God does require the unexpected of his people, and he has required it in past days. I was thinking this morning of Abraham when he was in Padan Aram, living with his father’s family. He had made his wife and servants and his property, but he had ceased his idolatrous worship, and turned to the true God. His fathers were all idolaters before him. They worshiped the sun, moon, and stars, and were living like the people about them; but Abraham had given his heart to God. Let me read one thing that I think must have been a little hard to Abraham when he started out to fully serve the Lord: “The Lord said unto Abram, get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I will show thee.” Back in that country, in the days when Abraham lived, there were no great public highways, no facilities for traveling; and the nations were only armed men, Arabs and Syrians, going hither and thither, ready to fall and prey upon any man not able to defend himself. “Get thee out of thy country, . . . unto a land that I will show thee,” was God’s command. Abram did not ask where that land was, nor how long it would take to get there; but he left his father’s house, and went unto the land which the Lord had commanded him. Abraham stands out prominently before all of us as a man of faith. Why?—Because he was a man of obedience. Do you know that there was never yet a man of faith who was not a man of obedience? And, my friends, if you are weak in faith, doubting any of God’s word, or hesitating over any of his precepts, the trouble lies in your disobedience. There is not a man who renders implicit obedience to his conscience who does not have faith in God. Obedience brings faith, brings confidence, brings hope; it brings the blessing of God into the soul. A man may talk about faith; but until the heart is ready to render obedience to God’s requirements, he can not have faith. It is impossible. So, my friends, God always commands his people along lines that seem hard, utterly impossible for them to fulfil; but every command of God has to be received in faith.
I remember reading a story of a general who had led his armies through great battles, and had won every conflict. This time he had pitched his camp, and got his army all ready, and the battle was to be fought early in the morning. He was walking about among the tents in disguise, trying to discover whether his men had courage and faith or not. As he was creeping from one tent to another, listening to the conversation of the soldiers, who were lying inside, he came to one tent, and listened. One of them said, “We are defeated, we shall never gain this battle.” The other one said, “Well, I think that is so. The general is a great captain, but he has made a fatal mistake this time. We never can gain this battle. Why, here we are, only forty thousand men, and the enemy has three times our number! It is impossible.”
The general’s heart was stirred. He lifted the curtain of the tent, and walked in, and said to the men, “How many do you count me for?”
“O,” they said, “general, you have made an awful mistake in placing your men here. You ought never to fight this great number of men.”
He answered, “How many do you count me for?”
“Yes, but it is impossible for us ever to get the victory on the morrow. I know it, because they are three to our one, and they are just as well trained as we.”
“I want you to answer me just one question,” said the general again. “How many do you count me for?”
There is a lesson for us in that. When it seems as if the battle must go against us, let us remember our General. With his might, his power, it is possible to win. And the requirements that God has made—we look at them, and say, it is impossible, it can not be done. Brethren, if the God of heaven has commanded it, it is possible for it to be done. And instead of our hesitating, and saying, It can not be done, I want to know, How many do you count God for? God is sufficient in every instance, when he commands, to see that that command is absolutely and fully obeyed by every child of his. I care not how we may be outnumbered, or what superior strength may come against us, just as surely as God has made a requirement of us, just so surely has he provided the possibility of that thing being done. It is possible. O, I would that his people—you and I—recognized this truth, and acted on it! God requires you and me to walk in perfect obedience to his will. It is possible. How?—Through the strength that God himself provides. The weakest child, the man who has the least power to resist the passions of his own heart,—when God commands, there is nothing for that poor, weak soul to do but to render perfect obedience. The grace of God is ready to enter into every heart, to give courage to undertake, fortitude to endure, and the victory in every conflict. Let us look at this question of obedience from the further light of the Testimonies concerning God’s work. I have10said it myself. But, my friends, has God required what can not be done?—Never! Never!
When God told Moses to take Israel up into Canaan, it was possible for them to go. Israel took no arms, they had no war instruments, nothing with which to fight. They went up with their bare arms, and they faced great and war-like kings on every side; yet it was possible for them to take the land. Why?—Because God commanded it. But had Israel settled down, and counted how they were to do it,—their own weakness and the strength of their enemies,—I venture that not a wise man among them could have seen how it would be possible. The only thing they could do was to start when God gave the command. And where did he lead them?—O, my friends, in a way that I should never have chosen to lead them. They did not have a boat nor an instrument of warfare among them, not a thing with which to cope with the enemy. God led them straight from Egypt to the edge of the Red Sea. What a position!—mountains on each side of them, the Red Sea before them, and the armies of Egypt behind them! It looked as if the leaders had made a mistake; and do you blame the poor people for saying, “Would God that we had died in the land of Egypt”? But when the Lord stretched out his hand over that sea, and fanned those waters either way, and the people passed over on dry ground, and they could look back and see their enemies all slain, then they could join in the song of praise and victory. If Israel had never started in obedience to God’s command, they would never have reached even this stage in their journey.
Now God says to this people, “Do great things.” But we say, “This is impossible, or that is impossible; this is too large, or that is too large.” Brethren, does God say do these things? If he does, that, it seems to me, ought to end it. That ought to end it. Men ought to settle the question that if God has spoken, they will obey; every one of us ought to pledge his life to see the thing accomplished.
“But,” you say, “that sounds all right; but we are not really sure about our leadership. We are a little bit doubtful about you men. We do not have full confidence in all of you. We would like a little more moderation, a little more consideration.” O brethren! some of us are so conservative that we would consider a thing till doomsday,—and it would never be done. What God wants in his cause to-day is men who hear his voice, and who are ready to obey when he commands. It is a fearful thing; but this cause is being paralyzed because of the hesitancy in God’s ministry to accomplish what God commands. From Maine to California we hear men acknowledge that the trouble is inactivity, it is inaction. A paralysis has come over us, an inactivity with which we can not cope. Brethren, are we ever going to arouse out of this inactivity by considering and pondering, and waiting until we get a better start?—Never!
The cause of God to-day is languishing for Elijahs—men of faith, who dare to brave anything for God, and will risk consequences when God has spoken. Give us a dozen or fifteen or twenty such men as that, and things will move. But O, how afraid we are when anything does start to move!
“But,” you say, “I do not think that is just the way to look at it.”
I want to give you a parallel case. I want to go over here to my text. It was the day when Israel was to go over into the promised Canaan. You will remember they had had a sore time of it, yet they had seen much of God. The pillar of cloud had overshadowed them by day, and shielded them from the fierce rays of the sun; by night the pillar of fire had kept the wild beasts away, and had protected Israel from their enemies. Bread had been rained down from heaven to feed them, and water had gushed forth from the solid rock to quench their thirst. The great God had come down from Sinai, and his voice had reverberated through all the earth, and all the people had heard his voice speaking his law. With his own finger he had written his ten great commandments upon tables of stone. No people had ever seen such mighty manifestations of Jehovah as Israel. We would suppose that when God told them to go into Canaan, they would have gone straight forward, without complaining or murmuring.
But we have a different record here in the thirteenth chapter of Numbers. God told Moses to select a man from each tribe, and send them over and let them spy out the land. So Moses took twelve of the rulers. He said, “Get you up this way southward, and go up into the mountain: and see the land, what it is; and the people that dwelleth therein, whether they be strong or weak, few or many; and what the land is that they dwell in, whether it be good or bad; and what cities they be that they dwell in, whether in tents, or in strongholds.” See whether it is productive, whether it is well-watered, whether there is fine timber for building. Make a thorough inspection. See whether the people are well-armed and trained for battle, and bring us back a report.
Those twelve men go through all that great territory, while Israel wait in camp, ready to go over there. By and by, after forty days, these men come back. Their families are glad to see them. Moses and Aaron meet them. And I fancy every heart hopes to receive a good report.
They start out with a very good report, as you can see. Let me read what they said: “And they told him, and said, We came unto the land whither thou sentest us, and surely it floweth with milk and honey; and this is the fruit of it.” You will remember it took two men to carry one bunch of grapes. “Nevertheless,” they said,—and I tell you, my friends, man never started out with that word without landing somewhere in darkness. You never heard a man begin to talk, “Nevertheless,” “But,” etc., without ending in unbelief. That is so. I have heard many a man say, “Yes, yes; we ought to go to Washington; but”—But what?—“Let us have time to consider and to get our plans together. Wait; just wait.” I have heard many a man say we ought to do this and that when God speaks; but let us wait; there are impossibilities in the way, there are difficulties surrounding us. My dear friends, when a man begins to reason along that line, he is sure to lose sight of God and his power. It was thus that the men reasoned who went to spy out the land of Canaan. They said: “Nevertheless the people be strong that dwell in the land, and the cities are walled, and very great: and moreover we saw the children of Anak there. The Amalekites dwell in the land of the south: and the Hittites, and the Jebusites, and the Amorites, dwell in the mountains: and the Canaanites dwell by the sea, and by the coast of Jordan.”
It would not take long for ten good, conservative men, bringing in such a report as that, to throw a whole church into unbelief. I can bring up case after case that I know of, where men who are conservative, careful financial men, have delayed the progress of God’s work year after year. And God does not approve of it, my friends. The men who lead in this work are to be men of faith. I know we say, Let us put “practical men” at the head, men who won’t do anything, who won’t get us into trouble;—and we die of inaction and stagnation. What we want at the head of God’s work is men who believe God, and who are ready to start something going. Ten thousand times better that this people should consecrate their means and their sons and daughters to God’s work, than to have their sons and daughters grow up worldly and godless, and have them get out of the work and forget the great commission that God has given to us!