Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1633
Delivered on Thursday Evening, April 28, 1881
“Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bore you.” Isaiah 51:2.
“Even as Sara obeyed Abraham, calling him lord: whose daughters you are, as long as you do well, and are not afraid with any amazement.” 1 Peter3:6.
I DESIRE to thank God for having had the privilege of preaching in Exeter Hall, yesterday, to a large congregation from the whole of the second verse of the 51st of Isaiah—“Look unto Abraham your father, and unto Sarah that bore you: for I called him alone, and blessed him, and increased him.” [See No. 1596, HEARKEN AND LOOK—OR, ENCOURAGEMENT FOR BELIEVERS preached on behalf of the Baptist Missionary Society on the morning of April 27,1881.] On that occasion I confined my remarks to Abraham and tried to make prominent the facts that God called him while he was a heathen man, one man and a lone man—and yet He blessed him and made him the founder of His people, multiplying his seed as the stars and as the sand of the seashore. I devoutly beseech the Lord to accept my testimony to His power and to increase the faith of the many of His servants to whom I spoke on that occasion. His Holy Spirit gave me the word—may He cause His saints to feed upon it!
Now, I never like to do an injustice to anybody and I feel that I did not, in that sermon, speak sufficiently about Sarah, though I did not quite forget her. Let us make up for our omissions. If we had Abraham at Exeter Hall yesterday morning, we will have Sarah at the Tabernacle, tonight, and maybe we shall learn a lesson from her holy character as well as from that of her husband. And the two lessons combined may go to the perfecting of each other. May our great Teacher, the Holy Spirit, now instruct us! To begin with, let us note what a happy circumstance it is when a godly, gracious man has an equally godly and gracious wife.
It is ill when there is a difference, a radical difference, between husband and wife—when one fears God and the other has no regard for Him. What a pain it is to a Christian woman to be yoked with an unbelieving husband! In a case which I remember, the husband lived all his life indifferent to Divine things, while the wife was an earnest Christian woman and saw all her children grow up in the ways of the Lord. The father lived unregenerate and died without giving any testimony of a change of heart. When our Sister speaks of him, it is with fearful anguish. She does not know what to say, but leaves the matter in the hands of God, often sighing, “O that by a word or a look I could have been enabled to indulge a hope that my poor husband looked to Jesus at the last.”
The same must be the case of a husband who has an ungodly wife. However much God may bless him in all other respects, there seems to be a great miss there—as if a part of the sun were eclipsed—that a part of life which should be all light is left in thick darkness. Oh, let those of us who have the happiness of being joined together in the Lord thank and bless God every time we remember each other! Let us pray God, that having such a privilege—that our prayers are not hindered by irreligious partners—we may never hinder our prayers ourselves! God grant that we may give unto His name great glory because of His choice favor to us in this respect.
Abraham had cause to praise God for Sarah and Sarah was grateful for Abraham. I have not the slightest doubt that Sarah’s character owed its excellence very much to Abraham. I should not wonder, however, if we discover, when all things are revealed, that Abraham owed as much to Sarah! They probably learned from each other. Sometimes the weaker comforted the stronger and often the stronger sustained the weaker. I should not wonder if a mutual interchange of their several Graces tended to make them both rich in the things of God. Perhaps Abraham had not been all that Abraham was if Sarah had not been all that Sarah was.
Our first text bids us, “Look to Sarah,” and we do look on her and we thank God if we, like Abraham, are favored with holy consorts, whose amiable tempers and characters tend to make us better servants of God. We notice, next, as we look to Sarah, that God does not forget the lesser lights. Abraham shines like a star of the first magnitude and we do not, at first sight, observe that other star with light so bright and pure, shining with milder radiance but with kindred luster, close at his side. The light of Mamre, which is known under the name of Abraham, resolves itself into a double star when we apply the telescope of reflection and observation. To the common eye, Abraham is the sole character and ordinary people overlook his faithful spouse, but God does not!
Our God never omits the good who are obscure. You may depend upon it that there is no such difference in the love of God towards different persons as should make Him fix His eyes only upon those that are strong and omit those who are weak. Our eyes spy out the great things, but God’s eyes are such that nothing is great with Him and nothing is little. He is infinite and, therefore, nothing bears any comparison to Him. You remember how it is written that He who counts the stars and calls them by name also binds up the broken in heart, and heals all their wounds. He who treasures the names of His Apostles, notes, also, the women that followed in their train. He who marks the brave confessors and the bold preachers of the Gospel also remembers those helpers who labor quietly in the Gospel in places of retirement into which the hawk’s eyes of history seldom pries.