Mission for All; Message for Each

Mark 16:15 "And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature."

As I look back upon Christ's work, there is yet another feature of it that strikes me. I find in it a mission for all joined with a message for each.

Times without number we find Jesus surrounded by a multitude. Christ is the center of many crowds. Wherever He is, the crowd is sure to gather. And how He was stirred, and moved, and filled with compassion for the multitude, all readers of the gospel story know. Every chord of His human heart was set a-vibrating by a vast assembly. The common life of congregated thousands touched Him, true man, to all his heights and depths. He fed them, taught them. This was His parting charge, "Go ye into all the world and preach!" (Mr 16:15). Yet for all this the wide sweep of His mission—no teacher ever worked on so minute a scale as Jesus Christ. Did any crowd ever get deeper teaching than Nicodemus when he came alone? And was the woman of Samaria despised because companionless? How many sheep did the shepherd go to seek when the ninety and nine were in the fold? How many pieces of silver had gone lost? How many sons came home from the far country before the father brought out his robes and killed the calf? Christ did not work on the scale of a thousand, or on the scale of ten, but on the scale of one. Companionless men were born, and companionless they must be born again.

Brethren, we must remember that. We cannot afford, in these days, when all the tendency is toward the statistics of the crowd—we cannot afford to despise that great example. It is true, there is a stimulus in numbers. There is an indescribable sympathy that runs like an electric thrill through a great gathering; and heights of eloquence and song and prayer are sometimes reached where the crowd is, that never could have been reached in solitude. But for all that, all Christlike work is on the scale of one. Jesus insists on quality, not quantity. And when the books are opened and the strange story of the past is read, some voices that the world never heard, as of a mother or a friend, shall be found more like Christ's than others that have thrilled thousands by their eloquence.

From Some Features of Christ's Working, a sermon by George H Morrison, Great Preaching of the Faith.