LECTURE I.
[These lectures, hitherto unpublished, were delivered in the year 1855 by the late John Willans. The practical truths so simply pressed are as needed by the people of God to-day. May our ever gracious Lord apply them to us all with living power! — ED.]
(Read Exod. 3. and 4.)
GOD and His Word are sufficient for every time and circumstance; we are apt to think there are no such difficulties as ours, no times so hard to serve God in as ours; that is not faith. Let the soul look to God, and it will find Him enough, be the trial never so great and the times never so hard: this is true not only of private or temporal affairs, but as regards the failure in the Church, the corruption of systems, &c. &c. What then? Just leave them all and come to God. In 1855 you will find God the same, the great, the present God, and prove it, aye more blessedly, for having Him alone than if you lived in the best days as men speak.
The people did not care about going to Canaan, but God did for them. God’s truth and faithfulness cannot fail; spite of the people’s backwardness, spite of the king’s wickedness, He will bring His purposes to pass — yea, God uses that wickedness to show out His glory. No excuse this for men’s wicked acts but a great comfort to us, an assurance that how wretched soever the time is in which we live, how wicked soever those with whom we have to deal, God will pilot us through shoals and straits and make His glory shine out the brighter.
What an honour! to have our hearts in sympathy with God’s thoughts, to have fellowship with God in having our thoughts occupied with what concerns His glory! How often we forget that God has brought us to Himself, and that we upon earth have the one object with God in heaven, even His Christ!
The apostle tells us that by faith the parents of Moses hid him. The hope of the Messiah was strong in their hearts, the destruction of the male children threatened the annihilation of that hope — his mother made an ark of bulrushes when she could no longer hide him. Faith made a coffin for the babe and committed it in death to God — the living God — who gave him back to her in resurrection! An unparalleled fact, a mother received wages for nursing her own child; we should say the joy of doing so was enough, God’s way is to give more than enough.
Moses’ zeal was beyond his discretion, and beyond his faith, too. He defended his oppressed brethren, but he looked hither and thither, before and behind; he was afraid, he was not sure he was right; that was not faith. Proverbs says, “Let thine eyes look right on, and let thine eyelids look straight before thee” (4: 25). Faith looks straight to God, and if I do that which is right in His sight, what matters who sees me?
Chapter 3:7, 8. “I have seen, heard, and known, and I am come down,” &c. — we are apt to forget how God sympathises with our troubles, we chafe under them, but that is of no avail, better far come and pour them out before God, but we are slow to do that. We are only right as long as God keeps us, we only stand up straight so long as God upholds us; oh! we need to be kept every moment. A great mercy to be kept, but a greater still to know our need of being kept. Oh that our first thought in the morning may be, “Keep Thou me”; and at night we shall give Him thanks for having kept us. Let us bless Him this night that we have got through this day; we leave the morrow to Him; but each day that is added to us, let our cry be unto Him to keep us.
Whom God brings out of the clutches of Satan He will assuredly bring to glory. Redemption includes everything, in counsel, in time, to all eternity. We have the history of Moses, not to make a great man of him, but to show God’s great grace. The Bible is the history of men who in themselves are bad, yet upheld by the great God; that we may be comforted by the like grace having to do with the same God. How wondrous the condescension of God! He comes near, not to crush us, not to consume us, but to talk with us. Shall we not talk with Him about everything, even as He has to do with us in everything? The object God sets before us is Christ in death and resurrection; and not only that, but it is God’s estimate of Christ’s work and worth which gives us the privilege of coming thus near Him, that enables Him to come thus near to us and not consume us.
Moses says, Who am I? (Exod. 3:11). He has not done with self; he had a great schooling before he had done with that and was satisfied only to have to do with God. What makes us fit for service? If we believe in God we are as fit to-day as to-morrow: it is grace, grace, grace: that is all we want from the first day to the last. The oldest can only the best tell the young ones, that we have nothing, are nothing, all is of grace. Our power is the eye of faith fixed by grace on God’s object, not on our faith. Some make this mistake, alas, alas! and turn their eyes on their faith instead of on Him, who died and rose again, God’s object.
This is the token (ver. 12), wondrous token, only for faith to apprehend. God can’t meet your own condition, but by God’s Christ, obedience brings you into blessing. What was ever gained by fighting with sin? we shall only return like dog to vomit or sow to her wallowing. Study God’s Word, be occupied with grace which is in Christ Jesus, forget your sins, have to do with God, with His grace. It will be hard to sin in such presence of such grace, such love, and there will be your victory.
“I am” (vers. 14-17). Forever, is, and was, and will be: how majestic! a present living power. I am! Abraham, Isaac, Jacob sleep — I am ever!
God said, “They shall hearken,” &c. (3:18); Moses says, “They will not” (4:1). Unbelief always contradicts God; in the sinner, and also in the saint, its language is one. Remarkable the way God takes in His condescension to convince him that He is God and not man (the rod, the hand leprous and healed, alike in their lesson showing how the power was all of God). God never answers unbelief but by Himself. Strange reply! we might ask what had the one to do with the other? No difficulties with God. You say, I am so and so; what is that to God? God knew all you were and all you would be long, long ago! It was a hard lesson for Moses. Past experience is no help; we want God for the present moment, and, blessed be His name, we have Him. Study the Word diligently that you may learn what God is — how good! what man is — how vile!
Moses became more humble through contact with God. Moses kept high company and became lowly and learned that God does not take us up to use because we are fit, but He takes us to make us fit. Oh, that we may so remember that He knows us altogether, so as to be humbled about all, and then He will keep us through all.