Part 4

Elijah might have said: “Why haven’t you prayed to Baal for water this dry weather? You might just as well have asked him for water as for fire.”

After a long time they begin to get hoarse.

“You must pray louder than that, if you expect Baal to hear you,” says the old prophet. “Maybe he is asleep. Pray louder, so as to wake him up.”

Poor fellows! They haven’t any voice left. So they begin to pray in blood. They now cut themselves with knives, and lift their streaming hands and arms to Baal. But no fire comes down.

It is getting toward sundown.

The prophet of the Lord builds an altar. Mind you, he does not have any thing to do with the altar of Baal. He builds an entirely different one, on the ruins of the altar of the Lord, which had been broken down.

“We will not have any one saying there is any trick about this thing,” says the prophet. So they bring twelve barrels of water and pour over the altar. I do not know how they managed to get so much water, but they did it.

Then Elijah prays: “O God of Abraham and of Isaac and of Jacob, let it be known this day that Thou art God in Israel.”

He did not have to pray very loud. God heard him at once, and down came the fire. It burnt up the sacrifice--burnt up the wood--burnt up the water--burnt up the very stones of the altar. Jehovah is God; nobody can halt any longer.

Ah, but some of you say: “I, too, would have decided for God if I had been on Mount Carmel that day.” But Calvary is far more wonderful than Carmel. The sacrifice of Christ on the cross is more wonderful than the sacrifice which was burnt on that altar.

GIDEON.

I believe this man Gideon was called an enthusiast in the camp of Israel. The very idea of his going out to meet a hundred thousand men with pitchers and lanterns! How many people would have said: “The man has gone clean mad.” Yes, he was an enthusiast; but the Lord was with him.

If we lean upon ourselves we will have failure, but if we lean upon the arm of God we will see how swiftly God will give us victory. God wants the glory, and no flesh shall glory in His stead. Look at what He said to Gideon.

Gideon had called in an army of thirty-two thousand men. The Lord said to him: “You have too many men. If I give you victory, Israel will vaunt themselves against Me, saying: ‘My own hand hath saved me.’ You can not work with so many, because I must have the glory. Just say to all that are fearful: ‘Depart if you want to.’”

So Gideon proclaimed, in accordance with God’s command, saying: “Whosoever is fearful and afraid, let him return and depart early from Mount Gilead.” And there returned of the people twenty and two thousand, and there remained ten thousand.

I can imagine that Gideon became a little scared at first. Only ten thousand left! But the Lord came again, and said: “Gideon, you have got too many men. If I work with them, you will take the glory.” So he brought down the people unto the water, and the Lord said unto Gideon: “Every one that lappeth of the water with his tongue, as a dog lappeth, him shalt thou set by himself; likewise every one that boweth down upon his knees to drink.”

Three hundred lapped and ninety-seven hundred wheeled out of line. I can imagine they were like many Christians. What can God do with those who are like those of Gideon’s army who were full of fears and doubts? Look at the reduction in that great army. But three hundred men with the Almighty! Three hundred men that side with God can be a power for God. Three hundred like Gideon’s men will move any city. What a routing there was before that band! They fly like chaff before the wind. Do not call any thing small of God.

ITTAI.

I will read a few verses in the fifteenth chapter of Second Samuel, beginning at the nineteenth verse:

“Then said the king to Ittai, the Gittite: ‘Wherefore goest thou also with us? Return to thy place, and abide with the king; for thou art a stranger, and also an exile.

“‘Whereas, thou camest but yesterday, should I this day make thee go up and down with us? Seeing I go whither I may, return thou, and take back thy brethren. Mercy and truth be with thee.’

“And Ittai answered the king, and said: ‘As the Lord liveth, and as my lord the king liveth, surely in what place my lord the king shall be, whether in death or life, even there also will thy servant be.’

“And David said to Ittai: ‘Go, and pass over.’ And Ittai, the Gittite, passed over, and all his men, and all the little ones that were with them.

“And all the country wept with a loud voice, and all the people passed over. The king also himself passed over the brook Kidron, and all the people passed over, toward the way of the wilderness.”

What must have been the feeling of David when he got outside the city and found this foreigner and stranger out there with six hundred men, ready and willing to go with him! He had had three men who sat at his table, and in the hour of trial, in the hour of trouble, they had deserted him. It is in the time of darkness that we find out our friends. You find then who are your friends.

Now, David was in trouble, and here was this Ittai standing right by him. How that must have cheered the heart of the king! He had been driven from the throne by Absalom, and the whole kingdom seemed to be going with Absalom. Absalom and those who were with him were planning to take the life of David, but here we find this stranger--this man Ittai--just following David; and when David told him to go back, see what he says. I think it is one of the sweetest things in the whole life of David:

“Then said the king to Ittai, the Gittite: ‘Wherefore goest thou also with us? Return to thy place, and abide with the king; for thou art a stranger, and also an exile.

“‘Whereas, thou camest but yesterday, should I this day make thee go up and down with us? Seeing I go whither I may, return thou, and take back thy brethren. Mercy and truth be with thee.’”

Here was a man who was attached to a person. That was the point I wanted to call your attention to. We are living, I think, in the day of shams. There are a good many people who are attached to creeds, denominations and churches. They are attached to this and to that, instead of a person. Creeds and churches are all right in their places, but if a man puts them in the place of the Savior and the personal Christ, then they are but snares. He would be willing to give up every thing but Christ in the hour of trouble, and if he is attached to Christ he will be able to say: “Wherever Thou goest I go.” David had nothing to offer this man. There he was--barefooted and leaving the throne. Ittai was attached to the man.

David was every thing to Ittai, and life was nothing. No man had better friends than David had in his day. What we want is to be attached to the Lord Jesus Christ as Ittai was attached to David.

JACOB.

The key to all Jacob’s difficulties will be found in the twentieth chapter of Matthew. It is the story of the laborers in the vineyard. The thought is in the second verse. The first men hired agreed to the bargain. The men would not go until the owner of the vineyard had made a bargain with them. He told them that he would pay them what was right. They got a penny. He gave them the lawful wages. They probably asked: “And is this all you are going to give us?”

Jacob was all the time making bargains.

The Christians who are making bargains with the Lord do not get as much as those who trust Him. It does not pay to make bargains with the Lord.

Jacob is a twin brother of most of us. Where you find one Joseph or one Daniel you will find a hundred Jacobs. We are not willing, all of us, to take God at His word and trust Him. There is a strong contrast between the character of Joseph and Jacob. The one trusted God implicitly, but Jacob wanted to trust Him no farther than he could see God. There would have been a great deal of murmuring if Jacob had been thrown into jail in Egypt.

No doubt Jacob got much of his weakness from his mother. There was a division in that home. Isaac favored Esau, and Rebekah favored Jacob. Such dissensions are just the thing to stir up the old Adam in the man. A mother and a father have no right to take this course. Rebekah plans continually to keep Jacob at home. The very thing that Rebekah tries to achieve, in that she fails. By nature Esau was the better of the two. If such a mean and contemptible nature as Jacob’s can be saved, then there is hope for all of us.

The Lord promised to Jacob from the bottom of the ladder what he should have. Jacob gets up and says: “If God will be with me and keep and clothe me, then shall the Lord be my God.” What a low and contemptible idea he had! God had promised him all from Dan to Beersheba.

That is the difficulty with the people at the present time. If God will bless us in our basket and store, we shall have Him for our God. We find Jacob after this in Haran, driving bargains all the time, and the worst of it is he gets beat every time. He had to work seven years for his wife, and then gets another woman in her place. He is paid back in his own coin. We must not think that God will allow us to deceive without punishing us for it. Jacob forgot all the vows which he made at Bethel, but God did not forget His. Some of God’s promises are unconditional. The promise which He made at Bethel was unconditional.

God chose Jacob rather than Esau. Some people say that God hated Esau before he was born. This is not the teaching of Scripture, even though one of the minor prophets long years after mentioned it. God says to Jacob after he had been in Haran for so many years: “I am the God of Bethel. Arise and dwell there.”

Jacob ought to have been proud, and should have left Haran like a prince, but instead he steals away like a thief. He starts off, and his uncle and father-in-law pursue. God took care of him. God was determined to keep His vows, and there is no doubt that, had not God interfered, Jacob would have been slain.

We find that Jacob stays behind, like a miserable coward, after he had sent his effects away. A man out of communication with God is a coward always.

There was a man who wrestled with Jacob. He was Christ. When did Jacob prevail? When his thigh was out of joint all he could do was to hold on and get the blessing. The man who is the lowest down is the man whom God lifts up the highest. The man that has the greatest humility will be the most exalted.

A great many say that Jacob was a different man. Would to God his thigh had been left out of joint, so that there was no more of the flesh in him. The next thing, we find Jacob and Esau embracing, and we would suppose that he would be filled with gratitude. But no. He goes down to Shechem and builds an altar and calls it by a high-sounding name. Jacob in Shechem, with this altar with a high-sounding name, was no better than he was in Haran without an altar. He built an altar, finally, at Bethel. He said that he would go to Bethel and build an altar to his God, as if the Shechem altar was no altar. He called it El-Bethel. Just the moment he came to Bethel the Lord God met him.

The next thing we hear is the saddest episode in the career of Jacob--the death of Rachel, his favorite wife. His sons go back to Shechem, and hunt up the old idols. His sons bring him back news from there that his most dearly loved son was dead. Do you see how Jacob begins to reap the harvest of the sins of his early days? For twenty long years he mourned that beloved boy. He deceived his own father, and his own sons, in turn, deceived him.

What a bitter life! What was Jacob’s dying testimony to Pharaoh? It would take ten thousand Jacobs to get one convert like Pharaoh. “Few and evil,” said Jacob, “have my days been.” He started with a lie in his mouth. He died in exile. He died in Egypt--not in the land which God had promised him. He would not let God choose for him. He was saved by fire--or, as Job said, by the skin of his teeth.

JACOB’S SONS.

Look at the sons of Jacob. Look at them when they took away their brother, and after they had delivered him into slavery see them coming back. How much they must have suffered with their secret during those twenty years! What misery they must have endured as they looked, during all those years, at their old father sorrowing for his son, Joseph! They knew the boy had not been killed. They knew he was in slavery.

For twenty years the sin was covered up, but at last it came back upon them. God had, in the meantime, been doing every thing for Joseph. He had raised him nearly to the throne of Egypt.

A famine struck the land of the father, and the old man sent his sons down into Egypt to purchase corn. God was at work. He was making these men bring their own sin home to themselves. Their consciences smote them, and they confessed, in the presence of Joseph, that their sin had found them out. Twenty years after it was committed that sin was resurrected, and they were brought face to face with it. “He that covereth his sin shall not prosper.”

JOHN THE BAPTIST.

I want to call your attention to John, the forerunner of Christ. On hearing the news of the death of the king Joseph brings Jesus back to Nazareth, and there He remained for thirty years.

I once read of the founder of the Russian Empire going down to a Dutch sea port as a stranger and in disguise, that he might learn how to build ships and return home and impart this knowledge to his own subjects. People have wondered at that. But this is a far greater wonder, that the Prince of Glory should come down here and learn the carpenter’s trade. He was not only the son of a carpenter, but He was a carpenter Himself. His father was a carpenter, and He was a carpenter, too, for we read that they brought it up against Him that He was a carpenter. We read:

“And when He was come into His own country, He taught them in their synagogue, insomuch that they were astonished, and said: ‘Whence hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works? Is not this the carpenter’s son?’”

Right here is one lesson that we ought to learn, and that is, when Christ was here He was an industrious man. I have often said on this platform that I have never known a lazy man to be converted. If one ever was converted, he soon gave up his laziness. I tell you that laziness does not belong to Christ’s Kingdom. I do not believe a man would have a lazy hair in his head if he was converted to the Lord Jesus Christ. If a man has really been born of the Spirit of Christ, he is not lazy. He wants to find something to do, and no kind of manual labor is degrading. It is honorable. If our Master, who is the Prince of Peace and the King of Glory, could leave Heaven and come down here and work as a village carpenter, let us not think that manual labor is beneath our notice. Let us be willing to go out and work. If we can not find what we want, let us do what we can. If we can earn only twenty-five cents a day, let us earn that rather than do nothing. We not only want something to occupy our hands, but also our minds.

But this is not the point of the lecture this morning. I want to go back to those two wonderful men.

The thirty years have rolled away, and it is now time that this wonderful Messiah should come unto the nation. The Scriptures have been fulfilled, and the first sound we hear of His coming is that strange voice crying in the wilderness.

Those thirty years that have just expired were as nothing to the nation. Undoubtedly, the rumors about those two children, which created a great sensation at the time, had died out. The story of the shepherds on the plains of Bethlehem had gone out of popular recollection--faded away. The story of this child being brought into the Temple, and that old man and that old woman coming in there just at the time--that wonderful scene had faded away. Many who were in the Temple at that time had gone. Zacharias and Elizabeth had passed away, and the Roman Empire had also died, after sending out a decree that the country should be taxed. Herod was also dead.

A great change had taken place in thirty years. You just carry your minds back through thirty years, and see how many who stood with you thirty years ago--with whom you were acquainted--have gone, and are sleeping in their graves.

If the Holy Ghost had not come after Christ went to Heaven, the story of His death and His resurrection would have been forgotten as soon as His birth and His life. No doubt about that. It is that which has kept the memory of Christ in the world, and His name so fresh and fragrant. The Holy Ghost has come down here to keep in our minds the glory and beauty of Christ. Now, we find His forerunner comes.

Matthew says: “In those days came John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness.”

Mark says: “The voice of one crying in the wilderness.”

Luke says: “The word of God came unto John, the son of Zacharias, in the wilderness.”

John’s account is: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.”

The last prophet had closed up his prophecy by saying that John should come before the Messiah, and that he should be the herald who would come to introduce Him. Now, these four evangelists all take up their pens, and they all notice it.

You know, if you let any four men write up any one thing, they will not all write about it alike. Why, when men went to the Centennial, at Philadelphia, not any four of them wrote about it alike. Let a man come in here, and let any four of us look at him. One will get a side view of him, one a front view, and so on; and no two of the four will see him alike.

So these evangelists wrote about John, but not one of the four used the same language. You know, it was said he was to be like Elijah. Well, he looked like him, dressed like him, and his preaching was like him.

He came suddenly and unexpectedly upon the world, and it was not long before his voice rang clear through the whole nation, and the whole nation was stirred. He stood between the two dispensations. He was the last prophet the new dispensation was to have. They had had some mighty prophets--wonderful men; but this man was to be the last one.

Now, we find this man standing there, as it were, between these two dispensations; and when he commenced to preach his preaching was very much like that of Elijah. He was a reformer. His cry was: “Repent! Reform!”

But if he had stopped there his reform would have died out with him. A great many reformations die out with the reformers because they cry out: “Repent! Repent! Reform! Reform!” but they do not get any farther than that. Thank God, John had something else to tell them. He did not stop at “Repent! Repent!” He kept telling them there was One coming mightier than himself. Undoubtedly that was what thrilled the nation. Talk about sensation! There was never a nation moved as that one nation was moved by John the Baptist.

In these days, if certain persons want to stir a town or city, they need to influence the leading men of that city to stand around them, help them and pray for them. But there stood John the Baptist, preaching in the wilderness, without any influence of your committee. He did not have Mr. Sankey to sing for him to draw out the people. He stood there upon the banks of the Jordan alone, preaching the glorious tidings that the Messiah was coming after him, and he probably was preaching this to the lowest beggar in the land.

There John was in the wilderness, dressed like his predecessor, Elijah. There he was, preaching in the wilderness; and just bear in mind, it was not any milk-and-water preaching. He gave the message just as God gave it to him. I suppose, if he had some of the Christians of the present day there, they would have said: “Do not be so bold; be mild about it. Don’t you know you must use a little moderation about this? Come, John! If you talk against these Pharisees they will cut your head off.”

But that did not enter his mind. It was not what they wanted. It was what God gave him to deliver; and if any man just takes the message and delivers it as God gives it to him, I tell you God will stand by him. He is going to succeed--mind that. He may be unsuccessful at first; his labor may seem to be unprofitable for a time, and people may turn away. But the time will come when his words will cut deep down into their hearts and lead them to salvation.

Then the people began to tremble. They had no newspapers then to print the sermons; they had no telegraph wires to flash them over the country. But one man just took the matter up and passed it to the next, and so on, and very soon it was spread over the whole country.

“There he is,” they said, “dressed just like Elijah, with his leathern girdle and his raiment of camel’s hair.” He comes out about 9 o’clock in the morning, and there he stands on the banks of the Jordan, and there he continues his talk. Day after day he is seen there, and his cry is: “Repent! Repent!” And that was his appeal.

Well, it is not very long before every city, town and village has heard of this wonder. John preached the law just as it was given him, and as a specimen of his preaching just read this. See how bold he was:

“Then said he to the multitude that came forth to be baptized of him: ‘O generation of vipers!’”

O generation of vipers! Pretty hard talk, wasn’t it? I don’t know as you could get many people into this Tabernacle by such talk as that. But he knew what he was doing. He knew they hated his Master. He knew that, away down in their hearts, they were at enmity with God. Read a little farther, and see what he said:

“O generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come?

“Bring forth, therefore, fruits worthy of repentance, and begin not to say within yourselves: ‘We have Abraham to our father.’ For I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”

He knew the men pretty well. I do not know where he had been all these thirty years. But he had found out the human heart. He had found out human nature pretty well. And those people undoubtedly said: “We belong to the seed of Abraham. We are the descendants of Abraham. We do not need to be converted. We have got the law from Moses, and we obey that. Let these poor dogs of Gentiles be converted. It is not for us.”

And that is just the doctrine now.

“We do not need to be converted. John a first-rate reformer? Oh, yes; but that does not touch us. We go to church regularly. It is for these publicans and harlots. That kind of preaching is not for us. Oh, it is all good enough--all very good.”

And no doubt they would put up a Tabernacle for them--for the harlots and drunkards to go to.

“Oh, no! That preaching is not for us. It is good enough for them, but we do not need to go. We are the seed of Abraham. We belong to Moses, and we are not such bad men. What do you mean by conversion? We do not need to be born again. What do we need to be born again for? We pay our debts. We are good men.”

See? That same old spirit. Eighteen hundred years have rolled away, and you find human nature the same. John knew them pretty well.

“I say unto you that God is able of these stones to raise up children unto Abraham.”

You need not flatter yourselves that you are better than the other people. God can make children right out of these stones, and make them the seed of Abraham.

“And now, also, the ax is laid unto the root of the tree; every tree, therefore, which bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire.

“And the people asked him, saying: ‘What shall we do, then?’”

See! They had an inquiry meeting, right there on the banks of the Jordan.

“He answereth, and saith unto them: ‘He that hath two coats, let him impart to him that hath none; and he that hath meat, let him do likewise.’

“Then came, also, publicans to be baptized, and said unto him: ‘Master, what shall we do?’

“And he said unto them: ‘Exact no more than that which is appointed you.’