Mark 7:31-37 And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came to the sea of Galilee, through the middle of the coasts of Decapolis.… I. WHY DID CHRIST SIGH? For us Christians, as well as for that poor Jew; because, when He looked up to heaven, He looked up to His home as God, and as God He had before His omniscience all the sins which, through ear and tongue, had brought, were bringing, and would bring, misery to man. II. IS THERE NOT STILL A CAUSE WHY CHRISTIANS SHOULD SIGH WITH CHRIST? 1. For blasphemous words. 2. Unbelieving, sneering words, and flippant, irreverent words. 3. False words; the lies of society, of vanity, of business, of expediency, of ignorance. 4. Obscene, lascivious, wanton words. 5. Bitter, slanderous, and railing words.Of what does our conversation too often consist? First, there are self-evident platitudes about the weather (very often murmurings of discontent with that which comes so plainly and directly from God); then, the old Athenian craving either to tell or to hear some new thing, and that new thing, how commonly! an evil report about our neighbour. "Thou safest at thine ease," deliberately, in your home, at the table of your friend, in the railway carriage, in the newsroom, in the office, "thou satest and spakest against thy brother. Instead of every man shall give an account of himself," it might have been written, "every man shall give account of his neighbour unto God," so eager are we to detect and remember his infirmities, to ignore and forget our own. It never seems to strike us that, while we are so busy in spying and pointing out to others the thistles in our neighbours' fields, the tares are choking our own wheat. Our neighbours' idleness, lust, drunkenness, profanity, debt, — these are our theme; and we forget that there is such a thing as a judgment to come for our own misdeeds. III. THE CURE OF THE DISEASE. 1. Not mere secular "education": that is only the pioneer, who saps and mines, not the artillery which destroys the citadel. If the fountain is poisonous, the filter may remove the dirt which discolours, but it will not make the water wholesome. No mental, no moral education, can directly act upon the soul. You may teach men to speak more correctly and politely, to think more cleverly, and to reason more closely; but this will not purify the heart. Lust and dishonesty are all the more dangerous, when they quote poetry, and converse agreeably. 2. Education is but a means to an end. It is the ambulance on which we may convey the wounded man to the surgeon — the couch on which we bring the sick man to Jesus. Regarded thus, education is a most useful handmaid to religion. Christ is the sole physician; to Him, and to none else, the sin-sick soul must come. IV. FAITH IN HIM, STRENGTHENED BY THE HOLY SPIRIT, LEADS US TO CONSECRATE OUR POWER OF SPEECH TO HIS GLORY AND THE GOOD OF HIS CREATURES. V. THE FINAL ISSUE. The use we make of the tongue will decide our future (Matthew 12:37). It is said that one who had not long been converted to Christianity, once came to an aged teacher of the faith, and asked instruction. The old man opened his Psalter, and began to read the Psalm which first met his eye, the thirty-ninth; but when he had finished the first verse, "I said, I will take heed to my ways, that I offend not in my tongue," his hearer stopped him, saying, "That is enough; let me go home and try to learn that lesson." Some time after, finding that he came no more, the elder sent to enquire the reason, and the answer was, "I have not yet learned the lesson"; and even when many years had passed, and the pupil became a teacher as full of grace as years, he confessed that, though he had been studying it all his life, he had not mastered it yet. (Canon S. R. Hole.) Parallel Verses KJV: And again, departing from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, he came unto the sea of Galilee, through the midst of the coasts of Decapolis. |
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