Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1777
“Then Mordecai told them to answer Esther, “Do not thinkin your heart that you will escape in the king’s palace, more than all the Jews. For if you altogether hold your peace at this time, then shall there enlargement and deliverance arise to the Jews from another place, but you and your father’s house shall be destroyed: and who knows whether you are come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” Esther 4:13,14.
THE appeal of Mordecai in his pressing time of distress was to one single person, namely, to Esther. I believe that I shall do better this morning by making my sermon an address to individuals than by speaking of nations or Churches. I assuredly believe that England has been raised up as a nation and brought to her present unique position that she may be the means of spreading the Gospel throughout all the nations of the earth. I judge that God has blessed the two great nations of the Anglo-Saxon race—England and the United States—and given them pre-eminence in commerce and in liberty on purpose, that in such a time as this they may spread abroad the knowledge of the Glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ. Woe to these nations if they fail to fulfill their solemn obligations! If, being raised up for a purpose, they refuse to perform it, they shall melt away. If, being armed and carrying bows, they turn back in the day of battle, both empires will perish as surely as did the power of Macedon and the dominion of Rome. We ought to be very careful as a people to act upon the rule of righteousness and the principles of peace, for any other conduct is inconsistent with our high calling. We are entrusted with great opportunities—if we do not rightly use them, the New Zealander of Macaulay may yet survey the ruins of this empire city.
“You and your father’s house shall be destroyed,” said Mordecai to Esther, and he says the same to us! Oh, that England may know the day of her visitation! We might properly say of any Christian Church that it has its own appointed place in the purposes of Divine Mercy. If the candle is lit, even though it is set upon a golden candlestick, it is not lit for itself, but that it may give light to all that are in the house. If any Church fails to bless others and so proves unfaithful to her solemn trust, the Lord will take away the candlestick out of its place and leave the unfaithful to mourn in darkness. Remember the Lord’s warning voice, “Go you, now, unto My place which was in Shiloh, where I set My name at the first, and see what I did to it for the wickedness of My people Israel.”
Remember, also, unfaithful Jerusalem, whose house is left unto her desolate because she obeyed not the voice of the Lord. The Church in Rome was once a Church of high commanding influence for good—you know what it has become. Some other churches are on the way, I fear, to the same dreadful end. God grant that none of the Churches with which we are connected as Christian people may ever either apostatize from the faith, or grow lax and worldly, or become indifferent to the Glory of God and the salvation of men! I might thus speak to each Church and say, “Who knows whether you are come to the kingdom for such a time as this?” My Brothers and Sisters, it is a wonderfully easy thing to denounce the faults of a government or of a nation—to complain of this being done, and of that being left undone—and this amusement may only serve to divert our conscience from its more profitable duties at home.
But consider the matter and remember that in a free state we, each one, are part and parcel of the nation—and of the government—and we are, each one, personally responsible, in our measure and degree, for all the acts of the nation. It is an easy matter to tie up our country to the halberdiers, like a criminal, and then to scourge it without mercy, but it would be a far more profitable business to use the whip of criticism upon ourselves! The same is true with regard to a Church. Men are too apt to condemn, in the mass, what they tolerate in themselves as individuals. But why are we so ready to accuse the Churches? Why are we so censorious as to what the Churches do and what the Churches are? Who
make up the Churches? Why, we, each one, by our influence, help to make the Churches good, or bad, or indifferent, as the case may be!
Therefore, I will not waste time in generalities, but I will come to personalities. I will follow Mordecai’s tack and speak only to Esther—that is to say, to each one who may happen to be here to whom God has entrusted opportunity, talent and position. I would urge them to remember that there is a something for each Believer to do, a work which he cannot delegate to another. A task which it is his privilege to be permitted to undertake—which it will be to his solemn disgrace and detriment if he does not execute—but which will be to his eternal glory under God if he is found faithful in it. The Gospel assures us that the great Householder has committed talents “to every man according to his several ability.” Our hope of success, this morning, in our sermon, shall lie in your individualizing yourselves and hearing the voice of the Spirit of God saying to each one, “Who knows whether you are come to the kingdom for such a time as this?”