Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 906
Delivered by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Jesus of Nazareth passes by.”- Luke 18:37.
Such was the news of that day. As an exclamation, doubtless it was often repeated when our Lord made His journeys through the land of Palestine and its outskirts—“Jesus of Nazareth passes by!” How quickly would the inhabitants of their cities and their villages be astir when the news reached them! What a curiosity there would be to see Him, knowing that His fame was spoken of everywhere! What an eagerness among the multitudes to get close enough to hear Him! What an intense anxiety on the part of some to go, themselves, and of others to take their sick and diseased friends that they might obtain health and cure! Oh, I think there was enough in those words to make men forego, awhile, their farms and their merchandise, their labors and their pleasures that they might feast their eyes and ears with the sight of His face and the sound of His voice—or much more, that they might obtain some grateful relief and get some substantial benefit from Him who went about doing good!
But, my dear Brothers and Sisters, I want you to catch the spiritual significance of these thrilling words. Did you understand them aright, you would rise up and shake off your lethargy! You would be eager to greet His Presence and anxious to learn His doctrine! That, however, which I am sure would stir you to the heart’s core and excite all your passions is the vehement desire to have salvation, present salvation, from Him! Surely you would be ready to receive Him into your house, to welcome Him to your heart and to sit at His feet dissolved in wonder, love and praise! And yet full many of you who join the throng and mingle with the families that come up to seek the Lord are as unconcerned for yourselves as though your sins were of no concern and your souls in no immediate peril!
Oh, it is high time that some here present were saved! In a short time you must be in another world. Hard by that column, on my right, in yonder gallery, in that next pew, there have usually sat two attentive hearers, husband and wife, who early this morning were suffocated by the smoke of their own burning house! I little thought that they would be preachers to us tonight—but they are so. The calamity, sudden and mysterious, which has removed them from our midst, sets “the uncertainly of life,” and the “preparation for departure” so vividly before us that we cannot refrain our emotions or restrain our sympathies.
Their absence should speak loudly to those who occupy the seat they have vacated, asking them whether they are ready to depart. Not less loudly should it speak to all sitting here, raising the question in the hearts of some of you who are careless about your souls, how you could bear to pass out of this world if the arrow of death should overtake you unawares. A trifling accident may prove fatal! A slight illness may be the precursor of speedy dissolution! Can you imagine your own remorse as you glance backwards at the Gospel you have listened to but never embraced—the blood of sprinkling you have heard of, but have never been applied to your conscience—the Savior whom you passed by with indifference when He passed by you, ready to be gracious and you would not be His disciple? Ah, you may turn from such questions with a faint smile now—before long you will turn to them with a pale shudder!
Are there any here present anxious to be saved? Let me have their solemn, earnest and devout attention! I pray God that what I speak simply may just strike their consciences and touch their hearts. If they want their judgments informed, may the Word come with light to their spirits and in that light may they behold Christ and find salvation! Our text is taken from a little narrative of a blind man who sat by the side of the highway begging—not an inappropriate picture of you, my Friends, who are solicitous of mercy and anxiously desirous of salvation. Are you not as blind and poor spiritually as he was literally?
I am sure that you will at once confess that you are blind. The eyes of your understanding are dim. Your heart is wrapped in darkness. You cannot see what you want to see. You do not even see your sin so as to repent of it with contrition. You have not yet seen the power of the precious blood of Jesus so as to believe in it as worshippers once
purged and abundantly conscious that it has procured their remission. While you are so blind, I am quite sure that you will not be grieved or vexed with me if I say, too, that you are as poor as Bartimeus. His was poverty of pence, but yours is poverty of soul. You have no merit! You have no strength. You have no possibility of ever getting the means of spiritual livelihood for yourselves. You are as poor as the poorest beggar that ever asked a charity for God’s sake from the wayfarers!