Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 813
Delivered on Sunday Morning, May 31, 1868, by C. H. SPURGEON, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington..
“Then washed I you with water; yes, I thoroughly washed away your blood from you, and I anointed you with oil. I clothed you also with embroidered work, and shod you with badgers ‘skin, and I girded you about with fine linen, and I covered you with silk. I adorned you also with ornaments, and I put bracelets upon your hands, and a chain on your neck. And I put a jewel on your forehead, and earrings in your ears, and a beautiful crown upon your head. Thus were you decked with gold and silver; and your raiment was of fine linen, and silk, and embroidered work; you did eat fine flour, and honey, and oil: and you were exceedingly beautiful, and you did prosper into a kingdom. And your renown went forth among the heathen for your beauty for it was perfect through your comeliness, which I had put upon you, says the Lord God.” Ezekiel 16:9-14.
THE root of Israel’s nation was originally a lone man whose family and dependants formed a small Bedouin tribe wandering throughout the plains of Canaan. God separated and selected Abraham, who was in no way distinct from others in his parentage, and declared that in him and in his seed should all the nations of the earth be blessed. When the tribe had somewhat multiplied, God found them in Egypt, a herd of slaves helplessly crushed beneath the foot of Pharaoh. They were sorely burdened with labors for which they received no reward. They were without spirit to resent the oppressions of their taskmasters and without power to succeed had the energy been there.
Yet God brought them out of Egypt. He led them through the wilderness, chased out powerful nations before them, settled them in the most fertile country and there multiplied them at such an extraordinary rate, and enriched and endowed them with such power that the little kingdom of Israel became famous among the nations of the earth! And in the days of Solomon its scepter was respected far and wide. The nations of the earth stood still and wondered how so small a monarchy had come to be so exceedingly rich and great. It was entirely through the favor of Jehovah that these great blessings had been received.
He had a favor to Abraham’s race. He revealed Himself to them and not to others. He chose them to be His people and made them the custodians of His Law. His worship was kept up among them and while they were faithful to Him they were a happy and a prosperous people whose renown went forth to Tarshish and the isles—and the excellence of whose laws and government was respected and admired even by such distant nations as those which were governed by the queen of the South.
The beauty of the nation consisted entirely in what God had done for it—its comeliness was a comeliness which Jehovah had put upon it. It was a nation wealthy, intelligent, free and upon the whole, pure and happy so long as it remained faithful to its God. Our business, this morning, is not with that nation, but ourselves. Our meditations, to be profitable, must be personal. Vainly do we blame departed nations—usefully may we judge ourselves. Children of God, I shall address myself to you. God has done great things for us of which we are glad. All that God did for His Israel was but a type and shadow of what He has done for His own beloved and redeemed ones whom He has distinguished beyond all men that dwell upon the face of the earth.
I shall ask you, O you sons of God, to contemplate the bounties of the Lord towards His people. And then, secondly, for a short time to draw reflections from your contemplations.
I. Let us, each man for himself, sitting in this house before the Lord, REVIEW THE LORD’S LOVING KINDNESS and contemplate the amazing bounties which have come to us from the blessed fount of His Grace. To help your meditations, let me remind you where you were when Divine loving kindness pitched upon you effectually and you knew its power experimentally in your own consciences. You were, as others are, lovers of sin, having no desires towards righteousness and salvation. You had sinned and you continued in sin and found delight in sin.
You were defiled, depraved, condemned and ready to perish. Like the infant whom Ezekiel has described—you lay cast out and forsaken, polluted in your own blood. You had no power to cleanse yourself, neither were there to be found any friends through whom cleansing might possibly come to you. You were both loathsome and helpless. As the loathsomeness necessarily would have involved your eternal ruin, so your helplessness took away from you all hope of eternal safety.
Some of you had plunged into open sin. Others who had been kept from that yet had a den of unclean birds within their hearts. Our past lives will not do to look at—our state before conversion is something to be blushed over—we should repent of it in dust and ashes. And yet the eye of Jehovah had fixed itself upon us from before the foundations of the world! And when He saw us ruined, first by Adam’s Fall, and afterwards by our own practical iniquity, He did not take away that eye of regard nor did His heart change towards us. He loved us, loved us still, loved us when there was nothing in us to love—nothing to evoke His complacency, nothing even that could call forth His benevolence—for our sin was such a counter power against our misery that if our misery might have made Jehovah pity us, our sin must have made Him hate us!