'Watch ye, and keep them, until ye weigh them ... at Jerusalem, in the
chambers of the house of the Lord.'--EZRA viii. 29.
The little band of Jews, seventeen hundred in number, returning from
Babylon, had just started on that long pilgrimage, and made a brief
halt in order to get everything in order for their transit across the
desert; when their leader Ezra, taking count of his men, discovers
that amongst them there are none of the priests or Levites. He then
takes measures to reinforce his little army with a contingent of
these, and entrusts to their special care a very valuable treasure in
gold, and silver, and sacred vessels, which had been given to them for
use in the house of the Lord. The words which I have taken as text are
a portion of the charge which he gave to those twelve priestly
guardians of the precious things, that were to be used in worship when
they got back to the Temple. 'Watch and keep them, until ye weigh them
in the chambers of the house of the Lord.'
So I think I may venture, without being unduly fanciful, to take these
words as a type of the injunctions which are given to us Christian
people; and to see in them a striking and picturesque representation
of the duties that devolve upon us in the course of our journey across
the desert to the Temple-Home above.
And to begin with, let me remind you, for a moment or two, what the
precious treasure is which is thus entrusted to our keeping and care.
We can scarcely, in such a connection and with such a metaphor, forget
the words of our Lord about a certain king that went to receive his
kingdom, and to return; who called together his servants, and gave to
each of them according to their several ability, with the injunction
to trade upon that until he came. The same metaphor which our Master
employed lies in this story before us--in the one case, sacrificial
vessels and sacred treasures; in the other case, the talents out of
the rich possessions of the departing king.
Nor can we forget either the other phase of the same figure which the
Apostle employs when he says to his 'own son' and substitute, Timothy:
'That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost
which dwelleth in us,' nor that other word to the same Timothy, which
says: 'O Timothy! keep that which was committed to thy trust, and
avoid profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science, falsely
so called.' In these quotations, the treasure, and the rich deposit,
is the faith once delivered to the saints; the solemn message of love
and peace in Jesus Christ, which was entrusted, first of all to those
preachers, but as truly to every one of Christ's disciples.
So, then, the metaphor is capable of two applications. The first is to
the rich treasure and solemn trust of our own nature, of our own
souls; the faculties and capacities, precious beyond all count, rich
beyond all else that a man has ever received. Nothing that you have is
half so much as that which you are. The possession of a soul that
knows and loves, and can obey; that trusts and desires; that can yearn
and reach out to Jesus Christ, and to God in Christ; of a conscience
that can yield to His command; and faculties of comprehending and
understanding what comes to them from Jesus Christ--that is more than
any other possession, treasure, or trust. That which you and I carry
with us--the infinite possibilities of these awful spirits of
ours--the tremendous faculties which are given to every human soul,
and which, like a candle plunged into oxygen, are meant to burn far
more brightly under the stimulus of Christian faith and the possession
of God's truth, are the rich deposit committed to our charge. You
priests of the living God, you men and women, you say that you are
Christ's, and therefore are consecrated to a nobler priesthood than
any other--to you is given this solemn charge: 'That good thing which
is committed unto thee, keep by the Holy Ghost that dwelleth in you.'
The precious treasure of your own natures, your own hearts, your own
understandings, wills, consciences, desires--keep these, until they
are weighed in the house of the Lord in Jerusalem.
And in like manner, taking the other aspect of the metaphor--we have
given to us, in order that we may do something with it, that great
deposit and treasure of truth, which is all embodied and incarnated in
Jesus Christ our Lord. It is bestowed upon us that we may use it for
ourselves, and in order that we may carry it triumphantly all through
the world. Possession involves responsibility always. The word of
salvation is given to us. If we go tampering with it, by erroneous
apprehension, by unfair usage, by failing to apply it to our own daily
life; then it will fade and disappear from our grasp. It is given to
us in order that we may keep it safe, and carry it high up across the
desert, as becomes the priests of the most high God.
The treasure is first--our own selves--with all that we are and may
be, under the stimulating and quickening influence of His grace and
Spirit. The treasure is next--His great word of salvation, once
delivered unto the saints, and to be handed on, without diminution or
alteration in its fair perspective and manifold harmonies, to the
generations that are to come. So, think of yourselves as the priests
of God, journeying through the wilderness, with the treasures of the
Temple and the vessels of the sacrifice for your special deposit and
charge.
Further, I touch on the command, the guardianship that is here set
forth. 'Watch ye, and keep them.' That is to say, I suppose, according
to the ordinary idiom of the Old Testament, 'Watch, in order that you
may keep.' Or to translate it into other words: The treasure which is
given into our hands requires, for its safe preservation, unceasing
vigilance. Take the picture of my text: These Jews were four months,
according to the narrative, in travelling from their first station
upon their journey to Jerusalem across the desert. There were enemies
lying in wait for them by the way. With noble self-restraint and grand
chivalry, the leader of the little band says: 'I was ashamed to
require of the king a band of soldiers and horsemen, to help us
against the enemy in the way; because we had spoken unto the king,
saying, The hand of our God is upon all them for good that seek Him;
but His power and His wrath is against all that forsake Him.' And so
they would not go to him, cap in hand, and ask him to give them a
guard to take care of them; but 'We fasted and besought our God for
this; and He was intreated of us.'
Thus the little company, without arms, without protection, with
nothing but a prayer and a trust to make them strong, flung themselves
into the pathless desert with all those precious things in their
possession; and all the precaution which Ezra took was to lay hold of
the priests in the little party, and to say: 'Here! all through the
march do you stick by these precious things. Whoever sleeps, do you
watch. Whoever is careless, be you vigilant. Take these for your
charge, and remember I weigh them here before we start, and they will
be all weighed again when we get there. So be alert.'
And is not that exactly what Christ says to us? 'Watch; keep them; be
vigilant, that ye may keep; and keep them, because they will be
weighed and registered when you arrive there.'
I cannot do more than touch upon two or three of the ways in which
this charge may be worked out, in its application for ourselves,
beginning with that first one which is implied in the words of the
text--_unslumbering vigilance_; then _trust_, like the trust
which is glorified in the context, depending only on 'the good hand of
our God upon us'; then _purity_, because, as Ezra said, 'Ye are
holy unto the Lord. The vessels are holy also'; and therefore ye are
the fit persons to guard them. And besides these, there is, in our
keeping our trust, a method which does not apply to the incident
before us; namely, _use_, in order to their preservation.
That is to say, first of all, no slumber; not a moment's relaxation;
or some of those who lie in wait for us on the way will be down upon
us, and some of the precious things will go. While all the rest of the
wearied camp slept, the guardians of the treasure had to outwatch the
stars. While others might straggle on the march, lingering here or
there, or resting on some patch of green, they had to close up round
their precious charge; others might let their eyes wander from the
path, they had ever to look to their charge. For them the journey had
a double burden, and unslumbering vigilance was their constant duty.
We likewise have unslumberingly and ceaselessly to watch over that
which is committed to our charge. For, depend upon it, if for an
instant we turn away our heads, the thievish birds that flutter over
us will be down upon the precious seed that is in our basket, or that
we have sown in the furrows, and it will be gone. Watch, that ye may
keep.
And then, still further, see how in this story before us there are
brought out very picturesquely, and very simply, deeper lessons still.
It is not enough that a man shall be for ever keeping his eye upon his
own character and his own faculties, and seeking sedulously to
cultivate and improve them, as he that must give an account. There
must be another look than that. Ezra said, in effect, 'Not all the
cohorts of Babylon can help us; and we do not want them. We have one
strong hand that will keep us safe'; and so he, and his men, with all
this mass of wealth, so tempting to the wild robbers that haunted the
road, flung themselves into the desert, knowing that all along it
there were, as he says, 'such as lay in wait for them.' His confidence
was: 'God will bring us all safe out to the end there; and we shall
carry every glittering piece of the precious things that we brought
out of Babylon right into the Temple of Jerusalem.' Yet he says,
'Watch ye and keep them.'
What does that come to in reference to our religious experience? Why
this: 'Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is
God that worketh in you, both to will and to do of His own good
pleasure.' You do not need these external helps. Fling yourself wholly
upon His keeping hand, and also watch and keep yourselves. 'I know in
whom I have believed, and that He is able to keep that which I have
committed unto Him against that day,' is the complement of the other
words, 'That good thing which was committed unto thee, keep by the
Holy Ghost.'
So guardianship is, first, unceasing vigilance; and then it is lowly
trust. And besides that, it is _punctilious purity_. 'I said unto
them, Ye are holy unto the Lord; the vessels are holy unto the Lord.
Watch ye, and keep them.'
It was fitting that priests should carry the things that belonged to
the Temple. No other hands but consecrated hands had a right to touch
them. To none other guardianship but the guardianship of the
possessors of a symbolic and ceremonial purity, could the vessels of a
symbolic and ceremonial worship be entrusted; and to none others but
the possessors of real and spiritual holiness can the treasures of the
true Temple, of an inward and spiritual worship, be entrusted. 'Be ye
clean that bear the vessels of the Lord,' said Isaiah using a kindred
metaphor. The only way to keep our treasure undiminished and
untarnished, is to keep ourselves pure and clean.
And, lastly, we have to exercise a guardianship which not only means
unslumbering vigilance, lowly trust, punctilious purity, but also
requires the constant use of the treasure.
'Watch ye, and keep them.' Although the vessels which those priests
bore through the desert were used for no service during all the weary
march, they weighed just the same when they got to the end as at the
beginning; though, no doubt, even their fine gold had become dim and
tarnished through disuse. But if we do not use the vessels that are
entrusted to our care, _they_ will _not_ weigh the same. The
man that wrapped up his talent in the napkin, and said, 'Lo, there
thou hast that is thine,' was too sanguine. There was never an unused
talent rolled up in a handkerchief yet, but when it was taken out and
put into the scales it was lighter than when it was committed to the
keeping of the earth. Gifts that are used fructify. Capacities that
are strained to the uttermost increase. Service strengthens the power
for service; and just as the reward for work is more work, the way for
making ourselves fit for bigger things is to do the things that are
lying by us. The blacksmith's arm, the sailor's eye, the organs of any
piece of handicraft, as we all know, are strengthened by exercise; and
so it is in this higher region.
And so, dear brethren, take these four words--vigilance, trust,
purity, exercise. 'Watch ye, and keep them, until they are weighed in
the chambers of the House of the Lord.'
And, lastly, think of that weighing in the House of the Lord. Cannot
you see the picture of the little band when they finally reach the
goal of their pilgrimage; and three days after they arrived, as the
narrative tells us, went up into the Temple, and there, by number and
by weight, rendered up their charge, and were clear of their
responsibility? 'And the first came and said, Lord, thy pound hath
gained ten pounds. And he said, Well, thou good servant, because thou
hast been faithful in a very little, have thou authority over ten
cities.'
Oh! how that thought of the day when they would empty out the rich
treasure upon the marble pavement, and clash the golden vessels into
the scales, must have filled their hearts with vigilance during all
the weary watches, when desert stars looked down upon the slumbering
encampment, and they paced wakeful all the night. And how the thought,
too, must have filled their hearts with joy, when they tried to
picture to themselves the sigh of satisfaction, and the sense of
relief with which, after all the perils, their 'feet would stand
within thy gates, O Jerusalem,' and they would be able to say, 'That
which thou hast given us, we have kept, and nothing of it is lost.'
A lifetime would be a small expenditure to secure that; and though it
cannot be that you and I will meet the trial and the weighing of that
great day without many failures and much loss, yet we may say: 'I know
in whom I have believed, and that He is able to keep my
deposit--whether it be in the sense of that which I have committed
unto Him, or in the sense of that which He has committed unto
me--against that day.' We may hope that, by His gracious help and His
pitying acceptance, even such careless stewards and negligent watchers
as we are, may lay ourselves down in peace at the last, saying, 'I
have kept the faith,' and may be awakened by the word, 'Well done!
good and faithful servant.'