JESUS RESTORES PEACE BETWEEN GOD AND MAN.
There are things which God cannot do—which it were not to honour but dishonour Him to believe He could. He can neither tempt, nor be tempted, to sin. The sinner He may love, but not his sin; that is impossible; as the prophet expresses it, “Thou art of purer eyes than to behold evil, and canst not look on iniquity.” Indeed, I would as soon believe that God could condemn a holy spirit to the pains of hell, as admit a guilty one, unjustified and unsanctified, to the joys of heaven. In that terrible indictment which God thunders out against Israel by the mouth of Ezekiel, He says, “Thou art the land which is not cleansed. Her princes in the midst thereof are like wolves ravening the prey, to shed blood, and to destroy souls, to get dishonest gain. Her prophets have daubed them with untempered mortar, saying, Thus saith the Lord God, when the Lord hath not spoken. The people of the land have used oppression, and exercised robbery, and have vexed the poor and needy; therefore have I poured out mine indignation upon them; I have consumed them with the fire of my wrath: their own way have I recompensed upon their heads, saith the Lord.” So he arraigns this and the other class. And how of the priests? “Her priests have violated my law, and have profaned mine holy things: they have put no difference between the holy and profane, neither have they showed difference between the unclean and the clean.” He censures His servants for not separating between the clean and unclean; and it insults Him to suppose that He could do in His own practice what He condemns in theirs. Events, such as old murders brought to light, ever and anon occur to show that God’s mill, as runs the proverb, though it grinds slow, grinds sure; yet because He does not execute judgment speedily on workers of iniquity—giving them space to repent; because He often seems, like one far remote from earth, to treat its crimes and virtues with equal indifference, men have not believed these solemn words, “There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked.” But let the wicked hear His words, and take the warning, “Thou hatest instruction; thou castest My words behind thee. When thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him. Thou hast been partaker with adulterers. Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue practiseth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother’s son. These things hast thou done, and I kept silence; thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself: but I will reprove thee, and set them in order before thine eyes. Consider this, ye that forget God, lest I tear you in pieces, and there be none to deliver.”
The universal conscience of mankind is stricken with a sense of guilt. Alarmed by an instinctive sense of danger, men have felt the need of reconciliation; and, under a sense of His displeasure, have everywhere, and in all ages, sought to make their peace with God. For this end altars were raised and temples built; sacrifices offered, and penances endured. If the colossal structures of Egypt, and the lovely temples of Greece and Rome, were erected, as well to adorn the state as to please the gods, it was less to please approving, than to appease angry divinities, that their courts resounded with the cries of victims, and smoking altars ran red with blood. So much did the heathen feel their need of peace, such store did they set by it, that many of them sought it at any price. They would buy peace at any cost; nor did they shrink from giving all their fortune, even the fruit of their body, for the sin of their souls. For peace with God the Hindoo walked to his distant temples in sandals that, set with spikes, pierced his flesh at every step, and marked all the long, slow, painful journey with a track of blood; for peace with God the Syrian led his sweet boy up to the fires of Moloch, and, unmoved in purpose by cries, or curses, or passionate entreaties, cast him shrieking on the burning pile; for peace with God the Indian mother approached the river’s brink with streaming tears and trembling steps, and, tearing the suckling from her bursting heart, kissed it, to turn away her eyes, and fling it into the flood. We pity their ignorance. But how do they rebuke the indifference of many; their unwillingness to submit to any sacrifice whatever for the honour of Jesus and the interests of their souls? These heathens may pity thousands whom they shall rise up in judgment to condemn. Neglecting the great salvation, preferring the pleasures of sin, what a contrast do these offer to a poor Hindoo, who, hearing a missionary tell of the blood of Christ, sprang from the ground, and, loosing his bloody sandals, flung them away to exclaim, “Now, now I have found what I want!”
The peace which he found all men want, and shall find in Jesus, if they seek it honestly, earnestly. God has no pleasure in the death of the wicked. He never had. We pronounce him an unnatural father, who, on a breach occurring between him and his child, though he is the injured and not the injurer, does not long to be reconciled—is not the first to make advances and overtures of peace. In this feature of the parental character God has stamped upon our hearts the beautiful image of His own. Yearning over them as the kind old man over his wayward prodigal, his exiled child, God was willing to receive back sinners to His arms; to reinstate them in His family, and restore them to His favour. But how was this to be done?—done without dishonour to His holy law, and with due regard to His character as a God of truth. He had said, “The soul that sinneth shall die;” nor could peace be restored between Him and man but on such terms as maintained His truth. A father or mother punishes one child, and allows another, guilty of the same offence, to go free. But had God cast fallen angels into hell, and, without any regard to His word, admitted fallen men to heaven, what had angels, what had devils, what had men themselves thought of a God who conducted his government with such caprice—playing fast and loose with His most solemn words? “The way of the Lord,” said ancient Israel, “is not equal;” and in such a case there had been ground for the charge, and none for the indignation with which He repels it, saying, “Hear now, O Israel, is not my way equal? are not yours unequal?”
There was only one way of restoring peace; but it involved a sacrifice on God’s part which the most sanguine had never dared to hope for. If the Lord of heaven and earth, veiling His glory, would assume our nature, would take the form of a servant, would stoop to the work of a subject, would die the death of a sinner, we might be saved—not otherwise; if He would leave heaven, we might enter it—not otherwise; if He would die, we might live—not otherwise; if He would enter the grave its captor, we might leave it its conquerors—not otherwise; if He, as our substitute, would fulfil the requirements of the law, both in doing our work and discharging our debt, both obeying and suffering in our stead, peace could be restored—not otherwise. For these ends God did not spare His Son, but gave Him up to death, “that whosoever believeth in him might not perish, but have everlasting life;” and the “set time” having come at length, Jesus descended on our world, to make peace through the blood of His cross—His angel-train, ere they returned to heaven, holding a concert in the skies.
Dying, the just for the unjust, He has made peace; and these are the easy terms, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” How gladly should we accept them? If men reject peace, what chance for them in war? “Hast thou an arm like God? Canst thou thunder with a voice like him?” “Let the potsherds strive with the potsherds of the earth; but woe to the man who striveth with his Maker!” He has proclaimed a truce—granting a suspension of arms, and offering most generous proposals of peace. How should men improve the pause, and accept the overtures!—as eagerly seizing salvation through the cross of Christ as a drowning man life through the rope some kind hand flings within his reach. In warfare patriots have stood up gallantly against overwhelming odds, and, closing their broken ranks, have said, “Better fall on the field, better lose life than honour;” but when sinners, dropping the weapons of rebellion, yield themselves up to God, honour is not lost, but won, in a crown that fadeth not away. Brave men have said, “Better fight to the last, die with our swords in our hands, than become captives to pine away a weary, ignoble life within the walls of a prison;” but when the sinner gives himself up to God, he goes not to exile but home; not to chains and a dungeon, but to glorious freedom, a palace, and a throne. God asks you to give up your sins that they, not you, may be slain. It is of them, not of you, He says, “But those mine enemies which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me!”
In these circumstances, oh for the wisdom of her who showed herself on the city walls in the thick of the assault, crying to Joab, “Hear, hear, come near hither, I pray you, that I may speak with thee!” A woman’s figure there, her voice sounding above the thunder of the captains and the shouting, suspends the attack. Assailants and assailed alike rest on their arms; and as one marked as a leader by his plume and bearing, covered with the dust and blood of battle, steps forward, she bends over the battlements to ask, “Art thou Joab?” “I am he,” is the reply. “Then hear the words of thy handmaid,” she cries; “I am one of them that are peaceable and faithful in Israel: thou seekest to destroy a city and a mother in Israel!” He solemnly repudiates the charge. “Far be it from me,” he answers, “that I should swallow up and destroy. The matter is not so: but a man of Mount Ephraim, Sheba, the son of Bichri, hath lifted up his hand against the king, against David: deliver him only, and I will depart from the city.” She accepts the terms; and saying “Behold, his head shall be thrown to thee over the wall”—vanishes. Prompt in action as wise in counsel, she goes to the people, deals with them, sways the multitude to her will; and ere the last hour of the brief truce has closed, a bloody head goes bounding over the wall. It rolls like a ball to the feet of Joab; and in its grim and ghastly features they recognise the face of the son of Bichri. So Joab blows the trumpet, and the host retires from the walls, every man to his own tent. So let men deal with their sins. Let them die with the son of Bichri: they have “lifted up their hand against the King.” Why should we spare them, and lose our souls? By His precious blood Jesus has opened up a way to peace. He has come, but not “to swallow up and destroy.” Blessed Lord, He came to save, not to destroy. “O earth, earth, earth,” cried the prophet, “hear the word of the Lord;” and be it known to the world’s utmost bounds that God willeth not the death of the sinner, but rather that he would turn to Him and live. With her flaming sword, red with the blood of men and angels, Justice holds to us no other language but that of Joab, “Deliver up your sins only, and I will depart!” and, inspired of God with the wisdom that chooseth the better part, and maketh wise unto salvation, let us say, “Better my sins die than I; better Satan be cast, than Jesus be kept out of it; better strike off the heads of a thousand sins that have lifted up their hands against the King, than that I should fall—sparing my sins to lose my soul!”
PART V.
Ahab and Jezebel, two of the worst characters in sacred story, had a son; and with such blood as theirs in his veins, no wonder that Joram, on succeeding to the throne of one parent, exhibited the vices of both. His mother does not seem to have had a drop of human-kindness in her breast. Yet he was not altogether dead to humanity, as appears by an incident which occurred during the siege that reduced his capital to the direst extremities. The ghastly aspect of a famished woman who throws herself in his way with a wild, impassioned, wailing cry of “Help, my lord, O king!” touches him; and he asks, “What aileth thee?” Stretching out a skinny arm to one pale and haggard as herself, she replies, with hollow voice, “This woman said unto me, Give thy son, that we may eat him to-day, and we will eat my son to-morrow. So we boiled my son, and did eat him: and I said unto her on the next day, Give thy son, that we may eat him; and she hath hid her son.” Struck with horror at the story, Joram rent his clothes. He had pity, but no piety.
“Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will but revolt more and more.” Never were these words, never was the fact that unsanctified afflictions have the same hardening effect on men which fire, that melts gold, has on clay, more strikingly illustrated than on this occasion. So far from rending his heart with his garment, and humbling himself before the Lord, Joram flares up into fiercer rebellion; and turning from these victims of the famine to his courtiers, he grinds his teeth to profane God’s name and vow vengeance on his prophet, saying, “God do so and more also to me, if the head of Elisha the son of Shaphat shall stand on him this day.” Impotent rage against the only man who could have weathered the storm, and saved the state! The prophet’s head stood on his shoulders when that of this son of a murderer—as Elisha called him—lay low in death in the dust of Naboth’s vineyard. The day arrives which sees the cup of Joram’s iniquity full, and that of God’s patience empty—drained to the last drop. The chief officers of the army are sitting outside their barrack, when one wearing a prophet’s livery approaches them. Singling out Jehu from the group, he says, I have an errand to thee, O captain! The captain rises; they pass in alone; the door is shut; and now this strange, unknown man, drawing a horn of oil from his shaggy cloak, pours it on Jehu’s head. As if it had fallen on fire, it kindled up his smouldering ambition—so soon at least as this speech interpreted the act, “Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I have anointed thee king over the people of this land. Thou shall smite the house of Ahab thy master; dogs shall eat Jezebel in the portion of Jezreel, and there shall be none to bury her.” Having spoken so, the stranger opens the door, and flies. But faster flies God’s vengeance. Ere his feet have borne the servant to Elisha’s door, the banner of revolt is up, unfurled; troops are gathering to the sound of trumpets; and soldiers, eager for change and plunder, are making the air ring to the cry, Jehu is king!
Launched like a thunderbolt at the house of Ahab, Jehu makes right for Jezreel with impetuous, impatient speed. A watchman on the palace tower catches afar the dust of the advancing cavalcade, and cries, I see a company! Guilt, which sleeps uneasy even on downy pillows, awakens, on the circumstance being reported to him, the monarch’s fears. A horseman is quickly despatched with the question, Is it peace? Thus, pulling up his steed, he accosts the leader of the company, who, drawing no rein, replies, in a tone neither to be challenged nor disobeyed, What hast thou to do with peace? Get thee behind me! Failing the first’s return, a second horseman gallops forth to carry the same question and meet the same reception. Sweeping on like a hurricane, the band is now near enough for the watchman to tell, “He came near unto them, and cometh not again;” and also to add, as he marks how their leader is shaking the reins and lashing the steeds of his bounding chariot, “The driving is like the driving of Jehu, the son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.” Displaying a courage that seemed his only redeeming quality, or bereaved of sense, according to the saying, Whom God intends to destroy He first makes mad, Joram instantly throws himself into his chariot, advances to meet the band, and demands of its leader, Is it peace, Jehu? What peace, is the other’s answer, so long as the whoredoms of thy mother and her witchcrafts are so many? With the words that leave his lips an arrow leaves his bow to transfix the flying king—entering in at his back and passing out at his breast; and when he is cast, a bloody corpse, into Naboth’s vineyard, and dogs are crunching his mother’s bones, and Jehu has climbed the throne, and Elisha walks abroad with his head safe on his shoulders, and the curtain falls on the stage of these tragic and righteous scenes, it was a time for the few pious men of that guilty land to sing, “Lo thine enemies, O Lord, lo thine enemies shall perish; but the righteous shall flourish like the palm-tree: they shall grow like a cedar of Lebanon.”
Such was the mission of Jehu, the son of Nimshi. How different that of Jesus, the Son of God! They might have been identical; presented at least grounds of comparison rather than grounds of striking contrast. Yet so remarkable is the contrast that Jehu’s mission—and therefore have we related the story—forms as effective a background to Christ’s, as the black rain-cloud to the bright bow which spans it. The cause of the difference lies in God’s free, gracious, sovereign mercy—in nothing else; for had mankind, at the tidings that the Son of God, attended by a train of holy angels, was approaching, met Him on the confines of our world with Joram’s question, “Is it peace?” that question might justly have met with Jehu’s answer, “What hast thou to do with peace?”—what have you done to obtain it, or to deserve it? Yet, glory be to God in the highest, it is peace—peace more plainly and fully announced in these most gracious words, “It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell; and, having made peace through the blood of his cross, by him to reconcile all things to himself, whether they be things on earth, or things in heaven.”