Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 953
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, September 25, 1870
“I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day. In that day, says the Lord of hosts. They shall call every man his neighbor under the vine, and under the fig tree.” Zechariah 3:9,10.
WE cull the text from one of Zechariah’s most instructive visions. It is a stone from a diamond field. All the context is rich in precious things, but we cannot, though we would be very glad to do so, linger over them this morning. We must be satisfied with this one brilliant stone. Taking the text as it stands, and by itself, it is evidently descriptive of those long expected and happy days when God will once and for all forgive His Israel and restore His long-banished ones to their former place of favor and ofjoy. As a consequence thereof, He shall cause them to dwell in their own land under the happiest circumstances, surrounded by peace and enjoyment, praising and blessing the God of mercy.
But we may, from the dealings of God with one particular case, usually extract the rule of the Divine procedure—for the Lord is under no necessity to alter His modes of action, and is not subject to change. As He works in one case, so may we expect Him to do in another, if the circumstances taken in are all similar. I purpose this morning, to draw, therefore, from the text nothing about Israel after the flesh, but much concerning the spiritual Israel—believing souls who are the true seed of the father of the faithful.
Our object will be to glorify the fullness and richness of the Divine mercy which pardons the greatest sin and sheds abroad the most delightful peace. May the Holy Spirit now instruct both the preacher and the congregation. While all our eyes are gazing upon the promise of Grace, may it be fulfilled in our midst.
I. Our first remarks will gather around the question, WHAT IS TO BE REMOVED? What does the text speak of? The reply is, “the iniquity of that land.” The term “iniquity” or, in-equity, is a very comprehensive one—including everything that is not equitable, not right towards God, not just towards man. It comprehends the entire compass of sin, for a sin of commission is an in-equity of excess, and an omission is an in-equity of falling short. The text, therefore, in the term “iniquity” comprehends every violation of equity either by way of transgression or shortcoming.
It includes sins against the first and second table, sins of the body, the hand, the tongue. Sins which more immediately spring from and end in the soul, sins against God and man, sins of youth, and sins of old age. Widely extended as iniquity is, God declares that He will remove all of it from His people in one day. The great variety of the sin to be removed is clear from the additional words, “that land.”
The offenses of a whole nation make up a complete catalogue of crimes. When high and low, old and young, rich and poor, literate and illiterate are considered as one body, the mass of their united sin is diversified, indeed. In the throng I see a despiser of parents in one place, and a Sabbath-breaker in another. Search the land over and you will be sure to find liars, slanderers, drunkards, gluttons, swearers, thieves, harlots, murderers, and I know not what of wickedness besides.
The one city of Jerusalem was so sinful that Ezekiel likened it to a boiling pot, and said of it, “Woe to the bloody city, to the pot whose scum is there. She has wearied herself with lies. In your filthiness is lewdness.” In a land so large as Israel, though comparatively small, there must have been criminals of all kinds—wretches defiled with sins of the blackest dye—a more than Newgate calendar of reprobates. And yet it is promised that all these varieties of sin shall be removed in one day! From sins of thought and heart right up to blood-red murder, and the most desperate adulteries—all are spoken of as to be removed.
The iniquity of a land, however, is not only that of the generation then dwelling in it, but the accumulated sin ofpast generations, even as we read that, “the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full.” If anyone would speak correctly of the sins of Israel he would not mean the sins of the Israel of that particular hour, but the heaped-up sins of their fathers who had provoked God many long generations before. Now grasp the grand idea of mercy’s boundless plan—in one day—
the promise declares that God shall not only remove all the sins of one man, but all the sins of many men! Yes, and all the sins that have accumulated and laid up a store of wrath against a whole nation!
What mercy is this which blots out the long records of the past, sweeps out the rotting heaps of old transgression and cleanses the Augean stable of a guilty nation’s sin? “I will remove the iniquity of that land in one day.” What a miracle of infinite mercy! The iniquity rises before us like a huge mountain whose peak defies the thunderbolts of God, but lo, eternal Mercy, like a sea, swallows up the mountain and it is gone, to be found no more. It is clear, then, from the text, that the Lord is able to forgive sins of every shade and form.