Taking the Hazard

“Our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

acts xv. 25.

There is something very delightful in finding these two men bracketed together in a common roll of honour. Both of them are hazarding their lives for the Lord Jesus Christ, and the two men are strikingly dissimilar. Their characters are distinguished by a common loyalty, but their characteristics are strangely different. They are like two musical notes, both of them absolutely in tune, but expressing quite different qualities of sound. In many ways it would be difficult to find two men more unlike than Barnabas and Paul, and yet they both gambled with their lives and put them in hazard in their fidelity to the Lord Jesus Christ.

I am not surprised to have this news concerning the apostle Paul. I do not wonder that he sprang into the thick of dangers as naturally as the stormy petrel lifts her wings at the call of the tempest. For Paul was a born warrior. He was a “bonny fighter!” If a menace arose, or any threat was in the air, his spirit was refreshed. Where is there a record of any antagonist appearing where we find Paul nervously sulking away to his tent? The way of difficulty was always his favourite road. He loved the battle and the breeze. He revelled in close grips with stern wrestlers, and that day was always most welcome that promised a struggle from which he could extort the prize of victory. I do not, therefore, wonder that this man hazarded his life for the Lord Jesus, that he flung himself into the midst of a crowd of adversaries and that he staked everything upon his triumph.

But Barnabas was a very different type of man. I imagine him to be the kind of man whom we describe as a home-bird. He was more a man of the fireside. He was gentle, companionable, sweet. He was pastoral where Paul was militant. He was the son of consolation while Paul was a man of war. Where Paul would carry a sword, in readiness for an adversary, Barnabas would carry a wallet, filled with oil and wine, in readiness for any traveller whom he might find robbed and beaten on the road. He was a peacemaker, and he was great in the ministry of reconciliation. When Paul would have dismissed a man for cowardice, Barnabas would give him another chance. And so he was greatly distinguished by the softer and more genial virtues. I should not compare him to some splendid cedar, with branches like an athlete’s limbs, joyfully contending with tempests on the heights of Lebanon; he was more like a domesticated olive tree, quiet and gentle, laden with fruit, but having its home in the sheltered vale. It was the difference between Jonathan and David, between John and Peter, between Ridley and Latimer, between Gordon and Kitchener. And yet we are told that Barnabas also, the man of pacific virtues, the man who was clothed in softer and more retiring moods, heard the trumpet call of the hour, and hazarded his life for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. The olive tree revealed the strength and fibre of the cedar. Barnabas and Paul united their dissimilarities in a common and glorious venture. They hazarded all they had. They gambled everything for Christ.

Now, what was it that prompted them to take the hazard? It was the name of the Lord Jesus. They spake of the name where the name carried their fate. Our circumstances are now so different that we have to deliberately enlist the imagination and the historic sense to create the scene, and to give reality and life to the record. I can anywhere proclaim the name of the Lord Jesus, and the name is my security rather than my offence. I exalt it here in this house of prayer, and there is none to make me afraid. I can announce the name of Jesus like a herald in any open square or on any village green in the kingdom, and no menace would darken my steps. The fact of the matter is this — in Britain the name of Jesus has no religious rival, and when we “hail the power of Jesu’s name,” there is no contendent for His throne. You can trudge from Land’s End to John O’Groats, and you can mark the milestones of your pilgrimage by the proclamation of the name of Christ, and never in the entire journey will your life be in hazard, or your safety in peril, or your comfort broken. To merely declare the name of Christ in our day does not in any way recall the circumstances of the early Church.

For, look you, take an example. When Paul went to Ephesus to proclaim the name of Jesus there was another name there before him. “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” There was a rival on the field. The rival was mighty and predominant. The rival was revered. “Great is Diana of the Ephesians!” And to go into the city of Ephesus and stand up in some public square, and proclaim, “Great is Jesus of Nazareth,” was to carry your life in your hands, to arouse the enmity of rivalry, to stir the fires of pride and prejudice, and to enlist against you all the fiercest hatreds of religious passion. To say the name of Jesus where everybody else was saying the name of Diana, was to gamble with your safety and to put your life in hazard. And if some Ephesian, learning the name from you, went along his old ways singing something like this, “How sweet the name of Jesus sounds,” or this, “Jesus, the name to sinners dear,” or this, “The name above every name,” or this, “Jesus, the name high over all,” what then? What about Diana? What had that man to face? The pointing finger was outstretched, and the menacing cry was raised, Yah! Anti-Diana! Anti-Diana! Pro-Nazarene! If we would know what he had to face we must recreate and recall the use of phrases like “Pro-Boer,” or “Pro-German,” or “Anti-Patriotic,” or “Anti-Loyalist,” or any other circumstance where some hoary and accepted tradition has opened the armoury of its terrors, and marched against anyone who has questioned its right and authority. In such remembrance we shall recover something of the mood and temperature of those early days.... Well, then, in face of all this menace in Ephesus, how did the apostles fare? Let us hear again the simple record, “They magnified the name of the Lord Jesus “; “They hazarded their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

It is just here that we may see the intervening years between their day and ours melt away, and we may feel the essential kinship between Ephesus and London. There is now little or no hazard in proclaiming the name of Jesus. There is no Diana within our shores to awaken battle. But loyalty to the name of Jesus is as provocative in our day as it was nineteen hundred years ago. There may be no exalted, tinselled monarch who is jealous of our fine gold, but you cannot maintain your loyalty to Christ without facing

49 the menace of Mammon, or the irritation of Fashion, or the heavy inertia of Tradition, or the sleepless antagonism of the World, the Flesh and the Devil. Diana has vanished! I said Jesus had no rivals in Britain, and yet these are fierce contendents for her power. The way of Christian loyalty is on that road, the road of open venture. And the all-determining question is this — How far will we go in our religious devotion? What is the extent of our stake? How much will we hazard for Christ? Paul and Barnabas hazarded their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ.

For, after all, the real test of the value of our religion is found in the stake which we are willing to wager in the name of our Lord. In one of his books Donald Hankey has a very arresting phrase. It is this: “True religion is betting one’s life that there is a God.” I want you to notice the nature of the bet. You don’t bet your word that there is a God. You don’t bet ten minutes or a quarter of an hour a day that there is a God. You don’t hazard threepence a week that there is a God. You bet your life on it. That is the stake. “True religion is betting one’s life that there is a God.” I say that Donald Hankey’s phrase is very arresting, and very quickening, but there is not enough life and colour in it for me. I wonder how the apostle Paul would recast and remint the phrase. Most assuredly he would so remould it as to make room for Christ. I wonder if this might be anything like the refashioning: “The true Christian religion is betting one’s life that Jesus is the Son of God and the Saviour of the world, and hazarding everything for the honour of His friendship.” At any rate, however we may phrase the form of the venture, we may surely say that the Scriptures and Donald Hankey’s statement agree in this, that vital religion implies the element of hazard, of speculation, of splendid gamble, and that where there is no risk the so-called venture is dead.

Well, if that be so, we have a ready measure for testing the reality and value of our religious professions. We need not begin with prolonged investigation into the length and details of our theological creed. I have known men and women with a creed as long as your arm, but they had no more spirit of venture than a limpet. Their theology is like a mountain, but they have not the courage of a mouse. Our jealousy for orthodoxy is no proof at all of the value of our faith. What do we hazard for it? The measure of the hazard reveals the vitality of our faith, and nothing else reveals it. It is not revealed by our controversial ardour. It is not revealed by our stern guardianship of orthodox spoils. It is not revealed by the scrupulous regularity of our attendance at church and worship. No, all these may mean nothing at all. What do we hazard for Christ? What have we staked on the venture? How much have we bet that He is alive and King?... Twopence a week, or our life?... That is the test. Paul and Barnabas hazarded their lives for the Lord Jesus Christ. They staked everything on Him.

Now the New Testament teaches that the heart of faith is venture. If you will study the eleventh chapter of the letter to the Hebrews, that wonderful chapter where the heroes and heroines of faith are honoured and commemorated as in the gathered memorials of some venerable cathedral — if you will study the shining legends of that chapter you will find that every instance reveals a vista of venture. Some man or woman is taking a hazard. Every memorial begins with the majestic prelude, “By faith, so and so... .,”

and the sentence goes on to describe a splendid risk. Every emblazoned record preserves the renown of some man or woman who staked everything on the faithfulness of God. You pass from one to another, and they are all the stories of hazardous exploits. They are very dissimilar. In one instance a man is venturously putting himself at the head of a mass movement of his fellow countrymen, and he is leading them out of age-long bondage. In another instance a woman puts a bit of scarlet thread in a window, and risks her life in the venture. Yes, they are very dissimilar. The roads are very different, but they are all alike in the display of a common venture. And therefore do I say, on the authority of the Word of God, that there is no true faith without venture. Merely to hug a creed and to take no risk, is no more faith than to hug a time-table is to take a journey.

Look at it from another angle for a moment. Let us ask this question — What faculties are involved in the work of faith? Reason? Surely. Conscience? Yes, surely. Imagination? Yes. Emotion? Yes, and no; possibly, but not necessarily. You may have faith without emotion, as some bulbs open out their hidden glory without water, absorbing from the atmosphere the scanty moisture which they need. You may have all these other faculties at work, and yet faith may still be dead. Reason, conscience, imagination, may all be present, and yet there may be no splendid ventures of movement in the life. Reason may perfect her logical steps and processes. Conscience may become incandescent. Imagination may cherish nobler ideals. Emotion may awake in sacred and chivalrous desire. You may have all these, and yet you may not have the faith which will entitle you to be honoured in the ranks of those whose glories are recounted in the letter to the Hebrews. In those shining records you see not only reason in logical movement, and conscience surveying larger moral issues, and imagination scanning the outlines of new worlds, and emotion expressing itself in penitential word and tears, you see more than these. In the faith of these men and women it is life itself that is moving, and it is moving in glorious hazard and venture. Reason is there, and conscience, and imagination, but all these are vitalized by the vitalizing companionship of the will, and it is the will moving in venturesome journeys. If you have reason, and conscience, and imagination without the will, it is like having three finely upholstered railway carriages, but no engine. They are all right to stand in a station, and you can rest and sleep in them, but they are no use for a journey. Add the engine, and the whole is in movement, and you can go to the ends of the earth! Reason, conscience, imagination — now add will, a venturesome will! It is in the valorous movement of the will, staking everything upon her venture, that life is displayed in the vitality and regality of faith. These heroes and heroines are all in movement, and it is always the movement of hazard and gamble: “They stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire, escaped the edge of the sword, turned to flight armies of aliens. Others had trials of mockings and scourgings, yea, moreover of bonds and imprisonment; they were stoned, they were sawn asunder, they were tempted, they were slain with the sword.” What wealth of hazard is here! What prodigality of venture! And what is their venture? It is all hidden in this phrase, “By faith!” A risking will converts a passive belief into an active faith. Without hazard there is no faith. Faith without works is dead. Paul and Barnabas hazarded their lives for the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. They gambled every thing on His truth and grace.

And now let me add this word in conclusion. A religion without hazard is a religion which makes no discoveries. Nothing ventured, nothing won! That is the teaching of the world on other roads of experience. It is also the teaching of the Word of God. Nothing ventured, nothing won! Our hazards are methods of exploration, and they are the measures of our findings. No stakes, no winnings! Splendid gambling, splendid gains! What sort of gains? Read what Jesus Christ says about them. What sort of gains? Read what the Apostle Paul says about them. You may possibly remain as poor as a struggling village carpenter, but you will assuredly share the riches of the Son of God. Aye, but there is something even better than that. In the common sort of gambling no one grows richer except the winner. But where a man or woman hazards their life on the Christ everybody shares their gains. All men are better when any man sides with God. He sweetens the world for everybody else. Every noble venture brings

Heaven into the common road and makes it fragrant with the perfume of divine truth and grace.

How much shall we put into our religion? What shall we hazard? How much money shall we put into it? Shall it be less than we put on our backs, less than we put into the theatres? How much faculty shall we put into it? How much glory and strength? Shall we toy with it or shall we gamble our life in the business? What shall we put into it?

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were an offering far too small,

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my life, my soul, my all.