A Door of Hope

“I will give her ... a door of hope.” — Hosea ii, 5.

THIS chapter is full of God’s wills. It is easy to enumerate between twenty and thirty. And as we read them over, we are lost in wonder at all that God is prepared to do for us, who wandered from Him, choosing our own willful ways. It is onlyanother illustration of the truth that God’s love is inexhaustible, and that He will not fail nor be discouraged till He has executed His purpose in each of those whom He has taken to be His own. It may be a long process delayed and checked by our repeated backslidings; but through all our wanderings and sins, He will pursue the purpose of His all-conquering love, till we are betrothed unto Him forever.

Let us imagine a narrow, rocky defile. A mountain torrent, rapid and muddy, hurries downward beside the path, strewn with rough slate and jagged stones, which climbs up to the head of the pass. On either side walls of rock rear themselves, steamy with moisture, and covered with festoons of hanging plants and ferns; above, a narrow chink of blue shows itself where the walls of rock almost meet; all is wild and lonely, and terrible. And there, with bleeding feet, clothed in scanty rags, a female figure crouches in brokenness of heart and desperate straits. Such is the valley of Achor, or Trouble; and that is Israel in the hour of her extreme distress. God has allured her from paths of vice and sin into the wilderness. Her way as been

74 H 2)oor of 1bope*

so hedged up that she could not find her paths. Corn and wine have failed; wool and flax have been withdrawn; ear-rings and jewels have been stripped off.

Yet, as she is on the point of abandoning herself to the uttermost abyss of despair, the air seems to quiver with angel-wings, and to thrill with the repeated declarations of the Divine purposes of grace. And beneath their impulse the sinner is heard to say, “I will go and return to my first husband; for then was it better with me than now.” Ah, blessed resolve! No sooner has it passed her lips than down the pass a fair form is seen approaching, in robes of dazzling beauty, which make day amid the gloom. It is the angel of Hope; and when she reaches the place where the penitent kneels, she touches with her wand the adjoining rock, and, lo! it swings backward, and opens a way straight into a smiling landscape of luxuriant beauty, where the corn waves, and the juice reddens in the clustered grapes. It is the door of hope in the valley of Achor, through which the penitent passes from the wilderness into the garden of Paradise, w7here the sun ever shines, and the breeze is heavy with perfume. Something like this happens still. At sometime or other we shall have to pass through the valley of Achor. The road to our home lies that way. A chariot of fire carries some beloved soul from our side, and we have taken alone a path which a little before we trod in blessed companionship. Or we are called upon to face opposition, slander, and misinterpretation on the* part of those whom we had counted friends. Or our schemes miscarry, our cherished hopes are blighted, and, we are driven back discomfited from some position which seemed to be within our easy reach. At such times we tread the valley of Achor, desolately and painfully.

We cannot forget the incidents which first gave its name to the valley of Achor, and which will throw light on one of the frequent causes of our coming thither. Flushed with their successful capture of Jericho, the tribes of Israel chose out a handful of their number to capture the little town of Ai, which stood at the top of the defile leading from the Jordan plain into the heart of the country. The work seemed altogether inconsiderable, and any great effort needless. Ah! how little they expected that ere the night fell that little band of warriors would be fleeing in hot haste down the pass, pursued almost to the -gates of the camp by the foe! — not because they were wanting in prowess, but because the forbidden thing was concealed in one of their tents, standing in apparent innocence amongst the rest, which “Zhz accursed tbtng,” 77

glistened as lign-aloes beside the rivers. There are troubles which God sends us directly from His Fatherly chastening hand; these are not so hard to bear, because, if with one hand He uses the scourge, with the other He binds and heals, and applies the leaves of the tree of life. There are other troubles which come to us from men, these, too are bearable, because we can turn to Him for vindication, and count on Him for sympathy and fellowship. But there are other troubles for which we are ourselves accountable, because we have taken of the forbidden thing, and have hidden it in our hearts, smoothing over the earth that it appears not to men. But all the time we are conscious of the guilty secret, and it is always naked and open to the eyes of Him with whom we have to do. These troubles are the hardest to bear; and there is no relief from them until we have discovered and dragged the accursed thing to light, and put it away, stoning it with stones, and burning it with fire. It may be that some who read these words will find here a photograph of themselves, of the inner reason why their lives have been so full of defeat and failure. They are met in every direction by shut gates. The way is hedged up by thorns. Angels with drawn swords stand in narrow ways, walled on either side, and forbid their further progress. Bitterly they refuse to be called “Naomi, “because the hand of the Lord seems to have gone out against them. The very ships in which they sail are doomed to go down with crew and freight because they have taken passage in them. Like Joshua, they rend their clothes, and fall on their faces before the Lord, and put dust on their heads. But as to him, so to them, the Lord says, “Get thee up; wherefore liest thou thus upon thy face?... There is an accursed thing in the midst of thee, O Isarel. Thou canst not stand before thine enemies, until ye take away the accursed thing from among you” (Josh. vii. 10-13).

Deliverance from the valley of Achor is impossible until a solemn convocation has been held in the heart, to which all the motives, and purposes and intentions of the inner life have been summoned. The lot must be solemnly cast. Is it the inner life or the outer? And if the inner, is it soul or spirit? And if the soul, is it the past, present, or future; retrospective or prospective; memory or hope? And if it be neither of these, but some permitted evil in the present, is it in the emotions or the will? Thus we winnow away one possible cause of failure after the other, until we are led by the Holy Spirit to discover, so to speak, “Achan, the son of Carmi, the son of Zabdi, the son of Zerah, of the tribe of Judah,” as the cause of all disaster and defeat. And when once he is indicated, we must show him no mercy. The cause of our defeat and failure must perish, that we may ourselves be saved. Maiming is, after all, not too dear a price to pay, if only we may enter into life.

And if we be too tender-hearted to deal strongly and vigorously with the Achan who has caused us defeat and loss, let us go to our merciful and faithful High Priest, who carries in His hand the sharp, two-edged sword, which pierces to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit; and let us implore Him to do for us what we cannot, or dare not, do for ourselves. He will not fail us in our extremity. He will do the work as tenderly and as thoroughly as the case requires. And when the work is done in the valley of Achor, there will be opened to us ua door of hope.”

Zbe was to IDictor.

I may here be permitted to quote from a letter which has come into my hands while writing this article: — “Last June I asked your advice about continuing an engagement with a young man who was not a Christian; and at that time I fully determined — I fear too much in my own strength — to give it up. But a short time ago, in a moment of weakness, it was again re-opened. Since that time I have experienced nothing but defeat and failure, until a few Sundays ago your sermon about Achan showed me plainly how wrong I was; and in God’s strength I gave over the whole of my life into His hands, after a sharp struggle. I am very happy now, fully trusting that this is not His will for me. Oh, if people would let God live through them, how much happier they would be!” In this case, in the valley of Achor, there has been opened “a door of hope.”

How often our great adversary tries to arrest us in doing some necessary deed of self-denial, by presenting to our view all the suffering and pain to which we shall be exposed if we dare to persevere! But he cannot, and will not, tell us, on the other hand, how much blessing will stream into our life, if we dare to be true to the promptings of the spirit of God. Only let us believe that in every valley of Achor there is a door of hope, if we will but dare to stone Achan to death. And when the cairn of stones beneath which he lies is reared in the valley, we shall ascend the long pass to victory. As sure as God is true, there is a way out of every trouble into assured and glorious victory, if only in the trouble we will do God’s will on Achan.

Time would fail to tell of all the advantages to which that door will lead. Some of them are enumerated here.

“She shall sing77 (15). There shall be a return of joy, which had fled from the heart. “Thou shalt call me Ishi” (16). There shall be a deeper knowledge of God, so that He shall be rather the Husband than the Master. “I will make a covenant” (18). There shall be realized a blessed unity with all creation. “I will hear77 (21). There shall be new power in prayer, and answers shall tread in each other’s footsteps, as they hasten into the soul.

Thus through trouble we shall pass into blessedness; through the grave into life; through the iron gate into freedom. And, at last, when we pass through the valley of the shadow of death — to so many a valley of Achor indeed — we shall find a door of hope suddenly opened even there, by which we shall pass into the radiant, dazzling light of our Father’s palace, and the land of perpetual day.