John 10:3-5 To him the porter opens; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calls his own sheep by name, and leads them out.… I. WE HAVE BEEN LOOKING AT THE PORTER ALREADY THIS ADVENT AND HE HAS NOT ALWAYS BEEN THE SAME. We have seen some sitting there; we might have seen others. At one time, as we saw, it was the patriarchs who were sitting there. And they said: "Go after Him, follow Him. His promise is true and faithful: He will never leave thee nor forsake thee." And the angels sat there and taught us the thrice holy hymn, and how the incense goes up before the throne, and the worship of the elders, and the great water rush of the Alleluias, whose spray falls in a golden mist over our worship here below; and they said: "Go out with Him, and going through the vale of misery use it as a well." And their message was, "Worship Him." And the Law sat there in its sternness and said, "You must," and "You shall not," and so braced us up. And the prophets sat there, with their messages from another world, their devotion and their calm endurance. And they said, "Be patient, brethren, unto the coming of the Lord." Yes; and we might have paused to see sitting there also the Gentile world with its splendid natural virtues, its beauty, dignity, and strength, and have heard them point us to the beautiful Shepherd, and bid us aim always at the true, the beautiful, and the good. But today we must contemplate the last figure that sat at the gate of the sheep fold — the precursor of the Shepherd of His people, the forerunner of the King. Then, when the Jewish fold was about to give up its sheep, once and for all, to be merged into something higher, there sits St. John the Baptist; and his message is repentance. His message to the sheep, as they pass out to forget him, to leave him, to lose him, in another and mightier than himself is, "Repent." "To Him the porter openeth." The Baptist is the last and truest teacher and porter of the Jewish Church, and his great message is, "Repent." II. And now let us turn to St. John the Baptist, and see WHAT REPENTANCE IN HIS MOUTH MEANT AS A PREPARATION FOR CHRIST. And we are attracted at once with the dignity, the magnitude of the word. It is not quite the most popular method — Repent. And when he said this, he asked them to feel sorrow. The Pharisee must feel, "Well, I have made a false start." This satisfaction is not a good sign; the remedies I have chosen have not been painful, but they have not touched the seat of the disease. The knife and the burning is what I need. Oh, that sore! It is a humiliating thought to remember how it came there as I tear away the covering which conceals it. And he meant more than this. They were baptized of him in Jordan "confessing their sins." It would be easy and in perfect good taste to soften down the too striking contour of a proud individuality with a confession which does but "bless with faint blame." But no, he wants more. He wants each to face for himself the accumulation of a lifetime, to watch the tale of sin mounting up to its deadly total, until like a spendthrift, who having had a general idea that he had been extravagant, is astonished as each bill adds its quota to the heavy debt, some forgotten, some underestimated, some put aside to another day — he faces the accumulating mass and realizes the enormity of the debt which he believed that he some day would be able to pay if God would but extend patience to him. No; repentance on any other principle would lack, I had almost said, that business-like air which should characterize all our dealings with our souls. It would lack that element of humble acknowledgment which, when it concerns ourselves, we call an apology, to an all-knowing God who, indeed, can trace far better than we can right up into the hidden springs of motive, the history of our sins, but yet waits for us with our own mouths to tell Him. And then he had for each his own method of amendment. Such is the message of that porter who held the gate at the last moment before the Dawn, such was his teaching of repentance which was to prepare the way of the Lord. III. AND STILL THE MESSAGE OF THE NEARER ADVENT IS REPENTANCE. Would that we learned more that penitence is a prerequisite to entering on the service of God! And then, lastly, "Repent" is the message before the last, the final coming of the Lord to each soul in death. And here again the Church, just about to give up the sheep into the hands of the Good Shepherd, still murmurs through the voice of the porter — "Repent." And so the porter waits the coming of Christ to claim His own. "Repent." His voice is stern, but the light gets brighter, the heaven is ablaze, His footsteps sound across the distance, the Bridegroom cometh go ye forth to meet Him. (W. C. E. Newbolt, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: To him the porter openeth; and the sheep hear his voice: and he calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth them out. |
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