Read Luke 15
THE one great thing that I want to bring before you is that the joy of God in receiving the sinner is infinitely greater than that of the sinner himself. Irrespective of everything in you and of you, and of everything you have done, God has His joy, His own peculiar joy, in getting the sinner back to Himself.
Those of you who are familiar with the Scripture will have your thoughts directed to Luke 15, as illustrating most preciously this theme!
It is the Gospel of the grace of God that it is our privilege to preach; our one desire is to bring you into immediate contact with that large, loving heart of God, and vial that which was the most full and blessed expression of it, the work of His precious spotless Son. The fast that ever preached the Gospel in the tars of ruined sinners was the Lord Himself; He was the first to proclaim the glorious tidings of salvation. For four thousand years had God been working, as the Lord Himself declares in John 6, “My father worketh hitherto.” What was He working for? For the salvation of poor sinners. And then the Lord adds, “and I work;” that is, He takes up the work of His Father. What an earnest, diligent, constant, faithful preacher! How devoted! His days spent in work, and sometimes, too, His nights in prayer; wherever He could find an open ear He was ready. As to poor sinners, He always had a message of peace and love: “The spirit of the Lord. is upon me because He hath anointed me to preach the Gospel to the poor; he hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord” (Luke 4:18,19). This work of grace is going on now, but you know not the moment when it will be the day of vengeance.
Did you ever mark that the Lord in quoting this Scripture stopped at that terrible word, “and the day of vengeance of our God”? That is the reason why He shut the book; had he passed that comma, you would not be where you are just now. There is only a comma; we know not when the last moment of the acceptable year will pass. Oh, the solemnity of the day of vengeance! It shall overtake all those who have been hearkening to the Gospel and have never yielded to its power.
In this 15th of Luke we have unfolded the work of the Son, of the Spirit, and of the Father, and all tending to one blessed point.
In the first we get the Son going after the poor, lost, wandering sheep, and going after it till He find it. The Lord has come down into this world for the purpose of seeking and saving that which was lost.
Every clause in this marvelous picture is full of the sweetest grace for our hearts. When He hath found it, what does He with the sheep?
Just what He will do with any poor sinner that comes to Him now. He lays it on His shoulder. He lays it on, rejoicing. We have not merely the action, but the style of the action— “rejoicing.” It will give Him a great deal more joy to have you on His shoulder than it will give you to be there.
I was asked one day to go and see a dying infidel. I went, and found him in a state which I can never forget. As I went up to his room, his sister told me that a moment before he had been blaspheming God for laying him on that bed, and for all that he was suffering. The chamber of a dying infidel is an awful place to be in. I entered, and saw one who had been a fine young man tossing upon his bed of death in the last stage of consumption. There he was; no getting out of the grasp of that last enemy; all the treasures of the universe could not have saved him.
You, too, beloved friends, must meet that enemy. It is only a question of days, of months, or at most of years.
All the reasonings of the infidel are like cobwebs when he approaches the reality of eternity.
This man was an artisan. He had spent his weeks in work and his Sundays in pleasure.
There he was, at thirty-two years of age, evidently dying. I sat down beside him, looking to God to give me something to say; then, drawing my Bible from my pocket, I read this self-same Luke 15. Then I said, “There is one thing I want you to learn from this chapter.”
Fixing his eyes upon me, he earnestly asked,
“What is it?”
It is this, “God’s joy in getting you back and pardoning all your sins is infinitely greater than would be your joy in being brought back and forgiven.” There was a pause, and he looked at me. “That is good news for me.” The effect of which words can be better imagined than expressed: they were the first gleam of hope.
But then came, in broken accents, words which he could scarcely get out (as if the devil were busy at work), “Will God save me, lying here and doing nothing?” I said, “And what have you been doing the thirty-two years you have lived in the world? If you were to live thirty-two years more, do you suppose you would make a much better use of them?”
Again I press this most precious truth, the very owned of the race of God. Do not talk of your Miserable doings. What has the sheep done? What is it likely to do? To wander still farther. It is lost. It is not a question of what you have done, though it is right enough that you should be broken-hearted. What you have done and what you are, all together is but filthy rags.
But what became of the infidel? His soul was blessedly saved, and in a few weeks afterward he passed home to glory.
But now I have another picture. His brother was close by, and he too was dying. But he was not an infidel; he had been one that had preached the Gospel, but one who had never known the peace of God. I found him miserable; quite a different case. He had no peace, had never known true solid peace. He was one of that large class who think it is right always to have doubts and fears.
I sat down beside him and had a different work to do—to show him that for the weakest believer in Christ there is no such thing in. the New Testament as doubts and fears: no such thing recognized. I would assert it in the fullest and freest manner. People doubt because they do not know the heart of God and Christ—they know not what it is to be in His presence.
Could I doubt if I felt myself carried above everything by Christ—on the very shoulder of Christ?
What should I doubt? Myself? Of course you would be a fool to trust in yourself. The shoulder of Christ? Do you think that if He puts you there and keeps you there you can ever perish? It is no humility to doubt. It is presumption. My poor friend (the brother of the infidel) was brought into the full liberty of the grace of God and he too died rejoicing.
Well, beloved, see the consummation of all this in what our Lord adds here. What He here says is not that there is joy amongst the angels. He says there is joy in heaven. There is joy in the presence of the angels of God.
What He teaches us is that God has His joy.
If you had your way the harps of heaven would hang upon their willows forever; you would rob God of the joy of His heart.
There is the same in the second parable, the woman represents the Holy Ghost. She seeks diligently.
And now we come to the marvelous unfolding of the heart of God. What a picture in the younger son of one desirous to escape from the restraint of the father’s house! What a photograph of a fast young man of a young man wanting to taste what the world is! Depend upon it, if you want to do the same you will find out what it is. “He began to be in want.”
The time is sure to come when want will stare you in the face. So long as you have anything to bestow, the world will have plenty of room for you. Did you ever hear those lines?
“It is a very good world to live in, to spend in,
The very worst that ever was known to beg, to borrow in.”
Let a man’s fortune have passed away he will not be troubled with many carriages.
Whatever you may be, whenever you want the world, it does not want you. If you ask me what was the most vivid proof that ever was afforded of the hollowness of the world, shall I turn to police reports and statistics of crime?
Never! To what, then, shall I turn? To the cross of my Lord. The world crucified the Lord of glory: shall I expect anything from it? When you want God, He wants you; that is the difference between God and the world. There was no giving in the far country.
“And when he came to himself.” Mark, there are stages in his history.
First, he came to himself. Second, the father came to him. The first is the moment of the gracious visitation of God’s Spirit to the heart of man. People constantly say when urged, “I have not love enough in my heart.” Ah! that is the very reason why you should come. God knows that there is nothing but hatred towards Him, still He wants you just as you are Do not wait till you are a little better, or till you have got a little more love. No; you must come trusting in the love of His heart. The work of conviction cannot be too deep. “Make me as one of thy hired servants;” that is all the length that anyone goes. I do not believe that the element of legality is ever eradicated from anyone’s heart till he knows what God is to him.
So long as you reason from what you are to what God is, you are all in the dark. We ought to reason from what God is down to ourselves.
The moment the prodigal says, “I will say, Make me as one of thy hired servants,” he shows a deep ignorance of the father’s character. This always marks the awakened heart.
“While he was yet a great way off, the father ran.” That is the father’s way. “He ran.”
Remember, this is not delineated by the pencil of fancy; it is the Lord Himself letting you into the very secret of the heart of God, giving you to understand, if you will, what is in that heart at this moment. The father saw him first. He ran and fell on his neck, and kissed him in his rags and wretchedness. Then the prodigal goes up only to a certain point, omitting all about being his servant. How could he speak about this when the father was kissing him? Impossible. There is not a word of that.
The father interrupts him with, “Bring forth the best robe.”
You say, “I am not worthy of that.”
It is not a question of what you are worthy of, but of what it is in the Father’s heart to give.
“Let us eat and be merry, for this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” Then there is a whole scene of joy awakened up in that house at the return of the poor wretched prodigal. This is a specimen of the joy that there would be in heaven this day over one poor sinner who turns to Jesus.
But there was one (the elder son) who could not appreciate the fruits of it all, and the Lord turns the whole brunt of the parable upon the Pharisees.
The elder son, coming back from the field, hears the sound of music and dancing. What do the servants say? “Thy brother is come, and thy father hath killed for him the fatted calf.” He is angry, and will not go in, and the father comes out to entreat him. Mark what he says in reply. “As soon as this thy son (not my brother) was come.” He does not understand what a brother is.
Dear friends, no one can understand anything of what God’s heart is but a poor lost sinter who has been saved by grace. The father says, “Your obedience goes for what it is worth, but will you rob me of my joy? won’t you let me taste the sweetness of having a poor lost sinner back with myself?” God, oh, marvelous thought! will have the joy of filling His house with sinners saved by grace.
Did you ever mark this, that side by side with this wonderful unfolding of grace you have the awful scene in chap. 16? The same hand that opens the door of the Father’s house draws aside the curtain and gives you a glimpse into hell. There you see the rich man asking for one drop of water to cool his scorching tongue. There is where every soul who reads this will be who dies in his sins. Do not deceive yourselves, you who are hardened; there is such a thing as hellfire.
You, who are still afar off, I entreat to come to Jesus just as you are, in your rags and wretchedness. It is well you should look on your rags and know they are such, but let them not hinder you.
There must be a work of repentance sooner or later, but when you have gone down into the deepest depths of self-judgment, the question still remains, what is there in the heart of God?
The proof of what is in his heart towards you is the gift of His Son. You could never be in the bosom of the Father till the Son had borne the wrath of a sin-hating God, that rebels like you and me should be brought to the Father’s house to walk those golden streets.
“He spared not His own Son.” In proportion to the love, to the grace, will be the depth of the darkness and desolation of your soul, if from the very sound of the gospel you drop down into the pit of hell. If there be a place of torment deeper than others, it will be occupied by rejectors of the gospel of the grace of God.
I entreat you with all earnestness, trample not upon God’s love, lay not your head on a Christ-less pillow tonight, or you may spend a Christ-less eternity.
C. H. M.