would ever have dreamed that underneath this cheap and tarnished dress
there beat a hungry heart? Who would ever have thought that this
outcast heathen had moments when she looked wistfully toward the
heights and longed for a better life? I suppose nobody would ever have
thought of it but the kindly Stranger who now sat upon the well curb
talking to her. He knew that in spite of her wasted years, in spite of
her tarnished past, in spite of the fact that the foul breath of
passion had blown her about the streets as a filthy rag--there still
was that within her that hungered and thirsted for goodness and for God.
And, my friend, you may assume that that thirst belongs to every man.
There is not one that is not stirred by it. It belongs to the best of
mankind. It belongs to the elect company of white souled men and women
that have climbed far up the hills toward God. It belongs to the great
saints like David who cries, "My soul thirsteth for God, for the living
God," who sobs out in his intensity of longing, "As the hart panteth
after the water brook, so panteth my soul after thee, O God."
And thank God it does not belong to the saints alone. It belongs also
to the sinners. It does not belong simply to those who have climbed
toward the heights, but also to those who have dipped toward the lowest
depths. About the only difference between the saint and the sinner in
this respect is that the saint knows what he is thirsting for. He
knows who it is that can satisfy the deepest longings of his soul, and
the sinner does not know. But both of them are thirsting for the
living God.
Jesus Christ knew men and women. He knew the human heart, and knowing
man at his deepest, He knew what we sometimes forget. He knew that in
every man, however low, however degraded he may be--that in every
woman, however soiled and stained she may be, there is an insatiable
longing for God. They do not always realize that for which they are
thirsting. But I am absolutely sure that Augustine was right when he
said that "God has made us for Himself and we never find rest till we
rest in Him." Every human soul that is in the Far Country is in want,
is hungry for the Bread of Life and thirsty for the Water of Life.
Do you remember what the Greeks said to Andrew that day at Jerusalem?
"'Sir, we would see Jesus.' We would have a vision of the face of
God's Son." And this is a universal longing. It is a thirst that has
burned in the heart of man from the beginning of human history. It is
older than the pyramids. It is a cry that is the very mother of
religion.
As we sit by our Lord and see this unclean woman coming with her
earthenware pot upon her shoulder we would fain warn Him. We would
whisper in His ear, "Look, Master, yonder comes a degraded woman,
yonder comes that creature that in all the centuries has been the most
loathed and the most despised and who has been regarded as the most
hopeless. Yonder comes an outcast." But Jesus said, "You see and know
only in part. Your knowledge is surface knowledge. You do not know
her in the deepest depths of her soiled soul. Yonder comes one, who in
spite of her sin longs to be good and pure and holy. Yonder comes an
immortal soul with immortal hungers and thirsts. Yonder comes a
possible child of mine that longs ignorantly but passionately for the
under-girding of the Everlasting Arms."
And believe me, my friends, when I tell you that this longing is
universal. You have feared to speak to that acquaintance of yours who
seems so flippant, who seems so utterly indifferent to everything that
partakes of the nature of religion. But that is not the deepest fact
about him. Whoever he is and wherever he is, there are times when he
is restless and heartsick and homesick. There are times when he is
literally parched with thirst for those fountains that make glad the
city of God. Dare to speak to him as if he wanted Jesus Christ. For
he does want Him, though he may not know it and may be little conscious
of it.
"If thou knewest the gift of God . . . thou wouldest have asked of
Him." That was absolutely and literally true, though I seriously doubt
if the woman herself would have believed it of herself. If you knew
the gift of God, if you knew what God could do for you, how much he
could mean to your wasted and burnt out affections--you would ask Him.
You would seek for Him. You would change this well curb into an altar
of prayer. You would change this noon-tide glare into an inner temple,
into a holy of holies where the soul and God would meet and understand
each other.
This reply of the Stranger awakens the interest of the woman while at
the same time it mystifies and bewilders her. He is evidently sincere,
and yet what can He mean? And in puzzled wonderment she asks Him,
"Whence then hast thou living water? You have nothing to draw with and
the well is deep. Are you greater than our father Jacob who gave us
the well and drank thereof himself and his sons and his cattle? Jacob
was a great prince, a man of power with God and man. Do you know a
secret that he did not know? Can you do what he could not do?"
And this winsome Stranger does not hesitate to say that He can. Will
you listen to the claim that He makes to this woman. No other teacher
however great and however egotistical ever made such a claim before or
since. "Yes," He replies, "I am greater than your father Jacob. I am
greater because I can give a gift that is infinitely beyond his.
'Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but
whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never
thirst. But the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of
water springing up into everlasting life.'"
Did you notice here the two-fold declaration of the Master? He said in
the first place that this old well would not satisfy permanently. And
what is true of that well is true of all wells that have ever been
digged by human hands. What is wrong with them? For one thing, they
never satisfy. They never slake our thirst. To drink from them is
like drinking sea water--we become only the more parched and thirsty as
we drink.
Do you remember "The Ancient Mariner"? He is on a ship in the ocean
and he is parched and dying with thirst. What is the matter? Has the
sea gone dry? No--
"Water, water everywhere
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water everywhere,
Nor any drop to drink."
There is water, but it is not water that will satisfy.
And so men have digged their wells. They have been real wells. They
had held real water of a kind, but it has been water that was utterly
powerless to slake the thirst of the soul. Here is a man who has
digged a well of wealth. Treasure is bubbling up about him like the
waters of a fountain. He is rich beyond his hopes, but is he
satisfied? Listen! "Soul, thou hast much good laid up for many days,
eat, drink and be merry." But his soul has no appetite for that kind
of bread. His soul has no thirst for that brackish and bitter water.
It is hungry and thirsty for the living God, and nothing else can
satisfy.
Here is another who has made the same tragic blunder.
"I'm an alien--I'm an alien to the faith my mother taught me;
I'm an alien to the God that heard my mother when she cried;
I'm a stranger to the comfort that my 'Now I lay me' brought me,
To the Everlasting Arms that held my father when he died.
I have spent a life-time seeking things I spurned
when I had found them;
I have fought and been rewarded in full many a winning cause;
But I'd yield them all--fame, fortune and the pleasures
that surround them;
For a little of the faith that made my mother what she was.
"When the great world came and called me I deserted all to follow,
Never knowing, in my dazedness, I had slipped my hand from His--
Never noting, in my blindness, that the bauble fame was hollow,
That the gold of wealth was tinsel, as I since have learned it is--
I have spent a life-time seeking things I've spurned when
I have found them;
I have fought and been rewarded in full many a petty cause,
But I'd take them all--fame, fortune and the pleasures
that surround them,
And exchange them for the faith that made my mother what she was."
Here is one who has dug a well of fame, but he cannot count up twelve
happy days. And though he has drunk draughts that might have quenched
the thirst of millions, he is dying of thirst because there is no more
to drink.
"Oh, could I feel as once I felt,
And be what I have been,
And weep as I could once have wept
O'er many a vanished scene.
"As springs in deserts found seem sweet,
All brackish though they be;
So midst the withered waste of life
Those tears would flow to me."
"Oh, what is fame to a woman," said another. "Like the apples of the
Dead Sea, fair to the sight and ashes to the touch." Here is another
and he has digged wells of wealth and fame and power and pleasure. He
seems afloat upon a very sea in which all the streams of human power
and glory and wisdom mingle. He tastes them all only to dash the cup
from his lips in loathing and disgust as he cries, "Vanity of vanities!
All is vanity and vexation of spirit."
And so Jesus says to this woman, "This well can never permanently
satisfy you. No well of this world can. But if you are only willing,
I can give you a well that will satisfy. I can impart that which will
meet every single need and every single longing of your soul." What a
claim is this! How marvelous, how amazing! And yet this tired young
man, sitting here by the well, makes this high claim, and through the
centuries He has made it good.
"I can give you," says He, "a well that will satisfy you now. I can
touch the hot fever of your life into restfulness now. I can satisfy
the intensest hunger of your starved soul even now. And not only can I
do this for the present, but I can satisfy for all eternity. I can
give you a fountain that will never run dry. I can bless your life
with a springtime where the trees will never shed their leaves and the
petals of the rose will never shatter upon the grass."
"If you will allow me, I will give you that which will enrich and
satisfy your life to-day and to-morrow and through all the eternal
to-morrow." In all world feasts there comes a time when we have to
say, "There is no wine." There comes a time when the zest is gone,
when the wreaths are withered. There comes a time when joy lies
coffined and we have left to us only the dust and ashes of burnt out
hopes. But Christ satisfies now and ever more. And this He does in
spite of all circumstances and in the presence of all difficulties.
For His is not an external fountain to which we have to journey again
and again and from which we may be cut off by the forces of the enemy.
His is a fountain within. It is that which makes us independent of our
foes and even, when need be, of our friends. Dr. Jowett tells how he
visited an old, ruined castle in England and found far in the inner
precincts of that castle a gurgling and living spring.
What a treasure it was to the man who lived in that castle! His
enemies might besiege him and shut him in, but they could never cut off
his water supply. No foes however great were able to overcome him by
starvation for water because he had a fountain within. There was
within the castle a well of water springing up, and he was independent
of all outside sources.
Now, when Jesus had told this woman of the wonderful gift that He had
the power of imparting it is not at all strange that she answered,
"Sir, give me this water that I thirst not, neither come all the way
here to draw." And that is just what Jesus desires above all else to
do for her. But there is one something in the way. Before Christ can
impart His saving and satisfying gift the woman must be brought face to
face with her need. She must be made to face her own sin eye to eye
and to hate it and confess it. She must be willing to turn from it to
Him who is able to cleanse from all sin by the washing of His blood.
And how tactfully does Christ bring her face to face with her past!
Nothing could be more tenderly delicate than His touch here. "Go call
thy husband," He says. "I have no husband," is the ready response.
And then He compliments her.
If you are to be successful as a soul winner, if you are to be
successful as a worker anywhere--it is fine to have an eye for that
which is praiseworthy. There is something commendable about everybody
if we only seek for it and find it. A disreputable dog came to our
house the other day. My wife looked at him and said, "What a horrible
looking dog!" But our small boy looked at him with a different eye and
found something good about him and remarked that he could wag his tail
well.
There was not much in this woman to compliment. But Jesus picked out
one thing that was commendable. He complimented her on the fact that
she had told Him the truth. He said, "You have been honest in this.
You have no husband. You have had five husbands, but the man that thou
now hast is not thy husband. In that saidst thou truly." And now the
woman stands looking her soiled and stained past eye to eye. She does
not like it. She would like to get away from it. She wants to start a
theological discussion. She is ready to launch out into an argument
over the proper place to worship God. But Christ holds her face to
face with her sin till she loathes it, and utters that deepest cry of
her inner nature, the longing for the coming of the Messiah. And then
it is that Christ made the first disclosure of Himself that He ever
made in this world. He seems to lift the veil from the face of the
infinite as He says, "I that speak unto thee am He."
And this woman has found the Living Water. She forgot her old thirst.
She forgot the errand that brought her to the well. She left the empty
water pot by the curbstone and bounded away like a happy child into the
city. She is under the compelling power of a marvelous discovery. She
has a story infinitely too good to keep. And in spite of the fact that
her past had been a shameful and sordid past--she would not let it
close her lips. She gave her testimony, and as a result we read these
words, "Many believed because of the saying of the woman."
Heart, this woman never had your chance and mine. She was placed in a
bad setting. She wasted the best years of her life. She never found
Jesus till the sweetest and freshest years of her life had been
squandered in sin. She only met him in the last lingering days of
autumn or maybe in the winter time of life. Though she met Him so
late, when she stood in His presence a little later in glory she had
her hands full of sheaves.
You have had a great chance. Is there anybody that believes because of
what you have said? Has any life been transfigured and transformed by
the story that you have told? Will you not give a little more
earnestness and a little more thought and a little more prayer and a
little more effort to the doing of this work that Jesus Christ did not
think was beneath Himself as the King of Heaven and the Savior of the
world?
And if you have never found the fountain that satisfies, if you know
nothing of the spring that flows within--will you not claim that
blessed treasure now? Will you not do so, first of all, because of
your own needs? Then will you not do so not only because of your own
needs but because of the needs of those about you? You are thirsty men
and women, and this is a thirsty world. You need God and God needs
you. Will you give Him a chance at you?
Remember that this well of water is not to be yours on the basis of
merit. It is not to be bought. It is not to be earned. It is not
found in the pathway of the scholar or of the rich or of the great or
of the gifted. It is God's gift. If you want wages serve the devil,
for "the wages of sin is death." "But the gift of God is eternal life
through Jesus Christ, our Lord."
In oriental cities, where water is often scarce, water carriers go
through the streets selling water at so much per drink. And their cry
is this: "The gift of God, who will buy? Who will buy?" And sometimes
a man will buy the whole supply, and then allow the water carrier to
give it away. And as he goes back down the street, he no longer says,
"The gift of God, who will buy?" but "The gift of God, who will take?
The gift of God, who will take?" That is my message to you: "The gift
of God, who will take?" It is yours for the taking. May God help you
to take it now.
VII
A GOOD MAN--BARNABAS
_Acts 11:24_
This is the text: "He was a good man." Doubtless you think me daring
to the point of rashness to undertake to interest and edify a modern
congregation by talking about a virtue so prosaic as goodness. "He was
a good man." We do not thrill when we hear that. It is not a word
that quickens our pulse beat. We do not sit up and lean forward. We
rather relax and stifle a yawn and look at our watches and wonder how
soon it will be over. We are interested in clever men, in men of
genius. We are interested in bad men, in courageous men, in poor men
and rich men, but good men--our interest lags here, nods, drowses, goes
to sleep.
The truth of the matter is that the word "good" is a bit like the poor
fellow that went down from Jerusalem to Jericho. It has fallen among
thieves that have stripped it of its raiment and have wounded it and
departed, leaving it half dead. It is a word that has a hospital odor
about it. It savors of plasters and poultices and invalid chairs. Its
right hand has no cunning. Its tongue has no fire. Its cheeks are
corpse-like in their paleness. It seems to be in the last stages of
consumption. If people say we are handsome or cultured we are
delighted, but who is complimented by being called good?
What has wrecked this word? What is the secret of its weakness and
utter insipidity? Answer: bad company. The Book says, "The companion
of fools shall be destroyed." And this word is an example of the truth
of that statement. It has been forced to rub elbows with bad company
till it has come into utter disrepute.
Its evil companions have been of two classes. First, it has been made
to associate with the gentleman about town whose greatest merit was
that he would smoke a cigar with you, if you would furnish the cigar,
or take a drink with you, if you would furnish the liquor. He also
graced a dress suit, even though it were a rented one with the rent
unpaid. And he looked well in pumps. He was a graceful dancer and
good at poker. He also was very skilled in never having a job. And
his friends all said that "he was a good fellow." And, of course,
being forced to keep company with said fellow was enough to ruin the
reputation of the word forever more.
But as if that were not enough calamity to befall any innocent and
inoffensive word, it was forced into another association that was but
little less disreputable. There was an individual--sometimes a man,
sometimes a woman--who did not swear, nor lie, nor steal, nor dip
snuff; whose conduct was as immaculate as that of a wax figure in a
show window; who never made a mistake, nor did he ever make anything
else. He was as aggressive as a crawfish and as magnetic as a mummy.
He was "faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null." And one
day we felt called upon to clothe this colorless insipidity, this
incarnate nonentity, with some sort of an adjective, and so we threw
around its scrawny shoulders this once glorious robe "good." We said,
"Yes, he isn't much account, it is true, but he is a good fellow." And
the garment fit him as the coat of Goliath would fit a pigmy. But
little by little the once great cloak seemed to draw up and to come to
fit the figure of the dwarf.
Thus the word "good" lost its reputation, fell, as many words and many
folks do fall, through bad company. But let me remind you that, in
spite of popular misconception, "good" is not after all a weak word.
It is a strong, brawny, masculine word. It has the shoulders of a
Samson. It has the lifting power of a Hercules. And the reason God
employed it here to describe this man Barnabas was not because He had
to say something about him and could not find anything else decent to
say. It was not a word to cover up the deformity of uselessness or the
glaring defect of a moral minus sign. He used the word because there
was none other that would fitly describe the fine and heroic man of
whom He was speaking. It means here all that "Christian" means.
"He was a good man." That was what God said about him. That was how
he looked when seen through "the microscope of Calvary." He had
matriculated in God's school, and after faithful and patient study, his
Master gave him a degree. And what was that degree? Barnabas, the
genius? No. Barnabas, the gifted? No. It was a higher degree than
either of these. It was the highest degree that Heaven itself can
confer. He gave him the degree of "good." Barnabas, the good. "For
he was a good man."
Now, why did God call him good? Or, in other words, what are the
characteristics that go to make up a good man? When is a man good in
the sight of "Him who sees things clearly and sees them whole?" In
what branches must a man show himself proficient in order to receive
this degree? I ask these questions with the hope that some of us who
are here to-day may want to matriculate in God's school to receive the
high degree that was conferred upon Barnabas.
The first branch in which Barnabas showed himself proficient in his
preparation for this degree was the branch of Christian Stewardship.
And I make bold to say that no man will ever receive the degree that
Barnabas received who is not proficient in the grace of stewardship.
Here is the story. Barnabas is in Jerusalem at the time of Pentecost.
The Church is in the early spring-time of its power. Many Jews, both
home-born and foreign-born, have been brought into the fold. They have
thereby broken with their kindred, and many of them are without any
means of support. Then Barnabas comes forward. He is a wealthy land
owner. He sells his land and puts every dollar of it upon the altar of
his Lord, for the saving of the church in its hour of crisis.
What does this mean? It means that when Barnabas became a Christian,
that when he gave himself to Christ, he gave his money also. Now,
stewardship for you may not mean that you, as Barnabas, sell what you
have and give it all away. God does not call upon all men to do that,
but what He does do is to call upon every man to put both himself and
his money at His disposal. He calls upon every man to recognize God,
and not himself, as the owner. That is the first step in Christian
Stewardship: that God owns all; He owns me; He owns my home; He owns my
children; He owns my property. I have called your attention before to
the fact that the modern idea of ownership is pagan. The Christian
idea is this: that God is the absolute owner of all things.
I am sure that we are as ready as was Barnabas to acknowledge this
fact. We nod our heads and agree, but a truth like this demands
something more than simply a nod of the head. If God owns everything,
then I am to acknowledge that ownership. How was God's ownership
acknowledged throughout all the Old Testament days? By the devoting of
a tenth to His service. That was required of the rich and of the poor.
No man was exempt. Christ never at any time set that law aside. I do
not see how any man dare do less than that to-day. The Jews, without
one thousandth part of our light, were cursed because of their failure
to do this very thing. Since when has it come to pass that the greater
the light the less the responsibility?
There is nothing more needed to-day than a Christian attitude toward
money. There has been a reaction from the altruism that prevailed
during the war, and the world is more money mad than ever before. And
men are making money as scarcely ever before, and the man who is making
money is the man who stands in the position of a peculiar danger. For
the men who can rapidly accumulate money and at the same time be loyal
to Jesus Christ are few indeed.
While I was in Dallas the other day I talked to a friend who was a man
of wealth. He said without enthusiasm, "I have made more money this
year than I ever made before." And then I questioned him regarding his
work in the Church. At one time he had been the teacher of a very
large class of boys. He told me that he had given up his Sunday School
work, that he had given up all his religious work. Then I said, "If
you had a thermometer for registering happiness, I suppose your
thermometer would register lower to-day than at any other time since
you came into the Church." And with sadness he acknowledged that such
was the case.