The Visible Church an Encouragement to Faith.
I. Certainly it cannot be denied, that if we surrender our hearts to Christ and obey God, we shall be in the number of the few. So it has been in every age; so it will be to the end of time. It is hard, indeed, to find a man who gives himself up honestly to his Saviour. Nay, it would seem that as Christianity spreads, its fruit becomes less, or at least does not increase with its growth. It seems as if a certain portion of truth were in the world, a certain number of the elect in the Church, and as you increased its territory, you scattered the remnant to and fro, and made them seem fewer, and made them feel more desolate. Even when they know each other they may not form an exclusive communion together. There is no Invisible Church yet formed; it is but a name as yet, a name given to those who are hidden and known to God only, and as yet but half formed, the unripe and gradually ripening fruit which grows on the stem of the Church Invisible. As well might we attempt to foretell the blossoms which will at length turn to account and ripen for the gathering, and then, counting up all these, and joining them together in our minds, call them by the name of a tree, as attempt now to associate in one the true elect of God. They are scattered about amid the leaves of the mystical vine which is seen, and receive their nurture from its trunk and branches.
II. Do what he will, Satan cannot quench or darken the light of the Church. He may encrust it with his own evil creations, but even opaque bodies transmit rays, and Truth shines with its own heavenly lustre, though under a bushel. The scattered witnesses become, in the language of the text, "a cloud," like the Milky Way in the heavens. We have, in Scripture, the records of those who lived and died by faith in the old time, and nothing can deprive us of them. We find that we are not solitary; that others before us have been in our very condition, have had our feelings, undergone our trials, and laboured for the prize which we are seeking. This is why it is a Christian's characteristic to look back upon former times. The man of this world lives in the present, or speculates about the future; but faith rests upon the past, and is content. It makes the past the mirror of the future. What a world of sympathy and comfort is thus opened to us in the communion of saints. The heathen, who sought truth most earnestly, fainted for want of companions; every one stood by himself. But Christ has "gathered together the children of God that were scattered abroad," and brought them near to each other in every time and place. One living saint, though there be but one, is a pledge of the whole Church Invisible.
J. H. Newman, Parochial and Plain Sermons,vol. iii., p. 236.
Weights and Sins.
I. There are hindrances which are not sins. A "weight" is that which, allowable in itself legitimate, perhaps a blessing, the exercise of a power which God has given us is, for some reason, a hindrance and impediment in ourrunning the heavenly race. The one word describes the action or habit in its inmost essence; the other describes it by its accidental consequences. Sin is sin, in whatever degree it is done; but weights may be weights when they are in excess, and helps, not hindrances, when they are in moderation. The one is a legitimate thing, turned to a false use; the other is always, and everywhere, and by whomsoever performed, a transgression of God's law. The renunciation that is spoken of is not so much the putting away from ourselves of certain things lying round about us, that may become temptations, as the putting away of the dispositions within us which make these things temptations.
II. If we would run we must lay weights aside. The whole of the Christian's course is a fight. Because of that conflict, it follows, that if ever there is to be a positive progress in the Christian race, it must be accompanied and made possible by the negative process of casting away and losing much that interferes with it. There are two ways in which the injunction of the text may be obeyed. (1) The one is, by getting so strong that the thing shall not be a weight, though we carry it; (2) the other is, to take the prudent course of putting it entirely aside.
III. The laying aside of every weight is only possible by looking to Christ. We empty our hearts; but the empty heart is dull and cold and dark; we empty our hearts that Christ may fill them. Just as the old leaves drop naturally from the tree when the new buds of spring begin to put themselves out, so the new affections come and dwell in the heart, and expel the old.
A. Maclaren, Sermons in Manchester,vol. i., p. 259.
The Cloud of Witnesses.
I. Christian life is here compared to a race. The fitness of this comparison will appear in the following facts: (1) Christian life is not the ordinary human life. (2) In living out the Christian life exertions and endeavours are necessary. (3) For entrance upon Christian life a great change is needful. (4) The consummation of the Christian's life is singular. There is a racer's crown for the Christian.
II. These are the truths which justify the figure; but they are not the truths specially presented in the text: these are (1) that Christian life is not, as a life of faith, new; it has its witnesses from all past time. (2) The Christian life is not solitary; its witnesses are a cloud. (3) Christian life is not easy; it has its hardships and difficulties. (4) Christian life is continuous; it has its starting-point and its goal. (5) Christian life is not unaided; it has its subordinate aids and helps, besides the helper God.
S. Martin, Comfort in Trouble,p. 151.
Our Life a Race.
Life is of necessity a race, and we are commanded to make it a Christian race; such a race as Christianity will approve, and the Author of Christianity will reward with an imperishable crown. I notice
I. That in order to this it must be run with a view to a proper object. (1) In judging of what ought to be the great aim and ambition of our life, it will be admitted, as an axiomatic truth, that it ought to be the very highestaim of which we are capable. (2) One consequence of this is, that anything which addresses itself only to a partof our being cannot be the proper aim of our life; we must take in the whole. Christianity proposes a prize which is worthy of all our efforts, which may well stand at the end of our life-race, and inflame the runners with a holy and boundless ambition.
II. The second thing necessary to make our life a Christian race is that we run in the right path. In every race there is a course marked out. It is not left to the runner to prescribe for himself in this matter. He must keep to the course, or he forfeits the very possibility of gaining the prize. There are two marks by which we may know the Christian's way. (1) The first is faith; (2) the second is loving obedience.
III. The third thing necessary to make our life-race a Christian race, is that we run in a right manner and spirit. The Apostle tells us that we must sorun as to obtain; everything as regards comfort, progress and success will depend on the manner and spirit in which we run. (1) We must strip ourselves of every unnecessary encumbrance. (2) We must have concentration of purpose. (3) We must run in a spirit of dependence on our God. Note one or two remarks by way of encouragement. (1) It is surely a great encouragement that Divine help is promised. (2) It is a great encouragement that we are running in the view of so many onlookers, all concerned for our progress, and deeply interested in our success. This was one of the grand animating circumstances in the national contests of ancient times. The runner was conscious that the eyes of his assembled countrymen were upon him. The nation was present to behold. The consciousness of this could not fail to be the inspiration of all; it widened the glory of victory and deepened the shame of defeat. Is it not the same in the Christian race? The witnesses here are all the best and greatest in the universe. (3) The unspeakable value of the prize is another encouragement which we cannot overlook. Well might the Apostle say, "I reckon that the sufferings of the present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that shall be revealed in us."
A. L. Simpson, The Upward Path,p. 81.
The Christian Race.
I. The writer has been taking his readers through the splendid battle roll of the heroes of faith. His object in doing so had been twofold: he wished to show them that in becoming Christians they had introduced no discontinuity into their religious life; had nowise forfeited their religious inheritance in the grand historic past of which, as patriots, they had a right to be so proud. But far more he desired to show, that not a few souls in this sad and wicked world had been pure and good; that there had been some, even in Sardis, who had not defiled their robes; that the views of those who would fain persuade us that apparent saintship is nothing but perfected hypocrisy are not merely cynical, but false. It is of memorable importance for us to know that the task set before us is not beyond the powers of any one of us; that any attempt to regard it as beyond our powers is a device of the justice and love of God. God has set a goal before us; He has bidden us run a race, and that race we can run, and that goal we can attain, not by our own strength, but by the strength which God gives us.
II. In order to run the race we must lay aside every weight. The word rendered "weight" is a technical, an athletic, a gymnastic word; it means, strictly speaking, superfluous flesh. We must strip off every encumbrance; yes, and the sin which doth so easily beset us. Here you have the very heart of the matter. You must retain nothing that impedes the race of God; you must make no truce with Canaan, you must plead for no Zoar of your own; you must leave the guilty city, and cast upon it no backward glance. If there be one point in which you are specially weak against the assaults of Satan; if you know that there is one sin to whose assaults you are specially prone, it is that sin which, as Dante said, will destroy your soul; that conquered, all others follow it; that victorious, all others partake of its victory.
F. W. Farrar, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxii., p. 289.
References: Hebrews 12:1. G. Salmon, Sermons in Trinity College, Dublin,p. 1; Bishop Temple, Rugby Sermons,1st series, p. 55; S. Martin, Comfort in Trouble,p. 151; Expositor,1st series, vol. v., p. 149; R. L. Browne, Sussex Sermons,p. 227; Homilist,3rd series, vol. iv., p. 198; Ibid.,4th series, vol. i., p. 96; T. De Witt Talmage, Christian World Pulpit,vol. ii., p. 70; J. B. Brown, Ibid.,vol. vii., pp. 369, 392; H. W. Beecher, Ibid.,vol. viii., p. 501; Preacher's Monthly,vol. v., p. 124; vol. x., p. 299; Homiletic Quarterly,vol. viii., p. 57; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. viii., p. 88.
Repentance.
I. The writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews is speaking in this passage of Esau a reckless young man parting with spiritual advantages without any thought of their real value, finding that the loss of them involves the loss of temporal advantages too, and trying in vain to recover the temporal advantages which in a moment of recklessness he had parted from for ever. A man squanders his money, and he is very sorry for it, and wishes he had not done so; but he cannot get back his money, even though he seeks it earnestly and with tears. A man by dissipation ruins his health, and when he is lying on a sick-bed, he is very sorry for it, and he wishes he had never been such a fool, and that he could recover the health which he has parted from for ever. It is easier to harden the heart than to have the softness restored; it is easier to blunt our feelings than to recover for them their elasticity and acuteness. And then the man, though, for a time at least, he may be sorry, makes no great change; he finds a change very difficult, if not impossible, and he finds, therefore, no place for repentance, though he seek it for a moment "even with tears."
II. We cannot expect that every effect of sin is to be entirely done away with. God intends that we shall still feel the scourge of our sins, even when, by His mercy, we are freed from their dominion; and the gospel of Jesus Christ is this, that, though sin has made men slaves, they may be emancipated, If the mercy of God in Jesus Christ visits us, and we turn to Him with full purpose of amendment, though the temporal consequences of our sin may be beyond recall and must continue for ever, yet, by His operation on the heart, God brings deliverance to the enslaved soul. The death of Christ speaks of our justification, and removes for those who turn to God the penalty which is hanging over them for sins past; the sanctification through the gift of the Holy Spirit makes the reconciled sinner to grow in holiness, and brings him back to the state which he had lost by the sin he had committed.
Archbishop Tait, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xvii., p. 97.
Esau's Birthright Irreparable Follies.
I. The writer is here speaking to Jewish Christians, pleading examples from the early history of their own race, to which they ever turned with reverence and fondness. He is warning them of the danger of forfeiting in carelessness the inheritance which belonged to them as Christians. They were in danger of undervaluing it. In the sense of present isolation from the mass of their countrymen, of hunger for the visible tangible support of ordinances in the old religion from which they had separated themselves, in the pressing fear of deadly persecution, they were losing heart and hope. They were losing, so he argues all through the eleventh chapter, that crowning grace to which their nation, through its long line of patriarchs, heroes, prophets, had owed its peculiar greatness the grace of faith, of trust in the invisible, of power to live and die in hope, not having received the promises. In this chapter for the moment he has turned to the other sight. He suggests from their own history an instance of one who lacked this power, who in a moment of weakness sold the future for the present, and who found that that moment's work was irreparable. He found no place of repentance. He could never again to any purpose change his mind. It is the type of our irretrievable acts, but in an especial way of irretrievable choices made under such circumstances as those under which Esau made his choice in the heat and weakness of youth. A single heedless act with unalterable results.
II. How often is the story repeated. The character of Esau, drawn in the bold natural outlines of a simple age, is one that cannot fail to find its likeness among the young. Bold, vigorous, his father's favourite, fond of outdoor life and adventure, generous even in his after-years, as we see from his meeting again with Jacob, here surely was the making of a fine character. Yet, even as in Saul and David, we should have been wrong. Something is wanting, something that cannot be replaced. And sooner or later the want shows itself, stamps itself indelibly in an act of folly that cannot be undone. We know the thoughtlessness that leads to loss of innocence, to the missing of golden opportunities. In spite of everything, the birthright, in the best sense of all, is still ours. Yet even in that sense too we may cast it away.
E. C. Wickham, Wellington College Sermons,p. 27.
Esau's Vain Tears.
I. Look at the history which is here held up before us, a solemn warning. There is nothing in Genesis about Esau's vainly seeking for repentance, but there is an account of his passionate weeping and loud entreaties that he yet might obtain a blessing from Isaac's trembling lips. There is bitter sorrow for what had passed, and that is repentance. And there is earnest desire that it might be different. In what may be called its secular significance there are in Esau's case as recorded in Genesis both the elements of a decided alteration of mind and purpose, and a penitence and sorrow for the past.
II. Look at the lessons which this story teaches us. There may come in your life a time when the scales will fall from your eyes, and you will see how insignificant and miserable are the present gratifications for which you have sold your birthright, and may wish the bargain undone which cannot be undone. You cannot wash out the bitter memories, you cannot blot out habits, by a wish. The past stands. "Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."
III. Notice the misapprehension which these words do not teach. They do not teach that a man may desire to repent with tears, and be unable to do so. If a man desires to repent, there must be in him some measure of regret and sorrow for the conduct of which he desires to repent considered as sin against God; and that is repentance. Nor do the words teach that a man may desire to receive the salvation of his soul from God and not receive it. To desire is to possess, to possess in the measure of the desire and according to its reality. There is no such thing in the spiritual realm as a real longing unfulfilled. The Gospel proclaims that whosoever shall ask will receive, or rather that God has already given, and that nothing but obstinate determination not to possess prevents any man from being enriched by the fulness of God's salvation.
A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth,Oct. 22nd, 1885.
References: Hebrews 12:17. L. Cheetham, Church of England Pulpit,vol. xix., p. 241; Preacher's Monthly,vol. vii., p. 144.