Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1130
“Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation; and uphold me with Your free Spirit. Then will I teach transgressors Your ways; and sinners shall be converted unto You.” Psalm 51:12-13.
BELOVED Brothers and Sisters, sinners are all around us living in their sins. Tens of thousands in our great cities and our country towns and villages are abiding in the densest spiritual darkness. They do not know their right hand from their left as to eternal things. And an equally numerous class who do know something of the letter of the Gospel are yet as men who see but perceive not, who hear but understand not. Some of these wandering ones are in great misery everyday, as the result of their sins, and if we knew what they suffered we would greatly pity them. It would be impossible for us to remain indifferent if we heard their secret groans. And all these sinners, whether they are suffering or not, are living to the dishonor of God, robbing God of the Glory which is due Him as Creator, and more or less dishonoring the Lord Jesus who receives no reward from them as Redeemer. If we were in a right state of heart we could not live where we are without feeling daily anguish on account of abounding sin.
Meanwhile, all around us there are potent agencies at work to hold these sinners in their present condition and prevent their escape into a better life. We may be idle, but the powers of darkness and their agents are busy—busy in working mischief, leading men into one form of error or another, or casting one or other of the nets of infidelity around them. Hell from beneath is stirred at this moment! If there is no revival in the Church of God, there is certainly a revival among her enemies! They are compassing sea and land to make proselytes, though, when they make them, they will be tenfold more the children of Hell than they were before. The activity of the hosts of the Evil One should act as the sound of the alarm to awake the slumbering army of the living God! What are you doing, O sleepers? Arise, for the Philistines are at your gates!
Meanwhile, the case is still graver. Sinners are dying! Every hour hurries a company of them into eternity. They are carried away as with a flood! They fall like grass before the mower’s scythe! And where do they go? Alas, we know, but how little do we consider! They are driven from the Presence of God and from all hope of restoration. Their woe is such as cannot be described in language, though in the Book of God the Holy Spirit has employed terms of extreme expressions, whose meaning it would be hardly possible to exaggerate. I might say, eye has not seen, nor has ear heard, neither has entered into the heart of man the doom which awaits all those who perish in impenitence!
Beloved, the thought of souls sinking into everlasting woes stirs me with the desire to awake you. I feel that if my heart is cold I may share the responsibility of any lack of zeal in you, but if I shall be helped to be earnest, I shall hope that the sacred contagion will spread and that Believers in Christ all around will be deeply concerned for the souls of others. Our topic, then, is the life business of the Christian—to teach transgressors God’s ways—that sinners may be converted unto Him.
We shall handle our subject thus—first, we shall show who are to teach others. Secondly, what they are to aim at in their teaching. Thirdly, why they should thus seek the conversion of others. And, fourthly, how they can do this, for there may be some who will need a little practical guidance as to what they shall attempt.
I. First, dear Brethren, WHO ARE TO TEACH TRANSGRESSORS THAT THEY MAY BE CONVERTED UNTO GOD? The reply is easy. The text is found in a Psalm which is deeply penitential all through, but ends in the joy of forgiven sin. The words before us relate to joy restored by a sense of pardon—therefore the men who should teach others the ways of God are those who have, themselves, been pardoned. Who else can tell of the guilt of sin but men upon whom the burden of sin has pressed, who have felt the arrows of conviction in their own soul, who have been bowed into the dust because they have felt that the wrath of God rested upon them?
They can speak with authority concerning what they have personally felt. When such men speak of pardoning love and of the blood which cleanses, how sweetly do they tell of that blessed moment when their transgressions were forgiven and their sins were covered! These are not the men to descant upon the dignity of human nature, the excellencies of virtue and the merit of moral reformation. Their story is of quite another kind. They cry, “We have destroyed ourselves and all our help is found in Jesus! We are condemned and have no means of self-justification! But there is a precious blood that speaks better things than that of Abel, which pleads for us!”