And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.—St. LUKE xvii. 20, 21.
I. Any one who reflects on the parables of the steward, and of the rich man, or on any of the facts of Jewish history which illustrate them, may exclaim in sadness and in bitterness, ‘So then all things which seem “blessings” are really occasions of falling. Those who have most advantages of any kind are the greatest offenders. They stumble themselves—they cause others to stumble.’
He who knew what was in man—He who felt in Himself all the doubts and perplexities which could arise in any of us—anticipated these thoughts. His own spirit sounded the depth of them.
‘Then said he unto the disciples, It is impossible but that offences will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a mill-stone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones.’
As if He had said, Yes! All these scandals which the children of Abraham are causing to each other and to the heathen world are indeed very terrible. How terrible they are you cannot measure. But you do yourselves no good by complaining that you are exposed to them. Prepare for them as for enemies that must meet you, that you cannot escape. And then consider, ‘The evil is not in receiving an offence, but in giving it. The woe is to him through whom the offence cometh. Think of that.’
II. My friends, here is indeed a maxim of the Kingdom of Heaven. There cannot be a simpler, there cannot be a deeper or a more practical one. Accept offences or scandals that meet you as inevitable. Take care, each one of you, that you are not the author of an offence or scandal. Is it said then that you can have no control over those which others cause, that you can do nothing to hinder them? Hear what you may do if you observe the first rule. ‘Take heed to yourselves: If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him. And if he trespass against thee seven times in a day, and seven times in a day turn again to thee, saying, I repent; thou shalt forgive him.’
Avoid giving offences, then you will forgive those who offend you. Forgiveness is your weapon against scandals. Your temptation will always be to confound the evil which is done with the injury which it inflicts upon you. Separate them by forgiving that injury; so you lead the man to ask how the evil whence the injury came may be taken away. He rises from your forgiveness to the apprehension of a forgiving God. He perceives that there is one who desires to send away sins. It seems to me that our Lord struck here at the very root of the Pharisaical doctrine—of that doctrine which was always producing scandals, and could do nothing to abate them. Forgiveness in any real sense of the word was not a part of their practice. It therefore was not, and could not be, in any real sense, a part of their creed. Forgiveness meant to them the indulging in certain cases those who had offended. Up to a certain point that might be a duty. It was a hard duty. After a certain number of experiments they might assure themselves that God was satisfied. They had done all that He required. Therefore forgiveness, when it was asked of Him, meant the same kind of indulgence—a mere remission of punishment for injuries which He had incurred at their hands. The dream of a God who delighted to forgive; who reclaimed by forgiving; who sent away not punishment but sins; who made the hearts and consciences of His subjects free from guilt; this did not enter into their theology, as that which corresponded to it had no place in their ethical code. But to reveal such a God and His Kingdom was the work of Christ. His code of morality is formed by His theology.
III. When the disciples heard the precept so new to their ears, yet bearing such a witness of its truth to their consciences, that they should forgive their brother if he turned to them seven times a day, and said, ‘I repent,’ they uttered a very natural cry, ‘Lord, increase our faith.’ The words expressed more than they knew of their own want. It was exactly faith which they needed—faith in God’s forgiveness; then forgiveness in its most inward sense, the forgiveness from the heart, would be possible for them. But there was a confusion in their minds which marred this simple petition. They had thought of faith as a possession or stock, which might be increased as a sum of money may be increased by a present or a bequest.
I judge that they had this thought, partly from their language, partly because we all of us have it; still more from the answer which our Lord made them.
IV. ‘And the Lord said, If ye had faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye might say unto this sycamine tree, Be thou plucked up by the root, and be thou planted in the sea; and it should obey you. But which of you, having a servant plowing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by, when he is come from the field, Go and sit down to meat? And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself, and serve me till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink? Doth he thank that servant because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not. So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants: we have done that which was our duty to do.’
The grain of mustard seed, the tiniest of seeds, illustrates the nature of faith better than an accumulating heap. It is the greatest when it is least. The man feels that he has nothing, and can do nothing; therefore he relies on One who has all, and can enable to do what He wills him to do. Once let him think that he has any power of his own—call it faith, or what you please—the reliance vanishes; the essence of faith is gone. While the man really depends on a strength which is not his own, he can bid sycamine trees move into the sea; mountains will be no hindrance to him.
Is that not a justification of all miracle workers? What power have they ever pretended to which was so great as this? To none which was half or a thousandth part so great. For they have pretended to exhibit their own great feats, their superiority to other men, the difference between them and their fellows. Therefore they have not been able to remove real hindrances, physical or moral, as those have done who have worked simply and obediently as the ministers of God’s order. Such is our Lord’s own correction of the tendencies which were sure to appear in His disciples, and to connect themselves with the efforts and the triumphs of faith. What was their faith given them for? That they might indulge themselves with it? That they might sit down to meat and enjoy themselves on the strength of it? I trow not. They were simply labourers ploughing and feeding cattle for a master. Their faith was given them to serve Him with, that they might do His work. They would have what was wanted that they might do what was their duty to do; no more. In the performance of that duty difficulties that appeared quite insurmountable would disappear; nothing would be impossible to them. But if they began to be proud of themselves; to think that they could do something more than was their duty; that they might turn their faith into a luxury or an occasion of display: they would soon be reminded of their own insignificance; they would be brought back to dependence and faith by severe lessons. The words, ‘We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do,’ are often quoted by the champions of the Reformation against those who plead for works of supererogation. They have, no doubt, great point in this application; but let us remember that the roots of that tenet of supererogation lie deep in all our natures, that they may send up shoots of various kinds. Those who speak of the efficacy of faith for justification may exhibit many of those shoots; the Protestant soil is not less favourable to the growth of them than the Romish. Those who glorify themselves on their faith come even more directly within the scope of our Lord’s animadversion in this passage than those who glorify themselves on their works. And it is on remembering that faith is the power by which it enables us to do what He wills us to do that we may escape either temptation.
V. I have inferred from the express words of St. Luke in the ninth chapter that all these discourses were delivered during our Lord’s last journey to Jerusalem. You have seen how often our attention is called to the place whither His steps are directed; how every woe, every expression of sorrow and anguish, every parable, has had some reference to it. We are reminded of it again in the eleventh verse. The incident which is recorded immediately after suggests another hint respecting the condition of the chosen people, another comparison between them and those whom they supposed to be enemies of God.
‘And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: and they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us. And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed. And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, and fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan. And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God save this stranger. And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.’
The Jew dwelt much on the original crime of the ten tribes; on the mixture of Assyrian worship with the worship of Jehovah in those who had been settled in the land after the captivity of those tribes; on the opposition which they offered to the building of the temple at Jerusalem; on the carefulness of Ezra and Nehemiah to preserve the purity of blood in their race; on the schismatical temple at Gerizim. Not by arguments in confutation of this exclusiveness, but by living practical instances, is the way prepared for a message first to Samaritans, then to all who had no descent from the Patriarchs. How an habitual traditional faith may pass into a loss of all faith, how the formal acknowledgment of God may harden into Atheism; this was the fearful discovery which Christ was making to those who had inherited all blessings, who were exulting in their orthodoxy. How God may prepare ‘strangers’ to see Him in His acts, to confess Him, to give Him thanks for that which the others received as common things; this was the consolatory lesson which accompanied that melancholy one. The suddenness of their cure—what we call its miraculous character—had not the slightest effect in startling the nine Israelite lepers out of their moral torpor. They were glad to be freed from a plague, however the advantage might come. But there was no divine message to them in the deliverance. The hard trading temper of the rulers and the scribes had become theirs; they wanted certain things of the Most High; it might be freedom from punishment here or hereafter; it might be the acquisition of certain good things here or hereafter. They did not care to know Him. The Samaritan was overwhelmed by the blessing which was granted him; he had no right to be; what had he done to deserve it? The gift must have come from the Source of health, and life, and gladness. It had come through a man who felt with him in his sorrow, who had healed him, it would seem, by some mighty power of sympathy. Surely this must be his ruler, the Lord of his spirit. And the God who spoke by this man could be no distant ruler in the clouds. Was it not He who taught Abraham to trust Him for himself and his seed after him? The removal of the leprosy was to this man a revelation of God. His faith, the faith which was as a grain of mustard seed, did not glorify itself, but God who had saved him. He had been raised out of himself—he had become a new man.
VI. It is by no accident, I conceive, but in the most strict ‘order,’ that the words which we read next succeed to this story.
‘And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation: neither shall they say, Lo here! or, Lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.’
The Pharisees had heard Him speak much of the Kingdom of God as being at hand. They would like much to know when it was to appear. It seemed to be long in coming. The sneer was one in which they were sure to indulge; it could not be without its effect on the disciples. We may hear and repeat the answer, not attaching much sense to it. The Samaritan leper had found the sense of it. The Kingdom of God had revealed itself to him. It had not come visibly, with observation. His spirit had bowed to it—had become its subject. And thou hard material Pharisee! thou must learn what this Kingdom of God is as the Samaritan leper learned it, or thou wilt never perceive it at all, though it be about thee, though thou livest under the shadow of it, though thou art called as he is to enter into it, and be governed by it. If thou art looking for it in this place or that place, in the city or the desert, or the secret chamber, thou wilt not see it. Thou mayst calculate times and seasons accurately. Thou mayst guess from the sacred book what are the signs which shall herald the grand apparition. Thou mayst be picturing to thyself all the pomp and procession which shall welcome the Monarch, and the gifts and the punishments which He will dispense. But thou wilt know nothing of its nature till thou, like this stranger, this outcast, cryest for deliverance from a tyrant who is oppressing thee, and till thou thank God as thy Deliverer.
VII. Then He turned to the disciples, who needed counsel on this subject as much as the Pharisees. They had clung to Him; they had heard Him call Himself the Son of Man; they had entered in some slight degree into the force of that name; they had believed that the Kingdom of God would be His kingdom—would be a human kingdom—a kingdom for men. ‘But the days will come when ye shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of man, and ye shall not see it.’ That form which they had looked upon would be visible no more. Nay, it would seem to them as if they had lost Him—as if all signs of His presence were gone—as if the world were left—as if they were left—more desolate of Him than before. That would be a time of fearful temptation. They would hear voices saying to them, ‘See here, or see there.’ Impostures would beset them on all hands. They would be told, ‘The Son of Man is revealing ’Himself to this seer, to this circle of initiated disciples.’ Neither he nor they can teach you how to recognise your Lord. ‘But go not after them, nor follow them. For as the lightning, that lighteneth out of the one part under heaven, shineth unto the other part under heaven; so shall the Son of man be in his day.’
VIII. Hard it must have been for the disciples to understand that saying, even when they were preaching of the Son of Man as the risen and ascended Lord of men and angels. Hard it must have been to believe: ‘Our words, the words which go forth from the mouths of fishermen and tentmakers, shall spread like the lightning from one part of the heaven to the other part of it; shall reach nations we never dreamed of; shall bring them to confess the Son of Man.’ If they did grasp the conviction, it could only have been through faith in the purpose of the eternal God to establish the kingdom of His Son, for neither then nor before will it have come with observation. They had to remember continually what He had said when He was speaking of His triumph. ‘But first must he suffer: many things, and be rejected of this generation.’ A rejection not terminating with His death, only beginning with it. The message of the Cross, the message of the Resurrection, would be more scouted than He had been in the days of His flesh. The rejection would come from the same persons; from the religious teachers and rulers of the chosen nation first and chiefly; then from the kings and emperors of the world.
IX. ‘And as it was in the days of Noe, so shall it be also in the days of the Son of man. They did eat, they drank, they married wives, they were given in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and the flood came, and destroyed them all. Likewise also as it was in the days of Lot; they did eat, they drank, they bought, they sold, they planted, they builded; but the same day that Lot went out of Sodom it rained fire and brimstone from heaven, and destroyed them all. Even thus shall it be in the day when the Son of man is revealed. In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back.’
That the words, ‘days of the Son of Man,’ point to some crisis which would affect the condition of mankind, no one who acknowledges the authority of the Speaker can doubt. Those who do not acknowledge His authority suppose that He expected such a crisis, or that His disciples expected it or believed that it had occurred, and therefore ascribed this language to Him. There is a perplexity in the minds of those who resort to the fraud or exaggerations of the Apostles or of the later Church for the explanation of these announcements. If what He said corresponds with some exactness to the events which happened when Jerusalem fell, they determine that it was a prophecy after the fact. But since they assume the prediction to be only satisfied by a destruction of the universe, they fall back upon the ignorance and simplicity of Him or His reporters, and suppose that their expressions prove them to have looked childishly forward to a catastrophe which never occurred, not to look back on one which did occur. We have a right, assuredly, to ask that they will determine which of these solutions they adopt, and will adhere to that; not mix them loosely together, seeing that they are incompatible. But before we make that demand we must clear our own minds of a confusion which renders us often as irreverent to Christ, as inattentive to His express language, as those who deem Him and the Evangelists to be impostors. Were the warnings derived from the state of men in Noah’s age and in Lot’s age meant to warn the disciples of a calamity which was impending over them? Can you read any single sentence of the passage which I have read to you, or of the passage which follows it, and doubt that they were? Must not every one of those who listened to Him have supposed that they were? Leave for a moment the words respecting the past and consider these:
X. ‘In that day, he which shall be upon the housetop, and his stuff in the house, let him not come down to take it away: and he that is in the field, let him likewise not return back. Remember Lot’s wife. Whosoever shall seek to save his life shall lose it; and whosoever shall lose his life shall preserve it. I tell you, in that night there shall be two men in one bed; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left. Two women shall be grinding together; the one shall be taken, and the other left. Two men shall be in the field; the one shall be taken, and the other shall be left.’
Can any warnings be less vague, more distinct? They point to the field, the mill, the house, the housestuff, the bed. Yet it is not the distinctness of one who had lived during a siege, and could relate some of the stirring and frightful incidents which had taken place in it; no such signs either of foresight or of deception are here. What we do observe, is a purpose to avoid the grand imagery of a falling universe, such as the analogies of the burning mountain might have supplied, and to fix the thoughts of the hearers upon minute and individual circumstances which might affect their own conduct.
But why then speak of Noah or of Lot? Ask Christ to tell you why He does not dwell as we might, if we wanted to impress our hearers with a coming day of judgment, upon the universality of the deluge, so far as hills or valleys were concerned in it. He speaks of the condition of the people whom it overtook. He passes therefore naturally, and without an effort, to a single city of the Plain, as if that contained precisely the same lesson. In each case there is a revelation of God’s purpose to put down evil and to vindicate right. In each case there is a stupor, indifference, hardness, lasting to the very instant when the overthrow came. Now, these characteristics of former crises or judgments were strictly verified in the one which befell that age. There was the same incapacity of believing that the holy city could fall, in its inhabitants, as there was that the city of the Plain could fall, in its inhabitants. The Lord of David, they said, could not mean that David’s conquest should be won by sacrilegious Romans. All our Lord’s warnings have been directed to remove this expectation from His disciples’ minds. God would not prove himself to be the Lord of the city by such an interference. He would Himself be its Judge. He would call His steward to give an account of his stewardship. He would manifest His Kingdom of Heaven by putting down that kingdom on earth which was most directly setting at nought all His purposes. The downfall of the city, the casting out of the Jewish nation, would be in the strictest sense a revelation of the Son of Man.
It would fulfil the purpose of all previous judgments. It would declare God’s eternal war with unrighteousness in whomsoever unrighteousness might be found. It would declare His purpose to regenerate and restore the human race, and to sweep away whatever opposes its regeneration and restoration. It would be like all previous days of the Lord—a day of thick darkness, a day of glorious light coming forth from the darkness.
But can we afford, my friends, to rob ourselves of these divine predictions, that we may give all the terror of them to the Jews? We cannot, indeed! It is the very cheat, the very robbery which we have practised upon ourselves. The vague conception of some distant universal judgment, which we may describe in grand rhetorical phrases, has hidden from us those direct practical hints respecting a judgment, which might have helped the inhabitants of every city whereon any judgment has fallen, in Europe or in Asia, in the nineteenth century or in the first; which have actually verified themselves in every one. We have lost the special, the minute warnings which might have profited and consoled individuals so much, and shown them their position in the world’s history. We have equally lost sight of the universal and the eternal. We have put the dream of a grand assize which merely appeals to the fancy, for the revelation of a Son of Man which speaks to every human conscience. We have forgotten that the trial day which the Jewish Nation passed through must come to the Universal Church. Does not this sentence apply to both?
‘And they answered and said unto him, Where, Lord? And he said unto them, Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together.’ —