Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2693
“He offered up Himself.” Hebrews 7:27.
I DO not know when I have ever felt a more decided conflict of emotions in my own heart than I do just now. Happy is the man who has such a message as that in my text to deliver to his fellow men—but burdened is the man who feels that the message is far too great for his lips, or, indeed, for any human tongue to convey. To be allowed to announce to men that our Lord Jesus Christ “offered up Himself on their behalf is, indeed, an errand which angels might envy, but the theme is too great for any human being to compass. I comfort myself with the reflection that it does not require any excellence of speech to tell it—the excellence lies in the Truth itself. And if men’s minds are in a right condition—if they are conscious of their lost state and they really desire to know what Christ has done to save them from it—they will need no garnishing or tawdry fripperies of human eloquence. All they will need will be to hear, as plainly and as earnestly as it can be spoken, the message of reconciliation which God has sent through Jesus Christ, His Son. Yet I cannot help feeling that the meaning of my text is so weighty that it may break the backs of the words that attempt to bring it to us. The axles of my human medium of conveyance are ready to snap when freighted with such a load of Infinite Love and Wisdom as comes to us in my short, full text—“He offered up Himself.”
But, to begin, I would remind you, dear Friends, that the idea of a sacrifice for sin is, in some sense or other, found in almost all human religions. I believe that some of the most ignorant tribes of Africa, and also Unitarians, have been found without the doctrine of an atoning sacrifice in their religion, but I do not think there are any other persons so benighted as these to be found anywhere. Go where you may, you will discover that as soon as ever people begin to say, “God,” the next thing they say is, “sacrifice.” And though their idea of God is often distorted and their idea of sacrifice is also distorted, yet both ideas are there. Man, however degraded, cannot altogether forget that there is a God and then, shrinking back from the awful majesty of the Divine holiness, he at least hopes that there is a sacrifice by which his sins may be put away. He feels that there must be one if he is ever to be brought into connection with God and so, in some form or other, the notion of sacrifice crops up wherever there is any religion at all. It may be in the ghastly form of human sacrifice, which is a hideous misinterpretation which has crept in under the darkness and gloom of heathenism or false teaching. Or it may appear in the continued sacrifice of bulls, or lambs, or other victims, but, somehow or other, the idea is there. Man seems to know, in his inmost nature, that he must bring a sacrifice if he would appear before God, and this is, by no means, an error on his part. However erroneous may be the frmit takes, in its essence there is truth in it.
Brothers and Sisters, did you ever know this Truth of God in your own souls? Has not the conviction come to you, under a sense of sin, as an absolute certainty, that sin must be punished? I will not say that you have thought so when you have imagined yourself to be all right, or, at least, to be pretty nearly clear of anything wrong. No, but when conscience has been awakened and has begun to speak in the quiet night watches, in times of sickness, or when you have seemed to be on the brink of eternity, I ask you, has there not come the thought that sin would surely be visited with punishment?
That—
“Dread of something after death”
of which the world’s poet speaks, is an indication of belief in the Truth of God which is most sure, that the Judge of all the earth will not suffer His Laws to be trampled on with impunity, but that He will certainly punish iniquity, transgression and sin.
Then there has also come to your mind, I feel sure—at least I remember well when it came to mine—the thought that God could not pardon me without punishing my sin—or that, if He did, His moral government of the whole universe would be weakened. If He permitted the guilty to enjoy the same rewards as the righteous received, where would be His justice? An amnesty to the guilty would, practically, be an abolition of His Law—it would be tantamount to saying, “It does not matter how you live, all will come right at last.” There are some who teach that doctrine, nowadays, and, to state it in plain English, this is the doctrine that they teach—that we may rebel against God, we may blaspheme God, we may despise God—we may cheat, we may lie, we may murder, and so on—but it shall be just as well with us one day as it will be with the best man that lives! Does not the least atom of common morality that remains in man compel him to shrink back from teaching so intolerable as that? It cannot be right! We need not argue about the matter, it is impossible that it should be so, for human society would go to pieces under such an arrangement as that and the Judge of all the earth would have to abdicate His Throne before this could be! Many years ago, I put into words for myself, when I was under a sense of sin, a feeling which I believe others must have had under similar circumstances. I said, “If God does not punish me for my sin, He ought to do so.” I felt that if He did not condemn me for my sin, my conscience would condemn Him and that if He allowed me to go unpunished when I was guilty, in some way or other He would cease to be a just God and would no longer be worthy of the respect of my own conscience.