Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3490
“If you seek Him, He will be found of you.” 1 Chronicles 28:9.
ALTHOUGH this was addressed to Solomon, it may, without any violence to the Truth of God, be addressed tonight to every unconverted person here present, for there are a great many texts of Scripture of a similar import which apply to all ungodly ones, such, for instance, as that, “Seek you the Lord while He may be found; call you upon Him while He is near.” And that other, “He that seeks, finds; to him that knocks, it shall be opened.” I should like to go round, if it were possible, and say to every hearer here, as I put my hand upon his shoulder, “If you seek your God, He will be found of you”—even of you. May I ask you to take it as spoken to each individual—not to your neighbors, not to one who is better or worse than yourselves, but to you? You, young man, and you of riper years, you of all ages, classes and sexes, “If you seek Him, He will be found of you.” I know that those who think at all about religion and do not understand it, are very apt to conceive that there is something wonderfully mysterious about it. That a man should follow it, and may, perhaps, attain the blessing of it towards the end of life, or on a dying bed, though some conceive that then nobody is quite sure that he is saved unless it is some extraordinarily good man! Oh, is not this strange, that with a book so plain as this, and with a Gospel preached by so many in these days, yet the mass of mankind are in a cloud and a fog about the blessed Revelation of God? Jesus Christ is salvation! He is to be had—He is to be had now! You may know you have Him. You may be saved now —completely saved, and live in the full enjoyment of that knowledge! “If you seek Him, He will be found of you.”
The notion is that there are a great many very mysterious preliminaries, a great deal to do, and a great deal to be, and all quite beyond our power. It is not so, but seek Him. We will tell you what that means and he that seeks Him finds Him. “If you seek Him, He will be found of you.” It has been supposed that we should need a good deal of help in seeking after salvation—certain persons who step in to be absolutely necessary priests between us and God. A great delusion, but there are thousands who believe it and who fancy that God won’t hear them if they pray, except they have some respect for these human mediators. Away with the whole lie! Away with any pretence for anyone to stand between the soul and God, except Jesus Christ! “If you seek Him, He will be found of you.” Though you bring no other man with you, but come empty-handed as you are to God, here, without paraphernalia, or altar, or “sacrifice of the Mass,” He will be found of you! Take the text in its simplicity and sublimity. It is just this—that if any heart really seeks God in His way, it shall find Him! If any man really wants mercy from God and seeks it as God tells him to seek it, he shall have it! Any man of woman born, be he who he may, if he comes to God in the way laid down, and sincerely asks for salvation, that salvation he shall surely have! The matter is simple enough—our pride alone obscures it! The way to Heaven is so plain that “a wayfaring man, though a fool, may not err therein.” We do but muddle it because we dislike it! We do but add this and that and the other to it because, like Naaman, the Syrian, we need to do some great thing, and we are not content to take the Prophetic word, “Wash and be clean.” I aim at nothing tonight, therefore, but that some here present may be brought to see the way of salvation and may be led to run in it. Oh, may God grant that, out of this company, there may be some at least who will be willing to seek and to find! While we shall cast the net, may the Master grant that some may be taken in it to their own eternal welfare! We shall try to do three things, four perhaps. First, to notice that there is a promise here explained. We will then give directions. Thirdly, we will answer objections. And, if time serves us, we will offer a stimulant to the pursuit of this. First, then, there is—
I. A Promise to Be Explained
“If you seek Him, He will be found of you.” I have almost completed my explanation already. We have lost our God by the Fall—by our own sin. We have alienated ourselves from Him, but our case is not hopeless. Since Jesus Christ has come into the world and given the Gospel, and provided an Atonement, it is a certainty that if we desire the Lord and seek Him, He will be found of us. Now God has told us the way in which to seek. It is by coming to Him as He is revealed in Christ Jesus and trusting our souls with Jesus. If we do this, we have found God—and we are saved! The sum and substance of the promise is this—any soul that, by prayer, seeks God, desires salvation through Jesus, through faith in Jesus—such a soul shall be heard, shall get the blessing it desires, shall find its God! You shall not pray in vain! Your tears, cries and longings shall be heard. Christ shall be revealed to you and, through your believing in Christ, you shall certainly be saved! There is not, and never will be, in Hell, a single person who dares say that he sought the Lord through Christ and could not find Him. There is not living a man who dares say that, or if he did, his own conscience would call him a liar! They that seek Him may not find Him at once, but they shall, ultimately. Delays from God are not denials. I will repeat what I said. There is not, and there never shall be, in the pit of Hell, a soul that shall dare to say, “I earnestly sought mercy of God through Jesus Christ, and did not find it.” They who never found mercy in Christ never sought it, or never sought it correctly and earnestly! The seeker will become a finder. Seeking in God’s way, heartily and earnestly, God will not reject him. “How do you know who I may be?” asks one—“you speak at large of all.” I do not know who you may be, but I do know this, that if “the wicked forsakes his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts, and turns unto the Lord, He will have mercy upon him, and our God will abundantly pardon” him! I also know this, concerning you, my Friend, that “whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved,” and be you who you may, I am bidden to preach this Gospel to every creature under Heaven—and surely you are a creature! And what is this Gospel? Why, “He that believes and is baptized, shall be saved.” Therefore, however peculiar your case or circumstances, there stands the one grand, glorious promise—“if you seek Him, He will be found of you.” The only, “if,” there is, is with you! If you seek Him—no, “if,” about His being found of you! Oh, shall it be an, “if? Shall it be an “if? The Lord convert that “if into certainty, and may you be compelled to say, tonight, “I will seek Him, and I will never cease my seeking until in my case the promise is true, and I have found Him of whom it was written, ‘If you seek Him, He will be found of you.’” I have thus explained the text, though it scarcely needed it. Now let me give—