Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1425
“I say the truth in Christ, I lie not, my conscience also bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great hea viness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that I were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsman according to the flesh, who are Israelites, to whom pertains the adoption, and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the Law, and the service of God, and the promises; whose are the fathers, and of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed forever. Amen.” Romans 9:1-5.
WHAT an intense man Paul was! Once convince him and his whole nature moved in the direction which he judged to be right. He was whole-hearted when he persecuted the Church of God and he was equally whole-hearted when, afterwards, he labored with all his might to build up the Church which he had sought to destroy! I would to God we were all as thorough-going in the service of our Lord! The pity is that so many professing Christians appear to have no heart, while others borrow a heart for some occasions but do not seem to keep one permanently beating in their own bosoms. O for a warm, engine-like heart all consecrated and forever pulsing mightily!
What a change was worked in Saul of Tarsus, that he who was so ardent a persecutor should become so fervent a preacher! His conversion is one of the proofs of the Divinity of Christianity. The study of the story of Paul was the means of the conversion of Lord Lyttleton who read it with the design of exposing it as a hoax. His friend, Gilbert West, was, at the same time, considering the resurrection of our Lord in a similar spirit and, happily, with the same result—the friends met to unite in the joint conviction that the Bible is the Word of God! Dr. Johnson says of Lyttleton’s, “Observations upon the Conversion and Apostleship of St. Paul,” “it is a treatise to which infidelity has never been able to fabricate a specious answer.”
Consider for a moment the renowned conversion of Paul. It was singularly Providential that just at that period when the Church needed such a man, the Apostle with his remarkable education, his noble purpose and his acquaintance with Jewish and Greek literature, should have been called out from the world and placed in the very forefront of the battle for Christ! Truly might he say that he was not a whit behind the very chief of the Apostles, though in his humility, he felt himself to be nothing. No name in the Christian Church can be pronounced with greater honor after that of our glorious Master than the name of Paul who was, indeed, a wise master builder.
When you remember what he was by nature, you will marvel at the extraordinary change of thought and feeling which was worked in him! He who was cruel to the saints, who gave his voice against Stephen and held the garments of those that stoned him, became tenderhearted as a nurse towards her child! Though his Jewish brethren terribly persecuted him and pursued him from city to city, there is not a trace of resentment in any word he writes! Rather, he is full of gentleness. The lion had become a lamb and he that breathed out threats breathed out prayers! He who seemed to burn with enmity became a flame of love!
Dear Friends, before we go any further, pause and answer this question—has such a change as this been worked in you? Perhaps you have never been conspicuously a blasphemer or a persecutor as Paul was, but still, if converted, there will have been a very wonderful change in you. Old things will have passed away and all things will have become new. Do you feel that and do you recognize the change both in your inner and outer life? If not, you must be born again! Unless you are converted and become as little children, you cannot enter into the kingdom of God!
Our first thought, after reading this passage, is, what a wonderfully tender and loving preacher Paul must have been. One of the early fathers was known to say that he wished he could have seen Solomon’s temple in its glory, Rome in its prosperity and Paul preaching! I think the last the grandest sight of the three! Oh, to have heard him speak! It might have shamed us into deeper tones of earnestness. Though, I suppose, his oratory was not very astonishing as mere rhetoric, for some said his speech was contemptible, yet it must have been wonderfully powerful upon the heart, for it abounded in sighs and tears and other tokens of evident emotion! Besides, his awful intensity of look and tone must have made his discourses irresistible!
He would never have written as he has done in his Epistles if he had been one who could speak with icicles hanging about his lips. He must have spoken from a burning heart which shot forth red-hot bolts of fiery words! He poured his language out like lava from a volcano from the flaming furnace of his soul! His sentences burned their way into the hearts of those who heard him! Brother, if you are called to preach the Gospel, let Paul be your model! I reckon that we never preach aright unless we pour out our inmost soul! And unless we long and hunger and thirst for the conversion of our hearers, we might as well be in bed and asleep! We shall teach them to be indifferent if we, ourselves, are indifferent.