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TEXT.—Matt. 10:42: “And whosoever
shall give to drink unto one of these little ones
a cup of cold water only in the name of a dis
ciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no
wise lose his reward.”
A
T IS MY purpose to try to impress
upon you the importance of the
ministry of small things. It was
the custom of our Lord in His
teaching to use the simplest and.
most commonplace things of life
to set forth His deepest meaning,
and in this respect He sets to the
world of teachers and preachers a
great example. Never mind what kind of
audience He was addressing, whether an audi
ence of scholars or philosophers, or statesmen,
He used the same method. He taught through
the simplest and most commonplace things in
their everyday life, His greatest truths. And
among the things that He used more frequent
ly than any others, because of their universal
use, was the bread and water, the two essen
tial elements in the food of man. For ex
ample, in John 6, we have Jesus, in connec
tion with the miracle of the feeding of the
five thousand, speaking as follows: “I am
that bread of life; he that cometh to me shall
never hunger; and he that believeth on me
shall never thirst.” Then in connection with
the institution of the Lord’s Supper, we have
this said of Him, “ And as they did eat, Jesus
took bread, and blessed, and brake it, and
gave to them, and said, Take, eat; this is my
body.” Also we find this, when Jesus was
speaking to the woman at the well, He said:
“Whosover drinketh of this water shall thirst
again; but whosoever drinketh of the water
that I shall give him shall never thirst.”
And the use I want to make this morning
of water is the use our Lord makes of it in
our text: “And whosoever shall give to drink
unto one of these little ones a cup of cold
water only in the name of a disciple, verily
I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his
reward.” In presenting this text to His dis
ciples, Jesus, as I see it, had a very definite
line of teaching in view. In order that we may
understand it, it is necessary for us that we
shall go back in the life of Jesus to the be
ginning of His public ministry. Almost im
mediately after His baptism He gathers His
disciples with Him upon the mountain top
and delivers to them His inaugural address,
generally spoken of as “the sermon on the
Mount.” In that sermon on the Mount, Jesus
sets forth the highest possible conception of
the Christian life and the kingdom of right
eousness which He had come to establish;
and after that sermon was delievered He
came down to the valley where again He
touched elbows with the world of living hu
manity, and as He came down in touch with
them He found somehow a whole army of
needy and suffering humanity. There were
blind people, lepers, deaf and dumb people,
paralysed people, people suffering from hun
ger, people possessed with demons; there
was represented every kind and character of
suffering and need.
The news had gone out of the presence of
Jesus and His disciples upon that mountain
top and these suffering ones had gathered
with a fond hope that He would be able to help
them, and so Jesus faced this need immediate
ly after the preaching of that great and won
derful sermon; and when He came in contact
with this need, He did not simply inquire
about them, or pity them; He did not simply
stand and gather lessons from their needs that
could be appropriated to spiritual things; but
He at once set Himself to the task of remedy
ing their needs, giving health, life, strength,
£nd hope and comfort to those sick and com-
** *! The (jolden Age for April 13, 1011.
THE CUP OF COLD WATER
Tabernacle Sermon by jßcb. Len G. Broughton, D.D.
Bt«no<ra.phio<lly reported for The Selden Age.—Copyright applied fee.
fortless ones. He healed a leper; healed the
centurion’s servant; healed Peter’s wife’s
mother; cast out demons by the wholesale.
He dispensed universal healing to that mul
titude.
A little later on He got into a ship, the
crowd pressing so fast and so close that it be
came necessary for Him to get away; He got
into a ship and went across on the other side
of the sea and on the journey across there
came up a storm, which He stilled. When
He arrived on the other side, on the Gadara
side of the lake, He was met by the demoniac
of Gadara, and He cast the devils out of him.
After this he healed the man with the palsy and
raised the ruler’s daughter, opened the eyes
of two blind men and cast the demons out of
the man that was dumb.
While all this was going on, Jesus was sur
rounded by His disciples. His disciples had
just been selected, and he was now giving
them their first lessons in Christian service.
All that they knew about religion they had
learned from the old rabbinical relig
ion. Jesus now, before He turned over
to His disciples any part of the work
that they were to do, as His repre
sentatives to the world in the establishment
of the new order, gives to them certain in
structions. These instructions came first upon
the Mountain. Then He takes them from this
exalted place of teaching down into the valley
of human need where He instructs them by
example as to the nature of Christian service.
And these disciples were all of them amazed
at the character of the work that He did, and
that they were to do as His followers. Their
amazement for a time discouraged them. The
glory of the possibilities and powers of this
religion so dazzled them that at first they
could not take it in. They were like a man
from whose eyes a cataract has been taken.
It is necessary for that man that he shall be
kept in a dark room; it is necessary that the
light shall be admitted very gradually, so that
the nurse in charge begins by the lifting oc
casionally of a bit of the bandage, admitting
just a bit of the light at a time, until after
awhile he is able to enjoy his full sight. But
it would seem here that Jesus all at once took
the bandage, as it were, from their eyes sud
denly and flooded their souls with the con
sciousness of Christian service and obligation
which He had come to set up. It was so dif
ferent from anything that they had ever seen,
that they were not prepared to take it in; and
no wonder that they became discouraged, in
realizing the task before them and their lack
of power to accomplish it. I can fancy them
saying to one another, “And this is the work
He has called us to do; it cannot be done;
we do not know how; we haven’t the power;”
and Jesus, like the careful nurse, begins show
ing them a little at a time. He said, “Who
soever shall give to drink unto one of these lit
tle ones a cup of cold water only in the name
of a disciple, verily I say unto you, he shall
in no wise lose his reward.”
My brethren, there is no person so keen
to catch discouragement on the part of a dis
ciple as Jesus. Fie knows and He does not
forget, and He is always on hand with the
remedy, and He says to those discouraged
disciples, “Well, if you cannot unstop deaf
ears and loose dumb tongues and open blind
eyes and heal lepers and give life to the pal
sied limb and cast devils out and raise the
dead, there is one thing you can do —you can
give a cup of cold water to one that is thirsty,
for you live by the side of a clear lake and
there is nothing to do but to dip down and
give. If you do that and it is the best you
can do, it is not forgotten and for it you shall
have your reward.” And brethren, I can see
those disciples become encouraged as they
take this first lesson in Christian ministry—
the lesson of simply serving, no matter how
small the task, at every opportunity. I can
see a new phase of this Kingdom looming up
before them.
And it is with reference to this phase of the
truth that I am desirous of speaking today.
In most respects we are just like those dis
ciples though we have had all the ages passed
to inform us, but we are nevertheless just like
these disciples, for we are prone to discour
agement in service because of a lack of a
proper conception as to the nature of service
and as to its accumulative effects. There are
two classes of professed Christians before me
this morning; one the man who is a professed
Christian for all he may get out of it. His
name is legion. We have an example of this
in the case of the feeding of the five thou
sand. When the news went out that Jesus
had just fed that great hungry multitude,
many others began to seek Him out so that
they, too, might have a share of the loaves
and fishes. And so today there are professed
Christians the world over who make these sa
cred professions simply for what they can get
out of it. Some are in the church because it
is popular. It is popular to be a professed
Christian, to be a member of the church, and
some people, hoping to gain some end by rid
ing upon a popular current, have identified
themselves with the cause of Christ.
And then there are others who are professed
Christians simply because of what they may
do for themselves in the way of getting gain.
I know people who have joined some particu
lar church and when they have been asked for
the reason why they joined that particular
church, they were honest enough to say, “Be
cause 1 have daughters and am anxious to get
them in the best kind of society.” I have had
men to tell me that. I know it of women who
have been frank enough to say the same thing.
Some have hoped to get personal gain in the
way of an alliance with church people. I have
in mind a physician who went to a certain
town —he was an ordained Baptist in the com
munity where he lived; he was a leader in the
church. When he went to the town of which
I spoke he found the Baptists by no means the
most intelligent and wealthy people of the
community, and he soon saw there was no
special influence among them, and he wanted
practice. And that man went and joined an
other denomination, and had no trouble in
smothering his conscience, that he might pros
per financially.
There are people here in the service of
Christ because they hope to escape hell and
get to heaven; they are using their religion
as a kind of fire insurance against hell, and I
do not know of anything more selfish than the
man who is simply trying to get all he can
get out of the service of Christ and put as lit
tle as he can in it.
Then there is another class of people —
they are not so numerous, certainly not
so numerous as they should be —that are
in the church and the service of their Lord,
not for what they can get out of it, but for
what they can put into it. And that is the
man that has Jesus at his back. Show me
that man, and I will but have to have him step
aside to show you Jesus. He is the man who
is thinking of what his Lord has done for him.
He is thinking of the glorious salvation which
He has wrought out and given freely. And
so, filled with the enthusiasm that comes from
this conception, he forgets to look for what
he can get and begins to think of what he can
put in.
(Continued on Page 14.)