And here I am met upon the very threshhold by the opposition of certain modern theologians, who hold that sonship is not the special and peculiar privilege of believers. But yonder is the Saviour,, and he is called Jesus, "For he shall save his people from their sins." It is Christ that died." Come on thou world in arms! is this the cause of thine enmity? For that very reason they began to groan. The co-heir is heir to the entire estate; and if he says, "No, not to that portion," then he is not heir to any; and if he makes exemption anywhere, he makes exemption to the whole. How can we deserve anything from the being we hate? The believer continues to hope for the time when death and sin shall no more annoy his body; when, as his soul has been purified, so shall his body be, and his prayer shall be heard, that the Lord would sanctify him wholly, body, soul, and spirit. Blessed be his name. Our Lord is the Son of the Highest, the Son of God; and truly, beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is. Romans 8:26-27 . They think that if they cry, "Lord, have mercy upon me," when they lay a-dying, they shall go to heaven directly. Others of you have affliction in your children, many of you are tried in your business, and some of you in your bodies with chronic or acute diseases. I can foil him with that, for he sits there to judge him and to condemn him for ever. The saints in heaven are perfectly free from sin, and, so far as they are capable of it, they are perfectly happy; but a disembodied spirit never can be perfect until it is reunited to its body. Remember again, we are Christ's brethren, and there is a debt in brotherhood. I owe no man anything after the debt has been paid, whether by myself, or by somebody else; and if Christ took our sin upon himself, and suffered for it, the sins for which he suffered are gone, plunged as in a shoreless sea, drowned in the Redeemer's blood. Now, farewell to such of you as are debtors in that sense; but just one word to those who are debtors in the other sense; Sinner, thou who owest to God's justice, thou who hast never been pardoned; what wilt thou do when pay-day comes/ My friend over there, you who have run up a score of black sins, what will you do when pay-day comes, and no Christ to pay your debts for you? The sighing of the prisoner surely cometh up into the ears of the Lord. It is a checkered scene, a garment of many colours. Expect not, then, that all things shall work together as for thy good. If man alone call thee, thou art uncalled. As Paul's exposition in 5:12-21 has shown, "through one . Every priest stands daily ministering and offering sacrifice for sin. Come with me, believer, to your estates, and behold, just on the edge of your Father's great inheritance, lies the swamp and morass of affliction. Oh, yes, rivers of consolation flow from my calling. You quenched conscience. Debts of honor, as we call them which are no debts in some men's eyes we can discharge; but the great and solemn debt we owe to God is ofttimes passed by, neglected and forgotten. Every one knows that it is a disgrace to a matchless prayer-book, that such words should be permitted to stand there-words so infamously untrue that by their gross untruthfulness they cease to have the destructive effect which more cunning language might have produced, because the conscience of man revolts against the idea that the sprinkling of drops of water upon the infants's brow can ever make it a member of Christ, and a child of God. Oh! Yet again. Now, the apostle sets the whole matter before us when he said, "The whole creation groaneth," and you know what comes after that, "travaileth." I will count it to be my highest glory if I may be made a knight of the cross, and may carry that cross upon my shoulder: to the world a badge of dishonor, but to me the ensign of glory, the escutcheon of honor. He says, "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Will you not be satisfied to serve God though you lose by it; to stand up and be thought an arrant fool, because you will not learn the wisdom of this world; to be esteemed a mad fanatic, because you cannot swim with the current. He took the payment and bore it to God, took his wounds, his rent body, his flowing blood, up to his Father's very eyes, and there he spread his wounded hands and pleaded tor his people. It is a strong expression, but as it is Scriptural, we cannot alter it; and we have no wish to do so. He see the disease, but the name of the medicine is not known to us. It is almost as good as Scripture; for Scripture leads us to think of the sufferings of Christ as an unfathomable deep. When Napoleon was on the island of St. Helena, he was watched by many guards, but after many complaints, he enjoyed comparative liberty, and walked alone. "If thou be the Son of God." I believe that, when Christ died, he took all the sins of all his people, past, present, and to come, and when the whole mass was condensed into one bitter cup, he drank it all up. It means, first of all, that Christ is now in the honourable position of an accepted one. And yet once more, another precious means of test in the first of Corinthians, the first chapter, and the ninth verse. Here are four pillars. He died for thee, if now thou dost confess thy guilt. Romans 8:2. (Who would wish that they should? Would that he were not so severe, so rigorously just, so sternly strict to his integrity." I tell thee No; Christ never called the righteous; and if he has not called thee, and if he never does call thee, thou art not elect, and thou and thy self-righteousness must be subject to the wrath of God, and cast away eternally. Has it lifted up the constant tenor of your life, so that you spend your life with God in prayer, in praise, and in thanksgiving, and can no longer be satisfied with the low and mean pursuits which you followed in the days of your ignorance? He it is that leads our soul to cry, "though my house be not so with God, yet hath he made with me an everlasting covenant ordered in all things and sure." Thou Church of God, surely it must survive in thee; for to whom should it more belong to die and sacrifice all, than to those who are the sons of God. "Who is he that condemneth? And these appear to be four at least. The mass of men are all in uncertainty; they do not know what will become of them at last. There is no opposition in God's providence; the raven wing of war is co-worker with the dove of peace. It is not optional with him, it is an inevitable law of the universe. Amen. Do you not remember that the two sons of Zebedee asked to sit, one on the right hand and the other on the left? The Spiritual Resurrection of our Mortal Body (8:1-13) 8:1. So it is not by imitation, but it is by nature, that the child is evil. Were you once darkness in regard to Christ; and has marvelous light manifested to you a marvelous Redeemer, marvelously strong to save? The title of joint heir contains another mystery which I cannot withhold, although it must be judiciously handled Christ, as coheir, has (of his own free grace) so identified himself with what his rights as co-heir are not to be separated or viewed apart from ours. I wonder what the things present are with you, my dear hearers. 2. Not only does faith believe it, but our own history convinces us of the truth of it." You, that were going to thrash mountains, find that molehills cast you down. London: Passmore & Alabaster, 18, Paternoster Row, and all Booksellers. say you? My illustrations do not touch the mystery, but set forth the grace. Now, all them that love God love him because they have had a special, irresistible, supernatural call. Perhaps since matter may not be annihilated, and probably cannot be, but will be as immortal as spirit, this very world will become the place of an eternal jubilee, from which perpetual hallelujahs shall go up to the throne of God. They are the family of God, and the family of Satan their character how different their end, how strangely divided! Why, my brethren, if we get nothing, Christ gets nothing; if there should for us, there is no heaven for Christ. I. The Spirit is one with the Father, and the Father knows what the Spirit means. "Say to the North, give up, and to the South, keep not back; bring my sons from afar, and my daughters from the ends of the earth." All these terrible things in righteousness, the awful proofs of holy vengeance in the judge of all the earth, and successfully neutralized in their arousing effect, by being quietly written among the loving acts and words of the Universal Father. Our spirit bears witness that we are the children of God, when it feels a filial love to God. No priest sat down; he must always stand; for there was always work to be accomplished, always something to be done. My mind wanders: I chatter like a crane; I roar like a beast in pain; I moan in the brokenness of my heart, but oh, my God, I know not what it is my inmost spirit needs; or if I know it, I know not how to frame my petition aright before thee. EXEGESIS: ROMANS 8:12-13. He loves Christ so much that he loves us notwithstanding our unloveliness, because Jesus Christ has covered us with his robe of righteousness, and he has said, "My Father, consider them as lost in me, hidden in me, made one with me." O ye first-born whose names are written in heaven, I take my seat with you and join your rapturous adoration. Consider how much you owe to his forgiving grace, that after ten thousand affronts he loves you as infinitely as ever; and after a myriad of sins, his Spirit still resides within you. And who amongst us has not been so foolish as to desire that there were no God? If all things work together for good (all events, all circumstances, all trials, all happenings, etc. Now, to-day, seeing we are here taught the object of his predestination, it will be our business to labor after it, to bless God that he has set such an object before him, and pray that we may be partakers in it. As we were conceived in sin at the first, and shapen in iniquity, even so in regeneration our new man is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created us. I say it boldly and without a figure, the eternal arm of God now nerved with strength, now released from the bondage in which justice held it, is able to save unto the uttermost them that come unto God by Christ. AMEN. Pentateuch and Other Historical Books of the Old Testament. Veteran! The second time the Lord called him, and said, "Samuel, Samuel," and he arose again, and went to Eli, and said, "Here am I, for thou didst call me," and then it was that Eli, not Samuel, first of all perceived that the Lord had called the child. The duty of the minister is to call souls to Christ, he is to make no distinction whatever "Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Tell conscience that Christ has died for your sins, according to the Scriptures, and it will be perfectly satisfied: it will not go to sleep, but it will use its voice for other purposes, and it will no longer seek to condemn you. I might appeal to scores and hundreds here, and I might say, brethren, you with grey heads, rise up and speak. "It is Christ that died. "We have," says the text, not "we hope and trust sometimes we have," nor yet "possibly we may have," but "we have, we know we have, we are sure we have." While sense is grovelling down below, faith with eagle wing cuts through the cloud and mounts to heaven. The Lord reigneth, or we might lament right bitterly. sir, I could always do wonders when there were no wonders to do. So, you see, I cannot help wondering what the "things to come" will be for you who are here. Judge these things rightly. Let me attempt a second simile: he is as an advocate to one in peril at law. Death hath no more dominion over him and no more dominion over me; his deliverance is mine, his freedom mine for ever. So is it with our text. Even this first point of what the saint has attained will help us to understand why it is that he groans. But there are some that always get well paid for what they do, and, therefore, I shall not mention them, since I am not aware that their claims need my advocacy. The enemy is in front of us. II. Are you intelligently persuaded not only that God is love, but that God loves you? Secondly, I see here, a remedy for all sin. Good men are labouring, at least with usual zeal, and bad men are strenuously plying their craft of evil. It finds the sinner dead, it gives him life, and he obeys the call of life and lives. Everything that is and is done, worketh out some great end and purpose. It reminds me of what I have sometimes heard of the ropes that are used in mining. But he is much more than this. This truth divides itself thus: it is the will of God that conforms us to Christ's image rather than our own will. And then he goes on giving a description of those who are the sons of God, who could not mean any but those who by a living faith in Christ Jesus, have cast their souls once for all on him. I do not believe that the Bible is to be understood except by receiving these doctrines as true. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. We are priests unto our God. What is God to us? Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and steadfast, and which entereth into that within the veil; Sailors throw their anchors downwards; we throw ours upwards. The law condemned us in former days, and would again overthrow us if we ventured to meet it unarmed. Let us notice in the first place, how it is that our spirit is able to bear witness; and as this is a matter of experience, I can only appeal to those who are the true children of God; for no others are competent to give testimony. "My beloved," said he, "thou shalt be the model by which I will fashion my noblest creature, I will for thy sake make men able to converse with thee, and bound to thee by bands of love, who shall be next akin to myself, and in all things like to thee." "The carnal mind," he says, "is ENMITY against God." "As many are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." "This world is ours," says the apostle in another place, and ours because it is Christ's by right of inheritance. A groan then is a part of prayer which we owe to the Holy Ghost, and the same is true of all the prayer which wells up from the deep fountains of our inner life. In the volume of the Book it is written of him: "I delight to do thy will, O my God! "You have robbed God of his glory," another voice seems to say. We pray evermore on such matters with this reserve, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." If you have faith enough brethren, you may this mourning be raised up to sit together in heavenly places with Christ Jesus. Will not such presumption as this be avenged? "What an intellectual treat his prayer was! Is he omnipotent? Prayers which are the offspring of great desires, sublime aspirations, and elevated designs are surely the work of the Holy Spirit, and their power within a man is frequently so great that he cannot find expression for them. But distinguishing grace has made a difference where no difference naturally was; we are now no longer treated as criminals condemned, but as children and heirs of God. Heavenly calling means a call from heaven. I see him putting his own imprimatur thereupon, stamping it with his own signet, dignifying it with his own seal, and again I cry, "Yea rather, who is risen from the dead," who then can condemn the believer? Christ was in his death the hostage of the people of God. Delivered on Lord's Day Morning, March 24th, 1872, by. These two expressions are the great distinguishing marks whereby we are able to separate the precious from the vile, by discovering to us who are the children of God. Our Lord Jesus Christ will say, in the judgment, concerning certain persons, "I never knew you," yet in a sense he knew them, for he knows every man; he knows the wicked as well as the righteous; but there the meaning is, "I never knew you in such a respect as to feel any complacency in you or any favor towards you." "All things work together for good.". They compelled him, however, to go, exacting from him this promise, that if the Romans did not make peace he would come back, and if he came back they would put him to death in the most horrid manner that ever cruelty could invent. We are to be like him then in nature, in relation, in experience. All things at this present moment are working together for the believer's good. Or, read you that old legend of Curtius, the Roman knight. He uses the word "likewise" to intimate that in the same manner as hope sustains the soul, so does the Holy Spirit strengthen us under trial. He hears a sonnet. THE APOSTLE PAUL was writing to a tried and afflicted people, and one of his objects was to remind them of the rivers of comfort which were flowing near at hand. The trumpet of the gospel sounds aloud to every man in our congregations "Ho, everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money; come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price." 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