Men and women of Faith
“Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown"
When we walk with the Lord
In the light of His word,
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will,
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.
Not a shadow can rise, not a cloud in the skies,
But his smile quickly drives it away.
Not a doubt, not a fear, not a sigh, not a tear,
Can abide while we trust and obey.
Trust and obey, for there's no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
Men and women of faith are characterized by the path that they choose in life. And that path is governed by their adherence to the will and the word of God, as it's revealed to them by God.
Now we live in a nation which over the last hundred years or so has rapidly departed from the God of the Bible. The latest example is just this last week from the Church of England where the clergy in Birmingham were advised to be careful not to give offence by singing Christmas carols that draw attention to the fact that Jesus is the true Messiah.
So that's the state of the nation today. They're throwing out Christianity. They don't want it. I want to remind us today that it wasn't always so. There was a time when there was some truth in the notion that we live in a Christian country. Where our government and those in high place, including our royal family and the majority of the population in general, at least paid lip service to the absolute truth of the Bible, even if all of them didn't sincerely believe in the Bible and the God of the Bible.
And I was reading just this morning before I came out, a blog post by a writer called Dr. Campbell Campbell-Jack—a Scottish, he's an ex Church of Scotland minister I think or a Free Church minister. (He lives in Stirling)—but he was writing and saying that people today are dangerously ignorant about their own heritage. And he said:
“just as a fish cannot see the water in which it swims, so westerners cannot see and value their Christian heritage and its benefits.”
I thought that was very good.
King George the sixth, the father of the late Queen Elizabeth the second, made his first Christmas broadcast to the nation on the 25th of December 1939, just four months after the outbreak of the second world war. And at the end of his address to the nation, he read part of a poem by a lady called Minnie Louise Haskins. He read the preamble to that poem and it goes like this:
And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year
Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown
And he replied go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.
And King George stopped there, (there's more, I'm going to read the rest of the poem later.) But he added these words, he said:
“May that Almighty hand guide and uphold us all”.
He was a man of sincere faith in God and I believe that his daughter Queen Elizabeth was too.
So Minnie Louise Haskins wrote this poem. Who was she? She was a member of the congregational church and she taught in Sunday school for many years. She studied at the University College in Bristol and she worked as a volunteer for the Wesleyan Methodist mission, and in 1907 she went out to India, to Madras, to work in what was called the Zinana mission to women. And in 1912 to raise funds for their mission to the women in India, she published a small volume of poems, and one of the poems was a poem called “God Knows”, the poem in which the preamble that we've just read that the King George the 6th read in 1939, December 1939.
That poem meant so much to Queen Elizabeth, that after her father died, she had the words of the preamble that he read engraved on stone plaques and fixed to the gates of the King George the 6th memorial chapel in Windsor Castle where the King was interred. The Queen Mother was also buried there.
But I want to just take us to the scriptures now and talk about some of these men of faith. Men of faith —of course there are many women of faith, we know that. But I want to talk particularly about Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
So Genesis chapter 17:1 -
“And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, ninety-nine, the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him ‘I am God Almighty, walk before me and be thou perfect’”.
You be perfect. Abram's obedience and his faithfulness to the call of God had a lasting effect on his family for generations to come. And the Bible records how Abram's grandson Jacob blessed Joseph and Joseph's sons. And Jacob said in Genesis 48: 15 - 16, let me just read that, Genesis 48:15—
“And he blessed Joseph and said, the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which hath fed me all my life long unto this day, the angel which hath redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads and let my name be named on them and the name of my fathers Abraham and Isaac and let them grow into a multitude in the midst of the earth.”
The particular phrase which I want to fasten here on is “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk”, — ‘before whom’—
When Abraham was ninety-nine, Abram his name was at that time, God appeared to him and said walk before me, walk before me. And Jacob repeated that word, the God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk.
Now the word before in the Hebrew is the Hebrew word for face. So the meaning implicit in this phrase walk before me is that Abraham and Isaac's walk, their journey through life was to be lived in the presence of God. God wanted them to do that, that's why he appeared to Abraham and said to him, “walk before me and you be perfect”—Perfect in the sense of having the moral integrity to do what was right in God's eyes and to be blameless in his words and in his actions. He was to live in the knowledge that God was watching, God was watching him and that God was actively directing his footsteps. Just as a shepherd would direct or lead the sheep in the Holy Land we know that the shepherd goes in front of the sheep. But in this country they go behind the sheep and they get the dogs to help them.
But there's the thought, walk before me, he's the good shepherd. Jesus said “I am the good shepherd” and he's watching over us and he wants us to look to him for guidance in our life.
Jesus said “I am the light of the world”.
King George the sixth said “put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be better to you than a light, than light and safer than a known way.”
Jesus says
“I am the light of the world. He that follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.”
And in Psalm 119 it says
“your word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path”.
So those who choose to walk by faith, to walk before God in the light of his word, they'll be blessed with God's favour. They'll experience God actively working on their behalf for their benefit in life.
King David one of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob's descendants, he was a man of faith just like them. And he followed in their footsteps in as much as they walked before God according to his will and word. And David endeavoured to do that in his life although he was a failing man just like you and I. But God blessed him and David wrote in Psalm 65:11, let's just turn to it.
Psalm 65:11, here's what David the Psalmist wrote.
“You crown the year with your goodness and your paths drop fatness.You crown the year with your goodness”.
We've come to the end of another year and we can look back and we can say God has crowned this year with his goodness. He’s blessed us throughout the year. But one of the commentators that I read about this word, “you crown the year with your goodness”—he said, you can read it as you have crowned, ‘you have crowned the year’ and it can also mean encompass,—you have encompassed the year with your goodness. So that suggests the thought that God has surrounded us with his goodness. He's hedged us about and protected us and blessed us. He's redeemed us from all evil. He's delivered us from things and people that would harm us. He's surrounded us with his goodness in the year that's passed.
And so as we come to the threshold of a new year, we look back and we acknowledge God's goodness in so many ways. But we also look forward with confidence that no matter what 2025 may have in store for us, based on our experience of God's goodness to us in the past and God's promises in his word, we have confidence that God's goodness and mercy will encompass us and surround us in 2025. David wrote at the end of Psalm 23:
"Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever."
Before I read the poem, I'm going to read another verse that came to me as I was thinking about things this morning.
And it's found in Isaiah 54, just at the end of Isaiah 54:17.
"No weapon that is formed against you shall prosper, and every tongue that shall rise against you in judgment you shall condemn. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their righteousness which is of me, says the Lord”.
“No weapon that's formed against you shall prosper."
That's a precious verse to me, and it was and is.
Now in closing we'll just read the whole of the poem that King George VI read part of in 1939. It's called “God Knows”.
“And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year, 'Give me a light that I may tread safely into the unknown.' And he replied, 'Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the hand of God. That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way.' So I went forth, and finding the hand of God, trod gladly into the night, and he led me toward the hills and the breaking of day in the low east.
So heart be still:
What need our little life
Our human life to know,
If God hath comprehension?
In all the dizzy strife
Of things both high and low,
God hideth His intention.
God knows. His will
Is best. The stretch of years
Which wind ahead, so dim
To our imperfect vision,
Are clear to God. Our fears
Are premature; In Him,
All time hath full provision.
Then rest: until
God moves to lift the veil
From our impatient eyes,
When, as the sweeter features
Of Life’s stern face we hail,
Fair beyond all surmise
God’s thought around His creatures
Our mind shall fill.'
(Minnie Louise Haskins 1875-1957)
We'll ask God's blessing.
O God, we give thanks for your goodness to us in this year that has passed, and we thank you that you have surrounded us with your care and kindness and protection, and we are confident that you will continue to bless us as we endeavour, by the help of the Holy Spirit, to walk before you, to walk before your face, to live lives that are pleasing to you in the light of your word. And so we are glad to put our hand in your hand and go confidently into this new year. Bless us, we pray, for we ask all and give thanks in the precious name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Now shall we sing the words of hymn 380.
O Master, let me walk with you in lowly paths of service free. Tell me thy secret, help me bear the strain of toil, the fret of care. Teach me thy patience still with thee in closer dearer company, in work that keeps faith sweet and strong, in trust that triumphs over wrong.
The whole hymn, 380.
O Master, let me walk with Thee
In lowly paths of service free.
Tell me Thy secret, help me bear
The strain of toil, the fret of care.
Help me the slow of heart to move
By some clear winning word of love.
Teach me the wayward feet to stay,
And guide them in the homeward way.
Teach me Thy patience still with Thee
In closer dearer company,
In work that keeps faith sweet and strong,
In trust that triumphs over wrong.
In hope that sends a shining ray
Far down the future's broadening way,
In peace that only Thou cans’t give.
With Thee, O Master, let me live.