First part of Sermon LXXI. for the Twenty-fifth Sunday after
Trinity. Jer. xxiii. 5-8. St. John vi. 5-14.
The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved.—JER.
viii. 20.
IN our sacred year, as well as in the natural, we have a harvest and
a summer time; and one of these has now again come to a close; so that
all we can now say of the year that is past is in the words of this day’s
Gospel, “Gather up the fragments that remain.” Another season of grace
has gone, with all its opportunities; it is numbered among the past; its
seed is laid up in the eternal future.
The portion of Scripture which our Church has appointed for the Epistle
is from the Prophet Jeremiah, where, amidst the desolations of Israel and
the abounding of unfaithful shepherds, God gives the promise of Christ,
the Shepherd that should feed His scattered flock, and gather them out
of all countries. And our appointed Gospel describes the fulfilment of
this prophecy being acknowledged by the Jews, when our Lord fed the multitudes
with miraculous bread in the wilderness. The one lesson, therefore, of
this our last Sunday in the year, appears to be this: that amidst the desolations
of the Christian Church, and whatever may be the want of faithfulness in
its pastors, yet the one Great Shepherd of His flock is distributing to
each the portion convenient for him; and the question to each is, whether
he has made and is making the most of what he has received. For inconceivably
great is our blessing as the chosen people of God; and equal to the blessing
is the responsibility.
First of all, then, we have the prophecy, Behold, the days come,
saith the Lord, that I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, and a
King shall reign and prosper, and shall execute judgement and justice in
the earth. Our Blessed Saviour is often called “The Branch,” “the Man
whose Name is the BRANCH," (Zech. vi. 12; iii. 8.) inasmuch as He has been
pleased to take upon Him our nature, to be made man, to be born of the
stock of Abraham, of the family of David; to be, as He called Himself,
“the Son Man.” And as when He takes on Him our poverty He gives us
His riches, He has graciously transferred the same name to Christians,
that they should be “branches,” (St. John xv. 5.) branches in Himself,
the true Vine, partakers of the Divine nature; and as He is the Son of
man, that they should be made in Him sons of God.
“The righteous Branch shall reign in the earth.” Declarations of God
are always fulfilled in a truer and higher sense than the words first sounded
to the ear: so the Ring, the Son of David, reigning and executing judgment,
has an accomplishment in us, the true Israel of God, at this day beyond
the letter. Who does not feel that there is One reigning in his heart,
and exercising a sway there beyond that which any mere earthly sovereign
could do?
In His days Judah shall be saved, and Israel shall dwell safely:
and this is His Name whereby He shall be called, THE LORD OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.
“The Lord,” i. e. Jehovah, God and man. He is our sanctifica-tion, by procuring
for us the Holy Spirit; our redemption, by paying for us the ransom of
His death; He is “our righteousness,” says Bishop Wilson, “by satisfying
the justice of God in our nature.” “A man shall be a covert from the tempest.”
Therefore, behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that they shall
no more say, The Lord liveth, Which brought up the children of Israel out
of the land of Egypt; but, The Lord liveth, Which brought up, and Which
led the seed of the house of Israel, out of the north country, and from
all countries whither I had driven them: and they shall dwell in their
own land. That is, the mercies of God are so great in the coming time
that men shall no longer swear by the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
Who brought them up out of the land of Egypt; but by Him, the same God,
Who hath wrought things far greater, of which those were but the sign ;
when the Great Shepherd of the sheep shall feed His flock on the mountains
of Israel, “and there shall be one fold and one Shepherd.” And then this
prophecy in the Scripture appointed for the Epistle seems, as it were,
to pass into the Gospel,...
.... (for the second part, on the
Gospel.)
