Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3081
“Grace is poured into Your lips.” Psalm 45:2.
WHAT a never-ending theme there is in the name and Person of our blessed Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! The poets of Scripture never mention His Person but they fall into rhapsodies at once! They never sing of His name, or of His glories, but at once they seem to be so enchanted by the spirit of poetry that they soar up with ecstasies of joy and their love scarcely knows how to find language to express itself. Love sometimes leaps over language among sensitive men— and so it does more palpably in Sacred Scripture. Take, for instance, the Canticles. There, love has strained language to the uttermost in order to embody its vehement passion. Yes, so strained it, that some of us, not so filled with love to God, can scarcely appreciate its glowing utterance. Here, too, you see, the Psalmist, with harp in hand, no sooner begins to meditate on the Person of the Messiah, than he cries, “My heart bubbles up with a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made touching the king: my tongue is the pen of a ready writer. You are fairer than the children of men: Grace is poured into Your lips.”
We shall have no time for a preface, but must proceed at once to the discussion of our text. Grace is poured into the lips of Christ. Let us consider, first, the plenitude of this Grace. Secondly, the nature of this Grace. And thirdly, endeavor to show you in what offices Jesus Christ proves that Grace is poured into His lips.
I. We commence with the word, “POURED,” as suggesting THE PLENITUDE OF GRACE. “Grace is poured into Your lips.”
Others among the children of men have had “Grace.” Poets have spoken gracious words and Prophets of old have uttered wondrous sayings which were Divinely Inspired. So that it might be said that their doctrine “dropped” as the rain, and their speech “distilled” like the dew. Such imagery, however, is too faint to describe our Lord Jesus! Not merely did He speak as the dew, nor did His message simply drop as the small rain, it “POURED” from His lips! Whenever He spoke, a copious stream of gracious words flowed from Him like a very cataract of eloquence. Jesus Christ had not a little Grace, but it was “poured into” Him. Not a vial of oil on His head, but He had a cruse and a horn of oil emptied upon Him. Grace was poured into His lips!
I notice that Calvin translates this passage thus, “Grace is shed from Your lips.” Not only did God give to His Son Grace on His lips, but the Son, whenever He speaks, whether He addresses the people in Doctrine and exhortation, or whether He pleads with His Father on their behalf—whenever His lips are open to speak to God for men, or from God to men, He always has “Grace shed from His lips.” And when I turn to the Septuagint translation of this passage, I find that it has the idea of the very exhaustion of Grace, “Grace is poured from Your lips,” as though emptied out till there is none left. Jesus Christ had Grace exhausted in His Person. In Him “dwelt all the fullness of the Godhead bodily.” All Grace was given to Him. The very exhaustion of the inexhaustible store, as much as to say that God could give no more and that Jesus Christ, Himself, could not receive or possess more Grace. It was all poured into His Person—and when He speaks, He seems to exhaust Grace itself! Imagination’s utmost stretch cannot conceive of anything more gracious—and the contemplation of the most devoted Christian cannot think of any words more majestic in goodness, more tender in sympathy, more full of honey and more luscious in their sweetness than the gracious words that proceeded out of the lips of Jesus Christ!
“Grace is poured into Your lips.” Ah, Christian, you may have some Grace on your lips, but you have not got it “poured” into them! You may have some Grace in your heart, but it is dropped there like small rain from Heaven—you
have not got it “poured” there! You may be ever so full of Grace, but Christ is more full than you are—and when you are ever so reducedin Grace, it is a consolation that with Him is plenteous Grace, plenty that knows no lack, for Grace is poured into His lips! Be not afraid to go to Him in every time of need, nor think that He will fail to comfort you. His comforts are not like water spilled on the earth that cannot be gathered up—they yield perpetual streams, for Grace is poured into His lips! He has no stinted supply, no short allowance to give you, but ask what you will, you shall have as much as your faith can desire and your heart can hold, for Grace is poured into His lips in the richest plenitude!
II. Not to speak further on this, let us pass on to consider THE KIND OF GRACE THAT JESUS CHRIST HAS WHICH IS THUS POURED INTO HIS LIPS AND SHED FORTH FROM HIS LIPS.
It is important to remark that Jesus Christ has what none of the sons of men ever had—He has inherent Grace. Adam, when he was created by God, had some inherent Grace which God gave him, yet not so much of God’s Grace as to preserve the uprightness of his character. He had but the Grace of purity, as it could be displayed in the innocence of his intelligent nature. There must have been much Grace in the constitution of the man, seeing he was originally created in the likeness of God, yet there could not have been perfect Grace in him, for he did not keep his first estate. But Jesus Christ had all the Grace that Adam had and all the Grace that any innocent man could have had, in the most sublime perfection! And that Divine Grace was always in Him. You and I have none of that intelligent Grace. We have heard men say that children are not born in sin, nor shaped in iniquity, but that they have inherent Grace—but we have never yet met with the man who has found so wonderful a child! At any rate, the children have been mightily spoiled in growing to maturity, for they have not given much proof of Grace afterwards. No, Beloved, we are naturally graceless, a seed of evildoers—all our inherent Grace was spoiled by Adam. However full the pitcher might have been originally, it has been emptied out by the Fall. Adam broke the earthen vessel and spilt every drop of its contents—and we have none left. But in Jesus there was no sin—He had inherent Grace in Himself.