Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3094
“Now when they heard this, they were pricked in their heart, and said unto Peter and to the rest of the Apostles, Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Acts 2:37
[Another Sermon by Mr. Spurgeon upon the same text (together with verse 36,) is #2102, Volume 35—“PRICKED IN THEIR HEART]
I DARESAY you have seen collections of celebrated sermons which have been chosen with more or less discretion. I suppose that the sermon of Peter, on the day of Pentecost, was one of the most celebrated discourses that was ever delivered, for it was the means of bringing 3,000 persons to conviction, to conversion, to profession of faith and to union with the visible Church! Yet I do not believe that any library collector would ever have put this sermon by Peter among the most famous. It does not seem to me to be very eloquent—there is no climax in it, nothing of that fashionable thing called a “peroration.” It is all plain speaking and hard hitting, very personal, very much to the point, very full of clear Scriptural reasoning—but there is nothing at all oratorical about it. It is just such a simple speech as you might expect from a fisherman as Peter had been! I should think that Peter’s discourse was delivered calmly and deliberately. He was at a white heat of earnestness and was altogether too earnest to lose his self-control. His whole being was so thoroughly possessed by what he had to say that he thought little of how he said it.
It was a very powerful sermon, but where did the power lie, do you think? Well, instrumentally and speaking after the manner of men, I think it lay partly in Peter’s vivid realization of what he was saying. He knew that his Lord and Savior had, with wicked hands, been crucified and slain—and that He had risen from the grave and had gone back again to Heaven. You could see, by his whole manner, that he was not talking about myths and fancies, but about truths and things of which he knew for certain. There is always a power about a man’s message when his hearers know that he who delivers it believes what he is saying and has no latent doubts, no concealed skepticisms, but speaks what he knows and testifies what he has seen.
The next secret of the power of Peter’s discourse was, I think, that it was full of Scripture. There is a quotation, first of one Psalm, and then of another—David said this, and David said that—Peter’s superstructure of argument was built upon the solid rock of Holy Scripture. Peter had a great mass before him that day needing to be moved and I do not wonder that he got such good leverage with such a fulcrum as he had. The more of Scripture, yes, of the very words of Scripture that we can use in preaching, the better and, certainly, the more of such thing as can begin with, “Thus says the Lord.” Men will not care about what we say, or, “Thus says Mr. Wesley,” or, “Thus says John Calvin”—it is, “Thus says the Lord” that will have power over them! McCheyne says that you will generally notice that conversions are worked rather by the preacher’s text, or by some passage of Scripture quoted by him, than by his sermon, “For,” he adds, “it is God’s Word, not our comment upon God’s Word, which is usually blessed to the salvation of souls.” I think it is so, though the rule is not without many exceptions, and our Lord hints at that when He says, “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word,” as if the message of God-sent servants was not only God’s Word, but also theirword—and men were led to believe on Jesus through hearing it.
But the real strength of Peter’s sermon lay in this, that he had been that very day baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire. Sitting in that upper room with the rest of the disciples, he had heard “the sound from Heaven as of a rushing mighty wind” which “filled all the house where they were sitting.” And the “cloven tongues like as of fire” had sat upon
Peter as well as upon the rest—and he, too, had been “filled with the Holy Spirit,” so that through him the Holy Spirit spoke. Therefore it was that when he delivered that very simple sermon, his hearers were pricked in their heart, and thousands of them cried out, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?” Oh, that some such power might fall upon this congregation this evening, especially upon the unconverted part of it, that they might be “pricked in their heart” as Peter’s hearers were!
I. My subject is the pricking in the heart and my first observation is that A SAVING IMPRESSION IS ALWAYS A PRICK IN THE HEART.
A prick in the heart is very painful. To be pricked anywhere is not a thing to be desired, but a prick in the heart would not merely be painful, but, in a natural and literal sense, it would be fatal. There are a great many different kinds of impressions made by preachers upon their hearers, but blessed is that preacher who makes a wound right in their hearts!