A Sermon by Rev D A Macfarlane
Micah 2:12-13. I will surely assemble, O Jacob, all of thee; I will surely gather the remnant of Israel; I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, as the flock in the midst of their fold: they shall make great noise by reason of the multitude of men. The breaker is come up before them: they have broken up, and have passed through the gate, and are gone out by it: and their king shall pass before them, and the Lord on the head of them.
2. The Breaker bringing them to the “fold”.
I take it that the “Breaker” is the Redeemer, and He is also brought before us as the King. The Father in the divine essence did not speak directly but indirectly. The Lord Jesus Christ was set up in the everlasting covenant, and you should consider it much. You can say to yourself: This bit here, this blessed prophecy, is in the Bible. What other Book is it in? This is an extract from the Book of Life. The Lord has the Book of Life in glory, and He agreed on this with the Angel of the Covenant – the Wisdom of God, the Messiah, the Daysman and near kinsman. They put down in a book all the names of the elect. And although that is not what we have to do with in the first place, yet we know a lot of them by name: the godly men and women that we read about in the Old Testament, and in the New Testament too.
Here you have the Breaker, and He was to be a Breaker in a two-fold way. First of all, the Father spoke in eternity to the Second Person of the Trinity, as His Servant – the elect servant, the chosen and choice Servant. The Father said to the Redeemer, My dearly beloved Son, Thou wilt be the Breaker for them. What did that mean? Christ in His work of redemption was to free them from the grasp of the law.
But do I not mean the grasp of Satan? Which is first? Freed from the grasp of the law or freed from the grasp of Satan? There are people here tonight who know from the inside what the answer is, and I will not give it to you just now. You will set to and roll up your sleeves spiritually and find out which is first, through The Shorter Catechism and The Confession of Faith, and watching what the minister here says, and what the elders say, and if you cannot arrive at the answer, ask them point blank and pocket your pride. Yet alas, it will come back again, thief that it is; but seek to find out for your own good whether the work of the Saviour has pre-eminently to do first with the power of sin or with the claims of the law.
We will leave it at that just now, but I am afraid we are giving away our little problem. He not only met the claims of the law on behalf of the Israel of God, but also, in virtue of that, He received the Holy Spirit, not according to measure. He said, I undertake to meet the claims of the law; and the Father said, I anoint Thee with the everlasting Spirit and Thou wilt also ransom them by Thy power from the grip of Satan. The law says, I am very well pleased; I am delighted with everyone that runs to the cleft of the Rock. Flee, all of you, to the Rock of Ages.
The Redeemer has also the power of an endless life to bring poor sheep to the fold. He convinces sinners and brings them to what we may call the “fold of reconciliation”, or you can call it the “fold of salvation”, which is just the same. The first fold they are brought to is the fold of justification and adoption, and they are shown that the Redeemer saves by price and by power. When He leads the blind by a way that they know not, and secretly grips them and awakens their consciences and asks them to hear the gospel, and convinces them and regenerates them and when, by His Holy Spirit, they are made willing in a day of power, then they are out of the gate of the enemy and enter by the “fold” to eternal salvation and regeneration. Thus you have them in that blessed state. He was their Breaker-up, and they would never get past the law were it not for His sufferings and death.
Satan was there and their lusts and wicked companions and the fear of man and the fear of being mocked for being so good; the Redeemer had to break up their way through these thorns and briers and deal with them. He brought Manasseh and Paul and the Ethiopian eunuch and the Philippian jailor and the three thousand on the Day of Pentecost and countless numbers, from the days of Abel till the time He came Himself, and onwards till the blast of the last trumpet will sound. He is the great Breaker of all obstacles by the price of His death and His divine power, giving the Spirit of wisdom to understand – light for the mind and power for the soul and holiness and love for the heart, whereby the soul touches the hem of His garment and sweetly takes Him in a day of regeneration.
Child of God, you will have to say He was the Breaker up of your way so far, to this fold of peace with Jesus Christ. The justification that you have tonight, however you may feel, if you are one of His, it is just the same justification as you will have in glory – the infinite merit of the Redeemer. You are perfect in Him as to your state, and you will stand upon His merit and “know no other stand, not even where glory dwelleth, in Immanuel’s land”. It is all due to the graciousness of God. It is all for nothing, and the Lord grant that it may be our portion.
3. How the Breaker brings on to glory those that the Father gave Him.
He says to you, Come and welcome to the Lord Jesus. He is gathering them in now. Some were gathered in here and came forward to witness for Him at His table yesterday, and would that scores had come forward at this communion season! May the Lord bless poor sinners in that way! A nation can be born in a day. See how they are coming forward in southern Africa. Dr Macdonald down there knows more than I do about the godly men and women they have out there, and what a source of comfort it is! Mr Tallach2 used to tell us about some of them – so earnest and willing, exercised Christians. They knew what they were speaking about; the Holy Spirit had come and given them the knowledge of the holy, which is understanding, so that by the work of the Breaker for them and in them, they “overleaped a wall” and got into the blessed land of holy liberty, Christ kissing them and they kissing Him.
When sinners get a saving look at the Redeemer, they continue to make progress. When the Israelites had the presence of God and confessed their sins, they made a great noise; and every poor sinner when first brought to the “fold” will make a great noise. What is this noise? I read it in the prayer of Solomon: their lamentation and weeping, and their smiting on the thigh, saying like Ephraim, I was “as a bullock uncustomed to the yoke; turn Thou me, and I shall be turned”. “Be merciful to me a sinner.” “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than the snow.” That is the noise they make, and they will be praying for faith and, when they get it, they will be lifting up their voices to the Lord and singing Psalm 116. That is a good example of making “great noise by reason of the multitude of men”.
What a sweet song they must have had and what a blessed noise in the realms of bliss when there were revivals at Kilsyth and Cambuslang and Skye and other places! And there are songs going up still, although not in the same degree. Nevertheless the Lord is hearing music from the eyes of poor sinners. How from the eyes? Show me a tear of sorrow falling down the neck of a poor sinner, who is crying to the Redeemer: Lord, be merciful to me and wash me and put Thy raiment around me. That is sweet music in the realms of bliss, and there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one prodigal that returns to the Father. And when there are hundreds of them, what a blessed noise they will make returning to Zion!
“The ransomed of the Lord shall return, and come to Zion with songs and everlasting joy upon their heads.” That is the joy that is going to flow into the ocean of eternity. The joy is there and the road is there, and if it will not always be there, it is on account of our carelessness. The Lord have mercy on us and make us wise and honest! But the ransomed of the Lord return with a blessed noise to Zion. “I love the Lord, because my voice and prayers He did hear. / I, while I live, will call on Him, who bowed to me His ear.” Why? “My bands He did untie”; He cut them and He breathed into the nostrils of your soul the breath of life, and made you a partaker of grace, and will bring you into the land of glory at last. There are a good many more bands that the Redeemer has to cut, but once He has begun the good work, He will set His people to cut another lot of bands about their souls. It is a progressive work. The sweet Psalmist of Israel was deeply experienced in it.
In conclusion, He is the Breaker-up of His people’s way, from the day of peace with God, through union with the Saviour and by faith of the operation of God’s Spirit. And He is the Breaker till they reach heaven. On what road is He taking them, from the day of justification onwards to heaven, to be for ever with the Lord?
Dear fellow sinner, it is the road of sanctification. The Lord Jesus Christ is the wisdom, righteousness, sanctification and redemption – the blood-bought redemption – of the Church. It is a mark of God’s children that they have not merely an orthodox knowledge of justification, but that they begin to ask while here below: “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?” With their scarlet guilt, they were enabled penitently to drink in the merit of the atonement, but they show that they were not only pardoned and accepted in the Beloved – accepted as to their persons and adopted – but they walk in the way of sanctification. This is just the way of the Ten Commandments – the way of the first table of the law with regard to the Most High, and the second table with regard to their fellow man.
That is a broad enough field to follow, and ask the Lord to give you true light; and those who have light are to ask for more, that their path may be “as the shining light, that shineth more and more unto the perfect day”. Thus we are told: “An highway shall be there, and a way, and it shall be called The way of holiness”. First say, There is a highway from the day of justification to the land of complete redemption; that is the way which is worth calling the way of holiness; teach me to walk in it. The way that I walked before was folly, though it was what I myself thought right, and I excused it too.
Dear fellow sinner, look into your own soul and notice how many excuses you perhaps made since this communion season began. Yet notice that but of unbelief. There is this and that and the next thing, and there is: But I am going to be wise yet; I promise I will read my Bible yet, and be good when I am old – and the like of that. That is our folly, and it is natural to us.
But our point is: God’s people are on the way of sanctification. Although here they are not, and never will be, as holy as they would like, they would still like to be holy, and the Lord puts in them an endeavour after new obedience. They ask, Help me to die to my secret faults, and let not presumptuous sins have dominion over me; purge out the old leaven; make me willing to do Thy holy pleasure. They know the Breaker and the King, and they are His property. They are for Him and not for another, and they will be with Him; they are on the way to the city of habitation. No one is on that way except those I have been speaking of.
A way is spoken of in Ecclesiastes: “The labour of the foolish wearieth every one of them, because he knoweth not how to go to the city”. They have a lot of labour. Paul himself laboured to get there with his useless pray-ers; they were not worth a spittle. They were noxious, and yet he laboured as if they would take him to heaven. He did not know how to go to the city, and you will never know the way till you get mercy and find Christ for you and in you – you united to Him and He in you. You will never know the way till you get a drink of Him and be like the sheep, gathered in, and till the mark of the blood is stamped on you, and you are washed in the fountain opened for sin and for uncleanness, and have the “earmark”: they “hear My voice”; and the “foot mark”: “they follow Me”. Then they are on the way of sanctification, to the Father’s house.
There are many obstacles in the way, and they are often caught in bushes, but He will never leave them. He is invisible and goes before them and is their rearward. The poor sheep that is caught in a bush may say, Here I am caught and, if no one will come to take me out, I will die. And so it would. But all the time the shepherd may have been a good bit away and was seeing the animal, but it was not seeing him. The Lord, the Breaker-up of the way to death and the conqueror of that last enemy, sees them when they are in the bushes and He will take them out, and perhaps He will have to give them a good stroke or two as He did to Peter and Thomas, but the great matter is to be one of His people and to know a little of what sanctification is – to have the character of the godly.
A good illustration of that is what is said of Levi in the book of Malachi: “The law of truth was in his mouth, and iniquity was not found in his lips; he walked with Me in peace and equity, and did turn many away from iniquity”. That is true not only of Levi in Israel, but it is true of everyone in the way of sanctification, in a greater degree in some than others. Some are more watchful than others and not such weathercocks – perhaps some are more ready, like a sheep, to jump through a gap in the dyke. That is the way with believers, but where the new nature is, it will make progress. They should ask, Let the old nature collapse more and more, and grant more of that crucifixion – help me to mortify the flesh.
You may say you never turned any away from iniquity, but have you the desire that the whole earth would be filled with the glory of the Lord, and would like to glorify Him in your walk and conversation in the world? Well, you have the principles of Levi; seek to go on in the paths of God, dying unto sin, living in dependence on the Saviour and seeking to feed in His pastures. You have plenty pastures from Genesis to Revelation – plenty in the doctrine of the Trinity, the doctrine of the atonement, the Person of Christ, the work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration, and His graces.
If we were growing, what would be true of us? This would be a feast to us: the doctrines of regeneration, the work of the Holy Spirit, sanctification, everlasting glory, and election – all of these. They are grand doctrines. If we had some liberty, you would not feel the night passing, while feeding upon them and thinking about them. It could not be better. They would make a man of you, and a woman worth calling one, if you were getting into them and they into you, and you were saturated by them. Ask the Lord to give you a little of the blessed leaven to hide in your soul, and it would permeate your whole life.
Ask the Breaker, the Saviour-Mediator, the Firstborn of many brethren, who will not leave one sheep in the wilderness, who said, “Other sheep I have which are not of this fold, them also I must bring, and they shall hear My voice, and there shall be one fold and one Shepherd”; ask Him: Lord, grant that I may be one of them. And may the Lord bless His Church. “The God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant, make you perfect in every good work to do His will, working in you that which is well-pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever.”
“I will put them together as the sheep of Bozrah, as the flock in the midst of their fold.” They will be greater than the flocks of Bozrah – and they were famous for their numbers. And when the Lord will gather in all people at the great day, the Lord’s people will be there and the Redeemer at their head. And He will bring His sheep to everlasting glory, but the goats will be sent to everlasting misery; the ungodly will be banished for ever from His presence. But the Lord grant, by the blood of Jesus and the sweet regenerating work of the Spirit, that we may be brought into the fold and have the Spirit dwelling in us. And although my language today may be, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man,” yet may you and I be loving Christ and His blood. Then we shall never be put out.
1Preached in Glasgow, on 27 April 1936, the Monday of a communion season, and taken down by a hearer. After a lengthy introduction, the first part, last month, dealt with the captivity in which sinners are.
2Rev Roderick Macdonald and Rev John Tallach were at that time missionaries in what is now Zimbabwe.