Living for Jesus

YOUR great object, dear young friend, now that you know the Lord Jesus to be your Saviour, should be to live for Him. Life is like a battlefield; it is a struggle. The world would have your heart, and God says to you, “My son, give Me thy heart.” Who then is to have your heart, your affections, and the strength of your life?
The whole question of living for Jesus, or living for the world, depends upon where your heart is. You need not make a number of promises or resolutions, for if your heart is really given to the Lord you will live for Him. If on the other hand your heart is only half for Christ then it is all for the world. “Ye cannot serve God and Mammon.”
There are precious years of your life, Christian boys and girls. “The way the twig is bent the bough’s inclined.” Every day spent with God is a day spent for God. Every day of your youth given to the world is bending the twig crooked. You could not straighten an old twisted oak tree, and the way the early days of your lives are spent will affect your whole life.
We cannot believe that any one of you is so selfish as to say, “I am saved, I am going to heaven, therefore I can live for myself.”
The Plagues of Egypt.
THE children of Israel were sorely downcast when they found, that, instead of obtaining liberty, their bonds were increased. Moses also was so distressed that he said to the Lord, “Why is it that Thou hast sent me?”
The trial of faith is always hard to bear. But the Lord sustains His own. He is very pitiful and of tender mercy. He answered Moses, “Now shalt thou see what I will do to Pharaoh!” The hopelessness of Israel became the moment for the Lord to show His power. And more, for beyond the promise of His power, the Lord revealed His name to His people as Jehovah. When God gives His people to know Him by a special name He gives them all that that name covers. Think how much the name of “mother” contains for a child. What love, what service, what kindness! The name of friend also covers many beautiful acts and thoughts of love, but not so many as that of mother.
God gave His servant Abraham to know Him as the “Almighty” God. With such a name Abraham could trust God for everything, for with the Almighty all things are possible. And Abraham did trust God indeed. Weak in himself he was strong in faith, giving glory to God. At the time of which we speak, when Israel so deeply needed comfort, God gave them to know Himself as the Unchanging One. Jehovah is the One who was, who is, and who is to come. He is the Eternal God who from everlasting to everlasting is the same for His people. How it would build up Israel’s confidence in God to look beyond their present trial, and to rest in His unchanging character. In our days God has revealed Himself to His people as Father, and in that name He gives us even stronger consolation than the little child finds in the sweet name of mother. God will make Himself known upon earth by-and-bye in His name of the Most High— the One who possesses all things.
Moses spake to the children of Israel that which God had spoken unto him, but such was their misery and their bitterness, because their circumstances had become worse than before, that “they hearkened not” to the utterances of their Unchangeable God.
It is not unfrequently the case still, that persons are so tried with the oppression of Satan, and are in such anguish of spirit and under such cruel bondage of soul, that they do not even listen to the welcome word which God sends them. They are so overwhelmed with their misery that they do not hearken to God’s grace.
At God’s bidding Moses and Aaron now present themselves to Pharaoh, with signs and wonders. As we have seen, Pharaoh did not know the name of the God of the Hebrews, hence God sends him signs of His power.
Aaron casts down the rod of God, and it becomes a serpent before the king and his servants. The serpent, in at least one form, was considered sacred by the Egyptians, who held in reverence and worshipped various kinds of beasts, birds, and reptiles. Then Pharaoh calls in the aid of the wonder-working wise men of Egypt. These were of the priestly caste, and were learned in various kinds of knowledge, combined with which they wrought magic, by means of Satan’s power. They imitated God’s power. As Aaron had done with his rod, so did they with theirs—they cast them down and forthwith the rods became serpents. Then Aaron’s rod swallowed up their rods, expressing thereby that whatever Satan’s power may be, God’s is greater. We do not wisely to make light of the enemy’s power, but we are without faith if we think it greater than God’s.
Pharaoh trusts in what his magicians could do. He did not take the warning God sent him. And thus he arrayed his will against Jehovah’s, and his gods against the God of Israel, but only to bring down upon himself and his land those terrible wonders which we know as
THE PLAGUES OF EGYPT.
Israel had just been gathering the wheat stubble to make their bricks, which shows us the time of the year the events before us took place. It was now about the time of the rising of the waters of the Nile. That is, it was about our springtime. This is the great event of the year in Egypt. Upon the greatness or smallness of the rise of the Nile depends the fineness or the poverty of the harvest. If the waters rise to a high flood, their overflowing’s fill up the various channels, lakes, and ponds, and thus bring their wealth of grain and fish to the people. Egypt, you know, is a land where rain scarcely ever falls. So important is the height of the rise of the river to the welfare of the country, that careful records of it are always made, and to this day we may see the marks made upon the rocks thousands of years ago, showing its height in those times.
When the waters of the Nile first begin to rise they are of a green color. The Green Nile, as the river is there called, lasts for some short time, perhaps three or four days, after which the waters turn to a red color. It is the Red Nile which overflows into the channels and fills the ponds of which we have spoken.
The Egyptians had a god of the Nile, and the rise of the water was accompanied by religious ceremonies. Nu, the water god, was one of their great deities. You can see him here pictured with the water flowing in a river out of his mouth, and the Green Nile and the Red Nile pouring out their streams upon the earth.
On the morning of which the Bible tells us, Pharaoh comes to the river’s brink in his pomp, no doubt to do homage to his god and also to inspect the condition of the river, and while thus engaged God sends him by Moses this message “The Lord God of the Hebrews” says, “Let my people go, that they may serve me in the wilderness: and, behold, hitherto thou would’st not hear. Thus saith Jehovah. In this shalt thou know that I am Jehovah: behold, I will smite with the rod that is in mine hand upon the waters which are in the river, and they shall be turned to blood. And the fish that is in the river shall die and the river shall stink; and the Egyptians shall lothe to drink of the water of the river.”
Now not only did the Egyptians worship their river, they loved it. Its sweet waters, its fruit giving streams, the fish it produced, were all dear to them.
The word had gone forth. Aaron stretched forth the rod of God’s righteousness over the waters of Egypt!—upon the “Niles”—that is, the branches of the river leading to the sea, and between and upon the sides of which Israel dwelt. For in those days the Delta of the Nile was interlaced with a multitude of canals, which Ramases had dug, carrying the fruitful waters to every part of the well-populated district. The rod of God was also stretched out over the elegant flower-surrounded lakes, and the pools of the gardens well stocked with fish. It was stretched out also over the water in the porous cooling earthen jars belonging to the peasants, and in the vessels of gold of the palaces.
So the river and its waters became blood. The fish died; the waters stank; and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. The rod of God’s righteousness had wrought judgment and death everywhere over the proud and resisting land.
We can but feebly conceive what the horror and terror of this plague was. The god of the Egyptians was degraded; the river of delight was turned into death and corruption, and for seven days they had to dig into the sand and to drink of the saltish waters of the wells, while the Red Nile rolled on to the sea.
Pharaoh, as a king, would feel personally but little of the severity of the suffering. He called his priests to his help, and they imitated the power of Jehovah. They found water and turned what they found into blood, and Pharaoh’s heart was hardened. They could not change God’s judgments, they could only copy them. They could not reverse His decree. Man can bring in death, we know, but God brings in life. When the due time appointed by God had come to an end—the perfect period—the seven days of His wrath, the Nile once more received its sweetness. But the blood-water left upon the fields caused the land to stink under the cloudless sky. H. F. W.
William Farel.
(Continued from p. 16.)
WILLIAM FAREL, meanwhile, was not only teaching boldly, but studying deeply. He read most, and very carefully, the blessed word of God. He also read the history of the church. He wished to find out how it was that men had so wandered into the darkness—how it came to pass that, having once known the gospel, they were now calling evil good, and good evil—as ignorant and as senseless as the heathen. He read the sad story of the early days of the church, and he talked it over with the learned priests of Paris, who had advised him to read these writings of the fathers. You shall hear of what he learned from his studies and conversations in his own words. They are words that many amongst us may remember with profit. “St. Paul,” he says, “spoke these words: Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” This sentence is worthy to be written in all our hearts, being in truth spoken by God Himself through the mouth of the holy apostle. And this good personage was thus led to speak on account of the evil ways of heretics, who dared to teach what they could not prove by the holy scriptures, who dared to set up their own reasons and opinions in the face of the fact that the things they taught were not to be found in the scriptures at all. And, in truth, all the ruin and downfall of men has always come from the same source—namely, that they persisted in adding to, or taking from, the word of God. You see that, in the time of the holy apostle, these teachers were not contented with the grace and truth which were fully and plentifully preached by Paul; they began to hinder the truth, and to hinder God’s blessing—not by disapproving of the preaching of Jesus Christ, they approved of it in fact—but they persisted in adding to it that which God had not commanded. They added to it those things which God had never commanded to believers in Jesus, but to the nation of Israel. It is true these false teachers had some show of having the right on their side, because it was a fact that God did speak to Moses, and what Moses commanded was really by the order of God, and the apostles themselves had observed those ceremonies. But the holy apostle Paul, and God who spoke by his mouth, would give no ear to such excuses; he would not admit that Moses, to whom the Gentiles had never been given in charge, was to be ranked with Jesus Christ, nor that Moses was to be added on to Christ to give salvation and life. And not only does Paul say that the ordinances of Moses were unnecessary for believers; he goes much further, and says, on the contrary, that all who teach such things are to be detested, and held as accursed—that they are miserable troublers of the church, and that any such ought to be entirely disowned, even should such a teacher prove to be an angel from heaven—such an angel should be held as accursed by God; for nothing is to be added, nothing to be diminished from that which God has said. His holy and perfect word is to be kept pure and entire.
“The apostle Paul says, in the first Epistle to the Corinthians, that what he preached was to be proved by the scriptures, and that all scripture is written by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, thoroughly furnished unto all good works. If all could receive this pure truth, and give to Christ that honor which belongs to Him, and if the old fathers had, in every single matter, kept to that rule, there would have been no need now to write against evil doctrine, and to have such trouble to weed out of the hearts of men the things which have taken such deep root in them. On the contrary, all that is not contained in the holy scriptures, all that has no foundation there, would have been held in abhorrence; and, instead of writing as they did with such affection about the sign of the cross and such like things, the old fathers would have opposed them, as not contained in the Bible, they would have firmly resisted everything of the sort. But by lack of having kept to that safe rule, it happened that as soon as one of the old fathers, who had an appearance of great goodness and great wisdom, turned a little aside from the straight path, the next who followed did a little worse, and by this means many wretched and wicked inventions of men were brought in. But God, by His grace, ordered it that the fathers should be judged out of their own mouths, for when they were waked up by heretics they were obliged to have recourse to the scriptures to expose their errors, they were driven to the necessity of condemning these heretics by the word of God, in doing which they also condemned themselves, for they, too, had taught as doctrines things which were not in the scriptures at all.”
William then remarks how the Lord Jesus, who could not err, and who was Himself the truth, always confirmed His words by the scripture, and explained to His apostles that the history of His coming into the world, of His life, death, resurrection, and of His great salvation, all this was written beforehand in the scriptures. And that much more need is there that those who teach and preach now, should be able to prove their words by the Bible. “Otherwise,” he says, “We must be as reeds shaken with the wind, whereas we ought to be firm in Christ, knowing for certain that we have His word for everything, and thus the gates of hell shall never prevail against us. This is what God requires of all Christians; He looks for it from each one, and admits nothing less in any who are members of the Body of Christ, sheep of the Good Shepherd. And he who does not know what he is to believe, nor whom he is to believe, nor how he is to believe, who hears no difference between the voice of Jesus and other voices, who cannot distinguish between the voice of the shepherd and the voice of the stranger, he does not belong to Jesus Christ as yet, he is not in Christ at all. It is no use to say, ‘I have always been used to believe and to teach so and so’; it is no use to say, ‘Our pastors and teachers tell us this or that.’ For custom without truth is useless. God never has approved, and never will approve, anything but the truth, and He will judge us by that. The pastor and teacher must keep to the word of God only, and feed the flock with that, otherwise he is a blind leader of the blind, and all together will fall into the ditch. And now that things are come to that, that everything is poison, except that heavenly bread, the Word of God, it is quite certain that whosoever attempts to feed upon other food than that will be poisoned, and die.”
William remarks also, that such is the power of the word, when preached purely and simply, that he asks no further witness of that power than the consciences of those who oppose it. They oppose it just for that reason, because they feel its force. The whole of popery, he says, falls at once the moment we admit that the word of God alone is the rule to guide us. “Where, then,” he says, “is the authority for the mass, and such like services? Where is the authority for the consecration of altars and of churches? Where is the authority for using the sign of the cross? God has not commanded any of these things. And if we once admit that it is lawful for a man in any one thing to command and order that which God has not commanded, where are we to stop? How are we to have any rule, if once we step beyond the plain word of God? Oh that it might please God, in his grace, to open the eyes of this poor world, so that they might seek no longer to make excuses for anything which is not to be found in the holy scriptures, that they might believe, do, hold, and follow nothing that is not to be found there.”
He gives the example of the council at Jerusalem, in Acts 15 “It was in truth a holy council,” he says; “not of anti-Christian popes, nor of cardinal-princes of Sodom, nor of bishops of Gomorrah, nor of abbots who go in the way of Balaam. These, alas, are of no use to the world, except to stand as beacons to all men by their evil doctrines and their abominable lives, which are as much as to say, ‘Do not follow us in anything’! But at the council of Jerusalem were assembled the most favored and gifted of God’s faithful servants, and yet all that they there ordered, was not to be held as binding upon any, except as proved by the scriptures.
“But when we come to the fathers, how can it be said without speaking wickedly, that all they taught was according to the scriptures? Look at St. Ambrose (who tells us how the Empress Helena went to Jerusalem to find the true cross). He says, in the first place, she set forth on her journey to the holy places. I should like him to prove to me by the word of God, that there is one place on the earth more holy than another. For the Lord Jesus Christ said that people should neither on this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father. By these words He overturns the thought of any difference between one place and another, just as the scripture also tells us there is no difference between one day and another. Ambrose tells us also that the spirit inspired Helena to seek the wood of the cross. Still less could he prove that to me from scripture, unless he meant that it was an evil spirit that thus inspired her. For the Holy Ghost never inspired anybody, and never will, to believe or do more or less than the Lord Jesus had told them beforehand, and than the scriptures had declared. To say that the Holy Spirit inspired anyone to seek for the wood of the cross is against His nature, which is to turn away our hearts from the things which are seen, from the things of the earth, and to turn them to the unseen things that are in heaven. How could the Holy Spirit direct the heart of Helena to things below, seeing that the precious body of Jesus Christ,