Matthew 2:16-23

Chapter 5

Second Causes Not Sufficient Physical Force Weaker Than Moral Angel Ministries Afraid of Whole Families Goodness Cannot Die

Prayer

Almighty God, thy way is very wonderful, and we cannot find it out; thou dost justify thyself in righteousness and in mercy, notwithstanding our sore perplexity and the vexation of our soul in time of trouble. Thou dost send men on strange errands, thy requests are bold; thou dost lay thine hand upon our life, and require it as our gift. Who can restrain thee? Who can mitigate thy severity? Who can answer thy great thunder? What sword have we that can reply to thy lightning? Teach us that our place is to obey, to receive the will from heaven, and with all patience and loving industry to do it every whit. How can we do so? We are of yesterday, and know nothing; we mistake the near for the precious and the great; we do not allow for distance and colour in the proportion of things, so we are constantly mistaking that which is in our hand as being greater and better than that which is afar off. We consult impatient temper; we are the slaves of an imperfect and depraved will; a thousand mean and treacherous appetites besiege the very centre and source of our best life how then can we obey? This is of the Lord's doing: we are saved by grace and not by work; this is not an offering of our own; it is the outworking of the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. We do not marvel now that we must be born again; we bless thee for this gospel of regeneration, which is the gospel of the heart of thy Son, for the laver of regeneration is filled with nothing less than the blood of the heart of Christ. To no baptismal water do we come, but to a laver and fountain of regenerating blood. The blood of Jesus Christ, thy Son, cleanseth from all sin. We would test its power; we would see our sin cleansed by its efficacy; we are weary of sin: it tires those whom for a moment it pleases the fire of wickedness goes out and leaves a death-like cold behind it. We would therefore turn unto the Lord with full purpose of heart; we would live in the Lord, for the Lord would we live, our delight would be in thy testimonies, and our satisfaction in thy service.

Thou hast appointed unto us but a few days wherein to live. Our life is as a dying smoke, or as a wind that flieth speedily away and which none can find. We are like water spilled upon the ground which cannot be gathered up. Few and evil are the days of thy servants; our life is but a span; we see the meanness of its duration and the poverty of its own resources, yet are we enslaved by fascinations which throw their spell upon us every day. We would that God would deliver us from all these bondages, and cause us to enter into the wide and glorious liberty of his Son. That we should ever have prayed this prayer is the miracle of our life, for we were dead in trespasses and sin, and our soul's delight was in the gardens forbidden, and in the trees that are interdicted, but now we are alive in Christ, and our soul's desire is to drink of the living stream, to pluck of the tree of life, and to do God's will with hearty sincerity, with humble devoutness, with reverence that itself is worship.

Appoint unto us our task and give us strength to fulfil it all. When the burden is very heavy, do not lessen the load, but increase the strength. When the hill is very high and the wind is very bleak, and we are ill able to bear it, reduce nothing of the severity of the discipline, but increase in us that loving patience, that high hope, that gentle trust, which accepts everything at thine hand as right and wise and good.

Thou art teaching us many lessons difficult to learn, hard to apply, yet which in the application turn to sweet gospels, even to resurrections and great deliverances. Thou dost take away the pride of our life, the delight of our eyes, the song of oar souls. Thou dost make us poor indeed: thou sendest a bitter cold upon us, under which we shiver and tremble with agony: thou dost distress us by many troubles, thou wilt not allow us to keep the dear child it is plucked like an unopened bud. When thou dost see us in the midst of our joy thou dost trouble our cup with bitterness as for our fig-tree, thou dost bark it and leave it naked as for our one lamb, its loneliness is no protection against thy judgment; thou dost take it away in the night time, and in the morning we are visited with infinite distress.

This is the life we live: we sing and curse and mourn and reproach, and there is no prayer found upon our lips, yet dost thou send unto us messages from heaven, yea, last of all thou didst send thy Son, and he gave himself for us. We have been touched by the pathos of the cross, we have been moved by the entreaties of the dying Christ, we have found in him our one and only priest now we would live in him, and for him and to him, and would be bound to his kingdom as willing and loving slaves. Amen.

Matthew 2:16-23 .

16. Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men (mocked of God, rather) was exceeding wroth, and sent forth (murderers), and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem, and in all the coasts (suburbs or precincts) thereof, from two years old and under, according to the time which he had diligently enquired of the wise men.

17. Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying,

18. In Rama (which lay on the way to Babylon) was there a voice heard, lamentation, and weeping, and great mourning, Rachel (the progenetrix of Israel) weeping for her children, and would not be comforted, because they are not.

19. But when Herod was dead, behold an angel of the Lord appeareth in a dream to Joseph in Egypt.

20. Saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and go into the land of Israel (the country is divinely named; the particular town was humanly selected); for they are dead which sought the young child's life (literally the young child's soul).

21. And he arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel.

22. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign (under the inferior title of Ethnarch) in Judea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither; notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee:

23: And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth, that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a. Nazarene (mean and. contemptible, so the root of the word signifies.)

"Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men" yet the wise men did not mock him at all! When will people get away from the region of secondary causes, and understand that life has a divine centre, and that all things are governed from the throne of heaven? It is not only a philosophical mistake to drop into second causes for the purpose of finding the origin of our miseries, it sometimes, yea often, becomes a practical mischief, a sore and terrible disaster of a personal and social kind. Therefore with great urgency would I drive men away from secondary lines and intermediate causes, to the great cause of all God, and King, and Lord, and Christ. Herod was mocked of God: he was not mocked of the Persian sages: they were not unwilling to ally themselves with him, so far as they were personally concerned, if they could contribute aught to his intelligence or to the carrying out of his expressed purpose to "worship" the Child of whom they themselves were in quest. Herod was mocked, vexed from heaven, troubled from the centre of things. The fog that, fell upon his eyes came downwards, not upwards, it was a blinding mist from him who sends upon men delusions as well as revelations.

We have ourselves been mocked of God, and we have taken vengeance upon human instrumentalities. If we insist upon having our own way, there is a point at which God says, "Take it, and with it take the consequences." If we resolutely and impatiently say, "We will find success along this line and no other," God may say to us, "Proceed, and find what you can." And at the end of that line, what have we found? A great rock, a thousand feet thick, and God has said, "You may find success if you will thrust your hand through that granite." So we have been mocked. We have determined to proceed along a certain course, notwithstanding the expostulations of heaven, and having gone mile after mile, what have we found at the end of the course? A great furnace, and God has said to us with mocking laughter, that hast shaken the skies, "Your success is in the middle of that furnace: put your hand right into the centre and take it," knowing that he who puts his hand in there takes it out no more.

In proportion, therefore, as we are mocked and vexed, as we come back from the wilderness, bringing with us nothing but the wind, as we return from the mountains bringing with us nothing but a sense of perplexity, it becomes us to ask serious questions about our failure. Who mocked us? Not men, not women we were laughed at from heaven. There is no passage of Scripture which has upon me so weird an effect as that which says that God will mock at our calamity, and laugh when our fear cometh. We have seen his tears they baptized Jerusalem, they have fallen in gracious showers upon the graves that hold our heart's treasure, but we have never heard his laugh. There is a human laughter that turns us cold God forbid that we should ever hear our divine Father's laughter, when the great fire-waves swell around us and all heaven seems to be pleased with the discomfiture of our souls.

When Herod saw that he was mocked of the wise men, what did he? Let us suppose that the passage is interrupted at that point and that we are required to continue the story. Now let us set our wits to work to complete the sentence which begins with "When Herod saw that he was mocked of the wise men." Let me suggest this continuation He saw a religious mystery in this matter: he said, "This is not the doing of the wise men, there is a secret above and behind and around this, which I have not yet penetrated: I am troubled, but it is with religious perplexity. I will fall down upon my knees, I will outstretch mine arms in prayer, and will cry mightily to God to visit me in this crisis of my intellectual distress and moral consternation." Let me now turn and see how far my conjecture is right. "Then Herod, when he saw that he was mocked of the wise men, was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew." The power of wickedness is physical, the power of goodness is moral. Wickedness says, "A sword;" goodness says, "A pen."

We know that this narrative is true in the case of Herod, because it is made true every day in our own experience. When we are vexed and mocked and disappointed, we do exactly what Herod did we grow exceeding wroth, and slay. You need not consult the ancient historians to know whether Herod really did this work or not, when we ourselves are doing it every day of our vexation and disappointment. We all play the fool under such visitations. Not unless we are regenerated by God the Holy Ghost and cleansed through and through by the atoning blood do we rise to the high dignity and grandeur of moral dominion and spiritual conquest.

There are two victories possible to us, the one is physical, the other is a moral. I want this child to attend public worship. I say to the child, "You must: if you refuse I will scourge you until you go to church. I am older, I am stronger than you are, and you shall feel the supremacy of my age and the oppressiveness of my strength. To church I will make you go." I have succeeded, the child is in the church to-day. The child is here, but not here. By a perverse will the child is turning this church into a desecrated place. The child's will is not here, nor is the child's love present with us: our prayers have been burdensome, and God's own word has lost its music, because of the constraint under which that attendance has been enforced.

Let me take the case of the child from another point. I have been dwelling upon the advantages of going to church: I have been speaking about God and God's love, Christ and Christ's cross, about the tender music and the beautiful word and the loving gospel, and I have said to the child, "I should like you to go: it would make my heart glad if you did go I only ask you, I do not force you." And the child has said, "Certainly I will go; show me the way, I should be glad to go." The child is here, every blood-drop in his heart is here, his eyes are rounding into a great wonder, and his breast heaving with an unusual but most glad emotion. Which is the conquest? The conquests of force exhaust themselves and perish in ignominious failure, the conquests of love grow and increase with the processes of time.

When Herod saw that he was mocked of the wise men, he was exceeding wroth, and sent forth and slew all the children that were in Bethlehem. The power of badness is destructive, the power of goodness is preservative. We need direction in the quality and uses of strength. It is easy to destroy: even a beast can crush a flower, but no angel in all the heavens can reset the broken joint. We mistake destructiveness as a sign of power. What power there is in the act of destructiveness is of the lowest and coarsest quality. You cannot drive evil out of men by any merely negative and destructive process. If you call out "Repent," you must immediately follow the word with "For the kingdom of heaven is at hand." The call to repentance is in a sense a negative call, the announcement that the kingdom of heaven is at hand is the positive and affirmative call, which tends to the upfilling of the emptied heart with the better dominion, the sanctuary from heaven. You may cut down all the weeds in your garden, but if you do not attend to that garden, putting in the place of that which was noxious that which is useful, the old roots will re-assert themselves and your garden will become a scene of confusion. Jesus does not destroy without creating. If we suppress anything we do not believe in, we ought to set up in its place influences of a higher and nobler kind. It is no use for you, my friends, to empty the public-house unless you open some other place that shall attract within its better limits those whom you have expelled. It is of no use for you to drive the devil out of a man unless you have something to put into the man. That devil will wander about and will return and bring with him seven worse than himself, and the end of the man will be worse than the beginning.

"Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Rama was there a voice heard, mourning, lamentation, weeping," distress night and day, the cry of pain and the moan of agony. The result of selfishness is human distress, the result of goodness is good-will towards men. See then what the world would come to under a selfish rulership. Selfish rulership says, "If I cannot have my own way easily, I will have it at all costs and hazards." Selfish rulership lifts up its sword and says, "Make way." Selfish rulership will purchase its own ends at any cost of mourning, lamentation, and weeping. Thus the bad man seems to succeed more than the good man; his way is rougher, his manners are ruder, he destroys, he does not create, and it is always easier to pull down than to build up. Jesus Christ proceeds slowly because of the depth and vitality and permanence of his work. It is easier to curse than to pray. Under Herod the world would become a scene of selfish triumph; under Christ it would become a family united by tenderest bonds, made holy by mutual and sympathetic love, and sacred by the exercise of those obligations which elevate and ennoble human nature. I ask you, therefore, to-day, as the end of this part of the exposition who is to be king, Herod or Christ, violence or persuasion, force or love, selfishness or beneficence? The choice is sharp, the division is distinct: he who would seek to muddle and confuse these distinctions, is not the friend of progress, he is the victim of a mischievous pedantry. The world can only be under one of two kings, God mammon, Christ Herod, beneficence selfishness. Choose ye; put high his banner over your life and let it float so that men can see it from afar.

In the next paragraph of our text we find the appearance of an angel of the Lord in a dream. The angels are ever mindful of the good. "Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be the heirs of salvation?" You say you have had no experience of angel ministry: be careful what you say, lest you narrow yourselves unduly by the mere letter, and miss the poetry and grandeur of your life. You say you are bound by things visible and palpable, and beyond those things do not venture to go. I am not asking you to venture to go any distance beyond those limitations, but I am asking you to allow God the power to come to you by any one of a series of innumerable ministries. You must not "limit the Holy One of Israel." The question is not, What can I do? It is, What can God do?

I could imagine a little boy with his arithmetic saying that all things that could be reckoned up, in space and in quantity, were reckonable upon the basis of his book of figures. He begins and ends with the multiplication table; he says the multiplication table ends at twelve times twelve, and beyond that he will never go. He is not going to be wise above what is written: if any man should venture to ask him how many are thirteen times thirteen, he would shudder with arithmetical aversion, and reply that thirteen times thirteen was not to be found in the multiplication table. Would he be right? He would be as far wrong as possible! Thirteen times thirteen is as certainly in the multiplication table as twice one or five times five. He will find that out by-and-by. He thinks he is keeping himself within due limits and must not transgress certain boundaries, when he says the table ends at twelve times twelve. He is going to be arithmetically orthodox: other people may dream about thirteen times thirteen if they please, he thinks that inquiry involves a very grave responsibility: he shrinks from their society, and he betakes himself with renewed ardour to the four corners of the table that begins at twice one and ends at twelve times twelve. Is he arithmetically pious and arithmetically orthodox? He is arithmetically narrow and arithmetically bigoted and arithmetically foolish!

By-and-by he will advance further. I will say to him, "What is the square root of five-and-twenty?" And he will say, "Anybody knows that the square root of five-and-twenty is five." "What is the square root of minus a?" "Ah, I do not go into that sort of thing at all." "But there is a science which tackles questions of that kind." The boy replies, "I know nothing about it; I do not want to be wise above that which is written. I can give you the square root of one hundred in a moment, but the square root of minus a he must be a very presumptuous and arrogant person to discuss such a question! If it be not presumptuous, which it appears to me to be, it is exceedingly foolish." He lives within his arithmetic, he does not know that there is another science just over it, which undertakes to find out sums by signs, and to discuss deep problems by letters and symbols that appear to be foolish to those who have never entered their higher education.

When I come to these angel ministries, they baffle me. I say, "They are not in my arithmetic, they are not in the multiplication table." Let me never forget that algebra continues and perfects common arithmetic, and let me never forget that even beyond algebra itself are methods of calculation unknown to those who are in the lower ranges of human thought. I must not set up myself as the measure and bound of things. If the Bible comes to me with angel ministries, with assurances of what has been done by angels and through the medium of dreams, by high efforts of the religious imagination, I must not play the boy-fool by saying that reckoning ends with twelve times twelve; I must remember that the universe is larger than I have yet imagined it to be, and that there are men who are older and wiser, and it is not for me to say God's ministry begins here and ends there. I love to live in an enlarging universe, I love the horizon which tempts me to touch it, and then vanishes to an infinite distance.

The angel of the Lord said, "They are dead, which sought the young child's life." The good have everything to hope from time, the bad have everything to fear from it.

The bad man is in haste, the good man rests in the Lord and waits patiently for him. The bad man says, "It must be done now; my motto is ' ad rem ,' now or never, strike the iron while it is hot, let passion have its way instantaneously." They that believe do not make haste, they are calm with the peace of God; they trust to time; they say, "All things will be fulfilled in the order of duration and the process of the suns." Innocence can wait; innocence can go into any land and tarry there until sent for by the angel; innocence can go into any prison and wait, not till helped. by a butler, but until sent for by the king. If thou art innocent, be quiet; if thou art really good at the core, through and through, simple-minded, honest in motive, pure in purpose, high and sacred in ambition, wait; thy funeral will not be first.

Yet another fear fell upon the mind of Joseph. When he heard that Archelaus reigned in Judea, under the inferior title of Ethnarch, in the room of his father Herod, he was "afraid to go thither." There are some families of which we are afraid: there are whole generations that seem to be blighted with a common taint. There are some chains whose links are all bad. Joseph thought that Archelaus might inherit the prejudices and hostilities of his father. There was no need for him to do so. Thank God, a man may break away from his own family, a child may be a stranger to his own father. Thank God for these possibilities of beginning again. I see what is called fate in the order and destiny of men: I have taken hold of the chain and find it to be thick and strong yet I see also the wonderful liberties of men, so that they can detach themselves from a melancholy and shameful past on the part of others and begin again, by themselves, under God's blessing and direction, for themselves. Was your father a bad man? You may be a good son. Fear not, do not droop under the blighting cloud. If it be in your heart to be better and you mention this purpose in prayer to God, your father's name shall rot, and yours shall be a memorial of goodness and hope, long as the sun endures.

They are DEAD which sought the young child's life. That is always the ending of wickedness: that is the history of all the assaults that ever have been made upon Jesus Christ and his kingdom. I have seen great armies of men come up against the young child, and behold they have perished in a night, and in the morning the angels have said to one another, "They are DEAD which sought the young child's life." I have seen armies of infidel books come up to put down Christianity, to expose it; and refute it and cut it to pieces, and destroy it as Herod's sword the children of Bethlehem, and lo, in twelve months not one of them could be found, and the angels have said to one another, "They are DEAD which sought the young child's life." I have seen critics come up with keen eye and sharp knife, and a new apparatus adapted to carry out its processes and purposes of extermination, and behold the critics have cut their own bones and died of their own wounds, and the angels have said, "They are DEAD that sought the young child's life." I have seen whole towns of new institutions, created for the purpose of putting down the Christian Church. All kinds of competitive buildings have been put up at a lavish expenditure, the preacher was to be put down, the Bible was to be shut up, the old hymn-singing was to be done away with, a new era was to dawn upon the wilderness of time, and lo, the bankruptcy court had to be enlarged to take in groups of new mendicants, for they DIED that sought the young child's life!

No man ever died who sought the young child's saving ministry; no man ever died who went to the young child and said, "My Saviour, thy grace is greater than my sin, pity me and lift me out of this deep pit by the hand of thy love." The angels never said about such a one, "He is dead who offered that prayer." No dead man is found at the foot of the cross, they live who touch that tree, they are immortal who open their hearts to receive that baptism of blood, they are a triumphant host that take hold of hands around the young child.

He is always young: he is always in bloom. Time cannot wither him: as for custom it cannot "stale the infinite variety" of his ministry and his worship. God delights in youth: there is no wearying in the duration of goodness wickedness runs down into exhaustion, goodness runs up into renewal of efflorescence and beauty, and eternal spring.