Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 644
Delivered on Sunday Morning, August 13, 1865
Isaiah 43:10.
You, most of you, know that I am incessantly engaged every hour in the week either in preaching the Gospel or in endeavoring to discharge the multifarious duties connected with this immense Church. Now I always look upon my Saturdays as being consecrated, as far as possible, to meditation and study, that I may find something to set before you on the Lord’s Day. But, unfortunately for me, I was served with a subpoena to attend the courts at Croydon and was compelled to spend the whole of yesterday sitting in a hot and crowded court.
There is a vast difference between the Throne of Grace and the bench of justice, and between communion with Heaven and converse with lawyers and witnesses! I tried to think, while sitting there, but I found the business so distracting that I went home with a headache and thought I should scarcely be able to preach to the assembled crowds on the morrow. It struck me, however, that if I could not preach about anything else, I must just try to get something out of the occupation of yesterday.
Perhaps we may glean some profitable ears of corn among such unlikely stubble. Let me draw your attention to the text and compel my occupation of yesterday to yield a few illustrations to set forth its meaning. As the text stands, in its connection, we have before us a great assembly. All the nations of the earth are summoned to bring forth their rival gods, and the question to be decided is this—which one of them is the living and true God? The mode of test is this most admirable one—which out of these gods has foretold the future? Among all these votaries of various idols, which of them can claim that their deity possesses the gift of foresight?
Let all the venerated blocks of wood and stone bring forward their witnesses! They can tell of Sibylline oracles, of strange mysterious mutterings which contained doubtful declarations hidden under ambiguous terms. The Lord demands that there shall be presented before this court plain prophecies, distinct declarations of events which could not have been foreseen by human discernment. In this respect, the gods of the heathen failed. But when Jehovah summoned His people Israel and put them into the witness box, and said to them, “You are My witnesses,” they were able distinctly to prove that all the great events of their national history had been foretold by their God and that each had occurred precisely as foretold.
Not one of His prophecies had failed! Not one word had dropped to the ground. Surely the Jew might, with great satisfaction, recur to that ancient prophecy which is recorded in the fifteenth chapter of the Book of Genesis. We read in the twelfth verse of that chapter that “when the sun was going down, a deep sleep fell upon Abram. And, lo, an horror of great darkness fell upon him. And He said unto Abram, know of a surety that your seed shall be a stranger in a land that is not theirs and shall serve them. And they shall afflict them four hundred years. And also that nation, whom they shall serve, will I judge: and afterward shall they come out with great substance. And you shall go to your fathers in peace. You shall be buried in a good old age. But in the fourth generation they shall come here again: for the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full.”
Every descendant of the Patriarch could point to this as a Revelation given to his great ancestor at a time when such events seemed improbable and yet it was literally fulfilled. The people went down into Egypt. They stayed there till the four hundred years of this prophecy had been fulfilled. At that very hour they came out of Egypt. With a strong hand and with an outstretched arm did God bring them out! He judged Egypt with many plagues and with a terrible overthrow in the Red Sea—but Israel came out with great substance, for we find that they had jewels of silver and jewels of gold. After forty years they found the sin of the original inhabitants of Canaan was full and that the set time was come for their slaughter and destruction.
All this was fulfilled verbatim and in the eighteenth and following verses there is a continuation of the prophecy— and this, too, was literally accomplished. “Unto your seed have I given this land, from the river of Egypt unto the great river, the river Euphrates: the Kenites and the Kenizzites and the Kadmonites and the Hittites and the Perizzites and the Rephaims and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Girgashites and the Jebusites.” And all the inhabitants of the land were to be destroyed and Canaan was to be the possession of the descendants of the solitary man who, as a stranger and a pilgrim with his God, trod its acres without owning a foot of the soil!
This early prophecy was so exactly accomplished that to Israel it was conclusive proof that Jehovah was truly the Lord. Moreover, the Jews could say that in every national event they had always been forewarned. Was David appointed that his seed should rule over Israel? Jacob long before had seen the scepter in the tribe of Judah. Was the kingdom to be divided at the latter end of the reign of Solomon? Ahijah rends the garment of Jeroboam and foretells that he shall take ten pieces to make another kingdom for himself.