Christ Glorified as the Builder of His Church

Christ Glorified as the Builder of His Church

A Sermon

(No. 191)

Delivered on Sabbath Morning, May 2, 1858, by the

REV. C.H. SPURGEON

at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens

"He shall build the temple of the Lord, and he shall bear the
glory."–Zechariah 6:13.

"There's music in all things, if men had ears;

This world is but the echo of the spheres."

HEAVEN singeth evermore. Before the throne of God, angels and redeemed
saints extol his name. And this world is singing too; sometimes with
the loud noise of the rolling thunder, of the boiling sea of the
dashing cataract, and of the lowing cattle; and often with that still,
solemn harmony, which floweth from the vast creation, when in its
silence it praises God. Such is the song which gushes in silence from
the mountain lifting its head to the sky, covering its face sometimes
with the wings of mist, and at other times unveiling its snow-white
brow before its Maker, and reflecting back his sunshine, gratefully
thanking him for the light with which it has been made to glisten, and
for the gladness of which it is the solitary spectator, as in its
grandeur it looks down upon the laughing valleys. The tune to which
heaven and earth are set, is the same. In heaven they sing, "The Lord
be exalted; let his name be magnified for ever." And the earth singeth
the same: "Great art thou in thy works, O Lord! and unto thee be
glory." It would seem, therefore, a strange anomaly if the church, the
temple of the living God, should be void of song, and we bless God that
such an anomaly doth not exist, for "day and night they praise God in
his temple." And while it is true the ceaseless circles of the starry
heavens are praising him without cessation, it is also true that the
stars of earth, the churches of the Lord Jesus Christ, are each of them
evermore singing their hymns of praise to him. To-day, in this house,
thousands of voices shout his name, and when the sun of to-day shall
set, it shall rise upon another land, where Christian hearts awakened,
shall begin to praise as we have just concluded; and when to-morrow we
shall enter upon the business of the week, we will praise him when we
rise, we will praise him when we retire to rest, and we will solace
ourselves with the sweet thought, that when the link of praise here is
covered with darkness, another golden link is sparkling in the sunshine
in the lands where the sun is rising when it sets upon us.

And mark how the music of the church is set to the same tune as that of
heaven and earth–"Greet God, thou art to be magnified." Is not this
the unanimous song of all the redeemed below? When we sing, is not this
the sole burden of our hosannahs and hallelujahs?–"Unto him that
liveth and sitteth upon the throne, unto him be glory, world without
end." Now, my text is one note of the song. May God help me to
understand, and to make you to understand it also. "He shall build the
temple of the Lord, and he shall bear the glory." We all know that the
Lord Jesus Christ is here alluded to, for the context runs–"Behold the
man, whose name is the Branch"–which title is ever applied to the
Messiah, Jesus Christ of Nazareth. "He grew up out of his place, and he
shall build the temple of the Lord; even he shall build the temple of
the Lord, and he shall bear the glory, and shall sit and rule upon his
throne; and he shall be a priest upon his throne: and the counsel of
peace shall be between them both."

Now we shall notice this morning, first of all, the temple, that is the
Church of Christ. We shall notice next, its builder–"He," that is
Jesus, "shall build the temple." Then we shall stop a moment and pause
to admire his glory,–"He shall bear the glory." Then we shall attempt,
under the good hand of the Holy Spirit, to make some practical
applications of the subject.

I. The first point is THE TEMPLE. The temple is the church of God; and
here let me begin by just observing, that when I use the term "church
of God," I use it in a very different sense from that in which it is
sometimes understood. It is usual with many Church of England people,
to use the term "church" as specially applying to the bishops,
archdeacons, rectors, curates, and so forth: these are said to be the
church and the young man who becomes a pastor of any congregation is
said to "enter the church." Now I believe that such a use of the term
is not scriptural. I would never for one moment grant to any man that
the ministers of the gospel constitute the church. If you speak of the
army, the whole of the soldiers constitute it; the officers may
sometimes be spoken of first and foremost, but still the private
soldier is as much a part of the army as the highest officer. And it is
so in the church of God, all Christians constitute the church. Any
company of Christian men, gathered together in holy bonds of communion
for the purpose of receiving God's ordinances, and preaching what they
regard to be God's truths, is a church; and the whole of these churches
gathered into one, in fact all the true believers in Christ scattered
throughout the world, constitute the One true Universal Apostolic
Church, built upon a rock, against which the gates of hell shall not
prevail. Do not imagine, therefore, when I speak at any time of the
church, that I mean the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London,
and some twenty other dignitaries, and the whole host of ministers. No,
nor when I speak of the church do I mean the deacons, the elders, and
pastors of the Baptist denomination, or any other–I mean all them that
love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and in truth, for these make up
the one universal church which hath communion in itself with itself,
not always in the outward sign, but always in the inward grace; the
church which was elect of God before the foundation of the world, which
was redeemed by Christ with his own precious blood, which has been
called by his Spirit, which is preserved by his grace, and which at
last shall be gathered in to make the church of the first-born, whose
names are written in heaven.

Well, now, this church is called the temple of God, and Christ is said
to be its builder. Why is the church called the temple? I reply very
briefly, because the temple was the place where God especially dwelt.
It was true that he did not wholly dwell in the temple made with hands,
of man's building, which Solomon piled upon the mount of Zion, but it
is true that in a special sense the Infinite Majesty there held its
tabernacle and its dwelling place. Between the wings of the
overshadowing cherubim, there did shine the bright light of the
Shekinah, the type, the manifestation, and the proof of the special
presence of Jehovah, the God of Israel. It is true he is everywhere; in
the highest heavens and in the deepest hell God is to found, but
especially did he dwell in his temple, so that when his people prayed,
they were bidden to turn their eye towards the temple as Daniel did,
when he opened his window towards Jerusalem, and offered his prayer.
Now such is the church. If you would find God, he dwelleth on every
hill-top, and in every valley, God is everywhere in creation; but if
you want a special display of him, if you would know what is the secret
place of the tabernacle of the Host High, the inner chamber of
divinity, you must go where you find the church of true believers, for
it is here he makes his continual residence known–in the hearts of the
humble and contrite, who tremble at his word.

Again, the temple was the place of the clearest manifestation. He who
would see God the best of all, must see him in his temple. I repeat, he
was to be discovered everywhere. If you stood on Carmel's top, and
looked towards the great sea wherein are all the ships and the great
leviathan he had made to play therein, there might God be discovered in
his great strength. If you turned your eye on the same hill, and looked
toward the vale of Esdraelon there was God to be seen in every blade of
grass, in every sheep feeding by the Stream; God was everywhere to be
discovered; but if you would see hint it is not on Bashan, it is not on
Sermon, it is not on Tabor; it was on Mount Zion that the Lord God
loved to make a special display of himself. It is so with the Church.
God is to be seen in the midst of her, her helper, her strength, her
teacher, her guide her deliverer, her sanctifier. In holy communion–in
the breaking of bread, and in the pouring out of wine, in holy
baptism–in the immersion of believers into the Lord Jesus Christ, in
the preaching of the Word, in the constant declaration of the great
salvation of Jesus, in the lifting up of the cross, in the high
exalting of him that died upon it, in the preaching of the Covenant, in
the declaration of the grace of God–here is he to be seen, here is his
name written in brighter letters and in clearer lines than elsewhere
the wide world o'er. Hence his church is said to be his temple Oh,
Christian people, you know this, for God dwelleth in you, and walketh
with you; you dwell in him, and he dwells in you–"the secret of the
Lord is with them that fear him, and he will show them his covenant."
It is your happy privilege to walk with God; he manifests himself to
you, as he doth not unto the world; he takes you into his inner
chamber; he manifests his love; the song of Solomon is sung in your
courts, and nowhere else; it is not the song of the wide world, it is
the sonnet of the inner chamber, the song of the house of wine, the
music of the banquet. You understand this, for you have been brought
into near acquaintance with Christ; you have been made to lean your
head upon his bosom, you have been taught to look into his heart, and
to see eternal thoughts of love there towards you. You know well,
better than we can tell you, what it is to be the temple of the living
God.

And once more; we should fail to describe the reason why the word
"temple" is used to picture the church, if we did not observe that the
church is like the temple–a place of worship. There was a law passed
by God, that no offering should be presented to him except upon the one
altar in his temple at Jerusalem, and that law is extant to this day.
No acceptable service can be offered to Christ except by his church.
Only those who believe in Christ can offer songs, and prayers, and
praises, that shall be received of God. Whatever ordinances you attend
to, who are without Christ in your hearts, you do belie that ordinance
and prostitute it–you do not honor God therein. Two men go up to the
temple to pray, the one a believer the other an unbeliever. He that is
an unbeliever may have the gifts of oratory, the mightiest fluency of
speech, but his prayer is an abomination unto God, whilst the feeblest
utterance of the true believer is received with smiles by him that sits
upon the throne. Two persons go to the Master's table–the one loveth
the ordinance in its outward sign, and reverenceth it with
superstition, but he knows not Christ; the other believes in Jesus, and
knows how to eat his flesh and drink his blood as a worthy partaker in
that divine ordinance; God is honored in the one, the ordinance is
dishonored in the other. Two persons come to holy Baptism: the one
loves the Master, believes in his name, and trusts him; he is baptized,
he honors Christ Another comes, perhaps an unconscious infant, one who
is incapable of faith; or hath no faith; he dishonors God, he dishonors
the ordinance in venturing to touch it, when he is not one of the
church, and therefore hath no right to offer sacrifice of prayer and
praise unto the Lord our God. There is only one altar–that is, Christ;
and there is only one set of priests, namely, the church of God, the
men chosen out of the world to be clothed in white robes to minister at
his altar. and whosoever besides pretendeth to worship God, worshippeth
him not aright. His offering is like that of Cain; God hath no respect
to his sacrifice, for without faith it is impossible to please God. We
care not who it is that doth the act; unless he believeth, he cannot
will pleasure from God, nor shall his sacrifice be accepted.

I have thus noted the reasons why the church is said to be the temple.
As there was only one temple, so there is only one church. That one
church is his holy place, where God dwells, where God accepts worship,
where songs of praise are daily uttered, and the smoking incense of
prayer continually comes up before his nostrils with acceptance.

II. Now, we have an interesting subject in the second part of our text.
"He shall build the temple of the Lord." CHRIST IS THE CHURCH'S ONLY
BUILDER. Now, I shall want to make a parallel between Christ's building
the church, and Solomon, as the builder of the first temple. When
Solomon built the temple, the first thing he did was to obtain
instructions with regard to the model upon which he should build it.
Solomon was exceeding wise, but I do not think he was his own
architect. The Lord, who had shown the pattern of the old tabernacle in
the wilderness to Moses, doubtless showed the pattern of the temple to
Solomon, so that the pillars, and the roof, and the floor thereof were
all ordained of God and every one of them settled in heaven. Now,
Christ Jesus in this is no Solomon; with this exception, that being God
over all, blessed for ever, he was his own architect. Christ has made
the plan of his church. You and I have made a great many plans for the
building up of that church. The Presbyterian makes his plans extremely
precise. He will put an elder in every corner, and the Presbytery is
the great ground-work–the pillar and the ground of the truth, and
right is he in so doing to an extent. The Episcopalian builds his
temple too. He will have a bishop at the door-post, and he will have a
priest to shut the gate. He will have everything built according to the
model that was seen by Cranmer in the mount, if he ever was there at
all. And those of us who are of severer discipline, and have a simpler
style, must have Christ's church always built in the congregational
order; every congregation distinct and separate, and governed by its
own bishop, and deacons, and elders. But mark, Christ does not attend
to our points of church government, for there is one part of Christ's
church that is Episcopalian, and looks as if a bishop of the Church of
England had ordered it; another part is Presbyterian; another, Baptist,
another, Congregational; and yet all these styles of architecture
somehow fused into one by the Great Architect, make that goodly
structure which is called "the temple of Christ, the church of the
firing God, the pillar and ground of truth." Christ must be his own
architect. He will bring out different points of truth in different
ways. Why, I believe that different denominations are sent on purpose
to set out different truths. There are some of our brethren a little
too high, they bring out better than any other people, the grand old
truths of sovereign grace. There are some, on the other hand, a little
too low; they bring out with great clearness the great and truthful
doctrines of man's responsibility. So that two truths that might have
been neglected, either the one or the other, if only one form of
Christianity existed, are both brought out, both made resplendent, by
the different denominations of God's people, who are alike chosen of
God, and precious to him.

God forbid I should say anything that would bolster up any in their
errors; nevertheless God's people, even in error, are a precious
people. Even when they seem to be as earthen pitchers, the work of the
hands of the potter, they are still comparable to fine gold. Rest
assured that the Lord hath deep designs to answer, even by the
divisions of his church. We must not interfere with Christ's reasons,
nor with his style of architecture. Every stone that is in the temple,
Jesus Christ ordained should be put where it is; even those stones that
are most contemptible and unseen, were put in their places by him.
There is not one board of cedar, one piece of burnished pinnacle, that
was not foreseen and pre-arranged in that eternal covenant of grace
which was the great plan that Christ, the Almighty Architect, did draw
for the building of the temple to his praise. Christ, then, is the only
Architect, and he shall bear the glory, for he designed the building.

Now, you remember that when Solomon set to work to build his temple, he
found a mountain ready for his purpose, mount Moriah. The top of it was
not quite broad enough, he had therefore to enlarge it, so that there
might be room for the beautiful temple, the joy of the whole earth.
When Jesus Christ came to build his temple, he found no mountain on
which to build it; he had no mountain in our nature, he had to find a
mountain in his own, and the mountain upon which he has built his
church is the mountain of his own unchangeable affection, his own
strong love, his own omnipotent grace and infallible truthfulness. It
is this that constitutes the mountain upon which the church is built,
and on this the foundation hath been digged, and the great stones laid
in the trenches with oaths and promises and blood to make them stand
secure, even though earth should rock and all creation suffer decay.

Then after Solomon had his mountain ready and the foundation builded,
the next trouble was he had no trees near at hand: there were, however,
fine trees growing in Lebanon, but his servants had not skill enough to
cut them down. He had therefore, to send for Hirum, king of Tyre, with
his servants, to cut down the trees upon Lebanon, which, after being
shaped according to the model, were to be sent by rafts or floats to
Joppa, the port nearest to Jerusalem, and there brought a short
distance over land for the building of the temple. He had to do the
same with the stones of the quarry; for the different stones that were
needed for the building had to be hewn out of the quarry by Hiram's
servants, assisted by some of Solomon's people, who had inferior skill
and therefore were set about the more laborious and rougher parts of
the work. The same fact you will notice, if you will read the history
of the building of Solomon's temple, occured with regard to the making
of the vessels of the house. It is said that Hiram did cast them, and
Solomon found the gold; and the moulds were made in the great plain,
and Solomon did cast them there, with Hiram for his chief designer and
director.

Ah! but herein Solomon fails to be a type of Christ. Christ builds the
temple himself. There stand the cedars of Lebanon that the Lord hath
planted but they are not ready for the building; they are not cut down,
nor shaped nor made into those planks of cedar, whose odoriferous
beauty shall make glad the courts of the Lord in Paradise. No; Jesus
Christ must cut them down with the axe of conviction; he must cut them
up with the great saw of his law, he must plane and polish them with
his holy gospel. And when he hath made them fit to be pillars in the
house of the Lord, then they shall be carried across the sea to heaven;
then shall they be placed in his temple for ever. No Hiram is needed.
The axe is in his hand, the plane is in his hand too. He understandeth
well that business. Was he not a carpenter on earth? And spiritually,
he shall be the same to his church for ever and ever. It is even the
same with the stones of the temple. We are like rough stones in the
quarry. Behold the hole of the pit whence we were digged, and the rock
whence we were hewn. But we were hewn out of that rock by no hand but
Christ's. He raised up seed unto Abraham out of the stones of the pit;
it was his own hammer that broke the rock in pieces, and his own arm of
strength that wielded the hammer, when he dashed us from the rock of
our sin. Though we are each of us being polished, so that we may be
ready for the temple, yet there is nothing that polishes but Christ.
Afflictions cannot sanctify us, except as they are used by Christ, as
his mallet and his chisel. Our joys and our efforts cannot make us
ready for heaven apart from the hand of Jesus who fashioneth our hearts
aright, and prepareth us to be partakers of the inheritance of the
saints in light.

Thus you notice that herein Jesus Christ excels Solomon, for he
provides all the materials. He hews them himself; he rough-casts them
first, and then afterwards, during life, polishes them till he makes
them ready to transport them to the hill of God, whereon his temple is
to be built. I was thinking what a pretty figure was that floating of
the trees of Lebanon after being hewn into planks and made ready to be
fixed as pillars of the temple–what a fine emblem of death! Is it not
just so with us. Here we grow, and are at length cut down, and made
ready to become pillars of the temple. Across the stream of death, we
are ferried by a loving hand, and brought to the port of Jerusalem
where we are safely landed, to go no more out for ever, but to abide as
eternal pillars in the temple of our Lord Now, you know the Tyrians
floated these rafts; but no stranger, no foreigner shall float us
across the stream of death. It is remarkable that Jesus Christ always
uses expressions with regard to his people, which impute their death to
him alone. You will recollect the expression in the Revelation–"Thrust
in thy sickle, and reap: for the time is come for thee to reap; for the
harvest of the earth is ripe." But when he begins to reap, not the
vintage, which represents the wicked that were to be crushed, but the
harvest which represents the godly; then it is said "He that sat upon
the throne thrust in the sickle." He did not leave it to his angels, he
did it himself. It is so with the bringing of those planks, and the
moving of those stones. I say no king of Tyre and Sidon shall do it,
Jesus Christ who is the death of death and hell's destruction, he
himself shall pilot us across the stream, and land us safe on Canaan's
side. "He shall build the temple of the Lord."

Well, after these things were brought, Solomon had to employ many
thousand workmen to put them in their proper places. You know that in
Solomon's temple there was no sound of hammer heard, for the stones
were made ready in the quarries, and brought all shaped and marked so
that the masons might know the exact spot in which they were to be
placed; so that no sound of iron was needed. All the planks and timbers
were carried to their right places, and all the catches with which they
were to be linked together were prepared, so that there might not even
be the driving of a nail–everything was ready beforehand. It is the
same with us. When we get to heaven, there will be no sanctifying us
there, no squaring us with affliction, no hammering us with the rod, no
making us. We must be made meet here; and blessed be his name, all that
Christ will do beforehand. When we get there, we shall not need angels
to put this member of the church in one place, and that member in
another; Christ who brought the stones from the quarry and made them
ready, shall himself place the people in their inheritance in paradise.
For he has himself said "I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go
away, I will come again and I will receive you unto myself" Christ
shall be his own usher, he shall receive his people himself, he shall
stand at the gates of heaven himself to take his own people, and to put
them in their allotted heritage in the land of the blessed.

I have no doubt you have read many times the story of Solomon's temple,
and you have noticed that he overlaid all the temple with gold. He
provided much of the substance, but his father David brought him a good
store. Now Jesus will overlay all of us with gold, when he builds us in
heaven. Do not imagine we shall be in heaven what we are to-day. No,
beloved, if the cedar could see itself after it had been made into a
pillar, it would not know itself. If you could see yourselves as you
shall be made, you would say, " It doth not yet appear' how great we
must be made." Nor were these pillars of cedars to be left naked and
unadorned–though they had been fair and lovely then–they were
overlaid with sheets of gold. So shall we be. "It is sown in dishonor,
it is raised in glory. It is sown a natural body, it is raised a
spiritual body," plated with pure gold: no longer what it was, but
precious, lustrous, glorified.

And in the temple, we understand, there was a great brazen sea in which
the priests did wash themselves, and there were other brazen seas, in
which they washed the lambs and bullocks when they were offered. In
heaven there is a great laver, in which all our souls have been washed,
"for they have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of
the lamb." Now Christ himself prepares this sacred sea. He filled it
with blood from his own veins. As for our prayers and praises, the
great laver in which they are washed, was also made and filled by
Christ; so that they with us are clean, and we offer acceptable
sacrifices to God through Jesus Christ our Lord. I say again, before I
leave this head, there is no part of the great temple of the church,
which was not made by Christ. There is a great deal in the church on
earth, that Christ had nothing to do with, but there is nothing in his
true church, and nothing especially in his glorified church, which was
not put there by him. Therefore, we may well come to the conclusion, on
the last head, here, he shall bear all the glory, for he was the only
builder of it

III. Now, what a sweet thing it is to try and GLORIFY CHRIST. I am
happy this morning to have a subject that will magnify my Master. But
is it not a sad thing, that when we would magnify Christ most, our
poor, failing lips refuse to speak. Oh, if you would know my Master's
glory, you must see it for yourselves, for like the Queen of Sheba, the
halt can never be told you, even by those who know him most and love
him best. Half his glory never can be told. Pause awhile, and let me
endeavor to address to you a few loving words. Your Master, O ye saints
of the Lord, has prepared you and will build you into his temple. Speak
and say, he shall have all the glory. Let us note, first, that the
glory which he shall have will be a weighty glory. Dr. Gill says, "the
expression implies, that the glory will be a weighty one, for it said,
he shall bear the glory." "They shall hang," says another expression,
"upon him all the glory of his Father's house;" and in another place,
we are told, that there is "an exceeding weight of glory," which is
prepared for the righteous. How great then, the weight of glory which
shall be given to Christ. Oh, think not that Christ is to be glorified
in such humble measure, as he is on earth. The songs of heaven are
nobler strains than ours. The hearts of the redeemed pay him loftier
homage than we can offer. Try not to judge of the magnificence of
Christ by the pomp of kings, or by the reverence paid to mighty men on
earth. His glory far surpasses all the glory of this time and space.
The honor which shall be bestowed upon him is as the brightness of the
sun, the honors of earth are but the twinklings of a fading star.
Before him, at this very day, principalities and powers do bow
themselves. Ten thousand times ten thousand seraphim wait at his
footstool. "The chariots of the Lord are twenty thousand, even
thousands of angels," and all these wait his beck and his command. And
as for his redeemed, how do they magnify him? never staying, never
changing, never wearying; they raise their shout higher, and higher,
and higher, and yet louder, and louder still, the strain is lifted up,
and evermore it is the same. "To him that liveth and was dead and is
alive for evermore, unto him be glory, world without end."

And note again, that this glory is undivided glory. In the church of
Christ in heaven, no one is glorified but Christ. He who is honored on
earth has some one to share the honor with him, some inferior helper
who labored with him in the work; but Christ has none. He is glorified,
and it is all his own glory. Oh, when you get to heaven, ye children of
God, will ye praise any but your Master? Calvinists, today you love
John Calvin; will you praise him there? Lutheran, to-day thou dost love
the memory of that stern reformer; wilt thou sing the song of Luther in
heaven? Follower of Wesley, thou hast a reverence for that evangelist;
wilt thou in heaven have a note for John Wesley? None, none, none!
Giving up all names and all honors of men, the strain shall rise in
undivided and unjarring unison "unto him that loved us, that washed us
from our sins in his blood, unto him be glory for ever and ever."

But again: he shall have all the glory; all that can be conceived, all
that can be desired, all that can be imagined shall come to him.
To-day, you praise him, but not as you can wish; in heaven you shall
praise him to the summit of your desire. To-day you see him magnified,
but you see not all things put under him; in heaven all things shall
acknowledge his dominion. There every knee shall bow before him, and
every tongue confess that he is Lord. He shall have all the glory.

But to conclude on this point, this glory is continual glory. It says
he shall bear all the glory. When shall this dominion become effete?
When shall this promise be so fulfilled that it is put away as a worn
out garment? Never,

"While life, and thought, and being last,

Or immortality endures,"

we shall never leave off praising Christ. We think we can almost guess
how we shall feel when we get to heaven, with regard to our Master.
Methinks if I should ever be privileged to behold his blessed face with
joy, I shall want nothing but to be allowed to approach his throne, and
cast what little honor I may have before his feet, and then be there
and ever more adore the matchless splendor of his love, the marvels of
his might. Suppose some one entering were to say to the redeemed,
"Suspend your songs for a moment! Ye have been praising Christ, lo,
these six thousand years; many of you have without cessation praised
him now these many centuries! Stop your song a moment; pause and give
your songs to some one else for an instant." Oh, can you conceive the
scorn with which the myriad eyes of the redeemed would smite the
tempter? "Stop from praising him! No, never. Time may stop, for it
shall be no more; the world may stop, for its revolutions must cease;
the universe may stop its cycles and the movings of its world but for
us to stop our songs–never, never!"–and it shall be said,
"Hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah, the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth."
He shall have all the glory, and he shall have it for ever; his name
shall endure for ever; his name shall continue as long as the sun; men
shall be blessed in him, and all generations shall call him blessed;
therefore shall they praise him for ever and ever.

IV. Now, in conclusion, let us just make A PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF OUR
TEXT. Brothers and sisters, are we to-day built upon Christ? Can we
say, that we hope that we are a part of his temple; that his handiwork
has been exhibited upon us, and that we are built together with Christ?
If so, listen to one word of exhortation. Let us evermore honor him.
Oh! methinks, every beam of cedar, and every slab of gold, and every
stone of the temple, felt honored when it was raised up to be a part of
the fabric for Jehovah's praise. And if that cedar, that marble, could
have been vocal in that day when the flame descended from heaven, the
token of Jehovah's presence, the store, and the cedar, and the gold,
and the silver, and the brass, all would have burst out into song, and
would have said, "We praise thee, O God, for thou hast made the gold
more than gold, and the cedar more than cedar, inasmuch as thou hast
consecrated us to be the temple of shine indwelling." And now, will you
not do the same? O my brothers and sisters! God has highly honored you
to be stones in the temple of Christ. When you think of what you were,
and what you might have been; how you might have been stones in the
black dungeons of vengeance for ever, dark dank stones, where the mobs,
and the greed, and the slimy thing for ever might have lived;
disgraced, abandoned, cast away in blackness of darkness for ever–when
you think of this, and then remember that you are stones in Jehovah's
temple,–living stones,–oh, ye must say that ye will praise him, for
man is more than man, now that God dwelleth in him. Daughters of
Jerusalem, rejoice! you are more than women now. Sons of Israel,
rejoice! for your manhood is exalted, he hath made you temples of the
Holy Ghost–God dwelling in you and you in, him. Go out from this place
and sing his praise; go forth to honor him, and while the dumb world
wants you to be its mouth, go and speak for the mountain, for the hill,
for the lake, for the river, for the oak, and for the insect; speak for
all things; for you are to be like the temple, the seat of the worship
of all worlds; you are to be like the priests and offerers of the
sacrifices of all creatures.

Let me address myself last of all to others of you. Alas! my hearers, I
have many here who have no portion in Israel, neither any lot in Jacob.
How many of you there are, who are not stones in the spiritual temple,
never to be used in the building up of God's Jerusalem. Let me ask you
one thing; it may seem a slight thing to-day to be left out of the
muster-roll of Christ's church,–will it seem a slight thing to be left
out, when Christ shall call for his people? When you are all assembled
around his great white throne at last, and the books shall be opened,
oh! how dread the suspense, while name after name is read! how dreadful
your suspense, when it comes to the last name, and yours has been left
out! That verse of our hymn has often impressed me very solemnly:

"I love to meet among them now,

Before thy gracious feet to bow,

Though vilest of them all;

But can I bear the piercing thought–

What if my name should be left out,

When thou for them shalt call?"

Sinner conceive it! The list is read, and thy name unmentioned. Laugh
at religion now! scoff at Christ now! now that the angels are gathering
for the judgment; now that the trumpet sounds exceedingly loud and
long; now that the heavens are red with fire, that the great furnace of
hell o'erleaps its boundary, and is about to encircle thee in its
flame; now despise religion! Ah! no. I see thee. Now thy stiff knees
are bending, now thy bold forehead for the first time is covered with
the hot sweat of trembling, now thine eyes that once were full of scorn
are full of tears, thou dost lock on him whom thou didst despise, and
thou art weeping for thy sin. sinner, it will be too late then. there
is no cutting of the stone after it gets to Jerusalem. Where thou
fallest there thou liest. Where judgment ends thee, there eternity
shall leave thee. Time shall be no more when judgment comes, and when
time is no more, change is impossible! In eternity there can be no
change, no deliverance, no signing of acquittal. Once lost, lost for
ever; once damned, damned to all eternity. Wilt thou choose this and
despise Christ? or wilt thou have Christ and have heaven? I charge you
by him that shall judge the quick and the dead, whose I am, and whom I
serve, who is the searcher of all hearts, choose ye this day whom ye
will serve. If sin be best serve sin, and reap its wages. If you can
make your bed in hell, if you can endure eternal burnings, be honest
with yourself, and look at the wages while you do the work. But if you
would have heaven, if you would be amongst the many who shall be
glorified with Christ, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ; believe now,
to-day "If ye will hear his voice harden not your hearts as in the
provocation." "Kiss the Son, lest he be angry and ye perish from the
way, when his wrath is kindled but a little." Men, brethren, and
fathers, believe and live; cast yourself at Jesus' feet, put your trust
in him,

"Renounce thy works and ways with grief,

And fly to this most sure relief;"

giving up all you are to come to him, to be saved by him now, and saved
eternally. O Lord, bless my weak but earnest appeal, for Christ's sake.
Amen.
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