KenH
Well-Known Member
Excerpts from a sermon preached by John Kershaw at Zoar Chapel, Great Alie Street, London, in 1845.
“The poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.” (Isaiah 29:19)
There are two things, as leading principles in our text, that I want, by the help of the Lord, to call your attention to. The first is, to say a little of “the poor among men.” And secondly, to show that they “shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.”
...
The doctrine of God’s election is clearly revealed in the sacred Scriptures. Everlasting, electing love is the spring and fountain of every blessing of grace and salvation. As, for instance, if you and I feelingly and experimentally know our spiritual poverty and destitution,, our knowledge of it has for its origin God’s covenant love and covenant mercy.
...
“The poor among men,” intended by the words of the text are, “the redeemed of the Lord;” those who are redeemed by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ from sin, the curse of the law and the pit of destruction. God’s election and Christ’s redemption are coupled and bound up together. All that Jehovah the Father loved, he gave into the hand of Christ their covenant Head. Christ in the covenant became their bond, their Surety and their Mediator; and, in the fullness of time, according to covenant engagements, he came forward, appeared in our nature, made of a woman, made under the law (the right of redemption falling upon him) to redeem his people from under, “the curse of the law,” being made a curse for them.
But we observe, in the next place, my friends, that the objects of the Father’s love, and the purchase of Christ’s blood, cannot be known, only as God the Holy Ghost makes them manifest. The Lord’s people, in their Adam-fall state, are no better than the rest of the world; they all have had their conversation among their ungodly neighbours in time past in the lusts of their flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and have by nature the same wrathful dispositions as others.
...
We were observing that none can tell who the Lord’s people are till God the Spirit makes them manifest. The Lord knows who they are: “Having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his.” “Yes,” say some, “He knows them when they begin to turn to him, when they accept the offers and proffers of salvation, and take hold of his grace; he knows them then.” My friends, that is not God’s way of working. He knows his sheep before he gives them eternal life; he says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” In God’s religion, life is the first thing given. The poor sinner is dead in trespasses and sins. The Lord Jesus Christ is a “quickening spirit;” and he has “power over all flesh, to give eternal life to as many as the Father gave him.” And in regeneration, the Holy Spirit makes no mistake. As a Spirit of knowledge, he knows who the Lord’s covenant people are; and when the set time to favour Zion comes, he arrests them in the conscience. Saul was one of these vessels of mercy; and Zacchaeus also was a monument of grace; and therefore, at the appointed moment, the Lord the Spirit quickened them into spiritual life. There are not any whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life but what the blessed Spirit either has regenerated, or will in due time regenerate and begin the good work of grace in their precious souls, and carry it on in the face of every opposition from within and from without, from sin, men and devils. It is a good doctrine, my friends. Where God begins the work, he will surely carry it on and finish it till at last he lands the soul safe in immortal glory. He does not give the poor sinner a stock of grace to live on and cultivate. No, no! It is God’s grace that cultivates the poor sinner, and not the poor sinner that cultivates the grace of God.
...
The destitute, then, are such as have nothing of their own, those who feel themselves only a mass of sin, weakness and helplessness before the Lord.
...
But secondly. “The poor among men,” the destitute, the weak, the helpless, the lost and the undone, “shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.” Indeed, my friends, they have nothing else to rejoice in. “The poor among men,” God’s spiritually poor people, cannot rejoice in the world or the things of it. There is nothing in it that will do them good, nor indeed can they be satisfied with anything short of the rich treasure which is treasured up in the Lord of life and glory. Thus it is that the truly poverty-stricken, bankrupt, undone sinner and Jesus Christ, in his glorious salvation, rich treasure and inexhaustible fullness, meet so blessedly together, the One being so adapted to the other. A full sinner and a full Saviour will not do together at all; but an empty sinner and a full Saviour, a filthy, vile and polluted sinner and the efficacious blood of Christ to cleanse it away, a naked and undone sinner and the robe of Christ’s justifying righteousness, a weak and helpless worm and the power of the mighty God of Jacob to keep, support and hold him up, these things blessedly harmonize together. And this is God’s way of working.
...
Paul understood these things well, and he explains in the seventh of Romans in a heartfelt way what every one of “the poor among men,” spoken of in our text, knows something about; he says, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!” This is the inward feeling of every one of the Lord’s saints concerning themselves.
...
“The poor among men,” rejoice in a finished salvation, all of grace; not a salvation partly accomplished by Christ and the rest made up by the sinner. A gospel of this kind will not save, “the poor among men.”
...
“The poor among men,” then, rejoice that salvation is finished, that sin is for ever put away by the sacrifice of Jesus, that law and justice are satisfied, that everlasting righteousness is wrought out and brought in, that the world is overcome, that death and hell are conquered, for
“Hell and our sins resist our course,
But hell and sin are vanquished foes;
Our Jesus nailed them to the cross,
And sang the triumph when he rose.”
...
The Lord Jesus Christ, in our text, is called, “The Holy One of Israel.” And this he is experimentally felt to be by all God’s spiritual Israel.
...
Now, my friends, I make two very broad assertions, but I will stand fast to them, there is not one particle or grain of true holiness in the whole world but what comes from Christ, “the Holy One of Israel;” and there is not one grain of holiness amongst the, “spirits of just men made perfect,” now before the throne but what has emanated from a precious Christ, “the Holy One of Israel.” As all natural light is from the sun, so all spiritual holiness is from Christ, “the Holy One of Israel.”
...
“The poor among men,” then, shall rejoice in this precious Christ, “the Holy One of Israel.” We can find no holiness in ourselves; but Jesus Christ has a holiness which is made over to us. Now, I know I am on ground which many of our professedly pious religionists do not like. The very sound of, “imputed holiness,” they abhor and detest; they are for having a holiness in themselves.
...
(continued below)
“The poor among men shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.” (Isaiah 29:19)
There are two things, as leading principles in our text, that I want, by the help of the Lord, to call your attention to. The first is, to say a little of “the poor among men.” And secondly, to show that they “shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.”
...
The doctrine of God’s election is clearly revealed in the sacred Scriptures. Everlasting, electing love is the spring and fountain of every blessing of grace and salvation. As, for instance, if you and I feelingly and experimentally know our spiritual poverty and destitution,, our knowledge of it has for its origin God’s covenant love and covenant mercy.
...
“The poor among men,” intended by the words of the text are, “the redeemed of the Lord;” those who are redeemed by the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ from sin, the curse of the law and the pit of destruction. God’s election and Christ’s redemption are coupled and bound up together. All that Jehovah the Father loved, he gave into the hand of Christ their covenant Head. Christ in the covenant became their bond, their Surety and their Mediator; and, in the fullness of time, according to covenant engagements, he came forward, appeared in our nature, made of a woman, made under the law (the right of redemption falling upon him) to redeem his people from under, “the curse of the law,” being made a curse for them.
But we observe, in the next place, my friends, that the objects of the Father’s love, and the purchase of Christ’s blood, cannot be known, only as God the Holy Ghost makes them manifest. The Lord’s people, in their Adam-fall state, are no better than the rest of the world; they all have had their conversation among their ungodly neighbours in time past in the lusts of their flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and have by nature the same wrathful dispositions as others.
...
We were observing that none can tell who the Lord’s people are till God the Spirit makes them manifest. The Lord knows who they are: “Having this seal, the Lord knoweth them that are his.” “Yes,” say some, “He knows them when they begin to turn to him, when they accept the offers and proffers of salvation, and take hold of his grace; he knows them then.” My friends, that is not God’s way of working. He knows his sheep before he gives them eternal life; he says, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me: and I give unto them eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.” In God’s religion, life is the first thing given. The poor sinner is dead in trespasses and sins. The Lord Jesus Christ is a “quickening spirit;” and he has “power over all flesh, to give eternal life to as many as the Father gave him.” And in regeneration, the Holy Spirit makes no mistake. As a Spirit of knowledge, he knows who the Lord’s covenant people are; and when the set time to favour Zion comes, he arrests them in the conscience. Saul was one of these vessels of mercy; and Zacchaeus also was a monument of grace; and therefore, at the appointed moment, the Lord the Spirit quickened them into spiritual life. There are not any whose names are written in the Lamb’s book of life but what the blessed Spirit either has regenerated, or will in due time regenerate and begin the good work of grace in their precious souls, and carry it on in the face of every opposition from within and from without, from sin, men and devils. It is a good doctrine, my friends. Where God begins the work, he will surely carry it on and finish it till at last he lands the soul safe in immortal glory. He does not give the poor sinner a stock of grace to live on and cultivate. No, no! It is God’s grace that cultivates the poor sinner, and not the poor sinner that cultivates the grace of God.
...
The destitute, then, are such as have nothing of their own, those who feel themselves only a mass of sin, weakness and helplessness before the Lord.
...
But secondly. “The poor among men,” the destitute, the weak, the helpless, the lost and the undone, “shall rejoice in the Holy One of Israel.” Indeed, my friends, they have nothing else to rejoice in. “The poor among men,” God’s spiritually poor people, cannot rejoice in the world or the things of it. There is nothing in it that will do them good, nor indeed can they be satisfied with anything short of the rich treasure which is treasured up in the Lord of life and glory. Thus it is that the truly poverty-stricken, bankrupt, undone sinner and Jesus Christ, in his glorious salvation, rich treasure and inexhaustible fullness, meet so blessedly together, the One being so adapted to the other. A full sinner and a full Saviour will not do together at all; but an empty sinner and a full Saviour, a filthy, vile and polluted sinner and the efficacious blood of Christ to cleanse it away, a naked and undone sinner and the robe of Christ’s justifying righteousness, a weak and helpless worm and the power of the mighty God of Jacob to keep, support and hold him up, these things blessedly harmonize together. And this is God’s way of working.
...
Paul understood these things well, and he explains in the seventh of Romans in a heartfelt way what every one of “the poor among men,” spoken of in our text, knows something about; he says, “O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death!” This is the inward feeling of every one of the Lord’s saints concerning themselves.
...
“The poor among men,” rejoice in a finished salvation, all of grace; not a salvation partly accomplished by Christ and the rest made up by the sinner. A gospel of this kind will not save, “the poor among men.”
...
“The poor among men,” then, rejoice that salvation is finished, that sin is for ever put away by the sacrifice of Jesus, that law and justice are satisfied, that everlasting righteousness is wrought out and brought in, that the world is overcome, that death and hell are conquered, for
“Hell and our sins resist our course,
But hell and sin are vanquished foes;
Our Jesus nailed them to the cross,
And sang the triumph when he rose.”
...
The Lord Jesus Christ, in our text, is called, “The Holy One of Israel.” And this he is experimentally felt to be by all God’s spiritual Israel.
...
Now, my friends, I make two very broad assertions, but I will stand fast to them, there is not one particle or grain of true holiness in the whole world but what comes from Christ, “the Holy One of Israel;” and there is not one grain of holiness amongst the, “spirits of just men made perfect,” now before the throne but what has emanated from a precious Christ, “the Holy One of Israel.” As all natural light is from the sun, so all spiritual holiness is from Christ, “the Holy One of Israel.”
...
“The poor among men,” then, shall rejoice in this precious Christ, “the Holy One of Israel.” We can find no holiness in ourselves; but Jesus Christ has a holiness which is made over to us. Now, I know I am on ground which many of our professedly pious religionists do not like. The very sound of, “imputed holiness,” they abhor and detest; they are for having a holiness in themselves.
...
(continued below)