Matthew 4:19-20

Matthew 4:19

The Attractive Force of Jesus.

I. The Lord had but one method with all classes. He could only bless the rich by making them feel that a man's heart was beating, and a man's needs were crying to God, under their purple. And He had no other means of blessing the poor. It was the common humanity that He touched and drew after Him by the magnet of His attraction, and, as He drew it, the class vestments and badges were dropped and left behind in the way.

II. In lower human forms this magnetic attraction of man on man is not unknown. It is the orator's power. It constitutes, in a still higher form, the great captain's power. This power, which under the highest conditions man exercises within limits over his fellows, the Lord exercises absolutely and royally over mankind. For He is the King of men their natural, heaven-born King. Deep down in every man's nature there is that which has an eye and an ear for His Kingship; a sense of His Royal authority and right with which, when it is once awakened, nothing in this wide universe can compete. A glance, a word, as the Lord passed by, a. transient gleam from that fountain of attractive force, and merchants left their gains, workmen left their tools, fishers left their nets, scholars left their lore, leaders left their thrones, and cast no longing, lingering look behind them, as they pressed on in the footsteps of the poor, weary, helpless, excommunicated Christ. "Lord, we have left all, and followed Thee," was the word of every one of them.

III. Nor has the spell lost its power. "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto Me." Our Lord in these words reveals the power which lies at the root of all the grandest movements in the history of the world. Behind all that can be accounted for, all that can be weighed and measured by the act of the understanding in the spread of Christ's Gospel, there lies that which cannot be accounted for, which cannot be measured, the attraction of Christ Jesus. It is the spell which the Lord the King cast upon His subjects, in right of His ancient, universal royalty, and by the might of His newly revealed and transcendent love.

J. Baldwin Brown, The Sunday Afternoon,p. 97.

Reference: Matthew 4:20. Clergyman's Magazine,vol. xix., p. 278.