Faith and life;

Front matter

-^?SrOF PHlict

Purves, George T. 1852-1901.

SERMONS

Contents

PAGE

INTRODUCTION by B. B. Warkield, D.D., LL.D vii

I. THE DISAPPOINTMENT OP^ THE WORLD WITH

II

" I am Alpha and Omega." — Revelation xxii. 13.

The Lord Jesus Christ was the central figure of the whole vision seen by Saint John in Patmos, even as the coming of Christ is the theme of the whole Apocalypse. That remarkable book begins with the appearance of the glorified Saviour to His beloved disciple. John heard behind him a great voice, as of a trumpet, saying, " I am Alpha and Omega, the first and the last." And he beheld, in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, one like unto the Son of man, but strangely different from the lowly form of Jesus of Nazareth, because invested with the symbols of divine majesty and power.

This appearance gives the key to all the following

visions. The messages to the seven churches of Asia

were from this Christ; they were delivered with all

the authority of a master; and they rebuked and

praised with the sovereignty of an absolute king.

Then, in the vision of the throne in heaven, the

seer beheld in the midst of the throne and of the

four living creatures, and in the midst of the ciders, a Lamb as it had been slain, who came and took the book of the decrees out of the right hand of God, and before whom the heavenly multitude fell down with loud and long worship. So when the first seal of the book was broken, Christ, on a white horse, was seen to ride forth, with a crown given Him, conquering and to conquer. Again, He is represented as the Child of Israel, caught up at birth unto God and to His throne, against whom the dragon and his angels, and the beasts which obey the dragon's will, incessantly make war. Still again He issues forth from heaven on His work of conquest, followed by the armies of the skies, and bearing on His vesture and on His thigh the name written. King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. And finally He proclaims Himself the author of His Apostle's vision : " I Jesus have sent mine angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the root and the offspring of David, and the bright and morning star." For as in the early twilight, when the light and darkness combat with each other, the morning star heralds the coming day, so amid these visions of the conflict between spiritual light and darkness is the figure of Christ. The sure herald of the splendor of the everlasting dawn, He stands forth supremely — the Christ glorifying Himself by glorifying His people — the Christ conquering, ruling, judging, and rewarding. According to the same Apostle, He was the Eternal Word, who in the beginning was with God and was

God. According to this same Apostle, the Word had become flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth. And now He is King over all things, leading to everlasting triumph the hosts of God. What wonder that there should echo from the lips of Christ Himself, through all the Apocalypse, this phrase, which seems to contain all the Lord's glorious history: " I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last!"

The general meaning of the phrase is evident enough. It sets forth the supremacy, the sovereignty, the everlastingness of Christ, the author, the governor, and the goal of all creation. But it is not, we think, too fanciful to perceive in the first clause a particular form in which the general idea is expressed. What, then, we ask, is indicated by this title appropriated by Christ, " I am Alpha and Omega " ? Its suggestiveness will appear in the following way. The first and last letters of the alphabet may be used to represent in brief the sum and substance of any subject. Just as we call the elements of any study its A B C, so that which is the all-pervading idea, the centre, the substance of any treatise, would be its Alpha and Omega. It would be found everywhere throughout the volume. It would be implied where it is not expressed. It would be the main theme of which all else would be a variation. Furthermore, language is the expression of thought. When, therefore, Christ declares Himself the Alpha and Omega, He declares Himself the sum and substance of expressed thought, the all-pervading and central theme to which utterance has been given. But given by whom ? Of whose thought is He the expression ? Of whose language is He the theme ? There can be but one answer. It is God's thought which He expresses ; God's language of which He is the utterance. This, then, is the mighty truth proclaimed in our text — that Christ is the sum and the substance of God's revealed thought. He is the first and the last, for " in the beginning was the Word," and He is " the heir of all things " ; He is " the beginning and the end," for " all things were created by Him and for Him." But He is, furthermore, also the Alpha and the Omega, the actual substance, the single, universal theme of God's revealed thought. Now, in order afterward to exhibit the richness of this truth, let me remind you, first, that, in Bible teaching, the history of the world, both natural and moral, and still more clearly the history of redemption, are but the records in time of God's original thought He has already thought out that which takes place in His creation. The world, in all its parts, is the revelation of the divine mind — of the idea which God had from and before the start. This is simply to say that God is an intelligent and almighty Creator. He is not a force that thrust the world blindly into being. He is not a law that operates like the laws of machines.

He is a person; He is a mind; He thinks; He plans; and so He acts He devised this creation before He created it. He had the thought before He proceeded to carry it out. " He created all things according to the counsel of His own will." " He purposed" certain things " in Himself." Such is the teaching of Scripture, and of all spiritual religion ; so that the ultimate secret of all things consists in God's thought ; and the ultimate reason for all events is to be sought in God's original purpose.

Without delaying longer on this point, I will simply remark that this view is the precise opposite of the doctrine of chance. If we believe in a personal God at all, it would seem to be almost impossible to suppose that He either made or governs the world in a haphazard way. Had the world been made by an angel, its author might not have known what would be the result or the history of his own work ; just as an inventor may have no idea to what uses his invention will finally be put. But the loftier and the purer our idea of God becomes, the more do we feel that anything like chance must be impossible in His works. We feel that, as the perfect intelligence. He must have had in mind, from the start, all the subsequent history of His creation ; we feel that, as the Almighty One, He must have willed the world into being with the intention that all that has come to pass should occur. We look back, therefore, to His eternal thought as the origin of all accomplished things. We may not be at all able to understand why He has acted as He does, or thought as He has ; but we would rather believe in His wisdom, in spite of our inability to understand it, than to be left to the monstrous alternative that He made a world without knowing why He made it, or without intending to do anything particular in it or with it.

And the loftier our idea of the Divine Being, the more do we feel that we can place absolutely no limit upon what was embraced in the scope of His original purpose. We feel, for example, that it must have included the infinitely various world of nature. That world awes us by its vastness ; astounds us by the intricate and subtle play of its forces. It overwhelms the imagination by the perfection of its machinery, even under the minutest examination of the microscope. It reveals everywhere the sway of exact law. Men have discovered in it a wonderful play of forces — one force changing into others, while yet the total amount of energy in the universe appears to remain the same. It is an immense unity ; each part affects the other parts about it, with the result of producing, in the lapse of ages, an infinite variety of objects instead of the formless chaos to which both Scripture and science point as having been at the beginning. Now we maintain that this natural world has not been produced by chance. I do not necessarily mean that each object, or each variety, or each species of a thing has been directly created out of nothing by the hand of God. That is another question. But whether that be so^ or whether these seem simply to have grown, in either case we hold to the idea that they come into being according to God's original design and under His supervision. To say that there is no evidence of mind in nature is to shut one's eyes to the order which pervades it ; to the adaptation to each other of even its most distinct parts ; and to forget, in too minute study of its details, the magnificent results which have been reached and which an infinity of chances could not have produced. We prefer the old statement of Scripture : " O Lord, how manifold are Thy works ! In wisdom hast Thou made them all : the earth is full of Thy riches."

Then, too, we feel in like manner that human history must have been included in God's original thought. This might, at first, appear more improbable, for the reason that man is a free agent, and therefore it would seem impossible to know beforehand what he would do, and impossible to direct his course without destroying his freedom. And yet a moment's reflection shows the contrary. For, explain it as we may, it is an undeniable fact that the history of man has been one of growth and progress. That progress has been in the direction of material improvement and of increasing knowledge ; and not only so, but mankind has been

SO controlled by unseen forces that great results for morals, and for religion, and for the human mind, have been accomplished which men never devised themselves. Here, then, is the evident fact that, though men are free, they are governed, they are controlled, they carry out unwittingly great purposes, the drift of which we can often see. This confirms us in the opinion that human history, in all its parts, was included in God's thought before even Adam stood in his earthly Paradise. " He hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation."

And I need scarcely add, that the whole work of redemption was included in God's original thought — that He foresaw and intended to allow the fall of man, though He did not cause the fall ; that He intended to allow the dispersion of the nations, and to select as the recipients of His special truth the children of Abraham ; that He intended to reveal Himself through the incarnation of His Son, and to apply Christ's redemption in His own way through the work of the Spirit.

The history of the world, therefore, is the record of God's thought. I do not wish to elaborate this idea, but merely to impress it on your minds for the sake of what will follow. I am perfectly aware that it is not an easy idea to explain ; that it is not always clear ; that

THE ALPHA AND OMEGA 2g

there are facts in the world's history which it often seems to us God could not have intended. But I am sure that it is less difficult to explain these than to adopt the theory of chance. That would banish Him altogether from His creation. That would require draughts on faith in comparison with which faith in God would be child's play. If you stand in the nave of a cathedral, it is evident to your mind that the building was erected for a purpose, and according to one or more architectural ideas. You may not admire the architecture ; you may find fault with the design ; you may be unable to understand why certain features were added and others left out. But as you survey the whole, you would not, because of your criticism upon it, conclude that the building rose by chance. Still less can we believe this of the wide universe. It is God's handiwork. It is God's building. It embodies divine thought. We are forced to agree with the Psalmist that " the counsel of the Lord standeth forever, the thoughts of His heart to all generations " ; to believe also the solemn words of the Prophet, that " the Lord of hosts hath sworn, saying, Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass ; and as I have purposed, so shall it stand " ; and to accept finally the teaching of the Apostle, of " the purpose of Him who worketh all things after the counsel of His own will." If there be any darkness to us in His dealings, we should exclaim, " O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God ! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out ! For who hath known the mind of the Lord ? or who hath been His counsellor ? Or who hath first given to Him, and it shall be recompensed unto him again ? For of Him, and through Him, and to Him are all things ; to whom be glory forever. Amen."

With then this in mind, we may be prepared for the declaration of Jesus Christ, " I am Alpha and Omega." As I have named some of the many things included in God's revealed thought, you have noticed that the sending of Christ was mentioned as but one of them, and such is the place which He occupies in ordinary thought. He is considered, perhaps, but one among many religious teachers ; or if His unique place in redemption be recognized, redemption itself is considered as but one of many purposes for which the world was made, and sometimes not even the most important. But this is not what Christ claimed for Himself, or the Bible for Him ; and if I have been able to impress you with the truth that all creation is the unfolding of God's thought, you will be prepared to admit the grandeur of the position which Christ occupies when we are told that, of all that thought of God's which has been revealed. He is the sum and substance. He is its Alpha and Omega.

Let me indicate how the vista of this truth opens in several directions before the mind's eye.

I, In the first place, then, He is the sum and substance of the Bible itself, and so the practical truth, the substance of truth to be believed. The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are the Word of God. They are His language, utterances of His thought, given from time to time, and collected into a volume. They also reveal that plan of salvation which all believers admit to have been devised by God alone. Here, then, is the written record of God's thought. He knew the end of it from the beginning, but little by little did He communicate it to men. It forms a book whose human authors were not aware of the size and extent of the revelation to which they contributed. It contains various methods of teaching — now by the lessons of history, now by the exhortations of the prophets, now by the thunders of law, now by the arguments of acute minds, and again by the examples of holy characters. It treats of various themes — was composed under the most various circumstances and for the most various purposes. God of old times spoke " unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners"; and no less did He so speak through the apostles and evangelists. The book is a mosaic, made by different artists under the unknown direction of a greater than they. It is God's word to man — manifold, complex, and prolonged ; and yet when we receive it all, we discover that, of all this mass of revealed thought,

Jesus Christ is the Alpha and the Omega, the substance and the sum, the stone out of which each piece of the mosaic is taken, and the figure which all the pieces unite to portray.

You may see this by following along the history of the revelation itself In the earlier parts, indeed, Christ is seldom mentioned. The stream rises amoner the mountains, a little rivulet, that might be overlooked in the landscape. But slowly and surely it widens. God tells, first, of the woman's seed that would bruise the serpent's head. Then, to Abraham, of his seed, in whom all nations should be blessed. Then, through Jacob, of Shiloh, the prince of peace ; through Moses, of the future prophet ; through Balaam, of the Rising Star ; to David, of his greater Son ; through Isaiah, of the suffering Redeemer and the glorious King : and so with louder and still stronger emphasis, till the shadows fly before the rising of the Sun Himself Then He fills all the firmament. Apostles preach Him ; evangelists describe Him ; the Spirit in the Church explains and glorifies Him ; and, at last, as we have seen, prophecy expires with the vision of Christ in glory coming to judge the world. We realize now that, of the whole book, He is the Alpha and Omega ; and looking back to the beginning we can see that though He was but seldom mentioned. He underlay all. In the earliest sacrifices, His sacrifice was implied. The ritual of the tabernacle and the temple anticipated

THE ALPI/A AND OMEGA 33

His coming. All that God taught men of old time was part and parcel of Christ ; so that were it lost and He only retained, not one whit of God's thought would perish for mankind.

Or you may see the same thing by examining the system of doctrine revealed in the Bible. Its elements are such as these. It begins with man's sin and guilt, declaring- him to be a lost soul. It then tells of God's holiness and justice and love — the holiness which men must imitate, the justice which punishes disobedience, the love which reaches in fatherly tenderness to us, His fallen children. It adds to this the failure of man's efforts to please God, the necessity of an atonement, the immortality of the soul, and eternal rewards and penalties to come. These are the elements, but they all are merged in the single doctrine of the Christ. If in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive. If God be just, Christ has satisfied His justice for every one that believes. If God be love, Christ reveals that love. If God be holy, Christ enables man to become holy likewise. He also brings immortality to light by His resurrection ; and according as men do or do not receive Him are they to receive happiness or misery in the future world. Christ, therefore, is the sum and substance of Bible doctrine as well as of Bible history. Everything must be viewed in His light. Everything must be explained by its relation to Him. He is the

te.xt on which all else is the comment. He is the truth 3 of which all else is the application. He is the centre from which all else radiates, and the foundation on which all else rests. Not the decrees of God, not the law of God, not the guilt of man, not immortality, not any of these other truths is the central one ; but Jesus Christ is the centre. He implies all the rest ; looking at Him, we look at the light itself; we read the whole revelation in a glance. He is the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last.

2. Then glance in another direction at the vista opened by our text. He is the sum and substance of all human history, and so the guiding principle of all thoughts.

I have already maintained that all history is the unfolding of divine thought. God's purposes embraced not merely the Jews and the Christian Church, but all mankind. He intended to leave the nations for a while to their own ways, as though to prove thereby the impossibility of living aright without His aid ; and in the fullness of time to unite them in the faith of the Gospel. We ask, then, whether it is possible to discover in history any movement, embracing all peoples, and leading to one universal goal. At first sight, it might appear impossible. The nations of the world have lived at cross-purposes, have fought furiously against each other, and have differed, the one from the other, in ten thousand ways. Each has seemed to go its own road, making its own religion, establishing its own laws, working out its own destiny. But is this appearance not deceptive ? Is there visible no general movement of humanity in one direction ? Have not many barriers been broken down, so as to tend toward the discovery of one human race ? Is not also the contrast already great between the separation of people from people which antiquity showed and the amalgamation of all into one which in some measure modern life discloses ? Is not the human mind the same everywhere, and cannot we see that the drift of human life is toward some single goal common to all the world ?

If so, what is that goal ? Once discover it, and you will have the sum and substance of man's history ; the object for which he has been made to live. What is it then ? Is it mere political unity ? That seems as far off as ever. Is it merely secular knowledge, or knowledge applied to the comforts of life? That would leave unchanged the moral nature of man, and the race would continue to show, even when most enlightened, as much crime and sin as now. No, the goal of history is the Kingdom of God, and the Kingdom of God is the Kingdom of Christ ! He is its Alpha and Omega.

We can obtain a hint of this by recalling that remarkable combination of circumstances, which Saint Paul called the fullness of time, with which you all are familiar, and by which Christ came into the world at precisely the moment when natural religion was worn out, when the Jewish Church had ended its mission, when the civilized world had one language to convey the Gospel and one government to protect it. But this is only a hint of a larger truth, namely, that the one divine purpose which runs through all human life is to create the age in which every knee shall bow to Jesus, and in which the human race shall find its perfection of both brain and heart in the Kingdom of God's dear Son. Christ's Kingdom is the end of history. His character, the goal of man. All that conflicts with Him shall be cast out of the world He has redeemed. Only what is Christ-like will survive therein. And as we shall look back upon human life from the glorious future, we shall confess that He was the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end, the first and the last, the sum and the substance of this world's long, confused life.

3. But I would have you look at this truth in another direction, and this time apply the telescope of God's Word to the vast universe above and beyond our world, for you will find that Christ is the Alpha and the Omega of all creation, and so also the goal to which all leads. We have ascended, step by step, upon the mount of vision, and, as the landscape has widened, have beheld the same figure of Christ, the central object in Patmos and in the world, in the Bible and in all history. Now we are to gaze beyond earth, and into the starry spaces — back into the silent eternity, up to the throne of God, on into the ages to come, and lo ! He, around whom this world gathers, is found to be still the centre of God's creation, the Alpha and Omega of God's thought.

I would that I could convey to you the wonderful impression of the dignity of Jesus Christ which I derive from the pages of God's Word. Let me simply indicate whither our thought should tend. We should turn first to the opening of Saint John's Gospel : " In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. . . . All things were made by Him ; and without Him was not any thing made that was made. In Him was life; and the life was the light of men." What means this language, but that the Son of God, who became flesh in Jesus Christ, is so emphatically the revelation of God's thought that He is called literally the Word of God, and that He has been so from the very beginning of all things ? Christ is God's utterance; He is all of God's revealed thought. Through Him the Father works. He created the world. He is the world's spiritual light. There is this grand thought conveyed by the Apostle, that God has revealed Himself only through His Son ; the Son is the revelation ; He is the medium through which God shines forth and acts and loves. To take an imperfect

38 FAITM AND LIFE

illustration : If a father should bequeath to his child an invention, endow him with the results of all his own labors, and that child should put that invention into practice; then the child would be prepared to convey the father's thought. And so we are taught did the Son of God contain in Him and carry into action all the Divine Father's thought. He is the Word of God; all that God has revealed of Himself has been through His Son.

Then, with this in mind, we turn to the first chapter of Ephesians, and discover the same truth put in a different way and differently applied. We read that Christ is the medium through which all God's loving thoughts toward His people have been carried out. He has blessed us with all spiritual blessings in Christ. He has chosen us in Christ before the foundation of the world. In Christ we have redemption, through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins. This means that the decrees of God, and the love and salvation of God, are all looked upon by God Himself through Christ ; Christ being the medium by which they are carried out, the glass through which they are seen, the representative through whom they are conveyed and distributed to us.

And yet not merely is He the Agent of our Christian lives. He is now the Head over all things. He administers God's wide government. He is appointed Heir of all things, He by Whom God made the worlds.

He is in God's place, exalted above all principality and power, that He might fill all things. And to what end ? This question is answered by Saint Paul in a sentence which is itself the complete statement of our text and of the idea we have deduced from it. He wrote again to the Ephesians that God has " made known unto us the mystery of His will " — i. e., that eternal thought of which the universe is the copy — " according to the good pleasure which He purposed in Himself — namely, this, that in the dispensation of the fullness of times He might sum up in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth." Christ is the end to which absolutely all things tend — not merely the little life of man, but the greater life of the whole creation. As in the beginning, He revealed God, so at the end will He do the same, but with that fullness of revelation which only the long history of conflict between sin and righteousness could produce. As He was at the beginning, so will He be in the end, but with all that He has done meanwhile, with all that through Him and with Him men have learned meanwhile, spread out to view.