Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1298
“They came to Him from every quarter.” Mark 1:45.
THE fact as it stands is well worthy of our notice and offers considerable encouragement to us. The multitudes came to hear our Lord and to see His miracles. He could not be hidden—wherever He appeared a congregation soon assembled. Indeed, the crowds became too large and too pressing, “insomuch that they trod one upon another.” Few preachers suffer from our Lord’s difficulty, but it was a frequent necessity with Him to use means to diminish the crowds and, therefore, He repaired to desert places, or took boats and crossed the sea. I gather from this, dear Friends, that notwithstanding the holiness of our Lord’s doctrine and the way in which it runs counter to the desires of the carnal heart. Notwithstanding the plainness of His rebukes and the way in which He lays pride in the dust, there is a remarkable attractiveness to all kinds of men in the teaching of the Lord Jesus.
If we would find a topic calculated to interest the masses, we need not go abroad for novelties—the old, old Gospel will best collect the eager anxious throng. Other things being equal, you shall find that more men will be drawn together to hear of Christ than to listen to any other topic. And this will continue year after year while other subjects have lost what temporary interest they once possessed. Give a man any other theme you please and let him expound upon it three or four times a week in the same place, to the same audience, and it will not be long before his hearers will be weary and he, himself, will be worn out.
I do not believe it would be possible to retain, year after year, a mass of attentive hearers, and send them away longing for more, with any theme except Jesus Christ and Him crucified! If you bring Jesus forth, the people will continue to come to Him from every quarter, for the prophecy of Jacob is still true, “To Him shall the gathering of the people be.” The attraction in the instance before us was not only Jesus preaching, but Jesus displaying His healing power. The works which He did bore witness of Him until the people asked, “What thing is this? What new doctrine is this? For with authority He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey Him.” The news of lame men leaping and lepers cleansed brought the people together. Even thus, let but Jesus be in any congregation manifesting His saving work—Jesus breaking hard hearts, Jesus binding up broken spirits, Jesus reclaiming the outcasts, Jesus gathering the lambs in His bosom, Jesus in action—then be sure of this, the people will come together till you will have to cry “Who are these that fly as a cloud and as doves to their windows?”
The best advertisement for Jesus is the personal testimony of every soul whom He has blessed! To blaze abroad His fame you need hire no hack writers or mercenary tongues—they shall speak best of Him who tell about the things which they have done touching the king, whose tongues are as the pens of ready writers because their hearts dictate the matter. They have experienced His power and, therefore, they cannot but speak what they have seen and felt! Jesus Christ, healing and spoken of by those whom He had healed, drew multitudes to Himself in the olden times. And I gather from this the expectation that if any of us will preach Christ in Christ’s way, accompanied by Christ’s power in the healing of men, we shall, even in desert places, see the people coming together! And all the more so because He has been lifted up upon the Cross and, therefore, will draw all men unto Him.
But, dear Friends, there was an inner circle. The mere hearers did but come to Him in the lowest sense. I do not think Jesus Christ set much store by drawing multitudes around Him to listen to His words or look upon His miracles. I am sure He did not, for He sought to avoid such popularity and, therefore, He forbade the leper to speak of his cure and He withdrew Himself to escape from the people. If He had considered that success was to be measured by the size of His audience, He would have remained where the crowds were assembled. But He formed a more accurate judgment and knew
that as the heap upon the threshing floor contains abundance of chaff, even so in the great gatherings of mere hearers, there are multitudes whose adherence is of little value.
Beloved, if men only come together to hear the Gospel, our work will end in dreary disappointment and the gatherings on the Sabbath will prove to be wretched wastes of time! But my text can be carried, as a matter of fact, very much further, for disciples came to Jesus from every quarter in a far better sense. He called, by His mysterious power, one and another who became His followers and they came to Him in the best sense. We read that He went into a mountain and called whom He would and they came to Him—this was a better coming. Of them it may be said, “They came to Him from every quarter.”