Chapter 7

They were to be wholly unlike the other nations, utterly unambitious politically, neither exciting war upon themselves by others nor ever making war upon others. Their great mission was to be a teacher-nation to all the earth, teaching the great spiritual truths; and, better yet, embodying these truths in their personal and national life.

But the plan failed. The glitter of the other nations turned them aside from God's plan. They set up a kingdom, "like all the nations," very much like them.

Then God worked with them where they would work with Him. He planned a great kingdom to overspread the earth in its rule and blessed influence, but not by the aggression of war and oppression. Their later literature is all a-flood with the glory light of the coming king and kingdom. Yet when the King came they rejected Him and then killed Him. They failed at the very point that was to have been their great achievement. God's plan failed. The Hebrew people from the point of view of the direct object of their creation as a nation have been a failure up to the present hour.

God's choice for their first king, Saul, was a failure, too. No man ever began life, nor king his rule, with better preparation and prospects. And no career ever ended in such dismal failure. God's plan for the man had failed.

Jesus' plan for Judas failed. The sharpest contrasts of possible good and actual bad came together in his career in the most startling way. He failed at the very point where he should have been strongest--his personal loyalty to his Chief.

There can be no doubt that Jesus picked him out for one of His inner circle because of his strong attractive traits. He had in him the making of a John, the intimate, the writer of the great fourth Gospel. He might have been a Peter, rugged in his bold leadership of the early Church.

But, though coached and companioned with, loved and wooed, up to the very hour of the cowardly contemptible betrayal, he failed to respond even to such influence as a Jesus could exert. Jesus planned Judas the apostle. He became Judas the apostate, the traitor. He was to be a leader and teacher of the Gospel. He became a miserable reproach and by-word of execration to all men. Jesus' plan failed.

Where the Reproach of Failure Lies.

Will you please mark very keenly that the failure always comes because of man's unwillingness to work with God? It always takes two for God's plan--Himself and a man. All His working is through human partnership. In all His working among men He needs to work with men.

Some good earnest people don't like, and won't like, that blunt statement that God fails sometimes. It seems to them to cast a reproach upon God. They may likely think it lacking in due reverence. But if these kind friends will sink the shaft of their thinking just a little deeper down into the mine of truth, they will find that the reproach is somewhere else.

There is reproach. Every failure that could have been prevented by honest work and earnest faithfulness spells reproach. And there is reproach here. But it isn't upon God; it is upon man. God's plan depends upon man. It is always man's failure to do his simple part faithfully that causes God's plan to fail.

There is a false reverence that fears to speak plainly of God. It seeks by holding back some things, and speaking of others with very carefully thought-out phrase, to bolster up God's side. True love has two marked traits: it is always plain-spoken in telling all the truth when it should be known; and it is always reverential. It can't be otherwise. The bluntest words on the lips combine with the deepest reverence of spirit. God doesn't need to be defended. The plain truth need never be apologized for.

It's a false reverence that holds back some of the truth, lest stating it may seem to reflect on God's character. Such false reverence is a distinct hindrance. It holds back from us some of the truth, and the strong emphasis that the truth needs to arouse our attention and get into our some-time thick heads. We men need the stirring up of plain truth, told in plainest speech. The Church has suffered for lack of plain telling of the truth. The deepest, tenderest reverence insists upon plain talk, and reveals itself in such talk.

It is irreverent to hold back some of God's truth. For so men get wrong impressions of God. It is unfair as well as irreverent. Theology has sometimes been greatly taken up with adjusting its statements so as to defend God's character. But the plainest, fullest telling of truth is the greatest revealer of His great wisdom and purity and unfailing love.

God's Sovereignty.

There has been a good bit of teaching about "God's sovereignty". Behind that mysterious, indefinite phrase has crept much that badly needs the clear, searching sunlight of day. God's sovereignty is commonly thought of as a sort of dead-weight force by which He compels things to come His way. If a man stand in the way of God's plan so much the worse for the man. It is thought of as a sort of mighty army, marching down the road, in close ranks, with fixed bayonets. If you happen to be on that road better look out very sharply, or you may get crushed under foot.

I do not mean that the theologians put it in that blunt fashion, nor that I have ever heard any preacher phrase it in that way. I mean that as I have talked with the plain common people, and listened to them, this is the distinct impression that comes continually of what it means to them. Then, too, the phrase has often been used, it is to be feared, as a religious cloak to cover up the shortcomings and shirkings of those who aren't fitting into God's plan.

God is a sovereign. The truth of His sovereignty is one of the most gracious of all the truths in this blessed old Book of God. It means that the great gracious purpose and plan of God will finally be victorious. It means that in our personal lives He, with great patience and skill and power, works through the tangled network of circumstances and difficulties to answer our prayers, and to bring out the best results for us.

It means further that, with a diplomacy and patience only divine, He works with and through the intricate meshes of men's wills and contrary purposes to bring out good now--not good out of bad, that is impossible; but good in spite of the bad--and that finally all opposition will be overcome, or will have spent itself out in utter weakness, and so His purposes of love will be fully victorious.

But the practical thing to burn in deep just now is this, that we can hinder God's plan. His plans have been hindered, and delayed, and made to fail, because we wouldn't work with Him.

And God lets His plan fail. It is a bit of His greatness. He will let a plan fail before He will be untrue to man's utter freedom of action. He will let a man wreck his career, that so through the wreckage the man may see his own failure, and gladly turn to God. Many a hill is climbed only through a swamp road.

God cares more for a man than for a plan. The plan is only for the sake of the man. You say, of course. But, you know, many men think more of carrying through the plan on which they have set themselves, regardless of how it may hurt or crush some man in the way. God's plan is for man, and so it is allowed to fail, for the man's sake.

Yet, because the plan is always made for man's sake, it will be carried through, because by and by man will see it to be best Many a man's character has been made only through the wrecking of his career. If God had had His way He would have saved both life and soul, both the earthly career and the heavenly character.

Let us stop thoughtfully, and remember that God has carefully thought out a plan for every man, for each one of us. It is a plan for the life , these human years; not simply for getting us to what we may have thought of as a psalm-singing heaven, when we're worn out down here.

It is the best plan. For God is ambitious for us; more ambitious for you and me than we are for ourselves, though few of us really believe that. But He will carry out His plan--aye, He can carry it out only with our hearty consent. He must work through our wills. He honors us in that With greatest reverence be it said that God waits reverently, hat in hand, outside the door of a man's will, until the man inside turns the knob and throws open the door for Him to come in and carry out His plan. We can make God fail by not working with Him. The greatest of all achievements of action is to find and fit into God's plan.

The Church Mission.

Now, God had and has a plan for His Church. That plan is simply this: The Church was to be His messenger to the nations of the earth. There are other matters of vast importance committed to the Church, without doubt: the service of worship and the training and developing of the life of its members. But these, be it said very thoughtfully, are distinctly secondary to the service of taking the Gospel to all men.

These two, the chief and the secondary, are interwoven, each contributing to and dependent upon the other. But there is always a main purpose. And that here, without question, is the carrying of the message of Jesus fully to all the earth. In each generation the chief plan, to which all else was meant to be contributory, was that all men should hear fully and winsomely the great thrilling story of Jesus.

Shall I say that that plan has failed? It hurts too much even to repeat such words. I will not say the Church has failed. But I will ask you to note God's plan for the Church, and then in your inner heart to make your own honest answer.

And in making it remember the practical point is this--the Church is you. I am the Church. Its mission is mine. If I say it has failed I am talking about myself. I can keep it from failing so far as part of it is concerned, the part that I am. My concern is not to be asking abstractly, theoretically, about the Church, but about so much of it as I am.

In annual church reports, and triennial and quadrennial, much space is given to telling of the wealth of the Church. Of course, I suppose its wealth is meant to be an index of all its work. It may seem a bit odd to use the world's index-finger to point out our faithfulness to our Master's will. It is used, of course, to impress the world in the way the world can most quickly and easily understand.

But the Church was not meant by the Master to be a rich institution in money and property; though it has grown immensely so. The Master's thought was that its power and faithfulness should be revealed entirely in the extent to which all men of all nations know about Himself and have been won to Him.

If we think only a little bit into the past history of the Church, and then into present world conditions, we know the answer to that hurting question about the Church being a failure.

I know that many of you are thinking of the triumphs of the Church; of her imperishable and incalculable influence upon the life of the world. And I will join you heartily in that, some other time. Just now we are not talking of that, but of just one particular fact of its history. One truth at a time makes sharper outlines and brings the whole circle of truth out more plainly. I love to sing,

"I love Thy Kingdom, Lord, The house of Thine abode; The Church our blest Redeemer saved With His own precious blood."

We shudder to attempt to think into what these centuries would have been without the influence of the Church.

But at present we are talking about something else. Let me ask you, softly, if God's plan for the Church was that it was to be His messenger to all men, as you think back through nineteen centuries and then think out into the moral world conditions to-day, would you say the plan had succeeded? Or had--?

"Christ also Waits."

There's a bit of light here on that vexed question of the Lord's second coming, about which good, earnest people differ so radically. The Master said, you remember, that we were to be watching for His return. But many ask, how can we be watching when it's been two thousand years since He told us to watch, and the event seems as far off as ever?

I remember one day in a Bible class the lesson was in the twelfth of Luke, about watching for the Lord's return. Some of the class seemed to think that it means that we should be in a constant attitude of expectancy, looking for His return. But one man, an earnest, godly old minister said, "How can you be looking expectantly for a thousand years?"

But will you mark keenly that the teaching of Jesus Himself was that His return depended on His followers' doing a certain thing?[13] When all men had been told fully of Jesus, then He was to return and carry out a further part of His plan. Clearly if the part we were to play has not been done, it delays His part. The telling of all men about Jesus seems to bear a very close connection with what will occur when Jesus returns.

Some of our good friends have been much taken up with figuring out when the Lord would come back. Some of them seem to have great skill in making calendars. They even go so far as to fix exact dates. They seem to forget that word of the Master, "In such an hour as ye think not the Son of Man cometh." If you think He will come at a certain given time, then you can know one thing certainly, that He won't come then.

The only calendar we men have is a calendar of dates , fitted to the movements of the sun and moon. God has a calendar, too, but it is a calendar of events , not of dates. The completion of His plans doesn't depend on so many revolutions of the earth about the sun, but on the faithful revolution of His followers in their movement around the earth telling men of Jesus.

It looks very much as though the Master's coming has been delayed, and His plans delayed, because we have not done the preparatory part assigned us.

"The restless millions wait the light, Whose coming maketh all things new. Christ also waits; but men are slow and late. Have we done what we could? Have I? Have you ?"

"Somebody Forgets."

A little fellow, of a very poor family, in the slum section of one of our large cities, was induced to attend a mission Sunday-school. By and by, as a result of the teacher's faithful work, he became a Christian. He seemed quite bright and settled in his new Christian faith and life.

Some one, surely in a thoughtless mood, tried to test or shake his simple faith in God by a question. He was asked, "If God loves you, why doesn't He take better care of you? Why doesn't He tell some one to send you warm shoes and some coal and better food?"

The little fellow thought a moment, and then with big tears starting in his eyes, said, "I guess He does tell somebody, but somebody forgets ."

Without knowing it, the boy touched the sore point in the Church's history. I wonder if it is the sore point with you or me.

The Coming Victory

Failure Swallowed By Victory. The Revised Missionary Motto. Ahead, But Behind. In A Swift Current. Power Of Leadership. A Minority Movement. A Great World-chorus. The Oratorio Of Victory.

The Coming Victory

Failure Swallowed by Victory.

But God's failures are only for a while. They are real. There is the tragic element in them. There is the deep, sad tinge of disappointment running throughout this old Book of God. Yet the failures are only for a time. Sometimes it seems a very long time, especially if you are living through some of it. But the time reaches eagerly to an end. Victory comes. And God's victory will be so great as to make us completely forget the failures that marred the road.

The Eden plan was more than a plan. It was a prophecy of the final outcome. The Book of God begins with failure, but it ends with a glowing picture of great victory, painted with rose colors. Every feature of beauty and of good in Eden has grown greatly in John's Revelation climax. The garden of Genesis becomes a garden-city. All the simplicity and purity of garden life, and all the development and power represented by city life, are brought together. There is now a river of life , and the tree of life has grown into a grove.

And God isn't through with that nation of Israel yet. The Jew can't be lost. In every nation under heaven he can be found to-day, a walking reminder of God's plan. Every Jew, in whatever ghetto he may be found, is an unconscious prophecy of a coming fulfilment of God's purpose. The strange racial immortality of the Jew is a puzzle from every standpoint, except God's. He can't be killed off; though men have never ceased trying to kill him off. The Jew looms up bigger to-day than for many generations.

The present strange restless Jewish longing for national existence again, that will not down, spells out the coming victory of God's plan after centuries of failure. And even though the present tide may run out toward ebb, it will be to gather force for a new and fuller flood. When God's plan works out the world will have a wholly new idea of national life, and of a world-power without army or navy or any show of force, touching all men, and touching them only to bless.

And though King Saul failed, there was already the ruddy David, out among the sheep, waiting the anointing oil, and carrying about in his person his nation's greatest king.

Jesus' Judas failed to realize the promise of his earlier days. He struck the record note for baseness. But Paul was being prepared by blood inheritance and scholarly training. Under the touch of the Master's own hand he became the Church's greatest leader in its life-mission. If Judas struck the lowest note, Paul rang the changes on the highest note of personal loyalty to Jesus and to His world-wide passion and purpose.

And the Church has waked up. I said, you remember, last evening, that if you look over the whole history of the Church since its birthday on Pentecost, you are pained by the sore fact that the chief mission entrusted to it has been for the most part forgotten. There has been more forgetting of it, and neglecting it, than fulfilling it.

Yet always, be it keenly noted, in every generation of these centuries there have been those whose vision of Olivet never dimmed. There have always been those who have tried faithfully to carry out the Church's great mission. The darkest days have never been without some of the brightest light, made all the brighter by the surrounding night.

The Revised Missionary Motto.

But there's a new chapter of the Church's life being written as we talk together. Its writing began in the closing twilight of the eighteenth century. That chapter isn't finished yet. Some of its best pages are now being written, with more and better clearly coming.

Its first lines were written by a very common pen. Carey's English cobbler-shop became a sounding-board whose insistent, ringing messages began to waken the Church. The Church is waking up, and shaking itself, and tightening on its clothes, for the greatest work yet to be done in fulfilling the life-mission entrusted to it.

A hundred years ago the fire of God found fresh kindling stuff in the hearts and brains of a few young college fellows in an old New England village. The sore need of the world crowded in upon them by night and by day. But they were few, and young, and unknown. And the task was stupendous. The rain-storm of a Sabbath afternoon drove them to the shelter of a hay-stack. And the storm of the world's need drove them to the shelter of prayer, and then to the shelter of a great purpose. With simple faith in God, and strong devotion to the great neglected task, they spoke out to the Church the thrilling words, "We can do it if we will".

And on that same spot a hundred years later the Church gathered. Those intense words had been heard. The Church had waked up. Men of long service in far-away lands stood with those of the home circle. They talked of the past, but far more of the present and future. They revised the century-old motto. No group of scholars in the Jerusalem Chamber of Westminster Abbey ever did finer revision work. They said, "We can do it, and we will". No greater tribute to the memory of the faithful little hay-stack group was ever made than in that changed motto.

The young collegians' bold cry had sounded out throughout the Church. And the Church heard and roused up. The modern missionary movement of the Church is the most marked development of the past century of church history. It can be said that the Church of our day in its missionary activity far exceeds the early Church. That is to say, in certain particulars we have exceeded.

It is common to refer to the missionary zeal of the first centuries. Fresh from the Master's touch, the early Church was chiefly a missionary church. One great purpose gripped it, and that was to take the news of Jesus everywhere. And they went everywhere. We know most about Paul's journeys in the Grecian and Roman worlds. But there is good evidence that there is another "Acts of Apostles" beside the one bound up in this Bible. Out to the farthest reaches of the earth they seemed to have gone in those early days, preaching and winning men and establishing church societies.

The bulk of the modern movement is without doubt greatly in excess of the early movement. The number of men out in various fields, the amount of money being given annually by the Church in America and Great Britain and the Continental countries is so much greater as to leave comparison practically out.

In the thoroughness of organization, the elements of permanency, the great variety of means used such as hospitals, schools, literature, and industrial helps, the present probably exceeds by far the early movement. The statesmanlike study by church leaders of the whole world-field, the steadiness of movement year after year, in spite of difficulties and discouragements, the careful systematic effort to inform and arouse the home church--these are marked features of the present foreign-mission campaign. They are such as to awaken the deepest admiration of any thoughtful onlooker. In all of this the modern Church is making a wholly new record.

Ahead, But Behind.

Yet, while all this is true, it can be said just as truly that the Church, as a whole, is so far behind the primitive Church as, again, practically to leave comparison out of the question. They were so far ahead in the mass of their movement that we are scarcely in the lists at all. Then the whole Church was an active missionary society. Every one went and preached. The nearest approach to it in modern times probably is the movement of the native Church of Korea. This foreign people seems to have caught the early spirit. Our heathen brothers are taking their place as pace-setters for the Church.

By contrast with that, the modern activity has been by a minority, really a small minority, though a steadily growing one. The leaders have struggled heroically against enormous odds in the backward pull of the majority.

Then they went everywhere . That is, they went everywhere that they could, so far as open doors, or doors that could be pried open, let them. We have gone actually farther, and to more places probably, but we haven't begun to go everywhere that we could.

Our ability to go, and the urgent requests for us to come, would carry us to thousands of places not yet touched. If we began to do things as the early Church people did, it would stand out as one of the greatest movements in the history of the race. If a small minority of us have made such enormous strides what could the whole of us do if we would!

In a Swift Current.