SOMETIMES IT TAKES GREAT TRIBULATION TO PERFECT FAITH

THE FAITH OF ISRAEL

EXODUS 14:19-25, 30, 31; JOSHUA 6:12-16, 20

"By faith they passed through the Red Sea as by dry land; which the Egyptians assaying to do were swallowed up. By faith the walls of Jericho fell down, after they had been compassed about for seven days."—HEBREWS 11:29, 3

            There is an old and somewhat trite commonplace saying that confession is good for the soul. I am not discussing it, but I am proposing to avail myself of its suggestion, and begin my article with a confession. The confession is that if I had had my own way, I would not have taken these two texts. And in con­nection with that confession, I indulge in a few moments in the form of an digression from the topic on prejudice.

            What is prejudice? It is almost invariably used in the sense that reveals it as something unworthy. Well, I certainly think that in many cases that use is justifiable. It is justifiable when prejudice becomes the in­spiration of action. Then it is always unworthy. But what is prejudice after all? Prejudice is judgment be­forehand, very often before full examination, very often before all the facts are known. It is judging a matter and deciding about a matter beforehand: that is prejudice.

            Now prejudice may be correct, it may be right. My judgment beforehand may prove to be correct. It is a conviction. I am sorely tempted to use a word. English people must forgive it. It is widely used here in America—it is a "hunch." Did you ever hear of it; a hunch? It is a great word after all, it is very forceful. Prejudice is a hunch, a presentiment if you like, and it is often right, but it is certainly often wrong. The judgment formed beforehand may be entirely mistaken for very many reasons, and this at least is to be remembered—I hinted at it already in passing, I state it and leave it—prejudice is never right when it is the basis of action. I can have my judgment beforehand, and I may be proved in the running of the years I was quite right. I have my prejudice about many issues. I may be wrong; but I should be perfectly wrong if I allowed my prejudice to be the inspiration of my actions. That is all about that.

            Why did I want to omit the text? Because I had a prejudice against the people. I do not mean in a wrong sense, but it seemed to me, as I have been pondering this remarkable chapter, that it is a striking thing, in the midst of all these wonderful accounts about faith, that the writer should include these people at all, that he should refer to them as people of faith; and in view of their history I had that prejudice. I admit at once it is wrong. I have no right to have the prejudice, so I have made a confession, and I think my soul is helped.

            Yet I said to myself, I dare not leave these verses out. They are in this record, and as I believe it is an inspired record, the summary of great truths concerning the principle and the victories of faith by an inspired pen, who am I that I should object to consider any part of the history. I have taken these texts, and any prejudice of that kind there may have been in my mind in this particular application is due, of course, to the history of these people. That sentence is enough to call to your mind the history. It is all here in the Old Testament. I am not referring to any subsequent history. I am referring to the history that began with the call of Abraham, and culminated with the crucifying of Jesus. You will remember what our Lord said about these people, and it is at least an arresting fact Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record this estimate of them which fell from the lips of our Lord. What did He call them? "A faithless and perverse generation." But in the end after Great Tribulation reveals their inclusion.

            Well, if there is prejudice that has been the reason of it. And yet, remember this, that one great danger threatening prejudice is that it sees failure, and is apt to forget victory.

            Now the writer of this letter fell into no such error. He knew the failure of these people, and it is very significant, this is the only reference he makes to the nation, as the nation, in the matter of faith. There is no other reference to them. Oh, yes, to individuals constituting a part of the nation. The cases we have been taking illustrate that; and the massing of a great number of them, which we shall glance at next. But the nation itself, this is the only reference to faith, and the reference is here to the nation.

            I was greatly interested to notice in this twenty-ninth verse of chapter eleven, "By faith they passed through the Red Sea," that remarkable commentator and delightful expositor, Canon Farrar, has one little note against that verse, only one, and this is it: "'They'— of course that means Moses and the children of Israel."

            I always think he did not like the verse to pass without reference to Moses, and he was perfectly right. The "they" certainly refers to Moses and the people. Un­doubtedly he is correct, but Moses is not named, neither is Joshua named in the next verse. It is the people that were in view; and the writer of the letter to the Hebrews looking back says, "By faith they passed through the Red Sea as on dry land . . . by faith the walls of Jericho fell down." In view of such history, these declarations concerning the activity of faith on behalf of these people constitute a lurid light of warning, for they began in faith; even though the last finding concerning them, a finding proceeding from the lips of Him Who was essential Truth, and could make no mistake either, was that they were faithless, "a faithless and perverse generation." (In regards to that present generation while He was on earth.)

            So let us take the writer's outlook. He looks back to the beginnings of their history. He records two incidents connected with the earliest movement of these people toward nationality, and the two incidents are forty years apart. They were both, in the history of the people, hours of crisis, the crisis created for them when they left Egypt, and the crisis created for them when they actually crossed the Jordan and were enter­ing the land. Looking back at these early incidents he sees faith operating. All we have to do is to examine the two incidents, the exodus and the taking of Jericho.

            Now look back to that historic account. I need not dwell upon it. It is so familiar an account. Look at the people. Think of the people as they were at that time. They were an enslaved people and I think we may safely say that in many senses there had come to them that which always comes to an enslaved people, they had become vulgarized by their slavery. Very few of those people, if any, would remember Joseph. At the time of the exodus he had been dead 144 years; and yet, in spite of all the experiences through which they had passed of brutal treatment and enslavement of the very worst kind, they still believed in God. We see one flaming illustration of it in the case of Amram and Jochebed when they took that child and committed it to the waters of death. They believed in God. There might have been other illustrations that might be quoted. Take the illustration of Joshua. Joshua was born in slavery, and lived unquestionably for forty years in Egypt under these terrible conditions; and then he came out, and at once was seen at the right hand of Moses, his helper. They believed in God. I think we are justified in saying that their belief in God persisted, but as to His government, and the method of His government they were largely ignorant. They were uninstructed. They had not received the Law. They had not received the revelation of God that had been given to them through the Law and the sacred ritual. I am only trying to remember the condition of these people.

            Now while they were in that condition there suddenly arrived in their midst, Moses. There were those who would remember that he had left the country forty years before. Undoubtedly they had often seen him in costly apparel, the son of Pharaoh's daughter, the heir-apparent to the throne in all probability; possibly they had seen him, knowing him to be of their race, moving among the courtly splendors of Egypt, and he had disappeared. I have no doubt the account had gone all round how he had delivered an Israelite from the brutal Egyptian, and had killed the Egyptian; and the next day sought to deliver two of his race from each other, and they had said, "Who made thee a prince and a judge over us? Thinkest thou to kill me, as thou killedst the Egyptian?" And he had fled, and he had been away for forty years. They had lost sight of him, and forty years is a long time. They knew very little about him. But he came back, and what did he do? He called to­gether the elders of Israel, and there is a gleam of light showing, that these people, in all their downtrodden condition, had not broken from relationship to each other by race. They had their elders, and he called to­gether the elders, and he told them the strange, and one would almost say the unbelievable, news that he was sent by God to lead them out of Egypt. He had called the elders and told them the news.

            Do you remember what they did? It is distinctly told you. They bowed and worshipped. That bowing of the elders in the midst of a brutal slavery when called together and told that their God in Whom they had always believed, and never lost conviction concern­ing, that He was going to deliver them, they bowed and worshipped.

            Then the activity of faith is manifest not only on the part of the elders, but on the part of the people. It is a marvelous account read with naturalness. They were told to secure a lamb and observe a feast of which they had never heard. It was to be called the feast of Pass­over, the feast of escape, the feast of deliverance. They were still there, bound, but they were to observe this feast, and by the hopefulness of faith they obeyed. By faith they observed the Passover. Just as we say, by faith Moses instituted the Passover; it is equally true that by faith the people observed the Passover.

            Then let us thank God for these Bible accounts. They hide nothing. We see the failure. We see it almost im­mediately. They march away out of Egypt. What a march it was, a march of faith. All the cohorts of Egypt behind them, equal to overcoming them in con­flict; but they marched. There was a shadow of ap­palling agony over Egypt on account of the death of the firstborn from the palace of Pharaoh down to the lowest bed. But they marched, and marched in faith.

            Then we have the account of their march, not in a straight course, but round about. How often God leads us round about when we have to learn something and He led them until they came to Pi-hahiroth, and there in front of them was the sea. They had come to the land's last limit. On the one side the rocky cliffs which they could not climb; on the other Pi-hahiroth, the marshy land they could not tramp across. Only one road for them they could march. What was that? The only way was the way back. They found themselves hemmed in. That is what I meant when I said the Bible hides nothing. They complained. They grum­bled. The Bible' is so modern. If I may use other language, they said to Moses: We told you so. I have heard that. Haven't you? Now see what has hap­pened. Here we are, hemmed in. We came in faith, and yet we wondered as we came. Our faith was un­mixed and wondering, but here we are, hemmed in.

            Then the wonderful account. Moses, great man of God, said to them: "Stand still, and see the salvation of the Lord." It was great advice, but it was a mistake. Mistake? Oh no, not in some senses. It was good; but notice what comes immediately after. It says im­mediately afterwards: "Wherefore criest thou unto me? Speak unto the children of Israel that they go for­ward." Stand still. Do not pray just now. March. It was the command of God that they go forward, and then by faith they went. All murmuring hushed for the moment because of what Moses had said and done. The command of God, while those in advance of the people watched and waited and wondered. After their grumbling they saw the road stretching over the sea. They were conscious of the springing up of the wind, and they watched the waters which had prevented all possibility of progress, rolling back, rolling back until they were piled in a crystal heap, and a road was left, dry—that they might pass over dry-shod. By faith they marched.

Yes, they still needed faith. I cannot help it. I am bound to let myself have my own way. I wonder if they did not wonder if the wind would turn and become west. There the waters are. They are piled up. It is a dry way, but the waters may come back. God had commanded, and, however tremblingly, they marched, and the record says: "The children of Israel went into the midst of the sea upon the dry ground; and the waters were a wall unto them on their right hand, and on their left." I watch them march, march, march until they are all over; and then I listen, and they are all singing, and you know the version of their song set to a hymn, not in our hymn-book: 

"Sound the loud timbrel o'er Egypt's dark sea,

Jehovah hath conquered, His people are free."

            We still hear the song. Now watch that crowd; every move was actuated by faith, not certainty, not knowl­edge, not even assurance in the full sense of the word, but by faith, adventure, a venture based upon the com­mand of God. By faith they left Egypt, crossed over the sea, and their faith was vindicated in the fact that they obeyed in spite of their own doubt. In spite of their own murmuring they marched, and they reached the other shore.

            Then we have forty years to look at. Because their faith failed, they were wandering up and down in the wilderness. Have you ever tried to trace the journeying’s from the Bible? You can see how they went, hither and thither through "that great and terrible wilderness "—I am quoting Moses—forty years be­cause their faith failed; but still onward, still believing in God, under the discipline of God. Now the forty years have passed away, and again we see them. They crossed the Jordan, and the crossing of the Jordan was again a supernatural intervention as was the crossing of the Red Sea. We read of the effect upon the kings of the nation’s surrounding, created by the fact that this strange people had crossed the Jordan dry-shod. Joshua tells us:

"It came to pass, when all the kings of the Amorites, which were beyond Jordan westward, and all the kings of the Canaanites, which were by the sea, heard how that the Lord had dried up the waters of Jordan from before the children of Israel, until we were passed over, that their heart melted, neither was there spirit in them any more, because of the children of Israel."

            Then they advanced into the land, and the account that I read is the account of how they surrounded the first city. Jericho was the first city they met, and they were there by the command of God to take possession of the land, and there were the walls of Jericho confronting them. Now what is the account? It is the account of the activity of faith, faith in obedience to a divine order—one pauses, and has to speak carefully, and yet I speak resolutely —a divine order which apparently had no connection whatever with the taking of a city, and the falling of its walls, and the opening of its gates. The Lord simply told them they were to take the Ark, and go round the city, the priests blowing trumpets; and they were to do it one day, and the next day, and the next, six days; and on the seventh they were to do it seven times. Do you see any—yes, I nearly said it—do you see any sense in it? Is there anything rational in that? March­ing round the wall of a city, blowing horns, with a Box at the center, which they called an Ark? I say with­out any hesitation, apparently there was no energy, no power, and no force in what they were doing.

            But they did it by faith, and by faith they were si­lent. If we read that sixth chapter a little earlier than at the point where I began, we shall find they were commanded to keep silence, tramping, tramping, tramp­ing, no human voice raised; nothing but the blasting of the horns. Is anything going to happen? I cannot tell what they thought. I know what they did. They marched, they marched, they marched until at the seventh day they were told no longer to cease, or refrain from shouting, but to shout. There went up a great shout, and suddenly the walls before them crumbled. I am quite careless about the modern idea that an earth­quake caused the walls to fall, and that they try to prove the earthquake. Probably there was one, but God caused the earthquake. All I know is they marched and marched, and the walls fell. The silent people, the marching priests, the great shout, every move actuated by faith. Such are the two incidents quoted about the history of these people and their faith.

            I take the whole account, indeed all the account of this eleventh chapter, if you like, specially fixing my thinking for a moment upon this, and I say that I learn as I watch and listen, and have the interpretation of this letter that faith acts when there is no explanation in sight. That is always what faith does, and often it acts when the acts have no reasonable grounds. That is true in both of these incidents. There is no reasonable explanation as to how to get away from Pi-hahiroth and Egypt. There is no reasonable explanation of the city yielding. Remember when faith acts, it is not faith does the work. It is faith makes possible the activity of God. The results are the acts of God in their ad­vance upon the sea, dividing it. Not the tramping of feet shook the walls of Jericho down. God divided the sea. God cast down the walls of Jericho, but in order to do it, these people had to obey, and it was the obedi­ence of faith. Faith by obedience prepares the way for the activities of God. His commands are so con­stantly seen to be beyond the reason; but His com­mands are always intended to fling us back upon Himself. It was in the hour when they could do nothing either in front of the Red Sea, or in front of the walls of Jericho, but what He said, they were flung back upon God; then it was possible for Him to act. Such is the account of beginnings.

            Then comes the appalling history to which I have made reference at the beginning, and thus it is a history full of solemn warnings. The people who so began became at last a generation faithless and perverse, and so blinded by their faithlessness and perversity that they crucified the Lord of glory. Without attempting to answer it, I am tempted to use, yet in another connection, the question Paul put to the Galatians: "Ye were running well; who did hinder you?" (Gal. 5:7) What did hinder them? What spoiled them? What degraded their faith? And again I shall quote, and quote a word written for us as well as for those very Hebrew Chris­tians from which the account I am touching upon is taken. Listen: "Take heed, brethren, lest haply there shall be in any one of you an evil heart of unbelief, in falling away from the living God."

            That is how they failed. That is why they failed, "in falling away from the living God." Such is the account. Each time after falling, they enter tribulation and return to the Lover of their souls. Their destiny is eventually Great Tribulation that finishes their journey of faith that finally perfects. The blessings of all the families of the earth follow as the by-product. (Gen 12:3)

            Someone has said—you have all read it and know it is true—that by-products are always valuable things. For instance the by-products of coal are wonderful things. We know this, that if we really knew the value of the by-products of coal it would be a penal thing to burn coal in an open grate. All right, you are mostly warmed otherwise today. What are you talking about? You ask me. Well, the by-products of these accounts are very wonderful, and as I ponder over these accounts my reluctance to look at them is overcome, and my prayer was and is that there may be something in them for me, and for those to whom I speak. Every action which is not of faith, but which is a venture, may lead to uttermost disaster. We may take an action, which appears to be exactly what the people of faith are do­ing, but if not an action of faith, it may lead to disaster; "Which the Egyptians assaying to do were swal­lowed up." They were trying to do exactly what these people had done, not in faith, but taking a risk. Surely the water will remain long enough for us to get over. There is nothing sure about it if you shut God out. Actions which appear to be actions of faith, but which are not based on faith, may lead to uttermost and ter­rific disaster, "Which the Egyptians assaying to do were drowned."

            Then I come to this other account, and I do not forget that things follow the account which have their bearings upon it; and the second of the things that I am venturing to call the by-products of these stories is this, that faith must have its actions completed in obedience, or disaster will follow. Where do we get that? Well, read on. There was one man, a member of the nation, who broke the law of God when in Jericho. He saw a Babylonish garment and a wedge of gold, and he coveted them; and they were strictly charged there was to be no looting, and he has it in his tent, and the whole march was defeated at Ai until the thing was discovered and put right, and the sin was cleansed away. It is not enough for the first vision that must come, but it must be obedient, and it must conform to all the commandments of God. By faith they—poor, stupid people, nevertheless for the moment acting by faith—left Egypt, crossed the sea, took the city of Jericho, and began the conquest of the land.