Expositions of Holy Scripture Volume I Part 47

And so I remind you, not only that there are other 'sayings of Mine' to be kept than it, but also that there is no keeping of it without keeping other sayings first. For the highest of Christ's commandments is 'Believe also in Me,' and you have to take Him as your Redeemer and Saviour from death before you will ever thoroughly accept Him as your Guide and Pattern for life. We must first draw near to Him in humble penitence and lowly faith, and then there comes into our hearts a power which makes it possible and delightsome to keep even the loftiest, and in other aspects the hardest, of 'those sayings of Mine.' So, brethren, the obedience of which this text speaks is second, and the building of ourselves on Jesus Christ Himself, by faith in Him, is first. Only when we build on Him as our Saviour shall we build our lives upon Him in obedience to His commands.

'Behold! I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried corner-stone, a sure foundation, and he that believeth shall not make haste'; and long after the prophet said that, the Apostle catches up the same thought when he says, 'Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid. Let every man take heed how he buildeth thereon.' Jesus Christ is the foundation of our lives, if we have any true life at all. He ought to be the foundation of all our thinking. His word should be the absolute truth, His life the final all-satisfying, perfect revelation of G.o.d, to our hearts. 'In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge.'

The facts of His Incarnation, earthly life, Death, Resurrection, Ascension, and present Sovereignty--these facts, with the truths that are deduced from them, and the great glimpses which they afford into the heart of G.o.d and the depths of things, are the foundations of all true thinking on moral and social and religious questions, and on not a few other questions besides. Christ in His Revelation gives us the ultimate truth on which we have to build.

He is also the foundation of all our hope, the foundation of all our security, the foundation of all our effort and aspiration. His Cross goes before the nations and leads them, His Cross stands by the individual, and anodynes the sense of guilt, and breaks the bondage and captivity of sin, and stirs to all lofty emotions and holy living, and moves ever in the van like the pillar of cloud and fire, the Pattern of our lives and the Guide of our pilgrimage. It is Christ Himself who is the foundation, and His death and sacrifice which are the sure basis of our hope, safety, and blessedness; and it is only because He Himself is the Foundation, and what He has done for us is the basis of hope and blessedness, that He has the right to come to us and say, 'Take My commandments as the foundation on which you build your lives.'

The Rock of Ages cleft for us, is the Rock on which we build if we are Christians; the other man built his house upon the sand. That is to say, shifting inclinations, short-lived appet.i.tes, transitory aims, varying judgments of men, the fashions of the day in morality, the changing judgments of our own consciences--these are the things on which men build, if they are not building upon Jesus Christ. Like a vessel that has a raw hand at the helm, you sometimes head one way, and then the puff of wind that fills your sails dies down, or the sails that were flat as a board belly out a little, or you are caught in some current, and round goes the bowsprit on another tack altogether. How many of us are pursuing the objects which we pursued five-and-twenty years ago, if we have numbered so many years? What has become of aims that were everything to us then? We have won some of them, and they have turned out not half as good as we thought they would be. The hare is never so big when it is in the bag as when it is hurrying across the fields. We have missed some of them, and we scarcely remember that we once wanted them. We have outlived a great many, and they lie away behind us, hull down on the horizon, and we are making for some other point that, in like manner, if we reach it, will be left behind and be lost. There is nothing that lasts but G.o.d and Christ, and the people that build their lives upon them.

I press upon all your hearts that one simple thought--what an absurdity it is for us to choose for our life's object anything that is shorter-lived than ourselves!--and how long-lived you are you know. They tell us that sand makes a very good foundation under certain circ.u.mstances. I believe it does, but what if the water gets in? What about it then? But in regard to all these transitory aims and short-lived purposes on which some of you are building your lives, there is a certainty that the water will come in some day. So, friend, dig deeper down, even to the Eternal Rock. That is the only foundation on which an immortal man or woman like you is wise to build your life. Are you doing it?

II. Let me say a word, in the next place, about the two houses.

The one is built upon the rock. That just means, of course--and I need not enlarge upon that--a life which is based upon, and shaped after, the commandments of Jesus Christ, His Pattern and Example. And that life will stand. Now, of course, the ideal would be that the whole of His sayings should enter into the whole of our lives, that no commandment of that dear Lord should be left un.o.beyed, and that no action of ours should be unaffected by His known will. That is the ideal, and for us the task of wisdom is daily to draw nearer and nearer to that ideal, and to bring the whole of our lives more and more under the sway and sanctifying influence of the whole sum of Christ's precepts. Of course, on the other side, the life that is built on the sand is the life which is not thus regulated by Christ's will and known commandments.

But I desire rather to bring out, in a word or two, some of the lessons that may be gathered from this general metaphor of a man's life as a house. And the first that I would suggest is this:--Have you ever thought of your life as being a whole, with a definite moral characteristic stamped upon it? I look upon the men and women that I come across in the world, and I cannot help seeing that a great many of them have never got into their heads the idea that their life is a whole. A house? No. A cartload of bricks, tumbled down at random, would be a better metaphor. A chain? No! A heap of links not linked. Many of you live from hand to mouth. Many of you have such unity in your life as comes from the pressure of the external circ.u.mstances of your trade or profession. But for anything like the living consciousness that life is a whole, with a definite moral character for which you are responsible, it has never dawned upon your mind. And so you go on haphazard, never bringing reflection to bear upon the trend and drift of your days; doing what you must do because your occupation is this, that, or the other thing; doing what you incline to do in the matter of recreation; now and then sporadically, and for a minute or two, bringing conscience to bear, and being very uncomfortable sometimes when you do. But as for recognising the mystic solemnity of all these days of yours in that they are welded together, and are all tending to one end, and that each pa.s.sing moment contributes its infinitesimal share to the awful solemn whole--that has seldom entered your minds, and for a great many of you it has never had any effect in restraining or stimulating or regulating your conduct.

Then there is another consideration which this metaphor suggests--viz.

that the house is built up by slow degrees, brick upon brick, course by course, day by day, and moment by moment. It is slow work, but certain work. 'Let every man take heed how he buildeth,' and never despise the little things. Very small bricks make a large house.

Then there is another consideration that I would suggest, and that is, you have to live in the house that you build. Your deeds make the house that Christ is here speaking of. Like the chrysalis that spins out of its own entrails the coc.o.o.n in which it lies, so are you spinning, to vary the metaphor, what you lodge in, until you eat your way through it, and pa.s.s into the next stage of being. Our deeds seem transient, but although we are building on the sand we are building for Eternity, because, though the deeds are transient in appearance, they abide.

They abide in memory. Some of you know how true that is. Black memories haunt some of us, and there could be for some no worse h.e.l.l than that G.o.d should say, 'Son, remember.' You have to live in the house that you build. The deeds abide in habit. They abide in limiting and determining what we can be and do in the future; and in a hundred other ways that I must not touch upon. Only, I bring to you this question, and I pray G.o.d that you may listen to it and answer it: What are you building? A shop?

That is a n.o.ble ambition, is it not? A pleasure-house? That is worse. A prison? Some of you are rearing for your incarceration a jail where you will be tied and held by the cords of your sins, and whence you will be unable to break out. Or are you building a temple? If you are building on Christ it is all right. Only take heed _what_ you build on that foundation.

III. Now let me say a word, in the next place, about the storm.

I need not dwell upon the picturesque force of our Lord's description, so true to the sudden inundations of Eastern lands, and as true to the sudden floods of Northern countries when the snows melt. The house is attacked on all sides. From above, the rain comes down to beat on the roof, the wind rages round the walls, the flood comes swirling round the eaves from beneath, and if the house stands upon a cliff, the polished rock turns the flood off innocuous, but if it stands upon sand, the furious rush of waters eats a way beneath and undermines the whole.

But you will notice that the description of the storm is repeated in both cases, and is _verbatim_ the same in each. And the lesson from that is just this--let no Christian man fancy that he is not going to be judged according to his works, for he is. The storm that comes, which I take distinctly to mean the final judgment which falls upon all men, beats against the house that is built upon the rock. For every one of us, Christian or not Christian, 'must all appear before the Judgment Seat of Christ, that we may receive according to the deeds done in the body.' Christian people, do not fancy that the great doctrine of forgiveness of sins and acceptance in the Beloved, means that you have not to stand His judgment according to your works. According to the other metaphor of the Apostle, working out the same idea with some changes in figure, the Christian man who builds 'upon the foundation gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble,' has his 'work tried by fire.' So all of us have to face that prospect, and I beseech you to face it wisely. A sensible builder calculates the strain to which his work will be exposed before he begins to put it up. Or if he does not there will befall it the same fate that years ago befell that unfortunate Tay Bridge, where, by reason of girders too feeble, and piers not solid enough, and rivets left out where they should have been put in, one December night the whole thing went over into the water below. You have to stand the hurtling black storm. Take into account the strain which your building will have to resist, and build accordingly.

IV. And now, lastly, one word about the two endings.

'It stood'; 'it fell'; that is all. A life of obedience to Christ is stable, a life not based on Christ vanishes; and these two statements are true because whatsoever a man does for himself, apart from G.o.d in Christ, he is sowing to corruption, and he will reap corruption. As I said, nothing lasts but G.o.d, and what is done according to the will of G.o.d. And when the storm conies, whether the builder was a Christian man or not, all which was not thus built on Christ will be swept away, as the flimsy habitation of Eastern people, made of bamboos and oiled paper, are whirled away before the typhoon. All that was not built upon Christ--and much of you Christian people's lives is not built on Christ--will have to go.

And what about the builders? 'If any man's work abide he will receive a reward.' 'Their works do follow them.' 'If any man's work is burned, he himself shall be saved, yet so as by fire.' And if any man has reared a structure of a life ignoring Jesus Christ, and with no connection with Him, then house and builder will perish together.

Jesus Christ does not speak in my text about the righteousness or the unrighteousness of these two courses of conduct. He does not say, 'a _good_ man does so-and-so, or a _bad_ man does the other thing,' but he says: A _wise_ man builds his house on the Rock, and a _foolish_ man builds his on the sand. To live by faith and obedience is supreme wisdom. Every life which is not built upon Christ is the perfection of folly.

THE CHRIST OF THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

'And it came to pa.s.s, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at His doctrine: 29. For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.'--MATT. vii. 28-29.

It appears, then, from these words, that the first impression made on the ma.s.ses by the Sermon on the Mount was not so much an appreciation of its high morality, as a feeling of the personal authority with which Christ spoke. Had the scribes, then, no authority? They ruled the whole life of the nation with tyrannical power. They sat in Moses' seat, and claimed all manner of sway and control. And yet when people listened to Jesus, they heard something ringing in His voice that they missed in the rabbis. They only set themselves up, in their highest claims, as being commentators upon, and the expositors of, the Law. Their language was 'Moses commanded'; 'Rabbi _this_ said _so-and-so_; Rabbi _that_ said _such-and-such_.' But as even the crowd that listened to Him detected, Jesus Christ, in these great laws of His kingdom, adduced no authority but His own; stood forth as a Legislator, not as a commentator; and commanded, and prohibited, and repealed, and promised, on His own bare word. That is a characteristic of all Christ's teaching; and, as we see from my text, to the apprehension of the first auditors, it was deeply stamped on the Sermon on the Mount.

I purpose to turn to that Sermon now, and try if we can make out the points in it which impressed these people, who first heard it, with the sense that they were in the presence of an autocratic Voice that had a right to speak, and which did speak, with absolute and unexampled authority.

And I do that the more readily because I dare say you have all heard people that said 'Oh! I do not care about the dogmas of Christianity; give me the Sermon on the Mount and its sublime morality; that is Christianity enough for me.' Well, I should be disposed to say so pretty nearly too, if you will take _all_ the Sermon on the Mount, and not go picking and choosing bits out of it. For I am sure that if you will take the whole of its teaching you will find yourself next door to, if not in the very inmost chamber of, the mysticism of the Gospel of John and the theology of Paul.

I. I ask you, then, to note that the Sermon claims for Jesus Christ the authority of supremacy above all former revelation and revealers.

'Think not,' says He, 'that I am come to destroy the law or the prophets; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.' And then He goes on, in five cases, to ill.u.s.trate, in a very remarkable way, the authority that He claimed over the former Law, moulding it according to His will.

Now I do not propose to do more than suggest, in a sentence, two points that I think of importance. Observe that remarkable form of speech, 'I am come.' May we not fairly say that it implies that He existed before birth, and that His appearance among men was the result of His own act?

Does it not imply that He was not merely born, but _came_, choosing to be born just as He chose to die? In what sense can we understand the Apostle's view that it was an infinite and stupendous act of condescension in Christ to 'be found in fashion as a man,' unless we believe that by His own will and act He came forth from the Father and entered into the world, just as by His own will and act He left the world and went unto the Father?

But I do not dwell upon that, nor upon another very important consideration. Why was it that Jesus Christ, at the very beginning of His mission, felt Himself bound to disclaim any intention of destroying the law or the prophets? Must not the people have begun to feel that there was something revolutionary and novel about His teaching, and that it was threatening to disturb what had been consecrated by ages? So that it was needful that He should begin His career with this disclaimer of the intention of destruction. Strange for a divine messenger, if He simply stood as one in the line and sequence of divine revelation, to begin His work by saying, 'Now, I do not mean to annihilate all that is behind Me!' The question arises how anybody should have supposed that He did, and why it should ever have been needful for Him to say that He did not.

But I pa.s.s by all that, and ask you to think how much lies in these words of our Lord: 'I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.' They imply a claim that His life was a complete embodiment of G.o.d's law. Here is a man beginning His ministry as a religious teacher, with the a.s.sertion, stupendous, and, upon any other lips but His, insane arrogance, that He had come to do everything which G.o.d demanded, and to set forth before the world a living Pattern of the whole obedience of a human nature to the whole law of G.o.d. Who is He that said that? And how do we account for the fact that nineteen centuries have pa.s.sed, and, excepting in the case of here and there a bitter foe whose hostility had robbed him of his common sense, no lip has ventured to say that He claimed too much for Himself when He said, 'I am come to fulfil the law'; or that He falsely read the facts of His own experience and consciousness when He declared, 'I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do.'

Still further, here our Lord claims specifically and expressly to fulfil not only law but prophets. That is to say, He sets Himself forth as the Reality which had filled the imaginations and the hearts of a whole nation for centuries; as the living Reality which had been meant by all those lofty words of seers and prophets in the past. He declares that all those rapturous forecastings, all those dim antic.i.p.ations, all those triumphant promises, were not left to swing _in vacuo_, or to float about unfulfilled, but that He stood there, the actual Realisation of them all; and in Him, wrapped up as in a seed, the Kingdom of Heaven was among men.

And still further, He claims not only personal purity and completeness, and the fulfilment of all prior and prophetic antic.i.p.ation, but also He claims to have, and He exercises, the power of moulding, expanding, interpreting, and in some cases brushing aside, laws which He and they alike knew to be the laws of G.o.d. I do not need to specify in detail the instances which are contained in this Sermon on the Mount. But I simply ask you to consider the formula with which our Lord introduces each of His references to that subject. 'Ye have heard that it hath been said to them of old time' so-and-so,--and then follows a command of the Mosaic law; but '_I_ say unto you' so-and-so,--and then follows a deepening or a modification or a repeal, of statutes acknowledged by Him and His hearers to be divine. He certainly claims to speak with the same right and authority as the old Law did. He as certainly claims to speak with incomparably higher authority than Moses did, for the latter never professed to give precepts of his own. He was not the Lawgiver, as he is often called, but only the messenger of the Lawgiver. But Christ is Himself the fountain of the laws of His Kingdom. Nor only so, but He puts Himself without apology or explanation in front of Moses and a.s.serts power to modify, to set aside, or to re-enact with new stringency, the precepts of the divine law.

One supposition alone accounts for Christ's att.i.tude to law and prophets in this Sermon, and that is that the Eternal Wisdom and Personal Word of G.o.d, which at sundry times and in 'divers manners' spake to the old world by Moses, itself at last, in human form and personal guise, came here on earth and spake to us men. It is the same Voice that breathed through the prophets of old, and that spake on the lips of the Christ of Nazareth; the same Eternal Word who manifested Himself in a 'fiery law'

on Sinai, and in words of no less majesty and of deepened gentleness, when He gathered the people round about Him, and said to them, 'It hath been said to them of old time, ... but _I_ say unto you ...'

Here is the sum and climax of all revelation, the last word of the divine mind and will and heart, to the world. Moses and Elias stand beside Him on the Mount of Transfiguration, witnesses of His superiority and servants at His feet, and they vanish into mist and darkness, and leave there, erect, white-robed, solitary, the unique figure of the One Lawgiver and the perfect Revealer of G.o.d to men.

And this is the authority which struck even on the unsusceptible hearts of the listening crowds.

II. Still further, let me ask you to consider how, in this same great Sermon, He claims the authority of One who is unique in His relation to the Father.

You will find that in it there occurs very frequently the expression, '_your_ Father which is in Heaven'; or sometimes with the variation,'_thy_ Father which is in Heaven,' or, 'which seeth in secret.' But you will also find that whilst our Lord speaks about '_My_ Father which is in Heaven,' He never says '_our_ Father'; excepting in the exception which proves the rule when He is putting into the lips of His disciples the great formula of prayer which we call the 'Lord's Prayer'; and there speaking as through their consciousness, and teaching them their lesson, He says '_Our_ Father,' not as if He Himself were praying, but as if He were telling them how to pray. But when He speaks out of His own consciousness He speaks of '_My_ Father' and '_your_ Father,' never of '_our_ Father.'

And that corresponds with other phenomena in Scripture in our Lord's own language where you find that always He draws this broad distinction. He never a.s.sociates Himself with us in His Sonship. He ever a.s.serts that He is _the_ Son of G.o.d. Even when He wishes to speak with the utmost tenderness, He bids the weeping Mary hear the message, 'I go unto My Father and your Father.' This doctrine is thought by many to be one of those which they get rid of by professing the Christianity of the Sermon on the Mount. But it is there as plainly as in other parts of Scripture.

If we accept all which it teaches, we cannot escape from the belief that He is the only begotten and well-beloved Son of the Father; and also that through Him and in Him we, too, may receive the adoption of sons.

Dear friends, I press this upon you as no mere piece of hard theological doctrine, but as containing in it the very essentials of all spiritual life for each of us, that all our spiritual life must come by partic.i.p.ation in Christ, and that we enter into an altogether new and blessed relation to G.o.d when, laying our humble and penitent hands on the head of that dear Sacrifice that died on the Cross for as, we through Him cease to be children of wrath and become heirs of G.o.d. 'To as many as received Him, to them gave He authority to become the children of G.o.d, even to them that believe in His name,' but His Sonship stands unique and unapproachable, though it is the foundation from which flows all the sonship of the whole family in heaven and in earth. Moses and the prophets, teachers and guides, Apostles and Helpers, they are all but the servants of the family; this is the Son through whom we receive the adoption of sons.

III. We have in this great discourse the authority of One who is absolute Lord and Master over men.

'Not every one that saith unto me, Lord! Lord! shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. Many will say to Me in that day, Lord! Lord! have we not prophesied in Thy name, and in Thy name done many wonderful works?'

'Whoso heareth these sayings of Mine, and doeth them, I will liken him to a wise man, which built his house upon a rock.'

Jesus Christ here comes before the whole race, and claims an absolute submission. His word is to control, with authoritative and all-comprehensive scrutiny and power, every aim of our lives, and every action. In His name we may be strong, in His name we may cast out devils, in His name we may do many wonderful works. If we build upon Him we build upon a rock; if we build anywhere else we build upon the sand.

Strange, outrageous claims for a _man_ to make! 'Give me the Sermon on the Mount, and keep your doctrinal theology,' say people. But I want to know what kind of morality it is that is all traceable up to this--'Do as I bid you, My will is your law; My smile is your reward; to obey Me is perfection.' I think that takes you a good long way into 'theology.'

I think that the Man who said that--and you all know that He said it--must he either a good deal more or a good deal less than a perfect man. If He is only that He is not that; for if He is only that, He has no business to tell me to obey Him. He has no business to subst.i.tute His will for every other law; and you have no business--and it will be at the peril of your manhood if you do--to take any man, the Man Christ or any other, as an absolute example and pattern and master.

My brethren, Christ's claim to absolute obedience rests upon His divine nature and on His redeeming work. He has delivered us from our enemies, and therefore He commands us. He has given Himself for us, and therefore He has a right to say, 'Give yourselves to Me.' He is G.o.d manifest in the flesh, and therefore absolute power becomes His lips, and utter submission is our dignity. To say to Him 'Lord, Lord,' carries us whole universes beyond saying to Him, 'Rabbi, Rabbi.'

IV. And now, lastly, we have in this great discourse the authority of our Lord set forth as being the authority of Him who is to be the Judge of the world.

'Then will _I_ profess unto you I never knew you; depart from _Me_, ye that work iniquity.' He, the meek, the humble, who never claimed for Himself anything except what His consciousness compelled Him to a.s.sert, who desired only that men should know Him for what He was, because it was their life so to know Him, here declares that the whole world is to be judged by Him, that He has such knowledge of men as will pierce beneath the surface of professions and will be undazzled by the most stupendous miracles, and beneath the eloquent words of many a preacher and the wonderful works of many a so-called Christian philanthropist, will see the hidden rottenness that they never saw, and, tearing down the veil, will reveal men at the last to themselves.

That is no human function, that is no work that belongs to a mere teacher, pattern, martyr, sage, philosopher, or saint. That is a divine work; and the authority of Him whose final word to each of us will settle beyond appeal our fate, and reveal beyond cavil our character, is a divine authority. He has a right to command because He is going to judge; and the lips that declare the law are the lips that will read the sentence.

So, my brethren, do you take the whole Christ for yours, the Son of G.o.d, the crown and end of revelation, the sinless and the perfect, who died on the Cross for our salvation, and loves and pities, and is ready to help every one of us; who, therefore, commands us with an absolute authority, and who one day comes to be our Judge? If you turn to Him and ask Him, 'Art Thou He that should come?' let Him speak for Himself, and He will answer you: 'I that speak unto thee am He.' When He asks each of us, as He does now, 'Whom sayest thou that I am?' oh that we may all answer, with the a.s.sent of our understandings, with the love of our hearts, with the submission of our wills, 'Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living G.o.d.'