413. Full Chalices
Full Chalices
Luk_14:17 : ’93Come, for all things are now ready.’94
It was an exciting time in English history when Queen Elizabeth visited Lord Leicester at Kenilworth Castle. The clocks in all the towers and throughout the castle were stopped at the moment of her arrival, so continuing to point to that moment as the one surpassing all others in interest. The doors of a great banqueting hall were opened. The queen marched in to the sound of the trumpeters. Four hundred servants waited upon the guests. It was a scene that astonished all nations when they heard of it. Five thousand dollars a day did the banquet cost as it went on day after day. She was greeted to the palace gates with floating islands and torches and the bomb of cannon and fireworks that set the night ablaze and a burst of music that lifted the whole scene into enchantment. Beginning in that way, it went on from joy to joy and from excitement to excitement and from rapture to rapture. That was the great banquet that Lord Leicester spread in Kenilworth Castle.
Cardinal Wolsey entertained the French ambassadors in Hampton Court. The best cooks of all the land provided for the table. The guests were kept hunting in the parks all the day so that their appetite might be keen, and then in the evening hour they were shown into the banqueting hall, the table aglitter with imperial plate and ablush with the very costliest wines, and the second course of that feast was made of foods in all shapes, of men and birds and beasts and dancing groups and jousting parties riding upon each other with uplifted lances. Lords and princes and ambassadors, their cups gleaming to the brim, drank first to the health of the King of England, and then to the health of the Emperor of France. That was the banquet that Cardinal Wolsey spread in Hampton Court. But today, my brothers and sisters, I invite you to a grander entertainment. My Lord, the King, is the banqueter. Angels of God are the cupbearers, all the redeemed are the guests; the halls of eternal love frescoed with light and paved with joy and curtained with unfading beauty are the banqueting place, the harmonies of eternity are the music, the chalices of God are the plate, and I am one of the servants come out with invitations to all the people, and oh, that you might break the seal of the invitation and read written in ink of blood and with the tremulous hand of a dying Christ: ’93Come, come, for all things are now ready.’94
Sometimes there have been great disappointment at a banquet. The wine has given out or the servants have been rebellious or the lights have failed; but I walk all around the banqueting table of my Lord today and I find everything complete and I swing open the door of this banqueting house and I say: ’93All things are now ready.’94
Illustrating my text, I go on and in the first place say that the Lord Jesus Christ is ready. Cardinal Wolsey did not come into the banqueting hall until the second course of the feast, and when he entered booted and spurred, all the guests arose and cheered him; but I have to tell you that our banqueter, the Lord Jesus Christ, comes in at the beginning of the feast. Ah, he has been waiting for his guests, waiting for some of them eighteen hundred and ninety-two years, waiting with mangled feet, waiting with hand on the punctured side, waiting with hand on the lacerated temples, waiting, waiting! Wonder it is that the banqueter did not get weary and say: ’93Shut the door and let the laggard stay out.’94 No, he has been waiting. How much he is in earnest. Shall I show you? I gather up all the tears that flooded his cheek in sympathy, all the blood that channeled his brow and back and hand and foot to purchase our redemption. I gather up all the groans coming from midnight chill and mountain hunger and desert loneliness, and I put them into one bitter cry’97I gather up all the pangs that shot from cross and spike and spear, into one groan’97I take one drop of sweat from his brow and I put it under the glass of the Gospel, and it enlarges to lakes of sorrow, to oceans of agony. That Christ today, emaciated and worn and weary, comes here, and with a pathos in which every word is a heartbreak and every sentence a martyrdom, he says to you and he says to me: ’93Come, come, for all things are now ready.’94
Ahasuerus made a feast that lasted one hundred and eighty days. This lasts forever. Lords and princes were invited to that. You and I are invited to this. Yes, he has been waiting, he is waiting now. Other kings wrap themselves in robes of beauty and power before they come into a banquet. So does Christ. Oh, he is the fairest of the fair. In his hands is the omnipotent surgery that opened blind eyes and straightened crooked limbs and hoisted the pillars of heaven and swung the twelve gates which are twelve pearls.
Oh, what a Christ’97a Christ of beauty, a Christ of power. There are not enough cups on earth to dip up this river of beauty. There are not ladders to scale these heights of love. Oh, thou flower of eternity, thy breath is the perfume of heaven. Oh, thou daybreak of the soul, let all nations clap their hands in thy radiance. Chorus! Come men and angels and cherubim and seraphim and archangel, all heights, all depths, all immensities. Chorus! Roll on through the heavens in chariot of universal acclaim, over bridges of hosanna, under arches of coronation, by the towers chiming with eternal jubilee. Chorus! Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and made us kings and priests unto God, to him be glory.
Ah! there is one word of five letters that I would like to write; but I have no sheet fair enough to write it on. and there is no pencil good enough to inscribe it. Give me a sheet from the heavenly records and some pencil used by an angel in describing a victory and then with hand struck by supernatural energy and with pencil dipped in the everlasting morning, I will write it out in capitals of love: J-E-S-U-S, Jesus! It is this one that is waiting for you and for me, for we are on the same platform before God. How long he waited for me! How long has he waited for you? Waiting as a banqueter waits for his delayed guests, the meats smoking and beakers brimming and the minstrel with his finger on the stiff string ready to strike it at the first clash of the hoofs at the gateway. Waiting as a mother waits for her boy that ten years ago went off dragging her bleeding heart after him. Waiting. Oh, can you not give me some comparison intense enough, importune enough, high as heaven, deep as hell, and vast as eternity? Not expecting that you can help me with such a comparison, I simply say he is waiting as only an all-sympathetic Christ knows how to wait for a wandering soul.
Bow the knee and kiss the Son,
Come and welcome, sinner, come.
But I remark again, not only Christ is waiting, but the Holy Spirit is waiting. Why are some sermons a dead failure? Why are there songs that do not get their wing under the people? Why are there prayers that go no higher up than a hunter’92s halloo? Because there is a missing link that only the Holy Spirit can make. If that Spirit should come through this assemblage this morning, there would be a power felt like that when Saul was unhorsed on the road to Damascus, like as when Lydia’92s heart was broken in her fine store, like as when three thousand souls were lifted out of midnight into midnoon at the Pentecost.
Do you notice that sometimes that Spirit takes an insignificant agency to save a soul? I think it is very often that at just one passage of Scripture, a soul is saved because the Holy Spirit gives it supernatural power. There was a man on a Hudson river boat to whom a tract was offered. With indignation he tore it up and threw it overboard, but one fragment lodged on his coatsleeve, and he saw on it the word ’93eternity,’94 and he found no peace until he was prepared for that great future. Do you know what it was that saved Martin Luther? It was that one verse: ’93The just shall live by faith.’94 Do you know what it was that brought Augustine from his horrible dissipations? It was that one verse: ’93Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.’94 Do you know what it was that saved Hedley Vicars, the celebrated soldier? It was the one passage: ’93Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved.’94 Do you know what it was that brought Jonathan Edwards to Christ? It was the one passage: ’93Now unto him be glory forever and ever.’94 One Thanksgiving morning in this church I read my text, ’93Oh, give thanks unto the Lord, for he is good,’94 and a young man stood in the gallery and said to himself: ’93I have never rendered one acceptable offering of gratitude to God in all my life. Here, Lord, I am thine forever.’94 By that one passage of Scripture he was brought into the kingdom, and if I might tell my own experience I might tell how one Sabbath afternoon I was brought to the peace of the Gospel by reading of the Syro-ph’9cnician’92s cry to Christ where she said: ’93Even the dogs eat of the crumbs that fall from the master’92s table.’94 Philosophic sermons never saved anybody. Metaphysical sermons never saved anybody. But the minister comes some Sabbath to his pulpit worn out with engagements and the jangling of a frenzied doorbell. He has only a text and two or three ideas, but he says, ’93O Lord, help me. Here are a good many people I may never meet again. I have not much to say. Speak thou through my poor lips.’94 And before the service is done there are tearful eyes and a solemnity like the judgment. The great French orator, when the dead king lay before him, cried out, ’93God is great,’94 and the triumph of his eloquence has been told by the historians. But I have not heard that one soul was saved by the oratorical flourish. An earnest plea going right out of the heart blessed of the Holy Ghost, that is what saves, that is what brings people into the kingdom of Christ.
I suppose the worldly thought that Thomas Chalmers preached great sermons in his early ministry, but Thomas Chalmers says he never preached at all until he came out of his sickroom, and weak and emaciated, he stood and told the story of Christ to the people, and in the great day of eternity it will be found that not so much the eloquent sermons brought men to Christ as the story told, perhaps, by those who were unknown on earth, the simple story of the Saviour’92s love and mercy, sent by the power of the Holy Ghost straight to the heart. Come, Holy Ghost. Ay, he is here this morning. He fills all the place. Did I say Christ was ready? I tell you the Holy Ghost is ready. At the great day of eternity it will be found that the most souls have been brought to Christ not by the Massillons and Bourdaloues but by humble men, who, in the strength of God and believing in the Eternal Spirit, invited men to Jesus.
There were wise salves, there were excellent ointments, I suppose, in the time of Christ, for blind and inflamed eyes. But Jesus turned his back upon them and put the tip of his finger to his tongue, and then with the spittle that adhered to the finger he anointed the eyes of the blind man and daylight poured into his blinded soul. So it is now that the Spirit of God takes that humble prayer-meeting talk, which seems to be the very saliva of Christian influence, and anoints the eyes of the blind and pours the sunlight of pardons and peace upon the soul. I wish I could feel it more and more that if any good is done it is by the power of God’92s omnipotent Spirit. I do not know what hymns may bring you to Jesus. I do not know what words of Scripture lesson I read may save your soul. Perhaps the Spirit of God may hurl the very text into your heart, ’93Come, for all things are now ready.’94
Then I go on and tell you the church is ready. There are those here who say: ’93No one cares for my soul.’94 We do care for it. You see a man bowing his head in prayer and you say: ’93That man is indifferent.’94 That man bows his head in prayer that the truth may go to every heart. The air is full of prayers. They are going up this morning from this assembly. Hundreds of prayers straight to the throne of a listening God. Prayers ascending noon by noon from Fulton Street prayer-meeting, Friday night by Friday night all over this land, going up from praying circles. Yea, there is not a minute of an hour of any day that there are not supplications ascending to the throne of mercy. The church is ready. And if you should this morning start for your Father’92s house, there would be hundreds and thousands in this assemblage who would say if they knew it: ’93Make room for that man, make room for him at the holy sacrament; bring the silver bowl for his baptism; give him full right to all the privileges of the Church of Jesus Christ.’94 I know there are those who say the church is a mass of hypocrites, but they do not really think so. It is a glorious church. Christ purchased it. Christ built it. Christ swung all its gates. Christ curtained it with upholstery crimson with crucifixion carnage. Come into it. I do not pick out this man or that man and say: ’93You may come.’94 I say all may come’97whosoever will. ’93Come with us and we will do you good. The Lord hath promised good concerning Israel.’94
We are a garden walled around
Chosen and made peculiar ground,
A little plot enclosed by grace
Out of the world’92s wild wilderness.
Do not say you have never been invited. I invite you now to the King’92s feast. One and all. All! All!
But I go further and tell you that the angels are ready. Some people think when we speak about angels we are getting into the region of fancy. They say it is very well for a man when he has just entered the ministry to preach about the angels of heaven, but after he has gone on further it is hardly worth while. My friends, there is not any more evidence in the Bible that there is a God than that there are angels. Did they not swarm around Jacob’92s ladder? When Lazarus’92 soul went up did they not escort it? Did not David say: ’93The chariots of God are twenty thousand, even thousands of angels’94? Are they not represented as the chief harvesters of the judgment day? Did not one angel in one night slay one hundred and eighty thousand of Sennacherib’92s troops? Oh, yes, our world is in communication with two other worlds: heaven and hell. All that communication is by angels. When a bad man is to die, a man who has despised God and rejected the Gospel, the bad spirits come upon sulphurous wing and they shackle him and they try to push him off the precipices into the ruin and they lift a guffaw of diabolical exultation. But there is a line of angels, bright and beautiful and loving angels, mighty angels, reaching all the way from earth to heaven, and I suppose the air is full of them. They hover. They flit about. They push down iniquity from your heart. They are ready to rejoice. Look! There is an angel from the throne of God. One moment ago, it stood before Christ and heard the doxology of the redeemed. It is here now. Bright immortal, what news from the golden city? Speak, spirit blest. The answer is melting on the air: ’93Come, come, for all things are now ready.’94 Angels ready to bear the tidings. Angels ready to drop the benediction. Angels ready to kindle the joy. All ready. Ready, cherubim and seraphim. Ready, thrones and principalities and powers. Ready, Michael the archangel.
Yes, I go further and say that your glorified kindred are ready. I have not any sympathy with modern spiritualism. I believe it is born in perdition. When I see the ravages it makes with human intellects, when I see the homes that it has devastated, when I see the bad morals that very often follow in its wake, I have no faith in modern spiritualism. I think if John Milton and George Whitefield have not anything better to do than to crawl under Rochester tables and rattle the leaves they had better stay home in glory. While I believe that modern spiritualism is bad because of its mental and domestic ravages, common sense, enlightened by the Word of God, teaches us that our friends in glory sympathize with our redemption. ’93There is joy in heaven among the angels of God over one sinner that repenteth,’94 and if the angels hear it, do not our departed kindred there hear it? There are those there who toiled for your salvation, and when they bade you good-by in the last hour, and they said, ’93Meet me in heaven,’94 there was hovering over the pillow the awful possibility that you might not meet. But, oh, the pathos when that hand was thrust out from the cover, and they said good-by. For how long a good-by was it? Now, suppose you should pass into the kingdom of God this morning, suppose you should say: ’93I’92m done with the sins of this world. Fie upon all these follies. O Christ! I take thee now, I take thy service, I respond to thy love, thine am I forever’94’97why, before the tear of repentance had dried on your cheek, before your first prayer had closed, the angel standing with message for thy soul, would cry upward, ’93He is coming!’94 and angels poising mid-air would cry upward: ’93He is coming!’94 and all along the line of light from doorway to doorway, from wing tip to wing tip, the news would go upward until it reached the gate, and then it would flash to the house of many mansions, and find your kindred out, and those before the throne would say: ’93Rejoice with me, my prayers are answered. Give me another harp with which to strike the joy. Saved, saved, saved!’94
Now, my friends, if Christ is ready and the Holy Ghost is ready and the church is ready and the angels of God are ready and your glorified kindred are ready, are you ready? I give with all the emphasis of my soul the question. If you do not get into the King’92s feast it will be because you do not accept the earnest invitation. Arms stretched out soaked with blood from elbow to finger-tip, lips quivering in mortal anguish, two eyes beaming everlasting love while he says: ’93Come, come, come, for all things are now ready.’94
At Kenilworth Castle, I told you, they stopped the clocks when Queen Elizabeth arrived, that the hand of time might point to that moment as the one most significant and tremendous, but if this morning, the King should enter the castle of your soul, well might you stop all the clocks and have the finger of time pointing to this moment as the one most stupendous in all your life. Would that I could come all through these aisles and all through these galleries, not addressing you perfunctorily, but taking you by the hand as a brother takes a brother by the hand, and saying to one and all: ’93Come, come, the door is open, enter now and sit down at the feast.’94
Old man, God has been waiting for thee long years. Would that some tear of repentance might trickle down thy wrinkled cheek. Has not Christ done enough in feeding thee and clothing thee all these years to win from thee one word of gratitude? Come, all the young. Christ is the fairest of the fair. Wait not until thy heart gets hard. Come, the furthest away from Christ. Drunkard, Christ can put out the fire of that thirst. He can restore thy broken home. He can break that shackle. Come now, today, and get his pardon and its strength. Libertine, Christ knew where you were last night. He knows all the story of thy sin. Come to him this day. He will wash away thy sin and he will throw around thee the robe of his pardon. Harlot, thy feet foul with hell, thy laughter the horror of the street’97O Mary Magdalen! Christ waits for thee. And the one furthest off, further than any I have mentioned, a case not so hopeful as any I have mentioned: Self-righteous man, feeling thyself all right, having no need of Christ, no need of pardon, no need of help’97O self-righteous man! dost thou think in those rags thou canst enter the feast? Thou canst not. God’92s servant at the gate would tear off thy robe and leave thee naked at the gate. O self-righteous man! the last to come. Come to the feast. Repent thy sin. Take Christ for thy portion. Day of grace going away. Shadows on the cliff reaching further and further over the plain. The banquet has already begun. Christ has entered into that banquet to which you are invited. The guests are taking their places. The servant of the King has his hand on the door of the banqueting room, and he begins to swing it shut. Now is your time to go in. Now is my time to enter. I must go in. You must go in. He is swinging the door shut. Now it is half shut, Now it is three-fourths shut. Now it is just ajar. After a while, it will be forever shut!
Autor: T. De Witt Talmage