Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1862
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, September 27th, 1885, by, the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
“And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.” John 1:14.
“For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.” John 1: 17.
THERE WAS A TIME when God freely communed with men. The voice of the Lord God was heard walking in the garden in the cool of the day. With unfallen Adam the great God dwelt in sweet and intimate fellowship; but sin came and not only destroyed the garden, but destroyed the intercourse of God with His creature man. A great gulf opened between man as evil, and God as infinitely pure; and had it not been for the amazing goodness of the most High, we must all of us forever have been banished from His presence, and from the glory of His power. The Lord God in infinite love resolved that He Himself would bridge the distance, and would again dwell with man; and in token of this He made Himself manifest to His chosen nation Israel when they were in the wilderness. He was pleased to dwell in type and symbol among His people, in the very center and heart of their camp. Do you see yonder tent with its curtains of goats’ hair in the center of the canvas city? You cannot see within it; but it was all glorious within with precious wood, and pure gold, and tapestry of many colors. Within its most sacred shrine shone forth a bright light between the wings of cherubim, which light was the symbol of the presence of the Lord. But if you cannot see within, yet you can see above the sacred tent a cloud, which arises from the top of the Holy of Holies, and then expands like a vast tree so as to cover all the host, and protect the chosen of God from the intense heat of the sun, so apt to make the traveler faint when passing over the burning sand. If you will wait till the sun is down, that same cloud will become Alimonies, and light up the whole camp. Thus it was both shade and light; and by its means was enjoyed that safety which was afterwards set forth in the promise, “The sun shall not smite thee by day, nor the moon by night.” Over all the glory was a defense and a comfort. The Lord dealt not so with any nation, save only His people Israel, of whom He said, “I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
The day of the type is over; we see no more a nation secluded from all others and made to be as “the church in the wilderness.” God doth not now confine His abode to one people; for “The God of the whole earth shall he be called.” There is now no spot on earth where God dwells in preference to another. Did not our Lord say, at the well of Sychar, “Woman, believe me, the hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.” “But … the true worshipers shall worship the Father it spirit and in truth”? Wherever true hearts seek the Lord, He is found of them. He is as much present on the lone mountain’s side as in the aisles of yonder above, or in the galleries of this tabernacle. “Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet, Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool; what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?”
Yet there is a true house of, a real temple of the infinite, a living abode of the Godhead. The epistle to the Hebrews speaks of “the true tabernacle, which the Lord pitched, and not man.” There is still a trysting-place where God doth still meet with man, and hold fellowship with him. That place is the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, “in whom dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. “The manhood of Christ is become to us the anti-type of that tent in the center of the camp. God is in Christ Jesus; Christ Jesus is God; and in His blessed person God dwells in the midst of us as in a tent; for such is the force of the original in our text. “The Word was made flesh, and tabernacled, or tented, among us.” That is to say, in Christ Jesus the Lord dwelt among men, as God of old dwelt in His sanctuary in the midst of the tribes of Israel. This is very delightful and hopeful for us: the Lord God doth dwell among us through the incarnation of His Son.
But the substance far excels the shadow; for in the wilderness the Lord only dwelt in the abode of man, but now His approach to us is closer, for He dwells in the flesh of man. “The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.” Note that word “flesh.” It doth not say, “The Word was made man”: it means that, but the use of the word “flesh brings the Lord Jesus still closer to us, and shows that He took on Him the very nature and substance of manhood: He did not merely assume the name and notion, and appearance, of manhood, but the reality: the weakness, the suffering, the mortality of our manhood He actually took into union with Himself. He was no phantom, or apparition, but He had a human body and a human soul. “The Word was made flesh.” When the Lord became bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh, His incarnation in a human body brought Him far nearer to man than when He only abode within curtains, and occupied a tent in the midst of Israel.