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THE SAVIOUR’S PRAYER FOR THE
FIRST COMMUNICANTS
I pray not that Thou
shouldest take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldest keep them from
the evil.—St John xvii. 15.
These words deserve our special attention on an evening like this. It is not
merely the kindness and the wisdom that shine through them, that I should
wish you to observe. But when we look at them, we find that there is a great
principle involved in them; and a principle which runs through all God's
dealings with His children and servants. God's plan with His Christian
people, is not to withdraw them from danger, but to shield them in it: not
to remove them from labour, but to strengthen them for it: not to keep them
entirely free from sorrow, care, and trial, but rather to comfort under
these, and turn all these into a heavenly discipline. Even worldly wisdom
can see that it is a nobler thing to strengthen the back, than to lighten
the burden: it is worthier to give more power to the arm, than to lessen the
work it has to do: it is better to strengthen the ship till it shall be able
to face the hurricane, than to keep it always sailing upon a breezeless sea.
In many respects, and for many reasons, it is better to bring up the
strength to do and bear, than to let down the standard of what is to be done
and borne. And so the Christian principle is, that we must labour to enter
into rest,— that through much tribulation we must enter into the Kingdom of
God,—that we must pass to that country where there is no darkness of night,
through the dark valley of the shadow of death.
Our Blessed Saviour, as all here well know, after addressing His apostles in
that most beautiful discourse which is recorded in the three chapters which
>**ec^de that in which my text stands, lifted up His eyes to heaven, and
poured out that kind, wise, comforting Intercessory Prayer. He is about to
leave His chosen friends in a world of sin and sorrow: and He thinks mainly
of them, and not of His own approaching agony and death. How often have we
all lingered upon these wonderful words; wherein the Redeemer asks that so
much of good and so much of glory may be the appointed portion of those He
is leaving behind! He says much of an evil world in which they were to be
left: a world that would hate His friends because they were not of it: a
world in which they never would find the rest, the holiness, the happiness,
the home, which He prayed they might yet enjoy : a world from which He was
Himself going soon away; and from which it might have seemed a blessed and a
happy thing that they should all go together. But the Saviour's purpose and
the Saviour's prayer were not like that. He did not wish to withdraw the
labourer from the burden and heat of the day : He did not intend to remove
the soldier from the field on which he must fight the good fight of faith:
it was no plan of His to take away the apostles from a world in which they
were to preach the gospel to perishing souls, and to testify of Christ’s
work and resurrection. But yet the wind must be tempered to the shorn lamb:
He would not cast them forth upon this world at its worst, to bear the brunt
of whatever storm might blow. The prayer was as kind and thoughtful as if it
had asked that they might enter into heaven at once: but still it went upon
that great principle on which all God’s dealings with His children go. The
Redeemer prayed for His apostles, and prayed with all the tenderness of the
dying father who is leaving his little children behind: yet His words are,
‘I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou
shouldst keep them from the evil! ’
You see, there were the two good things which the Redeemer might have prayed
for. He wished well to His disciples: and the great thought which to beings
like us is implied in wishing well and in being well, is Deliverance from
Evil. The first and most obvious way was by removing them altogether from a
world of evil: and if there had been no good end for them to serve by
remaining in this world, that might have been the better way. The second
way, a way demanding greater skill, greater wisdom, greater power,—was to
let them stay in this evil world,—let them remain where they would be
surrounded by evil, pressed by evil, assailed on every side by evil,—and yet
to keep them from it all. And that would be the God-like way. That would be
the way which would consist with all the Almighty’s ways of dealing with His
believing people below. And that would be the way, too, in which every good
result would be secured that would follow from their remaining in this
world. There was a work for the apostles to do here. There were weighty
reasons why it was desirable that they should remain in this world. They
could hot be spared, just then. It would have been sad for you and me, had
they gone when their Master went. And so Christ expressly declared which of
the two good wishes He would wish : which of the two good things He would
ask for. Not the first; but the second. Not calm; but strength to bear the
storm. Not entire removal from danger; but safety amid it all. Not to leave
this earth ; but to wait and do their work in it. I pray not That thou
shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from
the evil!'
Now you will easily see that there was weighty reason why the apostles
should not at that time have been taken out of the world. No doubt, at the
first glance, you would say that it would have been a happy thing for
themselves, if they had been spared all the toils and sufferings, the
persecution and the martyrdom, which awaited them after the departure of
their Lord: and no doubt, had it been left to themselves to decide, they
would rather have shrunk away from the strife, and entered at once upon thy
rest. But where would have been the Christian^ Church, if the men had been
removed from this & world who were to plant and train it? The world could
not spare them: God had a great work for them to accomplish here. The New
Testament was yet to write: the Holy Spirit was to descend : the gospel was
to be preached by them to many, who should believe through their word. For
our sake, my hearers, it was needful that they should remain here when their
Lord departed. It was needful for the diffusion of the knowledge of the holy
religion which the Redeemer lived and died to teach: it was needful to save
the great work of redemption, which had just been accomplished, from being
lost in forgetfulness. The foundation had been laid, and now it was for them
to build upon it. And even for their own sake, it was better that they
should face the battle than fly from it: their heavenly crown was growing
brighter for all the warfare and all the toil they underwent. O surely a
happier welcome and a more glorious place would wait them, when at the close
of their allotted pilgrimage they left this world, than would have waited
them had they left it then!
But the apostles, not at that moment to be taken out of the world, have been
taken out of it long ago : their race is run and their warfare is ended; and
they are once more with their Lord at last. And though it never can be a
thing devoid of interest to trace the why and wherefore, so far as we can
trace them, of every arrangement made by the Almighty, still you would say
that the question of the reasons why the apostles were to remain when their
Master went, is now, so to speak, out of date: it is comparatively of little
practical moment to justify a state of things which no longer exists. A
greater and more pressing interest appears to invest the text, where wc
generalize the principle implied in it; and regard il not as something said
of the apostles only, but as something said concerning all believers. And
although our Lord did not in express words say as much of all believers, you
need not be told that bj the arrangements of His providence He is daily
telling us that His plan is not to remove true Christians from this world,
but to keep them from the evil that is in this world. It need not be said
that, to the believer, 'to die is gain:' and ‘to depart and be with Christ
is far better' than to toil and suffer here, ever apart from the fearful
risk of finally falling away that hangs over us so long as we continue here,
exposed to temptations from within and from without. Anc so, there can be no
doubt at all, that to the Christiar himself it might be a happy thing, once
he was assuridly in Christ, to be taken out of this world and inally
delivered from all its ‘evil'. Heaven is better :han earth; and assuredly it
would be gain to ex-?hange earth for heaven. But it is not to be so. The
best we can hope is to be left for God’s time in :his evil world, but to be
kept from its evil: and surely it will be interesting for us to think this
evening why we are to be left upon a stormy ocean when we might be taken
into the haven at once. Why is it that Christ’s prayer for all His people
may be understood :o be that stated in the text? And why is it, therefore,
:hat in all but the most extraordinary circumstances, t is hardly
justifiable for the believer to offer for himself any other prayer than that
it may please his God :o take him indeed when His good time comes; but
meanwhile, if not to ‘take him out of the world' thn to ‘keep him from the
evil’?
Let it be said, that the phrase ‘to take out the world ’ may be variously
understood. No doubt, what Jesus meant when He said these words, was the
removal by death: it was the taking away from earth to heaven. No doubt that
is the first thought which would suggest itself when we apply this text to
believers now. And so, understanding it thus in the mean time, can you not
see why it is better that believers should be spared in this world but kept
from its evil, than that they should be taken out of this world at once?
What kind of world would this be if all the true Christians were taken out
of it? Very truly has it been said that ‘ many good people are spared to
live, because they cannot be spared to die/ This world could not do without
the true believers in Christ: they are the salt of the earth, that save the
human race from utter corruption. Not to speak of the vast effect of direct
religious instruction : not to speak of the many schemes of usefulness, and
institutions of charity, which are founded on Christianity or they have no
foundation —which never were in this world till Christianity came to it: not
to speak of the direct doings of Christianity, as such : I say that you
cannot even conceive the indirect influence which Christianity and Christian
people wield even over such as never pretend to be Christians. The world
would become a den of thieves, a cage of savage wild beasts, if all the
Christians were taken out of it! This dark earth needs all the light they
can yield it! For God to take His own people out of this world, would just
mean that God had given up this world,—had cast it off, and would care for
it no more. It would just mean that hell was to begin below, and begin at
once. When sometimes we hear it said that Christianity has proved somewhat
of a failure—has not improved rnankind so much as with its high pretensions
it Ought to have done—it is forgotten, surely, how O^uch worse men might
possibly and would certainly ^ave been, but for the constant presence among
them of this great spiritual disinfectant. And not only I may we say that
for this worlds sake it is needful that true believers should not be taken
out of it: we may affirm that it is needful for God's honour that they
should for a while continue here. God's glory can be vindicated in either of
two ways; by the punishment of the guilty, or by the salvation of the
guilty: but He has chosen that it shall be vindicated-in the milder way; and
so He is e not willing thatr^ any should perish, but that all should come to
'repentance.' So you see that God's glory and man's-salvation are bound up
together: not without meaning does the first answer of the Shorter Catechism
combine the two great ends of man's happiness and God's honour; telling us
that the great purpose of our being here is to 'glorify God and enjoy Him
for ever.' Whatever serves the. one end serves the other: whatever conduces
to the one thing conduces to the other too. The utter perdition of mankind,
which would necessarily follow from the removal of God's people from this
world, would mean that x God's greatest work, that work which had cost Him
most thought, and time, and work, yea, and suffering through the medium of
flesh and blood, had proved a wretched failure. What wonder, then, that our
Lord, in the close prospect of His agony and His death, should expressly
disavow any desire for that which might indeed save His people from a few
days or years of trial, but which would make His agony and death prove to
have been all in vain! What wonder if, as He reckoned up the measure in
which man's salvation and God's glory were bound up and linked with His
people's continuance on earth, He should exclaim almost with the hurried air
of one who fears that what He has already said should be understood as
meaning more than He intends,—'I pray not that Thou shouldst take them out
of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep them from the evil!'
But I have said to you that when we speak being taken out of this world, or
of withdrawin^^^ from this world, the phrase need not of necessity^^f mean
that we should quit the world by death. There^^* have been men who have
turned their back upon that world even while they wore its earth around
them.. Such a thing may be, as ‘the world forgetting, by^^B^ the world
forgot/ to grow, without dying, as dead to the world as though we breathed
its air no more. —Like the stricken deer, that left the herdmen. I have
broken away from the business and bustle time, and thought that in the
monastic shade there I could more perfectly serve the Redeemer, and live
more completely above the things of sense. It is not straining the meaning
of this text to affirm, that it, along with a host of others, teaches us
that such is not our Master's will. For what did He ask, for those for whom
He asked His best ? Not to be ‘ taken out of the world/ but to be ‘kept from
the evil.'
Not that we should shrink away from our part in that worldly work which must
be done by some, but that we should see to it that our daily life shall be
hallowed by Christian principle, and that wherein we are called, therein we
abide with God/ There is no calling, so it be a calling not in itself a
sinful one, in which we may not keep our religion by us. I need not say,
that in this country we are exposed to no temptation to fly from common
business to such religious retreats as I have named: and I do not know that
in the case of any in whom the mind is not truly morbid, there will
now-a-days be found any actual impulse to retire from the active duties of
life for religion's sake. Few, very few, not under the influence of
temporary depression or excitement, will seriously think of turning away
from an honest worldly calling because they think it is not a Christian's
part to be there. The difficulty is in theory rather than in practice: it is
rather in the head than in the life.
Yet no doubt there are many people who have in their mind a lurking fancy,
that there is something not religious in common drudgery and care. And we
see this fancy looking out in the way in which people divide affairs into
sacred and secular; and talk of a man’s worldly duties and his religious
duties, as if these were things quite different, and indeed in some degree
opposed to each other. People think it is religious work to pray, to read
the Bible, to go to church : but it is worldly work to dig your garden, or
to plough your field, or to walk down to the Exchange, or to go into Court.
They have, in fact, a lurking fancy which this text shows is wrong, that
religion consists in getting ( out of the world/ Nay, it is not so. Religion
abides not in going out of the world, but in € keeping from the evil/ An
action or a life is religious not from anything in itself, but according as
it is done from religious principle. A man may pray, and read the Bible, and
go to church, all with such a spirit as shall make it all thoroughly worldly
work : and, on the other hand, he may dig, and plough, and transact
mercantile affairs, with such a spirit as shall make it all thoroughly
religious work. I do not deny that in a fancy picture, it may look the finer
thing that the believer should be given up exclusively to his Christian
duties, standing apart from and eievated above the little prosaic cares of
this world, and 'having his conversation in heaven.' And so the ancient
Church held it, that it better befitted those whose souls were to be much
exercised in sacred thoughts and duties, to have nothing to do with
sublunary matters at all. But all this is a wrong view of things. All this
goes on the false supposition, that you cannot be ‘kept from the evil'
unless you are ‘taken out of the world.' Surely it is Platonism rather than
Christianity to hold that there is anything necessarily debasing or
materializing about the cares of daily life. All these cares take their
character from the spirit with which we pass through them. The simple French
monk, five hundred years since, who acted as cook to his brethren, indicated
the Christian's true path when he wrote, ‘I put my little cake on the fire
for the sake of Christ:' and the quaint Anglican divine and poet, more
gracefully, has shown how, as the eye may either look on glass, or look
through it, we may look no farther than the daily task, or may look through
it to something nobler beyond:
Teach me, my God and King,
In all things Thee to see ;
And what I do in anything,
To do it as for Thee.
All may of Thee partake :
Nothing can be so mean,
Which with this tincture, for Thy sake,
Will not grow bright and clean.
And so you see that in this sense, too, so long as God shall please to
continue us in this life, our desire and prayer ought to be, not that we may
be entirely removed from worldly business, but that we may be kept from any
evil which attaches to it,—so that its cares may not choke the word in our
heart,— so that though in the world we may not be of it,— so that we may not
grow worldly in that seuse in which to be worldly unfits the soul for a
better world beyond the grave. Do not think that in your ordinary work you
may not be serving God: do not be surprised though you, a Christian man,
should have to hold much intercourse with people who are not Christians, and
who if they go on as they are going will surely end in woe. It would be a
pleasanter thing, indeed, you would say, if ygu never needed to speak at all
to any man who seems to be advancing to perdition: it would be a happier
thing, you might fancy, to hold the Jerusalem above ever in your eye and in
your heart: but that is not your Saviour's will. € I pray not that Thou
shouldst take them out of the world, but that Thou shouldst keep
them from the evil/ Better for the world that it should be so: better for
the world’s business, better for the world’s society: it is hard to reckon
how much the presence of true believers does to keep up the standard of even
mercantile morality: and it is hard to say how much it does to purify the
tone even of that worldly society in which all mention of such solemn truths
as that man is a dying creature, and that man is a sinful creature, is a
thing forbidden by canons which, though unwritten and unspoken, are yet
perfectly understood. Better for God’s glory and God’s cause on earth, as we
have already seen : and now let it be added, better for believers
themselves.
It has been maintained that such is the nobility of conflict and struggle,
and such the accession of happiness in the other world which is allotted to
the sun.which has 'overcome,’ that it would be better, if I were given to
the Christian to decide for himself,—-— better to remain in this world, only
kept from its evil than even to leave it by death and enter into heaven.
That we dare not say : but that we need not debate; since it is agreed on
all hands that it is not for us to decide whether or not we shall in that
solemn fashion quit this world. Whether better for ourselves or not, there
can be no doubt that it is for us to remain patiently in this world in so
far as that means that we shall breathe its air till we are called away by
death. But when we think of the other way of leaving the world, the
voluntary way, the way by entire withdrawal from worldly business and
society;—then, indeed, we can venture to affirm without doubt that even for
the-believer himself it is better, far better, that he should not seek to do
so. He cannot do it, without flying in the face of the manifest intention of
his Maker: he cannot do it, without oowardly shrinking away from the work
and warfare xvhich God set him to do: And all the cares of even the busiest
life may be so sanctified by the Holy Spirit as to make them work together
for the Christian's eternal weal. It will be but a poor and sickly type of
Christianity which will grow up in the hothouse atmosphere of entire
withdrawal from active life. The mind grows morbid in too much retirement;
and it is needful to maintain its healthy tone that we should bear the brunt
of the rough realities of life. What monstrous errors in doctrine, yea, what
fearful lapses into sin, have come of men fancying that they knew better
than Christ, and turning His prayer to the very opposite of His meaning,
saying virtually, ‘We pray that Thou wouldst take us out of the world, for
thus only canst Thou keep us from the evil.' No rude winds blow away
unwholesome damps: the cheek will be pale which no cold blast has ever
visited: the frame will be weak and nerveless which has not been strung by
constant toil. We do not want a hot-house religion: we want what will stand
the daily wear of life. It was the purpose of the Author of our holy
religion to give us in it something that should brace the nerve and muscle
alike of the body and the soul. And so I say to you who have come from the
Holy Table, Do your work, your daily work: do it faithfully and honestly and
diligently: and comfort yourself with the firm belief, that if you do it in
a Christian spirit, it is a Christian work you do. If you do it, mind, in a
Christian spirit—everything turns upon that. All that the believer does
should be sacred work, being done for the Redeemer's sake. But remember that
you are surrounded with temptations: the Evil One himself, and all that evil
in which he delights, are always on the watch, ever seeking to lead you
wrong. Even your daily work, though right and honest, may become a
temptation, if you are led to give to it more care and earnestness than you
give to working out the salvation of your immortal soul. Yea, the home where
your best affections centre, and the dear ones you love, may becor^ve a sore
temptation, if you are led to put down from the throne of your heart and to
place them there: for they have grown to be idols then How earnest should be
our prayer, that we may be kept from the evil seeing that there is scarce
thing in this world from which evil influences not come! The very
Communion-table, the ver^^ house of God, may become a snare to us, if we
make sure, from the regularity of our appearance there, that we are better
and safer than God knows us to be! Yet be encouraged, believers: you were
not forgotten in your Master's gracious prayer. He knew the world in which
He was leaving His own: He knew it was an evil world: but He knew that its
evil was not so strong but that the Blessed Spirit could bring them safely
through. He was anxious for them,-kindly anxious,—but, after all, not much
afraid. He was content to run the risk, and He left them behind— 'pray' He
said, 'not that Thou shouldst get them out of the world, but that Thou
shouldst keep them from the evil!'
Now unto Him that is able to keep us from failing and to present us
faultless in the presence of His Glory with exceeding joy: To the only wise
God our Saviour, be glory and majesty, dominion and power, now and ever.
Amen. |
