Then God worked with them where they would work with Him.  He planned a great kingdom to overspread the earth in its rule and blessed influence, but not by the aggression of war and oppression.  Their later literature is all a-flood with the glory light of the coming king and kingdom.  Yet when the King came they rejected Him and then killed Him.  They failed at the very point that was to have been their great achievement.  God’s plan failed.  The Hebrew people from the point of view of the direct object of their creation as a nation have been a failure up to the present hour.

God’s choice for their first king, Saul, was a failure, too.  No man ever began life, nor king his rule, with better preparation and prospects.  And no career ever ended in such dismal failure.  God’s plan for the man had failed.

Jesus’ plan for Judas failed.  The sharpest contrasts of possible good and actual bad came together in his career in the most startling way.  He failed at the very point where he should have been strongest—­his personal loyalty to his Chief.

There can be no doubt that Jesus picked him out for one of His inner circle because of his strong attractive traits.  He had in him the making of a John, the intimate, the writer of the great fourth Gospel.  He might have been a Peter, rugged in his bold leadership of the early Church.

But, though coached and companioned with, loved and wooed, up to the very hour of the cowardly contemptible betrayal, he failed to respond even to such influence as a Jesus could exert.  Jesus planned Judas the apostle.  He became Judas the apostate, the traitor.  He was to be a leader and teacher of the Gospel.  He became a miserable reproach and by-word of execration to all men.  Jesus’ plan failed.

Where the Reproach of Failure Lies.

Will you please mark very keenly that the failure always comes because of man’s unwillingness to work with God?  It always takes two for God’s plan—­Himself and a man.  All His working is through human partnership.  In all His working among men He needs to work with men.

Some good earnest people don’t like, and won’t like, that blunt statement that God fails sometimes.  It seems to them to cast a reproach upon God.  They may likely think it lacking in due reverence.  But if these kind friends will sink the shaft of their thinking just a little deeper down into the mine of truth, they will find that the reproach is somewhere else.

There is reproach.  Every failure that could have been prevented by honest work and earnest faithfulness spells reproach.  And there is reproach here.  But it isn’t upon God; it is upon man.  God’s plan depends upon man.  It is always man’s failure to do his simple part faithfully that causes God’s plan to fail.

There is a false reverence that fears to speak plainly of God.  It seeks by holding back some things, and speaking of others with very carefully thought-out phrase, to bolster up God’s side.  True love has two marked traits:  it is always plain-spoken in telling all the truth when it should be known; and it is always reverential.  It can’t be otherwise.  The bluntest words on the lips combine with the deepest reverence of spirit.  God doesn’t need to be defended.  The plain truth need never be apologized for.