So, then, there is here a revelation, not only of a universal truth, but a most tender and pathetic disclosure of Christ’s yearning love to each of us. He beseeches us that we let Him bless us, and enter in for our rest. Upon that I do not need to dwell, but I desire to enforce the individual bearing of the general truth upon our own consciences, and to come to each with this message: The saying is true about thee, and at the door of thy heart Jesus Christ stands, and there His gentle, mighty hand is laid, and on it the flashes of His light shine, and through the chinks of the unopened door of thy heart comes the beseeching voice, Open! Open unto Me.’ A strange reversal of the attitudes of the great and of the lowly, of the giver and of the receiver, of the Divine and of the human! Christ once said, Knock and it shall be opened unto you.’ But He has taken the suppliant’s place, and, standing by the side of each of us. And the ‘any man’ which follows is wide enough to warrant us in stretching out the representation as far as the bounds of humanity extend, and in believing that wherever there is a closed heart there is a knocking Christ, and that all men are lightened by that Light which came into the world. True, my text was originally spoken in reference to the unworthy members of a little church of early believers in Asia Minor, but it passes far beyond the limits of the lukewarm Laodiceans to whom it was addressed. Here is a revelation of a universal truth, applying to every man and woman on the face of the earth but more especially and manifestly to those of us who live within the sound of Christ’s gospel and of the written revelations of His grace.
This is the meaning, in the fewest possible words, of the great utterance of my text. What are His knockings and His voice? All providences all monitions of His Spirit in man’s spirit and conscience the direct invitations of His written or spoken word in brief, whatsoever sways our hearts to yield to Him and enthrone Him. What is the door? This closed heart of man. I suppose that the briefest explanation of my text is sufficient. Think, then, first of all, of that suppliant for admission. ‘I will come in to him, and sup with him, and he with Me.’ What can surpass such words as these? I venture to take this great text, and ask you to look with me at the three things that lie in it the suppliant for admission the door opened the entrance, and the feast. In His face are love repelled, and pity all but wasted in the touch of His hand are gentleness and authority.īut the picture pauses, of course, at the beginning of my text, and its sequel is quite as wonderful as its first part.
There stands, amid the night dews and the darkness, the patient Son of man, one hand laid on the door, the other bearing a light, which may perchance flash through some of its chinks. In it we see the fast shut door, with rusted hinges, all overgrown with rank, poisonous weeds, which tell how long it has been closed. Many of us are familiar, I dare say, with the devoutly imaginative rendering of the first part of these wonderful words, which we owe to the genius of a living painter.
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