"O Isaac, how can I give thee up?"
Morning breaks. What a morning it must have been for that father! He doesn"t eat; he tries to pray, but his voice falters. After breakfast they start on their journey again. He has not gone a great way before he lifts up his eyes, and yonder is Mount Moriah. His heart begins to beat quickly. He says to the two young men:
"You stay here, and I will go yonder with my son."
Then, as father and son went up Mount Moriah, with the wood, and the fire, and the knife, the boy turns suddenly to the father, and says:
"Father, where is the lamb? We haven"t any offering, father."
It was a common thing for Isaac to see his father offer up a victim, but there is no lamb now.
Did you ever think
HOW PROPHETIC THAT ANSWER WAS
when Abraham turned and said to the son, "G.o.d will provide Himself a sacrifice?" I don"t know that Abraham understood the full meaning of it, but a few hundred years after G.o.d did provide a sacrifice right there. Mount Moriah and Mount Calvary are close together, and G.o.d"s Son was provided as a sacrifice for the world.
On Mount Moriah this father and son begin to roll up the stones, and together they build the altar; then they lay on the wood and everything is ready for the victim. Isaac looks around to see where the lamb is and then the father can keep it from the son no longer, and he says:
"My boy, sit down here close to the altar, and let me tell you something."
Then perhaps that old, white-haired patriarch puts his arm around the lad, and tells how G.o.d came to him in the land of the Chaldeans, and the story of his whole life, and how, by one promise after another, G.o.d had kept enlarging the promised blessings, and that He would bless all the nations of the earth through him. Isaac was to be the heir. But he says:
"My son, the last night I was at home G.o.d came to me in the hours of the night and told me to bring you here and offer you up as a sacrifice. I don"t understand what it means, but I can tell you one thing: it is much harder for me to offer you up than it would be for me to be sacrificed myself."
There was a time when I used to think more of the love of Jesus Christ than of G.o.d the Father. I used to think of G.o.d as a stern judge on the throne, from whose wrath Jesus Christ had saved me. It seems to me now I could not have
A FALSER IDEA OF G.o.d
than that. Since I have become a father I have made this discovery: that it takes more love and self-sacrifice for the father to give up the son than it does for the son to die. Is a father on earth a true father that would not rather suffer than to see his child suffer? Do you think that it did not cost G.o.d something to redeem this world?
It cost G.o.d the most precious possession He ever had. When G.o.d gave His Son, He gave all, and yet He gave Him freely for you and me.
I can imagine that Abraham talks to Isaac and tells him how hard it is to offer him up. "But G.o.d has commanded it," he says, "and I surrender my will to G.o.d"s will. I don"t understand it, but I believe that G.o.d will be able to raise you up, and maybe He will."
They fell on their faces, and prayed together. After prayer I can see that old father take his boy to his bosom, and embrace him for the last time. He kisses and kisses him. Then he takes those hands that are so innocent, and binds them, and he binds the feet, and he ties him up, and lays him on the altar, and gives him a last kiss.
Then he takes the knife, and raises his hand. No sooner is the hand lifted than a voice calls from heaven:
"Abraham, Abraham, spare thy son!"
You remember that Christ said, "Abraham saw my day, and was glad." I have an idea that G.o.d then and there just
LIFTED THE CURTAIN OF TIME
for Abraham. He looked down into the future, saw G.o.d"s Son coming up Calvary, bearing his sins and the sins of all posterity. G.o.d gave him that secret, and told him how His Son was to come into the world and take away his sins.
Now, my friends, notice: whenever G.o.d has been calling me to higher service, there has always been a conflict with my will. I have fought against it, but G.o.d"s will has been done instead of mine.
When I came to Jesus Christ, I had a terrible battle to surrender my will, and to take G.o.d"s will. When I gave up business, I had another battle for three months; I fought against it. It was a terrible battle. But oh! how many times I have thanked G.o.d that I gave up my will and took G.o.d"s will. Then there was another time when G.o.d was calling me into higher service, to go out and preach the gospel all over the land, instead of staying in Chicago. I fought against it for months; but the best thing I ever did was when I surrendered my will, and let the will of G.o.d be done in me. Because Abraham obeyed G.o.d and held back not even his only child, G.o.d enlarged his promises once again:
"And the angel of the Lord called unto Abraham out of heaven the second time, and said, By myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, for because thou hast done this thing, and hast not withheld thy son, thine only son: that in blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea sh.o.r.e; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice."
If you take my advice, you will have no will other than G.o.d"s will.
Make a full and complete surrender, and the sweet messages of heaven will come to you. G.o.d will whisper into your soul
THE SECRETS OF HEAVEN.
After Abraham did what G.o.d told him, then it was that G.o.d told His friend all about His Son. If we make a full surrender, G.o.d will give us something better than we have ever known before. We will get a new vision of Jesus Christ, and will thank G.o.d not only in this life but in the life to come. May G.o.d help each and every one of us to make a full and complete and unconditional surrender to G.o.d, fully and wholly, now and forever.
THE CALL OF MOSES
There is a great deal more room given in Scripture to the _call_ of men to G.o.d"s work than there is to their _end_. For instance, we don"t know where Isaiah died, or how he died, but we know a great deal about the call G.o.d gave him, when he saw G.o.d on high and lifted up on His throne. I suppose that it is true to-day that hundreds of young men and women who are listening for a call and really want to know what their life"s mission is, perhaps find it the greatest problem they ever had. Some don"t know just what profession or work to take up, and so I should like to take the call of Moses, and see if we cannot draw some lessons from it.
You remember when G.o.d met Moses at the burning bush and called him to do as great a work as any man has ever been called to in this world, that
HE THOUGHT THE LORD HAD MADE A MISTAKE,
that he was not the man. He said, "Who am I?" He was very small in his own estimation. Forty years before he had started out as a good many others have started. He thought he was pretty well equipped for service. He had been in the schools of the Egyptians, he had been in the palaces of Egypt, he had moved in the _bon ton_ society. He had had all the advantages any man could have when he started out, undoubtedly, without calling on the G.o.d of Abraham for wisdom and guidance, yet he broke down.
How many men have started out in some profession and made a failure of it! They haven"t heard the voice of G.o.d, they haven"t waited upon G.o.d for instruction.
I suppose Moses thought that the children of Israel would be greatly honored to know that a prince of the realm was going to take up their cause, but you remember how he lost his temper and killed the Egyptian, and next day, when he interfered in a quarrel between two Hebrews, they wanted to know who had made him judge and ruler over them, and he had to flee into the desert, and was there for forty years hidden away. He killed the Egyptian and lost his influence thereby. Murder for liberty; wrong for right; it was a poor way to reform abuses, and Moses needed training.
It was a long time for G.o.d to keep him in His school, a long time for a man to wait in the prime of his life, from forty to eighty.
Moses had been brought us with all the luxuries that Egypt could give him, and now he was a shepherd, and in the sight of the Egyptians a shepherd was an abomination. I have an idea that Moses started out with a great deal bigger head than heart. I believe that is the reason so many fail; they have
BIG HEADS AND LITTLE HEARTS.
If a man has a shriveled-up heart and a big head he is a monster.
Perhaps Moses looked down on the Hebrews. There are many people who start out with the idea that they are great and other people are small, and they are going to bring them up on the high level with themselves. G.o.d never yet used a man of that stamp. Perhaps Moses was a slow scholar in G.o.d"s school, and so He had to keep him there for forty years.
But now he is ready; he is just the man G.o.d wants, and G.o.d calls him. Moses said, "Who am I?" He was very small in his own eyes--just small enough so that G.o.d could use him. If you had asked the Egyptians who he was, they would have said he was
THE BIGGEST FOOL IN THE WORLD.
"Why," they would say, "look at the opportunity that man had! He might have been commander of the Egyptian army, he might have been on the throne, swaying the sceptre over the whole world, if he hadn"t identified himself with those poor, miserable Hebrews! Think what an opportunity he has lost, and what a privilege he has thrown away!"
He had dropped out of the public mind for forty years, and they didn"t know what had become of him, but G.o.d had His eye upon him. He was the very man of all others that G.o.d wanted, and when he met G.o.d with that question, "Who am I?" it didn"t matter who he was but who his G.o.d was. When men learn the lesson that they are nothing and G.o.d is everything, then there is not a position in which G.o.d cannot use them. It was not Moses who accomplished that great work of redemption, for he was only the instrument in G.o.d"s hand. G.o.d could have spoken to Pharaoh without Moses. He could have spoken in a voice of thunder, and broken the heart of Pharaoh with one speech, if He had wanted to, but He condescended to take up a human agent, and to use him. He could have sent Gabriel down, but he knew that Moses was the man wanted above all others, so He called him. G.o.d uses men to speak to men: He works through mediators. He could have accomplished the exodus of the children of Israel in a flash, but instead He chose to send a lonely and despised shepherd to work out His purpose through pain and disappointment. That was G.o.d"s way in the Old Testament, and also in the New. He sent His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh to be the mediator between G.o.d and man.
Moses went on making excuses and said, "When I go down there, who shall I say has sent me?" I suppose he remembered how he went before he was sent that other time, and he was afraid of a failure again. A man who has made a failure once is always afraid he will make another. He loses confidence in himself. It is a good thing to lose confidence in ourselves so as to gain confidence in G.o.d.