I had once a friend, an upright gracious man, a gentleman whom God had prospered. He had, when engaged in a bank, acted uprightly in a matter in which his superiors judged him to be foolishly scrupulous, and therefore dismissed him. He could not do wrong; and so he was left with a wife and family, without a situation, and as everybody told him, irretrievably ruined, because of his “foolish conscientiousness.” He was for years the head of that very bank. In a singular way, the Lord made his discharge the means of his advancement, so that he rose, step by step, to be the master where he had been the rejected servant; and this, humanly speaking, would not have come about had it not been for the incident mentioned. Have faith that God can turn the evil into good, and that which threatens to annihilate you will be the means of your enlargement. Look you well to your integrity, and the Lord will look to your prosperity. The way of faith is not a common turnpike road, which every careless traveler may traverse without care or study. It is a mysterious way, which no fowl knoweth, and the lion’s whelp hath not trodden. Those who inherit the special glories of heaven must encounter the special perils of the deep and of the desert, and in their wonderful journey they shall behold the glorious arm of the Lord working wonders for them.
Note well that the Lord would not only find them a way, but, at the same time, overthrow their enemies. You have come up out of Egypt, O young believer, but the taskmasters are at your heels! There may come a decisive moment, after which they shall never pursue you again. These who seek your soul are to be destroyed, so that there shall not be one of them left. I believe that many a young convert hates sin, and hates all evil habits, but these evils keep dogging his footsteps, and seem as if they would master him; and then there comes a time of great struggle and tremendous battling without and within: on that one desperate field he fights the matter out. His adversaries are drowned in that Red Sea: his old sins and his old habits love for ever their former power. The Red Sea rolled between Israel and Egypt; and whatever else might trouble the pilgrim host, they were never, throughout the whole forty years, molested by Pharaoh, or any of the Egyptians. It is a grand thing when a man gets clean away from the world and is reckoned as dead to it. He has burnt his boats, and has landed on the shore, from which he never can go back again, but must fight out the battle against sin even to the end. When a man is sworn into the army of Christ for eternity, and the world has cast him out, there is nothing for him but to go right ahead. Everything that he has is now staked on the cross of Christ. Happy man to have come to such a pass—to be once for all crucified to the world, and the world crucified to him! The Egyptians of sin which had so fiercely pursued him are drowned, and the rest of the Egyptians of evil have given him up; and he may go on his way to the promised land in peace, so far as his old taskmasters are concerned.
Remember, also, dear friends, that when these people were thought to be hopelessly entangled, they were about to see the Lord perform for them a work which would be most helpful to their ultimate conquest of Canaan; for when Pharaoh and his chariots were drowned in the sea, Palestine heard of it, and all the natives thereof began to tremble. Thus sang Moses in his famous song, “Fear and dread shall fall upon them; by the greatness of thine arm they shall be as still as a stone. The people shall hear, and be afraid: sorrow shall take hold on the inhabitants of Palestine.” That day in which a convert has to fight out the battle once for all with himself shall give him strength for all future conflict, and smooth his pathway into the land that flows with milk and honey. You must not think, young Christian, because you are saved from guilt, that everything is done, and the warfare ended! There is a life-long conflict for you before you obtain possession of your inheritance; and, it may be that, if now, when you are in special trouble, you are found faithful, all the rest of the road will be cleared from similar troubles. Now shall the Egyptians be drowned in the sea. Some of us can recollect the time when we had to stand still and seriously ask, “Can I now be true to the Lord and his law? I am advised the other way by a very prudent friend. Can I reject this advice? I can see the worldly advantage that I should gain through acting in a crooked course. Can I forego that advantage I can see that I shall have to suffer if I am conscientious. Can I take up my cross?” When, after hours of anguish and prayer, you have come out of every entanglement pure and free, from that time forth the Lord may lift up the light of his countenance upon you, and your victory over all other adversaries will be easy. Will not this comfort some of you who have just come to the Red Sea? The place of test and trial shall be the place of the ending of the foe.
Why had the Lord led the people so far if he would not help them still? Do I hear some one say, “I fear that I shall never get out of my difficulties”? Yet you believe that the Lord has brought you out from the dominion of Satan? Tell me, has God brought you so far to let you perish? He has broken off the yoke of sin; he has given you a hope in Christ, and you are a changed man. Do you think that he would do all this for you, and then leave you? Come, my brother, has the Lord brought you out of Egypt, by the precious blood of the Lamb, that you should die in the wilderness? Do you believe that Jesus has redeemed you to let you be lost after all? I would speak personally to any elderly Christians here who begin to think that they shall one day fall by the hand of the enemy. How old are you? Sixty.” Sixty? How long do you expect to live? Answer: ten years. Then if God has taken care of you for sixty years, can you not trust him for the odd ten? “Well,” says one, “I am eighty.” Eighty? How long do you reckon to remain on earth Are you going to doubt for the few years that are yet to come? Have you trusted your God for eighty long years? Do not doubt him now, I pray you. Do not please the devil by distrusting your faithful God. As surely as Jehovah begins he will finish. It shall never be said of any work of God, “He began to build, and was not able to finish.” If he has set you on the way to the eternal inheritance, he will surely bring you into it. God is never defeated or turned aside. “He shall not fail nor be discouraged.” Comfort one another, therefore, with such words as these.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
