Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2720
“He will rest in His love.” Zephaniah 3:17.
ONE of our sweetest hymns commences with this verse —
“How firm a foundation, you saints of the Lord, Is laid for your faith in His excellent Word! What more can He say than to you He has said, You who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?” Well might the poet have put that question if he had risen up from reading this third chapter of the prophecy of Zephaniah! O people of God, open your ears and your hearts while Jehovah thus speaks to you by the mouth of His ancient Prophet, “Sing, O daughter of Zion; shout, O Israel; be glad and rejoice with all the heart, O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away your judgments, He has cast out your enemy: the King of Israel, even the Lord, is in the midst of you: you shall not see evil anymore. In that day it shall be said to Jerusalem, Fear you not: and to Zion, Let not your hands be slack. The Lord your God in the midst of you is mighty; He will save, He will rejoice over you with joy; He will rest in His love, He will joy over you with singing.” The words are very simple, but the promises they convey are so weighty that the verses roll along like the triumphant periods of a jubilant poem! The Truth of God, even when told in the simplest words, is very much akin to the loftiest poetry and I might, without the slightest hesitation, declare that there never was any poem composed by human intellect which could match for a moment, in the sweetness of its notes, the succession of precious promises which God here proclaims in the ears of His chosen ones!
We cannot, on the present occasion, enter into the wondrous depths of the promises here revealed. We would need, indeed, a long period of time before we would be able to explain them and, possibly, the whole of life will scarcely be sufficient for us to fully realize these great Truths of God in our own experience. We will, therefore, at once turn to the few words I have chosen as my text, “He will rest in His love,” and we shall consider these words as referring to the Lord Jesus Christ and as relating to His Divine and matchless love which He has manifested toward His people in the wondrous works of Grace which He has accomplished for them and in them.
“He will rest in His love.” This short sentence is capable of several interpretations and each view we take of it has in it something extremely delightful.
I. Here is, first of all, THE DOCTRINE THAT CHRIST WILL ALWAYS STAY FAITHFUL TO THOSE UPON WHOM HE HAS SET HIS HEART’S AFFECTION.
The love of human beings is a fitful and flickering flame. It may be set, for a season, with apparent constancy upon a certain object, but you can never tell how long it will remain steadfast. However firm, however true and however fervent it may seem to be—and even may reallybe—yet trust it not so implicitly as to come under that ancient sentence, “Cursed is the man who trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm, and whose heart departs from the Lord.” Trust not too much to any friend whom you may have! Put not all your confidence in any man, for the best of men are but men at the best, and the firmest of men are subject to the infirmities and the frailties of their race!
But God’s love is no flickering flame! It does not flare up for a little while, like the crackling of thorns under a pot, and then die out in darkness. It is not to be set forth by the image of a fool’s mirth which lasts but for a little season. It begins, it waxes vehement, it diminishes not, but it grows from strength to strength till what seemed at first to be but a single spark, becomes a mighty flame—and what was a flame becomes like the beacon lights of war, and what was but as a beacon becomes as the sun itself, in the fierceness of its heat and in the majesty of its goings!
There are some who teach that Christ’s love may be set upon a man and yet that it may afterwards be removed from him. Where, then, remains the comfort of God’s people if their teaching is true? But, thank God, it is not true, for the promise of the text is that Jesus “will rest in His love.” If their doctrine is according to the Scriptures, where is the value of Christ’s affection at all? In what respects can He be said to stick closer than a brother? How can it be true that many waters cannot quench His love, neither can the floods drown it? If these men are right, must not the Apostle Paul have been wrong when he declared that he was persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in the whole of creation should ever be able to separate the saints from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus their Lord? Shall we imagine that the Apostle was mistaken and suppose that this erroneous teaching is the Truth of God? Shall we turn away from the positive testimony of Holy Scripture and believe the lies of men in its place, especially when that Scripture is itself so full of consolation to God’s people that if it can ever be proved to be untrue, they may put their hands upon their loins in agony of woe, and go to their graves full of misery and despair?