Jerusalem the Guilty

Jerusalem the Guilty

(No. 3520)

A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, JULY 13, 1916.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"It cannot be that a Prophet should perish out of Jerusalem." Luke
13:33.

I CAN scarcely tell you under what singular feelings I am led to adopt
this text. It has entered my mind, whispered in my ears and I might
almost say, it has haunted my thoughts, for all the day long has it
been fresh in my memory, and again and again it has recurred to me in
the night watches. There is no comfort that I can extract from the
meditation, and not much instruction that I can deduce from the
oracular sentence. Conscience, however, lays on me a strong constraint.
Any portion from the Word of God that comes forcibly home to my own
soul, I am prone to accept, as it were, in trust for your sakes. So I
aim to deliver unto you that which I also received. Be it void of
comfort or charged with rebuke, God grant it may be acknowledged to
your profit and accepted to His praise!

"It cannot be that a Prophet should perish out of Jerusalem." Probably
this was a proverb among the Jews which our Savior used and endorsed.
For many years Jerusalem had been stained with the blood of Prophets.
These godly men might have lived securely in the rural districts of
Judah and among her various towns and hamlets, and though sometimes
annoyed, never exposed to violence–but so had the seat ofjudgment
become the throne of iniquity that vengeance was reeked where justice
should have ruled! Jerusalem, the metropolis of government, the center
of religion and the priests, became notorious as the scene of judicial
murder and vindictive martyrdom! It had been, through a number of
years, the place where one after another of God's servants had been
stoned and put to death. Our Savior seems to have felt that He was safe
while in Herod's jurisdiction, but that when He got to Jerusalem, He
was in imminent peril from conspirators–that there a baptism of blood
awaited Him, when His life would be sacrificed and He would become, as
it were, the Prince of Martyrs–an offering of the noblest life, a
shedding of the richest blood that ever was poured out on the altar at
Jerusalem! It seems strange that Jerusalem should have sunk so low as
to monopolize the sin of murdering the Prophets–that it should have
become renowned for persecution and vindictive cruelty–a city within
whose walls God's servants might look in vain for shelter. Where
popular feeling and the public courts were alike against them. Where
summary indictment and certain conviction were sure to be their lot!
"Oh, Jerusalem, Jerusalem! You that stone the Prophets and kill them
who are sent to you!"

From generation to generation had they thus framed mischief and done
violence–until our Lord accuses and holds them guilty of the slaughter
of His servants from "the blood of righteous Abel unto that of
Zacharias, the son of Bara-chias, whom they slew between the Temple and
the altar." What a fearful contrast this presents to the name that
Jerusalem had received, and the position that had been assigned to her!
Was she not called Jerusalem, the place of righteousness and of peace?
Her bards had praised her in glowing sonnets as, "beautiful for
situation, the joy of the whole earth." How did the Psalmist draw
lively, lovely images of her security, surrounded by mountains that
served as natural fortresses to protect her! And did he not even
picture the little hills that environed her as companions of the
mountain on which the Temple stood? "Why leap you so, you high hills?
This is the hill which God delights to dwell in." Where else did
acceptable sacrifices smoke? As for the altars of the high places, they
were an abomination to the Lord! The one altar at Jerusalem God had
ordained for acceptable sacrifice. There the tribes came up to worship.
It was the meeting place and rallying point of all the families of
Israel at their annual festivals–

"Unto her gates, with joys unknown

Did Judah's tribes repair.

The Son of David held His throne

And sat in judgment there."

Her mountain was illustrious in history. It was on one of her pinnacles
that Abraham drew the knife to slay his son! And on the spot where the
plague was stopped in David's day when the outstretched hand of the
angel was arrested at the threshing floor of Araunah, the Jebusite, was
built, stone by stone, the Temple where God delighted to dwell! It was
the source from where light went streaming through the land as from the
sun, and at the same time it was the great lake into which the rivers
of sacred prayer and praise constantly flowed, gleaming in their
fullness! Oh, Jerusalem, your very name was dear to the captives as
they sat mournfully down by Babylon's streams and wept, saying, one
with another, "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget
her cunning. If I do not remember you, let my tongue cleave to the roof
of my mouth if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joys." You seem so
fair a city, so perfect a chrysolite! Your halls seem so truly made of
agate, and your gates of carbuncle that in your glory we see a type of
the abode of the saints of God–

"Jerusalem, my happy home! Name ever dear to me. When shall my labors
have an end, In joy, and peace, and thee?"

And has it come to this? Well, then, might the Savior, whom you did
despise and reject, weep over you! Jerusalem! Jerusalem! Has it come to
this? "You kill the Prophets and stone them that are sent to you." Has
it come to this? No marvel that your house is left unto you desolate,
that the holy city is given up to the abomination of desolation, and is
left to be trodden under foot by the Gentiles! Has it come to this? Oh,
horror of horrors! What sorrows are too sad and heart-rending to follow
at the heels of sin! Look, my Brothers and Sisters–that same sin which
once cast down Lucifer from his throne, degraded him from the royalties
of Heaven and doomed him to the Pit that burns with fire and brimstone
forever–that same sin has plucked this pearl from the regal diadem of
the King of Kings, subjected it to the direst dishonor and made it a
byword in the earth! So is her beauty spoiled! So is her sacredness and
such are the wages of sin, and such the recompense of transgressions!
As you think of this city of the great king converted into a place of
butchery and a shamble for Prophets, I would have you recollect that–

I. THE LIKE RIGHTEOUS RETRIBUTION IS STILL INFLICTED WHEREVER SIN SEEKS
SHELTER UNDER THE SOLEMN SANCTIONS OF A SOUNDING PROFESSION!

Now and then we are startled. Someone who had stood foremost among the
saints has all of a sudden excited public gaze, conspicuous as a fiend.
I remember such a man. He preached the Gospel and seemed to preach it
with intense sincerity. At any rate, there was such fervor in his
manner that zeal seemed to animate his heart. His words moved many–
souls were converted under his ministry, souls that shall make glad the
angels of God throughout eternity! He comforted the saints and many
disciples were refreshed by his discourses. But in an evil hour he
turned aside. His fall was precipitate. The sink was abysmal. Of
drunkards he became one of the worst! Of swearers the most profane!
Among licentious the most lewd! No slave of Satan was ever more in
earnest to destroy himself and to do his black master's bidding than
that same man who once ministered at the altar of God and appeared to
be a star in the right hand of Christ! And why may not such a collapse
occur to me? And why may it not occur to you, my Brother? Every man, it
has well been said, has not a soul of crystal whereby other men can
read his actions. You look fair. You seem to be a saint. Yet there may
be a worm in the center of your fair plant after all! Sudden death
often surprises those who appear to be in sound health, though slow
disease has long been sapping the strength of their system. Be not
deceived by appearances–make sure of your salvation! Jerusalem killed
the Prophets. Maybe you will likewise belie your pretensions to virtue.
You have heard of a woman out of whom seven devils were cast. Did you
never hear of one into whom seven devils entered?

There she stands. Never woman seemed more pure! Never penitent wept
more sparkling tears! Like another Mary Magdalene, she washed her
Savior's feet with her tears. Yes, she seems to sit at Jesus' feet and
love Him with all her heart. Earnest in season and out of season, we
admire her. But the time of trial comes–that time which tests the
metal whether it is gold or not. She gives her heart to another than
her Savior. Once led astray, no lips are more defiling than hers! No
feet run more swiftly in the way of the Destroyer. It happened unto her
that she did in theory know the way of righteousness, but the
gracefulness of her profession was not the Grace of God in truth–so
presently she turned aside, and she, who seemed to be a Hannah, turned
out to be a Jezebel! And she who once could sing, as we thought, the
grateful song of Mary, must hence forever weep a doleful Miserere!Take
care, my Sister, that you are safely built upon the Rock of Ages! As
Jerusalem killed the Prophets, so may you. I say so because I find it
in God's Word.

Have we not too often seen instances of those who were regular outward
attendants upon God's House who seemed to adorn the earthly courts and
bid fair for Heaven? Who rejoiced continually in holy things with a
full measure of assurance and rather frowned on some of the Brethren
who were sometimes depressed and filled with doubt and fears–have not
we seen you very Church members become the victims of some darling sin,
the prey of some base lust which has driven you like bullocks to the
slaughter? "There is a sin unto death." Our eyes have seen the
mischief! Our ears have listened to the tale! Our hearts have been
pained by the recital hundreds of times! From my youth up I have felt
indescribable terror when I heard of such an one who seemed to be a
pillar in the Church moved from his place–"Demas has forsaken me,
having loved this present evil world." When I have heard of it,
sometimes I have been ready to wail with the Prophet, "Howl, fir tree,
for the cedar has fallen." Those who seemed better than ourselves, more
gracious and far more gifted, have turned aside–and we have felt that
it is only by a miracle of Grace we have not done the same–

"So stones hang in the air So sparks in ocean live, Kept alive with
death so near, I to God the glory give."

Jerusalem killed the Prophets, and there is that secret wickedness in
the hearts of every one of us that would have made us do the same a
thousand times–that would have turned us from saints into devils, if
the constraining, preserving Grace of God had not defended us! Let us,
then, humbly acknowledge all this. Let us carefully search ourselves to
see whether we are in the faith and then let us gratefully bless that
mighty hand which, having begun its gracious work, will not leave us
until it has perfectly performed its purpose and fulfilled in us all
the designs of love! Looked at thus, this passage conveys a very solemn
warning. How terrible must be the deathbed of a man who, after having
made a profession, and perhaps preached the Gospel, has become an
apostate! Can we picture the siege of Jerusalem? I believe that all
human rhetoric must fail in the description and that if a painter
dipped his brush in blood, he could not sketch the horrors of that
awful time! If those days had not been shortened, surely the whole race
had been swept away! There never was and never shall be until the Last
Tremendous Day, anything that can be paralleled with the destruction of
Jerusalem under Vespasian and Titus! In like manner, there is nothing,
I think, that can parallel–certainly nothing that can exceed–the
horrors of the dying bed of an apostate. Did you ever read the story of
Francis Spire, or of John Auld, in the days of the last nonconforming
reformation in England? If you ever read the stories of these
deathbeds, they will ring in your ears at night, and make you cry out,
"O God, if I am damned, let it not be as an apostate! If I must perish,
yet let me not perish as one who, like a dog, returns to his vomit, or
like a sow that was washed, to her wallowing in the mire." Jerusalem
stoned the Prophets! You young men who are just putting on your
harness, boast not as though you were taking it off!

Beginners in the way of Grace, it is a great and solemn Truth of God
that every child of God will hold on until the end, but it is an
equally solemn Truth that many who profess to be the Lord's are
self-deceivers and will turn out apostates after all! They will go back
to the beggarly elements from which they appear to have escaped and
begin to stone the Prophets, whom once they professed to reverence and
love! How dreadful their doom! To see the Lord when fire blazes before
Him, and the clouds form a chariot beneath Him–when "He shall come,
but not the same as once in lowliness He came"–when He shall appear in
rainbow wreath and clouds of storm, how dreadful will it be to those
who turned their backs upon Him! In vain shall they call upon the
mountains and rocks to cover them! They must face Him whom they
deserted. They must be arraigned before Him whom they treacherously
betrayed. Oh, how they will fall in speechless, helpless, hopeless
dismay before Him! And oh, how He will trample on them in His anger
because they trampled on His blood in their treachery and crucified to
themselves the Lord of Life afresh! God save us from their eternal
woes, for of all bitter remorse and fell despair, theirs must be the
most tormenting! The privileges they enjoyed aggravate the perdition in
which they are engulfed. Down from Heaven's gates they are thrust into
Hell by the back door! Their faces, once towards Jerusalem the Golden,
now confront the accursed Gehenna! Far from the rayless, pathless
outlook with which they bid farewell to mortal life to the dire reality
of their dreaded doom they are launched forth, "wandering stars, for
whom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever." Such are trees
without fruit, twice dead, plucked up by the roots! Such are raging
waves of the sea, foaming out their own shame! "God deliver us from
their character and their conduct, lest we reap the consequence that is
sure to close their career!" Now to draw a fresh lesson, let me remind
you of–

II. THE UTTER USELESSNESS OF OUTWARD PRIVILEGES UNLESS THERE IS INWARD
PURITY.

Never was a city more richly endowed or more highly privileged than was
Jerusalem of old. As we have already said, it was the city of the great
king. There all the festivals were held. Her priests were her pride.
The anointed ministers of the altar thronged her streets, numerous as
the flowers which bedeck the meadows in spring. There you might have
heard the voice of sacred song every hour in the day! Within her gates
the ritual of religion was observed with almost perpetual celebrations.
All that was comely, sacred and holy seemed to have an exclusive abode
within her precincts. Yet for all that, these people were not a whit
the better. They had a baneful monopoly that they shamefully coveted–a
monopoly of killing the Prophets and of stoning those whom God sent to
them! The means of Grace were evidently not blessed to them.

How plainly this shows the possibility of retaining sin, unsubdued and
unchecked, notwithstanding all the righteousness that is taught in
precepts, and all the Divine Grace that is exhibited in ordinances! Are
there not regular attendants here who, though they mingle with the
Church, join in the hymns of praise and listen to the words of
exhortation, are as corrupt in their character and their conversation
as if they went nowhere? Sit there not in these pews those who are as
covetous, as bad tempered and, in some cases, as licentious as if they
never entered a place worship at all? For them our most earnest
rebukes, invitations and warnings are ineffective as the roaring of the
wild waves of the sea, or the ringing of bells in a church tower–they
produce no sort of moral or spiritual result! I speak solemnly of
individuals, not censoriously of systems, when I affirm, without
particularizing any denomination, because the same is true among
ourselves! I know there are thousands who go to church and believe
because they have conformed, more or less, to religious customs and
observed the sacraments, all seems well with them–but neither Doctrine
nor discipline of Christians exert the slightest influence upon their
hearts or their lives! Their temper is as fiery or as morose. Their
greed for the world just as inordinate. Their vanity and fondness of
display quite as unseemly and the petty vices of a degraded mind as
freely indulged as if they ranked themselves among the profane! They
have all the outward signs of religion, but they have not a particle of
vital godliness!

I remember a time when people wore rings round their fingers to cure
their bones of rheumatism. It may have done them some good, though I
doubt it! But that outward forms of religion can be of any use to purge
the heart, or sanctify the soul, I utterly disbelieve! What does it
matter whether you go to church or not? Whether you use a prayer book
or a hymnal or not, or whether you bend your knee morning and evening
or not, if these things have no effect upon you–if you walk after the
flesh and not after the Spirit? You may as well leave off these
religious fashions, though it may seem rather bold to say so. I would
rather you put off every sham because then you would know where and
what you are! Religious pretence only deceives others and fools
yourselves. We always talk about England as a Christian country. We are
wrong! It is not a Christian, it is a heathen country! There are some
Christians in it, thank God! But the country is not a Christian
country. The Metropolis is not Christian. London, herself, is a heathen
city. Vice and violence, lewdness and licentiousness are as ripe in her
as they are in Paris or Vienna, Calcutta or Bombay! You need not go far
afield–take the nearest court, or the blind alley that leads out of
the main street, or go into some of the great houses at the West End
and you will see in them such awful abominations as might convince you
that their frequenters say, in their heart, there is no God, or, if
they worshipped a deity, it was Buddha or Vishnu! Count the churches,
count the chapels, take account of the mission stations–sum up all the
outward privileges and mark the condition! In the teeth of them all, we
may say sin is growing more rampant! The more religion, the more sin,
if it is a religion of outward rites without the power of godliness!
Jerusalem was the worst of cities and yet the most religious. It was
the most profane because it was the most sanctimonious–its piety being
a mere empty profession. In no other city was there so much
lip-service, cringing and bowing. In offering oblations and burning
incense, she was pre-eminent! Still, no other city had such a
reputation for stoning the Prophets!

And it may be that your real character may be as little in keeping with
your pretensions. You may have prayers every morning and Bible readings
every day. You may resort to sacraments, practice genuflections,
observe festivals and make pilgrimages–all to no purpose! Your seeming
sanctity may be only a mask, covering up folly and vice. The balance is
on the wrong side. Your creed has aggravated your crimes! Your religion
has precipitated your ruin. The tag-raggery of vestments and ceremonies
are but the histrionics of religion in which amateurs delight! All
their mystery and pomp are mere stage play. No benefit whatever can you
derive from such principles or such performances. All the trust you put
in them must entail miserable disappointments–it may involve you in
desperate consequences! No lies can be harmless!

Self-deception must be deadly! Lend me your eyes and I will show you
the worst man in Jerusalem. What? Do you think that I am going to point
out that tax-gatherer? By no means! He is a scoundrel, I admit. He
exacted three times as much as he ought of that poor widow, and drained
her resources. No doubt he is a real bad fellow, but I know a worse. Go
knock at the door of yon affluent rabbi–you cannot be admitted just
yet. Ask the servant where his master is. He will tell you that he is
at prayers. He will not be at liberty for three-quarters of an hour at
least. You must wait, I suppose, until this gentleman has finished his
devotions. After a while he condescends to put in an appearance. You
look at him with surprise. Whatever is that remarkable feature on his
forehead? You might fancy he must have fallen down and bruised himself,
and put a piece of plaster on his forehead. Oh, no–that little box on
his forehead is inscribed with texts of Scripture! A Bible precept
supplies him with a bold pretext–"You shall bind them for a frontal
between your eyes." So, like a fool, taking the sound and leaving the
sense, he has inserted a series of texts into a box and tied it on to
his head! And, oh, what a deep fringe he has to his robe! It is half as
long as his robe. What is that for? Because he is told to have a border
to his garment and so he has it broad–half an inch would have done,
but he has it seven inches at least! He cannot do anything in
moderation as it should be done. He must carry everything to an
extreme. If you wish to speak to this gentleman, you find he really
cannot attend to you because he is just going up to the Temple–he has
a little account to pay there. He shows it to you. Of course, he says
he likes to show it. You can see how precise he is. It is a farthing–
and an eighth part of it is for mint he has been using. He is very
careful about tiny matters. Before he goes to pay that, he tells the
servant to mind and strain out all the gnats, lest he should swallow
any unclean animal when he drinks his wine. Follow him up to the Temple
and you will observe him standing by himself. He is saying, "God, I
thank You that I am not as other men are." It is rude, perhaps, to pry
into his private doings, but as he is gone out, just let us take a look
into this little sanctum and see his accounts. We begin to look at them
and we must be quick, for fear he should come and catch us. Look at
this entry, "Half a dozen widows' houses devoured last week." Go on and
you will see all sorts of bad things that he has been doing. He would
not have been such an atrocious villain had it not been for his
religion! He wraps that about him as a cloak and it prevents his seeing
what a great sinner he is. Perhaps if he did not practice so much
piety, he might be shocked at his lack of morality. As Jesus said to
the Pharisees, "If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now you
say you see–therefore, your sin remains."

This man pretends to be a saint, but he proves to be a devil! His
soaring profession aggravates his heartless infamy. Surely, I think,
this example falls fairly within the scope of my text. Jerusalem, as a
locality, the center of devoutness, became the cesspool of corruption!
If you have the cherubim without the Shekinah. If you have the sacred
symbols without the sanctifying Spirit. If you have the sound creed
without the lively faith. If you have Gospel in the pulpit without
Grace in the heart. If you have Protestant Christianity without a
precious Christ, then the decadence of your religion will lead to the
demoralizing of your character! The mere possession of the outward
means of Grace may have no better effect than that of making men worse.
Yet it entails a very solemn responsibility. No man can sin after he
has received the Light of God from above, so cheaply as he does who
commits his transgressions in the dark. When you are warned, and
entreated, and begged to turn from the error of your ways–should you
still pursue them, "Being often warned, and hardening your neck," the
sentence is, "you shall be suddenly destroyed, and that without
remedy." I believe some hyper-Calvinists raise an objection to the
responsibility of man while hearing the Gospel. And there are several
other things to which they likewise object, but I hope we shall always
accept the testimony of God's Word without distorting it, whether it is
agreeable or distasteful to us. As for me, I have braved the sneer of
men because I feared the frown of my Lord. But now they are dead that
troubled me and it is not likely that I shall cease to speak of
unbelief as other than a grievous sin, a capital crime and an
aggravation of all other transgressions! The Gospel is either a savor
of life unto life, or of death unto death to everyone of you who hears
it. If it is not a stone of help, it will become a stone of stumbling.
You will either fall upon it and be broken, or it will fall upon you
and grind you to powder! Beware, you that hear the Gospel and trifle
with it, lest it be said unto you, "Behold, you despisers, and wonder,
and perish."

I believe that throughout eternity the punishment of the guilty will be
aggravated forever by the privileges against which they have persisted
in sinning. To sink into perdition from the shadow of the Gospel is
possible. To go down with warnings of judgment and wooing of mercy
sounding in one's ears is suicidal! To leap into the Pit headfirst and
to find out the deepest depths of dire despair is dreadful beyond
description! To think of it conjures up thoughts from which we recoil.
Oh, call it not a fatal mistake, for it is a foul crime! The heathen,
who never heard of Christ, cannot accuse them-

selves of having wasted Sabbaths and rejected a Savior. But Sabbath
after Sabbath you who have had the Gospel delivered in your
hearing–you will have to bear a reproach like this, "You knew the
Gospel, but loved it not!" This shall be the perpetual worm that shall
never die. There was a time when God called. He himself said it, "I
called, but you refused; I stretched out My hand, and no man regarded
it; therefore, I also will laugh at your calamity, I will mock when
your fear comes." In like manner Jesus says, "Woe unto you, Chorazin;
woe unto you, Bethsaida; it shall be more tolerable for Sodom and
Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for you." The privilege in each
instance clenches the responsibility. Oh, may this solemn Truth of God
abide with each of us!

Now let me, in closing, give a slightly different tone to our
meditation. We have seen that Jerusalem had a monopoly of one sin–she
killed the Prophets.

III. THERE ARE SINS WHICH GOD'S PEOPLE, HIS REAL PEOPLE, TRUE AND
GENUINE SAINTS, MAY BE CHARGED WITH–no, of which they may accuse
themselves, as exclusively their own! Possibly the very mention of them
may lead us to repent and bring us back, again, humbly and penitently
to the foot of the Cross that we may accept with the more gratitude the
full Atonement which our Savior made. You and I are, dear Friends, the
children of God in a sense in which other men are not–we are part of
His great family. Being regenerated and adopted, we have received the
nature of children and been put into their status. Other men are but
subjects under His Law–we are sons and daughters. No servant can sin
as a child can. A servant and a son may both be guilty of the same
offense, but there is a difference in the degree of guilt, because of
the relationship. A father may well say, "My servant ought not to have
done this–he has offended me. But as for you, my own child, my
beloved, you have grieved me to my heart, for you have sinned against a
father's love as well as against a father's authority. You are bound to
me by ties so close that you ought to have been more scrupulous. I can
understand a servant injuring my property or my reputation, but to my
child, both of these should be very dear." There seems to me to be a
baseness about the ingratitude of a child with which the unkindness of
a friend will not compare. Sharper than an adder's tooth is the conduct
of a thankless child, because he is a child. I do not think it is
possible for anyone not related to break and wound a mother's heart as
her own child can. You Christians can easily apply this reflection to
yourselves. There is a peculiar wickedness about your sin. In the
judgment of others it is the same, but in your own judgment, if you
think of your heavenly Father and your nearness to Him, it will seem to
be far worse. Dear Friend, remember you are not only a child, but
sometimes you rejoice to think that you are Christ's spouse! Now, one's
spouse lies very near one's heart. Another person may say something
against me, and I might pass it over. A remark which, coming from a
stranger, or even from a friend, we might slight, but did it come from
one's own spouse, it would cut deep into the very soul! You would say,
"It was not an enemy. Then I could have borne it. But it was you– you
who rests in my bosom and enjoys my perfect confidence–you have lifted
up your heel against me." Say, then, child of God, do you not see that
your sins may have a peculiar heinousness about them? Them may be a
stoning of Prophets, and a crucifying of Christ in your misdeeds!
Although still favored as a bride, never to be divorced, your crime is
bitter and to be repented of bitterly.

There is one sin which has often oppressed my heart, and I dare say it
has yours. We grow cold in love to our Savior. Some of you do not love
your Savior with the same warmth and devotedness you did at first.
There may be those among you who plead not guilty. I wish most of you
could, but, alas, how many of you have to look back upon former days
and say, "O that it were with me as in the days that are past!" More
cause you have for loving Him–more coals have been put on the fire,
but yet it is less hot and burns less brightly! More stones have been
thrown on the marker and yet it is smaller than it was at first! Oh,
strange it is–we sometimes even almost wonder to see it–that some who
since they first came to Christ and rested only on Him, have had many
gifts and Graces vouchsafed to them–have almost put them in the place
of Him who gave them! Master Brookes says, "Suppose a loving husband
were to hang his wife's ears with earrings, and put jewels about her
neck, and rings upon her fingers–and she got so fond of all these
pretty things that she forgot her husband? It would be a sad thing if
love tokens should make us forget the hand that gave them." This case
is just like ours–we begin looking at our own good works and Graces
and get to be so pleased that we forget from whom they came–and look
upon them as our own! Whereas there is no luster in them except that
which is reflected–and we shall soon lose even the reflection if we
get contented with them. We must look to Christ, and Him alone! Shame
on us Christians that we should be thus remiss and negligent of our
deepest, most tender obligations! This is a vice to which even the
heathen are not prone.

Do you ever hear of a nation forsaking its gods? Well might the Prophet
expostulate, since no other nation forsook its gods, yet Israel forsook
hers! Worldly men do not forsake their pursuits with the indifference
that you forsake yours. They grow more and more enamored of the
flaunting charms of that woman Jezebel, the world, while our hearts,
alas, are often forgetful of our fair, infinitely fair, Lord Jesus, and
go rambling abroad with some other love! This is a sin which none but
Christians commit! And what shall I say of the doubts we cast upon the
faithfulness of God, after having proved it so conspicuously? No
unconverted person can have proved it as we have done. There are
promises of which anyone, especially the stranger within our gates,
might have availed himself. The world, however, discredits sheer worth.
But some of you have gone to the Throne of Grace with pleas based on
promises not once only–perhaps if I should say you have gone hundreds
and thousands of times, I should not exceed the number of proofs you
have made of the Divine faithfulness! Fifty years have transpired since
some of you came to the Lord, and you never found Him slack. He never
dishonored His own Word–He has been faithful and true in the midst of
all that was fleeting and transient. Yet your heart flutters and your
lips murmur when a fresh trial arises. How can you be so distrustful,
so provoking? Airy says, "If there is a God, if prayer can prevail, if
there is any kind of piety that is not a baseless presumption–all
these are moot questions with the men of this generation." But you know
there is a God! You know He hears prayer! You know He honors obedience
and fulfils every tittle He has spoken! Why should you ever harbor a
doubt, or cherish a misgiving? Is it not monstrous? Doubt, now? What
fresh pledge, what further guarantee can you require? Do strive
earnestly. Do pray constantly that this accursed unbelief may be cast
out of you! Are you not heirs of Heaven? Are you not looking for and
waiting for the coming of the Son of God? Shall your faith be steadfast
as to the goal, and yet in suspense as to the journey?

With such seed thoughts have I ruminated on my text, "It cannot be that
a Prophet should perish out of Jerusalem." Jerusalem! Your name
suggests to me all that is beautiful for situation, and all that is
precious for privileges–and yet I tremble at your history, for it is a
record of mischief and misery! O Jerusalem, Jerusalem! Rather had I
sung your praise than rehearsed your crimes! But, O God, let the words
of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be alike acceptable to You!
May such warnings be as fruitful as any wooing in drawing reluctant
hearts to right allegiance. This is my last word–Believe and live!
Amen.