The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon. The following excerpt is from the New Park Street Pulpit, sermon number 57, "The incarnation and birth of Christ."“Out of thee,” saith Jehovah, speaking by the mouth of Micah, “out of thee shall he come forth unto me.”
What if Jesus came? Did not his Father send Him? If he were made a child, did not the Holy Spirit beget Him? If he spoke wondrously, did not his Father pour grace into his lips that he might be an able minister of the new covenant? If his Father did forsake him when he drank the bitter cup of gall, did he not still love him still? and did he not, by-and-by, after three days, raise him from the dead, and at last receive him up on high, leading captivity captive?
Ah! beloved, he who knoweth the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost as he should know them, never setteth one before another; he is not more thankful to one than the other; he sees them at Bethlehem, at Gethsemane, and on Calvary, all equally engaged in the work of salvation.
“He shall come forth unto me.” O Christian, hast thou put thy confidence in the man Christ Jesus? Hast thou placed your reliance solely on him? And art thou united with him? Then believe that thou are united unto the God of heaven; since to the man, Christ Jesus thou art brother, and holdest closest fellowship, thou art linked thereby with God the Eternal, and “the Ancient of days” is thy Father and thy friend! “He shall come forth unto me.”
Did you never see the depth of love there was in the heart of Jehovah, when God the Father equipped His Son for the great enterprise of mercy? There had been a sad day in Heaven once before, when Satan fell, and dragged with him a third of the stars of Heaven, and when the Son of God launching from his great right hand the Omnipotent thunders, dashed the rebellious crew to the pit of Perdition; but if we could conceive a grief in Heaven, that must have been a sadder day, when the Son of the Most High left his Father’s bosom, where he had lain from before all worlds.
“Go,” saith the Father, “and thy Father’s blessing on thy head!” Then comes the unrobing. How do angels crowd around to see the Son of God take off his robes! He laid aside his crown; he said, “My Father, I am Lord over all, blessed forever, but I will lay my crown aside, and be as mortal men are.”
He strips himself of his bright vest of glory; “Father,” he says, “I will wear a robe of clay, just such as men wear.” Then he takes off all those jewels wherewith he was glorified; he lays aside his starry mantles and robes of light, to dress himself in the simple garments of the peasant of Galilee. What a solemn disrobing that must have been!
And next, can you picture the dismissal! The angels attend the Saviour through the streets, until they approach the doors; when an angel cries, “Lift up your heads, O ye gates, and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, and let the king of glory through!”
Oh! methinks the angels must have wept when they lost the company of Jesus—when the Sun of Heaven bereaved them of all its light! But they went after Him. They descended with him; and when his spirit entered into flesh, and he became a babe, he was attended by that mighty host of angels, who after they had been with him to Bethlehem’s manger, and seen him safely laid on His mother’s breast—in their journey upwards appeared to the shepherds and told them that he was born King of the Jews.
The Father sent Him! Contemplate that subject. Let your soul get hold of it, and in every period of his life think that he suffered what the Father willed; that every step of his life was marked with the approval of the great I AM.
Let every thought that you have of Jesus be also connected with the eternal, ever-blessed God; for “He,” saith Jehovah, “shall come forth to Me.” Who sent him, then? The answer is, his Father!
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