New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 81
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, May 25, 1856, New Park Street Chapel, Southwark.
“Even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you. I have made, and I will bear; even I will carry, and will deliver you.”—Isaiah 46:4.
THOSE will be peculiar circumstances under which I shall stand up to address the people next Tuesday; circumstances which perhaps seldom occur,—possibly may never have occurred before. It might have been more in order that the aged minister should himself address the people; but nevertheless, as it is his own choice, so it must be; and I shall draw my consolation from the third verse, where it is declared, that though God be the God of the close of our life, yet he is also the God of its beginning. He carries us from the very womb; therefore the child may trust in God, as well as the grey head; and he who giveth special blessings to the hoary hairs does also crown the head of the young with his perpetual favor, if they be his children.
“Even to your old age I am he; and even to hoar hairs will I carry you.”
Will you allow me to expound the doctrine of this text, and then to show you how it is carried out, especially in the time of old age?
I. THE DOCTRINE OF THE TEXT I hold to be, the constancy of God’s love, its perpetuity, and its unchangeable nature. God declares that he is not simply the God of the young saint; that he is not simply the God of the middle-aged saint: but that he is the God of the saints in all their ages from the cradle to the tomb. “Even to old age I am he;” or, as Lowth beautifully and more properly translates it: “Even to old age I am the same, and even to hoary hairs will I carry you.”
The doctrine, then is twofold: that God himself is the same, whatever may be our age; and that God’s dealings towards us, both in providence and in grace, his carryings and his deliverings, are alike unchanged.
As to the first part of the doctrine, that God himself is unchanged when we come to old age, surely I have no need to prove that. Abundant testimonies of Scripture declare God to be an immutable being, upon whose brow there is no furrow of old age, and whose strength is not enfeebled by the lapse of ages; but if we need proofs, we might look even abroad on nature, and we should from nature guess that God would not change during the short period of our mortal life. Seemeth it unto me a hard thing, that God should be the same for seventy years, when I find things in nature that have retained the same impress and image for many more years? Behold the sun! The sun that led our fathers to their daily labour, lighteth us still; and the moon by night is unchanged,—the self-same satellite, glittering with the light of her master, the sun. Are not the rocks the same? And are there not many ancient trees, which remain well night the same for multitudes of years, and outlive centuries? Is not the earth, for the most part, the same? Have the stars lost their light? Do not the clouds still pour their rain upon the earth? Does not the ocean still beat with its one great pulse of ebb and flow? Do not the winds still howl, or breathe in gentle gales upon the earth? Doth not the sun still shine? Do not plants grow as heretofore? Hath the harvest changed? Hath God forgotten his covenant of day and night? Hath he yet brought another flood upon the earth? Doth it not still stand in the water and out of the water? Surely, then, if changing nature, made to pass away in a few more years, and to be “dissolved with fervent heat,” remains the same through the cycles of seventy years, may we not believe that God, who is greater than nature, the creator of all worlds, would still remain the same God, through so brief a period? Does not that suffice? Then, we have another proof. Had we a new God, we should not have the Scriptures: had God changed, then we should need a new Bible. But the Bible which the infant readeth is the Bible of the grey head; the Bible which I carried with me to my Sunday School, I shall sit in my bed to read, when, hoary-headed, all strength shall fail save that which is divine. The promise which cheered me in the young morning of life, when first I consecrated myself to God, shall cheer me when my eyes are dim with age, and when the sunlight of heaven lights them up, and I see bright visions of far-off worlds, where I hope to dwell for ever. The word of God is still the same; there is not one promise removed. The doctrines are the same; the truths are the same; all God’s declarations remain unchanged for ever; and I argue, from the very fact that his years do not change him. Look at our worship—is not that the same? Oh! hoary heads! well can ye remember how ye were carried to God’s house in your childhood; and ye heard the self-same hymns that now ye hear. Have they lost their savour? Have they lost their music? At times, when prayer is offered, ye remember that your ancient pastor prayed the same petition fifty years ago; but the petition is as good as ever. It is still unchanged; it is the same praise, the same prayer, the same expounding, the same preaching. All our worship is the same. And with many it is the same house of God, where first they were dedicated to God in baptism. Surely, my brethren, if God had changed, we should have been obliged to make a new form of worship; if God had not been immutable, we should have needed to have sacrificed our sacred service to some new method; but since we find ourselves bowing like our fathers, with the same prayers, and canting the same psalms, we rightly believe that God himself must be immutable.