PUT together these are wonderful chapters. In the first, the Lord visits our world; in the second, we visit His. In the fourteenth He makes Himself acquainted with our ways; in the fifteenth we are called to acquaint ourselves with His. This is the grand moral distinction between the two chapters, and nothing can exceed them in interest. In the fourteenth chapter we find that nothing satisfies Him. Are you prepared for this conclusion? There is nothing thoroughly according to His mind. In the fifteenth everything is suited to Him, and if we were divinely intelligent and divinely sensitive we should find that nothing in man's world and everything in Christ's world would do for us. It is the grand character of the Apocalypse, that there is not a thing in it but suits the mind of the glorified church.
Chapter 14. opens by the Lord being invited to eat bread in a Pharisee's house, and as He enters, at once all the sympathies of His mind are intruded on. The house is a type of man's world.. "As He went in they watched Him," and there came in a poor man that had the dropsy, and He asked them, "Is it lawful to heal on the Sabbath day?" Now why did they hold their peace? It was a hypocritical silence. They ought to have answered, but they wanted to catch Him. Oh! what wretched miserable tricks these hearts of ours can play! Your heart is under the lion and the serpent, violence and subtlety. Satan is represented as both these. The Lord healed him, and then said to them: " Which of you shall have an ox or an ass fallen into a pit, and will not straightway pull him out on the Sabbath day?" Ought not you to have gathered your answer to the question from your own ways? The Lord takes us on our own showing, and exposes us out of our own mouth and our own ways. I do not want any one to show me what I am, I know very well. In ver. 7 He has entered the house, and looked around. That is exactly where we fail. We are so much taken up with ourselves that we do not look round to see things with the eyes of the Lord. The Lord came with the heart and resources of God to dispense blessing; but with the eye and ear and sensibility of God, to acquaint Himself with the moral of the scene here. What does He see here? First the guests, and they do not please Him. He saw they chose the highest rooms. Now suppose you had the eye of God, and looked on the scene around you, day by day, would not you see the same thing? We savor too much of it ourselves, and therefore cannot testify against it. Christ was infinitely pure, so that He could detect the smallest bit of impurity. He saw that it was pride that animated the scene under His eye, and you and I must have very false notions of what is abroad if we do not see the same thing. The lust of the flesh, the lust of the eye, and the pride of life is the spirit that animates the activities around us.
Now He looked at the host, but there was no relief for Him there. Selfishness in another form shows itself to Him. It was not the poor, the maimed, the lame, and the blind that the Pharisee asked to his feast, but his rich neighbors were seated on his right hand and on his left. Here the heart of Christ tells itself out in calling those who cannot recompense Him. It is very happy that Christ cannot be pleased with your world. What would your Lord Jesus he to you if He could put up with such a world? If Christ could have found sympathy with man's world as delineated here, you and I should never have been saved. He acted on directly contrary principles, or we should never have had to talk of salvation.
Now one of the company says, "Blessed is he that shall eat bread in the kingdom of God," a gracious, movement I believe. I do not say whether it ended in good or not, but a certain gracious instant passed over the soul. The Lord was not unaffected by it. He pays attention to the interruption. Oh, the precious and perfect humanity of Jesus! His deity was equal to the Father's-His humanity was equal to yours and mine, not in its corruption, but in all the beautiful traits that could adorn it in its perfection. He waits and indites the parable of the marriage supper: The man had said, "Blessed is he who shall eat bread in the kingdom of God," and the Lord brings out this parable to exhibit eating bread in the kingdom of God. This shows that the Lord is willing to wait on the secret stirring of your spirit, and give it a suited response; and that word of the man that sat at table gives Him occasion to expand before his eyes a feast spread in the heavenly country, and oh, what a different one from that here I Not one of the bidden guests came. No, and not a single bidden guest since Adam will be at that table. What do I mean? There must be more than invitation. God must fill the chairs as well as the table. He must force His guests in, as well as fill the board. He sends His servants and says, " Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled." There is a peep into heaven I Did you ever know such a place in all your life? The richest feast ever seen, and not one at it that has not been compelled to come in! And does God put up with this? If there had only been the mission of the Son there would never have been a single guest. If there had only been the mission of the Holy Ghost, there would have been no feast spread. What a wonderful exhibition of the love of God! If you had' prepared a kindness for another, would you like to find an indisposed heart in him? No, you would not ask him again, but would say, "Let him go and get what he values more." But there is the double mission of the Son and the Spirit. The Son prepares the feast and the Spirit prepares the guests. So that there is not a single merely bidden guest there; they are compelled guests. What a wretched exhibition of the heart you carry.
One has bought a piece of ground, another has bought five yoke of oxen. Anything but the Lord's feast. This is the contrast between God's table and man's.
When the. Lord had delivered the parable, as He was leaving the house great multitudes followed Him, and He turned and said, "Whosoever Both not bear his cross and come after me, cannot be my disciple." Now, how do you treat the Lord Jesus? Do you look at Him as a pattern-an example? " Well," you will say, " I ought to do so," and I grant it; but you and I are thoroughly wrong if our first communion with Him is as a pattern; it must be as with a Savior. The multitudes followed Him as a pattern and the Lord says, " If you will be like me, you must give up everything." The next chapter opens with publicans and sinners, and there is communion of soul with Him as a Savior. The moment the Lord got that object, He was at home. He passes on through all till " publicans and sinners " draw near to hear Him. He had entered and left the Pharisee's house, and His spirit had not breathed a comfortable atmosphere, but when a poor sinner comes and looks at Him, that moment His whole heart gave itself out, and uttered itself in the three beautiful parables that follow. It is impossible to follow the spirit of Christ in this chapter without being comforted. Could I know Christ as I would know Him if he could find a home in my world? No? but He says, " If I can't find a home here, do you come and find a home with me. You have disappointed me, but I will not disappoint you." As one said once, " In preaching the Gospel, the Lord said, 'Well, if I cannot trust you, you must trust me.' " It is another version of the same thought here, and these beautiful parables show one leading and commanding truth: that God's world is made happy by sinners getting into it. Do you believe that you, as a sinner, are important to heaven? Whether you believe it or not, it is true. It is not our gain in the matter of salvation that is presented here, but God's joy and that only. He takes these homely figures that our thoughts may not be distracted, and that you may learn that you are lost, but you learn, too, the joy of God in recovering you. I do not believe a richer thought can enter the soul of man. I sit down in heaven, not as a recovered sinner only, but as one whose recovery has formed the joy of heaven. Now you are at Christ's table, in Christ's world, and you see what kind of a place it is. As for the poor lost sheep, if left to itself it would only have wandered farther still; and as for the piece of money, it would have lain till this hour if the woman had not searched diligently till she found it. Now let Us combine these two chapters. In 14. you get the words, " Compel them to come in," and in 15 you get the prodigal compelled. We were observing the missions of the Son and of the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost never gives me my title to glory, but He enables me to read it. If I could not read it, it would be no use to me. Now, I ask, what is this compulsion? It is not against your will, but you are made willing in the day of His power. Take, for instance, the prodigal. When he was brought to his last penny: and began to be in want, he came to himself This was the beginning of the compelling, when the poor prodigal opened his eyes to his condition. What did the Lord do to the heart of Lydia? He opened it, and her opened heart listened to what Paul Spoke. The mighty compelling power showed itself here, when the poor prodigal looked round on his condition and said, " What shall I do?" The Holy Ghost makes you willing when he makes you see your need, and that death and judgment are before you. He stirs you up by this, till He puts you on the road to God. One poor soul says, " I had better begin to look out for eternity;" another is terrified by the thought of death and judgment. He will take you in any way. The thing is to get your back to the land where once you lingered. The poor prodigal says, " I will arise; I have found out the end of my own. doings; I will go to my Father;" and back he goes, and back he is welcomed The story of the prodigal beautifully illustrates the compelling of the previous chapter. Zacchaeus wished to see Jesus one morning and up he got into the tree. That was the compelling of the Holy Ghost. Oh; what two chapters! Christ disappointed in your world, and you satiated in Christ's world!