Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3224
“And that repentance and remission of sins should bepreached in His name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.” Luke 24:47.
[Another Sermon by Mr. Spurgeon upon the same text is #1729, Volume 29—BEGINNING AT JERUSALEM.]
THIS verse is among our Lord’s last words to His disciples just before He left them to return to Heaven. He wished to impress upon them the Truth of God that it was His purpose and desire that their lives should be devoted to the preaching of His Gospel among all nations upon the face of the earth. In Christ’s own words and throughout the New Testament, we find the greatest stress laid upon preaching. Preaching is the great battering ram that is to shake the gates of Hell! Preaching is God’s chief method of winning souls unto Himself—“for after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.” We cannot too often remind this age in which we live of this Truth, for this is a time in which it is supposed that rites and ceremonies, human learning and literature and I know not what else, may very properly be allowed to supplant the preaching of the Word! Yet our Lord has given no intimation of any change in His purpose and plan—on the contrary, His great commission is evidently intended to cover the whole of this present dispensation—“Go you, therefore, and teach (that is, make disciples of) all nations, baptizing them (that is, those who have been made disciples) in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit; teaching them to observe all things whatever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world (or, more properly, unto the end of the age). Amen.” So, until this dispensation is brought to a close by the personal return of the Lord Jesus Christ, “repentance and remission of sins” are to “be preached in His name among all nations.” Blessed, indeed, are those who, in this land or anywhere else, have heard their Lord and Master say to them as He said to His disciples before He left them, “and you are witnesses of these things.”
As I have been called, by His Grace, to be one of His witnesses, I will now try to put the text to practical use by preaching, first, upon the subject, and secondly, upon the audience here mentioned by our Lord.
I. First, let us consider THE SUBJECT OF OUR PREACHING as here stated by our Lord—“that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name.”
So the first part of the subject is that repentance should he preached in the name of Jesus. There is a very important point that must here be noted—and that is that repentance is not to be preached in the name of Moses as a legal duty. Undoubtedly, it is a legal duty, for everyone who sins against God ought to repent of doing so. Whenever we have broken any Law of God, we ought to be sorry for having broken it. It is the natural, commonsense duty of the creature, when he has disobeyed any command of his Creator, to grieve that he has thus grossly offended his Maker and to resolve that if possible, he will not do so any more. But it is not in this fashion, simply as a legal duty, that Christ has bid His servants preach repentance. If we preach it thus, our labor will be in vain—at least to a very large extent!
Nor are we to preach it merely as a matter of faint hope. There is, indeed, more than a faint hope for any man who is bid to repent because he will suppose, naturally and properly, that the God who bids him repent must have some designs of love towards him. But we are not to preach to sinners in such a fashion as simply to make them faintly hope that they may be saved. You know that when Jonah passed through the streets of Nineveh, his mournful and monotonous message was, “Yet forty days and Nineveh shall be overthrown.” When that message was carried to the king, he laid aside his gorgeous robe and put on sackcloth, sat in ashes, proclaimed a fast for man and beast and commanded his people to turn from their evil ways! Yet he had no better hope than this—“Who can tell if God will turn and repent, and turn away from His fierce anger, that we perish not?” When they repented, God didhave mercy upon them and spared them. But we
have to carry to sinners a far more hopeful message than that heathen king’s enquiry, “Who can tell if God will turn and repent?” Our Lord Jesus Christ has ordained that repentance should be preached in quite a different fashion than that!
We are not even to preach it after the manner of John the Baptistwho preached repentance as a preparation for the coming of Christ. His message was, “Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” To the Pharisees and Sadducees who came to his baptism, he said, “Bring forth, therefore, fruits meet for repentance,” evidences of a change of life, because there was One far mightier than he coming after him—whose shoes he was not worthy to bear. John was only sent to prepare the way for Him who should baptize with the Holy Spirit and with fire. There are some, nowadays, who seem to think that repentance is a sort of preparation for faith in Christ, but that is not as we understand the Word of God— as we will try to show you before we have finished our discourse. We have not to preach repentance after the manner or in the nature of Moses, or Jonah, or John the Baptist—we have to preach repentance in the name of Jesus Christ! What does this mean?