Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1587
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, March 6, 1881
“And Jesus stood still.” Mark 10:49.
A FRIEND enquired of me yesterday, “Will you preach on Sunday morning to saints or to sinners?” I could not, at the moment, answer him, but afterwards I thought to myself—If I preach concerning Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior, I shall kill two birds with one stone and give both saints and sinners a profitable theme for thought. There is but one message of the Gospel and it has a voice to all. Saints know no sweeter music than the name of Jesus and sinners know no richer comfort than His Person and His work. We preach to all when we preach Him who is All in All. Christ comes as life to the dead and He is equally life to the living.
I trust there will, at this time, be a word in season, both to those who fear God and to those who fear Him not, while I speak of the Savior from these three words, “Jesus stood still.” Our Divine Lord has changed His position, but He is, Himself, the same as always and, therefore, every Truth of God which we learn concerning Him in the past becomes all the more valuable since it is still true of Him. Our Lord’s name is “Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.” What His Character was on earth such it is still—His pursuits on earth are still His pursuits. His main objective when He was here is His chief aim even in Glory. We have not to say, “This is what Jesus was,” and then to mourn that He has changed, for He is without variableness. His transit from the Cross to the Throne has not affected His Nature so as to make Him other than He was when here below.
If we delight in a trait of His Character as drawn in the Gospels, we may be sure that He possesses the same excellence now that He is at the right hand of the Father. His dealing with blind Bartimaeus 19 centuries ago is a fair type of His conduct towards every poor blind sinner who at this hour comes to Him crying, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” I hope we shall see the miracle of Jericho repeated in this house this very day! I am persuaded that it will be so, for even now, encouraged by the prayers already offered, Jesus waits to be gracious and today it shall be said that at the entreaties of His people, Jesus paused to work wonders of love—“Jesus stood still.”
I. First, let us answer this question—WHAT DOES THIS PAUSE MEAN IN THE SAVIOR’S PROGRESS. “Jesus stood still”? This was not His frequent posture, for He was always on the move—“He went about doing good.” He might have done much among men if He had taken up His station and remained in one place so that the crowds could have come to Him to listen to His voice or to be healed by His power. But Jesus was not an immovable statue of benevolence! He was active and energetic—an itinerant Preacher who never wearied in His circuit. One does not often see Jesus standing still. His was the love which does not wait to be sought after by men, for it has come to seek as well as to save that which was lost. The zeal of the Lord’s house consumed Him so that for Him there was no loitering or standing still. Yet in the case before us, the Great Worker ceased from His activity—“Jesus stood still.”
In the Gospel we read that our Lord was going up to Jerusalem with His face steadfastly set to accomplish His great work. His own words were, “Behold, we go up to Jerusalem; and the Son of Man shall be delivered unto the chief priests, and unto the scribes; and they shall condemn Him to death, and shall deliver Him to the Gentiles: and they shall mock Him, and shall scourge Him, and shall spit upon Him, and shall kill Him: and the third day He shall rise again.” (Mark 10:33, 34). He bad a Baptism to be baptized with and be was straitened until it was accomplished and, therefore, with brave resolve He forced His way to the city.
Every pause to Him would have been untimely unless there had been some weighty reason to stop. His great work pressed upon His soul and He longed to be fully engaged in it—as one who has a cup to drink and thirsts to set it to His lips. Yet, though His thoughts were thus urgently preoccupied and His whole heart engrossed, we find Him pausing in His steady progress to the desired end—“Jesus stood still.” There was, doubtless, somewhat special about this recorded
pause. What was it which fastened Him to the spot? It was not hesitancy—His resolve was too firm. It was not fear—the thought of drawing back never passed the Redeemer’s mind! Onward, onward, was His fixed resolve. He stood still from no unworthy motive—all His movements and His pauses have a nobility about them and a fullness of meaning which no personal motive can account for.
Our Lord was beginning, at the moment, that triumphal procession which continued till He reached the Temple amid the hosannas of the multitude! It is true He was advancing to the Cross, but before He reached His death, He was to be proclaimed as the King, meek and lowly, who came riding upon a colt, the foal of an ass. His triumphal march has begun and Jesus is in the midst of admiring listeners! Yet Jesus stands still. The whole procession stops. The 12 disciples and the company of the faithful are stopped and the crowd tarries in the roadway of Jericho. For what great reason did it happen that Jesus stood still?