Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2225
“Arise you, and depart; for this is not your rest: because it is polluted, it shall destroy you, even with a sore destruction.” Micah 2:10.
THERE is a miserable tendency in men to cling to things that are seen. Though that which we behold is only temporal and shadowy, lacking any true substance or permanence—though the things round about us can only endure for a little while and then will vanish away—yet we give our hearts to them and are ensnared by their false glitter and glamour. Like the poor birds that light on birdlime and cannot get away, we are entangled by the things of time and sense, instead of rising, as on eagle wings, to a higher sphere. Forgetting that the soul of man cannot be satisfied with the poor baubles of earth, nor his yearning heart filled with the fleeting joys of time, we often put away from us the things that are unseen and eternal. One of the most necessary words for us to hear at such a time is this, “Arise you, and depart; for this is not your rest.”
Suppose that the children of Israel, when they came out of Egypt and were on the way to Canaan, instead of living in tents and moving as the fiery cloudy pillar guided them, had taken it into their heads to build houses and cities and temples wherever they stopped—as if they were to stop in the wilderness forever? Would they not have missed much by such a plan? In the wilderness, not only would all who came out of Egypt have perished, but their children and their children’s children would also have found graves in the desert, nor ever have seen the goodly land promised to their fathers. On the contrary, as you know, they lived in their canvas cities and when the cloud moved, every tent was struck, and they began the march. When the cloud halted, they rested under canvas, never knowing how long they would continue in any one place, always expecting that they would be on the move, again, seeing that they had not yet come to the land that flowed with milk and honey. They well knew that in the wilderness was no abiding place for them, for the sand which was all around them yielded them no meat—and if their food had not dropped from above, they would have had no supply from the barren desert. They were strangers and pilgrims with God—and sojourners—as were their fathers.
Now, our sad tendency is to be building cities, digging out foundations, laying courses of brick and saying, “Here I am going to rest. I have journeyed long enough and now I have come to a place where I can say, ‘Soul, you have much goods laid up for many years. Take your ease—eat, drink and be merry.’” It is a sorry business when the heirs of Heaven wish to dwell in the wilderness and when men who have an inheritance on the other side of Jordan forget the land that God has given them by Covenant and seek to enjoy their portion in this life! We do not wonder that the ungodly do so— they may well make as much as they can of their little enjoyment here, for, unless they repent of their evil ways, that is all that they will ever have! I do not wonder that such as have their lot in this life should seek after carnal merriment, fleshly pleasures and the giddy dance. What more do they have? It is not astonishing to see the swine greedy at the trough, pushing one another aside as they struggle to get their mash. But when those who have been redeemed with a strong hand and an outstretched arm sink into worldly conformity, worse, because more deadening, than the slavery of Egypt, then, indeed, we see the sad havoc sin can work and mourn because of it.
Unawakened men have not a thought above these minor things and yet, if they could for once shake off the spell that has lulled to sleep their immortal spirits and turned them into comrades of the brutes, they would begin to feel that this is not their rest and would hear a voice saying to them, “Arise you, and depart.” Perhaps they would even answer, “I will arise and go to my Father. I will leave the husks with which I gladly would have filled myself, and I will eat of the bread,
whereof in my Father’s house there is enough and to spare.” But the trumpet call to “arise” is not only needed by prodigals in the far country! Careless professors who once ran well, but have been hindered, and who now rest content with the world, as if they were to stay here forever, require to be awakened from their slumber. “Awake you that sleep, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give you light.” God means His Church to be a separated people on the earth. Our citizenship is in Heaven, yet too many of us and, perhaps, all of us, at times, fall into the ways of the unregenerate and have fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness—even if we, ourselves, do not do them. Because of this slothful and carnal tendency, even in the best of us, it is continually necessary that the awakening call should come, “Arise you, and depart; for this is not your rest.”