1. What Is the Church?
Rev H M Cartwright
Introduction. Whether or not this subject interests us may depend to some extent on whether we see the Church as just a human institution or as Christ’s body on the earth. But even some who know and love the Lord think that the government of the Church is a matter of expediency, about which the
1This is the first section of a paper given at the Youth Conference in 1999; it had the subtitle: “What the Bible says about Church Government”.
Bible has nothing much to say – so that people can adopt Presbyterianism, Episcopacy, Independency or whatever, according to their own preference, or what seems most suited to their situation. It might be useful to approach this subject by asking – and trying to answer – three questions: (1) What is the Church? (2) Does the Bible tell us anything about how the Church is to be governed? (3) If it does, what does the Bible tell us about how the Church is to be governed?
1. What is the Church? The common word for Church in the New Testament is ekklesia, from which we get ecclesiastical. The word itself just means an assembly called out or convened for any particular purpose. This might be for a secular purpose, as in Ephesus over the effect of the preaching on the worship of the goddess Diana (Acts 19:32,39,41). In the Greek version of the Old Testament, ekklesia is used to translate the Hebrew word kahal, which is translated in the AV as the assembly or the congregation of the Lord (Deut 4:10; 9:10; 10:4; 18:16; Ps 22:22). Basically the word used for the Church focuses on it as the assembly or congregation or gathered people of God, called out of the world by Him.
In the New Testament the word ekklesia is used with different applications. It is used of the Church viewed as the people of God from all ages and places: Christ “loved the Church and gave Himself for it” (Eph 5:25f); “And He is the Head of the body, the Church” (Col 1:18). It is used of the universal Church on earth: “God hath set some in the Church, first apostles, secondarily prophets, thirdly teachers . . .” (1 Cor 12:28). It is used of the Lord’s people over a wide area, or in a city, consisting of thousands of people and a number of congregations: “Then had the churches rest throughout all Judea and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified” (Acts 9:31); “Then tidings of these things came unto the ears of the church which was at Jerusalem” (Acts 11:22); “Unto the church of God which is at Corinth” (1 Cor 1:2). It is used to identify a very small group of Christians, such as the church which was in Nympha’s house (Col 4:15). The term is applied in different ways, but in each case ekklesia identifies the people of God as a people called by Him out of the world around.
There are many other terms in the Bible which fill out the meaning of ekklesia and help us to understand what is meant by the Church. For example, in 1 Peter 2:9,10, we read: “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should show forth the praises of Him who hath called you out of darkness into His marvellous light: which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy”. The Bible refers to the Church as the kingdom of God, the body of Christ, the building of God, the temple of God,
the family of God, the flock of Christ, and so on. No one term can adequately describe the Church.
When we think of the Church we must think of it primarily in its relation to God. It is not a humanly-devised society with merely-human origins and aims but a divine institution. Witsius describes it as “the Church which the Father has elected, and the Son redeemed, and which the Spirit unites to Christ, and seals unto the day of complete redemption”. The Westminster Confession of Faith begins its chapter (25) on the Church with this statement: “The catholic or universal Church, which is invisible, consists of the whole number of the elect that have been, are or shall be gathered into one, under Christ the head thereof; and is the spouse, the body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all”.
We must also think of the Church as the communion of saints. The communion of those who have been gathered in to the Church is primarily with Christ Himself – and then with one another in and through Him. “All saints that are united to Jesus Christ their head by His Spirit, and by faith, have fellowship with Him in His graces, sufferings, death, resurrection and glory. And being united to one another in love, they have communion in each other’s gifts and graces; and are obliged to the performance of such duties, public and private, as do conduce to their mutual good, both in the inward and outward man.”2 “For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ. For by one Spirit are we all baptised into one body, whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether we be bond or free; and have been all made to drink into one Spirit” (1 Cor 12:12, 13). Sinners are saved individually but they are not saved in, or for, isolation, but in a way that binds them together as members one of another and makes them useful to each other.
Calvin spoke of “the Church as it really is before God” by which he meant the Church as it is essentially and eternally, which he described as “the Church into which none are admitted but those who by the gift of adoption are sons of God, and by the sanctification of the Spirit true members of Christ”.3 There is a real difficulty over the discrepancy between the Church as we see it and the Church as it is described in terms of election, redemption, regeneration, communion with Christ and with one another. The difficulty is not lessened by the fact that the Church as we see it is the body addressed by the apostles in such glorious terms. Paul addresses one of his epistles “unto the church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints, with all that in every place call upon
2 Westminster Confession, 26:1.
3 Institutes, 4.1.7.
the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours” (1 Cor 1:2), though he recognised that there were those among them who ought to be excluded from church fellowship because of their wicked conduct.
The classic Reformed solution to the discrepancy between the Church as we see it, and the Church as it is described in terms of election, redemption and regeneration, is the doctrine of the visible and invisible Church. Having described the invisible Church as the elect of God, united to Christ, the Westminster Confession goes on to say: “The visible Church, which is also catholic or universal under the gospel (not confined to one nation, as before under the law), consists of all these throughout the world that profess the true religion, together with their children; and is the kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, the house and family of God, out of which there is no ordinary possibility of salvation. Unto this catholic visible Church Christ hath given the ministry, oracles and ordinances of God, for the gathering and perfecting of the saints in this life, to the end of the world; and doth by His own presence and Spirit, according to His promise, make them effectual thereunto. The catholic Church hath been sometimes more, sometimes less visible” (25:2,3).
It is obvious that the Church as we see it in the world is not co-extensive with the Church of God’s elect, which Christ redeemed by His blood, and the Holy Spirit regenerated and sanctified. Yet the Church as we see it is addressed as the Church by God and it is the visible expression, the earthly embodiment, of the Church of God. It is not merely a voluntary coming together, even of those in whom God has created the social instincts of grace. The Church as a visible entity, as an institution in the world, exists as a result of divine ordination. It is God’s revealed will that there be unity in public profession of faith, in weekly assemblies for worship, in observance of the ordinances of Baptism and the Lord’s Supper, in mutual helpfulness in spiritual and temporal things, and in support of and submission to regularly appointed office-bearers. “And the Lord added to the Church daily such as should be saved” (Acts 2:47)
The invisible Church and the visible Church are not identical in their membership but they are not unrelated. The visible Church is the form in which the invisible Church comes to expression in the world but there are differences between the two. Some of these differences are because of the sin and weakness of men, others because it is God’s will that persons be admitted to membership of the Church on the basis of a profession and understanding and way of life which conform to biblical requirements, as far as men can judge, and that the children of those who are members of the Church should also be admitted to membership through baptism. Whatever the precise relation of the visible and the invisible, the chief distinction, or
the one most easy to grasp, is in the fact that membership of the invisible Church belongs to those who are elect, redeemed, regenerate, believing, whereas membership of the visible belongs to those who “profess the true religion, together with their children”.4
When we speak of the government of the Church, what is in mind is the Church as it appears in the world.
The Dunnottar Covenanters of 16851
5. The Voyage to America
Rev D W B Somerset
Following their removal from Dunnottar Castle on 13 August 1685, the prisoners were brought before the Privy Council in Leith on August 18, and those who refused to take the oaths were sentenced as follows:
“Forasmuch as the persons underwritten [here follow the names of 51 men and 21 women], at present prisoners in the Tolbooth of Leith, being convened before the Lords of His Majesty’s Privy Council at the instance of His Majesty’s Advocate2 for several crimes and irregularities, refusing the Oath of Allegiance or to own the King’s authority or take the Oath of Abjuration in manner at length libelled; and all the said persons being men having judicially, in presence of the Council, refused to take or sign the Oath of Allegiance, and the women abovesaid having altogether refused to own his Majesty’s authority or to take the Oath of Abjuration, the Lords of his Majesty’s Privy Council have banished and hereby banish the haill [all the] forenamed persons, men and women, conform to the act of Parliament, to his Majesty’s plantations abroad, and discharges them ever to return to this kingdom hereafter without the King or the Council’s special licence under the pain of death to be inflicted on them without mercy.
4Westminster Confession, 25.
1In the previous two articles, we gave an account of the prisoners’ return from Dunnottar to Leith. In this article we follow many of them in their disastrous voyage to America.
2Sir George Mackenzie of Rosehaugh (1636-91) was the King’s Advocate from 1677-86. He is generally known as “Bloody Mackenzie” on account of his persecution of the Covenanters. On 30 June 2003 his mausoleum in Greyfriars Churchyard, Edinburgh, was broken into by a drunken youth, and a head was removed from a coffin and used as a puppet. There were four coffins in the mausoleum, and the identity of the head is not certain. Vile as the crime was, it does not compare to the behaviour of the dragoon Peter Inglis in 1685 who, having killed the Covenanter James White, cut off his head and played football with it. Richard Cameron’s head was similarly used; see Patrick Walker, Six Saints of the Covenant, London, 1901, vol 2, pp 114-5.
“And further ordains the haill forenamed persons, as also the persons underwritten formerly sentenced to the plantations, and now prisoners in the Tolbooth of Leith, [here follow the names of a further 16 men and seven women (two of whom had already been included among the 21 above)] to be delivered to Mr George Scot of Pitlochie and by him transported to his Majesty’s plantations in East New Jersey in the ship lying in the road of Leith now bounding thither, upon his finding sufficient caution to transport the haill forenamed persons to the foresaid plantation, and to report a certificate of their landing there from the Governor or Deputy Governor of the place before the first day of September 1686 . . . under the penalty of five hundred merks for each one of them in case of failure, sea hazard, mortality and pirates being always excepted, and discharges the forenamed persons formerly and now ordered to the said plantations ever to return into this kingdom without licence and under the certification as aforesaid. And the said Lords do hereby give order and warrant to the baillies of Leith and keepers of the Tolbooth thereof to deliver the haill forenamed persons to the said Mr George Scott of Pitlochie when he shall require them conform to the warrant to be given him for that effect, and to be concurring and assisting to him in putting them aboard, and if need be recommends to General Dalzell to allow him such a party of his Majesty’s forces as he shall think fit for that effect.”3
Others of the Dunnottar prisoners were released at this time, or their examinations were postponed on account of sickness. One woman, Janet Fulmerton of Edinburgh, “flatly and boldly in face of council denied the king to be lawful sovereign, and his authority”, and was ordered to be “processed before the justices for her life”. She was well known to Patrick Walker, who describes her as a “singular Christian, of deep exercises, high attainments, and great experience in the serious exercise and solid practice of godliness”. She was about 50 years old, unmarried, and had “spent much of her time in visiting prisoners and sufferers, doing good to them and for them, especially on the murdering bloody days of their deaths, going amongst friends, getting coffins and winding sheets, and managing of their headless and handless bloody corpses, many of them being hashed and hagged off”. Eventually she was delivered to Pitlochie for transportation and died on the voyage.4
It is difficult to know exactly how many prisoners were on the ship with Pitlochie. He had been given 67 men and 27 women above (including Janet Fulmerton), and he received further grants of seven men on August 21, three
3The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland 1685-6, third series, vol 11, Edinburgh, 1929, pp 154-5; Robert Wodrow, History of the Sufferings of the Church of Scotland, ed R Burns, Glasgow, 1830, vol 4, pp 221-222.
4Six Saints, vol 2, pp 96-101.
on August 25, another man (a criminal rather than a Covenanter) on August 26, three more men on August 27, and another on September 3.5 On the other hand, the Council on August 25 appointed a committee “to go to Leith and consider the condition of the several women prisoners sentenced to the plantations, and to keep back such of them as are married women and with child, and send them prisoners to the Tolbooth of Edinburgh”. Furthermore, the following day the Council had received a supplication from Pitlochie to the effect that, having already lost £250 “through the disappointment he hath met with of wanting forty men promised him by the Council,” he was now also informed “that there is aboard of his vessel by the Council’s order six aged infirm men and as many women, who will be altogether useless to him, yea he hath certain information from such as hath been in these places that beside the paying of five pounds for each of their freights he must resolve to allow ten pounds yearly for their maintenance wherever they land,” and he craved to be released from this burden. The next day the committee ordered four men and three women to be taken off the ship.6
Two of the prisoners given to him (Patrick Walker and Robert Goodwin) had escaped before they could be put on the ship; another (Alexander Dalgleish) had probably died; and another (James Reston), though willing to go, was aged 69 and was presumably not wanted by Pitlochie.7 The records show that several more of Pitlochie’s prisoners did not in fact go with him, for whatever reason. Two of them (Thomas Russell and John Henderson), who were described as “notorious rogues”, mainly because they would not own that the assassination of Archbishop Sharp was murder, escaped from the Leith Tolbooth at the end of October “by cutting through the back wall into a cellar”; while five others (four men and a woman) are mentioned among the 19 Dunnottar prisoners brought from the Leith Tolbooth and put in irons in the Old Edinburgh Tolbooth on October 31.8 The total number of prisoners, therefore, who set sail with Pitlochie seems to have been something over 90. Of these Wodrow lists 22 who died on the voyage, to whom must be added Janet Fulmerton mentioned above, so the number who eventually reached New Jersey must have been about 70.
5 Register of the Privy Council 1685-6, vol 11, pp 159, 162-3, 165, 167-8, 173. Another prisoner, Walter Ker, was delivered on September 3 to “John Johnston, druggist,” who travelled with Pitlochie on the ship, and who subsequently married his daughter, Register, p 173. A similar grant on the same day is mentioned in The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, Edinburgh, 1923, vol 12, p 177.
6 Register of the Privy Council 1685-6, vol 11, pp 163, 165-6.
7 Register of the Privy Council 1685-6, vol 11, pp 154.
8 Register of the Privy Council 1685-6, vol 11, pp 154, 203; Book of the Old Edinburgh Club vol 12, p 184.
Wodrow continues his account of the prisoners on the Henry and Francis as follows: “Several of their testimonies and letters they wrote to their friends toward the end of August are before me; and particularly an original letter, from about twenty-eight of them, dated Leith Road, August 28th, 1685, directed to their friends, too long to be here insert. In short they signify,
“That now being to leave their own native and covenanted land by an unjust sentence of banishment, for owning truth, and holding by duty, and studying to keep by their covenant engagements and baptismal vows, whereby they stand obliged to resist, and testify against all that is contrary to the Word of God and their covenants; and that their sentence of banishment ran chiefly because they refused the oath of allegiance, which in conscience they could not take, because, in so doing, they thought they utterly declined the Lord Jesus Christ from having any power in His own house, and practically would, by taking it, say He was not King and head of His Church, and over their consciences; and on the contrary, this was to take and put in His room a man whose breath is in his nostrils, yea, a man that is a sworn enemy to religion, an avowed papist, whom by our covenants we are bound to withstand, and disown, and that agreeably to the scripture, Deut 17:14-15.’ They go on to leave their testimony against the evils of the times, and for the preaching of the gospel in the fields and houses.” The letter was signed by 22 men and 6 women.9
“In the same ship likewise were Mr John Fraser, and that excellent gentleman Robert M’Lellan of Barmagechan, of whom more just now, William Niven in Pollockshaws, with a good many others who had endured Dunnottar cruelties. And it is mostly from Mr Fraser and Barmagechan’s account of this voyage that I am to frame the following narrative of it. Several likewise in the vessel, who retired from their native country to settle in America, as the reverend Mr Archibald Riddell we had in the former part of this history, and his wife, and several of the relations of such who went over.
“The prisoners lay some time in the road of Leith, before all was ready, and sailed the 5th of September. Informations before me bear that Pitlochie tampered with some of them, particularly James Forsyth, to get money before they sailed, offering for five pounds sterling paid now, to set him at liberty as soon as they came to land. But James answered he would give him no money to carry him out of his native land, adding he had done nothing worthy of banishment. After they had turned the land-end, the fever began to rage in the ship, especially among such who had been in the great vault of Dunnottar. Not a few of them were sick when they came aboard, and no wonder, considering the barbarous treatment they had met with; besides,
9One of the signatories was Jean Moffat; see Article 6 in this series.
much of the flesh which the captain of the ship had provided for the prisoners began to stink before they sailed out of Leith road, and in a few days it was not eatable. In a month’s time the fever turned malignant, and few or none in the ship escaped it; in so much that it was usual to cast over board three or four dead bodies in one day.
“Most of the ship’s crew, except the captain and boatswain, died. Pitlochie, who had freighted the ship, with his excellent lady, died likewise,10 and so enjoyed nothing of the produce of near a hundred prisoners gifted him by the council; and near seventy persons died at sea. I have before me a list of the passengers and prisoners who died at sea. It concerns the design of this history only to record the names of the prisoners, and they are as follows [he gives 22 names]. Perhaps several of the passengers might be likewise sufferers, but able to pay their freights; but I have not set them down, for shortness. I find further in the list, Mr John Vernor and his wife;11 Pitlochie and his lady; and the Lady Aitherny;12 Mrs Riddell; Mrs Eupham Rigg, Lady Aitherny’s daughter; William Rigg, her son;13 Mr William Ged;14 and Mr William Aisdale, minister.15
“Notwithstanding of this raging sickness and great death, much severity was used toward the prisoners at sea, by the master of the ship and others: those under deck were not allowed to go about worship by themselves, and when they essayed it, the captain would throw down great planks of timber upon them to disturb them, and sometimes to the danger of their lives. We have heard of the badness of their provisions already.
“Many were the disasters of this voyage. The ship was at the utmost hazard by the breaking up of a leak at two several times. They had several
10His will was dated October 31; by then his wife was dead. See Edith H Mather, “George Scot of Pitlochy”, Proceedings of New Jersey Historical Society, vol 7 (1922), pp 276-7.
11Margaret Spence, “relict of John Vernor”, made her will on board the ship on November 1, “forasmuch as I am now presently lying under a grievous fever, and it being apparent that I am more likely to die than to live,” William A Whitehead, Early History of Perth Amboy, New York, 1856, p 29n.
12Lady Athenie, as far as we can gather, was the widow of William Rigg of Athenie, whose father Thomas was a half-brother of Pitlochie’s wife.
13William Rigg made his will on November 27. His mother and sister were already dead, and their jewellery he left to Eupham Scot, Pitlochie’s daughter, Perth Amboy, p 29n.
14In May 1682 there was a riot in the parish of Dron in Perthshire over the settlement of an Episcopalian minister, see Wodrow, vol 3, pp 374-5. For his connection with this, William Ged had been imprisoned, along with others, in the Edinburgh Tolbooth, and then fined, The Book of the Old Edinburgh Club, Edinburgh, 1916, vol 8, p 128.
15We have not been able to identify Mr Aisdale. Another minister who seems to have been on board the ship was David Simson, who had been minister of Southend, Kintyre, Register of the Privy Council 1685-6, vol 11, p 149.
calms, and some pretty severe storms. The captain, after Pitlochie’s death, began to tamper with Mr Johnston, his son-in-law, who now had the disposal of the prisoners; and it was projected to carry them into Jamaica or Virginia, and the master offered to take all the prisoners there from him, and pay him in bulk. It was urged for this that the markets were much better there for servants than at New Jersey. When they are thus treating, and near an issue, very much for the advantage of the passengers and prisoners, the wind turns straight for New Jersey, and they were forced to sail with it. There they arrived about the middle of December, after they had been about fifteen weeks at sea. At their landing many of them were sick; and Mr Fraser observes that a worthy gentleman from the west of Scotland died among their hands as they were carrying him ashore.
“The same person observes, that ‘partly of such who voluntarily offered themselves to go abroad from the kingdom of Scotland, and partly of such who were persecuted by banishment, there were upwards of 60 died at sea, whose blood (adds he) will be found in the skirts of enemies, as really, as if they had died at the cross and Grassmarket of Edinburgh’.”16
The Changeless Saviour1
Charles J Brown
If anyone will notice carefully the context here, he will find that the Apostle is marking a glorious contrast in the text. He had said in the previous verse: “Remember them which have the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end of their conversation”. In this verse it is: “Jesus Christ the same”. It is as if he had said, Your spiritual counsellors and guides, the most esteemed and loved of them, must be taken from you, as so many of them have already been. But Jesus Christ, the centre of their faith and life and teaching, does not die – Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and for ever. “Be not carried about”, he continues, “with divers and strange [or foreign] doctrines; for it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace; not with meats” – those things of a temporary and now-superseded economy – “which have not profited them that have been occupied therein. We have an altar,” the one unchangeable altar, “whereof they have no right to eat who serve the tabernacle”.
16Wodrow, vol 4, pp 331-3.
1Based on: “Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever” (Heb 13:8), and reprinted with some editing from The Christian Treasury of 1863. Brown (1806-1884) was minister of the New North Free Church in Edinburgh; some of his books are in print today.
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I would observe quickly here that Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever, in contrast to the different successive dispensations or administrations of the one covenant of grace. The economy of the patriarchs, with its simple promises and sacrifices, was succeeded by the legal, the Mosaic, economy with its costly and complicated ritual – its whole “law of commandments contained in ordinances”. And this again, in the fulness of the time, was succeeded by the Christian economy, with its sublime simplicity of worship and fulness of revealed grace and truth. All along, however, there has, for substance, been but one covenant of promise – one religion. “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no man cometh unto the Father but by Me” – Jesus Christ, under whatsoever diversities of administration, the same yesterday and today and for ever.
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He is the same in contrast to the endless changes, fluctuations, uncertainties of this present world. But what is there in the world that does not change – that possesses any stability? What are all the things around us but like the shifting scenes of some panorama? “One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh.” Infancy gives place to childhood, childhood to youth, youth to manhood and manhood to old age – unless indeed death comes in, as it continually does, to break the sequence at an earlier stage. Health departs from us; loved friends are taken away; our schemes are turned upside down. There is nearly as much change in our individual position and circumstances as in the condition of the nations, where all is like the troubled sea that cannot rest. Yea, this earth itself, so stable compared with the race that walks on it, will not last. “The mountains shall depart and the hills be removed”; “the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up”.
But Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. We may visit some city, after an interval of years, where we once dwelt. But the old familiar faces are either away or strangely changed. A new generation has sprung up. Our own hair has grown grey in the meanwhile; and the sentence, “Thou changest his countenance, and sendest him away,” is hastening to become our history, as it has been of the myriads before us. But, believers, not only is Jesus Christ the same in Himself, yesterday and today and for ever, He is the same also to you – the same righteousness to you, the same husband to you, heritage, portion, undying friend.
“Our friend Lazarus sleepeth”, He said; “but I go that I may awake him out of sleep.” You die, but you die in the changeless One, a part of His very body; and “because I live”, said He, “ye shall live also”. O let all the changes, the endless uncertainties, only endear the unchanging One all the more to you and make you cling the closer to Him. Say with the Church in the Song: “His locks are bushy and black as a raven” – that is to say, time effects no
changes on Him; it impresses no marks of decay. “The Lord liveth, and blessed be my rock”; “My heart and my flesh faileth; but Thou art the strength of my heart, and my portion for ever” – Jesus Christ the same, the same!
- He is the same in contrast to very great variations also in feeling and condition within. A thousand things are liable to affect the feelings of the Christian. Natural temperament has not a little to do with them. The state of bodily health will influence them materially. Any great change of outward circumstances will seldom leave them exactly the same. No doubt they would be affected much less by such things if there was more of the simple, humble, trustful, obedient spirit of the weaned child.
Still it is absolutely necessary to distinguish, broadly, between changing feelings and a changed Saviour. If we could only reach it, it would be our high wisdom here to walk, not by feeling, any more than by sight, but by faith. When, believers, you are dull, heavy, dispirited, Christ has not changed. It is one thing for your knees to tremble on the rock; it is another thing altogether for the rock to tremble beneath them – never, never!
You have seen the mists resting, for weeks together, over the mountains, so that no trace of them was visible. But the mists gradually cleared away, and the sun burst through and revealed them in unchanged grandeur. I think you may say of your variable frames what David said of his house: Though it is “not so with God” – not as it once was, might be, or ought to be – “yet hath He made with me an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things, and sure”. “Ye now . . . have sorrow,” said Jesus to His disciples; “but I will see you again, and your heart shall rejoice.” “Who is among you that feareth the Lord, that obeyeth the voice of His servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord, and stay upon his God.” “When my heart is overwhelmed, lead me to the rock that is higher than I” – Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and for ever.
- The context suggests a further contrast between Jesus Christ the same, and an unworthy instability and fickleness of mind respecting the doctrines of the faith. The Apostle obviously points to this in the words which follow the text: “Be not carried about with divers and strange doctrines; for it is a good thing that the heart be established with grace”. How desirable, brethren, that in this our day of truly divers and strange doctrines, these words of the Apostle be fixed deep in our hearts – that, as he speaks elsewhere, we be not “children, tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive!” It is very unworthy of the disciples of an unchanging Saviour to be thus carried about – tossed to and fro, unstable as water. So, let them remember, one grand secret of steadfast adherence to the truth, to the whole
counsel of God, is to keep one’s eye continually on Him who is the centre of it all, in whom all its great lines meet, who is the truth as well as the way and the life – Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and for ever.
- Once more, the context suggests another contrast between Jesus Christ the same, and the departure of even the most valued under-shepherds, the ministers of the Word – their past or rapidly-approaching death. “Remember them which have had the rule over you, who have spoken unto you the word of God: whose faith follow, considering the end”, the close, “of their conversation.” Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever. What the Apostle had, in a previous chapter, said of the priesthood of the law holds true here also for substance: “They truly were many priests, because they were not suffered to continue by reason of death; but this Man, because He continueth ever, hath an unchangeable priesthood”.
The very fact that pastors and teachers are not suffered to continue, by reason of death, surely proclaims with a loud voice that, while they are to be used and valued in their place as instruments – esteemed “highly in love for their work’s sake” – they are no exception to the rule: “Cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils”. And we are to beware of placing our trust in them, idolizing them, putting them in the room of the one Prophet, Priest, King of the Church.
How interesting an incident we have in the Gospels: “The next day after John stood, and two of his disciples; and looking upon Jesus as He walked, he saith, Behold the Lamb of God! And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.” They heard him speak and they left him and began to follow after Jesus, to whom he bore witness – unlike others of John’s disciples, of whom we read that they came to him and said, “Rabbi, He that was with thee beyond Jordan, to whom thou barest witness, behold, the same baptizeth, and all men come to Him”. Which of the two classes of disciples the Baptist most approved comes gloriously out in his reply. “John answered and said, A man can receive nothing, except it be given him from heaven. Ye yourselves bear me witness that I said, I am not the Christ, but that I am sent before Him. He that hath the bride is the bridegroom: but the friend of the bridegroom, which standeth and heareth him, rejoiceth greatly because of the bridegroom’s voice: this my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease.”
It must have been a deeply affecting scene among God’s ancient people when Moses was instructed: “Take Aaron and Eleazar his son, and bring them up unto mount Hor: and strip Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son; and Aaron shall be gathered unto his people, and shall die there. And Moses did as the Lord commanded: and they went up into mount
Hor in the sight of all the congregation. And Moses stripped Aaron of his garments, and put them upon Eleazar his son: and Aaron died there on the top of the mount: and Moses and Eleazar came down from the mount.” And very soon that voice was heard, “Moses My servant is dead”. Next Joshua died. And under the new dispensation, the Apostles all, one after another, depart. How touching are Peter’s words: “I think it meet, as long as I am in this tabernacle, to stir you up by putting you in remembrance; knowing that shortly I must put off this my tabernacle, even as our Lord Jesus Christ hath showed me!”
But what a contrast – O to learn its lessons – “He laid His right hand upon me, saying unto me, Fear not; I am the first and the last: I am He that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen; and have the keys of hell and of death”. Jesus Christ, who holds the stars in His right hand, the Minister of the sanctuary, the great Shepherd of the sheep, is the same yesterday and today and for ever!
I have endeavoured to apply the subject somewhat to believers. I will now briefly address those among us who are altogether strangers to Christ and His grace. Where is your rock amid the changes – amid the endless, confessed, utter uncertainty of all things here? You are in a world where, as you must needs more and more acknowledge, nothing is stable – where almost the only thing that can be much depended on is death, which is hastening to sweep you from this life altogether. You have no rock beneath your feet, being strangers to Christ and His grace; but recollect that expression of Scripture, “the wrath of the Lamb”. He is the same, not only in His undying friendship and love to His people, but also in His holy wrath against those of His enemies who remain impenitent. He will indeed not change that word: “Him that cometh to Me I will in no wise cast out”; but no more will He change that one: “Ye must be born again”; nor that one: “Except ye repent, ye shall . . . perish”; nor that one: “He that believeth not shall be damned”; nor that one: “Their worm dieth not, and their fire is not quenched”.
As yet, however, it is our blessed privilege to invite, to beseech, to implore you to seek refuge in the clefts of the smitten Rock of ages. It is our privilege to proclaim to you the unchanged freeness of His salvation – the unchanged perfection and sufficiency of His atonement and righteousness for all who will betake themselves to Him in very deed.
However dark the day in the Christian life, at evening time there shall be light. His life is a twilight, but it is the twilight of the morning, that shall brighten and broaden into a day that has neither sunset nor night; whilst the twilight of the sinner is that of the evening, that shall thicken and blacken into that long and gloomy night that knows no morning.
T V Moore