Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2548
“But now thus says the Lord that created you, O Jacob, and He that formed you, O Israel, fear not: for I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name; you are Mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overflowyou: when you walk through the fire, you shall not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon you. For I am the Lord your God, the Holy One of Israel, your Savior: I gave Egypt for your ransom, Ethiopia and Seba for you. Since you were precious in My sight, you have been honorable, and I have loved you: therefore will I give men for you, and people for your life. Butyou have not called upon Me, O Jacob; butyou have been weary of Me, O Israel. You have not brought Me the small cattle of your burnt offerings; neither have you honored Me with your sacrifices. I have not caused you to serve with an offering, nor wearied you with incense. You have bought Me no sweet cane with money, neither have you filled Me with the fat of your sacrifices: but you have made Me to serve with your sins, you have wearied Me with your iniquities. I, even I, am He that blots out your transgressions for My own sake, and will not remember your sins.” Isaiah 43:1-4;22-25.
Beloved Friends, there are many lights in which we can see sin. And our perception of sin very much depends upon the light in which we look at it. Sin is very terrible by the blaze of Sinai, when the mountain of Law and terrors is altogether on a smoke. It is a dreadful thing to look at sin when God speaks in thunder and all the earth trembles before Him. It is an awful thing to see sin by the light of your dying day. More terrible, still, will it be to see it by the light of the Judgment Day. When Abraham rose up early in the morning and looked towards Sodom, it was a lurid light that met his gaze as he saw the guilty cities blazing and smoking up towards Heaven like a vast furnace. To see sin in that light is a solemn thing. But of all the lights that ever fall upon sin, that which makes it, “like itself appear,” is that which falls upon it when it is set in the light of God’s Countenance. To see sin by the light of God’s Love, to read its awful character by the light of the Cross—beholding Christ bleeding and dying—is the way to see sin. Nothing makes us feel sin to be so vile and guilty a thing as when we realize that it was perpetrated against the God of Infinite Love.
I am going to speak at this time mainly concerning God’s own people. They are to be the direct object of my talk, and I want to set their sins in the light of God’s Love to them. I mean, Beloved, your sins and my own. Let us set our sin in the light of God’s eternal Love and if the sight should break us down, so much the better. If it should send us away humbled and ashamed, so much the better. And if it should make us praise eternal love beyond anything we have ever done before, so much the better. My one objective will be to set before you the contrast between God’s action towards His people and His people’s usual action towards Him. He is all Love, but I fear that some of us who love Him from the bottom of our hearts do not always show it in our lives—and we give much cause for Him to set our conduct in direct contrast to His own.
I pray, dear Brothers and Sisters, that your consciences may be wide awake while I am preaching, and that you will not so much listen to me as make heart-searching inquisition into your own spiritual state and your own behavior towards your God. I do not want so much to preach to you, as just to help you while you take the candle and the broom and sweep the house. There may be some piece of silver that you have lost which you will find very speedily by that process. It may be that you will learn to love the Savior better after you have thoroughly searched yourself and seen the contrast between His action towards you and yours towards Him.
I. The first contrast lies in THE CALL. Please open your Bibles at the first verse, and read with me—“I have redeemed you, I have called you by your name.” Now read in the 22nd verse—“But you have not called upon Me, O Jacob.”
We will begin by speaking of God’s call to us. God has had much converse with those of us who are His people. We are not strangers to the sound of His voice and that method of communication from God came forth toward us even before we knew anything about it, for, first, God called us out of nothing. See how He begins this chapter—“Thus says the Lord that created you, O Jacob.” Our creation is entirely due to God. An ungodly man can hardly bless God for having made him, for his end may be terrible. But you and I can bless the day of our birth and praise the Lord that we ever were created to be His sons and His daughters and to enjoy so much, as we already do, of His infinite love and mercy. Blessed be God for our being, because it is followed by our well-being! Blessed be God for our first birth, because we have also experienced a second birth! We praise the Lord that it pleased Him to make us to be His people!