32 Our Lord Deserted of His Disciples
XXXII OUR LORD DESERTED OF HIS DISCIPLES
What is one man’s meat is another man’s poison. And the sixth chapter of John’s Gospel is a case in point. "That blessed sixth of John," said John Bunyan, speaking about the very same chapter that made so many of our Lord’s disciples to desert Him. "This is an hard saying," they said; "who can hear it?" And from that time many of His disciples went back, and walked no more with Him.
I sometimes wonder just how our Lord would feel ever afterwards toward those many deserters from among His disciples. I could tell you if it would do you any good to know, just how some of your ministers feel when they meet with that same heart-searching trial and temptation in their ministerial life. But you do not need to be told that. You know yourselves how you feel toward any deserter from your political party. Or, again, if you are a shopkeeper you must know how you think and feel toward those former customers of yours who no longer deal with you I some times wonder within myself just what my Master felt in His heart when He suddenly ran up against some of those deserter-disciples of His on the street. Or when He saw them sitting in a seat of honor in some synagogue into which He went to worship. Or, again, when He was compelled to encounter their special bitterness of opposition in some of those controversies and collisions of which His whole earthly life was so full. Of one thing I feel sure, His whole heart was at all times and in all places whiter than the snow. And thus it was that His humility and His meekness and His forgiveness of all manner of injuries have never had a parallel in any sinful man, such as we all are in such circumstances. I am quite sure that whatever He felt at any time toward any of those temporary and renegade disciples of His, there was never any real hatred of them in His heart. Nor any sinful resentment at them. Nor any scorn or contempt expressed at their utter lack of spiritual intelligence. Nor any smoldering spite whatsoever at them, or at any one belonging to them. But on the other hand, I do not surely need to tell you what you feel in your heart when you meet any of your deserter-disciples. Nor do l surely need to urge you to be often on your knees in secret pain and shame, before God, continually importuning Him for a meek and a forgiving heart; a copy of that heart which He gave to His Son Jesus Christ, the meek-hearted Master of those deserter-disciples of His. Our Lord had seventy and more declared and devoted disciples at one time. But after that so soul-sifting sermon of His only twelve remained and kept still attached to Him. And it was when He saw His whole discipleship melting away from Him like snow, that He turned to the twelve and said to them, Will ye also go away? At one time or other in His life on the earth our Lord was in all points tempted like as we are. And at that terrible epoch of His life He was sorely tempted to give way to that sinking of heart to which all His servants in the ministry are so specially liable. Take it all in all, and all through his life, there is no trial so heavy to bear to a minister as when he sees his congregation melt melting away all around him. Till, where there was at one time full pews, and warm and thankful hearts, there is in place of all that, universal decay and desertion. And when all that comes through causes for which he himself is largely to blame, that does not make a minister’s cross any the easier to bear. That sad state of things comes sometimes simply through the gradual increase of a minister’s years, and through the growing inefficiency for duty that comes to all men through the increase of their years. Sometimes that decay of his congregation and that desertion comes through a preacher letting himself fall hopelessly behind the advancing intellectual life of his people; and especially of his young people. Sometimes, again, it comes simply through new and fresh and popular rivals, so to call them, coming into his neighborhood. While, on some rare occasions, a minister’s case is not at all unlike the case of our Lord Himself That is to say, it is sometimes the very depth and spirituality and evangelical inwardness of his preaching that makes the chaff fly off in such clouds till scarcely any wheat is left behind. No two cases of a minister’s desertion are exactly the same and in everything alike. But from whatever cause his desertion comes; whether it is really an honor to him or simply a disgrace; take any poor minister of Christ in his defeat and dejection, and already his Master has been beforehand with him in that most heart-sinking of all his experiences. And His ministers all need at such seasons all that their Forerunner can feel for them and can do for them and in them. If it is because they have outgrown their people in the depth of their spiritual experience and in the heavenliness of their mind that their people steal away to shallower services; or, if it is more frequently the result of their minister’s long-continued neglect both of his pulpit and his pastoral work; in either case, with what sickness of heart does he see the gradual emptying out of his once full church. "What would I do," said one of the best ministers Scotland ever possessed, "if Christ’s suretyship righteousness were not to be imputed to His short-coming servants?." Above all other short-coming men, let all ministers thank God that they have not a High Priest who cannot be touched with the feeling of their infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as they are. Let them therefore, of all men, come boldly to the throne of grace, that they may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.
If Peter caused his Master, first and last, far more provocation and far more pain than any other of His disciples; he at the same time gave his Master, again and again, more consolation and encouragement than any other disciple ever did. If Peter often spake rashly and unadvisedly with his lips, at other times he said the very thing that needed to be said. "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona," said his Master to Peter on one occasion, "for flesh and blood have not revealed that unto thee, but My Father which is in heaven." And never did Peter, or any one else, say the right thing at the right moment as Peter did that day when all our Lord’s disciples were fast deserting Him. "Go away! " exclaimed Peter, "Go away! Where could we go? I would like to know! Go away from the Son of God! Go away from my Savior, who alone has ever spoken to me the words of eternal life." No disciple of all the seventy had ever felt so many temptations to desert his Master as Peter had felt. Peter was staggered, and indeed quite upset, times without number, at what his Master said and did. A multitude of things that Peter could neither see the reason of, nor could hold his peace about, continually staggered Peter. But then over against all that, Peter’s heart was riveted to his Master with chains and clasps of gold. And, speaking for myself, it is not because I do not feel both the deep difficulties of the Christian faith and the besetting mysteries of the Christian life that I remain a disciple of Christ. For my part, all the infidel and deserter-books I have ever read do not go beneath the first surface of my difficulties both in my faith and in my life. If I were to draw out and advertise to the world all the reasons I feel for deserting Christ, I would far eclipse all those deserters whose imbecile arguments I have ever heard or read. But then all my difficulties of that kind do not weigh one feather’s weight against the immense and overwhelming reasons I have to keep closer than ever to my Redeemer. I read the other day that Sir Leslie Stephen left Christ and left the Christian ministry with a light heart. Well, if he did, I will take it upon me to say that, with all his intellectual ability, and with all his knowledge of eighteenth and nineteenth century literature, he. did not know the first principles either of himself or of the Savior he left so easily, not to say jauntily. Peter was an unlearned and an ignorant man--the New Testament itself admits that. But then no one who ever saw Peter, or heard him speak, could have any doubt with whom he had been. And no one who has ever been with Peter’s Master, to call being with Him, has ever left Him, and least of all with a light heart. The thing is impossible; absolutely impossible. It has never happened, and it never will happen. Lord, to whom shall we go? said Peter, with an expressive smile at the very suggestion; a smile that was like a flagon of wine to his Master’s somewhat sinking heart that day of so many light-hearted desertions. For my part, I am to be one of Peter’s fellow-disciples, and for Peter’s reason. I am to be one of Augustine’s fellow-disciples also, and for Augustine’s reasons, and I am to be one of Plato’s disciples who says :--"If a man can neither find the whole truth for himself, nor come to it by the teaching of another, then, having chosen that which is the best and most indisputable of human doctrines, his knowledge of himself and of his own deepest needs, let him embark thereon, in default of any other ship, and then make the lonely voyage of this life. Unless indeed it is possible to discover some Divine doctrine on which to trust his soul securely, and without any more danger." Now the believer in Jesus Christ, and in His Divine doctrine, has under him both the raft of self-knowledge, and the solidly-built ship of Divine Revelation. And with his own raft lashed securely to the heaven-built ship, he is slowly but surely making his way through fair weather and foul to that shore which awaits all those voyagers who love and follow out the truth as it is in Jesus. And who simply will not, because they cannot, forsake Him and His truth through whatsoever darkness and storm there is a need be that they should pass. ’Thou!" exclaimed Peter triumphantly, “Thou alone hast the words of eternal life!"
It was deep Divine doctrine, far too deep and far too Divine for their shallow and unspiritual minds, that made the deserters of that day leave our Lord. But even when that deep doctrine is as dear to us as ever it was to John Bunyan, there are other things that sometimes threaten to separate us from our Lord. A deep, and an ever-deepening, sinfulness of heart, that will sometimes threaten to do in our case what their Master’s ever-deepening doctrine did in the case of those deserters. We will sometimes have such appalling discoveries made to us of the absolutely bottomless evil of our own hearts, that we Will utterly despair of ourselves, and will hopelessly doubt whether we have ever been truly in the holy discipleship of Jesus Christ at all. The very desperateness of our case will sometimes tempt us to turn away for ever from Him who alone understands our whole case, and who alone is able to deal with it all. "Depart from me," we say with Peter at another time; "depart from me, for I am the sinfullest of all men, O Lord." But, while that is literally true; even with all that, we must not allow ourselves to fall into absolute despair. No, not for an hour. In the teeth of a raging conscience, and in the teeth of a heart like no other man’s heart on the face of the earth, we must continually come and cast ourselves at our Savior’s feet. Let us every day, and every hour of every day, be like Peter on that other day, or night rather, after he had denied his Master with oaths and curses. Let us often go out into the darkness and weep as he wept. Let us also say to our Lord in the words of David as we lie at His feet: "Cast me not away from Thy presence; and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me. Restore unto me the joy of Thy Salvation; and uphold me with Thy free Spirit. Then will I teach transgressors Thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto Thee." And this also: "Do good in Thy good pleasure unto Zion; build Thou the walls of Jerusalem." Properly speaking, that is the psalm of a minister who has broken down the walls of Jerusalem in his own congregation, and elsewhere. But with very little alteration and adaptation that same psalm will suit all scattered congregations, as well as all deserted ministers, till they shall all be made one again by the peace-speaking blood of Christ. For He is our peace, who hath made both one, and hath broken down the middle wall of partition between us.