I have already said that Hobab had nothing in the world to trust to
except Moses' word, and Moses' report of God's Word. 'We will do you
good; God has said that He will do good to us, and you shall have your
share in it.' It was a grave thing, and, in many circumstances, would
have been a supremely foolish thing, credulous to the verge of
insanity, to risk all upon the mere promise of one in Moses' position,
who had so little in his own power with which to fulfil the promise;
and who referred him to an unseen divinity, somewhere or other; and so
drew bills upon heaven and futurity, and did not feel himself at all
bound to pay them when they fell due, unless God should give him the
cash to do it with. But Hobab took the plunge, he ventured all upon
these two promises--Moses' word, and God's word that underlay it.
Now that is just what we have to do. For, after all talking about
reasons for belief, and evidences of religion, and all the rest of it,
it all comes to this at last--will you risk everything on Jesus
Christ's bare word? There are plenty of reasons for doing so, but what
I wish to bring out is this, that the living heart and root of true
Christianity is neither more nor less than the absolute and utter
reliance upon nothing else but Christ, and therefore on His word. He
did not even condescend to give reasons for that reliance, for His most
solemn assurance was just this, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you.' That
is as much as to say, 'If you do not see in Me, without any more
argument, reason enough for believing Me, you do not see Me at all.'
Christ did not argue--He asserted, and in default of all other proof,
if I might venture to say so, He put His own personality into the
scales and said, 'There, that will outweigh everything.' So no wonder
that 'they were astonished at His doctrine,'--not so much at the
substance of it as at the tone of it, 'for He taught them _with
authority_.'
But what right had He to teach them with authority? What right has He
to present Himself there in front of us and proclaim, 'I say unto you,
and there is an end of it'? The heart and essence of Christian faith is
doing, in a far sublimer fashion, precisely what this wild Arab did,
when he uprooted himself from the conditions in which his life had
grown up, and flung himself into an unknown future, on bare trust in a
bare word. Jesus Christ asks us to do the same by Him. Whether His word
comes to us revealing, or commanding, or promising, it is absolute,
and, for His true followers, ends all controversy, all hesitation, all
reluctance. When He commands it is ours to obey and live. And when He
promises it is for us to twine all the tendrils of our expectations
round that faithful word, and by faith to make 'the anchor of the soul,
sure and steadfast.' The venture of faith takes a _word_ for the most
solid thing in the universe, and the Incarnate Word of God for the
basis of all our hope, the authority for all our conduct, 'the
Master-light of all our seeing.'