Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3240
“As for you, also, by the blood ofyour Covenant I have sent forth your prisoners out of the pit wherein is no water.” Zechariah 9:11.
[Two other Sermons by Mr. Spurgeon upon this same subject are #277, Volume 5—THE BLOOD OF THE EVERLASTING COVENANT and #1186, Volume 20—THE BLOOD OF THE COVENANT.]
[Two other Sermons by Mr. Spurgeon upon Verses 11 and 12 are #2839, Volume49—“PRISONERS OF HOPE” and #2883, Volume 50—PRISONERS DELIVERED.]
THE LORD is here speaking to His ancient people, Israel. That nation had always been preserved, although other nations had been destroyed—and the reason was that God had entered into a Covenant with Abraham on their behalf. Circumcision was the sign and seal of the Covenant, so that God could truly speak of “the blood of your Covenant.” The Jews have never ceased to be a nation, though they have been scattered, peeled and delivered over into the hand of their adversaries because of their sins. They may enjoy various rights and privileges in the different countries where they sojourn for a while, but they cannot be absorbed into the nationalities by which they are surrounded. They must always be a separate and distinct people—but the day shall yet come when the branches of the olive tree, which have been so long cut off, shall be grafted in again. Then shall they, as a nation, again behold the Messiah, the true and only King of the Jews—and their fullness shall be the fullness of the Gentiles, also!
All Believers have some share in that Covenant made with Abraham, for he is the father of the faithful. We who believe in Jesus are of the seed of Abraham, not according to the flesh, but according to the promise, and we are pressed by a Covenant which like that made with Abraham, is signed and sealed with blood even “the blood of the Everlasting Covenant.” We, too, are saved and kept as a separate and distinct people, not because of any natural goodness in us, or because of our superiority over others, but solely and entirely because the Lord has made an Eternal Covenant concerning us, which is “ordered in all things and sure,” because Jesus Christ is, Himself, the Surety on our behalf that its guarantees and pledges shall all be carried into effect.
I. So, applying our text to the Covenant people of God in all ages, we have first to consider THEIR NATURAL AND YET PRIVILEGED CONDITION. By nature they are like prisoners in a pit wherein is no water, but by Grace they are in Covenant relationship to God!
Brothers and Sisters in Christ, when we were in our natural state, we were like prisoners. A prisoner is one who has lost his liberty—and that was our condition before Jesus met with us and set us free. We were “carnal, sold under sin,” in bondage to our own lusts and held captive by the devil at his will. No doubt we boasted of our free will, but our will, itself, was enslaved with all the rest of our powers. There is no greater mockery than to call a sinner a free man. Show me a convict toiling in the chain gang and call him a free man if you will! Point out to me the galley slave chained to the oar and smarting under the taskmaster’s lash whenever he pauses to draw a breath—and call hima free man if you will—but never call a sinner a free man, even in his will, as long as he is the slave of his own corruptions! In our natural state we wore chains, not upon our limbs, but upon our hearts—fetters that bound us and kept us from God, from rest, from peace, from holiness—from anything like freedom of heart and conscience and will! The iron entered into our soul and there is no other slavery as terrible as that. As there is no freedom like the freedom of the spirit, so is there no slavery that is at all comparable to the bondage of the heart!
A prisoner is also one who feels that he cannot escape from his prison—and that is how we felt. We began to have longings after better things. A heavenly Visitor came to us and dropped a new and strange thought into our minds—and we began to pant after something higher and nobler than this poor world could give us—but we could not reach it, for we were prisoners. We could not escape from the cruel grip of our captor and it became quite clear to us that we could never be delivered from the house of bondage by any power of our own. Do you not remember, my Brothers and Sisters, when you used to sorrowfully say—
“I would but cannot pray I would but can’t repent”—
and when you could use Paul’s words as your own and sadly cry, “To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not?” You were still a prisoner, yet you were beginning to be one of the “prisoners of hope.”
That is a strange kind of prison that is mentioned in the text—“the pit wherein is no water.” In the East, pits were frequently used as prisons. When a tyrant king wished to keep anyone in safe custody and also in ignominy and shame, and sorrow, he would have him cast into one of these waterless pits where the poor prisoner would be beyond human sight or hearing—and with no possible hope of deliverance from his doleful dungeon. Such was our sad state by nature, and well do we remember our first efforts to obtain release! We were in dense darkness and we felt all round the walls of our prison to try to find a door, or window, or ladder by which we might escape, but all in vain. We tried to look up, but we seemed to have been thrust, like Paul and Silas, into some inner prison where no ray of light could penetrate. The fact that there was “no water” in our prison-pit made our agonies all the more terrible! Those of you who have passed through that state of deep conviction of sin know that in such circumstances there is no comfort for the present and no hope for the future—as to the past, there is nothing to look back upon but sin—and as to the future, there is nothing “but a certain fearful looking for ofjudgment and fiery indignation.” To a sinner in that condition, there seems nothing within but a heart as hard as stone, nothing beneath but a gapping Hell and nothing around but thick darkness. How dreary and dreadful is the state of man by nature—and how painfully conscious he is of his true condition when the Holy Spirit reveals it to him! Then is he, indeed, like a prisoner in a “pit wherein is no water.”