The King In His Beauty

The King In His Beauty

A sermon

(No. 752)

Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, MAY 26, 1867, by

C.H.SPURGEON,

At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

"Your eyes shall see the King in His beauty: they shall behold the land
that is very far off."- Isaiah 33:17.

WHEN the Assyrians had invaded Judea with an immense army and were
about to attack Jerusalem, Rabshakeh was sent with a railing message to
the king and his people. When Hezekiah heard of the blasphemies of the
proud Assyrian, he tore his clothes, put on sackcloth and went into the
house of the Lord and sent the elders of the priests, covered with
sackcloth, to consult with Isaiah the Prophet. The people of Jerusalem,
therefore, had seen their king in most mournful array, wearing the
garments of sorrow and the weeds of mourning. They were, however,
cheered by the promise that there should be so complete a defeat of
Sennacherib that the king should again adorn himself with the robes of
state and appear with a smiling countenance in all the beauty ofjoy.

Moreover, through the invasion of Sennacherib, the people had not been
able to travel. They had been cooped up within the walls of Jerusalem
like prisoners. No journeys had been made, either in the direction of
Dan or Beersheba. Even the nearest villages could not be reached–but
the promise is given that so completely should the country be rid of
the enemy that wayfarers should be able to see the whole of their
territory–even that part of the land which was very far off. It would
be safe for them to make long voyages–they would no longer be afraid
of the oppressor, but should find the highways, which once lay waste,
to be again open and safe for traffic.

In these days of Gospel Truth, dear Friends, we see in this text a
meaning far surpassing that which gladdened the citizens of Zion. We
have a nobler King than Hezekiah! He is the King of kings and Lord of
lords! We have seen our well-beloved Monarch, in the days of His flesh,
humiliated and sorely vexed, for He was "despised and rejected of men,
a Man of Sorrows, and acquainted with grief." He whose brightness is as
the morning wore the sackcloth of sorrow as His daily dress. Shame was
His mantle, and reproach was His vesture. None was more afflicted and
sorrowful than He. Yet now, inasmuch as He has triumphed over all the
powers of darkness upon the bloody tree, our faith beholds our King in
His beauty, returning with dyed garments from Edom, robed in the
splendor of victory!

No longer does He wear the purple robe of mockery, but He is clothed
with a garment down to the feet, and gird about the paps with a golden
girdle. We, also, His joyful subjects who were once shut up and could
not come forth, are now possessed of boundless Gospel liberty. Now that
we see Jesus crowned with glory and honor, we freely possess to its
utmost bounds the Covenant blessings which He has given to us. We
rejoice that if the land of happiness should sometimes seem very far
off, it is nevertheless our own and we shall stand in our lot in the
end of the days. The Savior highly exalted–and ourselves at a happy
liberty–these are two rich themes for thought! May God the Holy Spirit
grant that we may find wines on the lees well refined stored in the
text.

I. Proceeding, without further preface, to the text itself, we remark
that WE HAIL THE LORD JESUS CHRIST AS OUR KING. We–I must not speak
for you all–I wish I could, but there are some here, at any rate, who
have bowed the knee to that great Son of David who is the Son of God.
There are some here who delight to feel that Jesus is their heart's
Lord, the unrivalled Master of their affections. I speak of such–we
hail Immanuel as King!

His right to royalty lies first in His exalted Nature as the Son of
God. Who should be king but Jehovah? And, inasmuch as Jesus Christ is
very God of very God, let Him reign! Let His kingdom come! Let Him in
all things have the preeminence. Bow down, you creatures of His hand,
and do Him homage for the Lord is King forever and ever! Hallelujah!
Let His opposers tremble at the unchangeable decree, for the Son of God
must reign till He has put all enemies under His feet! It is not to be
endured that God should not be King in His own world! Neither will it
forever be allowed that God, in the earth which He has fashioned,
should be forgotten or blasphemed.

He who is God over all, blessed forever, shall yet be worshipped by
every knee, and every tongue shall confess that He is Lord! Jesus has a
right to reign because He is the Creator. "Without Him was not anything
made that was made." Shall not the Potter exercise lordship over His
own clay? If the Son of God has made and formed us, shall He not
command us? Who are the potsherds that shall set themselves in array
against Him? Surely He shall break them as with a rod of iron and dash
them into shivers!

Besides this, the Lord Jesus is the Preserver of all men, for by Him
all things consist. It is by virtue of His intercession that the barren
trees are not cut down. By the force of His tender love sinners are
spared upon the earth. Should He not reign? If the breath of our
nostrils is in His keeping and we are, ourselves, the sheep of His
pasture, should we not cheerfully yield to His generous rule? Besides
this, and over and above the natural rights of Christ to reign, He
governs by virtue of His Headship of the mediatorial kingdom. He is not
merely King because He is God, but He is King in His complex Nature as
God and Man.

Here He has the rights of Divine delegation, for God has made Him King.
Some of the worst of tyrants have delighted to call themselves kings by
Divine right. Emperors by the will of God. Monarchs by the Grace of
God, and the like. It may be so. I doubt not many of earth's tyrants
require much Grace, lest their crimes should bring them to speedy ruin!
And doubtless it is sometimes the will of God to inflict great scourges
upon guilty nations! But, my Brothers and Sisters, Jesus Christ is no
despotic claimant of Divine right–He is really and truly the Lord's
Anointed! "It has pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness
dwell."

God has given to Him all power and all authority. As the Son of Man, He
is now head over all things to His Church, and He reigns over Heaven,
and earth, and Hell with the keys of life and death at His side. "The
government shall be upon His shoulder: and His name shall be called
Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The Everlasting Father, The
Prince of Peace." We recognize Him as King by Divine right. We see in
Him most clearly that true Deity which "does hedge a king," and we
meekly bow before Him whom God has "appointed to be a Prince and a
Savior, to give repentance and remission of sins."

Certain princes have delighted to call themselves kings by the popular
will, and certainly our Lord Jesus Christ is such in His Church. If it
could be put to the vote whether He should be King in the Church, every
believing heart would crown Him. O that we could crown Him more
gloriously than we do! We should count no expense to be wasted that
could glorify Christ! Suffering would be pleasure and loss would be
gain if thereby we could surround His brow with brighter crowns and
make Him more glorious in the eyes of men and angels. Yes, He shall
reign! Long live the King! All hail to You, King Jesus! Go forth, you
virgin souls who love your Lord! Bow at His feet! Strew His way with
lilies of your love and the roses of your gratitude! "Bring forth the
royal diadem, and crown Him Lord of all."

Moreover, our Lord Jesus is King in Zion by right of conquest. He has
taken and carried by storm the hearts of His people and has slain their
enemies who held them in cruel bondage. In the Red Sea of His own
blood, our Redeemer has drowned the Pharaoh of our sins–shall He not
be King in Jeshurun? He has delivered us from the iron yoke and heavy
curse of the Law–shall not the Liberator be crowned? We are His
portion whom He has taken out of the hand of the Amorite with His sword
and with His bow–who shall snatch His conquest from His hand? All the
rights of conquest support the Throne of the Lord's Anointed, for God
has declared that He will give Him a portion with the great, and He
shall divide the spoil with the strong.

We are that spoil! We are trophies of His victory! We are the treasure
for which He laid down His life that He might redeem us unto Himself!
We, therefore, who have believed in Him, accept Him to be King and do
not, for a moment, question His right. We see Him to be established
upon the Throne of His Father, and rejoice that though the people rage,
and the kings of the earth take counsel together, yet has the Lord set
His King upon His holy hill of Zion, and said: "You are My Son. This
day have I begotten You." All hail, Jesus, King of our souls!

Now, my Brethren, in this great kingdom of our Lord Jesus, it behooves
us, since we thus verbally acknowledge Him to be King, to distinctly
understand what this involves. We look upon the Lord Jesus as being to
us the Fountain of all spiritual legislation. He is a King in His own
right–no limited monarch–but an autocrat in the midst of His Church,
and in the Church all laws proceed from Christ and Christ only. As for
us, His people, we reject with scorn and disdain all the spiritual
legislation of kings and parliaments, of bishops and councils!

We are loyal subjects of political rulers in political things and none
honor the king more than we do! In whatever State the Christian is
cast, he counts it to be his Christian duty to submit himself to the
powers that be. But, within the Church of God we know no royal sway of
Caesar! We have another King, one Jesus! Let Caesar mind his own, and
never venture to touch the crown-right of Jesus. Away with that base
Erastianism which has laid the Church of God at the foot of kings and
princes, so that they, indeed, can put their feet upon the neck of the
free bride of our Lord Jesus Christ! We deny that either king or
parliament can legislate for Christ's Church! For Thomas Cranmer's
church they may if they please, but for Christ's Church, never!

In the midst of those Churches which are true to Christ's authority,
the Bible is the only statute book, and the living Jesus the only
Lawgiver! As Christ alone is the Fountain of all spiritual legislation,
so He alone gives authority to that legislation. If we are commanded to
baptize, we baptize not because we have been authorized by a
consistory, or have been licensed by a bishop or a presbytery, but we
baptize because Christ has said, "Go you therefore, and teach all
nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
of the Holy Spirit."

If we come together to break bread, it is not in the name of a
denomination or a court, but in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ! If
you rest any church practice upon the authority of Augustine,
Chrysostom, or Calvin, or Luther, or base your faith upon some living
preacher and depend upon the force of his oratory, or upon the cogency
of his argument, you put Christ out of His proper place. The reason why
we should believe revealed Truth of God is because Jesus has borne
witness to it. His ipse dixit is the great ground of all our theology,
for He is "the Word of God," and His regal supremacy is the argument
for obedience to His commands.

Where you have no command from Christ, your teaching is nothing. Stand
away, Sir! You have no place here! Where you have no teaching of Christ
at your back, your word is the word of maw, and nothing more! It is not
a word before which the subjects of King Jesus can bow themselves. If
Christ is King, we receive both laws from Him and the force which makes
the law–its dominion over our consciences. If He is King, my Brethren,
it should be our joy to obey Him. We have nothing to do with setting up
our opinions and views, and thoughts and tastes where He alone is
supreme. When we turn to this good and blessed old statute Book, we
must do what He bids us do in it. We are not to cut, and pick, and
choose, and take this and leave the other–for the royal imprimatur is
put upon every page of the Bible, and it is our part, like little
children, obedient to a gentle parent, to subject our wills at once. We
should, like Mary, sit at Jesus' feet to learn, and then rise and carry
into practice what we have learned in so good a school.

Once more, if Jesus is King, then He is the Captain in all our warfare.
When we fight, my Brothers and Sisters, if we contend after our own
ways, with our own weapons, and not under the guidance of Christ, we
may expect defeat! But if we follow Christ, believing the Truth of God
because He has revealed it, and contending for the Truth as His Truth–
careless of man's esteem, and only caring for the esteem of
Christ–then we shall be honored of Him in the day when He shall put
the laurel upon the head of the conquerors. May God grant us Divine
Grace to be such!

I am afraid that many Christians do not understand the mediatorial
royalty of Christ in the Church. I see so many of them acting as if
they were not subjects of a King at all, but were mere bandits fighting
on their own account, doing just according to their own judgment. I
hear so many professors quoting this man's authority, and that man's
that I am of the same mind as the Apostle who spoke of some of whom he
said he feared lest their faith should stand in the wisdom of maw, and
not in the power of God! If it does so, you forget that your faith and
everything else must stand in Christ, and that Christ must in all your
Graces and in all your actions be acknowledged as Head over all things
to His Church, which is His body, or else you err, not holding the
Head.

We are the spouse, He is the Husband. He loves and cares for us, but
the wife's business is to be obedient to her lord. Let us not prove
unfaithful to the marriage bond and violate the conjugal vow by being
unkind, unfaithful, and disobedient to our Husband. But by His Grace
let us watch to know His will, make haste to do it when it is
known–and ever ask Him to teach us His way and guide us in His paths
till He takes us to His rest. We sincerely and cheerfully acknowledge
our Lord Jesus Christ to be a King–our King.

II. Secondly, WE DELIGHT TO KNOW THAT OUR KING POSSESSES SUPERLATIVE
BEAUTY. There is a natural beauty which belongs to our Beloved. Who can
be more beautiful than God, who is "glorious in holiness, fearful in
praises, doing wonders"? There is a natural beauty in the Character of
Christ. Indeed, so beautiful is that Character that those who have
railed most against Christianity have scarcely had the heart to say a
word against Christ–and they

have first been compelled to belie the narrative of His life before
they could raise objections against Him. Perfect in love, goodness, and
truth–never spoke man like this Man! Never was there a character which
could rival His inimitable excellence.

But the beauty intended in the text is not that of His Nature and His
Character, but the beauty of position. As I told you in regard to
Tiezekiah, the people could see his beauty and character as well when
in sackcloth as in cloth of gold. But the beauty they were to see was
the public state of royalty and happiness–and such is the beauty which
we believe our Lord Jesus now has. He had this glory originally. He
speaks of the glory which He had with His Father before the world was.
From of old He was inconceivably great. The cherubim and seraphim
hastened to obey Him who sat upon a throne, high and lifted up, whose
train filled the temple. Who is like unto You, O Lord? Among the gods,
who is like unto You?

He was the express image of His Father's Person, and the brightness of
His Father's glory. And you know how He came from Heaven, undressing
all the way–taking off robe after robe, and jewel after jewel–till
here He wrapped His Godhead in a veil of our inferior clay! He cast off
even the beauty which naturally belonged to His Manhood, and though He
was fairer than any of the children of men, yet His visage became more
marred than that of any man. You know at last how, having given His
back to the scourgers, and His cheek to them that plucked off the
hair–hiding not His face from shame and spitting–He at last consented
that the cold seal of death should be set upon His blessed visage. And
though He saw no corruption, yet did He sleep in the somber depths of
the tomb. Here was His humiliation.

But, Beloved, our King is now in His beauty. He was in His beauty at
the moment of the Resurrection, when the watchmen, in terror, fled far
away, or, fainting, became as dead men. He somewhat hid His
Resurrection splendor when He sojourned for forty days below. Yet it
must have been a lovely sight to see Him at Emmaus when He was known of
the disciples in breaking of bread. Or, again, when He took a piece of
a fish and a part of a honeycomb, and did eat before them. Oh, happy
was Thomas, though to be chided for his unbelief, he was privileged to
put his finger into the print of the nails, and to thrust his hand into
the wound of that blessed body!

How that body must have sparkled with glory in the eyes of seraphs when
a cloud received Him out of mortal sight, and He ascended up to Heaven!
Brothers and Sisters, it is yonder that the King is in His beauty! He
is now crowned with the crown which God has given Him as a reward for
His tremendous labors and His terrible sufferings. Now He wears the
glory which He had with God before the earth existed, and yet another
glory above all–that which He has well earned in the fight against
sin, death, and Hell.

Hark how the song swells high! It is a new and sweeter song–"Worthy is
the Lamb that was slain, for He has redeemed us unto God by His blood!"
Hark how the hallelujah, which went up before of old time, has a
sweeter note to it, when they sing, "For you were slain." More deep and
more melodious are the harpings of the harpers, and the swells of that
song which is comparable to great thunders, and to the mighty waves of
the sea–

"Worthy is He that once was slain, The Prince of Peace that groaned and
died. Worthy to rise, and live, and reign At His Almighty Father's
side."

The King this day wears the beauty of an intercessor who can never
fail, of a prince who can never be defeated, of a conqueror who has
vanquished every foe, of a Lord who has the heart's allegiance of every
subject, of a well-beloved who is adored in the depths of all
regenerate hearts.

Jesus wears all the beauty which the pomp of Heaven can bestow upon
Him, all the glory which 10,000 times 10,000 angels can minister to
Him. The chariots of the Lord are 20,000, even thousands of angels!
Jesus is in the midst of them as in the Holy Place. You cannot, with
your utmost stretch of imagination, conceive the beauty which now
adorns our King! Yet, Brethren, there will be a further revelation of
it when He shall appear on earth in His glory, for He is yet to descend
from Heaven in great power. "We believe that You shall shortly come to
be our Judge." We expect to see the King on earth again. It may be as a
King to rule over all the nations. It may be, it must be, as a Judge to
separate the people as the shepherd divides the sheep from the goats.

Oh, the splendor of that glory! It will ravish His people's hearts! But
those who in derision crowned Him, mocking, thus, His gracious claim,
shall weep and wail because of Him when they shall look on Him whom
they have pierced but find no salvation, seeing they rejected Him in
the day of Grace. Amid the splendors of that day it shall be the joy of
the

Christian to see the King in His beauty! Nor is this the end, for
eternity shall sound His praise: "Your throne, O God, is forever and
ever!" Forever shall Christ be fair and lovely in the esteem of His
Father, in the sight of all intelligent spirits, lovely to the ends of
the universe, lovely while the cycles of ages shall roll, chief among
10,000, and altogether lovely! Thus Beloved, the King is arrayed in
rarest beauty.

III. Furthermore, THERE ARE SEASONS WHEN WE SEE THE KING IN HIS BEAUTY.
We see the King in His

beauty at this moment, not with these eyes, but with the far clearer
spiritual eye of faith. Eyes are impediments to spiritual sight! Faith
is the true eyeball of the soul. Confidence in God substantiates the
things that are not seen–gives solid form and shape to that which eye
has not beheld.

Let me tell you briefly when some of us have seen the King in His
beauty. We saw Him in that day when He pardoned us of all our sins. You
remember it! That day when Jesus met you and you were able to cast all
your sins on Him and see them all forgiven! Did you ever see such a
lovely sight before? Well do I recollect that day! Well will some of
you remember the time when you laid your sins on Jesus, the appointed
Lamb of God. You had had many friends but never such a friend as He.
You had derived much comfort at different times, but never such comfort
as He gave you. Oh, those dear wounds, that crown of thorns on His
head, that blood-sprinkled Person!

How you could have kissed those feet! With what alacrity would you have
broken the alabaster box of precious ointment, to have poured it on His
head, if you could have done so! He was precious to you. He is precious
now at the bare recollection of that happy day. When the king writes
the felon's pardon, how fair is his handwriting! When the King says, "I
have blotted out your sins like a cloud," even the weak and bloodshot
eyes of a penitent sinner can discern the inexpressible loveliness of
such a gracious Lord. But, dear Brethren, Jesus Christ was seen by us
in His beauty more fully when, after being pardoned, we found how much
He had done for us!

You had no idea, when you were first saved, that there was so much in
store for you. You conceived that if your sins were forgiven it would
be all you wanted. But lo, you found you were made a child of God,
introduced into the family of the Most High! You discovered that you
were covered with a robe of righteousness, that your feet were set upon
the Rock of Ages, that a new song was put into your mouth, and that you
had a portion in the skies! Do you remember, some of you, when, first
of all, you learned the doctrine of Jesus Christ's eternal love to you?
I know it came to my mind, when first I understood it, like a new
discovery! Columbus, when he discovered America, could not have been so
overjoyed as my heart was when I learned the lesson of those words,
"Yea, I have loved you with an everlasting love: therefore with loving
kindness have I drawn you."

Oh, you saw the King in His beauty when you discovered that not only
had He loved you with an everlasting love, but always would He do so!
That from His bosom He never could or would divorce you! That you were
His in time and would be His in eternity. Do you remember when you
could grasp that glorious Truth of God–

"Immutable His will, Though dark may be my frame, His loving heart is
still Eternally the same: My soul through many changes goes, His love
no variation knows."

Let me say to you, Beloved, the more you know about Christ, the less
you are satisfied with superficial views of Him. And the more deeply
you study His transactions in the Everlasting Covenant, His engagements
on your behalf as the eternal Surety, and the fullness of His Grace
which shines in all His offices, the more will you be seeing the King
in His beauty. Be much in such outlooks! Long more and more to see
Jesus!

There are times also, when, in our contemplations, we see His beauty.
Meditation and contemplation are often like windows of agate and gates
of carbuncle through which we see the Redeemer. Meditation puts the
telescope to the eye, and enables us to see Jesus after a better sort
than we could have seen Him if we had lived in the days of His flesh.
For now we see not only Jesus in the flesh, but the spiritual Jesus. We
see the spirit of Jesus, the core and essence of Jesus, the very soul
of the Savior. O happy are you that spend much time in contemplations!
I wish that we had less to do, that we might do more of this heavenly
work. Would that our conversation were more in Heaven and that we were
more taken up with the Person, the work, the beauty of our Incarnate
Lord. More meditation, and you would see the King in his beauty better.

Beloved, it is very probable that we shall have such a sight of our
glorious King as we never had before when we come to die. Many saints,
in dying, have looked up from amid the stormy waters and have seen
Jesus walking on the waves of the sea and heard Him say, "It is I, be
not afraid." I have heard expressions from some dying men and women
that I never read in the best written book. They have seemed to me as
if they knew more about my Master than I had ever learned, or than the
old Divines, or the best of writers had ever been able to communicate.
Ah, yes! When the tenement begins to shake, and the clay falls away, we
see Christ through the rifts, and between the rafters the sunlight of
Heaven comes streaming through!

But, Brethren, if we want to see the King in His beauty we must go to
Heaven for it, or the King must come here in His Person. It may be He
will spare us till He comes. But, just as likely is it that He will
take us away to see Him where He is. Do you ever long for Him? Do you
ever grow weary of this prison? Do you ever pant to see your Beloved?
Those sweet words of our hymn, do they ever come across your mind?–

"My heart is with Him on His Throne,

And ill can brook delay.

Each moment listening for the voice,

'Rise up, and come away.'"

He is our Husband, and we are widowed by His absence! He is our Brother
sweet and fair, and we are lonely without Him! Thick veils and clouds
hang between our souls and their true life–when shall the day break
and the shadows flee away? When shall the veil be torn again and the
glory of God be seen? When shall we leave these childish things, leave
the glass in which we see our Beloved darkly–and see Him face to face?
Oh, long-expected day begin! My eyes shall see the King in His beauty.

As I pause over this verse, I would like to ask every hearer here
whether he expects to see the King with joy? You never will unless you
see Him here on earth as your Savior. You must see Him by faith in His
sufferings or else you will never see Him by sight in His beauty. Let
the question go along these seats, "Shall my eyes see the King in His
beauty, or, must I say with Balaam, 'I shall see Him, but not near. I
shall behold Him, but not now. I shall see Him as a Judge, but His
beauties shall increase my alarm. I shall flee from Him and say to the
rocks and to the hills, hide me from the face of Him that sits on the
throne.' "

Dear Hearer, I hope that will not be your dreadful lot! Look to Him
this morning by faith, for He is still able to save to the uttermost
them that come unto God by Him! Cast your spirits upon His finished
work this moment, and then joyfully sing–

"There shall my disimprisoned soul

Behold Him and adore,

Be with His likeness satisfied,

And grieve and sin no more.

Shall see Him wear that very flesh

On which my guilt was lain;

His love intense, His merit fresh,

As though but newly slain.

These eyes shall see Him in that day,

The God that died for me;

And all my rising bones shall say,

Lord, who is like to You?"

IV. THE EXCEEDING GLORY OF THIS SIGHT may well detain us for a minute
or two. I shall set out this exceeding glory to you by way of contrast.
What a sight that was which Abraham beheld one morning when he lifted
up his eyes "and he looked toward Sodom and Gomorrah, and toward all
the land of the plain, and beheld, and, lo, the smoke of the country
went up as the smoke of a furnace."

I think I see the Prophet all alone, gazing upon the dreadful sight. He
had interceded and wrestled with God with arguments, and yet Sodom and
the cities of the plain are all gone! A fire-shower has destroyed them,
and their smoke darkens the sky. Can you put yourself in such a
position and on a far more terrible scale look at the judgments of the
lost, of which we are told in the book of the Revelation–"their smoke
goes up forever and ever"? What a vision! And you would have been
there, not as a spectator, but yourself dwelling with everlasting
burnings unless love had delivered you!

Contrast what you deserve with what Divine Grace has prepared for you!
O Believer in Christ, no smoke of furnace, no terrors of devouring
flame, but for you the promise–"Your eyes shall see the King in His
beauty." Glory be to super abounding Grace, that, "where sin abounded,
Grace did much more abound." Contrast this again with another sight.
The prophet Ezekiel was taken to the temple and after seeing the image
of jealousy set up, he was shown yet greater abominations. Behold,
there was a hole in the wall, and within were all forms of creeping
things and abominable beasts, and a voice said to the Prophet, "I will
show you greater abominations than these," and he saw yet filthier and
fouler forms of idolatry.

You and I have been like that Prophet–we have had to gaze into our own
hearts, and we have seen the idols there! And as we have looked longer,
we have seen worse idols than we had seen before. And if your daily
experience is like mine, you have often heard that mysterious voice,
"Son of man, I will show you greater abominations than these." Yet,
although all this inbred sin was within us–and some of it is still
there–yet our eyes shall see the King in His beauty! What a change
from fighting with corruption to full communion with Christ! What an
exchange from a sense of sin to the perfect image of our best Beloved!
Rejoice, then, dear Brothers and Sisters, exceedingly, when you look at
the contrast!

Again, let me try to show you the great beauty of this sight by
comparison. Our Lord had a very remarkable sight when He was taken up
to an exceedingly high mountain and He was shown all the kingdoms of
the world and the glory thereof by the Evil Spirit. A fair sight–you
and I might be glad of the vision–though not of the temptation which
followed it. But among all that was to be seen from this mount of
temptation, there is nothing to equal the sight of the King in His
beauty! Verily I say unto you that all the kings of the earth, in all
their splendor, with all their hosts and armies in their glittering
array are not to be compared to Him who is altogether lovely!

Compare yourself, again, with the queen of Sheba. She came from afar to
see the wisdom of Solomon, but, behold, a greater than Solomon is to be
seen by you! When she saw the king's riches, and his servants, and his
pomp, no heart was left in her. But Solomon, in all his glory, was not
arrayed like the Savior of men! He was not worthy to be a waiting
footman at the table of our great King! Even the sight that Moses saw
hardly bears comparison. He looked from Pisgah upon the land that
flowed with milk and honey and he tracked the land from Lebanon's
snow-crested peaks far away to the blue sea, and to the tawny desert
that goes down to Egypt.

With joyful eyes he beheld the cities where the tribes would dwell and
saw the hills which are round about Jerusalem. But he died and entered
not into the land. You and I see Jesus! And in that day we enter fully
into possession of Him! All the milk and honey that ever flowed in
Sharon's plains, or Eshcol's valleys never could be compared for a
single second to the everlasting joy and beatific blessedness that are
to be found in a sight of Christ! I think our sight of Christ will be
even nearer and clearer than that of John in Patmos, though that is the
nearest approach to it. John saw his Master but for a season–we shall
behold Him forever and see the Savior in His own Person–not a mere
picture upon the camera of the imagination.

V. Lastly. From the text it appears that THIS SIGHT OF CHRIST EMINENTLY
AFFORDS LIBERTY TO THE

SOUL. When we see not Christ, we cannot receive the possessions of the
Covenant. But when we get a view of the King in His beauty, then we see
the land that is very far off. A sight of Christ gives us a view of the
dim past–a view of electing love we sweetly enjoy when we see the King
in His beauty. And the future, which is dark with excessive
brightness–that we also see when we see Jesus and know that we shall
be like He when we see Him as He is.

If we live near to Jesus we shall count no Covenant mercy too great for
Him to bestow. "He that spared not His own Son, but freely delivered
Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all
things?" Do any of you want to enjoy the high doctrine of eternal love?
Do you desire liberty in very close communion with God? Do you long to
understand mysteries? Do you aspire to know the heights, and depths,
and lengths, and breadths? Then, Beloved, you must get to see the King
in His beauty! He who understands Christ receives an anointing from the
Holy One by which he knows all things.

Christ is the great master key of all the chambers of God. There is no
treasure house of God which will not open and yield up all its wealth
to the soul that lives near to Jesus! O that He would dwell in my
bosom! Would that He would make my heart to be His house, His dwelling
place forever! Open the door, beloved Hearers, and He will come into
your souls. He has long been knocking and it is this which He has
wanted–that He may sup with you–and you with Him.

He sups with you because you have the house or the heart, and you with
Him because He brings the provision. He could not sup with you if it
were not in your heart, you finding the house. Nor could you sup with
Him, for you have a bare cupboard and He must bring the provision with
Him.

Fling wide, then, the portals of your soul! He will come with that love
which you long to feel! He will come with that joy with which you
cannot work your poor depressed spirit! He will bring you joy which now
you have not! He will come with His flagons of wine and sweet apples
and cheer you till you shall have no other sickness but that of love
overpowering, love Divine! Only open the door, then, and have no other
sickness than that of love. Only open the door, then, to Him! Drive out
His enemies! Give Him the keys of your heart and He will dwell there
forever–and your eyes shall see the King in His beauty!

May the Lord give His blessing to these few remarks of mine and cause
them to live in His people's souls so that they may live near to Him
and dwell in Him. You who never knew the Lord, take my word for it, you
do not know what happiness is! If you have never seen my Lord, you have
never seen anything worth seeing! If you have never rested in Him you
have not cast your anchor where it will hold. O hunger after Jesus!
Long for Jesus! Never rest till you win Him! He is waiting to receive
you–He has a great heart to receive sinners–

"He sits on Zion'shill, And receives poor sinners still." Do but come
to Him. As for your sin and your righteousness–throw both of those
away–come to Him as you are–He will never reject the soul that longs
to be saved entirely by Him. May God bless you, for Jesus' sake! Amen.
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Nazareth–or Jesus, Rejected by His Friends

A sermon