Now for the third of our little people. “The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands.” I wonder if you know anything about locusts. They are little, brown insects, very much like grasshoppers. They do not trouble us much here in England, but in the hot eastern countries they do terrible mischief. At a certain time in the year they start forth, hundreds and thousands of them together, and travel over the country. Many things have been tried to stop their onward way; people have made fires to burn them, or have dug trenches and filled them with water, hoping to drown them; but in spite of everything, on they go with irresistible force, devouring every green thing in their pathway, every blade of grass, and every green leaf, until the land looks blasted and bare as if scorched by fire. A long time I puzzled over the locusts. I thought over all I had ever heard about them, and I could not think what lesson we could possibly learn from such destructive creatures. At last I came back to the Bible words; over and over again I said them to myself, “The locusts have no king, yet go they forth all of them by bands” —and then it flashed across my mind, “Yet go they forth.” There is something here for us, if we have learned the lessons of the first of our little people, if we have a treasure stored up against the dark days, and know what it is to have our dwelling in the Rock, then these words are full of meaning for us. We are not to sit down idly and do nothing but enjoy ourselves. Let us go forth, not as the locusts, carrying desolation and famine and death in our way. No, the heavenly Master has given us something better than that to do; it is ours, if we will, to go forth in service to Him. Do you not think we should be willing, aye, more than willing, glad, that our lives should be wholly for His service, Who has loved us and given Himself for us? Dear children, will you think of this? I want you to think how much of your lives is spent for the Lord Jesus. You know it does not follow that because you serve Him, you must go and preach, or visit the poor; for little children would hardly have opportunities of doing either; but He, that tender, loving Saviour, counts it as service to Himself if the daily life is spent so as to please Him; if the lessons, and everything that you do, are done with the thought of pleasing Him, that may be all the service He has given you, except the service of your lips, for even little children can carry the living water to those who are thirsty, and faint, and weary. Will you not choose gladly to serve Him? It is not that you have to do it, but if you know anything of how He has loved you, I am sure you will want to please Him, and I am sure, too, that He will give you grace to do it. He has given you an example; and His own words are, “Herein is My Father glorified, that ye bear much fruit; so shall ye be My disciples.”
Part 4
And now we come to the last of our little people. “The spider taketh hold with her hands, and is in kings’ palaces.” Who would have thought that a spider could teach us anything? I expect you do not much like spiders. There is no need to tell you what they are like, is there? for you have all often seen them. Everywhere the spiders go, it does not seem to matter to them, as long as there is a place to spin their web in, as our verse tells us they are in kings’ palaces. What do they teach us? Can you think? It is a beautiful lesson. “The spider taketh hold with her hands.” Cannot you do this? I think what God means for us is that we are to lay tight hold of the precious promises He has given us in His word, and make them our own by faith. A tree with the most beautiful fruit on it, would be of no use to us, if we did not gather it; and so God’s Word will pass before us, often I am afraid, almost uninteresting, if we have not faith to lay hold of the precious things there; and the Bible is full of precious things, as a poor woman said to me one day, “There seems to be always there just what. I want.” You will find, too, that if you have learned anything of the first three of our lessons, you will need the fourth; for if you are trying to please the Lord Jesus, you will find in the Bible just what He likes, and you cannot please a person unless you know what suits him. Study your Bibles, little people; value them; search in them as you would for hid treasure, and may God give you to make the treasures there your own.
But the spider has another lesson for us, that if we knew, we would not miss for anything. “And is in kings’ palaces.” What does this mean? Is there no thought here of the place where we are going? I do not think it is simply the Lord Jesus being with us here as He has promised, “Lo! I am with you alway,” but more than this, we are going to Him, we shall soon be entering into those many mansions, within the King’s palace, our home, there to be in the very presence of the King; there where sorrow, and sighing, and tears may never enter, where sickness and death are done away, and sin and restless longing are all unknown; there is to be our home, and what rest is there! what peace in the very word home! And the One Who is all the joy and all the glory of that glorious land is the One Whom we have known, in Whose love we have trusted, and Whom we have delighted to follow here. Oh! it is no stranger who will greet us in that heavenly home, but the Lord Himself; and it may be so soon. Who can measure the time when He has said, “Behold, I come quickly?” May it be ours to be ready, waiting for Him, “That when He knocketh, we may open to Him immediately.”