Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2456
“These are they which follow the Lamb wherever He goes.” Revelation 14:4.
YOU, dear Friends who belong to the Tabernacle, are well acquainted with our venerable friend, George Rogers. It was a great joy to me to find him alive when I came home from the Continent. He said that he must keep on living till he had seen me once more, and then he hoped that he should go Home. That was a month ago, but yesterday I saw him again and he seemed to be greatly revived and refreshed. He has attained an extremely advanced age and it is only natural that he should soon go to his rest and reward. He remarked to me, yesterday, that he had bid farewell to the world, entirely, and he did not wish to renew the acquaintance! He did not know why he should linger here any longer, for everything was finished and he was ready to depart. And then he said to me, in his cheery way, “I wonder whether I shall see that new Baptist Chapel completed.” You know that he is not a Baptist, but a Congregationalist, yet he has been with us so many years that we always claim him!
He added, “When it is built, I hope they will send a regular old-fashioned Baptist to preach in it.” I asked him, “What sort of old-fashioned Baptist do you mean?” “Why,” he replied, “the oldest-fashioned Baptist was the man that cried, ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world.’ That is the old-fashioned sort of Baptist I mean—John the Baptist—and that is the sort I hope will come there.” “Yes,” I said, “and I wish that was the sort of preacher who would go everywhere, for that is the Truth of God which still needs to be preached.” “Ah, yes,” said Mr. Rogers, “there is nothing like the doctrine of the Atoning Sacrifice! It is the doctrine for this world and it is the doctrine for the next.” “Do you not think,” he said, “that this passage would make you a good text for tomorrow, ‘These are they which follow the Lamb wherever He goes’?” “Yes,” I answered, “that will make me a good text. May God send me the sermon!”
That is why I have taken this text—it really comes to you from that venerable man who is so far advanced in years and so close to the border of the eternal state. He feels that the old-fashioned Baptist doctrine that ought to be continually preached is this, “Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world,” and that the best character that can be ascribed to Christians in any age is this, “These are they which follow the Lamb wherever He goes.” Upon that theme I am now going to speak to you as the Holy Spirit shall enable me.
I. And, first, I would make this observation, that THIS IS CHARACTERISTIC OF SAINTS—“These are they which follow the Lamb wherever He goes.” This has always been the way of the saints. This is the way the holy Prophets went, the way of the martyrs, the way of the reformers and confessors, the way of all who shall meet above around the Throne of God and of the Lamb.
Begin at the beginning. When do you see Abel at his best? It is when he brings of the firstlings of his flock and stands beside the altar of sacrifice whereon lies the God-accepted lamb! The first of the martyrs is a martyr to the doctrine of Sacrifice by Blood! He, being dead, yet speaks, bearing his testimony that there is no way of access to God except by the sacrifice of a lamb.
Pass on to Abraham. What is one of the most memorable sayings of the father of the faithful? “My son, God will provide Himself a lamb for a burnt offering.” Did not Abraham, then, by faith, see Christ’s day? Yes, he saw it afar off and was glad. He knew that the great Jehovah-Jireh would provide a wondrous Substitute who would die in the place of His people, even as the ram took the place of Isaac. And Abraham saw in his own offering of his son whom he so dearly loved, a faint image of that greater Offering of the Eternal Father when He would give His only-begotten and well-beloved Son to die that His people might live.
Again I say that it is always characteristic of God’s people that they follow the Lamb, for look at Israel in Egypt. They are slaves at the brick kilns. They are building treasure cities and pyramids, but they cannot stir out of Egypt until, first of all, they have slain and eaten the paschal lamb and sprinkled his blood upon their dwelling places. Then they go out singing the song of Moses, the servant of God and of the Lamb! All through their marching in the wilderness there was the offering of the morning lamb and the evening lamb. The people of God were known by their trust in a great Sacrifice, that Sacrifice being prefigured by “the blood of bulls and of goats, and the sprinkling of the ashes of an heifer,” and especially by the Passover lamb and the morning and the evening lamb.
I do not know any clearer characteristic of the saints throughout the ages that are past than this, “These are they which follow the Lamb.” Think of the Prophet Isaiah and as you remember him and his prophecy, does not the thought of the Lamb of God rise up to your mind at once? “He is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opens not His mouth.”