Selected from: The Presbyter, No. 29, July, 1881, ed. Rev. Arthur Paul (Australia: Synod Archives, Presbyterian Church of Eastern Australia, 1995), 250–251.
“But they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.”
—Jeremiah 30:9.
What has befallen the Jews, since they rejected Jesus of Nazareth, is that which will happen to all despisers of the gospel. What is to happen to Israel in the latter days, when they shall repent of their unbelief and embrace the true Messiah, is the same which every repenting sinner will experience at the hands of a merciful God. Here is the description of that grace which God will show to such sincere penitents—“They shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.”
1. Men are not qualified to be their own masters. They must obey, and their blessedness consists in accepting the right service.
Those who will not serve God, by that very determination, fall into the service of their own sins. We see some who will not acknowledge any control. They spurn to govern their conduct by anything besides their own likings. Neither God’s law, nor his worship, nor the Savior he has provided commands any respect from them, and to speak to them of religious obligation is to exasperate them. Yet the question remains: Are such lawless spirits as free as they imagine themselves? The truth is, they are not free; they are the slaves of a degrading bondage. The Lord Jesus signifies that men may have a choice of masters. “No man can serve two” (Matt. 6:24). But this plainly enough implies that such a being as man must be content to accept a master, on the one side or on the other. He cannot live for himself, or be at his own disposal, whatever he may think. If he does not serve God, he will serve his own sins. No doubt, the self-willed transgressor conceives that, in refusing God’s law, he asserts his own liberty, but nothing could be a greater mistake. By repudiating the claims of God, he falls under the dominion of habits which tyrannize over his soul, and eat out the substance, and at last, the very possibilities of happiness out of his nature. And in the end, he finds that the way of transgressors is hard (Prov. 13:15). He gets fast bound in fetters, which he never anticipated, simply by yielding himself to the seductive but pernicious path of self-gratification, and is more a slave by pleasing than he would have been by denying himself. Bodily appetites, proud self-estimation, withering asceticism are cruel tyrants, when they come to have the upper hand in any soul. Men may refuse to serve God in his commandments, but they cannot escape from serving him in his righteous judgments. Sinners may reject God’s word, but they cannot withdraw from under the heavens which he has made, or hold themselves independent of those ministries which his providence fulfils. God rules the seasons and holds in his hand the changes of sickness and health. He keeps also the peace of the world, and can denounce war more sovereignly than all the crowned potentates of this puny earth. The entire succession of chances—so called—and contingencies is in his hand, and he wields it as his scepter of government, irresistibly over the world, and governs as a moral ruler, sending war, or pestilence, or public disorders, or social disaffection to punish the haughty spirit of self-will and lawlessness among men. Israel would not serve God in his commandments, but the result was that they served their enemies as exiles in a land that was not their own. And the same dispensation of justice is meted out to all men. Whoever will not serve in the precept must serve him in the penalties of his righteous law.
But there is another side to this universal necessity of service under which men lie, for some there are who are privileged to accept a willing service under the authority of God. Such voluntary submission to the burden of duty which God prescribes always arises from a change of heart. Love of God renders obedience a delight, but such love the Holy Ghost must shed abroad in the heart. When this new sentiment is created, love of all God’s commandments will follow. “O, how love I thy law!” (Ps. 119:97) is the genuine outgoing of every heart which God’s grace has touched. Obedience, flowing from such a change of heart, is always sincere. Imperfect it will necessarily be in this world, but towards perfection it will always follow on. For it loves the one Master and hates the other—it holds to the one and despises the other (Matt. 6:24). Being made free from sin, and becoming a servant of God, it has its fruit unto holiness, and the end, everlasting life.
2. Obedience to Christ is the one way of happiness. When God promises good to Israel in the latter days, he says, “They shall serve David, their king.”
In no period of Israel’s history was their national state so prosperous, as when the son of Jesse held the scepter. And to promise the sons of Abraham a revival of the reign of David was, therefore, to open up before them a prospect of unlimited welfare. In the oracles of prophecy, such a promise must be qualified with a spiritual signification, and should be understood as pointing to that state of voluntary and happy obedience into which Christ will receive every converted man. What does this obedience consist in? We answer:
All whose hearts God has touched will serve Christ, by faith in his finished work. Christ’s glory as a Savior consists in having a willing people. He is rewarded, as God the Father appointed that he should be, by the devotion wherewith transgressors, seeking reconciliation, cling to his atoning sacrifice. The very hem of Christ’s priestly garment has virtue in it, and attraction for distressed and convinced sinners. And this faith, or reliance on the character and qualification of Christ, Christ recognizes as the rendering of a true homage—the presentation of a real service. For Christ is a Priest upon his throne, and no form of obedience obtains his approbation sooner than this surrender of the hearts of men to the grace and power of his priestly work. Nothing satisfies his kingly feelings better than the steadfast attendance of a believing people, waiting daily at his gates, watching at the posts of his door. He will provide that none who so wait on him shall be disappointed. The faith of such as are ready to perish, who hasten to cast the burden of their guilt, and the care of their souls upon his hands, is his recompense of reward. In the sight of all worlds, he will glory in being their King—the King of an afflicted and poor people. Of every one among them, he will say, “Because he hath set his love upon me, therefore will I deliver him: I will set him on high, because he hath known my name” (Ps. 91:14).
Such as submit themselves to Christ by faith will also serve him, by obedient attendance upon his ordinances. To observe all things whatsoever he has commanded is one of the fundamental statutes of Christ’s kingdom, and no law of the kingdom is more peremptory than that, which requires his disciples to wait on the preaching of the gospel. The age we live in will go off from Christ altogether, unless the declension of men’s affections from the preaching of the gospel be checked. There is to be “a falling away” in the latter days (2 Thess. 2:3). An age will come—for God’s word forewarns us of it—when revolt against the claims, and perhaps against character, of Christ will be rampant. Whether we are now nearing that ominous time, or are already in the current of the lawlessness which will characterize it, it would be hard to tell. Most trials come as a surprise, and changes of temper and disposition in communities are usually stealthy in their approach. But whether we are in the last times or not, certainly there is a great declension from, and a fast-growing contempt for Christ’s ordinances and for the preaching of the word, especially the most characteristic and important of all the ordinances of Christ’s kingdom. Such despite against Christ’s word is a clear indication that men’s hearts are in rebellion against Christ himself. The account of a truly gracious people is entirely opposite. “They shall serve . . . David their king.” And whatever be the state of the community in which we live, each one can take home this lesson to his own heart. We shall serve Christ, the King of Israel, by honouring his appointments, not forsaking the assemblies of his people, continuing steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and prayer.
True servants of Christ will be distinguished, also, by following him in his example, and this is to be remembered, lest attendance on outward ordinances should at any time grow formal. Imitation of any person’s behaviour is the completest evidence of regard and esteem for him. The moral influence of a friend over us is perfect, when his very every disposition and habit finds a copy in our life, when he reigns, not only over our wills by his authority, but over our hearts by his attractiveness, and draws us to run after him, as the moon in the heavens draws the floodtide in its train. But thus does Christ influence as many as truly turn to God. He is the great primary of the spiritual sphere, and round him all lesser orbs of light obediently circulate. From him they derive their beauty of holiness, and their radiance of glory. And to reflect Christ in our lives is the highest form of obedience which we can render, when as he was, so are we in the world.
Such is the service in which all will engage whose hearts are touched by God. It is an honour more than a service, a privilege more than a duty, to be Christ-like, “and learn of him, for he is meek and lowly in heart” (Matt. 11:29). It is more true of Christ’s than of Solomon’s attendants: “Happy are his men! Happy are his servants, who stand continually before him!” (1 Kings 10:8) Sin shall not have dominion over them. No weapon formed to incriminate them before God’s tribunal shall prosper. Death itself shall not prevail over their mortal bodies. Neither death nor life, nor things present, nor things to come shall prejudice their interest in the love of God. Strangers shall no more serve themselves of them: “but they shall serve the LORD their God, and David their king.”
3. God’s gracious provision for bringing men under law to Christ is mentioned. It consists in raising up and constituting the Son of David to be a Prince and a Saviour.
“David their king—whom I will raise up unto them,” says the God of salvation, speaking good concerning Israel in the latter days. When Israel shall repent of their unbelief, and look on him whom they pierced, the sight of the crucified One will be as fresh to them as if the new and living way were but then opened through the rent veil of the great sacrifice. Although the space of two millenniums shall have intervened, they will behold that monument of God’s judgment, as if it were current history, transpiring before their eyes. So clear is the light of God’s word that, when the spirit, bearing witness by means of it, takes of Christ’s things and shows them, the quickened soul sees light clearly. So realizing is the power of faith that when the truth of God and living faith meet, Christ is set forth manifestly crucified before the beholder’s eye. In this way, it comes that as often as a sinner comes to repentance, and bewails himself, and looks upward to the mercy seat, there is a new creation. As if the Lamb slain were there in the midst of the throne for the first time, the penitent looks on him as One whom he never saw in that guise before. The natural world is new to the opening eye of the babe. So is Christ new—a great wonder seen in heaven, a vision of kingly and priestly glory—to the understanding which God has enlightened. So far as the experience of every quickened soul is concerned, the revelation of God’s Son within it operates the same surprise and admiration, as if God had raised up his Son Jesus from the dead in that very hour, and had given Christ glory, expressly for the purpose of commending him to the acceptance of the sinner then repenting. And so will it be with the whole people of Israel in the latter day, when they shall live, with their children, and turn again. They shall look on Jesus, whom they pierced, as distinctly as if no mist of centuries intervened between them and the crucifixion. The risen Saviour’s seat in the heavens will be as vividly realized by their faith, as if they watched with the eyewitness of the word, the ascending cloud, rising overhead, and conveying Jesus to the right hand of power. Thus it is that God will raise up a heavenly king on behalf of every sinner that repenteth. What was done once in history is done again and again in the experience of every several penitent, in the hour when he looks and lives. Faith has that operation. It puts substance into the words of Scripture. And when faith comes, the same experience visits the newly-converted man, as if, in that very hour, the Son of God were appearing incarnate on the earth—as if the great lifetime of vicarious obedience were even then being accomplished, as if the cross were being erected, and the Son of man lifted up upon it. The words of the text come home to such a newly-quickened soul with perfect reality: “They shall serve the LORD their God and David their king, whom I will raise up unto them.”
Shall we subscribe with our hand to the Lord Jesus, as our divinely-appointed and rightful master? or shall we deny him? Will any say of the man of God’s right hand, “We will not have this man to rule over us” (Luke 19:14)? If so, the one only alternative abides, for we cannot be our own masters. If we reject that Son of David, whom the Father of mercies has raised up for us, we shall sink under the yoke of strangers. Deceitful lusts will war in our members, and bring forth fruit unto death. How much better the lot of those who accept service under Christ! To them he will grant that, being delivered from the power of their enemies, they shall serve him without fear in holiness and righteousness before him all the days of their life (Luke 1:74–75).
