Willing Obedience
135
This great act of faith is penciled on the pages of sacred history
to shine forth upon the world as an illustrious example to the end of
time. Abraham did not plead that his old age should excuse him from
obeying God. He did not say: “My hairs are gray, the vigor of my
manhood is gone; who will comfort my waning life when Isaac is no
more? How can an aged father spill the blood of an only son?” No;
God had spoken, and man must obey without questioning, murmuring,
or fainting by the way.
We need the faith of Abraham in our churches today, to lighten
the darkness that gathers around them, shutting out the sweet sunlight
of God’s love and dwarfing spiritual growth. Age will never excuse
us from obeying God. Our faith should be prolific of good works, for
faith without works is dead. Every duty performed, every sacrifice
made in the name of Jesus, brings an exceeding great reward. In the
very act of duty, God speaks and gives His blessing. But He requires
of us an entire surrender of the faculties. The mind and heart, the
whole being, must be given to Him, or we fall short of becoming true
Christians.
God has withheld nothing from man that can secure to him eternal
riches. He has clothed the earth with beauty and furnished it for his use
and comfort during his temporal life. He has given His Son to die for
the redemption of a world that had fallen through sin and folly. Such
matchless love, such infinite sacrifice, claims our strictest obedience,
our holiest love, our unbounded faith. Yet all these virtues, exercised to
[146]
their fullest extent, can never be commensurate with the great sacrifice
that has been offered for us.
God requires prompt and unquestioning obedience of His law; but
men are asleep or paralyzed by the deceptions of Satan, who suggests
excuses and subterfuges, and conquers their scruples, saying as he
said to Eve in the garden: “Ye shall not surely die.” Disobedience not
only hardens the heart and conscience of the guilty one, but it tends to
corrupt the faith of others. That which looked very wrong to them at
first, gradually loses this appearance by being constantly before them,
till finally they question whether it is really sin and unconsciously fall
into the same error.
Through Samuel, God commanded Saul to go and smite the
Amalekites and utterly destroy all their possessions. But Saul only
partially obeyed the command; he destroyed the inferior cattle, but