Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1497
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, September 28, 1879
“Which say, Stand by yourself, come not near to me; for I am holier than you. These are a smoke in My nose, a fire that burns all the day.” Isaiah 65:5.
THE Apostle Paul shall be our interpreter here. You remember how in the 10th chapter of his Epistle to the Romans he quotes from this chapter and says, “Isaiah is very bold and says, I was found of them that sought Me not; I was made manifest unto them that asked not after Me. But to Israel He says, all day long I have stretched forth My hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people”? Isaiah was very bold to speak the Gospel so plainly, when a legal spirit prevailed, and very bold to defy the enmity of his own nation by declaring that they would be rejected for their sins, while the far-off heathen would be brought in by Sovereign Grace. He was bold to denounce hypocrites to their faces and to smite a proud nation with the threats of the Lord. Perhaps it was for this boldness that he suffered a cruel death by the hands of Manasseh.
The application of the passage to Israel is just thus. Year after year God dealt with great patience towards His chosen people, but they seemed to be desperately set upon idolatry in one form or another. Sometimes they worshipped Jehovah, but then they did it under figures and symbols, whereas He has expressly forbidden that even His own worship should be thus celebrated. He who said in the First Commandment, “You shall have no other gods before Me,” also said in the Second, “You shall not make unto you any graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in Heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: you shall not bow down yourself to them, nor serve them.”
They reckoned that the touch of a common person polluted their sacredness so that they needed to wash after walking down a street. When they traversed the ways, they took the edge of the pavement so that they might not brush against the garments of the passers-by. And even in the Temple, in prayer, they stood by themselves lest they should be defiled! Their whole spirit is expressed in the words of the text, “Stand by yourself, come not near to me; for I am holier than you.” God declares this to be as obnoxious to Him as smoke in a man’s nose. He could not bear it. He was no more able to tolerate their self-righteousness than to endure their idolatry.
It is this last form of the evil of the Israelite heart which I am going to speak about this morning because it is a phase of evil which is now common among us. Self-righteousness is rampant in our own day! There are many who come up to the courts of the Lord’s house and mingle among the followers of Christ who still say, “Stand by, for I am holier than you.” Our sermon is meant to be a cannonade against self-righteousness—that righteousness which a man makes a show of his own doings, his own feelings, his own alms, prayers, or sacraments—all such righteousness is to be utterly despised!
I. The first point is this—THE SIN OF SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS GROWS UP AMONG RELIGIOUS PEOPLE. It is not always the sin of the outside world, for many outsiders do not pretend to any righteousness at all and I fancy they think all the better of themselves for that! This is an idle plea which needs not many words to expose. “I make no profession,” says one. This is about as honorable a confession as if a thief should boast when caught at picking pockets,
“I do not make any pretense to be honest,” or a liar, when detected, should turn round and cry, “I never professed to speak the truth.” Would you have men glory in not professing to be honest or true? Yet, surely, they do no worse than one who boasts that he does not profess to fear God. Such a man has gone to a considerable pitch of iniquity before he can bronze his face to make his glory in that which is his shame.
Among those who profess to be religious, self-righteousness very frequently comes in because they have not truly received the religion of Jesus Christ. If they were true Believers they would be humble and contrite, for self-righteousness and faith in Christ are diametrically opposed. He that is saved by Grace finds no room for glorying in himself. What says the Apostle? “Where is boasting, then? It is excluded.” The word is, it is shut out and it has the door shut in its face. A sinner washed in Jesus’ blood and clothed in Jesus’ righteousness glories only in the Lord! He has done, once and for all, with that particular form of sin which glories in self. It is detestable in his sight. His cry is “God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
Many who mingle with Christians and are religious in a certain sense because they practice the forms of religion, are known to put the forms into the place of the Holy Spirit. With them, in Baptism, the washing in water is everything, but the burial with Christ which it sets forth is quite unknown. With them the partaking of the bread and the wine are everything at the Lord’s Table, but the spiritual feeding upon the body and blood of Christ is not understood. With them, the place of worship is everything, but the spirit of worship is lacking. The broken heart, the contrite spirit, the soul that trembles at God’s Word, the heart that joys in the Lord—they are strangers to all this though they can sit as God’s people sit, though they can hear as God’s people hear and look as if they were all that saints should be.