Who Knocks?
‘■’■Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will coine in to hitn, and will sup with him, and he with me.’’’’ — Revelation iii. 20.
‘ATE in the autumn, at dawn of day, you stand on a hill top, and cast your eye as far as the horizon along the valley that sleeps below. A pure white mist covers the whole plain, while here and there an eminence stands out like an island in the sea, and the mountains, covered half way up, stretch along the opposite side like a steep and rugged shore. All the more conspicuous and vivid seem the insular patches of visible ground, that the surrounding landscape is submerged beneath the placid milky sea. While your eye rests on these protruding spots, you know right well that all the surrounding space is dry ground, and will appear in fertility and beauty as soon as the covering mist shall have cleared away. The land is there, although for the present it is hidden from view, and when the sun is up it will show itself
This book of Scripture is such a valley at such a time. A veil, only partially and faintly transparent, hangs over its main bulk; but through the veil, even while it remains, some solid spots stand out distinctly visible, and soon the sun, rising in his strength, will roll back the covering, and display the whole landscape. God’s ways are in the deep, his footsteps are not known. His goings, however, are glorious all the while, although we cannot trace their windings. “What thou knowest not now, thou shalt know hereafter.” This cloud-covered valley will one day emerge into view; this prophecy will become a history. We shall better understand the Designer’s meaning when his work is done.
There is some ground to hope that even now the beginning of the end approaches. The stupendous progress of our own generation has gone far to prepare the way of the Lord. Events emerging now, or their successors germinating as thoughts in human hearts, may rend the veil of prophecy, and make bare the Almighty Arm, that we may behold its work.
In the meantime, while we wait for the development of the divine purpose in the fulness of time, we need not wait in idleness. We may now plant a firm foot on those portions of the field that are already visible. They are raised above the mist, that we may take immediate possession. You may read the signal displayed from these heights of the Apocalypse: Occupy these visible portions of the Word, till the Lord come to uncover the now concealed mysteries of his providence and his covenant.
We need not wait for the end o( the dispensation, in order to obtain sure and direct instruction and reproof from this book of Scripture. These epistles to the Churches are written in the vernacular of all lands and all times. They contain messages from the Lord to the Lord’s people on the earth. Those messages are not of any private interpretation. They are meant, like the sunlight, to fall in every latitude, and to stream down with quickening power on every generation of mankind. Well may we adopt, as we read them, the expression of the disciple’s glad surprise, “Lord, now speakest thou plainly, and speakest no proverb.” In these letters to the Churches, the types are employed for mercy, and not for judgment. They are glasses, rather than veils. They are fitted to display rather than to conceal the writer’s meaning. “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock,” &c. A metaphor, indeed, throughout; but a metaphor that helps the humblest reader to apprehend and retain the sense.
Let us now take this transparent word of the Lord into our hands, and apply it honestly to our hearts and lives.
I. Who stands? — An ancient patriarch, by keeping open heart and open house for strangers, was privileged to entertain angels unawares. This day we may obtain a visit of the Lord of angels, if only we will let him in. He who stands and knocks at our door is the Mediator of the covenant, God with us. Without him was not any thing made that was made. From hour to hour he is
Upholding all worlds by his hand, and writing all human history in his book. He has received authority to rule the world in its course, and to judge it when that course is done. We must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ. He is holy; but they are not the holy whom he came to seek. He pitied the unholy, and gave himself for them. He took our nature, that he might bear our sin, and deliver us from its curse. He became the way for the prodigal’s return to the Father: to-day he keeps the way open, and beckons the lost to hasten in.
2. How near he coi7tes. — “Behold, I stand at the door.” He has bowed his heavens and come down. We are not left to cry in despair. Who shall ascend into heaven.-* (that is, to bring Christ down from above). The Word — the Word who was with God, and is God — the Word who makes known the Father, is nigh thee, even in thy mouth. The Good Shepherd has left the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and followed this one wandering world. He has come very close to us — has become bone of our bones, and flesh of our flesh. We are not much moved by anything that is far distant. Whether the visitant be coming for judgment or mercy, we take the matter lightly, as long as he is far away. A distant enemy does not make us tremble, — a distant friend fails to make us glad. A whole army of enemies, many hundred miles distant, does not disturb our rest; but a single thief, known to be in the neighbourhood, may cause a sleepless night. When your protector is distant, you tremble at danger; when he is near, you breathe freely again.
How near the Son of God has come to us! He is our Ikother: he touches us, and we touch him, at all points. He knows all our hopes and fears. He wept with sorrowing sisters beside a brother’s grave, and wept over a guilty Jerusalem. He sighed like ourselves when sorrow lay on his heart, and was in agony when the sin of his people lay on his soul. How closely he comes into every thought of a human heart! — as closely as the sun gets into the bosom of every flower, — as closely as the air clasps every part of the earth and sea.
3. How far off he is kept. — “At the door.” The same expression tells both how near he comes to us, and how far we keep him away. He in great kindness comes to the door; we in great folly keep him at the door. The sunlight travels far from its source in the deep of heaven, — so far, that though it can be expressed in figures, the imagination fails to take in the magnitude of the sum; but when the rays of light have travelled unimpeded so far, and come to the door of my eye, if I shut that door — a thin film of flesh — the light is kept out, and I remain in darkness. Alas! the Light that travelled so far, and came so near — the Light that sought entrance into my heart, and that I kept out — was the Light of life! If I keep out that Light, I abide in the darkness of death: there is no salvation in any other. Here are two wonders: one, the Saviour’s condescending love; the other, a sinner’s self-destroying blindness. One wonder is, that the man keeps this visitor at the door; and another wonder is, that this visitor, kept at the door, does not go
away and leave the lost to perish. These two wonders seem equal, as the sky that you look down upon in the lake, and the sky that you look up to in the heavens, seem to be of equal depth. That we should refuse to let Jesus in, and that Jesus should not therefore instantly forsake us, are two wonders deep as the heavens both. Angels may desire, but will not be able to see, the bottom of either abyss.
4. He knocks for entrance. — It is more than the kindness of his coming and the patience of his waiting. Besides coming near, he calls aloud: he does not permit us to forget his presence.
To live without Christ in the world is not a sin of simple neglect: it is the sin of refusing his offer, and turning a deaf ear to his call. Although a messenger were at the door bearing the King’s commands to you, if he stood silent there, the guilt of neglect would be less. But silent this heavenly messenger does not stand. He has many ways of knocking, so as to make our house ring about our ears. By these words that I now speak, your Lord is knocking at the door of your heart. Each word, though spoken by a fellow-creature’s lips, is a stroke on your conscience by the dying love of Christ, to awaken, to arouse you. When an illness comes, there is. a knock; and when a friend dies, there is another. Sometimes these resound long in an empty, aching heart. The conversion of neighbours, especially if the awakening be sudden, and the awakened numerous, is another kind of knocking. Every case of a careless or profane person compelled to cry, “What must I do to be saved?” becomes a startling sound, reverberating through the hollow, uneasy chambers of your soul, and calling on you to turn and live. This is a method of knocking which the Lord has frequently and with great power employed of late years in the land. I have known secure and long-hardened worldlings awakened as it were by the sound of a going, when many of their neighbours were pressing in by the strait gate. They have been suddenly seized with a great dread lest all these should enter the kingdom, and the door be shut behind.
If two men are working together in the field, or two women grinding at the mill, and lightning from the sky strike one dead in a moment, the fact is an alarm of peculiar loudness to the one who is left. But there is a kind of knocking which, if less loud, is more deep — a knocking that seems to penetrate further into the conscience of the unconverted; and that is when of two persons who stood close together in one workshop, or one family, one is taken, not into sudden death by a lightning-stroke, but into sudden life by the quickening Spirit, and the other is left in cold, spiritual death. In such a case the unhappy survivor — that is, the one who remains where he was when his companion enters into peace with God — is sometimes smitten with such an over- whelming fear, that he cannot abide another day in the
City of Destruction. He, too, arises and flees for his life. Sometimes the sense of solitude is the knock which Jesus makes in order to gain admission. You are re-JVHO KNOCKS? 281
moved while yet young from your country and kindred. Among the strangers, indeed, a house is provided; but it is not a home. Its walls seem a prison around you. No mother’s hand places your food before you, and no father’s voice blesses it. Your heart feels empty, and in the vacancy the slightest whisper resounds like thunder in the hills: the still small voice of Jesus, stifled long, and drowned by the din of a bustling world, is articulately heard at last, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man will open, I will come in.”
But there is no limit to the instruments that may be employed in the earlier stages of conversion — in the Spirit’s ministry to convince, and awaken, and arouse. All are the servants of our Lord. He makes the winds his messengers, and flaming fire his ministers. The voices of nature may be employed to articulate Christ’s call in a deaf ear. The crowing of a cock was the alarm that awakened Peter, when he seemed to have sunk into the sleep of death. That simple sound was Christ’s knock at Peter’s heart — a knock that roused the slumbering sentinel, and procured admission for the outraged but still compassionate guest.
A man who has sold himself to vanity, looks over the hedge as he hastens along the road, and sees the cattle grazing peacefully by day, meekly returning home at night: let the prodigal who is fleeing from his father think that other creatures fulfil the end of their being, while he is thwarting the gracious purpose of God and making his own perdition sure. You look upon the fields when rain begins to fall after drought: the dry ground gladly drinks the water in, and hastily sends a white incense up to heaven — an offering of gratitude: let the sight remind you that your heart, although it is as dry and needy, does not thus willingly receive the Spirit from on high. Cast your eye upward on the clouds, and see them soaring, white and pure, on the bosom of the sky; and let that look carry home the terrible thought — Grovelling in the dust, impure, I am not fit to walk with God in white.
Knock! oh, all things knock at closed human hearts for the admission of their Lord. Death and life, angels, principalities and powers, things present and things to come, height and depth, and every other creature, — all unite in one long, loud cry, “Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light.”
5. Many tilings Jiinder the hearing. — Christ’s voice, although uttered at the door, is often not heard within. Other thoughts occupy the mind; other sounds occupy the ear. Either joy or grief may become a hindrance. The song of mirth and the wail of sorrow may both, by turns, drown the voice of that blessed Visitant who stands without and pleads for admission. I once went to a house in the country, to make a call of friendship. It was a bright afternoon at the close of an early harvest. I knocked at the door, and knocked again. No answer. As I stood, I began to observe the reason why my call was unheeded. A company was assembled within, and a joyous feast was going on. I heard them laughing; but they did not hear me knocking. I turned and went away. The inmates of the house never knew that I had been at the door. They lost nothing by that, for I had nothing to give them; but He who knocks at our door to-day, has eternal life at his disposal, and he has come to bestow it: if we are so taken up with our company and our enjoyments as not to hear him, we perish in our sins. “Hear, and your soul shall live:” the other side of that word is, — If ye do not hear him, your soul shall die.
6. Hear, and open. — Hearing alone is not enough. Felix heard, did he not, in his deafest ear t The word of God, as spoken by Paul, rang like the stroke of doom through all the chambers of his guilty conscience: he heard, but did not open. When he heard God’s voice without, he shut the door of his heart violently, and warned the visitor away. Ah, you will never open to let in an angry God! You must hear the voice of Jesus, and know the meaning of that blessed name, — “He saves his people from their sins.” It is not the wrath of God, but his mercy in Christ, that melts the iron fastenings, and lifts up these shut gates, that the King of glory may come in. A benevolent Christian went once to a poor widow’s door bearing in his hand the help which the poor widow sorely needed. He knocked loud and long, and went away at last without gaining admission. Why.’’ Was the widow not within y She was. Asleep, perhaps, and therefore did not hear y No; she was wide awake, and heard all. She sat cowering on the floor with her naked, hungry children, neither making answer nor Opening. Why? She was in debt, and thought the knocker an officer come to claim from her what she had not to give. Oh, if she had known who was knocking, and why he knocked, she would have opened eagerly, and at the opening life would have flowed in. It is thus - that the guilty refuse to open for Christ, even when they hear him knocking. They have hard thoughts of him. They think he comes to demand a righteousness which they cannot give, and to bind them over to the judgment because they cannot pay. God is love, and Christ is the outcome of his forgiving love to lost men. He comes to pardon sin, and gwQ you righteousness. He comes to redeem you, and save you. It is when you know him thus that you will open at his call.
“/ will come my — Ah, this is perhaps the secret reason why so few are willing to open! If he should offer to free from punishment, and open heaven at last, leaving every one to himself now, the carnal mind would more willingly open. It is his incoming and indwelling that are dreadful. People will open their church, or their confession of faith, to let Christ in; but into their heart they are not willing to admit him, until they become also willing to part with all that Christ hates. When he comes into his temple, the buyers and sellers who possess and pollute it will be driven out before him. His terms are, that when he comes in, vice and vanity must depart. Agree to his terms, my brother. Answer him, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”
“f <^^0’ ^^^(-ii open, I will come vl — These are the
WI/0 KNOCKS? 2S5-
terms. Although He who stands at the door has all power in heaven and on earth, he will not force his way in. This is clearly intimated by the very fact that he stands, and knocks. Unless the heart is opened spontaneously from within, it is never opened.
It is a very solemnizing thought, that in the first instance our need of Christ is the very thing that induces us to reject Christ. It is the sinfulness of man that makes a Saviour necessary; but it is that same sinfulness that makes the Saviour whom God has sent unwelcome. Because we are in a condition that needs a divine Redeemer, we refuse the divine Redeemer when he comes. It is the natural aversion of the unholy to the holy one.
When the word of God is pressed on the unclean conscience — when this word is effectual to the extent of compelling the man to look to his own guilt and to God’s righteousness, a great weight presses upon the man, but it does not induce him to open and admit the power that presses for admittance. In this respect there is a remarkable analogy between the gates of a human heart and the gates of a lock on a canal. Here is the lock: it is a great empty room. At its upper end are hucre foldinor-doors shut. Outside of these doors a great body of water presses steadily, heavily on. Shall we open the doors to admit the pressing water .^ Try. Here are long strong arms attached to the gates, for the purpose of moving them. Send fifty men to draw — send a hundred: they pull at these lever arms with all their might, but the doors do not open by a hairsbreadth.
Why? Are they clasped together by iron chains? No; in that respect they are absolutely free. In their construction no provision is made for any kind of fastening. They simply touch each other. What holds them then? It is the great, lofty, deep body of water, pressing to get in, that keeps the gates so inexorably shut. Empty the great chamber of the lock remains although the gates are left loose, because the weight of the water outside closes the gates far more effectually than clasps of iron. Because the chamber is empty it needs to be filled; but because the chamber is empty it will not, cannot open its doors to admit the pressing water.
Behold the picture of an alienated human heart — empty and dreary for want of the indwelling of God a Spirit — with God in Emmanuel now come nigh, and offering, pressing to come in and possess the empty space, to satisfy again the weary prodigal; yet that prodigal keeping his heart closed, although it is the Father of his spirit who is offering to come in — nay, keeping resolutely shut precisely because the Father of his spirit is seeking to come in. What then? Shall this dead lock last for ever? Will the human heart, because it is empty and alienated, for ever keep out, as by a law of its nature, that waiting, inviting Redeemer, whom it needs and yet dreads? No; many hearts are opening and admitting Christ. And we observe that although grext forces come into play — man resisting on the one side, and his Saviour pressing on the other — we observe that when the door is opened at last, the process is a soft and gentle movement jr//0 KNOCK’S? 287
The kingdom of God, when it comes at length, cometh not with observation. It is not the thunder and the earthquake, but the still small voice.
How is the door of the lock at length opened? Not by any vast mechanical pressure that overcomes the pressure of the water. In the secret depths of that hollow chamber, through channels skilfully and for a purpose constructed there from the first, the water is gradually admitted. The water which the closed door kept out springs up within and fills up by degrees the emptiness. The water which while outside pressed the door shut, now that it is inside leaves the door free to open; and oh, how easy it is to open these two-leaved gates, when the water behind them and within is as high as the water before them and without!
In a similar way is the closed heart opened to Christ. The love of Christ, seeking its way like water, oozes in through secret openings, — gradually more and more makes its way within; and when the heart is well filled with Christ inside, it no longer refuses to open for Christ. It is, after all, Christ that opens his own way in; and yet the man opens. When the Saviour has sent in much sense of his compassion to swell up within the once empty soul, the force of resistance gives way. The presence of Christ saying, “Open to me,” no longer locks the door. To that presence now the door gently opens; because in secret the soul has already been tasting that the Lord is gracious.