When the soul is disentangled from self and other idols, and sees the God of glory before it in the fulness of His perfection and love, how unlimited, how steadfast, how joyful is its confidence in Him! “Behold,” says the church (Isa. xii. 2), “God is my salvation: I will trust and not be afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and my song, he also is become my salvation.” The soul being thus settled on the everlasting Rock, there follows:—
III. In this beholding of God, a glorious train of holy and delighted emotions of the soul.
“Faith worketh by love;” the spices flow forth; God’s love, loveliness, and manifold glory draw out the supreme esteem, desire, and longing of the soul. Then, it is melted down in sweet complacency, delighting itself in the Almighty, and drinking in ineffable pleasure from His smiles and embraces. Then the fire of divine zeal is kindled, and burns partly with the fuel of sacred gratitude and partly with disinterested ardour, forgetting self and all its interests in comparison of God himself and His glory, yet rejoicing inexpressibly in His love. Then to imitate God, to obey Him, to love His creatures and children, to spread abroad the knowledge of His excellency, to hasten to His immediate presence; these, and such like, are the natural, the unforced consequences.
Thus you see, my brethren, how spiritual knowledge, faith, and love make up that beholding of Jehovah which the text requires. I proposed
II. To explain what is signified by the pressing, pathetic manner in which the call is issued out in this text; “I said, Behold me, behold me.”
I hope, my friends, you already feel the melting energy of this repetition. I am sure that if the Spirit of the Lord once touches your hearts with these words and brings them home as the voice of Jesus your beloved, you will feel in them all the sweetness, fire, and majesty of more than celestial eloquence.
I shall endeavour, however, to furnish you with some distinct ideas of the meaning, propriety, and force of this manner of address.
“I said, Behold me, behold me.” This is expressive,
I. Of that Divine consciousness which the Lord hath of His own boundless excellencies, and His desire to manifest and communicate Himself to miserable, unworthy creatures.
God speaks of Himself in a style which no other being can assume without being guilty of the most criminal arrogance. He speaks as one wrapped up in the sense of His own excellency, and proclaims to others His own glory. This becomes the majesty of the self-sufficient and Infinite Being. And it is equally becoming the Divine benignity and beneficence; for as He sees nothing in the universe comparable with Himself—as it is His felicity to contemplate with delight His own independent beauty and glory—so He knows that all the happiness of intelligent creatures lies in their acquaintance with Himself. More especially, in reference to the recovery of ruined men, He knows the extent of their misery, the vanity of other refuges, and the glorious worth and fulness of the preparations He hath made for their relief. Therefore He gives vent to infinite compassion and liberality in calling the attention of men to Himself as the alone Author of salvation. Such is the voice of God in many passages of Scripture besides the text. As, for example, Isa. lv. 2. “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not;” and Prov. ix. 1 2 3 4 5, “Wisdom hath builded her house, she hath hewn out her seven pillars, she hath killed her beasts, she hath mingled her wine, she hath also furnished her table, she hath sent forth her maidens: she crieth upon the highest places of the city, Whoso is simple, let him turn in hither; as for him who wanteth understanding, she saith to him, Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine which I have mingled.”
II. The manner of address in the text may be considered as set in opposition to the careless neglect on the one hand and the discouraging fears on the other which hinder our obedience to the call.
He must knock and knock again; he must utter with vehemence and importunity to gain the attention of trifling and hard-hearted sinners. And when we begin to listen and to perceive the infinite value of the offers our guilty fears suggest a thousand surmises and suspicions. Our hearts would misgive us and sink back did not the God of grace multiply and repeat over again the assurances and invitations of mercy which warrant our approaches to His throne. Luke xiv. 23, “Compel them to come in, that my house may be filled.”
III. Hereby He intimates His readiness to interpose with His effectual grace so as to render successful the endeavours of those who attempt to obey the call.
For this is our next difficulty; we feel ourselves blind, dead, and unable to believe. But the Lord insists on our making the attempt. “Behold me! why do you hesitate? I say, Behold me! I know your inability: But have not I commanded you? Am not I able to create faith? Therefore, attempt, and attempt again, to behold me.” Such was the force of the repetition in those sweet words addressed to the prophet Daniel, chap. x. 19. “Peace be unto thee; be strong; yea, be strong;” that is, in spite of all thy weakness, depend on me, and endeavour to gather strength, and thou shalt succeed.
IV. This pathetic repetition, “Behold me, behold me!” conveys the idea of the boundlessness of that glory and love which are to be seen in the Lord; and that this beholding must be continued in, repeated, and advanced from one degree to another.
Look, and look again. We are called to dwell upon this glorious object. One gracious discovery makes way for another, and rises above another, like the steps of Jacob’s ladder, till it ascends to the highest heavens. So David resolved to spend his whole life in this contemplation. Psal. xxvii. 4, “One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple.” And the apostle in the following words marks the happy progress of believers in this exercise:—”But we all, with open face, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
It now remains,
III. To show the beauty and force of that which the text mentions as an aggrandising circumstance of the call. It is addressed to those who were not called by God’s name.
The entire alienation from God which overwhelmed the Gentiles is brought to remembrance to heighten the wonder excited by God’s merciful procedure. This circumstance has a peculiar beauty and force in it for that purpose. So it will appear from the following observations:—
I. The sovereignty and riches of the grace of God appear in its venting itself abundantly towards those who were altogether unworthy.
The heathen nations were, to appearance, almost already in the belly of hell when Divine mercy came upon them. They had no appearance of connection with the true God, having wrapt themselves up for many ages in the shades of idolatrous darkness. After multitudes of them had been justly left to perish in that apostacy, God at length visited the posterity of those who had for thousands of years been peopling the abodes of misery. But why did he distinguish the children from the fathers? Not, surely, from any superior goodness on their part; for never had wickedness advanced to greater maturity among the heathen than at the very time when the mercy of Jehovah began to triumph among them. “He hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, and whom he will he hardeneth.” “O, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God; how unsearchable are his judgments and his ways past finding out! For who hath first given unto Him, and it shall be recompensed to him again.”
II. The mercy which reached lost heathens was in a high degree preventing, surprising mercy.
It came upon them suddenly, unsolicited by themselves, and unexpected by others who might have better understood the counsel of God as revealed in the Scripture. The unknown God burst in upon them in the splendours of His majesty, holiness, and compassion, and turned them from idols to Himself, from the horrors of hopeless condemnation to the life-inspiring hope of eternal blessedness. “I am sought,” says He, “of them that asked not for me; I am found of them who sought me not;” “I said, Behold me, behold me, unto a nation that were not called by my name.”
III. This circumstance of the antecedent outcast state of the heathen leads us to observe the wonderful contrast between their gracious state and their natural misery.
Who can justly conceive of this strange transition? The holy angels in heaven look back with wonder to that nothingness from which Divine power brought them, and with still greater wonder to that fall into the abyss of sin and misery, from which the distinguished goodness of God held them back in their time of trial. But the people to whom the text relates were already lost. To all human appearance they were sunk past recovery in the depths of an entire apostacy from God. His very name and every vestige of his glory were blotted out from among them. Hell, from beneath, was moved for them to meet them at their coming. When, lo! millions of these kindled brands are plucked from the fire. The hopeless enemies of God and heirs of wrath are called back, reconciled, washed, made kings and priests to God, initiated into the mysteries of celestial joy, and conveyed into the holiest of all to see the unveiled face of God for ever and ever. If this contrast does not strike us with wonder it is for no other reason than because Satan, the god of this world, hath blinded our minds.
APPLICATION.
What improvement, my brethren, is to be made of this subject?
i. I infer from it—and I defy all the hypocrites in the world to gainsay on solid grounds this inference—I infer that a steady, spiritual contemplation of God, in His real and harmonious perfections, is the soul of true religion.
There are many who hover, as it were, around this, who intermeddle with everything else in religion, but the main exercise of religion in fixing the understanding, the conscience, and the heart steadily upon God; this they will not come near: it is too deep for them: they will talk, hear, sing, profess, rejoice as much as you please; but to sit down to think closely on God, to strive as in an agony, till they, by prayer and close attention, get into the light of the knowledge of God’s glory they will not do. What is this conduct but directly to rebel against the voice of God in the text? And will such people be saved? Shall they sit in heaven contemplating God with endless pleasure? No, verily; their doom is already written in the Scripture and will not fail to be executed if repentance prevent not: “It is a people of no understanding, therefore he that made them will not have mercy on them, and he that formed them will show them no favour.”
2. Let us mourn over it that so gracious a voice should be so little regarded, so vilely contemned.
How few do truly answer this sweet call? What is the reason? What have men got to spend their thoughts and their time upon? Are these better employed elsewhere? “They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God,” says the Most High, “they have provoked me to anger with their vanities.” And what is the consequence? “A fire is kindled in mine anger, which shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth and its increase and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. To me belongeth vengeance, their foot shall slide in due time. If I whet my glittering sword and my hand take hold of judgment, I will render vengeance to mine enemies and will reward them that hate me.” What words are these! Words the weight of which the damned constantly feel, in whose miserable footsteps multitudes—multitudes are now hastening forward. But why, my brethren, are we so little moved with concern at the dishonours generally done to God, and at the ruin, the awful ruin bringing on myriads of souls? Is it because we are indeed much bowed down to submit to Divine sovereignty? Is it not rather because our hearts are yet too hard and selfish, and because we do not by faith realise the certainty, terribleness, and endless duration of threatened punishment? How shall many, in a little, rave with sorrow and gnash their teeth with despairing envy who are now living at ease, while God shall justly laugh at their calamity and mock when their fear cometh! O the awful Sabbaths of London, the woful evenings, the tavern-haunting, the oaths, the uncleanness, the raging thirst for the world, the scornful neglect of ordinances or mock attendance on them! These things, if duly laid to heart would bring us to something like what David felt when he said, “Rivers of waters run down mine eyes because they keep not thy law.”
3. Amidst these causes of deep sorrow let us rejoice that the sovereign God can conquer the obstinacy of the human heart; He can command attention and draw to Himself the inmost part of the soul.
I hope some of us are monuments of this. What cause have they to rejoice in whom the text hath been fulfilled! You little know, my dear friends, the value of that little saving knowledge of God which you have obtained. But let us examine ourselves closely lest we be deceived. What kind of knowledge have we? Is it that holy and powerful kind of knowledge which bears genuine marks of its coming from above? Let us bless God if such is our knowledge, though but as a grain of mustard seed.
5. Whatever our condition has hitherto been let us now urge this call on ourselves and on each other.
The Lord now utters the call to us. “Behold me, behold me!” He utters it as really and particularly to each of us as though a voice from heaven were now rending the sky and summoning each of us, by his name, to attend to the concerns of salvation. Yea from day to day, from night to night, in every secret retreat where there is opportunity to seek God, there this voice secretly sounds forth from the Invisible Being, “Behold me, behold me!” What shall be our reckoning if we shall be found disregards of these numberless calls? Millions of them we have already slighted. Let none venture to-day to harden his heart. Let us now look to the crucified Redeemer. Let us look and look again till, through the illumination of the Spirit, we see the cross, as it were, all in a blaze of Divine splendour, and God Himself, in the awfulness of His justice and in the sweetness of His mercy, beaming forth from the marred visage, the wounds, the blood, the unknown sorrows, the expiring groans of Jesus the Lamb of God. To Him be glory, now and for evermore. Amen.