Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 673
Delivered on Sunday Morning, January 28, 1866
“Moreover the Lord your God will send the hornet among them, until those who are left, who hide themselves from you, are destroyed.” Deuteronomy 7:20.
LET us spiritualize the story of the conquest of Canaan by the children of Israel. Canaan was given to Abraham and to his seed by a covenant of salt. Our body, soul, and spirit are given to Christ Jesus to be His portion and His heritage— and the newborn principle within us which represents the seed of Israel is to conquer the whole of our manhood for Christ that He may have possession of it in all its powers and passions, parts and faculties. When our Lord Jesus Christ died, He died not only for our souls but also for our bodies—He did not purchase a right to a part of us only but to the entire man. He contemplated in His passion the sanctification of us wholly—spirit, soul, and body—that in this triple kingdom He Himself might reign supreme without a rival.
It is the business of the newborn nature which God has given to the regenerate to assert the rights of the Lord Jesus Christ. “My Soul, so far as you are a child of God, you must conquer all the rest of yourself which yet remains unblest. You must subdue all your powers and passions to the silver scepter of Jesus’ gracious reign, and you must never be satisfied till He who is the King by purchase becomes also the King by gracious coronation, and reigns in you supreme.”
Although Israel had Canaan by right, the Jebusites and eight mighty nations had it in possession. And alas, we are made painfully to feel that though Christ has a right to us and He alone should reign in our mortal bodies, yet sin has a dwelling place in us! Those old sins which were born with us and seem as if they will never die till we, ourselves, are wrapped in our winding sheets, have entered into us and will dwell in us. I may say of our nature what was said in Egypt during the plague of frogs: “Behold these filthy things have come up into our chambers and into our ovens, and our kneading troughs.”
There is no part of our heart too hot or too sacred for sin to intrude into it. The whole head is sick and the whole heart is faint—from the sole of the foot even to the head—naturally—there is nothing but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. Sin has entrenched itself in our nature and it is not to be cast out by our mere talking about it nor by our best resolutions. Our sins have chariots of iron, as those of us know who have to contend with them, and their cities are walled up to Heaven their entrenchments are so strong! Our sins have so worked themselves into our flesh that our flesh cries out, “Spare them!”
“Surely the bitterness of death is past,” said Agag when he came delicately before Samuel. And thus our sins come so delicately to us, assume such pleasant shapes, and are so congenial, that something whispers, “Let them live!” It is hard to slay them—so difficult to cut them up root and branch, for they are in possession—and the new nature is but a babe! “But the old nature is the old man, and it is a very unequal fight between a babe and an old man!” The new nature has just emerged into an atmosphere which is not congenial with it, while the old nature has everything to help it—the devil from beneath, the world from without, and even the cares of business, of life—all seem to act as allies to the old nature.
Meanwhile the new nature has to fight alone. If the Eternal Spirit were not our helper, and if He who is the Father of our new nature were not also its support and its succor, long ago it would have died and been utterly cut off by the hosts of its foes! Christ and holiness have a right to us, but sin is in possession.
What then, Beloved? Why this—since sin has no right to any part of us, we go about a good and legal warfare when we seek, in the name of God, to drive it out! O my Body, you are a member of Christ! Shall I take you and subjugate you to the Prince of Darkness? O my Soul, Christ has suffered for your sins and redeemed you with His most precious blood! Shall I suffer your memory to become a storehouse of evil, or your passions to become firebrands of iniquity? Shall I surrender my judgment to be perverted by error, or my will to be led in fetters of iniquity?
No, my Soul, you are Christ’s, and sin has no right to you. Sin shall not have dominion over us, for we are not under Law but under Grace. Christ has bought us and paid for us! God has willed us over to Christ. We belong to Him! We are His portion and His reward. Sin has no legal right, then, but it has possession—and you know that is nine points of the law. But we will dispute the nine points! We will bring the one grand point—that God, the Judge of all, has decided that the blood-bought belong to Christ! And we will fight it out even to the death against these, our sins!