Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 505
“The root of the matter is found in me.” Job 19:28.
FOR the last three or four Lord’s Day evenings I have been trying to fish with a net of small meshes. It has been my anxious desire to gather in and draw to shore the Much-Afraids, the Fearings, the Despondencies, and those of Little-Faith who seem to think it scarcely possible that they could belong to the people of God at all. I hope those sermons which have taken the lowest evidences of Christian life, and have been adapted rather to babes in Divine Grace than to those who are strong men in our Israel, will furnish comfort to many who beforetime had been bowed down with distress. In pursuance of the same purpose this evening, I take up the expressive figure of our text to address myself to those who evidently have the Grace of God embedded in their hearts, though they put forth little blossom and bear little fruit. I pray that they may be consoled, if there is clear evidence that at least the root of the matter is found in them incidentally. However, the same truth may be profitable, not only to the saplings in the garden of the Lord, but to the most goodly trees. For there are times and seasons when their branches do not put out much luxuriant foliage, and the hidden life furnishes the only true argument of their vitality. I. Our first aim, then, will be TO SPEAK OF THOSE THINGS WHICH ARE ESSENTIAL TO TRUE GODLINESS IN CONTRAST, OR, I might better say, IN COMPARISON WITH OTHER THINGS WHICH ARE TO BE REGARDED AS SHOOTS RATHER THAN AS ROOT AND GROUNDWORK. The tree can do without some of its branches, though the loss of them might be an injury. But it cannot live at all without its roots—the roots are essential—take those away, and the plant must wither. And thus, my dear Friends, there are things essential in the Christian religion. There are essential doctrines, essential experiences, and there is essential practice. With regard to essential doctrines, it is very desirable for us to be established in the faith. A very happy thing it is to have been taught from one’s youth up the sound and solid doctrines which comforted the Puritans—which made blessed the heart of Luther and of Calvin, fired the zeal of Chrysostom and Augustine—and flashed like lightning from the lips of Paul. By such judicious training we are, no doubt, delivered from many doubts and difficulties which an evil system of theology would be sure to encourage. The man who is sound in the faith, and who understands the higher and more sublime doctrines of Divine Revelation, will have wells of consolation which the less instructed cannot know. But we always believe, and are ever ready to confess, that there are many doctrines which, though exceedingly precious, are not so essential. We believe a person may be in a state of Divine Grace, and yet not receive them. For instance—God forbid that we should regard a belief in the doctrine of election as an absolute test of a man’s salvation—for no doubt there are many precious sons of God who have not been able to receive that precious Truth of God. Of course the doctrine is essential to the great scheme of Grace, as the foundation of God’s eternal purpose—but it is not, therefore, necessarily the root of faith in the sinner’s reception of the Gospel. And, perhaps, too, I may put the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints in the same list. There are many who, no doubt, will persevere to the end, but who cannot accept the possibility of being assured of the fact. They are so occupied with the thoughts of their probation that they come not to the mature knowledge of their full salvation. They are securely kept while they credit not their security, just as there are thousands of the elect who cannot believe in election. Though Calvinistic doctrine is so dear to us—we feel ready to die in its defense—yet we would by no means set it up as being a test of a man’s spiritual state. We wish all our Brothers and Sisters agreed with us, but a man may be almost blind, and yet he may live. A man with weak eyesight and imperfect vision may be able to enter into the kingdom of Heaven—indeed, it is better to enter there having but one eye, than, having two eyes and being orthodox in doctrine—to be cast into Hell fire. But there are some distinct truths of Revelation that are essential in such a sense that those who have not accepted them cannot be called Christians. And those who willfully reject them are exposed to the fearful anathemas which are hurled against apostasy. I shall not go into a detailed list. Let it suffice that I give you a few striking illustrations. The doctrine of the Trinity we must ever look upon as being one of the roots of the matter. When men go unsound here, we suspect that, before long, they will be wrong everywhere. The moment you get any suspicion of a man’s wavering about the Divinity of Christ, you have not long to wait before you discover that on all other points he has gone wrong. Well did John Newton express it— “What think you of Christ is the test To try both your state and your scheme. You cannot be right in the rest, Unless you think rightly of Him.”