Luke 11:29-36 - Homiletics

to it.

We are on trial, placed in a scene of conflict between good and evil, and called to make our election. Our whole life is such an election; every day, every action, goes to complete that solemn probation on which depend issues of unspeakable moment. Such has always been the contention of Christian teachers. There is a higher aspect of life than that. To say that life is a Divine education is to give the fuller and nobler conception of God's purpose concerning us. He is not merely testing us; he is training us, disciplining our character, seeking to perfect our moral being. This world is his school, and the influences of which we are conscious, the events which mark our days, the varieties in befalling and condition, are the schoolmasters through which he is stimulating or correcting, guiding or controlling, the natures with which we are endowed. But it is wrong to set this higher, as against the other aspect referred to. The two—that which regards probation and that which regards education—are not opposed. Our part is to refuse the evil and to choose the good, and to stand by our choice. In respect of this we are on trial. We are called to work out our own salvation with fiat and trembling. Yet, in all, God is working in us to will and to do; educating the response of our will to his, that as his dear children we may walk before him in love. In this passage the Lord reminds all to whom he speaks of the relation of the human mind to the truth that looks down from heaven. His discourse bears on the test of inward state supplied by the attitude of the mind to the truth. Let us listen to it as reminding us

I. THE PROPER AND CHARACTERISTIC FORCE OF TRUTH . Christ is grieved with the generation whose representatives are with him. He had wrought in their presence the works of God; he had spoken to them the words of God. And what did they aver? That he was secretly leagued with Beelzebub; in the ministry of love they saw the malignities of hell, the finger, not of God, but of Satan. Those who shrank from such wilful misconstruction clamoured for a sign—some portent in the skies, some miracle so striking as to prove the Divine Source of his mission. And, feeling the pain of this contradiction of sinners, he says ( Luke 11:29-32 ), "Sign, more than the preaching itself? What Jonah was to the Ninevites—the testimony against them—that the Son of man shall be. Sign, more than the preaching itself? The heathen Queen of Ethiopia shall condemn them; for her the preaching of Solomon was enough, and the Greater than Solomon is here. The people of heathen Nineveh shall condemn them, for they repented when the prophet preached; and yet this generation repents not, though the Son of God is himself speaking to it. Sign? The troth is its own sign. It is open; it may be known and read of all men. It is light (verse 34), not covered by a bushel, but set as a candle on a candlestick, that all who come into the house may see it." This is the abiding characteristic of truth. It is light. Pharisees with cabbalistic lore, so-called philosophers, with their doctrine for the initiated, their pretentious knowledge, are not the light-givers. "Whatsoever doth make manifest is light." When the soul is interpreted or helped; when God in nature, in providence, or in thought, is declared; when the relations and proportions of facts are discerned; when the order of the universe is apprehended and felt; when, if puzzle and problem are not seen through, the light pierces into what is beyond, and the heart is enabled to say, "I cannot understand, I love;"—when thus the truth is known, the truth that is known makes free. It is the freedom of light before which the darkness passes. Let us realize the self-evidencing nature of truth. Signs outward and carnal it does not need. What speaks of Christ in miracle is not the mere wonder. That only called attention to the real sign, the object and the manner of the work. The claim of truth consists, not in what adheres to it, but in what it is. We do not need a sign to tell us that the sun shines; the shining is the sign. We do not need a sign to tell us that a candle is lit; the candlestick shows that. And so with regard to Christianity. As it has eloquently been said, "The central unquestionable miracle is Jesus himself—One from the cradle to the grave, walking in spotless purity, through all temptation wearing a conscience without a scar, treading the great deep of human life and never wetting his feet with the spray; equally at home with saints in the glory of the mount, and with men writhing in misery at its base; elect to wipe away the tear of humanity, to bear it undwarfed and undimmed to the heavenly places, yet to whom we can go when the shame burns in the cheek, and the sweat stands on the brow." Ah! yes; and this miracle is still writing its n,ark on the conscience and life of man. Persons speak dolefully about the decadence of the evangelical faith, and indeed the signs are mixed; but the evangel of the living Christ is still the power of God—never more than now

"The presence of a good diffused,

And in diffusion ever more intense."

Not less, but all the more, as the world waxes old, and the needs of men become more urgent and complicated, is this evangel "the light shining in the darkness, and the darkness will never overtake it."

II. But now observe THE CONDITIONS ON WHICH THE FORCE OF THE TRUTH 1S REALIZED . These conditions, as stated by the Lord, are two.

1 . There is the quality of the receptive organ. "The light of the body is the eye" (verse 34). Whatever affects the eye affects the impression of the object beheld. For example, the very common defect known as color-blindness necessarily vitiates the discernment. Any injury to the eye, any disturbance of the wondrously delicate mechanism, mars the vision. All this has its moral counterpart. "As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he." The truth presented to the soul may yet not be apprehended as truth by the soul, and the fault lies in the soul itself. The moral necessarily acts on the intellectual. The intellectual life that springs out of or develops in harmony with a developing spiritual life is the light of the soul. All is then beheld in its real force and its right proportions. But not otherwise. And therefore the great Teacher emphasizes the need of "the single eye ," the mind purely intentioned to know God and his will and truth, and this intention undisturbed by appetite of sense, or by prejudice closing against the evidence of the light. Ah, the single eye! The tiniest mote may confuse and becloud. One cunning bosom sin, one aberration from the right, so small as scarcely to be thought of, may yet impair the organ. And once let the eye become evil, "thy body also is full of darkness."

2 . There is, as the second condition, a complete enlightenment of mind (verse 36). See to it that every part of the thinking, willing, activity is submitted to the light. The whole being must be yielded to it. "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting." It is the partial illumination which we have so often to deplore. The prophet describes Ephraim as "a cake not turned "—one part of it under the influence of the fire, burned; the other part uninfluenced and doughy. So there is often to be noticed an imperfect sanctifying of character, an imperfect acquaintance with the way of the Lord. Men are always apt to measure what is due to God, what is to be kept for themselves. The apostle says, "The God of peace sanctify you wholly. " We are often pained by a narrowness of view in Christians, by their failure in learning the lesson suggested by the evangelist, when he speaks of Christ "looking round about on all things." We are often pained, again, by a so-called breadth of view—no height in it, no mountain, forgetful that in the city which lieth foursquare, the length and the breadth and the height of it are equal. Oh, how needful is the prayer to increase in the knowledge of his will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding! Offer all, conscience, intellect, emotions, affections, will, all to the light; make an unreserved surrender. "If the whole be full of light, having no part dark, that whole is full of light." Not like a candle burning dimly, flickering and feeble, but as "when by its bright shining it giveth light."

III. Here, then, is THE RESPONSIBILITY WITH REGARD TO THE TRUTH . Men discuss whether we are responsible for our faith. We are responsible for ourselves, and what we are individually will greatly determine what, individually, we believe. This seems most obvious. "Take heed therefore that the light which is in thee be not darkness" (verse 35). There is a light, a capacity of receiving and verifying the light, in every man—unless, indeed, in rare cases, or in those who are described as "past feeling." In speaking to men, in preaching the gospel to every creature, we assume this. And it is this which defines the responsibility resting on all. For the state of this receptive faculty, for its exercise, we must answer. "Take heed," says the Master. How solemn and expressive his sentence! Not merely "that the light shine," or "lest the light be extinguished," but more strongly still, "that this inner light be not darkness itself"—that what should lead to God does not take from God and become an angel, a power, of darkness. This was the catastrophe already fulfilling in the Pharisees, the catastrophe which he had declared (see parallel passage, Matthew 12:1-50 ). to be the sin against the Holy Ghost. And the word of warning still confronts us. Take care of all that savours of sophisticating the conscience. Take care of all that cuts off from the light. Take care lest your prayers lose tone, your desires lose fervor, your soul loses interest in Divine things. Take care lest any way of thought, through companions, or literature, or otherwise, blight what is best and holiest in yourselves. The life of God in a soul is very sensitive. It needs to be guarded; it needs to be kept open to all Heavenward influence; it needs to be ever filled anew out of the fullness of God. A very little may destroy the organ, may separate from the vision. "The little rift within the lute by-and-by will make the music mute." Walk in the light. As the Light of God is ever seeking you, so let the light in you be ever seeking him. "Feed daily on Christ in your heart by faith, with thanksgiving." Do God's will with all the strength. Then the life is a beauteous order. Apart from the Light, the life is a chaos, a darkness how great!