Love's Complaining 2
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II. And now let us note WHAT THE SAVIOR PRESCRIBES.
The Savior's prescription is couched in these three words: "Remember," "Repent," "Return."
The first word is Remember. "You have left your first love." Remember, then, what your first love was, and compare your present condition with it. At first nothing diverted you from your Lord. He was your life, your love, your joy. Now you look for recreation somewhere else, and other charms and other beauties win your heart. Are you not ashamed of this? Once you were never wearied with hearing of him and serving him. Never were you overdone with Christ and his gospel: many sermons, many prayer-meetings, many Bible readings, and yet none too many.
Now sermons are long, and services are dull, and you must have your jaded appetite exited with novelties. How is this? Once you were never displeased with Jesus whatever he did with you. If you had been sick, or poor, or dying, you would still have loved and blessed his name for all things. He remembers this fondness, and regrets its departure. He says to you today, "I remember you, the kindness of your youth, the love of your espousals, when you went after me in the wilderness." You would have gone after your Lord anywhere in those days: across the sea, or through the fire, you would have pursued him; nothing would have been too hot or too heavy for you then. Is it so now? Remember! Remember from where you have fallen. Remember the vows, the tears, the communings, the happy raptures of those days; remember and compare with them your present state.
Remember and consider, that when you were in your first love, that love was none too warm. Even then, when you did live to him, and for him, andwith him, you were none too holy, none too consecrated, none too zealous. If you were not too forward then, what are you now—now that you have come down even from that poor attainment? Remember the past with sad forebodings of the future. If you have come down from where you were, who is to tell you where you will cease your declining?
He who has sunk so far may fall much farther. Is it not so? Though you say in your heart like Hazael, "Is your servant a dog?" you may turn out worse than a dog yet, yes, prove a very wolf. Who knows? you may even now be a devil! You may turn out a Judas, a son of perdition, and deny your Master, selling him for thirty pieces of silver. When a stone begins to fall it falls with an ever-increasing rate; and when a soul begins to leave its first love, it leaves it more and more, and more and more, until at last it falls terribly. Remember!
The next word of the prescription is Repent. Repent as you did at first. The word so suitable to sinners is suitable to you, for you have grievously sinned. Repent of the wrong you have done your Lord by leaving your first love of him. Could you have lived a seraphic life, only breathing his love, only existing for him, you had done little enough; but to leave your first love, how grievously have you wronged him! That love was well deserved, was it not? Why, then, have you left it? Is Jesus less lovely than he was? Does he love you less than he did? Has he been less kind and tender to you than he used to be? Say, have you outgrown him? Can you do without him? Have you a hope of salvation apart from him? I charge you, repent of this your ill-doing towards one who has a greater claim upon your love than ever he had. He ought to be today loved more than you did love him at your very best! O my heart, is not all this most surely true? How badly are you behaving! What an ingrate are you! Repent! Repent!
Repent of much good that you have left undone through lack of love. Oh, if you had always loved your Lord at your best, what might you not have known of him by this time! What good deeds you might have done by force of his love! How many hearts might you have won for your Lord if your own heart had been fuller of love, if your own soul had been more on fire! You have lived a poor beggarly life because you have allowed such poverty of love.
Repent! Repent! To my mind, as I thought over this text, the call for repentance grew louder and louder, because of the occasion of its utterance. Here is the glorious Lord, coming to his church and speaking to her angel in tones of tender kindness. He condescends to visit his people in all his majesty and glory, intending nothing but to manifest himself in love to his own elect as he does not to the world. And yet he is compelled even then to take to chiding, and to say, "I have this against you, because you have left your first love." Here is a love-visit clouded with upbraiding—necessary upbraiding. What mischief sin has done! It is a dreadful thing that when Jesus comes to his own dear bride he should have to speak in grief, and not in joy. Must holy communion, which is the wine of heaven, be embittered with the tonic of admonition? I see the upper springs of nearest fellowship, where the waters of life leap from their first source in the heart of God. Are not these streams most pure and precious? If a man drink thereof he lives forever. Shall it be that even at the fountain-head they shall be dashed with bitterness? Even when Christ communes personally with us must he say, "I have somewhat against you?" Break, my heart, that it should be so! Well may we repent with a deep repentance when our choicest joys are flavored with the bitter herbs of regret, that our best Beloved should have somewhat against us.
But then he says in effect, Return. The third word is this—"Repent, and do the first works." Notice, that he does not say, "Repent, and get back your first love." This seems rather singular; but then love is the chief of the first works, and, moreover, the first works can only come of the first love. There must be in every declining Christian a practical repentance. Do not be satisfied with regrets and resolves. Do the first works; do not strain after the first emotions, but do the first works. No renewal is so valuable as the practical cleansing of our way. If the life be made right, it will prove that the love is so. In doing the first works you will prove that you have come back to your first love. The prescription is complete, because the doing of the first works is meant to include the feeling of the first feelings, the sighing of the first sighs, the enjoying of the first joys: these are all supposed to accompany returning obedience and activity.
We are to get back to these first works at once. Most men come to Christ with a leap; and I have observed that many who come back to him usually do so at a bound. The slow revival of one's love is almost an impossibility; as well expect the dead to rise by degrees. Love to Christ is often love at first sight: we see him, and are conquered by him. If we grow cold, the best thing we can do is to fasten our eyes on him until we cry, "My soul melted while my Beloved spoke." It is a happy circumstance if I can cry, "Before I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadab." How sweet for the Lord to put us back again at once into the old place, back again in a moment! My prayer is that it may be so this morning with any declining one. May you so repent as not merely to feel the old feelings, but instantly to do the first works, and be once more as eager, as zealous, asgenerous, as prayerful, as you used to be! If we should again see you breaking the alabaster box, we should know that the old love had returned. May the good Master help us to do as well as ever, yes, much better than before!
Notice, however, that this will require much of effort and warfare; for the promise which is made is "to him that overcomes." Overcoming implies conflict. Depend upon it, if you conquer a wandering heart, you will have to fight for it. "To him that overcomes," says he, "will I give to eat of the tree of life." You must fight your way back to the garden of the Lord. You will have to fight against lethargy, against an evil heart of unbelief, againstthe benumbing influence of the world. In the name and power of him who bids you repent, you must wrestle and struggle until you get the mastery over self, and yield your whole nature to your Lord.
So I have shown you how Christ prescribes, and I greatly need a few minutes for the last part, because I wish to dwell with solemn earnestness upon it. I have no desire to say a word by which I may prove myself a true brother pleading with you in deep sympathy, because in all the ill which I rebuke, I mourn my own personal share. Bless us, O Spirit of the Lord!
III. Now see, brethren, JESUS PERSUADES. This is the third point: the Lord Jesus persuades his erring one to repent.
First, he persuades with a warning: "I will come unto you;" "quickly" is not in the original: the Revised Version has left it out. Our Lord is generallyvery slow at the work of judgment: "I will come unto you, and will remove your candlestick out of its place, except you repent." This he must do: he cannot allow his light to be apart from love, and if the first love be left, the church shall be left in darkness. The truth must always shine, but not always in the same place. The place must be made fit by love, or the light shall be removed.
Our Lord means, first, I will take away the comfort of the Word. He raises up certain ministers, and makes them burning and shining lights in the midst of his church, and when the people gather together they are cheered and enlightened by their shining. A ministry blessed of the Lord is a singular comfort to the church of God. The Lord can easily take away that light which has brought comfort to so many: he can remove the good man to another sphere, or he can call him home to his rest. The extinguisher of death can put out the candle which now gladdens the house.
The church which has lost a ministry by which the Lord's glory has shone forth has lost a good deal; and if this loss has been sent in chastisement for decline of love it is all the harder to bear. I can point you to places where once was a man of God, and all went well; but the people grew cold, and the Lord took away their leader, and the place is now a desolation: those who now attend those courts and listen to a modern ministry cry out because of the famine of the Word of the Lord. O friends, let us value the light while we have it, and prove that we do so by profiting by it; but how can we profit if we leave our first love? The Lord may take away our comfort as a church if our first zeal shall die down.
But the candlestick also symbolizes usefulness: it is that by which a church shines. The use of a church is to preserve the truth, wherewith to illuminate the neighborhood, to illuminate the world. God can soon cut short our usefulness, and he will do so if we cut short our love. If the Lord be withdrawn, we can go on with our work as we used to do, but nothing will come of it: we can go on with Sunday-schools, mission-stations, branch churches, and yet accomplish nothing. Brethren, we can go on with the Orphanage, the College, the Colportage, the Evangelistic Society, the Book Fund, and all else, and yet nothing will be effected if the arm of the Lord be not made bare.
He can, if he wills, even take away from the church her very existence as a church. Ephesus is gone: nothing but ruins can be found. Rome once held a noble church of Christ, but has not her name become the symbol of Antichrist? The Lord can soon take away candlesticks out of their places if the church uses her light for her own glory, and is not filled with his love. God forbid that we should fall under this condemnation! Of your mercy, O Lord, forbid it! Let it not so happen to any one of us. Yet this may occur to us as individuals. You, dear brother or sister, if you lose your first love, may soon lose your joy, your peace, your usefulness. You, who are now so bright, may grow dull. You, who are now so useful, may become useless. You were once an instructor of the foolish, and a teacher of babes; but if the Lord be withdrawn you will instruct nobody, you will be in the dark yourself. Alas! you may come to lose the very name of Christians, as some have done who once seemed to be burning and shining lights. They were foolish virgins, and before long they were heard to cry, "Our lamps are gone out!" The Lord can and will take away the candlestick out of its place if we put him out of his place by a failure in our love to him.
How can I persuade you, then, better than with the warning words of my Master? My beloved, I persuade you from my very soul not to encounter these dangers, not to run these terrible risks; for as you would not wish to see either the church or your own self left without the light of God, to pine in darkness, it is needful that you abide in Christ, and go on to love him more and more.
The Savior holds out a promise as his other persuasive. Upon this I can only dwell for a minute. It seems a very wonderful promise to me: "To him that overcomes will I give to eat of the tree of life, which is in the midst of the paradise of God." Observe, those who lose their first love fall, but those who abide in love are made to stand. In contrast to the fall which took place in the paradise of God, we have man eating of the tree of life, and so living forever. If we, through grace, overcome the common tendency to decline in love, then shall we be confirmed and settled in the favor of the Lord. By eating of the tree of knowledge of good and evil we fell; by eating of the fruit of a better tree, we live and stand fast forever. Life proved true by love, shall be nourished on the best of food: it shall be sustained by fruit from the garden of the Lord himself, gathered by the Savior's own hand.
Note again, those who lose their first love wander far, they depart from God. "But," says the Lord, "if you keep your first love you shall not wander, but you shall come into closer fellowship. I will bring you nearer to the center. I will bring you to eat of the tree of life which is in the midst of the paradise of God." The inner ring is for those who grow in love; the center of all joy is only to be reached by much love. We know God as we love God. We enter into his paradise as we abide in his love. What joy is here! What a reward has love!
Then notice the mystical blessing which lies here, waiting for meditation. Do you know how we fell? The woman took of the fruit of the forbidden tree, and gave to Adam, and Adam ate and fell. The reverse is the case in the promise before us: the Second Adam takes of the divine fruit from the tree of promise, and hands it to his spouse; she eats and lives forever! He who is the Father of the age of grace hands down to us immortal joys, which he has plucked from an unwithering tree. The reward of love is to eat the fruit of life. "We are getting into mysteries," says one.
Yes, I am intentionally lifting a corner of the veil, and no more.
I only mean to give you a glimpse at the promised boon. Into his innermost joys our Lord will bring us if we keep up our first love, and go from strength to strength therein. Marvelous things are locked up in the caskets whereof love holds the key! Sin set the angel with a flaming sword between us and the tree of life in the midst of the garden; but love has quenched that sword, and now the angel beckons us to come into the innermost secrets of paradise. We shall know as we are known when we love as we are loved. We shall live the life of God when we are wholly taken up with the love of God. The love of Jesus, answered by our love to Jesus, makes the sweetest music the heart can know. No joy on earth is equal to the bliss of being all taken up with love to Christ.
If I had my choice of all the lives that I could live, I certainly would not choose to be an emperor, nor to be a millionaire, nor to be a philosopher; for power, and wealth, and knowledge bring with them sorrow and travail; but I would choose to have nothing to do but to love my Lord Jesus—nothing, I mean, but to do all things for his sake, and out of love to him. Then I know that I should be in paradise, yes, in the midst of the paradise of God, and I should have food to eat which is all unknown to men of the world.
Heaven on earth is abounding love to Jesus. This is the first and last of true delight—to love him who is the first and the last. To love Jesus is another name for paradise! Lord, let me know this by continual experience. "You are soaring aloft," cries one. Yes, I own it. Oh that I could allure you to a heavenward flight upon wings of love! There is bitterness in declining love: it is a very consumption of the soul, and makes us weak, and faint, and low. But love to Jesus is the foretaste of glory. See the heights, the glittering heights, the glorious heights, the everlasting hills to which the Lord of life will conduct all those who are faithful to him through the power of his Holy Spirit. See, O love, your ultimate abode! I pray that what I have said may be blessed by the Holy Spirit to the bringing of us all nearer to the Bridegroom of our souls. Amen.
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