Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2385
“And the Lord spoke to Manasseh, and to his people: but they would not listen. Therefore the Lord brought upon them the captains of the host of the king of Assyria; which took Manasseh among the thorns, and bound him with fetters, and carried him to Babylon.” 2 Chronicles 33:10,11.
THE proper way for a sinner to be brought to God is for God to speak to him and for him to hear. Manasseh would not come that way—“The Lord spoke to Manasseh, and to his people: but they would not listen.” Therefore, as God determined to save the rebellious king, He fetched him back by a rougher road—He sent the captains of the host of the king of Assyria, who took him among the thorns.
I am going to talk to you a little about the plain and proper road by which you should come to God. And then I shall deal with those who have gone among the thorns. There may be some such characters here, tonight. Let me say that if I should happen to describe anyone very correctly, I hope he will not do as a friend did the other Monday. He had come up to London and I gave such an accurate description of him on the Sunday that he came in very indignantly to see me the next day, to know whether his wife had not written to me. He looked as if his wife and myself might, both of us, have rather hard times with him. When I assured him that I did not know his name and had never seen him or his wife, or heard a word about him, he grew a little more calm—but the portrayal of him appeared to be so accurate that I could not help saying to him, “Surely God has spoken to you. Take the message home to yourself. Do not blame me or your wife, but blame yourself to think that such a description should apply to you.”
Now, first, as I have already told you, the proper way for a sinner to be brought to God is for God to speak to him and for him to hear. In Holy Scripture, God warns men. He tells them that sin is an evil thing and that if it is persisted in, it will bring endless ruin to them. Now, the proper thing for the man who hears that warning is to take heed to it, to run to the helm of his vessel and steer the ship in another direction. God grant that you and I may not be as the horse and as the mule, that need bit and bridle, but may we listen at once to the warning so kindly given and turn from every evil way!
Sometimes God speaks by way of invitation. “Come to Me,” He says. “Return to Me. I am ready to forgive. I delight in mercy.” Now, the proper way for one who hears this invitation is not to wait and linger, but to accept it at once. “When You said, Seek you My face; my heart said unto You, Your face, Lord, will I seek.” The Lord invites you to come to the ark to escape the flood, to come to the banquet to satisfy your hunger, to come to the sacred bath, that you may wash and be clean, as he of old did who washed his leprosy away in the Jordan. Whenever God speaks to us in any way, let us listen and, listening, let us obey—especially when He sets before us Jesus, Crucified, and says to us, “Trust in Him and you shall be forgiven. Accept the Great Sacrifice! Believe that your sin was laid on Him and you shall be forever clear of it.” Oh, that you would accept Him at once! We do not need to go round about, over hedge and ditch, to find the Savior—there is the Cross, look to it and live!
I was asking a friend, just now, concerning a sermon he had heard, and he said, “It was a very clever sermon, but if anybody had followed its teaching, he would not have been within 6,000 miles of the Cross of Christ.” Well now, that is not what I want to do with you, to lead you thousands of miles away from Christ! But, as God has set forth Christ to be a propitiation for sin, I pray that you may accept Him and live by Him. “Look unto Me,” He says, “and be you saved.”—
“There is life for a look at the Crucified One.”
May the Holy Spirit, whose word is, “Today, today, today,” speak with power to your hearts that you may hear because God speaks!
You understand the way sinners are saved, do you not? “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.” We hear the Gospel, we believe it, we live by it—there is the whole machinery of salvation! We preach a Crucified Savior, and whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. Yet we cannot beat it into men’s heads that salvation is as simple as this! I remember how Martin Luther said that it was so difficult to get the Doctrine of Justification by Faith into the minds of the Wittenbergers that he had half a mind to take the Bible and beat them over the head with it! I am afraid that he would not have gotten the Truth of God into their heads that way. “Look,” he said, “if these sectaries come to you with a new doctrine, you stare at it like a cow at a new gate! But when I bring you the Gospel, you will not even look at it, much less will you receive it!” Oh, that the Spirit of God would deliver us from such folly, that we may accept Christ, trust Him, and live!