Notes of a Sermon

BY THE LATE REV. ARCHIBALD COOK, DAVIOT.

PREACHED IN JOHN KNOX’S FREE CHURCH, GLASGOW.

“If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”—JOHN xv. 19.

THE hatred of the world is not easy for the saints to endure. A child of God is not an angel that he can live above feeling, nor is he a stone that he cannot feel; on the contrary, he has very tender feelings. The hatred of the world is sometimes very hard, very severe, but if it arises against the creature on account of his spiritual acquaintance with the Saviour, he often rejoices in the midst of it. We read of the apostles that they went “from the presence of the council, rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name.” A view of this would make opposition easier for the child of God. The hatred of the world is a part of the cross he has to bear, and the cross is an ornament to the gracious soul. When these words were first uttered, the Saviour was personally present with His disciples. He knew from experience what the hatred of the world was, and He knew that the world from that time forward would hate every drop of His grace in His disciples, and therefore He forewarned them that they might lay their account with suffering. He says: “It hated me before it hated you.” “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own; but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.” In discoursing from these words, I intend to show:—

I. Whence the love of the world to its own arises.

II. The manner of Christ’s choosing His people out of the world; and

III. Whence arises the hatred of the world to the children of God.

I. We are to show whence the love of the world to its own arises. Why does the world love its own?

1. In the first place we may say it arises from this, that the world is all of the same corrupt nature. We see that every class of creatures has a kind of attachment to its own class. We see that sheep, cows, horses, fowls, and even the very serpents, have an attachment each to its own kind because they are of the same nature. And so the world must love its own; it is all of the same corrupt fallen nature. We need not wonder at this. But one thing may be said, their attachment to one another is but short; there will be nothing of it in eternity.

2. I observe further that this love arises from sinful lusts in the

nature. There is not a sin we hear of or see in the world, but the seed of that sin is in us when we come into the world. We need not say, “Look at the murderer, the thief, or the unclean creature;” we brought the seed of murder, theft, and uncleanness into the world with us. But there is some predominant sin in the nature of each person. Although the same sin is in the nature of all, yet the same sin does not predominate or rule in every creature. Hence the ruling sin of some is drunkenness, of others, covetousness, and of others still, uncleanness. Now, whatever sin rules in the nature of one person, that sin chooses a companion in another; it loves its own image in the other person. Hence you may know what sin reigns in a man by his companions. No doubt this is partly what is meant by the rich man in hell speaking of his five brethren, who were probably his five companions in lust. Why did he not wish them to come to hell? Was he not wanting their company? No, my friends; but because he was afraid they would bring five more hells with them. And do we not see some of those persons freer with a companion than with a brother, or a sister, or a father? There are persons who, on hearing another profane the name of God, will reprove him for it, and will even be grieved for it, but, should they see one drunk, they, and very few besides, will grieve for or reprove him. I hear people often saying, “He was an honest man, though he had his own infirmities.” Although he was a drunkard, a profane swearer, a Sabbath breaker, they will say he was an honest man who had his own infirmities. There is a want of faithfulness among men. Many will speak behind a man’s back, what they will not say to his face. What if you see that person on the left hand for the very sin which you should have reprov’d him for?

1. We may go further and speak of the low, mean thoughts of divine things that reign in the unregenerate heart of the world. There are low and contemptible thoughts of God, of Christ, and of eternity, reigning in unregenerate persons. Now, it is from this that a great deal of their love to one another and of their hatred to God’s people arises. We see that the old philosophers never agreed in anything among themselves; they were tearing one another continually; but when Christ Jesus appeared to preach to poor sinners, they join together to reject Him. Here the world showed that it loved its own.

II. The manner of Christ’s choosing His people out of the world. On the subject of choosing sinners, as here set forth, we are not going to enter into the doctrine of eternal election. With regard to this, there is a mystery in God, hidden from the angels, and known only to Himself. Eternal election was a mystery from all eternity, and its objects are only known when we see the power of God made known in the souls of sinners. When you see the power of God made known in the soul of a sinner, you may know that that sinner was elected from eternity.

1. In the first place, I observe that Christ gains the consent of

the soul to be His. Without this, we cannot say that a soul will be saved, according to the eternal purpose of God, and in view of that eternal purpose, we dare not say that any soul, whose consent is gained to Christ will be lost. We read that when Eliezer went for a wife to Abraham’s son, Isaac, the question was put to Rebekah, “Wilt thou go with this man?” Her answer was, “I will go.” Her consent was gained. Now, the Spirit of God creates in the elect soul that consent; though this movement of soul be no bigger than the first movement of a child in its mother’s womb, yet the Spirit of God is there, and it will take the soul to glory. I believe that if the pain produced by the point of a needle would be sufficient to prepare the soul for heaven, the Lord would not use more, but he must bruise, and break, and purge the soul to pieces, before He brings it there. In choosing His people out of the world, Christ by His Spirit gives them grace to consent. “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power.”

1. I observe further, that the gaining of the soul from the world to Christ is by means of “the promise” and that in His own ordinances. Know you, poor sinner, that can put your finger upon a promise with which God gained your consent to Christ, you have something that will give you comfort, when you come to grapple with eternity, when flesh cannot comfort you. This promise is between the soul and God, it is a secret. And it is very often when the poor sinner is on his knees that the consent of his soul is gained. This promise has something of the nature of the word of which the Psalmist speaks—”Remember the word unto thy servant, upon which thou hast caused me to hope.” Indeed, whatever word the soul gets from time to time to the day of his death, it is only a confirmation of the first word.

2. When the soul is gained to Christ by the promise, there is something of the nature of spiritual dew that comes with it. You, that know something of this, you know something of a heart closed in to God, closed in to Christ, closed in to the offers of the Gospel. Neither prayer, preaching, affliction, nor hell itself would convert you. Now, when the Lord comes to a soul in this way, a spiritual dew comes down. You yourselves will see in the morning, when the dew descends and the sun begins to rise, you will see the very flowers opening their bosoms. And when the Spirit of God opens up to the soul something of the infinite loveliness of the Great One, the spiritual dew falls down from Him through the promise into the soul, and the soul is open to receive it. “Awake, O north wind; and come thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out. Let my beloved come into his garden, and eat his pleasant fruits.” The hypocrite has only God without, Christ without, and he is content with that, but the gracious soul must have Him within. You that have room in your souls to give to God and Christ, they have room in glory for your souls. You that have no room for the Saviour, you have no evidence that He has room for you in glory.

3. This experience comes to the soul oftentimes when the soul is looking at himself as one whose day of grace is past. There are some poor creatures that conclude that the day of grace is past with them, and that they are given up to judicial hardness. There is something in these words—”Why hast thou hardened our hearts from thy fear?” This is as if they thought the Lord had hardened their hearts in judgment. We see the Psalmist in the eighty-eighth psalm saying, “Wilt thou shew wonders to the dead? shall the dead arise and praise thee?” Why does he say this? He needed to realise himself among the dead. Why? That the Son of God may be glorified. “This sickness is not unto death, but for the glory of God, that the Son of God may be glorified thereby.” There is power in His resurrection—”that they may know him in the power of his resurrection and in the fellowship of his sufferings”—to give sinners a spiritual resurrection. I am sure you, poor soul, know something of this. Once you thought if you could be freed from vain thoughts in prayers, on the Sabbaths, when reading the Bible, you would be happy; but what follows now? A dead soul. “Oh, it is not so much vain thoughts I am now burdened with—but a dead soul, every feeling is dead.” The carnal world know not the worms that eat them; their spiritual death never brought one sigh from their hearts. But there is a principle of faith in the bosom of the living soul, which lies, as were in a grave, until the power of Christ’s resurrection comes; then something comes out of that grave that sets the soul to spiritual action. This is the way in which the Lord chooses a people out of the world or sets apart a soul for Himself. Will not His glory, His power, His grace, and His love, be seen in the resurrection of that poor soul?

4. The soul will now be newly furnished. We lost our spiritual furniture by the fall; we are unfit for the enjoyment of God. Now the soul will feel a new love of spiritual objects, a new hatred to sin, a new longing after holiness and after enjoyment of the Three-One God.

5. The Saviour, when He chooses and sets apart a poor soul for Himself, sets apart that soul for God. “I have chosen you out of the world.” First; the tastes of the soul are renewed. You may set a sheep to feed on a dunghill, but let it loose, and it will go to the grass. Why? It is its nature. Take a sow, and put it on grass, but let it loose, and it will go to the dunghill. Why? It is its nature. You may take a carnal worldling and put him among the people of God, and I am sure he will have very little comfort, he will soon get tired. The reading of a chapter is a burden to him. Why? It is his nature; it is like that of the swine. But whenever the power of the Saviour comes to the soul the taste is changed, so that the soul does not find comfort in the carnal company of the world. He now becomes a poor broken creature, mourning in a corner over hatred of God, and a barren, hard heart. And notwithstanding this mourning, he must confess

that at this moment he has greater comfort than all the comfort he had in the world. How? Because he is renewed in his mind, and in proportion as he is renewed, his comfort becomes sweeter. This change must take place in the soul here, that the creature may love God through eternity. Though an unregenerate sinner would be brought to glory, how is it possible that he can love glory, who had no love to God here? The renewed soul loses comfort, solace and happiness in the fashions and company of the world, and profess to be a poor, broken creature at the footstool of the Lord. Secondly, the soul now becomes tender and easily wounded in spirit. Perhaps there was a time when he could hear the profaning of God’s name or profane swearing, without any grief. He could see drunken creatures, and the sight gave him no grief. But the soul now has become tender, and like one who has a wound on his body that is easily hurt, so the Lord now makes his conscience tender like raw flesh, easily hurt. But the soul is not yet wholly weaned from his lusts or from company, and again another drop falls from above and makes the soul tender, so that a vain thought or a worldly word will wound him. But some professors of religion can make a prayer, a long prayer, and a good prayer, and can live with any company; their conscience is spiritually dead.

1. I observe further that they set themselves apart from the world because they feel from experience that the Saviour is not among the world. Hence when there, they get hardness of heart, and when that hardness comes, it is not easily removed. Nothing but power and comfort from above will remove barrenness of soul and the sense of an angry God. This makes them know that the Lord is not in the pleasures of the world, and hence they try a private corner. O my friends, it is a great thing to be brought to love a secret place. There are many professors who keep family worship as regular as the clock, and yet they do not spend five minutes in prayer in a corner from morning to night. O it is a wonderful thing to bring one to find happiness in private exercise! The poor creature loves a broken heart, loves a penitent spirit, loves a thirst after God, and loves holiness. First: the soul may set himself apart for God from spirit of thankfulness. O child of God, if the Spirit of grace gives you a glimpse of the sins which you had once, if you “look unto the rock whence ye are hewn, and to the hole of the pit whence ye are digged,” and look at yourself as you were an heir of hell, lying in your blood in the open field, think of your deliverance, and what it cost God before you could be delivered out of that pit. The Son of God had to become a man of sorrows, and to be sacrificed in your room. He then passed by and said to your soul, “Live,” and the soul was quickened; and perhaps you remember the first day you had a spiritual being. Will not that soul be filled with thankfulness, and be disposed to give himself to the Lord’s service? Why, see the Psalmist, after he got deliverance from the pains of hell, he

says, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all his benefits toward me? . . . I am thy servant, and the son of thy handmaid: thou hast loosed my bonds.” These bonds were chains that all the angels in heaven could not loose. Ah, sinner, there were two chains on the soul that would make the very devils miserable to all eternity, the chains of guilt and of the curse. Now, you, poor sinner, I am sure, if the Lord will give you your choice, you will not be willing to leave the world without doing something for Him. Secondly: Now, the soul, in setting himself apart for the Lord, as the fruit of the Saviour’s choice of him, comes to see the end of his creation. What is the greatest honour that ever was put on a sinner of this world? Is it to be a king or queen? No, no. The greatest honour is to answer the end of his creation. All the lower creatures answer their end; the very serpents answer their end. Think of your tongue; was it for speaking about the world on the Lord’s day that the Lord gave you a tongue? Look at the profane swearer; was it for profanity that a tongue was given him? But the child of God answers the end of his creation, the greatest honour that can be put upon him. The riches of the world, the honours of the world, are but a shadow in comparison with this. In whatever company he is, whether among the people of God or among the world, if he sees the crown on the head of the Redeemer, and the world under foot, he counts it an infinite sweetness, an infinite comfort. It is something which makes the creature happy through all eternity. It is in this way that the people of God find it easy to get through the world. The soul comes to this, as the result of the Saviour’s setting him apart, namely, to put the crown on His head. All the true godliness that is in the world is the only thing the soul sees of any value.

III. This brings me to the last part—why the world hates the people of God. Never you mind, never you mind, there is a common saying among people, “Dogs may bark at the moon, but the moon is none the worse of their barking.” So the world may bark at the people of God, but they are none the worse. Moses counted the reproach of Christ greater riches than all the treasures in Egypt. There are few people will do this, but the children of the new birth will do it.

1. The hatred of the world is a fulfilment of the first promise. The Lord said to the serpent, “I will put enmity between thy seed and her seed.” This must be fulfilled; it is God who spoke it; and what Word is so faithful as His?

2. Again I observe that the world hate God’s people, because something of the spiritual knowledge of the Son of God has come into their souls. The knowledge of the Saviour, or the fruit of that knowledge, will appear outwardly, and the enmity of the world will show itself against it, for the world are against God, and when God appeared in man’s nature sinners were not at ease. If you saw a bear or a lion on the road, you would flee from it, if

you could not overcome it. So sinners, because they cannot overcome God, flee from Him. Thus when the fruit of the spiritual knowledge of the Saviour begins to make its appearance, the world will try to nip it in the bud. You, child of God, you could once dance as well as others, you could go to the ball as well as others. Did your parents say anything against you then? But something came over you and you began to pray, and perhaps they then turned upon you. There are some poor creatures that only God and their souls know what they have suffered at the hands of others. There are but few who have so much godliness, but that when they are in the company of drunkards, these may say, “Ye are of our own;” or when they are with the Sabbath-breakers, these may say, “Ye are of our own;” they conform to every company.

1. The world’s hatred arises because the people of God have so much tenderness of spirit that they cannot put up with everything others may do. Lot was in Sodom, and I am sure the people of Sodom were as tired of him as he was of them, for he was re proving them for their sin. Now, poor creatures, that cannot allow things to pass without reproof, I am sure you will often feel the serpent beginning to hiss, and this will often send you to your knees with broken spirits and wet eyes. “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own: but because ye are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the world, therefore the world hateth you.”

2. The world’s hatred to the soul arises because the soul has a principle of steadfastness that will not comply or make concessions. We see this in poor Daniel; he would not yield although they threw him among the lions. We see the other children; they would not yield although they were thrown into the furnace. The furnace was as terrible in itself to the three children as to any others, but they had a view of the unquenchable fire; they saw that Nebuchadnezzar’s fire would be soon over, and could at the worst burn only their bodies, but the other fire would eternally burn their souls in hell. So, if the Lord creates a principle of steadfastness in the soul that will rather suffer than yield, the child of God will lose all rather than sin. But, my friends, you will not lose; there is not a hair lost but you will get it back in a spiritual way. I have no doubt but that for every arrow that enters the soul there is a drop of eternal sweetness put in his cup in glory, and even in this world itself there will be drops of sweetness in the cup with trials. If the world knew that they were the occasion of so much sweetness to the children of God they would not meddle with them.

3. It is the sovereign good will of God that the world’s hatred is shown to his children. Were it not that the Lord would bring us out of the world’s company we would lie and rot in it. So He must let the world loose upon a poor creature, and this is a part of the furnace a gracious soul must be brought through. This is

not our home; eternity is our home; glory is our home. It is written of others that they sought “a better country.” Why did they seek it? Because they were crucified to the world, and the world to them. And this is one of the ways in which the Lord crucifies them to the world, and makes them pilgrims and strangers. “If ye were of the world, the world would love his own.” But poor things, remember that it hated the Saviour before it hated you, and “in that he himself suffered, being tempted, he is able to succour them that are tempted.” When things come to a head, He will take you home to Himself, or He will cut these things short. The Saviour loves a broken heart and a contrite spirit. These are the sacrifices with which He is well pleased. But He does not like them to be too much broken, so when things come to a height with a poor soul, He will send deliverance.

The Lord honours that soul greatly whom He hath separated for Himself. It is not everyone that the Lord is separating for Himself. These are few. How many are going out of the world as ignorant of God, of self, of sin, as when they came into it. There are but few holy creatures whom the Lord is setting apart for Himself. Remember these words, “Beloved, now are we the sons of God; and it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.” And what is it to be like the Son of God? Ah, there is not a child of grace in this world but will be more glorious in eternity than although ten thousand suns should be shining in one sun. It were worth while to endure the spittings of the world for a while. Where would they be, if they had got their deserts? they would be lying in hell among the devils. Perhaps there are persons in hell this night that were no worse than you, and if He show His grace to you, will you not then endure the spittings of the world, when there are such things in eternity? Moses chose to suffer affliction. O what a reward he has got! How many thousands of years he has been already in glory! Four score years would likely have ended his happiness in Egypt, and then there would be the eternal flames; now, although he should get no more happiness than he has got already, has he not been rewarded enough?

O poor, foolish sinner, your day of grace is given to prepare for eternity, and will you spend your few days in trifling? “What will it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?” Ah, poor sinner remember eternity; you must go to eternity for yourself. “Him that cometh unto me,” says the Saviour, “I will in nowise cast out.” “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” “They that be wise shall shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” for ever and ever.—Amen.