Luke 8:10

MYSTERIES MADE KNOWN

‘Unto you it is given to know the mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to others in parables; that seeing they might not see, and hearing they might not understand.’

Luke 8:10

When Christ spake the parable of the sower, He was not addressing any little cluster of men—‘a great multitude were by the sea on the land,’ and they all heard His words. Why was it then that only a few, ‘those who were about Him with the Twelve,’ followed Him to ask the meaning of the parable? Surely if more had asked the question, more would have received the answer.

I. ‘He that hath, to him shall be given.’—There are some who feel the mystery of life, the awfulness of their being, who draw near to the Lord and ask Him questions and receive His answer. There are others to whom the world is a parable which they do not care to have explained. They ask no questions, for they have forgotten that there are things unseen. They have not, therefore they cannot receive. Yet they who follow the Light are the very last to fancy that they have made that Light for themselves. They who arise at the sound of their Father’s voice are the very last to fancy that they have made themselves His children. They are sure that they could not have sought Him, if He had not been seeking them first. Unto them it was given to know the mysteries. It was no great achievement of theirs. He had called, and they had answered. That was all. The call and the answer both were His—the commandment and the power to fulfil it.

II. Life’s mysteries.—‘To know the mysteries.’ We live encompassed with mysteries. The fashion of this world passeth away. And when it has passed away, what remains but—mystery? Whence came we? whither go we? what are we doing here in this little point of time resting upon the depths of the great eternity? None of us can quite forget the mystery of our being. It forces itself upon us when we least expect it. In hours of sorrow and in hours of joy; in the shock of some crisis of our life or in a time of quiet thought; in the awful silence of the chamber of death or in the peaceful stillness of a starlight night. Whether in tones of hope or fear, in a whisper which brings peace to the soul or one which the soul would gladly not have heard, the world unseen, the world of mystery, is sure to find a voice which will reach us—‘It speaks and we must hear.’ And as we hear we become conscious of a mystery within ourselves which is greater and more mysterious far than all that is without.

III. The mysteries of the kingdom.—The mysteries which surround us are the mysteries of a kingdom. The world unseen is not without form and void. It is no dreary waste of an un-peopled wilderness. There are no dark and terrible forms which move without order or law, which may crush or destroy or let alone, according to chance or their own caprice. There is One Who controls them all. They all obey a Ruler. They belong to a kingdom. It is the Kingdom of God. All peace lies in these words—Blessed is he ‘who understands and knows that God is the Lord.’

IV. Mysteries made known.—To those who ask it is given to know these things—to know them, not as we know the things of this world, which we can understand and express in words, but to know them with the deep devotion and the fervent love of the inmost heart. ‘To know the mystery of His will’—to give ourselves up to it, and enter into it with all the living consciousness of the spirit—to work it out in ourselves and in the world around us; is there a more blessed portion for us upon the earth than this? Is it not a gift worth the asking?

Illustration

‘It is easy, alas! to question the authority of the greatest thoughts which God sends to us. It is easy to darken them and to lose them. But it is not easy to live on to the end without them. You must have been allowed to feel that you are stirred with the truest joy, and braced to labour best at your little tasks, while you welcome and keep before you the loftiest ideal of the method and the aim of work and being which God has made known to you. That is, indeed, His revelation, the vision of Himself. So He declares what He would have you to do, what He will enable you to do. So He calls you to be prophets. The heart alone can speak to the heart. But he who has beheld the least fragment of the Divine glory, he who has spelt out in letters of light on the face of the world one syllable of the Triune Name, will have a confidence and a power which nothing else can bring. Only let him trust what he has seen, and it will become to him a guiding-star till he rests in the unveiled presence of Christ. We shall say, with the lowliest confession of our unworthiness, “our eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” ’