The Heart of Love.
And out of the vision comes the heart of love. The sight of the Lord Jesus' face begets love; and love begets obedience. But obedience never can keep true away from its father. It is never true full obedience except it have the throbbing heart of love in it. This is the unfailing mark.
It's so easy to fail here. Yet "love never faileth." The classical Thirteenth of First Corinthians becomes an indictment. We know it better in the Book than in life. "Love suffereth long, ... _envieth_ not ... is not puffed up; doth not behave itself unbecomingly or inconsistently, seeketh not even its own, is not provoked." Love "beareth" with "all things" in the one loved, which it would gladly have different, "believeth all" possibly good "things" of him, "hopeth" for "all" desirable "things"
in him, "endureth all things" in him that hurt and pain. "Love _never_ faileth." In conversation one day with an unusually earnest worker in the Orient, we were talking of these things. His work was beset by many sore perplexities. "Ah," he said, "there is where I have failed. I have not had the heart of love." And I thought how many of us could say the same thing.
There are in the Bible three great illustrations of the heart of love. As Moses came down from the presence of God, and found the people dancing about the golden calf, he was hotly indignant. But as he goes back to plead with God, the greatness of his love and grief comes out. In God's presence their sin is seen to be so much greater. He cries, "Oh, this people have sinned a great sin, and have made them gods of gold. Yet now if Thou wilt forgive their sin----" And a great sob breaks the sentence abruptly off, and it is never finished. The possibility seems to come to his mind, in this holy presence, that such sin, by these so greatly blest, could not be forgiven. And that seems to him unbearable. "And if not," if it cannot be forgiven, "_blot me_, I pray Thee, _out of Thy Book_; but don't blot them out."[109]
In the beginning of the great Jew section of Romans, Paul is speaking of the intense pain of heart he had over the unbelief and stubbornness of his racial kinsfolk. He says, "I have great sorrow and unceasing pain in my heart. For I could wish _that I myself were accursed_ from Christ for my brethren's sake, my kinsmen," that so they might not be accursed.[110] Yet neither Moses nor Paul could so sacrifice himself for another's sin. "No man can by any means redeem his brother, nor give to God a ransom for him."[111] But Jesus, the pure, sinless one, _was_ blotted out. He _was_ made a curse. Moses and Paul would if they could. Jesus both could and did. Was there ever such a heart of love! And that heart was greatest in its action of love when it broke.
A simple story has come to me, I cannot remember where, of a woman in southern China in the province of Kwangtung. She had a serious illness and was taken to a mission hospital in Canton for treatment. There for the first time she heard of Christ, of His love and death. And that story coming so new and fresh transformed her, as she opened her heart to the Saviour. And a great peace came into her heart, and showed plainly in her face. Then her thought began turning to her own village. Not a soul there knew of this wondrous Saviour. If they but knew. But what could she do, her illness was very serious.
The next time the physician came by she asked him how long she would live if she stayed there. He said that he did not know, but he thought about six months. And how long if she left the hospital and returned home. He didn't know; maybe three months. And after he had gone she quietly announced that she was going home. And those about her were greatly astonished. "Why," they said, "you'll lose half your life!" And the tears came into her eyes, as a gentle smile overspread her poor worn face, and she simply said, "Jesus gave His whole life for me; don't you think I'm glad to give half mine for Him?" I don't know how long she lived. The story didn't say, but it did tell that most of the people in her village knew a long life, even an everlasting life, because of her simple telling of the Gospel story.
There were the three essentials, though never so thought of or analyzed by her. She had the vision of Jesus Christ her Saviour, then of those who had never heard of Him, and then of her own part in the plan of telling them. The impulse to tell them was obeyed gladly. And the heart of love counted not her life dear unto herself if only others might be told of this wondrous Christ Jesus.
Fellow-Followers
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.