THE GIFT OF WISDOM
If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.
Jas 1:5 This is one of the many beautifully practical thoughts which fill and characterise St. James.
I. What is wisdom? Wisdom is not knowledge, though it involves knowledge, for the most learned persons are often the least wise. Wisdom is the right use of knowledge. Or take it thus. Wisdom is that union of the heart and head when right affections guide the exercise of talent. Or, wisdom is power to balance materials of good thought. It is the ability to direct intelligently and usefully the words we speak or the acts we do. Or, a step higher still, wisdom is the reflection of the mind of God. Christ is the reflection of the mind of God. Therefore Christ is wisdom. And the most Christ-like is the most wise. If you wish to understand wisdom, study Christ.
II. The guilt of foolishness. The memory of most of us need go very little way back to show the necessity for this understanding of God. What a very humbling thing it is to look back and think I do not now say how sinfully but how very foolishly we have again and again spoken and acted. And is foolishness much less than sin? Is foolishness not sin? Is it not the idle word for which we shall give account ? Was it not the fool who said in his heart, There is no God ? and the fool who said to his soul, Soul, thou hast much goods ? Was not it the foolish man that built upon the sand ? And were not the foolish virgins the virgins lost? If wisdom were not a thing covenanted, then might a man not be responsible for being unwise. But now that God has promised to give wisdom to every one who asks for it, it is no longer venial to be foolish. The silly word you say, and the foolish act you do, is left guilty, and without excuse.
III. Asking for wisdom. To obtain wisdom, the first thing you have to do is to recognise it to be a gift. Wisdom seems to be such a natural development of mind that we cannot easily get rid of the idea that if we only think enough think long enough and think deeply enough, we shall think ourselves into wisdom. But to the wisdom such as God gave Joseph in the sight of Pharaoh that wisdom of which some asked, Whence hath this man wisdom? the wisdom which is first pure the wisdom no science, no self-discipline, no effort will secure the road is prayer, only prayer, communion with the Unseen. Now the way to ask is practically twofold. There is making it the subject of your stated prayer, and there is also the secret prayer in the heart, darted forth just at the moment when the emergency occurs and the need is felt; and it is of this ejaculatory prayer that St. James is chiefly speaking.
Rev. James Vaughan.
Illustration The Church asks for your energy, your zeal, your self-devotion. She asks in the world s name for examples, signal examples of holy consecrated life. She wants men to spend themselves and be spent with whole-hearted, patient continuance in well-doing. She wants workers who are wise of heart. Christ is wisdom; live in His presence; draw daily out of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge which are hidden in Him, and you will not fail, nor be finally discouraged. They that be wise with His wisdom shall turn many to righteousness; shall share in the glory of His perfect kingdom; shall shine as the stars for ever and ever. Go, then, whatever your gifts may be, and lay them down at His feet; lay down the very faculties of thought and feeling; die there to the world, and rise to live for Him alone. And ask in faith for wisdom. Our very prayers fail often in wisdom, but our refuge is in God, Who gives to all men liberally and upbraideth not.
Forgive our wild and wandering cries,
Forgive them where they fail in truth,
And in Thy wisdom make me wise.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
THE WISDOM OF GOD Ask what I shall give thee. So spake the still small voice in the deep silence of the Divinely given dream. And the answer was worthy of the man and the moment. One great want that lay heavy upon Solomon in the daylight of reason followed him behind the veil of darkness into the uncreated light of the Divine Presence. He slept, but his heart was wakeful, alert, quick with high sensibility. His answer was: Give me wisdom, that I may go out and come in before this people. And the prayer was answered, for when Solomon awoke from his dream to his duties he found himself established in his kingdom. His people saw, we are told, that the wisdom of God was in him. Shall not this inspiring vision find its counterpart here to-day?
I. And what is matter of strong encouragement is this viz. that whenever such things take place, not only does the gift come that is asked for, but it comes liberally ; it comes from One Who in His giving is moved only by His essential nature to pour out the blessing as soon and as fully as His children are ready to receive it. Liberally, I said. The word St. James uses occurs but this once in the whole New Testament. The same English word is found once in the Old Testament (
Deu 15:14), but in a different connotation; so here in this one place it stands, a measure immeasurable of Divine response to those who ask in faith that wisdom which they find lacking in themselves. Perhaps he had in his mind the gift of a fool He will give little and upbraid much (
Eccles. 20:15) so he turns from the sometimes ungracious gifts of men to the unfailing largesses of God.
II. There is yet a further encouragement. The man who in presence of a great duty to which he inwardly trusts that he is called, whether it be to a throne as a monarch, or in the Church of God to rule or feed God s flock, he, if his prayer is for wisdom, will kindle in other hearts the same desire, and a multitude of prayers will go up with his and bring yet larger answers down. No sooner had Solomon s prayer been answered than there began to enter into prayers and proverbs, into sacred literature devotional and didactic this thought of wisdom as God s great gift to men. It became their guide of life. It becomes more and more familiar as we turn over the pages of what we call, in the Canon of Scripture and out of it, the wisdom literature. Wisdom was the principal thing. They had no other philosophy of life. It was practical; it was binding; it was a law of conduct; it had right instincts; it built up character upon true foundations. The fear of God was its beginning; the approval of God its end.
III. But when in process of time it became stiff and rigid and mechanical, as, in all rites and rituals, rules and regulations may, another yoke was needed easier than that which Scribes and Pharisees had wrought out. The image of wisdom rose above the law, disengaged itself from the law. The law at its best was given by Moses, but Scribes had made a hedge around it, law around law. It could not quicken; it could not give life. Then the nobler souls remembered Wisdom and heard her invitations. They felt her attraction, and tried to account for it. Wisdom was their law, and they followed the clue till they grew prophetic and invested wisdom with personality. She was to them an image of His goodness, an effulgence of the Everlasting Light, an unspotted mirror of the working of God. Then again the prayer of Solomon went up to God; then again the large, the liberal answer came down. O God of my fathers, the prayer rang, Who … by Thy wisdom formed man, give me wisdom, her that sitteth by Thee on Thy throne.… Send her forth out of the holy heavens, and from the throne of Thy glory bid her come. Let her toil with me. Let her teach me what is well pleasing before Thee. She shall guard me in her glory, and in my doings she shall guide me in ways of soberness.
So ran once more the prayer for wisdom for wisdom to live for God, for wisdom to live in His light and in His love, and nearest approach to the language of Pentecostal clearness Whoever gained, the prayer went on, the knowledge of Thy counsel except Thou gavest wisdom, and sentest Thy Holy Spirit from on high?
Rev. Chancellor Edmonds.
Illustration The Church has, in her long career, left few niches unoccupied for distinguished men to fill. What she needs most in her young ministers, what she prizes most in her most honoured and trusted leaders, is not their learning, highly as she prizes it, but their wisdom, heavenly wisdom, the thing in them which of all others is likest God. Learned, in any large sense of learned, you may never be; but wise wise unto salvation wise to win men to their salvation, you all may be. It is good to know, it is better to be wise. In you there are, I trust, these
Ardent, unquenchable fires,
Not with the crowd to be spent,
Not without aim to go round
In an eddy of purposeless dust.
THE WAVERER
He that wavereth is like a wave of the sea.
Jas 1:6 The picturesque imagery of this Epistle discloses the mind of one who communed with God as the God of human life, and also as the God of nature. The practical, almost proverbial mould of instruction which the writer employs gives to many of the sentences the familiar shape of the so-called Sapiential Books of the Old Testament. Wisdom is the Christian grace especially specified (
Jas 1:5). This is a thoroughly Hebrew sentiment.
I. The sign of instability and purposeless motion. The soul that is not settled in a firm faith is like this storm-driven wave, driven at the mercy of the wind, heaved to and fro by every tide, in continual and wasting agitation. Isaiah uses this illustration as representing the life of the sinner (
Isa 57:20), but here St. James is speaking of the weakness which is the result of uncertainty. He that wavereth he that is doubting and of two minds, hesitating, undecided, vacillating not perhaps willingly and knowingly a hypocrite, but sunk in the duplicity of trying to serve two masters; not wicked and denying God or forsaking truth altogether, but halting between two opinions, weak in faith, not relying on God s will. Woe to fearful hearts and faint hands, and the sinner that goeth two ways (
Ecc 2:12). Unstable in all his ways, disorder, confusion, unrest are his portion in life.
II. This unrest is one of the familiar characteristics of modern life. In all ages of transition, not knowing one s own mind is the trap that fronts every thinker and all that seek for righteousness. Fulness of faith and devotion seem impossible amid the complexity of thought and feeling. There are so many aims, so many gospels, so many answers to the questions of life; and side by side with this genuine wish for truth, there are so many human beings who seem to live quite contented without any answers to the questions at all, even unwilling to be disturbed by the asking of them. These souls, who believe in nothing, and want to believe in nothing, satisfied with their worldly state of mind, show an attitude of perfect indifference to the reality of things in this world or the world to come. But the soul that wills to know, that wishes to win, that cannot live without arriving at some truth, without touching the hem of the vesture of God s garment of life, this soul must find some certain shore and limit in the ebbing and flowing ocean of human existence.
III. The causes that lead to the wavering and the disturbance are suggested by the Apostle. Let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. He who asks without a full trust in God s eternal steadfastness will naturally find his mind full of many misgivings.
(
a)
Want of reliance in God. Without the conviction that the universe is being rationally and morally governed by a loving Creator, the meaning of the world is largely unrealised. Without the conviction that the individual life is under the particular, discriminate, and ever-loving eye of a watchful Father, the whole complexity and entanglement of the things of life seem ruled by a godless, hopeless chance.
(
b)
Selfish dissatisfaction. However pleasant outward circumstances may be, the question comes at times to all persons in all conditions and in all ages, Why am I where I am?
(
c)
But those only ask in unrest and confusion who rack their minds with a false opinion of their worth and the state of life into which God has called them.
Illustration Let even a polished man, says George Eliot in
Silas Marner, get into a position he is ashamed to avow, and his mind will be bent on all the possible issues that may deliver him from the calculable results of that position. Let him live outside his income, or shirk the resolute honest work that brings wages, and he will presently find himself dreaming of a possible benefactor, a possible simpleton who may be cajoled into using his interest, a possible state of mind in some possible person not yet forthcoming. Let him neglect the responsibilities of his office, and he will inevitably anchor himself on the chance that the thing left undone may turn out not to be of the supposed importance. Let him betray his friend s confidence, and he will adore that same cunning complexity called chance, which gives him the hope that his friend will never know.
CONSEQUENCES OF SIN
Sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.
Jas 1:15 It would be easy to draw a glaring and harrowing picture. I might take you to our abodes of infamy and wretchedness to our prisons and our hospitals; and to many a sick and dying bed. I might take you to our own streets, of a night, and to the crowded dens of drunkenness and debauchery! And I might tell you to read there what is sin! and its consequences! But it will be more practical to trace only some of the results of such sins as we know belong, the more closely, to ourselves.
I. Every allowed sin kills the power of the perception of truth. Sin weakens, and tends to destroy, every power we possess. Physical sin weakens physical strength. And both physical and mental sin weaken both mental and spiritual powers. And if the weakening process is allowed to go on, it will weaken till it kills! It will go on till it brings forth death!
II. One habitually allowed sin will deaden the grace both of the mind and the heart, till, by more and more withering processes, the grace of both will die! Why are so many young men and young women prone to infidelity? Why have they grown sceptical of old and familiar truths which were dear to their parents and were once dear to themselves? Look at their lives, their worldliness, their frivolity, their private habits, their secret or their open sins! There is the reason. Infidelity is a deadening thing. And sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth that death.
III. Sin is destructive of all pure love. A pure and chaste and holy love will not live long with any indulged evil passion! True love is too sacred a thing to stay in a breast with wrong deeds or wicked actions! The wrong love kills the good love. It brings forth death ; and the good love dies.
IV. Sin will paralyse, if not the will, certainly the power, to live to any good purpose. The consciousness of sin will always come across his mind, when he is speaking, checking him, incapacitating him. Who am I to speak? I, who am living myself so sinfully! And that conviction will stop his mouth; it will make his words hollow. And men are keen judges of each other. They very soon discover what is unreal in all your fine talking. And can God bless any effort that such a man makes? He may speak as an angel; but God has not sent him. This sin will turn his most living words to death!
Illustration Sin is not finished yet. All sin has in it a necessity to increase. Sin makes sin. One barrier broken down, the stream of evil rushes on with a greater force; and another barrier giving way, the current swells, till it scarcely knows a check. But what will sin finished be? What will it be when, stripped of its soft and beautiful colours, it stands out, without a mask, in its true and native form? What a monster will every, the least, sin look beside Perfect Holiness! It will need nothing more to make that sin eternal punishment! eternal death!
THE GIFTS OF GOD
Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with Whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.
Jas 1:17 Thus does the Holy Apostle St. James, to whom, after the Resurrection, had been vouchsafed a special manifestation of his beloved Lord, delight to honour the Great Benefactor of the human race before Whom his soul bowed down in reverent worship.
I. God is the Father of lights.(
a)
The lights of the natural world, the sun and moon and stars shining brightly in the heavens own Him as their Lord, and bear testimony to their Creator by their unfading beauty and their wonderful order from generation to generation.
(
b)
The light of reason and the light of conscience speaking with a still, small voice within the soul of man compel him to turn his eyes heavenward, if he would learn in comfort and in hope the secret of his origin and his destiny.
(
c)
The light of the prophets of old and the precepts of the law, sometimes obscured by clouds, sometimes hidden by darkness, bursts into a perfect blaze of splendour in the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
(
d)
There is the light, too, that shines from the heavenly city to guide the pilgrim as he toils along; and if, sometimes, the clouds and mists that arise from earth cause its rays to be indistinctly seen, yet still, if eagerly and enthusiastically welcomed, they are bright enough to guide him to his home.
Of these and others innumerable, God is the Father.
II. With God there is no variableness. He is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Surely we can grasp the thought with eagerness and ecstasy, that God will never change as the long ages of time roll on to eternity. In the midst of all the vicissitudes of our life below, we may, if we will, count upon the love and protection of One with Whom there is no variableness, Who loves unto the end. Neither with God is there any shadow of turning. We, as we turn from place to place, from thought to thought, are for ever creating around us new shadows which darken our way. Each soul has his own shadows which delude and dismay. But with the gift of immortality is planted within the breast a lively hope that some day, by the power of the Cross, we may abide in the presence of the Father of Lights, when the day shall break and the shadows flee away.
III. In one continual stream come down, in rich abundance, the good and the perfect gifts.(
a)
Some are national gifts, for which nations are responsible, for which multitudes, in united worship, should render thanks upon their knees.
(
b)
And there are individual gifts, coming down from the same source, common as the shadows of rain or the shining of the sun. How few of us sufficiently acknowledge their origin, or break forth into praises for the royal bounty.
(
c)
Then there is the gift of Love, which helps us to bear half the burdens of a toilsome life and sweetens half its many sorrows. The unloving taste not some of the purest joys in which the soul may delight itself and live. There is something imperishable in the joy that arises from the performance of deeds of love to those who are struggling beside us, in whom we recognise the faded image of the God of Love; brotherly love so cleanses and beautifies the soul as to lift it up into a purer life which the changes and chances of mortality can neither defile nor destroy.
These are but a sample of the good and perfect gifts which are continually coming down from above, giving unto life all that is worth living for. There are thousands of other gifts which each heart can number in gratitude for itself. Intellect, courage, faith, hope, peace, competence, and plenty: all are presents from the royal bounty meant for use and cultivation by every soul upon whom they are bestowed.
IV. The day is surely coming on when the Divine Giver shall demand each gift back again with usury; the fruits of each must be manifested in a life dedicated heart and soul unto Christ; each quality of excellence and virtue must be brought to the foot of the Cross and offered there in the devotion of self-sacrificing love; then shall the Father of Lights recognise and receive the disciple of His eternal Son and welcome him to the joy of his Lord.
Rev. W. E. Coghlan.
Illustration Whatever God gives partakes of His own immortality. Heaven and earth shall pass away, but My word shall not pass away. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but My kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of My peace be removed, saith the Lord. How tender, how happy, how holy, how safe must that gift be, which is identified with God Himself, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning. A gift for ever and ever! Oh! it is a poor thing to have a gift which cannot last. At the best it will only be for a few short years. That kind of gift does not suit a man. It does not suit his immortality! But this gift matches his whole being. It is for ever and ever.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
GOOD AND PERFECTIf anyone should think that to say, Every good thing is a gift from God! is a mere truism, and that, therefore, it does not need any special consideration, let him remember that a truism, for this very reason, because it is so simple and so true, demands the greater care lest we pass it by unheeded and undefined.
I. What is a gift? A gift is something that expresses the mind and betokens the love of the giver, and at the same time brings happiness to the receiver. What then is a good gift? That which fulfils these two requisitions. And what is a perfect gift? That which entirely fulfils these two ends.
II. Is there any difference between a good gift and a perfect gift, or are we to take it only as a repetition of the same thought, expressing the same meaning, rising to the same climax? A perfect gift is one which exactly fits the mind and the taste of the receiver; expresses the whole heart of the giver, and can never be taken away. A gift which has in it perfect adaptation and eternity. Now the world those who do not love God have the good gift, many, many a good gift ; but God s own dear children, they have the perfect gift. And why? The gift fits, and they feel it fits their whole being body, mind, and soul. They have the gift and the Giver; and both the Giver and the gift are inalienable for ever and ever.
III. Some of us have many gifts. They are all from above, from the same Father; but from the want of the light which should reign in that gift, the gift is valueless. Nay, more, it is an unfilled possibility; it is the handle of temptation; it turns to self, to pride, to sin. The gift is abused; and in proportion as the gift is good and perfect, it becomes evil, and it incurs the heavier gift of condemnation. But it is right to use every gift when it comes; and it is one of the strongest arguments you can ever use with God: Oh! God, Thou hast given me this great gift, now, because Thou hast given me this great gift, give me also the light to understand it, to hold it, to keep it, to use it, to enjoy it. Lord, sanctify both the gift and me by that light to Thy glory.
Illustration In the collect for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity, God is pronounced in the collect to be the Author and Giver of all good things. Whether this was intended or not, the phrase is a most exact echo of the words of St. James in the text. There is a splendid movement in the preamble of the collect, where God is described not only as the Author and Giver of all good things, but the Lord of all power and might. It is impossible not to feel how much we owe to Cranmer and his associates for this preamble. It is true that for this magnificent language there is a small Latin basis, but the change which has been made in it amounts to transformation.
(THIRD OUTLINE)
THE SOURCE OF ALL BLESSING I. The Sublime Names of God.(
a)
The Father. This is comparatively a modern name for God. He was first known as the Elohim; then as Jehovah; then as the Lord; now as the Father.
(
b)
The Father of Lights. Of sun, and moon, and stars. God is light. He is the Sun not of a system, but of all worlds the great Fountain and Dispenser of light and heat, of power and life, of order, harmony, and perfection. All is unclouded splendour. His Son declared Himself the Light of the world ; and figuratively, He Himself sows light for the righteous, and gladness for the upright in heart.
II. The Infinite Kindness of God.(
a)
He is the sole Author of every good gift. In looking at experts or men of genius, we say that their skill and genius were born with them, and therefore natural to them. Granted. But all was God-given. Who dowered Bezaleel (
Exo 31:2-5), and Hiram (
1Ki 7:13-14), and Sir Isaac Newton, and Lord Bacon, and other famous men, with their extraordinary gifts? God. Nay, who bestows on ordinary men their ordinary gifts? God (
Isa 28:24-29).
(
b)
He is the sole Giver of every perfect boon. Pardon, and peace, and purity. Christ is God s unspeakable gift (
Joh 3:16). He came out of the bosom of the Father (
Joh 1:18). Through Him God gives us every blessing (
Rom 8:32).
III. The Unchangeableness of God.(
a)
His perfection prevents change. And if so in His nature, so in His character, so in His feeling, so in His covenant. Men change; sinners alter for the worse; and even saints have their fluctuations not so God. I am the Lord, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed.
(
b)
His absolute perfection prevents even the shadow of a change. There are changes in the sun, which, in a sense, may be called the father of lights. It rises and sets at various times throughout the year; or rather, by the revolution of the earth, it is ever either increasing or decreasing its light. But God has never, age after age, the least variableness, or even the faintest shadow of turning ! How awful yet blessed this assurance! How full of consolation to the heirs of promise (
Heb 6:17-18).
Illustration So far as the management of the material universe is concerned, God has declared unmistakably that He has no favourites. He has given to material forces a law which cannot be broken. We trust Him more because there is no devilish element in nature, no wild impulse rushing with eruptions of curse and blessing into space. We begin to see that nature is but a word, is but a figure of speech, is but a fiction of imagination, is nothing in the world but a reverent synonym for the sum total of the laws which God has impressed upon His universe.
THE POWER OF THE PULPIT
Of His own will begat He us with the Word of Truth.
Jas 1:18 Simon and Andrew called to be fishers of men were not unknown to the Lord Jesus, nor He to them. They had seen Him as the Lamb of God; they had visited His home and held communion with Him; and they had witnessed some of His miracles. The call was not without preparation, nor was it unreasonable. The promised training to catch men was attractive. The subsequent miraculous draught of fishes was an encouraging sign of success.
I. Not only are the faithful ministers of Christ fishermen, but He who teaches how to fish is in the boat with them; the Gospel net is His own; and every now and then the order goes forth, Let down your net for a draft, while the answer of faith is given, At Thy word we will let down the net. And men, often the most unlikely, are caught and laid as a sacred offering at the feet of Jesus, meet for the Master s use. The commission of the Apostle Paul is another case in point. Prepared by a vision of the Lamb of God, like the early Apostles, he was called as follows: I am Jesus Whom thou persecutest. But rise and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness. Now observe what a minister and witness in our Lord s estimation really is both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles, unto whom now I send thee, to open their eyes and to turn them from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which are sanctified by faith that is in Me. In other words, St. Paul was to catch men the end of his ministry was the conversion of souls unto God.
II. St. Paul s own ministry is in accordance with this commission. Some persons have thought that he made comparatively little use of the sacraments, because they are so seldom alluded to or mentioned in his writings and speeches. But the fact is, the primary idea in his mind was, not so much the benefits of the sacraments to believers nor the privileges and blessings of those who were already saved, but the preaching of the Word, the reaching of the conscience, the will, the affection, the reasoning powers, by the Gospel in other words, the bringing men into that status outside of which sacrament and Christian advantages were valueless. What he did himself is what he ordained others to do. Timothy was to preach the Word. The manifestation of God s Word through preaching is the basis of His Epistle to Titus. It is the same with the other Apostles. The truth is an expression which serves as a special feature of St. John s writings an expression caught from the Saviour s lips. St. Peter and St. James ascribe every blessing to the Word. St. Jude points out that heresy and viciousness of life were owing to a neglect of the words which were spoken before of the Apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ.
III. Our Lord not only preached the Word Himself, but He showed from the Parable of the Sower that the primary work of His disciples was to sow the seed of the Word. Nay, the sower who soweth the Word is our Lord Himself. So St. Matthew tells us. His disciples act as His deputies. He is still the Sower, by whatever instruments or agents he works. Now it is admitted, in some sense and in some cases, that there is a necessity for conversion. But all do not rightly use the one great means by which it is to be effected. The Bible is not in the hands of our people, nor in our churches, nor in our day and Sunday-schools as it used to be. So-called Church teaching is not always sowing the seed of God s Word. Vague utterances will never really touch or change a heart. To speak about conversion is not to convert. Moreover, conversion is not a mere resuscitation of grace, nor a living up to privileges, nor an outward reformation of life. It is an inward change effected by the Holy Spirit of God a new birth, manifesting itself in a new life; and the instrument by which, in the case of adults, it is effected is the Word of Truth. To give the Bible, therefore, a secondary place, or to misstate the need of such a conversion and the means by which it is brought about, is never to attain the great end of the Christian ministry.
IV. No section of the Church of England makes light of the pulpit. But preaching, however interesting, however eloquent, however widely instructive, is not always preaching that will convert. Sermons without any Christ in them, without an adequate estimate of man s sinfulness, without a declaration, clear and unmistakable, of the design and effect of the atonement, may charm the ear, please the imagination, quickly while away the time, but they will never turn men from darkness to light nor from the power of Satan unto God; nor will sermons about the Church, her apostolicity, her catholicity, her energy and zeal; nor yet will sermons with the mere shibboleths of evangelical truth. If the great end of the Christian ministry be the glory of God in the conversion of souls, we may well ask, Have we aimed at or in any degree attained this glory? Exercising the very widest charity, we must say of a town, of a parish, of a church, how few are really on the narrow path of life and how many are on the broad road of destruction. I pause not to consider whether we and the godly in our congregation who are bound to aid us by prayer and sympathy are to blame in this matter, for I do not look back now to the past, but onward to the future that lies before us. Let repentance deal with the past; let hope animate us for the future.
V. There are three subjects God s ministers ought incessantly to mention at the throne of grace.(
a)
Personal sanctification according to the covenant of grace and the prayer of our great Intercessor Sanctify them through Thy truth, Thy word is truth.
(
b) A life for God s glory.
(
c) Ministerial joy. Ministerial joy is more than the joy of large congregations, crowded communions, and satisfactory offerings of money or service, very charming and encouraging as they are in their proper places; it is the joy of noting the signs of the conversion to God and of the sanctifying effects of that conversion. I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.
Rev. Canon McCormick.
Illustrations(1) When Queen Elizabeth tried to check Archbishop Grindal in his preaching zeal, he wrote, Public and continual preaching of God s Word is the ordinary means and instrument of the salvation of mankind. St. Paul calls it the ministry of reconciliation of man to God. By preaching of God s Word, the glory of God is enlarged, faith is nourished and charity is increased. By it the ignorant is instructed, the negligent exhorted and incited, the stubborn rebuked, the weak conscience comforted, and to all those that sin of malicious wickedness the wrath of God is threatened.
(2) The primitive bishops were the greatest preachers of their time. It is to preaching that Christianity owes its origin, its continuance, and its progress; and it is to itinerating preaching (however the ignorant may undervalue it) that we owe the conversion of the Roman world from Paganism to primitive Christianity, our own freedom from the thraldom of Popery, in the success of the Reformation, and the revival of Christianity at the present day. No one can read 1 Corinthians 1,
Romans 10, or our Lord s commission, and the action of our Lord and His Apostles, without seeing the importance of preaching.
A RULE OF CHRISTIAN CAUTION
Let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak, slow to wrath.
Jas 1:19 In trying to lead a Christian life we have two main things to do. We have to keep trying to grow better, to be good, and to do right, to grow more holy, more pure, more charitable, more prayerful, and the like. This is one thing. Then, on the other hand, we have to grow less bad, that is to keep striving against sin.
I. The text goes straight to the root of many common sins, and what makes it still more important is, that it applies to all of us equally. Every one is liable to sins of the tongue. Every one is liable to faults of temper. Unfortunately, it is not every one who is aware how much these little common sins little as people think them, for they are by no means little in reality it is not every one who is aware how much these everyday faults do towards keeping us back from real holiness of character.
II. You have what may be called a rule of Christian caution, to protect you against the commonest sin which undermines our growth in goodness. I suppose that every one of us feels there is nothing which it is so hard to avoid as getting angry, while on the other hand there is nothing which does our religion more harm than angry feelings. How can a man pray when he is angry?
III. The avoidance of wrath. St. James says, let every man be swift to hear, slow to speak : and then in this way we shall be slow to wrath. What does this tell us? It tells that when we are moved to be angry, the first thing we must think about is, that we should be ready to listen to whatever the person we are going to be angry with has to say for himself. This sounds very simple, but nothing is really little which helps to keep a man in a holy and God-fearing state of mind. And so it is with this rule. If you will only try it, you will soon see how great a help this little rule will be to you. The next time you feel yourself growing angry, just say this text to yourself: swift to hear, slow to speak. Don t say a word, but listen to what the person you are with has to say. And if he does not say anything, encourage him to speak, but do not say one word that can sound like anger. And while you are checking yourself, just say a short quick prayer to God to be with you and to keep your heart calm and still. God is really very near to you. The Holy Ghost is within you. Pray that the Holy Ghost who is the Spirit of Peace may move over the surface of your soul and still the tempest that is rising. And your prayer will be answered. Even while you listen to what your neighbour has to say, God will drive away the rising anger from your heart, and even though (as men say) you might have had a good right to be angry, the very fact of your not being angry will help to set things straight again, and you will go on with your day s work quietly and steadily with the sense of God being with you.
IV. We ought all of us to behave in this way quite as a matter of course; for it is upon doing these commonplace things that the reality of our Christian life depends. It is for want of these matters of Christian carefulness and Christian watchfulness that our improvement in Christianity is so spoiled; and, therefore, no doubt it is that God inspired St. James to write in another place, that if any man seem to be religious and bridleth not his tongue, this man s religion is vain. Think what a terrible thing it is for our religion to be all empty, and vain, and fruitless.
Illustration Often it happens that while the angry fit is on, Satan leads you into some further and deeper sin, and then at night he is at your ear to tell you it is no use for such a sinner as you to try and pray to God. He tells you, you ought to be ashamed of such hypocrisy as kneeling down and praying to God at night when you have done so wrong during the day after all your good resolutions in the morning. And then, perhaps, you give way to these thoughts, and go to rest without repenting or confessing your sin, and then the next morning the same thing may happen again, and you go on for days living like a heathen, and all through that one sin of anger letting in a whole flood of sins, and giving the Devil the mastery of you, and shutting you out from God. Many a man s religion is ruined in this way.
SPIRITUAL GRAFTING
The engrafted Word.
Jas 1:21 The figure is that of grafting a good shoot upon an inferior stock. Without pushing the figure too far, we may learn from it something concerning the nature of the change produced by Christianity upon the individual and upon society.
I. Grafting interferes with the order of nature. Human wisdom and skill are brought to bear upon the living but unconscious tree; a change is effected in it by a power from without acting upon it. The process of degeneration in human nature is arrested by Christianity; a Divine wisdom, power, and love are in it, brought to bear upon our race, and a measure of spiritual progress and attainment made possible which could not have been reached by man s unaided efforts.
II. Grafting implies that there is affinity between the Divine and the human. In the natural world only those trees that are of the same order or family can be utilised for the purpose of grafting; an oak cannot be grafted on an apple-tree, or an orange on a pear-tree. In the same way human nature must be akin to the Divine for the spiritual process corresponding to grafting to succeed. Man is created in the Divine image, and in a mysterious but real sense of the term is a partaker of the Divine nature. However sunk in sin he may be, there is always a possibility of his rising to holiness and communion with God.
III. The purpose of grafting is to change and improve the inferior stock. It is not done simply as a curious experiment. In like manner, the interposition of God in human affairs has in view the redemption of man from evil, and the creation of the race afresh in righteousness and true holiness.
Illustration A gardener has a tree that bears small and inferior fruit and wishes to improve it. He lops off a considerable number of branches and inserts into the stock a slip taken from another tree of the same kind, the fruit of which is large and delicious. If the graft succeeds, the slip inserted ultimately forms a tree similar to that from which it was taken, and the portion which remains of the original tree becomes assimilated to that which was inserted in it, and its leaves, blossoms, and fruit are improved in quality. In this process we have a parable of spiritual things.
EGOISM AND ALTRUISM
Be ye doers of the Word, and not hearers only, deluding your own selves.
Jas 1:22 (R.V.)
There are two great classes of human lives; there are two fundamental differences which separate them. The one class is egoistic, it lives simply for itself; the other, if you will pardon me the word, is altruistic, it lives mainly for the good of others. The one is epicurean; the other is Christlike.
I. The self-indulgent, self-absorbed life ranges up and down many degrees in the social and moral scales. It may be that of the elegant and bejewelled patrician, or it may reek of the gin-shop and the prison. It may assume the guise of languid ease or that of brutal ruffianism; but in all cases it is only selfishness wearing different masks, and in all phases it involves the most despicable state to which human life can sink. And God speaking in the force of outward circumstances God, Whose light shines on so patiently, showing all things in the slow history of their ripening stamps this life with the seal of His utter reprobation. Oh, how terrible and certain a retribution does this life of selfishness draw down upon itself!
II. How different is the altruistic life, the unselfish life, the life which is given to God and fearlessly lives for the good of its fellow-men the life, not like those others, earthly, sensual, devilish; but pure, gentle, peaceable, full of mercy and good fruit, without partiality and without hypocrisy! That is the life of heaven; such are the lives of the saints of God. The world has ever recognised the lustre, the loveliness of such a life, though in envy and hatred it has many times slain or slaughtered those who have tried to live it. Rise before us as ye were, ye saints of God, in the beauty of your holiness; show us the lives roses without, lilies within ; the lives white as lilies in their transparent guilelessness, and red as roses in their glowing enthusiasm! Show how gracious a thing a human being may become, in whom the love of God, expanded into infinitude, has led to the abjuration of the lower self.
III. Can such a life be described in a single word? Yes! and it lies at the centre of all that in all nations of the world has the best right to call itself religion. When Confucius was asked by a disciple to express all the virtues in one word, he answered, Is not
reciprocity such a word? and by reciprocity he meant the Divine rule Do unto thy neighbour as thou wouldst that he should do to thee. When Auguste Comte tried to formulate a new religion of Positivism he made its one rule
altruism Vivre pour autrui. It is Christianity that gives us a word more divine, more all-comprehensive, more steeped in emotion, more radiant with the light of heaven than reciprocity or altruism and that is the word
love. And let men prate how they will about other things if the Word of God stands sure, then one truth is supremely important above all other truths, and that is, that we owe no man anything, but to love one another ; that love is the bond of perfectness ; and that love is the fulfilling of the law.
IV. Consider the bearing of these two lives on the entire condition of the world.(
a)
The natural and immediate result of selfishness is utter, hopeless, callous quiescence, contented luxury, absolute neglect. It shuts out the disturbing spectacle of human necessity.
(
b)
The unselfish life, the life of Christian charity, is opposed to all this. Though all the journals misrepresent and sneer at it, it will try every method in its power legislative, social, ecclesiastical, individual whereby it may in any way alleviate the sorrows or reverse the wrongs of the world. It is invincibly hopeful; it is undauntedly courageous; it believes in the soul, and is very sure of God ; it is full of Divine enthusiasm; it leaps amid the laughter of the world into the flaming chariot of zeal, and shakes loosely the slack reins.
How shall we grapple with this overwhelming mass of evil? There are some, thank God! who are grappling with it. Everywhere the work is being attempted by the clergy, and by those who help their work. The poor in many parishes are treated as brethren, and as free men and women, for whom, with all their faults, Christ died.
Dean Farrar.
Illustration To the egotist class those who are absorbed by the desires of the mind belong the ruinous conquerors who from time to time have swept over the earth with sword and flame, and have made her furrows red with the blood of men. The course you propose, said Prince Metternich to Napoleon, would cost the lives of a hundred thousand men. A hundred thousand men! answered Napoleon. What are a hundred thousand men to me? Prince Metternich walked to the window, flung it wide open, and said, Sire, let all the world know that you express this atrocious sentiment! There you have this egoism on a colossal scale. Yet a man need not be a Napoleon to sacrifice the good of hundreds, and sell the fate of his country for the satisfaction of himself, his party, or his class.
A DOER OF THE WORK
But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.
Jas 1:25 This Scripture is part of a striking contrast between two men. One is likened unto a man taking a look at himself in a polished mirror, but who goes away and immediately forgets what manner of face he had; the other is likened to a man who, though he takes only a peep into the perfect law of liberty, is so influenced by what he sees therein, that he forms his whole life and action in correspondence with it. This latter man is in every sense worthy of our study and imitation.
I. Characteristics of a doer of the Work.(
a)
The Word of God is his mirror. St. James represents it as the law which he looks into as the cherubim seemed to look into the Ark of the Covenant. Some people tremble when they think of Divine law, conscious that they have violated it. Hence they make a wide difference between the law and the Gospel. There is as much connection between the law and the Gospel as between the parent and child, the sun and light. The two are one, and both are designed to create and guard virtue and blessedness.
(
b)
The Word of God is the perfect law. It has been accumulating for ages, but, like its Author, it is perfect, as He is perfect; and therefore meets every requirement (
Psa 19:7-11). The sun is full-orbed; the feast is infinitely plentiful. Woe to him who dares to add to it, or take from it (
Rev 22:18-19).
(
c)
The Word of God is the law of liberty. It is a living power emancipating the soul (
Joh 8:31-32). It is God s grand instrumentality whereby He gives freedom from the bondage of Satan. It is a law, too, by which God puts man again under His government and establishes in him the principle of loving fear and personal holiness; and thus He makes it the very element of a good man s life.
II. Blessed in his deed. Such a man could not fail to be blessed. His portrait is admirably sketched in
Psa 1:1-3. But in what does his blessedness consist?
(
a)
The peace of his soul. Great peace have they who love Thy law, and nothing shall offend them.
(
b)
The usefulness of his life. He is the salt of the earth, the light of the world, the city on the hill, the candle in the house (St.
Mat 5:13-16).
(
c)
The reward of his action. This is threefold: it includes the approval of man (
Job 29:11-25), the testimony of God (
Heb 11:5), the felicity of heaven (
Rev 22:14).
III. Practical lessons.(
a)
Search the Bible.
(
b)
Love the Bible.
(
c)
Live the Bible.
Illustration It is a name for the New Testament as true as it is beautiful the perfect law of liberty. We must never, in looking at its grace, lose sight of its bindings; or forget its mercy, when we are thinking of its obligations. Christ is a Legislator, and the Gospel is the Statute Book. The New Covenant did not oppose law; it riveted it. And the law of the New Testament is exceedingly strict, stricter than the Old. First: you are to give God your whole heart, mind, soul, and strength ; then you are to be so entirely unselfish, that you are to love every one with whom you have to do, that is, your neighbour, as much as you love yourself ; you are to be always doing good works.
PURE RELIGION
Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction.
Jas 1:27 That we, through Christ, have become the sons of God, is the very central truth of the Christian faith; that God is our Father is the pledge and promise of a Father s tender care through life, and, after death, of a mansion in our Father s house.
But our Father is expecting gifts from His children; He is waiting and watching for proofs of their devotion. He is looking down from heaven His dwelling-place, and the fruit of our religion is beneath His searching gaze. Our service to the King of kings must be pure and undefiled.
I. To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction. This is but a sample of the innumerable good deeds that must flow freely from the Christian s lively faith; a specimen of the daily life of our Master Who went about doing good. We are wont to murmur as we behold with tears the multitude of evils upon earth; the burdens which sin and sorrow lay upon loving, weary hearts. We sigh as we behold countless numbers of our brethren toiling on beneath a load of poverty and ignorance; ignorance of the Father s love and the possibility of their admission into the family of God. But we dare not gaze too long into the darkness when the light is shining brightly above it all.
II. Behold the grandeur and nobility of the mission of the Christian brotherhood! It is ours to alleviate the sorrow that wounds and to banish the sin that defiles. The heart that for ever offers its gifts upon the altar of self soon becomes hard and ignoble, unworthy of the Father s love; it misses some of the sweetest gifts that Heaven in its mercy bestows. Out in the world, away from self, is the labour of unselfish love. Who has not felt a warm glow of unutterable pleasure as, led by Divine charity, he has gone into the house of mourning and extended a helping hand to those whom God for discipline has smitten? This pleasure, unlike so many that the world offers to its votaries, will cast no gloom upon our life like the blight that withers and kills the fruit of the garden; it has nothing but the sweetest memories to delight the soul. If it had been possible for the Man Christ Jesus, while upon earth, to have felt the ecstasy of human joy, would He not have found it in the countless human faces upturned to Him in gratitude for diseases healed and sorrows banished; in the blind restored to sight, the bereaved mother blessed once more with a loving son s devotion; in brothers, sisters, fathers, friends reunited in the bonds that death and the devil had rudely torn asunder? These are the golden fruits of religion pure and undefiled before God, Who is the Father of the fatherless and the God of the widow.
III. If our hearts are renewed by the grace of our Master, and touched by His self-denying life and death of agony, our motives will be holier, our labour more unceasing, our offering pure and undefiled before God Who is our Father.
Rev. W. E. Coghlan.
Illustration I have often thought that it must be a source of the keenest delight to the skilful and kind-hearted physician, when, under the blessing of the Almighty, he is able, for a time at least, to banish or to mitigate the sufferings of the human frame, and to restore those who seem almost dead to the arms of the living who love them. As also it must gladden the heart of the good priest of the Church to be able, under heaven s guidance, to calm the doubts that will rise at times in the human breast, or to win a wicked and unhappy man to a better and a safer life. But, in one sense, it matters not whether our profession be that of physician, or priest, or any other lawful and honest calling in the providence of God; we all have our work to do, our mission in the brotherhood of Christ.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
PURE WORSHIPProperly and strictly, religion is being tied down. It has a sense of confinement. Something like another word, which comes from the same root, obligation. Then it came to mean prescribed forms of worship. And the Greek word in the passage, as nearly as we can translate it, is worship. More lately, religion means a man s creed, and the spiritual affections, and the holy life, which grows out of His belief and love the way of salvation the state of conduct of a man who is saved.
Here, in the text, we have it in its second sense, worship the mind s attitude to God, and the way of worshipping God.
Good works are more than the supplement of worship. They make worship. It is not worship without them. They are worship.
The question, therefore, now is, not about the way of salvation, that is a settled thing; it supposes you are saved; the question is, How shall you, as a saved person, worship God?
What is worship ? And to ascertain this, we must take rather the spirit than the letter of the text.
And what is the rule?
I. Whoever has received Christ has had to do with the most perfect act of unselfishness that the world has ever seen. He left His beautiful and happy home, and divested Himself of His glory, to visit an orphaned, widowed world. He became the hardest Worker that ever trod this earth. His whole life and death was one great unselfishness. We may say of Him, what we can say of no other, Christ had no self.
And more than this. By the act which makes you a Christian, you are no longer your own. You are bought bought with blood. You are another s. You are Christ s. Mere worship, commonly so called, has a great deal of selfishness in it. It consists very much in asking for self what we want; or praising for what we have; or in listening to something which is to do us good. It need not be selfish. It might consist much more than it does of simple adoration of God, for what He is in Himself, for His own sake. But practical worship is far too much selfish. Therefore for worship you need to do something that will take you out of self; something more like Jesus. This is the action of every one who is no longer his own, but Christ s.
II. The power of Christ as a Man was His sympathy. As a Brother, He lived with men, when He was here. As a Brother, He sits in heaven. As a Brother, He will come again in judgment. As a Brother, we have His presence now. As soon as a person is really united to Christ, he takes Christ s nature. All his tender feelings are drawn out. Whatever he was before, he becomes gentle, loving, kind. He catches the sympathies of Christ. Before, he was a hard man hard to sin because he had never really felt sin; hard to sorrow because he was occupied with his own sorrows or joys; hard to happiness, because he never himself was quite happy. Now, he is capable of sympathy. The expression in the original which we have translated visit is looking to. It is the same word as bishop. It implies one who takes care, and interest, and pays attention which could not be without sympathy.
III. Effort. Faithful, diligent effort, painstaking love. Real worship! It is not to sit still and pity; it is not to send money; it is to go and do it yourself to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction. Jesus did not stay in heaven and issue a mandate. He did not devolve His mission to another. He came He lived He suffered He did it Himself. Here is the force that many lose. You do kindnesses, great kindnesses; but you do it by deputy. You give to missions; but you are no missionary. You bestow money; but you do not give yourself to the work after the money is spent. You feel; but you do not act. You send; but you do not go. Your religion stops where actual labour has begun.