We have now reached chapter 16, and it is a serious chapter. We have been, in one sense, on very happy chapters in the last two, and have seen how the Lord visited our world, and how we are to visit His world—how nothing in our world pleased Him, but everything in His own. It should be so with us. If we are right-minded we cannot find a home here. Man's apostate condition has built this world, and it is a painful thing to build a house and not be happy in it; yet it should be so with us. You have built a house here, and Christ has built a house in the heavens. Do you cultivate the mind of a stranger in this world, and of a citizen in the heavens?
Having gone through this wonderful moral scenery, we enter on chapter 16—a continuation of the same scene. If there is a serious chapter in this Gospel, it is this one. The Lord begins by the parable of the unjust steward; and before we go further let me call your mind to the word "wasted," in the case of the prodigal. It was just what he had done, and it is the business of this parable to show that the elder brother may do just what the younger did. He may be a very respectable waster; there are hundreds of thousands of such in the world, and high in the credit of the world they stand; but, weighed in God's balances, they are just as much wasters as this dissolute prodigal. If we do not carry ourselves as stewards of God, we are wasters. If I am using myself and what I have as if they were my own, in the divine reckoning I am a waster. This lays the ax deep at the root of every tree. The elder brother thought he was not a waster; but let me ask you, if you are living for this world, and using what you have as if it were your own, are you not an unfaithful steward and, if so, are you not a waster? Here is a steward. We are not told how he spent his money, but it is enough to know that he was not faithful to his master. Then we see how the Lord goes on to draw out the reasoning of a man like that. He lived for this world—laid plans about his history in this world and not in the next. The moral is beautifully laid to you and to me. As that man laid out his plans for this world, so you should lay up your plans for Christ's future world. If you live to yourself, do you not deny your stewardship to the Lord?
Then the Pharisees who heard Him derided Him. To be sure they must! It was a heavenly principle, and they were covetous. Covetousness is living for this world, and we are covetous just so far as we are laying our plans for this world. Now, when you find corruptions in yourself, what do you do? Do not let corruptions lead you to give up Christ, but to put on your armor. The Pharisees derided Him, and what did the Lord say to them? "Ye are they which justify yourselves before men." This is just what we were saying. The elder brother may be highly esteemed among men, but "That which is highly esteemed among men is abomination in the sight of God."
We are now introduced to the rich man. Tell me, has this passage been repulsive to you, rather than attractive? There seems something rather repulsive in it, but let us look at it. Observe the difference between the rich man and the prodigal. The prodigal "came to himself" before it was too late, and the rich man, after the door was shut. The prodigal was dissolute and abandoned, and when he came to himself he thought of his sin. The rich man came to himself in the place of judgment, and did not think of his sins, but of his misery. The prodigal came to himself in the midst of his misery here—the rich man, in the midst of his torment there.
That is all the difference. The prodigal said, I will go back; what a sinner and a rebel son I have been! There was nothing of that gracious stirring in the spirit of the rich man when he lifted up his head in flames. The prodigal had not to finish the first sentence; the father answered him on the spot, and put on him a ring and the best robe, and killed the fatted calf; but the rich man cried again and again. It was too late. Here is the end of the respectable waster. Why do I call him a waster? Will you tell me he called himself a steward of God while he was living sumptuously every day, with a saint of God lying at his gate? I am bold to say you and I are just the same if we are living to ourselves. This man died a respectable waster, full of honor and gratification. He had no misery to call him to himself. Have you ever contrasted these two pictures? It has changed this picture from repulsion to attraction.
Chapter 17
In the opening of chapter 17, the Lord applies all this. "It is impossible but that offenses will come: but woe unto him, through whom they come! It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones." I call upon each one to listen to this. To offend one of these little ones is to be on the way to the judgment of the millstone. In Rev. 18, we see Babylon under the judgment of the millstone; and here the Lord sees, in the offending of a little one, something that savors of the same thing. Now what is it to offend? Beloved, the Church of God is His little one—a cypher in the eyes of the world, but everything in the sight of God, and you and I ought to take care of any course of conduct that might stumble the little one. So far as I am living in this world, I am savoring of offense, having gone back to that out of which the grace of God had called me. Do you and I go through the circumstances of each day in the spirit of service to everything around us? That is the spirit of the little one. That is the beauty of the Church of God, and of every saint in the world. The moment you act as if you were privileged to dispose of circumstances after your own pleasure, you are an offender.
"If thy brother trespass against thee, rebuke him; and if he repent, forgive him." That is serving his soul. We should seek for grace to walk through circumstances as serving Christ and our neighbor. Christ is to be our Lord as well as our Savior.
He is a Savior inasmuch as He saves for eternity—a Lord inasmuch as He demands our time. This beautiful combination is exactly what Peter talks of, "our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." There were some (2 Pet. 2:11But there were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privily shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction. (2 Peter 2:1)) who talked about Christ as a Savior, while denying His lordship practically. The Spirit is fruitful in revelations of grate and in admonitions of holiness. They cry out, "Lord, Increase our faith," for this is a terrible demand on us: and the Lord says, Ah, faith is the very thing that will do that for you. Faith is the very thing that God brings in, and then all things are possible. You might pluck up the roots of nature, and send them to be planted in the distant sea, in mortifying the flesh. There are two beautiful virtues of faith here, while it is a principle of self-emptying. "When ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants."
If I can meet a temptation with the Lord Jesus, I have the stronger man with me, and I overcome, and then come back and say, I have done that which it was my duty to do. There is an import in this chapter that makes it infinitely valuable.
From verse 11 of chapter 17 to verse 8 of chapter 18, must be read together. We are still with the Lord on His way to Jerusalem. The historic structure of Luke delineates the different stages of His journey up to the city. Now, as He passed through Samaria and Galilee, He came upon a certain village, and was met by ten lepers taking the place in which their leprosy put them, standing afar off. We find in Leviticus the divine dealing with leprosy. It was set apart among the plagues that visit human nature to represent sin, and to show what God would do with it. The leper was first put outside the camp, and that is just where sin puts you and me. Have you any business or right to put a spot on the fair creation of God? No, you have not; and therefore to represent that, the leper was put outside the camp; and his business there was to learn what he was. Your first business as a sinner is to learn that exile from God becomes you. So he lifted up his hands and cried, "Unclean, unclean." This, in evangelic language, is called conviction. There he is, left outside; and with whom? None in the whole creation but God. His friends and neighbors were put afar off. So none can meet our necessity but Christ. Then he Was cleansed, brought back to the camp, and the priest received him back. This represents sin in its fruit and penalty, and the way in which God takes it up and deals with it.
These lepers cry, "Master, have mercy on us." This was not the language of faith, but of misery; but the Lord has an ear for the voice of misery. He had an ear for the voice of Hagar when she wandered in the wilderness; and now from their misery they howled out, "Have mercy on us," and He had mercy. "Go show yourselves unto the priests," He said; and they went, and as they went they were healed. This was the proof that they had been in God's presence—that the Jesus who had spoken, was none less than God Himself, because if we look again at Leviticus we shall find that none but God had a right to speak to a leper. This just shows us that we in our sin can go to none but Jesus; if we go to any other, we have not learned what sin is—that it shuts us out from all but Him. Our necessity is such that if we do not reach Christ, we do not reach blessing. The nine lepers had not discovered this; only one read the healing aright. Nine-tenths of those who hear a sermon will let it pass by. Another will ponder it and learn Christ. That was the tenth leper. He was stirred up to ponder what was done; and, instead of going to the priest, he returned to Jesus and laid his offerings at the feet of God his Savior. This was faith; "with a loud voice" he "glorified God." The other cry was misery. He had discovered who the stranger was, and he was down on his face glorifying God. He who "thought it not robbery to be equal with God," at once goes in and occupies God's relation to their misery. There is a difference between misery and faith. Did you cry to me when you howled on your beds? says the prophet. No, you did not. Yet many a one begins his eternity of joy with the howling of misery.
In verse 20 we find Him again in company with the Pharisees. How exquisitely interesting it is to trace the moral scenery that constituted the path of Christ! Here they asked when the kingdom of God should come. What a vain—an insolent—inquiry! What I mean is this: it was as if they had said, Oh, we are ready for the kingdom—the only question is, when the kingdom will be ready for us. At once the Lord answers the condition of their souls. You must look for the kingdom within you before you can get it around. Do you not vindicate the Lord in such words? You are never ready for the kingdom in glory, till you have the kingdom within you. And having thus disposed of their question, He turns to the disciples and speaks to them of the kingdom.
The kingdom of God is a self-evidencing thing. Whenever it erects itself, it does not need a witness. Does the sun or the moon, the thunder or the lightning require a witness? They bear witness to themselves. Are you conscious that God has set up His kingdom within you? Paul says, "The kingdom of God is... righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." Rom. 14:1717For the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost. (Romans 14:17). Now, can you have such a thing in you and not know it? It may be in feebleness. There is many a poor trembling soul whose tremblings are evidence to those who look on that it is in a better plight than it thinks; but wherever the power of God is, it makes itself known. "The kingdom of God" is an expression meaning divine power. Having established this with His disciples, He says, The days will come when you will desire to see the kingdom in glory, but you will not see it yet. What is the path of the Church all through this age? A path of desire. Is your spirit traveling, day by day, a path of desire after your unmanifested Savior? He says, I am to pass through rejection first, and you must pass through it with Me. The saint is desiring an absent Lord and, till He comes, is the companion of a rejected Lord, filled with the desire for His return, and filled with consent to be companion of His rejection. It is a rebuke, but let us welcome it; it is an excellent oil that will not break our heads (Psalm 141:55Let the righteous smite me; it shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me; it shall be an excellent oil, which shall not break my head: for yet my prayer also shall be in their calamities. (Psalm 141:5)).
Having presented these qualities, He goes on to show the state of things just before the Son shines out in glory. In the days of Lot and Noah you get a picture of what the world will be then. They will be going on as those that have found their object in the world. The Lord had given a sketch of what the saint in the age of His absence ought to be; now He draws a sketch of what the world would be. Then, He says, it will be a day of discerning, as the day of Noah was. Was not Noah left when the whole world was destroyed? The story of Noah is to be revived in the closing hour of earth's history. There will be two in a bed—two in the field -it matters not; it will be a day of discerning.
Like the pillar of cloud that was at once salvation to the Israelites and doom to the Egyptians, so the day of the Lord will rise like the sun with healing in his wings to one in a bed, while it will burn like an oven for the other. No wonder that they cried out, "Where, Lord?" Strikingly, He answers, "Wheresoever the body is, thither will the eagles be gathered together." He never answered a question curiously, but morally. So it is here. The day of judgment will make no mistake; it will not take one it ought to have left, or leave one it ought to have taken. We ought to say, Am I ready? Do I know that if the Son were to break forth in judicial glory, I should not be part of the carcass?
Then in this connection He gives the parable of the poor widow. "He spake a parable unto them to this end," that they ought always to pray. It should not read "men." Suppose I were practically the companion of a rejected Lord; what should I naturally be doing? praying, to be sure, for strength to take my place till the Master comes back. Then He shows how the judge lent a deaf ear to the poor widow. Now does not the Lord appear to do the same? It was the judge's wickedness—it is His glory, and His long-suffering. Why did the judge not answer? Because of his selfishness! Why does not the Lord come back? Because of His long-suffering. The Lord seems to pass by our prayers, as the judge did pass by the poor woman; but the judge passed her by because of his selfishness! The Lord passes by, not willing that any should perish. But He will avenge, and the book of the Apocalypse comes in to make good the word. The day is coming when He will avenge these quarrels, but look to yourselves. Take care, while you are crying out against others, that you may be found right yourselves. Cherish and cultivate the hidden life of faith to which He has called you, and into which the Spirit He has given you would lead you. This completes the scene. Oh, if there is a thing to delight our hearts, it is to discover the personal, moral, and official glories of the Lord Jesus, and to see how Scripture harmonizes to bear this lesson undistracted to your heart and mine!