Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3204
“He that spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?” Romans 8:32.
MANY of you, dear Friends, are coming to the Lord’s Table at the close of this service. Our blessed Redeemer instituted that simple but sublime ordinance so that we might be kept in constant remembrance of Him. The bread is nothing but bread, yet it is the very suggestive emblem of Christ’s flesh. And it shall be well with you if, after a spiritual fashion, you shall thus eat the flesh of Christ. The wine is nothing but wine, yet is it the emblem of Christ’s blood. And they are thrice blessed who experimentally understand the meaning of Christ’s words, “Whoever eats My flesh, and drinks My blood, has eternal life.” Christ is yours, Believer! You know that He is more yours than even your own life, for that you may lose. When God gave you your existence, He gave it to you without any covenant as to its prolongation, but He has given Christ to you by an Everlasting Covenant, to be yours forever and ever! Christ is yours, Beloved! Oh, that you knew how to make the best use of this blessed property! Christ is yours to live upon and to spend, yours to have and to hold, to keep and to enjoy, yours not only to look at that you may be saved, and to wear that you may be justified, but yours to eat that you may be refreshed by Him and live upon Him! Christ is yours to the fullest extent possible! There is no reservation—He is your absolute, indefeasible and inalienable property—yours, today, as perfectly as He will be when you are in Heaven! Yours as certainly as you are His. Oh, that you may now, knowing that Christ is thus your property, live upon Him, rejoice in Him and feel that you are, indeed, immeasurably rich!
When we come to this Communion Table, to partake of these emblems of Christ’s death, it will be a very happy thing for us if we remember that possessing Christ, we have everything. There is no need that you have which will not be supplied if you really know that Christ is yours. There is no necessity, however great, which may press upon you which shall not be instantaneously supplied if Christ is truly yours. You come to Christ’s Table to meet with Christ and you know that when you have Him, you have everything, so you do well to sing—
“You, O Christ, are all I need”— for in Him you have all that you can possibly need. And, moreover, the gift of Christ is God’s solemn pledge that He will keep back from you nothing that you really need. “No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” “Whatever you shall ask in prayer, believing, you shall receive.” Having given you Christ, He must, He will—with Christ—freely give you all things—
“How vast the treasure we possess!
How rich Your bounty, King of Grace!
This world is ours and worlds to come—
Earth is our lodge and Heaven our home.
All things are ours—the gift of God!
The purchase of a Savior’s blood
While the good Spirit shows us how
To use and to improve them, too.” I am going to make it my business, in a very simple but earnest manner, to try and exhort the children of God to cast aside all thoughts of their being poor and to rejoice, now, in their boundless riches in Christ Jesus!
I. First, let me remind you, Believer, that, whatever you may really require, God will not deny it to you, for He has
already given you Christ! THINK WHAT THIS GIFT WAS TO THE FATHER—it was His only-begotten and well-
beloved Son!
Perhaps you have a willful, wayward boy—one who costs you much, but brings you little comfort—yet, would you like to lose him? If you saw him in his coffin tomorrow, would you not cry over him as David cried over his son, “O my son, Absalom! My son, my son Absalom! Would God I had died for you, O Absalom, my son, my son”? Vile he may be, and a disgrace to your name, yet he is still your child and you could not bear to give him up. But what shall I say of the child who, from his youth up, has been obedient to you? Who, having grown up to manhood, has become your friend as well as your offspring? Who has been with you in every holy enterprise and has proved himself to be worthy of his father’s love and esteem? Could you give him up? Mother, you know how dear is your first-born son to you. Of all griefs that tear a mother’s heart, perhaps the greatest is to lose her first-born. Even if he is only in his infancy, it is a wound from which the mother’s tender heart does not soon recover. But to lose that son in manhood. To see the hale strong man suddenly cut down—this is no small sorrow—and many, under such trying circumstances, have found it no easy task to say, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”
To lose one’s child even for some object which is nearest and dearest to our heart, is pain and grief, indeed. Then what must it have cost God to give up His Son to die for His people? What must God’s love to His only-begotten Son be? We can only speak of God after the manner of men, for we know not how otherwise to speak of Him and, inasmuch, as God is infinitely greater than we are, His love is infinitely greater than ours! We can only love to the finite degree of which humanity is capable, but God loves beyond all degree. The heart of God is filled with fathomless oceans of eternal affection—and this affection has always been fixed upon His Son! Christ is infinitely more dear to God than your son can ever be to you because of the greatness of the heart of the Father who loves His Son who has always been with Him, and ever His delight, who has never offended Him, who takes His share in all the Father’s plans and who said of old, and says it always, “I delight to do Your will, O My God.”
Besides, Christ is One with His Father in essence. What that mysterious Unity is, we cannot tell. And how Christ is the Son of God, we do not know. We know that His Sonship does not imply any inferiority in the Son, nor that the Father existed before the Son. He was not the Father till the Son was His Son and the names, “Father,” and, “Son,” are not to be understood as they are used among us, although the marvelous, indescribable relationship which we cannot fully understand cannot be better expressed than by the terms used, “the Father” and, “the Son.” Again I ask—what must it have cost such a Father’s heart to give up such a Son—a Son so near and so dear to Him? Yet the Father gave up His Son to die for you and for me, Beloved! Theologians lay it down as an axiom that God cannot suffer, but I am not sure that they are right. I cannot understand God’s love to me. I cannot rejoice as I should in His goodness to me unless I believe that the gift of His Son cost His heart awful pangs. I know that I am treading upon delicate ground and that I am standing where thick darkness gathers, but I am not certain that what theologians take for granted is necessarily true. That God can do everything, I do believe. And I also believe that if He wills to suffer He can do so. I cannot think of God as an insensible Being when He gave His Son to die for sinners. I cannot imagine Him giving His only-begotten Son and feeling no more than a heathen idol of stone could have done. I think that the Father, in giving up that Son who had always given Him such intense joy, must have suffered in His Son’s death.
Well then, as God has thus given up His only-begotten and well-beloved Son, how can He deny anything to you who believe in Him? Do you feel anxious about the bread that perishes? Is that worthy to be compared with God’s only-begotten Son? Are you concerned about how you are to get food and clothing? How can God deny you such trifles as these when He has given you His Son? Perseverance in Grace—is that what you ask? Even that is but a crumb under the Master’s table compared with His Son! You need certain virtues, you need help in trouble, you need sustenance under stern difficulties—I know not what you need, but this I know—all the needs of all of us put together could only make one little drop in comparison with the tremendous ocean of benevolence which flowed out of God’s heart when He spared not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all! As we look at Christ, whom God has given to us, we must believe that, with Him, He will give us whatever we need!
II. I shall try to knock a second time at the door of your hearts to comfort you by reminding you how PRECIOUS