Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3357
“Take heed, therefore, how you hear.” Luke 8:18.
It is implied in this verse that you do hear. A man cannot take heed how he hears if he does not hear at all. Hence, how great is the sin of a vast proportion of the inhabitants of this city who utterly forsake the ministry of the Gospel, who never hear it, or hear it but only now and then! We have frequently met with people who, before they came to this house, never attended any place of worship. They were taken there, they say, to be christened, or they went there to be married and they expected to be carried there, or somewhere like it, to be buried, but that was all their church going and all their respect for the worship of God. Unhappy they—to have the Light of God and to refuse to see—to have God’s diamond lying, as it were, at their very feet, and yet to refuse to pick it up! The day will come when wasted Sabbaths will be a burning accusation against the inhabitants of this privileged, but wicked city! With churches in almost every street, with preachers of the Gospel to be found here and there declaring fully the saving Truth of God, it shall go harder with the citizens of London than with the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah in the day when the Lord comes to judge the quick and the dead! Do I address any who have merely dropped in here tonight, but who are not often hearers of God’s Word? Ah, my dear Friends, you little know the sweetness of the Gospel, for if you did, “not tents of ease nor thrones of power” could tempt your feet away from the place where God specially reveals Himself on the Day of Rest!
Do you think how unjustly you are treating your God? There are seven days in the week and He gives you six, but you rob Him of the seventh. You are like a man on the highway who met a beggar and seeing him to be in great need— and having but seven pounds in his pocket, he gave the beggar six—and then the beggar knocked him down and stole the seventh from him! He was an ungrateful wretch—and what are you? You shall answer for yourselves.
It is implied, again, in the text that a man hears the Gospel, for it does not matter much how you hear if it is not God’s message, if it is not the Truth of God. The best way to hear a lie is not to hear it at all. The best way to hear preaching that is not according to God’s Gospel is to hear enough of it to know what it is and then walk off and hear no more. But it is implied that you do hear the Gospel and here comes the enquiry—Do those who frequent places of worship invariably ask themselves the question—“Is the preacher a Gospel preacher? Does he preach according to the Holy Scriptures? Does he deliver to me the Truth of God, or is it a cunningly devised fable or invention of his own?” I fear that the most of our hearers only ask, “Is he a fluent speaker? Is he a high-soaring rhetorician? Can he pile his words, one upon another? Or is he amusing? Does he use many illustrations and metaphors? Will there be something to interest me?” Ah, but, my Hearers, if the bread is poisoned, it is of small concern that the baker makes it up into pretty loaves! If it is not a Gospel draught that is given you to drink, it is a small matter to you whether the cup is richly designed or not. Better that you have it in the poorest pot and drink from that, if it is from the river of the Water of Life, than that you receive untruth out of a golden cup! The chief matter with a hearer when he goes to a town to live and has to enquire, “Where shall I attend on the Lord’s-Day?” should be this—“Where can I hear most concerning the Lord Jesus Christ? Where shall I hear a man who can touch my conscience? Where shall I hear the Truth that will be quick, powerful and sharp as a two-edged sword to my soul? Where may I hope to be saved? Where may I trust, being saved, that I may be helped on the road to Heaven?” All the rest is mere matter of taste, but this is a matter of the utmost importance! Is it the Gospel or not? If it is not the Gospel, let not your feet tread the floor! But if it is the Gospel of Jesus, then “forsake not the assembling of yourselves together, as the manner of some is.”
But now, these two things being granted—that we ought to hear and that it ought to be the Gospel—the text graciously counsels us, “Take heed how you hear.” We purpose to handle our theme after this fashion. First, there is a caution implied in the text. Secondly, there are rules intended in it. And then again, there are strong reasons for it. First, there is—
I. A Caution Implied in the Text
“Take heed how you hear.” The caution is that we should not think it a trifling thing to hear the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “Take heed”—as though you had to stop on the threshold and remember where you are. Take heed, take heed and remember, then, that it is no trifling thing to hear a sermon if it is a Gospel sermon! Some think it is a simple work to preach and child’s play to sit and listen. When the great trumpet peals and the dead are awakened, they will think very differently! They will reckon that speech was never put to so noble a purpose as when it was used to bring men to reconciliation with their Maker—and that ears were never used to as good an end as when they were used attentively to hear what God the Lord would speak when He would bid the rebel come to Him and find mercy! The preacher, if he is what he should be, does not think it a light or easy thing to preach. It is said of Luther that he never feared any man and yet he declares that he never preached a sermon without his knees knocking together because he trembled lest he should be guilty of the blood of any of his hearers. This is the great burden of my life, lest I should miss anything that should be profitable to you. Lest, in dealing with God’s Word, I should be like some untaught chemist’s lad who is mixing medicines which were meant for restoring health, but who introduces poisons into them. No! But I would tell you all I know, tell you all God’s Word as I have learned it and speak it honestly, affectionately and plainly, trusting thus to be clear of the blood of all men!