Bible Commentaries

Called to Sanctification

Isaiah 56:2).

The Lord will have us, as we are now constituted, begin at some point of obedience. We may not be able to keep the whole law as we should like to do, but if we wish to do it, and faithfully attend to any one point in it, God will see that the blessing is not withheld. Many men can begin at the fourth commandment who cannot begin at the first. The first is an awful, grand commandment; eternity is hidden in it; there is nothing in all infinity so far as it is revealed in Scripture that is not included in the true conception and the true worship and service of God. The commandment is ineffably spiritual, transcending all human imagination, yet evermore appealing to the noblest faculties of the mind to awaken and ascend, and realise divine opportunities. The fourth commandment seems to come within the range of childhood; there we are commanded to honour a day: who does not think of a birthday, or some day full of sacred memory in the family? It may be a day of death, the day on which we the good-bye that killed us, for "when some friends part, "tis the survivor dies." Yet there is the fact that days are remembered and honoured; they are days of mourning, or days of sacred melancholy and joy. So the Lord will allow us to begin by honouring a day, not perfunctorily and mechanically, but spiritually, with all the stress and energy of love; so we will call it the Lord's day, the day of rest, the day that represents all time in its divinest aspect and purpose. There are those who say that all days should be sacred,—a philosophy which we accept, if it is not followed by the immorality which neglects to keep any day. We never find that people are peculiarly observant of the Sabbath day who generalise their love over the whole week; and we never find that people are careless during the intervening time who conscientiously, intelligently, and adoringly receive the Sabbath day as a rich gift from God. There are those who say all money is God's, and therefore they never set apart a Lord's account. It is to be feared they may be deluded, and that the Lord may suffer on account of that generality which does not identify itself with peculiar and isolated sacrifice. Let every man examine himself herein. A blessing is pronounced upon those who do God's commandments—not an external blessing. There is all the difference in the world between a reward that is added to a service and a reward that comes up out of the service itself. In the case of religious devotion the blessing is in the service. To serve is to be blessed.

There are those who tell us that even in other pursuits the joy is in the quest. When the sportsman goes forth on his highly mettled steed to pursue the prey he says the enjoyment is in the pursuit, in the swift ride, in the leap, even in the partial danger We should get a hint from all men, and certainly those who talk thus supply us with the hint that we may be looking for the heaven beyond, instead of expecting the blessing here and now, and yet always preliminary and symbolical. Why do we not look for the blessing instantly? To pray is to be answered; to enter the sanctuary in a right spirit is to touch the threshold of heaven; to read with a broken heart God's Word is to be in sympathy with the inspiration of God's Spirit. Do not look beyond black rivers and frowning horizons and rolling storms for the blessing, but expect it here and now, and God will not withhold it. Some men seem to be so constituted that they never have any immediate blessing. There are persons so eager, so desperate in energy, that you cannot show them anything that is here; they are always in an attitude of strain and expectancy, thinking that the blessing is over yonder. We who live in large towns have very little gardens, quite little patches of flower-bed. Some visitors call upon us to whom we want to show the garden: the little garden is just outside the house, but when we take such eager friends to see the patch of flower-bed they are over and away as if the garden were two miles off and were then ten miles long. We stop them and say, "This is the garden;" and then they look at it! With what speed they ride across the little grass plot! We should like the garden to be where they think it Isaiah 56:3).

You have noticed how full the Bible is of the "stranger." Always the Bible will have a place for the foreigner, the stranger, the visitor, the alien, the heathen; because Jesus Christ is the Son of Isaiah 56:7). The Lord will have a mountain on his landscape. There are those who do not know a mountain when they see it; they think it is something that ought to be there and has always been there, but what it is they do not know; the poorest imbeciles in the world are to be found in Alpine valleys. The Lord will have his saints be mountaineers; when he has a feast it shall be on the top of the mountains; it is characteristic of his majesty, it is typical of his hospitality, it is charged with suggestions of nobleness and grandeur. Have we ever lived the mountain life? Have we ever left the hedgerows and begun really to climb? To climb is to be blessed. The blessing begins long before you get to the top; walking is recreation; exercise is recruital. If we cannot do other than dwell in the valley, the Lord will accommodate himself to us; but he calls us to the mountain: "Come unto the mountain early in the morning, and I will speak to thee." What sublimer picture is there in ancient history than Moses going with a friend or two up the mountain, and then at a certain time saying, Stop here: I must go the rest alone? Watch him as he climbs the great stony steep. What helps that old young man to climb as he is doing? There is youth in his limbs, yet there is old age in his bent shoulders. Why climbs he so high? He has an appointment with his Lord. And why did Jesus Christ go into the mountain? That he might see God. Why did the Saviour, God the Isaiah 56:8). He will not merely gather, he will gather the outcasts; more and more he will gather besides those. He says, I have more to come; "Yet will I gather others to him, beside those that are gathered unto him." If there is one man not saved, O ye missionaries, explorers, up! flee!—the man may die before you seize him. Will the Lord receive another outcast? He will. "I," says one, "am the vilest of the men that live: will he receive me?" Yes. "When will he receive me?" Now. Thus we have in the Old Testament the very spirit of the New. Christianity is nothing if it be not a missionary religion. The Cross has no meaning if it were merely a Roman gallows. The Cross is more than wood; above the superscription of Pilate is written with the finger of God, "Herein is love, that while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." That, O man of God, is your subject. It includes all fields and topics that are good, all benevolence, charity, philanthropy, activity of a reformatory and ameliorative kind. The Cross of Christ is the largest subject that ever appealed to the understanding, the conscience, and the imagination of mankind.