Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1349
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, April 15, 1877
“Purifying their hearts by faith.” Acts 15:9.
THE Jewish or Pharisaic party violently opposed the Gospel from without. Wherever the Apostles went, the Jews who believed not, being moved with envy, stirred up the people against them. They could not endure to hear of the salvation of the Gentiles by Grace through faith! It grated on their ears, for they thought that this doctrine was contrary to the Law of Moses in which they boasted. They were children of the bondwoman under the old Covenant of Works and they could not endure that the children of the promise should come to the inheritance. They struggled and rebelled against the Gospel of salvation by Grace, for it went against their natural pride and their national exclusiveness.
Yes, and even when any of them, as blessed be the Grace of God was the case, became converted, the old man was still within them and the spirit of bondage was still apt to assert itself. Those who had been of the sect of the Pharisees brought a good share of Pharisaic tendencies with them into the Church—and these were dangerous to the young kingdom of Christ. I scarcely know whether legal principles were not able to do more mischief inside the Church by perverting pure doctrine than they could do outside the Church by exciting persecution.
One can hardly imagine how the Gospel could have escaped being overlaid and smothered by Judaism, like a baby by its mother, had it not been for the preserving Grace of God and the indwelling Spirit within the Church of God. You know, Brothers and Sisters, how we mourn, today, that certain who claim to be Christians are laboring most zealously to put a yoke upon the neck of the disciples which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear. They invent pompous ceremonies, observe days and months and are bound by rubrics and regulations—all of which are an idle and needless servitude to outward forms.
Certain others would bind us with creeds and ordinances not plainly taught in the Word of God, nor agreeable thereto—of which Peter and John knew nothing whatever—having no force but that which comes of human authority. The old Pharisaic spirit is a great forger of bonds and builder of prisons! It would subject us to ordinances of, “Touch not, taste not, handle not,” and fetter us with rules of many sorts—for it cannot understand the liberty wherewith Christ has made us free. It teaches this and it teaches that, whereof the Apostles would have said, “We gave no such commandment.”
We must contend against this spirit as much now as ever! We must refuse to be entangled, again, with the yoke of bondage. Christ is all! We are complete in Him and we will not permit a single letter to be added to His perfect Law of Liberty. Peter, at the great Jerusalem council was enabled, through his experience to answer those who said that unless a man was circumcised he could not be saved. Depend upon it, Brothers and Sisters, there is nothing like practical work for Christ to teach us Christ’s Truth!
For the most part, the heretics of the present day are a clique of literary men, adept at the pen, but quite unable to speak. It may be that their failure in this direction sours them and sets them upon opposing the Gospel ministry. At any rate, they are a set of theorizers who know nothing of practical service for the Lord! And so they make up all manner of nonsense according to their own fancies. They sit in their studies and do nothing——and then criticize those who are doing hard service and are successful in it. They are so busy with nibbling their quills and polishing their periods that they care nothing about saving souls! And they are so intent upon making discoveries which shall manifest their own gigantic intellects that they cannot soil their hands with practical work among the poor and ignorant.
Having nothing upon their hearts, their whole nature runs to their head and the head being unbalanced by a busy heart takes to spinning cobweb theories and novelties of heresy. Fiercely liberal, the spirit which they manifest against the orthodox is grandly bigoted—in this they are earnest—but in little else except in engendering grievous errors which
are ravaging the Churches and ruining souls. Among the do-nothings all mischief begins! Give a man practical work for Jesus and keep him at it, and he will, like Peter, learn as he goes and, like a river, filter as he flows. Peter could not continue to believe in restricting the Gospel to the Jews after the Lord had bid Cornelius send for him from Joppa, that he might teach him the Gospel—his actual service refined his theory!
If those who ruled botanical science never saw a flower, would you wonder if they ran into gross heterodoxies of belief? A naturalist who never saw a living animal would not be likely to be very sound in zoology and, even so, those who never deal with the souls of men—who never see penitents under conviction, nor hear the songs of new-born Believers in Christ, nor see men rejoice in affliction and triumph in death—are sure to blunder when they set up for teachers. They lean back in their study chairs and blow bubbles and vent doubts to the subverting of the faith of many godly but feeble souls—and all for the need of something better to do.