These Laodicean people were unhappily in such a state that youcould not get at them. They were not so poor that they knew they were poor, and therefore when the poverty-stricken were addressed, they said, “These things are not for us: we are increased in goods.” They were blind, but they thought they saw; they were naked, and yet they prided themselves on their princely apparel, and hence it was hard to reach them. Had they even been outwardly worse, had they defiled their garments with overt transgression, then the Spirit might have pointed out the blot and convicted them there and then; but what was to be done when the mischief was hidden and internal?
I. First, let us think of the Church in Laodicea and listen to their saying; it may prevent us from reaching such a height of pride as to speak as they did.
1. The spirit of self-congratulation expressed itself in a manner strikingly unanimous. It was the general, unanimous feeling, from the minister down to the latest convert, that they were a most wonderful Church. They were heartily at one in having a high estimate of themselves, and this helped to keep them together, and stirred them to attempt great things.
2. This saying of theirs was exceedingly boastful. The present was all right, the past was eminently satisfactory, and they had reached a point of all but absolute perfection, for they needed nothing.
3. They were sincere in this glorying. When they said it they were not consciously boasting, for the text says, “And thou knowest not that thou art wretched, and miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked.” They did not know the truth. How readily do we believe a lie when it fosters in us a high opinion of ourselves.
4. But now see what was their actual state: they were altogether mistaken. These intelligent persons, these wealthy persons, these instructed persons did not know themselves, and that is the grossest kind of ignorance. You remember the Tay Bridge disaster. There is no doubt whatever that the bridge was not fitted for its position, its ordinary strain was all it could bear; but nobody thought so. Undoubtedly the engineers reckoned it would stand any test to which it might be put, and therefore there was no attention given to it to make it any stronger and to provide against sudden disaster; and consequently when a specially fierce hurricane was out one night it swept it all away. That is just the picture of many a Church and many a man, because he is thought to be so pious, and the Church is thought to be so correct and vigorous, therefore no attempt is made for improvement, no special prayer, no cries toheaven.
II. Our Lord’s blessed counsel.
1. Note how He begins: “I counsel thee to buy.” Is not that singular advice? Just now He said that they were “wretched” and “poor.” How can they buy? Surely it suggests to us at once those blessed free grace terms which are only to be met with in the market of Divine love: “Yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”
2. But next, what does He say? “I counsel thee to buy of Me.” Ah, they had been dealing with one another: they had been bartering amongst themselves. One brother had brought this talent, another that, and they had grown rich, as they thought, by a mutual commerce. “Now,” says Christ, “compare yourselves with yourselves no longer: give up seeking of man, and buy of Me.” It is the very foundation of grace--to be willing to buy of Christ.
3. Now see the goods which He describes. “I counsel thee to buy of Me”--what? Everything. It is true that only three wants of these people are here mentioned, but they are inclusive of all needs.
4. The counsel of the Lord is not only that we buy of Him everything, but that we buy the best of everything of Him. Gold is the most precious metal, but He would have them buy the best of it, “gold tried in the fire”; gold that will endure all further tests, having survived that of fire. Remember the raiment too, for that is of the best; our Lord calls it “white raiment.” That is a pure colour, a holy colour, a royal colour. We put on the Lord Jesus as our joy, our glory, our righteousness. And as to the eyesalve, it is the best possible one, for Jesus says, “Anoint thine eyes with eyesalve that thou mayest see.”
5. All this isthe counsel of Christ, and the counsel of Christ to a people that were proud and self-conceited. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The self ignorance of the Laodiceans
The secret of lukewarmness is disclosed in these words, “Thou sayest, I am rich, and increased with goods, and have need of nothing.” Shall we find fault with the words in themselves? Might they not be taken as an expression of gratitude? Might they not mean, “The lines are fallen to me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage”? Now I would not deny that this may have been meant by the Laodiceans as the language of very exalted piety. Possibly, too, their neighbours might admit the claim, and regard them with admiration. But when we look closely into the words, two unpleasant things appear. First, here is no recognition of the Lord and His goodness; no lowly and grateful ascribing of all to His undeserved lovingkindness and bounty. If the Laodiceans had felt themselves debtors, they would at least have said, “By the grace of God I am what I am”--“Not unto us, O Lord, not unto us, but unto Thy name be the glory.” This second thing, too, becomes apparent, in examining the words, that they are a boast; a glorying in self, and not in the Lord; a quiet claim of superiority over other Churches; like the words of the Pharisee, “God, I thank Thee that I am not as other men are.” Their wretched and pitiable condition is presented to themselves in three aspects: as poverty, blindness, and nakedness. What a combination of ills! If you find a fellow-man in this plight, how you commiserate him. Each evil more than doubles the other. And then add inevitable nakedness--with its shamefulness and discomforts--and how woeful the condition! Well, here is a Church of Christ in that pitiable condition. There is material wealth, growing numbers, name and repute in society, many showy and coveted virtues that attract attention and admiration. But look for the faith, the love, the joy, the peace, thehope, the meekness, the piety, the holy zeal, the beneficence, the martyr-spirit, the self-forgetfulness and self-denial, in which the true wealth of a Church consists, and she has nothing. Inquire how much of heaven there is within her borders--how much of the power and joy of the Holy Ghost-and you discover that in the real, true sense she is bankrupt. This Church is “blind” as well as poor--blind in the eye that sees God. They said, “We see,” and believed it. But enterthe region of spiritual truths and realities--bring up the doctrines of the gospel and the hidden wisdom, comparing spiritual things with spiritual--they are foolishness to the Laodiceans, neither can they know them, because they are spiritually discerned. If spiritual poverty in a Christian Church is sinful, so also is blindness. It is not misfortune, but fault. It need not be. The Saviour was anointed with the Holy Spirit that He might give sight to the blind, and He has lost none of His skill. One thing more characterises this Laodicean Church: instead of the rich and glorious adorning of thy fancy, “thou art naked.” Grace clothes the happy soul with the garment of salvation, and covers it with the robe of righteousness, so that we appear with acceptance in the presence of the majesty of heaven and earth; but Laodicea in its pride is naked as a beggar. And saddest of all, “thou knowest it not”: it is hidden from thine eyes. Could aught be more deplorable? (J. Culross, D. D.)
The Church of the Laodiceans
I. The opinion which the Laodiceans held of themselves. “Thou sayest.” It is not likely that the words which follow were spoken. The saying was in a cherished thought--not in a thought that comes in, if I may so speak, at one door of the spirit and passes out at another, but a thought that a man makes at home in his mind. He who speaks to the Laodiceans, hears this speaking; though the speaking be only thinking, He hears it; though only in feeling, He hears it. Oh, what a different thing life would be, if lived out under the eye of God, from what it now is as lived out under the eye of men! But, mark, every Church presents itself in a particular form to Jesus Christ. Every Church by its worship and communion and fellowship and work is, according to this text, saying something perpetually into the very ear of God. Now these people said, “I am rich”--rich not in material wealth, though that most likely was true. And they said, “I am increased with goods”: that is, I am become wealthy. There is a force in the word that gives the idea of their having gained this spiritual treasure by their own exertions, so that it was to their credit to have been thus spiritually rich. “And have need of nothing”; that is, they were perfectly satisfied. You see there is a sort of climax here: rich--become rich--having need of nothing. First the fact of wealth is stated, then the means by which it was obtained is indicated, and then the result. But now, what does all this mean in plain language? Christ intends to say to these people, that they were self-conceited and self-sufficient. The men who are great in their own eyes are men who have very little to do with God, and very little to do with the works of God; and the Christians and the Churches that are great in their own eyes are Christians and Churches that cannot be much in communion with Christ.
II. Their real condition, as described by one who knew it well. “And knowest not that thou art wretched”--literally, “that thou art the wretched on”--the wretched one out of these Asiatic Churches--the wretched one in all the Churches of Christ. The Laodicean Church thought itself to be the great one; and, to correct them, Christ is represented as saying, “and knowest not that thou art the wretched one.” A slave to vanity and to delusion, this Church was verily the wretched and the pitiable one, a true object for compassion.
III. The counsel. It is just the same with a man who professes to cultivate his mind, to increase his knowledge, and to add to his information--so soon as he begins to rest in what he has gained, and to call it wealth, and to feel rich in it, so soon he arrests his progress in getting to himself the treasures of information and of knowledge. This counsel, I say again, is offered to those who assume and assert that they do not need it. But what is here meant by the word “buy”?--“I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire.” The word “buy” here does not mean to give an equivalent, but to part with this self-sufficiency, and to part with it for something valuable. We often see God bring a conceited man down to no faith at all in order to lift him up to theposition of a true believer. What Christ suggests to these people is this, that they shall part with their self-conceit and with their self-sufficiency. By this “gold tried in the fire, that thou mayest be rich,” we may understand sterling godliness as opposed to “the form of godliness without the power.” Of what use is a sham Christian? Of what benefit is an unreal Church? Things are precious only as they be true and thorough and entire. “And white raiment that thou mayest be clothed,” etc. Put into plain language, this simply means, getwhat is really valuable; put on what is really fair and true; and try to see things by a proper and spiritual discernment to be derived from above just aa they really are. (S. Martin.)
Shallowness in religion
Setting aside for a little the question what this lukewarmness or shallowness is, in the higher spiritual life of the soul, we are all of us perfectly well acquainted with those whose characters it marks in common life--shallow, surface, outside men. We see it in one man in the life of the affections. He is full of a ready, courteous, skin-deep kindliness of demeanour, which reaches down to no self-sacrifice, which implies no wearing anxiety for others, which revealsno deep, disturbing love, perhaps, for any one person upon the earth, nay, which perhaps is thoroughly compatible with absolute cruelty of heart. This character is one of utter shallowness; it is marked by an essential poverty in the life of the affections. They are called up by the lightest surface-touch, because to them the surface is all. They are mere land-springs of kindness, easy to break out after a summer shower, easy to dry up after a twelve hours’ drought. It is demonstration without depth, the brook of shallow love, babbling of its shallowness as it flows. Here is one of these shallow characters: now look at it from another point, and see it in the life of science. See the poor sciolist, with his ready smattering of all learning, veiling even from himself his universal ignorance. For what worth knowing does the man know? His readiness to acquire and his readiness to produce are of the very essence of his disease. Again, you may see the self-same character in the public man. He is the easy repeater of the watchwords of a party, the retailer of other men’s aphorisms, the uncomprehending inheritor of a traditional policy. There is not in this man, perhaps, one atom of real knowledge, one acting of any deep principle which could govern, could strengthen, or could ennoble a public life. Here, then, in the ordinary life of this world--having put for the time the higher spiritual world aside--here is this familiar phase of shallowness. And now, how is it to be cured? How are we ourselves to get free from it? We must trace the cause of the evil. The master root of this vice is the selfishness of our fallen nature, working under the peculiar circumstances which belong to ease, to abundance, and to a refined civilisation. Men shaken daily together in the vast sack of common respectabilities round off from one another the sharp corners of their individuality, and thus the curse of shallowness is imparted, like some contagious disorder, from one to another; and all combine to banish, as the source of continual trouble, from their life of painted complacency, deeper and more real qualities. Here is the working of the evil and its cause; and now where is the cure to come from? Wealth cannot buy it; civilisation cannot give it; intellectual power cannot command it. Where then is the cure against all this degradation of humanity? In the Church of Christ, and in it alone, is stored the sufficient remedy. The Lord imparts Himself to the soul that will receive Him. This is the new life of the regenerate. This is the mystery of the new birth in its perfection, in the soul that follows after Christ. And so the shallownesses of his nature are swept away by the mighty burst; the rock is struck and the streams flow, and those whom the Lord has healed, witness of that healing to others. The emptiness of fallen man is filled full by the awful in-dwelling of the Incarnate God. “I counsel thee to buy of Me.” And what is needed to buy of Him? First, you must believe in the reality of the renewed life. How many fail here! They live in the perpetual dream that for the present they must be shallow, instead of believing in the mighty enfranchisement which the Eternal Son has wrought out for them. Oh, claim it for thyself, and claim it here. Next, join in desire, join in prayer, join in perpetual aspiration, your present life to the life of Christ. This is the great sacramental mystery of our new being. By the power of the Holy Ghost, Christ will work daily within you, if you will seek His working. Only thirdly, seek all this not as a mere apprehension of the understanding, for that will do no good, but seek it as part of a renewed life. Seek it in a life of greater brightness and greater obedience in service. (Bp. S. Wilberforce.)
The great and dangerous mistake of some professors
All flattery is dangerous; self-flattery is more dangerous; but self-flattery in the business of salvation, is the most dangerous of all.
I. That there are multitudes of such self-deceivers among professors.
II. The grounds and causes of this self-deceit among professors.
1. The natural deceitfulness of the heart, than which nothing is more treacherous and false (Jer_17:9).
2. Satan is a chief conspirator in this treacherous design.
3. The common works found in unregenerate souls deceive many, who cannot distinguish them from the special works of the Spirit in God’s elect (Heb_6:4).
4. To add no more, this strengthens self-deceit exceedingly in many, viz., their observations of and comparing themselves with others. Use 1 shall be for caution to professors. Before I tell you what use you should make of it, I must tell you what use you may not make of it.
(1) Do not make this use of it--to conclude from what hath been said, that all professors are but a pack of hypocrites.
(2) Do not make this use of it--that assurance must needs be impossible, because so many professors are found to be self-deceivers.
(3) Do not make this use of it--to conceal or hide the truths or graces of God, or refuse to profess or confess them before men, because many professors deceive themselves and others also by a vain profession. Use
2. Surely you cannot improve this point to a better purpose than from it to take warning, and look to yourselves, that you be not of that number who deceive themselves in their profession. (John Flavel.)
The unconverted sinner’s estimate of himself
I. The unconverted sinner’s estimate of his own condition.
1. “I am rich.” The word “rich” is here used in its most extended meaning, as descriptive of the possession of that which is of great value. “I am rich.” I possess much; and what I possess is well worth having. If the unconverted sinner has money, he is proud of it. He looks upon it as a great portion. But many of the unconverted have no money to be proud of. That circumstance, however, does not prevent them from finding out that they are rich. Perhaps they have respectable family connections, or they have a goodly personal appearance, or they possess superior talents. In any such case, the mind fastens with special complacency upon the circumstance, and feels all the satisfaction attendant upon the consciousness of being rich.
2. “And increased with goods.” These words embody an additional conceit of the unconverted man. He is rich, and his wealth is not in the course of decay; on the contrary, it is rising in its amount, it is accumulating fast. If he is a young man, he, peradventure, rejoices in the rapid growth and extensive range of his literary and scientific and professional acquirements, and his heart bounds within him as the strong hope arises of approaching distinction and fame. See, again, that man who has left behind him the gay period of youth, and has arrived at the years of maturity and wisdom. He is no longer what he once was. The fire of passion is moderated, and the greaser immoralities of early life are abandoned. From being a person of no character, he is become a person of good character. He is a prudent, a well-behaved, an honourable citizen.
3. “And have need of nothing.” In these words we are presented with the unconverted man’s climax. The prosperity of his state has arrived at the superlative degree.
`II. The unconverted sinner’s real state.
1. “He is wretched.” Consider the original stateof mankind. Think of its enjoyments, its privileges, its honours, its prospects. What a happy condition! and how wretched the condition which has succeeded! They might be free, but instead of that they are slaves to Satan, to the world, to their own lusts. They might be noble princes; but, alas! they are disgraced outcasts from the Divine favour. They might be kings and priests unto God; but they are doomed criminals, the branded victims of coming vengeance. Surely they are in a wretched condition; they have the Almighty Potentate of heaven and earth for their foe.
2. “Miserable.” It is intimated here, that when the mind comes to the consideration of the state of the unconverted, the appropriate emotion is pity. The thraldom they are held in calls for pity; the forfeiture they have incurred, the doom they have provoked, the self-deception they are practising, the false security they areindulging, the infatuation they are exemplifying, demand our pity.
3. “Poor.” If the tattered garment around the body be recognised as the symbol of poverty surely we have the symbol of a deeper poverty when the soul is enveloped in the unclean ragsof self-righteousness!
4. “Blind.” Sinai overhangs him, but he heeds not the frowning mountain. One fairer than the sons of men, and chief among ten thousand, appears to him; but he evinces no sense of His attractions. The deformities of sin do not hinder him from embracing it. Though it be the noon-day of the Gospel, he gropes as one in darkness. The road which he travels is marked for his warning, as the way to everlasting misery and ruin, but he slackens not his pace. Can it be, then, that he sees? Would beauty have no power to draw a man, deformity none to repel him, or dangers to dismay him, unless he were blind?
5. “Naked.” This completes the picture of an unconverted state. The unconverted are naked in a two-fold respect--in that they want the garment of justification, and likewise the garment of sanctification.
III. Some inferences descriptive of the unconverted man’s error.
1. It is a great error. It is just as great an error as possibly can be. It is not, for example, the error of the man who saysit is an hour before noon, or an hour after noon, when it is actually just noon; but it is the error of him who declares it is midnight while he stands under the blaze of the meridian sun.
2. It is a surprising error. It is surprising from its very grossness. Man is so prone to err that the occurrence of small mistakes excites no astonishment; on the contrary, we look for it. But it is startling to find men calling bitter sweet, emptiness abundance, disgrace honour, and misery comfort and happiness. The error in question is the more extraordinary, when it is considered that there are such ample means of getting at the truth.
3. It is a pernicious error. Death is the consequence of adhering to this error--death in its most appalling form--the eternal ruin of body and soul.
4. It is an error which, by human means, is incorrigible. We say not that its correction is beyond the power of God. (A. Gray.)
Human need
Man is by nature the neediest of all beings. Nor is it, as some might maintain, his disgrace and the signal of his inferiority that he is thus needy, but rather the mark of his native glory and pre-eminence. For it points to the number and greatness of his faculties. The lower the creature, the less his need; for the more feeble his sensibilities, narrow his powers, and torpid his desires. But, from the most sagacious and strongest of the animal tribes, how vast the difference, in capacity of intellect and feeling, to man! And no less vast the difference of need. He draws from the earth, from the water, and from the air, to satisfy his appetites and to satiate his curiosity; he ransacks every kingdom of nature for his comfort and aggrandisement, and is not content. Is there, then, no satisfaction for a man? God has not made His noblest creature for a wretched failure and a miserable want. Let him bring into light all his abilities and desires--they are not too many or too strong; those of the higher nature as well as the lower; those that tend up to God Himself and heaven and immortality, as well as those that tend downwards and abroad to earthly things. Let him unfold them without fear. The vast supplies from the foreseeing Creator, in the treasury of His truth, are ready. Let him appropriate them to his need. Man is a being that does not need daily bread and clothing and shelter alone; but he needs truth, needs duty, needs love, needs God. The mistake is in trying to gratify fully his nature with such outward things, neglecting the spiritual. It is just this foolhardy and hazardous assurance of satisfaction in outward prosperity, that I apprehend, the author of our text means to expose. Man--whosoever thou art, content with sensual good and clinging to outward treasure--that is not the true gold with which thou fillest thy coffers. That is not the durable raiment with which thou art clad. There are riches of goodness for the heart. To sustain this exhortation, it is not necessary to speak in the exclusive ardour of one idea, but the sober proportion that takes in man’s whole estate. He needs, by various education, to get possession of all his members and faculties. He needs to fabricate, needs to manufacture, needs to discover and invent, needs to trade, needs to accumulate; so that every industrial faculty may be brought out, every hand employed, every talent put in motion--nay, so that the community itself may not fail, but be civilised. In setting before you a moral and spiritual need,I certainly do not forget these personal, social, and political necessities, nor would shove them by an inch from their place; but, admitting the latter, maintain the supreme importance, the predominating position of the former. The dull caterpillar may be content with lying upon the ground, hardly appearing animated, like a lump or brown leaf, when the wings are actually folded up within, to bear it into the sunshine and among all the blossoms of the landscape. So a man may be content with a low, earth-bound life, a state of half-manhood, because unconscious of the heaven-bestowed capacities by which he might live above the world. But the mere force of nature will not unfold the man as it does the insect. He may discourage and keep down these wings of the soul. He may, by sin and his rebellious will, wound and mutilate them as they instinctively strive to expand. Yet he cannot remain for ever unconscious of their existence. He cannot exercise them in the mean ways of the world in which he treads. Lacking their true element and use, they will pine and wither with dissatisfaction and remorse. We need the principle of devotion to God and others’ good. We need the practice of the two great commandments of love to God and man. We need to be humble, need to be patient, need to be meek, to the Father above and our brethren below. We need these dispositions, not only as paying our debt to them, though they are our debt, but as the indispensable requisites of our own well-being. (C. A. Bartol.)
Moral wealth
I. Moral wealth is most foreign to theself-righteous. In morals, the richer a man thinks himself to be, the poorer he is. Pharisaic souls are in utter destitution.
II. Moral wealth is the great want of humanity. Men, whatever else they possess, are abject without it.
1. It is the only wealth that is intrinsically valuable.
2. The only wealth that enriches the man.
3. The only wealth that procures an honourable status in being.
4. The only wealth that secures a true and lasting interest in the universe.
III. Moral wealth is to be obtained only in connection with Christ. Jesus has “the gold,” “the white garment,” “the eyesalve,” the “unsearchable riches.”
IV. Moral wealth must be obtained by purchase. “Buy of Me.” You must give up something for it--ease, self-righteousness, prejudices, worldly gain and pleasures. You must sell that you have. (Homilist.)
The spiritually luxurious and proud
What is the condition of the individual Christian (so called) who is represented in the Laodicean Church? Is not this a description of one who is spiritually luxurious and proud? Do not confound the spiritually luxurious with the temporally luxurious. One spiritually luxurious Christian may be a man poor in this world’s goods. He may be the farthest removed from the world’s luxury. He may wear hair-cloth and walk with bare feet. His outward condition has nothing to do with his spiritual state. His supposed riches, his increase of goods, his need of nothing--all refer to his spiritual condition. He thinks he is full of the Divine life. He is one of the Lord’s favourites. He serenely looks down upon mankind from the high level of a spiritual nobility. He takes his delicious ease amid his good thoughts of himself, and has a lofty scorn for the common herd of Christians. He may be an observer of forms. He may go to church. He may bow his head reverently. He may even enter a brotherhood and take the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience; or, on the other hand, he may be a neglecter of all public worship--above all the means of grace. They are good enough for the crowd, but he has no need of them. In either ease he considers himself a model Christian, and never thinks of applying to himself any of the Divine rebukes for shortcomings and inconsistency. You have often seen such. They are very varied in their earthly conditions, and also in their mode of exhibiting their conceit, but they all have the same satisfaction with themselves.
1. They are spiritually poverty-stricken. The spiritual wealth consisting of appreciation of the Divine promises, close communion with God, and the glorious visions of hope and faith, is altogether lacking. The wealth of sympathy and helpfulness, the wealth of energy for Christ and His salvation, has no representation in them.
2. They are spiritually naked. The grateful sense of indebtedness to a gracious Saviour, melting the soul and humbling it before Him, has never been felt.
3. They are spiritually blind. That is why they do not detect their nakedness. That is why they do not know their coin is all spurious and their wealth but poverty. (H. Crosby.)
What does God think of me
A young lady of thoughtful turn of mind once said to the late Dr. Jowett, Master of Balliol, “Doctor, what do you think of God?” For a while the doctor was silent, and then, with great solemnity and pathos, he replied, “My dear, it is not what I think of God, but what does God think of me.”
What we are before God
The Laodiceans said, “We are rich and have need of nothing,” but God said, “Thou art poor and wretched and miserable.” In the old tombs of our cathedrals there were frequently two figures on the monuments, one of the deceased king, or knight, or bishop, resting above in his full robes of state as he wore them abroad in life, and another beneath of a thin, emaciated skeleton, which recalled to the eyes of the beholder the realities of the grave below. It is well to have in thought this double imago of ourselves, what we are before the world, and what we are before God. (Free Methodist.)
Poor and needy
Dr. T.L. Cuyler tells us that when the richest American of his day was in his last fatal sickness, a Christian friend proposed to sing to him; and the hymn henamed was, “Come, ye sinners, poor and needy.” “Yes, yes,” replied the dying millionaire, “sing that to me; I feel poor and needy.” Yet at that moment the stock markets of the globe were watching and waiting for the demise of the man who could shake them with a nod of his head.
I counsel thee to buy of Me.--
Christ giving counsel
Looked at broadly, these words intimate that the Lord has not given them up, however desperate their condition. To the hearing ear they sound like this, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in Me is thine help.” It will be found that the grace of Christ meets the Laodiceans at every point. Knowing their poverty, the Lord offers to provide them with true and durable riches--gold bright from the fire. The fire-purged gold represents those spiritual possessions in which the true wealth of a Church consists. What shall we count in under this head? Light is thrown on the question by what we are told (2Co_8:1-5) concerning the Churches of Macedonia. They were marked by “deep poverty,” but that poverty was conjoined with “abundance of joy”--the joy of the Holy Ghost, which had never failed them since they embraced the gospel; that joy of theirs was “gold.” Again, even in a great trial of affliction, the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality; that liberality of theirs was “gold.” Again, there was the outflow of love to their suffering brethren in Christ at a distance; they were willing to contribute to their help, even beyond their power: that love was “gold.” A Church that is rich in these things is rich indeed. Besides being poor, the Laodiceans were naked. So He invites them to make application to Him, and promises to give “white raiment,” etc. This represents and symbolises the saintliness of life in which saintliness of heart expresses itself. As the dress clothes the body, and answers to its form and size, so a saintly life is the garb, as it were, and expression of a holy heart. The “well-doing” in which we are not to be “weary” is not the mere doing of what is “good,” but of what is “beautiful”; and beauty of living is the outward of heartbeauty, as a smile is the outward of heart-cheer. Besides being poor and naked, they were blind; answering to the prophet’s description of “the blind people who have eyes,” or like those men who appealed to Jesus with the question, “Are we blind also?” Now we must settle it in our hearts that we can find what we need only in Christ, and nowhere else. “Buy,” He says, “of Me.” We must not merely look away from man, we must also look away from ourselves to Him. There is a peculiar and very delightful emotion produced in the mind by fine scenery; almost every one, I suppose, knows what it is. You sit in a room which commands one of the finest views in the country. Your face, however, as it happens, is turned away from the window. You shut your eyes and strive to call up the peculiar emotion to which I have referred. Of course you fail. All the striving in the world would be in vain. What, then? Rise from your chair, open your eyes, step to the window, gaze forth upon the scene outspread before you, and let it produce its own effect upon your mind. In like manner, in religion, we shall not succeed in getting the right feeling by our trying and striving, we must look out of ourselves to Christ. (J. Culross, D. D.)
Jesus, the heavenly counsellor
Uncertainty and doubt will make themselves felt in the history of all who have the journey of life to accomplish. We cannot wonder, then, that in the present day so many guides should present themselves, all professedly eager to help us in our great uncertainties.
I. The counsel Jesus gives.
1. Jesus counsels us what we are to believe. The faculty of belief is as certainly possessed by man as is the faculty of vision; the one is a physical and the other a mental power, but both are possessed byus, and both are to be exercised. Jesus says, “I counsel thee what to believe.” To believe in God, in His perfections, His power, wisdom, justice, grace, mercy, truth, love. In His providence and care over you, to believe in such a way as that we shall revere, obey, and love God. To believe in Jesus--“Ye believe in God, believe also in Me”--that I am what the prophets said I should be, the true Messiah. Believe in the fulness of My love, the sufficiency of My atoning work, My ability and willingness to pardon and cleanse, and in the absolute and unchanging truthfulness of all My words. Believe in the Holy Ghost; in His convincing, converting, renewing, sustaining, and sanctifying energy. Believe in the duties pertaining to personal life and godliness as I have revealed them.
2. I have met with not a few young folks who have been sadly perplexed with the question as to what they shall be. One has solved it by saying, “I shall be a great merchant; my ships shall sail on many seas, and my servants and warehouses shall be exceedingly numerous.” Another has said, “Science shall be my study.” A third has said, “I will be a physician, and I will try to relieve the poor of their maladies.” To all such the Heavenly Counsellor comes, and He does not say to such, “How mistaken you all are, you must all change your decisions.” Oh no, but He counsels the farmer as he sows to sow goodness, that when the reaping time comes he may reap the same. To the philosopher He counsels the study of the wisdom which is from on high, and which is full of good works; and to the merchant He says, “Let goodness be the article in which you shall always trade; let it store your warehouses, fill the holds of your ships, and govern all your transactions.” To all the Heavenly Counsellor says, “Be good; have a good heart, a good conscience, a good intention, a good life.”
3. This Heavenly Counsellor tells us also what we are to do. Activity, under His advice, is always to characterise us. The Lord Jesus knows as no one else the great evils of idleness, and how such evils must afflict and torment all who are slothful; and so against this sin He plainly counsels us. In the cultivation of inward holiness and in the development of righteous principles, in the hope of winning souls for heaven and God, work.
II. Christ’s counsels are all and always golden. So that not any mixture can be detected; they have all passed through, and been stamped in, the minting house of heaven. But how shall we know that these counsels are all golden?
1. In the first place, because of their genuineness. It matters not the test through which we put them, or the analysis they are subjected to; not all the testing in the world can either detect the least impurity or make them more genuine than they are. Who, I should like to know, seeks the good of every man, woman, boy, and girl, as Jesus does? And whose counsel when adopted has resulted in such untold good to millions of our fellow creatures as His? Yes, look at it how, when, and where you may, ring it as you please, weigh it, measure it, or bring any other test you please to bear upon the counsel offered by Jesus, and its genuineness will be made the more evident.
2. Because of the value of His counsels. All genuine things are not so valuable as gold; a violet is a genuine violet, but we don’t part with gold for violets. The paper on which I am writing is genuine paper, but it is not of the value of gold. The counsel Jesus gives is not only as valuable, but more so than gold. Do you ask what the advice Jesus gives will procure? It will procure for us the favour of God, the approval of angels, and the esteem of all good men. It will procure for us peace within and purity without, enable us to live soberly, righteously, and godly here, and then to sit down in the kingdom of God above and to go no more out.
3. Like gold, they must be searched for. The name of the mine is “the Bible,” theimplements with which we are to work are prayer, patience, and faith. By knee work and ceaseless industry they will be amply recompensed.
4. Because, like gold, they are to be used. Some people who keep a shop hang up His counsels in their parlours and drawing-rooms; it would be better if they would use them in their business. Some look at them when they put on their Sunday clothes, and then say adieu to them when Sabbath attire is laid away. Better if they would walk and move and live in the same all the week through. Then, like gold, if we use Christ’s counsels aright, they will increase more and more.
III. No one is entitled to expect this golden counsel for nothing. Men do not part with gold on such terms, nor does Jesus part with His counsels thus, and so He says, “I counsel thee to buy.”
1. We are to obtain this counsel in the first place by giving up all our sins. What an exchange I It is dross of the worst for gold of the very best kind. If a man were to come and offer gold and crowns, titles and lands, for old rags and bones, I feel sure there would not be many left in all the houses put together; and yet, whilst Jesus offers the gold of heaven if we will only forsake our evil ways and come to Him, how few are really eager to make the exchange.
2. Then in a sense we purchase the gold of heaven by using aright the quantity already given. It is by use the two talents become five, and the five talents ten. If we walk in the light already given, however faint and feeble it may be, it will conduct us to greater clearness and to more perfect vision. (J. Goodacre.)
Christ’s counsel to a lukewarm Church
He does not willingly threaten, and He never scolds; but He rather speaks to men’s hearts, and their reason, and comes to them as a friend, than addresses Himself to their fears.
I. Now, I observe that the first need of the lukewarm Church Is to open its eyes to see facts. Observe that the text falls into two distinct parts, and that the counsel to buy does not extend--though it is ordinarily read as if it did--to the last item in our Lord’s advice. These Laodiceans are bid to “buy of” Him “gold” and “raiment,” but they are bid to use the “eyesalve” that they “may see.” No doubt, whatever is meant by that “eyesalve” comes from Him, as does everything else. But my point is that these people are supposed already to possess it, and that they are bid to employ it. No doubt the exhortation, “anoint thine eyes with eyesalve that thou mayest see,” may be so extended as to refer to the general condition of spiritual blindness which attaches to humanity, apart from the illuminating and sight-giving work of Jesus Christ. That true Light, which lighteneth every man that cometh into the world, has a three-fold office as the result of all the parts of which there comes to our darkened eyes the vision of the things that are. He reveals the objects to see; He gives the light by which we see them; and He gives us eyes to see with. “Behold Me as I am, and the things that I reveal to you as they are; and then you will see yourselves as you are.” So, then, there comes out of this exhortation this thought, that a symptom constantly accompanying the lukewarm condition is absolute unconsciousness of it. In all regions the worse a man is the less he knows it. It is the good people that know themselves to be bad; the bad ones, when they think about themselves, conceit themselves to be good. The higher a man climbs in any science, or in the practice of any virtue, the more clearly he sees the unscaled peaks above him. The frost-bitten limb is quite comfortable. Another thought suggested by this part of the counsel is that the blind man must himself rub in the eyesalve. Nobody else can do it for him. True! It comes like every other good thing, from the Christ in the heavens; and, as I have already said, if we will attach specific meanings to every part of a metaphor, that “eyesalve” may be the influence of the Divine Spirit who convicts men of sin. But whatever it is you have to apply it to your own eyes. Our forefathers made too much of self-examination as a Christian duty, and pursued it often for mistaken purposes. But this generation makes far toolight of it. Apply the eyesalve; it will be keen, it will bite; welcome the smart, and be sure that anything is good for you which takes away the veil that self-complacency casts over your true condition, and lets the light of God into the cellars and dark places of your souls.
II. The second need of the lukewarm Church is the true wealth which Christ gives. “I counsel thee to buy of Me gold tried in the fire.” Now, there may be many different ways of putting the thought that is conveyed here, but I think the deepest truth of human nature is that the only wealth for a man is the possession of God. That wealth alone makes us paupers truly rich. For there is nothing else that satisfies a man’s craving, and supplies a man’s needs. That wealth has immunity from all accidents. No possession is truly mine of which any outward contingency or circumstance can deprive me. But this wealth, the wealth of a heart enriched with the possession of God, whom it knows, loves, trusts, and obeys, this wealth is incorporated with a man’s very being, and enters into the substance of his nature; and so nothing can deprive him of it. The only possession which we can take with us when our nerveless hands drop all other good, and our hearts are untwined from all other loves, is this durable riches.
III. The third need of a lukewarm Church is the raiment--that Christ gives. The wealth which He bids us buy of Him belongs mostly to our inward life; the raiment which He proffers us to wear, as is natural to the figure, applies mainly to our outward lives, and signifies the dress of our spirits as these are presented to the world. I need not remind you of how frequently this metaphor isemployed throughout the Scripture. There is nothing in the world valuer than effort after righteousness which is not based on faith. “Buy of Me raiment,” and then, listen to the voice which says, “Put off the old man with his deeds, and put on the new man of God created in righteousness and holiness of truth.”
IV. Lastly, all supply of these needs is to be bought. “Buy of Me.” There is nothing in that counsel contradictory to the great truth, that “the gift of God is eternal life.” (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
Gold tried in the fire.--
Tried gold
I. A precious commodity.
1. Gold represents the blessed Saviour, for He is the most excellent of beings.
2. Gold represents the gospel, for it is the most excellent of systems.
3. Gold represents the Christian graces, for they are the most permanent of treasures. Faith, hope, and love have a power to bless beyond this world’s wealth.
II. This precious commodity tried. Even philosophy itself has confessed that the gold of the gospel alone will sustain in the final conflict.
III. This tried and precious commodity is offered for acceptance It is strange but true that men reject salvation because it is freely offered. Pride resents the humbling conditions. Self-will tramples beneath its feet offered mercy.
IV. The glorious consequence of accepting. Soul riches are the true abiding wealth. (W. Burrows, B. A.)
Aggravated poverty of soul
If a man’s gold prove counterfeit, his jewels painted glass, his silver lead or dross, he will not only be found poor when he comes to be tried, and want the benefit of riches, but will also have a fearful aggravation of his poverty, by his disappointment and surprisal. If a man’s faith, which should be more precious than gold, be found rotten and corrupt, if his light be darkness; how vile is that faith, how great is that darkness! (J. Owen, D. D.)
