Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 930
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, April 10, 1870
“Fear you not. For I am with you; be not dismayed; for I am your God: I will strengthen you; yes, I will help you; yes, I will uphold you with the right hand of My righteousness.” Isaiah 41:10.
IF there should be nothing in the sermon this evening, Brethren, there is enough in the text to satisfy your mouth with good things, so that your youth may be renewed like the eagle’s. May the Holy Spirit spread for you a table in the wilderness. And may He give you appetites to feed by faith upon these royal dainties, which, like the food that Daniel and his companions fed upon, shall make you well-favored before God and man.
To whom are these words spoken? For we must not steal from God’s Scripture any more than from man’s treasury. We have no more right to take a promise to ourselves that does not belong to us than we have to take another man’s purse from him. These words were evidently spoken in God’s name by the Prophet to God’s “chosen” ones. Read the eighth verse “But you, Israel, are My servant, Jacob whom I have chosen, the seed of Abraham My friend.”
And again in the ninth verse—“You are My servant. I have chosen you.” So, then, if you or I should meet with anything that is gracious and comfortable here it will come to us, not upon the footing of merit, but upon the ground of Sovereign Grace. It will not be ours because we have chosen Christ, but because He has chosen us. Our heavenly Father has blessed us with all spiritual blessings according as He has chosen us in Christ Jesus from before the foundation of the world. The eternal choice is the wellhead from which all the springs of mercy flow. Happy are you, my Soul, if Divine Grace has inscribed your name in God’s eternal book! You may come to this text like a child to his father’s own table, and you may draw from it all manner of comforts to sustain your spirit.
But since, dear Friends, you and I cannot read the secret roll of God’s electing love, we are helped to judge whether this text belongs to us by another description. For those who are here called “chosen,” are, in the ninth verse, also described as being “called.” “You whom I have taken from the ends of the earth, and called you from the chief men thereof.” God’s chosen people of old were set apart for Himself, and called out from all the rest of the world, and so they are now. They are a people called out by His special Grace—with a gracious call which they have not been able to resist—and they have come forth and declared themselves on the Lord’s side.
“For whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the first-born among many Brethren. Moreover, whom He did predestinate, them He also called.” If you are called, depend upon it you are chosen. I do not mean if you are called in the common sense with the universal call of the Gospel, for in that sense, “many are called, but few are chosen.” But I mean if you are effectually called, personally called, called of the Holy Spirit, called as Mary was when Jesus said to her, “Mary”—and that gracious voice thrilled through her soul, and she responded to it, and said to Him—“Master!”
Have you been so called that you have forsaken all for Christ, or are willing to do so? Have you left your old pleasures and your old companions? And are you now a separated one, set apart for Christ? Oh, if it is so, let nothing keep you back from enjoying the riches of my text, for every comfortable sentence in it belongs to you!
Still, farther to help us to find out to whom this text belongs, notice that the person here described is spoken of in the eighth verse as a “servant.” “You, Israel, are My servant,” and in the ninth verse, “And said unto you, You are My servant.” Now, are you God’s servant, dear Hearer? A servant does not do his own will. He would soon get his discharge if he carried out his own whims and wishes. He takes his guidance from his master’s mouth and his master’s eyes. Have you submitted your will to God’s will? Are you no longer governed by a proud and high spirit which cries, “Who is the Lord, that I should obey Him?” Do you desire to know what God’s will is, and then to do just what He bids you? Do you count it your highest honor to be called a servant of Christ? Is it for Him that you live? Is His glory your highest aim? If
so, then you who are willing to labor may come and feast upon the text, for every honey-dropping word of it belongs to you, since you serve the Lord Christ.
One more word to help you to see whether you have a right to these promises. He says in the ninth verse, “I have chosen you, and not cast you away.” Now you have, some of you, been professors of the Christian faith for many years. Some of the younger ones of us have now been twenty years maintained in His House, for it is just so long since we were baptized in Christ’s name. Surely, my Brethren, we feel that, judged by the strictness of the Law, we deserved to have been cast away! And yet, being under Grace, we have been preserved by the Lord’s salvation even until now.