A POWERFUL REASON FOR COMING TO CHRIST – Charles Spurgeon
A POWERFUL REASON FOR COMING TO CHRIST
“A great multitude, when they had heard what great things He did, came unto Him.” Mark 3:8.
The opposition of the great ones of the earth did not, after all, hinder the cause of Christ. The Pharisees, who were the leaders of religious thought, combined with the Herodians, who were the court party, to destroy Jesus, but at the very moment when their wrath had reached its highest pitch, the crowd around the Savior’s Person was greater than ever. Let us not, therefore, dear Friends, be at all dismayed if great men, learned men, and nominally religious men should oppose the simple Gospel of Christ! All the world is not bound up in a Pharisee’s phylactery, nor held in chains by a philosopher’s new fancy. If some will not have our Savior, others will—God’s eternal purpose will stand, and the kingdom of His Anointed shall come. If our Lord Jesus is rejected by the great, nevertheless the common people hear Him gladly. To the poor, the Gospel is preached, and it is His joy and His delight that out of them He still gathers a company who, though poor in this world, are rich in faith and give glory to God. I would have you, Beloved, count upon opposition and regard it as a token of coming blessings. Dread not the black cloud; it does but prognosticate a shower. March may howl and bluster, and April may dampen all things with its rains, but the May flowers and the autumn’s harvest of varied fruits will come, and come by this very means. Go on and serve your God in the serenity of holy confidence, and you shall live to see that the hand of the Lord is not to be turned back, though the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together.
Those who came to Christ in such great multitudes did not all come from right motives, and I shall not assume that they did. Some came from idle curiosity, no doubt. Others came to listen to what He had to say, but were not prepared to believe in Him. We know that many came to be fed with loaves and fishes, swayed by the most mercenary motives. Still, in the case now under notice, large numbers came to Jesus because they had heard of the great things which He did, hoping that He would do something of the same kind for them, for multitudes of those who came were sick folk, plague-smitten, stricken with disease, and they came thinking that by touching Him they might be delivered from all their sufferings. This gift they gained and glorified the name of the Lord! I shall not, therefore, stay to divide out the characters which made up the crowd, but remind you that we must never expect that all who come to hear the Gospel will receive it. Just as Jesus went up into the mountain and there called out to Himself whom He would, so does He form His Church, which is an assembly of called-out ones whom the Sovereign Lord selects from the congregation of hearers that they may become a Church of Believers. The process of selection and separation is always going on, and the great heap which lies on the threshing floor is being daily winnowed to divide the golden grain from the worthless chaff.
For our present purpose, we shall just now view those who literally came to Christ as the types of those who come spiritually. Many, I trust, who are present at this time will come to Jesus for the same reason that these people came, namely, because they have heard of the great things which have been done by Him. So to our work at once. Three things are before us. The first is the attraction—“They had heard what great things He did.” Secondly, the gathering—“They came unto Him.” And thirdly, the context furnishes us with this—the result of the attraction and the gathering. We find it written, “He had healed many; insomuch that they pressed upon Him for to touch Him, as many as had plagues.”
I. The Attraction—“They Had Heard What Great Things He Did”
My dear Hearers, the case of these people is parallel with your own! There must be very few of you here who have not heard of the great things which Jesus Christ has done. Let us note, first, that these people had heard with somewhat of a believing ear. Stories floated about concerning one who had healed blindness, palsy, leprosy, and they accepted the statements as facts. A lame man told how he had been made to leap like a rabbit, and a blind man declared that his eyes had been opened—and as these wonders passed from mouth to mouth, these people believed them to be true.
I know that even those of you who are not converted yet, believe what is recorded in these four Gospels concerning the miracles that Jesus worked. You are persuaded that the records are authentic. You believe that the Lord Jesus did heal the sick and that He did even raise the dead and cast out devils. You also accept the grand Gospel statement that He is able to save unto the uttermost those that come unto God by Him. Believing so much as that, you ought to believe a good deal more and I pray the Holy Spirit, now, to lead you to that farther faith. If you have come as far as that, the most reasonable thing to do is to go to Him with your own case and trust Him to heal you!
I am persuaded that I may go very far with many here present in a statement of their beliefs. You believe that Jesus Christ has done great spiritual wonders for multitudes. You have been told of great sinners whose hard hearts have been softened, whose characters have been changed, whose lives have been renewed, whose sins have been forgiven! You have met with such, have you not? The deed of Grace was performed upon your own brother, perhaps, or upon some intimate friend, or some person of public notoriety. You know many such cases and you believe them to be genuine wonders of Divine Grace. You do not think that conversion is all a delusion—you have not reached that degree of unbelief. Indeed, instead of unbelief, you are filled with ardent admiration and feel a measure of desire to be saved yourself—and while sitting in this house, you have often said, “Yes, I believe it is so. Oh that the mighty Grace of God would renew me and that I could touch the hem of the Savior’s garment that He might save even me.” Believing so much as you do, you ought, in all reason, to believe more.
I mean you should go on to trust Him who has worked these great things and place your own case in His hands and leave it there. This is the legitimate course to pursue. A man believes a certain medicine to have worked great cures, and he knows that he, himself, is sick of the disease which it is meant to heal. Why, it seems as if no one needs to say, “The next step is that you should try that medicine upon yourself.” Yet it grieves me that so many of you do not proceed to this saving point, but linger on the borders of faith. You see the river of the Water of Life and wish to drink, for you are sure that it would quench your thirst and yet you are in danger of perishing in sight of the flowing stream! O, Holy Spirit, remove the madness of sin and teach men true wisdom!
The many who came to Jesus felt themselves drawn because they had heard of the great things which He had done and believed them. They proceeded, however, to the second step which I have already indicated, for they drew from what they had heard, an argument of hope. They said, “Has He done these great things to others? Why should He not work the same gracious miracles upon us?” The palsied man said, “He that was sick as I am has been recovered! Surely, if I could get near to Jesus and could catch His eye, He would restore me.” The blind said, “He healed one like myself—oh, if I could but sit where He passes by I would cry, ‘You Son of David, have mercy on me,’ and He would open my eyes, too.” They could not be, at once, sure that He would heal them, for that He works a cure in one is not, in itself, a proof that He will work upon another—but they were further informed that He delighted in mercy and that He was gentle and gracious and easily entreated and, therefore, they concluded that if such an One had power to work such beneficent miracles and evidently had a will to work them, they had but to come to Him and they would be partakers of His healing power!
O that my unconverted hearers would act reasonably at this time and draw the same conclusion! I pray you, dear Friends, see how sensible these people were that you may imitate them! To me it seems as plain as the working out of a proposition in mathematics. Jesus has saved such as I am, therefore He can save me. To believe in Him is as reasonable an act as to eat that which is good when you know it is good and know that you need it! Or to drink that which quenches thirst, when you perceive that it is suitable for that purpose and that you are in need of drink. O that your hearts would say—Jesus Christ has worked great deeds of Grace! He is evidently willing to work more—let me, then, come to Him and trust myself in His hands!
If this is a time of cool, collected thought and the Holy Spirit works in us wisdom, it will again happen that, “A great multitude, when they had heard of the great things which Jesus did, came unto Him.” One more step should be mentioned. No doubt these persons were partly urged to come to Him by their own sad condition. Some of them were full of pain through bodily plagues and others suffered poverty and wretchedness through being blind, crippled, lame, or withered, and they were anxious to be delivered from their infirmity and the poverty which came of it. Being convinced that their cases were similar to those which had been healed by Christ, they felt an eager desire to see what He could do for them.
II. The Gathering—“They Came Unto Him”
Now, I know that I may call my hearers to Christ till I lose my voice, but none will come but those who feel that they need Him. But, my dear unconverted Hearers, you need Him whether you know it or not! There is a disease upon you which has already brought you down to spiritual death and will bring you down to Hell before long.
The most moral of you; the most amiable of you, unless Jesus shall look upon you in love, is carrying about within himself a plague of the heart which will be your eternal ruin! Jesus must save you, or you are lost! There is no hope for any man among you except it comes from Him. Do you know this? If so, come at once to the Savior! Do you not know it? Then believe it to be so, for so it is and let the conviction lead you to seek His face.
But remember, these people did not only come because they were sick, or because they felt they were sick, for they had long known and felt their sicknesses and had remained at home. Or they had resorted to other physicians, or to Bethesda’s pool, or to some other famous fountain. They came to Jesus because, knowing and feeling their need, they also perceived that Jesus was able to meet their case. Come, then, to Christ, O my sin-stricken Hearers, because, be your condition what it may, He can meet it! Are you troubled with hardness of heart? By His Spirit He can take away the heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh! Is your difficulty unbelief? You cannot see the Truth of God, but the Lord Jesus can open the eyes of him that was born blind! Is it a case of lack of power? Is your hand withered? The Lord can bid the withered hand be stretched out and it shall be done! It is not possible that there should be any moral or spiritual disease about any one of you that will baffle the power of my great Lord and Master! If you do but come to Him, He can and will make you every whit whole. He has already dealt with cases like yours, as bad as yours, as desperate as yours—in the record of His cures there are instances parallel to your own and some which even surpass them in difficulty.
Depend on it, He is able to do, again, what He has already done, for He is the same yesterday, today, and forever! His arm is not shortened that He cannot save! He can reach as far as sin can go and draw back those whom Satan has driven to the Pit’s mouth. Now, be reasonable and act upon this fact. May the Spirit of God lead you in the way of understanding and then you will say, today, “I, also, will join that multitude who, having heard of the great things which Jesus did, came to Him.” God grant it may be so! Yes, He will grant it, for His Word shall not return unto Him void.
III. The Result
Of all that came to our Lord, multitudes though they were, not one was ever repulsed—no, not one! Since the world began has one soul been driven away from the Savior’s door? Oh, tell it in Gath! Publish it in the streets of Askelon if ever Christ shall be found casting out a sinner, for then may the adversary justly rejoice over the defeat of the Gospel! Let it ring down the corridors of Hell and let every devil dance for joy as he hears that Christ has broken His promise and is untrue to His character whenever you hear of one who comes to Him whom He casts out!
I challenge all time! I challenge Heaven and earth and Hell to bring a case in which my Lord and Master ever cast out a soul that put its trust in Him. It cannot be! As none were repulsed, so all were healed! And even so all who now believe in Christ are healed of sin and its plagues!
“Ah,” say objectors, “you preach faith as the way of salvation.” We confess the charge and glory in it, since it is most true that it does save men. “But you ought to bid people do good works in order to salvation.” See here, good Sir, if the people who believe in Jesus do not perform good works and if this faith does not make them moral, honest, sober, holy people, then we grant your point! But who shall assert that the doctrine of faith is other than purifying and sanctifying when we can bring multitudes of proofs that this very preaching up of faith and not of works is the most effective cause of virtue and holiness?
Those who cry “Works, works, works,” have generally but a scant supply of such wares! Remember the age of Laud and his popish preaching? Who were the followers of that theology but the libidinous cavaliers? Those who preached salvation by Grace—who were they but the godliest men in the nation, the Puritans, against whom no man could bring any charge except that they were too sternly good and kept the Sabbath too precisely and walked before God with too much gravity? I wish the same fault could be found with us all! If that is vile, we propose to be viler still—“Talk we of morals, oh, You bleeding Lamb! The grand morality is love of You.”
How can this Divine morality of love be worked in us unless the Lord Jesus, by His Holy Spirit, bestows upon us a heart to trust Him and to take Him and Him, alone, to be our salvation? One thing I cannot help mentioning and that is, as everyone that came to Christ was healed, it followed that the attraction grew. Say there had been 500 healed—then when the people came and a hundred more were benefited there were 600 to draw. And the next day, if there were a hundred more healed, there were 700 to attract others!
Now, there never was a time since the world began when there were so many reasons for a sinner’s coming to Christ as there are this morning! Just think of it. Every soul whom the Lord has saved is another argument that He is able to save you! In reasoning philosophically, if we find a fact, we put it down. But we do not dare to draw any inference from it because an isolated fact cannot prove a general rule. When we get two or three dozen facts, we say, “The common inference from all these is such-and-such,” and a rule is proven. Suppose we could collect two or three hundreds of such facts, then we are really sure!
Now, for 1,800 years and more our Lord Jesus Christ has gone on saving sinners! And He has saved more sinners at this moment than ever before. Still they are coming! Still they are coming and still He is saving them and every one of these is an argument that you should come! O my dear Hearer, where are you—the man whom God means to bless under this sermon? Come at once and say, “I, too, will trust Him with my soul, for He has power to save me.” Then shall another be added to the long roll of His wonderful cures! The Lord grant it may be so and His shall be the praise!
I desire now to spend a few minutes in real, hard, earnest work, in which may God the Holy Spirit help me while I plead with those who have never come to Jesus, that they should come to Him at once. My dear Hearer, if you have often heard about what Christ has done and yet have never come to Him, yourself, that He might work a similar work of love in you, I pray you not be hindered any longer. First, come because His very name invites you—Jesus, a Savior! You are sinful, but He has forgiveness. Come to Him! You will be well met—a sinner and a Savior! Can two more congruous things come together? His name is Christ, too—that is, Anointed. Now, God has anointed Him with power to save and commissioned Him to save and He must and will discharge His high office by saving those who come to Him. It is His business to save and you may be sure that He wears no empty title and makes no vain pretense of being what He is not. Come along, then!
Come to Jesus—The Real Savior for Real Sinners
Come along to Him who is a real Savior for real sinners. He is a Savior commissioned of God—commit your soul’s business to His care. I say the name He bears rings out like a silver bell, and this is its note, “Come and welcome! Come and welcome to Jesus Christ!” Our Lord’s power should also encourage you to come to Him. Of that, I have already spoken. Nothing has ever baffled Him yet. Stormy winds and raging waves obey Him! The very devils flee before Him. Come along with you. He is mighty to save. Therefore, come and hang the whole weight of your souls upon Him.
Next, let His Character allure you. There was never such a mass of love as Jesus is! He speaks no harsh words to coming sinners—He gives them mercy liberally and upbraids not. Has He not said, “I will receive them graciously and love them freely”? Oh, come to Jesus! I am not calling you to Moses with the broken fragments of the Law at His feet, thundering in indignation! I invite you to Jesus with His pierced hands and open side, entreating souls to come to Him. Come to Jesus because God has made it His Glory to pardon sinners! Constantine had a son whom he much loved, and he wished the nation to honor him. So, while his son was yet a child, he caused him to sign pardons and charters, so that all gracious acts of the king bore the prince’s signature. The Prince Emmanuel signs and seals Divine pardons for the chief of sinners! And the great God in Heaven loves that His Son should give pardon to sinners, for it endears Him to men and brings Him honor. Since it will honor Him to save you, come to Him and be not afraid.
Again, let me remind you of the preparations that are made for saving sinners. Christ has died to save them! He shed His blood to save them, and do you think He will have these preparations wasted? I smiled last night at a little incident in my own home. Three of our friends had been writing hard for me all day, and my wife, expecting them to tea, had spread the table bountifully and adorned it with choice flowers. I came into the room and said, “They cannot stop to tea, for there is a meeting at the Orphanage and they say they must hurry off.” I confess I felt sorry as I looked at the table and all its adornments. My own good wife replied, “No, no. They cannot go. They must have their tea. I cannot spread a table like this and nobody come and eat. Go out and fetch in those highwaymen who want to run off! Compel them to come in.” I fetched them in and they were by no means loath to sit down and partake! It would have been a great disappointment to the kind hostess if no one had eaten what she had provided. This is a homely story, but it sets forth the need there is that our Lord’s provisions of Grace should be used. He has spread a table, and He will have sinners come and feed at it. What did the king say who made a wedding feast for his son? “Go out quickly into the highways and hedges and compel them to come in.” Thus the wedding was furnished with guests. Strange guests they were, and yet they furnished the feast with guests! They were odd bits of furniture, but they were necessary! A wedding with a feast and nobody to eat it would be a dishonor to the king, so guests were necessary furniture. Oh, you that are furthest off from God, my Master’s mercy needs your misery that He may relieve it! He needs your emptiness that He may impart His fullness and Grace for Grace!
The Urgent Call to Come to Jesus
One thing more I have to say. I cannot tell if it will have power with anybody present, but I hope it may. I wish you would come to Jesus even for His servant’s sake. If I were a sculptor fashioning a statue, I should feel that every stroke I took made a permanent impression, so that if I only worked a little upon the hard stone, I should make some progress and my work would remain. Alas, my labor is not thus abiding in reference to some of you. I do my best each Sunday, but I am not much the gainer, for you seem to be statues of ice, and the six weekdays melt away my one day’s work! It is weary work to labor thus in vain! A painter takes his brush, and though he may be executing a very difficult portrait, yet every stroke and each tint and touch of color denotes progress. Alas, I seem as if I wrote on the sand with some of you! The week’s tide obliterates the Sabbath’s marks! Am I always to weave in the pulpit that which is undone at home? You do not know how sadly we sometimes say to our Master, “Who has believed our report and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?” We would give anything to see our hearers converted, that our Master might have honor, and we are sad when men come not at our call! If we see no souls brought to the Redeemer’s feet, we are ready to lie down and die.
I read the other day of an old minister who had been some 20 years without a conversion, as far as he knew, and yet he was a really earnest man. At last, having much prayed over it, he announced that he should preach no more in that place but resign his charge, and the reason he gave them with many tears was, “I am doing no good among you. There are no souls saved, and perhaps if another minister filled my place, you might listen to his appeals. At any rate, I will not stand in the way of one who might be more useful, and so I bid you farewell.” As he went out, an old woman named Sarah said, “O, Sir, you cannot go, for you were the means of leading me to Christ some three or four years ago.” “You,” he said, “Sarah, I thought you were one who did not care for my ministry.” “Oh, Sir,” she said, “it has been my meat and my drink.” “Woman,” he said, “why did you not tell me as much before? My heart has been breaking for you.” In the course of the week, 20 or 30 came in to testify that they had sought and found the Savior through his ministry. All he could do was to say, “Bless the Lord, I’ll not leave my post. But why did you not tell me of it before? O the sleepless nights I might have missed if you had but told me.”
Some of you may have been saved and yet you have never confessed the blessed fact! I ask you, whether you do well and kindly by His servant thus to rob him of his wages and keep back comforting news from his burdened heart! However, that may pass. You who have not sought and have not found my Lord—what message shall I take home, this morning, to my Master when I go upstairs to speak with Him alone? Shall I tell Him you will not believe on Him? I set Him before you once again as able to save you—will you again refuse Him? Or shall the message be that you will trust in Him for salvation? God grant that you may give a wise reply for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.