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Title: Expositions of Holy Scripture
       St. John Chapters I to XIV

Author: Alexander Maclaren

Release Date: May, 2005 [EBook #8070]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on June 11, 2003]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE ***




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EXPOSITIONS OF
HOLY SCRIPTURE

ALEXANDER MACLAREN, D. D., Litt. D.




ST. JOHN

Vols. I and II

CONTENTS


THE WORD IN ETERNITY, IN THE WORLD, AND IN THE FLESH (John i. 1-14)

THE LIGHT AND THE LAMPS (John i. 8; v. 35)

'THREE TABERNACLES' (John i. 14; Rev. vii. 15; xxi. 3)

THE FULNESS OF CHRIST (John i. 16)

GRACE AND TRUTH (John i. 17)

THE WORLD'S SIN-BEARER (John i. 29)

THE FIRST DISCIPLES: I. JOHN AND ANDREW (John i. 37-39)

THE FIRST DISCIPLES: II. SIMON PETER (John i. 40-42)

THE FIRST DISCIPLES: III. PHILIP (John i. 43)

THE FIRST DISCIPLES: IV. NATHANAEL (John i. 45-49)

THE FIRST DISCIPLES: V. BELIEVING AND SEEING (John i. 50, 51)

JESUS THE JOY-BRINGER (John ii. 1-11)

THE FIRST MIRACLE IN CANA--THE WATER MADE WINE (John ii. 11)

CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE (John ii. 16)

THE DESTROYERS AND THE RESTORER (John ii. 19)

TEACHER OR SAVIOUR? (John iii. 2)

WIND AND SPIRIT (John iii. 8)

THE BRAZEN SERPENT (John iii. 14)

CHRIST'S MUSTS (John iii. 14)

THE LAKE AND THE RIVER (John iii. 16)

THE WEARIED CHRIST (John iv. 6, 32)

'GIVE ME TO DRINK' (John iv. 7, 26)

THE GIFT AND THE GIVER (John iv. 10)

THE SPRINGING FOUNTAIN (John iv. 14)

THE SECOND MIRACLE (John iv. 54)

THE THIRD MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL (John v, 8)

THE LIFE-GIVER AND JUDGE (John v. 17-27)

THE FOURTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL (John vi. 11)

'FRAGMENTS' OR 'BROKEN PIECES' (John vi. 12)

THE FIFTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL (John vi. 19, 20)

HOW TO WORK THE WORK OF GOD (John vi. 28, 29)

THE MANNA (John vi. 48-50)

ONE SAYING WITH TWO MEANINGS (John vii. 33, 34; xiii. 33)

THE ROCK AND THE WATER (John vii. 37, 38)

THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD (John viii. 12)

THREE ASPECTS OF FAITH (John viii. 30, 31)

'NEVER IN BONDAGE' (John viii. 33)

ONE METAPHOR AND TWO MEANINGS (John ix. 4; Romans xiii. l2)

THE SIXTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL--THE BLIND MADE TO SEE, AND THE
SEEING MADE BLIND (John ix. 6,7)

THE GIFTS TO THE FLOCK (John x. 9)

THE GOOD SHEPHERD (John x. 14, 15)

'OTHER SHEEP' (John x. 16 R.V.)

THE DELAYS OF LOVE (John xi. 5, 6)

CHRIST'S QUESTION TO EACH (John xi. 26, 27)

THE OPEN GRAVE AT BETHANY (John xi. 30-45)

THE SEVENTH MIRACLE IN JOHN'S GOSPEL--THE RAISING OF LAZARUS (John xi.
43, 44)

CAIAPHAS (John xi. 49, 50)

LOVE'S PRODIGALITY CENSURED AND VINDICATED (John xii. 1-1l)

A NEW KIND OF KING (John xii. 12-26)

AFTER CHRIST: WITH CHRIST (John xii. 26)

THE UNIVERSAL MAGNET (John xii. 32)

THE SON OF MAN (John xii. 34)

A PARTING WARNING (John xii. 35, 36 R V.)

THE LOVE OF THE DEPARTING CHRIST (John xiii. 1)

THE SERVANT-MASTER (John xiii. 3-5)

THE DISMISSAL OF JUDAS (John xiii. 27)

THE GLORY OF THE CROSS (John xiii. 31, 32)

CANNOT AND CAN (John xiii. 33)

SEEKING JESUS (John xiii. 33)

'AS I HAVE LOVED' (John xiii. 34, 35)

'QUO VADIS?' (John xiii. 37, 38)

A RASH VOW (John xiii. 38)

FAITH IN GOD AND CHRIST (John xiv. 1)

'MANY MANSIONS' (John xiv. 2)

THE FORERUNNER (John xiv. 2, 3)

THE WAY (John xiv. 4-7)

THE TRUE VISION OF GOD (John xiv. 8-11)

CHRIST'S WORKS AND OURS (John xiv. 12-14)

LOVE AND OBEDIENCE (John xiv. 15)

THE COMFORTER GIVEN (John xiv. 16, 17)

THE ABSENT PRESENT CHRIST (John xiv. 18, 19)

THE GIFTS OF THE PRESENT CHRIST (John xiv. 20, 21)

WHO BRING CHRIST (John xiv. 22-24)

THE TEACHER SPIRIT (John xiv. 25, 26)

CHRIST'S PEACE (John xiv. 27)

JOY AND FAITH, THE FRUITS OF CHRIST'S DEPARTURE (John xiv. 28, 29)

CHRIST FORESEEING HIS PASSION (John xiv. 30, 31)




THE WORD IN ETERNITY, IN THE WORLD, AND IN THE FLESH


'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the
Word was God. 2. The same was in the beginning with God. 3. All things
were made by Him; and without Him was not any thing made that was
made. 4. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men. 5. And
the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not.
6. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. 7. The same
came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through
him might believe. 8. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear
witness of that Light. 9. That was the true Light, which lighteth
every man that cometh into the world. 10. He was in the world, and the
world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not. 11. He came unto
His own, and His own received Him not. 12. But as many as received
Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them
that believe on His name: 13. Which were born, not of blood, nor of
the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. 14. And the
Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld His glory, the
glory as of the only-begotten of the Father,) full of grace and
truth.'--JOHN i. 1-14.

The other Gospels begin with Bethlehem; John begins with 'the bosom of
the Father.' Luke dates his narrative by Roman emperors and Jewish
high-priests; John dates his 'in the beginning.' To attempt adequate
exposition of these verses in our narrow limits is absurd; we can only
note the salient points of this, the profoundest page in the New
Testament.

The threefold utterance in verse 1 carries us into the depths of
eternity, before time or creatures were. Genesis and John both start
from 'the beginning,' but, while Genesis works downwards from that
point and tells what followed, John works upwards and tells what
preceded--if we may use that term in speaking of what lies beyond
time. Time and creatures came into being, and, when they began, the
Word 'was.' Surely no form of speech could more emphatically declare
absolute, uncreated being, outside the limits of time. Clearly, too,
no interpretation of these words fathoms their depth, or makes worthy
sense, which does not recognise that the Word is a person. The second
clause of verse 1 asserts the eternal communion of the Word with God.
The preposition employed means accurately 'towards,' and expresses the
thought that in the Word there was motion or tendency towards, and not
merely association with, God. It points to reciprocal, conscious
communion, and the active going out of love in the direction of God.
The last clause asserts the community of essence, which is not
inconsistent with distinction of persons, and makes the communion of
active Love possible; for none could, in the depths of eternity, dwell
with and perfectly love and be loved by God, except one who Himself
was God.

Verse 1 stands apart as revealing the pretemporal and essential nature
of the Word. In it the deep ocean of the divine nature is partially
disclosed, though no created eye can either plunge to discern its
depths or travel beyond our horizon to its boundless, shoreless
extent. The remainder of the passage deals with the majestic march of
the self-revealing Word through creation, and illumination of
humanity, up to the climax in the Incarnation.

John repeats the substance of verse 1 in verse 2, apparently in order
to identify the Agent of creation with the august person whom he has
disclosed as filling eternity. By Him creation was effected, and,
because He was what verse 1 has declared Him to be, therefore was it
effected by Him. Observe the three steps marked in three consecutive
verses. 'All things were made by Him'; literally 'became,' where the
emergence into existence of created things is strongly contrasted with
the divine 'was' of verse 1. 'Through Him' declares that the Word is
the agent of creation; 'without Him' (literally, 'apart from Him')
declares that created things continue in existence because He
communicates it to them. Man is the highest of these 'all things,' and
verse 4 sets forth the relation of the Word to Him, declaring that
'life,' in all the width and height of its possible meanings, inheres
in Him, and is communicated by Him, with its distinguishing
accompaniment, in human nature, of light, whether of reason or of
conscience.

So far, John has been speaking as from the upper or divine side, but
in verse 5 he speaks from the under or human, and shows us how the
self-revelation of the Word has, by some mysterious necessity, been
conflict. The 'darkness' was not made by Him, but it is there, and the
beams of the light have to contend with it. Something alien must have
come in, some catastrophe have happened, that the light should have to
stream into a region of darkness.

John takes 'the Fall' for granted, and in verse 5 describes the whole
condition of things, both within and beyond the region of special
revelation. The shining of the light is continuous, but the darkness
is obstinate. It is the tragedy and crime of the world that the
darkness will not have the light. It is the long-suffering mercy of
God that the light repelled is not extinguished, but shines meekly on.

Verses 6-13 deal with the historical appearance of the Word. The
Forerunner is introduced, as in the other Gospels; and, significantly
enough, this Evangelist calls him only 'John,'--omitting 'the
Baptist,' as was very natural to him, the other John, who would feel
less need for distinguishing the two than others did. The subordinate
office of a witness to the light is declared positively and
negatively, and the dignity of such a function is implied. To witness
to the light, and to be the means of leading men to believe, was
honour for any man.

The limited office of the Forerunner serves as contrast to the
transcendent lustre of the true Light. The meaning of verse 9 may be
doubtful, but verses 10 and 11 clearly refer to the historical
manifestation of the Word, and probably verse 9 does so too. Possibly,
however, it rather points to the inner revelation by the Word, which
is the 'light of men.' In that case the phrase 'that cometh into the
world' would refer to 'every man,' whereas it is more natural in this
context to refer it to 'the light,' and to see in the verse a
reference to the illumination of humanity consequent on the appearance
of Jesus Christ. The use of 'world' and 'came' in verses 10 and 11
points in that direction. Verse 9 represents the Word as 'coming';
verse 10 regards Him as come--'He was in the world.'

Note the three clauses, so like, and yet so unlike the august three in
verse 1. Note the sad issue of the coming--'The world knew Him not.'
In that 'world' there was one place where He might have looked for
recognition, one set of people who might have been expected to hail
Him; but not only the wide world was blind ('knew not'), but the
narrower circle of 'His own' fought against what they knew to be light
('received not').

But the rejection was not universal, and John proceeds to develop the
blessed consequences of receiving the light. For the first time he
speaks the great word 'believe.' The act of faith is the condition or
means of 'receiving.' It is the opening of the mental eye for the
light to pour in. We possess Jesus in the measure of our faith. The
object of faith is 'His name,' which means, not this or that
collocation of letters by which He is designated, but His whole
self-revelation. The result of such faith is 'the right to become
children of God,' for through faith in the only-begotten Son we
receive the communication of a divine life which makes us, too, sons.
That new life, with its consequence of sonship, does not belong to
human nature as received from parents, but is a gift of God mediated
through faith in the Light who is the Word.

Verse 14 is not mere repetition of the preceding, but advances beyond
it in that it declares the wonder of the way by which that divine Word
did enter into the world. John here, as it were, draws back the
curtain, and shows us the transcendent miracle of divine love, for
which he has been preparing in all the preceding. Note that he has not
named 'the Word' since verse 1, but here he again uses the majestic
expression to bring out strongly the contrast between the
ante-temporal glory and the historical lowliness. These four words,
'The Word became flesh,' are the foundation of all our knowledge of
God, of man, of the relations between them, the foundation of all our
hopes, the guarantee of all our peace, the pledge of all blessedness.
'He tabernacled among us.' As the divine glory of old dwelt between
the cherubim, so Jesus is among men the true Temple, wherein we see a
truer glory than that radiant light which filled the closed chamber of
the holy of holies. Rapturous remembrances rose before the Apostle as
he wrote, 'We beheld His glory'; and he has told us what he has beheld
and seen with his eyes, that we also may have fellowship with him in
beholding. The glory that shone from the Incarnate Word was no
menacing or dazzling light. He and it were 'full of grace and truth,'
perfect Love bending to inferiors and sinners, with hands full of
gifts and a heart full of tenderness and the revelation of reality,
both as regards God and man. His grace bestows all that our lowness
needs, His truth teaches all that our ignorance requires. All our
gifts and all our knowledge come from the Incarnate Word, in whom
believing we are the children of God.




THE LIGHT AND THE LAMPS


'He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that
Light.'--JOHN i. 8.

'He was a burning and a shining light; and ye were willing for a
season to rejoice in His light.'--JOHN v. 35.

My two texts both refer to John the Baptist. One of them is the
Evangelist's account of him, the other is our Lord's eulogium upon
him. The latter of my texts, as the Revised Version shows, would be
more properly rendered, 'He was a lamp' rather than 'He was a light,'
and the contrast between the two words, the 'light' and 'the lamps,'
is my theme. I gather all that I would desire to say into three
points: 'that Light' and its witnesses; the underived Light and the
kindled lamps; the undying Light and the lamps that go out.

I. First of all, then, the contrast suggested to us is between 'that
Light' and its witnesses.

John, in that profound prologue which is the deepest part of
Scripture, and lays firm and broad in the depths the foundation-stones
of a reasonable faith, draws the contrast between 'that Light' and
them whose business it was to bear witness to it. As for the former, I
cannot here venture to dilate upon the great, and to me absolutely
satisfying and fundamental, thoughts that lie in these eighteen first
verses of this Gospel. 'The Word was with God,' and that Word was the
Agent of Creation, the Fountain of Life, the Source of the Light which
is inseparable from all human life. John goes back, with the
simplicity of a child's speech, which yet is deeper than all
philosophies, to a Beginning, far anterior to 'the Beginning' of which
Genesis speaks, and declares that before creation that Light shone;
and he looks out over the whole world, and declares, that before and
beyond the limits of the historical manifestation of the Word in the
flesh, its beams spread over the whole race of man. But they are all
focussed, if I may so speak, and gathered to a point which burns as
well as illuminates, in the historical manifestation of Jesus Christ
in the flesh. 'That was the true Light which lighteth every man that
cometh into the world.'

Next, he turns to the highest honour and the most imperative duty
laid, not only upon mighty men and officials, but upon all on whose
happy eyeballs this Light has shone, and into whose darkened hearts
the joy and peace and purity of it have flowed, and he says, 'He was
sent'--and they are sent--'to bear witness of that Light.' It is the
noblest function that a man can discharge. It is a function that is
discharged by the very existence through the ages of a community
which, generation after generation, subsists, and generation after
generation manifests in varying degrees of brightness, and with
various modifications of tint, the same light. There is the family
character in all true Christians, with whatever diversities of
idiosyncrasies, and national life or ecclesiastical distinctions.
Whether it be Francis of Assisi or John Wesley, whether it be Thomas a
Kempis or George Fox, the light is one that shines through these
many-coloured panes of glass, and the living Church is the witness of
a living Lord, not only before it, and behind it, and above it, but
living in it. They are 'light' because they are irradiated by Him.
They are 'light' because they are 'in the Lord.' But not only by the
fact of the existence of such a community is the witness-bearing
effected, but it comes as a personal obligation, with immense weight
of pressure and immense possibilities of joy in the discharge of it,
to every Christian man and woman.

What, then, is the witness that we all are bound to bear, and shall
bear if we are true to our obligations and to our Lord? Mainly, dear
brethren, the witness of experience. That a Christian man shall be
able to stand up and say, 'I know this because I live it, and I
testify to Jesus Christ because I for myself have found Him to be the
life of my life, the Light of all my seeing, the joy of my heart, my
home, and my anchorage'--that is the witness that is impregnable. And
there is no better sign of the trend of Christian thought to-day than
the fact that the testimony of experience is more and more coming to
be recognised by thoughtful men and writers as being the sovereign
attestation of the reality of the Light. 'I see'; that is the proof
that light has touched my eyeballs. And when a man can contrast, as
some of us can, our present vision with our erstwhile darkness, then
the evidence, like that of the sturdy blind man in the Gospels, who
had nothing to say in reply to the subtleties and Rabbinical traps and
puzzles but only 'I was blind; now I see'--his experience is likely to
have the effect that it had in another miracle of healing: 'Beholding
the man which was healed standing amongst them, they could say nothing
against it.' I should think they could not.

But there is one thing that will always characterise the true
witnesses to that Light, and that is self-suppression. Remember the
beautiful, immovable humility of the Baptist about whom these texts
were spoken: 'What sayest thou of thyself?' 'I am a Voice,' that is
all. 'Art thou that Prophet?' 'No!' 'Art thou the Christ?' 'No! I am
nothing but a Voice.' And remember how, when John's disciples tried to
light the infernal fires of jealousy in his quiet heart by saying, 'He
whom thou didst baptise, and to whom thou didst give witness'--He whom
thou didst start on His career--'is baptising,' poaching upon thy
preserves, 'and all men come unto Him,' the only answer that he gave
was, 'The friend of the Bridegroom'--who stands by in a quiet, dark
corner--'rejoices greatly because of the Bridegroom's voice.' Keep
yourself out of sight, Christian teachers and preachers; put Christ in
the front, and hide behind Him.

II. Now let me ask you to look at the other contrast that is suggested
by our other text. The underived light and the kindled lamps.

It is possible to read the words of that second text thus--'He was a
lamp kindled and (therefore) shining.' But whether that be the
meaning, or whether the usual rendering is correct, the emblem itself
carries the same thought, for a lamp must be lit by contact with a
light, and must be fed with oil, if its flame is to be sustained. And
so the very metaphor-whatever the force of the ambiguous word--in its
eloquent contrast between the Light and the lamp, suggests this
thought, that the one is underived, self-fed, and therefore undying,
and that the other owes all its flame to the touch of that uncreated
Light, and burns brightly only on condition of its keeping up the
contact with Him, and being fed continually from His stores of
radiance.

I need not say more than a word with regard to the former member of
that contrast suggested here. That unlit Light derives its brilliancy,
according to the Scriptural teaching, from nothing but its divine
union with the Father. So that long before there were eyes to see,
there was the eradiation and outshining of the Father's glory. I do
not enter into these depths, but this I would say, that what is called
the 'originality' of Jesus is only explained when we reverently see in
that unique life the shining through a pure humanity, as through a
sheet of alabaster, of that underived, divine Light. Jesus is an
insoluble problem to men who will not see in Him the Eternal Light
which 'in the beginning was with God.' You find in Him no trace of
gradual acquisition of knowledge, or of arguing or feeling His way to
His beliefs. You find in Him no trace of consciousness of a great
horizon of darkness encompassing the region where He sees light. You
find in Him no trace of a recognition of other sources from which He
has drawn any portion of His light. You find in Him the distinct
declaration that His relation to truth is not the relation of men who
learn, and grow, and acquire, and know in part; for, says He, 'I am
the Truth.' He stands apart from us all, and above us all, in that He
owes His radiance to none, and can dispense it to every man. The
question which the puzzled Jews asked about Him, 'How knoweth this Man
letters, having never learned?' may be widened out to all the
characteristics of His human life. To me the only answer is: 'Thou art
the King of glory, O Christ! Thou art the Everlasting Son of the
Father.'

Dependent on Him are the little lights which He has lit, and in the
midst of which He walks. Union with Jesus Christ--'that Light'--is the
condition of all human light. That is true over all regions, as I
believe. 'The inspiration of the Almighty giveth understanding.' The
candle of the Lord shines in every man, and 'that true Light lighteth
every man that cometh into the world.' Thinker, student, scientist,
poet, author, practical man--all of them are lit from the uncreated
Source, and all of them, if they understand their own nature, would
say, 'In Thy light do we see Light.'

But especially is this great thought true and exemplified within the
limits of the Christian life. For the Christian to be touched with
Christ's Promethean finger is to flame into light. And the condition
of continuing to shine is to continue the contact which first
illuminated. A break in the contact, of a finger's breadth, is as
effectual as one of a mile. Let Christian men and women, if they would
shine, remember, 'Ye are light in the Lord'; and if we stray, and get
without the circle of the Light, we pass into darkness, and ourselves
cease to shine.

Brethren, it is threadbare truth, that the condition of Christian
vitality and radiance is close and unbroken contact with Jesus Christ,
the Source of all light. Threadbare; but if we lived as if we believed
it, the Church would be revolutionised and the world illuminated; and
many a smoking wick would flash up into a blazing torch. Let Christian
people remember that the words of my text define no special privilege
or duty of any official or man of special endowments, but that to all
of us has been said, 'Ye are My witnesses,' and to all of us is
offered the possibility of being 'burning and shining lights' if we
keep ourselves close to that Light.

III. Lastly, the second of my texts suggests--the contrast between the
Undying Light and the lamps that go out.

'For a season ye were willing to rejoice in His light.' There is
nothing in the present condition of the civilised and educated world
more remarkable and more difficult for some people to explain than the
contrast between the relation which Jesus Christ bears to the present
age, and the relation which all other great names in the
past--philosophers, poets, guides of men--bear to it. There is nothing
in the world the least like the vividness, the freshness, the
closeness, of the personal relation which thousands and thousands of
people, with common sense in their heads, bear to that Man who died
nineteen hundred years ago. All others pass, sooner or later, into the
darkness. Thickening mists of oblivion, fold by fold, gather round the
brightest names. But here is Jesus Christ, whom all classes of
thinkers and social reformers have to reckon with to-day, who is a
living power amongst the trivialities of the passing moment, and in
whose words and in the teaching of whose life serious men feel that
there lie undeveloped yet, and certainly not yet put into practice,
principles which are destined to revolutionise society and change the
world. And how does that come?

I am not going to enter upon that question; I only ask you to think of
the contrast between His position, in this generation, to communities
and individuals, and the position of all other great names which lie
in the past. Why, it does not take more than a lifetime such as mine,
for instance, to remember how the great lights that shone seventy
years ago in English thinking and in English literature, have for the
most part gone out, and what we young men thought to be bright
particular stars, this new generation pooh-poohs as mere exhalations
from the marsh or twinkling and uncertain tapers, and you will find
their books in the twopenny-box at the bookseller's door. A cynical
diplomatist, in one of our modern dramas, sums it up, after seeing the
death of a revolutionary, 'I have known eight leaders of revolts.' And
some of us could say, 'We have known about as many guides of men who
have been forgotten and passed away.' 'His Name shall endure for ever.
His name shall continue as long as the sun, and men shall be blessed
in Him; all generations shall call Him blessed.' Even Shelley had the
prophecy forced from him--

  'The moon of Mahomet
  Arose and it shall set,
  While blazoned as on heaven's eternal noon,
  The Cross leads generations on.'

We may sum up the contrast between the undying Light and the lamps
that go out in the old words: 'They truly were many, because they were
not suffered to continue by reason of death, but this Man, because He
continueth ever... is able to save unto the uttermost them that come
unto God through Him.'

So, brethren, when lamps are quenched, let us look to the Light. When
our own lives are darkened because our household light is taken from
its candlestick, let us lift up our hearts and hopes to Him that
abideth for ever. Do not let us fall into the folly, and commit the
sin, of putting our heart's affections, our spirit's trust, upon any
that can pass and that must change. We need a Person whom we can
clasp, and who never will glide from our hold. We need a Light
uncreated, self-fed, eternal. 'Whilst ye have the Light, believe in
the Light, that ye may be the children of light.'




'THREE TABERNACLES'

'The Word ... dwelt among us.'--JOHN i. 14.

'... He that sitteth on the Throne shall dwell among them.'--REV. vii.
15.

'... Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with
them.'--REV. xxi. 3.

The word rendered 'dwelt' in these three passages, is a peculiar one.
It is only found in the New Testament--in this Gospel and in the Book
of Revelation. That fact constitutes one of the many subtle threads of
connection between these two books, which at first sight seem so
extremely unlike each other; and it is a morsel of evidence in favour
of the common authorship of the Gospel and of the Apocalypse, which
has often, and very vehemently in these latter days of criticism, been
denied.

The force of the word, however, is the matter to which I desire
especially to draw attention. It literally means 'to dwell in a tent,'
or, if we may use such a word, 'to tabernacle,' and there is no doubt
a reference to the Tabernacle in which the divine Presence abode in
the wilderness and in the land of Israel before the erection. In all
three passages, then, we may see allusion to that early symbolical
dwelling of God with man. 'The Word tabernacled among us'; so is the
truth for earth and time. 'He that sitteth upon the throne shall
spread His tabernacle upon' the multitude which no man can number, who
have made their robes white in the blood of the Lamb; that is the
truth for the spirits of just men made perfect, the waiting Church,
which expects the redemption of the body. 'God shall tabernacle with
them'; that is the truth for the highest condition of humanity, when
the Tabernacle of God shall be with redeemed men in the new earth.
'Let us build three tabernacles,' one for the Incarnate Christ, one
for the interspace between earth and heaven, and one for the
culmination of all things. And it is to these three aspects of the one
thought, set forth in rude symbol by the movable tent in the
wilderness, that I ask you to turn now.

I. First, then, we have to think of that Tabernacle for earth. 'The
Word was made flesh, and dwelt, as in a tent, amongst us.'

The human nature, the visible, material body of Jesus Christ, in which
there enshrined itself the everlasting Word, which from the beginning
was the Agent of all divine revelation, that is the true Temple of
God. When we begin to speak about the special presence of Omnipresence
in any one place, we soon lose ourselves, and get into deep waters of
glory, where there is no standing. And I do not care to deal here with
theological definitions or thorny questions, but simply to set forth,
as the language of my text sets before us, that one transcendent,
wonderful, all-blessed thought that this poor human nature is capable
of, and has really once in the history of the world received into
itself, the real, actual presence of the whole fulness of the
Divinity. What must be the kindred and likeness between Godhood and
manhood when into the frail vehicle of our humanity that wondrous
treasure can be poured; when the fire of God can burn in the bush of
our human nature, and that nature not be consumed? So it has been. 'In
Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.'

And when we come with our questions, How? In what manner? How can the
lesser contain the greater? we have to be content with the recognition
that the manner is beyond our fathoming, and to accept the fact,
pressed upon our faith, that our hearts may grasp it and be at peace.
God hath dwelt in humanity. The everlasting Word, who is the
forthcoming of all the fulness of Deity into the realm of finite
creatures, was made flesh and dwelt among us.

But the Tabernacle was not only the dwelling-place of God, it was also
and, therefore, the place of Revelation of God. So in our text there
follows, 'we beheld His glory.' As in the tent in the wilderness there
hovered between the outstretched wings of the silent cherubim, above
the Mercy-seat, the brightness of the symbolical cloud which was
expressly named 'the glory of God,' and was the visible manifestation
of His real presence; so John would have us think that in that lowly
humanity, with its curtains and its coverings of flesh, there lay
shrined in the inmost place the brightness of the light of the
manifest glory of God. 'We beheld His glory.' The rapturous adoration
of the remembrance overcomes him, and he breaks his sentence, reckless
of grammatical connection, as the fulness of the blessed memory floods
into his soul. 'That glory was as of the Only Begotten of the Father.'
The manifestation of God in Christ is unique, as becomes Him who
partakes of the nature of that God of whom He is the Representative
and the Revealer.

And how did that glory make itself known to us? By miracle? Yes! As we
read in the story of the first that Christ wrought, 'He manifested
forth His glory and His disciples believed upon Him.' By miracle? Yes!
As we read His own promise at the grave of Lazarus: 'Said I not unto
thee, that, if thou wouldest believe, thou shouldest see the glory of
God?' But, blessed be His name, miracle is not the highest
manifestation of Christ's glory and of God's. The uniqueness of the
revelation of Christ's glory in God does not depend upon the deeds
which He wrought. For, as the context goes on to tell, the Word which
tabernacled among us was 'full of grace and truth,' and therein is the
glory most gloriously revealed.

The lambent light of stooping love that shone forth warning and
attracting in His gentle life, and the clear white beam of unmingled
truth that streamed from the radiant purity of Christ's life, revealed
God to hearts that pine for love and spirits that hunger for truth, as
no others of God's self-revealing works have done. And that revelation
of the glory of God in the fulness of grace and truth is the highest
possible revelation. For the divinest thing in God is love, and the
true 'glory of God' is neither some symbolical flashing light nor the
pomp of mere power and majesty; nor even those inconceivable and
incommunicable attributes which we christen with names like
Omnipotence and Omnipresence and Infinitude, and the like. These are
all at the fringes of the brightness. The true central heart and
lustrous light of the glory of God lie In His love, and of that glory
Christ is the unique Representative and Revealer, because He is the
only Begotten Son, and 'full of grace and truth.'

Thus the Word tabernacled amongst us. And though the Tabernacle to
outward seeming was covered by curtains and skins that hid all the
glowing splendour within; yet in that lowly life that was lived in the
body of His humiliation, and knew our limitations and our weaknesses,
'the glory of the Lord was revealed; and all flesh hath seen it
together' and acknowledged the divine Presence there.

Still further the Tabernacle was the place of sacrifice. So in the
tabernacle of His flesh Jesus offered up the one sacrifice for sins
for ever. In the offering up of His human life in continuous
obedience, and in the offering up of His body and blood in the bitter
Passion of the Cross, He brought men nigh unto God.

Therefore, because of all these things, because the Tabernacle is the
dwelling-place of God, the place of revelation, and the place of
sacrifice, therefore, finally is it the meeting-place betwixt God and
man. In the Old Testament it is always called by the name which our
Revised Version has accurately substituted for 'tabernacle of the
congregation,' namely 'tent of meeting.' The correctness of that
rendering and the meaning of the name are established by several
passages in the Old Testament, as for instance, 'There I will meet
with you, to speak there unto thee, and there I will meet with the
children of Israel.' So in Christ, who by His Incarnation lays His
hand upon both, God touches man and man touches God. We who are afar
off are made nigh, and in that 'true tabernacle which the Lord pitched
and not man' we meet God and are glad.

  'And so the word was flesh, and wrought
  With human hands the creed of creeds,
  In loveliness of perfect deeds.'

The temple for earth is 'the temple of His body.'

II. We have the Tabernacle for the Heavens.

In the context of our second passage we have a vision of the great
multitude redeemed out of all nations and kindreds, 'standing before
the Throne and before the Lamb, arrayed in white robes, and palms in
their hands.' The palms in their hands give important help towards
understanding the vision. As has been often remarked, there are no
heathen emblems in the Book of the Apocalypse. All its metaphors move
within the circle of Jewish experiences and facts. So that we are not
to think of the Roman palm of victory, but of the Jewish palm which
was borne at the Feast of Tabernacles. What was the Feast of
Tabernacles? A festival established on purpose to recall to the minds
and to the gratitude of the Jews settled in their own land the days of
their wandering in the wilderness. Part of the ritual of it was that
during its celebration they builded for themselves booths or
tabernacles of leaves and boughs of trees, under which they dwelt,
thus reminding themselves of their nomad condition.

Now what beauty and power it gives to the word of my text, if we take
in this allusion to the Jewish festival! The great multitude bearing
the palms are keeping the feast, memorial of past wilderness
wanderings; and 'He that sitteth on the throne shall spread His
tabernacle above them,' as the word might be here rendered. That is to
say, He Himself shall build and be the tent in which they dwell; He
Himself shall dwell with them in it. He Himself, in closer union than
can be conceived of here, shall keep them company during that feast.

What a thought of that condition--the condition as I believe
represented in this vision--of the spirits of the just made perfect,
'who wait for the adoption, to wit, the resurrection of the body,' is
given us if we take this point of view to interpret the whole lovely
symbolism. It is all a time of glad, grateful remembrance of the
wilderness march. It is all a time in which festal joys shall be
theirs, and the memory of the trials and the weariness and the sorrow
and the solitude that are past shall deepen to a more exquisite
poignancy of delight, the rest and the fellowship and the felicity of
that calm Presence, and God Himself shall spread His tent above them,
lodge with them, and they with Him.

And so, dear brethren, rest in that assurance, that though we know so
little of that state, we know this: 'Absent from the body, present
with the Lord,' and that the happy company who bear the palms shall
dwell in God, and God in them.

III. And now, lastly, look at that final vision which we have in these
texts, which we may call the Tabernacle for the renewed earth.

I do not pretend to interpret the scenery and the setting of these
Apocalyptic visions with dogmatic confidence, but it seems to me as if
the emblems of this final vision coincide with dim hints in many other
portions of Scripture; to the effect that some cosmical change having
passed upon this material world in which we dwell, it, in some
regenerated form, shall be the final abode of a regenerated and
redeemed humanity. That, I think, is the natural interpretation of a
great deal of Scriptural teaching.

For that highest condition there is set forth this as the
all-sufficing light upon it. 'Behold, the Tabernacle of God is with
men, and He will tabernacle with them.' The climax and the goal of all
the divine working, and the long processes of God's love for, and
discipline of, the world, are to be this, that He and men shall abide
together in unity and concord. That is God's wish from the beginning.
We read in one of the profound utterances of the Book of Proverbs how
from of old the 'delights' of the Incarnate Wisdom which foreshadowed
the Incarnate Word 'were with the sons of men.' And, at the close of
all things, when the vision of this final chapter shall be fulfilled,
God will say, settling Himself in the midst of a redeemed humanity,
'Lo! here will I dwell, for I have desired it. This is My rest for
ever.' He will tabernacle with men, and men with Him.

We know not, and never shall know until experience strips the bandages
from our eyes, what new methods of participation of the divine nature,
and new possibilities of intimacy and intercourse with Him may be ours
when the veils of flesh and sense and time have all dropped away. New
windows may be opened in our spirits, from which we shall perceive new
aspects of the divine character. New doors may be opened in our souls,
from out of which we may pass to touch parts of His nature, all
impalpable and inconceivable to us now. And when all the veils of a
discordant moral nature are taken away, and we are pure, then we shall
see, then we shall draw nigh to God. The thing that chiefly separates
man from God is man's sin. When that is removed, the centrifugal force
which kept our tiny orb apart from the great central sun being
withdrawn, we shall, as it were, fall into the brightness and be one,
not losing our sense of individuality, which would be to lose all the
blessedness, but united with Him in a union far more intimate than
earth can parallel. 'The Tabernacle of God shall be with men, and He
will tabernacle with them.'

Do not let us forget that this highest and ultimate hope that is held
forth here, of the union and communion, perfect and perpetual, of
humanity with God, does not sweep aside Jesus Christ. For through all
eternity the Everlasting Word, the Christ who bears our nature in its
glorified form, or, rather, whose nature in its glorified form we
shall bear, is the Medium of Revelation, and the Medium of
communication between man and God.

'I saw no Temple therein,' says this final vision of the Apocalypse,
but 'God Almighty and the Lamb,' and these are the Temples thereof.
Therefore through eternity God shall tabernacle with men, as He does
tabernacle with us now through Him, in whom dwelleth as in its
perennial habitation, 'all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.'

So we have the three tabernacles, for earth, for heaven, for the
renewed earth; and these three, if I may say so, are like the triple
division of that ancient Tabernacle in the wilderness: the Outer
Court; the Holy Place; the Holiest of all. Let us enter into that
outer court, and abide and commune with that God who comes near to us,
revealing, forgiving, in the person of His Son, and then we shall pass
from court to court, 'and go from strength to strength, until every
one of us in Zion appear before God'; and enter into the Holiest of
all, where 'within the veil' we shall receive splendours of revelation
undreamed of here, and enjoy depths of communion to which the
selectest moments of fellowship with God on earth are shallow and
poor.




THE FULNESS OF CHRIST

'And of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.'--JOHN
1.16.

What a remarkable claim that is which the Apostle here makes for his
Master! On the one side he sets His solitary figure as the universal
Giver; on the other side are gathered the whole race of men,
recipients from Him. As in the wilderness the children of Israel
clustered round the rock from which poured out streams, copious enough
for all the thirsty camp, John, echoing his Master's words, 'If any
man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink,' here declares 'Of _His_
fulness have _all we_ received.'

I. Notice, then, the one ever full Source.

The words of my text refer back to those of the fourteenth verse: 'The
Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth.' 'And
of His fulness have all we received.' The 'fulness' here seems to mean
that of which the Incarnate Word was full, the 'grace and truth' which
dwelt without measure in Him; the unlimited and absolute completeness
and abundance of divine powers and glories which 'tabernacled' in Him.
And so the language of my text, both verbally and really, is
substantially equivalent to that of the Apostle Paul. 'In Him dwelleth
all the fulness of the Godhead bodily; and ye are complete in Him.'
The whole infinite Majesty, and inexhaustible resources of the divine
nature, were incorporated and insphered in that Incarnate Word from
whom all men may draw.

There are involved in that thought two ideas. One is the unmistakable
assertion of the whole fulness of the divine nature as being in the
Incarnate Word, and the other is that the whole fulness of the divine
nature dwells in the Incarnate Word in order that men may get at it.

The words of my text go back, as I said, to the previous verse; but
notice what an advance upon that previous verse they present to us.
There we read, 'We beheld His glory.' To _behold_ is much, but to
_possess_ is more. It is much to say that Christ comes to manifest
God, but that is a poor, starved account of the purpose of His coming,
if that is all you have to say. He comes to manifest Him. Yes! but He
comes to communicate Him, not merely to dazzle us with a vision, not
merely to show us Him as from afar, not merely to make Him known to
understanding or to heart; but to bestow--in no mere metaphor, but in
simple, literal fact--the absolute possession of the divine nature.
'We beheld His glory' is a reminiscence that thrills the Evangelist,
though half a century has passed since the vision gleamed upon his
eyes; but 'of His fulness have all we received' is infinitely and
unspeakably more. And the manifestation was granted that the
possession might be sure, for this is the very centre and heart of
Christianity, that in Him who is Christianity God is not merely made
known, but given; not merely beheld, but possessed.

In order that that divine fulness might belong to us there was needed
that the Word should be made flesh; and there was further needed that
incarnation should be crowned by sacrifice, and that life should be
perfected in death. The alabaster box had to be broken before the
house could be filled with the odour of the ointment. If I may so say,
the sack, the coarse-spun sack of Christ's humanity, had to be cut
asunder in order that the wealth that was stored in it might be poured
into our hands. God came near us in the life, but God became ours in
the death, of His dear Son. Incarnation was needed for that great
privilege--'we beheld His glory'; but the Crucifixion was needed in
order to make possible the more wondrous prerogative: 'Of His fulness
have all we received.' God gives Himself to men in the Christ whose
life revealed and whose death imparted Him to the world.

And so He is the sole Source. All men, in a very real sense, draw from
His fulness. 'In Him was life, and the life was the light of men.' The
life of the body and the life of the spirit willing, knowing, loving,
all which makes life into light, all comes to us through that
everlasting Word of God. And when that Word has 'become flesh and
dwelt among us,' His gifts are not only the gifts of light and life,
which all men draw from Him, but the gifts of grace and truth which
all those who love Him receive at His hands. His gifts, like the water
from some fountain, may flow underground into many of the pastures of
the wilderness; and many a man is blessed by them who knows not from
whence they come. It is He from whom all the truth, all the grace
which illuminates and blesses humanity, flow into all lands in all
ages.

II. Consider, then, again, the many receivers from the one Source. 'Of
His fulness have all we received.'

Observe, we are not told definitely what it is that we receive. If we
refer back to words in a previous verse, they may put us on the right
track for answering the question, What is it that we get? 'He came
unto His own,' says verse 11, 'and His own received Him not; but as
many as received Him, to them gave He power,' etc. That answers the
question, What do we receive? Christ is more than all His gifts. All
His gifts are treasured up in Him and inseparable from Him. We get
Jesus Christ Himself.

The blessings that we receive may be stated in many different ways.
You may say we get pardon, purity, hope, joy, the prospect of Heaven,
power for service; all these and a hundred more designations by which
we might describe the one gift. All these are but the consequences of
our having got the Christ within our hearts. He does not give pardon
and the rest, as a king might give pardon and honours, a thousand
miles off, bestowing it by a mere word, upon some criminal, but He
gives all that He gives because He gives Himself. The real possession
that we receive is neither more nor less than a loving Saviour, to
enter our spirits and abide there, and be the spirit of our spirits,
and the life of our lives.

Then, notice the universality of this possession. John has said, in
the previous words, '_We_ beheld His glory.' He refers there, of
course, to the comparatively small circle of the eye-witnesses of our
Master's life; who, at the time when he wrote, must have been very,
very few in number. They had had the prerogative of seeing with their
eyes and handling with their hands the Word of life that 'was
manifested unto us'; and with that prerogative the duty of bearing
witness of Him to the rest of men. But in the 'receiving,' John
associates with himself, and with the other eyewitnesses, all those
who had listened to their word, and had received the truth in the love
of it. '_We beheld' refers to the narrower circle; 'we _all_ received'
to the wider sweep of the whole Church. There is no exclusive class,
no special prerogative. Every Christian man, the weakest, the
lowliest, the most uncultured, rude, ignorant, foolish, the most
besotted in the past, who has wandered furthest away from the Master;
whose spirit has been most destitute of all sparks of goodness and of
God--receives from out of His fulness. 'If any man have not the Spirit
of Christ he is none of His.' And every one of us, if we will, may
have dwelling in our hearts, in the greatness of His strength, in the
sweetness of His love, in the clearness of His illuminating wisdom,
the Incarnate Word, the Comforter, the All-in-all whom 'we all
receive.'

And, as I said, that word 'all' might have even a wider extension
without going beyond the limits of the truth. For on the one side
there stands Christ, the universal Giver; and grouped before Him, in
all attitudes of weakness and of want, is gathered the whole race of
mankind. And from Him there pours out a stream copious enough to
supply all the necessities of every human soul that lives to-day, of
every human soul that has lived in the past, of every one that shall
live in the future. There is no limit to the universality except only
the limit of the human will: 'Whosoever will, let him take the water
of life freely.'

Think of that solitary figure of the Christ reared up, as it were,
before the whole race of man, as able to replenish all their emptiness
with His fulness, and to satisfy all their thirst with His
sufficiency. Dear brother! you have a great gaping void in your
heart--an aching emptiness there, which you know better than I can
tell you. Look to Him who can fill it and it shall be filled. He can
supply all your wants as He can supply all the wants of every soul of
man. And after generations have drawn from Him, the water will not
have sunk one hairsbreadth in the great fountain, but there will be
enough for all coming eternities as there has been enough for all past
times. He is like His own miracle--the thousands are gathered on the
grass, they do 'all eat and are filled.' As their necessities required
the bread was multiplied, and at the last there was more left than
there had seemed to be at the beginning. So 'of His fulness have all
we received'; and after a universe has drawn from it, for an Eternity,
the fulness is not turned into scantiness or emptiness.

III. And so, lastly, notice the continuous flow from the inexhaustible
Source. 'Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace.'

The word 'for' is a little singular. Of course it means _instead of,
in exchange for_; and the Evangelist's idea seems to be that as one
supply of grace is given and used, it is, as it were, given back to
the Bestower, who substitutes for it a fresh and unused vessel, filled
with new grace. He might have said, grace _upon_ grace; one supply
being piled upon the other. But his notion is, rather, one supply
given in substitution for the other, 'new lamps for old ones.'

Just as a careful gardener will stand over a plant that needs water,
and will pour the water on the surface until the earth has drunk it
up, and then add a little more; so He gives step by step, grace for
grace, an uninterrupted bestowal, yet regulated according to the
absorbing power of the heart that receives it. Underlying that great
thought are two things: the continuous communication of grace, and the
progressive communication of grace. We have here the continuous
communication of grace. God is always pouring Himself out upon us in
Christ. There is a perpetual out flow from Him to us: if there is not
a perpetual inflow into us from Him it is our fault, and not His. He
is always giving, and His intention is that our lives shall be a
continual reception. Are they? How many Christian men there are whose
Christian lives at the best are like some of those Australian or
Siberian rivers; in the dry season, a pond here, a stretch of sand,
waterless and barren there, then another place with a drop of muddy
water in some hollow, and then another stretch of sand, and so on. Why
should not the ponds be linked together by a flashing stream? God is
always pouring Himself out; why do we not always take Him in?

There is but one answer, and the answer is, that we do not fulfil the
condition, which condition is simple faith. 'As many as received Him,
to them gave He power to become the sons of God; even to them that
believed on His name.' Faith is the condition of receiving, and
wherever there is a continuous trust there will be an unbroken grace;
and wherever there are interrupted gifts it is because there has been
an intermitted trust in Him. Do not let your lives be like some dimly
lighted road, with a lamp here, and a stretch of darkness, and then
another twinkling light; let the light run all along the side of your
path, because at every moment your heart is turning to Christ with
trust. Make your faith continuous, and God will make His grace
incessant, and out of His fulness you will draw continual supplies of
needed strength.

But not only have we here the notion of continuous, but also, as it
seems to me, of progressive gifts. Each measure of Christ received, if
we use it aright, makes us capable of possessing more of Christ. And
the measure of our capacity is the measure of His gift, and the more
we can hold the more we shall get. The walls of our hearts are
elastic, the vessel expands by being filled out; it throbs itself
wider by desire and faith. The wider we open our mouths the larger
will be the gift that God puts into them. Each measure and stage of
grace utilised and honestly employed will make us capable and
desirous, and, therefore, possessors, of more and more of the grace
that He gives. So the ideal of the Christian life, and God's intention
concerning us, is not only that we should have an uninterrupted, but a
growing possession, of Christ and of His grace.

Is that the case with you, my friend? Can you hold more of God than
you could twenty years ago? Is there any more capacity in your soul
for more of Christ than there was long, long ago? If there is you have
more of Him; if you have not more of Him it is because you cannot
contain more; and you cannot contain more because you have not desired
more, and because you have been so wretchedly unfaithful in your use
of what you had. The ideal is, 'they go from strength to strength,'
and the end of that is, 'every one of them appeareth before God.'

So, dear brother, as the dash of the waves will hollow out some little
indentation on the coast, and make it larger and larger until there is
a great bay, with its headlands miles apart, and its deep bosom
stretching far into the interior, and all the expanse full of flashing
waters and leaping waves, so the giving Christ works a place for
Himself in a man's heart, and makes the spirit which receives and
faithfully uses the gifts which He brings, capable of more of Himself,
and fills the widened space with larger gifts and new grace.

Only remember the condition of having Him is trusting to His name and
longing for His presence. 'If any man open the door I will come in.'
We have Him if we trust Him. That trust is no mere passive reception,
such as is the case with some empty jar which lies open-mouthed on the
shore and lets the sea wash into it and out of it, as may happen. But
the 'receive' of our text might be as truly rendered 'take.' Faith is
an active taking, not a passive receiving. We must 'lay hold on
eternal life.' Faith is the hand that grasps the offered gift, the
mouth that feeds upon the bread of God, the voice that says to Christ,
'Come in, Thou blessed of the Lord; why standest Thou without?' Such a
faith alone brings us into vital connection with Jesus. Without it,
you will be none the richer for all His fulness, and may perish of
famine in the midst of plenty, like a man dying of hunger outside the
door of a granary. They who believe take the Saviour who is given, and
they who take receive, and they who receive obtain day by day growing
grace from the fulness of Christ, and so come ever nearer to the
realisation of the ultimate purpose of the Father, that they should be
'filled with all the fulness of God.'




GRACE AND TRUTH

'The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus
Christ.'--JOHN 1. 17.

There are scarcely any traces, in the writings of the Apostle John, of
that great controversy as to the relation of the Law and the Gospel
which occupied and embittered so much of the work of the Apostle Paul.
We have floated into an entirely different region in John's writings.
The old controversies are dead--settled, I suppose, mainly by Paul's
own words, and also to a large extent by the logic of events. This
verse is almost the only one in which John touches upon that extinct
controversy, and here the Law is introduced simply as a foil to set
off the brightness of the Gospel. All artists know the value of
contrast in giving prominence. A dark background flashes up brighter
colours into brilliancy. White is never so white as when it is
relieved against black. And so here the special preciousness and
distinctive peculiarities of what we receive in Christ are made more
vivid and more distinct by contrast with what in old days 'was given
by Moses.'

Every word in this verse is significant. 'Law' is set against 'grace
and truth.' It was 'given'; they 'came.' Moses is contrasted with
Christ. So we have a threefold antithesis as between Law and Gospel:
in reference to their respective contents; in reference to the manner
of their communication; and in reference to the person of their
Founders. And I think, if we look at these three points, we shall get
some clear apprehension of the glories of that Gospel which the
Apostle would thereby commend to our affection and to our faith.

I. First of all, then, we have here the special glory of the contents
of the Gospel heightened by the contrast with Law.

Law has no tenderness, no pity, no feeling. Tables of stone and a pen
of iron are its fitting vehicles. Flashing lightnings and rolling
thunders symbolise the fierce light which it casts upon men's duty and
the terrors of its retribution. Inflexible, and with no compassion for
human weakness, it tells us what we ought to be, but it does not help
us to be it. It 'binds heavy burdens, and grievous to be borne,' upon
men's consciences, but puts not forth 'the tip of a finger' to enable
men to bear them. And this is true about law in all forms, whether it
be the Mosaic Law, or whether it be the law of our own country, or
whether it be the laws written upon men's consciences. These all
partake of the one characteristic, that they help nothing to the
fulfilment of their own behests, and that they are barbed with
threatenings of retribution. Like some avenging goddess, law comes
down amongst men, terrible in her purity, awful in her beauty, with a
hard light in her clear grey eyes--in the one hand the tables of
stone, bearing the commandments which we have broken, and in the other
a sharp two-edged sword.

And this is the opposite of all that comes to us in the Gospel. The
contrast divides into two portions. The 'Law' is set against 'grace
and truth.' Let us look at these two in order.

What we have in Christ is not law, but grace. Law, as I said, has no
heart; the meaning of the Gospel is the unveiling of the heart of God.
Law commands and demands; it says: 'This shalt thou do, or else--';
and it has nothing more that it can say. What is the use of standing
beside a lame man, and pointing to a shining summit, and saying to
him, 'Get up there, and you will breathe a purer atmosphere'? He is
lying lame at the foot of it. There is no help for any soul in law.
Men are not perishing because they do not know what they ought to do.
Men are not bad because they doubt as to what their duty is. The worst
man in the world knows a great deal more of what he ought to do than
the best man in the world practises. So it is not for want of precepts
that so many of us are going to destruction, but it is for want of
power to fulfil the precepts.

Grace is love giving. Law demands, grace bestows. Law comes saying 'Do
this,' and our consciences respond to the imperativeness of the
obligation. But grace comes and says, 'I will help thee to do it.' Law
is God requiring; grace is God bestowing. 'Give what Thou commandest,
and then command what Thou wilt.'

Oh, brethren! we have all of us written upon the fleshly tablets of
our hearts solemn commandments which we know are binding upon us; and
which we sometimes would fain keep, but cannot. Is this not a message
of hope and blessedness that comes to us? Grace has drawn near in
Jesus Christ, and a giving God, who bestows upon us a life that will
unfold itself in accordance with the highest law, holds out the
fulness of His gift in that Incarnate Word. Law has no heart; the
Gospel is the unveiling of the heart of God. Law commands; grace is
God bestowing Himself.

And still further, law condemns. Grace is love that bends down to an
evildoer, and deals not on the footing of strict retribution with the
infirmities and the sins of us poor weaklings. And so, seeing that no
man that lives but hears in his heart an accusing voice, and that
every one of us knows what it is to gaze upon lofty duties that we
have shrunk from, upon plain obligations from the yoke of which we
have selfishly and cowardly withdrawn our necks; seeing that every
man, woman, and child listening to me now has, lurking in some corner
of their hearts, a memory that only needs to be quickened to be a
torture, and deeds that only need to have the veil drawn away from
them to terrify and shame them--oh! surely it ought to be a word of
gladness for every one of us that, in front of any law that condemns
us, stands forth the gentle, gracious form of the Christ that brings
pardon, and 'the grace of God that bringeth salvation unto all men.'
Thank God! law needed to be 'given,' but it was only the foundation on
which was to be reared a better thing. 'The law was given By
Moses'--'a schoolmaster,' as conscience is to-day, 'to bring us to
Christ' by whom comes the grace that loves, that stoops, that gives,
and that pardons.

Still further, there is another antithesis here. The Gospel which
comes by Christ is not law, but truth. The object of law is to
regulate conduct, and only subordinately to inform the mind or to
enlighten the understanding. The Mosaic Law had for its foundation, of
course, a revelation of God. But that revelation of God was less
prominent, proportionately, than the prescription for man's conduct.
The Gospel is the opposite of this. It has for its object the
regulation of conduct; but that object is less prominent,
proportionately, than the other, the manifestation and the revelation
of God. The Old Testament says 'Thou shalt'; the New Testament says
'God is.' The Old was Law; the New is Truth.

And so we may draw the inference, on which I do not need to dwell, how
miserably inadequate and shallow a conception of Christianity that is
which sets it forth as being mainly a means of regulating conduct, and
how false and foolish that loose talk is that we hear many a
time.--'Never mind about theological subtleties; conduct is the main
thing.' Not so. The Gospel is not law; the Gospel is truth. It is a
revelation of God to the understanding and to the heart, in order that
thereby the will may be subdued, and that then the conduct may be
shaped and moulded. But let us begin where it begins, and let us
remember that the morality of the New Testament has never long been
held up high and pure, where the theology of the New Testament has
been neglected and despised. 'The law came by Moses; truth came by
Jesus Christ.'

But, still further, let me remind you that, in the revelation of a God
who is gracious, giving to our emptiness and forgiving our sins--that
is to say, in the revelation of grace--we have a far deeper, nobler,
more blessed conception of the divine nature than in law. It is great
to think of a righteous God, it is great and ennobling to think of One
whose pure eyes cannot look upon sin, and who wills that men should
live pure and noble and Godlike lives. But it is far more and more
blessed, transcending all the old teaching, when we sit at the feet of
the Christ who gives, and who pardons, and look up into His deep eyes,
with the tears of compassion shining in them, and say: 'Lo! This is
our God! We have waited for Him and He will save us.' That is a better
truth, a deeper truth than prophets and righteous men of old
possessed; and to us there has come, borne on the wings of the mighty
angel of His grace, the precious revelation of the Father-God whose
heart is love. 'The law was given by Moses,' but brighter than the
gleam of the presence between the Cherubim is the lambent light of
gentle tenderness that shines from the face of Jesus Christ. Grace,
and therefore truth, a deeper truth, came by Him.

And, still further, let me remind you of how this contrast is borne
out by the fact that all that previous system was an adumbration, a
shadow and a premonition of the perfect revelation that was to come.
Temple, priest, sacrifice, law, the whole body of the Mosaic
constitution of things was, as it were, a shadow thrown along the road
in advance by the swiftly coming King. The shadow fell before Him, but
when He came the shadow disappeared. The former was a system of types,
symbols, pictures. Here is the reality that antiquates and fulfils and
transcends them all. 'The law was given by Moses; grace and truth came
by Jesus Christ.'

II. Now, secondly, look at the other contrast that is here, between
giving and coming.

I do not know that I have quite succeeded in making clear to my own
mind the precise force of this antithesis. Certainly there is a
profound meaning if one can fathom it; perhaps one might put it best
in something like the following fashion.

The word rendered 'came' might be more correctly translated 'became,'
or 'came into being.' The law was _given_; grace and truth _came to
be_.

Now, what do we mean when we talk about a law being given? We simply
mean, I suppose, that it is promulgated, either in oral or in written
words. It is, after all, no more than so many words. It is given when
it is spoken or published. It is a verbal communication at the best.
'But grace and truth came to be.' They are realities; they are not
words. They are not communicated by sentences, they are actual
existences; and they spring into being as far as man's historical
possession and experience of them are concerned--they spring into
being in Jesus Christ, and through Him they belong to us all. Not that
there was no grace, no manifest lore of God, in the world, nor any
true knowledge of Him before the Incarnation, but the earlier portions
of this chapter remind us that all of grace, however restrained and
partial, that all of truth, however imperfect and shadowy it may have
been, which were in the world before Christ came, were owing to the
operation of that Eternal Word 'Who became flesh and dwelt among us,'
and that these, in comparison with the affluence and the fulness and
the nearness of grace and truth after Christ's coming, were so small
and remote that it is not an exaggeration to say that, as far as man's
possession and experience of them are concerned, the giving love of
God and the clear and true knowledge of His deep heart of tenderness
and grace, sprang into being with the historical manifestation of
Jesus Christ the Lord.

He comes to reveal by no words. His gift is not like the gift that
Moses brought down from the mountain, merely a writing upon tables;
His gift is not the letter of an outward commandment, nor the letter
of an outward revelation. It is the thing itself which He reveals by
being it. He does not speak about grace, He brings it; He does not
show us God by His words, He shows us God by His acts. He does not
preach about Him, but He lives Him, He manifests Him. His gentleness,
His compassion, His miracles, His wisdom, His patience, His tears, His
promises; all these are the very Deity in action before our eyes; and
instead of a mere verbal revelation, which is so imperfect and so
worthless, grace and truth, the living realities, are flashed upon a
darkened world in the face of Jesus Christ. How cold, how hard, how
superficial, in comparison with that fleshly table of the heart of
Christ on which grace and truth were written, are the stony tables of
law, which bore after all, for all their majesty, only words which are
breath and nothing besides.

III. And so, lastly, look at the contrast that is drawn here between
the persons of the Founders.

I do not suppose that we are to take into consideration the difference
between the limitations of the one and the completeness of the other.
I do not suppose that the Apostle was thinking about the difference
between the reluctant service of the Lawgiver and the glad obedience
of the Son; or between the passion and the pride that sometimes marred
Moses' work, and the continual calmness and patient meekness that
perfected the sacrifice of Jesus. Nor do I suppose that there flashed
before his memory the difference between that strange tomb where God
buried the prophet, unknown of men, in the stern solitude of the
desert, true symbol of the solemn mystery and awful solitude with
which the law which we have broken invests death, to our trembling
consciences, and the grave in the garden with the spring flowers
bursting round it, and visited by white-robed angels, who spoke
comfort to weeping friends, true picture of what His death makes the
grave for all His followers.

But I suppose he was mainly thinking of the contrast between the
relation of Moses to his law, and of Christ to His Gospel. Moses was
but a medium. His personality had nothing to do with his message. You
may take away Moses, and the law stands all the same. But Christ is so
interwoven with Christ's message that you cannot rend the two apart;
you cannot have the figure of Christ melt away, and the gift that
Christ brought remain. If you extinguish the sun you cannot keep the
sunlight; if you put away Christ in the fulness of His manhood and of
His divinity, in the power of His Incarnation and the omnipotence of
His cross--if you put away Christ from Christianity, it collapses into
dust and nothingness.

So, dear brethren, do not let any of us try that perilous experiment.
You cannot melt away Jesus and keep grace and truth. You cannot tamper
with His character, with His nature, with the mystery of His passion,
with the atoning power of His cross, and preserve the blessings that
He has brought to the world. If you want the grace which is the
unveiling of the heart of God, the gift of a giving God and the pardon
of a forgiving Judge; or if you want the truth, the reality of the
knowledge of Him, you can only get them by accepting Christ. 'I _am_
the Truth, and the Way, and the Life.' There _is_ a 'law given which
gives life,' and 'righteousness _is_ by that law.' There is a Person
who is the Truth, and our knowledge of the truth is through that
Person, and through Him alone. By humble faith receive Him into your
hearts, and He will come bringing to you the fulness of grace and
truth.




THE WORLD'S SIN-BEARER

'The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the
Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.'--JOHN i. 29.

Our Lord, on returning from His temptation in the wilderness, came
straight to John the Baptist. He was welcomed with these wonderful and
rapturous words, familiarity with which has deadened our sense of
their greatness. How audacious they would sound to some of their first
hearers! Think of these two, one of them a young Galilean carpenter,
to whom His companion witnesses and declares that He is of worldwide
and infinite significance. It was the first public designation of
Jesus Christ, and it throws into exclusive prominence one aspect of
His work.

John the Baptist summing up the whole of former revelation which
concentrated in Him, pointed a designating finger to Jesus and said,
'That is He!' My text is the sum of all Christian teaching ever since.
My task, and that of all preachers, if we understand it aright, is but
to repeat the same message, and to concentrate attention on the same
fact--'The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world.' It is
the one thing needful for you, dear friend, to believe. It is the
truth that we all need most of all. There is no reason for our being
gathered together now, except that I may beseech you to behold for
yourselves the Lamb of God which takes away the world's sin.

I. Now let me ask you to note, first, that Jesus Christ is the world's
sin-bearer.

The significance of the first clause of my text, 'the Lamb of God,' is
deplorably weakened if it is taken to mean only, or mainly, that Jesus
Christ, in the sweetness of His human nature, is gentle and meek and
patient and innocent and pure. It _does_ mean all that, thank God! But
it was no mere description of Christ's disposition which John the
Baptist conceived himself to be uttering, as is clear by the words
that follow in the next clause. His reason for selecting (under divine
guidance, as I believe) that image of 'the Lamb of God,' went a great
deal deeper than anything in the temper of the Person of whom he was
speaking. Many streams of ancient prophecy and ritual converge upon
this emblem, and if we want to understand what is meant by the
designation 'the Lamb of God,' we must not content ourselves with the
sentimentalisms which some superficial teachers have supposed to
exhaust the significance of the expression; but we must submit to be
led back by John, who was the summing up of all the ancient
Revelation, to the sources in that Revelation from which he drew this
metaphor.

First and chiefest of these, as I take it, are the words which no Jew
ever doubted referred to the Messiah, until after He had come, and the
Rabbis would not believe in Him, and so were bound to hunt up another
interpretation--I mean the great words in the prophecy which, I
suppose, is familiar to most of us, where there are found two
representations, one, 'He was led as a Lamb to the slaughter, and as a
sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opened not His mouth'; and
the other, still more germane to the purpose of my text, 'the Lord
hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all.... By His knowledge shall He
justify many, for He shall bear their iniquities.' John the Baptist,
looking back through the ages to that ancient prophetic utterance,
points to the young Man standing by his side, and says, 'There it is
fulfilled.'

But the prophetic symbol of the Lamb, and the thought that He bore the
iniquity of the many, had their roots in the past, and pointed back to
the sacrificial lamb, the lamb of the daily sacrifice, and especially
to the lamb slain at the Passover, which was an emblem and sacrament
of deliverance from bondage. Thus the conceptions of vicarious
suffering, and of a death which is a deliverance, and of blood which,
sprinkled on the doorposts, guards the house from the destroying
angel, are all gathered into these words.

Nor do these exhaust the sources of this figure, as it comes from the
venerable and sacred past. For when we read 'the Lamb _of God_,' who
is there that does not recognise, unless his eyes are blinded by
obstinate prejudice, a glance backward to that sweet and pathetic
story when the father went up with his son to the top of Mount Moriah,
and to the boy's question, 'Where is the lamb?' answered, 'My son, God
Himself will provide the lamb!' John says, 'Behold the Lamb that God
_has_ provided, the Sacrifice, on whom is laid a world's sins, and who
bears them away.'

Note, too, the universality of the power of Christ's sacrificial work.
John does not say 'the _sins_,' as the Litany, following an imperfect
translation, makes him say. But he says, 'the _sin_ of the world,' as
if the whole mass of human transgression was bound together, in one
black and awful bundle, and laid upon the unshrinking shoulders of
this better Atlas who can bear it all, and bear it all away. Your sin,
and mine, and every man's, they were all laid upon Jesus Christ.

Now remember, dear brethren, that in this wondrous representation
there lie, plain and distinct, two things which to me, and I pray they
may be to you, are the very foundation of the Gospel to which we have
to trust. One is that on Christ Jesus, in His life and in His death,
were laid the guilt and the consequences of a world's sin. I do not
profess to be ready with an explanation of how that is possible. That
it is a fact I believe, on the authority of Christ Himself and of
Scripture; that it is inconsistent with the laws of human nature may
be asserted, but never can be proved. Theories manifold have been
invented in order to make it plain. I do not know that any of them
have gone to the bottom of the bottomless. But Christ in His perfect
manhood, wedded, as I believe it is, to true divinity, is capable of
entering into--not merely by sympathy, though that has much to do with
it--such closeness of relation with human kind, and with every man, as
that on Him can be laid the iniquity of us all.

Oh, brethren! what was the meaning of 'I have a baptism to be baptized
with,' unless the cold waters of the flood into which He unshrinkingly
stepped, and allowed to flow over Him, were made by the gathered
accumulation of the sins of the whole world? What was the meaning of
the agony in Gethsemane? What was the meaning of that most awful word
ever spoken by human lips, in which the consciousness of union with,
and of separation from, God, were so marvellously blended, 'My God! my
God! why hast Thou forsaken Me?' unless the Guiltless was then loaded
with the sins of the world, which rose between Him and God?

Dear friends, it seems to me that unless this transcendent element be
fairly recognised as existing in the passion and death of Jesus
Christ, His demeanour when He came to die was far less heroic and
noble and worthy of imitation than have been the deaths of hundreds of
people who drew all their strength to die from Him. I do not venture
to bring a theory, but I press upon you the fact, He bears the sins of
the world, and in that awful load are yours and mine.

There is the other truth here, as clearly, and perhaps more directly,
meant by the selection of the expression in my text, that the
Sin-bearer not only carries, but carries _away_, the burden that is
laid upon Him. Perhaps there may be a reference--in addition to the
other sources of the figure which I have indicated as existing in
ritual, and prophecy, and history--there may be a reference in the
words to yet another of the eloquent symbols of that ancient system
which enshrined truths that were not peculiar to any people, but were
the property of humanity. You remember, no doubt, the singular
ceremonial connected with the scapegoat, and many of you will recall
the wonderful embodiment of it given by the Christian genius of a
modern painter. The sins of the nation were symbolically laid upon its
head, and it was carried out to the edge of the wilderness and driven
forth to wander alone, bearing away upon itself into the darkness and
solitude--far from man and far from God--the whole burden of the
nation's sins. Jesus Christ takes away the sin which He bears, and
there is, as I believe, only one way by which individuals, or society,
or the world at large, can thoroughly get rid of the guilt and penal
consequences and of the dominion of sin, and that is, by beholding the
Lamb of God that takes upon Himself, that He may carry away out of
sight, the sin of the world. So much, then, for the first thought that
I wish to suggest to you.

II. Now let me ask you to look with me at a second thought, that such
a world's Sin-bearer is the world's deepest need.

The sacrifices of every land witness to the fact that humanity all
over the world, and through all the ages, and under all varieties of
culture, has been dimly conscious that its deepest need was that the
fact of sin should be dealt with. I know that there are plenty of
modern ingenious ways of explaining the universal prevalence of an
altar and a sacrifice, and the slaying of innocent creatures, on other
grounds, some of which I think it is not uncharitable to suppose are
in favour mainly because they weaken this branch of the evidence for
the conformity of Christian truth with human necessities. But
notwithstanding these, I venture to affirm, with all proper submission
to wiser men, that you cannot legitimately explain the universal
prevalence of sacrifice, unless you take into account as one--I should
say the main--element in it, this universally diffused sense that
things are wrong between man and the higher Power, and need to be set
right even by such a method.

But I do not need to appeal only to this world-wide fact as being a
declaration of what man's deepest need is. I would appeal to every
man's own consciousness--hard though it be to get at it; buried as it
is, with some of us, under mountains of indifference and neglect; and
callous as it is with many of us by reason of indulgence in habits of
evil. I believe that in every one of us, if we will be honest, and
give heed to the inward voice, there does echo a response and an amen
to the Scripture declaration, 'God hath shut up all under sin.' I ask
you about yourselves, is it not so? Do you not know that, however you
may gloss over the thing, or forget it amidst a whirl of engagements
and occupations, or try to divert your thoughts into more or less
noble or ignoble channels of pleasures and pursuits, there does lie,
in each of our hearts, the sense, dormant often, but sometimes like a
snake in its hybernation, waking up enough to move, and sometimes
enough to sting--there does lie, in each of us, the consciousness that
we are wrong with God, and need something to put us right?

And, brethren, let modern philanthropists of all sorts take this
lesson: The thing that the world wants is to have sin dealt
with--dealt with in the way of conscious forgiveness; dealt with in
the way of drying up its source, and delivering men from the power of
it. Unless you do that, I do not say you do nothing, but you pour a
bottle full of cold water into Vesuvius, and try to put the fire out
with that. You may educate, you may cultivate, you may refine; you may
set political and economical arrangements right in accordance with the
newest notions of the century, and what then? Why! the old thing will
just begin over again, and the old miseries will appear again, because
the old grandmother of them all is there, the sin that has led to
them.

Now do not misunderstand me, as if I were warring against good and
noble men who are trying to remedy the world's evils by less thorough
methods than Christ's Gospel. They will do a great deal. But you may
have high education, beautiful refinement of culture and manners; you
may divide out political power in accordance with the most democratic
notions; you may give everybody 'a living wage,' however extravagant
his notions of a living wage may be. You may carry out all these
panaceas and the world will groan still, because you have not dealt
with the tap-root of all the mischief. You cannot cure an internal
cancer with a plaster upon the little finger, and you will never
stanch the world's wounds until you go to the Physician that has balm
and bandage, even Jesus Christ, that takes away the sins of the world.
I profoundly distrust all these remedies for the world's misery as in
themselves inadequate, even whilst I would help them all, and regard
them all as then blessed and powerful, when they are consequences and
secondary results of the Gospel, the first task of which is to deal by
forgiveness and by cleansing with individual transgression.

And if I might venture to go a step further, I would like to say that
this aspect of our Lord's work on which John the Baptist concentrated
all our attention is the only one which gives Him power to sway men,
and which makes the Gospel--the record of His work--the kingly power
in the world that it is meant to be. Depend upon it, that in the
measure in which Christian teachers fail to give supreme importance to
that aspect of Christ's work they fail altogether. There are many
other aspects which, as I have just said, follow in my conception from
this first one; but if, as is obviously the tendency in many quarters
to-day, Christianity be thought of as being mainly a means of social
improvement, or if its principles of action be applied to life without
that basis of them all, in the Cross which takes away the world's
iniquity, then it needs no prophet to foretell that such a
Christianity will only have superficial effects, and that, in losing
sight of this central thought, it will have cast away all its power.

I beseech you, dear brethren, remember that Jesus Christ is something
more than a social reformer, though He is the first of them, and the
only one whose work will last. Jesus Christ is something more than a
lovely pattern of human conduct, though He is that. Jesus Christ is
something more than a great religious genius who set forth the
Fatherhood of God as it had never been set forth before. The Gospel of
Jesus Christ is the record not only of what He said but of what He
did, not only that He lived but that He died; and all His other
powers, and all His other benefits and blessings to society, come as
results of His dealing with the individual soul when He takes away its
guilt and reconciles it to God.

III. And so, lastly, let me ask you to notice that this Sin-bearer of
the world is our Sin-bearer if we 'behold' Him.

John was simply summoning ignorant eyes to look, and telling of what
they would see. But his call is susceptible, without violence, of a
far deeper meaning. This is really the one truth that I want to press
upon you, dear friends--'Behold the Lamb of God!'

What is that beholding? Surely it is nothing else than our recognising
in Him the great and blessed work which I have been trying to
describe, and then resting ourselves upon that great Lord and
sufficient Sacrifice. And such an exercise of simple trust is well
named beholding, because they who believe do see, with a deeper and a
truer vision than sense can give. You and I can see Christ more really
than these men who stood round Him, and to whom His flesh was 'a
veil'--as the Epistle to the Hebrews calls it--hiding His true
divinity and work. They who thus behold by faith lack nothing either
of the directness or of the certitude that belong to vision. 'Seeing
is believing,' says the cynical proverb. The Christian version inverts
its terms, 'Believing is seeing.' 'Whom having not seen ye love, in
whom though now ye see Him not, yet believing ye rejoice.'

And your simple act of 'beholding,' by the recognition of His work and
the resting of yourself upon it, makes the world's Sin-bearer your
Sin-bearer. You appropriate the general blessing, like a man taking in
a little piece of a boundless prairie for his very own. Your
possession does not make my possession of Him less, for every eye gets
its own beam, and however many eyes wait upon Him, they all receive
the light on to their happy eyeballs. You can make Christ your own,
and have all that He has done for the world as your possession, and
can experience in your own hearts the sense of your own forgiveness
and deliverance from the power and guilt of your own sin, on the
simple condition of looking unto Jesus. The serpent is lifted on the
pole, the dying camp cannot go to it, but the filming eyes of the man
in his last gasp may turn to the gleaming image hanging on high; and
as he looks the health begins to tingle back into his veins, and he is
healed.

And so, dear brethren, behold Him; for unless you do, though He has
borne the world's sin, your sin will not be there, but will remain on
your back to crush you down. 'O Lamb of God, that taketh away the sins
of the world, have mercy upon _me_!'




THE FIRST DISCIPLES: I. JOHN AND ANDREW

'And the two disciples heard Him speak, and they followed Jesus. 38.
Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What
seek ye? They said unto Him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being
interpreted, Master,) where dwellest Thou? 39. He saith unto them,
Come and see. They came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him
that day: for it was about the tenth hour.'--JOHN i. 37-39.

In these verses we see the head waters of a great river, for we have
before us nothing less than the beginnings of the Christian Church. So
simply were the first disciples made. The great society of believers
was born like its Master, unostentatiously and in a corner.

Jesus has come back from His conflict in the wilderness after His
baptism, and has presented Himself before John the Baptist for his
final attestation. It was a great historical moment when the last of
the Prophets stood face to face with the Fulfilment of all prophecy.
In his words, 'Behold the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the
world!' Jewish prophecy sang its swan-song, uttered its last
rejoicing, 'Eureka! I have found Him!' and died as it spoke.

We do not sufficiently estimate the magnificent self-suppression and
unselfishness of the Baptist, in that he, with his own lips, here
repeats his testimony in order to point his disciples away from
himself, and to attach them to Jesus. If he could have been touched by
envy he would not so gladly have recognised it as his lot to decrease
while Jesus increased. Bare magnanimity that in a teacher! The two who
hear John's words are Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, and an anonymous
man. The latter is probably the Evangelist. For it is remarkable that
we never find the names of James and John in this Gospel (though from
the other Gospels we know how closely they were associated with our
Lord), and that we only find them referred to as 'the sons of
Zebedee,' once near the close of the book. That fact points, I think,
in the direction of John's authorship of this Gospel.

These two, then, follow behind Jesus, fancying themselves unobserved,
not desiring to speak to Him, and probably with some notion of
tracking Him to His home, in order that they may seek an interview at
a later period. But He who notices the first beginnings of return to
Him, and always comes to meet men, and is better to them than their
wishes, will not let them steal behind Him uncheered, nor leave them
to struggle with diffidence and delay. So He turns to them, and the
events ensue which I have read in the verses that follow as my text.

We have, I think, three things especially to notice here. First, the
Master's question to the whole world, 'What seek ye?' Second, the
Master's invitation to the whole world, 'Come and see!' Lastly, the
personal communion which brings men's hearts to Him, 'They came and
saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day.'

I. So, then, first look at this question of Christ to the whole world,
'What seek ye?'

As it stands, on its surface, and in its primary application, it is
the most natural of questions. Our Lord hears footsteps behind Him,
and, as any one would do, turns about, with the question which any one
would ask, 'What is it that you want?' That question would derive all
its meaning from the look with which it was accompanied, and the tone
in which it was spoken. It might mean either annoyance and rude
repulsion of a request, even before it was presented, or it might mean
a glad wish to draw out the petition, and more than half a pledge to
bestow it. All depends on the smile with which it was asked and the
intonation of voice which carried it to their ears. And if we had been
there we should have felt, as these two evidently felt, that though in
form a question, it was in reality a promise, and that it drew out
their shy wishes, made them conscious to themselves of what they
desired, and gave them confidence that their desire would be granted.
Clearly it had sunk very deep into the Evangelist's mind; and now, at
the end of his life, when his course is nearly run, the never-to-be-
forgotten voice sounds still in his memory, and he sees again, in
sunny clearness, all the scene that had transpired on that day by the
fords of the Jordan. The first words and the last words of those whom
we have learned to love are cut deep on our hearts.

It was not an accident that the first words which the Master spoke in
His Messianic office were this profoundly significant question, 'What
seek ye?' He asks it of us all, He asks it of us to-day. Well for them
who can answer, 'Rabbi! where dwellest _Thou_?' 'It is Thou whom we
seek!' So, venturing to take the words in that somewhat wider
application, let me just suggest to you two or three directions in
which they seem to point.

First, the question suggests to us this: the need of having a clear
consciousness of what is our object in life. The most of men have
never answered that question. They live from hand to mouth, driven by
circumstances, guided by accidents, impelled by unreflecting passions
and desires, knowing what they want for the moment, but never having
tried to shape the course of their lives into a consistent whole, so
as to stand up before God in Christ when He puts the question to them,
'What seek ye?' and to answer the question.

These incoherent, instinctive, unreflective lives that so many of you
are living are a shame to your manhood, to say nothing more. God has
made us for something else than that we should thus be the sport of
circumstances. It is a disgrace to any of us that our lives should be
like some little fishing-boat, with an unskilful or feeble hand at the
tiller, yawing from one point of the compass to another, and not
keeping a straight and direct course. I pray you, dear brethren, to
front this question: 'After all, and at bottom, what is it I am living
for? Can I formulate the aims and purposes of my life in any
intelligible statement of which I should not be ashamed?' Some of you
are not ashamed to do what you would be very much ashamed to say, and
you practically answer the question, 'What are you seeking?' by
pursuits that you durst not call by their own ugly names.

There may be many of us who are living for our lusts, for our
passions, for our ambitions, for avarice, who are living in all
uncleanness and godlessness. I do not know. There are plenty of
shabby, low aims in all of us which do not bear being dragged out into
the light of day. I beseech you to try and get hold of the ugly things
and bring them up to the surface, however much they may seek to hide
in the congenial obscurity and twist their slimy coils round something
in the dark. If you dare not put your life's object into words,
bethink yourselves whether it ought to be your life's object at all.

Ah, brethren! if we would ask ourselves this question, and answer it
with any thoroughness, we should not make so many mistakes as to the
places where we look for the things for which we are seeking. If we
knew what we were really seeking, we should know where to go to look
for it. Let me tell you what you are seeking, whether you know it or
not. You are seeking for rest for your heart, a home for your spirits;
you are seeking for perfect truth for your understandings, perfect
beauty for your affections, perfect goodness for your conscience. You
are seeking for all these three, gathered into one white beam of
light, and you are seeking for it all in a Person. Many of you do not
know this, and so you go hunting in all manner of impossible places
for that which you can only find in one. To the question, 'What seek
ye?' the deepest of all answers, the only real answer, is, 'My soul
thirsteth for God, for the living God.' If you know that, you know
where to look for what you need! 'Do men gather grapes of thorns?' If
these are really the things that you are seeking after, in all your
mistaken search--oh! how mistaken is the search! Do men look for
pearls in cockle-shells, or for gold in coal-pits; and why should you
look for rest of heart, mind, conscience, spirit, anywhere and in
anything short of God? 'What seek ye?'--the only answer is, 'We seek
_Thee_!'

And then, still further, let me remind you how these words are not
only a question, but are really a veiled and implied promise. The
question, 'What do you want of Me?' may either strike an intending
suppliant like a blow, and drive him away with his prayer sticking in
his throat unspoken, or it may sound like a merciful invitation, 'What
is thy petition, and what is thy request, and it shall be granted unto
thee?' We know which of the two it was here. Christ asks all such
questions as this (and there are many of them in the New Testament),
not for His information, but for our strengthening. He asks people,
not because He does not know before they answer, but that, on the one
hand, their own minds may be clear as to their wishes, and so they may
wish the more earnestly because of the clearness; and that, on the
other hand, their desires being expressed, they may be the more able
to receive the gift which He is willing to bestow. So He here turns to
these men, whose purpose He knew well enough, and says to them, 'What
seek ye?' Herein He is doing the very same thing on a lower level, and
in an outer sphere, as is done when He appoints that we shall pray for
the blessings which He is yearning to bestow, but which He makes
conditional on our supplications, only because by these supplications
our hearts are opened to a capacity for receiving them.

We have, then, in the words before us, thus understood, our Lord's
gracious promise to give what is desired on the simple condition that
the suppliant is conscious of his own wants, and turns to Him for the
supply of them. 'What seek ye?' It is a blank cheque that He puts into
their hands to fill up. It is the key of His treasure-house which He
offers to us all, with the assured confidence that if we open it we
shall find all that we need.

Who is He that thus stands up before a whole world of seeking,
restless spirits, and fronts them with the question which is a pledge,
conscious of His capacity to give to each of them what each of them
requires? Who is this that professes to be able to give all these men
and women and children bread here in the wilderness? There is only one
answer--the Christ of God.

And He has done what He promises. No man or woman ever went to Him,
and answered this question, and presented their petition for any real
good, and was refused. No man can ask from Christ what Christ cannot
bestow. No man can ask from Christ what Christ will not bestow. In the
loftiest region, the region of inward and spiritual gifts, which are
the best gifts, we can get everything that we want, and our only limit
is, not His boundless omnipotence and willingness, but our own poor,
narrow, and shrivelled desires. 'Ask, and ye shall receive; seek, and
ye shall find.'

Christ stands before us, if I may so say, like some of those fountains
erected at some great national festival, out of which pour for all the
multitude every variety of draught which they desire, and each man
that goes with his empty cup gets it filled, and gets it filled with
that which he wishes. 'What seek ye?' Wisdom? You students, you
thinkers, you young men that are fighting with intellectual
difficulties and perplexities, 'What seek ye?' Truth? He gives us
that. You others, 'What seek ye?' Love, peace, victory, self-control,
hope, anodyne for sorrow? Whatever you desire, you will find in Jesus
Christ. The first words with which He broke the silence when He spake
to men as the Messias, were at once a searching question, probing
their aims and purposes, and a gracious promise pledging Him to a task
not beyond His power, however far beyond that of all others, even the
task of giving to each man his heart's desire. 'What seek ye?' 'Seek,
and ye shall find.'

II. Then, still further, notice how, in a similar fashion, we may
regard here the second words which our Lord speaks as being His
merciful invitation to the world. 'Come and see.'

The disciples' answer was simple and timid. They did not venture to
say, 'May we talk to you?' 'Will you take us to be your disciples?'
All they can muster courage to ask now is, 'Where dwellest Thou?' At
another time, perhaps, we will go to this Rabbi and speak with Him.
His answer is, 'Come, come now; come, and by intercourse with Me learn
to know Me.' His temporary home was probably nothing more than some
selected place on the river's bank, for 'He had not where to lay His
head'; but such as it was, He welcomes them to it. 'Come and see!'

Take a plain, simple truth out of that. Christ is always glad when
people resort to Him. When He was here in the world, no hour was
inconvenient or inopportune; no moment was too much occupied; no
physical wants of hunger, or thirst, or slumber were ever permitted to
come between Him and seeking hearts. He was never impatient. He was
never wearied of speaking, though He was often wearied in speaking. He
never denied Himself to any one or said, 'I have something else to do
than to attend to you.' And just as in literal fact, whilst He was
here upon earth, nothing was ever permitted to hinder His drawing near
to any man who wanted to draw near to Him, so nothing now hinders it;
and He is glad when any of us resort to Him and ask Him to let us
speak to Him and be with Him. His weariness or occupation never shut
men out from Him then. His glory does not shut them out now.

Then there is another thought here. This invitation of the Master is
also a very distinct call to a firsthand knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Andrew and John had heard from the Baptist about Him, and now what He
bids them to do is to come and hear Himself. That is what He calls
you, dear brethren, to do. Do not listen to us, let the Master Himself
speak to you. Many who reject Christianity reject it through not
having listened to Jesus Himself teaching them, but only to
theologians and other human representations of the truth. Go and ask
Christ to speak to you with His own lips of truth, and take Him as the
Expositor of His own system. Do not be contented with traditional talk
and second-hand information. Go to Christ, and hear what He Himself
has to say to you.

Then, still further, in this 'Come and see' there is a distinct call
to the personal act of faith. Both of these words, '_come_' and
'_see_,' are used in the New Testament as standing emblems of faith.
Coming to Christ is trusting Him; trusting Him is seeing Him, looking
unto Him. 'Come unto Me, and I will give you rest,' 'Look unto Me, and
be ye saved, all ye ends of the earth.' There are two metaphors, both
of them pointing to one thing, and that one thing is the invitation
from the dear lips of the loving Lord to every man, woman, and child
in this congregation. 'Come and see!' 'Put your trust in Me, draw near
to Me by desire and penitence, draw near to Me in the fixed thought of
your mind, in the devotion of your will, in the trust of your whole
being. Come to Me, and see Me by faith; and then--and then--your
hearts will have found what they seek, and your weary quest will be
over, and, like the dove, you will fold your wings and nestle at the
foot of the Cross, and rest for evermore. Come! "Come and see!"'

III. So, lastly, we have in these words a parable of the blessed
experience which binds men's hearts to Jesus for ever. 'They came and
saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him that day, for it was about the
tenth hour.'

'Dwelt' and 'abode' are the same words in the original. It is one of
John's favourite words, and in its deepest meaning expresses the
close, still communion which the soul may have with Jesus Christ,
which communion, on that never-to-be-forgotten day, when he and Andrew
sat with Him in the quiet, confidential fellowship that disclosed
Christ's glory 'full of grace and truth' to their hearts, made them
His for ever.

If the reckoning of time here is made according to the Hebrew fashion,
the 'tenth hour' will be ten o'clock in the morning. So, one long day
of talk! If it be according to the Roman legal fashion, the hour will
be four o'clock in the afternoon, which would only give time for a
brief conversation before the night fell. But, in any case, sacred
reserve is observed as to what passed in that interview. A lesson for
a great deal of blatant talk, in this present day, about conversion
and the details thereof!

  'Not easily forgiven
  Are those, who setting wide the doors, that bar
  The secret bridal chambers of the heart.
  Let in the day.'

John had nothing to say to the world about what the Master said to him
and his brother in that long day of communion.

One plain conclusion from this last part of our narrative is that the
impression of Christ's own personality is the strongest force to make
disciples. The character of Jesus Christ is, after all, the central
and standing evidence and the mightiest credential of Christianity. It
bears upon its face the proof of its own truthfulness. If such a
character was not lived, how did it ever come to be described, and
described by such people? And if it was lived, how did it come to be
so? The historical veracity of the character of Jesus Christ is
guaranteed by its very uniqueness. And the divine origin of Jesus
Christ is forced upon us as the only adequate explanation of His
historical character. 'Truly this man was the Son of God.'

I believe that to lift Him up is the work of all Christian preachers
and teachers; as far as they can to hide themselves behind Jesus
Christ, or at the most to let themselves appear, just as the old
painters used to let their own likenesses appear in their great
altar-pieces--a little kneeling figure there, away in a dark corner of
the background. Present Christ, and He will vindicate His own
character; He will vindicate His own nature; He will vindicate His own
gospel. 'They came and saw where He dwelt, and abode with Him,' and
the end of it was that they abode with Him for evermore. And so it
will always be.

Once more, personal experience of the grace and sweetness of this
Saviour binds men to Him as nothing else will:

  'He must be loved ere that to you
  He will seem worthy of your love.'

The deepest and sweetest and most precious part of His character and
of His gifts can only be known on condition of possessing Him and
them, and they can be possessed only on condition of holding
fellowship with Him. I do not say to any man: 'Try trust in order to
be sure that Jesus Christ is worthy to be trusted,' for by its very
nature faith cannot be an experiment or provisional. I do not say that
my experience is evidence to you, but at the same time I do say that
it is worth any man's while to reflect upon this, that none who ever
trusted in Him have been put to shame. No man has looked to Jesus and
has said: 'Ah! I have found Him out! His help is vain, His promises
empty.' Many men have fallen away from Him, I know, but not because
they have proved Him untruthful, but because they have become
unfaithful.

And so, dear brethren, I come to you with the old message, 'Oh!
taste,' and thus you will 'see that the Lord is good.' There must be
the faith first, and then there will be the experience, which will
make anything seem to you more credible than that He whom you have
loved and trusted, and who has answered your love and your trust,
should be anything else than the Son of God, the Saviour of mankind.
Come to Him and you will see. The impregnable argument will be put
into your mouth--'Whether this man be a sinner or no, I know not. One
thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see.' Look to Him,
listen to Him, and when He asks you, 'What seek ye?' answer, 'Rabbi,
where dwellest Thou? It is Thou whom I seek.' He will welcome you to
close blessed intercourse with Him, which will knit you to Him with
cords that cannot be broken, and with His loving voice making music in
memory and heart, you will be able triumphantly to confess--'Now we
believe, not because of any man's saying, for we have heard Him
ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the
world.'




THE FIRST DISCIPLES: II. SIMON PETER


'One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew,
Simon Peter's brother. 41. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and
saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being
interpreted, the Christ. 42. And he brought him to Jesus. And when
Jesus beheld him, He said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt
be called Cephas, which is, by interpretation, a stone.'--JOHN i.
40-42.

There are many ways by which souls are brought to their Saviour.
Sometimes, like the merchantman seeking goodly pearls, men seek Him
earnestly and find Him. Sometimes, by the intervention of another, the
knowledge of Him is kindled in dark hearts. Sometimes He Himself takes
the initiative, and finds those that seek Him not. We have
illustrations of all these various ways in these simple records of the
gathering in of the first disciples. Andrew and his friend, with whom
we were occupied in our last sermon, looked for Christ and found Him.
Peter, with whom we have to do now, was brought to Christ by his
brother; and the third of the group, consisting of Philip, was sought
by Christ while he was not thinking of Him, and found an unsought
treasure; and then Philip again, like Andrew, finds a friend, and
brings him to Christ.

Each of the incidents has its own lesson, and each of them adds
something to the elucidation of John's two great subjects: the
revelation of Jesus as the Son of God, and the development of that
faith in Him which gives us life. It may be profitable to consider
each group in succession, and mark the various aspects of these two
subjects presented by each.

In this incident, then, we have two things mainly to consider: first,
the witness of the disciple; second, the self-revelation of the
Master.

I. The witness of the disciple.

We have seen that the unknown companion of Andrew was probably the
Evangelist himself, who, in accordance with his uniform habit,
suppresses his own name, and that that omission points to John's
authorship of this Gospel. Another morsel of evidence as to the date
and purpose of the Gospel lies in the mention here of Andrew as 'Simon
Peter's brother.' We have not yet heard anything about Simon Peter.
The Evangelist has never mentioned his name, and yet he takes it for
granted that his hearers knew all about Peter, and knew him better
than they did Andrew. That presupposes a considerable familiarity with
the incidents of the Gospel story, and is in harmony with the theory
that this fourth Gospel is the latest of the four, and was written for
the purpose of supplementing, not of repeating, their narrative. Hence
a number of the phenomena of the Gospel, which have troubled critics,
are simply and sufficiently explained.

But that by the way. Passing that, notice first the illustration that
we get here of how instinctive and natural the impulse is, when a man
has found Jesus Christ, to tell some one else about Him. Nobody said
to Andrew, 'Go and look for your brother,' and yet, as soon as he had
fairly realised the fact that this Man standing before him was the
Messiah, though the evening seems to have come, he hurries away to
find his brother, and share with him the glad conviction.

Now, that is always the case. If a man has any real depth of
conviction, he cannot rest till he tries to share it with somebody
else. Why, even a dog that has had its leg mended, will bring other
limping dogs to the man that was kind to it. Whoever really believes
anything becomes a propagandist.

Look round about us to-day! and hearken to the Babel, the wholesale
Babel of noises, where every sort of opinion is trying to make itself
heard. It sounds like a country fair where every huckster is shouting
his loudest. That shows that the men believe the things that they
profess. Thank God that there is so much earnestness in the world! And
now are Christians to be dumb whilst all this vociferous crowd is
calling its wares, and quacks are standing on their platforms shouting
out their specifics, which are mostly delusions? Have you not a
medicine that will cure everything, a real heal-all, a veritable
pain-killer? If you believe that you have, certainly you will never
rest till you share your boon with your brethren.

If the natural effect of all earnest conviction, viz. a yearning and
an absolute necessity to speak it out, is no part of your Christian
experience, very grave inferences ought to be drawn from that. This
man, before he was four-and-twenty hours a disciple, had made another.
Some of you have been disciples for as many years, and have never even
tried to make one. Whence comes that silence which is, alas, so common
among us?

It is very plain that, making all allowance for changed manners, for
social difficulties, for timidity, for the embarrassment that besets
people when they talk to other people about religion, which is 'such
an awkward subject to introduce into mixed company,' and the
like,--making all allowance for these, there is a deplorable number of
Christian people who ought to be, in their own circles, evangelists
and missionaries, who are, if I may venture to quote very rude words
which the Bible uses, 'Dumb dogs lying down, and loving to slumber.'
'He first findeth his own brother, Simon!'

Now, take another lesson out of this witness of the disciple, as to
the channel in which such effort naturally runs. 'He _first_ findeth
_his own brother_'; does not that imply a second finding by the other
of the two? The language of the text suggests that the Evangelist's
tendency to the suppression of himself, of which I have spoken, hides
away, if I may so say, in this singular expression, the fact that he
too went to look for a brother, but that Andrew found his brother
before John found his. If so, each of the original pair of disciples
went to look for one who was knit to him by close ties of kindred and
affection, and found him and brought him to Christ; and before the day
was over the Christian Church was doubled, because each member of it,
by God's grace, had added another. Home, then, and those who are
nearest to us, present the natural channels for Christian work. Many a
very earnest and busy preacher, or Sunday-school teacher, or
missionary, has brothers and sisters, husband or wife, children or
parents at home to whom he has never said a word about Christ. There
is an old proverb, 'The shoemaker's wife is always the worst shod.'
The families of many very busy Christian teachers suffer wofully for
want of remembering 'he first findeth his own brother.' It is a poor
affair if all your philanthropy and Christian energy go off noisily in
Sunday-schools and mission-stations, and if your own vineyard is
neglected, and the people at your own fireside never hear anything
from you about the Master whom you say you love. Some of you want that
hint; will you take it?

But then, the principle is one that might be fairly expanded beyond
the home circle. The natural relationships into which we are brought
by neighbourhood and by ordinary associations prescribe the direction
of our efforts. What, for instance, are we set down in this swarming
population of Lancashire for? For business and personal ends? Yes,
partly. But is that all? Surely, if we believe that 'there is a
divinity that shapes our ends' and determines the bounds of our
habitation, we must believe that other purposes affecting other people
are also meant by God to be accomplished through us, and that where a
man who knows and loves Christ Jesus is brought into neighbourly
contact with thousands who do not, he is thereby constituted his
brethren's keeper, and is as plainly called to tell them of Christ as
if a voice from Heaven had bid him do it. What is to be said of the
depth and vital energy of the Christianity that neither hears the call
nor feels the impulse to share its blessing with the famishing Lazarus
at its gate? What will be the fate of such a church? Why, if you live
in luxury in your own well drained and ventilated house, and take no
heed to the typhoid fever or cholera in the slums at its back, the
chances are that seeds of the disease will find their way to you, and
kill your wife, or child, or yourself. And if you Christian people,
living in the midst of godless people, do not try to heal them, they
will infect you. If you do not seek to impress your conviction that
Christ is the Messiah upon an unbelieving generation, the unbelieving
generation will impress upon you its doubts whether He is; and your
lips will falter, and a pallor will come over the complexion of your
love, and your faith will become congealed and turn into ice.

Notice again the simple word which is the most powerful means of
influencing most men.

Andrew did not begin to argue with his brother. Some of us can do that
and some of us cannot. Some of us are influenced by argument and some
of us are not. You may pound a man's mistaken creed to atoms with
sledge-hammers of reasoning, and he is not much the nearer being a
Christian than he was before; just as you may pound ice to pieces and
it is pounded ice after all. The mightiest argument that we can use,
and the argument that we can all use, if we have got any religion in
us at all, is that of Andrew, 'We have found the Messias.'

I recently read a story in some newspaper or other about a minister
who preached a very elaborate course of lectures in refutation of some
form of infidelity, for the special benefit of a man that attended his
place of worship. Soon after, the man came and declared himself a
Christian. The minister said to him, 'Which of my discourses was it
that removed your doubts?' The reply was, 'Oh! it was not any of your
sermons that influenced me. The thing that set me thinking was that a
poor woman came out of the chapel beside me, and stumbled on the
steps, and I stretched out my hand to help her, and she said "Thank
you!" Then she looked at me and said, "Do you love Jesus Christ, my
blessed Saviour?" And I did not, and I went home and thought about it;
and now I can say _I_ love Jesus.' The poor woman's word, and her
frank confession of her experience, were all the transforming power.

If you have found Christ, you can say that you have. Never mind about
the how! Any how! Only say it! A boy that is sent on an errand by his
father has only one duty to perform, and that is to repeat what he was
told. Whether we have any eloquence or not, whether we have any logic
or not, whether we can speak persuasively and gracefully or not, if we
have laid hold of Christ at all we can say that we have; and it is at
our peril that we do not. We can say it to somebody. There is surely
some one who will listen to you more readily than to any one else.
Surely you have not lived all your life and bound nobody to you by
kindness and love, so that they will gladly attend to what you say.
Well, then, _use_ the power that is given to you.

Remember the beginnings of the Christian Church--two men, each of whom
found his brother. Two and two make four; and if every one of us would
go, according to the old law of warfare, and each of us slay our man,
or rather each of us give life by God's grace to some one, or try to
do it, our congregations and our churches would grow as fast as,
according to the old problem, the money grew that was paid down for
the nails in the horse's shoes. Two snowflakes on the top of a
mountain gather an avalanche by the time they reach the valley. 'He
first findeth his brother, Simon.'

II. And now I turn to the second part of this text, the
self-revelation of the Master.

The bond which knit these men to Christ at first was by no means the
perfect Christian faith which they afterwards attained. They
recognised Him as the Messiah, they were personally attached to Him,
they were ready to accept His teaching and to obey His commandments.
That was about as far as they had gone. But they were scholars. They
had entered the school. The rest would come. It would be absurd to
expect that Christ would begin by preaching to them faith in His
divinity and atoning work. He binds them to _Himself_. That is lesson
enough for a beginner for one day.

It was the impression which Christ Himself made on Simon which
completed the work begun by his brother. What, then, was the
impression? He comes all full of wonder and awe, and he is met by a
look and a sentence. The look, which is described by an unusual word,
was a penetrating gaze which regarded Peter with fixed attention. It
must have been remarkable, to have lived in John's memory for all
these years. Evidently, as I think, a more than natural insight is
implied. So, also, the saying with which our Lord received Peter seems
to me to be meant to show more than natural knowledge: 'Thou art
Simon, the son of Jonas.' Christ may, no doubt, have learned the
Apostle's name and lineage from his brother, or in some other ordinary
way. But if you observe the similar incident which follows in the
conversation with Nicodemus, and the emphatic declaration of the next
chapter that Jesus knew both 'all men,' and 'what was in man'--both
human nature as a whole, and each individual--it is more natural to
see here superhuman knowledge.

So then, the first point in our Lord's self-revelation here is that He
shows Himself possessed of supernatural and thorough knowledge. One
remembers the many instances where our Lord read men's hearts, and the
prayer addressed to Him probably, by Peter, 'Thou, Lord, which knowest
the hearts of all men,' and the vision which John saw of 'eyes like a
flame of fire,' and the sevenfold 'I know thy works.'

It may be a very awful thought, 'Thou, God, seest me.' It is a very
unwelcome thought to a great many men, and it will be so to us unless
we can give it the modification which it receives from the belief in
the divinity of Jesus Christ, and feel sure that the eyes which are
blazing with divine omniscience are dewy with divine and human love.

Do you believe it? Do you feel that Christ is looking at you, and
searching you altogether? Do you rejoice in it? Do you carry it about
with you as a consolation and a strength in moments of weakness and in
times of temptation? Is it as blessed to you to feel 'Thou Christ
beholdest me now,' as it is for a child to feel that, when it is
playing in the garden, its mother is sitting up at the window watching
it, and that no harm can come? There have been men driven mad in
prisons because they knew that somewhere in the wall there was a
little pinhole, through which a gaoler's eye was always, or might be
always, glaring down at them. And the thought of an absolute
Omniscience up there, searching me to the depths of my nature, may
become one from which I recoil shudderingly, and will not be
altogether a blessed one unless it comes to me in this shape:--'My
Christ knows me altogether and loves me better than He knows. And so I
will spread myself out before Him, and though I feel that there is
much in me which I dare not tell to men, I will rejoice that there is
nothing which I need to tell to Him. He knows me through and through.
He knew me when He died for me. He knew me when He forgave me. He knew
me when He undertook to cleanse me. Like this very Peter I will say,
"Lord, Thou knowest all things," and, like him, I will cling the
closer to His feet, because I know, and He knows, my weakness and my
sin.'

Another revelation of our Lord's relation to His disciples is given in
the fact that He changes Simon's name. Jehovah, in the Old Testament,
changes the names of Abraham and of Jacob. Babylonian kings in the Old
Testament change the names of their vassal princes. Masters impose
names on their slaves; and I suppose that even the marriage custom of
the wife's assuming the name of the husband rests originally upon the
same idea of absolute authority. That idea is conveyed in the fact
that our Lord changes Peter's name, and so takes absolute possession
of him, and asserts His mastery over him. We belong to Him altogether,
because He has given Himself altogether for us. His absolute authority
is the correlative of His utter self-surrender. He who can come to me
and say, 'I have spared not my life for thee,' and He only, has the
right to come to me and say, 'yield yourself wholly to Me.' So,
Christian friends, your Master wants all your service; do you give
yourselves up to Him out and out, not by half and half.

Lastly, that change of name implies Christ's power and promise to
bestow a new character and new functions and honours. Peter was by no
means a 'Peter' then. The name no doubt mainly implies official
function, but that official function was prepared for by personal
character; and in so far as the name refers to character, it means
firmness. At that epoch Peter was rash, impulsive, headstrong,
self-confident, vain, and therefore, necessarily changeable. Like the
granite, all fluid and hot, and fluid because it was hot, he needed to
cool in order to solidify into rock. And not until his self-confidence
had been knocked out of him, and he had learned humility by falling;
not until he had been beaten from all his presumption, and tamed down,
and sobered and steadied by years of difficulty and responsibilities,
did he become the rock that Christ meant him to be. All _that_ lay
concealed in the future, but in the change of his name, while he stood
on the very threshold of his Christian career, there was preached to
him, and there is preached to us, this great truth, that if you will
go to Jesus Christ He will make a new man of you. No man's character
is so obstinately rooted in evil but that Christ can change its set
and direction. No man's natural dispositions are so faulty and low but
that Christ can develop counterbalancing virtues, and out of the evil
and weakness make strength. He will not make a Peter into a John, or a
John into a Paul, but He will deliver Peter from the 'defects of his
qualities,' and lead them up into a higher and a nobler region. There
are no outcasts in the view of the transforming Christ. He dismisses
no people out of His hospital as incurable, because anybody,
everybody, the blackest, the most rooted in evil, those who have
longest indulged in any given form of transgression, may all come to
Him; with the certainty that if they will cleave to Him, He will read
all their character and all its weaknesses, and then with a glad smile
of welcome and assured confidence on His face, will ensure to them a
new nature and new dignities. 'Thou art Simon--thou shalt be Peter.'

The process will be long. It will be painful. There will be a great
deal pared off. The sculpto