Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 826
Delivered on Lord’s Day Evening, March 22, 1868, by C. H. SPURGEON, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington..
“A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the Glory of Your people Israel.” Luke 2:32.
WE must read this passage literally, for so Simeon intended it. The Lord Jesus Christ, though once despised and rejected by His own countrymen, is the great honor and splendor of God’s people, Israel. It is reckoned an honor to a nation when eminent persons are born of its stock and lineage—but Israel can claim the palm above all lands, for she can say that our Lord sprang out of Judah.
Put together all the heroic and famous names of Greece and Rome—add all the literary splendors of Germany and the flashing beauties of France. Combine with these the blazing fame of Milton and Shakespeare, of Bacon and of Newton in our own land—and all countries put together cannot compass so great a glory of manhood as can the nation of the Jews, for they can claim not so much Moses, and David, and the Prophets, as Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews, in whom dwells the fullness of the Godhead bodily.
If mention is made of Egypt and Babylon, or Philistia and Tyre, saying, “This man was born there,” the answer shall be concerning Zion, “The Son of Man was born in her.” It ill behooves us ever to speak slightingly of the Jew. It ill behooves the Christian Church to despond concerning the conversion of the seed of Israel, or to be so indifferent as she sometimes is as to the conversion of Israel. Brethren, the day will come when the veil shall be taken from the eyes, and the hardness from the heart, and Abraham’s sons shall behold the true Messiah and accept Him as their Glory and their All.
In that day, after the long time of winter, how bright the summer will be! If their casting away brought the Gentiles so much blessing, what will their gathering together be but life from the dead! After so long an alienation, how ravishing and delightful will be the reconciliation between the Bridegroom and His ancient spouse! How will the earth ring with joy and every river in Judea’s land flow to the tune of Heaven’s own music, when Jesus and the Jew shall be reconciled, and He shall be, as He is prophesied to be, the Glory of His people Israel!—
“The hymn shall yet in Zion swell
That sounds Messiah’s praise,
And Your loved name, Immanuel!
As once in ancient days.
For Israel yet shall own her King,
For her salvation waits,
And hill and dale shall sweetly sing
With praise in all her gates.
Hasten, O Lord, these promised days,
When Israel shall rejoice,
And Jew and Gentile join in praise,
With one united voice.”
It would have been wrong to use the text as I am going to use it if I had not first given you its primary meaning. We have no right to use texts for other purposes without, first of all, giving the literal meaning, and saying, “Such-and-such is originally the mind of the Holy Spirit.” It is doubtless the mind of the Spirit speaking here by Simeon, that the Lord Jesus shall be a Light to lighten the once darkened Gentiles, but peculiarly the Glory of the Jewish nation. We shall now employ the natural Israel as a type of the Lord’s elect ones, and surely there is no straining of the text when we say that Jesus Christ is the Glory of the spiritual seed, the redeemed people, who stand to the Lord actually where Israel of old stood in the type.
Jesus Christ is the Glory of His people, His spiritual people Israel. And why, with evident propriety, may the saints of God be compared to Israel? Surely because God has made a Covenant with them as He did with Jacob. Jacob at the foot of the ladder saw a way which led from earth to Heaven. We at the foot of the Cross have beheld the same vision. We see a way from our poor fallen estate up to all the glories of the place where Jehovah dwells. That night a Covenant was made with Jacob. And between God and our own souls—in the Person of the Lord Jesus—there is a blessed compact made which shall stand secure though earth’s old columns bow.
He will be our God, and we shall be His people. He has made with us a Covenant ordered in all things and sure. This is the great fountain of all our mercies, the ground of all our hopes. Our Covenant God is the delight of our inmost souls, our castle and high tower, our sun and our shield—
“He by Himself has sworn.
I on His oath depend.
I shall, on eagles’ wings upborne,
To Heaven ascend:
I shall behold His face,
I shall His power adore,
And sing the wonders of His grace
Forevermore.”
We may be compared with Israel, again, because if we are the children of God we have learned to wrestle with the angel and prevail. It is one mark of the heir of Heaven that he understands the value of secret prayer, and that he exercises himself in it—that is to him as stern a reality as wrestling is to the athlete when he seeks to hurl his antagonist to the ground. Not a mumbling of words, but a marshalling of all the powers of manhood to come into contest—loving, blessed contest—with God Himself! Well may they be called prevailing princes who are so. Dear Friend, if you are a man of secret prevailing supplication, why need you doubt that you are one of the Lord’s Israels?