Mark 4:33-34 And with many such parables spoke he the word to them, as they were able to hear it.… With matter Divine and manner human, our Lord descended to the level of the humblest of the crowd, lowering Himself to their understandings, and winning His way into their hearts by borrowing His topics from familiar circumstances and the scenes around Him. Be it a boat, a plank, a rope, a beggar's rags, an imperial robe, we would seize on anything to save a drowning man; and in His anxiety to save poor sinners, to rouse their fears, their love, their interest, to make them understand and feel the truth, our Lord pressed everything — art and nature, earth and heaven — into His service. Creatures of habit, the servants if not the slaves of form, we invariably select our text from some book of the Sacred Scriptures, He took a wider, freer range; and, instead of keeping to the unvarying routine of text and sermon with formal divisions, it were well, perhaps, that we sometimes ventured to follow His example; for may it not be that to the naturalness of their addresses and their striking out from the beaten paths of texts and sermons, to their plain speaking and home thrusts, to their direct appeals and homespun arguments, our street and lay preachers owe perhaps not a little of their power? Our Lord found many a topic of discourse in the scenes around Him; even the humblest objects shone in His hands, as I have seen a fragment of broken glass or earthenware, as it caught the sunbeam, light up, flashing like a diamond. With the stone of Jacob's Well for a pulpit, and its water for a text, He preached salvation to the Samaritan woman. A little child, which He takes from its mother's side, and holds up blushing in His arms before the astonished audience, is His text for a sermon on humility. A husbandman on a neighbouring height between Him and the sky, who strides with long and measured steps over the field he sows, supplies a text from which he discourses on the gospel and its effects on different classes of hearers. In a woman baking; in two women who sit by some cottage door grinding at the mill; in an old, strong fortalice perched on a rock, whence it looks across the brawling torrent to the ruined and roofless gable of a house swept away by mountain floods — Jesus found texts. From the birds that sung above His head, and the lilies that blossomed at His feet, He discoursed on the care of God — these His text, and Providence His theme. (T. Guthrie, D. D.) Parallel Verses KJV: And with many such parables spake he the word unto them, as they were able to hear it.WEB: With many such parables he spoke the word to them, as they were able to hear it. |
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