S. Observing the Commands of Christ

OBSERVING THE COMMANDS OF CHRIST

TEXT: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. - Matthew 28:20. More than once during the last great meeting your attention was called to this commission of our Saviour, and the first part of it was doubtless sufficiently discussed; that is, to make disciples by repentance and faith, and to baptize the disciples. And now comes the text of today: “Teaching them (that is, the baptized disciples) to observe all things whatsoever” Jesus Christ has commanded. You will do well to note carefully that a baptized disciple has only started. He has complied with the initial commandments. He has learned the rudiments. He has made his heart acquainted with the first principles of the oracles of God. He is a babe in Christ. It is easy to point out the ground over which he has passed. He has repented towards God he has received the Lord Jesus Christ-he has been baptized. He is now a member of the church, entitled to all its privileges and franchises and subject to all its obligations. I ask you next to compare thoughtfully the difficulties of the first teaching with the difficulties of this teaching. In making disciples you deal with the enemies of Jesus Christ, in open revolt against His government. The inveterate and incorrigible depravity of the heart must be subdued; but when a disciple is once made, when the Holy Spirit has breathed upon him and made him a new man; when his heart is full of love to God, then it would seem easy to teach him to do whatever his Saviour has commanded him to do. And my reliance today is upon the fact that you are children of God horn from above penitent believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, created in Him unto good works. I have as the predicate of every instruction I shall give you today, and as the hope of its fulfilment in your life, that you are children of God. Not only this, but I can appeal to your baptism, to which you submitted in the presence of vast throngs of the people, thus publicly obligating yourselves to walk in newness of life according to the resurrection which it showed. Not only this, but the baptism was more than a declaration of your faith in Jesus Christ as King of kings and Lord of lords, and divine teacher and divine Saviour; it was also your oath of allegiance to Him. In it you put on His uniform, enlisted in His service, acknowledged His ownership of brain and hand and heart and purse and everything that you had. Therefore, in teaching you, God’s children, you monuments of His mercy, you, on the altar of whose hearts the kindling fire of a new inspiration has been placed, I can with some confidence venture to lay upon you the obligation to do whatever else He has commanded. Now, I am going to so arrange this sermon that you can take hold of it and the different parts of it. I will do this by emphasizing single words. First, is the word “impossible.” By that, I mean that it would be impossible to teach you to do these things Jesus Christ has commanded if you had not been born of the Spirit of God. It would be morally impossible. There are some foolish people who assume to take a raw sinner and whitewash his depravity and baptize him in his unregenerated, his sinful and antagonistic state, and ,then try to teach him to observe all the commandments of Jesus Christ. It is morally impossible. Such teachers will say, “Join the church if you have no more religion than a horse. Join the church and get religion by doing religion.” These very teachers who break down the walls of the sheepfold and invite in and drive in all the goats who can be persuaded or driven, will then stand at the gate and complain that the fold is full of goats, who will not act like sheep. It is circumstantially impossible to teach the latter part of this commission to those ignorant of the first part. Unless he is converted, unless his soul is made anew, you cannot induce him to attend regularly and systematically, and regular attendance there must be in order to learn and to do what my text speaks about today; and, therefore, circumstantially it would be impossible for this part of the commission of the Lord Jesus Christ to be performed, the other being undone. And it is not only morally and circumstantially impossible, but it is personally impossible, in that you could not, except upon the predicate of the first work done, get the man’s consent to be a learner and a doer of these other words of Jesus Christ. And without his consent and co-operation, how can you teach? Therefore, morally, circumstantially and personally, it would be impossible for this latter part of the commission to be carried out if the first part had failed. So when you hear false teachers transpose the order of God’s commandments and when you see their deluded followers vainly trying to lead a Christian life without being Christians, you will recall this first emphatic word, “impossible.” You will recall God’s word in Ezekiel, that when He had cleansed them, when He had taken away their stony hearts, when He had giver them a heart of flesh, when He had put His Spirit within them, “then they would keep his commandments and do them.” You will recall the words of Jesus: “First make the tree good and then the fruit will be good.” Yes, impossible impossible! My next word is “only.” “Teaching them only what he has commanded.’ Now, there is a vast deal of both religion and theology in that thought. I do not feel upon my heart as a preacher the slightest obligation to teach to you from this pulpit on this and similar occasions anything except what Jesus has commanded, either by express words or by fair and necessary implication. I will not go back to any authority of councils in dark ages, nor to conventions, nor to resolutions of men, to. find even the shadows of a burden to put on you-not one. Here the law by the expression of one thing excludes every other thing. When the obligation is laid upon us to teach what Jesus has commanded, it means to teach in His name nothing that He has not commanded. I wish you would rivet that, clinch it, and never allow any preacher, your pastor nor any other man’s pastor, pope, archbishop, cardinal, deacon, or elder, no matter what his name or what his position, to teach you anything as a religious obligation except what Jesus Christ has commanded. And if Jesus has commanded it you may be sure He has commanded it in words easy to be understood, and the words are a matter of record; therefore, demand that the teacher show you the words. And if he cannot show you the words you say to him, “As a religious teacher you are out of your province. I am not under the slightest obligation to hear you teach that. Give me the precepts and examples from the Word of my Lord.” Now I asked you to rivet that so it may abide with you, and I will tell you why. Because thereby you have swept away nine hundred and ninety-nine out of every thousand of the so-called religious obligations imposed upon the consciences of men. They are swept away. When teachers with itching ears, or the people themselves would yield to popular demands or customs in other denominations, when they try to impose their Easter days or other festivals or rites of paganism and will-worship on you, remember this word, “only.” Only what Jesus has commanded. Remember Paul’s injunction, misapplied to the less deadly sin of dram-drinking: “Touch not; taste not; handle not.” I will give you a smaller word for the next thought - “All.” All. That is in the text. “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” Now, when it says, “all” it doesn’t mean a part. When it says, “all” it doesn’t allow us with nicety of conscience to discriminate. It doesn’t allow us to say, “This commandment I will teach and I will do; that other commandment, being less important, I will leave out.” You may count the days from the time a churchmember begins to quibble in his discrimination of ordinances until he commits treason. There must be some high ideal of the majesty and dignity and supremacy of law-so high that you will not attempt to palm off upon the ignorant and credulous and superstitious anything as law that is not written, nor amend at your hazard anything that is written. I tremble for a man who begins to extenuate and palliate and apologize for his disregard of the least of the commandments of Jesus Christ. We will come to that “all” again directly. For the present, consider another word “alway”. That is in the text. “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have comanded you; and lo, I am with you alway.” In other words, His continuance with His people is to be commensurate with the obligation to teach and to do what He has commanded, and therefore the obligation is to teach “alway,” because He has promised to be with them, “alway.” Now let us see what is the first idea in that “alway,” and especially when you look at it as it is expressed in the original, “Lo, I am with you all the days, every one of the days, bright or dark; I am with you all the days, even unto the end of the world.” What then is the first thought in it! Do you know how much you have learned when you receive, not as a sojourner, but as a member of the family, this thought, that no - commandment of Jesus Christ is ever to become antiquated! You will see men in these modern times attitudinizing before an undiscerning public as men of “advanced thought,” of high culture, who have gotten beyond some of the old commandments of Jesus. They say, “That was that time; this is now.” Never, forever does any commandment of Jesus Christ go out of date. It lies on you as imperious in its obligation as it rested on the hearts and consciences of the men to whom it was originally addressed. Not only that, but there comes right under that thought, which is that as we are to teach only what He has commanded, and all He has commanded, and as we are to teach that alway, and as He so commanded, being omniscient and looking to the end of the world, and foreseeing all future contingencies and developments, therefore, there will never be any need for another revelation. This is the gospel. It is to have no successor. Like an angel, it has no posterity. And like its eternal Priest, it has no successor. The next thought is the tense. Tense refers to time. We say, “present tense, past tense, future tense.” Now what tense comes in here? “Teaching them to observe all things I have commanded you.” “It is finished.” What does that mean? That means that from the day this obligation was placed upon the disciples, Jesus Christ was to reveal no new commandments, but He was to give the Holy Spirit, whose mission it was merely to bring to their remembrance the things that He had done and had taught, so that not even from Christ Himself do we look for another book, another revelation. So that what is contained in the Acts of the Apostles, and referred to in the epistles and in the Apocalypse, are but the unfolding and development of what had occurred when He said, “It is finished.” When I come to the next word I think of that old Latin proverb, Hic labor; hoc opus est. Not teaching them all the commandments? Oh, no! Oh, how sad it is when we get the idea of it” But “teaching them to observe all things whatsover I have commanded you” to observe. Hear the story of the Scotch boys, for I do want you to rivet this thought. A Scotch mother had two boys, Jamie and Robbie. Jamie was very bright, but Robbie was very dull; Jamie had a strong, vigorous body, but poor Robbie was a cripple. One day the Scotch mother brought home a chart on which were the Ten Commandments, and hung it up in the room and said, “Now, boys, there is your lesson.” Jamie flashed his eyes at it and said, “Why, Mother, I can learn it in half an hour, but it will take Bobby a month.” And in half an hour Jamie came and recited every one of them, but poor Bobby could not say one of them. But he had come to his mother and asked her the meaning of this one, “Honour thy father and thy mother.” And she had explained it. Soon after, the mother said, “Jamie, I wish you would run out beyond the hill and drive the cattle home.” And he shrugged his shoulders and said, “Oh, mother, I don’t want to go.” But Bobby hobbled up to his mother and said, “Mother, I will go.” “Ah, Jamie, Robbie is ahead of you in the commandments. You have learned them, but have not learned to observe any of them.” Listen at the scorn of God, the sarcasm of the Almighty, when He speaks to Ezekiel: “Also, thou son of man, the children of thy people still are talking against thee by the walls and in the doors of the houses and speak one to another, every one to his brother, saying, Come, I pray you, and hear what is the word that cometh forth from the Lord. And they come unto thee as the people cometh, and they sit before thee as my people, and they hear thy words, but they will not do them; for with their mouth they show much love, but their heart goeth after their covetousness. And, lo, thou art unto them as a very lovely song of one that hath a pleasant voice and can play well on an instrument; for they hear thy words, but they do them not.” The Saviour’s grand peroration comes up to emphasize and accentuate the thought. At the close of the Sermon on the Mount, He says, “Therefore, whosoever heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock. And everyone that heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon the sand. And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon that house; and it fell and great was the fall of it.” And James says, “But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man, beholding his natural face in a glass: For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this man shall be blessed in his deed.” “Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of, rams.” It is the essence of the law, obedience. “Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” We are all like Solomon in one respect; we know more wisdom than we practice. But I do wish-it has been a matter of very grave concern to me in tie last twenty-four hours - I do wish that in your hearts could come this very day a purpose like granite, “God being my helper I will delight to do His will. It shall be more to me than my necessary food. It shall be sweeter to me than the honey-comb.” God, give us the spirit of prompt and loving and continuous obedience! You have slept with a traitor the very night that you have harbored the thought that you could disregard a commandment of Jesus Christ. Let our last emphasis be on a phrase, “I am with you.” “Lo, I am with. you, alway, even unto the end of the world.” That presence! Do you remember the day I preached the sermon here in which the position was taken that you could be as vividly impressed by and as sensibly conscious of the presence of God as you could of the presence of a man, and some thought it a strange doctrine? But since our meeting, I venture to say 250 of you, maybe more, would stand up and say, “I know that now just as well as you do. I know that is true.” You recollect when you felt that presence, when you felt it in this house. Here was His power, here was the Lord Himself. Oh, the sweetness of it! Can succeeding events ever blur the pictures on our hearts of that glorious meeting, when mercy came down, and power and love filled this house full of the glory of God! Now, brethren, I can promise you that presence always if you do what He says. He promises that presence only when we make disciples as He commanded, only when we teach them what He has commanded. But always when we carry out His instructions we may claim and expect that presence. But suppose I teach a substitute for baptism; can I say, “Be thou with me?” Suppose I sidetrack the principal thought in the communion; can I say, “Be thou with met” Suppose I enjoin a tradition of man as a substitute for the commandment of Jesus Christ; can I say, “Be thou with me?” For that reason, if there were no other reason in this world, I would count it as an obligation which absolutely shut me in, leaving me no alternative. I cannot afford to be without. God’s presence. I want to feel it when I pray, when I preach. When I do anything that is a religious thing, I want the presence of the Holy Spirit. When men corrupt the plain words of the Lord Jesus Christ, it is to step out of the highways which He illumines, which He overshadows, which He guards from uncleanness and peril, to wander in a dismal Okefenokee swamp of tradition, to listen to the bellowing and hooting of alligators and owls, and to dwell with slimy things. I would not have God’s finger write on my brain, “High treason! Thou traitor!” And then I expect to die, and when I come to die, it may be, it will be a time of memories for me; and when my mind goes back over the past, it would be a bitter thing for me to remember that I had taught men in the name of God to do what God had never commanded and that in teaching them to do what God had never commanded I had thereby substituted man’s word for God’s Word. I do not want that memory at such a time. And when I come to die, it will be a time of anticipation. The mind will not only look backward, but it will look forward above the swelling of the Jordan into the misty shores of the beyond into the realms of eternity, in the forefront of which looms up the Great White Throne of God’s judgment. In such anticipation I do not wish to look into the eye of Him whose glance is like lightning, so keen, so hot, that men who could - bear the piercing of the dart and saber and arrow flinch from it as from a spear of fire. I would not, while standing before Him, have to think that I had spent my life teaching men to do contrary to what He had commanded. Finally, what are the things which He has commanded? You cannot even consider them unless you take hold first of this word “church.” I would not have any member of this congregation to be ignorant of what that word means-church. There are questions I want you to be able to answer just as quick as you can put the forefinger of your right hand on the forefinger of your left hand. I want you to be able to turn the leaves of the Book to the proof-texts as fast as you can answer: Who established the church? When did He establish the church? What is the church? What are its ordinances? Who are its officers? What are their duties? What is its worship? What is its discipline? What is its work? Do you know that to be a Baptist there is a greater demand for intelligence and piety than to be anything else in the world? I make that statement boldly and never expect to qualify it unless to make it stronger, and now, I will tell you why, directly. I want you to learn that the Lord Jesus Christ established His church, and not Abraham, nor Mahomet, nor Moses, nor Lord Chesterfield, and that the Lord Jesus Christ established His church, not in His preincarnate state, nor in His ascended state, but in the days of His flesh. In a sermon hereafter I will cite these Scriptures. I would cite them today but for one reason: You left your Bibles at home, and I now ask you, every member of this church, to bring your Bibles next time and note the passages, so that any member of this church can meet any preacher in the world and say, “Here, thus saith the Lord.” I want to answer these questions: Who founded the church? When did He found the church? What is the church? What are its ordinances? Who are its officers? What are their duties? What is its worship? What is its authority? What is its work? What is its mission? A church of Jesus Christ is the purest democracy the world ever saw, and the only one; the only one in the world, the only one the world ever knew anything about. Every member is the full equal of every other member; no master in it, no lord in it. Now I will tell you why it requires more intelligence and more piety and more courage to be a Baptist than to be anything else in the world. In the first place, members of Baptist churches have truer and higher citizenship than any others in the world. Your franchise is broader. You select your religious teachers you receive your members you are the final earthly judges of doctrine and discipline. Now that calls for intelligence. If these were done for you by others, it would not make any difference whether you had any intelligence or not. If somebody else settled the question for you, if you had the luxury of a pope or a bishop, who could appoint for you teachers of morals and of religion, for you and for your children, why then let him be intelligent and pious. But if you make the election, if God devolves upon you such vast and solemn obligations, you cannot delegate your responsibilities. Whatever may be the case with others, with you there can be no sponsors and no proxies. You, as fellow citizens, elect your preacher, elect your deacons, ordain your preacher and your deacons, and then judge of the soundness of the doctrines which they teach. Therefore, you ought to know the Bible by heart. You ought to learn it, every member of you. I am prouder of you as a congregation in one thing than of any congregation I ever saw, and that is, you do your own thinking. You are indeed fellow citizens, and under God you feel responsibility resting upon you every time you elect a preacher or a deacon, or even appoint a protracted meeting. And I gladly admit you were right in your judgment as to when to commence this last one and your pastor’s judgment was at fault. Now, doesn’t that call for intelligence and piety and courage? And then to be the judge of doctrine. I want you to be able to prove that from the Bible. I could tell you the Scripture this morning, but you have no Bibles with you and you would not remember it. You, knowing God’s Word in the pew, are to be the judges of the soundness of the. truth preached from the pulpit; and if a man brings to you any other gospel than the gospel of Jesus Christ, you are not to receive him. Not only that, but as a member of this congregation, this commonwealth, this pure democracy, you and not the preacher have charge of its discipline, and therefore you ought to be acquainted with the law of the New Testament. Every step of it ought to be as familiar to you as the walk from your house-door to your front-gate sidewalk. Yes, it ought to be that familiar to you. Well, it isn’t easy then to be a Baptist. Moreover, upon you, the congregation, upon you has God devolved this solemn charge, to preserve and to observe the ordinances as He delivered them unto you. Then you ought to know all about them. You ought to be able to tell how many of them there are, and where He placed them, and what is to be done and why it is to be done, and to what end. It ought to be just as familiar to you as it is to your pastor. And that means every member of every Baptist church. Not only this, but here is the grand thing, “teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you.” O church, ecclesia, the called out, the called out from the, world, the called out to the service of God, the blood-washed congregation of Jesus Christ, on you is devolved this commandment, “making disciples of all nations.” What a thought! How stupendously high! How immeasurably deep! How incomprehensibly broad! You are to make disciples here in Waco. You are to make disciples in cooperating with the churches of the association. You are to make disciples in the state, co-operating in the state convention. You are to make disciples in the world, co-operating with the Southern Baptist Convention. And you ought to understand every point of duty and history in these departments of work. You ought to know the name, of every special collector in your church, and you ought to know the object of that collection. You ought to know its end or destination. So then, as a citizen, understanding, piously observing, courageously executing the law of God, you may at last hear, rising above the cold waves of death, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant; enter thou into the joys of thy Lord.” O ye children of God, ye converted people, ye called out, ye witnesses, ye lovers of Jesus, ye men and women who stood up here before great throngs and said He is our Saviour, what is your mission herein Waco, here among your neighbors, here where you live? Make disciples! Carry the gospel! God give us a revolution in Christian work. I pray for this revolution and can tell you the steps of it. How are you going to make disciples here in Waco! You must give yourself to God for service. Now, I am just one, and I do my best. I have six public services every week, and every one of them has to be studied. Who would bring an empty mind before a people, commits a sin. Oftentimes I do not sit down to eat. I am so busy that one of the members of the church suggested that I needed nine days to the week. Then how can I do the visiting in Waco? What can I do in so great a matter? But there are of you over eight hundred. What if you made one visit a day, a religious visit, each one of you! In a week you would make 5,600 religious visits. Did you ever think of that? Will you now think about It? It would breed a revolution. I tell you the science of heaven, as well as of earth, brings the most battalions upon a given point at one time. If you mount only one gun, whose solitary shot is heard only once a week, the Devil will build up three walls while you demolish one. But if you bring up the whole line of God’s elect, if you put the commission on the heart of every converted soul, if you let every man of them feel, “Yes, I know how to lead a soul to Jesus,” then comes stupendous victory. I know that every man in the world can tell his experience if he has one. Some people cannot tell it because they have not got it. But if you love Jesus you can say that to a sinner. Now, brethren, if each of you bring one sinner here a week, that is a thousand new ones every Sunday. Did you ever think about it? Oh, do think of it! There is the secret; there is the power; there is the revolution. Bring a Bible with you next Sunday and mark the Scriptures I will give you, then study them so that you will know them by heart, and when you sit down by a man you say, “I am your neighbor. I am no preacher. I don’t know anything about Greek and Latin, but here is what Jesus said. You read that.” Oh, for a working church! And now having given you this exhortation, I will speak a few words of praise. I was gratified exceedingly when the State Superintendent of Missions announced publicly and published it in the Minutes of the Convention, that you did, as a congregation, more mission work for God than any other ten churches in the state. I was glad of that, but I knew we had not done very much after all. But when we come to the true conception of service to Christ, you will hear men get up in this congregation and say, “Here, I have $100 or $500 or $1,000 I would like to invest in the necessary books to put into the hands of the members of the church, that they may learn their duties, and I will give another $100 and let the city missionary take them over the district, wherever you go, and flood the town in every place.” Now, here is a proposition: I will agree to it if you will. Here we stand today, fronting each other. I say I will agree to it if you will, that at every public service we hold in this church, at the prayer meeting, Sunday morning or Sunday night service, I will call for sinners to step heavenward if you will get them. here and pray for their present salvation, and so let the Lord bless us until every time this church comes together a soul is converted. Now that is the revolution I seek. Are you willing? I will commence right now. Saviour, make this a great day! To any lost soul here today I do now offer present and eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ. Will you accept it as a gift? Will you take it today? If you do not understand, will you now rise up and come here for… guidance and instruction? Will you come as the publican, praying, “God be merciful to me a sinner”?