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‘It was noised that He was in the house.’
Mar_2:1
I. If Christ is in the house, other people will find it out.—We are told ‘it was noised that He was in the house.’ It got about. It was in the air, as we say. Our Lord did not parade His presence. No one sounded a trumpet to herald His approach; it was not advertised; but for all that, His presence betrayed itself. Our influence with our fellow-men in public will always be in exact proportion to the depth of our hidden life with God in secret. It is not what we say, not what we do; it is what we are that tells, or rather what Christ is in us.
II. If Christ is in the house, He will make it attractive.—If our lives have no magnetic force; if we are not winning souls to Christ; if we are not attracting others to follow Christ by our life and our example; if we are conscious that, instead of attracting, we have often repelled others by the gloom and dullness of our Christian profession, it is an evidence that Christ is not in the house, or at least that He is not in full possession of the house.
III. When Christ is in the house, He will open to us the Scriptures.—We read at Mar_2:2 that ‘He preached the word unto them.’ When Christ is dwelling in our hearts, the Bible will be a new book. That is the testimony of hundreds who have received Christ as their sanctification. They tell you that the Bible is illuminated from cover to cover. If you want to understand a book, the best plan is to make the acquaintance of the author; he can interpret it as no one else can.
IV. If Christ is in the house, our diseases will be healed.—This man, sick of the palsy, was healed. There are a good many paralysed Christians—many weak and miserable in their own Christian experience. They have not power to ‘walk.’ Is there any remedy or deliverance from this life of ups and downs, of constant defeat, this spiritual lameness from which they are suffering? When Christ comes to dwell in you, you have a power never known before. You feel more the meaning of St. Paul when he said, ‘I can do all things through Christ that strengthened me.’
V. If Christ is in the house, some people are sure to object.—You find that the Pharisees did so here. Shall we lose a blessing because some people do not understand it? God forbid! Though some one will object, what does it matter, if God be glorified?
Rev. E. W. Moore.
Illustration‘ “The holiness of the common Christian,” says William Law, “is not an occasional thing, that begins and ends, or is only for such a time, or place, or action, but is the holiness of that which is always alive and stirring in us, namely, of our thoughts, wills, desires, and affections. If, therefore, these are always alive in us, always driving or governing our lives; if we can have no holiness or goodness but as this life of thought, will, and affection works in us; if we are all called to this inward holiness and goodness, then a perpetual, always existing operation of the Spirit of God within us is absolutely necessary. For we cannot be inwardly led and governed by a spirit of goodness, but by being governed by the Spirit of God Himself. If our thoughts, wills, and affections need only be now and then holy and good, then, indeed, the moving and breathing Spirit of God need only now and then govern us. But if our thoughts and affections are to be always holy and good, then the holy and good Spirit of God is to be always operating as a principle of life within us.” ’