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This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
‘This is My beloved Son: hear Him.’
Mar_9:7
I. He has a right to speak.
(a) Who has a higher claim on our bodies and souls? Whose words can bring so much profit at all seasons and under all circumstances? Who will be so patient, so loving, so gentle with us?
(b) The words of none other are so dangerous to resist. No other’s words press for so immediate attention.
(c) Whether we hear or forbear He must deal with us according to His laws.
(d) Shall we not wisely hear and obey at once? Shall we not throughout life seek daily and hourly to hear His voice and follow His guidance?
(e) Must we not, therefore, follow out His commands in regard to the world outside His Church? His words are for them as well as for us.
II. It is the Father’s command—‘Hear Him.’
(a) Hear Him tell that the Father hath sent Him; that He has died, yea, rather, has risen again; that He ever liveth to make intercession for us; that He is ever with those who proclaim Him; that the reward of the faithful worker is sure.
(b) The non-Christian world sees intimations of the Godhead, and worships blindly. Now God would show to it Jesus Christ as the Saviour, and bid it ‘Hear Him.’
(c) With what profit of personal peace, of a new life for the society as well as the individual convert, has this command been followed!
III. Our own duty.—In the matter of missions, let us no longer hesitate or lend perfunctory help. But rather
(a) Hear Him and obey instantly—like the Apostles leaving their callings;
(b) Hear Him and obey joyfully, casting away all that may obstruct our movements;
(c) Hear Him with submission.
Illustration
‘One who “heard Him,” and went forth not knowing whither she went, was Miss Hester Needham, an English lady of means, and the head of flourishing Y.W.C.A. work in Brompton. She attended a public meeting, at the close of which a small pamphlet was put into her hands. In it was mentioned “some place in Sumatra, which forty years before had asked for Christian teaching, and to which all these years no answer had gone. Before twenty-four hours had passed Hester had said ‘Yes’ to the call, though what or where the place was, or under what Society she could go, she knew not.” Writing from Mandailing eight years later, she said, “I was obliged to confess … that I had pledged myself to go to some place in Sumatra, the name of which I did not know, and did not know how to obtain.” After much inquiry she found that the country was under Dutch control, and missionaries had been sent out by the Rhenish Mission at Barmen, in Germany, though not to Mandailing, the district in question. She went to Barmen and offered herself, and was accepted as an honorary missionary, being then at the age of forty-six. She worked for a time at Pansurnapitu, in Sumatra, and then went on to Mandailing, where she died in 1897.’