Sermons on National Subjects

What does confessing the Lord Jesus with our mouth mean?  It means what we ought to mean when we say, in the Apostles’ Creed, I believe in Jesus Christ, His only Son, our Lord.  Not merely, I believe that there is an only Son of God: but I believe in a certain man, with a certain character, who is that only Son of God.

And what, you will ask, does that mean?

To know that, I fear, we must go back many many hundred years, to the times when the old martyrs confessed the Lord Jesus Christ before the heathen.  Those were times in which it was not enough to say the Apostles’ Creed in church.  Men, ay, and tender women, and little children, had to stand by it through terror and shame, and to die in torments unspeakable, because they chose to say: “I believe in Jesus Christ, our Lord.”  Now, what was it which made the heathen hate and persecute and torture, and murder them for saying that?  What was there in those plain words of the Apostles’ Creed which made the great heathen emperors of Rome, and their officers and judges hunt the Christians down like wild beasts for 300 years, and declare that they were not fit to live?  I will tell you.  When the Christians were brought before the emperor’s judges for being Christians, they did not merely say: “I believe that Jesus Christ’s blood will save my soul after death.”  They said that: but they said a great deal more than that.  If that had been all that the Christians said, the judge would have answered: “What care I for your souls, or for your notions about what will happen to them when you are dead?  Go your way.  You may be of what religion you like, and talk and think about your own souls as much as you like, provided you do not trouble the Roman emperor’s power.”  But the heathen judge did not make that answer; because he knew well enough that what the Christians believed was not a mere religion about what would happen to their souls after death; but something which, if it gained ground, would utterly destroy the Roman emperor’s power.  He used generally to say to the Christians only this: “Will you burn those few grains of incense in honour of the emperor of Rome?”  And he knew, and the Christians knew well enough, that those words meant: “Will you confess with your mouth the emperor of Rome?  Will you confess that he is the only lord and king of this whole earth, and of your bodies and souls, and that there is no power or authority but of him, for the gods have delivered all things into his hands?”  And then came out what confessing the Lord Jesus really means.  For the Christians used to answer: “No.  The emperor of Rome is the lord and master of our bodies, and we will obey his laws so far as we can without doing wrong: but we cannot obey them when they are contrary to the laws of our Lord and Master Jesus Christ.  For the Lord Jesus Christ, who was crucified and rose again the third day, He, and not the emperor of Rome at all, is the Lord and King of the whole earth, and of our bodies and souls; and we must obey Him before we obey anyone else.  Power and authority come not from the emperor of Rome, but from the Lord Jesus Christ; and the emperor is only His servant and steward, and must obey Him just as much as we, or the Lord will punish him as surely and easily as He will the meanest slave.  For God has delivered all things, and the emperor of Rome among the rest, into the hand of His Son Jesus Christ, who sits a King over all, God blessed for ever.”  That was confessing Christ.

And to that the heathen judges used to make but one answer—for there was but one to make.  Those heathen judges’ guilty consciences, as well as their worldly cunning, told them plainly enough exactly what St. Paul told the Christians; that those Christians, by confessing Christ, were not fighting against flesh and blood, and setting up their selfish interests against other people’s selfish interests: but that the battle they were fighting was a much deeper and more terrible one; that by saying that One who had walked the earth as a poor man, and yet a perfectly righteous and loving man, doing nothing but good, and sacrificing Himself utterly for poor fallen creatures, they were fighting against the whole state of things all over the world; against the government, and principles, and religion of that whole unjust and tyrannical Roman empire, and all its rulers, and generals, and judges; against principalities, against powers, against the world-rulers of the darkness of those times; against spiritual wickedness in heavenly things.  For if Jesus Christ’s life was the right life, those rulers must be utterly wrong; for it was exactly opposite to His.

If Jesus Christ was really the Governor of the earth, there was no hope for them; for their way of governing was exactly opposite to His.  So as I say, they made but one answer; because there was but one to make: “You say that Jesus Christ is King of kings and Lord of lords.  I say the emperor of Rome is.  You say you must obey Christ first, and the emperor of Rome afterwards.  I say that you must obey the emperor first, and Christ afterwards.  At all events, if you do not, you have no right on this earth of the emperor’s; either the emperor’s power must fall, or your notion about Jesus Christ’s power must.  And we will see whether your heavenly King of whom you talk can deliver you out of the emperor’s hand.”  And then came the scourge, and the red-hot iron, and the wild beasts, and the cross, and all devilish tortures which man’s evil will could invent, brought to bear without shame or mercy upon aged men, and tender girls, and even little children, just to make them say that the earth belonged to the emperor, and not to Jesus Christ.  Those who died bravely under those tortures without denying Christ were called martyrs, which means witnesses—people who bore witness before God and man that Jesus Christ was King and Lord.  Those who did not die under the tortures, but escaped after all, were called confessors—people who had confessed with their mouths that Jesus Christ was King and Lord, in spite of their terror and agony. . . .  That was what confessing Jesus Christ meant in the old times.  And that was what it ought to mean now, even though there is no persecution or torture for Christians in these happier times.

And now, we may see perhaps why St. Paul spoke so much of our Lord’s rising again as the most important part of the gospel.

Because he wanted Christians to believe, not merely in a Christ who once died, but in Him who died and is alive for evermore; in a Christ who rose again, body, soul, and spirit, and sat at God’s right hand, praying for poor creatures when they were tempted, and persecuted, and tormented for righteousness’ sake.  St. Paul knew well that such fearful times as those of which I have been speaking were coming on the people to whom he wrote.  And he knew equally well that the only thought which could save them, when the heathen judges commanded them to deny the Lord Jesus, was the thought that He was really risen.  The only thought which could make them bold enough to face all the horrors of death, was the thought that the Lord Jesus had not merely tasted death, but conquered it, and risen again from it.  And therefore it is that St. Paul speaks so often of Christ’s resurrection, and that in the text he takes so much pains to prove that Christ had really risen, by telling them how many persons, well known to him who wrote to them, had seen the Lord Jesus Christ after He rose, and talked with Him, and were sure that He was the very same person still, with the same countenance, and body, and soul, and spirit, as He had when He was nailed to the cross, and laid in the sepulchre.

What a thought for a poor creature in the last agony of fear and shame, expecting presently to be torn in pieces, or burnt alive: “Death, this horrible death, cannot conquer me, weak and fearful as I am; for my Lord and Master, for whom I am going to suffer, has conquered death, and He will not let it conquer me.  He is stronger than death and hell, and He will not suffer me at my last hour for any pains of death to fall from Him.  He is King of heaven and earth, and He will take care of His own!”  What a comfortable thought to be able to say: “Ay, I am torn from wife and child, and all which I love on earth.  But not for ever, not for ever.  For Christ rose from the dead.  And I who belong to Christ, shall rise as He did.  This poor flesh of mine may be burnt in flames, devoured by ravenous beasts.  What matter?  Christ the King of men, has risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept.  That same Spirit of His, which brought back His body from the grave and hell, will bring our bodies also from the grave and hell, to a nobler, happier life with Him in glory unspeakable.  Christ is risen, and I shall rise with Him at the last day.  Christ sits at God’s right hand, watching me, pitying me, and blessing me, holding out to me a crown of glory which shall never fade away!”  That was the thought which gave Stephen courage to confess the Lord Jesus Christ, amid to die in peace and the murderous blows of the Jews.  For by faith he saw, as he said, the heavens opened, and Jesus sitting at the right hand of God.  He knew that his Lord was risen, and that He would hear his dying cry: “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.”

And so with us, my friends; we have no martyrdom to go through, thank God; but it is just as true of us as it was of the blessed martyrs and confessors, that there is no other name under heaven by which we can be saved but the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.  Saved; not only from hell, but from sin, from giving way to temptation, from denying Christ.  Oh, pray for faith.  Pray for faith.  Pray to be able really to confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus.  Pray to believe with your hearts that God has raised Him from the dead.  Then when you are tempted to do wrong, you, like Stephen, will see, not with your bodily eyes, but by faith, the Lord Jesus sitting at God’s right hand, and be able to say to Him: “Lord Jesus, who hast conquered all temptation, help me to conquer this.  Thine eye is on me; how can I do this great wickedness and sin against Thee?”  When you are in terror, and trouble, and affliction, and know not where to turn, that same blessed thought—“Christ is risen from the dead”—will be a shield and a strength to you which no other thought can give.  “My Lord is risen; He is here still—a man, with His man’s body, and His man’s spirit—His man’s love and tenderness; He has taken them all up to heaven with Him.  He is a man still, though He is very God of very God.  He rose from the dead as a man, and therefore He can understand me, and feel for me still, now, here in England in this very year, 1852, just as much as He could when He was walking upon earth in Judæa of old.”

Ay, and in the black jaws of death, when this world is vanishing from our eyes, and we are going we know not whither, leaving behind us all we know, and love, and understand; then that thought of all thoughts—“Christ is risen from the dead”—is the only one which will save us from dark sad thoughts, from fear and despair, or from stupid carelessness, and the death of a brute beast, such as too many die.  “Christ is risen and I shall rise.  Christ has conquered death for Himself, and He will conquer it for me.  Christ took His man’s body and soul with Him from the tomb to God’s right hand, and He will raise my man’s body and soul at the last day, that I may be with Him for ever, and see Him where He is.”  In life and in death this is the only thing which shall save us from sin, from terror, and from the dread of death; the same good news which St. Paul preached to the Corinthians; the same good news which made St. Stephen, and the martyrs and confessors of old brave to endure all misery for the sake of the good and blessed news, that God had raised His Son Jesus from the dead.

XLVI.

GOD’S WAY WITH MAN

And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I have wrought with you for my name’s sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O ye house of Israel, saith the Lord God.—Ezekiel xx. 44.

In this chapter the prophet Ezekiel argues with his sinful and rebellious countrymen, and puts them in mind of all that God has done for them and with them, from the time when He brought them out of Egypt to that day.

And now comes the old question, What has this to do with us!  St. Paul tells us that all things which happened to the old Jews happened for our example.  What example can we learn from this chapter?

This, I think, we may learn: Is not the way in which God taught these Jews the same way in which He teaches many a man—perhaps every man?  Which of us, when we were young, has not had his teaching from God?  The old Catechism which our mothers taught us, was not that a word from God Himself to us?  The voice of conscience, which made us happy when we had done right, and uneasy and ashamed when we had gone wrong; was not that a word from God to us?  Yes, my friends, those child’s feelings of ours about right and wrong, were none other than the voice of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Word of God, the Light which lightens every man who comes into the world.  I tell you, every right thought and wish, every longing to be better than you were, which ever came into any one of your hearts, came from Him, the Lord Jesus.  It was His word, His voice, His Spirit, speaking to your spirit, just as really as He spoke to His prophet Ezekiel, of whom we have been reading.  Think of that.  Recollect, never, never forget, that all your good thoughts and feelings are not your own, not your own at all, but the Lord’s; that without His light your hearts are nothing but darkness, blind ignorance, and blind selfishness, and blind passions and lusts; that it is He, he Himself, who has been fighting against the darkness in you all your life long.  Oh think, then, what your sin has been in putting aside those good thoughts and longings!  You were turning your back, you were shutting your doors to the Lord God Himself, very God of very God begotten, by whom all things were made.  The Creator came to visit His creature, and His creature shut Him out.  The Almighty God pleaded with mortal man, and mortal man bade God go, and come back at a more convenient season!  A voice in your heart seemed to say: “Oh, if I could but be a better man!  How I wish that I could but give up these bad habits, and mend!  I hate and despise myself for being so bad.”  And then you fancied that that voice was your own voice, that those good thoughts were your own thoughts.  If you had really known whose they were; if you had really known, as the Bible tells you, that they were the Word of the Lord, the only-begotten Son of the Father, speaking to your heart, I hardly think that you would have been so ready to say yourself: “Well, then, I will mend; but not just now: some day or other; somehow or other, I hope, I shall be a better man.  It will be time enough to make my peace with God when I am growing old.”  You would not have dared to thrust away the good thoughts, and keep them waiting, while you took your pleasure in a few more years’ sin; if you had guessed whom you were thrusting away; if you had guessed whom you were keeping waiting.

And, my good friends, has not God been saying to us many a time from our youth up, as He did to the Jews of old: “Do not walk in the statutes of your fathers, nor defile yourselves with their idols?”  Do you ask me how?  Why, thus.  Have you never said to yourself: “How ill my father prospered, because he would do wrong!”  Or, again: “See how evil doing brings its own punishment.  There is so and so growing rich, by his cheating and his covetousness, and yet, for all his money, I would not change places with him.  God forbid that I should have on my mind what he has on his mind!” Why should I make a long story of so simple a matter?  Which of us has not felt at times that thought?  How much misery has come in this very parish from the ill-doing of the generation who are gone to their account, and from the ill-training which they gave their children?

And what was that but the Word of the Lord Himself speaking to our hearts, and saying to us: “Do not defile yourselves with their idols; do not hurt your souls by hunting after the things which they loved better than they loved Me: money, pleasure, drink, fighting, smuggling, poaching, wantonness, and lust; I am the Lord your God?”

And yet, young people will not listen to that warning voice of God.  They see other people, even their own fathers and mothers, punished for their sins; perhaps made poor by their sins, perhaps made unhealthy by their sins, perhaps made miserable and ill-tempered by their sins: and yet they go and fall into, or rather walk open-eyed into, the very same sins which made their parents wretched.  Oh, how many a young person sees their home made a complete hell on earth by ungodliness, and the ill-temper and selfishness which come from ungodliness; and, then, as soon as they have a home of their own, set to work to make their own family as miserable as their father’s was before them.

But people say often: “How could we help it?  We had no chance; we were brought up in bad ways; we had a bad example set us; how can you expect us to be better than our fathers and mothers, and our elder brothers and sisters?  If we had had a fair chance, we might have been different: but we had none; and we could not help going the bad way, for we were set in it the day we were born.”

Well, my dear friends, God shall judge you, not I.  If little is given to a man little is required of him.  But not nothing at all; because more than nothing was given him.  A little is given to every man; and, therefore, a little is required of every man.  And so, he who knew not his Master’s will shall be beaten with few stripes.  But he will be beaten with some stripes, because he ought to have known something, at least of his Master’s will.  If you were dumb animals, which can only follow their own lusts and passions, and must be what nature has made them, then your excuse would be good enough; but your excuse is not good now, just because you are men and women, and not dumb beasts, and, therefore, can rise above your natures, and conquer your lusts and passions, as they cannot, and can do what you do not like, because, though you dislike it, you know that it is right.  And, therefore, God does not take that excuse which sinners make, that they have had no teaching.  But what does he do to them?

Suppose, now, that you had a dog which would not be taught, or broken in, or cured of biting, or made useful, or bearable in any way, what would you do to that dog?  I suppose that you would kill it; you would say: “It is an ill-conditioned animal, and there is no making it any better; so the only thing is to put it out of the way, and not let it eat food which might be better spent.”  Now, does God deal so with sinners?  When young people rush headlong into sin, and become a nuisance to themselves and their neighbours, does God kill them at once, that better men may step into their place?  No.  And why?  Just because they are not dumb animals, which cannot be made better, but God’s children, who can be made better.  If there were really no hope of a sinner repenting and amending, I think God would not leave him long alive to cumber the ground.  But there is hope for every one; because God the Father loves all; the loving heart of the Lord Jesus Christ yearns after all; the Holy Spirit, which proceeds from the Father and the Son, strives with the hearts of all; therefore God, in His patience and tender mercy, tries to bring his foolish children to their senses.  And how?  Often in the very same way, in which Ezekiel says He tried to bring the Jews to their senses, by letting them go on in the road of sin, till they see what an ugly pit that same road ends in.  If your child would not believe you when you warned and assured him that the fire would burn him, would it not be the very best way of bringing him to his senses, to tell him: “Very well; go your own way; put your hand into the fire, and see what comes of it; you will not believe me; you will believe your own feelings, when your hand is burnt.”  So did the Lord to those rebellious Jews when they would go after their fathers’ sins.  He gave them statutes which were not good, and judgments by which they could not live, to the end that they might know that He was the Lord.  God did not make them commit any sins.  God forbid!  He only took away His Spirit, His light and teaching, from them, and let them go on in the light of their own foolish and bewildered hearts, till their sin bred misery and shame to them, and they were filled with the fruit of their own devices.  Then, after all their wealth was gone, and their land was wasted by cruel enemies, and they themselves were carried away captive into Babylon, they began to awake, and say to themselves: “We were wrong after all, and the Lord was right.  He knew what was really good for us better than we did.  We thought that we could do without Him, disobey Him.  But He is the Lord after all.  He has been too strong for us; He has punished us.  If we had listened to His warnings years ago, we might have been saved all this misery.”

Ah, how many a poor foolish creature, in misery and shame, with a guilty conscience and a sad heart, sits down, like the prodigal son, among the swinish bad company into which his sins have brought him, longing to fill his belly with the husks which the swine eat! but he cannot.  He tries to forget his sorrow by drinking, by bad company, by gambling, by gossiping, like the fools around him: but he cannot.  He finds no more pleasure in sin.  He is sick and tired of it.  He has had enough of it and too much.  He is miserable, and he hardly knows why.  But miserable he is.  There is a longing, and craving, and hunger at his heart after something better; at least after something different.  Then he begins to remember his heavenly Father’s house.  Old words which he learnt at his mother’s knee, good old words out of his Catechism and his Bible, start up strangely in his mind.  He had forgotten them, laughed at them, perhaps, in his wild days.  But now they come up, he does not know where from, like beautiful ghosts gliding in.  And he is ashamed of them; they reproach him, the dear old lessons; and yet they seem pleasant to him, though they make him blush.  And at last he says to himself: “Would God that I were a little child again; once more an innocent little child at my mother’s knee!  I thought myself clever and cunning.  I thought I could go my own way and enjoy myself.  But I cannot.  Perhaps I have been a fool; and the old Sunday books were right after all.  At least I am miserable.  I thought I was my own master.  But perhaps He about whom I used to read in the Sunday books is my Master after all.  At least I am not my own master; I am a slave.  Perhaps I have been fighting against Him, against the Lord God, all this time, and now He has shown me that He is the stronger of the two. . . . ”  And so the poor man learns in trouble and shame to know, like the Jews of old, who is the Lord.

And when the Lord has drawn a man thus far, does He stop?  Not so.  He does not leave His work half done.  If the work is half done, it is that we stop, not that He stops.  Whosoever comes to Him, howsoever confusedly, or clumsily, or even lazily they may come, He will in no wise cast out.  He may afflict them still more to cure that confusion and laziness; but He is a physician who never sends a willing patient away, or keeps him waiting for a single hour.

How then does the Lord deal with such a man?  Does He drive him further?  Not if he will go without being driven.  You would call it cruel to drive a beast on with blows, when it was willing to be led peaceably.  And be sure God is not more cruel than man.  As soon as we are willing to be led, He will take His rod off from us, and lead us tenderly enough.  For I have known God do this to a man, and a sinful man as ever trod this earth.  I have known such a man brought into utter misery and shame of heart, and heavy affliction in outward matters, till his spirit was utterly broken, and he was ready to say: “I am a beast and a fool.  I am not worth the bread I eat.  Let me lie down and die.”  And then, when the Lord had driven that man so far, I have seen, I who speak to you now, how the Lord turned and looked on that man as he turned and looked on Peter, and brought his poor soul to life again, as He brought Peter’s, by a loving smile, and not an angry frown.  I have seen the Lord heap that man with all manner of unexpected blessings, and pay him back sevenfold for all his affliction, and raise him up, body and soul, and satisfy him with good things, so that his youth was renewed like the eagle’s.  And so the man’s conversion to God, though it was begun by God’s chastisements and afflictions, was brought to perfection by God’s mercy and bounty; and it happened to that man, as Ezekiel prophesied that it would happen to the Jews, that not fear and dread, but honour, gratitude, and that noble shame of which no man need be ashamed, brought him home to God at last.  “And you shall remember your ways, and all your doings wherein ye have been defiled: and you shall loathe yourselves in your own sight for all the evils which you have committed.  And you shall know that I am the Lord, when I have wrought with you for my name’s sake, not according to your wicked ways, nor according to your corrupt doings, O house of Israel, saith the Lord God.”