065. THE CHURCH MUST DECREE ALSO

THE CHURCH MUST DECREE ALSO

Brethren, let us make an end of Antinomianism and hyper-Calvinism in missions. God’s decrees and Christ’s fulfillment of them no more dispense with our activity in the salvation of the world than they dispense with our activity in our own salvation. The world will never be saved until the church takes upon its lips the words " I will declare the decree: The Lord hath said unto me, This day have I begotten thee," and with the holy boldness born of conscious union with Christ its Lord begs God to give it the world for its possession. And just as Christ’s declaring the decree is a declaration in deed as well as in word, so the church’s declaring the decree involves a fulfillment of it, by carrying the gospel to the farthest corners of the earth. God works through Christ, and Christ works through his church. God’s decrees are not self-executing. God decrees, but his people must decree also. The decree of God will become effective only through the decree of the church. Only when the determination of the church to subdue the world to Christ comes to express the absolute and unchanging determination of God himself, will the enemy succumb and the gospel secure its triumph. Say not, O Church of Christ, that God works in you, and therefore you have no work to do in the saving of the world! In missions to the heathen, as in the conversion of the individual soul, you will find that God works in you to will and to do, only as you work out your own salvation. If his kingdom is ever to come, it must be by your doing his will on earth even as it is done in heaven.

There is a decree of Satan as well as a decree of God. When the kings of the earth set themselves against the Lord and against his Anointed, they only register the decree of the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that works in the children of disobedience. And so in our earthly battles invisible powers are struggling. Over against this decree of Satan we are to set the decree of God and of the church. The conflict between sin and holiness, between Satan and God, is a mighty one. Of ourselves we are utterly unequal to it. Every new year with its revelation of the increasing greatness of earth’s populations, and the intensity of their opposition to God, makes the task more appalling. But it is not the power of the enemy that should appall us,—it is the unbelief and inactivity of the church. God has determined to save the world, but we have not yet determined to save it. We have not yet set ourselves to do this thing. We have tried to compass both this world and the next. We have tried to serve God and Mammon. Christ has had to share with Belial. The troops we have sent to the field have been few and ill-equipped. The most they have been able to do is to capture a few outposts in the enemy’s country. Victory will be ours only by our pouring into heathen lands such armies as in the Crusades sought to rescue Christ’s sepulchre from the infidels, when all Europe seemed to empty itself into Asia.

There is an account of the battle of Sedan, in the Franco-Prussian war, which describes the tremendous energy and determination with which the Germans attacked a French position upon which depended the fate of the day. Regiment after regiment, brigade after brigade, of the best German soldiers advanced upon it, and as fast as they advanced were swept away by the dreadful fire. But still they came, came in greater and greater force, came till the whole country seemed a living mass of men. On they came, their ranks riddled with shot and shell, whole battalions annihilated, but the more that were killed the more there were to kill. Over the distant crest of the hills they still kept pouring on; for every thousand slain, ten thousand marched to take their places; till the spectacle became too fearful to endure; the French began to fancy that all the armies of the earth were combining to attack them; and with a sudden impulse and panic they forsook their guns and fled. It will be so with the forces of our great adversary. When they once perceive that the whole church has devoted itself to subduing their rebellion, they will see in that determination the expression of God’s decree, and will lay down their arms forever.

Plutarch, the heathen moralist, said well that "God is the brave man’s hope, not the coward’s excuse." When a general on the eve of battle rides along the line, assuring his troops of victory, his words do not soothe to slumber,—they nerve to action. Let the decrees of God in like manner encourage us in the work we have undertaken,—the work of bringing the world to Christ. Let us ponder the strength and immovableness of the divine purpose. It is more solid and enduring than these Rocky Mountains, whose desolate and gloomy ramparts hem us in to-day, for the mountains themselves are built upon it. Everything else may perish or fail of accomplishment, every other plan go wrong, every other hope be disappointed ; but one thing shall stand, for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it, and that is, that every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord. This purpose of God has been inwrought into all the forces of nature and of history; the very stars in their courses fight against Christ’s enemies; he must reign until he has put all enemies beneath his feet. It is now more than thirty years since Abraham Lincoln uttered his prophecy with regard to the irrepressible conflict between slavery and freedom in America. "A house divided against itself," he said, "cannot stand. This government cannot continue to exist half-free and half-slave." We see his prophecy already fulfilled. But Abraham Lincoln announced a principle of universal application. This world cannot continue to exist half-Christian and halfpagan. Christ and Antichrist cannot forever divide the earth between them. "Faith and unfaith can ne’er be equal powers." The one side will pull the other over. Heathendom will sooner or later be swallowed up in Christendom, and will c^ase to be.

Human life is great, according as it takes up into itself and ratifies and embodies this decree of God. It is petty and mean, if it is not in some way connected with this great plan of God to give the world to Christ. But life is a glorious thing, if it can be made tributary to that mighty purpose for the unfolding of which God built the arches of the firmament and decorated them with their mosaic of constellations, laid the rocky floor of the earth as the stage of a theatre for the tragedy of Calvary, arranged all the events of history as shifting scenes of the mighty drama, and for the opening of it made the curtain of night and chaos rise at the creation. In Washington, at the close of our great Civil War, before our soldiers disbanded, there was a review of the Army of the Potomac and of the Army of the Tennessee. Meade and Sherman passed before President Johnson and General Grant at the head of their troops. There were men in the ranks who had lost an arm in battle ; there were other men who had languished in the prison-pen at Andersonville. But not one man of them all was sorry he had suffered and bled; for the purpose of the war had been accomplished; victory had crowned our banners; the Union had been saved. So there will be a great day when this cruel war is over, God’s Decree Inspires Patience and the soldiers come marching home, when Christ’s triumphant army shall be reviewed, and when the Captain of our salvation shall welcome and reward those who have been faithful in the fight. Then it will appear that labor and sacrifice and suffering for Christ are honorable, and that only he is great whose life has been spent in efforts to further the progress and to secure the triumph of the kingdom of God. In the certainty that God’s decree will be executed we can work. But we can also wait. When I think of the long ages that have intervened since our Lord ascended to heaven, and of the struggle and suffering that have crowded them full, I wonder at the waiting even more than I wonder at the work. I hear Luther, near the time of his death, saying: "God forbid that the world should last fifty years longer. Let him cut matters short with his last judgment." Melancthon put the end less than two hundred years from his time. Calvin’s motto was: "Do mine, quousque ?"—" O Lord, how long?" Jonathan Edwards, before and during the Great Awakening, indulged high expectations as to the probable extension of the movement until it should bring the world, even during his lifetime, into the love and obedience of Christ. If believers have been thus disappointed, is it wonderful that unbelievers should say: "Where is the promise of his coming?" We do not deny that there is a trial of our faith. But we remind ourselves of the decrees of God. With him *’ one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years are as one day." He speaks and it is done; he commands and it stands fast. He delays only that the harvest of good may be the greater, that larger and larger ranges of society and of life may be penetrated by his love and power, that unto principalities and powers in heavenly places may be made known through the church the manifold wisdom of God. On Christ’s head shall be many crowns. The whole universe shall bow to him. The promise of God the Father to God the Son is an effective promise; it not only engages to give the victory to faith, but it engages to give the faith for victory. And for the rest, in weariness, In disappointment and distress, When strength decays and hope grows dim, We ever may recur to him Who has the golden oil divine Wherewith to feed our failing urns, Who watches every lamp that burns Before his sacred shrine.

"For of him, as well as through him and to him, are all things."

Brethren of the Missionary Union: With these decrees of God to encourage us, let us go forward with calm assurance that his purpose shall be fulfilled, and that our efforts shall be made one of the means of fulfilling it. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but his word shall not pass away. Even now the government is upon Christ’s shoulder. He is conducting the march of civilization. He is turning and overturning the systems of philosophers and the thrones of kings. He is the Sun of Righteousness, and the Sun has risen upon the world ; he is pressing back the darkness of heathenism and of ancient wrong; soon his beams shall enlighten every land; soon the kingdoms of this world shall become the kingdoms of our God and of his Christ. Our work is sure of success because he holds us in the hollow of his hand; we are his instruments, his members, linked to him, parts of his very body; and he is the omnipotent Revealer of God, the one and only Executor of God’s eternal plan. We therefore join ourselves anew to thee, O Christ. We count ourselves happy that we may labor and suffer and wait with thee! We expect the day when thou wilt loose the last seal of the book of God’s decrees and translate its uttermost secret into the fulfillments of history! We pray, as thou hast bidden us pray, that thou wilt give thy Spirit of holiness and love and power to thy church; that thou wilt help thy people by their own decree of self-sacrifice and faithfulness, in every word and work, effectively to declare thy decree of salvation to the whole world for which thou didst die; and that thus thou wilt hasten the day when "every creature that is is heaven and on the earth and under the earth, and such as are in the sea, and all that are in them shall be heard saying: Blessing and honor and glory and power be unto him who sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb, forever and ever!"