God's Problem.
God needs men. That is the tremendous fact that stands out in every
generation. There never has been a corner since Adam walked out of Eden
where that need was not thrust into some man's face, and thrust into God's
face. It is being thrust into our faces to-day as ever before, and as
never before. For the ends of the earth are come upon us, for the helping
touch of our hands, _or_ for the drag-back to be overcome by some one's
else helping touch.
God is a needy God. That fact is spelled out by every page of this old
Book of His. And it is spelling itself out anew by the book of the life of
the race whose current chapter is being written by our generation. God's
wonderful plan for man lies at the root of His need. In His great
graciousness He made us in His own image. That is, He gave to us the right
of full free choice. He has never infringed upon that image, that right of
choice, by so much as a whispered breath or the moving of a hair. He gave
man the sovereignty of the earth and its life. And every move God has made
among men on earth has been through a man, and through his free consent.
The tragedy of sin has intensified God's need tremendously. It has
intensified everything, man's misunderstanding and hatred of God, the love
of God's heart for man, and the distance between the two. It is constantly
intensifying pain, sorrow, man's need, and the blight upon nature. It
increases God's difficulty in working out His will of love for man. For it
makes it increasingly hard to get even Christian men to see things through
God's eyes, and gladly give themselves up to His purposes.
Poor God! Such a needy God! Rich in power, in character, in the loving
worship of the upper world, in His love for all, rich beyond power of
human calculation; so poor in the response of men to the wooing of His
heart. So poor in the glad, intelligent co-operation of those who trust
Him for salvation in the next world, but are content with very little of
it in this. So needy in the lack of those who bring love and life,
intellect and wealth, and lay all at His feet.
This has been God's problem, to respect the rights He has given man, and
yet work through him in carrying out His great plan of love. This is the
warp into which the whole of the Bible fabric is woven--the tragedy of
sin, of sin-hurt, sin-stubborned men, the patience of God in wooing men
back, and His exquisite tact and unlimited patience is always working
_through_ men's consent, and through human channels.
To-day He comes to you and me, pleadingly asking us to help Him in His
passionate plan for His race. Some few have the gift of leadership. Most
of us are moulded to follow. He needs both leader and follower. He needs
the _life_. He needs the _love_. Through these, whether in prominent place
or shadowed, in leadership or in following along some well-beaten path,
through these--the _life_, the _love_, He works in His great simple plan
for overcoming the tragedy of sin. That plan includes the whole race. God
has no favourites among the nations. When the hour is ripe for an advance
step, a man is found ripened for leadership. This is the real final
explanation of certain great leaders. It was not the man himself alone,
but the coming together of the time, the man, and the plan; the time for
an advance step, the man who had yielded to God up to the ripening point,
the plan of God. And the decisive thing was the plan of God.
President Finney used to insist very earnestly that revivals followed a
fixed law of action. When men would with all their hearts fit into the
great laws of grace, there would follow the gracious revival results even
as effect follows cause in nature; and without question he was wholly
right. In addition to this, however, there is a further fact to note, of
which Finney himself was a striking illustration. In God's broader plans
for the race when the time is ripe for an advance step, He has some man in
training for leadership in that hour, and so ripeness of time and of man
and of plan come together. But the chief factor at work is God Himself.
This, and only this, explains fully certain great religious movements and
leaders. Such men in later centuries as Luther in Germany, Zwingli in
Switzerland, Calvin in France and Switzerland, Wesley and Whitefield in
England, and Finney in both America and England. Only this can
satisfactorily explain Moody's unusual career. He was a man of strong
native parts, of marked individuality, and of utter surrender to God. And
this combination would have brought great results under any circumstances,
but it does not explain the great movement in which he was the leader. It
was God's hour for an advance movement, the man so untrained in men's
schools, was slowly made ready in God's school, and man and hour and plan
fitted together. But the chief emphasis remains on the fact that it was
the time in God's gracious plan for an advance. And the nations of the
earth have been feeling the blessed impulse of that advance ever since.
But the leaders are few; and what could they do without the great mass of
followers? God needs the faithful ones, unknown by name, hidden away in
quiet corners, each the centre of a group which is touching a larger
group, and so on, ever widening. Everything turns on this,--letting God
have the full use of us; living as though God were the realest thing in
this matter-of-fact, every-day world; going on the supposition that the
Bible is indeed His Word, and is a workable book for daily problems and
needs, the one workable book; making everything bend toward getting His
will done. When we get up into His presence, this will be found to have
been the one thing worth while. When the race story has been all told, the
biography of earth brought to its last page, this will be the one thing
that will stand out, and remain, that we let Him use us just as He would,
and that we have brought everything at our disposal to bear on doing His
will of love.
He comes to you and me afresh to-day with His old-time winsome patience,
asking the use of us. He always thinks of us in two ways, for our own
sakes and for our help in reaching the others. Followers are messengers.
Some are special messengers in speech. But all are messengers in their
lives; that is, they are meant to be. This is our Lord's plan. He wants us
to _live_ the message.
That old word "witness" has grown to mean three things, that you _know_
something, that you _tell_ it, and that you tell it _with your life_.
Every time the word witness is used in the New Testament it stands for
some form of the word underneath from which our English word "martyr"
comes. We have come to associate that word "martyr" with the idea of
giving one's life in a violent way for the truth believed. This is the
meaning that has grown into the word. But the practical meaning of this
martyr-witness word goes a bit deeper yet than this. It is not merely
giving the life out in the crisis of dying, but that the whole life is
being given out in a continual martyrdom, that is, a continual witnessing.
These words, follower, messenger, witness, run together. In following we
are witnesses. We know something about this Man who goes before, a blessed
something that has entered into the marrow and joints of one's being. We
tell it. We tell it chiefly by living it. We are messengers. The whole
life is a message of what Christ Jesus has done for us, and is to us.
A Confession of Faith in Wood and Nails.
Now, this is the thing--this _living it_--that God has always counted on
most. There are in the Bible most striking illustrations of lived or
_acted messages_. One man actually preached a sermon nearly fifteen months
long merely by the position of his body. You would call that a long
sermon, but it had the desired result, at least partly. The man got the
ears of the people. They were hardened sermon listeners. The talked
sermons had no effect. So they were given an acted sermon.
I think it may help to look at a few of the old-time followers. The one
chief thing that marked these men was that they _lived the messages_. They
experienced the truth they stood for, sometimes to the extent of much
suffering. This _experience_ became part of the man's life. And this it
was that God used as His message. You cannot be a follower fully without
the thing taking your very life, and taking it to the feeling,
deep-feeling, point.
One of the earliest of these followers was _Enoch_. His brief story is
like the first crocus of spring coming up through the cold snow, like a
pretty flower growing up out of the thin crack of earth between great
stones. There was such a contrast with the surroundings. It is in the
Fifth of Genesis, one of the most tiresome chapters in the whole Bible.
Its tiresome monotony is an evidence of its inspiration; for it is a
picture of life with God left out. There are five chapters in Enoch's
biography. He was born; with that he had nothing to do. Like his lineal
descendants and his neighbours he just "_lived"_ for a while, went through
the usual physical and mental and social motions of life, no more. Then a
babe came into his household, a fresh act of God, a fresh call of God, one
of God's loudest calls. This was the turning point. He must have heard and
answered that call, for a new life began. He "walked with God." This
became his chief trait. It stands in contrast with his former life. Before
he merely _lived_; now he was on a higher plane, he _walked with God_. The
final chapter,--"God took him." They two had a long walk one day along the
hilltops--or was it only a short walk?--and Enoch never came back. God
kept him.
Now, in all this Enoch was God's messenger to the whole race. Jude speaks
of his prophesying or preaching. But the emphasis of this simple Genesis
biography is not on his preaching but on himself. That man walking about
in his simple daily touch of heart with God,--that was the message. It
wasn't an easy thing to do. The whole set of his time was against it. It
was an evil time; impurity and violence were its outstanding traits.
Enoch's life cut straight across the grain of his time. He was the leader
of the first racial family, the chief one in the direct line from Adam.
And he insisted on living habitually a simple, holy, pure life, walking
with God, never out of touch. _Following meant keeping in step with God,
never missing step_.
And this was talked about. Every one knew it. He was doubtless felt to be
out of touch with his time. And he was, blessedly out of touch. It was
probably never harder to walk with God. But he did it. This is how he
helped God. This is what he was asked to do. God was speaking to the whole
race through this great man's simple habit of life. And He spoke still
louder when, one day, He took him away. Enoch's absence was the talk of
the race. "He was not _found_." Clearly they looked for him, looked
everywhere and discussed him and his peculiar manner of life, his strange
disappearance, and his freedom from death.
So he met God's need. He became God's medium of communication to the
entire race, simply in what he was, and so it is that most of us may help
God. And if we will, He will be less needy, for He will speak through our
lives to all whom we touch. Following means walking with God. So we help
God in His need.
And Enoch helped God to get _Noah_. The touch of Enoch is on his
great-grandson. Grace _is_ hereditary, when there's enough of it. Enoch
had the boldness to set a new standard. It was easier for Noah to reach up
toward it, when it was already set. Now, Noah was asked to do something
more. Enoch walked with God, the personal life was the one thing. Noah
walked with God, _and_ did something more.
He was asked to believe something unusual. It was something that could be
believed only by accepting God's word against every other circumstance and
probability; that is, that a flood was coming to cover the whole earth,
and destroy the race. And he was asked further to put his belief into the
shape of an immense house-boat probably built where it wouldn't float
except such a flood did come. That huge boat was his confession of faith.
He acted his faith. It would be a costly thing, perhaps taking all Noah's
wealth, and taking some years to build. That belief was about the
unlikeliest thing imaginable from every natural standpoint, _with God left
out_. And God is _practically_ left out, except as a very last
questionable consideration, then, and ever since, and to-day. Probably
Noah was the butt of gossip and ridicule, quite possibly of scandal and
reproach, year after year, by the whole race; and he would feel it, and
feel it for his family's sake. That boat and its dreaming builder were the
standing joke of the time. He was regarded as a fool, a fanatic, a poor,
unbalanced enthusiast, building his gigantic boat on dry land! Perhaps
some regretted that he brought the cause of religion into reproach by
being such an extremist.
Yet the only thing he did was to believe God's word, and to shape his
conduct accordingly. He simply did as God asked. He heard God correctly.
His ears were trained to hear. He did what God wanted, regardless of what
people thought. That was how he helped God in His need. The race was saved
through this fresh start, else it had burned out long ago. Following meant
a true life lived, _and faith in God expressed in wood and nails, and in
good money paid out_, while men met him coldly on the road, or jeered.
Befriending God.
Long years afterward there was another man who helped God so decidedly
that he became known as "the friend of God." And the word "friend" is used
this time in the emergency sense. He did the thing God asked him to do,
and this helped God in a plan He was working out for the whole race. God
had to have a man. Abraham was willing to be the man. And in that he
became God's helpful friend. The thing God asked him to do seems very
simple, and yet it was a radical thing for this man to do. He was to leave
his father's family, and all his kinsfolk, and live _a separated life_,
both from them and from all others. It is almost impossible for the West
to realize how close and strong family ties are in the Orient. Separation
meant an unusual, sad break in holiest ties. God was trying a new step in
His fight against sin. He had separated the leader of sin from all
others.[112] He had removed all the race except a seed of good.[113] Both
of these plans had failed, through man's failure. Now a new,
farther-reaching plan is begun. A man is separated from all others, to
become the seed of a new nation, a _faith_ nation, which should be a
different people from others, embodying in themselves God's ideals for
all.
Abraham is asked to become a separated man in a peculiar sense, separate
outwardly, separate in his worship of the true God, and separate in living
a _faith_ life. It was to be a life dependent wholly on God regardless of
outer circumstance or difficulty. There was a training time of twenty-five
years before Abraham was ready for the next step,--the bringing of the
next in line of this new faith stock. Separation, then still further
separation, an open stand for God in the land of strangers, then a series
of close personal tests, each entering into the marrow of his life,--this
was the training to get the man ready to be a _faith_ father to his son,
the next in line of a faith people. And the hardest test of all came
after the child of faith had grown to manhood. Then he became a child of
faith in his own experience, as well as in his father's. Following meant
separation. It meant believing God against the unlikeliest circumstances,
against nature itself, hoping in the midst of hopelessness. Everything
spelled out "hopelessness." God alone spelled out "hope." He took God
against everything else. It meant going to school to God, until he could
be used as God planned. And Abraham consented. He followed. He helped God
in His need. He befriended God; he became His friend in His need.
But _every_ generation needs men. Each new step in the plan needs a new
man. In a sore crisis of that plan, long after, another man's name,
_Moses_, is known to us, _only_ because he singled himself out as being
willing to let God use him. In his unconscious training, the training of
circumstances into which it was natural to fit, he was peculiarly prepared
for the future task. Bred in Egypt as the son of the ruler's household, he
received the best school training of his day, with all the peculiar
advantages of his position in the royal family.
Following meant more to Moses, in what he gave up of worldly advantage,
than to any other named in the Bible record. Egypt was the world empire of
that day. Moses was in the innermost imperial circles, and could easily
have become the dominant spirit of the court, if not the successor to the
Pharaoh's throne. But he heard the call. His mother helped train his ears.
He answered "Yes" to God, without knowing how much was involved. Following
meant giving up, then a long course of training in the university of the
desert, with the sheep and the stars and--God. It meant a repeated risking
of his life not only in his bold dealings with Pharaoh, but afterward with
the nation-mob, mob-nation, whose leader, and father and school-teacher,
and everything else, he had to be for forty years. And it meant much on
the other side, too.
"Had Moses failed to go, had God
Granted his prayer, there would have been
For him no leadership to win;
No pillared fire; no magic rod,
No smiting of the sea; no tears
Ecstatic, shed on Sinai's steep;
No Nebo, with a God to keep
His burial; only forty years
Of desert, watching with his sheep."
A Yet Deeper Meaning.
When we turn to the leaders of the latter years of the Kingdom time of
God's teacher-nation, the prophetic time, there is one thing that stands
out sharply in the men God used. It was this, a man's inner personal life
and experience were made use of to an unusual degree. It is as though the
sacred inner life were sacrificed. The holy privacies were laid bare to
the public gaze. The sweets of the inner holy of holies of the personal
life were given up. The people were so far God-hardened that only _acted_
preaching, _lived_ messages, that took it out of one's very life, with
pain in the taking, had any effect.
This is most markedly so in the case of _Hosea_, whose experience it seems
almost if not wholly impossible for us to take in.[114] It is true that
the Christianized West has conceptions of personal privacy to which the
East is a stranger. Yet, even so, the way in which these men were asked to
yield up their inner personal lives, must have been a most marked thing to
these Orientals. For God used it as the one thing apparently, the extreme
thing, to touch their hearts with His appeal.
_Isaiah_ had just such peculiar experiences. The birth of a son is planned
for, and told of for the purpose of making more emphatic the message to
the dull ears and slow heart of the nation.[115] His two sons bore names
of strange meaning, as a means of teaching truths that were peculiarly
distasteful to the people. Isaiah takes one of these strangely named sons
as he goes to deliver a message to the king. And the son standing by his
father's side is a reminder in his name of a disagreeable truth.[116] A
little later the man is actually required to go about barefooted, and
without clothing sufficient for conventional respectability, and to
continue this for three years.[117] When we remember that he was not an
erratic extremist, but a sober-minded, fine-grained gentleman of
refinement and of a good family, it helps us to understand a little how
hard-hearted and stubborn were a people that could be appealed to only in
such a way.
And it tells us, too, how utterly surrendered was the man who was willing
thus to give up his private personal life. How much easier to have been
simply an earnest, eloquent preacher, with his inner personal life lived
free from public gaze, a thing sacred to himself. Following meant the
giving up of the sacred private life to a strangely marked degree, for God
to use.
Even more marked are the experiences that _Jeremiah_ was asked and
consented to go through. It would seem as though the repeated conspiracies
against his life, the repeated imprisonments in vile dungeons dangerous to
health and life, and the shame of being put in the public stocks before
the rabble, would have been much for God to ask, and for a man to give.
But there is something that goes much farther and deeper into the very
marrow of his life than these. He is bidden not to marry, not to have a
family life of his own.[118] And he obeyed. This was to be so only and
solely as a message to the people. A message couched in such startling
language they might listen to. Again we must remember the Oriental setting
to appreciate the significance of this. In the East the unit of society is
not the individual but the _family_. A man's marriage is planned for by
the family, as a means of building up the family. To be childless and
especially son-less was felt to be peculiarly unfortunate, almost
bordering on disgrace.
This meant for Jeremiah not only the loss of personal joys and delights,
but that his line would be broken off from his father's family. He would
be without heir, or future, in the family history. So following meant
going yet deeper into the inner personal life, for the sake of God's plan.
This giant's strength is revealed in nothing more than in his tear-wet
laments over his people. And he gave all this strength to following. He
said "Yes" to God's need and request, though it must have taken his very
life to say it.
But _Ezekiel_ was asked to do something even beyond this. He was the
messenger of God to the colony of Hebrew exiles in Assyria. His accounts
of the visions of God reveal a remarkable power of detailed description,
and a remarkably strong mentality. Strange to say, these people in
captivity are yet harder to reach than were their fathers in their native
land. Yet, not strange, for the human heart is the same when it won't open
to the purifying of the upper currents of air. Here the man himself
literally became the message. He actually lay upon his left side for
thirteen months and then on his right side for six weeks longer.
During all that time he ate food that was particularly repugnant, and it
was carefully weighed out, and the water as carefully measured out for
his use. He had to rise, no doubt, for various reasons, but the bulk of
the time for nearly fifteen months he lay out where all could see him. His
fellow-exiles, I suppose, looked and wondered, laughed and gossiped
perhaps, and then as time wore on, they thought and thought more, and were
awed as they began slowly to take in the meaning of this strange message
of God. Thereafter Ezekiel was the leader, to whose house the leaders of
the colony came, and to whose words they intently listened.
But there was a yet deeper meaning to following than we have found yet. It
is a meaning that awes one's heart into amazed silence. He was married.
His wife is spoken of very tenderly as "the desire of thine eyes." He was
told that she would be taken away out of his life. She would die. That was
the great thing. Then he was not to mourn outwardly for her; this was the
second thing. He was to be before the people as though the greatest sorrow
of his life had not happened. Is it any wonder the people came astonished
to know what this meant? The simple brevity with which he tells of the
occurrence takes hold of one's heart. "So I spake unto the people in the
morning; and at even my wife died; and I did in the morning as I was
commanded."[119] There was no questioning, no hesitancy of action, but a
simple, prompt obedience, even though his heart was breaking. This was
what God asked of him. God needed this in His dealings with these people
of His in whom His world-plan centred. How desperate must have been the
need that called for such an experience as this! Ezekiel said "Yes" even
to this. Surely there was here some of that Calvary meaning, of the
secondary sort, of which we have spoken together. Following meant not only
giving his personality and life, but now it meant giving what must have
been more than life itself.
Through Fire.
To _Daniel_ following meant something essentially different. He was not a
messenger to his own people, nor their leader. He was a messenger to the
great world-rulers of his time, through the visions he interpreted, and
through his unbending faithfulness and purity of life; The thing that
stands out largest is the life he lived, a life of simplicity in habit, of
purity and consistency, with an unwavering faith in God. God _could_ use
him to speak to the great emperors. So he helped God to get His message to
men so hard to reach through a human channel.
Following meant a pure life. It was Daniel's insistence on being pure and
true that shut him up with the wild beasts. And it was through his
unflinching fidelity and persistence that God could send His message anew,
in the most public manner, out to all the millions of that great
world-empire. Following meant to a marked degree a pure life as the basis
of the service rendered. It proved to mean a lions' den, _and_ the power
of God overcoming the instincts of ravenous beasts. But clear beyond these
it meant that God could reach His world with His message to an unusual
extent.
_Daniel's three companions_ helped God by means of a most thrilling
experience, a really terrible experience. God had been pleading with the
great Nebuchadnezzar through Daniel's message. Now He wants to speak again
in a way that will compel attention. He needs these three young men. They
consent to be His messengers. It meant going through a terrible ordeal.
They simply remained true in their personal devotion to God. This was the
thing God needed, and used. Everything of use to God roots down in the
life. The personal plea of the great king, and the prospect of a horrible
death fail alike to move them. They probably had quite resigned themselves
to the fate of being burned alive for the truth. But God had a different
purpose. He was thinking about this ruler with whom He dealt so personally
and unusually, time and again.
The three men, walking quietly up and down in the seven-times heated
furnace in company with a glorious looking person "like a son of the
gods"--this was the message God wanted spoken to the ruler He was pleading
with. His strangely marvellous power, and His personal regard for His
faithful followers--this was what God was trying to say to Nebuchadnezzar.
He asked the use of these three young men. Their personal loyalty to
Himself even unto death--this was what He wanted. _Through_ this He
reached the heart of the man He was after.
The experience of these men is an intensely interesting study. It was a
fearful ordeal that they went through. Yet it was wholly mental, and of
the spirit. They suffered no pain of body, nor inconvenience. The fire
only made them free, burned up the bonds that held them. It took great
strength of will, of decision, to stay steady through all the fearful
test. Yet _nothing happened to their bodies_ except to help them. God took
care of that. They gave Him what He asked. He gave them more than they
expected. They probably expected death and were willing. God had a deeper
plan He was working out. How glad they must have been that they followed
fully, that they didn't disappoint God.
Following meant simply being true, even though the road led through a
furnace. God would attend to the furnace. Their part was simply to follow
where He led. And our God is needing just such acted messages to-day. He
is longing for just such opportunities to reveal His power and love, not
merely _to us_, but through us to His world.
Let us take time for one more of these faithful followers. This time it is
a young woman. It is at the most critical juncture of God's plan, thus
far. He needed a woman whom He could use to bring His Son, and could use
further to mother that Son's early years. All unconsciously Mary of
Nazareth and of Bethlehem was fitting into His plan in her life, her
simple, pure, godly, personal life. We can understand that God wooed her
especially to such a life of heart devotion as a preparation for the after
part. And she said "Yes" to all His wooings, never suspecting what was to
come of it. You never know how much a simple "Yes" to God may mean, _or_ a
"No." You never know how much of service may grow out of the true life.
Yet all true service is something coming out of the life.
Then the plan of God was made known to her,--the marvellous plan, yet so
simple to Him. And again she said a simple, awed "Yes." She waits only
long enough to ask the natural, woman's question as to method. There was
no questioning of God's power, what He could do, and would do. It came to
mean hurting suspicion, peculiarly hurting to as pure and gentle a soul as
she. Apparently this was unavoidable. It speaks volumes for her openness
of both mind and heart to God, that she instantly took in Gabriel's
meaning, and could take it in that such an unprecedented thing was
possible. It would have saved her the cruel suspicion if Joseph had been
told beforehand, but the whole probability is that he could not have taken
it in that such a thing was possible.
Following meant the glad "Yes" to the early wooing up to a pure devoted
life. It meant saying a further "Yes" to the plan of God even though
something so unusual, and with it the misunderstanding and cruel
suspicion, on the one point most sensitive to a woman, and by the one
nearest her. But she said "Yes" both times. She let God have the use of
her life for His plan. That was all He asked. That is all He asks. But
that is what He asks.
These are a few of the glorious company of followers, the goodly
fellowship of those who have helped God in His passionate plan for His
world, the noble army of willing ones. But the number is incomplete. The
plan is not yet fully worked out. The need is not yet wholly met. It was
never more urgent. To-day the insistent voice still comes as of old,
asking you and me to follow.
And no one can tell how much _his_ following may mean to God in reaching
His world.