Every Christian man has large tracts of unannexed territory, unattained
possibilities, unenjoyed blessings, things that are his and yet not
his. How much more of God you and I have a right to than we have the
possession of! The ocean is ours, but only the little pailful that we
carry away home to our own houses is of use to us. The whole of God is
mine if I am Christ's, and a dribble of God is all that comes into the
lives of most of us.
How much inward peace is ours? It is meant that there should never pass
across a Christian's soul more than a ripple of agitation, which may
indeed ruffle and curl the surface; but deep down there should be the
tranquillity of the fathomless ocean, unbroken by any tempests, and yet
not stagnant, because there is a vital current running through it, and
every drop is being drawn upward to the surface and the sunlight. There
may be a peace in our hearts deep as life; a tranquillity which may be
superficially disturbed, but is never thoroughly, and down in its
depths, broken. And yet, let some little petty annoyance come into our
daily life, and what a pucker we are in! Then we forget all about the
still depths in which we ought to be living; and fears and hopes and
loves and ambitions disturb our souls, just as they do the spirits of
the men that do not profess to have any holdfast in God. The peace of
God is ours; but, ah! in how sad a sense it is true that the peace of
God is _not_ ours!
What 'heights'--for Ramoth means 'high places'--what heights of
consecration there are which are ours according to the divine purpose
and according to the fulness of God's gift! It is meant, and it is
possible, and well within the reach of every Christian soul, that he or
she should live, day by day, in the continual and utter surrender of
himself or herself to the will of God, and should say, 'I do the little
I can do, and leave the rest with Thee'; and should say again, 'All is
right that seems most wrong, If it be His sweet will.' But instead of
this absolute submission and completeness and joyfulness of surrender
of ourselves to Him, what do we find? Reluctance to obey, regret at
providences, Self dominant or struggling hard against the partial
domination of the will of God in our hearts. The mind which was in
Jesus Christ, who was able to say, 'It is written of Me, lo! I come to
do Thy will, O Lord!' is ours by virtue of our being Christians; but,
alas! in practical realisation how sadly it is not ours!
What noble possibilities of service, what power in the world, are
bestowed on Christ's people!' All power is given unto Me in heaven and
in earth,' says He. 'And He breathed on them, and said, As My Father
hath sent Me, even so send I you.' The divine gift to the Christian
community, and to the individuals that compose it--for there are no
gifts given to the community, but to the individuals that make it
up--is of fulness of power for all their work. And yet look how, all
through the ages, the Church has been beaten by the corruption of the
world; and how to-day many of us are standing, either utterly careless
and callous about the diseases that we have the medicine to cure, or in
desperation looking about for other healing for the social and moral
condition of the community than that which is granted to us in Jesus
Christ. 'Know ye that Ramoth in Gilead is ours, and we be still, and
take it not out of the hands of the King of Syria?'
There is ever so much in the world which belongs to our Master, and
therefore belongs to us, and which the Church is bound to lay its hand
upon and claim for its own and for its Lord's. For remember, brethren,
that all the gifts at which I have been glancing--and I might have
largely increased the catalogue--all these spiritual endowments of
peace, and safety, and purity, and joy, of religious elevation, and
consecration, and power for service, and the like--are ours by a
threefold title and charter. God's purpose, which is nothing less for
every one of us than that we should be 'filled with all the fulness of
God,' and that He should 'supply all our need, according to His riches
in glory,'--that is the first of the parchments on which our title
depends. And the second title-deed is Christ's purchase; for the
efficacy of His death and the power of His triumphant life have secured
for all who trust Him the whole fulness of this divine gift. And the
third of our claims and titles is the influence of that Holy Spirit
whom Jesus Christ gives to every one of His children to dwell in him.
There is in you, working in you, if you have any faith in that Lord, a
power that is capable of making you perfectly pure, perfectly blessed,
strong with an immortal strength, and glad with a 'joy that is
unspeakable and full of glory.'
Oh! then, let us think of the awful contrast between what is ours and
what we have. It is ours by the divine intention, by the divine gift in
its fulness and all-sufficiency, and yet think of the poor, partial
realisation of it that has passed into our experience. Be sure that you
have what you have, and that you make your own what God has made yours.
II. Then, let me suggest, again, how our text hints for us, not only
the difference between possession and realisation, but also our strange
contentment in imperfect possession.
Ahab's remonstrances with his servants, which make the starting-point
of my remarks, seem to suggest that there were two reasons for their
acquiescence in the domination of a foreign power on a bit of their
soil. They had not realised that Ramoth was theirs, and they were too
lazy and cowardly to go and take it. Ignorance of the fulness of the
gift, and slothful timidity in daring everything in the effort to make
it ours, explain a great deal of the present condition of Christian
people.
Is not that condition of passive acquiescence in their small present
attainments, and of careless indifference to the great stretch of the
unattained, the characteristic of the mass of professing Christians?
They have got a foothold on a new continent, and their possession of it
is like the world's drawing of the map of Africa when we were children,
which had a settlement dotted here and there along the coast, and all
the broad regions of the interior were blank. The settlers huddle
together upon the fringe of barren sand by the salt water, and never
dream of pressing forward into the heart of the land. And so, too, many
of us are content with what we have got, a little bit of God, when we
might have Him all; a settlement on the fringe and edge of the land,
when we might traverse the whole length of it; and behold! it is all
ours.
That unfamiliarity with the thought of unattained possibilities in the
Christian life is a damning curse of thousands of people who call
themselves Christians. They do not think, they never realise--and some
of us are guilty in this respect--they never realise that it is
possible for them to be all unlike what they are now, and that, instead
of the miserable partial hallowing of their nature, and the poor,
weak--I was going to say strength, but it is not worth calling strength,
that they possess, they might be as the angels of God: 'the weakest as
David,' and David as a very angel of heaven itself. Why is it, why is
it, that there is this unfamiliarity?
And then, another reason for the woful disproportion between what we
have and what we utilise is the love of ease, such as kept these
Israelites from going up to Ramoth-Gilead. It was a long way off; there
was a river to be forded; there were heights to be climbed; there were
weary marches to be taken; there were hard knocks going in front of the
walls of Ramoth before they got inside it; and on the whole it was more
comfortable to sit at home, or look after their farms and their
merchandise, than to embark on the quixotic attempt to win back a city
that had not been theirs for ever so long, and that they had got on
very well without.
And so it is with hosts of Christian people; we do not realise how much
we have that we never get any good out of. And, in the second place, we
had rather just stay where we are, and make the best of the world as it
is, and the desires of our hearts go in another direction than for our
increase in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour. Ah,
brethren! if we had a claim to some great property, or any other wealth
that we really cared about, should we be so very indifferent as to
asserting our rights? Should we not fight to the death, some of us, for
the last inch of soil, for the last ounce of treasure, that belonged to
us? When you really value a thing, you secure the greatest possible
amount of it; and there is very little margin between what you own and
what you use.
And if there is such a tremendous difference between the breadth of the
one and the narrowness of the other in our Christian life, there can be
no reason for it except this, that we do not care enough about
spiritual blessings and forces to make the effort that is needed to win
and keep, and get the good of, all that is ours.
And is not that something like despising the birthright? Is it not a
criminal thing for Christian people thus to neglect, and to put aside,
and never to seek to obtain, all these great gifts of God? There they
lie at our doors, and they are ours for the taking. Suppose a carrier
brought you a whole waggon full of precious goods, and put them down at
your door, and you were not at the trouble to open your doors, or to
carry the goods into your cellars. That would not look as if you cared
much either for the goods or for the giver. And I wonder how many of us
are chargeable with that criminal despising of God's gifts, which is
clearly the explanation of our letting them lie rotting, as it were, at
our gates? We are starving paupers in the midst of plenty.
'My God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory, by
Christ Jesus,' says Paul. You have the right to them all. Draw cheques
against the capital that is lodged in your name in that great bank.
III. And so, lastly, my text suggests the effort that is needed to make
our own ours.
'We be still, and take it not out of the hands of the King of Syria.'
Then these things that are ours, by God's gift, by Christ's purchase,
by the Spirit's influence, will need our effort to secure them. And
that is no contradiction, nor any paradox. God does exactly in the same
way with regard to a great many of His natural gifts as He does with
regard to His spiritual ones. He gives them to us, but we hold them on
this tenure, that we put forth our best efforts to get and to keep
them. His giving them does not set aside our taking. However much we
tried we could not take them out of His hand if it were clenched. Open
as His hand is, and stretched out to us as it is, the gifts that
sparkle in it are not transferred to our hands unless we ourselves put
forth an effort.
So let me say that one large part of the discipline by which men make
their own their own is by familiarising themselves with the thought of
the larger possibilities of unattained possessions which God has given
them. That is true in everything. To recognise our present
imperfection, and to see stretching before us glorious and immense
possibilities, opening out into a vista where our eyesight fails us to
travel to its end, is the very salt of life in every region. Artist,
student, all of us 'are saved by hope,' in a very much wider sense than
the Apostle meant by that great saying. And whosoever has once lost, or
felt becoming dim, the vision before him of a possible better than his
present best, in any region, is in that region condemned to grow no
more. If we desire to have any kind of advancement, it is only possible
for us, when there gleams ever before us the untravelled road, and we
see at the end of it unattained brightnesses and blessings.
And we Christian people have an endless prospect of that sort
stretching before us. Oh, if we looked at it oftener, 'having respect
unto the recompense of the reward,' we should find it easier to dash at
any Ramoth-Gilead, and get it out of the hands of the strongest of the
enemies that may bar our way to it. Let us familiarise ourselves with
the thought of our present imperfection, and of our future
completeness, and of the possibilities which may become actualities,
even here and now; and let us not fitfully use what power we have, but
make the best of what graces are ours, and enjoy and expatiate in the
spiritual blessings of peace and rest which Christ has already given to
us. 'To him that hath shall be given,' and the surest way to lose what
we have is to neglect to increase it.
And, above all, let us keep nearer to our Master, and live more in
fellowship with our Lord, and that will help us to deny ourselves to
ungodliness and worldly lusts. It is the prevalence of these, and the
absence of self-denial, that ruins most of the Christian lives that are
ruined in this world. If a man wants to be what he is not, he must
cease to be what he is.
Self-sacrifice, and the emptying of our hearts of trash and trifles, is
the only way to get our hearts filled with God and with His blessing.
Let us keep near Jesus Christ. If we have Him for ours we have peace,
we have power, we have purity. 'He of God is made unto us' all in all,
and every gift that may adorn humanity, and make our lives joyous and
ourselves noble, is given to us in Jesus Christ. Let us put away from
ourselves, then, this slothful indifference to our unattained
possessions. 'Know ye that Ramoth is ours?' 'Let us be still' no
longer. 'All things are yours, whether the world, or life, or death, or
things present, or things to come: all are yours if ye are Christ's.'