Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2606
“It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they shall be all taught of God.’ Every man, therefore, that has heard and has learned of the Father, comes unto Me.” John 6:45.
I SUPPOSE that you never noticed any great literary excellence in Bradshaw’s Railway Guide. “No,” you say, “one writing would be very much out of place in such a book as that—it is meant to be a plain direction to travelers. When we consult it, we do not wish to be entertained, we want to be guided as to the best and quickest route to our desired destination.” Well, that is the sort of sermon I am going to try to preach—one which, I trust, shall be a guide to Heaven to some who hear it, or who may afterwards read it—I long, above all things, that through my words many may find rest and peace in Jesus Christ our Lord.
Notice, dear Friends, what our Savior was aiming at in this discourse. The Jews had been murmuring at Him. Certain followers of the scribes and Pharisees, who always opposed Him, had been whispering among themselves and finding fault with Him. Our Lord did not condescend to come down to their level and parley with them. They pretended that their difficulty was that He was well known among them, that He was the son of Joseph, the carpenter, and that they knew His mother and His brothers and sisters. Our Lord does not appear directly to answer them, but He takes quite a different tack. He says, “Murmur not among yourselves about this matter. Do not imagine for a moment that I am disappointed because you do not believe in Me, and do not suppose that your unbelief will at all frustrate My Father’s purpose or surprise Him. You may reject Me if you are determined to do so, but your folly and sin will make no difference to anybody except yourselves. On your own head shall be the guilt of your own blood. I knew that you would not believe in Me. I quite expected that you would not receive Me, for, ‘No man can come to Me, except the Father which has sent Me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.’” And, Beloved, in a similar manner, when we are pleading with you that you should believe in Christ, we must weep over you as Jesus wept over Jerusalem! And we may say, as Paul wrote to the Thessalonians, “We were gentle among you, even as a nurse cherishes her children,” but when you come to this terrible decision—that you reject Christ and will not have Him reign over you, then we fall back upon the eternal purposes of God—and we tell you that you have not received either the electing love of God or the effectual working of the Holy Spirit. And you are left to perish in your sins!
To the ungodly and the unspiritual this may sound like rather harsh language, but should not men be treated with some measure of harshness if they spurn the Christ who is set before them and, in their unbelief, wickedly reject Him? True love is all the more loving because it is outspoken and sometimes seems even severe. There is a spurious sort of love current, nowadays, which consists in saying, “Ah, yes, you are all right and I am all right! You say, ‘No,’ and I say, ‘Yes,’ but, no doubt, we are both equally correct. You are black and I am white—or I am black and you are white—but, in these days, black iswhite, and white is no color at all! Let us make things smooth and pleasant all round. You praise me and I will praise you! It does not really matter what you believe, or what you think—we shall all get right at last.” That kind of talk, or the preaching which comes practically to the same point, is infernal cruelty to immortal souls! I dare not use a milder term to describe it. It may be cried up as charity, but there is no charity in it! It is a shameful selfishness which, for the sake of ease and popular favor, cries, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace, and seduces men to their own destruction—playing merry tunes to them when, all the while, they are dancing down to death and to Hell!
Our Lord Jesus Christ was not a preacher of that order. When men refused Him, He flashed the red light of the Truth of God in their faces and made them know that if they rejected Him, they rejected their only hope of mercy—and if they turned against His Grace, it was because they did not know its power and were not under its influence. He taught these people, who murmured at Him, that they never would believe in Him unless the Father taught them. He plainly declared that the Father would teach all His own and that if those who were listening to Him did not come to Him, it would prove that the Father had not taught them, that they were not God’s chosen and, therefore, they would perish in their carnal and guilty ignorance of Him!
Now coming to the text, I shall ask you to notice, first, thepromise of the Father’s teaching of His ownpeople. “It is written in the Prophets, ‘And they shall be all taught of God.’” Then, secondly, we shall examine the teaching itself. “They shall be all taught of God.” And, thirdly, we shall consider the grand result of the teaching. “Every man, therefore, that has heard, and has learned of the Father, comes unto Me.”