yes. When Paul had alluded to that consoling subject he turned to the next ground of comfort namely, that we are to be sustained under present trial by hope. But another bitter taunt comes to me, "You have sinned in spirit. "As many are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." If there were no future to this world as well as to ourselves, we might be glad to escape from it, counting it to be nothing better than a huge penal colony, from which it would be a thousand mercies for both body and soul to be emancipated. Then, beloved, I have reason to hope that thou hast been called of God, for it is a holy calling wherewith God doth call his people. Consider again, I pray you, what a dignity God hath conferred upon you even upon you in making you his son. Yours, in deep sympathy with all the sick and the bereaved. As far as I can guess, the main text on which these people build the doctrine of the universal Fatherhood, is that quotation which the apostle Paul took from a heathen poet "As certain also of your own poets have said, For we are also his offspring." Stern was the labour, toilsome was the work; he dug on, and on, and on, through rocks of suffering, into the deepest caverns of misery; but the resurrection was the springing up of the water. All these terrible things in righteousness, the awful proofs of holy vengeance in the judge of all the earth, and successfully neutralized in their arousing effect, by being quietly written among the loving acts and words of the Universal Father. Merchant; though you have been sore pressed this week, and it is highly probable that next week will be worse still for you, believe that all things even then are working for your good. Do I suffer with him, suffer for him? He had endured persecution, imprisonment, famine, shipwreck, he had suffered from scorn and scandal, pain of body, and depression of spirit. He said within himself, "Does Jesus love me? Did you notice how the text begins? But the blessed Spirit does more than this, he will often direct the mind to the special subject of prayer. On this I shall speak very briefly. Now why call Zaccheus? and hence he is "a very present help in time of trouble.". It does not strike man upon the head; it penetrates into his heart; it lays the axe at the root of the tree, and pronounces him "enmity against God," against the person of the Godhead, against the Deity, against the mighty Maker of this world; not at enmity against his Bible or against his gospel, though that were true, but against God himself, against his essence, his existence, and his person. Let us mark a yet more positive passage, Romans ix. If thou art this day an heir of heaven, remember, man, thou wast once the slave of hell. What about your present sinfulness?" Do you see the force of this expression? I have sometimes read sermons upon the inclination of the sinner to evil, in which it has been very powerfully proved, and certainly the pride of human nature has been well humbled and brought low; but one thing always strikes me, if it is left out, as being a very great omission; viz. And men of every kindred, and of every tribe, shall see in the face of every man, a relative allied to them by ties of blood. Let God call a man may resist, but he cannot resist effectually. Ask him whether God has been once untrue to him and he will say, "No; not one good thing hath failed of all that the Lord God hath promised; all hath come to pass!" God bless you, for Christ's sake! Both the sinner and the Surety are now free. That is the first illustration I will give you of what is meant by effectual calling. He gave to us his heaven, for "where I am, there shall my people be." Moreover, the Holy Spirit's intercession creates prayers offered in a proper manner. True Advocate is he, and Comforter most effectual. rail on as pleases you. Christ once wore a thorny crown, and if you are to have all that he has, you must bear the thorny crown too? This poor man knows very little about law, and is quite unable to meet his cunning opponent. There are e'en stronger arguments for the non-condemnation of the believer in the resurrection of Christ than in his precious death and burial. At present I am at enmity with God. Do you hate God for all this? We are to stand at the door expecting the Beloved to open it and take us away to himself. A groan then is a part of prayer which we owe to the Holy Ghost, and the same is true of all the prayer which wells up from the deep fountains of our inner life. I. Second, being born in human likeness and living among us as a sinless man, Jesus "condemned sin in the flesh"beat sin on its own turf. He means that, if we were tempted by the love of life to deny Christ' we should be strengthened so that we should not deny him even to save our lives, for his people have been brave enough in this respect in all times. 2. I knew there was a work; I knew I prayed, and cried, and groaned for mercy, but I did not know that was the Lord's work; I half thought it was my own. Those of us who have passed through any spiritual conflicts know that Satan is a terribly real personage. And so, after he had patiently endured, he obtained the promise. That bereavement is working for thy good. In preaching of this call this morning, I shall divide my sermon into three brief parts. Since the day when Adam fell all things have had to toil and labor. There is no fear of tempest, that grand old hospice has outstood many a thundering storm. I fear many of us here must acknowledge that we do not charge the sin of it to our own consciences. Ah, my hearers, what would you give if you could obtain this confidence? I have affirmed, and I am sure most Christians will bear witness, that what I said was the truth, that if any man loveth God he loves him because God gave him grace to love him. To hate the all-lovely to despise the essentially good to abhor the constantly merciful to spurn the ever beneficent to scorn the kind, the gracious one; above all, to hate the God who sent his son to die for man! Let us try to meet this question, "Why does Christ intercede to day in heaven?" We are reduced to such straits that we must pray, but what shall be the particular subject of prayer we cannot for a while make out. Strange to say, it proved true that it was for his good; for being delayed a day or so on the road through his lameness, he just arrived in London in time enough to hear that Elizabeth was proclaimed queen, and so he escaped the stake by his broken leg. Beloved, if you would be saved, you must be persuaded of this truth; and when you are persuaded of it, you will know the joy of it. We cannot be precisely as God is, yet as we have borne the image of the earthy we shall also bear the image of the heavenly, whatever that image may be. But all things pass away. Again, I repeat it, the believer should take strong draughts of consolation here. To him fine language is as sounding brass or tinkling cymbal, but a groan has music in it. Tell even them that Christ died. So shall we be, for because he lives, we shall live also. Grace in the soul is its new nature; the soul is alive to God, and has begun its holy happiness which shall endure for ever. Others of you have affliction in your children, many of you are tried in your business, and some of you in your bodies with chronic or acute diseases. I might review all our powers, and write upon the brow of each one, "Traitor against heaven! NVIPT. But this know, O man, whatever thou sayest of this doctrine, it is a stone upon which, if any man fall, he shall suffer loss, but if it fall upon him it shall grind him to powder. Those whom the Lord looked upon with favor as he foresaw them, he has predestinated to he conformed to the image of his Son. So is it also with us. To prove that, however, I will refer you to the express words of scripture: Romans 11:29 "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance." I have heard that in the Marshalsea of old they did take rank according to the greatness of their debts. Thirdly, we are to be conformed to the image of Christ in our experience. They surrounded it; they were about to sack it, and Camillus was the only man who could deliver it. He might say, as Jesus did to the Jews, "For which of these works do ye stone me?" But distinguishing grace has made a difference where no difference naturally was; we are now no longer treated as criminals condemned, but as children and heirs of God. If all the processes of grace fail in the case of any professors, what is to be done with them? What will the father do? When we feel that we have power with God and can obtain anything we ask for at his hands, then our difficulties cease to oppress us. But again, Matthew v. 9. The law has, therefore, more than it asked for, and I am thus not afraid of the anger of the great God. MY DEAR READERS, Your weekly preacher is still weakly; but though his progress towards strength is slow, it has been steadily maintained during the late trying weather. Now, suppose I should put the following question to any converted man in this hall. Many have gone round the world to look for a saviour other than the Lord Jesus Christ, and they have only come to him when all others have failed them. You see what you are to come to, therefore, set Christ before your eyes always. It is our will now, but it was God's will when it was not our will, and it only became according to our will when we were converted, because God's grace had made us willing in the day of its power. Tell him that you are a sinner, and that if he should paint your sin in its blackest colours, you would not even then despair, for it would still be true that Christ "is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him." How is this? Added to this you must also be the heir of persecution. I take it there is not. Look at our history. Still the accuser continues reminding us of our past life: "you have trusted in others, and turned away from Christ; you went everywhere before you came to him." If I may be allowed the simile, I would say that this represents in part the work of the Spirit of God in us, suggesting to us the right desire, and bringing all things to our remembrance whatsoever Christ has told us. We have believed in Jesus, and it is written, "as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to as many as believed on his name.". Happy is he who can follow the apostle step by step, and say, "Yes, I have this morning the spirit of a son; I know that my heart loves God, and I look to him as my Father, with trust, with confidence, and with love; then I am surely his son, because I have the Spirit a son; then I am his heir; I am the heir of God; and thus my faith lays hold upon the thrice-precious words of this glorious text I am joint heir with Christ.". I doubt not that God at first supernaturally revealed it to him; but yet, in order that he might be still more sure of it, God was pleased to reveal it to him again and again, till his trembling heart was more and more completely persuaded of it. You shall find, when your biography is written, that the black page did but harmonize with the bright one that the dark and cloudy day was but a glorious foil to set forth the brighter noon-tide of your joy. Be not drugged with the laudanum of self-security! But my counsel would say, "Now just be quiet, my dear sir, you perhaps may plead more earnestly than I can, because it is for your own life, but then you do not understand the law, you will make some blunder or other, and commit yourself and spoil your own cause." We shall behold his glory, we shall be with him where he is, and we shall be ourselves glorious in his glory. He said to himself, "If, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life." Is then your calling a high calling, has it lifted up your heart, and set it upon heavenly things? Cataracts of trouble descend if you will, and you, ye floods of affliction, roll if so it be ordained, for God has written my name in the book of life. These prayers are sometimes "groanings that cannot be uttered," because they concern such great things that they cannot be spoken. "There's the respect that makes calamity of so long life," that there is so much longer time for temptation and trial. Towards man he was all love; it becomes us to be the same. Are we not his sons, and is there not a debt the son owes to the father which a lifetime of obedience can never remove? Stop HIM? "For ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord; walk as children of the light." Yet at that selfsame moment, where human eyes saw nothing seraphic eyes beheld marvels of grace, and angels in heaven rejoiced over one sinner that repented, singing once again "glory to God in the highest." Simply because it is depraved; and until he had entered a foul element until the body had begun to quiver with a kind of intoxication the fancy would not hold its carnival. "Now," says Paul, "yea rather, he is risen from the dead." Remarks on Beecher's Life of Christ. Now, God will one day change our bodies and make them fit for our souls, and then he will change this world itself. So it is: prayer prompted by the Holy Spirit is the footfall of the divine decree. You know how thrice he assailed him with those temptations which are most likely to be attractive to poor humanity, but Jesus overcame them all. Say soul, canst thou honestly declare that thy past life was darkness and that thy present state is light in the Lord? It may have seemed to him, as it does to some of us, to be almost too good to be true, and therefore the Holy Spirit so shed abroad this truth in the apostle's mind that he yielded to it, and said, "I am persuaded." "Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called the children of God." Lecture 1: A Chat about Commentaries. You may cast your eye to the remotest star, or send your thoughts beyond into the untraversed leagues of space, but look where you will, as all is Christ's, so all is yours. may seem too mean to pray about. Oratory may stand back, and eloquence may hold her tongue. You will notice here, my beloved, that there are two witnesses in court two who are ready to prove our filiation to the eternal God. 9. But what is the conflagration of a distant planet, what is the destruction of the mere material of the most ponderous orb, compared with this fall of humanity, this wreck of all that is holy and sacred in ourselves? this is "to the uttermost;" what we thought, perhaps, to be the very smallest matter in the recital, is just the greatest. "Christ hath redeemed us from the curse of the law, being made a curse for us: for it is written, Cursed is every one that hangeth on a tree." You may judge of a man by what he groans after. The help which the Holy Ghost renders to us meets the weakness which we deplore. Let your faith and your imagination work together to portray the unutterable glories of Immanuel, God with us, as he sits at the right hand of the Father. He died, the Prince of glory died the ignominious felon's death, in the room and place and stead of guilty men. I say it boldly and without a figure, the eternal arm of God now nerved with strength, now released from the bondage in which justice held it, is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Christ. We may look, then, at this third clause, as having a "much more" before it, comparing Scripture with Scripture. Wherefore, since it is only our Judge who can condemn us, and since he is the very Person who has paid our debt for us, and put our sin away, we dare to repeat again, with additional emphasis, our ringing challenge to all the universe, "Who is he that condemneth?". You believe that all things will in the end work for your good. We shall be called upon to notice, this morning, first, the truthfulness of this assertion; secondly, the universality of the evil here complained of; thirdly, we will still further enter into the depths of the subject, and press it to your hearts, by showing the enormity of the evil; and after that, should we have time, we will deduce one or two doctrines from the general fact. Ah! "We know," and the apostle lifts his hand to where the white-robed hosts are praising God for ever. Then again I say to you, "Tell it not in Gath and publish it not in Askelon, then has a heathen eclipsed a Christian." But here we have a more uncommon and a sublimer theme. You may have seen very beautiful prayers in print, and you may have heard very charming compositions from the pulpit, but I trust you have not fallen in love with them. And he came before his Father's throne and said, "There it is; the full price: I have brought it all." Romans 8:26-27 . Happy in what he has received, for that very reason he groans to get the fulness of what is promised him. At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. But of the Christian, it can be said, that he does not owe God's justice a solitary farthing; for Christ has paid the debt his people owed. 'The Believer's Challenge' and 'A Challenge and a Shield', Delivered on Sabbath Morning, June 5th, 1859, by the. Look again at that noble youth, Mutius Scoevola. Ye are young brides, and the marriage day is not come, and by the love your spouse bears you, you are led to long and to sigh for the marriage day. There is an amazing glory in reserve for us, and though as yet we cannot enter upon it, but in harmony with the whole creation must continue to groan and travail, yet the hope itself should minister strength to us, and enable us patiently to bear "these light afflictions, which are but for a moment." I feel that to the knee that dandled me and the breast that gave me sustenance, I owe more than I can ever pay; and to him who taught me, and led me in the paths of truth I owe so much, that I dare not speak of the tremendous weight of obligation due to him. Jehovah has declared that he will be a father unto us, and that we shall be his sons and his daughters. He has, in fact, no right at all, except as he is taken in connection with his co-heir. "We have not an High Priest that cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmities." It is called "first-fruits," again, because these were always holy to the Lord. Who is he that condemneth, then? Let us not be backward in doing our work. But, on a certain set day, the gates were thrown wide open, and the general, victorious from the wars in Africa or Asia, with his snow-white horses bearing the trophies of his many battles, rode through the streets, which were strewn with roses, while the music sounded, and the multitudes, with glad acclaim, accompanied him to the Capitol. LONDON: PASSMORE AND ALABASTER, Paternoster Buildings; and of all Booksellers. "To as man as received him to them gave he power to become the sons of God"; and to the sons of God alone cometh the Spirit of adoption, and all his helping grace. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according the to will of God." Amen. As this is a legal question, and as in matters of wills everything should be proven and sworn to, let us have, concerning our inheritance, the evidence of God: that cannot lie. It is not the Spirit that groans, but we that groan; but as I have shown you, the Spirit excited the emotion which causes us to groan. Is there not any word of special commendation to this? I thought I saw you the other day looking amazingly great, because on such an occasion you really had done some little service to Christ's Church; and you looked astonishingly proud about it. Romans 8 concludes the second main section of the body of the letter, ' Living under grace '. We will answer these and other questions along the way: Should sin in my life cause me to question whether or not I am in Christ? thou shall rest for ever and ever. It sends a shiver through some when we begin to speak of death, and the bravest man who ever lived may well tremble at the thought that he must soon meet the king of terrors; but, brothers and sisters, if Christ loves us, and we love Christ, we may well be persuaded that death will not break the union which exists between us. "Well, sir, you know how much I love the cause, and how earnest I am in doing everything that I can to serve my Maker; but (now comes the end of it all) I really work so hard all the week that I cannot afford to go out on the Sabbath to Sunday-schools." He replies, "Youth! At any rate, meet the attack of the world as you met the attack of Satan, with this weapon only: "It is Christ that died," and you will be "more than conquerors through him that loved us.". If any text can be more conclusive than this against universal sonship, I must confess I know of none, and unless these words mean nothing at all, they do mean just this, that believers are the sons of God and none besides. In referring to the issue of servitude to sin ( katakrima ), Paul has reference to the problem discussed in the previous chapter and in 5:12-21. Intended for Reading on Lord's-Day, November 22, 1896. Say not, "Lutheranism and Popery are mighty." If it were some little thing, my narrow capacity could comprehend and describe it, but I need all covenant blessings. ", I. sir, I could always do wonders when there were no wonders to do. Here comes in this blessed word taken out of the Greek litany, "By thine unknown sufferings." Today, also, we can preach the gospel of Jesus Christ, casting it about us as it were as our garment, and he that toucheth the hem thereof shall he not also be made whole to-day, even as when Jesus was among men? The sermons he preached touched the lives of thousands. Perhaps after those great fires of which Peter speaks when he says, "The heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat," earth will be renewed in more than pristine loveliness. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: that, according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.". OLD TESTAMENT. who is fully assured of his interest in the covenant of grace, in the blood of atonement, and in the glories of heaven! I am in this boat myself. Those in heaven, have, as it were, stolen there. Now God has never promised that "all things shall work together" for such good as that to his people. We shall first look over these four pillars of the believer's faith, and then, afterwards, we shall ourselves take up the apostle's challenge, and cry, "Who is he that condemneth?". Christ will not belie himself. As I have already said, if in time of trouble a man can pray, his burden loses its weight. We have that work of the Spirit within our souls which always comes before admittance into glory. The voice of God in the word has testified to us our Heavenly Father's dove; and the Holy Spirit has borne witness with our spirits that we are the children of God. In Philippians 3:13-14 you find these words. 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