|
"The Night is Coming" Augustine says somewhere, "What I live by, I impart." It was his inimitable way of saying that he preached out of his own experience, as all preachers do, of course, but Augustine to a special degree. He preached the Word of God, of course. But preaching is a very individual art and every preacher proclaims the Divine Word in a way shaped by his own experience. What Augustine meant was that what God had made precious to him he sought to make precious to others; what God had used to help him, he sought to make helpful to others, what God showed him to be essential to faith, or most wonderful about Christ's salvation, or most important to understand if one would live a devout and fruitful life in the world, he, in turned sought to show to others. All faithful preachers do this, of course. But most preachers do something else as well. They preach their worries, their worries about themselves, first of all. Taking my cue from Augustine, I might say, "What concerns me, I seek to make a matter of your concern." And so we come, once more, to a sermon on the passage of time and the importance of making the most of the single opportunity, the all-too-brief opportunity God gives us to live by faith in this world. What better time than the change of year to consider such things. As Charles Lamb, the British essayist once wrote, "No one ever regarded the first of January with indifference." But, that is not the first reason you get such a sermon from me. Honesty compels me to admit that it is my own concern for my own rapidly disappearing life that leads me to think on and then to preach to you on this theme every new year. "What I live by, I impart." If I were less concerned about what I myself will make of my own few remaining years, you would get fewer sermons on this subject and less urgent exhortations to make the most of the time that remains to you. And so we come to our text and, especially, to the Lord's remark, "As long as it is day we must do the work of him who sent me. Night is coming, when no one can work." There is very little discussion in the commentaries about what Jesus meant with these words. They are clear enough that he who runs might read. As so often in his teaching of his disciples, the Lord takes one of their questions -- in this case, why the man had been cursed with blindness from his birth -- and turns it to a use and makes a point that they had never thought of. They wanted to know why the man was blind. Jesus was more interested in what might be done for him. They wanted Jesus to solve a theological puzzle for him, he saw the same situation as an opportunity for service -- for serving both God and man. [Hendriksen, p. 73] The English translation of v. 4 obscures the fact that the pronoun "we" is in the emphatic position in the sentence. They ask about why this man was blind. He replies "WE, as long as it is day, must do the works of Him who sent me." "We" not "I." As so often, the Lord brings his disciples into the picture. What he is doing before them is to become their work as well. And, of course, we -- you and I -- are his disciples too. And the works we are to do are the works of the one who sent Jesus, the works of the Father in heaven, the works of his kingdom, the works he has given us to do and taught us to do in his name and for his sake. Now, what does he mean by "as long as it is day?" Well, in his own case, he tells us in v. 5. For Jesus, it is "while he is in the world." When he left the world, his "day" was done, so far as doing these works was concerned. He continues to work in heaven, of course, and on earth through his spirit; but not these works, not in this world. That is, his "day" was the time he had in the world to do his Father's works. For the disciples, of course, their day is the same, the time that will be given to them to do the works of their Father in heaven. For them, "night" will be death, when their "day" of working for God here in this world is over, when, as we read in Ecclesiastes 9:6, "never again will they have a part in anything that happens under the sun." And the Lord's exhortation is clear: do these works heartily and faithfully, fill up your day with them, for the night is coming and your opportunity to do these works will be forever gone. In other words, the Lord took the case of this blind man and the question the disciples asked about him and turned it into an appeal to all who are his disciples to make the most of the short while we are given to live in this world; to fill up our little day with all we can do for God and man. That is what he was doing, fulfilling his heavenly calling to the uttermost, and he left us an example that we should follow in his steps. In this way the Lord is urging upon us the same lesson we find elsewhere in the Bible. "Lord, teach us to number our days aright, that we may gain a heart of wisdom." (Psalm 90:12) Or, as Paul puts it in Ephesians 5:16: "redeem the time, for the days are evil." Now, I am well aware that some of you relish sermons like this, on themes like this, and others of you do not. For some of you life is already a great weight and for me to urge upon you the shortness of your time and the need to make the most of what remains seems to you only to increase the load. You feel downhearted enough as it is, now I am going to make matters worse by telling you that you need to do much more and soon, or else you will be a greater failure still. I know how you feel, I have felt this way to some extent myself -- not perhaps as you are feeling it, I recognize -- in regard to certain matters in my own life as a Christian. Now, to begin, it is surely important for me to remind you that the "Lord knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust." And to remind you, that the Lord is a gracious God and a loving Father and takes a very little from his children to be a very much. Remember the beautiful way that Christopher Love, the English puritan put this. "Look not so much on your sins, but look upon your grace also, though weak. Weak Christians look more on their sins than on their graces; yet God looks on their graces and overlooks their sins and infirmities. The Holy Ghost said, 'Ye have heard of the patience of Job.' He might also have said, 'Ye have heard of the impatience of Job'; But God reckons his people not by what is bad in them, but by what is good in them. ... O it is good to serve such a Master, who is ready to reward the good we do, and is ready to forgive and pass by what is amiss. Therefore, you who have but little grace, yet remember that God will have his eye on that little grace. He will not quench the smoking flax nor break the bruised reed." [Sermons, vol. 3, "Growing in Grace."] I was reading recently a letter that Dr. Francis Schaeffer wrote to a young woman who felt quite dejected about her life and about her disappointed hopes. And he is urging her to believe that God can make something beautiful out of what was a genuine mess. He wrote, "Edith has an illustration that I like very much. There was a girl who was supposed to make cakes in the Les Melezes kitchen, and she got all messed up until she had nothing but a mess of goo. It would have seemed as though there was nothing to do but throw the whole mess out. But as you know, we don't have a great deal of money, and so Edith has learned to be very economical in the kitchen. Thus she sat down and figured out what was in the gooey mess, and by adding an extra ingredient was able to make it into the most marvelous noodles you have tasted in your life." [Letters, p. 108] That is the spirit of Christian faith! And that is the beginning of wisdom. For, like it or not, whatever the situation in our life at this moment, the Lord Jesus, here in John 9:4-5, has told us what is true. The night is coming when no man shall work. Our lives are short, shorter than any of us thinks, and we are not given to live them a second time. Jeremiah also felt the burden of life in the way some of you are feeling it; he felt some of the time that he could wish he had never been born. But, he redeemed the time nevertheless, and what a life he lived and how he performed his Father's works before his night came. There is a seriousness, an urgency about the Christian life, there is a zeal appropriate to the Christian life that we all need much more of. I remember reading in Philip Henry's diary -- this is the father of the celebrated Matthew Henry, the Bible commentator; the father was a great Christian in his own right --, I think it was his entry for his 30th birthday, his reflecting on the fact that by 30 years of age Alexander had conquered the whole world, and here he was struggling to subdue the little world of himself, struggling on, so he felt, at such a low level of Christian attainment. Well, I am 17 years older than Philip Henry was when he was bemoaning his lack of spiritual progress, and I am at my age a pale shadow of the man Henry was when he was 30! [Lives of Philip and Matthew Henry, p. 1] And the night is coming when no one can work! Peter, in his second letter, urges us to "grow in the grace and the knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ." That is the way he puts it in conclusion (3:18). In chapter 1 he is more specific. He exhorts us to "add to our faith, goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness, and to brotherly kindness, love." And then he goes on to say a most important thing. "For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ" (1:5-8). That is, it is not enough to have these qualities, in some degree or another. One must have them in increasing measure. One must see them grow, deepen, strengthen. That is the path to fruitfulness, to productivity as a Christian is the way Peter says it, but he is speaking of the same thing Jesus spoke of in John 9. He is speaking of our doing God's works in the world and filling our short life with what pleases God. For the night is coming when no one can work. Now, this continuation in Christian work and this growth in grace and the knowledge of the Lord is urged upon us so much in the Bible because we all find it so easy to succumb to self-satisfaction with what we have already achieved. The status quo has a tremendous grip; habits of mind and life are very powerful and difficult to break free from. Once we grow comfortable in a certain stage of Christian living and serving and working it is hard to escape what once was a goal but now has become a deep rut. We cannot get free of it to drive off in a new direction. Many of us must confess that at one time we were more eager to grow in grace, to put our sins to death, to advance in usefulness to Christ than we are now. We thought about it, prayed for it, took steps to get more of Christ and holiness than we do now. In the same volume of the Letters of Francis Schaeffer from which I took the illustration I used earlier, I came across a letter Dr. Schaeffer had written to an art student who felt that his Christian life was not growing as a result of the distractions of moving and of his art studies. And in his letter back to that young man, Dr. Schaeffer said this: "I do think the only way that our spiritual life does not suffer is to go quite steadily on. It is something like artistic work. So often the pseudo-artist is rich in artistic temperament, but has little wealth in regard to going on in a [consistent way.] I remember something I read about Matisse a short while ago. It said that he worked every day regularly. But he made the remark once that the difficulty [with many who wanted to be artists] was that they spent all their time seducing the models rather than painting them." [pp. 93-94] No, said Dr. Schaeffer, the Christian must keep at it, always keep after what is not yet in his Christian life -- whether in devotion to the Word or to prayer or to witness for the faith or to some particular piece of Christian purity or obedience or service. That is how God made the Christian life to be lived -- it prospers only when it is growing! Or to build on Dr. Schaeffer's illustration from art, one of Alexander Whyte's mottos for life was the motto of an old painter: "nulla dies sine linea", that is, "no day without a stroke of the brush." Every day something new on the canvas, some work done, even if the sense of the painting is vague and one is uncertain how to proceed. Progress comes in constant effort and application. Think of your Christian life as a canvas to be painted: each part of that life -- worship, devotion, witness, love to spouse, to children, to the brethren, to one's enemies, obedience to the various commandments of God's law, etc. -- needing to be sketched and then to be filled in with brush and paint. Nulla dies sine linea. No day without one more stroke of the brush, one more detail added to the canvas. Every day, all the time, another step forward, however small, adding to faith and knowledge and godliness and love. The Lord will grant, must grant the increase, of course. But, the Lord's point is that he grants that increase to those who seek it most faithfully by doing the works of their Father in heaven in the living sense that the night is approaching when no one will work. Men and women who establish that habit of constant application, of never resting content with what they have so far attained, who keep before them the goal of higher and deeper things in the life of God, of greater usefulness in the kingdom of God, who are always pushing themselves forward, greedy for sanctification in every way, in any way, I say such men and women go far, they go as far as God will grant them to go, and, they go much farther than they otherwise would have gone. I remember Dr. Cornelius Van Til of Westminster Theological Seminary reminiscing about calling upon Dr. J.O. Buswell at the Quarryille Retirement Center in Pennsylvania in 1974. Dr. Buswell, the great man of our former denomination and one of the very few significant theologians of the middle of the 20th century -- professor of theology at our Covenant Theological Seminary from its founding and for years after -- had had a stroke and had also fallen and hurt his leg. He was in bed when Dr. Van Til came to call on him. A most interesting meeting, by the way, because the two of them had not seen eye to eye on a number of issues during their careers. But, what I remember about Dr. Van Til's reminiscence of that meeting was that he said, when he called on Dr. Buswell, he found him -- now almost 80 years of age-- in bed, drilling himself on Hebrew verbs! Dr. Buswell was in his retirement, only months from his death, and he was keeping his Hebrew sharp! That is the picture of Christian living being painted for us in these few words of our Savior in John 9. Up and about the work -- in our own hearts and in our families and in the church and in the world -- up and about and at work until the night falls. Every day pressing forward, content with nothing but that new ground should be won and then kept, and still more new ground tomorrow. That the works the Father has given us to do, be faithfully done until the night comes. I have been reading Alexander Smellie's small biography of Robert Murray McCheyne this past week. I was glad to learn of it, for reading Andrew Bonar's Memoir of McCheyne during my high school years had been an epoch in my life. I had no idea that another biography existed and was delighted to find this one. And, it has been interesting reading -- not only refreshing my memory of this Scottish pastor who died at 29 years of age in 1843, but adding some highly interesting tidbits of information that I did not have before. For example, that McCheyne once found himself in a street fight in a village in southern Poland -- you would have to know something of the slightness of his body and the gentleness of his spirit to appreciate how comical is the scene of McCheyne warding off two would be robbers with his walking stick --, or that in his later years he was twice engaged to be married. That didn't fit my picture of McCheyne either, but I am glad to add it to the picture of his saintliness that I already had and had treasured these many years. But, more important, in reading the little biography I have been reminded of what two things always go together in the life of particularly fine and godly Christians. McCheyne wanted, he said to his closest friends and he confided to his diary, to be as holy as a redeemed sinner can be. And many holy men of that very spiritual day thought he the holiest man they had ever met. But, he also had a setting sun painted on his watch, so that every day, whenever he checked the time, he was reminded that the night was coming when no one could work. People who know that the night is coming and who care always to remember that and who want to be holy end up people, like Robert McCheyne, who go very far in the things of God and the works of their Father in heaven, even if they live to be only 29 years of age. Because he lived to grow each day, to do more in his Master's service each day, to delve deeper into the Word of God each day, to seek more of the Lord and from the Lord in prayer each day, "he had his task completed when most of us are dreaming of commencing ours." [Smellie, p. 162] Like Dr. Buswell he was doing his Father's works to the very end. It was simply his habit of life to work while it was day. And the result was that he worked until the very nightfall. He fell sick after an evening of preaching, and even during his last days, half-delirious with the Typhoid fever that killed him -- though sickly himself, he never failed to visit those who had typhus themselves and so it was only a matter of time before he was infected as well -- he did the works of God. Even in his delirium, he loved his friends, he prayed for his church, he died with his hands in the air, as if pronouncing another benediction upon the congregation of St. Peter's, Dundee. Where does a finish like that come from? It comes from a life of working with a view to the coming night! In the early years of the 19th century, there was a Methodist minister by the name of Thomas Taylor who had the spirit that Jesus was seeking to inculcate in his disciples. He was in the middle of his life in the service of his heavenly father when one Sabbath night he confided to his congregation in a sermon that he hoped to die as an old soldier of Jesus Christ, with his sword in his hand. That very night, suddenly, unexpectedly, Thomas Taylor died. His friend, the celebrated Moravian hymn-writer, James Montgomery, wrote these verses in reflection upon that sudden night-fall.
"Servant of God! well done; Rest from thy loved employ; The battle fought, the victory won, Enter thy Master's joy." --The voice at midnight came; He started up to hear: A mortal arrow pierced his frame. He fell, -- but felt no fear. Tranquil amid alarms, It found him in the field, A veteran slumbering on his arms, Beneath his red-cross shield; His sword was in his hand, Still warm with recent fight, Ready that moment at command Through rock and steel to smite. The pains of death are past, Labour and sorrow cease, And life's long warfare closed at last, His soul is found in peace. Soldier of Christ! well done; Praise be thy new employ; And while eternal ages run Rest in thy Saviour's joy. Is there anything that should be desired by any one of us more than that that summons, the nightfall, should find us in the field? But will it, how can it, unless we are always in the field, unless our sword is always in our hand, still warm with recent fight? "Tomorrow" is a bad word, an evil word, for Christians such as you and I. "Today" is our word, always for us "Today." Hear the good Bishop, J.C. Ryle: "Tomorrow is the Devil's day, but today is God's. Satan cares not how spiritual your intentions may be, and how holy your resolutions, if only they are fixed for to-morrow. ...give not place to the Devil in this matter! Answer him, 'No: Satan! It shall be today: today." It was our Lord Jesus who urged us to work while it was day for the night was coming when no one could work, our same Lord Jesus who promised to be with us to the end of the age. And so remember too what Dr. Schaeffer also told that dejected young woman: "Knowing he is there changes everything!" |
|
[Home] |