The Saviour’s Intercession And The Stranger’s Prayer

“Moreover concerning a stranger, that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country for thy name’s sake; (for they shall hear of thy great name, and of thy strong hand, and of thy stretched out arm;) when he shall come and pray toward this house; hear thou in heaven thy dwelling place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to thee for:”—1 Kings 8:41-43

These words form a part of Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple, which he built according to God’s promise to David, and by divine direction. Solomon was a lively type of the Lord Jesus. His very name is blessedly applicable to Christ—the word “Solomon” signifying peaceable, perfect, or who recompenses. And truly Jesus is peaceable; His errand to earth was an errand of “peace” (Luke 2:14). He is emphatically called “our peace” (Eph. 2:14). The covenant of which He is the Surety is designated a “covenant of peace” (Isa. 54:10); the legacy He has bequeathed to His people is a legacy of “peace” (John 14:27). What a mercy for those who can truly say of Him, “He is our peace”! All of us who have a hope of peace with God ground our hope upon something. Rotten in itself, and perilous to the soul, is every other ground of peace but Jesus.

Jesus is indeed perfect. As a Person in the ever-adorable Trinity, He is perfection itself. As Man He is perfect; nothing of human perfection was absent from this “fairer than the children of men” (Psalm 44:2); and nothing of human defection (to use an obsolete word) was ever, or can ever be, present in this “holy, harmless, and undefiled One” (Heb. 7:26). As God-Man, or God and Man in one glorious Christ, He is perfect. “He is the Rock; His work is perfect” (Deut. 32:4). Oh, how perfectly fitted for His work! Was obedience, human obedience, called for? The obeying Man could give it. Was human suffering demanded? The bleeding Man could endure it. Was infinite worth and almighty power required? God in human flesh had it. How perfectly fitted was this glorious Christ to pay, in human flesh, an infinite debt, to satisfy infinite justice, and exemplify and open a free and righteous channel for the outgushings of infinite mercy! And how perfectly suited is this glorious Christ to heal the gaping wounds, cleanse away the guilty stains, clothe the naked soul, and fill the empty heart of a poor sensibly-lost and ruined sinner! Truly Jesus, the great Solomon, is the “perfection of beauty”; ”and, in His Person, work, names, offices, and fulness, He is indeed to every sensible sinner suited, “let his wants be what they may.”

Christ mystical, or Jesus, the Head, in union with all His members, is for ever perfect. “Clear as the sun, fair as the moon, and terrible as an army with banners” (Sol.’s Song 6:10). Jesus, the anti-typical Solomon, is truly One that “recompenses.” He made, by His obedience and suffering, recompense or reconciliation for the sins of His chosen people; He restored that which He took not away (Dan. 9:24; Psa. 60:11); and the Holy Spirit brings all the elect to be so sensible of the breadth of the holy law, and their own exceeding vileness, that they can hold up nothing else before the throne of God’s holiness, and at the bar of equity, but Jesus for a recompense. And truly, when the soul has faith to lay hold of, and shelter in, this blessed Solomon as his own, it is a sweet recompense for all the painful stripping and humbling work that he has been led through. Oh, then he admires the wisdom displayed in all the Lord’s dealings with him, and is thankful that ever he should have been wounded by conviction, to be cured by such a balm as Jesus’ blood; stripped of his filthy rags, to make room for such a glorious dress as Jesus’ righteousness; and brought off from every other foundation, and driven from every other shelter, that he might realize the blessedness of being built upon this precious foundation, and find in this great Rock, this sweet Hiding-Place, a refuge from the wind and a covert from the tempest. (Isa. 32:2). And will He not be, in the kingdom of eternal glory, an endless recompense for all the toils of the desert? One wave of the tide of immortal bliss, flowing from His right hand, will for ever efface the deepest print that tribulation has made upon our hearts while in the desert, as the rising tide obliterates every foot-mark from the sandy beach which it covers. Oh, when He comes, ”He will come with a recompense;” and “we shall be satisfied when we awake with His likeness” (Isaiah 35:4; Psalm 17:15).

We might, now we are upon Solomon’s name, as applicable to Christ, add His name, Jedadiah, “beloved,” or Lemuel, “God with them,” each sweetly applicable to “Immanuel, God with us,” the Beloved of the Father, the beloved Object the Holy Ghost reveals, the Beloved of the heart of saved sinners, and the beloved theme of the heavenly songsters; but this we will forbear enlarging upon, and draw nearer to the text.

Solomon was a lively type of Christ in building a temple for Israel and Israel’s God to commune in, and to be the object upon which God’s eye should rest and Israel’s eye be directed to. And the Greater than Solomon, by His incarnation, and. By His resurrection, has reared a place of meeting for poor sinners and the Majesty of heaven, and it is upon this glorious temple that God’s “eye” and God’s “heart are perpetually, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year” (2 Chron. 7; Deut. 11:12). And it is to this blessed point that the seeking soul is bidden to look: “Look unto Me, and be ye saved” (Isa. 44:27). And the saint is exhorted to keep this temple in view: “Let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus” (Heb. 12:2).

And not only did the building of the temple, and the temple itself, with all its ornaments, utensils, and ordinances, preach Jesus, but Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the temple sets forth the intercession of Jesus, who once, as our great High Priest, made atonement by sacrifice at the altar of burnt offering, and now makes intercession at the altar of incense. And, while Solomon’s prayer was on earth, and for an earthly people, and chiefly for earthly blessing, Jesus’ prayer is in heaven, and for a heavenly people, and for heavenly blessing—that is, for a people whose names are written in heaven, whose religion comes down from heaven, and whose “inheritance is reserved in heaven,” and consists of “heavenly things.” We may add, as Solomon’s intercession exhibits the intercession of Jesus, so the people interested in it set forth the people interested in the prayer of Jesus before the throne.

In looking through this prayer, how much one is reminded of the prayer of Jesus, in the seventeenth of John, which is left us as a pattern of His intercession in heaven! Solomon prays for Israel brought out of Egypt, and brought into the land of promise; and Jesus prays also for believers gathered out of the Egypt of this world, and brought into the Canaan of Gospel rest: “I have manifested Thy name unto the men which Thou gavest Me: I pray for them” (John 17:6, 9). But Solomon does not forget to pray for the poor “stranger to the covenants of promise,” and “aliens from the commonwealth of Israel” (Eph. 2:19), who, hearing of Israel’s God and Israel’s blessing, should be brought to say to Israel, as Ruth, the Moabitess, ”Thy people shall be my people, and thy God my God.” So Jesus does not forget those who spiritually shall “take hold, out of the languages of the nations, of the skirt of him that is a Jew, saying, “We will go with you, for we have heard that God is with you” (Zech. 9:23). “Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe on Me through their word” (John 17:20).

Now, the words of our text are a prayer of Solomon for the strangers—those who were not of the Lord’s people Israel—and, in my mind, they set forth the intercession of Jesus for those spiritual strangers who, though objects of the Father’s love, and the purchase of Immanuel’s blood, are still “afar off,” and in the “far country” of nature’s darkness and death. Such are, in the Lord’s time, quickened to feel their position, and brought to come out of this “far country” for the Lord’s new covenant “name’s sake,” having “heard of His great name, and of His strong hand, and of His stretched out arm,” and to come and pray toward Jesus, the House of the Lord. For the typical strangers Solomon prayed in the temple, and for the anti-typical strangers Jesus intercedes in heaven: “Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling-place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to Thee for.”

Now, regarding this text as setting forth the ever-availing intercession of Jesus, and the character here described as setting forth one interested in the intercession of Jesus, I will try and expound it by—

I. Taking notice of the character prayed for—“a stranger, which is not of Thy people Israel.”

II. Taking notice of the important things said of this stranger—that he “cometh out of a far country for the Lord’s name’s sake,” &c.

Ill. Enquiring what are the things that the stranger “calleth to the Lord for;” and,

IV. Observing the success attending his request, or the blessings which are sure to be given him, in answer to the Saviour’s prayer, “Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling-place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to Thee for.”

I. The character prayed for is a stranger. When man was created he was no stranger to God. No sinful distance, no guilty shyness, had then intervened betwixt him and his Maker; no cloud of darkness then overshadowed the human understanding; man was then no stranger to his Creator. But, alas! sin has enstranged him from God, and now in his natural state he is a total stranger to the true character of his Maker—a stranger to the real misery of his condition—a stranger to himself as he is—a stranger to real peace and happiness—in a word, he is a total stranger to everything that is worth the intimacy of an immortal soul, though he may have much acquaintance, yet blind to their deformity, with those things that are in truth, the best of them, vain and fading, and the worst of them worse than madness, poison, and death. “The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned” (1 Cor. 2:14). But many among the human family who are still thus strangers, and not manifestly of the Lord’s people Israel, have an interest in the prayer of Jesus before the throne; and, when the Lord’s time has come to make manifest the individual stranger for whom Jesus is spreading out His interceding hands before the Father, he is quickened to feel, and enlightened to see, his alienation and strangership. And truly it is a solemn sight for a sinner to see that, up to the present moment, however wise he may have been concerning evil, he is a stranger to all that is good—a stranger to true peace, and to a right foundation for eternity—and it is a painful thing for a soul to feel, who knows that he is fast hastening into an eternal world, that, although God has a “people Israel,” who will be saved and happy through eternity, he knows nothing of being put among those children; and, dying without what he feels destitute of, this is stamped upon his conscience, “Not of Thy people Israel.” We will now proceed to take notice—

II. Of the important things said of the stranger prayed for. We must remember that Solomon did not pray for every Gentile stranger, but only for such as the text describes; nor is it for every stranger that Jesus intercedes, but only for such who bear those marks which this text puts upon the individual prayed for.

1. The stranger in the text is said to “hear of God’s great name.” A sinner must not only be convinced of his distance from God, and of his awful state, to drive him to seek mercy, but he needs to hear of something in the name of God that appears amiable and attractive to draw him to seek mercy. The poor woman with the issue of blood is an illustration of my meaning. She had been diseased for many years. This drove her to seek a cure from many quarters, but all were vain. All proved in her case “physicians of no value;” but “when she heard of Jesus,” she had faith given her to believe that, if she could but come in contact with Him, all would be well. One touch of Him she believed would be healing. This was a strong attracting cord upon her heart, and drew her to press, notwithstanding all her weakness, through the crowd that surrounded Jesus, and kept her from resting until she obtained the healing touch (Mark 5:25-34). So the stranger whom God makes no longer a stranger to guilt, but sensible of his entire strangership to pardon, is prone to “spend money for that which is not bread, and labour for that which satisfieth not” (Isa. 55:2). But the Lord has His eye upon him, and, by whatever means He pleases, gives him to “hear of His great name,” His new covenant name in Jesus. “The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, and forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin” (Exod. 34:6, 7). Hearing this, and being no longer a stranger to the utter inefficacy of all other means for his soul’s cure, he is glad to hear that there is “balm in Gilead,” that there is a “Good Physician there” (Jer. 8:22); that “there is bread enough” in Jesus, the “Father’s House,” and “to spare” (Luke 15:17); that, filthy as he is, and deep as, are his stains—

“There is a fountain filled with blood, 

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins;

And sinners plunged beneath that flood 

Lose all their guilty stains.”

This brings him to resolve, with the prodigal, though he be in a “far country,” and though exceedingly unworthy of the Father’s regard, to “arise, and go,” and lay himself, a vile and guilty beggar, at Jesus’ gate, waiting for mercy’s falling crumbs.

2. But the stranger not only “hears of His great name,” but also of His strong hand, and of His stretched out arm. He hears that Jesus, the Arm of the Lord, has been the power of God to the salvation of many poor lost souls, and this encourages him to apply for that Arm to be stretched out in his case. He has heard that the King of Israel is a merciful King. This emboldens him to come, though thoroughly sensible of his unworthiness of the least favour, or of anything but death. He comes with a “rope upon his head.” How often has the report of the Lord’s saving arm, revealed to a Saul, or Magdalen, or a thief upon the cross, been made sweetly encouraging to poor sensibly “far off” sinners to “fly for refuge to lay hold on the hope set before them” (Heb. 6:18).

3. Hearing thus of the Lord’s great name, and of His strong hand, and of His stretched out arm, the stranger “cometh out of a far country”—comes in sighs, desires, and wishes after Jesus towards Him, the true Temple; flees from sin and wrath to the pardoning blood of Jesus; flees from Sinai’s thundering mount towards Calvary’s peaceful cross; escapes for his life from the Sodom of this world to the mountain where the Lord commands the blessing, “even life for evermore;” flies from his own righteousness, and longs for the righteousness of Jesus; and thus “cometh out of a far country for the Lord’s name’s sake’,” that he may know in power the Lord’s Zion name, “merciful and gracious,” &c. He knows His Sinai name, “a jealous God, who will by no means clear the guilty.” This has wounded him, and drank up his spirit. Now he is coming for acquaintance with His Zion name to heal his wounds; and, having heard of the Lord’s mighty hand, and of His stretched out arm, in conscious neediness he stretches out his hand: toward, and pleads alone the finished work of Jesus, the true Temple; and toward this House, all his expectation being from thence, and all his plea being Jesus, he makes known his many wants.

III. We are to enquire what are the things that “the stranger calleth to the Lord for;” and here we can only notice some of the many requests of the stranger, the sum and substance of which is, that ho may know those things to which he is a stranger. He is no stranger to guilt, but he is a stranger to pardon; he is no stranger to nakedness, but he is a stranger to being clothed; he is no stranger to condemnation, but he is a stranger to justification; he is no.stranger to distance from God, but he is a stranger to nearness; he is no stranger to pollution, but he is a stranger to cleansing; he is no stranger to God in a broken law, cursing sinners, but he is a stranger to Jesus revealed in the Gospel, blessing sinners; he is not a stranger to the “sound of the trumpet and the alarm of war” (Jer. 4:19), but he is a stranger to sweet victory and peace. The bondage of Egypt he has groaned under, but the blessed “land flowing with milk and honey” he has not yet set his foot upon. The “yoke” he understancls, but the anointing he is still without. Weariness, hunger, and fear he is no stranger to, but ho is a stranger to rest, satisfaction, and “joy and peace in believing.” Hence, the substance of what this sensible stranger calleth to the Lord for is—

1. Pardon. He feels himself a guilty sinner, and he knows well that, without his sins being pardoned, he can never see the Lord’s face with joy. He feels himself indeed “tied and bound with the chain of his sins,” and is thus obliged to come over to the great Cyrus, as it is written, “The labour of Egypt, and the merchandise of Ethiopia, and of the Sabeans, men of stature, shall come over unto Thee, and they shall be Thine: they shall come after Thee; in chains they shall come over”, and they shall fall down unto Thee; they shall make supplication unto Thee” (Isa. 45:14). And thus it is that this stranger comes; in the chains of his guilt, and, making supplication unto Jesus, cries, “Pardon mine iniquity, for it is great” (Psa. 25:11). He comes with the prodigal’s confession, “I have sinned,” and longs for the sweet “kiss” of pardoning love. He “acknowledges his sin unto the Lord, and hides not his iniquity,” and longs and begs to know the “blessedness of the man whose transgression is forgiven, “whose sin is covered, to whom the Lord imputeth not iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no guile” (Psa. 32:1-3). 

2. He calleth to the Lord for justification. He has been arraigned at the bar of a broken law. There the sentence has come forth against him. There he stands condemned, and upon the ground of works can look for nothing but the curse. But he is now making his appeal from the throne of justice to the throne of grace. He is now turning his face from “the mount that may be touched, that burneth with fire, and blackness, and a tempest, and from the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, and is looking toward “Mount Zion, to Jesus, the Mediator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling” (Heb. 12:18-24), and to the finished righteousness of Jesus, begging to be delivered from the condemnation of Sinai, through the atonement of Jesus, the King in Zion. He wants the “sentence” of acquittal to come forth from the Lord’s presence in the “blessed mount where He commands the blessing, even life for evermore” (Psa. 17:2; 133:3). He wants that blessed faith that enables to fly from the burning mountain in the deserts or Arabia to the rich and glorious mountain, Calvary, where Jesus, and pardoning love and blood, are food for dying souls. He is “black as the tents of Kedar” in himself, but begs for faith to put on the righteousness of Jesus, that he may be “comely as the curtains of Solomon” (Solomon’s Song 1:5).

3. He begs for the rich privilege of entering into the holiest, washed in the Saviour’s blood, clothed in His righteousness, and with the sweet Spirit bearing witness with his spirit that he is a child of God (Rom. 3:16). He wants to “draw nigh with a true heart, in full assurance of faith, having his heart sprinkled from an evil conscience, and being washed with pure water” (Heb. 10:22). He wants to be able to say, “Abba, Father,” without a wavering tongue. In a word, he wants and begs for his filthy soul to be washed in Jesus’ blood; his naked soul to be clothed in His righteousness; his lost soul to be saved with His salvation; his hungry soul to be fed with His bruised body; his diseased soul to be healed with His balm; his refugeless soul to find refuge in Him. He wants Calvary’s cross for his shade; Calvary’s wounds for his refuge; Calvary’s atonement for his peace. He wants to be built on Christ as a foundation; to dwell in Christ as a temple; draw nigh to God through Christ; live through Christ; live upon Christ; live to the praise of Christ; and at last live with Christ for ever, to praise the sacred Three in everlasting hallelujahs of joy, peace, and triumph. These, then, in substance, are the things that “the stranger calleth to the Lord for.” But—

IV. We have to observe the success attending the stranger’s errand,—or the blessings which are sure to be given him, in answer to the Saviour’s prayer. Whoever may find his prayers unavailing, Jesus, the great Solomon, will never find His so. If the effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man be much availing, surely we may assert that the effectual fervent prayer of Jesus is all availing. The cries of the spiritual stranger must come up into the ears of the Lord of Sabaoth, because the great Angel of the covenant, on his behalf, officiates at the golden altar (Rev. 8:3), and adds to his anxious breathings the sweet incense of His own sacrificial and intercessory work. Indeed, there are several immutable things to secure the success of the supplicating stranger. The will of the Father is on his side, and it is “according to the will of God” that the Holy Ghost “makes intercession” for the stranger (Rom. 8:26-29). There are the “yea and amen promises” (2 Cor. 1:20) as well as the never-to-be-forfeited “oath” of a covenant God on his side (Heb. 6:17, 18). But the point of security which the text makes most prominent is, the intercession of the Greater than Solomon. Oh, Jesus is looking, coming stranger, with a heart full of tenderness and compassion upon thee, and looking to the Father with an authoritative and confident cry, “Hear Thou in heaven Thy dwelling-place, and do according to all that the stranger calleth to Thee for.” As if He should say, pointing to the poor, guilt-stung, coming stranger, and lifting up His eyes to the throne of the Father, “Look upon an object of Thy everlasting love. See, there is one whom Thou gavest Me to redeem. I bought him with My invaluable blood. His name is on My breast, and deep engraven on the palms of My hands. Now, taught by the Holy Spirit, he sees his strangership; he feels his helplessness; he feels his ruin; but he sees the way of pardon, justification, and access. His eyes are upon, and his hands are stretched out toward, the place of meeting, Myself, the true Temple. Hear his humble confession, ‘I have sinned’; listen to his supplication; read his wants in his earnest looks, his deep sighs, his heart-felt cries; read his heart, see its woes, mark its wants, and do according to all that he calleth to Thee for.” Can we doubt the stranger’s good success with such an Advocate with the Father, who, though—

“With cries and tears He offered up 

His humble suit below,

Yet with authority He asks, 

Enthroned in glory now”?

No; indeed, there can be no Scriptural ground to doubt the success of the coming stranger. He may not have his requests granted him just in the manner and measure, nor at the time, nor by the means he bas desired and hoped. God displays the absolute sovereignty of His character in all His dealings with the heirs of salvation; but, while the exercise of sovereignty gives endless and admirable diversity to His handiwork in the souls of His children, the immutability of His will and the stability of His word secures to them all the blessings of pardon, justification, and access to the Father. In the reception of the blessings the stranger seeks, God alone is the efficient cause, although the blessing is received by faith; but still, that faith is “not of him- self,” but is “the gift of God” (Eph. 2:8).

Since Jesus, with His obedient life, and atoning death, and justifying resurrection, is the only channel of pardon and peace, and the only way of access that the Scriptures reveal, he that thinks he is pardoned, and may draw nigh to God, and yet his pardon was not gained by “looking unto Jesus,” is deceiving his own self. Hart might well say—

“Worship God, then, in His Son, 

There He’s love, and there alone; 

Think not that He will or may 

Pardon any other way.”

When God’s time of blessing the stranger has arrived, he is enabled, by whatever means the Lord pleases, to go, a poor, guilty, black and hell-deserving sinner, to a law-fulfilling and sin-atoning Saviour; and, notwithstanding all his guilt and wretchedness, to believe that he is welcome to Jesus, and that He “will in no wise t:ast him out” (John 6:37); and so drop with all his load of sins and woes upon the atonement of Jesus, and so believe Him to have stood in his law-place, to have paid all his debts, and to have endured all his hell, that his conscience becomes unburdened and clean, his soul is in sweet rest and peace, and his heart is enlarged with the “love of God, shed abroad therein by the Holy Ghost” (Rom. 5:5). And truly most blessed is the effect of this believing sight of Jesus “making peace” for him “through the blood of the cross” (Col. 1:20). The law is no longer his terror, for he sees that, in his blessed Surety, it is “magnified and made honourable” (Isa. 42:21). Justice no longer seems against him, but on his side; yea, every perfection of Deity is for him. The wretched hardness of his heart is taken away, and softened, meekened, humbled, happy, and free, he can draw nigh to the mercy-seat, and feel no terror nor guilt; he can lift up “holy hands, without wrath and doubting” (1 Tim. 2:8); he can “serve the Lord without fear, in holiness and righteousness” (Luke 1:74, 75). “Perfect love” has “cast out fear” (1 John 4:18). “The mount that may be touched, that burns with fire, and blackness. and darkness, and a tempest” (Heb. 12:18), is now far behind him in the desert, and “Mount Zion” is full in view. The righteousness of Jesus is now his dress, and glitters in his eyes with ten thousand lovely charms. The blood of Jesus is exceedingly dear. Christ is the “Chiefest among ten thousand, and the altogether lovely.” Fair are his prospects, great his possessions, rich his inheritance, and clear his title; and now he can indeed say that tho wilderness and the solitary place is glad; the desert rejoices and blossoms as the rose. The lame man now leaps as a hart, and the tongue of the dumb man sings; for in the wilderness waters have broken out, and streams in the desert (Isa. 35:1, 6). This mighty and happy revolution makes his old title obsolete, for he is now “no more a stranger and a foreigner, but a fellow citizen with the saints, and of the household of God; and is built upon the foundation of the Apostles and Prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief Corner-stone” (Eph. 2:19, 20). He now not merely prays “toward” Jesus, the Temple of the Lord, but he prays “in this house,” and there, “in the secret place of the Most High, he dwells and abides under the shadow of the Almighty” (Psa. 90:1); and is there—

“No more a stranger, or a guest, 

But like a child at home.”

And well is he taught to know that to God belongs all the praise of the great things that are done for his soul; and, indeed, all is to be traced to the dateless love of the Father toward him, the precious work of Jesus for him, and to the mighty power of the Holy Ghost in him; and it, therefore, well becomes him, and is every way congenial with his feelings, to “give thanks unto the Lord, whose mercy endureth for ever” (Psa. 136); and well can he respond to the Psalmist’s exhortation, “O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noise to the Rock of our salvation. Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving, and make a joyful noise unto Him with psalms. O come, let us worship and bow down: let us kneel before the Lord our Maker; for He is our God; and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand” (Psa. 95); and happily can he join the blessed song, “The Lord liveth; and blessed be my Rock; and let the God of my salvation be exalted” (Psa. 18:46).

But, although all the Lord’s people in this life know something of this sweet change—the oil of joy given for mourning (lsa. 61:3)—yet a complete and full donation of the stranger’s requests is reserved for another and a better life. There the stranger will indeed be satisfied. There every power of his soul, unembarrassed by sin and the mortal tabernacle—and at the resurrection, his body, too, immortal and spiritual—shall find endless employ to contemplate and gaze upon, adore and feast upon, Jesus, the true Temple and eternal All of the chosen. 

Now, my hearers, in conclusion, permit me to remind you that you are either in a state of entire strangership, or in a state of sensible strangership. In other words, you are either dead in sin, or quickened to feel the burden of sin, coming to Christ for the pardon of sin, or have found rest in Christ, the Saviour from sin. Examine yourselves with that carefulness, and conclude with that conscientiousness, that becomes you upon so momentous a subject, remembering, if you are in the former of these states, you are journeying to an endless hell; if in the second, the Gospel calls you to Jesus, and points you for help to the “Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world”; if in the third state (coming to Jesus), the Gospel promises and God’s oath, with Jesus’ intercession, are on your side. But, if you are resting on and believing in Jesus, all the blessings, promises, ordinances, precepts, and cautions of the Gospel are your’s, with heaven at the end of your race. Indeed, “all things are your’s, whether Paul, or Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are your’s; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1 Cor. 3:21-23).