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TOPIC: Gordon, Samuel Dickey - Quiet Talks on Following the Christ (Other Topics in this Collection)
SUBJECT: 13. God on a Wooing Errand
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God on a Wooing Errand
God and man used to live together in a garden. It was a most wonderful garden, full of trees and flowers and fruit, of singing birds with rare feathers and songs, of beasts that had never yet learned fear, nor to make others feel it, and a beautiful river of living water. The name given it indicates that it was a most delightful spot. (Eden: delight.) God and man used to live together in this garden. They talked and walked and worked together. Man helped God in putting the finishing touches on His work of creation. It was the first school, with God Himself as teacher. (Gen_2:8-20.) God and man used to have a trysting time under the trees in the twilight. But one evening when God came for the usual bit of fellowship the man was not there. God was there. (Gen_21:8-9 He had not gone away, and He has never gone away. Man had gone away, and God was left lonely standing under the tree of life.
A friend, in whose home we were, told of her little daughter's remark one day. The mother had been teaching her that there is only one God. The child seemed surprised and on being told again, said in her childlike simplicity, "I think He must be very lonesome." Well, the child was right in the word used. God is lonesome, though for an utterly different reason than was in the child's mind. God was lonesome that day, left standing alone under the trees of the garden. He is lonesome for fellowship with every one who stays away from Himself. That homely human word may well express to us the longing of His heart.
Man went away from God that day, then he wandered farther away, then he lost his way back, then he didn't want to come back. And away from God his ideas about God got badly confused. His eyes grew blind to God's pleading face, his ears dull and then deaf to God's voice. His will got badly warped and bent out of shape morally, and his life sadly hurt by the sin he had let in. (Gen_4:1-26; Gen_5:1-32; Gen_6:1-22
And all this was very hard on God. (Gen_6:6; Deu_5:29; Psa_81:13; Isa_48:18.) It grieved Him at His heart. He sent many messengers, one after another, through long years, but they were treated as badly as they could be. (Mar_12:1-8; 2Ch_36:15-16; These passages, and many similar, while speaking directly of the one nation Israel, are giving a picture of the heart of God toward all men, and His habit of action: Israel itself was the messenger-nation, whose life was meant to be God's message of love to all the race.) And at last God said to Himself, "What more can I do? This is what I will do. I'll go down Myself and live among them, and woo them back Myself." And so it was done. One day He wrapped about Himself the garb of our humanity, and came in amongst us as one of ourselves. (Joh_1:1-18, especially Joh_1:1-5; Joh_1:14.) And He became known amongst us as Jesus. He had spoken the world into being; now, in John's simple homely language, He pitched His tent amongst our tents as our near neighbour and kinsman. (Joh_1:14 f.c.) Our Lord Jesus was the face of God looking into ours, the voice of God speaking into the ears of our hearts, the hand of God reached down to make a way back and then lead us along the way back again, the heart of God coming in touch to warm ours and make us willing to go back.
It was a long road He came, as long as the distance we had gone away from Him. And no measuring stick has yet been whittled out that can tell that distance. We want to look a bit at the last lap of the road, the earth-lap. It runs from the Bethlehem plain where He came in, to the Olivet hilltop where He slipped away again up and back, for a time, until things are ready for the next step in His plan.