Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1811
“Those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.” 1 Samuel 2:30.
OUR chickens generally come home to roost. Our thoughts of other men become other men’s thoughts of us. According as we measure out to our fellows, so do they measure back into our bosoms, for good or for evil. So especially, in reference to the Lord, Himself, the God of Justice sooner or later causes a man to reap his own sowing and gather his own scattering. See how the Lord keeps touch with His friends and foes and pays them in their own coin—“Those who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly esteemed.” A man’s life is often its own echo. He sinned and he suffered after the likeness of his sin—you may see the sin in the punishment—as you see, today the footprint of the Egyptian dog in the brick which he trod upon when it was yet soft clay. The man sinned again, for it is the nature of sin to repeat itself and grow into habit and, behold, another sorrow was born in the likeness of that other sin! Thus the man lived in the present and formed his future life by one and the same act. He spoke and the echoes spoke to him in the years following. So does life repeat itself. So does the seed develop the flower and the flower again produce the seed. It is an endless chain, for the thing that has been, is the thing which shall be! A man may live to see a grim procession of all his old sins marching past him, robed in the sackcloth and ashes wherein Justice dooms them to be arrayed.
So is it also with our joys. God gives us joy after the similitude of our service. Godly Fear fills her garden with many flowers and her house with music of different kinds. And the Lord appoints to her that she shall live of her ministry and that her oxen shall eat of the good corn which they tread out for others. When we have been faithful to God, He is always faithful to us and sends us a full reward. If we walk contrary to Him, He will walk contrary to us. But if we delight ourselves in Him, He will delight Himself in us to do us good. There is goodwill to men of good will, and evil shall slay those whose lives are evil.
If you wish to see this exemplified in Scripture, how many instances rise before you! Enoch walks with God because God pleases him and then we find that he pleases God! Noah obediently rests the issues of his life upon the Truth of God and God gives him rest. Abraham was famous for trusting God and it is wonderful how God trusted him! The Lord seemed to put His honor as well as His oracles into the guardianship and custody of Abraham. “Shall I,” says God, “hide this thing that I will do from Abraham, my friend?” Oh, no! God spills His heart out to Abraham, for Abraham has spilled out his heart to God! See, on the other hand, Jacob. He is a good man and true—and I do not like to speak of the failings of the faithful. There is a Ham-like propensity in some, to point out the nakedness of God’s saints, and it is much better to go backward and cover them with the garment of love. Yet we cannot help seeing that Jacob was not so in harmony with God as he should have been and, therefore, his life lacked the majestic serenity which attended Abraham’s.
He begins life by bargaining and by cheating his brother and all his life he was bargained with and cheated beyond his heart’s content. His cunning came home to him—what he was to Esau, Laban was to him. Yet, as he wrestled with the Angel in mighty prayer, the Lord gave him the wrestler’s name of honor. And as he trusted in the Lord, even in his saddest estate, the Lord preserved him to the end. As an instance on the other side, take Moses. He would not be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter, but gave up all prospect of a kingdom in Egypt. But what did he get? He became a greater king than any Pharaoh! He led, through the wilderness, a nation compared with which the Egyptians are mere barbarians! He had all the rank and dignity that could fall to the greatest ruler of his age or of any other age—and his honor after death is, to this day, infinitely beyond that of all the Pharaohs rolled into one. Moses is an imperial name— among them that are born of woman, whose fame is greater? He is no loser—he honored God and he was honored.
Take David, on the other side, and see how his transgressions came home to him. I will not speak of the better character of David, just now, though that would abundantly illustrate how God repays His faithful ones. But, when David sinned, the sorrows that embittered the latter end of his life were the reflection of his own offenses. One is struck with the family likeness between David’s sins and sorrows. Remember the names of Absalom and Adonijah and you cannot forget the lust and the falsehood of him to whom these young men were both sons and punishments.
Very striking as an instance of the retaliation of Providence is the case of Adonibezek. When they cut off his thumbs and his big toes, so that he might lose all power to draw the bowstring and all power, indeed, to go to battle at all because he could not stand safely in the conflict, he confessed that 40 kings to whom he had done the same thing had picked up crumbs under his table. It was his own remark that, as he had done, God had requited him. Samuel, when he smote Agag, told him that, as his sword had made women childless, so should the sword of the Lord, that day, make his mother childless by slaying him. Most memorable of all is the instance of Haman and his gallows, 50 cubits high. See how he swings on it! He built the gallows for Mordecai. Ah, no—he built it for himself!