Satan's Match.
If you will allow me an expression, Satan got a match when he got Paul.
He tried to get him away from God, but he never switched off. Look how
they tortured him. Look how they stripped and beat him. Not only did the
Romans do this, but the Jews also. How the Jews tried to drag him from
his high calling. How they stripped him and laid upon the back of the
apostle blow after blow. And you know that the scourge in those days was
no light thing. Sometimes men died under that punishment. If one of us
got one of the stripes that Paul got, how the papers would talk about
it. But it was nothing to Paul. He just looked at it as if it were a
trivial thing--as if it were a light affliction. When he was stripped
and scourged by his persecutors you might have gone and asked him:
"Well, Paul, what are you going to do now?" "Why, press toward the mark
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus;" Take your stand before Him
and ask him as they bring the rod down upon his head, "What are you
going to do now, Paul?" "Do? I am going to press toward the mark of the
high calling of God in Christ Jesus." He had one idea, and that was it.
Look at him as they stoned him. The Jews took up great stones to throw
upon the great apostle. They left him for dead, and I suppose he was
dead, but God raised him up. Come up and look at him all bruised and
bleeding as he lies. "Well, Paul, you've had a narrow escape this time.
Don't you think you had better give up? Go off into Arabia and rest for
six weeks. What will you do if you remain here? They mean to kill you."
"Do!" he cries as he raises himself like a mighty giant, "I am going to
press toward the mark of the high calling of God." And he goes forth and
preaches the gospel. I am ashamed of Christianity in the nineteenth
century when I think of those early Christians. Why, it would take all
the Christians in the Northwest to make one Paul. Look at his heroism
everywhere he went. Talk about your Alexanders; why, the mighty power of
God rested upon Paul. "Why," said he, "thrice was I shipwrecked while
going off to preach the gospel." What did he care about that? Cold
churches wouldn't trouble him, although they trouble us. What would
lying elders and false deacons be to him? That wouldn't stop him. He had
but one idea, and over all obstacles he triumphed for that one idea.
Look at him as he comes back from his punishment. He goes up some side
street and gets lodgings. He works during the day and preaches at night
on the street. He had no building like this, no committee to wait on
him, no carriage to carry him from the meeting, no one to be waiting to
pay his board bills. There he was toiling and preaching, and, after
preaching for eighteen months, they say, "We'll have to pay you for all
this preaching, Paul," and they take him to the corner of the street
and pay him with thirty-nine stripes! That is the way they paid him.
Oh, my friends, when you look at the lives of such men don't it make
you feel ashamed of yourselves. I confess I feel like hanging my head.
Go to him in the Philippian jail and ask him what he is going to do now.
"Do? press forward for the mark of my high calling." And so he went on
looking toward one point, and no man could stand before him.
Saved and Saving.
One day I saw a steel engraving that I liked very much. I thought it was
the finest thing I ever had seen, at the time, and I bought it. It was a
picture of a woman coming out of the water, and clinging with both arms
to the cross. There she came out of the drowning waves with both arms
around the cross perfectly safe. Afterwards, I saw another picture that
spoiled this one for me entirely, it was so much more lovely. It was a
picture of a person coming out of the dark waters, with one arm clinging
to the cross and with the other she was lifting some one else out of the
waves. That is what I like. Keep a firm hold upon the cross, but always
try to rescue another from the drowning.