Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1560
“And when Jesus departed from there, two blind men followed Him, crying and saying, You son of Da vid, have mercy on us! And when He was come into the house, the blind men came to Him: and Jesus said unto them, Do you believe that I am able to do this? They said unto Him, Yes, Lord. Then He touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no one knows it.” Matthew 9:27-30.
I AM not about to expound this incident, nor to draw illustrations from it, but only to direct your attention to one single point in it and that is, its extreme simplicity. There are other cases of blind men and we have various incidents connected with them, such as, in one instance, the making of clay and the sending of the patient to wash at the pool of Siloam and so forth. But here the cure is extremely simple—the men are blind, they cry to Jesus, they come near, they confess their faith and they receive their sight straightway! In many other cases of miracles that were worked by Christ there were circumstances of difficulty. In one case a man is let down through the roof, being borne of four; in a second case a woman comes behind Him in the press and touches the hem of His garment with great effort.
We read of another who had been dead four days and there seemed to be a clear impossibility in the way of his ever coming forth from the tomb. But everything is plain sailing here. Here are blind men, conscious of their blindness, confident that Christ can give them sight. They cry to Him, they come to Him, they believe that He is able to open their eyes and they receive their sight at once! You see there was, in their case, these simple elements—a sense of blindness, a desire for sight—then prayer, then coming to Christ, then an open avowal of faith and then the cure. The whole matter lies in a nutshell. There are no details, no points of care and nicety which might suggest anxiety—the whole business is simplicity, itself, and upon that one point I want to dwell at this time.
There are cases of conversion which are just as simple as this case of the opening of the eyes of the blind and we are not to doubt the reality of the work of Grace in them because of the remarkable absence of amazing incidents and striking details. We are not to suppose that a conversion is a less genuine work of the Holy Spirit because it is extremely simple. May the Holy Spirit bless our meditation.
I. To make our discourse useful to many I will begin by remarking, in the first place, that it is an undoubted fact that MANY PERSONS ARE MUCH TROUBLED IN COMING TO CHRIST. It is a fact which must be admitted—that all do not come quite so readily as these blind men came. There are instances on record in biographies—there are many known to us and, perhaps, our own cases are among them—in which coming to Christ was a matter of struggle, of effort, of disappointment, of long waiting and, at last, of a kind of desperation by which we were forced to come.
You must have read Mr. John Bunyan’s description of how the pilgrims came to the wicket gate. They were pointed, you remember, by Evangelist to a light and to a gate and they went that way according to his bidding. I have told you, sometimes, the story of a young man in Edinburgh who was very anxious to speak to others about their souls, so he addressed himself one morning to an old Musselburgh fishwife and he began by saying to her, “Here you are with your burden.” “Yes,” she said. He asked her, “Did you ever feel a spiritual burden?” “Yes,” she said, resting a bit, “I felt the spiritual burden years ago, before you were born, and I got rid of it, too. But I did not go the same way to work that Bunyan’s pilgrim did.”
Our young friend was greatly surprised to hear her say that and thought she must be under grievous error and therefore begged her to explain. “No,” she said, “when I was under concern of soul, I heard a true Gospel minister who bade
me look to the Cross of Christ and there I lost my load of sin. I did not hear one of those milk-and-water preachers like Bunyan’s Evangelist.” “How,” said our young friend, “do you make that out?” “Why, that Evangelist, when he met the man with the burden on his back, said to him, ‘Do you see that wicket gate?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t.’ ‘Do you see that light?’ ‘I think I do.’ Why, man,” she said, “he should not have spoken about wicket gates or lights, but he should have said, ‘Do you see Jesus Christ hanging on the Cross? Look to Him and your burden will fall off your shoulders.’
“He sent that man round the wrong way when he sent him to the wicket gate and much good he got by it, for he was likely to have been choked in the Slough of Despond before long! I tell you, I looked at once to the Cross and away went my burden.” “What?” said this young man, “Did you never go through the Slough of Despond?” “Ah,” said she, “many a time, more than I care to tell. But at the first I heard the preacher say, ‘Look to Christ,’ and I looked to Him. I have been through the Slough of Despond since that—but let me tell you, Sir, it is much easier to go through that slough with your burden off than it is with your burden on!”