Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 871
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, MAY 16, 1869, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Then Agrippa said unto Paul, You almost persuade me to be a Christian.”- Acts 26:28.
NOTWITHSTANDING his bonds, Paul is to be envied that he had an opportunity of addressing himself to kings and rulers and that once, at least, in his life he stood before the great master of the Roman world, the Emperor himself. To reach the ignorant who sit on thrones is no mean feat for benevolence. Alas, the Gospel seldom climbs the high places of rank and dignity. It is a great act of mercy towards nobles and princes, when they have the opportunity of hearing a faithful Gospel discourse. Highly favored was Edward VI to have such a preacher as Hugh Latimer, to tell him to his face the Truth of God as it is in Jesus!
And much favored was Agrippa, though he scarcely appreciated the privilege, to listen to so earnest an advocate of the Gospel of Jesus as Paul the Apostle. We ought to pray much more than we do for men in high places, because they have many bewitching temptations and less gracious opportunities than even the humblest paupers. There is less likelihood of the Gospel ever affecting their hearts than of its converting the poor and needy. We should make them, therefore, especially the subjects of supplication and then we might hope to see consecrated coronets far more frequently. Should a preacher be called to address himself to kings, he could not follow a better model than the Apostle Paul whom we may fitly call the king of preachers and the preacher to kings.
His speech is extremely forcible and yet exceedingly courteous. It is powerful in matter, but graceful in manner. It is bold, but remarkably unobtrusive—never cringing, but never impertinent. The Apostle speaks much of himself, for so his argument required, but still, nothing for himself, nor by way of self-commendation. The whole address is so adroitly shaped with such a sacred art and yet with such a holy naturalness, that if any human persuasion could have converted Agrippa to the faith, the address of the Lord’s prisoner was most likely to have done so. The line of argument was so suited to the prejudices and tastes of Agrippa as to be another instance of Paul’s power to become “all things to all men.”
Now, it may be, this morning, while we are speaking upon the Apostle’s teaching and the results of it, that a great blessing may rest upon us so that many of you may be persuaded to be Christians by the very arguments which failed with the Herodian king. Not many great men after the flesh, not many mighty are called—but this assembly is of another order and, O may the Lord extend His Sovereign Grace along our ranks, through Jesus Christ our Lord!
I. This morning I shall ask you to spend a little time in considering THE GREAT OBJECT OF THE CHRISTIAN MINISTER’S PERSUASIONS. Agrippa said, “You almost persuade me to be a Christian.”” I do not recollect a single sermon from this text that is fairly upon the words as they stand. They are all discourses upon being almost Christians, which, begging the pardon of the venerable divines, has nothing to do with the text, for the Apostle never persuaded Agrippa to be an “almost-Christian”—but he almost persuaded him to be a Christian!
Agrippa certainly never was an almost-Christian! His life and character displayed a spirit very far removed from that condition. He was not like the young man in the Gospel to whom the name “almost-Christian” is far more applicable, although I gravely question its propriety in any case. There is a great difference between being almost a Christian and being almost persuaded to be a Christian. A man may be almost a Calvinist and so may hold most of the Doctrines of Grace, but another who has been on a certain occasion almost persuaded to be a Calvinist, may be, as a matter of fact, a complete Arminian. A man who is almost an artist knows something of painting, but a man almost persuaded to be an artist may not even know the names of the colors.
Now the great drift of Paul’s preaching, according to Agrippa’s confession, was to persuade him to be a Christian. And the Apostle himself acknowledges the same design in his concluding sentence, “I would to God, that not only you, but also all that hear me this day, were both almost and altogether such as I am.” In that parting word of goodwill he
unveiled the desire of his heart—he sought not release from his chains, but the deliverance of the souls of his hearers from the bondage of sin.
My Brethren, the preaching of the Gospel minister should always have soul-winning for its object. Never should we seek that the audience should admire our excellency of speech. I have in my soul a thousand times cursed oratory and wished that the arts of elocution had never been devised, or at least had never profaned the sanctuary of God. Often, as I have listened with wonder to speech right well conceived and sentences aptly arranged, I have yet felt as though I could weep tears of blood that the time of the congregation on the Sabbath should be wasted by listening to wordy rhetoric, when what was needed was a plain, urgent pleading with men’s hearts and consciences. It is never worth a minister’s while to go up his pulpit stairs to show his audience that he is adept in elocution.