I. THE SIN OF SOME AND THE SUFFERING OF OTHERS. This is put before us in a very striking figure. Literally, the taste of a sour grape would be an instantaneous sensation; but here we are asked to imagine the possibility of a man getting whatever other advantage there might be in the grape, whatever nourishment, whatever refreshment, and then handing on the one bad element of sourness. And truly it often seems as if there were this kind of division. The wrong doer goes on succeeding, enjoying himself, getting his full of life, and then his children come in to find that the father's wrong doing is like a millstone round their necks, destroying every chance they might otherwise have. The figure here presents from the human side that fact of experience which from the Divine side is presented as a law. "I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children" (Exodus 20:5). II. THE SIN OF SOME AND THEIR OWN SUFFERING. We need to look somewhat carefully at the point brought out in ver. 30. At first it seems as if daily experience were contradicted, for we leap to an inference that the children's tooth will not be set on edge by the sour grapes their fathers have eaten; whereas it is abundantly plain that children still suffer for the sins of their fathers. But observe that this is not at all denied. The great point insisted on is that the fathers will suffer themselves; and this is a point that needs to be insisted on, for the fallacy is continually arising that a man may, by some magic, some precaution, escape the consequences of his evil, and so he may escape from some consequences. But observe, again, the all-comprehending word here used, "he shall die," and this word has a retrospective force. There never has been any other law but that a man shall die for his own iniquity. Possibly we should take this passage as having some sort of reference to the old custom of making revenge an hereditary thing. If the doer of a wrong escaped vengeance and died peacefully in his bed, then his son stood in the father's place, and became an object of attack till the punishment due to the father was visited on him. It seems so plain to us that a man should die for his own iniquity, punishment falling on the head of him who does the wrong, that we find it hard to imagine a day when the ethical code was otherwise. Whereas it is tolerably clear that in Old Testament times and countries the feeling was that somebody must be punished; and if the real criminal escaped, why, then take his nearest blood relation. That the Christian looks on things so differently is the clearest proof that this prophecy has been fulfilled. III. THE NEED THERE IS THAT EVERY ONE SHOULD CLASSIFY THE SUFFERINGS OF HIS LIFE. It is not enough that we seek deliverance from suffering. It is right for us to do so, and suffering, we may be sure, is not by the will of God. But as there is suffering which comes from causes within our control, so there is suffering coming from causes outside our control; and it is with the former only that we can deal. Besides, it is the worst suffering, seeing that it comes from trouble and unrest of conscience. God has so made us that the worst wounds from others are but as surface scratches compared with the wounds that in our folly we inflict on ourselves. Then we have to look, not only on the sufferings, but enjoyments. We may so live as to rise above the worst that men can do to us, and at the same time, we may be the better for whatever good man is disposed to do. If sometimes it is true that the fathers eat sour grapes and the children's teeth get set on edge, is it not also true that the fathers eat sweet grapes, yet little of the sweetness they seem to taste - it is a sweetness standing over for the children? - Y.
I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee. I. OUR ONCE DESOLATE AND MISERABLE CONDITION BY NATURE. Were we not captives? yea, bond-slaves? All our happiness consisted in forgetting ourselves. Everything marked us as, in the worst sense, slaves. Some of us professed to despise the opinions of men, and yet, what were we but the slaves of men? What did we pursue? Nothing but the applause of men. What were we afraid of? Nothing but their censure. How afraid of singularity, when we first perhaps had some thoughts concerning our souls. What was this but slavery? Look at the lives we led. We lived but for ourselves. Self was our Nebuchadnezzar, who took possession of the city, our walls, and got all for himself. Self, perhaps, in some decent, moral form, but still self; the fleshy, unregenerate, corrupt, carnal self. Was not this the greatest slavery? And who was the master, the grinding tyrant of this slave? To whom had we sold ourselves for nought? Who was it that led us captive at his will? (2 Timothy 2:25, 26.)II. THE LOVE WHICH GOD HAS TOWARDS HIS TRUE ISRAEL. And what is its peculiar character? It is Sovereign and Distinguishing. 1. It is a Love bounded by His Will. His most wise, righteous, and holy Will, (Exodus 33:19). 2. It is" personal and individual. "I have loved thee. Thee, a poor sinner, a prodigal; thee, a poor, unprofitable servant thee, a poor backslider in heart too oft; thee, too much, too frequently ungrateful; — yet have I loved thee — yes, thee, notwithstanding all; thee, singly and alone, as if there were no other; thee, as one of the innumerable family, the many sons whom I will bring to glory. 3. It is effectual and overcoming. "With lovingkindness have I drawn thee." Ah, how gently, how tenderly, how silently, sometimes mysteriously, but ever in love. 4. This love is everlasting. Time never knew its beginning, eternity shall never know its end. Closing remarks: — 1. All religion consists in individuality. Religion is a personal thing. (1) (2) (3) 2. All the blessings of present salvation spring from God s everlasting love. (J. H. Evans, M. A.) II. When the Lord does so appear, WE THEN PERCEIVE THAT HE HAS BEEN DEALING WITH US. "The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee." What exceeding love the Lord showed to us before we knew Him! Let us now look back and remember the love of long-suffering, which spared us when we delighted in sin. The Lord did not cut us off in our unbelief; therein is love. The next admirable discovery is the Lord's restraining grace. We now see that the Lord held us back from plunging into the deepest abysses of sin. Blessed be God for those crooks in my lot which kept me from poisonous pleasures! So, too, we now see the preparations of grace, the ploughing of our hearts by sorrow, the sowing of them by discipline, the harrowing of them by pain, the watering of them by the rain of favour, the breaking of them up by the frosts of adversity. These were not actually grace, but they opened the door for grace. We now see how in a thousand ways the Lord was drawing us when we knew Him not. The text chiefly dwells upon drawings. I beg you to refresh your memories by recollecting the drawings of the Lord towards you while you were yet ungodly. Often these were very gentle drawings: they were not such forces as would move an ox or an ass, but such as were meant for tender spirits; yet sometimes they tugged at you very hard, and almost overcame you. Drawing supposes a kind of resistance; or, at any rate, an inertness; and, truly, we did not stir of ourselves, but needed to be persuaded and entreated. Some of you will recollect how the Holy Spirit drew you many times before you came to Him. The Lord surrounded you as a fish is surrounded with a net; and though you laboured to escape you could not, but were drawn more and more within the meshes of mercy. Do you remember when at last the Holy Spirit drew you over the line; when at last, without violating your free will, He conquered it by forces proper to the mind? Blessed day! You were made a willing captive to your Lord, led in silken fetters at His chariot-wheels, a glad prisoner to almighty love, set free from sin and Satan, made to be unto your Lord a lifelong servant. III. WE PERCEIVE THAT LOVING-KINDNESS WAS THE DRAWING FORCE. "Therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee." At first we think God has dealt sternly with us, but in His light we see light, and we perceive that the drawing power, which has brought us to receive mercy, is the Divine loving-kindness. Love is the attractive force. What multitudes of persons have been drawn to the Lord first by His loving-kindness in the gift of His dear Son! The loving-kindness of God as seen in the sacrifice of the Lord Jesus draws men from sin, from self, from Satan, from despair, and from the world. Next, the hope of pardon, free and full, attracts sinners to God. "Thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven thee," makes a man run after Christ. I have known others drawn to the Lord by another view of His loving-kindness, namely, His willingness to make new creatures of us. The prayer of many has been, "Create in me a clean heart, O God"; and they have been charmed by hearing that whosoever believes in Jesus is born again, to start on a new life, ruled by a new principle, and endowed with a new nature, sustained by the Holy Spirit. Oh, the loving-kindness of the Lord! You may measure heaven; you may fathom the sea; you may plunge into the abyss, and tell its depth; but the loving-kindness of the Lord is beyond you. Here is an infinite expanse. It is immeasurable, even as God Himself is beyond conception. It is everywhere about us, behind, before, beneath, above, within, without. Every day the Lord loads us with benefits. IV. THEN WE LEARN THAT THE GREAT MOTIVE OF THE DIVINE DRAWINGS IS EVERLASTING LOVE. Lot your spirit lie and soak in this Divine assurance: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." Take it up into yourself as Gideon's fleece absorbed the dew. Notice, the Lord has done it. It is an actual fact, the Lord is loving you. Put those two pronouns together, "I" and "thee." "I," the Infinite, the inconceivably glorious — "thee," a poor, lost, undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving sinner. See the link between the two! See the diamond rivet which joins the two together for eternity: "I have loved thee." See the antiquity of this love: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." I loved thee when I died for thee upon the Cross, yea, I loved thee long before, and therefore did I die. I loved thee when I made the heavens and the earth, with a view to thine abode therein: yea, I loved thee before I had made sea or shore. There is a beginning for the world, but there is no beginning for the love of God to His people. Nor does that exhaust the meaning of "everlasting love." There has never been a moment when the Lord has not loved His people. There has been no pause, nor ebb, nor break in the love of God to His own. That love knows no variableness, neither shadow of turning. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." You may take a leap into the future, and find that love still with you. Everlasting evidently lasts for ever. We shall come to die, and this shall be a downy pillow for our death-bed, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." When we wake up in that dread world to which we arc surely hastening, we shall find infinite felicity in "everlasting love." When the judgment is proclaimed, and the sight of the great white throne makes all hearts to tremble, and the trumpet sounds exceeding loud and long, and our poor dust wakes up from its silent grave, we shall rejoice in this Divine assurance: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." Roll on, ye ages, but everlasting love abides! Die out, sun and moon, and thou, O time, be buried in eternity, we need no other heaven than this, "I have loved thee with an everlasting love"! ( C. H. Spurgeon.) 1. The object mentioned. "Thee." Most unworthy. 2. The attribute displayed. Love. What is it? 3. The person speaking. "I," whom ye have — (1) (2) (3) II. A GREATER WONDER. "With an everlasting love." Wonderful to love us at all. More wonderful to love us with such a love. This love is everlasting in its — 1. Counsels. 2. Conquests. 3. Continuance. 4. Consequence. III. THE GREATEST WONDER. "Therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee" To send food to the hungry, is gracious in the wealthy; but to bring the hungry in the kindest manner to the royal table — this is wonderful indeed. We shall see here — 1. A wonderful display. "I have drawn thee." Here is inferred our helplessness and unwillingness to come. God draws by many means. 2. A wonderful instrument. "Loving-kindness." The heavenly magnet. Kindness does not always go with love. God saves us. Here is kindness. But He does so in the best possible way. In the tenderest, most gentle manner. 3. A wonderful reason. "Therefore." God's reason is in Himself. Our salvation the fruit of everlasting love, and nothing else. Should we not love Him? (W. J. Mayers.) 1. Because He loved them He created them. 2. Because He loved them He created them what they are. He made them capable of enjoying every kind of happiness of which we have any conception. II. CREATED MEN ARE THE SUBJECTS OF DIVINE LOVE. 1. God's love in nature has a power to draw men to Him. His love in nature appears in two forms.(1) In the form of utility. Nature ministers to man's necessities and gratifications.(2) In the form of beauty. What is beauty, but the costume of love, the pictures and statues of love, nay the voice, the winning music of love? 2. God s love in mediation has a power to draw men to Him. The incarnation of Christ is at once the effect, the channel, and the instrument of Divine love, and the Divine love that draws with a moral magnetism of the highest measure. (Homilist.) II. THE PRACTICAL EXPRESSION OF GOD'S LOVE. 1. An external revelation (John 3:16; 1 John 4:9). Open your heart to the influence of the Cross of Calvary, comprehend in some measure the sacred sorrow of Him who there took the burden of our sins upon Him that He might bear them all away, and you can never doubt the "everlasting love" wherewith the Father loves you. 2. An internal force. Even in his Divine relations man is not a being to be compelled by resistless force to move in any path chosen for him, but one who is endowed with the wondrous power of yielding in response to persuasive influence a free and willing service (Hosea 11:4). That is the noblest kind of persuasive influence which appeals not so much to our fears as our desires, which awakens not terror but love. (Homiletic Magazine.) 1. The distinguishing constitution He has given him. He has endowed him with more faculties of enjoyment than any other creature in the universe possesses. He has given him intellect, by which be can enjoy the pleasures of meditation; social affection, by which he can enjoy the blessings of friendship; religious affinities, by which he can have sympathy with the source of all life and blessedness. 2. His wonderful mercy in the mediation of His Son. II. His love for man is ETERNAL. 1. Humanity had nothing to do with exciting it. 2. Christ had nothing to do with procuring it. Christ's mediation was the effect, not the cause of God's love for man. His mediation was no afterthought. The Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. III. His love for man is ATTRACTING. 1. How attracting it is in its nature! Kindness is always attractive; and its attracting power is always in proportion to its spontaneity, disinterestedness, and magnanimity. 2. How attracting it is in its manifestation! Look at it — (1) (2) (Homilist.) I. THE MARVELLOUS APPEARING. "The Lord hath appeared of old unto me." Here are two persons; hut how different in degree I Hers we have "me," a good-for-nothing creature, apt to forget my Lord, and to lira as if there were no God; yet He has not ignored or neglected me. There is the High and Holy One, whom the heaven of heavens cannot contain, and He has appeared unto me. Between me and the great Jehovah there have been communications; the solitary silences have been broken. "The Lord hath appeared," hath appeared "unto me." Do I hear some asking, How is this? I understand that God appeared to Israel, but how to me? Let me picture the discovery of grace as it comes to the awakening mind, when it learns to sit at the feet of Jesus, saved by faith in the great sacrifice. Touched by the Spirit of God, we find that the Lord appeared to each one of us in the promises of His Word. Every promise in God's Word is a promise to every believer, or to every character such as that to which it was first given. Furthermore, "The Lord hath appeared of old unto me," in the person of His Son. God came to each believer in Christ Jesus. Say, "Yes, eighteen hundred years ago and more, the Lord in the person of His dear Son appeared unto me in Gethsemane, and on Calvary as my Lord, and my God, and yet my substitute and Saviour." Since that, the Lord has constantly appeared unto us in the power of His Holy Spirit. Do you remember when first your sin was set in order before your tearful eyes, and you trembled for fear of the justice which you had provoked? Do you remember when you heard the story of the Crucified Redeemer? when you saw the atoning sacrifice? when you looked to Jesus and were lightened? It was the Holy Spirit who was leading you out of yourself; and God by the Holy Spirit was appearing unto you. Now, we hold this appearance in precious memory: "The Lord hath appeared of old unto me." Many things are preserved in the treasure-house of memory; but this is the choicest of our jewels. How gracious, how glorious was the appearance of God in Christ Jesus to our soul! This appearance came in private assurance. To me it was as personal as it was sure. I used to hear the preacher, but then I heard my God; I used to see the congregation, but then I saw Him who is invisible. I used to feel the power of words, but now I have felt the immeasurable energy of their substance. God Himself filled and thrilled my soul. I cannot help calling your attention to the fact, that the Lord came in positive certainty. The text does not say, "I hoped so," or "I thought so"; but, "The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying." To me it is bliss to say, "I know whom I have believed." My soul cannot content herself with less than certainty. I desire never to take a step upon an "if," or a "peradventure." I want facts, not fancies. II. THE MATCHLESS DECLARATION. "The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love." 1. Here is a word from God of amazing love. Jehovah saith, "I have loved thee." Think it over. Believe it. Stagger not at it. If the husband should say to his wife, "I have loved thee," she would believe him: it would seem only natural that he should do so. And when Jehovah says to you, a feeble woman, an unknown man, "I have loved thee," He means it. 2. Note, next, it is a declaration of unalloyed love. The Lord had been bruising, and wounding, and crushing His people, and yet He says, "I have loved thee." These cruel wounds were all in love. 3. This statement is a declaration of love in contrast with certain other things. What a difference between the false friend-ship of the world and sin, and the changeless love of God! You have provoked Him to jealousy by gods which were no gods, but He has never ceased His love. What a miracle of grace is this! How sweetly does immutability smile on us as we hear it say, "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love"! 4. Thus, our text is a word of love in the past. "I have loved thee." We were rebels, and He loved us. We were dead in trespasses and in sins, and He loved us. We rejected His grace, and defied His warnings, but He loved us. The matchless declaration of the text is a voice of love in the present. The Lord loves the believer now. Whatever discomfort you are in, the Lord loves you. The text is a voice of love in the future. It means, "I will love thee for ever." God has not loved us with a love which will die out after a certain length of time: His love is like Himself, "from everlasting to everlasting." This is a declaration of love secured to us — secured in many ways. Did you observe in this chapter how the Lord secures His love to His people, first, by a covenant? Further, this love is secured by relationship. Will you dart your eye on to the ninth verse, and read the last part of it? "I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn." A man cannot get rid of fatherhood by any possible means His love is pledged again by redemption. Read the eleventh verse, "For the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he." Would you see the indenture of God's covenant love? Behold it in the indented hands and feet of the Crucified Redeemer. This is a declaration of love Divinely confessed. The Lord has not sent this assurance to us by a prophet, but He has made it Himself — "The Lord hath appeared." Notice, that it is love sealed with a "yea." God would have us go no further in our ordinary speech than to say ",yea, yea"; and surely we may be content with so much from Himself. His "yea" amounts to a sacred asseveration: "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love." III. THE MANIFEST EVIDENCE. "I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee." Here are drawings mentioned. Have you not felt them? These were drawings resulting from love. He drew us because He loved us with an everlasting love. Other drawings of Divine goodness are resisted, resisted in some cases to the bitter end, and men justly perish; but the drawings of everlasting love effect their purpose. Here are drawings mentioned: these were drawings from God. How sweetly, how omnipotently, God can draw! We yield to the drawings because they come from the Lord s own hand, and their power lies in His love. As the drawings come from God, so are they drawings to God. Blessed is he whose heart is being drawn nearer and nearer to the Most High. The Lord assures us that these are drawings of His loving-kindness. However He draws, it is in love; and whenever He draws, it is in love. These drawings are to be continuous. "With loving-kindness have I drawn thee"; and He means to do the same evermore. Such a magnificent text as ours ought to make us consider two things. The first is, Is it so? Am I drawn? If God loves you with an everlasting love, He has drawn you by His loving-kindness: is it so or not? Has He drawn you by His Holy Spirit, so that you have followed on? Are you a believer? Do you carry Christ's cross? You have been drawn to this. Then take home these gracious words: "I have loved thee with an everlasting love." If you have not been so drawn, do you not wish you were? But, child of God, if you know these drawings, and if it be true that God loves you with an everlasting love, then are you resting? "I have a feeble hope," says one. What? How can you talk so? He who is loved with an everlasting love, and knows it, should swim in an ocean of joy. Not a wave of trouble should disturb the glassy sea of his delight. What is to make a man happy if this will not? ( C. H. Spurgeon.) 1. It is more abundant. Our love partakes of this narrowness of our nature — it can embrace but a few objects and it cannot travel far. But God is an infinite Being. He fills all space with His presence; there is no limit to His capabilities. His love is accordingly an infinite love. Our love is a taper, shining on a few objects only and on those dimly; the love of God is a sun, throwing its light wide as it is His good pleasure to throw it, pervading His universe, brightening and warming and gladdening millions on millions of objects as easily and effectually as one. 2. It is also a free, self-moving love. It rises spontaneously in His mind, as water rises in a fountain. It requires nothing in any object, no merit or amiableness or beauty or anything else, to call it forth. II. "I HAVE LOVED THEE WITH AN EVERLASTING LOVE." There never was a period when God did not live and did not love you. He loved you before your father or mother or any one else loved you; He loved you before you were born; He loved you before the earth or the heavens were created; He loved you in the very first moment He loved at all. Would you tell how old His love to you is? You must first tell how old the Ancient of days Himself is. Would you measure His love to you? It must be with a line which can stretch to the beginning of eternity on the one hand, and reach to the end of it on the other. III. "I HAVE DRAWN THEE," the Lord says; and this is very naturally and beautifully said here. Real love, we know, is always of a drawing nature. Its tendency ever is to bring near to us, or to lead us near to the object we love. "Give me my infant," the tender mother says. "Let me if possible have my children around me," says the affectionate father. So the Lord says here, "I have loved you, and therefore, because I have loved you, I have drawn you, drawn you to Myself." When the soul at last turns to Christ and through Christ to God, it is because God in some way is working on that soul, and attracting and drawing it. IV. The Lord tells us in the text HOW HE DRAWS HIS PEOPLE TO HIM. "With loving-kindness have I drawn thee." "My love to thee is so strong, that it not only impels Me to draw thee to Me, but it influences Me in all My conduct while drawing thee." We may assign a twofold meaning to the words, regarding them as descriptive both of the means which the Lord employs to bring His people to Him, and of the manner in which He deals with them while bringing them. He will draw them by His loving-kindness, and He will draw them by that lovingly, most kindly and tenderly. (C. Bradley, M. A.) II. WE HAVE NEW REVELATIONS OF AN OLD TRUTH. With every Divine appearance came a revelation. He who appeared of old to the Church breathing words of love, hath in these last days spoken unto us. That last appearance was the most perfect expression of love, that last revelation left nothing unsaid that even Divine love could say. How much has love said in this world — how much it says to you this day. You have not found out yet the depth, the full significance of its revelations. You know something, you may know far more. The more you love, the more you will be capacitated for manifestations of love. We need new, constant assurances of the Divine love. We cannot live in the past alone. Do you ask why are new revelations necessary? Why is it not enough to be told once that God loves us? Why must we be told again and again? I answer, we should require assurances of love from a friend if we felt that our affinities with his pure nature were anything but entire, that we often pained him by our recklessness, and prevented his intercourse with us by our indifference; and surely, with all my frailties and sins, with the deep consciousness of my unworthiness, I need God to tell me that He loves me, and I want Him to repeat the assurance. There is, moreover, a peculiar sensitiveness about love; it craves for fresh utterances, for strong, unequivocal assertions, just as Jonathan caused David to swear again, because he loved him as his own soul; so the love of God is so essential to us that we cannot live without it, we prize it above all things, and hence we long to hear, in the depths of our souls, the words, "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love." III. THE LOVE OF GOD IS EVER NEW. It is an everlasting love. God loved you long before you realised His love. You have, perhaps, sometimes thought that He loved you because you loved Him; it is quite the reverse; you love Him because He first loved you. God will still love through all changes — in sorrow, in sickness, in old age, in death. God will love us for ever. His loves is always fresh; it is the same to-day as yesterday, and to-morrow it will be as to-day. IV. IT IS GOD'S LOVE THAT ATTRACTS MEN. This love draws. Men yield to this Divine power. This is the power of the Gospel; this subdued, this won you. What melted that heart of ice, — what, but the warm breath of love? What drew you, but the cords of love that were entwined about your heart! (H. J. Bevis.) 1. It is not derived, or imparted, or excited by us in the sense of being awakened by us. We are the occasion in part of its being aroused and expressed, but it is not a derived or imparted love. Ours is a love that is as a spark from the great fire that burns in God's heart, fire of love that is underfeed, self-existent, independent. 2. It is perfect, it is impossible to add anything to it, nor could anything be taken from it without rendering it imperfect, it is as complete as love can be found. 3. Instead of being divorced from the other attributes and affections of God, it is allied with them all — love and self-existence, love and independence, love and omnipotence, love and boundless wisdom, love and unspotted purity, love and undeviating righteousness. 4. In all respects is the love of God, Godlike — equal with God. Verily, that man is loved whom God loves. What though no creature may care for him, if God loves him he is loved for ever, and infinitely loved; he is loved with all the strength of the Divine affection; on the other hand, he knows not what it is to be loved in perfection, who does not know and believe the love of God for us.Just look further, at the love of God when embracing sinful men, and notice three things about it. 1. It is personal in its objects. He loves you individually; and His loving a large number is by His loving each one in that number. 2. Although embracing sinners, the love of God is discriminating, and pure, and righteous love. It delights where it can delight, and seeks the good of its object in every form, and in the highest degree. 3. The love of God follows those whom it embraces. It was prolonged to the seed of Abraham beyond numerous apostasies and spiritual adulteries; it is prolonged to us beyond seasons of declension and of backsliding. The love of God goes after us. It follows us into every new relationship, into every new duty, into every new trial, into every new temptation, into fresh provocation, and claims upon God's forbearance; it follows us through life into death, and through death into immortality. (S. Martin.) 1. It may seem strange, yet it is true, that there are hearts who can more readily feel that God is angry with them than that God really loves them. The instinct of conscious guilt is fear, and when the sense of sin is strongly awakened, we are apt to turn away from God and to feel as if God must hate us. 2. We feel, as it were, in other moments that the human heart is strangely inconsistent. We feel as if the powers of nature were strong in us, and the sense of sin dies down; we feel as if God would overlook our sins, and that we are not so sinful after all; we feel as if we might trust to His goodness, as if it were, so to speak, good nature. But this is equally inconsistent with true spiritual experience. To all that is evil in human life and human history, whether in Gentile or in Jew, God is a consuming fire. II. GOD LOVES US EVERLASTINGLY. The fact of Divine love is not only sure in itself, it is never uncertain in incidence. Whatever appearances there may seem to the contrary, it is still there. No cloud can extinguish it, however it may obscure it; no misery, born of the depths of human despair, no tragedy of human agony or of human crime, can make that love doubtful; it is still there, it is around us, it is with us; its everlasting arms are holding us even when we cannot feel it, and grasping us in its soft embrace although our feet may be bleeding and sore with the hardness of the road along which we travel. All sorrow is a gift, and every trouble that the heart of man has, an opportunity. You may not know this now, you may never know it, and yet it is true. God's love knows no relenting. "My will for you is a will of. good without variableness or shadow of turning." "Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love." Just a few words only as to the last point — "I have loved thee; therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee." III. THE LOVE OF GOD IS INDIVIDUAL; it is personal; it is the love of one loving heart to another; it is no mere impersonal conception of supreme benevolence; it is the love of a father to a child, the love of a mother to a daughter; it would not be love otherwise, for it is a distinguishing idea of love that it discriminates its object. How personal always was the ministry of our Lord! "Come unto Me." "Take up My cross." "Simon, son of Jonas, lovest thou Me?" (Principal Tulloch.) 1. It had no birthday. Go back through a past eternity, still you find no date for its commencement. Find out a day when the Lord Jesus was not loved by the Father, and you have the day when the Church was not loved by Him; you will arrive at the time when His love first began to the Church, for He says, "Thou hast loved them as Thou hast loved me, and Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world. It foresaw all the rebellion, backslidings, frailties, sins, infirmities — everything that would characterise the individual upon whom that love rested; and yet the Lord loved you, because He would love you; and that is the only reason that love itself can assign, because He would keep the covenant which He made with His own Son for you. 2. As it had no birthday, so it has no changing day. Like its Author, it is immutable, unvarying. There is nothing that can occur in reference to the objects on whom God s love is fixed that He did not foresee, and there is no change that can occur in the Divine mind as to any improvement in His plan and order of government, or manifestation of mercy to man.(1) This love bestowed upon you the greatest blessings before conversion. Strange to say, and yet it is a great and solemn truth, that while you were an enemy it gave you Christ-gave you the Spirit to regenerate you. Love, ere you were born, was manifested towards you — made the covenant, formed the plan of mercy by which you might be saved.(2) This love changes its dispensations, not its nature. Who questions a father's love when he corrects a rebellious son? Who doubts the teacher's love when he compels his pupil to apply his mind to the subject of instruction? So God acts. If it be necessary to make you diligent in His service, to overcome temptation, to draw you away from the world and its vanities and its corruptions, He may deprive you of property, He may remove an idol, He may stain your pride, He may bereave you of one who is as your own soul, He may prostrate your honour in the dust, He may suffer your own family to rise against you; and the very spring of all this is love. 3. It has no dying day. Love is a golden chain, one end of which is fixed to God s throne in eternity past, and the other end to His throne in eternity to come. This love of God is a bond not to be dissolved, a union never to be broken, a depth which cannot be fathomed, a height which can never be scaled, a length which can never be traversed, a breadth which cannot be measured, a science that passeth all knowledge, a fire which many waters cannot quench, a flame which the floods cannot drown, a sovereign stronger than death, a constrainer which cannot be overcome, a breastplate which cannot be pierced, a safeguard which casts out all fear, an inhabitant that can never be removed, a preventive to every evil, a catholicon for all woe. "For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life," &c. II. THE MANNER IN WHICH THIS LOVE IS DISPLAYED, or the evidences by which we may ascertain that we possess it. 1. See how with loving-kindness He has drawn you in the paths of providential arrangement! Begin with the earliest dawn of. memory: why were you drawn to such a school? Why did you form such friendships? Did not that love draw you to a situation, a locality as foreign co your thoughts as can well be, give you prosperity, make you influential, happy and blessed, and a blessing to others? What a constraint, often inexplicable, has it put upon your inclinations to accomplish an object which, had it been granted, you afterwards saw would have been your ruin! But the cord stayed you, the love was thrown around you to keep you back. Afflictions, too, have been some of the most beneficial cords of love that have visited you — cords which confined your aspirations and checked your vanity, taught you to pray, taught you to sympathise with others, taught you to love. 2. In the progress of regeneration this is wondrously manifested. 3. In the experimental enjoyment of His favour we see this Divine discovery. Your life has consisted of so many steps from one manifestation of Divine love to another. 4. Practical remarks.(1) Every soul who hears me may be interested in this love.(2) How humbling the contrast of our love to God! How inconstant, how feeble, how spiritless is our level(3) Let us imitate God in His dealings with us. If we would prevail with others, we shall find that the cords of love are better than the rod of Moses. Neither ministers nor private Christians can scare men into the ways of godliness; no threats will frighten a man to be holy. (J. Sherman.) 1. Everlasting love is love without a beginning. The eternity of Divine love is a subject which we cannot fathom, but we may look at it in relation to our own being. Go back behind creation, before the Divine will had generated a single atom of matter, and in that very we discover ourselves in a perfect, living, actual conception, subjective being was embraced, nourished, and delighted in by "everlasting love." The love of God is not an emotion of delight created by the appearance of comeliness, but delight itself; not an emotion excited by beauty, but beauty itself. There is a tendency in the human mind to thrust itself behind the birthday of time, and fall — where? Into the arms of "everlasting love." 2. "Everlasting love" is love without change. Man, in relation to the eternity of God, must be regarded as a whole. "Everlasting love" embraces that whole. Our first impulse is to regard it as encircling the pure and the innocent, but turning aside from the disobedient and simple. It is not so, for the Word says, "God so loved the world." Sin has transformed a paradise into a wilderness, a heaven into a hell, but sin cannot change "everlasting love." That explains it all. 3. "Everlasting love" is love without end. On every Mohammedan tombstone the inscription begins, "He remains," i.e., God. To-day we will write on every gravestone, The love of God remains. Ah, there are many gravestones besides those in the churchyard. You may imagine inscriptions like these: "To the memory of friendship"; "To the memory of parental and filial affection"; "To the memory of marriage sacredness and devotion." But those fires, which once burnt brightly, have gone out for want of fuel, or for something that is worse. Should there be an aching void or bitter disappointment because former sources of affection have dried up, let us not turn to the devil to supply their places, but let us turn to the "everlasting love" of God. II. THE METHOD OF REDEMPTION. "Therefore with loving-kindness have I drawn thee." We sometimes think that our Heavenly Father deals with us harshly, or unkindly. Yes, why the cross and not the crown? You see the child running in from the garden full of tears, and saying, "Something has hurt me." On examination it is found that a thorn is in one of the fingers. Then the gentlest of hands will endeavour to extract it. When she is doing so, the child will cry out, "Oh, mother, you hurt me." Ah, it is not the mother that hurts, but the thorn. When God takes out the thorn, we think that He hurts us. Not so, it is the thorn. Even God cannot take sin out of the heart but that it will give pain. 1. In dealing with the attractions of "everlasting love," we must bear in mind the fact that we can only be saved by attraction. Grace begins its work by transforming the heart into the image of the Son of God. One grain of the Saviour's love in that heart will leaven the whole. The sinner must be made willing to part with his sin. The power to effect this comes from God, but it can only be applied when the willing cry rends his heart, "Lord, save, or I perish." 2. Consider the particular form which God's loving-kindness has assumed in order to attract man to virtue. Under what aspects has mercy appeared unto men? We look back, and see an altar, and a victim, and a priest. But we soon learn that these are only types, yet, God's mercy pursued man in times of yore, and does now, and everywhere. To-day, it is not altar, victim, or priest; but the Son of God, in a body like our own, and bearing up under the vicissitudes of life. In Christ Jesus we have the picture of loving-kindness. Sometimes that picture is in words of sympathy, of love, of encouragement, and inspiration. "Never man spake like this Man." At other times the picture is in deeds, — the most gracious and marvellous. The sick are healed. The blind see. The deaf hear. The dead live. Is the picture overdrawn? (T. Davies, M. A.) ( T. Guthrie, D. D.) ( T. Goodwin.) (A. Maclaren, D. D.) (Thomas Spurgeon.) What the Immense Creation Teaches August the Twenty-First Satisfaction God in the Covenant The Two Covenants: their Relation The New Covenant Conversion of all that Come. Old Things are Passed Away. Whether the Active Life Remains after this Life? Waiting Faith Rewarded and Strengthened by New Revelations A vision of Judgement and Cleansing Perseverance in Holiness Appendix xiv. The Law in Messianic Times. Conversion --Varied Phenomena or Experience. The Girdle of the City. Nehemiah 3 The King in Exile "We have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous. " The Quotation in Matt. Ii. 6. Exposition of Chap. Iii. (ii. 28-32. ) The Lord's Supper Instituted. The First Covenant Sanctification. |
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