Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2804
“But they have not all obeyed the Gospel.” Romans 10:16.
EVEN concerning those who have heard the Gospel, it can still be said, “They have not all obeyed the Gospel.” And this, dear Friends, is one of the plainest proofs of the deep depravity of human nature. We might have expected that if God, in the exercise of His marvelous mercy, should stay His hand and not at once execute the sentence of justice upon the guilty—if in His surprising Grace, He should devise a way by which He could be just and yet could justify the ungodly— I say, we might have supposed that the moment men heard that good news, they would immediately believe it! Seeing that they had offended God and so had brought themselves into a state of condemnation, we might have thought that as soon as ever the God of Grace mentioned the possibility of forgiveness, they would have sought it at His hand! It could never have been imagined—apart from the utter ruin of man’s nature by the Fall—that we should have needed so many ministers, so much pleading, so many years of long-suffering on God’s part and, above all, that we should have needed the display of the almighty power of the Spirit of God, Himself, before sinners would be willing to obey the Gospel! Yet so it is and nothing that I know of beneath high Heaven, so clearly proves that man’s heart is absolutely estranged from all that is good—and that the sinner has really become demented through his sin—as that man rejects the Gospel of Grace, refuses Divine Mercy and often stops his ears to the voice of God’s messengers and, in every case, except where the Holy Spirit graciously renews the nature—tramples underfoot the very blood of the Son of God! O Man, you who were at first like the sons of the morning—no, more than that, you who were made in the likeness of God—you whose place was in Eden, the garden of the Lord—how low have you fallen and into what a sad state of estrangement to your God have you come through your sin!
That, however, is not my subject at this time. I want, in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, to have a time of earnest pleading with those who have not obeyed the Gospel. It is true of many who meet with us, in this House of Prayer, as it is of those who assemble elsewhere, that though they have often heard the Gospel, yet “they have not all obeyed the Gospel.” Perhaps some of those who up to now have been disobedient, will now obey it. May the Spirit of God make it to be so!
I. My first observation upon the text will be this. THE GOSPEL COMES TO MEN WITH THE FORCE OF A
COMMAND. “They have not all obeyedthe Gospel.” But you cannot speak of obeying anything which has not the authority of a command—it is clear, therefore, that the Gospel comes to men in the form of a command and that it has the force of a command!
I shall not stay to quote the large number of texts which I might easily bring to your recollection and all of which, unless they are wrested from their true meaning in order to suit a certain form of theological teaching, prove that the Gospel comes to men as a command. I will mention just one such passage—“The times of this ignorance God winked at; but now commandsall men everywhere to repent.” So it is not optional to you whether you will accept the Gospel or not—it is not said to you, “You may, if you will, accept it, or you may, if you please, reject it.” You cannot reject it without incurring the guilt of disobedience to a Divine command! The Gospel does not come to you as an ordinary thing which is of little or no importance to you. It is true that you may reject it, but not without frightful peril to your soul. It does not humbly crave an entrance into your heart—it demandsit—claims it as a right! It comes not as a message from one of your fellow men, but, with Divine authority, it comes to you from the mouth of God, Himself, directly through His Word, or indirectly through the faithful preaching of His servants. Therefore, if you reject it, you are disobedient to God, Himself, like those of old to whom He said, “All day long I have stretched forth My hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.” To reject the Gospel of Christ is to incur great sin. He Himself said, concerning the Holy Spirit, “He will reprove (or convince) the world of sin.” And then, almost immediately, He added, “of sin, because they believe not on Me”—as though it were the very head and front of sin—the flower and crown of sin—its virus—its quintessence of guilt—that men believe not on Christ!
And, further, the command to men to believe the Gospel has the death penalty attached to disobedience. Let me remind you of the words of our Lord Jesus Christ upon this point—“He that believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil.” Remember, too, the solemn utterance of our Lord concerning the universal ministration of His Word—“Go you into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be damned.” So, you see, the Gospel is given to us as a command—and disobedience to it involves a direful penalty.