Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3033
“We esteemed Him not.” Isaiah 53:3.
This must be the universal confession of the human race. From the highest monarch to the meanest peasant, from the loftiest intellect to the most degraded mind, from the admired of all men to the unknown and insignificant, this one confession must come—“We esteemed Him not.” Whether we examine the sensualist rioting in the delights of the flesh or the formalist starving his body to fatten his pride, the merchant laboring to acquire wealth or the spendthrift recklessly scattering gold with both his hands, the profligate black with profanity, the moralist rejoicing in his goodness, or even the devoted Christian, we shall make them all acknowledge that either now or at some past period, they esteemed not Jesus! We make no exception, for even the holiest of God’s saints, those who now are—
“Foremost of the sons of light, Nearest the eternal Throne”— those who have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb—even they once “esteemed Him not.” And the brightest saints still upon the earth, those who are most earnestly and faithfully serving the Savior, at one time “esteemed Him not.” I am going, first, to prove that this was true. Next, to dive deeper and try to find out the reasons why we esteemednot Jesus. And, afterwards, I want to remind you ofthe emotions which this fact ought to create in our minds—the fact that at one time—and in the case of many of us it was true not many years ago that “we esteemed Him
not.”
I. First, then, I have TO PROVE THAT THIS WAS TRUE.
Look, then, my Friends, first, at the overt acts of your transgression against the Lord Jesus Christ Go back in imagination to the scenes of your youth and recollect your former transgressions. Some of you have your heads covered with the snows of many a winter and you have been for 40 or 50 years wearing the harness of the soldiers of Jesus Christ. You have fought the good fight ever since you enlisted under the blood-stained banner of the Cross, yet you can never forget some things that happened before that happy day when you first sang from your heart—
“‘Tis done! The great transaction’s done— I am my Lord’s, and He is mine.” It might not be profitable to mention in detail those sins of long ago, yet some of you have a very vivid remembrance of them and, although the Lord has graciously forgiven them and blotted them out of His Book of Remembrance, your own conscience will not let you forget them.
There are others of you who were, either by your early associations, or by the restraints of Sovereign Grace, kept from openly sinning against God as many others did, yet you know that your lives were not in accordance with the Law of God. You were, in comparison with many of your fellows, moral, upright, amiable, yet, as far as Christ was concerned, you “esteemed Him not.” Your friends and companions could find no fault with your character, but you know, now, that all the while there was a fatal flaw which was plainly manifest to the eyes of God. In the case of some, the apparent excellence was all on the surface, but, underneath there was a mass of rottenness and sin of which they can only think now with shame and sorrow. That, too, has all been forgiven and forgotten by God—yet it lingers in their own remembrance in a most salutary fashion, for it makes them hate all forms of iniquity and turn from them with utter loathing.
Besides the overt acts of sin which some of you committed—and the less public but none the less deadly evils of which others of you were guilty—there was further evidence that you did not esteem Christ in the fact that you did not esteem His Word as you should have done. Possible, just to quiet your conscience, you read a chapter from it in the morning and another in the evening, or you listened to it while your parents read it at family prayer. But how dull and dry it seemed to you! You could revel in a novel and be completely fascinated with fiction, but the Inspired Truth of God was a weariness and a burden to you. I must honestly confess that before I knew the Lord, or was seriously seeking Him, although I found the historical parts of the Bible interesting, a great portion of the Scriptures appeared to me to be dull and meaningless. As for anyone reading the Word as a treat, I could no more understand how that could be done than a blind man could appreciate the beauties of the scenery that could be discerned by sightseers on the top of a mountain! I might perhaps be mentally charmed by some beautiful passages in the Bible, but as to its hidden spiritual meaning, I had no true perception. If I were sick and in fear lest I was about to die, down would come my Bible and I would read it diligently for a while! But as for taking it as my everyday companion—that idea never occurred to me until the Holy Spirit began to work conviction in my heart. And then I was glad enough to turn to the neglected Book to find an answer to the all-important question, “What must I do to be saved?” If you, my Brothers and Sisters in Christ, could each one relate your own experience, I expect you would, many of you, have to join with me in saying, “We esteemed Him not, for we did not hold in proper esteem the Sacred Scriptures in which He had been revealed to us.”