John 9:4

THE BREVITY OF LIFE

‘I must work the works of Him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh.’

John 9:4

It is not merely of the literal shortness of our time, or the possible nearness of death, that our Lord’s words should set us thinking.

I. If we measure our life by the things we should accomplish in it, by the character it should attain to, by the purposes that should be bearing fruit in it, and not by mere lapse of time, we soon come to feel how very short it is, and the sense of present duty grows imperative. It is thus that the thoughtful man looks at his life; and he feels that there is no such thing as length of days which he can without blame live carelessly, because in these careless days critical opportunities will have slipped away irrecoverably; he will have drifted in his carelessness past some turning-point which he will not see again, and have missed the so-called chances that come no more.

II. But even this is only a part of the considerations that make our present life so precious; for this is only the outer aspect of it. What makes our time so critically short, whether we consider its intellectual or its moral and spiritual uses, is that our nature is so very sensitive, so easily marred by misuse, and spoilt irretrievably. The real brevity of the time at our disposal, whether for the training of our mind, or for our growth in character, consists in this, that deterioration is standing always at the back of any neglect or waste. Deterioration is the inseparable shadow of every form of ignoble life.

‘Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,

Our fatal shadows that walk with us still.’

Leave your faculties unused and they become blunted and dulled; leave your higher tastes uncultivated and they die; let your affections feed on anything unworthy and they become debased. To those who do this it may happen that whilst, so far as years go, they are still in all the freshness of youth—

III. They are already dying that death to all higher capacity which is worse than any decay of our physical organism.—The mere possibility of such a fate overhanging any of us should stir us like a trumpet-call to take care that we do not surrender our life to any mean influence.

—Bishop Percival.

Illustration

‘Even while working busily, and working the works of God, we must not forget our own infirmity, we must remember and repeat Christ’s words—for in them He speaks as one of us, and not as our God—“The night cometh, when no man can work.” The day which is so happy to us, and we would fain hope not unprofitably wasted, is yet hastening to its close. It is of no less importance that we should remember that the time is soon coming when we cannot work, than that we should avail ourselves of the time present, to work in it to the utmost.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

THE PURPOSE OF LIFE

You are sent into this world on a mission. A prepared being to do a prepared work. This was the first principle of our Master’s life, and it should be ours.

I. What am I do that I may fulfil the purpose of my creation?—What are ‘the works of Him that sent me?’ I answer—

(a) Secure your own happiness here and for ever.

(b) Then do all that in you lies to make and secure the present and eternal happiness of your fellow-creatures.

In your own happiness, and in their happinesses, your great Creator is pleased and honoured. These two things are the motive and characteristic feature of daily life, to make a true happiness in us and around us, in our own and others’ hearts to the glory of God.

II. How is it to be done?—What is the course of life that will make that ‘work’? I look for the answer to our Master’s life. How did He ‘work the works of the Father who sent Him’? He was a Man of prayer; in constant communion with God. His was a life all dedicated; a life sacrificed; even to the death. We have our pattern, but how can such a life be copied? Is it not too high, too pure, too heavenly—impossible? We can never reach it; but we can follow it. We can pray for it. We can have it always before us.

III. As to what ‘work.’—In the special ‘work’ you are set to do this year, or day, expect to be guided. You will be guided if you seek guidance and act out at once the impulses of your heart after prayer. For ‘the work’ and ‘the worker’ are both predestined. Only do not be satisfied with anything that is vague and general. Nor in some things which you mean to do tomorrow, or by and by. Put no trust in mere intentions; the work must be instant. The constraint which Christ felt to His work was not only very strong but urgent: ‘I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day.’

Illustration

‘The words “day and night” here have a special reference to our Lord’s bodily Presence with His Church. As long as He was visibly with them it was “day.” When He left them it was “night.” It is well to remark that St. Paul uses the same figures when comparing time present with time to come, at the Second Advent. He says, “The night is far spent, and the day is at hand” (Romans 13:12). There the night is Christ’s bodily absence, and the day Christ’s bodily Presence. Melancthon points out what an example Christ supplies to Christians in this place. The hatred, opposition, and persecution of the world, and the failures and infirmities of professing Christians, must not make us give way to despondency. Like our Master, we must work on. Calvin observes: “From these words we may deduce the universal rule, that to every man the course of his life may be called his day.” Beza and others think that there is a primary prophecy here of the withdrawal of light and privilege from the Jews, which was in the mind of our Lord, as well as the general principle that to all men day is the time for work and not night.’