It is the touching record of the inspired historian in narrating Abraham’s heaviest trial—“After these things, God did tempt Abraham.” After what things? After a season of rich blessings, gilding a future with bright hopes!
Would that, amidst our happy homes, and sunshine hours, and seasons of holy and joyous intercourse between friend and friend, we would more habitually bear in mind “This is not to last!” In one brief and unsuspected moment Lazarus may be taken. The messenger may now be on the wing to lay low some treasured object of earthly solicitude and love. God would teach us—while we are glad of our gourds—not to be “exceeding glad;” not to nestle here as if we were to “live alway,” but rather, as we are perched on our summer boughs, to be ready at His bidding to soar away, and leave behind us what most we prize.
It tells us, too, the utter mysteriousness of many of the divine dispensations.
“Lazarus is dead!” What! He, the head, and support, and stay of two helpless females? The joy and solace of a common orphanhood,—a brother evidently made and born for their adversities? What! Lazarus, whom Jesus tenderly loved? How much, even to his Lord, will be buried in that early grave! We may well expect, if there be one homestead in all Palestine guarded by the overshadowing wings of angels to debar the entrance of death, whose inmates may pillow their heads night after night in the confident assurance of immunity from trial, it must surely be that loved resort—that “Arbour in His Hill Difficulty,” where the God-man delighted oft to pause and refresh His wearied body and aching mind. Will Omnipotence not have set its mark, as of old, on the door-posts and lintels of that consecrated dwelling, so that the destroyer, in going his rounds elsewhere, may pass by it unscathed? How, too, can the infant Church spare him? The aged Simeon or Anna we dare not wish to detain. Burdened with years and infirmities, after having got a glimpse of their Lord and Saviour, let them depart in peace, and receive their crowns. These decayed trees in the forest—those to whom old age on earth is a burden—let them bow to the axe, and be transplanted to a nobler clime. But one in the vigour of life—one so beautifully combining natural amiability with Christian love—one who was pre-eminently the friend of Jesus, and that word profoundly suggestive of all that was lovely in a disciple’s character. Death may visit other homes in that sequestered village, and spread desolation in other hearts, but surely the Church’s Lord will not suffer one of its pillars so prematurely to fall!
And yet it is even so! The mysterious summons has come!—the most honoured home on earth has been rudely rifled!—the most loving of hearts have been cruelly torn; and inscrutable is the dealing, for “Lazarus is dead!”
“He, the young and strong, who cherish’d
Noble longings for the strife,
By the roadside fell, and perish’d
On the threshold march of life.”
And worse, too, than all, “the Lord is absent.” Why is Omniscience tarrying elsewhere, when His presence and power are above all needed at the house of His friend?
The disconsolate sisters, in wondering amazement, repeat over and over again the exclamation, “If Jesus had been here, this our brother had not died!” “Hath He forgotten to be gracious?” “Surely our way is hid from the Lord, our judgment is passed over from our God.”
Ah! the experience of His people is often still the same. What are many of God’s dispensations?—a baffling enigma—all strangeness—all mystery to the eye of sense. Useless lives prolonged, useful ones taken! The honoured minister of God struck down, the unfaithful watchman spared! The philanthropic and benevolent have an arrest put on their manifold deeds of kindness and generosity; the grasping, the avaricious, the mean-souled—those who neither fear God nor do good to man, are suffered to live on from day to day! What is it but the picture here presented eighteen hundred years ago—Judas spared to be a traitor to his Lord, while—Lazarus is dead!
But let us be still! The Saviour, indeed, does not now lead us forth, amid the scene of our trial, as He did the bereft sisters, to unravel the mysteries of His providence, and to shew glory to God, redounding from the darkest of His dispensations. To us the grand sequel is reserved for eternity. The grand development of the divine plan will not be fully accomplished till then; faith must meanwhile rest satisfied with what is baffling to sight and sense. This whole narrative is designed to teach the lesson that there is an undeveloped future in all God’s dealings. There is an unseen “why and wherefore” which cannot be answered here. Our befitting attitude and language now is that of simple confidingness—“Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right?”—Listening to one of these Bethany sayings (we shall by and by consider), whose meaning will be interpreted in a brighter world by Him who uttered it in the days of His flesh—“Said I not unto thee, that if thou wouldest believe thou shouldest see the glory of God?”