Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

A >> Alexander Maclaren >> Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chaps. XV to XXI

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And it is a precious lesson for us, dear brethren! that whatever may
be our memories, and whatever may be our hopes, the very wisest thing
we can do is to stick to the common drudgery, and even to go back to
abandoned tasks. It stills the pulses. 'Study to be quiet; and to do
our own business' is the best remedy for all excitement, whether it
be of sorrow or of hope. And not seldom to us, if we will learn and
practise that lesson, as to these poor men in the tossing fisherman's
boat, the accustomed and daily duties will be the channel through
which the presence of the Master will be manifested to us.

So they go, and there follow the incidents which I need not repeat,
because we all know them well enough. Only I wish to mark the
distinct allusion throughout the whole narrative to the earlier story
of the first miraculous draught of fishes which was connected with
their call to the Apostleship, and was there by Christ declared to
have a symbolical meaning. The correspondences and the contrasts are
obvious. The scene is the same; the same green mountains look down
upon the same blue waters. It was the same people that were
concerned. They were, probably enough, in the same fishing-boat. In
both there had been a night of fruitless toil; in both there was the
command to let down the net once more; in both obedience was followed
by instantaneous and large success.

So much for the likenesses; the contrasts are these. In the one case
the Master is in the boat with them, in the other He is on the shore;
in the one the net is breaking; in the other, 'though there were so
many, yet did it not break.' In the one Peter, smitten by a sense of
his own sinfulness, says, 'Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O
Lord!' In the other, Peter, with a deeper knowledge of his own
sinfulness, but also with the sweet knowledge of forgiveness, casts
himself into the sea, and flounders through the shallows to reach the
Lord. The one is followed by the call to higher duty and to the
abandonment of possessions; the other is followed by rest and the
mysterious meal on the shore.

That is to say, whilst both of the stories point the lesson of
service to the Master, the one of them exhibits the principles of
service to Him whilst He was still with them, and the other exhibits
the principles of service to Him when He is removed from struggling
and toiling on the billows to the calm of the peaceful shore in the
morning light.

So we may take that night of toil as full of meaning. Think of them
as the darkness fell, and the solemn bulk of the girdling hills lay
blacker upon the waters, and the Syrian sky was mirrored with all its
stars sparkling in the still lake. All the night long cast after cast
was made, and time after time the net was drawn in and nothing in it
but tangle and mud. And when the first streak of the morning breaks
pale over the Eastern hills they are still so absorbed in their tasks
that they do not recognise the voice that hails them from the nearer
shore: 'Lads, have ye any meat?' And they answer it with a half surly
and wholly disappointed monosyllabic 'No!' It is an emblem for us
all; weary and wet, tugging at the oar in the dark, and often seeming
to fail. What then? If the last cast has brought nothing, try
another. Out with the nets once more! Never mind the darkness, and
the cold, and the wetting spray, and the weariness. You cannot expect
to be as comfortable in a fishing-boat as in your drawing-room. You
cannot expect that your nets will be always full. Failure and
disappointment mingle in the most successful lives. Christian work
has often to be done with no results at all apparent to the doer, but
be sure of this, that they who learn and practise the homely,
wholesome virtue of persistent adherence to the task that God sets
them, will catch some gleams of a Presence most real and most
blessed, and before they die will know that 'their labour has not
been in vain in the Lord.' 'They that sow in tears shall reap in
joy.'

And so, finally, about this first part of my subject, there stands
out before us here the blessed picture of the Lord Himself, the Risen
Lord, with the halo of death and resurrection round about Him; there,
on the firm beach, in the increasing light of the morning, interested
in, caring about, directing and crowning with His own blessing, the
obedient work of His servants.

The simple prose fact of the story, in its plain meaning, is more
precious than any 'spiritualising' of it. Take the fact. Jesus
Christ, fresh from the grave, who had been down into those dark
regions of mystery where the dead sleep and wait, and had come back
into this world, and was on the eve of ascending to the Father--this
Christ, the possessor of such experience, takes an interest in seven
poor men's fishing, and cares to know whether their ragged old net is
full or is empty. There never was a more sublime and wonderful
binding together of the loftiest and the lowliest than in that
question in the mouth of the Risen Lord. If men had been going to
dream about what would be fitting language for a risen Saviour, if we
had to do here with a legend, and not with a piece of plain, prosaic
fact, do you think that the imagination would ever have entered the
mind of the legend-maker to put such a question as that into such
lips at such a time? 'Lads, have ye any meat?'

It teaches us that anything that interests us is not without interest
to Christ. Anything that is big enough to occupy our thoughts and our
efforts is large enough to be taken into His. All our ignoble toils,
and all our petty anxieties, touch a chord that vibrates in that deep
and tender heart. Though other sympathy may be unable to come down to
the minutenesses of our little lives, and to wind itself into the
narrow room in which our histories are prisoned, Christ's sympathy
can steal into the narrowest cranny. The risen Lord is interested in
our poor fishing and our disappointments.

And not only that, here is a promise for us, a prophecy for us, of
certain guidance and direction, if only we will come to Him and
acknowledge our dependence upon Him. The question that was put to
them, 'Lads, have ye any meat?' was meant to evoke the answer, 'No!'
The consciousness of my failure is the pre-requisite to my appeal to
Him to prosper my work. And just as before He would, on the other
margin of that same shore, multiply the loaves and the fishes, He put
to them the question, 'How many have ye?' that they might know
clearly the inadequacy of their own resources for the hungry crowd,
so here, in order to prepare their hearts for the reception of His
guidance and His blessing, He provides that they be brought to
catalogue and confess their failures. So He does with us all, beats
the self-confidence out of us, blessed be His name! and makes us know
ourselves to be empty in order that He may pour Himself into us, and
flood us with the joy of His presence.

Then comes the guidance given. We may be sure that it is given to us
all to-day, if we wait upon Him and ask Him. 'Cast the net on the
right side of the ship, and ye shall find.' His command is followed
by swift, unanswering, unquestioning obedience, which in its turn is
immediately succeeded by the large blessing which the Master then
gave on the instant, which He gives still, though often, in equal
love and unquestioned wisdom, it comes long after faith has discerned
His presence and obedience has bowed to His command.

It may be that we shall not see the results of our toil till the
morning dawns and the great net is drawn to land by angel hands. But
we may be sure that while we are toiling on the tossing sea, He
watches from the shore, is interested in all our weary efforts, will
guide us if we own to Him our weakness, and will give us to see at
last issues greater than we had dared to hope from our poor service.
The dying martyr looked up and saw Him 'standing at the right hand of
God,' in the attitude of interested watchfulness and ready help. This
Easter morning bids us lift our eyes to a risen Lord who 'has not
left us to serve alone,' nor gone up on high, like some careless
general to a safe height, while his forsaken soldiers have to stand
the shock of onset without him. From this height He bends down and
'covers our heads in the day of battle.' 'He was received up,' says
the Evangelist, 'and sat on the right hand of God, and they went
forth and preached everywhere.' Strange contrast between His throned
rest and their wandering toils for Him! But the contrast gives place
to a deeper identity of work and condition, as the Gospel goes on to
say, 'The Lord also _working with them_ and confirming the word with
signs following.'

Though we be on the tossing sea and He on the quiet shore, between us
there is a true union and communion, His heart is with us, if our
hearts be with Him, and from Him will pass over all strength, grace,
and blessing to us, if only we know His presence, and owning our
weakness, obey His command and expect His blessing.

II. Look at the other half of this incident before us. I pass over
the episode of the recognition of Jesus by John, and of Peter
struggling to His feet, interesting as it is, in order to fix upon
the central thought of the second part of the narrative, viz. the
risen Lord on the shore, in the increasing light of the morning,
'preparing a table' for His toiling servants. That 'fire of coals'
and the simple refreshment that was being dressed upon it had been
prepared there by Christ's own hand. We are not told that there was
anything miraculous about it. He had gathered the charcoal; He had
procured the fish; He had dressed it and prepared it. They are bidden
to 'bring of the fish they had caught'; He accepts their service, and
adds the result of their toil, as it would seem, to the provision
which His own hand has prepared. He summons them to a meal, not the
midday repast, for it was still early morning. They seat themselves,
smitten by a great awe. The meal goes on in silence. No word is
spoken on either side. Their hearts know Him. He waits on them,
making Himself their Servant as well as their Host. He 'taketh bread
and giveth them and fish likewise,' as He had done in the miracles by
the same shore and on that sad night in the upper room that seemed so
far away now, and in the roadside inn at Emmaus, when something in
His manner or action disclosed Him to the wondering two at the table.

Now what does all that teach us? Two things; and first--neglecting
for a moment the difference between shore and sea--here we have the
fact of Christ's providing, even by doing menial offices, for His
servants.

These seven men were wet and weary, cold and hungry. The first thing
they wanted when they came out of the fishing-boat was their
breakfast. If they had been at home, their wives and children would
have got it ready for them. Jesus had a great deal to say to them
that day, a great deal to teach them, much to do for them, and for
the whole world, by the words that followed; but the first thing that
He thinks about is to feed them. And so, cherishing no overstrained
contempt for material necessities and temporal mercies, let us
remember that it is His hand that feeds us still, and let us be glad
to think that this Christ, risen from the dead and with His heart
full of the large blessings that He was going to bestow, yet paused
to consider: 'They are coming on shore after a night's hard toil,
they will be faint and weary; let Me feed their bodies before I begin
to deal with their hearts and spirits.'

And He will take care of you, brother! and of us all. The 'bread will
be given' us, at any rate, and 'the water made sure.' It was a modest
meal that He with His infinite resources thought enough for toiling
fishermen. 'One fish,' as the original shows us, 'one loaf of bread.'
No more! He could as easily have spread a sumptuous table for them.
There is no covenant for superfluities, necessaries will be given.
Let us bring down our wishes to His gifts and promises, and recognise
the fact that 'he who needs least is the nearest the gods,' and he
that needs least is surest of getting from Christ what he needs.

But then, besides that, the supply of all other deeper and loftier
necessities is here guaranteed. The symbolism of our text divides,
necessarily, the two things which in fact are not divided. It is not
all toiling on the restless sea here, any more than it is all rest
and fruition yonder; but all that your spirit needs, for wisdom,
patience, heroism, righteousness, growth, Christ will give you _in_
your work; and that is better than giving it to you after your work,
and the very work which is blessed by Him, and furthered and
prospered by Him, the very work itself will come to be moat and
nourishment. 'Out of the eater will come forth meat,' and the slain
'lions' of past struggles and sorrows, the next time we come to them,
will be 'full of honey.'

Finally, there is a great symbolical prophecy here if we emphasise
the distinction between the night and the morning, between the shore
and the sea. We can scarcely fail to catch this meaning in the
incident which sets forth the old blessed assurance that the risen
Lord is preparing a feast on the shore while His servants are toiling
on the darkling sea.

All the details, such as the solid shore in contrast with the
changeful sea, the increasing morning in contrast with the toilsome
night, the feast prepared, have been from of old consecrated to
shadow forth the differences between earth and heaven. It would be
blindness not to see here a prophecy of the glad hour when Christ
shall welcome to their stable home, amid the brightness of unsetting
day, the souls that have served Him amidst the fluctuations and
storms of life, and seen Him in its darkness, and shall satisfy all
their desires with the 'bread of heaven.'

Our poor work which He deigns to accept forms part of the feast which
is spread at the end of our toil, when 'there shall be no more sea.'
He adds the results of our toil to the feast which He has prepared.
The consequences of what we have done here on earth make no small
part of the blessedness of heaven.

'Their works and alms and all their good endeavour
Stayed not behind, nor in the grave were trod.'

The souls which a Paul or a John has won for the Master, in their
vocation as 'fishers of men,' are their 'hope and joy and crown of
rejoicing, in the presence of our Lord Jesus.' The great benediction
which the Spirit bade the Apocalyptic seer write over 'the dead which
die in the Lord,' is anticipated in both its parts by this mysterious
meal on the beach. 'They rest from their labours' inasmuch as they
find the food prepared for them, and sit down to partake; 'Their
works do follow them' inasmuch as they 'bring of the fish which they
have caught.'

Finally, Christ Himself waits on them, therein fulfilling in symbol
what He has told us in great words that dimly shadow wonders
unintelligible until experienced: 'Verily I say unto you, He shall
gird Himself, and make them to sit down to meat, and will come forth,
and serve them.'

So here is a vision to cheer us all. Life must be full of toil and of
failure. We are on the midnight sea, and have to tug, weary and wet,
at a heavy oar, and to haul an often empty net. But we do not labour
alone. He comes to us across the storm, and is with us in the night,
a most real, because unseen Presence. If we accept the guidance of
His directing word, His indwelling Spirit, and His all-sufficient
example, and seek to ascertain His will in outward Providences, we
shall not be left to waste our strength in blunders, nor shall our
labour be in vain. In the morning light we shall see Him standing
serene on the steadfast shore. The 'Pilot of the Galilean lake' will
guide our frail boat through the wild surf that marks the breaking of
the sea of life on the shore of eternity; and when the sun rises over
the Eastern hills we shall land on the solid beach, bringing our 'few
small fishes' with us, which He will accept. And there we shall rest,
nor need to ask who He is that serves us, for we shall know that 'It
is the Lord!'

'IT IS THE LORD!'

'Therefore that disciple whom Jesus loved saith unto Peter, It is
the Lord.--JOHN xxi. 7.

It seems a very strange thing that these disciples had not, at an
earlier period of this incident, discovered the presence of Christ,
inasmuch as the whole was so manifestly a repetition of that former
event by which the commencement of their ministry had been
signalised, when He called them to become 'fishers of men.' We are
apt to suppose that when once again they embarked on the lake, and
went back to their old trade, it must have been with many a thought
of Him busy at their hearts. Yonder--perhaps we fancy them thinking--
is the very point where we saw Him coming out of the shadows of the
mountains, that night when He walked on the water; yonder is the
little patch of grass where He made them all sit down whilst we bore
the bread to them: there is the very spot where we were mending our
nets when He came up to us and called us to Himself; and now it is
all over. We have loved and lost Him; He has been with us, and has
left us. 'We trusted that it had been He who should have redeemed
Israel,' and the Cross has ended it all! So, we are apt to think,
they must have spoken; but there does not seem to have been about
them any such sentimental remembrance. John takes pains in this
narrative, I think, to show them to us as plain, rough men, busy
about their night's work, and thinking a great deal more of their
want of success in fishing, than about the old associations which we
are apt to put into their minds. Then through the darkness He comes,
as they had seen Him come once before, when they know Him not; and He
speaks to them as He had spoken before, and they do not detect His
voice yet; and He repeats the old miracle, and their eyes are all
holden, excepting the eyes of him who loved, and _he_ first says, 'It
is the Lord!' Now, besides all the other features of this incident by
which it becomes the revelation of the Lord's presence with His
Church, and the exhibition of the work of the Church during all the
course of the world's history, it contains valuable lessons on other
points, such as these which I shall try to bring before you.

Now and always, as in that morning twilight on the Galilean lake,
Christ comes to men. Everywhere He is present, everywhere revealing
Himself. Now, as then, our eyes are 'holden' by our own fault, so
that we recognise not the merciful Presence which is all around us.
Now, as then, it is they who are nearest to Christ by love who see
Him first. Now, as then, they who are nearest to Him by love, are so
because He loves them, and because they know and believe the love
which He has to them. I find, then, in this part of the story three
thoughts,--First, they only see aright who see Christ in everything.
Secondly, they only see Christ who love Him. Lastly, they only love
Him who know that He loves them,

I. First then, they only see aright who see Christ in everything.

This word of John's, 'It is the Lord!'--ought to be the conviction
with the light of which we go out to the examination of all events,
and to the consideration of all the circumstances of our daily life.
We believe that unto Christ is given 'all power in heaven and upon
earth.' We believe that to Him belongs creative power--that 'without
Him was not anything made which was made.' We believe that from Him
came all life at first. In Him life was, as in its deep source. He is
the Fountain of life. We believe that as no being comes into
existence without His creative power, so none continues to exist
without His sustaining energy. We believe that He allots to all men
their natural characters and their circumstances. We believe that the
history of the world is but the history of His influence, and that
the centre of the whole universe is the cross of Calvary. In the
light of such convictions, I take it, every man that calls himself a
Christian ought to go out to meet life and to study all events. Let
me try, then, to put before you, very briefly, one or two of the
provinces in which we are to take this conviction as the keynote to
all our knowledge.

No man will understand the world aright, to begin with, who cannot
say about all creation, 'It is the Lord!' Nature is but the veil of
the invisible and ascended Lord: and if we would pierce to the
deepest foundations of all being, we cannot stop until we get down to
the living power of Christ our Saviour and the Creator of the world,
by whom all things were made, and whose will pouring out into this
great universe, is the sustaining principle and the true force which
keeps it from nothingness and from quick decay.

Why, what did Christ work all His miracles upon earth for? Not solely
to give us a testimony that the Father had sent Him; not solely to
make us listen to His words as a Teacher sent from God; not solely as
proof of His Messiahship,--but besides all these purposes there was
surely this other, that for once He would unveil to us the true
Author of all things, and the true Foundation of all being. Christ's
miracles interrupted the order of the world, because they made
visible to men for once the true and constant Orderer of the order.
They interrupted the order in so far as they struck out the
intervening links by which the creative and sustaining word of God
acts in nature, and suspended each event directly from the firm
staple of His will. They revealed the eternal Orderer of that order
in that they showed the Incarnate Word wielding the forces of nature,
which He has done from of old and still does. We are then to take all
these signs and wonders that He wrought, as a perennial revelation of
the real state of things with regard to this natural world, and to
see in them all, signs and tokens that into every corner and far-off
region of the universe His loving hand reaches, and His sustaining
power goes forth. Into what province of nature did He not go? He
claimed to be the Lord of life by the side of the boy's bier at the
gate of Nain, in the chamber of the daughter of Jairus, by the grave
of Lazarus. He asserted for Himself authority over all the powers and
functions of our bodily life, when He gave eyes to the blind, hearing
to the deaf, feet to the lame. He showed that He was Lord over the
fowl of the air, the beasts of the earth, the fish of the sea. And He
asserted His dominion over inanimate nature, when the fig-tree,
cursed by Him, withered away to its roots, and the winds and waves
sunk into silence at His gentle voice. He let us get a glimpse into
the dark regions of His rule over the unseen, when 'with authority He
commanded the unclean spirits, and they came out.' And all these
things He did, in order that we, walking in this fair world,
encompassed by the glories of this wonderful universe, should be
delivered from the temptation of thinking that it is separated from
Him, or independent of His creative and sustaining power; and in
order that we should feel that the continuance of all which surrounds
us, the glories of heaven and the loveliness of earth, are as truly
owing to the constant intervention of His present will, and the
interposition beneath them of His sustaining hand, as when first, by
the 'Word of God' who 'was with God and who was God,' speaking forth
His fiat, there came light and beauty out of darkness and chaos.

O Christian men! we shall never understand the Christian thought
about God's universe, until we are able to say, Preservation is a
continual creation; and beneath all the ordinary workings of Nature,
as we faithlessly call it, and the apparently dead play of secondary
causes, there are welling forth, and energising, the living love and
the blessed power of Christ, the Maker, and Monarch, and Sustainer of
all. 'It is the Lord!' is the highest teaching of all science. The
mystery of the universe, and the meaning of God's world, are shrouded
in hopeless obscurity, until we learn to feel that all laws suppose a
Lawgiver, and that all working involves a divine energy; and that
beneath all which appears there lies for ever rising up through it
and giving it its life and power, the one true living Being, the
Father in heaven, the Son by whom He works, and the Holy Ghost the
Spirit. Darkness lies on Nature, except to those who in

'the light of setting suns,
And the round ocean, and the living air,
And the blue sky,'

see that Form which these disciples saw in the morning twilight. Let
'It is the Lord!' be the word on our lips as we gaze on them all, and
nature will then be indeed to us the open secret, the secret of the
Lord which 'He will show to them that fear Him.'

Then again, the same conviction is the only one that is adequate
either to explain or to make tolerable the circumstances of our
earthly condition. To most men--ah! to all of us in our faithless
times--the events that befall ourselves, seem to be one of two things
equally horrible, the play of a blind Chance, or the work of an iron
Fate. I know not which of these two ghastly thoughts about the
circumstances of life is the more depressing, ruining all our energy,
depriving us of all our joy, and dragging us down with its weight.
But brethren, and friends, there are but these three ways for it--
either our life is the subject of a mere chaotic chance; or else it
is put into the mill of an iron destiny, which goes grinding on and
crushing with its remorseless wheels, regardless of what it grinds
up; or else, through it all, in it all, beneath it and above it all,
there is the Will which is Love, and the Love which is Christ! Which
of these thoughts is the one that commends itself to your own hearts
and consciences, and which is the one under which you would fain live
if you could? I understand not how a man can front the awful
possibilities of a future on earth, knowing all the points at which
he is vulnerable, and all the ways by which disaster may come down
upon him, and retain his sanity, unless he believes that all is
ruled, not merely by a God far above him, who may be as
unsympathising as He is omnipotent, but by his Elder Brother, the Son
of God, who showed His heart by all His dealings with us here below,
and who loves as tenderly, and sympathises as closely with us as ever
He did when on earth He gathered the weary and the sick around Him.
Is it not a thing, men and women, worth having, to have this for the
settled conviction of your hearts, that Christ is moving all the
pulses of your life, and that nothing falls out without the
intervention of His presence and the power of His will working
through it? Do you not think such a belief would nerve you for
difficulty, would lift you buoyantly over trials and depressions, and
would set you upon a vantage ground high above all the petty
annoyances of life? Tell me, is there any other place where a man can
plant his foot and say, 'Now I am on a rock and I care not what
comes'? The riddle of Providence is solved, and the discipline of
Providence is being accomplished when we have grasped this
conviction--All events do serve me, for all circumstances come from
His will and pleasure, which is love; and everywhere I go--be it in
the darkness of disaster or in the sunshine of prosperity--I shall
see standing before me that familiar and beloved Shape, and shall be
able to say, 'It is the Lord!' Friends and brethren, that is the
faith to live by, that is the faith to die by; and without it life is
a mockery and a misery.

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