Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1476
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, May 25, 1879
“And He commanded us to preach unto the people and to testify that it is He which was ordained of God to be the Judge of the quick and the dead.” Acts 10:42.
You will notice throughout this short address by Peter how very careful he is to speak not at all upon his own authority, but wholly upon the authority of the Most High. He commences his conversation by saying that God had shown him that it would be right for him, as a Jew, to commune with Gentiles. God had shown it to him—he had not, therefore, broken through Jewish law as the result of his own judgment, but under Divine direction. He goes on to commence his sermon by saying, “The Word which God sent unto the children of Israel.” He had come, therefore, not with a Word of his own inventing, but with a Word of God’s sending. “That Word, I say, you know.” Then he speaks of Jesus of Nazareth Himself as anointed with the Holy Spirit and with power. And he speaks of himself and his fellow Apostles as “witnesses,” bearing testimony to what the Lord Jesus had done.
Now, this way of speaking was, perhaps, rendered the more necessary by the mistaken reverence which Cornelius had rendered to his person, for he fell down at the Apostle’s feet and worshipped him, but it should be the constant habit of all the ministers of Christ. It is ours to keep within the boundaries of our commission and shield ourselves behind its authority. What are we that we should, of ourselves, have anything to say unto you, my Brothers and Sisters? What is our authority and by what right can we speak of ourselves? Verily, we have no such power over you and if we come unto you in our own name, bid us not God speed!
Every true minister must speak because he is commanded to speak. He must speak what he is commanded to speak and he must be prepared to fall back upon the authority of the Word of God continually. “If they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them.” Only if the testimony of any man is in accordance with the Word of God, is God with him and it would be perilous to reject his testimony. The Apostle was not long in his address before he came to the doctrine of the judgment of all men by Jesus Christ. He says that he was commanded to preach it and, therefore, he did preach it. It may not be called, “the Gospel,” but it is certainly a most important accessory Truth to the Gospel—it is one of those doctrines without which a Gospel ministry would not be complete. I mean that if in any testimony concerning Christ the doctrine that He shall come a second time to judge the world were utterly neglected, such a testimony would not be a complete Gospel.
Hence you find that Paul, when he preached to the famous congregation of the Areopagites, took care to insist upon this Truth of God. In Acts 17:30, 31, he says, “The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commands all men everywhere to repent because He has appointed a day in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He has ordained; whereof He has given assurance unto all men, in that He has raised Him from the dead.” This was also a part of Paul’s subject when he stood before Felix—“he reasoned of righteousness, temperance and judgment to come”—and this made Felix tremble, for there is great force of conviction in that solemn Truth of God.
The doctrine of the judgment of the world by Christ was used by Peter and Paul and other Apostles as a sort of preliminary Truth which they insisted upon before they came to the essence of the Gospel which consists in preaching Jesus Christ as a Savior. They plowed with this doctrine before they sowed the invitations of the Gospel. They did not, however, lay the axe to the root and then forget to proclaim the Word of Grace—they preached the terrors of the Lord, not in a legal, but a Gospel manner! Peter does so in this case, for he first speaks of Christ in the judgment and then in verse 43 he adds, “To Him give all the Prophets witness, that through His name whoever believes in Him shall receive remission of sins.”
This morning, in obedience to the same command, I shall try to speak, first of all, upon the message. And, secondly, upon the evident importance to be attached to it which we shall, in a great measure, gather from the words of our text. May the Holy Spirit, who in Peter’s day fell on all those who heard his word, fall, also, upon you as you are led to believe in the Lord Jesus!
I. First, let us consider THE MESSAGE which God commands all His servants to declare. That message begins with the assurance that there is a moral government. There is a Judge over the race of men—we are not as the locusts, of whom Solomon says that they have no king. The world is not left unobserved of God to be as a den of wild beasts, or a pond of fish where everyone devours his fellow and none calls them to account. Men are not permitted to do whatever is right in their own eyes, but there is a Law and a Governor over them. God has committed all authority unto His Son and Jesus Christ, at this moment, reigns and rules over the whole race of men, taking account of all the actions that are done in their bodies and making note of everything in order to the summing up of all things by-and-by. There is a Law, there is a rule, there is a government over the human commonwealth. The race is not left to anarchy—Jesus Christ is Head of all.