0343. The Great Multitude of Impotent Folk

The Great Multitude of Impotent Folk

"In these (five porches) lay a great multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting for the moving of the water" (Joh_5:3).

This Key Verse gives us an exact picture of conditions around us to-day.

1. The multitude of people about us are sick–all are sick. By this we mean that all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There is none righteous, no, not one. From their head to their feet there are wounds and bruises and putrefying sores, sores that have not been bound up, nor mollified with ointment.

The only ones who are well, are those who have felt the saving power of the Great Physician. Think of it, we are moving about among people who are sick, so very sick. They press us on every side–a great multitude of impotent folk.

2. These people were not all equally sick. Some were blind, some halt and some were withered away, but all were sick.

The unsaved are all sinners; there is no difference there, but all are not equally sinful. Some have gone further down the way than others. The fact of sin is the same with all, but the effect of sin is progressive.

Leprosy is a type of sin. It began as a small white-pinkish spot on the hand or the forehead, and it spread slowly, but steadily until the leper became the most hideous of creatures.

Sin is in the heart, for "the heart is deceitful above all things and terribly wicked." But sin grows daily in its manifestation.

3. Not only were the people not all equally sick, but they did not all have the same disease. Some were blind, some halt, some withered. Sin does not work out the same characteristic details in each life.

Too often the one who is fairly decent, morally, imagines that sin is only seen in the more vulgar, in the villainy of the depraved.

Not at all, we are sure that the moralist is quite as sinful as the immoralist; indeed the heart of the former may be harder than the heart of the latter.

Christ said, "The publicans and the harlots go into the Kingdom of God before you." And He was speaking to the moral scribes. The one who is moral, as men compare themselves with men, but who has rejected Christ, has shown a heart that is altogether vile. Think of it. How wicked must that one be, who is counting the Blood of the covenant as an unholy thing, and who is treading under foot the Son of God, and who is doing despite to the Spirit of grace.

How wicked must that one be, who with abundant light, is sinning against the light; that one who, though moral, is despising the riches of God’s goodness and forbearance, and longsuffering, not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth him to repentance.

Surely those who seem the less sick, are often the sicker; and those who boast their morals are only heaping to themselves wrath against the day of wrath and the revelation of the righteous judgment of God, Who will render to every one according to his deeds.

4. There were the blind–and we have the blind to-day–those who have been blinded by the god of this world, lest the light of the glory of God should shine in on them and convert them.

"Oh, blind, blind, blind, amid the blaze of noon,

Irrecoverably blind; total eclipse;

Without one ray of light."

There were the halt, the crippled and the lame. Just so to-day, there are those who cannot walk the narrow way; they struggle and they stumble and they fall. They need One who will make them whole.

There were the withered away. And how sin has brought down many who were noble and who boasted of their worth. To-day their hopes are gone. They are withered away. The home is broken up, the money gone, health gone, friends gone, and they wander, vagabonds.

Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR