Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2768
“There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty.” Luke 7:41.
I TRUST that the Lord has “somewhat to say” upon this subject to some who are like Simon the Pharisee. And if He has, I trust that those persons will be led by the Grace of God to say, as Simon did, “Master, say on.” Be ready to hear what the Lord Jesus Christ will speak to you! There are some who cover up the windows of their hearts with the shutters of prejudice—they are only prepared to hear what will please them—they cannot endure to listen to that which will grieve them and humble them. How many there are who want the preacher to prophesy smooth things! If he will say what they can agree with, they will go away and sing his praises, which is a poor result in any case. But let us be of a nobler sort than that! Let us be like the Bereans, who, after they had heard Paul and Silas preach, “received the Word with all readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those things were so. Therefore many of them believed.” Let us say, as Eli bade young Samuel do, “Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears.” Let us say to Him, “Even if You speak that which will lay me in the dust, I will hear it. If You say that which will condemn me to Hell, I will give heed to it, for it is best for me to know the Truth of God, that, by knowing it, I may be stirred up to flee from the wrath to come. Let me know the worst of my case, O Lord God of Truth! ‘Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.’”
So far, I think, Simon the Pharisee may be an example to us. The Master said to him, “Simon, I have something to say to you.” And his answer was, “Master, say on.”
I am not going to expound the whole parable at this time. We may, perhaps, go on with it on another occasion. I intend now to take only this one verse—“There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty.” There are two lessons for us to learn from this text. The first is that all sinners are debtors to God. And the second is that some sinners are greater debtors to God than others are—“The one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty.”
I. First, ALL MEN ARE DEBTORS TO GOD. He is that “certain Creditor” mentioned in our text, of whom, I fear, many debtors think very little.
We are all indebted to God, first, in the matter of obedience to Him, as His creatures. He is our Creator, our Preserver, our Provider, our Benefactor. “It is He that has made us, and not we ourselves; we are His people, and the sheep of His pasture.” He is “the living God” who gives us richly all things to enjoy.” We owe to Him our continued existence. Every breath of our nostrils is His gift. Therefore, by our very creation, we are bound to serve Him according to the righteous demands of His holy Law, “You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him only shall you serve.” And that other “first and great commandment”—“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.” This Law is not exacting. It does not go a hair’s breadth beyond the righteous claims of Divine Justice.
But, as we have not rendered to God the obedience which is due Him, we have become further indebted because of the penalty incurred by us as sinners. All the Ten Commandments stand up in the court as witnesses against us, for we have broken them all. We have been guilty of sins of omission altogether innumerable—and of sins of commission more than
the hair of our head. We are under obligation to obey God’s command even though we are unable to obey it. Though we have not the power to keep God’s Law perfectly, that inability by no means removes from us the liability to do so. If a man is in debt and cannot pay, the fact that he is unable to pay does not exonerate him from the duty of paying. He is still in debt. Debts are not discharged by pleading that you cannot pay them—that is no valid excuse and we are, all of us, bound to obey God perfectly, notwithstanding all that has happened in the past. What a debt, then, we must owe Him— a debt that is increasing every day—a debt that is already past all reckoning—a debt that will go on swelling as long as we live unless it can be removed by some power higher than our own!
That debt of penalty involves tremendous results to the body and the soul of man. “Fear not them which kill the body,” said Christ, “but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy both soul and body in Hell.” You know that among all the terrible words spoken concerning the penalty of sin, the most terrible are those which were uttered by our Lord Jesus Christ, the most loving and tender of all teachers. Measure not a man’s true tenderness of heart by his avoidance of the subject of “the wrath to come.” It may be only tenderness to him, or a willingness to pander to the evil desires of sinful men that prompts him to such action as that. But the Christ who weeps over Jerusalem does not hesitate to predict its dreadful doom! And He who loved men so much as to lay down His life for them was the one who spoke again and again of the place “where their worm dies not, and the fire is not quenched.” Many such words fell from those loving lips that never would have invented an unnecessary terror, so we may be sure that the penalty of sin is a very terrible one.