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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks About the Tempter (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 015. A Human Understudy
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A Human Understudy
It is both striking and startling to find that there is a human illustration of his career. There is portrayed for us, with great faithfulness in detail, by the Holy Spirit, the character and career of a man, who fills out with strange exactness, this strange story of Satan. It is found in the biography of King Saul of Israel. His career is put down for us in the Word of God, with that peculiar fidelity to truth in outlining human character, that marks this Book. That it is put down here for a real practical purpose, no one who reads carefully can question.
Notice please, very briefly, the story of Saul's life. It is all found within less than fourteen pages of First Samuel. (1 Samuel 9-31.) He was a man of unusual personal beauty, and excellence of character. He was chosen by God to be a Prince over His people. He was peculiarly endowed by the Spirit of God for this work. He ruled for a time with real rare wisdom, with great fidelity and obedience to God's purposes.
Then he acted independently of God; he preferred his own way, persisted in it, and defended it. He was set aside as God's chosen one. Another was chosen in his place, to be God's prince over his people. But he refused to transfer the realm to his God-chosen successor, though he knew and acknowledged that this other one was God's own chosen one to rule in his place. He not only refused, but he fought his successor; he persistently and tenaciously and devilishly fought him up to the very end.
He was defeated. At the close of his career, in the sore plight in which he found himself, he sought the aid of demons, of evil spirits. Finally he died by his own hand. And then there is a startling point to mark at the very close; that is to say, it is startling when one thinks of the great rebellious spirit-prince of whom we are talking—namely, his successor grieved sorely over him in his death.
Yet he that knows the heart of God, as given so tenderly and fully in this Book, knows this, that while His purity flames out against sin, and He cannot do anything else than judge it, and burn it out, and burn it up, yet His great heart grieves sorely over His children, the sons of men, and over the higher spirits who have so sadly fallen.
Is not that a most striking parallel between these two princes: the first prince of Israel and the first and chief of all the princes of the upper world? But I am very sure there is yet more in the parallel between the stories of Satan and of Saul. There is something intensely personal to us. Saul perfectly produced in himself the career of Satan from the break on. It is possible for a man to reproduce the Satan character. A man may be a mirror reflecting clearly and fully in his own life the characteristics of that traitor-prince.
Mark very keenly and prayerfully—the core of all Satan's rebellion was his preferring himself to God. He wanted his own way. That was all. But that was terrific. He was self-willed, he persisted in his self-will. Here was the one seed, out of which his whole character and career grew into their awful strength. May I ask you very softly, please, do you find any of this sort of seed inside yourself? Let the answer be only to yourself, as all alone in God's own presence, with this strangely searching Word of His open, you find your inner motives laid bare by the faithful Holy Spirit.
As we close our talk may we not very quietly offer this petition in our hearts, and repeat that great prayer of David's: (Psa_139:23-24.) Search me, O God, and know my heart; and let me know about this heart of mine, what Thou dost know. Try me, and know my thoughts—that is, my innermost motives, my undermost purposes, my hidden-away ambitions—the thing underneath all else that is really gripping my life. Try me.
"Try" is a fire word. It means a hotly heated furnace, and the metal heated to the liquid state, that all the dross may be freed out and come to the top in clear view, and then fee painstakingly skimmed off. "Try me." It's not an easy prayer to make. Yet it is the only prayer that will meet the case here. "Try me"—find out, and put out. Let the fire-test come. Can you make that prayer? Aye, you can; will you? There's a wondrous life of purity and power at the end of that road.
And see if there be any way in me that grieves Thee; and help me see what Thou dost see; and help me be grieved over what I see even as Thou art. And lead me—and here the iron of one's will comes in—lead me; here I am, willing to be led.
"I was not ever thus, nor prayed that Thou
Shouldest lead me on;
I loved to choose and see my path,—but now-
Lead Thou me on."
Here I am, ready to go along as Thou dost lead; lead me out of this way, into Thy way, the way everlasting.