The Lamentations of Jesus
“Ye will not come tome that ye might have life.” — John v. 40.
The Messenger of the covenant speaks. Our eternal interests hang on his lips. How intently should sinners listen to the Saviour’s words! “Gather up the fragments that none of them be lost.”
Some of his words are commands, and some are warnings; some are promises, and some threatenings; in some he expresses approval, and in others he utters a complaint. Out of that one loving hea.rt proceed many thoughts embodied for our profit in human speech. The new man lives by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. Each is best in its time and place. None of them could be wanted in the full provision of our Father’s house.
The word of Jesus which we have chosen as our theme to-day is a COMPLAINT.
It would be an interesting and instructive exercise to gather from the Scriptures the complaints which were uttered by the Man of Sorrows in the course of his personal ministry, or by prophets and apostles in his name. We possess the Lamentations of Jeremiah; I would like to see in one view the Lamentations of his Lord.
In some points of view they are at once the grandest and sweetest of his words. Taken in connection with his person and his power, they distinguish him as “the Wonderful, the Counsellor.” A command befits the dignity of the Supreme; a threat sounds seemly on the Judge’s lips when criminals stand convicted at his bar; promises flow so naturally from the Shepherd of Israel, that they are counted on as things of course. All these words, as soon as we learn who the speaker is, we expect to hear; but the tender complaint takes us by surprise. It brings Emmanuel closer to us than his other words. It is not after the manner of men. Having the right and the power to punish, he pleads. When we need him, he speaks as if he needed us. Getting the homage of all unfallen creatures, he follows the fallen, beseeching them to be reconciled: “Ye will not come to me that ye might have life.” What a word is this! There is fire in it sufficient to melt a nether millstone heart, and make it flow down like water.
I shall submit a series of observations, all logically based on the text, and tending, cumulatively, at once to open its meaning and apply its power.
I. Men, before regeneration, and apart from the salvation of God, are in a state which Jesus counts and calls death. In this plaint of the Saviour the true condition of sinners is seen with awful distinctness. No room is left here for dispute or mistake. The speaker knows what is in man, and what is, consequently, before him. In the bosom of the Father Jesus knows the mind of God. He sees the end from the beginning. On the foreground of time he declares that death is men’s character; with
his eye on eternity he pronounces that death will be their doom. If we remain to the last where we are found at first, we shall be lost for ever.
This estimate of man’s state and prospects which the Redeemer has formed and recorded, is of vital importance at the -very threshold of religious knowledge and experience. Theoretically to deny, or practically to neglect it is to make him a liar, and accuse him of coming to the world on a needless errand, — wasting divine compassion in vain. If you do not accept his view of your own loss, you cannot possibly close with his offer of deliverance. If you begin by disbelieving his word, how can you end by confiding in his mercy? If you think the physician has not taken up the disease, how can you trust in his skill to cure it? It is death: down in the bottom of that deep, dark pit, must the foundation of our hope be laid.
Hear, O earth! for the Lord hath spoken. He who is the way is also the truth. Speaking of the condition which is common to all men, he calls it death. His word, spoken to Nicodemus as a sample of fallen humanity, has been recorded for our use: “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
II. In order to pass from death unto life, it is necessary to ccmie to Jesus. “I am the way,’’ he has said; “No man cometh unto the Father but by me;” “He that hath the Son hath life. He that hath not the Son shall not see life; but the wrath of God abideth on him.”
Observe, on our part it is not a word but an act. Suppose you were standing aloft on a platform that has been undermined beneath, and must fall within an hour. Suppose, further, that one who cares for you, and knows the frailty of your footing, should warn you of the danger, and point out the place of safety. You believe that the information is correct, thank your informant, and resolve to take his advice; but you linger, forget, and fall asleep on the spot. You fall and perish, although you were warned, and understood the warning, and believed the Warner’s word. Because you did not flee from the danger, it overtook and overwhelmed you; because you did not go to the place of safety, you were not saved. A ministering angel looking on, with no hand of flesh to touch the sleeper, and no human voice wherewith to penetrate his ear, might weep for the falling, but his tears could not arrest the fall.
A dead-letter knowledge, destitute of moving power, pervades and paralyses the Church. Oh, for the prodigal’s sense of need, and the prodigal’s simple, earnest, honest resolving! Having said, “I will arise and go to my father,” forthwith he arose and went.
Beware lest you lose your way in the mist which sometimes gathers round the expression, “Come to me.” A spiritual coming is as real in its nature, and as influential in its eflects, as any bodily coming can be. In the experience of life we all pass over frequently from one view and one confidence to another. When our fond expectations have on one side been bitterly disappointed, we let go the broken reed, and, perhaps cast it away with loathing from our pierced and bleeding hands. Thereafter, it may be, hope beams forth from the opposite direction Uke dawn in the east. The soul’s inward trust is transferred to a new object, and, as a consequence, the life course is reversed, as if a river by some convulsion of nature were made to flow backward in its bed. We come in spirit from one confidence to another, as really and as potentially as we come in body from one place to another. Nor is this a rare experience. It occurs to all, and it occurs often to each.
It may still remain true, in point of fact, that those have no distinct conception of what coming to Christ means, who have not themselves come to Christ. This ignorance, however, will not palliate the guilt, and, consequently, cannot modify the sentence of unbelievers. Every one of them has repeatedly, in his own experience, lost confidence in one person or thing, and come over to another. Out of their own lips, out of their own life, will they be condemned. It is not an incapacity to understand any such change; it is an unwillbigness to make this one.
It is not hearing or echoing the cry, “Come unto me,’’ that will save the lost. The lost must wrench themselves away from a whole legion of possessing spirits, and come to Jesus as simply, and as really, as the cured demoniac came to sit at his feet. To put off* the old man, and put on Christ, is as real as to put ofi” garments that are filthy and put on garments that are clean, and as great in its results as to put ofi* this mortal and put on immortality.
III. In order to life, nothing more is needed than to come to Jesus.
No preliminary qualification is demanded. No selection of persons according to their merits is made. None are excluded for the presence of one quality or the absence of another. To the dead one thing only is essential — that they should come to Christ.
Neither before conversion nor after it is any other thing necessary to life. It is, indeed, true that faith will not justify if it be found alone; but that is because if it abide alone, it is not faith. It is dead, and its deadness is known by its barrenness. All the living bear fruit; but it is their life that makes them fruitful, not their fruitfulness that begets their life.
To go conclusively off from self and all other confidences, and cleave to the Son of God as all your salvation, is all that is necessary to life. “He that hath the Son hath life,” It is not that the fruitful branch will get into the vine; but the branch which is in the vine will be fruitful.
The effects which the change produces have not produced the change. One of faith’s fruits, for example, is brotherly love. Hereby we know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. Here is fruit, which, by its ripeness and sweetness, proves that the tree has been made good; but the fruit-bearing had no place as a cause in changing the character of the tree. All labour to induce good fruit to grow on a bad tree, in order thereby to make the tree good, is labour lost. Make the tree good; then and therefore will its fruit be good.
It is not the coming to Jesus, and a better obedience, that together will bring life to the dead. Coming to Jesus is, itself alone, life from the dead, and a new
X obedience through the ministiy of the Spirit springs naturally from newness of life. This Physician knows both the malady and the cure. When he undertakes to tell what lies between the dead in sin and life eternal, he names one thing only, “Ye will not come to me,” If more were needful, this witness would not be true. The labour of the legalist to eke out his claim makes Christ’s word false, and therefore is more heinous than other sins.
IV. Those who are spiritually dead are not willing to come to Christ for life.
This seems strange. Even the Lord himself wondered at their unbelief It is the very mystery of iniquity, that man’s resistance to the divine proposal is great in proportion to the easiness of its terms.
The human nature of the question is graphically represented in the history of Naaman the leprous Syrian soldier. If much had been required, he would have done much; but to wash in Jordan was so easy to do, that he would not do it. Even in his case, however, there was something deeper than the pet of a spoiled child. That easy act was, from his view-point, one of the hardest sacrifices that could have been exacted. It did not require the removal of a mountain, but it required the crushing of national pride in the most painful manner, and at the most sensitive point. Abana and Pharpar, rivers of Damascus, were then, as now, accounted by the Syrians the sweetest, and freshest, and most sanitary that flowed upon the earth. To abandon these as worthless, and wash for healing in the Jordan, the despised stream of a despised people, — this was to crucify the flesh. It was to honour what he contenined, and trample in the dust what he honoured.
These things, although a portion of actual history, are an allegory in their design and use. The leper, divinely instructed to leave his native streams, in which he gloried, and wash for healing in the Jordan, which he despised, represents a sinner instructed to turn away from all his own appliances, and come for cleansing to the fountain opened in the house of David. In the proud answer of the heathen, when he spurned away the humiliating proposal, you may see reflected the inborn self-righteousness of the fallen, and their unwillingness to submit to the righteousness of Christ. Most men would do many difficult things, and do them gladly, for the sake of what they caU heaven; but they are unwilling to do the one easy thing which God requires. Those Jews to whom these words were at first addressed, came to the Scriptures thinking that thereby they would obtain eternal life. They were willing to toil through their task of so many chapters every day, and all their days: they would wear pieces of the Scriptures written on parchment bound on their brows, and wrapped round their bodies; but, while they superstitiously manipulated the Scriptures, they refused the Christ whom the Scriptures proclaim. The letter of the word became to them like the husks that once held the wheat after the wheat had dropped out ripe. These husks are not bread: there is no life in them. That life is in God’s Son.
The want lies in the will. The great Physician points to the seat of the disease. The sick should profit by his kindness and skill. Some malady which you do not understand troubles and alarms you. The physician is called. Thinking that the illness proceeds from a certain inflammatory process on a portion of your skin, you anxiously direct his attention to the spot. Silently, but sympathizingly, he looks at the place where you have bidden him look, and because you have bidden him look there, but soon he turns away. He is busy with an instrument on another part of your body. He presses his trumpet-tube gently to your breast, and listens for the pulsations which faintly but distinctly pass through. He looks and listens there, and saddens as he looks. You again direct his attention to the cutaneous eruption which annoys you. He sighs, and sits silent. When you reiterate your request that something should be done for the external eruption, he gently shakes his head and answers not a word. From this silence you would learn the truth at last. You would not miss its meaning long. Oh, miss not the meaning of the Lord, when he points to the seat of the soul’s disease: “Ye will not come.” These, his enemies, dwell in your heart. He stands at the door and knocks. If he enter, these must be driven out. Well, the change would be deliverance now and salvation for ever. What hinders? Only this — “Ye will not.” This is the key of the position. Around this spot the battle chiefly rages all through the battle-day. There the strong man armed most successfully holds his own. If that position is ever won, it yields only to Omnipotence: “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power,”
V. Jesus complains that they will not come to him for life. It follows from this, as clear and sure as the reflection of your face in a mirror, that he delights to give, to be, eternal life to the lost.
Here the Saviour opens his heart, that we may look in and see the love that fills it. I know not any scripture whence the compassion of Emmanuel more freely flows. This plaint, when interpreted aright, is more consoling than any promise — more solemnizing than any terror. When Jesus tells us what grieves him, we learn with certainty what would make him glad. The inference is infallible. No truth can be more plain or more sure than this, that the flight of sinners to himself for life is the chief delight of God our Saviour.
His love to us is wonderful, passing the love of mothers. When the sick child turns away with loathing from the mother’s breast, the mother grieves. It was her delight to feel the little one lying on her breast, and drawing its life from hers. To feel life flowing from herself into her babe constituted the keenest enjoyment which her nature could bear. When that flow ceases through the want of drawing, the giver grieves more than the receiver. In these deep things of nature, whether the old or the new,” it is more blessed to give than to receive.’^ Accordingly, when the stoppage occurs, the giver wails; the getter only is silent. The giver bears both sorrows. He grieves for the death of the dead, and for the loss of his own life-giving. As He was glad when a woman in the crowd so touched him as to get life thereby, he is grieved when the crowd gaze idly on and get nothing. The grief is double, and the gladness too. He bears, or enjoys, both his own and theirs.
Speaking, immediately before his departure, to those who fondly clustered round him, new born, or coming to the birth, he said, “I go to prepare a place for you,” All his delight is in being life and giving life to those who once were dead in sin. Observe how a mother prepares for her child. With unwearying pains she makes all things ready; and great is her grief if the preparation has been in vain — if the grave receive the infant from the womb, and the prepared cradle lie empty in her sight. Who can take the measure of that mother’s sadness when she feels the babe’s nourishment gathering in her breast, and knows that there are no living lips to draw it forth!
So grieves a more loving heart than hers, when the perishing heed not his call, and leave his provided mercy to lie waste. Hear ye him: “Ye will not come to me, that ye might have life.” He weeps for those who will not weep for themselves, and because they will not weep for themselves.
The upper side of religion is not a sentiment, but a fact; such al«o must its under side be. The one is Christ’s coming into the world to die for us; the other is our coming to Christ to live in him. Te work of redemption has been done, once for all, and the story of the fact is the gospel The Son of God took our nature. He lived, and died, and rose again, in a land to which one of us could travel in a few weeks. He bare sin not his own. He assumed his people’s guilt, and offered for it a sacrifice that satisfies divine justice, and washes it all away. He ever lives in heaven to make intercession for those whom he bought with his blood on earth. This act, overshadowing all others, fills up time and eternity. It is an act done, and the Bible is its history. But the lower and lesser side must be equally an act in the experience of every sinner saved. Mercy let down from heaven must be grasped by the needy on the earth while it is within their reach. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Brother, the plain doctrine of the Bible is, if you do not come to Christ, you miss the profit of getting life, and he misses the pleasure of giving it. When you neglect this great salvation, you mar the Saviour’s joy. On his side, which is all a giving, the work is finished; on your side, which is simply a receiving, it languishes. So far from grudging to bestow pardon and eternal life. He who has them at his disposal stands here to-day (‘’ Lo, I am with you always”) complaining that you will not receive them at his hands.
I was called lately to visit a young mother in deep distress. Her husband, who had been in confidential employment, had appropriated a large sum of money as it passed through his hands, and absconded. That weeping wife, with an infant on her knee and another at her foot, said, as she pointed to the window, “I sat at that window and looked for him until these men came back to their work in the morning.” A great longing lay in one little human heart that night. A greater fills the heart of God our Saviour, as he waits for sinners, and complains that few are coming.
Jesus, mediator between God and man, suffers two desertions, and utters two complaints. On that side, God forsook him; and on this side, man. The answer to the first desertion, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me V came in a strong cry from his dying lips; the answer to the second is written here, “Ye will not come to me that ye might have life.” The desertion by the Father in the utmost agony of the Son, was the greater — was inconceivably, infinitely great; but the lower and lesser — the desertion by sinners whom he seeks that he may save — pierces his heart more painfully, because the last desertion makes the first for that case of no avail. When we come to him for life, he sees, he tastes of the travail of his soul and is satisfied: when we refuse, he complains that so far his soul has travailed in vain. The disciples were glad when they saw the Lord, “risen from the dead:” the Lord is gladder when he sees disciples coming to himself, as doves to their windows.