The Girdings of Jehovah

‘Ere suns and moons could wax and wane,
Ere stars were thunder girt, or piled
The heavens, God thought on me His child,
Ordained a life for me, arranged
Its circumstances every one
To the minutest; aye, God said,
This head this hand shouldest rest upon
Thus, ere He fashioned star or sun.”
E. B, BROWNING.

ISAIAH xlv. 5.)

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= <i YRUS, who is named here for the first time, is one of the noblest figures in ancient history. Herodotus and Xenophon are loud in his praise. A century after his death, as the latter travelled through Asia Minor, the impression of his noble personal character and wise statesmanship was fresh and clearly defined. He must, indeed, have been a good and great man, whose character became a model for the Greek youth, in strength, simplicity, humanity, purity, and self-restraint. Such was God’s chosen instrument for the great work of emancipating the chosen people and reinstating them in their own land.

We have seen that Jehovah assured the people graciously of their return from captivity at the end of the seventy years. Jerusalem should be built, and the cities of Judah inhabited (xliv. 26). And they probably expected that the return would be signalized by miracles as stupendous as those which opened the door to freedom from the bondage of Egypt. Again the waters would start back, and the river divide; the floor of the desert would be strewn with manna, and rocks would gush with water-springs. But their deliverance was not to be on this wise. The miracle was to be wrought in the world of mind, not of matter. By a series of unexpected providences, the Divine purpose was to be realized through a heathen monarch, who did not know Him by whom his strength was girded and his path prepared.

At the beginning of his career, Cyrus was chieftain of an obscure Persian tribe. His first success was in obtaining, whether by diplomacy or force, the leadership of two tribes of hardy mountaineers, at that time unknown beyond the narrow confines of their native hills. With these he began a course of conquest which swept from the frontier of India to the blue waters of the A’gean, subjugating even Croesus, king of Lydia, whose wealth has passed into a proverb. Doors of opportunity opened before him quite marvellously; rough difficulties were levelled; hidden treasures fell into his hands, and the brazen doors stood open before his triumphant progress. All this time, though religious according to his light, and punctilious in acknowledging the gods of his people, he did not know Jehovah, by whom he was being girded and used.

At last, after years of unbroken victory, he stood knocking at the gates of Babylon, demanding from the son and grandson of Nebuchadnezzar the recognition of his supremacy. How little did he or they realize that this summons was the result of a Divine purpose, bent on securing the emancipation of the captive Jews, and their return to their sacred city, to become the religious leaders of the world — the stock from which the true Servant and Anointed of the Lord was to proceed!

For weary months Babylon withstood the siege, and laughed to scorn the attempt of barbarous tribes to scale her massive walls, or force her mighty gates. But one night when, in fancied security, Belshazzar made a feast to a thousand of his lords, and the vigilance of the guards was relaxed, the mystic hand on the walls of the royal banqueting-hall traced the decree that the kingdom was at an end, and had passed into the hands of the Medes and Persians. That night Cyrus diverted the mighty river that traversed the lordly city into a vast reservoir, arranged for the storage of water; and as it left its ancient course, his troops marched along the oozy channel, and burst into the city with wild cries that startled the revellers at their cups, and the sleepers in their dreams, inaugurating days of slaughter, rapine, and pillage.

Daniel, venerable with age, was beyond controversy the greatest subject of the realm. On the night of the capture he had rebuked Belshazzar for his sins, and announced the conclusion of the siege. He held in his hand the keys to the policy of the empire, and was therefore at once sought after by Cyrus and his uncle Darius (Dan. vi. 2; x. 1). He had come to see that the period of seventy years was now nearly ended (Dan. ix. 2); and he appears to have taken an early opportunity, at least so Josephus says, of acquainting Cyrus with the history of his people, and with those wonderful predictions that had stood so long on the pages of their sacred books, minutely predicting his career, and even his name. They also gave forecast of what he was next to do. Notwithstanding the predictions of Chaldean astrologers, God had brought him to the throne of Babylon; and, in spite of all apparent unlikeliness, he would perform the counsel of inspired messengers, saying of Jerusalem, “‘ She shall be inhabited; and of the cities of Judah, they shall be built” (Isa. xliv. 26). How startling it must have been, when the aged prophet brought under the notice of the young conqueror such words as these: “I have raised him up in righteousness, and I will make straight all his ways: he shall build my city, and he shall let go my captives, not for price nor reward, saith the Lord of hosts” (xlv. 13).

It is therefore not to be wondered at, that in the first year of his reign he made a proclamation throughout all his kingdom, and put it also in writing, saying, “Thus saith Cyrus, king of Persia: All the kingdoms of the earth hath the Lord, the God of heaven, given me; and He hath charged me to build Him an house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. Whosoever there is among you of all his people, his God be with him, and let him go up to Jerusalem, which is in Judah, and build the house of the Lord, the God of Israel” (Ezra i. 1-4, R.V.).

What a vast conception is here unfolded to us of the Providence that shapes man’s ends, “rough-hew them as he will”!

There is a plan which underlies the apparent chaos of worldly E

affairs, and is slowly achieving its ends; though the agents through which it is being executed are largely unaware of what is afoot. In the words of the greatest monarch of his time, whom Jehovah likened to a head of gold, and who had ample opportunity of verifying his conclusions, God does as He will among the inhabitants of the earth, and none can stay his hand, or say, What doest Thou? (Dan. iv. 35).

I. Gop’s PLAN, AS IT AFFECTS SOCIETY. — (1) /¢ ts comprehensive, sweeping from age to age, threading millenniums, building its structure from the dust of earth’s earliest age to the emergence of the new heavens and earth at the close of time.

But it ts minute and particular. No great general can carry through a successful campaign who is not patient enough to attend to details. Wellington rode over to see Blucher the night before Waterloo, to know for himself when the Prussian legions would come through the forest of Soignies. God ordained the succession of William of Orange to the throne of England, in the place of the Stuarts; and it was his hand that made the wind veer from west to east at one critical moment in the night of his landing, or he had missed Torbay and been carried into the heart of the English fleet. Nothing is small with God. The sparrow does not fall to the ground without Him; and the tiniest events are woven into the scheme of his all-embracing providence. He makes even the sin and wrath of man to subserve his purposes.

(2) He works through individuals. The story of man is for the most part told in the biographies of men. It is through human instruments that God executes his beneficent purposes, his righteous judgments. Through Columbus, He draws aside the veil from the coast line of America. Through a Watt and a Stephenson, He endows men with the co-operation of steam; through a Galvani and an Edison, with the ministry of electricity. Through a De Lesseps, He unites the waters of the eastern and western seas, and brings the Orient and Occident together. Through a Napoleon He shatters the temporal power of the Pope; and by a Wilberforce strikes the fetters from the slave. Men do not know the purpose of God in what they are doing. They arise and move onward in a course of unbroken success. They become accustomed to the opening of barred gates, the unclosing of closed doors. They expect and win the highest positions, honours, and prizes of the world. They credit themselves with what they achieve; and their fellows eagerly analyse their make-up and methods to ascertain the secret of their great strength. They know not that they are really instruments in the Divine hand, surnamed and girded by One whom they know not.

(3) God’s use of men does not interfere with their free action. This is clearly taught in more than one significant passage in Scripture. Joseph’s brethren acted on the promptings of their malicious hearts, and meant only evil; but God, all the while, was meaning and achieving good to Joseph, to themselves, and to the land of Egypt. Herod, Pilate, and the religious leaders of the Jews, were swept before a cyclone of passion and jealousy; and it was with wicked hands that they crucified and slew the Lord of Glory: but they were accomplishing the determinate counsel of God, and doing whatsoever his hand and his counsel foreordained to come to pass. We cannot understand this mystery, nor reconcile the movements of the far-distant planets of this great system. This arises from the limitation of our faculties in this our nursery life. But we must accept it as true. It is incontestably the teaching of Scripture, that a man like Cyrus might be engaged in the pursuance of his own schemes and ambitions, whilst, all the time, he was being girded and used by One whom he did not know.

All these principles should be carefully conned and prayerfully pondered. They underpin the life of society and of individuals also.

II. Gop’s PLAN, AS IT AFFECTS INDIVIDUALS. — We are all conscious of an element in life that we cannot account for. Other men have started life under better auspices, and with larger advantages than we, but somehow they have dropped behind in the race, and are nowhere to be seen. Our health has never been robust, but we have had more working-days in our lives than those who were the athletes of our school. We have been in perpetual peril, travelling incessantly, and never involved in a single accident; whilst others were shattered in their first journey from their doorstep. Why have we escaped, where so many have fallen? Why have we climbed to positions of usefulness and influence, which so many more capable ones have missed? Why has our reputation been maintained, when better men than ourselves have lost their footing and fallen beyond recovery?

There is not one of. us who cannot see points in the past where we had almost gone, and our footsteps had well-nigh slipped: precipices along the brink of which we went at nightfall, horrified in the morning to see how near our footprints had been to the edge. Repeatedly we have been within a hair-breadth of taking some fatal step, yielding to some imperious temptation, striking a Faust-like bargain with the devil. How nearly we were caught in that eddy! How strangely we were plucked out of that companionship! How marvellously we were saved from that marriage, from that investment, from embarking in that ship, travelling by that train, taking shares in that company!

There is something to be explained in the lives of men which they cannot account for. They describe their consciousness of this anonymous element, as it has been called, by the words “luck,” “fortune,” “chance”; but these are mere subterfuges, sops thrown to silence the appeals of their common sense. We know better. It is God who has girded us, though we did not know Him.

It was God who opened those doors of opportunity; who smoothed those rough places, so that not a pebble remained at which to stumble; who gave treasures, where all had been dark; who unlocked gates of brass, which had threatened to bar the way. This is one of the luxuries of our mature years, to see all the way by which He has led us; it will be a cause of adoring gratitude as we review our life-course from the heights of heaven. As we stand there with God, He will show us how often our girdings to great tasks were due to his strong hands being placed around and upon us. He ever girds for tasks to which He calls. God cannot desert what has cost Him so much. He will finish what He has begun. He will lead thee o’er crag and torrent till the night is gone. He will not let one good thing fail. And, like the dying patriarch, standing on the verge of another world, thou wilt see the Angel who has redeemed thee from all evil.

When Peter stood with Jesus by the shores of the lake of Galilee He contrasted the independence of his earliest days, when he girded himself, and walked whither he would, with the dependence of those later days when he should stretch forth his hands, and another should gird and carry him. With these words our Lord signified the manner of death in which he should glorify God. What was true of the helplessness of Peter’s old age, and martyrdom, should be true of each of us in the intention and choice of the soul. Let us give up girding ourselves in the assertion of our own strength, and stretch forth our hands, asking our Lord to gird us and carry us whither He will, even to death, if thereby we may the better glorify God.