King's Business - 1918-10

896 resurrection.-^—Gaebeleii}. The blessed One spared the fathers heart the pang which He did not spare His own heart, even that of smiting His own Son. There was no voice from heaven when on Calvary, the Father offered up His own Son.—McIntosh. v. IS. Offered the ram in the stead. Here is the doctrine of substitution clearly stated.—Compan. Bible. This is the Lamb God Himself has provided. The ransom He has found in Christ is also typified by the ram caught in the thicket.-—Gaebelein. v. 14. Jehovah-jireh. “ The Lord will see to it,’ thus bearing testimony to the reality of God’s presence and pro­ vision.— Thomas. It is only when we are put to the test that we discover what God is. Without trial, we can be but theorists and God would not have us as such.— C. H. M. We never know how sweet our blessings are until we have yielded them to Him.— Sel. “ You don’t understand, you can’t understand.” That was a mother’s cry when she learned of the death of her son, a gallant young captain in France. “ It isnt his death, for I MY know he was saved and I GIRLS shall meet him in glory. “ It isn’t his death, for I could not give him up for my country’s sake. I would gladly give him and my two daughters as well in this right­ eous war. It is the blasting of my life pla,n and his life plan that costs so ter­ ribly. I had planned to lean on him as I grew old. He was the only male mem­ ber among our family connections. He was to perpetuate the family name.” I wonder if this Twentieth Century price was not the same price that Abra­ ham paid on Mount Moriah. That is, the giving up of his life plan. God had promised Abram about seventy-five years before that his seed should be as the dust of the earth. (13:16), Abram had thought that this was to be accom­ plished through his son Ishmael, born

THE K I N G ’ S BUS I NESS of his wife’s handmaiden, Hagar. (16: 3, 15). God said “ No.” (17:20-21). This would have excluded Sarai’s part in being a mother of nations and kings as had been promised. (17:16). God had promised Isaac a legitimate son of Abram and Sarah by a miracle birth. (17:15-19; 18:11-15). At the set time Isaac was born according to promise. (21:1-3). Note the change of the names of Abram and Sarai to Abraham and Sarah, (17:5, 15) and the evidence of Abraham’s belief in God by imme­ diately speaking of his wife as Sarah, her new name. (17:17) To Abraham, God’s plan for keeping His promise seemed to be working per­ fectly. Imagine the disturbance in his mind when ere Isaac had not much more than reached manhood God com­ mands that he be sacrificed as a burnt offering. Unlike the mother above, we find no recorded rebellion from Abra­ ham. Nor is there any hint that either Abraham or Sarah at all distrusted God’s plan for fulfilling His covenant. They believed that God was able to raise Isaac from the ¡dead if need be (Heb. 11:19), even though they had never witnessed a resurrection. This event in the lives of Abraham and Sarah stands out as the greatest surrender in all scripture aside from God’s surrender of His only begotten son. To them, aside from trusting God, it meant smashing their life plan. Of all things Christians are called upon to surrender that is the most costly. We have plans for the holidays, we have plans for the summer, we have' plans for our lives. We think they must be followed. We do not see how anything else is possible. Something else is not only possible, but much better, and that is the surrender of those plans to God. We speak of two kinds of surrender, conditional and unconditional. We may question the correct use of words here. There is no such thing as conditional surrender. Better terms would be real

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