It is the turning point where our Lord Jesus begins to tell them that He was to suffer. Their ears _could_ not take in the words. Their dazed eyes show that they think they could not have heard aright,--He to _suffer!_ What could this mean? They hadn"t figured on this when they left the nets and boats to follow. There had been a rosy glamour filling impulsive Peter"s self-confident sky. Now this black storm cloud! Then to Peter"s foolhardy daring came words spoken with a new intense quietness that made the words quiver: "If any man would come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and "Follow Me.""[38]
This was startling to a terrific degree. Here was a new, strange, perplexing combination--"deny himself," and "cross," coupled with His "Follow Me." What could He mean? This was surely some of His intensely figurative language again, they think. Yes, it surely was; and it stood for a yet intenser experience. "Follow Me" means sacrifice. It means a going down as well as a going up. And it proves to mean that one can go up in power and service, only as far as he has gone down in the obedience that includes sacrifice. Did Peter take in the meaning that day? I think not. Actions speak louder than words.
That betrayal night a few short months after, when the actual cross was almost in actual sight, he "followed Him afar off."[39] Without knowing it, that was as far as he had ever really followed thus far. He wanted to keep as "far off" from that cross as possible. He always had. He baulked at its first mention, baulked tremendously. Yet he "followed." Poor Peter!
he was in a terrible strait betwixt two, this wondrous Master whom he really loved, and this threatening cross of nails and thongs and thorns.
It was a stiff struggle between heart and flesh; between the longing of his love and the shrinking from pain and hardship and shame. And Peter"s kinsfolk are still having the same struggle. A great many stop here. This is going _too_ far! They prefer staying by the easier "Follow Me"s," and forgetting this one. Yes, and go on living powerless lives, and engaging in powerless service, when the crowds were never so needy.
Peter didn"t follow this time. The road was too rough. He stumbled and fell badly. Badly? Still no worse than many others. When he got up he was still facing the same way. You can always tell a man"s mettle by the way he faces as he gets up after a bad fall.
Six months or so after there came another "Follow Me," to Peter. No, it wasn"t another; it was the same one, the one he hadn"t accepted. Peter was to have another opportunity at the same place where he fell so badly. How patient our Lord Jesus was--and is.
It was one morning just after breakfast--a rare breakfast--on the edge of the lake, after as poor a night"s fishing as that other time.[40] Again the touch of power revealed the Master"s presence. Again Peter had a special word with the Master while the others are hauling in the fish. Now breakfast"s over and the seven are grouped about the One, listening. The Lord"s quiet skilled hand touches the heart meaning of "Follow Me." Its real meaning is a love meaning. Do you love? Then "Follow Me." Then you _must_ follow, your love draws you after, even though the path be rough and broken. This is the same "Follow Me" that Peter baulked at so badly months before. Its meaning had not changed. It would mean a death, Peter is plainly told. But now Peter baulks no longer. The Master"s great love had taught Him how really to love. And now not even a cross for himself would or could keep him from following close up to such a Master.
Here is the meaning of "Follow Me" as it worked out in Peter"s experience--acquaintance, a new life, schooling, service, a sight of sacrifice, and a baulking, then--a sight of Jesus on the cross, and then a willingness to go on even though it meant the sorest sacrifice. This is an etching of the road Peter actually went, an etching in black and white, with the black very black. Is it a picture of your road? But perhaps you have never filled out the last part--still back at that baulking place. In the thick of our present life, in the noise and din of the street of modern life, comes as of old the quiet, clear, insistent call "Follow Me."
Getting in Behind.
But, some one says, how can we really follow this Lone Man, our Lord Jesus Christ? He was so pure in His life, stainless in motive, and unstained in character. And we--well, the nearer we get to Him the more instinctively we find Peter"s lakesh.o.r.e cry starting up within, "I am a sinful man." His very presence makes us feel the sin, the sin-instinct, the old selfish something within. How can we really follow? And the answer that comes is a real answer. It answers the inner heart-cry.
It is this: we begin where He ended. The cross was the end of His life. It must be the beginning of ours. It was the climax of His obedience. All the lines of His life come together at the cross. It is the beginning for us.
All the lines of our lives, the lines of purity, of character, of service, of power, run back to the one starting point. And we come to find--some of us pretty slowly--that it is only the lines that do start there that lead to anything worth while. The starting point for the true life, and for real service is very clear. And if any of us have made a false start, it will be a tremendous saving to drop things and go back and get the true start. "The blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth from all sin"--this is the only point from which to start the "Follow Me" life. "Follow Me" does not mean imitation. It means reincarnation. It"s some One coming to re-live His life in us. He died that His life might be loosed out to be relived in us.
I have already spoken of this as being a call to friendship. All the rest that comes is meant to be what naturally grows out of this friendship.
Peter never forgot his last "Follow Me" call. "Lovest thou Me?" Then thou mayest follow. This greatly sweetens all the rest. It"s all for Him!--our friend. Out of this personal relation comes service, power in service, suffering because of opposition to Him whom we serve, and joy because we may suffer on His account.[41]
Matthew became His friend that day down at the little customs-shed at the Capernaum water edge. And out of that friendship grew our first gospel.
John lived very close, and out of his intimacy came the gospel that reveals to us most the inner heart of our Lord, and His own intimacy of relation with the Father. And out of that friendship came, too, not only John"s wonderful little "abiding" epistle,[42] but the Revelation book, which gives us an inkling of the coming in of the Kingdom time that lies so near to our Lord"s heart. Out of such intimacy of touch grew Stephen"s ringing address before the Jewish council, and--his stormy, stony exit, out and up into his Master"s presence.
And time would fail me to tell of those in every corner of the earth, and every generation since our Lord was here, who have served and suffered because they loved Him and followed. Hidden away in the rocks and caves of France from the fires of persecution, the Huguenots sang their favourite hymn:
"I have a friend so precious, So very dear to me, He loves me with such tender love, He loves so faithfully.
I could not live apart from Him, I love to feel Him nigh, And so we dwell together, My Lord and I."
When I was in China a year ago, my heart caught some of the distant echoes of that sort of singing, by Chinese Christians, in the midst of the fiery persecutions of the Boxer time. And I heard the same sad, glad undertone last year out in Corea, in the homes we visited, whose loved ones were behind prison bars for their Friend"s sake.
One of the latest chapters of this friendship"s outcome is only just closed in the story of that quiet, young friend of the Lord Jesus, William Whiting Borden, who sat down a little while ago, and so placed the wealth left him that the world might learn of his Friend, and then went out and laid down his life in Egypt in this same pa.s.sion of friendship. So the earth"s sod in every corner has known the fertilizing of such friendship blood, and shall some day know a wondrous harvest under our great Friend"s own gleaning.
And this is why He asks us to follow. He needs our help. Our Lord Jesus gave His precious life blood to redeem the world, to set it free from its sin-slavery. But there are two parts to that redemption, His and ours.
These two parts are strikingly brought out by a single word in the beginning of the book of Acts,[43] the word "began." Luke says that what he has been writing in his Gospel of the life and death of Jesus was only a _beginning_. This was what "He _began_ both to do and to teach." It is usually explained that what our Lord Jesus began in the Gospels, the Holy Spirit continued to _do_ in the Acts, and to _teach_ in the Epistles. And this is no doubt true. But there is still more here. The Holy Spirit continued and continues through men what He began through Jesus. There is a second part to the work of redemption, our part, the Holy Spirit working through us. There had to be a first part; that was the great part. There could be no second without a first. That first part was done when our Lord Jesus was hurt to death for us. That is the great first part. Yet in doing that He had but begun something. He touched Palestine. We are to cover the earth. He touched one nation; we are to go to all nations. We are to continue what He began. The work of redemption was finished on the cross so far as He was concerned; but not yet finished so far as its being taken to "all the world" was concerned. He needs us. This is why He asks us to follow. He needs our co-operation.
The second great factor in carrying out what He began is--how shall I put it? Shall I say, men and the Holy Spirit? You say, "No, change that, say the Holy Spirit and men. Put the Spirit first." Well, the order of these two depends on where you are standing. If you are standing at the Father"s right hand, you say "the Holy Spirit and men." For the power is all in the Holy Spirit. He is the power. There can be nothing done without Him.
Whatever is done in which He is not dominant amounts to nothing. How I wish we men might have that tremendous fact grip us in these days when the whole emphasis is on organization.
But, very reverently let me say this, and I say it thus plainly that we may know how much our Lord Jesus is depending on us, how really He needs us,--this, that since we are on the earth, in the place of human action, where the fighting is to be done, it is accurate to say with utmost reverence, "_men_ and the Holy Spirit." For mark keenly, the initiative is in human hands. G.o.d"s action has always waited on human action. The power is only in the Holy Spirit. The most astute and strong leadership amounts to nothing without Him flooding it with His presence. But the power needs a channel. The Spirit needs men strongly pliant to His will. The great world-plan waits, and always has waited, for willing men. And so our great Friend asks us to follow because He really needs us in His plan.
Have you ever noticed the picture in the word "follow"? You remember that the earliest language was picture language. And it is a great help sometimes to dig down under a word and get the picture. Here, it is a man standing on a roadway, earnestly beckoning, and pointing to the road he is in. The Old Testament word means literally "same road." The very word the Master Himself used means "in behind."
To-night this wondrous Lord Jesus stands just ahead. His face still shows where the thorns cut and the thongs tore. But there is a marvellous tenderness and pleading in those great patient eyes. His hand is reached out beckoning, and you cannot miss the hole in the palm of it. The hand points to the road He trod for us. And His voice calls pleadingly, "Take this same road; get in behind. I need your help with My world."
Selling All.
And yet--and yet----. Do you remember one time our Lord turned to the crowds that were following and told them it would be better to count up the cost before deciding to be His disciples?[44] He feared if they didn"t there would be "mocking" by outsiders because His followers" lives didn"t square with their profession. His fear seems to have been well founded.
There seems to be quite a bit of that sort of mocking. It"s better to count the cost, to know what following really means. A Salvation Army officer in Calcutta tells about a young handsome Hindu of an aristocratic family. One day he came in, drew out a New Testament, and asked the meaning of the words, "sell whatsoever thou hast," in the story of the rich young ruler.[45] The Salvationist told him it meant that if a man"s possessions stood in the way of his becoming a Christian he must be willing, if need be, to dispose of them for the needy. To his surprise the young man quietly said, "I fear you don"t understand."
"Do you want to be a Christian?"
"Yes, but I"m not willing to sell all that I possess."
After a little more talk the young Indian left. Sometime after he appeared at one of the Salvation Army meetings, and when the opportunity was given for those who would accept Christ to kneel at the altar, at once he started forward. But instantly a storm broke out in the crowded meeting. A group of men rushed forward, shouting angrily, seized the young man and bore him bodily out while the crowd watched in terror. A few weeks later the young man turned up again, asking to be taken in and quietly saying, "I have begun to sell all."
Then his story came out. A Bible had come into his hands; the character and call of the Lord Jesus made a great appeal to him. He was haunted by the words, "sell whatsoever thou hast." He felt he knew what it meant for him. His family heard of his interest in Christianity. They belonged to the highest cla.s.s, were wealthy and officially connected with the heathen temple-worship. They did their best to dissuade him, then finding that useless, they kept watch, and had him forcibly taken from the meeting where he was about to openly confess Christ. The entreaties of his father and mother shook him greatly but failed to change his decision. He had been imprisoned, chained hand and foot, and scantily fed, but all to no purpose. Then he managed to escape and came to the one Christian place he knew, the Salvation Army, and asked to be taken in.
After about two weeks he disappeared as abruptly as he came. Then one day he came back, and told his Salvation friend that he had been carried to Benares, their holy city, and forced to bathe in the Ganges. "But," he said, "as I stood in the water of the Ganges, I said, "Lord Jesus, wash me in Thy precious blood," and when I was forced to bow to idols, I bowed my soul to the eternal Father and said, "Thou art G.o.d alone."" His mother had implored him on her knees not to disgrace them; his tutor, whom he loved dearly, and his brothers had joined the father in their plea not to bring such shame on the family. "Well," the Salvationist said, "now, you know the meaning of "sell whatsoever thou hast"" "Not yet," he said, "but I have sold nearly all."
Again he came back and said quietly, "_I have sold all_." He appeared deeply grief-stricken, and yet there was a light shining in his eye. In answer to questions he said, "I have not only ceased to be a Brahmin, I have ceased to be a human being. I am not only an outcast, I am dead. I have neither father, mother, brothers, nor sisters. I have been burned in effigy, and the ashes buried. It was not the effigy they burned; it was I.
My father would not recognize me now if he met me on the street, nor would my mother. I am dead. I have been buried. It is the end. I have sold all."[46] He had counted the cost. Then though it meant so much, he followed. The rich young Jew to whom the words were first spoken, saw _things_ bigger than Jesus; the rich young Hindu saw Jesus bigger. Each held to what he prized most, and let the other go. Would it not be better if we were to count the cost, and then _deliberately_ decide? and if it be to follow, then follow _all the way?_ I want to talk a little later about what it means to follow. I hope this will help us a little in our calculations, in counting the cost before starting in to follow fully.
And yet, and yet, may the vision of the Lone Man in the road, beckoning, flood our eyes while we count the cost, even as with the young Hindu.
What Following Means
1. A Look Ahead.
2. The Main Road.
3. The Valleys.
4. The Hilltops.
1. A Look Ahead
Saltless Salt.
The Lord Jesus never tried to make things look easier than they are. He wanted you to see the road just as it is, and asked you to look at it carefully. He knew this was the only right way to do. He knew that so the sinews would be grown in character that would stand the tests coming, and only so.