Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2402
“Butbefore faith came, we were kept under the Law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.” Galatians 3:23.
THIS is a condensed history of the Jews before the Gospel was fully preached to them. Before the clear and plain revelation of the way of salvation—that is to say, before Jesus Christ, Himself, actually appeared among the sons of men—the Hebrew nation was put under the tutorship and governance of the Mosaic Law. So far as salvation was to be obtained by it, that Law was a total failure. It did not make the Jews a holy people—whenever they reached any point of excellence, they soon went back from it, for they were bent on backsliding. Whatever the influence of that blessed Law might be supposed to be, the actual net result was very poor, indeed, for, when Christ came to the chosen people, they were in a most miserable condition, and there was no hope for them at all apart from the promised Messiah. They were shut up to the alternative of receiving Him, or else being put away as a nation for a long time of banishment and exile. This, indeed, they have actually endured through their rejection of the one and only Savior.
I am not going to preach at this time about the Jews, but I want to show you that the history of every soul chosen of God is very like the history of the chosen nation. I have heard of masses of crystal which assume certain forms and, if they are split up, again and again, however small the particles may be, the same crystalline shape remains—the crystals are still of one form! So, if you take a nation as a mass, its spiritual history will be found in each individual and often every experience of that individual will still bear the same shape and outline. I take this text, therefore, as being, I am sure, a picture of myself. Before faith came, I was, “kept under the Law, shut up unto the faith which should afterwards be revealed.” And my impression is that this is the history of all the people of God, more or less. We are not all alike in every respect. We differ greatly in certain particulars, yet the main features of all the children of God will be found to be the same—and their Christian experience will resemble that of the other members of the Lord’s family.
So I shall leave the text as a matter of history of the Jews and use it as the life-story of many here present! Perhaps while I am explaining the experience of the child of God, there may be some, here, who are passing through the darker stages of that experience, who may gather hope from that fact and say, “I see that my spot is the spot of the Lord’s children. Possibly, my soul-trouble, being like theirs, may be producing in me the same result as it produced in them.” And thus, I trust, while I am speaking, some may be led into a clearer light and may even come into the full light of God’s reconciled Countenance!
There are three things that I am going to talk about as the Holy Spirit shall guide me. The first is, the unhappy period—it was long ago with some of us—the unhappy period “before faith came.” Secondly, I shall describe the custody we were in at that time—“we were kept under the Law, shut up.” That is where we were when the spirit of bondage was holding us in captivity “before faith came.” Then, thirdly, I shall have a little to say upon the revelation which set us free—“the faith which should afterwards be revealed.”
I. First, then, I have to say something about THE UNHAPPY PERIOD. “Before faith came.” As I said just now, this period was long ago with some of us, but it was not so far back with others of you, “before faith came.”
We remember, some of us, when we had no idea of faith. We were, in a measure, religiously inclined, and in a certain way, sincere and devout. As a matter of duty, we went to Church, or we went to the Meeting House, and we felt easy in our mind because we had been there. As a matter of duty, we read our Bibles and, sometimes, we felt a pleasure in getting through the chapter—perhaps we had all the more pleasure if the chapter was not a long one! We did not object to family prayer—it may be that we had been used to it from our childhood. The less we had of it, the better we liked, it but still, we kept to it, although it was always only a matter of duty.
As to saving faith, we had not an intelligent idea of it. Our notion was that good people would get to Heaven and that we must do our best to make ourselves fit to be in that holy place. We had a great many shortcomings and failures, no doubt, but in some mysterious way we fancied that all would get rectified and we would be all right if we were only sincere. Many still seem to imagine that it does not matter what persons believe as long as they are sincere, nor what they do so long as they are conscientious in doing it. That was our notion, but as to any idea of there being a faith peculiar to God’s elect, a faith which saves the soul by linking us to the Savior—if anyone had talked to us in that fashion—we would have said, “Yes, that is, no doubt, orthodox teaching—we have heard that Martin Luther taught that doctrine at the time of the Reformation, but what he meant by it, we have not the slightest idea!” We did not know. We had not formed any idea of that which, had we known it, would have been the chief joy of our minds and hearts—in that unhappy period we had no idea of faith.