Matthew 9:36

SHEEP WITHOUT A SHEPHERD

‘When He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.’

Matthew 9:36

The bearing of the Lord’s compassion and command here upon heathendom is divinely weighty. But its directest incidence lies another way. Its first message is for Christendom.

I. A religious country.—Our Lord, when He thus spoke out His great compassion, stood in the midst of a religious country. It was a land where the synagogue was everywhere.

II. Externals of religion.—To the Lord assuredly the mechanism and externals of religion were momentous things. He was Himself, in His sinless human humiliation, wonderful as the thought always is, a worshipper in the order of the Church of Israel. He opened His Messianic ministry in a synagogue. He was jealous for the sanctity of even the outermost precincts of the Temple. Church, Sacrament, Ministry—these are things as holy, as reverend, as precious in their essentials, as the direct institution of the Lord can make them. But all this must never becloud the Christian’s recollection of his Lord’s opinion of mechanism, even where it is Divine, without the Divine breath.

III. Religionism without God.—In our Master’s view, nothing was so deplorable, so repellent, so formidable, as religionism without the living God. He has nothing but a sacred disgust for the spirit which puts sacrifice before mercy, the traditional detail before the Word of God, the ecclesiastical subterfuge from affection and duty before the plain Divine command, the prerogatives of even a divinely-originated institution before equity and self-forgetting love. To Him, the shepherd void of living love is so little a shepherd that the flock, for all he is to them, is in a profound sense derelict.

IV. The message for to-day.—What is the message of all this to ourselves, in our dear Church to-day? God forbid that I should even seem to forget the noble evidences among us in a thousand quarters of the workings, in and through our Anglican ministry, of the Holy Spirit in His living power. But none the less—yea, all the more—it must lie upon the very heart of all of us to see to it that all this leaves us solemnly on the watch against religionism without the living God. For His power and presence in the wills and lives of His ministers, and in the wills and lives of the flock, there is no substitute, there is no second best. It will be still a shepherdless wilderness and a deserted harvest field without the life of Christ beating in our hearts, speaking in our witness, shining in our lives, and so winning living souls to the living God.

Bishop H. C. G. Moule.

(SECOND OUTLINE)

SERVICE—PRAYER—METHOD

The Ministry of the Church must correspond to that of her Lord. Difficulties not greater now than then. See how He dealt with them. Take only one problem which is vexing the Church to-day—the spiritual destitution of the masses. It was a problem in our Lord’s day: how did He deal with it? He was moved with compassion, and His compassion crystallised into action. He went amongst them Himself; He bade His disciples pray for more labourers; He sent out the Twelve. These methods should be ours to-day.

I. Personal service (St. Matthew 9:35).—This the great need of the Church. We give our money; we need to give ourselves. Never will the masses be won until every Christian is a worker.

II. United prayer.—He stirred up His disciples to pray. When the Church prays for men, men will be sent.

III. Method (St. Matthew 10:1).—He sent forth the Twelve. In this development of our Lord’s ministry there are four great principles which should guide the Church in all time.

(a) Selection. The Twelve were chosen and trained before being sent forth.

(b) Association. ‘Two and two’ (St. Mark 6:7). We must mass our workers, not isolate them.

(c) Self-sacrifice (St. Matthew 10:9). This is a strong instinct in the Christian heart, and we err because we do not use it. Work amongst the masses needs men who will forgo the pleasures of life.

(d) Philanthropy. The Twelve were to ‘heal the sick’ as well as preach the kingdom. Gifts of healing withdrawn, but the principle of caring for men’s bodies as well as souls remains.

Bishop F. J. Chavasse.