Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3547
“Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, that through this Man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins and by Him all that believe are justified from all things from which they could not be justified by the Law of Moses.” Acts 13:38,39.
APOSTOLIC preaching was widely different from the common sermonizing of this age. Doubtless, when the Apostles addressed assemblies of Believers, they took distinct subjects and kept to them, opening up and expounding the particular Truths of God they had in view. But when speaking to the outside world, and making their appeals to unbelievers, they do not usually appear to have selected any one Doctrine as their topic. The manner in which they preached did not so much consist in inculcating a specific Doctrine and showing the inferences that would naturally arise from it, as it did in declaring certain facts of which they had been actual witnesses, themselves, and had been chosen to bear witness to others. Turn to Peter’s sermon at Pentecost, or the same Apostle’s sermon to Cornelius, or to the record of Paul’s preaching at Perga or at Antioch. You will find these discourses were an argument from the Scriptures that as God had of old promised to send a Savior, so Jesus Christ had come into the world, had lived a holy life, had been put to death, being falsely accused, had been laid in the grave, after three days had risen again and that afterwards He had ascended, according to the testimony of the Prophets. Of Him they spoke, that whoever believed in this Man, who was very God, should certainly be saved by Him. This was the declaration which they made. I do not find them, as a rule, expounding the Doctrine of Election in promiscuous assemblies of unbelievers, or arguing the subtle questions of free agency and Predestination, or striving about words to no profit, to the subverting of the hearers. Their resolute purpose was to declare those things that pertain directly to the salvation of the soul, this being the all-important matter which they would have all men to heed. Thus they charged everyone who heard them, at the peril of his soul, to accept the Revelation and embrace the faith of the Gospel!
Listen to the Apostle Paul in that famous 15th Chapter in the First Epistle to the Corinthians which is usually read at funerals. He says there—“Moreover, brethren, I declare unto you the Gospel which I delivered unto you.” Now you expect him to begin a long list of Doctrines, but instead of that, he says, “How that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures; and that He was buried, and that on the third day He rose again according to the Scriptures.” This it is that he emphatically describes as the Gospel! To assert these facts, to exhort men to believe them and to put their trust in the Man who thus lived, and died, and rose again, was the preaching of the Gospel which of old shook the hoary systems of superstition, fastened though they seemed to be upon their thrones most securely! This preaching it is which enlightened the darkness of heathendom and made, in those first ages of Christianity, the whole world to be astonished with the light and the Glory of Christ!
Let us, then, strive to imitate the Apostles, and endeavor to preach a simple Gospel sermon, if not with their ability, or with their Inspiration, yet with their earnestness and with the same desire as burned within their bosoms—that men may be saved thereby! We shall accordingly have to deal, first, with the history of Jesus, whom we hold forth as a Savior Secondly, with the claims of Jesus. And thirdly, with the blessings which Jesus brings. In respect to—
I. THE HISTORY OF JESUS, if you will kindly refer to your Bibles, you will find that the Apostle here commenced his sermon by noticing that many Prophets had gone before to speak concerning the coming of Jesus. In the 23rd verse he especially mentions the promise made to David, that of his seed God would raise up a Prince and a Savior to the house of Israel. Let me remind you, Brothers and Sisters, that full often in the world’s history, sages have appeared claiming a Divine Inspiration, whose announcements fostered the hope of a coming Man who should redeem the world from thrall-dom, and become the Savior of our race. All the Seers whose eyes were anointed of God to look into the future, heralded the advent of a Great Prophet, a Prince and a Savior, whose claims to homage it would be alike perilous and preposterous to reject! These Prophets appeared at divers times and various places, and without any collusion they have, one and all, proclaimed the same thing! The most of them sealed their witness with their blood. “Which of the Prophets did not your fathers slay?” Yet in the teeth of extreme suffering, or of violent death, they seem to have been compelled by a Divine furor within them to proclaim, even to the last, that One was coming who would overturn the old reign of terror and the old order of outward ceremonies, to introduce a spiritual kingdom, and to redeem the world from its sins and sorrows!