Matthew 7:15-29

Chapter 27

Hypocrisy In Art Judgment By Fruits Christ's Forecast of Himself

Prayer

Almighty God, truly is our life a great mystery, and there is no answer to it in ourselves, but in thy sweet gospel do we find the whole explanation, yea, we find the infinite light. Thou hast set our life strangely so that we know neither the beginning nor the end of it. Thou dost fix our abode, and thou dost determine our lot upon the earth and we are not our own, we are wholly thine. Thou hast made us so that we can sin against thee with both hands and our whole heart, and thou hast so made our life that it can be turned into one joyous and loving prayer this is the Lord's doing and it is wonderful in our eyes. Surely this life of ours is cruel; thou dost afflict us sorely, and by many a deprivation dost thou bring us to poverty extreme. Sometimes thou seemest to have no mercy upon the children of men. Thou dost scourge them to the flowing of the blood, and when they turn up their eyes in faint prayer, the sky is dark and sullen. Behold thou dost separate us one from another, and care not for our Farewell; thou dost dig the grave at the very foot of our pleasure, and in the middle of the feast thou dost blight us with great fears. Yet thou art also full of compassion and loving-kindness: we see it not wholly just now we see glimpses and sharp glances of thy love, quick lights that flash and flare a moment, and we believe that thou wilt by-and-by explain it all, and show that thou hast done all things well. Thou dost rule us with a rod of iron, and thou dost touch us with a sceptre of love. Thou dost bind us with cords that cannot be broken by human strength and thou dost give us a great liberty that cannot be measured by human imagination. This is our life, a pain, a joy, a night, a day, a thrilling fear, an inspiring hope.

We bring to thee the robe of the week, fouled and torn, that thou mayest again array us in the white linen of the saints. We have done the things we ought not to have done, we have left undone the things that we ought to have done, and we come without excuse or defence, for thou hast given us light enough to see all the way, and help enough to sustain us against every assault, yet have we utterly failed and there is no white day in our whole life, without scar or blot upon its beauty. God be merciful unto us sinners, and show us the cross, the sacred cross, the infinite cross, the redeeming, healing, hopeful cross, and in the sight of that vision our sin shall be all forgotten.

Thou dost give us a handful of days, and we go to work to spend it as though it were an eternity such fools are we and so utterly blind. We do not reckon our little store and set it out in lots, saying, "This shall be done to-day and that tomorrow, if the Lord will, but with a ruffian's force and a prodigal's thoughtlessness we rush upon our little dowry of time and spend it without thy fear. How brief a span is our life: our breath is in our nostrils, our little day is but twelve hours long, and we know not that we shall live the whole time so teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom.

We bless thee for all Christian light, for all Christian truth and consolation; may thy light shine upon our hearts this day, may thy truth make our understandings strong as a great tower, and thy consolation guard our hearts against destructive fears. Save us from the anxiety that is unchristian, from the care that is the result of unbelief, and that becomes an offence against thy dignity and love enable us to live as those who love the Saviour and trust the loving Father, and in whom death is abolished.

Thou seest us as we are gathered and bent here, praying, suppliant, contrite hearts. Omit no one from thy blessing let the old man feel young again, let the young be startled into a sobriety that may become religious in the long run, let the busy man remember that he can take nothing out of the world into which he brought nothing, and may those who are in affliction, sorrow, secret distress, and mortal pain, sigh what they cannot speak in words, and tell thee the latent breathings of their heart, what they may not speak in the ear of man. The prodigal is here, with his broken staff and his weary feet, and his head dizzy and aching, and his heart broken and crushed the Lord give him another chance in life, the Lord show him the way back again and give him courage to take it, every step. Amen.

Mat 7:15-29

15. Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves.

16. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?

17. Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.

18. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

19. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

20. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.

21. Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.

22. Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not phrophesied in thy name? and in thy name have cast out devils? and in thy name done many wonderful works?

23. And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart from me ye that work iniquity.

24. Therefore whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock;

25. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell not; for it was founded upon a rock.

26. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand:

27. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and in fell: and great was the fall of it.

28. And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were astonished at his doctrine:

29. For he taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

"Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves." Beware of the false in everything: encourage the instinct and spirit of truth then you will have no need to be instructed as to particulars and details. Be as true as fire, a perpetual disinfectant, a test that can never be deceived. Have in you, ever dwelling in the temple of your heart, the spirit of truth, then you will know the false man the moment you look at him: the detection of falsehood will not be an act of skill or cleverness, but you will shudder when the false man is within a mile of you, as the wind in some parts of the sea has a sudden chill in it because of the far-off icebergs. Beware of the false in everything, false promises, false directions, false appearances. Then add the word prophets, for there is more in the word false than there is in the word prophets. A man is not a good man simply because he is a prophet do not trust to the goodness or the nobleness of your office for your personal vindication: you should be bigger than your office no pulpit on earth should be as grand as you are, no prophet's robe that ever covered human shoulder should be worth your majesty.

"False prophets." What ironies there are in speech. To think the word false should ever have been married to the word prophets. Surely that sacred word prophet might have escaped this foul contamination. Let the word false go wooing otherwhere, let it marry the marketplace, but let it keep a thousand miles away from the snow-like purity of the church of Christ "False prophets." Who can imagine two words more positively contradictory? Who can imagine a union so palpably and grossly absurd? Who can effect a junction between two words that shall mean so much that is mischievous, disastrous, ruinous? It requires Jesus Christ surely to say the word false before the word prophets. Surely that word false was written in faint ink, and required his eyes of fire to see it. In other cases it was written large enough: it seemed to boast of its haziness, and to make its very bigness a kind of satirical virtue; but in connection with the word prophets, who ever found it before? False professor, false prophet, false teacher, false thinker it is in that line that lying does its worst mischief.

There is arising amongst us a class of men who are exceedingly anxious not to tell lies in art. It is provocative of secret laughter, and much of it. Solemn persons, who will not allow a painter to tell lies in oil. Yet it is not unbeautiful, and not wholly unsuggestive of things heavenly. Mr. Ruskin would never allow you to paint a piece of wood as if it were oak: such an action would send him half wild. Paint it as black as soot if you like; paint it a glaring, fiery red; steep it in amber but do not imitate oak. To such an art-critic it is a lie, it is a piece of hypocrisy in art, it is not true, and therefore it ought to be frowned out of your houses. You, skilful amateur, have painted a piece of common slate so skilfully that your neighbours suppose it to be marble. Your mother insists that it is marble; or, at all events, that she never could have told the difference between it and marble. Your neighbours almost go the length of applauding you as an artist. If one of the class to which I have referred could come into your house and see that painted slate, veined and shaded like a cutting from the rock, he would call it a lie, and your cleverness would be so much set down to your discredit.

Now, whilst I am not able to say much either for or against these purists in art, I have sometimes wondered if it could be possible for a man who would go into a rage about seeing a piece of common deal painted like oak to tell a lie. The swallowing powers, of man are painful mysteries to his Creator. I will tell you what a man can do: he can strain at a gnat and swallow a camel. Yet he will not believe in miracles. Who can believe anything with so roomy a throat? It would seem to swallow up the whole man that he should seem to be nothing but throat. Have you never met in life persons who would almost go into a fit if you were to suggest to them any falsehood in certain directions, who yet could turn right round in pious rage from that suggestion and tell falsehoods of another kind the clock round? so curious a creature and irregular and unmanageable is man.

In all ages the false has followed the true. I do not wonder: it is an excellent speculation. In all ages the false has brought the true into trouble. "Of your own selves shall men arise, speaking perverse things, to draw away disciples after them. They that are such," says the apostle, "serve not the Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly, and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple." The nearer the false approaches the true, the more dangerous is it. What do you think they are doing now? Making stones which they call simile diamonds. Take care. People are now making paste so like diamonds as to deceive the unwary. My wonder is that people who are so anxious along that line of life should exhibit anything but the slightest anxiety in matters of doctrine touching correct thinking and the like. Present them with a false diamond as a true one, and let them find out the mistake, and then you know the rest. But suggest to them a false idea, a crude and self-contradictory philosophy of the universe, any mad theory of creation you like, and they will call it ingenious, skilful what a young man once called to me "a clever doubt." Where will be their rage, where their sublime madness, where their fiery and honest indignation?

The fear is that we become technical purists and moral liars. Your life cannot be good if your teaching is bad. Doctrine lies at the basis of life. There may be those who refine upon doctrine and turn it into useless distinction and vexatious definition, but doctrine, teaching, correct idea, lies at the root and core of our life. You are what you believe. You may profess to believe a good many things which you do not turn into a lie, but in reality what you believe is the very substance and inspiration of your character. How needful, therefore, that we should be rooted and grounded in it, and saved from perversion and folly, and hold the truth of God with a grip not to be relaxed by the most importunate fingers that try to tear us from our attachment to divine verities.

How are we to know the false from the true? Jesus Christ tells us. "By their fruits ye shall know them." The purist I have been speaking about would be horrified with this kind of preaching; if it were done so by any living man, he would write a paragraph in the newspaper about it; he would say, "The preacher in such and such a church is the most remarkable character for mixed metaphor that probably ever lived. That we may not be apparently speaking to his disadvantage without reason, let us cite the following example." Then in small type would come, "Beware of false prophets which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns or figs of thistles?" He was talking about a wolf, and now he is talking about grapes and figs and thistles. The teaching of the great teacher, whoever he is, is full of ellipses. He thinks more rapidly than he can speak: words cannot keep pace with his intellectual velocity. This is pre-eminently the case with all the teaching of the New Testament. The lacunæ, or gaps, and breaks, are innumerable, and only the man who wants to find the truth can find it amid many of the statements which are of the figurative or metaphorical kind. If you really want to know what Christ means in this case, do not trouble yourselves with the rapidity with which he changes the metaphor; but, with an honest and sober heart, look at the case, when he says, "By their results shall ye know them." So then a false teacher may require a little time for self-revelation. The nearer he approaches the truth the longer time may he require fully to disclose his doctrine and his purpose. The hand may be the hand of Esau, the voice may be the voice of Jacob: it is difficult for the false hand to get a false voice, and for the false voice to get a false hand: nature is set against such conjunctions, and will not afford facilities for the completion of lies.

Jesus Christ submitted to his own test. His words are, "Many good works have I showed you from my Father; for which of these works do you stone me?" And, again, "If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not; but if I do, though ye believe me not, believe the works, that ye may know and believe that the Father is in me and I in him." Judge all preaching by its results, judge all doctrine by its effects. My young friend, let me speak soberly and with great breadth of persuasiveness and sympathy to you upon this subject. The doctrine to which you have been listening recently in various places seems to you to be brilliant you are enamoured, you are under a spell, you say the doctrine seems to refute all other doctrine, and to be bright with new hopes. You are now in the intellectual period. How does the doctrine come down into life? What does it make of its believer? is it a painted cloud to be gazed at and wondered about like an apocalypse in the air, or is it an inspiration that expresses itself in charity, love, patience, forbearance, sympathy, and that compels to honourableness of conduct? My first question about any doctrine is How does it come down-stairs out of its dreamer's intellect and behave itself in the kitchen? how does it put on its apron and tuck up its sleeves and go to life's daily work? how does it go into the chamber and hush itself into gentleness and quietness, and what does it say to the pained heart, and what to the ebbing life? By its fruits let it be known: What it can do in the plain, everyday circles of life shall be its proofs to me of its heavenly origin. It requires God to make himself of no reputation, and do earth's lowest, humblest work. I ask you not, therefore, how much your doctrine titillates your intellect, inflames and pleases your fancy; I ask you how it comes down to the counter and pays its bills? how it stands by a man when all hell seems to be against him in huge and terrible assault on his integrity and his peace? The rainbow is to me most beautiful, but I cannot live upon it.

Now we come to a remarkable passage, in which the tone of the great Preacher changes with some suddenness the twenty-first verse to the twenty-third inclusive. "Not every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." That is a new tone in the sermon Lord, Lord. Why, whoever thought of saying, "Lord, Lord," to the carpenter's son? Inflamed by the passion of his own rhetoric he has started up into lordship. We never thought of calling thee Lord, poor Peasant. It is a matter of consideration amongst some of us why certain men should be called "Mr." at all. Think of that, that we solid-headed Englishmen make a matter of enquiry as to whether certain persons should be called "Mr." And then a very acute subject, rising into a kind of social agony, is as to whether certain persons can properly be called "Esquire." These are the mighty problems that tear and vex our nineteenth century utterly now and then. Here is a man who began life in a manger, and whose parents absconded suddenly into Egypt and wandered about homelessly for some time, who says that at a certain time people will be calling him "Lord, Lord," and he will not know them. It is in these subtle touches that I find the true quality of my Teacher's character.

"Many will say to me in that day." What, and is he to be Judge as well as Lord? Is he to be the Arbitrator as well as the Teacher? What a forecast, what an assumption, how high the ground on which he stands. If it be not a rock, he will fall off, and we shall hear no more of him.

"But he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven." Is he not our Father which is in heaven? Yes, mediately, not immediately. Through a priestly intercession, not by right of filial obedience and uncorrupted and incorruptible love.

"Many will say unto me, Have we not prophesied in thy name?" There he feels the throbbing of his own almightiness: he feels already that his name is to be a charm in the world: thus early he forecasts the marvels that will be wrought in his name. Men will wear it as an amulet, speak of it as a charm, offer it as a certificate, wear it as a seal and an endorsement. This he said, not after ten centuries' experience, but at the very beginning of the beginning. How true it is let time testify.

"Then will I say unto them, Depart from me." What, then, does he make heaven, and does he make hell; and is everything to be determined by his will, and have we all to be subjected to his criticism and to undergo his judgment? All this is most fully involved in the statement we are now perusing.

Now I see what it meant when he went up into a mountain. He speaks as if he were on a mountain. I wondered why he withdrew to that height: he explains it in the conclusion of his sermon. Why the sermon itself is a mountain, in shape, in bulk, in dignity; beginning with the gentle slopes of the beatitudes, easy, vernal slopes, green with spring's own loveliness. he passes on to rugged places, modified Sinais, stony, rough, rugged places that would affright us but for the light of his smile which falls upon them and on he goes, higher and higher in his doctrine, he rises to high challenges and new proclamations, and now the sermon culminates in lordships and supremacies which overlook and dominate the whole earth. We saw him by the quiet river, we watched him driven into the bleak wilderness, we saw him walking by the seaside; now we behold him seated upon a mountain a culmination in very deed, an upgathering of all that went before, and a place whence he projected himself across the whole abyss of time. Henceforward Jesus takes the name of Lord; henceforward "these sayings of mine" are to be the root and core of the only durable philosophy, and henceforward men are wise or foolish according as they build or build not on Christ.

Now we see why he chose the mountain; no other pulpit would have been worthy of such a discourse, no scaffold of man's making could have borne that infinite weight, no platform of human erection could have supplied base enough for the projection of such teaching. Great husbandman, on the top of the mountain, thou dost scatter a handful of corn; the fruit thereof shall shake like Lebanon and the cities of the plain shall rejoice in its abundance.