HE HAS NEED OF YOU

J. Taylor

Each evangelist has a definite end in view in his narrative. Mark intends to secure the believer wholly; he seeks the man, so at the end he records that at the empty tomb of Jesus there was a young man, and he was clothed in white (see Mark 16: 5). Luke indicates that we are to have a place in heaven, and Matthew that we are to have a part in the assembly here—a very great matter; but Mark would have us in entirety in spiritual energy and freshness in our faculties. Taking all the evangelists together, the Lord has very great things, and a variety of them, for us, but He would say to each that He has need of you.

I recollect hearing of an incident which occurred in the war period. Man was doing his worst, but God is always doing His best. In the gift of His Son He did His best. He spared not His own Son. And so during that awful period the work of God went on, and there were thousands of conversions, and the work goes on still.

A bishop was the instrument whom God used for the conversion of a young woman in London. She was converted to God, but not secure in the sense in which the young man at the end of this gospel suggests and which God would have. She entered into the Red Cross service, and then got away from the Lord. In her service evidently she was not robed with white like the young man at the end of this gospel. The Lord speaks of certain walking with Him in white, referring to our holiness, our moral cleanliness here. There can be no doubt she had not been instructed as to the white robe; for she placed herself where it could easily be defiled with the filth of this world, and as a consequence she got away from the Lord.

She came back to London and the bishop was preaching again, and when he finished preaching he walked down the aisle and the young woman stepped out and spoke to him, and said, ‘You will be sorry to hear that I have discovered that I can get along without Christ’.

Satan had got the better of her, it was all out, she was deceived, like many others, in the thought that she could get along without Christ. To be independent of Him here means that I have to exist without Him by and by; terrible thought to be without Christ in eternity, in that awful place that is spoken of as prepared for the devil and his angels!

‘Well’, the bishop said, ‘I do regret it very much, but I can tell you that He cannot get along without you’, and this so touched the wanderer that she broke down and was restored on the spot. The bishop told this story in Paris, where he was also preaching, and a person who was in the audience told me. The Lord has need of each of His elect; He died in order to have you, and He will have you. He may have to overthrow kingdoms to get you, but He will get you, and He wants you wholly; He wants the entire person.

A young man with a white robe is available for service; he is in all his faculties, spirit, soul and body in his prime, ready for the Lord, for the testimony here; that is Mark.

From a preaching in 1930, see N.S. Vol.90, p.263