Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 759
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, JULY 7, 1867, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“…now once in the end of the age has He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself.”- Hebrews 9:26.
WHEN the conscience is unenlightened and the heart is rebellious, man is divided from his God by a false sense of personal righteousness. He imagines that God deals harshly with him, that He looks upon his sin in too severe a light, and that although He may be offended, yet, in some other respects, he has a claim upon the consideration of his Maker. As soon, however, as the Spirit of God illuminates the understanding, this self-righteousness disappears! It is a flimsy cobweb which the broom of the Law soon sweeps away. It is no more substantial than the mist of the morning, and it is at once dissipated by the rising sun of Divine Grace.
Then man feels himself divided from his God by another and more real barrier—he has given up his self-righteousness, but now he is painfully conscious of his sinfulness, which appears to him to be an impassable gulf— separating him forever from the just and holy God. The more the conscience becomes quickened and the more fully the understanding is enlightened, the more desponding does the man become as to any hope of his ever becoming acceptable to the Most High. He puts himself into God’s position—his enlightened understanding enables him to look upon sin in some degree as God would regard it—and he is horrified to think that he should have been so ungrateful to so kind a Father!
He is ashamed that he should have broken laws so perfectly just, and he is altogether out of heart with himself for having done despite to a government every way so generous and righteous as the moral government of God. The awakened sinner says within himself, “I can never make recompense for the injury which I have done to God’s honor. It is not possible that anything I do or suffer may compensate for my continued rebellion and obstinacy. Even if I could cease from sin in the future, yet I cannot hope to meet my God with peaceful mind when I remember the unhallowed and disgraceful past.”
And thus the very enlightenment of conscience, which is one of the best signs of hope in quickened sinners, causes in him a consciousness of sin which becomes to him the ground of self-despair. I have no doubt I have some such in this congregation. Even among you who have believed in Jesus there may be some such. Every now and then we must go back to first principles and get, again, a distressingly vivid sight of sin. We need, once more, to understand how God can be just and yet the justifier of him that believes.
Brethren, if you are now desirous to be at one with God. If your spirit longs for His embrace—and yet you feel as if you could not come to God by reason of the sin which troubles you—it will be a great joy to you to know that eternal wisdom has devised a plan, and carried it out, too, for the effectually putting away of sin! This is a wonder of wonders which will create, forever, enthusiastic gratitude among celestial spirits. Eternity shall not diminish the amazement of our minds at the thought that the impenetrable partition wall of our sin has been broken down, and the awful veil of thick darkness which shut us out from the Mercy Seat has been forever removed.
Belshazzar’s knees knocked together and the joints of his loins were loosened when he saw the handwriting on the wall which declared his condemnation. What joy would have filled his despairing spirit if suddenly that writing had been blotted out, and another hand had written “I have loved you with an everlasting love”! Can you conceive the joy of that astonished monarch—the transport of that frightened throng?
Yet this morning I have as good news to tell to the penitent as though such were their position, and such the act of pardoning mercy! Jesus has blotted out the handwriting which was against us, and written words of love concerning us! The Angel of Wrath once stood over Jerusalem, having a drawn sword in his hand, but Jehovah has put away the sin of
His people and now the avenging sword is returned to the scabbard and God regards His Zion with everlasting love! I have said that this is a wonder, and so it is, when you recollect that the angels fell.
The sons of the morning kept not their first estate, but for fallen angels there is no putting away of sin. Shut up forever, chained with adamantine bands, their sufferings shall know no pause, their anguish shall find no end. And yet we, creatures of inferior mold, we have enlisted the sympathy of the Ever Blessed who undertook to make atonement for our sin, and has achieved the purpose of His Grace. Brethren, it might have been easy enough for God to have put away human sin itself by the destruction of our race. It would no more need an effort of power on God’s part to destroy us than for us to tread upon a moth—no, His mere will could have done it—and I do not know that one of the crowns of His glory would have lost a jewel.