TEXT: "_How wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?_"--Jer. 12:5.
High up in the mountains of Anti-Lebanon a famous river was born which
was to play so important a part in the history of God's people that it
would not have been strange if the birds of heaven had chanted their
praises when first it began its journey. From four different places in
the mountain the stream starts. Then the four streams become one, and
in a single channel the river makes its way across the plain.
There are two chief characteristics which must be borne in mind. The
first is that a part of its journey is through a rocky country, and
caves are on either side of the river, sometimes one above another;
frequently three caves are to be seen one above another. The other
characteristic is that it overflows its banks in all the time of
harvest. These two things must be kept in mind if the text would teach
its lesson.
There are certain people who will always remember the river Jordan--the
children of Israel first of all, because it separated them from the
Promised Land; and while scripturally Canaan does not stand for Heaven,
yet in the mind of many it does, and the Jordan typifies an experience
which stands between us and the future. Naaman will remember it, for
when he came as a leper to the servant of God he was bidden to wash
seven times in this river. At first he rebelled against the thought,
finally he entered the stream, bathed twice, three times, four, five,
six times, and was still a leper; but you will remember the word of the
Lord, seven times must he bathe, and when the seventh plunge was taken,
behold, his flesh was as the flesh of a little child! No man need
expect to have light and peace and power or eternal life until he has
fulfilled all the commands of God.
The wild beasts frequently make their way to these caves as a place of
refuge. When the waters begin to rise they are driven out, when they
go to the higher cave, and then to the highest of all, and the waters
constantly rising fill this cave and they are overpowered and put to
death. They are an illustration for us. Men of to-day are in caves of
different sorts; some in the cave of dissipation, others in the cave of
infidelity, and still others in the cave of morality. One day the
waters of judgment will begin to rise, and it will be an awful thing to
stand in terror before God, driven forth without refuge.
I
_Dissipation_. "I am in the clutch of an awful sin," wrote some one to
me recently, whether man or woman I cannot tell, but this was the story:
Three years before the writer had been free, and then in an unguarded
moment had gone down. Now came the pathetic cry, "I am helpless and
hopeless." I do not know what the sin was, but it makes no difference;
any sin can bind us if we but yield to it. Under the subject of
dissipation I do not speak of drinking as the worst of sins, because it
is not the worst, by any means. I had a thousand times rather admit to
my home the drunkard who has been cursed with his appetite than to
admit there the man who is lecherous, who possibly stands high in
society and in the business world, but whose sin is great and whose
heart is vile beyond description. I speak of drinking because it is
the most common of sins.
John B. Gough cries out concerning this sin, "I do not speak of it
boastingly," said he, "for I have known what the curse of strong drink
is; I have felt it in my own life and seen it in others, but I say the
truth, let the bread of affliction be given me to eat, take away from
me the friends of my old age, let the hut of poverty be my dwelling
place, let the wasting hand of disease be placed upon me, let me live
in the whirlwind and dwell in the storm, when I would do good let evil
come upon me--do all this, merciful God, but save me from the death of
a drunkard." When he would speak in such language, God pity the man
who yields to such a sin.
It may be that gambling is your weak point. When I was in Colorado a
young man who was a graduate of Harvard, the honor man of his class,
and who had recently buried his wife, sat at the gambling table, staked
his last dollar and lost it; then deliberately put up his little child
and lost her; and then, in despair, blew out his brains and sent his
soul to hell. When such a man of culture and training would go down
under such a sin, God pity the man who yields to it.
Or it may be licentiousness, that sin which makes men lower than the
beasts of the field, from which one can scarcely break away. I do not
know what the sin may be that clutches your life, but if you have given
way to it and rejected Christ, how wilt thou do in the swelling of
Jordan, when the waters rise higher and higher and you are without
Christ and without hope?