The Hungry Filled; the Rich Sent Away Empty

“And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” —Matthew viii. 11, 12.

This is St. John’s Day. The two chapters which we have read from the Apocalypse are beautiful commemorations of it. The first tells us how the Apostle himself wished his contemporaries to think of him. He had borne witness to the Word of God and to the testimony of Jesus Christ. He was their brother and companion in tribulation, and in the Kingdom and patience of Jesus Christ. The second tells us what that Kingdom is in which he lived, and for which he waited.

I have had other occasions of speaking to you of this Apostle’s testimony concerning the Word of God. I have spoken recently from a memorable passage in the Apocalypse, concerning the Kingdom of Heaven and the saints who dwell in it. The text I have chosen is from St. Matthew. It too is a testimony concerning the Word of God and the Kingdom of Heaven. It may show us how wonderfully the doctrine of St. John explains the doctrine of those who went before him; how fitly the Apocalypse winds up the New Testament; how its truths, whether delivered by St. John or any other, expound Christmas Day to us, and may prepare us for a New Year.

St. Matthew’s words follow the story of the Roman centurion, who sent elders of the Jews to ask our Lord that He would heal his servant. I referred to him not many Sundays ago, as an illustration of the deep and practical divinity which a man might learn in a camp. He had soldiers under him; he was himself under authority. It was not by physical force that he ruled his men. It was not by physical force that he was ruled. He said, Go, and the men went. He said, Come, and they came. This mighty power lay in words. The soldier observed it and considered it. Must not there be some power not physical, not visible, from which this power flowed? Must not some one be speaking to him,—speaking to his very heart,—whom he was bound to obey? Was not this his Lord? Was not this the source and spring of his life?

To what did these thoughts lead? He heard of One Who was going about healing sicknesses. He considered, “If this Jesus can heal, it must be because the Word of God is with Him, is in Him, perhaps because He is this Word of God Himself. There is no need that He should come into my house; I am not worthy that He should. Let Him speak and it will be done, as my commander speaks and I obey, as I speak and my soldiers do my bidding.”

And our Lord said, “I have not found this faith in Israel. Even in the best of you who read the Law and the Prophets I have not found such a discernment of the very meaning of the Law and the Prophets as in this heathen. Even in the best of you who frequent the worship of the Temple I have not found such a freedom from idolatry as in this man, who was brought up to reverence the Jove of the Capitol. In all of you there has still been a craving for the touch, for the look. You must have signs and wonders before you believe. There has not been this inward trust, this bowing of the spirit before an inward King. And yet till you are brought to the confession of this Roman soldier, you will not learn why I have come upon earth, what good My coming is to do you or the world; you will not enter into that Kingdom of Heaven of which I have been preaching, and which I am to establish in the world. That is the Kingdom in which your fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob lived; for they lived by faith in a King Whom they could not see; Who was with them where they were; Who watched over their wives and their children, their flocks and their herds; Who told them where they were to go; Who made them understand when they did wrong. They were learning their place in a fellowship to which you belong; they were getting the first glimpses of a ladder set upon earth and ascending to Heaven, upon which you may stand, and by which you may mount. But I say unto you, many shall come from the east and the west, and shall sit down with them in this Kingdom, while the children of the Kingdom shall be thrust out.”

I. There ought to have been nothing which startled them in the first part of this announcement. The name of Abraham ought to have recalled to them the covenant on which their nation stood. That covenant would have told them of a blessing to all the families of the earth. But they had never understood what the blessing was which they had inherited, and which the families of the earth were to share with them. This Kingdom of Heaven, what did it mean? Where was it? It was at hand. In a few days or years perhaps, they might see the Son of David entering this royal city, as they had heard of a Roman general entering their capital with the spoils of the east and of the west. Or was not Heaven up in the sky, a city or a palace to which those should be transported after death, who had prayed and fasted and done good deeds here upon earth? Whichever of these notions of a Kingdom of Heaven was adopted, or whatever middle opinion, partaking a little of the nature of each, somewhat less definite than either, took its place, the difficulty was the same in imagining how Roman Centurions, how Greeks or Barbarians from the east or the west, could be partakers of the felicity. In one case they must be trampled down, they must be the kings and slaves to grace the procession of the Conqueror. In the other case, how could these men have earned the rewards which scarcely any but the most religious children of the Covenant could hope to win? What a sentence it was upon those who had been toiling in the heat of the day to deserve their hire, if a multitude called at the eleventh hour were admitted to the same!

A sentence indeed! And even such a sentence Jesus came into the world to pronounce. The gospel of His Kingdom was the sentence upon those who had imagined another kingdom for themselves. The news of salvation to the world was the judgment upon those who counted the salvation of the world a loss and a curse to them. We cannot bring this thought too distinctly and strongly home to our minds. It will make us understand the point which I have been pressing lately, that the coming of Christ as a Deliverer necessarily involved His coming as a Judge. It will enable us to perceive why all the Jewish expectations were inverted by His appearing; why it exalted the nations which they supposed were to be condemned; why it laid low the nation which they supposed would have been exalted.

We must adhere very strictly to our Lord’s language in this passage, and in every passage where He speaks of the Kingdom of Heaven, and not suffer ourselves to introduce any preconceptions or fancies of our own, if we would enter into this great Christian paradox. The Kingdom of Heaven in which Abraham and Isaac and Jacob were sitting, and in which many from all quarters of the world would sit with them, could surely have nothing to do with either of those heavens which the Jewish imagination had constructed. It must, if the story of the Centurion has any application to our Lord’s remark, have been closely connected with the acknowledgment of a mysterious sovereignty over human beings, over their hearts and reins, a sovereignty in which the imperator and the centurion and the commonest soldier were all interested, because they were all within the circle of its commands and of its grace. If Abraham was brought out of a race which was becoming idolatrous,—if he was preserved amidst a race which was sunk in idolatry—to be an early witness of this blessed dominion, of this righteous rule, which should at last break in pieces all dominion and rule that is not righteous and not blessed,—the expansion of this knowledge, the discovery to an ever larger circle of Him in Whom they are living and moving and having their being, was implied in the selection of a person to bear a practical testimony of it. The sphere of his work was very limited. Soon he would bequeath it to a successor; soon the place of that successor would know him no more. But as Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob passed out of the region in which they had spent the few and often evil days of their pilgrimage, they would become better acquainted with that Kingdom which they had confessed, would understand better how it overshadowed this world, would see how gradually it was making its grace and its power known to the children of men. To find ever fresh spirits from earth entering into this kingdom, to see God’s army continually increasing, to expect ever fresh discomfitures of His enemies, to give succours and encouragements to those who were fainting in the warfare, to be growing themselves in knowledge and awe and love with every fresh ministry in which they were engaged for their brethren, this was the reward which God had prepared for those that loved Him. If He had prepared any rewards for those who did not love Him, but who sought prizes for themselves and counted the admission of others into their privileges an injustice, these they did not aspire after.

And therefore it could be no wonder, though an infinite delight to them, if the divine Kingdom which they had so faintly apprehended themselves upon earth, was made known through one gracious discipline or another to Roman centurions, to eastern Magians, to Greek sages, to poor sufferers in all ends of the earth; no wonder, but an infinite delight, if these were taught of a Father’s house to which they might return, from the far country in which they had been wandering, and that their Father Himself was fetching them home. Every new age had been bringing more and more into this apprehension. The fulness of the time had come when the perfect Image of the Father was revealed. That revelation opened to the Gentiles the Kingdom of Heaven. And that which was a light to lighten them, was also the glory of the people Israel. All that for ages had been hidden came to light. What prophets and kings had longed for was made known to fishermen. Those fishermen were permitted to enter into the labours of prophets and kings, and to reap harvests of seeds which they had sown, from lands which they had ploughed. The Law went forth in very deed from Judah, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem. The King of Israel claimed the homage of all lands, and multitudes in all lands bowed their necks and their hearts to His yoke.

II. “But the children of the Kingdom,” so the text goes, “shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Here again I would beseech you to observe the language of our Lord, and not to change it for any phrases of ours. We certainly cannot make it clearer or fuller than He has made it. He speaks of darkness: St. John tells us why. “This,” he says, “is the condemnation, that Light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than Light, because their deeds were evil.” The Light of the World shines forth upon mankind. Those who should hail it and spread it through the world are scared by it; fly from it, hate it. Either they must establish their reign of darkness, or the Light must prove itself stronger than they are. It does prove itself stronger, therefore they are left to the darkness which they have chosen. It is outer darkness; it lies outside of God’s kingdom, outside of humanity. God’s order has banished it.

Such phrases as these, when they proceed from the holiest and divinest lips, must not be treated like the phrases of vulgar rhetoricians. We are to think of them, not to play with them. When our Lord speaks of darkness, He intends us to consider what darkness is in our ordinary experience, what it is to be without the power of distinguishing the forms of things or the faces of men, of discerning between that which is safe and that which is perilous. He would have us reflect that in our spiritual condition there can be no greater horror than that which corresponds to this; the incapacity of knowing evil from good, that which is to be hated with a perfect hatred from that which is to be loved with a perfect love. He would have us reflect that, as the light comes to the eye from the presence of a sun, light comes to the spirit from the presence of the Father of Spirits; that to be shut up in ourselves without Him is the perdition, the deepest possible perdition of a creature made in His image.

Is the phrase gnashing of teeth less fearfully intelligible? Have you ever been in a madhouse? Have you compared what you saw and heard there with what you read in the Lesson yesterday; how the crowd to whom St. Stephen said, “Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost; as your fathers did, so do ye,” gnashed upon him with their teeth. The Conscience within them said, He is speaking truth. The Devil within them said, Kill the truth. The Devil appeared to triumph. They did their best to kill the truth, by killing the utterer of it. But if it could not die—if the truth remained and those witnesses to it remained,—must not the teeth continue to gnash? It was the gnashing for blessings very near, but not realized; it expressed the inward conviction that they were gone.

My brethren, the Conscience of men, in all times, has responded so mightily and fearfully to those words of our Lord,—has found for them such a personal application,—that it has been hard to vindicate for them their direct and obvious sense, hard to convince them that when He spoke of Israel, He had Israel in his mind,—that the children of the Kingdom who He said would cast themselves out, did cast themselves out in that generation. I think that it is our duty, and therefore our wisdom, to adhere to the letter of Scripture; that if we trifle with it for the sake of extracting good lessons from it, all its power over us disappears. But I do attach very great importance to this witness of our hearts, that the words cannot have meant more to Judæa than they mean to Christendom, that their whole blessing and their whole terror is for us and for our children. What that blessing is, what that terror is, I believe we shall understand most, we shall feel most, if we consider what was given to the world by the Advent of Christ, what was lost to those who had been the stewards of God’s blessings to the world. The Word made flesh, and dwelling among men, opened to men a Kingdom of Righteousness, Peace, Joy; told them that they were inheritors of this Kingdom; showed them how with their spirits they might enter into it; promised them the Spirit of His Father,—the Spirit who had dwelt without measure in Him, that they might enter into it. The Word came to His own, and His own received Him not. They did not confess Him as the Lord of their spirits; they saw in Him only the Carpenter’s Son. And so more and more the invisible world became utterly obscure to them; they could perceive only that which their senses presented to them. And so more and more those great possessions, of which the senses can take no account,—Justice, Love, Truth,—the eternal, substantial, universal treasures, which the hearts of holy men felt that they must have or perish, were withdrawn from the apprehension of the chosen people; they became as though they were not. Shadows took their place, they passed into shadows. The forms which had spoken of them and revealed them, became unnaturally huge and prominent, spectres of the night, sometimes telling in awful voices of that which they could not restore, sometimes for a moment deluding those who embraced the cloud with the hope that they had found the divinity. Then came the hubbub of parties, a Babel of unintelligible sounds, nothing clear but the passion and fury which were trying to express themselves, and which, since words proved so ineffectual, must seek for other weapons.

Is the picture too like? Dare we not look upon it, because it reminds us too much of what might be, of what may be, in the nineteenth century after Christ? Yes. We feel and know that the signs of a Kingdom of God are amongst us; every Christmas Day testifies that it has been brought near to us; that we are living, moving, having our being in the midst of it. It is not far off, that we should say “Who shall ascend into Heaven to bring it to us? Who shall descend into the deep to tell us of it?” But it is with us, close to the heart of each one of us. The Word of God is preaching to us of it there. That Word of God converts every record of the past into a message for the present. Stephen looks at us as he did at the Jewish Sanhedrin, with the face of an angel. For us he witnesses, for us he dies. John is our brother and companion in tribulation, and in the Kingdom and Patience of Jesus Christ. The Innocents mingle with the children who are born and die before our eyes. All testify of a Kingdom undefiled and eternal, into which we may enter, the treasures of which are for us all.

And about us all are powers of darkness which would persuade us that there is no Kingdom of Light, which would draw us beyond its circle. They tell us that the world which speaks to eye, ear, taste, is the only real world. We believe them, and the beauty of that world vanishes; what looked—what was—full of life and motion and freedom, becomes dull and hopeless. We believe them, and we became inhabitants of a kingdom that has as little to do with the senses as Christ’s Kingdom, which is as spiritual as that; only it is a kingdom of Unrighteousness, of War, of Joylessness. We do not abandon our religion because we become sensualists; but our religion becomes one of terror and hatred; a system of devices to escape from God, to cause the Holy One to cease from us.

Oh, brethren, that Christendom, that England may never so dally with these powers of darkness, as at last to be brought into that outer darkness to which the children of Abraham, of Isaac, and Jacob were doomed! Oh that we may never gnash with our teeth because God’s Word speaks to our consciences of good things that were ours, and that we would not have! Oh that the warnings of this year—that the deliverances of this year—may be received as God’s own loving entreaties to us, not to cast ourselves into this torment! But whether we receive them as such or not, multitudes will come from the East and the West, the North and the South—at last we believe those Jewish exiles will come themselves—and sit down in the Kingdom of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. As sure as day rises out of night,—as year succeeds year,—will He Who stood before John in the Isle of Patmos be revealed to the eye of every creature. As surely as the voice of any earthly friend is speaking to us warning or comfort, is He saying, “Behold I come quickly, and My reward is with Me, to give to every man as his work shall be.”