Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2846
“And have no root in themselves.” Mark 4:17.
THESE rocky-ground hearers have occupied our thoughts twice recently. [Sermon #2844, Volume 49—THESEED UPON A ROCK, and Sermon #2845, Volume 49—LACKING MOISTURE]. Or You remember that the first sermon concerning them was upon the text, “They had no deepness of earth” and that, in it, I tried to show the shallowness of some men’s religious character, how the pan of rock below the thin layer of earth had never been broken, so the Seed could not really enter into them, but lay, for a little while, in the soil, rapidly springing up and just as rapidly perishing. The other discourse was upon the words, “It lacked moisture,” a very instructive little sentence full of meaning. Only Luke tells us that the rocky-ground hearers “lacked moisture.” This, you probably remember, I explained as meaning dry doctrine without gracious feeling, experience without humiliation, practice without heart-love, belief without repentance, confidence without self-diffidence, action without spirituality and zeal without communion. I went somewhat deeply into that part of the subject and I think that there must have been some who trembled as they thought that, possibly, they were among the number of those who have no deepness of earth and who lack moisture.
Now, my dear Hearers, I do feel intensely concerned that every work of Grace supposed to be worked in this house should be real and, therefore, permanent. We are thankful that we are constantly having conversions, but we are very grieved that we also have some perversions. It is a comparatively easy thing to increase the Church roll, but it is only God’s almighty Grace that can preserve to the end those whose names are written in our Church records. Oh, for sure work! It is better to have only one convert who will endure to the end than 20 who only endure for a while and in time of trial fall away. We have so much of the superficial, the merely topsoil work, in these days, that I feel that I am not laying too much stress upon one point if, three times in succession, I preach on this same subject, taking these three forms of expression indicating different phases of the same evil—no depth of earth, no moisture and no root in themselves. According to our Savior’s interpretation, this is what happens to people of this sort—“Afterward, when affliction or persecution arises for the Word’s sake, immediately they are offended.”
I. Notice, first, that THEY WERE DEPENDENT UPON EXTERNALS. They had “no root in themselves.” Their religion did not spring from within and was not fostered from within.
This reminds us of a class of persons who cause us much grief of heart, though at the first they give us cause for much hope. I mean those whose religion depends upon their parents. What a fearful calamity it often seems to a family when the father is taken away just when the boys are growing up! We have seen, in our own royal family, an example of it. Wherever it happens, it is always a cause of very terrible danger to the children. But do you not also think that there are many lads and lasses who are, in the main, favorable to the things of God simply because their father is an eminently devout man? Where that is the case and where there is no true work of Grace in their hearts, the death of their father will give them such a measure of liberty and release from restraint as will afford them an opportunity of showing that their religion was not real.
In another case it may be the influence the almost boundless influence of a godly mother over her sons and daughters. Some women are queens at home—they reign with a kind of imperial sway over their children and those gracious matrons, by God’s Grace, often lead their sons and daughters in the way of Truth and righteousness. Yet sometimes it is not so much a work of Grace within, as the work of the mother upon the surface—and so, if the dear mother falls asleep— the family is never again quite what it used to be. There is no longer that deep devotion, that intense earnestness that there used to be in the religion of the household, and one reason is that its members have no root in themselves. Their root was in their mother, or their father.
Now, dear young Friends, any of you who are making a profession of religion, I say nothing against the gracious influence of your parents. God forbid that I should do so! I say everything in praise of it, but I pray you not to let the influence of your parents be substituted for the work of the Holy Spirit upon your own heart. The message to you, as to all others, is, “You must be born-again.” He only is the true Christian who can say, “If my father and my mother were gone, it would greatly grieve me and I would feel it to be a serious loss. Yet, if it should happen, I would, by God’s Grace, hold on to Christ with no less intensity, but rather with even more, for I should feel it to be my duty to help fill the great void which the loss of my parents had occasioned. I should think that I heard them speaking to me from the skies and bidding their son, their daughter, follow them even as they followed Christ.”