The Eight Gates into the City of Blessedness—An Exposition of the Beatitudes
4. The Example of Our Lord—His Reverence for an Use of Scripture
Our Lord’s attitude towards Scripture is really suggestive. His own life-course was determined by it. Not only at the great crises, but in smaller matters and minute details He was ruled by it. He affirmed that His reading of parables, His going up to Jerusalem, His working of miracles, betrayal of Judas, seizure of the Jews, violent death, and victorious resurrection were all in accordance with Scripture. He found these and many minute points beside recorded on its pages. It was clear to Him that His whole career had been set down by the Divine Spirit in cypher on those sacred pages, with which He was so intimately familiar. He was guided in the jots and tittles of His life and ministry by His Father’s will as it was expressed through Scripture and mapped out there.
When the disciples asked the reason of His clothing His teaching in those picture stories, which have enriched the thought and speech of men in every page, He told them that it was to fulfil what had been spoken of the Prophet (Matt. 13:13–15, 34, 35; John 12:38, 39). When He was bearing the griefs and sorrows of mankind He found His justification again in Isaiah’s words (Matt. 8:16, 17). The wonder at His frequently repeated cautions that the healed should not make Him known was met by reference to Scripture predictions (Matt. 12:15–21). His triumphal entrance into Jerusalem was justified by the requirements of ancient prophecy. Many of the pathetic details of His last hours were, in a most literal and significant sense, the fulfilment of Scripture. The crowning with thorns, the scourging, the piercing of hands, feet and side, the vinegar, the mockery, the unbroken bones, the parted raiment, the broken heart, the burial in the rich man’s sepulchre, the very words He used on the cross, all prove, in affecting detail, how saturated His soul was with Scripture, and how minutely He fulfilled it in countless particulars. From the beginning of His public ministry, when He repelled Satan by the thrice, “It is written,” to the close, when He taught His disciples in all the Scriptures, “the things concerning himself,”—the Word of God was His rod and His staff.
It has been truly said that no disciples of Browning or Tennyson, Milton or Shakespeare, Goethe or Dante, Virgil or Homer, were ever so saturated with their master’s thoughts or so steeped in their spirit as Jesus was with Scripture. He discovered unexpected truths in it, revealed Divine depths, disclosed hidden meanings, made unthought-of applications—unforeseen by the writers and unperceived by the readers. It was its sustenance of His own soul’s life and the nourishment of His spiritual nature. His human character developed along its lines, whilst His moral and spiritual being was perfected by its indwelling up to the full stature of His glorious manhood. He performed His life-work under its inspiration, defended Himself by its examples, resisted His temptations in its strength, sustained His soul by its comfort, died with its blessed words upon His lips. To Him it was the true and faithful Word of God, which could not be broken, but was the foundation and pillar of truth. So we may readily suppose, therefore, He was The Prince of Expositors. We are told that “He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself.”
One notable example of this occurred at Nazareth. He had passed, on the way to the synagogue from Mary’s house, many a bent and aged elder whom He had known strong and stalwart years before. Many a voice He recognized in the clear sunny air as belonging to a girl or boy of His happy boyhood’s memories. The well-remembered little meeting-place was crowded by the friends and families of His early years. The ancient Levite, who may have been the first to unfold to Him the sacred mysteries of Scripture, may have been the minister of the sanctuary who handed to Him the sacred scroll and motioned Him to read. Mary was there behind the screen that hid the women from gaze, and His brother sat in the audience. What should be His subject on that memorable day, when beneath the pressure of the great tides that were pulsing through His spirit He stood up before the expectant audience? He turned to the lesson of the day, to the next in the course, and proceeded to expound Isaiah 60:1–3.
We cannot found an argument upon this single act, but it is at least significant that the Lord gave His sanction to the systematic reading and consideration of the inspired Word in His earliest sermon.
Our Lord was also careful to consider the text in relation to the context and the whole tenor and teaching of Scripture. The habit of taking a little snippet of a verse from any part of the Bible and making it the subject of discourse, exposes the preacher to the danger of an unbalanced statement of truth, which is very prejudicial. Nothing is more perilous than the partial knowledge of God’s truth, which is based on sentences torn from their rock-bed and viewed in isolation from their setting.
When Satan was met by our Lord’s use of Scripture, he also quoted Scripture to his purpose, saying, “It is written that he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee, lest thou dash thy foot against a stone.” But there was a touch almost of sternness in our Lord’s reply, “It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.” “What is the meaning of that?” asks Dr. Parker. It is that the Bible is not made to be of one text. The meaning is that you must compare Scripture with Scripture. It is possible to fasten the mind upon a single line, so as to miss the whole revelation of the Bible. We have to compare spiritual things with spiritual. It is written here, and it is written again; and the one passage must be read in the light of the other. You must have the whole Bible, and not an isolated text, to rest upon. There is a Biblical spirit as well as a Biblical letter.
Surely this Biblical spirit is more certainly imbibed, and the whole tenor of truth more certainly embraced, when a congregation is led consecutively through some noble argument like that of the Romans, or a series of ascents like those of the Hebrews, than would be possible if isolated topics were selected, apparently at haphazard.
Our Lord always associated the Scriptures with the energy of Divine power. During the last week of His earthly ministry He was confronted by a series of questions carefully prepared to entrap Him. “There came unto him Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection: and they asked him,” etc. (Mark 12:19, etc.).
Our Lord introduced His reply by the startling announcement that they erred greatly because “they knew not the Scriptures, nor the power of God.” They were not prepared to suppose that there was anything in the Hebrew Scriptures with which they were not already perfectly familiar. It was a novel experience to be taught by one who had not passed through their schools, and to find Him connecting in this wonderful manner the Scriptures and the power of God.
Three things are worthy of notice: (1) Our Lord did not appeal, as Plato might have done, to arguments for the other life, based on the nature of the soul or the processes of nature, but to the Scriptures, which were ever His ultimate court of appeal. In His conflict with Satan and in His teachings His supreme appeal was always to the Word of God. (2) He discovered an argument for the future life in the present tense, as Jehovah used it, in His first conference with Moses. In this He shows His reverence for the very letter of the Word of God, and reminds us of Paul the Apostle, who founds an argument on the presence or absence of a single letter (Gal. 3:16).
We should never have dreamed of the fathomless depths that underlie those simple words, “I am,” unless He had taken us by the hand and bade us look into their profundity, blue with distance. It was argument enough for our Lord that two hundred and fifty or three hundred years after the death of the youngest patriarch God described Himself as being the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; and from these words He, as man, arrived at the assurance and was warranted to affirm that all these souls must be in existence somewhere, since God could not be God of the dead, but of the living. If God could still assert Himself as the God of Jacob two and a half centuries after he had been laid to sleep in Machpelah’s ancient cave, then Jacob must still be alive! What light this casts on the possibilities that sleep under the simplest texts! We pass and repass over them, like the prone gravestones of an old churchyard, which have become a well-worn pathway to hurrying feet, but we cannot exhaust the depths that lie under. From this instance, however, we may infer the mysteries of wonder and beauty that our Lord must have unfolded to His disciples during the forty days, when, as we have seen, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.
Why did our Lord so significantly combine the Scriptures with the power of God? If we can ascertain what the Scriptures are we may arrive somewhat nearer the truth. Perhaps we cannot put the matter better than in the words of Dr. Gordon, “Literature is the letter, Scripture is the letter inspired of the Spirit.” What our Lord said of the New Birth is equally applicable to the doctrine of inspiration, “That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit.”
You may educate, develop and refine the natural man to the highest possible point, but he does not become a spiritual man till, through the new birth, the Holy Spirit renews and dwells in him, energizes and strengthens him with all might in the inner man. So of literature; however elevated its tone, lofty its thought, eloquent its expression, it is not Scripture, because it is not, in any special sense, the organ and weapon of the Divine Spirit. The absence of the quickening energy and vitalizing power of the Holy Spirit from any writing constitutes an impassable gulf between it and Scripture. In short, the one fact which makes the Word of God a unique book, standing in solitary separateness from other writings, is that which also parts the man of God from common men—the indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
We must not speak of Scripture as having been once inspired of the Spirit of God, as though it were not so now, but as still being inspired. The bush burns with fire. The voice of God speaks in it. The Word gives living force to the words. The words are, as our Lord affirmed, both Spirit and life. As the sun burns in our furnaces, its heat having been for millenniums bottled up in the coal, which has been described as fossilized sunlight; so the Holy Spirit is present in Scripture as in no other writing under heaven. Our Lord’s perception of this made the Scripture His constant meditation and final court of appeal. And in proportion as we use them, enforcing and applying, we also shall discover that to a superexcellent degree they contain not only oracles, but the power of God.
Even the words of Scripture are not unimportant. We may go too far in the further extreme from the doctrine of verbal dictation. If they were not dictated, they have at least answered to the Divine thought as the coin to the die; and we are not at liberty to alter the language without imperilling the thought. The expositor, therefore, may be excused if he should linger lovingly over the very words of the paragraph which he is unfolding. Many of them are so apt, so picturesque, so laden with suggestiveness that they well deserve to be held up to an audience as the connoisseur will hold up precious stones, dilating and expatiating on their beauty.
Whatever God has promised in Scripture He is prepared to make good by His power. Not only is there power in the Word, but with it. We must know the Scriptures and the power of God. In the proper balancing of these two—in the study of Scripture on the one hand, and in the adoring contemplation of God’s power on the other—we shall find our best preservative against the errors of our age; and so we may await the hour when God will vindicate Himself. “What he has promised he is able also to perform.”
Not the Scriptures without the Power, or you will arrive at the dry-as-dust pedantries of Pharisee and scribe. Not the Power without the Scriptures, or you will drift into the ineptitudes of mysticism and fanaticism. Always combine the Scriptures and the Power of the living God, and you will establish the inspiration of Scriptures for all thoughtful hearers and readers, because they will become aware of a Divine energy working with them and through them, as by no other medium known amongst men.
Our Lord’s profound reverence and love for the Scripture should make every minister desire that during his pastorate he should succeed in leading his people to a well-balanced and intimate acquaintance with the entire range of the Word of God, that they may be thoroughly furnished unto all good works. If he is not able to expound every book, as Dr. Parker did, he should see to it that his people have a thorough knowledge of some, and a competent knowledge of all.
When I commenced my fifteen years’ pastorate at Christ Church, I began with the Old Testament in the morning and the New Testament in the evening, and went systematically on from Genesis 1 in the one case and Matthew 1 in the other. I had not completed either course, but had advanced through two-thirds in each case.
This systematic exposition of the Scripture places the Bible where our Lord put it, in the supreme place; and, though the inspiration of the Epistles of John is different and deeper than of Judges or Samuel, yet all Scripture, given by the inbreathing of the Divine Spirit, is profitable. The late Dr. W. Robertson Smith left this conclusion on record, which his scholarship and fidelity to truth make extremely valuable: “So long as we go to Scripture, only to find in it God and His redeeming love mirrored before the eyes of faith, we may rest assured that we shall find living, self-evidencing, infallible truth in every part of it, and that we shall find nothing else.”
The Eight Gates into the City of Blessedness—An Exposition of the Beatitudes
There is a condition of soul which may be experienced and enjoyed by every child of our race, which the Master calls Blessedness. He uses the same word to describe it as is employed to set forth the Being of God and the life of the saints who have passed beyond the veil.
“Blessed are ye” (Matt. 5:11); “The glorious gospel of the blessed God” (1 Tim. 1:11); “Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord” (Rev. 14:13). This condition of soul, however, need not be postponed until we, too, in our turn, pass the Gate of the City and find ourselves amid “the solemn troops and sweet societies” of eternity. It may be entered here and now. The fragrance of this garden steals through the crowded and noisy cities of our modern civilization like the morning air laden with the scent of new-mown grass. The gates of this city stand open night and day for lonely souls in country and sequestered places, where the noise of the city-life cannot reach; and at any moment they may tread its thronged streets, listen to its murmured speech, and join in its vast convocations, of which it is written: “Ye are come to Mount Sion, the City of the Living God, to myriads of angels, to the general assembly and church of the first-born.”
Blessedness does not depend on outward possessions, such as worldly goods, or lands, or high birth, or erudite culture. Indeed, there are words of Christ which suggest that they who stand possessed of these things will find it harder to enter that Paradise which has not yet faded from our world, and to pass through the gates of that city which are before our eyes, if only they were opened to discern them. When he repeated this sermon of the mountain heights and of the dawn to the multitudes that stood breathless beneath its spell, He said: “Woe unto you that are rich.… Woe unto you that are full.… Woe unto you, ye that laugh.” He did not mean that such would be necessarily excluded, but that entrance into blessedness would be harder for them; as when, after dusk, a camel strives to get through the needle-eye gate placed in the city wall for belated pedestrians.
There is no soul of man so illiterate, so lonely, so poor in this world’s goods, so beset with hereditary sins and demoniacal temptations, that may not at this moment step suddenly into this life of blessedness, begin to drink of the river which makes glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacles of the Most High. It is not necessary to ascend into heaven to bring it down, or to descend into the depth of the abyss to bring it up; it has not to be wrestled or wept for; it is not to be obtained by the merit of holy deeds or as the guerdon of devoted service; it is not a reward which comes after long years in the council chamber or on the tented field. We have not to do or feel or suffer, but only to be, to cultivate certain dispositions, to possess a nature, here carefully defined—and instantly blessedness begins, an unearthly light breaks on the soul, which is destined to increase into the full radiance of heaven’s high noon. “Come in, thou blessed of the Lord” (can you not hear the angel voices?); “Wherefore standest thou without?”
Our Master did not speak of this condition of soul by hearsay; for thirty years it had been His sweet and deep experience. During His life in Nazareth, had not the Lamb of God lain in His Father’s bosom? Had He not realized that He was wrapped around with the love which had been His before the worlds were made? Had He not been content to let the great ones of the world go on their way of pomp and pride because He was assured of a deeper joy, a more perfect peace, a more satisfying happiness than Cæsar’s smile or the imperial purple could afford? The well of water was springing up in His own pure heart before He spoke of it to the woman at Sychar’s well. He knew the Father, loved the Father, fulfilled the Father’s behests, rested in the Father’s will, was encompassed with the perpetual sense of the Father’s presence, breathed the sunny air of the Father’s love. During His earthly life, as He confessed Himself, the Son of man was, therefore, already “in heaven” (John 3:13). He offers us what He was experiencing for Himself. “My peace I leave with you; my peace I give unto you.” “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you.” “That the love wherewith thou lovest me may be in them.”
Not to the same degree, but after the same quality and kind, we may know in this life, amid difficult, tempestuous and sorrowful experiences, what the Lord felt when He said, “He that sent me is with me; the Father hath not left me alone, for I do always those things which please him.”
The ingredients of this experience are enumerated thus: First, it is blessed to belong to that invisible Kingdom which is already in our world, including within its ever-expanding circle all gracious souls of every race and age, breathing the ozone of heaven into the stale and exhausted atmosphere of the world; its King, the Enthroned Lamb; its subjects, the childlike, the forgiving, the gentle, and the pure; its laws, love; its advances, so soft, sweet, irresistible as the dawn; its duration, eternal. It is a blessed thing to know that one has the franchise and freedom of that Kingdom, that one need never go out from its holy and strong embrace, and that men like John the Divine may greet us thus: “Your brother and partaker with you … in the Kingdom … which is in Jesus.” (Rev. 1:9, R. V.)
Second, it is blessed to be comforted with the comfort which only God can give. When the eyes are wet with tears that refuse to be staunched, to feel a hand soft and strong wiping them away, and to discover that it is the Hand
That can ruffle an evening calm,
And bears Calvary’s mark on its pierced palm;
when the face is buried amid the dried flowers and leaves of departed joys, to hear a whisper which thrills the sense, growing fuller and clearer, like a flute, and to detect in its syllables the assurances of the Comforter Himself; when the sepulchre seems to hold all that made life worth living, to become suddenly aware that there is a Presence near at hand, and to find that the Gardener Himself is at hand to lift the drooping plant of life, unfurling its petals again to the light; to be strong in God’s strength, comforted with the paracletism of the Paraclete, to drink of the brook by the way—here is blessedness which eye hath not seen, neither the ear of ordinary man heard, nor the unregenerate heart perceived. Even the bereaved and lonely heart, sitting amid the wreckage of all its joys and hopes, may be aware of this.
Third, it is blessed to inherit the earth. When that condition of soul is reached of which the Master is speaking,
Heaven above is softer blue,
Earth around is sweeter green;
Something shines in every hue
Christless eyes have never seen.
There is a new rapture in common sights, a new meaning in common sounds; lilies are robed more gloriously than Solomon; the winged and furred denizens of the woodlands become, as St. Francis found them, “little brothers and sisters.” As Cowper said, such a man may be poor compared with those whose mansions glitter in his sight, but he calls the luxuriant prospect all his own. Every wind wafts him blessing; all things work together for his good. Whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come—all things bring their tribute to the man who has learned Christ’s secret, which, like the fabled philosopher’s stone, turns everything to gold. What inheriting the earth means is shown in the words of one of Christ’s most proficient pupils when he said, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content.” You may own vast estates, and get nothing from them. You may have no rod or perch of land, and yet you may derive joy and delight from every scene, and extract nutriment from every incident. Newspapers, public events, journals, travels, pictures, architecture, literature, human life—all shall minister to your joys and perfecting.
Fourth, it is blessed to be filled. In this life as well as in the next it is possible to hunger no more, neither thirst any more. Not to hunger for the husks that the swine eat, because filled with the provisions of the Father’s table! Not to thirst for the heated pools at which the children of the world seek to quench their thirst, because the well of water that springs up to eternal life is within. Not to clamour for the fleshpots of Egypt, because there is so plentiful a provision of manna. Oh, it is a blessed thing to be filled with the Spirit, to be full of joy and peace, to be filled with God’s grace and heavenly benediction, to be filled with the fruits of righteousness, to be filled with the knowledge of His will, to be filled unto the fulness of God! Tennyson says that the babble of the Wye among the hills lasts until the tidal wave fills up its channels to the brim; and the heart is restless till it is full—but when it has realized this blessed fulness, dipped deep into the fulness of God, and lifted out dripping with flashing drops, ah, then evil has no lure to charm, the fear of man cannot intrude, the fascination and blandishments of sense are neutralized. What more can the soul want than to be filled with Thee, O God, who didst make us for Thyself? Cannot a flower be satisfied which has a sun to shine on it, and a glacier-fed river to wash its roots?
Fifth, it is blessed to be the recipient of mercy. There is never a moment of our life in which we do not stand in need of mercy, both at the hands of our fellows and, above all, from the hand of God. There is no saint in the heavenly Kingdom who does not, at some time or other, need to appropriate the petitions of the man after God’s own heart and say, “Have mercy on me, O God, according to thy loving-kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies.” We need mercy from little children startled by our harsh tones; mercy from our servants and employees hindered by our inconsistencies, our quick temper and imperious tones; mercy from husband or wife, brother or sister, neighbour or friend; above all, mercy from the Most Merciful; and it is blessed to know that we have it in heaven’s own measure, full, pressed down, and running over. So far from making us lax in permitting sin, it predisposes us to more mercy toward the failings of others, more mercilessness to ourselves.
Sixth, it is blessed to have the vision of God. Not to terrify, as when Moses hid his face, and Elijah went into the covert of the cave, and John fell at His feet as dead; but more after the fashion of Mr. Hewitson’s experience, when he says: “Our Redeemer is no mere abstraction, no ideality that has its being only in our shifting thoughts. He is the most personal of all persons, the most living of all who live. He is ‘the First and the Last, and the living One.’ He is so near us, as the Son of God, that we can feel His warm breath on our souls; and as the Son of man He has a heart like these hearts of ours—a human heart, meek and lowly, tender, kind, and sympathising. In the Word—the almost viva voce utterance of Himself—His arm of power is stretched forth beside you, that you may lean on it with all your weight; and in the Word, also, His love is revealed, that on the bosom of it you may lay your aching head and forget your sorrow in the abundance of His consolation. To the Living One who died we must look, that we may be weaned and won over to God, that we may be strengthened, spiritualized, and sanctified.” Who would not desire a life like this, in which God should be the one dear Presence, the one familiar and everpresent Object of thought, the Friend with whom an increasing dialogue is maintained? A young girl employed in a shop told me that her consciousness of God and her converse with Him had now lasted for three years, and that difficult things had become easy, as though He arranged all and smoothed out the creases.
Seventh, it is blessed to be recognised as the son of God. Some are undoubtedly children of God who are not like God. It would require a good deal of scrutiny to detect His image and superscription on their faces, or the tones of His voice in their speech. The manners of the heavenly court are not evident in their demeanour; the courtesy and thoughtfulness that characterised the Son of man are not characteristic of their behaviour to the poor and timid, to little children and helpless women. They too often break the bruised reed and quench the smoking flax; they strive and cry, and cause their voice to be heard in the street; they do not bear, believe, hope, and endure all things, or elicit the love of men to Him, whose name and nature they ought to bear in every lineament. Be it ours to be imitators of God as dear children, to be harmless and blameless, the sons of God, without rebuke—to be thus is to be blessed.
Eighth, we come back to the Kingdom of heaven. For blessedness is like a spiral staircase: we are always coming back to the same standpoint from a higher position on the circling round. When we begin to live for God we find ourselves in the Kingdom, and are ravished with the beauty of the dawn; but after years have been spent in doing His will and walking in His fellowship, there is a new depth of loveliness and significance in its infinite and divine contents.
O Christ, Thou King of Glory, uplift us above the common dusty road of mortal life; lift us into Thy life, above the heads of our enemies, above the weight of our flesh, above the glamour of the world, and make us most blessed for ever, and glad with joy in Thy presence!