There are two or three very plain ideas, suggested by the great
words of my text, in regard to the condition of those whom the Lord
thus ministers to, and waits upon. I need not expand them, because
they are familiar to us all, but let me just touch them. 'He shall
make them to sit down to meat.' The word, as many of you know,
really implies a more restful attitude--'He shall make them recline
at meat.' What a contrast to the picture of toil and effort, which
has just been drawn, in the command,' Let your loins be girded
about, and your lamps burning, and ye yourselves as men that wait
for their Lord!' Here, there must be the bracing up of every power,
and the careful tending of the light amid the darkness and the gusts
that threaten to blow it out, and every ear is to be listening and
every eye strained, for the coming of the Lord, that there may be no
unpreparedness or delay in flinging open the gates. But then the
tension is taken off and the loins ungirded, for there is no need
for painful effort, and the lamps that burn dimly and require
tending in the mephitic air are laid aside, and 'they need no
candle, for the Lord is the light thereof'; and there is no more
intense listening for the first foot-fall of One who is coming, for
He has come, and expectation is turned into fellowship and fruition.
The strained muscles can relax, and instead of effort and weariness,
there is repose upon the restful couches prepared by Him. Threadbare
and old as the hills as the thought is, it comes to us toilers with
ever new refreshment, like a whiff of fresh air or the gleam of the
far-off daylight at the top of the shaft to the miner, cramped at
his work in the dark. What a witness the preciousness of that
representation of future blessedness as rest to us all bears to the
pressure of toil and the aching, weary hearts which we all
carry! The robes may flow loose then, for there is neither pollution
to be feared from the golden pavement, nor detention from briars or
thorns, nor work that is so hard as to be toil or so unwelcome as to
be pain. There is rest from labour, care, change, and fear of loss,
from travel and travail, from tired limbs and hearts more tired
still, from struggle and sin, from all which makes the unrest of
life.
Further, this great promise assures us of the supply of all wants
that are only permitted to last long enough to make a capacity for
receiving the eternal and all-satisfying food which Christ gives the
restful servants. Though 'they hunger no more,' they shall always
have appetite. Though they 'thirst no more,' they shall ever desire
deeper draughts of the fountain of life. Desire is one thing,
longing is another. Longing is pain, desire is blessedness; and that
we shall want and know ourselves to want, with a want which lives
but for a moment ere the supply pours in upon it and drowns it, is
one of the blessednesses to which we dare to look forward. Here we
live, tortured by wishes, longings, needs, a whole menagerie of
hungry mouths yelping within us for their food. There we wait upon
the Lord, and He gives a portion in due season.
The picture in the text brings with it all festal ideas of light,
society, gladness, and the like, on which I need not dwell. But let
me just remind you of one contrast. The ministry of Christ, when He
was a servant here upon earth, was symbolised by His washing His
disciples' feet, an act which was part of the preparation of the
guests for a feast. The ministry of Christ in heaven consists, not
in washing, for 'he that is washed is clean every whit' there, and
for ever more--but in ministering to His guests that abundant feast
for which the service and the lustration of earth were but the
preparation. The servant Christ serves us here by washing us from
our sins in His own blood, both in the one initial act of
forgiveness and by the continual application of that blood to the
stains contracted in the miry ways of life. The Lord and Servant
serves His servants in the heavens by leading them, cleansed to His
table, and filling up every soul with love and with Himself.
But all that, remember, is only half the story. Our Lord here is not
giving us a complete view of the retributions of the heavens, He is
only telling us one aspect of them. Repose, society, gladness,
satisfaction, these things are all true. But heaven is not lying
upon couches and eating of a feast. There is another use of this
metaphor in this same Gospel, which, at first sight, strikes one as
being contradictory to this. Our Lord said: 'Which of you, having a
servant ploughing or feeding cattle, will say unto him by and by,
when he is come from the field, go and sit down to meat, and will
not rather say unto him, make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird
thyself, and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward
thou shalt eat and drink.' These two representations are not
contradictory. Put the two halves together like the two pictures in
a stereoscope and, as you look, they will go together into one solid
image, of which the one part is the resting at the table of the
feast, and the other part is that entrance into heaven is not
cessation, but variation, of service. It was dirty, cold, muddy work
out there in the field ploughing, and when the man comes back with
his soiled, wet raiment and his weary limbs a change of occupation
is rest. It is better for him to be set to 'make ready wherewith I
may eat and drink,' than to be told to sit down and do nothing.
So the servants are served, and the servants serve. And these two
representations are not contradictory, but they fill up the
conception of perfect blessedness. For remember, if we may venture
to say so, that the very same reason which makes Christ the Lord
serve His servants makes the servants serve Christ the Lord. For love,
which underlies their relationship, has for its very life-breath doing
kindnesses and good to its objects, and we know not whether it is more
blessed to the loving heart to minister to, or to be ministered to by,
the heart which it loves. So the Servant-Lord and the servants,
serving and served, are swayed in both by the same motive and rejoice
in the interchange of offices and tokens of love.