God the Uprooter of Sects

“But He answered and said, Every plant, which My Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.”—Matthew xv. 13.

Our Lord had been proclaiming the principle, “Not that which entereth into the mouth defileth the man; but that which cometh out of the mouth, that defileth him.” It was a principle evidently of very wide application. It undermined a whole scheme of religion. The Jewish teachers felt how much was involved in it. “Knowest thou,” said the disciples to their Master, “that the Pharisees were offended, after they heard this saying? But He answered and said, Every plant, which my Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up. Let them alone: they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both shall fall into the ditch.”

Again He enunciated a universal maxim. But He did not leave the disciples to find applications of it. He left them in no doubt that the sect of the Pharisees was that plant of which He spoke; that this was to be rooted up. They must have wondered at the sentence. They must have been aware that many of the Pharisees were righteous only on the surface. They may have been long enough under our Lord’s teaching to understand that conformity to an outward rule is very different from conformity to the Will of God. Still this sect, as such, was emphatically the religious sect. It was the witness against another sect, which made light of Divine ordinances, and would have substituted a morality not essentially different from that of the heathen schools, for everything that was peculiar to the faith of their fathers. The earlier Pharisees had been, no doubt, men of earnest character, desirous to save their countrymen from falling into indifference,—consistent witnesses, not merely for that which they believed to be true, but for that which was true. There must have been at all times among them men of sincere, elevated devotion. Their doctrines and professions kept alive an impression in the minds of the people that man’s existence is not bounded by that which is present and visible. The disciples knew this. Must they not have asked themselves: “If such a plant, which has been growing for so long a time, is to be rooted out, what can we look for but a disturbance of all that is most sacred and precious in our nation and in ourselves?”

(1) Such thoughts may have shaken the minds of these humble fishermen; but they were not therefore unwholesome or mischievous thoughts. Our Lord wished them to believe that the axe had been laid to the root of the tree; that a great judgment-day of their nation was approaching; that not Earth only would be shaken, but also Heaven. He had prepared them by all His teaching for events of terrible import, events which would denote His coming and the end of an age. We may believe that He intended these words as one note of the trumpet which was announcing this day of convulsion and of doom. “It is not your Sadducees—the sect which you may fancy has defied God, and which has deserved His wrath,—it is not this which I tell you will be rooted out. It is that which bears on its banner the names of Religion and of God; it is that which believes itself to be the only plank between the nation and Atheism;—it is that which must wither and die, because it has not God for its root, because it does not derive its life and nourishment from Him.”

(2) But if the disciples needed this lesson, that they might not be startled by the fading away of much which had seemed to them fair and vigorous, they needed it still more that they might understand what there was in the Jewish soil which could not be rooted out,—what there was that would spread its fibres more widely, genially, and send out higher branches wherein the fowls of the air might dwell. The sect of the Pharisees, our Lord says, His heavenly Father had not planted. That had been established by men with a kind of notion that it might further His glory, that it might preserve His Name from being forgotten, that it might put down His enemies. Faith, or Religion, was taken under its patronage; it watched over the interests of the Divine Kingdom. It was not thus that the first father of the nation had felt, when he went forth into the land of Canaan, not knowing whither he went. He had obeyed a call from the Voice of God. He had believed in a Righteous Lord Who ruled him. He had trusted that Lord, and had risen up a righteous man. He kept his flocks, lived with his wife, brought up his children, fought his battles as a servant of the Unseen Protector. He bore witness of that Protector by doing the work that was given him to do. He expected that God would be with his children, as He had been with him. He expected that that seed would multiply as the stars in Heaven, and that in it all the families of the earth should be blessed. The Heavenly Father did plant this seed. He did establish a Family which was bidden to trust Him and to obey Him. Of such a Family the Father of the Faithful was the beginner; not of a Sect which was to proclaim itself as the worshipper of Jehovah, and therefore to exalt itself and not Him.

Nor was Moses the author of any such sect. His heart yearned over his kinsfolk who were bondsmen to a tyrant. Slowly and reluctantly he yielded to the conviction that the God of these slaves had called him to be their deliverer. He showed the tyrant that a God Who cared for outcasts was stronger than he and than his gods. He showed the slaves that the Lord God, the I AM, is a Deliverer. He bound them together in the name of that Deliverer, as subjects of a Law which no man could break without bringing punishment on himself. He taught them that the Unseen God desired to make them a brave and understanding people, to set them free from their own lusts, to restore them when they had transgressed. He taught them that God Himself was in the midst of them, binding them together as a Nation, and that they were none of them to doubt of His presence and His help. In one word, Moses was God’s instrument in planting a Nation of Israelites, which was to bear witness of Him as the One Living God of the whole earth. The Laws and Ordinances which he published denoted that this God was the King of the Land, and that the people of it were His subjects, and that it was a revolt from Him to worship any visible thing. Moses was not the founder of a Jewish sect, to testify against heathen sects, or in favour of Jewish rites and customs.

Again, we are told that David was called by God from being a keeper of sheep to be the shepherd over His people Israel. We are told that by defeats and victories, as a popular champion and as an outlaw, by the strength which was given him to rule righteously, by the punishments that were inflicted on him when he ruled unrighteously,—he was taught that he was at all times under a higher King, that he lived to bear witness of this King; that he could only bear this witness by judging between man and man, by putting down the enemies of the Nation, by uniting its members, by preparing the Gentiles to feel that the same King was reigning over them, and would one day be manifested to them as their Light and their Deliverer. That is to say, David was the man after God’s heart, just so far as he did not set himself to be the head of a self-created sect, but the called chief of a divine Nation, which was to expand itself till it comprehended all Mankind within its circle.

(3) And now the crisis was come—the disciples of Jesus were to understand that it was come—which would decide whether this Family of which Abraham the friend of God had been the first earthly father, this Nation which Moses had led out of the house of bondage, and which under David had acquired the consistency of a Kingdom, should end in a sect or in a number of sects, or should unfold itself into that Universal Society, of which they and all the Prophets had believed that it was the germ. The religious party among the Jews could conceive no higher blessing than their complete triumph over their enemies, than the putting down of all the notions and opinions which were adverse to theirs. What else could be desired? Would not religion then be exalted to its highest place? Would it not be the religion which they had learnt from the Divine books? Would not all that was irreligious, all heathenism, all imperfect, insincere, heretical Judaism, be banished into outer darkness?

(4) The disciples of Jesus learnt gradually from His lips that they were called and chosen out to preach to their own countrymen that the Son of David and the Son of Abraham had come to bind together in one Publicans and Sinners, Jews, Galileans, Samaritans; that this Son of David and of Abraham was the Son of Man, Who would at last gather all Nations into one; that this Son of Man was the Son of God, in Whose image men had been created, Who was the brightness of the Father’s glory, the express image of His person; Who was, like Moses, a Deliverer from bondage; Who, because He was a Son and not a Servant, could break all the bonds which Moses could not break, could fulfil the Righteousness of which Moses only testified. With this message they were to go forth, with this Gospel to Jews and Gentiles. As they bore it, they soon discovered that the natural and necessary antagonists of it were the sects; that Sadducees and Pharisees hated it equally; that they saw in it the destruction of the sect-principle; that they felt they could only maintain even a temporary ascendency by fighting with this rival as for life and death.

Then, when they found how mighty this sect-principle was, and what numbers were pledged to it, and how it identified itself with even the better thoughts and faith of some, so that they supposed everything must perish if that were to give way,—they must have recollected the words which had been once spoken to them: “Every plant, which My Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” As they saw how wicked these Jewish sects became in the latter days of the commonwealth, they will have become more sure that the sentence must one day be executed, though the cry, “How long, O Lord!” will have often been in their hearts and on their lips.

(5) They had still deeper reasons for raising that cry. They saw too clearly that there were other soils besides that of Judæa on which this old plant could thrive; that the root of bitterness from which it sprang could be traced in every Church which was baptized into the all-embracing, all-uniting Name. How terrible the discovery was to St. Paul, the first Epistle to the Corinthians may teach us formally and directly; every other of his Epistles, if we look into the heart of it. The more profoundly he entered into the meaning of the Gospel with which he was entrusted, the more he dwelt upon the Son of God as the destroyer of all walls of partition, as the Atoner of God and of Man, as the Head of a body fitly joined together and inhabited by a quickening, uniting Spirit, as intending to bring together unto Himself all things in Heaven and Earth,—the more startling did the contradiction seem, that party names and watchwords should be heard in His Society. Everything he spoke and wrote was aimed at this contradiction. If it was necessary to speak of himself or his fellow-workers, it was as of Apostles called out by God, sent with a message of peace to men. If he spoke of the members of the Church, it was to tell them that they were called to be saints.

This language strikes as much at the root of the sect-maxim as that in which he speaks of praying to the Father of the whole family in Heaven and Earth; as that in which he claims all members of the Church as members of Christ, and bids them not live unworthy of their vocation. For the sect-profession is: “We have bound ourselves together for the purpose of promoting certain great objects; we have adopted certain distinct badges of our faith; we are pledged to oppose that which interferes with it.” Christ chooses the Church to be a witness of His love to mankind. The sect chooses Christ because it is convinced that His doctrine is better than that of the founders of other religions; and then goes on to choose Cephas, or Paul, or Apollos, as having the most refined or satisfactory form of that doctrine. So the person of Christ becomes lost in certain opinions which the sects have taken up respecting Him.

(6) What had the Apostles to support them under the actual sight of this Sectarianism, unfolding itself in the Churches which God had enabled them to build; under the certain conviction that it would not cease in the ages that were coming, but would spread more and more? They had these supports. First, they were certain that what God had planted would not be uprooted, but would bear fruit from generation to generation. Christ would remain, however men might form notions concerning Him, and separate themselves into parties professing those notions. And they did not dare—they did not find it possible—to think of human society except as constituted in Christ. It was the confusion, the unbelief of men, to regard themselves as capable of fellowship and existence without Him, to suppose that they would congregate merely because they found solitude inconvenient. It was the business of Christ’s ministers to proclaim that there could have been no families, no nations, no social impulses, no laws, nothing to resist the selfish, self-seeking tendencies which each of us is conscious of in himself and complains of in his neighbours, if there had not been one living centre of the whole body of Humanity, one Head of every man. And therefore the Ministers of Christ were to assure themselves that the Church of Christ, which does not stand in the faith of men but in the Will of God, would continue to live and to bear witness of the order which He has established in His Universe, and of His purpose to bring all into one, whatever powers might threaten to crush it from without or to undermine it from within.

And, secondly, they were to remember the words, “Every plant, which My Heavenly Father hath not planted, shall be rooted up.” Whatever unions men have entered into for the support of some theories or opinions of theirs,—whatever plans they have devised in their wisdom to prevent the ark of God from falling, or, as they say in their coarse jargon, “to promote the interests of religion,”—carry in them the pledge and prophecy of dissolution. They may look plausible in the eyes of men; they may so work themselves into the substance of that plant which our Heavenly Father has planted as to appear inseparable from it; but they are of a different root. He can part them, though His servants cannot. He can bind the one in bundles to be burned, and gather the fruit of the other into His garner for ever.

(7) My brethren, I believe that no men ever needed the lesson which is contained in this verse more than we do, and that we should ask God earnestly to teach us how we may apply it. We are all, of course, ready enough to apply it to our opponents. Each party turns to the one which it wishes to overthrow, and says solemnly, “Yours is a plant which God has not planted, therefore it will be rooted up;” and proceeds as best it may, by honest means or dishonest, to the work of uprooting. The Protestant says to the Romanist, “Your Popedom was not planted by our Heavenly Father; it will be rooted up.” The Romanist says to the Protestant, “All your schools and parties were not planted by our Heavenly Father; they shall be rooted up.” Which is right? Which is using Christ’s words in the true sense? Which is abusing them? I apprehend that all are using them in their true sense; that none is abusing them. Each is proclaiming God’s judgment, which must stand, though heaven and earth pass away; each is a prophet of that which shall assuredly come to pass. And each is, to a great extent, justified in its allegations against the immorality and ungodliness which the system it denounces has produced, and is likely to produce. Only, brethren, it behoves us to remember that we are not to seek for the causes which lead to this immorality and ungodliness in other men, but in ourselves. We are to look for them where we can know their malignity, where we can be instruments in God’s hands of casting them out. There is a plant in your heart and mine which our Heavenly Father has not planted, and which must be rooted out. It is that same plant of self-seeking, of opinionativeness, of party spirit, which has shed its poison over the Church and over the world. It springs in us from that same root of unbelief in One Who is the Head of us all, Whose Life is the common Life of all, out of which all sects and parties have proceeded,—from that root of pride which has led to the amazing delusion, that God has not called us to be His servants and children, but that we are taking Him to be our Lord and Father. If once by His grace we are delivered from that presumption, we shall not doubt that He has taken care of His own name and His own kingdom in this earth of ours, however ignorantly His creatures have been setting themselves to defend and exalt one or the other. We shall not talk of a set of men who have preserved His faith and Church which He had suffered to go into ruin; but we shall believe that His Church has stood firm in His Son; that in every land He has testified of its existence by His ordinances, which no corruptions of men could set aside; by the light He has kindled in the hearts of unknown myriads, which no darkness of theirs could quench; by the witness which He has borne of a Unity among men, that no artificial arrangements could create, and no divisions could destroy.

(8) Holding this to be so, we shall remember that when Christ spoke to His disciples of the rooting up of the Pharisee sect, He added, “Let them alone.” The work will be done; but it is not yours to do. You cannot separate the tares from the wheat; you cannot distinguish between the man whom I love and the Pharisee whom I hate. If you try to destroy the sect which my Heavenly Father has not planted, you would destroy something of that Church which He has planted, which He is watching over, till it attain the full stature of Christ. We are to listen to the denunciations of parties against each other, and to acknowledge, with trembling, that they are all too well founded. We should not eagerly join in them, for we have another and nobler work which God has given us to do, the work of showing the members of parties that when their mud houses fall down, there is a house of God not made with hands, eternal in the Heavens, in which they may find a refuge. Above all, we must never be tempted to that greatest of all sins, the forming a new party for the sake of displacing or overcoming existing parties. That temptation will present itself in ten thousand forms. The Evil Spirit will come as an Angel of Light. He will tell us that it is not a new party we are to construct—that would be very wicked—but a protest against all parties; in fact, a larger Church, a freer and more expansive Christianity. Accursed sophist! We construct a Church! We lay a broader foundation for Humanity than God has laid in His Son! We invent a more comprehensive Gospel than the Gospel of the Ascension, that He has gone upon high, leading captivity captive, glorifying our Nature at the right-hand of His Father! Such an experiment would concentrate all the arrogance and unbelief of former sects into one grand, devilish scheme for our self-exaltation. The Society we assisted in forming would be the Society of Antichrist. No, brethren! in this sense of attempting to compete with parties, or imitate them, or supersede them, we must let them wholly alone. In another sense, we must never let them alone; we must be continually tormenting them. The Apostles did not uproot the sect of the Pharisees, but they preached the corner-stone of Humanity. Against that stone, this sect stumbled and fell. It could not confess a One Lord Who came to bind Jew and Greek, bond and free, Heaven and Earth, in one. It would maintain itself and its own traditions against man and against God. And man and God were too strong for it.

So it will be with all parties and all systems which have been formed by human wit, with ever so religious a purpose, and which our Heavenly Father has not planted. The compromises of statesmen and churchmen will not weaken them. Indifference and infidelity will give them a force which is not their own. But they will shrink and shrivel before the blast of the breath of His mouth, Who is the Son of Man and the Son of God, the Saviour and the Judge of the whole earth.