The Good News of God

SERMON XIX
CHRIST’S BOYHOOD

Luke ii. 52

And Jesus increased in wisdom, and in stature, and in favour both with God and man.

I do not pretend to understand these words.  I preach on them because the Church has appointed them for this day.  And most fitly.  At Christmas we think of our Lord’s birth.  What more reasonable, than that we should go on to think of our Lord’s boyhood?  To think of this aright, even if we do not altogether understand it, ought to help us to understand rightly the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ; the right faith about which is, that he was very man, of the substance of his mother.  Now, if he were very and real man, he must have been also very and real babe, very and real boy, very and real youth, and then very and real full-grown man.

Now it is not so easy to believe that as it may seem.  It is not so easy to believe.

I have heard many preachers preach (without knowing it), what used to be called the Apollinarian Heresy, which held that our Lord had not a real human soul, but only a human body; and that his Godhead served him instead of a human soul, and a man’s reason, man’s feelings.

About that the old fathers had great difficulty, before they could make people understand that our Lord had been a real babe.  It seemed to people’s unclean fancies something shocking that our Lord should have been born, as other children are born.  They stumbled at the stumbling-block of the manger in Bethlehem, as they did at the stumbling-block of the cross on Calvary; and they wanted to make out that our Lord was born into the world in some strange way—I know not how;—I do not choose to talk of it here:—but they would fancy and invent anything, rather than believe that Jesus was really born of the Virgin Mary, made of the substance of his mother.  So that it was hundreds of years before the fathers of the Church set people’s minds thoroughly at rest about that.

In the same way, though not so much, people found it very hard to believe that our Lord grew up as a real human child.  They would not believe that he went down to Nazareth, and was subject to his father and mother.  People believe generally now—the Roman Catholics as well as we—that our Lord worked at his father’s trade—that he himself handled the carpenter’s tools.  We have no certain proof of it: but it is so beautiful a thought, that one hopes it is true.  At least our believing it is a sign that we do believe the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ more rightly than most people did fifteen hundred years ago.  For then, too many of them would have been shocked at the notion.

They stumbled at the carpenter’s shop, even as they did at the manger and at the cross.  And they invented false gospels—one of which especially, had strange and fanciful stories about our Lord’s childhood—which tried to make him out.

Most of these stories are so childish I do not like to repeat them.  One of them may serve as a sample.  Our Lord, it says, was playing with other children of his own age, and making little birds out of clay: but those which our Lord made became alive, and moved, and sang like real birds.—Stories put together just to give our Lord some magical power, different from other children, and pretending that he worked signs and wonders: which were just what he refused to work.

But the old fathers rejected these false gospels and their childish tales, and commanded Christian men only to believe what the Bible tells us about our Lord’s childhood; for that is enough for us, and that will help us better than any magical stories and childish fairy tales of man’s invention, to believe rightly that God was made man, and dwelt among us.

And what does the Bible tell us?  Very little indeed.  And it tells us very little, because we were meant to know very little.  Trust your Bibles always, my friends, and be sure, if you were meant to know more, the Bible would tell you more.

It tells us that Jesus grew just as a human child grows, in body, soul, and spirit.

Then it tells us of one case—only one—in which he seemed to act without his parents’ leave.  And as the saying is, the exception proves the rule.  It is plain that his rule was to obey, except in this case; that he was always subject to his parents, as other children are, except on this one occasion.  And even in this case, he went back with them, it is expressly said, and was subject to them.

Now, I do not pretend to explain why our Lord stayed behind in the temple.

I cannot explain (who can?) the why and wherefore of what I see people do in common daily life.

How much less can one explain why our Lord did this and that, who was both man and God.

But one reason, and one which seems to me to be plain, on the very face of St. Luke’s words—he stayed behind to learn; to learn all he could from the Scribes and Pharisees, the doctors of the law.

He told the people after, when grown up, ‘The Scribes and Pharisees sit in Moses’ seat.  All therefore which they command you, that observe and do.’  And he was a Jew himself, and came to fulfil all righteousness; and therefore he fulfilled such righteousness as was customary among Jews according to their law and religion.

Therefore I do not like at all a great many pictures which I see in children’s Sunday books, which set the child Jesus in the midst, as on a throne, holding up his hand as if he were laying down the law, and the Scribes and Pharisees looking angry and confounded.  The Bible says not that they heard him, but that he heard them; that they were astonished at his understanding, not that they were confounded and angry.  No.  I must believe that even those hard, proud Pharisees, looked with wonder and admiration on the glorious Child; that they perhaps felt for the moment that a prophet, another Samuel, had risen up among them.  And surely that is much more like the right notion of the child Jesus, full of meekness and humility; of Jesus, who, though ‘he were a Son, learnt obedience by the things which he suffered;’ of Jesus, who, while he increased in stature, increased in favour with man, as well as with God: and surely no child can increase in favour either with God or man, if he sets down his elders, and contradicts and despises the teachers whom God has set over him.  No let us believe that when he said, ‘Know ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?’ that a child’s way of doing the work of his Father in heaven is to learn all that he can understand from his teachers, spiritual pastors, and masters, whom God the Father has set over him.

Therefore—and do listen to this, children and young people—if you wish really to think what Christ has to do with you, you must remember that he was once a real human child—not different outwardly from other children, except in being a perfectly good child, in all things like as you are, but without sin.

Then, whatever happens to you, you will have the comfort of feeling—Christ understands this; Christ has been through this.  Child though I am, Christ can be touched with the feeling of my weakness, for he was once a child like me.

And then, if trouble, or sickness, or death come among you—and you all know how sickness and death have come among you of late—you may be cheerful and joyful still, if you will only try to be such children as Jesus was.  Obey your parents, and be subject to them, as he was; try to learn from your teachers, pastors, and masters, as he did; try and pray to increase daily in favour both with God and man, as he did: and then, even if death should come and take you before your time, you need not be afraid, for Jesus Christ is with you.

Your childish faults shall be forgiven you for Jesus’ sake; your childish good conduct shall be accepted for Jesus Christ’s sake; and if you be trying to be good children, doing your little work well where God has put you, humble, obedient, and teachable, winning love from the people round you, and from God your Father in heaven, then, I say, you need not be afraid of sickness, not even afraid of death, for whenever it takes you, it will find you about your Father’s business.

SERMON XX
THE LOCUST-SWARMS

Joel ii. 12, 13

Therefore also now, saith the Lord, Turn ye even to me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning; and rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.

This is one of the grandest chapters in the whole Old Testament, and one which may teach us a great deal; and, above all, teach us to be thankful to God for the blessings which we have.

I think I can explain what it means best by going back to the chapter before it.

Joel begins his prophecy by bitter lamentation over the mischief which the swarms of insects had done; such as had never been in his days, nor in the days of his fathers.  What the palmer worm had left, the locust had eaten; what the locust had left, the cankerworm had eaten; and what the cankerworm had left, the caterpillar had eaten.  Whether these names are rightly rendered, or whether they mean different sorts of locusts, or the locusts in their different stages of growth, crawling at first and flying at last, matters little.  What mischief they had done was plain enough.  They had come up ‘a nation strong and without number, whose teeth were like the teeth of a lion, and his cheek-teeth like those of a strong lion.  They had laid his vines waste, and barked his fig-tree, and made its branches white; and all drunkards were howling and lamenting, for the wine crop was utterly destroyed: and all other crops, it seems likewise; the corn was wasted, the olives destroyed; the seed was rotten under the clods, the granaries empty, the barns broken down, for the corn was withered; the vine and fig, pomegranate, palm, and apple, were all gone; the green grass was all gone; the beasts groaned, the herds were perplexed, because they had no pasture; the flocks of sheep were desolate.’  There seems to have been a dry season also, to make matters worse; for Joel says the rivers of waters were dried up—likely enough, if then, as now, it is the dry seasons which bring the locust-swarms.  Still the locusts had done the chief mischief.  They came just as they come now (only in smaller strength, thank God) in many parts of the East and of Southern Russia, darkening the sky, and shutting out the very light of the sun; the noise of their innumerable jaws like the noise of flame devouring the stubble, as they settled upon every green thing, and gnawed away leaf and bark; and a fire devoured before them, and behind them a flame burned; the land was as the garden of Eden before them, and behind them a desolate wilderness; ³ till there was not enough left to supply the daily sacrifices, and the meat offering and the drink offering were withheld from the house of God.

But what has all this to do with us?  There have never, as far as we know, been any locusts in England.

And what has this to do with God?  Why does Joel tell these Jews that God sent the locusts, and bid them cry to God to take them away?  For these locusts are natural things, and come by natural laws.  And there is no need that there should be locusts anywhere.  For where the wild grass plains are broken up and properly cultivated, there the locusts, which lay their countless eggs in the old turf, disappear, and must disappear.  We know that now.  We know that when the East is tilled (as God grant it may be some day) as thoroughly as England is, locusts will be as unknown there as here; and that is another comfortable proof to us that there is no real curse upon God’s earth: but that just as far as man fulfils God’s command to replenish the earth and subdue it, so far he gets rid of all manner of terrible scourges and curses, which seemed to him in the days of his ignorance, necessary and supernatural.

How, then, was Joel right in saying that God sent the locusts?

In this way, my friends.

Suppose you or I took cholera or fever.  We know that cholera or fever is preventible; that man has no right to have these pestilences in a country, because they can be kept out and destroyed.  But if you or I caught cholera or fever by no fault or folly of our own, we are bound to say, God sent me this sickness.  It has some private lesson for me.  It is part of my education, my schooling in God’s school-house.  It is meant to make me a wiser and better man; and that he can only do by teaching me more about himself.  So with these locusts, and still more so; for Joel did not know, could not know, that these locusts could be prevented.  But even if he had known that, it was not his fault or folly, or his countrymen’s which had brought the locusts.  Most probably they were tilling the ground to the best of their knowledge.  Most probably, too, these locusts were not bred in Palestine at all; but came down upon the north-wind (as they are said to do now), from some land hundreds of miles away; and therefore Joel could say—Whatever I do not know about these locusts, this I know; that God, whose providence orders all things in heaven and earth, has sent them; that he means to teach you a lesson by them; that they are part of his schooling to us Jews; that he intends to make us wiser and better men by them: and that he can only do by teaching us more about himself.

What, then, does Joel say about the locusts, which he might say to you or me, if we were laid down by cholera or fever?  He does not say, these troubles have come upon you from devils, or evil spirits, or by any blind chance of the world about you.  He says, they have come on you from the Lord; from the same good, loving, merciful Lord who brought your fathers out of Egypt, and made a great nation of you, and has preserved you to this day.  And do not fancy that he is changed.  Do not fancy that he has forgotten you, or hates you, or has become cruel, or proud, or unlike himself.  It is you who have forgotten him, and have shown that by living bad lives; and all he wishes is, to drive you back to him, that you may live good lives.  Turn to him; and you will find him unchanged; the same loving, forgiving Lord as ever.  He requires no sacrifices, no great offerings on your part to win him round.  All he asks is, that you should confess yourselves in the wrong, and turn and repent.  Turn therefore to the Lord with all your heart, and with weeping, and with fasting, and with mourning—(which was, and is still the Eastern fashion); and rend your heart, and not your garments.  And why?  Because the Lord is very dreadful, angry and dark, and has determined to destroy you all?  Not so: but because he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.

Yes, my friends: and this, you will find, is at the bottom of all true repentance and turning to God.  If you believe that God is dark, and hard, and cruel, you may be afraid of him: but you cannot repent, cannot turn to him.  The more you think of him the more you will be terrified at him, and turn from him.  But if you believe that God is gracious and merciful, then you can turn to him; then you can repent with a true repentance, and a godly sorrow which breeds joy and peace of mind.

So Joel thought, at least; for he tells them, that if they will but turn to God, if they will but confess themselves in the wrong, all shall be well again, and better than before.

Now, if Joel had been a heathen, worshipping the false gods of the Canaanites, he would have spoken very differently; he would have said, perhaps—Baal, the true God, is angry with you, and he has sent the drought.

Or, Ashtoreth, the Queen of Heaven, by whose power all seeds grow and all creatures breed, is angry with you, and she has destroyed the seeds, and sent the locusts.

Or, Ammon, the Lord of the sheep, is angry, and he has destroyed your flocks and herds.

But one thing we know he would have said—These angry gods want blood.  You cannot pacify them without human blood.  You must give them the most dear and precious things you have—the most beautiful and pure.  You must sacrifice boys and girls to them; and then, perhaps, they will be appeased.

We know this.  We know that the heathen, whenever they were in trouble, took to human sacrifices.

The Canaanites—and the Jews when they fell into idolatry—used to burn their children in the fire to Moloch.

We know that the Carthaginians, who were of the same blood and language as the Canaanites, used human sacrifices; and that once when their city was in great danger, they sacrificed at one time two hundred boys of their highest families.

We know that the Greeks and Romans, who had much more humane and rational notions about their gods, were tempted, in times of great distress, to sacrifice human beings.  It has always been so.  The old Mexicans in America used to sacrifice many thousands of men and women every year to their idols; and when the Spaniards came and destroyed them off the face of the earth in the name of the Lord—as Joshua did the Canaanites of old—they found the walls of the idol temples crusted inches thick with human blood.  Even to this day, the wild Khonds in the Indian mountains, and the Red men of America, sacrifice human beings at times, and, I fear, very often indeed; and believe that the gods will be the more pleased, and more certain to turn away their anger, the more horrible and lingering tortures they inflict upon their wretched victims.  I say, these things were; and were it not for the light of the Gospel, these things would be still; and when we hear of them, we ought to bow our heads to our Father in heaven in thankfulness, and say—what Joel the prophet taught the Jews to say dimly and in part—what our Lord Jesus and his apostles taught us to say fully and perfectly—

It is very meet, right, and our bounden duty, at all times and in all places—whether in joy or sorrow, in wealth or in want, to give thanks to thee, O Lord, Holy Father, Almighty, Everlasting God.

Through Jesus Christ our Lord, according to whose most true promise the Holy Ghost came down from heaven upon the apostles, to teach them and to lead them into all truth, and give them fervent zeal, constantly to preach the Gospel to all nations, by which we have been brought out of darkness and error into the clear light and true knowledge of thee and of thy Son Jesus Christ.

Yes, my friends, this is the lesson which we have to learn from Joel’s prophecy, and from all prophecies.  This lesson the old prophets learnt for themselves, slowly and dimly, through many temptations and sorrows.  This lesson our Lord Jesus Christ revealed fully, and left behind him to his apostles.  This lesson men have been learning slowly but surely in all the hundreds of years which have past since; to know that there is one Father in heaven, of whom are all things, and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things; that they may, in all the chances and changes of this mortal life, in weal and in woe, in light and in darkness, in plenty and in want, look up to that heavenly Father who so loved them that he spared not his only begotten Son, but freely gave him for them, and say, ‘Father, not our will but thine be done.  All things come from thy hand, and therefore all things come from thy love.  We have received good from thy hand, and shall we not receive evil?  Though thou slay us, yet will we trust in thee.  For thou art gracious and merciful, long-suffering and of great goodness.  Thou art loving to every man, and thy mercy is over all thy works.  Thou art righteous in all thy ways, and holy in all thy doings.  Thou art nigh to all that call on thee; thou wilt hear their cry, and wilt help them.  For all thou desirest, when thou sendest trouble on them, is to make them wiser and better men.  And that thou canst only make them by teaching them more about thyself.’

SERMON XXI
SALVATION

Isaiah lix. 15, 16

And the Lord saw it, and it displeased him that there was no judgment.  And he saw that there was no man, and wondered that there was no intercessor: therefore his arm brought salvation unto him, and his righteousness it sustained him.

This text is often held to be a prophecy of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.  I certainly believe that it is a prophecy of his coming, and of something better still; namely, his continual presence; and a very noble and deep one, and one from which we may learn a great deal.

We may learn from it what ‘salvation’ really is.  What Christ came to save men from, and how he saves them.

The common notion of salvation now-a-days is this.  That salvation is some arrangement or plan, by which people are to escape hell-fire by having Christ’s righteousness imputed to them without their being righteous themselves.

Now, I have nothing to say about that this morning.  It may be so; or, again, it may not; I read a good many things in books every week the sense of which I cannot understand.  At all events it is not the salvation of which Isaiah speaks here.

For Isaiah tells us very plainly, from what God was going to save these Jews.  Not from hell-fire—nothing is said about it: but simply from their sins.  As it is written, ‘Thou shalt call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins.’

The case is very simple, if you will look at Isaiah’s own words.  These Jews had become thoroughly bad men.  They were not ungodly men.  They were very religious, orthodox, devout men.  They ‘sought God daily, and delighted to know his ways, like a nation that did righteousness, and forsook not the ordinances of their God: they asked of him the ordinances of justice; they took delight in approaching unto God.’

But unfortunately for them, and for all with whom they had to do, after they had asked of God the ordinances of justice, they never thought of doing them; and in spite of all their religion, they were, Isaiah tells them plainly, rogues and scoundrels, none of whom stood up for justice, or pleaded for truth, but trusted in vanity, and spoke lies.  Their feet ran to evil, and they made haste to shed innocent blood; the way of peace they knew not, and they had made themselves crooked paths, speaking oppression and revolt, and conceiving and uttering words of falsehood; so that judgment was turned away backward, and justice stood afar off, for truth was fallen in the street, and equity could not enter.  Yea, truth failed; and he that departed from evil made himself a prey (or as some render it) was accounted mad.

And this is in the face of all their religion and their church-going.  Verily, my friends, fallen human beings were much the same then as now; and there are too many in England and elsewhere now who might sit for that portrait.

But how was the Lord going to save these hypocritical, false, unjust men?  Was he going to say to them, Believe certain doctrines about me, and you shall escape all punishment for your sins, and my righteousness shall be imputed to you?  We do not read a word of that.  We read—not that the Lord’s righteousness was imputed to these bad men, but that it sustained the Lord himself.—Ah! there is a depth, if you will receive it—a depth of hope and comfort—a well-spring of salvation for us and all mankind.

You may be false and dishonest, saith the Lord, but I am honest and true.  Unjust, but I am just; unrighteous, but I am righteous.  If men will not set the world right, then I will, saith the Lord.  My righteousness shall sustain me, and keep me up to my duty, though man may forget his.  To me all power is given in heaven and earth, and I will use my power aright.

If men are bringing themselves and their country, their religion, their church to ruin by hypocrisy, falsehood, and injustice, as those Jews were, then the Lord’s arm will bring salvation.  He will save them from their sins by the only possible way—namely, by taking their sins away, and making those of them who will take his lesson good and righteous men instead.  It may be a very terrible lesson of vengeance and fury, as Isaiah says.  It may unmask many a hypocrite, confound many a politic, and frustrate many a knavish trick, till the Lord’s salvation may look at first sight much more like destruction and misery; for his fan is in his hand, and he will thoroughly purge his floor, and gather the wheat into his garner: but the chaff he will burn up with unquenchable fire.

But his purpose is, to save—to save his people from their sins, to purge out of them all hypocrisy, falsehood, injustice, and make of them honest men, true men, just men—men created anew after his likeness.  And this is the meaning of his salvation; and is the only salvation worth having, for this life or the life to come.

Oh my friends, let us pray to God, whatsoever else he does for us, to make honest men of us.  For if we be not honest men, we shall surely come to ruin, and bring all we touch to ruin, past hope of salvation.  Whatsoever denomination or church we belong to, it will be all the same: we may call ourselves children of Abraham, of the Holy Catholic Church (which God preserve), or what we will: but when the axe is laid to the root of the tree, every tree that brings not forth good fruit is hewn down, and is cast into the fire; and woe to the foolish fowl who have taken shelter under the branches of it.

And we who are coming to the holy communion this day—let us ask ourselves, What do we want there?  Do we want to be made good men, true, honest, just?  Do we want to be saved from our sins? or merely from the punishment of them after we die?  Do we want to be made sharers in that everlasting righteousness of Christ, which sustains him, and sustains the whole world too, and prevents it from becoming a cage of wild beasts, tearing each other to pieces by war and oppression, falsehood and injustice?  Then we shall get what we want; and more.  But if not, then we shall not get what we want, not discerning that the Lord’s body is a righteous and just and good body; and his blood a purifying blood, which purifies not merely from the punishment of our sins, but from our sins themselves.

And bear in mind, my friends, when times grow evil, and rogues and hypocrites abound, and all the world seems going wrong, there is one arm to fall back upon, and one righteousness to fall back upon, which can never fail you, or the world.—

The arm of the Lord, which brings salvation to him, that he may give it to all who are faithful and true; which cannot weaken or grow weary, till it has cast out of his kingdom all which offends, and whosoever loveth or maketh a lie.—

And the eternal righteousness of the Lord, which will do justice by every living soul of man, and which will never fail or fade away, because it is his own property, belonging to his own essence, which if he gave up for a moment he would give up being God.  Yes, God is good, though every man were bad; God is just, though every man were a rogue; God is true, though every man were a liar; and as long as that is so, all is safe for you and me, and the whole world:—if we will.