Quiet Talks on John's Gospel Part 5

Packing Most in Least.

And John goes quietly on with his great simple story: "_and the light shineth in the darkness_," John has a way of packing much in little.

Here he packs four thousand years into three English letters. For he has been back in that creative Genesis week. And now with one long stride he puts his foot down in the days when Jesus walks among us as a man. Forty centuries, by the common reckoning, packed into three letters e-t-h.

Rather a skilful bit of packing that. Yet it is not unusual. It is characteristic both of John and of the One that guides John's pen. When He is allowed to have free sway the Holy Spirit packs much in little.

That rugged old Hebrew prophet of fire and storm, Elijah, standing in the grey dawn, in the mouth of an Arabian cave, had the whole of a new G.o.d--a G.o.d of tender gentle love--packed into an exquisite sound of gentle stillness, that smote so subtly on his ear, and completely melted and changed this man of rock and thunder. It's a new man that turns his face north again. The new G.o.d that had compacted Himself anew inside the ruggedly faithful old man is revealed in the prophet's successor. This is the new spirit, so unlike the old Elijah, that comes as a birth-right heritage upon young Elisha. Great packing work that.

That fine-grained young university fellow on the Damascus road, driving hard in pursuit of his earnest purpose, had the whole of a G.o.d, a new G.o.d to him, packed into a single flash of blinding light out of the upper blue. He had the whole of a new plan, an utterly changed plan for his life, packed into a single sentence spoken into his amazed ears as he lies in the dust.

And if this Holy Spirit may have His way--a big if? Yes: yet not too big to be gotten rid of at once: G.o.d puts in the if's, that we may get the strength of choosing. We put them out, _if_ we do. _If_ He may have His way He'll pack--listen quietly, with your heart--He'll pack _the whole of a Jesus_ inside you and me. Much in little! Most in least! And the more we let Him in, the bigger that "most" prints itself to our eyes, and the more that "least" dwindles down to the disappearing point.

G.o.d gives us His own self in Jesus. Jesus comes to live inside of us. He doesn't give us things, but Himself. We talk about salvation. There's something better--_a Saviour_. We talk about help in trouble. There's something immensely more--_a Friend_, alongside, close up. We talk about healing--sometimes, not so much these days; the subject is so much confused. There's something much better--a _Healer_, living within, whose presence means healing and health for body and spirit.

Then John says, "the light shineth _in the darkness_." This is G.o.d's way of treating darkness. There are two ways of treating darkness, man's and G.o.d's. Man's way is to attack the darkness. Suppose this hall where we are were quite dark, all shuttered up, and suppose we were new on the earth, and not familiar with darkness. We want to hold a meeting. But how shall we get rid of this strange darkness that has come down over everything? Let's each of us get a bucket or pail or basin, and take some of the darkness out. So we'll get rid of it, and its inconvenience.

And if the suggestion were made seriously there might be talk of putting the suggestor in a certain sort of inst.i.tution for the safety of the community. Yet this is the way we go at the other darkness, the worse moral darkness.

_G.o.d's way_ is quite different; indeed just the exact reverse _let the light shine._ The darkness can't stand the light. If the hall _were_ quite dark, and I scratched only a parlour-match, instantly as the little flame broke out of the end of the stick some of the darkness would go. It's surprising how much would go, and how quickly. The darkness can't stand the light. It flees like a hunted hare before a pack of hounds.

There may be times when action must betaken by a community against certain forms of evil, so d.a.m.nable, and so strongly entrenched, and so threatening to the purity of home and young and of all. But note keenly that this is _incidental_. It is immensely important at times, but it is distinctly _secondary._ The great simple plan of G.o.d is this: _let the light shine_. The darkness flees like a whipped cur, tail tightly curled down and in, before the real thing of light.

Let me ask you a question. Come up a bit closer and listen quietly, for this is tremendously serious. And it's the quietest spoken word that reaches the inner c.o.c.kles of the heart. Listen: is it a bit dark down where you live? Morally dark? Spiritually? How about that? in commercial circles and social and fraternal, in church and home and city and neighbourhood. Is it a bit dark? Or, have I found the Garden of Eden at last before the serpent entered?

Because if it be a bit dark, softly, please, let me say it very quietly, for it may sound critical, and I would not have that for anything. We are talking only to help. Though sometimes the truth itself does have a merciless edge. If it be a bit dark does it not suggest that _the light has not been shining as it was meant to_? For where the light shines the darkness goes.

For, you see, this is still G.o.d's plan for treating darkness. It is meant to be true to-day of each of us,--"_the light shineth in the darkness_." Of course, _we_ are not the light. He is the Light. But we are the light-holders. I carry the Light of the world around inside of me. And so do you, _if you do_. It is not because of the "me," of course, but because of the great patience and faithfulness of Him who is the Light. A very rickety cheap lantern may carry a clear light, and the man in the ditch find good footing in the road again.

You and I are meant to be the human lanterns carrying the Light, and letting it shine clearly fully out. And you know when some one else is providing the light the chief thing about the lantern is that the gla.s.s of the lantern be kept dean and clear so the light within can get freely out. The great thing is that _we shall live clean transparent lives_ so the Light within may shine clearly out. We may live unselfish clean Christly lives, by His great grace. And through that kind of lives, the Light itself shines out, and shines out most, and most clearly.

Over at the mouth of the Hudson, where I call it home, there are some strange things seen. Sometimes the gla.s.s of this human lantern gets smoky, badly smoked. And sometimes it even gets cobwebby, rather thickly covered up. And even this has been known to happen up there,--it'll seem very strange to you people doubtless--_this_; they write finely phrased essays on the delicate shading of grey in the smoke on the gla.s.s of the human lantern.

They meet together and listen to essays, in rarely polished English, on the exquisite lace-like tracery of the cobwebs on the gla.s.s of the human lantern. But look! Hold your heart still and look! There's the crowd in the road in the dark, struggling, jostling, stumbling, and falling into the ditch at the side of the road, ditched and badly mired, because the light hasn't gotten to them. The Light's there. It's burning itself out in pa.s.sionate eagerness to help. But the human lanterns are in bad shape.

"Rhetoric!" do you say? I wish it were. I wish with my heart it were.

Look at the crowds for yourself. There they go down the street, pell-mell, bewildered, blinded, some of them by will-o'-the-wisp lights, ditched and mired many of them. The thing is only too terribly true.

Our Lord's great plan, bearing the stamp of its divinity in its sheer human simplicity, is this: we who know Jesus are to _live Him_. We're to let _the whole of a Jesus_, crucified, risen, living, shine out of _the whole of our lives_.

Is it a bit dark down where you are? _Let the Light shine_. Let the clear sweet steady Jesus-light shine out through your true clean quiet Jesus-swayed and Jesus-controlled life. Then the darkness must go. It can't stand the Light. It can't withstand the purity and insistence of its clear steady shining. And the darkness _will_ go: slowly, reluctantly, angrily, doggedly, making hideous growling noises sometimes, raising the dust sometimes, but it will go. It must go before the Light. The Light's resistless. This is our Lord's wondrous plan _through_ His own, and His irresistible plan _for_ the crowd, and His plan against the prince of darkness.

The Heart-road to the Head.

Then John goes on to say, "_the darkness apprehended it not_." The old common version says "comprehended"; the revisions, both English and American, say "apprehended." Both are rather large words, larger in English than John would use. John loved to use simple talk. Yet there's help even in these English words. Comprehend is a mental word. It means to take hold of with your mind; to understand. Apprehend is a physical word. It means to take hold of with your hand.

You can't _comprehend_ Jesus. That is just the simple plain fact. You may have a fine mind. It may be well schooled and trained. You may have dug into all the books on the subject, English and German and the few French. You may have spent a lifetime at it. But at the end there is immensely more of Jesus that you don't understand than the part that you do understand. You've touched the smaller part only, just the edges. You cannot take Jesus in with your mind simply. The one is too big and the other too limited for that particular process.

But, listen with your heart, you can _apprehend_ Him. You can _take hold_ of Him. There isn't one of us here, however poorly equipped mentally and in training, and too busy with life's common duties to get much time for reading, not one of us, who may not reach out your hand, the hand of your heart, the hand of your life, the hand of your simple childlike trust--if you're great enough in simplicity to be childlike, to be natural, not one of us, but may reach out the hand and _take in all there is of Jesus_.

And the striking thing to mark is this, that we don't really begin to comprehend until we apprehend. Only as we take Him into heart and life _can_ we really understand. It's as if the heat in the heart made by His presence there loosens up the grey juices of your brain, and it begins to work freely and clearly.

Of course, this is a commonplace in the educational world. It is well understood there that no student does his best work, no matter what that work may be, in science or philosophy or in mathematics or in laboratorial research, his mind cannot do its best, or be at its best, until his heart has been kindled by some n.o.ble pa.s.sion. The key to the life is in the heart, that is the emotions and purposes tied together.

The approach to the mind is through the heart. The fire of pure emotion and of n.o.ble purpose burning together, works out _through_ the mind _into_ the life. This is nature's order.

But what John is saying here, put into as simple language as he would use, is this: "_the darkness wouldn't let the light in, and couldn't shut it out, and couldn't dull the brightness of its shining_." It tried. It tried first at Bethlehem. The first spilling of blood came there. There was the shedding of blood at both ends of Jesus' career, and innocent blood each time. It tried at the Nazareth precipice, and in the spirit-racking wilderness. It tried by stones, then in Gethsemane, then at Calvary.

And there it seemed to have succeeded. At last the light was shut in and down; the door was shut and barred and bolted. And I suppose there was great glee in the headquarters of darkness. But the Third Morning came.

And the bars of darkness were broken, as a woman breaks the sewing-cotton at the end of the seam. The Light could not be held down by darkness. It broke out more brightly than ever. The darkness couldn't shut the light out. And it can't.

_Let the light shine._ Let it shine out through the clear clean gla.s.s of an unselfish, Jesus-cleansed Jesus-fired life lived for Him in the commonplace round, and the shut-away corner. _And the darkness will go_.

The darkness cannot shut out the light, nor keep it down, nor resist the gentle resistless power of its soft clear flooding. Let the Light shine down in that corner where you are. And the darkness, darkness that can be felt, and _is_ felt so sorely deep down in your spirit, in its uncanny Egyptian blackness, that darkness will break, and more, clear, and go, go, go, till it's clear gone.

And so ends John's first great paragraph. It is so tremendous in its simplicity that, Greek-like, men stumble over its simple tremendousness.

Away back in the beginning G.o.d revealed Himself in making a home for man, and in bringing the man, made in His own image, to his home. And then when the damp unwholesome darkness came stealing in swamping the home and man He came Himself, flooding in the soft clear pure light of His presence, to free man from the darkness and woo him out into the light.

Tarshish or Nineveh?

Then John goes on into his second paragraph. "_There came a man, sent from G.o.d, whose name was John_." Why? Because man was in the dark. He sent a man to help a man. He used a man to reach a man. He always does.

Run clear through this old Book of G.o.d, and then clear through that other Book of G.o.d--the book of life, and note that this is G.o.d's habit.

He, Himself, uses the path He had made for human feet. With greatest reverence let it be said that G.o.d _must_ use a human pathway for His feet.

Even when He would redeem a world He came, He must needs come, as a Man, one of ourselves. He touches men through men. The pathway of His helping feet is always a common human pathway. And, will you mark keenly that _the highest level any life ever reaches_, or _can_ reach, is this: _to be a pathway for the feet of a wooing winning G.o.d_.

And this is still true. It is meant to be true to-day that there came a man, sent from G.o.d, whose name is--_your name_. You put in your own name in that sentence, then you get G.o.d's plan for you. For as surely as this particular John of the desert and of the plain living, and the burning speech, was sent by G.o.d, so surely is every man of us a man sent by G.o.d on some particular errand. And the greatest achievement of life is to find and fit into the plan of G.o.d for one's life. This is the only great thing one can do. Anything else is merely _labelled_ "great." And that label washes off. This is the one thing worth while.

The bother is we don't always get the verbs, the action words, of that sentence straight. John was a man _sent_ from G.o.d. And he _came_. All men are sent But they don't all come, some _go_; go their own way. There was a man sent from G.o.d whose name was Jonah. But he didn't come. He went. He was sent to Nineveh on the extreme east. He went towards Tarshish on the extreme west; just the opposite direction. Every man is headed either for Nineveh or Tarshish, G.o.d's way or his own. Which way are you headed?

Some of us go to Tarshish _religiously_. We go our own way, and sing hymns and pray, to make it seem right and keep from hearing the inner voice. We hold meetings at the boat-wharf, while waiting for the Tarshish ship to lift anchor. We have services in the steerage and second-cla.s.s and distribute tracts and New Testaments; but all the time we're headed for Tarshish; our way, not G.o.d's. It won't do simply to do good. We must do G.o.d's will. Find that and fit into it.

The meetings and tracts are only good but they ought to be on the train to Nineveh, and in Nineveh where G.o.d's sent you. Are you berthed on the boat for Tarshish? or have you a seat engaged on the train for Nineveh?

going your own way? or G.o.d's? John was _sent_ and he _came_. You and I are sent. Are we coming or going? coming G.o.d's way? or, going our own?

Living Martyrs.

This true-hearted burning man of the deserts _came for a witness_. Here we strike one of John's great words. You remember the three things that _witness_ means? that you know something; that you tell what you know; and that you tell it most with your life. And telling it _with your life_ means, not only by the way you live, but, too, even though the telling of it _may cost you your life_. It came to mean all of that with this witness.

It came to mean that with a new fullness of meaning, a peculiar significance, to _the great Witness_, of whom John told. This was the very throbbing heart of the wooing errand. This explains the tenderness and tenacity of the Lover in His wooing in the midst of intensest opposition, and in spite of it.

The opposition brought about the terrific grouping of circ.u.mstances which the great Lover-witness used as the tremendous climax of both wooing and witnessing. No one doubts the reality of Jesus' witness to the Father's love before men. And no one, who has had any touch at all with Him, doubts the tremendous pull upon one's heart of such a wooing appeal as that Calvary climax of witnessing made, and makes.