God Stands By 3/2/41
Scripture: I Corinthians 1: 1-9.
Text: I Corinthians 1: 9; “God is faithful .....”
While I was a minister in Hawaii on the Island of Maui, I had my study for a time in a corner of a house that fronted on the beach in Kahului harbor. The view of both the sea and mountains from that point of vantage never ceased to inspire me. Sometimes it was restful, sometimes stimulating, sometimes ominous, sometimes placid.
Much of the time the harbor teemed with activity. Fishermen prepared their sampans for trips out onto the deep. Others pulled their nets for the small fish near the shore. Seaplanes of the Navy occasionally alighted there and took off again with a mighty roar. And the great ships came and went in all kinds of weather - sometimes gliding along in confident peace- sometimes coming in defiance of the challenge of a storm.
I remember more than once watching a freighter, or one of the Inter-Island ships, steam out of the protected harbor to meet giant waves in the open channel. Then rearing, plunging, rolling, tossing, but going resolutely ahead, the mighty craft would plow its way out to sea and darkness, blotted from my sight by the storm. There was work to do that the ship was designed to do - cargo to be moved, passengers to be transported - and she went about the task in calm or storm.
People are like that. You and I have been placed in this world to make our way in the service of mankind; to do our part of the world’s work. Sometimes the sailing is reasonably calm and the work is a song from the heart or a whistle on our lips. But the storms come too, when we must battle with the elements, the passions, the violence, the sins of the world. Often there is personal danger to the sailors as the tempest threatens to blow us from the rigging and the waves appear ready to swamp us. And we must struggle with every effort, and with the sense of what is right, to keep our souls alive and the ship-of-what-we-stand-for afloat. And it helps to remember that the Master Pilot is standing by.
Think now, during this Lenten season, for a while, of what was happening to the men who sat listening to Jesus in the quiet of the last evening he was to be with them. They were destined, sooner than they realized, to face the wind and the dark. They were headed for a tempest of evil, of hatred and misunderstanding, of danger to life and integrity - headed for the storm; not theoretically but practically toward prison bars and the point of the sword!
Sailing had been reasonably smooth thus far, and their running had encountered only ordinary seas. True, they had gained their “sea legs” at this business of following the mind and example of their Lord. But tomorrow, there would be a cross on a hill, life would seem to go bitterly wrong. It would seem dark and ghastly for good people, with nothing but contempt and death waiting round each corner. There would even be the thought that God was just standing by and doing nothing. Weaker hearts than the Lord’s would plunge downward into black hopelessness with the cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” Later on they would be slapped and spat at for their pains. They were to look up many a time, amazed and hurt and bewildered by the perversity of their fellows.
Well, Jesus was preparing them for just that! He had understood life. He knew it was not to be all a Palm Sunday triumph. And he knew that there is another, greater, kind of triumph. Life might appear to go bitterly wrong and still be mightily worth the struggle. And in that struggle they would know that God stands by.
Now of course I do not want to overstate the facts and paint the storm in utter blackness and everlasting permanence. There is little use in going about like Augustine, calling life wretched, and blind, and confused, and unclean, the mistress of all evils, with death at her heels. Life is not only that.
There is loyalty, too, in the world; there are happy homes, and carefree laughter; there is music and friendship and love - far more than some of us seem to admit - and in odd corners, too.
There is the legend of an oriental king, who was very unhappy, and who called in a philosopher and asked his advice. The philosopher told him to seek out the most contented man in his entire kingdom, and wear for a while that man’s shirt. But it was said that when, after searching long and diligently, they found the most contented man in the kingdom, he had no shirt!
There is happiness in odd corners, and it is free, without any price except the willingness to receive it; sunsets, flowing water, gentle hands, drifting clouds, the smell of clean earth, the joy of accomplishment, the sound of a song. Even pain sometimes has its uses (now and then) in putting us on our guard, in order that we may stay fit! No use painting the picture too darkly, because there are strokes of light, too.
But neither is it good to understate the difficulties, or overlook them as if they were not there. Pain is real enough. So are all of the ills of the flesh. Grief-stricken eyes look at you, pleading for a reassuring explanation of the heavy hand of the reaper or the waywardness of a loved one. Perhaps a job is gone and feet ache as they tramp the street, never catching up with anything. Some one you know, perhaps, goes on living with a pain-racked body, agony knocking day after day at the temples and no release.
They don’t want a reed shaken in the wind. Better be silent than to offer them a draught of something light and merry for their woe! It is no time for the velvet words of those clothed in soft raiment. They that wear soft clothing are in king’s houses. Let them be.
But Jesus has something to say. He is of the same kind with sufferers, with those who face pain, injustice and bitterness. And what he said to his disciples is utterly honest - neither salve nor acid - but the simple truth. “They shall put you out of the synagogues; yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God a service.” Jesus sets the ship of his disciples’ living straight into the inevitable storm. And the secret of their confidence is the certainty that God stands by.
To make headway in understanding the problem of why there are storms that must be met - this age old baffling problem of evil in a world created by God - we must assume one thing. The assumption is this. We are here, getting ready for something; human souls are here to grow to some fitting stature; this short span of life is not the end, but a testing and a training - for what we can not always say, specifically, but that can be left to the care of God. You can try all other assumptions - or merely exist without an effort to understand. But if you really think about the matter, you and I are driven to this one assumption again and again, that the supreme issue of living is the state of a human soul.
When the truth of that assumption has taken hold of you, there is left little doubt that some kind of struggle in a lethargic or hostile world is inevitable! Moral struggle - the grappling with what is right and against that which is wrong - is the price which, somehow, we have to pay for progress. A “comfortable” world is no place for the growth of a sturdy spirit. The lack of exercise makes a body or a spirit soft, flabby. Growth is the result of effort.
There can be no victory without the possibility of defeat, no emerging faith without the nagging of doubt, no bravery without a reason for fear. Why God did not fix it otherwise, I do not know. But I am sure that it is so. We can not have a fire that will broil a steak but is incapable of burning a house. If you and I were not capable of knowing pain, we would be equally incapable of knowing joy. This world may not be the best imaginable world, but we may guess it is the best kind of world for the growth of the human soul. When the truth is known, we like the hazards!
The heroic Robert Scott wrote home from the dreary, snow-blasted wastes of Antarctica where at last he and his associates faced certain death: “My dear Sir Edgar: I hope this reaches you. We have been to the Pole and we shall die like gentlemen. We very nearly came through, and it is a pity to have missed it. If this diary is found it will show how we stuck by dying companions and fought the thing out till the end.”
No cowardly desertion of the weakened and dying companion here! No sordid reports of cannibalism. No vain cursing of fate. And when a searching party found that diary under Scott’s frozen head many months later and gave it to the world, there wasn’t a human heart that heard the story that didn’t stand at salute!
In a motion picture of 2 or 3 years ago, “The Citadel”, a young doctor descends a mine shaft to save a life if possible. {{Man caught in falling tunnel. --- Wife hysterical --- but proud }}
Life is a testing matter. “They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whoever killeth you will think that he doeth God a service!” [John 16: 2]. The disciples were not to brood over it. It was simply a fact, to be faced with the knowledge that God stands by through it all.
“Thy mercy, Lord, is in the heavens; and thy faithfulness reacheth into the clouds!” [Psalm 36: 5].
There is One who has stood on our side of the gulf and received the scars and hurts of mortal life. And God stood by! He still stands by and throws His infinite weight on the side of man when evil throws all its force against him.
And isn’t that enough?
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Dates and places delivered:
Pilgrim Church, Honolulu, April 23, 1939 AM
Wisconsin Rapids, March 2, 1941
W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, April 2, 1941 (first 8 pages)
W.F.H.R., Wisconsin Rapids, May 3, 1941 (Last 5 pages)