IN THE LOWEST ROOM
‘Go and sit down in the lowest room.’
He had a right to say these words, Who, when all the chambers of creation were open to Him, came and ‘sat down in the lowest room!’ And, in this lone world of ours, where was He ever found, but in its ‘lowest room’?
I. The humiliation of Jesus was the basis of His exaltation; and that which obtained in the Head is only being acted, over and over again, in each one of His members; hence the evangelical power and truth which lieth in the words, ‘He that humbleth himself shall be exalted.’
II. All the unhappinesses we have ever known in life have been from not taking ‘the lowest room.’
(a) There is one man—he has fallen into sin, and therefore he is wretched. But why did he fall into that sin? He did not take sufficiently abasing views of his own utter weakness.
(b) There is another. He cannot succeed. Life, in all its greatnesses, has been a failure to him. And why? He never went deep enough.
(c) There is another. He is conscious that he has no influence. He can do no good. And why? He has yet to learn that the secret of power is sympathy, and that the soul of sympathy is to stoop, and to be little, and to make self nothing.
III. Most persons agree that their earliest religious days were their happiest and best.—May not this be traced, in part at least, to the fact that, at the beginning, we all take ‘a lower place’ than we do afterwards? Was not it that then you were least in your own eyes, that your feelings were more child-like, that you walked closer, that you had more abasing views of the wickedness of your own heart than now? And, if it be so—if we may take these words as applicable to a spiritual, as well as to a temporal prosperity, ‘When Ephraim spake trembling, he exalted himself in Israel’—then, is not the secret of a return to more religious enjoyment, and higher religious attainment, clearly defined and pointed out distinctly, ‘Go, and take the place where once you used to sit.’
IV. When you were nothing, but God was everything, God took a most stooping course with you.—He condescended to become a suitor; and, as if He had been the sinner, He said, ‘Come, and let us reason together.’ Do you want to reclaim any one? Do you want to lead any one? Do the same. Do not say, ‘You are a sinner’; but say, ‘I am a dreadful one.’ Do not say, ‘God will punish you’; but say, ‘God has had mercy even on me’! Do not place yourself at all above, but, whatever you are, go below that man. Be learners together, be penitents together, be seekers together, be saved together, be happy together. It is in ‘the lowest room’ that all the usefulness that ever was done in this world was done.
—Rev. James Vaughan.
Illustration
‘We have been taught to regard this parable as a counsel of prudence, and of a somewhat worldly prudence, rather than as a counsel of perfection. Some of our best commentators so read it, while they confess that, thus read, it enforces an artificial rather than a real humility, that it even makes an affected humility the cloak of a selfish ambition which is only too real and perilous. What [this interpretation] really comes to is this, that when our Lord was speaking to men who eagerly grasped at the best places, all He had to give them was some ironic advice on the best way of securing that paltry end, in the hope that if they learned not to snatch at what they desired, they might by and by come to desire something higher and better. Is that like Him? Do you recognise His manner, His spirit, in it? Can you possibly be content with such an interpretation of His words as this?’