O Arrows
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Obedience.
You are God's creature, and yet you have rendered to Him no obedience! You would not keep a horse or a dog that did not do you some service, or follow at your whistle.
Obedience. The negro said, you remember, that if God bade him to go through a wall, whether he could go through it or not was no business of his. "Here I go," said he, "right at it." We may rest assured that the Lord never did command us to leap through a wall without causing it to give way when our faith brought us to the test. We have to obey the precept, and leave the consequences. If God says, "Do it," the command is both the warrant for our act and the security for our being aided with all necessary help.
Obedience—Orderly.
It will never do to put Christ's commands the other way upwards, because then they mean just nothing. You have heard of Mary, when her mistress said, "Mary, go into the drawing-room, and sweep and dust it." Her mistress went into the drawing-room and found it dusty. She said, "Mary, did you not sweep the room, and dust it?" "Well, ma'am, yes, I did; only I dusted it first, and then I swept it." That was the wrong order, and spoiled the whole.
Old and new theology.
I have been informed by those that know most about it, that the theology of the future has not yet crystallized itself sufficiently to be defined. As far as I can see, it will take a century or two before its lovers have licked it into shape, for they have not yet settled which shape it is to be. While the grass is growing, the steed is starving. The new bread is baking, the arsenic is well mixed with it. But the oven is not very hot, and the dough is not turned into loaf yet. I should advise you to keep to that bread of which your fathers ate, the bread which came down from Heaven. Personally, I am not willing to make any change, even if the new bread were ready on the table; for new bread is not very digestible, and the arsenic of doubt is not according to my desire. I shall keep to the old manna till I cross the Jordan, and eat the old corn of the Land of Canaan.
Old nature remains. A respectable man whom I know, said that the other night he was driving along with his old horse. Another man came through the fog, and their horses touched each other; but, said he, "We passed very civilly." But there came along one like a gentleman, driving rather fast; he drove into the poor man's cart, and instead of making any apology, he cut him across the face with his whip. My friend is a decided Christian, yet he felt the old nature in him, and wanted to give him a cut with his whip in return, but he did not. When he got home he said, "The old man is not dead yet; if he had been, I should not have felt a momentary spite. I kept him down, but I felt very angry, and I said to myself: 'Ah! though you have been a Christian for a great many years, the old man is still alive.' "So he is in every one of us. He lies like a sneak in the corner, but the day shall come when there shall be no remains of the evil, no trace of sin left in us, and in heaven we shall sing, "He hath washed us from our sins in His own blood." He has taken the last relic of sin away, every tendency to evil, every possibility of evil, for it is written: "They are without fault before the throne of God, and no sin shall ever come into their hearts again."
Old things passed away.
Dr. Chalmers, in his exposition of Romans, pictures a man engaged with full and earnest ambition on some humble walk of retail merchandise. He cares about petty things, and makes great account of his little stocktaking. His hopes and fears range within his circumscribed trading, and he aspires to nothing more than to reach a few shillings a week to retire on. But a splendid property is willed to him, or he is introduced into a sublime walk of high and honorable adventure. Henceforth everything is made new. The man's cares, hopes, habits, tastes, desires, all are new. His expenditure alters; his valuation of money alters; his fears about the state of his stock disappear; his joy in the prospect of a small competency is no more before his eyes. He has risen to a different level altogether. New conditions have silently changed all things. The whole man is built on a bigger scale; his house, his table, his garments, and his speech, are of all another sort. In the same way the Lord, by air that He has done for us, and in us, has changed everything.
Omitted duty.
Omitted duty is like a little stone in the sole of your shoe. It is small, and some say it is a non-essential matter; but it is just because it is so small, that it can do so much mischief. If I had a great pebble in my boot, I should be sure to get it out, but a tiny stone may remain and blister me, and lame me. Get out the little stones, or they will hinder your travelling to heaven.
Opposition helpful.
Many, many years ago, a number of persons were seen to be going towards Smith-field, early one morning, and somebody said, "Whither are you going?" "We are going to Smithfield." "What for?" "To see our pastor burnt." "Well, but what in the name of goodness do you want to see him burnt for? What can be the good of it?" They answered, "We are going to see him burn, to learn the way." Oh, but that was grand. "To learn the way." Then the rank and file of the followers of Jesus learned the way to suffer and die as the leaders of the church set the example. Yet the church in England was not destroyed by persecution, but it became more mighty than ever, because of the opposition of its foes.
Order—the right thing in the right.
You know that it spoils even good things when you reverse the right order they should be done in, and as we commonly say, "Put the cart before the horse." Great mischief always comes from departing from God's method in spiritual things. When the Lord tells you to believe and be baptized, if you are baptized first, and then believe, you have upset the Scriptural order, and have practically disobeyed it; you have not kept to God's Word at all. There is nothing like doing the right thing in the right order. Our commission, our warrant. The postman frequently knocks at the door as late as ten o'clock. I suppose you want to be asleep. Do you cry out—"How dare you make that noise?" No, he is the postman, an officer of Her Majesty, and he is sent out with the last mail, and must deliver the letters. You cannot blame him for doing that for which he is sent. Go you and knock at the door of the careless and the sleepy. Give them a startling word. Do not let them perish for want of a warning or an invitation, go on without fear: your commission is your warrant. Our impotence, glorifying Christ.
You see, in a school, that clever boy. Well, it is not much for a master to have made a clever boy of him. But here is one who shines as a scholar, and his mother says he was the greatest dolt in the family. All his school* fellows say, "Why, he was our butt. He seemed to have no brains; but our master somehow has got brain into him and made him know something which, at one time, he appeared incapable of knowing." {Somehow it does seem to be as if our very folly, and impotence, and spiritual death, if the Holy Ghost shows to us the things of Christ, will go towards the increase of that great glorifying of Christ, at which the Holy Spirit aims. Our righteousness lifeless.
"See here," they say, "we will make it stand." If I had a corpse here—I am glad that I have not—I would stand it up, and it tumbles down. Nevertheless, I will put its legs a little wider apart. Down it goes. Now I will prop it up. Surely I can make this dead thing stand. But no. It has a tendency to fall, and it falls. Have I not seen a sinner trying to set up the corpse of his own righteousness, and make it stand? At last he has been obliged to say what the fool said in the old classic, "It wants something inside," and so it does; for until there is life within, it will not stand. Even so, our righteousness has no true vitality, no life within, and it will not stand.
Obedience is for the present tense.
One of the best positions in which our heart can be found is at Jesus' feet. Our littleness does not alter God's promise. Our motto is, "With God anywhere: without God, nowhere." Our vessels are never full till they run over. The little over proves our zeal, tries our faith, casts us upon God, and wins His help.