THE FAITHFUL VOW

A SERMON

Preached on Sunday Morning September 2nd, 1860

By Mister JAMES WELLS

At the Surrey Tabernacle, Borough Road

Volume 2 Number 87

“O my soul, you have said unto the Lord, you are my Lord.” Psalm 16:2

AS King David was in many respects a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, so he was brought by the Spirit of God into such a position as to personate the Savior in the very language which Christ as man should use. Hence, we are assured in the New Testament that David in this Psalm speaks not of himself but speaks of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ, therefore, must be considered in our text as the speaker; and if we want an explanation of the character in which he here speaks, the answer is that he here speaks as God’s servant, devoted, and consecrated to God. And hence the command, “behold my servant, whom I uphold; my elect in whom my soul delights; I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles:” or, another Scripture renders it, “He shall bring forth victory to the Gentiles.” And that victory which he brings forth unto the Gentiles is a victory over sin, and a victory over the world, and a victory over death, and over Satan, and over all the powers of darkness, and finally over all tribulation; and this is done simply by his all-atoning blood: “they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb.”

In our text, we have, then, the Savior’s vow of consecration to God. “O my soul, you have said unto the Lord, you are my Lord.” Secondly, his faithfulness to the vow into which he here enters. And then, thirdly, and lastly, the faithfulness of God to him who was in his humiliation as well as in his exaltation faithful to God.

I notice then, first, here, the sacrificial vow of the Lord Jesus Christ. “O my soul;” this is expressed with this emphasis in order to remind us of the solemnity of his position; “O my soul;” as though he embodied in this idea all that he had to endure; for the sufferings of Christ are, as you are aware, referred to in the after part of this Psalm. And the great object, one great object of all the dealings of the Lord with his people is to bring them to know their need of this wonderful person, the Lord Jesus Christ. And yet the perfection of his obedient life, and the perfection of his atoning death, while they are matters that are talked about a good deal in our day, yet they do not appear to me to be generally so appreciated as to constitute the Lord Jesus Christ all and in all. The grand secret of it all is, my hearer, a want of conviction of sin, especially of the sinfulness of our state. That is the great point. I must say again what I have said before that the natural conscience and the word are capable, without the grace of God, and without the Spirit of God, and without the life of God in the soul, are capable of convincing any man morally of sin, and converting any man morally, there is no question about this. And hence the moral influence of the word of God is extensive. But then, if this be all, there will not be any real appreciating of what the Lord Jesus Christ is. That conversion that originates in the grace of God leads a man into the chambers of imagery of his own heart: and you will find that your vows will all come to be nothing; you will vow to be this, and that, and the other; you will begin with the outward, and get that straight; then you are determined to get your heart right, your thoughts right, and everything right; and you will find your resolutions will all come to nothing, will all fall to the ground, and you yourself will fall with them, and you will look around and say, whatever is to become of me? I will tell you what is to become of you; here is the Surety, here is the one who has said, not for himself, but for sinners, “Ah my soul, you have said unto the Lord, you are my Lord.” Now, what has this wonderful Person done? In this vow he especially refers, evidently so, to his sacrificial character. Let me just tell you what he has done. We are assured in Isaiah that his soul was made and offering for sin. Now he had no sin of his own, and you have nothing but sin to call your own, you are a poor sinful creature, but here lies the remedy; his soul was made an offering for sin. And I must here remind you that the Savior is sometimes named by one part of his person, but I think in all cases we must understand his whole person. Hence when it is said, “He bare our sins in his own body on the tree,” we must understand that he as God-Man Mediator did atone for sin; and when it says that his soul was made an offering for sin, we must get an explanation from such a scripture as this, that “He was made sin for us;” and that it means, therefore, his whole person, that he bore our sins, and that it pleased the Lord to put him to grief, and that he poured out his soul unto death. He entered into this vow to put away our sins; and his vow has in it a two-fold aspect: the one is that of putting away sin, and the other is that of being surety for the people.

I am sure there is no character of the Savior that is more highly appreciated than this of his being the Surety; when you find that your resolutions and vows are all nothing, and then learn that the Lord Jesus Christ has by himself put away sin, that there is an end of it altogether, and that your path will be to learn more and more of your need of what he has done, it is this downward experience, it is this knowledge of self, that will endear the Lord Jesus Christ. Now did he ever fail in any one thing? No. You and I have failed in everything, the Lord Jesus Christ failed in nothing. We have failed in the law sense of the word, for there we are carnal, sold under sin; we have in the gospel sense of the word, for we have found out that faith is the gift of God, and that every good and perfect gift comes down from the Father of Lights, with whom there is no variableness, neither shadow of turning: Indeed, my hearer, there is a complete contrast between the Savior and the sinner; we are everything that is bad, and he, on the other hand, is everything that is good. Here then he enters into a vow on behalf of those whose vows have, all come to nothing, on behalf of those who dare not be surety for themselves. There is, as you are aware, a great deal said in our day about responsibility: they say, is not man a responsible being? Well, if I enter into that question of man’s responsibility in reality, I pass by his responsibilities as a man among men; I pass by his responsibilities as connected with his social relations on earth, as husband, or brother, or child, or servant, or master, or whatever position in which he may stand. In all these the Christian as well as another man, has his responsibilities. But when I come to that responsibility that pertains to eternity, then it is quite another thing; we must distinguish between the two. And if you ask what is our responsibility as pertaining to eternity, it is simply this. There is a law which is spiritual, there is a law which is infallible, there is a law which is holy, just, and good; and you are responsible to God for entire conformity to that law. That, sir, is your responsibility; and that law will bend to no compromise; he that offends in one point, is guilty of the whole. Now is there one in this assembly this morning that could meet death on that ground? Here is your responsibility; you are responsible to God for entire conformity to his spiritual, holy, eternal law. Now I say, supposing you are called, then, to the bar of God, how would you stand? The law demands of you a perfection of obedience, such as could be rendered by Adam before the fall. Well, you say supposing I cannot render this. Then the sentence of the law is, “depart from me you cursed, into everlasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” That is the responsibility. But what men tell us, and I am sorry I have to occupy a moment of your time in making the remark, but I say, when men tell us that we are responsible for our salvation: that God brings the gospel, and we are to be damned for not savingly receiving it; when they tell us this, they thereby hide the great secret of our real responsibility, and at the same time they create a responsibility where no legal responsibility exists; and at the same time, while they are doing this, they bring the believer into bondage, they delude men. And if ever there was a day of almost universal deception, I believe it to be the day in which we live. Now my hearer’s let us ask ourselves, one and all, have we been brought to see and feel our responsibility; before God is not a gospel responsibility? We are not damned for not having saving faith; we are not lost, or cursed, or banished from God’s presence for not savingly receiving the gospel, because this is contrary all together to the order of the gospel. The great truth of our state, is simply this, that as we sinned in Adam we died in Adam; and our responsibility lies in this, that we are accountable to God for a perfect obedience to his law: and if we cannot stand before him as perfect as that law is, then I say the sentence of it is, “Depart, you cursed, into everlasting fire.”

Now then, where is the remedy? for not one jot nor tittle of that law will God suffer to fail. Whether God could have put that law aside, and dealt with us after some other manner, is not for us to say. Men are very fond of saying what God could do, and could not do, making out God to be a mere statue, nothing better. I declare that some people worship a God that they say could do this and could not do that; could and could not, could and could not; so much of it that it presents the blessed God in a light to me not much better than the God the ancients called fate; they worshipped fate: everything came to pass by an absolute fate. I am a strict Predestinarian, but not a fatalist: no. I believe that God’s counsels are all governed by infinite prescience, and that they were all arranged and settled by his good pleasure and his sovereignty. But coming back again to this matter there stands the law. It is not what God could do or could not do, but what he will do; he will maintain every iota of that law. Now then, look at the Lord Jesus Christ; he comes, and is made under the law, made of a woman, made under the law; and he became a debtor in our place to do the whole law, and under that law he looked to God in his eternity, and he said to Jehovah, “O Jehovah, you are my Lord;” you are my foundation, you are my sustainer, you are my ruler.

These are the meanings of the word, “Lord,” as mentioned the second time in our text, which we shall have presently more carefully to amplify. Now then, my hearer, look at the Lord Jesus Christ as having gone in his life to the end of this law; and look at him as having gone in his death also to the end of sin. You see here that the law legally dies to you, as much as the husband is literally dead that dies legally; when the husband dies the wife is free from that husband; and so, the law is thus represented, that by the work of Jesus Christ that law legally died, and we became dead to it, became entirely free, so that we have entirely done with the law as a law of works. Ah, then, if you have this knowledge of your law-condemned state as a sinner and are led to see the Lord Jesus Christ standing in your place, how you will appreciate him. You will say, What then, through his standing in this position, is it so that if I am brought to feel my need of him, and to receive the testimony of him, and to walk with him, and be reconciled to God by him. Is it so then that before sin can be laid to my charge, it must be first laid to his charge? Just so it is. And as it is so that before I come short of anything that God has for me in this covenant Christ himself must first come short. Just so he is the husband, and the law looks to him for everything: he stands here as the Surety. Here lies our responsibility not in the gospel, but in the law, and Christ took that responsibility. And, say you, now then we have no responsibility at all. Yes, we have. Am I going to free the believer from responsibility? The believer has no legal responsibility: but I am still responsible to God that are not in a law sense, not in a legal sense. Well say you how are you responsible? I will tell you how I am responsible to God. As a Christian, leave out my character as a minister, I have received God’s truth; and I am responsible to God for holding fast of that truth and for use I make of that truth; and if I can’t at the last give a good account of myself in this gospel sense, then I shall be cast out. Hence the man who has the truth by the Holy Ghost, he holds it fast, can’t part with it. Ah, he says, Jesus is the Surety: Jesus is the end of the law, he entered into a sacrificial vow, and that vow he made good, that vow he has eternally carried out. I have failed in every part: he has failed in no part. Now being brought to receive this, we stand accountable to God for holding fast the truth. Once give up the truth, then you can’t give a good account of yourself; but if you are enabled to hold fast the truth, then your gospel responsibility stands good, you can at the last give a good account of yourself; as one did when he said, “I have waited for your salvation.” He felt his need of this, and he held it fast to the end. And as another did when he bore testimony in his dying hour of the eternity of God’s covenant; and as another did when he said, “I have fought the good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith.” Now, my hearer, never go away after that and say that we hold that the real Christian is under no responsibility. But then this at the same time is a delightful responsibility; because God has promised to carry on the work in our hearts, so that the truth will be with us forever; that will not give us up, we, consequently, shall not give that up. We are all responsible to God for the use we make of his truth; if we make a wrong use of it, I am sure we thereby dishonor the Lord, and bring ourselves into bondage. What is making a wrong use of it? Why, if we mix it up with any human tradition, if we enter into any compromise whatever with any system contrary to it, that is making a wrong use of it, corrupting and perverting the word of God.

And then another idea is the profit it is to us. You will be at the last enabled to say that you have kept his way, and not declined it, and you will be enabled to say that it has been all of grace, and that his holy word also has been profitable to you. This is the good gospel account that you will give. And then you will sum up the whole of it as the people in heaven do: “Unto him that loved us and washed us from our sins in his own blood and has made us kings and priests unto God.” Here then is the solemn law vow into which Christ entered. Ah, my hearer, men talk a great deal about the commandments as a rule of life; but out of all the ministers and all the professors not one man, not one woman out of them all keep that law that they profess to hold as a rule of life. As the Lord lives, the best law minister you can find, give me two hours of his company, ah, one hour, and I will demonstrate in one hour that he does not keep the law that he professes to hold as a role of life, take only one item of the law, “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Where will you find the man, will where will you find the minister, where will you find the Christian, where will you find such a thing on earth? There is no such thing; as the Lord lives there is not among men. But I can find it in Jesus Christ; I can find it there. He loved his people as himself, and therefore laid down his life for them. Well, say you, what is the law for, then? The law is to condemn people; the law is to convince people of sin; the law is to thunder people into despair; the law is to flash upon people’s minds, and threaten to their souls God’s eternal wrath; the law is to burn up all their righteousness, the goodness, and comeliness, wisdom, and strength, and leave them as it were a collection of ashes, and make them feel they are but dust and ashes. The law, why, it is a trumpet that waxes not weaker and weaker, not feebler, and feebler, but louder and louder; to denote that the longer you live under it the more it will be against you. That is the use we want to make of the law in our day, to show unto sinners that the law is spiritual, there is a great deal of talk in our day; men are very fond of inventing phraseology. All, they say, the moral law: the moral law. Well, no man in his senses that I know of would deny that the law is moral; but it is a remarkable thing, while men smooth matters over in this way, the Bible never calls the law moral. Where in all the Bible do you read of a moral law? But these men must have their own phrases, must call it the moral law. The Bible never calls it so, never; there is not such a phrase in all the Bible. And why not? Because such a term would be deceptive; and would convey the idea that if you have a little whitewash smooth behavior the law is satisfied, whereas the word of God declares that the law is spiritual. When it came to Saul of Tarsus, and searched his house, what did it find? all manner of concupiscence; cut him up root and branch; made him confess what he was. The law is spiritual; and until a man is brought to feel this is the case, and to know this, he will never appreciate the Lord Jesus Christ. So that our law responsibility, therein lies our eternal ruin; our gospel responsibility is merely a test that distinguishes the real possessor from the mere professor. Whenever people begin to be whimsical with their religion, it shows that there is something wrong at the bottom, whenever people get some hobby doctrine or another, run away with it, and begin to be whimsical, I am always inclined to think that such persons have never been brought under the solemnities of real conviction, have never felt the solemnities of real conviction, have never felt their need of the great Surety and Savior standing in their place; have never seen the greatness of his salvation, the greatness of his victory; have never felt the solemnity of that position which he has, which he does, and which he ever will occupy. Whatever we may be capricious about, the Lord keep us firm in these weighty and solemn things, that we may more and more appreciate the dear Savior standing thus in our law place.

Let me give another idea of the Savior standing in our place; you must not suppose that he stood in our place as our representative merely in atoning for our sins; he is our representative now. When God wants to bless you, he does not look upon you to see whether you are worthy of it or not; he looks upon his dear Son, who is in heaven, our representative; he beholds our shield; he has constituted him our shield; he looks upon the face of his Anointed, and he sees perfection there; and then he deals with you entirely according to that perfection, and then he looks to you, and whatever sin, whatever wound, whatever grief, whatever sores, whatever necessity, there may be in you, let it be what it may, he finds a remedy in the fulness and perfection of his dear Son; and ever sees you where you have never yet seen yourself. Why, say you, I have seen myself complete in Christ. Ah, but you must not tell me you have seen the beauty of it as God does; you must not tell me you have seen the perfection of it as God sees it, for we see only in part yet. The Savior might well say, “Come in my name; ask in my name.” If you come to preach, preach in remembrance of me; if you pray, pray in remembrance of me; if you hear, hear in remembrance of me; if you commemorate my death, do it in remembrance of me; if you live, live in remembrance of me; when you come to die, die in remembrance of me. All centers in this glorious and wonderful person as our representative. Here is the vow; he came into our law place; “O my soul, you have said unto the Lord, You are my Lord.”

I now go on to the next part, namely, the relation, “You are my Lord.” First, the foundation. God the Father in the eternity of his counsels was Christ’s foundation. Christ rested entirely upon the counsels of God, entirely so; and when he would wish to be glorified, and his people with him, it was m accordance with the counsels of God. “The glory that I had with you before the world was.” Do you ask what these counsels were? The scriptures represent them in a great many places, but still, I will give an instance or two. Now, the first idea, then, of these counsels is this, that God the Father constituted Jesus Christ, and a number that no man can number, he constituted them one; and upon this constitution of things Christ rested. “Both he that sanctifies, and they who are sanctified are all of one: for which cause he is not ashamed to call them brethren.” Now Christ rested upon this. He saw that God the Father had loved them with an eternity of love, with an everlasting love; that election in him was absolute as eternal; that they having obtained an inheritance, being predestinated thereto according to the good pleasure of his will; now upon these counsels the Savior rested; and he trusted in God in the order of these counsels. And you observe another feature of these counsels. “The Lord has sworn and will not repent. You are a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek. Now Christ rested on these counsels; he trusted in God in the order of these counsels. Then another feature of this foundation is the appointment of Christ himself. Jesus Christ was verily foreordained; he came not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him; and therefore, he did the will of God, and rested upon God’s counsel concerning him. “Therefore, does my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again: no man takes it from me, but I lay it down of myself. This commandment have I received of my Father.” So that the Father was Christ’s foundation; the Father in the eternity of his counsels, constituted the people and Christ one, and appointed Christ as their Savior and Surety. And on these counsels the Savior rested, and what a sweet resting. No wonder that he should call on nothing for his support but God’s eternal counsels. No wealth, no human institutions, no human inventions, he stood clear of them all. “You are my Lord,” you are my foundation. Here he rested. Christ then looked to the Lord as his foundation: Christ is our foundation. Then it signifies also sustainer. “O my soul, you have said unto the Lord, you are my sustainer.” God the Father sustained Christ as man. And where is the secret of God sustaining Christ? because if you can find out the secret of God sustaining him, you will find out the secret of his sustaining you. The secret of God sustaining the Savior was twofold: first, because of the interest he had in him, having loved the people he had given to him, and having loved Christ, his interest was great in the Savior, and everlasting: the second part of the secret of his sustaining Christ, was his entire approbation of Christ. Ah, he never had to withdraw from him on account of anything wrong in him; no. Ah, say you, that’s Jesus Christ, that’s not me. But, my hearer, let me whisper a word to you, after I have made, shall I say, a few preparatory remarks. You read in the Bible of a wind that rent the mountains and the rocks, but the Lord was not in the wind. And so, sometimes a sweeping wind of circumstances passes over you, and rends your mountains all to pieces, and produces a scene of desolation; but you cannot see the Lord in it, the Lord is not there; no can’t see him; his power is there, but he is not there in the sense he is somewhere else. Then comes an earthquake, swallows up something that you greatly prized it is gone. Ah, you say, I should not care if I could see the hand of the Lord in it; I can see myself in it, the devil, and sin, and circumstances in it, but not the Lord. Well, then comes the fire, and burns up what little you have left, the Lord is not in the fire. Ah, you say it is worse and worse; I should not mind if I could see the hand of the Lord in it. But presently comes the still small voice. We have said the secret of his sustaining Christ was his entire approbation of Christ; and you say, that is Jesus Christ, that is not me.

Now, the still small voice is this, it is a short sentence, only three words, but eternally significant, “Approved in Christ;” there it is, “Approved in Christ.” Now I want to know, I really want io know, if you are in relation to Christ as pure as his blood can make you, and if you are accepted in his righteousness, and conformed? which you ultimately will be, to covenant shape and order. I want to know what difference there possibly can be between your state, and that of Christ himself? Is it his blood that is to be your sanctification; if his blood be innocent and pure, you are made by it innocent and pure. It is his righteousness that is to cover you; well then, you will be just like him. It is his truth that is to form and shape you and bring you into new covenant shape; must be conformed to his truth. I do not wonder, I did years ago, I do not now at all wonder, that John should even the second time fall down to worship one of his fellow servants. John had seen the Lord; there was not one disciple more familiar with Christ than John, and I am sure there was not one that had more fellowship with Christ after Christ was in heaven than John had. Look at the Savior’s appearing to him in the Isle of Patmos again and again; and so clear was the revelation, that John has left on record a description of the Savior’s appearance. And yet after thus seeing him, when he saw one of his fellow servants, he fell down and worshipped him. “See you do it not, I am your fellow servant.” Fellow servant! Why, I see no difference between you and the Master. I have seen the Master; and now I see you, made sure it was the Master! No, I am your fellow servant. And so impressive was this, that John fell down the second time when he appeared again. Look then at the still small voice, “Approved in Christ!” Ah! the Lord is determined you shall not find him in the whirlwind, the earthquake, or the fire; there indeed is his power, and there are his mysterious dealings; you shall not see his hand, but all these shall sweep away every fleshly hope, and make you know that your sustenance is by that entire approbation of you, in which God holds you in Christ. “O my soul, you have said unto the Lord, you are my sustainer.” God the Father always upheld the cause of Christ: he will never suffer his interest to die. What a magnificent view Daniel had of this, when he saw, in the course of ages, the kingdoms of this world reduced to chaff, and driven away as chaff on the summer threshing floor; and over all that, there rose up in wondrous distinction, the invulnerable, impregnable, untarnishable, incorruptible, eternal, and wealthy, and happy, and blissful kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ. You are my sustainer.

Then it means also ruler. You are my ruler. Oh, how entirely Jesus Christ was ruled by the Father, came not to do his own will, but the will of him that sent him. The Savior was holy, and just, and good, and therefore he could say what we cannot always say, he could say, “I delight to do your will, O God.” And though it was the will of God he should bear our sins, and suffer what he did suffer, yet in the face of it all, “I delight to do your will O God: your law is within my heart!” I do not like to set forth the Savior abstractedly, but to notice in all we say of him, the relation which he bears to us.

Now in the 18th of Genesis you have a very significant Scripture upon this matter of ruling. Jesus Christ was ruled by the law of God and by the gospel of God; we are to be ruled by the gospel of God. “I know him,” namely, Abraham, “that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he has spoken of him.” Now take these words and apply them to the literal descendants of Abraham, and will they stand good? Were Abraham’s literal descendants commanded by him; did they obey, did they continue to do justice and judgment, and to retain their earthly Canaan with all its advantages? They did not. What becomes then of the Scripture that “Abraham will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which he has spoken of him.” But take his spiritual descendants, there you get it fulfilled. The same truths by which the Lord appeared unto Abraham have commanded his spiritual children from age to age to the present day. And ministers may well take a hint from that Scripture. The children of Abraham are commanded, and governed, and retained efficiently and effectively by Abraham; not by Abraham personally, but by the truths revealed to Abraham. And what were those truths? Why, to sum them up concisely, one was that of the eternal Priesthood of Christ, as shown in Melchizedek meeting Abraham; and the second was that of the immutability of the counsels of God. All the gospel is contained in these two. Now his children shall be so commanded; they shall do justice. How can they do justice? Where is the most important position in which justice shall be done? Well, say you, at the bar of God, between man and God. How then can I do justly with God? By precious faith in that Just One. I take the dear Redeemer’s name, his atonement, his righteousness, and here I stand just before God. There I can do justly. I cannot do justice to the law, nor justice to justice itself, nor justice to God, nor justice to my own soul, nor justice to the souls of others, in any way but by the righteousness of Jesus Christ. Now then, the same gospel that governed Abraham, he, by that gospel, commands his children to this day. Here then as Christ entered into this vow, took upon him our responsibility, and was the end of the law, we are thereby made free. And as the Lord in his eternity of his counsels was his foundation, by what he himself is done he became our foundation, by what he has done for us. And as the Lord was his sustainer by his entire approbation of him, so he is our sustainer by his entire approbation of him, so he is our sustainer by his entire approbation of us in his dear Son. And as Jesus Christ was governed by these councils, these truths, so his brethren are governed by them likewise. And the Savior was always careful to set before his apostles the eternity of these truths. “Having loved his own that were in the world, he loved them unto the end.” And when he gave the great commission, he summed it up with these words “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world;” “I am with you;” meaning that he was with them in all those ties, in all those relations.

I notice now, in conclusion, the faithfulness of God the Father to Christ. It is said in Ephesians 1, that God the Father “first trusted in Christ;” a remarkable scripture that is; and that is a very solemn trust; he entrusted the people to Christ; he entrusted the honors of his holy law to Christ, he entrusted all the purposes of the new covenant to Christ, he entrusted the government of the world to Christ. I have often thought of that, that God the Father put such honor upon Christ, to trust him with the souls of all his people; and yet here am I, cannot trust him with one soul! yet God the father trusted him with all; and triumphantly at the last he will say, “Here am I, and all you have given me.” Then Christ had to trust the Father. His language was, and with that we close, “I have set the Lord always before me.” Can you say that? Well, I think I can say, yes. Don’t say it; stop a minute and think about it. Do you mean to say in all your thoughts, movements, and purposes, that self is never brought in? You had better not say it. But the Savior said it, and he did it, not for himself, but for us. Ah, say you, here it is again; I have very often set something else before me besides God. What is the remedy? Christ never did, he never committed error. We are daily committing error. “The eyes of a fool or in the ends of the earth;” but the Savior was blind to every other object but that which he came into the world for. “I have set the Lord always before me; he is at my right hand, and I shall not be moved.”

All, blessed Redeemer, will God the Father be faithful to you? You have been faithful to him; will he be faithful to you? Yes! I am sure he will. How far, Lord, will God the Father be faithful to you? Why, “he will not leave my soul in hell;” nor did he: “he will not suffer his Holy One to see corruption;” nor did he: “he will show me the path of life;” which in bringing him again from the dead through the blood of the everlasting covenant he did; “And I shall come into his presence, where there is fullness of joy; and to his right hand, where there are pleasures for evermore.” “And Stephen said, behold I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God.” There is, then, the confidence the Father had in Christ; Christ carried it out; here is the trust that Christ had in the Father, and the Father carried it out. Thus, there is a sweet mutuality of trust between the Father and the Savior.