of God, who will never save us, unless we are prepared to let him have all the glory.
3. First, I shall endeavour to expound at large the doctrine contained in this text; in the next place I shall endeavour to show its force and truthfulness; and then in the third place I shall seek God’s Holy Spirit to apply the useful, practical lessons which are to be drawn from it.
4. I. I shall endeavour to EXPOUND THIS TEXT. “Not for your sakes do I do this says the Lord God.” The motive for the salvation of the human race is to be found in the heart of God, and not in the character or condition of man. Two races have revolted against God — the one angelic, the other human. When a part of this angelic race revolted against the Most High, justice speedily overtook them; they were swept from their starry seats in heaven, and henceforth they have been reserved in darkness to the great day of the wrath of God. No mercy was ever presented to them, no sacrifice ever offered for them; but they were without hope and mercy, for ever consigned to the pit of eternal torment. The human race, far inferior in order of intelligence, sinned also, and as I believe sinned as atrociously; at any rate, if the sins of manhood that we have heard of would be put together and properly weighed, I can scarcely understand how even the sins of demons could be much blacker than the sin of mankind. However, the God who in his infinite justice passed over angels, and allowed them for ever to expiate their offences in the fires of hell, was pleased to look down on man. Here was election on a grand scale; the election of manhood, and the reprobation of fallen angelhood. What was the reason for it? The reason was in God’s mind, an inscrutable reason which we do not know, and which if we knew, probably we could not understand. Had you and I been asked to decide who should have been spared, I do think it probable we should have chosen that fallen angels should have been saved. Are they not the brightest? Have they not the greatest mental strength? If they had been redeemed, would it not have glorified God more, as we judge, than the salvation of worms like ourselves? Those bright beings — Lucifer, son of the morning, and those stars that walked in his train — if they had been washed in his redeeming blood, if they had been saved by sovereign mercy, what a song would they have lifted up to the Most High and everlasting God! But God, who does as he wills with his own, and gives no account of his matters, but who deals with his creatures as the potter deals with his clay, did not take upon him the nature of angels, but took upon him the seed of Abraham, and chose men to be the vessels of his mercy. This fact we know, but where is its reason? certainly not in man. “Not for your sakes do I do this, oh house of Israel, be ashamed and be confounded for your own ways.”
5. Here, very few men object. We notice that if we talk about the election of men and the non-election of fallen angels, no one objects for a moment. Every man approves of Calvinism until he feels that he is the loser by it; but when it begins to touch his own bone and his own flesh then he kicks against it. Come, then, we must go further. The only reason why one man is saved, and not another, does not lie, in any sense, in the man saved, but in God’s heart. The reason why this day the gospel is preached to you and not the heathen far away, is not because, as a race, we are superior to the heathen; it is not because we deserve more from God’s hands; his choice of Britain, in the election of outward privilege, is not caused by the excellency of the British nation, but entirely because of his own mercy and his own love. There is no reason in us why we should have the gospel preached to us more than any other nation. Today, some of us have received the gospel, and have been changed by it, and have become the heirs of light and immortality, whereas others are left still to be the heirs of wrath. But there is no reason in us why we should have been taken and others left.
There was nothing in us to merit esteem,
Or give the Creator delight.
’Twas ‘Even so, Father!’ we ever must sing,
Because it seem’d good in your sight.
6. And now, let us review this doctrine at length. We are taught in Holy Scripture that, long before this world was made, God foreknew and foresaw all the creatures he intended to fashion; and there and then foreseeing that the human race would fall into sin, and deserve his anger, determined, in his own sovereign mind, that an immense portion of the human race should be his children and should be brought to heaven. As for the rest, he left them to their own deserts, to sow the wind and reap the whirlwind, to scatter crime and inherit punishment. Now, in the great decree of election, the only reason why God selected the vessels of mercy must have been because he wished to do it. There was nothing in any one of them which caused God to choose them. We all were alike, all lost, all ruined by the fall; all without the slightest claim upon his mercy; all, in fact, deserving his utmost vengeance. His choice of anyone, and his choice of all his people, is causeless, as far as anything in them was concerned. It was the effect of his sovereign will, and of nothing which they did, could do, or even would do; for thus says the text: “Not for your sakes do I do this, oh house of Israel!”
7. As for the fruit of our election, in due time Christ came into this world, and purchased with his blood all those whom the Father has chosen. Now come to the cross of Christ; bring this doctrine with you, and remember that the only reason why Christ gave up his life to be a ransom for his sheep was because he loved his people, but there was nothing in his people that made him die for them. I was thinking as I came here this morning, if any man should imagine that the love of God to us was caused by anything in us, it would be as if a man should look into a well to find the springs of the ocean, or dig into an anthill to find an Alp. The love of God is so immense, so boundless and so infinite, that you cannot conceive for a moment that it could have been caused by anything in us. The little good that is in us — the no good that is in us — for there is none, could not have caused the boundless, bottomless, shoreless, summitless love, which God reveals to his people. Stand at the foot of the cross, you merit mongers, you who delight in your own works; and answer this question. Do you think that the Lord of life and glory could have been brought down from heaven, could have been fashioned like a man, and have been led to die through any merit of yours? Shall these sacred veins be opened with any lancet less sharp than his own infinite love? Do you conceive that your poor merits, such as they are, could be so efficacious as to nail the Redeemer to the tree, and make him bend his shoulders beneath the enormous load of the world’s guilt? You cannot imagine it. The consequence is so great, compared with what you suppose to be the case, that your logic fails in a moment. You may conceive that a coral insect raises up a rock by its multitude, and by its many years of working; but you cannot conceive that all the accumulated merits of manhood, if there were such things, could have brought the Eternal from the throne of his majesty, and humbled him to the death of the cross: that is a thing as clearly impossible to any thoughtful mind, as impossibility can be. No; from the cross comes the cry — “Not for your sakes do I do this, oh house of Israel.”
8. After Christ’s death, there comes, in the next place, the work of the Holy Spirit. Those whom the Father has chosen, and whom the Son has redeemed, in due time the Holy Spirit calls “out of darkness into marvellous light.” Now, the calling of the Holy Spirit is without any regard to any merit in us. If this day the Holy Spirit shall call out of this congregation a hundred men, and bring them out of their estate of sin into a state of righteousness, you shall bring these hundred men, and let them march in review, and if you could read their hearts, you would be compelled to say, “I see no reason why the Spirit of God should have operated upon these. I see nothing whatever that could have merited such grace as this — nothing that could have caused the operations and motions of the Spirit to work in these men.” For, look here. By nature, men are said to be dead in sin. If the Holy Spirit quickens, it cannot be because of any power in the dead men, or any merit in them, for they are dead, corrupt and rotten in the grave of their sin. If then, the Holy Spirit says, “Come forth and live,” it is not because of anything in the dry bones, it must be for some reason in his own mind, but not in us. Therefore, know this, men and brethren, that we all stand on the same level. None of has anything that can recommend us to God; and if the Spirit shall choose to operate in our hearts to salvation, he must be moved to do it by
