SPIRITUAL ENVIRONMENT
‘Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher of our faith.’
‘Seeing that we are compassed about’—whether we see it or not it is a truth. There are so many people who seem to live quite unconscious of environment. And what is true of ordinary things is also true of the Kingdom of God. Some Christians are so very unsympathetic to environment, and there are some whose eyes are open and they see Jesus at the right hand of God. It is like that Old Testament story of Elisha’s servant.
But what are we compassed about with? The writer of this Epistle does not say that we are compassed about with a great cloud—mark the word ‘cloud’—of spectators, observers; no, he says witnesses. And the word ‘witness’ means not a spectator, an observer, but one who testifies, a martyr. We might render it ‘We are compassed about with so great a cloud of martyrs.’
Now mark the word ‘wherefore.’ The eleventh chapter, which precedes this, is the great chapter of the saints of old, who waxed valiant in the fight, who were stoned, tempted, sawn asunder, and who confessed that they were only strangers and pilgrims who sought a better country, and that a heavenly, who were destitute, tormented, afflicted, of whom the world was not worthy.
Then just let me follow the text out in the simplest way. What are we to do?
I. First of all we are to ‘lay aside every weight, and the sin that doth so easily beset us.’ The word ‘us’ is not in the original. It does not mean sin within us at all. We are to lay aside every weight and the sin which is always at us.
II. And then the second point is this—run with patience the appointed course.—There is where the happiness comes in. You yourself are placed on the course by God—it is all His choice. He made you, and He has made the conditions in which you have got to run.
III. And then, last of all, ‘Looking unto Jesus.’—Keep your eye in the right direction. How strong here is the preposition! It is not looking unto exactly. There is a little word which in the Greek means looking into Jesus, right into Him, not looking only at His words, His works, His miracles, and His beautiful Life; something more than that, looking right into Him and reading His heart.
IV. Then comes the last beautiful expression of the text, ‘the Author and Finisher of our faith.’—Now, is not that a complete text? See how complete it is, coming after chapter 11. The Lord Jesus is the author of faith, and the end of faith, too. If we have faith in Jesus, He put it there. He is the Author of it. It is His faith in us. He is the Author of your faith, and He is the Finisher of your faith. He Who has begun the good work in you will continue it unto the day of His coming.
Rev. A. H. Stanton.
(SECOND OUTLINE)
WORK FOR GOD
What is the work God has given us to do? Plainly it has many parts, plainly there are details peculiar to each one of us, but, speaking broadly, we can distinguish certain universal elements in it.
I. The formation of our own character.—We might say that our work here for God is the formation of our own character. The many sayings of the wise which so soon become commonplaces about life being a place of trial, a state of probation, mean just this, that our natural instincts and desires are given us by God as so much material out of which to fashion our own characters. They are just the warp and woof by means of which we are set down to weave at tapestry fit for the eyes of God, they are so much clay out of which to mould things upon the wheel of the world. We have to fashion a vessel for the glory of God. Now there is a work—who can deny it?—that lies upon us all. How does it fare? Are we yet masters of ourselves? Do we know yet our defects, our deficiencies? Have we sought in any systematic way to remedy or to supply them? Do we know that it is a case for surgery from which the flesh shrinks, an eye or a hand that causes us to stumble and cries out for treatment? Is it sin that does beset us, or is it care that encumbers? What to each of us here in church at this moment as moral beings is the one thing needful? Probably we all know. Is it regard for truth, is it the control of temper, is it the control of evil desire, is it the banishment of sloth, the banishment of selfishness? All these, we know, of themselves are great works, difficult, very difficult of enterprise, simple as they sound, but we know in our heart of hearts that they are all works for God which lie upon us all, they are all part of the race, and are all well worth adventuring in His Name with Him our source and our goal. And shall we say, then, that there is part of our life’s work, the making of ourselves?
II. Our share in the making of others.—But that does not exhaust it. We each of us also have our share in the making of others, for no one lives to himself, and sometimes, while we have to keep a clear eye open to these clogging faults, we cure them best in the course of that other work which is not so self-conscious, as we throw our interest out from ourselves on some other cause of God. We all have some work for others. We all have some ties, some who depend upon us, people of whose consciences, though we cannot recognise the fact, we are really the keepers, people with whom our words and actions weigh, and therefore people whom we help to mould day by day into our own likeness—our pupils, our clerks, apprentices, secretaries, employees, juniors, and there also is a great part of our work for God. And beyond these, there are all those others whom Christ sums up as our neighbours, those who can plead no tie but that of a common blood and a common need, and who bring that need into our view. To these also we have a duty in God’s name. Do not think, brethren, that we are ever losing ground in the race by helping others. These are not the encumbrances we are told to get rid of. Jesus is the Leader; we keep our eyes upon Him to tread in His steps, to copy His example, and surely in no way can we follow Him more closely than by helping others to follow Him. We can each do a work for the glory of God in making friends with somebody who plainly needs friendship, somebody whom our clearer judgment may instruct, somebody whom our firmer will may help to control. One wishes very often that Church membership meant more in the Church of England than it does. We can hardly offer God a better prayer than that Church membership may come again in England to mean something real.
III. Our place in the commonwealth.—Then, again, there is all that work by which we take our place in the commonwealth, which is from God, because the powers that be are ordained of God, and this too must be for God, our daily work, our task. Of course, some work is richer than other in the width of its influence for good, such work as the administration of justice, or the long labour of legislation, or the command of the sea and land forces, or the patient work of investigators, or the art of the poet or the painter. All these are works whose influences spread far and wide, and from kingdom to kingdom, and generation to generation, and the glory of such work and its consolation in the hour of fatigue and perplexity and discouragement is that it may all be substantial labour on those eternal walls of God’s righteous kingdom which He is slowly building up from day to day through the task work of you and me. But whatever our work is, if it is real work and true work, work in trade or manufactory or business, so far as it bears upon the lives of men it is in accordance with the Divine will and it brings its blessing. Even work that may seem but play, the work of amusing the nation, work which absorbs at the present day so much skill, that has its part, that, if it is sound in its influences, is work for God. Such, then, is at least some part of the work God has given us upon the hearts and minds of ourselves and others in all the manifold activities of civilised society.
—Rev. Canon Beeching.
Illustration
‘You will remember that poem of Tennyson’s about the northern farmer. When he lies on his death-bed he solaces himself with the thought that he had done one thing in life before he left it, he had “stubb’d Thurnaby waäste.” That was a righteous boast. He had attempted something, done something with his life before the night came and he could work no longer, and that satisfaction in work wisely undertaken and successfully carried through is one of the greatest happinesses of life. It is a happiness that comes from God, and God grant that we all may know what that happiness is.’