IF I was once present with a clergyman who had a very little boy. His name was Georgie. He was playing on the rug. He had a very good father. He said to him, "Papa, I wish Jesus would come ; oh, it would be very nice ! " His father said to him, " What if Jesus were to come and find you in one of your pets — what would you do then?" This puzzled little Georgie for a while. He was a very clever boy, and he made a very clever answer, but not a very good one. He said, " Well, papa, I should not mind." His papa said, " Why would you not mind ?" He said, " Because then I should be Christ's enemy, and Christ says we must love our enemies ; so He would love me." That was very clever, but not quite right. '
5. Now I come to my fifth and last " Come," that I shall call the Crowning " Come." You will find it in the 25 th chapter of St. Matthew : " Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world." Oh, what a glorious " come " that will be ! Do you ever think of Jesus coming ? Do you think He will be alone ? No. Do you know anybody who has gone to heaven — any dear friends, relations, or anybody else ? I will tell you what it will be when Jesus comes. They will come with Him; you will see them. It says so in the 4th chapter of the First Epistle to the Thessalonians : " Them also which sleep in Jesus " — the good ones who are gone to Jesus — God will take, and " bring with him." Whenever you read that verse always pay great attention to the last words, "with him" — Him, not God, hut Jesus. God will "bring with Jesus!" "With Him!" That is, when Jesus comes, God will take care that those dear ones gone to heaven will come " with Him." If you are there you will see them.
ISAIAH 27
Now.
This " now " is nob the " now " of time, but of entreaty. Spurgeon, taking the word as temporal, says, " God would not have you live another moment as you are." This is true and most important, but it belongs rather to the exposition of another text which Spurgeon appositely quotes : " Now is the . accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation." The note of thej present text is tender entreaty rather than urgent warning,
IF I remember very well, as if it were but yesterday, though it is now some five-and-twenty years ago, being present at a discussion in a little secularist or infidel hall in the east of London, where the controversy turned for a moment upon this very passage. The lecturer of the evening had had the audacity to attack the Bible on the score of its morality. He had quoted the words, " Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord : though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." He had argued that by such language a dangerous facility was given to sin ; that, if its effects and consequences could be so easily removed, there was less need for striving against the temptations to it. In the course of the discussion, there rose on the other side one who was to all appearance a common working man, not well educated, but evidently thoughtful, clear-headed, and in earnest. He quietly and very effectively called attention to the context of the passage, the two verses which precede our text. " Wash you, make you clean ; put away the evil of your doings from before mine eves ; cease to do evil ; learn to do well ; seek judgment, relieve tne oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead for the widow." This, he urged, is the true and necessary prelude to what follows : " Come now," come ivhen this is done, " and let us reason together, saith the Lord : though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow ; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool." The passage, he argued, rightly understood, teaches not that sin is a light matter, easily condoned, but that only through true repent- ance, and through reformation, is there a way to forgiveness and absolution. So far from facilitating sin, it opposes to it the thorny and terrible obstacle of the necessity of retracing, in tears and shame and pain, the devious path, and recovering, at bitter cost, the true, but lost, direction.
The argument was sound in substance, though wrong in form. That the doctrine of the Bible, with reference to sin and repentance and forgiveness, is what the speaker represented it to be, no candid and ingenuous mind could for one moment doubt. But the
28 THE GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE
word " now " of our text, — " Come now," — was being pressed into a service for which Isaiah never intended it. It is not the " now " of time. It is in the original only a word, closely connected with the preceding word (to which indeed it is actually joined in the Hebrew by a hyphen), and emphasising it. We could express it in English by merely laying a stress upon the word " Come " : " Come, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." The language of the text thus becomes the language of earnest invitation, of tender entreaty. " Come, I beseech you, and let us reason," or confer, " together, saith the Eternal." ^