Luke 11:23

FOR OR AGAINST?

‘He that is not with Me is against Me.’

Luke 11:23

As we look around the world we see some are for Christ, and we see others are against Him. In fact, this is the thing which divides the whole world.

I. If you are for Christ, yours is great joy.—Christ infinitely increases the joys of life and lessens the sorrows.

II. To be for Christ often necessitates great sacrifices (Read Luke 12:49). Duty is a great word, a noble, a grand word, but love is a higher, nobler, greater, grander word. Men will do for love, they will make sacrifices for love, which they would not do for duty.

III. To live for Christ ensures great reward (Matthew 25:21; Revelation 22:12).—Your feet shall stand at last within the New Jerusalem, and there Christ will give you eternal rest, and light perpetual will shine upon you.

—Rev. F. Harper.

Illustrations

(1) ‘The application of this expression, “ He that is not with Me is against Me,” is differently interpreted by different commentators. Some think that it should be confined strictly to the subject of which our Lord is speaking: that is, the utter division which exists between His kingdom and that of the devil. They think our Lord is enforcing the absurdity of the idea that He cast out devils by Beelzebub, and that His argument is, “There can be no alliance between Me and Satan: he is not with Me, and so he is against Me: he is not gathering with Me, and so he scatters.” Others think that the expression is of much wider application, and that it is a general truth concerning all waverers, and doubters, and half-hearted and excuse-making people, of whom no doubt there were many among our Lord’s hearers. They argue that our Lord is exposing the awful danger of many of His Jewish hearers, who had been a little roused by John the Baptist, and seemed likely to receive Christ when He appeared. And yet, when He did appear, they hung back and affected to be troubled with doubts, and so continued neutral and undecided. This last opinion appears to me by far the most probable, and is confirmed by the passage which immediately follows. The sentence is directed against undecided Jews, who were like the man from whom the unclean spirit had gone forth. Their hesitating neutrality was a most dangerous position. Their last end was likely to be worse than their first.’

(2) ‘At first sight it seems difficult to reconcile our Lord’s words in this verse with His words in another place. We find Him saying of one who cast out devils in His name, but did not follow His disciples, “Forbid him not; for he that is not against us is for us” (Luke 9:50). Here, however, we find Him saying, “He that is not with us is against us.” The reconciliation of the two sentences in reality is not difficult. They were spoken of two entirely different classes of persons. In the former case, our Lord was speaking of one who was really working for Christ and against the devil, and was doing good, though perhaps not in the wisest way. Of him He says, “He that is not against us is for us.” He works against the same enemy that we work against, and therefore he is on our side. In the case before us, our Lord is speaking of men who refused to join Him and become His disciples, who held aloof from Him, and were afraid or ashamed of His service. Of them He says, “He that is not with us is against us.” He does not avow himself our friend, and so he becomes practically one of our foes.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)

NO NEUTRALITY

In this wide world there are two, and but two, opposing armies; the army of good, which is of Jesus; and the army of evil—and every soul belongs to one or the other.

I. No neutrality.—We know from our Lord’s words in the text that neutrality is impossible. Under every mask of appearances there beats a heart in every human bosom—and that heart is the Lord’s, or it is not—it belongs to Jesus, and it has chosen good—or it has chosen evil and sin. You may not be able to see which—it is, perhaps, not desirable that you should be able. But, nevertheless, we learn, without a shadow of doubt, that every one of us makes the choice between good and evil—between right and wrong—and cannot avoid making it.

II. Fatal facility of choice.—And we learn, in the next place, that there is a ‘fatal facility’ of choice—that it is terribly easy to choose wrongly in this momentous and important matter. As the first beginnings of good, so the first beginnings of evil in the soul are for the most part hidden and secret—open only to the eye of God. An unhappy person who has chosen to be on the wicked side, as I may say, may not at all realise or understand that he has so chosen. For it is but seldom that any one chooses evil by any one great and decisive act. He chooses it by degrees.

III. Under which flag?—There are, as we have seen, two armies; to which do we belong? There are two leaders; which of them do we follow? What a deeply and vitally important matter this is! and yet, I fear, we give it very little thought. Many there are who drift into evil ways, without any specially evil purpose, because they have not taken the trouble to choose aright. To make no choice is to make a bad choice; let us never forget that.

IV. Faithful soldiers.—But the choice, though of the greatest importance, is not all. We have not done all needful for our salvation when the choice is made, and made rightly. You choose to be Christ’s soldiers and servants. You do well. But that is not the end of your duty in this life; it is, indeed, only the beginning. Soldiers have battles to fight; servants have duties to perform; and when we have chosen Christ for our Master and Leader, we must not sit down and fold our hands, and think that we have done all when we have, in fact, done nothing. He would be but a poor soldier who never made a campaign; he would not be a very valuable servant who did nothing in the way of service to his master. No; if we choose Jesus as our Master, we must do something for Him; we must in some way do Him service. To this refers the words, ‘ He that gathereth not with Me scattereth.’ What does this mean? Why, it means that the man, the woman, the child even, who does not help Christ’s work, hinders it. What is Christ’s work? It is the salvation of the whole world.

Illustration

‘There is a picture called “Diana or Christ?” It is really a story of the early days of the Christian Church. There in the foreground of the picture stands a young Christian maid. By her side is the altar-fire burning before the image of the goddess, and by it sits the Roman governor waiting to see Rome’s cruel law carried out. Let her cast the incense upon the flame, but one grain of it, and she is free. Loving hands and lips all about her urge her to do the thing she is bidden, and there dimly sketched in the background of the picture you see the dark outlines of the Roman amphitheatre. Is the old question never put to us: Diana or Christ? “But one grain of the incense, and thou art free.” Yet there were some who dared to die because they loved Christ too well to deny Him. Bishop Patteson was found lying dead, killed by the savages, with five wounds on his body as on his Master’s. To come down to the Chinese massacres of 1901; mark the heroism of the Chinese native Christians; out of sixty in one town there were fifty-nine who chose martyrdom, that is, to lose their heads, rather than renounce Christ, the executioner standing by meanwhile.’