Bible Commentaries

Chapter49

Prayer

Almighty God, thou hast made all things good for us, and thou hast issued to our hearts a great welcome, broad as all thy love. Thou hast called to those who are hungry and thirsty, thou dost give them chief places in thine house that they may eat and drink abundantly and forget all their pain and weariness. Great voices of hospitality fall from the heavens upon our weary life: when there is no door into which we can enter upon the earth, thou dost call us upward to thyself and offer us wide liberty and continual joy. Thou hast made all things beautiful for man: for him thou dost enkindle the fires and light the flames of glory, and for him thou dost make the earth bring forth abundantly everything that could nourish his strength and delight his taste. What is man that thou art mindful of him, or the son of man that thou dost visit him? Thou hast made him a little lower than the angels, thou crownest him with glory and honour, thou hast put all things under his feet, thou dost live thine own life over again in this mystery of human pain.

We are now in thy chosen house, where thy book is read in our mother-tongue, and where is the holy altar sprinkled with the blood of the heart of Christ, even the great cross itself, whose root is in the earth and whose head is in thy heavens. Whilst we are here we will bless thee with loud psalm and sweet hymn and anthems of rapturous joy, because it is here that thy broadest revelations brighten before us and thy tenderest grace heals our heart with infinite comfort. This is none other than the house of God and this is the gate of heaven: here the angels come lo speak of the risen one, and here our tears are dried as we hear the voice from heaven saying, "He is not here, he is risen." May we all rise in Christ, may we know not only the fellowship of his sufferings, but also the power of his resurrection; may we live in his life, endure throughout his eternity, and at all times enjoy the light of his countenance, which is life, and the spirit of his benediction, which is peace.

We thank thee for the language of prayer, which once we could not utter: it was a foreign tongue, we knew not the mystery of the sacred speech: when we endeavoured to speak it, the words fell dead from our unwilling lips, but today we have returned to the shepherd and bishop of our souls, and our heart's desire, expressing itself in many words, rises up to heaven in prayer, supplication, thanksgiving, and adoration, because in the Lord we have all we need.

Thou dost lead us to thine house by various ways, Some have come from the dark chamber that they may refresh their eyes with light from heaven, the light of the morning, the light of the better land, that being so refreshed, they may return to the house of affliction and mourning with messages delivered to them from heaven by God's own angels. Some have come from homes of wealth, and delight and every comfort, and still they are here to confess that in thine house is a blessing not to be found otherwhere: they have come for the child's portion, they have come to claim their inheritance in Christ, to make common prayer and join in common song and enjoy the hospitality provided for the commonwealth of the Church. Some are old and withered—they can see now the end, and turning round they can measure the whole span of life, and see what shape it bears and what accent it carries and what is the meaning of it all, as they say, "Few and evil have been the days of thy servant." Lord, whilst yet the light lingers in the western sky, speak some new message, comfort them with some unheard-of solace, reveal to them some hidden beauty of the infinite Christ, and give them joy: may their last utterance be a song of heaven!

Regard the young, the inexperienced and speculative, the hopeful and those who are in danger from their great sanguineness, not knowing how thickly the ground is sown with danger, and how skilfully the trap and gin and snare is laid by hands that are skilled and cruel. The Lord give guidance unto such, keenness of vision, that sympathy with the right which is as a new conscience, a high and gracious sympathy, which is as insight which shall save the young from many a danger.

As for those who are hard of heart, do thou break them with thine own hammer. Thou wilt not grind them to powder, but thou wilt take out of them the heart of stone and put within them the heart of flesh.

Help us to live more and more in Christ, that we may live more and more for Christ. Give us deeper understanding of the mysteries of his kingdom; give us clearer insight into his wonderful words, which stretch themselves across all ages, and utter the speech and the accent of every man. The Lord help us to live out the little remainder of our days with a gracious purpose; help us to illustrate the nobleness of Christian heroism; enable us in all things, in body and in soul, to glorify Christ, lo whom we owe our life, and at the last may our sin be forgotten in thine infinite grace. Amen.

Matthew 12:1-13

1. At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath day (the first after the Passover) through the corn; and his disciples were an hungered, and began to pluck the ears of corn (allowed in Deuteronomy 23:25), and to eat.

2. But when the Pharisees saw it, they said unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath day.

3. But he said unto them, Have ye not read what David did, when he was an hungered, and they that were with him;

4. How he entered into the house of God (the tabernacle at Nob), and did eat the shewbread, which was not lawful for him to eat, neither for them which were with him, but only for the priests?

5. Or have ye not read in the law, how that on the Sabbath days the priests in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are blameless? ("There is no Sabbath in the temple:" Rabbinical maxim).

6. But I say unto you, That in this place is one greater than the temple (a greater thing than the temple is here).

7. But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless.

8. For the Son of man is Lord even of the Sabbath day.

9. And when he was departed thence, he went into their synagogue:

10. And, behold, there was a man which had his hand withered. And they asked him, saying, Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath days? that they might accuse him.

11. And he said unto them, What man shall there be among you that shall have one sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the Sabbath day, will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out?

12. How much, then, is a man better than a sheep? Wherefore it is lawful to do well on the Sabbath days.

13. Then saith he to the Matthew 12:14-37

Mighty Words and Mighty Judgments

"Then the Pharisees went out and held a council against him, how they might destroy him," because he had broken the Sabbath day. The penalty would seem too much, but it is the way with passionate men that they should overleap themselves, and show by the severity of their penalties some sign of the errors of their own supposed piety. You will generally find that a man's condemnation of other people is meant to be a recommendation of himself. Study this law of social penalties, and you will be amazed, I think, to find how constantly it operates in this direction. A man severely condemns this or that offence on the part of his fellow-creatures. Is it a really honest judgment upon the offence or the sin? Is it not oftentimes a backhanded compliment to himself, as who should say, "What a virtuous man I am: how my indignation burns like an oven against such offences. Trust me, I am judge and purist and honourable man?"

The Pharisees sought to destroy Christ because he had broken the Sabbath day. This was the exaggeration of piety—a piety that, by its own exaggeration, broke itself, and became impiety, so that extremes met. But what could you expect from men who actually wrote in plain letters this doctrine, that to eat with unwashen hands was more criminal than homicide? That to eat with unwashen hands, let me explain to the children, was worse than to kill a man. It is thus that good doing falls into Pharisaical impiety when it is left without a divine and living centre; this is what we come to in the absence of a legitimate and adequate authority: our morality becomes offensive; we rearrange it: we put it in new lights, and place it at new angles, and we make experiments of it, and we run it through all the gamut of our own imagination, until at last it becomes the wildest farce, the most consummate and intolerable nuisance. We want a standard authority, a court of appeal, a law that says, "Thou shalt and thou shalt not," and a spirit which interprets that law with all the breadth of poetry, and yet with all the clearness and narrowness of the highest rectitude. This law and this spirit we find in him only who is the Son of man.

"But when Jesus knew it, he withdrew himself from thence." This was the true courage; it was no use opposing physical force to physical force. The man whose life is founded upon a great plan does not live by mere surprises, nor does he trust to what is called the fool's Bible, namely, the chapter of accidents. He removes the occasion; he will not even lead his enemies into temptation; he can always get out of the way. No man could hide himself so impenetrably as Jesus Christ, no man could look so dumb. He looked at Herod until Herod was glad to call in a score of servants to keep him company. No man could be so silent as Christ, could withdraw himself to such infinite distances as Christ, even whilst he stayed and looked at you. He frightened Pilate like a ghost leering out of the darkness.

This was part of the wisdom of Christ, that he should not bring his enemies into temptation to kill him. He kept back force by that subtlest and mightiest of all forces, true prudence. Force, thou fool, is not in thy fist; that is the meanest of weapons; it is in Matthew 12:38-50

Christ's Denials

It was always difficult for Christ to say No. Surely he was not born to say that cold word to any human heart that asked a question of him. The negative did not come easily to those beneficent lips—they were shaped rather to say with all tunefulness and sympathy of love, "Yes," to every human desire, to every yearning, loving spirit. Yet in this case Jesus Christ says" "No," and no man can say No with so severe a firmness. In his lips, under such circumstances as are detailed in the text, his No was final. He had an intermediate no, which he never meant to stand as such—the No which he said to the Syro-Phoenician woman—it was an experimental No, there was no hollowness of. final, negative purpose in it, it was one of the trials or temptations addressed to the human heart by him who intends to fill that heart with larger blessing in consequence of its temporary denial. When did Jesus Christ say "No" to the sick, to the weary, to the broken-hearted, the bruised, the helpless, the wounded spirit? When did he say it to any little child that asked the favour of his smile? Yet in this case, standing up in front of an evil and adulterous generation, he said "No." "Twas unlike him and yet very like him: he would rather have said "Yes" to human prayer, but it is sometimes quite as merciful to say "No" as to say "Yes."

What was it the Scribes and Pharisees wanted from Jesus Christ? They sought a merely intellectual gratification, they wanted a sign, something to estimate, something to speculate upon, another link in a chain of argumentative evidence. Jesus Christ never came to satisfy the mere intellect of man. Therein have all the doctors and sages and leaders of the Church made many a mischievous mistake. They have written evidences, and built up proofs, and conducted a high intellectual argument. The gospel has nothing to say to the intellect merely as such; to the intellect, stiff and blind in its godless conceit, the gospel has nothing to utter but a plain disappointing "No." The wisdom of this world is not the wisdom of God. What are called proofs, in the lower schools of men, are not to be taken as proofs in the higher reasoning and in the diviner culture. With the heart man believeth unto righteousness. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. To this man will I look, to him that is of a broken and contrite heart, who trembleth at my word. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him. In the sixty-first chapter of is, in which the mission of Christ is stated in many particulars, I find no reference to the intellect. "The spirit of the Lord God is upon me, because he hath sent me"—what to do? to give signs and wonders, to satisfy mere intelligence and carnal curiosity and intellectual ambition? No such line can be found in this loving and beneficent specification of duty and vocation. The meek, the captive, the bound, the tired, the helpless, the mourning, the tearful, the sad—all these are gathered within the enclosure of Christ's purpose, but the merely intellectual and literalistic and argumentative, where are they? Outside, of no consequence in this great strife—they will be brought in by other processes, yea, they shall be found on bent knee, worshipping him who is the King. Meanwhile Jesus Christ keeps his great answers and his great promises and benedictions for the meek, the broken-hearted, the sincere, the child-like, the docile, and those who have no self-confidence.

What does Jesus Christ teach in this broad answer? Jesus Christ teaches that there is already enough in human history to satisfy every healthy and earnest mind if right use be made of it. The great questions of the heart were answered at the beginning; the gospel is in Genesis; God planted every tree from the very first, and the after ages have but developed the roots set in the human heart by the divine hand, or planted in heaven by him who plants only the trees of righteousness. All great answers have been given. Jonah and the queen of the south have their counterparts in all histories and in all cultivated and developed human lives. If you have not lived the story of Jonah the dictionary can never explain it to you. The whale and its mouth, and a thousand mysteries that gather around it—you will never be able to understand it; but if you have been Jonah , and have been in the whale and in the deep, and have been cast out, and have passed through all the tragedy, you will know the meaning of the spirit, without being able to give any satisfaction to those who live in the universe of a zoological garden, and who never penetrate the inward poetry and apocalyptic meaning of the things that are happening around them every day. The earth is full of signs, the heavens shine with tokens, all life is a witness and confirmation. We need no more proof; what we do need is to make better use of the proof we already have.

Let me, therefore, speak with all moral incisiveness and positiveness of meaning, to those who are yet among the Scribes and the Pharisees, saying, with vulgar or ill-concealed conceit of intellect, "Master, we would see a sign from heaven." There shall no more signs be given; what we now have to do is not to add to the evidences but to utilize them. You do not want a new Bible, you want to read the Bible you already have in your hands. There is not a man in a thousand who knows anything about the Bible vitally and really, in all its grasp and meaning. There is no book of such momentous purpose and significance so little read and so little understood. We are outside, and we see only the edges and surfaces of things written in the inner book. We do not want more evidences, evidences have often misled the thinker or have only been food to the pride of his intellect, or have only established him in the confidence of his own conceit, for wherein he has mastered them, he has said, if not in words yet in effect, "See how able I am, and how clever and how masterly is my grasp of things." That man has not come into the kingdom of heaven at all. I will not say he has not come in by the right gate, he has come in by no gate, he is as one who walks round about it and takes observations and makes measurements, but has never been caught in the whirlwind of its music, in the fire and sacrifice of its ineffable passion. You do not want more evidence, you need the understanding heart, the clean heart, the right spirit, the child-like disposition, all prayers in one, "Lord, teach me what thou wouldst have me do."

What think ye? Here is a man who is filling his grate with all kinds of fuel, and a beautiful grate it is, not wanting in capacity. And still he re-arranges the material, again he redistributes the fuel, he takes it all out and puts other fuel in, and calls the attention of men to the size of his grate and to the purpose of his life, and he challenges men to find any better fuel than he has yet secured. What should he be doing? Not playing himself at grate-filling, but setting fire to the material already in his possession, and thus kindling a friendly influence in the house, the fire, that household apocalypse, that household revelation, that chamber of the picture-gallery, the fire—wherein battles are fought and victories won, and temples built and sacrifices offered, and great motions continually are proceeding which are to be caught by the imagination and transformed into all kinds of utility in the life. O, fool, light the fuel you have; other fuel will be wanted and will be ready to come, not for ornament but for use.

Jesus Christ gave a broad answer, we have just said, to this inquiry for a sign. "When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest and finding none: then he saith, I will return." That unclean spirit is curiosity, idle, vain, self-seeking curiosity, and when once it has been satisfied by the great replies of history, and still wants a further satisfaction, and goes out to find it, it will return and become sevenfold greater than it once was. Beware how you keep your curiosity chained. Strengthen the chain every day. Once get into the spirit of sign-seeking and question-asking, and vital piety becomes an impossibility in your case. Never let question-asking get the upper hand of you. In this solemn department of life keep curiosity in its right place, which is outside, mile on mile away from the letter. Consider how easy it is to ask for signs, how poor and feeble an intellectual condition it is merely to be able to ask questions, to propound difficulties, to suggest troubles, and to bewilder and puzzle those who are endeavouring to do great good in the world. Do not mistake question-asking or sign-seeking for intellectual greatness.

The doctrine is not only true intellectually, it is true morally. If once you get over a bad habit you must do something more, or that bad habit will come back to you, and finding the house empty, swept, and garnished, will bring with it seven other habits worse than itself, and the last state of your heart shall be sadder than the first. What is that other thing a man has to do after he has got rid of a bad habit? He has to cultivate a good one. It is not enough to cease to curse, you must learn to pray; it is not enough to throw away from you the evil-spirited book and to say, "I will never read another line of you;" you must replace it by a wise and good book, otherwise the old appetency will wake, and will urge you to its cruel satisfaction.

Herein it is very important that all merely negative reformers should be followed up in their noble and beneficent course by those who have something distinctive and positive to offer to such as have been reclaimed from open and scandalous vices. You have been converted from the sin of drunkenness; it is not enough that you be a mere abstainer from intoxicating drinks, you must be surrounded by the noblest influences, you must be intellectually enlightened and trained, you must betake yourself to some grand moral purpose, you must become deeply interested in some philanthropic and beneficent scheme, and thus must complete in positiveness what has been so happily begun in the region that is merely destructive or negative.

The unclean spirit will come back. No man can remain in the same state from time to time—getting no better, getting no worse—it is not in human nature to be thus stationary. "The last state of that man is worse than the first," said Christ concerning those who had not filled up the house of the heart with good and heavenly spirits. We become worse and worse every day if we are not pursuing the right course; we do not stand still. Nor is the decadence and corruption of our nature a rapid and visible one; the process is silent, subtle, often invisible, and not seldom unfelt in its detailed action. The sapping goes on quietly, the strength is sucked out of a man little by little, so that he shakes himself and says, "I am as strong as ever;" but there comes a time when in shaking himself he reveals himself to himself, and feels that he is no longer the young, blithe, strong, clear-headed man which he was in his earlier life. Sometimes the collapse is sudden; there is nothing in the outward circumstances to betoken what has been proceeding within; but at one critical touch the whole outline gives in and the collapse is complete. I may have illustrated this to you before by the action of the white ant. The white ant will enter into a door and will eat it up; every fibre of the wood will be consumed by the little creature, and the paint will be left untouched. You would say, "The door is there, open it." If you touch it it falls; the whole of the woodwork has been consumed by the little mischief-maker. It is also the same in our life. We appear to be the same; to all outward seeming we are just as we were twenty years ago; but if we have not been growing in the right direction, there will come upon us a touch, and we shall sink and perish, and the tremendous reality will be revealed.

"While he yet talked to the people." We must not forget the circumstances under which the next event occurred. Jesus Christ was in the excitement of speech; when he spoke, everything in him spoke; the whole life was an utterance; in no cold blood did this mighty publisher of eternal truths declare his testimony; his quietness was power suppressed, his whisper was a thunder-burst in the azure, when he spoke he trembled, thrilled, vibrated through and through to some influence within and above. "While he talked to the people, behold his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee." His mind was moving forward with the sweep and wholeness of a great river; a man in the crowd sought to turn the urgent river from its channel; Jesus answered out of the inspiration of his human enthusiasm, "Who is my mother, and who are my brethren?" You cannot understand these words in cold blood; there are fingers so icy that they ought never to touch this Book; there are eyes so cold they ought never to look into these immortal pages. You cannot understand the prophets and the apostles in cold critical mood; you can vivisect their words, etymologise them, searching into remote meanings and earlier definitions, and when you have done all that—as I shall endeavour to do in a few instances this evening in this church—there remains a broader interpretation which can only be exercised by those who are aflame with the very fire of God.

We all know what it is to speak out of a holy and sublime excitement. There are sacred hours, when we see the broadest and grandest bearings of the lines of life, and in which we seize the innermost meaning of common or tender terms. Our little self is lifted up into a heroic personality, in which no local relation is destroyed, but rather ennobled and sublimed. You must therefore look at Jesus Christ's words in the light of the fact that they were uttered while he yet talked to the people, his soul aglow, his eye alight, his blood fevered with the fire of God, and his whole individuality lifted up into a broader self-hood than was measurable by the merely human eye even in its keenest observation.

Look at this wonderful speech of Jesus; it recalls his earliest recorded words. Said his mother: "Thy father and I have sought thee, sorrowing." Said he: "Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's business?" Already, at twelve years of age, he was another than the son of Mary and the reputed son of the carpenter. Already he had seized the key-word of the universe and realised that relation which makes all other relations fall into their right perspective and assume their proper proportion and colour. We are too local, we are too small, we build ourselves up into families and we enclose ourselves within square huts, and we have terminal points—we begin here and we end there, and so far we know nothing about the spirit of Jesus Christ, the great humanity, the world-feeling—we do not realise our ancestry and our posterity and our whole bearing in the universe: we detach ourselves: we belong to this sect, or to yonder clan, or to the other fraternity; we are English, or American, or Italian, or Colonial; we have these little narrowing dwarfing terms always clinging to us and impoverishing our speech. Use them as mere conveniences and they may be of some utility, but there ought to be times in the consciousness of every Christian heart in which every land is home and every man a brother.

This answer explains Christ's true relation to the human family. "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother and sister and mother." It is not a question of local pedigree, it is not a claim that can be set up on partial lines. This whosoever is as broad as any whosoever uttered in all the great and inclusive language of the Bible. "Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven." He keeps to the key-word, he involves the centre, he stands on vital terms. Not—whosoever shall be born in my day and age, whosoever shall be born in my country, whosoever shall speak my language with my accent; not—whosoever shall be great or noble, or rich, or mighty—whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven. Then that gives me my chance. I may be a relation of Jesus Christ—poor, obscure, unknown, helpless; even I may enter the household of faith and be permitted to touch at least the hem of his garment. I may be one of his family; I may be a kinsman of the Son of God; I need no longer be a stranger and a foreigner, but may enter into the household and commonwealth of heaven.

I have thus to offer you a grand ancestry; to offer all men new vitalities, new surroundings, new kinsfolk. This shows the uniting power of Christianity. The Christian religion never divides men, never splits up a human family and belittles our human relations. The Christian religion would have us all brought into a common sympathy, united by a common spirit of loyalty to the same Saviour, and would give each of us the same badge, the old, grim, black, accursed cross, which may be turned into the very symbol of the heart of God himself, the greatest Sufferer, the one Sufferer, the only Heart that knows the meaning of infinite woe.

Here, then, is our standing; this very day we are members one of another. Whether one member suffers, all the members suffer with it; whether one member rejoices, all the members should rejoice with it, and have common dance and song and high delight in the holy place. Bear ye one another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of Christ. Be no longer strangers and foreigners, but of the household of God. We are not isolated individuals; we grasp hands with the ages, the glorious company of the apostles, the holy band of the prophets before them, the noble army of martyrs uniting them both, the holy Church throughout all the world—this is the household of God. Beauteous picture! Tender relationship! it cannot be realised in all its ideal perfection here and now, but we ought always to cling to the inner and vital truth which it typifies, that the Church is one—indivisible as the heart that bought it with blood.