Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1898
“That if you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.” Romans 10:9.
PAUL’S great work was saving souls. Whatever else he might be doing, he never forgot, “by all means to save some.” Whatever else he aimed at in his Epistles, he always took care to write that men might, by his teaching, be led to the Lord Jesus. He sought to speak so that troubled consciences might come to peace through Jesus Christ his Lord, whom he loved so well. This is one of the reasons why he so often gives us weighty condensations of the Gospel, packing the Truths of God together very closely. He knew that these are very useful and so he prepared them for his Brothers and Sisters, as one provides portable meats or condensed milk for travelers. When the reader finds a compact sentence of this sort, he has met with a little Bible, a miniature Body of Divinity. Behold the whole story of redeeming love told out in a line or two, easy to be understood, likely to be remembered, calculated to impress! He who composes short and striking summaries of Gospel Truth may be working as effectively for the salvation of men as another who delivers earnest, pleading discourses. In this chapter Paul several times puts the Gospel in a remarkably plain, simple and brief manner. He is the master of condensation and our text is a specimen of his power! He here gives the plan of salvation in a line or so—“If you shall confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you shall be saved.”
I wish to preach in the same spirit in which Paul wrote, aiming from my first word to my last at the conversion of any of you who have not yet known the Lord. I pray that we may all mean business at this time and may get at it in downright earnest. May you be determined to come to the point and no longer hesitate! How glad I should be if any would say to themselves, “I will run in the way, if I can but see it. I will lay hold of that which is put before me, if I may but grasp it. I will hesitate and trifle no longer, but I will deal solemnly with solemn matters, so that this day I may find peace with God!”
I am not going to enter into any profound exposition of the deep things of God, but I shall keep to those simple matters through which salvation comes to plain men and women. Oh that the Spirit of God may bless my words to the immediate conversion of my hearers!
I. I shall need you to notice in our text, first, that the Gospel, as Paul here sets it forth, is a Gospel of faith. And THIS GOSPEL OF FAITH IS EVIDENTLY INTENDED FOR LOST MEN. Observe, he says, “If you shall believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead you shall be saved.” When Moses wrote the Law, he spoke upon obedience to the command as securing life, for, he says, “This do, and you shall live.” It was presupposed by the Law that those to whom the Law came already possessed life and the fulfilling of the Law did but preserve them in the life which they already possessed. We read in the fifth verse of this chapter, “For Moses describes the righteousness which is of the Law, that the man which does those things shall live by them.” You see, the Law continues life to those who have already life enough to do good works. The Gospel comes to us under quite another aspect—it does not regard us as having life, but as needing that life. The Gospel comes to us not as to servants who need to be told how they are to continue to live, but as to dead sinners who need to be made to live and then to be kept alive and preserved in happy and holy being! The Gospel says not only that we shall live by it, but that we shall be saved by it, which promise goes much lower and further. When it is said that we shall “be saved,” it implies that we have fallen into a lost, ruined and undone condition—and out of this the Gospel is to rescue us.
It is well to start fairly in preaching the Gospel, by declaring plainly to whom this Gospel is sent. It is sent to you that need it—it is sent, therefore, to you who are lost, because if you are not lost, you do not need saving. If you have not fallen, you do not need restoring. If you have not sinned you do not need forgiving. If you are not far off from the Lord, you do not require to be brought near by the blood of Christ. The Gospel of salvation is sent to those who are under the curse of the Law and condemned to pay its penalties. What a joyous note this is! Hear it, you broken-hearted, and be encouraged! To you we proclaim the free gift of God!
Some fancy that we are to preach to you a milder kind of Law, a more easy way of works, an amended dispensation. But, on the contrary, we preach to you not demands but gifts, not Law but love. Our Gospel is, in very deed, good news! We have come to tell men not what they are to do for God, but what God has done for them! We speak not of what men are to bring to Jesus, but of what Jesus has brought to them and has freely and graciously put forward for their acceptance! Listen, then, you who need saving—this Book is for you—the Christ whom this Book reveals is for you! The Spirit of God who bears witness to Christ is for you! Ah, you guilty, you self-condemned, you utterly disheartened, it is to such as you that the risen Savior is preached today!