Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIVMaclaren, Alexander
Religion
Expositions of Holy Scripture: St. John Chapters I to XIV
Maclaren, Alexander
Bible. John -- Commentaries
But not only does Christ seek us all, inasmuch as the whole conception
and execution of His great work are independent of man's desires, but
He seeks us each in a thousand ways. He longs to have each of us for
His disciples. He seeks each of us for His disciples, by the motion of
His Spirit on our spirits, by stirring conviction in our consciences,
by pricking us often with a sense of our own evil, by all our
restlessness and dissatisfaction, by the disappointments and the
losses, as by the brightnesses and the goodness of earthly providences,
and often through such agencies as my lips and the lips of other men.
The Master Himself, who seeks all mankind, has sought and is seeking
you at this moment. Oh! yield to His search. The shepherd goes out on
the mountain side, for all the storm and the snow, and wades knee-deep
through the drifts until he finds the sheep. And your Shepherd, who is
also your Brother, has come looking for you, and at this moment is
putting out His hand and laying hold of some of you through my poor
words, and saying to you, as He said to Philip, 'Follow Me!'
II. And now let us next consider that word of authority which, spoken
to the one man in our text, is really spoken to us all.
'Jesus findeth Philip, and saith unto him, "Follow Me!"' No doubt a
great deal more passed, but no doubt what more passed was less
significant and less important for the development of faith in this man
than what is recorded. The word of authority, the invitation which was
a demand, the demand which was an invitation, and the personal
impression which He produced upon Philip's heart, were the things that
bound him to Jesus Christ for ever. 'Follow Me,' spoken at the
beginning of the journey of Christ and His disciples back to Galilee,
might have meant merely, on the surface, 'Come back with us.' But the
words have, of course, a much deeper meaning. They mean—be My disciple.
Think what is implied in them, and ask yourself whether the demand that
Christ makes in these words is an unreasonable one, and then ask
yourselves whether you have yielded to it or not.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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