Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 771
Delivered by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“We see Jesus.” Hebrews 2:9.
THE Apostle, in this verse, does not claim to have seen the Lord in the flesh, although he boasts in another passage that he has done so, and asserts it as one of the proofs of his Apostleship. He is not, indeed, in this text referring to any seeing of the Lord by mortal eyes at all—he is speaking offaith—he means a spiritual sight of the Lord Jesus Christ. The point to which I shall have to draw your attention this evening is that sight is very frequently used in Scripture as a metaphor, an illustration, a symbol to set forth what faith is.
Faith is the eye of the soul. It is the act of looking unto Jesus. In that act, by which we are saved, we look unto Him and are saved from the very ends of the earth. We look to Him and we find salvation. So far as seeing with these natural eyes of ours is concerned it is the very opposite of faith. We have heard people speak as though they wished they had lived in the Savior’s day and could have seen Him. It must have been a great privilege to those who were spiritually-minded, but it was no privilege (as they know now, alas, to their regret), to those who were spiritually blind—for many of those who saw our Lord and heard Him preach, rose up in wrath to thrust Him out of the synagogue, and cast Him down the brow of the cliff.
Instead of being overawed by His sweet majesty, or won by that love which sat upon His brow, they scoffed at Him, said He was a Samaritan, had a devil, and was mad! Even the sight of Jesus Christ upon the Cross did not convert the men that stood there, but they thrust out their tongues and called Him by ignominious titles and increased the sorrows of His death by their scornful expressions. To see Jesus Christ with the natural eye is nothing, my Brothers and Sisters, for this shall be the lot of all men! They shall look on Him whom they have pierced and shall weep and wail because of Him.
The sight of Him, when He shall come in the latter days to judge the earth in righteousness, will be the source of terror to the wicked so that there can be no kind of benefit, certainly no saving blessing, from such a sight of Jesus Christ with the eyes as will be afforded even to lost spirits. The Apostle is speaking of the spiritual eye here. He is speaking of that mental vision which God affords to those who have had their eyes anointed with heavenly eye salve by the Holy Spirit that they may see. And our business tonight is, first of all, to show why faith is so frequently compared to the sense of sight.
I. Let us, in the first place, give our attention for a few minutes TO THE REASON WHY FAITH IS COMPARED TO SIGHT. Is not sight, in many respects, the noblest of all the senses? To be deprived of any of our senses is a great loss, but perhaps the greatest deprivation of all is the loss of sight. Certainly, whatever may be the degree of pain that may follow the loss of any other sense, they who lose their sight lose the noblest of human faculties.
For observe, in the first place, that sight is marvelously quick. How wondrously fast and far it travels! It does not take you an hour to make a journey from one part of the country to another by your eyes. You are on a mountain and you can see 50 or a 100 miles, as the case may be, and you see it by the simple opening of the eyes. It is all there. Your thought is flashed far away in an instant, in the twinkling of your eye. Standing on some of the Alpine summits, you look far and wide and see lakes spread at a distance beneath your feet. And far away there is a range of black mountains, or of hills clothed with snow.
You know they are, perhaps, 200 miles distant, but in a moment you are there! So quick does the sense of sight travel that we go to the moon or to the sun without knowing that any space of time is taken up by our eyes traveling there! And those remote stars which the astronomers tell us are so distant that they can scarcely compute how far off they are, yet my eye travels to them in a second of time when I gaze upon the starry firmament! So quickly does sight travel—and equally rapid is the action offaith!
Brethren, we know not where Heaven may be—where the state, the place called “Heaven” is—but faith takes us there in contemplation in a single moment. We cannot tell when the Lord may come—it may not be for centuries yet— but faith steps over the distance in a moment and sees Him coming in the clouds of Heaven, and hears the trumpet of resurrection! It would be very difficult, indeed, it would be impossible for us to travel backward in any other chariot than that of faith, for it is faith which helps us to see the creation of the world when the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy!
Faith enables us to walk in the garden with our first parents and to witness the scene when God promised that the Seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head. Faith makes us familiar with Patriarchs and gives us to see the troubles and trials of kings. Faith takes us to Calvary’s summit and we stand and see our Savior as plainly as did His mother when she stood sorrowfully at the foot of the Cross. We this day can fly back to the solemn day of Pentecost and feel as if we could hear the mighty rushing wind, and see the cloven tongues sitting upon the chosen company, so swiftly does faith travel!