Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2512
“And He said unto them, Take heed what you hear: with what measure you use, it shall be measured to you: and unto you that hear shall more be given.” Mark 4:24.
In these days we have many instructions as to preaching, but our Lord principally gave directions as to hearing. The first part of our text, “Take heed what you hear,” may be viewed as a note of discrimination. Be careful what you hear— hear the Truth of God and only the Truth of God! It does seem to me as if some people say, “Here is a place of worship. There is sure to be a sermon, let us go in and hear it.” Ah, but all that is preached is not Gospel and it is not all hearing that will be valuable to your souls! Especially at this present time it is incumbent upon Christians to learn how to use the discerning faculty with regard to what is and what is not the Truth of God. Would you eat all meat indiscriminately without tasting and testing its quality? If so, would you not soon be ill? Does a man take any drug that may happen to be upon the chemist’s shelves? Does he not expect great care to be exercised in the doctor’s dispensary, lest he should be taking poison where he hoped for a salutary medicine? Remember what the Apostle John says, “Beloved, believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they are of God.” And when you know what the Truth of God is, be not ready to listen to that which is contrary to it, or you will rue the day in which you lent your ears to the deceiver! Ulysses was not unwise when he sealed the ears of his sailors while they passed by the rocks of the sirens, for they sang so sweetly that they tempted mariners to run their ships upon the rocks where they would be wrecked. So dear Friends, with sealed ears, pass by those who have nothing to communicate that can tend to your spiritual edification—and thus carry out our Savior’s words, “Take heed what you hear.”
This command is also a very clear note of warning. We take heed what we eat and what we drink. Every person who desires to have health does that. And shall we be careless of what we hear? May we not, by hearing error and falsehood, engender disease in our spirit and bring our soul into sin, sorrow and eternal ruin? Time is too short for us to be listening to every babbler! Heaven and earth are too important for us to be running any risk concerning our eternal state by giving heed to the speculations of evil men!
But I am going to use the text in another sense, namely, as a word of awakening to you who are hearers. I do not think that I need to say to the most of you, “Hear the Word,” for, if ever there were people who loved to hear the Word of God, they are to be found in this congregation, willing to come not only on the Sabbath, but on week-nights, too, to hear the preaching of the Word! May you, as well as the city of Glasgow, flourish by the preaching of the Word! May your souls be fat and flourishing as you are willing to hear the Word! But, alas, there are many to whom it is necessary to give an exhortation even to come and hear the Gospel! It is getting far too commonly so in London—the vast proportion of our population does not care about hearing preaching. There is a good deal of the preaching that they need not care much to hear, especially poor people who cannot understand the Latinized English, whereas, if our glorious old Anglo-Saxon mother tongue were used, I guarantee you that we would find people coming to hear much more numerously than they do!
Notice, dear Friends, that there is in our text, first, a precept—“Take heed what you hear.” There is, secondly, a proverb—“With what measure you use, it shall be measured to you.” And there is, thirdly, a promise—“And unto you that hear shall more be given.”
I. First, here is a PRECCEPT which ought to be dear to our souls. If God commands anything, we ought to wish to know what it is that He commands.
Take heed, then, what you hear. That is, hear with attention. Do not hear heedlessly, for that is not really to hear. There is a mode of attending a place of worship which cannot be of much service because the person attending is three parts asleep. He is not sufficiently asleep for his neighbor to nudge him, but he is quite sufficiently asleep to require to nudge himself and wake himself up! A great many persons, when they come to a place of worship, are like what I sometimes find upon my garden wall. It looks like a chrysalis, but when I take it up, I find that the living thing has flown away. Here is the chrysalis of a man, but where is the man, himself? Oh, he is at home! He is planning what he is going to do tomorrow, or he is thinking about what he did not do on Saturday! How often is it that a hearer’s ears are nothing better than a mere trumpet—what is said goes in and goes out, again—and nothing remains. I like that kind of hearing of which I heard concerning a boy who was noticed always to be drinking in what the preacher said. He would lean forward, and listen with eyes, and ears and mouth all open! His mother said, “John, what makes you so attentive ?” “Why, Mother,” he answered, “I heard that if there was any part of the sermon that was likely to be blessed to our souls, it was just then that the devil would try to make us inattentive. So I made up my mind that I would hear every bit of it so that God might bless me by it.” If we always had such hearers as that boy, we would be sure to have faith worked in them and God would be glorified in their salvation!