Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1994
“These things I have spoken to you, that in Me you might have peace. In the world you will have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” John 16:33.
THIS most delightful passage occurs at the close of the last of our Savior’s sermons before He went to the Father. Let us treasure it as we lay up a man’s last words. Wonderfully full is that sermon—it is of a piece with His last prayer—and that rises above all other pleadings of men! This farewell discourse may occupy but a short space in Scripture, but the thoughts suggested by it are so many that I suppose that the world itself might hardly contain the books that might fairly be written upon it. It took our Lord but a moment to speak some of its sentences—it will take us a lifetime to fully understand them! Perhaps we never shall understand some of these gracious sayings till we have put away all childish things and shall have come to the fullness of the stature of men in Christ Jesus. We shall never see all the richness of the Grace of this sermon till we have risen beyond these mists and clouds into the clearer atmosphere of the unclouded skies. In that Happy Country, being ourselves raised to a nobler condition, we shall be better able to comprehend the deep things of God, concerning which our Savior spoke in His supreme discourse. Meanwhile, let us apply our heart and mind to the consideration of these last Words of the greatest of all Preachers, the dearest of all Teachers and, may the Spirit of our God open them up to us!
Observe concerning the preaching of our Lord Jesus how eminently practical it is. You never find in the Master’s speaking a single sentence spoken for what orators use to call, “effect.” He never introduces a pretty bit here and there to let men see how poetical His mind could be. He never goes a little aside to introduce a something which was quite unnecessary to the display of the subject, but very necessary to the display of the orator. Nothing so little, so self-seeking, ever governs the mind of Jesus. Far from it! His soul goes with His subject and He has no second objective—He would convey His meaning to His hearers and His mind is concentrated on that aim. He keeps hard at it, steadily driving at His point and He always speaks with the one desire, that the Truth should go home to the heart and should be blessed to the hearer. Hence He adopted the method in this instance of summing up and doing what the old divines used to call “making the improvement” at the end, when the Truths of God which they had spoken was turned to practical account and the uses of the topic were enlarged upon. We might have found out, perhaps, by diligent study, what the practical drift of the Savior’s discourse was, for it is never difficult for a spiritual mind to perceive His drift, but He meant not only that we might possibly see what He was aiming at, but that we should be sure of seeing it—and so He puts it into the plainest language and says, “These things have I spoken to you, that in Me you might have peace.”
If this was our Lord’s objective, I do not doubt that He had fully accomplished it! All that He had said tended to produce peace in His disciples’ hearts, but He knew that their minds were dark—that they had but slight capacity as yet, and so, in His infinite tenderness, He told then, as one might tell a child, what He intended His address to produce. We thank Him for this and herein would we endeavor to emulate Him. We hope that our friends will always bear with us when we try to be very plain and simple—and spend much of our strength in pointing out what is the practical bearing of the Truth which we are teaching. It will be better to be considered needlessly explicit than to miss the end we have in view.
Let us greatly prize this conclusion of the Savior’s ministry! It is all the more endeared to some of us by the fact that our Lord finished as He began. He is our peace. He came to bring it and He left it behind Him as He went away. Even before He had commenced His life-work, it was announced of Him that He came to bring “peace on earth, good will to-
ward men.” And before He is taken up, His last Words must necessarily be, “Peace I leave with you, My peace I give to you.” It was meet that He should close the service of His life wherein He had preached peace, by pronouncing this as His benediction. “These things have I spoken to you, that in Me you might have peace.”
In trying to handle this text, tonight, aiming at the same practical end as my Divine Lord and Master, I shall notice, first of all, the Believer in Christ, and in Christ he is at peace. Secondly, the Believer in the world, and in the world he has tribulation. And, thirdly, the Believer in the world and in Christ, and in that condition he has victory! “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” May the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of peace, bless the word which I may now speak to you!