Volume I Part 11 (2/2)

'Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd.' Striking as these words are in themselves, they are still more striking when we notice their connection; for they follow immediately upon His utterance about laying down His life for the sheep. So, then, this was a work beyond the Cross, and whatever it was, it was to be done after He had died.

I need not point out to you how far afield Christ's vision goes out into the dim, waste places, where on the dark mountains the straying sheep are torn and frightened and starving. I need not dwell upon how far ahead in the future His glance travels, or how magnificent and how rebuking to our petty narrowness this great word is. 'There shall be one _flock_' (not fold); and they shall be one, not because they are within the bounds of any visible 'fold,' but because they are gathered round the one Shepherd, and in their common relation to Him are knit together in unity.

But what sort of a Man is this who considers that His widest work is to be done by Him after He is dead? 'Them also I _must_ bring.' Thou?

how? when? Surely such words as these, side by side with a clear prevision of the death that was so soon to come, are either meaningless or the utterance of an arrogance bordering on insanity, or they antic.i.p.ate what an Evangelist declares did take place--that the Lord was 'taken up into heaven and sat at the right hand of G.o.d,'

whilst His servants 'went everywhere preaching the Word, the Lord also working with them and confirming the Word' with the signs He wrought.

'Them also I must bring.' That is not merely a necessity rooted in the nature of G.o.d and the wants of men. It is not merely a necessity springing from Christ's filial obedience and sense of a mission; but it is a 'must' of destiny, a 'must' which recognises the sure results of His pa.s.sion; a 'must' which implies the power of the Cross to be the reconciliation of the world. And so for all pessimistic thoughts to-day, or at any time, and when Christian men's hearts may be trembling for the Ark of G.o.d--although, perhaps, there may be little reason for the tremor--and in the face of all blatant antagonisms and of proud Goliaths despising the 'foolishness of preaching,' we fall back upon Christ's great 'must.' It is written in the councils of Heaven more unchangeably than the heavens; it is guaranteed by the power of the Cross; it is certain, by the eternal life of the crucified Saviour, that He will one day be the King of humanity, and _must_ bring His wandering sheep to couch in peace, one flock round one Shepherd.

IV. Lastly, we have Christ applying the greatest principle to the smallest duty.

'Zaccheus! make haste and come down; to-day I _must_ abide in thy house.' Why must He? Because Zaccheus was to be saved, and was worth saving. What was the 'must'? To stop for an hour or two on His road to the Cross. So He teaches us that in a life penetrated by the thought of the divine will, which we gladly obey, there are no things too great, and none too trivial, to be brought under the dominion of that law, and to be regulated by that divine necessity. Obedience is obedience, whether in large things or in small. There is no scale of magnitude applicable to the distinction between G.o.d's will and that which is not G.o.d's will. Gravitation rules the motes that dance in the suns.h.i.+ne as well as the ma.s.s of Jupiter. A triangle with its apex in the sun, and its base beyond the solar system, has the same properties and comes under the same laws as one that a schoolboy scrawls upon his slate. G.o.d's truth is not too great to rule the smallest duties. The star in the East was a guide to the humble house at Bethlehem, and there are starry truths high in the heavens that avail for our guidance in the smallest acts of life.

So, brethren, bring your doings under that all-embracing law of duty--duty, which is the heathen expression for the will of G.o.d. There are great regions of life in which lower necessities have play.

Circ.u.mstances, our past, bias and temper, relations.h.i.+p, friends.h.i.+p, civic duty, and the like--all these bring their necessities; but let us think of them all as being, what indeed they are, manifestations to us of the will of our Father. There are great tracts of life in which either of two courses may be right, and we are left to the decision of choice rather than of duty; but high above all these, let us see towering that divine necessity. It is a daily struggle to bring 'I will' to coincide with 'I ought'; and there is only one adequate and always powerful way of securing that coincidence, and that is to keep close to Jesus Christ and to drink in His spirit. Then, when duty and delight are conterminous, 'the rough places will be plain, and the crooked things straight, and every mountain shall be brought low, and every valley shall be exalted,' and life will be blessed, and service will be freedom. Joy and liberty and power and peace will fill our hearts when this is the law of our being; 'All that the Lord hath spoken, that _must_ I do.'

THE LAKE AND THE RIVER

'G.o.d so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'--JOHN iii. 16.

I venture to say that my text shows us a lake, a river, a pitcher, and a draught. 'G.o.d so loved the world'--that is the lake. A lake makes a river for itself--'G.o.d so loved the world that He _gave_ His... Son.'

But the river does not quench any one's thirst unless he has something to lift the water with: 'G.o.d so loved the world that He gave His...

Son, that whosoever _believeth_ on Him.' Last comes the draught: 'shall not perish, but have _everlasting life._'

I. The great lake, G.o.d's love.

Before Jesus Christ came into this world no one ever dreamt of saying 'G.o.d _loves_.' Some of the Old Testament psalmists had glimpses of that truth and came pretty near expressing it. But among all the 'G.o.ds many and lords many,' there were l.u.s.tful G.o.ds and beautiful G.o.ds, and idle G.o.ds, and fighting G.o.ds and peaceful G.o.ds: but not one of whom wors.h.i.+ppers said, 'He loves.' Once it was a new and almost incredible message, but we have grown accustomed to it, and it is not strange any more to us. But if we would try to think of what it means, the whole truth would flash up into fresh newness, and all the miseries and sorrows and perplexities of our lives would drift away down the wind, and we should be no more troubled with them. 'G.o.d loves' is the greatest thing that can be said by lips.

'G.o.d ... loved the world.' Now when we speak of loving a number of individuals--the broader the stream, the shallower it is, is it not?

The most intense patriot in England does not love her one ten-thousandth part as well as he loves his own little girl. When we think or feel anything about a great mult.i.tude of people, it is like looking at a forest. We do not see the trees, we see the whole wood.

But that is not how G.o.d loves the world. Suppose I said that I loved the people in India, I should not mean by that that I had any feeling about any individual soul of all those dusky millions, but only that I ma.s.sed them all together; or made what people call a generalisation of them. But that is not the way in which G.o.d loves. He loves all because He loves each. And when we say, 'G.o.d so loved the world,' we have to break up the ma.s.s into its atoms, and to think of each atom as being an object of His love. We all stand out in G.o.d's love just as we should do to one another's eyes, if we were on the top of a mountain-ridge with a clear sunset sky behind us. Each little black dot of the long procession would be separately visible. And we all stand out like that, every man of us isolated, and getting as much of the love of G.o.d as if there was not another creature in the whole universe but G.o.d and ourselves. Have you ever realised that when we say, 'He loved the world,' that really means, as far as each of us is concerned, He loves _me_? And just as the whole beams of the sun come pouring down into every eye of the crowd that is looking up to it, so the whole love of G.o.d pours down, not upon a mult.i.tude, an abstraction, a community, but upon every single soul that makes up that community. He loves us all because He loves us each. We shall never get all the good of that thought until we translate it, and lay it upon our hearts. It is all very well to say, 'Ah yes! G.o.d is love,'

and it is all very well to say He loves 'the world.' But I will tell you what is a great deal better--to say--what Paul said--'Who loved _me_ and gave Himself for _me_.'

Now, there is one other suggestion that I would make to you before I go on, and that is that all through the New Testament, but especially in John's Gospel, 'the world' does not only mean men, but _sinful_ men, men separated from G.o.d. And the great and blessed truth taught here is that, however I may drag myself away from G.o.d, I cannot drive Him away from me, and that however little I may care for Him, or love Him, or think about Him, it does not make one hairs-breadth of difference as to the fact that He loves me. I know, of course, that if a man does not love Him back again, G.o.d's love has to take shapes that it would not otherwise take, which may be extremely inconvenient for the man. But though the shape may alter, _must_ alter, the fact remains; and every sinful soul on the earth, including Judas Iscariot--who is said to head the list of crimes--has G.o.d's love resting upon him.

II. The river.

Now, to go back to my metaphor, the lake makes a river. 'G.o.d so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son.'

So then, it was not Christ's death that turned G.o.d from hating and being angry, but it was G.o.d's love that appointed Christ's death. If you will only remember that, a great many of the shallow and popular objections to the great doctrine of the Atonement disappear at once.

'G.o.d so loved ... that He gave.' But some people say that when we preach that Jesus Christ died for our sins, that G.o.d's wrath might not fall upon men, our teaching is immoral, because it means 'Christ came, and so G.o.d loved.' It is the other way about, friend. 'G.o.d so loved ... that He gave.'

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