Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3201
“In that day, says the Lord, will I assemble the lame, and I will gather the outcast, and those whom I have afflicted.” Micah 4:6.
THIS is spoken, I suppose, in the first place, of the Jewish people who have been so afflicted on account of their sin that they almost cease to be a nation. They are driven here and there among the lands and made to suffer greatly. In the last time, when Christ shall appear in His Glory in the days of halcyon peace, then shall Israel partake of the universal joy. Poor, limping, faltering Israel, afflicted with tempest, shall yet be gathered and rejoice in her God!
However, I am sure that the text applies to the Church of God and we shall not do amiss if we also find in it promises to individual Christians. We will regard the text in those two lights as spoken to the Church and as spoken to individual souls.
I. First, then, AS REFERRING TO THE CHURCH OF GOD. “In that day, says the Lord, will I assemble the lame, and I will gather the outcast, and those whom I have afflicted.”
The Church of God is not always equally vigorous and prosperous. Sometimes she can run without weariness and walk without fainting, but at other times she begins to limp and is lame. There is a deficiency in her faith, a lukewarm-ness in her love, doctrinal errors spring up and many things that both weaken and trouble her—and then she becomes like a lame person. And, indeed, Beloved, when I compare the Church of God at the present moment with the first Apostolic Church, she may well be called, “the lame.” Oh, how she leaped in the first Pentecostal times! What wondrous strength she had throughout all Judea and all the neighboring lands! The voice of the Church in those days was like the voice of a lion—and the nations heard and trembled. The utmost isles of the sea understood the power of the Gospel and before long the Cross of Christ was set up on every shore. Thus was the Church in her early days—the love of her espousals was upon her and her strength was like that of a young unicorn!
How the Church now limps! How deficient in vigor, how weak in her actions! If I compare the Church now with the Church in Reformation times, when, in our own land, our fathers went bravely to prison and to the stake to bear witness to the Lord Jesus! When, in Covenanting Scotland and Puritan England, the Truth of God was held with firmness and proclaimed with earnestness and, what is, perhaps, still better, when the Truth of God was lived by those who professed it—then was she mighty, indeed, and not to be compared to “the lame,” as I fear she is now in these days of laxity of Doctrine and laxity of life—when error is tolerated in the Church and loose living is tolerated in the world!
I might almost use the same simile for the Church, today, as compared with those early days of Methodism when Whitefield was flying like a seraph in the midst of Heaven—preaching in England and America the unsearchable riches of Christ to tens of thousands! When Wesley and others were working with undiminished ardor to reach the poorest of the poor and the lowest of the low! Those were good days with all their faults. Life and fire abounded, the God of Israel was glorified, and tens of thousands were converted! The Church seemed as though it had risen from the dead and cast off its grave clothes, and was rejoicing in newness of life! We are not without hopeful signs today. There is not everything to depress, but much to encourage. At the same time, the Church limps—she does not stand firm and run fast. Oh, that God would be pleased to visit her!
Moreover, if I look at the text, I perceive that the Church not only is sometimes weak, but, at the same time, or at some other time, the Church is persecuted and made to suffer, for the text speaks of “the outcast.” And it has often happened that the Church has been driven right out from among men. It has been said of her, “Away with her from the earth! It is not fit that she should live.” But how wondrously God has shown His mercy to His people when they have
been driven out! The days of exile have been bright days! The sun never shone more fairly on the Church’s brow than when she worshipped God in the catacombs of Rome, or when her disciples “wandered about in sheepskins and goatskins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented.” In our own country, those who met in secret, perpetually pestered by informers who would bring them before the magistrate for joining in prayer and song, often said, when they got their liberty, that they wished they had the days, again, when they were gathered together in the lonely house and scarcely dared to sing loudly! They had brave times in those days, when every man held his soul in his hand. When he worshipped his God not knowing whether the hand of the hangman or the headsman might not soon be upon him. The Lord was pleased to bless His people when the Church was driven out. If the snowy peaks of Piedmont, if the lowlands of Holland, if the prisons of Spain could speak, they would tell of Infinite Mercy experienced by the saints under terrible oppression—of hearts that were leaping to Heaven while the bodies were bruised or burning on earth! God has been gracious to His people when they have been driven out.