Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 799
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, March 8, 1868, by.
“I will declare Your name unto My brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise You. You that fear the Lord, praise Him; all you the seed of Jacob, glorify Him; and fear Him, all you the seed of Israel.” Psalm22:22,23.
WE greatly esteem the dying words of good men, but what must be the value of their departing thoughts! If we could pass beyond the gate of speech and see the secret things which are transacted in the silent chambers of their souls at the moment of departure, we might greatly value the revelation, for there are thoughts which the tongue could not and must not utter, and there are deep searchings of heart which are not to be expressed by syllables and sentences. If, by some means we could read the inmost death-thoughts of holy men, we might be privileged, indeed.
Now, in the Psalm before us, and in the words of our text, we have the last thoughts of our Lord and Master, and they beautifully illustrate the fact that He was governed by one ruling passion—that ruling passion most strong in death was the glory of God. When but a Child, He said, “Know you not that I must be about My Father’s business?” Throughout His work-life He could say, “The zeal of Your house has eaten Me up.” “It is My meat and My drink to do the will of Him that sent Me.” And now, at last, as He expires with His hands and His feet nailed, and His body and soul in extreme anguish, the one thought is that God may be glorified!
In that last happy interval, before He actually gave up His soul into His Father’s hands, His thoughts rushed forward and found a blessed place of rest in the prospect that, as the result of His death, all the kindreds of the nations would worship before the Lord, and that by a chosen Seed the Most High should be honored. O for the same concentration of all our powers upon one thing, and that one thing—the glory of God! Would God that we could say with one of old, “This one thing I do,” and that this one thing might be the chief end of our being—the glorifying of our Creator, our Redeemer, the liege Lord of our hearts!
My object, this morning, is to excite in you the spirit of adoring gratitude. I thought that as last Sabbath we spoke of Christ as the example of protracted prayer, it might seem seasonable at the end of a week of so much mercy to exhibit Him to you as the example of grateful praise and to ask you as a great congregation to follow Him as your Leader in the delightful exercise of magnifying the name of Jehovah—
“Far away are gloom and sadness; Spirits with seraphic fire, Tongues with hymns, and hearts with gladness, Higher sound the chords and higher.” I shall ask your attention, in considering these verses, first, to our Lord’s example: “I will declare Your name unto My brethren: in the midst of the congregation will I praise You.” And, secondly, I shall invite you to observe our Lord’s exhortation: “You that fear the Lord, praise Him; all you the seed of Jacob, glorify Him; and fear Him, all you the seed of Israel.”
I. We begin with OUR LORD’S EXAMPLE. The praise which our Jesus as our Exemplar renders unto the Eternal Father is twofold. First, the praise of declaration, “I will declare Your name unto My brethren.” Secondly, the more direct and immediate thanksgiving, “In the midst of the congregation will I praise You.”
1. The first form of the praise which our blessed Mediator renders unto the eternal Father is that of declaring God’s name. This, my dear Friends, you know He did in His teaching. Something of God had been revealed to men before. God had spoken to Noah and Abraham, and Isaac and Jacob and especially to His servant Moses—He had been pleased to reveal Himself in different types and ceremonies and ordinances. He was known as Elohim, Shaddai and Jehovah, but never until Christ came did men begin to say, “Our Father which are in Heaven.” This was the loving word by which the Well-Beloved declared His Father’s name unto His brethren.
The sterner attributes of God had been revealed amidst the thunders of Sinai, the waves of the Red Sea, the smoke of Sodom and the fury of the deluge. The sublimities of the Most High had been seen, and wondered at by the Prophets who spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit. But the full radiance of a Father’s love was never seen until it was beheld beaming through the Savior’s face. “He that has seen Me,” said Christ, “has seen the Father.” But until they had seen Him they had not seen God as the Father. “No man can come unto the Father,” says Jesus, “Except by Me.” And as no man can come affectionately in the outgoings of his heart or fiducially in the motions of his faith, so neither can any man come to God in the enlightenment of understanding except by Christ, the Son.
He who understands Christianity has a far better idea of God than he who only comprehends Judaism. Read the Old Testament through and you shall value every sentence, and prize it above fine gold—but still you shall feel unrest and dissatisfaction—for the vision is veiled and the light is dim. Turn, then, to the New Testament and you discern that in Jesus of Nazareth dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily! Then the noontide of knowledge is around you. Then the vision is open and distinct. Jesus is the express image of His Father, and seeing Him you have seen God manifest in the flesh! This sight of God you will assuredly obtain if you are one of the Brethren to whom, through the Spirit, Jesus Christ in His teaching declares the name of the Father.