JOTHAM

'So Jotham became mighty, because he prepared his ways before the Lord

his God.'--2 CHRON. xxvii 6.

This King Jotham is one of the obscurer of the Jewish monarchs, and we

know next to nothing about him. The most memorable event in his reign

is that 'in the year when King Uzziah,' his father, 'died,' and

consequently in Jotham's first year, Isaiah saw the Lord sitting in

the Temple on the empty throne, and had the lips which were to utter

so many immortal words touched with fire from the altar. Whether it

were the effect of the prophet's words, or from other causes, the

little that is told of him is good, and he is eulogised as having

imitated his father's God-pleasing acts, and not having stained

himself by repeating his father's sin. The rest that we hear of him in

Chronicles is a mere sketch of campaigns, buildings, and victories,

and then he and his reign are summed up in the words of our text,

which is the analysis of the man and the disclosure of the secret of

his prosperity: 'He became mighty, because he prepared his ways'--and,

more than that, 'he prepared them before the Lord his God.'

So then, if we begin, as it were, at the bottom, as we ought to do, in

studying a character, taking the deepest thing first, and laying hold

upon the seminal and germinal principle of the whole, this text

reminds us that--The secret of true strength lies in the continual

recognition that life is lived 'Before the Lord our God.'

Now to say, 'Walk thou _before_ Me,' the command given to

Abraham, suggests a somewhat different modification of the idea from

the apparently parallel phrase, 'to walk _with_ God' which is

declared to have been the life's habit of Enoch. The one expression

suggests simple companionship and communion; the other suggests rather

the vivid and continual realisation of the thought that we are 'ever

in the great Taskmaster's eye.' To walk before God is to feel

thrillingly and continually, and yet without being abased or crushed

or discomposed, but rather being encouraged and quickened and calmed

and ennobled and gladdened thereby: 'Thou God seest me.' It seems to

me that one of the plainest pieces of Christian duty, and, alas! one

of the most neglected of them, is the cultivation, definitely and

consciously, by effort and by self-discipline, of that consciousness

as a present factor in all our lives, and an influencing motive in

everything that we do. If once we could bring before the eye of our

minds that great, blazing, white throne, and Him that sits upon it, we

should want nothing else to burn up the commonplaces of life, and to

flash its insignificance into splendour and awfulness. We should want

nothing else to lift us to a 'solemn scorn of ills,' and to deliver us

from the false sweetnesses and fading delights that grow on the low

levels of a sense-bound life! Brethren! our whole life would be

transformed and glorified, and we should be different men and women if

we ordered our ways as '_before the Lord our God_.' What meanness

could live when we knew that it was seen by those pure Eyes? How we

should be ashamed of ourselves, of our complaints, of our murmurings,

of our reluctance to do our duty, of our puerile regrets for vanished

blessings, and of all the low cares and desires that beset and spoil

our lives, if once this thought, 'before God,' were habitual with us,

and we walked in it as in an atmosphere!

Why is it not? and might it not be? and if it might not, ought it not

to be? And what are we to say to Him whom we profess to love as our

Supreme Good, if all the day long the thought of Him seldom comes into

our minds, and if any triviality, held near the eye, is large enough

and bright enough to shut Him out from our sight? With deep ethical

significance and accuracy was the command given to Abraham as the

sole, all-sufficient direction for both inward and outward life: 'Walk

before Me and (so) be thou perfect.' For indeed the full

realisation--adequate and constant and solid enough to be a motive--of

'Thou God seest me,' would be found to contain practical directions in

regard to all moral difficulties, and would unfailingly detect the

evil, howsoever wrapped up, and would carry in itself not only motive

but impulse, not only law but power to fulfil it. The Master's eye

makes diligent servants. How schoolboys bend themselves over their

slates and quicken their effort when the teacher is walking behind the

benches! And how a gang of idle labourers will buckle to the spade and

tax their muscles in an altogether different fashion when the overseer

appears upon the field! If we realised, as we should do, the presence

in all our little daily life of that great, sovereign Lord, there

would be less skulking, less superficially performed tasks, less jerry

work put into our building; more of our strength cast into all our

work, and less of ourselves in any of it.

Remember, too, how connected with this is another piece of effort

needful in the religious life, and suggested by the last words of this

text, 'Before the Lord _his_ God.' Cultivate the habit of

narrowing down the general truths of religion to their relation to

yourselves. Do not be content with 'the Lord _our_ God,' or 'the

Lord the God of the whole earth,' but put a 'my' in, and realise not

only the presence of a divine Inspector, but the closeness of the

personal bond that unites to Him; and the individual responsibility,

in all its width and depth and unshiftableness--if I may use such a

word--which results therefrom. You cannot shake off or step out of the

tasks that 'the Lord _your_ God' lays upon you. You and He are as

if alone in the world. Make Him your God by choice, by your own

personal acceptance of His authority and dependence upon His power,

and try to translate into daily life the great truth, 'Thou God seest

_me_,' and bring it to bear upon the veriest trifles and smallest

details.

Now the text follows the order of observation, so to speak, and

mentions the outward facts of Jotham's success before it goes deeper

and accounts for them. We have reversed the process and dealt first

with the cause. The spring of all lay in his conscious recognition of

his relation to God and God's to him. From that, of course, followed

that he 'prepared,' according to the Authorised Version, or 'ordered,'

according to the Revised Version, 'his ways.' There is an alternative

rendering of the word rendered 'prepared' or 'ordered' given in the

margin of the Authorised Version, which reads, 'established his ways.'

Both the ideas of ordering and establishing are contained in the word.

Now that fact, that the same word means both these, conveys a piece of

practical wisdom, which it will do us all good to note clearly and

take to heart. For it teaches us that whatever is 'ordered' is firm,

and whatever is disorderly, haphazard, done without the exercise of

one's mind on the act, being chaotic, is necessarily short-lived.

The ordered life is the established life. The life of impulse, chance,

passion, the life that is lived without choice and plan, without

reflection and consideration of consequences, the following of nature,

which some people tell us is the highest law, and which is woefully

likely to degenerate into following the _lower_ nature, which

ought not to be followed, but covered and kept under hatches--such a

life is sure to be a topsy-turvy life, which, being based upon the

narrowest point, must, by the laws of equilibrium, topple over sooner

or later. If you would have your lives established, they must be

ordered. You must bring your brains to bear upon them, and you must

bring more than brain, you must bring to bear on every part of them

the spiritual instincts that are quickened by contact with the thought

of the All-seeing God, and let these have the ordering of them. Such

lives, and only such, will endure 'when all that seems shall suffer

shock.' 'He that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.'

But the lesson that is pressed upon us by this word, understood in the

other meanings of 'prepared' or 'ordered,' is that all our 'ways,'

that is, our practical life, our acts, direction of mind, habits,

should be regulated by continual consciousness of, and reference to,

the All-discerning Eye that looks down upon us, and 'the God in whose

hands our breath is, and whose are'--whether we make them so or

not--'all our ways.' To translate that into less picturesque, and less

forcible, but more modern words, it is just this: You Christian people

ought to make it a point of duty to cultivate the habit of referring

everything that you do to the will and judgment of God. Take Him into

account in everything great or small, and in nothing say, 'Thus I

will, thus I command. My will shall stand instead of all other

reasons'; but say, 'Lord! by Thee and for Thee I try to do this'; and

having done it, say, 'Lord! the seed is sown in Thy name; bless Thou

the springing thereof.' Works thus begun, continued and ended, will

never be put to confusion, and 'ways' thus ordered will be

established. A path of righteousness like that can no more fail to be

a way of peace than can God's throne ever totter or fall. An ordered

life in which He is consulted, and which is all shaped at His bidding,

and by His strength, and for His dear name, will 'stand four-square to

all the winds that blow,' and, being founded upon a rock, will never

fall.

But we may also note that in the strength of that thought, that we are

before the Lord our God, we shall best establish our ways in the sense

that we shall keep on steadily and doggedly on the path. Well begun

may be half ended, but there is often a long dreary grind before it is

wholly ended, and the last half of the march is the wearisome half.

The Bible has a great deal to say about the need of obstinate

persistence on the right road. 'Ye did run well, what did hinder you?'

'Cast not away your confidence, which hath great recompense of

reward.' 'We are made partakers of Christ if we hold fast the

beginning of our confidence firm unto the end.' 'He that overcometh

and keepeth My words unto the end, to him will I give authority.'

Lives which derive their impulse from communion with God will not come

to a dead stop half-way on their road, like a motor the fuel of which

fails; and it will be impossible for any man to 'endure unto the end'

and so to be heir of the promise--'the same shall be saved,' unless he

draws his persistency from Him who 'fainteth not, neither is weary'

and who 'reneweth strength to them that have no might' so that in all

the monotonous levels they shall 'walk and not faint,' and in all the

crises, demanding brief spurts of energy, 'they shall run and not be

weary,' and at last 'shall mount up with wings as eagles.' A path

ordered and a path persisted in ought to be the path of every

Christian man.

The text finally tells of the prosperity and growing power which

attends such a course. 'Jotham became mighty.' That was simple outward

blessing. His kingdom prospered, and, according to the theocratic

constitution of Judah, faithfulness to God and material well-being

went together. You cannot apply these words, of course, to the outward

lives of Christians. It is no doubt true that 'Godliness _is_

profitable for all things,' but there are a great many other things

besides the godliness of the man that does them which determine

whether a man's undertakings shall prosper in the world's sense or

not. It would be a pitiable thing if the full revelation of God in

Christ did not teach us Christians more about the meaning and the

worth of outward success and inward prosperity than the Old Testament

could teach. I hope we have learned that lesson; at least, it is not

the fault of our lesson book if we have not. Although it is true that

religion does make the best of both worlds, it does not do so by

taking the world's estimate of what its best for to-day is, and giving

a religious man _that_. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it does

not, and whether it does or no depends on other considerations than

the reality of the man's devotion. Good men are often made better by

being made sad and unsuccessful. And if they are not bettered by

adversity, it is not the fault of the discipline but of the people who

undergo it.

But though the husk of my text falls away--and we should thank God

that it has fallen away--the kernel of it is ever true. Whosoever will

thus root his life in the living thought of a loving, divine Eye being

perpetually upon him, and make that thought a motive for holiness and

loving obedience and effort after service, will find that the true

success, the only success and the only strength that are worth a man's

ambition to desire or his effort to secure, will assuredly be his. He

may be voted a failure as regards the world's prizes. But a man that

'orders his ways,' and perseveres in ways thus ordered, 'before the

Lord' will for reward get more power to order his ways, and a purer

and more thrilling, less interrupted and more childlike vision of the

Face that looks upon him. God's 'eyes behold the upright,' and the

upright behold His eyes, and in the interchange of glances there is

power; and in that power is the highest reward for ordered lives. We

shall get power to do, power to bear, power to think aright, power to

love, power to will, power to behold, power to deny ourselves, 'power

to become sons of God.' This is the success of life, when out of all

its changes, and by reason of all its efforts, we realise more fully

our filial possession of our Father, and our Father's changeless love

to us. We shall become mighty with the might that is born of obedience

and faith if we order our ways before the Lord our God. 'The path of

the just is as the shining light, that shineth more and more until the

noontide of the day.'