Ezekiel 21:21 For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows bright… When you have been wandering in the country you have sometimes come to where two roads branched away from the one you were on — like the two arms of the letter Y — and then you stood puzzled which to take; for the one would take you where you wanted to go, and the other would take you from it. That spot, then, where you stood uncertain was "the parting of the way." Now, it is much the same with your life. It is a journey; you are always going on and on, getting older, getting better, or getting worse, just as you have turned to the right or the left at the parting of the way. In America there is a house built on the very top of a great ridge of mountains, and when the rain falls it gathers for a little on the flat roof and then drips over the eaves. But what do you think? the raindrops that fall on the one side and those that fall on the other never meet again! The one trickles away to the Atlantic, and the other descends to the Pacific ocean; they take just opposite ways, and never meet any more. That house is the parting of the way. And there are circumstances which divide people from each other in much the same way — once they are parted they never come together again. How careful, then, we should be, and how prayerful we should be, at these times in choosing what we shall do! How thoughtful and watchful, too, we should be about guiding others when they are at the parting of the way! A little word can sometimes save them then. About forty years ago a little boy went into a shoe shop in Boston to have some repairs made. While he was waiting he said to the errand boy of the shop, "Do you go to Sunday school?" "No," said he, "I don't know nothing about it, and can't read." "Oh," said the other, "I go to Sunday school, and I have such a nice teacher! If you tell me where you live, I will call for you next Sunday and take you." And he did; and the errand boy behaved very badly, saying naughty things, and sticking pins into his neighbours, altogether behaving so badly that the teacher threatened to turn him out of the school. Still, the teacher had patience and persevered — and who do you think that little wild scholar became? Mr. Daniel Moody, the great preacher, who along with Mr. Sankey has been the means of saving many, many people by bringing them to Jesus. And yet, it was a little boy who guided him right at the parting of the way! What a deal of good that little boy did that day! And you can do the same. Whenever you try to do good to others, or speak to them about Jesus, you are helping them more than you think to take the right way at the parting. When we come to the parting of the way there are two fashions of deciding which way we shall take. One way is by trusting to chance. That is the fashion the king the text speaks about decided which way to take. People do not use arrows nowadays, but sometimes they "toss up," and that is just the same thing. Is that the way we should decide? No! no! a blind man might as well "toss up" whether an orange was black or white, — "tossing up would never make it the one or the other. Never trust to chance; the book of Chance is Satan's Bible, and that is always meant to deceive. There is a surer way, namely — Go by the directions. I saw a picture once which has stuck to my memory for years and years. It was a picture of a dark, wild, stormy night, and a traveller was standing up in the stirrups of his horse at a parting of the way, trying to read the directions on the fingerpost. How eagerly he is looking! I can see him yet — holding the lighted match carefully in his hands, lest the wind should blow it out before he had read the directions! It was a good thing for him that there were directions, and it is a good thing we have them too. Where are our directions? They are — the Bible. That is God's word to us, telling us which road to take when we come to the parting of the way. (J. R. Howatt.) Parallel Verses KJV: For the king of Babylon stood at the parting of the way, at the head of the two ways, to use divination: he made his arrows bright, he consulted with images, he looked in the liver. |
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