The garden of the Lord.
The Lord would comfort Zion, and make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the Lord; joy and gladness would. be found therein. The expression, "garden of the Lord," signified everything that was choice, inviting, eligible, that ministered to peace and satisfaction. It may be taken as suggestive of the Church of Christ, which ought to be, to the outside and unreclaimed world, what the cultivated garden is to the surrounding wilderness. The Church—each separate Church—of Christ should be as the garden of Lord in respect of—
I. CULTURE, DIVINE AND HUMAN. The garden is marked out from other spaces by the superior culture which it receives; every square inch of it has attention flora the gardener's hand. The ideal garden is carefully and regularly weeded, digged, planted, pruned, etc. The Church of Christ should show the signs of heavenly, of spiritual culture. On it the Divine Husbandman has bestowed the greatest care. He has wrought upon it, suffered for it, watched over it, tended it with wondrous condescension and inexhaustible love. Human culture has also been expended upon it: the ministry of man, the watchful love, the earnest 'prayer, the faithful admonition, the solemn vows of its own members, have been given to improve and perfect it: it is, or it should be, well-cultivated ground.
II. SECURITY. The garden is fenced on all sides, that no wild animal, that no intruder of any kind, may enter, to steal or to ravage. The Church of Christ should be a sphere of the greatest possible security. In it there should be no occasion to be dreading the presence of the marauder, of "the thief who comes … to steal or to destroy," of the enemy that undermines faith, or that wins away holy love, or that deadens sacred zeal. There we should be free to walk without apprehension, without fear of harm.
III. BEAUTY. We aim to make our gardens as beautiful as the finest taste can make them; to exclude all that is unsightly, and so to introduce and arrange everything that, in part and in whole, it shall be attractive and inviting. From the Church of Christ should be excluded all that is distasteful to the Divine Lord—all that is irreverent, untruthful, discourteous, ungenerous, inconsiderate. Within the Church should grow and flourish all these graces of the Spirit of God which are fair and comely in the sight of God and man.
IV. FRUITFULNESS. What the fruitage of the productive garden is to the house-bolder, that the many-sided usefulness of the active and earnest Church is to the Lord of the vineyard.
V. VARIETY. That is a poor and imperfect garden in which are only two or three kinds of flowers, and where the beds and lawns are laid out so as to suggest monotony. That is a poor and imperfect Church where only one or two orders of intelligence or moral excellence or piety are found. Our Lord does not want to see all the flowers and shrubs and trees in his garden cut and trimmed so as to be of an unvarying pattern.
VI. PEACE AND HAPPINESS. We associate with the garden the thought of tranquility and peace. It is the abode of domestic felicity; there friendship spends its golden hours; it is the resort of happy love. The Church should be the home of peace and joy. To it we should be glad to retire from the bustle and strife of life; in its fold we should find the purest and the sweetest satisfaction which earth can yield. There have been Churches which might justly be called the arena of conflict or the wilderness of neglect. The ideal Church—that at which we should aim, and for which we should strive and sacrifice—is one that might be appropriately designated, "The garden of the Lord."—C.
A sure criterion of character, etc.
This address of Jehovah to the good and worthy among his people contains—
I. A SURE CRITERION OF CHARACTER.
1. It is well to be hearers of God's Word. All the Jews were that; they were all the children of privilege. This, however, was by no means sufficient to prove that they were the children of God.
2. It is better to know his Word and to understand his will. It says something for us if we can be thus addressed, "Ye that know righteousness." But there are many who clearly apprehend their duty, and who, for one reason or another, refrain from doing it.
3. The certain test of spiritual worth is that God's Law is in the heart: "In whose heart is my Law." They who can say with the psalmist," Oh how love I thy Law! it is my meditation all the day" (Psalms 119:97, Psalms 119:111); who esteem God's precepts as more desirable than gold and more sweet than honey (Psalms 19:10); who delight to do his will, for his Law is within their heart, the object of their affection, the source of their joy, the well-spring of their comfort, the treasury of their hope;—these are they whom God loves and honours; and theirs is the kingdom of heaven (see John 14:15, John 14:16, John 14:21, John 14:23; Matthew 7:21).
II. A PROBABLE INCIDENT OF A FAITHFUL LIFE. "Fear ye not the reproach of men, neither be ye afraid of their revilings." It is highly probable, indeed morally certain, that if we are thoroughly loyal to our Lord and true to our own convictions we shall incur the secret dislike and also the active opposition of men. Implicitly, if not explicitly, we shall condemn their theories and their doings, and they will turn upon us in anger or in self-detente. He who never comes into sharp collision with the sentiments and habits of wicked men must either live a life of very unusual seclusion or else have grave reason to suspect his fidelity to Christ.
III. TWO DECISIVE CONSIDERATIONS.
1. Fidelity to conviction means the preference of God to man. Men are saying, "Hearken unto us"—unto us, thy fellows, thy partners, thy confederates; unto us who will share thy responsibility and thy sin, and perish with thee when thou tallest. But God is saying, "Hearken unto me"—unto me, thy Creator, thy Benefactor, thy Divine Friend. A Divine Saviour is saying unto us, "Follow me," in the paths of purity, of integrity, of piety, of consecration (see Isaiah 51:12, Isaiah 51:13).
2. Fidelity to conviction means ultimate triumph, but unfaithfulness means final ruin. The devices of iniquity will come to nought, and the guilty themselves will perish. "The moth shall eat them up like a garment." But "he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever." "God's righteousness shall be for ever," and they who are loving and living it shall never be confounded. Theirs is the present favour and everlasting friendship of the Eternal.—C.
The force in reserve.
It has been said that the battle goes to him who has the best force in reserve. The general who brings all his regiments to the front may expect to be beaten; but he who holds a strong force in reserve may look for victory. ]n the great spiritual struggle now proceeding, the people of God have in reserve that on which they can and will fall back with infinite advantage to their cause.
I. OUR URGENT NEED OF EFFECTUAL SUCCOUR. The battle seems to go against us. We note:
1. The prevalence of evil—of poverty, of misery, of vice, of crime, of unbelief, of superstition, of gross idolatry.
2. The comparative failure of the Church to subdue it. Looking at the entire field of activity, we are obliged to own that complete victory is a very long way off; that the millions of men and women whom the gospel has not reached, and those other millions whose spirit and whose life it has not succeeded in transforming, present a view which is very disappointing. Or looking at particular fields of Christian work, either at home or abroad, regarding the towns and villages of our own land, we do not find that the truth of God has the redeeming and elevating influence which answers to our hopes. We am not conquering the evil which surrounds and assails us; our heart sinks at the thought of the stupendous work before us, which seems to grow rather than to lessen, spite of all our struggle.
II. THE DIVINE FORCE IN RESERVE. Behind us is the arm of the Lord, and on this we lean.
1. It is a great thing that we are armed with a truth which is so fitted to do the renewing work on which we are engaged, a truth which so exquisitely meets the necessities of the human soul.
2. It is a great thing that this truth has triumphed gloriously in the case of individual men, families, tribes, and even nations.
3. But our last and best hope is in the presence and power of God. "The Lord of hosts is with us, the God of Jacob is our Refuge." There are two sustaining thoughts here. One is that Almighty God cannot be defeated. The "arm of the Lord" is the power of the Omnipotent; it is the overcoming energy of him who is the Source of all might and strength, and in whom reside all riches and all resources whatever. The other is that God has shown the exceeding greatness of his power many times before, and can work as glorious marvels in the future as in the past. He who smote Egypt could slay Assyria; he who made a passage across the sea could open a way from Babylon to Jerusalem. The God who has smitten the idolatries of Europe can slay the superstitions of Asia. He who has turned the sensuality and savagery of the islands of the sea into purity and peace can and will overcome the mightiest obstacles which remain. subdue the most hostile forces, and cause the "armies of Israel" to be crowned with victory.