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‘Repent ye: for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
Mat_3:2
II. The incentive to repentance.—There is a feature in this teaching which deserves the closest observation. Repentance is generally made the child of fear; and persons are urged to repent on this ground,—that if they do not, some great evil will fall upon them. But here is the opposite. The motive by which both John and Christ pressed people to repent is, that something very good and very happy is coming. But it is this,—When Christ sets up His throne in any one man’s heart, and becomes the one leading, ruling idea of that man’s mind,—that is ‘the kingdom of heaven’ in the soul. There are other meanings, but whether you take the expression in this way or another, it equally signifies something very good and very happy—so good and so happy, that there is nothing in comparison with it worth the name. In very fact, it is the only happiness; for this alone is peace, and rest, and love that satisfies, and an abiding joy. And this is His great argument for repentance,—Everything is going to be so pleasant!—there is such a bright, glad time coming!—therefore make haste, get rid of your sins, turn and be converted!
III. Repentance defined.—Let me say a word as to what God means when He says ‘Repent.’
(a) What it is not.—Repentance is not remorse, though a sanctified remorse may become repentance. It is not sorrow for sin, though sorrow is one of its elements; it is not conviction, though it cannot be without it; it is not change of habits, though it leads to it.
(b) What it is.—It is change of mind—that is a literal translation of the word. It is a change of mind. It differs from conversion only in this—conversion is a change of action, repentance is a change of feeling. Therefore it is greater than conversion, in the same degree as a change in the spring is greater than a change in the stream. I may paraphrase it—‘Humble yourself, give up your old ways, and give your heart to God.’ That is repentance.
(c) An universal necessity.—It is not a thing which has to take place once only in a man’s life. We all need to ‘repent and to be converted’ again and again. St. Peter needed it three years after he had been a disciple. And you need it. Whose conscience does not bear witness to it? Who has not, whatever may have been his grace—who has not fallen very low?
The Rev. James Vaughan.
Illustrations(1) ‘Had I to do with the most abandoned man or the most profligate woman on the face of the earth, I would say, “God loves you dearly—the Spirit of God, which is striving with you, shows that God loves you; there is a free pardon waiting for you—do not be afraid, do not be afraid to take it; you are to be a happy, an honoured, a useful Christian—more happy, more honoured, more useful because of your very sins; there are good things coming—a life of peace and holiness and service, and an eternity with God; even now I see the dawn breaking for you upon the horizon. God wants you, God will have you, God will bless you.” “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand.” ’
(2) ‘Savonarola, the Prophet of Florence, has been compared to John the Baptist. The Florentines were totally unused to the fervent natural eloquence of a preacher who rejected all traditions of oratory, and, careless of fine style or graceful diction, poured forth what was in him in floods of fiery words, carried away by his own earnestness and warmth of feeling. To see a man thus inspired by his subject, possessed by what he has to say, too much in earnest to choose his phrases or think of anything—taste, literature, style, or reputation—except that truth which he is bound to tell his auditors, and which to them and to him is a matter of life and death—this is at all times a wonderful and impressive spectacle. His whole soul was intensely practical, concentrated upon the real evils around him, riveted upon Florence in particular, upon the sins, strifes, frauds, and violences which made the city weak, and put her down from her high estate. Burlamacchi describes the scene: “The people got up in the middle of the night to get places for the sermon, and came to the door of the cathedral, waiting outside till it should be opened, making no account of any inconvenience, neither of the cold, nor of wind, nor of standing in winter with their feet on the marble; and among them were young and old, women and children of every sort, who came with such jubilee and rejoicing, going to the sermon as to a wedding. Thus” [after entering the Cathedral] “they waited three or four hours till the Padre entered the pulpit. And the attention of so great a mass of people, all with eyes and ears intent upon the preacher, was wonderful; they listened so that when the sermon reached its end it seemed to them that it had scarcely begun.” ’
‘The kingdom of heaven is at hand.’
Mat_3:2
I. Christ claims a universal dominion.—He claims the whole world. Hence the missionary leaves home and friends and goes out in steady confidence. Here in this England of ours Jesus Christ claims an absolute sovereignty over it all. And yet how far we are from recognising it. Here as of old there are many wistful ears anxiously straining for the news of deliverance. There is the huge mass of indifference without God in the world; there is reckless waste and hopeless want; there is sin in all its terrible defiance of the very laws of human existence. There is suffering and misery, and, worse than all, an inability for a man to assert his powers as a man to make his own way in the world. There is confusion and difficulty, misunderstanding and suspicion, wherever we turn. Pray on, wherever you may be; pray for those dark spots of sin and those sad spots of sorrow which darken our Christian cities. The waves of the sea are mighty, and rage horribly; but He that dwelleth on high is mightier. The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God is at hand. Jesus Christ reigns.
II. The need of patience.—Patience—how we hate that word! But no lasting good is to be had without it. We can always cut the knot of a difficulty, but the truly great man wants to untie it. Of course it is true that destitution and hunger and want ought to be, and must be, attended to at once by wise remedies. They do not brook delay. But we want a solution of a recurring difficulty, the adjustment of what seems to be an inequality of opportunity. Be assured of this, that there is no lack of ardent desire on the part of every right-minded man to do all he can to help while these great questions are being worked out. There is always a danger of impatience. Think of the slaves! What was patience to them? It seemed as if Christ had nothing to say to their cruel grievance. His kingdom came and slavery stayed. But Christ had enunciated principles which tended to make slavery impossible, and gradually, through long years, slavery has been dying out. So it was with those blood-stained shows, in which men killed each other for sport: Christ seemed to have done nothing to stop them, when all of a sudden it was found that the whole system collapsed at the earnest preaching of one devoted man, because Christian principles had condemned it and made it impossible. So it has been with the position of woman; so it has been with wars of aggression; so it will be with the evils which paralyse us to-day. ‘Sirs, ye are brethren.’ ‘By this shall all men know that ye are My disciples, if ye have love one towards another.’ These are the laws of Christ’s kingdom; these He will set up and proclaim, if we will let Him. But we are all apt to think that we know better. ‘We can hurry man, but we cannot hurry God.’
III. The Kingdom of God is within you.—It is not only the cause and the measure which we must think of, but the man. If, therefore, you feel that God has called you to help solve a very difficult problem, let me beseech you each to look to yourselves. There are problems in our own lives as difficult as the problems in large cities. A man may be beaten down by temper, or by passion, or by desire—by a hundred things, so that he becomes useless for work in God’s service. Let us each, in our several ways, work towards the same end—the solving of a great and pressing difficulty—and to that end let us offer to God ourselves, each of us as we are and what we are. ‘Men make a city, and not walls,’ was said on a famous occasion; and it is the individual man who counts in carrying forward Christ’s kingdom. If God says ‘Speak to the children of Israel that they go forward,’ then we can advance, even through the Red Sea, towards our promised land; but, on the other hand, ‘except the Lord build the house, their labour is but lost that build it.’
—
Canon Newbolt.
Illustration(1) ‘A modern writer, speaking of the impression left on his mind by a visit to the Grande Chartreuse, in the days when it was still occupied by its devoted band of religious men, describes to us the solemnity of the night offices and the suggestiveness of those solemn intercessions: “I heard them,” he says, “interceding for men who, at that moment of the dark night, were forgetting God, and truth, purity, and goodness. I heard the murmur of the solemn petition which had gone up to the throne of grace night after night for many centuries, prayers for the poor and the wretched, for the guilty and the crime-laden, for the dying and the dead, for the faint-hearted that they might hope again in God, for the light-headed lest they might forget Him.” ’