The Gospel by Wireless/Gospel
The
Gospel by Wireless.
The Story of a Novel Experiment and the Sermon that was Preached by
Dr. J. Boon,
The first man to use a Great Invention for the declaration of God's Love to Man.
Almost instinctively at this time I turn to John iii. 16 for my text—to John iii. 16.—where I read: "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Before I begin I would like to make it perfectly plain that I stand by the Bible from cover to cover—all in—from the first verse of the first chapter of Genesis to the last verse of the last chapter of the Revelation of St. John. For the moment I am not out to defend the Bible—the Bible can be left to take care of itself; and I note, in passing, that when men attack the old Book, it only ends in the biter being bit.
Only a few years ago a sceptic wrote from a certain room of a house in Paris that the Bible was antiquated, out of date, and obsolete, and that in a very short time at the longest, men would throw it upon the world's dust-heap, and leave it there. That house to-day is a Bible emporium, and the room in which the man sat writing the words that I have just quoted is so full of Bibles that you only enter the room with difficulty. But—and as Robbie Burns says in "Tam o' Shanter "—tae ma tale. "For God so loved the world that He gave His Son." I believe that this is true. It is true, not only because it is in the Bible—it is in the Bible because it is true. Just recently a very worthy Dean, speaking about our empty churches, said—or at least was reported to have said—that he had no doubt the sermons were dull. If the sermons are dull, that is neither the fault of the Bible nor the fault of God; and the man who can only preach dull sermons has no right to preach at all.
There is nothing dull about the text I have chosen. It is all about Love, and there is no dulness where love is. Love is the greatest power in the universe, could we but grasp it. Brute force against love always has lost, and always will. Look at the world to-day—nation upon nation on the brink of bankruptcy and ruin; all, mark you, the outcome of cruel and wanton war. In one word: Force.
The Gospel is a Gospel of Love. You have the whole of the gospel in my text, and I have chosen this text because I see in it the three great verities of the Christian faith: No. 1, the fact of God; No. 2, the fact of Christ, and No. 3, the fact of the future life.
First of all, the fact of God. Note this, the Bible never seeks to prove the existence of God. Written for man, it takes it for granted that man believes that already. It does not follow that just because our churches are to a large extent more than half empty that men deny God's existence. I have neither the time nor the patience to discuss this subject with the man who bluntly and baldly tells me that there is no God. The man who denies God's existence is an absolute outsider, and should be treated as such. A man like that is not only a danger to himself; he is a danger to the whole commonwealth. He is "a" leper, and the cry should go up "Unclean, unclean," and nobler men should shun that man as they shun the plague itself. We do not live to-day in the poisonous atmosphere of a cold and naked atheism; we live in an age when all right-minded men and women are open to conviction and reason. People are seeking the truth to-day as they never sought it before. An old man was one day asked if he knew So-and-so. "Knew him?" he queried in his reply, "why, I slept in the same church with him for 20 years." Let the story be taken for what it is worth. We can, with all truth, say this, that men to-day do not go to church to sleep. If they go at all, they go desiring something, and expecting something. Dull platitudes from the pulpit will neither draw men nor keep men in. The modern mind craves for great things, not petty piffles. In a word, men want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. It is the whole Word of God men want, not half of it; and like the baby in the well-known soap advertisement, they won't be happy till they get it.
When you begin to think about it, it is very much easier to believe that God is, than believe that God is not, and never was. The man who tries to persuade himself that there is no God goes through life, always and everywhere, looping the loop with his own intelligence. He begins nowhere, and ends at the same place. On the other hand, the man who begins with the fact of God falls into harmony with the very laws of his being; and the stars in their courses help that man along the way.
"The fact of Christ." Christ as a fact in history no one outside an asylum for the insane will deny. Men have denied God's existence who have accepted the fact of the historical Christ. They may have accepted the fact because they had to; but they accepted the fact, and that is the main thing.
But Christ, a mere fact in history, is not enough. It is true that Christ lived: it is no less true that Christ died; and it is just as true that Christ rose from the dead. If Christ did not rise from the dead, then my text is useless and worthless; and well might the great Apostle write: "If Christ be not risen, then is our preaching vain." Christ is more than a fact in history; Christ is a fact of eternity. Christ came from God, and went back to God. The fact of the resurrection is everything to the Christian; without that, nothing; with it, everything.
The fact of the future life. Christ taught many great and far-reaching truths when He was upon this earth, and He most certainly taught this, that the grave did not end all. Christ looked upon what we call death with supreme contempt. It was death by sin that was Christ's great and chief concern. Christ stands for all time as the great Unveiler of the unseen world, and in all His teaching I note this, that while other men speculate, and say "Perhaps," Christ affirms, and says "This is." Hear Him now, and hear Him as He speaks about the future life. You who are listening to me in the East of England, and you in the West, you who are in the North, and you in the South; listen:—"Let not your heart be troubled. In My Father's house are many mansions. I go—not to the grave, but I go—go—to prepare a place for all believers." Amen.
In these days there seems to be a tendency in some quarters to decry the writings of the Old Testament. It has even been suggested that we discard the Old altogether, and confine our attention to the New. For the life of me I cannot see the reason of all this: as a matter of fact there is neither rhyme nor reason in any one part of it. As I said ten minutes ago, the Book is one, and one it is going to remain.
When I tell some men that I believe the Bible from cover to cover, they laugh; and the man who laughs last is said to laugh best. When I tell some men that I believe in the creation story just as I find it in Genesis, they laugh. When some men try to be clever and put that poser to me—poser as they think, mark you—when men ask me where Cain got his wife, they laugh. When I tell men that I believe what I read about Noah—Noah's ark—and the flood, they laugh; and when it comes to Jonah and the fish—they have a blue fit!
But wait a minute. There is a right way and a wrong way to read the Bible; and the whole volume is a closed book to the man who has not got the key.
It matters little to me whether God made the world in six days or six thousand years: all the lesson that I get from the creation story is this: that God made the world. That God made the world is more likely to be true than untrue. In any case, the world never made itself; and until someone can prove to me that this is not so, I hold to what the Bible says, that in the beginning God made the world and all the world contains.
To ask me where Cain got his wife is silly. I neither know nor care. The lesson lies round Cain, not Mrs. Cain. When I hear Cain say, as he goes out from the presence of the Lord, that his punishment is greater than he can bear, I find in that matter for deep meditation and study; and when I have mastered that, I might give my consideration to Cain's wife; not before.
As far as the flood is concerned, I do not trouble about the rain. If a man is drowned, it is of little moment to the man whether he is drowned in fresh water, salt water, buttermilk, or in a vat of beer. It was a flood. Keep to that for a moment. To me it reads that it was a flood of the wrath of God. And the lesson that I get from Jonah simply lies along this line, that Jonah brought a punishment upon himself for his own disobedience and very wilful wrongdoing.
I sometimes think that Old Testament reading is too strong for some people—that it hits too hard; and these deluded people think they can get rid of the whole thing by simply saying "Go!" Ostrich-like, they hide their heads in the sand. Oh! that some men would just use their brains.
Someone has said that just as all roads in England lead to London, so should all texts of the Bible lead to the Cross. Of course, it will depend upon what the preacher is aiming at in his sermon; but there is, after all, only one thing to preach, and that is Christ, and Him crucified; and all the Bible leads to that it is the one thing in the Bible that counts. In reading Old Testament writing this thing strikes me over and over again, that when you read something in the Old Testament, you can often, very often, find its counterpart in the New. For instance, in the first book of the Old, I find my first Adam. In the first book of the New, I find my second. I find the Ark as a type of Christ in the Old: I find Christ Himself in the New; one door in the Ark for safety, and all go in that one door: one way to the Kingdom and to God—Christ. Who said Himself: "I am the Door." The first Adam fell, the second Adam stood the first Adam died; the second Adam rose again. In the Old Testament I find Moses and the Law. In the New Testament I find Christ, and in Christ I find grace and truth. I find sin and wrongdoing from page to page in both the New Testament and the Old. Sin was the only one fact that concerned Christ. Nothing else mattered with Christ so long as sinful men and sinful women were put right with God. Christ met sin, battled with it, and destroyed it. This was His mission, and He fulfilled it. At the world's price He could have, ruled the world and been crowned King. But this Man who was called Jesus—God Himself, manifest in the flesh—chose rather to sit with a woman by the well who was hungering and thirsting for better things; chose rather to meet men like Nicodemus by night, that He might explain the mysteries of His Kingdom; chose rather to mix with publicans and sinners, in order that He might lead men to God. Christ came to seek and to save the lost; and men were lost because of sin. It is quite true that we are all sinners, but the great truth about sin tends to be lost in this vague generality. It is not, enough to tell men that they are sinners; men need to be taught that, and taught what sin is. Sin is not confined to wrong actions sin lies much deeper than that. Sin is bad thoughts, wrong desires, and evil inclinations. This was the high plane of Christ's teaching all through, not only that lusting was sin, but that the look was sin none the less. And if these things be so, it all amounts to this, that men could commit murder before they rise from their beds in the morning, or cut the throat of a neighbour when they are lacing their own boots. Christ went to the root of the matter—it was the heart; and He ever sought to get the heart of man right. This was His supreme ambition, this His self-chosen task.