Crowding to Touch the Savior
A Sermon
(No. 841)
Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, November 13, 1868, by
C. H. SPURGEON,
at Bloomsbury Chapel.
"For He had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon Him for to
touch Him, as many as had plagues."
Mark 3:10.
OUR Lord had been persecuted and therefore He put forth many proofs of
His power. When opposition attends the Gospel it will be the more
triumphant. The warnings of the devil predict the success of the Word
of God. When our Lord Jesus had done much, He was under a sacred
necessity to do more–for everyone who was healed busied himself in
spreading abroad the fame of the Beloved Physician–and others laboring
under similar infirmities hastened at once to receive the like cure.
The more we do for Christ the more we may do, and I think usually the
more we must do. If we hold back from Christian labor we may think that
little is required of us, but as soon as we once enter, heart and soul,
into the Master's service, we shall feel as if we needed a thousand
hands and a hundred lives to overtake the growing demands upon us.
I gather from the case before us in the text, that as it was with the
Master so will it always be with the servants. Their pace of usefulness
will increase in geometrical proportion, like that of a falling stone.
Healed multitudes will act as willing decoys to attract multitudes of
their unhealed friends. If there are any here who have received the
Grace of God, it will be natural for them to induce others to listen to
the Word of Life so they, also, may find salvation in our exalted
Savior. Thus it is that the kingdom grows more and more, until the
strongholds of sin are overthrown and the gates of Hell are shaken. The
little cloud, no bigger than a man's hand, increases till it darkens
all the skies and at last deluges the earth with blessings. Let us take
care that we prove not an exception to this blessed rule! Never let us,
by unholy silence, rob our Master of one of His best weapons, and the
Church of her greatest joy. You who are healed should publish abroad in
every place the fame of the Friend of Sinners! It is your privilege and
your duty.
In calling your attention to the text, I shall notice the parallel,
which actually exists, and the fuller parallel which might be expected
between the present times and those of the text. I shall then briefly
notice the sins which prevent the parallel being carried out. Thirdly,
I shall dwell a little upon Divine Grace which invites us to complete
the likeness. And then, lastly, utter some cautions which may be
useful.
I. First, the PARALLEL which exists at this moment between these times
and the text, and which might be expected more fully to exist. Thus it
is in the text Jesus had healed many. These had informed other
afflicted ones, and these afflicted ones, anxious to obtain the gift,
pressed around the Savior in a mighty throng–everyone striving to
touch Him that he might obtain immediate healing.
At this present time, also, Jesus Christ has healed many. Spiritual
sickness is as rife today as bodily sickness was in the period of our
Lord's earthly sojourn. He is, at this hour, graciously occupied in
healing all kinds of moral deformity and moral disease. To our
knowledge some great sinners have been saved. Some who were diseased
with drunkenness, with dishonesty and with lasciviousness have believed
in Christ and have been restored to virtue and to holiness! Surely,
this ought to encourage others to hope that better things are possible
to them through the Savior's healing power!
The Gospel has had free course in the slums of St. Giles! It has worked
graciously in the mansions of Bloomsbury! The Gospel has been found
mighty in Bethual Green, and it has been victorious in the West End. A
few have been saved of the highest in the land, and not some only, but
many of the poor in these last days have found Jesus mighty to save!
Many who were lost to all spiritual things have been saved of late.
During this last week many believed and were changed in heart. Every
Sunday, by God's Grace, souls are saved! We may not blazon it in the
newspapers, nor parade the work of the Lord in magazines, but, for all
that, God is allowing us, week after week, to see evil men made good!
We can assure you that those of us who are pastors, and watch for
souls, constantly see Jesus at His gracious work with sin-sick souls.
He is today healing men of the maladies of their souls. Those whom
Jesus has healed have been most thoroughly and effectually restored.
The drunkard has not merely been reclaimed for a time, but he has
become throughout life a sober, excellent citizen. The depraved and the
debased have not been lifted up into a transient hypocritical
profession of a religion which they did not understand, but we
confidently testify that they have been made new creatures in Christ
Jesus and are now among the most honorable members of society!
Looking back upon our own observation during a course of years, those
of us who are occupied in preaching the Gospel earnestly bear witness
that in these degenerate times, as men usually call them, Jesus Christ,
exalted in the highest heavens, is still delivering men from spiritual
infirmities, saving them from gross vices and inveterate habits! So far
the parallel exists, and it would be natural to expect to see it
completed. Since many diseased in soul have been healed, it might be
reckoned that great multitudes of men would desire to be saved, too.
There are crowds of sick folk in every direction. There are many here
this morning who are spiritually sick. They have eyes that see not God,
hearts that throb not with love to Him, knees that bow not in earnest
prayer, hands withered for all holy service, consciences seared,
judgments unbalanced, imaginations perverse.
All around us spiritual sicknesses of one kind or another meets our
eyes. Even this House of God is crowded with diseased souls like a huge
hospital. As for the great outlying population who fear not God, what a
scene of plague meets the spiritual eye! What pestilence stalks in
public! What disease festers in private! Soul sickness being thus
prevalent, and Jesus being still engaged in healing, how is it that the
sick folk do not throng to Him? How is it that every house in which
Christ is preached is not crowded to the doors? Why do not men struggle
and thrust one another to hear the glad tidings of redemption from
their sins? How is it that they are not earnestly engaged in prayer?
One would have thought that every house would have had its sighs, its
tears, its groans until Christ should reveal Himself and the
inhabitants should be healed! One would have expected to find whole
families engaged in supplications, even to the neglect of worldly
business, for a time, until their souls were healed! Men lie awhile
with bodily sickness, why not with soul sickness? We might have
imagined that as we walked the streets men would run after us crying,
"Brothers and Sisters, what must we do to be saved?" The need of
healing is great! The Physician is present–how is it that men sleep on
and neglect gracious opportunities which concern their eternal
destinies?
The parallel is not carried out. Men care nothing about the Word of
their salvation. If they hear it, they forget it. If some of them
remember it, they do not practice it. If, for awhile, they practice it,
their goodness is "as the morning cloud and as the early dew." The mass
of mankind are content to be spiritually blind, and halt, and maimed,
and talk as if their wounds, and bruises, and putrefying sores were
marks of honor and ensigns of health!
Now, this would not be wondered at if there were reasonable doubts as
to whether Jesus did really heal the souls of men. But there is no
doubt on the minds of those who have watched the various cases. Some of
us have, ourselves, been healed–and therefore speak from assured
experience. Here stands a man before you who by the space of five years
was secretly bowed down with despondency and depression of spirits of
an unusual sort–one whose life was spent at the very gates of Hell
through sorrow of heart when but a youth! Yet, in one moment he was
lifted into perfect peace–a peace which he would not change with any
man beneath the stars! And all that by a simple looking to Him who was
crucified upon the Cross!
That one form of healing is a type of others, for all other evils are
overcome in the same manner. Jesus can heal you of your pride. He can
deliver you from anger. He can cure you of sluggishness. He can purge
you from envy, from lasciviousness, from malice, from gluttony–from
every form of spiritual malady! And this He can do, not by the
torturing processes of penance, or the exhausting labors of
superstitious performance, or the fiery ordeals of suffering– but the
method is simply a word from Him, and a look from you–and all is done.
You have but to trust in Jesus and you are saved! Saved this morning!
Made a new creature in an instant! Set on your feet again to start upon
a new life, with a new power within you which shall conquer sin!
We who bear this testimony claim to be believed. We are not liars. Not
even for God's honor would we palm a pious fraud upon you. We have felt
in ourselves the healing power of Christ! We have seen it, and do see
it every day, in the cases of others, in persons of all ranks and of
all ages. All who have obeyed the Word of Jesus have been made new
creatures by His power! It is not one or two of us who bear this
witness–there are hundreds who certify to the same fact!
Not of ministers alone, but of other professions and callings. There
are tradesmen here! There are gentlemen here! There are working men
here! There are persons high and low here, who could, if this were
fitting, rise and say, "We, too, are witnesses that Christ can heal the
soul."
Here, then, is the marvel–that those who know this do not immediately
throng to Christ to obtain the same blessing! " 'Tis strange, 'tis
passing strange, 'tis unbelievable!" The course of those of whom we
read in the text was a rational one. They heard that Christ had healed
many and the true practical logic was, "Let us be healed, too! Where is
He? Let us reach Him. Are there crowds about Him? Let us jostle one
another. Let us force our way into the mass until we touch Him, and
feel the healing virtue flowing forth from Him." But men seem to have
taken leave of their reason now. They know that the blessing is to be
had–an eternal blessing not to be weighed with gold, nor compared with
diamonds–and yet they turn their backs upon it!
Selfishness usually attracts men to places where good things are to be
had, but here is the chief of all good–the possession of a sound soul,
the gaining of a new nature which will fit a man to be a partaker with
angels of light in glory–to be had, and to be had freely, yet man,
untrue to himself, not even letting a right-minded selfishness govern
him, turns away from the Fountain of all goodness, and goes his way
into the wilderness to perish of eternal thirst!
II. Secondly, and very solemnly, WHAT ARE THE SINS WHICH PREVENT THE
CARRYING OUT OF THIS PARALLEL? Painful is it to remember that one of
the first sins which prevent men from pressing and thronging to touch
Christ is ignorance. The sin of willful ignorance, not knowing what
they might know, not knowing in very truth what they have learned in
theory.
My dear Hearers, many of you, this morning, are unconverted. You are
just what you always were–men diseased by sin. You know that Christ is
healing souls and yet you have no desire to be healed, or the desire
does not lead you practically to press to Him for the blessing. I say
one cause of this is your ignorance. You do not know your disease. You
do not know the true meaning of these three letters–S, I, N. If I were
to put you through a few questions, you would admit the truth that you
are sinners, but you do not know the meaning of your own confession.
You would confess that you were born in sin, but then the true meaning
of sin has never occurred to you, and the confession is, therefore,
good for nothing.
If I were to read the bottom of your soul, I should discover deeply
engraved there the belief that you are not very guilty, and that all
your sins put together amount to nothing very serious. If you had
indulged in some gross external act of iniquity you might, perhaps,
have perceived its vileness. But you do not see any particular
heinousness in those commonplace transgressions into which you have
fallen, and you are quite ignorant of the evil which lies hidden within
them. You are at rest, though God is angry with you! You remain at ease
though you bear an unclean disease about you which will shut you out of
Paradise! If a man were quite sure that he had a cancer in his breast
and knew that a medicine was to be found which would heal it, if he did
not seek the medicine you would feel confident that he did not know
what a cancer meant.
So is it with you. You do not know what sin means. You do not know that
the smallest sin is the beginning of Hell, a spark of the infernal
fire, the first cause of that unutterable torment, the smoke of which
goes up forever and ever! O poor Souls, to be so ignorant–where not to
know is to be forever undone! May God's Eternal Spirit shine like the
sun into your dark spirit and reveal yourself to yourself! If I might
pray one prevailing prayer for every unconverted one here this morning,
it should be this, "Lord, make them to know their present state, and to
tremble at it." Oh, if you did but know your danger and knew the
sweetness and efficacy of the Remedy! If you did but know the
punishment which is coming– and the blessedness of escaping from
it–you would be among the first to press and throng about the Savior
to obtain healing from Him. But ignorance holds many back.
Akin to ignorance is insensibility. Many men know, but do not feel. The
mass of our hearers, the unconverted, I mean, have but very little
feeling. Indeed, spiritually they have none at all, for they are "dead
in trespasses and sins." You may stab a dead man in a thousand places,
but he will not cry out. So is it with ungodly men. You may tell them
of the love of Christ–the story of which might surely melt a rock and
make a stone dissolve, and if they feel any emotion it is but for a
moment–a little superficial feeling, no sooner begun than ended and
they go their way to forget it all. The love of the bleeding Immanuel
is an idle tale to them.
Then the preacher may bid Sinai thunder with all its mighty peals. God
Himself may be heard in judgments loud and terrible! But, while the
forests bow and the rocks are shivered, the hardened heart remains
unmoved! Defiance is hurled by unbelief against Omnipotence itself! In
vain we talk of the terrors of God and the judgment to come! In vain we
poor preachers endeavor to convey our warning messages in the most
affectionate and pathetic terms! Charm we ever so wisely, the deaf
adder will not hear! And we go back to our Master and lament, "Who has
believed our report? To whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" An awful
insensibility has stolen over the natural heart of man, and, therefore
it is that though poisoned through and through with the venom of sin,
with Jesus waiting to heal, men crowd not to find the remedy.
In addition to this insensibility, there grows over unrenewed hearers
of the Gospel a sad indifference about it all. I do not hear them speak
out this indifference openly, but they might as well do it, for they
really feel it. There is this kind of indifference–"Well, well, why
make so much to do about it? If I am to be saved, I shall be saved.
These things will happen in due time. Meanwhile, why make so much fuss
about the soul? Our souls do not pay as a present investment, and we do
very well with them as they are. We are at the desk from Monday to
Saturday. We are in the shop or in the exchange all day long. Really, a
man must look to the main chance and mind his business, or else
nowadays he will soon go to the wall."
There is a tacit persuasion among men that the soul does not matter,
although few men would have the hardihood to say as much. Yet he who
soberly calculates cannot but know that the soul is of the utmost
consequence, for as the life is more than meat, and the body more than
raiment, so must the soul be more precious than the body–especially
viewing it in the light of immortality. "What can it profit a man if he
gains the whole world and loses his own soul?" When that funeral bell
begins to toll, what use shall it be to a man that he was learned and
famous? That he made so much money and died, as men say, worth so many
thousands? How can his wealth serve him if his soul, in all its naked
deformity, is bound to stand before its God, its wounds unhealed, its
filth unwashed, covered from head to foot with the loathsomeness of its
sin?
To hear the Judge say, "Get away from here! You have no portion with
the blessed, you are sick unto death! Get you to the abode of the
unclean, forever," will be the everlasting death-knell of all hope! O
Sirs, you will, then, wish that you had given up all the world to have
found Christ! You will, then, curse yourselves that you spent your
lives in gaining an infinite loss, and hoarded and scraped up mere
smoke and ashes! How you will mourn that you gave your minds to things
which are not bread, and your labor for that which profits not while
you suffered your soul's weightiest affairs to go by default!
Indifferent we may be, now, but it will be hard to be so indifferent on
a dying bed! It will be impossible to be so before the bar of God!
Here we may place earth first, but when we come to die we shall find
all mortal things recede. After death what a speck will earth appear!
Time's fleeting concerns will have vanished from our thoughts except as
they linger in our regrets, and add fiercer pangs to our pains. Oh, I
pray you give your thoughts to Heaven–for your immortal natures demand
this of you! Pause awhile! Be sober! Give scope and room to sound
judgment! Trifle not with eternity! If you must forget any part of your
manhood, let it be the part which shall so soon be worm's meat and melt
back to mother earth! But O, rob not your souls! Defraud not your
spirits! Be not indifferent to your own best welfare!
Men press not to Christ as we should expect they would because they
procrastinate. Delay is Satan's great net. All men mean to repent.
Alas, they will repent one day that they did not repent at once! Most
men intend to believe in Jesus, but they put off believing till there
will be no Savior in whom to trust. It is always tomorrow with men.
Archias, the Grecian ruler, was met one night by a friendly messenger
who brought a communication informing him that he was to be
assassinated at a feast. Archias, being in a merry mood, would not read
the letter just then. Why should he, as he was going to a banquet?
"But," said the messenger, "it contains serious things." "Well, well,"
said he, "serious things tomorrow." He died bearing about him the
message which would have saved his life if he had read it!
Thousands are saying, "Serious things tomorrow!" and so they die. And
what is more, they are damned bearing the warning about them which was
meant to arouse them! Why will men thus go blindfolded to destruction?
God forgive some of you for having delayed so long, and may you be
moved by His eternal love to persevere no longer in such a course!
Hear, I beseech you, the Word of God which says, "Today, if you will
hear His voice, harden not your hearts." "Today is the accepted time,
today is the day of salvation!"
There is another reason men come not to Christ to seek healing for
their souls–because they really love the disease! It is a part of the
madness of sin and the folly of iniquity that it fascinates men into a
love of itself. If men did not love unrighteousness they would not be
unrighteous! If men did not love in their hearts disobedience to God
and the pleasures of the flesh, they would no longer be disobedient but
would yield to God at once. When we have to deal with sinners about
their souls, there is this difficulty–that instead of desiring to be
saved, with many of them–this is the last thing they would wish for.
If to be saved meant to be delivered from going down to Hell, they
would like that well enough. But since it means something more, namely,
being saved from their sins, saved from being any longer slaves to
their lusts, they care not for such a salvation!
They would rather be spiritually crooked, and blind and lame! They do
not desire the holy sanity of spiritual manhood! They would rather bear
about them the deformity of sin because their perverted minds have
gathered a taste for that which destroys them! They perceive, or think
they do, light in that which is darkness and sweetness in that which is
bitter! Will not the drunkard take the cup at all hazards? Ah, have I
not seen him poison himself willfully with his excess? When year after
year he has undermined his constitution and is at death's door, will he
not grieve, and even shed tears if from poverty, sent in mercy to him,
he is unable to get that drink which is ruining him?
And will not men who have given way to their passions, when they know
that mischief will follow–when they have already smarted from it–go
on in sin like the sheep which follows the butcher into the very
shambles? Oh the madness, the raving madness of men! The basilisk eyes
of the old serpent enchant poor foolish humanity so that it sits still
to be devoured and has no will to escape! Men hug their chains and kiss
their fetters! They talk of happiness when they are standing over the
mouth of Hell and in a few short months or days will fall into the
devouring fire! Madness reigns in the human heart! O God, remove it!
Remove it from each one of my hearers this morning that not one may
choose his own delusions, and select for himself a course which must
inevitably end in unmeasured misery! Thus I have tried, as best I
could, to point out the sins which prevent men from thronging to
Christ.
But I feel that I speak too coldly upon a theme which charms my heart.
And I fear you listen to this matter, you unconverted ones, as though
it were of no great concern to you–when oh, within the next hour or
two, it may receive an importance which you have not dreamed of! Poor
dying creatures that we are, at our very longest so short-lived and so
apt to be caught away in a moment, how is it that we can sport and
trifle with the things which more concern us than all else beside? What
are houses and lands? What are stocks and exchanges? What are all our
belongings? What, even, the body itself–these eyes, and hands, and
this tongue–compared with the soul which is our essential self, our
very being?
If our souls are unsound. If our spirits are rotting with the disease
of sin. If we are therefore as lepers shut out from Heaven and God
forever, oh, misery of miseries–what can make up for this if it were
but for an hour? But when it is for eternity, and the soul is lost
forever, what can compensate? Ah, dear Hearers, run not the risk, but
crowd to the Savior, today, who is so willing to receive you right now!
III. This brings me, in the third place, to notice THE GRACE WHICH
INVITES us, this morning, to complete the parallel of the text. Christ
is healing souls. Grace invites us to do as the text says, namely, to
press upon Him to touch Him, as many of us as have plagues. Think, now,
what facts invite you to come to Christ? In the first place, dear
Hearers, you are spared in this world–and with some of you this is no
small wonder!
You have passed, it may be, through great perils. You were sick of the
fever. You were laid low with cholera. You have been in shipwreck. You
have escaped from a calamitous fire. You have been in eminent peril
many and many a time. It is a wonder to all who know you that you are
alive, and it is most of all a wonder to yourself! Account that the
longsuffering of God is salvation, and is meant to lead you to
repentance! He has spared you that you might not die until you have
found mercy! Thus His eternal mandate ran–"Spare that man till he has
yielded Me his heart, for I have loved him with an everlasting love,
and I will not suffer death and Hell to take him. He is Mine and he
shall live till he repents."
Is it not so? May not God have sent me here this morning to tell you
that it is so? You have been allowed to live where others have perished
because God has a special regard for you! I talked with one some years
ago who rode in the charge of Balaclava, when the shots were emptying
the saddles all around. As in obedience to orders, the troops were
galloping on to Death's mouth. I could not but look upon him with awe,
hoping that he was one for whom God had a peculiar regard.
Now, you aged men who have been spared till now, your companions have
fallen on the right hand and on the left! How Death has emptied the
saddles of those around you! Those who kept shop in the same street.
Those who went to school with you. Your playmates, your relatives, your
brothers, your cousins–they are nearly all gone, and you are here!
What are you here for? Why, I think, to say this morning, "I will arise
and go unto my Father. I will tell Him I have sinned against Him. I
will ask His mercy." Let the fact of your being spared induce you to
seek Christ!
There is another encouragement for you in the fact that you are spared
to hear the Gospel. You did not always hear it, and you do not, even
now, always hear it. But you are brought, this morning, to listen to
one who would gladly, by the Holy Spirit's power, bring you to Christ,
and who, speak as he may, desires to speak out of love to your soul. It
is a great mercy that you have been permitted to hear the Gospel after
having so many times repelled its warnings and forgotten its
admonitions–
"Still does His good Spirit strive, With the chief of sinners dwell." I
do not believe that the Gospel has been sent into this place, this
morning, to be preached for nothing! I will not believe that my Master
directed me to stand in this pulpit and address you without intending
that some of you should, by His Spirit's power, comply with the Divine
request which is so much for your own profit!
The Gospel is preached unto you, and God has not sent it with the
intention that after you have heard it you should seek mercy and not
find it. Oh no, God does not tantalize! He does not mock the sons of
men. He bids you come to Him. Repent and believe, and you shall be
saved! If you come with a broken heart, trusting in Christ, there is no
fear that He will reject you–else He would not have sent the Gospel to
you! Beloved, there is nothing that so delights Jesus Christ as to save
sinners. I never find that He was in a huff because they pressed about
Him to touch Him. No, but it gave Him Divine pleasure to give forth His
healing power.
You who are in trade are never happier than when business is brisk, and
my Lord Jesus, who follows the trade of soul-winning, is never happier
than when His great business is moving on rapidly. What pleasure it
gives a physician when at last he brings a person through a severe
illness into health! I think the medical profession must be one of the
happiest engagements in the world when a man is skillful in it. Our
Lord Jesus feels a most Divine pleasure as He bends over a broken heart
and binds it up! It is the very Heaven of Christ's Soul to be doing
good to the sons of men! You misjudge Him if you think He wants to be
argued with and persuaded to have mercy! He gives it as freely as the
sun pours forth light, as the heavens drop with dew, and as clouds
yield their rain.
It is His honor to bless sinners. It makes Him a name and an
everlasting sign that shall not be cut off. I know I once belied Him.
When I felt my sins to be a great burden, I said within myself, "I will
go to Jesus, but perhaps He will reject me." I thought I had much to
feel and to do to make myself ready for Him. and I therefore did this
and that–but the more I did, the worse I became! I was like the woman
who spent her money on physicians and was nothing better, but rather
grew worse. At last I found it was of no use, and when I fully
understood that there was life in a look at Christ– that all which was
needed was for me simply to trust, to come as I was and put my case
into His dear pierced hands, and leave it there–I could not think it
could be so!
It seemed so simple–how could it be true? Was that all? I thought when
I came to Him He would say to me, "Sinner, you have rejected Me so
long. You have mocked Me by saying prayers which you did not feel. You
have been a hypocrite and joined with God's people in singing My
praises when you did not praise Me in your heart." I thought He would
chide me, and bring 10,000 sins to my remembrance. Instead of that, it
was but a word and it was all done! I looked to Him and the burden was
gone! I could have sung, "Hosanna! Blessed is He that comes in the name
of the Lord with pardon in His right hand and acceptance in His left,
with abundant blessings to the least deserving of the sons of men."
Now, my dear Hearers, I have to tell you that Jesus Christ abides in
the same ability to save as He had in the days of His flesh. He ever
lives to make intercession for sinners and is, therefore, able to save
to the uttermost them that come unto Him–and it is still true that him
that comes He will in no wise cast out. There has never been an
instance of a man that trusted Christ and perished! And there never
shall be an instance! Murderers have tried it, and blood-red murder has
been washed out by the crimson blood of Jesus! Harlots have tried it,
and have sat at the feet of Jesus and washed them with their tears for
very joy!
Thieves have tried it! The adulterer, the whore-monger, the most
debauched and depraved have come to the Cross and have obtained mercy
through the precious blood of my Master! None are excluded who desire
to come and who sincerely trust in Christ to save them! I pray you,
therefore, listen to our tearful invitation and stand not back through
shame or fear, for Jesus still is able and willing to save all who
trust Him! Do I need to enlarge upon this? Perhaps so, but our time
fails. I know if you are insensible to your need of Jesus, and do not
care about being made whole, you are not likely to come for any
drawings of mine.
But if you are awakened in any degree by the Holy Spirit, let me take
hold of your hand and say, My dear Friend, do not delay trusting
Christ. Do not entertain a hope that it will ever be easier to trust
Jesus than it is now. Do not think that you will ever be in a better
state for coming than you are in now. The best state in all the world
for washing is to be filthy! The best state in all the world to obtain
help from a physician is to be sorely sick! The best state for asking
alms is to be a beggar! Do not try to patch up those rags, nor improve
your character, nor make yourself better before you come to Christ.
Come in all your poverty and vileness, just as you are, and say to Him,
"My Lord and my God, You suffered as a Man for all the sins of all
those who trust You–I trust You–accept me, give me peace and joy."
And tell the world, I pray you, whether He accepts you or not! If He
casts you away you will be the very first–then let us know of it! But
if He receives you, you will be but one among 10,000s who have been
thus accepted–then publish it to the confirming of our faith!
IV. Lastly, I have one or two CAUTIONS to mention, which seem to me to
be necessary in such a case. "He had healed many; insomuch that they
pressed upon Him for to touch Him, as many as had plagues." Our first
caution is– never be content with merely pressing upon Christ. When
there is a gracious season in a Church and persons are converted, many
rest satisfied because they have been in the congregation where works
of mercy have been performed. It is dreadful to reflect that we have in
all our assemblies men and women who are perfectly satisfied with
having spent the Sunday in a place of worship.
Now, suppose the case of a man having the leprosy who goes to the place
where Jesus is. He sees the people thronging to get near, and he joins
in the press. He pushes on for a certain length of time and then he
comes back perfectly content because he has joined with the crowd. The
next day the great Master is dispensing healing virtue right and left,
and this same man joins in the throng. He once more elbows himself
tolerably near to the Savior, and then retires. "Well," he says, "I got
into the crowd. I pressed and squeezed, and made my way, and so I was
in the way. Perhaps I might have got a blessing."
Now that would be precisely similar to the condition of hundreds and
thousands of people who go to a place of worship on Sunday. There is
the Gospel. They come to hear it. They come next Sunday, there is the
Gospel again. They listen to it, and they go their way each time.
"Fool!" you say to the man with the leprosy, "why, you did nothing!
Getting into the crowd was nothing! If you did not touch the Lord who
dispensed the healing, you wasted your time. And besides, you incurred
responsibility because you got near to Him, and yet for lack of putting
out your hand to touch Him, you lost the opportunity."
So you, good people, who come to this Chapel, or go to any other place
of worship where Jesus Christ is faithfully preached, you come and go,
and come and go continually. And what fools you are, what gross fools,
to get into the throng and to be satisfied with that and never touch
Christ! Don't tell me of your Church goings and your Chapel goings!
They are not a morsel of use to you unless you touch the Savior through
them! Your occupying that pew for a space of 20 years. Your going to a
place of worship twice every Sunday. Your attendance on the
weeknight–all this is only so much responsibility, but not a grain of
blessing to you unless you are really come to Jesus Christ! You are
right to come to the services, just as they were right to press into
the crowd. But you are wrong if you stop there–just as that leprous
man would have been had he been foolishly content to have pressed into
the throng without getting near to Christ!
And yet, is not this the conduct of a great many of you? It is getting
serious, too. You have been Chapel-goers, perhaps, for 30 or 40 years,
and are you a bit the better? Your mother took you in her arms to the
sanctuary. You went to Sunday school. You have always been in the way
of the means of Divine Grace–and yet, for the lack of one thing, a
real trusting in Christ, you are perishing in your sin! Living water
flows at your feet, but you do not drink. Living bread is upon the
table, but you have not eaten. Divine pardon is before you, and you
will not put out your hand to take it.
Heaven's gate is set wide open, and you are content to turn your back
upon it. I must caution you, again, not to be content with touching
those who are healed.
There were many in the crowd, who, having touched the Master, clapped
their hands and said, "Glory be to God, my withered arm is restored."
"My eyes are opened." "My dropsy has vanished." "My palsy is gone." One
after another they praised God for His great wonders. And sometimes
their friends who were sick would go away with them and say, "What a
mercy! Let us go home together." They would hear all about it, and talk
about it, and tell it to others–but all the while, though they
rejoiced in the good that was done to others, and sympathized in
it–they never touched Jesus for themselves.
It is very dangerous work for some of you Sunday school teachers, when
you are the means of bringing dear children to Christ, and yet do not
come yourselves! Noah's carpenters built the ark but were all drowned.
Oh, I pray you, be not satisfied with talking about revivals and
hearing about conversions–get an interest in them! Let nothing content
any one of us but actual spiritual contact with the Lord Jesus Christ!
Let us never give sleep to our eyes or slumber to our eyelids till we
have really looked to that great Sacrifice which God has lifted up for
the sins of men. Let us not think of Christ as another man's Savior,
but be passionately in earnest till we get Him for our own. If He is
not ours today, today let us lay hold on Him!
I cannot endure the thought of your going out of this House of Prayer
before you are saved! Remember, salvation work does not require months
and years. If you look to Christ at this very moment, you shall have
your sins as much forgiven as if you were 70 years a Christian, for
there is no difference, here, between the new-born babe in Christ, and
the most advanced veteran in the Christian army. If you only look now,
your sins are forgiven you, and you shall, this day, begin the new
life–and God shall be glorified in that new life until He takes you up
to dwell with Himself forever!
Do you know what it is to trust Christ? I do not know how to explain it
better than by dwelling on the word itself– trust. It is a reliance, a
dependence. The old divines used to call it a recumbence. It is a
leaning all your weight on Christ, giving up your own power and
depending on Him. Dr. Watts puts it thus–
"A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On Your kind arms I fall.
Be You my strength and righteousness,
My Jesus and my All."
But still, people will not understand us. A young man once said to me,
"I want to know what I must do to be saved." I reminded him of that
verse. He said, "Sir, I cannot fall." "Oh," said I, "you do not
understand me. I do not mean a fall which needs any strength in you–I
mean a fall caused by the absence of all strength." It is to tumble
down into Christ's arms because you cannot stand upright. Faint into
the arms of Christ–that is faith!
Just give up doing. Give up depending upon anything that you are, or
do, or ever hope to be–and depend upon the complete merits, and
finished work and precious blood of Jesus Christ. If you do this you
are saved. Anything of your own doing spoils it all. You must not have
a jot or a tittle of your own! You must give up relying upon your
prayers, your tears, your Baptism, your repentance–and even your faith
itself! Your reliance is to be on nothing but that which is in Christ
Jesus.
Those dear hands, those blessed feet are ensigns of His love–look to
them! That bleeding, martyred, murdered Person is the grand display of
the heart of the ever-blessed God. Look to Him! Look to the Savior's
pangs, griefs, and groans. These are punishments for human sin. This is
God's wrath spending itself on Christ instead of spending itself on the
Believer. Believe in Jesus, and it is certain that He thus suffered for
you. Trust in Him to save you, and you are saved!
God grant you the privilege of faith, and the gift of salvation. Amen.
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The Angelic Life
A Sermon