549
TH E K I N G ' S B U S I N E S S
September 1924
"Grasshopper M en ” (Sermon preached by Dr. John Murdoch Maclnnis, in the Church of the Open Door, (Bible Institute Auditorium Dos Angeles)
kings to leave their thrones and trudge over mountains and plains and standing bareheaded and barefooted in the cold awaiting a word of favor or of forgiveness. But that lone monk with the impelling power of God in an experience of grace shook that hierarchy to its very foundations. The grasshopper man can never understand the miracle of that thing. He can see the great black and impossible continent of Africa in its degradation and hopeless slavery, but he can not understand the philosophy of the modest Scotch lad impelled by his sense of God and eternal values seriously attacking that continent in a heroic and impassioned effort to win it for God. Yet the lad in a superb passion of devo tion plowed a furrow to the bleeding heart of that black continent and opened it to the gospel of Christ. The man of horizontal vision can never, never understand that kind of a miracle, because he has lost his perspective in God’s world. He never could write a line of poetry like this— a That is another way of saying, “ It is God Who worketh in us both to will and to do of His good pleasure”— but a grasshopper man could never see that. That kind of a vision does not come from the earth line; it is born in the upper spaces. Lack of Perspective Therefore the grasshopper man is the man who has lost his perspective in God’s world-Ss-he sees everything from the earth line point of view. From that point of view he is never able to give the proper value to the moral and spiritual forces. Material things are more real to him than the spiritual realities which give its deepest meanings to life. Those men could see the giants and the walled cities, but they lost sight of the throne of God and its regal pow ers. From this angle they were so filled with the sense of the might of near things that they clean forgot what God did in Egypt and at the Red Sea. The grasshopper man has a poor memory when the crisis hour comes. The sight of big men and towering walls wipes out the memories of the glorious victories of the past. Having lost the vision of the throne he has lost the sense of its power. These men forgot who they were. They forgot they were the called and sent of God. Forgetting the throne and the commission they lost their place in their world. Having lost their bearings in their world they were not able to understand the times in which they were living. They were living in an hour when God was definitely mov ing forward to new and greater things. It was a crisis hour in the history of the world. The nations of Canaan had run their allotted time— the cup of their rebellion was full and they must give way to a people who were willing to move in the will of God. A nation understanding and moving in God’s will and purpose could not fail. God was working both “ to will and to do.” Having willed, there was nq ques tion of His power to do. But men, looking at things on the earth line, could not understand this. Having lost sight of the throne they lost the sense of the presence and power of God. The things that filled their vision were spirit forces, (Continued on page 605) “We see but half the causes of our deeds, Seeking them wholly in the outer life, And heedless of the encircling spirit-world, Which, though unseen, is felt and sows in us AH germs of pure and world-wide purposes.”
“We were in our own sight as grasshoppers and so we were in their sight.” Numbers 13:33.
course they were.: If men insist on calling them- lelves grasshoppers other men are not likely to hink of them as lions. These men were right n their estimate of themselves— they were gen uine grasshopper men. Let us look at these words in their context in order that we may be able to see what a grass hopper man is and to understand something of the tragedy of his life. These men were called and redeemed from the bondage of Egypt and baptized unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea and drank of the spiritual rock which was Chi-ist, and were under orders to possess a great land for God. Under these circumstances they were sent to spy out the land for the people preparatory to conquest. They went up arid saw that the land was all that God promised it to be, but they also found that it was full of great walled cities indwelt by giants. The sight of these loomed so large in their vision and thinking that they had no eyes or mind for any thing else. The more they saw these giants and the more they thought about them the smaller they became in their own sight. It was this testing that discovered them as grasshopper men. What Is a Grasshopper Man? The very simile used suggests the fundamental charac teristic of the man. The grasshopper is a creature whose vision is normally on a horizontal line— the vision of an earth line. In this kind of a vision near things look big and a far vision is impossible. You can test this by getting down on the ground in grasshopper shape and looking at an approaching man, or a near wall or large building. From that angle an ordinary man looks like a giant and an ordin ary wall impassable, and an ordinary building like a great mountain. If you would get up from the ground and find your way up to the top of this building and look down upon the ordinary man and wall, things would appear very different. Therefore, the grasshopper man who views all life from the earth line loses his perspective in life. He has a wholly exaggerated idea of near things and a wholly inadequate conception of the things which give life its deepest mean ings and measure its greatest possibilities. His terms of value are flesh and blood, stone walls and fortified cities. He can never see or appreciate the moral and spiritual realities and purposes which after all are the mighty forces of life. These are the things that connect man up with the sources of great power. These men can see imperial Rome with all her military and political powers and think of an all-conquering force, but they cannot understand the irre sistible power of a little group of ordinary unknown men who are possessed of a geniune experience of God and com pelled by a spiritual message. They cannot see these spiritual forces on the earth line and therefore they cannot believe that they are or that they can be equal to the con quest of the military and political giants of the Roman Empire with all of its mighty cities. His Limitations A grasshopper man can never understand the sense of a lone, unknown son of a poor miner from the backwoods of Germany going up against the regal power of a hierarchy whose head commanded things and empires, commanding
Made with FlippingBook Online newsletter