Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2876
“His glory is great in Your salvation: honor and majesty have You laid upon Him.” Psalm 21:5.
I FEEL quite sure that David here sings first concerning himself and then concerning the far greater King, “great David’s greater Son,” the Lord Jesus Christ. But I shall apply the text entirely to our blessed Redeemer and, surely, the Psalmist’s language is most appropriate to Him.
Some of us are going to meet, presently, around the Table of our Lord to commemorate His death for us and, of course, there must be some sorrowful processes connected with that ordinance. How can we remember His death without sorrowing over the sin which made that death necessary? How can we remember “that the Lord Jesus, the same night in which He was betrayed, took bread, and broke it,” without feeling that there is a somberness of spirit which becomes us as we surround His Table? Yet we must not indulge the mournful strain too much, for we must never forget that it is a joyous feast, not a funeral repast, to which our Lord invites us! It is a feast which reminds us of His triumph as well as of His conflict and agony. “After supper,” we are told, in the record of its institution, “they sang a hymn” and our Lord Jesus Christ would have us come to His Table in the spirit of hymn-singing, making melody in our hearts unto the Lord. No funeral dirge is appropriate, here, no muffled drums nor wailing pipes—but let the daughters of song sound the loud timbre, as Miriam and the women of Israel did at the Red Sea!
Let it not be forgotten, too, that the last time this supper will ever be celebrated on earth, it will not die out amid groans and lamentations, but it will cease to be observed any longer because He will have come, whose coming will have been welcomed by the acclamation of all His saints, both those that are alive and remain, and those who come with the King and all His holy angels! This ordinance is full of joy, for each time it closes with a hymn when it is properly celebrated and, at the last, like all external symbols, it shall pass away amidst the hallelujahs of eternity! Come, then, Beloved, let us not be in a dolorous mood as we come to the Table of our Lord, but let us take all our harps down from the willows and wake their glad strings to exultant music! He, whom we remember in this ordinance, is not here, for He is risen! He is not there, on yonder crucifix. His wounds bleed no longer. No thorns surround His brow, no nails pierce His feet and hands, no spear tears open His side, for He has gone back into the Glory which was His before the worlds were made, and it is thus that we are now to think of Him—“His glory is great in Your salvation: honor and majesty have You laid upon Him.”
In meditating upon this text, we shall notice, first, that it reminds us of a Divine Salvation. Secondly, it sets forth the glory of Jesus in that salvation. And, thirdly, it reveals to us the reward which Jesus has obtained for that salvation— “Honor and majesty have You laid upon Him.”
I. First, then, THE TEXT REMINDS US OF A DIVINE SALVATION. It speaks of “Yoursalvation” that is to say, the salvation of God, by which is intended, according to the Hebrew idiom, not merely the grandest of all salvations, the chief of all deliverances, but, actually, that the salvation of which we speak is God’s! O Brothers and Sisters, though the Truth of God is very simple and the observations I shall make upon it may be very trite, yet is it a Truth never to be put in the background that “salvation is of the Lord”!
Remember that the salvation of man is God’s, in the conception of it He first conceived the idea of redeeming the rebellious sons of Adam. It must be so, for the sons of Adam were not born when the Lord first planned the way of their salvation. From old eternity, before yet the sun had opened its eye of fire, God, in far-reaching foresight had beheld the sons of Adam ruined by the Fall—and He resolved that, out of them He would choose a people who should be redeemed and who, to all eternity, should show forth His praise! From the august mind of the Infinite God, the first thought of salvation sprang and it was He who sketched and mapped it all out, electing unto eternal life as many as it pleased Him, settling the way by which they would be redeemed, the method by which they would be called, arranging the place, the day, the hour, the means by which they would be converted—fixing it all, according to His eternal purpose, in Infinite wisdom and prudence—for in every part it was to be of Him and through Him and to Him! Even as in the old tabernacle in the wilderness, every board, curtain, hook, silver socket, every badger skin and every vessel of the sanctuary was ordained by God—and man was only left to carry out God’s plan—even so is it in the salvation of God! In its minutest details, as well as in its grand outline, the provisions of eternal love are of the Lord! And so it is in His salvation.