Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1799
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, September 14th, 1884, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
‘Martha saith unto Him, I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day. Jesus said unto her, I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever liveth and believeth in Me shall never die. Believest thou this?’John 11:24-26.
MARTHA is a very accurate type of a class of anxious believers. They do believe truly, but not with such confidence as to lay aside their care. They do not distrust the Lord, or question the truth of what He says, yet they puzzle their brain about ‘How shall this thing be?’ and so they miss the major part of the present comfort which the word of the Lord would minister to their hearts if they received it more simply. How? and why? belong unto the Lord. It is His business to arrange matters so as to fulfil His own promises. If we would sit at our Lord’s feet with Mary, and consider what He has promised, we should choose a better part than if we ran about with Martha, crying, ‘How can these things be?’
Martha, you see, in this case, when the Lord Jesus Christ told her that her brother would rise again, replied, ‘I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’ She was a type, I say, of certain anxious believers, for she set a practical bound to the Saviour’s words. ‘Of course there will be a resurrection, and then my brother will rise with the rest.’ She concluded that the Saviour could not mean anything beyond that. The first meaning and the commonest meaning that suggests itself to her must be what Jesus means. Is not that the way with many of us? We had a statesman once, and a good man too, who loved reform; but whenever he had accomplished a little progress, he considered that all was done. We called him at last ‘Finality John,’ for he was always coming to an ultimatum, and taking for his motto ‘Rest, and be thankful.’ Into that style Christian people too frequently drop with regard to the promises of God. We limit the Holy one of Israel as to the meaning of His words. Of course they mean so much, but we cannot allow that they intend more. It were well if the spirit of progress would enter into our faith, so that we felt within our souls that we had never beheld the innermost glory of the Lord’s words of grace. We often wonder that the disciples put such poor meanings upon our Lord’s words, but I fear we are almost as far off as they were from fully comprehending all His gracious teachings. Are we not still as little children, making little out of great words? Have we grasped as yet a tithe of our Lord’s full meaning, in many of His sayings of love? When He is talking of bright and sparkling gems of benediction, we are thinking of common pebble-stones in the brook of mercy; when He speaketh of stars and heavenly crowns, we think of sparks and childish coronals of fading flowers. Oh that we could but have our intellect cleared; better still, could have our understanding expanded, or, best of all, our faith increased, so as to reach to the height or our Lord’s great arguments of love!
Martha also had another fault in which she was very like ourselves: she laid the words of Jesus on the shelf, as things so trite and sure that they were of small practical importance. ‘Thy brother shall rise again.’ Now, if she had possessed faith enough, she might truthfully have said, ‘Lord, I thank Thee for that word! I expect within a short space to see him sitting at the table with Thee. I put the best meaning possible upon Thy words, for I know that Thou art always better than I can think Thee to be; and therefore I expect to see my beloved Lazarus walk home from the sepulchre before the sun sets again.’ But no, she lays the truth aside as a matter past all dispute, and says, ‘I know that my brother shall rise again in the resurrection at the last day.’ A great many precious truths are laid up by us like the old hulks in the Medway, never to see service any more, or like aged pensioners at Chelsea, as relics of the past. We say ‘Yes, quite true, we fully believe that doctrine.’ Somehow it is almost as bad to lay up a doctrine in lavender as it is to throw it out of the window. When you so believe a truth as to put it to bed and smother it with the bolster of neglect, it is much the same as if you did not believe it at all. An official belief is very much akin to infidelity. Some persons never question a doctrine: that is not their line of temptation; they accept the gospel as true, but then they never expect to see its promises practically carried out; it is a proper thing to believe, but by no means a prominent, practical factor in actual life. It is true but it is mysterious, misty, mythical, far removed from the realm of practical common sense. We do with the promises often as a poor old couple did with a precious document, which might have cheered their old age had they used it according to its real value. A gentleman stepping into a poor woman’s house saw framed and glazed upon the wall a French note for a thousand francs. He said to the old folks, ‘How came you by this?’ They informed him that a poor French soldier had been taken in by them and nursed until he died, and he had given them that little picture when he was dying as a memorial of him. They thought it such a pretty souvenir that they had framed it, and there it was adorning the cottage wall. They were greatly surprised when they were told that it was worth a sum which would be quite a little fortune for them if they would but turn it into money. Are we not equally unpractical with far more precious things? Have you not certain of the words of your great Lord framed and glazed in your hearts, and do you not say to yourselves, ‘They are so sweet and precious’? and yet you have never turned them into actual blessing’never used them in the hour of need. You have done as Martha did when she took the words, ‘Thy brother shall rise again,’ and put round about them this handsome frame, ‘in the resurrection at the last day.’ Oh that we had grace to turn God’s bullion of gospel into current coin, and use them as our present spending money.