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Expositions of Holy Scripture

A >> Alexander Maclaren >> Expositions of Holy Scripture




II. Then, again, we see here, I think, the revelation of one great
purpose of our Lord's coming, to hallow all common, and especially all
family, life.

What a strange contrast there is between the simple gladness of the
rustic village wedding and the tremendous scene of the Temptation in
the wilderness, which preceded it only by a few days! What a strange
contrast there is between the sublime heights of the first chapter and
the homely incident which opens the ministry! What a contrast between
the rigid asceticism of the Forerunner, 'who came neither eating nor
drinking,' and the Son of Man, who enters thus freely and cheerfully
into the common joys and relationships of human nature! How unlike the
scene at the marriage-feast must have been to the anticipations of the
half-dozen disciples that had gathered round Him, all a-tingling with
expectation as to what would be the first manifestation of His
Messianic power! The last thing they would have dreamed of would have
been to find Him in the humble home in Cana of Galilee. Some people
say 'this miracle is unworthy of Him, for it was wrought upon such a
trivial occasion.' And was it a trivial occasion that prompted Him
thus to commence His career, not by some high and strained and remote
exhibition of more than human saintliness or power, but by entering
like a Brother into the midst of common, homespun, earthly joys, and
showing how His presence ennobled and sanctified these? Surely the
world has gained from Him, among the many gifts that He has given to
it, few that have been the fountain of more sacred sweetness and
blessedness than is opened in that fact that the first manifestation
of His glory had for its result the hallowing of the marriage tie.

And is it not in accordance with the whole meaning and spirit of His
works that 'forasmuch as the brethren were partakers of' anything, 'He
Himself likewise should take part of the same,' and sanctify every
incident of life by His sharing of it? So He protests against that
faithless and wicked division of life into sacred and secular, which
has wrought such harm both in the sacred and in the secular regions.
So He protests against the notion that religion has to do with another
world rather than with this. So He protests against the narrowing
conception of His work which would remove from its influence anything
that interests humanity. So He says, as it were, at the very beginning
of His career, 'I am a Man, and nothing that is human do I reckon
foreign to Myself.'

Brethren! let us learn the lesson that all life is the region of His
Kingdom; that the sphere of His rule is everything which a man can do
or feel or think. Let us learn that where His footsteps have trod is
hallowed ground. If a prince shares for a few moments in the
festivities of his gathered people on some great occasion, how
ennobled the feast seems! If he joins in their sports or in their
occupations for a while as an act of condescension, how they return to
them with renewed vigour! And so we. We have had our King in the midst
of all our family life, in the midst of all our common duties;
therefore are they consecrated. Let us learn that all things done with
the consciousness of His presence are sacred. He has hallowed every
corner of human life by His presence; and the consecration, like some
pungent and perennial perfume, lingers for us yet in the else
scentless air of daily life, if we follow His footsteps.

Sanctity is not singularity. There is no need to withdraw from any
region of human activity and human interest in order to develop the
whitest saintliness, the most Christlike purity. The saint is to be in
the world, but not of it; like the Master, who went straight from the
wilderness and its temptations to the homely gladness of the rustic
marriage.

III. Still further, we have here a symbol of Christ's glory as the
ennobler and heightener of all earthly joys.

That may be taken with perhaps a permissible play of fancy as one
meaning, at any rate, of the transformation of water into wine; the
less savoury and fragrant and powerful liquid into the more so. Wine,
in the Old Testament especially, is the symbol of gladness, and though
it received a deeper and a sacreder meaning in the New Testament as
being the emblem of His blood shed for us, it is the Old Testament
point of view that prevails here. And therefore, I say, we may read in
the incident the symbol of His transforming power. He comes, the Man
of Sorrows, with the gift of joy in His hand. It is not an unworthy
object--not unworthy, I mean, of a divine sacrifice--to make men glad.
It is worth His while to come from Heaven to agonise and to die, in
order that He may sprinkle some drops of incorruptible and everlasting
joy over the weary and sorrowful hearts of earth. We do not always
give its true importance to gladness in the economy of our lives,
because we are so accustomed to draw our joys from ignoble sources
that in most of our joys there is something not altogether creditable
or lofty. But Christ came to bring gladness, and to transform its
earthly sources into heavenly fountains; and so to change all the less
sweet, satisfying, and potent draughts which we take from earth's
cisterns into the wine of the Kingdom; the new wine, strong and
invigorating, 'making glad the heart of man.'

Our commonest blessings, our commonest joys, if only they be not foul
and filthy, are capable of this transformation. Link them with Christ;
be glad in Him. Bring Him into your mirth, and it will change its
character. Like a taper plunged into a jar of oxygen, it will blaze up
more brightly. Earth, at its best and highest, without Him is like
some fair landscape lying in the shadow; and when He comes to it, it
is like the same scene when the sun blazes out upon it, flashes from
every bend of the rippling river, brings beauty into many a shady
corner, opens all the flowering petals and sets all the birds singing
in the sky. The whole scene changes when a beam of light from Him
falls upon earthly joys. He will transform them and ennoble them and
make them perpetual. Do not meddle with mirth over which you cannot
make the sign of the Cross and ask Him to bless it; and do not keep
Him out of your gladness, or it will leave bitterness on your lips,
howsoever sweet it tastes at first.

Ay! and not only can this Master transform the water at the marriage
feast into the wine of gladness, but the cups that we all carry, into
which our tears have dropped--upon these too He can lay His hand and
change them into cups of blessing and of salvation.

'Blessed are they... who, passing through the valley of weeping,
gather their tears into a well; the rain also covereth it with
blessings.' So the old Psalm put the thought that sorrow may be turned
into a solemn joy, and may lie at the foundation of our most flowery
fruitfulness. And the same lesson we may learn from this symbol. The
Christ who transforms the water of earthly gladness into the wine of
heavenly blessedness, can do the same thing for the bitter waters of
sorrow, and can make them the occasions of solemn joy. When the leaves
drop we see through the bare branches. Shivering and cold they may
look, but we see the stars beyond, and that is better. 'This beginning
of miracles' will Jesus repeat in every sad heart that trusts itself
to Him.

IV. And last of all, we have here a token of His glory as supplying
the deficiencies of earthly sources.

'His mother saith unto Him, "They have no wine."' The world's banquet
runs out, Christ supplies an infinite gift. These great water-pots
that stood there, if the whole contents of them were changed, as is
possible, contained far more than sufficient for the modest wants of
the little company. The water that flowed from each of them, in
obedience to the touch of the servant's hand, if the change were
effected then, as is possible, would flow on so long as any thirsted
or any asked. And Christ gives to each of us, if we choose, a fountain
that will spring unto life eternal. And when the world's platters are
empty, and the world's cups are all drained dry, He will feed and
satisfy the immortal hunger and the blessed thirst of every spirit
that longs for Him.

The rude speech of the governor of the feast may lend itself to
another aspect of this same thought. He said, in jesting surprise,
'Thou hast kept the good wine until now,' whereas the world gives its
best first, and when the palate is dulled and the appetite diminished,
then 'that which is worse.' How true that is; how tragically true in
some of our lives! In the individual the early days of hope and
vigour, when all things were fresh and wondrous, when everything was
apparelled in the glory of a dream, contrast miserably with the bitter
experiences of life that most of us have made. Habit comes, and takes
the edge off everything. We drag remembrance, like a lengthening
chain, through all our life; and with remembrance come remorse and
regret. 'The vision splendid' no more attends men, as they plod on
their way through the weariness of middle life, or pass down into the
deepening shadows of advancing and solitary old age. The best comes
first, for the men who have no good but this world's. And some of you
have got nothing in your cups but dregs that you scarcely care to
drink.

But Jesus Christ keeps the best till the last. His gifts become
sweeter every day. No time can cloy them. Advancing years make them
more precious and more necessary. The end is better in this course
than the beginning. And when life is over, and we pass into the
heavens, the word will come to our lips, with surprise and with
thankfulness, as we find how much better it all is than we had ever
dreamed it should be: 'Thou hast kept the good wine until now.'

Oh, my brother! do not touch that cup that is offered to you by the
harlot world, spiced and fragrant and foaming; 'at the last it biteth
like a serpent, and stingeth like an adder.' But take the pure joys
which the Christ, loved, trusted, obeyed, summoned to your feast and
welcomed in your heart, will bring to you; and these shall grow and
greaten until the perfection of the Heavens.




CHRIST CLEANSING THE TEMPLE

'Take these things hence; make not My Father's house an house of
merchandise.'--JOHN ii. 16.

The other Evangelists do not record this cleansing of the Temple at
the beginning of Christ's ministry, but, as we all know, tell of a
similar act at its very close. John, on the other hand, has no notice
of the latter incident. The question, then, naturally arises, are
these diverse narratives accounts of the same event? The answer seems
to me to be in the negative, because John's Gospel is evidently
intended to supplement the other three, and to record incidents either
unknown to, or unnoticed by, them, and, as a matter of fact, the whole
of this initial visit of our Lord to Jerusalem is omitted by the three
Evangelists. Then the two incidents are distinctly different in tone,
in setting, and in the words with which our Lord accompanies them.
They are both appropriate in the place in which they stand, the one as
the initial and the other as all but the final act of His Messiahship.
So we may learn from the repetition of this cleansing the solemn
lesson: that outward reformation of religious corruptions is of small
and transient worth. For in three years--perhaps in as many weeks--the
abuse that He corrected returned in full force.

Now, this narrative has many points of interest, but I think I shall
best bring out its meaning if I remind you, by way of introduction,
that the Temple of Jerusalem was succeeded by the Temple of the
Christian Church, and that each individual Christian man is a temple.
So there are three things that I want to set before you: what Christ
did in the Temple; what He does in the Church; what He will do to each
of us if we will let Him.

I. First, then, what Christ did in the Temple.

Now, the scene in our narrative is not unlike that which may be
witnessed in any Roman Catholic country in the cathedral place or
outside the church on the saint's day, where there are long rows of
stalls, fitted up with rosaries, and images of the saint, and candles,
and other apparatus for worship.

The abuse had many practical grounds on which it could be defended. It
was very convenient to buy sacrifices on the spot, instead of having
to drag them from a distance. It was no less convenient to be able to
exchange foreign money, possibly bearing upon it the head of an
emperor, for the statutory half-shekel. It was profitable to the
sellers, and no doubt to the priests, who were probably sleeping
partners in the concern, or drew rent for the ground on which the
stalls stood. And so, being convenient for all and profitable to many,
the thing became a recognised institution.

Being familiar it became legitimate, and no one thought of any
incongruity in it until this young Nazarene felt a flash of zeal for
the sanctity of His Father's house consuming Him. Catching up some of
the reeds which served as bedding for the cattle, He twisted them into
the semblance of a scourge, which could hurt neither man nor beast. He
did not use it. It was a symbol, not an instrument. According to the
reading adopted in the Revised Version, it was the sheep and cattle,
not their owners, whom He 'drove out.' And then, dropping the scourge,
He turned to the money-changers, and, with the same hand, overthrew
their tables. And then came the turn of the sellers of doves. He would
not hurt the birds, nor rob their owners. And so He neither overthrew
nor opened the cages, but bade them 'Take these things hence'; and
then came the illuminating words, 'Make not My Father's house a house
of merchandise.'

Now this incident is very unlike our Lord's usual method, even if we
do not exaggerate the violence which He employed. It is unlike in two
respects: in the use of compulsion, and in aiming at mere outward
reformation. And both of these points are intimately connected with
its place in His career.

It was the first public appearance of Jesus before His nation as
Messiah. He inaugurates His work by a claim--by an act of
authority--to be the King of Israel and the Lord of the Temple. If we
remember the words from the last prophet, in which Malachi says that
'the Messenger of the Covenant...shall suddenly come to His Temple,
and purify the sons of Levi,' we get the significance of this
incident. We have to mark in it our Lord's deliberate assumption of
the role of Messiah; His shaping His conduct so as to recall to all
susceptible hearts that last utterance of prophecy, and to recognise
the fact that at the beginning of His career He was fully conscious of
His Son-ship, and inaugurated His work by the solemn appeal to the
nation to recognise Him as their Lord.

And this is the reason, as I take it, why the anomalous incident is in
its place at the beginning of His career no less than the repetition
of it was at the close. And this is the explanation of the anomaly of
the incident. It is His solemn, authoritative claiming to be God's
Messenger, the Messiah long foretold.

Then, further, this incident is a singular manifestation of Christ's
unique power. How did it come that all these sordid hucksters had not
a word to say, and did not lift a finger in opposition, or that the
Temple Guard offered no resistance, and did not try to quell the
unseemly disturbance, or that the very officials, when they came to
reckon with Him, had nothing harsher to say than, 'What sign showest
Thou unto us, seeing that Thou doest these things'? No miracle is
needed to explain that singular acquiescence. We see in lower forms
many instances of a similar thing. A man ablaze with holy indignation,
and having a secret ally in the hearts of those whom He rebukes, will
awe a crowd even if he does not infect them. But that is not the full
explanation. I see here an incident analogous to that strange event at
the close of Christ's ministry, when, coming out from beneath the
shadows of the olives in the garden, He said to the soldiers 'Whom
seek ye?' and they fell backwards and wallowed on the ground. An
overwhelming impression of His personal majesty, and perhaps some
forth-putting of that hidden glory which did swim up to the surface on
the mountain of Transfiguration, bowed all these men before Him, like
reeds before the wind. And though there was no recognition of His
claim, there was something in the Claimant that forbade resistance and
silenced remonstrance.

Further, this incident is a revelation of Christ's capacity for
righteous indignation. No two scenes can be more different than the
two recorded in this chapter: the one that took place in the rural
seclusion of Cana, nestling among the Galilean hills, the other that
was done in the courts of the Temple swarming with excited
festival-keepers; the one hallowing the common joys of daily life, the
other rebuking the profanation of what assumed to be a great deal more
sacred than a wedding festival; the one manifesting the love and
sympathy of Jesus, His power to ennoble all human relationships, and
His delight in ministering to need and bringing gladness, and the
other setting forth the sterner aspect of His character as consumed
with holy zeal for the sanctity of God's name and house. Taken
together, one may say that they cover the whole ground of His
character, and in some very real sense are a summary of all His work.
The programme contains the whole of what is to follow hereafter.

We may well take the lesson, which no generation ever needed more than
the present, both by reason of its excellences and of its defects,
that there were no love worthy of a perfect spirit in which there did
not lie dormant a dark capacity of wrath, and that Christ Himself
would not have been the Joy-bringer, the sympathising Gladdener which
He manifested Himself as being in the 'beginning of miracles in Cana
of Galilee' unless, side by side, there had lain in Him the power of
holy indignation and, if need be, of stern rebuke. Brethren, we must
retain our conception of His anger if we are not to maim our
conception of His love. There is no wrath like the wrath of the Lamb.
The Temple court, with the strange figure of the Christ with a scourge
in His hand, is a revelation which this generation, with its
exaggerated sentimentalism, with its shrinking, by reason of its good
and of its evil, from the very notion of a divine retribution based
upon the eternal antagonism between good and evil, most sorely needs.

II. Now, secondly, notice what Christ does in His Church.

I need not remind you how God's method of restoration is always to
restore with a difference and a progress. The ruined Temple on Zion
was not to be followed by another house of stone and lime, but by 'a
spiritual house,' builded together for 'a habitation of God in the
Spirit.' The Christian Church takes the place of that material
sanctuary, and is the dwelling-place of God.

That being so, let us take the lesson that that house, too, may be
desecrated. There may be, as there were in the original Temple, the
externals of worship, and yet, eating out the reality of these, there
may be an inward mercenary spirit.

Note how insensibly such corruption creeps in to a community. You
cannot embody an idea in a form or in an external association without
immediately dragging it down, and running the risk of degradation. It
is just like a drop of quicksilver which you cannot expose to the air
but instantaneously its brightness is dimmed by the scum that forms on
its surface. A church as an outward institution is exposed to all the
dangers to which other institutions are exposed. And these creep on
insensibly, as this abuse had crept on. So it is not enough that we
should be at ease in our consciences in regard to our practices as
Christian communities. We become familiar with any abuse, and as we
become familiar we lose the power of rightly judging of it. Therefore
conscience needs to be guided and enlightened quite as much as to be
obeyed.

How long has it taken the Christian Church to learn the wickedness of
slavery? Has the Christian Church yet learned the unchristianity of
War? Are there no abuses amongst us, which subsequent generations will
see to be so glaring that they will talk about us as we talk about our
ancestors, and wonder whether we were Christians at all when we could
tolerate such things? They creep on gradually, and they need continual
watchfulness if they are not to assume the mastery.

The special type of corruption which we find in this incident is one
that besets the Church always. Of course, if I were preaching to
ministers, I should have a great deal to say about that. For men that
are necessarily paid for preaching have a sore temptation to preach
for pay. But it is not only we professionals who have need to lay to
heart this incident. It is all Christian communities, established and
non-established churches, Roman Catholic and Protestant. The same
danger besets them all. There must be money to work the outward
business of the house of God. But what about people that 'run'
churches as they run mills? What about people whose test of the
prosperity of a Christian community is its balance-sheet? What about
the people that hang on to religious communities and services for the
sake of what they can make out of them? We have heard a great deal
lately about what would happen 'if Christ came to Chicago.' If Christ
came to any community of professing Christians in this land, do you
not think He would need to have the scourge in His hand, and to say
'Make not My Father's house a house of merchandise'? He will come; He
does come; He is always coming if we would listen to Him. And at long
intervals He comes in some tremendous and manifest fashion, and
overthrows the money-changers' tables.

Ah, brethren! if Jesus Christ had not thus come, over and over again,
to His Church, Christian men would have killed Christianity long ago.
Did you ever think that Christianity is the only religion that has
shown recuperative power and that has been able to fling off its
peccant humours? They used to say--I do not know whether it is true or
not--that Thames water was good to put on board ship because of its
property of corrupting and then clearing itself, and becoming fit to
drink. We and our brethren, all through the ages, have been corrupting
the Water of Life. And how does it come to be sweet and powerful
still? This tree has substance in it when it casts its leaves. That
unique characteristic of Christianity, its power of reformation, is
not self-reformation, but it is a coming of the Lord to His temple to
'purify the sons of Levi, that their offering may be pleasant as in
days of yore.'

So one looks upon the spectacle of churches labouring under all manner
of corruptions; and one need not lose heart. The shortest day is the
day before the year turns; and when the need is sorest the help is
nearest. And so I, for my part, believe that very much of the
organisations of all existing churches will have to be swept away. But
I believe too, with all my heart--and I hope that you do--that, though
the precious wheat is riddled in the sieve, and the chaff falls to the
ground, not one grain will go through the meshes. Whatever becomes of
churches, the Church of Christ shall never have its strength so sapped
by abuses that it must perish, or its lustre so dimmed that the Lord
of the Temple must depart from His sanctuary.

III. Lastly, note what Christ will do for each of us if we will let
Him.

It is not a community only which is the temple of God. For the
Apostles in many places suggest, and in some distinctly say, 'ye are
the temples' individually, as well as the Temple collectively, of the
Most High. And so every Christian soul--by virtue of that which is the
deepest truth of Christianity, the indwelling of Christ in men's
hearts by faith--is a temple of God; and every human soul is meant to
be and may become such. That temple can be profaned. There are many
ways in which professing Christians make it a house of merchandise.
There are forms of religion which are little better than chaffering
with God, to give Him so much service if He will repay us with so much
Heaven. There are too many temptations, to which we yield, to bring
secular thoughts into our holiest things. Some of us, by reason not of
wishing wealth but of dreading penury, find it hard to shut worldly
cares out of our hearts. We all need to be on our guard lest the
atmosphere in which we live in this great city shall penetrate even
into our moments of devotion, and the noise of the market within
earshot of the Holy of Holies shall disturb the chant of the
worshippers. It is Manchester's temptation, and it is one that most of
us need to be guarded against.

So engrossed, and, as we should say, necessarily engrossed--or, at all
events, legitimately engrossed--are we in the pursuits of our daily
commerce, that we have scarcely time enough or leisure of heart and
mind enough to come into 'the secret place of the Most High.' The
worshippers stop outside trading for beasts and doves, and they have
no time to go into the Temple and present their offerings.

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