Matthew 21:17-22

Chapter 78

Prayer

Almighty God, if we put our trust in thee, our souls shall know no unrest or pain, for thou wilt bring forth our righteousness as the light and our judgment as the noonday. Thou dost carry all government, and none can rule but by thy permission behold, every sovereignty is part of thine own: thou art the reigning One and there is none higher than the Father. Help us to put our whole trust in this sacred doctrine, that our souls may not be driven about and tossed with every wind that blows, but may enjoy a sense of security, and enter into the mystery of the peace of God. Thou dost hide us in thy pavilion, thou dost surround us with inviolable security, thine eye is upon us for good, thine hand is laid upon us that we may be defended. Help us to read the miracles of thy providence, to understand them as signs given to the sons of men from Heaven, and may we so read thy wonderful works as to enlarge in happy continuation the word which thou hast written in thy Book for our daily instruction.

Thy law is one through all the ages: it is broken only to our senses by sleep and wakefulness, by surprises which reveal our ignorance, but from thy throne, ever continued, ever consistent, full of love, shining with beneficence, the purpose of God, the election and decree of Heaven. That we may rest on the rocks is our prayer, that our feet may stand upon the eternal granite of thy righteousness is our heart's desire then we shall have peace and sweet content and bright hope, and our heart shall be as the church of the angels.

We have come to sing our united hymn in thy hearing, to make common prayer at the foot of thy throne, to lift up the voice of our thanksgiving without restraint, and to plead with thee that as our day, so our strength may be, and that according to the burden we have to carry may be thy sustaining grace. We come by the appointed way: Jesus said, "I am the door" we enter by that living door, we come by the cross of Christ, upon us and upon every syllable of our prayer is the sacred blood of the atoning sacrifice; so shall we prevail with thee, and our hymn and our prayer shall have audience in Heaven.

Pity us, for we are here but a little while, and whilst we are here we are digging our grave. Shed thy tears upon us, but withhold the glances of thy judgment, for we are as a vapour that cometh for a little time and then vanisheth away; yet hast thou given unto us wondrous capacities of sin, of knowledge, of service, of homage to thy throne, and of complete identification with every purpose that stirred the heart of the Redeemer of the world. May those capacities be sanctified, may fire from Heaven take away from them everything that is impure, and may the Holy Ghost, the fire of the universe, the flame of light and of glory, dwell within us, subduing our will, enlightening our mind, leading our purified heart into higher rapture and more loving service.

Thou knowest all the purposes of our life; the plans we have laid out for tomorrow thou hast read in every line and shape; all the secret things in our heart are written with sunbeams on the walls of Heaven thou knowest us altogether, our purposed journeyings and voyagings, our breakings up of immediate relations that they may be renewed in still tenderer embraces, our commercial enterprises, our family designs, every trouble that depresses, every light that brings us joy all is known unto thee: thou art ruling and directing all. We pray for the spirit of resignation and trust and complete love, that we may rest in the Lord and commit our way unto the Father.

Take away from us the delight of our eyes, the pride of our life, the joy of our home, and the staff of our pilgrimage if thou wilt, but take not thy Holy Spirit from us. We yield ourselves into thine hand: they are well kept whom thou dost keep. Make our bed in our affliction: when the enemy is strongest, be thou mightier than he, and when he would come in as a flood, lift up thy Spirit as a standard against him.

Send messages from thy table to ail the guests who would have been here but cannot, because of suffering, in mind, body, or estate. Speak comfortably to such in their solitude, turn their tears into blessings, and may their weakness become the point of their strength. Comfort all that mourn, visit those whom others avoid, let the helplessness of the weak be the reason of thy coming to. them in the almightiness of thy grace. Watch all the seas of the globe, search all the lands where our loved ones are, find out where they be that messages of love may reach them and as for those for whom we dare hardly pray, so much in hell, do thou search for them, and seek them, and bring them back thou, the loving Shepherd, the wounded Man, the sacrificed Priest, the Son of God. Amen.

Mat 21:17-22

The Condemnation of Uselessness

From the city to the village it seems to be but a short journey; in point of mileage indeed it was nothing but an easy walk. From the city into Bethany how far was that? Do not tell me the distance in miles, statute or geographical such journeys have not to be measured by arithmetical instruments. From the city to Bethany was from a battlefield to a home how far is that? From the city to Bethany was a journey from strangeness to friendship who can lay a line upon that immeasurable distance? From the city to Bethany, a journey from tumult and riot and murder to love and rest and tender ministry who can lay a line upon that diameter and announce its length in miles? None.

It was worth while making that little change for one night one quiet look upward, one brief solemn pause in the rush of life, that the head might turn towards the stars and the firmament and the serenities of the upper places. The house at Bethany was not grand, but the home was lined with the gold of love. We want such a home when the stress is heavy upon us tears could be shed there without being misunderstood, and the heart could tell its whole tale or remain in total silence, just as the mood determined, and there would be no misconstruction. It was a church in the rocks, it was a sweet sanctuary, just out of the great high road of life's business and sacrifice. Can you retire to such a nest? Happy is your lot! He who can find a Bethany, a home, a rest-place, a Sabbath in the midst of the week, can bear his burdens with equanimity, and grace and hope.

But we must return. In the seventeenth verse we read, "And he left them and went out of the city," and in the eighteenth verse we read, "As he returned into the city." The village must not detain us long the village for rest, the city for toil. Once the disciples said unto him by the mouth of their spokesman, "Lord, it is good to be here: let us build." He himself could have said that morning in Bethany, "It is good to be here: warm is this home, the walls are like arms round about me. Why not tarry here and rest till the storm blow away, and all God's great sky shine again in translucent blue above my head?" But he returned.

And as he returned, he hungered. See the wonderful naturalness of this story: it lives in the very words which tell it. Truly this Jesus was human: he never was at pains to conceal his humanity, he drew no screen around his weakness, saying, "My followers must not see me in this low condition." At Sychar he told a woman that he thirsted; on the road from Bethany he hungered; on the sea he fell asleep. About the humanity of Christ there can be no doubt: his deity is the greater to me because of his humanity. The foot of this ladder is upon the earth: I can begin at certain points in this history and find my way upward to other and remoter points.

The circumstance of the fig-tree must be treated in this particular connection as illustrative of the inner life of Christ. His treatment of that tree was a revelation of himself as he was at that moment. Jesus Christ never did other than reproduce his real self at the time: whatever he did is the counterpart and outer sign of his own mental and spiritual condition at the time of revelation. In the action find the spirit. Read the life of Christ in the light of this suggestion, and it will be its own commentary and broadest and clearest exposition. Every act was a translation of the Man. See how true this is in the case before us. Christ always looked for the fulfilment of the Divine idea in everything. The divine idea of the fig-tree was not leaves, but fruit. There was no fruit, and therefore the word of destruction was spoken. Consider how near he was to the fulfilment of the divine idea which he himself represented, and a man so burningly in earnest could brook no disappointment then. His own life was too hot to stand the mockery of any disappointment. He came to the fig-tree searching for fruit; he found nothing but leaves, and he spoke the word that withered it away.

What have we here but a great law, namely, that the earnestness of the living man determines his view of everything round about him? Jesus Christ was always earnest, but even his earnestness acquired a new accent and intensity as the baptism of blood came nearer. "I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished." That was the mood of the Man: he could not brook any irony of a practical kind then. We know what this is in our own life, when high pressure is put upon us, when all life is centred in one effort, when all the energies of our nature are wakened up and are bearing upon one object which we consider worthy of them how impatient we then are with mockery and disappointment and trifling of every kind! We who under other circumstances could pause and wait and wonder and excuse and suggest mitigations of the case, can brook no delay or mockery when the blood is at its supreme heat.

Jesus Christ showed this in his cleansing of the temple for the second time. We wondered how the men consented to have themselves driven out of the place. You should have seen the driver, thai would have explained all: you should have seen the royalty of his look and heard the sovereignty of his tone, and felt the fervour of his prayer. There are times when vice owns the supremacy of virtue: Jesus Christ now realised one of those times when he heard in the temple the voices of the brigands who haunted the limestone caverns of Judea: the calling of their merchandise and the clamour of their selfishness roused his indignation, and he scourged the ruffians out of the house they had polluted.

This was the temper of his mind just then, when he wanted the ass, and the colt, the foal of the ass "Say the Lord hath need of him, and he will be given up." In that temper he came into the temple and cleansed it, in that temper he looked upon the disappointing fig-tree and withered it. All this is but a transcript of himself. Everything, in the judgment of Christ must be real, useful, and satisfying according to its nature. His very hunger was a judgment at that time. He did not wither away the poor Samaritan woman who parleyed with him about a draught of water: he had more time on his hands the cross was farther off, it was a time of revelation rather than of judgment, and he spoke kindly true words to her and held a mirror up to her in which she saw herself in all the length and mystery of her lifetime. He who so communed with the woman at the well withered up the tree that did not supply him with food at the moment of his necessity. It was the same Christ, but the same Christ under different circumstances. At Sychar he was Revealer, Interpreter of the universe, Messiah, the Revealed One of God on the road from Bethany, wanting almost his last breakfast upon earth before the great tragedy, he was burning, heated sevenfold, the stress was terrible every look was then a judgment!

Jesus Christ here shows what he will do with all useless things. This is not a surprise in the revelation of Christ Do not let us lift up our eyes from the page and say how wonderful that he should have done this. In very deed, if we have rightly read the story, this is the very thing he has been doing as he has been coming along the whole line of his life, only we see some things now and then more sharply than at other times. There are occasions upon which whole revelations are condensed in an incident, and we give way to a pitiful wonder which does but betray our ignorance of what has already passed before us. This circumstance was foretold in the great sermon on the mount, when Jesus said, "If the salt have lost its savour it is henceforth good for nothing but to be cast out and to be trodden under foot of men." In that sentence you have the withered fig-tree as to all its law, and inner meaning, and certain judgment, and, when Christ antedated the day of final criticism, and brought before him the man who had buried his talent in a napkin and brought it out and shook it down, saying, "There thou hast that is thine," he said, "Cast ye the unprofitable servant into outer darkness." That was but the divine and highest view of this very fig-tree scene the condemnation of uselessness, the outcasting and final burning of unprofitableness. Do not let us therefore consider that we have come upon an exceptional instance, as though nothing of this kind had been so much as hinted at before. Here we find the accentuation, in a most visible and palpable instance of a law which has guided the Saviour in all his previous ministry.

Will this be the law of his procedure always? Most certainly it will. If so, what will happen in society, in politics, in the church? This will occur: he will come up to our institutions seeking fruit, and if he find none, he will wither the institutions away. See there the difference between him and us. We keep up institutions because they are a hundred years old Jesus Christ keeps them up because they bear fruit. We preserve our institutions and our organisations and machinery, because of their venerableness; we think it a pity to touch them. True, they are not so useful as they were wont to be: true, they are effete, they are self-exhausted, but seeing that they have been standing there a thousand years, let them stand a thousand longer! So talks an unreal sentimentalism. Jesus Christ says, "If they do not satisfy the hunger of the age, let them be withered and cut down and removed, and new ones put in their places." He judges of your institutions by their power of satisfying the hunger that immediately applies to them. So shall it fare with the church, with the pulpit, with all that we hold traditionally dear. Jesus Christ will attend our services, and he will draw nigh unto the pulpit and say, "I hunger, give me food," and the pulpit that does not satisfy the healthy and natural hunger of the soul, he will wither away. No matter how old, how costly, how traditionally grand, how adorned with faded splendours of the past, if it do not contain food and water for the immediate hunger of the age, he curses it and it must wither away. How real he is, how stern in his healthiness, how utterly and grandly robust in all his demands. He will cut down, he will wither away, he will destroy, he will overturn, overturn, overturn, until the right kingdom come in and be set up on foundations that cannot be moved.

How swiftly the decree executed itself. "And presently the fig-tree withered away." When was his miracle ever done other than presently? How suggestive is this reflection. Early in the sacred book we read, "And God said, Let there be " there was! The be hardly died out of the startled air till the thing spoken of stood fast. So here and everywhere throughout the whole story of the miracles, we have immediateness, instancy, obedience without reluctance, reply without hesitation. A man is withered away in a moment; a great man disobedient, disloyal, untrue to God, unfaithful to oath and covenant, is touched by the invisible finger is gone! He calls it loss of memory, he speaks of it as premature old age, he rubs his eyes as if to make them new and young again, and says there is a mist before them. What is he? A tree without fruit, a cumberer of the ground, man without manhood, a living irony, a mocker of realities, a hypocrite, a palpable and mischievous sarcasm!

And so at the end we have just the selfsame thing as at the beginning and at the middle. So subtle and complete is the consistency of the divine government. "Let there be " and there was. "Let no fruit grow on thee henceforward forever," and presently the fig-tree withered away. And at the last he will say to some "Depart," and these shall go away I My soul, come not thou into that secret.

It is in the power of almightiness to wither us, to turn our brain upside down, to confuse the memory, to cause reason to lose her way in the troubled brain and to be groping there in everlasting night. He interrupts the currents of vitality, he isolates the mocking life, he will not have uselessness in his church his is a withering word, nor does he spare it even on his way to save the world. He could have withered his betrayers and judges by one glance, he could have burned up the mob which was led by the gentility and culture of the age, and left them as white ashes on the ground they had dishonoured; but the Son of Man came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them, and whilst there is one drop of sap in the bruised reed he will not break it, whilst there is one spark in the smoking flax he will not quench it. But he says, as he only can say, "My Spirit shall not always strive. O that thou hadst known, even thou, in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace. Now they are hidden from thee."

When the disciples saw it, they once more fell down from the dignity of the occasion, and showed, as we have so often seen, littleness and meanness of soul. Would we could put them all out of the way when we read this story: we should then feel as if walking on mountain tops but ever and anon we are plunged right down into deep valleys by those mocking foolish men. They marvelled, saying, "How soon is the fig-tree withered away," struck by the incident, not impressed by the law marvelling at something that was comparatively of no consequence, and forgetting the grand and universal doctrine that was conveyed. They are like ourselves. Instead of hearing the sermon, we hear how it was delivered: instead of listening for the eternal tone, and the eternal truth, we look at some mean transient incident of the occasion. What wonder if we are lean in soul, poor and empty in mind, and tossed about because of unfaith and every mischievous doubt? We should be on the outlook for the everlasting, our eyes should be shut so that they might not be tempted or led away by little or unmeaning incidents, and that our heart might have intensity of concentration in reference to the great things spoken by Christ See how these men have not grown one solitary whit from the beginning until now, and in a page or two they will run away: they must run away such wonderers, such puerilities, could not stay: they must run, they will forsake him and flee, and thus complete the poetic circle and bring to its proper issue the ideal consistency of such characters. They who had seen a thousand miracles, the dead raised, the blind restored, the deaf made to hear, the sea quieted by a command, wondered with puerile amazement because the fig-tree shrunk in a moment and was withered up for ever. Such hearers would have degraded any preacher but the Son of God, such hearers would have stripped even him of every feature of heroism and dragged him down to their own mean dust, if he had been other than God himself. Any man-lighted candle they would have blown out because the light was solar and fed from eternity they could not extinguish its splendour.

Now Jesus returns and lifts up the occasion again to the right level. Said he, "If ye have faith and doubt not." Not only so, he made the occasion an opportunity of laying down the great law of prayer: so does he turn our wonder to great uses and make our ignorance the starting-point of his own revelation. "And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive." Believing, not hoping for, not selfishly expecting, not transiently wishing, but believing: and a man cannot believe in the right sense who is asking for anything which his reason condemns as improper, unjust, or mischievous. This word "believing" guards this promise like a flaming sword. I cannot ask for riches or strength or honour or fame: I cannot ask that one may sit on the right hand and another on the left: I cannot ask that the laws of nature be suspended and the universe be afflicted with a thousand troubles, whilst I am in the mood described as "believing." How much is involved in that word: resignation, childlike trust, asking for what God will give, and rounding off every prayer with this sweet Amen, "Nevertheless not my will, but Thine, be done."

Thus Jesus Christ would make us believe that we answer our own prayers just as he told the people that they had wrought their own miracles. So great grace was never seen before. He told the poor woman who went straightened and invigorated from his feet, that she had made herself whole "Daughter," said he, "go in peace, thy faith hath made thee whole. Not my almightiness but thy faith." So he told all the people upon whom the miracles were wrought, "According to your faith be it unto you." "Canst thou believe? All things are possible to him that believeth." And now in prayer, when I fall down before God, and with united heart and clenched hands, the whole man symbolical of homage, resignation, faith, and ask for what I need, when God hands it to me from his hospitable heavens, he says, "Take it: thy Faith hath prevailed."