Chapter 3
If we visit with hallowed emotion the places where first we learned to love the Lord, to two at least of those who accompanied the Redeemer, the region He now traversed must have been full of fragrant memories; _there_ it was that Jesus had been first pointed out to them as the "Lamb of God;" _there_ they first "beheld His glory, the glory as of the only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and of truth." (John i. 28.)
On His way thither, on the present occasion, He most probably passed through Bethany, and apprised His friends of His temporary absence. Lazarus was then in his wonted vigour--no shadow of death had yet passed over his brow; he doubtless parted with the Lord he loved happy at the thought of ere long meeting again.
But soon all is changed. The hand of sickness unexpectedly lays him low. At first there is no cause for anxiety. But soon the herald-symptoms of danger and death gather fast and thick around his pillow; "his beauty consumes away like a moth." The terrible possibility for the first time flashes across the minds of the sisters, of a desolate home, and of themselves being the desolate survivors of a loved brother. The joyous dream of restoration becomes fainter and fainter. Human remedies are hopeless. There was _One_, and _only_ ONE, in the wide world who could save from impending death. His word, they knew, could alone summon lustre to that eye, and bloom to that wan and fading cheek. Fifty long miles intervene between the great Physician and their cottage home. But they cannot hesitate. Some kind and compassionate neighbour is soon found ready to hasten along the Jericho road with the brief but urgent message, "_Lord! behold he whom thou lovest is sick._" If it only reach in time, they know that no more is needed. They even indulge the expectation that their messenger may be anticipated by the Lord Himself appearing. Others might doubt His omniscience, but they knew its reality. They had the blessed conviction, that while they were seated in burning tears by that couch of sickness, there was a sympathising Being far away marking every heart-throb of His suffering friend. Even when the stern human conviction of "no hope" was pressing upon them, "hoping against hope," they must have felt confident that He would not suffer His faithfulness now to fail. He had often proved Himself a Brother and Friend in the hour of _joy_. _Could_ He fail--_can_ He fail to prove Himself now a "Brother born for _adversity_?"
Although, however, thus convinced that the tale of their sorrows was known to Jesus, _a messenger is sent_,--_the means are employed_! They act as though He knew it _not_; as if that omniscient Saviour had been all unconscious of these hours of prolonged and anxious agony!
What a lesson is there here for _us_! God is acquainted with our every trouble; He knows (far better than we know ourselves) every pang we heave, every tear we weep, every perplexing path we tread; but the knee must be bent, the message must be taken, the prayer must ascend! It is His own appointed method,--His own consecrated medium for obtaining blessings. Jesus _may_ have gone, and probably _would_ have gone to restore His friend, even though no such messenger had reached Him: We dare not limit the grace and dealings of God: He is often (blessed be His name for it!) "found of them that sought Him not." But He loves such messages as this. He loves the confiding, childlike trust of His own people, who delight in the hour of their extremity to cast their burdens upon Him, and send the winged herald of prayer to the throne of grace on which He sits.
Would that we valued, more than we do, this blessed link of communication between our souls and Heaven! More especially in our seasons of trouble, (when "vain is the help of man,") happy for us to be able implicitly to rest in the ability and willingness of a gracious Redeemer.
Prayer brings the soul near to Jesus, and fetches Jesus near to the soul. He may linger, as He did now at the Jordan, ere the answer be vouchsafed, but it is for some wise reason; and even if the answer given be not in accordance with our pre-conceived wishes or anxious desires, yet how comforting to have put our case and all its perplexities in His hand, saying, "I am oppressed; undertake Thou for me! To Thee I unburden and unbosom my sorrows. I shall be satisfied whether my cup be filled or emptied. Do to me as seemeth good in Thy sight. He whom I love and whom THOU lovest is sick; the Lazarus of my earthly hopes and affections is hovering on the brink of death. That levelling blow, if consummated, will sweep down in a moment all my hopes of earthly happiness and joy. But it is my privilege to confide my trouble to Thee; to know that I have surrendered myself and all that concerns me into the hand of Him who 'considers my soul in adversity.' Yes; and should my schemes be crossed, and my fondest hopes baffled, I will feel, even in apparently _unanswered_ prayers, that the Judge of all the earth has done right!"
"It is said," says Rutherford, speaking of the Saviour's delay in responding to the request of the Syrophenician woman; "It is said He _answered_ not a word, but it is not said He _heard_ not a word. These two differ much. Christ often heareth when He doth not answer. His not answering is an answer, and speaks thus: 'Pray on, go on and cry, for the Lord holdeth His door fast bolted not to keep you out, but that you may knock and knock.'"
"God delays to answer prayer," says Archbishop Usher, "because he would have more of it. If the musicians come to play at our doors or our windows, if we delight not in their music, we throw them out money presently that they may be gone. But if the music please us, we forbear to give them money, because we would keep them longer to enjoy their music. So the Lord loves and delights in the sweet words of His children, and therefore puts them off and answers them not presently."
Observe still further, in the case of these sorrowing sisters of Bethany, while in all haste and urgency they send their messenger, they do not ask Jesus to come--they dictate no procedure--they venture on no positive request--all is left to Himself. What a lesson also is there here to confide in His wisdom, to feel that His way and His will must be the best--that our befitting attitude is to lie passive at His feet--to wait His righteous disposal of us and ours--to make this the burden of our petition, "Lord, what wouldst _Thou_ have me to do?" "If it be possible let this cup pass from me, _nevertheless_, not as _I_ will, but as _Thou wilt_."
Reader! invite to your gates this celestial messenger. Make prayer a holy habit--a cherished privilege. Seek to be ever maintaining intercommunion with Jesus; consecrating life's common duties with His favour and love. Day by day ere you take your flight into the world, night by night when you return from its soiling contacts, bathe your drooping plumes in this refreshing fountain. Let prayer sweeten prosperity and hallow adversity. Seek to know the unutterable blessedness of habitual filial nearness to your Father in heaven--in childlike confidence unbosoming to Him those heart-sorrows with which no earthly friend can sympathise, and with which a stranger cannot intermeddle. No trouble is too trifling to confide to His ear--no want too trivial to bear to His mercy-seat.
"Prayer is appointed to convey The blessings He designs to give; Long as they live should Christians pray, For only while they pray, they live."
V.
THE MESSAGE.
The messenger has reached--what is his message? It is a brief, but a beautiful one. "_Lord, behold he whom Thou lovest is sick._"
No laboured eulogium--no lengthened panegyric could have described more significantly the character of the dying villager of Bethany. Four mystic words invest his name with a sacred loveliness. By one stroke of his pen the Apostle unfolds a heart-history; so that we desiderate no more--more would almost spoil the touching simplicity--"_He whom Thou lovest!_"
We might think at first the words are inverted. Can the messenger have mistaken them? Is it not more likely the message of the sisters was this:--"Go and tell Him, 'Lord, he whom _we_ love,' or else, 'he who loveth _Thee_ is sick?'"
Nay, it is a loftier argument by which they would stir the infinite depths of the Fountain of love! They had "known and believed the love" which the Great Redeemer bore to their brother, and they further felt assured that "loving him at the beginning, He would love him even to the end." Their love to Lazarus (tender, unspeakably tender as it was one of the loveliest types of human affection)--was at best an _earthly love_--finite--imperfect--fitful--changing--perishable. But the love they invoked was undying and everlasting, superior to all vacillation--enduring as eternity.
It is ours "to take encouragement in prayer from God only;"--to plead nothing of our own--our poor devotedness, or our unworthy services; they are rather arguments for our condemnation;--but _His_ promises are all "Yea, and amen." They never fail. His name is "a strong tower," running into which the righteous are safe. That tower is garrisoned and bulwarked by the attributes of His own everlasting nature. Among these attributes not the least glorious is His _Love_--_that_ unfathomable love which dwelt in His bosom from all eternity, and which is immutably pledged never to be taken from His people!
Man's love to his God is like the changing sand--_His_ is like the solid rock. Man's love is like the passing meteor with its fitful gleam. _His_ like the fixed stars, shining far above, clear and serene, from age to age, in their own changeless firmament.
Do we know anything of the words of this message? Could it be written on our hearts in life? Were we to die, could it be inscribed on our tombs, "This is one whom _Jesus loved_?"
Happy assurance! The pure spirits who bend before the throne know no happier. The archangels--the chieftains among principalities and powers, can claim no higher privilege, no loftier badge of glory!
Love is the atmosphere they breathe. It is the grand moral law of gravitation in the heavenly economy. God, the central sun of light, and joy, and glory, keeping by this great motive principle every spiritual planet in its orbit, "for _God is love_."
That love is not confined to heaven. It may be foretasted here. The sick man of Bethany knew of it, and exulted in it. Though in the moment of dissolution he had to mourn the personal absence of his Lord, yet "believing" in that love, he "rejoiced with joy unspeakable and full of glory." His sisters, as they stood in sorrowing emotion by his dying couch, and thought of that hallowed fraternal bond which was about so soon to be dissolved, could triumph in the thought of an affection nobler and better which knit him and them to the Brother of brothers--and which, unlike any earthly tie, was indissoluble.
And what was experienced in that lowly Bethany home, may be experienced by us.
That love in its wondrous manifestation is confined to no limits, no age, no peculiar circumstances. Many a Lazarus, pining in want, who can claim no heritage but poverty, no home but cottage walls, or who, stretched on a bed of protracted sickness, is heard saying in the morning, "Would God it were evening! and in the evening, Would God it were morning!" if he have that love reigning in his heart, he has a possession outweighing the wealth of worlds!
What a message, too, of consolation is here to the _sick_! How often are those chained down year after year to some aching pillow, worn, weary, shattered in body, depressed in spirit,--how apt are they to indulge in the sorrowful thought, "Surely God cannot care for _me_!" What! Jesus think of this wasted frame--these throbbing temples--these powerless limbs--this decaying mind! I feel like a wreck on the desert shore--beyond the reach of His glance--beneath the notice of His pitying eye! Nay, thou poor desponding one, He _does_ cherish, He _does_ remember thee!--"Lord, _he whom Thou lovest_ is sick." Let this motto-verse be inscribed on thy Bethany chamber. The Lord _loves_ His sick ones, and He often chastens them with sickness, just _because_ He loves them. If these pages be now traced by some dim eyes that have been for long most familiar with the sickly glow of the night-lamp--the weary vigils of pain and languor and disease--an exile from a busy world, or a still more unwilling alien from the holy services of the sanctuary--oh! think of Him who _loves_ thee, who loved thee _into_ this sickness, and will love thee _through_ it, till thou standest in that unsuffering, unsorrowing world, where sickness is unknown! Think of Lazarus in _his_ chamber, and the plea of the sisters in behalf of their prostrate brother, "Lord, come to the sick one, _whom Thou lovest_."
Believe it, the very continuance of this sickness is a pledge of His love. You may be often tempted to say with Gideon, "If the Lord be with me, why has _all_ this befallen me?" Surely if my Lord loved me, He would long ere this have hastened to my relief, rebuked this sore disease, and raised me up from this bed of languishing? Did you ever note, in the 6th verse of this Bethany chapter, the strangely beautiful connexion of the word THEREFORE? The Evangelist had, in the preceding verse, recorded the affection Jesus bore for that honoured family. "Now Jesus _loved_ Martha and her sister and Lazarus." "When He had heard THEREFORE that he was sick,"--what did He do? "Fled on wings of love to the succour of His loved friend; hurried in eager haste by the shortest route from Bethabara?" We expect to hear so, as the natural deduction from John's premises. How we might think could love give a more truthful exponent of its reality than hastening instantaneously to the relief of one so dear to Him? But not so! "When He had heard THEREFORE that he was sick, _He abode two days still in the same place where He was_!" Yes, there is _tarrying_ love as well as _succouring_ love. He _sent_ that sickness because He loves thee; He _continues_ it because He loves thee. He heaps fresh fuel on the furnace-fires till the gold is refined. He appoints, not one, but "many days where neither sun nor stars appear, and no small tempest lies on us," that the ship may be lightened, and faith exercised; our bark hastened by these rough blasts nearer shore, and the Lord glorified, who rules the raging of the sea. "We expect," says Evans, "the blessing or relief in _our_ way; He chooses to bestow it in _His_."
Reader! let this ever be your highest ambition, to love and to be loved of Jesus. If we are covetous to have the regard and esteem of the great and good on earth, what is it to share the fellowship and kindness of Him, in comparison with whose love the purest earthly affection is but a passing shadow!
Ah! to be without that love, is to be a little world ungladdened by its central sun, wandering on in its devious pathway of darkness and gloom. Earthly things may do well enough when the world is all bright and shining--when prosperity sheds its bewitching gleam around you, and no symptoms of the cloudy and dark day are at hand; but the hour is coming (it may come soon, it _must_ come at some time) when your Bethany-home will be clouded with deepening death-shadows--when, like Lazarus, you will be laid on a dying couch, and what will avail you then? Oh, nothing, _nothing_! if bereft of that love whose smile is heaven. If you are left in the agony of desolation to utter importunate pleadings to an _Unknown Saviour_, a _Stranger God_--if the dark valley be entered uncheered by the thought of a loving Redeemer dispelling its gloom, and waiting on the Canaan side to shew you the path of life!
Let the home of your hearts be often open, as was the home of Lazarus, to the visits of Jesus in the day of brightness; and _then_, when the hour of sorrow and trial unexpectedly arises, you will know where to find your Lord--where to send your prayer-message for Him to come to your relief.
Yes! He _will_ come! It will be in His own way, but His joyous footfall _will_ be heard! He is not like Baal, "slumbering and sleeping, or taking a journey" when the voice of importunate prayer ascends from the depths of yearning hearts! If, instead of at once hastening back to Bethany, He "abides still for two days where He was"--if He linger among the mountain-glens of distant Gilead, instead of, as we would expect, hastening to the cry and succour of cherished friendship, and to ward off the dart of the inexorable foe--be assured there must be a reason for this strange procrastination--there must be an unrevealed cause which the future will in due time disclose and unravel. All the recollections of the past forbid one unrighteous surmise on His tried faithfulness. "_Now, Jesus loved Lazarus_," is a soft pillow on which to repose;--raising the sorrowing spirit above the unkind insinuation, "My Lord hath forsaken me, and my God hath forgotten me."
If He linger, it is to try and test the faith of His people. If He let loose the storm, and suffer it to sweep with a vengeance apparently uncontrolled, it is that these living trees may strike their roots firmer and deeper in Himself--the Rock of eternal ages. Trust Him where you cannot trace Him. Not one promise of His can come to nought. The channel may have continued long dry--the streams of Lebanon may have failed--the cloud has been laden, but no shower descends--the barren waste is unwatered--the windows of heaven seem hopelessly closed. Nay, nay! Though "the vision tarry," yet if you "wait for it" the gracious assurance will be fulfilled in your experience--"The Lord is good to them that wait for Him, to the soul that seeketh Him." The fountain of love pent up in His heart will in due time gush forth--the apparently unacknowledged prayer will be crowned with a gracious answer. In His own good time sweet tones of celestial music will be wafted to your ear--"It is the voice of the Beloved!--lo, He cometh leaping upon the mountains, skipping upon the hills!" If you are indeed the child of God, as Lazarus was, remember this for your comfort in your dying hour, that whether the prayers of sorrowing friends for your recovery be answered or no, the Lord of love has at least _heard_ them--the messenger has not been mocked--the prayer-message has not been spurned or forgotten! I repeat it, He _will_ answer, but it will be _in His own way_! If the Bethany-home be ungladdened by Lazarus restored, it will exult through tears in the thought of Lazarus glorified. And the Marthas and Marys, as they go often unto the grave to weep there, will read, as they weep, in the holy memories of the departed, that which will turn tears into joy--"_Jesus loved him._"
VI.
THE SLEEPER.
"_Our friend Lazarus sleepeth._"--The hopes and fears which alternately rose and fell in the bosoms of the sisters, like the surges of the ocean, are now at rest. Oft and again, we may well believe, had they gone, like the mother of Sisera, to the lattice to watch the return of the messenger, or, what was better, to hail their expected Lord. Gazing on the pale face at their side, and remembering that ere now the tidings of his illness must have reached Bethabara, they may have even expected to witness the power of a distant _word_;--to behold the hues of returning health displacing the ghastly symptoms of dissolution. But in vain! The curtain has fallen! Their season of aching anxiety is at an end. Their worst fears are realised.--"Lazarus sleepeth."
How calm, how tranquil that departure! Never did sun sink so gently in its crimson couch--never did child, nestling in its mother's bosom, close its eyes more sweetly!
"His summon'd breath went forth as peacefully As folds the spent rose when the day is done."
Befitting close to a calm and noiseless existence! It would seem as if the guardian angels who had been hovering round his death-pillow had well-nigh reached the gates of glory ere the sorrowing survivors discovered that the clay tabernacle was all that was left of a "brother beloved!"
From the abrupt manner in which, in the course of the narrative, our Lord makes the announcement to His disciples,[10] we are almost led to surmise that He did so at the very moment of the spirit's dismissal--the Redeemer speaks while the eyelids are just closing, and the emancipated soul is winging its arrowy flight up to the spirit-land!
_Death_ a SLEEP!--How beautiful the image! Beautifully true, and _only_ true regarding the Christian. It is here where the true and the false--Christianity and Paganism--meet together in impressive and significant contrast. The one comes to the dark river with her pale, sickly lamp. It refuses to burn--the damps of Lethe dim and quench it. Philosophy tries to discourse on death as a "stern necessity"--of the duty of passing heroically into this mysterious, oblivion-world--taking with bold heart "the leap in the dark," and confronting, as we best can, blended images of annihilation and terror.
The Gospel takes us to the tomb, and shews us Death vanquished, and the Grave spoiled. Death truly is in itself an unwelcome messenger at our door. It is the dark event in this our earth,--the deepest of the many deep shadows of an otherwise fair creation--a cold, cheerless avalanche lying at the heart of humanity, freezing up the gushing fountains of joyous life. But the Gospel shines, and the cold iceberg melts. The Sun of Righteousness effects what philosophy, with all its boasted power, never could. Jesus is the abolisher of Death. He has taken all that is terrible from it. It is said of some venomous insects that when they once inflict a sting, they are deprived of any future power to hurt. Death left his envenomed sting in the body of the great victim of Calvary. It was thenceforward disarmed of its fearfulness! So complete, indeed, is the Redeemer's victory over this last enemy, that He Himself speaks of it as no longer a reality, but a shadow--a phantom-foe from which we have nothing to dread. "Whosoever believeth in Me shall _never die_." "If a man keep My sayings, he shall _never see death_." These are an echo of the sweet Psalmist's beautiful words, a transcript of his expressive figure when he pictures the Dark Valley to the believer as the Valley of a "_shadow_." The substance is removed! When the gaunt spirit meets him on the midnight waters, he may, like the disciples at first, be led to "cry out for fear." But a gentle voice of love and tenderness rebukes his dread, and calms his misgivings--"It is I! be not afraid!" Yes, here is the wondrous secret of a calm departure--the "sleep" of the believer in death. It is the name and presence of JESUS. There may be many accompaniments of weakness and prostration, pain and suffering, in that final conflict; the mind may be a wreck--memory may have abdicated her seat--the loving salutation of friends may be returned only with vacant looks, and the hand be unable to acknowledge the grasp of affection--but there is strength in that presence, and music in that name to dispel every disquieting, anxious thought. Clung to as a sheet-anchor in life, He will never leave the soul in the hour of dissolution to the mercy of the storm. Amid sinking nature, He is faithful that promised--"Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."--"Thou art with me," says Lady Powerscourt--"this is the rainbow of light thrown across the valley, for there is no need of sun or moon where covenant-love illumes."