One of my favourite poems has long been The Listeners by Walter de la Mare. Now, as an English Literature graduate, I’m slightly ashamed to admit that, because I am not sure that Walter de la Mare is really in the first rank of English poets. But I love this poem – and this may be slightly self-indulgent – I’m going to read it to you now. The setting is an isolated house, in the middle of the night, when a lone horseman comes and knocks at the door:
‘Is there anybody there?’ said the Traveller,
Knocking on the moonlit door;
And
his horse in the silence champed the grasses
Of the forest’s ferny floor:
And
a bird flew up out of the turret,
Above the Traveller’s head:
And
he smote upon the door again a second time;
‘Is there anybody there?’ he said.
But
no one descended to the Traveller;
No head from the leaf-fringed sill
Leaned
over and looked into his grey eyes,
Where he stood perplexed and still.
But
only a host of phantom listeners
That dwelt in the lone house then
Stood
listening in the quiet of the moonlight
To that voice from the world of men:
Stood thronging the faint moonbeams on the
dark stair,
That goes down to the empty hall,
Hearkening
in an air stirred and shaken
By the lonely Traveller’s call.
And
he felt in his heart their strangeness,
Their stillness answering his cry,
While
his horse moved, cropping the dark turf,
’Neath the starred and leafy sky;
For
he suddenly smote on the door, even
Louder, and lifted his head:–
‘Tell
them I came, and no one answered,
That I kept my word,’ he said.
Never
the least stir made the listeners,
Though every word he spake
Fell
echoing through the shadowiness of the still house
From the one man left awake:
Ay,
they heard his foot upon the stirrup,
And the sound of iron on stone,
And
how the silence surged softly backward,
When the plunging hoofs were gone.
It seems to me that the heart of the poem are these lines that come in the middle: ‘Tell them I came, and no one answered, That I kept my word,’ he said. What was that word, that promise, that had been made? To whom had the Traveller given his word, made that promise? Why had he made it? What had it cost him to try to keep it? And why was it no longer possible to keep it? Why was the house now empty and forlorn and deserted? There is something very moving about a promise and the attempt to keep a promise.
Take Saving Private Ryan – not really a Chick Flick, I’m afraid, but I’m guessing that quite a number of us may have seen it. The story hinges on a promise that the U.S. General Staff made to themselves that one mother in the mid-West would not have to face the death of all four of her sons in the Second World War. So, at immense cost to themselves, an infantry section fought their way across Normandy to find and rescue her only surviving son, Private Ryan – just to keep a promise.
Now, we can’t always keep our promises. For whatever reason, the Traveller arrived at the house too late. For all their determination, the U.S. General Staff might not have been able to rescue Private Ryan alive. Paul, in our passage, had had to change his mind about a visit to Corinth, and that was what had given rise to a painful misunderstanding with the Corinthian Christians – not to say a row – between him and them. We are not always able to keep our promises, not even to those we most love: husbands to wives, parents to children.
But when we find God, we finally find the One who has never broken His promise; the One who never breaks His word. That’s why Paul was so determined that the Corinthians should not let the misunderstanding between him and them undermine their grasp of that truth. Look at verse 18: ‘But as surely as God is faithful, our message to you is not “Yes” and “No”. He’s saying, “Has my attitude to you really changed, because I cancelled a visit? No more than God’s attitude to you has changed!” – ‘For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by me and Silas and Timothy, was not “Yes and “No”, but in him it has always been “Yes”. For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. ’ (v. 19, 20a).
God is not tricksy. He is not one of the capricious deities of the classical pantheon (like Zeus or Jove), so that we never quite know where we stand with Him. God is absolutely consistent in His attitude to us, because He deals with us in just one way: through Jesus Christ. God is a promise-maker (and that is a wonderful thought); and He is a promise-keeper (and that is an even more wonderful truth about Him) and all His promises are fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Verse 20 is the main focus of what we’re going to look at: ‘For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ.’ So there’s no uncertainty, no luck, no chanciness about dealing with God. It’s not a matter of good fortune, like winning the National Lottery, or having blonde hair, or something like that. It doesn’t just happen to you. So we don’t have to cross our fingers and hope for the best when we are dealing with God. We have to face up to Jesus: ‘For no matter how many promises God has made, they are “Yes” in Christ. And so, through him, the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God’ (v. 20).
For Jesus is the One who will show us God. You and I cannot grasp infinity, eternity, the invisible Creator God. But we can understand another human being. So God became a human being in order that you and I might get to know and to understand what we could not possibly otherwise grasp: the nature of divinity and deity. “Have you ever seen God?” Christians sometimes get asked. The answer is actually, “No. I was born too late. If I had been around 2,000 years ago, in the Near East, I could have seen Him.” And we have now a record of that life – the Bible.
But Jesus does not just reveal deity. He is not just like some divine model, walking the catwalk of a human life, saying, “Look at Me! This is how wonderful God is!” He does not just show us God. He brings us to God. My problem is not so much that I am ignorant of God. But that I have rebelled against Him. There are some things in life that we are reluctant to get to know about, because once we do know about them they will change our lives. Forgive me a banal illustration, but computer technology would be an example in my case. I know that I ought to know more about E-mails and word processors and hard drives and things like that, things way beyond my comprehension. And if I did know more I would have to smarten up my act. But, as a rapidly ageing 54 year old, I just can’t face it. But in a much more serious way, how many can’t face God? – not because He isn’t there, not because they don’t have a pretty deep sense of His reality, but because they would have to change, from being a rebel against Him (have you ever thought of yourself in that way? − that’s what we are if God is not in the centre of things), to being a worshipper. I want to ask whether that is you? You know it would be a change for the better, but you shrink from it.
Perhaps because we think we could never keep it up. It’s not so much that we don’t want to be better people, we just don’t think it’s possible. We’ve tried and we’ve failed again and again and again.
Well, if you’re thinking like that, please look at verses 21 and 22 (because it is important that you hear God at this point, and not me – so I want to encourage us to look into the word of God): ‘Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.’ ‘Now it is God …’ – it couldn’t be much clearer, could it, than the way Paul puts it here?
A human being does not find God by his or her own efforts. Forgive me if that comes as news to you. God has to come to us from the other side. We cannot know Him without Him revealing Himself to us. We cannot find Him without Him rescuing us: ‘Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us …’
That is why Jesus did not just live a wonderful life and teach amazing truths. He also died a ghastly death: because in our rebellion, you and I have done, said and thought enough bad things in our lives to cut us off from a holy God for ever. I think we all know that, don’t we? But Jesus, who never, did, said or thought a bad thing in all His life, died on a Roman gibbet, screaming out in agony that God had forsaken Him…because He died for you, in your place, and in mine, to deal with that past: the past which would otherwise keep us from God for ever. There was a promise that found its fulfilment in Jesus: the promise to forgive us our sins – so that instead of standing before God as guilty rebels, we stand there ‘in Christ’, as Paul calls it. Look again at verse 21: ‘Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ’ − forgiven for His sake – ‘He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit , guaranteeing what is to come.’ So what God has done for us in Christ, guarantees what He will do for us. When something belongs to you, you care about it, don’t you? If you notice someone trying to park his car and denting another parked car in the process (I almost said ‘park her car’, but thought better of it!). Your attitude changes immediately if your recognise that the parked car being scratched is yours: “Hey! It’s my car you’re putting a dent in the back of!”. Ownership makes all the difference. Look again at those verses: ‘He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come.’ If we are believers, God will keep us safe for heaven, because we belong to Him. It is He who saves us and He who keeps us saved.
“So,” I hear you say, “do I have to do nothing at all? Do I have to do absolutely nothing, Mark?” Well, in verses 20-22 there is just one thing that Paul says is done by us. And I’m going to ask you to find it for yourselves now…Do you see it there? At the end of verse 20, the one thing that we have to do: ‘And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.’ We have to say, “Amen”. Big deal! That’s how Paul puts it. The word ‘amen’ means ‘so be it’. And it isn’t a lot, is it? We accept that those promises of God find their fulfilment in Christ for us by saying, “Amen”: “So be it”. Just a word of acceptance, just: “Yes, please.” That’s what it amounts to.
I mentioned last week that one of my wisdom teeth had been shown the yellow card by my dentist. He X-rayed it at that time, all ready to find out where the roots were, ready to extract it – but then he said, “It’s up to you, Mark. There’s nothing more I can do for it: you must decide if it’s going to come out.” So we gave it another week or so’s grace. But if I go back and sit down in his chair again I won’t have to say anything but, “Yes, please.” And he will reach for the pliers. I don’t have to do anything to get that tooth out, I won’t have to wrench at it myself, I don’t have to pull it around, I don’t have to do a thing. He will do it all; but he will not do it until I say, “Yes, please.”
OK, it’s another trivial illustration of a great truth: God will not save anyone without that person saying, “Yes, please.” Not one of us is going to be dragged, kicking and screaming, into heaven because we have a godly mother, or a Christian wife, or somebody who has been praying for us. You won’t get there until you say, “Amen. So be it. Yes, please.” It is God who saves. None of us can get ourselves into heaven by our own will. But it requires our agreement: one word ‘Amen’ to Christ – let it be so, let me be saved by Him – and all the power of God flows into my life: ‘And so through him the “Amen” is spoken by us to the glory of God.’ We accept that all the promises of God have their “Yes” in Christ. We say “Amen”, so be it. ‘Now it is God who makes both us and you stand firm in Christ. He anointed us, set his seal of ownership on us, and put his Spirit in our hearts as a deposit, guaranteeing what is to come’ (vv. 21, 22).
Perhaps it’s the one thing you’ve missed so far. You’ve tried church; you’ve tried being good; but you’ve never said, “Yes” to Jesus. You’ve never said, “If I’m going to be saved, God, you’re going to have to do it. Please do so!”
I know it isn’t quite the mood of today: to open a door that lets the supernatural God into a human life, to turn my world upside down. That’s not the sort of adventure that’s fashionable in 2002. It’s ‘Gap Year’ trips on sailing ships to Guatemala’ and things like that: that’s the adventures we think of today: things that cost us a lot of money and are a lot of fun. Dr. Jonathan Steinberg, Vice-Master of Trinity Hall, wrote an article a few years ago about the tone of university life. He entitled it: ‘No risk, no cause, no fun; all they want is a good degree’. And he wrote in it ‘Not long ago I asked my lecture audience if anybody in the room thought that anything he or she would do in life would make any difference to the way the world functioned. They looked at me in pity. Clearly I had gone mad.’
But God has made a promise to change the world that you and I inhabit by changing us: me, you. Will you let Him? By saying the “Amen” to Jesus Christ. He gave His word in Jesus to you. He will not break it. With what word will you reply? Or is the life of your house now, as it were, empty and deserted, save for the ghosts of what might have been, thronging a moonlit stair and an empty hall? “Tell them I came and no one answered. That I kept my word,” he said.
Walter de la Mare was not writing about Christ (at least I don’t think he was), but God has kept His word to you. He has kept it; He will keep it. He has never, in the history of time, broken His word. And I’m challenging you now to respond in some appropriate way. I’m going to say a short prayer in a moment, as though I were an unbeliever trying to say “Yes” to God for the first time. I’m going to admit my sin and trust in Jesus to forgive it, and I’m going to ask God to come into my life now. It’s just an expanded “Amen”. You might want to echo that in your hearts.
Let’s pray:
Father God, I’m sorry that I have put myself: ‘In the beginning, Mark Ashton’. I have put myself where you should be, and I have rebelled against you. I am sorry for my sin. Thank you that you sent Jesus to die, that I might be forgiven. Please come into my heart; and may all your promises to me be fulfilled in Jesus Christ. Amen.