Judah learned that the yoke of obedience to God's law was a world
lighter than the grinding oppression of the Egyptian invader.
God's service is freedom; the world's is slavery.
Liberty is unrestrained power to do what we ought. Man must be subject
to law. The solemn imperative of duty is omnipresent and sovereign. To
do as we like is not freedom, but bondage to self, and that usually
our worst self, which means crushing or coercing the better self. The
choice is to chain the beast in us or to clip the wings of the angel
in us, and he is a fool who conceits himself free because he lets his
inferior self have its full swing, and hustles his better self into
bondage to clear the course for the other. There is but one
deliverance from the sway of self, and it is realised in the liberty
wherewith Christ has made us free. To make self our master inevitably
leads to setting beggars on horseback and princes walking. Passion,
the 'flesh' is terribly apt to usurp the throne within when once God
is dethroned. Then indulgence feeds passion, and deeper draughts
become necessary in order to produce the same effects, and cravings,
once allowed free play, grow in ravenousness, while their pabulum
steadily loses its power to satisfy. The experience of the undevout
sensualist is but too faithful a type of that of all undevout livers,
in the failure of delights to delight and of acquisitions to enrich,
and in the bondage, often to nothing more worthy to be obeyed than
mere habit, and in the hopeless incapacity to shake off the adamantine
chains which they have themselves rivetted on their limbs. There are
endless varieties in the forms which the service of self assumes,
ranging from gross animalism, naked and unashamed, up to refined and
cultured godlessness, but they are one in their inmost character, one
in their disabling the spirit from a free choice of its course, one in
the limitations which they impose on its aspirations and
possibilities, one in the heavy yoke which they lay on their vassals.
The true liberty is realised only when for love's dear sake we
joyously serve God, and from the highest motive enrol ourselves in the
household of the highest Person, and by the act become 'no more
servants but sons.' Well may we all pray--
'Lord! bind me up, and let me lie
A prisoner to my liberty,
If such a state at all can be
As an imprisonment, serving Thee.'
God's service brings solid good, the world's is vain and empty.
God's service brings an approving conscience, a calm heart, strength
and gladness. It is in full accord with our best selves. Tranquil joys
attend on it. 'In keeping Thy commandments there is great reward,' and
that not merely bestowed after keeping, but realised and inherent in
the very act. On the other side, think of the stings of conscience,
the illusions on which those feed who will not eat of the heavenly
food, the husks of the swine-trough, the ashes for bread, that self
and the world, in all their forms set before men. A pathetic character
in modern fiction says, 'If you make believe very much it is nice.' It
takes a tremendous amount of make-believe to keep up an appetite for
the world's dainties or to find its meats palatable, after a little
while. No sin ever yields the fruit it was expected to produce, or if
it does it brings something which was not expected, and the bitter
tang of the addition spoils the whole. It may be wisely adapted to
secure a given end, but that end is only a means to secure the real
end, our substantial blessedness, and that is never attained but by
one course of life, the life of service of God. We may indeed win a
goodly garment, but the plague is in the stuff and, worn, it will burn
into the bones like fire. I read somewhere lately of thieves who had
stolen a cask of wine, and had their debauch, but they sickened and
died. The cask was examined and a huge snake was found dead in it. Its
poison had passed into the wine and killed the drinkers. That is how
the world serves those who swill its cup. 'What fruit had ye then in
those things whereof ye are _now_ ashamed?' The threatening
pronounced against Israel's disobedience enshrines an eternal truth:
'Because thou servedst not the Lord thy God with joyfulness, and with
gladness of heart, by reason of the abundance of all things; therefore
shalt thou serve thine enemies ... in hunger and in thirst, and in
nakedness and in want of all things.'
God's service has final issues and the world's service has final
issues.
Only fools try to blink the fact that all our doings have
consequences. And it augurs no less levity and insensibility to blink
the other fact that these consequences show no indications of being
broken short off at the end of our earthly life. Men die into another
life, as they have ever, dimly and with many foolish accompaniments,
believed; and dead, they are the men that they have made themselves
while living. Character is eternal, memory is eternal, death puts the
stamp of perpetuity on what life has evolved. Nothing human ever dies.
The thought is too solemn to be vulgarised by pulpit rhetoric. Enough
to say here that these two tremendous alternatives, Life and Death,
express some little part of the eternal issues of our fleeting days.
Looking fixedly into these two great symbols of the ultimate issues of
these contrasted services, we can dimly see, as in the one, a wonder
of resplendent glories moving in a sphere 'as calm as it is bright,'
so, in the other, whirling clouds and jets of vapour as in the crater
of a volcano. One shuddering glance over the rim of it should suffice
to warn from lingering near, lest the unsteady soil should crumble
beneath our feet.
But the true Lord of our lives loves us too well to let us experience
all the bitter issues of our foolish rebellion against His authority,
and yet He loves us too well not to let us taste something of them
that we may 'know and see that it is an evil thing _and a
bitter_, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God.' The experiences
of the consequences of godless living are in some measure allowed to
fall on us by God's love, lest we should persist in the evil and so
bring down on ourselves still more fatal issues. It is mercy that here
chastises the evildoer with whips, in hope of not having to chastise
him with scorpions. God desires to teach us, by the pains and
heartaches of an undevout life, by disappointments, foiled plans,
wrecked hopes, inner poverty, the difference between His service and
that of 'the kingdoms of the countries,' if haply He may not be forced
to let the full flood of fatal results overwhelm us. It is best to be
drawn to serve Him by the cords of love, but it is possible to have
the beginnings of the desire so to serve roused by the far lower
motives of weariness and disgust at the world's wages, and by dread of
what these may prove when they are paid in full. Self-interest may
sicken a man of serving Mammon, and may be transformed into the
self-surrender which makes God's service possible and blessed. The
flight into the city of refuge may be quickened by the fear of the
pursuer, whose horse's hoofs are heard thundering on the road behind
the fugitive, and whose spear is all but felt a yard from his back,
but once within the shelter of the city wall, gratitude for
deliverance will fill his heart and 'perfect love will cast out fear.'
The king concerning whom our text was spoken had to suffer humiliation
by the Egyptian invasion. His sufferings were meant to be educational,
and when they in some measure effected their purpose, God curbed the
invader and granted some measure of deliverance. So is it with us, if,
moved by whatever impulse, we betake ourselves to Jesus to save us
from the bitter fruits of our evil lives. The extreme severity of the
results of our sins does not fall on penitent, believing spirits, but
some do fall. As the Psalmist says: 'Thou wast a God that forgavest
them though Thou tookest vengeance of their inventions.' A profligate
course of life may be forgiven, but health or fortune is ruined all
the same. In brief, the so-called 'natural' consequences are not
removed, though the sin which caused them is pardoned. Polluted
memories, indulged habits, defiled imaginations, are not got rid of,
though the sins that inflicted them are forgiven.
Is it not, then, the part of wise men to lay to heart the lessons of
experience, and to let what we have learned of the bitter fruit of
godless living turn us away from such service, and draw us by merciful
chastisement to yield ourselves to God, whom to serve accords with our
deepest needs and brings first fruits and pre-libations of blessedness
and peace here, and fullness of joy with pleasures for evermore
hereafter?