Learning in Private What to Teach in Public
(No. 2674)
INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, MAY 13, 1900.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
DECEMBER 24, 1882.
"What I tell you in darkness, speak in light: and what you hear in the
ear, preach on the housetops." Matthew 10:27.
I HOPE that many who are now present desire, beyond everything else, to
be useful to their fellow creatures. We do not want to go to Heaven
alone–we are most anxious to lead others to the Savior! I remember a
very remarkable telegram which was sent from England by a lady who had
sailed from New York with all her children. She landed in England after
being shipwrecked and she sent her husband this brief but suggestive
telegram, "Saved–alone." Ah, that last sad word seemed as if it took
almost all the sweetness out of the first one. "Saved alone." May that
never be what we shall have to say as we enter Heaven, but may we have
the privilege of saying, "Here am I, Father, and the children whom You
have given me." May it be my joy to be able to say, "Here am I and all
my congregation, saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation."
So we begin with the assurance that all of you who know the Lord want
to be useful, but, if that is to be the case, preparation is necessary.
You say that you are going out to battle, young man, do you? Well, do
not be in such a hurry! You have no rifle or sword–you will be in the
way of the other soldiers rather than an addition to them. Unless you
are, first of all, properly trained, you will certainly make a failure
of your soldiering. The man who jumps into the army is not a warrior
all at once–there must be drills, there must be a certain course of
training before he can be of any service to the Queen. So is it with
Christ's disciples. He did not send them out to preach at once–He
called them from their former occupations–but He kept them with
Himself for a time till they had learned at least some of the lessons
they were to impart to others, for how could they teach what they did
not know? Can a thing which is not in a man come out of him? And if it
has never been put into him, how can it be gotten out of him? So our
Savior, in the words of our text, encouraged His disciples to proclaim,
even from the housetops, the Gospel which He had revealed to them, but
He also gave them to understand that, first of all, they had need of
preparation before they would be qualified to deliver their message.
"What I tell you in darkness, that speak you in light: and what you
hear in the ear, that preach you on the housetops."
I. I want, first, to speak to you who desire to work for Jesus,
concerning His own definition of AN INVALUABLE PRIVILEGE FOR ALL
CHRISTIANS–"What I tell you in darkness." "What you hear in the ear."
From our Lord's words, I learn that it is the great privilege of
Christians to realize, first, that Christ is still alive and still with
His people, still conversing with His chosen ones, still, by His Divine
Spirit, speaking out of His very heart into the hearts of His true
disciples. Christ was born an Infant, but He is no Infant now. Christ
died, but He is not dead now. He is risen! He has gone up into His
Glory! He sits upon the Throne of God, but, at the same time, by a very
real spiritual Presence, He is with all His people, as He said to His
disciples, "Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world."
And there is nothing that can so fit a man for holy service as to have
Christ's eyes looking into his eyes and reading him through and
through–and to have Christ's pierced hand laid on his heart till the
very imprint of its wound is reproduced, filling that heart with a
loving grief for others!
"Oh," says one, "I think that I could speak for Christ if that should
ever be true to me!" Ah, my Friend, you will neverspeak aright until it
istrue to you! Not with those mortal eyes will you see Him, but your
heartshall behold Him without any help from those dull eyes. Not with
your ears shall you hear His voice, but your heart shall attend to His
message without the use of those poor impediments of ears. You shall
know that He is with you–you shall be sure of it–for His life shall
touch your life, His Spirit shall flood your spirit and then, but not
till then, shall you be fit to speak in His name! That is the first
part of this invaluable privilege–we are permitted to realize our
Lord's Presence with us personally.
Next, we are enabled to feel Christ's Word as spoken to us–"I tell
you." The message of the Gospel is applied directly and distinctly to
our own soul by Christ! We do not look for any new Revelation, but we
do expect the old Revelation to be made known to our hearts and
consciences in all its wondrous power. We expect that the Words which
Jesus spoke should ring in our souls with such music as they evoked
when He first uttered them and that we should, by the working of His
Spirit, feel the force of those Words just as they did who heard Him
with their outward ears! And we shall never fully preach the Gospel
till then. A man may go to Seminary, he may learn all about the letter
of Scripture, but he is no minister of God if he has not sat at Jesus'
feet and learned of Him. And when he haslearned of Him and the Truth of
God has come home to his heart as his own personal possession given to
him by Christ, then shall he speak with more than mortal power, but not
till then! Step back into the rear rank, Sir, if Christ has never
spoken to you thus–and wait there until He has done so. If the Master
has given you no message, do not run–what is the use of running if you
have nothing to tell? Do you think that you are to make up your own
message as you run? Ah, then, you are not Christ's servant, for His
servant waits until he has heard the message from his Master–and then
it is both his duty and his privilege to proclaim it just as he has
heard it! "What I tell you in darkness, that speak you in light: and
what you hear in the ear"–"I myself whispering it into your ear, that
you may receive it directly from Me–this it is which you are to go and
proclaim upon the housetops."
The text seems to imply that these communications are made to us again
and again. There are some of us who are called to spend our whole lives
in our Master's service. And unless we are often alone with Him,
listening to the message He has for us to deliver, our streams will not
continue to run. I thank God that during the last few weeks, while I
have been in the South of France, I have had a blessed period of
privately hearing the Word afresh from the Master. It has been a
constant joy and delight to me to meditate again and again upon the
Truths which I have preached, to feed upon them in my own soul and, in
quiet communion with God, to be gathering spiritual stores of
nourishment for you, of which, first of all, I had proved the power and
preciousness to my own heart. I would earnestly urge all Christian
workers to be sure to get some time alone for the prayerful study of
the Word. The more of such time that you can get, the better will it be
both for yourself and for others. You know that it is impossible for a
sower of seed to be always scattering, and never gathering–the seed
basket must be filled again and again, or the sowing must come to an
end. You cannot keep on distributing bread and fish to the multitude,
as the disciples did, unless every now and then you go back to the
Master and say, "My Lord, I need more bread and more fish, for my
supply is running short. Give me more, that I may give out more."
Make such occasions as often as you can. I am glad to see so many of
you, my young Friends, busy for the Master, but I pray you not to
forget that it was Mary, who sat at the Master's feet, of whom He said
that she had chosen that good part which should not be taken away from
her! It is well to be like Martha, busy on your Lord's behalf, but you
cannot do without Mary's quiet meditation. You must have the
contemplation as well as the activity, or else you will do mischief and
not really honor the Master. Suppose you see a carpenter with a little
hammer in his hand go round the workshop and gently tap a hundred nails
on the head? You would rightly say that he has not done any good at
all! But here is another workman with a good heavy hammer–and when he
hits a nail, he drives it home–and he does not leave it till he has
driven it home and clinched it, too. There is a way of seemingto be
doing a great deal and yet really doing nothing. And there is also a
way of apparently doing but little, but then it is good solid work,
thoroughly well done. Nobody can do this solid, permanent work, in a
spiritual sense, without often getting alone with the Lord Jesus
Christ.
Avail yourselves also, dear Friends, of those special opportunities
which God makes for you to receive His messages. Sometimes He takes one
of His servants and puts him away for a while. "Be you silent," He
says, "and I will talk to you." Perhaps the Lord takes away the
strength, the bodily vigor of His servant. There is the Christian woman
who longs to be going up and down her district, laid upon a sick bed.
Or there is the earnest, faithful Sunday school teacher no longer able
to instruct his class. Yet it is in God's wisdom that the nets are
sometimes drawn out of the water, that there may be an opportunity to
mend them–otherwise they would not always take the fish that are ready
to be caught! It is true
economy to let the cannon rest till it gets cool, or else there may be
mischief done to the men who are firing it, instead of to the enemy!
And all of us need rest, every now and then, if we are to be fitted for
future service. Above all, we need often to go to Christ, to get from
His hand a fresh stock of that Gospel provision which we are afterwards
to dispense to the people in His name. I pray you who are seeking to
serve the Savior, to take good note of the advice I have been trying to
give you.
II. Now, secondly, this going to Christ, to hear the Word directly from
Him, is itself A MOST BLESSED PREPARATORY PROCESS FOR ALL CHRISTIAN
WORKERS. Let me show you how it is so.
First, if you get your message of mercy directly and distinctly from
the living Christ, you will have the Truth of God in its
personality–living, acting, feeling, for He is "the way, the truth and
the life." The message will come to you with power because He uttered
it and you will, therefore, preach Him as well as it. We do not want a
misty, cloudy Christ–a sort of impalpable phantom, to comfort us–we
want a real Christ, God and Man, really among us and really able to
save unto the uttermost all them that come unto God by Him. So, my dear
Brother, if you go to Him for your message, you will be sure not to
forget Him! He will be real to you and your teaching will make Him real
to other people. Some ministers preach very finely about Christ, but
that which saves sinners is preaching Christ Himself. He is our
salvation and we shall never put that salvation in tangible, graspable,
real form unless we go to Him and get distinctly from Himself the
message we are to deliver on His behalf.
By doing this, we shall also have the Truth of God in all its purity.
You know that when the light of the Gospel shines through me, it takes
a little tinge of color from me, just as when it shone through Luther,
there was a Lutheran shade about the Truth. And when it shone through
John Calvin, there was a Calvinistic tinge. Shining through any man,
God's light will be tinged to a certain extent, just as it is when
shining through the very best glass that was ever made. You had better
get into the sunlight for yourself, so that you may have it in all its
purity. I am of the mind of that man who said that the milk was so bad
where he lived that he would move into the country and keep a cow for
himself. It is just so with the Gospel–there is nothing like going to
the Lord Jesus Christ, Himself, as to the wellhead of doctrine, and
saying to Him, "Master, what do You teach? What can I learn from You?"
Our unfailing rule is–What did Jesus say about this or that? How did
His Spirit speak by the Apostles? It is that living with Christ, from
day to day, which will give us the Truth of God in all its purity!
And it will also give us the Truth of God in its due proportions. We
are, all of us, lopsided in one way or another. I suppose that there is
not a pair of eyes in this world that is absolutely a pair. There is
scarcely anything about us that is exactly as it ought to be–we are,
all of us, somewhat wrong and, therefore, there is no man who teaches
all the Truth of God in its exact proportions. One man sees the
responsibility of man and he preaches it. Another sees the Sovereignty
of God and he preaches that. Cannot we find a Brother who preaches both
those Truths? Yes, no doubt we can, but, then, that Brother will
probably fail to see some other Truth of God. If we knew all Truths in
their right proportions, we would be God rather than man, for we would
practically possess Omniscience! But to avoid giving undue prominence
to any one Truth of God and casting another Truth into the shade, the
best remedy is to get your teaching directly from Christ, Himself. You
think you see a certain doctrine in the Bible. Well, then, take it to
Him who gave you the Bible and say, "Blessed Lord Jesus, by Your
Spirit, teach this doctrine to me. Let me know, by Your teaching, what
this passage of Scripture means, for I am prepared to receive whatever
You impart to me."
If you do this, dear Friends, you will get the Truth of God in its
personality, in its purity and in its due proportions.
And, let me add, that you will then get the Truth of God in its power
When the Truth of God has broken your heart and, afterwards, bound it
up. When Christ has so spoken it to you that you have felt the power of
it, then you will speak it as men should speak who are ambassadors for
God! George Fox was called a Quaker because, when he preached, he often
trembled and quaked. Was that folly on his part? No, for he had so felt
the power of what he spoke that his very body was full of emotion while
he delivered the Truths of God to others. And well may you and I also
tremble at the Word of the Lord. But, on the other hand, whenever that
Word comes home with sweetness to the heart, you must often have
noticed with what sweetness the man proclaims it to others. There is
nobody who can preach the Gospel like the man who has experienced its
power! You know that the tale of a tale, the report of a report, is a
very poor thing–but when a man gets up and says, concerning some
notable event, "I was there, I saw it all"–then you listen to him. So,
if you can say of Christ, "He is, indeed, precious, for He is precious
to me. He can save, for He has saved me. He can com-
fort, cheer and gladden, for He has done all that to me"–then you
speak with power to others because Christ has spoken with power to you!
And there is something more than that. A man who receives the Gospel
distinctly from Christ will speak the Truth in Christ's spirit Did you
ever hear a man preach the Gospel in a passion? You wonder at my
question, yet such a thing has happened. But if you are present on such
an occasion, you feel sure that the man did not get his message–or, at
any rate, he did not get his manner–from his Master! The other day I
saw a man offer a bit of bread to a poor, lean, half-starved dog. The
animal did not seem to care for bread, so he turned away and, then,
directly, the man was so angry with the creature because he would not
have the bread that he threw a stone at it. There is a certain kind of
preaching that is just like that–the minister seems to say, "You dogs
of sinners, there is the Gospel for you–will you have it? If you do
not, I will throw a stone at you!" Well now, neither dogs nor men
admire that sort of treatment and, certainly, the Lord Jesus Christ
never intended us to deliver His message in that kind of fashion!
There are some, I believe, who preach the Doctrines of Grace very much
as a dog of mine acts with his rug. When I go home tonight, he will
bring it out and drag it up to my feet just because he wants me to try
and take it away from him, that he may growl over it. So have I seen
some people preach the Doctrine of Election and other Truths of God
like it, as if they wanted some Arminian to try to run away with them,
or have a fight over them! Now that is not the way which Christ teaches
us to preach! He never bids us proclaim the Gospel in such a way that
we seem to want to make an Irish fight over it. No, no, no–go direct
to Christ for the Truth of God and you will preach it strongly,
honestly, openly, positively–and you will always preach it with love.
That is the plan I recommend to you–the system of getting the Gospel
fresh from the mouth of Jesus–and then delivering it, as far as we
can, in Jesus Christ's tones and in Jesus Christ's spirit. I can assure
you, my dear Friends, that we shall never know how Jesus preached till
we hear Him speak in our hearts and then endeavor to imitate the tone
of that speech which our inward ears have heard. Oh, to preach Christ
in a Christly way–to tell of mercy in the spirit of mercy and to
preach Divine Grace in a truly gracious way!
Here is the time to say that if you go to Christ for all the Truth of
God you preach and if you proclaim it in His way, then you will preach
it with what is called "unction." Do you know what unction is? I do,
but I cannot tell you. I can tell when a man has notany unction, and I
can tell when he has, but I do not know exactly how to define and
describe it, except by saying that it is a special anointing from the
Spirit of God. There is an old Romish tale of a monk who had been the
means of converting great numbers of persons, but, on a certain
occasion, he was detained in his journey and could not reach the
congregation in time to conduct the service. The devil thought it was a
fine opportunity for him to speak to the people, so, putting on the
robe of the monk, he went into the pulpit and preached. According to
the story, he preached about Hell–a subject with which he was well
acquainted–and the hearers listened very attentively. Before he
finished his discourse, the holy man appeared and made the devil
disclose himself in his proper form. "Get out of here," said he to
Satan, "but however dared you preach the Truth of God as you were doing
when I came in?" "Oh," replied Satan, "I did not mind preaching the
Truth, for there was no unction in it, so I knew that it could not do
any hurt to my cause." It is a curious legend, but there was a great
truth at the bottom of it–where there is no unction, it does not
matter what we preach, or how we preach it!
One of my friends behind me sometimes says to me, after the service, "I
believe that God has been blessing the people, for there has been
plenty of dew about." That is what we need–that holy dew which the
Spirit of God so graciously bestows! You may preach to one
congregation, but it is all in vain, for there is no dew about. But, at
another time, it is sweet preaching and blessed hearing because there
is plenty of dew about. And the way to get that dew is by coming
straight out of the Master's Presence, with the Master's message
ringing in your own ears, to proclaim it as nearly as possible as He
has told it to you!
Once more, this preparation for declaring the Truth is very valuable
because it enables a man to have the Truth of God in its certainty.
Concerning the Truth of God, questions are continually being raised
nowadays. Many people ask, with Pilate, "What is truth?" Even preachers
ask that question. Why do they not hold their tongues until they know?
Suppose a servant comes to the door to bring you the answer to a
question which you have sent to her mistress. She begins to talk on all
sorts of subjects and you say to her, "Do you not know what the reply
is from your mistress to my enquiry?" She says, "Well, to tell you the
truth, I have not been to her to know what her reply is, but I am
making up an
answer myself." Of course you say to her, "I do not want to hear your
answer. Go to your mistress at once and whatever message she has to
send to me, kindly report it to me, for that is all I want to know." So
we say to the minister, "Tell us what your Master has told you–we
don't want to hear anything else." If he says, "I think–, uh, I beg
your pardon, I am very anxious not to appear dogmatic, but with great
diffidence I submit to you," you reply, "My dear Sir, we want you to be
dogmatic! If you have been to your Master and He has given you a
message for us, tell it to us! And if you have not been to Him and He
has not told you anything to say on His behalf, then clear out of that
pulpit, for you have no right to be there! Go and earn an honest living
at breaking stones, or something of that sort."
An ambassador who is not commissioned by his sovereign had better be
sent home by the first ship that is going that way. He who comes
professedly as a messenger from God and yet declares that, for the life
of him, he does not know what God would have him preach, proclaims his
own condemnation! And we say to him, "We cannot let our souls run the
risk of being lost, so, if you have no message from Christ for us, we
will not waste our time by listening to you." Be sure, dear Friends, to
have as your minister a man who lives with God and walks with God–a
man who leans his head on the bosom of Jesus and then comes forward and
speaks what his Master has whispered into his ear. Men are startled
when they hear him–they say, "Who is this fellow? Where did he learn
such things?" But, with awful earnestness, so that his hearers
sometimes think him half-demented, he tells what he feels that he must
tell because he has received it from his Lord and Master! He says,
"That is the Truth of God, whether you take it or leave it. I will
preach to you nothing but what God has told me. I cannot and I dare not
turn aside from what I believe to be His teaching."
Look at Martin Luther whom God raised up to speak so bravely for Him.
People said, "This man is so positive, so dogmatic"–but he could not
be otherwise–his whole heart and soul were possessed by certain great
Truths of God and he felt that he must proclaim them, whether men put
him in prison, or dragged him away to the stake! And such a man,
speaking after that fashion, shook the Vatican and the most powerful
empires of the earth! And he was the means of bringing the Light of God
to multitudes who otherwise would have remained in darkness! In like
manner as the Reformer did, get you to your Lord, my Brother–receive
your message from Him and what He speaks privately into your ear. Tell
that wherever you have the opportunity, but mind that you do not tell
anything else.
III. Now I must finish with THE CONSEQUENT PROCLAMATION. "What I tell
you in darkness, that speak you in light: and what you hear in the ear,
that preach you upon the housetops."
First, it has been told me in the ear and whispered into my very soul
that there is pardon for the greatest guilt through faith in Jesus
Christ–that His precious blood, shed on Calvary's Cross, is able to
cleanse from all sin of every kind–and that as many as believe in Him
are saved. "Their sins, which were many, are all forgiven." I heard
this said, once, and I thought it was true. No, I heard it many times
from those who would not have said what was false. But, on a
never-to-be-forgotten day, I, myself, looked to Him who did hang upon
the Cross. It had been dark days with my spirit until then and my
burden had been exceedingly heavy. I was like a man who would have
preferred to die rather than to live and I might even have laid violent
hands upon myself, in the hope of ending my misery, but that the dread
of something worse after death did haunt me.
I found neither rest nor respite until I heard one say, "Look unto
Christ and you shall be saved. Look, young man, look, for He says,
'Look unto Me, and be you saved, all the ends of the earth.'" And then
and there I did look unto Him and my sins were, at that moment,
forgiven me! I know as surely as I know that I am standing here, and
speaking to you, that they were forgiven! I might be made to doubt some
things about which I feel tolerably certain, but I must absolutely lose
my reason before I can ever doubt the fact that I then passed out of
despair into something higher than hope–and rose from the very gates
of Hell into a joy that is with me even now! Shall I not tell others
what the Grace of God has done for me? Shall I not lay hold of every
poor sinner's hand and say, "Look you to Christ and you, also, shall be
saved, even as I was"? Shall I not, from the very housetops, shout
again and again–
"There is life for a look at the Crucified One! There is life at this
moment for you!"
Further, there is another thing that has been whispered in my ear. It
is that by faith in Christ, the ruling power of sin is immediately
broken and that every sin, of every kind, may be overcome by faith in
the blood of Jesus Christ. I heard one man laughing at another because
he said that he had a clean heart. Ah, me, but that may have been true,
for every man who believes in Christ has a clean heart. Are you
nominally a Christian and yet your Christianity does not make you
holy? I implore you to throw such worthless Christianity to the dogs,
for it is worse than useless to you! If your religion does not make you
holy, it will damn you as surely as you are now alive! It is simply a
painted pageantry to go to Hell in–it is not the true religion of the
Lord Jesus Christ. He that believes in Christ shall be delivered from
sin! He shall trample it under his feet! He may have a lifelong battle
with it–no, I am surehe will have that, else Christ would never have
taught His disciples to pray, "Lead us not into temptation." When there
is no more sin in us, we need not fear temptation–there is no risk of
fire to the man who has no tinder in his heart. The Lord can keep His
people and He will preserve them. "He will keep the feet of His
saints." Brother, have you fallen into drunkenness? Faith in Christ can
turn that cup bottom upwards for you! Are you a swearer? My Master can
rinse your mouth out so that you shall never speak in that shameful
fashion again, or even be tempted to do so, for I have known swearers
cured in a moment and the temptation to blaspheme has never come back
to them! Have you been a thief, or a liar? Have you been a fornicator,
or an adulterer? Are you unjust, unholy and unclean? There is provision
for washing sinners such as you are! There is a Fountain opened for sin
and for uncleanness–and Christ can deliver you from the power as well
as from the penalty of sin! Only trust Him about it. Come and rest your
soul upon Him. Oh, if there is a harlot here, or a man who has fallen
into all sorts of gross sin, Christ can and will deliver you if you
will only come and repose your heart's trust in Him!
I cannot tell you all that I have had whispered into my ear, but I must
mention one other thing that I know. It is that faith in Christ can
save a man from every sort of fear in life and in death. Faith in
Christ can make even trouble to be welcome and affliction to be
regarded as a gain! Faith in the Lord Jesus Christ can make poverty to
be sweet and sickness to be borne with patience. The ills of life are
turned into blessings when once a man believes in Jesus and fully
trusts in Him. I am not now saying what I, alone, know, but what a
great many others here also know. There are hundreds–I might
truthfully say thousands–here who can say the same as I can about
these matters. Let me prove my assertion. You who have found that faith
in Christ sweetens life to you, speak out and say, "Yes." Has Christ
sweetened life to you who have believed in Him? If so, say, "Yes."
[Many voices: "Yes."] Of course you can say it and you are not ashamed
to say it over and over again! Is He the joy of your heart? [Voices:
"Yes."] Has He made your very soul to leap within you when you have
kept close to Him? [Voices: "Yes."] I knew that you would answer "Yes"
to that question, for it is even so with you! There is a joy which
sometimes comes upon the Christian–which I cannot attempt to
describe–but it bears us right away above all physical pain and
everything that might depress the spirit. The heart is made strong in
the Lord and in the power of His might. Oh, He is a precious Christ! Is
there one person here who has trusted in Christ who is willing to give
Him up? [Voices: "No."] There is not one, I am sure. You hardly need to
answer the question, for there never was one individual who really knew
Christ, who could give Him up! They who leave Him have only fancied
that they knew Him–they never really trusted Him.
Possibly, dear Friend, you are in trouble because you say that you feel
afraid to die tonight. Well, but perhaps you are not going to die
tonight and, therefore, dying Grace has not yet been given to you! But
when the time comes for you to die, then very likely you will not feel
the slightest fear. My brother said to me, the other day, when he had
been seeing one of our members pass away, "Brother, we can say to one
another what the two Wesleys said, 'Our people die well.'" So they do.
They often die shouting for very joy and, at any rate, they go Home
peacefully, quietly welcoming the everlasting future and the Glory that
Christ has laid up for them. Oh, yes, we know that "to die is gain."
Some of us have been laid very low and we have thought that we were
about to die–and we have had the greatest joy, then–greater than we
ever knew, before, in all our lives! And, therefore, we proclaim it to
others and we mean to tell it as long as we live!
Salvation by Grace, through faith in Jesus, is no dream, no fiction!
Let skeptics say what they will. Our experience– and we are as honest
as they are and no more fanatical than they are–our experience agrees
with what our Lord has revealed to us in His Word and, therefore, when
we preach the Gospel, or relate what Grace has done for us, we use
Christ's very Words and say, "We speak what we do know and testify what
we have seen." God grant that many of you may be able to bear similar
testimony, for our Lord Jesus Christ's sake! Amen.
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: MATTHEW 10:1-27.
Verses 1-4. And when He had called unto Him His twelve disciples, He
gave them power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal
all manner of sickness and all manner of disease. Now the names of the
twelve Apostles are these. The first, Simon, who is called Peter, and
Andrew his brother; James the son of Zebedee, and John his brother;
Philip, and Bartholomew; Thomas, and Matthew the publican; James the
son of Alphaeus, and Lebbaeus, whose surname was Thaddaeus; Simon the
Canaanite, and Judas Iscariot, who also betrayed Him. The lesson to be
learned from these names is, first, that these men are mentioned in
couples and I think that, as a rule, God's servants work best in pairs.
In other senses than the matrimonial one, it is not good that man
should be alone. Moses needs Aaron; Peter needs Andrew; James needs
John. It is well to be of such a temperament and disposition that you
can work harmoniously with another of your Lord's servants. If you
cannot, pray God to change you! Notice that expression, in the 3rd
verse, "and Bartholomew." I think there is not a single instance in the
New Testament where Bartholomew is mentioned without the word, "and,"
before or after his name–"and Bartholomew," or, "Bartholomew and"
someone else. Perhaps he was not a man who ever began any work by
himself, but he was a grand man to join in and help it on when somebody
else had started it. So, dear Friend, if you are not qualified to be a
leader in the Church of Christ, be willing to be Number Two–but do
serve the Master, in some capacity or other, with all your might! Be a
Brother who carries an, "and," with him wherever he goes. Be like a
horse that has his harness on and is ready to be hooked into the team.
That is the lesson of the two words, "and Bartholomew." The last lesson
from the names is at the end of the 4th verse–"and Judas Iscariot, who
also betrayed Him." He preached of Christ. He worked miracles in the
name of Christ. He was ordained as one of the Apostles of Christ, yet
he was, "the son of perdition." Oh, let none of us be content merely
with our official position, or trust in the good which we hope we have
done, or in any gifts with which the Master has entrusted us! Judas
Iscariot had all these marks of distinction, yet he betrayed his Lord.
God grant that no one among us may turn out to be a Judas Iscariot!
5, 6. These twelve Jesus sent forth and commanded them, saying, Go not
into the way of the Gentiles, and into any city of the Samaritans enter
you not: but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel The
Gospel is now to be preached to every creature in all the world, but,
in those days, it was to be proclaimed first to the Jews, then to the
Samaritans and afterwards to the Gentiles as a whole. The largeness of
our commission to "preach the Gospel to every creature" need not
prevent our following Providential directions to make it known in one
place rather than in another. It is well for the servants of Christ to
always ask their Master where they are to go. You know how it is
recorded, in the Acts of the Apostles, that Paul and Silas "essayed to
go into Bithynia, but the Spirit suffered them not." Ask the Lord,
therefore, where you shall work, as well as what your work shall be,
for your Master knows how you can best serve Him.
7. And as you go, preach, saying, The kingdom of Heaven is at hand.
That blessed Kingdom, which is now set up among men, of which Christ is
the King, and I hope many of us are the subjects. That Kingdom was then
"at hand."
8. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils:
freely you have received, freely give. "Exercise your healing arts most
freely. They cost you nothing–let them not cost anything to those who
receive the benefit of them."
9. 10. Provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses, nor
scrip for your journey, neither two coats, neither shoes, nor yet
staves: for the workman is worthy of his meat They were to "quarter on
the enemy," as we say. Wherever they went, they would be furnished with
food, raiment and shelter if they faithfully executed the commission
with which their Master had entrusted them.
11-13. And into whatever city or town you shall enter, enquire who in
it is worthy; and there abide till you go thence. And when you come
into an house, salute it And if the house is worthy, let your peace
come upon it: but if it is not worthy, let your peace return to you.
How about your houses, dear Friends? Are they "worthy" houses in this
New Testament sense? If an Apostle came there, could he bring "peace"
to it? Or would he have to take the peace away with him to some other
house that was more worthy to receive it?
14, 15. And whoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words, when
you depart out of that house or city, shake off the dust of your feet.
Verily I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom
and Gomorrah in the day of judgment, than for that city. Despised and
rejected privileges make the fiercest fuel for the fires of Hell. They
who might have heard the Gospel, but would not hear it, shall find the
hand of God more heavy upon them than it will be even upon the accursed
Sodomites! Woe, then, unto such as live in London, yet who will not
hear the Word of the Lord, or, when they do hear it, will not accept
it!
16, 17. Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be
you therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. But beware of
men. ' 'Do not trust yourselves with them."
17-19. For they will deliver you up to the councils, and they
willscourge you in their synagogues; andyou shall be brought before
governors and kings for My sake, for a testimony against them and the
Gentiles. But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what you
shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what you shall
speak. "Let it not fret you that you are not orators, that you are not
men of culture–speak what God the Holy Spirit shall teach you to
say–and leave the result with Him."
20. For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which
speaks in you. Oh that is grand–when a man has so communed with God
that the very Spirit of the Father has entered into him–then shall
there be a wondrous power about his speech! Men may not understand from
where it came, but they will be obliged to feel the force of it.
21. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the
father the child: and the children shall rise up against their parents,
and cause them to be put to death. Read the martyrologies and see
whether it was not exactly as our Lord foretold that it would be! In
martyr times men often burst all the bonds of natural affection and
betrayed even their own fathers or children to death! Yet the saints
quaffed not–they were content to let every earthly tie be snapped so
that the tie of their heavenly and eternal relationship might be
confirmed. So may it be with us, also!
22-27. Andyou shall be hated of all men for My name's sake: but he that
endures to the end shall be saved. But when they persecute you in this
city, flee you into another, for verily I say unto you, You shall not
have gone through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes. The
disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord. It is
enough for the disciple that he is as his master, and the servant as
his lord. If they have called the master of the house, Beelzebub, how
much more shall they call them of his household? Fear them not,
therefore, for there is nothing co vered that shall not be revealed;
andhidden, that shallnot be known. What I tellyou in darkness, that
speakyou in light: and whatyou hear in the ear, that preach you on the
housetops. God help us to do so, for Christ's sake! Amen.