Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 516
Acts 28:24.
THIS is the only proper way to calculate the results of our ministry. We just want the account book ruled with two columns. On one side we must put down the long list of the some that believe not. And on the brighter side we may enter what is, too often, the far less number of the some that believe. This is the only true method, I repeat it, by which we can hold a stock-taking so as to ascertain the net profit of the preaching of the Gospel. We must not estimate the good that is done by the number of those who listen. It is a very pleasant thing to see the House of Prayer filled to overflowing.
It is intensely delightful to reflect that often on the Sunday evening in London the theatres are full, St. Paul’s Cathedral is full, and multitudes of Churches and Chapels are crowded with willing listeners. Still, it is not all pleasure. Instead of its being of any advantage for the persons who have heard the Gospel but have not believed, it will rather increase their doom. If they have only heard, and the Truth of God has penetrated no deeper than the natural ear, then alas for the preachers who have spent their strength for nothing! And alas for the multitudes who, having ears, have heard as though they heard not!
Nor ought we to calculate the result of our work by the persons who have been pleased with our ministry. What man is not gratified when he hears that the people have been pleased with his preaching? It were not in flesh and blood for a man to be unpleased by applause. The love of praise is ingrained in human nature—
“The proud to gain it toils on toils endure, The modest shun it but to make it sure.” But still, it were a miserable thing if all that a man accomplishes is just to win the ear and to strike the people with wonder at the amazing way in which he could utter forth the Words of Truth. Shall God’s servants live upon the breath of men’s nostrils? Can the approbation of the crowd be nutritious enough to constitute the solid food of a God-sent herald of the Cross?
Never! When a man has to die, this shall give him no comfort. To have preached faithfully, though some were angry, will always be consolatory. To have preached unfaithfully, or to have held back any part of the Truth of God, though he may have won universal acclaim, would be but a passport to perdition at the last. No, no, if our ministry has only pleased people it is good for nothing. A sermon often does a man most good when it makes him most angry. Those people who walk down the aisles and say, “I will never listen to that man again,” very often have an arrow rankling in their breast.
Smarting from a wound that never will be healed till God heals it—they will come again right enough. Others, alas, who are quite pleased and delighted, will come and go from the place of the holy, unimpressed and unimpressionable as slabs of marble—down which the oil runs without producing the slightest impression.
Nor even dare we hastily to calculate the effect of our ministry by the number of persons impressed with serious convictions. Of course, it is a hopeful sign to see the people weep under the Word, especially if it is the Gospel that moves them to weep and not the pathos of the preacher. I do not think it does anybody much good spiritually when tears are excited simply by the description of a funeral, or by being reminded of one’s childhood, or of one’s parents. Some preachers appeal much to the passions and think when the congregation are weeping, good is being done. I do not see the use of it at all.
When the preacher can make these natural emotions a platform upon which to stand and work upon the conscience, then it is well and good. But if he has only succeeded in drawing briny tears from mortal eyes, they may flow until the floor is watered with them without any salutary result. We must go deeper than the eyes. We want to make the heart weep. We want tears of penitence for sin, not tears of regret for departed husbands and wives. We want emotions which spring from a startled conscience—not those which come from a want of resignation to the Divine will. No, dear Friends, we have done nothing after we have preached a thousand times unless we can write down that some believe on the Lord Jesus.
I. Turning to our text a little more closely, let us remark, in the first place, that UNDER THE BEST MINISTRY IN THE WORLD THE RESULTS WILL BE DIVERSE, AND THAT YOU WANT TWO COLUMNS TO WRITE THE
Account In
There will always be the some that believe and the some that believe not. This is not altogether the minister’s fault. It is the custom of the age to blame ministers very much, and I dare say we deserve it. But still the blame in this matter does not lay entirely with us, for even when Paul preached—a model preacher, he!—there were, “some believed the things which were spoken, and some believed not.” Did I say that Paul was a model preacher? Let me prove it. Was he not a model preacher as to matter?