Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 892
Delivered by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“My father, if the Prophet had bid you do some great thing, would you not have done it? How much rather, then, when he says to you, Wash and be clean?”- 2 Kings 5:13.
I am somewhat, myself, in the position of Elijah, when Naaman, the Syrian, came dashing up with his horses and with his chariot and stood at the door of the house of the Prophet. There are before me in this house, I fear, many who are spiritually diseased. Your motive for coming up to this assembly should be to hear the Gospel and to discover the remedy by which your spiritual disease may be removed. But what, let me ask, are really the thoughts that occupy your minds? I can suppose that you are looking for different things from me. One, perhaps, imagines that something will be said odd and strange that shall provoke a smile. Another imagines that I shall labor to make some display of elocution and speak tender words softly, like flakes of feathered snow melting as they fall and so draw forth the silent, graceful tear.
When both of these are, alike, disappointed, you will probably say to yourselves, “Well, it is only the old story we used to hear when we went to Sunday school. It is just what we have listened to Sunday after Sunday, till we turn away disgusted with it. It is, ‘Believe in Jesus Christ and live.’ There is nothing fresh or new to stimulate our intellect— nothing original to whet our curiosity. In whatever shape the preacher puts it, whatever illustrations he uses to enforce it, it comes to just what we have always heard—‘believe and live.’” And you take offense.
Because it is so simple and so plain, you will not attend to it. I will therefore suppose myself to mingle in the crowd as you retire and come up to you, one by one, and kindly take you by the hand and say, “If the preacher had told you of some new and strange thing, some difficult matter, you would have inclined your ear and devoted your heart to it. How much more, then, when he has simply told you a plain matter and laid before you a simple method by which you may obtain pardon for your sins, cleansing for your guilt, health and cure for your conscience! If the intricate and the hard would have commanded your interest, how much more should the simple and the easy engross your attention?
The thing I spoke of cannot be, wish it as I might. I cannot speak to every one of you individually. It remains that I stand here, returning the glance of each and all of you as best I can, while I converse with you freely and friendly, but firmly and truly, of the things that make for your peace.
I. Our subject shall be full of reprimands. First of all, let me notice the PRIDE OF MAN’S HEART. Stands there before your mind’s eye this great man, the captain of the host of the King of Syria. He is a typical character, or to say the least, he is a representative man. His haughty bearing prompts the inquiry, “Who is this?” As you learn that he holds a high office, that he has served his country well and that he enjoys the favor of his master, you will be apt to count him a man of mark, one to be admired.
But look at him more closely. Observe his pale face and his emaciated frame and your pity is moved. Now you ask with concern, what ails this mighty man of valor? The fatal secret is quickly told—he is a leper. Why, then, comes he thus with his splendid equipage to Samaria? Surely it is not to air his nobility, but to get relief from his debility that he takes this journey into the land of Israel. How better, then, could his distressing case be met than by the simple message which Elisha sent him? The manner disappoints his expectation—his temper is irritated by a method of treatment that he thinks beneath his station—and he indignantly rejects the faithful admonition of the Prophet.
The more you consider his circumstances, the more surprise you will feel at his conduct! Why, his own servant respectfully expostulates with him, “My father, if the Prophet had bid you do some great thing, would you not have done it?” Ah, he thinks himself great and therefore only a great thing will be becoming! If he is commanded to make some great sacrifice, or to do some great service, he will do it, do it willingly. It suits his high and lofty nature. I am not about to launch on a sea so wide as the theme of human pride in general—that would require many a sermon—but only this
one point of human pride which shows itself in wanting to do some great thing in order to obtain eternal salvation, concerns us now.
It is a universal rule of the entire family of man, in every place and at every time, that man wants to do some great thing by which to restore himself to the favor of God. If you had asked the ancient heathen how men could win the favor of the gods, they would have told you that, like Socrates, they must drink the hemlock cup and die with words of cheer upon their lips. Or like the brave 10,000 under Xenophon, cut their way through innumerable difficulties, or die like victims for freedom at the pass of Thermopylae. For such men there would be quiet resting places in the Elysian fields and perhaps some men might be caught up to high Olympus, to sit down in the circle of the celestials.