01.10. WISE HASTE.

Chapter 10

WISE HASTE " See that ye hasten the matter."

2 Chronicles 24:5 The young King Joash, under the tutelage of the high priest Jehoiada, made up his mind to attempt a Jewish reformation. The first step was building, or at all events repairing, the neglected and ruinous temple. The king summoned the proper ecclesiastical authorities, by whose default it had come into such a condition, and instructed them immediately to take steps to gather in the necessary contributions. He does not seem to have been quite sure of his men- or, rather, he was tolerably sure of them ; for he thought it necessary to stir them with this somewhat curt and stringent exhortation : " See that you do not let the grass grow under your feet ; but hasten the matter," namely, the raising of funds. And we are told, notwithstanding, " the Levites hastened it not." Church authorities do not often much like laymen’s interference with their prerogatives, and are accustomed to take matters a great deal more easily than the more impetuous outsiders, who are enthusiastic, and seek to quicken official and professional indifference. However, we need not say anything more about Joash and his lazy Levites, but take these words as a very imperative and earnest exhortation to ourselves. "See that ye hasten the matter," whatever it be that God has entrusted to you.

I There are two kinds of haste, the right and the wrong.

Haste which comes from imperfectly appropriated convictions is wrong. The seed that sprung up quickly did so because it had no depth of earth, and since it had not, it could have no length of root, and because it had no length of root it had nothing to sustain it in the scorching heat and the sunshine, and it withered away. There are many earnest people who are in such a hurry to begin Christian work - in these days of exhortation to good people to be doing something for God - and who make it their occupation so completely, that they have no time to look after the roots of their Christian life, and consequently they bear no fruit worth harvesting. The haste which seeks to abbreviate the preparatory processes of meditation and communion with God, and appropriation of His grace, is unblest haste. And, in regard to its apparent results in matters of Christian effort, the cynical saying in the Book of Proverbs will come true, " An inheritance may be gotten hastily at the beginning ; but the end thereof shall not be blessed."

There is another kind of haste, which is a counterfeit of the true. Hurry pretends to be haste, but it is "half sister to delay." The quickness which vamps up superficial work is not the conduct enjoined on us in the words of our text. Time spent in digging deep foundations is not lost, though there is nothing above ground to show for it after many days’ work. It looks rapid work to run up walls a brick and a half thick, and with scarcely any depth of foundation, but they will fall even more quickly than they were built if a gale blow.

Another kind of spurious haste we are sometimes tempted to fall into, namely, the haste which is sure to tire the worker because he began too fast. In a long footrace the competitor who is " leading " at the first " lap " is very seldom the winner. It is better to begin at such a pace as we can keep up, than at such as takes away all our breath before we have covered half the course. Look at the work men who have for ten hours a day to use trowel or hammer. We think that we could do it twice as fast, and quite as thoroughly. So perhaps we could for a few minutes, but when the task has to be kept up all day long, and six days a week, the amateur will find out how much homely wisdom there is in the old proverb, ’’The more haste the less speed." Something that is " slow to begin, and never ending," is the kind of haste to be recommended. It is easy to light a fire with straw and brown paper, and it will burn up cheerily and brightly long before coals begin to smoke ; but which fire will last the longer? "See that ye hasten the matter " by all means ; but see, too, that you do not cut short the private, meditative, contemplative side of your Christian life ; and see that you do not put in superficial work ; and see that you calculate your strength and your persistence wisely, and begin at the same rate as that at which you mean to end. For when the apostle said, " Ye did run well ; what did hinder you ? " it would have been a true answer if some of the Galatians had replied, " We ran so well at first that that hindered us from keeping up the pace."

II Consider some of the fields in which the enjoined hastening of the matter is to be put in practice.

If I were now preaching to a congregation that was not so largely composed of professedly Christian people, of course the first thing that I should say would be, " See that you hasten the matter of your own personal acceptance of Jesus Christ as your Saviour." For that is the foundation of all, and "now is the accepted time." There may be some one to whom these words may come, some young man or woman, or perhaps some older person, who has been thinking and hesitating, and all but actually leaning his or her whole trust upon Christ, and who yet has delayed it. "See that ye hasten the matter."

But, then, seeing that the most of you are, at all events, nominal Christians, our exhortation is mainly to be directed to the subsequent steps of the Christian life. For instance, see that nothing comes between us and the immediate abandonment of anything and everything that we know or suspect to be wrong. There are things which cannot be done quickly, and there are some other things which can scarcely be done except quickly, and I doubt whether any man ever plucked up strongly rooted sin or fault unless he did it suddenly, and out and out, and by one supreme effort of will, which loosened the fangs of the roots. You cannot draw decayed teeth gradually. There must be a wrench. Of another of the Jewish religious reformations it is said, "The thing was done suddenly," and therefore it was thoroughly done, and so " all the people rejoiced." When the serpent came out of the heat, " and fastened upon Paul’s hand," suppose he had said to himself, " Now, this thing must be done gradually. We must get rid of this evil by degrees ; it will not do to hurry the process too much." You cannot take a serpent off a man’s arm at the rate of a coil a day, but must shake it into the fire as quickly as possible, with one vigorous motion at once. The beginning of all true conquest of our evil is an instantaneous resolve to cast it from us, followed by immediate, persistent, and unresting action. I know it will be a lifelong work. The embankments meant to bring the erratic course of the river into bounds and to keep in the floods may be swept away and have to be rebuilt. They will certainly want constant watching and frequent strengthening. But the longer and more difficult the work, the more reason for the ringing summons, " See that ye hasten the matter " since, if a thing is wrong, it cannot be given up too soon, and delay only gives the evil more power. In like manner, whenever we know a thing to be duty, do not let us delay a second in the performance of it. One of the old psalms says, " I made haste, and delayed not, but made haste to keep Thy commandments." That is the language of all true obedience. When I was a boy, in the days when parental discipline was rather more of a reality than it is now, my father used to say, " My boy, not obedience only, but prompt obedience." Most of us, no doubt, have found out by this time that when a disagreeable duty has to be performed it is best to get it over at once. The more nauseous the draught, the more need there is to gulp it down quickly. No unwelcome tasks become any the less unwelcome by putting them off till tomorrow. It is only when they are behind us and done, that we begin to find that there is a sweetness to be tasted afterwards, and that the remembrance of unwelcome duties unhesitatingly done is welcome and pleasant. Accomplished, they are full of blessing, and there is a smile on their faces as they leave us. Undone, they stand threatening and disturbing our tranquility, and hindering our communion with God. If there be lying before you, my brother, any bit of work from which you shrink, go straight up to it and do it at once. The only way to get rid of it is to do it. In the quaint dialect of the early Quakers, ’’to be clear of my burden" meant to fulfill some hard task which God was felt to have enjoined ; and there is no other escape from the pressure of disagreeable duties than this, "See that ye hasten the matter."

I might apply this exhortation of our text in another direction, upon which, however, I do not need to dwell. The original application of the saying was to one form of what has too much monopolized the title of " work for God," namely, efforts directed specially to the diffusion of religion. If men dawdled at their business in the way in which they dawdle at doing their Christian work, they would all be in the bankruptcy court before the year was out. And unless we form a vigorous determination that we shall be like our Master, " unhasting " in the false sense of the word, " but unresting," and promptly filling every moment - and how elastic the moments are ! - with the service which the moment requires, we shall pass out of life with very little done. "See that ye hasten the matter."

III

Let me for a moment, before I close, suggest one or two of the plain reasons why such haste as I have been trying to describe is absolutely necessary for us.

There is so much to do, so much in perfecting our own Christian character and in winning the world for our King. "There remaineth yet very much land to be possessed." How little we have accomplished in all these years ! How little like our Master we are than we were five, ten, twenty years ago ! How little victory we have won over our be setting weaknesses ! How few of the habits that we long ago knew to be deleterious we have got rid of! So much waits and craves to be done. If we are slothful, the devil and his angels are not. Why does the fire engine go through crowded streets at such a pace ? Because the fire is burning at such a pace. Therefore they have to whip the horses into a gallop, and everything has to get out of the way. "See that ye hasten the matter " for the other side hastens its matters with a vengeance - so much remains to be done, and the evil is growing so fast ; every moment’s delay adds so enormously to its power, and the issues at stake are so tremendous, and the Christian life which is slothful and does the work of the Lord negligently is so vapid, uninteresting, and wearisome to the liver, as compared with one crowded to the very margin with work, and that has no time for unwholesome brooding and melancholy retrospection, because it feels that so much is crying out to be done.

I need not remind you of the example of Jesus Christ and His toilsome life. At the beginning of that Gospel which is practically the Gospel of the Servant, the words seem to hurry one after another, telling the swift succession of toils and services in which He engaged, and how, like beneficent flame, He leaped from one cold, dark misery to another, bringing to each swift radiance and unwonted fire of joy. Observe those " immediatelys " and "forthwiths" and " straight ways " that crowd the first pages of Mark’s Gospel. And let us take the lesson taught us by Him who Himself recognized that, even in His great work, there was need for diligence, and who Himself has told us that He shared with us one of the motives for hastening the matter which we might have thought could not belong to Him, when He said, " I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is called day : the night cometh, when no man can work." The night for Thee, blessed Lord ! Is there any time for Thee, O Thou Omnipotent Christ, when Thou canst not work? Yes, a time when, the conditions and limitations and associations of earth having ceased, it was no longer possible for Him to manifest the human sympathy which He delighted to give, nor to alleviate by the touch of His hand the ills that He was willing to bear. Even that thought, that so little time is left us to do so great a work, Jesus Christ shared with us, and we ought to seek to share it with Him.

There is an old curse in the Book against "the men that did the work of the Lord negligently," under the lash of which a great many Christian people today will come. And there is an old description in one of the prophets of " the doers of evil," which may well be held up as a rebuke and an exhortation to us in our poor attempts at doing good. We are told that they did it " with both hands earnestly." Some of us are contented to do good with one hand slackly, and some of us will not touch the burden ’’with the tip of one of our fingers." Shame, that in a universe in which unresting motion is the law of its being, and over which reigns a Father who worketh hitherto, and a Lord who works with His servants, and in which the powers of evil are ever active the laggards should be those who profess to have been bought with an inestimable price, and to be bound by the strongest and tenderest motives to a service which they discharge so ill ! Be not slothful, but work while it is called day, and "see that ye hasten the matter."