It is God's trumpet, His means of making His voice heard through all the
uproar of the world. As the captain upon the deck in the gale will use
his speaking-trumpet, so God's voice needs your voice. The Gospel needs
to be passed through human lips in order that it may reach deaf ears.
The purpose for which we have been apprehended of Christ is not merely
our own personal salvation, whether we understand that in a narrow and
more outward, or in a broader and more spiritual sense. No man is an end
in himself, but every man, though he be partially and temporarily an
end, is also a means. And just as, according to the other metaphor, the
Kingdom of Heaven is like leaven, each particle of the dead dough, as
soon as it is leavened and vitalised, becoming the medium for
transmitting the strange, transforming, and living influence to the
particle beyond, so all of us, if we are Christian people, have received
that grace into our hearts, for our own sakes indeed, but also that
through us might be manifested to the darkened eyes beyond, and through
us might drop persuasively on the dull, cold ears that are further away
from the Divine Voice, the great message of God's mercy. The Church is
God's trumpet, and the purpose that He has in view in setting it in the
world is to make all men know the fellowship of the mystery, and that
through it there may ring out, as by some artificial means a poor human
voice will be flung to a greater distance than it would otherwise reach,
the gentle entreaties, and the glorious proclamation, and the solemn
threatenings of the Word, the Incarnate as well as the written Word, of
God.
Of course all this is true, not only about communities, but it is true
of a community, just because it is true of each individual member of it.
The Church is worse than as 'sounding brass,' it is as _silent_ brass
and an _untinkling_ cymbal, unless the individuals that belong to it
recognise God's meaning in making them His children, and do their best
to fulfil it. 'Ye are my witnesses,' saith the Lord. You are put into
the witness-box; see that you speak out when you are there.
II. Another point that this figure may suggest is, the _sort_ of sound
that should come from the trumpet.
A trumpet note is, first of all, clear. There should be no hesitation in
our witness; nothing uncertain in the sound that we give. There are
plenty of so-called Christian people whose lives, if they bear any
witness for the Master at all, are like the notes that some bungling
learner will bring out of a musical instrument: hesitating, uncertain,
so that you do not know exactly what note he wants to produce. How many
of us, calling ourselves Christian people, testify on both sides;
sometimes bearing witness for Christ; and alas! alas! oftener bearing
witness against Him. Will the trumpet, the instrument of clear, ringing,
unmistakable sounds, be the emblem of your Christian testimony? Would
not some poor scrannel-pipe, ill-blown, be nearer the mark? The note
should be clear.
The note should be penetrating. There is no instrument, I suppose, that
carries further than the ringing clarion that is often heard on the
field of battle, above all the strife; and this little church at
Thessalonica, a mere handful of people, just converted, in the very
centre of a strong, compact, organised, self-confident, supercilious
heathenism, insisted upon being heard, and got itself made audible,
simply by the purity and the consistency of the lives of its members. So
that Paul, a few weeks, or at most a few months, after the formation of
the church, could say, 'From you sounded out the word of the Lord, not
only in Macedonia and Achaia,' your own province and the one next door
to it, 'but also in every place your faith to Godward is spread abroad.'
No man knows how far his influence will go. No man can tell how far his
example may penetrate. Thessalonica was a great commercial city. So is
Manchester. Hosts of people of all sorts came into it as they come here.
There were many different circles which would be intersected by the
lives of this Christian church, and wherever its units went they carried
along with them the conviction that they had turned from idols to serve
the living God, and to wait for His Son from heaven.
And so, dear brethren, if our witness is to be worth anything it must
have this penetrating quality. There is a difference in sounds as there
is a difference in instruments. Some of them carry further than others.
A clear voice will fling words to a distance that a thick, mumbling one
never can attain. One note will travel much further than another. Do you
see to it that your notes are of the penetrating sort.
And then, again, the note should be a musical one. There is nothing to
be done for God by harshness; nothing to be done by discords and
gangling; nothing to be done by scolding and rebuke. The ordered
sequence of melodious sound will travel a great deal further than
unmusical, plain speech. You can hear a song at a distance at which a
saying would be inaudible. Which thing is an allegory, and this is its
lesson,--Music goes further than discord; and the witness that a
Christian man bears will travel in direct proportion as it is
harmonious, and gracious and gentle and beautiful.
And then, again, the note should be rousing. You do not play on a
trumpet when you want to send people to sleep; dulcimers and the like
are the things for that purpose. The trumpet means strung-up intensity,
means a call to arms, or to rejoicing; means at any rate, vigour, and is
intended to rouse. Let your witness have, for its utmost signification,
'Awake! thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead; and Christ shall
give thee light.'
III. Then, still further, take another thought that may be suggested
from this metaphor, the silence of the loudest note.
If you look at the context, you will see that all the ways in which the
word of the Lord is represented as sounding out from the Thessalonian
Church were deeds, not words. The context supplies a number of them.
Such as the following are specified in it: their work; their toil, which
is more than work; their patience; their assurance; their reception of
the word, in much affliction with joy in the Holy Ghost; their faith to
Godward; their turning to God from idols, to serve and to wait.
That is all. So far as the context goes there might not have been a man
amongst them who ever opened his mouth for Jesus Christ. We know not, of
course, how far they were a congregation of silent witnesses, but this
we know, that what Paul meant when he said, 'The whole world is ringing
with the voice of the word of God sounding from you,' was not their
going up and down the world shouting about their Christianity, but their
quiet living like Jesus Christ. That is a louder voice than any other.
Ah! dear friends! it is with God's Church as it is with God's heavens;
the 'stars in Christ's right hand' sparkle in the same fashion as the
stars that He has set in the firmament. Of them we read: 'There is
neither voice nor language, their speech is not heard'; and yet, as man
stands with bared head and hushed heart beneath the violet abysses of
the heavens, 'their line' (or chord, the metaphor being that of a
stringed instrument) 'is gone out through all the earth, and their words
to the end of the world.' Silent as they shine, they declare the glory
of God, and proclaim His handiwork. And so you may speak of Him without
speaking, and though you have no gift of tongues the night may be filled
with music, and your lives be eloquent of Christ.
I do not mean to say that Christian men and women are at liberty to lock
their lips from verbal proclamation of the Saviour they have found, but
I do mean to say that if there was less talk and more living, the
witness of God's Church would be louder and not lower; 'and men would
take knowledge of us, that we had been with Jesus'; and of Jesus, that
He had made us like Himself.
IV. And so, lastly, let me draw one other thought from this metaphor,
which I hope you will not think fanciful playing with a figure; and that
is the breath that makes the music.
If the Church is the trumpet, who blows it? God! It is by His Divine
Spirit dwelling within us, and breathing through us, that the harsh
discords of our natural lives become changed into melody of praise and
the music of witness for Him. Keep near Christ, live in communion with
God, let Him breathe through you, and when His Spirit passes through
your spirits their silence will become harmonious speech; and from you
'will sound out the word of the Lord.'
In a tropical country, when the sun goes behind a cloud, all the insect
life that was cheerily chirping is hushed. In the Christian life, when
the Son of Righteousness is obscured by the clouds born of our own
carelessness and sin, all the music in our spirit ceases, and no more
can we witness for Him. A scentless substance lying in a drawer, with a
bit of musk, will become perfumed by contact, and will bring the
fragrance wherever it is carried. Live near God, and let Him speak to
you and in you; and then He will speak through you. And if He be the
breath of your spiritual lives, and the soul of your souls, then, and
only then, will your lives be music, the music witness, and the witness
conviction. And only then will there be fulfilled what I pray there may
be more and more fulfilled in us as a Christian community, this great
word of our text, 'from you sounded out,' clear, rousing, penetrating,
melodious, 'the word of the Lord,' so that we, with our poor preaching,
need not to speak anything.