'Now the first day of the feast of unleavened bread the
disciples came to Jesus, saying unto Him, Where wilt
Thou that we prepare for Thee to eat the passover?
18. And He said, Go into the city to such a man, and
say unto him, The Master saith, My time is at hand; I
will keep the passover at thy house with My disciples.
19. And the disciples did as Jesus had appointed them;
and they made ready the passover. 20. Now when the even
was come, He sat down with the twelve. 21. And as they
did eat, He said, Verily I say unto you, That one of
you shall betray Me. 22. And they were exceeding
sorrowful, and began every one of them to say unto Him,
Lord, is it I? 23. And He answered and said, He that
dippeth his hand with Me in the dish, the same shall
betray Me. 21. The Son of Man goeth as it is written
of Him; but woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is
betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not
been born. 25. Then Judas, which betrayed Him, answered
and said, Master, is it I? He said unto him, Thou hast
said 26. And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and
blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples,
and said, Take, eat; this is My body. 27. And He took
the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying,
Drink ye all of it; 28. For this is My blood of the new
testament, which is shed for many for the remission
of sins. 29. But I say unto you, I will not drink
henceforth of this fruit of the vine, until that day
when I drink it new with you in My Father's kingdom.
30. And when they had sung an hymn, they went out into
the Mount of Olives.'--MATT. xxvi. 17-30.
The Tuesday of Passion Week was occupied by the wonderful discourses
which have furnished so many of our meditations. At its close Jesus
sought retirement in Bethany, not only to soothe and prepare His
spirit but to 'hide Himself' from the Sanhedrin. There He spent the
Wednesday. Who can imagine His thoughts? While He was calmly
reposing in Mary's quiet home, the rulers determined on His arrest,
but were at a loss how to effect it without a riot. Judas comes to
them opportunely, and they leave it to him to give the signal.
Possibly we may account for the peculiar secrecy observed as to the
place for the last supper, by our Lord's knowledge that His steps
were watched, and by His earnest wish to eat the Passover with the
disciples before He suffered. The change between the courting of
publicity and almost inviting of arrest at the beginning of the
week, and the evident desire to postpone the crisis till the fitting
moment which marks the close of it, is remarkable, and most
naturally explained by the supposition that He wished the time of
His death to be that very hour when, according to law, the paschal
lamb was slain. On the Thursday, then, he sent Peter and John into
the city to prepare the Passover; the others being in ignorance of
the place till they were there, and Judas being thus prevented from
carrying out his purpose till after the celebration.
The precautions taken to ensure this have left their mark on
Matthew's narrative, in the peculiar designation of the host,--'Such
a man!' It is a kind of echo of the mystery which he so well
remembered as round the errand of the two. He does not seem to have
heard of the token by which they knew the house, viz., the man with
the pitcher whom they were to meet. But he does know that Peter and
John got secret instructions, and that he and the others wondered
where they were to go. Had there been a previous arrangement with
this unnamed 'such an one,' or were the token and the message alike
instances of Christ's supernatural knowledge and authority? It is
difficult to say. I incline to the former supposition, which would
be in accordance with the distinct effort after secrecy which marks
these days; but the narratives do not decide the question. At all
events, the host was a disciple, as appears from the authoritative
'the Master saith'; and, whether he had known beforehand that 'this
day' incarnate 'salvation would come to his house' or no, he eagerly
accepts the peril and the honour. His message is royal in its tone.
The Lord does not ask permission, but issues His commands. But He is
a pauper King, not having where to lay His head, and needing another
man's house in which to gather His own household together for the
family feast of the Passover. What profound truths are wrapped up in
that 'My time is come'! It speaks of the voluntariness of His
surrender, the consciousness that His Cross was the centre point of
His work, His superiority to all external influences as determining
the hour of His death, and His submission to the supreme appointment
of the Father. Obedience and freedom, choice and necessity, are
wonderfully blended in it.
So, late on that Thursday evening, the little band left Bethany for
the last time, in a fashion very unlike the joyous stir of the
triumphal entry. As the evening is falling, they thread their way
through the noisy streets, all astir with the festal crowds, and
reach the upper room, Judas vainly watching for an opportunity to
slip away on his black errand. The chamber, prepared by unknown
hands, has vanished, and the hands are dust; but both are immortal.
How many of the living acts of His servants in like manner seem to
perish, and the doers of them to be forgotten or unknown! But He
knows the name of 'such an one,' and does not forget that he opened
his door for Him to enter in and sup.
The fact that Jesus put aside the Passover and founded the Lord's
Supper in its place, tells much both about _His_ authority and
_its_ meaning. What must He have conceived of Himself, who bade
Jew and Gentile turn away from that God-appointed festival, and
think not of Moses, but of Him? What did He mean by setting the
Lord's Supper in the place of the Passover, if He did not mean that
He was the true Paschal Lamb, that His death was a true sacrifice,
that in His sprinkled blood was safety, that His death inaugurated
the better deliverance of the true Israel from a darker prison-house
and a sorer bondage, that His followers were a family, and that 'the
children's bread' was the sacrifice which He had made? There are
many reasons for the doubling of the commemorative emblem, but this
is obviously one of the chief--that, by the separation of the two in
the rite, we are carried back to the separation in fact; that is to
say, to the violent death of Christ. Not His flesh alone, in the
sense of Incarnation, but His body broken and His blood shed, are
what He wills should be for ever remembered. His own estimate of the
centre point of His work is unmistakably pronounced in His
institution of this rite.
But we may consider the force of each emblem separately. In many
important points they mean the same things, but they have each their
own significance as well. Matthew's condensed version of the words
of institution omits all reference to the breaking of the body and
to the memorial character of the observance, but both are implied.
He emphasises the reception, the participation, and the significance
of the bread. As to the latter, 'This is My body' is to be
understood in the same way as 'the field is the world,' and many
other sayings. To speak in the language of grammarians, the copula
is that of symbolic relationship, not that of existence; or, to
speak in the language of the street, 'is' here means, as it often
does, 'represents.' How could it mean anything else, when Christ sat
there in His body, and His blood was in His veins? What, then, is
the teaching of this symbol? It is not merely that He in His
humanity is the bread of life, but that He in His death is the
nourishment of our true life. In that great discourse in John's
Gospel, which embodies in words the lessons which the Lord's Supper
teaches by symbols, He advances from the general statement, 'I am
the Bread of Life,' to the yet more mysterious and profound teaching
that His flesh, which at some then future point He will 'give for
the life of the world,' is the bread; thus distinctly foreshadowing
His death, and asserting that by that death we live, and by
partaking of it are nourished. The participation in the benefits of
Christ's death, which is symbolised by 'Take, eat,' is effected by
living faith. We feed on Christ when our minds are occupied with His
truth, and our hearts nourished by His love, when it is the 'meat'
of our wills to do His will, and when our whole inward man fastens
on Him as its true object, and draws from Him its best being. But
the act of reception teaches the great lesson that Christ must be in
us, if He is to do us any good. He is not 'for us' in any real
sense, unless He be 'in us.' The word rendered in John's Gospel
'eateth' is that used for the ruminating of cattle, and wonderfully
indicates the calm, continual, patient meditation by which alone we
can receive Christ into our hearts, and nourish our lives on Him.
Bread eaten is assimilated to the body, but this bread eaten
assimilates the eater to itself, and he who feeds on Christ becomes
Christ-like, as the silk-worm takes the hue of the leaves on which
it browses. Bread eaten to-day will not nourish us to-morrow,
neither will past experiences of Christ's sweetness sustain the
soul. He must be 'our daily bread' if we are not to pine with
hunger.
The wine carries its own special teaching, which clearly appears in
Matthew's version of the words of institution. It is 'My blood,' and
by its being presented in a form separate from the bread which is
His body suggests a violent death. It is 'covenant blood,' the seal
of that 'better covenant' than the old, which God makes now with all
mankind, wherein are given renewed hearts which carry the divine law
within themselves; the reciprocal and mutually blessed possession of
God by men and of men by God, the universally diffused knowledge of
God, which is more than head knowledge, being the consciousness of
possessing Him; and, finally, the oblivion of all sins. These
promises are fulfilled, and the covenant made sure, by the shed
blood of Christ. So, finally, it is 'shed for many, for the
remission of sins.' The end of Christ's death is pardon which can
only be extended on the ground of His death. We are told that Christ
did not teach the doctrine of atonement. Did He establish the Lord's
Supper? If He did (and nobody denies that), what did He mean by it,
if He did not mean the setting forth by symbol of the very same
truth which, stated in words, is the doctrine of His atoning death?
This rite does not, indeed, explain the _rationale_ of the
doctrine; but it is a piece of unmeaning mummery, unless it preaches
plainly the fact that Christ's death is the ground of our
forgiveness.
Bread is the 'staff of life,' but blood is the life. So 'this cup'
teaches that 'the life' of Jesus Christ must pass into His people's
veins, and that the secret of the Christian life is 'I live; yet not
I, but Christ liveth in me.' Wine is joy, and the Christian life is
not only to be a feeding of the soul on Christ as its nourishment,
but a glad partaking, as at a feast, of His life and therein of His
joy. Gladness of heart is a Christian duty, 'the joy of the Lord is
your strength' and should be _our_ joy; and though here we eat
with loins girt, and go out, some of us to deny, some of us to flee,
all of us to toil and suffer, yet we may have His joy fulfilled in
ourselves, even whilst we sorrow.
The Lord's Supper is predominantly a memorial, but it is also a
prophecy, and is marked as such by the mysterious last words of
Jesus, about drinking the new wine in the Father's kingdom. They
point the thoughts of the saddened eleven, on whom the dark shadow
of parting lay heavily, to an eternal reunion, in a land where 'all
things are become new,' and where the festal cup shall be filled
with a draught that has power to gladden and to inspire beyond any
experience here. The joys of heaven will be so far analogous to the
Christian joys of earth that the same name may be applied to both;
but they will be so unlike that the old name will need a new
meaning, and communion with Christ at His table in His kingdom, and
our exuberance of joy in the full drinking in of His immortal life,
will transcend the selectest hours of communion here. Compared with
that fulness of joy they will be 'as water unto wine,'--the new wine
of the kingdom.
'IS IT I?'
'And they were exceeding sorrowful, and began every one
of them to say unto Him, Lord, is it I? 25. Then Judas,
which betrayed Him, answered and said, Master, is it I?
He said unto him, Thou hast said.'-MATT. xxvi. 22, 25.
'He then lying on Jesus' breast saith unto Him, Lord,
who is it?'--JOHN xiii. 25.
The genius of many great painters has portrayed the Lord's Supper,
but the reality of it was very different from their imaginings. We
have to picture to ourselves some low table, probably a mere tray
spread upon the ground, round which our Lord and the twelve
reclined, in such a fashion as that the head of each guest came
against the bosom of him that reclined above him; the place of
honour being at the Lord's left hand, or higher up the table than
Himself, and the second place being at His right, or below Himself.
So there would be no eager gesticulations of disciples starting to
their feet when our Lord uttered the sad announcement, 'One of you
shall betray Me!' but only horror-struck amazement settled down upon
the group. These verses, which we have put together, show us three
stages in the conversation which followed the sad announcement. The
three evangelists give us two of these; John alone omits these two,
and only gives us the third.
First, we have their question, born of a glimpse into the
possibilities of evil in their hearts, 'Lord, is it I?'
The form of that question in the original suggests that they
expected a negative answer, and might be reproduced in English:
'Surely it is not I?' None of them could think that he was the
traitor, yet none of them could be sure that he was not. Their
Master knew better than they did; and so, from a humble knowledge of
what lay in them, coiled and slumbering, _but there_, they
would not meet His words with a contradiction, but with a question.
His answer spares the betrayer, and lets the dread work in their
consciences for a little longer, for their good. For many hands
dipped in the dish together, to moisten their morsels; and to say,
'He that dippeth with Me in the dish, the same shall betray Me,' was
to say nothing more than 'One of you at the table.'
Then comes the second stage. Judas, reassured that he has escaped
detection for the moment, and perhaps doubting whether the Master
had anything more than a vague suspicion of treachery, or knew who
was the traitor, shapes his lying lips with loathsome audacity into
the same question, but yet not quite the same, The others had said,
'Is it I, Lord?' he falters when he comes to that name, and dare not
say 'Lord!' That sticks in his throat. 'Rabbi!' is as far as he can
get. 'Is it I, Rabbi?' Christ's answer to him, 'Thou hast said,' is
another instance of patient longsuffering. It was evidently a
whisper that did not reach the ears of any of the others, for he
leaves the room without suspicion. Our Lord still tries to save him
from himself by showing Judas that his purpose is known, and by
still concealing his name.
Then comes the third stage, which we owe to John's Gospel. Here
again he is true to his task of supplementing the narrative of the
three synoptic Gospels. Remembering what I have said about the
attitude of the disciples at the table, we can understand that
Peter, if he occupied the principal place at the Lord's left, was
less favourably situated for speaking to Christ than John, who
reclined in the second seat at His right, and so he beckoned over
the Master's head to John. The Revised Version gives the force of
the original more vividly than the Authorised does: 'He, leaning
back, as he was, on Jesus' breast, saith unto Him, Lord! who is it?'
John, with a natural movement, bends back his head on his Master's
breast, so as to ask and be answered, in a whisper. His question is
_not_, 'Is it I?' He that leaned on Christ's bosom, and was
compassed about by Christ's love, did not need to ask that. The
question now is, 'Who is it?' Not a question of presumption, nor of
curiosity, but of affection; and therefore answered: 'He it is to
whom I shall give the sop, when I have dipped it.'
The morsel dipped in the dish and passed by the host's hand to a
guest, was a token of favour, of unity and confidence. It was one
more attempt to save Judas, one more token of all-forgiving
patience. No wonder that that last sign of friendship embittered his
hatred and sharpened his purpose to an unalterable decision, or, as
John says: 'After the sop, Satan entered into him.' For then, as
ever, the heart which is not melted by Christ's offered love is
hardened by it.
Now, if we take these three stages of this conversation we may learn
some valuable lessons from them. I take the first form of the
question as an example of that wholesome self-distrust which a
glimpse into the slumbering possibilities of evil in our hearts
ought to give us all. I take the second on the lips of Judas, as an
example of the very opposite of that self-distrust, the fixed
determination to do a wrong thing, however clearly we know it to be
wrong. And I take the last form of the question, as asked by John,
as an illustration of the peaceful confidence which comes from the
consciousness of Christ's love, and of communion with Him. Now a
word or two about each of these.
I. First, we have an example of that wholesome self-distrust, which
a glimpse into the possibilities of evil that lie slumbering in all
our hearts ought to teach every one of us.
Every man is a mystery to himself. In every soul there lie, coiled
and dormant, like hibernating snakes, evils that a very slight rise
in the temperature will wake up into poisonous activity. And let no
man say, in foolish self-confidence, that any form of sin which his
brother has ever committed is impossible for him. Temperament
shields us from much, no doubt. There are sins that 'we are inclined
to,' and there are sins that 'we have no mind to.' But the identity
of human nature is deeper than the diversity of temperament, and
there are two or three considerations that should abate a man's
confidence that _anything_ which one man has done it is impossible
that he should do. Let me enumerate them very briefly. Remember, to
begin with, that all sins are at bottom but varying forms of one root.
The essence of every evil is selfishness, and when you have that, it
is exactly as with cooks who have the 'stock' by the fireside. They
can make any kind of soup out of it, with the right flavouring. We
have got the mother tincture of all wickedness in each of our hearts;
and therefore do not let us be so sure that it cannot be manipulated
and flavoured into any form of sin. All sin is one at bottom, and this
is the definition of it--living to myself instead of living to God.
So it may easily pass from one form of evil into another, just as
light and heat, motion and electricity, are all--they tell us--various
forms and phases of one force. Just as doctors will tell you that
there are types of disease which slip from one form of sickness
into another, so if we have got the infection about us it is a matter
very much of accidental circumstances what shape it takes. And no
man with a human heart is safe in pointing to any sin, and saying,
'_That_ form of transgression I reckon alien to myself.'
And then let me remind you, too, that the same consideration is
reinforced by this other fact, that all sin is, if I may so say,
gregarious; is apt not only to slip from one form into another, but
that any evil is apt to draw another after it. The tangled mass of
sin is like one of those great fields of seaweed that you some times
come across upon the ocean, all hanging together by a thousand slimy
growths; which, if lifted from the wave at any point, drags up yards
of it inextricably grown together. No man commits only one kind of
transgression. All sins hunt in couples. According to the grim
picture of the Old Testament, about another matter, 'None of them
shall want his mate. The wild beasts of the desert shall meet with
the wild beasts of the islands.' One sin opens the door for another,
'and seven other spirits worse than himself' come and make holiday
in the man's heart.
Again, any evil is possible to us, seeing that all sin is but
yielding to tendencies common to us all. The greatest transgressions
have resulted from yielding to such tendencies. Cain killed his
brother from jealousy; David besmirched his name and his reign by
animal passion; Judas betrayed Christ because he was fond of money.
Many a man has murdered another one simply because he had a hot
temper. And you have got a temper, and you have got the love of
money, and you have got animal passions, and you have got that which
may stir you up into jealousy. Your neighbour's house has caught
fire and been blown up. Your house, too, is built of wood, and
thatched with straw, and you have as much dynamite in your cellars
as he had in his. Do not be too sure that you are safe from the
danger of explosion.
And, again, remember that this same wholesome self-distrust is
needful for us all, because all transgression is yielding to
temptations that assail all men. Here are one hundred men in a
plague-stricken city; they have all got to draw their water from the
same well. If five or six of them died of cholera it would be very
foolish of the other ninety-five to say, 'There is no chance of our
being touched.' We all live in the same atmosphere; and the
temptations that have overcome the men that have headed the count of
crimes appeal to you. So the lesson is, 'Be not high-minded, but
fear.'
And remember, still further, that the same solemn consideration is
enforced upon us by the thought that men will gradually drop down to
the level which, before they began the descent, seemed to be
impossible to them. 'Is thy servant a dog that he should do this
thing?' said Hazael when the crime of murdering his master first
floated before him. Yes, but he did it. By degrees he came down to
the level to which he thought that he would never sink. First the
imagination is inflamed, then the wish begins to draw the soul to
the sin, then conscience pulls it back, then the fatal decision is
made, and the deed is done. Sometimes all the stages are hurried
quickly through, and a man spins downhill as cheerily and fast as a
diligence down the Alps. Sometimes, as the coast of a country may
sink an inch in a century until long miles of the flat seabeach are
under water, and towers and cities are buried beneath the barren
waves, so our lives may be gradually lowered, with a motion
imperceptible but most real, bringing us down within high-water
mark, and at last the tide may wash over what was solid land.
So, dear friends, there is nothing more foolish than for any man to
stand, self-confident that any form of evil that has conquered his
brother has no temptation for him. It may not have for you, under
present circumstances; it may not have for you to-day; but, oh!
we have all of us one human heart, and 'he that trusteth in his own
heart is a fool.' 'Blessed is the man that feareth always.' Humble
self-distrust, consciousness of sleeping sin in my heart that may very
quickly be stirred into stinging and striking; rigid self-control over
all these possibilities of evil, are duties dictated by the plainest
common-sense.
Do not say, 'I know when to stop.' Do not say, 'I can go so far; it
will not do me any harm.' Many a man has said that, and many a man
has been ruined by it. Do not say, 'It is natural to me to have
these inclinations and tastes, and there can be no harm in yielding
to them.' It is perfectly natural for a man to stoop down over the
edge of a precipice to gather the flowers that are growing in some
cranny in the cliff; and it is as natural for him to topple over,
and be smashed to a mummy at the bottom. God gave you your
dispositions and your whole nature 'under lock and key,'--keep them
so. And when you hear of, or see, great criminals and great crimes,
say to yourself, as the good old Puritan divine said, looking at a
man going to the scaffold, 'But for the grace of God there go I!'
And in the contemplation of sins and apostasies, let us each look
humbly at our own weakness, and pray Him to keep us from our
brother's evils which may easily become ours.
II. Secondly, we have here an example of precisely the opposite
sort, namely, of that fixed determination to do evil which is
unshaken by the clearest knowledge that it is evil.
Judas heard his crime described in its own ugly reality. He heard
his fate proclaimed by lips of absolute love and truth; and
notwithstanding both, he comes unmoved and unshaken with his
question. The dogged determination in his heart, that dares to see
his evil stripped naked and is 'not ashamed,' is even more dreadful
than the hypocrisy and sleek simulation of friendship in his face.
Now most men turn away with horror from even the sins that they are
willing to do, when they are put plainly and bluntly before them. As
an old mediaeval preacher once said, 'There is nothing that is
weaker than the devil stripped naked.' By which he meant exactly
this--that we have to dress wrong in some fantastic costume or
other, so as to hide its native ugliness, in order to tempt men to
do it. So we have two sets of names for wrong things, one of which
we apply to our brethren's sins, and the other to the same sins in
ourselves. What I do is 'prudence,' what you do of the same sort is
'covetousness'; what I do is 'sowing my wild oats,' what you do is
'immorality' and 'dissipation'; what I do is 'generous living,' what
you do is 'drunkenness' and 'gluttony'; what I do is 'righteous
indignation,' what you do is 'passionate anger.' And so you may go
the whole round of evil. Very bad are the men who can look at their
deed, described in Its own inherent deformity, and yet say, 'Yes;
that is it, and I am going to do it.' 'One of you shall betray Me.'
'Yes; I will betray you!' It must have taken something to look into
the Master's face, and keep the fixed purpose steady.
Now I ask you to think, dear friends, of this, that that obstinate
condition of dogged determination to do a wrong thing, knowing it to
be a wrong thing, is a condition to which all evil steadily tends.
We may not come to it in this world--I do not know that men ever do
so wholly; but we are all getting towards it in regard to the
special wrong deeds and desires which we cherish and commit. And
when a man has once reached the point of saying to evil, 'Be thou my
good,' then he is a 'devil' in the true meaning of the word; and
wherever he is, he is in hell! And the one unpardonable sin is the
sin of clear recognition that a given thing is contrary to God's
will, and unfaltering determination, notwithstanding, to do it. That
is the only sin that cannot be pardoned, 'either in this world or in
the world to come.'
And so, my brother, seeing that such a condition is possible, and
that all the paths of evil, however tentative and timorous they may
be at first, and however much the sin may be wrapped up with excuses
and forms and masks, tend to that condition, let us take that old
prayer upon our lips, which befits both those who distrust
themselves because of slumbering sins, and those who dread being
conquered by manifest iniquity:--'Who can understand his errors?
Cleanse Thou me from secret faults. Keep back Thy servant also from
presumptuous sins. Let them not have dominion over me.'
III. Now, lastly, we have in the last question an example of the
peaceful confidence that comes from communion with Jesus Christ.
John leaned on the Master's bosom. 'He was the disciple whom Jesus
loved.' And so compassed with that great love, and feeling absolute
security within the enclosure of that strong hand, his question is
not, 'Is it I?' but 'Who is it?' From which I think we may fairly
draw the conclusion that to feel that Christ loves me, and that I am
compassed about by Him, is the true security against my falling into
any sin.
It was not John's love to Christ, but Christ's to John that made his
safety. He did not say: 'I love Thee so much that I cannot betray
Thee.' For all our feelings and emotions are but variable, and to
build confidence upon them is to build a heavy building upon
quicksand; the very weight of it drives out the foundations. But he
thought to himself--or he felt rather than he thought--that all
about him lay the sweet, warm, rich atmosphere of his Master's love;
and to a man who was encompassed by that, treachery was impossible.
Sin has no temptation so long as we actually enjoy the greater
sweetness of Christ's felt love. Would thirty pieces of silver have
been a bribe to John? Would anything that could have terrified
others have frightened him from his Master's side whilst he felt His
love? Will a handful of imitation jewellery, made out of coloured
glass and paste, be any temptation to a man who bears a rich diamond
on his finger? And will any of earth's sweetness be a temptation to
a man who lives in the continual consciousness of the great rich
love of Christ wrapping him round about? Brethren, not ourselves,
not our faith, not our emotion, not our religious experience;
nothing that is in us, is any security that we may not be tempted,
and yield to the temptation, and deny or betray our Lord. There is
only one thing that is a security, and that is that we be folded to
the heart, and held by the hand, of that loving Lord. Then--then we
may be confident that we shall not fall; for 'the Lord is able to
make us stand.'
Such confidence is but the other side of our self-distrust; is the
constant accompaniment of it, must have that self-distrust for its
condition and prerequisite, and leads to a yet deeper and more
blessed form of that self-distrust. Faith in Him and 'no confidence
in the flesh' are but the two sides of the same coin, the obverse
and the reverse. The seed, planted in the ground, sends a little
rootlet down, and a little spikelet up, by the same vital act. And
so in our hearts, as it were, the downward rootlet is self-despair,
and the upward shoot is faith in Christ. The two emotions go
together--the more we distrust ourselves the more we shall rest upon
Him, and the more we rest upon Him, and feel that all our strength
comes, not from our foot, but from the Rock on which it stands, the
more we shall distrust our own ability and our own faithfulness.
Therefore, dear brethren, looking upon all the evil that is around
us, and conscious in some measure of the weakness of our own hearts,
let us do as a man would do who stands upon the narrow ledge of a
cliff, and look sheer down into the depth below, and feels his head
begin to reel and turn giddy; let us lay hold of the Guide's hand,
and if we cleave by Him, He will hold up our goings that our
footsteps slip not. Nothing else will. No length of obedient service
is any guarantee against treachery and rebellion. As John Bunyan
saw, there was a backdoor to hell from the gate of the Celestial
City. Men have lived for years consistent professing Christians, and
have fallen at last. Many a ship has come across half the world, and
gone to pieces on the harbour bar. Many an army, victorious in a
hundred fights, has been annihilated at last. No depths of religious
experience, no heights of religious blessedness, no attainments of
past virtue and self-sacrifice, are any guarantees for to-morrow.
Trust in nothing and in nobody, least of all in yourselves and your
own past. Trust only in Jesus Christ.
'Now unto Him that is able to keep us from falling, and to present
us faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy; to
the only wise God our Saviour be glory and majesty, dominion and
power, both now and for ever.' Amen.
'THIS CUP'
'And Jesus took the cup, and grave thanks, and gave it
to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; 28. For this is My
blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for
the remission of sins'--MATT. xxvi. 27, 28.
The comparative silence of our Lord as to the sacrificial character
of His death has very often been urged as a reason for doubting that
doctrine, and for regarding it as no part of the original Christian
teaching. That silence may be accounted for by sufficient reasons.
It has been very much exaggerated, and those who argue from it
against the doctrine of the Atonement have forgotten that Jesus
Christ founded the Lord's Supper.
That rite shows us what He thought, and what He would have us think,
of His death; and in the presence of its testimony it seems to me
impossible to deny that His conception of it was distinctly
sacrificial. By it He points out the moment of His whole career
which He desires that men should remember. Not His words of
tenderness and wisdom; not His miracles, amazing and gracious as
these were; not the flawless beauty of His character, though it
touches all hearts and wins the most rugged to love, and the most
degraded to hope; but the moment in which He gave His life is what
He would imprint for ever on the memory of the world.
And not only so, but in the rite he distinctly tells us in what
aspect He would have that death remembered. Not as the tragic end of
a noble career which might be hallowed by tears such as are shed
over a martyr's ashes; not as the crowning proof of love; not as the
supreme act of patient forgiveness; but as a death for us, in which,
as by the blood of the sacrifice, is secured the remission of sins.
And not only so, but the double symbol in the Lord's Supper--whilst
in some respects the bread and wine speak the same truths, and
certainly point to the same Cross--has in each of its parts special
lessons intrusted to it, and special truths to proclaim. The bread
and the wine both say:--'Remember Me and My death.' Taken in
conjunction they point to that death as violent; taken separately
they each suggest various aspects of it, and of the blessings that
will flow to us therefrom. And it is my present purpose to bring
out, as briefly and as clearly as I can, the special lessons which
our Lord would have us draw from that cup which is the emblem of His
shed blood.
I. First, then, observe that it speaks to us of a divine treaty or
covenant.
Ancient Israel had lived for nearly 2000 years under the charter of
their national existence which, as we read in the Old Testament, was
given on Sinai amidst thunderings and lightnings--'Now, therefore,
if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall
be a peculiar treasure unto Me above all people; for all the earth
is Mine, and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests and an holy
nation.'
And that covenant, or agreement, or treaty, on the part of God, was
ratified by a solemn act, in which the blood of the sacrifice,
divided into two portions, was sprinkled, one half upon the altar,
and the other half, after their acceptance of the conditions and
obligations of the covenant, on the people, who had pledged
themselves to obedience.
And now, here is a Galilean peasant, in a borrowed upper room,
within four-and-twenty hours of His ignominious death which might
seem to blast all His work, who steps forward and says, 'I put away
that ancient covenant which knits this nation to God. It is
antiquated. I am the true offering and sacrifice, by the blood of
which, sprinkled on altar and on people, a new covenant, built upon
better promises, shall henceforth be.'
What a tremendous piece of audacity, except on the one hypothesis
that He that spake was indeed the Word of God; and that He was
making that which Himself had established of old, to give way to
that which He establishes now! The new covenant which Christ seals
in His blood, is the charter, the better charter, under the
conditions of which, not a nation but the world may find an external
salvation which dwarfs all the deliverances of the past. That idea
of a covenant confirmed by Christ's blood may sound to many hearers
dry and hard. But if you will try to think what great truths are
wrapped up in the theological phraseology, you will find them very
real and very strong. Is it not a grand thought that between us and
the infinite divine Nature there is established a firm and unmovable
agreement? Then He has revealed His purposes; we are not left to
grope in darkness, at the mercy of 'peradventures' and 'probablies';
nor reduced to consult the ambiguous oracles of nature or of
Providence, or the varying voices of our own hearts, or painfully
and dubiously to construct more or less strong bases for confidence
in a loving God out of such hints and fragments of revelation as
these supply. He has come out of His darkness, and spoken articulate
words, plain words, faithful words, which bind Him to a distinctly
defined course of action. Across the great ocean of possible modes
of action for a divine nature He has, if I may so say, buoyed out
for Himself a channel, so as that we know His path, which is in the
deep waters. He has limited Himself by the utterance of a faithful
word, and we can now come to Him with His own promise, and cast it
down before Him, and say: 'Thou hast spoken, and Thou art bound to
fulfil it.' We have a covenant wherein God has shown us His hand,
has told us what He is going to do and has thereby pledged Himself
to its performance.
And, still further, in order to get the full sweetness of this
thought, to break the husk and reach to the kernel, you must
remember what, according to the New Testament, are the conditions of
this covenant. The old agreement was, 'If ye will obey My voice and
do My commandments, then,'--so and so will happen. The old condition
was, 'Do and live; be righteous and blessed!' The new condition is:
'Take and have; believe and live!' The one was law, the other is
gift; the one was retribution, the other is forgiveness. One was
outward, hard, rigid law, fitly 'graven with a pen of iron on the
rocks for ever'; the other is impulse, love, a power bestowed that
will make us obedient; and the sole condition that we have to render
is the condition of humble and believing acceptance of the divine
gift. The new covenant, in the exuberant fulness of its mercy, and
in the tenderness of its gracious purposes, is at once the
completion and the antithesis of the ancient covenant with its
precepts and its retribution.
And, still further, this 'new covenant,' of which the essence is
God's bestowment of Himself on every heart that wills to possess
Him; this new covenant, according to the teaching of these words of
my text and of the symbol to which they refer, is ratified and
sealed by that great sacrifice. The blood was sprinkled on the
altar; the blood was sprinkled on the people, which being translated
into plain, unmetaphorical language is simply this, that Christ's
death remains for ever present to the divine mind as the great
reason and motive which modifies His government, and which ensures
that His love shall ever find its way to every seeking soul. His
death is the token; His death is the reason; His death is the pledge
of the unending and the inexhaustible mercy of God bestowed upon
each of us. 'He that spared not His own Son, shall He not with Him
also freely give us all things?' The outward rite with its symbol is
the exhibition in visible form of that truth, that the blood of
Jesus Christ seals to the world the infinite mercy of God.
And, on the other hand, that same blood of the covenant, sprinkled
upon the other parties to the treaty, even our poor sinful hearts,
binds them to the fulfilment of the condition which belongs to them.
That is to say, by the power of that sacrifice there are evoked in
our poor souls, faith, love, surrender. It, and it alone, knits us
to God; it, and it alone, binds us to the fulfilment of the
covenant. My brother, have you entered into that sweet, solemn,
sacred alliance and union with God? Have you accepted and fulfilled
the conditions? Is your heart 'sprinkled with the blood so freely
shed for you'; and have you thereby been brought into living
alliance with the God who has pledged His being and His name to be
the all-sufficient God to you?