Life-wounds

Peter’s sermon was not a fine display of eloquence; Neither was it a very pathetic plea;

Nor a loud but empty cry of “Believe, believe!”

It was simple, a plain statement, and a soberly earnest argument.

Its power lay in the truthfulness of the speaker, his appeal to Scripture, the concurrence of his witnessing brethren, and his own evident faith.

Above all, in the Holy Spirit who accompanied the word.

I. SAVING IMPRESSION IS A PRICK IN THE HEART.

To be cut to the heart is deadly (Acts 5:33): to be pricked in the heart is saving.

1. All true religion must be of the heart.

   • Without this—
   • Ceremonies are useless. Is. 1:13.
   • Orthodoxy of head is in vain. Jeremiah 7:4.
   • Profession and a constrained morality fail. 2 Timothy 3:5.
   • Loud zeal, excited and sustained by mere passion, is useless.

2. Impressions which do not prick the heart may even be evil.

   • They may excite to wrath and opposition.
   • They may lead to sheer hypocrisy.
   • They may create and foster a spurious hope.

3. Even when such superficial impressions are good, they are transient; and when they have passed away, they have often hardened those who have felt them for a season.

4. They will certainly be inoperative. As they have not touched the heart, they will not affect the life.

   • They will not lead to confession and inquiry, nor
   • to repentance and change of life.
   • to glad reception of the word, nor
   • to obedience and steadfastness.
   • Heart-work is the only real work.

II. WHAT TRUTHS PRODUCE SUCH A PRICK?

1. The truth of the gospel has often, by the power of the Holy Spirit, produced an indelible wound in minds skeptical and opposed.

2. A sense of someone specially startling sin has frequently aroused the conscience. 2 Samuel 12:7.

3. Instruction in the nature of the law, and the consequent heinousness of sin, has been blessed to that end. Romans 7:13.

4. The infinite wickedness of sin, as against the very being of God, is also a wounding thought. Psalm 51:4.

5. The exactness, severity, and terror of the judgment, and the consequent punishment of sin, are stirring thoughts. Acts 16:25–30.

6. The great goodness of God has led many to see the cruel wantonness of sin against him. Romans 2:4.

7. The thought of Christ as a Substitute has often been the means of revealing the greatness of the sin which needed such an atonement, and of showing the true tendency of sin in having slain One so good and kind. Zechariah 12:10.

8. The abundant grace and love revealed in the gospel, and received by us are sharp arrows to wound the heart.

III. WHAT HAND MAKES THESE PAINFUL PRICKS?

1. The same hand which wrote the piercing truths also applies them.

2. He is well acquainted with our hearts, and so can reach them.

3. He is the Quickener, the Comforter, the Spirit helping our infirmities, showing to us the things of Jesus: his fruit is love, joy, peace, etc. We need not utterly despair when wounded by such a tender Friend.

4. He is a Spirit to be sought unto, who acts in answer to his people’s prayers. We turn for healing to him who pricks.

IV. HOW CAN THESE PRICKS BE HEALED?

1. Only One who is divine can heal a wounded heart.

2. The only medicine is the blood of his heart.

3. The only hand to apply it is that which was pierced.

4. The only fee required is gladly to receive him.

Let us ask the question, “Men and brethren, what shall we do?”

Let us then obey the gospel, and believe in the Lord Jesus.

Pointed Passages

Conversion is a work of argument, for the judgment is gained by the truth. It is a work of conviction, for the awakened are pricked in their hearts. It is a work of inquiry, for they ask, “What must we do to be saved?” And, lastly, it is a work of comfort, for its subjects have received remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost.—Joseph Sutcliffe.

Peter, standing up, said: “We heard from him whom we know that God has raised from the dead the promise of the Holy Spirit. He has shed forth this; therefore let Jerusalem know assuredly that God has made him Lord.” I call that Peter’s colossal “therefore.” It is the strongest word in the first oration delivered in the defense of Christianity. The Holy Spirit was promised; he has been poured out; therefore, let those who receive him know that the power behind natural law—our Lord, who was, and is, and is to come—is now breathing upon the centuries as he breathed upon us symbolically. He has shed forth this; therefore, let all men know assuredly that God has made him Lord. When they who were assembled at Jerusalem at that time heard this “therefore,” they were pricked in the heart.—Joseph Cook.

Heart-work must be God’s work. Only the great heart-Maker can be the great heart-Breaker.—Richard Baxter.

The Comforter came to convince the world. The Comforter! Does it seem a strange name to any of you, my brethren, for him who came on such an errand? Does it seem to you that, in convincing you of your sins, instead of comforting you, he must needs cover you with shame and confusion, and make you sink to the ground in unutterable anguish and dismay? No, dear brethren, it is not so. Those among you whom the Spirit has indeed convinced of sin, will avouch that it is not. They will avouch that, in convincing them of sin, he has proved that he is indeed the Comforter. If the conviction and consciousness of sin arises from any other source, then indeed it is enough to crush us with shame, and to harrow us with unimaginable fears. But when it comes from the Spirit of God, it comes with healing and comfort on its wings. Remember what the sin is, of which he convinces us—that we believe not in Christ. All other conviction of sin would be without hope; here the hope accompanies the conviction, and is one with it. If we have a deep and lively feeling of the sin of not believing in Christ, we must feel at the same time that Christ came to take away this along with all other sins.—J. C. Have.

When a man is wounded with a barbed arrow, the agonies he suffers will cause him to toss about in pain; but the harder he strives to release the weapon from his flesh, the more does it become entangled in his sinews, the wound becomes enlarged, and the torture is increased. When, by the power of the Holy Spirit, a man is wounded on account of sin, and the arrows of the Most High tear his soul, he frequently tries to pluck them out with his own hand, but finds that the misery becomes worse, and the inflaming wounds at last cause faintness and despair. Only the Good Physician knows how to relieve the pain without tearing und festering the spirit.—Handbook of Illustration.