CHRIST’S UNIVERSAL KINGDOM AND HOW IT COMES – Charles Spurgeon
CHRIST’S UNIVERSAL KINGDOM AND HOW IT COMES
“Ask of Me and I shall give You the heathen for Your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for Your possession. You shall break them with a rod of iron; You shall dash them in pieces like a potter’s vessel.” Psalms 2:8, 9.
I. THE LORD WILL GIVE TO CHRIST THE HEATHEN AS HIS INHERITANCE
Observe, dear Friends, the wonderful contrast between the violent excitement of the enemies of the Lord and the sublime serenity of God Himself. He is not disturbed though the heathen so furiously rage and their kings and mighty ones set themselves in battle array. He smiles at them—He has them in derision. You and I are often downcast and depressed, and our forebodings are dark and dismal, but God sits in His eternal peacefulness and serenely overrules tumult and rebellion. The Lord reigns and His Throne is not moved, nor His rest broken whatever may be the noise and turmoil down below.
Notice the sublimity of this Divine calm. While the heathen and their princes are plotting and planning how to break His bands asunder and cast His cords from them, He has already defeated their devices and He says to them, “Yet have I set My king upon My holy hill of Zion.” “You will not have My Son to reign over you, but nevertheless He reigns. While you have been raging I have crowned Him. Your imaginations are, indeed, vain, for I have forestalled you and established Him upon His Throne. Hear Him as He proclaims My decree and asserts His filial sovereignty.” God is always beforehand with His adversaries—they find their scheming frustrated and their craft baffled even before they have begun to execute their plans! By God’s decree, the Ever-Blessed Son of the Highest is placed in power and exalted to His Throne. The rulers cannot snatch from His hand the scepter, nor dash from His head the crown—Jesus reigns and must reign till all enemies are put under His feet. God has set Him firmly upon Zion’s sacred hill, and raging nations cannot cast Him down! The very idea of their doing so excites the derision of Jehovah. He disturbs not His great soul because of their blustering.
As if it were a banquet rather than a conflict, the Lord God, as Himself King, speaks to the King’s Son, even to His Anointed on His right hand, and having acknowledged His royal rank, confers upon Him the highest honors. At great feasts, many a monarch has been known to say to hIs favorite, “Ask what I shall give you and nothing shall be denied you this day.” Even thus does the great Father say to His glorious Son, the Prince of Peace, “Ask of Me and I will give You the heathen for Your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for Your possession.” He bids Him open His mouth wide and request a boundless dominion! He will give Him distant nations, yes, and the whole round earth to be His kingdom. There is an air of regal festivity and peaceful joy about all this which strangely contrasts with the uproar of the adversaries.
Brothers and Sisters, I wish we could enter, in some measure, into this sublime quiet. We may well be confident since God is so. If the Captain is assured of victory, it behooves the common soldier to be bravely hopeful. The battle is the Lord’s, and since He is the Lord God Omnipotent, fear about the issue of the conflict is foolish and wicked. All events are in His hands—His hands who can dash whole worlds to dust or create them when it pleases Him. What can stand against the almighty will? Who shall say unto Jehovah, “What are You doing?” In this eternal All-Sufficiency is our rest, and we may, therefore, cease from anxiety! Stand still, my weary Brother, and see the salvation of God! Put not forth your timorous hands to stay the trembling ark, but know that Jehovah can protect His own! Lay your Martha cares aside, my Sister—sit at your Savior’s feet and listen to His voice! He will tell you that God still reigns and that His Anointed shall reign, also. Things are not as they seem—all is well when all looks ill. If the heavens are clouded, the sun is not put out! If the evening has darkened, even to midnight, yet the morning comes! To the moment shall it break, nor can all the powers of darkness hinder the dawning day! Jehovah’s fixed decrees remain engraved as in eternal brass, nor can the craft of Hell efface a single line nor stay the execution of a single purpose! Despite all opposition, the sacred purpose will blossom into the actual Providence, and the Providence will ripen into salvation. God’s plan will be carried out without failure in any point, and there is no cause for alarm.
If we were more calm and restful, we would do our work better, for do we not gather both wisdom and courage when we abide in quietness and confidence? The joy of the Lord is the strength of His saints. The assurance of faith, if we were filled with it, would make us go forth “fair as the moon, clear as the sun and terrible as an army with banners.” Alas, our short-sighted fretfulness, our anxious mistrust and our timorous suspicion cause us needless distress, weaken us for service, and expose us to the assaults of our adversaries! Without the preparation of the Gospel of peace, our feet are unshod and we are unfit for the heavenly pilgrimage. Groveling here below among the troubles of the hour, the majority of Christians are a timorous people and act like the tribe of Reuben in the day of Barak’s battle, to whom Deborah cried, “Why abide you among the sheep-folds, to hear the bleating of the flocks?” O you who lie among the pots and do servile work in abject fear, arise to a braver spirit! Up to the everlasting hills and breathe a purer air—gird yourselves with the belt of confidence in God and you shall be “strong in the Lord and in the power of His might!” May God grant that the subject of this morning may help us out of the depressing influences which surround us and raise us into fellowship with the calm in which Jehovah sits smiling and out of which He says, “Yet have I set My King upon My holy hill of Zion.”
II. THIS UNIVERSAL DOMINION IS TO BE ASKED FOR
Our text suggests to us this morning, first, that the kingdoms of the earth and the earth itself are Christ’s inheritance—“I shall give You the heathen for Your inheritance.” Leave out those little words which the translators have inserted, for they but feebly help the sense. “I will give the heathen, Your inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth, Your possession.” When we have dwelt upon that, we shall then notice that this is to be had for the asking—“Ask of Me and I shall give.”
Beloved, Jesus fails not to ask. We do not doubt that He responds to the Father’s invitation and asks for His inheritance. This is the way in which the Psalm before us touches upon the priestly character of Christ as combined with His kingly office. He always lives to intercede, and a part of His daily intercession is to ask that the heathen may be His inheritance. Now, Beloved, this is a lesson to us. We belong to Christ. We are members of that body of which He is the mystical Head, and it is ours to act with Him in His life work—as He asks, we are to ask with Him. As Jesus suffers in His people, so He pleads in them. Let us cry day and night unto God for the coming of the kingdom of our Lord! Let the Throne of the Highest be surrounded by our perpetual prayers! Let us urge for the Lord Jesus His suit in the courts above, that the heathen may be His inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth His possession.
We are so truly one with Him that His sympathies and hopes are ours! His Glory is our glory! His victory our victory, and, therefore, our supplications should naturally and spontaneously arise for Him every day of our lives. Our union with Him has given us a kingdom, the same kingdom as that which He claims. He Himself has said it, “It is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” As surely as He sets His Son upon His holy hill of Zion, so surely will the Lord bring us all there! Our prayers, therefore, should daily rise together with the pleading of the great Intercessor, Himself. O Lord, Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory! Let Your will be done in earth as it is in Heaven! This prayer is one which is commanded by God Himself. About its fitness we can, therefore, have no doubt. Your Savior taught you to say, “Your kingdom come.” In this text we find it prescribed as a prayer to the Well-Beloved—“Ask of Me”—and, therefore, it is certainly a proper prayer for us, and we may use it without question. We are highly honored in being permitted to present such a petition—to be allowed to pray for myself is mercy, to be permitted to pray for my fellow man is favor—but to be allowed to pray for Jesus is an honor! It is written, “Prayer also shall be made for Him continually,” and thus there is a special honor put upon those who intercede. My Lord’s prayer for me saves me, but when He bids me pray for Him, He dignifies me and I say with David, “Your gentleness has made me great.” Whatever else we forget, never from our private intercessions let us omit the prayer that the heathen may come to glorify Christ!
It is a joy to know that this prayer will be effectual to the fullest. It is no vain desire, no dream of a fevered brain—the infinite wisdom of God, Himself, suggests it, for He says, “Ask and I shall give You.” This union of precept and promise is found attached to every Covenant blessing, but here it is conspicuously and distinctly stated in so many words—“Ask and I shall give You.” Concerning this thing, the promise of God is definite! We may, therefore, pray with full assurance.
III. THIS DOMINION IS TO BE GAINED BY THE POWER OF GOD
Let us avail ourselves of this plain direction every hour of our lives. O Church of God, ask, on Christ’s behalf, and the Lord God will give Him the kingdom! Heir of Heaven, ask on behalf of the Elder Brother, for the Elder Brother pleads in you and God will hear both you and Him and He will grant the united request! My heart is full of confidence when pleading upon this subject! What surer guarantee do we need than, “Ask and I shall give You”? Let our prayer be wide and far-reaching. Let our desires embrace the world. Pray not only for your own country, though it needs it and God, alone, knows how much—but pray for the colonies, the continent and the far-off lands. Ask that all heathens may become Christians! Plead that the whole round earth may be the Lord’s—that the uttermost parts of the earth may resound with songs in His praise!
On this earth, His blood has fallen! The precious drops could not be gathered up again, and so this globe remains blood-marked—the one star upon which the Son of God poured out His life! It must be the Lord’s! The Sacrifice of Calvary has made it sacred to the Son of God! As our Government marks with the broad arrow those stores which belong to it, so did Christ, upon the tree, when the blood fell from His hands and feet and side, mark, as it were, with something more full of meaning than the broad arrow—this round earth on which He bled—and it must be forever and ever His by right of purchase and ransom! It was made subject to vanity for a little season, but it is to be redeemed from it—and when it shall be purified and beautified in the day of the manifestation of the sons of God, you will not know it, for it will come forth as “a new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwells righteousness.”
Its sister stars have long wondered at its silence, or its discord, but at the sight of its restoration to the choirs of holiness, they will sing in deep delight and chant a new song unto the Lord! With what admiration will they perceive, rising up from this once beclouded orb, a flame of unquenchable praise with pillars of perfumed smoke, the incense of eternal gratitude! Sweeter the offering of this once fallen world than that of any other sphere, for it has been redeemed and upon it have been seen marvels of free Grace and dying love such as no other world has known. Oh, may this soon come to pass! May the prayer be heard and God be praised. But it can only be accomplished through His own appointed method, the asking of Christ, the pleading of the Church. Oh, awaken, Church, to ask! Awake from your unholy lethargy and cry day and night unto God! Cease not, but with anguish, like a woman in travail, cry aloud and spare not until He gives the risen Lord the heathen for His inheritance and makes His Throne higher than the kings of the earth!
IV. THIS INVOLVES THE BREAKING UP OF ALL THE CONFEDERACIES WHICH NOW EXIST OR EVER SHALL EXIST FOR THE HINDRANCE OF THE REDEEMER’S KINGDOM
Our text employs a figure which is very full of meaning. “He shall break them with a rod of iron.” He breaks not the subject nations, nor the inherited heathen, but the kings of the earth who stood up and took counsel together against the Lord and against His Anointed. Against these He will lift up His iron rod of stern justice and irresistible power! Over His own inheritance, He will sway a silver scepter of love. Over His own possession, He shall reign with gentleness and Grace, but as for His adversaries, He will deal with them in severity and display His power in them.
How shall they stand out against Him? They have formed their confederacy with great care and skill—as when men prepare clay and make it pliable for the potter’s use, so have they made all things ready—they have set their design upon the wheel and caused it to revolve in their thoughts and with great skill they have fashioned it. Lo, there it stands—finished and fair to look upon! Yet at its very best it is nothing more than a potter’s vessel. It may be of the purest clay and of such exquisite workmanship that it shall enchant every man of taste, but it is nothing more than an earthen vessel and, therefore, woe unto it when the rod of iron falls upon it. Woe to all human societies and brotherhoods which are framed to resist the Lord!
Mark the conflict and its end! It is brief enough. A stroke! Where is the hope of the Lord’s adversary? Gone, gone, utterly gone! Only a few potsherds remain. Oh for such a smiting of the apostasy of Rome! Oh for one touch of the iron rod upon the imposture of Mohammed! Oh, for a blow at Buddhism and a back stroke at the superstition of Brahmanism and at all the idols of the heathen! Woe unto the gods of the land of Sinim in that day! A single stroke shall set the potsherds flying. Why, then, should we fear, although they plot and plan? Although a solemn conclave of cardinals is held. Though the “Pope” fulminates his bulls. Though the Sultan ordain that every convert to Christianity shall be put to death. Though the scoffers still revile at Christianity and say that it spreads not as once it did, a speedy answer shall confound them, or if not speedy, yet the stroke shall be sure!
Our King waits a while. He has leisure. Haste belongs to weakness. His strength moves calmly. Only let Him be awakened and you shall see how quick are His paces! He redeemed the world in a few short hours upon the Cross and I guarantee you that when He gets that iron rod once to working, He will not need many days to ease Him of His adversaries and make a clean sweep of all that set themselves against Him! If you want to see how it will be done, read, I pray you, Daniel 2:31—“You, O king, saw and behold a great image. This great image, whose brightness was excellent, stood before you; and the form thereof was terrible. This image’s head was of fine gold, his breast and his arms of silver, his belly and his thighs of brass, his legs of iron, his feet part of iron and part of clay.” It was a strange conglomeration—all the metallic empires are set forth as combined in one image—which image is the embodied idea of monarchical power which has fascinated men even to this day.
The Prophet goes on to say, “You saw still that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon his feet that were of iron and clay and broke them to pieces. Then was the iron, the clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold broken to pieces together and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors and the wind carried them away, that no place was found for them: and the stone that smote the image became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.” And so it is to be—the vision is being each day fulfilled. The Gospel stone, which owes nothing to human strength or wisdom, is breaking the image and scattering all opposing powers. No system, society, confederacy, or cabinet can stand which is opposed to the Truth of God and righteousness.
I, even I, that am but of yesterday and know nothing, have seen one of the mightiest of empires of modern times melt away all of a sudden as the frost of the morning in the heat of the sun. I have seen monarchs driven out of their tyrannies by the powers of a single man and a free nation born as in an hour. I have seen states which fought to hold the Negro in perpetual captivity subdued by those whom they despised, while the slave has been set free! I have seen nations chastened under evil governments and revived when the yoke has been broken and they have returned to the way of righteousness and peace. He who lives longest shall see most of this. Evil is short-lived. Truth shall yet rise above all. The Lord says, overturn, overturn till He shall come whose right it is and God shall give it to Him. Woe unto those that stand against the Lord and His Anointed, for they shall not prosper. “Be wise now, therefore, O you kings: be instructed, you judges of the earth. Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you perish from the way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in Him.”