Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2713
“O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the LORD.” Isaiah 2:5.
We may regard this invitation, first of all, as addressed to the Jews. According to the preceding verses, the Gentiles are to be brought in—“And it shall come to pass in the last days, that the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established in the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many people shall go and say, Come, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And he shall judge among the nations, and shall rebuke many people: and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.” Then, after that, finding the Jews still alienated from God, the Gentiles will turn to them and say, “O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord.”
Now, in a measure, this prophecy has already been fulfilled and the evidence of its fulfillment is before your very eyes at this moment! Multitudes of us Gentiles, whom the Jews only regarded as dogs and outcasts, have been converted to the faith of Christ and adopted into the family of God. So now, my Brothers and Sisters, we ought to have very great tenderness of heart towards the older branch of the family—the seed of Abraham, the house of Jacob, the children of Israel, who, for the most part, still reject our Lord Jesus Christ and remain outside the pale of His Church. A Christian is the last person who ought to ever speak disrespectfully or unkindly of the Jews. We remember that our Lord belonged to that race and that His first Apostles were also of that nation. And we regard that ancient people as the very aristocracy of mankind, tracing back their pedigree to those before whom the mightiest kings might well veil their faces, and bow in lowliest homage, for I reckon that to be descended from Abraham, “the friend of God,” and, “the father of the faithful,” is to have a lineage higher than that of any of the princes of the earth!
Let us pray to God continually for the ingathering of the Jews. They are the original branches of the good olive tree, although for a time they have been cut off because of unbelief. And we, who were only wild olive shoots, have been grafted into their places. Shall we boast and exalt ourselves over them? No, for we also seem to be of the house of Jacob—he was rightly called Jacob, that, is, a supplanter, for he supplanted his brother Esau—and we have supplanted the Jews and have thus become Jacobs to those who are Jacob’s seed. Yet, they are to be grafted again into the olive tree, and it is according to the mind of Christ that we should pray and labor for their conversion, and long for that happy time when they shall be brought in and, with the fullness of the Gentiles, be gathered at the feet of the Messiah whom they have so long rejected.
Having said this, which was necessary to explain the text—for we must never forget the literal meaning of any passage of God’s Word, even when we are fully justified in spiritualizing it—I am now free to speak of the spiritual seed of Israel, for to them, also, this message comes, “O house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” Here is, first, an invitation upon which we will think for a while. And then, when we have thought of it, let us accept it, and let us endeavor now and throughout the rest of our lives, God helping us, to “walk in the light of the Lord.”
I. First, then, HERE IS AN INVITATION. When a man receives an invitation, he naturally enquires from whom it comes. So we observe, first, that this invitation comes to us from those to whom we have ministered aforetime. The literal seed of Jacob had kept God’s lamp alight in the world, and other nations had seen that light—and it afterwards turned out that those very nations which had been enlightened by the Jews, said to them, “Oh house of Jacob, come and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” It should greatly encourage us, dear Friends, whenever we hear any whose conversion we have been seeking, say to us, “Come and let us walk in the light of the Lord.” You who have been blessed in turning sinners to Christ will bear witness with me that there is scarcely any joy, out of Heaven, that equals the delight of hearing a sinner express his willingness to come to Christ and so to “walk in the light of the Lord.”
I distinctly remember the first person who ever told me that I had been the means of her conversion. I remember the little cottage in which she dwelt, for she was a poor woman who resided in an obscure village. Her testimony was to me the sweetest music I had ever heard, with the exception of my Savior’s voice when I, myself, was saved by His Grace. I felt then that I must go on preaching, for this was a seal, set to my commission, for which I blessed the Lord day and night. I can recall at this moment the intense delight I had in listening to that good woman’s cheering words. I do not know that I have had so much joy over any score of converts, since, as I had over that first one! That is a very natural feeling, you know. What a fuss is generally made over the first child in a family. So it is it with our first converts—we rejoice exceedingly over them.