THE FLAMING SWORD
LITTLE girl once sat beside her governess deeply pondering a knotty point. It was not how to do her sums, or parse her sentences, or repeat her lessons; it was a far more important question that filled her mind. She had just read about the flaming sword that kept Adam from getting back to the Tree of Life, and she was pondering what she would have done had she been there. Young as she was, she had found out that her soul was in the Land of Loneliness, and she knew well that the sea of Death was rising round her. She feared death intensely. If only old people had died, that would not have troubled her, but she knew well that there were many little graves in the churchyard, and her soul was terrified within her at the thought of death. Her governess knew nothing of what was going on within her; the solitary soul hid its fear, but it worshipped Self, and Self was rebellious against the thought of death. "If I had been there," she said within her, "I know I would have found some way back to the Tree of Life. I would have made a tunnel under the ground, where the flaming sword could not have reached me, or I would have gone a long, long way round, and have crept in where no eye could have seen me." Ah! she did not understand that the Fire lay between sin and a Holy God; that the Flaming Sword turned every way, to keep the way of the Tree of Life; that God must judge sin because of what He is, and that the poor sinful creature, man, could not come near Him because of the Fire. Have you ever thought about it? Have you ever considered when you talk about going to heaven after death that "our God is a consuming fire"? If you are afraid of Him now, what will you be then? Oh, but you say, "God is love." That is true, but if He is love He is also holy, and because He is holy He is righteous, and because He is righteous sin must be judged, and His wrath must flash out into judgment to destroy evil. Sin brings misery. A child is always unhappy when it is naughty. It is not because it fears punishment only—it is because its conscience makes it wretched. It is gratifying Self, and Self is never satisfied. It is impossible that a Being whose very nature is Love can endure sin—sin, which is the root of all misery. Besides which no throne can stand but through righteousness, and righteousness must bring judgment upon evil; so God's throne is always represented as guarded by fire—fire through which sin cannot pass; fire which flashes out upon sin.
Do you wonder why God represents His judgment by the picture of fire? It is, I think, because fire as we know it can destroy our bodies and almost everything that we use. But, on the other hand, fire is the outcome of heat, and we could not exist on this earth without heat. You may have a piece of metal very hot indeed, and there will be no flame; but if you put oil or paper or wood near it, it will burst into flame, because the material exposed to the heat cannot stand the fire. So we shall see that though God is love, and His holy love is very warm indeed, it was when sin came in that the Flaming Sword was seen.
I remember well when I first learned that there was heat in everything on the earth, and that nothing could exist as we see it but for this all-pervading heat. I will tell you how it was. The curtains were drawn closely over the large bow windows of our schoolroom, the candles were lighted on the table, and the firelight threw flickering shadows on the walls of the room. "There is fire in everything," said my governess. "Fire in everything!" I cried with alarm. "There cannot be fire in stones?" "Can't there!" she replied. "If you get two flint stones to-morrow when we are out walking, and go into a dark place and strike them together, you will soon see that there is fire in stones." The morrow came, and I quickly found the two flint stones, and as soon as the short winter's afternoon had closed in and the curtains were drawn again over the windows, my brothers and I crept in behind them and struck our stones together. I well remember how the sparks flashed out, and how delighted we were, and how hot the stones became; yet a certain dread filled my mind as I pondered how near, how very near the fire we all were. But if my governess had gone on to say that there was heat in the crystal ice which covered the mere where we skated, I am afraid my belief in her would have vanished altogether. Heat in ice! you say. Yes, there is heat in ice. And if it were not for heat, the air you breathe would become a liquid of a pale blue color. You must ask the learned professors about these things.
only want you to know that heat is as necessary to our existence as Light, and that Fire is a perfect picture of the jealousy of God's love, meeting sin like a "vehement flame" (Cant. 8:6).
Now there comes sooner or later what I will call a terrible thunderstorm, which sweeps over the Land of Loneliness. You all know what a thunderstorm is. Some people are terrified be yond measure when they see dark clouds rolling across the sky, and when the lightning glitters and the thunder rolls, they will close their shutters, and even hide in dark cellars, that they may not see the fiery flash or hear so much of the tempest. The voice of the storm that rages over the soul that has found out that it is in the Land of Loneliness cries, "After death the judgment." The solitary soul might brace itself up to meet the rising tide of Death, were it not for the terrible consciousness that behind the advancing waters lies the Flaming Sword ready to execute God's judgment upon sin. "If I could but hide myself from God," cries the soul, "how glad I should be!" But it cannot, and Self trembles in his secret shrine, and the soul moans sadly in its solitude, "Where, oh where am I going ?"
I read once of a strange and fearful sight that a sea-captain saw when sailing his vessel in the Archipelago. All was as usual on the wave and in the sky, when suddenly from out of the sea, at some distance from his ship, a column of mingled smoke and steam rushed up into the air. Around it the waters boiled and raged, and presently a mighty flame rose up upon the smoke, while a dull roar like that of subterranean thunders shook his vessel, and filled his heart with fear. It was plain that under those waters fire was at work. Some volcano had poured out its lava into the sea, and for a moment showed itself above the seething waters. And even so there is fire behind the rising waters of death that surround you.
People laugh now about the Flaming Sword, and say it is all a fable; but no amount of laughing, or of serious reasoning either, can alter the fact that sin brings endless misery in its train, and that Self, set up as a center within, causes isolation to the soul, and renders it wretched and unsatisfied. It is true God is love, but how can a God of love tolerate the wretchedness and the defilement of the object of His love? He must be righteous too, or He were not holy, and so you must own that when righteousness meets sin, judgment must follow, as surely as that natural heat when it is great, and finds that which cannot abide the fire, must produce flame. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die"(Ezek. 18:44Behold, all souls are mine; as the soul of the father, so also the soul of the son is mine: the soul that sinneth, it shall die. (Ezekiel 18:4)), and" after this the judgment" (Heb. 9:2727And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after this the judgment: (Hebrews 9:27)).
That little girl who thought in her pride that she would not have stayed out of Eden as Adam had done was just a specimen of us all who, in our blindness and folly, do not understand that sin and holiness can never dwell together, and that a sinful creature cannot abide the presence of a holy Creator.
Not many years ago there was an island in the Indian Ocean which had thousands of people living upon it. Over it shone the sun by day, and the moon and stars by night; round it rolled the water of the sea, and across its mountain heights and its groves of waving palm trees swept the fresh sea-breezes; but now no one can find that island. Waters roll where once it stood, waters that tell no tale of the awful catastrophe that once they witnessed. None lived to tell of the moment when the fierce volcanic fires burst forth upon the dwellers there, but vessels sailing many miles away were shaken by the terrific roar, the sky was darkened, the firmament shook, and never more has human eye beheld that island with its woods and hills. A gentleman who was living in Ceylon at the time, Which was more than a thousand iniles away from it, told tile, that he had distinctly heard the roar of the terrible explosion, when the water and the fire met and destroyed that sunny land.
Oh! pause not, soul, if yet unawakened in the Land of Loneliness. Pause not, for while the Love of God broods over a fallen world the Fire is around you, above you, beneath you, and any moment you may be called upon to face judgment to come. Do you fear it? Has the sense of unfitness for God been awakened within you? Do you hear the Voice of the storm crying, "After death the judgment"? Oh, blessed moment! From behind the Flaming Sword a hand has reached your soul, and has touched it, and that first awakening touch is that which is called in the Bible "The New Birth."
It is when God touches the soul where it is, in sovereign grace, and it wakes up, as it were, able to be reached by His voice. I once thought that the New Birth meant much more than this, and I will tell you how I was undeceived. Years ago, when I was first thinking over this wonderful subject, I asked a friend, who knew better than I did, if I could use the birth of an infant into a family as a picture of the New Birth? He replied by asking me a question: "When you were born into this world, had you a body suited to the life you would have to live here?" "Yes," I replied. "But when you were born again, had you a body suited to the new life which you are intended to live?" he asked. Of course I could only answer "No," for I knew only too well that my poor mortal body was the greatest hindrance possible to living that life.
So you see there is no new body when the soul in its Land of Loneliness is born again, but it wakes up to a keen sense of its loneliness, its lost condition, and its fear of judgment to come just where it is. It is capable of hearing God's voice and of believing it. No soul, in moral death, from Adam downwards, could have been reached, but through this sovereign touch from the hand of the God of love. How He could draw near to a sinful person to do it and not at once destroy him we shall see as we go on.
Do you know what a penal settlement is? It is an island which is made into a vast prison. The waters that surround it shut in the convicts, and there they have to live and work under the governor's eye, afar from their native land. If they attempt to escape they are shot down; death is around them, and their doom hangs over them. When the soul hears the voice of the storm, crying, "After death the judgment," it makes a terrible discovery; it finds that the Land of Loneliness, instead of being a place where it can hide itself from God, is really a penal settlement, and that judgment is hanging over it, from which it is impossible to escape. "I seemed," said a gentleman to me one day, "to be hanging over the flames of hell."
Picture to yourself some red-handed murderer who dreams that he is in safe hiding from the judge's eye, who wakes up with a start to find himself really lying in the condemned cell, with the warders beside him, and the gallows before him! There is no escape—none. Death and doom are his. So wakes up the soul to know that death and doom are before it, and it sees no way of escape.
I beard of a young man the other day who was so startled at the discovery of his sinfulness that he could not hide his terror from those about him on the upper earth. His body told out the tale of his soul's distress. He could not rest; he grew thin and ill, and wasted away. "He is gone mad," said his relatives; "he is no worse than other people. Why does he talk about judgment to come?" They were like the convict in his prison, asleep still in their cells, dreaming that they were hidden from the judge's eye. The young man had been awakened-that was the difference. Have you been awakened? If so, I know the first thought of your frightened soul is, "I must try and alter my ways, and improve myself." Why do you want to improve Self? "To please God," you answer. "And why do you want to please God?" "To save myself from judgment." Ah, there it is! Self is still your object, your center, and sits in the shrine of your heart. You would fain propitiate God, so as to save you idol from the doom of sin.
You see we are talking this time, not about sins that have been done, but about what we are by nature. And we are, I hope, beginning to see that our idol Self has the place in our hearts which is God's due. Do not be afraid to face it, however gloomy it may look; it is better to face the truth at once than to run away and hide your head in the sand like the poor hunted ostrich. Self being our object instead of God is sin, and our idol being independent and willful wants to rule us, and does rule us, and so we live for ourselves instead of for God who created us.
Oh, terrible state! Oh, terrible dwelling-place! Land of Loneliness, Land of moral death, girdled by physical death—well may the human soul quail as it wakes up to find that thou art its gloomy abode! Oh, soul in that dreary abode, far off from God and from life, is there no way back for thee to the Tree of Life where it blooms in its beauty in the paradise of God? Is there no way save through the waters of advancing death? Is there no path save through the scorching breath of the flaming sword? There is none. Can death beget life? Can corruption produce purity? Can darkness create light I' Ask of the cherubim who in silent majesty guard that closed gate. Ask of the Flaming Sword as it circles the Tree of Life, each flaming flash proclaiming that the fire-encircled "I Am" must judge evil—must destroy all taint of sin! Away, away, fallen creature, from that closed gate! away with your theories and your wisdom! Can you pass through the fire, and exist? Can you combat the dark waters of death? Away in your impotence and your sin; your hope lies in your fear, not in your false confidence. God is God, ramp and rage as you will; and Fire is Fire, laugh at and deride it as you will; and death is death, and sweeps on unhindered by your devices, choking in your very lips the words with which you question the acts of your Creator, Help must come, if come it can, from without your gloomy land altogether. It must come from behind that wheeling sword, from beyond those ever-advancing tides; it must come forth to find you where you are by nature "dead in trespasses and sins," wailing through the darkness, "What am I? Where am I? Where am I going?"