Sermons on National Subjects

We read nothing here about God’s absolute purposes, and fixed decrees, whereof men talk so often, making a god in their own fallen image, after their own fallen likeness.  The Lord, the Word of God, of whom the Bible tells us, does not think it beneath his dignity to say: “It repenteth me that I have made man.”  Different, truly, from that false god which man makes in his own image.  Man is proud, and he fancies that God is proud; man is self-willed and selfish, and he fancies that God is self-willed and selfish; man is arbitrary and obstinate, and determined to have his own way just because it is his own way; and then he fancies that God is arbitrary and obstinate, and determines to have His own way and will, just because it is His own way and will.  But wilt thou know, oh vain man, why God will have His own way and will?  Because His way is a good way, and His will a loving will; because the Lord knows that His way is the only path of life, and joy, and blessing to man and beast, yes, and to the very hairs of our head, which are all numbered, and to the sparrows, whereof not one falls to the ground without our Father’s knowledge; because His will is a loving will, which wills that none should perish, but that all should come and be saved in body, soul, and spirit.  He will have His own will done, not because it is His own will, but because it is good, good for men.  And if men will change and repent, then will He change and repent also.  If man will resist the striving of God’s Spirit with him, then will the Lord say: “It repenteth me that I have made that man.”  But if a man will repent him of the evil, then God will repent Him of the evil also.  If a man will let God’s Spirit convince him, and will open his ears and hear, and open his eyes and see, and open his heart to take in the loving thoughts and the right thoughts, and the penitent and humble thoughts, which do come to him—you know they do come to you all at times—then the Lord will repent also, as he repents, and repent concerning the evil which He has declared concerning that man.  So said the Lord, who cannot change, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, the same now that He was in the days of the flood, to Jeremiah the prophet, when He moved him to go down to the potter’s house, and watch him there at his work.

And the potter made a vessel—something which would be useful and good for a certain purpose—but the clay was marred in the hand of the potter.  He was good and skilful; but there was a fault in the clay.  What did he do?  Throw the clay away as useless?  No.  He made it again another vessel.  He was determined to make, not anything, but something useful and good.  And if the clay, being faulty, failed him once, he would try again.  He would change his purpose and plan, but not his right will to make good and useful vessels; them he would make, if not by one way, then by another.  And Jeremiah watched him; and as he watched, the Spirit of the Lord came on him, and taught him that that poor potter’s way of working with his clay, was a pattern and likeness of the Lord’s work on earth.  Oh shame, that this great parable should have been twisted by men to make out that God is an arbitrary tyrant, who works by a brute necessity!  It taught Jeremiah the very opposite.  It taught him what it ought to teach us, that God does change, because man changes, that God’s steadfast will is the good of men, and therefore because men change their weak self-willed course, and fall, and seek out many inventions, therefore God changes to follow them, like a good shepherd, tracking and following the lost and wandering sheep up and down, right and left, over hill and dale, if by any means He may find him, and bring him home on His shoulders to the fold, calling upon the angels of God: “Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which I had lost.”

This is the likeness of God.  The good and loving will of a Father following his wandering children.  The likeness of a loving Father repenting that He hath brought into the world sinful children, to be a misery to themselves and all around them, and yet for the same reason loving those children, striving with their wicked wills to the very last, giving them one last chance and time for repentance; as the Lord did to those evil men of the old world, sending to them Noah, a preacher of righteousness, if by any means they would turn from their sins and be saved.  Ay, not only preaching to their ears by Noah, but to their hearts by His Spirit; as St. Peter tells us, He Himself, Christ the Lord, went Himself by His Spirit to those very sinners before the flood, and strove to bring them to their reason again.  By His Spirit; by the very same one and only Holy Spirit of God, St. Peter says, by which Christ Himself was raised from the dead, did He try to raise the souls of those sinners before the flood, from the death of sin to the life of righteousness: but they would not.  They were disobedient.  Their wills resisted His will to the last; and then the flood came, and swept them all away.

And so the first work of the heavenly Workman was marred in the making by no fault of His, but by the fault of what He made.  He made men persons, rational beings with wills, that they might be willingly like Him: but they used those wills to be unlike Him, to rebel against Him, and to fill the earth with violence and corruption.  And so, for the good of all mankind to come, He had to sweep them all away.  But of that same sinful clay He made another vessel, as it seemed good to Him; even Noah and his Sons, whom He saved that He might carry on the race of the Sons of God unto this day.

And after that again, my friends, in a day more dark and evil still, when the earth was again corrupt before God, and filled with violence; when all flesh had corrupted His way upon the earth, so that, as St. Paul said of them, there was none that did good, no not one: then the same Lord, when He saw that all the world lay in wickedness, and that the clay of human-kind was marred in the hands of the potter, then did He cast away that clay as reprobate and useless, and destroy mankind off the face of the earth?  Not so.  Then, when there was none to help, His own arm brought salvation, and His own righteousness sustained Him; He trod the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none with Him.  His own righteousness sustained Him.  His perfectly good and righteous will never failed Him for a moment; man He would save, and man He saved.  If none else could do it, He would do it Himself.  He would bring salvation with His own arm.  He would fulfil His Father’s will, which is that none should perish; He would be made flesh, and dwell among men, that man might behold the likeness of God the Father, full of grace and truth, and see what they were meant to be.  Then, in Him, in Jesus who wept over Jerusalem, was fully revealed and shown the likeness and glory of the Lord; the Lord in whose image man was made; who walked and spoke with Adam in the garden; who was not ashamed to say that it repented Him that He had made man; whom Ezekiel saw upon His throne, and as it were upon the throne the appearance of the likeness of a man; whom Daniel saw, and knew him to be the Son of Man.  Not a man, then, of flesh and blood; but the Eternal Word of God, in whose image man was made, who could be loving and merciful, long-suffering and repenting Him of the evil, but never of the good.  He came, and He swept away, as He had told the Apostles that He would do, by such afflictions as man had never seen since the beginning of the world until then, that Roman world with all its devilish systems and maxims, whereby the nations were kept down in slavery and sin; and He founded a new heaven and a new earth, wherein dwell righteousness, even this Holy Catholic Church, to which we all belong this day.

Yes, my friends, this is our gospel, our good news, that there is a God whose Spirit strives with sinners to change them into His own likeness.  A God who is no dark, obstinate, inexorable Fate, whose arbitrary decrees must come to pass; but a loving and merciful God, long-suffering, and who repenteth Him of the evil; who repents Him of the evil which is in man, and hates it, and has sworn to Himself to fight against it, till He has put all enemies under His foot, and cast out of His kingdom all things which offend.  Who repents Him of the evil in man: but who will never again repent Him of having made man, for then He would repent of having become man; He would repent of having been conceived of the Holy Ghost; He would repent of having been born of the Virgin Mary; He would repent of having been crucified, dead, and buried; He would repent of having risen from the dead, and ascended up into heaven in His man’s body, and soul, and spirit; He would repent of sitting on the right hand of God; He would repent of coming to judge the quick and the dead; He would repent of having done His Father’s will on earth, even as He did it from all eternity in the bosom of the Father.  For He is a man; and even as the reasonable soul and body are one man, so God and man are one Christ.  As man, He did His Father’s will in Judæa of old; as man, He will judge the world; as man He rules it now; as man, St. John saw Him fifty years after He ascended to heaven, and His eyes were like a flame of fire, and His hair like fine wool, and He was girt under the bosom with a golden girdle, and His voice was like the sound of many waters; as man, He said: “Fear not: I am the first and the last; I am He that liveth, and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of death and hell.”  Yes.  This is the gospel, the good news for fallen man, that there is a Man in the midst of the throne of God, to whom all power is given in heaven and earth; that the fate of the world, and all that is therein—the fate of suns and stars—the fate of kings and nations—the fate of every publican and harlot, and heathen and outcast—the fate of all who are in death and hell, depends alike upon the sacred heart of Jesus; the heart which groaned at the tomb of Lazarus His friend; the heart which wept over Jerusalem; the heart which said to the blessed Magdalene, the woman who was a sinner: “Go in peace; thy sins are forgiven thee;” the heart which now yearns after every sinful and wandering soul in His church, and all over the earth of God, crying to you all: “Why will ye die?  Have I any pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord, and not rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live?  Come unto me, all ye that are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”  Oh, my friends, wonderful as my words are—as wonderful to me who speak them as they can be to you who hear them—yet they are true.  True; for on that table stand the bread and wine whereof He Himself said, standing upon this very earth which He Himself had made: “This is my body which is given for you; this cup is the new covenant in my blood, which I will give for the life of the world.”

XXXVII.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD

The kingdom of God is within you.—Luke xvii. 21.

These words are in the second lesson for this morning’s service.  Let us think a little about them.

What they mean must depend on what the kingdom of God means; for that is the one thing about which they speak.

Now, the kingdom of God is very often spoken of in the New Testament.  Indeed, it is the thing it speaks of above all others.  It was the thing which our Lord went about preaching.  It was the thing of which He spoke in His parables, likening the kingdom of God first to one thing, then to another, that He might make men understand what it was like.

Now, it is worth remarking that we—I mean even religious people—speak very little about the kingdom of God nowadays.  One hears less about it than about any other words, almost, which stand in the New Testament.  Both in sermons and in religious books, and in the talk of godly people, one hears the kingdom of God spoken of very seldom.  One hears words about the Church, which are very good and true; but very little, if anything, about the kingdom of God, though both St. Paul, and St. John, and the blessed Lord Himself, speak of the two together, as if they could not be parted; as if one could not think of the one without thinking of the other.  And we hear words about the gospel, too, some of them very good and true, and others, I am sorry to say, very bad and false: but, true or false, they are not often joined now in men’s minds, or mouths, or books, with the kingdom of God.  But the New Testament joins them almost always.  It says that gospel must be good news.  Therefore the gospel must be good news about something.  But about what?  We hear all manner of answers nowadays; but we hear the right one very seldom.  People talk of the gospel as if it only meant the good news that one man can be saved here, and another man can be saved there.  And that is good news, certainly.  It is good and blessed news to hear that any one poor sinner can be saved from sin, and from the wages of sin.  But the holy scriptures, when they talk of the gospel, call it the gospel of the kingdom of God.  And I think it best and wisest to call it oftenest, what the holy scripture calls it oftenest, and to try and understand, first of all, what that means, what the good news of the kingdom of God is: and to understand that, we must first understand what the kingdom of God is.

But some may answer, holy scripture speaks of the gospel of salvation.  True, it does, once or twice.  But what does that show?  Is that a different gospel from the gospel of the kingdom of God?  Are there two gospels?  Surely not.  Else why would holy scripture speak so often of “the gospel”—“the good news,” by itself, without any word after to show what it was about?  It says often simply “the gospel;” because there is but one gospel; and, as St. Paul says, if any man or angel preach any other than that one, “Let him be anathema.”

Therefore the gospel of salvation must be the same as the gospel of the kingdom of God; and, therefore, it seems to me, that salvation and the kingdom of God must be one and the same thing.

Now, do you think so?  When I say “The kingdom of God is salvation,” do you think it is?  Have you even any clear notion of what I mean when I say it?  Some of you have not, I am afraid; you cannot see at first sight what salvation and the kingdom of God have to do with each other.  And why?  You think salvation means being saved from hell, and going to heaven, when you die.  And so it does: but I trust in God and in God’s holy scripture, that it means a great deal more; for I think it means being unfit for hell, and fit for heaven, before we die.  At least, so says the Church Catechism, which teaches every little child to thank his Heavenly Father for having brought him into such a state of salvation in this life, even while he is young.  Thanks be to The Spirit of God which taught our fore-fathers to put these precious words into the Church Catechism, to guard us against falling into the very same mistake as the Pharisees of old fell into, when they asked our Lord when the kingdom of God was to come.  And, believe me, it is easy enough and common enough to fall into the same mistake.

For what was their mistake?  They fancied that the kingdom of God was not yet come.  And do not most of you think the same?  They did not deny, of course, that God was almighty, and could rule and govern all mankind if He chose so to do.  But they did not believe that He was ruling and governing all mankind then, because they did not know what His rule and government were like.  Now, St. Paul tells us what God’s kingdom is like.  The kingdom of God, he says, is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit.  So wherever there is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit, there the kingdom of God is.  But His kingdom over what?  Over dumb animals, or over men?  Over men, certainly; for dumb animals cannot have righteousness, or joy in the Holy Spirit.  But over what part of a man?  Over his body or over his spirit, as we call it nowadays?  Over his spirit, certainly; for it is only our spirits which can be righteous, or peaceful, or joyful in God’s Spirit.  Therefore God’s kingdom, of which St. Paul speaks, is a kingdom, a government over the souls, the spirits of men.  Now, are our spirits the inward part of us, or our bodies?  Our spirits, certainly.  We all say, and say rightly, that our bodies are the outward part of us, and that our spirits are within us.  Now, do you not see how that agrees exactly with the blessed Lord’s saying in the text, “Behold, the kingdom of God is within you”—that is, in your spirits, because it is righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit; and these are things which only our souls, not our bodies at all, can have.

But these Pharisees were not righteous; they were wicked and hypocritical men.  Was the kingdom of God within them?  The blessed Lord said plainly that it was.  He said not, “The kingdom of God is within some people’s hearts;” or, “The kingdom of God is within the hearts of believers;” or, “The kingdom of God might be within you if you liked.”  But He said that the kingdom of God was then and there within the hearts of those wicked and unbelieving Pharisees.

Now, how could that be?  In the same way that some time before that, as St. Luke tells us, the power of the Lord was present to heal those same Pharisees; and they were for the time amazed, and glorified God, and were filled with fear at His mighty works; but not healed.  Their souls were not cured of their sin and folly by any means; for we find in the very next chapter, that because Jesus cured a palsied man on the Sabbath-day they were filled with madness, and consulted together how to kill Him.

For, my friends, as it was with them, so it is with us.  God’s kingdom is within every one of us; but it may make us worse, as well as make us better.  It may fill us with righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit; or it may fill us, as it filled the Pharisees, with madness, and hatred of religion and of goodness; as it is written, that the gospel may be a savour of death unto death to us, as well as a savour of life unto life.  And it depends on us which it shall be.

This is what I mean: God’s kingdom is within each of us.  God is the King of our hearts and souls; our baptism tells us so; and it tells us truly.  And because God is the King of each of our hearts, He comes everlastingly to take possession of our hearts, and continues claiming our souls for His own.  He speaks in our hearts day and night; whenever we have a good thought, He speaks in our hearts, and says to us: “I am the King of your spirit.  It must obey me.  I put this good thought into your hearts, and you are bound to follow that good thought, because it is a law of my kingdom.”  Or again, God speaks in our hearts, and says to us: “You have done this wrong thing.  You know that it is wrong.  You know that it is an offence against my law.  Why have you rebelled against me?”  Or again, when we see anyone do a good, a loving, or a noble action; or when we read of the lives of good and noble men and women; above all, when we read or hear of the character and doings of the blessed Lord Jesus, then and there God speaks in our hearts, and stirs us up to love and admire these noble and blessed examples, and says to us: “That is right.  That is beautiful.  That is what men should do.  That is what you should do.  Why are you not like that man?  Why are you not like my saints?  Why are you not like me, the Lord Jesus Christ?”

You all surely know what I mean.  You know that I do not mean that you hear a voice speaking to your ears, but that thoughts and feelings come into your heart, without you putting them there: ay, often enough, in spite of your trying to drive them away.  Now, those right thoughts are the kingdom of God within you.  They are the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ speaking by His Holy Spirit to your spirit, and telling you that He is your King, and that you ought to obey Him; and that obeying Him means being righteous and good, as He is righteous and good; and calling on you to give up your own wills and fancies, and to do His will, and let Him make you holy, even as He is holy.  That, I say, is the kingdom of God showing itself within you, telling you that God is your King, and telling you how to obey Him.

But what if a man will not hear that voice?  What if a man rebels proudly against the good thoughts that rise in his mind, and tries to forget them, and grows angry with them, angry with the preacher, the Church Service, the Bible itself, because they will go on reminding him of what he knows in his heart to be right?  What if those good thoughts only make him the more stubborn and determined to do his own pleasure, and follow his own interests, and do his own will?

Do you not see that to that man God’s kingdom over his heart is a savour of death unto death—that his finding out that God is his Lord only makes him more rebellious—that God’s Spirit striving with his heart to bring it right, only stirs up his stubbornness and self-will, and makes him go the more obstinately wrong?

Oh, my friends, this is a fearful thought!  That man can become worse by God’s loving desire to make him better!  But so it is.  So it was with Pharaoh of old.  All God’s pleading with him by the message of Moses and Aaron, by the mighty plagues which God sent on Egypt, only hardened Pharaoh’s heart.  The Lord God spoke to him, and his message only lashed Pharaoh’s proud and wicked will into greater fury and rebellion, as a vicious horse becomes the more unmanageable the more you punish it.  Therefore, it is said plainly in scripture, that The Lord hardened Pharaoh’s heart; not as some fancy, that the Lord’s will was to make Pharaoh hard-hearted and wicked.  God forbid.  The Lord is the fountain of good only, and not He, but we and the devil, make evil.  But the more the Lord pleaded with Pharaoh, and tried to bend his will, the more self-willed he became.  The more the Lord showed Pharaoh that the Lord was King, the more he hated the kingdom and will of God, the more he determined to be king himself, and to obey no law but his own wicked fancies and pleasures, and asked: “Who is the Lord, that I should obey Him?”

And so it was with the Pharisees.  When they found out that the kingdom of God was within them, that God was the King of their hearts and minds, and was trying to change their feelings and alter their opinions, it only maddened them.  They were determined not to change.  They were determined not to confess that they had been wrong, and had mistaken the meaning of holy scripture.  They were too proud to confess what Jesus told them, that they were no better than the poor ignorant common people whom they despised.  And yet they knew in their hearts that He was right.  When the Lord told them the parable of the vineyard, they answered, “God forbid!” they felt at once that the parable had to do with them—that they were the wicked husbandmen on whom He said their master would take vengeance: but that only maddened them the more, till they ended by crucifying the Lord of Glory, upon a pretence which they knew was a false and lying one; and when Judas Iscariot said, “I have betrayed the innocent blood,” they did not deny that the Lord Jesus was innocent; all they answered was, “What is that to us?”  They were determined to have their own way whether He was innocent or not.  They had seen God’s likeness.  They had seen what God was like, by seeing the conduct of His only begotten Son Jesus Christ.  And when they saw God’s likeness they hated it, because it was not like themselves.  And the more God strove with their hearts, and tried to make them obey Him, the more, in short, they felt His kingdom within them, the more they hated that kingdom of God within them, because it reproved them, and convinced them of sin.  Oh, my friends, young people especially, beware; beware lest you fall into the same miserable state of mind.  The kingdom of God is within you.  The Holy Spirit, by which you were regenerate in holy baptism, is stirring and pleading with your hearts, making you happy when you do right, unhappy when you do wrong.  Oh, listen to those good thoughts and feelings within you!  Never fancy that they are your own thoughts and feelings: else you will fancy that you can put them away and take them back again when you choose to change and become religious.  Do not let the devil deceive you into that notion.  These good thoughts and feelings are the Spirit of God.  They are the signs that the kingdom of God is within you; that God is King and Master of your hearts and minds; and that you cannot keep Him out of them: but that He can enter into them when He likes, and put right thoughts into them.  But though you cannot prevent God and His kingdom entering into you, you can refuse to enter into it.  Alas! alas! how many of you shut your ears to God’s voice: try to drive God’s Spirit out of your own hearts; try to forget what is right, because it is unpleasant to remember it, and say to yourselves, “I will have my own way.  I will try and forget what the clergyman said in his sermon, or what I learnt at school.  I am grown up now, and I will do what I like.”  Oh, my friends, is it a wise or a hopeful battle to fight against the living God?  Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, whereby ye are sealed to the day of redemption, lest He go away from you and leave you to yourselves, spiritually dead, twice dead, plucked up by the roots, whose end is to be burned.  Grieve Him not, lest He depart, and with Him both the Father and the Son.  And then you will not know right from wrong, because God the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of right, has left you.  You will not know what a man ought to be or do, because the Son of Man, the perfect likeness of God, and therefore the pattern of man, has left you.  You will not know that God the Father is your Father, but only fancy him a stern taskmaster, reaping where He has not sown, and requiring of you more than you are bound to pay, because God the Father has left you.