Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 884
Delivered on Sunday Morning, AUGUST 8, 1869, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“We look for light, but behold obscurity; for brightness, but we walk in darkness.”- Isaiah 59:9.
ISRAEL had greatly revolted from her God and in consequence she had brought upon herself great sorrow. Still, instead of repenting of their faults and returning to their allegiance to Jehovah, the nation continued to be duped by false prophets and presumptuous pride into the expectation of better days. The better days came not. They looked for the sunshine, but they wandered in the mists. They waited for brightness, but walked in gloom. Unhappy Israel! She turned aside from Jehovah to worship Baal—she went after the gods of the heathen which were not gods—and from that hour her land was afflicted with pestilence and famine.
The spoiler came up against her. He stopped her wells, cut down her vines and barked her fig trees. And in the end he carried her away captive, made the sons and daughters of Zion to sit down by the waters of Babylon and weep at the remembrance of the beloved city. Sin is evermore a bitter thing and they who follow it expecting to arrive at the light of joy are duped and deceived. They shall be plunged into denser and denser darkness until they arrive at an unending midnight unbroken by a solitary star.
This historical example might be used by way of warning to any seekers after happiness who foolishly expect to find it in the pleasures of sin and the neglect of God. You will certainly be disappointed, for, “joy is a plant that does not grow on nature’s barren soil”—only a renewed nature can be blessed. The more intensely you pursue happiness in the bewitching way of sin, the further will it fly from you. Like the will-‘o-the-wisp, the glare of pleasure will entice you into the quagmire and there will leave you to find that your chase has gained you nothing but danger and weariness. The pearl of happiness lies not in the depths of dissipation. The broad road always ends in destruction, never in peace.
Hoist the sails of desire to the breeze, let go the helm of reason and let your soul be borne wherever the blasts of temptation or the currents of custom may direct and one thing you may be sure of—your unhappy boat will never be drifted by such means into the haven of peace! To such a voyage shipwreck is the certain end! To other modes of living disappointment is in like manner attached. Vain is it to pile up gold. Vain is it to awaken the clarion trumpet of fame. Vain is it to gather learning or to master eloquence, eminence, rank, wealth, power—all these things are too little to satisfy the insatiable craving of an immortal soul.
You must have God or you shall never have enough! You must be reconciled to Him or you can never be at peace with yourself. Man must enter into a covenant of peace with his God or all the creatures of God shall conspire against him! Pilgrim of earth, your way must be towards holiness and God, or in vain shall you expect the dawning—to the sinner there is reserved the blackness of darkness forever and even now his way is hard and his path is darkened with fear and disquietude.
I thought, however, this morning, of addressing myself through the words of the text, to another class of individuals. To persons who are sincerely seeking better things. Those desirous of obtaining the true and heavenly light, who have waited, hoping to receive it—but instead of obtaining it are in a worse, or at least in a sadder state than they were. They are almost driven, today, into the dark thoughts that for them no light will ever come—that they shall be prisoners chained forever in the valley of the shadow of death.
If God shall bless a few words of awakening and encouraging to such prisoners, so that some shall see the heavenly light today, thrice happy shall our heart be!
I. We will commence by depicting the character we wish to speak to. Our first head, therefore, may be remembered as DESCRIPTIVE. These persons are in some degree aware of their natural darkness. According to the text they are looking for light. They are not content with their obscurity—they are waiting for brightness. In this audience there are a few
who are not content to be what their first birth has made them. They discover in their nature much of evil. They would gladly be rid of it! They find in their understanding much ignorance and they would gladly be illuminated. They do not understand the Scripture when they read it and though they hear Gospel terms, yet they fail to grasp Gospel thought.
They pant to escape from this ignorance. They desire to know the Truth of God which saves the soul, and their desire is not only to know it in theory, but to know it by its practical power upon their inner man. They are really and anxiously desirous to be delivered from the state of nature which they feel to be a dangerous one, and to be brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God! Oh, but these are the best of hearers—these in whom right desires have begun to be awakened! Men who are dissatisfied with the darkness are evidently not altogether dead, for the dead shall slumber in the catacombs, heedless whether it is noon or night. Such men are evidently not altogether asleep, for they that slumber shall sleep the better for the darkness—they ask no sunbeams to molest their dreams.