Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1669
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, July 16, 1882
“And with many such parables spoke He the Word unto them, as they were able to hearit. But without a parable He did not speak to them: and when they were alone, He explained all things to His disciples.” Mark 4:33,34.
OUR blessed Lord had two great objectives before Him in His ministry. The first was to preach the Word to the outlying masses, that out of them He might gather a people to Himself who should be His disciples. This part of His work He carried on with great diligence and perseverance, traversing the Holy Land from end to end and finding here, one, and there, another, but never ceasing to preach the Gospel to the crowds that flocked to Him. His second objective was to train those who became His disciples, that having gathered them to Himself, He might educate them in the Truth of God. He taught them concerning the Father and His love. He taught them concerning Himself, His work, His death and His Resurrection. And He taught them concerning the Divine Comforter and His indwelling and all else that would make for their progress and profit.
While our Lord was here, He gathered the men together who should carry on the work after He was gone. He did not think it enough to make converts—He wished to make disciples! He did not think it enough, even, to make beginners in discipleship, but He would have them advance in knowledge and in holiness, learning till they were able to teach others. To this day this same double work is carried on by the Divine Spirit through the ministers and servants of God. We are to preach to the multitude who make up the outer ring, for our Lord has said, “Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature.” We are bound to evangelize all, making no distinction of rank or character. To every person with whom we may come in contact, we are to proclaim the Kingdom of God. That being done, however, the minister’s work is only begun, for He is now to go on to expound the mystery, to open up the higher doctrine, to lead the dis-cipled ones into the deep things of God that there may be fathers, instructors, and leaders in the Church. And that the Church may, in all the generations yet to come, until the Lord Himself appears, carry out the glorious purposes of God for the building up of a spiritual house and the conquest of the world.
I want, this morning, to call your special attention to the way in which the Lord spoke to the outside gathering and, then, afterwards, to the way in which He spoke to the inner circle of His own disciples. From His conduct we may learn our own. Soul-winners and soul-helpers may here see their double work set before them in pattern. We shall see how Jesus first fetched home the prodigal sons and then made music and dancing inside the house for them—how He went after the lost sheep and brought them back upon His shoulders—and how He, afterwards, folded and fed the sheep which He had saved. There must be much in all this to instruct those of us who work for Jesus.
I. First, let us study our Lord’s conduct towards THE OUTSIDE GATHERINGS. Kindly read these verses—“And with many such parables spoke He the Word unto them, as they were able to hear it. But without a parable spoke He not unto them.” First, when our Divine Lord preached to the outside multitude, He always spoke “the Word” to them. You see here what He preached—He spoke “the Word” unto them. This is a very short description, but it is intensely full of meaning. It has much more of fullness in it than I can show you just now. He always spoke “the Word”—that is to say, whatever sort of congregation gathered to Jesus, He had only one grand system of Truth to set before them. He preached “the Word,” which of old was prophesied by men of God and was written upon the roll of Inspiration.
The term, “the Word,” shuts up into a small compass the glorious Revelation of God which He has shown to us by Christ Jesus. “The Word”—here is unity—He preached not two gospels, but one. His Word was not yes and no. It was a special message—not a word, but the Word—the special speech of the Father. Jesus had received one weighty, all-important message from God and this He delivered whenever He had opportunity. It was never His objective, when He was addressing the people, to speak to them upon subjects of merely temporal interest—He preached the eternal Word of
God. He did not come to instruct them in geology, or astronomy, or jurisprudence, or politics—His one business was to win their souls by proclaiming the love and mercy of the Father.
He did not even come to open up a fresh system of morals, though of necessity a system of morals grew out of His central teaching. He came to preach the Gospel and He preached nothing else! He spoke it in various ways, yet He always spoke the one thing—“the Word.” “He spoke the Word unto them”—to publicans and harlots, or to Pharisees and Sadducees. He declares to the blinded Jews, “I speak that which I have seen with My Father.” “He whom God has sent speaks the Words of God.” What a lesson this is to all of us who try to do good in the world by teaching! We have only to preach “the Word!” Some fancy that they have to preach the thought, the deep thought, the wonderful thought of modern times. I have heard that expression, “modern thought,” till I am sick of it! It is a cant phrase smelling strongly of self-conceit!