What is "The Hound of Heaven"?

It may be, that like many another, you have feared His imperious and exclusive claim. You may have felt, as Francis Thompson expressed it in his striking poem: "For, though I knew His love who followed, Yet was I sore adread — Lest having Him, I must have naught beside." And so you fled from Him, but: — "Fear wist not to evade as Love wist to pursue." You tried elsewhere for satisfaction, but nothing blest your thirsting mouth, and still He followed you: — "With unperturbed pace, Deliberate speed, majestic majesty; And passed those noised feet A voice came yet more fleet — Lo! naught contents thee, who content'st not Me." You could not evade Him and now you are His for ever. Blessed be the Lord for the persistency of His love. Now His joy in us and ours in Him lies in our being wholly for Him.

The common thought is that God is our Judge, and so He is; but who made Him a Judge? Who put God on the judgment seat? You did! I did! The sin and guilt of man have forced God into the place of judgment. God must judge sin, or else God and man would be both alike, neither of them thinking much about it, and there would be no righteousness; but, so far from His desiring to take the place of judgment, why, even here, to Job, He says, "I desire to justify thee (Job 33:32). This is an answer to a question put by Job in the ninth chapter, when Bildad was putting barbed arrows into him, insinuating that he was a hypocrite, and informing him that "the hypocrite's hope shall perish," and, further, that "God will not cast away a perfect man" (Job 8:13-20). In Job 9:2, Job replies, "How should man be just with God? If he will contend with him, he cannot answer him one of a thousand" — much less the other 999 things. More, "If I wash myself with snow water, and make my hands never so clean; yet shalt thou plunge me in the ditch, and mine own clothes shall abhor me." Job saw it was all of no use. Ah! Job knew very well, however much he might try to justify himself before his friends, yet in his heart of hearts he knew he could not stand before God. And, when he has learnt this thoroughly, the grace of God comes in and shows him how he can be justified, how he can be saved, and that, beloved friends, is what I want to show you tonight. How you can be justified. How you can be saved, and how you can know it, too; and I would go farther and say, how you may be saved tonight, for God's salvation is a present salvation. Does the salvation of a sinner rest on what a sinner can do? No! On what Christ will do? No! but on what Christ has done. The sinner is utterly helpless, he can do nothing. Christ can do, nothing more, but Christ has done everything. "It is finished," is the dying Saviour's legacy to a lost, helpless, guilty sinner. How the grace of God pursues a man, seeking his soul; goes after him when he does not care a bit about it; seeks him that He may save him. He pursued Saul of Tarsus when he only hated Him. He is pursuing you, following you in grace tonight, though you do not care for Him and though you have come in here not caring even about the salvation of your own soul. You say, "Why do you single me out?" I'll tell you. Because I want you to be saved. Oh! let His grace, let His heart, who is thus pursuing you in love, win your heart for Him tonight.

I do not dislike the idea of being lost, and there is no hardship in hearing that truth, when along with it I hear these words, "The Son of Man is come to seek, and to save, that which is lost." If a man were told that he was lost, and that there was no Saviour, it would be bitter indeed. If there were not a single chance of my returning to God, and if there were no Redeemer, and no redemption, it would be bitter, and bad, my friend; but God tells me I am a lost man in one breath, and in the next, He presents to me a loving, living Saviour. That is the very thing I want. What I need, as a lost sinner, is what the grace of God provides for me — a Saviour. And let me ask you, Did you ever think calmly that the blessed Son of God left the realms of glory, and came into this world to seek you and me? Did you ever ask Him to come? He tells us He came to seek, and to save, that which was lost. It was His own heart that brought Him. His love prompted Him: "For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son" (John 3:16). The blessed Son of God became a man, and came into this scene to seek, and to save, that which was lost. Glorious tidings! And, has He not sought you, worldly man, time and again? Does He not seek to attract you to Him now? I will tell you what has happened. You have hitherto managed to evade His grasp; you have eluded Him; you have kept Him at arm's length. Do you think you are wise; do you think you evince wisdom by this?

You have the same truth brought out in the fifteenth of Luke by the blessed Lord. I find Him, in the figure of the Shepherd, seeking the lost sheep; He goes out to seek and save it. The same idea is present in the lost bit of money. The woman swept the house till she found it. And when the father received back the prodigal, he said, "This my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost and is found" (Luke 15:24). The Lord points out there the truth as to man's condition. He is away from God; he is no longer with God. He is lost; and if he be not delivered by sovereign grace, where is he for ever? He remains where he is. Therefore the Lord announces that He is come "to seek, and to save, that which was lost." I know this is not a very palatable doctrine nowadays. But it is not a question of whether it be palatable or not. Is it true? is the question. It is far better to know the truth, because if I do not know the truth, I do not see where I am, I do not learn my state before God, I do not learn what my condition is, and in consequence do not seek to remedy it. Consequently it is of unspeakable importance that every one should know where he is, and what his condition is in the sight of God. Lost, is the emphatic word which describes the condition of every unsaved man.

The Lord Jesus says here, "The Son of Man is come to seek, and to save, that which was lost" What does He mean? Let me illustrate it. I was passing along Princes Street a few years ago. It was a fine bright, sunny afternoon. I came to a cross street where a little lassie, about five years of age, was standing. She was in floods of tears, with her hat in her hand, and her hair hanging down her back. The child was the picture of misery and distress. I was naturally touched. "What is the matter, my little one?" I said. She lifted up her hands, and piteously said, "I am lost" That one word "lost" explained all. She was away from home, was alone, and lost, in this big city, with no one to help her. That, dear friends, is where you are. You are away from home, and away from God. It is a great thing to know you are lost. I debated with myself what I should do for the child, and thought of handing her to a policeman, when I noticed a girl of about eighteen running down the street, as hard as she could, and looking this way and that, as if she wanted to find some one she had lost At last she saw the little lass, and rushing up to her she cried, "O Jennie, Jennie, I've found ye." The little creature, immensely relieved, rushed at once into her sister's arms, and I thought, that is just my history. The Saviour has come out to seek, and to save me. That child was found by her sister, and the man who speaks to you, tonight, has been found by the Saviour. Have you been so found? I have got to know the truth, that the Son of Man is come to seek, and to save, that which is lost. Oh! friends, let us face the truth. It is good to do so. It is an immense mistake not to know the truth. It is of paramount importance to know the truth about ourselves, about our souls. I must know where I am. It is an immense thing to get light as to what my state before God is, for light shows me just what, and where I am, and also reveals to me who, and what Jesus is.

This being the true condition of things, all would perish in their appalling folly, but for the activity of God in grace. If men do not want Him, He wants them! Immediately after the rebellion in the garden, the voice of God was heard, saying, "Adam, where art thou?" (Gen. 3:9). The Gospel tells us (Oh, blessed thought!) that God is now the Seeker after men. This is the meaning of the coming amongst us of His beloved Son. Accordingly in the New Testament sinners are never charged to seek the Lord although it is still their responsibility to do so; in stead, they are told that God is seeking them. When the Lord Jesus was found fault with for receiving sinners and eating with them, He gave utterance to the delightful parables of Luke 15, wherein He delineated the grace that seeks the lost, and that welcomes the penitent. He likened Himself to a shepherd "going after that which is lost until He find it." When again complained of for entering the house of Zacchaeus the tax-gatherer, He said: "the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which is lost" (Luke 19:10). The grace which seeks (oh, so unweariedly!) those whom righteousness might well condemn, is marvellous! What a God is ours! Yet how cruelly misrepresented by Satan to foolish men whom he would fain keep in eternal distance from the God who loves them! It is noticeable that when the Lord Jesus spoke of little ones He omitted the word "seek." All He said was: "the Son of man is come to save that which is lost." (Matt. 18:11). Even the Youngest is lost by nature; but some have not had time enough to wilfully stray from their God. Yet they need to be saved.

It is worthy of our God that His saving grace should not select for its subjects those who are capable of making a return for the grace bestowed on them, that it should not demand qualifications, either mental or moral, that it should ask for nothing, nor be hindered by anything, whilst it seeks to make itself known. It is in its nature voluntary and free, and in its intensity of desire—its energy of pursuit—it is found in the streets and lanes of the city, in quest of “the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind”; nay, with more diligence still, it is seen scouring the very “highways and hedges,” in order to indulge itself in the good of man. This is worthy of such a God as ours. His grace seeks sinners for its subjects, and be they never so worthless—never so ruined by the fall, they are none the less within the solicitude of a love that came to “seek and to save that which was lost.”

“Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest, and causest to approach unto Thee.” It is not that we wanted to be in His presence; He wanted to have us in His presence. It is not that we wanted those new and eternal relationships. We only wanted to be saved from hell, but He had something better than that for us. His salvation included being brought to Himself, and being set in the person of His Son before His face, so that we might be in the end with Him and like Him to the satisfaction of the heart of the Father and the Son throughout eternity. So the Spirit of God has something more to say about our blessedness besides that we are forgiven, and that God will never look on us in any other way than as righteous before Him. “Blessed is the man whom Thou choosest, and causest to approach unto Thee.” That is a very happy man. It is God who has advanced towards me. He has come out towards me, as the shepherd sought the sheep, as the woman sought the piece of silver, and as the father came out to the son. He wanted me. It is true of all the people of God, whether they have learned it or not. Perhaps we are long on the way of learning it, and perhaps some never learn it at all, and think that the movement was on their side first. God was dealing with us before we were dealing with Him. “Everyone that has heard and learned of the Father, comes unto Me.” We stayed away from Him as long as ever we were able, and did not want to have anything to do with Him, but as the hymn puts it— “And when was come the moment, Thou, calling by Thy grace, Didst gently, firmly lead us, Each from his hiding place.”

God reveals Himself then as Seeker. It is He whose the sheep are who is come after them. In this character He is for the lost, the wandered, though it be, as with these publicans, that worst wandering, heart and mind astray, and astray hopelessly, without power of self-recovery. A bottomless word, this "lost"! Not even the Pharisees would have uttered it of these publicans for they believed in an inherent power in man by which, though by painful effort and perseverance, the crooked might be straightened yet. Were there not legal sacrifices and prescribed restitutions, ablutions, and purifications?

Divine love saw lost ones, — saw in its full extent the misery which it alone was adequate to relieve, and that misery, so hopeless otherwise, brought it down on their behalf. The Creator becomes the Saviour. He "goeth after that which is lost until He find it." With the divine power and wisdom in pursuit, there is no uncertainty here as to success. Help is laid upon One who is mighty, with whom to fail would be indeed irretrievable disaster, convulsing heaven and earth in universal ruin. But there is no fear: the cause of the helpless is become the cause of the Almighty, to the praise of the glory of His grace."

Truth, then, will convict a man. When I am convicted by truth, what is the next thing? Grace wins me. Grace attracts me, and I turn to Him, in whose presence I find myself to be a poor, ruined, good-for-nothing sinner. I turn to Him, and learn that I am unfit for God. I learn also in that blessed Man, who is the image of God, and the eternal Son of God, in His life and death, what grace is — grace personified. I learn how the love of God can go out after a good-for-nothing, ungrateful, sinful, and self-willed man, until it has overtaken him, and poured blessing into his soul. Many a man in this audience tonight can tell you the same thing. I was pursuing a course of self-will until arrested. My friend, you must be arrested sooner or later. The day of your arrest is at hand. Sooner or later! Infinitely better is it to be arrested in this moment, when grace is active, when God in grace is blessing man, — when God in grace is coming out to meet us, than be arrested by-and-by in your sins, when righteousness can only condemn you. Now God, in the Person of the Lord Jesus Christ, comes to meet us in grace, with a view to our present and eternal blessing.

The strayed sheep would not let itself be caught by the shepherd who would lift it into his bosom. And here we get what I call the aggressive character of God's love. I won't have Him; but He says, "I will and must have you, struggle as you may to escape from My arms. I have prepared a place for you up there, and I must have you there with Me for ever."