But My words shall not pass away.
The words of Christ
The characteristics of our Lord’s words.
1. The authority which speaks in them.
2. Their elevation.
3. Their awful depth. (Canon Liddon.)
The permanency of Christ’s teaching
1. The words of Christ are abiding because of their special inspiration. His words cannot die by reason of the living power that is in them.
2. The teachings of Jesus have a great and an enduring task to perform. The gospel has the “power of an endless life” which the work before it demands. Great things and great ends require great and large preparation. The Niagara Falls is one, if not the greatest, of the wonders of the world; but the river St. Lawrence was twenty-seven thousand years making the deep cutting in the rock which forms the cataract. The great task before the gospel, of bringing the light of truth to every heart, must be accomplished. The efforts of the Church must not be relaxed until this end has been attained. Whatever changes are woven into the nature of things the continuation of gospel teaching is inevitable. “The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God shall stand for ever.”
3. As the gospel has survived the revolutions of more than eighteen centuries, so it will survive those yet to come.
4. The impression which the words of Jesus make on the souls of the redeemed is another proof that they shall not pass away. When the world has passed away, these words will abide in the hearts of men who have believed in Christ. Every portion of the gospel we learn and feel and practice will remain with us for ever. (The Weekly Pulpit.)
The transient and the permanent
“Heaven and earth shall pass away.”
I. It needs some thoughtfulness to apprehend the transient character of these great objects of our interest.
1. The forms of life and activity with which we are familiar pass away. The morning light, buds, seasons, living creatures, soon die.
2. If we extend our vision and take within its sweep not only the life of the individual, but the course of the ages, and the history of the world. These pass away.
II. And yet in all this there is permanence. The form passes, but the material remains. Perhaps even the material may be our name for the unknown nothing, and there remains only the law, only the type, only the order, which unceasingly lives. Thus the form of the living thing disappears, but life remains; and that vegetable life which we saw so busy and so plentiful in forms of flower and leaf and tree, shall next year bring forth new flowers and put out fresh leaves; and when the trees that to-day stand erect, monarchs of the forest, shall, fallen prone, be slowly turning into the fuel of future ages, that same life shall yet be lifting up new pillars of the forest, tall and stately, beautiful and strong, over which new generations of branches and leaves shall wave beneath the sunshine and be swayed by the breezes of the future years. And so is it with the life of the animal and man. This animal, this man, may perish, but man remain. And the human race has not vanished. Babylon, Egypt, and ancient Greece and Rome have disappeared, but man remains, in his essential nature unchanged. The moods of the sensitive nature pass away and follow each other like the shadows on the mountain-side when the fleecy clouds are floating o’er the sky on a summer noon. And yet there is something that remains. There is the subject of these sensations; there is that element which is always present in these conscious states which knows itself and them, and the differences between each state, and the resemblances and the differences between itself and them, and the combination of all into one homogeneous whole. There is something permanent, something that lasts. You cannot destroy, you cannot waste it, you cannot, indeed, change it. It is itself-itself always-eternal, I believe, as the eternal God. Or we might illustrate it again in relation to thoughts, to ideas, to concepts; to those class cognitions of the mind which result from the comparison and the abstract classification of states of sensation, of memory, of judgment. We thus gain ideas-the good, the beautiful, the true, the evil, the human, the Divine. The individual states, the individual acts, the individual persons who, by these acts, produce these states-all these may vanish. They may be only a memory; or even grow in memory dim, and at last fade away from the last reminiscence of the soul; but the ideas we have formed-that abstract beauty, goodness, humanity, or divineness-these remain. Their light will play about other forms; their relations dwell within the caverns of our nature and fill them with music, or make them hideous with discord.
III. Thus the words of Christ seem only to be the following, accompaniment of what we saw on all sides of our quest-that there is a permanent, and that there is a transient. He goes down to the very base of the nature, and declares that a man must be born from above if he is to see the kingdom of God. The spiritual only can behold the things of that kingdom, which are wholly spiritual. The worship of God is to be in spirit and in truth. His own very words are to be interpreted in the sphere of the spiritual and the true, and the work He came to do for men was not to make their lot here easy or hard, not to spread life’s path with flowers or with thorns; it had no respect to these mere circumstances and conditions of outer life. But it went to the very centre of being, to the inner personality of the man. And, as Christ Himself gave up all that He had that was external, material, physical, letting it all go in death, and living only in His living union with the eternal God, so must man live only in that living personality, letting all else die with Christ, and even when living, not living except as Christ lived in him. (L. D. Bevan, D. D.)
The immutability of the words of Christ
I. The permanence and immutability of the gospel are proofs of the perfection of its plan.
II. The immortality of the words of Christ is proof of their perfect adaptability to the constitution and course of nature.
III. Is proof of their perfect consonance with absolute truth.
IV. Is proof of their identity with the ultimate basis of life.
V. Two lessons.
1. He that formulated this immutable scheme and must be Divine.
2. Upon these words of Christ we have an assured and stable basis upon which to build for eternity. (E. S. P.)
The enduring word
I. What word is this?
1. “My Word.” Who spoke this word? Jesus Christ the Saviour. Must not He be God who could fling upon the winds such a prophecy as this, and be sure of its everlasting success? It is not the word of Jeremiah, John, etc. They were the instruments, but Christ’s word is nevertheless audible in all.
2. What are some of the marks and characteristics of Christ’s word?
Given in the Bible.
1. Authoritative. We hear men saying, “We want an authority:” here it is.
2. True.
3. Spirit and life.
4. “Never man spake like this man.”
II. What does Christ say? of His word? It shall not pass away. Empires, etc., have passed away, but the word of Christ still survives; it speaks with undiluted emphasis; it spreads with uninterrupted speed. All things that threatened to extinguish it have only aided it. Those things that once seemed to rise like mountain obstructions to its march are day by day dissolving like wreaths of snow in the sunshine, in contrast to the advancing and triumphant word of the Lord. And when the new heaven and the new earth shall come, Christ’s word shall not cease. The only change will be, all its promises will be enjoyments, etc. Comfort for the believer. Of the least promise that you choose to select you may say, “Heaven and earth,” etc. Encouragement to the seeker, worker, minister, etc. (J. Cumming, D. D.)
The immutability of the Divine Word
1. The certainty of Divine truth.
2. The words of Christ considered in their necessary imperishableness.
3. The words of Christ shall never pass away, because they form the last of that series of communications given by God to a lost world.
4. Because they are founded on eternal truth, and on the fixed counsels of the immutable God.
5. Because of their connection with His own final glory as Mediator.
6. These are the words preached unto you. (D. Moore, M. A.)