A SON HONOURETH HIS FATHER - Robert Murray Mcchene

“A son honoureth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you.”—Mai. i., 6.

THE first conviction that a essential to the conversion of the soul, is conviction of sin; not the general conviction that all men are sinful, but the personal conviction that I am an undone sinner; not the general conviction that other men must be forgiven or perish, but the personal conviction that I must be forgiven or perish. Now, there is no greater barrier in the way of this truth being impressed on the soul, than the felt consciousness of possessing many virtues. We cannot be persuaded that the image of God has so completely been effaced from our souls as the Bible tells us, when we feel within ourselves, and see exhibited in others, what may almost be termed godlike virtues. The heroes of whom we have read in history, with their love of country, and contempt of death, their constancy in friendship, and fidelity in affection, seem to rise up before us to plead the cause of injured humanity. And what is far more baffling, our every-day experience of the kindness of hospitality, the flowings of unbounded generosity, the compassion that weeps because another weeps; and all this among men that care not for Christ and his salvation, seems to raise a barrier impregnable against the truth, that man is conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity. When we enter one cottage door, and see a whole company of brothers and sisters melted into tears at the sight of a dying sister’s agonies; or when we enter another door, and see the tenderness of a mother’s affection toward the sick infant in her bosom; or when we see, in a third family, the cheerful obedience which the children pay to an aged father; or, in a fourth family, the scrupulous integrity with which the servant manages the affairs of an earthly master, we are ready to ask, Is this indeed a world of sin? is it possible that the wrath of God can be in store for such a world? It will be very generally granted, that there are some men so utterly worthless and incorrigible, so far gone in the ways of desperate wickedness, that nothing else is to be expected for them, but an eternity of hopeless misery. There is a crew of abandoned profligates, who scoff at the very name of God and religion. There are Atheists, who openly deny his very being; Infidels, who openly deny that Christ came in the flesh. There are coldblooded murderers, and worse than murderers, who are confessed by all to be a disgrace to the name of man. For these, few would dare to plead exemption from the awful vengeance that awaits the ungodly. So that there is a felt reasonableness in the dreadful words: “The abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone.” But that the obedient child, and the faithful’ servant, the tenderly affectionate mother, the hospitable and generous neighbor, the man of intelligence and good feeing, that all these should ever be bound up in the same bundle of destruction, and consigned to the same eternal flames, merely because they do not believe in Jesus: this is the rock of offence on which thousands stumble and fall, to their inevitable loss.

There is, perhaps, no way more commonly used by man, to repel all the personal convictions of sin which the Word of God would cast on us. For do I not feel within me nil the tender affections of humanity, all the honesties and integrities of our nature? Do I not feel pleasure in being honest and fair dealing, in being compassionate, and generous, and hospitable? How plainly, then, may I say to my soul: “Soul, take thine ease?” These virtues of thine are a sure token that thou art born for a blessed eternity. Ah! my friends, is it not a most blessed thing that, in the passage now before us, God wrests from our hand the very weapon wherewith we would defend ourselves, and turns it with a shaft to pierce our worldly consciences? And, oh! if we had minds as intelligent as when Adam walked with God in Paradise, nothing more would be necessary to carry to our hearts the overwhelming conviction of sin than the repetition of the words: “A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master; if then I be a father, where is mine honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you.” There is a power and a pathos in this argument, which might well break down the hardest and most unfeeling mind; it is as if God had said, as he elsewhere doth: “Come and let us reason together.” You say that you have many excellent virtues, that you have’ tender and beautiful affections; you say that filial and parental love occupy a master- lace in your bosom, that integrity and unsullied honesty beat high in your breast. And do I deny all this? Shall I detract from the glory of my own handiwork, so beautiful, even in ruins? No, it is all true; the son does honor his lather, the servant is faithful to his master; all is beautiful, when I look only to the earthly relationships. But that is the very thing which shows the utter derangement of all the heavenly relationships; for, “if I then be a father, where is mine honor? if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you.” I see that you honor your earthly fathers, and serve faithfully your earthly masters; but that is the very thing which shows me that I am the exception. I see that there is not a father in tin: whole universe that is deprived of the love of his children, but me —tin IT is not a master under heaven that is robbed of the honor

and service of his domestics, as I am. If, brethren, you and I were sunk into actual brutality, if we had no love for parents, no honesty to masters, then God might have had cause to say of us, that nothing better could be expected from such wretches, than that we should forget our heavenly Father and Master. But. oh! when there are such tender and beautiful affections in our bosoms towards our earthly relations, is not our sin written as with an iron pen, and with lead in the rock for ever, that we make God the exception, that we are godless in the world ?

I would now, with ail affection and tenderness, beseech every one of you to search his own heart, and see if these things be not so; sec if that which you generally take for the excuse of your sins, be not the very essence of your sin. What would you not do, what would you not suffer, for the sake of an earthly parent? and yet you will not expend so much as a thought, or the breathing of a desire, for your heavenly Parent. God is not in all your thoughts. You will toil night and day in behalf of an earthly master; yet you will not do a hand’s turn for your heavenly Master. God is the only parent whom you dishonor; God is the only master whom you wrong. “If you were blind, you should have no sin; but now it is plain you see, therefore, your sin remaineth.” If you were incapable of affection or fidelity, then you should have no sin; but now it is plain you are capable of both, therefore, your sin remaineth. Imagine a family of brothers and sisters all bound together by the ties of the closest amity and affection. Oh! it is a good and pleasant sight to see brethren dwell together in unity. “It is like precious ointment upon the head, that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron’s beard, that went down to the skirts of his garments. It is as the dew of Hermon, that descended upon the mountains of Zion.” What will they not do for each other? what will they not suffer for each other? But, imagine again that all this unity, which is so much like the temper of heaven, was maintained among them, whilst all the while they were united in despising the tender mother that bore them, in turning away from, and forsaking the grey-haired father that had brought up every one of them. Would not this one feature in the picture change all its beauty and all its interest? Would it not make their unity more like that of devils, than that of angels? Would you not say, that their affection for one another was the very thing which made their disaffection to their parents hateful and most unnatural? Oh! brethren, the picture is a picture of us: “A son honoreth his father, and a servant his master: if then I be a father, where is mine honor? and if I be a master, where is my fear? saith the Lord of hosts unto you.”Oh! it is a fearful thing, when our very virtues, to which we flee for refuge against the wrath of God, turn round most fiercely to condemn us. What avail your honesties, what avail your filial attachments, what avail your domestic virtues, which this world so much admire, and praise you for, if, in the sight of God, these are all the while enhancing your ungodliness? Let no man misunderstand me, as if I had said that it was a bad thing to be honest, to be faithful, and just, and affectionate; to parents. Every sensible man knows the value of these earthly virtues, and how much they are invigorated and enlarged, and begin anew life, as it were, when the worldly man becomes a believer. But this I do say, that if thou hast nothing more than these earthly virtues, they will every one of them rise in the judgment only to condemn thee. I say only what the mighty Luther hath said before me, that these virtues of thine, whereby thou thinkest to build thy Babel tower to heaven, are but the splendid sins of humanity; and that they will only serve to cast thee down into tenfold deeper condemnation. God doth not charge you, brethren, with dishonesty, with disobedience to parents. The only charge which he brings against you here is, the one long sin of the natural man’s life, ungodliness. God is not in all your thoughts. He admits that you have earthly virtues; but these just make blacker and more indelible your sins against heaven.

I. I infer from this passage, that our worldly virtues will not atone for sin, or make us acceptable in the sight of God.— Humanity is a ruin; but it is beautiful even in ruins. And just as you may wander through some magnificent pile, over which the winter storms of whole centuries have passed, and stand with admiring gaze beside every fluted column, now broken and prostrate, and luxuriate with antiquarian fancy amid the halfdefaced carving of Gothic ages, as you may do all this without so much as a thought of the loss of its chief architectural glory, the grand proportions of the whole towering majestically heavenward, with bastion and minaret, all now lying buried in their own rubbish, so may you look upon man; you may wander from one earthly affection and faculty to another, filled with admiration of the curious handiwork of Him who is indeed the most cunning of artists; you may luxuriate amidst the exquisite adaptations of man to man, so nice as to keep all the wheels of society running smoothly and easily forward; you may do all this, as thousands .have done before you, without so much as a thought of the loss of man’s chiefest glory, the relation of man to his God, that while many amid the rubbish of this world are honest, and fair-dealing, and affectionate to parents, there is not one that seeketh after God. 

Let us imagine for an instant that these worldly virtues could take away sin; and just look to the consequences. Where would you find the man altogether destitute of them? where is salvation to stop? If honesty and generosity are to blot out one sin, why not all sin? In this way you can fix no limit between the saved and the unsaved; and, therefore, all men may live as they please, for you never can prove that one man is beyond the pale of salvation. Again: if worldly virtues could blot out sin, Christ is dead in vain. He came to save his people from their sins. Angels ushered him into the world as the Saviour of sinners. John bade men behold in him the Lamb of God that taketh away the sins of the world; and the whole Bible testifies, that “through this man is preached unto you the remission of sins.” But if the every-day honesties, and kindnesses, and generosities of life, could avail to take away sin, what needed Christ to have suffered? If anything so cheap and common as earthly virtues are, could avail to the blotting out of sin, why needed so inestimably precious a provision to be made as the blood of the Son of God? It’, with all our honesties, and nil our decencies and respectabilities in the world, we do not stand in need of everything, why doth Christ counsel us to buy of him gold tried in the fire, that we may be rich? Nothing that is imperfect can make us perfect in the sight of God. Hence the admirable direction of an old divine; “Labor after sanctification to the utmost; but do not make a Christ of it; if so it must come down, one way or other. Christ’s obedience and sufferings, not thy sanctification, must be thy justification.” The matter seems a plain one. God is yet to judge the world in righteousness; that is, by the strictest rule of his holy law. If we are to be justified in his sight on that day, we must be perfect in his sight. But that we cannot be. by means of our own sanctification, which is imperfect. It must be through the imputing of a perfect righteousness, then, even the perfect obedience of Christ, that we are to be justified in that day. We are complete only in Christ; we are perfect only in Christ Jesus. But ah! brethren, if our sanctification will not do for a righteousness in that day, much less will our worldly virtues do. If your honesties and worldly decencies are to be enough to cover your nakedness, and make you comely in the sight of God, why needed Christ to have fulfilled all righteousness, as a surety in the stead of sinners? Why does he offer to make poor sinners the righteousness of God in him? Why does he say of his saved ones: “Thou wast perfect in beauty, through my comeliness which I put upon thee?”

II. I infer from this passage that earthly virtues nay accompany a man to hell.—I desire to speak with all reverence, and with all tenderness upon so dreadful a subject. The man who speaks of hell should do it with tears in his eyes. But, oh! brethren, is it not plain, that if the love of earthly parents, and honesty to earthly masters, be consistent with utter ungodliness upon earth, they may also be consistent with the ungodliness of hell? Which of you does not remember the story of the rich man and Lazarus’? When the rich man lifted up his eyes in hell, being in torments, and when he prayed Abraham to send Lazarus to dip his finger in water, and cool his tongue, what was the one other desire which in that fearful hour racked the bosom and prompted the prayer of the wretched man? was it not love for his brethren? “I pray thee, therefore, father, that thou wouldst send him to my father’s house; for I have five brethren; that he may testify unto them, lest they also come into this place of torment.”—Luke xvi., 27. Ah! my brethren, does not this one passage remove a dreadful curtain from the unseen world of woe? does it not reveal to you some eternal pains which you never dreamed of. There will be brotherly affection in hell. These parching flames cannot burn out that element of our being. But, oh! it will give no ease, but rather pain. The love of children will be there; but, oh! what agonies shall it not cause, when the tender mother meets the children on whose souls she had no pity, the children whom she never brought to the Saviour, the children unprayed for, untaught to pray for themselves! Who shall describe the meeting of the loving wife and the affectionate husband in an eternal hell? those that never prayed with one another, and for one another; those that mutually stifled each other’s convictions; those that fostered and encouraged one another in their sins? Ah! my friends, if these, the tenderest and kindest affections of our nature, shall be such fierce instruments of torture, what shall our evil affections be?

I would now speak a word to those of you who are counting upon being saved, because you are honest and affectionate to parents. Oh! that you would be convinced this day by Scripture and common sense, that these, if you be out of Christ, and therefore not at peace with God, do but aggravate your ungodliness, and will add torment inexpressible to your hell. If, then, our very virtues condemn us, what shall our sins do? If the ungodly shall meet with so fearful a doom, where shall the open sinner appear? But there is a fountain opened up in Zion, to which both the ungodly and the sinner may go; and if only you will be persuaded to believe that you” are neither more nor less than one of these lost and undone creatures, I know well how swiftly you will run to plunge yourself into these atoning waters. But if you will still keep harping upon the theme of your many excellent qualities, your honesty, your uprightness, your filial and parental affection, your exactness in equity, your kindness in charity, and will not be convinced by the very words of God, that though the son honor his father, and the servant his master, these do but add a deeper and more diabolical dye to your forgetfulness and contempt of God. If you still do this, then we can only turn away from you with sadness, and say: “The publicans and harlots enter into heaven before you.”

Larbert, Nov. 22, 1835.