It is instructive and interesting to trace through Scripture how the Lord leads His servants from scenes and positions of natural servitude and subjugation to power and dignity, moral or natural. The first man who arose practically as God’s witness on earth, (not only to the world as Enoch) must build an ark for the saving of his house, amid the scoffs and reproaches of the whole unbelieving world. He must boil and fulfill his work, and from the demands of it there could be no escape; he must submit himself cheerfully to those demands, or the service imperatively enjoined, and one which He himself felt as incontrovertibly necessary, would be in a tenfold degree more onerous. For if the mind disapproves of the demand to which it must submit, the submission must be inconceivably more difficult, and the suffering greatly augmented.
Noah labored in faith, and though the period of his humiliating work was more than one hundred years, yet he labored and felt he must, — not that He liked the place of suffering, but he believed that the end would compensate for the interval. Now the great cause of suffering in any chill of God is not from the place of subjection he is set in, but from the repugnance of his mind to submit himself to it. Noah had the secret, he felt the servitude was necessary, and that the end would be his reward. It is the lack of this faith which makes the path of many a one painfully arduous, and one of bitter suffering... God sees no other path would suit, and He in His love is inflexible in nurturing up His own, so that the and may vindicate and justify His counsel. This reluctance to submit and with faith to one’s ordained position here is to be found in every station of life, — the parent of all discontent, the fruition of the fall, and therefore the real sting and sorrow in the duty.
Abraham’s history teaches us the same truth: Required to be a stranger in a strange land, be ever found that unqualified submission to what was enjoined was the path of safety; if he became reluctant, or discontented with the yoke, he suffered more, as his going down to Egypt taught him. He learned, and by faith too, to cease from all endeavors to extricate himself from the humbling position of stranger ship, for he could not be walking in faith, yielding himself to the humbling path enjoined with the acquiescence of a convinced judgment (which faith confers), if he were.
The want of this faith was the cause of Lot’s apostacy, and forfeiture of the blessing which crowns one really subject to the will of God. He sought to extricate himself, and alas how many do, and the end with them is that they lose the very thing which has seduced them from the path of subjection, and in the end they have lost on both sides they have lost the ideal which induced them to forsake the path of self-denying subjection.
We are warned of the same in Jacob’s history. When he turned aside to Shalem and forgot for a moment his pilgrim character, what sorrow and trial awaited him! On the other hand we learn from Joseph how faithful righteous submission to the will of God, not seeking to evade nor (as often Christians in common service are) careless in the discharge of the duties of it, ensured in the end such honor and blessing. I might cite Moses, and many more, but I have adduced examples enough to prove that God tests the quality of every one of His own by their ability to walk in humble subjection to a path which in itself is dreary, but ends in distinct and perfect blessing and satisfaction.
Perhaps it would be admitted, if the path is clearly prescribed of God, as Noah’s and Abraham’s, then the point I press is simple and distinct enough, but if I have plunged myself, by my own impatience and carnality, into circumstances of trial, may I not seek to extricate myself from them? The answer to this depends entirely on the nature of the circumstances. If I can be made free, use it rather, is God’s principle to every bondsman; but the freedom must be divinely obtained, or it is only a repetition of the impatience of the flesh. The children of Israel ought to have gone direct from the wilderness to Canaan, but distrusting the arm of the Lord, they in their hearts turned back into Egypt; consequently they are excluded from that land, and hence if they attempt to extricate themselves from the sentence of passing their lives in the wilderness, they only meet with defeat and disgrace. Their place and duty is to submit and acknowledge the justness of the sentence. While Caleb and Joshua who suffer in a similar way, but not for the same reason, learn in humble subjection to wait for a brighter day, and because they submit, according to God’s mind, to find that they were no older after 40 years submission, then they were before it.
A wondrous instance of grace, that if we submit in faith unto God’s counsel, though humbling and trying for a moment, yet the length or severity of the suffering shall in no wise impair our energy for active service by and bye when the term of discipline is over.
Again we find another form in which this truth is established. In the instances we have been considering, Israel, through unbelief and fear, disqualified themselves for the blessings of Canaan, but on the occasion of their captivity into Babylon, however severe and galling bodily and religiously that captivity was, they were to use no means to extricate themselves from it. In their carnality they had first sought Babylon, that is in their natural tastes they were attracted to it, and now that they are led captive by it and find themselves under its iron heel, their (see Jer. 29) present blessing and happiness depend on their resigned and contented submission to their lot. Here their carnality led them, but they must learn now in captivity, not in natural equal intercourse, the fruition of what mere nature would lead to; and in the oath which Zedekiah sware to the king of Babylon, we learn the bondage that the overpowered one submits to from the one who has conquered in nature. And this oath, it was not righteous or admissible, for Zedekiah to break (see, Ezek. 17), nay in his attempting to break it, and by the king of Egypt, he only entailed on himself the wrath and judgment of God. (See Ezekiel 17:19, 2019Therefore thus saith the Lord God; As I live, surely mine oath that he hath despised, and my covenant that he hath broken, even it will I recompense upon his own head. 20And I will spread my net upon him, and he shall be taken in my snare, and I will bring him to Babylon, and will plead with him there for his trespass that he hath trespassed against me. (Ezekiel 17:19‑20).)
J. E. S.