Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1050
“Hearken to me, you that follow after righteousness, you that seek the Lord. Look unto the rock where you are hewn, and to the hole of the pit where you are dug.” Isaiah 51:1.
THE Israelites were commanded to remember all the ways which the Lord their God had led them in the wilderness. That precept was not given without reason. The remembrance of God’s mercy in the past is helpful to us in many ways. To look back upon our past condition and upon the manner in which God befriended us at such times as we were reduced to sore straits will often prove salutary and bracing to our souls. For one thing, it tends to bring forth in us the meekness of wisdom. Should we become rich and increased in goods spiritually, it will humble us and keep us in our right place if we remember that once we were naked, poor and miserable.
Are we, today, rejoicing in the Lord, sitting down at our Father’s table, enjoying the privileges of sonship? It will prevent our being proud if we remember that not long ago we gladly would have filled our belly with the husks that the swine ate, and in our rags and filth we were led to say, “I will arise, and go to my Father.” Whenever, O child of God, you become self-complacent through beholding the excellence of your present estate, it will do you good to remember what you once were, how you have now become what you are, and to whom the glory of it is due. It will cool your hot blood, calm your feverish pulse and constrain you to bow in the dust of adoration before Him to whom your well-being, like your being, exclusively is due.
A remembrance of the past also will be sure to excite our thankfulness. God’s people are always happy when they are grateful. We would be 10 times more full of bliss if we were proportionately more full of thankfulness. We bury God’s mercies and then sigh for His comforts. If we remembered how near to Death’s dark door we once laid, and how the gates of Hell were opened for us—and gladly would have closed upon us forever—we should bless that mighty arm which plucked us like brands from the burning, and adore that matchless Atonement which has delivered us from going down into the Pit because a ransom has been found!
If no other results came from a retrospect of our past condition but humility and thankfulness, these would be sufficient to justify the Prophet in bidding us look to the rock where we were hewn, and to the hole of the pit where we were dug. But, in this particular instance Isaiah had not in his mind’s eye the cultivation either of humility or of gratitude. He was led by the Spirit of God to admonish the Israelites to look back for quite another reason, though one of equal importance. It was this—that they might be cheered and encouraged in a time of gloom and sadness, and that they might be animated with fresh confidence in God’s power to bring them up again from their sad condition as they thought of all that He had done for them in times past, when they were equally low, or when, perhaps, they were even in a worse plight than they were at present.
Give ear, then, Beloved! Listen to this appeal, all you that follow after righteousness! There is a cheerful view for you if you will but look back—and brighter scenes will yet open up before you as you go forward! It is a great thing for people to be encouraged. Sometimes Satan makes the pendulum vibrate in one direction, and sometimes in another direction. If it swings this way, men become presumptuous in sin. Or, if he make it swing that way, they become desponding as to the pardon of their sin and the renewal of their heart. Quite as many souls are ruined by the latter as by the former. I desire, this morning, to speak so that every one of you that follows after righteousness and desires the Lord, may say, “There is hope for me, then. There is good cheer for me,” and with your face turned towards your Father’s house, may quicken your footsteps towards the place where pardon and love are awaiting you.
I. First, WE SHALL EXPOUND THE TEXT WITH GREAT BREVITY IN ITS APPLICATION TO ISRAEL LITERALLY. They are bid to look back to the origin of their nation, in order that they may be comforted. Abraham
was the stock out of which the nation of Israel came. He was only one man. “Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bore you, for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.” He was a single individual. His wife and he made up but one family. One tent enclosed them—and yet the Lord said to him, “I will make of you a great nation; and I will bless you, and you shall be a blessing, and in you shall all the families of the earth be blessed.”
Yes, more, the Lord said to him, “I will establish My Covenant between Me and you, and your seed after you, in their generations for an everlasting Covenant.” And God bade Abraham look towards Heaven and count the stars, and He said, “So shall your seed be.” A progeny that should be like the innumerable sand upon the seashore was assured to the Patriarch and Sarah, his wife! Moreover, the man was old, well stricken in years, and we read concerning him that his body was now dead—that is to say, he was too far advanced in years to be likely to become the progenitor of a race. As for his wife, she also, it is said, was barren.