Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 808
Delivered on Sunday Evening, April 19, 1868, by.
“Now therefore why speak you not a word of bringing the king back?” 2 Samuel 19:10.
THIS morning we were indulged with the Master’s blessing while considering one of the most delightful subjects that can ever occupy the minds of God’s creatures this side of Heaven [Sermon #807, Good News for Loyal Subjects.] It was a celestial song, fitter for angels’ harps than sinners’ tongues. We sang the triumphs of the once rejected but now exalted Son of Man. We lingered lovingly over the guarantees of His sure and blessed kingdom, and fed with delight upon that short, sweet sentence, “He must reign.” We tried to show that the Throne of our Lord Christ is settled on a firm foundation, and that His ultimate and undisputed sovereignty over all things in Heaven and earth and Hell is a matter of Divine decree and will be asserted by the Divine power in due time.
We laid the sheaf upon the threshing floor this morning—let us beat out the precious grain this evening. We showed you the pearl, now let us make it a golden setting of practical holiness! The Son of David is assuredly King, and you know it. “Now therefore why speak you not a word of bringing the King back?” Israel had revolted, and set up Absalom against his father—but when the rebel bands had been scattered and Absalom had been slain, the people thought of their old love—they remembered the days when David was the terror of the Philistines and the champion of Israel! Their hearts smote them for their ingratitude to their valiant deliverer, and they said one to the other, “Now therefore why speak you not a word of bringing the king back?”
There are three sorts of people in this great throng, to each of whom this text might well be addressed. May none of my three arrows miss the mark! I shall endeavor to speak pointedly, and may the Holy Spirit make an effectual application of each word. May I but win a throne for Jesus in any one heart, and my joy shall be full!
I. First, my Brothers and Sisters, MANY AMONG US HAVE LOST THE COMFORTABLE PRESENCE OF THE LORD JESUS CHRIST. Some have long dwelt in the cold shade of suspended fellowship. Others, for a shorter period, have passed through the cloud. But, surely, the shortest period is all too long—and those who have lost fellowship must be anxiously pining after its restoration.
Now to such as these, who see no longer the bright and morning star, we say, “Why speak you not a word of bringing the King back?” My sorrowing Brother, you have been mourning much concerning your present condition. Sitting down, perhaps, this very afternoon and taking stock of your spiritual estate, you have felt yourself to be in an almost bankrupt condition and you have written bitter things against yourself. Your barometer has been going down, down, down, for the last month or two—from rain to much rain and stormy. It now appears as if it never would ascend again. Upon a review of the past you observe that your prayers have not been so constant nor so fervent as they used to be. In reading the Word, the promises have not been laid home to your heart as once they were, and in attending the means of Grace, you have not so often said with Jacob, “Surely God was in this place.”
You are getting now into a sad condition and all because your eyes have not lately seen the King in His beauty, neither has He brought you into His banqueting house, nor waved over you the banner of His love. You have been turning this forlorn plight over and over and over in your mind, and you have been anxiously searching for the cause of all this withering of your spirit. You can see that the cause does not lie in Him but in yourself. You perceive that your David has not forsaken you, but that you have forsaken Him, and set up some fair but false Absalom in His place. He who delivered you has been forgotten, and he who deceived you has been followed.
Smooth-spoken sin has made you a traitor to your liege Lord. The luxuriant tresses of Absalom were nets to catch the shallow men of Israel, and Satan has taken care to find suitable snares for you. You know this, and you mourn it, and the temptation is to continue morbidly meditating upon the sin and its cause and consequences until despair burns its horrible brand into the spirit. My business tonight is to remind you that all your lamentation over your folly will not of itself remove the disease. Your remedy does not lie within you, but beyond and above yourself! It is a good thing to discover where the mischief lies and to lament it, yet the real cure for it does not lie in lamentation—it lies in seeking, again, the face of your Lord! “Now therefore why speak you not a word of bringing the King back?”
The royal hand brings health and cure—healing is to be found nowhere else in earth or Heaven. Go, then, to Jehovah-Rophi, the healing Lord! Oh, if you do but get Him back, your sorrow and sighing will flee away! Though everything else should be dark and doleful, His Presence is enough, by itself alone, to make a gala day in the heart!—