Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 848
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, JANUARY 3, 1869, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever.”- Hebrews 13:8.
FOR a very considerable number of years an esteemed and venerable vicar of a Surrey parish has sent me at the New Year a generous testimony of his love and an acknowledgment of the pleasure which he derives from the weekly reading of my sermons. Enclosed in the parcel which his kindness awards to me is a text from which he hopes that I may preach on the first Sunday morning of the New Year. This year he sends me this golden line, “Jesus Christ the same yesterday and today and forever.”
I have preached from it before—you will find a sermon from this text in print. But we need not be at all afraid of preaching from the same text twice. The Word is inexhaustible—it may be trod in the winepress many times and yet run with generous wine. We ought not to hesitate to preach a second time from a passage any more than anyone going to the village well would be ashamed to put down the same bucket twice, or feel at all aggrieved at sailing twice down the same river! There is always a freshness about Gospel Truth, and though the matter may be the same, there are ways of putting it in fresh light so as to bring new joy to those who meditate upon it.
Moreover, what if we should repeat our teachings concerning Christ? What if we should hear over and over again the same things “touching the King”? We can afford to hear them! Repetitions concerning Jesus are better than varieties upon any other subject. As a French monarch declared that he would sooner hear the repetitions of Bourdaloue than the novelties of another, so we may declare concerning our Lord Jesus, we would sooner hear again and again the precious truths which glorify Him than listen to the most eloquent orations upon any other theme in all the world!
There are a few works of art and wonders of creation which you might gaze upon every day in your life and yet not weary of them. A great architect tells us there are but few buildings of this kind, but he instances Westminster Abbey as one—and everyone knows, who has ever looked upon the sea, or upon the Falls of Niagara—that look as often as you may, though you see precisely the same object, yet there are new tints, new motions of the waves and new flashes of the light which forbid the least approach of monotony and give to the assembling of the waters an ever-enduring charm.
Even thus is it with that sea of all delights which is found in the dear Lover of our souls. We come, then, to the old subject of this old text and may the blessed Spirit give us new unction while we meditate upon it. Note, first, our Lord’s personal name, Jesus Christ. Notice, secondly, His memorable attribute—“He is the same yesterday and today and forever.”” And then let us have a few words about His evident claims derived from the possession of such a Character.
I. First, then, the personal names of our Lord here mentioned—“JESUS CHRIST.” “JESUS” stands first. That is our Lord’s Hebrew name, “Jesus,” or, “Joshua.” The word signifies, a Savior, “for He shall save His people from their sins.” It was given to Him in His cradle—
“Cold on His cradle the dewdrops are shining, Low lies His head with the beasts of the stall. Angels adore Him, in slumber reclining, Maker and Monarch and Savior of all.” While He was yet an Infant hanging on His mother’s breast, He was recognized as Savior, for the fact of God’s becoming Incarnate was the sure pledge, guarantee and commencement of human salvation. At the very thought of His birth the virgin sang, “My spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior.” There is hope that man shall be lifted up to God, when God condescends to come down to man! Jesus in the manger deserves to be called the Savior, for when it can be said that, “the tabernacle of God is with men and He does dwell among them,” there is hope that all good things will be given to the fallen race.
He was called Jesus, in His childhood—“The Holy Child Jesus.” It was as Jesus that He went up with His parents to the Temple and sat down with the doctors, hearing them and asking them questions. Yes, and Jesus as a Teacher in the very first principles of His doctrine is a Savior—emancipating the minds of men from superstition, setting them loose from the traditions of the fathers—scattering, even, with His Infant hand the seeds of Truth, the elements of a glorious liberty which shall emancipate the human mind from the iron bondage of false philosophy and priestcraft.
He was Jesus, too, and is commonly called so both by His foes and by His friends in His active life. It is as Jesus the Savior that He heals the sick, that He raises the dead, that He delivers Peter from sinking, that He rescues from shipwreck the ship tossed upon the Galilean lake. In all the teachings of His middle life, in those laborious three years of diligent service, both in His public ministry and in His private prayer, He is still Jesus the Savior. By His active, as well as by His passive obedience, we are saved.