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The sermon presents humanity as fallen, guilty, helpless, and unable to save itself through morality or religious works. Jesus Christ, fully divine and truly human, died for sinners so that God can justly forgive those who come to Him. Spurgeon urgently commands hearers to repent, believe, and come to Christ without delay, assuring even the worst sinner of a gracious welcome. The sermon combines a genuine universal Gospel appeal with confidence that the Holy Spirit sovereignly opens hearts and makes sinners willing to respond.
Theological center: The Gospel rests on Christ’s substitutionary atonement and God’s free mercy, applied to sinners through the sovereign work of the Holy Spirit.
Applications: Come to Christ · Repent and believe · Look to Jesus · Receive Christ’s welcome
Primary texts: Luke 14:23 · Revelation 22:17 · Isaiah 1:18
“Compel them to come in.” Luke 14:23 I FEEL in such a haste to go out and obey this commandment this morning, by compelling those to come in who are now tarrying in the highways and hedges, that I cannot wait for an introduction, but must at once set about my business. Hear then, O you that are strangers to the truth as it is in Jesus—hear then the message that I have to bring you. You have fallen, fallen in your father Adam, you have also fallen in yourselves by your daily sin and your constant iniquity, you have provoked the anger of the Most High, and as assuredly as you have sinned, so certainly must God punish you if you persevere in your iniquity, for the Lord is a God of justice, and will by no means spare the guilty. But have you not heard, has it not long been spoken in your ears, that God in His infinite mercy, has devised a way whereby, without any infringement upon His honor, He can have mercy upon you, the guilty and the undeserving? To you I speak, and my voice is unto you, O sons of men, Jesus Christ, very God of very God, has descended from heaven, and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh. Begotten of the Holy Ghost, He was born of the Virgin Mary, He lived in this world a life of exemplary holiness, and of the deepest suffering, till at last He gave Himself up to die for our sins, “the just for the unjust, to bring us to God.” And now the plan of salvation is simply declared unto you—“Whosoever believeth in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved.” For you who have violated all the precepts of God, and have disdained His mercy and dared His vengeance, there is yet mercy proclaimed, for “Whosoever calleth upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.” “For this is a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief,” “Whosoever cometh unto him he will in no wise cast out, for he is able also to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for us.” Now, all that God asks of you—and this He gives you—is that you will simply look at His bleeding dying Son, and trust your souls in the hands of Him whose name alone can save from death and hell. Is it not a marvelous thing that the proclamation of this Gospel does not receive the unanimous consent of men? One would think that as soon as ever this was preached, “That whosoever believeth shall have eternal life,” every one of you, “casting away every man his sins and his iniquities,” would lay hold on Jesus Christ, and look alone to His cross. But alas! such is the desperate…