Ruth's successful marriage. Then one day the sweet angel of suffering
came to the home where the one-time-stranger lived and Ruth held her
first-born in her arms. And the years went by and there was another
child born among the Judean hills and the sunshine was tangled in his
hair and countless songs were pent up in his heart. And he so sang and
battled and sinned and repented that everybody loved him and we thank
God still for David. And David was Ruth's grandbaby.
Then other years went by and there was a burst of light upon those
Judean hills. And there was music from a choir that came from that
country where everybody sings. "There were shepherds abiding in the
fields, keeping watch over their flocks by night. And the angel of the
Lord came upon them and the glory of the Lord shone round about them
and they were sore afraid. And the angel said, 'Fear not, ye, for
behold, I bring you glad tidings of great joy which shall be to all the
people; for there is born unto you this day, in the city of David, a
Savior who is Christ the Lord.'" And that Savior was another one of
Ruth's grandbabies.
But in the purpose of God, neither David nor David's Greater Son would
have been possible without Naomi. And so one woman remaining true to
God became a roadway along which the Almighty walked to the
accomplishment of His great purpose, even the salvation of the world.
XIII
CONFESSIONS OF A FAILURE--THE BUSY MAN
_1 Kings 20:40_
In 1 Kings 20:40 you will find the text. "As thy servant was busy here
and there, he was gone." This is part of a parable that was spoken by
a certain prophet to King Ahab. This prophet was seeking to rebuke the
king for his leniency in dealing with Benhadad, whom he had overcome in
battle. It is not our purpose, however, to discuss this parable in
relation to its context. We are going to consider it altogether apart
from its surroundings. We will rather study it as it is related to
ourselves. Here then, is the story of this man's failure from his own
lips. "Thy servant went out into the midst of the battle; and, behold,
a man turned aside and brought a man unto me, and said, Keep this man:
if by any means he be missing, then shall thy life be for his life, or
else thou shalt pay a talent of silver. And as thy servant was busy
here and there, he was gone."
I imagine I meet this soldier immediately after he has been put in
charge of his important captive. He walks with the purposeful stride
of one who knows his task and who is setting seriously about doing it.
He seems to appreciate the honor that has been conferred upon him. He
seems also to have a sense of the serious responsibilities involved.
And when he takes his position before the cell of his prisoner he
watches with all diligence.
But when I pass his way again next day I am greatly shocked. My
soldier is no longer on guard. Another had taken his place. And when
I look about for the important prisoner that has been captured at the
price of blood and conflict he is no longer to be seen. Upon inquiry I
find that he has escaped. In his place, bowed down with shame and
dressed in chains, is the man who yesterday was a guardsman.
I cannot pass him by without a question. "How did this come about?" I
ask. "Were you surprised and overcome? Did your fellow soldiers allow
a strong company to break through their lines and to overpower you and
take your prisoner from you? Did a strong hand strike you down from
behind in the dark? How is it that your prisoner had escaped?"
And the man, without being able to look me in the eye, answers, "No, he
did not escape because I was overpowered. He did not escape because I
was surprised. He escaped because I was too busy to watch him." "Too
busy," I answer in amazement, "too busy doing what? What task did you
find more important than saving your country and saving your own home
and saving your own honor?" "Oh, no task in particular," he answers.
"I was just busy here and there." That is his confession. "As thy
servant was busy here and there, he was gone."
And the man is sentenced to death. And we must admit that the sentence
is just. Not that he has committed any aggressive crime. He has not
cut anybody's throat. He has not stabbed anybody in the back. He has
not stolen anything. He is not being punished for what he has done.
He is being punished for what he has failed to do.
And that kind of sin, let me warn you, is just as dangerous and just as
killing as positive and aggressive sin. How foolish are they who think
they are pious simply because they do no wrong. How absurd it is to
get it into your minds that a man is a Christian by virtue of what he
does not do instead of by virtue of what he does. Now, I know that
there are certain sins that are damaging and damning, but in order to
be lost now and ever more it is not necessary to be guilty of any of
them. All that is necessary is that you do what this man did, and that
is fail in your duty.
This is what our Lord taught us again and again. What was wrong with
the fig tree that He cursed it? It was not loaded with poison. It
simply had nothing but leaves. What charge is brought against Dives?
No charge at all. We are simply made to see him neglect the man at his
gate who needed his help. He does not drive the man away. He simply
lets him alone. And over his neglected duty he stumbles out into a
Christless eternity. What was wrong with the five foolish virgins? It
was not that they had water in their lamps. It was simply the fact
that they had no oil. What was the matter with those to whom the judge
said, "Depart from me"? Only this, they had failed in their duty. The
charge is, "Inasmuch as ye did it not."
So this man failed in his duty. That is what wrecked him. Why did he
fail? First, he did not fail through ignorance. He did not fail
because he did not know his duty. He understood perfectly what he was
to do. He understood also the great importance of his doing it. He
knew it was a life and death business with him. I know that he failed.
He failed miserably. He failed to his own ruin. But it was not
because of his ignorance. And that is not the secret of your failure.
We need to know more, all of us, but our greatest need in the moral
realm is not for more knowledge. Our greatest need is the will to live
up to what we already know. The reason you are selfish, the reason you
are unclean, the reason you are godless is not because you do not know
better. You have known better through all these years. It is because
you are unwilling to do better.
There is not a man here that does not know enough to do his duty. It
may be that you do not know the exact niche that the Lord wants you to
fill. It may be that you do not know the exact task to which He is
calling you. But you do know this, you know that there is an absolute
difference between right and wrong, and that you ought to be enlisted
on the side of the right. You know that it is your part to help and
not to hinder, to bless and not to curse, to lift up and not to drag
down.
And while you may not know your particular task, yet it is your
privilege to know even that. I am confident that God has a particular
task for every single soul of us. And I am equally confident that He
will let us know what that task is if we will only make it possible for
Him to do so. He tells us how we may know. "In all thy ways
acknowledge Him and He shall direct thy path."
There are many misfits in the world, and you know a misfit is the
cheapest and most useless thing known. If you want a cheap suit of
clothes go to the misfit establishment. I remember when I was a young
fellow just getting grown I decided to quit wearing the crude
hand-me-down suits such as I could purchase at the village store. I
decided that I must have a genuine tailored suit.
So with this idea in mind I wrote for the catalogue of Montgomery Ward
& Company. I might have used Sears Roebuck, but I liked Montgomery
Ward better. I found the suit I wanted, read his directions, took my
own measure and ordered the suit. In due time it came. And I pledge
you my word that you might have tried that suit on every form of man
and beast that the whole Roman Empire could furnish and it would not
have fit a single one of them. The legs of the pants were large enough
to keep house in. They would have made admirable wheat sacks, but as
trousers they were a failure. To me the suit was worthless because it
was a misfit.
And there are many men just as worthless to-day. But they need not
have been so. If they did not know their task they might have known
it. They did not fail, as this man did not fail, through ignorance.
Second, this man did not fail for lack of ability. If he could have
said that he was overpowered, if he could have told that superior
numbers came upon him and took his prisoner in spite of himself we
could have pardoned him. Or if he could have shown us a scarred breast
and a face that had been hacked by a sword, and said, "I won these
wounds trying to keep my prisoner," we would have respected him. We
would have sympathized with him. But he had no scars to show. He had
made no fight at all. Therefore he could not say, "I failed, 'tis
true, but I could not help it." Neither can you say that. No man here
is failing for lack of ability.
Now, I do not mean by that that you can do anything that you want to
do. When I was a boy people used to come to our school and tell us
such rubbish as that. But it is all false. Suppose I were to take a
notion to be a great painter, not one after the fashion of the ordinary
sixteen year old girl of to-day, but a painter like Turner. Why, I
might work at it a thousand years and never accomplish anything.
Suppose some of you were to take a notion to be great singers. Is
there any use for me to tell you that if you persist you will succeed?
Not a bit of it. You might succeed in ruining the nerves of your
teacher. You might easily make those who hear you practise "want to
gnaw a file and flee into the wilderness." But you would never learn
to sing. There is no hope for some of us till we get to Heaven.
No, we cannot do anything that we might want to do. But we can do
something infinitely better. We can do everything that God wants us to
do. I cannot do your task, and you cannot do mine. I am glad that
that is true. I am glad that we all do not have the same aptitudes. I
am glad that we all cannot do successfully the same things. I am glad
that we do not all have the same tastes. But while that is so, every
man has the ability, through grace, to perform the task to which he is
called.
In the third place, this man did not fail because of idleness. He did
not fail because he was lazy. Of course idleness will wreck anybody.
Laziness is a deadly sin unless it is overcome. I know something about
it because I have had to fight it all my life. But this man was not an
idler. This man was a worker. He failed, but he did not fail because
he refused to put his hand to any task or to bend his back under any
load.
Why then did this man fail? Not from ignorance, not from inability,
not from idleness. He was busy. That is his word about himself. And
nobody denies it. "As thy servant was busy here and there, he was
gone." What, I repeat, was the secret of his failure? Just this, that
though he was busy, he was not busy at his own task. He was simply
busy here and there. He was one of those unfortunate souls that has so
many things to do and so many engagements to keep and so many functions
to attend and so many burdens to carry that he cannot do his own duty.
Do you know of anybody like that? "Did you keep your prisoner?" I ask.
"No, I was too busy." "Busy at what, in Heaven's name! Do you know of
anything more important than obeying the orders of your king? Do you
know of anything more important than helping to save your nation? Do
you know of anything of more importance than saving your own life, your
own honor, your own soul."
You can see his trouble. He allowed the secondary to so absorb him
that he neglected the primary. Those things that he was working at
here and there, those unnamed tasks that he was performing, there is no
hint that they were vicious things. I am sure that they were
altogether harmless. They may have been altogether good and useful.
But the trouble with that good was that it robbed him of the privilege
of doing the best. The trouble with the Prodigal in the Far Country
was not simply the fact that he was in a hog pen. He might have been
in a palace and been quite as bad off. It was the fact that he was
missing the privilege of being in his Father's house.
The sin that I fear most for many of you is not the sin of vicious
wrong-doing. It is the sin of this man, the sin of choosing the second
best. I read recently of an insane man who spent all his time in an
endeavor to sew two pieces of cloth together. But the thread he used
had no knot in the end of it. So nothing was ever accomplished. Now,
there is no harm in such sewing. But the tragedy of it is that if we
spend all our time doing such trivial things we rob ourselves of the
privilege of doing something better. And that is just the trouble of
much of our life to-day. Many of us are engaged in a great, stressful,
straining life of trivialities. Some of these are not especially
harmful. But the calamity of it all is that they so absorb us that we
have no time left for the highest.
Down in Tennessee near where I used to live a house was burned one day.
The mother was out at the well doing the week's washing. The flames
were not discovered till they were well under way. Of course when they
were discovered the woman was seized with terror. She rushed into the
house and brought out a feather bed and a few quilts. But in her
madness she forgot her own baby and the child was burned to death.
Now, I submit to you that there was absolutely no harm in saving a
feather bed. There was no harm in saving a few old quilts. The
tragedy was that in the absorption of saving all these half worthless
things she lost the primary. In her interest in the good she became
utterly blind to the best.
I wonder if that is not your folly. You are busy here and there. You
go to work six days in the week. You are passionately in earnest about
amusing yourself. You do a thousand and one decent and respectable
things. But while you are busy here and there the peace of God slips
out of your life. While you are busy here and there you neglect the
Sunday School and the Church. While you are busy here and there you
lose your interest in the Word of God and you forget "the secret
stairway that leads into the Upper Room." "Busy here and there" you
lose the sense of God out of your life. "Busy here and there" you
allow the altar in your home to fall down. "Busy here and there" you
allow your sons and daughters to stumble over that broken down altar
into lives of Christless indifference.
Oh, men and women, there is but one remedy for us if we would avoid the
rock upon which this condemned guardsman wrecked himself. We must put
first things first. Let us listen once more to the voice of the sanest
man that ever lived. This is His message: "Seek ye first the kingdom
of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added unto
you." If you fail to do this, however noble may be the task at which
you toil, life for you will end in tragedy. If you do this, however
mean and obscure may be your task, life for you will end in eternal joy
and victory.
XIV
A MOTHER'S REWARD--JOCHEBED
_Exodus 2:9_
"Take this child away and nurse him for me and I will give thee thy
wages." This text refers to one of the big events of human history.
This is one of the most stupendous happenings that was ever recorded.
I doubt if there was ever a battle fought that was so far reaching in
its influence. I doubt if all the fifteen decisive battles of the
world taken together were of greater importance than this event that
took place here on the banks of the Nile.
It is a simple story. An Egyptian princess, with her attendants, has
come to the riverside for a bath. To her amazement she discovers a
strange vessel lying at anchor upon the waters of the river. Her
curiosity is aroused. When the vessel is brought to land its cargo is
discovered. And what a cargo it is. It is so wonderful, it is so
amazingly great that we marvel that any ship should be large enough to
hold it. We are amazed that any sea should be vast enough to float
such a vessel.
What was this cargo? It was a baby, a baby boy. He is waving dimpled
hands and kicking chubby feet, and he is crying. And the vessel upon
which he sails becomes a battleship. He at once begins to lay siege to
the heart of the princess. He pelts her with his tears. He pierces
her through and through with his winsome weakness. He cannonades her
with his lovely helplessness till she capitulates and gathers him in
her arms. And this princess is no wicked woman, I am sure of that.
She had a mother heart. I think I can hear her across the centuries
talking to this little waif. She hugs him close. "Yes, yes," she
said. "You shall be my baby. The big, old soldiers shan't have you.
They shan't kill mother's little boy." And she loved him as her own.
Now, two bright eyes had been witnessing this wonderful scene. There
was a little girl hidden nearby and she watched all that happened. And
when she saw the princess take her little baby brother to her heart she
understood. She felt sure at once that the baby was safe. And a glad
and daring thought took possession of her and she hurried from her
place of hiding and approached the princess. And this is her word, "My
lady, may I get a nurse for your baby?"
And the princess did not despise the little girl. I feel perfectly
confident that the spirit of God was moving upon the heart of this
princess. She listened to the child and accepted her services. And I
can see that little girl as with flying feet she hurries to her mother
with the good news. "Mother, they have found Little Brother, but they
are not going to kill him. The Princess found him and I told her that
I would get somebody to nurse him for her. Come, and we may have him
for our own again."
Now, I take it that it was an important event when the Princess decided
that the child was to live. The death sentence had gone out against
him. You know that. The death sentence had been pronounced against
every son of the Hebrews. But an even more important event took place
when the Princess decided who should be the baby's nurse. When she
decided who should have the training of the child, then she decided
what the child was to be. Suppose, for instance, she had determined to
train him herself, she would have made him like herself. Moses would
have become a heathen in spite of the blood in his veins. He was
destined to be a genius, but his genius might have been very far from
being the helpful something that it was. Wrongly trained it might have
been as brilliant as the lightning's flash, but also as destructive.
But this woman chose, all unwittingly, it is true, to give her baby to
be nursed by his own mother. And this Jewish woman was not a heathen.
She was a faithful servant of the Lord. I can see her as she hurries
down to the banks of the Nile. And as she goes there's a wonderful
light in her eyes. And her lips are moving, and she is saying,
"Blessed be the God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Israel, who has
heard the prayer of His servant and who has granted the desire of her
heart."
And I love to look again upon this scene. The Egyptian princess is
handing over the precious little bundle of immortality into the arms of
a Jewish slave. And that Jewish slave is hugging her own child to her
hungry heart. And the princess is talking to her proudly, haughtily,
as becomes her rank, "Take this child away and nurse him for me and I
will give thee thy wages." And away goes this mother, the happiest
mother, I think, in all the world.
Now, had you met this mother with her child so wonderfully restored to
her and had asked her whose was the child and for whom she was nursing
it, I wonder what she would have said. I know what the attendants of
the princess thought. I know what they would have said. They would
have said that she was nursing the child for the Princess. They would
have said that the Princess was her employer. They would have said
that Moses was the Princess's baby. But this mother never thought of
it in any such way. She laughed in the secret depths of her heart at
the idea of her being employed by the Princess. Who was her employer?
I know what she thought. She believed that God was. She had a pious
fancy that God was speaking through the lips of that Princess and that
He was saying, "Take the child and nurse him for me and I will give
thee thy wages." She thought her child was God's child. Therefore,
she believed that it was to God, and not to the Egyptian Princess, that
she was to account at the last for the way in which she trained and
played the mother's part by her boy.
Yes, I feel confident that this mother believed that God was her real
employer. She believed that she was His minister. She believed that
she had been chosen for the task that was now engaging her. And she
was right in her belief. When God, who had great plans for Moses,
sought for some one who was to make it possible for Him to realize His
plans, whom did He choose? To whom did He commit this precious
treasure, from whose life such infinite blessings should come to the
world? He did not commit him to a heathen. He did not commit him to a
mere hired servant. He committed him to his mother. When God wants to
train a child for the achieving of the best and the highest in life He
sends him to school to a godly mother.
Now, when God chose the mother of Moses for his nurse and his teacher
He made a wise choice. The choice was wise, in the first place,
because this mother of Moses was eager for her task. She was a willing
mother. Whatever glad days may have come in her life history, I am
sure no gladder time ever came than that time when she realized that to
her was going to be given the matchless privilege of mothering her own
child. I know there are some mothers who do not agree with her. I
know there are some that look upon the responsibilities of motherhood
as building a kind of prison, but not so this immortal mother. She
looked upon her duty as her highest privilege. She entered upon her
task with an eagerness born of a quenchless love.
The choice was fortunate, in the second place, because she was a woman
of faith. In the letter to the Hebrews we read that Moses was bidden
by faith. Both the father and the mother of Moses were pious people.
They were people of consecration, of devotion to God, of faith in God.
It is true they were slaves. It is true they had a poor chance. It is
true they lived in a dark day when the light was dim, but they lived up
to their light. And their home was a pious home and its breath was
sweet and fragrant with the breath of prayer.
And I have little hope for the rearing of a great Christian leader in
any other type of home. I have no hope of rearing a new and better
civilization in any other type of home. Our national life is
discordant and hate-torn to-day. We are living in a time of intense
bitterness and selfishness and sordid greed. But what civilization is
to-day, the home life of yesterday has made it. And what civilization
will be to-morrow the home life of to-day will make it. If we do not
have Christian homes, believe me, we will never have a Christian
civilization.
"I know Abraham," God said, "that he will command his children and his
household after him." And there are two remarkable assertions made of
Abraham in this text. First, He said, "I know that Abraham will
command; I know Abraham will control his own household. I know that
Abraham will control his children." And God considered that as highly
important. Of course we are too wise to agree with Him to-day. We
believe it best to let our children run wild and do largely as they
please. We believe that Solomon was an old fogey when he spoke of
"sparing the rod and spoiling the child." And I am not here this
morning to tell you just how you are to control your child. But what I
do say is that you cannot commit a greater blunder than to fail to
control it. A child is better unborn than untrained.
Then God said of Abraham next, not only that he would command his
children and his household, but that he would command them after him.
He would not only exercise the right kind of authority, but he would
exert the right kind of influence. He would set the right kind of
example. He knew that Abraham would be in some measure what he desired
his children to be, that by authority and by right living he would
Christianize his own home.