Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 762
Delivered by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Turn, O backsliding children, says the Lord; for I am married unto you.”- Jeremiah 3:14.
THESE are dainty words—a grateful sedative for a troubled conscience. Such singular comfort is fitted to cheer the soul and put the brightest hue on all her prospects. The person to whom it is addressed has an eminently happy position. Satan will be very busy with you, Believer in Christ, tonight! He will say, “What right have you to believe that God is married to you?” He will remind you of your imperfections and of the coldness of your love, and perhaps of the backsliding state of your heart. He will say, “What? With all this about you can you be presumptuous enough to claim union with the Son of God? Can you venture to hope that there will be any marriage between you and the Holy One?”
He will tell you as though he were an advocate for holiness that it is not possible that such a one as you can feel yourself to be, can really be a partaker of so choice and special a privilege as being married unto the Lord! Let this suffice for an answer to all such suggestions—the text is found addressed not to Christians in a flourishing state of heart. It is not said to Believers upon Mount Tabor, transfigured with Christ. It is not addressed to a spouse all chaste and fair, sitting under the banner of love, feasting with her lord! It is addressed to those who are called “backsliding children.”
God speaks to His Church in her lowest and most abject estate and though He does not fail to rebuke her sin, to lament it, and to make her lament it, too, yet still in such an estate He says to her, “I am married unto you.” Oh, it is Divine Grace that He should be married to any of us! But it is Grace at its highest pitch—it is the ocean of Grace at its flood-tide that He should speak thus of “backsliding children!”
That He should speak in notes of love of any of the fallen race of Adam is “passing strange—‘tis wonderful.” But that He should select those who have behaved treacherously toward Him, who have turned their backs on Him and not their faces—who have played Him false, although, nevertheless, His own—and say unto them, “I am married unto You”—this is loving kindness beyond anything we could desire or think!
Hear, O Heaven, and admire, O earth! Let every understanding heart break forth into singing, yes, let every humble mind bless and praise the condescension of the Most High! Cheer up, poor drooping hearts! Here is sweet encouragement for some of you who are depressed, and disconsolate, and sit alone to draw living waters out of this well. Do not let the noise of the archers keep you back from the place of the drawing of water. Be not afraid lest you should be cursed while you are anticipating the blessing! If you do but trust in Jesus, if you have but a vital interest in the once humbled, now exalted Lord, come with holy boldness to the text and whatever comfort there is here, receive it and rejoice in it!
To this end let us attentively consider the relationship which is here spoken of and diligently enquire how far we are experimentally acquainted with it.
I. IN CONSIDERING THE RELATIONSHIP WHICH IS HERE SPOKEN OF, you will observe that the affinity of marriage, though exceedingly near kin, is not one of birth. Marriage is not a relationship of original relationship. It is contracted between two persons who may, during the early part of their lives, have been entire strangers to one another. They may scarcely have looked each other in the face except during the few months that preceded their nuptials. The families may have had no previous acquaintance. They may have lived afar off as the very antipodes.
One may have been opulent and in possession of vast domains, and the other may have been indigent, and reduced to straitened circumstances. Genealogies do not regulate it. Disparities do not hinder it. The connection is not of natural birth but of voluntary contract or covenant. Such is the relationship which exists between the Believer and his God. Whatever relation there was originally between God and man, it was stamped out and extinguished by the Fall. We were aliens, strangers, and foreigners far off from God by wicked works. We had, before, no relation to the Most High. We were banished from His Presence as traitors to His Throne, as condemned criminals who had revolted against His power.
Between our souls and God there could be no communion. He is light and we are dark. He is holiness and we are sin. He is Heaven and we are far more akin to Hell. In Him there is consummate greatness and we are puny insignificance. He fills all worlds with His strength, and as for us—we are the creatures of a day who know nothing—and who are crushed before the moth. The gulf between God and a sinner is something terrible to contemplate. There is a vast difference between God and the creature even when the creature is pure, but between God and the fallen creature—oh, where is he that shall measure the infinite leagues of distance?