Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1443
“Then shall I not be ashamed, when I ha ve respect unto all Your commandments.” Psalm 119:6.
ANY attempt to keep the Law of God with the view of being saved thereby is sure to end in failure. So contrary is it to the express warnings of the Divine Lawgiver and so much does it run counter to the whole Gospel, that he who ventures to seek justification by his own merits ought to be ashamed of his presumption. When God tells us that salvation is not by the works of the Law, are you not ashamed of trying to procure it by your obedience to its precepts? When He declares that by the works of the Law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight, are you not ashamed to go and seek after justification where He tells you it never can be found? When He, over and over again, declares that salvation is by faith and that it is a matter of Grace to be received, do you not blush for yourself that you should give the lie to God and propound a righteousness of your own conceit in which you have vainly tried to keep up a respectable appearance, screening the palpable delinquencies of your life under a thin veil of piety toward God and charity toward men?
Eternal life is not to be earned by any trade you can carry on in works of the flesh because, however estimable in the opinion of men, they are simply vile in the sight of God! If a man seeks to keep the Commandments of God in order that he may attain eternal life, he will be ashamed and confounded. He had better at once renounce the folly of attempting so insane, so futile, so impossible a task as that of defending his own cause and justifying his own soul! But when a man is converted; when he has believed in Christ Jesus to the salvation of his soul; when he is justified by faith and his sin is blotted out—when he has obtained mercy, found Grace in the eyes of the Lord and entered into the rest of faith because he knows that he is a saved man—then in keeping the precepts of the Law he will gratify a strong inclination. In fact, it henceforth becomes his highest ambition to be obedient—and the great delight of his soul is to run in the ways of God’s Commandments out of gratitude for the great benefits he has received.
And let it never be imagined that because Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the Law, there is, therefore, a complete removal of all moral constraints and restraints from Christian men! We are not under the Law, but under Grace, yet are we not lawless and libertine since we have become servants of God and followers of Christ. No, but we are under another Law—a Law of another sort which works upon us after another fashion. What if a man says, “I am free from the police, the magistrate, the judge and the executioner”? Does it, therefore, follow that he is free from the rules of his father’s house? Assuredly not! The child may be quite clear of the police court, but there is a rod at home. There is a father’s smile; there is a father’s frown. And though Christians shall never be so punished for their sins that they can come under condemnation, seeing they are delivered from that evil calamity by Christ, yet being children of God they come under another discipline—the discipline of His house and home—a discipline of chastisements not at all of a legal caste, for, however bitter the suffering it often entails, though He cause grief, He will have compassion.
The rebukes are sharp, but the retribution is not vindictive and the Lord is known to smile with approbation, to speak with commendation and to bestow His compensations with liberal hands on those who seek His face, listen to His voice and do His bidding. When He has committed to us some service which He only could qualify us to discharge, He has often caused us to partake of the fruits in abundant joy. Now, I shall endeavor to bring out this principle while I am speaking upon our text. Those who are children of God should seek after universal obedience to the Divine Commands. They should have respect unto all the Lord’s Commandments. If they do so, they will have a full requital and this is the reward. “Then shall I not be ashamed, when I have respect unto all Your commandments.” Two things, then, claim our attention—the universality of believing obedience and the excellence of its result.
I. THE UNIVERSALITY OF BELIEVING OBEDIENCE is here highly commended. The esteem in which we hold and the tribute we pay to all God’s Commandments is spoken of. Not some of His Commandments, but all of them. Not picking and choosing—paying attention to this because it pleases me and omitting that because it is not equally
pleasurable—but the careful, earnest respecting of all the statutes of God and the anxious endeavor to keep them all! This it is which challenges attention and therein is great blessedness. Turn to the Psalm, itself, which is far preferable to any reflections we could offer, inasmuch as the Word of God must ever excel the word of man. There David says, ” Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the Law of the Lord.”