Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3443
“Yet a little while, and the world sees Me no more; but you see Me.” John 14:19.
WHATEVER religious privileges men of the world may have, they will lose them. It was a great favor to see Christ in the flesh. Kings and Prophets had desired to see His day and had died disappointed because He had not come, but that sight of Him which the generation in which Christ lived enjoyed was taken from them. They were none the better and, in some respects, they were all the worse for having seen Him, whose blood was on them and on their children. So, as a general Truth of God, all the outward religious privileges which any of you may enjoy, if you do not become spiritualmen and are not, indeed, Christ’s disciples, will be taken from you, speedily taken from you, leaving no blessing behind, but rather a curse! You are hearers of the Gospel today, some of you, though unconverted—but you shall not always hear it. There is a land where Sabbath bells never ring, where the joyful feet of the messengers of mercy are never seen, and where no loving expostulations and no affectionate entreaties will be addressed to you! Now you join in song with God’s people but you will not do so soon—another sound, more strange and full of trembling—will be in your ears! Some of you, it may be, unconverted as you are, even venture to touch the ordinances and have been baptized and have come to the Lord’s Table. There will be another baptism for you and you will eat bread at a far different table from that of the Lord, by-and-by, for unless you are converted, these, instead of being means of Grace, shall be swift messengers against you to your condemnation! It is a very sorrowful case when a man is so bad that that which is good becomes bad to him, and a fearful proof of the fall of our race and the depravity of our unregenerate nature—that even the best religious privileges will only become a savor of death unto death unto us unless the Grace of God shall change our hearts!
Note, then, that as the text says that the world which saw Christ should soon see Him no more, so it teaches us that there are many outward privileges in religion that even worldly people enjoy that they shall soon enjoy no more, for, as they would not have the inward spiritual Grace, they shall not forever have the outward and visible sign to tread beneath their feet! As they would not receive the Grace of God into their hearts in the power of it, so shall the very offers of love and the outward ministrations of mercy be withdrawn from them!
With that black foil, the gem of our text may shine the brighter. “But you see Me”—you, My people. You that have believed, you who, by Grace, have received the new nature. You who have passed from death unto life—when the world sees Christ no more, you shall see Him in His Glory! And even now, while a blind world beholds Him not, you are enjoying a sight of Him. Our first word tonight, after this preface, shall be—
I. Spiritual Differences
The world sees Him no more, but you see Him. The difference lies in the kind of sight. The world’s sight of Christ, in the first place, was only a sight to the eyes and, consequently, the moment Christ was gone out of this world, the world saw Him no more. But when He was gone, there were others who had seen Him with a different sight, which was not affected by His corporeal absence—they continued to see because their seeing had been something other than the sight of the eyes. Now, when Jesus Christ was here upon earth, all that an ungodly man saw of Christ was His outward form—as some think incomparably beautiful, and so I suppose it was at the first. So perfect a spirit must surely have been enshrined within a matchless, outward form! I can conceive Him to have been full of Grace, even in the common sense of that term, as well as in its higher meaning. But in later years, such were the griefs of His heart that we know that He appeared to be older than He was, for the Jews said, “You are not yet fifty years old,” when He was but a little more than thirty. Such was the decay, probably, such the emaciation that grief brought upon Him, that He had no form or comeliness, and when men looked upon Him they saw Him as the Man of Sorrows and the acquaintance of grief. Whatever the
outward form may have been, it was certainly all that the ungodly man saw, all that the Pharisee saw, all that Pilate saw, all that Herod saw—just that outward form. They did not, therefore, see the real Christ of God at all, and in proof that they did not see Him, we find that some of them could only see in Him an impostor, who pretended to be what He was not. Others could only see in Him an ordinary Prophet, a remarkable man, but still one of the common of Prophets, and no more. They could not see in Him what His disciples saw, namely, His glorious inward Character, the Glory as of the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of Grace and Truth.