The Clean and Unclean 2
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By your spiritas well as your aim you should likewise be distinguished. The spirit of this world is often selfish; it is always a spirit that forgets God, that ignores the existence of a Creator in his own world, the land which he makes fat by his own bounty. Men with God’s breath in their nostrils forget him who makes them live. Now, Your Spirit Should Be One of Unselfish Devotion, a Spirit Always Conscious of His Presence, bowed down with the weight, or raised up with the cheer of Hagar’s exclamation — "You God see me;" a spirit which walks humbly before God, and seeks to know his will and to do it through the grace of God given to you. Such a spirit as this, without the drab of one sect, or the phylacteries of another, will soon make you quite as distinct from your fellow men as ever meats and drinks could make the Jews a separate people.
Your maximstoo, and the rules which regulate you, should be very different from those of others. The world says "Well, it is usual in the trade; there is no use in being over scrupulous; we must not be too Puritanic, or too severe; we shall never get on if we are picking at this and frowning at that." A Christian never considers what is usual, but what is right; he does not estimate a wrong by its commonness; he counts that a fraud. And a falsehood will be as much fraud and falsehood, though all the world shall agree to practice it, as though but one man should do it in the dark. The believer reads things, not in man’s light, in the obscurity of which so many blind bats are willing to fly, but he reads things in the sunlight of heaven. If a thing be right though he lose by it, it is done; if it be wrong, though he should become as rich as Croesus by allowing it, he scorns the sin for his Master’s sake. We want our merchants on the Exchange, our traders in their shops, and our artisans in their factories; yes, and we want all masters, employers, and overseers too, to be distinguished, as the clean from the unclean, in the maxims that govern their daily life, and thus manifestly separate from the world.
This will naturally lead to the next point — the Christian should be separate in his actions. I Would Not Give Much for Your Religion Unless it Can Be Seen. I know some people’s religion is heard of, but give me the man whose religion is seen. Lamps do not talk, but shine; a lighthouse sounds no drum, it beats no gong, and yet far over the waters its friendly spark is seen by the mariner. So let your actions shine out your religion. Let Your Conduct Talk out Your Soul. Let the main sermon of your life be illustrated by all your conduct, and it shall not fail to be illustrious. Have I not told you before that the only bit of ecclesiastical history we have in the whole New Testament is — what? The sermons of the Apostles? No, no, the "Actsof the Apostles." So let your history be written, so that it may have this title — "The acts of such-and-such a man." This will furnish the best proof that you have been with Jesus.
A Christian is distinguished by his conversation. He will often trim a sentence where others would have made it far more luxuriant by a jest which was not altogether clean. If he would have a jest, he picks the mirth but leaves the sin; his conversation is not used to levity; it is not mere froth, but it ministers grace unto the hearers. He has learned where the salt-box is kept in God’s great house, and so his speech is always seasoned with it, so that it may do no hurt but much good. Oh! commend me to the man who talks like Jesus, who will not for the world allow corrupt communications to come out of his mouth. I know what people will say of you if you are like this: they will say you are straight-laced, and that you will not throw much life into company. Others will call you mean-spirited.
Oh, my brethren! bold-hearted men are always called mean-spirited by cowards. They will admonish you not to be singular, but you can tell them that it is no folly to be singular, when to be singular is to be right. I know they will say you deny yourselves a great deal, but you will remind them that it is no denial to you. Sheep do not eat carrion, but I do not know that sheep think it a hardship to turn away from the foul feast. Eagles do not prefer to float on the sea, but I do not read that eagles think it a denial when they can soar in higher atmosphere. Do not talk of self-denial. You have other ends and other aims; you have wells of comfort that such men know not of. It would be a shame for you to be eating husks with swine, when your Father’s table is loaded with dainties. I trust, my dear brethren, that you know the value of the gold of heaven too well to pawn it away for the counterfeits of earth. "Come out from among them; be separate, and touch not the unclean Thing." by a Holiness Which Merely Moral Men Cannot Equal, Stand as on a Pedestal Aloft above the World. Thus men may know you to be of the seed of Jesus, even as they knew the Jew to be the seed of Israel.
How shall I urge you to give more earnest heed to this holy separation? Let me add the voice of warning to that of entreaty. If we do not see to this matter we shall bring sorrow on our own souls; we shall lose all hope of honoring Christ, and we shall sooner or later bring a great disaster on the world. You know the world is always trying to nationalize the Church. What a mercy it is that there are some who will not have it! If you could once make the Church and the nation one, what would follow? It must be destroyed; it must fall. It was when the church and the world became one in Noah’s day that the Lord sent the flood to destroy all people.
No, the proper position of a Christian is not with the world, even in its best state and its most exalted condition. We are to Be Separated from this Present Evil World according to the will of God. Our position today is as much as in Christ’s day, outside the camp, not in it; we are still to be protesters, still to be testifiers against the world. "You are of God, little children, and the whole world lies in the wicked one." Scripture never supposes that the world will get better until the coming of Christ. It does not propose to lift the world up and marry it with the Church. It always supposes the Church to be as an Alien and a Stranger here until Christ, her husband shall come.
On which side will you rank? Truce there cannot be, links between the two there must not be. God and mammon cannot go together. For which will you be — for God — for truth — for right? Or for Satan — for the lie — for the wrong? Which shall it be? May the Spirit of God whisper in your heart tonight, and say, "Believe you in Christ Jesus; take up your cross and follow him, and be enlisted on his side henceforth and for ever."
II. We have now a second and an important matter to bring forward. The distinction drawn between clean and unclean animals was, we think, intended by God TO KEEP HIS PEOPLE ALWAYS CONSCIOUS THAT THEY WERE IN THE NEIGHBORHOOD OF SIN. Just let me picture it. I have caught the idea from Mr. Bonar, though I fear I cannot paint it in words so well as he has done. An oriental Jew, sensible and intelligent, walks out in the fields. He walks along close by the side of the high-road, and what should he see but a string of camels going along? "Ah!" he says to himself "those are unclean animals." Sin, you see, is brought at once before his mind’s eye. He turns away from the road and walks down one of his own fields, and as he goes along a hare runs across his path. "Ah!" says he, "an unclean animal again; there is Sin in My Path." He gets into a more retired place, he walks on the mountains; surely he shall be alone there. But he sees a coney burrowing among the rocks; "Ah!" says he, "unclean; there is sin there!" He lifts his eye up to heaven; he sees the osprey, the bald eagle, flying along through the air, and he says, "Ah! there is an emblem of sin there!"
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