Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1579
“Cast you up, cast you up, prepare the way, take up the stumbling block out of the way of My people.” Isaiah 57:14.
(Preached on an evening when the Tabernacle was left to strangers).
WHAT is the way, the way of salvation, the way to Heaven? Jesus Christ says, “I am the way.” He is the Son of God and He left the glories of Heaven and took upon Himself our nature and lived here. In due time He took upon Himself our sin and made Atonement for it and now He has gone up into Heaven and sits at the right hand of God, even the Father, from where He will shortly come to judge the quick and the dead. The way to be delivered from sin—the way to Heaven is simply to trust in Jesus Christ! God has set Him forth to be a Propitiation for sin and whoever believes in Jesus Christ has his sin put away at once, whatever he may have done. Before Christ went to Heaven, He said to His disciples, “Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be damned.”
This is the way of salvation which we preach, unaltered and unalterable, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved.” In other words, trust Him and you are saved! This is the entrance into the way of salvation and this is the track of that way even to the end—trust in Christ. “Are not good works needed?” asks one. They always flow from faith in Christ. He that would be saved from sin, trusts Christ and his nature is changed—and so he hates the sin that once he loved and endeavors to honor the Christ who has saved Him. But in the matter of our Salvation, the ground and bottom of it is not our works, or tears, or prayers, but simple reliance upon the finished work of Jesus Christ. He is A and He is Z in the alphabet of Grace.
He is the Beginning and He is the End. “He that believes in Him has everlasting life.” “He that believes in Him is not condemned,” and never shall be, for he has passed from death unto life. Such being the way, it is very simple. Straight as an arrow, is it not? And yet in this way there are stumbling blocks.
I. First, LET US SHOW WHY THIS IS. The first reason is that the way of believing is such an uncommon way. Men do not understand the way of trusting. They need to see, to reason, to argue—but to trust in “God made flesh,” dead, buried, risen, gone into Heaven—they do not like that. Man says, “I cannot trust.” How very difficult it would be for a cow that has always lived by the day, the short life that can be fed on grass, if it had to live by reason as men do! It would be a new, strange way for the poor beast. And when man has to live by faith, he is as awkward as a cow would be at reasoning! He is out of his element. What? Am I to do nothing but trust the Savior and He will save me? Is that to be the top and bottom of it? It is so. “Then,” says the man, “I cannot get at it—there are stumbling blocks in the road.”
Another reason is that men, when they are really seeking salvation, are often much troubled in mind. They are conscious that they have done wrong. Conscience pricks them. They feel that if God is just, He must punish them for their wrong doing. They are well aware that He knows the secrets of their hearts and this alarms and distresses them. And when they are told that if they believe in Jesus Christ all manner of sin and of blasphemy shall be forgiven, they wonder, “How can it be?” If we put it very plainly and say, “However great your guilt, however black your sin, wash in the Fountain filled with blood and you shall be clean”—it seems plain enough—but they cannot see it. A sense of sin blinds them and they grope in the noonday, like blind men, for the wall, stumbling over this and that which has no existence except in their own fears. Conscience makes unbelievers of us all and stumbling blocks are created by our trembling condition. I do not know how it is to be otherwise.
Besides this, men are often ignorant of the way of salvation. I am not speaking, now, as though I blamed them. I was brought up, myself, to attend the House of God regularly. I do not suppose that on any Lord’s Day, except through ill-
ness, I was ever absent. Yet when I began to seek the Lord, I did not know the way of salvation. I knew the letter of it, but not the real meaning—how can a man know it till the Spirit of God reveals it to him? The sun itself may shine, but a man will never see till his eyes are open. Until Christ comes, who is the Light of the world, men will roam in darkness. Why, in this London of ours, the bulk of people are still without the knowledge that salvation is entirely of Grace—that it is an act of Divine Mercy that saves a man—that a man is never saved by his zeal, or his prayers, or his tears, or anything that he does, but is saved entirely by the mercy of God in Jesus Christ!