New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 279
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, October 16th, 1859.
“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come. And let him that heareth say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”—Revelation 22:17.
THE CRY OF THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION is the simple word, “Come.” The Jewish law said, “Go, and take heed unto thy steps as to the path in which thou shalt walk. Go, and break the commandments, and thou shalt perish; Go, and keep them, and thou shalt live.” The law was a dispensation of the whip, which drove men before it; the gospel is just of the opposite kind. It is the Shepherds dispensation. He goeth before his sheep, and he bids them follow him, saying unto them, “Come.” The law repels; the gospel attracts. The law shows the distance between God and man; the gospel bridges that distance, and brings the sinner across that great fixed gulf which Moses could never bridge. The fact is, as you will all have to learn, if you know anything of gracious experience, that from the first moment of your spiritual life until you are ushered into glory, the cry of Christ to you will be, “Come, come unto me.” He will always be ahead of you, bidding you follow him as the soldier follows his leader. He will always go before you to pave your way, and to prepare your path, and he will bid you come after him all through life, and in the solemn hour of death, when you shall lie panting upon your bed, his sweet word with which he shall usher you into the heavenly world shall be—“Come, come unto me. Stretch thy wings and fly straight to this world of joy where I am dwelling. Come and be with me where I am.”
Nay, further than this, this is not only Christ’s cry to you; but if you be a believer, this is your cry to Christ—“Come! come!” You will be longing for his second advent; you will be saying, “Come quickly, even so come Lord Jesus.” And you will be always panting for nearer and closer communion with him. As his voice to you is “Come,” even so will be your prayer to him, “Come, Lord, and abide in my house. Come, and consecrate me more fully to thy service; come, and without a rival reign; come, occupy alone the throne of my heart.”
“Come,” then, is the very motto-word of the gospel. I hope to expand that word, this morning, to beat out the golden grain into goldleaf, and may God the Holy Spirit speak this day with his minister, and may some who have never come to Jesus before, now come to him for the first time.
Let us go at once to our text—“Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Now, there are four things very plain from our text, namely, that first, there is a “water of life;” that secondly, the invitation is very wide—“Whosoever will;” that thirdly, the path is clear, for it says, “Whoever will, let him come;” and then again, that, fourthly, the only rule that is prescribed is—let him take it “freely.” That is the only price demanded, and the only condition, which indeed is not a condition, but a death-blow to all conditions. “Let him come and take the water of life freely.”
I. First, then, remember I am about to preach a very simple sermon this morning, dealing with simple souls. I am longing to see sinners brought to Christ, my heart yearns after the multitude of men who see no beauty in him that they should desire him. God has saved many in this place; may he be pleased this morning to bring some wanderer to the Father’s house, through the merit of the Son’s cross by the Spirit’s influence. Well, then, THERE IS A “WATER OF LIFE.” Man is utterly ruined and undone. He is lost in a wild waste wilderness. The skin bottle of his righteousness is all dried up, and there is not so much as a drop of water in it. The heavens refuse him rain, and the earth can yield him no moisture. Must he perish? He looks aloft, beneath, around, and he discovers no means of escape. Must he die? Must thirst devour him? Must he fall upon the desert and leave his bones to bleach under the hot sun? No; for the text declares there is a fountain of life. Ordained in old eternity by God in solemn covenant, this fountain, this divine well, takes its spring from the deep foundations of God’s decrees. It gusheth up from the depth which coucheth beneath, it cometh from that place which the eagle’s eye hath not seen, and which the lion’s whelp hath not passed over. The deep foundations of Godly government, the depth, of his own essential goodness and of his divine nature—these are the mysterious springs from which gush forth that fountain of the “water of life” which shall do good a to man. The Son hath digged this well and bored through massive rocks which prevented this living water from springing upward. Using his cross as the grand instrument he has pierced through rocks, he has himself descended to the lowest depth, and he hath broken a passage by which the love and grace of God, the living water which can save the soul, may well up and overflow to quench the thirst of dying men. The Son hath bidden this fountain freely flow, hath removed the stone which laid upon the mouth thereof, and now having ascended upon high he standeth there to see that the fountain shall never stay its life-giving course, that its floods shall never be dry, that its depths shall never be exhausted. This sacred fountain, established according to God’s good will and pleasure in the covenant, opened by Christ when he died upon the cross, floweth this day to give life and health, and joy and peace to poor sinners dead in sin, and ruined by the fall. There is a “water of life.”