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15. But again, we call Christ our Saviour. Now, have any of you that foolish credulity which would lead you to trust in a man for the everlasting salvation of your soul? If you have, I pity you: your proper place is not in a Protestant assembly, but among the deluded votaries of Rome. If you can commit the keeping of your soul to one like yourself, I must indeed mourn over you, and pray that you may be taught better. But you do trust your salvation to him whom God has set forth for a propitiation, do you not, oh follower of Jesus? Can you not say all your hope is fixed on him, for he is all your salvation and all your desire? Does not your spirit rest on that unbuttressed pillar of his entire satisfaction, his precious death and burial, his glorious resurrection and ascension? Now, observe, you are either resting on man, or else you have declared Christ to be “the mighty God.” When I say I put my faith in him, I do most honestly declare that I dare not trust even in him, if I did not believe him to be God. I could not put my trust in any being that was merely created. God forbid that my folly should ever go to such an extent as that. I would sooner trust myself than trust any other man, and yet I dare not trust myself, for I should be accursed. “Cursed is he who trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm.” And would the Socinian have me to believe that I am to preach faith in Christ, and that yet, if my hearers trust Christ, they will be accursed, as they assuredly must be, if he is nothing but man, for again I repeat it, “cursed is he who trusts in man, and makes flesh his arm.” You get a blessing by faith in Jesus, but how? Is it not because — “Blessed is he who trusts in the Lord, and whose hope the Lord is?” Christ is very Jehovah, and therefore the blessing comes to those who trust in him. So, then, as often as you put your trust in Jesus, for time and eternity, you have called him “the mighty God.”
16. This subject is capable of the greatest expansion, and I do believe there is sufficient interest attached to it to warrant me in keeping you to a late hour today, but I shall not do so. There has been enough said, I think, to prove at least, that we are continually in the habit of calling Christ “the mighty God.”
17. III. My third proposition is to explain to you HOW CHRIST HAS PROVEN HIMSELF TO US TO BE “THE MIGHTY GOD.” And here beloved, without controversy, great is the mystery of Godliness, for the passage from which the text is taken says, “To us a child is born.” A child! what can he do? A child he totters in his walk, he trembles in his steps — and he is a child newly born. Born! what! an infant hanging on his mother’s breast, an infant deriving his nourishment from a woman? Can that one work wonders? Yes, says the prophet, “To us a child is born.” But then it is added, “To us a Son is given.” Christ was not only born, but given. As man he is a child born, as God he is the Son given. He comes down from on high; he is given by God to become our Redeemer. But here behold the wonder! “His name,” this child’s name, “shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God.” Is this child, then, to us the mighty God? If so, oh brethren, without controversy, great is the mystery of Godliness indeed! And yet, just let us look through the history of the church, and discover whether we have not ample evidence to substantiate it. This child born, this Son given, came into the world to enter into the battle against sin. For thirty years and upwards he had to struggle and wrestle against temptations more numerous and more terrible than man had ever known before. Adam fell when only a woman tempted him; Eve fell when only a serpent offered fruit to her, but Christ, the second Adam, stood invulnerable against all the shafts of Satan although he was tempted in all points, like as we are. Not one arrow out of the quiver of hell was spared; all of them were shot against him. Every arrow was aimed against him with all the might of Satan’s archers, and that is no little matter! And yet, without sin or taint of sin, he stood more than a conqueror. Foot to foot with Satan, in the solitude of the wilderness; hand to hand with him on the top of the pinnacle of the temple; side by side with him in the midst of a busy crowd — yet always more than a conqueror. He gave him battle wherever the adversary met him, and at last, when Satan gathered up all his might, and seized the Saviour in the garden of Gethsemane, and crushed him until he sweat as it were greet drops of blood, then when the Saviour said, “Nevertheless, not as I will but as you will,” the tempter was repulsed. “Be gone, be gone!” Christ seemed to say; and away the tempter fled, nor dared to return again. Christ, in all his conquests over sin, does seem to me to have established his Godhead. I never heard of any other creature that could endure such temptation as this. Look at the angels in heaven; how temptation entered there I do not know; but this I know, that Satan, the great archangel, sinned, and I know that he became the tempter to the rest of his companions, and drew with him a third part of the stars of heaven. Angels were tempted only a little, some of them were not tempted at all, and yet they fell. And then look at man; how slight was his temptation, yet he fell. It is not in a creature to stand against temptation; he will yield, if the temptation is strong enough. But Christ stood, and it seems to me, that in his standing he proved himself to have the omni-radiant purity, the immaculate holiness of him before whom angels veil their faces, and cry,
Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Hosts.
18. But these proofs might appear insufficient, if he did not accomplish more than this. We know also that Christ proved himself to be the “mighty God” from the fact that at last all the sins of all his people were gathered upon his shoulders, and “he bore them in his own body on the tree.” The heart of Christ became like a reservoir in the midst of mountains. All the tributary streams of iniquity, and every drop of the sins of his people, ran down and gathered into one vast lake, deep as hell, and shoreless as eternity. All these met, as it were, in Christ’s heart, and yet he endured them all. With many a sign of human weakness, but with convincing signs of divine omnipotence, he took all our griefs and carried all our sorrows. The divinity within strengthened his manhood, and though wave after wave rolled over his head, until he sank in deep mire where there was no standing, and all God’s waves and his billows had gone over him, yet he lifted up his head, and more than a conqueror, at length, he put the sins of his people to a public execution. They are dead. They have ceased to be; and, if they are sought for, they shall not be found any more for ever. Certainly if this is true, he is “the mighty God” indeed.
19. But he did more than this, he descended into the grave, and there he slept, fettered firmly with the cold chains of death. But the appointed hour arrives — the sunlight of the third day gave the warning, and he snapped the bands of death as if they were only tow, and came forth to life as “the Lord of life and glory.” His flesh did not see corruption, for he was not able to be held by the bands of death. And who shall be the death of death, the plague of the grave, the destroyer of destruction, but God? Who but immortal life, who but the Self-existent, shall trample out the fires of hell; who, but he whose Being is eternal, without beginning, and without end, shall burst the shackles of the grave? He proved himself then, when he led captivity captive, and crushed death and ground his iron limbs to powder — he proved himself then to be the mighty God.
20. Oh, my soul, you can say, that he has proven himself in your heart to be a mighty God. He has forgiven you of many sins and relieved your conscience of the keen sense of guilt, he has assuaged innumerable griefs, he has overcome insurmountable temptations; he has implanted virtues once impossible, he has promised grace in its fulness, and he has given it in its measure. My soul bears record that what has been done for me could never have been done by a mere man; and you would rise from your seats, I am sure, if it would be needed, and say, “Yes, he who has loved me, washed me from my sins, and made me what I am, must be God; no one but God could do what he has done, could bear so patiently, could bless so lavishly, forgive so freely, enrich so infinitely. He is, he must be, we will crown him such — ‘The mighty God.’ ”
21. And, in conclusion, lest I weary you, permit me now to say, I beg and beseech of you all present, as God the Spirit shall help you, come and put your trust in Jesus Christ; he is “the mighty God.” Oh, Christians, believe him more than ever; cast your troubles constantly on him; he is “the mighty СКАЧАТЬ