GOD'S WORD THE GUIDE FOR FAITH
GOD’S WORD THE GUIDE FOR FAITH
The first thought of every true soul is — what saith the Lord?
The cause of the failure of every one springs from disregard of the simple meaning of God’s word. God supplies enough of His mind to secure us from the dangers of the scene in which we are. God gave His word to establish His people against the dangers to which they were exposed, and had it written in order to ensure His [p. 83] mind being known, and that souls might judge themselves by it. The word to Eve was enough to guide her, but she departed from it. The word to Cain was enough, and he would not hear it. The word to Noah was enough, but his descendants departed from it and built a city and a tower. God’s visible token was not enough for them. The word to Abram was enough; he failed first in not answering to it fully, and afterwards in going down to Egypt. God has always said enough to supply us with plenty of counsel for our circumstances, and there is no failure that is not traceable to a departure from the word given. Isaac was not in God’s mind about Jacob and Esau because he forgot the word of God. Israel forfeited the land because they would not accept the word of God. If they had obeyed it, which faith always does, they would have succeeded like Caleb. Moses lost the land because he exceeded the word of God, the word given to him was enough, but he went beyond it. The failure before Ai was because the word of God had been transgressed, and Joshua showed his weakness in crying to God about it instead of examining whether they had departed from the counsel of God. This is always the cause of failure, therefore we should always seek to ascertain where the departure from His word has been, for until that is rectified there is no use in attempting anything else. Israel did not attend to the word of the Lord in driving out the inhabitants of the land, and consequently, as the Judges show us, they suffered from this contempt of His counsel. Had they adopted His counsel, how differently they would have fared.
Saul did not attend to the word of the Lord, and he forfeited the kingdom. The word tested him and proved his incompetency for God’s service. Alas! how often it is so with us! David is humiliated in divine things in the midst of and at the height of his achievements, because he overlooked the counsel of God respecting the Levites carrying the ark. David suffers from the sword in his own house because he disobeyed the word of God. How self-indulgence is requited by a never-ending sorrow, more so in a king than in a menial!
Israel is a captive in Babylon for seventy years to fulfil [p. 84] the seventy sabbatical years, which they refused to accord to God as His word enjoined. The Jew is condemned because Christ’s words had no place in them. “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin” (John 15: 22). “He that is of God heareth God’s words: ye therefore hear them not, because ye are not of God” (John 8: 47). If Peter had attended to the word of Christ, he would not have denied Him; and yet that very word convicted him afterwards. There is the double value of the word; it would preserve us from danger, and convict us when we fall into the danger, so that we may accord with its dictation.
In a very small way, but with serious mistakes, we may misunderstand the words of the Lord from interpreting them with the natural mind. The great point for me is to clearly understand a person’s mind. Fear, love or gain may so influence as to hinder one from getting a true apprehension of another’s mind. I only know any one’s mind as it has transpired, or as he in some way has disclosed it. So as to God’s mind; I can only know His mind as He has revealed it, and it is only by the Spirit that I can understand and act upon it.