So it is with us. We recoil from witnessing, because we think maybe the people are too hard, too resistant, or there would be some embarrassment in this particular case. So we say in our minds, ‘Let them go, send them away; not this person, not this group, not yet, or this is not the right moment.’ Here is this preacher and he is say, ‘If you’re saved, if you have found the Lord, what about your serving the Lord in the community work, in the Sunday School work for children, in something of this kind?’ ‘Oh, I haven’t got time for that; I won’t have the children in my mind, I won’t have community visiting in my mind. It’s not convenient.’ ‘Send them away!’ said the disciples, ‘it’s too much for us to cope with and soon they will be complaining and then it will be our fault.’
It depicts modern Bible Christianity sometimes. ‘Send them away’ – the church these days that won't restart the Sunday School. ‘Oh the difficulties are too great; there is too much to be considered. Send the children away.’ If you are Calvinists, you can hide behind grand doctrines of grace: ‘If God means to save them, he’ll find some way of doing it; it isn't all down to us; send them away.’ Or perhaps you and I say it during the day. The opportunity to witness to someone has come, and we should witness to them, but we shrink from it. ‘Oh not that person; that person will be difficult. Send them away Lord.’ Again, maybe we hide behind the doctrine of sovereign election. God will have a way of reaching him, but I'm scared of that one. I recoil from that one. These words convict us: ‘Send them away.’ You can't ever do that.