“Moody, I have had eight hundred conversions this last year! It is a great mistake I did not begin earlier to pull in the net.”
So, my friends, if you want to catch men, just pull in the net. If you only catch one, it will be something. It may be a little child, but I have known a little child to convert a whole family. You don’t know what is in that little dull-headed boy in the inquiry-room; he may become a Martin Luther, a reformer that shall make the world tremble—you cannot tell. God uses the weak things of this world to confound the mighty. God’s promise is as good as a bank note—“I promise to pay So-and-So,” and here is one of Christ’s promissory notes—“If you follow Me, I will make you fishers of men.” Will you not lay hold of the promise, and trust it, and follow Him now?
If a man preaches the Gospel, and preaches it faithfully, he ought to expect results then and there. I believe it is the privilege of God’s children to reap the fruit of their labor three hundred and sixty five days in the year.
“Well, but,” say some, “is there not a sowing time as well as harvest?”
Yes, it is true, there is; but then, you can sow with one hand, and reap with the other. What would you think of a farmer who went on sowing all the year round, and never thought of reaping? I repeat it, we want to sow with one hand, and reap with the other; and if we look for the fruit of our labors, we shall see it. “I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.” We must lift Christ up, and then seek men out, and bring them to Him.
You must use the right kind of bait. A good many don’t do this, and then they wonder they are not successful. You see them getting up all kinds of entertainments with which to try and catch men. They go the wrong way to work. This perishing world wants Christ, and Him crucified. There’s a void in every man’s bosom that wants filling up, and if we only approach him with the right kind of bait, we shall catch him. This poor world needs a Savior; and if we are going to be successful in catching men, we must preach Christ crucified—not His life only but His death. And if we are only faithful in doing this, we shall succeed. And why? Because there is His promise: “If you follow Me, I will make you fishers of men.” That promise holds just as good to you and me as it did to His disciples, and is as true now as it was in their time.
Think of Paul up yonder. People are going up every day and every hour, men and women who have been brought to Christ through his writings. He set streams in motion that have flowed on for more than a thousand years. I can imagine men going up there, and saying, “Paul, I thank you for writing that letter to the Ephesians; I found Christ in that.” “Paul, I thank you for writing that epistle to the Corinthians.” “Paul, I found Christ in that epistle to the Philippians.” “I thank you, Paul, for that epistle to the Galatians; I found Christ in that.” And so, I suppose, they are going up still, thanking Paul all the while for what he had done. Ah, when Paul was put in prison he did not fold his hands and sit down in idleness! No, he began to write; and his epistles have come down through the long ages of time, and brought thousands on thousands to a knowledge of Christ crucified. Yes, Christ said to Paul, “I will make you a fisher of men if you will follow Me,” and he has been fishing for souls ever since. The devil thought he had done a very wise thing when he got Paul into prison, but he was very much mistaken; he overdid it for once. I have no doubt Paul has thanked God ever since for that Philippian gaol, and his stripes and imprisonment there. I am sure the world has made more by it than we shall ever know till we get to heaven.
5. The “I Will” of Comfort.
The next “I will” is in John, fourteenth chapter, verse eighteen: “I will not leave you comfortless.”
To me it is a sweet thought that Christ has not left us alone in this dark wilderness here below. Although He has gone up on high, and taken His seat by the Father’s throne, He has not left us comfortless. The better translation is, “I will not leave you orphans.” He did not leave Joseph when they cast him into prison. “God was with him.” When Daniel was cast into the den of lions, they had to put the Almighty in with him. They were so bound together that they could not be separated, and so God went down into the den of lions with Daniel.