THE KING’S BUSINESS
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great papers would photograph them as living curiosities. Isaiah said, “Here am I send me.” Then he received his commis sion : “Go and tell this people.” j God wants you to go and tell his message of love and salvation to perishing sinners. Isaiah asked, “Lord, how long?” He found that God was not issuing annual clergy permits—God’s commission is a life-work. There are some exceptions, of course, but many times the man who leaves the mission field or ministry, acts like a man whom God has not called to the work. God answered Isaiah : “Until thè cities be wasted without inhabitant and the houses without man and the land be utterly desolate and the Lord have removed men far away; and there be a great forsaking in the midst'of the land.” In other words, when there is no one left to warn, your work is at an end. Isaiah continued his faithful work for sixty yeàrs and at- the end of a lifetime of faithful service his heartless hearers ' stoned him to death. GIVE FAITHFUL SERVICE In conclusion I desire to say, your influ ence is at stake in these days. What you do will doubtless determine where some people will spend eternity. I wish that every pastor, every husband, wife, child, father and mother would realize that God expects your faithful service —-for our influence is either a blight or a blessing. Many years ago when Dakota Territory was being settled a young woman left her home to visit her father and mother. She was the mother of a little child and she was anxious for her parents to see her little one. Her father returned from the postoffice and 1reported an approaching blizzard from the northwest. It was described as the worst storm they had ever experienced in that faraway district. The young mother, against the advice of her father, cut her visit short and decided to hasten home. When she had travelled on her homeward journey some thirty or forty minutes, the terrific blizzard broke upon the country in all its fury. She became
slum districts of Jerusalem and preach to outcasts. Isaiah knew well enough that God was not calling for any man to pre pare addresses concerning the sweet influ ences of the Pleiades or chase cdnverts through the trackless fields of ether, and fill the eyes of his congregation with star dust and their ears with east wind. Isaiah volunteered. And yet God did not mention his name. God will not mention your name. He is calling for volunteers. Volunteers make the workers. Volunteer service is the most beautiful service in all the world. It not -only involves love but courtesy. Compulsory service means drudgery. Listen to the happy housewife singing about her work. Listen to the grumbling and complaining of the prisoners who are sentenced to hard labor for their crimes. Isaiah said, “Here am I, send me.” Imagine with me a picture: A father sits in his home with his three boys. It is a cold evening. The fire has burned low and the coal bucket is empty. He says, “Boys the fire is getting low. Will one of you go and hring in a bucket of coal ?” Instantly the boys poke their noses in their books and pretend not to hear him. The father says, “Tom, go and bring a bucket of coal.” Tom, the disobedient, growling ingrate, answers, “O, I don’t want to carry coal. Send Bill.” Bill, like his disobedient brother, tfies to shift the responsibility to some pther boy. Then the father threat ens to use the gad if Tom does not move immediately toward the coal house. That is compulsory service and it is always drudgery. Suppose you see a father in the home with three boys, the empty coal bucket, the fire which needs attention and the father merely says, “Boys, the fire needs atten tion.” Instantly the three boys leap to their. feet and each asks for the privilege of going, and they have a good-natured argument as to which one can carry the most coal. Now that picture is mere fic tion. It is all imagination. If you had boys who would present such beautiful pictures of volunteer service, I think the
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