p. 12 | Obeying the Word

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Washington, D.C. · Dec 10, 1903

Obeying the Word

The foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men. It was when Christ was rejected and slain that he triumphed. As long as men were following him, applauding his sayings and his mighty works, desiring him for their king, he seemed powerless to help them. They misunderstood all his teaching. When they had murdered him, he had a new hold on them. He showed them at once both the greatness of his unconquerable love and the blackness of their own hearts. They saw with new eyes. At last they understood him, and they understood themselves.

It has been the same in the history of the church. What Christians have not been able to do by their toil and effort, they have accomplished by laying down their lives. The blood of the martyrs has been the seed of the church.

The weapons of our warfare are not carnal. By the cross Christ overcame, and the carnal indifference of men can only be conquered by spiritual lives, revealing afresh the dying of the Lord Jesus. It is natural to crave for the outward tokens of success in Christian work, but God works in ways that are despised by men. The cross, which is the power of God to faith, is foolishness and a stumbling-block to the wise of this world.

We need not be deceived as Israel was. If we set Jesus Christ continually before us and seek for spiritual anointing, our eyes will be opened. While we receive his Word as a quickening power, our ears will not be heavy. But God's servant must be blind and deaf toward earth if his eyes and ears are to be open toward heaven. He must either be of the earth, earthy, or of heaven, heavenly.

God is still sending forth his Word, his commandment, which is life everlasting, but it is falling again upon deaf ears and blinded eyes. Many see that God's Word rebukes their lives, that they are not keeping his spiritual Sabbath which teaches them to trust only in God, but honoring the works of the flesh in obeying rather the commandment of men. Many believe the Word in their hearts, but their eyes are on the synagogue out of which they will be thrust if they venture to differ from others, on the situation they fear to lose if they do not work on the seventh day. They have heard the commandment of God, but they are listening rather to the myriad human voices, the traditions of the elders, the theories of ministers, the counsels of worldly wisdom. They are treading again the path that Israel trod. Their feet are wandering from the way of life, and drawing near the darkness where Satan has control of men. “Yet a little while is the light with you. Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you: for he that walketh in darkness knoweth not whither he goeth. While ye have the light, believe in the light, that ye may be the children of light.”

“The flesh profiteth nothing.” Jesus said, “He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me. And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me.” God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself. Christ knew the Father, and his one ambition was to be God's messenger, to give to others the word which God commanded him to speak. That word was his own life, for he lived by every word which proceeded out of the mouth of God.

The Word would save every one who received it, and those who rejected it must answer to it at the last day. Christ was sent with the Word to save, not to judge, only to give light that men should not abide in the darkness. The man who rejects light has condemned himself to be in darkness.

When the rejecters of God's Word come to the judgment of the great day, it is the Word they have heard and despised that condemns them. They have forfeited eternal life, and when they long for it exceedingly, they see that it was they who cut themselves off from it by not receiving the Word that brought it to them as a free gift. The service of Christ, the joy of the redeemed, a home in heaven, the companionship of the angels, all appeal to them as they never thought they could, but all these they deliberately rejected when they turned from the Word of Christ. Now their portion is in the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.—Present Truth.