Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3221
“And yet there is room.” Luke 14:22.
I REMINDED YOU, this morning, [See Sermon #485, Volume 8—NO ROOM FOR CHRIST IN THE INN.] that there was no room for Christ and His parents in the inn at Bethlehem—and also that there were then other places where, although there was no room for Christ, far inferior persons found a welcome and entertainment. I need, this evening, to convince you that although there are still many sinners who seem to have no room for Christ in their hearts and lives, yet there is plenty of room for sinners in the heart and love of Christ! And I am going to give them an earnest, tender, affectionate invitation to come to Christ while “yet there is room.” You who have hitherto been strangers to the Grace of God. You who, as yet, have never feasted at the Gospel Banquet, you who have, until now, been content with this world’s frothy dainties and have never tasted that which is substantial and satisfying for time and for eternity—to you, even to you—comes the message of our text, “yet there is room.”
I. My first question concerning the text is, WHERE IS THERE ROOM? And the answer is, there is room in the Fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness! There is room for you to be washed and to be made clean. Vast multitudes have gone into that Fountain black as the thickest night—and they have come up from the washing “whiter than snow.” Innumerable offenses have there been washed away, but the Fountain has lost none of its cleansing power, nor will it until the last elect soul has been washed therein, as Cowper so confidently and so truly sings—
“Dear dying Lamb, Your precious blood
Shall never lose its power
Till all the ransomed Church of God
Is saved to sin no more!” It is our joy to be able to assure you that in that blessed bath of cleansing, “yet there is room!”
There is room, too, in that chariot of love which carries the washed ones all the way to Heaven—that chariot of which Solomon’s was a type and of which we read, “he made the pillars thereof of silver, the bottom thereof of gold, the covering of it of purple, the midst thereof being paved with love for the daughters of Jerusalem.” In this chariot there is room for millions more—and if you are washed in His precious blood, He who is greater than Solomon will take you up and carry you on and over the rough and rugged road of this wilderness world—and conduct you safely to His Father’s House above. You shall travel joyously in the best of company, so enter while there is room, Sinner, and there is room now!
There is room, too, in the Father’s great family. He has adopted an innumerable multitude of those who once were children of wrath and servants of Satan! He has selected some of the vilest of the sons and daughters of Adam, but they are washed, they are cleansed, they are regenerate and they have received the seal of their adoption into the family of God and are joyously crying, “Abba, Father!” But there is room for millions more in that great family! Earthly fathers, as a general rule, have no room for strangers in their home—the house is already crowded with their own boys and girls—so they cannot receive other people’s children into their family. But there is still room in the great Father’s heart for all who will come unto Him by Jesus Christ, His Son. All whom He has chosen unto eternal life have not yet believed in Jesus and been “sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise, which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession.” All whom He intends to save have not yet been brought to recognize Him as their Father and
their God, so again I say that there is still room in the great Father’s heart for all who will come unto Him by Jesus Christ, His Son!
There is room, too, in the visible Church here below. We gladly welcome every new convert and we say to each one—
“Come in, you blessed of the Lord, Stranger nor foe are thou! We welcome you with warm accord, Our friend, our Brother now.”
“The Lord knows them that are His,” but all that are the Lord’s are not yet added to His visible Church. Thousands of them stray in the paths of sin—millions of them are as yet like jewels hidden away in the mire, or pearls lying many fathoms deep in the caverns of the sea! There is still room for more stars in the diadem that adorn the brows of the Church on earth! There is still room for more golden candlesticks to give her light. She still has room for many more children to be dandled on her knees and to suck at her breasts—use whatever metaphor we may, we can still say, in the words of our text—“yet there is room.”
There is room, too, in the ordinances of God’s House. There is room for you, Christian Brother or Sister, in the liquid tomb which is the emblem of your Savior’s grave! You may be buried with Him by Baptism into death and rise from the baptistery in the likeness of His Resurrection, therefore to walk with Him in newness of life! There is room for you, too, at that Communion Table where, in eating bread and drinking wine, we spiritually eat Christ’s flesh and drink His blood and so prove that He dwells in us and we dwell in Him.