Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2214
“For they, being ignorant of God’s righteousness, and going about to establish their own righteousness, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.” Romans 10:3.
You that have your Bibles open, kindly follow me from the first verse of the chapter. It begins, “Brethren, my heart’s desire and prayer to God for Israel is that they might be saved.” If you really desire that men should be saved, pray for them! It is an empty wish, a mere formality, if you do not turn it into prayer. Every loving desire for any man or woman should, by the Believer, be taken before God in prayer. We cannot expect that God will save men unless His people pray for it. There must be travail before the birth and there must be travail in prayer with God before we can expect that many will be born, again, into the Church of God. Oh, for more prayer! Let us cry to God in secret, in the family and in all our assemblies, that God would save the sons of men!
But prayer, if it is sincere, is always attended with effort. Therefore the Apostle begins to teach as well as to pray. He prays that Israel might be saved and then he explains the difficulties in the way and tries to remove them. You pray, dear Friend, do you? But you never speak to the individual for whom you pray. Is your prayer sincere? I will not question it. But your prayer has hardly reached that pitch of passionate earnestness which will secure an answer, for if you were in downright earnest, you would go to the person for whom you pray and explain the way of salvation! You want your boy to be a scholar. Then you send him to school. You want your girl to learn a certain trade. You put her apprentice to it, do you not? In the things of common life, that which you desire you use means to obtain. Oh, that in all our Churches we might feel that while effort without prayer is presumption and prayer without effort is hypocrisy, the holy blending of prayer and labor will produce, for certain, a grand result!
If we labor for souls, we must not be content unless souls are really saved, for the Apostle says, “For I bear them record that they have a zeal for God.” Well, does not that satisfy you, Paul? They are zealous for God! They are red-hot! “No,” he says, “not unless it is in the right way. They have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge.” We feel very thankful when we see tears stream down the cheeks, but, you know, people cry at the theater and there is not much in it. Pray God it may not end in a shower of tears, but that the heart may bleed as well as the eyes weep! It may happen that we have induced our Hearers to give up some outward sins. So far, so good. But it is written, “You must be born again.” And if this vital change is not experienced, all outward reformation will land them short of Heaven! Beloved, the Apostle’s love for souls led him to pray and led him to labor—but it led him to be very concerned that none should stop short of real living faith in Christ—and justification by His blood and righteousness.
When we are in the throes of a revival and we think men are turning to Christ, let us be happy and let us not throw any cold water upon anybody—but let us see that it is really the work of Grace in the hearts of our Hearers. Let us take care that the plowshare goes down deep. Some soil needs even cross-plowing and scarifying. Let us do the work thoroughly, for it is only those that are really converted that will stand. We do not need a lot of people that will run in at one door of the Church and out at the other—we want saving work and our prayer should be—“Lord, quicken the people into Divine Life by Divine Truth, through the Divine Spirit!”
Now observe that the Apostle, being thus earnest about souls, endeavors to be especially clear about the doctrine of Justification by Faith. If we want men to be truly converted, we must set before them the plan of salvation very clearly and distinctly. I meet with hundreds of persons who have had some kind of work upon their hearts, but they tell me that they walk in a mist. They have not quite understood it. They feel that they are on the Rock, but they were not quite sure
what the Rock really is. It is a good thing that our zeal for God should be according to knowledge, that we know what we believe and why we believe it. That we know that we are saved, how we are saved and why we are saved, for if there is a mistake here, it may be fatal!
Martin Luther, who, as we all know, continually preached the doctrine of Justification by Faith, said, one day, that he felt half inclined to take the Bible and bang it about the people’s heads, for they seemed as if they would not get a hold of the doctrine that we are saved by faith in Jesus Christ and by Him, alone! I suspect that knocking people’s heads about with the Bible would not effect any very great result—but that was Martin Luther’s way of putting it. Keep hammering away on that nail—“Believe, believe, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.” Well, now, that was the particular battleground of Luther’s day, so that he said, “The doctrine of Justification by Faith is the article of a standing or a falling church.” If a Church holds and preaches that, it is a Church of Christ, notwithstanding many blunders. But, whatever it may preach, if it does not preach that, it is to be questioned whether it is not a fallen church, a church that has lost its true position.