(Read Luke 13)
THE Spirit of God has grouped together in this chapter incidents and scenes very different in their character, but they are put together to give us a beautiful moral picture from which we may learn deep lessons, if only our ear be opened to what the Lord would teach us.
You have the Lord here bringing out those words of grace and of truth which are so needed by you and me,— words which touch the heart, and which reach the conscience too.
It is a great thing, my reader, to have the conscience reached, and God's Spirit seeks to do this, to bring men and women to a true sense of who they are and what they are in God's presence. The first two incidents in this chapter the Lord brings up for this purpose, to bring the conscience into the light of God's presence.
People had looked on and had thought that these must have been very wicked people to meet with so very terrible a calamity, or on whom this great suffering came, but the Lord says, " I tell you nay, but except ye repent ye shall all likewise perish.”
Let these solemn words of Christ reach your conscience, my reader, for they concern you. They leave out none, old or young, rich or poor, scientific or ignorant. “Except ye repent, ye shall all like-wise perish." I ask you, have you repented? A person may be very religious and yet never have repented; he may be beautifully moral in his ways and yet never have repented; he may be a first-rate citizen, a good husband and father, and yet know nothing of repentance. Do you say, “What is repentance?” Ah, my friend, your very question proves you know nothing about it. When a man repents he judges the whole of his life as one grand mistake, because, till a man is brought to do with God, what is he living for? He is living for time and not for eternity; he is living for the world and not for God; and he is resting on himself and not on Christ.
Such a man is saying, like Job, “My righteousness I hold fast, and will not let it go." He may not put it in so many words, but he likes to be thought a good citizen, a good neighbor, a good husband and father, or whatever it may be. A man who repents judges his whole life as utterly wrong; he must do so as soon as he gets into God's presence. While we measure ourselves with man we are very contented, but the moment I measure myself by God's standard I say, "Woe is me!”
Do you ask what is God's standard? God's standard is Christ, and when I measure myself by Christ what do I find? That everything about me is a total failure.
Ver. 6. “He spake also this parable. A certain man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came and sought fruit thereon and found none.” God was looking for fruit from man's heart, and what is fruit? That which will suit God. Man, as a creature of God, is responsible to bring to God that which will suit Him as the Creator. Has he brought it? "He found no lie." Do you think there has been anything in your life suited to God? If you think so, my reader, you have been totally deceived. If you have not been brought to Christ there has not been one single thing that God could own as suited to Him, for “that which is born of the flesh is flesh.”
It is not only three years that He has been seeking fruit in your ease: it may have been thirty, or forty, or even sixty, that He has had His eye upon you, and finding no fruit, and it may be the solemn command concerning you has gone forth, " Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?”
You are a cumberer of the ground if you are not bringing forth fruit to God. Ah, my reader, thank God that you were not cut down yesterday in your sins. You owe your life to Christ, to His work, to His pleading "Let it alone." Why does He let you alone? To give you an opportunity of bringing forth fruit.
How can I bring forth fruit? do you ask. You cannot unless the seed has been first put in. Have you believed the Gospel? Have you received Christ by faith into your heart? Then only can there be fruit to God.
Ah, my reader, the Lord is drawing near to you, and He is seeking to make you fruitful. You can only receive blessing as the result of the absolute grace of God.
Ver. 11. “And behold there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together and could in no wise lift up herself.
And when Jesus saw her he called her to him and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity. And he laid his hands on her, and immediately she was made straight and glorified God." Look at this incident. This woman is the very picture of a sinner in his sins. Did she call to Jesus? turn to Jesus? No, she did nothing He called to her when He saw her. It is a true picture of the grace of God. Satan had bound this woman, and Satan binds you in your sins. You may think you are free, but you are bound by Satan. Yes, and unless God in His mercy delivers you, you will find out in the depths of hell that Satan had bound you, and blinded you, and led you on to destruction.
Do you ask then, as they asked in this chapter, “If Satan thus binds men, Are there few that be saved?”
The Lord does not answer idle curiosity, but He turns round and says to them, “Strive to enter in at the strait gate." If a man wants salvation he may have it, for Christ says, “I am the door; by me if any man enter in he shall be saved.”
The Gospel is the unfolding of what God has done for the sinner, not of what the sinner has to do for God. The Gospel proclaims to you that though you are in your sins, Christ came down from heaven, and suffered and bled and died that if you turn round to Him you might be saved.
It is a strait gate, because you can only go in one at a time. It is individual. The faithful wife cannot take in her husband by her side, or can the believing husband take in the wife. You must go in alone. The gate is so narrow that you must go through it without anything upon you. You must not be clothed with any righteousness of your own, nor with any good deeds of your own, nor with anything of your own at all. The gate is too strait to let you pass with any of your filthy rags upon you, but if you come as you are without any attempt to clothe yourself, you may enter in at that strait gate, and find it has led you to life everlasting.
“I am the door," Christ says, and not only “by me if any man enter in he shall be saved," but also "and shall go i n and out and find pasture." There is liberty, and the soul is fed. The man of the world is always looking about for something to make him happy. The Christian carries about with him something that makes him happy always.
“Many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able, when once the master of the house is risen up and hath shut to the door." I believe the day is near when the door will be shut, when the last note of warning will have been given, when the Lord will have come and taken all His people out of this scene. Every preacher of the Gospel will then be gone, and there will come a time of terrible awakening, when many will cry, “Lord, Lord, open unto us; and he shall answer and say, I never knew you." Oh, what a terrible thing for the Lord to deny all knowledge of you in that day!
You may have eaten and drunk in his presence. You may have been a communicant at His table, but you never believed in your heart; there is a missing link, and the Lord will say to you, “I tell you I know you not whence you are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity.”
Oh, what an awful discovery, after spending a long lifetime, thinking you are all right, to have all knowledge of you denied, and when you seek ingress to that door to find it shut, and you shut out and forever refused entrance, and to hear the Master of the house from within say to you, " Depart from me." Oh, let not that be your fate, my reader. To-day He is calling out, "Come unto me.” Will you not listen to His voice? How unspeakably awful to be called and not to come yourself; and then with your own eyes—eyes that will stream with tears unavailing—to see the saved go in, to hear the music and the singing, to see the happy portion of the believer, when for you it is too late. Oh, take salvation now, believe the Saviour now, before for you it is too late. Make it impossible for the Lord to deny you, in that day, by coming to Him now, when He is calling you and waiting for you. The one who owns Him now He will own then. He will never deny in that day one single soul that has come to Him now; He will confess him then before His Father and before the holy angels.
Will you not trust Jesus, my reader? And if you have trusted Him, own Him, confess Him, and seek to live for Him. Nov is our only opportunity of living and witnessing for Him. In eternity we shall be with Him, resting, worshipping, adoring. Here, now, we may serve and please Him. That we should do so was the apostle Paul's fervent desire. “We thus judge that if one died for all, then Were all dead: and he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again” (2 Cor. 5:14, 1514For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: 15And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. (2 Corinthians 5:14‑15)). Shall not we judge likewise?
W. T. P. W.