BY THE REV. EWEN MACQUEEN, INVERNESS.
“And He said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”—Mark xvi., 15, 16.
IN endeavouring to consider these words for a short time, we shall:—
I. In the first place notice a few things about the men who are here addressed. Women are not addressed, although many in our day maintain that women should be preachers as well as men. We do not see, however, that the blessed Saviour gave them this commission. Hence, what the blessed Saviour did not give we have no right to give.
II. In the second place, we shall notice the commission which Christ gives them.
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The field which He assigns to them.
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What they should do in the field that was assigned to them. He says, “Preach the gospel to every creature.”
III. And in the third place, the results which were to follow a preached gospel to the end of time. If the gospel is not saving you, it is damning you. The acceptance of the gospel, the crediting of the gospel, will not fail to do what Christ said it should do, but we have also what the non-acceptation of the gospel will do. Is it the law that will condemn us? No. If the damnation of the law were the only damnation, it would be no damnation in comparison with the damnation of a rejected gospel.
I. With regard to the men addressed, we see here the wonderful wisdom of God. 1. It was not angels whom He commissioned to go out with the gospel, although some people have the idea that those who go out with the gospel should be angels. An angel from heaven would have no knowledge at all of the stubbornness of sinners, and of the hard-heartedness of sinners. Those who are here commissioned were all children of wrath even as others; there was no difference between them and other sinners. They were mostly fishermen on the Lake of Galilee, men who prosecuted their occupation as strenuously as other men. But what made the difference. Well, everyone of them knew the power of the word of God addressed to them by Jesus Christ. “Follow me,” He said, “and I will
make you fishers of men.” When the word of God came to them it had this effect, to immediately sever asunder their great and idolatrous love of the world, and this is the effect of the word of God whenever it comes to an individual sinner or many sinners. Immediately it breaks the great love that is in the soul of the sinner to the world. Before that took place in the case of the disciples, their boats, their nets were their all. Zebedee I presume would be supreme in the eyes of John, the boats and nets in the eyes of Peter, but when Christ said “Follow me” there was such power in these words that made their boats and their nets very little and made Christ appear everything in their eyes. It made them believe this was the true Messiah. When He asked Peter, “Whom do men say that I the Son of Man am?” Peter was led to say, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” “Blessed art thou, Simon, Bar-Jona, for flesh and blood hath not revealed this unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven.” They were men who were taught of the Father in heaven that here, in the son of Joseph and of Mary as the Jews thought, they had indeed the very Messiah. “The Word was made flesh and we beheld His glory.” Those were the men who were commissioned now—those who beheld His glory.
- In the second place, it was true of them that they could not part with Christ. When many turned back and said, “This is an hard saying, who can hear it?” He turned to the disciples and said, “Will ye also go away?” Well, my friends, if I can go away from the Christ of God, I have no right to hope or conclude that ever I was called of the Father in heaven. Spurgeon used to put it: “If you can be anything else than a minister, do not be a minister.” But what did the disciples reply to Christ “To whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.” If we thought of putting our back upon Thee, we feel it would be eternal death to us.
But on the other hand, were they altogether free from unbelief? Oh, no. It was true of them as to their old nature that they were hard-hearted. Christ upbraids them for this. Now, I believe that there is no man on the face of the earth who gets so much trouble with his hard heart as the truly sent minister of Christ. There was an eminent minister in the north of Scotland called Mr Porteous, and he had a godly session. One of his session became very much tried with a temptation from the devil, and after enduring the temptation for about a fortnight or three
weeks he made for the minister, going, as he said himself, to send in his resignation. Well, the man found the minister out in the garden, and Mr Porteous said to him, “I suppose it was not without some message that you came from the mountains to see me?” The man was afraid to tell his message, but at last Mr Porteous made him tell it. “Well,” he said, “I am both ashamed and afraid to tell it; I came here to resign my office as an elder and to resign even my right to go to the Lord’s Table.” “That is a serious thing,” Mr Porteous said, and urged him to tell the reason. “Oh well, I am very much tried with the temptation that there is not such a Being as God at all, and what right has a man who is down so low as that to be an elder or go to the Lord’s Table?” “Ay, ay, man,” said Mr Porteous, “I did not think the devil had that temptation for any man but for a minister. Many a day he hurls that at me. I know your trouble full well. I cannot take you out of that trouble, but rust will not lie on your soul as long as you have that temptation.”
As I said already, they were also men full of unbelief. We do not need to go out of our own hearts for unbelief. It is a weed that grows in the garden of every heart, and it will follow the people of God as long as they are in the world, as his shadow will follow a man. When Christ, as the Sun of Righteousness, will shine on the soul of the sinner, unbelief will follow as a shadow on the side the Sun of Righteousness is not shining on. We see then that the men who were sent out were men who were adopted, men who could not part with Christ whatever it would cost them. “We have left all and followed Thee,” said Peter.
II. In the second place, what was the field of their commission? “Go ye into all the world,” wherever Adam’s race have gone. He did not say, Go and preach among the lost angels. No. I believe that although the persons of the Apostles did not come to this place, the Apostles came to it for all that. “He being dead yet speaketh.” And why into all the world? Because there is not a part of the world that does not need them and does not need what they carry. We know there are plenty who do not feel their need of the Apostles or of what they carry, but, my friends, the less you feel your need, the greater is your need. When Christ came near Jerusalem, what made Him weep? “Ah,” He said, “If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which be-
long unto thy peace! But now they are hid from thine eyes.” Men blind to their need of what the Gospel alone can bring to them is something that wrings out bitter tears from the glorious eyes of the Son of God.
Now, what is true of men in all the world? 1. First of all, men and women are everywhere spiritually dead, and how can they be brought alive? By nothing but by the gospel of God’s dear Son. A brother may weep for another dead brother, but will a weeping brother be able to stop and arrest the spiritual death in which his brother is? Oh, no.
Yet none of these his brother can
Redeem by any way;
Nor can he unto God for him
Sufficient ransom pay.
The spiritually dead cannot feel their own condition. But, in the next place, men are all morally under the curse of a broken law. Is it not clearly and distinctly stated, “Cursed is everyone that continueth not in all things that are written in the book of the law to do them.” The Gospel alone brings before us what can remove the fearful curse. We are enemies in our mind by wicked works. There is enmity in the natural man that would dethrone God if it were possible for him, the spirit of the deicide. Then how can I, how can you get this nature that is dominated with enmity against the being of God changed? Can I get it changed by following any system of human invention? No. The Gospel is absolutely needed, my friends. And how will you know the enemies of God? They will go to vanity instead of delighting in the law of the Lord. They sit in the chair of the scoffer, they hate the Sabbath of the Lord, they hate the people of God.
But let me notice now what the gospel is, the remedy for sin-destroyed sinners. Well, it is glad tidings, the gospel of God concerning His Son, Jesus Christ. As the whole world has but one natural sun, similarly the gospel is concerning one Person, and that Person is the Son of God. I pointed out that men everywhere were spiritually dead, but what does the gospel bring before us? We lost life in the first covenant head, but in the Lord Jesus Christ “was life and the life was the light of men. And the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.” So, my friends, to you who are by nature spiritually dead, the blessed, glad tidings come with life everlasting in their arms. The gospel comes to dead sinners to-night. What does it
come with? With that eternal life which was with the Father and manifested unto us. If you realised your deadness, my dear friends, you would just be like the slaves at the time of the emancipation in the United States of America, about which I was reading lately. It was President Abraham Lincoln who got through the Act, and on the day he went up on a platform in Washington and read the Act that emancipated the slaves, when it dawned upon the poor slaves who were then in bondage that now they had their liberty, they almost rushed the platform on which the President stood, weeping and shouting for joy, “Glory be to God in the highest, and thanks to President Lincoln.” But here the gospel of God’s dear Son comes to us with life eternal for dead sinners. Will you accept the gospel?
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In the second place, it not only comes with life, but it comes with the Person that bore the curse in His own body and made an end of it, as we are told, “He was made a curse for us.” How? In bearing our curse in His own body on the tree. The Curse-Bearer comes to you. Will you lay your cursed weight upon Him? Will you, my young friends, seek that the Lord would enable you, when He comes with His word to your door, nearer than the door, even to your heart, to accept the Curse-Bearer, and He will remove every curse from off you?
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And the third thing is that the gospel comes before us with the One who was holy, harmless and undefiled, separate from sinners, who made peace by the blood of His cross. Immediately the sinner gets faith to embrace Christ, what takes place? Ah, he gets a new nature. “Who of God is made unto us wisdom, sanctification and redemption.” But again we were full of enmity. What does the gospel bring to you? The One who united the two natures in the one person for ever, that in the two natures He might make an end of the gulf that was between us and God. The gospel comes to us with the One who made peace, and if you will accept Him, you will just feel that instead of being an enemy to God, you would give the whole world that your past life of enmity were buried in eternal oblivion. The gospel comes to us with the One of whom it is written, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me.” Do you feel yourself a prisoner, even in the very grasp of the devil? Well, the gospel comes with the One of whom it is written, “He hath sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.” The gospel comes to you
with One who says thus, “I go to prepare a place for you; that where I am, there ye may be also.” “In my Father’s house are many mansions, if it were not so I would have told you.” Ah, my friends, there is nothing like the gospel, for you may say that it is the only thing that will raise a sinner from the brink of hell, as you find the Psalmist speaking in the 116th Psalm. The gospel has that in it which will cheer and raise you up from the greatest depths of despondency. The devil does not like his children to be hearing glad tidings that will liberate them from his own chains.
III. Now, let me notice the result of the gospel. “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” What is implied here, “He that believeth?” When the gospel comes, it comes invested with everything that the sinner needs, and it is by the gospel the dead sinner is awakened out of his stupor or spiritual death. What is he saved from? From death, from the curse, and from the enmity of his fallen nature. When the word of God, or the gospel, comes with power, do you ever feel how it will drown the enmity that is in the nature of man? There is no way by which you and I can drown the enmity but by faith’s view of the Crucified One. The gospel will finally save the sinner from all sin, the very being of sin. “And is baptized.” In the days of Christ they were passing over from Judaism to Christianity. He said to John the Baptist, “Suffer it to be so now: for thus it becometh us to fulfil all righteousness.”
In the last place, “He that believeth not shall be damned.” This is a fearful thing, the damnation of a rejected gospel. What is more fearful than the law? It is the gospel, if it is rejected and trampled upon. It is very clear that this is the last dispensation, and the rejection of the gospel proves the sinner to be the inveterate enemy of God as Moral Governor; it proves the sinner the inveterate enemy to God as the Saviour. My dear friends, are you willing to leave this place with the curse of the gospel upon you? He says, “He that believeth” shall be saved; he that believeth not shall be damned.” May you never know the meaning of the words, to be damned of the gospel. Oh, friends, let these words sink into your minds, that the reception of the gospel, through the grace of God, saves with an everlasting salvation, and that the rejection of the gospel will damn the sinner with a damnation that will be unspeakable, and that will never, never be removed.
The Suffering Saviour.
BY THE REV. JOHN MACDONALD, CALCUTTA.
(Continued from p. 49.)