lize, but of God's power to thwart and to
disappoint and to wreck and to utterly destroy. And in his destruction
God tells us that He has achieved His purpose.

You will agree with me that this is an amazing statement. The teaching
seems to be that God has raised this man up that He might glorify
Himself by making a complete and utter wreck of him. I wonder if that
can be true. We agree, I suppose, all of us who believe the Bible,
that God has a plan for every life. All nature tells of a planning
God. All revelation teaches it also. We have the message direct from
the lips of the Lord, "As my Father hath sent me, even so send I you."

But in admitting that God plans every life, can we believe that He
plans for some to go wrong and for others to go right? Can we believe
that He plans for one to become a Judas and the other a St. John? Is
it the purpose of God that one shall develop into a Moses and the other
right at his side shall grow up into a miserable and distorted wreck
that we call Pharaoh? In other words, is Judas as much a part of the
plan of God as John? If so we are of all men most miserable because we
have a wicked God.

But we know that such is not the case. God never planned that any man
should go wrong. He is not willing that any should perish, but that
all should come to repentance. He is the eternal lover. He loved
Moses, but He loved Pharaoh no less. And Judas was as dear to God's
heart as John. And whatever failure they made of their lives, and
whatever failure you and I make of our lives, we do not make because
God forces us to do so. In whatever way we go wrong, we do not do so
because God planned that we should. We do it because of our own
willfulness and wicked rebellion against God.

In other words, though God plans your life and mine, He cannot in the
very nature of things, force us to enter into His plan. You who are
fathers and mothers realize that. Many parents have made beautiful
plans for their children only to have those plans despised. Our
children are not ourselves. They have independent wills. They have
the capacity for entering into our purposes for them and thus bringing
us joy unspeakable. They have also the capacity for despising those
purposes and breaking our hearts.

How, then, do we explain this strange text, "For this cause have I
raised thee up that I might show forth my power in thee"? Because it
is a fact that this death in the Red Sea was not a