Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2799
“Bring My sons from far, and My daughters from the ends of the earth.” Isaiah 43:6.
IF YOU will look at the connection of these words, you will see that they were spoken with the view of encouraging the Church—“Fear not: for I am with you: I will bring your seed from the East, and gather you from the West; I will say to the North, Give up; and to the South, keep not back: bring My sons from far, and My daughters from the ends of the earth.” The Lord loves His Church and He loves to see her full of courage and confidence, but, sometimes, her ministers appear to labor in vain and to spend their strength for nothing. The services in connection with the various agencies of the Church appear to be like plowing upon a rock. The bread is cast upon the waters, according to the Lord’s command, but it is not found again even after many days have passed away. At such times the Church begins to tremble—she is full of fear. She cannot give up her mission which is the enlightenment of the world, but she is very apt to continue in it with a faint and feeble heart and, consequently, to do what she is doing as a matter of mere routine, with very little zeal, or love, or hope, or joy.
Now, Beloved, the Lord would not have it so. He intends that His cause and Kingdom shall prosper in the world. It is written concerning the Messiah, “He shall not fail nor be discouraged, till He has set judgment in the earth: and the isles shall wait for His Law”—and He would not have His people to be discouraged! Does not the farmer, after sowing his seed, wait a long while for the precious fruits of the earth? And for such fruits as those which are to be reaped by us we may well be content to wait, not merely for weeks, or for months, but for centuries! We need not be in such a hurry as we often are. God has great leisure. He lives not merely in time, He inhabits eternity. A thousand years are to Him but as one day, so He can afford to wait. We are only children and we feel that we must have something done at once, or we may be dead and gone and never see it—but Jehovah is always the same and of His years there is no end, so He bids us cease to judge by the appearances after a few days or years of toil for Him and to believe in the grandeur to be revealed in the ages yet to be, for, before the end of the age, this prophecy must be fulfilled and Christ shall “set judgment in the earth, and the isles shall wait for His Law.”
My subject, on this occasion, is intended to cheer up the workers for Christ, to encourage those who are seeking to serve the Lord by giving them full assurance that the Lord has a people whom He means to save, that they will be saved, are being saved, now, and that it becomes us to see to it that we help—each one of us according to his or her own measure—in this glorious work.
I. The first Truth of God that I see in the text is that THE LORD HAS CHILDREN FAR AWAY—“Bring My sons from far, and My daughters from the ends of the earth.”
Some of them are far away in the matter of locality. They are not dwelling where the Gospel is preached. They are nowhere near to the happy shores where the message of salvation is constantly being proclaimed. Some of them are where roads have not as yet been made and the commerce of civilization has not come. I doubt not that, in dark Africa, the Lord Jesus has multitudes of those who are redeemed with His precious blood—those who are elect according to the foreknowledge of God—whom He is determined to save. And in those lands of which Mr. Hudson Taylor spoke to us the other night—in Tibet, in Manchuria, in Tartary—Christ has a people whom He has ordained unto eternal life and whom
He means to bring unto Himself. In all nations and among all kindreds, people and tongues, there is a remnant according to the election of Grace upon whom the eyes of God are especially set, and of whom He has declared, in His eternal purpose, “They shall be Mine in that day when I make up My jewels.” It should be a great encouragement to every missionary of the Cross to know that the Lord has a people everywhere. He said to Paul, concerning Corinth, “I have much people in this city” and that assurance encouraged the Apostle to preach the Word there. We can never tell where the Lord has much people, but this we do know—our commission runs thus, “Go you into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature”—and one reason for this command is because the Lord has many of His sons and daughters who are far off as a matter of locality.
But we know that He also has many sons and daughters who are far off in a worse sense than this—for they are far off as to character—as opposed to God as darkness is to light! Alas, alas, that it should be so! Yet so it is, for the whole race of mankind has gone astray. But God has His chosen people among the fallen race. Some of the human race have gone further astray than the rest by gross criminality, or by long-continued habits of abominable filthiness, yet even among those who are reckoned to be beyond the pale of decent society, among those who have gone the full length of their tether and who could not go any further in sin if they were to try to do so—the Lord still has sons and daughters whom, in due time, He intends to bring to Himself and to save! It is a great joy to us, when we think of the fallen masses of London, to know that many a daughter of our Lord shall be washed and cleansed though now impure, unhallowed, and vile. It is a comfort to us to think that many a son of God shall yet be redeemed by power, having already been redeemed by price, and shall be brought to Jesus’ feet, though now a slave to sin and an ardent lover of everything that is evil! Oh, yes, the Lord has a chosen people whom He means to fetch out of the worst dens and kennels of London—a people whom He intends to allure away from the frivolities of fashion, the blasphemies of infidelity and the degradations of superstition! He will effectually call them out from all their old associations, for He has chosen them and Christ has redeemed them—and He will, in this sense, bring His sons from far and His daughters from the ends of the earth!