Praise For Jesus

The next thing for which Judah was to be praised was Jacob’s prophecy, “Thy father’s children shall bow down before thee.“ Now, who in this house is a child of God? You will not be long in answering that question

when I put to you another, “Do you bow down before the Lord Jesus Christ?” Here we are, a vast multitude assembled in this Tabernacle, but we are not all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. We cannot all

truly say, “Our Father, who art in heaven.” Our text gives us the means of knowing who are the children of God, for the great Father says to his Son, “Thy Father’s children shall bow down before thee.” Do you bow down before the Lord Jesus Christ? Is he your only trust? Do you rest your whole weight upon him? Do you depend for time and eternity upon Judah-Jesus whom God has anointed and appointed to be the only Saviour of sinners? If so, you have proved your sonship by bowing down before your great elder Brother.

The third glory of Judah was his lion-like power. Jacob said, “Judah is a lion’s whelp; from the prey, my son, thou art gone up: he stooped down, he couched as a lion, and as an old lion; who shall rouse him up?” This

seems to be a picture, first of Judah, and then of the Lord Jesus Christ. As a young lion, he has gone up, and rent his prey in pieces. Sin, death, and hell he has torn asunder; and now that he is like a mighty, full-grown lion, woe be unto those who provoke him to anger, but blessed are they who have him on their side. Many of you have seen that beautiful engraving of Una the type of innocence, riding upon a lion’s back, that lion, according to Spenser, protecting her from all ill. That is how every penitent soul rides, by the grace of God; the Lion of the tribe of Judah is the Guardian of every believing head. You have but to trust yourself to Jesus, and he will see to it that you are never destroyed. He will preserve and deliver you from all evil of every kind, and at last shall safely bring you where you shall see his face, and rejoice in him, for ever and ever. But woe to any of you who reject him! Woe to you who deny his Deity! Woe to you who break his Sabbaths, abhor his Word, and despise his cross! In that last tremendous day, his anger against the wicked shall be so terrible that they shall say to the mountains and rocks, “Fall on us and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb: for the great day of his wrath is come; and who shall be able to stand ?” Oh, bow before him, accept his grace, trust in his atoning sacrifice; and then, the

very power which should make you tremble now will be exerted on your behalf, and cause you to rejoice for ever.

Further, Jesus is to be extolled for his perpetual sovereignty. “The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come.” Judah’s sovereignty came to an end, but Jesus always reigns. His kingdom here on earth has often seemed as if it were in jeopardy, but it has never been overthrown, and it never will be. In the martyr days, they sewed the Christians up in the skins of wild beasts, and cast them to the dogs; they dragged them at the heels of horses; they burned them at the stake; they stripped off their clothes, and tortured then with hot irons on every part of their body; I dare not mention all the cruelties that were practiced on the followers of Jesus, but nothing availed to shake their allegiance to their king. In all these trials they were more than conquerors through him who loved them, and who gave them the grace to endure all these things for his sake. Neither tribulation, nor distress, nor persecution nor famine, nor nakedness, nor peril, nor sword could separate them from the love of Christ, and thus his kingdom was perpetuated during even the darkest ages of its history, which in another sense were also the brightest because of the glory that the faithfulness of his followers brought to their King. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom; “of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever.”