Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2709
“And you also shall bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning.” John 15:27.
OUR Lord Jesus Christ ought to be believed upon His own unsupported Word, first, because of the Divinity of His Nature. God cannot lie and that Christ is God is abundantly proved by His miracles. He did that which none but God could do. He ought also to be believed because of the perfection of His Character, for even the enemies of the Gospel have been obliged to confess that the perfection of the Character of Jesus is altogether undeniable. They have critically examined it, but they have not been able to find a single fault or flaw in it. They have thrust the Character of Christ into a furnace such as that in which men try silver—and they have heated the furnace seven times hotter than usual—yet has the Character of Christ come forth unhurt from every trial. A perfect Man ought to be believed when He speaks. The perfection of His Character proves Him to be worthy of confidence.
Put together, then, the Godhead and the perfect Manhood of Christ, and I am not too bold when I say that He deserves to be believed upon His bare Word without any further witness. Yet such is the natural infidelity of the human heart with regard to anything that comes from God—so resolutely do men shut their eyes against the light lest they should be reproved by it—that our Lord Jesus Christ has not left Himself without witnesses. The first and chief Witness to Christ is the Holy Spirit. Read again the verse preceding our text, upon which I have already commented—“When the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceeds from the Father, He shall testify of Me.” The Holy Spirit is still here on earth, working spiritual miracles in the hearts of men, and those works of His are the attestation and seal of the mission of Christ, that He is, indeed, the Savior of men. “There are three that bear witness in earth, the Spirit, and the water, and the blood: and these three agree in one.” The water and the blood are two things about which we, ourselves, become witnesses, as I shall show you directly, but the point I want you to notice just now is that as it was with the Apostles, so is it in a measure with ourselves, for we are called, as they were, to the most honorable office conceivable, seeing that we are called to do what the Holy Spirit, Himself, deigns to do, that is, to witness to Christ, for, after He had spoken of the testimony of the Spirit of Truth, He added, “And you also shall bear witness.” We are to be laborers together with the Holy Spirit! We are to stand, as it were, in the witness-box with Him, and bear similar testimony to that which He bears concerning Christ—“He shall testify of Me: and you also shall bear witness.” Oh, what an honorable position we are to occupy! What a grand work we are to do—a work which an angel might envy us, for we are to be witnesses, together with the Holy Spirit, concerning Christ!
In handling this text, I shall have, first of all, to remark that the Apostles were witnesses to the facts of Christ’s life. He said to them, “You also shall bear witness, because you have been with Me from the beginning.” Then I shall have to show you that Believers are now witnesses to the results of Christ’s Gospel. We have not been with Him from the beginning and, therefore, our witness is not concerning the facts of His life—but we can testify to the results of His Gospel. When I have spoken upon those two themes, I shall close by noticing the objective of both these forms of testimony—the Apostles’ witness to the facts of Christ’s life and the Believers’ witness to the results of those facts.
I. First, then, the Apostles were stated by Christ to be WITNESSES TO THE FACTS OF HIS LIFE, from the time when they became His disciples, right down to the day when He was taken up into Heaven.
You know, dear Friends, how any historical fact comes to be accepted as a fact. It is by the weight of the evidence by which it is supported. If Tacitus, for instance, makes a statement in his history, as a rule we believe what he says because he is known to be a veracious historian. But Tacitus is certainly not more reliable than is Matthew, or Mark, or Luke, or John, because Tacitus never died for the defense of any statement that he made. But those who bore witness concerning Christ, and were His historians, were ready to die and did die rather than deny anything that they had said concerning their Lord and Master. When we find discrepancies in the writings of historians, we examine and weigh the evidence as to any contradictions, so as to see which is the correct record of the facts in question. If anyone made a statement that such-and-such a thing happened yesterday, and you needed to ascertain if the statement were true, you would call witnesses who saw it. Suppose you could not get those witnesses for a month—their testimony would be just as good in a month’s time as it is today. Suppose you could not get them together for 50 years—their evidence would be just as valid. Or if they had written their testimony, and had it duly attested, what they had written would be just as good evidence 50 years hence as it would be today and, if true at all, it would stand true—yes, as true as the testimony of these witnesses stands though 1,800 years and more have elapsed since they bore their witness! We have, concerning the life of Christ, the testimony of those who were with Him from the beginning—and their testimony is good because it complies with certain rules which usually apply to reliable evidence.