“Shall two walk together, except they have agreed?” (Amos 3:3)
am going to say again as I close what I said last Sunday evening: This is not the Gospel. There is no Gospel in my text. It is investigation, it is inquisition. The whole time of our meditation on the text has been time—if there has been any true meaning and value in it—in which we have been finding out the need for the Gospel. The Gospel is not here.
But we have a Gospel, and the Gospel begins with emphasizing the truth revealed in the investigation, for the Gospel begins with Jesus, of Whom I have spoken, Whose name we know so well, of Whom we thought in a passing moment as the one ideal and perfect Man. That is where the Gospel begins. But Jesus merely as Example brings me no Gospel. If you tell me that is the perfect Man among all the ages, and that if I will conform my life to His, then I shall walk with God, I shall say in answer, I cannot do it, I cannot conform my life to His, I cannot copy Him I love, I cannot reproduce in this life of mine all the fair and wondrous strength and beauty that shone and flashed and flamed in His life. I emphasize that further by declaring that if this Jesus of Whom men speak so often today, this perfect Example, has done no other than reveal that example, He has done no other for me than mock my impotence as He reveals my degradation.
I cannot stand in His presence without knowing how entirely, utterly unworthy I am. Can you? Are you among the number of those strange men who write and talk of Him, and whom I sometimes meet, who admire Jesus and patronize Him? Whenever I meet Him I am compelled, as by comparison I look in on my own soul, to say I am unclean, I am a leper. I may have many things in which to boast if I compare myself with other men. I think I could compare myself with some of you quite advantageously; but, so help me God, I have given up the business, because I have seen the light that shone in Judæa and Galilee, and through all the centuries, and I am ashamed. There is a Man walking with God. There is a Man moving in the Divine direction, one with the Divine will, co-operative with the Divine purpose, in the Divine strength. God and a Man walking together! There is a Man in perfect agreement with God. All that He was in the deepest truth concerning Him I find that I am not. There is no Gospel in my text. There is no Gospel in Jesus as Example.
ut we have a Gospel, for remember that the One on Whom we looked and grew ashamed, did not consummate His human life as He might have done if all He had sought was to give the world a perfect example. If Jesus had wished only to give the world an example He would never have descended from the Mount of Transfiguration. That was where His perfect human life was consummated. There in the light and glory He was prepared for entrance into the life that lies beyond, without death. The Sinless One had in Himself no reason to die. By transfiguration, metamorphosis, complete change, He might have passed out into the strange, wonderful, mystic life that lies beyond. But He came down from the Mount of Transfiguration. He trod the way of the valley where the lunatic boy was in possession of a demon, and He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, and gave Himself with all the strength of His purity to the buffeting and bruising of sin and malice and evil, and in a mystery unfathomable, and, therefore, blessed be God, sufficiently deep for all my sin to find in it cancellation and oblivion, He went by the way of the Cross and the way of Resurrection to the eternal and supernal heights. That is the Gospel!
onsequently, that Cross, my brother man, is the “trysting place where heaven’s love and heaven’s justice meet.” That Cross is the place where I may come into agreement with Him, be reconciled to Him, discover anew the meaning of my own life, and receiving from Him absolution for all my sin, may receive also the energy and the life which will enable even me, tremblingly but yet surely, to walk with God.
here shall I meet with Him? You may meet with Him right where you are. When may I meet with Him, in some special evangelistic meeting? This is an evangelistic meeting. In the after-meeting? There is no after-meeting; this is the after-meeting. Then by coming out? No, by sitting still. By signing a card and sending it in? No, by doing nothing that other men may see. There where you sit you may at this moment have direct dealing with God in Christ by saying to Him what I venture to declare you have sung hundreds, perhaps thousands, of times; but now by saying it and meaning it as you never have before, the central actuality of all your life:
othing in my hand I bring,
Simply to Thy Cross I cling;
Naked, come to Thee for dress,
Helpless, look to Thee for grace;
Foul, I to the fountain fly,
Wash me, Saviour, or I die.
f some in this congregation at this moment will make that the language of their inner life, then they will reach the trysting place, and presently, down these aisles and through yonder doors and along the darkened streets of London they may walk with God. And you also, young man, my brother, whom I honor as I see you wearing the King’s Regimentals, presently in France, in the trenches, you may walk with God. But there is no walking with God unless there be agreement. There may be agreement through Him Who loved us and gave Himself for us. (Online source)
G. Campbell Morgan
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