This verse stands in the midst of a long line of threatenings. Like a rock of mercy, it rises in the midst of a sea of wrath. Hence many critics have felt bound to see in it a continuation of threatening. I am quite content to accept the united authority of the Authorized and the Revised Versions, and to believe that the mind of the Holy Spirit is fairly expressed in the grand old Bible of our fathers. I regard our text as a promise overflowing with delight.

While it does stand as a rock apart, this gracious word is far from being the only one in the book of the prophet Hosea. In the torrent bed of this prophet’s denunciations we find dust of the gold of promise. Hosea, in his style, is jerky and abrupt: he says exactly what you do not think he is going to say. The Holy Spirit, speaking through him, interjects promises in the midst of threatenings, in wrath remembering mercy. If any should think that this passage is exceptional, let them read the rest of Hosea’s prophecy. Let them pause for a minute over the eleventh chapter, resting at the eighth verse: “How shall I give thee up, Ephraim? how shall I deliver thee, Israel? how shall I make thee as Admah? how shall I set thee as Zeboim? mine heart is turned within me, my repentings are kindled together. I will not execute the fierceness of mine anger, I will not return to destroy Ephraim, for I am God, and not man.” Where was ever greater tenderness than this? When you get to the twelfth chapter, at the ninth verse, a still small voice is heard in the midst of the thunder: “I that am the Lord thy God from the land of Egypt will yet make thee to dwell in tabernacles, as in the days of the solemn feast.” The fourteenth chapter is all of love and mercy: “O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips.” Hear the gracious word, verse four-“I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.” So that our text, in its Christian interpretation, is not contrary to the general method of this prophecy. To find it here is very surprising; but it is after the manner of the Holy Ghost, when speaking by the prophet Hosea.

Israel was coming to its very worst. The people were to be carried to Babylon, and thence to be scattered to the ends of the earth. Yet the Lord, in his great love, lets them know that this was not to be a final and entire destruction. He would not utterly cast away the people whom he did foreknow, nor allow death to hold them in bondage for ever. He would open their graves, and bring them out, and make them to know Jehovah. Therefore, he drops in this word of promise when it was least expected.

I shall ask you this morning, first, to consider the fact which is here used as a figure. The resurrection of the dead is here employed as a figure of that which the Lord was about to do for his people. At one time salvation from sin is called a creation, and creation is a fact; here it is a resurrection from the dead, and that also is sure to be accomplished in due time: we have the first-fruits of it already.

Brethren, there will be a special resurrection for those who are in Christ Jesus. “There shall be a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.” But for the members of the body of Christ there is a resurrection from among the dead. These are the many that sleep in the dust of the earth who shall awake to everlasting life (Dan. 12:2). They rise because they are one with Christ in his resurrection. His resurrection is the proof and the guarantee that they also shall rise in the day of his appearing. “If Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness” (Rom. 8:10). Their bodies, which were redeemed as truly as their souls, though left during this life under mortgage to nature, so that they suffer pain, and weakness, and ultimate death and decay-their bodies, I say, being a part of the purchase of the precious blood, shall be raised again from the dead. That which is sown in weakness shall be raised in power; that which is covered with dishonour by the very fact of death and decay shall be raised in splendour, made like unto the glorious body of Christ. This is no poetic fiction, but a literal matter of fact, even as was the resurrection of the Lord Jesus. We hear our Redeemer say, “Thy brother shall rise again,” and we accept it literally. Our dear ones whom we have laid in the grave shall come again from the land of the enemy. Concerning ourselves, also, we believe, as we just sang-

“Sweet truth to me,

I shall arise,

And with these eyes

My Saviour see.”

We accept the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead as the revelation of Christianity. The immortality of the soul was seen before the appearing of our Lord in a dim and cloudy manner; but the resurrection of the dead was not discoverable by the light of nature, and when it was at first preached, men called the preacher a “babbler”; they could not understand that such a thing could be. The philosophy of human nature rejected the resurrection, and rejects it still. Only by the revelation of Christ do we know that the dead shall rise again.

This resurrection is connected with redemption: “I will ransom them from the power of the grave.” A ransom is the paying of a price for something. There was a price paid for us, to deliver us from the death which is the desert of sin. You know who paid it, and how he paid it. Remember how he opened wide his hands, and poured forth more than gold; remember how his side was digged by the spear, that the deep mines of his life-wealth might be emptied out for us. Jesus our Lord has paid the ransom price. Now are we “waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Rom. 8:23). Another word is used in the parallel sentence of our text-“I will redeem them from death.” It refers to the redemption of an inheritance by the next-of-kin. “I know that my Redeemer liveth” is the ground of Job’s confidence as to his resurrection and justification. My goel, my next-of-kin, to whom the right of redemption belonged in equity, has stepped in, and has fully redeemed both my soul and my body. What a blessed truth is this, that the ransom of the body is paid, so that this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality! Though the body remains for a while subject to vanity, yet the term of this subjection will soon run out, the ransom being already paid. Regeneration has liberated the soul, and resurrection will do the like for the body before long. The margin hath it, “I will ransom them from the hand of the grave: I will redeem them from death.” O beloved, we come into the grave’s hand, as it were, and firm is the grip of the sepulchre; but our God saith, “I will redeem them from the hand of the grave.” The grave holds the bones of the saints as with the grasp of an iron hand; but the redemption of our Lord Jesus will open the giant fist, and set the prisoners free. Glory be to God for the sure hope of resurrection! No mass of stone, nor superincumbent clay, shall keep down these bodies of ours when our Saviour’s angels shall “their golden trumpets sound.” Beloved, there remains nothing due upon the estate of our bodies for which they can be detained in the dust when the Lord Jesus comes to awaken them from their long sleep. They shall freely rise to be reunited with the disembodied but happy spirits to which they belong. We look for a resurrection from among the dead. “But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished. This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power” (Rev. 20:5, 6).

This, according to our text, is wrought entirely by divine power. It must be so; for how could the dead contribute to their own lives? How can bodies which have been dissolved in the sepulchre reconstruct themselves? Here you have in the text the divine personality asserting itself four times-“I will ransom them,” “I will redeem them”; “O death, I will be thy plagues”; “O grave, I will be thy destruction.” Here we have “I will” four times. Who but he that made can re-make? But all things are possible to the Creator. We have heard many objections raised to the doctrine of the resurrection. Let them object as long as they please. Grant us a God, and nothing is impossible or even difficult. With a God who can work miracles nothing becomes incredible. Whatsoever the eternal God decreeth concerning the resurrection of his elect he will readily accomplish; for he is abundantly sufficient for it. What a triumph will the resurrection be for the Lord God! He hath been pleased to give the special honour of it to his own dear Son. By the risen Christ we shall be raised again from the dead. We shall sing hallelujahs to him that was slain. He by death has destroyed death, and by his resurrection has torn away the gates of the grave. This is our Lord’s doings, and we adore him because of it.

Observe, next, that by the resurrection death itself is transformed, and totally overcome. He saith, “O death, I will be thy plagues,” as if death were personified, and then itself plagued-its own arrows of pestilence being shot into itself. Beloved, death no longer kills, but rather admits to a larger life; it no more destroys, but the rather it perfects-I mean not of itself, but through our Lord Jesus Christ. It is no longer death to die; it is no longer punishment to the believer, but a dismissal from banishment. Ye that are in your sins will die in your sins, and to you death is death indeed; but to the child of God, death is so altered that he who hath the power of death, that is, the devil, is sore vexed. He is plagued by seeing the joy with which the believer dies. It is a grand thing to see a man dying full of life: the river of his mortal life comes to an end, but only by widening into the ocean of the glory-life above. Satan gloated over the mischief which he had wrought by death; but lo, it is through death that Jesus has destroyed him, and delivered his people. God makes his dying people to be like the sun, which never seems so large as when it sets. All the glories of mid-day are eclipsed by the marvels of sunset. Watch the west! See how the clouds are mountains of gold, and anon the skies are seas of fire. All the tapestries of heaven are hung out to welcome the returning hero of the day to his rest beyond the western sea. So does the dying saint light up his dying chamber with heavenly splendour as he sets upon this world to shine in another. Thus the Lord plagues death, leaving the monster powerless to harm or even terrify the believer.

As for the sepulchre, it is destroyed. “O grave, I will be thy destruction.” No grave shall detain one of the redeemed. The tomb is

“No more a charnel-house, to fence

The relics of lost innocence;

A place of ruin and decay

The imprisoning stone is rolled away.”

The grave is our bed-chamber, which our Lord himself hath furnished for us by leaving in it his own grave-clothes. It is a retiring-room whose odour is most sweet to love; for

“There the dear flesh of Jesus lay,

And left a blest perfume.”

Death, thou art not death! Grave, thou art no grave! The names remain, but the nature of the things has altered altogether.

To close this first subject-this resurrection will abolish death and every possibility of it in the future. I notice that certain persons, in their anxiety to suck the meaning out of the word “everlasting,” so as to avoid everlasting punishment, have questioned the everlasting nature of heaven. They have even gone the length of hinting that they are not quite clear that if believers get to heaven they will always remain there. Yes, and this is what it comes to. Nothing is safe from these revolutionists. They would tear away every covenant blessing from the children of God in their zeal to make the punishment of sin a trifle. To do honour to their own intellect, they would sacrifice the eternal blessedness of the blood-washed! But it is not so. Jesus has said-“Because I live ye shall live also.” As long as Christ lives we must live: as long as Christ is in heaven we must be with him where he is, to behold his glory. So long as God is God his children, partakers of the divine nature, must live for ever, and be for ever blessed. Raised from the dead, and taken up to Christ’s right hand, we shall henceforth fear no second death. When sun and moon grow dim with age, and earth’s blue skies are rolled up like a worn-out vesture, we shall enjoy an age like the years of God’s right hand, like his own eternity. The great I am shall be the bliss of every soul whom Christ hath redeemed from the grave, and this shall know no end.

To this the Lord sets his seal. Do you want to see the red wax and the divine impression thereon? Look at the close of the text, “Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.” There doth Jehovah declare his unalterable will; it must and shall be even so. That his saints shall rise from the dead is the immutable decree of God. In all this let us rejoice. Our future is bright with glory. These things are revealed to faith, but they are not to be seen of the eye, nor even conceived in the heart, nor pictured by the imagination.

“I know not, oh, I know not, what joys await us there!

What radiancy of glory! What bliss beyond compare!”

This much, however, we do know, that there is to be a rising for us, even as our Lord has risen, and we shall be satisfied when we awake in his likeness. Constantly in Scripture is this resurrection used as the figure of God’s delivering and blessing his people; and especially as the figure of regeneration or the giving of a new and spiritual life to those who were by nature dead in trespasses and sins. I intend to use it so in our next line of thought.

In the second place, in these words lie an encouragement to look for deliverance out of great troubles. The encouragement comes in this way: God, that will surely raise his people from the dead by his own power, can and will as surely raise them from every kind of trouble and apparent destruction. If there can be any comparison of ease with omnipotence, it must be easier to raise Job from his dunghill, than to raise Job from his grave. If God, therefore, shall restore us from the sepulchre, he can certainly restore us from sickness, from poverty, from slander, from depression of spirit, from despair. That is clear; who shall doubt it?

God will delight to work the work of our deliverance. If he takes pleasure in raising a dead body, he will assuredly take pleasure in raising from their distresses those in whom he delights. The Lord rejoices in our joy. He doth not afflict willingly, but he blesses us joyfully. Therefore, we may rest assured that he will turn again and have compassion, and raise us up from our downcastings.

The ends and designs for which the Lord afflicts them are very gracious, and we may expect that he will end the affliction when those designs are accomplished. When the Lord puts us into the furnace it is to refine us; and as soon as the dross is consumed he will bring forth the pure gold. He puts us under chastisement for our profit; and when that profit is seen, he will break the rod. We may assuredly expect that he who bringeth up dead bodies from the grave will bring his distressed people up from their troubles, when those troubles have wrought their lasting good.

And now, to come to the text, we must traverse the same ground again: this deliverance comes through redemption. Beloved, he that redeemed Israel from all iniquity will also redeem Israel from all his troubles. That redemption price of the Lord covers every necessity of his people, and supplies every mercy that they will need between here and heaven. Do not, therefore, doubt or despair, because your troubles seem as if they would slay you, for the Angel who has redeemed your body from death will redeem you from all evil. He that will bring your body from the grave, will love you up from the pit of trouble, even when you are ready to perish. Redemption covers all, and secures from every danger. He that died for you, lives for you, and cares for you. You shall be supplied, not only with grace and glory, but with food and raiment. “Thy bread shall be given thee; thy waters shall be sure.” Oh, rest in the Lord; especially confide in the redemption of Jesus. Let the precious blood speak peace to you; for if he has bought your soul, he has bought all that goes with it, and all that is needed for this life as well as the next. As well our temporal as our eternal concerns come under the protection of the blood. The Paschal lamb, whose sprinkled blood shielded the house wherein the Israelite was sheltered, also became to him food for his journey. He who provides heaven will provide all necessaries on the road thither.

This deliverance will also be God’s work. I have shown you that it was so in resurrection, concerning which the great “I will” is so prominent in the text. Now, if you are in great trouble, do not run to friends and acquaintances, nor reckon up your own strength, but make direct resort to God, who quickeneth the dead. He that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus is he that can and will deliver you. He will raise up your mortal body without the help of man or of angel; and he can, apart from created strength, upraise you from your present woe. He is the God of salvation, and unto him belong the issues from death. His name is Shaddai-God all-sufficient; trust him fully. When he made the heavens, who was there to help him? What aid does he need in rescuing his servants? Oh, learn to wait only upon the Lord! Do not think that I am talking mere words. No; trust in God must be real and practical, and it must be simple and unmixed. “My soul, wait thou only upon God; for my expectation is from him.” Oh, how sweet it is to rest on God’s bare arm! Long have I known what it is to trust in God, and at the same time to repose on the help of many friends; but now I know what it is to rest in him unmoved when forsaken of many. I cling to that dear arm, and find it all the help I need. And now I will henceforth abide in my confidence in that lone arm; and should deserters all return, and ten thousand friends rally to my side, I will not spare them a particle of my reliance, but still cry, “My soul, wait thou only upon God.” Behold the great hero of the conflict with the powers of darkness treads the wine-press alone, and of the people there is none with him: let us associate none with him in our faith. If you rest on God alone, as the rock of your salvation, you need never fear. Often does the Lord afflict us to this end, even as Paul saith, “But we had the sentence of death in ourselves, that we should not trust in ourselves, but in God which raiseth the dead.”

When the Lord delivers his people, his work is singularly complete, for he triumphantly turns evil into good. We shall yet exult over that which now casts us down. That which threatened to kill us shall increase our life, and we shall hear our Lord say to it, “O death, I will be thy plagues; O grave, I will be thy destruction.” He will turn mourning into dancing, loss into gain, sorrows into joys. He will enrich you by your impoverishment; he will make you strong out of weakness; he will give you health by means of sickness; and fulness by emptying you. Does the adversary threaten to destroy you? You shall be more than a conqueror. Are you led away in bonds? You shall lead your captivity captive. Those who seek your ruin will unconsciously be doing the best thing that could be done for you. Their malice shall bruise your spices, and cause their aroma to flow out. He that by shameful death winneth greater glory shall by your afflictions increase your greatness, and comfort you on every side. The Lord will not only prevent the powers of evil from doing you harm, but he will cause you to damage their empire by your patience. You shall be the plague of Satan and the destroyer of his strongholds. That which seemed to be the death and burial of your hope shall be the overthrow of your fears.

The Lord will do this so completely that he will make you sing concerning it. In the book of Hosea the Lord declared a fact in plain language; but when the work was done the Lord by his servant Paul made it into a song for his chosen in that famous chapter of the Corinthians-“O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” Let us catch the spirit of this lyric, and translate it thus! “O poverty, where is thy penury? O sickness, where is thy misery? O weakness, where is thy loss? O slander, where is thy sting?” We shall before long look back upon all our afflictions with gladness, and bless the Lord for them as for our chiefest blessings. We may yet feel like that great saint who, when he recovered from sickness, cried, “Take me back to my sick bed again, for there have I enjoyed such fellowship with Christ as I never knew before.” We may yet have to say, as certain saints of the Church of Scotland said, “Oh, that we were meeting among the moors and the hills once more; for never had the bride of Christ such followship with the Bridegroom as when she met him in secret places.” The Lord knoweth how to lift us high by that which cast us low, and to make psalms for our stringed instruments out of the dirges which drowned our music. The God of the resurrection has delivered, doth deliver, and will deliver his people.

Time fails me, and therefore I must hurry on, else I had loved to linger and expand. See here a declaration that God will save his chosen from their death in sin. He that will raise our bodies from the grave will, according to his everlasting covenant, raise his chosen from their death in sin.

This must be so. If the Lord did not raise his people’s souls from their death in sin, a resurrection of their bodies would be a curse rather than a blessing. Resurrection will be no boon to those who die unregenerate. My hearers, you will all rise from the grave; but I fear that some of you will rise to shame and everlasting contempt. That is an awful passage which I quoted just now from the Book of Daniel: think much of it. Therefore since God will not have his people rise to shame and everlasting contempt he will make their souls to rise first into newness of holy life. This regeneration must come to all of you, if you are to be partakers of the glory of Christ hereafter. Ye must be quickened, though ye were dead in trespasses and sins. That fact suggests a question to each heart-Have you received the divine life?

If you are indeed made alive unto God, you will agree with me that this resurrection comes to us entirely through redemption. There is no quickening a dead soul, except by the process here described: “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death.” Did the law of God, when you heard it, ever quicken you? Nay, it slew you. “When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died.” It made your death more apparent to you, but it brought you no life. Did the eloquence of men, or human persuasion, ever raise you from spiritual death? You listened to it, and you listened, but you listened in vain. You were moved with human affections, but these human affections passed away, like the morning dew. Beloved, life only came to you when you received Christ Jesus, your Redeemer. Well do I remember when I first looked unto him, and lived! The life and the look came together. There is no receiving eternal life apart from believing in him who is the life. There is no life except by looking unto Jesus. Your uplifted eye must be fixed on the uplifted Saviour, crucified as the redemption of his people: life only comes to us through his redeeming death. God himself only maketh us live by Christ Jesus. He is the life. You cannot yourself create life; nor can you renew it, except by coming to your Lord’s dear wounds again. Oh, that we could dwell on Calvary! Oh, that we never turned our eyes away from the cross! Let me be crucified with Christ, so as never to part from perpetual, conscious union with him. In him we died unto sin, in him we were redeemed from death and the curse, and in him we live for ever. Our resurrection from spiritual death is always connected with the precious blood once shed for many, for the remission of sins.

You will follow me in this also: quickening is always the Lord’s work. Here he may repeat the “I will” of the text all the four times. We spoke of resurrection as solely the work of God, so must the implantation of spiritual life be the work of the Spirit of God, and of him alone. Never let us dream that we can make ourselves alive unto God, or that we can quicken our unconverted friends. You could not make the simplest insect, how could you make a new heart and a right spirit? This is the finger of God, nay, this needs the arm of God, as it is written, “to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed”? The full power of God is needed to beget faith’s life within the soul of man.

Further, keep up the parallel between regeneration and resurrection as seen in the text, and notice that whenever the Lord raises his dear ones from the dead, and makes them live, it is a great plague to death. He that hath the power of death must often be grievously annoyed when he sees a dead sinner begin to live unto God. “I did reckon on him,” saith he. “I wrapped him up in the cerements of drunkenness, I shut him up in the dark sepulchre of ignorance; and yet he is alive!” “I did reckon on the debauched man,” saith he, “I saw him rotting in lasciviousness; he was so far gone in lust that he was given over by his friends; but my great enemy Jesus Christ has come here, and made even the corrupt to live!” Again and again the adversary has to feel that Christ is his plague, and that he will be his destruction. When Jesus raises men from the dead, he shows who is Master, and makes the adversary know that his dominion is soon to fall. As in his lifetime on earth the Lord overcame both the devil and death by a word, even so it is now, and his name is thereby greatly glorified.

Those who are made alive, how greatly do they plague the enemy of souls when they begin to talk aloud of free grace and dying love? When black sinners show themselves washed in the blood of the lamb, when lips that used to curse begin to sing hallelujahs, and tongues that talked infidelity begin to proclaim the testimony of the true faith, how the prince of darkness is afflicted! How the sepulchres of sin are destroyed! Right well does the poet say:-

“Satan rages at his loss,

And hates the doctrine of the cross.”

This work once done is an abiding work. I point again to the seal at the bottom of the text. “Repentance shall be hid from mine eyes.” God resolves that they shall live, for he has redeemed them, and his redemption price is too precious to be wasted. He has ransomed them from the grave, and they shall never return to their grim prison-house again, they shall live to plague Satan, but they shall not live to be overcome by him. What the Lord has done he will not suffer sin, death and hell to undo. Nothing shall lead him to repent of his design, or turn from the purpose of his heart. Jesus lifts his hand and says, “I give unto my sheep eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” Man’s work is superficial, and therefore soon disappears. All that nature spins, nature unravels: all that is woven in the loom of human excitement will be rent to pieces by the hand of time and trial; but surely I know that what God doeth he doth for ever, and it standeth fast without a change. Oh, that he would this morning come and quicken dead souls! Pray, dear people, that it may be so! The Lord will do as he wills. Doth he not say, “I will have compassion upon whom I will have compassion”? Oh, that he would have compassion on this great congregation at this moment, and give them life! We heard the cry of human weakness just now when our sister was taken in a fit; I doubt not that our Lord heard it too, and pitied the bodily infirmity; how much more will he hear the voice of our spiritual need, and have pity upon our death in sin!

What little time you can yet afford me, I will use in stating that here we have an assurance that the Lord can deliver from any other form of death. I ask you now to think of a few matters very briefly.

The Jews: as an organized nationality they are dead. They are a people scattered and divided under the whole heaven. Truly might they say, as in the prophet Ezekiel, “Our bones are dried, and our hope is lost: we are cut off for our parts.” We have no instance in history of a nation dying and coming to life again. Assyria, Babylon, these had their day, and they failed and passed away. Where are they now? Can these empires live again? Persia, Greece, Rome, these vast dominions died morally, and then they ceased to be a living power. Can they ever be restored? Impossible. But because her God liveth, Israel can never die. Israel will be a nation yet again, and a glorious one. Restored to her own land, and rejoicing in her own Messiah, who is “the glory of his people Israel,” it shall be seen that the Lord hath not cast off his people. It seems impossible. Our missions are, to a large extent, a failure; they become the ridicule of the ungodly because so little success attends them. Yet shall all Israel be saved. Shall not their restoration be as life from the dead? It shall; and because it will be like life from the dead, he that will raise dead bodies will raise poor Israel yet. The seed of faithful Abraham, who believed God that he could raise up Isaac from the dead, shall be raised out of their low estate. A nation of priests shall they be unto him who of old made them the keepers of his oracles. O lovers of the seed of Abraham, be comforted concerning them.

In the next place, suppose the church at large should decline to a spiritual death-and I am sure it does so just now-what then? The faults which are now so apparent may only be the beginning of worse evils. Brethren are prophesying that the Jesuits will ruin us, and others that Rationalism will eat out the heart of the church. I think both these sets of prophets have a good deal to say for themselves; the signs of the times are much with them. But suppose error should become rampant in all our churches, as it may; suppose those who bear testimony should grow fewer, and their voices should be less and less regarded, as they may be; suppose at last the true church of Christ should scarcely be discoverable, and that men should bury it, and dance a saraband upon its grave, and say, “We have done with these believers in atonement. We have done with these troublesome evangelical doctrines.” What then? The truth will rise again. The eternal gospel will burst her sepulchre. “Vain the watch, the stone, the seal.” Let us take comfort in the fact that God, who will raise the dead, will also raise up buried truth, and incarnate it again in a living church, even though the world should exult that both doctrine and church are down among the dead.

Some of you perhaps from the country may happen to belong to churches which have come near to death’s door. That which is true of the church at large is true of any individual church. Have faith in God. He can trim the expiring lamp. Even to Laodicea, which he spewed out of his mouth, the Lord came, knocking at the door. They talk about shutting the doors of the chapel. Has it come to that? Prayer-meetings, are they given up? Gospel preaching, have you almost forgotten the joyful sound? The Sunday-school, has that become a farce. Does everything seem dead? Cry to the living God. Do not say to yourself, “Can these dry bones live?” They can, if the living God intervenes. God, who made Ezekiel see the dry bones stand up as a great army, can make you see it yet. Be of good confidence. Have hope for Zion, for the Lord will restore her in answer to your cries. Take pleasure in her stones, and favour the dust thereof, for the time to favour her, yea, the set time has come. “When the Lord shall build up Zion he will appear in his glory.”

Suppose I am now speaking to some child of God, who says, “I can believe all this; but, alas! I feel dead myself.” We do sometimes faint, and are full of fears, and cry, “Will the Lord cast off for ever? and will he be favourable no more?” We trust we do really love the Lord; but we get very dull at times, and cry out-

“Dear Lord, and shall we always live

At this poor, dying rate:

Our love so faint, so cold to thee,

And thine to us so great?”

We feel as if we could not pray; there is no singing in us; and we feel as if we could not feel. At times we are so dull and stupid that we cannot think ourselves to be enlightened of the Lord at all. For my own part, “I am more brutish than any man” at times, in my own esteem. Be our case as it may, let not faith waver because feeling changes. When you are down in the dumps, remember that as the Lord will raise your dead body, he can certainly revive your fainting heart. Trust in him to restore your soul. This very morning, I hope, is ordained to be a resurrection morning to you. Before you quit this house of prayer I hope the silver trumpet of the gospel will be heard like the trumpet of the resurrection, and you will say to yourself, “I will quit my grave, for I live unto God.” By God’s grace, leave the vaults and come into the upper air of trust and thanksgiving. A man, finding himself imbedded in the snow, discovered, to his horror, that he could not move his feet, for they were frozen; nor his hands, for they were stiff with cold. He would have given himself up, therefore, as certainly doomed to die, but he found that he could speak, and here was hope. His tongue was not frozen, so he began to call aloud; and he did not call long before helpers came and dug him out, and thawed him back to life. If you cannot do anything else, my dear friend, do cry aloud. Cry, “O God, help me! Quicken thou me, O Lord.”

Do any of you say, “Well, I never get into so sad a state. I am always lively”? I am very glad to hear it, if it be true. But I have heard that the statues in St. Paul’s Cathedral are never afflicted with rheumatism; and the reason is, because they have no life. I am just a little afraid that you also may have no changes and no fears, because you have no spiritual life. God knows whether it is so or not. Look to it. I would sooner have the rheumatism, and be alive, than be without pain, and be a statue. The most painful life is preferable to the stillest death. But O ye dying saints of God; ye poor, fainting, perishing believers, take hope this morning, for the Holy Spirit will revive you, even as Jesus saith, “He that liveth and believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

Lastly, let us have that same hope about our unconverted friends. We want to see them born again during this week of special services. Let us begin by knowing what they are, and what is their condition. Do not say, “I hope my boy will be saved, because I do not see much evil in him.” Your boy is as spiritually dead by nature as anybody else’s boy. “That which is born of the flesh is flesh”; and however good your flesh may be, it is only flesh, and only flesh has come of it. I beg you to regard every soul that is not begotten unto God as being dead in sin, else you will not go to the bottom of things, and you will not go the right way to work. Next, go to the Lord and Giver of life, and say, “Lord, I cannot make this dear child live; I cannot bring my unconverted husband to thee. I will do all I can by teaching, persuasion and example; but O my Lord, I look to thee to give the spark of divine life.” Go to God with your anxiety for dead souls, and cry, “Lord, quicken them!” In dependence upon the Spirit of God, preach the gospel, which is the vehicle of divine life, and you shall see them live. Have faith about those who are laid on your heart. God grant your faith a full and speedy reward, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.

Portions of Scripture read before Sermon-Psalm 88; Ezekiel 37:1-14.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-911, 843, 841.

NO COMPROMISE

A Sermon

Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, October 7th, 1888, by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington

“And the servant said unto him, Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest? And Abraham said unto him, Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again. The Lord God of heaven, which took me from my father’s house, and from the land of my kindred, and which spake unto me, and that sware unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land; he shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence. And if the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this my oath: only bring not my son thither again.”-Genesis 24:5-8.

Genesis is both the book of beginnings and the book of dispensations. You know what use Paul makes of Sarah and Hagar, of Esau and Jacob, and the like. Genesis is, all through, a book instructing the reader in the dispensations of God towards man. Paul saith, in a certain place, “which things are an allegory,” by which he did not mean that they were not literal facts, but that, being literal facts, they might also be used instructively as an allegory. So may I say of this chapter. It records what actually was said and done; but at the same time, it bears within it allegorical instruction with regard to heavenly things. The true minister of Christ is like this Eleazar of Damascus; he is sent to find a wife for his Master’s Son. His great desire is, that many shall be presented unto Christ in the day of his appearing, as the bride, the Lamb’s wife.

The faithful servant of Abraham, before he started, communed with his master; and this is a lesson to us, who go on our Lord’s errands. Let us, before we engage in actual service, see the Master’s face, talk with him, and tell to him any difficulties which occur to our minds. Before we get to work, let us know what we are at, and on what footing we stand. Let us hear from our Lord’s own mouth what he expects us to do, and how far he will help us in the doing of it. I charge you, my fellow-servants, never to go forth to plead with men for God until you have first pleaded with God for men. Do not attempt to deliver a message which you have not first of all yourself received by his Holy Spirit. Come out of the chamber of fellowship with God into the pulpit of ministry among men, and there will be a freshness and a power about you which none shall be able to resist. Abraham’s servant spoke and acted as one who felt bound to do exactly what his master bade him, and to say what his master told him; hence his one anxiety was to know the essence and measure of his commission. During his converse with his master he mentioned one little point about which there might be a hitch; and his master soon removed the difficulty from his mind. It is about that hitch, which has occurred lately on a very large scale, and has upset a good many of my Master’s servants, that I am going to speak this morning: may God grant that it may be to the benefit of his church at large!

Beginning our sermon, we will ask you, first, to think of the servant’s joyful but weighty errand. It was a joyful errand: the bells of marriage were ringing around him. The marriage of the heir should be a joyful event. It was an honourable thing for the servant to be entrusted with the finding of a wife for his master’s son. Yet it was every way a most responsible business, by no means easy of accomplishment. Blunders might very readily occur before he was aware of it; and he needed to have all his wits about him, and something more than his wits, too, for so delicate a matter. He had to journey far, over lands without track or road; he had to seek out a family which he did not know, and to find out of that family a woman whom he did not know, who nevertheless should be the right person to be the wife of his master’s son: all this was a great service.

The work this man undertook was a business upon which his master’s heart was set. Isaac was now forty years old, and had shown no sign of marrying. He was of a quiet, gentle spirit, and needed a more active spirit to urge him on. The death of Sarah had deprived him of the solace of his life, which he had found in his mother, and had, no doubt, made him desire tender companionship. Abraham himself was old, and well stricken in years; and he very naturally wished to see the promise beginning to be fulfilled, that in Isaac should his seed be called. Therefore, with great anxiety, which is indicated by his making his servant swear an oath of a most solemn kind, he gave him the commission to go to the old family abode in Mesopotamia, and seek for Isaac a bride from thence. Although that family was not all that could be desired, yet it was the best he knew of; and as some heavenly light lingered there, he hoped to find in that place the best wife for his son. The business was, however, a serious one which he committed to his servant. My brethren, this is nothing compared with the weight which hangs on the true minister of Christ. All the Great Father’s heart is set on giving to Christ a church which shall be his beloved for ever. Jesus must not be alone: his church must be his dear companion. The Father would find a bride for the great Bridegroom, a recompense for the Redeemer, a solace for the Saviour: therefore he lays it upon all whom he calls to tell out the gospel, that we should seek souls for Jesus, and never rest till hearts are wedded to the Son of God. Oh, for grace to carry out this commission!

This message was the more weighty because of the person for whom the spouse was sought. Isaac was an extraordinary personage; indeed, to the servant he was unique. He was a man born according to promise, not after the flesh, but by the power of God; and you know how in Christ, and in all that are one with Christ, the life comes by the promise and the power of God, and springeth not of man. Isaac was himself the fulfilment of promise, and the heir of the promise. Infinitely glorious is our Lord Jesus as the Son of man! Who shall declare his generation? Where shall be found a helpmeet for him? a soul fit to be espoused unto him? Isaac had been sacrificed; he had been laid upon the altar, and although he did not actually die, his father’s hand had unsheathed the knife wherewith to slay him. Abraham in spirit had offered up his son; and you know who he is of whom we preach, and for whom we preach, even Jesus, who has laid down his life a sacrifice for sinners. He has been presented as a whole burnt-offering unto God. Oh! by the wounds, and by the bloody sweat, I ask you where shall we find a heart fit to be wedded to him? How shall we find men and women who can worthily recompense love so amazing, so divine, as that of him who died the death of the cross? Isaac had also been, in a figure, raised from the dead. To his father he was “as good as dead,” as said the apostle; and he was given back to him from the dead. But our blessed Lord has actually risen from an actual death, and stands before us this day as the Conqueror of death, and the Spoiler of the grave. Who shall be joined to this Conqueror? Who is fit to dwell in glory with this glorious One? One would have thought that every heart would aspire to such happiness, and leap in prospect of such peerless honour, and that none would shrink back except through a sense of great unworthiness. Alas! it is not so, though so it ought to be.

What a weighty errand have we to fulfil to find those who shall be linked for ever in holy union with the Heir of the promise, even the sacrificed and risen One! Isaac was everything to Abraham. Abraham would have said to Isaac, “All that I have is thine.” So is it true of our blessed Lord, whom he hath made heir of all things; by whom also he made the worlds, that “it pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell.” What a dignity will be put upon any of you who are married to Christ! To what a height of eminence will you be uplifted by becoming one with Jesus! O preacher, what a work hast thou to do to-day, to find out those to whom thou shalt give the bracelet, and upon whose face thou shalt hang the jewel! To whom shall I say, “Wilt thou give thy heart to my Lord! Wilt thou have Jesus to be thy confidence, thy salvation, thine all in all? Art thou willing to become his that he may be thine?”

Said I not truly that it was a joyful, but a weighty errand, when you think what she must be to whom his master’s son should be espoused? She must, at least, be willing and beautiful. In the day of God’s power hearts are made willing. There can be no marriage to Jesus without a heart of love. Where shall we find this willing heart? Only where the grace of God has wrought it. Ah, then, I see how I may find beauty, too, among the sons of men! Marred as our nature is by sin, only the Holy Spirit can impart that beauty of holiness which will enable the Lord Jesus to see comeliness in his chosen. Alas! in our hearts there is an aversion to Christ, and an unwillingness to accept of him, and at the same time a terrible unfitness and unworthiness! The Spirit of God implants a love which is of heavenly origin, and renews the heart by a regeneration from above; and then we seek to be one with Jesus, but not till then. See, then, how our errand calls for the help of God himself.

Think what she will become who is to be married to Isaac? She is to be his delight; his loving friend and companion. She is to be partner of all his wealth; and specially is she to be a partaker in the great covenant promise, which was peculiarly entailed upon Abraham and his family. When a sinner comes to Christ, what does Christ make of him? His delight is in him: he communes with him; he hears his prayer, he accepts his praise; he works in him and with him, and glorifies himself in him. He makes the believing man joint-heir with himself of all that he has, and introduces him into the covenant treasure-house, wherein the riches and glory of God are stored up for his chosen. Ah, dear friends! it is a very small business in the esteem of some to preach the gospel; and yet, if God is with us, ours is more than angels’ service. In a humble way you are telling of Jesus to your boys and girls in your classes; and some will despise you as “only Sunday-school teachers”; but your work has a spiritual weight about it unknown to conclaves of senators, and absent from the counsels of emperors. Upon what you say, death, and hell, and worlds unknown are hanging. You are working out the destinies of immortal spirits, turning souls from ruin to glory, from sin to holiness.

“’Tis not a work of small import

Your loving care demands;

But what might fill an angel’s heart,

And filled the Saviour’s hands.”

In carrying out his commission, this servant must spare no exertion. It would be required of him to journey to a great distance, having a general indication of direction, but not knowing the way. He must have divine guidance and protection. When he reached the place, he must exercise great common-sense, and at the same time a trustful dependence upon the goodness and wisdom of God. It would be a wonder of wonders if he ever met the chosen woman, and only the Lord could bring it to pass. He had all the care and the faith required. We have read the story of how he journeyed, and prayed, and pleaded. We should have cried, “Who is sufficient for these things?” but we see that the Lord Jehovah made him sufficient, and his mission was happily carried out. How can we put ourselves into the right position to get at sinners, and win them for Jesus? How can we learn to speak the right words? How shall we suit our teaching to the condition of their hearts? How shall we adapt ourselves to their feelings, their prejudices, their sorrows, and their temptations? Brethren, we who preach the gospel continually may well cry, “If thy presence go not with me, carry us not up hence.” To seek for pearls at the bottom of the sea is child’s play compared with seeking for souls in this wicked London. If God be not with us, we may look our eyes out, and wear our tongues away in vain. Only as the Almighty God shall lead, and guide, and influence, and inspire, can we perform our solemn trust; only by divine help shall we joyfully come back, bringing with us the chosen of the Lord. We are the Bridegroom’s friends, and we rejoice greatly in his joy, but we sigh and cry till we have found the chosen hearts in whom he will delight, whom he shall raise to sit with him upon his throne.

Secondly, I would have you consider the reasonable fear which is mentioned. Abraham’s servant said, “Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land.” This is a very serious, grave, and common difficulty. If the woman be not willing, nothing can he done; force and fraud are out of the question; there must be a true will, or there can be no marriage in this instance. Here was the difficulty: here was a will to be dealt with. Ah, my brethren! this is our difficulty still. Let me describe this difficulty in detail as it appeared to the servant, and appears to us.

She may not believe my report, or be impressed by it. When I come to her, and tell her that I am sent by Abraham, she may look me in the face, and say, “There be many deceivers nowadays.” If I tell her that my master’s son is surpassingly beautiful and rich, and that he would fain take her to himself, she may answer, “Strange tales and romances are common in these days; but the prudent do not quit their homes.” Brethren, in our case this is a sad fact. The great evangelical prophet cried of old, “Who hath believed our report?” We also cry in the same words. Men care not for the report of God’s great love to the rebellious sons of men. They do not believe that the infinitely glorious Lord is seeking the love of poor, insignificant man, and to win it has laid down his life. Calvary, with its wealth of mercy, grief, love, and merit, is disregarded. Indeed, we tell a wonderful story, and it may well seem too good to be true; but it is sad indeed that the multitude of men go their ways after trifles, and count these grand realities to be but dreams. I am bowed down with dismay that my Lord’s great love, which led him even to die for men, should hardly be thought worthy of your hearing, much less of your believing. Here is a heavenly marriage, and right royal nuptials placed within your reach; but with a sneer you turn aside, and prefer the witcheries of sin.

There was another difficulty: she was expected to feel a love to one she had never seen. She had only newly heard that there was such a person as Isaac, but yet she must love him enough to leave her kindred, and go to a distant land. This could only be because she recognized the will of Jehovah in the matter. Ah, my dear hearers! all that we tell you is concerning things not seen as yet; and here is our difficulty. You have eyes, and you want to see everything; you have hands, and you want to handle everything; but there is one whom you cannot see as yet, who has won our love because of what we believe concerning him. We can truly say of him, “Whom having not seen, we love: in whom, though now we see him not, yet believing, we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.” I know that you answer our request thus: “You demand too much of us when you ask us to love a Christ we have never seen.” I can only answer, “It is even so: we do ask more of you than we expect to receive.” Unless God the Holy Ghost shall work a miracle of grace upon your hearts, you will not be persuaded by us to quit your old associations, and join yourselves to our beloved Lord. And yet, if you did come to him, and love him, he would more than content you; for you would find in him rest unto your souls, and a peace which passeth all understanding.

Abraham’s servant may have thought: She may refuse to make so great a change as to quit Mesopotamia for Canaan. She had been born and bred away there in a settled country, and all her associations were with her father’s house; and to marry Isaac she must tear herself away. So, too, you cannot have Jesus, and have the world too: you must break with sin to be joined to Jesus. You must come away from the licentious world, the fashionable world, the scientific world, and from the (so-called) religious world. If you become a Christian, you must quit old habits, old motives, old ambitions, old pleasures, old boasts, old modes of thought. All things must become new. You must leave the things you have loved, and seek many of those things which you have hitherto despised. There must come to you as great a change as if you had died, and were made over again. You answer, “Must I endure all this for One whom I have never seen, and for an inheritance on which I have never set my foot?” It is even so. Although I am grieved that you turn away, I am not in the least surprised, for it is not given to many to see him who is invisible, or to choose the strait and narrow way which leadeth unto life. The man or woman who will follow God’s messenger to be married to so strange a Bridegroom is a rare bird.

Moreover, it might be a great difficulty to Rebekah, if she had had any difficulties at all, to think that she must henceforth lead a pilgrim life. She would quit house and farm for tent and gipsy life. Abraham and Isaac found no city to dwell in, but wandered from place to place, dwelling alone, sojourners with God. Their outward mode of life was typical of the way of faith, by which men live in the world, and are not of it. To all intents and purposes Abraham and Isaac were out of the world, and lived on its surface without lasting connection with it. They were the Lord’s men, and the Lord was their possession. He set himself apart for them, and they were set apart for him. Rebekah might well have said, “That will never do for me. I cannot outlaw myself. I cannot quit the comforts of a settled abode to ramble over the fields wherever the flocks may require me to roam.” It does not strike the most of mankind that it would be a good thing to be in the world, and yet not to be of it. They are no strangers in the world, they long to be admitted more fully into its “society.” They are not aliens here with their treasures in heaven, they long to have a good round sum on earth, and find their heaven in enjoying it themselves, and enriching their families. Earthworms as they are, the earth contents them. If any man becomes unworldly, and makes spiritual things his one object, they despise him as a dreamy enthusiast. Many men think that the things of religion are merely meant to be read of, and to be preached about; but that to live for them would be to spend a dreamy, unpractical existence. Yet the spiritual is, after all, the only real: the material is in deepest truth the visionary and unsubstantial. Still, when people turn away because of the hardness of holy warfare, and the spirituality of the believing life, we are not astonished, for we hardly hoped it could be otherwise. Unless the Lord renews the heart, men will always prefer the bird-in-the-hand of this life to the bird-in-the-bush of the life to come.

Moreover, it might be that the woman might not care for the covenant of promise. If she had no regard for Jehovah and his revealed will, she was not likely to go with the man, and enter upon marriage with Isaac. He was the heir of the promises, the inheritor of the covenant privileges which the Lord by oath had promised. His chosen would become the mother of that chosen seed in whom God had ordained to bless the world throughout all the ages, even the Messiah, the seed of the woman, who should bruise the serpent’s head.

Peradventure the woman might not see the value of the covenant, nor appreciate the glory of the promise. The things we have to preach of, such as life everlasting, union with Christ, resurrection from the dead, reigning with him for ever and ever, seem to the dull hearts of men to be as idle tales. Tell them of a high interest for their money, of large estates to be had for a venture, or of honours to be readily gained, and inventions to be found out, they open all their eyes and their ears, for here is something worth knowing; but the things of God, eternal, immortal, boundless-these are of no importance to them. They could not be induced to go from Ur to Canaan for such trifles as eternal life, and heaven, and God.

So you see our difficulty. Many disbelieve altogether, and others cavil and object. A greater number will not even listen to our story; and of those who do listen, most are careless, and others dally with it, and postpone the serious consideration. Alas! we speak to unwilling ears.

In the third place, I would enlarge upon his very natural suggestion. This prudent steward said, “Peradventure the woman will not be willing to follow me unto this land: Must I needs bring thy son again unto the land from whence thou camest?” If she will not come to Isaac, shall Isaac go down to her? This is the suggestion of the present hour: if the world will not come to Jesus, shall Jesus tone down his teachings to the world? In other words, if the world will not rise to the church, shall not the church go down to the world? Instead of bidding men to be converted, and come out from among sinners, and be separate from them, let us join with the ungodly world, enter into union with it, and so pervade it with our influence by allowing it to influence us. Let us have a Christian world.

To this end let us revise our doctrines. Some are old-fashioned, grim, severe, unpopular; let us drop them out. Use the old phrases so as to please the obstinately orthodox, but give them new meanings so as to win philosophical infidels, who are prowling around. Pare off the edges of unpleasant truths, and moderate the dogmatic tone of infallible revelation: say that Abraham and Moses made mistakes, and that the books which have been so long had in reverence are full of errors. Undermine the old faith, and bring in the new doubt; for the times are altered, and the spirit of the age suggests the abandonment of everything that is too severely righteous, and too surely of God.

The deceitful adulteration of doctrine is attended by a falsification of experience. Men are now told that they were born good, or were made so by their infant baptism, and so that great sentence, “Ye must be born again,” is deprived of its force. Repentance is ignored, faith is a drug in the market as compared with “honest doubt,” and mourning for sin and communion with God are dispensed with, to make way for entertainments, and Socialism, and politics of varying shades. A new creature in Christ Jesus is looked upon as a sour invention of bigoted Puritans. It is true, with the same breath they extol Oliver Cromwell; but then 1888 is not 1648. What was good and great three hundred years ago is mere cant to-day. That is what “modern thought” is telling us; and under its guidance all religion is being toned down. Spiritual religion is despised, and a fashionable morality is set up in its place. Do yourself up tidily on Sunday; behave yourself; and above all, believe everything except what you read in the Bible, and you will be all right. Be fashionable, and think with those who profess to be scientific-this is the first and great commandment of the modern school; and the second is like unto it-do not be singular, but be as worldly as your neighbours. Thus is Isaac going down into Padan-aram: thus is the church going down to the world.

Men seem to say-It is of no use going on in the old way, fetching out one here and another there from the great mass. We want a quicker way. To wait till people are born again, and become followers of Christ, is a long process: let us abolish the separation between the regenerate and unregenerate. Come into the church, all of you, converted or unconverted. You have good wishes and good resolutions; that will do: don‘t trouble about more. It is true you do not believe the gospel, but neither do we. You believe something or other. Come along; if you do not believe anything, no matter; your “honest doubt” is better by far than faith. “But,” say you, “nobody talks so.” Possibly they do not use the same words, but this is the real meaning of the present-day religion; this is the drift of the times. I can justify the broadest statement I have made by the action or by the speech of certain ministers, who are treacherously betraying our holy religion under pretence of adapting it to this progressive age. The new plan is to assimilate the church to the world, and so include a larger area within it bounds. By semi-dramatic performances they make houses of prayer to approximate to the theatre; they turn their services into musical displays, and their sermons into political harangues or philosophical essays-in fact, they exchange the temple for the theatre, and turn the ministers of God into actors, whose business it is to amuse men. Is it not so, that the Lord’s-day is becoming more and more a day of recreation or of idleness, and the Lord’s house either a joss-house full of idols, or a political club, where there is more enthusiasm for a party than zeal for God? Ah me! the hedges are broken down, the walls are levelled, and to many there is, henceforth, no church except as a portion of the world, no God except as an unknowable force by which the laws of nature work.

This, then, is the proposal. In order to win the world, the Lord Jesus must conform himself, his people, and his Word to the world. I will not dwell any longer on so loathsome a proposal.

In the fourth place, notice his master’s outspoken, believing repudiation of the proposal. He says, shortly and sharply, “Beware thou that thou bring not my son thither again.” The Lord Jesus Christ heads that grand emigration party which has come right out from the world. Addressing his disciples, he says, “Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” We are not of the world by birth, not of the world in life, not of the world in object, not of the world in spirit, not of the world in any respect whatever. Jesus, and those who are in him, constitute a new race. The proposal to go back to the world is abhorrent to our best instincts; yea, deadly to our noblest life. A voice from heaven cries, “Bring not my son thither again.” Let not the people whom the Lord brought up out of Egypt return to the house of bondage; but let their children come out, and be separate, and the Lord Jehovah will be a Father unto them.

Notice how Abraham states the question. In effect, he argues it thus: this would be to forego the divine order. “For,” says Abraham, “the Lord God of heaven took me from my father’s house, and from the land of my kindred.” What, then, if he brought Abraham out, is Isaac to return? This cannot be. Hitherto the way of God with his church has been to sever a people from the world to be his elect-a people formed for himself, who shall show forth his praise. Beloved, God’s plan is not altered. He will still go on calling those whom he did predestinate. Do not let us fly in the teeth of that fact, and suppose that we can save men on a more wholesale scale by ignoring the distinction between the dead in sin and the living in Zion. If God had meant to bless the family at Padan-aram by letting his chosen ones dwell among them, why did he call Abraham out at all? If Isaac may do good by dwelling there, why did Abraham leave? If there is no need of a separate church now, what have we been at throughout all these ages? Has the martyr’s blood been shed out of mere folly? Have confessors and reformers been mad when contending for doctrines which, it would seem, are of no great account? Brethren, there are two seeds-the seed of the woman, and the seed of the serpent-and the difference will be maintained even to the end; neither must we ignore the distinction to please men.

For Isaac to go down to Nahor’s house for a wife would be placing God second to a wife. Abraham begins at once with a reference to Jehovah, “the God of heaven”; for Jehovah was everything to him, and to Isaac also. Isaac would never renounce his walk with the living God that he might find a wife. Yet this apostasy is common enough nowadays. Men and women who profess godliness will quit what they profess to believe in order to get richer wives or husbands for themselves or their children. This mercenary conduct is without excuse. “Better society” is the cry-meaning more wealth and fashion. To the true man God is first-yea, all in all; but God is placed at the fag-end, and everything else is put before him by the base professor. In the name of God I call upon you who are faithful to God and to his truth, to stand fast, whatever you lose, and turn not aside, whatever you might gain. Count the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures of Egypt. We want Abraham’s spirit within us, and we shall have that when we have Abraham’s faith.

Abraham felt that this would be to renounce the covenant promise. See how he puts it: “The God that took me from my father’s house sware unto me, saying, Unto thy seed will I give this land.” Are they, then, to leave the land, and go back to the place from which the Lord had called them? Brethren, we also are heirs of the promise of things not seen as yet. For the sake of this we walk by faith, and hence we become separate from those around us. We dwell among men as Abraham dwelt among the Canaanites; but we are of a distinct race: we are born with a new birth, live under different laws, and act from different motives. If we go back to the ways of worldlings, and are numbered with them, we have renounced the covenant of our God, the promise is no longer ours, and the eternal heritage is in other hands. Do you not know this? The moment the church says, “I will be as the world,” she has doomed herself with the world. When the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took them wives of all which they chose, then the flood came, and swept them all away. So will it again happen should the world take the church into its arms: then shall come some overwhelming judgment, and, it may be, a deluge of devouring fire. The covenant promise and the covenant heritage are no longer ours if we go down to the world and quit our sojourning with the Lord.

Besides, dear friends, no good can come of trying to conform to the world. Suppose the servant’s policy could have been adopted, and Isaac had gone down to Nahor’s house, what would have been the motive? To spare Rebekah the pain of separating from her friends, and the trouble of travelling. If those things could have kept her back, what would she have been worth to Isaac? The test of separation was wholesome, and by no means ought it to be omitted. She is a poor wife who would not take a journey to reach her husband. And all the converts that the church will ever make by softening down its doctrine, and by becoming worldly, will not be worth one bad farthing a gross. When we get them, the next question will be, “How can we get rid of them?” They would be of no earthly use to us. It swelled the number of Israelites when they came out of Egypt that a great number of the lower order of Egyptians came out with them. Yes, but that mixed multitude became the plague of Israel in the wilderness, and we read that “the mixt multitude fell a lusting.” The Israelites were bad enough, but it was the mixed multitude that always led the way in murmuring. Why is there such spiritual death to-day? Why is false doctrine so rampant in the churches? It is because we have ungodly people in the church and in the ministry. Eagerness for numbers, and especially eagerness to include respectable people, has adulterated many churches, and made them lax in doctrine and practice, and fond of silly amusements. These are the people who despise a prayer-meeting, but rush to see “living waxworks” in their schoolrooms. God save us from converts who are made by lowering the standard, and tarnishing the spiritual glory of the church! No, no; if Isaac is to have a wife worthy of him, she will come away from Laban and the rest, and she will not mind a journey on camelback. True converts are never daunted by truth or holiness-these, in fact, are the things which charm them.

Besides, Abraham felt that there could be no reason for taking Isaac down there, for the Lord would assuredly find him a wife. Abraham said, “He shall send his angel before thee, and thou shalt take a wife unto my son from thence.” Are you afraid that preaching the gospel will not win souls? Are you despondent as to success in God’s way? Is this why you pine for clever oratory? Is this why you must have music, and architecture, and flowers, and millinery? After all, is it by might and by power, and not by the Spirit of God? It is even so in the opinion of many. Brethren beloved, there are many things which I might allow to other worshippers which I have denied myself in conducting the worship of this congregation. I have long worked out before your very eyes the experiment of the unaided attractiveness of the gospel of Jesus. Our service is severely plain. No man ever comes hither to gratify his eye with art, or his ear with music. I have set before you, these many years, nothing but Christ crucified, and the simplicity of the gospel; yet where will you find such a crowd as this gathered together this morning? Where will you find such a multitude as this meeting, Sabbath after Sabbath, for five-and-thirty years? I have shown you nothing but the cross, the cross without the flowers of oratory, the cross without the blue lights of superstition or excitement, the cross without diamonds of ecclesiastical rank, the cross without the buttresses of a boastful science. It is abundantly sufficient to attract men first to itself, and afterwards to eternal life! In this house we have proved successfully, these many years, this great truth, that the gospel plainly preached will gain an audience, convert sinners, and build up and sustain a church. We beseech the people of God to mark that there is no need to try doubtful expedients and questionable methods. God will save by the gospel still: only let it be the gospel in its purity. This grand old sword will cleave a man’s chine, and split a rock in halves. How is it that it does so little of its old conquering work? I will tell you. Do you see this scabbard of artistic work, so wonderfully elaborated? Full many keep the sword in this scabbard, and therefore its edge never gets to its work. Pull off that scabbard. Fling that fine sheath to Hades, and then see how, in the Lord’s hands, that glorious two-handed sword will mow down fields of men as mowers level the grass with their scythes. There is no need to go down to Egypt for help. To invite the devil to help Christ is shameful. Please God, we shall see prosperity yet, when the church of God is resolved never to seek it except in God’s own way.

And now, fifthly, observe his righteous absolution of his servant. “If the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this my oath: only bring not my son thither again.”

When we lie a-dying, if we have faithfully preached the gospel, our conscience will not accuse us for having kept closely to it: we shall not mourn that we did not play the fool or the politician in order to increase our congregation. Oh, no! our Master will give us full absolution, even if few be gathered in, so long as we have been true to him. “If the woman will not be willing to follow thee, then thou shalt be clear from this my oath; only bring not my son thither again.” Do not try the dodges which debase religion. Keep to the simple gospel; and if the people are not converted by it, you will be clear. My dear hearers, how much I long to see you saved! But I would not belie my Lord, even to win your souls, if they could be so won. The true servant of God is responsible for diligence and faithfulness; but he is not responsible for success or non-success. Results are in God’s hands. If that dear child in your class is not converted, yet if you have set before him the gospel of Jesus Christ with loving, prayerful earnestness, you shall not be without your reward. If I preach from my very soul the grand truth that faith in the Lord Jesus Christ will save my hearers, and if I persuade and entreat them to believe in Jesus unto eternal life; if they will not do so, their blood will lie upon their own heads. When I go back to my Master, if I have faithfully told out his message of free grace and dying love, I shall be clear. I have often prayed that I might be able to say at the last what George Fox could so truly say: “I am clear, I am clear!” It is my highest ambition to be clear of the blood of all men. I have preached God’s truth, so far as I know it, and I have not been ashamed of its peculiarities. That I might not stultify my testimony I have cut myself clear of those who err from the faith, and even from those who associate with them. What more can I do to be honest with you? If, after all, men will not have Christ, and his gospel, and his rule, it is their own concern. If Rebekah had not come to Isaac she would have lost her place in the holy line. My beloved hearer, will you have Jesus Christ or not? He has come into the world to save sinners, and he casts out none. Will you accept him? Will you trust him? “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” Will you believe him? Will you be baptized into his name? If so, salvation is yours; but if not, he himself hath said it, “He that believeth not shall be damned.” Oh, do not expose yourselves to that damnation! Or, if you are set upon it; then, when the great white throne shall be seen in yonder skies, and the day of wrath has come, do me the justice to acknowledge that I bade you flee to Jesus, and that I did not amuse you with novel theories. I have brought neither flute, harp, sackbut, psaltery, dulcimer, nor any other kind of music to please your ears, but I have set Christ crucified before you, and bidden you believe and live. If you refuse to accept the substitution of Christ, you have refused your own mercies. Clear me in that day of all complicity with the novel inventions of deluded men. As for my Lord, I pray of him grace to be faithful to the end, both to his truth, and to your souls. Amen.

Portion of Scripture read before Sermon-Genesis 24.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-166, 928, 884.