Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3050
“For the Son of Mann is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Luke 19:10.
GOD came down from Heaven but once to be united with human flesh. On what errand did He come and who were the objectives of it? What messenger was sent on that errand? What method was pursued by Him? With what success was it attended?Our text gives us the information—“The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.” Let us speak briefly upon these four points.
I. First, AS TO THE OBJECTIVE OF CHRIST’S ERRAND—“The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”
That word, “lost,” is constantly applied by desponding and despairing persons to themselves. Such people say, “We are lost—we feel that we are lost, wholly lost. There is no hope for us.” Herein they betray both their ignorance and their unbelief—their ignorance, for to be lost is nothing so peculiar that they should claim to be heritors of a strange doom since the whole human race is lost! And their unbelief since Christ came especially to seek and to save the lost. Therefore, their being lost is not a ground for despair, but may be construed into a ground of hope! Let us think over that word, “lost,” and see in what sense those are lost whom Christ came to save.
Christ came to save those who were lost hereditarily. You often hear people say, “Man is in a state of probation.” No such thing! There is no man now in a state of probation. Adam was in a state of probation and man in Adam was in a state of probation in the Garden as long as he stood in obedience to the test that was given. He was upon his trial, but the moment that Adam tasted of the forbidden fruit, the probation was over—he was a lost man! And our probation was over, too, for we were lost in him. Man, in this world, is either in a state of condemnation or a state of salvation. “He that believes not” is not in a state of probation—he is “condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.” We have Divine authority for this. A man who has believed in Jesus is not in a state of probation, for “there is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus,” and, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” The fact is that we are all absolutely lost through the sin of Adam and we need a Revelation to show us that we are absolutely saved in the righteousness of Christ! It is not a question whether I shall fall or not—I have fallen in Adam. “By one man’s disobedience,” says the Apostle, “many were made sinners.” I stood in Adam as long as he stood, but when Adam fell, he so represented me and all my kith and kin, that I fell in him—and fell so as to be hopelessly and forever lost—if Jesus Christ had not stepped in “to seek and to save that which was lost.”
We are lost, again, in another sense. We are lost naturally. It is supposed by some that man has it now in his power to choose his own character and so become the arbiter of his own destiny. They say that his nature is, at first, in such a state of equilibrium that he can select either the strait and narrow path of rectitude, or pursue the broad road which leads to destruction. No, my dear Friends, both Scripture and experience teach us otherwise! We are born with natures that incline towards that which is evil and never of themselves tend towards that which is good! “Behold,” says David, “I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.” Well did Job ask, “Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? No one.” How, then, can he be pure who is born of a woman who is herself sinful? How can we, who are impure, be the parents of pure children? Such a thing is not possible! The whole head of human nature is sick and the whole heart faint. Naturally from our very birth we go astray, speaking lies! There is written upon human nature, by the finger of our first parent, this word, “Lost!”—lost to God, therefore lost to the virtuous exercise of the affections and the true balance of the judgment, lost to rectitude, the will lost to obedience, the mental vision lost as to a sight of God, the moral sense lost as to that proper sensibility of conscience by which it shall stand out against sin. The reigning power in
man is dislodged from its place—manhood’s glory, his victory and integrity lost, lost forever—unless some greater Man shall restore it. This is how we truthfully describe the whole human race and so, surely, those whom Christ came to save were hereditarily and naturally lost.
Among these, there are some so totally lost to all feeling that they do not know they are lost. Even the preaching of the Gospel does not suffice to bring them to a consciousness of their condition. Their conscience has become seared and their heart hardened by perversity in sin. If they once knew what it was to tremble at the wrath to come, that time is past. Even the wooing of Divine Mercy fall upon them as oil would fall upon marble and runs off without producing any effect. They wish they could feel. They envy souls that despair and wish that they could, themselves, despair. They despair, however, of ever being able to get into a good enough state of heart to despair! “If anything is felt,” they say, “‘tis only pain to find we cannot feel,” and not much of that is felt. Now, even such Jesus Christ came to save—and we know this because such were some of us! Do not I recollect the time when I would have given my eyes for a tear and would have been willing to suffer anything if I could have but bent my knees and uttered one groan? But my heart would not yield a sigh or my eyes a tear! I turned to the Book of God but that did not move me. I listened to the preacher without emotion. It seemed as if even a dying Savior’s groans could never move a heart so base as mine—and yet I bear witness that Christ came to save such, for I do myself rejoice in His salvation! You who are lost to all feeling may well catch at this text, “The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.”