For Israel to be able to cross the River Jordan on dry ground was a remarkable display of God’s power, as their crossing of the Red Sea had been 40 years previously. In each case, “the Lord caused the sea to go back” (Ex 14:21) – not man or any natural phenomenon, though He made use of “a strong east wind” – so that Israel might get safely across to the other side of the water. Yet their enemies, Pharaoh and his army, could not safely make use of the passage through the Red Sea; it was presumption on their part to make the attempt. God provided a safe passage through the sea for His people, not for their enemies.
God had a further purpose in dividing the Red Sea and the Jordan, as Joshua told the Israelites after they had safely crossed the river: “That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty” (Jos 4:24). The hand of the Lord refers to Him working, and the surrounding peoples – whether Egyptians or Amalekites, or any of the tribes then occupying the land of Canaan – were to realise that, when God acts, He acts in a powerful way. And some of God’s works are particularly intended to make a powerful impression on those who see them or hear about them, and this was true of what God did to bring Israel out of Egypt and into the promised land.
Rahab in Jericho bore testimony to the effect that news of the Israelites’ crossing of the Red Sea had on the people of her city and farther afield, when she told the spies that Joshua had sent out: “Your terror is fallen upon us, and . . . all the inhabitants of the land faint because of you. For we have heard how the Lord dried up the water of the Red Sea for you, when ye came out of Egypt” (Jos 2:9,10). These people heard of what God had done; they were afraid; they felt weak in the face of such power; but they were not willing to serve this great God who had revealed His power so wonderfully. How common this, sadly, still is: people knowing about the power of God and yet they do not seek to be reconciled to Him!
Rahab was an exception: she confessed, “The Lord your God, He is God in heaven above, and in earth beneath”. And we can be sure that her faith
was saving faith because of what is said of her in Hebrews 11: “by faith” she “perished not with them that believed not, when she had received the spies with peace” (v 31). She was not only impressed by God’s powerful working but she trusted in Him and so she received into her house those who had come to prepare for the conquest of her city. She trusted in the true God, the God of heaven and earth, as the One who could save her soul.
We too are called: “Come and see the works of God”; in particular, because “He turned the sea into dry land: they went through the flood on foot” (Ps 66:5,6). To see those works we must go to the record of them in Scripture, and we should do so with confidence in the reliability of that record, because the whole Bible was inspired by the Holy Spirit and is therefore without error. And we are to draw the same conclusion as those did who heard about these events immediately after they took place: we are to recognise God’s power in them. We may object that no such miracles happen today; yet we have a record in Scripture of many such events and the record is totally dependable.
Besides, the whole universe is being preserved in existence by the same “hand” that created it in the beginning. And each of us, sinners though we are, is being preserved in this world by the same power. Daniel, when called to interpret the writing that appeared on the wall during Belshazzar’s ungodly feast, faithfully pointed out to the King: “The God in whose hand thy breath is . . . hast thou not glorified” (Dan 5:23). It was God, the living and true God, who was keeping him breathing, but Belshazzar refused to worship Him, even although his predecessor Nebuchadnezzar had been constrained to acknowledge something of God’s power and authority: “The most High ruleth in the kingdom of men, and giveth it to whomsoever He will”. We should ask ourselves if we really, from our hearts, make this acknowledgement, glorifying Him who keeps us alive but could bring our life to an end without a moment’s notice.
When Paul arrived in Athens, he found “an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD”. The people must have felt this god was due their acknowledgement in addition to all the other gods they believed in. Athens was then the intellectual capital of the world, yet Paul needed to give the people basic instruction about the true God, the God they did not know. Paul pointed to the evidence all around them of the power of God: He had “made the world and all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of heaven and earth” (Acts 17:24). Today many people deny that there is a Creator – and in countries with a Christian heritage they do so with much less excuse than Paul’s contemporaries in Athens. The present generation very largely feel that they can ignore God and disregard His power.
But Paul impressed on those who were listening to him some of the consequences of what he was saying: the facts that God’s power will be shown in raising everyone from the dead, the whole world will be judged righteously, and therefore they were all obliged to repent. They were to turn from their own ways and serve the true God, who had revealed His power as Creator. These are lessons that this rebellious generation urgently needs to learn: in particular, that however persistently they may ignore the existence of God and His power in creating all things, He will yet reveal His power in bringing all from their graves to Christ’s judgement seat. And after God’s righteousness has been displayed in the judgement, all will be brought either to the eternal blessedness of heaven or sent away to awful, but justly-inflicted, eternal punishment in hell.
In the life of Ruth the Moabite we should see God’s power exerted on an individual soul. She had been brought up a heathen, but as she accompanied her mother-in-law, who was returning to Judah, she insisted, “Intreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee: for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge: thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God” (Ruth 1:16). Not only was she firmly attached to Naomi, she was now a sincere follower of Naomi’s God. One can only assume that this was the result of what she had seen in Naomi’s life and what she had heard from Naomi’s lips about the God who made all things and was “merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty” (Ex 34:6,7).
We must think of Naomi as one of those “epistles” which are “written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart” (2 Cor 3:2,3). The Holy Spirit had worked powerfully in Naomi’s heart, producing a godliness that Ruth and others could see, but Ruth actually read this epistle; she paid attention to it and benefited from doing so, for the Holy Spirit worked powerfully in her heart also. Charles Hodge (commenting on 2 Cor 3:3) points out that “the work of redemption and sanctification is always represented in the Scripture as a much higher manifestation of divine power and grace than any mere external miracle”. This work of redemption and sanctification is too great for us; it is beyond our power; but how earnestly we should seek, for Christ’s sake, that the Spirit would powerfully renew our hearts, making us willing and able to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and be saved.
Not only did Ruth hear from Naomi of the power of the God of Israel; she was also brought to “fear the Lord”. This was a further purpose of God when He brought Israel through the Red Sea and the Jordan: “that ye might fear
the Lord your God for ever” (Jos 4:24). It was one thing for the Israelites to be impressed by God’s wonderful works in working outward miracles for them – not only making it possible for them to walk on dry ground where there was normally a depth of water, but also providing them with food and water as they journeyed through the wilderness, and guiding them by the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by night. But they must also have a right attitude to this God who had chosen them as His own people. They must fear Him; they must be obedient to Him, not through fear of the consequences of breaking His law but because they wished not to offend Him – because they wished to love Him and so to keep His commands.
Israel was the professing Church of Old Testament times. It was to them that God had revealed Himself, His law and the way of salvation. They were to consider particularly, again and again, how God had revealed His power in delivering them from Egypt and in setting the promised land before them. Day after day, sacrifices were being offered on their behalf, showing how they could be saved through the sacrifice of a substitute. They were being pointed forward to the Seed of the woman (Gen 3:15) who would come in the fullness of time to bruise the serpent’s head and provide salvation for sinners like them, a salvation that included the powerful work of the Holy Spirit in their souls, through which they would be able to fear the Lord.
Salvation is not obtained by means of human righteousness, by keeping God’s law. If we were to earn salvation in this way, we would have to keep the law perfectly, and that is altogether impossible for fallen creatures like us. So Paul speaks of “what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh”. But he speaks also of what the all-powerful God did for the salvation of helpless sinners: He sent “His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Rom 8:3,4). There was no limit to the power of God in providing salvation through His Son, and there is no limit to the power of the Holy Spirit in applying the redemption wrought out by the Son.
Israel was to fear the Lord God “for ever”. So parents were to pass on the teaching of Scripture to the children, which is still the duty of parents today. Thus Matthew Henry makes this application of Joshua 4:24: “In all the instructions and informations parents give their children, they should have this chiefly in their eye, to teach and engage them to fear God for ever. Serious godliness is the best learning.” May we seek the godliness which is the work of the Holy Spirit and is given for the sake of Jesus Christ, who “is able also to save . . . to the uttermost” (Heb 7:25). And God’s power to change the hearts of the most rebellious remains totally unchanged.
Christ’s Invitation to the Labouring (1)1
A Sermon by Thomas Boston
Matthew 11:28. Come unto Me, all ye that labour, and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.
The great object of gospel preaching is to bring sinners to Christ. The first article in Christianity is, according to John 5:40, “Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life”. The connecting chain is: “To whom coming, as unto a living stone . . . ye also as lively stones are built up” (1 Pet 2:4,5). And it is the last exercise of the Christian; for when finishing his warfare, the invitation is: “Come, ye blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you” (Mt 25:34). It is virtually all that God requires of us: “This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent” (Jn 6:29). The words of the text are a most solemn and ample invitation which Christ gives to sinners.
For the connection, look at verses 25 and 26 and compare them with Luke 10:21: “Jesus rejoiced in spirit”. It was a joyful time to Him when He gave this invitation. He rejoiced in the good news of the success with which the message of the disciples was attended, in the wise and sovereign dispensation of grace by the Father, which He here celebrates – as also upon the view of His own power, where He shows that all power was lodged in Him. The keys of the Father’s treasures of grace are in His hand, and whatever is the Father’s. He also shows that no one could know the Father but by Him, for that is given to Him only. He opens, as it were, the treasure door to sinners in the text. From the connection of this verse, as just now stated, I would observe that the solemnity of this invitation is most worthy of notice. There seems to be something about it more than ordinary. As,
- It was given in the day of Christ’s gladness. He was a man of sorrows, all made up of sorrows. Sorrow, sighing, weeping, groaning were His ordinary fare. Once indeed we read of Him being glad (Jn 11:15), and once of Him rejoicing (Lk 10:21). On this occasion, that thread of sorrow was interrupted; the sun of joy broke out for a little from under the cloud. His heart was touch-
1Boston preached a number of sermons on this verse in January and February 1711. This is the first of them and others may be printed in future months. It is reprinted, with editing, from Boston’s Works, vol 9. It appears here in response to an article by J C Philpot (1802-69) in The Gospel Standard for January 2021. Though highly respected for many of his writings, in this extract Philpot speaks thus of the invitations of Scripture and “their limitation”. “They are confined to God’s quickened family”, he claims, and “are circumscribed within a circle . . . descriptive of the characters of those in whose hearts the Spirit of God is at work”. Among the verses discussed is the text of this sermon. Boston’s view of these invitations is the scriptural one.
ed and, as it were, leaped for joy, as the word signifies (in Greek, “He was exceeding joyful”). At this extraordinary time, He gives the invitation in the text. Hence infer:
(1.) Christ invites sinners with an enlarged heart. Joy enlarges it. His heart is open to you, His arms are stretched wide. You often see Him with sorrow and anger in His face, and so you will not come. Behold Him smiling and inviting you now to Himself, sending love-looks to lost sinners from a joyful heart.
(2.) In the Scriptures we have the expression, “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied” (Is 53:11). He rejoices but does not rest; He invites sinners to a share, as if all could not satisfy Him, while He has yet an eye upon some who are yet to be His children.
(3.) Nothing can make Christ forget poor sinners or be unconcerned for them. Sorrow could not do it; joy could not do it. Either of these will drive a narrow-spirited man so much into himself as to forget all others. Yet never was Christ’s heart so filled either with sorrow or joy but there was always room for poor sinners there. When He was entering the ocean of wrath, He remembered them (Jn 17) and, as their forerunner, He went into the ocean of joy (Heb 6:20). Like Aaron He carried sinners’ names on His heart when He went in to appear before the Lord in heaven (Ex 28:29).
- The invitation was given at a time when a great breach was made in the devil’s kingdom (compare Lk 10:17,18). Christ was now beginning to set up a new kingdom, and he sends out 70 disciples. He was to bring the people out of the spiritual Egypt. The success of the disciples was a fair pledge of the devil’s kingdom coming down and of the deliverance of sinners. And when the news of it comes, His heart rejoices and His tongue breaks out in this invitation to the devil’s captives, to come away upon this glorious signal. As He had begun to perform His part of the covenant, the Father had begun to perform His part, which made His heart leap for joy and set Him on to cry that they would all come away as disciples, to pursue vigorously the advantage which was gained: “He shall drink of the brook in the way, therefore shall He lift up the head” (Ps 110:7). Hence infer:
(1.) Christ’s heart is set upon the work of saving sinners. You see no undue haste, but He would have no delays. He puts His hands to the work, calling, “Come unto Me”. He preferred it to the eating of His bread, and what else is the meaning of all the ordinances and providences you meet with? The answer is:
(2.) Christ would have you to come, taking encouragement from the example of others that have come before you. A gap has been made in the devil’s prison; some have made their escape from it already. Will you not
follow? The Lord has set examples for us, both of judgement and of mercy. In the beginnings of the Jewish Church, there was an example of God’s sovereignty in the destruction of Nadab and Abihu (Lev 10:1,2); and in the beginnings of the Christian Church, in the death of Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5); of mercy, in the Jewish Church, Rahab the harlot, besides Abraham, an idolater, the father of them all (Jos 2, compare Is 51:2), and in the Christian Church, Paul the blasphemous persecutor (1 Tim 1:16). Hence infer:
(3.) However full Christ’s house may be, there is always room for more; He does not weary of welcoming sinners; the more that come the better. Christ’s harvest is not all cut down at once, nor His house built in a day; if the last stone was laid on the building, the scaffolding of ordinances would be taken down and the world be at an end. But none of these has hitherto taken place; therefore yet there is room: “I will cleanse their blood that I have not cleansed, for the Lord dwelleth in Zion” (Joel 3:21).
- This invitation is given on a solemn review of that fullness of the all that the Father has lodged in the hand of the Mediator, and that alone. No sooner does the Father lead Him into those treasures but, as it were, Christ says, This and this is for you, sinners; here is a treasure of mercies and blessings for you; pardon, life, peace are all for you. Come therefore unto Me, the Father has delivered them into My hand, I long to deliver them over. Come therefore to Me, and I shall draw out my fullness from there to you.
Christ had received a kingdom from the Father; it was as yet thinly peopled, and so He calls you to come to Him, that you may be happy in Him. He has no will to enjoy these things alone, but because He has them, He invites you to take a share.
Doctrine. As the fullness lodged in the Mediator has a free vent in His heart, so it seeks to diffuse itself into the souls of needy sinners.
Jesus Christ longs to make sinners the better of that all-fullness that is lodged in Him by the Father. Christ speaks here to us as the true Joseph (Gen 45:9-11). As Joseph invited his brethren to come and dwell with him, so Jesus cordially invites us and promises us a share of the fullness which He Himself possesses.
1. I shall give some reasons, or show why Christ is so liberal to sinners:
(1.) Because the Father has given Him for that end: “Behold, I have given Him for a witness unto the people, a leader and commander to the people (Is 55:4). The Father had thoughts of love to man; His love purposed to distribute a treasure of mercy, pardon and grace to lost sinners; but His justice would not allow His giving them this treasure directly out of His own hand; therefore He gave it to the Mediator to distribute. An absolute God is a consuming fire; so guilty creatures, as stubble, could not endure His heat
but would have been burnt up by it; therefore he set His own Son, in man’s nature, as a wall between Him and them; He gave Him the Spirit without measure. Not only a fullness of sufficiency, but an abundance of blessings, is laid up in Him; for “it pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell”.
(2.) Because He received a fullness of treasure for that very end: “For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the truth” (Jn 17:19). The first Adam got mankind’s stock; he soon lost it all. Christ takes the elect’s stock in His hand for their security, and so He is given for a covenant of the people. He takes the burden upon Himself for them, and takes on Him the administration of the second covenant, that it might be a better covenant with them than the first.
(3.) Because He bought these treasures at the price of His blood on their behalf: “He humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted Him, and given Him a name which is above every name” (Phil 2:8,9). The Son of God, who is Lord of all, needed no exaltation in the court of heaven, being equal with His Father; but His design was to exalt man’s nature, to make those that were the children of the devil friends to heaven, and prepare room for them there. He said, “I go to prepare a place for you” (Jn 14:2). No wonder then that He should long to see the purchase of His blood, the fruit of the travail of His soul, come to Him.
(4.) Because of His love to them. Where true love is, there is an aptness to communicate; the lover cannot see the beloved in need of what he can provide. God’s love is a giving love: He “so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son” (Jn 3:16). Christ’s also is such love; He loves indeed: He “loved [us], and gave Himself for [us]” (Gal 2:20).
For the application of this doctrine, I only add an exhortation. Come to Christ then, O sinner, upon this His invitation and do not refuse His blessed call. To enforce this I urge these motives:
(1.) There is a fullness in Him, all power is given to Him. Whatever you lack, He has power to give it to you; the Son of man had power, even on earth, to forgive sins. Grace outside you or grace within you, He is the dispenser of all: “Of His fulness have all we received, and grace for grace” (Jn 1:16). He is the great Secretary of heaven; the keys hang at His girdle; He shuts and none can open; He opens and none can shut.
(2.) You are welcome to it. He does not have it to keep it but to give it out, and to whom but to needy sinners? Even the worst of you are welcome, if you will take it out of His own hand: “If any man thirst,” says He, “let him come unto Me, and drink” (Jn 7:37).
(3.) Would you do Christ a pleasure? Then come to Him. “He shall see of the travail of His soul, and shall be satisfied” (Is 53:11). Would you content and ease His heart? Then come. It is a great ease to full breasts to be sucked. The breasts of His consolations are full; hear how pressingly He calls you to suck! “Eat, O friends; drink, yea, drink abundantly, O beloved!”
(4.) Would you fall in with the purposes of the love of the Father and the Son in the mystery of salvation? Then come to Him. Why is a fountain opened but that you may run to it and wash? Do not shut up against yourselves what God and Christ have opened.
2. The persons invited. These are they that labour and are heavy-laden. The word labour does not signify every kind of labouring, but a labouring to weariness, and so some understand the word as weary. Heavy laden are they that have a heavy burden on their back which they are not able to bear.
Who are meant by these terms? I cannot agree with those that restrict these expressions to those that are sensible [or, conscious] of their sins and misery, of being without Christ, and are longing to be rid of them. But I think it includes all that are out of Christ, sensible or insensible – that is, those that have not had, and those that have had, a law-work on their consciences. And to fix this interpretation, consider:
(1.) The words apply to all that are out of Christ, and none have any right to restrain them. None more properly labour, in the sense of the text, than those that are out of Christ, seeking their satisfaction in created things: “All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing” (Ecc 1:8). And who have such a burden of sin and wrath upon their back as they have? The word properly signifies a ship’s lading, which, though insensible of it, may yet sink under the weight.
(2.) “The whole world lieth in wickedness” (1 Jn 5:19), as men in a deep mire, still sinking. Christ came to deliver men out of that situation, having taken upon Him our nature (Heb 2:16) – He caught hold (the Greek word indicates) of our nature as one does of a drowning man, as He did of Peter when sinking (Mt 14:31). And what are the invitations of the gospel but Christ putting out His hands to sinking souls, sinking with their own weight?
(3.) The words, in other parts of Scripture, are without controversy applied to the most insensible of sinners. See what labour and weariness! “Behold, is it not of the Lord of hosts that the people shall labour in the very fire, and the people shall weary themselves for very vanity?” (Hab 2:13). In the most solemn invitation to Christ, in all the Old Testament, the word labour is so used: “Wherefore do ye spend money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which satisfieth not?” (Is 55:2). In Luke 11:46, “Ye lade men with burdens grievous to be borne”, lade is the same word used in Isaiah 1:4,
“Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity”. Were they sensible? Far from it; for “Israel doth not know, My people doth not consider” (Is 1:3). And in 2 Timothy 3:6 it is said, “Silly women, laden with sins, led away with divers lusts”.
(4.) Consider the parallel text: “Ho, every one that thirsteth” (Is 55:1), where we are to understand by “the thirsty”, not so much those that are thirsting after Christ, as those that are thirsting after happiness and satisfaction, seeking to squeeze it out of created things. The thirsty invited are the same as those that are spending their “labour for that which satisfieth not”, but those that are thirsting after Christ do not labour in this way.
(5.) If the words restrict the call to sensible sinners, then the greater part of sinners are excluded. Then the text is no gospel-truth at all, for all without exception that hear the gospel are called to come to Christ: “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock; if any man hear My voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with Me” (Rev 3:20). If any “man” is not called, they have no warrant to come; then rejection of the gospel – as in the case of the heathen – is not their sin, which is absurd.
(6.) This is a most solemn invitation to come to Christ; and if I say it is the most solemn, there is some ground for it, by what I said before. And shall a verse be judged restrained that so expressly and solemnly comes from the fullness of power lodged in Christ – as the one just quoted (Rev 3:20), where there is no shadow of restriction? Besides, such a restriction may well be a snare to an exercised soul, which ordinarily, by a legal disposition in all, will not accept that they may come to Christ, because sin does not feel heavy enough to them. But although sinners will never come to Christ till they see their need of Him, I will ever preach that all, under pain of damnation, are obliged to come to Him, and that they shall be welcome when they come, no matter what their case is. And I will ever preach that such as are willing to come ought not to stop because of a defect in what they are sensible of, but come to Him that they may get a true sense of sin unto repentance; for He is “exalted . . . a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins” (Acts 5:31).
If there be a God that takes care of His own in evil days, do not you be distractedly careful what will become of you in such times. You cannot see how it is possible for you to escape, but the Lord knows how to deliver when you do not (2 Pet 2:7-9). Little did Lot know the way and manner of his preservation till God opened it to him; nor Noah till God contrived it for him. There was no way to be contrived by them for escape; He that knew how to deliver them can deliver you also. The fear of God is the most effectual means to extinguish the sinful fear of men and to secure us from danger.
John Flavel