Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2186
“He shall see His seed.” Isaiah 53:10.
THE first thought suggested by this text is that Jesus is still alive, for to see anything is the act of a living person. Our Lord Jesus died. We know that He died. We are glad that there is overwhelming evidence that, not in appearance, but in fact, He died. His side was pierced. He was given up by the Roman authorities for burial—the imperial authorities were sure of His death. The soldier had made assurance doubly sure by piercing His side. His disciples buried Him. They would not have left Him in the cave if they had felt any doubt about His death. They went in the morning after the Sabbath to embalm Him. They were all persuaded that He had really died. Blessed be the dying Christ! Here our living hopes take their foundation. If He had not died, we must have died forever. The more assured we are of His death, the more assured we feel of the life of all who are in Him!
But, my Brothers and Sisters, He is not dead. Some years ago, someone, wishing to mock our holy faith, brought out a handbill which was plastered everywhere—“Can you trust in a dead man?” Our answer would have been, “No. Nobody can trust in a man who is dead.” But it was known by those who printed the bill that they were misrepresenting our faith. Jesus is no longer dead! He rose again the third day. We have sure and Infallible proofs of it. It is an historical fact, better proved than almost any other which is commonly received as historical, that He did really rise again from the grave. He arose no more to die. He has gone out of the land of tears and death. He has gone into the region of immortality. He sits at the right hand of God, even the Father, and He reigns there forever. We love Him that died, but we rejoice that He who died is not dead, but always lives to make intercession for us!
Dear children of God, do not be afraid that Christ’s work will break down because He is dead. He lives to carry it on. That which He purchased for us by His death, He lives to secure for us by His life. Do not let your faith be a sort of dead faith dealing with a dead man—let it be instinct with life, with warm blood in its veins. Go to your own Christ, your living Christ—make Him your familiar Friend, the Acquaintance of your solitude, the Companion of your pilgrimage. Do not think that there is a great gulf between you, a living man, and Him. The shades of death do not divide you from Him. He lives, He feels, He sympathizes, He looks on, He is ready to help, He will help you even now. You have come in to the place where prayer is known to be made, burdened and troubled and you seek relief. Let the thought that your Lord is a living Friend ease you of your burden. He is still ready to be your strong Helper and to do for you what He did for needy ones in the days of His sojourn here below. I want even you, who do not know Him, to remember that He lives, that you may seek Him tonight—that before another sun shall rise you may find Him and, finding Him, may, yourselves, be found and saved. Do not try to live without the living, loving Friend of sinners! Seek His healing hand, then beg for His company. Get it. Keep it and you shall find that it makes life below like Heaven above! When you live with the living Christ, you will live, indeed! In Him is the Light of God and the Light of God is the life of men!
And now to the text itself, with brevity. I have to observe upon it, first, that Christ’s death produced a posterity. “When you shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed.” Evidently the death of Christ was fruitful of a seed for Him. Secondly, that posterity remains. Our Lord Jesus Christ does not look, today, on emptiness—He is not bereaved of His household, but He still sees His seed. And, thirdly and lastly, that posterity is under His immediate eyes at all times, for, “He shall see His seed.”
I. Well, first of all, THE DEATH OF CHRIST HAS PRODUCED A POSTERITY. We do not read, here, that the Lord Christ has followers. That would be true, but the text prefers to say He has a seed. We read, just now, that the Lord Jesus has disciples. That would be distinctly true, but the text does not so read. It says, “He shall see His seed.” Why His
seed? Why, because everyone who is a true follower or disciple of Christ has been born by a new birth from Him into the position of disciple. There is no knowing Christ except through the new birth. We are naturally sold under sin and we cannot discern the spiritual and real Christ until we have a spirit created within us by the new birth, of which He said, “You must be born again.” This is the gate of entrance into discipleship! None can be written in the roll of followers of Christ unless they are also written in the register of the family of God—“this and that man was born there.” Other men can get disciples for themselves by the means that are usual for such ends, but all the disciples of Christ are produced by miracle. They are all discipled by being newly-created! Jesus, as He looks upon them all, can say, “Behold, I make all things new.” They all come into the world, of which He is King, by being born into it. There is no other way into the first world but by birth—and there is no other way into the second world, wherein dwells righteousness, but by birth— and that birth is strictly connected with the pangs of the Savior’s passion, “when you shall make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed.” See, then, the reason why we have here the remarkable expression—“His seed.”