Part 34 (2/2)

It does not in the least set aside the natural craving for recreation and relaxation and repose. It does not overlook G.o.d's obligation to keep His slave alive, and in good condition for doing His work, by bestowing upon him the things that are needful for him, but it does meet that temptation which comes to us all to take that rest which circ.u.mstances may make manifestly not G.o.d's will, and it says to us, 'Forget the things that are behind, and reach forth unto the things that are before.' You have done a long day's work with plough or sheep-crook. The reward for work is more work. Come away indoors now, and nearer the Master, prepare His table. 'Which of you, having a servant, will not do so with him?' And that is how He does with us.

Then, the next thought here, which, as I say, has a harsh exterior, and a bitter rind, is that one of the slave doing his work, and never getting so much as 'thank you' for it. But if you lift this interpretation too, into the higher region of the relation between G.o.d and His slaves down here, a great deal of the harshness drops away. For what does it come to? Just to this, that no man among us, by any amount or completeness of obedience to the will of G.o.d establishes claims on G.o.d for a reward. You have done your duty--so much the better for you, but is that any reason why you should be decorated and honoured for doing it? You have done no more than your duty. 'So, likewise, ye, when ye have done all things that are commanded you'--even if that impossible condition were to be realised--'say we are unprofitable servants'; not in the bad sense in which the word is sometimes used, but in the accurate sense of not having brought any profit or advantage, more than was His before, to the Master whom we have thus served. It is a blessed thing for a man to call _himself_ an unprofitable servant; it is an awful thing for the Master to call him one. If _we_ say 'we are unprofitable servants,' we shall be likely to escape the solemn words from the Lord's lips: 'Take ye away the unprofitable servant, and cast him into outer darkness.' There are two that may use the word, Christ the Judge, and man the judged, and if the man will use it, Christ will not. 'If we judge ourselves we shall not be judged.'

Now, although, as I have said about the other part of this text, it is not meant to exhaust our relations to G.o.d, or to say the all-comprehensive word about the relation of obedience to blessedness; it is meant to say

'Merit lives from man to man, And not from man, O Lord! to Thee.'

No one can reasonably build upon his own obedience, or his own work, nor claim as by right, for reward, heaven or other good. So my text is the antic.i.p.ation of Paul's teaching about the impossibility of a man's being saved by his works, and it cuts up by the root, not only the teaching as to a treasure of 'merits of the saints,' and 'works of supererogation,' and the like; but it tells us, too, that we must beware of the germs of that self-complacent way of looking at ourselves and our own obedience, as if they had anything at all to do with our buying either the favour of G.o.d, or the rewards of the faithful servant.

II. Now, all that I have been saying may sound very harsh. Let us take a second step, and try if we can find out the kernel of grace in the harsh husk.

I hold fast by the one clue that Jesus Christ is here replying to the Apostle's prayer, 'Lord, increase our faith.' He had been laying down some very hard regulations for their conduct, and, naturally, when they felt how difficult it would be to come within a thousand miles of what He had been bidding them, they turned to Him with that prayer. It suggests that faith is there, in living operation, or they would not have prayed to Him for its increase. And how does He go about the work of increasing it? In two ways, one of which does not enter into my present subject. First, by showing the disciples the power of faith, in order to stimulate them to greater effort for its possession. He promised that they might say to the fig tree, 'Be thou plucked up and planted in the sea,' and it should obey them.

The second way was by this context of which I am speaking now. How does it bear upon the Apostles' prayer? What is there in this teaching about the slave and his master, and the slave's work, and the incompatibility of the notion of reward with the slave's service, to help to strengthen faith? There is this that this teaching beats down every trace of self-confidence, and if we take it in and live by it, makes us all feel that we stand before G.o.d, whatever have been our deeds of service, with no claims arising from any virtue or righteousness of our own. We come empty-handed.

If the servant who has done all that is commanded has yet to say, 'I can ask nothing from Thee, because I have done it, for it was all in the line of my duty,' what are we to say, who have done so little that was commanded, and so much that was forbidden?

So, you see, the way to increased faith is not by any magical communication from Christ, as the Apostles thought, but by taking into our hearts, and making operative in our lives, the great truth that in us there is nothing that can make a claim upon G.o.d, and that we must cast ourselves, as deserving nothing, wholly into His merciful hands, and find ourselves held up by His great unmerited love. Get the bitter poison root of self-trust out of you, and then there is some chance of getting the wholesome emotion of absolute reliance on Him into you. Jesus Christ, if I might use a homely metaphor, in these words p.r.i.c.ks the bladder of self-confidence which we are apt to use to keep our heads above water. And it is only when it is p.r.i.c.ked, and we, like the Apostle, feel ourselves beginning to sink, that we fling out a hand to Him, and clutch at His outstretched hand, and cry, 'Lord, save me, I peris.h.!.+' One way to increase our faith is to be rooted and grounded in the a.s.surance that duty is perennial, and that our own righteousness establishes no claim whatever upon G.o.d.

III. Finally, we note the higher view into which, by faith, we come.

I have been saying, with perhaps vain repet.i.tion, that the words of our text and context do not exhaust the whole truth of man's relation to G.o.d. They do exhaust the truth of the relation of G.o.d to any man that has not faith in his heart, because such a man is a slave in the worst sense, and any obedience that he renders to G.o.d's will externally is the obedience of a reluctant will, and is hard and harsh, and there is no end _to_ it, and no good _from_ it. But if we accept the position, and recognise our own impotence, and non-desert, and humbly say, 'Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but by His mercy He saves us,' then we come into a large place. The relation of master and slave does not cover all the ground _then_. 'Henceforth, I call you not slaves, but friends,' And when the wearied slave comes into the house, the new task is not a new burden, for he is a son as well as a slave; but the work is a delight, and it is a joy to have something more to do for his Father.

If our service is the service of sons, sweetened by love, then there will be abundant thanks from the Father, who is not only our owner, but our lover.

For Christian service--that is to say, service based upon faith and rendered in love--_does_ minister delight to our Father in heaven, and He Himself has called it an 'odour of a sweet smell, acceptable unto G.o.d.' And if our service on earth has been thus elevated and transformed from the compulsory obedience of a slave to the joyful service of a son, then our reception when at sundown the plough is left in the furrow and we come into the house will be all changed too. 'Which of you, having a servant, will say to him, Go and sit down to meat, and will not rather say to him, Make ready whilst I eat and drink?' That is the law for earth, but for heaven it is this, 'Blessed are those servants whom the Lord, when He cometh, shall find watching. Verily, I say unto you, that He shall gird Himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth and serve them.' The husk is gone now, I think, and the kernel is left. Loving service is beloved by G.o.d, and rewarded by the ministering, as a servant of servants, to us by Him who is King of kings and Lord of lords.

'Lord, increase our faith,' that we may so serve Thee on earth, and so be served by Thee in heaven.

WHERE ARE THE NINE?

'And it came to pa.s.s, as He went to Jerusalem, that He pa.s.sed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee.

12. And as He entered into a certain village, there met Him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: 13. And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. 14. And when He saw them, He said unto them, Go show yourselves unto the priests.

And it came to pa.s.s, that, as they went, they were cleansed. 15. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified G.o.d. 16. And fell down on his face at His feet, giving Him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. 17. And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? 18. There are not found that returned to give glory to G.o.d, save this stranger. 19. And He said unto him, Arise, go thy way, thy faith hath made thee whole.'--LUKE xvii. 11-19.

The melancholy group of lepers, met with in one of the villages on the borders of Samaria and Galilee, was made up of Samaritans and Jews, in what proportion we do not know. The common misery drove them together, in spite of racial hatred, as, in a flood, wolves and sheep will huddle close on a bit of high ground. Perhaps they had met in order to appeal to Jesus, thinking to move Him by their aggregated wretchedness; or possibly they were permanently segregated from others, and united in a hideous fellows.h.i.+p.

I. We note the lepers' cry and the Lord's strange reply. Of course they had to stand afar off, and the distance prescribed by law obliged them to cry aloud, though it must have been an effort, for one symptom of leprosy is a hoa.r.s.e whisper. Sore need can momentarily give strange physical power. Their cry indicates some knowledge. They knew the Lord's name, and had dim notions of His authority, for He is addressed as Jesus and as Master. They knew that He had power to heal, and they hoped that He had 'mercy,' which they might win for themselves by entreaty. There was the germ of trust in the cry forced from them by desperate need. But their conceptions of Him, and their consciousness of their own necessities, did not rise above the purely physical region, and He was nothing to them but a healer.

Still, low and rude as their notions were, they did present a point of contact for Christ's 'mercy,' which is ever ready to flow into every heart that is lowly, as water will into all low levels. Jesus seems to have gone near to the lepers, for it was 'when He saw,' not when He heard, them that He spoke. It did not become Him to 'cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the street,' nor would He cure as from afar, but He approaches those whom He heals, that they may see His face, and learn by it His compa.s.sion and love. His command recognised and honoured the law, but its main purpose, no doubt, was to test, and thereby to strengthen, the leper's trust. To set out to the priest while they felt themselves full of leprosy would seem absurd, unless they believed that Jesus could and would heal them.

He gives no promise to heal, but asks for reliance on an implied promise. He has not a syllable of sympathy; His tender compa.s.sion is carefully covered up. He shuts down, as it were, the lantern-slide, and not a ray gets through. But the light was behind the screen all the while. We, too, have sometimes to act on the a.s.sumption that Jesus has granted our desires, even while we are not conscious that it is so. We, too, have sometimes to set out, as it were, for the priests, while we still feel the leprosy.

II. We note the healing granted to obedient faith. The whole ten set off at once. They had got all they wanted from the Lord, and had no more thought about Him. So they turned their backs on Him. How strange it must have been to feel, as they went along, the gradual creeping of soundness into their bones! How much more confidently they must have stepped out, as the glow of returning health a.s.serted itself more and more! The cure is a transcendent, though veiled, manifestation of Christ's power; for it is wrought at a distance, without even a word, and with no vehicle. It is simply the silent forth-putting of His power. 'He spake, and it was done' is much, for only a word which is divine can affect matter. But 'He willed, and it was done,' is even more.

III. We note the solitary instance of thankfulness. The nine might have said, 'We are doing what the Healer bade us do; to go back to Him would be disobedience.' But a grateful heart knows that to express its grat.i.tude is the highest duty, and is necessary for its own relief. How like us all it is to hurry away clutching our blessings, and never cast back a thought to the giver! This leper's voice had returned to Him, and his 'loud' acknowledgments were very different from the strained croak of his pet.i.tion for healing. He knew that he had two to thank--G.o.d and Jesus; he did not know that these two were one. His healing has brought him much nearer Jesus than before, and now he can fall at His feet. Thankfulness knits us to Jesus with a blessed bond. Nothing is so sweet to a loving heart as to pour itself out in thanks to Him.

'And he was a Samaritan.' That may be Luke's main reason for telling the story, for it corresponds to the universalistic tendency of his Gospel. But may we not learn the lesson that the common human virtues are often found abundantly in nations and individuals against whom we are apt to be deeply prejudiced? And may we not learn another lesson--that heretics and heathen may often teach orthodox believers lessons, not only of courtesy and grat.i.tude, but of higher things? A heathen is not seldom more sensitive to the beauty of Christ, and more touched by the story of His sacrifice, than we who have heard of Him all our days.

IV. We note Christ's sad wonder at man's ingrat.i.tude and joyful recognition of 'this stranger's' thankfulness. A tone of surprise as well as of sadness can be detected in the pathetic double questions.

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