3437. Friendship’s Guide

A Sermon Published On Thursday, December 17, 1914.

You are my friends, if you do whatever I command you. {Joh 15:14}

For other sermons on this text:

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1552, “Friends of Jesus, The” 1552}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3437, “Friendship’s Guide” 3439}

   Exposition on Joh 15:1-17 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3488, “Justification, Propitiation, Declaration” 3490 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Joh 15:12-27 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2709, “Christ’s Past and Present Witnesses” 2710 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Joh 15:9-27 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2627, “Best Friend, The” 2628 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Joh 15:9-27 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2651, “Christian’s Service and Honour, The” 2652 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Joh 15 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2444, “Cheering Words” 2445 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Joh 15 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2990, “Believer Not an Orphan, The” 2991 @@ "Exposition"}

1. It is very easy to understand how Jesus Christ is our friend. Did ever anyone deserve the name so well? Who can prove his friendship as Jesus proved it by laying down his life for those he calls his friends? But it is a sign of wonderful condescension on his part that he should call us his friends, and it confers on us the highest conceivable honour that such a Lord as he is, so infinitely superior to us, should condescend to enter into terms of friendship with us. You are my friend, oh Jesus, for you have redeemed my soul from death and hell, but that I should be your friend—nothing but your loving, condescending tenderness could ever have conceived of this. If you put such a title as this on me, teach me how I may act in conformity with it.

2. Beloved, there is a mutual friendship between Christ and the believer. There cannot be friendship if it is all on one side. There is bounty, there is kindness, and there may be some gratitude in return, but friendship is a reciprocal thing. In its fullest sense it is between two, and the one heart must be as the other heart, or else there is no friendship. Now every believer is a friend to Jesus, and Jesus is a friend to him. They are friends because they have a mutual love for each other. The believer does not love his Lord so much as Jesus loves him, for his heart is little compared with Jesus’ heart. But when the believer is in a right state, he loves Jesus with all his heart, and soul, and strength. He feels that there is no one in the world who can have a place in his affections at all comparable with his Lord and Master. He can say:—

   My Jesus I love thee: I know thou art mine;

   For thee all the follies of sin I resign.

3. And if Jesus loves us, we also love him. Friendship has in it a mutual delight. Two friends value each other. Now the delight of Jesus is with the sons of men. In those whom he has redeemed with his blood he sees the satisfaction for the travail of his soul. He says of his Church that her name is Hephzibah—“My delight is in her”; and on the other hand, the believer’s delight is in Christ. “He is all my salvation, and all my desire,” says the believer: “He is the chief among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.” No one can be compared with him. It is sweet to think of the saint looking at the Saviour, and the Saviour looking at the saint, and the two together blending their love in mutual delight in each other.

4. This love and this delight lead to mutual communion. People can hardly maintain friendship if they only see each other now and then. If there is no communion by letter or in any other way, I should think friendship could scarcely be maintained. But oh! Jesus reveals himself to his people, and his people pour out their hearts to Jesus. Do not suppose that because he is not here, for he is risen, that therefore we have no communion with him. Our prayers speak into his ears, our tears fall into his heart: when we are wounded, his wounds bleed afresh. He is the Head, and we the members, and, however great the body, if you wound the body, the head feels it at once; so close is the communion. Yes, and we still communicate with him in meditation, in adoration, alone in our rooms. Though we have not seen him with these eyes, which are, after all, poor things, we have seen him with our soul’s eyes, which are brighter eyes by far, and as we have beheld him, our soul has melted for joy in the glance of his beauty.

5. Now to make friendship there will be not only mutual love, delight, and communion, but friends must have harmony of thought. I will not say identity, for man and man must always be two, and Christ and his people, though one in some respects, are two existences. But though two notes, though different, may be in perfect harmony, so it is with the heart of Christ, and the heart of his renewed child. What Jesus loves, we love; what Jesus hates, we hate; what Jesus seeks, we seek; what Jesus shuns, we shun. This is true friendship when there is only one heart in two bodies, and when one heart in the two produces with undivided strength one object. Now Christ’s object is his Father’s glory. If you are Christ’s friends, that object is yours too. His object is to seek and save the lost: if you love him, you also seek to save the lost in your way. He loves truth, holiness, righteousness. He delights in what puts an end to misery, to evil, to cruelty, to wrong-doing. Do you delight in the same? If so, unity of design harmony of thought, will make up very greatly the friendship between you and Jesus. Oh! but we are going to the same great destination. Where he is, there our hearts are drawn. We are living here for the same purpose that brought him here, and when our work is done, the same reward that gladdened him shall also gladden us—we also shall enter into the joy of our Lord.

6. Some of you do not know much about this: I am talking strange things to some of you. Jesus—yes, you read of him—Jesus—you hear of him: it is proper to receive his name; but oh! you have never spoken with him: you have never known him to be real nor conceived of him as such. I pray that you may be made spiritual and you may be born again. Until you are, you cannot be a friend of Christ; but when you are, and may it come now this very hour, may you discover that he is a great friend to you, and then, out of love for him, may you become a friend of his.

7. Now we are not left in the dark as friends of Jesus concerning the best way of showing our friendship. Two people may be great friends, and one may wish to serve the other, and say, “I hardly know what I can do to please my friend. I wish I knew his wishes, I wish I knew his desires: I would strive to gratify them.” Now you have tonight given to you, as lovers of Jesus—you have the guide concerning how you can prove yourselves his friends. “You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.” We have, then, in the text the guide for friendship, and I will say this about it: it contains seven things.

8. I. The first is:—TRUE FRIENDS OF CHRIST HIMSELF DISTINCTLY ACKNOWLEDGE HIS TRUE POSITION TOWARDS THEMSELVES.

9. That position is contained in these words, “I command you.” We are friends of Jesus, but Jesus must still be first: “I command you.” The genuine friend of Christ does not command himself: he has taken Christ’s yoke on him, and is now Christ’s liege man and servant. He does not now follow his own whims in religion, nor does he think he is to be dictator to himself. In becoming Christ’s friend, he agrees to subordinate his mind and will to the supremacy of Christ Jesus the Lord. Now then, friend of Jesus, note this. You are not your own from now on, not your own master, neither are you your own guide.

10. I am often afraid when I hear people talk about the glorious excellency of liberty of conscience, that they make a mistake concerning what liberty of conscience is. What is liberty of conscience? Is it liberty to believe anything I like—liberty to hold any doctrine I please? No; it is such liberty with regard to the civil magistrate and with regard to my fellow man. Before my fellow man I have a right to believe what I wish, and he may not call me to account; I am free there. But does such freedom exist before God? I do not think so. The friend of Jesus asks to have his conscience taught: he lays his judgment at the feet of the great Teacher, and all the liberty that he wants for his conscience is to have it purified and cleansed, so that it may be a fit guide for him to follow; otherwise a distorted, perverted, dark, polluted conscience may as readily lead a man to hell as if he never had a conscience at all. It is not because I am conscientious that I am right. As I have often told you, a man may conscientiously drink arsenic or prussic {hydrocyanic} acid, and believe that it will do him good, but he would die for all that. Ah! and a man might conscientiously believe a lie, and he will reap the fruit of that lie. You are a friend of Jesus to take your command from his lips, and lay down at his feet, for he says, “I command you.”

11. But notice, though Christ has to command his friends, we are not to let anyone else command us. Oh! shun the slavery of all who take their religion from men, no matter who they are, whether called priests or presbyters, or from human creeds or books. Read them, gather what you can from them all, but “One is your Master, even Christ,” and all of you are brethren. No church may lord it over your minds, for the church may err, but not so Christ. “Whatever I command you,” he says. He is infallible: he will tell you to do no evil, but a church of fallible men is still fallible, and may slide aside, first a little, then more, then much, then monstrously; then utterly apostatise from the faith of God’s elect. Therefore your guide, your leader, is nothing but Jesus. “Do whatever I command you.” There is too much among us of doing whatever our particular religion may command us. I charge you, brethren, do nothing of the kind. What are your councils? What are your assemblies? Nothing—less than nothing, I think. If they decree anything contrary to God’s will, they are mischief-makers. Christ is the head of the Church, and he has not vacated his high position in the midst of his Israel. Yield to him. Go to the fountain-head, the statute-book, that shows his will, and get it there. You have enough there, though everyone contradicts you. You have enough there, and all the councils of the fathers, and all the Church will be less than the small dust in the balance, if you do not find the law to be Christ’s. Whatever he says, the true friend of Jesus does—neither less nor more—for he knows that no one can legislate in his realm but the King himself, and all who pretend to legislate only err, when they get away from the “It is written” of the grand old Word of God.

12. Remember, too, all friends of Christ’s that this doctrine of Christ’s supremacy always stands good. He is your Lord, and he is to command you everywhere, not in your religious thought only, but at home, in the bedroom, in the parlour, in the drawing-room, outdoors, in the street, in the market, on the exchange, in your shop. His rule contained in his own life—his golden rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you”—his new commandment that you love each other—these are always binding. A soldier may have a furlough, but a Christian never. You might plead that concerning such and such a law you were exempt before men, but to Christ you are never exempt, nor would you wish to be, for his service is freedom, and his law, oh friend of Christ, has now become your delight. Grasp, then, that first thought, “You are my friends if I command you”—if you recognise me as being the leader and the commander to you his people. You must recognise Christ in that capacity, and him only, or you are not his friends.

13. II. But note, again, the text has in it a word which I may paraphrase in this way:—WE ARE TO RECOGNISE OUR OWN PERSONAL OBLIGATIONS.

14. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. Most of mankind who pretend to be religious suppose this book to be written to all kinds of good people, but not particularly to themselves, and there are those who think that the commands of Christ are very proper to be read, and to be heard, and to be proclaimed, but they do not look at them as being binding on themselves. Friend of Jesus, Jesus has a right to your service, to your obedience. What he commands, he commands you—if to no other, yet to you. Then the zeal of some good men does not exempt me. If my minister is very useful, that is not myself. I am Christ’s friend if I do whatever he commands me. Then the intense fervour of the Church does not permit me to recoil, and say, “There is nothing for me to do.” No; I am his friend if I do what he commands me. If, on the other hand, I dwell among a slumbering church, if I see all around me the signs of sloth, yet I am not to judge the church and excuse myself, and say, “I do as much as others—perhaps a little more: I am not so hard-hearted as So-and-so.” Oh! sirs, what have you to do with your brethren, with your fellow servants? To your own Master you must stand or fall, as they must, and you are Christ’s friend if you do whatever he commands you.

15. It seems to be very hard to get men to individualise themselves in the things of God. They do not consider themselves rich because England is rich: they do not consider themselves to be getting rich because the bank-rate is lower: they want to get the solid coins in their own grasp, and into their own bank account. But when I come to religion, men talk about this denomination and that church, and that other—anything but about themselves. But you, oh friend of Christ, you must live before the Lord as though there were no other. “You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.”

16. III. Now we will lay the force of our thought on another word. Observe here that:—THE TRUE FRIEND OF CHRIST OBSERVES CAREFULLY ALL THAT CHRIST SAYS.

17. It is not “You are my friends if you do some things that I command you.” But “You are my friends if you do whatever I command you”—whatever. Are there public duties? Do they require courage? I must perform them. Are there private duties? Are they unseen by men? They are as much incumbent upon me: I must discharge them. Are there commands of precept by way of ordinance? I must keep them. Are there commands by way of morals? I must obey them, however hard or stern they may seem. Whatever Christ commands is the law for his people. Oh England, England, when will the day come back when this book which is said to be the only religion of Protestants shall be truly so? The Bible, and the Bible only, is the religion of Protestants—so they say, but it is not so. There are many things practised by so-called Protestants that are not here. Where are your holy baptisms? Where are your confirmations? Where are half the ceremonies, if not all, of the Church of England, and many other bodies? They are inventions of man, and man only, having not so much as a shred or vestige of a foundation in God’s own Book. You have made another book—your bishops have made another book—and laid it on the top of God’s own book, and this is your Bible—not the Bible, and the Bible only, but the Book of Common Prayer.

18. And with other denominations, dissenting denominations, there is too much of the same kind of thing. “What did John Calvin say?” What do I care what he said, or did not say? “What did John Wesley say?” What do I care what John Wesley said, or did not say? The Master, the Master, let us do whatever he commands us. These were his good servants, as I believe John Wesley and John Calvin both were; and if they did better than I, which I know they did, I will rejoice in it, and bless God, and where they followed the Master, I, with unequal footsteps, would seek to follow too; but to say that I will do this because John this or John that taught it—shame on the Christian man who dares to bow his head to such a yoke as that. Let every Christian man contend for this that he is to do whatever Christ commands. Does it kick over the conventionalities of the church? Let them go over. Does it burn the rag-tags you thought so much of—your venerable things that you laid up as holy relics? Burn every one of them. What right have they to stand in contradiction to the law of Christ? Indeed, whatever he commands—not more, not less—this is to be our religion and our law, and to it let every Christian stand. Happy day shall it be for the church and for the world when this is true.

19. IV. Once more, it is clear from one word, that:—THE TEXT IS VERY PRACTICAL.

20. “You are my friends if you do whatever I command you”—not “if you do some things,” not “if you talk about it,” for lip-service is hypocrisy—not “if you tell others to do it”—there is a great deal of religion that is very much like charity, and you know what charity is. A sees B is very badly off, and he writes a letter at once to C to help B. So it is with religion. A sees it a duty that such a thing should be done, and tells B that he is very wrong not to do it. That is what is called religion. But as I understand religion, it is this. A sees B needing help, and gives it to him: A sees a duty and does it himself, and after he has done it himself, then he may talk to B about it, and not until then. “You are my friends if you do whatever I command you.” Well, some of you have been thinking about it for a long while—it is time for you to do it. He commands you to love your brother: you have been talking about that—well, do it. Do not grumble, and complain, and criticize any longer. You know he commands you to forgive anyone who offends you. Do not know it any longer, but go and do it. Some of you believe that you ought to be baptized and make profession of your faith. What is the good of thinking of it? Go and do it: go and do it. It is in the keeping of his commandments that there is great reward. He does not do the will of God who says, “Well, I am thinking it over, and one of these days I suppose I shall be moved to do it.” What do you need to move you but this, that you owe everything to Christ, and that Christ commands you? A soldier in the day of battle only needs the command, and on he marches, and a true friend of Jesus pays to him as perfect an obedience as a soldier to his captain, or at least he desires to do it. A lift of Jesus’ finger, and away he goes. One look from Jesus’ eye shall cause him to stop, or make a rapid advance, just as the word may be.

21. V. Our next point is:—THIS COMMAND IS VERY SIMPLE.

22. I shall close by commending this text to you because it is so. You are my friends if you acknowledge me as your Master in everything, your own personal Master, and then do what I tell you. Now how plain is this? There is no mistake about it. It is obedience Christ asks for. “To obey is better than sacrifice, and to listen than the fat of rams,” and what a blessing it is that this text gives us such a very simple thing to do. Suppose Jesus Christ were to say, “That man is my friend who will support a minister, who will build a place of worship, who will go out abroad to be a missionary.” Oh! there are some of you who would weep and say, “I can do neither of those things: I wish I could! It would be my greatest pleasure if I could.” My dear friends, the poorest man, the poorest woman here, who is a true friend of Christ can do this: you can do whatever he commands you. By the power of his blessed Spirit who has made you love him, you can watch earnestly to be holy, to be loving, as Jesus was.

23. The notion with a great many is, “I want to show that I am Christ’s friend; now I must shut myself up and get away from everyone.” That is not what Christ says. He says, “Do whatever I command you”—not run out of the battle, but fight through, and win it. “No; but,” says another, “what can I do to praise my Saviour? I must speak about him.” Yet, perhaps, that dear friend could not put three words together consecutively. Dear brother, if God has not given you that gift, you need not cry that you have not got it. Go and do whatever he commands you; that will be better than sacrifice. I know some people who are very attentive to sermons. I am glad they are. They wish to get out on week-nights, and I am glad they are. I wish everyone were able to. But many a mother will be serving God much better by keeping the house clean, and the clothes mended, than by coming to a sermon. You must do whatever he commands you, and what he commands you as a wife, is to discharge a wife’s duty.

24. When I sometimes see a religious servant a great talker, who does not groom his Master’s horses well, and who, if he can get an excuse for leaving work, will, I think, “That man might do more good in minding his master’s business than in running here and there to make a show of religion.” I believe plain, holy, godly living is needed a great deal more than fine preaching; and if my preaching does not, by God’s grace, produce in you a finer character than that, then I am preaching for nothing. I heard of a man the other day who could preach with his feet, and I know a great many who do. That is, preaching with living and daily walk and conversation. It is, after all, to be upright in business, to be affectionate in the family, to make those around you happy, to live Christ—that is, after all, true friendship with Christ. No big words of ready talkers, no polished phrases, no gift of prayer will ever be so acceptable to the Lord Jesus Christ as the simple piety that graces the fireside, that adorns the private and the public life of the believer. You are my friends if you do whatever I command you. Practically to prove that Jesus Christ is your Lord is the highest service that any of you can render to him. May God help you to render it from this time on with undeviating correctness, and with the help of his Spirit may you yet do it more and more.

25. VI. For let me conclude by observing that, though this seems a very simple thing, yet after all:—IT IS A MOST USEFUL AND NECESSARY THING.

26. It is not possible that a rebel should be a friend to Christ. If a man says of any law of Christ, “I do not intend to keep that,” then, sir, you have virtually said, “I do not intend to have Christ for my Lord,” and that means that you cannot have him as your Saviour. If you do not know a thing to be Christ’s, well, I believe you are still sinful, for you ought to know it. The laws of our country never excuse a person for breaking the law because he says he did not know the law. It is presumed that everyone ought to know it. And the Bible is not such a book as they cannot understand if they try. Any person can find out Christ’s will if he wants to. But suppose you know it is Christ’s will, and do not choose to do it—if you put your foot down there and say, “I shall not do it,” then there is an end of all friendship. Obedience, then, is an essential of true friendship to Christ, for those who make a profession of friendship and do not do what he commands are the worst enemies he has. No city that is besieged need fear so much the enemy outside, as treachery inside. If there is known to be treachery inside, then the stress of war becomes severe. So if inside the church there are people who deliberately say, “We are disciples of Christ, but we will not be obedient to his will,” there is sedition and treason inside the camp; and these are those of whom Paul said, “I have told you even weeping—that they are the enemies, the special enemies, of the cross of Christ.”

27. VII. And let me say this keeping of the law of Christ is, after all:—THE BEST WAY OF SERVING HIM AS A MATTER OF USEFULNESS.

28. Sermons preached at home are the best sermons. Sermons at sick-beds by holy women, sermons to drunken husbands by the patient godliness of the much-suffering wife, sermons by holy fathers and mothers in their loving anxiety for wayward sons and daughters, sermons by servants in the rectitude of their conduct to their employers, sermons by Christian tradesmen preached in their bills and in their trade by strict attention to everything upright—these are sermons that the world must hear; these are things that must glorify Christ; these are the most friendly actions that you can do for Jesus. You raise his name in the market, you make men think all the better of his religion by the holiness and consistency of your conduct. You are his friend then.

29. I dismiss you with this on your minds. If you are his friends, obey his command and imitate his example, and seek to have this not in theory, but as a matter of fact, of daily life. The day will come, my hearers, when to be a friend of Christ will be the grandest thing beneath the heavens. He is an exiled prince in regard to this world now, and men despise him, but he is coming to his crown before long; and when he shall appear in the clouds of heaven, as he shortly shall, all those who were his friends on earth, who stood in the pillory with him, and suffered for him—these shall shine out as the sun in the kingdom of his Father. Oh! it will then be a grand day, a brave day, for those who died for him, for those who were made poor for conscience sake, for those who left kindred and friends for his name. I think I hear the King say, “Make way, angels; make way, cherubim and seraphim; these poor men and women were friends with me; when I was in exile they suffered with me; they were willing to bear reproach for me—let them come; they shall be courtiers around my throne. They were friends of mine in my humiliation; they shall be friends with me in my glory. ‘Come, you blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from before the foundation of the world.’”

30. And oh! how will all men who were not his friends—how will they hide their heads and wish they had never been born to continue at enmity with him! They did not know who it was they were despising when they laughed at his people. They did not know what it was they trampled on when they put their profane feet on the cross of Christ. They did not know who they insulted when they broke the Sabbath, and lived godless, Christless lives, but they will know it then when they see the King on his throne, for their cry will be—their bitter lament shall be—“Fall on us, you mountains; cover us, you rocks, and hide us—hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne.” What! can you not face him? You used to jeer at his people; you used to say, “This religion is all nonsense.” Can you not face him? Can you not face him? He has not spoken yet; no thunderbolts are in his hand; can you not face him? No; they are ashamed; they dare not look; they dare not gaze on such heavenly beauty; they seek a shelter; they hold their hands before their eyes. They ask the mountains to afford them a hiding-place, for how could they be such fools as to despise him who died for his enemies, to despise the Christ of God, to despise the everlasting Creator, who out of mighty love gave up his life for men? Before he speaks a word, before he pronounces a sentence, this shame shall begin their hell. “Hide us from the face of him who sits on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb.” May God bless you, dear friends, save you by his great mercy, richly bless every one of you, and make you Christ’s friends. Amen and amen.

Expositions By C. H. Spurgeon {Joh 12:37-50 Isa 6}

John 12

37. But though he had done so many miracles before them, yet they did not believe in him.

They had an opportunity of seeing with their eyes what the Christ could do. He had even raised the dead in the midst of them, and yet this is the sorrowful statement.

38-40. That the saying of Isaiah the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spoke, “Lord, who has believed our report? And to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed?” Therefore they could not believe, because Isaiah said again. “He has blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; so that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them.”

This passage is very frequently quoted in the Old Testament: it was so extremely appropriate to the condition of the unbelieving Jews. They were wilfully blinded. They could see it; they were forced to hear it; there was much that even touched their hearts; but they hardened their heart against it, and to this day they remain the same.

41-43. Isaiah said these things, when he saw his glory, and spoke of him. Nevertheless among the chief rulers also many believed in him; but because of the Pharisees they did not confess him, lest they should be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God.

And this is a common disease to this day. There are many who know the truth, who, nevertheless, keep very quiet about it. They do not like to be despised; they cannot endure to seem to be separate from their fellow men; it is not respectable to be decided for Christ, and to come out from among them, so they love the praise of men more than the praise of God.

44. Jesus cried and said, “He who believes in me, does not believe in me, but on him who sent me.

Faith in Christ is faith in God, he who trusts the Son has accepted the witness of the Father.

45. And he who sees me sees him who sent me.

That is a wonderful expression. Perhaps, we never fully understand it. Christ is seeable; God is not, but when we see the Christ, we virtually see all of God that we may desire to see: the Invisible has made himself visible in Christ—in him dwells all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.

46. I am come as a light into the world, so that whoever believes in me should not remain in darkness.

True faith in Christ sheds light on everything concerning which light is desirable. You shall understand things when you have come to the right standpoint, when you have come to believe in Christ. I do not wonder that those who doubt concerning him, doubt about everything; if they will not have this light, how shall they see?

47. And if any man hears my words, and does not believe, I do not judge him: for I did not come to judge the world, but to save the world.

Under this present age, it is not the time of judgment. The Lord leaves you who are unbelievers to yourselves. He does not come as yet to judge you; there is a second coming, when he will be both judge and witness, and condemner, of those who have rejected him; but at present it is an age of pure mercy. “He who rejects me, and does not receive my words, has one who judges him.” There is a great God above who considers this to be among the greatest of all human crimes, that they reject his Son. We speak of unbelief very lightly, and there are some who trifle with it as if it had no moral quality at all; but God does not do that.

48. He who rejects me, and does not receive my words, has one who judges him: the word that I have spoken, the same shall judge him in the last day.

Consider that the gospel which you refuse will judge you at the last day. We know that the Lord Jesus Christ shall judge the world, says Paul, “according to my gospel,” and he who sins against the gospel of love will certainly involve himself in the most solemn condemnation. He perishes who sins against the law; he dies without mercy at the mouth of one or two witnesses. Of how much more grievous punishment shall he be thought worthy who sins against love, and rejects the Saviour?

49. For I have not spoken on my own authority; but the Father who sent me, he gave me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak.

God stands behind Christ. Omnipotence supporting love. The expostulations of Christ, not left to our will to do as we like with them, but solemnly sanctioned by the royalties of God, so that to refute them is treason against the majesty of heaven.

50. And I know that his commandment is everlasting life: whatever I speak therefore, even as the Father said to me, so I speak.”

The eternal authority of God is behind the testimony of Christ. Oh! that men would not be so unwise as to reject it.

Now in our reading at the forty-first verse we find these words: “Isaiah said these things when he saw his glory and spoke of him.” Now let us read the passage which gives us an account of Isaiah’s seeing the glory of Christ.

Isaiah 6

1. In the year King Uzziah died

You remember him, that leprous king, that king who had thrust himself into the priests’ office, and was struck by leprosy, and confined in a separate house during the rest of his life. In the year that he died Isaiah saw a greater King, whom no defilement can ever touch, a King who reigns and lives for ever, though Uzziah dies.

1. I also saw the Lord sitting on a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple.

Whenever you read in the Old Testament that any man saw the Lord, understand it of the Second Person of the Divine Trinity, the Lord Jesus Christ. He makes himself as we have said, visible to men, and God in him.

2. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew.

There are the spirits who dwell in the presence of God, nearest to him, and since he is a consuming fire they come to be like him, for the seraphims are burning ones, consumers, burning and shining lights, who wait on God, who is the light of life. Notice how humble they are in that presence; they cover themselves before that Infinite Majesty.

3, 4. And one cried to the other, and said, “Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory.” And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him who cried, and the house was filled with smoke.

And if even the voice of a seraph moved the very foundations of the temple, what will the voice of God do when he shall speak once more? According to that word, he shall shake not only earth, but also heaven. What awe and trembling should happen to us when we wait on God, if even the posts of the doors move! “Then I said, ‘Woe is me!’” All God’s saints do this when they get a view of him. There was never a boastful thought in any man’s mind in the presence of God. Those who talk about their own purity have not known God, neither seen him. How could they? This is the cry of all the purified when they come into the presence of God, “Woe is me, for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips.” What made him think of lips, but the voice of the seraphim as responsively they cried to each other, “Holy, holy, holy” Then he thought of his own lips. Oh! brothers and sisters, what impurity comes out of our lips, perhaps more there than anywhere else is the impurity of the heart revealed in our idle words, our evil words.

5-7. Then I said, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for my eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Then one of the seraphims flew to me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar: And he laid it on my mouth, and said, “Lo, this has touched your lips; and your iniquity is taken away, and your sin purged.”

Just where he felt the impurity, there he felt the expiation. His lips were unclean, and now a touch of the altar coal, a communication from the great Sacrifice, has taken all his iniquity away, and his sin is buried.

8. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” Then I said, “Here I am: send me.”

Observe the unity and the plurality, “Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?” On what theory, but that of the doctrine of the Trinity, can we explain so exceptional a change from the singular to the plural, “‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then I said, ‘Here I am. Send me.’” This man, so lowly now, so purified with the vision of God, just seen by him; how cheerfully does he spring forward at the word of invitation. “Here I am, send me.” Now see what a sorrowful mission God, in these next verses, assured Isaiah that his ministry, so far as the conversion of the Jews were concerned, would be altogether fruitless; they would not receive his testimony.

9, 10. And he said, “Go, and tell this people, ‘Hear indeed, but do not understand; and see indeed, but do not perceive.’ Make the heart of this people dull, and make their ears heavy, and shut their eyes; lest they see with their eyes, and hear with their ears, and understand with their heart, and convert, and be healed.”

What a ministry, dark with insufferable light! So bright, so clear, that men should wilfully have to harden their hearts, and shut their eyes if they did not understand and receive it.

11, 12. Then I said, “Lord, how long?” And he answered, “Until the cities are wasted without inhabitant, and the houses without man, and the land is utterly desolate. And the Lord has removed men far away and there is a great forsaking in the midst of the land.

So it happened, as you know, the people were carried away captive; they still refused, they would not believe even, until Christ came, and then the destruction of Jerusalem, and the sweeping clear of their country was the final stroke of God. “But yet in it shall be a tenth.” There is always a gleam of light from God’s grace in the thickest darkness of his justice. God has his tithe.

13. But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, and shall be eaten: as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they shed their leaves; so the holy seed shall be its substance.”

And, therefore, the Jewish nation is not destroyed, but still exists, and the Church of God is not destroyed, despite all that happens to it. There is a substance in it, according to the election of grace, for which may God be praised.