Mark 6:31

Mark 6:31

Christian Work and Christian Rest.

I. With all our Lord's constant activity in doing good, let us hear the words of this text, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while." We know from other places in the Gospels, of what rest our Lord was here speaking, and how He employed these hours of retirement and solitude. No doubt, partaking as He did of the bodily infirmities of our nature, He required rest literally and in the simplest sense of the word; and no doubt also that such periods of rest and entire refreshment are not only allowable, but useful and even necessary. Let Christ show us how we may refresh our bodies and minds without letting our souls suffer; how we may return from such retirement, strengthened alike in body and in mind, for the work that is set before us. These times, which our Lord passed in a desert place, generally among the mountains that rise at some little distance from the shores of the Sea of Galilee, were His favourite times of prayer and meditation. He who as God worked and does work for ever, yet as a man and for our example thought it right to vary His active labours with intervals of religious rest.

II. Here, then, in three parts of the text in the zeal with which our Lord pursued His work, in the particular nature of it, and in the rest with which He thought fit from time to time to vary it there is matter of special improvement for three classes of persons. The zeal with which He pursued His work, so that they had no leisure so much as to eat, is an example for that most numerous class who are merely following their pleasure, or who, if obliged to work, yet work unwillingly and grudgingly. The particular nature of Christ's work is an example and a warning for those who, like the ground choked with thorns, are working indeed, and working zealously, but whose work is never of the same sort as Christ's: it is worldly in its beginning and worldly also in its end. And in the rest which Christ took from time to time, and the uses which He made of it, even they who are actually labouring in His service may learn how alone their labour may be blessed to themselves as well as to others; how their work may indeed be such as that when they fail in this world they may be received into the everlasting habitations of God.

T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 150.

We learn from the text a lesson of zeal in the discharge of our daily duties. "For there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat."

I. There are some dispositions which, from absolute indolence, seem to be zealous about nothing whatever persons who appear neither to care about business or pleasure, who cannot be roused to take an active interest in anything. These are characters which exist, and which we must all have sometimes met with; but they are not common, neither are they very dangerous, because the general feeling of men is apt to despise them as stupid and insensible. A much more common case is that of persons who like some things exceedingly and are all alive whenever they happen to be engaged in them; but who do not like their common employment, and display about that no interest at all. This is a very common case, for it rarely happens that our employment is the very one which we should most choose, or the one which we most choose at this particular time, or under these particular circumstances.

II. True it is that we cannot do heartily what we dislike; but it is no less true that we may learn if we will to like many things which we at present dislike; and the real guilt of idleness consists in its refusal to go through this discipline. I might speak of the well known force of habit in reconciling us to what is most unwelcome to us; that, by mere perseverance, what was at first very hard becomes first a little less so, then much less so, and at last so easy that, according to a well known law of our faculties, it becomes a pleasure to us to do it. But although perseverance will certainly do this, what is to make us so persevering? If we go through the discipline it will cure us, but what can engage us to give it a fair trial? And here it is that I would bring in the power of Christ's example; here it is that the grace of God, through Christ, will give us the victory. The Son of God pleased not Himself, and who are we who do not deny ourselves? His creatures, who owe everything to His goodness, and yet day by day are unworthy of it: His creatures, who, offending Him every hour, are yet impatient of anything but pleasure at His hands; who, with so much of that guilt for which He was pleased to be crucified, are yet unwilling to submit to that discipline which His pure and spotless soul endured cheerfully for no need of His own, but for our sakes.

T. Arnold, Sermons, vol. ii., p. 157.

The Religious Life.

I. The life of Christ was a busy life. The great work of redemption was so pre-eminently the work of Christ's life, that we sometimes lose sight of the enormous and ceaseless work which He accomplished daily in teaching, in healing disease, in travelling from place to place, so that, on some occasions, "He had no time so much as to eat," and was so fatigued at night that amidst a storm He slept soundly in a boat on the Galilean Sea. Thus the life of Christ was a life of earnest and active work. We can well imagine how the spotless holiness of Jesus of Nazareth consecrated every labour and hallowed every social scene. To many this will seem a complete type of the religious life. "Do your work honestly," say they; "enter into the pleasures of life soberly, and there is no need for any special reverence or any extraordinary means of spiritual culture."

II. But if we read our Master's life carefully we see that there is another side to it. There were periods when He felt that He needed rest, retirement, struggle, prayer. Again and again He goes apart a while to the stillness of the garden, or to the solemn loneliness of the mountain-side. He would retire at intervals from the wear and tear and weariness of public life, and in meditation, and solitude, and prayer, would strengthen His spiritual nature would deepen that hunger and thirst in His Divine soul for which the meat and drink were the doing of His Father's will.

III. Our great duty at present is life. It is to live that God gives us energy of mind and body. Every one of us who knows even a little of the internal side of this great mass of human life, amid which our lot is cast, must feel deeply convinced that if all true and honest men, and all true and pure women, were to withdraw themselves from the world, it would be the taking away of the very salt which is preserving it from decay. While we thus go into life, however, let us remember how hard is the battle, how wearing and exhausting to our better nature are the passions and strifes amid which we have to move. Let us remember how this tends to weaken our spiritual strength, to enervate our spiritual life. We need seasons when the Master calls us, as His disciples, to come apart with Him and rest a while.

T. T. Shore, The Life of the World to Come, p. 52.

After Rest.

I. The great horror, which followed upon so base a crime as the murder of John Baptist, might have seemed, perhaps, to us to suggest that his death was the very moment for our Lord and His disciples to step out, to denounce at once the tyrant himself, and the sin and luxury of the upper classes; and, with the blood of the martyr before them, to commence a new cycle of preaching with a new prospect of success. But not so our Lord thought. From what He said and did, which was so very different, even we, in such different times, and in such quiet walks of life as ours, may perhaps learn some lesson for today. He received the news, and His only utterance seems to have been: "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while." The teaching of nature, God's voice in the beauty of the wilderness that seems to have been their healing and their strength.

II. The bidding would, while all obeyed it, awake different echoes in different hearts; some, perhaps, would understand it as He meant it, some would be only too willing to hide their sadness and their despair of anything good coming out of a land where the regenerators of society were marked for early doom, some in the sense of strength unused and courage unbroken would think (except that they trusted Him) that they were losing time. Had He not seriously said to them that they must work while it is called day because of the approach of that night in which no work can be done?

III. It is with feelings various as these that we look often on the rest of Death: some seem to reach such fulness of wisdom and sagacity, the rashness of youth gone and yet its courage left, the inexperience to which all seemed easy succeeded by the experience which has learnt that difficulties abound almost impregnable unless approached by the one access to their citadel. They see the moment come for some decisive step, and who so fit as they to take it? And even then, in the wisdom of God, though to our baffling, is the moment when such men are taken from the world. Who can conceive why that is the very hour when God says to them: "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while?" We cannot realise the secret and the mystery of that place whither they go; but they find there Christ and the Apostles still, resting a while until the day of their recompensing work arrive.

Archbishop Benson, Boy Life: Sundays in Wellington College, p. 156.

The Saviour counsels retirement. He addresses the privileged Twelve; and recommends, proposes, will Himself lead and accompany, a withdrawal, a retreat, a seclusion from scenes and engagements and enjoyments too, which were in their own nature harmless, full of advantage to the persons busied in them, and to thousands and tens of thousands beside and beyond themselves. Jesus said to His disciples: "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while." When we compare St. Mark's with St. Matthew's narrative of this retirement we shall find three reasons for it.

I. St. Matthew expressly connects it with the tidings of the Baptist's martyrdom. John's disciples buried the corpse, and went and told Jesus. And "when Jesus heard of it, He departed thence by ship into a desert place apart." Read in this the Saviour's warrant for our mourning in the loss of friends. A near kinsman has been cut off by a sudden, a violent death. Was not Christ one with us in feeling it? Was He not here reproving by His example that stoical or that hyper-spiritual view of bereavement which would forbid the tear to flow, or the heart to ache, because it is God's will, or because death is the gate of life.

II. St. Mark gives us a second reason for the retirement counselled in the text. He connects it with the return of the Apostles from a mission described in earlier verses of the chapter. Christ receives them with an invitation to solitude, as though He saw that the excitement of a special service needed its counteraction; that there was something in them of a spiritual elation akin to self-complacency, if not to self-glorying requiring, therefore, that discipline not always for the present joyous, of a wilderness sojourn, literal or figurative, by which the soul recovers its juster, healthier estimate of greatness and littleness, of itself and God.

III. There is yet one third reason for this retirement, and St. Mark suggests it in the clause following the text: "For there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat." The mere unrest of that busy life created the necessity of retirement. The mere business of a life is reason enough for its resting. The mere coming and going of many who want and seek and would employ this life, is enough in the mind of the holy and compassionate Lord to demand intervals of repose and recreation. How much more when there is taken also into the reckoning what an over-tasked and over-taxed life of necessity must be, in reference to the higher interests to the well being of the soul.

C. J. Vaughan, Words of Hope, p. 247.

I. The Apostles' mission was ended. Such special efforts must begin and end. Neither for the worker's sake, nor for the sake of those worked upon, is it expedient that they should be other than temporary. The kind Saviour saw that the whole mission had been a heavy pull on their energies, both of body and mind. He saw that they were wrought up to a pitch of excitement; He saw they needed rest after toil, and quiet after excitement; He knew where they would get these not by sitting still and doing nothing for a space amid the throng of men coming and going not there: they must get apart to the calm seclusion of nature, where green hills and green trees and rippling streams should speak to their heart. Much grass humblest, commonest, most beautiful of all vegetation would pour its gentle refreshment into weary eye and aching brain. And so our blessed Redeemer's words are to the outworn, wrought-up Apostles: "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while."

II. Far more needful now has the counsel grown which is set forth in my text. Never, in the history of this country, have there been days in which the work of cultured men was so hard, so eager, so exhausting, so perilous, to fagged brain and nerves, to fevered soul and spirit. If Christ were here as of old He would say such words as those of my text. "Come away from this crowd of human beings, come away from this overpressure and hurry of engagements; come away to a desert place, to the silent hills, to the lonely shore; come and rest a while: you need quiet that you may see your way.

III. One wonders how our Redeemer and His Apostles would rest. Probably as other wearied men would. At first pure idleness. To the worn-out that is absolute rest. For a while it would be delightful just to do nothing. But after a little time that will not do. Let every weary mortal, entering on his resting-time, provide some occupation for it. And finally, if you would enjoy rest, if you would come back with a soul set right; wiser, calmer, more hopeful, more charitable; to do your work better and more cheerfully, to bear with less irritation the provocations which all earnest people will know all who desire to mend things and folk around them, see to it that you make the resting-time a time of distinct religious discipline.

A. K. H. B., Graver Thoughts of a Country Parson, 3rd series, p. 1.

Seclusions with Christ.

The world is too much with us. For some purposes it cannot be too much with us. With it, and in it, lies our work. To encourage the activities, to direct the energies, to foster the interests, of a little fragment of our generation this is one of the highest works given to any man; to go out of the world would be to desert the post assigned, and to do despite to the wisdom which has assigned it. And yet the world may be too much with us.

I. There are some influences of the world which need a strong counteraction. One of these is irritation; it is scarcely possible for a man to go through a long day of business without some trial of temper. (2) Another evil influence is worldliness.

II. Out of these plain and everyday experiences of all springs, as of course, the qualifying and correcting necessity "Come ye yourselves into a desert place, and rest a while." This seclusion may be either periodical or occasional. (1) By a wise and merciful ordinance of God's providence, all of us are taken aside, as it were, from the multitude in almost one-half of our earthly being. I speak not now of the ordinances of religion, but of appointments of nature. Think what night is, and then say what we should be without it. Think of its compulsory withdrawal from the exciting contests, the angry recriminations, the fallacious ambitions, the frivolous vanities, which belong to a day and to a multitude! Think of its natural tendency to recall the thought of dependence and of creatureship; to remind us of Him with whom darkness and light are alike, and who Himself neither slumbereth nor sleepeth. Where should we be, the best of us, if nature did not thus play unto the hands of grace?

III. And so we pass from the periodical to the occasional. God's grace has many sinkings; It despises no method as insignificant, it overlooks, we believe, no person as beneath its notice. Upon one Christ tries His hand of healing thus, and upon another thus adapting Himself with nicest discrimination to the antecedents, to the circumstances, to the character and to the life. But one thing you will always find He begins by taking him aside from the multitude, saying, "Come apart for a while with Me." Nothing can be done without that. Go aside with Christ now, and then there shall be no surprise, and no confusion, and no misgiving, if, when He comes for us, He even come suddenly, calling us to arise and follow Him through the pangs of a most suffering or a most startling death.

C. J. Vaughan, Last Words at Doncaster, p. 259.

The Christian Uses of Leisure.

I. One element of rest to be cultivated in leisure is communion with outward nature.

II. Another is intercourse with fellow-Christians.

III. A third is a closer converse with Christ Himself.

J. Ker, Sermons, 2nd series, p. 146.

References: Mark 6:31 . S. Leathes, Truth and Life, p. 134; J. F. Kitto, Church of England Pulpit, vol. ii., p. 129; H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. ix., p. 243; E. W. Shalders, Ibid., vol. xiii., p. 195; A. Rowland, Ibid., vol. xxix, p. 332; Preacher's Monthly, vol. iii., p. 255.Mark 6:31-34 . Ibid., vol. iii., p. 291.Mark 6:33-44 . A. B. Bruce, The Training of the Twelve, p. 120.