Mark 5:21. And when Jesus was passed over again by ship unto the other side, much people gathered unto Him: and He was nigh unto the sea.
1Sermon preached at the opening of the Synod by the retiring Moderator in October 2020.
This verse is part of a report of an event in the life of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ in this world. The event is also recorded in Matthew and Luke, with interesting details in each. To get a full picture, one needs to study all three accounts. The Lord Jesus had left Capernaum (called His own town) by boat on the Sea of Galilee, to go where a man was known to be possessed of a legion of devils. After setting this man free from his diabolical masters, the Lord Jesus returned to His own town.
The intention is to dwell on the delight the people of Capernaum had in His return, with this in view: to examine our own desires for the gracious return of the Lord Jesus Christ to us. The text tells us much about the people’s desires towards the Lord. Luke’s report tells us about the people’s desire, which is eminently worthy of our attention: “they received Him gladly”.
1. The place.
We will come closer to the details if we consider Capernaum, the place where they gathered. The Lord and Saviour has passed over from Gennesaret, where Legion was healed. He was sitting, clothed and in His right mind, Satan’s possession of him being terminated by the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ. That was a great thing. Little wonder there were some people waiting for Him; people who had diseases, had death and demons reigning in their hearts, which they had no power to dismiss. O blessed Saviour, come with that glorious power to perform a saving work in our hearts; to cure our spiritual diseases; heal our wounded consciences; terminate the reign of sin, Satan and spiritual death, as Thou alone art able to do. When we meet in the public means of grace, we ought to ask to receive Him, seek Him in the opening of the Word, find Him for ourselves, and knock till the door of access to heaven’s riches is opened to us.
The people of Capernaum “received Him gladly, for they were all waiting for Him” (Lk 8:40). Isaiah, almost 700 years earlier, had prophesied of the area where Capernaum was. Matthew mentions this prophecy: Jesus “came and dwelt in Capernaum, which is upon the sea coast, in the borders of Zabulon and Nephthalim; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, The land of Zabulon, and the land Nephthalim, by the way of the sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the Gentiles: the people which sat in darkness saw great light: and to them which sat in the region and the shadow of death light is sprung up” (4:13-16).
Scotland is like Capernaum, for the almighty Lord has visited this land; He came and dwelt with us; He has healed the spiritually sick; pardoned their sins; raised our dead; spoken to us. Scotland “waited on Him” and multitudes “received Him gladly”. They saw Him through the lattice of His Word. They fell down and worshipped Him; they shed their blood, rather than deny His honour. Our women were crowned with martyrdom in the Solway; they were put to death in Edinburgh, choosing death rather than deny Him. In Scotland, as in Capernaum, “the people which sat in darkness saw great light”. Like Capernaum, Scotland was a place where the horn of the New Testament David budded and where the crown that was upon His head flourished. History testifies that it flourished in greater majesty among our fathers than in any other nation, our Scotland being described as the fairest daughter of the Reformation.
Scotland sat in the darkness of pitiless Popery, and our fathers saw a great light shining in the doctrines of the Reformation. This same Jesus was made known to the two from Emmaus, in the breaking of bread at their family table, but he was made known in Scotland in the breaking of spiritual bread, in the preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified. This is what Scotland has to a large extent neglected and lost. Ichabod is written over large tracts of our land. The glory is departed.
We need to lay this to heart and cry unto the Lord, beseeching Him to return. We need to wait for Him, ready to “receive Him gladly”. Are we looking for Him to visit our land as in days past, with a reformation of true religion in the visible Church? There is a great danger that we are effectively breaking the chariot wheels of the gospel of Christ by the feebleness of our desire, the offspring of our unbelief, for “the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much” (Jas 5:16).
The preaching of the gospel is the light that sprang up in Galilee. The same light, the same gospel, which had brought Christ to Capernaum, brought Christ to Scotland. But a change came on Capernaum, partly because of the influence of the Jewish ecclesiastical leaders and partly because some grew weary of Him. Once they grew weary of His Word read and preached, they came near to destruction. So it is in Scotland. As a nation we have been given over to our sins. Paul spoke of men being delivered into the hand of Satan – for their eventual recovery from their sins. But when men or nations are given over to their sins, the situation is worse. Then they are under the dominion of their sins; there is little or no hope to be entertained for them. The whole United Kingdom is in a very large measure delivered up to its sins. O for help from heaven to cry longingly that the Lord would not deliver us altogether, that He would not remove His candlestick altogether.
The ark of the testimony was known as the throne of God, who “dwelleth / sitteth between the cherubims” (Ps 80:1; 99:1 etc); it was in the most holy place when the Children of Israel rested from marching in the wilderness. There were two rings on each side of the ark. Two poles passed through the rings for carrying the ark when they were on the march. The ark was a type of Christ and of the presence of Christ by His Spirit in the Church. The staves were to be left in these rings so that the ark could instantly be removed when they were called to resume marching in the wilderness. Is not this a symbol of the fact that the Lord can remove His presence – perhaps not formal worship but the power of His presence – without any warning.
This is a suitable occasion to think about this and how weak we are. We are told that 14 000 people came out of the Disruption Free Church with Mr Macfarlane and Mr Macdonald. Are we taking stock? How small our congregations are now! Is the Lord departing from Scotland? There is much talk of uniting separate presbyterian churches. That is not the solution: union at the expense of truth is a conspiracy against the truth. We must not ignore the solemn fact that this favoured people grew weary of Christ; He said, “Thou Capernaum, which art exalted unto heaven, shalt be brought down to hell; for if the mighty works, which have been done in thee, had been done in Sodom, it would have remained until this day. . . . It shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom in the day of judgement than for thee”. May the Lord pour upon us “the Spirit of grace and of supplications” and enable Scotland again to look upon Him whom we have pierced and to mourn!
2. The People.
“Much people gathered unto Him”. There was a remnant there. A man in Capernaum was irresistibly drawn to follow Jesus, to lay down a notorious occupation at “the receipt of custom” and follow Jesus. A woman with an issue of blood knew what it was to go to Him out of a felt need. She, like many others in Capernaum, was healed. She knew it, and He knew it. When she touched the hem of His garment she knew in herself, immediately, that she had been made whole. The Lord communicated that power to her body and that light to her mind, so that she knew immediately in herself that she had been made whole of her plague. He knew it, for He asked, “Who touched Me?” He asked because He wanted her to own it. A spiritual correspondence between Christ and His people is possible in the worst of times and places. If sinners were blessed in Capernaum, a town on which the Lord pronounces many woes, why not in Scotland?
Even in Scotland in 2020 there is a trade between the praying soul and heaven. There is communion between souls and the God of heaven and earth. Yes, the Lord’s princes are prevailing in prayer. Though they have in their providence what makes them lame in the world, they are “the lame [who] take the prey” (Is 33:23). That is what communion with God is. They have nothing to give but what is marred. “All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags” (Is 64:6). Everything we give must go through the hand of the Mediator so that it may be cleansed, but everything that He gives is to be received as it is. That is the nature of communion with God through our Lord Jesus Christ by the sweet influence of the Holy Spirit upon our souls: He giving and we receiving. What a glorious gospel!
How did they receive Him? He was offered freely. What a blessed day when a sinner is enabled at his door to receive Christ! What a night has come on us! But there is still in Scotland a divine knocking at the Church and the hearts of ministers and people: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him and sup with him and he with Me” (Rev 3:20). Do you believe that the Lord is still speaking to us: calling us to return, to lay down the arms of our rebellion, to repent and believe the gospel, to receive Jesus Christ as He is freely offered to us? The Lord’s people are receiving Christ at every turn in their journey. He is saying, “Who touched Me?” and they are saying, Who has thought on me in my low estate and healed me? He is saying “Who touched the hem of My garment” with the hand of faith? and they are saying, Who has given me peace of conscience? Who has given me joy in the Holy Ghost? Who has given me pardon and more pardons, grace and more grace, peace and more peace, joy and more joy? None but He!
They looked for Him, not for another, as they gathered. People like Levi, people like the man that had the palsy and was healed, people like Jairus; “saw Him”. Is someone saying, O that I could see Him as Jairus saw Him? Friend, see Him set forth by God in the preaching of the gospel, whom God has set forth so that you may see Him with the eye of faith and that your soul may run out to Him in the chariot of your heart’s affections to embrace Him warmly. When Jairus “saw Him, he fell at His feet” – an outward act indicating inward reverence to the One you receive as your Lord God. Jairus besought Him greatly. Do you beseech God greatly on behalf of your soul, for healing and eternal happiness, for your family and for your congregation, “saying, My little daughter lieth at the point of death: I pray thee, come and lay thy hands on her”? He believed he could trust Jesus and commit his great trouble to the One that was able to help him. No doubt there were others too, for “much people gathered unto Him”. Poor blind Scotland! How few gather to meet Him and give Him a glad reception!
“Turn us again, Lord God of hosts, and upon us vouchsafe
To make Thy countenance to shine, and so we shall be safe.”
3. The gathering.
The people gathered unto Jesus when He had “passed over again by ship”. What a beautiful picture of the brief months of Christ’s popularity in Capernaum. He had parted from them and they were waiting for Him to return. This illustrates a fundamental part of true piety: waiting for the Lord to return to us, by His Spirit accompanying the Word with spiritual influences: such power as regenerates the soul; binds up the broken hearted; sanctifies believers and prepares them for glory.
We have gatherings. Is it to see Jesus? David desired, “One thing I of the Lord desired, and will seek to obtain, / that all days of my life I may within God’s house remain; / that I the beauty of the Lord behold may and admire, / and that I in His holy place may reverently enquire” (Ps 27:4). Why was this David’s desire? He tells us: “Since better is Thy love than life, my lips Thee praise shall give. / I in Thy name will lift my hands, and bless Thee while I live”. This was the language of certain of the Greeks who “came up [to Jerusalem] to worship at the feast”, who said to Philip, “Sir, we would see Jesus” (John 12:20,21). It was in the desire of Mary Magdalene (Jn 20:13) at the empty sepulchre, and it was the ardent desire of some of those who gathered to Jesus as described in this text.
Sadly, this is not the language of many in our day; generally it is this: “We will not have this Man to rule over us”, telling Him to depart from us, “for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways”. What a happy posture of soul they had who loved His appearing! Do you not wish you had it? Yes, child of God, you say, If only I had that waiting posture constantly, for “they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength (Is 40:31). If only I was giving Him the honour of my patience, waiting, expectation, faith, hope.
One wonders why they were gathered. He had dwelt with them; He had taught among them; they understood something of the power that accompanied His doing good among them and His teaching, for no man ever spoke like this man. Some of them understood that He received sinners, for He had received and healed them. They had called on Him, and come to Him to ask and they received, to seek and they found, to knock and the door was opened to them. They brought their palsied ones, their sick, their diseased and their dying. The woman with the issue of blood went to Him herself. Yes, they gathered to wait for Him and they received Him gladly. They could not endure His absence. That was a good sign. We may know we have a desire after Him when we cannot endure the sense of His absence. Let us ask if we can endure the sense of the absence of Christ in the pulpit, in the pew, during the pastoral visit, in the sick bed, at family worship, in secret prayer and reading the Bible? Can you endure an absent Christ? Or like Esau, having the world, do you have no need of Christ?
Scotland goes on with an absent Christ but the Lord is speaking to her and to all the nations of the world. Maybe the Lord will speak until the ears of men are opened – burying their dead out of their sight, crying to the great God of eternity to come to have mercy upon them, from the highest in the land to the lowest. Maybe! The Lord has visited the land with a war and then another war; millions of men were slaughtered but it did not bring the nation to repentance. It made us harder. Ought we not to pray that He would not leave us altogether now to the mastery of our sins, whatever it will cost to bring us to repentance: people and rulers, Church and state?
So it is important to preserve the distinctive testimony of the branch of the Church to which we belong. When the Lord begins to work in the hearts of men, they will look for truth – in doctrine, practice, Church government. People will then ask, Where shall we hear the truth of the gospel? Where shall we hear the truth about our condition? Who can explain God’s anger against us? Where shall we learn to walk in the ways that please the Lord? So we have to preserve what we have! “Thou hast given a banner to them that fear Thee that it may be displayed because of the truth.”
Perhaps the gathering of the people was greater because they had heard of the storm when Christ was asleep in the hinder part of the ship as it crossed over to Gennesaret. The storm threatened the vessel and experienced fishermen were alarmed; they had never heard the wind like this, they had never heard the vessel creaking so much, they had never seen the waves filling the ship to the gunwales. At last they cried out, “Master, carest Thou not that we perish?” (Mk 4:38). What need we have of that cry! The Church, as a body of praying men and women, must cry to the Hearer of prayer, “Carest Thou not that we perish?” Is He asleep today? Where is His saving power, the power that accompanied the Word in the early days of the Reformation, the days of the Second Reformation, the days when the two Margarets were giving their lives rather than submit to the claims of the Stuart dynasty? Is He asleep? Of course, He is not asleep; God does not sleep.
When He was in the fiercest storm the disciples had experienced, He was upholding all things by the word of His power. This divine Person was not asleep, His human nature was weary, but He was perfectly aware of what was taking place. He continued to appear oblivious to their danger because they were not arousing Him, and He appears oblivious to our danger in stormy Scotland in 2020 because He is not being aroused by our prayers! We do not seem to see the peril that we, our children and our children’s children are in if Christ departs from us. We need to lay to heart that the sun looks like it is going down and the night drawing near, a spiritual night where all is still: no more gospel, no more absolute moral truth, nothing for the immortal soul, plenty pulpits but no Christ; everything relative, like sinking sands! Why are we not crying unto Him, “Carest Thou not that we perish?” Of course He cares! Why do we not care to ask Him sooner?
His heart yearns over His Zion, His bride. “How beautiful”, He says, “are thy feet with shoes, O prince’s daughter.” That is the language of His loving-kindness and care. “Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away. For, lo, the winter is past”. It is not that He does not care for His Zion, but He wants to hear her cry. We can plead with Him; we can fill our mouth with arguments as Job did. Remember the lawyer who said, “Who is my neighbour?” Jesus told him his neighbour was one that he was in a position to help – someone in need. The Good Samaritan was a good neighbour to the man that was left half dead. Can we not cry to Him who required the lawyer to help the helpless – to come and help us? That is a good argument: a motive to believe that He is too kind not to care; too wise to appear for our help before we ask; too mighty to fail. O come, blessed One, to the Church that is half dead, with Thine oil and Thy wine, Thy beast and Thy riches, Thine inn and Thy promises! Stir us up to ask and seek and knock.
They gathered to Him; they heard of the miracles perhaps. They were saying, “O come back, blessed One, to Capernaum; cast out our devils, heal our sick and wounded consciences; raise our dead and make the dumb to speak. Where are they among us who are crying out to Christ to come back to Scotland and cast out our corruptions, heal our diseases, restore the fallen, heal our backslidings, love us freely?
They gathered. The Holy Spirit was revealing to some of them the desirableness of Christ, “the desire of all nations”; He was making them willing in a day of His power. The Holy Spirit was conquering them and bringing them to the blessed Lord. They had a new affection – not all of them but those whom the Father was drawing. The Holy Spirit was operating savagely in the hearts of some, operating on the natural conscience of others, so that they were willing for a season to rejoice in His light. That is a good place to be – gathering in the house of God, under the glorious gospel, and asking for Christ to come.
Christ came to Scotland; He came to the hearts of men with such power and conviction of the truth that they were willing to give their lives. He came with a display of His power, as in Cambuslang and Kirk of Shotts. That is how the great light came to Nephthalim and Zabulon, to Capernaum: He came in the ship of gospel mercies. It is with gospel mercies that Christ comes to a person and to a congregation. It was in gospel mercies that He came to Scotland at the Reformation. While we have the preaching of the truth, we have the ship that carries Christ to the souls of men. “They were gathered to Him”. “They received Him gladly.” Gospel ordinances have this power when Christ comes to the souls of men and women. And we say to Him: “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev 22:20).
Application.
Today there is little evidence of true religion. Scotland grew weary of waiting on the Saviour. We began trampling on the Sabbath to get rich quicker. Sabbath-breaking farmers, merchants, entertainers and others did not believe the warning that using the Sabbath Day for farming, playing, buying and selling would lead to financial ruin. But God’s holy, wise and powerful providence is now trampling on the Sabbath-breaking riches of the nation. They have been putting money into bags with holes: “Ye have sown much, and bring in little; ye eat, but ye have not enough; ye drink, but ye are not filled with drink; ye clothe you, but there is none warm; and he that earneth wages, earneth wages to put it into a bag with holes” (Hag 1:6). We have said to our Sabbaths as to the Lord of the Sabbath: “Depart from us for we desire not the knowledge of Thy ways”. That is a sad tale to tell.
There is a little remnant still desiring that the Lord of the Sabbath would return, that the Lord would come by His Word and Spirit to work in their own hearts and the hearts of others in our beloved land. Those who welcome Christ in their shores seek more than the forgiveness of sins; they seek the power of Christ to heal their spiritual wounds on a personal, an ecclesiastical and a national level.
The Church is nothing in the eyes of the rulers of this nation. It seems to be looked on as a voluntary club which has no reason to exist beyond a human need. But it exists for the glory of God, who is worthy to be worshiped in a manner instituted by Himself. In our Scotland, now and again, we get the scent of Erastianism – the notion that the Kingdom of Christ on earth is subordinate to the state and that the civil government can dictate to the Church on spiritual matters. But the Lord Jesus Christ is the great Head of the Church. The eternal King of the Church is sitting upon the throne of glory at the right hand of God the Father; all power being committed into His hands. On the day of His coronation, the Father set Him on His throne with these words, “Sit Thou at My right hand until I make Thine enemies Thy footstool” (Ps 110:1).
Some described in our text learned what the loveliness of God in Christ was: compassion, generosity, willingness to relieve those in misery, healing broken-hearted ones, setting prisoners free, giving the oil of joy for mourning and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. They longed to see Him again, experience His power again; hear Him speak again. They were waiting for Him, longing for His return. May that be true of us in these dark and stormy days. Shall He arise and still the storm, granting us a great peace on the stormy waters of disturbing providences? “Even so, come, Lord Jesus.”