Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3073
“From this day will I bless you.” Haggai 2:19.
I THINK as soon as ever I read that promise, your heart would leap towards it and you would spontaneously say, “Lord, be this the day—the first day of the year, and that day the Lord’s Day—make this the day from which You will begin to bless me in a very special manner!” God’s blessing is the richest gift which His creatures can receive. To be deprived of it is their greatest calamity! What is Hell? It is the place where God’s blessing cannot come. What is Heaven? It is the place where God’s blessing is constantly enjoyed without admixture. My God, were there a choice between Your blessing and Heaven, I would sooner choose Your blessing and be out of Heaven, than be in Heaven, if such a thing were possible, unblessed of my God. The highest happiness of a creature is to be blessed by its Creator—and the very highest felicity of the child of God is to have his Father’s blessing on his head and in his heart!
In a certain sense, dear Friends, we cannot tell the time when God began to bless His people. If you go back to the day before all days, when there was no day but the Ancient of Days. If you get back to the time when there was no time, when only eternity existed, you find, in the council chambers of Divinity, that God was blessing His people. If I might suppose a day in eternity, I might say of it, “From this day will Jehovah bless His people.” When Jesus Christ appeared in human flesh, though you and I were not born, yet were we written in the Book in which all the members of Christ are written—and from that day when He bowed His head and said, “It is finished,” and yielded up the ghost, a channel was opened for those mighty streams of Divine Grace which sprang from the Divine Decree! And it might be peculiarly said that from that day God began to bless us. When you and I were born, from the first moment that our face received the air and our eyes were opened to the light, mercies were waiting for us. A tender mother received us on her bosom. A kind father provided for the needs of our weakness and infancy. I may say that from the cradle, the Lord has said, “From this day will I bless you.” But to some of us there has been a second birthday, a day in which we passed from death unto life, from darkness into light. Happy day! We can never forget it! Next is it in happiness to that day in which we shall see the face of Christ without a veil between! The happiest day of our existence was that when we saw Christ hanging on the tree to bear the punishment of our sins. Truly may I say, as I stand at the foot of the Cross and remember the day when Jesus first met with me there, that He then said to me, “From this day will I bless you.”
Passing, however, over all the times and seasons upon which we might well be tempted to linger, I shall use my text, first, for seeking souls. The time is come, even tonight, when God will bless them! Then I shall use it for individual Christians. May the same be their case! Then I shall apply it to this Church as a whole. May this Church realize the blessedness of the promise!
I. First, I shall use the text FOR SEEKING SOULS.
I remember well when my heart was seeking after God with intense earnestness. My never-ceasing desire and my daily cry was, “Oh that I knew where I might find Him!” And I would ask the Lord, “How long shall I cry unto You and You will not hear me? How long shall I seek the face of Christ in vain?” This gives me sympathy with others in a like condition. You have been for a long time seeking rest and finding none. You are weary and heavy laden—and you are saying, tonight, “When will God bless me? When shall I be privileged to see my Father’ s face in Christ Jesus and to know
that my sins are forgiven?” My Beloved Brothers and Sisters, there is a period known to God when He will show His face to His people. That period, when it does arrive, will certainly bring you comfort. It is written concerning Christ, “He must needs go through Samaria” and there is a similar necessity that, to every chosen sinner, a day of Grace should come so that he may see Christ and be saved through Him! That fixed and delightful time shall yet arrive to you. I pray that it may arrive tonight!
If you want to know when it is likely to arrive, let me give you some signs by which you may foresee it.
You are likely to have the whisper of God’s love in your heart when you have given up all confidence in the flesh. It may be that you have some indistinct reliance, at the present moment, upon your own prayers. You are not so foolish as to trust in your Baptism, or your Confirmation, or your Church attendance, or Chapel attendance—but there lurks within you the traitorous thought that there is some efficacy, some usefulness in your Bible reading, in your tears and repentance—or something else that comes from you. Now, remember, you will never know the fullness of Christ until you know the emptiness of everything else but Christ! All that was ever woven by man God shall unravel. All the sticks and stones that human energy can build in the matter of eternal salvation must be plucked down by Jehovah’s hand, for it is Christ alone who must build that house! Unless He shall do so, they will labor in vain that build it. I say that this may be only an indistinct matter, but I pray you to cast out every particle of this old leaven—for Christ and your soul can never be agreed until you are willing to take Him to be your sole and only reliance. And if you have a shadow of a dependence anywhere else, Christ can never be a Savior to you. See to that matter.