Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1046
“A newheart also willI give you, and a new spirit will Iput within you: and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh. And I willput My Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in My statutes and you shall keep My judgments, and do them.” Ezekiel 36:26,27.
LUTHER has well said that the experience of the minister is the best book in his library. I am persuaded it is so and that God often leads His servants through peculiar states of mind, not so much for their own benefit as for the sake of those to whom they may afterwards minister. It is not long ago since I felt myself, when engaged in devotion, cold and dead. And in looking into my own heart I saw no ground of comfortable assurance as to my being a possessor of the Grace of God—my feelings towards the great Father in Heaven were not, as far as I could judge, those of a child—my love towards Jesus Christ for His redemption was almost extinct.
I thought over the story of His Cross without emotion and I recalled to my mind the history of His everlasting love without gratitude. My soul was not, as it sometimes is, like the crystal lake which is ruffled with every passing breath of the breeze, but like some northern sea hardened into iron by the fierce reign of endless winter. The sublime Truths of infinite Grace stirred not my soul. My heart sank within me for a moment, but only for a moment, for there flashed across me this thought—“The Holy Spirit can produce within your heart all those emotions you are seeking for, all those desires you gladly would feel, all the melting, and the moving, and the yearning, and the rejoicing, which are significant of the Grace of God.”
Under the influence of that Truth of God, as in a moment, my deadness and coldness were driven away and I was filled with adoring love. Then I wondered greatly that the Lord should deign to handle such coarse material as our nature, that He should condescend to work upon such gross spirits, such groveling minds, such carnal understandings as ours. And when, by faith, I perceived that He could not only, then and there, give me to feel spiritual life but could maintain it against all hazards, and perfect it beyond all imperfections, and bring me safe into His eternal Kingdom and Glory—an act of faith exerted upon the Holy Spirit through the Cross of Christ made my soul eager for prayer, and my joy and peace in believing were more than restored to me!
Then I said within myself, there may be others in a similar case and especially there may be seeking souls who, seeing what must be worked in them before they can hope to be partakers of the eternal rest, may despair that such a work should ever be done, and looking only to themselves may be inclined to give up all hope, and conclude that within the pearly gates they can never enter. Perhaps, I thought, if I remind them that “the Spirit also helps our infirmities,” that Jesus Christ’s bequest to us, in virtue of His having gone to Heaven, is an Omnipotent One who can work all our worlds in us, causing us to will and to do of His own good pleasure—the thought may encourage their hearts and enable them to look with restful confidence to Him who works all our worlds in us.
Our text is a portion of that delightful rendering of the Covenant of Grace which is given us by Ezekiel, and we will, for a single moment, ask you to remember the persons with whom the covenant of Grace was made. An early version of the Covenant of Grace was given to Abraham and this in Ezekiel is a repetition, expansion, or explanation of the same. This Covenant, and that form of it made with Abraham, concern the same individuals. Let us, then, remind ourselves that the Covenant was not made with the fleshly seed of Abraham. If it had been, it would have run in the line of Ishmael as well as that of Isaac—but it was not made with Ishmael, for what says the Scriptures—“Cast out the bondwoman and her son, for the son of the bondwoman shall not be heir with my son, even with Isaac.”
The Covenant of Grace was not made with the children who are born after the flesh as was Ishmael, but with those who are born according to the promise as was Isaac—who was not born by virtue of the energy of the flesh, for of Abraham it was said that he was as good as dead, and as for Sarah that she was long past bearing. But Isaac, the child of laughter, the child of joy, the heir of the promise, was born according to the power of God and not after the energy of nature. Isaac evidently typifies not the man of works but the man offaith. The man of works is born after the flesh. He has reformed himself. He has done his best—he continues to do his best. He is the child of his own energy. He is the result of human power. He is under the Law—he tries to save himself by the Law—he is, therefore, the son of Hagar the bondwoman and he is under bondage. His destiny may be learned from the words, “Cast forth the son of the bondwoman, he shall not be heir with my son.”