I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled? But I have a baptism to be baptised with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!—St. Luke xii. 49, 50.
The words which were spoken in the house of the Pharisee were an open declaration of war. It had begun before. John the Baptist had denounced both the sects as generations of vipers. Jesus had provoked the wrath of this sect by His acts on the Sabbath day. The suggestion, ‘He casteth out demons by Beelzebub the Prince of the demons,’ proceeded most probably from them. But He had not till now spoken to them directly of their habits of mind as those which were bringing down curses upon the nation, and which would destroy it. He had not before showed men who assumed to be the worshippers of God—the teachers of the people how they should worship Him—that they were essentially godless; that they were undermining all godliness in the land. Henceforth there can be no doubt of His meaning. If the Gospel of His kingdom is true, their scheme of divinity and their code of ethics are false. The establishment of one must be the ruin of the other.
I. If we construe the words at the opening of the twelfth chapter strictly, we must suppose that whilst He was talking in the Pharisee’s house, a great concourse of people had assembled, waiting to hear Him. Before He speaks to them, He must pour out the thoughts of which His heart is full to His disciples. ‘He began to say to them, first of all, Beware ye of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.’ He does not speak now as He had spoken when He was face to face with the Pharisees and lawyers. Then He had laid open their special evils—those which arose out of their belief in their superiority to the rest of their countrymen. He speaks of a leaven which was affecting the whole land, of which His own little flock were in as much danger as any others. That which was the disease of the Pharisee was the disease of the time. He calls that disease hypocrisy. We have a reasonable horror of the name. We consider that it is applicable only to the worst men in the worst times. There is good excuse for that opinion; yet it may rob us of the force of our Lord’s warning—we may put it at a dangerous distance from ourselves. The hypocrite is the man who acts a part; there is no more evil signification in the word than that. And oh! how easy it is to be a hypocrite if that is his characteristic; how difficult it is not to be one! Do you not know with what terrible quickness a child becomes an actor or actress? Do you not know what we do to cultivate the acting talent, the acting habit in them? Do you not know what a number of social influences and contrivances are at work to convince men and women that it is their business to be masquers, that their skill is to be shown in the devising of masks?
To strike at the root of this hypocrisy,—to point out the remedy, this is the work which we ask from The King of men, from Him who knows what is in man. Jesus struck at the root of all social hypocrisy, of all personal hypocrisy, in Palestine, when He traced it to the religion which prevailed there. Then He pointed out the remedy in this sentence of everlasting might: ‘For there is nothing covered that shall not be revealed, neither hid that shall not be known.’ The religion of the Pharisees consisted in a series of attempts to please, flatter, and bribe the Ruler of the earth. If He could be persuaded not to look too curiously into the acts of His servants, not to probe the secrets of their hearts; if He could be induced to accept a compensation for this evil, on certain conditions to tolerate that; if His commandments could be shewn to bear different constructions for different persons; if cases might be imagined to which they did not apply, or applied with various qualifications and mitigations; if the creature could succeed in keeping the Creator at a distance from him, so that his secrets should not be brought to the light; their religion had realised its highest objects. Such a religion was leavening the chosen people, as it was under other aspects, with the most dissimilar professions under heathen forms of worship, leavening the old Roman Empire. The priests and lawyers in Jerusalem, the Pontifex and the Augur in Rome were alike acting a part. They rehearsed their parts in private; they performed them in public. The Pharisees were at once the consummate practisers of the art, and the most systematic instructors in it.
But what if the Ruler of the earth could not be flattered or bribed? What if everything that is covered must be revealed, if everything that is hidden must be known? What if the very act of the Creator is to reveal, if He is bringing all things to light, if He hates darkness? There is the whole question. Is it a God of light you serve, or a God of darkness? Acting hypocrisy is an impossible kind of service with the first, the only suitable one with the second.
The apostles of Christ would have need hereafter to remember this distinction, when the thought would be presented to them, as it had been to all teachers in the former days, that there was a certain lore which was meant for them, the initiated few, and quite another lore for the vulgar many. That poisonous doctrine, in which all imposture lurks, is scattered to the winds for all who believe the words, ‘Whatsoever ye have spoken in the darkness shall be heard in the light; and that which ye have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.’ That is the maxim for the ministers of a gospel. If they think the good news is for themselves, and their little circle, it ceases to be good news for themselves and that little circle; if the world is cheated of it they will find that it changes its character, and takes the form of a curse to those for whose special comfort it is reserved.
Anew topic appears to be introduced in the next verse. It is one, I think, which comes most naturally out of the preceding one. Those who convey a message to mankind will not have the ease and security of those who confine their lessons to the select band. The whole body of religious masquers will be in arms against those who proclaim God’s revelation of Himself, God’s discovery of the thoughts and intents of the heart, as the highest of all blessings to His creatures. The battle will be deadly. ‘And I say unto you my friends, Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him.’ ’You will have all the power of those who have been denounced by me arrayed against you, all the power of those who are pursuing objects like theirs in every part of the world. But what is that power? What can it effect? At the utmost it can kill your bodies. If that is all, you need not fear it. But that spirit of hypocrisy of which I am bidding you beware can do far more. Yield to that spirit, and it will destroy heart and soul as well as body; he prompts the murderers of the body, and after he has killed he has power to cast into hell. That, that is the dreadful enemy; you cannot regard that with too much dread and horror. Where is the protection from him? Are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before God? But even the very hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, therefore: ye are of more value than many sparrows.” Utter absolute trust in God, that is the refuge from the evil and destroying spirit. Have you not a ground and warrant for such trust? You feel your own insignificance; you can put forth no claim of merit. But you are not more insignificant than the birds, are you? God cares for them. Whatever is their worth in the market, they do not fall to the ground without Him. There is nothing in the argument to make the disciples think highly of themselves, nothing to exalt them above other men. There is everything to remind them of the prayer they have been taught to pray; there is everything to assure them that their Father in Heaven will give them day by day what they need, and that His spirit is stronger than the hypocritical and destroying spirit.
You must not confound the words which follow with some words of similar sound, of which I spoke to you a few Sundays ago. He said then, ‘Whosoever shall be ashamed of me and of my words, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed.’ Here we read, ‘Also (or but) I say unto you, Whosoever shall confess me (rather confess in me) before men, the Son of man will also confess him (or in him) before the angels of God: But he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God.’ If the last clause stood alone, we might treat the ‘ashamed’ and the ‘denial’ as equivalent expressions. But the previous clause, which has nothing that answers to it in the other passage, is the most prominent one here, and is that which unites this sentence to the rest of our Lord’s discourse. That kind of trust in God’s continual care and love for them would indeed raise them above the fear of their enemies. But how can a poor man, in the very moment when he is most crushed by those enemies, when the accusing spirit is tempting him and mocking him, entertain it? That spirit whispers to him continually that God has deserted him, that he has forfeited all right to depend on Him by his transgressions or his faithlessness. ‘Confess in me,’ says Christ. ‘Assert your union with me as the Son of man. Forget your own nothingness in the recollection that you belong to the race of which I am the Head. And then the Son of man will confess in you before the angels of God.’ He will show you that you are one with His family in heaven and earth. It will be the denial of your fellowship with them, your attempt to establish some ground of worth or security for yourselves apart from Him, apart from your kind, which will separate you from the invisible world as well as the visible, from angels as well as men.’ The courage to speak their gospel to men,—the courage which would raise them above the fear of men, would thus depend upon the degree in which they identified themselves with man in their common Lord and Saviour.
But the disciples of Christ might have turned these words to a wrong sense; they have been turned to such a sense in later days and generations. They might have said, ‘See what worth He gives to the confession of Him. Those who assert the truth of His mission, those who call themselves by His Name, He will own hereafter. Those who refuse Him He will cast out of His Father’s presence.’ This was exactly the thought in another form which was working in the minds of the Pharisees. They hoped that God would reward them for accepting in great strictness a religion which had His sanction; that He would condemn other people for not accepting that religion. The disciples of Jesus might suppose that He had come to introduce a religion under more terrible sanctions; men would be rewarded for accepting it, punished for not accepting it. He adds immediately to the previous sentence respecting the confession and denial of Him one which, at first, appears to clash with it. ‘And whosoever shall speak a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him; but unto him that blasphemeth against the Holy Ghost it shall not be forgiven.’ All interpreters have felt that this language must have some close relation to the words (with which it is directly connected by St. Mark), ‘He casteth out devils by Beelzebub, the Prince of the ’Devils.’ In another Gospel it is said that there shall be no forgiveness of this blasphemy, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.’ Taking this sentence with the rest of the passage, I cannot doubt that it tells us what the sin of the Pharisees and of the nation was; why they were cast out of their stewardship in that age; why the sentence upon them remains still. We say, ‘They rejected Jesus; they would not believe all the evidence which he brought from prophecies and miracles to attest His divine mission.’ He says, ‘All words spoken against the Son of Man will be forgiven;’ but there is a blasphemy against the Spirit of God—there is a confusion of good with evil, of light with darkness—which goes down far deeper than this. When a nation has lost the faculty of distinguishing hatred from love, the spirit of hypocrisy and falsehood from the spirit of truth, God from the devil, then its doom is pronounced—then the decree must go forth against it. I believe that is the natural sense of these awful words here and elsewhere; if we give them that sense we are delivered from imaginations which have darkened the Gospel to a number of souls, and the warning to ourselves becomes much more tremendous.
Fear and hypocrisy have always worked together. The dread of men’s faces has been one great motive to hypocrisy; the desire of their applause has been another. The baptism with the Spirit of truth is the deliverance from the spirit of hypocrisy. That same Spirit is the deliverer from the spirit of fear. ‘And when they bring you unto the synagogues, and unto magistrates and powers, take ye not thought (be not anxious or troubled) how or what things ye shall answer, or what ye shall say. For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say.’ The meaning and worth of that promise were to be ascertained by later experience: only that experience could enable the disciples to follow the windings of this discourse, and to see how each part of it was adapted to some great danger or necessity of theirs. One thing St. Luke knew, and has helped us to know. This assurance of the Spirit’s presence did not cause those who depended on it most to speak flighty words in the synagogues or before magistrates; rudely to defy them; to seize occasions of preaching to them. Nothing can be more simple, business-like, respectful, than the apologies of St. Paul. Must it not have been so? Are not our apologies liable to be quibbling, rhetorical, passionate, just because we do not believe that a Spirit of love and power, and a sound Mind, is with us to guide the thoughts of our hearts, to teach us what is manly and healthy, what is the product of our own fancy and vanity?
II. One principal poison which was working in the veins of the Jewish commonwealth, and was hastening its death, has been detected. Another was brought to light by a question which appeared to interrupt the conversation.
‘And one of the company said unto him, Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me. And he said unto him, Man, who made me a judge or divider over you? And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness; for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.’
Hobbes has dwelt upon these words as a confession by our Lord that He was merely a religious teacher, and that He aspired to no control over ordinary human affairs. Undoubtedly he declined to interfere in the case in which He was asked to interfere. He would not determine how much of the inheritance belonged to the complainant, how much to his brother. But His discourse on covetousness, it seems to me, is the discourse of One who is laying the axe to the root of a polity—of one who is come to establish a kingdom. How much it differs from the language of one who is laying down a religious or ethical code of precepts, I think you will perceive, if you examine it carefully.
(1.) The primary maxim of it you have heard. A man’s LIFE consisteth not in the abundance of his possessions. The contrast between life and possession goes through the whole of it.
A story illustrates this contrast.
‘And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully. And he thought within himself, saying, What shall I do, because I have no room where to bestow my fruits? And he said, This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and build greater; and there will I bestow all my fruits and my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry. But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee: then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.’
This story may be called a parable, merely because a single instance is taken to exhibit a general experience. But I think you will find as we proceed that there is another justification of the word. There is a spiritual covetousness as well as a material covetousness. Both were characteristic of the Jewish people. The man who has goods laid up for many years may be an example of one habit as much as of the other. But the point to which I would especially call your attention is this. Moral and religious teachers say much of the transitoriness of life. Our Lord speaks of the transitoriness of the things which a man has. ‘Then whose shall those things be which thou hast provided?’ God is holding intercourse with the man himself. ‘What art thou? Do these things make thee better? Will they go along with thee?’
(2.) See how this remark bears upon the inference which our Lord draws from the story.
‘And he said unto his disciples, Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat; neither for the body, what ye shall put on. The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment. Consider the ravens: for they neither sow nor reap; which neither have storehouse nor barn; and God feedeth them: how much more are ye better than the fowls? And which of you with taking thought can add to his stature one cubit? If ye then be not able to do that thing which is least, why take ye thought for the rest? Consider the lilies how they grow: they toil not, they spin not; and yet I say unto you, that Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. If then God so clothe the grass, which is to-day in the field, and to-morrow is cast into the oven; how much more will he clothe you, O ye of little faith? And seek not ye what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink, neither be ye of doubtful mind. For all these things do the nations of the world seek after: and your Father knoweth that ye have need of these things. But rather seek ye the kingdom of God; and all these things shall be added unto you.’
‘How contemptible a thing is the body! How poor a thing is life! And then think how God, by His infinite power, can crush both in a moment.’ Such have been the arguments by which preachers in all ages have tried to withdraw their hearers to religious reflections. Our Lord takes the opposite course. ‘How glorious is life; how much grander than the mere meat which sustains it! How grand is the body; how much nobler than the raiment with which you clothe it! And do you think God is indifferent either to the food or the raiment of His creatures? Does He not feed the ravens? Does he not clothe the lilies? Are you afraid that He should ever grudge you what you want?’ Here is the ground of His denunciation of the habits which He found prevailing among the chosen people. They were heathenish habits. They sprang out of distrust. The maxim of Solon, ‘The Divinity is an envious nature,’ was at the root of them. The restless, feverish pursuit of things to eat and drink, the doubtful miserable mind which accompanied that pursuit, would cease if they once believed in the Lord God of their fathers. Quiet, patient toil would then take the place of craving for possession in the rich, of despair in the poor. And here is His own Gospel. You have a Father. I come to you, poor men, from Him. It is His pleasure to give you a kingdom. You can claim your places as His sons and daughters. You can know His righteousness and His love, and be partakers of it, and shew it forth. Assert those rights. Seek to be subjects of His kingdom. The outward things which you need will come to you as you need them. They will be added to you.
(3.) The foundation of the Kingdom is laid, then, in the Nature of God, in His will to bestow the freest and largest of His gifts on His creatures. Those who claim their privileges as His adopted children may share this nature. His Spirit will work in them to distribute rather than to accumulate the things which they hold for a time, and to seek their treasure in the unchangeable things which are in Him. So read the verses which follow:
’Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also. Let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning; and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately. 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. And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants. And this know, that if the goodman of the house had known what hour the thief would come, he would have watched, and not have suffered his house to be broken through. Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not.
How the precept, ‘Sell that ye have, and give alms,’ was acted upon by the disciples after the day of Pentecost, we know from St. Luke’s other treatise. I pointed out to you, when I was speaking of the beginnings of the Church in Jerusalem, how entirely spontaneous the acts of selling and distributing were which the historian records; how careful the Apostles were to tell their little flock, that the things which they had ‘were in their own power,’ and might be kept or parted with as they chose: how dangerous the practice became when, as in the case of Ananias, it was thought to carry some merit with it, or be demanded by public opinion. Then it gave birth to the subtlest hypocrisy. A divine principle was exhibited in a particular and transitory form at that time—a principle which can never perish, and which must always find some form to express itself in, so long as the Church lasts. The principle is, that God is the ungrudging bestower of blessings, and that men are His stewards to distribute these blessings. So far as they enter into His mind, the delight will be in spreading abroad, not in accumulating. Their reward will be a continually growing knowledge of His character and purposes. Their treasure will be in whatever things are good, pure, true; their heart will be occupied with these. Here is warrant and encouragement for the servants. The King, the Bridegroom of your race, has set you your tasks. You are to watch over those to whom He has united Himself. You are to make them partakers of His gifts earthly and heavenly; those which are needed for their bodies, those which are needed for their spirits. And you are to remember that He Himself is at hand. These to whom you are ministering are not yours but His. He is Himself their chief minister. He has been so; He will be so. He will minister to you if you minister to Him. The sense of the nearness of the Son of man, of this great Bridegroom, is what must keep you watchful and earnest in your vocation. Lose that; think He is not near you, that He may not at any moment make you know how near He is; forget that He is the Son of man; and your house will be broken through. The spirit of covetousness will enter in and pillage it of all that is best and most precious within it.
(4.) Peter knew, by this time, that he was to be the minister in a kingdom, however imperfectly he might understand the nature of that ministry or of that kingdom. He saw that these exhortations must apply to him and his brother Apostles. He wished to know whether they had any further application. He said, ‘Lord, speakest thou this parable unto us, or even to all? And the Lord said, Who then is that faithful and wise steward, whom his lord shall make ruler over his household, to give them their portion of meat in due season? Blessed is that servant, whom his lord when he cometh shall find so doing. Of a truth I say unto you, that he will make him ruler over all that he hath. But and if that servant say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming, and shall begin to beat the menservants and maidens, and to eat and drink, and to be drunken, the lord of that servant will come in a day when he looketh not for him, and at an hour when he is not aware, and will cut him in sunder, and will appoint him his portion with the unbelievers. And that servant, which knew his lord’s will, and prepared not himself, neither did according to his will, shall be beaten with many stripes. But he that knew not, and did commit things worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few stripes. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall be much required: and to whom men have committed much, of him they will ask the more.’
The answer is very distinct. ‘Wherever in any age or in any country men shall profess to belong to my kingdom, or shall call themselves my ministers, there may be that faithful stewardship of which I have spoken, there will be also the blessings of it. And in every such age and such country there will be the temptation to say, “My Lord delayeth his coming.” There will be the temptation in the ministers to act independently of their Master; to suppose that He has left them to do their own pleasure, to proclaim their own decrees, to tyrannise over those whom He came to deliver from tyranny. In every age and country those who called themselves His ministers, and claim to be entrusted with His treasures, will be the worst and cruellest oppressors of all, if they banish the Spirit of the Son of Man, and allow the spirit of covetousness to enter into them and possess them. But He will shew that He is King of kings and Lord of lords. He will come to those ministers who have so exalted themselves, so sold themselves to His enemy, in an hour when they look not for Him. He will treat them as what they are—unbelievers. He will visit them with stripes which those who have had less committed to them can never suffer, of which they cannot even dream.’ The language is terrible. No words of ours can heighten or strengthen it. To us it is spoken, and to all who bear our responsibilities. May we meditate upon it in silence. And then the words which come next will not be only fearful. There will be a promise at the root of them.
III. I am come to send fire on the earth, and what will I, if it be already kindled?’ I said in speaking of the announcement of Christ by His forerunner that none could answer to that name who did not baptise with fire. We have seen a little of the need of this fire. The vices of hypocrisy and covetousness had penetrated into the very heart of the nation. No outward discipline could suffice for the removal of them. The Spirit of the Son of man must contend with these evil spirits. The battle would be, as the prophet had said, with burning and fuel of fire. That fire was already kindled which was never to be quenched on the earth, which would encounter the same foes in each new period—which would find them most fierce and rampant in communities bound together in the most holy names, professing the greatest devotion. The nation was in the beginning of that fiery struggle where it was to perish. But before its agony and death were accomplished, there must be another agony, another death. ‘I have a baptism to be baptised with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!? I shall send no fire on earth which I do not myself pass through.’ The people cannot suffer apart from the King. Whatever pains He inflicts are pains to Himself. This is indeed the deepest of all mysteries. But it is the Christian mystery—the mystery of the divine charity. Take it away, and the Gospel ceases to be a Gospel. Men cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; there is no Kingdom of Heaven for them to enter.