Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1921
“Then will I sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean: from all your filthiness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you.” Ezekiel 36:25.
THIS is one of the opening words of the glorious Covenant of Grace. Ezekiel’s copy of the Covenant is full and clear and deserves to be written in letters of gold and hung up in the best chamber of every Believer’s dwelling This is the Magna Charta of saints—the title deed of the land of our inheritance! Glorious Covenant of Grace, our heart delights in every line of promise wherewith you are enriched!
You perceive that this promise deals with sin and it deals with sin because sin broke the first Covenant and thus ruined us all. Sin must be removed before Covenant relationship can be reestablished. Sin must be purged from the conscience before Covenant communion can be enjoyed. Sin must be abhorred before Covenant union can be consummated. Blessed be God, sin shall be washed away, for thus it is written in the Everlasting Covenant!
Sin is the great plague and pest of our lives, now that we are awakened to discern between good and evil, and now that the new heart and the right spirit have been put within us. Is it not well that this cause of misery should be destroyed? It is sin, my Brothers and Sisters, that keeps us away from God. Should not this barrier be utterly broken down and swept out of the way? It was because of sin that we needed to be reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Should not that atoning death effectually kill sin? Sin has done all the mischief. At first it withered Paradise and sowed the earth with thorns and thistles. And ever since it has brought forth the same painful crop. Still it saps our strength; it destroys our comfort; it robs us of usefulness—it is the foe of all good—it is all evils in one. O curse of curses, fountain of Hell and father of the devil, you unutterably horrible monster, Sin! Shall we not be doubly blessed when we are rid of you? We certainly should never fear death if we had no sin—neither need we even fear the devil, himself, for, if there were no traitor within the city, Mansoul might laugh to scorn all the attacks of her enemies outside.
Sin, to the awakened sinner, is his burden, his misery, his horror. It is a nightmare which haunts him! He can never escape from it. Like David, he cries, “My sin is ever before me.” Even when sin is forgiven, the memory of it often makes a man go softly all his days. We could bear disease if we were cured of sin. We could bear the world’s troubles if there were not these spiritual sorrows. We could be content to pine in prison on bread and water all the rest of our natural lives if we could be clear from sin. Yes, I guarantee you that the darkest dungeon would be a bright paradise to a Believer, if there he could be exempt from the temptation, from the remembrance and from the presence of sin! It is, therefore, a very blessed thought on the part of our God to make the Covenant to bear so much upon our sin and our sinfulness—and especially to make it open with this unconditional promise of infinite love—“Then will I sprinkle clean water on you and you shall be clean: from all your filthiness and from all your idols, I will cleanse you.” As the laver at the Tabernacle door, so stands this promise at the entrance of the Covenant. Let us wash and be clean.
I. Our first remark at this time shall be that GOD BEGINS TO DEAL WITH HIS PEOPLE WHILE THEY ARE YET IN SIN. The text evidently implies this. He does not wait until they are clean before He bestows His love and pity upon them. He does not wait till they have saved themselves and then comes to them with a nominal salvation. He does not make promises of purification to them upon condition that they cleanse themselves, but He comes to them according to the riches of His Grace, even when they are dead in trespasses and sins! He finds them in all their defilement, rebellion and iniquity—and He deals with them just as they are. Jesus saves sinners! God’s love comes to those who in no degree merit it. His Grace stoops to the ruin of the Fall and lifts us up from it.
These are very simple words, you say, but there are those here to whom these plain sentences will sound like the ringing of the silver trumpets of jubilee! I know them, for I once was one of them—they are a people sighing because of their defilement which they mourn over, but cannot remove. Dear Hearts, you have not to look for any good in yourselves when you come to God—you are to come just as you are. However filthy, however enslaved by idols you may have been, however much your own heart condemns you, you are to come to Jesus on terms, not of merit, but of Grace! And you are to approach Him as sinners, without any further qualification. Christ is a Savior who came to save His people from their sins. And His salvation, therefore, begins with them while they are yet in their sins. He does not wait till He spies out some sound spot in the patient, but when he is covered all over with leprosy from head to foot—and there is not one sound speck on him as big as the point of a pin—then it is that the Great Physician comes and makes the leprous one to be clean!