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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About Our Lord's Return (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 48. The Patience of God
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The Patience of God
But there has been a hindrance to the working out of God's plan. That hindrance, sad to say, has been in our Lord's followers. They have failed to do the part assigned to them. We must remember that God's plan for men and the earth is always dependent upon human cooperation. God never coerces any man. He never crowds a thing through by sheer force. That is man's way, but not God's. Everything with God is through the sweet, glad consent and cooperation of the human will. His reign is one of unfailing love.
And He always touches men through men. There is a light that lighteth directly every man that cometh into the world. But through sin it has become a sadly bedimmed and mixed light, and so He has graciously been sending more light. When He would give fuller light He always sends some messenger. When He would win man back home to Himself, He Himself came as a man. God's pathway to a human heart is always a human pathway. If there be exceptions, they are so rare as to emphasize the rule. This is the natural law of our human life. And God always works along the pathways He has made.
Our Lord Jesus was acting strictly on our behalf when He came down here, and lived His life of perfect obedience, and then died His death of suffering, and rose in power. He was, in all this, fighting our foe, doing what we had failed to do. He conquered our enemy on our behalf. He was acting as a substitute for us, acting on our behalf throughout. Then He gave us His power and His victory as our own, through which to have victory at every step in the battle with our enemy. Then—then He bade us as His followers to go out to the whole creation and preach this wonderful deliverance and victory through His blood. We are each of us to be His new pathway for this blessed truth out to all the world.
Such witnessing and preaching to all men, fully done as He planned, would have brought two results. It always does bring two results. It wins human hearts, and it arouses the evil one. If it had been persistently done, those two things would have quickly reached the climax which brings the end. The whole body of believers would have been taken out from among all the peoples of the earth,—the purpose of this time of Church witnessing. And that would have meant the coming up to its final, awful head of the terrible power of evil. Good always arouses evil. That double climax has always been an impending possibility in every generation of men since our Bible was closed.
With utmost patience, quite beyond our conception of what "patience" means, God has waited. The long delay spells out the infinite patience and longsuffering [Note: 2Pe_3:9.] of God. Patience is love at its best. The group of events which gathers about the coming of our Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit withdrawn from His Church, the awful reign of lawlessness and so on, are no part of God's own plan. It is simply a faithful revealing to us of what He plainly foresees will work out of the utter freedom of choice and action with which every man is endowed. God never interferes for a moment by so much as a hair's breadth with man's full freedom of choice. This explains the long delay. This delay tells of the marvellous, inconceivable patience of God.
There is an instructive living picture of this in the Israelites' journey out of Egypt into Canaan. They expected to go in at once as rapidly as they could get there; God planned that they should do so. Yet they did not; the plan was broken; the entrance into Canaan was delayed; and the reason is most significant, because of their failure to believe and obey. Even after they expressed a willingness to go in, the keeping of them forty years in the desert was not an arbitrary punishment by God. They lacked the spirit of faith through which God must work in giving them victory over the inhabitants.
But there will come a time when there shall be delay no longer. The fullest opportunity will have been given to man, and to the Church. The patient waiting of God will have reached its maturity. The course of events on the earth, and in the Church, will mark that end. Then will come the fulfilment of the great love-purpose of God. Some day our Lord Jesus, up yonder at the Father's right hand, will quietly rise up, and begin the work of dispossessing evil, and taking possession of the earth. God's patience will have come to its full perfection. God's purpose will tarry no longer. This is a very searching bit of truth. It should send us to our knees in the inner chamber to review motives and life and possessions, and ask,—"Does it all spell out the passion for Him, and His purpose, and His return? Is everything His for the taking of His blessed Gospel to all men?"