Post by Admin on Apr 2, 2024 8:48:14 GMT -5
8. “THE KINGDOM OF GOD IS COME
NIGH UNTO YOU”
TEXT: Notwithstanding, be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come
nigh unto you. -
<421011>Luke 10:11
Before discussing the text I shall make a very brief explanation of some of the things
in the whole paragraph that need to be explained. The first is the occasion that
prompted our Savior to send out disciples. That is more forcibly expressed by
Matthew than in this connection.
It is therefore said, in the ninth chapter, just before He selected the Twelve Apostles,
that when He saw the condition of the people as sheep without shepherds, He had
compassion on them and selected men to go out and shepherd them. It is enough to
excite the compassion of anyone who has the spirit of Christ, seriously to look at the
religious condition of the masses of the people. Their ignorance as to the teachings of
the Bible is very profound. They are exposed to a great variety of temptations. It is
pitiable when you mix with people, to see how dark is their spiritual condition. It
ought to move any heart to offer this prayer to God: “O Lord, see this flock without
a shepherd! See these poor people, these lost people, with nobody to instruct them
and lead them in the way of life. O Master, send shepherds unto these.”
Now, as that was the occasion of the selection of the Twelve Apostles, so it was the
occasion of the selection of seventy others also, and so it has ever been the occasion
for the Lord to call out from among the people men here and there who would turn
their backs upon every other business and devote themselves exclusively to the work
of the ministry.
The next thing that needs a little explanation is this: “Salute no man by the way.” The
salutation in the Eastern country took up a great deal of time. Travelers who have
witnessed the formality of these salutations wonder how the people ever find time to
go through all the postures and prostrations and bows and delays in merely
expressing one single idea, “How do you do?” When He said, then, “Salute no man
by the way,” He meant to express just this idea: “I send you out on a great and
pressing mission in which time is precious. You are as one appointed to carry the
mail, the post, from one place to another. You are not an ordinary traveler. You
must ride fast, or walk fast. You do not stop like other people and chat and take up
your time in conversation on unimportant matters by the way. ‘The king’s business
requires haste.’ You are carrying a message, of life, or reprieve, or pardon to some
doomed criminal whose execution is at hand and may be over before you arrive.
Going out on such a mission as that, don’t stop to go through with the ordinary forms
of salutation as you meet men by the way. Remember why you are sent and let all
these trifling things that pertain to an idle life alone.” That is what it means.
Next: “Go not from house to house.” In the twentieth chapter of the Acts of the
Apostles, Paul, in speaking to the elders of the church at Ephesus, whom he had
invited to meet him at Miletus, showed them how, when he was among them, he did
go from house to house for the space of two years, and how they ought to do the
same thing in preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.
The question then is, why, in this connection, “Go not from house to house”? The
context explains. He said, “And in the same house remain eating and drinking such
things as they give.” “Go not from house to house. Go from house to house to
preach or to heal or to comfort, but go not from house to house to eat and drink, to
be feasted yourselves.” That is, in prosecuting a work of the Lord Jesus Christ in a
community, one thing the preacher must ignore - frequent social dinings from house
to house. Attend to your work.
You cannot carry on such a meeting as that if you accept an invitation to a big dinner
at A’s house today and another at B’s house tomorrow. It will destroy your
spirituality and take away your power. Remain in the house where you first stop. Eat
the things that are set before you with thankfulness, asking no questions. It is a very
small matter anyhow. Concern yourself with your mission and not with eating and
drinking. However proper it may be on other and more suitable occasions to
participate in social dinings, it is not in season when you are sent out upon this
mission.
It is quite proper to salute men by the way ordinarily, but carrying a message of life
and death, you ought not to stop to go through with the elaborate forms of the
salutation. And so, while it is a good thing in its place and at a proper season, to
attend to social dinings and eat good things of this world and to thank God for them,
and to appreciate them if a friend invites you, yet a man who is sent out on the
mission of carrying the gospel of salvation to the lost should not go about from house
to house, being entertained. “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister.” That is the explanation of that part of the subject.
Now we are prepared to look at the text itself: “Notwithstanding, be sure of this, that
the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you.” Here are several thoughts making
natural divisions of this text. First, what is meant by the kingdom of God? Second,
what is meant by the kingdom of God coming nigh unto people? Third, what is the
force of the “notwithstanding”?
It is a difficult matter for anyone to realize how much is involved in the phrase, “The
kingdom of God.” We learn things by contrast. You better understand day by the
contrast of night. There is a kingdom of Satan, a kingdom of darkness. In that
kingdom the subjects are the slaves of man’s chief enemy. It is the object of the
kingdom of God to turn men from the power of Satan unto God.
The whole of the thought is presented in the commission of Paul, where God said to
him, “I send you to the Gentiles.” For what? “To turn them from darkness to light.
To open their eyes, to turn them from Satan unto God, to give them an inheritance
among them who are sanctified by faith that is in Me.” So that the condition of the
subjects of Satan’s kingdom is one of privation. First, they are orphans. They have
no home, no inheritance. Otherwise the kingdom of God could not offer them an
inheritance. They are deprived of an inheritance. And what is the next deprivation?
They are blind. Blindness is the deprivation of sight. The mission of the kingdom of
God is to open their, eyes. It is to confer spiritual vision upon them, to enable them
to see and to discern their true relations to God, to see and understand the things that
make for their peace and in what their best interests are concerned. To be under the
power of Satan is to be deprived of God, of God’s presence; the kingdom of God is
to deliver them from the thraldom of Satan.
The kingdom of God means more than this. It includes the amelioration of all big
physical troubles. This context says, “As you go, heal the sick. Give sight to the
blind, hearing to the deaf.” It is a very great mistake that the kingdom of God is ever
oblivious of the physical sufferings of the people. It is a modern proverb that
missionary work is to preach the gospel only and let alone the poverty and sickness
of the people. The proverb is anti-Christian. It is always an argument against the
pretensions of any religious organization claiming to be the church of Jesus Christ
when it shuts its eyes to the physical wants and necessities of the people. Certainly
Jesus Christ never did. A great part of His mission here upon the earth had to do
with the illness, the wants of the body. He fed the people. He gave sight to the
people. He removed their difficulties of hearing. He supplied clothing to them. And it
is a sign and evidence of the kingdom of God in a community where the people who
are able and who have means are, through Jesus, using their means for the
amelioration of suffering.
A characteristic of the Christian religion is the establishment of orphanages, of
asylums, care for the destitute without any regard to the church relations of the
destitute. It is the anti-Christian philosophy of evolution that says, “Let only the fittest
survive. Let the weak, the wounded, and the decrepit perish.” But the main thing was
that the kingdom of God in coming to a place was to announce to them repentance
toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, by which present and eternal
salvation would be secured.
Second, if such be the meaning of the kingdom, then what is meant by that kingdom
coming nigh? It certainly means that all its blessings are accessible; that God’s offer
of eternal life is not only sincere but is then and there “come-atable” and available.
Let not any distorted view of election cause us to charge God with insincerity. All the
words and all the life of Jesus Christ, all His invitations and wooings, demonstrate
His good faith. “Nigh unto you” means present opportunity to receive and enjoy all
the blessings contained in “the kingdom of God.” It means that when the kingdom of
God reaches a community, accessible to that community is an open door that
connects directly with God and heaven. Whether they saw it or not, it meant an
opportunity; it meant that there had reached that community a privilege, an
opportunity, an open door, through which it was lawful for them to enter, and which
they were sincerely invited to enter, and which, if entered, conferred upon them
blessings of such inconceivable excellence that no words could describe them.
Third, what next, is the import of “notwithstanding” in the clause, “Notwithstanding,
be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you”? What is the
force of the “notwithstanding”? Here was a community visited by men sent out by the
Savior, and this community had rejected their testimony and the offered life. This
community had refused to receive the blessings of God’s grace that had been freely
offered to them. They had turned their back upon them, and by their rejection all of
these blessings were lost to them. Now, here is the text, “Though you do not see it,
though you derive no benefit from it, though it has been to you as if there were no
heaven and as if there were no escape from hell, yet to you, lost, I come with this
announcement, that at that period in your life the kingdom of God had come nigh
unto you.
“It was there. You walked close by the open door. You could have reached
out your hand and touched the fruit of eternal life. You were near enough to
the water of life to stoop down and quench the burning thirst within you. You
were so close to salvation that in the depths of hell the bitterest memory that
can ever come to you will be this, ‘Oh, what might have been!’ Looking
hack at it now, you will say, ‘How blind I was! To think that God once
placed right at my door this way of life, this offer of free pardon and
salvation; to think that once, yonder in time, the Savior rang my door-bell
and spoke to me and my house and said, Life, life, I offer unto you, if you
will accept it.’”
Now, our text says that you may be sure of this. There are things about which you
may have doubts, but you may be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come
nigh. I do not know a subject that suggests to the minds such strange, such
bewildering, such sad thoughts as this.
Let us take the case of one who is now lost, from whom the opportunity has fled,
whose day of grace is ended, who is lost forever. You say to that man, “Be sure of
this, that the kingdom of God once came nigh unto you.” It did. There was a time
when it did. Though you shut your eyes to it, though you refused to receive it, though
you treated it as a light matter, yet, O banished one, O child of eternal sorrow and of
punishment, O sufferer of unbroken despair, O eternal sufferer, be sure of this, that
the kingdom of God had come nigh unto you.
Notice yet the “notwithstanding”. Notwithstanding what? Notwithstanding that the
one who brought it nigh to you was a man, a human being just like yourself. One of
the grounds of the rejection of salvation through Jesus Christ is the messenger He
employs to carry that salvation. The objector says, “If Jesus Christ would come
Himself to me, or if He would send an angel, I might accept. If He would in some
other way approach me than by a faulty man a man like myself, I would accept it.
But that preacher - I know him. I live in the same town with him. He is a man of like
passions with myself. Why should he be the means of bringing the kingdom of
heaven nigh unto me?”
This questions the wisdom of God’s appointed methods of sending salvation to the
lost. Paul says that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and now
he says, “He hath committed unto us the ministry of reconciliation and we do
beseech you in Christ’s stead, be you reconciled to God.” We men, in Christ’s
stead, in His place, beseech you to be reconciled to God.
This ministry of reconciliation has been committed to us. Salvation for the lost,
salvation for the world, salvation for every creature, how shall it get to them? Who
shall bear it? And selecting twelve men he said, “I send you there.” He selected
seventy others - “I send you yonder.” And He gathered His disciples about Him on
the mountain of Galilee, and said, “Go ye therefore and preach the gospel to every
creature.” The means appointed for bringing the kingdom of God nigh unto men is
the employment of a ministry of men.
Says the objector, “The kingdom of God came not nigh unto me because I never
saw God. I never heard God. I never rejected God.” This paragraph closes thus:
“He that heareth you heareth Me, and he that despiseth you despiseth Me; and he
that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me.” So that notwithstanding the
character of the messengers employed by the Lord Jesus Christ in bringing the
kingdom of God to the world, notwithstanding that, you may be sure that the
kingdom of God, did come nigh unto you.
You say, “Why did God do this? Why put such a treasure in such a vessel? That
vessel is earthen, sometimes very earthen. Why will not God explain to me His
reasons for putting that treasure in that earthen vessel?” The Lord answers you:
“That the excellency of the power may be of God and not of men.” No one should
be able to boast. If angels had been commissioned to bring the power of God nigh
unto you, then the man unto whom the message was brought might stay his gaze at
the angels, and might say to Gabriel, “Thou art my God”; might forget to look
beyond such a glorious messenger. But if the messenger is manifestly without any
intrinsic worth or inherent power; if he is evidently just such a one as you are
yourself, of like passions with you, if it is perfectly evident that he has no power to
convert your soul, that he cannot charm you into the gates of God’s glory, then God
will be glorified and not the messenger.
If you put the Almighty upon the witness stand and catechise Him, if you demand
that God authenticate His Word and justify His methods at the bar of the creature’s
judgment, then this is God’s avowal: Though men preach - men just like you - and
though these vessels are very earthen, notwithstanding you may be sure of this, that
the kingdom of God had come nigh unto you.
How easy a thing it is to despise a man, to scorn one who is human, to have
contempt for him, to justify oneself in the rejection of God’s gospel on the ground of
some prejudice in the mind or heart against the preacher! Why, there never was a
preacher living but had more actual faults than the ‘people saw. Doubtless all of them
have been free from some faults that prejudice had charged against them, but in the
sight of God and in one’s own humble estimate of himself, there is always a
depreciation of self that says, “Why, brethren, of course I am full of faults. I am a
sinner as you are a sinner. I am myself a subject of the divine grace. You are not to
judge of the treasure by me. You are not to estimate the merit of what is offered to
you as food for the soul, and clothing for the soul, and everlasting life for the soul, by
my merits. I have not a thing in the world to commend me. You are not to receive it
because I can eloquently tell it, because I can theoretically illustrate it, because I have
a method of saying things better than other men can say them.”
In no sense does the excellency of it depend upon the rhetorical declamation of the
preacher. The demonstration of the power is in God. And notwithstanding it is a
poor preacher who brings you the message, you be sure that “the kingdom of God
has come nigh to you.”
Well, what other objection does the “notwithstanding” refute? Here it is, right here in
the context. Sending out these men he says, “Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor
shoes. The laborer is worthy of his hire.” Not only is the man employed as the
messenger of God’s salvation, but this man is compensated for his services by a
support. Here is the thought: See how Paul discusses it in the ninth chapter of the
First Letter to the Corinthians: “My answer to them that do examine me is this: Have
we not power to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead about a wife? …
Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? Or who feedeth a flock,
and eateth not of the milk of the flock? It is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt
not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. If we have sown unto you
spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things? … Even so hath
the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.”
Now, says the objector, “I could stand a man’s bringing me the message. I could get
over that part of it. I am willing to dispense with the angel and I will receive the
treasure in the earthen vessel, but the part that causes me not to see that the kingdom
of God is nigh is that this preacher of the gospel must be paid by the gospel. It is the
missionary’s salary. It is the pastor’s salary. Oh, this everlasting expense! It is what it
costs that is my objection.”
How heart-sickening, how heart-breaking this everlasting and degrading objection
about expenses! How it clogs the wheels of progress! How lamentable every now
and then, when some worn-out, threadbare character poses as a reformer, crying
out, “Expense! Expense!” To which of the text replies, “Notwithstanding, be you
sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.”
It is the ordinance of the Lord Jesus Christ that men shall be selected to do this
work, and though it may be repugnant to you that in entering into this work the man
is not to furnish his own purse, not to furnish even an extra pair of shoes, nor to take
his own scrip, though this may be repugnant to you, notwithstanding be you sure of
this, that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you. Now, that is the precise
thought of it.
Unquestionably, there are vast numbers of people who refuse to see that the
kingdom of God has come nigh unto them because it is only a man that has preached
the gospel to them and because that man is by the ordinance of Jesus Christ
compensated for his services as a laborer. Can you be an instance? Are you aware
of any prejudice in your own mind on the subject? Do you not know of people who
have turned away from heaven’s offer of eternal life solely on the ground that those
who bring to them the message of life are by the ordinances and requirements of
God taken care of as to their physical wants while they do this?
They put Paul on trial on these points: “Here, we will examine you on this. How do
you answer on this?” He says, “My answer to them that do examine me is this, that I
have a right to eat and drink. I have a right to marry as other men.” And a preacher
ought to marry; he ought to marry and be the husband of a wife. No one questions
this in other public affairs of men.
Here a government says to a man, “I want you to be a soldier.”
“Well, if I am a soldier, can I farm?”
“No, we want all your time.”
“Well, if I am a soldier, can I be a merchant?”
“No.”
“Well, if I am a soldier, can I be a lawyer?”
“No.”
To be a soldier is to surrender your time and your person and your service to the
government. Well, says Paul, “Who goeth to warfare at his own charge?” Who
does?
He uses then this illustration: Here is a flock of sheep, and the necessities of the case
require that somebody should shepherd that flock. I am speaking of actual sheep
now. Somebody must attend to them. They cannot take care of themselves.
Somebody must lead them into green pastures. Somebody must defend them from
the wolves. Now, says Paul: “Who feedeth a flock and eateth not of the milk of the
flock?” If you shut your eyes to the fact that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto
you, either because a man brought it or because that man was compensated as a
laborer for bringing it, you only injure yourself. Notwithstanding, be ye sure of this,
that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you.
But did not our Lord afterwards revoke this ordinance? Only for the period of His
death. Just before He died, when, for the time being, death was to prevail and the
hour of the power of darkness had come, He said, “When I sent you out (referring
to this occasion right here) didn’t I say take no scrip?”
“Yes.” Why?
“You were in My employ. It was My business to feed you and clothe you.” But now
that Jesus is to die, now that the employer Himself is to be out of the way for three
days and nights, now in that time, “if you have a sword, take it.”
In other words, if your Savior is a dead Savior, you look out for yourself. Fish, farm,
practice law, defend yourself, take your sword. But when He arose from the dead,
when this period passed away, He pointed back to the ordinance of this text. He
pointed back to the time when He had ordained that they that preach the gospel
should live by the gospel. And by virtue of the fact that He is not now dead, though
He was dead, but is alive and to die no more, but to live forever, and able therefore
to feed and clothe and take care of those who serve Him, this law is reappointed.
And it is just as certain as anything can be in the world that people who hold to the
theory that a minister should not be fairly compensated for his services do by that
practically say, “Our Savior is dead. He is dead. There is nobody to take care of His
laborer. Let him take care of himself. If he has a purse, let him take it. If he has a
sword, let him take it. He goes out as the representative of a dead God.”
Unquestionably that is the teaching of this Scripture and the passage with which I
have connected it. But the lost man still objects: “The kingdom of God only
appeared to come nigh me. Really I had no chance.” The context refutes you and
puts you to shame. Do hear it:
“And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And
if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn
to you again” (<421005>Luke 10:5-6).
I do wish I could get the picture before you of what I see in that. Just imagine men
like Peter and John, men of no very great social position in the world, not riding in
carriages, walking along the road, the dusty road, and coming to a house, and
without any attempt at justifying what they say, but as if God Almighty spoke through
them, spreading out the hands of benediction and saying, “Peace be to this house.”
Now, mark how it distinctly teaches that the peace of God does actually pass over.
It leaves them and passes over: “And if a son of peace be there, your peace shall
rest upon it.” Now, supposing a man and his house turn from it. Then what does
God say? “If not, it shall turn to you again.” Now, if that man is lost, be sure of this,
the kingdom of God had come nigh unto him. The peace had gone out and it came
back. What a thought that is about peace returning!
People who are in hell today, people who will be in hell it will be true that a light had
shone that “lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” It will be true that while
Jesus Christ judges no man but the man unto whom He has preached, it is a fact that
the gospel has been preached to them, which is the only predicate of the judgment.
“To whom He preacheth, them He judgeth.” No other. And to every lost soul in hell
it will be true that peace had gone out and it returned. It returned. Be sure of this,
that the kingdom of God had come nigh to you.
Suppose one is in a house; that house is on an island; that island lies low, subject to
overflow in certain extraordinary risings of the tide; not ordinarily, but occasionally.
One is in there sleeping, sleeping soundly, dreaming of peace and rest and life, when
suddenly a thundering sound awakens the sleeper. He looks up. He looks out. The
storm has burst. The mad waves are beating against the frail structure. The sands are
sinking. And he says, “Here I have been left to perish. Oh, did nobody think to warn
me? Did nobody love me enough to come and knock at my door and say, ‘Wake
up, wake up! The tide of death is coming’?”
God says, “You may be sure of this that Somebody did come. You may be sure that
He did knock at the door. You may be sure that a boat from the shore put off for
your special benefit. It came right up to your door and the Messenger did knock and
knock and knock, and stood there and said, ‘Behold, I have knocked, but you sleep
right on,’ and finally His boat returned. The peace returned. His boat returned, but
you may be sure that the kingdom of God had come nigh unto you.”
What a thought! Oh, shall we because of any prejudices in our mind about the
preachers or about the teachers or about any facts connected with their support,
refuse to bear? Shall we dismiss the peace of God that comes to our house? “When
you enter into a house, first say, Peace be to this house.” Did He ever say that to a
lost house? Did the peace ever go out and have to come back because it could find
no welcome? Did it go and was it refused an entrance and did it have to return? Yes.
You may be sure that had God brought right up to the very door of that man, life,
eternal life, he would not; he would not!
What an awful thought! Go to the jails, go to the penitentiaries, go to the graveyards,
go to the prison houses of eternal despair, and as you look at them, these whose
liberty is restrained, these about whom the walls rise up, these over the portals of
whose door is written, “He who enters here leaves hope behind,” to every one of
them you may say, “Be sure that the kingdom of God had come nigh unto you.”
I cannot, to save my life, keep from shivering when I think of that peace going to a
house and then having to come back, having to come back, finding, like Noah’s
dove, no place where its feet could rest. When a man is lost, God says to His Spirit,
“Let him alone. Come back. Come away from him. My Spirit shall not always strive
with men.” He says to His people, “Let Me alone. I have heard you often. I would
hear you now, but He will not.” Notwithstanding that, the kingdom of God has been
nigh to that man.
Now, I have only this last thought. There is a feeling in the world that the kingdom of
God is a long way off, that God Himself is a long way off. And yet God says, as Paul
expresses it in his sermon at Athens, that He is not very far from everyone of us. He
is not very far from any of us. Perhaps we don’t know it. We don’t realize it, but He
is not very far from any of us. God has commanded that we should seek for Him if
haply we might find Him, and along our path of life, though that path leads down to
eternal death, there is a place, one anyhow, maybe one hundred places, where there
is absolute contact between heaven and this life, where the juxtaposition is such that
they actually touch. Looking back, the lost one will say, “Yonder was the place. It
was right at me. There was the door and the door was open, only I was looking the
other way. I walked by the open door and saw it not, because I was looking the
other way. Just as I got nearly to it and might have seen it, where it seems I could not
help seeing it, the devil, not wishing me to be saved, and not wishing me to look that
way, came and said, ‘Look over here. Look at this pleasure. Look at this ball.’ And
I stood there staring at the things to which he called my attention, and so walked by
the door that was open and never saw it, and he did it on purpose. That was his
object. It was to divert me.”
The kingdom of God, the kingdom of life, the kingdom of salvation for the body, the
kingdom of salvation for the soul, the kingdom of eternal light and blessedness, the
kingdom of peace that flows like a river, peace that passeth the understanding, the
kingdom of joy, the kingdom of eternal communion with God, the kingdom that will
ultimately deliver us from all pain, sickness, sorrow, and death - it had come nigh to
you.
Oh, let us pray that God will wake us up; that God will cause us to see where that
opening is and not pass it lightly and not turn away from it because a poor man like
ourselves comes to tell of it. And let not these little prejudices come in to interfere.
Why, I have known some men who would not commune because they happened to
see someone in the group against whom they had a prejudice. The earthen vessel,
what is that to you? The kingdom of God has come nigh unto you though the means
employed are earthly means.
I want us to offer a prayer here. It may be that some soul has come right up to the
line today, right up to that border-line, and while we go to dinner he may pass that
point. He may lose the opportunity. While he is heedless, the opportunity may slip
by. It may escape while he is busy about other things. The opportunity of the past
may be gone, but right now and, here it may be that in God’s grace he has come
again to that door and the door is open and the voice speaks to him and he hears it
and it touches his heart. Come today. Today, if you hear His voice, harden not your
heart.
I want to pray that any soul here today who feels that he is on that thin line - oh, how
slight a line between salvation and damnation - the soul that feels that today by the
weight of a feather, by the breadth of a hair, the scale may turn to the right or to the
left. O soul, I pray for you that it may never have to be said about you that the
kingdom of God had come nigh unto you in vain
NIGH UNTO YOU”
TEXT: Notwithstanding, be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come
nigh unto you. -
<421011>Luke 10:11
Before discussing the text I shall make a very brief explanation of some of the things
in the whole paragraph that need to be explained. The first is the occasion that
prompted our Savior to send out disciples. That is more forcibly expressed by
Matthew than in this connection.
It is therefore said, in the ninth chapter, just before He selected the Twelve Apostles,
that when He saw the condition of the people as sheep without shepherds, He had
compassion on them and selected men to go out and shepherd them. It is enough to
excite the compassion of anyone who has the spirit of Christ, seriously to look at the
religious condition of the masses of the people. Their ignorance as to the teachings of
the Bible is very profound. They are exposed to a great variety of temptations. It is
pitiable when you mix with people, to see how dark is their spiritual condition. It
ought to move any heart to offer this prayer to God: “O Lord, see this flock without
a shepherd! See these poor people, these lost people, with nobody to instruct them
and lead them in the way of life. O Master, send shepherds unto these.”
Now, as that was the occasion of the selection of the Twelve Apostles, so it was the
occasion of the selection of seventy others also, and so it has ever been the occasion
for the Lord to call out from among the people men here and there who would turn
their backs upon every other business and devote themselves exclusively to the work
of the ministry.
The next thing that needs a little explanation is this: “Salute no man by the way.” The
salutation in the Eastern country took up a great deal of time. Travelers who have
witnessed the formality of these salutations wonder how the people ever find time to
go through all the postures and prostrations and bows and delays in merely
expressing one single idea, “How do you do?” When He said, then, “Salute no man
by the way,” He meant to express just this idea: “I send you out on a great and
pressing mission in which time is precious. You are as one appointed to carry the
mail, the post, from one place to another. You are not an ordinary traveler. You
must ride fast, or walk fast. You do not stop like other people and chat and take up
your time in conversation on unimportant matters by the way. ‘The king’s business
requires haste.’ You are carrying a message, of life, or reprieve, or pardon to some
doomed criminal whose execution is at hand and may be over before you arrive.
Going out on such a mission as that, don’t stop to go through with the ordinary forms
of salutation as you meet men by the way. Remember why you are sent and let all
these trifling things that pertain to an idle life alone.” That is what it means.
Next: “Go not from house to house.” In the twentieth chapter of the Acts of the
Apostles, Paul, in speaking to the elders of the church at Ephesus, whom he had
invited to meet him at Miletus, showed them how, when he was among them, he did
go from house to house for the space of two years, and how they ought to do the
same thing in preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God.
The question then is, why, in this connection, “Go not from house to house”? The
context explains. He said, “And in the same house remain eating and drinking such
things as they give.” “Go not from house to house. Go from house to house to
preach or to heal or to comfort, but go not from house to house to eat and drink, to
be feasted yourselves.” That is, in prosecuting a work of the Lord Jesus Christ in a
community, one thing the preacher must ignore - frequent social dinings from house
to house. Attend to your work.
You cannot carry on such a meeting as that if you accept an invitation to a big dinner
at A’s house today and another at B’s house tomorrow. It will destroy your
spirituality and take away your power. Remain in the house where you first stop. Eat
the things that are set before you with thankfulness, asking no questions. It is a very
small matter anyhow. Concern yourself with your mission and not with eating and
drinking. However proper it may be on other and more suitable occasions to
participate in social dinings, it is not in season when you are sent out upon this
mission.
It is quite proper to salute men by the way ordinarily, but carrying a message of life
and death, you ought not to stop to go through with the elaborate forms of the
salutation. And so, while it is a good thing in its place and at a proper season, to
attend to social dinings and eat good things of this world and to thank God for them,
and to appreciate them if a friend invites you, yet a man who is sent out on the
mission of carrying the gospel of salvation to the lost should not go about from house
to house, being entertained. “The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister.” That is the explanation of that part of the subject.
Now we are prepared to look at the text itself: “Notwithstanding, be sure of this, that
the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you.” Here are several thoughts making
natural divisions of this text. First, what is meant by the kingdom of God? Second,
what is meant by the kingdom of God coming nigh unto people? Third, what is the
force of the “notwithstanding”?
It is a difficult matter for anyone to realize how much is involved in the phrase, “The
kingdom of God.” We learn things by contrast. You better understand day by the
contrast of night. There is a kingdom of Satan, a kingdom of darkness. In that
kingdom the subjects are the slaves of man’s chief enemy. It is the object of the
kingdom of God to turn men from the power of Satan unto God.
The whole of the thought is presented in the commission of Paul, where God said to
him, “I send you to the Gentiles.” For what? “To turn them from darkness to light.
To open their eyes, to turn them from Satan unto God, to give them an inheritance
among them who are sanctified by faith that is in Me.” So that the condition of the
subjects of Satan’s kingdom is one of privation. First, they are orphans. They have
no home, no inheritance. Otherwise the kingdom of God could not offer them an
inheritance. They are deprived of an inheritance. And what is the next deprivation?
They are blind. Blindness is the deprivation of sight. The mission of the kingdom of
God is to open their, eyes. It is to confer spiritual vision upon them, to enable them
to see and to discern their true relations to God, to see and understand the things that
make for their peace and in what their best interests are concerned. To be under the
power of Satan is to be deprived of God, of God’s presence; the kingdom of God is
to deliver them from the thraldom of Satan.
The kingdom of God means more than this. It includes the amelioration of all big
physical troubles. This context says, “As you go, heal the sick. Give sight to the
blind, hearing to the deaf.” It is a very great mistake that the kingdom of God is ever
oblivious of the physical sufferings of the people. It is a modern proverb that
missionary work is to preach the gospel only and let alone the poverty and sickness
of the people. The proverb is anti-Christian. It is always an argument against the
pretensions of any religious organization claiming to be the church of Jesus Christ
when it shuts its eyes to the physical wants and necessities of the people. Certainly
Jesus Christ never did. A great part of His mission here upon the earth had to do
with the illness, the wants of the body. He fed the people. He gave sight to the
people. He removed their difficulties of hearing. He supplied clothing to them. And it
is a sign and evidence of the kingdom of God in a community where the people who
are able and who have means are, through Jesus, using their means for the
amelioration of suffering.
A characteristic of the Christian religion is the establishment of orphanages, of
asylums, care for the destitute without any regard to the church relations of the
destitute. It is the anti-Christian philosophy of evolution that says, “Let only the fittest
survive. Let the weak, the wounded, and the decrepit perish.” But the main thing was
that the kingdom of God in coming to a place was to announce to them repentance
toward God and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, by which present and eternal
salvation would be secured.
Second, if such be the meaning of the kingdom, then what is meant by that kingdom
coming nigh? It certainly means that all its blessings are accessible; that God’s offer
of eternal life is not only sincere but is then and there “come-atable” and available.
Let not any distorted view of election cause us to charge God with insincerity. All the
words and all the life of Jesus Christ, all His invitations and wooings, demonstrate
His good faith. “Nigh unto you” means present opportunity to receive and enjoy all
the blessings contained in “the kingdom of God.” It means that when the kingdom of
God reaches a community, accessible to that community is an open door that
connects directly with God and heaven. Whether they saw it or not, it meant an
opportunity; it meant that there had reached that community a privilege, an
opportunity, an open door, through which it was lawful for them to enter, and which
they were sincerely invited to enter, and which, if entered, conferred upon them
blessings of such inconceivable excellence that no words could describe them.
Third, what next, is the import of “notwithstanding” in the clause, “Notwithstanding,
be ye sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you”? What is the
force of the “notwithstanding”? Here was a community visited by men sent out by the
Savior, and this community had rejected their testimony and the offered life. This
community had refused to receive the blessings of God’s grace that had been freely
offered to them. They had turned their back upon them, and by their rejection all of
these blessings were lost to them. Now, here is the text, “Though you do not see it,
though you derive no benefit from it, though it has been to you as if there were no
heaven and as if there were no escape from hell, yet to you, lost, I come with this
announcement, that at that period in your life the kingdom of God had come nigh
unto you.
“It was there. You walked close by the open door. You could have reached
out your hand and touched the fruit of eternal life. You were near enough to
the water of life to stoop down and quench the burning thirst within you. You
were so close to salvation that in the depths of hell the bitterest memory that
can ever come to you will be this, ‘Oh, what might have been!’ Looking
hack at it now, you will say, ‘How blind I was! To think that God once
placed right at my door this way of life, this offer of free pardon and
salvation; to think that once, yonder in time, the Savior rang my door-bell
and spoke to me and my house and said, Life, life, I offer unto you, if you
will accept it.’”
Now, our text says that you may be sure of this. There are things about which you
may have doubts, but you may be sure of this, that the kingdom of God has come
nigh. I do not know a subject that suggests to the minds such strange, such
bewildering, such sad thoughts as this.
Let us take the case of one who is now lost, from whom the opportunity has fled,
whose day of grace is ended, who is lost forever. You say to that man, “Be sure of
this, that the kingdom of God once came nigh unto you.” It did. There was a time
when it did. Though you shut your eyes to it, though you refused to receive it, though
you treated it as a light matter, yet, O banished one, O child of eternal sorrow and of
punishment, O sufferer of unbroken despair, O eternal sufferer, be sure of this, that
the kingdom of God had come nigh unto you.
Notice yet the “notwithstanding”. Notwithstanding what? Notwithstanding that the
one who brought it nigh to you was a man, a human being just like yourself. One of
the grounds of the rejection of salvation through Jesus Christ is the messenger He
employs to carry that salvation. The objector says, “If Jesus Christ would come
Himself to me, or if He would send an angel, I might accept. If He would in some
other way approach me than by a faulty man a man like myself, I would accept it.
But that preacher - I know him. I live in the same town with him. He is a man of like
passions with myself. Why should he be the means of bringing the kingdom of
heaven nigh unto me?”
This questions the wisdom of God’s appointed methods of sending salvation to the
lost. Paul says that God was in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself, and now
he says, “He hath committed unto us the ministry of reconciliation and we do
beseech you in Christ’s stead, be you reconciled to God.” We men, in Christ’s
stead, in His place, beseech you to be reconciled to God.
This ministry of reconciliation has been committed to us. Salvation for the lost,
salvation for the world, salvation for every creature, how shall it get to them? Who
shall bear it? And selecting twelve men he said, “I send you there.” He selected
seventy others - “I send you yonder.” And He gathered His disciples about Him on
the mountain of Galilee, and said, “Go ye therefore and preach the gospel to every
creature.” The means appointed for bringing the kingdom of God nigh unto men is
the employment of a ministry of men.
Says the objector, “The kingdom of God came not nigh unto me because I never
saw God. I never heard God. I never rejected God.” This paragraph closes thus:
“He that heareth you heareth Me, and he that despiseth you despiseth Me; and he
that despiseth Me despiseth Him that sent Me.” So that notwithstanding the
character of the messengers employed by the Lord Jesus Christ in bringing the
kingdom of God to the world, notwithstanding that, you may be sure that the
kingdom of God, did come nigh unto you.
You say, “Why did God do this? Why put such a treasure in such a vessel? That
vessel is earthen, sometimes very earthen. Why will not God explain to me His
reasons for putting that treasure in that earthen vessel?” The Lord answers you:
“That the excellency of the power may be of God and not of men.” No one should
be able to boast. If angels had been commissioned to bring the power of God nigh
unto you, then the man unto whom the message was brought might stay his gaze at
the angels, and might say to Gabriel, “Thou art my God”; might forget to look
beyond such a glorious messenger. But if the messenger is manifestly without any
intrinsic worth or inherent power; if he is evidently just such a one as you are
yourself, of like passions with you, if it is perfectly evident that he has no power to
convert your soul, that he cannot charm you into the gates of God’s glory, then God
will be glorified and not the messenger.
If you put the Almighty upon the witness stand and catechise Him, if you demand
that God authenticate His Word and justify His methods at the bar of the creature’s
judgment, then this is God’s avowal: Though men preach - men just like you - and
though these vessels are very earthen, notwithstanding you may be sure of this, that
the kingdom of God had come nigh unto you.
How easy a thing it is to despise a man, to scorn one who is human, to have
contempt for him, to justify oneself in the rejection of God’s gospel on the ground of
some prejudice in the mind or heart against the preacher! Why, there never was a
preacher living but had more actual faults than the ‘people saw. Doubtless all of them
have been free from some faults that prejudice had charged against them, but in the
sight of God and in one’s own humble estimate of himself, there is always a
depreciation of self that says, “Why, brethren, of course I am full of faults. I am a
sinner as you are a sinner. I am myself a subject of the divine grace. You are not to
judge of the treasure by me. You are not to estimate the merit of what is offered to
you as food for the soul, and clothing for the soul, and everlasting life for the soul, by
my merits. I have not a thing in the world to commend me. You are not to receive it
because I can eloquently tell it, because I can theoretically illustrate it, because I have
a method of saying things better than other men can say them.”
In no sense does the excellency of it depend upon the rhetorical declamation of the
preacher. The demonstration of the power is in God. And notwithstanding it is a
poor preacher who brings you the message, you be sure that “the kingdom of God
has come nigh to you.”
Well, what other objection does the “notwithstanding” refute? Here it is, right here in
the context. Sending out these men he says, “Carry neither purse, nor scrip, nor
shoes. The laborer is worthy of his hire.” Not only is the man employed as the
messenger of God’s salvation, but this man is compensated for his services by a
support. Here is the thought: See how Paul discusses it in the ninth chapter of the
First Letter to the Corinthians: “My answer to them that do examine me is this: Have
we not power to eat and to drink? Have we not power to lead about a wife? …
Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? Or who feedeth a flock,
and eateth not of the milk of the flock? It is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt
not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. If we have sown unto you
spiritual things, is it a great thing if we shall reap your carnal things? … Even so hath
the Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live of the gospel.”
Now, says the objector, “I could stand a man’s bringing me the message. I could get
over that part of it. I am willing to dispense with the angel and I will receive the
treasure in the earthen vessel, but the part that causes me not to see that the kingdom
of God is nigh is that this preacher of the gospel must be paid by the gospel. It is the
missionary’s salary. It is the pastor’s salary. Oh, this everlasting expense! It is what it
costs that is my objection.”
How heart-sickening, how heart-breaking this everlasting and degrading objection
about expenses! How it clogs the wheels of progress! How lamentable every now
and then, when some worn-out, threadbare character poses as a reformer, crying
out, “Expense! Expense!” To which of the text replies, “Notwithstanding, be you
sure of this, that the kingdom of God is come nigh unto you.”
It is the ordinance of the Lord Jesus Christ that men shall be selected to do this
work, and though it may be repugnant to you that in entering into this work the man
is not to furnish his own purse, not to furnish even an extra pair of shoes, nor to take
his own scrip, though this may be repugnant to you, notwithstanding be you sure of
this, that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you. Now, that is the precise
thought of it.
Unquestionably, there are vast numbers of people who refuse to see that the
kingdom of God has come nigh unto them because it is only a man that has preached
the gospel to them and because that man is by the ordinance of Jesus Christ
compensated for his services as a laborer. Can you be an instance? Are you aware
of any prejudice in your own mind on the subject? Do you not know of people who
have turned away from heaven’s offer of eternal life solely on the ground that those
who bring to them the message of life are by the ordinances and requirements of
God taken care of as to their physical wants while they do this?
They put Paul on trial on these points: “Here, we will examine you on this. How do
you answer on this?” He says, “My answer to them that do examine me is this, that I
have a right to eat and drink. I have a right to marry as other men.” And a preacher
ought to marry; he ought to marry and be the husband of a wife. No one questions
this in other public affairs of men.
Here a government says to a man, “I want you to be a soldier.”
“Well, if I am a soldier, can I farm?”
“No, we want all your time.”
“Well, if I am a soldier, can I be a merchant?”
“No.”
“Well, if I am a soldier, can I be a lawyer?”
“No.”
To be a soldier is to surrender your time and your person and your service to the
government. Well, says Paul, “Who goeth to warfare at his own charge?” Who
does?
He uses then this illustration: Here is a flock of sheep, and the necessities of the case
require that somebody should shepherd that flock. I am speaking of actual sheep
now. Somebody must attend to them. They cannot take care of themselves.
Somebody must lead them into green pastures. Somebody must defend them from
the wolves. Now, says Paul: “Who feedeth a flock and eateth not of the milk of the
flock?” If you shut your eyes to the fact that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto
you, either because a man brought it or because that man was compensated as a
laborer for bringing it, you only injure yourself. Notwithstanding, be ye sure of this,
that the kingdom of God has come nigh unto you.
But did not our Lord afterwards revoke this ordinance? Only for the period of His
death. Just before He died, when, for the time being, death was to prevail and the
hour of the power of darkness had come, He said, “When I sent you out (referring
to this occasion right here) didn’t I say take no scrip?”
“Yes.” Why?
“You were in My employ. It was My business to feed you and clothe you.” But now
that Jesus is to die, now that the employer Himself is to be out of the way for three
days and nights, now in that time, “if you have a sword, take it.”
In other words, if your Savior is a dead Savior, you look out for yourself. Fish, farm,
practice law, defend yourself, take your sword. But when He arose from the dead,
when this period passed away, He pointed back to the ordinance of this text. He
pointed back to the time when He had ordained that they that preach the gospel
should live by the gospel. And by virtue of the fact that He is not now dead, though
He was dead, but is alive and to die no more, but to live forever, and able therefore
to feed and clothe and take care of those who serve Him, this law is reappointed.
And it is just as certain as anything can be in the world that people who hold to the
theory that a minister should not be fairly compensated for his services do by that
practically say, “Our Savior is dead. He is dead. There is nobody to take care of His
laborer. Let him take care of himself. If he has a purse, let him take it. If he has a
sword, let him take it. He goes out as the representative of a dead God.”
Unquestionably that is the teaching of this Scripture and the passage with which I
have connected it. But the lost man still objects: “The kingdom of God only
appeared to come nigh me. Really I had no chance.” The context refutes you and
puts you to shame. Do hear it:
“And into whatsoever house ye enter, first say, Peace be to this house. And
if the son of peace be there, your peace shall rest upon it: if not, it shall turn
to you again” (<421005>Luke 10:5-6).
I do wish I could get the picture before you of what I see in that. Just imagine men
like Peter and John, men of no very great social position in the world, not riding in
carriages, walking along the road, the dusty road, and coming to a house, and
without any attempt at justifying what they say, but as if God Almighty spoke through
them, spreading out the hands of benediction and saying, “Peace be to this house.”
Now, mark how it distinctly teaches that the peace of God does actually pass over.
It leaves them and passes over: “And if a son of peace be there, your peace shall
rest upon it.” Now, supposing a man and his house turn from it. Then what does
God say? “If not, it shall turn to you again.” Now, if that man is lost, be sure of this,
the kingdom of God had come nigh unto him. The peace had gone out and it came
back. What a thought that is about peace returning!
People who are in hell today, people who will be in hell it will be true that a light had
shone that “lighteth every man that cometh into the world.” It will be true that while
Jesus Christ judges no man but the man unto whom He has preached, it is a fact that
the gospel has been preached to them, which is the only predicate of the judgment.
“To whom He preacheth, them He judgeth.” No other. And to every lost soul in hell
it will be true that peace had gone out and it returned. It returned. Be sure of this,
that the kingdom of God had come nigh to you.
Suppose one is in a house; that house is on an island; that island lies low, subject to
overflow in certain extraordinary risings of the tide; not ordinarily, but occasionally.
One is in there sleeping, sleeping soundly, dreaming of peace and rest and life, when
suddenly a thundering sound awakens the sleeper. He looks up. He looks out. The
storm has burst. The mad waves are beating against the frail structure. The sands are
sinking. And he says, “Here I have been left to perish. Oh, did nobody think to warn
me? Did nobody love me enough to come and knock at my door and say, ‘Wake
up, wake up! The tide of death is coming’?”
God says, “You may be sure of this that Somebody did come. You may be sure that
He did knock at the door. You may be sure that a boat from the shore put off for
your special benefit. It came right up to your door and the Messenger did knock and
knock and knock, and stood there and said, ‘Behold, I have knocked, but you sleep
right on,’ and finally His boat returned. The peace returned. His boat returned, but
you may be sure that the kingdom of God had come nigh unto you.”
What a thought! Oh, shall we because of any prejudices in our mind about the
preachers or about the teachers or about any facts connected with their support,
refuse to bear? Shall we dismiss the peace of God that comes to our house? “When
you enter into a house, first say, Peace be to this house.” Did He ever say that to a
lost house? Did the peace ever go out and have to come back because it could find
no welcome? Did it go and was it refused an entrance and did it have to return? Yes.
You may be sure that had God brought right up to the very door of that man, life,
eternal life, he would not; he would not!
What an awful thought! Go to the jails, go to the penitentiaries, go to the graveyards,
go to the prison houses of eternal despair, and as you look at them, these whose
liberty is restrained, these about whom the walls rise up, these over the portals of
whose door is written, “He who enters here leaves hope behind,” to every one of
them you may say, “Be sure that the kingdom of God had come nigh unto you.”
I cannot, to save my life, keep from shivering when I think of that peace going to a
house and then having to come back, having to come back, finding, like Noah’s
dove, no place where its feet could rest. When a man is lost, God says to His Spirit,
“Let him alone. Come back. Come away from him. My Spirit shall not always strive
with men.” He says to His people, “Let Me alone. I have heard you often. I would
hear you now, but He will not.” Notwithstanding that, the kingdom of God has been
nigh to that man.
Now, I have only this last thought. There is a feeling in the world that the kingdom of
God is a long way off, that God Himself is a long way off. And yet God says, as Paul
expresses it in his sermon at Athens, that He is not very far from everyone of us. He
is not very far from any of us. Perhaps we don’t know it. We don’t realize it, but He
is not very far from any of us. God has commanded that we should seek for Him if
haply we might find Him, and along our path of life, though that path leads down to
eternal death, there is a place, one anyhow, maybe one hundred places, where there
is absolute contact between heaven and this life, where the juxtaposition is such that
they actually touch. Looking back, the lost one will say, “Yonder was the place. It
was right at me. There was the door and the door was open, only I was looking the
other way. I walked by the open door and saw it not, because I was looking the
other way. Just as I got nearly to it and might have seen it, where it seems I could not
help seeing it, the devil, not wishing me to be saved, and not wishing me to look that
way, came and said, ‘Look over here. Look at this pleasure. Look at this ball.’ And
I stood there staring at the things to which he called my attention, and so walked by
the door that was open and never saw it, and he did it on purpose. That was his
object. It was to divert me.”
The kingdom of God, the kingdom of life, the kingdom of salvation for the body, the
kingdom of salvation for the soul, the kingdom of eternal light and blessedness, the
kingdom of peace that flows like a river, peace that passeth the understanding, the
kingdom of joy, the kingdom of eternal communion with God, the kingdom that will
ultimately deliver us from all pain, sickness, sorrow, and death - it had come nigh to
you.
Oh, let us pray that God will wake us up; that God will cause us to see where that
opening is and not pass it lightly and not turn away from it because a poor man like
ourselves comes to tell of it. And let not these little prejudices come in to interfere.
Why, I have known some men who would not commune because they happened to
see someone in the group against whom they had a prejudice. The earthen vessel,
what is that to you? The kingdom of God has come nigh unto you though the means
employed are earthly means.
I want us to offer a prayer here. It may be that some soul has come right up to the
line today, right up to that border-line, and while we go to dinner he may pass that
point. He may lose the opportunity. While he is heedless, the opportunity may slip
by. It may escape while he is busy about other things. The opportunity of the past
may be gone, but right now and, here it may be that in God’s grace he has come
again to that door and the door is open and the voice speaks to him and he hears it
and it touches his heart. Come today. Today, if you hear His voice, harden not your
heart.
I want to pray that any soul here today who feels that he is on that thin line - oh, how
slight a line between salvation and damnation - the soul that feels that today by the
weight of a feather, by the breadth of a hair, the scale may turn to the right or to the
left. O soul, I pray for you that it may never have to be said about you that the
kingdom of God had come nigh unto you in vain