Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3436
“He has glorified You.” Isaiah 55:5.
GOD has glorified His Son. How deeply we ought to regret that we glorify Christ so little, bought with His precious blood, owing all we have to Him. We make but a very poor return and even when we are helped by the Spirit of God to glorify Christ, yet I am sure we should always feel an insatiable desire to do it yet more. To glorify Christ is so sweet a thing that when a man has once tasted of it, he pants and pants within his spirit for a greater capacity to glorify Christ— and this is one of his griefs, that he cannot praise his Savior as he would—hence it is that oftentimes the Prophet and the Psalmist, when they were most full of praise, would bid the earth, the sea, the heavens, and the Heaven of heavens, help to praise the King in whom they saw such ravishing beauties and delights! Hence it is that godly men, whenever they are stirred up and feel that they could magnify and bless the Lord, always want their fellow creatures to join them—and their sorrow is that Jesus does not reign in every heart and that He has not a throne in every soul!
Now it must be a great comfort to lovers of Christ, who mourn that He is not honored as He should be, that God has taken care of His Son’s honor. “He has glorified You,” and you know when God glorifies, He does the work perfectly! He does it after His own Spirit and that an Infinite One, so that the Glory of Christ, after all, is safe. And though He is blasphemed by rebels, dishonored by apostates and grieved by ourselves, yet God, after all, shall not suffer Christ’s fame to be tarnished for a single moment by all this, for He has said, “He has glorified You.” I don’t know that I can preach from the text, but I do know what I can do. I can feel thrice happy at the thoughts which it raises in my mind! It is so delightful to think that the crown is safe upon His head, though the nations rebel and the kings take counsel against Him, that his shield is forever glorified and untarnished, let men do what they may! Him has God the Father exalted and given Him a name which is above every name, which is first and chief and shall never be second, but shall forever reign and must reign till He has put all His enemies under His feet.
Now glancing across the subject, as some skiff flies over the sea, we will talk about what God has done by way of glorifying His Son, Jesus—
I. God Has Glorified Him in the Entire Economy of Salvation
From first to last, Christ glorifies His Father, and the Father glorifies Him. Begin with that which has no beginning, namely, everlasting love, and we find that we are chosen in Christ Jesus from before the foundation of the world. The love of God which comes to us through Jesus Christ always is the channel—and it is connected with Jesus Christ before the heavens were stretched abroad! He was glorified in our election! Now with Christ Jesus in the mind of the Eternal Father, there is no election to eternal love except through Jesus Christ! And if you and I are chosen, it is—
“Because Christ is My first elect, He said, He chose our souls in Christ our Head.” We dare not look into that council chamber unless we knew that Christ was there. We dare not think of the Infinite Wisdom of God in the arrangement of all things from the beginning, if we did not remember that Christ was the center of these arrangements and that as many as have believed on Him were represented in Him in those days before the daystar knew its place, or planets ran their round. God has been pleased to glorify Christ afterwards in all the promises which, one by one, revealed the glorious Grace of God, from that first promise at the gates of Eden concerning the Seed of the woman, right on until He appeared—the hand that drew back the black curtain that hid the face of God was always thehand of the Crucified—and whenever men come to see anything of the marvelous love and goodness of God, they always behold it in connection with the Messiah, the Anointed One yet to come.
God has glorified His Son in the matter of redemption. There is no redemption out of Christ, and there is none to help Christ in the matter of redemption. Albeit that Calvary seems to have a black cloud of shame hanging over it, yet is there no spot on earth or Heaven more glorious, for there it was that God permitted His Son to bear, without assistance, the Divine Wrath which was due to our sins, allowed Him to tread the winepress alone and would not permit that of the people there should be one with Him, lest the glory should in any way be divided. Christ, and Christ, alone, must pay the price of our souls with His own soul!
So onward, if you come to the matter of our justification or our acceptance which sprang out of redemption, God glorified His Son. We are, if pardoned, only forgiven through His blood! If justified, entirely by virtue of His righteousness! If accepted, it is always in the Beloved! If perfected, we are completed in Him, perfect in Christ Jesus! There is not a single Covenant blessing—as I begin at the beginning so may I continue to the close—there is not a single blessing in the economy of Christ which comes to us apart from Christ! And as we receive these gifts, one by one, the Holy Spirit takes care to make us know this—He empties us of self that we may see the fullness of Christ. He kills our pride that we may see the excellence of Christ. He takes away our strength that we may behold the power of Christ. In the operations of the Holy Spirit within our soul, while they aim at destroying sin and at many other blessed results, yet they have for their first and chief purpose, the making Christ glorified in the heart of all His people, in every gift that comes from the hand of the Most High! Brothers and Sisters, our preservation, our final perseverance and every other blessing which is secured to us, and about which we have no doubt—all this comes to us in Him! We are preserved in Christ Jesus. Because He lives, we live, also, and only because He lives and by virtue of our union with Him—we who are the branches continue to bring forth fruit—but if we were separated from Him, we should be only fit to be cast into the fire to be burned! Right away from the gates of Hell, up to the pearly gates of Heaven, it is Christ Jesus who is glorified! In every step the Believer takes, right out of the slough of despondency, up to the Beulah hilltop of full assurance and still onward beyond the clouds, and beyond the stars in the palace of eternal glory, it will be Christ, and Christ Jesus, alone, who shall have all the praise! God has taken care in the planning of the whole economy of Christ, that Jesus Christ should have the pre-eminence. There is much to talk of here, but think of it—that will be better than my speaking. Turn it over as Abraham Booth wrote a book showing the Grace of God in all the ways of salvation, so somebody else might write a book showing the glory of Christ in every single part of the way. And if we cannot write such a book, yet at least we must feel precious emotions as we contemplate the whole. In the next place, God has glorified His Son—