01.05. Now Come to What We May Safely Call

Now come to what we may safely call The way of acceptable service. Its importance is seen in the fact that each evangelist is inspired to record it. We refer to the feeding of the five thousand. With the exception of the feeding of the four thousand, it is the only instance where all served together under His own immediate oversight and personal direction.

Note, therefore, how this service was performed. It was as though He had said, “Do not ask them to go elsewhere. Feed them here on the spot”. Do not expect them to run after you for what they need. Bid them sit down where they are, and I will honour you with the service of taking it to them.

Come to Me and get. Go to them and give. And this they did until, one by one, the whole multitude had eaten to their fill. But further. Not only has our gracious Lord told us how He would like His work done, and illustrated it by parable, He has simply exemplified it in His own personal service.

What heart does not like to dwell on that delightful incident in John 4:1-54, where it is said: “He must needs go through Samaria”? - verse 4. We all know the secret of that journey. There was labour in it, and weariness too, but that mattered little, for there was love in it.

Again, if Andrew found Simon, and Philip found Nathanael, it was Jesus Himself who would find Philip. John 1:41, John 1:43. Blessed Master! Happy the servants who serve after such a pattern!

It matters little that men are unwilling to come to us if we are willing to go to them. It is our waiting till they can be persuaded to come to us that has so seriously stood in the way of their hearing the gospel at all.

It is the “feet” willing to carry the message to them that God calls “beautiful”. Isaiah 52:7; Romans 9:15. When God looked down upon the weary journey of His blessed Son from Judea to Sychar’s Well, you may be sure, if one admiring word could have expressed His thought of it, it would have been this word, “Beautiful”! And does He not still express the same admiring word when He sees willing feet on similar errands? That God takes a peculiar delight in the assembling of His saints together, and that He has His own way of doing so, there can be no shadow of question. To devote such places of assembling to the proclamation of the glad tidings, as often as preachers can be found to preach and men to listen, is not only our privilege, but God’s pleasure. To preach the gospel or to teach it with such sympathetic surroundings cannot fail to be a joy to any servant. Beside, it is a service of the greatest importance. The anxious and unestablished need it, and the most advanced will get his heart enlarged by it.

If the unconverted are willing to come to such meetings, we may well encourage them by all the means in our power. But let us never sin against the light of Scripture by limiting the scope of God’s harvest field to such places. Those who attend them have either been “found” already, or are outwardly occupying the place of seekers.

God says, “I was found of them that sought Me not. I was made manifest to them who asked not after Me”, Romans 10:20.

How was this? Was it not that some of those “beautiful feet” had journeyed to them with the news which makes “manifest” what He is?

How was the Giving God made manifest to the woman of Samaria? How did she find Christ? Those “beautiful feet”, as we have seen, journeyed to where she was.

He found her an unsatisfied sinner, but not seeking after Him. He filled her heart with the manifestation of Himself, and made her feet “beautiful” too; for how soon she left her waterpot and went to seek others! Can there, then, be any question as to the way the gospel was carried at the beginning, or the marvellous triumph accompanying it? In less than thirty years its power had been felt in all the three known continents - Europe, Asia and Africa! But this by no “Come to us” methods. Whether in the Jewish synagogue, or in some place of concourse like Mars’ Hill, or by a riverside, Paul went to them - “publicly and from house to house”.

It is most strikingly significant that the Holy Ghost,Who makes the record for that period, only mentions three buildings used as Christian meeting-places, and not one of them an ecclesiastical edifce! An “upper room”, probably a guest chamber, Acts 1:13, “a school”, Acts 20:9, and “a third loft”, Acts 20:9.

And, as far as we are told, these were for disciples only. That the unbeliever was free to go is clear enough from 1Co 14:-25.

We read, “The secrets of his heart are manifested; and thus, falling upon his face, he will do homage to God, reporting that God is indeed amongst you”. [Darby] New Translation. But who could possibly imagine that the ear of “every creature under heaven” could be reached within such bounds?

How many would have heard Peter preach at Pentecost if he had remained in that “upper room”? But he and the rest of the Spirit-filled men went where the needy ones were; they went to the people. The farm labourer, at certain seasons, may find plenty to do in his master’s granary; he needs what he finds in the granary for the sowing, but how much actual sowing would he do if he confined his labours to those four walls?

No, no! The word of the gospel admits of no barriers of limitation.

“The Word of God is not bound”. It is “living and operative”. The apostle’s desire was, “that the word of the Lord may run and be glorified” - 2 Thessalonians 3:1 - and as with the sun, according to God’s desire - “nothing hid from the heat thereof”, Psalms 19:6.

Rather try to chain a sunbeam in some dark cellar, and expect to succeed in your task, than fetter the outgoing of the “faithful saying”, and think by so doing to please the God of the gospel!

“But”, says one, “we cannot all be preachers; and we read: ‘How shall they hear without a preacher?’” The common thought is that a “preacher” is a public speaker only. That is a mistake. Philip preached, that is, announced the glad tidings to one. He got into the eunuch’s chariot and “preached unto him Jesus”. The field of individual testimony is open to all who have been made personally acquainted with His saving grace and power.