Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 688
Delivered on Sunday Morning, April 29, 1866, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
“I will accept you with your sweet savor.” Ezekiel 20:41.
GOD does not cease to observe the sins of His people. As the eyes of Moses never waxed dim, so the eyes of God do not grow dim with regard to the sins of His chosen. We may learn this from the recapitulation of those offenses which we find in the chapter before us and in many other places in Scripture. He looks down from Heaven and beholds their wanderings, the hardness of their hearts, the stubbornness of their will, their daily and continual violations of His statutes and commands. Mercy has some other source than that of laxness in the memory of God. He knows the sins of man and He hates the sins of His people just as much as the sins of other men. No, if there are sins which are worse in God’s estimation than others, they are the sins of His own elect.
But, notwithstanding this severe strictness, and although God must have a much clearer view of the evil of sin than any of us ever can, He freely pardons those whom He reserves. He casts their sins behind His back and remembers not their iniquity. He blots out their transgression like a cloud, and their iniquities like a thick cloud. He has a time to chasten but He has also a set time to bless. He afflicts, but He does not afflict from the heart. And when He turns in a way of Grace to His people, He then seems to be flying on the wings of the wind for He comes with all His soul most heartily and richly to display His favor and His love toward the objects of His choice.
One would have thought that the persons described in this chapter never would have been acceptable to God. They had so thoroughly defiled themselves, and after so many trials had been so desperately incorrigible, that one would have supposed the chapter would have concluded with thunderbolts of vengeance and a terrible voice condemning them to be driven forever from the face of the Most High. Instead of this it concludes with mercy! The trumpet ceases its loud swell, and the melodious tone of the harp is heard in gentle notes of melody. The thunder and the lightning are over, the storm is past, and the still small voice, in refreshing calm, proclaims the infinite pardon that proceeds from a tender Father’s heart.
Our text seems to me very full of fatness. Its savor will be doubtless passing sweet to those who have grace to appreciate it. We shall contemplate it in two lights. First we have a promise that the persons of His people shall be accepted as a sweet savor. Sinners are accepted through the merits of Christ: “I will accept you with your sweet savor.” I cannot accept you otherwise, but I will accept you thus. Then, secondly (which is more consistent with the context), we are assured that our offerings shall be accepted—“I will accept you with your sweet savor.” I will not only love and receive you, but I will also receive your worship and your service.
Your sweet savor, those same things which once you offered to idols, you shall from now on bring as an offering to Me and when I have accepted you and you are reconciled to Me, then I will accept your good works and your prayers, and your praises, too.
’ I. First of all, as being the fundamental evidence of Divine Grace, THE LORD ACCEPTS THE PERSONS OF HIS PEOPLE THROUGH THE SWEET SAVOR OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. The merits of our great Redeemer are sweet savor in the nostrils of the Most High. Whether we speak of the active or passive righteousness of Christ there is alike an overpowering fragrance. Such was the merit of His active life by which He honored the Law of God and exemplified every precept like a precious jewel in the pure setting of His own humanity.
Such, too, the merit of His passive obedience as He endured with unmurmuring submission, hunger and thirst, cold and nakedness—and with the ever-deepening stream of sorrow—and at length yielded to that unknown agony when He sweat great drops of blood in Gethsemane. And then when He gave His back to the smiters and His cheeks to them that plucked out His hair. He stretched His hands to the nails and was fastened to the cruel wood that He might suffer the wrath of God on our behalf. These two things are sweet before the Most High, and for the sake of His doing and His dying, His substitutionary sufferings and His vicarious obedience, the Lord God of infinite Justice accepts us with the sweet savor of Christ.
There are many sweet savors mentioned in the Old Testament. One of the first is the sacrifice of Noah where the word is used which is implied here. As soon as Noah came out of the ark he offered up clean beasts, and it is said, “the Lord God smelled a sweet savor of rest.” That is the very word here—a sweet savor or a savor of rest. And Noah obtained a Covenant made with him and with all creatures on the face of the earth—that a flood should no more destroy the earth—that Covenant being given partly as the result of the sweet savor of rest. In like manner there is a Covenant made with the chosen seed through our Lord Jesus Christ who is unto us a sweet savor of rest because God delights in Him as our blessed Substitute and Representative.