C.I.SCOFIELD
IN MANY PULPITS
with Dr. C. I. Scofield
Dr. Scofield was a preacher par excellence! His withdrawal from his pastoral
work for puhlication of the now famous Scofield Reference Bible made possible a
wide pulpit ministry - in the United States, England, North Ireland and Canada.
The twenty-seven sermons in this book are a selection from that ministry.
Included are some sermons preached to his own congregations in Dallas, Texas,
and East Northfield, Massachusetts.
Those who arc acquainted with Scofield
know what to expect in these sermons. There is no waste of words. The message
from Scripture rings true and clear - and it strikes home. There is instruction
here. Take for example the sermons entitled: "The Duty of Christ"; "The Bible";
and "Did Jesus Rise?" These messages are practical. Take for example the
sermons entitled: "The Demon of Worry" "Prayer"; and "The Test of True
Spirituality." There is comfort. There is admonition.
These sermons are as
timely as the Scriptures. They carry a message that will never lose its
relevance.
THE DEMON OF WORRY
"Therefore take no thought,
saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be
clothed?"
Matthew 6:31
"Take therefore no thought for the
morrow:" - Matthew 6:34
SOME of the things that Jesus Christ found in
the world seem to have caused Him surprise. We are told that He marvelled
because of unbelief. That any one should doubt God caused the Son of God not
indignation so much as astonishment. He felt, in the face of distrust of divine
veracity or of the divine goodness, an emotion of simple amazement. And another
fact of the life men live on the earth appears to have struck Him as foolish
and unreasonable - the fact that the race of men is an anxious, a worried
race.
In the Sermon on the Mount He deals with this fact of worry. He
gives to it more space than to adultery or murder. I should not conclude from
that, that in the divine estimation worry is a graver sin than adultery or
murder, but only that it is far more prevalent.
Wherever Christ looked
He saw the unmistakable traces of anxiety. All faces bore that sinister
mark.
The Sermon on the Mount is the constitution of the kingdom of
heaven on earth and that kingdom excludes worry. God Himself could not make an
anxious world happy. Let us see how Jesus Christ proposes to banish worry from
his world. First of all, he teaches us that we worry about the wrong
things.
"Therefore I say unto you, Take no thought for your life,
what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet for your body, what ye shall
put on. Is not the life more than meat, and the body than raiment?" -
Matthew 6:25
In the last analysis we shall find, if we make that
analysis fearlessly, that our worry is not about mere food and mere raiment,
but about superfluous food and superfluous raiment, and our Lord would call us
back to the consciousness that life itself is an infinitely larger thing than
the externals of life. The men and women who have touched this life of humanity
powerfully and helpfully have always been such as brought the facts of life
into the right perspective, counting life too high and beautiful a thing to
waste itself in overmuch thought about its mere incidents. Are we thinking thus
nobly about life and life's meanings? Have we thought about life itself, the
wonder of it, the deeper meanings of it, the measureless possibilities of even
one day of it? Do we habitually think of life as a trust rather than a
possession? Do we think of sometime giving an account of our administration of
that trust? Do we think of the tremendous investment which God and humanity,
and even the mere creature world, has made and is constantly making, just that
we may have life?
Then, too, Christ puts over against our causes of
anxiety the fatherhood of God.
"Behold the fowls of the air: for
they sow not, neither do they reap, nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly
Father feedeth them. Are ye not much better than they?" - Matthew
6:26
"And why take ye thought for raiment? Consider the lilies of
the field, how they grow; they toil not, neither do they spin; And yet I say
unto you, That even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of
these.
Wherefore, if God so clothe the grass of the field, which today is,
and tomorrow is cast into the oven, shall he not much more clothe you, 0 ye of
little faith?"
Matthew 6:28-30
The Christian is not an orphan
in an unfriendly universe. He is a child of the God who feeds the birds and
clothes the flowers, making each the subject of His solicitude. It has been
estimated, taking as a basis the quantity known to be necessary for their
sustenance, that no millionaire on earth could feed God's birds one day. But
God feeds them every day, and is no whit poorer at night. "Now," says Christ,
in effect, "that is what the Christian's Father does for flowers and birds.
Will He not do as much for His dear children?" The argument is unanswerable.
And it covers the very causes of that anxiety which is whitening the heads and
prematurely furrowing the faces of God's children in the world. It is no wonder
that men have imagined a multitude of invisible spirits at work upon the human
countenance from the cradle to the grave, spirits of light and spirits of
darkness, spirits angelic and spirits from the pit; that with viewless gravers
they patiently inscribe the lines which mark every thought and action. Of
course the deeper and even more awful truth is that human thoughts and actions
are self -recording, and that, struggle against it as we may, that record is
wrought into the substance of the human face.
0, the records that faces
bear! As our eyes grow wise to see, what confessions, fain hidden, stand out
from the faces of the crowd! And no demon drives his pitiless graver deeper,
nor with more certain stroke, than the hateful demon worry. And the lines he
makes are ignoble lines; lines in which he who runs may read the story of
happiness of homes eaten away by little and little as with a biting acid; of
home made hateful to husband and children; of love worn to the breaking point -
and all about things that pass and perish with the day; things of no vital
moment; things upon which neither the true happiness nor honor nor usefulness
of life depend. 0, the pity of it. 0, the miserable shame of it, that on a face
made beautiful by God there should be ignoble worry marks!
Suppose such
an one had trusted God about all those causes of anxiety. Suppose such an one
had said: "My Father feeds the birds; He clothes the flowers; He will assuredly
feed me and mine; He will clothe us." Ah, the happy spirits with the other
gravers would have written on that face other lines -lines of serenity, lines
of happy trust, lines which would have made the face a benediction and a
blessed memory.
Thirdly, Christ reminds the anxious one of earth that,
after all, worry does no good.
"Which of you by taking thought can
add one cubit unto his stature?" - Matthew 6:27
The waste of it!
The uselessness of it! All the worry that ever got itself accomplished in this
weary, worrying world; all the sleepless nights, all the burdened days; all the
joyless, mirthless, peace-destroying, health-destroying, happiness-destroying,
love-destroying hours that men and women have ever in all earth's centuries
given to worry, never wrought one good thing. It was all evil and only evil. It
shut out the face of God, the loveliness of nature, the joy of love, the
compensations of life. It poisoned the peace of others and cast its hateful
shadow over other lives. The very point of the sin of worry, the very reason
why it is the basest, most cowardly of sins, is that it darkens the lives we
are most responsible to bless -and all for no good, but only to blight and
wrong.
The amazing thing about it is that no one is convicted of this
mean sin! Good people live in it, and with no sense of the outrage which it
involves against the love of a kind, heavenly Father and against the rights of
others! A Christian man will not scruple to bring to his home the petty worries
and passing anxieties of the day. Christian women, - women whose lives are
pure, who scorn scandal, who devote life and strength unsparingly to the
service of husband and children, will yet shamelessly poison the peace of home
by the sin of worry, and with no apparent sense of the guilt of it! It is one
of the mysteries of human nature.
"Take therefore no thought for the
morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient
unto the day is the evil thereof."
Matthew 6:34