III.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD

THIRD SUNDAY IN ADVENT

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the meek; He has sent me to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that are bound.—Isaiah lxi. 1.

My friends, I do entreat those of you who wish to get any real good from this sermon, to listen to me carefully all through it.  Not that I have to complain of you in general for not attending to me.  I thank God, and thank you, that you do listen to what is said in this pulpit.  But there are many people who have a bad trick of minding the preacher carefully enough for a minute or two, and then letting their wits wander, and think about something else; and then if any word in the sermon strikes them, waking up suddenly, and thinking again for a little, and then letting their thoughts run wild again; and so on.  Whereby it happens that they only recollect a few scraps of the sermon, a word here, and a sentence there, and get into their heads all sorts of mistakes and false notions about the preacher’s meaning.

That is not right; that is not worthy of reasonable grown men: that is only pardonable in little scatter-brained children.  Men and women should listen steadily, reverently throughout; so, and so only, will they be able to judge of the message which the preacher brings them.  Listen to me, therefore, all through this sermon, and may God give you grace to understand it and lay it to heart, for it is the good news of the kingdom of God.

You recollect, I hope, that I have often told you, that the Lord Jesus Christ’s words would never pass away; that His prophecies are continually coming true, and being fulfilled over and over again.  Now this text is not one of His prophecies, but it is a prophecy about Him; one which He fulfilled, and which He has been fulfilling again and again.  He is fulfilling it, as I believe, more than ever, now in these very days.

If you will look at the 61st chapter of Isaiah, you will find this prophecy; and you will find, too, what will surprise you at first, that Isaiah was speaking of himself.  He says, “That the Spirit of the Lord was upon him”—Isaiah—“because the Lord had appointed him to preach good tidings to the meek, to bind up the broken-hearted, and deliverance to the captives, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord.”  Isaiah must have spoken truly about himself.  He could not have meant to tell a falsehood, to say a thing was true of himself which was only true of Jesus, who did not come till 800 years afterwards.  And he did speak the truth: you cannot read his prophecies without seeing that the Spirit of the Lord was indeed upon him; that the words which he spoke must have comforted all those who were sorrowing for their sins and the sins of the nation in their time.  We know, for a fact, that his prophecies came true; that the Jewish captives were delivered and brought back out of Judæa to Jerusalem again, and that Jerusalem was rebuilt as Isaiah prophesied, and the Jewish nation raised to far greater holiness, and prosperity, and happiness than it had ever been in before.  And yet 800 years afterwards the Lord took those very same words to Himself, and said, that He fulfilled them.  He read them aloud once in a Jewish synagogue, out of the book of the prophet Isaiah; and then told the congregation, “This day is the Scripture fulfilled in your ears.”  And again, as we read in the Gospel for this day, when John the Baptist sent to ask Him if He was really the Christ, He made use of another prophecy of Isaiah, and told John’s disciples that He was the Christ, because He was fulfilling that prophecy; because He was making the deaf hear, and the blind see, and preaching the gospel to the poor.  Now, how is that?  Could Isaiah be right in applying those words to himself, and yet Christ be right in applying them to Himself?  Can a prophecy be fulfilled twice over?

No doubt it can, my friends, and two hundred times over.  No prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation, says St. Peter.  That is, it does not apply to any one private, particular thing that is to happen.  Every prophecy of Scripture goes on fulfilling itself more and more, as time rolls on and the world grows older.  St. Peter tells us the reason why.  No prophecy of Scripture is of private interpretation; because it does not come from the will of man, from any invention or discovery of poor short-sighted human beings, who can only judge by what they see around them in their own times: but holy men of old spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.  And who is the Holy Spirit?  The Spirit of God; the everlasting Spirit; the Spirit who cannot change, for He is God.  The Spirit who searcheth the deep things of God, and teaches them to men.  And what are the deep things of God?  They are eternal as God is.  Eternal laws; everlasting rules which cannot alter.  That is the meaning of it all.  The Spirit of God is the Spirit which teaches men the laws of God; the unchangeable rules and ordinances by which He governs all heaven and earth, and men, and nations; the laws which come into force, not once only, but always; the laws of God which are working round us now, just as much as they were eighteen hundred years ago, just as much as they were in Isaiah’s time.  Therefore it is, that I said that these old Jewish prophecies, which were inspired by the Holy Spirit, are coming true now, and will keep on coming true, time after time, in their proper place and order, and whensoever the times are fit for them, even to the end of the world.

But again, we read that the Spirit of God takes of the things of Christ, and shows them unto us.  And what are the things of Christ?  They must be eternal things, unchangeable things, for Christ is unchangeable—Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.  He is over all, God blessed for ever.  To Him all power is given in heaven and earth.  He reigns, and He will reign.  Do you think He is less a Saviour now, than He was when He spoke those things to John’s disciples?  Do you think He is less able to hear and to help than He was in John’s time?  Do you think He used to care about people’s bodies then, but that He only cares about their souls now?  Do you think that He is less compassionate, and less merciful, as well as less powerful, than He was when He made the blind see, and the lame walk, and the deaf hear, in Judæa of old?

Less powerful! less compassionate!  One would have expected that Christ was more powerful, more compassionate, if that were possible.  At least one would expect that His power and compassion would show itself more and more, and make itself felt more and more, year by year, and age by age; more and more healing disease; more and more comforting sorrow; more and still more casting out cunning and evil spirits, till He had put all under His feet.  He Himself said it should be so.  He always spoke of His own kingdom as a thing which was to grow and increase by laws of its own, men knew not how, but He knew.  Like seed cast into the ground, His kingdom was, He said, at first the smallest of all seeds; but it was to grow, and take root, and spread into a mighty tree, He said, till the very birds in the air lodged in the branches of it; and David’s words should be fulfilled, “Thou, Lord, shalt save both man and beast.”  And does not St. Paul speak of His kingdom in the same way, as a kingdom which should grow? that He was to reign till He had put all enemies under His feet? that He would deliver at last the whole creation? the earth on which we stand, the dumb animals around us?  For, as St. Paul says, the whole creation is groaning in labour-pangs, waiting to be raised into a higher state.  And it shall be raised.  The whole creation shall be set free into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

What does that mean?  How can I tell you?

This I can tell you, that it cannot mean that Jesus Christ was merciful enough to heal people’s bodies at first, but that He has given up doing it now, and will never do it again.  “Well, but,” some would say, “what does all this come to?  You are merely telling us what we knew before—that if any of us are cured from disease, or raised up from a sick bed, it is all the Lord’s doing.”  If you do believe that, really, my friends, happy are you!  Many of you, I think, do believe it.  The poor are more inclined to believe it, I think, than the rich.  But even in the mouths of the poor one often hears words which make one suspect that they do not believe it.  I am very much afraid that a great many have got into the trick of saying that it was God’s mercy that they were cured, and that it pleased the Lord to raise them up from a sick bed, very much as a piece of cant.  They say the words by rote, because they have been accustomed to hear them said by others, without thinking of the meaning of them; just as, on the other hand, a great many people curse and swear without thinking of the awful oaths they use.  Ay, and often enough the very same persons will say that it was the Lord’s mercy they were cured of their sickness; and then, if they get into a passion, pray the very same Lord to do that to the bodies and souls of their neighbours which it is a shame to speak of here.  Out of the same mouth proceed blessings and cursings: showing that whether or not they are in earnest in cursing, they are not earnest in blessing.

Again: If people really believed that it was the Lord Jesus Christ who cured their sicknesses for them, they would behave, when they got well, more as the Lord Jesus Christ would wish them to behave.  They would show forth their thankfulness not only with their lips, but in their lives.  You who believe—you who say—that Christ has cured your sicknesses, show your faith by your works.  Live like those who are alive again from the dead; who are not your own, but bought with a price, and bound to work for God with your bodies and your spirits, which are His—then, and then only, can either God or man believe you.