PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIV
Alexander Maclaren, 1826-1910 · 238,680 words · 333 reading sections
The Destroyers And The Restorer
II. Now let us turn to the other aspects of these words. I think we see here, in the next place, a prophetic warning of the history of the men to whom He was speaking. There must be a connection between the interpretation of the words which our Evangelist assures us is the correct one, and the interpretation which wou…
715 wordsSECTION 62The Destroyers And The Restorer
Christ has builded up the Church on His Resurrection. On His Resurrection, I say, for there is nothing else on which it could rest. If men ask me what is the great evidence of Christ's Resurrection, my answer is—the existence in the world of a Church. Where did it come from? How is it possible to conceive that without …
663 wordsSECTION 63Teacher Or Saviour?
And yet more than 'forty and six years' will that temple have to be 'in building.' It is a lifelong task till the top-stone be brought forth. Only let us remember this: Christ, who is Architect and Builder, Foundation and Top-stone; ay! and Deity indwelling in the temple, and building it by His indwelling—this Christ i…
797 wordsSECTION 64Teacher Or Saviour?
Nicodemus 'came to Jesus by night,' and therein condemned himself. He said, 'Rabbi, we know.' There is more than a _soupcon_ of patronage in that. He is giving Jesus Christ a certificate, duly signed and sealed by Rabbinical authority. He evidently thinks that it is no small matter that he and some of his fellows shoul…
723 wordsSECTION 65Teacher Or Saviour?
I need not remind you of how noticeable it is that at this very early stage in our Lord's ministry there were a sufficient number of miracles done to be qualified by the Evangelist as 'many,' and to have been a very powerful factor in bringing about this real, though imperfect, faith. John has only told us of one mirac…
794 wordsSECTION 66Teacher Or Saviour?
The deepest ground of that necessity lies in the fact of sin. Brother, we can only verify our Lord's assertion by honestly searching the depths of our own hearts, and looking at ourselves in the light of God. Think what is meant when we say, 'He is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all.' Think of that absolute purity…
735 wordsSECTION 67Teacher Or Saviour?
III. And now, dear friends, one last word. Notice when and where this imperfect disciple was transformed into a courageous confessor. We do not know what came immediately of this conversation. We only know that some considerable time after, Nicodemus had not screwed himself up to the point of acknowledging out and out…
515 wordsSECTION 68Wind And Spirit
'The wind bloweth where it listeth, and them hearest the sound thereof, but canst not tell whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit.'—JOHN iii. 8. Perhaps a gust of night wind swept round the chamber where Nicodemus sat listening to Jesus, and gave occasion for this condensed …
702 wordsSECTION 69Wind And Spirit
But there are two sorts of 'listing.' There is the listing which is the yielding to the mob of ignoble passions and clamant desires of the animal nature within us, and there is the 'listing' which is obeying the impulses of a higher will, that has been blended with ours. And there you come to the secret of true freedom…
863 wordsSECTION 70Wind And Spirit
II. Here we have this new life in its manifestation. 'Thou hearest the sound,' or, as the Word might literally be rendered, the 'voice thereof,' from the little whisper among the young soft leaves of the opening beeches in our woods to-day, up to the typhoon that spreads devastation over leagues of tropical ocean. Tha…
743 wordsSECTION 71Wind And Spirit
The world does not know where that Christian life comes from. If you are a Christian, you ought to bear in your character a certain indefinable something that will suggest to the people round you that the secret power of your life is other than the power which moulds theirs. You may be naturalised, and you may speak fa…
373 wordsSECTION 72The Brazen Serpent
'Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness.'—JOHN iii. 14. This is the second of the instances in this Gospel in which our Lord lays His hand upon an institution or incident of the Old Testament, as shadowing forth some aspect of His work. In the first of these instances, under the image of the ladder that Jacob s…
665 wordsSECTION 73The Brazen Serpent
So, if we accept the historical veracity of this Gospel, we here perceive Jesus Christ, at the very beginning of His career, and before the dispositions of the nation towards Him had developed themselves in action, discerning its end, and seeing, gaunt and grim before Him, the Cross that was lifted up on Calvary. Enthu…
1,026 wordsSECTION 74The Brazen Serpent
II. Notice, again, how we have here the look at the uplifted Son of Man. I do not need to paint for you what your own imaginations can sufficiently paint for yourselves—the scene in the wilderness where the dying men from the very outskirts of the camp could turn a filmy eye to the brazen serpent hanging in their mids…
703 wordsSECTION 75The Brazen Serpent
III. And now, lastly, here we have the life that comes with a look at the lifted-up Son of Man. Those of you who are using the Revised Version will see that there is a little change made here, partly by the exclusion of a clause and partly by changing the order of the words. The alteration is not only nearer the origi…
565 wordsSECTION 76Christ'S Musts
'… Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.'—JOHN iii. 14. I have chosen this text for the sake of one word in it, that solemn 'must' which was so often on our Lord's lips. I have no purpose of dealing with the remainder of this clause, nor indeed with it at all, except as one instance of His use of the expression. B…
721 wordsSECTION 77Christ'S Musts
We cannot see all the grounds of that solemn imperative, but this we can see, that it was because of the requirements of the divine righteousness, and because of the necessities of sinful men. And so Christ's was no martyr's death, who had to die as the penalty of the faithful discharge of His duty. It was not the pena…
826 wordsSECTION 78Christ'S Musts
So then, brethren, what about our grudging service? What about our reluctant obedience? What about the widespread mistake that religion prohibits wished-for things and enforces unwelcome duties? If my Christianity does not make me recoil from what it forbids, and spring eagerly to what it commends, my Christianity is o…
682 wordsSECTION 79Christ'S Musts
IV. Lastly, we have Christ applying the greatest principle to the smallest duty. 'Zaccheus! make haste and come down; to-day I _must_ abide in thy house.' Why must He? Because Zaccheus was to be saved, and was worth saving. What was the 'must'? To stop for an hour or two on His road to the Cross. So He teaches us that…
455 wordsSECTION 80The Lake And The River
'God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.'—JOHN iii. 16. I venture to say that my text shows us a lake, a river, a pitcher, and a draught. 'God so loved the world'—that is the lake. A lake makes a river for itself—'God so …
686 wordsSECTION 81The Lake And The River
Now, there is one other suggestion that I would make to you before I go on, and that is that all through the New Testament, but especially in John's Gospel, 'the world' does not only mean men, but _sinful_ men, men separated from God. And the great and blessed truth taught here is that, however I may drag myself away f…
704 wordsSECTION 82The Lake And The River
Now there are a great many people who would like to put the middle part of this great text of ours into a parenthesis. They say that we should bring the first words and the last words of this text together, and never mind all that lies between. People who do not like the doctrine of the Cross would say, 'God so loved t…
745 wordsSECTION 83The Lake And The River
IV. The draught. Finally, we have here the draught of living water. Did you ever think why our text puts 'should not perish' first? Is it not because, unless we put our trust in Him, we shall certainly perish, and because, therefore, that certainty of perishing must be averted before we can have 'everlasting life'? N…
423 wordsSECTION 84The Wearied Christ
'Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well…. He said unto them, I have meat to eat that ye know not of.'—JOHN iv. 6,32. Two pictures result from these two verses, each striking in itself, and gaining additional emphasis by the contrast. It was during a long hot day's march that the tired ba…
767 wordsSECTION 85The Wearied Christ
Nor does that exhausted Figure, reclining on Jacob's Well, preach to us only what _He_ was. It proclaims to us likewise what _we_ should be. For if His work was carried on to the edge of His capacity, and if He shrank not from service because it involved toil, what about the professing followers of Jesus Christ, who th…
687 wordsSECTION 86The Wearied Christ
Note the distinction between doing the will and perfecting the work. That implies that Jesus Christ, like us, reached forward, in each successive act of obedience to the successive manifestations of the Father's will, to something still undone. The work will never be perfected or finished except on condition of continu…
684 wordsSECTION 87'Give Me To Drink'
I commend to you, brethren, the story of our text, in its most literal application, as well as in the loftier spiritual lessons that may be drawn from it. To be near Christ, and to desire to live for Him, delivers us from dependence upon earthly things; and in those who thus do live the old word shall be fulfilled, 'Be…
695 wordsSECTION 88'Give Me To Drink'
So, then, here stands, pathetically set forth before us, our Lord's true participation in two of the distinguishing characteristics of our weak humanity—subjection to physical necessities and dependence on kindly help. We find Him weary, hungry, thirsty, sometimes slumbering. And all these instances are documents and p…
655 wordsSECTION 89'Give Me To Drink'
The process by which Jesus gradually unveils His full character to this woman, so unspiritual and unsusceptible as she appeared at first sight to be, is interesting and instructive. It would occupy too much of your time for me to do more than set it before you in the barest outline. Noting the singular divergence betwe…
689 wordsSECTION 90'Give Me To Drink'
He meets this woman's conceptions as He had met those of Nicodemus. To him He had unveiled Himself as the Son of God, and the Son of Man who came down from heaven, and is in heaven, and ascends to heaven. To the woman He reveals Himself as the Messiah, who will tell us all truth, and to both as the Giver of the gift wh…
831 wordsSECTION 91The Gift And The Giver
Brother, answer His proffer of the gift as this woman did: 'Sir, give me this water, that I thirst not; neither go all the way to the world's broken cisterns to draw'; and He will put into your hearts that indwelling fountain of life, so that you may say like this woman's townspeople: 'Now I have heard Him myself, and …
651 wordsSECTION 92The Gift And The Giver
Our Lord, in the subsequent part of this conversation, again touches upon this great metaphor, and suggests one or two characteristics, blessings, and excellences of it. 'It shall be _in_ him,' it is something that we may carry about with us in our hearts, inseparable from our being, free from all possibility of being …
744 wordsSECTION 93The Gift And The Giver
Jesus Christ claims to give God's gifts. He is able to give to that poor, frivolous, impure-hearted and impure-lifed woman, at her request, the eternal life which shall still all the thirst of her soul, that had often in the past been satiated and disgusted, but had never been satisfied by any of its draughts. And He …
707 wordsSECTION 94The Gift And The Giver
III. Again, notice how to get the gift. Christ puts together, as if they were all but contemporaneous, 'thou wouldst have asked of Me,' and 'I would have given thee.' The hand on the telegraph transmits the message, and back, swift as the lightning, flashes the response. The condition, the only condition, and the indi…
666 wordsSECTION 95The Gift And The Giver
But, brethren, there is a worse case than ignorance; there is the case of people that know and refuse, not by reason of imperfect knowledge, but by reason of averted will. And I beseech you to ponder whether that may not be your condition. 'Whosoever _will_, let him come.' 'Ye _will_ not come unto Me that ye might have…
284 wordsSECTION 96The Springing Fountain
'The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water, springing up into everlasting life.'—JOHN iv. 14. There are two kinds of wells, one a simple reservoir, another containing the waters of a spring. It is the latter kind which is spoken about here, as is clear not only from the meaning of the word in the…
787 wordsSECTION 97The Springing Fountain
I am sure I have some such people in my audience, and to them this message comes. You may have, if you will, in your own hearts, a springing fountain of delight and of blessedness which will secure that no unsatisfied desires shall ever torment you. Christ in His fulness, His Spirit, the life that flows from both and i…
857 wordsSECTION 98The Springing Fountain
And there is not only a promise of activity here, but of activity which is its own law and impulse. That is a blessed promise in two ways. In the first place, law will be changed into delight. We shall not be driven by a commandment standing over us with whip and lash, or coming behind us with spur and goad, but that w…
704 wordsSECTION 99The Springing Fountain
III. The last point here is that Christ's gift is a fountain 'springing up into everlasting life.' The water of a fountain rises by its own impulse, but howsoever its silver column may climb it always falls back into its marble basin. But this fountain rises higher, and at each successive jet higher, tending towards, …
738 wordsSECTION 100The Second Miracle
'This is again the second miracle that Jesus did, when He was come out of Judaea into Galilee.'—JOHN iv. 54. The Evangelist evidently intends us to connect together the two miracles in Cana. His object may, possibly, be mainly chronological, and to mark the epochs in our Lord's ministry. But we cannot fail to see how …
697 wordsSECTION 101The Second Miracle
For in the words there is not only a revelation of our Lord's majestic leisure, but there is also an indication of what He thought of most importance in His dealing with men. It was worthy of His care to heal the boy; it was far more needful that He should train and lead the father to faith. The one can wait much bette…
714 wordsSECTION 102The Second Miracle
But although the form is entirely different the spirit still remains. Are there not plenty of us to whom sense is the only certitude? We think that the only knowledge is the knowledge that comes to us from that which we can see and touch and handle, and the inferences that we may draw from these; and to many all that w…
659 wordsSECTION 103The Second Miracle
Ah! dear brethren, any true man who has ever truly gone to Christ with a sense even of some outward and temporal need, and has ever really prayed at all, has often to pass through this experience, that the first result of his agonising cry shall be only the revelation to him of the unworthiness and imperfection of his …
738 wordsSECTION 104The Second Miracle
'Go thy way; thy son liveth.' What a test! Suppose the father had not gone his way, would his son have lived? No! The son's life and the father's reception from Christ of what he asked were suspended upon that one moment. Will he trust Him, or will he not? Will he linger, or will he depart? He departs, and in the act o…
672 wordsSECTION 105The Third Miracle In John'S Gospel
A partial faith brings experience which confirms and enlarges faith; and they who dimly apprehend Him, and yet humbly love Him, and imperfectly trust Him, will receive into their bosoms such large gifts of His love and gracious Spirit that their faith will be strengthened, and they will grow into the full stature of pe…
723 wordsSECTION 106The Third Miracle In John'S Gospel
And so, no doubt, with a smile on His face, which converted the question into an offer, He says: 'Wilt thou be made whole?' meaning thereby to say, 'I will heal thee if thou wilt.' And there comes the weary answer, as if the man had said: 'Will I be made whole? What have I been lying here all these years for? I have no…
784 wordsSECTION 107The Third Miracle In John'S Gospel
'Rise, take up thy bed and walk,' or as in another case, 'Stretch forth thy hand.' 'And he stretched it forth, and his hand was restored whole as the other.' Christ gives power to keep His commandments to the impotent who try to obey, because they have been healed by Him. II. In the next place, we have in this miracle…
702 wordsSECTION 108The Third Miracle In John'S Gospel
III. And then, still further, we have here our Lord setting Himself forth as the divine Son, whose working needs and knows no rest. We find, in the subsequent part of the chapter, that 'the Jews,' as they are called, by which is meant the antagonistic portion of the nation, sought to slay Christ 'because He had done t…
685 wordsSECTION 109The Third Miracle In John'S Gospel
IV. Lastly, we have in this incident yet another lesson. We have the Healer who is also the Judge, warning the healed of the possibilities of a relapse. 'Jesus findeth him in the Temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.' The man's eight-and-thirty years of…
433 wordsSECTION 110The Life-Giver And Judge
'But Jesus answered them, My Father worketh hitherto, and I work. 18. Therefore the Jews sought the more to kill Him, because He not only had broken the Sabbath, but said also that God was His Father, making Himself equal with God. 19. Then answered Jesus and said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, The Son can …
766 wordsSECTION 111The Life-Giver And Judge
It is expanded in verses 21-23 into two great classes of works, which Jesus says that He does. Both are distinctively divine works. To give life and to judge the world are equally beyond human power; they are equally His actions. These are the 'greater works' which He foretells in verse 20, and they are greater than th…
719 wordsSECTION 112The Life-Giver And Judge
The effects of faith are immediate, and the poor present may be enriched and clothed in celestial light for each of us, if we will. For Jesus does not point first to the mysteries of the resurrection of the dead, and the tremendous solemnities of the final judgment, but to what we may each enter upon at any moment. The…
502 wordsSECTION 113The Fourth Miracle In John'S Gospel
'And Jesus took the loaves; and when He had given thanks, He distributed to the disciples, and the disciples to them that were set down; and likewise of the fishes as much as they would.'—JOHN vi. 11. This narrative of the miraculous feeding of the five thousand is introduced into John's Gospel with singular abruptnes…
739 wordsSECTION 114The Fourth Miracle In John'S Gospel
Be that as it may, we may pause for a moment upon this question of our Lord's, 'Whence shall we buy bread that these may eat?' Now notice what a lovely glimpse we get there into the quick-rising sympathy of the Saviour with all forms of human necessity. He had gone away to snatch a brief moment of rest. The rest is de…
663 wordsSECTION 115The Fourth Miracle In John'S Gospel
So learn that when we have to deal with Christ's working—and when have we not to deal with Christ's working?—perhaps probabilities that can be tabulated are not altogether the best bases upon which to rest our calculations. Learn that the audacity of a faith that expects great things, though there be nothing visible up…
839 wordsSECTION 116The Fourth Miracle In John'S Gospel
And I believe, further, that Scripture teaches us that that continuous will, which is the cause of all phenomena and the underlying subsistence on which all things repose, is all managed and mediated by Him who from of old was named the Word; 'in whom was life, and without whom was not anything made that was made.' Our…
652 wordsSECTION 117'Fragments' Or 'Broken Pieces'
And more than that; notice the inexhaustible abundance. 'They did all eat, and were filled.' And then they took up—not 'of the fragments,' as our Bible gives it, conveying the idea of the crumbs that littered the grass after the repast was over, but of the 'broken pieces'—the portions that came from Christ's hands—twel…
662 wordsSECTION 118'Fragments' Or 'Broken Pieces'
Looking at this command, then, with this slight alteration of rendering, and consequent widening of scope, we may briefly try to gather up the lessons which it obviously suggests. I. We have that thought, to which I have already referred, as more strikingly brought out by the slight alteration of translation, which, b…
675 wordsSECTION 119'Fragments' Or 'Broken Pieces'
Surely they might have said: 'If thou canst multiply five loaves into all this abundance, why should we be trudging about, each with a basket on his back full of bread, when we have with us He whose word can make it for us at any moment?' Yes, but a law which characterises all the miraculous, in both the Old and the Ne…
844 wordsSECTION 120'Fragments' Or 'Broken Pieces'
A second essential to such stewardship is the careful guarding of the grace given from whatever would injure it. Let not worldliness, business, cares of the world, the sorrows of life, its joys, duties, anxieties or pleasures—let not these so come into your hearts that they will elbow Christ out of your hearts, and dul…
543 wordsSource & rights
Public domain in the USA; original historical text digitized by Project Gutenberg.
Project Gutenberg source record →
Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.