Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 720
Delivered on Sunday Morning, November 11, 1866, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
“And it came to pass on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and doctors of the la w sitting by, which were come out of every town of Galilee, and Judea, and Jerusalem: and the power of the Lord was present to heal them.” Luke 5:17.
LUKE, the writer of this Gospel, was a physician and therefore had a quick eye for cases of disease and instances of cure. You can trace throughout the whole of his Gospel the hand of one who was skilled in surgery and medicine. I gather from this that whatever may be our calling, or in whatever art or science we may have attained proficiency, we should take care to use our knowledge for Christ. And that if we are called being physicians we may understand the work of the Lord Jesus all the better by what we see in our own work, and we may also do much for our Lord in real substantial usefulness among our patients.
Let no man despise his calling. Whatever instrument of usefulness God has put into your hands, consider that the Great Captain knew what weapons were best for you to wield. Covet not your neighbor’s sword or spear, but use that which your Lord has given you and go forth to the battle of life to serve according to your capacity. If you are placed in this corner of the vineyard or that, consider that you are in the best place for yourself and the best place for your Master. And do not always be judging what your fellow servants ought to do in their place, nor what you could do if you were in another place, but see what it is that you can do where you are and use such things as you have in glorifying your Lord and Master.
One is pleased to observe in the language of a true man how the man’s self shows itself. David frequently sings like one who had been a shepherd boy, and though a king he is not ashamed to admit that he once grasped the crook. There is a manifest difference between the prophecies of Amos, the herdsman, and of Isaiah, the royal seer. True men do not imitate one another, but each one, moved of God, speaks according to his native bias and according to the circumstances in which Providence has cast him. It was destructive to Egyptian art when the great men of the land framed articles of taste, and laws of statuary and of painting by which every sculptor must be bound—for then everything like freshness and originality was driven away. The proportions of every colossal statue and of every figure upon the wall were rigidly fixed, and then the glory and excellence of art vanished from the land.
To do the same in religion is even more unwise. To say, “You shall all speak after one fashion, and you all shall conform to this manner of talk and life,” is folly at its height! Let each man speak after his own manner, every man in his own order, each quickened soul bringing out its own individuality and seeking in that individuality to magnify God and to show forth the riches of His Divine Grace. These remarks were suggested by the abundant record of cures in this chapter and elsewhere in Luke’s Gospel. Luke does not write like John, nor copy the style of Matthew. He writes not as a fisherman or a publican, but as a physician.
Luke did not cease to be Luke when he was called by Divine Grace. He was the same man elevated and refined, and taught to consecrate to noblest ends the gifts which he had acquired in his earthly calling. He was a physician before, and he became “the beloved physician” after his conversion.
I. The text, as we read it, suggests, in the first place, that THE POWER OF CHRIST IN THE GOSPEL IS MAINLY A POWER TO HEAL. “The power of the Lord was present to heal them.” The power of the Gospel, of which Christ is the Sum and Substance, is a healing power. My Brethren, when Christ came on earth He might have come with destroying power. Justly enough might God have sent His only Son with the armies of vengeance to destroy this rebellious world.
But—
“Your hands, dear Jesus, were not armed With an avenging rod. No hard commission to perform, The vengeance of a God. But all was mercy, all was mild, And wrath forsook the throne, When Christ on the kind errand came, And brought salvation down.”
“I have not come,” He said, “to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.” Elijah calls fire from Heaven upon the captains of fifties and their fifties, so that they are utterly consumed. But Christ brings fire from Heaven for quite another purpose, namely, that by its power men might be saved from the wrath to come. The Gospel is not intended to be a power to destroy. “God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.” And if that Gospel is made a savor of death unto death unto any, it is not on account of its own intrinsic qualities or design but because of the perversity and wickedness of the human heart.