Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1757
“I was a stranger, andyou took Me in.” Matthew 25:35.
“But as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.” John 1:12.
I LATELY received a New Year’s card which suggested to me the topic on which I am about to speak to you. The designer of the card has, with holy insight, seen the relation of the two texts to each other and rendered both of them eminently suggestive by placing them together. There is freshness in the thought that, by receiving Jesus as a stranger, our believing hospitality works in us a Divine capacity and we thereby receive power to become the sons of God. The connection suggested between the two Inspired words is really existent and by no means strained or fanciful, as you will see by reading the context of the passage in John—“He was in the world, and the world was made by Him, and the world knew Him not.” So He was a stranger in the world which He Himself had made! “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” So He was a stranger among the people whom He had set apart for His own by many deeds of mercy! “But as many as received Him”—that is to say, gave entertainment to this blessed Stranger—“to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His name.”
I thought that this might prove to be a suitable and salutary passage to discourse upon at the beginning of a New Year, for this is a season of hospitality and some among our friends will think it well to commence a New Year by saying to the Lord Jesus, “Come in, You blessed of the Lord; why do You stand outside?” This Divine stranger has knocked at many doors till His head is wet with dew and His locks with the drops of the night. And now I trust there are some who will rise up and open unto Him so that at the end of the year they may say with Job, “The stranger did not lodge in the street: but I opened my doors to the traveler.” Verily, in so doing, you will not only entertain angels unawares, but you will be receiving the Lord of angels!
The day in which you receive Him shall be the beginning of years to you—it shall be the first of a series of years which, whether they are few or many, shall be, each one, in the best sense happy! I would say a few words, first, about the Stranger taken in and then, about the Stranger making strangers into sons.
I. THE STRANGER TAKEN IN—this is a simile given to us by our Lord, Himself—a royal metaphor presented to us from His own Throne. Note that the passage begins, “I was hungry and you gave Me meat: I was thirsty and you gave Me drink.” These are two good works which prove faith in Jesus and love of Him and, therefore, they are accepted, recorded and rewarded. But it is a distinct and memorable growth when it comes to, “I was a stranger, and you took Me in.” A place to stay is a larger gift than refreshment at the door. It is good, believingly, to do anything for Christ, however small, but it is a much better thing to give entertainment to Jesus within our souls, admitting Him into our minds and hearts.
We have not come to the full of what our Lord has a right to expect of us until we have given from our stores to Him by benefiting His poor and aiding His cause—then we deliberately open the doors of our entire being to Him and install Him in our souls as an honored Guest! We must not be satisfied with giving Him cups of cold water, or morsels of bread, but we must “constrain Him, saying, Abide with us.” Our hearts must be as a Bethany, where, like Mary, Martha and Lazarus, we give our Master a grand welcome! Or as the house of Obededom where the Ark of the Lord may dwell in
peace. Our prayer must be that of Abraham’s, “My Lord, if now I have found favor in Your sight, pass not away, I pray You, from Your servant.”
The most important word of our text is stranger and its light casts a hue of strangeness over the whole passage. Here are three strange things. The first is, that the Lord Jesus should be a Stranger here below. Is it not a strange thing that, “He was in the world, and the world was made by Him,” and yet He was a stranger in it? Yet is it not a whit more strange than true, for when He was born there was no room for Him in the inn? Inns had open doors for ordinary strangers, but not for Him, for He was a greater Stranger than any around Him. It was Bethlehem of David, the seat of the ancient family to which He belonged, but alas, He had become “a Stranger unto His brethren, and an alien unto His mother’s children”! And no door was opened unto Him.
Soon there was no safe room for Him in the village, itself, for Herod the king sought the young Child’s life and He must flee into Egypt, to be a Stranger in a strange land and worse than a stranger—an exile and a fugitive from the land where, by birthright, He was king! On His return and in His public appearing, there was still no room for Him among the mass of the people. He came to His own Israel—to whom Prophets had revealed Him and types had set Him forth— but they would have none of Him. “He was despised and rejected of men.” He was the Man “whom men abhorred,” whom they so much detested that they cried, “Away with Him! Crucify Him! Crucify Him!” Yes, the world so little knew Him that they must necessarily hang up the Lord of Glory on a Cross and put “the Holy One and the Just” to a felon’s death! Jew and Gentile alike conspired to prove how truly He was a stranger—the Jew said, “As for this Fellow, we know not from where He is.” And the Roman asked Him, “Where are You from?”