In Many Pulpits with Dr. C. I. Scofield

TV/TY withdrawal from pastoral work that I might

prepare for publication the Scofield Reference

Bible, made possible the larger pulpit ministry to

which many doors in the United States, England,

Scotland, the North of Ireland and Canada were

open. From that ministry this book is a selection.

Some sermons preached to my own people in Dallas,

Texas, and East Northfield, Massachusetts, are also

included.

I DO not know what day of what month of what year the prodigal said that, but I do know that for him it was the real New Year — the real beginning of life. The children of Israel sacrificed the Passover in Egypt on the fourteenth day of the month of Abib, but they were made to revise their whole chronology because of that event.

“This month shall be unto you the beginning of months:”

—Exodus 12:2

No man who is wrong with God is really living. In the deepest of all senses, he is like the corpse in the death ceremony of an ancient people, who dressed in costliest attire the body of a dead friend and carried it about to their houses, seating it at their tables before the finest feasts. The cheeks were painted to represent life and the most flattering compliments were paid to what, after all, was a mere dead body.

Let us consider together this good resolution of the boy in the old parable. It was for him the best of good resolutions, because it began with the most important fact in his life — the fact of his father. And the most important fact in the whole universe to each one of us is the fact of God. We are in God’s universe and we cannot get out of it. God made it, God sustains it, God rules it. It is all His. Every acre of ground, every blade of grass, every one of the cattle upon earth’s thousand hills, every spring of water, every bird, every fish, every molecule of air — all are His. He has never parted with His title to one of these things. We are all tenants by sufferance. We till God’s earth, breathe God’s air, sustain life upon His bounty. We are absolute paupers, from king to peasant. The next moment, the next breath are not ours.

Furthermore we all want to go to God’s heaven when we die. There is no other heaven. Money can neither buy nor make heaven. The world, for whose opinion we care so much, has no heaven. Satan has no heaven. The heavenly things which are available here and now — unselfishness, helpfulness, purity, high and noble thinking, clean living, love — these are all God’s. Think then of the folly of living on wrong terms with God. Think of the unspeakable unreason of supposing that anything in life can be really right, till we are right with God.

But who and what is God? Creation is an answer to that question. God is the Being who made this fair universe. He it is, who made this wonderful earth for man, and man for this wonderful earth.

He it is who adorned the heavens and sprinkled them with stars. He it is who painted the flowers. And it is He who made us capable of love and all the blessed relationships of life. That is one answer. The Bible is another. God is the God of the Scriptures. The Bible is the most human book in the world, because it reveals God at work in human lives, and at last reveals Him in the terms of a human life. What is God like? He is like Jesus.

“He that hath seen me hath seen the Father;” — John 14:9

And in all the Book of God there is no more alluring portrait of God than that painted by the Son of God in the parable of the prodigal son.

What is God like? Like this:

“But when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on his neck, and kissed him.” — Luke 15:20

“But the father said, to his servants, Bring forth the best robe, and put it on him; and put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet:

And bring hither the fatted calf, and kill it; and let us eat, and be merry:

For this my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.” — Luke 15:22-24

We are all prodigal sons. The son in the parable committed his worst sin when he wished to be independent of his father. When he said:

“Father, give me the portion of goods that falleth to me”

—Luke 15:12 his heart was already in the far country. The riotous living and the wasting of his substance were but details and mere incidental consequences. The Bible says that sin is anomia — lawlessness. When Isaiah says that

“We have turned every one to his own way;” — Isaiah 53:6

it does not seem like a very serious charge. But it is the sum of all iniquities. Self-will is the Pandora’s box out of which come all the evils of earth. We have treated God evilly. The meanness of sin is that it robs a loving God of the love and fellowship which are his due.

When David said of his greatest sin,

“Against thee, thee only, have I sinned,” — Psalms 51:4

we do not at once see the truth of his bitter words. First of all, we think that his sins were against the husband whom he had wronged and the wife whom he had degraded. But whose creatures were these? They were God’s; and every sin against a fellow man is tenfold more a sin against God.

This prodigal about whom we are thinking, doubtless did many a kindly act in the far country. It is the way of prodigals to be generous and to wish all men well. You and I have done that. We have had kindly thoughts and good intentions. We have wished other prodigals happy new years with all sincerity, and because of this, have thought well of ourselves.

On one of Mr. Moody’s western campaigns, he was followed from city to city by an aged and broken man of venerable appearance who, in each place, asked the privilege of saying a word to the great congregations. He would stand up and in a quavering voice say: “Is my son George in this place? George, are you here? O, George, if you are here, come to me. Your old father loves you, George, and can’t die content without seeing you again.” Then the old man would sit down. One night a young man came to Mr. Moody’s hotel and asked to see him. It was George. When the great evangelist asked him how he could find it in his heart to treat a loving father with such cruel neglect, the young man said: “I never thought of him; but Mr. Moody, I have tried to do all the good I could.” That is a good picture of a self-righteous prodigal in the far country. He was generous with his money and with his words — yet every moment of his infamous life he was trampling on the heart of a loving father.

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