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The sermon defines the gospel as full, free, present, and everlasting pardon through Jesus Christ’s atoning blood. It strongly rejects salvation based on religious performance, moral generosity, intellectual ability, emotional experience, or financial resources. Christ alone has paid the price, and sinners are called to come to Him by faith, confessing their need and relying on His mercy. The message combines tender assurance for the needy with urgent warnings to face sin, judgment, and eternity honestly.
Theological center: Sinners are justified and pardoned by God’s free grace through Christ’s atoning blood, received by faith rather than earned by works.
Applications: Trust Christ alone for salvation · Look to the crucified Savior · Believe salvation is entirely by grace · Believe Christ’s atonement is sufficient
Primary texts: Isaiah 55:9
because we needed them, but because God would show us how He loved us and how anxious He was that we should be happy. Now, it is not likely that the God who made a happy world would send a miserable salvation. He who is a happy Creator will be a happy Redeemer. Those who have tasted that the Lord is gracious can bear witness that the ways of religion “are ways of pleasantness and all her paths are peace.” And if this life were all—if death were the burial of all our life and if the shroud were the winding sheet of eternity—still to be a Christian would be a bright and happy thing, for it lights up this valley of tears, and fills the wells in the valley of Baca to the brim with streams of love and joy. The Gospel, then, is like wine. It is like milk, too, for there is everything in the Gospel that you want. Do you want something to bear you up in trouble? It is in the Gospel—“a very present help in time of trouble.” Do you need something to nerve you for duty? There is grace all-sufficient for everything that God calls you to undergo or to accomplish. Do you need something to light up the eye of your hope? Oh! there are flashes of joy in the Gospel that may make your eye flash back again the immortal fires of bliss. Do you want something to make you stand steadfast in the midst of temptation? In the Gospel there is that that can make you immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. There is no passion, no affection, no thought, no wish, no power which the Gospel has not filled to the very brim. The Gospel was evidently meant for manhood. It is adapted to it in its every part. There is knowledge for the head. There is love for the heart. There is guidance for the foot. There is milk and wine in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And I think there is another meaning in the two words “milk and wine.” Wine, you know, is a rich thing, something that requires much time to manufacture. There has to be vintage and fermentation and preservation before wine can come to its full flavor. Now, the Gospel is like that—it is an extraordinary thing for feast days. It gives a man power to use a vintage of thought, a fermentation of action, and a preservation of experience, till a man’s piety comes forth like the sparkling wine that makes the heart leap with gladness. There is that, I say, in religion, that makes it an extraordinary thing—a thing for rare occasions, to be brought out when princes sit at the table. But milk is an ordinary thing. You get it everyday, anywhere. If you just run out into the farm yard there it is. There is no preparation required. It…