Beyond all controversy, this is a most remarkable text. Zeal is an attribute which is attributable to man; but we do not often think or speak of the zeal of the Lord of Hosts. At first sight, it might seem to be a word misplaced: God’s zeal, the divine arm, the fervency of the Infinite. Yet, if we think a little as we commune together to-night, I do not doubt but that much of comfort will cluster round the word, “The zeal of the Lord of Hosts.” When I turn to Holy Writ, I do not find that, in connection with the creation, the word zeal was ever used; and yet it was a glorious work, to make ten thousand thousand worlds, to fill space with ponderous orbs, before whose dimensions human imagination itself is staggered. It was no small work to make this world, with all its varieties of skill and art, adaptation and beauty. The morning stars might well sing together at the sight of it, and burst forth into a new hymn, as the light first shone upon this our planet. But the Lord seems to have done it much at his ease. In six days he finished it, and rested from all his work. No element of hardness, no token of zeal. Indeed, what is there in the mere creative act to awaken those marvellous attributes which dwell in the bosom of the infinite Jehovah? Wisdom? why, it is but the play of wisdom. Power? it was but a mere freak of power. There is such boundless power in God, that all that he hath created is but a drop of the bucket, and as a very little thing compared with him. Nor, if I remember rightly, does the idea ever come up in connection with the sustaining of worlds and the guiding of the events of Providence. It is true he calleth them all by their names, and by the greatness of his power, not one faileth. Arcturus with his sons; Mazzaroth in his season; the Pleiades in their delightful influences-all these are swayed and governed by him. But we find not that he was awakened up to zeal at all concerning them. And in the wonders of Providence which have been wrought upon earth, it is remarkable how gently, how easily Jehovah seems to take them. Look at that splendid work at the Red Sea-a work which God himself seems to have selected as a masterpiece of his skill and of his power, for even in heaven they sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and of the Lamb-that song, “Sing unto the Lord, for he hath triumphed gloriously; the horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea.” But how did he accomplish that stupendous work? “Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them; they sank like lead in the mighty waters.” No enthusiasm, no stirring up of strength; just the tender breath of his mouth, and it is all done, and the chivalry of Egypt sinks into the middle of the sea. Nor when I hear of angels being formed of the Lord, whenever that event may have taken place, do I hear of anything like the zeal of the Lord in connection therewith. Nor even the creation of Adam, when he took the man and placed him in the garden to till it. I pray I may use no expression which will dishonour the Most High; yet when we speak of him, we are obliged to use language according to the analogies of human kind. It seems to me that when God created mere materialism, there was nothing to excite the divine mind beyond a mere complacency, when he looked upon it and said, “It was very good.” And when he created pure spirits that were incapable of singing such as angels, he rejoiced to see their happiness; but inasmuch as they could not have communion with him, being so good as not to know good or evil, his soul does not seem to have been stirred; but he desired, if I may use such language concerning him, to have a race of beings surrounding him who should know both good and evil, who should know evil by having practically fallen into it, having so smarted under it as to know it to be evil in a practical and experimental sense-a race of creatures who should from henceforth never choose evil, who should voluntarily choose that which is good for ever and for ever, because they should be so bound to him, the source of all goodness, by an overwhelming obligation of love, that while they know evil, they shall bewail it; while they understand what it is to sin, they shall never throughout eternity, either in thought or imagination, defile themselves with sin, but shall remain immaculate, perfect, through the constraint of a love which he shall reveal toward them, which shall be sufficient to wash their robes and make them white, world without end. It seems to me that he desired to have a race of creatures that should not be like angels, or a race of creatures apart from himself; but a race that should be his sons, that should be mysterious and wonderful; and his plan was this, that Jesus, his only Son, should come into this world and take upon himself the flesh and nature of fallen creatures, that in that flesh he should die, and put away the guilt of all their sin, and that by his flesh, when risen, he should establish a link between them and God, so that there should be nothing between God and man. God blessed first for ever, and then Jesus, the Man, positively and really a man, clinging by his manhood through his Godhead to those chosen creatures whom he should have purified and made clean, who should for ever exist, the children of God, partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption which is in the world through lust. It is not for me-it is not for anyone-to strike out the divine idea, and say this is what God meant and intended; but we have enough of Scripture to let us say that this was a part of his aim at any rate; that in Jesus Christ there should be a race of creatures distinct from all others, because actually alive with the Deity-creatures who, to use the expression of the serpent, should “be as gods, knowing good and evil,” and be as gods always and for ever, preferring the good, though they have tasted the evil, and might have chosen it, but were constrained by divine grace to bewail it, and henceforth to keep close to God, world without end.

Now, brethren, it was such a plan as this that awoke the zeal of God. This was what could not have been done by mere power, but must bring forth all the attributes of God; the work that had to be achieved here was worthy of a great Creator; it was a work which would reveal the Deity as no other work had ever done; and hence, if I may use the expression (I have often to excuse myself, not to you, but to him), he seems to brace himself up to a display of all the divine energy and Almighty omnipotence, to accomplish his purpose, to carry out his plan, and make Jesus the King of a chosen company. “The zeal of the Lord of Hosts shall perform this.”

God enters into the plan of glorifying Christ and making to himself a people with great zeal.

This can be proved in the following way: we judge of a man’s zeal when the purpose has been long in his heart, and he has most industriously followed it through a long period. Now, the plan of grace through Jesus Christ was in the eternal heart before the worlds were made. He had it all in his mind. Hence he speaks of Christ as “the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world,” and never once has the divine mind turned aside from this purpose. Think, then, what zeal God must have towards the achievement of this design, when through these long ages, as we call them, he has continued still resolved to push on the work which he determined to do. Think, again, all the events of Providence that have ever occurred on this globe, have had an eye to that purpose, from the little up to the great. When he set the bounds of the people, he set them according to the children of Israel; he had an eye to the people of his love and to the Son of his choice, even when he was mapping out the territories which the different races should inhabit, and not a king has fallen from his throne, not an army has devastated a province, no changes of government, no changes of race have ever taken place apart from the divine intent, that he would set his Son upon his holy hill of Zion, and make him to be a King over all the nations of the earth. To that purpose God has steadily adhered all this while, and hence I honour “the zeal of the Lord of Hosts.”

Just think a moment, and I will show you God must be zealous in this matter. Behold his Son stoops to become a man. You see him lying as a babe in Bethlehem’s manger. You behold him as a youth obedient to his parents; as a full-grown man, a servant of servants in his toil. Now, when the Lord looks down upon his son, how he must resolve to glorify him. Oh! what must be the thought in that fraternal bosom. Does my Son thus stoop, does he take such a nature into union with himself? Oh! I will crown his head with many crowns; for all his stoopings he shall have a glory. Does he sit there at a harlot’s side at the well of Samaria? Does he sit there at the table with publicans and sinners? Does he go down to bear the sorrows of the sins of men? God seems to declare by himself that he will give him a name that is above every name-for all his stooping, he shall have an exaltation-the name at which every knee shall bow, even the name of Jesus, and every tongue shall confess that he is Lord to the glory of God the Father.

Or, look further through your tears, behold the wondrous sacrifice of Calvary. Can you behold Jesus, smarting, suffering, bleeding, dying, and can you imagine God looking on, a regular spectator? Oh! no. If we may suppose him to be capable of passions like ourselves, we shall have to say, as he looked upon his dying Son, he vowed that he would lift his head above the sons of men, and make him see a numerous seed to recompense his pain. If anything could make a man zealous in his cause, it would be to see it stained with the best blood on earth, to see it stained with his own son’s blood. Surely a man would say, I consecrate myself over the blood of my child to live and die, to honour the name that was thus put to shame for my purpose, my design. And God saith the same. The zeal of God burned at Calvary.

Think again; Jesus Christ at this moment is everywhere dishonoured. Thousands use Christ’s name in superstition, worshipping a crucifix, making a God out of the very images. Multitudes of people practise idolatry, enshrine and adore false deities, and what does God say? Think you that he looks on like Jove, fabled amongst the heathen an impassive spectator? Oh! it is not so. He hears the blasphemies of men; he sees their sins; and though he keeps his right hand in his bosom, and we sometimes say, “Now, where is thy zeal, and the soundings of thy bowels,” it is only because he is divine and can put a divine restraint upon his zeal that he does not rise at once and sweep away the idols, and devastate the nations. His long suffering makes him wait; his pity bids him tarry; but the day shall come-and it draweth near-when, with the hammer, he shall break in pieces, and with the iron rod he shall dash, like a potter’s vessel, the usurpers who dare to stand in Christ’s way and to take away the kingdom from the rightful heir. Yet the very sins of men are stirring up the Lord, and their iniquities, transgressions, and blasphemies almost are exciting his holy soul, making a zeal to burn within him, which one of these days, in the set time, will perform its work.

Only one more proof on this point, and it is this: brethren, we become zealous when we hear the cries and tears of the oppressed, I think I see a senator standing on the floor of the House of Commons, pleading, in years gone by, the cause of Afric’s down-trodden sons. I do not wonder at the zeal of Wilberforce, or the marvellous eloquence of Fox. What a cause they had! They could hear the clanging of the fetters of the slaves, the sighs of prisoners, the shrieks of women, and this made them speak, for they burned with an indignation which carried them away. Pity pulled up the sluices of their speech, and their souls ran out in mighty torrents of overwhelming eloquence. Now, think, the Lord this day hears the sighs of the oppressed all over the world; he hears the sighs of the sorrowful; and beyond that there comes up the daily cries of his elect, who day and night beseech his throne. Oh! that we were more clamorous! Oh! that we were more intensely importunate! Oh! that we gave him no rest until he would establish and make Jerusalem a praise on the earth; for, remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, “And shall not God avenge his own elect? Though they cry night and day unto him, I tell you he will avenge them speedily.”

You see, then, proofs of God’s zeal, and the source of it, if we may use such a term. It is his purpose; a purpose to which he has kept so long. His zeal is, moreover, excited by Christ’s humiliation, by the blasphemies and sins of men, and by the tears of his people. God is not as we are-cold, insensible. He is full of zeal; and in the great good old cause, which shall at last win the day, there may be zealous partisans; but none is so zealous as the Lord of Hosts; a Master in the midst of Israel. We will now change the strain, and notice the second point. The text saith his zeal will perform it; that is to say:-

His zeal will perform the setting of Christ upon his kingdom, and the establishing of it for ever.

But it will perform everything that has to do with that kingdom. God’s zeal will not leave a single jot or tittle of the covenant of his grace unfulfilled. He hath lifted his hand; he hath sworn by himself that Christ shall see of the travail of his soul; and the zeal of God will carry this out.

Notice, then, men and brethren, to-night, first, that the Lord will secure the salvation of all his chosen. Nothing else could secure it but God’s own zeal. The zeal of all the Church would not secure it. Men might perish notwithstanding every act; but God knoweth them that are his, and he will find them out. If there be some of them to-night plunged into the depths of sin, or others far gone in Atheism or unbelief, the zeal of God will find out every blood-bought one, and Christ shall have every single soul that the Father gave him, and that he redeemed with blood from amongst men. Oh! there is joy in this; but we cannot stay to think of it.

This secures, in the next place, the spread of the truth. Sometimes we sit down and say, “Truth, though mighty in itself, does not prevail amongst a godless generation set upon their idols”; and oftentimes we mourn and lament because the battle has turned against the Lord. But, brethren, God’s truth is wide enough and safe enough, we need not weep over a few defeats. God has ordained that the laurels of the King are all safe. He hath trodden the winepress alone, and the victory is sure to him. We have but to keep on in the patience and tribulation of the saints till the set time shall come, and every truth that God has declared shall be crowned and honoured. Wisdom is justified of all her children, and the infinite wisdom of Jesus shall be justified in all his teaching. But the grand meaning is this: that the day is sure to come when all the nations shall be converted unto God. I am not going into any pre-millennial or post-millennial theories. I am neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet; but if there is anything plain in Scripture, it seems to be this: that there is a kingdom of Christ; that there will be a reign of Christ over the people; that the Son of David shall rule the kingdom, from the rivers even to the ends of the earth; they that dwell in the wilderness shall bow before him; the heathen shall come and lick the dust at his feet, and he shall be King of kings and Lord of lords. “The zeal of the Lord of Hosts will perform this,” saith the text. I thank the Master for that word. All the missionary societies in the world never will know how to perform it; if they were strengthened to the uttermost, they would never be able to achieve this work. Not all the ministry will ever be able to perform this. Nor do I see any means adapted to achieve so sublime an end. Why, the population is increasing upon Christianity. We do not hold our own. Relatively, to the population, I suppose, there are not so many believers in Christ to-day as there were a hundred years ago. We are going backward instead of forward. See, ye sons of men, your zeal and your earnestness-nay, your lack of zeal and your lack of earnestness-see what it will come to! Poor, vain instruments, what can we perform? But in the rear there is One who will do it. As in the days of battle, when the front ranks are beaten, and one rank after another is driven back, up come the old guards, and they never quail, and know not how to say retreat, and so they win the day. Now, behold a greater than all the hosts of men, the Eternal Ages, the Ancient of Days, the Infinite himself, shall bring up his servants in the day of battle, and he shall thunder gloriously; the gospel shall be proclaimed; the kingdom shall be won; Christ shall reign, and the “Hallelujah” shall come up unto the Lord Omnipotent, who not only gets the kingdom, but gets it by his own power, wins it by his own zeal. “The Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Hosts shall perform this.” Now, our last word is practical:-

The practical teaching which arises out of this truth.

The expression of the text is only used four times in Scripture. One of these is a repetition of another. Virtually it is only used three times. In Isaiah 63:15, “the zeal of the Lord of Hosts” is used, as I have used it already, as an argument for prayer. God is thus addressed, “Where is thy zeal, and the sounding of thy bowels, and of thy mercies towards me? Are they restrained?” What a plea in prayer for us to-morrow night! O God, convert the sons of men; put an end to blasphemy and sin. If thou do not, we have heard of thy zeal, but where is thy zeal? Thou canst do it; why dost thou not do it? Thou canst save. The hardest heart will yield to thee. The rod of iron and steel shall be broken by the iron of the Cross. Oh! God, where, where, where is thy zeal? Hast thou forgotten the great fall, and the kingdom, and the covenant, and thine oath? Hast thou forgotten thy Son, his griefs, his merits; thy promised recompense to him? Where is thy zeal? Oh! but this is a battering-ram with which to shake the very gates of heaven. Men of prayer and faith, learn how to use this! The next time you are wrestling with the angel, if you would overcome him, here is the master-plea, “Where is thy zeal, and the sounding of thy bowels?” Let us thus flee to God!

But the text may be used, in the second place, as a ground of hope. If you turn to Isaiah 37:32, you will see that there it is used in relation to the salvation of a remnant-the remnant of Judah. When you and I feel ourselves to be like a remnant, cut off, and put away-when we feel ourselves to be unworthy of the divine notice, let us recollect that God is zealous to save his remnant, and let us ask him to save us, and appeal to the very zeal of God to give salvation to us who need it so much.

But not to dwell longer on this part of the subject, I am sure you will perceive that our text, practically, is a good reason for confidence. You begin to be dispirited in God’s work; it ought not to be so. If any of you are ready to give up your Sunday school work, or whatever it is you are engaged in, oh! say not so. God is so zealous that he will not let the good cause fail. There may be, as there will be, in every great battle, a certain sort of temporary defeat, which may be but a retiring of the troops that they may the more sternly and successfully advance again to the front. So is it with the Cross of Christ. There are slight repulses, but everything is working to ultimate victory. Look at the sea as it comes up towards flood, and then the waves retire. A child might sit down and weep, and say, “I thought the sea was coming up to here, but see it has gone back again, and it has not washed my feet.” In the long run the sea is still coming up, and it is thus a type of the good cause of Christ. Our lives are but like seconds in the tide of this great time of ours, which is itself but a second in the great duration of eternity. Because the good old cause does not seem to prosper for a single day, and the kingdom does not come to Christ in my short life, shall I sit down and weep? Nay, I am but one amongst millions who shall achieve the divine purpose-one little coral insect, helping to pile up the rock on which, by and by, shall grow the cedar and the palm-tree, and the lovely flowers, and the winds shall waft across it insects in every gale-I will do my work, though it be beneath the waves; I will do my work and die; and others shall do the same, but the rock is rising, God’s purpose is being accomplished. In the words of the prayer of Moses, “Let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory unto their children.” Lord, let us take the work, and give our children the glory. Let us work on; they shall live to see the glory. Some future generation shall see the triumph. And the best of it all is, we shall see it too, for it will be but a sleep betwixt now and then, but a little leaning upon the Saviour’s bosom in our disembodied state, and then the trumpet shall ring so shrill and clear through heaven and earth, and we shall come to dwell again in these bodies of ours, restored and rendered fit for purified spirit to dwell in; and our eyes shall see in that day the God that died for us, and oh! how we will adore him, and magnify him, and we will say together, the cause for which we struggled, the kingdom for which we fought, has come at last. It was a long day, and a weary one, and we feared the Master would not come. Some of us fell asleep before his appearing; but we awaken at the knockings at the door; we awaken up even with the blessed sleepers, and we come to see the triumph as we once of old saw the praise. Glory be to God, the victory is secure. Let us work on till then.

But, last of all, if God is thus zealous for the crown rights, the kingdom of Christ, let us be zealous too. This is not the day of zeal, this is the day of cleverness and achievement; it is not the day of solid earnestness. It is the day of mere sensationalism, and nothing more. Oh! what a sight it would have been to have seen old John Knox, when old and worn, go up into his pulpit, and though before he began to preach he seemed so weak that he could scarcely stand, yet he did not proceed far in preaching up the Master’s name, before, as an old historian says, “he did seem to use such force that one would think he would dash the pulpit into fragments”-dash it into shivers, I suppose, before the Popish priests and hypocrites of the age. How his eyes flashed fire as he spoke out his Master’s truth, as he denounced Popery, and held up the truth and the kingdom of the Lord Jesus. We want more men of this sort. Oh! that God would but send us one such, and then to back him a race of Covenanters, who should with their very blood dedicate themselves to the truth and the Kingdom of Christ against the insidious advances of Popery, and the infidelity of Rome and hell, which are twin brothers. Oh! that once again the Church were earnest to have no head or king of the Church but Christ, no creed but the Bible, no baptism but the baptism which he has taught, no sacrament but what he reveals, no doctrine but what that book dictates-the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible. May we come back to this in purity, to this with earnestness; and then it will not be long before we shall hear him coming in the chariot, paved with love for the daughters of Jerusalem, and we shall go forth to meet him, even to meet King Solomon, with the crown wherewith his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart. Oh! God of zeal, drop thy zeal upon us now, and make us zealous too, even we, by blood redeemed, by thy Holy Spirit, inhabit, consecrate us afresh, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Expositions by C. H. Spurgeon

ISAIAH 40:1-17; 25-31. JOHN 1:29-42

ISAIAH 40:1-17; 25-31

Verses 1, 2. Comfort ye, comfort ye my people, saith your God. Speak ye comfortably to Jerusalem, and cry unto her, that her warfare is accomplished, that her iniquity is pardoned: for she hath receiveth of the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.

God would have his people happy. He knows that we are not in a strong, vigorous state, neither do we honour his name while we are lacking in holy joy. Let the sinners be uncomfortable. Let them be “like the troubled sea that cannot rest”; but as for God’s people, it is his great joy that they should be happy. He bids his servants again and again to comfort them. Sometimes we are in a condition of warfare, and we are under the chastising rod, but now the Lord appears graciously to his servants, and he says, “Your warfare is over your chastisement is ended.” Now the Lord returns in mercy, and he grants a sense of forgiven sin.

3. The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God.

You know this was John the Baptist coming to proclaim the Saviour. That was the best comfort God’s people could have-the coming of the Lord. So it is now. The joy of the Church is the coming of the Lord, and to each one of us the greatest source of joy is the drawing near to us of our Lord. If he appears to us, our winter is over, our summer’s sun has come. If Christ be with us, the time of the singing of birds has come, and our heart is glad.

4, 5. Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low; and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain: And the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together: for the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it.

Wherever Christ comes, it is so. All things are right at his appearing, and if the Lord do but manifest himself to us to-night, each one, we shall find the crooked things made straight. We shall see the mountains of difficulty levelled, and the deep depressions will all be filled up, and there will be a causeway along which the Lord triumphantly shall ride to display the greatness of his power. There is nothing that shall hinder the coming of the Lord to us, and when he comes, there is nothing that shall stand against him.

6-8. The voice said, Cry. And he said, What shall I cry? All flesh is grass, and all the goodliness thereof is as the flower of the field: The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: because the spirit of the Lord bloweth upon it: surely the people is grass. The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God shall stand for ever.

Now that is a cry that we all need to hear-the death-cry of all creature-confidence for man at his very best is only like grass in the flower. It will be mown down in due time, but if the scythe comes not near it, yet will it fade in its season, for it is a transient thing, and every hope and confidence which is based upon that which is seen must be temporal and must pass away. All the joy that you have to-night-all the hope and all the confidence you have which is based upon an earthly thing-must by degrees all disappear. Nothing is eternal but that which springs out of the eternal. Unless our hope be in the Lord alone, that hope will at some time or other fail us; and this is a cry we need to heat, because until we are sick of the creature, we shall not turn to the Creator. Till we have done with false confidences, we shall not make God our trust.

9. O Zion, that bringest good tidings, get thee up into the high mountain: O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!

Look away from these fading things, and behold your God. Look away from the brightest joy you have, though it be, like the meadow, all besprent with many coloured flowers, and look to your God, and to your God alone. “Behold your God”-your God in Christ-your God who has come through the wilderness, making a highway for himself, that he may come to you. Rejoice in Christ your Saviour, and you shall have a joy that never shall be taken from you.

10, 11. Behold the Lord God will come with strong hand, and his arm shall rule for him: behold, his reward is with him, and his work before him. He shall feed his flock like a shepherd:

Do you belong to the flock to-night? Then let this comfort you. Never mind about the fading flowers. “He shall feed his flock like a shepherd.” He has brought you into the pasture to-night. Depend upon it, he has not led you by a wrong way. And now, though your soul be hungry and thirsty, you shall not lack, for “he shall feed his flock like a shepherd.”

11. He shall gather the lambs with his arm.

The feeblest, first. The most care, for those that want most care. “He shall gather the lambs with his arm.”

11. And carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.

Your sorrow is to come. It is to yourself alone known. None can sympathise with you. He will gently lead you. There is no overdriving with Christ. Sometimes his ministers, in order to get God’s people right one way, overdrive them another, and it is possible, while rebuking the hypocrite, to cause grief to the sincere believer; but our Lord is a better shepherd than the under-shepherds are at their very best. “He shall gather the lambs with his arm, carry them in his bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young.” Oh! what a blessed helper we have! Let us rest in him.

12-17. Who hath measured the waters in the hollow of his hand, and meted out heaven with the span, and comprehended the dust of the earth in a measure, and weighed the mountains in scales, and the hills in a balance? Who hath directed the Spirit of the Lord, or being his counsellor hath taught him? With whom took he counsel, and who instructed him, and taught him in the path of judgment, and taught him knowledge, and shewed to him the way of understanding? Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing. And Lebanon is not sufficient to burn, nor the beasts thereof sufficient for a burnt offering. All nations before him are as nothing: and they are counted to him less than nothing, and vanity.

Who would not trust such a God as this-this only God? How well may we be content to turn away from the fading creatures to this eternal Lord, and put our trust in him! Indeed, the wonder is that we do trust the creature, and the wonder still is that we do not trust the mighty Creator. Faith, which seems so difficult, after all, is nothing better than sanctified common-sense. It is the most common-sense thing in all the world to trust in Omnipotence-in infinite, unchanging love-in infallible truth. To trust anywhere else needs a great deal of justification, but to trust in God needs no apology. He well deserves it. O my soul, trust thou in him.

25, 26. To whom then will ye liken me or shall I be equal? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number: he calleth them all by names by the greatness of his might for that he is strong in power; not one faileth.

There is no other power that hangs yon lamps of heaven in their places, and keeps them ever burning, except the power of his Word. This whole round earth of ours hangs on nothing but the bidding of the Most High. I remember how Luther used to console himself in troublous times by saying, “Look at yonder arch of blue. There is not a pillar to hold it up, and yet whoever saw the skies fall?” Nothing but the power of God keeps them up. My soul, if all the worlds were made by his word, canst not thou hang on that word? If all things do exist but by the will and word of thy Father, can he not support thee, and canst thou not trust him? Oh! this confidence in the invisible and eternal ought to be natural to us as God’s children. But alas! here is our great sin-that we frequently trust in an arm of flesh and forget our God.

27. Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from the Lord, and my judgment is passed over from my God?

He forgets no star amongst the myriads, no creature amongst the multitudes. He has marked in his book the track of every single atom of air, and every particle of dust, and every drop of spray, and how canst thou be forgotten?

28, 29. Hast thou not known? hast thou not heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary? there is no searching of his understanding. He giveth power to the faint:

He loves to pour out into empty vessels. He does not give his power to the strong, but “he giveth power to the faint,” and the more faint thou art, the more room for his strength. Trust thou in him. If thou art burdened that thou canst not stand, lean on him. The more thou dost lean, the better will he love thee. He delights to help his people. “He giveth power to the faint.”

29, 30. And to them that have no might he increaseth strength. Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall:

We sometimes wish that we were as young as some, and that we had all their overflowing spirit-all the effervescence of their juvenile ardour. Ah, well! we need not wish for it, for mere mortal power shall droop and die, and earthly vigour cease, while such as trust the Lord shall find their strength increased. “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall.”

31. But they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength: they shall mount up with wings as eagles

That is very much when they begin. They are all for flying; and God gives them a glorious flight, and they are so happy and so delighted. But they will do better than that.

31. They shall run, and not be weary;

Is that better than flying? Yes it is-a better pace to keep up, but God enables his servants at length to keep along the road of duty and to run in it. But there is a better pace than that.

31. And they shall walk, and not faint.

It is a good, steady pace. It is the pace that Enoch kept when he walked with God. Sometimes it is easier to take a running spurt than it is to keep on day by day walk, walk, walk, in the sobriety of Christian conversation. Many under excitement can run a race, but it is the best of all to be able steadily to walk on, walking with God the Lord. The Lord bring us to that pace. “They shall walk and not faint.”

JOHN 1:29-42

Verse 29. The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.

John lost no time. He had no sooner discovered the Saviour than he bore witness of him. “The next day.” As soon as ever his eyes lighted upon Jesus, he had his testimony ready for him. “Behold,” said he, “the Lamb of God.”

30-33. This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me: And I knew him not: but that he should manifest to Israel, therefore am I come baptizing with water. And John bare record, saying, I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it abode upon him And I knew him not:

At first.

33, 34. But he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Ghost. And I saw and bare record, that this is the Son of God.

Notice how very clear John is. There is no mistaking him. He repeats himself lest there should be any possibility of an error, and he gives the detail of the mode by which he recognised the Saviour, in order that all might be persuaded to accept Jesus as in very truth the Messiah and the Son of God; so that we are to preach very plainly-not with enticing words of men’s wisdom, but with demonstration of the Spirit and with power. What have we to conceal? Nay, we have everything to reveal, and our business is that men should be convinced that Jesus is the Christ, and should come and put their trust in him.

35, 36. Again the next day after John stood, and two of his disciples: And looking upon Jesus as he walked, he saith Behold the Lamb of God?

There is no objection to preaching the same sermon twice if it be on such a matter as this. “Behold the Lamb of God,” he said one day, and the next day he did not vary the phraseology. He had no new metaphor-no new figure-with which to set forth Christ, but, as striking a nail upon the head and the same nail will help to fasten it, and may do more service than bringing out a new nail, so he gets to the same word and the same subject-“Behold the Lamb of God.”

37. And the two disciples heard him speak, and they followed Jesus.

They went beyond their teacher. And oh! what a mercy it is if our hearers can go Christward far beyond us. John was well content to be left behind if they followed Jesus; and so may any minister of Christ rejoice if his people will follow Jesus, even if they go far beyond his attainments.

38. Then Jesus turned, and saw them following, and saith unto them, What seek ye?

Christ wants intelligent followers: so he asks the question, “What seek ye?”

38, 39. They said unto him, Rabbi, (which is to say, being interpreted, Master), where dwellest thou? He saith unto them, Come and see,

Which is often his answer to enquirers-“Come and see.” “Oh! taste and see that the Lord is good.” Learn by experience. Do not merely hear what I say, but come and see.

39-42. They came and saw where he dwelt, and abode with him that day: for it was about the tenth hour. One of the two which heard John speak, and followed him, was Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother. He first findeth his own brother Simon, and saith unto him, We have found the Messias, which is, being interpreted, the Christ. And he brought him to Jesus,

This is how the kingdom began to grow-by individual effort. “Andrew findeth Simon”: one convert must bring another: “and he brought him to Jesus.”

42. And when Jesus beheld him he said, Thou art Simon the son of Jona: thou shalt be called Cephas, which is by interpretation, A stone,

There was a meaning in the change of names, for there was about to be a change of character-the timid son of a dove soon to become a very rock for the Church.

LOVE’S REWARD

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, November 19th, 1914.

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.”-Psalm 91:14.

That this psalm was written by David we see no reason to doubt. In the previous verses we have the words of the Psalmist himself. Here, however, there is a change of speaker. The promise is spoken by God himself in these three closing sentences. Doubtless the words of inspired men are very precious as a divine testimony, but when God himself directly speaks to us in his own name, what an extraordinary weight attaches to every syllable he utters! Dear child of God, thou who art a believer in Jesus, canst thou not think that thou hearest thy God saying, concerning thee, with his own gracious assuring voice, “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him”? And notice that he repeats these words, “I will,” four times, as if to give them the most striking emphasis. Surely this is intended to minister some comfort and refreshing to the Lord’s people. I pray the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, to give the Word, and to apply it.

“Because,” saith the Most High, “he hath set his love upon me.” We must look at this carefully, for it contains a description of character. If we can find ourselves classified here, it will be well for us, otherwise we shall have reason for deep anxiety. Is our love set upon God? Search your hearts, for the question is very pungent. The original Hebrew has more force in it than our translation expresses, although I do not know exactly how to improve upon our version. The idea, however, is something like this: “To have fallen in love,” as though with all the tenderness of passion, and all the transport of devotion, the creature yearned for his Creator, and mortal man cherished an intense affection for the eternal God.

The heart’s supreme love.

“He hath set his love upon me.” His love! Such love as draws the sympathies with its irresistible attraction; as brightens the thoughts with its fervent glow; as knits the heart with its indissoluble bonds; aye, such love as melts the soul with its potent charms. I would have you think of it now as a fact, not as a fiction, or a fancy. That word love is translatable into the many tongues of earth, and so it passes current among the million in every age and every clime; but hearts attuned alone can feel it; it finds echo only in the purest minds. But, to explain it, why, one had need combine a poet’s genius with the emotions of a child, a husband or wife, a parent, a friend, all earthly relations in one to paint genuine love in living language. And even then it were all felt, and little, very little, told. Oh! but this is a high matter, for a man to set his love upon God! His love-not a cold sentiment, not a languid approbation, not a mild complacency, not any mere formal respect, but love, burning love, which, like coals of juniper, gives forth a vehement flame-“his love set upon God,” like a river that is set upon its course to the sea; its volume ever swelling, its tide becoming more and more rapid. Answer now, dear hearer, canst thou say that thou hast set thy love upon God? If so, thou hast been the subject of a great change-a mysterious transformation; for thine heart was naturally at enmity to God, and the instincts of thy mind and the desires of the flesh were alien to him. Look back; compare thy present self with thy former self, and consider the difference. If thou wast not, in thy unregenerate state, in active hostility to God, yet wast thou indifferent towards him. God was not in all thy thoughts. Thou couldest rise at morn, and lay thee down to rest at night without enquiring after God; thou couldest go forth to thy work and labour, and return to seek thy recreation without seeking or acknowledging God in all thy ways. Fain wouldest thou try even to suffer, to lie upon the bed of sickness when called to it, struggling with weakness, confiding in the physician’s skill, without appealing to God thy Creator and thy Preserver. This was thy natural state, the bent and bias of thy perverse will, and in such waywardness thou wouldest have continued to this hour if the free, rich, undeserved, sovereign efficacious grace of God had not interposed. Is thy love now set upon God? Then a great change hath passed over thee, as though a dead man had been quickened into life, as though the darkness of midnight had been suddenly turned to the brightness of midday. A great wonder of grace, a miracle of saving mercy has been wrought in thee. Though thou must know to whom it is to be ascribed, let me refresh thy memory awhile, that I may awaken thy gratitude. Cometh not this of the Lord, who is wonderful in counsel and excellent in working? Depend upon it, only he who made thee could new make thee. Only that Voice which brought light out of darkness, and order out of chaos, could have dispelled thy vain infatuations or inflamed thy soul with love, and made thy wonted apathy and aversion give place to a sacred ardour and a devout affection. Surely the kingdom of God hath come nigh unto thee; salvation hath come to thy house; the Lord hath looked upon thee and spoken to thee; the Eternal Spirit hath brooded over thy dull faculties, and, as it were, by the breath of God’s mouth thou hast been regenerated; thou art born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever. Henceforth, thou art in Christ, a new creature. Revolve these things in thy soul, this array of lively blessings, that thy gratitude may bloom with joy in God, and thy praise to the Lord may burst into melodious song. Do I not speak of a matter which should constrain the tongue of every redeemed man to cry, “Hosanna in the highest”? Were it marvellous if a thousand voices should utter a loud hallelujah?

Thy love to God is no self-sown plant. If thou hast set thy love on him, it is because he first set his love on thee. What though thy love went spontaneously towards God, without any constraint to violate thy will? When he lifted upon thee the light of his countenance, and when thou didst find favour in his eyes, there were charms, attractions, drawings, conformable to the nature of thy mind-sweet constraints of divine enchantment-which enamoured thee of the beauties of Christ; a potent spell of divine persuasion, which led thee to listen to the voice of Christ, and believe. And now thou hast seen and known him, thou canst not do otherwise than love him. God has been revealed to thee in the person and work of his Son, and thy heart hath been warmed, thy affections have been kindled, thy whole soul hath been drawn towards him. So the Lord observes thee, and saith, “He hath set his love upon me.” Art thou the man of whom God speaks? Then I ask thee to avow thyself to thyself and to thy God, now, in the presence of all his people. “Yes,” you can say, “I do love my God; I cannot now live without thoughts of him; nor do I wish to do so; and when for a while, through pressure of care, I do not turn my soul towards God, yet, when the pressure is removed, my mind comes back to him, as the dove flies back to the dovecot, and as the needle trembles back to the pole. Never am I happier than when my thoughts are with my God; nor is there any thought so uppermost in my soul as the thought that he loves me, and that, consequently, I desire to live in obedience to his command, seeking his honour, and endeavouring to promote his glory.” I hope, beloved, if the Lord Jesus were to appeal to you, as he did to his servant Peter, you could stand the threefold interrogation, “Lovest thou me?” and you would answer with Peter at the last, “Thou knowest all things; thou knowest that I love thee.” Let this love of yours, then, which you do possess, be in your soul more and more a consuming flame.

Let nothing come in to quench it, to dim its ardour. Let nothing in your conduct obscure its truthfulness. Suffer no idol to divide the throne which God has claimed in your affections. Cry against the admission of any intruder; beseech the Lord to keep near to you, and to drive far away every attraction and allurement that would stir up rivalry in your breast. Be it your own strong resolve, in the power of his Spirit, that, as you do love him, you will seek to love him more and more, and, till your last dying day, it shall be your soul’s passion and master-thought, that God should be all in all enshrined within the heart as the bosom’s Lord. “He hath set his love upon me.” I think I hear some of you say, “Oh! that I could love him! I am half afraid to say that I do love him.” Yet, perhaps, you are the very persons that, if brought to the test, would prove to be the truest lovers of your Saviour. But I hear your inward whisper, “Though I do much that might make me fear and question the sincerity of my love to him, yet, at times, my soul’s emotions get the better of these qualms for a while, and speak out their fervour. Yes, my Jesus! I do love thee; I do know and feel that thou art my portion. Oh! my God, I do desire to love thee more; I do give myself up to thee.” You know, beloved, that it is not always easy to move the affection of love. It may be in the soul, and lie there quiet. Though I know that I love the Saviour, I remember a time when I was in great doubt whether I had any love to him, till, as I listened to a sermon from a good brother, the truth he uttered so stirred my soul that it set the love that had been slumbering in my spirit all in motion, and I perceived that, after all, I did love my Lord and Master, and had his truth near to my heart. Now, it may be that God will raise up something in providence, or something in connection with some fellow-Christian, that will make your love to flame up, and you will say within yourself, “There it is, after all! I was afraid it had expired.” Do you recollect when first you set your love on God? Do you mind the place where Jesus met with you, where the weight of sin was taken from you, and your transgression like a thick cloud was blown away? Ah! then the Saviour was very, very dear to you. You fixed your love on him. Do you not remember, since that, many high times and choice occasions when you have renewed your vow, when your soul has stretched out her wings towards Jesus, and he has looked towards you, and you towards him, and the love of your espousals has been restored? Oh! that it might be so now! But whether or not there be any flames of affection, let the coals burn on, and say within your spirit, “Yes, my Saviour, beyond a doubt, I do love thee, and I cling to thee! Better it were that my heart should cease to pray than cease to love thee!”

I am afraid there are some here that neither do set their hearts on God, nor care to do so. To them I can only say, God forbid that your present indifference should be your permanent choice. Your resolve not to love the God who made you, not to love the Redeemer of men, the Saviour of sinners, the Spirit of grace-such an obstinate resolution as that will involve the loss of all the privileges which belong to the lovers of Christ, and in that day “when the nearer waters roll, when the tempest rages high,” you may regret, when it is too late, that you rejected that Jesus who, as Lover of our souls, can alone find us a haven from the storm, and protect us from the wrath to come. You know, after all, that they are happiest who love God best. I can only pray for you that his Spirit may teach you wisdom, and lead you to renounce your culpable indifference and your wicked aversion, and draw you into the fellowship of those who have set their love upon God. Now we must pass on. Is our love set? Then the next thing we have to notice is:-

God’s love proved to the loving heart.

“Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him.” Rightly understood, this savours not of human merit, but of divine mercy. The possession of this love reflects no credit on the creature; but the production of it redounds to the praise of the Creator. He that giveth grace for grace adds here another golden link to the chain of his own loving-kindnesses, when he saith, “I will deliver him.” By what gentle ways does a mother fondle her babe, till the wee child clings to her, and to no stranger’s arms will it go without a scream. The mother is pleased; she presses the infant to her breast, and she says, “You sweet, affectionate little thing, I will take care of you; nobody shall hurt you.” Even so, beloved, “As one whom his mother comforteth, so will I comfort you,” saith the Lord. There is more than a mother’s tenderness in our heavenly Father’s heart. Come, ye children of God, take this gracious Word from your Father’s lips, and let your souls be satisfied with fatness as you feed on it. “I will deliver him.” Does it not mean that he will defend you from all your foes and all your fears? Are you exposed to ridicule, slander, persecution, tyranny? Or are you teased and tormented with the fawning looks, the treacherous words, the cunning devices, the gaudy allurements of those who would beguile you?; fear not ye their faces, whether they frown or smile; cling to your own Protector, for thus saith the Lord, “I will deliver thee.” Your worst enemies are evil spirits, able to tempt you in many ways, and to suit their devices to your weaknesses; fear them not, for even the prince of the power of the air, though he come against you with all his fiery darts at once, shall not prevail to destroy you, since it is written, “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him.” As you love God, he will certainly deliver you from all the powers of earth and hell. It may be that your temporal trials harass you. Are you poor and friendless, without supplies and without prospects? None know the stings of poverty but those that endure them. It were bootless to fret yourselves for the morrow, while you have enough for to-day. Take heart, ye that love the Lord, and cling to him closer when the peril seems nearer, for this promise goes before you, “I will deliver him.” Aye, doubtless the dinner is ordered when the cupboard is bare, for is it not written, “They shall not be ashamed in the evil time, and in the days of famine they shall be fed.” Or, perhaps, sickness has stealthily crept over your mortal frame. Gradually you have been weakened in body. Why should you tremble because of the infirmities of your constitution, or the natural decay that comes with growing years, for you shall be rescued from all the ill-consequences of depression of spirit and of weakness of the flesh, “I will deliver him.” It may be that bereavement has deprived your life of its joys. You have been losing friends one by one. Already you have borne to the grave some of the nearest and dearest of your kindred; and others are going. Fear haunts your breast that you will soon be left alone. What will you do when all help has failed, and all light faded from your dwelling? Why, will you not then have this promise to fall back upon?-“Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him.” There are no straits or struggles, no cares or crosses, no weary loads or dreary hardships, no privation at present, or famine in prospect, no pains or perils of any kind out of which the all-bounteous God cannot, and will not, deliver his people. Only believe you the promise, and you shall find it true, “I will deliver him.” Do you tell me that you are haunted by strong temptation; that you have been sorely beset with them of late; that your condition and position are full of danger and jeopardy; that, being tempted by those who have great influence over you, your steps have well nigh slipped? Go to your knees, cry to your God for strength to endure and might to overcome; but be not dismayed with craven fear, for if thou hast set thy love on God, there stands this record engraved as in eternal brass, “I will deliver him.” You shall have grace equal to your time of trial; you shall break the snares of the foe: though you be shut in like Samson in Gaza, and compassed about on all sides with temptations, you shall wake up as a giant refreshed, and, by your strength in God, pluck up the gates of the fortress, and carry them away, post and bar and all, and your soul shall be free. Peradventure, however, you are the victim of another fear; you are afraid of dying. Dying is at no time child’s play, and he that treats the matter lightly knows not what he does. But you, perhaps, are subject to bondage through fear of death. Its dread accompaniments, pain of body, gasping for breath; its strange outlook, a vast eternity; its near approach, the rolling up of the curtain that hides from mortal view the scenes that lie beyond-all these appal you. Oh! be not thou troubled in mind. Hast thou set thy love on Jesus, and does thy heart cling to the Father, God? Then on the bed of languishing thou shalt find gracious succour and grateful relief. When thy heart grows faint and thy flesh wastes away, thy soul shall be strengthened and thy spirit endowed with fresh vigour. The noisome graveyard shall be fragrant with flowers of paradise, and the dark sepulchre shall be lighted up with a blessed hope. You shall be gently led, not roughly driven, through the dark shades. And, as with the tender notes of a requiem, sweet though solemn, you shall hear this glad word, “I will deliver him: I will deliver him.” Delivered you shall be. The trial shall issue in triumph. Victim of death, you shall be victor over it. As in a chariot of fire, you shall be borne from the land of gloom to the land of joy. To your Father and your God you shall rise, leading your captivity captive. But ah! this is not a subject to stand and preach about; it is rather one upon which to sit and think: so sit thou down, thou lover of the Saviour, and again, and again, and again delight thyself with this sure word of covenant promise which is given to thee for thy portion, “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him.”

God’s promise to high knowledge.

It is set forth in the latter part of our text, “Because he hath known my name, I will set him on high.” This expresses a sacred mystery, “He hath known my name.” The Hebrews of old were not accustomed to use the name of Jehovah, either in ordinary speech or in their writing. In their sacred books they were commonly in the habit of putting in the word “Adonai,” or “Lord,” instead of the word “Jehovah,” the name of their God. To many of the heathen nations the distinctive name of the one God was not even known; they only heard it alluded to by the peculiar people who delighted to keep the name to themselves. Now there is always a secret about that vital religion which comes to the believer not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost-a secret which the natural man cannot discern. “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant.” The particular form of expression used in the text arises from the fact that there were some in Israel who did not know the name of God, while others did not know him as the “I am,” by that superlative name which is his memorial unto all generations. See Exodus 3:13-15. And just so there are to-day people taught of God, who know the Lord, while the rest of mankind know him not.

Let us try to give this matter a practical bearing. “He hath known my name.” This means information. Hast thou, O my soul, a part in that high privilege of which our Great Intercessor spoke when he said to his Father, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent”? Ask thyself, my hearer, the question, say, Art thou initiated into the mystery of that fellowship with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, which they enjoy who walk in the light? Dost thou know the living God? Dost thou know that he is, and there is none beside him? Dost thou know that he is almighty, and therefore bow down before him? Hast thou seen that he is merciful, and therefore put thy trust in him? Hast thou understood that he is just, and therefore dost thou fear him? Has thine eye ever perceived the blended attributes that make up the crown of Deity, and constrain thee to worship him in the beauty of holiness? Canst thou discern how impartial he is in punishing sin, and yet how gracious in providing a ransom for sinners? As for the ungodly world, it concerns them not whether there be a God or no; and as to the excellency of his character, they do not regard it; but those whom he loves, and whom he will set on high, delight to know the name of God, and to spell out its mystic letters as they are painted on his works, unfolded in his ways, and revealed in his Word. They make it their study to know what can be known of him. God is the one object of their life’s pursuit. Oh! that I knew where I might find him! is their instinctive cry. And the Holy Spirit is pleased to help them in their researches. Opinions, conjectures, guesses at truth, count for nothing. Dost thou know of a surety the name of the Lord, so that without hesitation thou canst say, “I know whom I have believed”?

“He hath known my name.” That means trust. He hath relied upon it. He has come and depended upon the name of God as his dwelling-place, the home of his soul. Wherein is thy reliance, O man? On what dost thou depend for time or eternity? Is it on thine own strength, thy works, or thy merits? Is it on thy wit, thy wealth, thy rank? Ah! then these poor props will fail thee ere long. But happy is that man who knows the name of God as his confidence, his refuge, his high tower, his place of defence and security.

To know God’s name likewise implies experience. I think many of you could rise and say, “Glory be to God, I do know him by the distresses in which I have called upon him, and the deliverances he has sent me. In my hours of darkness I have found him to be a never-failing light. I have gone to his mercy-seat in times of need, and then he hath appeared unto me. I have enquired at his holy oracle, and he has answered me with the word of his mouth.” Little can anyone know of God who has but heard of him with the hearing of the ear. Nothing is known of God till we know him by experience; nothing that is of value. All that the ear learns of God from another’s teaching is shallow and superficial. Thine heart must know God by its own deep communings. Let me ask thee, dear hearer, how far thou hast gone in this school of instruction and discipline? We shall ascertain who you are and where you are, by the answer you are able to give to this question. Tens of thousands of men walk through this world and never meet with God: they do not seek him in their troubles. They may invoke his name, and cry out, “God help me!” in a stress of grief or a paroxysm of pain, but they forget him when their trials are over. Oh! how different the children of God! “They that know thy name will put their trust in thee.” Theirs is not occasional, but habitual drawing nigh unto God. A good minister, sitting one day in the house of one of his people, overheard a dialogue with a beggar woman who knocked at the door. The good housewife opened it, and said to the poor creature, “Do not trouble me now; I do not intend to give you anything to-day.” The reply was, “Please don’t say so, ma’am. I am no upstart. You know me very well; I am an old beggar at your door. I should think I have begged of you every week for the last seven years. Do not turn me away, kind lady, I pray you.” She was about to be sent off without any relief, when the minister said, “Give her something for my sake. She is the exact picture of me. Her plea with you is just what I am obliged to plead with my God whenever I go to him. ‘Lord, give me thy mercy. I am no new comer; I am an old beggar. I have been dependent upon thy bounty, a pensioner upon thy charity, these many, many years.’ ” Oh! cast me not away! The Christian’s life is a life of dependence upon God. He always has to go to him. There is never an hour in which he could do without his God. Now this is the man of whom the text speaks, “He hath known my name”-by long experience he has come to rely upon my goodness and my love.

Then, beloved, you will observe the promise that is given to such, “I will set him on high, because he hath known my name.” “If he knows my name, I taught it to him; my grace made him know it. And now, having given him so much grace, I will give him more, and I will give him glory at the last: I will set him on high.” What does it mean, to be set on high by God? It certainly implies rank. The Christian is a man of rank. How so? Because every man whom God sets on high he owns as his child, makes him to be “an heir of God, and a joint-heir with Jesus Christ.” There is much respect shown in the world to the young man or the young woman whose good fortune it is to be heir of a noble title and large estates; but what must it be to be “an heir of God,” to be “a joint heir with Christ Jesus”? To be the son of a prince or the son of a king is no small thing in the esteem of most men. To have the blue blood in one’s veins is thought to be honourable. To trace your pedigree up to an emperor is a matter for pride. But the child of God, mean as he may be reckoned on this base earth, though he should have lived and died in a garret or a cellar, near the wind or nigh the damp soil, is a prince of the blood imperial. He is of the royal family of heaven; he shall be a peer; he shall be, ere long, in the court of the Most High. The blood royal runs within his veins, only it is not the royalty of a day, nor does it belong to the crown that is so readily taken from the wearer’s brow. The “crown that fadeth not away” belongs to every man who has set his love upon God, and who knows God’s name. He is set on high, for God has made him of a princely rank.

The promise to “set him on high” will, further, mean a place of security. The Christian, when his faith is as it should be, is set so high above his enemies that they cannot reach him. We have sometimes been on the top of the Alps, and seen a storm below in the valley. All has been calm over our heads in the sunlight, while below there has been all the tumult of the storm. God sets his servants on high, and often so high that, when others think they will surely disturb their peace and break their comfort, they have been smiling and rejoicing in the clear atmosphere of heaven, undismayed by the tumult that has raged beneath them. “The Lord is my Shepherd,” say they; “I shall not want. He prepareth a table for me in the presence of my enemies.” It must have been a glorious thing for those Frenchmen who went up in one of those balloons that ascended from the besieged city of Paris, to look down on the Prussian soldiers, vainly trying to reach them with their bullets, but they were up too high. It must give one a sense of security to think of the bullets coming half-way up, and then falling short. But such is the position of the Christian by faith. He is on a rock so high that all the gun-shots of his enemies cannot reach him. He is perfectly safe while he is near his God. “I will set him on high”-out of harm’s reach-“because he knows my name.” It is rank, and it is safety.

To be set on high, again, means happiness. He is the highest man, in some respects, that is the happiest man, for he weareth content within his bosom. To bear within the soul a pure satisfaction with the divine will, hath more to make him wealthy than all the coffers of Crœsus. And such is the Christian. Commend me to the man whose sin is forgiven, to whom a perfect righteousness is imputed, who is adopted into the divine family, from whose past all the blackness is blotted out, whose present is full of content, and whose future is radiant with glory-commend me, I say, to such a man whom nothing can separate from the love of Christ-a man to whom all things belong, whether things present or things to come; a man to whom Christ himself belongs, and all the treasures of God-and say if such a man be not blessed to all the intents of bliss, where are the blessed ones to be found? If he be not ranked among the happy, and set aloft above all others, where can happiness even be dreamed of? Verily the true Christian hath a portion of happiness allotted to him here below which far excels all the voluptuous pleasures and intoxicating joys of sense. He hath a right to be cheerful, a duty to rejoice evermore. The worldling boasts that he is happier than you are; it is a vain boast, an empty vaunt. His mirth-what does it consists of, but quips, and cranks, and wanton wiles? His joys-they do but flash, and crack, and sparkle, like thorns that burn for a few minutes, and then to ashes turn. Their fun will never compare with your felicity. They may have more laughter, but you have more liveliness. They dissipate their spirits, while you renovate your strength. Gloom follows their glee; but your calm eventides forestall bright to-morrows, and your present serenity is the sure presage of a welcome eternity. Then “hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown.”

“Because he hath known my name, I will set him on high.” Yes, beloved; he hath raised us up, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Before long, so short the time with some of us, that it may seem like to-morrow, we shall have our place among the angels. Among the angels did I say? Nearer the throne than they. Where even Gabriel cannot sit, at God’s right hand, by his side who wears our manhood on the throne. There will he set us on high, where sits the Crucified, his hands bearing still the scars, and his feet the nail-prints-he will set us there. Do not our hearts leap at the very thought? Worthy to be cast into the lowest pit of hell, and yet of infinite mercy promised a seat of honour in heaven! During the last week two or three venerable brethren, ornaments of our denomination, have passed away-some with whom it has been my habit to take sweet counsel. There was one dear brother, who, last week, was hale and strong, a man who, though his hand were busy and his mind occupied with the cares of this life, delighted to preach the gospel, and was the pastor of a church. When I heard of his departure, I seemed to realise more vividly how close we are to the world to come. Very soon, my brethren, you will hear of some in this congregation that have passed the flood. We have dear names in our recollection, the names of those dear to this congregation, whose spirits I could imagine are with us whenever we gather at the communion table. I can, without any immoderate stretch of fancy, picture them often within these aisles. So much did they seem to be part and parcel of ourselves, that when I miss them from their wonted place, I marvel that they shall occupy it no longer. And ere long some of you also will be missing, the pastor, perhaps, or the deacons, or the elders, or some of you whose old familiar faces greet us constantly. At length you are gone! But oh! what a blessing if gone to swell the number of the glorified, to complete the orchestra of heaven, to add some fresh notes to the everlasting music! The army there has gaps in its ranks; they, without us, cannot be perfect. We shall soon go over to the majority; we shall soon go from the militant to the triumphant, from those that sit down here and weep over their imperfections, to those who sit up there, see their Lord, and rejoice that they are like him. Let us anticipate the reunion there, and celebrate the communion here, full of the joys of hope, and the visions of that better land towards which we journey as pilgrims. “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him”-there is your promise for this life. “I will set him on high, because he hath known my name”-there is your promise of the life to come. I wish, oh! how I wish, this promise belonged to all of you. Alas! that some of you do not know his name; neither do you set your love upon him. You must go away without this blessing. Do seek it. Do ask forgiveness at the Saviour’s feet. God is willing to hear prayer, and when he constrains you to pray, he will surely give the answer. “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.”

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

ISAIAH 42:1-6

Verse 1. Behold my servant, whom I uphold: mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth: I have put my spirit upon him: he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.

Verily this prophecy is concerning the Lord Jesus Christ. Observe the title which he takes. He is called the servant of God. The Father calls him his servant. Above all others is Christ the servant of the Highest, deigning to become the servant of servants, though he is the King of kings.

“Whom I uphold”-which may be read two ways. According to some renderings, it should be, “Whom I lean upon”-as if God leant the full weight of his glory upon Christ, and gave over the work of grace into his hands, that is, if the passage be read passively. If actively, it runs as in our text, “Whom I uphold.” And both are true. God leans upon Christ. Christ draws his strength from God. They co-work, and mutual is the glory.

“Mine elect.” That is, first. “My choice one,” for there is none so choice as Christ. “My elected one,” for Christ is the head of election. We are chosen in him from before the foundation of the world, so that specially does God call him “Mine elect.”

“In whom my soul delighteth.” The delight of the Father in the Son is infinite. He delighted in his person. Now he delights in the work which he has accomplished. The delight of the Father is in Christ, and he delights in us because we are in him. If, indeed, we are members of Christ, he is well pleased with us for Christ’s sake. “In whom my soul delighteth.”

“I have put my Spirit upon him.” That was publicly done when he was baptized in the Jordan. The Spirit without measure rests and abides on him, our covenant head.

“He shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles.” Rejoice then, ye Gentiles. You are no longer excluded. At first the word came to the Jews only, but he has given the man, Christ Jesus, who has brought forth judgment to the Gentiles.

2, 3. He shall not cry, nor lift up, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed shall he not break, and the smoking flax shall he not quench: he shall bring forth judgment unto truth.

Jesus was gentle, retiring, meek, quiet. His testimony was a very powerful one, but not a noisy one. He sought no honour among men. He frequently forbade the healed ones to tell of his miracles. He rather retired than came into public notice. He was not contentious. He did not seek to put out the Pharisees, who were like smoking flax. He was never hard towards the tender ones, but always gentle as a nurse among her children. Now it is very often found that, where there is quietness and meekness, there is, nevertheless, great firmness of purpose. Noise and weakness go together, but quietness and strength are frequently combined. So read the next verse.

4. He shall not fail

He shall not faint. So it may be.

4. Nor be discouraged, till he have set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for his law.

This quiet, gentle Christ goes on pushing on his empire and extending his dominion till these far-off islands of the sea already know his power, and the day comes when the whole round earth shall be obedient to his sway. O blessed Christ, how glad we are to think that, when we are discouraged, thou art not, and, when we fail and faint, thou dost not. Thou holdest on for ever, like the sun who cometh forth from his chamber in the morning, and stayeth not till he has run his race.

5, 6. Thus saith God the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometh out of it; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk therein: I the Lord have called thee in righteousness, and will hold thine hand, and will keep thee, and give thee for a covenant of the people, for a light of the Gentiles:

Thus the great God commissions Christ. Thus he declares that the eternal power and Godhead will back him up till the Gentiles shall perceive his light, and the people shall be brought into covenant with God.

FRUITLESS FAITH

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, November 26th, 1914.

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

On Lord’s-day Evening, February 21st, 1861.

“Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.”-James 2:17.

Whatever the statement of James may be, it could never have been his intention to contradict the gospel. It could never be possible that the Holy Spirit would say one thing in one place, and another in another. Statements of Paul and of James must be reconciled, and if they were not, I would be prepared sooner to throw overboard the statement of James than that of Paul. Luther did so, I think, most unjustifiably. If you ask me, then, how I dare to say I would sooner do so, my reply is, I said I would sooner throw over James than Paul for this reason, because, at any rate, we must keep to the Master himself, the Lord Jesus Christ. We ought never to raise any questions about differences of inspiration, since they are all equally inspired, but if such questions could be raised and were allowable, it were wisdom to stick fastest to those who cling closest to Christ. Now the last words of the Lord Jesus, before he was taken up were these, “Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel to every creature,” and what was this gospel? “He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.” To that, then, we must always cling, but Jesus Christ has given a promise of salvation to the baptized believer, and he has said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, and whosoever believeth in him shall not perish, but have everlasting life.”

Here it is clear he promises everlasting life to all who believe in him, to all who trust in him. Now from the Master’s words we will not stir, but close to his own declaration we will stand. Be assured that the gospel of your salvation as a believer, with a simple confidence in Jesus Christ, whom God raised from the dead, will save your soul, a simple and undiluted reliance upon the life and death, and resurrection, and merit, and person of Jesus Christ, will ensure to you everlasting life. Let nothing move you from this confidence: it hath great recompense of reward. Heaven and earth may pass away, but from this grand fundamental truth not one jot or tittle shall ever be moved. “He that believeth in him is not condemned, but he that believeth not is condemned already, because he hath not believed on the Son of God.”

The fact is, James and Paul are perfectly reconcileable, and they are viewing truth from different standpoints; but whatever James may mean, I am quite confident about what Paul means, and confident about the truth of the two.

A second remark. James never intended, for a moment, nor do any of his words lead us into such a belief, that there can be any merit whatever in any good works of ours. After we have done all, if we could do all, we should only have done what we were bound to do. Surely there is no merit in a man’s paying what he owes; no great merit in a servant who has his wages for doing what he is paid for. The question of merit between the creature and his Creator is not to be raised; he has a right to us; he has the right of creation, the right of preservation, the right of infinite sovereignty, and, whatever he should exact of us, we should require nothing from him in return, and, having sinned as we have all, for us to talk of salvation by merit, by our own works, is worse than vanity; it is an impertinence which God will never endure.

“Talk they of morals, O! thou bleeding Lamb,

The best morality is love of thee.”

Talk of salvation by works, and Cowper’s reply seems apt:-

“Perish the virtue, as it ought, abhorred,

And the fool with it, who insults his Lord.”

What James does mean, however, is this, no doubt, in brief and short, that while faith saves, it is faith of a certain kind. No man is saved by persuading himself that he is saved; nobody is saved by believing Jesus Christ died for him. That may be, or may not be, true in the sense in which he understands it. In a certain sense Christ died for all men, but since it is evident that many men are lost, Christ’s dying for all men is not at all a ground upon which any man may hope to be saved. Christ died for some men in another sense, in a peculiar and special sense. No man has a right to believe that Christ peculiarly and specially died for him until he has an evidence of it in casting himself upon Christ, and trusting in Jesus, and bringing forth suitable works to evince the reality of his faith. The faith that saves is not a historical faith, not a faith that simply believes a creed and certain facts; I have no doubt devils are very orthodox; I do not know which church they belong to, though there are some in all churches; there was one in Christ’s Church when he was on earth, for he said one was filled with devils; and there are some in all churches. Devils believe all the facts of revelation. I do not believe they have a doubt; they have suffered too much from the hand of God to doubt his existence! They have felt too much the terror of his wrath to doubt the righteousness of his government. They are stern believers, but they are not saved; and such a faith, if it be in us, will not, cannot, save us, but will remain to all intents and purposes a dead, inoperative faith. It is a faith which produces works which saves us; the works do not save us; but a faith which does not produce works is a faith that will only deceive, and cannot lead us into heaven. Now this evening we shall first speak a few words upon:-

What kind of works they are which are necessary to prove our faith if it be a saving faith.

The works which are absolutely necessary are, in brief, these: First, there must be fruits meet for repentance, works of repentance. It is wrong to tell a man he must repent before he may trust Christ, but it is right to tell him that, having trusted Christ, it is not possible for him to remain impenitent. There never was in this world such a thing as an impenitent believer in Jesus Christ, and there never can be. Faith and repentance are born in a spiritual life together, and they grow up together. The moment a man believes he repents, and while he believes he both believes and repents, and until he shall have done with faith he will not have done with repenting. If thou hast believed, but hast never repented of thy sins, then beware of thy believing. If thou pretendest now to be a child of God, and if thou hast never clothed thyself in dust and ashes; if thou hast never hated the sins which once thou didst love: if thou dost not now hate them, and endeavour to be rid of them, if thou dost not humble thyself before God on account of them, as the Lord liveth, thou knowest nothing about saving faith, for faith puts a distance between us and sin; in a moment it leads us away from the distance between us and Christ; nearer to Christ, we are now far off from sin. But he that loves his sin, thinks little of his sin, goes into it with levity, talks of it sportively, speaks of sin as though it were a trifle, hath the faith of devils, but the faith of God’s elect he never knew. True faith purges the soul, since the man now hunts after sin that he might find out the traitor that lurks within his nature; and though a believer is not perfect, yet the drift of faith is to make him perfect; and if it is faith to be perfected, the believer shall be perfected, and then shall he be caught up to dwell before the throne. Judge yourselves, my hearers. Have you brought forth the fruits of repentance? If not, your faith without them is dead.

Works of secret piety are also essential to true faith. Does a man say I believe that Jesus died for me, and that I hope to be saved, and does he live in a constant neglect of private prayer? Is the Word of God never read? Does he never lift up his eye in secret with “My Father be thou the guide of my youth”? Has he no secret regard in his heart to the Lord his God, and does he hold no communion with Christ his Saviour, and is there no fellowship with the Holy Spirit? Then how can faith dwell in such a man? As well say that a man is alive when he does not breathe, and in whom the blood does not circulate, as to say that a man is a believer with living faith who does not draw near to God in prayer, that does not live indeed under the awe and fear of the Most High God as ever present, and seeing him in all places. Judge yourselves, ye professors. Are ye neglecting prayer; have ye no secret spiritual life? If so, away with your notion about saving faith. You are not justified by such a faith as that; there is no life in it; it is not a faith that leads to the Lamb and brings salvation; if it were, it would show itself by driving you to your knees, and making you lift up your heart to the Most High.

Another set of works are those which I may call works of obedience. When a man trusts in Jesus, he accepts Jesus as his Master. He says, “Show me what thou wouldst have me to do.” The Father shows what Christ would have him to do. He does not set up his own will and judgment, but he is obedient to his Master’s will. I will not to-night speak of those who know not their Lord’s will, who shall be beaten with few stripes, but I do fear me there are some professors who are living in wilful neglect of known Christian duties, and yet suppose themselves to be the partakers of saving faith. Now a duty may be neglected, and yet a man may be saved; but a duty persistently and wilfully neglected, may be the leak that will sink the ship, or the neglect of any one of such duties for the surrender of a true heart to Christ does not go such and such a length and then stop. Christ will save no heart upon terms and conditions; it must be an unconditional surrender to his government if thou wouldest be saved by him. Now some will draw a line here, and some will draw a line there up to this, and say, “I will be Christ’s servant”; that is to say, sir, you will be your own master, for that is the English of it; but the true heart that hath really believed saith, “I will make haste, and delay not to keep thy commandments; make straight the path before my feet, for thy commandments are not grievous.” “I have delighted in thy commandments more than in fine gold.” Now, sons and daughters of sin, professedly, what say you to this? Have you an eye to the Master, as servants keep their eye to their mistress? Do you ever ask yourselves what would Christ have you to do? or do you live habitually in the neglect of Christ’s law and will? Do you go to places where Christ would not meet you, and where you would not like to meet with him? Are some of you in the habit of professing maxims and customs, upon which you know your Lord would never set his seal? You say you believe, you have faith in him? Ah! sirs, if it be a living faith, it will be an obedient faith.

Living faith produces what I shall call separating works. When a man believes in Jesus, he is not what he was, nor will he consort with those who were once his familiars. Our Lord has said, “Ye are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.” Now Christ was not an ascetic; he ate and drank as other men do so that they even said of him a gluttonous man and a wine-bibber, because he mingled with the rest of mankind; but was there ever a more unearthly life than the life of Christ? He seems to go through all the world a complete man in all that is necessary to manliness, but his presence is like the presence of a seraph amongst sinners. You can discover at once that he is not of their mould, nor of their spirit, only harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners. Now such will the believer be if his faith be genuine, but this is a sharp cut to some professors, but not a whit more sharp than the Scripture warrants. If we are of the world, what can we expect but the world’s doom in the day of the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ? If ye find your pleasure with the world, you shall meet your condemnation with the world; if with the world you live, with the world you shall die, and with the world you shall live again for ever, lost. Where there is no separation there is no grace. If we are conformed to this world, how dare we talk about grace being in our souls; and if there be no distinguishing difference between us and worldlings, what vanity it is, what trifling, what hypocrisy, what a delusion for us to come to the Lord’s table, talking about being the Lord’s sons, when we are none of his? Faith without the works which denote the difference between a believer and a worldling is a dead, unsaving faith.

Now I have not said that any believer is perfect. I have never thought so, but I have said that if a believer could be a believer altogether, and faith could have her perfect work, he would be perfect, and that in proportion as he is truly a believer, in that proportion he will bring forth fruit that shall magnify God and prove the sincerity of his faith.

One other set of works will be necessary to prove the vitality of his faith, namely, works of love. He that loves Christ feels that the love of Christ constraineth him; he endeavours to spread abroad the knowledge of Christ; he longs to win jewels for Christ’s crown; he endeavours to extend the boundaries of Christ’s and Messiah’s kingdom, and I will not give a farthing for the loftiest profession coupled with the most flowing words, that never shows itself in direct deeds of Christian service. If thou lovest Christ, thou canst not help serving him. If thou believest in him, there is such potency in what thou believest, such power in the grace which comes with believing, that thou must serve Christ; and if thou servest him not, thou art not his.

This proof, before we leave it, might be illustrated in various ways. We will just give one. A tree has been planted out into the ground. Now the source of life to that tree is at the root, whether it hath apples on it or not; the apples would not give it life, but the whole of the life of the tree will come from its root. But if that tree stands in the orchard, and when the spring-time comes there is no bud, and when the summer comes there is no leafing, and no fruit-bearing, but the next year, and the next, it stands there without bud or blossom, or leaf or fruit, you would say it is dead, and you are correct; it is dead. It is not that the leaves could have made it live, but that the absence of the leaves is a proof that it is dead. So, too, is it with the professor. If he hath life, that life must give fruits; if not fruits, works; if his faith has a root, but if there be no works, then depend upon it the inference that he is spiritually dead is certainly a correct one. When the telegraph cable flashed no message across to America, when they tried to telegraph again and again, but the only result following was dead earth, they felt persuaded that there was a fracture, and well they might; and when there is nothing produced in the life by the supposed grace which we have, and nothing is telegraphed to the world but “dead earth,” we may rest assured that the link of connection between the soul and Christ does not exist.

I need not enlarge. We should just put it into that one sentence: “Without holiness no man shall see the Lord. Bring forth, therefore, works meet for repentance.” And now we turn to the second point with more brevity:-

Some facts that back up the doctrine that “faith without works is dead.”

These facts show that it is evident to all observers that many professors of faith without works are not saved. It would be very ludicrous, if it were not very miserable, to think of some who wrap themselves in the conceit that they are saved about whose salvation nobody but themselves can have any question. I remember a professor who used to talk of being justified by faith who was most assured about it, when he contained most beer. Such professors are not at all uncommon, sad is it to say so. They seem at the moment when their condemnation seems written on their very brow to all who know them, to be most confident that they themselves are saved. Now, brethren, if such cases are convincing and you entertain no doubt, but decide in their case, apply the same rule to yourselves, for although you may not plunge into the grosser vices, yet if you make your homes wretched by your selfishness, if you fall into constant habits of vicious temper, if you never strive against these sins, and the grace of God never leads you out of them; if you can live in private sin, and yet pacify your conscience, and remain just as you were before your pretended conversion; when you sit in judgment and pronounce the verdict on others, feel that you pronounce it upon yourself, for surely for one sin that is openly indulged in, which is manifested to you in the dissipation of your fellow-creatures, it is not hard for you to believe that any other sin, if it be constantly indulged and be loved, will do the same to you as it does to him. You know men who have not faith, but have a sort of faith, are not saved. It must be true, or else where were the Saviour’s words, “Staight is the gate and narrow the way, and few there be that find it”? For this is no straight gate and no narrow way, merely to be orthodox and hold a creed, and say, “I believe Jesus died for me”; but it is a very narrow gate so to believe as to become practically Christ’s servants, so to trust as to give up that which Christ hates. Truths which Jesus bids us believe are all truths, which, if believed, must have an effect upon the daily life. A man cannot really believe that Jesus Christ has taken away his sin by such sufferings as those of the cross, and yet trifle with sin. A man is a liar who says, “I believe that yonder bleeding Saviour suffered on account of my sins,” and yet holds good fellowship with the very sins that put Christ to death. Oh! sirs, a faith in the bleeding Saviour is a faith that craves for vengeance upon every form of sin. The Christian religion makes us believe that we are the sons of God when we trust in Christ. Will a man believe that he is really the Son of God, and then daily and wilfully go and live like a child of the devil? Do you expect to see members of the royal court playing with beggars in the street? When a man believes himself to possess a certain station of life, that belief leads him to a certain carriage and conversation, and when I am led to believe I am elected of God, that I am redeemed by blood, that heaven is secured to me by the covenant of grace, that I am God’s priest, made a king in Christ Jesus, I cannot, if I believe, unless I am more monstrous than human nature itself seems capable of being, go back to live after just the same fashion, to run in the same course as others, and live as the sons of Belial live. We see constantly in Scripture, and all the saints affirm it, that faith is linked with grace, and that where faith is the grace of God is; but how can there be the gift of God reigning in the soul, and yet a love of sin and a neglect of holiness? I cannot understand grace reigning and vice ruling over the living and incorruptible seed which abideth for ever to the inner man; and for this man to give himself up to be a slave of Satan is a thing impossible.

Faith, again, is always in connection with regeneration. Now regeneration is making of the old thing new; it is infusing a new nature into a man. The new birth is not a mere reformation, but an entire renovation and revolution: it is making the man a new creation in Christ Jesus. But how a new creature, if he has no repentance, if he has no good works, no private prayer, no charity, no holiness of any kind, regeneration will be a football for scorn. The new birth would be a thing to be ridiculed, if it did not really produce a hatred of sin, and a love of holiness. That kind of new birth which is dispensed by the Church of Rome, and also by some in the Church of England, is a kind of new birth which ought to excite the derision of all mankind, for children are said to be born again, certified to be born again, made members of Christ and children of God, and afterwards they grow up, in many cases, in most cases, let me say, to forget their baptismal vows, and live in sin as others do. Evidently it has had no effect upon them, but regeneration such as we read of in the Bible changes the nature of man, makes him hate the things he loved, and love the things he hated. This is regeneration: this is regeneration which is worth the seeking: it always comes with faith, and consequently good works must go with faith too. But we pass on to the last matter, which is this:-

What of those men that have faith, and that have no good works?

Then what about them? Why, this about them, that their supposed faith generally makes them very careless and indifferent, and ultimately hardened and depraved men. I dread beyond measure that any one of us should have a name to live when we are dead; for an ordinary sinner who makes no profession may be converted, but it is extremely rare that a sinner who makes a profession of being what he is not is ever converted. It is a miserable thing to find a person discovering that his profession has been a lie. A man sits down, and he says, “Why, I believe,” and as he walks he is careful, because he is afraid of what others might say. By and bye, he begins to indulge a little. He says, “This is not of works; I may do this, and yet get forgiveness.” Then he goes a little further away. I do not say that perhaps at first he goes to the theatre, but he goes next door to it. He does not get drunk, but he likes jovial company. A little further and he gets confirmed in the belief that he is a saved one, and he gets so much confirmed in that idea that he thinks he can do just as he likes. Having sported on the brink without falling over, he thinks he will try again, and he goes a little further and further, until I may venture to say, if Satan wants raw material of which to make the worst of men, he generally takes those who profess to be the best, and I have questioned whether such a valuable servant of Satan as Judas was could ever have been made of any other material than an apostate apostle. If he had not lived near to Christ, he never could have become such a traitor as he was. You must have a good knowledge of religion to be a thorough-faced hypocrite, and you must become high in Christ’s Church before you can become fit tools for Satan’s worst works. Oh! but why do men do this? Oh! what is the use of maintaining such a faith? I think if we do not care to get the vitality of religion, I would never burden myself with the husks of it, for such people get the chains of godliness without getting the comforts of godliness. They dare not do this, they dare not do that; if they do they feel hampered. Why don’t they give up professing? and they would be at least free; they would have the sin without the millstone about their neck. Surely there can be no excuse for men who mean to perish coming to cover themselves with a mask of godliness! Why cannot they perish as they are? Why add sin to sin by insulting the Church through the cross of Christ?

When men make a profession of religion, and yet their works do not follow their faith, what about them? Why, this about them. They have dishonoured the Church, and, of all others, these are the people that make the world point to the Church and say, “Where is your religion? That is your religion, is it?” So it is when they find a man who professes to be in Christ, and yet walks not as Christ walked. These give the Church her wounds; she receives them in the house of her friends; these make the true ministers of God go to their closets with broken heart, crying out, “Oh! Lord, wherefore hast thou sent us to this people to speak and minister amongst them, that they should play the hypocrite before thee?” These are they that prevent the coming in of others, for others take knowledge of them, as they think religion is hypocrisy, and they are hindered, and, if not seriously, they get, at any rate, comfort in their sin from the iniquity of these professors. What their judgment will be when Christ appeareth it is not for my tongue to tell; in that day when, with tongue of fire, Christ shall search every heart, and call on all men to receive their judgment, what must be the lot of the base-born professor, who prostituted his profession to his own honour and gain? He sought not the glory of God. What shall be the thunder-bolt that shall pursue his guilty soul in its timorous flight to hell, and what the chains that are reserved in blackness and darkness for ever for those who are wells without water and clouds without rain? I cannot tell, and may God grant that you may never know. Oh! may we all to-night go to Christ Jesus, humbly and freely confessing our sins, and take Christ to be our complete Saviour in very deed and truth. Then shall we be saved, and then, being saved, we shall seek to serve Christ with heart, and soul, and strength.

Lest I have missed my mark, this one illustration shall suffice, and I have done. There is a vessel drifting. She will soon be on the shore, but a pilot is come on board; he is standing on the deck, and he says to the captain and crew, “I promise and undertake that, if you will solely and alone trust me, I will save thy vessel. Do you promise it; do you believe in me?” They believe in him; they say they believe the pilot can save the vessel, and they trust the vessel implicitly to his care. Now listen to him. “Now,” says he, “you at that helm there!” He does not stir. “At the helm there! Can’t you hear?” He does not stir! He does not stir! “Well, but, Jack, haven’t you confidence in the pilot?” “Oh! yes. Oh! yes, I have faith in him,” he says; “he will save the vessel if I have faith in him.” “Don’t you hear the pilot, as he says have faith in him, and you won’t touch the helm?” “Now, you aloft there! Reef that sail.” He does not stir, but lets the wind still blow into the sail and drift the vessel on to the coast. “Now then, some of you; look alive, and reef that sail!” But he does not stir! “Why, captain, what shall I do? These fellows won’t stir or move a peg.” But “Oh!” says the captain; “I have every confidence in you, pilot. I believe you will save the vessel.” “Then why don’t you attend to the tiller, and all that?” “Oh! no,” says he; “I have great confidence in you. I don’t mean to do anything.” Now when that ship goes down amid the boiling surges, and each man sinks to his doom, I will ask you, had they faith in the pilot? Hadn’t they a mimicing, mocking sort of faith, and only that? For if they had been really anxious to have the vessel rescued, and have trusted in the pilot, it would be the pilot that had saved them, and they could never have been saved without him. They would have proved their faith by their works. Their faith would have been made perfect, and the vessel would have been secured.

I call upon every man here to do what Christ bids him. I call upon you, first of all, to prove that you believe in Christ by being baptized. “He that believeth in Christ and is baptized shall be saved.” The first proof that you believe in Christ is to be given by yielding to the much despised ordinance of believers’ baptism, and then, having done that, going on to the other means of which I have spoken. Oh! I charge you by your soul’s salvation neglect nothing Christ commands, however trivial it may seem to your reason. Whatever he saith unto you, do it, for only by a child-like obedience to every bidding of Christ can you expect to have the promise fulfilled, “They that trust in him shall be saved.” The Lord bless these words, for his name’s sake. Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

JAMES 1:1-26

Verse 1. James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ, to the twelve tribes which are scattered abroad, greeting.

James, a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. He was an apostle, and he was the Lord’s brother, yet he mentions not these greater things, but he takes the lowly title, in which, no doubt, he felt the highest honour, and calls himself “a servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.” Happy is that man who serves the Lord, whose whole life is not that of an independent master of himself, but of one who is fully submissive to the divine command.

Where is the fiction of the ten lost tribes? He writes to the twelve tribes that were scattered abroad, and gives them greeting, so that this Epistle is first directed to the seed of Israel, and then, as in all things, to all the Church of God, seeing all the saints of God are the true seed of believing Abraham, the father of believers.

2. My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations:

Do not sorrow over your trials; do not look upon them as misfortunes and calamities; they are black vessels, but they are loaded with gold. Your choicest mercies come to you disguised as your sharpest trials. Welcome them; do not sorrow over them, but rejoice in them.

3, 4. Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.

Endure everything; suffer everything that God sends you. Bathe yourself in this rough sea, till, by God’s blessing, it hath strengthened you and cleansed you, for to that end he sends it, and that it may perfect you by discipline, educating all your spiritual faculties, and bringing out all your powers for his glory. Shrink not then; seek not to escape by any wrong means from trial, but go through with it; have perfect endurance of it, that ye may be perfect and whole, wanting nothing. “If any of you lack wisdom,” and that is the point where you are most likely not to be perfect and entire.

5. If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and unbraideth not; and it shall be given him.

We are so apt, when we give anything, to diminish the value of it by some unkind remarks, but God doeth not so; he giveth, as he bids us give, with simplicity. There is the gift, and he will not detract from it by upbraiding us. Why, some will upbraid the poor while they help them: “How came you to be in such a condition?” But God saith not so to us; the gift is given in pure liberality, without any upbraiding. Wisdom is a gift. The best wisdom is not that which we acquire by study, but that which is the distinct gift of God in answer to prayer.

6. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering. For he that wavereth is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed.

Now on the shore, now sinking back, now driving fearlessly ahead, then sinking down. This is not the kind of man that prevails with God in prayer; it is not the kind of faith we ought to have in God-a faith that is very brilliant on the Sunday, and very dull on the Monday: a faith that is triumphant after a sermon, but which seems to be defeated when we get into actual trouble.

7, 8. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord. A double minded man is unstable in all his ways.

Unstable in everything. Till you get a single heart, till your whole soul is bound up in confidence in God, you cannot expect to be stable in your ways. “Unite my heart to fear thy name,” and then I shall not be a double-minded man.

9. Let the brother of low degree rejoice in that he is exalted:

The lowness of his estate is an exaltation. He shall find in his troubles a double blessing; he shall be made greater by being so little. “But let the rich rejoice in that he is made low,” so that what would have been foolish pomp and pride is taken away from him, and, by the grace of God, he is kept low. “Because as the flower of the grass, he shall pass away.”

10, 11. But the rich, in that he is made low: because as the flower of the grass he shall pass away. For the sun is no sooner risen with a burning heat, but it withereth the grass, and the flower thereof falleth, and the grace of the fashion of it perisheth: so also shall the rich man fade away in his ways.

Oh! to be delivered from all glorying in such uncertain riches. Whatever God gives you, he may soon take away from you; if he takes it not away, he may take away your power to enjoy it: it is poor, slippery stuff at the very best. Rejoice that you have something better, something lasting.

12. Blessed is the man that endureth temptation: for when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life, which the Lord hath promised to them that love him.

It is promised to love, but it is given to endurance. It is the love of God which spies out cur love and rewards it, but rewards it partly by trying it, and then ultimately by bringing forth the Stephanos, the crown. Men ran for a crown in the Greek games, and could not win the crown without the running. So doth God give to them that run a crown, but not without the running. He giveth to them, first, the privilege of suffering for his name’s sake, and then of being rewarded for it.

13. Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God: for God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man:

God tries men, but the motive of a trial is that which differences it from a temptation. In a temptation we try a man with a view of inducing him to do wrong; but God tries men to test them, that they may, by finding out their weakness, be saved from doing wrong. He never inclines a heart to evil. While he doeth all things, and is in all things, yet not so that he himself doeth evil, or can be charged therewith.

14. But every man is tempted, when he is drawn away of his own lust, and enticed.

This is the wanton harlot that deceives the heart of man: his own desire grown strong and hot till it cometh to be a lusting: this draws a man away; it baits the hook, and man swallows it and is thus entrapped and enticed.

15. Then when lust hath conceived, it bringeth forth sin: and sin, when it is finished, bringeth forth death.

There is the history and pedigree of sin. God save us from having any connection with the desire to sin, lest from that we be led into sin, and then from sin descend into death.

16, 17. Do not err, my beloveth brethren. Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,

All good from God, all evil from ourselves.

17. And cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning.

There is variableness and there is the shadow of turning in the sun, but in that greater Father of lights there is neither parallax nor tropic; he is evermore the same, and we may go to him with unwavering confidence because he is the same. Oh! what a blessing to such changing creatures as we are to have an unchanging God! “Of his own will.” If you want to know the power of God’s will, it never goes towards evil.

18. Of his own will begat he us with the word of truth, that we should be a kind of firstfruits of his creatures.

The best and noblest part of his creation, the twice begotten, the immortals that shall be the bodyguard of his Son, that shall stand about his bed, which is Solomon’s, each man with his sword upon his thigh, because of fear in the night. What a privilege it is to be begotten of God, to be the “firstfruits” of his creatures!

19. Wherefore, my beloved brethren, let every man be swift to hear,

Because it is by the Word that we are begotten: let us be swift to hear it. “Slow to speak,” because there is so much sin in us that the less we speak the better. In the multitude of words there wanteth not sin. Great talkativeness is seldom dissociated from great sinfulness. “Slow to wrath.”

20. Slow to speak, slow to wrath: For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.

There is a tendency to grow angry with those who do not see the truth; but is it not a foolish thing to be angry with blind men because they do not see? What if you see yourself? Who opened your eyes? Give God the praise for what you see, and never think that your anger, your indignation, your hot temper, can ever work the righteousness of God. It is impossible; it is contrary thereto, and cannot work towards it.

21-3. Wherefore lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls. But be ye doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving your own selves. For if any be a hearer of the word, and not a doer, he is like unto a man beholding his natural face in a glass:

It is a good thing for him to do that, to see himself as others see him. “Beholding his natural face,” even as men, in looking into the Word of God, behold the face of their nature; they see what they are like as they look into the glass.

24-26. For he beholdeth himself, and goeth his way, and straightway forgetteth what manner of man he was. But whoso looketh into the perfect law of liberty, and continueth therein, he being not a forgetful hearer, but a doer of the work, this man shall blessed in his deed. If any man among yon seem to be religions, and bridleth not his tongue, but deceiveth his own heart, this man’s religion is vain.

SANCTIFIED SORROW

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, December 3rd, 1914.

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted! behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.”-Isaiah 54:11, 12.

Who can doubt that this promise belongs to the Gentile Church, since it has been so richly fulfilled in her history? For many an age the light did not shine upon heathen lands. One spot alone upon all the earth received the genial beams of the Sun of Righteousness. Vast continents, thickly populated, full of life, bustle, and enterprise, lay spread out as a moral waste, barren and neglected. But little revelation of God had found its way among the teeming multitudes of the population. To them the dispensation of the grace of God had not been proclaimed. The mystery of Christ was not as yet made known unto the sons of men. The Israelites had a monopoly of covenant privileges. But now in these latter days, how wondrously are the tables turned. The branches of the wild olive have been grafted in “that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.” Thus the Lord has avouched unto himself a numerous seed once ignored by Israel, “which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy.” Not after the lineage of the flesh, but according to the nobler lineage of faith, the same are the children of Abraham; and with faithful Abraham they do inherit the covenant mercy of God. This day the barren woman keeps house, and is the joyful mother of many children. The Gentile Church hath her stones of sapphire; God is in the midst of her to make her glad.

Not less fully persuaded am I that this promise belongs to the Jewish Church. Among the natural descendants of the old Hebrew Patriarch, the Lord has preserved to himself a spiritual people. Glory be to his name he has not cast off his people whom he did foreknow. Even at this present time there is a remnant according to the election of grace. Of the Jewish race there is a certain number of disciples, who are witnesses of the truth, rejoicing in Christ Jesus, and worshipping him as their Messiah. But the day as yet is dark for Israel; thick clouds encompass her; the veil is still upon the hearts of her children. The converts gathered from her tribes are few in number compared with those from different branches of the Gentiles. Seemeth it not as though her cup of sorrow were not yet drained? God has put the sons of Jacob for a while out of their place as a punishment for their great sin in rejecting him, whom their own inspired prophets had foretold. But doubt not, beloved, that their future is radiant with hope.

The day will come, and that day may come speedily, when the glory shall return to Zion, and the excellency unto Judah. The fulness of the Gentiles then shall own the Lord when Jewish eyes shall behold and recognise him, Messiah, Prince of Peace. Well may we look and long with eagerness for that happy era. If I rightly read the Scriptures, the lost tribes are to be converted first, and gathered afterwards, while the people distinguished among us as Jews are to be restored to their own land, and then convinced by seeing the Man whom they pierced, enthroned with honour and majesty. Here the world’s history reaches a majestic climax. Once with their day of fearful recompense came our day of grateful visitation. Yes, the day-spring from on high hath visited us. What next is unrolled in the scroll of dispensations? If the casting away of them became the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them again be but life from the dead? So let the people to whom this great promise was originally spoken have all the good that was stored up for them in it.

May not, however, this rich consolation be applied to any church that is passing through a time of depression? All the promises of God are like minted gold, of sterling value and intended for circulation. The general principles of the promise may be appropriated by those to whom they are appropriate. Let any faithful church of Jesus Christ be passing through severe trial of persecution and declension, if there be a true likeness to Christ in it, the tempest and storm will eventually exhaust their fury and accomplish their end; afterwards a time of establishing and building up shall follow. It is said of some persons that they cannot fight losing battles. No such fatality need haunt us. We ought always to stand our ground, for when we have been worsted in the conflict, we have always before us the prospect that we shall at length be conquerors, because our defeats are permitted for our discipline without peril to our destiny. “A troop shall overcome Gad, but he shall overcome at the last.” Where would be the honour of a victory which was gained without a struggle? Is not the prize more welcome when it has been competed for with fag and strain? Do we not account any kind of success the sweeter for the toil expended and the difficulties mastered in reaching it? Are we to expect honour without labour? Take heart, then, thou afflicted Church, and faint not in the day of adversity, for God hath set over against it the day of prosperity, when thou shalt be built up with all the riches and treasures of his grace, and when thy mouth shall be filled with laughter, and thy tongue with singing; and then shalt thou say, “The Lord hath done great things for us, whereof we are glad.”

If, now, my text thus stands good to the Gentile Church, and to the remnant of Israel, and if it may serve to cheer and encourage the little Christian Churches, not in our own land only, but in all the regions of the earth where Christ is preached, may it not in like manner be applied to the experience of individual believers, and may we not find in it a rich draught of consolation for ourselves? Depend upon it, brethren, our period of trial and suffering will come to a close, and it will be overruled in the gracious Providence of God to the promotion of our best prosperity and our highest interests. We may be afflicted and tossed with tempest, but for this very cause ultimately we shall have our foundations laid in sapphire, and our stones with fair colours. I will endeavour to work out this one thought in respect to three kinds of distress which are wont to raise a tempest in the believer’s soul.

The first is the great life storm in which we are turned from darkness to light, and from the power of Satan to God; the second, the common life storms in which divers afflictions befall us, and manifold temptations try our faith; and the third is the last storm, which brings with it the wreck of our frail bark after all its tossings on the troubled sea of life, the death of the body: then no more fatigue, no more distress, for we shall enter the haven of rest, and enjoy an endless peace. Now, with regard to:-

The dawn of our spiritual life. Is it not true that well nigh every Christian is born of a storm? We are driven to Christ through stress of weather. We look to him because we have nowhere else to look for shelter. We drift to Christ, all of us, as mariners that are hard on rocks, with all our righteousness wrecked, and all our other hopes gone to the fore. That first storm with some of you may have lasted long. For months or years, it may have threatened your destruction. You remember it, and you think of it now that the tempest has spent itself, that the sky is clear, and you have come to rest calmly in Jesus Christ. Do you think that you lost anything by that storm? Do you not know that you gained much? You lost what it was good for you to lose. You gained the very blessings which you were most in need of. Do I speak to one who is at this hour in the very midst of such a trial? He that sitteth in the heavens looks down upon you through this storm, and says to you, “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold I will lay thy stones with fair colours.” You are afflicted with a sense of sin, the direst and sharpest of all afflictions. The arrows of adversity are blunt in comparison with those of guilt. Afflictions without sin to aggravate them are as a knife without an edge; they do not cut deep. But when there is sin to whet the blade, then the knife cuts to the very bone. What are those sins which now wring your hearts with anguish but the very same sins that once fascinated your hearts with delight. Feeling that God is angry with you, every incident or accident of Providence seems to you a token of judgment. Terrors haunt you in every gust of wind that blows; and you seek in vain to extricate yourself from your present forlorn condition. Hold on, man; do not despair. Better to be stricken with pain and suffer the smart pangs of a wounded conscience than go on with giddy step, frothy song, and frivolous talk to enjoy the pleasures of sin for a season, and then find out your mistake when it is too late, because you are swept away like the chaff from the threshing floor. Your afflictions, if they lead you to God, will prove the healthiest discipline and the happiest circumstances that ever happened to you. “O thou afflicted one,” saith God, “I will lay thy stones with fair colours,” as if, in the bitterness of repentance, thou didst meet with the blessedness of remission, and the brightest sunbeams shone upon thee just when the darkest shadows crossed thy path, and the heaviest clouds loomed over thy head. Fly to your God, O sinner! Haste to Jesus. Look to his atoning sacrifice. For such an afflicted conscience as thine Jesus bled, he came to bind up the broken in heart, and to proclaim liberty to captives such as thou art.

Note the next word: “O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest.” Does this describe the heaving and flurry of your agitated breast? Are you tossed to and fro? Once you were at ease, becalmed, aground, and you thought yourself as safe as you were quiet. You had a hope of your own, and you said in your heart, “I shall never be moved.” But that hope of thine was no sure anchorage. It served thee not in any stead when the clouds began to gather and the fierce winds began to blow. Then were you tossed hither and thither. You have tried to find some stay, some grapnel; but alas! you have sought it in vain. You are like a ship which has become the sport of the winds and waves; and now your spirit sinks within you. You reel to and fro and stagger like a drunken man, and you are at your wits’ end. All your wisdom is swallowed up. You cannot lay hold of a promise; you cannot take comfort from any providence; you see not your signs; and yet all this tossing and all this tumult, with the peril in which it places you, are meant for your good. So, indeed, it shall prove when you cry unto the Lord in your trouble, and he bringeth you out of your distresses: for notice the prophecy which is spoken by the mouth of the Lord, and say if it should not inspire thee with confidence, “I will lay thy foundations in sapphires.” When you shall have a foundation of God’s laying, it will be, verily, a safe foundation, and, being of sapphire, this foundation is very precious. There will be no more sorrow and sadness for you then, but a sacred satisfaction which it were beyond the power of any circumstance to mar. No more shall the buffeting of rough billows and rude breakers toss you to and fro; but throbbings of deep joy, like waves of the mighty sea, shall swell their ceaseless anthem in your ears. Oh! how you will bless the Lord then that he ever drove you from your refuge of lies, and drew you to a sure foundation upon which you might build, and be built up for eternity. You may be just now the sport of the tempest; high winds may rage within your breast; stormy passions may convulse your soul. Well do I remember when that same tempest howled through my spirit, sweeping away every fond hope and every fine conceit I had cherished. Ere that I would fain have contented myself with the world and the little ambitions it held out to my view. Ah! I would, but I could not. God’s tempest howled through my soul; and as for me, I was as a tiny leaf in a strong breeze, or as a ball before the whirlwind. Are you passing through such an ordeal? Yield not to the misery and madness of despair.

“Though plunged in ills, and harassed, too, with care,

’Twere treason to your soul did you despair;

When pressed by dangers and beset by foes,

God will his timely succour interpose.”

When your present emergencies shall be gathered up into past experience, you will look back upon them as a meet preparation for your better destiny. Every vestige of your own righteousness must be taken away, in order that he may “lay your stones with fair colours, and build up your windows with agate, and your gates with carbuncles.” Are not both in the promise-both the agitation and the salvation. The Lord hath promised both. Mark that word promised, how it is used by Paul. “Now he hath promised, saying, Yet once more I shake not the earth only, but also heaven.” Then observe the consequence. The removing of those things that are shaken makes way for another thing; namely, that those things which cannot be shaken may remain. Therefore it is that we, who feel that everything earthly is drifting from under our feet, are favoured to receive a kingdom which cannot be moved. Ought not this to reconcile our hearts to trial. Will it not make us rejoice in it, if we have only faith to believe that it will certainly turn out for our good?

The other part of the description-after being tossed with tempest-is this: “not comforted.” Is there nothing you can do to get out of this strait? Is there no solace to relieve the stress of your trial? Ah! poor soul! no doubt you have been looking for light, and behold there was darkness; while you have been seeking after relief, your sorrows have been aggravated. Did you go to the world, and ask sympathy of your neighbours or kinsfolk, the best comfort they could offer you would but wound your feelings. Have you tried the merriments and gaieties of sin, as though you would fain forget the arrows of the Almighty: lo! then, how visions of judgment to come would scare you!

Perhaps you feel you cannot be comforted on earth; then you are in a fair way to get deliverance, for you shall be comforted by the God of heaven. If your sore is such that no plaster of man could ever cure it, glory be to God; for, blessed be his name, he delights to find those cases which baffle all human skill. There shall be seen the power of his grace, and then will he send his Word and heal you. Your extremity of anguish is a token for good; a token that God means to bless you. If your soul refuses to be comforted by man-if you are brought to a stand, in which you wait only for God-then of you is it spoken, “I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and thy foundations with sapphire.” He will perform all things for you, and do on your behalf what you cannot do for yourself.

Every Christian will, I think, join with me in confessing that the dealings of the Lord with us have always baffled our own understanding, until we have been brought to see the end of the Lord, as Job saw it, that the Lord is very pitiful and of tender mercy. Our heaviest losses have thus enriched us with our choicest gains. The things which, as they happened, caused us the most terror, have fallen out to the furtherance of our best interests; and in the same manner, I believe, the more you feel the burden of sin, the majesty of the law, and the inflexible claims of divine justice, the sweeter afterwards will be your apprehension of guilt removed by the blood of Christ, of the law fulfilled by his obedience, and of justice satisfied by his suretyship. Did you sink as low as Jonah sank, when he was in the fish’s belly, and cried by reason of his affliction unto the Lord, when, as he testifies, “Out of the belly of hell cried I, and thou heardest my voice”; then you might purge yourselves of all false confidence, as Jonah did, saying, “They that observe lying vanities forsake their own mercy”; then, too, with the voice of thanksgiving you would pay your vow as Jonah did, when he said, “Salvation is of the Lord.” Take heart now, O thou afflicted one, tossed with tempest and not comforted. Pour no fresh bitters into thy cup by murmuring against God, and repining at his dispensations. Rather cry mightily and pray earnestly, that the God, who has made your experience tally with the first verse of the text, may give you to realise the fulness of that recompense which is promised in the next verse. So shall your sighs be turned into songs. So shall you sing with David, “Thou which hast showed me great and sore troubles shalt quicken me again, and bring me up again from the depths of the earth. Thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me on every side.” Happy day, dear soul, when thou art delivered from this first storm. Yet there are:-

Other storms of life which the children of God have to encounter.

After we find Christ we meet with many afflictions; we are “tossed with tempest, and not comforted.” It seems to me that the prophet has used a very remarkable metaphor. Suppose you have a home-a house rendered dear to you by a great many pleasant associations. Into this cheerful abode one night there comes a fire. You stand with tears in your eyes and see it all ablaze, and you watch it as it goes, storey by storey, room by room, till all your precious treasures are consumed. You go away and sit down, and wring your hands in agony, for all is burnt up; not a vestige remains. But with the first dawn of the morning an angel appears to you and says, “Come with me to the place where your home once was.” You go, and find that all the stones that made up your house have been turned into jewels, and all the lime and cement have been transmuted into bright scarlet, lustrous colours, and the pavement and flagstones have become sapphire. You go to the door, there are jewels-carbuncles; you look out of the windows, and instead of their being, as before, common sashes and sills, you find agates all sparkling. You are looking almost as if you had Aladdin’s wonderful lamp, which transformed everything. Well, now I think that is just the thought of this verse; let us read it over again. “I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires; and I will make thy windows of agate, and thy gates of carbuncle, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.” “Well,” you say, “that is the fact, and no fancy or dream to me; I have realised it. A fire kindled on me which raged in my soul, till it reduced to ashes all the goods I prided myself in; my hopes were laid waste, and I was left desolate; my nights were sleepless, and every bone in my body was full of pain; this have I proved. Then of a sudden there hath been wrought in me a marvellous change. My soul has had such joy-such blessing-such nearness to Christ-such delight in his Word-such upgrowings of a spiritual temple, richer far than all the palaces of Oriental imagination, springing up from a furnace of affliction as no common language would describe.” Let us just turn over these things one by one, as they are painted to us by the tongue of inspiration.

You are tossed and not comforted; bear it patiently, knowing that good will come to you in a far better and richer shape. Observe how it begins with edification. “I will lay thy stones in fair colours.” In the time of trial we not only get the proof, but we get the profit of experience, and these results are laid in fair colours. Do you think it possible for me to relate to you all the salutary lessons that I have acquired in affliction? The truth is learnt thus after quite a different manner from anything taught in the Sunday School. You may afterwards renounce all the credit you ever professed in the teaching, which stands merely on the authority of the teacher; but when God’s affliction brands the truth into your inmost soul, then you are bullet-proof against all heterodoxy; and it is not possible that the doctrine in which you have been rooted and grounded can ever forsake its hold upon you. It has found an entrance into your very soul; is not that a grand means of steadfastness? Such strong-holding cement binds the stones of which your spiritual temple is built, and by such personal experience your character becomes shaped and fashioned according to the truths of the gospel. Thus, as affliction is not sent without design, one benefit you are to expect from it is that a fundamental, solid groundwork shall be wrought in you.

But, brethren, you will not fail to notice that, while the word of the Lord is addressed to the afflicted, the hand of the Lord is engaged very particularly on their behalf. “I will lay thy foundations with sapphire.” Times of public calamity try our foundation, and so do all times of private affliction. When the natural emotions are violently excited, all the beliefs and sentiments, all the hopes and aspirations to which men have clung in calmer days, are put to the test; and if they are not well and truly based, they can easily be shifted. This, therefore, is one of the salutary effects of sanctified affliction; in the process of such discipline we get to have the foundation of our faith laid by a divine hand. “I will lay thy foundations.” The Lord draws near to us and works in us after his own Sovereign good will, imparting to us the true faith and the ardent love which are consonant with the truth. Then we have foundations hard as sapphire, and as precious, as unbreakable, as divine. We feel that now we have received the truth, not in the mere abstract, but in its vital power, its moral influence, and its spiritual beauty, as the substratum of our souls, and as a foundation of our hope, which can never be removed.

What a lovely change, too, is made in our outlook! “Thy windows of agate!” Before I was afflicted I looked through the lattices of carnal sense, well contented, though the things of this life and the objects near at hand bounded my view; but now I have been taught to look upwards, and to long for the life to come and the land that is afar off. Now my soul saith, “Oh! that I had wings like a dove, that I might fly away and be at rest”; and as I open the window towards the new Jerusalem, I sing:-

“Brief life is here our portion,

Sorrow and short-lived care:

The life that knows no ending,

The tearless life is there.”

It is wonderful how affliction cleans the windows of the soul. I find the word “windows” here might be much better translated “bulwarks,” “defences,” as if to show the manner in which we are fortified against temptation, and enabled to resist the destructive force of those strange vicissitudes and perilous undulations that are common to this stormy life. Hast thou learned, beloved, to fly to the Rock for shelter? Hast thou come to hide thee behind the dying Saviour? Dost thou know the tune of David’s psalm, “Blessed be the Lord my strength which teacheth my hands to war and my fingers to fight; my goodness and my fortress; my high tower, and my deliverer; my shield, and he in whom I trust”? Then thy godly sorrow has produced some happy result: not in vain has thy spirit been overwhelmed within thee. This is a lesson to be acquired in the school of adversity whereby we are brought to rest in the Lord more abidingly than we ever did aforetime, and thus we prove that he hath made our bastions of agate.

Still further it is said: “I will make thy gates of carbuncle,” as if to intimate more close and intimate communion with God. We come nearer to Christ, think more of him, spend more time in meditation, get to understand more of his work and his person, set our hearts more fully towards him and the good things of his grace after the tempest has spent its fury, and the clear shining has followed. Surely, if affliction did nothing more for us, it would be a great boon. It takes away the doors of iron and wood, and it gives us gates of carbuncle; and we say:-

“Come, then, oh! thou sweet affliction,

Thus to bring our Saviour near.”

Right sure I am that many of our tossings and buffetings have produced a permanent benefit which has given tone to our character, and shed a hallowed light over our whole career. Find me a Christian whose conversation is full of rich savour, whose judgment is tempered with charity, one whose fervent zeal is blended with the meekness of wisdom, and I will warrant you, as a rule, he has seen much affliction. “They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord and his wonders in the deep.” Physicians often recommend a sea-voyage to their patients. Do you think it is merely for the fresh air they breathe? Nay, I can tell you there is more than that in the prescription. It breaks the links that bind one to every-day life. There is a solitude on that broad expanse of waters which does not admit of the newspaper or the post office breaking in upon the stillness of your reflections. Your country, your office, your friends, your home, are all at a distance. The communications you are wont to hold with them are broken. And is it not so with Christ’s disciples, when he constraineth them to get into a ship, and leaves them a while to be tossed with waves in the midst of the sea? Do not they then feel a profound solitude which changes the hue of all their thoughts? Mind ye not what he said who was the saddest of all the old Hebrew prophets-Jeremiah in his lamentations bears this witness-” It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth; he sitteth alone and keepeth silence because he hath borne it upon him.” There is no room to doubt it, friends; sorrow is salutary. God’s brightest gems have had the most polishing on the lapidary’s wheels. The purest, cleanest wheat is that which hath had the most winnowing. We do grow in grace, doubtless, in our times of joy; but I think it is slow work. There are precious fruits put forth by the moon as well as precious fruits brought forth by the sun. Bright days would wither us if there were no shady nights to temper our gaiety. We are like the sycamore tree. Unless we had trials we should never come to spiritual perfection. Well! we have cause to be thankful if, speaking experimentally, we can say, “All the storms we have hitherto encountered have been blessed to us-all our tossings and tempests have furthered our good speed, and all the convulsions that have shaken our house have thus far contributed to its being built up with stones laid in fair colours upon a foundation of sapphire. And now, lastly:-

The same happy issue out of all our afflictions will happen, in a grander sense when the last hurricane shall blow.

Then shall this frail tabernacle totter and fall. Then eye, and ear, and hand, and foot, shall fail us. Then back to mother Earth shall this feeble flesh return. I know the earthly house of my tabernacle shall be dissolved; I expect it; I look for it. The affliction may take the form of grievous disease; the tossings to and fro on my couch may be distracting; it may be that no anodyne can relieve my pain or comfort me. But oh! the glory that is to follow! This very body of ours-who shall tell what it shall be like? That it shall be transformed and made like unto the glorious body of Christ Jesus our Lord we know. We may patiently endure the cross, since we shall so soon receive the crown; we may placidly go down to the grave, since we shall so triumphantly come up from it: we may cheerfully take leave of our lodgings here, since we have a home in prospect where our kindred shall all be gathered, and our Sire never absent. Brethren, we are, as it were, in a ship at sea to-day, tossed with tempest, but we are to be in a palace ere long. You observe how the figure changes, never tossed again, never again put forth on a tempestuous sea. Like buildings and mansions, we shall be fixed and permanent. In that land of our inheritance is a freehold with its foundation of sapphire, with its windows of agate, with its gates of carbuncle. What a sweet surprise for the sons of poverty on earth! Those jewels, since jewels are always connected with rank or royalty, are meant to betoken the honours in the next world to those who are humble and faithful in their sacred calling here. You shall have such palaces as Oriental extravagance could never emulate. Does it belong to kings to dwell in palaces? You shall be kings and priests unto God. A few more days of languishing, with their faint hopes and fretting fears; their throbbing temples and feverish pulse, ere Christ doth bid thee come. The Master calleth for thee. You must obey the summons. And what next? For ever with the Lord. Methinks I hear you say, “Amen, so let it be.” Do notice how three times here it is repeated, “I will,” “I will,” “I will.” God hath said it, and he will do it. Believe and rejoice therein, therefore; for it is no fiction, but a fact. Yet a little while and you shall leave your cottage for a mansion, your toil shall be exchanged for rest, your dishonour for glory, your pain for infinite pleasure. You shall find new company and better in yonder world of light. Though you close your eyes on fair prospects below, fairer scenes await you above. Be comforted! Notwithstanding any distress the last tempest may occasion you, depend upon it “to die is gain.” You shall lose nothing that it were worth your while to keep. You shall gain all your “capacious powers can wish, more than your imagination can paint.” Press forward, beloved, and may the confidence of a joyous future make you bold to brave the tempest and the storm. Peace be with you. Alas! then, if you are not in Christ, if you are not a child of God, this promise melts away before your eyes. You have no part or lot in it. May God change your hearts, renew your nature, lead you to receive Christ and believe in him, then will he give you to be his sons and daughters. So shall your heritage be secure for ever and ever. Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

ISAIAH 54:1-16

Try and suck all the sweetness that you can out of this chapter while we read it. The personal application of a promise to the heart by the Holy Spirit is that which is wanted. The honey in Jonathan’s wood never enlightened his eyes until he dipped the point of his rod into it and tasted it. Try and do the same. This chapter is the wood wherein every bough doth drip with virgin honey. Sip: taste: be satisfied.

Verses 1-3. Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear; break forth into singing, and cry aloud, thou that didst not travail with child: for more are the children of the desolate than the children of the married wife, saith the Lord. Enlarge the place of thy tent, and let them stretch forth the curtains of thine habitations: spare not, lengthen thy cords, and strengthen thy stakes; For thou shall break forth on the right hand and on the left; and thy seed shall inherit the Gentiles, and make the desolate cities to be inhabited.

You see they are called upon to praise God before the mercy comes. “Sing, O Barren,” whilst yet barren. Sing, O desolate one, while yet desolate; and thou who art narrowed and confined for space, thank God that he is about to enlarge thee, and begin already to stretch thy cords and strengthen thy stakes. We ought to act upon faith, and sing upon faith. The songs which are made at the sight of mercy are very sweet, but the songs that are sung before the mercy comes are those which are most acceptable to God. We may say of the sonnets of faith, “Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed.”

4. Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed: neither be thou confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame: for thou shalt forget the shame of thy youth, and shalt not remember the reproach of thy widowhood any more.

The dark past, the dreary past, shall be so obliterated with abounding mercy that they shall forget it. Thy memory of it shall not be painful. It shall only be as a foil behind the bright diamond of mighty mercy, if thou dost remember it at all.

5. For thy Maker is thine husband;

Bound to thee by the dearest, closest, and most enduring ties.

5-7. The Lord of hosts is his name; and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel; The God of the whole earth shall be called. For the Lord hath called thee as a woman forsaken and grieved in spirit, and a wife of youth, when thou wast refused, saith thy God. For a small moment

Not “a moment,” but “for a Small moment.”

7, 8. Have I forsaken thee: but with great mercies will I gather thee. In a little wrath I hid my face from thee for a moment: but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee; saith the Lord thy Redeemer.

This belongs to the whole Church of God. I know we might refer it all to the Church in general, but I invite you to-night to remember that what belongs to the Church as a body belongs to every member of that mystical body. Therefore, feast here. Be not afraid. Take these words as spoken to you-even to you-by God the Holy Spirit.

9-10. For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.

What more can he say than to you he hath said? What surer pledges can he give? Oh! rest, rest, rest, sweetly rest, on this sure word of covenant love. Then let the mountains move. He told you they would. Then let the hills of your comfort sink. He told you they would. But even then, when earth itself doth reel, and the very pillars of the universe are snapped, he standeth still the same. “I have sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.”

11. O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted, behold, I will lay thy stones with fair colours, and lay thy foundations with sapphires.

Built with jewels.

12. And I will make thy windows of agates, and thy gates of carbuncles, and all thy borders of pleasant stones.

They must be rare sights if the windows are so rare. If the windows be of agate, what are the sights that are seen through them? And if the very gates and doors are carbuncles, what must there be in the house of love within? If the very borders and the outside fringes of the royal domains of heaven be of precious stones, what must it be to be there? Remember that the best thing in this world is trodden under feet in the world to come; for we are told that the streets are paved with gold. Men hunt after it here, and tread on it there, for they have something better there than this world can possibly afford them.

13. And all thy children shall be taught of the Lord;

It must be a greater privilege, than windows of agates and gates of carbuncle, to see our children-to see all the children of God-taught by his own Spirit.

13. And great shall be the peace of thy children.

That is the most precious pearl of all, with its soft radiance, precious to the soul.

14, 15. In righteousness shalt thou be established: thou shalt be far from oppression; for thou shalt not fear: and from terror; for it shall not come near thee. Behold, they shall surely gather together, but not by me:

Enemies will come, but God will not be with them.

15, 16. Whosoever shall gather together against thee shall fall for thy sake. Behold, I have created the smith that bloweth the coals in the fire,

For he cannot blow any more than God lets him. He is God’s creature. The maker of the weapons of war is still in the hands of God.

16. And that bringeth forth an instrument for his work: and I have created the waster to destroy.

When he does his worst, he is only doing what I meant he should do. The divine decree of God still, with its mighty circle, doth encompass the worst deed of man, and overrules it all still for the good of his Church.

CHRIST GLORIFIED

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, December 10th, 1914.

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

On Thursday Evening, February 4th. 1869.

“He hath glorified thee.”-Isaiah 55:5.

God hath glorified his Son. How deeply we ought to regret that we glorify Christ so little, bought with his precious blood, owing all we have to him. We make but a very poor return, and even when we are helped by the Spirit of God to glorify Christ, yet I am sure we should always feel an insatiable desire to do it yet more. To glorify Christ is so sweet a thing, that when a man hath once tasted of it, he pants and pants within his spirit for a greater capacity to glorify Christ; and this is one of his griefs, that he cannot praise his Saviour as he would. Hence it is that oftentimes the prophet and the Psalmist, when they were most full of praise, would bid the earth, the sea, the heavens, and the heaven of heavens, help to praise the King in whom they saw such ravishing beauties and delights. Hence it is that godly men whenever they are stirred up themselves, and feel that they could magnify and bless the Lord, always want their fellow creatures to join them; and their sorrow is that Jesus does not reign in every heart, and that he has not a throne in every soul.

Now it must be a great comfort to lovers of Christ, who mourn that he is not honoured as he should be, that God has taken care of his Son’s honour. “He hath glorified thee,” and you know when God glorifies he does the work perfectly, he does it after his own Spirit, and that an infinite one; so that the glory of Christ, after all, is safe, and though he is blasphemed by rebels, dishonoured by apostates, and grieved by ourselves, yet God, after all, shall not suffer Christ’s fame to be tarnished for a single moment by all this, for he has said, “He hath glorified thee.” I don’t know that I can preach from the text, but I do know what I can do. I can feel thrice happy at the thoughts which it raises in my mind; it is so delightful to think that the crown is safe upon his head, though the nations rebel, and the kings take counsel against him, that his escutcheon is for ever glorified, untarnished, let men do what they may. Him hath God the Father exalted, and given him a name which is above every name, which is first and chief, and never shall be second, but shall for ever reign, and must reign till he hath put all his enemies under his feet.

Now glancing across the subject, as some skiff flies over the sea, we will talk about what God hath done by way of glorifying his son Jesus:-

God has glorified him in the entire economy of salvation.

From first to last, Christ glorifies his Father, and the Father glorifies him. Begin with that which hath no beginning, namely, everlasting love, and we find that we are chosen in Christ Jesus from before the foundation of the world. The love of God which comes to us through Jesus Christ always is the channel, and it is connected with Jesus Christ before the heavens were stretched abroad. He was glorified in our election. Now with Christ Jesus in the mind of the eternal Father, there is no election to eternal love, except through Jesus Christ, and if you and I be chosen, it is:-

“Because Christ be my first elect, he said,

He chose our souls in Christ our head.”

We dare not look into that council-chamber unless we knew that Christ was there. We dare not think of the infinite wisdom of God in the arrangements of all things from the beginning, if we did not recollect that Christ was the centre of these arrangements, and that as many as have believed on him were represented in him in those days before the day-star knew its place, or planets ran their round. God has been pleased to glorify Christ afterwards in all the promises, which one by one revealed the glorious grace of God, from that first promise at the gates of Eden, concerning the seed of the woman, right on until he appeared; the hand that drew back the black curtain that hid the face of God was always the hand of the Crucified, and whenever men come to see anything of the marvellous love and goodness of God, they always behold it in connection with the Messiah, the anointed One yet to come.

God has glorified his son in the matter of redemption. There is no redemption out of Christ, and there is none to help Christ in the matter of redemption. Albeit that Calvary seems to have a black cloud of shame hanging over it, yet is there no spot on earth or heaven more glorious, for there it was that God permitted his Son to bear without assistance the wrath divine which was due to our sins, suffered him to tread the wine-press alone, and would not permit that of the people there should be one with him, lest the glory should in any way be divided. Christ, and Christ alone, must pay the price of our souls with his own soul.

So onward, if you come to the matter of our justification or our acceptance, which sprang out of redemption, God glorified his Son. We are, if pardoned, only forgiven through his blood; if justified, entirely by virtue of his righteousness; if accepted, it is always in the Beloved; if perfected, we are completed in him, perfect in Christ Jesus. There is not a single covenanted blessing-as I begin at the beginning so may I continue to the close-there is not a single blessing in the economy of Christ which comes to us apart from Christ, and as we receive these gifts one by one, the Holy Spirit takes care to make us know this: he empties of self that we may see the fullness of Christ: he kills our pride that we may see the excellency of Christ: he takes away our strength that we may behold the power of Christ. In the operations of the Holy Ghost within our soul, while they aim at destroying sin, and at many other blessed results, yet have for their first and chief purpose the making Christ glorified, in the heart of all his people, in every gift that comes from the hand of the Most High. Brethren, our preservation, our final perseverance, and every other blessing which is secured to us, and about which we have no doubt, all this comes to us in him; we are preserved in Christ Jesus. Because he lives, we live also, and only because he lives, and by virtue of our union with him; we who are the branches continue to bring forth fruit, but if we were separated from him, we should be only fit to cast into the fire to be burned. Right away from the gates of hell, up to the pearly gates of heaven, it is Christ Jesus that is glorified. In every step the believer takes, right out of the slough of my despondency, up to the Beulah hill-top of my full assurance, and onward still, beyond the clouds, and beyond the stars in the palace of my eternal glory, it will be Christ, and Christ Jesus alone, that shall have all the praise. God hath taken care in the planning of the whole economy of Christ, that Jesus Christ should have the pre-eminence. There is much to talk of there, but think of it; that will be better than my speaking. Turn it over: as Abraham Booth wrote a book; showing the grace of God in all the ways of salvation, so somebody else might write a book showing the glory of Christ in every single part of the way, and if we cannot write such a book, yet at least we must feel precious emotions as we contemplate the whole. In the next place, God has glorified his Son:-

In the midst of the Church.

The Church is to Christ what Eve was to Adam. She was taken out of Christ: she is bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. As the apostle says, “For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and they twain shall be one flesh.” This is a great mystery, but I speak concerning what? Concerning matrimony? Yes, in one sense, but not in another sense. Concerning Christ and his Church; for thy cause did Christ leave his Father, and he came into thy world that he might be one flesh with his Church: she owes all to him here; her very existence is owing to Christ; as Eve springs from Adam, the Church springs out of the loins of Jesus Christ.

Now, beloved, it is meet that, seeing this is the case, Christ should have no second place in his Church, and certainly no such place has been allotted to him by the eternal Father. As I can now but speak of the Church of God at large, I think I am guided for a moment by an evil spirit standing at my left hand, who points with black fingers over to the city of the Seven Hills, and he says to me, “There is one great supreme ruler, the Vicar of God on earth; behold his splendours; see how they bear him through the streets of Rome upon the shoulders of men, with canopies of silk, smothered with jewels, and with peacock and ostrich feathers. Mark how they swing their censers, and how the multitudes fall down before him, for him hath God exalted, for him hath God glorified.” Ah! but this is a vain and idle boast, for we read not in any page of this Book of any such exaltation to any being, and where will be found the being that shall dare to take it, unless he shall first become the victim of Satan? Satan said to Christ, “All this will I give you if you will fall down and worship me,” and he that hath it must have first fallen down and worshipped Satan, or he hath no such power among the sons of men. Now, beloved, Christ did not redeem his Church with his blood that the Pope might come in and steal away the glory. He never came from heaven to earth, and poured out his very heart that he might purchase his people that a poor sinner, a mere man, should be set upon high to be admired by all the nations, and to call himself God’s representative on earth. Christ has always been the head of his Church. Why! we have read in history that kings at different times have wished to play the head of the Church, and that we owe our Protestantism, as we call it over here, that we owe much of that to the desire of a certain crowned head to become a little Pope over certain dominions. This is very true, but not Henry the Eighth, nor his successor, nor any of those who now live, are more the head of the Church than he is God himself. It is not possible for any to be head in the Church of Christ, but Jesus; him hath God exalted, and made him to be the head over all things, and it is usurping the prerogative of Christ for any to suppose they can be head of the Church of Christ, for Jesus Christ is the head, and he alone holds power over ecclesiastical organisations. Over the sacred mystical, blood-bought, redeemed, regenerated Church of Christ there never can by any possibility be any other head but Jesus Christ, the Lord himself. Now mark, God has exalted the Lord Jesus Christ in the government of his Church. All authority, all authoritative rules in Zion come through Jesus Christ; all true teachings in Zion come from his lips. We call no man master upon earth, for one is our Master, and that one is Christ. No man is Rabbi in the Church, but he is our Rabboni, our teacher, and all other teachers are thieves and robbers if they teach on their own authority. They only are accepted as the Lord’s shepherds, who speak Christ’s truth, in Christ’s name, and in the power of his own Spirit. God has made Christ to rule supremely throughout the Church, and in this he has glorified him. He has made him the head of the Church in another respect; he is the head of all light in the Church. There is no true light in the Christian Church, not a single spark of it, but what comes from Christ. All life comes to us from him. There may be energy in the Church of a carnal and fleshly sort; she may have force and power which she derives from men, but this will die and perish, like the grass and the flower of the field. Vital godliness proceeds always from Jesus Christ, as the branches’ life comes from the vine. “Without me, ye can do nothing, but because I live, ye shall live also.” He is the life of men: he quickeneth whom he will, and it is not possible that there should exist even a grain of spiritual life in any human heart, but that which comes to that heart through Jesus Christ. He is also the head over all things in the Church; all spiritual things. The Spirit of God resides in Christ without measure, and he sends forth the Spirit; he gives a Comforter to us. “It pleased the Father that in him should all fullness dwell,” and the continuance of the Church, and the growth of the Church, and the edification of the Church, all sorts of beneficial influences which come to the Church, proceed to us through Jesus Christ, the Church’s covenanted head.

Now I wish that we should form parts of the true Church of Christ, to whatever denominations we may belong. Let us cling closer and closer to our blessed Master, for the secret of union in the Church is union with Christ. It is utterly hopeless, brethren, for us to expect, as the world now is and as men now are, that we shall ever all of us agree in our opinions about all things. God never made us such creatures that we could agree in all things. He has so constituted us, and wisely so, that we, some of us, catch one angle of truth, and others another. To me one doctrine, perhaps, will always stand out much more clearly than certain others. I wish it were not so. I should like to have a mind comprehensive enough to grasp all truth, to attain the completed picture of truth without ever caricaturing a single feature, but I am deeply conscious I am far from being able to do that, and I think, without being censorious, I may say I do not know any of my fellow-creatures; but there is in them a warp somewhere or other in the judgment of good men, some mistake of some man which is not an offensive mistake at all. This is rather an infirmity than a sin, for he follows what he thinks is truth; his eyes are not right, he has got a little squint, and he thinks truth is a thing that it is not; he shoots well, mark you, if the mark were where he thinks it is, but it is not just there, and therefore his arrow does not quite hit the centre of the target. The true place of union will be, mark you, never in the creed, but in him who is the truth. If we believe in him, love him, cling to him, follow him, imitate him, glorify him, we shall get nearer each other than ever we were, closer to the common centre; we must be closer to one another. “I would preach up nothing but Christ, and preach nothing down but sin,” said a good old divine, and the good man was right there. Some old lady who heard of certain high Calvinistic preachers coming to a certain place did not know who they were, or what they were, but she said she thought she liked them because of their names. She misunderstood the words, and she thought they were high Calvary preachers, and anybody who preached high Calvary would suit her if they lifted up the cross of Jesus, and preached up the Master, and glorified his name. If in doubt, this should be the test of the doctrine: Does it glorify Christ? This should be the test of all our opinions: Do they glorify Christ? For nothing is fit to be within the walls of Zion but that which bows down before Zion’s King.

To change the tone, again ringing the same peal of bells, in the third place:-

God has highly exalted his dear Son in the achievement of the cross.

Oh! for a poet’s mind and seraph’s tongue to speak of the wonders of the cross, where Christ the Saviour hung and died. He died in shame; this never dimmed his glory; it reveals it to the admiring eyes of all the aged saints, who delight to look thereon. What did Jesus, by his dying a painful death, do for us? Why, first, as you all know, he put away all his people’s sins. There are some that think that Christ died to make all men salvable. They may keep their doctrine: it has no charms for me: that Christ died, some think, for all men, and it is a death for every man, I know the Word of God declares; but there is a redemption, there is a redemption far other than that which is universal. He laid down his life for his sheep: he loved his Church and gave himself for it, and there is a people spoken of who are redeemed from among men in quite another sense, in which any redemption was ever made for all men. Now, beloved, as many as Christ stood for as a substitute, for so many did he take their sins, and although it is written, “The Lord hath laid upon him the iniquity of us all,” for “he was made sin for us,” saith the apostle, and the sin of his people was actually laid upon him, imputed to him, though it was not his, yet he took it for his people, and here is the glory, that all that mass of sin no longer exists; it is gone; he hath vanquished the tyrant and “made an end of sin.” What a wonderful word-made an end of it, and brought in everlasting righteousness; he hath cast our iniquities into the depths of the sea. The blood of Christ our sins exterminated when he stood in the stead of his people; he suffered an equivalent for all that was due by them and from them to God, and the debts have ceased to be, for they are all paid and disposed of, no charge being brought against Christ’s elect, for, saith the apostle, “It is Christ that died; yea, rather that hath risen again.” In the morning when the Father raised his Son from the dead, and Jesus stood once more upon earth, no more to die, in that day the sentence went forth, “None shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect.” Oh! what a blessed work was this to do: to take sin away where it never can be found again: to make it to cease to be: to cover it over for ever: to blot it out. But this was not all; our Lord by his death destroyed death, and him that hath the power over it, and that is the devil.

But let us think: he disposed of death first of all. He slept in the tomb: when the morning came the prison door was opened, and he rose the first-born from the dead, the first fruits of them that sleep, and the harvest-sheaf of all who shall come henceforth from the sepulchre; and so now the tomb is no more a charnel house, a place of ruin; the big imprisoning stone is rolled away. “He that liveth and believeth in Christ shall never die, and he that believeth in him, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” Over yonder cemetery, with its holy memories and long-lamented departed, I hear a voice ringing, “Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord; yea, saith the Spirit, for they rest from their labours, and their works do follow them.” And in another case, beloved, “I am the resurrection and the life; death is dead.” Jesus Christ has accomplished this, and the Father hath glorified him.

And now he hath also vanquished, once for all, for his people, all the hosts of hell. Satan is a cruel enemy to the Lord’s people; he molests them; he worries whom he cannot devour; but here is our consolation, that he has an invincible enemy. Christ gave Satan every advantage; he met him as an old divine saith, “on his own dunghill”; he bearded the lion in his den; nay, he bearded him on his own hill. “This is thine own hour,” saith he; Satan’s own hour, and the hour of darkness; but Jesus triumphed, triumphed when the whole artillery of hell was discharged against him, when all the floods out of the mouth of the dragon were vented forth upon him; he vanquished all the hosts, and bears the banner of a glorious triumph this day, “having led captivity captive, and ascended up on high.”

To tell of all the wonders of the cross of Calvary would take far longer than the time we can allot to it now, but we may sum it all up in the words of the text, “He hath glorified thee.” The Father hath put many crowns upon the head of him that wore the crown of thorns.

I wish to ask a minute’s attention to the next, namely, that the Father hath glorified Christ in his present power: the Father sustains him in the highest heavens amongst the saints. It is no small glory that Christ should sit at the right hand of the Father, as he now does. He was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, but now is crowned with glory and honour, and the loftiest created beings delight to do his commands. He reigns in heaven with sceptre undisputed. He saith to this one, “Go, and he goeth; to another, come, and he cometh.” His intercession in heaven is part of the glory he has received; as he pleads there like a high priest, he pleads with authority, with a power that is always felt. The blood of Jesus Christ speaks to the heart of God, and no desire of Christ’s is ungranted when heard. A case put into Christ’s hands always speeds; if we ask the Father in Christ’s name, he will do it for us. I am sure very few of us know this, that if we ask in Christ’s name, we ask for Christ’s sake, and that is right and good, and that is as far as we get; but do you know the difference, if you go to a man and say, “Give me so-and-so, for the sake of such a friend, he deserves it of you,” that is a good plea; but suppose that friend arms you with this power, and he says, “Now you may go and ask for it in my name; say I sent you; use my name,” why, that is more powerful by far, and when each Christian becomes clothed, as it were, with that power from Christ, so that he asks God in Christ’s name as though Christ asked, what power is here! And it is part of the glory of Christ that his intercession should thus be so powerful for his people this day.

And, brethren, think how the Father has exalted Christ, in that at this time he is receiving every hour some of the purchase of his blood. I have sometimes tried to picture in my eye the delight of Christ, the gleaming of his eyes of love, as his blood-bought ones come home one by one. You know it is his prayer, “Father, I will that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am.” Here they come, one after another; some from this church; one yesterday; two or three a week usually, they come up into the bosom of Christ. You know how the husbandman rejoices as he sees the loaded wagons coming one by one to the barn; but he has sowed, not with blood, though he may have sowed with tears. You know how you and I rejoice as we think we have been the means of the conversion of someone, but what is the joy of Christ as he sees the perfection of his goodness. Christ is exalted, fresh crowns are laid at his feet; the eternal Spirit, as he brings and conducts the chosen spirit up to Christ, glorifies him. And here below, brethren, let us add, as we leave this point, Jesus Christ is glorified in the power which he possesses in the conversion of souls. Wherever his name is preached, it becomes like ointment poured forth. I have no belief in the preaching of Christ unsuccessfully. I think a dear brother may preach the gospel for years and see no conversions, and perhaps there may be none just then, but they will come. I won’t say this to myself to comfort myself. I should be afraid I was on the wrong tack if I did not see them, and I would say to those who preach the Master’s Word faithfully, “It shall not return unto me void.” Christ is greatly glorified when his gospel becomes a heart-breaker, like a hammer; when it dashes the rock in pieces and becomes like a fire. Christ is glorified when a harlot gives up her evil trade; when the thief casts down the tools of his infamy; when the drunkard lifts his last dram to his lips; when the blasphemer washes out his mouth, and resolves to drink no more of the wine of cursing. God grant us that we may ever pray that God will glorify Christ in marvellous and manifest conversions: extraordinary sinners, being snatched from between the teeth of the old lion, and made to dedicate the rest of their days to King Jesus. Now to close:-

We have already said that Christ is glorified in his spiritual kingdom in the midst of Zion. One is tempted to enlarge on that. The King is always glorious when he rules his people by good laws, when he has a happy and prosperous people. But our Lord Jesus Christ rules us with the best of laws, and happy are the citizens of the new Jerusalem.

“The King is glorious

When in war he is victorious.”

And when he is beloved of his subjects, he certainly is victorious in war. The spoils belong to him; all the virgins love him, and the saintly sons consecrate their purest affections to him. Jesus Christ is exalted in his Church, then, as a King upon his throne, and there God gives him glory for the present among the nations. Christ’s glory is not revealed as we desire it, though he rules by moral influence, and the government is upon his shoulders; perhaps, if our eyes were opened, we should see in the progress of civilisation and the various changes which have taken place in this world, much more of the influences of Christianity, and certainly of the power of Christ than we have been able to perceive at all times. Perhaps God is writing now, and has been during this last six thousand years, a wonderful drama, at the clearing up of which it will be seen from the first stroke of his pen to the last, God has glorified Christ. It may be so that the shaking of the nations, the revolutions, and even the bloody wars, shall all be compassed, and the one great whole of which it might be said at the commencement, as Virgil doth in song:-

“Arms and the man I sing.”

It may be that he has written a great epic concerning the warfare of the righteous against evil, and the conquest of the mighty men. He has yet to restore this world, and make it brighter than it was before, and, beloved, that God will exalt Christ in the latter days, let us never doubt that for a moment, and though men prophesy, making a profit by their prophecies, and are for everlasting muddling and unsettling weak minds by their silly predictions, let us still hold to it that this world belongs to Christ, who bought it with his precious blood, and he will have it, every inch, and there is not a corner where the dark places of cruelty shall remain, not a spot where an idol shall hold its throne, not a hill or valley where superstition shall be permitted to linger. We have but to wait; may be we shall be gathered to our Father to wait in serener places than this, for it is ordained, and none shall stay its coming, when Christ shall reign upon earth with his ancient glory, and the whole earth, once an Augean stable, shall be cleansed by its Hercules, who shall make the stream of his blood to run through it, and make it pure, glorified, and consecrated. And in that day the sceptres shall be gathered with them that remain, and crowns of kings shall be joyfully laid at his feet, and we shall understand the full meaning of the title, “King of Kings and Lord of Lords.” Oh! how we will salute him in that day when we shall rise to participate in the splendours with those that are alive and remain. Dear friends, those that are asleep shall rise to participate in all the splendour of that blessed land of King Jesus. My Father hath exalted thee; to thee, thy Master’s children bow. The sun and the moon bow down before thee; thou shalt reign, and we shall reign with thee; our reign being to behold thy reign; our glory being to participate in thy glory. We shall be like thee, for we shall see thee as thou art. May God grant us grace to have our share in that blessed advent, and he shall be blessed.

But now just one word more. God will glorify Christ, mark you, as he has done. Are we prepared to do the same, my dear brother and sister? Let us aim to glorify Christ, and shall I tell you how you may do it, for there are many small ways of doing it, not small in themselves, but only small comparatively. You can glorify Christ by your holy living, by your labours for his kingdom, by your liberality; or, if you want to do the greatest work to glorify Christ, you know what it is. Why, it is to trust him altogether with-all your concerns. Nothing glorifies Christ more than that. Now just lean your whole weight on him, and, with a faith that does not stagger, rely on the efficacy of his blood, the power of his arm, the love of his heart, and the immutability of his affections, and the divinity of his presence; lean on him, rest on him. A poor dependent creature cannot glorify God anyhow better than by trusting him. This is the work of God, you know; this is a Hebraism, for the greatest work of all; this is the work of God, the god-like work, the work. But what a mercy there is such a way for poor creatures like us, of glorifying Christ by trusting him.

“The best return for one like me,

So wretched and so poor,

Is from his gifts to draw a plea,

And ask him still for more.”

One other remark, and that is, if you don’t glorify Jesus Christ willingly and cheerfully by such a trust, he will be glorified even in your condemnation. In the day of his appearing, you that have heard the gospel, for I speak to you only, if you reject him, you will have yet to minister to his honour. “Kiss the son, lest he be angry and ye perish from the way, if his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.” But if you trust him not, here is the alternative: he shall “break the nations with a rod of iron; he shall dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” How stands it with you? Will you be able to endure that iron rod? Will you be able to endure the breaking, when first the body shall be broken, and then the soul to shivers, like a potter’s vessel? Be wise, therefore, oh! ye kings and ye men, sons of the earth; be wise, bow before him, accept him as your King. God will thus be glorified by the work of Christ, and if it be not so, he will be glorified by the aid of justice, which may the Lord forbid in the case of any one of us. Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

ISAIAH 53

Verse 1. Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?

The prophet seems to speak in the name of all the prophets, lamenting the general unbelief concerning Jesus Christ, the Son of God. The report concerning him is very clear. It comes from God: it is for our salvation, and yet how many disbelieve it! In fact, all do. Until the arm of the Lord is revealed, until he works upon the hearts of men, and they are led to believe in Jesus. And here is the difficulty of belief.

2. For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.

There was nothing about Jesus Christ to attract the attention of those who look for pomp and splendour. His religion is all simplicity: it is plain truth; there is nothing about it that is gorgeous to attract those who look after ritualistic vanities. To the most of men there is no beauty in him that they should desire him.

3. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

It was so with Jesus when he was here. He was the greatest of all sufferers: there were few that followed him; some of those who did betrayed him. There were few who would stand up for him: he met everywhere with a repulse, and yet he came on an errand of love. He needed not to have come at all. Heaven surely was large enough for him; but such was his pity for the dying sons of men that he must needs strip off his royal robes and put on the robes of our mortal flesh.

4, 5. Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.

He had not a pang to suffer on his own account, nothing to cause him grief in anything he had done:-

“For sins not his own, he died to atone;

Was love or was sorrow like this ever known?”

Scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet, peradventure, for a good man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.

6. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Taken the full load of sin, the whole mass of human guilt, and placed it upon him. He was perfectly innocent, and yet was the sin of man heaped upon him. He was our substitute, standing in our stead: a wondrous truth was this!

7. He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he openeth not his mouth,

And you know right well that our Master would not speak when he was charged before Pilate and Herod: he was eloquent-more eloquent in his silence than if he had used his ordinary language, which was wonderful, for “never man spake like this man,” and yet never man was silent as he for our sake.

8-10. He was taken from prison and from judgment: and who shall declare his generation? for he was cut off out of the land of the living: for the transgression of my people was he stricken. And he made his grave with the wicked, and with the rich in his death; because he had done no violence, neither was any deceit in his mouth, yet it pleased the Lord to bruise him; he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hand.

Our blessed Lord and Master is to have a full reward for all his griefs, and an earnest of that reward is here to-night. He will receive this very night some born unto him by the new birth, who shall henceforth be his children, and who shall gladly say, “Here, Lord, I come myself to thee, for thou hast bought me by thy precious blood.” It is the joy of some of us that we belong altogether to Christ. We would not have another honour: we wish to live to him, loving him and serving him, as long as we have any being. And there are some here to-night who have not felt this, whom God, nevertheless, will make to feel it, for so runs the promise:-

11. He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied: by his knowledge shall my righteous servant justify many; for he shall bear their iniquities.

That is the way he justifies them-takes their iniquities upon himself; and since a thing cannot be in two places at one time, when Christ takes our iniquities, they are gone, and we are just in the sight of God. He takes the burden, and we are unloaded, blessed be his name! “He shall bear their iniquities.”

12. Therefore will I divide him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong:

The dying Christ has risen again, and he is a great conqueror now, and divides the spoil. Those spoils are human hearts, and the true love and deep devotion of those he has redeemed. He shall have this:-

12. Because he hath poured out his soul unto death: and he was numbered with the transgressors: and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors,

And he is doing it now; pleading this very night that old prayer of his, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Oh! let you and I be pardoned with that plea.

FRIENDSHIP’S GUIDE

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, December 17th, 1914

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

On Lord’s-day Evening, September 11th, 1870.

“Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you.”-John 15:14.

It is very easy to understand how Jesus Christ is our friend. Did ever anyone deserve the name so well? Who can prove his friendship as Jesus proved it by laying down his life for those he calls his friends? But it is a mark of wonderful condescension on his part that he should call us his friends, and it confers upon us the highest conceivable honour that such a Lord as he is, so infinitely superior to us, should condescend to enter into terms of friendship with us. My friend, O Jesus, thou art, for thou hast redeemed my soul from death and hell, but that I should be thy friend-nothing but thy loving, condescending tenderness could ever have conceived of this. If thou dost put such a title as this upon me, teach me how I may act in conformity with it. Beloved, there is a mutual friendship between Christ and the believer. There cannot be friendship if it is all on one side. There is bounty, there is kindness, and there may be some gratitude in return, but friendship is a reciprocal thing. In its fullest sense it is between two, and the one heart must be as the other heart, or else there is no friendship. Now every believer is a friend to Jesus, and Jesus is a friend to him. They are friends because they have a mutual love for each other. The believer does not love his Lord so much as Jesus loves him, for his heart is little compared with Jesus’ heart. But when the believer is in a right state, he loves Jesus with all his heart, and soul, and strength. He feels that there is none in the world that can have a place in his affections at all comparable with his Lord and Master. He can say:-

“My Jesus I love thee: I know thou art mine;

For thee all the follies of sin I resign.”

And if Jesus loves us, we also love him. Friendship has in it a mutual delight. Two friends value each other. Now the delight of Jesus is with the sons of men. In those whom he has redeemed with his blood he sees the satisfaction for the travail of his soul. He says of his Church that her name is Hephzibah-“My delight is in her”; and on the other hand, the believer’s delight is in Christ. “He is all my salvation, and all my desire,” says the believer: “He is the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.” None can be compared with him. It is sweet to think of the saint looking on the Saviour, and the Saviour looking on the saint, and the two together blending their love in mutual delight in each other. This love and this delight lead to mutual converse. Persons can hardly maintain friendship if they only see each other now and then. If there be no communion by letter or in any other way, I should think friendship could scarcely be maintained. But oh! Jesus reveals himself to his people, and his people tell out their hearts to Jesus. Do not suppose that because he is not here, for he is risen, that therefore we have no intercourse with him. Our prayers speak into his ears, our tears fall into his heart: when we are wounded, his wounds bleed afresh. He is the Head, and we the members, and, however great the body, if you wound the body, the head feels it at once, so close is the communion. Yes, and we do converse with him still in meditation, in adoration, alone in our chambers. Though we have not seen him with these optics, which are, after all, poor things, we have seen him with our soul’s eyes, which are brighter eyes by far, and as we have beheld him, our soul has melted for joy in the glance of his beauty.

Now to make friendship there will be not only mutual love, delight, and converse, but friends must have harmony of thought. I will not say identity, for man and man must always be two, and Christ and his people, though one in some respects, are two existences. But though two notes, though different, may be in perfect harmony, so is it with the heart of Christ, and the heart of his renewed child. What Jesus loves, we love; what Jesus hates, we hate; what Jesus seeks, we seek; what Jesus shuns, we shun. This is true friendship when there is but one heart in two bodies, and when one heart in the twain produces with undivided strength one object. Now Christ’s object is his Father’s glory. If you are Christ’s friends, that object is yours too. His object is to seek and save the lost: if you love him, you seek to save the lost also in your way. He loves truth, holiness, righteousness. He delights in that which puts an end to misery, to evil, to cruelty, to wrongdoing. Do you delight in the same? If so, unity of design, harmony of thought, will make up very greatly the friendship between you and Jesus. Oh! but we are going to the same great end. Where he is, thither our hearts are drawn. We are living here for the same purpose that brought him here, and when our work is done, the same reward that gladdened him shall also gladden us-we also shall enter into the joy of our Lord. Some of you do not know much about this: I am talking strange things to some of you. Jesus-yes, you read of him-Jesus-you hear of him: it is proper to receive his name; but oh! you have never spoken with him: you have never known him to be real nor conceived of him as such. I pray you that may you be made spiritual, may you be born again. Until you are, you cannot be a friend of Christ; but when you are, and may it come now this very hour, may you discover that he is a great friend to you, and then, out of love to him, may you become a friend of his.

Now we are not left in the dark as friends of Jesus as to the best way of showing our friendship. Two persons may be great friends, and one may wish to serve the other, and say, “I hardly know what I can do to please my friend. I wish I knew his wants, I wish I knew his desires: I would strive to gratify them.” Now you have to-night given to you, as lovers of Jesus-you have the guide as to how you can prove yourselves his friends. “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” We have, then, in the text the guide for friendship, and I will say this about it: it contains seven things. The first is:-

True friends of Christ himself distinctly acknowledge his true position towards themselves.

That position is contained in these words, “I command you.” We are friends of Jesus, but Jesus must still be first: “I command you.” The genuine friend of Christ does not command himself: he has taken Christ’s yoke upon him, and is now Christ’s liege man and servant. He does not now follow his own whims in religion, nor does he think he is to be dictator to himself. In becoming Christ’s friend, he agrees to subordinate his mind and will to the supremacy of Christ Jesus the Lord. Now then, friend of Jesus, note thou this. Thou art not thine own henceforth, not thine own master, neither art thou thine own guide. I am often afraid when I hear persons talk of the glorious excellence of liberty of conscience, that they make a mistake as to what liberty of conscience is. What is liberty of conscience? Is it liberty to believe anything I like-liberty to hold any doctrine I please? No; it is such liberty with regard to the civil magistrate and with regard to my fellow-man. Before my fellow-man I have a right to believe what I will, and he may not call me to account; I am free there. But does such freedom exist before God? I trow not. The friend of Jesus asks to have his conscience taught: he lays his judgment at the feet of the great Teacher, and all the liberty that he wants to his conscience is to have it purified and cleansed, that it may be a fit guide for him to follow; otherwise a distorted, perverted, dark, polluted conscience may as readily lead a man to hell as if he never had a conscience at all. It is not because I am conscientious that I am right. As I have often told you, a man may conscientiously drink arsenic or prussic acid, and believe that it will do him good, but he would die for all that. Ah! and a man might conscientiously believe a lie, and he will reap the fruit of that lie. Thou art a friend of Jesus to take thy command from his lips, and lay down at his feet, for he says, “I command you.”

But mark, though Christ has to command his friends, we are not to let anyone else command us. Oh! shun the slavery of all who take their religion from men, be they who they may, whether called priests or presbyters, or from human creeds or books. Read them, gather what you can from them all, but “One is your Master, even Christ,” and all ye are brethren. No church may lord it over your minds, for the church may err, but not so Christ. “Whatsoever I command you,” saith he. He is infallible: he will bid you do no ill, but a church of fallible men is still fallible, and may slide aside, first a little, then more, then much, then monstrously; then utterly apostatise from the faith of God’s elect. Therefore your guide, your leader, is nothing but Jesus. “Do whatsoever I command you.” There is too much among us of doing whatsoever our particular religion may command us. I charge you, brethren, do nothing of the sort. What are your councils? What are your assemblies? Nothing-less than nothing, I trow. If they decree anything contrary to God’s will, they are mischief makers. Christ is the head of the Church, and he has not vacated his high position in the midst of his Israel. Yield you to him. Go to the fountain-head, the statute book, that shows his will, and get it there. You have enough there, though all contradict you. You have enough there, and all the councils of the fathers, and all the Church will be less than the small dust in the balance, if you find not the law to be Christ’s. Whatsoever he says, the true friend of Jesus does-neither less nor more-for he knows that none can legislate in his realm but the King himself, and all that pretend to legislate do but err, when they get away from the “It is written” of the grand old Word of God.

Remember, too, all friends of Christ’s that this doctrine of Christ’s supremacy stands good always. He is your Lord, and he is to command you everywhere, not in your religious thought only, but at home, in the chamber, in the parlour, in the drawing-room, out of doors, in the street, on the mart, on the ’change, in your shop. His rule contained in his own life-his golden rule, “Do ye to others as ye would they should do to you”-his new commandment that ye love one another-these are always binding. A soldier may have a furlough, but a Christian never. You might plead that concerning such and such a law you were exempt before men, but to Christ you are never exempt, nor would you wish to be, for his service is freedom, and his law, O friend of Christ, has now become your delight. Grasp, then, that first thought, “Ye are my friends if I command you”-if you recognise me as being the leader and the commander unto you his people. You must recognise Christ in that capacity, and him only, or you are not his friends.

But note, again, the text has in it a word which I may paraphrase in this way:-

We are to recognise our own personal obligations.

Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you. The mass of mankind who pretend to be religious suppose this book to be written to all sorts of good people, but not particularly to themselves, and there be they who think that the commands of Christ are very proper to be read, and to be heard, and to be proclaimed, but they do not look upon them as being binding on themselves. Friend of Jesus, Jesus has a right to your service, to your obedience. What he bids, he bids you-if to no other, yet to you. Then the zeal of some good men does not exempt me. If my minister be very useful, that is not myself. I am Christ’s friend if I do whatsoever he commands me. Then the intense fervour of the Church does not permit me to recoil, and say, “There is nothing for me to do.” No; I am his friend if I do what he commands me. If, on the other hand, I dwell among a slumbering church, if I see all around me the signs of sloth, yet I am not to judge the church and excuse myself, and say, “I do as much as others-perhaps a little more: I am not so hard-hearted as so-and-so.” Oh! sirs, what have you to do with your brethren, with your fellow-servants? To your own Master you must stand or fall, as they must, and you are Christ’s friend if you do whatsoever he commands you. It does seem to be very hard to get men to individualise themselves in the things of God. They do not count themselves rich because England is rich: they do not consider themselves to be getting rich because the bank-rate is lower: they want to get the solid coins in their own grasp, and to their own banking account. But when I come to religion, men talk of this denomination and that church, and that other-anything but about themselves. But ye, O friend of Christ, ye must live before the Lord as though there were no other. “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” Now we will lay the force of our thought on another word. Observe here that:-

The true friend of Christ observes carefully all that Christ says.

It is not “Ye are my friends if ye do some things that I command you.” But “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you”-whatsoever. Are there public duties? Do they require courage? I must perform them. Are there private duties? Are they unseen of men? They are as much encumbent upon me: I must discharge them. Are there commands of precept by way of ordinance? I must keep them. Are there commands by way of morals? I must obey them, however hard or stern they may seem. Whatsoever Christ commands is the law to his people. O England, England, when will the day come back when this book which is said to be the only religion of Protestants shall be truly so? The Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants-so they say, but it is not so. There be many things practised by so-called Protestants that are not here. Where are your holy baptisms? Where are your confirmations? Where are half the ceremonies, if not all, of the Church of England, and many other bodies? They are inventions of man, and man only, having not so much as a shred or vestige of foundation in God’s own Book. Ye have made another book-your bishops have made another book-and laid it on the top of God’s own book, and these be your Bible-not the Bible, and the Bible only, but the Book of Common Prayer. And with other denominations, dissenting denominations, there is too much of the same sort of thing. “What said John Calvin?” What care I what he said, or did not say? “What said John Wesley?” What care I what John Wesley said, or did not say? The Master, the Master, let us do whatsoever he commands us. These were his good servants, as I believe, both of them, John Wesley and John Calvin; and if they did better than I, which I know they did, therein will I rejoice, and bless God, and wherein they followed the Master, I, with unequal footsteps, would seek to follow too; but to say that I will do this because John this or John that taught it-shame on the Christian man that dares to bow his head to such a yoke as that. Let every Christian man contend for this that he is to do whatsoever Christ commands. Does it kick over the conventionalities of the church? Let them go over. Does it burn the tag rags you thought so much of-your venerable things that you laid up as holy relics? Burn every one of them. What right have they to stand in contradiction to the law of Christ? Nay, whatsoever he commands-not more, not less-this is to be our religion and our law, and to it let every Christian stand. Happy day shall it be for the church and for the world when this is true. Once more, it is clear from one word, that:-

The text is very practical.

“Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you”-not “if ye do some things,” not “if ye talk about it,” for lip service is hypocrisy-not “if ye tell others to do it”-there is a great deal of religion that is very like charity, and you know what charity is. A sees B is very badly off, and he writes a letter at once to C to help B. So is it with religion. A sees it a duty that such a thing should be done, and tells B that he is very wrong not to do it. That is what is called religion. But as I understand religion, it is this. A sees B needing help, and gives it to him: A sees a duty and does it himself, and after he has done it himself, then he may talk to B about it, and not till then. “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” Well, some of you have been thinking about it a long while-it is time for you to do it. He commands you to love your brother: you have been talking about that-well, do it. Don’t grumble, and complain, and criticise any longer. You know he commands you to forgive any who offend you. Do not know it any longer, but go and do it. Some of you believe that you ought to be baptized and make profession of your faith. What is the good of thinking of it? Go and do it: go and do it. It is in the keeping of his commandments that there is great reward. He does not do the will of God who says, “Well, I am turning it over, and one of these days I suppose I shall be moved to do it.” What do you want to move you but this, that you owe everything to Christ, and that Christ commands you? A soldier in the day of battle only wants the command, and on he marches, and a true friend of Jesus pays to him as perfect an obedience as a soldier to his captain, or at least he desires to do it. A lift of Jesus’ finger, and away he goes. One look from Jesus’ eye shall cause him to stop, or make a rapid advance, just as the word may be.

I shall close by commending this text to you because it is so. Ye are my friends if you own me your Master in everything, your own personal Master, and then do what I tell you. Now how plain this is? There is no mistake about it. It is obedience Christ asks for. “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken than the fat of rams,” and what a blessing it is that this text gives us such a very simple thing to do. Suppose Jesus Christ were to say, “That man is my friend who will support a minister, who will build a place of worship, who will go out abroad for a missionary.” Oh! there are some of you who would weep and say, “I can do neither of those things: I wish I could! It would be my greatest pleasure if I could.” My dear friends, the poorest man, the poorest woman here, that is a true friend of Christ can do this: you can do whatsoever he commands you. By the power of his blessed Spirit that has made you love him, you can watch earnestly to be holy, to be loving, as Jesus was. The notion with a great many is, “I want to show that I am Christ’s friend; now I must shut myself up and get away from everybody.” That is not what Christ says. He says, “Do whatsoever I command you”-not run out of the battle, but fight through, and win it. “No; but,” saith another, “what can I do my Saviour to praise? I must speak about him.” Yet, perhaps, that dear friend could not put three words together consecutively. Dear brother, if God has not given you that gift, you need not cry that you have not got it. Go and do whatsoever he commands you; that will be better than sacrifice. I know some persons who are very attentive to sermons. I am glad they are. They wish to get out on week-nights, and I am glad they are. I wish all were able to. But many a mother will be serving God much better by keeping the house clean, and the garments mended, than by coming to a sermon. You must do whatsoever he commands you, and what he commands you as a wife, is to discharge a wife’s duty. When I sometimes see a religious serving-man a great talker, who does not groom his Master’s horses well, and who, if he can get an excuse for leaving work, will, I think “That man might do more good in minding his master’s business than in running here and there to make a show of religion. I believe plain, holy, godly living is more wanted a great deal more than fine preaching; and if my preaching does not, by God’s grace, produce in you a finer character than that, then I am preaching for nothing. I heard of a man the other day who could preach with his feet, and I know a great many who do. That is, preaching with living and daily walk and conversation. It is, after all, to be upright in business, to be affectionate in the family, to make those around you happy, to live Christ-that is, after all, true friendship with Christ. No big words of ready talkers, no polished periods, no gift of prayer will ever be so acceptable to the Lord Jesus Christ as the simple piety that graces the fireside, that adorns the private and the public life of the believer. Ye are my friends if ye do whatsover I command you. Practically to prove that Jesus Christ is your Lord is the highest service that you can any of you render to him. May God help you to render it from this time forth, with undeviating correctness, and with the help of his Spirit may you yet do it more and more. For let me conclude by observing that, though this seems a very simple thing, yet after all:-

It is not possible that a rebel should be a friend to Christ. If a man says of any law of Christ, “I do not mean to keep that,” then, sir, you have virtually said, “I do not mean to have Christ for my Lord,” and that means that you cannot have him as your Saviour. If you do not know a thing to be Christ’s, well, I believe you are sinful still, for you ought to know it. The laws of our country never excuse a person for breaking the law because he says he did not know the law. It is presumed that everybody ought to know it. And the Bible is not such a book as they cannot understand if they try. Any person can find out Christ’s will if he likes. But suppose you know it is Christ’s will, and do not choose to do it-if you put your foot down there and say, “I shall not do it,” then there is an end of all friendship. Obedience, then, is an essential of true friendship to Christ, for those who make a profession of friendship and don’t do what he commands are the worst enemies he has. No city that is besieged need fear so much the enemy outside, as treachery inside. If there be known to be treachery inside, then the stress of war becomes severe. So if inside the church there be persons who deliberately say, “We are disciples of Christ, but we will not be obedient to his will,” there is sedition and treason inside the camp; and these are they of whom Paul said, “I have told you even weeping-that they are the enemies, the especial enemies, of the cross of Christ.” And let me say this keeping of the law of Christ is, after all:-

The best way of serving him as a matter of usefulness.

Sermons preached at home are the best sermons. Sermons at sick beds by holy women, sermons to drunken husbands by the patient godliness of the much-suffering wife, sermons by holy fathers and mothers in their loving anxiety for wayward sons and daughters, sermons by servants in the rectitude of their conduct to their employers, sermons by Christian tradesmen preached in their bills and in their trade by strict attention to everything upright-these are sermons that the world must hear; these are things that must glorify Christ; these are the most friendly actions that you can do for Jesus. You raise his name in the market, you make men think the better of his religion by the holiness and consistency of your conduct. You are his friend then.

I dismiss you with this upon your minds. If you are his friends, obey his command and imitate his example, and seek to have this not in theory, but as a matter of fact, of daily life. The day will come, my hearers, when to be a friend of Christ will be the grandest thing beneath the heavens. He is an exiled prince in regard to this world now, and men despise him, but he is coming to his crown ere long; and when he shall appear in the clouds of heaven, as he shortly shall, all those who were his friends on earth, who stood in the pillory with him, and suffered for him-these shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of his Father. Oh! it will then be a grand day, a brave day, for those who died for him, for those who were made poor for conscience sake, for those who left kindred and friends for his name. I think I hear the King say, “Make way, angels; make way, cherubim and seraphim; these poor men and women were friends with me; when I was in exile they suffered with me; they were willing to bear reproach for me-let them come; they shall be courtiers round my throne. They were friends of mine in my humiliation; they shall be friends with me in my glory. ‘Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from before the foundation of the world.’ ” And oh! how will all men who were not his friends-how will they hide their heads and wish they had never been born to continue at enmity with him! They did not know who it was they were despising when they laughed at his people. They did not know what it was they trampled on when they put their profane feet upon the cross of Christ. They did not know who they insulted when they broke the Sabbath, and lived godless, Christless lives, but they will know it then when they see the King on his throne, for their cry will be-their bitter lament shall be-“Fall on us, ye mountains; cover us, ye rocks, and hide us-hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne.” What! can ye not face him? You used to jeer at his people; you used to say, “It is all nonsense this religion.” Cannot you face him? Cannot you face him? He has not spoken yet; no thunderbolts are in his hand; can you not face him? No; they are ashamed; they dare not look; they dare not gaze on such heavenly beauty; they seek a shelter; they hold their hands before their eyes. They ask the mountains to afford them a hiding-place, for could they be such fools as to despise him who died for his enemies, to despise the Christ of God, to despise the everlasting Creator, who out of mighty love gave up his life for men? Before he speaks a word, before he pronounces a sentence, this shame shall begin their hell. “Hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.” God bless you, dear friends, save you by his great mercy, richly bless every one of you, and make you Christ’s friends. Amen and amen.

Expositions by C. H. Spurgeon

JOHN 12:37-50; ISAIAH 6

JOHN 12:37-50

Verse 37. But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they believed not on him:

They had an opportunity of seeing with their eyes what the Christ could do. He had even raised the dead in the midst of them, and yet this is the sorrowful statement.

38-40. That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake, Lord, who hath believed our report? and to whom hath the arm of the Lord been revealed? Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again. He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.

This passage is very frequently quoted in the Old Testament: it was so exceedingly apropos to the condition of the unbelieving Jews. They were wilfully blinded. They could see it; they were forced to hear it; there was much that even touched their hearts; but they hardened their heart against it, and to this day they remain the same.

41-43. These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and spake of him. Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed on him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; For they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.

And this is a common disease to this day. There are many who know the truth, who, nevertheless, keep very quiet about it. They do not like to be despised; they cannot endure to seem to be separate from their fellow-men; it is not respectable to be decided for Christ, and to come out from among them, so they love the praise of men more than the praise of God.

44. Jesus cried and said, He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on him that sent me.

Faith in Christ is faith in God; he that trusts the Son hath accepted the witness of the Father.

45. And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me.

Wonderful expression. Perhaps, we never fully realise it. Christ is seeable; God is not; but when we see the Christ, we do virtually see all of God that we may desire to see: the Invisible hath made himself visible in Christ-in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

46. I am come a light into the world, that whosoever believeth on me should not abide in darkness.

True faith in Christ sheds light on everything concerning which light is desirable. You shall understand things when you have come unto the right standpoint, when you have gotten to believe in Christ. I wonder not that those who doubt concerning him, doubt about everything; if they will not have this light, how shall they see?

47. And if any man hear my words, and believe not, I judge him not: for I came not to judge the world, but to save the world.

Under this present dispensation, it is not the time of judgment. The Lord leaves you that are unbelievers to yourselves. He does not come as yet to judge you; there is a second coming, when he will be both judge and witness, and condemner, of those who have rejected him; but at present it is a dispensation of pure mercy. “He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him.” There is a great God above who reckons this to be among the greatest of all human crimes, that they reject his Son. We speak of unbelief very lightly, and there are some who trifle with it as if it had no moral quality at all; but God doth not so.

48. He that rejecteth me, and receiveth not my words, hath one that judgeth him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.

Look, ye, to that, the gospel which you refuse will judge you at the last day. We know that the Lord Jesus Christ shall judge the world, saith Paul, “according to my gospel,” and he that sins against the gospel of love will certainly involve himself in the most solemn condemnation. He perishes that sins against the law; he dieth without mercy at the mouth of one or two witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy that sins against love, and rejects the Saviour?

49. For I have not spoken of myself; but the Father which sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.

God at the back of Christ. Omnipotence supporting love. The expostulations of Christ, not left to our will to do as we like with them, but solemnly sanctioned by the royalties of God, so that to refute them is treason against the majesty of heaven.

50. And I know that his commandment is life everlasting: whatsoever I speak therefore, even as the Father said unto me, so I speak.

The eternal authority of God is at the back of the testimony of Christ. Oh! that men would not be so unwise as to reject it.

Now in our reading at the 41st verse we met with these words: “These things, said Esaias, when he saw his glory and spake of him.” Now let us read the passage which gives us an account of Isaiah’s seeing the glory of Christ.

ISAIAH 6

Verse 1. In the year King Uzziah died

You remember him, that leprous king, that king who had thrust himself into the priests’ office, and was smitten of leprosy, and shut up in a separate house during the rest of his life. In the year that he died Isaiah saw a greater King, whom no defilement can ever touch, a King that reigneth and lives for ever, though Uzziah dies.

1. I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

Whenever you read in the Old Testament that any man saw the Lord, understand it of the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. He makes himself as we have said, visible to men, and God in him.

2. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly.

There are the spirits that dwell in the presence of God, nearest to him, and as he is a consuming fire they come to be like him, for the seraphims are burning ones, consumers, burning and shining lights, who wait upon God, who is light of life. Notice how humble they are in that presence; they cover themselves before that Infinite Majesty.

3, 4. And one cried upon another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

And if even the voice of a seraph moved the very foundations of the temple, what will the voice of God do when he shall speak once more? According to that word, he shall shake not only earth, but also heaven. What awe and trembling should be upon us when we wait upon God, if even the posts of the doors move! “Then said I, woe is me!” All God’s saints do this when they get a view of him. There was never a boastful thought in any man’s mind in the presence of God. They that talk of their own purity have not known God, neither seen him. How could they! This is the cry of all the purified when they come into the presence of God, “Woe is me, for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.” What made him think of lips, but the voice of the seraphim as responsively they cried to one another, “Holy, holy, holy”? Then he thought of his own lips. Oh! brothers and sisters, what impurity comes out of our lips, perhaps more there than anywhere else is the impurity of the heart discovered in our idle words, our evil words.

5-7. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged.

Just where he felt the impurity, there he felt the expiation. His lips were unclean, and now a touch of the altar coal, a communication from the great Sacrifice, hath taken all his iniquity away, and his sin is buried.

8. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I: send me.

Observe the unity and the plurality, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Upon what theory, but that of the doctrine of the Trinity, can we explain so singular a change from the singular to the plural? “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.” This man, so lowly now, so purified with the vision of God, just seen by him; how cheerfully does he spring forward at the word of invitation. “Here am I; send me.” Now see what a sorrowful mission. God, in these next verses, assured Isaiah that his ministry, so far as the conversion of the Jews was concerned, would be altogether fruitless; they would not receive his testimony.

9, 10. And he said, Go, and tell this people. Hear ye indeed, but understand not; and see ye indeed, but perceive not. Make the heart of this people fat, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.

What a ministry, dark with insufferable light! So bright, so clear, that men should have wilfully to harden their hearts, and shut their eyes if they did not understand and receive it.

11, 12. Then said I, Lord, how long? And he answered, Until the cities be wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land be utterly desolate. And the Lord have removed men far away and there be a great forsaking in the midst of the land.

So it happened, as you know, the people were carried away captive; they still refused; they would not believe even, till Christ came, and then the destruction of Jerusalem, and the sweeping clear of their country was the final stroke of God. “But yet in it shall be a tenth.” There is always a gleam of light from God’s grace in the thickest darkness of his justice. God hath his tithe.

13. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves; so the holy seed shall be the substance thereof.

And, therefore, the Jewish nation is not destroyed, but still exists, and the Church of God is not destroyed, despite all that happens to it. There is a substance in it, according to the election of grace, for which may God be praised.