Every little conventicle that is put up, and every hugh cathedral this is reared, be it a biuilding with lowly porch or lofty spire, is called the house of God. Well, did you never read where it is said, ‘God that made heaven and earth dwelleth not in temples made with hands, that is to say, of this building’?

Have you never read that magnificent sentence of Solomon at the consecration of the temple, ‘Behold, heaven and the heaven of heavens cannot contain Thee; how much less this house which I have built’? Think ye then that He will dwell in any of these classic buildings, be they of Greek, or Gothic, of Norman or medieval architecture?

Oh, sirs, God is great and greatly to be praised, as much outside as inside of your petty structures. He is everywhere; He filleth all things; and God’s house is not a place that you can build for Him, artistic as your tastes may be. Your memorial windows are not His remembrancers. They may charm you, they cannot cheat Him. But there is a place where God ever dwells. What habitation hath He prepared for Himself, and what tabernacle hath He builded?

There is one abode mysteriously fashioned. We speak of its strange conception and its matchless purity of architecture. It was the Body of the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘A body hast thou prepared me’. And the house of God, the true Bethel, the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, for ‘in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.’

For ‘the word was made flesh and tabernacled among us, and we beheld His glory, the glory as of the Only-begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth.’ The house of God is first the Person of Christ, and then the church of God, which is the Body of Christ mystically. This is the house and the household of God, even the church of the living God…

There are some in this house of prayer this morning who are spiritually paralyzed. They have eyes and they see the gospel; they have ears and they have heard it, and heard it attentively too; but they are so paralyzed they will honestly tell you, that they cannot lay hold upon the promise of God; they cannot believe in Jeuss to the saving of their souls.

If you urge them to pray, they say ‘We try to pray, but it is not acceptable prayer.’ If you bid them have confidence, they will tell you, though not in so many words perhaps, that they are given up to despair. Their mournful ditty is:

“I would but cannot sing;
I would, but cannot pray;
For Satan meets me when I try,
And frights my soul away.

I would, but can’t repeat,
Though I endeavor oft;
This stony heart can ne’er relent
Till Jesus makes it soft.

I would, but cannot love,
Though woo’d by love divine;
No arguments have power to move
A soul so base as mine.

O could I but believe!
Then all would easy be;
I would but cannot — Lord, relieve
My help must come from thee!”

The bottom of this paralysis is sin upon the conscience, working death in them. They are sensible of their guilt, but powerless to believe that the crimson fountain can remove it; they are alive only to sorrow, despondency, and agony. Sin paralyzes them with despair.

I grant you that into this despair there enters largely the element of unbelief, which is sinful, but I hope there is also in it a measure of sincere repentance, which bears in it the hope of something better.

Our poor awakened paralytics sometimes hope that they may be forgiven, but they cannot believe it; they cannot rejoice; they cannot cast themselves on Jesus; they are utterly wihtout strength…

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They can hardly speak but what they have something to grumble about. Trade with them is also always bad. Ever since I have been in London trade has been bad, but it is even worse now. It never was so bad as it is now, except that it was just as bad last year; and, as far as I know, has always been at the worst.

Farmers never have, to the best of my recollection, had more than “an average crop”, and most years there has been a failure. If the wheat has been good, the turnips have always gone bad, or something.

I notice murmuring to be a very common thing with many people, and you no sooner sit down in their cottage than, instead of telling you that someone has been there to help them a little and give them some assistance, they say they have only the parish allowance — a miserable pittance!

So it is; but they forget the mercies that they have. Why should I be always telling how often I have rheumatic pains, and how many times I find that there is something wrong with my constitution? Why should I make it my constant habit to compel everybody to be miserable wherever I go?

“Well”, says one, “but you know we cannot help it!” My dear friend, then if you do not help it, I will tell you what will be the fruit of it — you will make yourselves incorrigibly miserable. You will bring yourselves into a desperate state, in which nothing will comfort you.

I do believe that in this respect we are very much our own masters. Not all the bounties of Providence can make us happy, if we have a thankless, ungrateful heart. You may have all the world can give you, and yet be wretched; or you may be very, very poor, and yet be cheerful.

A thankful heart is essential, and oh! may God be pleased to give us that thankful heart! But what I want you to remember is that murmuring is a great sin. They murmured against God in the wilderness, and He sent fiery serpents among them. God thinks much of our complaints against His providential dealings with us; let us not think so little of the sin of provoking Him with our thoughts!

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There are self-righteous thoughts — the supposition that we are not so sinful as God says we are, the conceit that we may, perhaps, work ourselves out of our difficulties, and force our way to heaven.

Now, the fruit of such a thought as this will be amazement in the day when God will strip us of our self-righteousness, and make us stand naked, to our eternal shame.

Beware of self-righteous thoughts, my hearers! They are the Tarpeian rock from which Satan has hurled thousands of souls. It were better for you that a millstone were fastened about your neck, and that you were cast into the midst of the sea, than that you should thank God that you are not as other men, when after all you are as corrupt as other men, and will perish as they did.

Self-righteousness keeps you from coming to Christ, and certainly it excludes you from eternal life, and will close the gates of heaven against you. God deliver us from the fruit of such thoughts!

Then, again, proud, boastful, vain-glorious, self-seeking thoughts are alike obnoxious. How highly some people think of themselves! You can see it in their gait, and their speech bewrayeth them. Yet their wine is all froth, and their gold is counterfeit.

Their speech, when they begin to tell of what they have, what they can do, and what they did do upon such and such occasions — all this is an abomination to honest men; but their thoughts must be very abominable to God.

It is one of the things which He says He hates — “a proud look.” God grant us grace to be rid of every proud thought, for we have nothing to be proud of.

A proud man is nothing but a wind-bag, and when either the ills of life or the crisis of death shall put a pin into it, what a collapse there will be, how the haughty one will discover himself to be nothing but emptiness and vanity!

Get rid of proud thoughts, for, oh! what will they not do? Pride dragged an angel from heaven, and made a devil of him, and pride would drag any of us down to the level of the devil if we fall into its snare.

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This is a great doctrinal truth, and I might with much propriety preach a doctrinal sermon from it, of which the sum and substance would be the sovereign grace of God. God’s love is evidently prior to ours: “He first loved us.” It is also clear enough from the text that God’s love is the cause of ours, for “We love Him because He first loved us.” Therefore, going back to old time, or rather before all time, when we find God loving us with an everlasting love, we gather that the reason of His choice is not because we loved Him, but because He willed to love us.

His reasons, and he had reasons (for we read of “the counsel of His will”) are known to Himself, but they are not to be found in any inherent goodness in us, or which was foreseen to be in us. We were chosen simply because He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. He loved us because He would love us.

The gift of His dear Son, which was a close consequent upon His choice of His people, was too great a sacrifice on God’s part to have been drawn from Him by any goodness in the creature. It was not possible for the highest piety to have deserved so vast a boon as the gift of the Only-Begotten; it was not possible for anything in man to have merited the Incarnation and the passion of the Redeemer.

Our redemption, like our election, springs from the spontaneous, self-originating love of God. And our regeneration, in which we are made actual partakers of the divine blessings in Jesus Christ, was not of us, nor by us. We were not converted because we were already inclined that way, neither were we regenerated because some good thing was in us by nature; but we owe our new birth entirely to His potent love, which dealt with us effectually, turning us from death to life, from darkness to light, and from the alienation of our mind and the enmity of our spirit into that delightful path of love, in which we are now travelling to the skies.

As believers on Christ’s Name, we “were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” The sum and substance of the text is, that God’s uncaused love, springing up within Himself, has been the sole means of bringing us into the condition of loving Him. Our love to Him is like a tricklng rill, speeding its way to the ocean because it first came from the ocean. All the rivers run into the sea, but their floods first arose from it; the clouds that were exhaled from the Mighty main distilled in showers and filled the water-brooks.

Here was the first cause and prime origin; and, as if they recognized the obligation, they pay tribute in return to the parent source. The ocean love of God, so broad that even the wing of imagination could not traverse it, sends forth its treasures of the rain of grace, which drops upon our hearts, which are as the pastures of the wilderness; they make our hearts to overflow, and in streams fo gratitude the life imparted flows back again to God.

All good things are of thee, Great God; Thy goodness creates our good; Thine infinite love to us draws forth our love to Thee.

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It is not every man who can say that God is on his side; on the contrary, the most of men are fighting against the Lord. By nature we are the friends of sin, and then God is against us; with all the powers of justice he is against us for our destruction, unless we turn and repent. Is God for us?

How is God for us?

God is for us in four senses. He is for us, for He hath predestined us; He is for us, for He hath called us; He is for us, for He hath justified us; He is for us, because He hath virtually glorified us, and will actually do so.

Who Are Against Us?

There are four main enemies who conspire against the children of God; These always will be against us, but who are they?

Halleluliah! God the Father cannot be against us. He is our Father; He cannot be against His own children. He hath chosen us; He will not cast us away. He hath adopted us into His family; He will never discard us. He hath been pleased to ordain us unto eternal life; He will never reverse the decree. He was for us in the covenant of grace, when He planned the way to save rebellious man. He has been for us in the great ordering of providence; all things have worked together for good for us until now.

You may rest assured that whether earth shall rock and reel, or the moon be black as sackcloth of hair, or the earth be licked up with tongues of fire, still Jehovah has not a single thought, nor wish, nor word, nor look, against any one of the blood-bought ones; they are all safe in Him. God the Father cannot be against us.

Then God the Son is not against us. O, beloved! how sweetly He has been for us! Methinks I see him now, lifting up that face all covered with bloody sweat, and saying to every believer, “I am for thee; these gouts of gore fall to the dust for you; I sweat great drops of blood that I might redeem you.”

Halleluliah!

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1. Our first observation is that sinners, when they are tossed upon the sea of conviction, make desperate efforts to save themselves.

2. The second point, like these mariners, the fleshy efforts of awakened sinners must inevitably fail.

3. The third point of the sermon, that the soul’s sorrow will continue to increase, so long as it relies upon its own efforts.

4. The fourth point, that the way of safety for sinners is to be found in the sacrifice of another on their behalf.

Since they struggle in an unlawful manner, the crown of victory will never be awarded them; they may kindle the fire, and rejoice in the sparks thereof, but thus saith the Lord, “This shall ye have of mine hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow”.

Let us notice some forms of the fleshy energy of men straining after self-salvation:

The most usual is moral reformation. Moral reforms are excellent in themselves, but they are dangerous if we rest in them. I would have the leopard tamed and caged, but it will not remove his spots. Unless reforms are founded in regeneraton, they are baseless things which fail in the end for want of foundation; they are deceptive things affording a transient hope, which soon, alas! must melt away. {you must be born again}

Others add to their reformation a superstitious regard to the outward form of religion. Superstition is hard rowing; the ship will not come to the land thereby. Men invent ceremony after ceremony; there is this pomp and that show, this gaudy ornament and that procession; but the whole matter ends in outward display; no secret soul-blessing results flow therefrom.

Many persons row hard to get the ship to land by a notional belief in orthodox doctrine. This supersitution is harder to deal with, but quite as dangerous as the belief in good works. Sound doctrine is all very well, but he who boasts thus may be no better than the devil; nay, he may not be so good; for the devil believes and trembles, but these men believe and are too much hardened in their own conceit to think of trembling.

Orthodox sinners will find that hell is hot, and their knowledge will not yield a cooling drop to their parched tongues. Condemning other people, cutting off the saints of God right and left, is but poor virtue, and to have these blessed doctrines in the head while neglecting them in the heart is anything but a gracious sign.

Ah! You may row with those oars, but you will not get the ship to land; ye must be saved by sovereign grace, through the operation of the Holy Spirit upon the heart, or you will not be saved at all. As it is not by doing that we are saved, neither is it by subscribing creeds; there is something more than this needed ere the ship reach the port.

O beloved! It is a blessed thing to get right out of self. But many believers seem to have one foot on self and one on Christ. They are like the angel wth one foot on the sea and the other on the land; only, being angels, they cannot stand on such a footing. Put both feet on the rock, beloved; stand altogether on Christ.

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The Apostle Paul had been led to make the confession that Christ Jesus was despised both by Jew and Gentile. He confessed that this was no cause of stumbling to him; for what others counted foolishness he believed to be wisdom, and rejoined that the foolishness of God was wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men. Lest, however, any of the Corinthian Church should be stumbled by the fact that Christ was despised, the apostle goes on to show that it was the general way of God’s proceeding, to select means which men despised, in order that by accomplishing His purpose through them, He might have all the glory; and He refers them for proof of this to the one instance of their own election and calling: “Ye see your calling, brethren,” saith he, “not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called; ” but you, the poor, illiterate, the despised — you have been called — still for the same reason — that God may be all in all, and that no flesh may glory in His presence.

It is clear to everyone who will observe either Scripture or fact, that God never intended to make His gospel fashionable; that the very last thing that was ever in His thoughts was to select the elite of mankind, and gather dignity for His truth from the gaudy trappings of rank and station. On the contrary, God has thrown down the gauntlet against all the pride of manhood; he hath dashed mire into the face of all human excellency; and with the battle-axe of his strength, He has dashed the escutcheon of man’s glory in twain. “Overturn! overturn! overturn!” seems to be the very motto of the Lord of Hosts, and shall be so “until He shall come whose right it is to reign , and He will give it him,” for His is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.

There is no doctrine more truly humbling than the doctrine of election; and it was for this reason that the Apostle Paul refers to it, — that the disciples at Corinth might be quite content to follow the humble and despised cross-bearing Savior, because the election of grace consists of the humble and despised, who therefore cannot be ashamed to follow One who, like themselves, was despised and rejected of men.

Coming, then at once to our text, we observe in it very clearly, first, the Elector; secondly a strange election; then, the elected; and when we have considered all these a little, we shall pause over the reasons which God has given for His election — that “no flesh should glory in His presence.”

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To the lover of Jesus, it is very pleasant to observe how the Lord Jesus Christ has always stood foremost in glory from before the foundation of the world, and will do so as long as eternity shall last. If we look back by faith to the time of the creation, we find our Lord with His Father as one brought up with him. “When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water. While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world. When he prepared the heavens, I was there; when he set a compass upon the face of the depth: when he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep.”

He was that wisdom who was never absent from the Father’s counsels in the great work of creation, whether it be the birth of angels or the making of worlds of men. One of the first events ever recorded in Scripture history is, “When He bringeth in the first-begotten into the world, He saith, let all the angels of God worship Him.” Such words were never spoken of any creature, but only of Him who is co-equal and co-eternal with the Father, glorious forever; the first-born of every creature, the head of the household of God, the express image of His person, and the fullness of His glory.

In the earliest periods of which we possess any knowledge, Jesus Christ stood exalted far above all principalities and powers, and every name that is named. When human history dawns, and the history of God’s church commences, you will find Christ pre-eminient. All the types of the early church are only to be opened up by Him as the key. It would have been nothing to be of the seed of Israel, if it had not been for the promise of Shiloh that was to come; it would have been in vain that the sacrifices were offered in the wilderness, that the ark abode between the curtains, or that the golden pot which had the manna was covered with the mercy-seat, if there had not been a real signification of Christ in all these. The religion of the Jew would have been very emptiness if it had not been for Christ, who is the substance of the former shadows.

Run on to the period of the prophets, and in all their prophesyings do you not see additional glimpses of the glory of Christ? When they mount to the greatest heights of eloquence do they not speak of Him? Whenever their soul is carried up, as in the chariot of fire, is not the mantle left behind them a word telling of the glory of Jesus? They could never glow with fervent heat, except concerning Him. Even when they denounced the judgments of God, they paused between the crashes of God’s thunder to let some drops of mercy fall on man in words of promise concerning Him who was to come.

It is always Christ from the opening leaf of Genesis to the closing note of Malachi, — Christ, Christ, Christ, and nothing but Christ. It is very delightful, brethren, when we come to such a text as this, to observe that what was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end, Amen.

In that millennial state of which the text speaks, Jesus Christ is to be the light thereof, and all its glory is to proceed from Him; and if the text speaketh concerning heaven and the blessedness hereafter, all its light and blessings and glory stream from Him: “The Lamb is the light thereof.” If we read the text, and think of its connection with us today, we must confess that all our joy and peace flow from the same fountain. Jesus Christ is the Sun of Righteousness to us, as well as to the saints above.

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“With all our preaching, I am afraid that we too much omit the simple explanation of the essential act in salvation. I have feared that the anxious enquirer might visit many of our churches and chapels, month after month, and yet he would not get a clear idea of what he must do to be saved. He would come away with an indistinct notion that he was to believe; but what he was to believe, he would not know. He would, perhaps, obtain some glimmering of the fact that he must be saved through the merits of Christ, but how those merits can become available to him, he would still be left to guess. I know at least that this was my case–that when sincere and axious to do or be anythihng which might save my soul, I was utterly in the dark as to the way in which my salvation might be rendered thoroughly secure. Now, this morning, I hope I shall be able to put it into such a light that he who runs may read, and that the wayfaring man, though a fool, may not err therein.

The apostle says, he committed himself into the hands of Christ. His soul with all its eternal interests; his soul with all of its sins, with all its hopes, and all its fears, he had put into the hands of Christ, as the grandest and most precious deposit which man could ever make. He had taken himself just as he was, and had surrendered himself to Christ, saying–”Lord save me, for I cannot save myself; I give myself up to thee, freely relying upon thy power, and believing in thy love. I give my soul up to thee to be washed, cleansed, saved and preserved, and at last brought home to heaven.”

This act of committing himself to Christ was the first act which ever brought real comfort to his spirit; it was the act which he must continue to perform whenever he would escape from a painful sense of sin; the act with which he must enter heaven itself, if he would die in peace and see God’s face with acceptance. He must still continue to commit himself into the keeping of Christ.”

“….You cannot be saved, if you have one hand on self and the other hand on Christ. Let go, sinner; renounce all dependence in anything thou canst do. Cease to be thine own keeper, give up the futile attempt to be thy own Savior, and then thou wilt have taken the first step to heaven. There are but two–the first is out of self; the next is, into Christ. When Christ is thy all, then thou art safe!”

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