Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1331
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, December 31, 1876
“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come! And let him who hears say, Come! And let him who thirsts come. And whoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” Revelation 22:17.
[This sermon is the first sermon in Volume 23 in the original manuscripts.]
OUR text stands at the end of the Bible even as this day stands at the end of the year—and it is full of Gospel even as we would make our closing Sabbath discourse. It would seem as if the Holy Spirit were loath to put down the pen while so many remained unbelieving, notwithstanding the testimony of the Inspired Word and, therefore,, before He closes the canon of Holy Scripture and guards it against all addition or mutilation, with most solemn words He gives one more full, free, earnest, gracious invitation to thirsty souls to come to Christ and drink! So on this last page of the year I would gladly write another Gospel invitation that those who have not, up to now, believed our report, may, even on this last day of the feast, incline their ears and accept the message of salvation!
Before yet the midnight bell proclaims the birth of a new year, may you be born to God! At any rate, once more shall the Truth of God, by which men are regenerated, be lovingly brought under your attention. I ask those of you who have the Master’s ear to put up this request to Him just now, that if the arrows have missed the mark on the previous 52 Sabbaths, they may strike the target this time, being directed by the Divine Spirit. Pray, also, that if some have kept the door of their hearts fast closed against the Lord Jesus till now, He may, Himself, come in the preaching of the Word, this morning, and put in His hand by the hole of the door, that their hearts may be moved for Him.
In answer to that prayer we shall be sure to get a blessing! Let us expect it and act upon the expectation and we shall see men flying to Jesus as a cloud, and as doves to their windows! Are not the Words of our text the Words of the Lord Jesus? Can they be regarded as the words of John? I think not, for they follow so closely upon the undoubted language of Jesus in the former verse. Thus runs the passage—“I, Jesus, have sent My angel to testify unto you these things in the churches. I am the Root and the Offspring of David, and the Bright and Morning Star. And the Spirit and the bride say, Come!”
We can hardly, I think, divide the paragraph, and we must, it seems to me, regard our text as the Words of the risen Jesus, that Morning Star whose cheering beams foretell the glorious day! The lover of men’s souls was not quite done speaking to sinners—there was a little more to say and here He says it. The Divine Redeemer, leaning from His Throne where He sits as the reward of His accomplished work, and bending over sinners with the same love which led Him to die for them, says, “Let him who hears say, Come! And let him who thirsts come. And whoever will, let him take the water of life freely.”
Looking at the words, therefore, in that golden light as coming from the dear lips of the Well-Beloved, let us notice first, the heavenward cry of prayer—“The Spirit and the bride say, Come! And let him who hears say, Come!” These voices go upward to Christ. Then, secondly, let us hear the earthward cry of invitation—“Let him who thirsts come. And whoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” That cry goes outward and downward towards needy and sorrowing spirits. Then, thirdly, we shall pause awhile to notice the relation between these two cries, for the coming of Christ is connected with the coming of sinners. And then, as best we can, we shall observe and expect the response to the two cries—both from Him who sits in the heavens and from souls thirsting here below.
O Divine Spirit, bless the Word!
I. First, then, our text begins with THE HEAVENWARD CRY OF PRAYER, ‘The Spirit and the bride say, Come! And let him that hears say, Come!” I think it will be evident, if you read carefully, that this cannot be interpreted as being
only the voice of the Spirit and the bride to the sinner. Surely the sense requires us to regard this cry of, “Come!” as addressed to our Lord Jesus, who in a previous verse had been saying, “Behold I come quickly, and My reward is with Me.” We may see the second included in it, but it will never do to exclude the first. We shall not have dealt honestly with the words before us unless we regard them, first, as spoken upwards towards our Lord whose coming is our great hope.
The matter of this cry is first to be noticed—it is the coming of Christ. “The Spirit and the bride say, Come!” This is, and always has been, the universal cry of the Church of Jesus Christ! There is no one common theory about the exact meaning of that coming, but there is one common desire for it, in some form or other. Some of us are expecting the bodily coming because the angel said, when the cloud concealed the rising Christ, “This same Jesus who is taken up from you into Heaven shall so come in like manner as you have seen Him go into Heaven.” We therefore look for His descent upon the earth in Person, to be here, literally, among us.