Bible Commentaries

Out of Place

Luke 14:7-11

There is a fitness of things. We all know it. We feel it, though we may not be able to explain it in words. There is an instinctive judgment about proportion, and social rightness, and personal action. There is a regularity in irregularity. Life is not so tumultuous as it seems. If we could see the action of all the lines of life we should see that beneath all the tumult and uproar, all the eccentricity and irregularity, there is a steady line, direct, inevitable, persistent. It is upon that line that God looks when he talks of progress and the final out-blossoming of all the things he has sown and planted in the earth. There is what is called tendency. It can hardly be measured; it is often imperceptible; it may require whole centuries in order to note the very least progress that that tendency has made. It is in the air, it is in the remoter thought of men, it is in the things which they say to themselves when nobody hears them. It is thus that God leads us on from one point to another, whilst we ourselves imagine that things are irregular and upsidedown and wanting in order and peacefulness. There are two looks: there is the outward and superficial look that sees nothing, and there is the penetrating and spiritual look to which you may trust for a true and profound criticism. There is therefore, I repeat, a fitness of things, a sense of proportion, and colour, and weight, and values. We know one another at once; in a few minutes we soon learn whether the man should be here or there, or elsewhere: there is a spirit in Luke 14:7

Where did Jesus Christ get his texts? We have what we call our textbook, and we go to it in order that we may find passages for the purposes of exposition and application. Where did Jesus Christ, pre-eminently the preacher, get his texts? His sermons were always new, always bright with a light above the brightness of the sun, often tender with a pathos which made his hearers" hearts burn within them. He got some of his texts from the Old Testament, we know. Those texts are given. He was familiar with Moses, with the Luke 14:7 : "And he put forth a parable to them which were bidden, when he marked how they...." The book of daily life was Christ's great textbook. What every man did gave him a subject; every word he heard started a novel theme. We poor preachers of this nineteenth century often cannot find a text, and say to one another, "What have you been preaching about? I wish I could get hold of another subject or two." Poor professional dunderheads! and the great book of life, joy, sorrow, tragedy, comedy, is open night and day. Jesus Christ put forth a parable, not after he had been shutting himself up for a fortnight, and reading the classic literature of immemorial time, but when he marked how they.... Keep your eyes open if you would preach well—keep your eyes open upon the moving panorama immediately in front of you, omit nothing, see every line and every hue, and hold your ear open to catch every tone, loud and sweet, low and full of sighing, and all the meaning of the masonry of God. Jesus Christ was, in this sense of the term, pre-eminently an extemporaneous speaker, not an extemporaneous thinker. There is no occasion for all your elaborate preparation of words if you have had an elaborate preparation of—yourself. Herein the preacher would do well, not so much to prepare his sermon as to prepare himself, his life, his manhood, his soul. As for the words, let him rule over them, call them like servants to do his behest, and order them to express his regal will.

What sermons our Saviour would have if he stood here now! He would mark how that man came in and tried to occupy two seats all to himself—a cunning fellow, a man who has great skill in spreading his coat out and looking big, so as to deceive a whole staff of stewards. What a sermon he would have evoked on selfishness, on want of nobleness and dignity of temper, how the Lord would have shown him how to make himself half the size, so as to accommodate some poor weak person who has struggled miles to be here, and is obliged to stand. I have been enabled to count the number of pews from the front of the pulpit where the man is. I paused there. My Lord—keener, truer—would have founded a sermon on the ill-behaviour. He would have spoken about us all. He would have known who came here through mere curiosity, who was thinking about finery and amusement, who was shop-keeping even in the church, buying and selling tomorrow in advance; and upon every one of us, preacher and hearers, he would have founded a discourse. Do you wonder now at his graphic, vivid talk? Do you wonder now whence he got his accent? Can you marvel any longer to what he was indebted for his emphasis, his clearness, his directness of speech, his practical exhortation? He put forth a parable when he marked how they—did the marketing, dressed themselves, trained or mistrained their families, went to church for evil purposes, spake hard words about one another, took the disennobling, instead of the elevating, view of their neighbours" work and conversation. The hearers gave that preacher his text, and what they gave he took and sent back again in flame or in blessing. Observe, "when he marked"—when he marked how Beaconsfield went into the Berlin Congress with the island of Cyprus in his pocket; when he marked how ecclesiastical livings are bought and sold in the auction-room; when he marked how his church is broken up into a hundred contending sections; when he marked how envious one preacher is of another, and how anxious to pluck at least one feather out of his cap; when he marked how eloquent men are in gossip and how dumb in prayer—then he opened his mouth in parables which were judgments, and in allegories which filled their guilty hearers with fear.

Now let us listen to him again. In Matthew 13:2 and Matthew 13:3 : "When great multitudes came to him" what did he do? Mark the divinity of the Man. See where his mastery lay. "He"—I would that every ear might catch this—"He spake many things." It is in such little out-of-the-way touches as these that I see what he was. How to handle a multitude? With one string, with one idea, with one little mean method of attack? No, no. Seeing the multitudinous spectacle, he delivered a multitudinous address. A multitude cannot all be like one man—trained, cultured, critical, right up to the highest point of intellectual perception and moral sympathy. Where you have an almost infinite number of persons, you have a corresponding number of conditions, circumstances, tastes. That speaker is the Divine one who speaks many things, who has not one little drop of dew to let fall upon a host, but a great shower of rich rain, so that every soul may have its own baptism and go home with its own blessing.

A marvellous chapter is that13th of Matthew. What parables are in it—the sower, the woman with the leaven, the tares sown among the wheat, the pearl of great price, and many others. Why so many parables? That everybody might have something. You are sitting there, a well-trained scholar, and you want a continuous, concatenated discourse, culminating in some dazzling and convincing climax. The man next you has hardly put off his shop apron, and his hands still have the shop dust on them, and he wants something to be going on with. And the little child to whom life is a dream, a wonder, a mystery, a dance, half begun yet nearly ended—wants an anecdote, a story, and you say, "Pooh, pooh, nothing but anecdotes; just a string of anecdotes from beginning to end;" and you don"t like anecdotes, and you like logic—strong, persistent, inexorable, relentless logic. The man next you cannot spell logic, and if he could spell it he could hardly pronounce it, and if he could pronounce it he could not define it, and he wants a figure of speech, a little story, a bright parable, truth in a blossom, a gospel in a flower; he could understand that. So when Jesus saw great multitudes come to him, he spake many things; the scholar had a portion of meat, and so had the illiterate, and the little child had its cut of living bread, and the poor creature who was too feeble to lift the water to her lips has it lifted by the hand that gave it. When shall we understand this, and honour this kind of ministry, and when shall we believe that every man had his ministry in the church; the great thinker, and the great parabolist, the man who can tell an anecdote before you have time to object to it, and apply the moral so that you waken up to find that he has been meaning you all the time? I believe that a multitudinous humanity requires a multitudinous tuition, and into the church I welcome every man who can speak one word for his Master; somebody, somewhere, wants that particular word. God bless us, every one.

Now let us be present upon another occasion. You will find the circumstance in the5th chapter of the gospel by Matthew: "When his disciples came unto him, he opened his mouth and taught them." How different from every other discourse. He was then speaking to the church. A poor rude church it was just then; still, it was the nucleus of the visible kingdom of God upon the earth, and the only church which Jesus Christ could then have addressed. "When his disciples came to him, he opened his mouth and taught them, saying"—then came the beatitudes, the exposition of eternal laws, the application of great moral truths, calls to luminousness of character, diligence of service, nobility of temper, non-resistance of evil—to the perfectness of God's purity. No parable, no story, no anecdote, criticism, doctrine, history, dogma, great principle, solid law, exposition of righteousness, talk that went to the church's soul; and that is the basis of all doctrine and ethics in the church to this day, and shall be to the end of time.

There ought to be seasons when the church only comes together. Then we should have the richer talk; then we might be led into the inner places, where the mysteries are most sacred and most tender; then we should drink the old, old wine of God. When can this be arranged? There be many charmers that address the ear and call us otherwhere; alas! there ought to be found time when Christians should come together as Christians to read the. small print, to read between the lines, to read the richer, deeper mysteries of the Divine kingdom.

When the disciples came to him he opened his mouth and taught them. It was shepherdly talk, and that leads me to offer this suggestion to you. There is pastoral preaching as well as pastoral visitation. There are some persons who are never content unless the pastor is always visiting them. Personally, I should allow them to enjoy their discontentment; they like it, they would be unhappy if they had nothing to grumble about. There is pastoral preaching, rich revelation of Divine truth, high, elevating treatment of Christian mysteries, and he is the pastor to me who does not come to drink, and smoke, and gossip, and show his littleness, but who, out of a rich experience, meets me with God's word at every turn and twist and phase of my life, and speaks the something to me that I just then want. See him when he is largest and noblest, catch him in the moods of his inspiration, and do not drag him down to make a hassock of him in the drawing-room. Know you that there is pastoral preaching, talk to the disciples alone, quiet, beauteous, sympathetic, luminous talk, that makes the brain rejoice in a new light, and the heart glow with a more ardent love. May we have more and more such preaching.

Let us be present upon another occasion to find how Jesus got his texts. You will find the incident in the twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew 13:3 : "They came unto him privately"—and how he changed his tone. I can see it was the same speaker, but the tone was dropped to the occasion. It is in these modulations of voice that I see what my Lord really was. He comes to me where I am; if I am standing outside alone, when he is passing out of the church, and I say to him, "There was one thing I did not quite understand about the sower and the seed," he will take me to the house and talk to me as earnestly as if I were a thousand men, and as quietly as if I were a bruised reed. Christ is not God to me because of some cunning application of Greek syntax: I do not outwit the Unitarian by some knowledge of Greek punctuation of which he is ignorant: it is not a question of Greek conjugation, and declension, and parsing—it is in these things, his out-of-the-way traits, these secret characteristics, these personal kindnesses, these marvellous reaches over my whole life, that I find what he is, venerable as eternity, new as the young morning, the ancient of days and the child of Bethlehem.

There are many things that are to be spoken privately about the kingdom of heaven. Herein is the great delicacy and the great difficulty of Christian teaching. You cannot proclaim everything on the house-top. How misunderstood we are when we venture in the pulpit to relate our deepest experience. I dare hardly pray in public. Some earnest and, no doubt, in his own sphere, which I never penetrated, intelligent soul wrote to me from the West of England on a post-card, to know if I really was the bad man I depicted myself in my prayers, for it had quite grieved him. Do I pray here in secret? Am I speaking about one man? Do I not try to be, as it were, your priest and intercessor, gathering up into one broad public address our inmost desires, and confessing our inmost sin? When the minister speaks in public prayer do not ten thousand hearts speak in his voice? Ah me! it is so sad that there are persons who will belittle every occasion, and will not rise to the grandeur and the dignity of the circumstances. Some things must be spoken privately, to the confidential ear, to the one listening heart: we have much of sorrow to tell, and difficulty and doubt, and secret encounter, and it is good to be enabled now and then in private to tell the story, the inner tale, to show what the heart is in its solitude, in its secret realisations of the mystery of life, the mystery of sin, and the mystery of grace. Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another, and the Lord hearkened and heard it, and a book of remembrance was written of that private household talk. I would there were more of it—then the household fire would never go out, the household table would never be barren of a feast, Let us be present upon one more occasion. "Then drew near to him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him," we read in the15th chapter of Luke. What was the discourse? In the5th of Matthew we had the disciples coming to him, and he said, "Blessed are the poor in spirit, blessed are the pure in heart, blessed are the merciful, blessed are the meek, blessed are the peacemakers, blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteousness;" and now the congregation changes, and the sermon changes. What spake he when the publicans and sinners came for to hear him? Three parables that shall be read and spoken with tears wherever this gospel is preached. About the one lost sheep, about the one lost piece of money, about the one lost prodigal. The chapter that holds the tale of the prodigal son is a chapter the ink of which shall never be dry, the music of which shall never fade. But my object is now not to analyse these parables, but to direct attention to the method of this man's ministry to show you where and how he got his subjects. Methinks he would sit on the sea-shore or on the mountain-side or in the synagogue, and not know what he was going to preach till he saw the congregation he had to deal with. His disciples came to him and he said, "Blessed." Then drew near to him all the publicans and sinners for to hear him, and he spake three parables about loss and gain, and these parables set forth his gospel and the spirit of its ministry.

What say you to this Man? Give him his due: I like every man to have the palm who honestly wins it. What think you about him? He was but a peasant, he had never been to school, he had no certificate and no prizes and no rabbinical endorsement. He was but carpenter and carpenter's son: you would not expect much from him. His disciples came unto him, and he delivered a great doctrinal discourse which doctors might have heard and wondered at. When great multitudes came unto him, he spake unto them many things, so that every one in the mass might have something. When the disciples could not quite understand what he said, they came unto him privately, and he sat down in the house and went over all the truth with them, and drove it into their thick heads. When the publicans and sinners came, what did he? He spoke three parables, which he might at the moment have plucked from heaven itself, so beauteous, so musical, so pathetic, so infinitely vivid and true to the life. A few days ago I tried to show you this in particular about that young prodigal. We said: "Now we shall find out what. Jesus Christ really is: he may be able to describe a virtuous man, for he knew nothing about the ways of vice, but how will he describe a rake? We shall have the laugh over him there when he comes to describe a roue, a rake, a spendthrift, a prodigal, a villain. He will make a poor villain, a knock-kneed villain. He will never be able to find the colours that suit a villain." I charge you to tell me, after reading the parable of the prodigal son, if he has not drawn him to the life. Whence hath this Man this wisdom! He who was without sin, on whose fair brow there was no wrinkle wrought by remorse, in whose voice there was no tone or sob of personal penitence, a Man whose feet had never been in the ways of evil for his own purpose, how came he to give you line by line in neutral distance, in blood tints at the front, with eyes that had prodigality in every look—how came he to draw that picture? Give him the credit that is due to him, do not begrudge him; he needed not that any should testify of man, for he knew what was in man.

Now the great practical application of this is, that you will find in Jesus Christ's talk, whoever you are, just what you want, just what you most need. What are you? A cunning, long-headed old thinker? Go to Jesus Christ. I have seen such go to him: I have seen how they marvelled as he spoke unto them. Once a deputation of that sort went to wait upon him. They got up a nice little case about a woman and seven husbands—"And the seven husbands died, and last of all the woman died also"—and the Sadducees wanted to know whose wife she would be in the resurrection. The disciples would have shown their folly over that question. Jesus heard their tale out, and he was a, magnificent listener, and when they were done, he said: "Ye do err: you are wrong fundamentally. You do not know your own Scriptures, for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God." And so these long-headed, cunning thinkers came back with their heads a long way down in their necks. They went in, tolerably young men, under fifty: they came out about five hundred years of age. He was a wonderful talker!

What are you? "I am a poor woman who has got all wrong somehow." Go and see him: he knows all the sins, and if you behave aright he will say, "Thy sins which are many"—he does not conceal them—"are all forgiven thee. Begin again, and summer will dawn in thy poor winterbound soul."

What are you? "A thief half-damned." What, just going into hell? "Yes." Say, "Lord, remember me," and though the affairs of eternity are on his brain, he will not forget thee.

What are you? Just a poor little lad, just a wee little lassie, only a little child? Toddle up to him. Go, thread your way through the big folks as they are standing there, and put out a finger, and he will see it and you will be in his arms next moment, and that lift will bring you nearer heaven than ever you will be again on earth.

What are you? "A poor suffering creature, a poor woman with a secret sorrow, with a heavy affliction: my very heart oozing out of me, and nobody to speak to. I live in one of these lanes off Holborn. I just came in here to spend an hour: I did not know much what else to do. My very heart is leaking away, I have no joy in life, I have tried all physicians and curatives and restoratives, and here I am just as bad as ever, perhaps worse." Go to him. I saw a dear old mother go to him in just such a plight as you. She said—I heard her say it just under her breath as women sometimes speak—"If I may but touch the hem of his garment I shall be made whole." I saw the poor creature wriggling her way through the crowd, and when she thought nobody was looking, she just touched the hem of his garment and she stood upright like a tree of the Lord's right hand planting.

Go. I will go too. I need him, as you do, every day. Sometimes as a Judges , often as a Comforter, always as a Teacher, and the more I need him, the more he is.