text show that it is ‘a reasonable service;’ or, in other words, that it
is not the result of mere feeling, impulse, or emotion, but the
deliberate and well-considered decision of a thoughtful mind. The
passage corresponds to those words in 2 Cor. v. 14: ‘The love of Christ
constraineth us because we thus judge;’ where you see the union between
the heart and the head. The constraining love is the result of the
judgment, the blessed fruit of the deep convictions of the understanding:
so that those who feel it may give a reason, not only for the hope that
is in them, but also for the love that fills their heart. There are
certain great facts on which the judgment rests, and the believing
assurance of these facts is the means employed by the Holy Spirit to call
forth the devotedness of love.
Now what are these facts? What is it that possesses this love-producing
power? In the passage from the Corinthians there is one great fact
mentioned: viz., the propitiatory death of the Lord Jesus Christ. ‘If
one died for all, then were all dead,’ ‘or died.’ They died in Him,
inasmuch as they were represented by Him; and it is that great fact which
is said to produce the constraining love. In this passage no one fact is
mentioned, but the appeal is made to the whole multitude of His mercies:
‘I beseech you, therefore, by the mercies of God, that ye present your
bodies a living sacrifice.’ Throughout the Epistle St. Paul had been
showing that we are all saved by mercy. In the eleventh chapter he had
enlarged on the mercy by which we Gentiles are now saved in Christ Jesus
and the mercy about to be manifested towards the Jews, till he arrives at
the conclusion that ‘God hath concluded all in unbelief, that He might
have mercy upon all.’ Then he bursts forth in the exclamation, ‘Oh the
depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!’ and follows
it up by the appeal of the text: ‘I beseech you therefore, brethren, by
the mercies of God.’ If such mercy has been shown you, if,
notwithstanding all your unbelief, by boundless and unmerited mercy you
have been saved and made one even with Christ Himself, is it now too much
to ask of you that, without delay and without reserve, you yield your
whole lives to His service?
I believe it is impossible for us to be too careful in observing this
connexion between consecration and mercy, for in the very vague theology
of the present day there is a great deal which certainly has the
appearance of teaching that the blessed peace of a union with Christ is
to be the result of entire consecration. But we are here taught, not
that we are to reach mercy as the result of the completeness of our
consecration, but that, having realized mercy, we should yield ourselves
in consecration to God. That union with the Lord Jesus must be given
through the personal appropriation of the mercy of God in Him; and we
should regard with the utmost jealousy any teaching which, either
intentionally or unintentionally, turns the thoughts inwards to analyze
the extent of consecration, with a view to obtaining the blessing of that
union, instead of rather diverting all thoughts to the fulness of mercy
in Christ Jesus, and so calling forth out of His fulness the abounding
love of a consecrated heart.
This great truth is well brought out in our Communion Service. You
remember those words of self-consecration in which we have so often
united, words founded on this very text: ‘Here we offer and present unto
Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our souls and bodies, to be a reasonable, holy,
and lively sacrifice unto Thee.’ Now in the first Prayer-book of Edward
VI. that prayer stood before the reception of the Lord’s Supper, as if we
were first to complete an act of self-consecration, and then upon the
strength of it feed on Christ: so our Reformers changed its position, and
put the prayer after the reception instead of before it, in order to show
that when we want to feed on Christ Jesus, to dwell in Him and He in us,
we must come to His footstool as poor sinners, forgiven and accepted
through His most precious blood; and that when we have been thus
permitted to ‘sit under His shadow with great delight, and to find His
fruit sweet to our taste,’ the next thing for us all to do is to kneel
down with a full and thankful heart, and yield ourselves, body, soul, and
spirit, to His service.
IV. This consecration should be continually renewed and deepened. In
our Communion Service we renew our self-dedication every time that we
receive the Lord’s Supper, for every time we say the same words: ‘Here we
offer and present ourselves . . . to be a reasonable, holy, and lively
sacrifice unto Thee.’ In doing this I firmly believe we are right; and
that we are so seems clearly proved by the text. The Romans, to whom
these words were addressed, were ‘beloved of God, called to be saints’
(i. 7); they had ‘become servants of God’ and had ‘their fruit unto
holiness.’ (vi. 22.) There can be no doubt, therefore, as to their past
surrender to His service; but, notwithstanding that, they were exhorted
afresh to ‘present their bodies a living sacrifice,’ and afresh to ‘yield
themselves unto God.’ (vi. 13.) So we are not to look on our
consecration as a single act, completed at a certain moment, and
afterwards to be regarded as a finished thing; but rather as a habit and
attitude of mind, deepening with our depth, strengthening with our
strength, and growing with our growth. As we grow in grace and in the
knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, we shall grow also in the
deep sense of mercy. His love passeth knowledge, and it will take
eternity to learn its fulness. And His mercy corresponds with His love:
it is ‘from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear Him;’ it is
‘high as the heaven is above the earth;’ and as no astronomer can measure
the height of the fixed stars, and as no finite mind can take in the idea
of an infinite eternity, so none of us, no, not even the most advanced
believer, can fathom the depths or scan the heights of the free,
unfettered, everlasting mercy of our God. But as we grow in the
knowledge of Him and of ourselves, we shall learn more and more of it.
The more we know of the covenant of God,—the more we see of the Lord
Jesus, in His person, His character, and His work,—the more we know of
our own hearts, and discover the exceeding sinfulness of our ruined
nature, and the more we see of the perfect adaptation to our utmost wants
of the Divine salvation wrought out for us in Christ Jesus,—so much the
more shall we know of mercy. Every day in the believer’s life brings
with it a fresh lesson in mercy, and every prayer that we pray to a
reconciled Father should bring home to us with fresh power the deep debt
we owe to mercy.
And now you see in a moment how it is that there should be a continued
and constantly repeated renewal of self-consecration. Every fresh
discovery of mercy should lead at once to fresh surrender. If you are
looking on mercy as some distant thing, which you have often heard of and
wish to reach, but cannot, I see not, for my part, how it should have any
great power over your life; for, though it looks very beautiful, you
cannot say that it has brought any benefit to you. If you have never
felt your own deep need of it, and never learned your utter ruin, and
have therefore never realised your condemnation before God, I see not how
the tidings of mercy should have any great power upon you, for no man
really cares for the remedy until he has been taught by God’s Spirit to
feel his need. But if you have discovered yourself to be utterly and
hopelessly lost, condemned alike by your own conscience and by the law of
God; and if in the midst of your ruin you have, by God’s rich love in
Christ Jesus, ‘obtained mercy;’ if you can look on His mercy in having
redeemed you by His blood, in having called you by His Spirit, in having
saved you by His grace, in having given you a blessed hope of His
everlasting kingdom,—then indeed I cannot doubt that God has long since
called you to a real consecration to His service. But if this be so, and
if God has since been bringing you to a deeper sense of sin, and at the
same time opening your heart to understand more of His mercy; if He is
step by step making manifest to you ‘the depth, and length, and breadth,
and height,’ and causing you to ‘know the love of Christ that passeth
knowledge:’ then I can see very clearly that all past consecration must
appear to your own heart as nothing, and that, ‘forgetting those things
that are behind, and reaching forth unto those things that are before,’
you will be ready again to kneel down at His feet, and with fresh love
and fresh thanksgiving, yield yourselves afresh to Him, to be His, and
His for ever. You may have long since given yourself to the Lord; but if
you are this day really permitted ‘to feed on Him—in your heart—by
faith—with thanksgiving, you will be prepared to kneel down afterwards
and say, ‘Here we offer and present unto Thee, O Lord, ourselves, our
souls and bodies to be a reasonable, holy, and lively sacrifice unto
Thee.’
PRAYER.
‘I am Thine, save me; for I have sought Thy precepts.’—PSALM cxix.
94.
WE studied last Sunday the subject of consecration as taught us in the
words of the Apostle Paul, in which he exhorted us to ‘present our bodies
a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God.’ I trust the result
has been that many amongst us have so realised the multitude of God’s
mercies that, under the deep sense of profound thanksgiving, we have
knelt down before Him, afresh to yield ourselves to His service. If so,
the question arises, What next? If the sacrifice of ourselves has been
offered by us and accepted by God, into what position have we been
brought, and what are we to expect in our future life? Are we to expect
to be so set free from the impediments of sin, and so filled with holy
love and joy that we shall be gently wafted heavenward, without either a
conflict or a difficulty? or, are we to expect a stiff, hard warfare to
the end, with a certain hope of victory through the perfection of our
Leader’s power, but with all the accompaniments of a deadly struggle
until the victory is won and Satan bruised under our feet for ever? I
regard this question as one of the utmost importance, for if we look for
that which God has not promised, our very faith will lead to
disappointment; whereas if we do not look for that which He has really
promised, we shall clearly never rise to the high standard of His Word.
To this question then I purpose to turn your thoughts this morning, and I
pray God that the Holy Spirit may teach us all, and lead us rightly to
understand, and truly to act on, His Word.
This text appears to throw great light on the subject, for in the first
clause the Psalmist actually pleads before God the recognised fact of a
past and present consecration. He does not say, ‘I wish to be Thine,’ or
‘I hope to be Thine,’ or ‘I pray Thee to make me Thine,’ but he says,
‘Lord, I am Thine,’ and no one could say that unless he had already
yielded himself to God. But it is not consecration only that is
expressed when the believer says, ‘Lord, I am Thine;’ for the
consecration of which I was speaking last Sunday is a human act,—it is
our own surrender of our own powers to God; and when we look closely at
anything we do we may well remember the words of the prophet, ‘How weak
is thine heart!’ If we can truly say in faith, ‘Lord, I am Thine,’ we
must rely on something a great deal better than our own consecration of
ourselves. We belong to the Lord Jesus by virtue of the eternal covenant
to which He referred when He said, ‘My Father which gave them Me is
greater than all;’ we belong to Him because we have been made His own by
redemption, so as to be parts of the ‘Church which He has purchased with
His own blood;’ we belong to Him because we have been separated unto Him
by the mighty power of the Holy Ghost, and so been ‘sanctified unto
obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ;’ we belong to Him,
for we have been made His own children by adoption, so that He speaks of
us, saying, ‘I and the children whom Thou hast given Me;’ and we belong
to Him, for we have been solemnly signed and sealed unto Him in our
baptism, and in our own persons have deliberately ratified the covenant.
So that when we say, ‘Lord, I am Thine,’ we do not merely refer to some
one particular transaction of our own at some one particular time, but we
look at the whole counsel and covenant of God,—at the great and perfect
work of God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost,—before which
any feeble effort of our own minds is absolutely nothing; and, reviewing
it all, we kneel down, with our hearts full of praise, and wonder, and
say with the deepest thanksgiving, ‘Lord, I am Thine.’
It is clear, therefore, that these words, while they include personal
consecration on our own part, express that which is infinitely greater:
namely, the great grace of God Himself in redeeming us by the precious
blood of the Lamb, and separating us as a holy people unto Himself. And
now follows the question: When in this highest sense we can kneel down
and really say with truth, ‘Lord, I am Thine,’ what is to follow? The
words of the text supply us with a most important answer; for they teach
that one of the great results will be believing prayer, and they show
that when we are really His, and when we know that we are His, we are not
to rest content with that sacred and unspeakable privilege, but to kneel
down afresh and say, ‘Lord, I am Thine: save me.’
It is clear from this passage that there was something which David still
wanted, although he was the Lord’s. He was safe, but he still prayed to
be saved; he had been made the Lord’s own dear child, but he still
prayed, ‘Save me.’ Let us consider, then, what he wanted, and what he
did; and may God the Holy Ghost so apply the passage to our souls, that
we may know the double blessing of being His and being saved through His
grace!
I. WHAT HE WANTED; or, in other words, what he prayed for when he prayed
that he might be saved. There appears to be no reference in the psalm to
temporal deliverance, so we need not consider the prayer as referring to
it. It was for spiritual gifts that he prayed, and from spiritual
difficulties that he desired to be saved. And when we consider these
spiritual gifts it is very clear that it was not acceptance, or
reconciliation, for which he prayed, for his mind must have been quite at
rest upon that point when he said, ‘Lord, I am Thine.’ What he was
longing for was personal holiness,—that is, a complete conformity to the
perfect will of that holy God to whom he belonged and whom he loved. You
see this throughout the psalm. He does not pray, ‘Pardon me,’ ‘Receive
me,’ or ‘Blot out my transgressions,’ as he does in some other psalms;
but he does pray again and again that God’s statutes might be written on
his heart: ‘Oh, that my ways were directed to keep Thy statutes:’ ‘Teach
me Thy statutes;’ ‘Deal bountifully with Thy servant, that I may live and
keep Thy word;’ ‘Quicken me after Thy loving-kindness; so shall I keep
the testimony of Thy mouth.’ The whole psalm is full of such prayers,
and they show us perfectly clearly that the salvation for which he prayed
was the power for holiness from God. So the psalm also teaches us what
was the difficulty in the attainment of his wish. There are some
allusions to enemies, from which we may infer that there were persons
about him who hindered his progress. But the psalm shows clearly that
the real difficulty lay in himself, and in the deadness of his own heart.
No less than nine times does he pray, ‘Quicken me.’ And what did that
prayer imply? Was it not that he was conscious of a dead, cold state of
heart, and was longing for life and warmth? Had there been no element of
deadness in his soul, he would not have required to be quickened; but
there was that element of deadness, and he himself urged it as a reason
for his prayer, when he said (verse 25), ‘My soul cleaveth unto the dust:
quicken Thou me according to Thy word.’ It was the deep corruption of
his human nature which continued to cling to him, even when he was the
Lord’s, against which he prayed when he said, ‘Lord, I am Thine: save
me.’
And now arises the most deeply important practical question: Are we, as
believers in the Lord Jesus Christ, at the very time that we can truly
say ‘Lord, I am Thine,’ to be prepared to meet the same difficulty? In
answer to that question, I have not one moment’s hesitation in replying
that we are. I have read and heard that original sin in certain persons
is ‘destroyed,’ is ‘dead, though capable of revival;’ is ‘rendered
inert,’ and is ‘in suspense;’ but I do not believe one word of it. It is
far too large a subject for me to attempt to discuss fully in one short
sermon: I have not time to give you more than two passages, but I hope
they will be sufficient. In Romans viii.,—that grand chapter, so full of
the grand tidings of safety, beginning with no condemnation and ending
with no separation,—the chapter which some claim as descriptive of what
they term ‘the higher life,’—in the middle of that chapter we find a
description of the sons of God who are led by the Spirit. Now observe
carefully the effect of that leading of God’s children by the Holy Ghost.
We find it in verse 13: ‘If ye do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall
live: for as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of
God.’ The word rendered ‘do mortify’ means ‘are habitually putting to
death’ (θανατοῦτε). But if original sin were dead already, or inert, why
should the children of God, by the power of the Holy Ghost, be habitually
putting to death its deeds? The fact that its deeds are to be habitually
put to death is a perfectly clear proof that the root of the evil is not
dead already.
One passage more, and I have chosen it because I think it of peculiar
importance in its bearing on what is called the ‘higher life.’ You
remember that wonderful insight into heaven which St. Paul describes in 2
Cor. xii., and you remember how it was followed up by the thorn in the
flesh,—‘the messenger of Satan,’ given ‘to buffet him.’ Now why was it
thus followed? Why was this messenger of Satan let loose upon God’s
chosen servant immediately after this wonderful blessing? He himself
tells us the reason: ‘Lest I should be exalted beyond measure.’ In other
words, he was in danger of pride of heart. He was caught up into the
third heaven, but he carried with him even there so much of the old evil
of his fallen nature that when he came down he was in such danger of
being puffed up with pride that it was an act of mercy in God even to
permit him to be buffeted by Satan’s messenger, in order to keep him in a
humble spirit, depending upon grace. Surely we learn the lesson that,
whatever be our spiritual attainments, and whatever God has taught us of
His mercy, we have still to strive as David did against the active
working of indwelling sin, and to pray as he did, ‘Lord, I am Thine: save
me.’
II. We see then what the Psalmist WANTED; let us consider next WHAT HE
DID.
(1.) When he was conscious that his soul was cleaving to the dust, he
was not content to leave it there. He did not say that it could not be
helped, and so make it an excuse for sin. He did not do as some people
do with reference to their temper,—say they have the misfortune of a bad
temper, and therefore consider themselves not to be blamed when they
break out in a passion, or settle down in a sulky fit. He resolutely,
determinately, and prayerfully grappled with the difficulty. He was
conscious of sin, but he could not endure the thought of it. He could
say from the bottom of his heart, ‘I hate and abhor lying; but Thy law do
I love and it was because he loved the law, and hated the sin, that he
came before God with the cry, ‘Lord, I am Thine: save me!’ So we may be
perfectly sure that if a person be really born of God, the knowledge of
indwelling sin will never lead him to settle down in the apathy of
hopelessness; but will arouse him, by the sense of danger, to watch, to
pray, to trust, to strive, to conquer, in the name of the Lord Jesus and
by the power of the Holy Ghost.
(2.) But while David was thus energetic in his struggle, and allowed no
compromise with sin, he was evidently brought to the acknowledgment of
his own helplessness. With reference to the past he could say, ‘I have
sought Thy precepts;’ and with reference to the present, ‘I love Thy
commandments above gold: yea, than much fine gold.’ But notwithstanding
all his painstaking, he found he could not raise his own heart above the
dust, and was still obliged to acknowledge the truth of the words, ‘No
man hath quickened his own soul.’ Thus the words, ‘Lord, save me!’
implied that he had given up all hope of saving himself; and when we
offer the same prayer, there is the same act of self-renunciation as well
as faith. I do not say that we shall give up the most diligent and
devout endeavours after holiness, for we shall ‘press towards the mark
for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus;’ but that in
the midst of it all we shall both know and acknowledge our own utter
helplessness; and thank God for that passage in Rom. v. 6, in which we
are taught that ‘when we were _yet_ without strength, in due time Christ
died for the ungodly.’ I commend that ‘yet’ to the careful consideration
of all those who are painfully conscious of their own inability to rise.