Luke 8:49-56 While he yet spoke, there comes one from the ruler of the synagogue's house, saying to him, Your daughter is dead… This encouraging direction was spoken by Christ to a man in the very crisis of his acutest agony, and was so efficacious in its influence that it lifted its recipient at once to the highest rank among the heroes of a victorious and manly faith, the faith that(1) is persistent and triumphant in its contest with difficulties in the gravest perils of human experience; (2) Opens, and keeps open, the nature for evermore to the highest, holiest, and helpfullest; and(3) Eagerly avails itself of all contemporary life-interpreting facts. I. "Only believe." Yes, "only," but what an only! Put yourself in this man's position. "Only believe," meant for Jairus attempting the hardest task mortal man ever engaged in. II. Short as this sentence is, it is an ellipsis, and on the way in which it is completed depend the chances of our gaining a true conception of what a manly faith is, not less than a clear notion of this ruler's act. Only believe — what? whom? Oh! if "only" some of our teachers would take the trouble to think this clause out to its fullest significance, the passage would cease to be a miserable fetish, and become a spiritual power. What was this ruler's faith? A correct idea? Yea, verily, for faith without knowledge is superstition. A feeling? Most surely. A tender regard for the Saviour glows in the scene, and faith works by love, and inspires courage never to submit or yield. Obedience? Yes I every step he took alongside of Christ revealed it. But was this all? Knowledge, love, obedience? No! The act is complex. Go to its roots, and you cannot set it out in a short phrase, or dispatch it in a definition. It is vital, like life; and like life, indefinable. It is an opening of the entire nature, in all its powers and faculties, to Christ, to receive of His energies, so that Christ is flowing into him, healing and strengthening him, and sustaining him as he journeys along, and finally giving him a complete victory over himself and his painful and distressing lot. III. But it must not be forgotten that this quickening and stimulating counsel was enforced by an actual and positive fact, illustrative of that very heroism — of faith to which this perplexed and agitated man was encouraged. The direction is set in a background that brilliantly illumines and enforces it; for I cannot avoid thinking that the dangerous delay in reaching the poor man's home, and the obvious determination of Christ to bring the tired and trembling woman to the front, and to compel the confession of her sad and lengthened illness, and of her speedy cure, was meant to encourage this believer in his difficult task. There is always close to us the human fact interpreting and enforcing the Divine direction, if only we have eyes to see and ears to hear the message of our Lord. God never gives us words alone. IV. Let me ask you to take this direction and apply it to yourselves as this man took it. Cling to Christ, the truth, hold fast the gentle and healing hand of Christ. (J. Clifford, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: While he yet spake, there cometh one from the ruler of the synagogue's house, saying to him, Thy daughter is dead; trouble not the Master. |
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