Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1269
“And immediately he arose, took up the bed, and went forth before them all; so that they were all amazed, and glorified God, saying, We never saw it on this fashion.” Mark 2:12.
IT is very natural that there should be many surprising things in the Gospel, for it is remarkable beyond measure that there should be a Gospel at all. As soon as I begin thinking of it I exclaim with Bunyan, “O world of wonders, I can say no less.” And I invite you all to join with the multitude in saying with the text, “We never saw it on this fashion.” When man had sinned, God might instantly have destroyed our rebel race, or He might have permitted it to exist as the fallen angels do—in a state of enmity to all goodness and in consequent misery. But He who passed the angels by took up the seed of Abraham and looked upon man—that insignificant item in the ranks of creatureship and determined that man should experience salvation and show forth His Divine Grace.
It was a wonderful thing, to begin with, that there should be a Gospel for men. And when we remember that the Gospel involved the gift of the only-begotten Son of God. When we remember that it was necessary that God, the invisible Spirit, should be veiled in human flesh. When we think about the fact that the Son of God should become the son of Mary, should be subject to pain and weakness, poverty and shame—when we remember all this, we may expect to find great wonders clustering round such a stupendous fact!
Beholding God in human flesh, miracles no longer strike us as being at all marvelous, for the Incarnation of God outmiracles miracle! But we must further remember that in order to bring the Gospel to us it was necessary that God should, in our nature, offer Atonement for human sin. Think of it! The holy God making Atonement for sin! When the angels first heard of it, they must have been lost in astonishment, for they “never saw it on this fashion.” Shall the Offended die for the offender? Shall the Judge bear the chastisement of the criminal? Shall God take upon Himself the transgression of His creature? Yet so it has been, and Jesus Christ has borne, that we might never bear, the consequences of sin—no, sin itself. “For the transgression of My people was He stricken.” Jesus was made a curse for us, as it is written, “Cursed is every one that hangs on a tree.”
Now, a commonplace result could not be imagined as growing out of a Gospel sent to rebellious men, much less a Gospel involving the Incarnation and the death of the Son of God! Everything in God’s creation is made to scale. There is a balance between the dewdrop on the rose and the most majestic of yonder orbs that adorn the brow of night. Law regulates everything, from a single drop of water to the ocean itself. Everything is proportionate and, therefore, we are persuaded that in an economy in which we start with an Incarnate God and an infinite Atonement there must be something very striking. And we ought to be prepared to exclaim frequently, “We never saw it on this fashion.”
Commonplaces are foreign to the Gospel. We have entered the land of wonders when we behold the love of God in Christ Jesus. Romance is out-romanced in the Gospel. Whatever marvels men are able to imagine, the facts of God’s amazing Grace are more extraordinary than anything imagination has ever conceived. I desire at this time to say two or three things to those who are not familiar with the Gospel. Some have dropped in here to whom the Gospel, as we believe it, is quite a new thing. I want to say to them, first, do not disbelieve it because it strikes you as doing something very strange. In the second place, remember that in the Gospel there must be amazing and surprising things and we shall try to set them out before you, hoping that, so far from your disbelieving them, faith may be worked in your soul as you hear them. And, thirdly, if any of these strange things should have happened to you, and you should have to say, ” We never saw it on this fashion,” then glorify God and give new honors to His name.
I. First, then, DO NOT DISBELIEVE THE GOSPEL BECAUSE IT SURPRISES YOU. Remember, in the first place, that nothing stands so much in the way of real knowledge as prejudice. Our race might have known a great deal more
of scientific facts if it had not been so largely occupied and captivated with scientific supposition. Take up books upon most sciences and you will find that the main part of the material is an answer to many theories that have been set up in ages gone by, or originated in modern times. Theories are the nuisances of science, the rubbish which must be swept away that the precious facts may be laid bare.
If you go to the study of a subject, saying to yourself, “This is how the matter must shape itself,” having beforehand made up your mind what the facts ought to be, you will have put in your own way a difficulty more severe than the subject itself could place there. Prejudice is the stumbling block of advance. To believe that we know before we do know is to prevent our really making discoveries and coming to right knowledge. When an observer first discovered that there were spots on the sun he reported it, but he was called before his “Father Confessor” and upbraided for having reported anything of the kind.