Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 748
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, MAY 5, 1867, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Because your heart was tender, and you humbled yourself before God when you heard His words against thisplace, and against the inhabitants, and you humbled yourself before Me, and you tore your clothes, and wept before Me; Ialso have heardyou, says the Lord.”- 2 Chronicles 34:27.
JOSIAH was very earnestly engaged in a devout work for God—he was cleansing, beautifying, and repairing the Temple at Jerusalem. While this was being done, a copy of the Book of the Law being found, it was carried to the king, and the king at once diligently perused it. While reading it he discovered certain terrible penalties threatened to idolaters and other offenders, and knowing that his subjects had for successive years been guilty of the offenses thus condemned, he felt persuaded that the righteous judgments of God would come upon them. Greatly alarmed, though himself personally innocent of the guilt, he tore his clothes, wept, and humbled himself before the Most High.
Now, it seemed a strange thing, did it not, that so good a man, personally clear from blame, engaged in one of the holiest of works with a sincere heart devoting himself to the cause of his God, should meet with so sad and depressive a discovery just in the very midst of his prosperous labors? Was there not another time that the Law could have been sent to him with its condemning power? Were there not other offenders far more grossly erring than he who might have been humbled? Why need this king, with his large, royal, tender heart all consecrated to God, to be set a weeping and to be made to go softly in the bitterness of his soul just in the very moment of enthusiastic and successful labor?
I take it that the reason was this—God had much love towards Josiah, and, having honored him to rebuild the Temple, He knew the natural tendency of the human heart to pride, and therefore, with a holy jealousy for one whom He loved so well, He sent him this discovery of the Book of the Law to keep him humble at the time when otherwise he might have been exposed to peril by the lifting up of his heart. You remember, beloved Friends, the case of Hezekiah, when God raised him up from the sick bed. It is said he rendered not recompense to God according to the benefit received, for his heart was lifted up within him. And then God sent him a message by the Prophet to tell him that the treasures of his house should be carried away into Babylon and his sons should be captives to serve the king of Babylon. Thus the Lord administered a check after the sin had broken out.
But in the case before us, the Lord preferred a preventive to a cure, and sent a check before the mischief had occurred, and so the holy worker became also the humble penitent—and there was blended in the life of Josiah, like the blending of the drops of rain with the gleams of sunlight—a fair rainbow of many virtues. For you see him toiling for his Lord with all his might and yet bowing himself in dust and ashes, as an humble suppliant before the Throne of heavenly Grace. Learn from this that you and I, in the midst of a career of success from God, when our heart is most pure and most right, must not therefore expect that all things will go smoothly, but may rather, for that very reason, expect to experience humiliating circumstances.
Like Paul, when favored with an abundance of revelations, we may expect a “thorn in the flesh,” lest we should be exalted above measure. Disclosures of our own weakness and sinfulness are often made to us at the very time when God is honoring us most. In order that our vessel may be able to endure a strong and fair wind of Divine favor, the Lord in infinite wisdom causes us to be ballasted with grief or trial. This morning I cannot enter into the whole of my text, but I shall ask your attention to Josiah’s humbling himself. In this matter we shall note, first, the acceptable act. Secondly, the powerful reasons which exist for our imitating it. And, thirdly, the encouraging results which followed—some of them are clear in his case, and others we may expect in our own.
I. First, we have to speak upon THE ACCEPTABLE ACT which Josiah performed. I say an act, not a Grace or a state. It is not said that Josiah was humble. He was so, or he would not have trembled at God’s Word. All Graces are in
all Christians in a measure. In every Christian there is the germ of every virtue. Just as in every well-formed child there is every muscle and sinew, and nerve and bone. Although all are far from being developed, yet they are there. So in each Christian there exists humility, with all the kindred Graces, though it is as yet in some scarcely perceptible, and in others is far removed from perfection.
Josiah certainly possessed the Grace of humility. It is not said that his soul was in a state of habitual humility, although he ought to have been. We ought always to be, in a certain sense, in the valley of humiliation. Pride is never to be excused in the Believer. There is never a moment when we may safely be lifted up. Always lowly should we be in our own esteem. He that thinks himself to be something when he is nothing, deceives himself. And as we are always nothing in ourselves, it would be well for us to know and to feel this, and not to be self-deceived or lay a flattering unction to our hearts. What is mentioned in the text is an act, not a Grace, not a state, but an act. We have before us the Grace of humility in Josiah, acting after its own nature to produce the state of humility in his soul.