I
was asked the other day what preachers, teachers or writers have impacted me
the most, my mind rushed with so many names. Classic theologians such as Matthew
Henry, Charles Spurgeon, E.W Bullinger and John Bunyan first came to mind,
along with more recent men of God such as A.W. Tozer, John Piper and N.T.
Wright. Each of these men are or were completely different from each other, but
reading their works grabbed me by the nape and drove home a particular message
God wanted me to receive.
As
I was perusing the Internet recently, I came across a sermon Charles Spurgeon delivered
on Lord's-day, Morning, September 17th, 1871, by C. H. SPURGEON, At the
Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. I obviously needed to hear this message
because like other great works, it drove home a point I need to receive at that
precise moment. It dealt with a situation that many servants of God experience,
that feeling that our joy in the Lord does not feel as powerful as it was in
the past, especially during that season when we first met Jesus and experienced
His amazing love, grace and salvation. Maybe it impacted me more so due to the increasing pain of an aging body, but mostly due to the sorrow caused by the feeling of helplessness I'm experiencing in my heart due to the rampant and blatant sinfulness and the moral declination we
see growing exponentially throughout the world.
Spurgeon’s
sermon drove a spear of God's assurance deeply into my heart that reminded me that when our joy is low, we must needs remember His promises. Following is that sermon;
hopefully it will be a source of comfort and edification for you as well.
"Oh that I were as in months past, as in the days when God preserved me
when his candle shined upon my head, and when by his light I walked through
darkness; as I was in the days of my youth, when the secret of God was upon my
tabernacle."-Job 29:2,3,4.
IF
Job here refers to the temporal prosperity which he had lost, we cannot condemn
him for his complaint, neither can we commend him. It is but the expression of
a natural regret, which would be felt by any man who had experienced such great
reverses. But there is everywhere in the expressions which he uses such a
strain of spirituality, that we are inclined to believe that he had more
reference to the condition of his heart than to the state of his property. His
soul was depressed; he had lost the light of God's countenance; his inward
comforts were declining, his joy in the Lord was at a low ebb, this he
regretted far more than anything besides. No doubt he deplored the departure of
those prosperous days when, as he words it, his root was spread out by the
waters, and the dew lay all night upon his branch; but, much more did he bemoan
that the lamp of the Lord no more shone upon his head, and the secret of God
was not upon his tabernacle. As his spiritual regrets are far more instructive
to us than his natural ones, we will turn all our attention to them.
We may,
without violence, appropriate Job's words to ourselves; for I fear that many of
us can with great propriety take up our wailing and mourn for the days of our
espousals, the happy days of our first love. I shall have to trouble you with
many divisions this morning; but I shall be brief upon each one, and I hope
that our thoughts may be led onward, and rendered practically serviceable to
us, by the blessing of God's Spirit.
I.
Let us begin by saying, that regrets such as those expressed in the text are
and ought to be very BITTER. If it be the loss of spiritual things that we
regret, then may we say from the bottom of our hearts, "Oh that I were as
in months past."
It
is a great thing for a man to be near to God; it is a very choice privilege to
be admitted into the inner circle of communion, and to become God's familiar
friend. Great as the privilege is, so great is the loss of it. No darkness is
so dark as that which falls on eyes accustomed to the light. The poor man who
was always poor is scarcely poor, but he who has fallen from the summit of
greatness into the depths of poverty is poor indeed. The man who has never
enjoyed communion with God knows nothing of what it must be to lose it; but he
who has once been pressed upon the Savior's bosom will mourn, as long as he
liveth, if he be deprived of the sacred enjoyment. The mercies which Job
deplored in our text are no little ones. First, he complains that he had lost
the consciousness of divine preservation. He says, "Oh that I were as in
months past, as in the days when God preserved me." There are days with
Christians when they can see God's hand all around them, checking them in the
first approaches of sin, and setting a hedge about all their ways. Their
conscience is tender, and the Spirit of God is obeyed by them; they are,
therefore, kept in all their ways, the angels of God watching over them, lest
they dash their foot against a stone.
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But when they fall into laxity of spirit,
and walk at a distance from God, they are not so preserved. Though kept from
final and total apostasy, yet they are not kept from very grievous sin; for,
like Peter who followed afar off, they may be left to deny their Master, even
with oaths and cursings. If we have lost that conscious preservation of God,
which once covered us from every fiery dart; if we no longer abide under the
shadow of the Almighty, and feel no longer that his truth is our shield and
buckler, we have lost a joy worth worlds, and we may well deplore it with
anguish of heart.
Job
had also lost divine consolation, for he looks back with lamentation to the
time when God's candle shone upon his head, when the sun of God's love was as
it were in the zenith, and cast no shadow; when he rejoiced without ceasing,
and triumphed from morning to night in the God of his salvation. The joy of the
Lord is our strength, the joy of the Lord is Israel's excellency; it is the
heaven of heaven, it is heaven even upon earth; and, consequently, to lose it,
is a calamity indeed. Who that has once been satisfied with favor, and full of
the blessing of the Lord, will be content to go into the dry and thirsty land,
and live far off from God? Will he not rather cry out with David, "My soul
thirsteth for God; when shall I come and appear before God?" Surely his
agonising prayer will be, "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation, and
uphold me with thy free Spirit." Love to God will never be content if his
face be hidden. Until the curtain be drawn aside and the King's face be seen
through the lattices, the true spouse will spend her life in sighing; mourning
like a dove bereaved of its mate.
Moreover,
Job deplored the loss of divine illumination. "By his light," he
says, "I walked through darkness," that is to say, perplexity ceased
to be perplexity; God shed such a light upon the mysteries of providence, that
where others missed their path, Job, made wise by heaven, could find it. There
have been times when, to our patient faith, all things have been plain.
"If any man will do his will, he shall know of the doctrine;" but, if
we walk far off from God, then, straightway, even the precious truth of God is
no more clear to us, and the dealings of God with us in providence appear to be
like a maze. He is wise as Solomon who walks with God, but he is a very fool
who trusts his own understanding. All the wit that we have gathered by
observation and experience will not supply us with sufficiency of common sense,
if we turn away from God. Israel, without consulting God, made a league with
her enemies; she thought the case most plain when she entered into hasty
alliance with the Gibeonites, but she was duped by cunning because she asked
not counsel of the Lord. In the simplest business we shall err, if we seek not
direction from the Lord; yet, where matters are most complicated, we shall walk
wisely, if we wait for a voice from the oracle, and seek the good Shepherd's
guidance. We may bitterly lament, therefore, if we have lost the Holy Spirit's
light. If now the Lord answereth us not, neither by his word, nor by his
providence, if we wander alone, crying Oh that I knew where I might find him,
we are in an evil case, and may well sigh for the days, when by his light we
walked through darkness.
Moreover,
Job had lost divine communion: so it seems, for he mourned the days of his
youth, when the secret of God was upon his tabernacle. Who shall tell to
another what the secret of God is? Believing hearts know it, but they cannot
frame to pronounce aright the words that could explain it, nor can they convey
by language what the secret is. The Lord manifests himself unto his people as
he doth not unto the world. We could not tell the love passages that there are
between believers and their Lord; even when they are set to such sweet music as
the Song of Solomon, carnal minds cannot discern their delights. They cannot
plough with our heifer, and therefore they read not our riddle. As Paul in
heaven saw things which it were unlawful for a man to utter, so the believer
sees and enjoys in communion with Christ what it would not only be unlawful but
impossible for him to tell to carnal men. Such pearls are not for swine. The
spiritual discerneth all things, but he himself is discerned of no man. Now, it
is a high privilege, beyond all privileges, to enter into familiar intercourse
with the Most High, and the man who has once possessed it, and has lost it, has
a bitterer cause for regret than if, being rich, he had lost his wealth; or
being famous, he had lost esteem; or being in health, he were suddenly brought
to the bed of languishing. No loss can equal the loss of thee, my God! No
eclipse is so black as the hiding of thy face! No storm is so fierce as the letting
forth of thine indignation! It is grief upon grief to find that thou art not
with me as in the days of old. Wherever, then, these regrets do exist, if the
men's hearts are as they should be, they are not mere hypocritical or
superficial expressions, but they express the bitterest experiences of our
human existence. "Oh that I were as in months past" is no sentimental
sigh, but the voice of the innermost spirit in anguish, as one who has lost his
firstborn.
II.
But, secondly, let me remind you that these regrets are NOT INEVITABLE; that is
to say, it is not absolutely necessary that a Christian man should ever feel
them, or be compelled to express them. It has grown to be a tradition among us,
that every Christian must backslide in a measure, and that growth in grace
cannot be unbrokenly sustained. It is regarded by many as a law of nature, that
our first love must grow cold, and our early zeal must necessarily decline. I
do not believe it for a moment.
"The path of the just is us the shining
light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day;" and were we
watchful and careful to live near to God, there is no reason why our spiritual
life should not continuously make progress both in strength and beauty. There
is no inherent necessity in the divine life itself compelling it to decline,
for is it not written, "It shall be in him a well of water, springing up
unto everlasting life;" "out of his belly shall flow rivers of living
water." Grace is a living and incorruptible seed that liveth and abideth
for ever, and there is nowhere impressed upon the divine life a law of pining
and decay. If we do falter and faint in the onward path, it is our sin, and it
is doubly sinful to forge excuses for it. It is not to be laid upon the back of
some mysterious necessity of the new nature that it should be so, but it is to
be brought as a charge against ourselves. Nor do outward circumstances ever
furnish a justification to us if we decline in grace; for, under the worst conditions,
believers have grown in grace: deprived of the joys of Christian fellowship,
and denied the comforts of the means of grace, believers have nevertheless been
known to attain to a high-degree of likeness to Christ Jesus: thrown into the
midst of wicked companions, and forced to hear, like righteous Lot, the filthy
conversation of the ungodly, yet Christian men have shone all the brighter for
the surrounding darkness, and have been able to escape from a wicked and
perverse generation. Certain is it, that a man may be an eminent Christian, and
be among the poorest of the poor: poverty need not, therefore, make us depart
from God; and, it is equally certain, that a man may be rich, and for all that
may walk with God and be distinguished for great grace. There is no lawful
position of which we may say, "It compels a man to decline in grace."
And,
brethren, there is no period of our life in which it is necessary for us to go
back. The young Christian, with all the strength of his natural passions, can
by grace be strong and overcome the Wicked One; the Christian in middle life,
surrounded with the world's cares, can prove that "this is the victory
which overcometh the world, even our faith." The man immersed in business
may still be baptised of the Holy Ghost. Assuredly, old age offers no excuse
for decline: "they shall still bring forth fruit in old age; they shall be
fat and flourishing; to show that the Lord is upright." No, brethren as
Christ said to his disciples, when they would fain have sent the multitude away
to buy meat, "they need not depart;" so would he say to the whole
company of the Lord's people, "ye need not depart;" there is no
compulsion for decline in grace." Your sun need not stand still, your moon
need not wane. If you cannot add a cubit to your spiritual stature, at any
rate, it need not decrease. There are no reasons written in the book of your
spiritual nature why you, as a believer, should lose fellowship with God, and,
if you do so, take blame and shame to yourself, but do not ascribe it to
necessity.
Do not gratify your corruptions by supposing that they are licensed
to prevail occasionally, neither vex your graces by conceiving that they are
doomed to inevitable defeat at a certain season. The spirit that is in us
lusteth to evil, but the Holy Spirit is able to subdue it, and will subdue it,
if we yield ourselves to him.”
For information about this blog, the author's books and his other websites, please click on, Joe Ortiz.
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