'The Pharisees and lawyers rejected the counsel of God
against themselves, being not baptized of Him.'
--LUKE vii. 30.
Our Lord has just been pouring unstinted praise on the head of John
the Baptist. The eulogium was tenderly timed, for it followed, and
was occasioned by the expression, through messengers, of John's
doubts of Christ's Messiahship. Lest these should shake the people's
confidence in the Forerunner, and make them think of him as weak and
shifting, Christ speaks of him in the glowing words which precede my
text, and declares that he is no 'reed shaken with the wind.'
But what John was was of less moment to Christ's listeners than was
what they had done with John's message. So our Lord swiftly passes
from His eulogium upon John to the sharp thrust of the personal
application to His hearers. In the context He describes the twofold
treatment which that message had received; and so describes it as,
in the description, to lay bare the inmost characteristics of the
reception or rejection of the message. As to the former, He says
that the mass of the common people, and the outcast publicans,
'justified God'; by which remarkable expression seems to be meant
that their reception of John's message and baptism acknowledged
God's righteousness in accusing them of sin and demanding from them
penitence.
On the other hand, the official class, the cultivated people,
the orthodox respectable people--that is to say, the dead
formalists--'rejected the counsel of God against themselves.'
Now the word 'rejected' would be more adequately rendered
'_frustrated,_' thwarted, made void, or some such expression,
as indeed it is employed in other places of Scripture, where it is
translated 'disannulled,' 'made void,' and the like. And if we take
that meaning, there emerge from this great word of the Master's two
thoughts, that to disbelieve God's word is to thwart God's purpose,
and that to thwart His purpose is to harm ourselves.
I. And I remark, first, that the sole purpose which God has in view
in speaking to us men is our blessing.
I suppose I need not point out to you that 'counsel' here does not
mean _advice_, but _intention_. In regard to the matter immediately
in hand, God's purpose or _counsel_ in sending the Forerunner was,
first of all, to produce in the minds of the people a true consciousness
of their own sinfulness and need of cleansing; and so to prepare the
way for the coming of the Messiah, who should bring the inward gift
which they needed, and so secure their salvation. The intention
was, first, to bring to repentance, but that was a preparation for
bringing to them full forgiveness and cleansing. And so we may fairly
widen the thought into the far greater and nobler one which applies
especially to the message of God in Jesus Christ, and say that
the only design which God has in view, in the gospel of His Son, is
the highest blessing--that is, the salvation--of every man to whom
it is spoken.
Now, by the gospel, which, as I say, has thus one single design in
the divine mind, I mean, what I think the New Testament means, the
whole body of truths which underlie and flow from the fact of
Christ's Death, Resurrection, and Ascension, which in brief are
these--man's sin, man's helplessness, the Incarnation of the Son of
God, the Death of Christ as the sacrifice for the world's sin;
Faith, as the one hand by which we grasp the blessing, and the gift
of a Divine Spirit which follows upon our faith, and bestows upon us
sonship and likeness to God, purity of life and character, and
heaven at last. That, as I take it, is in the barest outline what is
meant by the gospel of Jesus Christ.
And now I want to press upon you, dear friends, that that great and
sublime body of truths made known to us, as I believe, from God
Himself, has one sole object in view and none beside--viz. that
every man who hears it may partake of the salvation and the hope
which it brings. It has a twofold effect, alas! but the twofold
effect does not imply a twofold purpose. There have been schemes of
so-called Christian theology which have darkened the divine
character in this respect, and have obscured the great thought that
God has one end in view, and one only, when He speaks to us in all
good faith, desiring nothing else but only that we shall be gathered
into His heart, and made partakers of His love. He is not willing
that any should perish, but that all should come to the knowledge of
the truth.
If so, the question comes very sharp and direct to each of us, Is
that gospel fulfilling its purpose in me? There are many subordinate
good things flowing from the Christian revelation, such as blessings
for social outward life, which are as flowers that spring up in its
path; but unless it has effected its one purpose in regard to you
and me, it has failed altogether. God meant His word to save your
soul. Has it done so? It is a question that any man can answer if
he--will be honest with himself.
Further, this single purpose of the divine speech embraces in its
intention each of the hearers of that message. I want to gather the
wide-flowing generality, 'God so loved the world that He sent His
Son that whosoever believeth,' into this sharp point, 'God so loved
_me_, that He sent His Son that _I_, believing, might have
life eternal.' We shall never understand the universality of
Christianity until we have appreciated the personality and the
individuality of its message to each of us. God does not lose thee in
the crowd, do not thou lose thyself in it, nor fail to apprehend that
_thou_ art personally meant by His broadest declarations. It is
_thy_ salvation that Christ had in view when He became man and
died on the Cross; and it is thy salvation that He had in view when
He said to His servants, 'Go into _all_ the world'--there is
universality--'and preach the Gospel to _every_ creature'--there
is individuality.
Then, further, God is verily seeking to accomplish this purpose even
now, by my lips, in so far as I am true to my Master and my message.
The outward appearance of what we are about now is that I am trying,
lamely enough, to speak to you. You may judge this service by rules
of rhetoric, or anything else you like. But you have not got to the
bottom of things unless you feel, as I am praying that every one of
you may feel, that even with all my imperfections on my head--and I
know them better than you can tell me them--I, like all true men who
are repeating God's message as they have caught it, neither more nor
less, and have sunk themselves in it, may venture to say, as the
Apostle said: 'Now, then, we are ambassadors for God, as though God
did beseech by us, we pray in Christ's stead.' John's voice was a
revelation of God's purpose, and the voice of every true preacher of
Jesus Christ is no less so.
II. Secondly, this single divine purpose, or 'counsel,' may be
thwarted.
'They frustrated the counsel of God.' Of all the mysteries of this
inexplicable world, the deepest, the mother-mystery of all, is, that
given an infinite will and a creature, the creature can thwart the
infinite. I said that was the mystery of mysteries: 'Our wills are
ours we know not how,'--No! indeed we don't!--'Our wills are ours to
make them Thine.' But that purpose necessarily requires the
possibility of the alternative that our wills are ours, and we
_refuse_ 'to make them Thine.' The possibility is mysterious;
the reality of the fact is tragic and bewildering. We need no proof
except our own consciousness; and if that were silenced we should
have the same fact abundantly verified in the condition of the world
around us, which sadly shows that not yet is God's 'will' done 'on
earth as it is in heaven,' but that men can and do lift themselves
up against God and set themselves in antagonism to His most gracious
purposes. And whosoever refuses to accept God's message in Christ
and God's salvation revealed in that message is thus setting himself
in battle array against the infinite, and so far as in him lies
(that is to say, in regard to his own personal condition and
character) is thwarting God's most holy will.
Now, brethren, I said that there was only one thought in the divine
heart when He sent His Son, and that was to save you and me and all
of us. But that thought cannot but be frustrated, and made of none
effect, as far as the individual is concerned, by unbelief. For
there is no way by which any human being can become participant of
the spiritual blessings which are included in that great word
'salvation,' except by simple trust in Jesus Christ. I cannot too
often and earnestly insist upon this plain truth, which, plain as it
is, is often obscured, and by many people is never apprehended at
all, that when the Apostle says 'It is the power of God unto
salvation to every one that believeth,' he is laying down no
limitation of the universality or of the adequacy of that power, but
is only setting forth the plain condition, inherent in the very
nature of things and in the nature of the blessings bestowed, that
if a man does not trust God he cannot get them, and God cannot give
him them, though His heart yearns to give him them He cannot do it.
How can any man get any good out of a medicine if he locks his teeth
and won't take it? How can any truth that I refuse to believe
produce any effect upon me? How is it possible for the blessings of
forgiveness and cleansing to be bestowed upon men who neither know
their need of forgiveness nor desire to be washed from their sins?
How can there be the flowing of the Divine Spirit into a heart which
is tightly barred against His entrance? In a word, how a man can be
saved with the salvation that the Gospel offers, except on condition
of his simple trust in Christ the Giver, I, for my part, fail to
see. And so I remind you that the thwarting of God's counsel is the
awful prerogative of unbelief.
Then, note that, in accordance with the context, you do not need to
put yourselves to much effort in order to bring to nought God's
gracious intention about you. 'They thwarted the counsel of God,
being _not_ baptized of Him.' They did not _do_ anything. They simply
did nothing, and that was enough. There is no need for violent
antagonism to the counsel. Fold your hands in your lap, and the gift
will not come into them. Clench them tightly, and put them behind
your back, and it cannot come. A negation is enough to ruin a man. You
do not need to do anything to slay yourselves. In the ocean, when the
lifebelt is within reach, simply forbear to put out your hand to it,
and down you will go, like a stone, to the very bottom. 'They rejected
the counsel,' 'being _not_'--and that was all.
Further, the people who are in most danger of frustrating God's gracious
purpose are not blackguards, not men and women steeped to the eyebrows
in the stagnant pool of sensuous sin, but clean, respectable
church-and-chapel-going, sermon-hearing, doctrine-criticising Pharisees.
The man or woman who is led away by the passions that are lodged in
his or her members is not so hopeless as the man into whose spiritual
nature there has come the demon of self-complacent righteousness, or
who, as is the case with many a man and woman sitting in these pews
now, has listened to, or at all events, has _heard_, men
preaching, as I am trying to preach, ever since childhood, and has
never done anything in consequence. These are the hopeless people. The
Pharisees--and there are hosts of their great-great-grandchildren in
all our congregations--'the Pharisees ... frustrated the counsel of
God.'