A SERMON

BY

THE REV. MARCUS RAINSFORD,

Preached on Sunday Morning, May 1st, 1870.

"I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."-ST. JOHN. x. 10.

THESE

HESE are the words of the Shepherd of the sheep— among the most familiar to us of those titles by which Jehovah made himself known to his people of old. Expressing to them his wonderful tenderness, and his anxious care, the Shepherd stands pre-eminent.

As early as in the forty-ninth chapter of the book of Genesis, and the twenty-fourth verse, we have the dying Jacob speaking of the "Shepherd, the stone of Israel,” and, as late as in the book of the prophet Zechariah, we have, "Awake, O sword, against my Shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of Hosts: smite the Shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered." But we have the fullest description of the "Shepherd of the sheep" in the book of Ezekiel, the thirty-fourth chapter. The Lord is, there, finding fault with his underling shepherds for their neglect of their duty, and, in the eleventh verse, he tells us what he himself intends to do as the Shepherd of the sheep. Oh! that the words were written in all our hearts! And, surely, if we go to that Shepherd to be folded, and fed, and

SERM. V.

protected, and blessed, we should experience the faithfulness of his promises: "Him that cometh unto me I will in nowise cast out."

"Thus saith the Lord God, behold I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. And I will bring them out from the people, and gather them from the countries, and will bring them to their own land, and feed them upon the mountains of Israel by the rivers, and in all the inhabited places of the country. I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be; there shall they lie in a good fold, and in a fat pasture shall they feed upon the mountains of Israel. I will feed my flock, and I will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God. I will seek that which was lost, and bring again that which was driven away, and will bind up that which was broken, and will strengthen that which was sick but I will destroy the fat and the strong; I will feed them with judgment. And as for you, O my flock, thus saith the Lord God, Behold, I will judge between cattle and cattle, between the rams and the he-goats. And I will set up one Shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their shepherd." Now, here, you have the Lord's own description of the duty of the Shepherd, and why it is that he will undertake the office himself.

I think it very notable that you have in this passage, Christ's three-fold pledge, "I will feed my flock." You have it in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth verses, "I will feed my flock."

Afterwards that Shepherd, in our nature, gave a similar solemn three-fold charge to his disciple: "Feed my flock."

Well, we have in the New Testament this charge exercised and illustrated by the Son of God himself. "I am," said he, "the Shepherd of the sheep." Most costly to him was that flock-most triumphant to us that office!

We have his claim to be the Shepherd associated with the four most eventful periods of the history of our most glorious Christ.

The first great event is his coming into the world in our nature. "I am come," he says, in the passage I have taken for my text, "that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." He is speaking, as you will see in the immediate context, as the announced and accredited Shepherd of the sheep. "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." "What man of you, having an hundred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the wilderness, and go after that which is lost until he find it ?"

The second great event we have afterwards in the eleventh verse: "The good Shepherd giveth his life for the sheep."

We go on to the thirteenth chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews; we have him again the Shepherd, but in a new phase: "The God of peace, that brought again from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, through the blood of the everlasting covenant."

Then, in the fourth great step in the history of our Christ, we have him again the Shepherd, but in a new phase. In the fifth chapter of the first epistle of Peter, at the second verse, we have the Spirit of God addressing all underling shepherds: "Feed the flock of God, which is among you, taking the oversight thereof;" and in the fourth verse, "When the chief Shepherd shall appear, ye shall receive a crown of glory that fadeth not away."

We have him, then, as :

The Shepherd of the sheep, associated with his incarnation.

The Good Shepherd laying down his life for the sheep.

The Great Shepherd rising again from the dead, through the blood of the everlasting covenant,

and

The Chief Shepherd, when he comes again with the crown of glory that fadeth not away. Well might David say, "The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want."

Observe what light the context, in which the verse I have taken for my text stands, throws upon the subject! "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly." We little realize the state of things into which our blessed Shepherd descended, ruined by sin, lost, guilty, corrupted, leprous, hellish sinners, enemies: every possible illustration is laid hold of by the Spirit of God to describe the state of ruin, misery, and bondage in which the Lord Jesus Christ, the Shepherd of the sheep, found his people, and he says, "I am come that they might have life, and that they might have it more abundantly."

Much is said, and much written in this our day upon the subject of life eternal, and death eternal. Persons seem to me to confound existence of being, with this life which the Lord Jesus came from heaven to bestow. Now I am not aware of a single passage in the Word of God where mere existence is confounded with life. When the Word of God speaks of life, it speaks of the life of joy, the life of peace, the life of grace, the life of glory, the life of fellowship with God; existence apart from this is not life, it is death, and the Spirit of God calls it death.

Beloved friends, a finally lost soul is not an insensible

wreck, but a living death, with its hopes, tastes, affections, desires, and faculties alienated by sin from him, whose fulness alone can satisfy. Like some beauteous vine, originally made to climb the oak, and furnished with tendrils to clasp its branches, now torn by rude hands down, and using the very fibres, made to ascend withal, to grasp the weeds, the thorns, the thistles, and the filth of earth,—that is just as a lost soul is. When the Lord Jesus Christ came, he did not come to give us existence. He found us in existence, and to his cost, he found us in existence,-mad with opposition to him, hellish in our hate to him, full of savage energy to shout "crucify him, crucify him," "Away with such a fellow from the earth." He found existence in the hands that pierced him upon the cross, and existence in the rulers that condemned him to death. He did not come either to give us existence, or to deprive us of existence, but to bestow that eternal life of God which sin had lost to us, and without which, existence is a curse, and not a blessing: "I am come that they might have life."

The death that we see is the death of the body, and, after all, this is but a temporal death; for we read that even the corrupt and corrupting dust of man shall live, the body of the meanest sinner that goes down into the ground and rots, and becomes the food of worms, shall live again. “And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt" (Daniel xii. 2). "It is appointed unto man once to die, but after this the judgment;" and the announcement of that judgment is found in the twentieth chapter of the book of Revelations: "I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened; and another book was opened, which is the book of life; and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea