we need not expect the ungodly to come because of any hunger they have for the deeper things of God. God does indeed raise up a Whitfield now and then with a special ministry to the masses and God uses various means to get him a crowd but the type of preaching our Lord did about the Bread of Life does not make headlines. Let us look at this sermon that cost our Lord His crowd. What caused such a desertion, even among His disciples? He had just fed the five thousand with five loaves and two fishes and the reaction was, “Let’s make Him a king! Anybody who can do that can do anything. He can break the yoke of Roman control and give us our in dependence again. He can lead us into a new prom ised land of peace and prosperity.” But Jesus re plied in effect: “You are following me for bread for your bodies. I did not come to earth merely to serve dinner on the ground and put on a world wide picnic. I came to give you the Bread of God.” Let us remember that the Passover lamb was not only slain and its blood applied; it was eaten and its strength assimilated. We are not only saved by the blood of Christ; we are sustained by the Bread of Christ. Yet thousands of church-mem bers profess to avail themselves of the benefits of the blood who care nothing for the blessing of the bread. The Israelites ate all of the lamb and we are to feed on Christ in His fulness for every need. They ate it that night and we are to feed on Christ NOW. They ate it with bitter herbs and we are to partake of Christ with a humble and contrite heart. They ate ready to travel and we are pilgrims and strangers, citizens of heaven, seeking a city. There was no work connected with that observance and we are not to mix our own works of righteousness with the finished work of Christ. The lamb was eaten with unleavened bread and we are to purge our hearts of the leaven of sin and wickedness. Some think they have taken care of this matter by observing the Lord’s Supper. Some of us tack that ordinance on to a Sunday service, then rush out to our Sunday dinner or an afternoon of pleas ure. We profess that Christ is our life, our meat and drink. Now if we feed on the godless trash of this world, what a farce we make o f it all! No Christian can grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ if He does not make Christ His meat and drink. One hour at Sunday school will not take care of that. A hurried morning devotional reading will not do it. What sickly anemic Christians we are, undernourished and underfed! Indeed, the apostle Paul speaks of those who are weak and sickly and those who sleep in death because they unworthily partook of the supper of the Lord. We are never worthy in ourselves but we partake in an unworthy manner, not discerning the Lord’s
the preaching of God’s Word today. If my preach ing were popular, I’d think I was backsliding. Alexander Whyte said, “ The true preacher may have, usually has but few people as people go in our day and the better the preacher sometimes the smaller the flock. It was so in the Master’s case. The multitude followed after the loaves but they fled from the feeding doctrines till He first tasted that dejection and sense of defeat which so many of His best servants are fed on in this world. Still as our Lord did not tune His pulpit to the taste of the loungers of Galilee, no more will a preacher worth the name do anything else but press deeper and deeper into the depths of truth and life as was the case with the Master till his followers, though few, will be all the more worth having.” We Americans are so enslaved to statistics, with such a mania for crowds and such an obses sion for numbers, that we can imagine no greater disgrace than a small congregation. Some are so crowd-conscious that they cannot enjoy a meeting unless there are several thousand people present. They would have been so discouraged at small attendance had they been at Aldersgate when John Wesley was converted or in that little chapel on a snowy morning when Spurgeon was saved that they could never have discerned the presence of the Lord for worrying over the absence of the people! Some of us are more afraid of a drop in attendance and a slump in statistics than false teaching or worldliness. A sermon that thins the congregation is to be abhorred more than the world, the flesh and the devil. Some do not fear the pow ers o f darkness as much as a substandard report on an off Sunday. We are so busy counting nickels and noses that we ransack books and study stunts and borrow from Hollywood trying to fill audi toriums that may need first to be emptied. A well-known minister and his wife visited a church where a popular preacher was packing them in. The minister whispered to his wife, “ I could never fill this place.” “No,” she replied, “but you could empty i t !” Peter Marshall said the pow er of Pentecost in our churches today would either fill our churches or empty them. Some need to be emptied first, emptied temporarily in order to be filled permanently. The business of the preacher is to fill the pul pit; the business of the people is to fill the pews. If the preacher becomes too intent on filling the pews, he will not fill the pulpit. Nor is it quite correct to say, “ Feed them, and they will come.” Feed their bodies and they will come but a hunger for God’s Word is not a natural appetite. People who love God have an appetite for His Word but the natural man receives not such things. Now Christians ought to fill God’s house with people who need to hear God’s Word and get saved but
OCTOBER, 1967
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