Exodus 14:30 and 9:16
In Exodus 14:19 we read these words: "And Israel saw the Egyptians dead upon the seashore." It is rather a ghastly and grewsome sight. There they lie, the soldiers of the once proud army of Egypt. They are in all sorts of positions, these dead men. Some have their heads pillowed peacefully upon their arms as if in sleep. Others have their hard faces half buried in the sand. Others still lie prone upon their backs with bits of seaweed in their hair and their sightless eyes staring in terror at nothing.
They are very much alike, these corpses. But here is one that is different. Look at the rich costume in which it is dressed. Look at its bejewelled fingers. There is no crown upon its brow. There is no sceptre in that nerveless hand. Yet it is easy to guess that this corpse, this "pocket that death has turned inside out and emptied" was once a king. Yes, this is the body of Pharaoh, the one time ruler of Egypt. But here he lies to-day among the meanest of his soldiers. He is sprawled in unkingly fashion upon his face as if the sea had spit him out in sheer nausea and disgust.
And now comes the big question that we want to consider. How came this famous Egyptian here? He was once a king, you remember. He was ruler over the proudest nation in the world. And here we find him dead. He died away from home. He died a violent death. Let us hold an inquest over him for a moment and see how he came to die. He did not leave Egypt and march into the Red Sea for that purpose. He never intended that life should end thus. Nor is he here because his enemy Israel has proven stronger than himself. What is the cause? And the question is answered by the voice of God. We read it in Exodus 9:16, "For this cause have I raised thee up that I might show forth my power in thee."
Will you notice what this strange text says. Without the least equivocation it says that God raised this man Pharaoh up that He might show forth His power in him. And that purpose He accomplished. This ghastly piece of royal rottenness has not been thrown upon this shore by the hand of man. As we look at him we see in him a monument of the power of God. And strange to say, he is not a monument of God's power to save and to keep and to utilize, but of God's power to thwart and to disappoint and to wreck and to utterly destroy. And in his destruction God tells us that He has achieved His purpose.
You will agree with me that this is an amazing statement. The teaching seems to be that God has raised this man up that He might glorify Himself by making a complete and utter wreck of him. I wonder if that can be true. We agree, I suppose, all of us who believe the Bible, that God has a plan for every life. All nature tells of a planning God. All revelation teaches it also. We have the message direct from the lips of the Lord, "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you."
But in admitting that God plans every life, can we believe that He plans for some to go wrong and for others to go right? Can we believe that He plans for one to become a Judas and the other a St. John? Is it the purpose of God that one shall develop into a Moses and the other right at his side shall grow up into a miserable and distorted wreck that we call Pharaoh? In other words, is Judas as much a part of the plan of God as John? If so we are of all men most miserable because we have a wicked God.
But we know that such is not the case. God never planned that any man should go wrong. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance. He is the eternal lover. He loved Moses, but He loved Pharaoh no less. And Judas was as dear to God's heart as John. And whatever failure they made of their lives, and whatever failure you and I make of our lives, we do not make because God forces us to do so. In whatever way we go wrong, we do not do so because God planned that we should. We do it because of our own willfulness and wicked rebellion against God.
In other words, though God plans your life and mine, He cannot in the very nature of things, force us to enter into His plan. You who are fathers and mothers realize that. Many parents have made beautiful plans for their children only to have those plans despised. Our children are not ourselves. They have independent wills. They have the capacity for entering into our purposes for them and thus bringing us joy unspeakable. They have also the capacity for despising those purposes and breaking our hearts.
How, then, do we explain this strange text, "For this cause have I raised thee up that I might show forth my power in thee"? Because it is a fact that this death in the Red Sea was not an accidental death. It is a fact that this corpse here upon the beach is not here by mere chance. This king was flung here by the power of a disappointed and grieved and rejected God. He lies here dead upon the shore according to the deliberate plan and purpose of God. But while this is true, we need to keep this big fact in mind: Though Pharaoh lies here according to the purpose of God, this was not God's first and highest purpose for him. But Pharaoh resisted and rejected every noble and worthy purpose that God had in his life. By his own rebellion he made it impossible for God to realize any purpose in him at all save the last and the worst.
Do you remember that story in Jeremiah? One day the word of the Lord came unto the prophet Jeremiah saying, "Arise and go down to the Potter's house and there I will cause thee to hear my word." And Jeremiah went down and heard the message. Arrived within the Potter's house, three objects at once drew his attention. There was a man working, the Potter. There was the instrument with which he worked, the wheel. And there was the substance upon which he worked, the clay. In the Potter's hand the clay was misshapen and unsightly. The cup was not yet finished in the Potter's hand. But there was a place where it was finished, and that was in the mind of the Potter. The Potter could already see the finished product. He was trying to make the cup according to the ideal that he had in his mind.
But we read that the cup was marred in the making. That is, there was something in the clay that resisted the Potter. Now, what did he do with the marred cup? We would have expected him to throw it away, but he did not. He made it again. What a gospel that is for failing and sinning men like ourselves. How glorious that, when we resist God's purpose and all but wreck ourselves, He will make us again. Truly we would be a hopeless race but for the fact that we have a mighty God who is able to remake us even when we have rebelled against Him and have thwarted His blessed plans for us.
He made it again. Yes, but notice this. He made it again "another vessel." He changed his plan for this latter vessel. He realized that he could not make it according to the fine ideal that was in his mind for the first vessel. That one refused to realize the best, therefore he made it into another vessel. He sought to make it realize the second best.
There is a truth here of tremendous importance that we are prone to forget, and that truth is this, that having rejected and resisted God for days and months and years, God cannot make of us what He could have made if we had entered into His plans from the beginning. If you reject God's best for you, then He tries to get you to realize His second best. If you reject this, then He seeks to bring you to the next best. But remember this, God cannot, in the very nature of things, make as much out of a fraction of a life as He can out of the whole of a life.
Now, suppose, the clay upon which the Potter was working had been marred again. Again he would have undertaken to have made it into another vessel. But all the while that clay would have been becoming less and less plastic. All the while it would have been becoming more and more difficult for the Potter to shape it according to his purpose.
Thus the time would inevitably come when it would no longer be capable of being shaped by his hand at all. Then what would be the result? Step outside the Potter's house and you are in the Potter's field. About you lie broken crockery and shattered earthenware. Why is it there? Not because the Potter made vessels for the stupid purpose of breaking them to pieces. They are there because there was something in the clay that so resisted the hand of the Potter that he was able to make nothing of them but these shattered and misshapen and broken wrecks.
Now this is the story of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. God had a noble purpose in this man's life to begin with. He gave him every opportunity. He brought to bear all that infinite love and mercy could bring to bear to get Pharaoh to be a good man. The reason Pharaoh ended as he did end was not because God did not love him and did not do His infinite best to save Him. It was because Pharaoh resisted and resisted, rebelled and rebelled till at last he threw himself a corpse upon this distant seashore. And the message we hear from his clammy lips this night is this, "Look at me and see what a terrible thing it is to rebel against God. Behold me and see the tragic failure of the man that persistently throws himself in wicked madness against the bosses of the buckler of the Lord Almighty."
Look now how hard God tried to make something of Pharaoh. In the first place, He gave to him a great and faithful minister. Pharaoh had the privilege of knowing Moses. He had an opportunity of hearing about the greatest individual that the world has ever seen. He threw himself away, did Pharaoh. He chose God's worst instead of God's best, but he did not do it because he did not know better. Neither are you wasting your life because you do not know better. If you have not had a teacher great as Moses, you have yet been faithfully warned, and in your sin you are without excuse.
God gave Pharaoh a chance to cooperate with Him, to help Him in saving Israel and making her into a great nation. Moses' first word to Pharaoh was this, "The God of Israel saith, Let my people go." Now, Pharaoh's answer to this demand was haughty enough. He answers, "Who is the God of Israel? I do not know him." And he didn't, though he might have known Him. But God did not throw him away after this one chance. On the contrary, He gave him ample opportunity to know Him.
With this end in view God brought His infinite energies into play. Wonder after wonder He worked in the presence of Pharaoh by the hand of Moses. At first these wonders were imitated by the magicians. These fakes, by their cunning, made it easy, at least for a while, for Pharaoh to resist God. They helped the King to close his royal eyes to the truth. They helped him to start with decision on his course of rebellion.
But the magicians were soon outdone. Moses began to perform wonders that they could not imitate. And they themselves were forced to believe in the presence and might and reality of God. And they who had helped their king to go wrong, turned to him with this acknowledgment on their lips, "It is the finger of God." But it is easier to lead a man astray than it is to lead him back. It is easier for you, by your godless and worldly life, to lead your children to despise Christ and the Church than it is to lead them back after they have gone astray. Pharaoh listened to the magicians when they counseled him to do wrong, but he turned a deaf ear to them when they counseled him to do right.
Then followed that series of plagues upon Egypt that were always preceded and always followed by this demand of God spoken through the lips of Moses, "Let my people go that they may serve me." You see what God was demanding of Pharaoh. It is the same that He demands of you and me, obedience—that is all. He is commanding us to surrender ourselves to Him, to enter into His purpose. And the one thing that God wanted was the one thing that Pharaoh did not want. But he was becoming afraid and so he proposed to compromise.
In his fright he tells Moses that he will obey. He will let the people go. That is, he said, "I will let part of them go. I will let the men go. Leave the children here." Pharaoh knew that just so long as he kept the children in Egypt, just so long would Israel remain in bondage. And the devil knows to-day just so long as our homes remain unchristianized, just so long will the world remain unchristianized. We will never bring in the Kingdom by simply seeking to save an adult generation. We must give God a chance at the children or the cause of righteousness is going to be defeated. But if we will save the child, we will surely save the world.
Then Pharaoh offered a second compromise. He said, "I will let you and the children go, but you must leave your cattle and your sheep. You must leave all your flocks and your herds." That is, you may go into Canaan if you must, but leave your business in Egypt. And the devil to-day is perfectly willing that you and I be just as pious and prayerful as we want to be on Sunday, provided we forget all about such things on Monday. He is willing for you to be devoutly religious if you will only confine your religion to the church. But a religion that does not permeate and purify and uplift and sanctify business and business relations is not the religion of Jesus Christ.
And then Pharaoh offered a third compromise. He said, "I will let the people go, but they must not go far." Why was that? For the very human reason that he wanted the privilege of getting them back. He said, for instance, "I will obey God, but I do not want to promise to make my obedience permanent." You have seen plenty of instances of that. Here is a man who has decided to be a Christian, but he won't join the church. He wants to see how he gets along first. Such a man is already making provision for going back. "Take up thy bed," said the Master to the paralyzed man whom He had healed. He ever wants us to make a complete break with the past.
But the plagues grow worse. Pharaoh is becoming more and more frightened. While the scare is on he promises again and again that he will obey the Lord unconditionally. There was a terrible storm, you remember. The hail stones fell like shrapnel and the lightning dropped from the clouds and fairly played along the earth, and terror gripped the King's heart. And he sends for Moses. When Moses comes he tells him, all atremble, "I have sinned this time. I will let the people go." But when the storm ceases and the sun shines out he is quite ashamed of his weakness. He is so ashamed that he forgets altogether the promise that he made when the fear of death was upon him.
This is a side of human nature that is a bit disgusting, yet we dare not shut our eyes to it. There are scores listening to me at this very moment who have acted for all the world as Pharaoh acted. And you have done so with all the light that he had and far more. I do not know of a man that is in greater danger of being ultimately lost than that man who never cares for religion except when he is scared. Because the truth of the matter is that a man of that kind does not care for goodness or for God at all. Not even in his moments of most abject terror does he want to be truly saved. He simply wants to escape the results of his sin. He does not want to pay the penalty for wrong doing. He wants to defeat the ends of justice. He is not interested in being good and pure and true. He is simply interested in keeping out of hell.
How patient God was with Pharaoh. We are amazed at it till we think how infinitely patient He has been with ourselves. By storm, by black night, by adversity after adversity, God is doing His best to fight Pharaoh back from the Bed Sea. He is doing all He can to turn him away from committing suicide in body and suicide in soul. But Pharaoh, as some of ourselves, seemed absolutely greedy for damnation. He seemed completely bent on working out his own utter destruction.
After the king had broken one vow after another and lied and lied and lied again, God brought the last dark providence into his life. He made one final effort to save him from his ruin. Pharaoh was called to kneel by the coffin of his first born. And his hard heart seemed softened at last. By the grave of the Crown Prince he made a solemn vow that he would obey God. And he set about putting the vow into execution at once. And the children of Israel were not only allowed to go, but they were hurried out of Egypt.
At last, at last, we say, with what infinite expense the man is brought to obey. But would you believe it the grass had not yet grown green upon the grave of his boy till he forgot his vow and turned back to the old life again. Oh, what a grip sin gets on us. Oh, how blind we become if we persistently refuse to follow the light. So Pharaoh brushed his tears out of his eyes, gathered his army and set out after the departing children of Israel.
I see the bustle and hurry of the setting out. I see the look of hate on the king's face as he comes within sight of his one time slaves. He laughs a mirthless laugh as he sees their predicament. They are shut in on either side. The sea is in front and he and his army in the rear. What a sweet revenge he is going to have.
But look. Something has happened. There is a path through the sea. These hunted slaves are marching in. But it doesn't matter. Wherever Israel can go, the Egyptians can go. So he and his army march in behind. They keep the Israelites in sight. Now in the distance they see that the last Israelite has reached dry land.
And then there is a great shriek that is quickly choked. The waters have come together again. The sea waves roar about these struggling soldiers like liquid hate. The King is forgotten. His men are madly trying to save themselves. A jeweled hand flashes in the light for a moment. There is an oath, a cry for help, a gulp, and silence. And the hungry sea has its prey.
Pharaoh, why are you here? And if those dead lips could speak he would say, "I am here because I persistently refused to obey God. He offered me the best and I spurned it and spurned it again till at last He threw me here. He did it because I made it impossible for Him to do anything else." And as I look at this wreck I think how different the story might have ended. This man might have had a part in the making of a great people. He might have been associated with Moses in giving to the world a new nation. He might even now be in the fellowship of Moses among the tall sons of the morning. For the difference between this man and the great man Moses is not in the fact that God purposed evil for the one and good for the other. It is in this, that one was obedient unto the heavenly vision, that one could say, "The grace that was bestowed upon me was not in vain," and the other resisted and kept resisting till he ran by every blockade that God could put in his path and plunged headlong into destruction.
Judges 11:35
"I have opened my mouth unto the Lord and I cannot go back." I like these big words. There is a ring of sterling strength in them. They have a robust masculinity that grips my heart. They are not the words of a weakling. They have absolutely no savor of softness or moral flabbiness. They are not cheap. They are high priced words. They are words made costly by a plentiful baptism of tragedy. They are words literally soaked in blood and tears.
This man Jephthah has made a vow. And now the hour is upon him in which it is his duty to make the vow good. His vow involves far more than he ever expected. But that fact does not cause him to be untrue. He has given his promise. Pay day has come. His promise involves measureless sacrifice. To keep it is to put out every star in his sky. It is to pluck up every flower in his garden. It is to change life's music into discord. It is to take from him the one he loves far better than he loves his own life. But even though the price is big, he will not refuse to pay it. Even though his promise is hard, he will keep it. "I have opened my mouth unto the Lord and I cannot go back."
Jephthah has had many hard things said about him. He has been wronged since before he was born. I do not think that justice has been done to his memory. Frankly, I think he is one of the most heroic souls of Old Testament history. It is true that he would not fully measure up to all our modern ideals, but remember this, he lived in the morning of human history. He lived when the light was dim. And he was true to the light that he had. He was true with a rugged fidelity that will cause him to rise up in the day of judgment and condemn many of us.
Jephthah, I say, has been greatly wronged. He never had a fair chance. He was wronged in his very birth. He was the son of a father who was unfaithful to his marriage vows. Jephthah was a child of shame. His father had chosen to sacrifice upon the wayside altar. His father had had his fling. He had sown his wild oats, and of necessity there was a harvest. His father suffered, but sad to say, he was not the only sufferer.
How we need to be reminded again and again that no man ever sins alone. No man ever walks from the path of virtue without he walks upon bruised and bleeding feet. He himself suffers, but what is sadder still, he causes somebody else to suffer. I cannot go to hell alone. I cannot plunge out into the dark without involving another soul, at least in some measure, in my tragedy. This father sinned. It meant suffering for him. It also meant suffering for one who was altogether blameless. It meant suffering for his boy.
Not only did Jephthah have as part of his life tragedy an unclean father, but he had an unclean mother as well. Jephthah's mother was not one of those unfortunate souls, more sinned against than sinning, who had made one false step for the sake of the man she loved. She was a professional outcast. She was a woman who made it her business day by day to sell herself over the counters of iniquity. She was one of those whose feet in all ages take hold on hell.
So Jephthah had a bad chance. He was the fragment of a home that never was. He had no father that dared to own him. And the first eyes into which he looked were the eyes of an unclean woman. And the first lips that kissed him were lips soiled and stained by years of sinful living. Poor little baby. Poor little foundling. Poor little outcast. How much he missed.
What are the most precious memories in your life to-night? What are the scenes to which you look back with deepest love and tenderness? I know. They are the scenes of your childhood's home.
"How dear to my heart are the scenes of my childhood,When fond recollection, presents them to view;The orchard, the meadow, the deep tangled wildwood,And every loved spot that my infancy knew."
But the secret of the fascination of those dear scenes is this, that we saw them by the glow of the light of love. We think tenderly of our early homes because they were presided over by a father and mother who knew God. And the one cord that has failed to snap between us and a good life is the cord that ties us still to the faith of our fathers and our mothers.
But Jephthah missed all this. His father was unfaithful. His mother was an unclean woman. There were no tender and holy associations that made it easy for him to be good. There were no memories to come in after years and whisper old half forgotten prayers. There were no fond recollections to lay their hands upon him with angelic tenderness and lead him away from his City of Destruction. He was a child of sin, a child of blackness and of night, a child bereft of the inspiration of a good mother's life and the sweet uplift of a pious home.
And not only was this man wronged in what he missed, he was equally wronged in what he suffered. Early he was branded with a shame not his own. I know of few places where society has been so unjust and unkind as it has in its condemnation of those innocent ones who are the victims of another's sin. We forget that every child comes into the world with the Father's kiss upon its clean soul regardless of the circumstances of its birth. We forget also that that child is no more to blame for those circumstances than it is to be blamed for the currents of the sea or for the darkness of the night.
But Jephthah was blamed. Ugly names were flung at him before he was old enough to know their dark and sinister meaning. He was forbidden to go to the big house of his father before he knew why he was not allowed to go. He was excluded from the games of those more fortunately born than he, when he could no more understand why he was excluded than he could keep back the bitter tears of childish disappointment. I can see him as he watches his half brothers and sisters play in the distance, and his little heart is lonely and he is hungry for a playmate. And the gate is shut in his face, the gate of a shame not his own.
By and by youthhood comes, and early manhood. The parental estate is to be divided. Jephthah is disinherited. He is driven from among his people. He is forced to flee for his life. And he goes to take refuge in Tob with its mountain fastnesses and with its rude heathens who are less unkind than those kinsmen of his who claim to be worshippers of Jehovah.
So we have here the material out of which this young man is called on to build a life. He has no parentage. He has no kindred. He has no friends. Nobody believes in him. Everybody expects him to go wrong. It seems even at times as if everybody wanted him to go wrong. They said, "Oh, yes, I know him. I used to know his mother. She died in the gutter. You can't expect anything of him."
And it is not at all difficult to go down when everybody expects you to go down. It is a great thing to have somebody to trust you. That is a tremendous help. As long as you feel that there is somebody who counts on you, who believes in you, you are not without an anchor. I read the other day of a little newsboy who was given a quarter that he might get change. And on his way back he was run over and crushed by an auto. And the last word he said was, "Be sure and hunt him up and give him back the change. He trusted me." But here is a young fellow exiled, robbed, persecuted and mistrusted. And out of this charred and ugly material he is called upon to build a life.
And what is the result? Well, he refused to surrender. He said, "If nobody else will believe in me I will believe in myself. Since nobody else will help me, I will help myself. If I am to be robbed of my inheritance I will make a way of my own." And so he set to work. He did not spend his time hunting up his neighbors to tell them of his misfortunes. He did not put in his time boasting of what he would do if he were as well off as his half brothers down in Israel. He went to work to build his fortune in the here and now. And little by little he won.
And then one day a runner came to him in the field and said, "Jephthah, you have company at your house." And the man looked up in surprise and said, "Company! Who is it?" "A committee of elders from Israel." And Jephthah is astonished. He is filled with wonder. He is trying to guess why they came. And with the problem unsolved he goes to meet his guests.
These elders greet him like a long lost son. They tell him how they rejoice in his prosperity. They informed him how they had always known that he would make good. They let him know that they would never have sent him out of Israel if they had had their way about it. And then at last they gather courage to tell him their errand. And they say, "Israel is being besieged by the Ammonites and we want you to come and be the commander-in-chief of our armies."
Well, now that was a shock. Here was a young fellow who began with nothing, and worse than nothing. But instead of whining, instead of quitting, instead of complaining that he had no chance, instead of putting in his time wishing that he was somewhere else, he did his duty where he was. And folks found it out and came to kneel at his feet and ask him for help. And I am not saying, young man, that every man gets his just deserts, but I do say that in the overwhelming majority of cases, if a man is really any account, sooner or later somebody will find it out. It may be true that
"Full many a gem of purest ray sereneThe dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear.Full many a flower is born to blush unseen,And waste its sweetness on the desert air."
But I doubt if any gem of real human worth ever lies permanently concealed. I seriously question if any radiant flower of human character ever wastes its sweetness on the desert air. Learn to do something that the world needs to have done and men will make a path to your door even if you live in a desert.
They came and asked Jephthah for help. It is a humiliating experience. Now, I suppose those half brothers of Jephthah's down in Israel, those fellows who had scorned him in his childhood, those fellows who had robbed him of his share in the estate,—I suppose they did some loud talking about the general being a kinsman of theirs. Oh, they are very much like we are. We seldom boast of our relationship to an outcast, but if we are one hundred and first cousin to somebody who is prominent we are mighty apt to go about telling it.
Jephthah heard their request and promised to help them. I think that was fine of him. It would have been so easy for him to have said, "Oh, yes, you kicked me out when I was a little helpless waif. When I needed help you would not give it. When I needed help you laughed at my childish tears. Now you need help, I will laugh at you." But there was nothing of revenge in him. Wronged as he had been, he would not nurse his wrongs. He would not allow his bitter treatment to make him bitter.
I wish we all were so wise. You were injured years ago by somebody. That somebody perchance was in the church. And so you have never had any use for the church since. You have never had any use much for anybody since. You have been snarling and snapping. Do you remember Miss Harrisham in "Great Expectations"? She was to be married. All arrangements were made. The wedding cake was on the table. But at twenty minutes to nine a cruel note came telling her that the groom was not coming. Therefore, the clocks were all stopped at twenty minutes to nine. The cake stood upon the table till it rotted. The blinds remained drawn and no sunlight was ever allowed in the house again. And life for her stopped at twenty minutes to nine. One disappointment wrecked her, embittered her, made her throw her life away. But Jephthah refused to be embittered.
He consented to go. But before he undertook the campaign he stood beside the altar of God. This man had lived for years among heathens, but they had not heathenized him. He still stood true by the altar. Circumstances were against him, but religion is not simply for the easy situations in which we find ourselves. Your test, as one has said, is not how good you can be if you have a devoted saint on either side of you down at the office. Your test is what your religion can do for you in the midst of a godless crowd. Daniel's God was tested not in the pleasant situations of his early home life. The test was among his foes. It is amidst the horrors of a lion's den that the king's question echoes, "Oh, Daniel, servant of the living God, is thy God whom thou servest continually, able to deliver thee?"
Jephthah went to battle from the altar of prayer. As he went he made a vow. It is the vow for which he has been most severely criticized. It is a vow that has caused his name among some to be branded with shame. He vowed that if God would give him the victory he would offer to Him whatever first came out of the door of his house to meet him on his return. It was a rash vow, I am ready to admit. Yet rash as it was, I do not find it in my heart to be severely critical of him. I rather join with Dr. Peck in my admiration. You know what is the matter with a great many of us smug church members? We are so prudent. We have such admirable possession of all our faculties. We are in danger of dying of self-control. This man in the white heat of his enthusiasm made a solemn pledge to the Lord of that which was destined to be infinitely the most precious thing in his life. But some of us in our prudence will not even make a pledge of a few dollars. We say we do not know how well we will be fixed next week or next month or next year.
You have heard of the man who subscribed $50 and refused to pay it, saying that he was too religious that day to look after his own interests. Some of us never get that religious. But all the encomiums throughout the Word of God are uttered upon those who are utterly rash in their giving. The widow foolishly gave away all that she had. And Mary squandered a whole box of ointment when a few drops would have been amply sufficient. But it was their mad recklessness that made them immortal.
Jephthah made his vow and went to battle. He went confidently. He went believing that inasmuch as he had put himself and what he had at God's disposal, that God would put Himself at his disposal. And God did not disappoint him. He won the fight. And now the victorious army is marching home. The soldiers are rejoicing. But there is a strange tenseness and anxiety in the general's face that the soldiers do not understand. Nobody understands but God and Jephthah. At last they round the bend in the road and the general comes in sight of his own home. And then suddenly his bronze face goes deadly pale. He reels upon his horse. For out from the door of his home has come a lovely girl with dark hair and sunny face, and she is singing a song of welcome.
Father and daughter come face to face. The girl is perplexed, and the general strains her hard to his heart. He is father and mother to her at once, and she is all he has. And the cup is bitter almost beyond the drinking. And he says, "Alas, my daughter, you have brought me very low." And he tells her his story. And the girl with sweet resignation understands, and the great sacrifice is made.
Jephthah was a hard man, you say. Do not judge him in the light of the twentieth century. Judge him in the light of the day in which he lived. And remember this, that he had the manhood to keep his promise. Remember that he had the sturdy courage to pay his vow. "I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back." Oh, the world is saved by the "cannot" men, by the men who have big impossibilities in their souls. Joseph says as he faces the temptation of his life, "I cannot do it." The apostles ordered to keep silent, say, "We cannot." And Jephthah with breaking heart and tear-wet face, tempted to break his vow, says, "I cannot go back."
Oh, I know what we would probably have done. We would have said to ourselves, "Nobody knows that I made that vow anyway, nobody but God. I made it in the secrecy of my own heart. I never breathed a word into any human ear. If I go back on it, it will not matter so much. It is simply a promise that I made to God." This man had not told his vow. It was a secret between himself and his Lord. He was not driven to the performance of it by public opinion. He was not urged to it, as flabby Herod, "for the sake of those that sat with him." He was urged to it by his own unstained conscience and his sterling manhood.
Or he might have said, "I made the vow, it's true, but I made it under pressure. A great danger was threatening and a man is not to be held responsible for a vow he makes in the presence of danger." Did you ever get frightened when a storm was on and promise God things, and then go back on it? Of course you have. We have been false to one another, some of us. How many of us have been false to God! How far is this old hero ahead of ourselves!
Think of the vows that you have made as members of the church. You have not even fulfilled the vow you made to your groceryman. Some of you have not paid for the clothes that you have on, and never will. Some of you have made pledges to the church and have forgotten them. And just because the church won't sue you, you are going to break the promise that you have made, not simply to men, but to God.
And what have you done with your church vows? You have promised to renounce the devil and all his works, the vain pomp and glory of the world. Have you kept your vow? You have promised to obediently keep God's holy will and commandments. Have you been honest with God in this matter? You have promised to be subject to the rules of the church and to attend upon its services, and some of you have trampled on those rules flagrantly, openly, knowingly. And remember that when you took that vow it was not a pledge that you made to me. You opened your mouth that day unto the Lord.
And you that are here outside the church, may the lord help you to pay your vows unto the Most High. For there is hardly a single one of you but that at some time has opened your mouth unto the Lord. What about that promise you made to God when you were sick? I do not say you made it into any human ear, but you breathed it in prayer into His ear. What about the promise you made to God by the coffin of your baby? What about the promise of consecration you made by the bedside of your dying mother? May the Lord help us to make this day a pay day. May the Lord give us the courage to say, "I have opened my mouth unto the Lord, and I cannot go back."
1 Kings 19:4
One day you were reading in the New Testament and you came to that surprising word from James: "Elijah was a man subject to like passions as we are." And if you were reading thoughtfully you stared at that sentence in wide-eyed amazement. And then in your heart you said, "It isn't true. Elijah's story doesn't read a bit like mine."
Then you thought of how he came and put his finger in Ahab's face and made that face go white. You thought of how he carried Heaven's key in his pocket for three years and six months. You thought of his lifting the dead boy into life; of his victory on Carmel; of his quiet walk to the little station beyond the Jordan where the Heavenly Limited met him and took him home. And again you felt like saying that James was altogether mistaken.
To fortify yourself more fully you reread his story. Then you came to this passage and you read it with a gasp: "And he came and sat down under a juniper tree," etc. And down by the print of your foot you saw the big footprint of the old prophet and you said, "After all, we are very much alike. After all, he got in the dumps, fretted and broke his heart with the blues, even as I."
Now, what was the matter with Elijah? He was not a natural and deliberate pessimist. There are some folks that are, you know. There are some people who study to be pessimistic. They are the "self-appointed inspectors of warts and carbuncles, the self-elected supervisors of sewers and street gutters." They pride themselves on being guides to the Slough of Despond and on holding a pass key to the cave of Giant Despair.
One such woman, being asked how she felt, said, "I feel good to-day. But I always feel the worst when I feel the best because I know how bad I am going to feel when I get to feeling bad again." Two buckets went to a well one day. One sobbed and said, "Oh, me! it breaks my heart to think that however full we go away from the well, we always come back empty." And its companion laughed outright and said, "Why, I was congratulating myself on the fact that however empty we come to the well, we always go away full."
One morning when the world was brimming with spring, two little girls ran out into a garden where the dewdrops and the sunlight and God had wrought the miracle of a hundred full-blown roses. They looked at the lovely scene and one went back and said tearfully, "Oh, mother, the roses are blooming, but there is a thorn for every rose." The other looked and went back singing and said, "Mother, the roses are blooming and there is a rose for every thorn."
No, this man was not a deliberate pessimist. Had he been his name and memory would have rotted long ago, for the men that bless us are the hopeful men, the forward-looking men. I read of a man who was put in jail during the Boer War simply because he was always prophesying disaster. He was a discourager. He refused to see anything hopeful. And a man of that kind ought to be in jail because he is as harmful as a man with the small-pox. "He who steals my purse steals trash, but he who filcheth from me" my sunny outlook, my expectation of the dawn of a to-morrow, "takes that which not enriches him, but makes me poor indeed."
What was the matter with Elijah? Well, in the first place, he was tired. He was utterly spent. He had just passed through a very trying and exacting ordeal. We can well imagine that the days just preceding the test upon Carmel were toilsome days and the nights were sleepless nights. Then came the great day of contest and victory. There was, of course, no rest that day. And, in the exhilaration of victory, you know how he ran before the chariot of Ahab from Carmel to Jezreel, a distance of seventeen miles.
Arrived there, he got a message from Jezebel threatening his life. He had expected, of course, that the men who had shouted "The Lord He is God" would stand by him. But they did not. He had expected that even Jezebel would be afraid to lift her voice in defense of the old defeated heathenism of the past. But here again he was much mistaken. In fact, instead of tamely acknowledging defeat she sends him this word: "So let the gods do to me, and more also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of them by to-morrow about this time."
Jezebel's threat totally upset the prophet's sense of victory. He came to feel that he had not won after all. For the first time he gave way to fear. Cowardice rushed upon him and drove him, without rest, down the road that led into the wilderness. The terminus of this road was, quite naturally, the juniper tree.
So one source of his discouragement, one secret of his being in the blues, was that he was utterly tired. It is hard indeed for a man to be hopeful when his nerves are on edge. It is hard for him to keep out of the blues when he is completely exhausted. As a tired body yields at such times far more readily to physical disease, so does it yield more readily to the exquisite torture of discouragement and depression.
A second reason for his collapse was a lost sense of the divine fellowship. Up to this time Elijah's every step had been ordered of the Lord. He had a sense of the Divine Presence that was continuous. But Jezebel's threat had made him believe that he must look out for himself. So he took his case into his own hands. And that is the road that must always lead to the juniper tree.
Such a collapse is next to impossible as long as we keep on intimate terms with God. Yonder is man named Paul on a ship that is going to pieces. The sea "curls its lips and lies in wait with lifted teeth as if to bite." The sailors' faces are ghastly with hunger and panic. But while despair grips every other heart and while death laughs with hollow laughter amidst the popping timbers of this wrecking ship, this man steadies himself and shouts, "Be of good cheer." What is the secret of his cheer? "There stood by me this night the angel of God whose I am." He was saved by an intimate and personal sense of the Divine Presence. Elijah had lost this sense of the Divine. Hence the deep, dark night of utter discouragement was upon him.
Thus utterly wearied and his old intimacy with the Lord gone, the worst naturally followed. All his hopes seemed to fall about him. There came to him a heart-breaking sense of personal failure. He sobbed out the complaint: "I am no better than my fathers. They allowed Israel to drift into idolatry. I have not been able to bring it back. I have accomplished nothing. I toiled long and hard, dreaming that at the end I would clasp the warm, radiant hand of success and victory, but in reality I only clasp the skeleton hand of failure."
Have you ever had a feeling that you were of no account and never would be; that in spite of all that God had done for you, you were a failure? There are few things more fraught with heartache and bitterness and discouragement than that. That is something that makes you want to sob and give over the fight utterly. And there are a lot of folks that allow themselves to come to that dismal conviction. They work, and nobody seems to appreciate it. They toil, and nobody compliments them. Then they decide that they do not amount to anything, and they feel like giving over the fight.
I read the other day a fascinating essay from Frank Boreham. In this essay the author spoke of a certain discouraged friend of his. He declared it his purpose to help this friend by sending him a present. And the strange present that he was going to send him was an onion. Yes, he was going to wrap this onion in lovely tissue paper and put it in a beautiful candy box and tie it with pink ribbon and post it to his friend at once.
Now, why send him an onion? Well, for the simple reason that though an onion is one of the most valuable of all vegetables, though it is the finest of relishes, though it has added piquancy to a thousand feasts, yet nobody praises the onion. Of course you know the author is right here. You may have read some great poetry in your time, poems on daffodils, violets, roses, daisies. Even you have known a great poet who could write about a louse and a field mouse, but where do you find a poem about an onion? What orator waxes eloquent in its praise? What bride ever carries a bouquet of onions as a bridal bouquet?
This is true, of course, but why is it true? Not because the onion is useless. The real reason is because it is so strong. It is harder to grow sentimental over great strong things,—though tears have been shed over onions, as our essayist has pointed out. There are some we praise, you know, because we think that they need it to keep them going. They are weak. There are others we do not praise because they are so strong, or because, being strong, we expect strong things of them. The football hero receives an ovation when he makes a touchdown, but no greater than the baby receives when it takes its first step. There was more noise in the former case, but only because there was a larger crowd of spectators. So it is not wise to conclude that because nobody is praising you, you are of no account in the world.
Not only did Elijah for the moment lose faith in himself, but he lost faith in others as well. He thought there was not a good man in all Israel. And if you want a short cut to wretchedness, get to a place where you do not believe in anybody. Some people seem to cultivate this disposition as if it were an asset. It is not an asset. It is the worst possible liability. If you want to make a hell for yourself in the here and now, cultivate the habit of seeing a selfish motive back of every seemingly unselfish act. School yourself to believe that all men and all women have their price. Say not in haste, but deliberately, that "All men are liars."
That is the leading characteristic of the devil. "Hast thou considered my servant, Job," the Lord asked, "that there is none like him?" "Yes," replied the devil, "I have considered him. I know him through and through. I know him better than you do. He is deceiving you. He is putting it over on you. You think he loves you for yourself,—I know that he loves you simply, because you are feeding him bonbons. Let me touch him and he will curse you to your face." That is the devil's habit. That is what makes him such a success as a devil.
If you do not believe in people no wonder you are miserable. If you do not believe that a fluctuating Simon can be changed into a rock; if you do not believe that a Magdalene can, through the grace of God, become a herald of the resurrection; if you do not believe that this world of men is a salvable world; then it is not to be wondered at that you are blue. If you do not believe in the honesty and goodness and purity of at least a few, I do not see how you can be in any other place than a veritable perdition.
There are bad men, vicious men, godless men, but they are not all so.Do not believe that they are.
"There are loyal hearts, there are spirits brave;There are souls that are good and true,Then give the world the best you haveAnd the best will come back to you.
"Give love, and love to your heart will flowAnd strength for your utmost need.Give faith and a score of hearts will showTheir faith in your worldly deed.
"Give truth and truth will be paid in kind,And honor will honor meet;And a smile that is sweet is sure to findA smile that is just as sweet.
"For life is the mirror of king and slave;It's just what we are and do.Then give the world the best you haveAnd the best will come back to you."
But if you frown at the world the world is going to frown at you, and if you mistrust it, it will mistrust you. I used to stand as a boy on the river bank on my father's farm and shout at the great rugged cliff across the silver Buffalo River. If I spoke kindly to the grim old cliff, its answer would be in the same kindly tone. If there was harshness and menace in my voice, it came back the same way. And life is a big echo. It speaks to us in the tone of our own voice. It gives us the faith or the unbelief that we ourselves give.
And with faith in self gone and also faith in men, it is not to be wondered at that Elijah requested for himself that he might die. But though he made this request, it is not the real sentiment of his heart. It is not the real Elijah speaking. A man ought never to make an important decision when he is in the blues. He is not himself any more than is a man under the influence of drink. Elijah is not himself here. How do we know? He really doesn't mean what he is saying. How do we know that?
Well, he is requesting for himself here that he, might die. Now, if he was really in earnest about dying, Jezebel would have attended to that for him without any prayer on his part, if he had just stayed round Jezreel for a while. The truth of the matter is that the love of life is strong in him. The truth of the matter also is that he still believes somewhat in himself and in God and in men. He is just in the blues now and is not saying what he really believes when he is at his best.
When you get in the dumps and fret and fume and wish you were dead, just stop right there and tell yourself that you are a liar. You do not wish anything of the kind. I heard of a man once who was always threatening to commit suicide. He had a good friend who was a pious man and who was grieved by such threats. But he heard them till he knew they meant nothing, so one day he stepped into this man's room at the hotel, laid an ugly looking revolver down on the dresser and said, "John, old man, you have been threatening to take your own life for some time. I do not want you to do it. It is murder and you will have no chance to repent. I love you as I love myself. For this reason I have decided to kill you. I will live long enough to repent. So get over there at the table and make your will." And the man's face went white and he wanted to wait till to-morrow.
How did God cure this man who was in the blues? First, He used a very commonplace remedy. He put him to sleep. He let him rest. Rest is a very religious thing for a tired man. Now, a man who has overworked himself needs to rest from his work. A lot of blue people need rest from idleness. One big reason they are blue is because they have nothing else to do. God gave this man a rest. That was the first step.
In the second place, He showed him his sin. He showed him where he was wrong and brought him to repentance and thus restored the old relationship of the past. He asked him this question: "What doest thou here, Elijah?" The emphasis is on the "doest." Elijah must have blushed at that question. And he said, "Oh, I am whining. I am complaining. I am trying to keep books, to add up a few columns of figures and test by that as to whether I am a success or a failure."
Now, what the Lord wanted Elijah to learn is just what He wants you and me to learn, that our job in this world is not bookkeeping. It is not for us to try to sum up the amount of good we have done. It is not for us to test whether we have succeeded or whether we have failed. The truth of the matter is that we are not always competent to tell the difference between success and failure. There are some seeming successes that in reality are failures and there are some of the supreme failures that have turned out to be the most glorious successes.
The greatest failure in the eyes of men that was ever made, was the failure on Calvary, and yet it came to pass that the world's darkest night was in reality the mother of its brightest day; that its grimmest desert became its sweetest flower garden. Do not break your heart and tear your hair keeping books.
One of the sanest things I ever heard was spoken by an able preacher who came one day to preach in my town. There was almost nobody out to hear him. And he preached a wonderful sermon and closed with this most sensible word: "I don't know what I have accomplished by coming to this town. I only know that I have come with God in my heart and have done my best. I am not keeping books. God is doing that. Some day on the other side of the River I am going to take down my book and look at it,—God will let me,—and I am going to see just what I accomplished when I came to your town." That is sensible and that is religious.
And so the Lord was saying to Elijah: "It is not your business to keep books. You do not know how to keep them, in the first place. You added up a column of figures and got zero. I added it up and got 7,000. Yes, there are 7,000 that have not bowed the knee to Baal. You have been a help. You have been an inspiration. You have not been a failure, because you have walked with me." God doesn't fail and the man who walks with him will not fail. He may not accomplish his ambition. He may not realize many of the great hopes of his life, but if he lives in the secret place of the Most High his life will never be a failure.
I read not long ago of a young woman who consecrated her life to God for mission work in India. She was ready for the great enterprise, but just before she was to set sail for that far country, her mother was taken sick with a lingering disease. She had to stay and nurse her for some three years. Then the Angel of Release came and the mother went home.
Preparations were made a second time for her setting out to India. But from a little home in the distant west there came a call for help. A widowed sister of this would-be missionary was sick and there were three little children to be cared for. She went to her sister's bedside. In a short time the sister died and the three little orphans were left on her hands, and the one big hope of her life had to be given up. It seemed strange. It seemed hard. Yet she remained true to the task that lay nearest. At last all three children were able to look after themselves. But by that time she herself was too old to go to her loved mission field.
Then one day one of those orphans for whom she had given up her life's dream put her arms around her neck and told her that she was going to be a missionary and that the field that she had chosen was India. And in later days the other two told the same story. So they all three went away to India to which she had so longed to go. And as they passed out to the land of her love and her prayers this heroic soul knew that she had not failed. And so God's call to Elijah, to you and to me is to leave off our heart-breaking bookkeeping, to put our hands in His and to resume the journey. And as we go we shall in some way shake off our discouragement as a hampering garment and we shall find ourselves in the sunlight once more. And we shall come to know for ourselves that "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on Thee."
Acts 16:30, 31
"What must I do to be saved?" That question was asked by a startled jailer. He was amidst strange and perplexing happenings. He had just seen wonderful sights. He was being shaken by unfamiliar terrors. For these terrors he sought relief and so he asked this infinitely wise question: "What must I do to be saved?"
But this jailer is not the only man that has ever asked that question. He is not the first man that asked it. This is a universal question. Men of all times and of all climes have asked and sought an answer to this question. The cultured Greeks tried to answer it by building altars to many gods. Then realizing that they had missed it, they sought further by building an altar to "the Unknown God." It was in an effort to answer this question that children were once sacrificed to the fire god, Moloch. And it is the struggle to answer the same question that causes the Indian mother to-day to cast her baby into the Ganges and to come home with empty arms and with an empty heart.
I heard a missionary from the heart of Africa say some years ago that he used to live among the savage tribes of the far interior. They were people of the lowest type. They wore no shred of clothing. But in their wild and barbarous religious dances they would swing round and round till they frothed at the mouth and fell down rigid. It was their way, said the missionary, of asking the supreme question: "What must I do to be saved?"
This was a dramatic moment in this jailer's life. It was a moment big with blessing. Look at the picture. Two strange preachers have come to this Roman city of Philippi. Their preaching has brought them into conflict with the authorities. They are drawn before the magistrates. Their clothing is torn from them and they are severely beaten.
It seems that this would have been shame enough and pain enough, but it was not. They were then turned over to a callous and cruel Roman jailer with the order that he should keep them fast. So he threw them into the inner dungeon and made their feet fast in the stocks. The place was foul and cold and dark. Their backs were lacerated and bleeding. And this wag their reward for seeking to bring to men the unsearchable riches of Christ.
Now it was dark enough for these two. But they did not lose heart. First they prayed. I can imagine they prayed secretly and then they prayed aloud. And those people in prison heard the voice of prayer for possibly the first time in their lives. Now, real prayer always makes things different. It brings us a consciousness of God. And so as these men prayed their hearts grew warm and joyous till by and by prayer gives place to praise and they begin to sing.
I have wondered what these people sang that night. It might have been the Twenty-third Psalm. Or they might have sung, "I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear thereof and be glad." Or the Thirty-seventh Psalm would have sounded well in the darkness of that hideous dungeon,—"Fret not thyself because of evil doers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb." But I think the most likely of all is the Forty-sixth: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea."
Whatever they sang it was great singing. I think the angels opened the windows when they heard it. I think it made the very heart of our Lord glad. What a surprise it was to those in that gloomy old prison. They had heard the walls ring with groans and shrieks. They had heard bitter oaths in the night, but songs with the lilt of an irrepressible joy in them—they had never heard anything like that before.
Now as the melody rang through the gloomy cells something else happened. The old building seemed to be shaking with the very power of the music. An earthquake was on and God took this petty prison in His hand and shook it as a dicer might shake his dice box, and all its doors were thrown open and the fetters were shaken from the feet of those that were bound. And the old jailer is shaken out of his complacency and out of his bed and a great terror grips him.
I can see him as he picks himself up and looks about him in dismay. The doors are open. He is sure that the prisoners are gone. He knows that his life will be to pay. He will not face the shame of it. He will inflict justice upon himself. He draws his sword and prepares to thrust it through him, but Paul's eyes were upon him, and knowing his purpose he shouts at him, "We are all here, Jailer. Do thyself no harm."
There is love in that cry, tenderness in it, longing in it that the jailer could not understand. Neither could he fail to realize the might of it. It touches him deeply. He is gripped by another terror, the terror that has come through the presence of these strange men who have brought the things of eternity to seem real to him. And urged on by that new terror he rushes to these men of bleeding backs and tattered garments and throws himself at their feet with this great question in his heart and upon his lips, "Sirs, what must I to do be saved?"
Now, I am aware of the fact that this jailer was a heathen and I am not accusing him at all of being a great theologian. I do not know how learned he was. I do not know whether he could read or write or not. I do not know whether he was widely traveled or not. He may have never been beyond the precincts of his own city. But what I do know is this, that he asked the biggest question that ever fell from human lips. There can be no greater. It was the greatest for him. It is the greatest for you. It is the greatest for me. "What must I do to be saved?" There is no question quite so big as that.
And I am wondering now if it is a big question to you. Remember, it is not: What must I do to be decent? It is not: What must I do to be respectable? These things are all right, but they are not supreme. It is not: What must I do to get rich? Millions of us are asking that question as if it were the one question of eternal importance. But you know that it is not. It is not: What must I do to be beautiful? Some of us are asking that question too, and some of us, I am sorry to say, are missing the answer to it very much. But that is not the big question. The supreme question is: "What must I do to be saved?"
What is implied in this question when it is asked intelligently? There is implied first of all that there is an absolute difference between being saved and lost. There is implied in it that there are two classes of people, not the cultured and the uncultured, not the learned and the unlearned. They are the saved and the lost. They are those that have life and those that do not have life.
I am perfectly aware that we of to-day do not like such dogmatic divisions. But I call your attention to the fact that they are the divisions that are made in the New Testament. They are the divisions that Jesus made. He puts folks into two classes, and only two. There were two gates, one was broad and the other narrow. There were two foundations on which a man might build, one was of sand and the other of rock. Mark you, He did not divide men into the perfect and the imperfect, but into those that had life and those that did not have it. And it was He that said, "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life." So this question, if it means anything, means that there is such a thing as being saved and there is such a thing as being lost. That fact is recognized throughout the entire Bible.
This question implies, in the second place, a consciousness of being lost. "What must I do to be saved?" When this man asked that question there were many things about which he was uncertain. He was uncertain as to how he was to get out of his darkness. He was uncertain as to how he was to be saved, but of one thing he was sure—he was dead sure that he was lost. He did not try to dodge that fact. He did not shut his eyes to it. He did not try in any way to deny it.
And, if you are here without God I hope you will not deny it. For if you have not taken Jesus Christ as your personal Savior you are lost. Then the best thing you can do, the first step to be taken in the direction of getting saved, is to realize your lostness. A man will not send for the physician unless he believes himself sick. He will not try to learn unless he realizes his ignorance. Neither will he turn to God for salvation unless he realizes that he is lost. Oh, it is a good day for a man when he gets a square look at himself. It is a great day when he has a glimpse of himself as God sees him. It is a great hour when, conscious of his guilt, he bows himself in the presence of Him who alone can save and says, "God, be merciful unto me a sinner."
This question implies, in the third place, not only that the man is lost who asked it, but that there is a possibility of his being saved. "What must I do to be saved?"—and here was a man conscious of being lost, conscious of being sin scarred and stained and guilty, yet he believes, and he is right in believing, that salvation is possible for him. He believes that even he can be saved unto the uttermost. There is such a thing as salvation and it is possible for me, even me, to lay hold of it.
And you too must realize that, otherwise it will do you no good to realize the fact that you are a sinner. It is not enough to know yourself lost. You must also believe that you may be saved. It is not enough to realize that you are weak: you must believe that is possible for you to be strong. You must believe that even a fluctuating Simon can be made into a rock. You must believe in the power of God to remake men, otherwise for you the question is only a question of black despair.
This question implies, in the fourth place, a willingness to be saved. "What must I do to be saved?" This man is not asking this question to gather material for a future argument. He is no speculator. He is no trifler. He is not even asking it because he is intellectually curious. He is not simply asking that he may know the conditions of salvation. He is asking with the earnest purpose in his heart to meet those conditions.
This question implies, in the fifth place, that while salvation is a possibility for you, you must do something in order to obtain it. "What must I do to be saved?" What sort of an answer would you expect to a question like that? What did the apostle say? Did he say, "Do nothing. Let the matter alone. Forget it. Drift?" That is what many of us are doing. No, sir, he said nothing of the kind. He told this man to do something. And this man knew, as you and I know, that if we are ever saved we have got to do something in order to get saved.
I say every one of us knows that, and yet too few of us act as if it were really true. We seem to think that salvation is something that we are going to stumble upon by accident. We seem to think it is something that we are going to receive with absolutely no effort on our own part. We act as if we thought it might be slipped into our pockets while we sleep or dropped into our coffins when we die. Ask the question intelligently, heart,—"What must I do to be saved?" Then you will realize that you must do something.
This question implies, in the first place, that the conditions of salvation are not optional, that it is not up to you and it is not up to me to decide just what we will do in order to be saved. You can accept salvation or you can refuse it. You can meet the conditions or you can refuse to meet them. But one thing you cannot do. You cannot decide upon the terms upon which you will surrender. If you are saved at all you must surrender unconditionally.
So the question is, "WhatmustI do to be saved?" It is not, What is the expedient thing or what is the respectable thing or what is the popular thing to do in order to find salvation? The conditions are not of your choosing and they are not of mine. God has made them and you and I dare not change them. Therefore, if you are ever saved there is not something simply that you ought to do, but there is something that you absolutely must do.
Last of all, this question implies that salvation is an individual matter. "What mustIdo?" It is not a question of what must God do. He has made full provision for the salvation of the whole world. It is not what must the Church do. It is not what must the preacher do. It is not what must this man that is beside me and this man that is behind me or in front of me do. The question comes to my own heart—"What mustIdo?"
"What must I do to be saved?" You must do something, but there are many things that we are doing that will not save us. If you expect to be saved, in the first place, do not depend on your own goodness. "All your righteousnesses are but as filthy rags." Do not count on your own decency. No man was ever saved that way. I challenge you to find one single one. I was holding a meeting some years ago and I met a young fellow who told me he was good enough without Jesus Christ. Of course he was not saved. A man who says that virtually tells Christ that He has misunderstood his case altogether and that Calvary was a wasted tragedy so far as he himself is personally concerned.
Neither will you be saved trusting in the other man's badness. I know what some of you are saying to yourselves as I preach. You are telling yourselves one of the oldest lies that was ever told. You are saying, "I would be a Christian but there are so many hypocrites in the Church." How many men give that as a reason, but it is no man's reason. And I never knew one man to be saved by it. Believe me, the shortcomings and the sins of my brother are mighty poor things to depend on for my own personal salvation.
Again, you will not be saved by seeking an easy way. You will never win by catering to your own pride and cowardice. I was conducting a revival in a Texas city some years ago. At the close of one of the services a young lady came forward to shake hands with the preacher. As she did so she said, "I am going to become a Christian." I congratulated her upon her decision, but she answered, "Oh, I do not mean right now. I mean I am going to be very soon."
"You see," she continued, "it is like this: I am going in a few days to visit some of my relatives that live way back in the country. There is going to be a revival nearby. It will be easy for me to make the decision there because nobody knows me. But here it is different. Everybody knows me here and I simply haven't the courage to come out and take an open stand for Jesus Christ." She went into the country as she planned but she was not saved. Of course not. Nobody ever found salvation by catering to his own cowardice and pride and seeking an easy way.
"What must I do to be saved?" There is an answer to this question. It is an answer that is absolutely dependable. There is nothing in all the world of which I am more sure than I am of the correctness of the answer to this question. I am as sure of it as I am of my own existence. I am as sure of it as I am of the fact of God.
I wonder if you are interested to know the answer. Remember that it is the answer to your supreme question. It is the answer to the most important question that was ever asked. It is the most important that you will ever be called to act upon in this world. Does the prospect of an answer quicken your heartbeat? Does it shake you out of your lethargy into intensest interest? It ought to if it does not. For the answer that I give is not the answer of a mere speculator or dreamer. It is the answer of inspiration and it is an answer whose truth has been tested by the personal experience of countless millions. "What must I do to be saved?" Answer: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."