known to Jesus, _a messenger is sent_,--_the means are employed_! They
act as though He knew it _not_; as if that omniscient Saviour had been
all unconscious of these hours of prolonged and anxious agony!
What a lesson is there here for _us_! God is acquainted with our every
trouble; He knows (far better than we know ourselves) every pang we
heave, every tear we weep, every perplexing path we tread; but the knee
must be bent, the message must be taken, the prayer must ascend! It is
His own appointed method,--His own consecrated medium for obtaining
blessings. Jesus _may_ have gone, and probably _would_ have gone to
restore His friend, even though no such messenger had reached Him: We
dare not limit the grace and dealings of God: He is often (blessed be
His name for it!) "found of them that sought Him not." But He loves such
messages as this. He loves the confiding, childlike trust of His own
people, who delight in the hour of their extremity to cast their burdens
upon Him, and send the winged herald of prayer to the throne of grace on
which He sits.
Would that we valued, more than we do, this blessed link of
communication between our souls and Heaven! More especially in our
seasons of trouble, (when "vain is the help of man,") happy for us to be
able implicitly to rest in the ability and willingness of a gracious
Redeemer.
Prayer brings the soul near to Jesus, and fetches Jesus near to the
soul. He may linger, as He did now at the Jordan, ere the answer be
vouchsafed, but it is for some wise reason; and even if the answer given
be not in accordance with our pre-conceived wishes or anxious desires,
yet how comforting to have put our case and all its perplexities in His
hand, saying, "I am oppressed; undertake Thou for me! To Thee I
unburden and unbosom my sorrows. I shall be satisfied whether my cup be
filled or emptied. Do to me as seemeth good in Thy sight. He whom I love
and whom THOU lovest is sick; the Lazarus of my earthly hopes and
affections is hovering on the brink of death. That levelling blow, if
consummated, will sweep down in a moment all my hopes of earthly
happiness and joy. But it is my privilege to confide my trouble to Thee;
to know that I have surrendered myself and all that concerns me into the
hand of Him who 'considers my soul in adversity.' Yes; and should my
schemes be crossed, and my fondest hopes baffled, I will feel, even in
apparently _unanswered_ prayers, that the Judge of all the earth has
done right!"
"It is said," says Rutherford, speaking of the Saviour's delay in
responding to the request of the Syrophenician woman; "It is said He
_answered_ not a word, but it is not said He _heard_ not a word. These
two differ much. Christ often heareth when He doth not answer. His not
answering is an answer, and speaks thus: 'Pray on, go on and cry, for
the Lord holdeth His door fast bolted not to keep you out, but that you
may knock and knock.'"
"God delays to answer prayer," says Archbishop Usher, "because he would
have more of it. If the musicians come to play at our doors or our
windows, if we delight not in their music, we throw them out money
presently that they may be gone. But if the music please us, we forbear
to give them money, because we would keep them longer to enjoy their
music. So the Lord loves and delights in the sweet words of His
children, and therefore puts them off and answers them not presently."
Observe still further, in the case of these sorrowing sisters of
Bethany, while in all haste and urgency they send their messenger, they
do not ask Jesus to come--they dictate no procedure--they venture on no
positive request--all is left to Himself. What a lesson also is there
here to confide in His wisdom, to feel that His way and His will must be
the best--that our befitting attitude is to lie passive at His feet--to
wait His righteous disposal of us and ours--to make this the burden of
our petition, "Lord, what wouldst _Thou_ have me to do?" "If it be
possible let this cup pass from me, _nevertheless_, not as _I_ will, but
as _Thou wilt_."
Reader! invite to your gates this celestial messenger. Make prayer a
holy habit--a cherished privilege. Seek to be ever maintaining
intercommunion with Jesus; consecrating life's common duties with His
favour and love. Day by day ere you take your flight into the world,
night by night when you return from its soiling contacts, bathe your
drooping plumes in this refreshing fountain. Let prayer sweeten
prosperity and hallow adversity. Seek to know the unutterable
blessedness of habitual filial nearness to your Father in heaven--in
childlike confidence unbosoming to Him those heart-sorrows with which no
earthly friend can sympathise, and with which a stranger cannot
intermeddle. No trouble is too trifling to confide to His ear--no want
too trivial to bear to His mercy-seat.
"Prayer is appointed to convey
The blessings He designs to give;
Long as they live should Christians pray,
For only while they pray, they live."
V.
THE MESSAGE.
The messenger has reached--what is his message? It is a brief, but a
beautiful one. "_Lord, behold he whom Thou lovest is sick._"
No laboured eulogium--no lengthened panegyric could have described more
significantly the character of the dying villager of Bethany. Four
mystic words invest his name with a sacred loveliness. By one stroke of
his pen the Apostle unfolds a heart-history; so that we desiderate no
more--more would almost spoil the touching simplicity--"_He whom Thou
lovest!_"
We might think at first the words are inverted. Can the messenger have
mistaken them? Is it not more likely the message of the sisters was
this:--"Go and tell Him, 'Lord, he whom _we_ love,' or else, 'he who
loveth _Thee_ is sick?'"
Nay, it is a loftier argument by which they would stir the infinite
depths of the Fountain of love! They had "known and believed the love"
which the Great Redeemer bore to their brother, and they further felt
assured that "loving him at the beginning, He would love him even to the
end." Their love to Lazarus (tender, unspeakably tender as it was one of
the loveliest types of human affection)--was at best an _earthly
love_--finite--imperfect--fitful--changing--perishable. But the love
they invoked was undying and everlasting, superior to all
vacillation--enduring as eternity.
It is ours "to take encouragement in prayer from God only;"--to plead
nothing of our own--our poor devotedness, or our unworthy services; they
are rather arguments for our condemnation;--but _His_ promises are all
"Yea, and amen." They never fail. His name is "a strong tower," running
into which the righteous are safe. That tower is garrisoned and
bulwarked by the attributes of His own everlasting nature. Among these
attributes not the least glorious is His _Love_--_that_ unfathomable
love which dwelt in His bosom from all eternity, and which is immutably
pledged never to be taken from His people!
Man's love to his God is like the changing sand--_His_ is like the solid
rock. Man's love is like the passing meteor with its fitful gleam. _His_
like the fixed stars, shining far above, clear and serene, from age to
age, in their own changeless firmament.
Do we know anything of the words of this message? Could it be written on
our hearts in life? Were we to die, could it be inscribed on our tombs,
"This is one whom _Jesus loved_?"
Happy assurance! The pure spirits who bend before the throne know no
happier. The archangels--the chieftains among principalities and powers,
can claim no higher privilege, no loftier badge of glory!
Love is the atmosphere they breathe. It is the grand moral law of
gravitation in the heavenly economy. God, the central sun of light, and
joy, and glory, keeping by this great motive principle every spiritual
planet in its orbit, "for _God is love_."
That love is not confined to heaven. It may be foretasted here. The sick
man of Bethany knew of it, and exulted in it. Though in the moment of
dissolution he had to mourn the personal absence of his Lord, yet
"believing" in that love, he "rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of
glory." His sisters, as they stood in sorrowing emotion by his dying
couch, and thought of that hallowed fraternal bond which was about so
soon to be dissolved, could triumph in the thought of an affection
nobler and better which knit him and them to the Brother of
brothers--and which, unlike any earthly tie, was indissoluble.
And what was experienced in that lowly Bethany home, may be experienced
by us.
That love in its wondrous manifestation is confined to no limits, no
age, no peculiar circumstances. Many a Lazarus, pining in want, who can
claim no heritage but poverty, no home but cottage walls, or who,
stretched on a bed of protracted sickness, is heard saying in the
morning, "Would God it were evening! and in the evening, Would God it
were morning!" if he have that love reigning in his heart, he has a
possession outweighing the wealth of worlds!
What a message, too, of consolation is here to the _sick_! How often
are those chained down year after year to some aching pillow, worn,
weary, shattered in body, depressed in spirit,--how apt are they to
indulge in the sorrowful thought, "Surely God cannot care for _me_!"
What! Jesus think of this wasted frame--these throbbing temples--these
powerless limbs--this decaying mind! I feel like a wreck on the desert
shore--beyond the reach of His glance--beneath the notice of His pitying
eye! Nay, thou poor desponding one, He _does_ cherish, He _does_
remember thee!--"Lord, _he whom Thou lovest_ is sick." Let this
motto-verse be inscribed on thy Bethany chamber. The Lord _loves_ His
sick ones, and He often chastens them with sickness, just _because_ He
loves them. If these pages be now traced by some dim eyes that have been
for long most familiar with the sickly glow of the night-lamp--the weary
vigils of pain and languor and disease--an exile from a busy world, or a
still more unwilling alien from the holy services of the sanctuary--oh!
think of Him who _loves_ thee, who loved thee _into_ this sickness, and
will love thee _through_ it, till thou standest in that unsuffering,
unsorrowing world, where sickness is unknown! Think of Lazarus in _his_
chamber, and the plea of the sisters in behalf of their prostrate
brother, "Lord, come to the sick one, _whom Thou lovest_."
Believe it, the very continuance of this sickness is a pledge of His
love. You may be often tempted to say with Gideon, "If the Lord be with
me, why has _all_ this befallen me?" Surely if my Lord loved me, He
would long ere this have hastened to my relief, rebuked this sore
disease, and raised me up from this bed of languishing? Did you ever
note, in the 6th verse of this Bethany chapter, the strangely beautiful
connexion of the word THEREFORE? The Evangelist had, in the preceding
verse, recorded the affection Jesus bore for that honoured family. "Now
Jesus _loved_ Martha and her sister and Lazarus." "When He had heard
THEREFORE that he was sick,"--what did He do? "Fled on wings of love to
the succour of His loved friend; hurried in eager haste by the shortest
route from Bethabara?" We expect to hear so, as the natural deduction
from John's premises. How we might think could love give a more truthful
exponent of its reality than hastening instantaneously to the relief of
one so dear to Him? But not so! "When He had heard THEREFORE that he was
sick, _He abode two days still in the same place where He was_!" Yes,
there is _tarrying_ love as well as _succouring_ love. He _sent_ that
sickness because He loves thee; He _continues_ it because He loves thee.
He heaps fresh fuel on the furnace-fires till the gold is refined. He
appoints, not one, but "many days where neither sun nor stars appear,
and no small tempest lies on us," that the ship may be lightened, and
faith exercised; our bark hastened by these rough blasts nearer shore,
and the Lord glorified, who rules the raging of the sea. "We expect,"
says Evans, "the blessing or relief in _our_ way; He chooses to bestow
it in _His_."
Reader! let this ever be your highest ambition, to love and to be loved
of Jesus. If we are covetous to have the regard and esteem of the great
and good on earth, what is it to share the fellowship and kindness of
Him, in comparison with whose love the purest earthly affection is but a
passing shadow!
Ah! to be without that love, is to be a little world ungladdened by its
central sun, wandering on in its devious pathway of darkness and gloom.
Earthly things may do well enough when the world is all bright and
shining--when prosperity sheds its bewitching gleam around you, and no
symptoms of the cloudy and dark day are at hand; but the hour is coming
(it may come soon, it _must_ come at some time) when your Bethany-home
will be clouded with deepening death-shadows--when, like Lazarus, you
will be laid on a dying couch, and what will avail you then? Oh,
nothing, _nothing_! if bereft of that love whose smile is heaven. If you
are left in the agony of desolation to utter importunate pleadings to an
_Unknown Saviour_, a _Stranger God_--if the dark valley be entered
uncheered by the thought of a loving Redeemer dispelling its gloom, and
waiting on the Canaan side to shew you the path of life!
Let the home of your hearts be often open, as was the home of Lazarus,
to the visits of Jesus in the day of brightness; and _then_, when the
hour of sorrow and trial unexpectedly arises, you will know where to
find your Lord--where to send your prayer-message for Him to come to
your relief.
Yes! He _will_ come! It will be in His own way, but His joyous footfall
_will_ be heard! He is not like Baal, "slumbering and sleeping, or
taking a journey" when the voice of importunate prayer ascends from the
depths of yearning hearts! If, instead of at once hastening back to
Bethany, He "abides still for two days where He was"--if He linger among
the mountain-glens of distant Gilead, instead of, as we would expect,
hastening to the cry and succour of cherished friendship, and to ward
off the dart of the inexorable foe--be assured there must be a reason
for this strange procrastination--there must be an unrevealed cause
which the future will in due time disclose and unravel. All the
recollections of the past forbid one unrighteous surmise on His tried
faithfulness. "_Now, Jesus loved Lazarus_," is a soft pillow on which to
repose;--raising the sorrowing spirit above the unkind insinuation, "My
Lord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me."
If He linger, it is to try and test the faith of His people. If He let
loose the storm, and suffer it to sweep with a vengeance apparently
uncontrolled, it is that these living trees may strike their roots
firmer and deeper in Himself--the Rock of eternal ages. Trust Him where
you cannot trace Him. Not one promise of His can come to nought. The
channel may have continued long dry--the streams of Lebanon may have
failed--the cloud has been laden, but no shower descends--the barren
waste is unwatered--the windows of heaven seem hopelessly closed. Nay,
nay! Though "the vision tarry," yet if you "wait for it" the gracious
assurance will be fulfilled in your experience--"The Lord is good to
them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him." The fountain of
love pent up in His heart will in due time gush forth--the apparently
unacknowledged prayer will be crowned with a gracious answer. In His own
good time sweet tones of celestial music will be wafted to your ear--"It
is the voice of the Beloved!--lo, He cometh leaping upon the mountains,
skipping upon the hills!" If you are indeed the child of God, as Lazarus
was, remember this for your comfort in your dying hour, that whether the
prayers of sorrowing friends for your recovery be answered or no, the
Lord of love has at least _heard_ them--the messenger has not been
mocked--the prayer-message has not been spurned or forgotten! I repeat
it, He _will_ answer, but it will be _in His own way_! If the
Bethany-home be ungladdened by Lazarus restored, it will exult through
tears in the thought of Lazarus glorified. And the Marthas and Marys, as
they go often unto the grave to weep there, will read, as they weep, in
the holy memories of the departed, that which will turn tears into
joy--"_Jesus loved him._"
VI.
THE SLEEPER.
"_Our friend Lazarus sleepeth._"--The hopes and fears which alternately
rose and fell in the bosoms of the sisters, like the surges of the
ocean, are now at rest. Oft and again, we may well believe, had they
gone, like the mother of Sisera, to the lattice to watch the return of
the messenger, or, what was better, to hail their expected Lord. Gazing
on the pale face at their side, and remembering that ere now the tidings
of his illness must have reached Bethabara, they may have even expected
to witness the power of a distant _word_;--to behold the hues of
returning health displacing the ghastly symptoms of dissolution. But in
vain! The curtain has fallen! Their season of aching anxiety is at an
end. Their worst fears are realised.--"Lazarus sleepeth."
How calm, how tranquil that departure! Never did sun sink so gently in
its crimson couch--never did child, nestling in its mother's bosom,
close its eyes more sweetly!
"His summon'd breath went forth as peacefully
As folds the spent rose when the day is done."
Befitting close to a calm and noiseless existence! It would seem as if
the guardian angels who had been hovering round his death-pillow had
well-nigh reached the gates of glory ere the sorrowing survivors
discovered that the clay tabernacle was all that was left of a "brother
beloved!"
From the abrupt manner in which, in the course of the narrative, our
Lord makes the announcement to His disciples,[10] we are almost led to
surmise that He did so at the very moment of the spirit's dismissal--the
Redeemer speaks while the eyelids are just closing, and the emancipated
soul is winging its arrowy flight up to the spirit-land!
_Death_ a SLEEP!--How beautiful the image! Beautifully true, and _only_
true regarding the Christian. It is here where the true and the
false--Christianity and Paganism--meet together in impressive and
significant contrast. The one comes to the dark river with her pale,
sickly lamp. It refuses to burn--the damps of Lethe dim and quench it.
Philosophy tries to discourse on death as a "stern necessity"--of the
duty of passing heroically into this mysterious, oblivion-world--taking
with bold heart "the leap in the dark," and confronting, as we best can,
blended images of annihilation and terror.
The Gospel takes us to the tomb, and shews us Death vanquished, and the
Grave spoiled. Death truly is in itself an unwelcome messenger at our
door. It is the dark event in this our earth,--the deepest of the many
deep shadows of an otherwise fair creation--a cold, cheerless avalanche
lying at the heart of humanity, freezing up the gushing fountains of
joyous life. But the Gospel shines, and the cold iceberg melts. The Sun
of Righteousness effects what philosophy, with all its boasted power,
never could. Jesus is the abolisher of Death. He has taken all that is
terrible from it. It is said of some venomous insects that when they
once inflict a sting, they are deprived of any future power to hurt.
Death left his envenomed sting in the body of the great victim of
Calvary. It was thenceforward disarmed of its fearfulness! So complete,
indeed, is the Redeemer's victory over this last enemy, that He Himself
speaks of it as no longer a reality, but a shadow--a phantom-foe from
which we have nothing to dread. "Whosoever believeth in Me shall _never
die_." "If a man keep My sayings, he shall _never see death_." These are
an echo of the sweet Psalmist's beautiful words, a transcript of his
expressive figure when he pictures the Dark Valley to the believer as
the Valley of a "_shadow_." The substance is removed! When the gaunt
spirit meets him on the midnight waters, he may, like the disciples at
first, be led to "cry out for fear." But a gentle voice of love and
tenderness rebukes his dread, and calms his misgivings--"It is I! be not
afraid!" Yes, here is the wondrous secret of a calm departure--the
"sleep" of the believer in death. It is the name and presence of JESUS.
There may be many accompaniments of weakness and prostration, pain and
suffering, in that final conflict; the mind may be a wreck--memory may
have abdicated her seat--the loving salutation of friends may be
returned only with vacant looks, and the hand be unable to acknowledge
the grasp of affection--but there is strength in that presence, and
music in that name to dispel every disquieting, anxious thought. Clung
to as a sheet-anchor in life, He will never leave the soul in the hour
of dissolution to the mercy of the storm. Amid sinking nature, He is
faithful that promised--"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of
the world."--"Thou art with me," says Lady Powerscourt--"this is the
rainbow of light thrown across the valley, for there is no need of sun
or moon where covenant-love illumes."
A Christian's death-bed! It is indeed "good to be there." The man who
has not to seek a living Saviour at a dying hour, but who, long having
known His preciousness, loved His Word, valued His ordinances, sought
His presence by believing prayer, has now nothing to do but to die (to
_sleep_), and wake up in glory everlasting! "Oh! that all my brethren,"
were among Rutherford's last words, "may know what a Master I have
served, and what peace I have this day. This night shall close the
door, and put my anchor within the veil." "This must be the chariot,"
said Helen Plumtre, making use of Elijah's translation as descriptive of
the believer's death; "This must be the chariot; oh, how easy it is!"
"Almost well," said Richard Baxter, when asked on his death-bed how he
did.
Yes! there is speechless eloquence in such a scene. The figure of a
quiet slumber is no hyperbole, but a sober verity. As the gentle smile
of a foretasted heaven is seen playing on the marble lips--the rays
gilding the mountain tops after the golden sun has gone down--what more
befitting reflection than this, "_So_ giveth He His beloved SLEEP!"
"Sweetly remembering that the parting sigh
Appoints His saints to slumber, not to die,
The starting tear we check--we kiss the rod,
And not to earth resign them, but to God."
Or shall we leave the death-chamber and visit the grave? Still it is a
place of _sleep_; a bed of rest--a couch of tranquil repose--a quiet
dormitory "until the day break," and the night shadows of earth "flee
away." The dust slumbering there is precious because redeemed; the
angels of God have it in custody; they encamp round about it, waiting
the mandate to "gather the elect from the four winds of heaven--from the
one end of heaven to the other." Oh, wondrous day, when the long
dishonoured casket shall be raised a "glorified, body" to receive once
more the immortal jewel, polished and made meet for the Master's use!
See how Paul clings, in speaking of this glorious resurrection period,
to the expressive figure of his Lord before him--"Them also which SLEEP
in Jesus will God bring with Him!" _Sleep in Jesus!_ His saints fall
asleep on their death-couch in His arms of infinite love. There their
spirits repose, until the body, "sown in corruption" shall be "raised in
incorruption," and both reunited in the day of His appearing, become "a
crown of glory in the hand of the Lord, and a royal diadem in the hand
of their God."
Weeping mourner! Jesus dries thy tears with the encouraging assurance,
"Thy dead shall live; together with My body they shall arise." Let thy
Lazarus "sleep on now and take his rest;" the time will come when My
voice shall be heard proclaiming, "Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in
dust." "The winter is past, the rain is over and gone, the flowers
appear on the earth; the time of the singing of birds is come, and the
voice of the turtle is heard in the land. Arise, my love, my fair one,
and come away." "Weep not! he is not dead, but sleepeth. Soon shall the
day-dawn of glory streak the horizon, and then I shall go that I may
awake him out of sleep!"