Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1517
Delivered by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
‘And when Jesus saw’ [’saw him,’ so it should be] ‘that he answered discreetly, he said unto him, Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.’Mark 12:34.
THIS MAN BEGAN with Christ as a foe, and he ended as a friend. It does not quite appear from Mark, but it is plainly stated by Matthew, that the scribe asked a question of the Savior ‘tempting him.’ He was, therefore, an enemy. Put the mildest sense you like on the word ‘tempt’ and it will retain the idea of an unfriendly testing; yet nothing could be more hearty in the end than the verdict with which he commended our Lord’s answer, ‘Well, Master, thou hast said the truth.’ Our Lord Jesus Christ has an almighty power over men’s minds; he possesses irresistible charms by which he turns adversaries into advocates. He has a secret key which fits the wards of human hearts, and he can open that which seems to be the most securely closed against him. ‘Never man spake like this man,’ for in his voice, even in his humiliation, there were traces of the eternal fiat which of old spake the primeval midnight into noon.
It strikes me that this scribe was half-hearted in the work of tempting our Lord, even at the first. I should imagine him to have been a very superior man amongst his fellows, a man of greater light and discernment than the rest, and of greater ability in statement and discussion. Possibly for this cause his brother scribes selected him, and put him forward to ask the testing questions. Now, it will sometimes happen that a man is thrust forward by others to do what he would never have thought of doing of his own accord, and quite unwillingly he acts as the mouthpiece of a set of people whom he half despises. Our Lord Jesus Christ is a ready reader of human hearts, and he very soon discovers whether what a man does is being done of himself or whether he is acted upon by a power behind. He discerns the difference between the malicious adversary and the less guilty victim of circumstances. These words of mine may be reaching persons who have opposed a religious movement, or fought against a gracious truth, not because they themselves would have done so if they had been left alone, but others have egged them on and made use of them, and thus they have been drawn or driven into a false position. The people whom they have been accustomed to lead have led them: it is too often the fate of leaders. The circle of which they have been the center and the head has imprisoned its own apparent master, and made him captive, so that he fights against that which in his heart he half suspects to be right. If, even now, he could be set free from his surroundings he would side with the right. Friend, my blessed Master can read your heart, and understand the pressure under which you are acting. I pray that as he reads your inmost soul he may see what of good there remaineth among the evil, and deliver you out of the false and dangerous position into which you have drifted. Jesus can set you right, my friend’can take you away from the entanglements of your surroundings, sever you from those who are making a tool of you, but who are at the same time sinking you down to their own level: can bring you to be his own friend, and lift you up to his own standard, so that you too shall be the champion of everything that is good and true, and shall go forward with him as your Master, bearing his cross, and looking to wear his crown.
Although the scribe in the narrative before us appeared first under the aspect of an antagonist, and tried to tempt our Lord, yet before long the great Teacher had put him into such a mental condition that he said of him, ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.’ At this time I shall first notice the commendation which is here expressed; and then, in the second place, I shall dwell for a little while upon the question which is here suggested‘suggested, I think, by no idle curiosity, but very naturally suggested: Did this man, who was so near to the kingdom, actually enter it, or did he not?
I. May the Holy Spirit instruct and impress us while, first, we consider the COMMENDATION EXPRESSED:’THOU art not far from the kingdom of God.’ I am not going to use this text after the usual fashion. It has been made the heading of a catalogue of characters who are supposed to be not far from the kingdom of God. It is a very proper thing to address hopeful persons, and to give descriptions of conditions about which there is much that is cheering, and yet much to create anxiety; but the text itself does not deal with many cases, but with one whom Jesus judged to be not far from the kingdom of God, of whom it gives us such information that we see why he was thus spoken of. It speaks of one particular individual: ‘Thou art not far from the kingdom of God’; and it tells us that Jesus said this because he saw that he answered discreetly. We may infer without fear of mistake that any man who would answer as this man answered is not far from the kingdom of God. Let us read his answer: ‘Master, thou hast said the truth; for there is one God, and there is none other but he; and to love him with all the heart, and with all the understanding, and with all the soul, and with all the strength, and to love his neighbor as himself, is more than all whole burnt-offerings and sacrifices.’