Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 508
“I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth: I said not unto the seed of Jacob, Seek you Me in vain.” Isaiah 45:19.
WE might gain much solace by considering what God has not said. What He has said is inexpressibly full of comfort and delight. What He has not said is scarcely less rich in consolation. It was one of these, “said nots,” which preserved the kingdom of Israel in the days of Jeroboam, the son of Joash. “The Lord said not that He would blot out the name of Israel from under Heaven” (2 Kings 14:27). In our text we have an assurance that God will answer prayer, because He has, “not said unto the seed of Israel, Seek you My face in vain.” You who write bitter things against yourselves, I would have you remember that. Let your doubts and fears say what they will, if God has not cut you off from mercy, there is no room for despair—even the voice of conscience is of little weight if it is not seconded by the voice of God.
What God has said tremble at! But suffer not your own fears and suspicions to overwhelm you with despondency and sinful despair. Many timid persons have been vexed by the suspicion that there may be something in God’s decree which shuts them out from all hope—some secret, written in the great roll of destiny, which renders it certain that if they did pray and seek the Lord—He would not be found of them. Our text is a complete refutation to that troublesome fear. “I have not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth. I have not said,” even in the secret of My unsearchable decree, “Seek you My face in vain.” The decrees are “spoken in secret”—the decrees are hidden as, “in a dark place of the earth.”
But it is absolutely certain that the Lord has said nothing in any of them, or anywhere else, which can be interpreted to mean, “Seek you My face in vain.” Oh, no, Brothers and Sisters, that Truth which God has so clearly revealed, that He will hear the prayer of those who call upon Him, cannot be contravened by anything which God may have spoken elsewhere. He has so firmly, so truthfully, so righteously spoken that there can be no equivocation. He does not, like the Sibyls, speak mysteriously with a double tongue. Nor does He, like the Delphic oracle, reveal His mind in unintelligible words. No, our God speaks plainly and positively, “Ask, and you shall receive.”
O that all of you would accept this sure Truth of God—that prayer must and shall be heard, and that never, even in the secrets of eternity, never, even in the council chamber of the Covenant—has the Lord said unto any living soul, “Seek you My face in vain.”
The proposition I come to deal with this morning is this—that those who seek God, through Jesus Christ, in God’s own appointed way, cannot, by any possibility, seek Him in vain. That earnest, penitent, prayerful hearts, though they may be delayed for a time, can never be sent away with a final denial. “He that calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved. He that seeks, finds. He that asks, receives. Unto him that knocks it shall be opened.” I shall prove this, first, by the negative, as our text has it—“I have not said, Seek you Me in vain.” And then, briefly, by the positive. Oh, may God give us His Holy Spirit, that while I am preaching, comfort may be given to many troubled hearts.
I. First, then, BY THE NEGATIVE. It is not possible that a man should sincerely, in God’s own appointed way, seek for mercy and eternal life and not find it. It is not possible that a man should earnestly, from his heart, pray unto God, and yet a gracious answer be finally refused. And that for several reasons.
1. We will suppose the case—suppose that sincere prayer could be fruitless—then the question arises, Why, then, are men exhorted to pray at all? If prayer is not heard, if supplication may possibly end in a failure, why does God so constantly, so earnestly, so strenuously constrain and command men to call upon Him? Would it not be a heartless cruelty on my part, if I saw a poor farmer who could not pay his way, if I exhorted him to plow upon a rock, and scatter the little seed he had upon soil where I knew it could never grow? Or if a king imposed upon his poor subject a law that he should plow the seashore, and harrow it, and exercise all the arts of husbandry upon it—when he was perfectly aware that not a single grain could ever bless the farmer’s toil?
What would you think of any man who should advise a thirsty wretch to pump an empty well? Suppose some sovereign should enjoin it upon his subject, seeing he is ready to die of thirst, to let the bucket down where there is no water and to continue to do it without ceasing—to be always letting down the bucket and always winding it up—with the absolute certainty that no good can come of it! And do you think that God, who commands men to pray and not to faint, would bid them do it, if no harvest could be reaped from it? Does He tell them to continue in prayer, to, “pray without ceasing”—to watch unto prayer, to arise in the night watches and cry unto Him—and yet, after all, has He settled it that He will be deaf to their entreaties and despise their cries?