Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1580
“She obeyed not His voice; she received not correction; she trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God.” Zephaniah 3:2.
HERE ARE FOUR heavy counts of a terrible indictment against Jerusalem and the Jewish people. Is it not sad to reflect that Jerusalem was the city of the great king and yet fell from its high estate? It was the place of the great Temple—there the light of God shone forth while other nations were in darkness—there the solemn worship of God was celebrated while false gods were being adored elsewhere! And yet its sin provoked the Lord till He gave it up to the Destroyer. It is clear, therefore, that no degree of Light and no amount of privilege can keep a people alive and right before God. If the heart is not changed, if the Grace of God goes not with outward ordinances, those who are exalted to Heaven may yet be cast down to Hell.
The putrefaction of the best produces the worst and when a city which has been favored as Jerusalem has, become a den of unclean beasts, then it is a den, indeed! Neither Nineveh, nor Babylon, nor Tyre, nor Sidon could equal in criminality this once chosen city of the great king. Let us not, therefore, as a nation, begin to exalt ourselves because of our privileges, for if we do not prove worthy of them, the candlestick will be taken out of its place and our darkness will be all the darker because of the Light of God we have lost. If we walk not before the Lord obediently, it may please Him to make this island as great a scene of destruction as the mounds of Babel or the rock of Tyre.
We usually take Jerusalem to be the type of a church and it is one of the fullest types of the one true Church— “Jerusalem which is above, the mother of us all.” We may therefore regard the fate of Jerusalem as being a special warning to churches. In a Church is God’s dwelling place—there is the Light of knowledge, there is the fire of sacrifice—out of it has God shined. But a Church may sadly decline. There is a church which is now worthy of the name of Antichrist— she went further and further astray till she has made a man to be her head and called him infallible! She has set up many lords and gods, saints and saintesses and innumerable objects of worship—even bones and rotten rags! There is a church against whom this indictment might be laid today—“She obeyed not His voice”—she did not hear the Gospel!
“She received not correction”—when Reformers came she sought their blood. “She trusted not in the Lord; she drew not near to her God, but she went after others and set up other intercessors than Christ and rejected the true Head of the Church. Other churches may fall into the same sin unless they are guarded by spiritual power. Remember Laodicea and how she was spit out of the mouth of Christ because she was neither cold nor hot! Remember Sardis which had but a few names in it that were undefiled! Where are those cities and those churches, now? Let desolation answer. It might be said of them as of Gilgal, of which the Lord said, “Go you there to the place where My name was at the first, and see if there is one stone left of it upon another which has not been cast down.”
Oh that we as a Church and all our sister Churches may walk before the Lord with holy jealousy as to doctrinal correctness, practical holiness and inner spiritual life! But, if not, our end will be miserable failure! If the salt of Divine Grace is not in a Church it cannot be an acceptable sacrifice to God, nor can it long be kept from the corruption which is natural to all masses of flesh! What are one people more than another? And what is one community more than another? We are men by nature, prone to the same evil, and we shall fall into the same transgression unless the Lord that keeps Israel shall keep us—and therein is our confidence—that He does neither slumber nor sleep.
This text is not only applicable to a nation and to a Church, but to individuals among God’s own people, though, of course, only in a degree. Some of God’s people follow Christ afar—their spiritual life is better seen in their fears than in their confidences! They are always trembling. Their hands are slack, their hearts are faint. We trust they are alive unto God, but that is all we can say. I fear it may be said of them, “She obeyed not His voice”—the gentle whisper of Divine
Love falls upon a deaf ear. Oh, how often, Brothers and Sisters, has God spoken and we have not hearkened so as to obey His voice!
I fear, too, that there are times when we have not “received correction”—when affliction has been lost upon us. We have risen from a sickbed worse than when we went to it! Our losses and crosses have provoked us to murmuring rather than to heart-searching. We have been bruised as in a mortar among wheat with a pestle and yet our folly has not departed from us. And this is a very provoking thing—when we despise the rod and the hand that uses it—and turn not at the smiting of the Lord. Yet it is so with some of God’s people—they obey not His voice, they receive not correction and, therefore, it comes to pass that at times “they trust not in the Lord.” They try to bear their trials themselves. They go to friends for advice and they inherit a curse, for it is written, “Cursed is he that trusts in man and makes flesh his arm.”