Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 864
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, APRIL 4, 1869, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“The water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”- John 4:14.
YOU have been busy all the week with external things. You have had to deal with the questions, “What shall we eat and what shall we drink and with what shall we be clothed?” It is well that at least on this one day in seven we should turn our eyes away from the external to the internal—from the less to the greater—for as life is more than meat and the body than raiment, so is the soul more important than all that which surrounds it. It were most unwise in any man to be so continually attending to the exterior of his house as to neglect the comforts of the inner apartments and the warmth of the fireside. It were extreme folly in any of us to be very careful in the dressing of our person and meanwhile to permit our body to pine away under some dreadful disease.
That which is the more important should have the most of our thoughts, and if it must, necessarily, be otherwise during the week, at least let it be so now. Let us forget our buying and selling, toiling and suffering, caring and enjoying! And turning away from all that lies abroad, let us look at home and view our inner natures by the light of the Word of God. We have a great tendency, dear Friends, to make even our religion too much external. There are certain externals of religion which are exceedingly important, but the danger is lest in our great zeal for these, we forget that, after all, there is something better and higher to be thought about.
I pity the man who takes no interest in the great discussion of the hour with regard to the separation of Church and State, but I should far more pity him if he were so absorbed in that discussion as not to enquire whether he was, himself, a member of the true Church of Jesus Christ. Assuredly the questions concerning ritualism, liturgies, episcopacy and so on, are very important and a man who takes no interest in them is unmindful of great interests. But still, if a man were so occupied with the circumstances of outward worship as to forget the inward drawing near unto God with heart and soul, it were a thing to be deeply deplored.
I shall invite you, this morning, to forget everything that has to do with the external part of religion, whether correct or incorrect. Forget the form of worship, the mode of song, the manner of prayer, the way of celebrating ordinances—all these may, for awhile, be put upon the shelf and left there. We have now to do with the interior life, the secret power which dwells within—we have to consider that water which the Lord Jesus gives to Believers, which is in them, “a well of water springing up into everlasting life.”
In a word, the subject of this morning is the spiritual life—the inward work of Divine Grace—the life which proves a man to be saved. The life which comes from God and labors to ascend to God. The life on earth which is the bud of the eternal life in Heaven.
I. Our first observation is that THE SPIRITUAL LIFE IS A DIVINE GIFT. Observe the words, “The water that I shall give him.” First, the new life is a gift. It is not a principle dwelling in the man naturally and to be brought out from obscurity. I have heard it said and I have been horrified when I have heard so gross a falsehood, that there is in man something good, noble, spiritual and that the object of the Christian minister in delivering the Gospel is to take away the ignorance and folly that may overlay this innate nobility and so to bring out and train up the precious vital principles which otherwise had lain latent within the human heart.
Taking holy Scripture to be the Truth of God, the doctrine I have just stated is, of all lies, one of the grossest! There is nothing spiritually good in man whatever by nature. The carnal mind is enmity against God and is not reconciled to God, neither indeed can be. We might long enough rake the dunghill of human nature before we found the priceless jewel of spiritual life concealed within it. Man is dead in sin! How long will you hunt the sepulcher before you shall discover life
within the ribs of death? Long enough may you ransack yonder moldering bones in the cemetery before you shall discover the germs of immortality within the ashes of the departed.
If man were but faint, we might, perhaps, by a sort of spiritual friction or electricity, arouse him to life. If he were lying in a state of coma, we might, by some gracious surgery, at length rekindle the embers and make the life burn forth in its strength. But when we are informed, over and over again, by the Holy Spirit Himself, that man is not only dead, but that he is corrupt—where is the hope of finding life within him? The living and incorruptible seed of Divine Grace is a gift, yet further, because it is not produced in men by efforts of their own, through the imitation of good example, or through early instruction, or gradual reform.