Seeing God In Bible History
During the summer prepare to preach from I Kings, the early half of a Hebrew book. Another summer, from II Kings. To us this double book relates history; to the Hebrew believer it consisted of prophecy, or “teaching-preaching” (W. E. Sangster). Make ready here, not to teach Bible history, but to declare the will of God for his nation, then and now. To help get started read Unger’s Bible Dictionary, 1957: “Kings, Books of”; “Solomon”; “Elijah.”
To show the layman what to look for: “The Hand of God in Bible History” (8:57). I. God’s Blessing on a Golden Era. A. A brilliant beginning for a ruler.
B. An opportunity to erect a church edifice. II. God’s Judgment on His People. A. Their disloyalty to God. B. Their division of the land. III. God’s Message through His Prophet. A. A call for a revival. B. A plea for restoration of God’s rule. This is not an outline of the book but a working guide.
In each case that follows, the Bible materials all come from the context. “God’s Plan for a Young Man’s Life” (3:5). I. The Lord Grants Him Freedom of Choice. II. Blesses for Choosing Wisely. III. Gives Much More than He Asks. Any young man here today has a still larger opportunity. “God’s Blessing on a Church Builder” (5:5). Chapter 8 abounds in riches for the pulpit. Plant all sorts of seed-thoughts now, and use them in later years. Let a sermon grow.
“God’s Blessing on Our Public Prayers” (8:27). I. God’s Presence in This Church. II. The Prayers of God’s Leader. III. The Petitions of His People. Many a layman needs pulpit guidance so as to pray in church. So does every boy or girl. No exhortation or scolding! Teach in love!
“God’s Blessing on Our Nation” (8:56a). Save this for Thanksgiving time. “God’s Blessing on Our Fathers” (8:57). I. Give Thanks for the Fathers and Mothers. II. Pray for Like Faith in God. III. Train the Young for Such Precious Faith. After a brief prayer of dedication, the hymn, “Faith of Our Fathers.”
“God’s Anger with a Brilliant Ruler” (11:9). “The dark line in God’s face.” Perhaps the most brilliant man in the Bible. A noble beginning, with a later decline, and a final eclipse. With Solomon began the disaster that darkens later Old Testament pages. (Cf. our Aaron Burr; 1 Cor. 10:12.) “God’s Ideal for a Public Official” (12:7). A passage for the Sunday before Election Day! A minister must not stoop to engage in partisan politics, or truckle by refusing to declare the will of God for our country.
The records about God’s use of Elijah afford opportunities for all sorts of practical sermons about affairs civic and national. Some of these are thrilling. “How God Makes a Good Man Useful” (17:5). As often elsewhere, the inspired record here is “the gift of God to the imagination.” So let living by the brook mean a good man’s experience of hard times. The drying up of the brook, his opportunity to share the experiences of God’s suffering poor. Indirectly, a message about God’s providence in preparing a future leader, the seer who later will represent his people on the Mount of Transfiguration. How God trains a minister!
“God’s Call for a Revival Today” (18:21). “God’s Gentleness with a Good Man’s Blues” (18:12c). Think of Elijah as the best man of his day, the foremost of all the seers, but preach here mainly about God. I. The Prophet of Fire Thinks of God as Spectacular, making Himself known chiefly in the earthquake, wind, and fire. But these are not his usual ways of speaking to his child. In Bible history one man came to God because of an earthquake, another because of a blinding flash from above, and a few because of some rushing, mighty wind. But ten thousand times ten thousand saints keep climbing the steep ascent to heaven now because the Lord has whispered: “This is the way, walk in it now, the old, old way of the Cross.” II. God Prefers the Ways of Gentleness. III. His Leader Learns to Listen for the still small voice of love. So does every saint.
“God’s Appeal to a Strong Man’s Conscience.” “Thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord” (21:20c). One feels tempted to turn aside and praise the seer for doing his duty boldly. But stress what he stressed, and for the same reason: the sin against God, and the resulting day of judgment. I. God’s Concern About a Poor Man’s Dwelling. II. God’s Rebuke of a Poor Man’s Oppressor. III. God’s Judgment on a Royal Sinner. James Stalker rightly says that the minister who cannot at times preach to the conscience cannot preach God’s way.
At least in printed messages, this kind of preaching seems rare today. According to perhaps the ablest liberal theologian of our day, Paul Tillich at Harvard, many of us conservatives preach little the First Person of the Trinity. If so, even unintentionally, why not now begin to preach from the Bible? With present tenses, stress what the preaching passage stresses. What a pity if either pulpit or pew fails to see God in Bible history! In this respect, as in many another, pray for a present-day Protestant Reformation such as no one of us has witnessed since the outbreak of World War One.
ANDREW W. BLACKWOOD
… Hast thou found me, O mine enemy? (1 Kings 21:20a).
The sermon begins with a contrast between the force of Elijah, the man of God, and Ahab, the king, guilty of murder, unconfessed. The main stress falls on the consequences of such an unforgiven sin. Under God—
I. Sin’s Pleasure Leads to Loss of Peace. A. There is no sin that is not the purchase of pleasure at the price of peace. B. This holds true of every evil a man commits. C. The silence of a seared conscience is not peace. D. Sin is not only a crime; it is a mistake. The thing you buy is not worth the price you pay—loss of peace with God.
II. Sin’s Blindness to Real Friends and Foes. Elijah was Ahab’s best friend, and back of the seer was God. A. The worst enemy of the sinful heart is the voice that tempts to sin, and lulls into self-complacency. B. God sends us a Gospel full of dark words about sin. C. Sin makes one fancy that God is his enemy. D. Conviction of sin is the work of the Comforter. An enemy or a friend, which is God to you?
III. Sin’s Laying Up a Terrible Retribution. Where Ahab did the wrong, there he died, unforgiven. A. God’s warning should have led Ahab to repent. B. The man who sells himself to sin lays up for himself an awful futurity of judgment. The voice that rebukes swells into the voice of final condemnation.
My friend, picture to yourself a human spirit shut up forever with its dead transgressions. Think what it will be for a man to sit surrounded by that ghastly company, the ghosts of his own sins. As each forgotten fault and buried badness comes into that awful society, silent and sheeted, and sits down there, think of Ahab’s greeting each ghost with the question: “Hast thou found me, O mine enemy?” From each bloodless specter tolls out the answer: “I have found thee, because thou hast sold thyself to work evil in the sight of the Lord.”
My friend, if that were all I had to say, it might stiffen into stony despair. Thank God, such an issue is not inevitable. Christ is your friend. He loves you. He speaks to you now, speaks of your danger, speaks of your sin, that you may say to him: “Take it away, O merciful Lord!”—From Sermons Preached in Manchester, first series, 1883, pp. 222–34.
Naaman was wroth, and went away, and said, Behold, I thought, he will surely come out to me, and stand, and call on the name of the Lord his God, and strike his hand over the place, and recover the leper (2 Kings 5:11).
The Bible looks on leprosy as a symbol of sin, and on pride as the chief barrier to salvation. Naaman here serves as an object lesson. In the eyes of the world he was a great man; in the eyes of God, a leper. [Since the hearer at home has read the passage prayerfully, omit a long introduction.]
I. God’s Indifference to Human Distinctions. Naaman wants to be treated as a great man who is a leper. Elisha treats him as a leper who happens to be a great man. A. The Gospel deals with all sinners on the same level. B. Such treatment accords with our condition as lepers. C. Here God shows his mercy, in Christ.
D. For this reason the proud man turns away. There is the narrow gate! Plenty of room for you! No room for the human distinctions that you bear on your shoulders! Naaman was wroth, and went away in a rage. So do proud men now refuse to accept the Gospel that proclaims all men under sin, and brings the equal remedy for the highest and the lowest, the wisest and the most foolish. What a Gospel, and what a God!
II. God’s Insistence on Simplicity. A great man wants to do some great thing. In this respect Christianity cannot compete with pagan displays. A. The seeming antagonism between God’s ways and man’s wants. B. The proud feel not at home in a realm purely spiritual and immaterial. C. To wash and be clean serves now as a symbol of God’s cleansing from sin. D. So give thanks for the simplicity of the Gospel as it centers in the Cross.
III. God’s Independence of Our Help. Like many a proud man today, Naaman wanted to help save himself. A. Salvation by faith does not mean salvation by words. Only God can save. B. Faith means forsaking reliance on self, and trusting solely in God to save. C. Since there is not a crevice where self-trust can creep through, proud hearts rebel. D. Christ’s work for us must be all in all, or not at all.
It is the glory of the Gospel that it proclaims a salvation in which the sinner has no share except to receive.—From Sermons Preached in Manchester, third series, 1881, pp. 255–72.
After the fire a still small voice (1 Kings 19:12c).
After his mighty victory for God on Mt. Carmel, the “prophet of fire” fell a victim to despondency. The cure came from God, chiefly through a vision of his gentleness. Not by such marvels as that on Carmel was the work of regenerating Israel to be accomplished, but by the quiet influence of love. The earthquake, the whirlwind, and the fire were but the out-riders of the divine majesty. That majesty itself appears in the gentleness that makes men great. In our day this vision reminds us that in God’s government—
I. The Quietest Influence Is Often the Most Powerful. In nature God carries on his noblest works silently. A. A vision for our sensation-loving time, a generation of fuss and bustle, trumpet-blowing and advertising. Sometimes this spirit even invades the church and the pulpit. B. Today the Lord still chooses to speak through the still small voice of Gospel grace. Would that we had less reliance on noise and more on the most Godlike thing on earth, a gentle character molded after the example of Christ, and created and sustained by the Holy Spirit.
II. The Force of Love Is Always Greater than That of Sternness. In Elijah’s dealings with men there had been little of love. Soon he must initiate a successor, to go about among the people with love and fellowship and helpfulness. Later, the highest manifestation of this truth comes in the work of Christ. By love he attracts us to himself at the first, and keeps us with himself to the last.
Is any pastor under the juniper tree, bewailing his lack of effectiveness? Let him ask himself whether he has not been trying to win men by sternness rather than by love. So with the Bible school teacher, and the parent in the home. You say that you have resorted to everything. Have you tried gentleness like that of God?
III. The Apparently Insignificant Is Often the Most Important. Despise not the small things. One does not need to be great in order to do good work for God. He uses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty.
When John Wesley began his work he never dreamed of anything so great as the Methodism of today. In this he was not alone. If we examine any one of the institutions that are radiating influence around the world, we discover that it had its commencement in something apparently as insignificant as the still small voice of our text.
Courage, then, my brother! Wait not for some great opportunity. The golden year is now. The accepted time is today. The appointed sphere is where you are. Do not quarrel with your call. Here is the answer to every possible objection: “Certainly I will be with thee.”—From Contrary Winds, 1883, pp. 107–20.
… How long halt ye between two opinions? If the Lord be God, follow him; but if Baal, then follow him. And the people answered him not a word (1 Kings 18:21).
God is calling for a revival today. A revival the world around, and above all here at home. By the term revival let us agree to mean the quickening and strengthening of vital godliness among professed followers of God now in our churches. An evangelistic ingathering ought to follow today, as in former seasons of revival.
I. God’s Call in Time of Crisis. In many an hour of crisis God has made such a call. A. In the days of Elijah (ninth century B.C.) a choice between the true God and Baal, a foul, false substitute imported from the homeland of Queen Jezebel, abetted by King Ahab. B. In the days of the Protestant Reformation, a choice between the New Testament church and that of Rome.
C. Today the choice is far more critical. Between the true God, and no-God. The Russian alternative would leave no room for God or Christ, Bible or soul, heaven or hell. Never in history has any responsible party demanded that believing men make such a choice. (See T. S. Eliot, “The Rock,” VII.)
II. God’s Call through a Challenge. A. At least 7,000 stood ready to come out and out on the side of God, and so with a host today. B. Including the Queen and her subservient husband, many others stood out and out against God. C. The vast majority, then as now, seemed not to care. On no vital moral issue of our day can God today count on a majority of our voters (Rev. 3:15). The indifferent still answer not a word!
III. God’s Call for Conflict. Today “not with swords loud clashing,” but “in deeds of love and mercy.” A. A conflict as decisive as that on Mt. Carmel. After that day the cause of Baal was as dead in Israel as dueling is with us in America now. B. A conflict between right and wrong. C. A conflict decisive for years to come. Never again in Hebrew history did any responsible person propose giving up the God of his fathers.
IV. God’s Call for Conquest, as in our own revival of 1857–58. A. Through preparation, in rebuilding God’s altar. Every revival in history has been preceded by preparation. God never does for us from heaven what we can do for him on earth. B. Through preaching. What preaching! Clear, strong moving words for God. C. Through prayer. Only after the prayer of God’s leader did the fire from God fall and consume the waiting sacrifice, causing the multitude to cry out: “The Lord, he is the God! The Lord, he is the God!”
Hearer of God’s message today, how do you respond? Well do you reply: “What can I do?” You can come out and out for God, and for him take your stand. You can help to repair the local altar that that has been broken down. Best of all, you can pray. Now as of old prayer releases the power of God, who alone can send the old-time fire.
