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John William McGarvey, Chapel Talks, 1956,
Chapel Address 16. These “talks” from 1910-11 were addressed to
men who were studying to preach, and therefore are presented
with them in mind. The import of the talks, however, are
universal. - Editor
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Repentance
By
John William McGarvey
John William McGarvey, Chapel Talks, 1956, Chapel Address 16. These
“talks” from 1910-11 were addressed to men who were studying to
preach, and therefore are presented with them in mind. The import of
the talks, however, are universal. - Editor
There are certain considerations in regard to repentance, which it
is exceedingly important for us to keep in mind. Among all the
conditions of pardon and eternal life, it is the most difficult to
bring about. When you look through the record of the Savior's
earthly ministry, you find that he induced a great many to believe
in Him--so many that, in the latter part of his career, it is said
by one Apostle, "many of the chief rulers believed, yet they did not
confess him for fear of the Pharisees, lest they be excluded from
the Synagogue." These chief rulers were probably the rulers of the
Synagogue, but the Pharisees had a large majority in nearly all of
the synagogues, and could easily exclude their rulers when they
desired to do so. But when you search for those who repented under
the Lord's preaching, you will find but few. If you can point out
any failure in his personal ministry, it was the failure to bring
men who heard him to repentance. Consequently, we find that when he
was about to leave Galilee, he upbraided the cities in which most of
his mighty works had been wrought, because they repented not. "Woe
unto thee, Chorazin ! Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty
works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they
would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes."
His inability to bring those who saw most and heard most of His
ministry to repentance, is a startling fact. And so it is with
preachers today, the world over. When you go out preaching among the
people of this country, you will not find it very difficult to
induce your hearers to believe the truth concerning Christ, and,
when they are prepared in mind and heart for baptism, you will not
find it at all difficult to persuade them to submit to that. Even in
the dead of winter, when thick ice must be removed in order to
immerse them. You will find no difficulty, provided they have
repented and desire to obey the Lord; but how difficult it is to
induce men to repent! Sinners outside the church and sinners inside
the church cling to their sins, and it appears impossible in many
instances to bring them to repentance.
As regards faith, the majority of sinners in this country find it
very difficult to be infidels when they try to be. You meet with
many a man who claims to be an infidel and seems to take pride in
it; but if you watch him closely for a long time, you will find that
he is merely trying to be an infidel, and this is demonstrated by
the fact that when great danger, or great sorrow, or death comes
close to him, the infidelity passes away, and the man who had
scoffed at the idea of religion turns pale, and trembles, and calls
upon some earnest Christian to kneel at his bedside and pray for
him. That occurrence is almost as common as the claim of infidelity.
If, then, when you are addressing your congregation, you make a
desperate effort to induce them to believe, very likely the majority
of them are saying to you, "I believe as firmly as you do; and you
are wasting your time trying to induce me to believe." I recollect
when I once felt that way myself. When a youth, I often listened to
an old Presbyterian preacher, whom I very highly esteemed, who
believed in justification by faith alone, and often insisted that as
soon as you believe that Jesus Christ is your personal Saviour your
sins are all gone--you are happy in the Lord. I said to myself, and
I said to my companions. "I believe just as firmly as that old
brother does, but it has not had such an effect on me. He is
certainly mistaken". But when you come to an effort to induce men to
repent of their sins, there you stagger, in a multitude of cases
from week to week and from year to year with the same hearers before
you. Why is this? I suppose it is accounted for by two
considerations. First, the pleasures of sin--the pleasures that
certain sins bring to the sinner dance before his eyes while he
hears you, and being unwilling to give up these pleasures, he
refuses to repent. Second, repentance has to do with the will, the
stubborn will of a man, and a man's will is backed up by his pride.
His pride and his self-will together stand against you and enable
him to cast off all of the appeals that you make. So he lives on in
impenitence.
When preaching was my work, I thought to myself many times, and I
think I said it many a time to others, that of all the gifts which I
crave, if I had my wish, the first would be that I might have the
power to bring men to repentance by my preaching. These being the
facts of the case, what should we preach? What should we make the
subjects of our addresses to the ungodly? A military man in battle
brings his heaviest artillery to bear against that which is the
strongest part of the enemy's defense. It is idle to bring the light
artillery to bear against the strongest fortification. The great
battleships which men are now constructing with the twelve inch
balls that they hurl are employed against these vessels that are
covered over with iron twelve inches thick and against the strongest
of fortified walls. The preacher, too, should level his heaviest
artillery, his strongest appeals, against that part of the fort of
his enemy, that is comparable to the thickest armor of fort and
battleship. What is that but impenitence? I am afraid that many
preachers make a mistake here. There are some who seem to plan their
sermons to gather up the greatest amount of oratorical beauty which
they can array, with the aim chiefly in their mind of pleasing their
audiences, that they can go away delighted with the preacher. That
is a very foolish idea. One of the Kings of France, Louis XV, I
believe, who was a very wicked man, had two court preachers, both of
them very eminent men. He was asked one day which of them he
preferred to hear, or rather, what was his estimate of the two
preachers. He answered, "When I hear such a one (naming him), I am
left thinking, what a wonderful man that is. When I hear the other,
I am left thinking what a miserable sinner I am." "Which of the two
do you prefer?" Wicked man as he was, he said, "I prefer the latter,
because he makes me feel like being a better man. The other makes me
admire him, the latter makes me despise myself." Oh, what a
difference between the two preachers! One exerting all of his powers
to make his hearers feel their sinfulness. Now, make your choice.
But, seeing that it is so difficult to induce men to repent, perhaps
you would like for me to suggest you something about the way to
succeed. I wish I could tell you a way by which you could always
succeed. It has been a great failure in my own life as a preacher. I
have been perhaps unusually successful in convincingly hearers of
the truth of what I had to present to them, but I have made a
failure in trying to bring them to repentance. I suggest that,
inasmuch as the Apostle Paul tells us that the goodness of God
brings men to repentance, you struggle in your sermons to bring to
bear every fact exhibiting the goodness of God to bad men, if,
perchance, through the gratitude that you stir in their hearts you
may induce them to repent. And inasmuch as Jesus in his appeal to
the cities in which he had done his great works, warned them of the
examples of Nineveh and Sodom, to bring them to repentance, his
method must be wise, although it may fail. Gather out of the
Scriptures as you study them--gather together in your memory,
everything that you find there, every fact, every precept, which
properly considered, ought to cause men to repent. Then, bring these
to bear upon them with all of the power you have: but, in preparing
your sermons, do not forget to prepare them for those to whom you
speak and the difficulties in their way. Have this in your mind
while you are trying to decide what subject you will take and how
you will treat and frame every sentence and every line of thought
with a view to effecting this great triumph. Thus you will be able
to save some.
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