John 21:21-23 Peter seeing him said to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do?… Our Master encouraged His followers to come to Him with all their difficulties. But He exercised a Divine discretion in the answers which He gave. Sometimes, as in the case of the blind man, He gave a direct reply, which removed error. Sometime, as after the parables, He entered into the fullest explanation. But when their questions sprang out of curiosity, He turned them aside either with quiet reproof or practical admonition, as when they asked Him, "Are there few that be saved?" and "Lord, wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom to Israel?" Beneath all this class of answers is the principle that we should not allow the difficulty of questions, for the solution of which we are not responsible, to keep us from doing the plain duty that is at our hands. In my student days I had a friend who was pro-eminently successful in gaining prizes by written competition. In general work he did not appear to be any better than his neighbours. I asked him to explain this, and he said, "You take the questions in the paper as they come; hence, if the first question is a very hard one, you spend, perhaps, the whole time upon that; but I pick out those that I can answer at once, and then having disposed of them, I go on to the harder ones." There was great wisdom in the plan, and in the college of life more of us would come out prizemen if we were to let speculation alone until we have performed plain duties. Much more does this hold of those things which are insoluble by mere human reason. Take — I. THE MYSTERIES THAT LIE OUTSIDE OF REVELATION ALTOGETHER. Many of those things in revelation which perplex men have already emerged in another form in nature and providence. There is — 1. That great enigma, the existence of evil under the government of a wise, holy, and loving God. Revelation did not make that; it found it; and while it shows us a way of escape from evil, it does not attempt to solve the mystery of its existence. Neither can we solve it. But then we are not asked to do so, and we are not responsible for it. How it came is not our affair; but how we may rid ourselves of its defilement, that is for us the question of questions. Just there, however, the Lord Jesus comes with His salvation. What madness, then, to turn away from the remedy to find out the origin of the disease! When you have extinguished the fire, inquire the cause; but while it is blazing, "All hands to the fire-engines!" When we have rescued the drowning man, we may examine how he came to be in the water; but our present duty is to throw him a rope. 2. Akin to that great difficulty is the perplexity occasioned by the anomalies presented by God's providence — the prosperity of the wicked and the adversity of the good. That old debate which waxed so hot between Job and his friends has emerged in every successive generation. Yet virtually they left it where they found it. Jehovah appeared to them at the close, asking them to leave the matter in His hands. And what farther can we get than that? We are not responsible for the government of the world. God will take care of His own honour. Meanwhile for us there is the lowlier province of working out our own salvation, under the assurance that "it is God who worketh in us, to will and to do of His good pleasure." To us the Saviour has said, "Follow Me," and for the answer we give to that we shall be responsible. We cannot unravel the perplexities of providence, but we can see the way of life. Let us work in the light we have, and as we follow it we shall be led to the fountain of light. 3. Very dark many occurrences around us seem to be. The vessel goes to pieces, and hundreds are hurried to a watery grave; the little child is battered to death by a brutal ruffian; the devout worshippers in a crowded church are burned or trampled to death. "These things happen," we say, "under a God of mercy and love and justice! Why do they occur?" And then there comes the answer, "What is that to thee?" In the long run God will be "His own interpreter, and He will make it plain"; meanwhile follow Christ. II. THE MYSTERIES WHICH SPRING OUT OF REVELATION. 1. To the superficial thinker it seems anomalous that in a communication from God there shall be any difficulties. But when we go deeper it will appear that mystery is inseparable from a revelation given by a higher to a lower intelligence. Your child asks you for an explanation of something, and you give him an answer suited to his comprehension; but your reply, perfectly intelligible from your stand-point, starts in his mind a whole crop of new perplexities. Now something like that occurs in our reception of the revelation which God has given us. The cry of our humanity was, "How shall man be just with God?" and in reply God has pointed us to Him whom He "hath set forth to be a propitiation," &c. This is a precious declaration; but how many new difficulties it has started! It brings us face to face with the mysteries of the Trinity, the Incarnation, the innocent suffering for the guilty, and so working out their redemption, &c.; and many caught in the meshes of the perplexities which they have occasioned are to-day where they were years ago. They have not "followed Christ," they have not joined His Church, they have not begun to grow in nobility and holiness of character, because they have not been able to thread their way through the labyrinth in which such questionings have involved them. 2. Now, how shall we deal with such? In the spirit of the principle before us. These questionings are not in our department. They have reference to matters which belong to God. We are not responsible for them. It may be that it is just as impossible for God to make them plain to us, as it is for us to render something which is incomprehensible to our child intelligible to him. It is not required of us to understand the infinite. Only God can comprehend God. What we are commanded to do is to follow Christ. That is within our power. There is but one way out of a labyrinth, when we have become hopelessly involved, and that is to put our hand in that of a guide, and follow his leading. And there is only one way out of these spiritual perplexities, viz., taking all that Christ says in childlike faith. III. THE CONTINGENCIES OF THE FUTURE. We are all prone to pry into the years to come. Sometimes we are solicitous about ourselves. We cannot see what is to become of us; and if we have no cause for apprehension, we torment ourselves about our children, or our friends, or the Church, or the nation. Now to all our misgivings we have but one answer. The future is not ours. The present is. We are responsible for the present and not for the future, except only as it shall be affected by the present. Nay, we shall best serve the future, and secure it from those evils which we fear, by doing with our might the work of the present, and leaving the issue with God. "Follow Christ." In your business "follow Christ," by conducting it on His maxims, and leave the result with Him. In your household "follow Christ," by setting before them an example of faith and charity. In the Church let your endeavour be to adorn the doctrine of God your Saviour, and do not distress yourselves about things that have not yet occurred. The Philistines will not carry off God's ark, or if they do, they will soon be made as eager to send it back as they were to take it away. So with national affairs. (W. M. Taylor, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: Peter seeing him saith to Jesus, Lord, and what shall this man do?WEB: Peter seeing him, said to Jesus, "Lord, what about this man?" |
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