p. 194 | THEY SHALL FIND HIM by Wm. M. Taylor

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · March 25, 1880

FromThe Review and Herald, Vol. 55, No. 13

THEY SHALL FIND HIM.

By Wm. M. Taylor

“But if from thence thou shalt seek the Lord thy God, thou shalt find him, if thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” Deut. 4:29.

“They shall find” Jehovah. To many this promise would read very like a threatening, inasmuch as they know that they have sinned against God, and their guilty consciences associate him with vengeance. But when it is said that the contrite souls shall find God, the meaning is not that he will reveal himself to them in their punishment, but rather that he will make himself known to them as he would have done had they never wandered away from him. They shall find the God whom they had lost, and they shall find him toward them precisely as he was before they lost him.

We can never have a better illustration of what this promise implies than in the beautiful and touching parable of the prodigal son. How did the prodigal find his father? Did the father hunt him off his grounds when he saw him coming near? Did he bolt the door of his mansion against his entrance? Did he order him off to seek an abode for himself elsewhere? Or, admitting him to his house, did he taunt him with his ingratitude, and tell him that he didn't know “when he was well off,” or that he “reckoned he had made a very fine thing of it,” or that some people were all the better for getting a draft of their own brewing, or the like? Not at all. That would only have made his father's house more intolerable to him than the swineherd's quarters that he had left, and driven him away again with a rooted aversion to his parent. But as it was, that one passionate embrace, and those warm tears that dropped so profusely on his neck, revealed to him that his father was his father still, and that whatever else had been changed, the loving heart still beat in tenderest affection toward him. No words of recrimination were uttered. No reference to the past was made. And so the idea of being a servant where he had formerly been a son, was utterly abandoned by the youth, as he sobbed out his penitential words, “Father, I have sinned against Heaven, and in thy sight, and am no more worthy to be called thy son.”

Now, it is not otherwise with our Father in Heaven; and when he promises that the penitent shall find him, he means that he will receive him with open arms, and “kiss the past into forgetfulness.” The returning one shall find God as a God of forgiveness, saying unto him, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins;” and as he makes this discovery the penitent shall sing, “Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever, because he delighteth in mercy.”

The qualification annexed to the promise is, “If thou seek him with all thy heart and with all thy soul.” Now, what is it to seek God? We need not look for him in outward forms or ceremonies of worship. The search we make for him must be spiritual, and it must be made in the way which he has himself commanded. We must seek God thus, by coming in faith to Jesus Christ. We must give up everything else to which the heart or soul clings as the ground of its hope, or the source of its delight. Christ will have the whole heart, or he will accept none of it. So we must not think to divide the honor of our salvation between him and any good work of our own, or to divide the empire of our heart between him and any darling lust or favorite sin. We must give up everything for him, and be willing that he should be our only Saviour and our only sovereign. There must be no half-heartedness, no Ananias and Sapphira-like keeping back a part of that which we have professed to give, no mental reservation, no bartering “buts,” like that of him who said, “Lord, I will follow thee, but;” nothing but an unqualified submission of the soul to be saved on God's terms and in God's way. This is seeking God with all the heart and with all the soul.

Now, friends, what have you to say to all this? I am aware that this is humbling doctrine to human pride, but it is divine doctrine, and humbling as it is, is it not better to be saved in God's way, than not to be saved at all? The Pharisee must strip off his self-righteousness, and be content to be saved, not for his tithes, and his prayers, and his phylacteries, but as a sinner, by the grace of God. The formalist must lay aside the garments of his outer worship, and be content to be saved, not for his church attendance, or his church membership, or his gift in prayer, but as a sinner, by the grace of God. The man of intellect must renounce his pride of reason, and be content to be saved, not for his genius, or his mental abilities, or his literary productions, or his artistic skill, but as a sinner, by the grace of God. And equally the sinner must renounce all sin. There must be nothing to dispute the supremacy of the soul and heart with Jesus. Everything that comes into antagonism to him must be given up. The seeking heart must be a single heart, and the penitent must come in the spirit of the psalmist when he cried, “Unite my heart to fear thy name.”

You may ask on what grounds you are warranted to believe that the promise of God will be kept to you. As Abraham said after God had promised to give him the land of Canaan, so you may say regarding this promise, “Whereby shall I know that I shall inherit it?” And in answer I have to remind you that this is God's promise. What better security would you have than that? The word of man, especially when given in writing, and in the shape of a solemn promise, is commonly relied on by us; and if I am going on a journey, I shall carry with me a letter of credit, signed, it may be, by one whom I have never seen, yet counted so secure by me that I take no thought concerning it, and rely that I shall have my money in foreign cities just as I may need it. Can I trust a fellow-man thus, and shall I place no reliance on the promise of my God? Down unbelief! When Jehovah promises, then to disbelieve is to make him a liar, and shall I incur a guilt like that? Nay; rather let me take him at his word, and so set to my seal that God is true.

But we have something more than the word of God to rest on here, for he has made this promise over sacrifice. Is it to be imagined that the covenant of mercy, confirmed and sealed by the blood of his own Son, can be in any degree broken? Nay; the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but this covenant of peace shall never be removed, and no one who seeks the Lord with all his heart and all his soul, shall seek him in vain.—Condensed from a sermon by Wm. M. Taylor, D. D.