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We cannot tell how the Spirit of God brooded over that vast watery mass. It is a mystery, but it is also a fact, and it is here revealed as having happened at the very commencement of the creation, even before God had said, “Let there be light.” The first divine act in fitting up this planet for the habitation of man was for the Spirit of God to move upon the face of the waters. Till that time, all was formless, empty, out of order, and in confusion. In a word, it was chaos; and to make it into that thing of beauty which the world is at the present moment, even though it is a fallen world, it was needful that the movement of the Spirit of God should take place upon it. How the Spirit works upon matter, we do not know; but we do know that God, who is a Spirit, created matter, and fashioned matter, and sustained matter, and that he will yet deliver matter from the stain of sin which is upon it. We shall see new heavens and a new earth in which materialism itself shall be lifted up from its present state of ruin, and shall glorify God; but without the Spirit of God the materialism of this world must have remained for ever in chaos. Only as the Spirit came did the work of creation begin.
That fact I intend to use this evening, spiritualizing it. It is a literal fact, and we are not to regard this chapter of Genesis or any other part of Genesis as being a mere parable; but having so said, we think we may now say that these real facts may illustrate the work of God in the new creation, and our main thought just now is that the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul of man is comparable to his work in creation. As in various books by the same author you can trace the writer’s idioms, and as in many paintings by one great artist there are certain touches which betray the same hand, so in the great book of nature we see traces of the same hand as in the book of grace; and in this great picture of material beauty we may see the handiwork of that same Master-Artist who has drawn lines and curves of spiritual beauty upon the souls of the redeemed.
I. I am going, first, to try to draw a parallel between the Spirit’s work in the old and new creation.
And first I want to remind you that, as the movement of the Holy Spirit upon the waters was the first act in the six days’ work, so the work of the Holy Spirit in the soul is the first work of grace in that soul. There may have been a thousand sermons heard, but there has been no effectual work within the soul until the Spirit of God comes there. Sabbaths may have passed over the man’s head for fifty years, and during every one of those Sabbaths that man may have been a regular attendant at the house of God; but there has been nothing savingly done for him unless the Spirit of God has entered into him, and begun to work upon his soul. He may have been baptized, and joined the church, and partaken of the communion; but, for all that, his heart is still without any sort of form or fashion which God would have it to bear. It is void; there is no life of God within it, no faith in Christ, no true hope for the future. It is emptiness itself, notwithstanding all that has been done, if the Spirit of God has not been at work in it.
It is a very humbling truth, but a truth notwithstanding its humiliating form, that the best man that mere morality ever produced is still “without form and void” if the Spirit of God has not come upon him. All the efforts of men which they make by nature, when stirred up by the example of others or by godly precepts, produce nothing but chaos in another shape; some of the mountains may have been levelled, but valleys have been elevated into other mountains; some vices have been discarded, but only to be replaced by other vices that are, perhaps, even worse; or certain transgressions have been forsaken for a while, only to be followed by a return to the selfsame sins, so that it has happened unto them, as Peter writes, “according to the true proverb, The dog is turned to his own vomit again; and the sow that was washed to her wallowing in the mire.” Unless the Spirit of God has been at work within him, the man is still, in the sight of God, “without form and void” as to everything which God can look upon with pleasure. What! is it so when a man has made great efforts, and has really done his best? Yes; for “that which is born of the flesh is flesh,” even when the flesh does its best; its fairest offspring is still only flesh. Water will naturally rise as high as its own source, but without extraneous pressure it will never rise any higher; and humanity may rise as high as humanity can rise, but it can never get any higher until the Spirit of God imparts a supernatural force to it. “Except a man be born again (born from above), he cannot see the kingdom of God.” The very first act in the great work of the new creation is that the Spirit of God moves upon the soul as he moved upon the face of the waters.
The second thing I ask you to note is that to this work nothing whatever is contributed by the man himself. “The earth was without form and void,” so it could not do anything to help the Spirit. “Darkness was upon the face of the deep.” The Spirit found no light there, it had to be created. There was nothing whatever there to help the Spirit of God, no agencies at work to say to him, “We have been preparing the way for your coming; we needed your assistance; we were waiting for you, and we rejoice that you have come to finish the work that we have begun.” There was nothing of the kind; and sad as the truth is, in unregenerate man there is nothing whatsoever that can help the Spirit of God. The heart of man promise help, but “the heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked.” The will has great influence over the man, but the will is itself depraved, so it tries to play the tyrant over all the other powers of the man, and it refuses to become the servant of the eternal Spirit of truth. If I am never to preach the gospel to a sinner till I see something in him that will help the Holy Ghost to save him, I shall never be able to preach the gospel at all; and if Jesus Christ never saves a man till he sees something in that man that cries to Christ to save him, then no man will ever be saved. We are, by nature, not merely like the man who was wounded on his way from Jerusalem to Jericho, and who was left on the road half dead, but we are wholly “dead in trespasses and sins,” and in the dead sinner there is nothing that can help his own resurrection. There is not a hand there to be lifted, nor even an ear to hear, nor an eye to see, nor a pulse that can beat. We do not exaggerate nor go beyond the truth when we say this; and every man is thus dead till the Spirit of God comes to him; and when the Spirit comes to him, he finds nothing in him that can co-operate with the Spirit of God, but everything that is to be good must be created in him, and be brought to him, and be infused into him. What is needed is not the fanning of sparks that have almost expired, not the strengthening of a life that was almost dead through faintness; the Spirit has to deal with death, and rottenness, and corruption. Man’s nature is a charnel-house, and a sepulchre, and a little hell; and God’s Spirit must bring to it that which is living, and good, and pleasing in God’s sight if it is ever to be there.
But more than that, in the old creation, not only was there nothing whatever that could help the Holy Spirit, but there seemed nothing at all congruous to the Spirit. I mean, for instance, that the Spirit of God is the Spirit of order, but there was disorder. He is the Spirit of light, but there was darkness. Does it not seem a strange thing that the Spirit of God should have come there at all? Adored in his excellent glory in the heaven where all is order and all is light, why should he come to brood over that watery deep, and to begin the great work of bringing order out of chaos? And, in a, similar fashion, often and often have we asked,—Why should the Spirit of God ever have come into our hearts? What was there in us to induce the Spirit of God to begin a work of grace in us? We admire the condescension of Jesus in leaving heaven to dwell upon earth; but do we not equally admire the condescension of the Holy Spirit in coming to dwell in such poor hearts as ours? Jesus dwelt with sinners, but the Holy Ghost dwells in us. If it were possible for the condescension of the incarnation to be outdone, it would be in the indwelling of the Holy Ghost in the hearts of men. This is a miracle of mercy indeed, for, I say again, there is nothing in the heart by nature that can at all please the Holy Spirit, but there is everything there that can grieve him. The Spirit would beget in us repentance for sin, but the heart is hard as a stone. The Spirit would work in us faith, but the heart is full of unbelief. The Spirit would make us pure, but the heart is fond of sin. The Spirit would lead us towards God, but all our passions incline us to run away from him, and to run to everything that is contrary to him. Yet doth the Spirit of God come and work in us while our heart is nothing but chaos, and our nature is full of darkness. For this wonderful mercy, let us bless and love the Spirit of God.
THE MISSION OF AFFLICTION
A Sermon
Published on Thursday, September 30th, 1909,
delivered by
C. H. SPURGEON,
at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,
On Thursday Evening, May 8th, 1873.
“Le him alone, and let him curse; for the Lord hath bidden him. It may be that the Lord will look on mine affliction, and that the Lord will requite me good for his cursing this day.”—2 Samuel 16:11, 12.
The bright side of David’s character was generally seen either when he was actively engaged or when he was greatly suffering. He was the man for action. When he ran to meet Goliath, and returned with the giant’s head in his hand, or when it was needful that he should lead forth the hosts of God to war against Philistia, then David was in his element. He was one who never feared the face of man. He was courageous, dauntless and full of confidence in God.
Equally well does he stand out in the time of his trouble. He will not lift up his hand against Saul even when the king is in his power. If he cuts off the skirt of Saul’s robe, even then his heart smites him. When his adversaries are before him and with a blow he can put them to death, with unusual magnanimity he restrains his hand and will not touch them. Revenge was not in his spirit. He was full of gentleness and tenderness. It is well for men of this kind when they have something to do or something to suffer. And this perhaps may account for it, that men have to be very busy or very faithful, if they are to avoid being sinful. There are spirits so ardent, so fervent, that unless they have either to do or to bear God’s will with a high degree of intensity, they are lacking in brightness and cheerfulness. David was seldom at leisure without falling into mischief. His great sin, his grievous sin was on this wise. It was the time when kings went forth to battle, but David sent Joab to fight against Ammon, and he himself stayed at home. We read that at eventide “David arose from off his bed and walked upon the roof of his house.” He had become luxurious, and then it was that temptation came and he fell. His second great offence was very much after the same order. He had subdued all his enemies. The rebellion of Absalom was put down with a strong hand. All was quiet within and without, and then Satan moved him to number the people. He thought, “I am the king of a great country, and I should like to know how many subjects I have. I should like to know how many troops I have. Joab, go and take a census and bring it to me, that I may understand how great I am.”
And then it was that God sent his servant to warn him that he would chasten him for his pride of heart, and he gave him the choice of three chastisements, one of which must fall upon the people. David was like a sword, which if hung up on a wall would soon gather rust, but when he was moved to fight the Master’s battle he was of wondrous keen temper, and could cut to the dividing asunder of the joints and the marrow. Let us dread, then, ease and repose.
“For, more the treacherous calm I dread
Than tempests hanging over head.”
Let us be afraid of having nothing to do, and be thankful for something to suffer, if we have not something to do actively; for, let us alone and the best of us will corrode. And if I am addressing any man who has lately given up business and is enjoying repose, I would urge upon him the wisdom of seeking some service for Christ which would engage his faculties, for it is true of Christians as well as other people, that,—
“Satan always mischief finds,
For idle hands to do.”
Our text to-night exhibits David in the time of his trouble, and he is here so admirable, and his conduct is here so commendable, that I hold him up as an example to all. There are four things in this transaction which we all ought to copy. The first was the absence of resentment from the heart of David; the second was his entire resignation to the divine will; the third was his expectancy from God alone; and the fourth was his looking to the bright side and having hope still.
I. First, then, admire David and then try to copy him in this respect. We read you the story just now. Now the attack of Shimei upon David was very cowardly. David had been king for many years, but you never hear a word from Shimei while the king was on his throne and in power. This man was skulking in the farthest corners of the land, no doubt often biting his tongue, but having too much sense to use it against the powerful king. But now that David is flying from the palace and his son is pursuing him, eager for his blood, out comes this coward from his skulking place and begins to accuse the king. Those who would not have dared to speak against David before now abuse him to his face with opprobrious epithets. It is very hard to bear a cowardly attack. One is very apt to reply and use hard words to one who takes advantage of your position and deals you the coward’s blow. Only the coward strikes a man when he is down. It is just possible that somebody here may be suffering from an injury which he knows the person responsible for it would not have dared to inflict in years gone by. That helps to make the blow more cutting—when it comes from a coward’s hands.
Besides being so cowardly, it was so brutal. We pity a man that is in distress. When a king has lost his throne, when a father has his own child in rebellion against him, one says, “Whatever may have been his faults, this is not the time to mention them.” When the poor heart is bleeding and the man is already suffering the very extremity of misery, who would wish to add a single ounce to the crushing weight that he has to carry? Sympathy and common humanity seem to say, “Be quiet! Hush! Another time, when he mounts again to prosperity, then, if it be needful, let us faithfully rebuke him for his faults, but not now. It is not seemly.” If this dog of a Shimei must needs fly at David when he is suffering, most surely Satan himself must have set him on to aggravate to the last degree the miseries of David. And yet David has not one hard word to say against him. Nay, he becomes his advocate, bears with the brutal attack, cowardly as it was, betrays no temper, but peacefully, calmly, gratefully spares the life which was in his hand.
Moreover, remember that the attack was especially a false one. He called David a bloody man, and accused him of having destroyed the house of Saul. Nothing could have been more false, for when Saul was in David’s power on two occasions, once in the cave and once when he lay asleep on the slope of the mountain, David did not put out his hand to touch the Lord’s anointed. When Saul and Jonathan were slain on Gilboa, David sincerely mourned and wrote that pathetic elegy—the song which he bade them learn to sing in mourning for Saul, who fell on the high places. And afterwards when the Amalekite came with the crown of Saul, hoping to be rewarded, David had him put to death on the spot. When wicked men came with the head of Ish-bosbeth, hoping to gratify David, he slew them both for the murder. Moreover, he sought out Mephibosheth, and though he was lame in both his feet and could not stand, he bade him sit at his table and did him honour. So far from being a bloody man he had, on the contrary, been hunted by Saul and his blood had been sought by the leader of that house, yet had he never returned evil for evil.
It is very hard to be reproached for what you do not do. I do not know how, but somehow the falseness of an accusation does put a degree of sting into it. I have heard of a woman who was charged with a certain degree of dishonesty. Her minister said to her, “You need not be so grieved about it if it is not true.” “No, sir,” she said, “I should not be grieved about it, if it were not true, but there’s the point about it, it is true.” And just so, if we were sensible, we should only feel those charges that are true, and the edge would be taken off others when we knew our conscience did not justify them. But it does not happen to be so. We do not hold the scales well. We feel that it is a very cruel thing to have things laid to our charge that we knew nothing of, and when our whole life has been in one direction to have it laid to our door that we act quite contrary to that is a very stinging thing. Shimei, I suppose, could not have uttered anything that could sting David more to the quick, than when he said to him, “Thou art a bloody man and hast destroyed the house of Saul.” Yet David did not put out his hand to him. He said, “Let him alone! Let him curse.” Magnanimously he suffered him to escape unscathed, though he cast stones and dirt upon him.
The way sometimes in which a thing is put is more cutting than the thing itself. For Shimei did not merely speak his charge against David, but he put it in the bitterest way, “Come out, come out!” as though be scorned him; and then he threw stones and dust at him, as though he did not mind him now, as though he thought David the very dust beneath his feet and called him the off-scouring of all things. Few among us can bear scorn. I suppose that a bitter sarcasm often stings where a downright charge, however false, might not have done so. A little bit of ridicule, with malice in it, will often wound, and little do we know how many may have gone with broken hearts all their days through unkind words that have been spoken, perhaps half in jest, but which, being taken in earnest, have made terrible wounds in the soul. Yet David would not be provoked by this man’s lies nor by the tones in which he spoke them, but like a true king, all royal as he was, he said, “Let him alone. Let him curse. It is hard to bear, but I will bear it still.”
Now be it recollected that David could very easily have put an end to all this. It was in his power to put an end to Shimei at once. “Off with his head,” said Abishai, and there would have been an end of the argument. Sometimes we are very patient with things we cannot cure. It is good sound doctrine, “What can’t be cured, must be endured,” and “Stooping down as needs he must who cannot sit upright.” If you cannot prevent, you may as well forgive—every fool will adopt that unless he be a strange fool indeed. But David could take this fellow’s head off and that in a moment, and yet he said, “Let him alone. Let him curse.” And this makes a splendid example. If you can revenge yourself, don’t. if you could do it as easily as open your hand, keep it shut. If one bitter word could end the argument, ask for grace to spare that bitter word.
Reflect, too, that David was urged by others to put an end to this man. Sometimes we follow advice readily, especially when there is something that we like in the advice. And who among us would not like the advice. I confess on reading the chapter that if I had been in Abishai’s case, I am afraid I should have taken his head off first, and asked permission afterwards. I am afraid it would have been very bad and wicked, but in such a case as that when my dear king for whom I had lived and would have died—such a blessed king as David—was scoffed at by such a dog as that—what lifeguardsman would not have said, “Off with his head! and have thought he did him too much honour, in those rough days. Yet David says, “No, we must not follow bad advice, we must not let the zeal of earnest friends lead us too fast.” If they are too fast, we must be too slow. In all matters of vengeance if other would go forward, we must draw back and say, “Christ has bidden us forgive even to seventy times seven,” and so will we do. Recollect this is under the old dispensation, when the law said, “An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” and so on, and therefore David might have been more excused if he had avenged himself. But he seems to have caught, like a prophet, the light of the coming time, and spared the man as Christ would have spared him, if he had been there. In this he is to be copied by us all. To gather all up in one, beloved, if the trouble that comes to you, comes to you as a second cause, don’t look at the second cause so as to quarrel with it, and don’t say, “I would not mind if it had been so-and-so.” That is why God selected so-and-so to chasten you, for when a father wants to make a child smart, he gets his heaviest rod. And so does God. He has taken up that instrument which will make you smart and cry out most. It is always foolish for us to fret about the second cause. If you threaten a dog with a stick he bites the stick; but if he were a sensible dog he would bite you, only he does not know any better and so he bites the stick, and if we rebel against the second cause we are in error. If there is anyone we should complain against, it would be God who uses the instrument, and as we cannot, and would not if we could complain against him, it is best for us to say as David did, “Let him alone! Let him curse! The Lord has bidden him. The Lord has bidden him.”
Now don’t we to-night say, “I could have borne that other trial if God had sent that”? Well, accept your present trial, and oh! if you are vexed with so-and-so forgive him. There is a higher hand than his in this matter. It is a rough knife that you have been pruned with, but it is the gardener that used the knife, and your God is using this affliction for your good. Don’t look at the affliction so much as at the end and at the design of God.
It was very beautiful for David to make excuses for Shimei. Notice how he puts it. “Well, there is Absalom, my son—he is seeking my life. No wonder that this man should! He is no relation of mine. I could not expect love from him. And then, moreover,” he said, “he is a Benjamite. Now God has been pleased to put me, David, into the room of Saul that was a Benjamite, and of course this man sympathises with the tribe that has lost the royal crown.” David put his finger on the secret. “The man has been a sufferer through me, therefore he is angry, he is estranged from me. I could not expect gentle treatment from him, and I have unconsciously, without intending to injure him, taken away some authority from the family to which he belongs, and therefore I can somewhat shut my eyes to his hard treatment of me, and, at any rate, I will show that God is using him as an instrument and will freely forgive him.” Now I am talking very simply and upon simple conduct, but I am sorrowfully conscious that a great many Christian people want to be preached to about giving lessons to others. As soon as ever a child learns to say, “Our Father, which art in heaven,” which is a little infant’s prayer, he is taught to say, “forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those that trespass against us,” and yet I find that some who have been Christians for years—at least they say they have—if they get a little put out about some insignificant trifle, take a long time to get their feathers smooth again. Perhaps it is something they need hardly have noticed, and yet they will go fretting about it day after day. Oh, let us be men, and let us be Christian men, and let us be able to forbear! “In many things we offend all.” “It needs be that offences come, but woe unto that man by whom the offence cometh.” I think it is equal woe unto that man that will not let the offence go away. Someone says, “I suppose somebody must have been offended here.” I am sure I don’t know of anybody, but, if the cap fits, let them wear it. May we ever learn to forgive as we hope to be forgiven.
II. Now the second thing is this—David’s complete resignation to the Divine will. “It is enough for me the Lord hath bidden him,” or, as in the tenth verse, “Let him curse, because the Lord hath said unto him, ‘Curse David.’ ” David felt very keenly the wicked act of his enemy, but he felt that it was sent for his further chastisement, and therefore he accepted it willingly. I daresay he said to himself, “I don’t deserve this charge, it is a very base one, but if Shimei had known all about me he might have charged me with something quite as bad that would have been quite correct.” When we are railed at by graceless men and they slander us we may say to ourselves, “Well, well, if they did but know us altogether and could see our hearts, they could perhaps have said something worse against us; so we will be well content to bear this.” For David, though, Shimei did not know about it, had sinned grievously. It does not make Shimei’s conduct any better, but David felt, “I have deserved this at the hands of the Lord, or something else if not on this particular occasion.” Then feeling it was the Lord, he said to himself, “I do not see the meaning of this, but I am sure there is love in it. Did God ever do anything to his children except in love? I do not see the necessity of it, but I am certain there is wisdom in it. Did the Lord ever do anything to his children that was not right? I do not see the benefit that may come out of it to me, but did God ever exercise his children with fruitless trial”? Is there not a divine necessity and a needs be for all chastisements? It is the Lord—that is enough for David. Brethren and sisters, is that enough for you? The Lord has done it, shall I open my mouth again when I know my Father did it? Did he take my child? Well, blessed be his name, that he loved my little one so well! Did he take my gold? Well, he only lent it to me, and a thing borrowed ought to go laughing back to its owner. Let him take back what he lent. He gives, and blessed be his name, he takes but what he gave; therefore let him still be praised. David seems to me, as it were, to have lain down before God under a sense of having done wrong in days gone past, and said to him, “My Father, chasten me just as thou wilt. My rebellious spirit is humbled before thee. If it be necessary for my good that I suffer from thy hand this affliction and a thousand others, go on, go on! Thy child may weep, but he will not complain. Thy child may suffer, but he will bring no charge against thee. What thou pleasest to do, it shall be my pleasure to bear. Thy pleasure and my pleasure shall be one pleasure henceforth and for evermore. If the Lord has done it, so let it be.”
I invite every troubled brother and sister here to cry for grace from God to be able to see God’s hand in every trial and then for grace, seeing God’s hand, to submit at once to it, nay, not only to submit, but to acquiesce, and to rejoice in it. “It is the Lord, let him do what seemeth him good.” I think there is generally an end to troubles when we get to that, for when the Lord sees we are willing that he should do what he wills, then he takes back his hand and says, “I need not chasten my child: he submits himself to me. What would have been effected by my chastisement is effected already, and therefore I will not chasten him.” You know David was not long in the dark after he was condemned to be there. “Well,” says the Lord, “if my child does not cry because he is left without a candle, he shall have his candle. Now I have tried him and proved him he shall come before me in the light.”
What is the use of our kicking and struggling against the Lord? What benefit ever comes of our rebellion against him? The ox and the mule which have no understanding have to be held in with bit and bridle. What comfort ever came to you from your rebellions and reluctances? And so with self-will and desiring to have your own way—what do you get from these but the scourge? Oh! it is the happiest and most blessed condition to lie passive in God’s hands, and know no will but his—to feel a self-annihilation, in which self is not destroyed but is absorbed into God so that we delight in the inner man in the will of God and ever say, “Father, thy will be done.” This is a hard lesson—far easier to preach about than to practise, and a great deal easier to think of when you have learnt it than to carry it out. I am often reminded of an old friend, Will Richardson, I used to talk with. He said, “When it is winter time, I think I could mow and reap, and fancy if you were only to give Will the sickle and scythe what a splendid day’s work he would do. That is in the winter, but in the summer I have not been half a day at work before I begin to feel that my poor old bones won’t stand much more work, and to think that I am hardly the man for a farm labourer.” Now so it is with our own strength. If we fell back upon the strength of God, we should be strong when we are weak, but when we fancy we are getting stronger, we are very much weaker, and might very often measure ourselves in the inverse ratio of what we think.
III. David is to be imitated in another aspect, namely, that his expectation was from God only. Notice the text—“It may be that the Lord will look upon mine affliction.” There was Abishai ready to take off this man’s head, but David said, “It may be that the Lord will look upon my affliction.” He thought that when he was in such great trouble God would surely have pity upon him. Oh, ye tried ones, look away once for all from man to your God. “My soul wait thou only upon God, for my expectation is from him.” There are two ways of going to a place. One is to go round and the other is to go straight. Now the straight road is the shortest cut. And there are two ways of getting help. The one is to go round to all your friends and get disappointed, and then go to God at last. The other is to go to God at first. That is the shortest out. God can make your friends help you afterwards. Seek first God and his righteousness, and the help of friends will be added afterwards. Straight forward makes the best running. Out of all troubles the surest deliverance is from God’s right hand. Therefore from all troubles the readiest way to escape is to draw near to God in prayer. Go not to this friend or that, but pour out thy story before God. Remember how the poet puts it:—
“Were half the breath thus vainly spent,
To heaven in supplication sent;
Our cheerful song would oftener be,
Hear what the Lord has done for me.”
Human friends fail us. The strongest sinew in an arm of flesh will crack, and the most faithful heart will sometimes waver, and when there is most need of our friends, we find that they fail us. But our God is eternal and omnipotent; whoever trusted in him in vain? Where is the man that can say, I looked up to him and hoped in him and I am ashamed of my hope?
The beauty of David’s looking alone to God came out in this quite calmly and quietly. He said to himself, “God will get me out of this;” therefore he was not angry with Shimei; he did not want his head to be cut off or anything of the sort. “God will do it.” Oh, that is the man for life, that is the man for death, that is the man for smooth waters, and that is the man for storms, who lives upon his God. If a man keeps in that frame of mind, what can disturb him? Though the mountains were cast into the midst of the sea and the earth were moved, yet still would he in patience possess his soul, and still be calm, for of such a man I may say, “His soul shall dwell at case, his seed shall inherit the earth.” At destruction and famine he will laugh. God hath given his angels charge concerning such a man to keep him in all his ways; for this is the man that dwelleth in the secret places of the most High and he shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. The Lord saith of him, “Because he hath set his love upon me therefore will I deliver him. I will set him on high because he has known my name. He has proved it by trusting in me, and me alone, therefore will I never fail him, neither shall he suffer long.” “Trust ye in the Lord alone, for in the Lord Jehovah there is everlasting strength.” Gather up your confidences, make them into one confidence, and fix them all on him. Lean not here and there—thou wilt grow crooked in thyself, and the staff thou leanest on shall turn to a spear and pierce thee. Lean wholly upon God, and as he is everywhere thou shalt stand upright in leaning upon him. This shall be the uprightness of thy ways that thou stayest thyself on the Rock of Ages. May we learn this lesson. It is a high one. May the Spirit of God teach it to us.
IV. Now the last of the four lessons is this—David learned to look at the bright side. What is the bright side of trouble? What is the bright side of your trouble, dear friend? Well, I don’t know what you would call the bright side, but David considered the bright side of his trouble to be the black side, and I think every man who walks by faith knows that to be so. If you read the text you see it at once, “It may be that the Lord will look on mine affliction and will requite me good for his cursing this day.” Much as if he said, “though my affliction is so very bitter God will pity me.” So the black side is the bright one. “This man has cursed me. That will move God to come to my side and defend me.” So the black side is the bright one again.
There is a sailor and the tide has ebbed out altogether. “Now,” says he, “is the turning.” Those that watch at night are glad when it comes to the darkest, because they know it certainly cannot be darker, and they know that daylight is coming soon. The darkest part of the night is that which precedes the day. We have an old saying about the weather, “As the day lengthens, the cold strengthens.” And so it does, but soon it will come to an end. The cold will soon yield. Be thankful when you have got into mid-winter, because you cannot go any deeper—it will turn soon. Let us be glad of that. Now if in our blackest parts of sorrow there is brightness, there must be brightness elsewhere, and, indeed, if we were half as inquisitive to find out that which will cheer us, as to discover that of which we may complain, we should soon have reasons of gratitude in the lowest and worst condition. We rummage our affairs to find out something to distress ourselves about, ambitious to multiply our sorrows, diligent to increase our distresses, as though our woes were wealth and our sorrows were worth hoarding up. But if we turned that curiosity and inquisitiveness of ours into another channel, we should begin to find that there are diamonds in dark mines, pearls in rough oyster shells, rainbows that deck the brow of the storm and blessings that come to us in the garb of cursings. We should soon have cause for joy. I suggest to our friends, therefore, the blessed habit of trying to find the silver lining of the dark cloud—to look away from the black surface into the bright gleams, so that they may have reason to rejoice in the Most High.
To conclude—David was a glorious man. If instead of having expectation from God, he had only had confidence in his fellow-men, and had gone about always repining and mourning and finding out the dark side of everything—well, he would have been a very small psalmist. In fact, I don’t think he could have written a psalm at all, except a poor one. He would have been a poor king—a mere pigmy, and would never have shone out as a saint. Now if you, dear brother and sister, want to shine before God and be among the illustrious elect, whom the Lord makes as stars in the Church’s history, pray for patience towards men and patience towards God. Pray for bright eyes to find out the light even in the darkness; pray ever to lean wholly upon God and stay yourself upon him. You will glorify God in that way, and you will be the means of bringing others to God. Distrustful preachers do not win souls. Moaning and repining Sunday school teachers will not bring children to Christ. “The joy of the Lord is our strength.” The patience which makes us possess our souls gives us the fulness of the blessing of the Lord. The Lord teach us in that school—we are very foolish. The Lord strengthen us in his grace—we are very weak. And may all of us on earth live quietly and happily the risen life which our Saviour did.
Now if I am speaking to any here to-night who are rebellious and do not love the Lord, I would remind them that there is a cure for these maladies, and that faith in Jesus Christ is that cure. He that believeth in him shall find the water that flowed from the riven side, to be of sin the double cure. May you have that cure every one of you, for Jesu’s sake. Amen.
SOUL SATISFACTION
A Sermon
Published on Thursday, March 25th, 1909,
delivered by
C. H. SPURGEON,
at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.
“Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.”—Psalms 35:3.*
This text may very properly be understood as a request that God would teach the soul to rest upon him in temporal difficulties, and straits, and distresses. We are all apt to try to work out our own deliverance. We would go back to Egypt, or we would climb the rock on our right hand, or we would, if it were possible, force a passage on the left; but when the Red Sea rolls before, when Pharaoh is behind, and there are frowning rocks on the right hand and on the left, this most delightful truth is learned,—and probably it is the only occasion when we can learn it,—God is our salvation! If thou art in trouble, Christian, ask who brought thee there, for he shall bring thee out again. If thou art sorely vexed and deeply grieved, why shouldst thou look to a human arm for succour, or why shouldst thou turn thine eye to the horses and to the chariots of Pharaoh? Lift up thine eyes to the hills, whence cometh thine help, and in the solemn silence of thy soul hear thou the soft and cheering word, “I am thy salvation; I have been with thee in six troubles, and no evil has touched thee; now I have brought thee into another trouble, but I will deliver thee out of them all; call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.” O believer, the strongest sinew in an arm of flesh will crack, and the strongest band of human strength will give way; but trust thou in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. Learn thou to stand still, and to see the salvation of God, as he says to thee, “I the Omnipotent, I the Omnipresent, I who have servants everywhere, will work thy rescue, for I am thy salvation.” It is also very necessary for us to learn this verse in its teaching as to soul-matters; for no man is saved, or can be saved, unless he knows that God is his salvation. The greatest enemy to human souls—I think I am not wrong in saying so,—is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation.
“From the cross uplifted high,
Where the Saviour deigns to die,”—
there comes a voice, as soft as it is potent, “I am thy salvation.” But the sinner stops his ear, and listens—perhaps to the enchantments of Rome, or to the mutterings of some false priest, or to the equal lying of his own heart, while these say, “We are thy salvation.” We must get away, brethren, from every form of confidence which would take us from the finished work of Jesus Christ. From the beginning to the end of the entire matter the great “I AM” comprehends our whole salvation. Jesus, the “Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,” was, nevertheless, JEHOVAH, the “I AM;” and as the “I AM” he speaks to-night to every soul that desires to know the way of salvation, and he says, “I am thy salvation.” Sinner, there is no hope for thee anywhere else. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid.” Thy hopes, poor sinner, shall be baseless; they shall be as the fabric of a dream. Rest thou not in them, but forsake them, pitying thine own folly for having ever trusted in them. Jesus bids thee renounce them now. Flee thou away from everything which has hitherto yielded thee a gleam of comfort, or a ray of joy, to the wounds of him who suffered in the sinner’s place, and to the cross of him who was made a curse for us that we might be made a blessing. “I am thy salvation.” You are to trust now. Are you saying, “How can I be saved?” Jesus answers, “I am thy salvation.” Not “I will be,” but “I am” Present salvation is stored up in Christ.
“There is life for a look at the Crucified One;
There is life at this moment for thee.”
“But,” say you, “what am I to do? What am I to feel? What am I to be?” The answer is,—
“Nothing, either great or small,
Nothing, sinner, no;
Jesus did it, did it all,
Long, long ago.”
“Yes, but surely there is something wanted to fit me for him?” No, come just as thou art. He does not say, “I will be thy salvation when thou hast done this and that, so as to fit thyself for me.” No, but he says, “I am thy salvation.” If thou dost but trust him unfeignedly, and with thy whole heart, he this moment forgives thee, he this moment takes thee into the family of grace, regenerates thee, and makes thee “a new creature” in himself. May God grant that we may all spiritually learn this doctrine, “I am thy salvation.”
Not that I intend just now to use the text in this sense alone, though I think it is highly proper both in temporal and in spiritual dilemmas to feel that God is our salvation. Rather let me show you how it embodies a prayer of the psalmist for the full assurance of faith. He is asking that, having believed in God, he may have a token for good, that he may be able to—
“Read his title clear
To mansions in the skies.”
He wants to hear a still, small voice within him saying, “I am thy salvation.”
I shall try, first of all, to describe the assurance intended in the text; secondly, to show its blessedness; and, thirdly, to set forth the way of reaching it.
I. First, let me describe the assurance intended in the text.
“Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” The assurance which the psalmist seeks in this prayer is one concerning a very solemn business. People like to be sure about purchasing their estates. There is a deal of searching every time the land is bought, in order to see that the title is good, valid, and indefeasible. Some persons are very particular about their bodily health, and they like occasionally to have an assurance from the physician that every organ is in a sound condition. But, in this Psalm, David is perplexed, neither about his estate, though that was a kingdom, nor about his health, though that was more than a fortune to him, but he is concerned only about his soul. O my brethren, if we ought to be sure anywhere, it is here; would that we were half as diligent to make our “calling and election sure” as some are to make secure their bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds! Not to be sure of heaven, what a wretched state to be in! To have a question about my soul’s eternal welfare,—a dying mortal, whose breath may depart any second in the hour!—oh, this is misery indeed! I had better know my true state. If it be bad, it will be well for me to know the worst of it while there is time, so that it may yet be mended; and if it be good, it will be a sweet thing for me to know that it certainly is so, and then my “peace shall be like a river,” and my joy shall flow on in perpetual waves of freshness. O my dear hearers, make sure work for eternity! If you must trifle anywhere, never trifle here! This anchor, this bower-anchor, this sheet-anchor of the soul, see that you have a good cable to this. There! let everything else go; but now that the dread storm is coming on, see that the anchor holds within the veil; and see also that it is God’s anchor of faith, wrought in you by God the Holy Spirit. Breathe, I pray you, at the very outset of this address, the prayer, “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.”
And, you will notice, as it is about a very solemn business, so, also, it is an appeal to One who knows about it, and who can speak on it with authority. Brethren, if you should come to a minister, whoever he may be, and say to him, “Sir, I will tell you my evidence, I will relate my experience; tell me, are these the marks of a child of God?” you may deceive him in your statements, and he himself may mislead you in his judgment. What would be the worth of the opinions of all the men in the world as to the state of a soul before God? Certainly it would be very suspicious, and would give much cause for fear if God’s people were afraid of me, for I should begin to be afraid of myself; but still, though they have accepted me, let me not therefore take it for granted that God has done so. I may stand well with his church, I may be beloved by his servants, but for all that he may know that I am none of his. I may be rather more thickly coated with gilt than some others, and yet I may not be real gold; I may be better made and varnished than some, and yet I may be but an imitation, and not the true wood. It looks well, my dear hearers, when you dare to come before God, and have an investigation of your case. When a man is willing to have the title-deeds of his estate examined in any court in the world, I should think that those deeds were thoroughly sound. When you can say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts,” or can even pray, as this text does, “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation,” then there is hope for you.
But observe that the evidence the psalmist wants is personal assurance: “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” How many times have we to cry out against that bad habit of generalizing in religion! Beloved, let us repeat what we have said a thousand times before, that national religion is altogether a dream; that even the idea of family religion, excellent as it is, is yet often but a mere idea. The only godliness worth having is personal godliness, and the only religion which will really effect salvation is that which is vital and personal to the individual. “Ye must be born again.” Now there is no way of being born again by proxy. The Church of England may invent its “sponsors” at will, but God has nothing to do with such things. I pray you, never let the soul-damning falsehood of another man standing for you be tolerated in your soul for a single second! Another man cannot promise anything for you, or, if he should promise it, he would not be able to accomplish what he had promised. These works must be wrought in you personally by God the Holy Ghost himself, or else saved you can never be. I love you to pray for your children; I am glad, poor woman, that you are anxious for your husband; it is a good thing that you, husband, should pray for your wife; but oh, remember, the salvation of another will be but poor comfort to you if you yourself should be cast into the everlasting burnings! Let your prayer be first for yourselves. Do let that be the leading point, and then you will breathe the prayer more hopefully for others: “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation; I hear that showers of mercy are dropping all around, let them drop also upon me; I hear that conversions are numerous, oh, if I am not converted, convert me; I know that thou doest great wonders, Lord, let me be a monument of thy power to save.” It is personal assurance that the psalmist wants.
Observe, also, for it lies on the surface of the text, that it is an assurance sent, not to the ear, but to the heart: “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” Now, God does speak to us through our ears. When the Word is read or preached, we often get a blessing through hearing it; but if the words you hear merely come to the ear, it involves responsibility without insuring a blessing. Certain persons dream that God is their salvation! Go to bed and dream again, and dream fifty times, and when you have dreamed the same thing fifty times, there can and will be nothing but dreaming in it after all. You who build on dreams had better mind what you are at.
“Well,” says another, “but I heard a voice in the air.” Nonsense! “But I did,” say you. Superstition! “But I am sure I did.” Well, what matters it? I care not where the voice came from, if you heard it only with your outward ears. It is as likely to have been the devil that spoke as anybody else, if indeed it was anybody at all. You are as likely to deceive yourself as anything in the world. The prayer of the text is not, “Say to my ears,” but “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” Do you understand what soul-talking is? Oh, dear, dear, the most of people do not understand anything that has to do with the spirit world; there are materialists in Christianity as well as in other matters. They suppose that, to worship God means to sing in a certain way, to bend the knee, and to say certain words. Why, you may do all that, and yet there may not be a fraction of worship in it; and, on the other hand, you may worship God without any of it. A man may sing God’s praises without ever opening his mouth; a man may pray unto God, and yet never say a word, for it is soul-singing and soul-praying that God accepts; and when God speaks back again to the soul that has learned to talk with him, he does not speak lip-language, tongue-language, or ear-language, but soul-language. I have already said that this soul-language sometimes takes the body of preaching, or of the Word of God, and so becomes, as it were, a thing to appeal to the ear; but even then the letter killeth, it is only the spirit that makes alive. It is God’s soul talking to man’s soul that is wanted here. And mark you, dear friend, if ever God speaks to your soul, you will not have to ask who it is that speaks, for if ever the eternal God comes into direct contact with the human heart, there is no making a mistake. Do you understand this? Some of you think I am fanatical. I would to God you were all as fanatical! May you have God talking with your soul, and may the Holy Spirit bear witness with your spirit that you are born of God! Pray the prayer, and may God hear it now, “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.”
Then I want you also to notice that the prayer here offered is a present one. It means, “Say now unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” It is not “Do it by-and-by,” but “now, Lord, now.” Perhaps some of you have heard God’s voice in years gone by, but now you have got into Doubting Castle. Well, you may pray this prayer here, and while you are sitting in the pew, though none shall hear it but yourself, yet God’s Spirit shall talk to you, and you shall hear him say, “I am thy salvation,” and then your heart shall sing, “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine.” Pray the prayer now, and it need not take a moment to be answered, for, while you are yet speaking it, you shall feel it. You will be bowed down under a sense of gratitude, and yet you will be lifted up with a “joy unspeakable, and full of glory,” when you can sing—
“While Jesus whispers I am his,
And my Beloved’s mine.”
Come, believers, let us all pray this prayer, whether we have heard this voice before or not. O, my God, make us true believers now, and may we all pray it, “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” The preacher often needs to use this prayer himself, and he has no doubt that many of his brethren have been constrained to use just such a cry. Well, let it go up again to-night: “O God, give us back the love of our espousals, our first faith, our early joy, and speak thou, with thine own voice, to our troubled hearts, and say to our souls, ‘I am thy salvation.’ ”
II. And now shall we turn, very briefly indeed, to the second point? It was to be the blessedness of the assurance asked for.
I do not think I shall preach on that at all, but leave you to find it out for yourselves. You who know it know that I cannot describe it, for you cannot describe it yourselves; and you who do not know it would not understand it if I told you what it is. You will understand as much as this, that if you were able to feel to-night that God himself had said to your soul, “I am thy salvation,” you would feel infinitely more happy than you now do. Some of you are very cheerful, but sometimes you do get troubled and cast down. You apparently have, I know, a great deal of hilarity and mirth about you, but at night, or in the early morning, or when you have to go to a funeral, you do not feel quite as you would like to feel. There is an aching void somewhere or other, and you have not found out that which is to fill it yet. Now, if God himself should say to you, “I am thy salvation,” would not that fill it? Oh, what a different life you would then lead! How happy you would be, and, being saved, how holy you would try to be; and, being holy, how near to God you would try to live! “If I were but saved,” says one, “then would I indeed praise the Lord as long as I had any being.” Well, poor soul, I pray that this may be thy case, but the blessedness of it thou must taste to know. “O taste and see that the Lord is good!” There is no other way of understanding it than this.
I think I told you, once, the little story of the boy at the mission-station who had received a piece of sugar from a missionary, and when he went home told his father that he had had something so sweet. The father asked if it were as sweet as such-and-such a fruit? Oh, sweeter than that! Was it as sweet as such another? Yes, much sweeter than that; and when the boy could not make his father understand how sweet it was, he ran down to the station, and said, “Oh, sir, would you give me another piece of that sweet stuff? Father wants to understand how sweet it is, and I want to make him understand it, but I can’t tell him.” So he got another piece of sugar, and back he went to his father with it. “Here, father, now you will understand how sweet it is.” A very good illustration is this of the text I just quoted, “O taste and see that the Lord is good!” Taste for yourselves, and then you shall know for yourselves.
III. Now let us go to the third point without delay. How are we to get this assurance? How shall the believer know that he is saved?
The way to assurance is through the door of simple faith. The gospel is, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” To believe is to trust Christ. Now, if I know that I do trust Christ, and that I have, in obedience to his command, been baptized, then, God says I shall be saved; and is not that enough for me? Ought it not to be, at any rate? If God says it, it must be true. I believe his Book to be inspired, and he has put it thus, “He that believeth on him is not condemned.” Well, if I do believe on him, then I am not condemned. Conscience says, “You are a long way off being perfect.” I know that. Ah, conscience! I know it to my shame and to my sorrow; but the Word says, “He that believeth on him is not condemned.” I do believe on him, and I am not condemned, let conscience say what it likes. “Well, but,” the devil says, “how can this be true?” That is neither my business nor thine, Satan; God says it is so, and therefore it is so. That is enough for me. We take men’s word, why should we not take God’s Word? He who simply believes in Jesus Christ must have some degree of assurance, for the simple act of reclining, recumbently resting, upon Christ, if it be done truly and sincerely, is in its measure assuring to the heart. At any rate, it is the milk that brings the cream. Faith is the milk, and assurance is the cream. You must get your assurance from your faith; and if it be a simple faith which relies entirely upon Jesus Christ, it will, if not directly, yet very speedily, bring you some degree of assurance of your interest in Christ.
There are many good people who say, “We are trusting in Christ, and we hope we are Christians.” They do not like to say that they know they are saved. They think they are very humble in saying, “We trust so; we hope so;” whereas there is nothing but pride, like a thick sediment, at the bottom of all that kind of talk. What right have I, when God tells me that a thing is so, to say that I hope it is so? If I were to promise to give a subscription of ten pounds to any object, and the person to whom I promised it should say, “Well, I hope you will give it;” I should answer, “But I have said that I will.” “Yes, I hope you will.” “But don’t you believe me?” “Yes, I hope I do, but———” Why, if such talk as this prevailed among men of the world, they would be for showing the door to one another. It would be looked upon as an insult not to believe a man; and why should you treat God in a manner in which you would not like to be treated by your fellow-men? God says that I am saved if I trust Christ. I do trust Christ, and I am saved; if I am not, then God’s Word is not true. It comes to that. Since his Word must be true, then, if I really do trust Christ, and I know that I do,—if, whatever else I have left undone, my soul does cling to him, sink or swim, not having the shadow of a hope anywhere but in his precious blood, and if I can say this, then I know I am saved, for God says I am. Experience and conscience may say whatever they like, but “let God be true, and every man a liar.”
The way, however, to increase the measure of our assurance is to be found in more study of the Word of God. Some people have not the confidence they might have because they do not understand the truth. I do think that certain forms of Arminianism are deleterious to the faith of the Christian; those forms, for instance, which deny the election of God, the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit, and the final perseverance, because the sure preservation, of the saints. These denials seem to me to cut from under a man’s foot everything he has to stand upon, and I do not wonder that the man who believes them has no assurance. If I believe that God’s children may fall away and perish, it seems to me that full assurance, at any rate, becomes an impossibility, for if they may fall, why may not I? What is there in me that I should stand where others fall? But when I rest alone upon the finished work and righteousness of Jesus, and believe it is finished, then I can sing, “Now unto him who is able to keep me from falling, and to present me faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, be glory, majesty, dominion and power, for ever and ever. Amen.” Study the Word much, dear Christian brother. Never mind the magazines; never mind the newspapers. Further than they are necessary to your business, you need not trouble yourself with them. We should all of us be a great deal better if we kept to the one Book. Let us be as expansive in our knowledge as possible, but let us keep the Bible as the sun and centre of the solar system of our knowledge, and let everything we know revolve around that centre. If we knew more of God, we might be content to know less of men.
Next to this, I think, if we would have full assurance established, we must be more in prayer than we are. You will not be in a healthy state if you live without prayer. You cannot live without it if you are a Christian; but I mean you cannot be healthy if you live without much prayer. I am persuaded that none of us pray as we ought. I am not given to bandying accusations against God’s saints without thought; but I am afraid that this is not a praying age. It is a reading age, a preaching age, a working age, but it is not a praying age. When one reads of the Puritans’ prayers, one is astounded. Why, their public prayers were sometime three-quarters of an hour in length, and sometimes one hour and a half by the clock. I do not like that; but their private prayers were longer far, and days of fasting and of prayer were quite common things. I wish we could have a day of fasting and of prayer about this cattle disease; but I only say this by the way. I wish we all of us prayed a great deal more than we do. We just pray for a short season because we say that we are so busy; but we forget that the more we pray the more able we are to work. The mower grudgeth not the time he spends in whetting his scythe, or the scribe the interval for mending his pen Martin Luther, when he had twice as much to do as he usually had, said, “I must pray for three hours to-day at least, or else I shall never get through my work.” The more work he had, the more did he pray in order that he might be able to get through it. Oh, that we did the like! We should have more assurance if we were more on the mount with God alone.
Let me also advise you to attend an edifying ministry, and to get with well-advanced Christians. Some of the young plants here, when they get moved away, suffer terribly from the cold; they come, perhaps, from the country, full of doubts and fears, and then some of my good brethren and sisters get round them, and talk to them, and cheer them up, and then they are so glad. Oh, that all churches were warm-hearted, cordial, and affectionate! There is so much stuck-upishness, so much keeping aloof from one another, that there can be no talking one to another about the things of God. By the grace of God, we will try to break this down, and get a little warm-heartedness to one another, and so we will hope to get the full assurance by talking to one another of the things of the kingdom, and so strengthening each other in our work.
But, dear friends, if you want to get full assurance, I can recommend you to another thing, and it is this, work for Christ. We are not saved by works, but working for God brings us many blessings. Rest assured that, if you spend and are spent for Christ, you shall never be out of spending-money. If you lay out your strength for him, he will lay in for you fresh stores of strength. He does not give us faith that we may bury it as the man buried his talent; but if we have five talents of faith, and use them, he will give us five talents more; and so we shall have assurance if we use our faith well.
And then, again, praise God for what you have. Old Master Brookes says, “If you only have candle-light, bless God for it, and he will give you starlight; when you have got starlight, praise God for it, and he will give you moonlight; when you have got moonlight, rejoice in it, and he will give you sunlight; and when you have got sunlight, praise him still more, and he will make the light of your sun as the light of seven days, for the Lord himself shall be the light of your spirit.” Praise and bless him, and your assurance shall grow.
Above all, press through ordinances, and means, and prayers, to the person of Christ himself. Thomas found that putting his finger into Christ’s wounds was a cure-all for his unbelief; and so will you. Ask him to—
“Wrap you in his crimson vest,
And tell you all his name.”
Pray him to reveal himself to you in his sufferings, and in his glory. Ask him that you may read his heart, that he may speak to you, and show you the great love unspeakable wherewith he loved you from before the foundation of the world. Then your communion with Christ shall be as eagle wings to bear you up to heaven; your fellowship with Jesus shall be like horses of fire to drag your chariot of flaming love up to the throne of the Most High. You shall walk the mountain-top, talking with God, for you have learned to commune with Christ. Your spirit shall make its nest hard by the throne of the Most High. You shall get above the cares of earth, you shall mount beyond the storm and strife of worldly conflict, and you shall even now bathe your souls in the unbroken sea of everlasting calm before the throne of God.
Let us ask him to say to each of our souls to-night, “I am thy salvation.” Some of us are going to the communion-table: perhaps he will say it to us there; and if he does not, we will go home to pray; and if he does not speak to us then, perhaps in the night-watches he will say it; and when we awake, we will still plead on, until those lips which said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, shall again say “Let there be light” to us, and we shall know that he is our salvation.
May God bless you very richly by hearing this prayer, for Jesus’sake.
Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon
Verses 1, 2. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations. For I have said, Mercy shall he built up for ever: thy faithfulness shall thou establish in the very heavens.*
So far, the gracious man declares the resolution of his heart to praise his God for ever, and gives the reason for that resolve. Now he quotes the Lord’s covenant with David:—
3, 4. I have made a covenant with my chosen, I have sworn unto David my servant, Thy seed will I establish for ever, and build up thy throne to all generations. Selah.
That covenant, as you well know, was not only made with David, but it had a higher spiritual bearing, for it related to that great and glorious Son of David who still reigns, and shall reign for ever, and in whom every covenant blessing is secured.
5. And the heavens shall praise thy wonders, O Lord: thy faithfulness also in the congregation of the saints.
It is often very profitable, when we are enjoying fellowship with God, for us to speak to God, and then wait for God to speak to us. It is so here, you see. First the psalmist says that he will praise God for ever, then God tells him of his covenant, and explains to him the reason why mercy shall be built up for ever, and then the man of God begins to praise God again. That will give you a hint for your own private devotion. Sometimes you feel that you cannot praise God, and cannot pray to him. Well, then, if you cannot speak to God, sit still, and let him speak to you. Read a portion of Scripture, and then, perhaps, some suggestive verse or word in it will set you praying; and then, when you have prayed, stop a little while, and read again; and so a blessed conversation shall be carried on between you and your God. Thus the psalmist takes his turn again: “And the heavens shall praise thy wonders, O Lord: thy faithfulness also in the congregation of the saints.”
6, 7. For who in the heaven can be compared unto the Lord? who among the sons of the mighty can be likened unto the Lord? God is greatly to be feared—
That is, reverenced,—
7–9. In the assembly of the saints, and to be had in reverence of all them that are about him. O Lord God of hosts, who is a strong Lord like unto thee? or to thy faithfulness round about thee? Thou rulest the raging of the sea: when the waves thereof arise, thou stillest them.
He lets them arise, and he bids them sink down again. All the providential dealings of God seem to be illustrated in the ever-varying phenomena of the sea. The Lord sometimes lets tempests arise in our circumstances, and anon with a Word he stills them, and there is a great calm.
10. Thou hast broken Rahab in pieces, as one that is slain;—
The great crocodile of Egypt;—
10–12. Thou hast scattered thine enemies with thy strong arm. The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: as for the world and the fulness thereof, thou hast founded them. The north and the south thou hast created them: Tabor and Hermon shall rejoice in thy name.
Oh, what a blessed spirit the spirit of true devotion is! There is such life in it that it seems to quicken all inanimate creation, and make the rocks and mountains to sing, and the trees of the wood to clap their hands, and the waves of the sea to praise the great Creator. So the whole world is like a great organ, and man, guided by God’s Spirit, puts his fingers on the keys, and wakes the whole to the thunder of adoration and praise. Oh, to be taught of God to have a praiseful heart, for then all around us will be more likely also to praise Jehovah.
13, 14. Thou hast a mighty arm:* strong is thy hand, and high is thy right hand. Justice and judgment are the habitation of thy throne: mercy and truth shall go before thy face.
There are wells of joy in this verse to those who know how to draw it up. It is a great delight to every man who is oppressed to know that justice and judgment stand, like armed sentinels, on either side of the throne of God; and to every human soul, conscious of unworthiness, it is an unspeakable delight that mercy and truth, like royal heralds, go before God wherever he goes. It has been well said that a God all mercy would be a God unjust; but a God all justice without mercy would be terrible indeed.
15–21. Blessed is the people that know the joyful sound: they shall walk, O Lord, in the light of thy countenance. In thy name shall they rejoice all the day: and in thy righteousness shall they be exalted. For thou art the glory of their strength: and in thy favour our horn shall be exalted. For the Lord is our defence; and the Holy One of Israel is our king. Then thou spakest in vision to thy holy one, and saidst, I have laid help upon one that is mighty; I have exalted one chosen out of the people. I have found David my servant; with my holy oil have I anointed him: with whom my hand shall be established: mine arm also shall strengthen him.
David was a great blessing to the nation over which God made him king. Among the choicest gifts that God ever gives to men are men; and therefore we read, concerning Christ, “When he ascended up on high, he led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men;” and those gifts were men, for “he gave some, apostles; and some, prophets; and some, evangelists; and some, pastors and teachers.” These were the choice ascension gifts of Christ.
Yet, while these verses primarily refer to David the king of Israel, we must believe that a greater than David is here, even Christ, who deigns to call himself God’s Servant, who has been anointed by the Spirit of God, with whom God’s hand is always established, and who is ever strengthened by the arm of Omnipotence.
22–25. The enemy shall not exact upon him; nor the son of wickedness afflict him. And I will beat down his foes before his face, and plague them that hate him. But my faithfulness and my mercy shall be with him: and in my name shall his horn be exalted. I will set his hand also in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers.
Do not believe, dear friends, any of the prophecies that some men make concerning the destruction of the kingdom of Christ and the failure of his Church; but be certain that the Lord will not suffer Christ to fail or be discouraged, and rest assured that the pleasure of the Lord shall prosper in his hands. The history of the Church of Christ is a history of conflict, but it shall be a history of victory before it is completed: “I will set his hand also in the sea, and his right hand in the rivers.”
26–34. He shall cry unto me, Thou art my father, my God, and the rock of my salvation. Also I will make him my firstborn, higher than the kings of the earth. My mercy will I keep for him for evermore, and my covenant shall stand fast with him. His seed also will I make to endure for ever, and his throne as the days of heaven. If his children forsake my law, and walk not in my judgments; if they break my statutes, and keep not my commandments; then will I visit their transgression with the rod, and their iniquity with stripes. Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.
If, then, you are in the covenant, you will have the rod; you may rest sure of that. If you do not walk in God’s ways, but break his statutes, you will not be allowed to go unchastened. If a father saw some boys in the street breaking windows or otherwise misbehaving themselves, and he gave one of the boys a box on the ears, you may be pretty certain that the boy is his own son. And when God sees men doing wrong, he often permits the wicked to go unpunished in this life; but as for his own people, it is written, “You only have I known of all the families of the earth: therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.” Our heavenly Father’s hand still holds the rod, and uses it when necessary; but it is in love that he corrects us. Let us, therefore, when he chastens us, plead the covenant that is here recorded, and say to him, “Thou hast said, ‘Nevertheless my lovingkindness will I not utterly take from him, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail. My covenant will I not break, nor alter the thing that is gone out of my lips.’ ”
35–37. Once have I sworn by my holiness that I will not lie unto David. His seed shall endure for ever, and his throne as the sun before me. It shall be established for ever as the moon, and as a faithful witness in heaven. Selah.
ESTABLISHED WORK
A Sermon
Published on Thursday, April 29th, 1909,
delivered by
C. H. SPURGEON,
at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,
On Thursday Evening, February 20th, 1873.
“Establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”—Psalm 90:17.
Some of us have been to the grave this afternoon, and the most forcible impression upon our minds at this time is that of our mortality. We cannot, in burying others, say, “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” without thinking of the time when we too shall be laid in the silent grave. The thought that we are, yet are not, that we are but as shadows that flit across the path of life,—coming, going, scarcely come ere we are gone,—the thought of our mortality has led us to ask concerning our work,—Is that mortal too? Will that die like ourselves? Some of us have darling objects, high designs, great enterprises on our hearts; are all those shadows? We are as the grass of the field; are they also grass? Will the scythe that cuts us down cut them down too? Truly, if we thought it would be so, it would give double bitterness to the remembrance of our own mortality to think that our work was mortal as well as ourselves.
Perhaps it was that feeling which led Moses, the great prophet-poet of the wilderness, to cry, “If we die, if we pass away, yet ‘establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.’ ” Every good man, who is doing a good work, has a sincere desire that his work should continue. This is not a wrong desire; it is in the highest degree right. We wish not to build with wood, hay, and stubble, which we know will be consumed,—and if our work be of that kind, we must not pray for its continuance; but if we believe that we are building with gold, silver, and precious stones, we may pray, for the prayer is a most proper one, and the thought that suggests the prayer is a right one, “Establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”
At the same time, let me here remark that it is the work of God which is the ground of our confidence and peace; but our own work—even that which we dare ask God to establish,—can never be such a comfort and stay to us, for it is always a cause of anxiety to us. It is a very strange thing that unconverted men should ever look to their own works for peace and comfort, since even to Christians their own works are rather a source of anxiety than of consolation. I feel sure that every true worker for God knows that it is so. The more you do for God, the more care you have pressing upon you; and though grace enables you to cast that care upon him whose work it really is, yet still care does naturally arise out of all work for God to those who are truly concerned in it. Hence our works never can become the source of our truest consolation. They may become evidences to us of God’s presence with us, and may yield to our conscience a measure of peace; but, still, the anxiety which will always spring out of good works will counterbalance any sort of comfort that can come from them. It is to God’s work, not our own, that we have to look: “ ‘Let thy work appear unto thy servants.’ We are willing to work for thee, Lord; but let us always have our eye on thy work. We shall never serve thee acceptably unless our eye is directed towards what thou hast done for us rather than towards what we do for thee. There is no glory in our work, but ‘let thy work appear unto thy servants, and thy glory,’ which always goes with it, ‘unto their children.’ Let us see thy glorious work, thy finished work; let us see it always, let us see it living, let us see it dying, and so we, thy servants, will praise thee even when our hearts are anxious, believing that thou wilt remove our anxiety: ‘Let thy work appear unto thy servants, … and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it?’ ”
I am going to try to answer three questions concerning our work for God. Firstly, what part of our work can we ask God to establish? Secondly, in what way is he likely to establish it? And, thirdly, if we are praying as Moses did, what ought to be our mode of action to correspond with such a prayer?
I. First, then, what kind of work can we ask god to establish? The ungodly must not pray, “Establish thou the work of our hands upon us;” it would be blasphemy for them to do so. If the work be evil, God cannot establish it. Jesus Christ has been revealed to destroy all the works of the devil; and when he is destroying the works of the devil, he will destroy all the works that have been wrought by men possessed by the spirit of evil. Nothing that has been wrought unrighteously will be allowed to stand, neither can we ask God to make it stand without supposing God to be such an one as ourselves, which he is not, and can never be. God will not help thee in that which is wrong, ungodly man, however much thou mayest try to interweave his holy name with thy unrighteous actions.
And remember, too, that God will never establish our works if they are intended to rival the works of his Son. Some people work very hard in trying to make a righteousness of their own; but if they could achieve their purpose, they would then be independent of a Saviour. Their attempted obedience to the law of God is intended to be a substitute for the perfect righteousness of Christ, and their tears and repentances are intended to be a substitute for the atoning sacrifice of Christ; but do you suppose that God will ever take the side of those who would fain rival his Son, and make the work of his Son needless? That can never be! Self-righteousness is the direst of insults to the Son of God. If I conceive myself to be righteous and meritorious in God’s sight, I do, as far as in me lies, cast a reflection upon the wisdom of God, for I tell him that, although he provided a Saviour, one was not needed, at any rate for me. I also insult the blood of Jesus, for I tell him that it was shed unnecessarily, at least as far as I am concerned, for I have no sin needing to be washed away. I insult the Holy Ghost too, for I tell him that I do not need a new birth, for I am already as good as I need to be. Self-righteousness insults the Triune Jehovah, and therefore we cannot ask God to establish it. If we were sensible, we should pray God to pull it down, every stick and stone of it. And rest assured, sinners, that if God ever does save you, he will do that as one of the first things; for every stone that our fancied nobility has ever put upon its fellow with a view to building a refuge for ourselves, God will take down; not one stone shall be left upon another if God is ever to save us. One of the most deplorable things that could ever happen to a man would be for him to be allowed to dwell comfortably in a refuge of lies until the storm of divine judgment should sweep both himself and his refuge away for ever. Dear hearer, may I ask whether thy work is a self-righteous one, whether thou art trying to save thyself? For if so, this prayer of Moses cannot properly be used by thee, neither can God hear it with acceptance. No wicked works, and no self-righteous works may we ask God to establish.
But may we ask God to establish the ordinary works and engagements of our daily life? Yes, assuredly we may. If thou art a servant of God, thou hast learnt to eat and drink to his glory, and thy commonest actions are a part of the holy priesthood to which all believers are called. Thou art thyself a priest, and all that thou doest is a part of thy service for God in his holy temple, for God’s temple is not this Tabernacle nor any other building. Wherever there is a true heart, there is a temple for God; and wherever there is a renewed heart, there is a priest for God; and that is the only temple and the only priest that God wants with the exception of the Great High Priest who stands for us before the throne of the Most High. Well then, whatever thou art doing, if thou art doing it thus before God, thou mayest ask him to prosper and establish it. Why not? When Abraham’s servant went down to Padan-aram to find a wife for Isaac, he did not say, This matrimonial arrangement is secular business, so I must not pray about it;” but he did pray about it, and God guided him, and prospered his errand. And David, when he wanted to know whether he should go to certain places to fight his enemies, enquired of the Lord, “Shall I go up?” and the Lord gave the answers to his petitions.
We should do well always to make little things as well as great things the objects of prayer. I am afraid that many people fail for want of due attention to little things. It is not always the great things in which a man slips, but it is often the little things which trip him up. Great matters he naturally takes to God, being diffident of his own judgment; but little matters he decides according to what he considers his own wisdom, and his own wisdom is generally nothing but the most arrant folly. The Israelites were never so grossly deceived as when the case seemed perfectly clear to them. There were the Gibeonites with old shoes and clouted upon their feet, so it was evident that they must have come from a distant land. They had dry and mouldy bread, so no doubt what they said was true, that they had taken it hot out of the oven when they set out on their journey, and it had become mouldy from the long distance that they had carried it. There was no need for the people to call the priest, and seek advice from God, the case was so clear that nobody could be deceived; their own common sense was quite sufficient to guide them,—so they said. Had it been a puzzling case, they would have asked the Lord to guide them; but being so very plain, they were deceived, and made a great mistake. Take care always to consult God about those very plain things as you consider them.
Still, beloved, I should be very sorry to see this prayer limited to such matters as these. It should be used concerning them, but it must also be used to higher ends, or else it will be to a large extent wasted. True Christians live for God, and work for God, and every one of us who claims to be a Christian is either working for God or else an impostor. I repeat my declaration that the man who calls himself a Christian, and yet does nothing for Christ, is an impostor. He professes to be a fruit-bearing tree, yet he bears no fruit; he declares himself to be salt, yet he has no savour; he says that he is a light to the world, yet he never helps to remove its darkness by scattering his beams. But every genuine Christian is a worker for Christ, and work done for God is the kind of work which we may ask God to establish, and it is that work which will in the highest sense be established.
What great works men have performed, and yet how little has been the length of their endurance! When the great city of Babylon was built, we can scarcely conceive how vast it was; but where is it now? Its site may be known, but its power is gone; its kings have long since passed away, and its glory has departed. Then there was that mighty city of Nineveh, with all the power which was connected with the Assyrians. Then there was the Persian empire, and the Persian kings with great diligence built up very powerful states; yet they were not established by God, and all the might of Persia melted away. The Romans also built up a vast empire. What a great metropolis they made Rome to be! As we walk amidst its massive walls, so stupendous that they look as if they must have been the work of giants, we see how the greatest works of men without God are not established. Let them build as solidly as they may, their mightiest works pass away like the child’s sand castles built on the beach that are washed away by the next tide. Nothing that man makes for man will endure. Build on, ye despots; but Time, a mightier king than you, will pull down all that you put up. And the very revolutions of society, as men change from one phase of thought to another, overturn each other, and that which it seemed right to establish yesterday, it seems needful to overthrow to-morrow. It is not merely empires that are thus cast down, but systems of religion and works that have apparently been done for God have gone too; and schools of thought, that ruled human minds, have passed away, and now they are not, all teaching us that only that which is really done for God, and that which is of God, will be established by God.
This leads me to say that I think the work we may pray God to establish is, first, the work of soul-winning, the work of bringing sinners to the Saviour; and, next, the work of upbuilding of a church; and, then, the work of testifying to the truth as it is in Jesus, a work which, is sadly neglected in these degenerate times. The work of soul-saving—when we have earnestly laboured to bring sinners to faith in Jesus, and have cried to the eternal God for the quickening power of his Holy Spirit to regenerate them,—we may certainly pray God that that work may be established. And then, when we have gathered Christians together, and God has given us grace to put them in their places in his Church, and the Holy Spirit has rested upon us so that the work under our hands has been God’s work as well as ours, we may certainly pray that God would build up his own Church, and establish it. And when we have borne testimony to the truth, we may and we must very earnestly pray that that truth may be spread still more widely, that it may not be forgotten by those who hear it, but may abide in their hearts, and that it may come to the front, and may influence men and women more than it has done hitherto. Thus we may pray that our witness-bearing for Jesus may be established.
I do not know what particular form of service may have fallen to the lot of my dear brethren and sisters here; but, in any case, we may pray that what we have done for God may be established; only let us remember that God will only establish work that is really and truly done for him. We can only pray to God, in the language of this prayer, to establish “the work of our hands.” There must be real work, and it must be two-handed work, we must throw our whole strength into it. I cannot expect God to establish that work over which I have trifled. If I have served God in such a way that it is palpable that I did not think the work very important, I cannot ask him to establish it. We have a great deal of talking about the gospel nowadays; we should have the truth spread everywhere if talking would do it; but it is “the work of our hands” that is wanted, real service, the putting out of our strength, the using of all our vigour, and wit, and wisdom, and the skill of the craftsman who has been trained to some special form of handiwork. When a man throws his whole soul into what he has done for the Lord, so that he can claim that the work of his hands is real work done as unto the Lord, then he may ask God to establish it. But it must be work that is truly done, for I am afraid that there is a great deal talked about that never is done. I am not quite sure about those thirty persons that were said to have been converted the other night at a certain meeting. I cannot always rely upon the information received from a certain brother who goes here and there, and who is quite sure that so many were converted one night, and so many another night. I shall be glad if it is true, but I am not quite clear about it; there is a good deal of “flash in the pan” about his work. I read, in certain newspapers, of the work done by an earnest brother well known to some of you; and I tried to find any trace of it, but I could not find any sign of it a few months afterwards. I am sorry to say that I have seen many churches “revived” until there has been nothing left of them. I am very dubious of a great deal that I have heard that seems to me like unholy boasting. If the work was exactly as it was said to be, there ought to have been a very great difference in certain towns from what there is now. My dear brother, if God has done a great work by you, don’t you go and brag about it. If it is needful for you sometimes to tell what the Lord has done in saving souls through your instrumentality, tell it very discreetly, giving God all the glory; but blowing the trumpet, and shouting, “Come and see our zeal for the Lord of hosts,” I believe brings a blight and a blast upon everything that is done. God, the Holy Ghost, must be displeased if we make a boast of any work that is done by us, and he will not establish any work of that sort. The real bona fide “work of our hands” God will establish, but he will not establish that which we try to puff into something like importance by pretty paragraphs in the newspapers about what wonderful things have been performed by us. The bare truth, plain transparent facts, we may give; but anything like exaggeration should be loathed by the Christian because it is untruthful, and it should be shunned by every wise man because it leads to bitter disappointment. God will only establish work that is really and truly done for him.
And I believe, further, that no work is ever really established by God unless it is founded upon downright truth. No doubt there is a great deal of work which God owns although all in it is not truth. God prospered the work of Whitefield and the work of Wesley; but did that prove the truth of all that Whitefield or Wesley preached? No; but it proved that both of them had a measure of truth in their preaching, and that measure of truth God blessed; but God would not establish anything that they taught in error. It may last for a while, and some of it has lasted, I am afraid, much longer than is good for us; but it will have to go sooner or later. There was Luther also; he taught a great deal of truth, and that truth will last; but he also taught some error, and the consequence is that there is a great deal to-day in Lutheranism which is doing much mischief. That will not last; it will have to go the way of all errors. That very point which God will destroy because it is erroneous may be that for which we contend with the greatest vigour. God will not establish any of his servants’ work which is not the truth, and I am sure that every faithful servant of his is glad of that. What a mercy it is, if I do some mischief when I am trying to do my Master’s work, that the good work I do will last, but the bad I do, forgiven by his infinite mercy, shall by his great wisdom be swept away ere long! Error shall not always remain to do mischief; it is the truth that will abide. Hence, I think that we ought never to seek to do good by stating what is not true. There is a great deal of preaching of that which is not truth in the hope that it will be the means of converting people, but it is of no use. God will establish the truth; but if we keep back any Scriptural doctrines, or if we cut the corners off them in order to make them more acceptable to our hearers, God will not establish our work. He is the God of truth, and he will not set his seal to lies.
Hence, beloved, it is so important that every man, who works for God, should seek always to work in harmony with the Spirit of truth. We have known some whose guiding star has been “policy.” One of these has said, “Suppose I were to leave such-and-such a church, which is in part erroneous, what would become of my work?” Dear brother, are you going to do a wrong thing in the hope of saving your work? Have you subscribed to that wicked maxim, “Let us do evil that good may come?” After all, what have I to do with the consequences of right actions? Is it not my business, if I have learned any truth, to follow it wherever it will lead me? It will not lead me into a morass, for it is God’s light, and it will only lead me into God’s way. If heaven could only stand by a Christian telling a lie, in God’s name let it fall, for the ruin of it would be a less calamity than for a true man to turn aside to falsehood. Stand upright, and then shall you be as God would have you to be; but the double-minded, the wavering, those that lean first this way and then that, with craft trimming their sails to this wind, and then adjusting them to that, whither will they go? And how can we expect the God of truth ever to establish such “policy” as that? Let our work be true work, done in truth, and with truthful maxims to guide us; for then we may bring it before God, and say, “Establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”
Do not try to build fast, as so many do, using untempered mortar which will not hold their buildings together. Do not try to build beyond or short of the foundation lines which Christ has laid down for you. You would not employ a bricklayer who said to you, “I can get a house up much more quickly than by ordinary methods; I don’t need to use the plumbline to see whether the walls are straight or not; I do not trouble about how I put the bricks in the interior of the building; I can leave a blank here, and a gap there; nobody will know it. There is no particular need why I should make the bricks fit the one to the other, as long as I put a good facing on the front, that will do.” Such a man as that may think that he has done well, but when the master comes, he says, “All this has to be cleared away before I can do anything. You have just been doing mischief, and you have wasted all the day in which you ought to have worked.” So, young man, if you go to a church, and want to see it quickly built up, and begin to take unconverted people into membership, or get up a great excitement, and receive a large number of persons without any careful examination, or preach what is not sound doctrine, so that big worldly people in the neighbourhood come to hear you, and say, “See how fast he is building,” when the Master comes, he will point out what mischief you have been doing, and he will send a better man to do the work; and that better man’s chief trouble will be to get rid of what this fast builder has put up. Let none of us build like that, but may God give us the grace to build what he can establish, for it is not everything that he can establish consistently with his own character for truth and uprightness.
II. I must not devote more time to that point, but must notice, secondly, and briefly, the manner in which God may answer this prayer: “Establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it.”
Possibly, for the establishment of our work, it may be necessary for us to die. Many a man is, perhaps unconsciously, hindering his own work; and if the work is to be established, it needs somebody else to come and do it. I may again use the very homely simile of a bricklayer; if he were to say to his master, “Let me finish the house that I have built,” the answer would be, “I do not need you any longer, you have done your part of the work; other workmen must finish the building.” So, sometimes, one good man is like the bricklayer, and another good man roofs in what he has built, or does all the work in the interior of the house. There is a time for all of us to die for the good of our own work; and, often, the removal of an eminent Christian man is not the loss to the Church of Christ that we think it must be. Perhaps you have seen a great oak tree which has covered quite a large area with its widely-spreading branches; and when it has been cut down, you have all regretted it, it seemed as if there would be a huge gap; but there were a dozen little oaks that never would have come to anything because they could not get sunshine or rain while they were overshadowed by that great oak; but when that was cut down, all those others began to grow, so that, instead of one tree, you had a dozen. And the removal of one eminent Christian has often been the means of letting sunlight in to somebody who was obscured before, but who now, in the providence of God, is made strong and useful. So it may be needful for some men to die in order that their own work may be established. If it is so with us, we may well be content to go to heaven sol that our prayers may be answered.
But, dear brethren and sisters in Christ, there are some very sweet thoughts connected with working for God. When a soul is saved by our means, our work is established, for Satan himself cannot undo that work. Death may take that believer away, but that will be the completion of the work. Now the wheat is in the heavenly garner, and the precious grain is laid up where no mildew can injure it. When the work done by good men and women is the means of bringing sinners to Christ, it is sure work. That is gold taken out of the mine which never can rust. Soul-saving work is lasting work; and there is this further comfort, that every soul that is truly converted by God’s grace propagates itself. Let one sinner be brought to Jesus, and he will bring another sinner. Light one candle, and you may light fifty candles from it. One person may be converted to God through your kind, faithful words and earnest believing prayers, and that one person may bring another, and that one another, and that one another, and that one another, and so on in an endless chain of blessing to God’s glory.
Remember too, that if we work for God as God wishes us to do, it is really God’s work that we are doing. He who works truthfully, according to the principles laid down in the Scriptures, has God working in him, and with him, and by him; and all that is God’s work will endure, you may rest assured of that. What he has done shall not be undone. Divine designs shall not be frustrated; so that we may be sure that the work of our hands, in so far as it is God’s work, will be established. Besides, God is alive to take care of the work that we do for him. We die, but he does not. We leave the work in his hands; we could not leave it in better hands. He could have done the work without us, if he had pleased; but, although he has been pleased to use us for a while, he can carry on the work without us when he takes us home. If you have sought to teach truth for Christ, who is the Truth, to bring souls to Christ, and to build up a church for Christ, God will establish your work. It is true that there are many enemies to the truth, devils and men of devilish spirit who would, if they could, tear down every stone that you have built up; but God shall make the wrath of even these enemies to praise him, and they shall become, perhaps unconsciously to themselves, the means of establishing your work.
Meanwhile the wheels of providence,* which are full of eyes, are grinding on in their majestic course on behalf of the work of God in which you are engaged; and all those eyes are looking onward towards the prosperity of that great cause which is so dear to your heart. Do not have any fear of failure, beloved; if you have really worked for God, you have worked for a cause that cannot know defeat. It may not win to-morrow, or the next day, but God can wait. Age comes upon us, but nothing shall ever make him decrepit; and through the course of ages, God can wait. I always feel, with regard to the causes in which we are engaged, when people tell us that we are in the minority, “Very well, we can be content to be in the minority at present, for the majority will be with us one day. We cannot doubt that when God is with us. Ay, and if we are alone with God, God makes majority enough for all true hearts. But even counting human heads, the truth shall yet have the majority. God can wait; he knows how to convince gainsayers, and bring them round to his side. Our little plans come to an end in a few years; we cannot afford to bring them out unless they do; but God can let his capital lie idle for thousands of years if it is necessary. He is so rich that it does not impoverish him, and he will get his interest by-and-by.
God can wait, and we must learn to wait too. That work which produces no visible results at present is none the less a true work and an accepted work. If you teach the truth, and die, and that truth appears to be forgotten, you have not lived in vain, for that truth will spring up again in God’s good time. They burnt Jerome of Prague; they took John Huss, and when they fastened him to the fatal stake, he said, “You may burn the goose to-day, but there shall come a swan that you cannot burn;” and that prophecy was fulfilled in Luther, whose crest was a swan. One good man dies, and another comes. If there were not brave men of truth to go down sapping and mining, there would not be other men to come afterwards to be acclaimed victors. In any great movement that succeeds, it is not the last man who deserves the credit, it is the men who went before, at whom perhaps everybody howled. To be able to hold the truth when everybody tries to hiss you down, and not to care for their opposition, but to feel, “I have God’s truth, and if all the devils in hell were against me, God is with me, and I am in the majority against them all,” that is the spirit to have, and when we have that spirit, we may pray, “Establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it;” and it will be done.
It is now some hundreds of years ago that certain believers in Christ were burnt to death upon the very spot on which this Tabernacle now stands. Nearly everybody agreed that they ought to be burnt to death, for they were called Anabaptists, though their belief was as nearly as possible the same as ours. Catholics and Protestants alike said, “Burn them, by all manner of means, for this pestilent sect of Baptists is always testifying against everybody else;” and burnt they were at the Butts at Newington. Suppose they had said, out of the midst of the fire, “There will one day stand, on this very spot, a great house of prayer wherein about six thousand Baptists shall meet at one time to hear the gospel preached for which we are being burnt to death,” men would have laughed them to scorn; but it has come true, and if I were to say that the last trace of infant sprinkling will be swept from off the earth, and that the last relic of Romanism, Episcopalianism, Mohammedanism, Buddhism, and heathenism will be swept away, and only be recollected by men to be loathed, I should no doubt be laughed at and disbelieved, but I should be speaking only the truth. All errors will die in due time. They may live for a while, and they may seem to conquer, but God will assuredly pierce them to the heart with his two-edged sword. His despised truth must come to the front; for, as surely as God lives, so must his truth live, for it is part of himself. Be on God’s side, I pray you, for that is the winning side. Be on God’s side, old men, and young men also; I charge you, as you shall appear before the judgment seat of Christ, follow the truth. Away with everything but the simple truth revealed in the Scriptures; put everything else aside, and God will establish your work in the ages yet to come. Who knows how long those ages may be? Christ may not come to-morrow; he may wait a while, but he will come one day. We are to live expecting him to return; yet, peradventure, he may tarry longer than we think; but true work for him will last until the trumpet of the resurrection shall sound. If the work is of God, it will certainly endure.
I have no time to speak of our third point, what we ought to do if this prayer of Moses is our prayer; but I will say just this. If we want God to establish our work, we must take care not to pull it down ourselves by inconsistent living. We must not imagine that we can establish it by any wrong methods. We must leave God to establish it in his own way, and God often establishes his truth by that which seems likely to throw it down. If we want God to establish our work, we must pray much about it, and we must do it as his work, and do it for his glory, and do it according to the rules which I have tried to lay down. If I leave only this one thought with you, that the Christian is to follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, and to be true to the light which God has given us in this sacred Book, I shall feel that this evening has been well spent. The Lord grant that all of us may be looking to his work for salvation, and then be doing his work with both our hands and all our heart, and praying God to establish it.
Psalms 102:16 pg 265 Psalms 104:28 pg 289 ISAIAH Isaiah 26:3 pg 601A PROMISE FOR THE BLIND
A Sermon
Published on Thursday, April 8th, 1909,
delivered by
C. H. SPURGEON,
at the baptist chapel, church street, blackfriars road,
On Tuesday Evening, April 3rd, 1855,
On behalf of The Christian Blind Relief Society.
“Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the coasts of the earth, and with them the blind and the lame, the woman with child, and her that travaileth with child together: a great company shall return thither.”—Jer. 31:8.
Poor Israel, as a nation, had its ups and downs. It was sometimes in captivity; and anon it experienced a deliverance. At one time, it was minished and brought low through affliction, persecution, or sorrow; at another, it was multiplied and increased exceedingly. It was the deliverance from one of these evil seasons that Jeremiah was commissioned to announce, by the promise that the Lord’s people should come again to their own land.
Let us consider, for a few minutes, the circumstances of these Israelites. It must have been a sorrowful thing for them to dwell in a land that was not their own, to hear a, language they understood not, to see the fierce inhabitants, their enemies, and the idolatrous worship of the heathen gods. We can well conceive of their mournful spirit, and the feeling with which they gave utterance to their plaintive song, “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion. We hanged our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof. For there they that carried us away captive required of us a song; and they that wasted us required of us mirth, saying, Sing us one of the songs of Zion. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land?” But God sent among them prophets, who told them that they should be restored, and herein lay the glory of the promise, that it included all the captive people of God, whatever might be their rank or position. The blind, the halt, and the lame, should all come back. The hoary-headed man with his staff equally with the young and vigorous; the lame man as well as he who could run like the hart; all should come to the mount of the Lord; nor should even women be left behind: “The blind and the lame, the woman with child, and her that travaileth with child together: a great company shall return thither.” Had the prophet not said that the blind and the lame should come, that their faces should be turned towards the holy city, had he not said that they should enter into the temple of the Lord; they might have thought that, being poor and blind, they would never be allowed to come unto the holy mountain, even Zion.
But, my friends, this text has a further prophetical signification in its reference to the gathering in of the Jews in the latter times; and with this we have more particularly to do. I believe in the restoration of the Jews to their own land in the last days. I am a firm believer in the gathering in of the Jews at a future time. Before Jesus Christ shall come upon this earth again, the Jews shall be permitted to go to their beloved Palestine. At present, they are only at the entrance gates. I am told that the Jews have a practice of bringing some of the soil of their own country to England, under the seal of the chief rabbi; and that, at their death, it affords them the highest joy to know that they will have a portion of this soil buried with them, even were it no more than sufficient to cover a sixpence. They have another idea,—of course, it is a very foolish one,—that every Jew dying in a foreign land travels underground direct to Palestine. It is because they love their country that they believe such a falsehood.
But whatever may be our opinion respecting the Jews, and their position, this I know,—though they ought not to be fettered and oppressed, though they ought to have a vote in Parliament, though they ought to be freed from civil disabilities, yet they never can amalgamate with other nations. The time will come when they shall leave their sordid ideas in the pursuit of gain to secure the treasures of paradise. They are a scattered people now, and must be till the last times; then suddenly they shall rise, touched by the influence of the Spirit, of God, again to be his people. Their temple shall again resound with the worship of God, and old Zion will be again built. Then may we truly expect the latter-day glory shall come. Certainly, if I read my Bible aright, I must believe that the downtrodden, despised Jew shall again be glad; and poor old Judæa, that has been the scoff and scorn of mankind, shall again be lifted up and restored, and shall shine forth “fair as the moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army with banners.”
If it be so, mark you, the blind Jew and the lame Jew will as surely go to Jerusalem as any of the rest of the Jews. They will all go; the blind, the lame, the woman travailing with child, will all meet in God’s holy temple.
However, I leave this case of the Jews, their coming up from Babylon, and the last gathering in of Israel. I know very little of them; but would rather speak of my text under another aspect. You know that God has a peculiar people, as much a chosen nation as the Jews ever were; a called and elected people, whom the Father has chosen from before the foundation of the world; a redeemed people, whom Jesus has purchased with his precious blood; a sanctified people, because God has separated them from the rest of mankind. Well, all these people are to be brought in, to be gathered to Christ; every one whom God has chosen, redeemed, and sanctified shall come to mount Zion. Blessed be God, they shall all come to this city above. God’s wheat shall all be gathered into God’s garner. The ransomed of the Lord shall all join the throng around the throne, for ever—
“To bless the conduct of his grace,
And make his glories known.”
My text says, the blind and the lame shall meet there.
Now I am about to speak, first of all, of the characters named in the text; and then I am going to try to show you the duties of Christians to the persons so designated, or spoken of, as the lame and the blind.
I. First, I am to speak of the characters named in the text: “the blind and the lame.”
We will speak of the blind first. There are three classes of blind people: the physically blind, the mentally blind, and the spiritually blind. In illustration, I would take you to the London Road, and there you will find these three orders of blind people. There is the school for the blind, where you will find the physically blind. Just before you is the Roman Catholic Cathedral; there you will find the spiritually blind. And further on is the Bethlehem Hospital, commonly called Bedlam, where you will find the mentally blind. These are, then, the three divisions: the naturally, or physically blind; the mentally blind; and the spiritually blind.
Well, first, we refer to the physically blind. If chosen of God, they will love him, and they shall all come to heaven. Ah, poor Adam, how many are the infirmities which thy one sin has entailed upon thine offspring! Oh, mother Eve, how did thine act of transgression bring on us a train of woes! Lameness, blindness, deafness, with all the sad ailments of the paralytic, the dumb, the deformed! But all honour to the second Adam, he overcomes these infirmities; he saves “the blind and the lame.” Through his sovereign grace, he loves many of the poor, darkened sons of men. Blind men are not chosen for soldiers, except in the army of God; but in that army, he enlists many blind warriors, and makes them the best of his soldiers. Yes, blind saints, God loves you, and will not exclude you from heaven. The man who has to go leaning on his crutch all through the journey of life, is not refused at heaven’s door because of his crutches. Ye blind men, groping along in the world, when you arrive at heaven’s gate, are you to be excluded because of the want of your eyes? Rather, the moment they come to its threshold, God speaks the word, and the withered limb regains its strength, the dim eye its lustre, and thus “the blind and the lame” become fitted to join the shining multitude around the throne.
We know that, if we die aged, we shall not be aged in heaven; there are no furrows on the brow of the glorified ones. Their eyes know no dimness; they know not what it is to have infirmities of body, for mortality is exchanged for immortality. It may be that we are weakly here; it may be that we have a feeble, diseased, emaciated body here; but there we shall have a spiritual body, like unto Christ’s glorious body, clothed in light and majesty; we shall then be partakers of the bliss of heaven, shining as the stars in the firmament for ever and for ever. Now, ye physically blind, ye who do not see the glorious rays of the sun, do not be downcast, but remember that there have been many illustrious saints who have endured the same calamity. Chief and foremost, remember the blind bard of paradise, who, when his eyes were darkened, saw things that others never had imagined; I mean, Milton. Though you are deprived of your temporal sight, you may see far into the deep things of God. Others have been blind as well as you. Many blind men have been great men. Ye physically blind, rejoice that, blind though you are, if you look to Christ by faith, you will join “the general assembly and church of the firstborn, which are written in heaven.”
But, then, secondly, the mentally blind shall be restored. I have referred to Bedlam for an illustration. I do not mean, by that, to refer to those who have suffered the entire loss of their reason. It would be a very doubtful question to discuss, whether a person born without the use of his natural reason can be an object of divine grace. It would lead to a great deal of discussion, without any practical result, so I leave it alone. But there is such a thing as practical mental blindness. There may be the master-mind, gigantic conceptions, a fruitful imagination, with the power of leading and governing other minds, and yet there may be a degree of mental blindness. We are all somewhat blind; we have all, we must confess, an imperfect vision; except the Pope, who claims to be infallible, and therefore proves that he is more blind than the rest of us. There are some of us who feel our fallibility in point of judgment, and who are obliged to acknowledge our ignorance and want of clear mental perception.
But, my friends, some of the mentally blind shall enter heaven. I now refer to those whose mental powers are very weak. I sometimes meet with these mentally blind people. They do not know much of their own language, and perhaps have never put as many as a half a dozen words together in their lives, in public. I once heard of one of these, an old woman, who had heard a most uninteresting discourse upon metaphysics, but she called it “a blessed sermon, for,” she said, “the minister told us all about the Saviour being both meat and physic too.” I think that was a good mistake. She, like many of the mentally blind, could not understand one-half of the words that are used by some of our preachers. She belonged to the somewhat mentally blind folk who have not had the benefit of teaching or training. Well, blessed be God, they do not need it to find the way to heaven. “The wayfaring men, though fools, shall not err therein.”
Well, all these mentally blind shall come. There will be people in heaven who never road a word in their lives. I know not how low the grace of God can go. Some poor creatures, who know nothing of the things of earth, even these may understand the gospel, it is so plain. We do not need a giant intellect in order to grasp its doctrines. Its element and substance is, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” Believer, ignorant though you may be, you can comprehend this grand scheme of man’s redemption, so do not say that, because you are poor and ignorant, you will not enter heaven.
But, then, thirdly, there are the spiritually blind. Whenever you find a person spiritually blind, you ought to be very careful how you speak to him, or of him. I do think this is a matter in which we often fail. The discussion between Catholics and Protestants has been far from what it ought to have been. We seem bent upon forcing them to submit at once to our views, but this is wrong of us. We may condemn wrong principles, but let us always speak gently of the men who hold them. They are spiritually blind, so we should deal kindly with them, avoiding that bitterness of spirit which is so often manifested. Sick men will not take your medicine if you give them vinegar with it; give them something sweet with it, and they will take it. So be kind and loving to the spiritually blind, and they will be likely to give heed to you.
To say nothing of the Church of Rome, the Puseyites, or Arminians; to go no further than the present congregation, there are many spiritually blind here. Oh, man or woman, do you see your lost and ruined state by nature? No. Did you ever, by faith, see Christ crucified on the cross for man’s redemption? No, you did not! Did you ever understand the sufficiency of the mediatorial sacrifice of Christ? No, you did not! Did you ever realize what vital union with the person of Christ means? No! Has the Holy Spirit ever spoken in your heart? You are obliged to confess that you know nothing about his purifying influence. Ah, then, you are blind, spiritually blind! Chapel-goer, churchgoer, having the form of religion without the power, you are blind as a bat, which can only fly in the night; or like the owl, when daylight comes, you will not be able to find your way. Unless the scales are removed from your eyes, you will be exposed to the judgment of God; but if the Holy Ghost illuminates you, though now blind, you shall come to Zion with the rest of the chosen race.
But my text also mentions the lame. These are not so much the subject of our consideration to-night, and may therefore be passed over briefly. But many of the lame are to get to heaven. Who are they? Well, brethren, there are some of God’s people who are lame, because they are weak in faith. We hear sometimes a great deal said about possessing a full assurance of being a child of God; and then, every now and then, we hear of others who have a doubt, or only a hope, concerning their salvation. As good Joseph Irons used to say, “They keep hope, hope, hoping,—hop, hop, hopping,—all their lives, because they can’t walk.” Little-faith is always lame. Yet, although some of you never could say, with certainty, that you are the people of God, yet one or another of you can say with sincerity,—
“A guilty, weak, and helpless worm,
On thy kind arms I fall;
Be thou my strength and righteousness,
My Jesus, and my all.”
Ye lame ones, fear not; you will not be cast out. Two snails entered the ark; how they got there, I cannot tell. It must have taken them a long time. They must have started rather early, unless Noah took them part of the way. So, some of you are snails, you are on the right road, but it will take you a long while to get into the ark unless some blessed Noah helps you.
Again, backsliders are lame. There are Christians to be found who believe that it is possible to fall from a state of grace. Here I would speak cautiously. God’s people cannot fall finally; but they can fall a long way. When a Christian falls, it is no light matter. I hear some talking of falling and getting up again, as if it were nothing; but let them turn to Hebrews 6:4–6.* But we will rejoice that—
“Grace will complete what grace begins,
To save from sorrows or from sins.”
I do not say that a Christian man may not fall, and break a limb; but I do say that a child of God cannot fall, spiritually, and break his neck. He cannot fall without grievous injury. The result, in his experience, must be unhappiness and misery. Look at poor David; after falling into that great sin, his history was nothing but troubles from rebellious sons and enemies. Ye loving, living children of the blessed God, I know that you will not talk lightly of falling into sin. Backsliders, fallen ones, God will have mercy upon you if you are truly penitent. It is a glorious fact that the sorrowing backsliders shall not be left behind. Backsliders shall sing above, as God’s restored children, whom he ever has loved. Blind and lame ones, believe in the Lord, and you shall be found amongst the followers of the Lamb at the last.
II. Now, secondly, and very briefly, what are our duties to these blind people?
I answer, first, to the spiritually blind, our duty is to pray for them. Yes, I believe we shall never do anything without this. However much you may profess to love them, yet if you do not pray for them, I cannot believe what you say. An infidel once met a Christian man, and said to him, “You don’t believe in the Bible; you don’t believe in the gospel.” “I do,” the Christian replied. “Well, then, how is it that, as I pass you in going to my business every day, you have never spoken to me concerning my soul? You don’t believe the Bible.” “I do.” “I cannot believe you,” he said, “for if you do, you are very unfeeling.”
Now, Christians, if you believe that you have spiritually blind people around you, what is your duty towards them? Sirs, unless you feel a deep concern about their state, I fear that the heavenly Physician has not removed the spiritual cataract from your eyes. If we believe their position to be one of extreme peril, that they, for want of the light to guide them, are perishing, how we ought to exert ourselves on their behalf. The ministers do not feel enough for souls in this degenerate age, but keep on preach, preach, preaching; or read, read, reading their good-for-nothing manuscripts, and yet there is no increase to their churches. The minister is here in the pulpit, and the people are down below in the pews; there is no golden link of sympathy between them. We want more of this sympathy. We want more intense love to souls, the souls of the ungodly. We want to go more to God’s throne to plead for you, and then to plead with you. As God’s ambassadors, we say with Paul, “We pray you, in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God.” It is no trifling matter to be spiritually blind. It is no light matter to have no eyes. No, the blind are sure not to enter heaven if they die spiritually blind. They must have their eyes enlightened by God if they are to be found above. May the ever-blessed and glorious God awaken all the spiritually blind! May we who are ministers, and all others who have the opportunity use it, under God’s blessing, to throw light upon their dark minds! Try to get your neighbours to the house of God, but take care that it is a gospel ministry to which you invite them. Take care that you prove the value of the gospel you possess by your own consistent practice. Pray for them, and it may be that God will give unto them repentance unto life.
And then, next, our duty to the mentally blind is to be very charitable, and try to instruct them. We must manifest, in all our dealings with them, a kindness of disposition, never attempting to thrash them into what we believe to be right. I do not believe in the utility of bigoted denunciations. I sometimes differ from my Christian brethren, but I do not quarrel with them on that account; all I can say is, “Well, brother, if you can’t see it, I cannot help it; it is in the Bible, and I can see it plainly enough.” We, as Calvinists, believe that men cannot see the truth unless it is revealed to them by God; we should therefore be the last to condemn the ignorant, but should do our utmost to instruct them, and to open their eyes. It is of no use to attempt to force a man to believe. It has been said,—
“Convince a man against his will,
He’s of the same opinion still.”
So, whenever you get into an argument with a mentally blind man, suppose it to be a Roman Catholic, don’t get cross with him. If you do, you will never make a friend of your opponent. Suppose others do not see as you do on some matters, on infant baptism or anything else,—and I think we Baptists very often err in our temper in some of our discussions,—well, don’t try to compel them to see as you see. Brethren, that is not the way to convince them of the truth of our beliefs. Instead of acting like that, we should try to show our brethren the truth as it is in the Bible; and then, they must shut their eyes or else see it. “It is there,” say you; “if you can’t see it, I shall not be cross or out of temper with you.” Never let us be cross with the mentally blind. You know that the policeman, when he meets a man at night, turns his lantern straight upon the man’s eyes; so must we turn the light of truth upon these blind eyes, and not take out the truncheon to thrash them at once. We should also reflect that there was a time when we, too, knew nothing. It therefore behoves us to act kindly to the younger scholars in the school, seeing that we have not always ourselves been in the highest class.
But, now to conclude, we have to speak of our duty to the physically blind. There are some good people who would be glad to work for their living, but they are disabled through affliction; among these are the blind. When I go amongst the sick and poor, I find so many to relieve that, when I have given all I can afford, there is still more to do. Well, there they are, and to do them any permanent good you must give them something week by week. I was thinking, suppose another globe were created, and rolled up alongside this world, so that when any in this world became sick, or blind, or helpless, we could put them over into the other world to get rid of them. Well, suppose that were done, brethren; you would soon want them back again. “There is dear Sister So-and-so, she is entirely dependent upon the charity of her friends, but she has such rich deep experience; we have derived so much comfort from her society that we must have her back.” Then, if these poor sufferers were in another world, you would have no way of doing good by relieving them, and then you would wish you could be doing something for them for the sake of the Lord Jesus Christ. You would then have to complain, “Here is this shilling; I don’t know what to do with it. Here I have money that I cannot use because there are no objects of charity to whom I can give it. I wish Jesus Christ would come down to earth again; would I not minister to his necessities if he were here? Ay, that I would; I would give him the best of things that were to be found anywhere. Then I would sit at his feet, washing them with my tears, and wiping them with the hair of my head.”
You say that, but if all these poor blind people were in another world, there would be no one to whom you could minister for his sake, so Jesus Christ has sent some of them to us that we may have the opportunity of doing good to them, and that, by-and-by, he may be able to say to us, “Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.” He has cast some blind people upon the Church on purpose to give us the treat of doing something for them. He has said, “The poor ye have always with you.” He allows you the opportunity of evidencing your love to him by relieving those who need your help. When I hear of a church where they are all gentlemen, I always say farewell to that; for where there are no poor, the ship will soon sink. If there are no poor there, Christ will soon give them some if they are a real gospel church.
Now, the reason we have a Blind Society is simply this, there are some good people who cannot help themselves because they are blind and helpless; there is one from my church, and some from other churches. It is not a very large Society, it is all the better for that; for I find that, in the great Societies, there is so much influence needed, and so many votes required, that those who need help most cannot obtain it; and those who do not need it so much, but have the influence, get it all. Well, in this Christian Blind Relief Society, some of these poor blind people receive a trifle every week, and I assure you they are all needy and deserving objects of your charity.
This is what we ask you to-night to support. Jesus Christ stands at the door, and says to you as you retire, “Give me somewhat, this night, if you love me.”
I have to appeal so often, and am followed so much by my own people, that I have not the face to ask you for anything to-night, so Christ shall ask instead, and I will ask next time.
Remember the poor! Take care of the blind!
THE NOVELTIES OF DIVINE MERCY
A Sermon
Published on Thursday, November 11th, 1909,
delivered by
C. H. SPURGEON,
at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,
“His compassions … are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.”—Lamentations 3:22, 23.
The Book of the Lamentations of Jeremiah is very dolorous. When you look upon the dragons, and owls, and pelicans, and bitterns of the wilderness, you have a fit picture of his mournful state. He was full of grief, like a bottle wanting vent. His heart was ready to burst with wormwood and with gall.
But the whole current changes when the prophet brings to his remembrance the mercy of God. No sooner does he think of the compassions of the Most High than at once he takes his harp from the willows, and begins to sing as joyously as ever that sweet singer of Israel, David, sang before him; and, truly, if we, too, instead of harping upon our miseries, would but reflect upon our mercies, we should exchange our mournful dirges for songs of joy.
It is true that God’s people are a tried people, but it is equally true that God’s grace is equal to their trials. It is quite true that through much tribulation they enter the kingdom; but then they do enter, and the thought of the kingdom that is coming sustains them in their present tribulation. They wade through the waters of woe, often breast-deep; but the billows do not, and shall not, go over them, they shall still be able to sing even in the midst of the tempest. I would suggest to any here who are in the habit of complaining,—and I would remind you that it is a very bad habit,—and to any of you who have become chronic murmurers, that this temper of mind is exceedingly sinful; while, on the other hand, the remembrance of God’s mercy, and grateful talk about it, is a virtuous habit, one which is honouring to God as well as strengthening and profitable to our own souls. Imitate Jeremiah, then, and if you can find no comfort in your present outward circumstances, meditate upon the unfailing mercies of God.
What a blessed word that is which the prophet here uses, “compassions “! David uses the word “pity” more frequently, but he means the same thing. It is a humbling word, though exceedingly consolatory. I have often felt very deeply chastened in my own soul at the remembrance of the text, “Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” What! is this the Lord’s attitude towards even the strongest and the best of saints? Does God only pity them? Yes, it is even so; those that do exploits, those that lead the van in the day of battle, those to whom we look up with respect and admiration, God looks upon with infinite love, but that love still takes the form of pity. He can see their weakness where we only see their strength; he can discover their defects where we merely admire the work of the Holy Spirit in them; and therefore he regards them with pity. Yet it is a Father’s pity, the pity of a Father who smiles at the weakness of the child, knowing that the attempt which it is making, though a feeble one, will educate ‘it for something better; and foreseeing that it will, by-and-by, outgrow its weakness, and be able to do greater things.
God has compassion for the best of his people, but it is compassion prompted by love. It is not the pity that is akin to scorn, but the pity which melts from love, as the honey drops from the honeycomb. I would again ask our dear friends who are tried and troubled to think of the infinite pity of God towards them. He has smitten you; but, still, not as hard as he might have done; out of pity he has stayed his hand. He has spoken sharply to you through your own conscience; but if he had spoken as loudly as your sins deserved, there would have been loud thunder-claps instead of gentle admonitions. He has withered your gourds; but if he had done to you what stern justice might have demanded, it would not have been the gourd that would have withered, but you yourself would have wasted away.
Admire the compassion of God toward you. Even if one child in your family is sick, they are not all sick. If the Lord has taken away one of your friends by death, there are many other friends still left to cheer and comfort you. You have had heavy losses in business, but you are not a bankrupt. You are not in good health; but, still, you have not been stricken with the diseases which have attacked some others, your pain is bearable. It is true that the weather is dull and heavy to your spirit, but it is not the blackness of “the valley of the shadow of death.” Take heart even in the midst of affliction and chastisement, for the compassion of God is still to be seen.
Moved by such thoughts as these, the prophet penned the remarkable words before us: “His compassions are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.” I have been admiring the first sentence of the text, which suggests to me the novelties of divine mercy; and as I speak upon it, I mean to get you to preach to yourselves, to wake up your recollections, to ask you to turn over a few pages in your old pocket-books, to make you look at your diaries, and remember what God has done for you since you first savingly knew his name.
I. First, then, I want to remind you that God’s mercies are always novelties: “They are new every morning.”
The water that is in the cistern may be sufficient for a long time; but if it is stored, it will not remain fresh. It may have been fresh the first morning it flowed into the cistern, but it will not be fresh to-morrow; and the longer it lasts, the more stagnant will it become. But the water that gushes from the spring-head is always fresh. I drank of it when I was a boy, I went to it in the prime of manhood, I stoop to drink of it now that my hair is turning grey; and still it is as fresh and sparkling as ever. God is not the cistern, but the fountain. Our treasures, which we lay up on earth, are the stagnant pools; but the treasure which God gives us from heaven, in providence and in grace, is the crystal fount which wells up from the eternal deeps, and is always fresh and always new. There are no grey hairs upon the Angel of the covenant, no wrinkles upon his brow; I may say of him what the spouse in Solomon’s Song says of her Beloved, “His looks are bushy, and black as a raven.” Mercy is as old as eternity, and is ever God’s darling attribute; yet it is always young, and active, and bright and fair. Mercy is not a tree that yields its fruit but once in the year; our trees bear such fruit as that, which may be stored through the winter, and be kept till, perhaps, it becomes rotten. But the mercy of God is like the tree of life, which beareth its fruit every month; at all times and at all seasons we may have a share of the compassions of God, and we shall find that “they are new every morning.”
The thought that God’s mercy is always new is a pleasing one, but that it is new every morning is very wonderful. If you had to preach, year after year, as some of us do, you would find it no small difficulty to have something new to say every Sunday; but God has something new for us every morning. I suppose the writers in our newspapers often have to exercise their brains to give us something new every day; but God, with the greatest ease, sends to the many millions of his people something new every morning. He does not need to repeat himself. If he sends the same mercy, there is something about it which shows it to be fresh and new. God never gives us old money that has been worn and defaced; his mercy always comes to us fresh from the mint with all the brightness and clearness of new coinage. “His compassions are new every morning;” not only some mornings, but every morning, from the first of January to the last of December. God never has to stay his hand; he never has to pause to think of something fresh; but his mercies come to us freely, spontaneously, “new every morning.” Let us think for a little while what this means.
In the first place, every morning brings a new mercy, because every morning ends the night. The night is the time of danger and dismay. Why do we ask, concerning the sick one, “How did he pass the night? “yet we seldom enquire, “How did he pass the day?” Is it not because, somehow or other, we connect the night with the idea of insecurity and danger? We wear the image of death upon our faces while we sleep, and how slight the difference is between a sleeping man and a dead man is plain to all beholders. Every morning we may say, “What a mercy that our bed did not become our tomb! What a mercy that, in the night, we were not alarmed with fire, that our couch Was not consumed, and ourselves in it; that the house was not broken into by wicked men; that no convulsions of nature terrified us; that no cry of anguish, like the shrieks that woke up every parent in Egypt, was heard in our house because our child was dying!” Such cries have been heard by some of us, and we have had dreadful nights which we never shall forget, let us live as long as we may; but every morning in which we wake without such alarms and terrors, or after a quiet, restful night in which God gives to his beloved sleep, we have had a new mercy, and we may at once look up to the Lord, and say, “We praise thee that another night is gone; thy mercies are new every morning.”
But every morning also brings a new mercy, because every morning ushers in another day. That is a new reason for praise, for we have no right to an hour, or even a minute, much less to a day. To the sinner, especially, it is a great mercy to have another day of grace, another opportunity for repentance, a new reprieve from death, a little more space in which to escape from hell, and fly to heaven. Ah, soul! suppose thou hadst never seen the light of another rising sun, but hadst heard instead thereof the dreadful sentence, “Depart, accursed one, into the darkness which shall never be pierced by a ray of light,” how terrible would have been thy portion, so what a mercy it is that thou art still spared!
The Christian may thank God that he has another day in which he may walk with God as Enoch did, another day in which he may trust God as Abraham did, another day in which he may work for Christ as Paul did, another day in which he may reap the gospel harvest, another day in which he may gather pearls for Immanuel’s crown, another day in which he may be ripening for glory, another day in which he may hold communion with his Lord, another day in which he may be making advances in the blessed pilgrimage towards the Celestial City. God gives us our days; may he teach us their value, for they are pearls of great price; and then, as each new morning breaks, we may truly say to him, “Thy mercies are new every morning, for the morning has brought us another day.”
Further, a new mercy comes to us each morning, at least to the most of us, because each morning brings supplies for the day. I have often thought to myself, “What a mercy it is to know that, when I wake, there is a breakfast provided for me!” There are many, alas! who do not know whence their first meal in the day is to come. That is a sorrowful thing, and a very trying discipline; but it is certainly not the case with the most of us, for we always have enough for the next day in our cupboard. When we rise in the morning, we are not quite like the sparrows, who have to seek their food; they begin to chirp as soon as they wake; there is nothing in their barn, yet they sing, as Luther understood them,—
“Mortal, cease from care and sorrow,
God provideth for the morrow.”
Then they set to work to find their daily bread; and find it they do, for God feeds the fowls of heaven, and your day’s provision is waiting for you. There is the manna for you outside the camp, and you know where to gather it. As you do so, remember the mercy of the Lord, and bless his holy name.
But you say that you have not all you could wish to have, and therefore you are not happy. Ah, dear friends, let us all obey the apostle’s injunction, “Having food and raiment let us be therewith content;” and let us all learn the lesson of which the apostle wrote, “I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content. I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need.”
Let me again remind you—because: I am afraid some of you, especially those of you who have abundance, do not always remember it,—that you are daily dependent upon God’s providence, that you as much receive your daily bread from God as if the ravens brought it, that you as certainly obtain all that you receive from the hand of God as if it dropped from the clouds, or as if the winds brought you quails. Be thankful, then, that, as each day brings to your household fresh needs for daily bread, and clothing, and shelter, God is pleased also to give such mercies as you need every morning.
In spiritual things, my brethren, and sisters in Christ, how richly may the text be illustrated! “His compassions are new every morning,” because every morning I commit fresh sins. Strange creature that I am, I can scarcely open my eyes to the light ere my complex nature begins to display the darkness that still lingers within me! Miserable mass of humanity that I am by nature, I can hardly breathe without offending in the thoughts and imaginations of my heart; and even though I may watch my eyes, and guard my tongue, and keep the members of my body pure, yet still my heart goeth a-wandering, and my tongue ere long speaketh idle words! Yet the mercy is that, with the new sin, there always comes the new pardon, for “his compassions are new every morning.” So, ere we leave our bed-chamber, we go afresh to the
“Fountain fill’d with blood,
Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,”—
and once again we wash’, and are clean. When we go forth to our business, and tug and toil to earn an honest living, we are all too prone to wander from our God; yet, even then, we may still think of our blessed Master, who girded himself with a towel, poured water into a basin, and washed his disciples’ feet, and then said that they were clean every whit. We are like those disciples, for our daily pollutions need a daily cleansing. We have been once washed in the precious blood of Jesus, and so are clean in the sight of God; but we need to be daily cleansed from our daily defilements, and every morning brings us this grace.
Then, we scarcely leave our bed-chamber, nay, we do not leave it, before the new morning brings new temptations. Some mornings especially bring us temptations that we have never experienced before; insinuations gain an entrance into our mind which never perplexed us till that moment. We scarcely know how to deal with them; and young Christiana especially are often staggered when these diabolical shafts are winging their way towards them. Then, when we go downstairs to begin the duties of the day, we do not know how long we shall be before we shall be sorely tempted to sin. If we did but know at what hour the tempter would come, we might be on the watch for him; but, lo! Satan and sin come like a thief in the night. The time when a child of God is most likely to be tempted to sin is when he is in the holiest frame of mind. You may think that is an odd remark, but I make it as the result of my own experience. I have often found that, when I have been nearest to God in prayer, or when I have most enjoyed a service, I have just then been met by somebody who said something cross, or wicked, or unkind, and I have been tempted to answer, and perhaps have answered, in a way for which I have afterwards been sorry. If you are like me, beloved, you know that, after having been lifted up by some ecstatic experience, you are not well prepared to meet these contrary individuals; so that, in your moments of highest joy, something may occur to cause your feet to trip.
Well, now, it is such a mercy for me to remember that, when I begin each new morning, though I cannot tell what temptations may come to me, I do know that God’s mercies are new every morning; and, therefore, that there will be fresh grace to enable me to resist the fresh temptations. We may rest assured that we shall be taken with no temptation but such as is common to man, and that God will, with the temptation, also make a way of escape for us. Put on the whole gospel armour; and then, let the shafts of the tempter fall where they may, they shall not wound you; or if a wound be received by you, between the joints of your harness there is a tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, and a heavenly hand shall reach down those healing leaves that your wounds may be stanched. Let us be glad, then, that there is daily grace to enable us to overcome daily temptations.
We do not completely know, when we wake in the morning, what will be the particular tasks of the day, for each new day brings new duties. Even though we should know completely, as we do know in part, the service appointed for the day, yet it would be a sad thing to wake up to new duties and new responsibilities if we had not also new strength with which to discharge them. Every day brings a new duty, or it may be an old duty in a new shape, cast in another mould. All that I did yesterday cannot exonerate me if I am idle to-day, and all the service that I did for my Master a year ago will not excuse me if I waste this year. I must take each hour of time on the wing, and I must seek to get wealth from it as it passes by me. This is your consolation, beloved, that there shall be daily strength given to you for the daily duty to which God calls you. Depend upon it, if God will allow us to work or fight for him, he will not let us go in our own strength or at our own charges, but he will provide his soldiers with suitable weapons, and he will provide the workers in his vineyard with the best tools for their service. There is daily grace, then, for daily duties.
I might go on to mention that each day will bring its trials, anxieties, and necessities, but I should also have to remind you that each morning brings the promise, “As thy days,”—note that the word is in the plural; not, as so many misquote it, “As thy day,” but “As thy days, so shall thy strength be.” As long as days shall last, and till time shall be swallowed up in eternity, God’s compassions shall be new every morning, to meet our new needs, our new relations, our new responsibilities, our new temptations, and our new sins.
II. Now I will try to illustrate this subject in another light, for this text is very like a kaleidoscope; you may turn it as many times as you will, and there will constantly be a fresh form of beauty to be seen. Remember therefore that, sometimes, the mercies we receive are actually new in themselves.
You must all have had certain periods in your lives when new mercies were bestowed upon you. I cannot mention them all; but just think of the Ebenezers, the stones of help, all along your pathway; and the stones of Bethel that you have set up after some distinguishing favours which have made such days and nights memorable to you. Such mercies as these have been new in a peculiarly special sense.
Sometimes, the mercy is new in substance; you have received what you never received before. At other times, the mercy is not so much new in substance as it is new in the way of its coming. I am sure that, yesterday, when, after praying for the last two or three months that God would remember the various works we have in hand, we received a thousand pounds for the Stockwell Orphanage from some unknown donor, I felt that it was a new mercy of a very special character. Money has been sent to me, many times, for the Lord’s work under my charge, but it has each time been sent in a different way, or in a different form, and each time it has well-nigh overwhelmed me. When I heard of the generous gift yesterday, I was sitting with a dear brother, who had just been saying to me, “My dear friend, there are some people who say, ‘Our brother Spurgeon does not know where to stop; he is always going on from one good thing to another; if he should make a failure, it would be a very dreadful thing?’ Now,” said my friend, “don’t you think it would be a great catastrophe? What a large amount is required for the College! “and then he mentioned other things, and closed by saying, “Suppose there should be a failure in the income! “I said, “I never suppose any such thing; I have no purpose to serve, and no end to gain, and no motive in carrying on all these institutional, but God’s glory. I was forced into these works against my will, and God cannot leave me; he must carry on the work, and I am persuaded that he will do so; my motto is Jehovah Jireh.” Just at that moment, the post came, and the letter was opened which told me about the thousand pounds. My friend said, “My dear brother, let us kneel down, and praise the Lord for his mercy;” and so we did, and with many tears he thanked God, oh! in such a warm-hearted manner, and he evidently felt how foolish it was to talk about things failing that are undertaken for God, because God is sure to help us. My friend said it was a blessed means of grace to him, and that he should recollect that day as one of the choice days in his life, in which God had showed that he would help those who, in his name, undertake work for the poor and needy, and try to aid his cause. Well, now, was not that a new mercy? It was not a new thing for us to receive help, but the mercy came in a new way; and it is in such a fashion as this that God’s mercies “are new every morning.”
Then, sometimes, when you do not get the mercy in exactly a new way, yet it seems new to you because you are in a new condition. You have more knowledge, and can better comprehend the value of the mercy. You have more experience, and can better understand your own need of the mercy. The mercy which comes to a young man of twenty has a special brightness about it; the mercy which comes to the same man at seventy may not have so much sparkle about it, but there will be, I think, if the man is a full-grown, Christian,—and age is not always identical with growth in grace,—a deeper and more solemn sense of obligation when the mercy comes to him. As we advance in life, the glitter of our thoughts may depart, but the solid gold of them will remain, and increase and multiply; that is to say, if we do really grow mature in spirit as well as old in years. The Lord grant that we may! I am sure that the light in which the aged Christian man regards a mercy is, in some respects, a different light from that in which the young man regards it. The babe in grace is very grateful for God’s mercy, and sees that the mercy is very precious; but the full-grown man in Christ Jesus has a gratitude of a far richer and deeper kind. Thus, the mercy of God is new to us because we see it in a new light, and it finds us in a new state.
III. Now, thirdly, to come to the practical point of my discourse, I want to ask this question,—As God’s mercies are new every morning, what then?
Then I call upon you for new praise. I ask, in the name of Jesus Christ, whose new mercies you and I, my brethren and sisters, are always receiving, that our hearts and our lips should praise him hour by hour, and even moment by moment. Weave new crowns for Christ. Sing new sonnets in honour of his blessed person, and of the mercies which so constantly flow to us from him.
“Thy mercy, my God, is the theme of my song,
The joy of my heart, and the boast of my tongue;
Toy free grace alone, from the first to the last,
Hath won my affections, and bound my soul fast.
“Great Father of mercies! thy goodness I own,
And the covenant love of thy crucified Son;
All praise to the Spirit, whose whisper divine
Seals mercy, and pardon, and righteousness mine!”
I ask you not merely for praise in words, but for praise in new actions, which shall speak far more loudly than words. Be not content with what you have already done for God, but out of gratitude to him be constantly doing something new if it is possible. As the soldier seeks to be ever pressing forward, so let us be ever trying to do more and more for God. Let us be even as the eagle when he soars to the skies, continually circling higher and higher. God grant that we may not rest on our laurels, saying, “We did so-and-so when we were young,” or “We gave so much yesterday to the cause of God;” but, as the new mercies continue to come to us, let there constantly be on our part new returns of service for God.
And I ask not only for new actions, but also for new faith. Let every new mercy confirm our confidence in the God of mercy. All these compassions of our covenant-keeping God are so many swift witnesses against our unbelief. All these lovingkindnesses of the Lord are so many strong evidences for the confirmation of our confidence in him. God may well say to us, “At what time have I been false to you? Have I received you for a season, and then cast you away? Have I been slack in blessing you? Have I stinted you in mercy? Have I withheld my lovingkindness from you?” You dare not say that God has been illiberal towards you. His mercies have been “new every morning.” Shall God then have to say to you, “Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices: but thou hast made me to serve with thy sins, thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities”? Let not the Lord have to upbraid us thus, but let our grateful enquiry be, “What shall we render unto the Lord for all his benefits towards us?” and so let us give him new praise, new gratitude, and new service to prove our gratitude.
I ask you then for new confidence in God; or if you cannot mount so high as that, at any rate I ask all here who have proved the faithfulness of God to offer to him new prayers. If you have been heard by him already, pray to him again. The beggar in the street says to you, “Help me this time, and I will never ask you again to help me.” Talk not like that, O thou who beggest at God’s door of mercy; but—
“From his mercy draw a plea,
And ask him still for more.”
“Open thy mouth wide, and I will fill it,” is the Lord’s gracious exhortation and promise. Spread thy wings, and soar away to the very throne of God, and then expect that he will still exceed thy faith, and do for thee exceeding abundantly above all that thou dost ask or even think.
Gathering up much matter into a little space, I ask of all Christians the exercise of a holy ingenuity in inventing new plans for honouring Christ. I ask the exercise of a holy perseverance in carrying those plans into action. I ask for the blazing of a holy zeal, every morning, to make the carrying out of those plans to be always earnest and fervent, so that, as the Lord’s lovingkindnesses are new every morning, so also may our grateful recollections and our loving service be.
IV. I have no time left for speaking at length upon the second Sentence of the text, “Great is thy faithfulness,” though I had intended to do so. I shall, therefore, only utter these few remarks upon it.
“Great is thy faithfulness,” so great that there has never been an exception to it. Thou hast never, O Lord, at any time acted towards any one of thy people otherwise than according to truth and righteousness. A man may be quite honest and upright, and yet, if he conducts an extensive business, it will be very difficult for him to escape a charge of having sometimes overstepped the mark. He may never have done so; but, still, it will be very difficult, especially if he has many servants, for him to escape the charge of having done so. But our God has had thousands of millions of people to deal with, throughout all ages, and yet there stands not beneath the cope of heaven, nor yet above the stars, nor in hell itself, a single soul who can say that God, in any transaction, has ever dealt with him otherwise than according to absolute faithfulness.
But, further than that, no item in the whole roll of divine promises to us has been unfulfilled by God. Old Joshua said to the children of Israel, “Not one thing hath failed of all the good things which the Lord your God spake concerning you.” If a man makes many promises, I will defy him to keep them all; because, even if he is both able and willing to keep them, yet he will not always be able to recollect them; but God remembers every promise that he ever made, and he takes care to honour each of those promises in the experience of those who believe in him. They who trust in the Lord shall find him to be faithful, not only in great things, but also in little things. While he keeps the oath of his covenant fast for ever, his faintest word shall abide firm and steadfast, and the least truth which he has ever declared shall never grow dim.
The glory of God’s faithfulness is that no sin of man has ever made him unfaithful. Unbelief is a most damning thing; and yet, even though we believe not, God abideth faithful. His children may rebel against his law, and they may wander far from his statutes, and he may chastise them with many stripes, yet he saith, “My lovingkindness will I not utterly take away from them, nor suffer my faithfulness to fail.” God’s saints may fall under the cloud of his displeasure, and provoke the Most High by their transgressions; yet he will have compassion upon them, and will turn unto them, and say, “I, even I, am he that blotteth out their transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember their sins.” So, no sin of man can make God unfaithful.
“Let us then, with gladsome mind,
Praise the Lord, for he is kind:
For his mercies shall endure.
Ever faithful, ever sure.”
And, once again, no exigence, that can by any possibility ever arise, can compel God to be unfaithful to his people. Even though the whole world should go to wreck and ruin, yet he would still bear up the pillars of his people’s hope. When his saints cannot be safe under heaven, he will take them up to heaven. When he shall bid the great fountains of fire leap up to consume this world, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, if we are alive and remain at the coming of the Son of man, we shall be caught up together with the Lord in the air. God provided an ark for Noah before he sent the deluge, and he had a mountain refuge ready for Lot before he destroyed Sodom. If David must be driven from the court of Saul, he shall be sheltered in Engedi; and if, by-and-by, the Philistines shall come up against the land, God will still take care of his servant. At the worst pinch, God will always be there; you may reckon it as certain that he has never forgotten his people. When the clock strikes, and the bell tolls the hour, God will arise for their defence, and show himself to be strong on behalf of all those who put their trust in him.
Settle it in your minds, beloved, that God cannot lie. Believe every man to be a liar if you must, but never believe that God can fail you. If thou speakest in thy soul after this fashion, “Sometimes I see the wicked prosper, and I am in tribulation and distress, and my spirit saith, ‘Hath God forgotten me? Will he give all the good things to those who curse him, and cause his people to be chastened evermore?’ ” say that to thyself very softly, and then add, “Yet, though all things seem thus contrary to the Lord’s people, I know that God is good to Israel, even to such as are of a clean heart.” Say, with Job, “Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him.… The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.” Say, with old Eli, “It is the Lord: let him do what seemeth him good.” “In quietness and in confidence shall be your strength.” “Trust in the Lord, and do good; so shalt thou dwell in the land, and verily thou shalt be fed.” “Cast not away therefore your confidence, which hath great recompense of reward.” Hold to your faith as the ancient warrior clung to his shield, for therein lies your safety. God help you still to cling to him,! When you cannot rejoice in the light of his countenance, trust in the shadow of his wings, and even there, like David, you shall find a safe retreat.
Here I leave the subject with you far your private meditations, and pray God to quicken in every one of his people a life of holy joy and confidence. Oh, that all of you whom I am addressing knew at least something of the experiences of God’s people! You who only live the life of sense, and have no faith in Jesus, little know what I mean; for, though I have talked largely of the sorrows of God’s people, yet the joys of faith are unspeakable. One drop of God’s love would sweeten a sea of gall. Ay, I was almost about to say that even the pangs of hell would lose their bitterness if a drop of the love of Christ could once flow there, and be tasted by those who are lost.
Christian, you know already what it is to find roses among the thorns, and to prove your pangs and your sufferings to be soul-enriching things, messengers from the King bringing you unto his banquet of wine, and leading you to the discovery of the treasures which he has laid up for you. You know this; so tell it to the ungodly, and mayhap their mouths will be set a-watering after the good things of Christ’s table. When they once long for them, they shall have them, for Christ never refuses a hungry one; and if there be such an one here, a poor, empty, destitute soul, remember, dear friend, that mercy’s door stands ever open, and that Christ, the Host of the Gospel Inn, stands always ready to receive every soul that comes, having written this gracious promise over the door of the Inn, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.”
THE BEAUTY OF THE OLIVE TREE
A Sermon
Published on Thursday, December 16th, 1909,
delivered by
C. H. SPURGEON,
at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,
On Thursday Evening, April 17th, 1879.
“His beauty shall be as the olive tree.”—Hosea 14:6.
Our present object* will be to bring out the resemblance in point of beauty between the godly man and the olive tree: but please to note that the parallel does not hold good of all who profess and call themselves Christians; it is only true of those whose backsliding has been healed, to whom the Lord has been as a refreshing dew. It is the believer in a healthy, growing, and useful condition whose beauty is “as the olive tree.”
Things of beauty were evidently intended to be gazed upon. God created beauty on purpose that it might enchain our eyes, rivet our attention, and command our thoughts. Whether it be the beauty of a tree or the beauty of a man, it was meant to be a joy for ever; and this it cannot be if it is left unnoticed. Beautiful objects are intended to be thought upon, and spoken of; and we shall not be doing ill if we now consider and commend a Christian. We shall be doing no dishonour to the Master if we admire the disciple, if we confess, at the very outset, that our whole intent is, not to magnify believers, but to glorify God in them. There is no beauty in anything which charms our eye but what the Creator has put upon it; and, assuredly, there is no spiritual beauty about any man but what the Holy Spirit has wrought in him, “for we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works.” If the olive tree be beautiful, we are not so doting as to fall down and worship it; and if a man be made comely by the grace of God, we do not worship the man, but we praise the Lord on his behalf. Glory be to God who has done such marvellous things for poor human nature that he has made it lovely,—so lovely that even he himself beholds a beauty in it; for be it remembered that the text is not the word of a prophet alone, but the word of Jehovah himself, who says, “I will be as the dew unto Israel; … and his beauty shall be as the olive tree.”
Having spent many months under the olive trees of the Riviera, my soul hath them still in remembrance. From morning till sunset I have rested in the peaceful groves; at one time basking in the sunshine, and anon seeking the shade to escape the heat of the sun which gave to the invalid summer in the months of winter. The very colour of the olive tree rests the eye. I delight in its emerald grey, its silver green, its unique foliage; and the song of the birds which sing among its branches refreshes the ear. As I have looked upon the olive trees, and thought of them over and over again, my mind has sought for matter whereby I might edify the people of God. Ever have my observations been made with that desire; and as I now present them to my readers, it is with many prayers that they may minister grace to those who read them.
I. The believer in a healthy spiritual state, refreshed by the Holy Ghost as with the dew of heaven, has a beauty like to that of the olive tree in this respect, that it is a beauty which grows upon you.
Louis Figuier, in his “Vegetable World,” says peremptorily, “The olive is of a sober greyish green aspect, and without beauty, having a rugged stunted aspect.” We demur to this verdict, but we freely admit that, at first sight, there is little or nothing attractive about the olive tree. We have even heard persons pronounce it an unsightly tree which has quite disappointed them. We were sure that they had never sought its company, and conversed with it hour after hour as we have done, or they would not have spoken so slightingly of what we have found “a gracious tree for fruit, for leaf, for flower.” Truth to tell, it is not the most shapely of the sons of the forest; and though the trees, as we are told in Jotham’s parable, sought it for a king, it does not, like Saul, lift its head above its fellows; neither does it, like Absalom, claim to be praised beyond all others for comeliness. It is not a tree which would at once strike the beholder with admiration., like some giant oak, or lofty elm; nor charm him with its elegance, like a weeping willow; nor astonish him with its grandeur, like a cedar of Lebanon. In order to perceive its beauty, you must linger a little. You must look, and look again; and then, if you do not at last feel a deep respect for the olive, and a quiet delight in its beauty, it must be because you are not of a thoughtful spirit, or else because you have little poetry in your soul. The more familiar you become with the olive tree, the more will you take pleasure in it.
Now all this is also abundantly true of the lively Christian who is full of the grace of God. He may not at first charm you. Your prejudices may lead you to avoid, if not to oppose him. He appears to be somewhat singular, and perhaps rugged. He differs materially from the rest of mankind, for he does not run with the multitude, and you are apt to think that his singularity is an affectation. Possibly, at first, he is somewhat cold and distant in his manner towards you. That is the way of many Christians until they know those to whom they are speaking, for they do not wish to cast their pearls before swine. As you watch them, you will perhaps, at first sight, see more of their imperfections than of their virtues; it being a habit with them not to parade their own attainments, either by wearing professional phylacteries or by sounding a trumpet before them;. They often put their worst foot foremost out of the very desire not to be seen of men in any Pharisaic fashion. Persevere, however, in observing the spiritual man, and you will surely see much that is beautiful about him. Look, and look again; and, perhaps, in time you will come to admire as an excellence that which you now think to be a defect. Be not in a hurry; the best things are not usually glittering and superficial in their attractions. A Christian man is assuredly the noblest work of God. In heaven itself, there standeth nothing superior in the way of creatureship to a man of God; and on earth, there is nought that can match him. Watch thou, therefore, the believer in Jesus, for his moral beauty will repay your study.
The olive grove is, to my mind, supremely lovely when the sun darts his beams through it in long slants of brightness, so that you see here a golden lane of light, and there a mass of silver shadows directly beneath the trees. I do not know anything that charms me more than to look into the mottled shadow and light created by the irregular planting of a forest of olive trees; they are all the more delightful because of their disorder, and the varied dark and bright hues which meet the eye, and gratify it with their exquisite chequer work. In like manner, when Christians enjoy the light of God’s countenance, and it is sunny weather with them, then will you see their beauty if you have true spiritual insight. When their faith is flourishing, and their hope is beaming; when their love is full of verdure, and the joy of the Lord flashes on them; then, if you have a spiritual eye for such beauty as angels care to gaze upon, you will wish to be numbered with good men, and to mingle in their sacred society.
Perhaps the finest idea of the beauty of olive trees is obtained when you see them in a mass. Stand upon the open common at Bordighera, and look beneath you towards Ventimille and Mentone, marking where the mountains shelve to the sea, and all their sides are clothed with olive groves, and you will clap your hands with delight. Before you is a very sea of olives, with billowy waves of silver verdure, reaching as far as the eye can see; with here and there a stately palm uprising above them all. Even thus, when we shall be privileged to look upon the entire Church of God, gathered in one countless multitude at the last, what a sight it will be! Then shall all the trees of the wood sing out before the Lord, and the mountains and the hills shall join their rapturous song. What a sight will that complete Church be to the pure eyes of holy men when they see all the trees of the Lord’s right hand planting standing together in one glorious garden far excelling Eden before the Fall! Yes, the perfection of the Church of God, and of each individual member of it, will be seen at the last when the separated ones shall be gathered together in one great general assembly, and the beauty of holiness shall be over them all. Till then, let us always believe that Christian men are lovely objects to look upon. Some seek the company of the rich and the great, but it is cold comfort that any will gain from mere rank and birth. Some delight in the society of the witty; but their sparks, though they glitter for a moment, are too soon extinguished to minister comfort to mourning spirits. Some delight to associate with those who are highly esteemed among men; but, surely, he is wiser who selects his companions from those who are precious in the sight of the Lord. O beloved, whatever others may say of the people of God, and of the Church of God, let us each one say,—
“There my best friends, my kindred, dwell,
There God my Saviour reigns.”
There, then, is the first point of resemblance between the beauty of a Christian and the beauty of the olive tree, it grows upon you; the more you are with the excellent of the earth, the more will you delight in them.
II. Secondly, in the case both of the olive tree and of the Christian, it is a beauty of a very sober kind.
The colour of the olive foliage is a grey green; or, if you will, an emerald drab. I do not quite know how to speak of it, but would remind you that it belongs to the same family as the ash, and is of somewhat similar colour, only of a lighter green, one side of the leaf being much paler than the other. I have heard giddy people observe that the olive groves are very dreary; these are the ladies and gentlemen who prefer the fashionable esplanades, where they can display their finery; or the deadly gambling saloons of Monte Carlo, where they can ruin others, or be themselves ruined. Everyone to his taste; ours lies in another direction. In an olive grove, where all sounds are hushed save the singing of birds, I prefer to sit the livelong day, with a good book, or even without one, and muse the hours away, and feel a deep serenity of soul akin to the everlasting rest. Truly, good Lord,—
“The calm retreat, the silent shade
With prayer and praise agree,
And seem by thy kind bounty made
For those that worship thee.”
If you want to see true beauty, you will find it in the olive gardens, but it will be of a serious quiet type; not the luxurious beauty of the orange or the lemon with their apples of gold, nor that of the goodly cedar with its regal dignity, nor even of the stalwart oak with its glory of strength, much less of the flowers of spring which, in the land of the olive, rival the hues of the rainbow; but an unobtrusive, calm, rugged beauty, dearest to those who seek for restfulness of heart, and shrink from “the madding crowd’s ignoble strife.”
Thus far the olive, and the true believer is like it to the letter. There is nothing showy about him, but much that is serious and reposeful. He has thought of things, and gone to the roots of matters; he has sorrowed under the burden of sin, and the delight he has known in being delivered from it is a deep mysterious joy. His happiness does not display itself like the anemones and wild tulips which grow in such profusion on the terraces of Mentone, but it is content with more subdued tints, which will last when flowers and their comeliness will be forgotten. The true Christian is not always simpering; he can laugh as every honest man can and should, but he is not a constant giggler and hunter after childish merriment, as many are. His is real, substantial, thoughtful happiness, which can bear the test of meditation and examination. He can give a reason for the hope that is in him. He does not need to dance and fiddle in order to enjoy himself; his joy is made of nobler stuff. It is such merriment as angels have when they see prodigal sons returning, and rejoice before the Father’s face. Give me the quiet delight of the genuine Christian. Oh, that acme professors had more of it! Not so fast, good friend, take your joy more calmly! Not quite so much fire and fury; pause for a little thought at least now and then. If you go so fast to-day, you will be out of breath before to-morrow. You are so very sanguine; disappointment, I fear, will tame you into despondency. “Rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for him.” Believe God, act according to the commonsense guidance of faith, and go calmly through the world as God enables you; for, if you do, you will have the beauty of the olive tree, and what would you have more?
III. Thirdly, the beauty of the olive and the beauty of the Christian are alike in this respect, they are ever-abiding. You saw yonder plane or beech, a few months ago, adorned with luxuriant foliage; but there came a chilly blast, and the leaves began to fall; and when you passed, the other day, the tree was like a vessel in a storm, under bare poles; not a green leaf was to be seen. In these wintry days, you will see the trees lifting their naked arms into the frosty air as if they longed to be clothed upon once more. Not so the olive: its leaf is always green, and its branch never bare. No wintry wind ever strips its boughs, and though it looks more full of foliage at some periods than at others, yet it always seems well clad, and in flourishing condition. Perpetually it clothes the bare his as with the downy feathers of the dove’s breast, and knows no nakedness. Such is the true Christian; he is evermore as a green olive tree in the courts of the Lord. You shall find him, not always alike happy, but always blessed; not always alike restful, but still at peace; not always alike useful, but still fruitful, always rejoicing in a blest estate such that, even at his worst, be would not change with the proudest sons of earth. His branches may be at times disturbed and tossed about, but his heart is not troubled, nor his joy taken from him. At bottom, he still believes in God, and rests in the covenant promises, and rejoices in Christ Jesus. Many professors know nothing of this constancy of joy. They rejoice for a season, and then lose their first love. Like the deciduous tree, which puts on its verdure in the early spring, but is stripped in winter, so do they lose their zeal, love, earnestness, and joy. This is not as it should be with you who profess to be God’s children. This is not having the dew of the Lord upon you. Final perseverance is the test of vital godliness. To continue in the truth, grounded and settled, to abide in Christ Jesus, to constantly bring forth the fruits of the Spirit, this it is to be a Christian. Constancy is the beauty and glory of a Christian. We all like the man of whom we can say that we know where to find him; but there are some whom we never know where we can find them, and if we did, they would not be worth finding. He is the man who really adorns his profession who is consistent and persistent, who abides steadfastly in the truth which he has received, and is not “carried about with every wind of doctrine.” The Lord grant unto us the grace to have perpetual spiritual health, which shall be our beauty, just as constant verdure is the beauty of the olive tree!
IV. Let us now notice, in the fourth place, that the beauty of the Christian is like that of the olive tree in its delightful variety.
Each season, each day, and I might almost say each hour, the olive presents a new aspect.
I have recently watched olive trees almost every day for three months, but they always appeared somewhat different, varying in colour and tint as the day was cloudless, overcast, or decidedly wet. Even the position of the sun caused a change in their appearance; and a little wind, turning up the silver side of the leaves, presented a new phase of beauty. After a shower of rain, the green appeared predominant; and on a hot and dusty day, the grey was in the ascendant. In the evening, they sometimes seemed slaty or drab; and another time they wore a silvery sheen. Like certain other colours which vary with the light, the tint of the olive leaf is peculiar in yielding to its surroundings. I cannot describe it, for it does seem as if it followed the mood of nature, and blended it with its own. I do not think I am very fanciful, but it seemed to me that this tree was in wonderful sympathy with the weather, the sun, the sky, the clouds, the morning and the evening.
Even thus, believers in Christ Jesus, if they are the right kind of believers, when you come to know them, have peculiar lights, and shades, and differences of mood and temperament, and in each variation there is beauty. The true Christian is a Christian in all his moods, and therefore is worthy of careful observation. When he is brightly gay, see how grace sobers him: and when he has a heavy heart, see how that same grace brightens his spirit. Watch him in the world, and see how unworldly he is; observe him in the midst of his brethren, and note how unreserved he is, even as a child is at home. On his knees or at his work, in the house of God or in his own home, in, controversy or in communion, at rest or in labour, he is ever the same; yet you constantly see a new phase of his character, and scarcely know which one pleases you the most. There are sometimes strange lights glowing around Christian character; and if you study the biographies of the godly, or watch the living saints, you will continually find fresh charms in them. I am old enough to be weary with observing the imperfections of my brethren and sisters in Christ, and I prefer to spy out their excellences, and to take delight in them. I find it better to think too well of God’s people than to think too ill of them; and better to commend my brethren, and to help them by commending them, than to censure them, and dispirit them by the censure. Do you the same. You will see some beauty even about the feeblest of God’s own people if you will but watch them long enough; and especially if you will study the lives of the saints given to us in the inspired Word, you will not fail to see lights and shades which are only new forms of the same “beauty of holiness.”
The olive tree changes with the seasons. Just before I left Mentone, it had put forth new shoots, slender branches which drooped like the boughs of the weeping willow. In a few weeks, that same olive will be covered with a vast multitude of flowers, little white stars countless in number, somewhat like the flowers of the him. Near each leaf, they tell me, there is a bunch of blossoms with a host of flowerets. The whole tree becomes one great mass of bloom, and whitens the ground with a snowfall of flowers. A very lovely sight is the olive tree in bloom; I do not doubt, however, that the peasants like best to see the fruit. The brown beads of the ripened olive have a beauty too; and when these are gone, the foliage is still attractive. It does not matter to an olive tree whether it is spring, summer, autumn, or winter; it is a thing of beauty and joy all the year round, and every day of the year; and such is the Christian when the dew of the Lord is upon him. He has his changes, but he does not lose his beauty, though men do not always have the eyes to perceive it. Look at David, especially as he is revealed to us in the Book of Psalms. There you see him like a green olive tree in the courts of the Lord. Look at the joy-blossoms that are on him, covering him with a beauteous garment of praise. When you read the 103rd Psalm, and similar joyous odes, he seems to be smothered with the delicious bloom which yields a most pleasing perfume of thanksgiving. Watch him at another time when he is putting forth the green shoots of holy desire, his heart thirsting after God as the panting hart thirsts for the water-brooks, his inmost soul longing to drink a deep draught of the grace that comes from the Most High. Then see him at another time when, as an old man, his fruit grows ripe, and you observe his rich experience, full of unction, bearing fruit unto the Lord. Everywhere David is beautiful, except when he sins; and so are all those who seek to follow David’s Lord, and make him their All-in-all.
Some Christians seem to be always the same. I wish I could be always the same by being always at my best; but it is very bad to be always the same at your worst; and I know some professors who appear to be just like that. They have a faulty string in their harp, yet they always want to play on that string whenever we are with them; indeed, they seem to think that that particular string of theirs is the one upon which we all ought to play; and if our harp-strings do not happen to be faulty like theirs, they fancy that our harp can scarcely be right, that our spot is not the spot of God’s children. Yet you know that, if one child in your family happens to have a defect somewhere or other, you would not think it essential or desirable that every one of your children should have just the same defect. It is well that they should all have the family likeness, but there is no need that there should be a family deformity peculiar to them all. Yet some Christians seem to think that there is such a need. I hardly think that many Christians are always at their worst, though, in another sense, I hope some are, because, if they are ever worse than I have seen them, they must be bad indeed. But I do wish we could all be always as we are at our best; only then I should wish that we could be something even better than that, and keep on ever advancing “till we all come in the unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” Yet it may be that these varying modes of feeling and ways of looking at things are, after all, so far as they are not sinful, the various parts that help to make up the complete beauty of the Christian character.
V. Now, fifthly, (I hope you will not be wearied with so many divisions; I cannot help having them, for the olive tree has so many branches;) another point of resemblance between the olive and the genuine, lively, healthy Christian, and another point of beauty in each case, is individuality.
I think no one ever saw two olive trees that were exactly alike; they are wondrously varied. The twists and turns of the branches, the singular way in which they grow down where you think they never can grow, and the equally remarkable way in which they do not grow where you think they should; the curious shapes and the shapeless shapes that they take I cannot describe to you; it would be necessary for you to see them to understand what I mean. Sometimes, some of the branches seem as if they were turned to serpents, coiling themselves around the bigger branches. The olive trees always appear to me to be in an agony, twisting and turning like one in excruciating pain, as if they remembered the griefs and woes of him who sweat as it were great drops of blood when he agonized beneath the shade of the olives in Gethsemane.
The trunk of the olive is often split into many separate parts, and each part seems to be full of vitality. You scarcely ever see one that appears to be entire; they are rent and torn, as though sundered by volcanic eruptions, and they are turned into all manner of shapes so that no one of them is like its fellows. Here and there, one sees a young tree that seems, for a while, to have a definite shape, and to grow up in some sort of comely form; but you see another, by its side, smaller still, which has not grown three feet above the ground before it takes a twist, and goes down again, and then comes up again once more, forming letters something like a W, or an S, or a V, but never reaching the shape that you would have thought it might have done.
This individuality in the olive tree is a part of the charm of the olive grove; and so it is among Christians. There are certain sets of professing Christiana about who are very much of one type; you must have noticed them if you have gone about with your eyes open. There is a Methodist type, a Particular Baptist type, and a Bible Christian type, and a Church of England type, and many others. Somehow or other, they are out and trimmed according to certain prescribed rules and regulations, like the lines of little olive trees that we pass on our way to Mentone, which have nothing of the grandeur and glory of the beautiful olive groves with which we are familiar. The more we get out of this attempt at securing uniformity, the better will it be for us and for the whole Church of God. Egyptian art laid down certain laws that had to be kept; the nose must bear such-and-such a proportion to the mouth, and the eye must be of just such-and-such a form, and so oh; and, hence, Egyptian art remained for ever where it was. True art knows that there must be individuality, and that no rule can be made of universal application. It is so among Christians. Here is one man who is naturally of a cheerful spirit, yet he condemns himself because he does not mourn like his sorrowful brother over yonder. But, my dear friend, God did not intend you to be like him. Here is another brother who is naturally of a very desponding spirit, and he often blames himself because he has not the exhilaration that he sees manifested in others. My dear friend, you were not to be as they are, and it is no use for you to try to imitate them; be yourself, for that will be much better. I have sometimes compared myself with my fellow-Christians until I have felt, not only humbled, which is a good thing; but I have become despondent, which is a bad thing; and I have found that the better plan is to remember that, in a great house, there are many different kinds of vessels, and they are not all of the same size or shape because they are not all to be put to the same use. In a large garden, there are various orders of flowers, and they are not all of the same colour, neither do all exhale the same perfume, neither do their seeds, when they come to perfection, all assume the same form. So is it among Christians; there are some who sing sweet, solemn melodies with a strain of despondency always running through their matchless music; for, to me, it seems the sweetest of all harmonies. There are others who are more like the lark; for, as they sing, they soar. The Countess of Huntingdon was a singer of this sort, and therefore she sang,—
“Teach me some melodious sonnet,
Sung by flaming tongues above.”
Well, shall I chide the lark because it is not a nightingale, or the linnet because it sings not like the canary or the goldfinch? No; let every bird have its own distinct note, let every flower have its own special hue, let every tree have its own peculiar form; and let all the Lord’s people grow as they are guided by the divine nature that is in them, and then one shall grow in this shape, and another shall grow in that style, and others shall grow differently from either of them. Although there is not one olive tree that is exactly like another, yet all the olives are olives, and you never mistake them for any other tree; and, in like manner, though no one Christian is exactly like another in all respects, yet they are all Christians, and you should not be able to mistake them for worldlings. The all-important matter is not that you should be like me, or that I should be like you, but that both of us should be like Christ. “Ah! but then,” you say, “we shall be like each other, shall we not?” No; it is strange, but it is quite true that Christians may be like Christ, and yet very little like each other. There may be a thousand minor diversities in the imitators of the one great Exemplar, and the individuality of every one of them shall be as definite as the identity of the whole of them as followers of Christ.
VI. Sixthly, much of the beauty of an olive tree, and much of the beauty of a Christian is found in the fact that the olive tree is full of life, and so is the Christian.
In the olive, it seems to be always a struggling life. It is true that it is full of life; but, as you get a glimpse of some olive trees, you say to yourself, “That tree must have had a hard time of it.” The gnarled and knotted old trunk is split up just as if an axe had been driven through it. You can see the white wood inside, and on the surface the rugged bark appears in places as if it were rotten, yet you find that it is still alive. Then you see the branches that grow out of these various divisions of the trunk twisting, and twirling, and wriggling in and out as if they lived in perpetual agony, for they have to draw oil out of the flinty rock. It would involve much hard labour for men to accomplish that task, yet the olive tree is continually doing it, yielding the precious oil which not only makes the face of man to shine, but which supplies him with food and light the whole year round. This the olive tree often does in a sterile soil where there appears to be no nourishment for it whatever. It seems as if the olive tree, though always in an agony, is always full of life. It is not an easy matter to kill an olive tree; even if you hew it down, yet leave the stump, or a portion of its roots in the ground, it will begin to sprout and grow again. If you let the tree stand for a thousand years or more, it will still bring forth fruit in old age; and when it is at last worn out and decayed, its children will have grown up into a fruitful grove all around it.
The olive must live, and it will live; and, to my mind, it is one of the beauties of the olive tree that, under the sternest circumstances, it seems invincibly to live; and that is also the glory of a true Christian, he must live, and will live. The grace of God within him will enable him to live when men would think he must die. Persecute him, but the axe, or the stake, or even the lions have no terrors for him. Try to crush the Church of Christ, and the more you try to crush it, the more it will live and flourish. Seek to exterminate the Christians, and in the futile attempt you shall multiply them like the stars of the sky or the sands of the seashore. There is no way of killing the life of God when it is once implanted in the heart of a believer in Jesus. All the devils in hell, if they set all their demoniacal powers to work to blow out the feeblest light that ever glowed in a Christian’s heart, could not put it out even if they took an age to do it. The Christian must live, and must grow, and must be verdant, and must bring forth fruit unto God. I love, therefore, to study the lives of believers, and to watch the struggles of the saints of God. You may study this conflict in your own heart, and see how the divine life within you struggles on under affliction, and adversity, and trial, and temptation, and conquers all. You may watch it also in your fellow-Christians who are poor, and despised, who have to suffer much sickness, and pain, and weakness, and who, perhaps, are bed-ridden year after year; yet you will see how the divine life lives still and triumphs over all obstacles. Is there not a wondrous beauty in it upon which we delight to look, and for which we praise God with all our hearts?
VII. Now, seventhly,—and coming to the number of perfection, we come to that which the olive tree might well regard as its greatest beauty, namely, its fruitfulness.
“Oh, yes!” the peasant says, “the olive is a beautiful tree, for it bears its berries full of oil, and the olive crop is the best crop that can possibly be grown.” There is no known root or seed that can be grown by the most skilful farming that can produce anything like so much return in a year as the olive doles with little or no labour from its proprietor. It simply stands still, and makes him rich. When he eats his bread, he uses no butter or animal fat as we do, but he spreads a little olive oil upon it, and so is nourished by it. When he lights his lamp at night, he does not use the pungent petroleum that we burn, but he takes some good sweet olive oil, and so gets all the light he needs. Mosquitoes and other insects sting him, or he has some irritation of his skin, and he anoints his flesh with oil, and obtains immediate relief. When he is sick, or his body is wounded, he anoints himself with oil, and it proves to be one of the best medicines in the world; and, at any rate, it is not so disagreeable as some of the medicines of modern invention. If ho is working a machine, the olive oil helps to prevent both the danger and the discomfort caused by the friction. In fact, the man puts the tree to so many uses that he says it is a lovely tree because its fruitfulness helps him in so many ways.
In like manner, the most beautiful Christian in the world is the most fruitful one. Our old proverb is true, “Handsome is that handsome does;” and, in the sight of God, those who do the most good works, and who thus most glorify their Father who is in heaven, are the most lovely of all Christians. It is not every Christian who is lovely in this way; but if you have the “dew” of which this chapter speaks, if the roots of your spiritual nature are refreshed by the river of the water of life, and if, by blessed fellowship with God, and the entire consecration of your body, soul, and spirit to him, you bring forth an abundance of fruit unto God, then you have the beauty of the olive tree, whose greatest glory is its fruitfulness.
You may, perhaps, have stood in an orchard in the autumn when the apples are getting rosy red, and are weighing down the boughs, so that they would break if the owner did not prop them up; or you may have been in a cottager’s garden, and he has said to you, “Look at that tree, sir; ain’t it a beauty?” Possibly, you had not been thinking of the beauty of the tree, for you were admiring some of the lovely flowers that were growing at your feet; but the cottager does not care much about them, but he does care about those apples which are so abundant. After a good look at the tree so well laden with ruddy-cheeked fruit, you agree with him, for there is a practical beauty in the tree’s fruitfulness. Try to have that beauty, dear friends. To be commended for the eloquent way in which you speak, or for the elegant way in which you dress, or for the admirable way in which you practise deportment, is praise that is empty as the wind; but to be useful in your day and generation, to glorify God by doing something to benefit your fellow-creatures, instructing the ignorant, helping the poor and needy, bringing the lost and erring ones to the feet of Jesus, is a practical kind of beauty that is worth having. Let your beauty in this respect be as the olive tree.
VIII. Eighthly, the beauty of the olive tree often lies in its progeny.
The writer of the 128th Psalm says of the man who feareth the Lord, and walketh in his ways, “Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.” If you have ever been in the olive groves, you must frequently have noticed, around the parent olive tree, two, three, four, sometimes as many as eight, ten, or twelve little trees all growing up from the old root, some of them also beginning to bear fruit, and standing there ready, when the old tree in the middle is taken away, to do all they can to supply its place. I have occasionally seen an olive tree felled, and the white trunk left flat just like a table, with several little trees growing all around it; and that sight seemed to bring the text I just quoted very vividly to my mind, “thy children like olive plants round about thy table.” May your children, beloved, be like young olive trees springing up around your table, to bring forth fruit unto God when you have done with fruit-bearing; or even, like the old and young olive trees, may you all be fruitful together! It is to me a very beautiful sight to see a godly man succeeded by gracious sons and daughters. It is a privilege beyond comparison, a delight beyond description, to see those whom you have nursed and nurtured come under the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and be so taught in his ways as to become true disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. The aged apostle John wrote, “I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth.” Do not you, dear parents, desire this joy for yourselves? I believe you will have it if the dew of the Lord be upon your souls.
I have frequently heard it said that many children of professing Christian parents do not turn out well. How is this? We know that Solomon said, “Train up a child in the way he should go; and when he is old, he will not depart from it.” Now I do not wish to say anything unkind or too severe, but I have noticed that, in many such cases, the children have not been trained up in the way they should go. The father was a very good man, so people said, yet he never had family prayer; but how could he train up his children aright without it? No prayer in the family? Why, the training of a tree on a wall requires that you should have some shreds of cloth and some nails so as to fasten securely every little branch or shoot as it comes out; and I call family prayers our shreds and nails to help to train up our boys and girls as they begin to grow. Besides, if a professing Christian finds his children turning out ungodly, let him ask himself this question, “Did I ever personally pray with my sons? Did I ever personally plead with my daughters? Have I been loving and kind in my conduct towards my children?” If you cannot say “Yes,” to these and similar questions, then you did not train your child up in the way he should go.
I verily believe that there are many fathers who make religion nauseous to their children. A young man said to me, “My father is a good man, but he will never let his children have any sport or mirth, and he condemns everybody who indulges in anything of the kind. His religion consists in saying, ‘Thou shalt not; thou shalt not; thou shalt not; thou shalt not.’ “Well, that may be Mosaic; but, according to the religion of Jesus Christ, there is something else beside the negative. There is a positive joy and a real delight in true religion; and where that is set before our young people in a proper spirit, we may expect that God’s grace’ will bring them to desire the same joy and delight for themselves. We have proved that God often gives us the happiness of seeing that, instead of the fathers, shall be the children, whom he makes princes in the earth. He who loved Abraham loved Isaac, and loved Jacob, and loved Joseph, and loved Ephraim and Manasseh; for although grace does not run in the blood, it often rune side by side with it; and when you once get God to be a Friend of your family, it is not easy to get him out of it. If his grace calls the father, is it not likely also to call the son, and the grandson, and the children’s children’s children, not only unto the third and fourth generation, but as long as the earth remaineth? Yes, blessed be his name, it shall be so; and this is one of the beauties of the life of a Christian, that his beauty is perpetuated through his progeny, as he stands like an old olive tree with the young olives growing up around him, and so “his beauty shall be as the olive tree.”
IX. Now, ninthly, I must remind you that the beauty or the olive tree sometimes suffers diminution.
At Mentone, I went up a valley between the mountains, and I came to an olive garden which certainly did not charm me by its beauty. The natives had been lopping the olives, and they had cut them most mercilessly, hacking away huge branches here and there, and leaving the poor trees standing there piteously lifting up their mutilated arms to heaven as though they were imploring someone to take pity upon them, and deliver them from their present wretched condition. Why had they been lopped and out about like that? Simply because some of the branches had ceased to yield fruit, so they had to be cut away; and then, where one old branch was cut off, there might come five or six smaller branches, all of which would in due season bear olive berries. So all that cutting and hacking and hewing was intended to improve the olive, and make it much more beautiful by making it far more fruitful than it would otherwise have been.
Christians do not look very pretty when they are thus lopped. You had better not come to see some of us when we are full of aches and pains, when the brain is so weary that we cannot think, when the breath is short and the throat is so dry that we cannot sing the high praises of our God. Do not say concerning any of your dear relatives who are very, very ill, “I cannot see much that is Christlike about them.” Ah, dear friend, they are under the rod; and about the only thing a child can do, when he is under the rod, is to cry; at least, that is what I used to do when I was under the rod, and I suppose that is what most of you would do under similar circumstances, there is not much else that seems in season then. The olive certainly does not look very lovely when it is being lopped, but remember this text, “Now no chastening for the present seemeth to be joyous, but grievous: nevertheless afterward it yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto them which are exercised thereby.” So, then, you may expect to find fruit afterwards, and you may expect to see the beauty of the Christian afterwards, and not while they are under the pruning process. “Father,” said a child, “did you not cut those fruit trees this morning?” “Yes, my child, I did.” “Why did you cut them, father?” “To make them bring forth more fruit.” “I thought so, father; so, after dinner, I ran down the garden to see if they bad brought forth fruit, but there is not a single pear or apple on any one of them.” “No, dear child,” replied the father, “it is not immediately after the cutting that the fruit comes, we must wait till its proper season, and then I hope we shall see it.” You all know how to interpret that little parable; do not expect to see the full results of sickness and trial immediately, but believe that in due time they will be seen.
X. Lastly, dear friends, to me the very choicest beauty of the olive grove is that it always reminds me of the Lord Jesus Christ.
This also is the point in which every Christian who has the dew of the Lord upon him has a beauty like that of the olive tree, namely, that he reminds those about him of his Master. They take knowledge of him that he has been with Jesus. When you are under the olives, you cannot help thinking of Gethsemane, of the dark night in the garden, of the disciples asleep, and of our Saviour himself in an agony of grief. A poetess sweetly sings,—
“But thou, pale olive, in thy branches lie
Far deeper spells than prophet grove of old
Can ere enshrine. I could not hear thee sigh
To the wind’s faintest whisper, or behold
One shiver of thy leaves’ dim silvery green
Without high thoughts and solemn of that scene
When in the garden the Redeemer prayed,
When pale stars looked upon his fainting head,
And angels ministering in silent dread
Trembled, perchance, within thy trembling shade.”
Well, just as all right-minded people would be sure to think of Christ when under the olive groves, so ought we to compel men, whether they are right-minded or not, to think of the Lord Jesus Christ when they come into association with ourselves. Not because we are always talking about religion, but because we are always practising it; and, as frequently as we can, adding suitable verbal expression to the practical testimony of our lives; speaking and singing of our beloved Lord whose name should never long be off our tongue. We should so act when we are provoked, bearing it so gently that observers should be compelled to say, “How Christlike they are! “We should, when injured, so readily, so truthfully, so thoroughly forgive the offenders that, if they do not say, they should at least feel, “How Christlike they are! “We should be so unselfish, so generous, so anxious to serve others, and to please them rather than ourselves, we should be so kind in our judgment, so truthful, so tender, so upright, so calm, so strong, so brave, and yet so free from all Pharisaism and affectation that men should not have to look at us long before they would be obliged to say, “They have been with Jesus; they never learnt that lesson anywhere but at the feet of the Crucified.”
The Lord bless you, dear friends, and give you faith in Jesus; and then, by his Spirit, impart to you all this beauty of which I have spoken, and a great deal more of which no tongue can adequately tell, even the beauty of holiness, and so your beauty shall be as the olive tree. God grant it, for his dear Son’s sake! Amen and Amen.
“THE TRUE SAYINGS OF GOD.”
A Sermon
Published on Thursday, May 13th, 1909,
delivered by
C. H. SPURGEON,
at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,
On Lord’s-day Evening, February 23rd, 1873
“These are the true sayings of God.”—Revelation 19:9.
Before I use our text in a larger sense, it is due to our reverence for the Word of God to expound this short sentence in its immediate connection, for the angel here declared that certain things which had been spoken in John’s hearing were “the true sayings of God.” You will observe that ho bade the apostle “write” what he had heard. It was so weighty that John was not to trust it simply to his memory. It was so necessary that it should be remembered that he had to record it so that it might be handed down to future generatione. “Write,” said the angel, and then, as if to give John reasons for writing, reasons why these truths should be permanently recorded, he added, “These are the true sayings of God.”
What were those true sayings? I shall not dwell long upon them, but just hastily allude to them. The first which appears in this chapter is the great fact that God will judge and condemn the harlot church. There are two churches in the world to-day. The one is the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ, composed of believers in him who worship God in spirit and in truth, whose creed is the Word of God, and whose power for life and service is the indwelling Spirit of God. There is another church; you know what a shameful name is applied to her in this chapter, and you also know that she deserves to be called by that name, for she has indeed corrupted the earth with her fornication. In the old Jewish time, idolatry was called spiritual harlotry; and there are millions of idolaters daily bowing down before images, and rags and bones that ought long ago to have been buried in the earth. The Church of Rome seems to have gathered up all the relics of the idolatries of other ages, and then to have capped them by saying that a substance, which is only bread before the “priest” consecrates it, becomes God afterwards, and then the idolater eats his god,—a monstrous piece of blasphemy and superstition unworthy of Dahomey itself. That is the harlot church, which God will surely judge; and when he does, terrible will be that judgment. Amongst the tremendous things of the last day will be the total overthrow and utter destruction of this “mother of harlots and abominations of the earth.” Come ye out from her, O ye people, lest ye be partakers of her plagues; for terrible will her plagues be in the day when the Lord shall avenge upon her the blood of all his saints and martyrs whom she has slain. This, then, is one of “the true sayings of God.”
The next true saying is concerning the glorious and universal reign of the great God. For John “heard as it were the voice of a great multitude, and as the voice of many waters, and as the voice of mighty thunderings, saying, Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” There has been a long war between God and idols of various names. Among the ancient idols were Baal, and Ashtaroth, and Dagon, but all had to bow down before Jehovah. Then Jupiter, and Saturn, and Venus, and Mars were worshipped as deities by the heathen, and now gods many and lords many still dominate a large part of the human intellect; but they are all doomed to fall, and the one invisible Creator of heaven and earth, almighty and eternal, will yet reign throughout the whole universe without a rival; and then shall be heard again that great shout that John heard during the wondrous revelation in the Isle of Patmos, “Alleluia: for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth.” Let us never imagine that God’s throne is in peril. Let us never fancy that the truth can be defeated. Truth is God’s daughter, and he covers her with his great shield, and fights for her with his invincible omnipotence. Do not tremble for the ark of God, do not despair, or even despond; the Lord will win the victory over all the powers of evil. This also is one of “the true sayings of God.”
The next true saying was this, that Jesus Christ, the Lamb of God,—so called because of the atoning sacrifice which he presented on Calvary,—will have a full reward for all his sufferings: “For the marriage of the Lamb* is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.… Blessed are they which are called unto the marriage supper† of the Lamb.” Jesus Christ came into this world to find his beloved ones, and he found them in bondage; and having taken upon himself their nature, he became their next of kin; and then, according to the ancient law, he redeemed them, and bought them unto himself, and he has espoused unto himself all those that trust in him. All believers in him, in whatever visible church they may be, make up the one Church of Jesus Christ which he hath redeemed from among men with his precious blood, and in the latter days he will have that Church to be his reward. At present, Christ has but a poor reward for all his sufferings. Comparatively few reverence him, his people are a feeble and scattered folk; but there are days coming in which the Lord Jesus Christ shall have all whom he bought with his blood. He shall have for himself all whom he came to save. He shall not be disappointed; “he shall not fail, nor be discouraged.” The Lord shall abundantly reward him for all his agonies. “He shall see of the travail of his soul, and shall be satisfied.” This also is one of “the true sayings of God.”
This true saying also declares that, in the latter days, when Christ comes again to this earth, he will find his Church here. He will bring with him a part of that Church, and he will find here part of that Church which shall be his bride for ever and for ever. A description of the purity which is her glory is given in the verse which precedes our text: “And to her was granted that she should be arrayed in fine linen, clean and white: for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints.” So that the Church of Christ will be arrayed as brides should be, in the garments of light and purity; she will also be chastely arrayed,—not like the harlot church, in purple and scarlet,—but “in fine linen, clean and white.” Christ’s Church shall be a pure Church, a simple Church, a humble Church, and yet, for all that, a beautiful Church in the eyes of Jesus Christ. She shall be a perfect Church, and her beauty shall be her righteousness. And where shall she obtain that righteousness? It is said that it shall be given to her. It will not be any righteousness which she has herself manufactured, for each of her members has the same desire as Paul had when he wrote, “That I may win Christ, and be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law, but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith.” The Church of God, then, when Christ receives her as his bride, will be dressed in the imputed righteousness which comes to her by faith. It is the righteousness which Jesus Christ spent his life to work out, the righteousness which never had a stain upon it, for Jesus Christ is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.” Oh, blessed be God for this glorious fact that for ever Jesus Christ will have a Church of this kind. This also is one of “the true sayings of God.”
The practical point for us to remember is this,—let us endeavour to get as far as ever we can from the meretricious church described in the 18th chapter. If you read that chapter through, you cannot mistake the church to which it refers, for the portrait is a photograph. Get as far as ever you can away from that mystery of iniquity. Shun sacramentarianism as you would shun the plague. Abhor the priesthood as you would the arch-fiend himself. Turn away from all idolatry, and worship God alone. Keep to the Bible, and forsake everything that is of man’s invention. Cleave to the simple teaching of God’s Word in doctrine, in practice, in the ordinances, and in everything. Cling, in fact, to the pure Church of Jesus Christ. If you ask me where you can find that Church, I may tell you that you can find part of it here, and parts of it scattered all over the land, and over a great part of the world. Believers in Christ are known to the Lord, for he knoweth them that are his; they are not as others are, for they have received an inner spiritual light and life; they no longer care for the world, nor for the world’s religion; they seek to walk where Jesus Christ marked the way with his own pierced feet; “These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth.” This is the Church that loves the righteousness of Christ, the Church that preaches up Christ, her great Husband and Lord, the Church that magnifies his atoning sacrifice, the Church that believes in his merits, and not in human merits, and that trusts in his death, and not in anything that men can do to save themselves. Cling to that Church, beloved; cleave to it. Be numbered with it, give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids, till you know that you are amongst those people to whom is granted the privilege of wearing the righteousness of Christ as “fine linen, clean and white.” The Lord grant that, in that dividing day, not one member of this assembly may be driven away with the beast and the false prophet; but may we all be found with the bride, the true, chosen, chaste, pure Church of Jesus Christ that has endeavoured to follow him through evil report and good report, never bowing at the feet of kings, never accepting their proffered gifts, but remaining true to God and Christ all her days!
Having spoken thus upon the connection of this passage, I desire now to address you, for a short time, upon these words as they refer to the entire canon of Scripture. I may take this blessed Book, this whole inspired Bible, and say of its contents, “These are the true sayings of God.” I want to make two remarks; the first is, that some of these sayings we have already proved to be true; and the second is, that the rest of them we are fully assured are true.
I. First, then, some of the great sayings in this Book we have proved to be true. There is nothing like tasting, and handling, and trying, and proving for ourselves what we find in the Scriptures.
Among other things, this Book says that sin is an evil and a bitter thing. Some of us have proved that to be true, for sin became, when we were awakened by God’s Spirit, our plague, our torment, our curse; and to this hour, though God has forgiven the sins of as many of us as have believed in Jesus Christ, we never sin without suffering injury as the result of it. I ask any child of God here whether he ever was a real gainer by sin. Was sin ever anything to you, beloved, but a loss,—an evil through and through? Have you not had to smart for it many and many a time, and do you not say, “Of all the evil things that ever came from hell, there is none that can match sin,”? Yes, we have proved that this saying of God is true.
But more pleasant to talk of is another true saying of God which tells us that the blood of Jesus Christ speaks peace to the conscience. This Book tells us that the blood of Jesus speaketh better things than that of Abel. It tells us that, “being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” I put the question to those who have been justified by faith, those who have tested the power of the precious blood of Christ,—has it not given you peace with God? My witness is, that I never knew what peace of conscience meant until I learned what the Saviour’s blood had done for me. There is no peace like the peace that comes from trusting in Jesus; it is “the peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” which keeps our hearts and minds through Christ Jesus. Nay, more, the precious blood of Jesus, when it is applied to the heart by the Holy Spirit, not only gives peace, but it gives a divine exhilaration and sacred joy, as the Word says, “We also joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the atonement.” I appeal to your experience, is it not so? Have you not proved that saying of God to be a true saying? Oh, yes! there are scores, and hundreds, and even thousands here who can repeat this saying, and add, “Verily, we know it to be true in our own souls.”
Further, God has told us in his Word, that there is a cleansing power in faith, and hope, and love, and all the other Christian, graces. “This is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.” “Every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself.” I put it to you who have faith and hope, have you not always found that, in proportion as you have these graces in active exercise, you can conquer sin? Perhaps you have some besetting sin; if so, have you not always been able to tread it under your feet when you have stood at the foot of the cross? When you have been full of love to Jesus, have you not also been most victorious over your inward corruptions, and most steadfast in resisting outward temptations? I know it is so, and there are some of us, in whom the grace of God has wrought such great wonders, changing us from what we once were, turning us inside out, making us such new creatures that, if we were to meet our old selves to-morrow, we should not know ourselves. When men tell us that the gospel is not the power of God unto salvation, we ask them how it is that, every day in the week, we hear of drunkards reclaimed, the unchaste made pure, thieves made honest, and persons of detestable temper made gentle and amiable; and how it is that we so often hear of the conversion of a husband and father, and that the wife and children at home bear witness that the conversion is no sham, but has made the cottage to be no longer a little hell, but more like a heaven upon earth. We say that the doctrine which can make such changes in men cannot be an untrue doctrine. When I have been troubled with scepticism, I have had to cure myself in this way. I have stood and looked up to the starry vault of heaven, and I have said, “Well, one thing I am clear about, and cannot doubt, namely, that there is a God. All these wondrous worlds did not grow; somebody made them. And there is another thing about which I am clear, and that is that I love this God whoever he is, and that I believe him to be a pure and holy being, and I want to be the same as he is; and whatever side he is on, I am on his side. I feel an honour and reverence for him, and desire to follow him in that which is good and that which is true.” Then I say to myself, “Did I always feel like that?” And I answer, “No, I did not. Now, that which makes me range myself side by side with God for that which is good and true, that which makes me love God, cannot be a lie, it must be true. And as it was the gospel of Jesus Christ that wrought that change in my soul, that gospel is true;” and so I get back again on firm rocky ground for my own soul to rest upon. And what I have said about myself is the witness of all who know the Lord. Their faith in God has had a sanctifying influence upon them, and so they know, in their own experience, that this saying of God is indeed true.
Another of “the true sayings of God” is this. He has said, “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you.” We have done as he bade us, and so we have proved the efficacy of prayer. It is all very well to sneer at answers to prayer, as some have done, and to propose various tests, which none could accept unless they were idiots; but the question cannot be disposed of in that way. There are honest people about by thousands who aver that God does hear their prayers. Not hear prayer? If any man were to say to me, “You have no eyes, you have no head, you have no arms, you have no legs,” I should say to him, “I don’t know how I can convince you that I have all these parts of the human body if you look at me, and then repeat your assertion; but I am absolutely certain that I have all these things; and if anyone says to me, “God has not heard your prayers,” I answer, “Why, he hears them every day. I receive answers to prayer so constantly that I cannot doubt the fact any more than I can doubt my own existence.” And I am not a solitary one in this matter. I am less than the least of all God’s servants, and there are many men who are mighty in prayer, men who have their will of God, who go to him in secret, and ask what they will, and it is given unto them. I could mention their names, but I will not; but even we, who are amongst the feeblest of the Lord’s people, can tell of many answers to prayer that we have received. Many persons write to ask me to pray for certain special cases. I do not know why they should do so, for my prayers can have no more effect than their own; and I often receive letters containing grateful thanks for answers that have been given to prayers that I have thus put up for others, and all these people are not fools. Some of them are such intelligent persons that they are regarded as leaders in their various circles, and others of them have at any rate managed to lead honest, sober, consistent Christian lives, and they believe that, if they can join their prayers with those of another brother in Christ, the Lord will grant their requests, and he does so constantly. They are not deceived by their own fancies or imaginations. Some people say, “They are mere coincidences which you call answers to prayer.” Well, call them coincidences if you like; but to us they are no such thing whatever they may be to you; and while we pray, and the answer comes, whether by a coincidence or not, it will not signify much to us so long as we do really receive the answer, and are made to rejoice in our souls, and to bless God for hearing our supplications. We have again and again proved that there is a God that heareth prayer, and the promise to hear and answer prayer is among “the true sayings of God.”
Once again, we know that it is according to the teaching of God’s Word that faith will sustain his people in the time of trouble and trial. This truth we have ourselves proved, and we have seen it illustrated in other Christians. That same sustaining power is promised to us in the hour of death. “When thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee.” David said, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.” Now, if there is ever a time when a man is honest, one would think it is when he lies face to face with death. People cannot usually play the hypocrite then, though there have been some daring enough to do even that; but, for the most part, men are startled out of mere fancies when they come to the reality of departure out of this world. How fares it with Christians when they are about to die? Why, beloved, we are not speaking about dreams, but of solid facts that we daily verify in our visitations of our flock, when we say that they die joyfully. One of our dear sisters, who was known to some of you, has just been called home. Through a long period of acute pain, which rendered her condition unusually distressing, her joy and peace were almost too seraphic to be talked about. When I met some of her friends in the house, they said to me, “Well, sir, we have derived more spiritual benefit in sitting here talking with our friend than we have got from any sort of religious exercise.” Words have fallen from that humble woman’s lips that would read like poetry, joyous words between the gasps for breath; and wonderful anticipations of the glory-land have been given to her in the midst of much physical weakness. And when we speak thus of one of our members, we may say the same of hundreds of them, for it is the usual experience with them on their death-beds. I wish more of you could see them die, and learn the way in which a Christian can expire. I always think, when I come away from the death-bed of a child of God, that I have added to my previous stock of facts proving the faithfulness of my God. I would believe the Bible without a single fact to back it up, but there is a vast quantity of external as well as internal evidence of the truth of the Scriptures. I would believe my God if he never gave me anything to see with my eyes or to hear with my ears. His own Word should be enough for me; but these blessed sounds and scenes, these cheering sights and holy triumphs make it not merely a matter of faith to believe the gospel, but also a matter of common sense. It seems impossible to doubt when you see the evident power there is about true godliness, and the majestic might that dwells in faith to strengthen the weak against the last grim foe. Yes, we have proved many of these things to be “the true sayings of God.”
Before I leave this point, I want to urge all believers always to treat the Bible as if it were all true. Do not let any of it seem to be a romance to you, but regard it all as real and true. I wish people were more business-like in dealing with the Bible, and that they would use more common sense with regard to it; we sometimes really fail to use it as if we believed it. Some persons appear to imagine that the excellence of their prayer consists in its length; but if they had more real belief in prayer, it would probably not be so long. Whenever I go to a, bank with a cheque, I pass it to the clerk at the counter, take up the cash he gives me, and go about my business. That is how I like to pray. I take to the Lord one of his promises, and I say to him, “Lord, I believe thy promise, and I believe that thou wilt fulfil it to me;” and then I go my way knowing that I have the answer to my petition, or that it will come in due time. To kneel down for a certain specified period, and pour out a long string of selected sentences, would seem to me a mere performance, and I should get nothing by it. “He that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” Do not let your praying be a mere ecclesiastical or religious engagement; go to God as your Father and your Friend, fully convinced that your prayer will be answered. Thousands of prayers are never answered because those who present them do not expect that they will be answered. If a man prays to God, and does not believe that God will answer him, he will not answer him. We must, without wavering, unstaggeringly believe that God will hear us, and then he must hear us. Note that I say “must.” But “must” is for the King! Yes, but he has bound himself by his own Word: “What things soever ye desire, when ye pray, believe that ye receive them, and ye shall have them.” These are Christ’s own words, not mine; and their meaning lies upon the very surface. Let the Christian pray in faith, and then he will find that God will never run back from his word, but will keep his promise to all his believing people.
II. My second point was to be that there are some things which we cannot prove just yet, but they are true, for all that.
Now let me tell you what will come true one of these days. Jesus Christ will come back to this earth. That same Jesus, who went up from the top of mount Olivet, will so come in like manner as he was seen to go up into heaven. He will come with a mighty blast of the archangel’s trumpet, and in amazing pomp and splendour, attended by myriads of angels and vast hosts of the redeemed; but he will surely come. It may not be to-day, it may not be for many an age; but in such an hour as men think not the Son of man will come. When he does come, remember that, if you are alive, you will have to stand before his judgment seat; but if you die before that time, your body shall rise again and your soul shall return to it, and there in your flesh shall you see the Son of God. That very Saviour whom to-night I preach to you, who will save you if you believe in him, will then come to sit upon his throne; and if you have lived and died without believing in him, he will come to judge you, and to pronounce upon you that dreadful sentence, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” Christ will come, and you will all rise, and either be accepted or condemned by him. “These are the true sayings of God.”
Further, there will be a heaven for all those who are found believing in Jesus. Christ will take them there to be with him where he is, that they may behold his glory. They shall enter into most blessed fellowship with him in all his joys and glories, and that world without end. If you do not believe in Jesus, you will miss all that, and where he is you will never come. The door will be shut against you, and the outer darkness where there shall be weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth must be your portion for ever, for this is another true saying of God, that there is a hell for all who do not believe in Jesus. As surely as there was a place of bliss for Lazarus, so surely was there a place of woe for Dives. As certainly as there is a heavenly fold for the sheep of Christ, so is there a hell for the goats. “These are the true sayings of God.” Do not despise them; do not doubt them. Some of you, who are unconverted, may be within a few minutes of death. I was struck, the other Monday night, when I was coming to the prayer-meeting here, by the appearance of a poor man, one of our church-members, who was sitting by the fire in the room behind looking very sickly. It was bitterly cold, but I soon saw that death was making him colder still. I felt that, in a short time, he must die however much care we might take of him. We took him home in a cab, and in a few hours he was gone. He was an old disciple, so he had entered into his rest; but I thought, “It is strange that there should so often be deaths in this Tabernacle.” Every now and then, while I am preaching the Word here, there comes to me a message, “There is a person dying here.” Beside that, death makes havoc continually among our thousands of members; sometimes, three or four die in one week. And out of this vast congregation, I do not know how many will die this week; probably we shall not all of us see next Sabbath, but certainly we shall soon depart out of this world. We shall fly away, and whither, whither, whither shall we go? I do not want to seem to be fanatical, but I will solemnly put this question to every one here,—as you do not believe that you will die like a dog, and as you do believe that you will live in another state, are you prepared for it? And as most of you, at any rate, believe that faith in Jesus is the only preparation for the future state, have you believed in him? Have you sought God by prayer? Is Jesus Christ your Lord and Saviour? If you are obliged to say, “No,”—I cannot hold your hand, (there are too many for me to do that,) nor can I take you by the buttonhole, and detain you for a while, but I would fain detain you as that ancient mariner detained the wedding guest, and say to you, “Are you wise to live in danger every day of death and judgment, and yet to remain unprepared? Ought it not to be the first business of your life, by faith and prayer, to make your calling and election sure?” If you are wise men and wise women, surely a word will be enough for you; and if you are not wise, may God make you so! May he lead you, this very hour, to confess your sins, and to seek his mercy, and may every one of us be found in Christ in that great day! Then shall we rejoice for ever in “the true sayings of God.” The Lord grant it, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.
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