Unconverted reader, remember there is no screen from
the eye of God. His eyes are as a flame of fire; and our strongest screens
crackle up as thinnest gauze before the touch of that holy flame. Even
rocks and hills are inadequate to hide from the face of him that sits upon
the throne. "Whither shall I go from thy presence?" That
question is unanswered, and unanswerable. It has stood upon the page of
Scripture for three thousand years, and no one yet of all the myriads that
have read it has been able to devise a reply. Heaven says, Not here.
Hell says, Not here. It is not among angels, or the lost,
or in the vast silent spaces of eternity. There is no creature anywhere
not manifest to his sight. He who made vultures, able from immense heights
to discern the least morsel on the desert waste, has eyes as good as they.
And think how terrible are the eyes of God! When Egypt's chivalry had pursued
Israel into the depths of the sea, they suddenly turned to flee. Why? Not
because of thunder or lightning or voice; but because of a look. "The Lord
looked out of the cloud, and troubled the Egyptians." Ah, sinner, how terrible
will it be for thee to abide under the frown of God! "With the froward
he will show himself froward."
Those eyes miss nothing. "All things
are naked and opened unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do." It
is said of the Lord Jesus, on one occasion, that he entered into Jerusalem,
and into the Temple; and when he had looked round about on all things,
he went out. It was his last, long, farewell look. But note its comprehensiveness.
Nothing escaped it. We look only on parts of things, and often look without
seeing. But the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward
appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart. "Naked and opened."
This is a sacrificial phrase, indicating the priestly act of throwing
the victim on its back before him, so that it lay, exposed to his gaze,
helpless to recover itself, ready for the knife. Ah, how eagerly we try
to hide and cloak our sin! We dare not pen a truthful diary; we dread the
illness which would unlock our tongues in wholesale chatterings; we shrink
from the loving gaze of our dearest. We deceive man, and sometimes ourselves;
but not our great High-Priest. He sees all, that secret sin; that lurking
enmity; that closed chamber; that hidden burglar; that masked assassin;
that stowaway; that declension of heart; that little rift within the lute;
that speck of decay in the luscious fruit. And thus it is that men are
kept out of the Canaan of God's rest, because he sees the evil heart of
unbelief which departs from himself; and on account of which he swears
now, as of old, "they shall not enter into my rest."
Is it not a marvel that he who knows so much
about us should love us still? It were indeed an inexplicable mystery,
save for the truth of the words which so sweetly follow: "Seeing, then,
that we have a great High-Priest." He has a priest's heart. His scrutiny
is not one of morbid or idle curiosity, but of a surgeon, who intently
examines the source of disease with pity and tenderness, and resolves to
extirpate it as quickly and as painlessly as possible. Is it not frequently
the case that fuller knowledge will beget love, which once seemed impossible?
There are some people whose faces are so hard, and their eyes so cold,
that we are instantly repelled; but if we knew all, how they have been
pierced and wounded, and disappointed, we should begin to pity them, and
pity is close kinsman to love. The Saviour has known us from all eternity,
our downsittings and uprisings, our secret possibilities of evil, our unfathomed
depths of waywardness and depravity; and yet he loves us, and will love
us.
"He knows all, But loves us better than he knows."
And out of this love, which wells up perennially
in the heart of Jesus, unfrozen by the winter of our neglect, Unstanched
by the demands of our fickleness, there comes the stern discpline
of which this passage proceeds to speak. In majestic phrase, the
Apocalyptic seer tells how he beheld the Word of God ride forth on his
snow-white steed, arrayed in crimson robes, whilst the many crowns of empire
flashed upon his brow. Two features are specially noted in his appearance.
His eyes were as a flame of fire; this characteristic looks
back over the words we have considered. Out of his mouth goeth a
sharp two-edged sword; this looks forward to the words which now
invite us. We must never divorce these two. The eyes and the sword. Not
the eyes only; for of what use would it be to see and not strike? Not the
sword only; for to strike without seeing would give needless pain, this
would be surgery blindfolded. But the searching tender vision, followed
by the swift and decisive flash of the sword of amputation and deliverance.
Oh, who will now submit to that stroke, wielded by the gentle hand that
often carried healing and blessing, and was nailed to the cross; guided
by unerring wisdom, and nerved by Almighty strength? Not death, but life
and fruitfulness, freedom and benediction, are all awaiting that one blow
of emancipation. That sword is the Word of God.
THE WORD OF GOD IS LIVING. The words he speaks are
spirit and life (John vi. 63). Wherever they fall, though into dull and
lifeless soil, they begin to breed life, and produce results like themselves.
They come into the heart of an abandoned woman; and straightway there follow
compunction for the past, vows of amendment, and the hasty rush to become
an evangelist to others. They come into the heart of a dying robber; and
immediately he refrains from blasphemy, and rebukes his fellow, and announces
the Messiahship, the blamelessness, the approaching glory, of the dying
Saviour. They come into hearts worn out with the wild excesses of the great
pagan ages, and ill-content, though enriched with the spoils of art and
refinement and philosophy in the very zenith of their development; and
lo! the moral waste begins to sprout with harvests of holiness, and to
blossom with the roses of heaven. If only those words, spoken from the
lips of Christ, be allowed to work in the conscience, there will be forthwith
the stir of life.
THE WORD OF GOD IS ACTIVE, i.e., energetic.
Beneath its spell the blind see, the deaf hear, the paralyzed
are nerved with new energy, the dead stir in their graves and come forth.
There are few things more energetic than life. Put a seed into the fissure
of a rock, and it will split it in twain from top to bottom. Though walls
and rocks and ruins impede the course of the seedling, yet it will force
its way to the light and air and rain. And when the Word of God enters
the heart, it is not as a piece of furniture or lumber. It asserts itself
and strives for mastery, and compels men to give up sin; to make up long
standing feuds; to restore ill-gotten gains; to strive to enter into the
strait gate. "Now ye are pruned," said our Lord, "through the word that
I have spoken to you." The words of Christ are his winnowing-fan, with
which he is wont to purge his flour, whether in the heart or the world.
We are not, therefore, surprised that a leading tradesman in a thriving
commercial center said that the visit of two evangelists, who did little
else than reiterate the Word of God, was as good as a revival of trade,
because it led so many people to pay up debts which were reckoned as lost.
THE WORD OF GOD IS SHARP. Its sharpness is threefold.
It is sharp to pierce. On the day of Pentecost, as Peter
wielded the sword of the Spirit, it pierced three thousand to the heart;
and they fell wounded to the death before him, crying, "What shall we do?"
Often since have strong men been smitten to the dust under the effect of
that same sword, skillfully used. And this is the kind of preaching we
need. Men are urged to accept of the gift of God, and many seem to comply
with the invitation; but in the process of time they fall away. Is not
the cause in this, that they have never been wounded to the death of their
self-esteem, their heart has never been pierced to the letting of the blood
of their own life, they have never been brought into the dust of death?
Oh for Boanerges! able to pierce the armor of excuses of vain hopes, behind
which men shield themselves, that many may cry with Ahab, pierced between
the joints of the harness "Turn thine hand, and carry me out of the battle,
for I am wounded!"
It is sharp to divide. With his sharp
knife the priest was accustomed to dissect the joints of the animal, and
to open to view even the marrow of the bones. Every hair was searched,
every limb examined; and thus the sacred gift was passed, and permitted
to be offered in worship. And God's scrutiny is not satisfied with the
external appearance and profession. It goes far deeper. It enters into
those mysterious regions of the nature where soul and spirit, purpose,
intention, motive, and impulse, hold their secret court, and carry on the
hidden machinery of human life. Who can tread the mysterious confines where
soul and spirit touch? What is the line of demarkation? Where does the
one end, and the other begin? We cannot tell; but that mystic Word of God
could cut the one from the other, as easily as the selvage is divided from
the cloth. It is at home in distinctions which are too fine drawn and minute
for human apprehension. It assumes an office like that which Jesus refused
when he said, "Who made me a judge and divider over you?"
It is sharp to criticise and judge.
"Quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart." Christ is eager
about these. Because what a man thinks and intends in his heart, that he
will be sooner or later in life. We must expect to have our most secret
thoughts, relations, and purposes questioned, criticised, and measured
by the Word of God. No court of inquiry was ever presided over by a more
exact inquisitor than this. The corpses of the dead past are exhumed; the
old lumber-rooms with their padlocked boxes are explored; the accounts
of bygone years are audited and taxed. God is critic of all the secrets
of the heart. As each thought or intention passes to and fro, he searches
it. He is constantly weighing in the balance our thoughts and aims, though
they be light as air.
On one occasion, when Saul had spared the spoils
of a doomed city, together with its monarch, the latter came to Samuel,
not as a criminal, but delicately, as a pampered friend. And Samuel said,
"As thy sword has made women childless, so shall thy mother be childless
among women. And Samuel hewed Agag in pieces before the Lord." Thus it
is that we have spared too many of our sins, at the risk of our irreparable
rejection from the throne of true manhood and righteousness. How much better
to let Christ do his work of amputation and excision! If we do not know
ourselves, let us ask him to search us. If we cannot cut off the offending
member, let us look to him to rid us of it.
Do not fear him; close after these terrible words,
as the peal of bells after the crash of the storm on the organ at Freiburg,
we are told that "he was tempted in all points like as we are," and that
" we have not a High~Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of our
infirmities." "Does she sing well?" asked the trainer of a new operatic
singer. "Splendidly," was the reply; "but if I had to bring her out, I
would first break her heart." He meant that one who had not been broken
by sorrow could not touch the deepest chords of human life. Ah! there is
no need for this with our Lord Jesus; reproach broke his heart. He understands
broken hearts, and is able to soothe and save all who come unto God by
him.