There are many aspects of the great thought on which I cannot touch
even for a moment. For instance, let me remind you how, in a very deep
sense, Jesus Christ is the foundation of the whole of the divine
dealings with us; and how, in another aspect, historically, since the
day on which He appeared on earth, He has more and more manifestly and
completely been the foundation of the whole history of the world. But
passing these aspects, let us rather fix upon those which are more
immediately in the prophet's mind.
Jesus Christ is the foundation laid for all men's security against
every tempest or assault. The context has portrayed the coming of a
tremendous storm and inundation, in view of which this foundation is
laid. The building reared on it then is, therefore, to be a refuge and
an asylum. Have not we all of us, like these scornful men in Jerusalem,
built our refuges on vain hopes, on creatural affections, on earthly
possessions, on this, that, and the other false thing, all of which are
to be swept away when the storm comes? And does there not come upon us
all the blast of the ordinary calamities to which flesh is heir, and
have we not all more or less consciousness of our own evil and
sinfulness; and does there not lie before every one of us at the end of
life that solemn last struggle, and beyond that, as we most of us
believe, a judgment for all that we have done in the body? 'I lay in
Zion for a foundation a stone.' Build upon that, and neither the
tempest of earthly calamities, changes, disappointments, sorrows,
losses, nor the scourge that is wielded because of our sins, nor the
last wild tempest that sweeps a man on the wings of its strong blast
from out of life into the dark region, nor the solemn final retribution
and judgment, shall ever touch us. And when the hail sweeps away the
refuge of lies, and the waters overflow the hiding-place, this
foundation stands sure--
And lo! from sin and grief and shame
I hide me, Jesus, in Thy name.
Brethren, the one foundation on which building, we can build secure,
and safe as well as secure, is that foundation which is laid in the
incarnation, death, resurrection, and ascension of the Son of God. The
foundation of all our security is Jesus Christ.
We may look at the same thought under somewhat different aspects. He is
the foundation for all our thinking and opinions, for all our belief
and our knowledge. 'In Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and
knowledge,' and whatsoever of solid fact men can grasp in their
thinkings in regard to all the most important facts and truths with
which they come into relation, is to be found in the life and death of
Jesus Christ, and in the truths which these reveal. He is the
foundation of all our knowledge of God, and of all our true knowledge
of ourselves, of all our true knowledge of duty, and all our true
knowledge of the relations between the present and the future, between
man and God.
And in His life, in the history of His death and resurrection, is the
only foundation for any real knowledge of the awful mysteries that lie
beyond the grave. He is the Alpha from whom all truth must be deduced,
the Omega to which it all leads up. Certitude is in Him. Apart from Him
we are but groping amid peradventures. If we _know_ anything about God
it is due to Jesus Christ. If we _know_ anything about ourselves it is
due to Him. If we _know_ anything about what men ought to do, it is
because He has done all human duty. And if, into the mist and darkness
that wraps the future, there has ever travelled one clear beam of
insight, it is because He has died and risen again. If we have Him, and
ponder upon the principles that are involved in, and flow from, the
facts of His life and death, then we know; and 'the truth as it is in
Jesus' is the truth indeed. To possess Him is to hold the key to all
mysteries, and knowledge without Him is but knowledge of the husk, the
kernel being all unreached. That Stone is the foundation on which the
whole stately fabric of man's knowledge of the highest things must ever
be reared.
He is the foundation of all restful love. A Czar of Russia, in the old
days, was mad enough to build a great palace upon the ice-blocks of the
Neva. And when the spring came, and the foundations melted, the house,
full of delights and luxury, sank beneath the river. We build upon
frozen water, and when the thaw comes, what we build sinks and is lost
to sight. Instead of love that twines round the creature and trails,
bleeding and bruised, along the ground when the prop is taken away, let
us turn our hearts to the warm, close, pure, perfect changeless love of
the undying Christ, and we shall build above the fear of change. The
dove's nest in the pine-tree falls in ruin when the axe is laid to the
root. Let us build our nests in the clefts of the rock and no hand will
ever reach them. Christ is the foundation on which we may build an
immortal love.
He is the foundation for all noble and pure living. He is the fixed
pattern to which it may be conformed. Otherwise man's notions of what
is virtuous and good are much at the mercy of conventional variations
of opinion. This class, that community, this generation, that school,
all differ in their notions of what is true nobleness and goodness of
life. And we are left at the mercy of fluctuating standards unless we
take Christ in His recorded life as the one realised ideal of manhood,
the pattern of what we ought to be. We cannot find a fixed and
available model for conduct anywhere so useful, so complete, so capable
of application to all varieties of human life and disposition as we
find in Him, who was not this man or that man, in whom the manly and
the feminine, the gentle and the strong, the public and the private
graces were equally developed. In Christ there is no limitation or
taint. In Christ there is nothing narrow or belonging to a school. This
water has no taste of any of the rocks through which it flowed. You
cannot say of Jesus Christ that He is a Jew or a Gentile, that He is
man or woman, that He is of the ancient age or the modern type, that He
is cut after this pattern or that. All beauty and all grace are in Him,
and every man finds there the example that he needs. So, as the perfect
pattern, He is the foundation for all noble character.
As the one sufficient motive for holy and beauteous living, He is the
foundation. 'If ye love Me, keep My commandments.' That is a new thing
in the world's morality, and that one motive, and that motive alone,
has power, as the spring sunshine has, to draw beauty from out the
little sheaths of green, and to tempt the radiance of the flowers to
unfold their lustre. They that find the reason and the motive for
goodness and purity in Christ's love to them, and their answering love
to Christ, will build a far fairer fabric of a life than any others,
let them toil at the building as they may. So, dear brethren, on this
foundation God has built His mercy to all generations, and on this
foundation you and I may build our safety, our love, our thinkings, our
obedience, and rest secure.