Read Ebook: Sermons on Biblical Characters by Chappell Clovis Gillham

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Now it was dark enough for these two. But they did not lose heart. First they prayed. I can imagine they prayed secretly and then they prayed aloud. And those people in prison heard the voice of prayer for possibly the first time in their lives. Now, real prayer always makes things different. It brings us a consciousness of God. And so as these men prayed their hearts grew warm and joyous till by and by prayer gives place to praise and they begin to sing.

I have wondered what these people sang that night. It might have been the Twenty-third Psalm. Or they might have sung, "I will bless the Lord at all times. His praise shall continually be in my mouth. My soul shall make her boast in the Lord. The humble shall hear thereof and be glad." Or the Thirty-seventh Psalm would have sounded well in the darkness of that hideous dungeon,--"Fret not thyself because of evil doers, neither be thou envious against the workers of iniquity. For they shall soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb." But I think the most likely of all is the Forty-sixth: "God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. Therefore will we not fear though the earth be removed and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea."

Whatever they sang it was great singing. I think the angels opened the windows when they heard it. I think it made the very heart of our Lord glad. What a surprise it was to those in that gloomy old prison. They had heard the walls ring with groans and shrieks. They had heard bitter oaths in the night, but songs with the lilt of an irrepressible joy in them--they had never heard anything like that before.

Now as the melody rang through the gloomy cells something else happened. The old building seemed to be shaking with the very power of the music. An earthquake was on and God took this petty prison in His hand and shook it as a dicer might shake his dice box, and all its doors were thrown open and the fetters were shaken from the feet of those that were bound. And the old jailer is shaken out of his complacency and out of his bed and a great terror grips him.

I can see him as he picks himself up and looks about him in dismay. The doors are open. He is sure that the prisoners are gone. He knows that his life will be to pay. He will not face the shame of it. He will inflict justice upon himself. He draws his sword and prepares to thrust it through him, but Paul's eyes were upon him, and knowing his purpose he shouts at him, "We are all here, Jailer. Do thyself no harm."

There is love in that cry, tenderness in it, longing in it that the jailer could not understand. Neither could he fail to realize the might of it. It touches him deeply. He is gripped by another terror, the terror that has come through the presence of these strange men who have brought the things of eternity to seem real to him. And urged on by that new terror he rushes to these men of bleeding backs and tattered garments and throws himself at their feet with this great question in his heart and upon his lips, "Sirs, what must I to do be saved?"

Now, I am aware of the fact that this jailer was a heathen and I am not accusing him at all of being a great theologian. I do not know how learned he was. I do not know whether he could read or write or not. I do not know whether he was widely traveled or not. He may have never been beyond the precincts of his own city. But what I do know is this, that he asked the biggest question that ever fell from human lips. There can be no greater. It was the greatest for him. It is the greatest for you. It is the greatest for me. "What must I do to be saved?" There is no question quite so big as that.

And I am wondering now if it is a big question to you. Remember, it is not: What must I do to be decent? It is not: What must I do to be respectable? These things are all right, but they are not supreme. It is not: What must I do to get rich? Millions of us are asking that question as if it were the one question of eternal importance. But you know that it is not. It is not: What must I do to be beautiful? Some of us are asking that question too, and some of us, I am sorry to say, are missing the answer to it very much. But that is not the big question. The supreme question is: "What must I do to be saved?"

What is implied in this question when it is asked intelligently? There is implied first of all that there is an absolute difference between being saved and lost. There is implied in it that there are two classes of people, not the cultured and the uncultured, not the learned and the unlearned. They are the saved and the lost. They are those that have life and those that do not have life.

I am perfectly aware that we of to-day do not like such dogmatic divisions. But I call your attention to the fact that they are the divisions that are made in the New Testament. They are the divisions that Jesus made. He puts folks into two classes, and only two. There were two gates, one was broad and the other narrow. There were two foundations on which a man might build, one was of sand and the other of rock. Mark you, He did not divide men into the perfect and the imperfect, but into those that had life and those that did not have it. And it was He that said, "He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son hath not life." So this question, if it means anything, means that there is such a thing as being saved and there is such a thing as being lost. That fact is recognized throughout the entire Bible.

This question implies, in the second place, a consciousness of being lost. "What must I do to be saved?" When this man asked that question there were many things about which he was uncertain. He was uncertain as to how he was to get out of his darkness. He was uncertain as to how he was to be saved, but of one thing he was sure--he was dead sure that he was lost. He did not try to dodge that fact. He did not shut his eyes to it. He did not try in any way to deny it.

And, if you are here without God I hope you will not deny it. For if you have not taken Jesus Christ as your personal Savior you are lost. Then the best thing you can do, the first step to be taken in the direction of getting saved, is to realize your lostness. A man will not send for the physician unless he believes himself sick. He will not try to learn unless he realizes his ignorance. Neither will he turn to God for salvation unless he realizes that he is lost. Oh, it is a good day for a man when he gets a square look at himself. It is a great day when he has a glimpse of himself as God sees him. It is a great hour when, conscious of his guilt, he bows himself in the presence of Him who alone can save and says, "God, be merciful unto me a sinner."

This question implies, in the third place, not only that the man is lost who asked it, but that there is a possibility of his being saved. "What must I do to be saved?"--and here was a man conscious of being lost, conscious of being sin scarred and stained and guilty, yet he believes, and he is right in believing, that salvation is possible for him. He believes that even he can be saved unto the uttermost. There is such a thing as salvation and it is possible for me, even me, to lay hold of it.

And you too must realize that, otherwise it will do you no good to realize the fact that you are a sinner. It is not enough to know yourself lost. You must also believe that you may be saved. It is not enough to realize that you are weak: you must believe that is possible for you to be strong. You must believe that even a fluctuating Simon can be made into a rock. You must believe in the power of God to remake men, otherwise for you the question is only a question of black despair.

This question implies, in the fourth place, a willingness to be saved. "What must I do to be saved?" This man is not asking this question to gather material for a future argument. He is no speculator. He is no trifler. He is not even asking it because he is intellectually curious. He is not simply asking that he may know the conditions of salvation. He is asking with the earnest purpose in his heart to meet those conditions.

This question implies, in the fifth place, that while salvation is a possibility for you, you must do something in order to obtain it. "What must I do to be saved?" What sort of an answer would you expect to a question like that? What did the apostle say? Did he say, "Do nothing. Let the matter alone. Forget it. Drift?" That is what many of us are doing. No, sir, he said nothing of the kind. He told this man to do something. And this man knew, as you and I know, that if we are ever saved we have got to do something in order to get saved.

I say every one of us knows that, and yet too few of us act as if it were really true. We seem to think that salvation is something that we are going to stumble upon by accident. We seem to think it is something that we are going to receive with absolutely no effort on our own part. We act as if we thought it might be slipped into our pockets while we sleep or dropped into our coffins when we die. Ask the question intelligently, heart,--"What must I do to be saved?" Then you will realize that you must do something.

This question implies, in the first place, that the conditions of salvation are not optional, that it is not up to you and it is not up to me to decide just what we will do in order to be saved. You can accept salvation or you can refuse it. You can meet the conditions or you can refuse to meet them. But one thing you cannot do. You cannot decide upon the terms upon which you will surrender. If you are saved at all you must surrender unconditionally.

"What must I do to be saved?" You must do something, but there are many things that we are doing that will not save us. If you expect to be saved, in the first place, do not depend on your own goodness. "All your righteousnesses are but as filthy rags." Do not count on your own decency. No man was ever saved that way. I challenge you to find one single one. I was holding a meeting some years ago and I met a young fellow who told me he was good enough without Jesus Christ. Of course he was not saved. A man who says that virtually tells Christ that He has misunderstood his case altogether and that Calvary was a wasted tragedy so far as he himself is personally concerned.

Neither will you be saved trusting in the other man's badness. I know what some of you are saying to yourselves as I preach. You are telling yourselves one of the oldest lies that was ever told. You are saying, "I would be a Christian but there are so many hypocrites in the Church." How many men give that as a reason, but it is no man's reason. And I never knew one man to be saved by it. Believe me, the shortcomings and the sins of my brother are mighty poor things to depend on for my own personal salvation.

Again, you will not be saved by seeking an easy way. You will never win by catering to your own pride and cowardice. I was conducting a revival in a Texas city some years ago. At the close of one of the services a young lady came forward to shake hands with the preacher. As she did so she said, "I am going to become a Christian." I congratulated her upon her decision, but she answered, "Oh, I do not mean right now. I mean I am going to be very soon."

"You see," she continued, "it is like this: I am going in a few days to visit some of my relatives that live way back in the country. There is going to be a revival nearby. It will be easy for me to make the decision there because nobody knows me. But here it is different. Everybody knows me here and I simply haven't the courage to come out and take an open stand for Jesus Christ." She went into the country as she planned but she was not saved. Of course not. Nobody ever found salvation by catering to his own cowardice and pride and seeking an easy way.

"What must I do to be saved?" There is an answer to this question. It is an answer that is absolutely dependable. There is nothing in all the world of which I am more sure than I am of the correctness of the answer to this question. I am as sure of it as I am of my own existence. I am as sure of it as I am of the fact of God.

I wonder if you are interested to know the answer. Remember that it is the answer to your supreme question. It is the answer to the most important question that was ever asked. It is the most important that you will ever be called to act upon in this world. Does the prospect of an answer quicken your heartbeat? Does it shake you out of your lethargy into intensest interest? It ought to if it does not. For the answer that I give is not the answer of a mere speculator or dreamer. It is the answer of inspiration and it is an answer whose truth has been tested by the personal experience of countless millions. "What must I do to be saved?" Answer: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved."

What is it to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ? It is to believe that Jesus Christ can do what He claims to do and what He has promised to do and to depend on Him to do it. Mr. Moody tells us how that he was in his cellar one day when he looked up and saw his little girl making an effort to see him. She could not because it was dark in the cellar. "Jump," said Mr. Moody, "Daddy will catch you." And instantly the little girl jumped. Now, that was faith. That was believing on her father. So the jailer believed on the Lord Jesus Christ. He depended upon Him then and there for salvation.

And what happened? He was saved. That very moment Christ came into the man's heart and he became a new creation. He became possessed of a new joy. He became possessed of a new tenderness.

Did you notice what he did? He took water and washed the stripes of the preachers. Paul and Silas were bleeding when they came to the prison but the jailer did not care. But now that he had found Christ he has already begun to be a partaker of the divine nature. A new love has come to him. He has become tender where he was cruel before. Even so does the power of Jesus Christ make men over.

Now, this question: do you want to be saved? If you do you can be. It's the surest thing in all the world. It is as sure as the fact that night follows day. It is more sure than the fact that if you sow wheat you will reap it, that if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ you shall be saved. Test the matter now and you will know the blessed fact in your own experience.

THE MOTHER-IN-LAW--NAOMI

It is thoroughly refreshing to come upon this exquisite bit of literature called "Ruth." It follows, as you know, immediately after the bloodstained stories we read in Judges. It shows that while there was war and confusion and hate there was also friendship and love and romance. It is a bit of exquisite beauty elbowed on either side by ugliness. This delightful story comes to us like a glad surprise. It is like finding a spring bubbling up in the desert. It is like plucking roses amidst ice bergs. It is like finding a violet in the very crater of a volcano.

I hope you have read the Book of Ruth and are familiar with it. If you haven't you have slighted one of the sweetest and tenderest stories ever told. If you haven't you have neglected about the most delicate and winsome idyl to be found in ancient or modern literature. I have read some good literature, first and last. I have read poetry that lifted the heart and "set the soul to dreaming." I have read prose strong as granite and songful as a mountain brook. But I confess to you, if I wanted to find a finer piece of literature than the book of Ruth, I would be at a great loss to know where to search.

The author sets you down at once amidst strange scenery. And the characters, while genuinely human, are also full of the witchery of romance and poetry.

Here is the story. The rains have failed in the Bethlehem country and the harvests have been exceedingly meager. A certain little family composed of husband, wife and two children, is having a hard fight to keep the wolf from the door. Elimelech, the husband, can find no work and Naomi, the wife and mother, "kneads hunger in an empty bread tray," and goes through the daily torture of being asked for bread that she is not able to supply.

Then one dark day the husband comes home utterly discouraged. He takes up the discussion where it was left off the day before. "Yes," he says, "there is nothing else to do. There is no bread in the land. There has been rain in Moab. We can go there. I do not know how they will receive us, but at any rate, they can only kill us and that is better than starvation."

And Naomi's sad face becomes a shade sadder and she says, "The will of the Lord be done. But I had so hoped that we might be able to remain in the land of our fathers. You see, my dear, it is not of myself that I am thinking. We have two boys. We do not want to rear them in Moab. Moab, I know, is not far off physically, but it is a long way morally. If we go there we may lose our children. The time may even come when they will break the law of Moses and marry among the Moabites."

But the boys were playing with the children of the Moabites. Of course they were. All children are alike. They know no barriers of kindred, of class or of religion. A child is the true democrat. Sad to say, we soon train him out of this. But he is a thorough democrat by nature. He plays as gladly with the son of a scrub woman as with the son of a queen. He lavishes his love as freely upon a pickaninny as upon a prince. So these Jewish boys were playing with the heathen children.

Then a few years went by and the pious father and mother came to realize with horror that their two boys were actually in love with two Moabitish girls. Not only did they love them, but they even wanted to marry them. This was a calamity indeed. I can hear the protests of the father and mother. They warn them of the danger of such marriages. They plead the law of Moses. But all in vain. And we are not surprised. You might as well get in front of Niagara Falls and say "Boo!" and expect it to flow back the other way, as to try to reason with the average young fellow who is in love. Both boys married Moabitish women.

And then what did this wise and godly father and mother do? They did not do what is so usual in cases of an unwelcome marriage. Our boy or our girl makes what seems to us a foolish and ruinous marriage. Then what do we do? We declare that we will never speak to them again, that they shall never darken our doors. And we thereby help on a disaster that might never have come. Naomi and her husband had better sense. They took the wives of their two sons, heathens though they were, into their home and into their hearts. They felt sure that that was the one way that promised a remedy.

Then one day disaster came to the little home of the strangers. The husband and father died, and Naomi was left with the whole responsibility of the family upon her lone shoulders. Her daughters-in-law had seen her in her joy. They marked her also in her sorrow. They were impressed, no doubt, by her calmness and her strength. She walked with the sure and quiet step of one who felt underneath her and round about her the Everlasting Arm.

Then the final disaster came. Both the boys died. Naomi was not only a widow, but she was childless. There were now no bonds that held her longer from the land of her fathers. She decides, therefore, to return. Her two daughters-in-law are to accompany her as far as the border of Moab. There they are to bid her farewell and then go each her own way. They make the journey, these three women, to the borders of Moab. Here Orpah tells Naomi good-bye. She parts from her with real grief and regret, for she loves her genuinely. I think I can hear her sobbing as she takes her lone way back to her own people.

Then it is Ruth's time to say good-bye. I see her as she flings her arms about the neck of Naomi and there she clings. "There, there," says the older woman, "you must be gone now. Your sister is going. She will turn the bend of the road in a minute. Go after her and God grant that you may find rest each in the house of her husband."

But Ruth clings only the tighter. And then she makes a confession. It is a confession of love. And nothing finer in point of tenderness and beauty was ever uttered by human lips. I hope you are not too old to thrill over a love story. John Ridd's devotion to Lorna Doone still stirs my heart. And there is the confession of a heroine in another story that we can never forget. "Tell him I never nursed a thought that was not his; that daily and nightly on his wandering way pour a woman's tears. Tell him that even now I'd rather work for him, beg with him, walk by his side as an outcast, live on the light of one kind smile from him, than wear the crown that Bourbon lost."

That is a beautiful confession. It is made by a woman to a man. But this was made by a woman to a woman. And strangest of all, it was made by a daughter-in-law to a mother-in-law. Ruth has this distinction, if none other, that she loved her mother-in-law. Her mother-in-law, mind you, that creature who has been the butt of evil jokes in all languages; the one who has proved the dynamite for the wrecking of not a few homes. This confession is the confession of a daughter-in-law to a mother-in-law.

It is the confession of youth to age. It is spring-time clinging to winter. It is June flinging its arms in a passionate tenderness around the neck of November. "It is time you were going," said Naomi. And Ruth's arms clung all the closer and this exquisite bit of poetry fell from her lips, "Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people and thy God my God: where thou diest, will I die, and there will I be buried: the Lord do so to me, and more also, if aught but death part thee and me."

You cannot beat that. No confession of love has ever surpassed it. But it is more than a confession of love. It is also a confession of faith. It is the declaration of a strong woman's choice. As Ruth clings to the woman she loves she announces her decision, a decision to which she remained true through all the future years. "Thy people shall be my people and thy God my God."

And the people of the little village of Bethlehem had something interesting to talk about a few days later. Two strange women had come their way, women who were poverty-stricken and homeless. One of them was a Jewess. The other was a Gentile. Neither of them was welcome. Naomi had lost her place in the life of the community. Ruth, the Moabitess had never had any place.

The days that immediately followed their arrival were sad and bitter days. But the younger woman, with a fine courage, refuses to be a burden. Instead, she will be the support of the mother of her dead husband. So she takes upon herself the menial task of a gleaner. It is harvest time and she goes out into the fields to glean.

Now, it happens in the good providence of God, that the field in which she went to glean belonged to a very rich and prosperous man named Boaz. And to that very field where Ruth was gleaning Boaz came that day. He was a young, vigorous, and positive man. He was accustomed to command. There was a dignity about him that made him seem older than his years. Everybody respected him. He was just and generous and religious.

No sooner was he among the workers than his attention was attracted by the winsome young stranger from Moab. I do not know why he should notice her at once, but I have a fancy that Ruth was attractive, that she had personality and charm. I feel confident that she had that superior beauty that is born of superior character. Anyway, the great landlord saw her and was interested. And he spoke kindly to her, and when Ruth got home that evening she had an interesting story to tell.

Who is the heroine of this exquisite story? I know that first place is given to Ruth. And I am in no sense disposed to try to put her in an inferior position. She cannot be honored too highly. She is so absolutely lovable. But I am going to give first place to Naomi. I do not do this because she is more winsome than Ruth. I do it because she accounts for Ruth. If it had not have been for Naomi, Ruth would have lived and died a heathen in the land of Moab.

Now, what are some of the lessons that we learn from the beautiful life of this ancient woman, Naomi? Were we privileged to sit down beside her in the Father's house to-day, she could teach us many wonderful lessons. But one truth she would impress upon us would be this: that life's greatest losses may, through the grace of God, become its richest gains. She would tell you then of the black despair of those days when she was being driven from her home by the cruel hand of poverty. She would not hesitate to say that it was very difficult for her to keep up faith in God in those dark days. "But the Lord was sending me then to find Ruth. You know He had to have her. The world could not keep house without her at all. Yet I would never have found her but for my terrible poverty."

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