Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2391
“I the LORD keep it. I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” Isaiah 27:3.
MY discourse this evening can hardly be called a sermon. It will be just a simple talk about a few experimental Truths of God, but I trust that it will be useful to some of the Lord’s people.
The text follows a terrible verse in which the Lord’s enemies are threatened with “His sore and great and strong sword.” But even when God has the most anger against His adversaries, He is still full of love for His people. The Church of God is here compared to a vineyard. The vine is a tender plant, needing continual care, and if the vineyard is not well fenced and guarded, the enemies of the vine are sure to get in and destroy it. The Church is called “a vineyard of red wine,” because the red grape happened to be the best kind grown in Palestine and, in like manner, God’s Church is, to Him, the best of the best, the excellent of the earth, in whom is all His delight! But what is true of the whole Church is also true of every member—the same God who keeps the vineyard also protects every vine, no, not only so, but His care extends to every little branch, to every spreading leaf and to every clinging tendril of that vine which He undertakes to keep night and day. Well did Toplady sing—
“Upon my leaf, when parched with heat,
Refreshing de w shall drop.
The plant which Your right hand has set,
Shall never be rooted up.
Each moment watered by Your care,
And fenced with power Divine,
Fruit to eternal life shall bear
The feeblest branch of Thine.” Our text mentions two much-needed mercies and upon each of these I will speak briefly. We find in the text, first, continual keeping. And then, secondly, continual watering. In these gracious Words of the Lord, we have a promise that we shall be kept from foes without and from foes within. God is both a wall and a well to His people—a wall to guard them from their adversaries—and a well to supply all their needs out of His ever living, over-flowing fullness.
I. First, then, concerning the CONTINUAL KEEPING which the Lord promises to His vineyard—“I, the Lord, keep it…lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day.” I will talk of that keeping in an experimental way, putting the subject before you in the form of questions which may be applied either to the Church as a whole, or to each individual Believer.
The first will be, “Do I need keeping? I trust I have been called by God’s Grace, that I have been washed in Jesus’ blood and that I have been made one of the Lord’s children—do I need keeping?” Ah, if I know anything of myself, I shall be compelled to answer that I do, for my foes are innumerable and I, like the vine, am subject to all sorts of perils and dangers! Brothers and Sisters there is the arch-enemy—how he longs to lay the axe to the roots of God’s vines! If we were in his power, you and I would not have a grain of faith or a spark of love left! He is desirous to have us, not only that he may sift us as wheat, but that he may burn us as chaff! When we think of his malice and cunning, we may well pray, “Deliver us not over unto the will of our enemy.” When God’s people have met Satan in a hand-to-hand conflict, they have always found it a stern and difficult struggle, for he is ferocious, malicious and powerful—and he comes
against us, not only to worry us—but seeking whom he may devour! We need keeping, then, if it were only because of that one adversary who would make a speedy end of us if we were left in his grip even for an hour!
Like the vine, too, we have not only to dread him who would cut us down, but there is a wild boar of the woods that would gladly tear us up by the roots! I mean that wild boar of unbelief that is constantly prowling around us. How does it seek with its sharp tusks to tear our vines and fig trees! You know, dear Friends, how unbelief takes away your comforts, how it destroys your strength and how it mars your usefulness. Perhaps some of you, at times, hardly know whether you are the Lord’s people or whether you are not His. Our friend, who addressed us last ordinance Sabbath, said that God’s people ought never to have doubts and fears. I quite admit that they ought not to have them—but that they really do have them is quite as certain! I like that good old hymn of Dr. Watts and sing it as I find it—
“When I can read my title clear
To mansions in the skies
I bid farewell to every fear
And wipe my weeping eyes.”
1 am afraid, dear Brothers and Sisters, you and I cannot travel the same road if you are always confident and if you never have reason to look back and cry because you have lost your evidences. This I know—there are seasons with me when I do not doubt my Lord and Master, but I do doubt my interest in Him—and I have to come to Him just as I came at first, as an empty-handed sinner and accept His Grace as He freely presents it. Yes, if the Lord did not keep us, the wild boar of unbelief would soon tear us to pieces, and we would have no Grace left, but would become useless forever!