The Relationship of Marriage
A sermon
(No. 762)
Delivered by
C.H.SPURGEON,
At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"Turn, O backsliding children, says the Lord; for I am married unto
you."- Jeremiah 3:14.
THESE are dainty words–a grateful sedative for a troubled conscience.
Such singular comfort is fitted to cheer the soul and put the brightest
hue on all her prospects. The person to whom it is addressed has an
eminently happy position. Satan will be very busy with you, Believer in
Christ, tonight! He will say, "What right have you to believe that God
is married to you?" He will remind you of your imperfections and of the
coldness of your love, and perhaps of the backsliding state of your
heart. He will say, "What? With all this about you can you be
presumptuous enough to claim union with the Son of God? Can you venture
to hope that there will be any marriage between you and the Holy One?"
He will tell you as though he were an advocate for holiness that it is
not possible that such a one as you can feel yourself to be, can really
be a partaker of so choice and special a privilege as being married
unto the Lord! Let this suffice for an answer to all such
suggestions–the text is found addressed not to Christians in a
flourishing state of heart. It is not said to Believers upon Mount
Tabor, transfigured with Christ. It is not addressed to a spouse all
chaste and fair, sitting under the banner of love, feasting with her
lord! It is addressed to those who are called "backsliding children."
God speaks to His Church in her lowest and most abject estate and
though He does not fail to rebuke her sin, to lament it, and to make
her lament it, too, yet still in such an estate He says to her, "I am
married unto you." Oh, it is Divine Grace that He should be married to
any of us! But it is Grace at its highest pitch–it is the ocean of
Grace at its flood-tide that He should speak thus of "backsliding
children!"
That He should speak in notes of love of any of the fallen race of Adam
is "passing strange–'tis wonderful." But that He should select those
who have behaved treacherously toward Him, who have turned their backs
on Him and not their faces–who have played Him false, although,
nevertheless, His own–and say unto them, "I am married unto You"–this
is loving kindness beyond anything we could desire or think!
Hear, O Heaven, and admire, O earth! Let every understanding heart
break forth into singing, yes, let every humble mind bless and praise
the condescension of the Most High! Cheer up, poor drooping hearts!
Here is sweet encouragement for some of you who are depressed, and
disconsolate, and sit alone to draw living waters out of this well. Do
not let the noise of the archers keep you back from the place of the
drawing of water. Be not afraid lest you should be cursed while you are
anticipating the blessing! If you do but trust in Jesus, if you have
but a vital interest in the once humbled, now exalted Lord, come with
holy boldness to the text and whatever comfort there is here, receive
it and rejoice in it!
To this end let us attentively consider the relationship which is here
spoken of and diligently enquire how far we are experimentally
acquainted with it.
I. IN CONSIDERING THE RELATIONSHIP WHICH IS HERE SPOKEN OF, you will
observe that the affinity of marriage, though exceedingly near kin, is
not one of birth. Marriage is not a relationship of original
relationship. It is contracted between two persons who may, during the
early part of their lives, have been entire strangers to one another.
They may scarcely have looked each other in the face except during the
few months that preceded their nuptials. The families may have had no
previous acquaintance. They may have lived afar off as the very
antipodes.
One may have been opulent and in possession of vast domains, and the
other may have been indigent, and reduced to straitened circumstances.
Genealogies do not regulate it. Disparities do not hinder it. The
connection is not of natural birth but of voluntary contract or
covenant. Such is the relationship which exists between the Believer
and his God. Whatever relation there was originally between God and
man, it was stamped out and extinguished by the Fall. We were aliens,
strangers, and foreigners far off from God by wicked works. We had,
before, no relation to the Most High. We were banished from His
Presence as traitors to His Throne, as condemned criminals who had
revolted against His power.
Between our souls and God there could be no communion. He is light and
we are dark. He is holiness and we are sin. He is Heaven and we are far
more akin to Hell. In Him there is consummate greatness and we are puny
insignificance. He fills all worlds with His strength, and as for
us–we are the creatures of a day who know nothing–and who are crushed
before the moth. The gulf between God and a sinner is something
terrible to contemplate. There is a vast difference between God and the
creature even when the creature is pure, but between God and the fallen
creature–oh, where is he that shall measure the infinite leagues of
distance?
Where was there a means of ever bridging so terrible a chasm except the
Lord Jesus had found it in His own Person and in His own passion? How
could we have ever perceived the infinite design unless it had been
revealed to us as an accomplished fact by which He has reconciled us
and brought us into communion with Himself that we should be married
unto Him?
Now, Christian, just contemplate what you were, and the degraded family
to which you belonged that you may magnify the riches of His Grace who
espoused you in your low estate and has so bound Himself with all the
pledges of a husband that He says, "I am married unto you." What were
you? That is a black catalog of foul transgressors which the Apostle
gives in the first Epistle to the Corinthians (6:9, 11). I forbear a
recital of the filthy vices–at the end of which he says, "But you are
washed, but you are sanctified."
In those crimes he enumerates, many of us had a share, no, all of us!
What was our father and our father's house? What was our aim? What was
our practice? What were our desires? What were our tendencies? They
were earthly, downward, Hell-ward! We were at a distance from God and
we loved that distance well. But the Lord Jesus took upon Himself our
nature–upon Him the Lord did lay the iniquity of all His people. And
why? Not merely to save us from the wrath to come, but that we, being
lifted up out of our degradation by virtue of His Atonement, and being
sanctified and made meet by the power of the Spirit, should have a
relationship established between us and God which was not formed by
nature, but which has been achieved and consummated by astounding
Grace!
Unto the Lord let us give thanks this night as we remember the hole of
the pit from where we were dug and call to mind the fact that now we
are united to Him in ties of blood and bonds of love! Marriage union
the result of choice! Any exceptions to this rule that might be pleaded
are void in reason because they arise from folly and
transgression–there ought to be no exception. It is scarcely a true
marriage at all where there has not been a choice on each side. But
certainly if the Lord our God is married unto us, and we are married
unto God, the choice is mutual.
The first choice is with God. That choice was made, we believe, before
the foundation of the world–
"Long before the sun's refulgent ray Primeval shades of darkness drove,
They on His sacred bosom lay, Loved with an everlasting love." God
never began to love His people. It were impossible for the spiritual
mind to entertain so unworthy a thought. He saw them in the glass of
His decrees. He foresaw them, with His eyes of Prescience, in the mass
of creatureship all fallen and ruined. But yet He beheld them and
pitied and loved them, elected them and set them apart. "They shall be
Mine," says the Lord.
Here we are all agreed. And we ought to be all agreed upon the second
point, namely, that we also have chosen our God. Brethren, no man is
saved against his will! If any man should say that he was saved against
his will it would be a proof that he was not saved at all! Reluctance
or indifference betrays an entire alienation of all the affections of
the heart. If the will is still set against God then the whole man is
proven to be at enmity with Him. By our nature we did not choose
God–by our nature we kicked against His Law and turned aside from His
dominion.
But is it not written, "My people shall be willing in the day of My
power"? Do you understand how, without any violation of your free
agency, God has used proper arguments and motives so as to influence
your understanding? Through our understanding our will is convinced and
our souls are spontaneously drawn. Then we throw down the weapons of
our rebellion, and humble ourselves at the footstool of the Most High.
And then we do freely choose that which we once wickedly abhorred! Do
you, Christian, at this very hour, choose Christ with all your heart to
be your Lord and Savior?
If it could be put to you over again, to make an election whether you
should love the world or love Christ, would you not say, "Oh, my
Beloved is better to me than 10,000 worlds! He fixes all my love,
engrosses all my passion. I give
myself up to Him most freely. He bought me with a great price. He won
me with His great love. He enraptured me with His unspeakable charms so
I give myself up to Him"? Here is a mutual choice!
I wish that some of our friends would forbear to make such a stand
against the doctrine of God's choosing us. If they will but read
Scripture with an unprejudiced mind I am quite sure they will find it
there. It always seems inexplicable to me that those who claim free
will so very boldly for man, should not also allow some free will to
God! I suppose my Brethren would not like to have to be married to
somebody whom they had not chosen, and why should Jesus Christ not have
the right to choose His own bride? Why should He not set His love where
He wills, and have the right to exercise, according to His own
Sovereign mind, that bestowment of His heart and hands which none could
by any means deserve? This know, that He will have His own choice
whether we impugn the doctrine or not! He will have mercy on whom He
will have mercy and He will have compassion on whom He will have
compassion.
At the same time I wish that those friends who believe this Truth of
God would receive the other, which is quite as true. We do choose
Christ in return and that without any violation of our free agency.
Some people cannot see two truths at one time. They cannot understand
that God has made all the Truths of God to be double. Truth is many
sided. While Divine Predestination is true, Human Responsibility is
also true! While it is true that Christ chooses us, it is also true
that the unrenewed mind will not choose Him–"You will not come unto
Me, that you might have life."
This is the sin and the condemnation of man, that "light is come into
the world and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds
were evil." Settle it, however, in your minds that when God says, "I am
married unto you," it implies that there is a blessed choice on both
sides–and so it is a true marriage.
Our third reflection is that marriage is cemented by mutual love. Where
there is not this mutual affection it deserves not the name of
marriage. The dark shadow of a blessing they cannot realize must be a
heavy load for either heart to bear–but where there is true and
genuine love, it is the sweetest and happiest mode of living. It is one
of the blessings of Paradise which has been preserved to us after the
Fall. Without love wedded life must be a very "purgatory" above ground.
In the solemn contract, which has brought our souls this night to God,
the marriage is sustained, cemented, strengthened, and made delightful
by mutual love.
Need I talk to you of the love of God? It is a theme we are scarcely
competent to talk of. You need to sit down and weep about it for very
joy–joy which fills the heart and makes the eyes overflow–but well
near chains the tongue, for it is a deep, profound, and inexpressible.
"He loved me, and gave Himself for me." "Behold, what manner of love
the Father has bestowed upon us." "As the Father has loved Me, even so
have I loved you." Oh, the love of God–it would surpass the powers of
an angel to set it forth.
Sure, sure, it shall be the blest employment of eternity's long ages
for us to comprehend it. And perhaps, when myriad's of ages have rolled
over our happy souls, we shall still be as much struck with wonder with
it as we were at first! The marvel does not diminish on
inspection–familiarity cannot make it common. The nearer we approach,
the deeper our awe. It will be as great a surprise that God should love
such cold, such faithless, such unworthy beings as ourselves, at the
end of 10,000 years as it was at first–perhaps more so! The more
thoroughly we shall know ourselves, the more fully we shall understand
the good of the Lord, and thus will our wonder grow and swell.
Even in Heaven we shall be lost in surprise and admiration at the love
of God to us! The rapture will augment the reverence we feel. Well,
but, beloved Brothers and Sisters, I trust we also love Him in return!
Do you never feel one soft affection rising after another as you muse
on the Christ of God? When you sometimes listen to a sermon in which
the Savior's dear affection to you is set forth, do you not feel the
tears wet your cheeks? Does not your heart swell sometimes as if it
were unable to hold your emotions? Is there not a "joy unspeakable and
full of glory" that comes over you? Can you not say?–
"Jesus, I love Your charming name, 'Tis music to my ears. Gladly would
I sound it out so loud That earth and Hea ven should hear." I hope you
do not need to sing tonight–
"'Tis a point I long to know,"
but, I trust, that in the solemn silence of your souls you can say,
"You know that I love You," grieved that the question should be asked,
but still ready to answer, with Peter, "Lord, You know all things, You
know that I love You."
Now, it is impossible for you to love God without the strong conclusive
evidence that God loves you. I once knew a good woman who was the
subject of many doubts and when I got to the bottom of her doubt, it
was this–she knew she loved Christ, but she was afraid He did not love
her! "Oh," I said, "that is a doubt that will never trouble me! Never,
by any possibility, because I am sure of this–that the heart is so
corrupt, naturally, that love to God never did get there without God's
putting it there."
You may rest quite certain that if you love God, it is a fruit and not
a root. It is the fruit of God's love to you and did not get there by
the force of any goodness in you. You may conclude, with absolute
certainty that God loves you if you love God. There never was any
difficulty on His part. It always was on your part, and now that the
difficulty is gone from you, none whatever remains. O let our hearts
rejoice and be filled with great delight because the Savior has loved
us and given Himself for us. So let us realize the truth of the text,
"I am married unto you."
My fourth observation is that this marriage necessitates certain mutual
relations. I cannot say "duties," for the word seems out of place on
either side. How can I speak of the great God making pledges of
faithfulness? And yet with reverence, let me word it so, for in any
vocabulary I have hardly words to set it forth. When God becomes a
Husband, He undertakes to do a husband's part. When He says, "Your
Maker is your Husband," you may rest assured that He does not take the
relationship without assuming (well, I must say it) all the
responsibilities which belong to that condition! It is the part of God
to nourish, to cherish, to shield, to protect, to bless those with whom
He condescends, in infinite mercy, to enter into union.
When the Lord Jesus Christ became the Husband of His Church, He felt
that He was under an engagement to us, and inasmuch as there were debts
incurred, He paid them–
"Yes, said the Son, with her I'll go,
Through all the depths of sin and woe.
And on the Cross will even dare
The bitter pains of death to bear." He never shrunk from the doing of
any of those loving works which belong to the husband of his chosen
spouse. He exalted the word "husband," and made it to be more full of
meaning than it had ever been before, so that the Apostle could see it
glittering in a new light and could say, "Husbands, love your wives,
even as Christ also loved the Church, and gave Himself for it."
Oh yes, dear Friends, there is a responsibility arising out of this
relationship, and He of whom we speak has not departed from it! You
know He has not. And now, what upon our side? The wife has to reverence
her husband, and to be subject unto him in all things. That is
precisely our position towards Him who has married us. Let His will be
our will. Let His wish be our Law. Let us not need to be flogged to
service, but let us say–
"'Tis love that makes our willing feet In swift obedience move."
O Christian, if the Master condescends to say, "I am married unto you,"
you will not any longer ask, "What is my duty?" but you will say, "What
can I do for You?" The loving wife does not say, "What is my duty?" and
stand coldly questioning how far she should go, and how little she may
do–but all that she can do for him who is her husband she will do–and
everything that she can think of, everything she can devote herself to
in striving to please him in all things she will most certainly do and
perform. And you and I will do the same if we have realized our union
with Christ!
O Beloved, do not grow sentimental and waste your energies in driveling
fancies as some have done. Speak you of a wife?–where the family is
large, the work is heavy and the responsibility great. I could gladly
remind you here, did time permit, of the words of King Lemuel and the
prophecy that his mother taught him. Bear with me, at least, while I
admonish you to such a one, that the heart of your husband may safely
trust in you. Let it be your care to give meat to your household. Lay
your hands to the spindle. Suffer not your industry to fail. Eat not
the bread of idleness.
Stretch out your hand to the poor and reach forth both your hands to
the needy. Open your mouth with wisdom and in your tongue be the law of
kindness. Yes, and consider this with yourself, that in your regard for
all the duties of your station, you are fulfilling your bounden
obligations to your Lord. Short words, but mighty, matchless deeds have
told how Jesus loved us! Be it ours to carve our song of love to Him on
the hearts of some tender nurslings who are cast in our way and
committed to our care.
that the life I now live in the flesh, by faith in the Son of God,
might become a poem and a grateful response to Him that loved me, and
gave Himself for me. I hope we do know, then, that when God says, "I am
married unto you," it necessitates mutual relations.
Fifthly, it also involves mutual confidences. How shall we call that a
marriage where the husband and wife are still two persons, maintaining
individuality as if it were a scrupulous condition of the contract?
That is utterly foreign to the Divine idea! In a true marriage the
husband and wife become one. Therefore their joys and their cares,
their hopes and their labors, their sorrows and their pleasures rise
and blend together in one stream. Brothers and Sisters, the Lord our
God has said it, "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him,
and He will show them His Covenant."
"Judas says unto Him, not Iscariot, Lord, how is it that You will
manifest Yourself unto us, and not unto the world?" There was the
secret because there is a union between Christ and His people which
there is not between Christ and the world! How joyously do the words
sound–they have a silvery ring in them–"Henceforth I call you not
servants, for the servant knows not what his lord does. But I have
called you friends, for all things that I have heard of My Father I
have made known unto you." Christ keeps nothing back from you!
Remember another word of His–"If it were not so, I would have told
you." Oh, how delightful! He says, "I go to prepare a place for you."
He tells them that He is going to prepare a place for them, and then He
says, "If it were not so, I would have told you–I keep no secrets back
from you–you are near Me, My flesh and My bones. I left My Father's
house in glory that I might become one with you, and manifest Myself to
you. And I keep back nothing from you, but reveal My very heart and My
very soul to you."
Now, Christian, just look–you stand in the relation of a spouse, and
you must tell your very heart out to Christ. No, do not go and tell it
to your neighbors, nor your friends, for, somehow or other, the most
sympathizing heart cannot enter into all our griefs. There is a grief
which the stranger cannot intermeddle with–but there never was a pang
into which Christ could not enter. Make a Confidant of the Lord
Jesus–tell Him all! You are married unto Him! Play the part of a wife
who keeps no secrets back, no trials back, no joys back–tell them all
to Him!
1 was in a house yesterday where there was a little child, and it was
said to me, "He is such a funny child." I asked in what way, and the
mother said, "Well, if he tumbles down and hurts himself in the
kitchen, he will always go upstairs crying and tell somebody, and then
he comes down and says, "I told somebody." And if he is upstairs he
goes down and tells somebody, and when he comes back it is always, "I
told somebody," and he does not cry any more." Ah, well, I thought, we
must tell somebody! It is human nature to want to have sympathy. But if
we would always go to Jesus and tell Him all and there leave it, we
might often dismiss the burden and be refreshed with a grateful song.
Let us do so, and go with all our joys and all our troubles unto Him
who says, "I am married unto you."
I know the devil will say, "Why, you must not tell the Lord your
present trouble–it is too insignificant–and besides, you know you did
wrong and brought it upon yourself." Well, but you would tell your
husband, would you not? And will you not tell your Lord? You could not
tell a master, but you can tell a husband. Oh, do not go back into the
old legal state of calling Christ Baali, but call Him Ishi–"My man, my
husband"–and put that confidence in Him which is expected that the
wife should place in a husband who dearly loves her.
We must go on to a sixth point. This marriage implies fellowship in all
its relations. Whatever a husband possesses becomes his wife's. She
cannot be poor if he is rich, and what little she has, whatever it may
be, comes to him. If she is in debt, her debts become his. When Jesus
Christ took His people, He gave them all He had. There is nothing which
Christ has which He has not given to us. It is noteworthy that He has
given His Church His own name! "Where?" you ask. Well, there are two
passages in Jeremiah that most remarkably illustrate this (23:6 and
33:16). In the one it says, "This is the name whereby He shall be
called," and in the other, "This is the name wherewith she shall be
called." In both, the name is identical. "Jehovah Tsidkenu, the Lord
our righteousness."
What? "She shall be called"? Yes, as though He said, "She shall take My
name," and with the name, of course, the entire open acknowledgment of
His interest in her and her interest in Him. As such she is partaker of
all His glory–if He is a king, she is a queen–if He is in Heaven, "He
has raised us up together, and made us to sit in heavenly places with
Him." If He is heavenly, she also shall bear the image of the heavenly.
If He is immortal, so shall she be. And if He is at the right hand of
the Father, so shall she be also highly exalted with Him.
Now, it is saying but very little when I add, that, therefore, whatever
we have, belongs to Him–oh, it is so little, so very little, but one
wishes it were more. "O that Christ were not so glorious as He is," I
have sometimes thought! It was half a wicked wish, but I meant it well,
that I might help to glorify Him. O that He were still poor that one
might ask Him to a feast! O that He were still in this world that one
could break the alabaster box of ointment and pour it on His head! But
You are so great, most blessed Master, that we can do nothing to
increase You! You are so high, we cannot exalt You! You are so happy,
that we cannot bless You!
Yet, what am I saying? It is all a mistake! He is still here! He calls
every one of His people "Members of His body." And if you wish to
enrich Him, help the poor! If you want to feed Him, feed the hungry.
They that bind garments about the naked put vestures upon the Lord
Himself. "Inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these
My brethren, you have done it unto Me." I hope we can sing without
falsehood that verse of Dr. Watts'–
"And if I might make some reserve,
And duty did not call,
I love my God with zeal so great,
That I could give Him all."
A seventh observation and then I shall refrain from dwelling longer on
this point. The very crown of marriage is mutual delight and
complacency. The wife of a Persian nobleman, having gone to a feast
which was given by the great Darius, was asked by her husband whether
she did not think that Darius was the finest man in the world. No, she
said, she did not think so. She never saw anyone in the world who was
comparable to her husband.
And doubtless that is just the opinion which a husband forms of his
wife and a wife of her husband where the marriage is such as it should
be. Now, certainly Christ sets a very high store upon us. I remember
turning over that passage in Solomon's Song, looking at it and
wondering how it could be true–believing it, and yet not being able to
comprehend it–where Christ says, "You are all fair, My Love. There is
no spot in you!" Oh, what eyes He must have! We say that love is
blind–but that cannot be true in Christ's case–for He sees all
things!
Why, this is how it is–He sees Himself in us! He does not see us as we
are, but in His infinite Grace He sees us as we are to be, as Kent
sings–
"Not as she stood in Adam's Fall,
When sin and ruin covered all.
But as she'll stand another day,
Brighter than sun's meridian ray." The sculptor says he can see a bust
in a block of marble and that all he has to do is to chip away the
extra marble and let the bust appear. So Christ can see a perfect being
in every one of us if we are His people! And what He is doing with us
day by day is taking off the warts, making us to be like Himself. He
can see us as we shall one day be before the Throne of God in Heaven,
without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.
Ah, Beloved, He sets great store by us! His delights are with the sons
of men! He loves to hear our praise and to listen to our prayer. The
songs of His people are His sweet perfume, and communion with His
people is like the beds of spices, the beds of lilies where He feeds.
And as for us who are His people, I am sure we can say that there is no
delight which can equal communion with Christ! We have tried other
delights–shame upon us! We have tried some of them, but after having
done so, we find that there is nothing like our Lord, "Vanity of
vanity, all is vanity," says the preacher! But when we come to Christ,
we find no vanity there! We can truly say–
"Where can such sweetness be
As I have tasted in Your love,
As I have found in You?"
The Christian's heart is like Noah's dove–it flies over the wide waste
and cannot rest the sole of its feet until it comes back to Christ. He
is the true Noah who puts out His hand and takes in the weary dove and
gives it rest. There is no peace the whole world over but with Christ–
"There's no such thing as pleasure here,
My Jesus is my All
As You do shine or disappear,
My pleasures rise or fall."
Thus much, by way, as it were, of skimming the surface of this
delightful word, "I am married unto you."
II. Two or three sentences only upon the second point. How FAR DO YOU
AND I EXPERIMENTALLY UNDERSTAND THIS? I am afraid some of you think me
half crazy tonight. You are saying, "Well, I do not comprehend this.
What is the man talking about? God married to us! Christ married to us!
I do not understand it!" God have mercy upon you, my poor Hearer, and
bring you to know it! But let me tell you, if you did but know it,
there is a secret here that would make you a thousand times more happy
than all the joys of the world can ever make you.
You remind me of the cock in the fable who found a diamond on the
dunghill, and as he turned it over, he said, "I would rather have found
a grain of barley." That was according to his nature. And so with you.
This precious pearl of union to God will seem to be nothing to you–a
little worldly pleasure will be more to your taste. One could weep to
think there should be such ignorance of true joy and true delight! Oh,
blind eyes that cannot see beauty in the Savior! Oh, stone-cold hearts
that can see no loveliness in Him!
Jesus! They are drunk! They are mad who cannot love You! It is a
strange infatuation of the sons of men to think that they can do
without You, that they can see any light apart from You, You Sun of
Righteousness, or anything like beauty in all the gardens of the world
apart from You, you Rose of Sharon, you Lily of the Valley! O that they
knew You!–
"A thousand sorrows pierce my soul, To think that all are not Your
own." Do I address any tonight, who, while they pretend to be religious
people, hold loosely by their allegiance to the Lord? There are many
such, and we occasionally meet with them here. They cannot appease
their conscience without some show of profession, so they join with us
as hearers and spectators in the solemn assembly!
But they never unite with the Church because they have not devotedly
yielded up their hearts to Christ. Ask them the reason and their answer
sounds modest, and yet the reserve it implies is anything but chaste.
Do you tell us that you are afraid you should not walk consistently?
Would it not be more true to admit that your relationship with the
world, your service of mammon, your ordinary pastimes, and your
occasional revelries, harmless as you try to persuade yourselves they
are, if viewed in the light of marriage to Christ must be accounted as
very shame? So far as the principles of Christianity are concerned you
endorse them with your private creed, and you are "Protestant" enough
to prefer the most evangelical doctrines. But the reserve in your
conduct is a clear index to a most fatal reserve in your character.
You might admit God to be the supreme, but not the exclusive Lord of
your heart. You would give the Lord's altar more honor than any other
altar, but still you would not remove the high places which desecrate
the land. Your opinion is that there is no god in all the earth but the
God of Israel, yet your practice is to bow down in the house of Rimmon.
You wish to have all the promises of God vouchsafed to you, but you
decidedly object to make any vows in His sanctuary. It is to such as
you that these delicate appeals are most distasteful, "Turn, O
backsliding children, says the Lord; for I am married unto you."
Nothing in your experience responds to this. You stand aloof as if you
were grieved. I must warn you, therefore, that God can be your God only
in these bonds of Covenant Union.
But, Christian, I speak to you. Surely you know something about this,
that God is married to you? If you do, can you not say with me, "Yes,
and He has been a very faithful Husband to me"? Now, there is no one of
you who can object to that! Thus far He has been very faithful to you
and what have you been to Him? How kind and tender has He been! How
faithful, how generous, how sympathizing! In your every affliction He
has been afflicted, and the angel of His Presence has saved you. Just
in your extremity He has come to your rescue.
He has carried you through every difficulty, even until now. Oh, you
can speak well of Him, can you not? And as for His love–Christian, as
for His love–what do you think of that? Is it not Heaven on earth to
you? Do you not reckon it to be–
"Heaven above To see His face, To taste His love"?
Well, then, speak well of Him, speak well of Him! Make this world hear
His praise! Ring that silver bell in the deaf ears of this generation!
Make them know that your Beloved is the fairest of the fair and compel
them to enquire, "O you fairest among women, what is your Beloved more
than another beloved?"
As for you who do not know Him, I should like to ask you this question,
and you answer it for yourselves. Do you want to be married to Christ?
Do you wish to have Him? Oh, then there will be no difficulties in the
way of the match! If your heart goes after Christ, He will have you.
If, when you get home to your bedside, you say to Him, "Dear Savior,
here is my heart. Take it, wash it, save me," He will hear you! Whoever
you may be He will not refuse you. Oh He seeks you, He seeks you! And
when you seek Him, that is a sure sign that He has found you!
Though you may not have found Him, yet He has found you already. The
wedding ring is ready. Faith is the golden ring which is the token of
the marriage bond. Trust the Savior! Trust Him! Have done with trusting
to your good works. Have done with depending upon your merits. Take His
works, His merits, and rest alone upon Him, for now does He say unto
you, "I will betroth you unto Me forever. Yes, I will betroth you unto
Me in righteousness, and in judgment, and in loving kindness, and in
mercies. I will even betroth you unto Me in faithfulness–and you shall
know the Lord." So may He do unto every one of you, and may Christ's
name be glorified forever. Amen.
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Songs of Deliverance
A Sermon