Charles H. Spurgeon e Israele: due sermoni.  Introduzione.

Dov'è la sapienza che abbiamo perduta? Qual'è la conoscenza che la Chiesa ha smarrita? C'è nel passato del cristianesimo e dell'evangelismo una sapienza che lo Spirito di Dio ha dato ma che uomini hanno nascosto e dimenticato perchè non secondo le proprie dottrine.

I sermoni di C.H.Spurgeon, un principe tra i predicatori, cui lo Spirito di Dio ha rivelato i Suoi propositi circa il Popolo Eletto, sono intrisi di grande sapienza circa il popolo del patto, anche se egli viene considerato un predicatore del nuovo patto. Verso la fine dell' Ottocento, mentre il Signore radunava i dispersi di Israele verso la terra promessa ridando vita alla Nazione d'Israele, a Londra quest'uomo di Dio rivelava le profezie di Dio per il suo tempo.

Nel cuore di una nazione evangelica, non predicava i trionfi dell'Impero Britannico e del risveglio evangelico, che pure in quell'epoca aveva luogo, ma piuttosto il ritorno a Sion del Popolo secondo le promesse. Esortava la Chiesa a rivolgere il suo sguardo a Gerusalemme e a quella Nazione che non esisteva ancora.

I temi affrontati da Spurgeon nel primo sermone del 1864 sono un ristabilimento politico degli ebrei nella Terra promessa e un ristabilimento spirituale in fede come Nazione. Riguardo alla Chiesa ricordava il suo compito di portare il Vangelo di Gesù, Messia d'Israele, agli ebrei, così come quello di intercedere in preghiera per questo doppio ristabilimento prima politico e poi spirituale.

Nel secondo sermone del 1878, invece, Spurgeon affronta le caratteristiche della Vigna d'Israele e il nostro compito di credenti gentili di essere debitori di Israele, da cui è disceso il nostro Signore Gesù per mezzo del quale abbiamo salvezza e vita eterna. Ci esorta inoltre a pregare per la salvezza d'Israele e di essere noi stessi delle testimonianze viventi, col nostro comportamento quotidiano, così da attrarre gli ebrei al Messia Gesù.

Importante anche ricordare che questi due sermoni vennero predicati a sostegno dei Fondi della Società Britannica per la Propagazione del Vangelo fra gli Ebrei.

Quindi le sue predicazioni si svolsero in un contesto di sostegno finanziario da parte della Chiesa inglese al fine di propagare la Buona Notizia agli ebrei.

A quegli evangelici che hanno smarrito il sentiero antico, offriamo la lettura di questi sermoni affinché tornino a parlar loro. Ad echeggiare nei nostri spiriti!

Buona lettura!

( A seguire versione in Inglese )

 

Luca Signorelli

"...Figliol d'uomo queste ossa sono tutta la casa di Israele" ( Ez. 37:11 ).

*    *    *    *    *

 

Pulpito del Tabernacolo Metropolitano

IL RISTABILIMENTO E LA CONVERSIONE DEGLI EBREI

Sermone N. 582

Predicato la sera del giovedì 16 giugno 1864,

dal Reverendo C. H. Spurgeon –

al Tabernacolo Metropolitano di Londra, zona di Newington [oggi Elephant & Castle], a sostegno dei Fondi della Società Britannica per la Propagazione del Vangelo tra gli Ebrei.

“La mano del Signore fu su di me e mi trasportò nello Spirito del Signore, e mi fece sedere nel mezzo della valle, che era piena di ossa, e mi fece passare vicino ad esse, tutt’attorno: ed ecco, ce n’erano tantissime nella aperta valle. Ed ecco, erano molto secche. Ed Egli mi disse, Figlio d’uomo, possono rivivere queste ossa? Ed io risposi, O Signore Dio, Tu lo sai.

Di nuovo Egli mi disse, Profetizza su queste ossa e dì loro, O voi ossa secche, ascoltate la parola del Signore. Così dice il Signore Dio a queste ossa: Ecco, Io farò entrare il respiro in voi e voi rivivrete: Io stenderò dei tendini e farò crescere della carne su di voi e vi ricoprirò con della pelle, e metterò il respiro in voi e voi rivivrete.

E conoscerete che Io sono il Signore.

Così profetizzai come mi era stato comandato: e come io profetizzavo, ci fu un rumore ed ecco uno scuotimento e le ossa si accostarono, l’una all’altra. E quando guardai, ecco, i tendini e la carne vennero su di esse e la pelle le ricoprì: ma non c’era respiro in loro.

Allora Egli mi disse, Profetizza al vento, profetizza Figlio d’uomo e dì al vento, Così dice il Signore Dio: Vieni dai quattro venti, O Respiro e alita sopra a questi uccisi, cosicché possano riprendere vita. Così profetizzai come Egli mi comandò e il respiro entrò in essi e tornarono in vita e si rizzarono in piedi, un esercito estremamente grande.”

Ezechiele 37:1-10 ( Versione King James )

 

Questa visione è stata usata, dal tempo di Gerolamo in avanti, come una descrizione della resurrezione e certamente potrebbe essere adattata in tal modo con grande effetto. Che visione del gran giorno le parole rappresentano davanti all’occhio della mente! Il grande esercito dei vivi, che un tempo era morto, sembra rimettersi in moto dal momento che leggiamo. Qui, pure, abbiamo una domanda opportuna ed appropriata che ci si deve porre in un sepolcro - “Figlio d’uomo, possono rivivere queste ossa?” Abbassando lo sguardo nella fossa tenebrosa, o guardando il becchino che tira su le reliquie decomposte, un tempo infuse di vita, l’incredulità può ben suggerire la richiesta - “Possono rivivere queste ossa?”

La fede non può che sempre dar risposta più soddisfacente di questa - “O Signore, Tu lo sai.” Ma, mentre questa interpretazione della visione può essere assai confacente come adattamento, deve essere piuttosto evidente ad ogni persona ragionevole che questo non è il significato del passo. Non c’è alcuna allusione da parte di Ezechiele alla resurrezione dei morti e un tale soggetto sarebbe stato del tutto lontano dal proposito del discorso del Profeta. Credo che egli non stesse pensando alla resurrezione dei morti più che alla costruzione di S. Pietro a Roma, o alla emigrazione dei Padri Pellegrini! Questo soggetto è completamente estraneo all’argomento a portata di mano e non potrebbe per nessuna possibilità essersi insinuato nella mente del Profeta.

Egli stava parlando del popolo d’Israele e profetizzando riguardo a loro. E in modo evidente la visione, secondo l’interpretazione di Dio stesso, riguardava loro e solo loro, perché “queste ossa sono l’intera casa d’Israele” (Ezechiele 37:11). Non era una visione che riguardava tutti gli uomini, né, davvero, riguardava ogni uomo quanto alla resurrezione dei morti - essa aveva un rapporto diretto e speciale con il popolo ebraico. Questo passo, di nuovo, è stato molto frequentemente, e oserei dire molto  convenientemente, usato per descrivere il risveglio di una Chiesa decaduta. Questa visione potrebbe essere vista come descrittiva di uno stato di tiepidità e letargia spirituale in una Chiesa quando si venga penosamente a porre la domanda - “Possono rivivere queste ossa?”

Può quel fiacco ministro risvegliarsi a vivente potenza? Possono questi freddi diaconi infuocarsi di santo fervore? Possono quei membri non spirituali risorgere a qualcosa di simile ad ardente, santa abnegazione? È possibile che la sonnolenta Chiesa formalista si avvii a un vero ardore? Tali suggerimenti mentali possono ben essere venuti a molte menti del tempo della Riforma. Sembrava davvero impossibile, quando il Cattolicesimo era nella sua potenza, che la vita spirituale dovesse mai ritornare di nuovo alla Chiesa. La pietà sembrava essere morta e sepolta e il convento, il clero, la superstizione e l’inganno, come dei grandi sepolcri, avevano inghiottito tutto ciò che vi era di buono.

Ma il Signore apparve al Suo popolo e riportò fuori dal sepolcro la sepolta Verità di Dio, e ancora una volta in ogni parte del mondo conosciuto il nome di Gesù Cristo fu innalzato e la sana dottrina venne predicata! Così avvenne anche nel nostro paese. Quando sia la Chiesa Anglicana che i dissidenti erano caduti nella morte spirituale avremmo potuto ben dire - “Possono rivivere queste ossa?” Ma Whitfield e Wesley vennero fatti sorgere da Dio ed essi profetizzarono alle ossa secche, ed esse si rizzarono in piedi - ripiene dello Spirito di Dio - “un esercito estremamente grande”. Che le folle di Kingsdown e le moltitudini al Kennington Common raccontino della vivificante potenza del nome di Gesù! Chiese decadute possono molto certamente essere rianimate per mezzo della predicazione della Parola accompagnata dalla venuta del “respiro” celeste dai quattro venti.

O Signore, mandaci tali risvegli adesso, perché molte delle Tue Chiese ne hanno bisogno - esse sono pressoché morte come i cadaveri che dormono attorno a loro nel cimitero. Ma, pur ammettendo che questo sia un adattamento molto calzante del nostro testo, tuttavia siamo del tutto convinti che non sia a questo che si riferisca il passo. Sarebbe completamente estraneo al tipo di pensiero del Profeta il pensare al ristabilimento d’uno zelo precipitato e alla riaccensione d’un amore che sta cessando. Egli non stava considerando né la Riforma di Lutero o di Whitfield, né il risveglio di una Chiesa o di un’altra. No, stava parlando del suo popolo, della sua stirpe e della sua tribù. Egli deve aver sicuramente conosciuto la sua mente e, condotto dallo Spirito Santo, ci dà come una spiegazione della visione.  Non - " Così dice il Signore, la Mia Chiesa morente sarà restaurata”, ma - “Io trarrò fuori il Mio popolo dai loro sepolcri e li porterò nella terra d’Israele” (Ezechiele 37:12).

Con grandissima proprietà, questo passo, pure, è stato usato per la consolazione dei Credenti nei loro giorni bui e nuvolosi. Quando essi hanno perso le loro consolazioni, quando le loro gioie spirituali si sono afflosciate come fiori appassiti, quando non sono stati più in grado di -

“leggere chiari i loro titoli

alle dimore nei cieli”(1)

gli è stato ricordato che Dio poteva ritornare a loro in Grazia e misericordia, che le ossa secche potevano vivere e dovevano vivere! Allora si sono ricordati che lo Spirito di Dio poteva nuovamente venire sul Suo popolo - che persino al tempo in cui erano pronti a rinunciare a ogni speranza e a giacere distesi nella disperazione, Egli poteva venire e ridar così loro vita, affinché i poveri codardi tremanti venissero trasformati in soldati di Dio e rimanesse in piedi un esercito estremamente grande!

Nessun sepolcro di dolore può trattenere la gioia immortale di un Credente - il terzo giorno essa risorgerà di nuovo, poiché, come il Signore che la diede, non vedrà mai la corruzione! Le tue consolazioni si accosteranno come fanno le ossa l’una all’altra e un esercito di gioie vivrà nella tua anima. Il passo, certamente, può essere usato senza strappi violenti e ciò potrebbe rendere molta consolazione al popolo di Dio. Ma ci prendiamo tuttavia la libertà di dire che questo non è il succo del discorso del Profeta e che non crediamo che egli stesse pensando a nulla del genere. Noi pensiamo che egli stesse parlando solo del proprio popolo, dei propri “parenti secondo la carne” (Romani 9:3).

Ancora una volta. Non c’è dubbio che abbiamo in questo passo un quadro assai notevole del ristabilimento di anime morte a vita spirituale. Gli uomini per natura sono proprio come queste ossa secche esposte nell’aperta valle. L’intero scheletro spirituale è slogato. La linfa e il midollo della vita spirituale sono stati fatti seccare dall’umanità dell’uomo. La natura umana non è solo morta, ma, come quelle ossa sbiancanti che sono a lungo impallidite al sole, essa ha perso ogni traccia di vita Divina. Volontà e forza se ne sono entrambe andate. La morte spirituale regna indisturbata. Ciononostante, le ossa secche possono rivivere! Con la predicazione della Parola i più vili peccatori possono essere redenti, le più caparbie volontà possono essere conquistate, le più empie vite possono essere santificate! Quando il santo “respiro” viene dai quattro venti, quando lo Spirito Divino discende a possedere la Parola, allora le moltitudini dei peccatori come al giorno consacrato di Pentecoste, si rizzano in piedi - un esercito estremamente grande - per lodare il Signore loro Dio.

Ma, badate, questa non è l’interpretazione primaria e propria del testo. È, in verità, nulla più che un caso molto singolare di paragone a quello davanti a noi. Non è il caso stesso. È solamente simile, poiché il modo in cui Dio ristabilisce una nazione è, praticamente, il modo in cui Egli ristabilisce un individuo. Il modo in cui Israele verrà salvato è lo stesso per mezzo del quale ciascun peccatore individuale verrà salvato. Non è, comunque, il caso al quale il Profeta sta puntando. Egli sta guardando alla vasta massa di casi - le moltitudini di esempi, che si troveranno in mezzo agli ebrei, di misericordiosa rianimazione e santa resurrezione. La sua prima e primaria intenzione era di parlare di loro e sebbene sia giusto e legittimo prendere un passo nel suo significato più esteso possibile, dato che “nessuna Scrittura procede da personale interpretazione” (2 Pietro 1:20), tuttavia io ritengo sia tradimento alla Parola di Dio trascurare il suo significato primario e dire costantemente - “Tale è il significato primario, ma non ha importanza alcuna ed io userò le parole per un altro soggetto.” Il predicatore della Verità di Dio non dovrebbe rinunciare al significato dello Spirito Santo! Egli dovrebbe aver cura di non metterlo addirittura in disparte. Il primo significato di un testo, il significato dello Spirito, è quello che dovrebbe essere proposto prima e sebbene il resto possa ragionevolmente scaturire da esso, tuttavia il senso primario dovrebbe avere il posto supremo. Abbia il posto più importante nella sinagoga. Sia considerato almeno come non inferiore, sia in interesse che in importanza, a nessun altro significato che possa affiorare dal testo. Il significato del nostro testo, se le parole significano qualcosa, è molto chiaramente come dischiuso dal contesto, in primo luogo, che dev’esserci un ristabilimento politico degli ebrei alla loro terra e alla loro nazionalità. E poi, in secondo luogo, c’è nel testo e nel contesto una dichiarazione molto evidente che dev’esserci un ristabilimento spirituale - di fatto una conversione - delle tribù d’Israele.

1. Primo, DEV’ESSERCI UN RISTABILIMENTO POLITICO DEGLI EBREI.

Israele è ora cancellato dalla mappa delle nazioni. I suoi figli sono dispersi in lungo e in largo. Le sue figlie piangono presso tutti i fiumi della terra. Il loro canto sacro è ammutolito - nessun re regna a Gerusalemme! Ella non genera nessun sovrano in mezzo alle sue tribù. Ma dev’essere ristabilita! Dev’essere ristabilita “come dai morti” (Romani 11:15). Quando i propri figli rinunceranno ad ogni speranza in lei, allora Dio apparirà in suo favore. Ella dev’essere riorganizzata - le sue ossa disperse dovranno essere riaccostate assieme. Ci sarà di nuovo un governo autoctono. Ci sarà nuovamente la forma di un nucleo politico. Uno Stato sarà incorporato e un re regnerà. Israele è ora diventato alienato dalla propria terra. I suoi figli, sebbene non possano dimenticare mai la sabbia sacra della Palestina, tuttavia muoiono ad irrimediabile distanza dai suoi consacrati lidi. Ma non sarà così per sempre, poiché i suoi figli gioiranno nuovamente in lei - la sua terra sarà chiamata Beulah - é come un giovane sposa una vergine così i suoi figli la sposeranno. “Io vi porrò sulla terra” (Ezechiele 37:14) è la promessa di Dio per loro. Essi cammineranno di nuovo sui suoi monti, ancora una volta si siederanno sotto le sue vigne e gioiranno sotto i suoi fichi!

E devono essere anche riuniti. Non ce ne saranno due, né dodici, ma uno - un solo Israele che loderà un solo Dio - che servirà un solo re e quell’unico Re, il Figlio di Davide, il disceso Messia! Essi avranno una prosperità nazionale che li renderà famosi. Anzi, essi saranno così gloriosi che l’Egitto e Tiro e la Grecia e Roma dimenticheranno tutte la loro gloria nello splendore più grande del trono di Davide! Il giorno deve ancor arrivare in cui tutte le alture sussulteranno d’invidia perché questa è la collina che Dio ha scelto! Il tempo verrà in cui il santuario di Sion verrà di nuovo visitato dai piedi perseveranti del pellegrino - quando le sue valli echeggeranno di canti e le sue sommità stilleranno vino ed olio. Se vi è un significato nelle parole questo dev’essere il significato di questo capitolo! Mi auguro di non imparare mai a strappare via il significato di Dio dalle Sue personali Parole. Se vi è qualcosa di chiaro ed evidente, il senso e il significato letterale di questo passo – un significato che non dev’essere fatto sparir via o spiritualizzato - dev’essere evidente che sia le due che le dieci tribù di Israele devono essere ristabilite alla propria terra e che un re deve governare su di esse. “Così dice il Signore Dio: Ecco, Io prenderò i figli d’Israele dalle nazioni pagane dove sono andati e li radunerò da tutte le parti e li porterò nella loro terra; ed Io farò di loro una sola nazione, nella terra sui monti d’Israele. E un solo re sarà re di tutti loro. E non saranno più due nazioni, né più divisi in due regni.” (Ezechiele 37:21-22)

Non sto entrando ora in teorie milleniali, o in una qualche speculazione quanto a date. Non so assolutamente nulla di tali cose e non sono sicuro che sia chiamato a spendere il mio tempo in tale ricerca. Io sono chiamato a ministrare il Vangelo più che a schiudere la profezia. Coloro che sono saggi in tali cose indubbiamente stimano la loro saggezza, ma io non ho il tempo di acquistarla, né ho alcuna inclinazione ad abbandonare l’inseguimento alla conquista di anime per temi meno stimolanti. Credo sia un grande affare meglio di lasciare esercitare a molte di queste promesse e benigne previsioni di Credenti la loro piena efficacia sulle nostre menti senza privarle della loro semplice gloria con l’aspirare a scoprire date e immaginari.

Sia fissato stabilmente questo, comunque, che, se vi è un significato nelle parole, Israele deve ancor essere ristabilito -

“Ma non in vano - sulla terra d’Israele

la Gloria ancor risplenderà.

Ed Egli, il tuo Re un tempo rigettato,

il Messia, sarà tuo.

La Sua Sposa eletta, destinata con Lui

a regnare su tutta la terra,

verrà prima disposta, e tu conoscerai

l’incomparabile merito del tuo Salvatore.

Allora tu, sotto il regno di pace

di Gesù e della Sua Sposa,

farai risuonare la Sua Grazia e la Sua Gloria

a tutta la terra accanto.

Le nazioni alla tua luce gloriosa,

O Sion, ancor s’affolleranno,

e tutte le isole in ascolto attenderanno

di cogliere il gioioso canto.”(2)

 

Ma c’è un secondo significato qui.

II. )    ISRAELE DEVE AVERE UN RISTABILIMENTO SPIRITUALE O CONVERSIONE.

Sia il testo che il contesto insegnano ciò. La promessa è che rinunceranno ai loro idoli ed, ecco , essi l’hanno già fatto! “Né si contamineranno più con i loro idoli.” (Ezechiele 37:23) Qualsiasi colpa l’ebreo possa avere, non ha certamente quella dell’idolatria. “Il tuo Dio è l’unico Dio” (Deuteronomio 6:4) è una Verità di gran lunga concepita più dall’ebreo che da qualunque altro uomo sulla terra, ad eccezione del Cristiano. Persa l’abitudine di adorare immagini di ogni sorta, la nazione ebraica è diventata ora infatuata di tradizioni o è ingannata dalla filosofia.

Avrà, comunque, invece di queste illusioni, una religione spirituale - essa amerà il suo Dio. “Essi saranno Mio popolo ed Io sarò loro Dio.” (Ezechiele 37:23) L’invisibile ma Onnipotente YeHoWaH verrà adorato in spirito e verità dal Suo antico popolo. Verranno davanti a Lui nel modo da Lui stabilito, accettando il Mediatore che i loro antenati rigettarono. Entreranno nella relazione del Patto con Dio, perché così ci dice il nostro testo - “Io farò un Patto di pace con loro,” (Ezechiele 37:26) - e Gesù è la nostra pace - perciò deduciamo che YeHoWaH entrerà nel Patto della Grazia con loro - quel Patto di cui Cristo è il Capo federale, l’Essenza e la Garanzia. Essi cammineranno nelle leggi e negli statuti di Dio e così esibiranno gli effetti pratici dell’essere uniti a Cristo che avrà dato loro pace. Tutte queste promesse certamente implicano che il popolo d’Israele sarà convertito a Dio e che questa conversione sarà permanente. Il tabernacolo di Dio sarà con loro! L’Altissimo avrà, in una maniera speciale, il Suo santuario per sempre nel loro mezzo cosicché, qualsiasi nazione possa apostatare e voltarsi dal Signore in questi ultimi giorni, la nazione d’Israele non potrà mai farlo, perché essa sarà efficacemente e permanentemente convertita. I cuori dei padri si volgeranno con quelli dei figli verso il Signore loro Dio ed essi saranno il popolo di Dio, per l’eternità. Siamo impazienti, dunque, per queste due cose. Non sto per teorizzare quale di queste verrà prima - se saranno ristabiliti prima, e convertiti in seguito - o convertiti prima e poi ristabiliti. Essi saranno ristabiliti e saranno anche convertiti. Il Signore mandi queste benedizioni nel ordine Suo e saremo ben contenti in qualunque modo avverranno. La prendiamo come nostra gioia e nostra consolazione che questa cosa avverrà e che, sia nel trono spirituale che in quello temporale, il Re Messia siederà e regnerà gloriosamente in mezzo al Suo popolo.

Ora vengo, stasera, alla parte pratica del mio sermone -

III.)      IL MEZZO DI QUESTO RISTABILIMENTO.

Guardando a questo fatto, siamo assai propensi a dire: “Come possono avvenire queste cose? Come possono gli ebrei essere convertiti a Cristo? Come possono essere fatti una nazione? Veramente, il caso appare così senza speranza come quello delle ossa nella valle! Come desisteranno dalla mondanità o come rinunceranno al costante inseguimento delle ricchezze? Come perderanno l’abitudine al fanatico attaccamento alle loro tradizioni Talmudiche? Come saranno tratti fuori da quella durezza di cuore che fa loro odiare il Messia di Nazareth, il loro Signore e Re? Come possono avvenire queste cose?” Il Profeta non dice che non possano avvenire. La sua incredulità non è così grande, ma allo stesso tempo a stento s’arrischia a pensare che possa mai essere possibile. Egli, comunque, molto saggiamente rimette la domanda al suo Dio - “O Signore Dio, Tu lo sai.” Ora alcuni di voi stasera hanno una grande aspettativa riguardo a ciò, voi siete in attesa di vedere gli ebrei convertirsi quanto prima, magari in un mese o due. Mi auguro che possiate vedere ciò non appena l’abbiano datato i vostri desideri. Altri fra noi non sono così ottimisti ed hanno una veduta più cupa di un lungo futuro di sventure. Beh, veniamo entrambi assieme davanti a Dio stasera e diciamo: “O Signore Dio, Tu lo sai. E se Tu lo sai, Signore, saremo contenti di lasciare il segreto a Te! Dicci solamente quel che Tu vorresti facessimo. Non cerchiamo alimento alla speculazione, ma noi chiediamo di lavorare. Chiediamo qualcosa per il quale possiamo mostrare praticamente che amiamo davvero l’ebreo e che vogliamo portarlo a Cristo.”

In risposta a questo, il Signore dice ai Suoi servitori: “Profetizza su queste ossa”, cosicché il nostro dovere stasera, come Cristiani, è di profetizzare su queste ossa e poi vedremo il proposito di Dio adempiuto - nel momento in cui obbediamo al precetto di Dio. Voglio che osserviate che ci sono due generi del ‘profetizzare’ di cui si parla qui. Primo, il Profeta profetizza alle ossa - ecco la predicazione. E poi, egli profetizza ai quattro venti – ecco la preghiera. La predicazione ha la sua parte nell’opera, ma è la preghiera che raggiunge il risultato - perché dopo che egli ebbe profetizzato ai quattro venti e non prima - le ossa iniziarono a rivivere. Tutto ciò che fece la predicazione fu di creare un movimento e di accostare le ossa assieme, ma fu la preghiera che compì l’opera, perché allora Dio, lo Spirito Santo venne a ridare loro vita! La predicazionee la preghiera, dunque, stasera sono i due nuclei di questa parte del mio sermone e parleremo di ciascuno brevemente.

 

1. È il dovere e il privilegio della Chiesa Cristiana di predicare il Vangeloall’ebreo e ad ogni creatura.E, nel far ciò, può sicuramente prendere la visione che abbiamo davanti come guida. Può prenderla come guida, innanzitutto, quanto ad argomento. Cosa dobbiamo predicare? Il testo dice che noi dobbiamo profetizzare e certamente ogni missionario che va agli ebrei dovrebbe specialmente mantenere ben in prominenza le profezie di Dio davanti agli occhi di tutti. Mi sembra che un modo in cui possa essere catturata la mente ebraica sia quello di ricordare assai spesso agli ebrei di quello splendido futuro che sia l’Antico che il Nuovo Testamento predicono per Israele. Ognuno ha un lato sensibile e un cuore appassionato verso la propria nazione e se gli dici che nel tuo libro fondamentale c’è una rivelazione fatta nella quale quella nazione dovrà esercitare un grande ruolo nella storia dell’umanità e, anzi, prenderà il posto più eccelso nell’assemblea delle nazioni - allora il pregiudizio dell’uomo è dalla tua parte ed egli ti ascolta con la più grande attenzione. Io non affiderei, come alcuni fanno, la predicazione eterna della profezia in ogni congregazione. Ma dovrebbe essere data una maggior prominenza alle profezie nell’ammaestrare gli ebrei che per qualsiasi altro popolo. Ma tuttavia, la cosa principale che dobbiamo predicare è Cristo. Potete contarci cari fratelli, i migliori sermoni che mai predicheremo saranno quelli più ripieni di Cristo Gesù, il Figlio di Davide e il Figlio di Dio! Gesù il Salvatore sofferente per le cui ferite siamo guariti! Gesù in grado di salvare al massimo grado - ecco il soggetto più appropriato per i Gentili. Dio ha formato ogni cuore in modo simile e questo perciò è il tema più grandioso anche per gli ebrei. Paolo amava i suoi compatrioti! Non fu un sempliciotto - egli sapeva qual era l’arma migliore con la quale affrontare e vincere i loro pregiudizi e ciononostante egli poteva dire: “Io mi proposi di non saper nulla fra voi salvo Gesù Cristo e Lui crocifisso.” ( 1 Corinzi 2:2 )

Innalza il Messia, dunque, sia davanti all’Ebreo che al Gentile. Digli del Figlio di Maria, l’eterno Figlio di Dio, l’Uomo di Nazareth che non è altri che la Parola Incarnata, Dio fatto carne e dimorante fra di noi! Predica la Sua vita santa - la rettitudine del Suo popolo. Dichiara la Sua morte dolorosa - la remissione di tutti i loro peccati. La Sua gloriosa Resurrezione! La giustificazione del Suo popolo. Digli della Sua ascensione. Il Suo trionfo sul mondo e sul peccato! Dichiara il Suo secondo avvento, la Sua gloriosa venuta per rendere il Suo popolo glorioso nella Gloria che Egli ha ottenuto per loro! E Cristo Gesù, quando sarà così predicato, sarà certamente il mezzo per il quale far rivivere queste ossa!

Che risuoni questa predicazione con Somma misericordia! Si abbia sempre in essa il chiaro e distinto accento della Grazia Gratuita. Stavo pensando mentre leggevo questo capitolo proprio ora, che di tutti i sermoni che siano mai stati predicati, questo sermone alle ossa secche è il più Calvinistico, il più ripieno di Grazia Gratuita di qualsiasi sermone sia mai stato pronunciato. Se lo noterete troverete che non vi è un “se”, o un “ma”, o una condizione in esso!

E quanto al libero arbitrio, non vi è nemmeno menzione d’esso. Risulta tutto in questo modo - “Così dice il Signore Dio a queste ossa: Ecco, Io farò entrare il respiro in voi e voi rivivrete: Io stenderò dei tendini e farò crescere della carne su di voi e vi ricoprirò con della pelle, e metterò il respiro in voi e voi rivivrete. E conoscerete che Io sono il Signore.” (Ezechiele 37:5-6) Vedete, è tutto un “farò”, e un “metterò”, e i propositi del Patto. Sono tutti decreti di Dio dichiarati e dichiarati, per di più, come se non ci fosse possibilità di resistenza dell’uomo ad essi.

Egli non dice: “Voi ossa secche, rivivrete, se lo gradirete. Rivivrete, se lo vorrete.” Non dice loro: “Voi vi rizzerete in piedi e sarete un esercito estremamente grande, se vi piacerà di acconsentire al Mio potere.” No, è invece: “Io farò” e “Voi rivivrete”. Quanto all’arbitrio, è del tutto estraneo alla domanda, perché come possono i morti avere una volontà in questa cosa? E dunque, cari Amici, io avrei predicato il Vangelo sia all’Ebreo che al Gentile con un tono molto chiaro e distinto di Onnipotente, somma Grazia gratuita.

L’uomo ha una volontà e Dio non ignora mai tale volontà - ma per mezzo della Sua onnipotente Grazia Egli la guida in modo benedetto in ceppi di seta. Egli non cessa di chiedere tale consenso della volontà quando va a raggiungere i Suoi scopi d’efficace Grazia. Egli vince tale consenso per mezzo di dolci persuasioni del proprio Onnipotente amore. Egli arriva abbigliato nelle vesti della Sua Onnipotente Grazia ed i più induriti dei ribelli vedono subito una tale forza attrattiva nell’amore di Dio in Cristo che essi, con pieno consenso contro i loro antichi desideri, si danno prigionieri alla Grazia di Dio! Non credo che gli ebrei, o chiunque altri, saranno mai convertiti quale fatto consueto celando una qualsiasi delle Dottrine della Grazia.

Dobbiamo disporre della Verità di Dio e della sua totalità. E sono necessari discorsi più chiari che trattino delle dottrine evangeliche e della Grazia di Dio sia per gli Ebrei che per i Gentili. Predica, predica, predica, dunque - ma che sia la predicazione di Cristo e la proclamazione della Grazia Gratuita. La Chiesa, dico, ha qui un modello quanto al fatto di predicare. E sono certo che essa abbia qui anche un modello quanto al suo modo di predicare.

Come dovremo predicare il Vangelo? Ezechiele stava forse per far ciò che alcuni dei mie Fratelli iper-Calvinisti dicono che i predicatori dovrebbero fare - mettere in guardia il peccatore, ma non fargli mai un invito?

Ezechiele stava per andare e parlare a quelle ossa, ma non dicendo mai loro una parola a mo’ di comando? Stava per spiegare la via della salvezza, ma non offrendo mai loro di camminare in essa? No! Dopo che ebbe dichiarato i propositi del Patto, egli stava poi per dire: “Così dice il Signore, voi ossa secche rivivete.” E dunque il messaggio del ministro del Vangelo, quando egli ha dichiarato i propositi della Grazia Divina, è quello di dire ai peccatori: “Così dice il Signore, credete nel Signore Gesù Cristo! Confidate in Cristo e sarete salvati!” Chiunque tu sia, Ebreo o Gentile. Che il tuo linguaggio sia quello della terra di Canaan o di una lingua Gentile. Che tu discenda da Sem, Cam o Giafet – confida in Cristo e sarai salvato! Confidate in Lui, dunque, voi ossa secche, e rivivete! Rami inariditi, siate spiegati! Uomini storpi, balzate in piedi! Occhi ciechi, vedeteci! Voi ossa secche senza vita, rivivete!

Il nostro modo di predicare dev’essere a mo’ di comando come pure a mo’ di insegnamento. Pentitevi e siate convertiti, ciascuno di voi. Afferrate la vita eterna. “Cercate e troverete. Bussate e vi sarà aperto.” (Matteo 7:7) “Credete nel Signore Gesù e sarete salvati!” (Atti 16:31) Abbiamo qui, inoltre, un modello quanto al nostro uditorio. Non dobbiamo selezionare la nostra congregazione, ma andare dove Dio ci manda. E se Egli dovesse mandarci nell’aperta valle dove le ossa sono molto secche, là dovremmo predicare.

Spero che i miei Fratelli della Società per la Propagazione del Vangelo tra gli Ebrei non limitino mai i loro lavori al buon ebreo, all’ebreo rispettabile, all’ebreo illuminato - che lo ricerchino in mezzo agli altri! - ma mi aspetto che ricerchino anche l’ignorante, il degradato, il povero e il caduto.

I raccolti migliori della Chiesa di solito sono stati mietuti in mezzo ai poveri. Per ogni chicco di grano che ha prodotto frutto sui fianchi delle colline del benessere, ne sono cresciuti producendo molto frutto nelle valli della povertà e dell’oscurità. “Ai poveri viene predicato il Vangelo” (Luca 7:22) - questo è il vanto del Vangelo! I poveri ricevono il Vangelo - questo è il successo! Predica, quindi, alle ossa secche. Non dire: “Un tal uomo è troppo bigotto.” La situazione del suo caso non dipende da lui, né dal suo bigottismo, ma da Dio! Queste ossa erano molto secche, ma cionondimeno hanno ripreso vita.

Vi è molta poca scelta, dopo tutto, tra un uomo ed un altro quando sono tutti morti! Una piccola differenza nell’aridità non è di molto conto quando sono tutti morti nel peccato. Che alcuni siano ebbri ed altri sobri, che alcuni siano corrotti ed altri virtuosi, fa una gran differenza in ambito morale e civile. Ma molta poca differenza, davvero, in ambito spirituale, poiché lì capitano loro i medesimi fatti. Se non credono, saranno perduti allo stesso modo. E se confidano in Gesù Cristo, saranno salvi allo stesso modo! Perciò, la maggiore immoralità di un popolo, o la loro maggior durezza di cuore, non si fermino nelle nostre vie - ma diciamo , secche come sono - “Voi ossa secche, rivivete.” E qui, ancora, abbiamo un’altra lezione quanto all’autorità del predicatore. Se osservate vedrete il Profeta dire: “Ascoltate la Parola del Signore.” (Ezechiele 37:4) Non dobbiamo andare né all’Ebreo né al Gentile con i nostri scopi, o portando le nostre parole. Non ho alcun diritto di ordinare ad uomo di credere a questo o quell’altro se io non sono un ambasciatore di Dio. E dunque, con l’autorità di Dio a dirigermi e a conferirmi pieni poteri, io parlo non più come un uomo che segue il proprio ingegno, ma come la bocca di Dio. Perciò, quando cerchiamo di salvare delle anime, ciascuno di noi vada sentendosi sopra la mano di Dio, con uno spirito pieno di desiderosi pensieri e fortemente palpitante di ardenti desideri. Parliamo -

“Come se non potessimo mai più parlare nuovamente,

come uomini morenti a uomini morenti,” (3)

rimanendo stretti al braccio di Dio e implorandoLo di operare con e attraverso di per il bene degli uomini. Ricordati, Cristiano, per quanto umile tu possa essere - quando pronunci la Parola di Dio - quella Parola ha un’autorità sua che lascerà un uomo senza scusa se la rigetta. Presenta sempre al tuo simile la Verità di Dio che ti è cara - non come una cosa con la quale egli possa giocare o con la quale possa far ciò che vuole - o che sia a sua discrezione scegliere o trascurare come egli pensi sia opportuno. Ma esponigliela come è in verità – la Parola di Dio. E non essere soddisfatto se non quando l’avrai ammonito che è a proprio rischio e pericolo che egli rigetta l’invito e che sulla propria testa ricadrà il suo sangue se egli devierà dalla buona Parola del comando di Dio. Così, abbiamo, penso, tutte le direttive che ci necessitano per predicare. E ciò che questa Società e ogni altra Società che mira alla conversione dei peccatori deve fare è di andare e predicare, predicare, predicare - non spendere troppo nella stampa, né in scuole, né in costruzioni ecclesiastiche - ma predicare la Parola di Dio! Perché dopo tutto, questo è il montone atterrante che farà vacillare le porte dell’Inferno e spezzerà le sbarre di ferro. Dio ha scelto “la pazzia della predicazione” (1 Corinzi 1:21) affinché Egli possa, per mezzo di essa, salvare coloro che credono! La predicazione è lo squillo del corno di montone prestabilito per radere al suolo Gerico e il suono della tromba d’argento prescritto per annunciare il giubileo. È il carro di fuoco di Dio che porta le anime in Cielo e la Sua spada a doppio taglio per colpire le armate dell’Inferno. I Suoi servitori consacrati sono al medesimo tempo guerrieri e costruttori, e la Parola serve loro sia per trafiggere che per intonacare.

Predica, quindi, dalla mattina alla sera - in ogni momento e in ogni occasione “le imperscrutabili ricchezze di Cristo” (Efesini 3:8) ed Israele ancor rivivrà!

Non posso abbandonare questo punto senza notare come il Profeta descriva l’effetto della sua predicazione - vi fu una voce e vi fu un rumore. Questo rumore della voce di Dio s’accompagnava alla voce dell’uomo? Oppure questo rumore delle ossa stesse s’insinuava tra loro? Questo rappresenta l’opposizione da parte di coloro ai quali si è predicato? La vera opposizione è sempre un buon segno! Quando riesci a portare un uomo ad opporsi a te, puoi nutrire qualche speranza in lui. Se egli ha una opinione religiosa sufficiente a cercar di rifiutare quel che tu gli rechi davanti, puoi essere contento. Questo subbuglio, dunque, è un subbuglio d’opposizione o di ricerca? Il furtivo strisciar assieme delle ossa non rappresenta forse le persone che s’accostano per ascoltare, per parlare l’una all’altra, per ragionare delle cose Divine? Il momento in cui i vari muscoli e la carne vennero sulle ossa, rappresenta questo l’apparizione di certi convertiti destinati ad essere le guide di altri? Questi tendini e muscoli sono i rappresentanti simbolici di uomini che debbano stimolare di lì a poco il resto degli organi del corpo? Potrebbe essere così e potremmo aspettarci di vedere, come Cristo sia predicato fra Ebrei o Gentili, sempre più subbuglio ed eccitazione - le persone che si accostano in maggior numero e l’intera massa che fermenta con la forza del lievito. Qualunque cosa è meglio che la stagnazione - io nutro ben più speranza in un persecutore che in un tranquillo dispregiatore.

2. Ma ora arriviamo a parlare di ciò in cui voi tutti potete prendere parte. Forse non potrete prendere parte nel predicare la Parola, sebbene io mi auguri che voi tutti lo possiate fare. Ed io agogno per voi tutti i doni migliori. Ma nella seconda forma di profetizzare potete voi tutti fare la propria parte. Dopo che il Profeta ebbe profetizzato alle ossa, avrebbe profetizzato ai venti. Egli avrebbe detto al beato Spirito, al Donatore di Vita, al Dio di ogni Grazia: “Vieni dai quattro venti, O Respiro e alita su questi uccisi, cosicché possano riprendere vita.” (Ezechiele 37:9) La sola predicazione fa poco. Essa può produrre un subbuglio. Può accostare le persone. Vi è una attrattiva riguardo al Vangelo che attrarrà le persone ad ascoltarlo. E vi è, inoltre, una forza in esso che le ecciterà, poiché “la Parola di Dio è vivente ed efficace e più affilata di qualunque spada a due tagli”. (Ebrei 4:12) Ma non vi è potenza vivificante nel Vangelo in sé stesso, in modo indipendente dallo Spirito Santo! Il “Respiro” deve prima soffiare e poi queste ossa rivivranno! Facciamo largo ricorso a questa forma di profetizzare. Fratelli e Sorelle in Cristo, voi che avete cura d’Israele, andate davanti al Signore ora, e da ora in poi, in ardente e insistente preghiera! Sforzatevi d’essere più che mai consci dell’assoluta indispensabile necessità di questo fatto. Considerate che senza Cristo non potete far nulla! Inutili saranno la vostra società, il vostro apparato produttivo, i vostri comitati, i vostri segretari, i vostri amministratori delle offerte, i vostri contribuenti, i vostri missionari senza lo Spirito Santo! Suonate la tromba e proclamate ad alta voce quel che avete fatto - voi avete seminato molto! - ma mieterete poco se non confiderete nello Spirito di Dio!

Vi è sempre questo pericolo al quale siamo esposti, sebbene alcuni, io so, pensino che sia un pericolo che non esiste - voglio dire il rischio di guardare alla forza o alla debolezza dei mezzi ed essere gonfi d’orgoglio a causa dell’una o abbattuti a causa dell’altra. Voi siete abbastanza per la vostra opera se Dio è con voi! E se siete solo una manciata di persone siete troppi per la vostra opera se Dio non è con voi. Dio non fa mai obbiezioni alla debolezza umana - quando giunge ad operare Egli la preferisce - perché questa crea una base per la potenza Divina. Cosa disse Egli a Gedeone - “La gente è troppa per Me.” (Giudici 7:2) Non disse che erano troppo pochi. Non troverete mai un caso nella Scrittura in cui Dio dica che la gente era poca - invece era “La gente è troppa per Me.” La forza dell’uomo è forse più nella via di Dio che la debolezza dell’uomo? No, la debolezza umana, dal momento che crea spazio per la forza di Dio, è la strumento scelto di Dio! “Perciò mi glorierò nelle infermità”, diceva l’Apostolo, “affinché la potenza di Dio riposi su di me.” (2 Corinzi12:9) Riposate quindi, sullo Spirito Santo come indispensabile e andate a Dio con questo per vostro grido: “Vieni dai quattro venti, O Respiro e alita su questi uccisi, cosicché possano riprendere vita. ”

Osservate, Diletti, che questo secondo profetizzare di Ezechiele è così ardito e pieno di fede proprio come il primo. Egli non sembra avere dubbi, ma parla come se potesse comandare il vento. “Vieni” egli dice e il vento viene. Abbiamo bisogno di più fede in Dio. Quando saremo impegnati in una qualche opera spirituale otterremo sempre successo in proporzione alla nostra fede. Poca fede, scarso raccolto! Molta fede, abbondanza di covoni!

Pochi pesci vengono in scarso numero alla rete della Poca Fede. Ma la Forte Fiducia può contenere a fatica tutti i gran pesci che riempie la sua barca. Non chiederò alla vostra società, o a voi, alcun altro dono che una maggior fede, perché avendo una maggior fede avrete la forza Divina e un sicuro successo.

Lo Spirito lavora sempre con uomini fedeli. Miei cari amici, lo Spirito di Dio è riversato! Egli dimora nella Sua Chiesa come l’onnipresente Consolatore. Non dobbiamo considerare le Sue influenze come un dono che non possiamo raggiungere perché Egli è qui che aspetta di darci tutto ciò di cui abbiamo bisogno. Egli abita nel mezzo del Suo popolo e non abbiamo che da gridare a Lui ed Egli manifesterà la Sua potente autorità, ed otterrà anime salvate sia da Ebrei che da Gentili! Siano, dunque, le vostre preghiere provviste di un senso di quanto voi ne necessitiate, ma tuttavia di una ferma convinzione che lo Spirito Santo verrà molto certamente in risposta alle vostre petizioni.

E quindi che sia ardente preghiera. Che “Vieni dai quattro venti, O Respiro” suoni in me come il grido, non di chi sia in disperazione, ma di chi è pieno di veemente desiderio gratificato da quel che vede, dato che le ossa si sono accostate e sono state misteriosamente rivestite di carne! Ed ora egli sta reclamando appassionatamente l’immediato completamento del miracolo - “Vieni dai quattro venti, O Respiro e alita su questi uccisi, cosicché possano riprendere vita.” Vi è, qui, una veemenza e una forza continua - ecco quel che rende davvero una preghiera prevalente. O, gridiamo con potenza a Dio! Non possiamo aspettarci di vedere grandi cose se non gridiamo a Lui - solo che siamo semplicemente limitati dalle nostre preghiere. In Lui noi non siamo ristretti! Siamo semplicemente ristretti in noi stessi.

Potremmo vedere cose più grandi se solo credessimo. Tutte le cose sono possibili per chi crede ma, come in passato, il Signore Gesù non può fare molte opere potenti al giorno d’oggi a causa della nostra incredulità. Noi ostacoliamo il braccio della Grazia! Come avvenne un tempo, noi davvero freniamo l’energia Onnipotente. O, per una maggior fede, credere che le nazioni possano rinascere in un giorno! Che le moltitudini possano essere convertite a Dio in un istante - e eppure lo vedremo - vedremo quel che i nostri padri non videro mai e quel che le nostre immaginazioni non hanno mai sognato! Salteremo di vittoria in vittoria, marciando avanti da un trionfo ad un altro fino a che non incontreremo l’illimitatamente glorioso Salvatore! Attaccando nemico dopo nemico e sconfiggendo esercito dopo esercito, noi andremo avanti, vincenti e per essere vincitori finché non saluteremo Colui che viene sul cavallo bianco del trionfo seguito da tutti gli eserciti del Cielo! Fratelli, siate di gran coraggio nella vostra opera di fede e nel vostro faticoso lavoro d’amore poiché non è e non sarà invano nel Signore.

Mi rivolgo ad alcuni stanotte che so non hanno alcun interesse in quello che ho detto perché non si tratta di temi in sé stessi riguardanti il Messia. Ricordatevi, la fede è un segno della vostra obbedienza a Lui. Confidate in Cristo e sarete salvati! Confidate in Gesù Cristo e sarete liberati dall’ira Divina e dal potere delle vostre passioni naturali. Il Signore vi conceda una resurrezione stanotte, O voi che siete morti nel peccato, e il Suo nome avrà tutta la lode! I nostri amici, qui, per un certo breve tempo hanno assistito in piccola parte questa Società con le loro contribuzioni. Essi, perciò, sono bene al corrente di questo. Non ho tempo stasera di entrare nei dettagli riguardo a ciò, ma posso solo dire che questa Società ha svolto per tanto tempo una buona opera in mezzo al popolo ebraico. E vi chiedo di contribuire a questo, fra le altre buone opere, come vi sentite mossi a farlo, ogni volta che ne venga l’opportunità.

www.jeshurum.org Traduzione  Mattia Peli - aprile 2010

 

1 Citazione dell’inno “When I can read my title clear” (Isaac Watts, Hymns and Spiritual Songs, 1707)

2 Citazione dell’inno “O Zion, when Thy Saviour came” (Edward Denny, 1838 - Melody from the Scottish

Psalter, 1650; harmony: J.Milton, ?-1647)

3 Riferimento al motto “I preached as never sure to preach again; and as a dying man to dying men” di

Richard Baxter (1615-1691)

 

 

Sermon N. 582 THE RESTORATION AND CONVERSION OF THE JEWS

PREACHED ON THURSDAY EVENING, JUNE 16, 1864, BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

In aid of the Funds of the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews.

“The hand of the Lord was upon me and carried me out in the Spirit of the Lord and set me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones and caused me to pass by them round about: and, behold, there were very many in the open valley. And, lo, they were very dry. And He said unto me, Son of man, can these bones live? And I answered, O Lord God, You know. Again He said unto me, Prophesy upon these Bones and say unto them, O you dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. Thus says the Lord God unto these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live: and I will lay sinews upon you and will bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live. And you shall know that I am the Lord. So I prophesied as I was commanded: and as I prophesied, there was a noise and behold a shaking and the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them and the skin covered them above: but there was no breath in them. Then said He unto me, Prophesy unto the wind, prophesy, Son of man and say to the wind, Thus says the Lord God: Come from the four winds, O Breath and breathe upon these slain, that they may live. So I prophesied as He commanded me and the breath came into them and they lived and stood up upon their feet, an exceeding great army.” Ezekiel 37:1-10.

 

THIS vision has been used, from the time of Jerome onwards, as a description of the resurrection and certainly it may be so accommodated with much effect. What a vision of the great day the words picture before the mind’s eye! The great army of the quick, who once were dead, seem to start up as we read. Here, too, we have a very fit and appropriate question to be asked in a tomb: “Son of man, can these bones live?” Looking down into the dark grave, or watching the sexton as he throws up the moldering relics, once infused with life, well may unbelief suggest the enquiry:“Can these bones live?”

Faith cannot at all times give a more satisfactory answer than this:“O Lord God, You know.” But while this interpretation of the vision may be very proper as an accommodation, it must be quite evident to any thinking person that this is not the meaning of the passage. There is no allusion made by Ezekiel to the resurrection and such a topic would have been quite apart from the design of the Prophet’s speech. I believe he was no more thinking of the resurrection of the dead than of the building of St. Peter’s at Rome, or the emigration of the Pilgrim Fathers! That topic is altogether foreign to the subject at hand and could not by any possibility have crept into the Prophet’s mind.

He was talking about the people of Israel and prophesying concerning them. And evidently the vision, according to God’s own interpretation of it, was concerning them and them alone, for, “these bones are the whole house of Israel.” It was not a vision concerning all men, nor, indeed, concerning any men as to the resurrection of the dead: it had a direct and special bearing upon the Jewish people. This passage, again, has been very frequently and I dare say very properly, used to describe the revival of a decayed Church. This vision may be looked upon as descriptive of a state of lukewarmness and spiritual lethargy in a Church when the question may be sorrowfully asked:“Can these bones live?” Can that dull minister wake up to living power? Can these cold deacons glow with holy heat? Can those unspiritual members rise to something like holy, earnest self-sacrifice? Is it possible that the drowsy formal Church could start up to real earnestness? Such suggestions might well have occurred to many minds at the time of the Reformation. It did seem impossible, when Popery was in its power, that spiritual life should ever again return to the Church. Piety seemed to be dead and buried and the cloister, the clergy, superstition and deceit, like great graves, had swallowed up everything that was good. But the Lord appeared for His people and brought up the buried Truth of God out of its grave, and once more in every part of the known world the name of Jesus Christ was lifted up and sound doctrine was preached! So was it in our own country. When both the Establishment and Dissent had fallen into spiritual death we might well have said:“Can these bones live?” But Whitfield and Wesley were raised up by God and they prophesied to the dry bones, and up they stood,filled with the Spirit of God: “an exceeding great army.” Let the crowds of Kingsdown and the multitudes on Kennington Common tell of the quickening power of Jesus’ name! Decayed Churches can most certainly be revived by the preaching of the Word accompanied by the coming of the heavenly “breath” from the four winds. O Lord, send us such revivals now, for many of your Churches need them: they are almost as dead as the corpses which sleep around them in the graveyard. But while we admit this to be a very fitting accommodation of our text, yet we are quite convinced that it is not to this that the passage refers. It would be altogether alien to the Prophet’s strain of thought to be thinking about the restoration of fallen zeal and the rekindling of expiring love. He was not considering the Reformation either of Luther or of Whitfield, or about the revival of one Church or of another. No, he was talking of his own people, of his own race and of his own tribe. He surely ought to have known his own mind, and led by the Holy Spirit, he gives us as an explanation of the vision. Not: “Thus says the Lord, My dying Church shall be restored,” but:“I will bring My people out of their graves and bring them into the land of Israel.” With very great propriety, too, this passage has been used for the comforting of Believers in their dark and cloudy days. When they have lost their comforts, when their spiritual joys have drooped like withering flowers, when they have been no longer able to

“Read their titles clear

To mansions in the skies,”

they have been reminded that God could return to them in Grace and mercy, that the dry bones could live and should live! Then they remember that the Spirit of God could again come upon His people, that even at the time when they were ready to give up all hope and lie down in despair, He could come and so quicken them, that the poor trembling cowards should be turned into soldiers of God and should stand upon their feet an exceeding great army!

No grave of grief can hold the immortal joy of a Believer, on the third day it shall rise again, for, like the Lord who gave it, it shall never see corruption! Bone to his bone shall your comforts come together and an army of joys shall live in your soul. The passage certainly may be so used without violent wresting and might thus yield much comfort to the people of God. But still we take the liberty of saying that this is not the drift of the Prophet and that we do not believe he was thinking of anything of the kind. We think that he was speaking only of his own people, his own “kinsmen according to the flesh.”

Once more. There is no doubt that we have in this passage a most striking picture of the restoration of dead souls to spiritual life. Men by nature are just like these dry bones exposed in the open valley. The whole spiritual frame is dislocated. The sap and marrow of spiritual life has been dried out of manhood. Human nature is not only dead, but, like the bleaching bones which have long whitened in the sun, it has lost all trace of the Divine life. Will and power have both departed. Spiritual death reigns undisturbed. Yet the dry bones can live! Under the preaching of the Word the vilest sinners can be reclaimed, the most stubborn wills can be subdued, the most unholy lives can be sanctified! When the holy “breath” comes from the four winds, when the Divine Spirit descends to own the Word, then multitudes of sinners as on Pentecost’s hallowed day, stand up upon their feet,an exceeding great army, to praise the Lord their God. But, mark you, this is not the first and proper interpretation of the text. It is, indeed, nothing more than a very striking parallel case to the one before us. It is not the case itself. It is only a similar one for the way in which God restores a nation is, practically, the way in which He restores an individual. The way in which Israel shall be saved is the same by which any one individual sinner shall be saved. It is not, however, the one case which the Prophet is aiming at. He is looking at the vast mass of cases, the multitudes of instances to be found among the Jewish people of gracious quickening and holy resurrection. His first and primary intention was to speak of them and though it is right and lawful to take a passage in its widest possible meaning since, “no Scripture is of private interpretation,” yet I hold it to be treason to God’s Word to neglect its primary meaning and constantly to say: “Such-and-such is the primary meaning, but it is of no consequence and I shall use the words for another subject.” The preacher of God’s Truth should not give up the Holy Spirit’s meaning! He should take care that he does not even put it in the background. The first meaning of a text, the Spirit’s meaning, is that which should be brought out first and though the rest may fairly spring out of it, yet the first sense should have the chief place. Let it have the uppermost place in the synagogue. Let it be looked upon as at least not inferior, either in interest or importance, to any other meaning which may come out of the text. The meaning of our text as opened up by the context is most evidently, if words mean anything, first, that there shall be a political restoration of the Jews to their own land and to their own nationality. And then, secondly, there is in the text and in the context a most plain declaration that there shall be a spiritual restoration, in fact a conversion, of the tribes of Israel.

I. First, THERE IS TO BE A POLITICAL RESTORATION OF THE JEWS. Israel is now blotted out from the map of nations. Her sons are scattered far and wide. Her daughters mourn beside all the rivers of the earth. Her sacred song is hushed,no king reigns in Jerusalem! She brings forth no governors among her tribes. But she is to be restored! She is to be restored “as from the dead.” When her own sons have given up all hope of her, then is God to appear for her. She is to be reorganized, her scattered bones are to be brought together. There will be a native government again. There will again be the form of a political body. A State shall be incorporated and a king shall reign. Israel has now become alienated from her own land. Her sons, though they can never forget the sacred dust of Palestine, yet die at a hopeless distance from her consecrated shores. But it shall not be so forever, for her sons shall again rejoice in her,her land shall be called Beulah, for as a young man marries a virgin so shall her sons marry her. “I will place you in your own land,” is God’s promise to them. They shall again walk upon her mountains, shall once more sit under her vines and rejoice under her fig trees! And they are also to be reunited. There shall not be two, nor ten, nor twelve, but one, one Israel praising one God, serving one king and that one King the Son of David, the descended Messiah! They are to have a national prosperity which shall make them famous. No, so glorious shall they be that Egypt and Tyre and Greece and Rome shall all forget their glory in the greater splendor of the throne of David! The day shall yet come when all the high hills shall leap with envy because this is the hill which God has chosen! The time shall come when Zion’s shrine shall again be visited by the constant feet of the pilgrim, when her valleys shall echo with songs and her hilltops shall drop with wine and oil. If there is meaning in words this must be the meaning of this chapter! I wish never to learn the art of tearing God’s meaning out of His own Words. If there is anything clear and plain, the literal sense and meaning of this passage, a meaning not to be spirited or spiritualized away it must be evident that both the two and the ten tribes of Israel are to be restored to their own land and that a king is to rule over them. “Thus says the Lord God: Behold, I will take the children of Israel from among the heathen where they are gone and will gather them on every side and bring them into their own land: and I will make them one nation in the land upon the mountains of Israel. And one king shall be king to them all. And they shall be no more two nations, neither shall they be divided into two kingdoms any more at all.”

I am not now going into millennial theories, or into any speculation as to dates. I do not know anything at all about such things and I am not sure that I am called to spend my time in such research. I am called to minister the Gospel rather than to open prophecy. Those who are wise in such things doubtless prize their wisdom, but I have not the time to acquire it, nor any inclination to leave soul-winning pursuits for less arousing themes. I believe it is a great deal better to leave many of these promises and many of these gracious outlooks of Believers to exercise their full force upon our minds without depriving them of their simple glory by aiming to discover dates and figures.

Let this be settled, however, that if there is meaning in words, Israel is yet to be restored:

“Yet not in vain, over Israel’s land

The glory yet will shine.

And He, your once rejected King,

Messiah, shall be yours.

His chosen Bride, ordained with Him

To reign over all the earth,

Shall first be framed, and you shall know

Your Savior’s matchless worth.

Then you, beneath the peaceful reign

Of Jesus and His Bride,

Shall sound His Grace and Glory forth,

To all the earth beside.

The nations to your glorious light,

O Zion, yet shall throng,

And all the listening islands wait

To catch the joyful song.”

But there is a second meaning here. ISRAEL IS TO HAVE A SPIRITUAL RESTORATION OR A CONVERSION. Both the text and the context teach this. The promise is that they shall renounce their idols and, behold, they have already done so! “Neither shall they defile themselves any more with their idols.” Whatever faults the Jew may have, he certainly has not idolatry. “The Lord your God is one God,” is a Truth far better conceived by the Jew than by any other man on earth except the Christian. Weaned forever from the worship of all images of any sort, the Jewish nation has now become infatuated with traditions or duped by philosophy.  She is to have, however, instead of these delusions, a spiritual religion, she is to love her God. “They shall be My people and I will be their God.” The unseen but Omnipotent Jehovah is to be worshipped in spirit and in truth by His ancient people. They are to come before Him in His own appointed way, accepting the Mediator whom their sires rejected. They will come into Covenant relation with God, for so our text tells us “I will make a Covenant of peace with them,” and Jesus is our peace, therefore we gather that Jehovah shall enter into the Covenant of Grace with them, that Covenant of which Christ is the federal Head, the Substance and the Surety. They are to walk in God’s ordinances and statutes and so exhibit the practical effects of being united to Christ who has given them peace. All these promises certainly imply that the people of Israel are to be converted to God and that this conversion is to be permanent. The tabernacle of God is to be with them! The Most High is, in a special manner, to have His sanctuary in the midst of them forever more so that whatever nations may apostatize and turn from the Lord in these latter days, the nation of Israel never can, for she shall be effectually and permanently converted. The hearts of the fathers shall be turned with the hearts of the children unto the Lord their God and they shall be the people of God, world without end. We look forward, then, for these two things. I am not going to theorize upon which of them will come first, whether they shall be restored first, and converted afterwards, or converted first and then restored. They are to be restored and they are to be converted, too. Let the Lord send these blessings in His own order and we shall be well content whichever way they shall come. We take this for our joy and our comfort that this thing shall be and that both in the spiritual and in the temporal throne, the King Messiah shall sit and reign among His people gloriously.

II. Now I come to the practical part of my sermon this evening:THE MEANS OF THAT RESTORATION. Looking at this matter we are very apt to say, “How can these things be? How can the Jews be converted to Christ? How can they be made into a nation? Truly the case is quite as hopeless as that of the bones in the valley! How shall they cease from worldliness or renounce their constant pursuit of riches? How shall they he weaned from their bigoted attachment to their Talmudic traditions? How shall they be lifted up out of that hardness of heart which makes them hate the Messiah of Nazareth, their Lord and King? How can these things be?”

The Prophet does not say it cannot be. His unbelief is not so great as that, but at the same time he scarcely ventures to think that it can ever be possible. He very wisely, however, puts back the question upon his God, “O Lord God, You know.” Now some of you are very expectant about this tonight and you are expecting to see the Jews converted very soon, perhaps in a month or two. I wish you may see it as soon as your desires would date it. Others of us are not as optimistic and take a more gloomy view of a long future of woes. Well, let us both together come before God tonight and say, “O Lord God, You know. And if You know it, Lord, we will be content to leave the secret with You! Only tell us what You would have us do. We ask not food for speculation, but we do ask for work. We ask for something by which we may practically show that we really do love the Jew and that we would bring him to Christ.” In answer to this, the Lord says to His servants, “Prophesy upon these bones,” so that our duty tonight, as Christians, is to prophesy upon these bones and we shall then see God’s purpose fulfilled, when we obey God’s precept. I want you to observe that there are two kinds of prophesying spoken of here. First, the Prophet prophesies to the bones, here is preaching. And next, he prophesies to the four winds here is praying. The preaching has its share in the work, but it is the praying which achieves the result for after he had prophesied to the four winds and not before the bones began to live. All that the preaching did was to make a stir and to bring the bones together, but it was the praying which did the work, for then God the Holy Spirit came to give them life! Preaching and praying, then, are the two heads of this part of my sermon tonight and we will speak upon each briefly.

1. It is the duty and the privilege of the Christian Church to preach the Gospel to the Jew and to every creature. And in so doing she may safely take the vision before us as her guide. She may take it as her guide, first, as to matter. What are we to preach? The text says we are to prophesy and assuredly every missionary to the Jews should especially keep God’s prophecies very prominently before the public eye. It seems to me that one way in which the Jewish mind might be laid hold of would be to remind the Jews right often of that splendid future which both the Old and the New Testaments predict for Israel. Every man has a tender side and a warm heart towards his own nation and if you tell him that in your standard book there is a revelation made that that nation is to act a grand part in human history and is, indeed, to take the very highest place in the parliament of nations, then the man’s prejudice is on your side and he listens to you with the greater attention. I would not commend, as some do, the everlasting preaching of prophesy in every congregation. But a greater prominence should be given to prophecies in teaching the Jews than among any other people. But still, the main thing which we have to preach about is Christ. Depend upon it dear Brethren, the best sermons which we ever preach are those which are fullest of Christ Jesus, the Son of David and the Son of God! Jesus the suffering Savior by whose stripes we are healed! Jesus able to save unto the uttermost, here is the most suitable subject for Gentiles. God has fashioned all hearts alike and therefore this is also the noblest theme for Jews. Paul loved his countrymen! He was no simpleton, he knew what was the best weapon with which to assail and overcome their prejudices and yet he could say, “I determined not to know anything among you save Jesus Christ and Him crucified.”

Lift up the Messiah, then, both before Jew and Gentile. Tell of Mary’s Son, the eternal Son of God, the Man of Nazareth who is none other than the Incarnate Word, God made flesh and dwelling among us! Preach His hallowed life, the righteousness of His people. Declare His painful death, the putting away of all their sins. Vindicate His glorious Resurrection! The justification of His people. Tell of His ascent on high. His triumph over the world and sin! Declare His second advent, His glorious coming to make His people glorious in the Glory which He has won for them! And Christ Jesus, as He is thus preached, shall surely be the means of making these bones live! Let this preaching resound with Sovereign mercy! Let it always have in it the clear and distinct ring of Free Grace. I was thinking as I read this chapter just now, that of all the sermons which were ever preached, this sermon to the dry bones is the most Calvinistic, the most full of Free Grace of any which were ever delivered. If you will notice it you will find that there is not an “if,” or a “but,” or a condition in it!

And as for free will, there is not even a mention of it. It is all in this fashion, “Thus says the Lord God unto these bones: Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live: and I will lay sinews upon you and will bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live. And you shall know that I am the Lord.” You see it is all “shalls,” and “wills,” and Covenant purposes. It is all God’s decrees declared and declared, too, as if there were no possibility of man’s resisting them. He does not say, “You dry bones, you shall live if you like. You shall if you are willing.” He does not say to them, “You shall stand upright and be an exceeding great army if it pleases you to consent to My power.” No, but it is, “I will,” and, “you shall.” As for will, it is altogether put out of the question, for how shall the dead have a will in the matter? And so, dear Friends, I would have the Gospel preached both to the Jew and the Gentile with a very clear and distinct note of free, Sovereign, almighty Grace. Man has a will and God never ignores that will, but by His almighty Grace He blessedly leads it in silken fetters. He never stops to ask that will’s consent when He comes forth upon His errands of effectual Grace. He wins that consent by the sweet persuasions of His own Omnipotent love. He comes arrayed in the robes of His Omnipotent Grace and the most hardened of rebels see at once such an attractive force in the love of God in Christ that with full consent against their ancient wills they yield themselves captives to the Grace of God! I do not believe that the Jews, or anybody else, will ever be converted as a usual thing by keeping back any of the Doctrines of Grace.

We must have God’s Truth and the whole of it. And more distinct utterances concerning evangelical doctrines and the Grace of God are required both for Jews and for Gentiles. Preach, preach, preach, then but let it be the preaching of Christ and the proclamation of Free Grace.

The Church, I say, has a model here as to the matter of preaching. And I am certain that she has also a model here as to her manner of preaching.

How shall we preach the Gospel? Was Ezekiel to do what some of my hyper-Calvinistic Brethren say preachers ought to do, to warn the sinner, but never to invite him?

Was Ezekiel to go and talk to these bones, but never say a word to them by way of command? Was he to explain the way of salvation but never bid them walk in it? No! After he had declared Covenant purposes, he was then to say, “Thus says the Lord, you dry bones live.” And so the message of the Gospel minister, when he has declared the purposes of Divine Grace, is to say to sinners, “Thus says the Lord, believe in the Lord Jesus Christ! Trust Christ and you are saved!” Whoever you may be, Jew or Gentile. Whether your speech is that of the land of Canaan or of a Gentile tongue. Whether you spring of Shem, Ham, or Japheth, trust Christ and you are saved! Trust Him, then, you dry bones, and live! Withered arm be outstretched! Lame men, leap! Blind eyes, see! You dead, dry bones, live!

The manner of our preaching is to be by way of command as well as by way of teaching. Repent and be converted, every one of you. Lay hold on eternal life. “Seek and you shall find. Knock and it shall be opened unto you.” “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved!” We have a model here, moreover, as to our audience. We are not to select our congregation, but we are to go where God sends us. And if He should send us into the open valley where the bones are very dry, we are to preach there. I trust that my Brethren of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Among the Jews will never confine their labors to the good Jew, the respectable Jew, the enlightened Jew, let them seek after him among the rest, but I hope they will also seek after the ignorant, the degraded, the poor and the fallen. The Church’s best harvests have generally been reaped among the poor. For every grain of wheat which has fructified upon the hillsides of wealth, thousands have sprung up to bring forth much fruit in the valleys of poverty and obscurity. “The poor have the Gospel preached to them”, this is the Gospel’s pride! The poor receive the Gospel, this is its success! Preach to the dry bones, then. Do not say, “Such-and-such a man is too bigoted.” The case rests not with him, nor with his bigotry, but with God! These bones were very dry, but yet they lived. There is very little to choose, after all, between one man and another when all are dead! A little difference in the dryness does not come to much account when all are dead in sin. That some men are drunk and some are sober, that some men are debauched and some are chaste makes a very great difference in the moral and civil world. But very little difference, indeed, in the spiritual world, for there the same things happen to them both. If they believe not they shall alike be lost. And if they trust Jesus Christ they shall alike be saved! Let not, therefore, the greater viciousness of a people, or their greater hardness of heart, ever stand in our way, but let us say to them, dry as they are, “You dry bones, live.”

And here, again, we have another lesson as to the preacher’s authority. If you will observe you will see the Prophet says, “Hear the Word of the Lord.” We are to go neither to Jew nor to Gentile upon our own errand, or bearing our own words. I have no right to command a man to believe this or that unless I am an ambassador of God. And then, with God’s authority to direct and empower me, I speak no longer as a man following his own wit but as the mouth of God.

So let every one of us go, when we are trying to save souls, feeling the hand of God upon us, with a soul big with anxious thoughts and heaving high with earnest desires. Let us speak “As though we never might speak again, As dying men to dying men,” taking hold upon God’s arm and beseeching Him to work by us and through us for the good of men. Remember, Christian, however humble you may be,when you speak God’s Word, that Word has an authority about it which will leave a man without excuse if he rejects it. Always put to your fellow man the Truth of God which you hold dear, not as a thing which he may play with or may do what he likes with or which is at his option to choose or to neglect as he sees fit. But put it to him as it is in truth, the Word of God. And be not satisfied unless you warn him that it is at his own peril that he rejects the invitation and that on his own head must be his blood if he turns aside from the good Word of the command of God.

Thus, we have, I think, all the directions which are necessary for us to preach. And what this Society and every other Society which aims at the conversion of sinners has to do is to go and preach, preach, preachnot spending too much upon printing, nor upon schools, nor ecclesiastical buildings, but preaching the Word of God! For after all, this is the battering-ram which is to shake the gates of Hell and break its iron bars. God has chosen “the foolishness of preaching” that He might, by it, save those who believe! Preaching is the blast of the ram’s horn ordained to level Jericho and the sound of the silver trumpet appointed to usher in the jubilee. It is God’s chariot of fire for bearing souls to Heaven and His two-edged sword to strike the hosts of Hell. His ordained servants are at once warriors and builders, and the Word serves them both for spear and trowel. Preach, then, from morning till night at every time and on all occasions, “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” and Israel shall yet live!

I cannot leave this point without noticing how the Prophet describes the effect of his preaching, here was a voice and there was a noise. Was this the noise of God’s voice going with man’s voice? Or was this the noise of the bones themselves creeping over one another? Does this represent opposition on the part of those preached to? Truly opposition is always a good sign! When you can get a man to oppose you, you may have some hope of him. If he has enough religious thought to try and refute what you bring before him, you may be thankful. Is this stir, then, the stir of opposition, or is it the stir of enquiry?

Does not the creeping of the bones together represent the people coming together to hear, to talk with one another, to reason about Divine things? When the various muscles and the flesh come upon the bones, does this represent the appearance of certain converts, destined to be the leaders of others? Are these sinews and muscles the representatives of men who are to move the rest of the corporate body by-and-by? It may be so and we may expect to see, as Christ is preached among Jews or Gentiles, more and more stir and excitement, the people coming together in greater numbers and the whole mass fermenting by the force of the leaven. Anything is better than stagnation, of a persecutor I have quite as much hope as of a quiet despiser.

2. But now we come to speak of that in which you can all take a part. Perhaps you cannot take a part in preaching the Word, though I wish that you all could. And I covet for you all the best gifts. But in the second form of prophesying you can all take your share. After the Prophet had prophesied to the bones, he was to prophesy to the winds. He was to say to the blessed Spirit, the Life-Giver, the God of all Grace, “Come from the four winds, O Breath and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”

Preaching alone does little. It may make a stir. It may bring the people together. There is an attractiveness about the Gospel which will draw the people to hear it. And there is, moreover, a force about it which will excite them, for it is “quick and powerful and sharper than any two-edged sword.” But there is no life-giving power in the Gospel of itself apart from the Holy Spirit! The “Breath” must first blow and then these bones shall live! Let us betake ourselves much to this form of prophesying.

Brothers and Sisters in Christ, you who care for Israel, go before the Lord now and from now on in earnest, importunate prayer! Strive to be more than ever conscious of the utter indispensability of this matter. Feel that without Christ you can do nothing! In vain your society, your machinery, your committees, your secretaries, your collectors, your contributors, your missionaries without the Holy Spirit! Blow your trumpet and proclaim loudly what you have done, you have sown much, but you shall reap little unless you are trusting in the Spirit of God! There is always this danger to which we are exposed, though some, I know, think that it is a danger which does not exist, I mean the peril of looking to the strength or the weakness of the instrumentality and being either puffed up by the one or dejected by the other.

You are enough for your work if God is with you! And if you are but a handful you are too many for your work if God is not with you. God never objects to human weakness, when He comes to work He prefers it, for it makes a platform for Divine power. What did He say to Gideon, “The people are too many for Me.” He did not say that they were too few. You never find a case in Scripture of God’s saying that the people were too few, it was, “The people are too many for Me.” Man’s strength is more in God’s way than man’s weakness. No, human weakness, inasmuch as it makes elbow room for God’s strength, is God’s chosen instrument! “Therefore will I glory in infirmities,” said the Apostle, “that the power of God may rest upon me.” Rest then, upon the Holy Spirit as indispensable and go to God with this for your cry, “Come from the four winds, O Breath and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.”

Observe, Beloved, that this second prophesying of Ezekiel is just as bold and as full of faith as the first. He seems to have no doubt, but speaks as though he could command the wind. “Come,” says he and the wind comes. We need more faith in God. When we are engaged in any spiritual work we shall always find our success proportioned to our faith. Little faith, slender harvests! Much faith, plenteous sheaves! Little fishes come in slender numbers to Little-Faith’s net. But Strong-Confidence can hardly hold all the great fishes which load her boat. I will not ask for your society, or for you any further gift than greater faith, for, getting greater faith you have Divine strength and sure success.

The Spirit always works with faithful men. My dear Friends, the Spirit of God is poured out! He abides in His Church as the ever-present Comforter. We are not to look upon His influences as a gift which we cannot reach for He is here waiting to give us all we need. He dwells in the midst of His people and we have but to cry unto Him and He will manifest His mighty power and we shall have souls saved, both Jews and Gentiles!

Let your prayer, then, be with a sense of how much you need it, but yet with a firm conviction that the Holy Spirit will most surely come in answer to your petitions.

And then let it be earnest prayer. That, “Come from the four winds, O breath,” reads to me like the cry, not of one in despair, but of one who is full of a vehement desire gratified with what he sees, since the bones have come together and have been mysteriously clothed with flesh!

And he is now crying passionately for the immediate completion of the miracle, “Come from the four winds, O Breath and breathe upon these slain, that they may live.” There is continual vehemence and force here, here is just that which makes a prayer prevalent. O, let us cry mightily unto God! We cannot expect to see great things unless we cry to Him, but we are only limited by our prayers. We are not straitened in Him! We are only straitened in ourselves.

We might see greater things if we could but believe. All things are possible to him that believes, but as of old, the Lord Jesus cannot do many mighty things nowadays because of our unbelief. We hamper the arm of Grace! We do, as it were, restrain the Almighty energy. O for greater faith to believe that nations may be born in a day! That multitudes may be turned unto God at once, and we shall yet see it, see what our fathers never saw and what our imaginations have never dreamed! We shall leap from victory to victory, marching on from one triumph to another until we meet the all-glorious Savior! Charging enemy after enemy and routing army after army, we shall go on, conquering and to conquer until we salute Him who comes upon the white horse of triumph followed by all the armies of Heaven! Brethren, be of good courage in your work of faith and labor of love for it is not and shall not be in vain in the Lord. I address some tonight, I know, who have no interest in what I have been saying for they are not subjects of Messiah, themselves. Remember, faith is a sign of your allegiance to Him. Trust Christ and you are saved! Trust Jesus Christ and you are delivered from Divine wrath and from the power of your natural passions. The Lord grant you a resurrection tonight, O you who are dead in sin, and His name shall have all the praise! Our friends here have for some little time been in a small way assisting this Society by their contributions. They, therefore, are well acquainted with it. I have not time this evening to enter into details about it, but I may just say that this Society has for a long time done a good work among the Jewish people. And I ask you to contribute to this among other good works as you feel moved to do whenever opportunity occurs.

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Sermon N. 3243 THE VINE OF ISRAEL

PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, MARCH 30, 1911.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. ON THURSDAY EVENING, MAY 9, 1878.

On behalf of the British Society for the Propagation of the Gospel among the Jews,

“Return, we beseech You, O God of Hosts: look down from Heaven, and behold, and visit this vine.” Psalm 80:14.

I FEEL somewhat straitened on this occasion because of the specialty of my subject. I have been persuaded by the Society to preach on behalf of the Jews, but my mind does not quite run in the direction which is prescribed for it. I have been so in the habit of preaching the Gospel to everybody, knowing neither Jew nor Gentile, barbarian, Scythian, bond, nor free, that the very recognition of anything like nationality and specialty is somewhat difficult for me. I do not think that the recognition of the distinction is wrong. No, I think it right, but it is so unusual that I scarcely feel at home. I would sooner, by a thousand times, take a text and preach the Gospel to sinners or to saints than discourse upon a special race. Yet is it necessary and, therefore, let it be done. And I trust the Holy Spirit may make our meditation profitable.

Assuredly, if there is any distinction which might be maintained, and I think there is none, for that distinction of Jew and Gentile seems to me to be wiped out and obliterated, if there is any distinction, we may, at least, remember that which lingeringly subsists between the seed of Israel and the nations, for God’s election of old fell upon them and when the old world lay in darkness, gleams of light gladdened their eyes! To them belonged the oracles. They were long the sole preservers of the precious Truth of God which they have handed down to us. And if through their unbelief we have taken their place, we cannot but recollect who occupied it for so many centuries and we cannot but look with extraordinary tenderness and affection and earnest desire to that elder family whom the Lord loved so long and towards whom, I think, His love still burns, as shall be seen when the day comes in which He shall gather Israel again unto Himself!

We shall view the prayer of the text in its reference to Israel. “Return, we beseech You, O God of Hosts: look down from Heaven, and behold, and visit this vine.” The vine was peculiarly a type of Palestine and the Jewish nation. When this Psalm was written, the Gentiles were not in the Psalmist’s mind, but only Israel. So let us now speak of Israel and let us pray to God that He will return in mercy, behold in pity and visit this vine and the vineyard which His right hand planted.

I. First, let us reflect upon WHAT AN AMOUNT OF INTEREST SURROUNDS THIS VINE, this chosen people. Brethren, Israel has a history compared with which the annals of all other nations are but poor and thin. Israel is the world’s aristocracy and her history is the roll call of priests and kings unto God. At the very beginning, what interest attaches to the planting of this vine! The Psalmist speaks of the Lord bringing the vine out of Egypt and casting out the nations that He might find a trench wherein He might place Israel’s roots that she might strike deep, and take possession of the soil. But what wonders God worked in the removal of Israel from the soil of Goshen, wherein her vine seemed to have taken deep root, until the wild boar of Egypt began to uproot her! Never can we forget what He did at the Red Sea. Even at the very mention of the name, we feel as if we could sing unto the Lord who triumphed gloriously and cast thehorse and his rider into the depths of the sea! What marvels He worked all through the wilderness when He turned the Rock into a pool of water and made refreshing streams to follow His chosen along the burning sand! Neither can we forget the Jordan,our hearts begin to sing at the mention of the name. What ailed you, O Jordan, that you were driven back when the Lord’s ark led the way through the depths of the river and the priests stood still in the midst, while all the hosts of His people passed over dry-shod? Neither can we fail to exult as we think of the planting of the vine in Canaan.

Saw you not the walls of Jericho tottering in ruins at the sound of the ram’s horns when Israel gave her shout, for the Lord was in the midst of His people? Therefore the sword of Joshua smote the Canaanites till they were utterly destroyed! The sun stood still upon Gibeon and the moon in the valley of Ajalon, because the Lord hearkened unto the voice of a man, working marvelously with His people, that He might settle them in the land which He gave unto their fathers, the land which flowed with milk and honey! When I think of such a planting, it seems to me that this vine can never be given up to be utterly burned with fire after wonders as these! It is not God’s fashion to cast away a people for whom He has done so much. The commencement of Israel’s national history is by far too good to close, as we fear it must, if we judge only according to carnal reason. An era brighter and more glorious must surely dawn and the Lord must bring again from Bashan, and lead up His chosen nation from the depths of the seas. Once again He will make bare His arm, even He that cut Rahab and wounded the dragon, and the whole earth shall behold all Israel, both spiritual and national, singing in one joyous song, the song of Moses the servant of God, and of the Lamb! The very planting of the nation makes us feel the deepest possible interest in its welfare. O God, behold and visit this vine, as the vineyard which Your right hand has planted!

Let us reflect again upon the prosperity of Israel and the wide influence which the nation exercised for centuries. I am keeping closely to the Psalm, which is really my text, for we are told that after the planting of the vine, “the hills were covered with the shadow of it, and the boughs thereof were like the goodly cedars. She sent out her boughs unto the sea, and her branches unto the river.” No nation has ever exercised such an influence upon the thought of the world as the Jewish people have done. I grant you that some other nations exercised greater influence upon the world’s art and sculpture and the like, for Israel eschewed much of art and science, not greatly to her loss, especially since the reason for it was so greatly to her gain. But the idea of one God, which the Lord had graciously written upon the hearts of His elect people, though it took many an age to erase the natural lines of idolatry which Nature had imprinted there, that idea of the unity of the Godhead is a treasure handed to us by the seed of Abraham! The grand Truths which were contained in type and shadow and outward ordinance, and given to the chosen people of God, exercised a far more powerful influence over the world than, perhaps, most of us have ever dreamed! I feel certain that the religion of Zoroaster came from the Jews. I believe that much of whatever is pure in Eastern religions might be distinctly traced to the teachings of Moses, to gleanings of the Israelite vintage which were carried to the nations through their commerce and intercommunication, perhaps directly and distinctly by the teachings of Jews who journeyed there as exiles in captivity.

The earth had become corrupt even in father Abraham’s time. And though, here and there, there might have been found goodly individuals like the Patriarch, Job, adhering to the simple worship of the one only God, yet for the most part, the whole world was sunken in idolatry. But the Light of God came to it and remains in it, gleaming strangely in the darkness like flashes of lightning amidst the blackness of a tempest! That light has always come, I believe, by the way of Israel! The original light of tradition grew dimmer and dimmer and threatened to die out, for in transmission from father to son its brightness was sadly clouded with human error. But the Truth retained much of its vitality and purity in the midst of Israel and from Israel it influenced the rest of the nations. In the days of Solomon, how proudly did the Temple stand upon its holy hill, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, the one Pharos of the midnight sea of humanity!

That little country we often forget what a very little district Palestine occupied was, nevertheless, the very queen among the nations! From far-off Sheba they came to hear the wisdom of Solomon and to other lands the rumor of his glory extended and all his greatness was connected with the worship of God, for she who came from Sheba, came to hear all the wisdom of Solomon “concerning the Lord, his God.” That little land thus influenced all lands and transmitted far-off down the centuries what was known of the ever-blessed God among the people! To me it seems so sad that she that sat over against the treasury should now be poor. That she that laid the daily showbread before the Lord should now be famished. That she that piled the Temple and brought the offering, should now turn away from the one only Sacrifice and should these many days remain without priest or temple! Alas poor Israel! Our hearts take the deepest interest in you and we pray the Lord to look down and behold, and visit this vine, when we remember the days of your glory and all the splendor of the Revelation of the Most High in the midst of His people!

Nor does the interest become one particle the less when we come to the time of Israel’s decay. She would imitate the heathen and go aside to false gods nothing could cure her of it. She was chastened again and again and, at last, it came to banishment and the people were scattered. Alas for the tears that Judah and Israel shed! What ocean could hold them all? How God’s people were made to smart, and cry, and groan! Let the waters of Babylon tell how salty they flowed with Judah’s griefs. How could they sing the Lord’s song in that strange land? What a history of woe has Israel’s story been! And then, when they were brought back cured of idolatry as, thank God, they most effectually are, there came an equally mournful decay for formalism, the absence of all spiritual life, the mere observance of outward ritual, came into the place of idolatry and the people in whom all the nations of the earth were blessed had the Christ among them, but refused Him! “He came unto His own, and His own received Him not.” Woe was the day! Speak of it with sevenfold sorrow. He came for whom they long had waited, Israel’s Hope, and they refused Him! Yes, they crucified Him.

My tongue will not attempt to tell what came of it, when His blood was on them and on their children. Earth never saw a more terrible sight th an the siege and destruction of Jerusalem! Then did they sell the ancient people of God for a pair of shoes and the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold, were esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter. The enemy plowed the holy place, sowed it with salt, and the seed of Abraham were scattered to the four winds of Heaven! Alas, the evil ceased not when the last stone was overthrown, but wrath followed the fugitives. Through many, many centuries Israel was persecuted shame covers my face, persecuted by those who called themselves Christians! The blood of Israel hangs in great clots upon the skirts of Rome and will bring down upon that thriceaccursed system the everlasting wrath of the Most High! Did they not grievously oppress the Jews in Spain and every other Catholic country, remorselessly hunting them down as if they were unfit to live, torturing them in ways that it were impossible for us to describe, lest your cheeks should blanch as you heard the horrible story? The men that were of the same race as the Christ of God were so hated by the professed followers of Jesus that no indignities were thought to be great enough, and no severities to be fierce enough for execution upon those they thought to be the execrable Jews!

Thank God, such persecution is now over, let us hope forever, at least in the Western world. The race would have been stamped out, however, if Rome’s tender mercies could have worked their will. Go to the Ghetto, today, in the Jews’ quarter in Rome, and see the Church, as I have done, in which a certain number of Jews were compelled to hear a sermon, once in the year, leveled at their own race and faith, and over the door of which is written what from such a quarter is a wanton insult to them, “To Israel He says, All day long I have stretched forth My hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people.” Verily it would be so eternally if the hands of Rome were the hands to be stretched out, when she encouraged, if she did not command the racing of Jews in the Corso, and the pouring of contempt upon them in the rudest fashion! Israel would never worship images, saints and virgins! Blessed were they as a nation for this thing, at least, that they utterly rejected the idolatry of which Rome is shamelessly guilty! It were far better to not be a Christian than to think Popery to be Christianity, for it is one of the vilest forms of idolatry that ever came from the polluted heart of man! Alas, poor Israel, what have you suffered! What tongue can tell your woes? I feel compelled to apply to Israel the language which Byron applied to Rome, when he called her “the Niobe of nations,” and reckoned all sorrows beside hers but petty misery,

“What are our griefs and sufferance? Come and see Jerusalem in heaps, and plod your way O’er steps of broken thrones and temples.”

Look, too, on a princely people crushed under persecution, laboring and finding no rest. Princes were hanged up by their hands. The faces of elders were not honored. Then was fulfilled Jeremiah’s Lamentation, “How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed! They that did feed delicately, are desolate in the streets, they that were brought up in scarlet, embrace dunghills.”

But we will not end here, my Brothers and Sisters. The interest which we feel with regard to Israel and which makes us pray, “Lord, visit this vine,” rises as we think of its future. I am no Prophet or interpreter of the prophecies, but this much seems clear to me, that the Lord Jesus Christ, the King of the Jews, will have dominion over them and they shall be converted and shall acknowledge Him to be the Messiah who was promised to their fathers, so does the New Testament teach us as well as the Old! It seems to me that we may work for the conversion of Israel with the absolute certainty that if we do not see it, ourselves, yet it shall be seen, for the natural branches of the olive, which for a while were cut off, shall be grafted in again, and so all Israel shall be saved. The future of the Gentiles in the fullness of its Glory can never be accomplished till, first of all, the Jews shall be ingathered. You shall have no millennial day, or full brightness of Messiah’s Glory, until yonder, by Jordan’s streams and Judah’s deserted hills, where once the Savior worked, and walked, and preached, the song shall yet again arise of Hallelujah to the God of Israel!

One more thought and then I leave this point of the interest we take in Israel. We must forever take a special interest in the Jews because of them came our Lord. He was so completely a Man that one forgets that He was a Jew, and, perhaps, for the most part it is best that we should, for He is more a Man than a Jew. But still, “He took not up the nature of angels, but He took up the seed of Abraham.” Jesus is the Son of David. The Jews have a part in Him, after the flesh, which we have not. And, amid all the privileges which we enjoy, we can well afford to let them have everything that they can claim. And they can certainly prove a special kinship to Him whom our soul loves. Oh, if it were for nothing else but that our Savior was of the Jews, we ought to love them and make them the subject of our prayers and of our earnest efforts!

Surely the mention of that will suffice and I need not say so much as one solitary word more! Interest in the Jews, indeed, is a very wide subject, and we have said enough for the present purpose.

II. NOW, SECONDLY, WHAT IS IT THAT THE JEWISH PEOPLE NEED? We have been exhorted by all these things to pray for this vine. What is it that is needed?

The answer of our text is, “Look down from Heaven, and behold, and visit this vine.” A visitation from God is the one thing necessary for Israel. For what purpose should God visit the Jews, then? I say, Brothers and Sisters, it is the one essential thing in order to give them spiritual life. Our acquaintances with the interior of the Jewish commonwealth at the present time is not very large, but some of us have observed that there are two sorts of Israelites. Some are devout, devout men with some of whom it has been our privilege to have hearty fellowship in matters of common interest touching the things of God. When we have spoken together of the Providence of God and of faith in the Divine Mercy, we have been much of the same mind. In the late debate brought on by Colenso, we were able, in comparing notes, to feel the same zeal for the value of the Old Testament and for the Glory of the ever-blessed God! Whether we were Christians or Jews, we were equally zealous to repel the infidel assaults of the famous master of arithmetic. We meet now and then with men whose sincerity and devotion we could not doubt at all, would to God that their sincerity led them to search the Scriptures and to examine the claims of our Lord Jesus! Such men lament that many of their people seem to have no religion, or what is almost the same thing to have nothing more than the outward form. Their being of the Israelite race is distinctly recognized and never for a moment held back the Sabbath is almost universally hallowed, for which let Israel put to shame many so-called Christian lands! Much is done that is commendable, much which exhibits high integrity and uprightness, but yet, to a large extent, the race is sunk in worldliness and misled by superstition. Oh, that God would visit the Jew and endow him with an enquiring and unprejudiced heart, with longing after the God of his fathers, with a deeper reverence and a truer zeal for the Glory of Jehovah! The visitation of God may well be entreated that He would next grant enlightenment to His people, taking away the veil which has been cast over their eyes and enabling them to see the true Messenger of the Covenant. There are thousands of Israelites today who only need to know that Jesus is the Messiah and they would as gladly accept Him as any of us have done. It seems to us so strange that they can read the 53rd Chapter of Isaiah and so many other plain passages of the Prophets and of the Psalms without seeing that the Man of Nazareth is the Christ of God! Yet they do read, but the veil is on their hearts so that they do not perceive Christ in their interpretations. Alas that the Son of Righteousness should shine and Israel should be in darkness! With many of the seed of Abraham there is an honest desire to receive whatever can be shown to be the Truth of God. If the Lord will touch their eyes and remove the scales what an enlightenment on the whole nation would follow! A nation would be born in a day! What joy for us, what honor to God, what happiness to themselves if they might but be delivered from their present alienation! O God, You alone can do this! We cannot. All arguments seem to be in vain, but do You behold, and visit this vine!

When the spiritual life of the nation shall have been revived and there shall be an enlightenment of the intellect, they will only need the Spirit to work upon the heart. Even as the Holy Spirit has quickened and regenerated us, so must it be with them, for there is no difference between Jew and Gentile in this matter. The same regenerated work is needed, the same enlightening of the Holy Spirit, and if the Lord will do this, our hearts shall be exceedingly glad!

III. WHAT, THEN, CAN WE DO? We are great debtors to Israel, what can we do for her?

Some people are always afraid of telling Christian people to do anything. They mutter between their teeth, “The Lord will do His own work,” and they are afraid that they should be interfering with God’s prerogatives. Ah, my dear Brothers and Sisters, I am not afraid that some of you will ever do the Lord’s work, for you do not do your own! That part which you can do is neglected! Do not be so mightily frightened lest you should be too active! It is God’s work to visit Israel and gather out His people and He alone can do it, but He works by means. What, then, would He have us do?

I answer, the first thing we can do is to pray for Israel. You believe in the power of prayer, do you not, my Brothers and Sisters? Why, some of us can no more doubt the power of prayer than we can doubt the force of a steam-engine or the influence of the law of gravity, because to us the effects and results of prayer are everyday things! We are in the habit of speaking with God about everything and receiving replies which to us are as distinct as if He had spoken to us with words. We can speak boldly in prayer to God concerning Israel! No nation can be nearer to God’s heart than the Jews.

We may be bold with the mighty God. We may open our mouth wide, for He will fill it. We may plead with Him urgently after this fashion “Will you not glorify Yourself by the salvation of the Jews? What could You do that would more signally strike the whole world with awe than if you were to turn this wonderful nation to the faith of Christ? You have taught them the unity of the Godhead, you have burnt this Truth into their very souls, now teach them the Deity of Your Son who is One with You! Bring them to rejoice in the Triune God with heart and soul, and all lands shall hear of it and say with wonder, ‘Who are these?’ Great God, were not these Your messengers of old? When You needed heralds, did You not look to Israel? You took James and John, and Peter and Paul. You will find such as these among them, now, if You will call them, both boastful Peters and persecuting Pauls whom Your Grace can transform into mighty testifiers for the name of Jesus.!”Let us pray to God to do this. We can pray!

The next thing we can do is to feel very kindly towards that race. I know all that will be said about converted Jews, and I lament that there should have been grave occasion given in many instances. But, for my part, I have been glad of late to smart a little for the sake of my Lord. I have said, “Well, it was a Jew that saved me and even if this professed convert should have a hypocritical design upon my purse, I had better be deceived by him that turn away an honest kinsmen of my Lord.” I do not marvel that there should be deceivers among the Jews, for have not we plenty of such in our churches, who, for the sake of loaves and fish and pelf, creep in among us, pretending to be followers of Christ when their hearts know nothing about Him? In all ranks and conditions of man, hypocrisy is sure to be found! But for all that, we do not turn round and say, “The Gentiles are a bad lot. We will have nothing more to do with them because two or three of them deceived us.” The Gentiles are always taking us in! We know they are and still we have hope for them. And so must we always have hope towards Israel, and instead of thinking bitterly and speaking bitterly, we must cultivate kindness of spirit both to those who become Christians and to those who remain in unbelief. I, for one, thank God that this land has now for several years swept away the civil disabilities of the Jew. He is no longer a stranger in the land, but he settles down in the midst of us and exercises all the rights of citizenship. May the kindness of feeling which has prompted this change, and it came, I think, mainly from earnest Christians, lead the Israelites to think kindly of our faith!

Another thing we can do, dear Friends, is to keep our own religion pure. I marvel not that Jews are not Christians when I know what sort of Christianity, for the most part, they have seen. When I have walked through Rome and countries under Rome’s sway, and have seen thousands bow before the image of a woman carried through the streets, when I have seen the churches crammed with people bowing down before pieces of bone, hair and teeth of dead saints, and such like things, I have said to myself, “If I were a worshipper of the One true God, I would look with scorn upon those who bow before these cast clouts, moldy rags, pieces of rotten timber and I know not what besides!” No, no, good Jew! Join not with this idolatrous rabble! Remain a Jew rather than degrade yourself with this superstition! If the Lord has taught you to know that there is an unseen God who made the heavens and the earth, and who alone is to be worshipped, if you have heard the voice of thunder which says, ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord your God is one God,’ stand you to that and go not one inch beyond it, if the way before you invites you to the worship of things that are seen, and the reverence of men who call themselves priests and the whispering out of every filthy thought into a confessor’s ear! No, no, no, Israel! You are brought very low, but you are far too noble to become an adorer of crosses and wafers, and pictures and relics!”

Even in our own land there is a good deal which one would not wish a Jew to regard as Christianity. To my mind, baptismal regeneration is about as glarin g a piece of Popery as there is to be found in the world! And they can hear that lie publicly taught in England! Grievous, too, it is to my very heart that they may hear it among those who profess a purer form of faith than that of which we have spoken. Try, Brothers and Sisters, to keep Christ’s religion as Christ taught it. Purify it. Let it come back to its original form!

Labor also to be Christians in ordinary life. If a Jew says, “I would like to see a Christian,” do not let him see a person full of superstitions. Let him see one who believes in the Triune God, who tries to live according to the commands of God, and who, when he talks about Jesus, lets you see the mind which dwelt in Jesus the same mind being in him. When once the Church of God shall bear a clear testimony to the Truth of Go d both with lips and life, great hindrances will be taken out of the way of Israel. I know you say, “Well, Jews ought to know that we hold a very different faith from Romanists.”

I know that you think so, but I am not able to perceive how the Jews are to learn the distinction, for Papists are called Christians as much as we are! Their religion is dominant in some countries it is prominent in every country. How is the Jew to know that it is not the religion of Christ? As he thinks that it is so, he declares that he will have nothing to do with it and I, for one, cannot condemn him, but approve of his resolve! I only hope that as the years roll on, we who worship God in sincerity and have no confidence in the flesh, we who are saved by the faith which saved Abraham, who is our father after the spirit though not according to the flesh, that we, I say, may be able to bring this purer faith more clearly to the knowledge of Israel and that God will lead His ancient nation to be fellow-heirs with us! We must keep our doctrine pure and hold it individually with clean hands and a pure heart, or we have not done all that we can for Israel.

This being done, I will next say that we must each one evangelize with all his might. Do this not among Jews, only, but among Gentiles, also. Wherever you are, tell abroad the knowledge of Jesus Christ! Do not live a single day, if opportunity serves you, without testifying concerning the love of God which is revealed in the Cross of Calvary. Your prayer should be for the whole Church of God, “Behold, and visit this vine.” And as a large number of God’s elect ones are as yet hidden in darkness, let us pray unto the Lord that He would visit this vine and make these branches to spring out into the Light of God, that on them, also, there may be rich clusters to His praise!

Brothers and Sisters, we are, ourselves, saved, are we not? Come, before you go away, let the question be put to you, Are you saved? Are you r eally Believers in Jesus? Is the Christ formed in you? Have you realized that He is your Savior? Are you trusting Him now? Will you live to Him? Are you consecrated to Him spirit, soul and body? If you are, that is the first thing. If you are not, I cannot ask you to pray for Israel, or for anybody else till, first of all, God has put a cry into your soul for yourselves. If you are saved, then let me ask myself and you, “Are we doing all we might for the honor and love of Jesus?” Sitting on these seats, might not many say, “We have not yet begun to live for Christ as we ought”? May the Lord quicken you!

There was a young man here, one Thursday night, when I closed with some such words as these, who derived lasting benefit from them. He was a gentleman doing a large business, to whom it had never occurred that he might preach Christ.

It did occur to him that night and he straightway went to the town in which he lived and began to preach in the streets! He is now the pas tor of a large Church, though he still continues his business and his is an example to be imitated by many! I would to God that some young man might be quickened to feel that he must do something, for Israel perhaps, for Christ, certainly! And you, Sisters, may you feel a Divine impulse upon you while you pray God to visit the vine which He has planted! May He also visit you and make you fruitful vines unto His praise! The Lord bless everyone of you, for Christ’s sake! Amen.

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON:

PSALM 46.

To the Chief Musician for the sons of Korah, A Song upon Alamoth. This Psalm is often called “Martin Luther’s Psalm.” Whenever there was any great trouble, Luther used to say, “Let us sing the 46th Psalm together and then let the devil do his worst.” This is the Psalm, too, from which Mr. John Wesley preached in Hyde Park at the time of a great earthquake. While the earth was shaking and there was a great storm, Mr. Wesley preached from the second verse “Therefore we will not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea.”

Verse 1. God is our refuge and strength, a very present help in trouble. All creatures have their places of refuge. “As for the stork, the fir trees are her house. The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats and the rocks for the conies.” All men also have their places of refuge, though some are “refuges of lies.” But God is our refuge and strength,” the Omnipotence of Jehovah is pledged for the defense and support of His people. “A very present help in trouble” One who is near at hand always near, but nearest when He is most needed. Not much entreaty is required to bring Him to the aid of His people, for He is close at hand and close at heart, “a very present help in trouble.”

2, 3. Therefore will we not fear, though the earth be removed, and though the mountains be carried into the midst of the sea; though the waters thereof roar and are troubled, though the mountains shake with the swelling thereof.

Here we have, you perceive, a mention of the greatest convulsions of Nature, yet the Believer fears not! Doubtless, too, these verses are intended to be a picture of the great convulsions that take place in the Providential dealings of God. States and kingdoms that seem to be as solid as the earth will one day be removed. Dynasties that seem as fixed and firm as mountains may soon be swept away into the sea of oblivion. We may have famine, war, pestilence and anarchy until the whole earth shall seem to be like the sea in a great storm! Yes, hope may fail with many and the stoutest hearts may shake at the swelling thereof. Yet let the worst come to the worst, God’s people are still safe! As one old writer says, “Though God should, to use His words concerning Jerusalem, wipe the earth as a man wipes a dish, wiping it and turning it upside down, yes, though He should break it into a thousand shivers, yet need not His people fear, for if He does not protect them under Heaven, He will take them up to be with Him in Heaven!” If Heaven and earth could be mingled together, and chaos could return, yet as long as God is God, there is no use for the Believer to fear!

3. Selah. We may well pause and renew our confidence in the God who has never failed us, and who never will fail any who trust Him.

4. There is a river, the stream whereof shall make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High. Whatever river may have been in the Psalmist’s mind, it was the symbol of Sovereign Grace flowing freshly and freely from the sacred Fountain of Eternal Love to make glad the people of God! And now we have the Inspired Book, we have the preached Word, we have the many precious promises, we have the blessed Spirit, Himself, and all these make a glorious river, the streams whereof “make glad the city of God, the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High.”

5. God is in the midst of her; she shall not be moved: God shall help her, and that right early. The Hebrew expression is, “at the turning of the morning.” Our marginal reading gives it, “when the morning appears.” “God shall help her at the turning of the morning.”At that period when the night is the blackest, just before the light begins to come, then shall God help His Church. Child of God, this promise is to you, also! When the night gets thickest and the gloom is the heaviest, then God shall help you “at the turning of the morning.” He may tarry for a while, but He will tarry no longer than is wise. You shall find, in looking back upon God’s dealings with you, that although He sometimes seemed to be long in coming to your help and you cried out, “Lord, how long?” yet, after all, He did help you and that “right early,” too!

6. The heathen raged, the kingdoms were moved: He uttered His voice, the earth melted. God has but to speak and His stoutest foe shall dissolve like snow when the sun shines on it.

7-9. The LORD of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah. Come, behold the work of the Lord, what desolation He has made in the earth. He makes wars to cease unto the ends of the earth; He breaks the bow, and cuts the spear in sunder; He burns the chariot in the fire.

Here the Psalmist invites us to behold what God has done in the past. He has desolated the desolaters and destroyed the destroyers! War has been a terrible scourge to mankind, but our God is Master even over war. When I look at the old ruined castles all over our land, I cannot help saying to myself and others, too, “Come, behold the works of the Lord, what desolations He has made in the earth,” and when I stumble upon some broken-down abbeys, or monasteries and Popish cathedrals, I can but wish that there were more of them, that we might see many such desolations which the Lord has made in the earth! He will get the victory over all His foes and break all His adversaries in pieces however long He may wait before putting forth His great power in judgment upon them!

10. Be still, and know that I am God. Here is the command and here is the reason which will help us to obey it. Judge not the Lord hastily! Murmur not at His Providential dealings with you! Be not hurrying and scurrying here and there, but, “be still.” In silence and in confidence shall be your strength. “Be still, and know that I am God”

10. I will be exalted among the heathen, I will be exalted in the earth. If God is willing to wait, you need not be impatient. His time is the best time and He will be exalted in due time.

11. The LORD of Hosts is with us; the God of Jacob is our refuge. Selah.

PRAY THE HOLY SPIRIT WILL USE THIS SERMON

TO BRING MANY TO A SAVING KNOWLEDGE OF JESUS CHRIST.

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