The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

that have rushed over the Jewish race. The Roman emperor razed the city to the ground and left not a vestige standing; another emperor changed the name of Jerusalem into that of Eliah, and forbade a Jew to go within some miles of it, so that he might not even look upon his beloved city. It was ploughed and left desolate. But is the Jew conquered? Is he a subjugated man? Is his country seized? No, he is still one of earth’s nobles — distressed, insulted, spit upon; still it is written, “To the Jew first, and afterwards to the Gentile.” He claims a high dignity above us, and he has a history to come which will be greater and more splendid than the history of any nation that has yet existed. If we read the Scriptures rightly the Jews have a great deal to do with this world’s history. They shall be gathered in; Messiah shall come, the Messiah they are looking for — the same Messiah who came once shall come again — shall come as they expected him to come the first time. They then thought he would come a prince to reign over them, and so he will when he comes again. He will come to be king of the Jews, and to reign over his people most gloriously; for when he comes, Jew and Gentile shall have equal privileges, though there shall yet be some distinction afforded to that royal family from whose loins Jesus came; for he shall sit upon the throne of his father David, and to him shall be gathered all nations. Oh!

      You chosen seed of Israel’s race,

      A remnant weak and small.

      You may, indeed,

      Hail him who saves you by his grace,

      And crown him Lord of all;

      Your church shall never die, and your race shall never become extinct. The Lord has said it. “The race of Abraham shall endure for ever, and his seed as many generations.”

      6. But why is it that the Jewish race is preserved? We have our answer in the text: “The holy seed is its substance.” There is something mysterious, hidden and unknown within a tree which preserves life in it when everything outward tends to kill it. So in the Jewish race there is a secret element which keeps it alive. We know what it is; it is the “remnant according to the election of grace”; in the worst of ages there has never been a day so black but there was a Hebrew found to hold the lamp of God. There has always been found a Jew who loved Jesus; and though the race now despise the great Redeemer, yet there are not a few of the Hebrew race who still love Jesus the Saviour of the uncircumcised, and bow before him. It is these few, this holy seed, that are the substance of the nation, and for their sake, through their prayers, because of God’s love to them, he still says of Israel to all nations, “Do not touch those who are my anointed, do no harm to my prophets. These are the descendants of Abraham, my friend. I have sworn and will not repent; I will show kindness to them for their father’s sake, and for the sake of the remnant I have chosen.”

      7. Let us think a little more of the Jews than we have been accustomed to; let us pray more often for them. “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; they shall prosper that love her.” As truly as any great thing is done in this world for Christ’s kingdom, the Jews will have more to do with it than any of us have dreamed. So much for the first point. The Jewish nation is like “a terebinth tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves; so the holy seed shall be its substance.”

      8. II. And now, secondly, THE CHURCH OF CHRIST, of which the Jewish people are only a dim shadow, and an emblem.

      9. The church has had its trials; trials from without and trials within. It has had days of blood red persecution, and of fiery trial; it has had times of sad apostasy, when an evil heart of unbelief and departing from the living God has broken out, and a root of bitterness springing up has troubled many, and by it they have been defiled. Yet, blessed be God, through all the winters of the church she still lived, and she gives signs now of a sweeter springtime, a fresher greenness and a healthier condition than she has shown before for many a day. Why is it that the church is still preserved, when she looks so dead? For this reason: that there is in the midst of her — though many are hypocrites and impostors — a “chosen seed,” who are “its substance.” You might have looked back a hundred years ago upon the professing church of Christ in this land, and what a sad spectacle it would have been! In the Church of England there was mere formality; in the Independent and Baptist denominations there was truth, but it was dead, cold, lifeless truth. Ministers dreamed on in their pulpits, and hearers snored in their pews: infidelity was triumphant; the house of God was neglected and desecrated. The church was like a tree that had lost its leaves: it was in a wintry state. But did it die? No; there was a holy seed within it. Six young men were expelled from Oxford for praying, reading the Bible, and talking to poor people about Christ; and these six young men, with many others whom the Lord had hidden by fifties in the caves of the earth, secret and unknown — these young men, leaders of a glorious revival, came out, and though ridiculed and laughed at as Methodists they brought forth a great and glorious revival, almost equalling the commencement of the gospel triumphs under Paul and the apostles, and very little inferior to the great reformation of Luther, of Calvin and Zwingli. And just now the church is to a great degree in a barren and lifeless state. But will she therefore die? You say that true doctrine is scarce, that zeal is rare, that there is little life and energy in the pulpit and true devotion in the pew, while formality and hypocrisy stalk over us, and we sleep in our cradles. But will the church die? No; she is like a teil tree and an oak; her substance is in her when she has lost her leaves; there is a holy seed in her still that is its substance. Where these are we do not know; some, I do not doubt, are here in this church, — some, I hope, are to be found in every church of professing Christians: and woe be the day to the church that loses her holy seed; for she must die, like the oak blasted by the lightning, whose heart is scorched out of it — broken down, because it has no substance in it.

      10. Let me now draw your attention, as a church connected with this place, to this point — that the holy seed is the substance of the church. A great many of you might be compared to the bark of the tree; some of you are like the big limbs; others are like pieces of the trunk. Well, we would be very sorry to lose any of you; but we could afford to do so without any serious damage to the life of the tree. Yet there are some here — God knows who they are — who are the substance of the tree. By the word “substance” is meant the life, the inward principle. The inward principle is in the tree, when it has lost its leaves. Now, God discerns some men in this church, I do not doubt, who are to us like the inward principle of the oak; they are the substance of the church. I would really hope that all the members of the church in some degree contribute to the substance; but I do not think that is so. I am obligated to say I doubt it; because, when one has fallen and then another, it makes us remember that a church has much in it that is not life. There are some branches on the vine that are cut off, because they do not draw sap from the heart of it, they are only branches bound on by profession, pretended graftings that have never struck root into the parent stock and that must be cut off, and hewn down, and cast into the fire. But there is a holy seed in the church that is its substance.

      11. Please note here, that the life of a tree is not determined by the shape of the branches, nor by the way it grows, but it is in the substance. The shape of a church is not its life. In one place I see a church formed in an Episcopalian shape; in another place I see one formed in a Presbyterian shape; then, again, I see one, like ours, formed on an Independent principle. Here I see one with sixteen ounces to the pound of doctrine, there I see one with eight, and some with very little clear doctrine at all. And yet I find life in all the churches, in some degree — some good men in all of them. How do I account for this? Why, just in this way — that the oak may be alive, whatever its shape, if it has the substance. If there is only a holy seed in the church, the church will live; and it is astonishing how the church will live under a thousand errors, if there is only the vital principle in it. You will find good men among the denominations that you cannot receive as being sound in faith. You say, “What! can any good thing come out of Nazareth”; and you go through, and find there are even in them some true Nazarites of the right order. The very best of men are sometimes found in the worst of churches! A church does not live because of its rubrics, and its canons, and its articles; it lives because of the holy seed that is in it as the substance. No church can die while it has a holy seed in it, and no church can live that