3. Supernatural Hope for Missions
The Missionary Problem
1. Scheme of Enterprise
Ask of Me, and I will give thee the nations for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession. (Psalm 2:8 rv)
The emphasis in this Psalm and all through the Bible is that missionary enterprise is God’s thought, not man’s. We do not know, apart from the Spirit of God, what God’s purpose is. The problems surrounding work in the mission field, and any branch of Christian work, are too big to be coped with by man’s intellect alone; yet the humblest saint in communion with God works out God’s answer to every problem, for the most part unconsciously to himself. To attempt to understand the problems that are pressing on the shores of Christian work to-day at home and abroad, apart from God, will result in an absolute bewilderment of mind and spirit. It must all come back to one point, a personal relationship to God in Christ Jesus. There is nothing simple in the human soul or in human life; only one thing is simple, and that is the relationship of the individual soul to God, “the simplicity that is in Christ.” In work for God it is not sufficient to be awake to the need, to be in earnest, to want to do something; it is necessary to prove from every standpoint, moral, intellectual and spiritual, that the only way to live is in personal relationship to God. It is the individual men and women living a life rooted and grounded in God,† who are fulfilling God’s purpose in the world.
The great Author and Originator of all missionary enterprise is God, and we must keep in touch with His line. The call to the missionary does not arise out of the discernment of his own mind, or from the sympathy of his own heart, but because behind the face of every distorted, downtrodden heathen, he sees the face of Jesus Christ, and hears His command—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations” (rv). The need of the heathen world can only be met by our Risen Lord Who has all power in heaven and in earth, and by our receiving from Him the enduement of power from on high. We have to see that we conserve the energy of regenerating grace planted in us by the Holy Ghost through the Atonement, then wherever we go, the rivers of living water will flow through our lives.
From the very beginning God’s work has seemed a forlorn hope, as if He were being worsted; and all the arguments seem to be in favour of working on other lines—the line of education, of healing, and of civilisation. These are the “birds” which come and lodge in the branches, and men are saying that the present manifestation of civilisation is the outcome of Christianity. “This,” they say, “is Christianity, this is the thing, these educational forces, these healing and civilising forces. This is what missions ought to be doing, not going off on the line of personal sanctification or of devotion to Jesus; we have grown out of all that. We must devote ourselves to the things we can see; we must educate and train these benighted races and introduce our wider, better views, and in that way the Kingdom of God will come in.” This is not God’s way. God will bring in His Kingdom in His own way. Jesus says that in this dispensation “the kingdom of God cometh not with observation. . . . Behold, the kingdom of God is within you.” All these forces of civilisation have been allowed to lodge in the branches of the spiritual tree of Christianity, whilst the Life that makes them possible is not recognised. They receive shelter from that which they are not themselves, and men’s eyes are blinded to the real issue. It is astounding how far away men will get when once they leave the humble stand of a life hid with Christ in God.
2. Spiritual Evangelisation
And the heathen shall know that I am the Lord, saith the Lord God, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. (Ezekiel 36:23)
The first purpose of missionary enterprise is evangelistic, and the evangel is that of personal sanctification. A missionary and a Christian ought to be one and the same, and a Christian is one who is united to his Lord by a living union of character. It is easy to rouse enthusiasm along medical, educational and industrial lines, on the ground that wherever Christianity is made known, social development follows. This is true, but all these things are secondary. The first aim of missionary enterprise is the spiritual evangelisation of the people, and the missionary must be united to Jesus Christ by the spiritual bond of sanctification before he can evangelise others. Wherever a Christian is placed, he must work out the sanctified life. We have to beware of the notion that spirituality is something divorced from contact with sordid realities. The one and only test of a spiritual life is in practical reality. When a missionary’s life is taken and placed down under the black night of heathenism, there is only one thing that can stand, and that is the sanctification wrought by God—a personal union with Jesus Christ, and the realisation that he is there for one purpose only, to make disciples of Jesus Christ.
If missionary enthusiasm is awakened without missionary knowledge being given, men go out totally unprepared to face the conditions in heathen lands, and every hour of the day they are faced with moral problems that shock every human sensibility. Unless the call of God has been heard, and the mind and nerves are prepared to face these things from God’s standpoint, the whole nature fails under the strain, and the result is, either that the missionary returns home broken, or that he sinks down into oblivion on the mission field itself. We have to call ourselves up short in reading missionary books that sweep us off our feet, and see if they tally with God’s purpose. It is extraordinary how few of them do. It is the needs of the heathen that are put first, the awfulness of the conditions that prevail in heathen lands. None of this constitutes the call for a missionary. The appeal is based on the command of our Lord—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations” (rv). Not—“Go because the conditions of the heathen will be improved”; they will be, but the great motive of the missionary is the command of Jesus Christ for spiritual evangelisation. We have to guard our motive in work for God as jealously as we would guard anything that God actually put into our hand. It needs more courage to face God with our motive in work for Him than it does to face an audience with our message. We have continually to face our own personal sanctification and our motive for service, with the Lord Himself, to let His searchlight come, and to see that we remain true to Him. We are not sent to develop the races, we are sent to preach the gospel to every creature because Our Lord has commanded it, and for no other reason. God’s purpose is at the back of the whole thing, and His purpose is revealed by His Spirit to sanctified souls only.
To-day people are trying to better Jesus Christ’s programme, and are saying that they must first of all look after men’s bodies, heal them and teach them, and then evangelise them. This reminds one of the legend which says that the birds decided that whichever of them could fly the highest, should be their king; whereupon the wren perched on the back of the eagle, and when the eagle soared up into the sky, the little wren flew up higher still. Many modern books on missionary enterprise are like the wren on the back of the eagle, they think they can go one better than Jesus Christ, “His teaching was all very well for the beginning stages, but now we can go one better.”
Missionary enterprise on the line of education, and healing, and social amelioration is magnificent, but it is secondary, and the danger is to give it the first place. The temptation is more subtle to-day than ever it has been, because the countries of the world are being opened up as never before. It sounds so plausible and right to say—Heal the people, teach them, put them in better surroundings, and then evangelise them; but it is fundamentally wrong. The cry “Civilise first, and then evangelise” has honeycombed itself into missionary work in every land; and it takes the Spirit of God to show where it is in direct opposition to God’s line. It is putting men’s needs first, and that is the very heart and kernel of the temptation Satan brought to Our Lord. Our Lord’s first obedience was not to the needs of men, but to the will of His Father. We must beware of putting anything first that Jesus does not put first. The testimony of missionaries over and over again is to the effect that when once evangelistic work is put in the second place, it is the devil who gets his way, not God. Dr. Moffatt said that civilisation drives away the tiger, but breeds the fox. That was the statement of a man after years of work in the mission field, and with ample opportunity of estimating all the forces at work. The introduction of civilisation, without the emphasis on living the life hid with Christ in God, tends to increase the power of evil because it covers it with a veil of refinement.
“The heathen shall know that I am the Lord . . . when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes.” The only reason for a Christian to go out to the mission field is that his own life is hid with Christ in God, and the compulsion of the providence of God outside, working with the imperative call of His Spirit inside, has wedded itself to the command of Jesus—“Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the nations” (rv). The awakening force spiritually will not come from the civilisation of the West, but from the lives of the lonely, obscure missionaries who have stood true to God, and through whom the rivers of living water have flowed.
3. Supernatural Hope for Missions
Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls. (Jeremiah 6:16)
In looking back over centuries of missionary work, the tendency is to say—“This is where that effort failed, and this is where the other failed”; but the real reason for the failure is missed, viz., that God’s ideal had been abandoned. If you talk about the need for personal sanctification to an aggressive Christian worker, he will say—“You are a dreamer of dreams, we have to get to work and do something”; whereas it is not a question of doing things, but a question of realising deep down until there is no shadow of doubt about it, that if we are going to do anything, it must be by the supernatural power of God, not by our own ingenuity and wisdom. Holiness people are not unpractical, they are the only ones who are building on the great underlying ideal of God. Our business as workers for God is to find out what God’s ideal is, to ask ourselves on what line we are doing our duty; whether we are progressing along the line of God’s ideal, and working that out, or being caught up in the drift of modern views and evolving away from God’s ideal. The Sermon on the Mount is the perpetual standard of measurement for those at work for God, and yet the statements of Jesus Christ are continually being watered down, and even contradicted by many to-day. There is not the slightest use in going to the foreign field to work for God if we are not true to His ideal at home. We should be a disgrace to Him there.
How many of us really live up to all the light we have? If we examine ourselves before God, we will find that we dare not go one step beyond our own crowd, no matter what the Lord says. If we get any new light on God’s word, or on His will for our lives, we take on the cringe of the coward—“I wonder if the others have seen that”; or, “Oh well, if they do not do it, I must not.” Very few of us walk up to the light we get unless someone else will go with us. For instance, if we notice how often Jesus Christ talks about being persecuted and cast out for His Name’s sake, we shall soon see how far we have fallen away from His ideal. Even the most spiritual among us have little of the genius of the Holy Ghost in our lives. We accept the ordinary common-sense ways of doing things without ever examining them in the light of God. When we do begin to re-relate our lives in accordance with God’s ideal, we shall encounter the scorn, or the amazement, or the ridicule, or pity of the crowd we belong to. There are books and teachers that tell us that when God is at work in our lives, it will be manifested in ostensible ways of blessing. Jesus says that the ostensible way in which it will work out is the way of ridicule. “As He is, so are we in this world.” What we are insisting on is a right relationship to God first, and then the carrying out of work along God’s line. Whether our work is a success or a failure has nothing to do with us. Our call is not to successful service, but to faithfulness. Our Lord demands of us a personal watchful relationship to Himself, and the doing of the duty that lies nearest from that standpoint; and whether men recognise it or not, it will tell for eternity whether we are in the home or the foreign field. It depends on our standpoint which line we emphasise. A personal relationship to Jesus Christ first, then from that basis, as much practical work as possible. Unless the missionary is based on a right relationship to God, he will fizzle out in the passing of the years and become a negligible quantity from God’s standpoint. The men and women who stand absolutely true to God’s ideal are the ones who are telling for God. God has staked His honour on the work of Jesus Christ in the souls of those whom He has saved, and sanctified, and sent.