When you have walked in the garden, early in the morning, you must have remarked the singular freshness and beauty which a summer’s morning always seems to give to the earth; the dewdrops, like tears standing in the eyes of the flowers, as if they wept for joy to see the sun again after the long night of darkness, sparkle in the sun; the greenness of vegetation has about it a more than emerald hue, and every “thing of beauty” looks more beautiful in the morning than at any other season. You have gone out again, perhaps, at noon, and you have noticed how dry and dusty everything appears; for the sun has risen, and by his burning heat he has exhaled the dew, and the freshness of the morning has departed in the drought of noon. Now, this is just a picture of all things here below; ay, and a picture of ourselves also. When we first behold many things, they have the dew upon them, and they sparkle; but in a little while, all their brightness is gone, and their brilliance scattered. Some of you have entered into pleasure, and you have found it a delusion; you have intermeddled with all kinds of knowledge, and you have found that, in the making and reading of books, there was much pleasure; but, ere long, you have discovered that, in reading many books, and in making them, there was no end, and much study was a weariness to the flesh.

Everything terrestrial has its dew in the morning, but its burning heat at noon; and we too, beloved,-I mean those of us who have received the anointing of the Holy Spirit,-is not this too much the case even with us? When we were first converted, what a sparkling dew there was upon our leaf! We could not sing God’s praises loudly enough; we could not sufficiently leap for joy before the ark of the Lord. All the exultations of those who came before seemed utterly insufficient for us. There was, to us, such unction and savour in the Word, that we could feast upon it every day,-yea, and all night long, and yet never be weary. We ran in the way of God’s commandments without weariness, and we mounted aloft as on the wings of eagles, and never thought that we could ascend too high. But, alas! beloved, is it not the case with many of us, that much of that early freshness of the morning of our youth is scattered, and some, at least, of our excellence hath proved to be like the early cloud and the morning dew? Though in some things we trust that we have grown, yet we are compelled to confess that, in some other things, we have diminished; while in the depths of self-knowledge we feel that we have made progress, yet in the heights of joy in Christ, in the sublimities of a full devotion to him, we sometimes fear that we have gone backward, and that we have not the bliss of our youth, the dew of the morning.

Our text, speaking of our Lord Jesus Christ, says he has the dew of his youth. We are certain that it is Jesus Christ who is spoken of in this Psalm, for, in arguing with the Pharisees, he quoted the first verse, and applied it to himself: “The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool.” So that no doubt this third verse also alludes to him: “Thy people shall be willing in the day of thy power, in the beauties of holiness from the womb of the morning: thou hast the dew of thy youth.” Having, therefore, set ourselves and all terrestrial matters in contrast with him, it only remains for me now to enter, as fully as God may help me, into the sweet doctrine of this text,-that Jesus Christ ever has had, and ever will have, the early dew, freshness, and brilliance of his youth. First, permit me to state the fact; secondly, to show the reasons for it; and, thirdly, to deduce the lessons from it.

First of all, let me state the fact, that Christ has the dew of his youth.

Let me first speak of Christ personally; has he not all the freshness, all the vigour, all the strength of ancient times? His goings forth were of old, even from eternity; and behold he still goeth forth, every day, in the preaching of his Word, and in the ministrations of his Spirit. In the chariots of salvation still rideth he forth, and among the golden candlesticks he walketh still. Have we ever imagined that he has lost the strength of his youth? Do his steps falter? Has his arm begun to feel the palsying influence of old age? Is there any sign of decrepitude or of wasting away upon his majestic brow? When John saw him, in Patmos, “His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow,” for he is the Eternal of Ages; yet, as saith the spouse in the Canticles, “His locks are bushy, and black as a raven,” for he has the strength of a youth, while he has the ages of eternity upon him. Well might he now rise up before us, and ask concerning himself personally, “Is mine ear heavy that I cannot hear? Is mine arm shortened that I cannot save? Am I not to-day what I was yesterday? Was I the Creator of the world? Did I speak it out of nothingness; and am I not still its Sustainer? Was I the Redeemer of the Church? Did I purchase her with mine own blood; and do I not still sustain with power those whom I redeemed with blood? Did I not on earth, with cries and groans, offer up my prayer before my Father; and do I not now plead, not with less vigour but with greater strength, when with authority I advocate my people’s cause before his throne?”

Nor is this freshness confined to Christ in his person; it is the same if you think of him as revealed in his doctrine. We have Christ among us now, not incarnate in flesh, but incarnate in doctrine. The doctrines of grace are in a certain sense the body of Christ. We speak sometimes of a Body of Divinity; but if any man would know what the true Body of Divinity is, let him learn that it is neither Calvin’s “Institutes,” nor Dwight’s “Theology,” nor Gill’s “Body of Divinity,”-it is Christ who is the Body of Divinity. His was the only body Divinity ever did take when it became incarnate; but taking Divinity, in another sense, to mean Divine doctrine, what Christ said, and what he did,-that is, the gospel-is the only body which Divinity ever will take. The gospel is always fresh. There are many subjects, beloved, that get exhausted after a while; but who ever heard of the gospel being exhausted? You have, some of you, come up to the house of God these thirty or forty years; did you ever feel that you wanted anything newer than the gospel? Did you ever say, as you went out, after you had heard a gospel sermon, “I should like to have some improvements made upon it”? No; if you have heard God’s truth proclaimed, have you not said, “That was the food of my childhood in grace, it is my food now that, by reason of years, I am able to discern between that which is good and that which is evil, and it shall be my food all through the wilderness, and until I eat of the corn of the kingdom on the other side of Jordan”?

It is a wonderful thing, I have often thought, that any man should be able, day after day, and week after week, to attract thousands of people to hear him talk. I do not believe any man could do it with any other subject except the gospel. I have the most intense respect for that great man and mighty orator, Mr. Gough; but, with all his ability, if he were to deliver a teetotal lecture, twice every Sabbath day, in any pulpit in England, he could not command a congregation for twenty-one years at a stretch; but the Christian minister, with only one subject,-Christ crucified,-may not only keep on for twenty-one years, but if he should live as long as Methuselah, he might still keep on preaching Jesus Christ, and him crucified, and he would still find that the people of God would come to hear him, and never crave for a fresh subject. Let any great historian open, if he please, a lecture-room, and attempt to deliver two lectures upon history every week, and let him see whether he does not find the congregation, which might at first gather around him, speedily diminished. We have had an instance, in London, of one who has delivered an amusing lecture a thousand times, always to great multitudes; but then they were different persons every time. No one thought of going to hear him lecture upon the same subject the whole thousand times; it would have become a most intolerable penance even to have heard Albert Smith delivering his lecture upon Mont Blanc so often, however interesting it might have been once or twice; it would certainly pall upon the mind if we heard it so many times; but the Christian minister may keep on, and on, and on with the same theme,-Christ Jesus, Christ Jesus; the same cross, the same crown of thorns, the same bleeding wounds,-from the first time that he enters his pulpit to the last when he lays down his charge; and the people may always say, and he can always feel, that the gospel has the dew of its youth upon it, and is always fresh and ever new.

Our text is also specially true of Christ as revealed in the Bible. There are many other valuable books that have been written; but, as a rule, however valuable they may be, when you have read them half-a-dozen times, you may be quite satisfied that you need not read them any more. Next to the Bible, the book that I value most is John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress,” and I imagine I may have read that through perhaps a hundred times; it is a book of which I never seem to tire, but then the secret of that is, that John Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress” is the Bible in another shape. It is the same heavenly water taken out of this same well of the gospel; yet you would tire even of that book at last. You would say, “I know all that this volume contains, and I want something more. Here is the experience of the Christian pilgrim; I know it is true, and I delight in it, but I want to go somewhat further.” The mind would crave for something else. But read the Bible; and, strange to say, the more you read it, the more satisfied you will be with it. When you begin to read the Bible, perhaps you want fifty other books in order that you may become a thorough Bible student; but your library will gradually diminish until, at last, the more you understand the Bible, the fewer books you will need, and you will come to say, “If I might have all my days over again, this should be the only book that I would study, and I would concentrate all my powers upon the understanding of this one volume.” You can get to the bottom of all other books; you dive into them, and at first they seem to be very deep; but every time you plunge, they appear to get shallower and shallower, until at last you can see the bottom at a glance. But in God’s Word, every time you dive, the depths grow deeper. The first time you read a text, in your ignorant conceit you fancy you have learned the full meaning of it; but you look at it again, and you find that, though you had the meaning in one sense, yet you had not the full meaning; and you dive again, and again, and again, and you find, each time you dive, that the meaning is still far beyond your reach, and that the Bible is altogether above your comprehension. It expands, it grows, it continually increases in interest. There is such a charm about the Bible, that he who reads it but little can never feel the full force of it. It is something like the maelstrom you have heard of, only in a different and more excellent sense. The maelstrom is a great whirlpool on the coast of Norway. A ship, at a long distance from it, will feel something of its attractive influence,-a very little, yet enough to make it veer from its course; but the nearer it gets to the whirlpool, the stronger becomes the current, and the more forcibly is the vessel carried along by it, until, at last, the ship is drawn near, whirled round at a tremendous rate, and then engulfed in its depths. In a higher and better sense, the like is true of the Bible. The nearer you go to it, the more closely you study it, the more voraciously you devour its contents, the more rapidly do you revolve in its circles, until at last you are swallowed up in its glory, and seem to long for nothing else than to prove the heights and depths of this bliss unfathomable,-the love of God in Christ Jesus as revealed to us in his sacred Word. Truly, we may say to the Bible, “Thou hast the dew of thy youth.”

Again, I may add, everything that has to do with Christ is always young. The beds of spices where he lieth are always green; the trees planted by him will never wither, their fruits will always come to perfection. Everything lives where he is; for he is life, and in him there is no death at all; and because he is life, he is always full of freshness, and therefore doth he scatter living force wheresoever he goeth. All this we shall best know when we shall follow him to the living fountains of waters, and God shall wipe away all tears from our eyes.

Now let us turn to the second point, and enquire, What is the reason for this freshness? What is the reason why Christ Jesus, and his gospel, and his Word, and all things about him, are always so fresh? Why have we always an abiding dew upon these holy things?

I answer, first, no man, who understands what it is to have Christ in his heart, will ever get tired of him through want of variety. The reason why we get tired of a thing is generally because, as we say, there is a sameness about it. There are many men who have a weighty message to deliver, consisting of very good matter; but, dear me! it is a pain to sit and listen to them, because they deliver all their words in a monotone; they always speak as if they were striking a bell, and word follows word, with no difference of tone. Now, the human ear loves variety; it cannot bear monotony. And so is it with the whole of our manhood; nothing monotonous will long retain its freshness. However sweet the music might be, if we always heard the same notes, we should most assuredly be as disgusted with even the music of an archangel, if we were compelled to hear it all day and all night long, as we are with the cackling of a goose. Everything is apt to lose its interest when it is repeated over and over again; but there is no fear of any monotony or tautology in Christ. You may look at Christ a thousand times, and you shall have, if you please, a thousand different aspects of his beauty.

If you turn to the Old Testament, you can see him in a vast variety of forms. You can see him as the paschal lamb and as the scapegoat; you can see him at one time as the bullock, strong to labour, and at another time as the lamb, patient to endure; you can see him as the dove, full of innocence; you can see him in the blood sprinkled, in the incense burning, in the laver filled with water, in Aaron’s rod that budded, in the golden pot that was full of manna; in the ark, you can see him having the law within his heart; and over the ark, you can see the golden light of the Shekinah above the mercy-seat, and say, “Christ is here.” In every type, you may see Christ, and in so many different shapes, too, that you can say, “Turn this whichever way I like, there is always something fresh in it.” Christ, if I may compare so glorious a Person to so humble a thing, is like the kaleidoscope. As often as you look through it, you see a fresh arrangement of colours, and a new design, and, in like manner, as often as you look at the Lord Jesus Christ, you always discover some new beauty in him.

When you have done with looking at him typically, look at him officially. You have not time to consider all his glories as a Priest,-you have hardly passed your eyes over his flowing vesture, and his glittering breastplate, and listened to the ringing of the bells, and marked the beauty of the pomegranates, before you see him come forth as a King; and you can scarcely stop to look at the many crowns on his head before he comes forth as a Prophet; and you have hardly time to admire him as a Prophet before he comes forth as Mediator, as Shepherd, as Captain of our salvation, as Head of the Church, as the everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace. If you go further, and look at his person, you will see what a wonderful variety there is in him. You see him as the Child born, the Son given; when he comes into this world, you know him to be God, and you are lost in admiration of his Deity; you also know him to be man, and you still stand astonished when you regard him in that aspect as bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh. The reason why everything else loses its freshness to us is because of its want of variety. You may go to any exhibition that has ever been opened to attract attention and awaken interest; but you will find that, after a certain time, there is a want of variety in it; but with Christ there never is such a lack, and therefore to the mind’s eye he always has the dew of his youth.

There is also another reason; Christ has the dew of his youth because of his excellence. To-day, stepping in to see a gentleman, I observed a table which had upon it a great variety of objects. I wondered what they were, and took the liberty of asking him. He told me that he had some beautiful stereoscopic views there, which had been taken at an immense expense in Egypt, in the Holy Land, and in all parts of the world; and he showed me one or two Scriptural subjects which very much interested me. They were certainly pre-eminently excellent as works of art. He said, “There, sir, I never get tired of looking at these slides; I could examine them constantly, and never be weary of them.” “Well,” I said, “I can quite understand that; they are so excellent; for, really, there is half-an-hour’s study in this one picture; and then one might begin again, it is so full of beauty, and it seems so true to the original.” But I thought to myself, “Excellent as they are, I think, if I call to see my friend in a year’s time, he will tell me that he has had to buy a fresh set of views, for he has been looking at these others so often that he has become altogether tired of them.” They would not have any freshness to him, because he had seen them so many times. But mark, the reason why he could look at them so often was because they were so excellent. If they had been poor pictures, if there had not been great skill and art bestowed upon them, he would soon have become weary of looking at them. There are some views in nature which a man might gaze upon a hundred times, and yet always wonder at them; but the reason is, because they are so beautiful. There are other things that might strike one at first, but which, when they were looked into more closely, would lose their freshness, because there would be no real ground for admiration, no excellence in them. But Christ Jesus will always have the dew of his youth, because he is always so excellent.

Ah, brethren! you thought Christ was sweet when first you tasted him; but you will know him to be sweeter still when you know more of him, and taste and see that he is good; but you can never know all his sweetness, for you can eat, and eat, and eat to the full, and yet not discover it all; possibly, scarcely in heaven itself will you know all the sweetness of Christ. You imagine, perhaps, that you know how great is his love to you; but remember, it passeth knowledge. You think that you have fully proved his faithfulness; but you have not proved it as you will yet do. All the tests to which you have ever put the Saviour, it may be, are but little compared with those that are to come after. You have proved him with the footmen, you shall soon prove him with the horsemen; you have proved him in the land of peace, you shall soon prove him in the swellings of Jordan. But the more you test and try him, the more shall you discover that he is excellent, and worth the proving; and because his excellence shall become more and more manifest, the more you look at him, you shall say to him continually, “Thou hast the dew of thy youth. I find thee better and better. Fairest of the sons of men, thou growest fairer every day! Bread of heaven, thou becomest sweeter to my taste every hour! Thou wast once like wafers made with honey; thou art sweeter than angels’ food now. Water of life, thou growest more cooling to my tongue, and more refreshing to my thirst continually! I loved thee as soon as I knew thee; but I love thee more now; I delighted in thee once, but I delight in thee more fully now.”

Still, I do not know but that the most excellent thing you and I have ever seen would, in time, lose its freshness to us, because we should discover all its excellence; but Christ will never lose his freshness to us, because he is divine. Whatever is not divine, in due time must lose its freshness. Suppose the Lord should give to us, to engross our attention and to interest us, the whole fields of space. Suppose, in eternity, the Lord should say, “Now I will give to you the works of my creation to be for ever the objects of your attention.” My dear friends, there is enough in a single flower, the botanist tells us, to occupy a man’s wonder and admiration for a number of years. There is so much skill and wisdom in but a single flower of the field, that a man might look and wonder as long as that. Well, just put together all the flowers and all the creatures of this world, and all the mighty rocks that are full of such marvellous secrets, and imagine that these are to be the objects of our eternal study and interest. I can suppose that a man would exhaust all the knowledge of this world in due time; it might take him thousands upon thousands of years, yet I can imagine that he might so fully examine everything that is noble and grand in this world, that at last he could sit down, and say, “I know every secret of nature here upon the earth; I have made every rock tell out its story; I have dived into every mine of truth, and I have ransacked all its secret treasures; but there are the stars for me yet to look at.” So picture the man going from star to star, and discovering all the wonders of God in the seemingly boundless universe. Here is a great conception for you. Imagine that all these stars were inhabited, and all full of fresh wonders; yet I can understand that, after myriads and myriads of years, all these marvels might be exhausted. Some stupendous mind, growing by that upon which it fed, might at last say, of all the secrets of God’s works, “I know them all. I have found out every wonder, and all the storehouses of God’s wisdom have I ransacked;” but, beloved, Jesus Christ is such a boundless field of knowledge, in him there is such a gathering up of all the secrets of God, that the whole of eternity must be exhausted before we could learn them all. He will have, he must have for ever, the dew of his youth, because he is divine. The wing of knowledge, though it had all the fields of space to fly in, must at last reach a boundary. The ship of wisdom, though it should sail across the sea that seems without a shore,-the as yet unnavigated sea of ether,-must at last reach a haven; but give a man Christ to be the subject of study, the object to awaken his interest and excite his wonder, and then you have indeed shot an arrow which shall never reach its mark; it shall fly on, on, on, and shall never stay. You have bidden the man plunge into a bottomless ocean. You have launched him, like Noah’s ark, upon a sea without a shore. He may go on, and on, and on, but he can never reach the end of that voyage. Christ must for ever be full of interest to him, because he is divine, and, therefore, inexhaustible.

Another reason why Christ will always have the dew of his youth is, because he meets all the cravings of our nature. Suppose I am introduced into a place full of the wonderful works of man. I look, and I look on; but why is it that I get tired of them, however interesting they may be? Because they only appeal to my eye. But suppose that there is the sweetest music at the same time, then I have something for my ear. Why is it that, even then, I get tired? Because I have another craving,-I hunger and I thirst. But suppose I have the richest dainties set before me; and I sit and feast, and look, and hear sweet sounds all the time, why is it that, even then, I should, after a time, however excellent might be the entertainment, grow tired? Why, because I have other propensities that are not brought into play, and other desires which have not their fair room for exercise. But suppose me to become like Solomon, so that I have all which the eye, or the ear, or the passions can delight in; should I, after all, be tired? Yes; Solomon tried it, and he said, “Vanity of vanities, all is vanity.” Why? Because there were other cravings in Solomon which all these things did not satisfy; his mind was hungering after knowledge; and when Solomon satisfied that, for he spake of all things, from the hyssop on the wall up to the cedar of Lebanon, there was one thing that was still not satisfied, that was his soul. His immortal spirit was longing for communion with his God; there was a hunger and thirst after something higher than mere mental food. His mind could not be contented with wine to drink and meat to eat, for it wanted knowledge; and his spirit could not be satisfied with mere knowledge, for it needed something higher than that,-the ethereal and celestial ambrosia of the glorified. His spirit was panting for communion with God, and therefore Solomon felt that all here was vanity, because it could not satisfy that craving.

Give me Christ, and I have no desire for anything beyond him, for Christ is all. Whatever of good we may wish for, it is all in Christ; it is impossible for the mind that is filled with Christ to imagine anything else; and in the day when we shall get to heaven,-we talk a great deal about golden harps, and golden crowns, and golden streets,-I imagine we shall find that all those harps and crowns and streets are contained in that one word “Christ.” When we really have Christ, we feel that we have nothing else that we can wish for. He that drinketh desireth to eat, but he that drinketh Christ drinketh food. He that eats desires to be clothed, but he that feedeth on Christ is clothed at the same time. He that is clothed needeth something wherewithal to adorn himself, but he that is clothed in the righteousness of Christ is robed in the court dress of heaven, and hath all the jewels of Divinity upon him. He that is adorned yet needeth something wherewithal to wash himself and keep himself beauteous, but he that is clothed in the righteousness of Christ, and adorned with God’s grace, is washed, and is clean every whit. He that is clean needs to be kept clean; but he that has Christ shall be kept clean. Dear friends, there is nothing that a sinner can want, there is nothing that a saint can want, that is not in Christ. There are many things that we think we want that are not in him, but nothing we really need that is not in him, for “in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily,” and the fulness of the Godhead must be more than sufficient fulness for manhood. “It pleased the Father that in him should all fulness dwell;” and if all fulness cannot meet our wants, what can? Therefore, shall we never be weary of Christ, because every craving of the heart is satisfied in him.

I will mention only one other reason why Christ will always have the dew of his youth. We shall never be tired of Christ, because the need that we have of Christ can never cease. While I am on earth, I shall never cease sinning; therefore I shall never cease to need the fountain filled with blood where I can wash away all my guilty stains. So long as I am here, my conscience will never leave off accusing me; therefore I shall ever need an Advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the righteous. While I am here, I shall never be free from trouble; therefore I shall always need him who is the Consolation of Israel. While I am here, I shall never get rid of weakness; therefore I can never bear to be without him who is my strength. While I am here, I shall never, I fear, cease from backsliding in some measure; therefore can I never cease to love him who restoreth my soul, and leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

You have heard, perhaps, the story of a party of travellers who were crossing the desert; they had exhausted all their supply of water, and they knew not where they should find any. But, at last, after some days’ march, they came near a turbid stream of the most filthy water, and in dashed the camels, and defiled it still worse. Yet the poor travellers, who had come across the arid desert, were so thirsty that they drank what was more earth than water, and thought it sweeter than any wine they had ever tasted. But after they had satisfied their thirst, did they still think so? Did they then say the water was sweet? No; they understood then what it was they had been drinking; and after their thirst was once quenched, you could not have compelled them to drink there again until the thirst returned in all its force. But so long as the Christian is here, he will always have the pangs of hunger, he will always have all the sufferings of spiritual thirst if Christ be removed from him, and, therefore, that longing will always make Christ sweet to him. Our Lord must ever have the dew of his youth upon him, because we shall always have an appetite for him as long as we are here; or if we lose it for a little while,-for fools will abhor all manner of meat sometimes,-yet that appetite must and shall return, and we shall again fly to those living waters as with the wings of a dove, and hasten again to those cooling streams with all the speed of the panting hart that longs after the water-brook, for it must drink or die. Therefore, beloved, you see yet again that, because we shall always need Christ, therefore will he always be fresh to us.

“But,” says one, “we shall not need him in heaven.” Who told you that? Whoever told you so, has certainly misled you. Not need Christ in heaven! Why, beloved, if you could take Christ away from heaven, you would take heaven away altogether, and leave every saint in hell. They do not “want” Christ in heaven, in one sense of the word, because they have him; therefore they do not “want” him as the Scotch use the word “want.” But they still need to have Christ with them every hour, for he is the sum and substance of heaven. If I shall not need Christ to cleanse me in heaven, yet I shall want Christ to commune with him. If I shall not need his blood to wash me, yet I shall need the offering of praise wherewith to bless and honour God. If I shall not need to pray to him, I shall want to praise him. If I shall not need him to forgive me, yet I shall want him to embrace me. If I shall not need him as a Shepherd, I shall need him as a Husband, as a Priest, as a King, that I may for ever serve him with joy and gladness.

The first is for the pulpit, a lesson of admonition. Dear brethren, we who occupy the pulpit must take care that we never, for a moment, entertain the idea that the gospel has become worn out. It still has the dew of its youth. There is a good deal of nonsense talked about a gospel adapted to the times. People say that the way Whitefield preached, and the way that John Berridge and Rowland Hill preached, was all wrong. True, many sinners were converted under their ministry; but, you know, sinners then were different from the sinners of these days, who do not need the same sort of preaching. Some say that the devil himself is improved, but I find him worse if anything,-improved the wrong way. They say that sinners are improved, and do not need to be addressed with the same fiery, burning words as of old; they say that they do not need the same simple preaching of Christ. The nineteenth century has become so learned that it has advanced beyond the simple knowledge of Christ crucified, it has become so erudite, that the simplicity of the gospel is far behind it, it has marched on so far ahead that it has left the cross miles in the rear.

Do not believe them for a moment, my dear brethren; if you want to wake up the people of England, preach the old-fashioned gospel; if you want to crowd your halls, and gather thousands round you, it is the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever, that you must preach. As for the manner and style of your preaching, you may leave that to the occasion; and stick to your subject, the simple gospel in all its freshness and glory. Pentecostal youth shall be seen in the gospel again when it is preached in all its fulness and purity. I know why some preachers like to be obscure; it is because it gives a man a peculiar kind of popularity. I believe some people like to hear a man whom they cannot understand; and some, when they hear a man they can only just comprehend, are very flattered, because the minister seems to say to them, “Now, you know that you are all very clever people, I must therefore preach you a very clever sermon;” and then they feel pleased that the minister should have such a good opinion of them, and should think them so clever. But when you go to hear some plain blunt man, who just simply tells out the gospel, and who believes that, to try to be eloquent when he is preaching would be just as stupid as to paint the rose or to whitewash the lily, then you say, “Well, now, he did not compliment me; why! he talked to me and all of us as if we had been a common lot of clod-hoppers and crossing-sweepers. He told us just the simple story of the cross, and there is nothing flattering in that.” Ay! and, by the grace of God, I trust that from our pulpits there will never be anything taught that is flattering to you. I hope each one of us will be able to say, with the apostle Paul, “I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: that your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.” Be you assured that there will be more unction resting upon the enunciation of the simple truths of the gospel, there will be more freshness to the hearers, than there will be upon the most polished oratory garnished with almost seraphic eloquence, and elaborated until it grows far beyond the comprehension of ordinary intellects. That lesson is for the pulpit.

The second lesson is a caution, a lesson of self-examination to each one here present. Do you, dear friend, take less interest in the gospel than you used to do? Do you find that it has become dull to you, and that even Christ himself has lost his freshness to you? Christ has not really lost his freshness, though you may have lost yours. What you should ask yourself is, “Have I found the right Christ? If the Christ I have found has lost his freshness, is it not very likely that I have found a wrong christ, one of my own making, one of my own conception? For the real Christ is always fresh, always interesting, always new. Have I not either laid hold of the wrong truth, or held it in the wrong way?” I said, “the wrong truth;” have I contradicted myself? Yet that is the palpable contradiction of this age. One man says, “Yes,” and another man says, “No.” I am told that it is uncharitable to say that another man is wrong if I am right; but I cannot make it out how both are to be right, or how yea and nay are to be made to agree together. He is a clever man who is able to tie the tails of yes and no together, and make them run in the same row. The fact is, if you have lost your interest in the gospel, it is not the right one that you have received, or else you never really accepted it; if you have lost your interest in Christ, it is because it is not the Christ of God in whom you were interested. It is very probable that, if your former zeal and your former delight in Christ have departed, you have made a mistake; and it is well that you should question yourselves very solemnly, lest you should be found building upon the sand when you thought you were building upon the Rock of ages.

I have just another word to add, and that is, a word of aspiration. If Christ has the dew of his youth upon him, let us, my dear friends who serve the Lord Jesus Christ, aspire to show the world that we do so. In the olden time, the dew of Christ’s youth made his people love him so much that they were ready to die for him; they gave all their substance to him; they lived a life of shame, and they were prepared to die a death of pain. Now let us prove to the world that Christianity has not lost its ancient vigour, that there is a godly seed yet left in the earth, and that the arm of the Church is not withered. Let us prove to the world that, as Christ made his people holy in olden time, he makes his people holy now; and that, as the religion of Christ made men disinterested, and devoted to him, zealous for his cause, prepared them to live, and helped them to die, it can do so now. It is for you and for me to prove to the world that our religion has not lost its force by letting them see its influence in our daily life. Emulate the noble army of martyrs, the glorious host of confessors; seek to live like the goodly fellowship of the prophets, and like that noble company of the apostles; and when you shall live the holy and devoted lives they did, then shall all the world say, “These men have been with Christ, for they have the dew of the youth of Christianity upon them. They are like the early Christians, and therefore the old religion has not grown old, so as to be likely to depart and pass away.”

ELIJAH FAINTING

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, May 5th, 1901, delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Thursday Evening, July 1st, 1880.

“He himself went a day’s journey into the wilderness, and came and sat down under a juniper tree: and he requested for himself that he might die; and said, It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.”-1 Kings 19:4.

When we read the Scriptures in our youth, we are often astonished at the peculiar conditions in which we find even good men. It is difficult for us to understand why David could be in such sore distress, and why such a man as Elijah could be so dreadfully downcast. As we get older, and become more experienced, as trials multiply around us, and our inner life enters upon a sterner conflict, as the babe grows to manhood, and therefore is entrusted with heavier tasks, we can better understand why God allowed his ancient servants to be put into such peculiar positions, for we find ourselves in similar places, and we are relieved by discovering that we are walking along a path which others have traversed before us. It might puzzle us to tell why Elijah should get under a juniper bush. We can understand his attitude on Mount Carmel, and comprehend his hewing the prophets of Baal in pieces; but we ask, in perplexity, “What doest thou here, Elijah, under a juniper, or away there in a cave on the hill-side?” But when we get under the juniper ourselves, we are glad to recall the fact that Elijah once sat there; and when we are hiding away in the cave, it is a source of comfort to us to remember that such a man as this great prophet of Israel was there before us. The experience of one saint is instructive to others. Many of those Psalms which are headed “Maschil” or instructive Psalms record the experience of the writer, and therefore become the lesson-book for others.

I may be, at this time, addressing some of the Lord’s children who have prayed Elijah’s prayer; I know one who, in the bitterness of his soul, has often prayed it; and, if God the Comforter shall guide me, I may be able to say something that shall help such an one in this his time of trial. If I should be permitted to come, as God’s angel, to smite some sleeper on the side, and wake him up to eat of spiritual meat which shall cause him to forget his sorrow, it shall be well. I will, first, speak about Elijah’s weakness; and then, in the second place, about God’s tenderness to him.

First, I am going to speak about Elijah’s weakness.

Only a few days before, he had stood on Mount Carmel as the mighty prophet of God, and had brought down first fire and then water from heaven;-he seemed to have the very keys of the skies, and to be girt almost with omnipotence to do whatever he would when he lifted up his voice in prayer;-yet, soon after, he was fleeing from the face of Jezebel, lest she should take him, and put him to death; and here we find him, after a long flight, in the wilderness, sitting down under a juniper bush, seeking to find a scanty shelter there, and entreating that he may die. How came all this about?

Well, the first reason is, that he was a man of like passions with ourselves. I suppose that the apostle James would hardly have said that concerning him if he had not perceived its truth in this particular instance. We used to have, in England, a great leader who is still called “The Iron Duke.” I think we might have called Elijah “The Iron Prophet.” He seemed to leap into the field of action like a lion from the forest; what strength and courage he had! He seemed to have nothing of the timidity, and trembling, and weakness of ordinary manhood; he was a very athlete in the service of God, girding up his loins, and running before Ahab’s chariot. Yet here we see that he was indeed a man of like passions with ourselves. He, too, could be impatient; he, too, could be petulant; he, too, could grow weary of his appointed service, and ask to be allowed to die. You have often heard me say that the best of men are but men at the best. The other day, somebody wrote me a letter to tell me that sentence was not true. All I could reply was, “No doubt, my good friend, you know yourself; and if, at your best, you are not a man, I do not know what you are; you must be something worse;” and there I left him. But I believe that, when a man is as good as he can be, he is still only a man; and as a man, while he is here, he is compassed with infirmities. Elias was not only a man of passions, but a man of like passions with ourselves;-a man who could suffer, and suffer intensely, one whose spirit could be depressed even to the very uttermost, just as the spirit of any one of us might be. He failed, as all God’s people have done; I scarcely know of any exception in all the biographies of the Old or New Testament.

Elijah failed in the very point at which he was strongest, and that is where most men fail. In Scripture, it is the wisest man who proves himself to be the greatest fool; just as the meekest man, Moses, spoke hasty and bitter words. Abraham failed in his faith, and Job in his patience; so, he who was the most courageous of all men, fled from an angry woman. He could stand face to face with that woman’s husband, and say to him, in answer to his false accusation, “I have not troubled Israel; but thou, and thy father’s house, in that ye have forsaken the commandments of the Lord, and thou hast followed Baalim;” yet he was afraid of Jezebel, and he fled from her, and suffered such faintness of heart that he even “requested for himself that he might die.” This was, I suppose, to show us that Elijah was not strong by nature, but only in the strength imparted to him by God; so that, when the divine strength was gone, he was of no more account than anybody else. When grace is for a time withdrawn, the natural Elijah is as weak as any other natural man; it is only when supernatural power is working through him that he rises out of himself, and so the grace of God is glorified in him.

It is some comfort to us when we see that we are not the only persons who have failed through the infirmity of the flesh. I do not hold up Elijah’s passions as any excuse for us indulging them; but if any are almost driven to despair because such passions have overcome them, let them shake off that despair. Nobody doubts that Elijah was a child of God; nobody questions the fact that God loved him even when he sat fainting under the juniper tree, for he manifested special love to him then; so let no despondent heart, no broken spirit, no discouraged soul say,-

“My God hath forsaken me quite,

My God will be gracious no more;”-

for it is not true. The Lord did not forsake Elias, and he will not forsake you if you trust in him; yet it may be that both you and Elijah have cherished passions of which he does not approve.

But, next, let us notice that this faintness of heart of Elijah was, no doubt, the result of a terrible reaction which had come upon his whole frame. On that memorable day, when all Israel was gathered together, and he stood forth as a lone man to champion the cause of Jehovah, having the four hundred and fifty prophets of Baal and the four hundred prophets of the groves in opposition to him, there must have been a strong excitement upon him. You can see that he was not very calm when the two altars stood side by side, and the prophets of Baal from morning till noon cried in vain, “O Baal, hear us.” Somehow, I like to think of Elijah, in the splendid furore of his soul, mocking them, and saying, “Cry aloud: for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing, or he is in a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked;” and, in their fanaticism, they cried aloud, and cut themselves after their manner with knives and lancets. Elijah’s blood was up to fever heat, his whole soul was aroused, and he scoffed at and scorned those who could worship anything except the one true God. But what a time of excitement that must have been when he bade the people go and fetch water from the sea, and pour it on the bullock and the wood lying upon Jehovah’s altar. When they had done as he bade them, he said, “Do it the second time;” and then, “Do it the third time;” and then, when the water ran round about the altar, and filled the trench as well, he prayed, and said, “Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and of Israel, let it be known this day that thou art God in Israel, and that I am thy servant, and that I have done all these things at thy word. Hear me, O Lord, hear me, that this people may know that thou art the Lord God, and that thou hast turned their heart back again. Then the fire of the Lord fell, and consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench. And when all the people saw it, they fell on their faces: and they said, The Lord, he is the God; the Lord, he is the God.”

I suppose that Elijah had no trembling while the issue of the conflict was in suspense; I expect that he felt the utmost assurance that the fire would come down; but even that confidence must have been accompanied by a wonderful excitement of spirit while he stood gazing up into heaven, and crying to God to send the fire as his answering signal from the sky. I can imagine, too, the intense delight and the holy triumph of the prophet when it came; and I can conceive how the grand prophetic frenzy came upon him, making him to become both judge and executioner, as he exclaimed, “Take the prophets of Baal; let not one of them escape.” Then, when he had executed the stern vengeance of God upon them, he had to go up to the top of Carmel, and pray for the rain. That was another season of intense strain upon his mind; and when he had sent to Ahab the message, “Prepare thy chariot, and get thee down, that the rain stop thee not,” the old prophet did what must have been very unusual for a man of his age and position, for he girded up his loins, and ran, like a footman, before the king, to prove his loyalty. So I do not wonder that, when the day’s work was done, he was very weary; and when the news came that Jezebel had determined to put him to death, his heart sank within him. As he had risen high, so he fell low; as he had soared, he must descend. It seems to be the way with us all; we must pay the price for any joy that we experience; we cannot have great exhilaration without having some measure of depression afterwards. Do not condemn yourself if this is your lot; do not excuse yourself if there is any measure of unbelief mingled with your depression, but do not condemn yourself for what is really as natural a result as the retirement of the sea after its waves have kissed the cliff. It must be so; night must follow day, winter must succeed to summer; and joyful spirits, that rise aloft, must sink again. We may sometimes wish that we could always keep on the level ground where some of our dear friends live. I have often envied them, especially when I have been down in the dumps; but when I have again ascended to the heights, I have not envied them in the least. At such times, I would have pulled them up with me if it had been possible; but that I could not do. So, dear friend, you may depend upon it that you cannot be Elijah upon Carmel without the probability that you will be Elijah under a juniper bush before long. The great prophet of fire proves himself to be only a man, after all; and in the time of testing, you also will be as weak as other men.

Another reason for the prophet’s depression was, no doubt, his intense love to God, and his grievous disappointment with the people. He had hoped that the test he had proposed would decide the great question. “If Jehovah be God, follow him: but if Baal, then follow him.” He had staked everything upon that one issue, “The God that answereth by fire, let him be God;” and he had proved to a demonstration that Jehovah was God. Israel ought to have renewed her covenant, and to have returned to the God of her fathers there and then; but that wicked woman Jezebel had power over the people, and as long as she ruled the court, and the court ruled the nation, the cause of God could not come to the front. Elijah could not endure that; and I think that the heaviest sorrows to a really gracious heart are the sins of the times, the transgressions of the multitude, the national sins that bite like asps into an earnest soul, especially if you have done something, or have seen it done by others, which ought to have ended the discussion, and settled the matter once for all. Sometimes, when we have trusted in God, and he has wrought a great deliverance; and when this has been done before the eyes of men who, if it had not been wrought, would have denied God’s existence or power, we have been disappointed to find that they did not candidly go the other way, and say, “Since God has done this, we are bound to admit that there is power in prayer, and that God’s promises in the Scriptures are not a dead letter.” No, my brethren, they would not be convinced, even though God should rend the azure sky, and put out his own right hand visibly before them; they would still say, “There is no God,” and they would talk of the phenomenon which they had seen, and, no doubt, interpret it upon some natural or scientific principles so as to fritter the whole thing away. This kind of conduct eats into a godly man’s spirit, and there is not much cause to wonder that he, who could say, “I have been very jealous for the Lord God of hosts,” should find himself in such a state of heart that he steals right away into the wilderness, and never wants to see anybody again. Have you never sighed, as did the poet Cowper,-

“For a lodge in some vast wilderness,

Some boundless contiguity of shade;

Where rumour of oppression and deceit,

Of unsuccessful or successful war,

Might never reach me more;”-

or have you never used the language of David, “Oh that I had wings like a dove! for then would I fly away, and be at rest”?

There was, probably, another and a minor reason for Elijah’s great depression, that is, he was very weary. I should suppose that he had gone a very long way, without resting at all; hot foot, in hasty flight from the cruel Jezebel, he had passed through a great part of the land both of Israel and Judah, and he had gone away alone into the wilderness, so he must have been very tired; and that, of itself, would tend to the lowering of his spirits. It is always a pity, when you are taking stock of yourself, not to consider the condition of the weather, the state of your stomach and liver, and a great many other things. Though they may seem small, yet there may be more in them than is apparent to the sight. I have known a man feel so bad that he thought he could not be a child of God; when, really, the main trouble was that he needed his dinner, for his spirits revived as soon as he had partaken of proper nourishment. Certainly, one of the lessons that this chapter teaches us is, that when we get weary, or we suffer from some disease, so that the strength of our body begins to flag, then we are apt to say,-

“ ’Tis a point I long to know,

Oft it causes anxious thought,-

Do I love the Lord, or no?

Am I his, or am I not?”

Now that kind of anxiety is right enough, but sometimes the cause of it lies in some small thing, altogether apart from spiritual forces, yet something which the devil can use to torment us very much. You know how Paul was tormented by Satan, once, in a way that was very painful and trying. It was not the devil himself who came to him, it was “the messenger of Satan,”-one of his errand boys; and he did not come to wound the apostle with a sword, he only came to “buffet” him, to hit him, as it were, with a gloved hand; and when he pierced him, it was only with “a thorn in the flesh;” yet that little thing bothered the apostle so much that he could not endure it, and he had to cry to God about it; he says, “For this thing I besought the Lord thrice, that it might depart from me.” It often happens that some little thing like that, which really at another time we should altogether despise, may be the cause of intense depression of spirit. I know it is so, and I beseech God’s children, however unusual the advice may seem, to attach some importance to it, or else they may begin condemning themselves when there is nothing to condemn, and be accusing themselves when really they are right with God, and all things are prospering with them. What terrible pain you may suffer from a little speck of dust in one of your eyes! You cannot see it, but you can feel it; and the tiniest stone in your shoe, how hard it makes your walking! And other little things will, often, as in the case of the prophet’s weariness, cause grievous depression of spirit.

I must, however, point cut to you that Elijah’s prayer that he might die, was a very foolish one. Let us look at it a minute or two, and its folly will soon appear. He prayed that he might die: why? Because he was afraid that he should die! That is the odd thing about his request; he was running away from Jezebel, because she had threatened to kill him, yet he prayed that he might die! This was very inconsistent on his part, but we always are inconsistent when we are unbelieving. There is nothing in the world more really ridiculous than unbelieving fears. If we could but see them as we shall see them one day, when faith is strong, and we get into clearer light, we should laugh at ourselves, and then weep over ourselves to think that we should be so foolish. You run away from death, and then ask that you may die; that is what Elijah did, so it is no cause for wonder if poor ordinary mortals, such as we are, act in the same fashion as this great prophet of God did.

Further, it was great folly for him to wish to die, because there was more need, even according to his own account, that he should continue to live then than there ever had been before. What did he say? “I, even I only, am left; and they seek my life, to take it away.” But, Elijah, if you die, there will be an end of the Lord’s people, if your reckoning is correct. Surely, if you are the only one left, you ought to pray that you may live on until there are some more to carry on the work. It is a pity that the coal of Israel should be utterly quenched, and that the last lamp should be put out. The reason that the prophet gave for wanting to die was the very best reason he could have given for wanting to live. That is strange; but we are very strange creatures. There is not a man here who is not foolish at times; certainly, he who is in the pulpit takes precedence of you all in that respect; we all, some time or other, let out the folly that is in us; and we only need to be driven up into a corner, as Elijah was, and our folly will be discovered as was his; he ought to have prayed to live, yet he prayed that he might die.

Another thing that proves his folly is, that he never was to die at all, and he never did die; for he went up by a whirlwind into heaven. It is a remarkable fact that he who prayed that he might die is one of the two men who o’erleaped the ditch of death, and entered into life without dying. I wonder whether, as he rode to heaven in that chariot of fire, Elijah said to himself, “Why, I am the man who prayed that I might die!” If he did, he must have smiled with holy wonder that God did not take him at his word, and with sacred pleasure that his prayer was left unanswered. It was a petition that never ought to have been presented; and you and I, beloved, often have good reason to thank God that he does not answer our prayers, and we may sing, with quaint Ralph Erskine,-

“I’m heard when answer’d soon or late;

And heard when I no answer get:

Yes, kindly answer’d when refus’d,

And friendly treat when harshly used.”

So was it with the prophet Elijah; God answered him by not answering him, because he had in store for him some better thing than he had asked.

Note, also, that the reason Elijah gave for his prayer was an untrue one. He said, “It is enough; now, O Lord, take away my life.” But it was not enough, he had not done enough for his Lord. He thought that he had; he imagined that he had gone to the very verge of his capacity. He had exalted God in the midst of the people, and put the whole nation to a crucial test, so he said, “It is enough; I can do no more.” But he had a great deal more to do. He had to go down to Naboth’s vineyard, and charge Ahab with the guilt of Naboth’s death; he had to rebuke the idolatry of Ahaziah; and, above all, he had to call out his successor, who should keep the prophetic lamp still burning in the midst of Israel.

Elijah said, “It is enough,” yet it was not enough even for his own enjoyment, for the Lord had more blessings in store for him; and you and I, beloved, have often felt that we have been, like Naphtali, “satisfied with favour, and full with the blessing of the Lord;” yet the Lord has given us still richer favours and choicer blessings. It was so with Elijah, for he was to have that wonderful revelation of God on Mount Horeb. He had more to enjoy, and the later life of Elijah appears to have been one of calm communion with his God; he seems never to have had another fainting fit, but to the end his sun shone brightly without a cloud. So it was not enough; how could he know that it was? It is God alone who knows when we have done enough, and enjoyed enough; but we do not know.

Elijah also said, “O Lord, take away my life; for I am not better than my fathers.” But that was probably no more true than was the other reason that he gave for wishing to die. We do not know anything about his father, or any of his ancestors, but it is not likely that any one of them was at all comparable to him. Elijah was a grand man, a truly great man; God had favoured him far beyond his fathers, and intended still to do so. He was a man who walked altogether on a higher path than the rest of his fellows; and while it was well for him to be humble, it was not well for him to be so humble as to forget the great things that God had done for him.

Come, then, my dear brother or sister, if you are sitting under your juniper tree, and saying, “Let me die, for it is enough;” correct your foolish request, examine the reason that suggests it, and you will find it too weak to justify such a desire; so, may God help you to abandon it at once!

Now, in the second place, it is a very pleasing task to speak for a few minutes upon God’s tenderness to Elijah in this time or weakness.

It is always well for ministers, and all who have the care of souls, to watch how God deals with those who are in trouble, just as a young surgeon, when he walks the hospital, is eager to see how a master in the healing art treats his patients. The first thing that God did with Elijah was a very simple thing, he let him sleep. There is the poor prophet down in the dumps; he wants to die, but the Lord lets him sleep instead; and he slept soundly, too, for he needed an angel to wake him, and soon he fell asleep again, and a second time he had to be awakened. Rest was the one thing that he most needed, so, by-

“Tired nature’s sweet restorer, balmy sleep,”-

God gave his servant rest. Some people do not seem to think that the Lord’s servants need any rest; they want us to be always at work, fulfilling this engagement and that; but this is the way to bring us quickly to our graves. Yet we do not serve a hard Master; his Church is often thoughtless and unkind, but he never is, so he gave his servant Elijah the sleep that he most of all needed just then.

What was the next thing that God did? It seems a very small matter, yet it was the best thing he could do for Elijah; that is, the Lord fed him. When the angel awakened him, “he looked, and, behold, there was a cake baken on the coals, and a cruse of water at his head. And he did eat and drink, and laid him down again.” Now, I am afraid that, if you and I had been there, we should have begun talking to Elijah, and have worried the poor man by telling him how wrongly he had been acting. Instead of doing that, the angel let him have a cake, and then let him go to sleep again. That was the best way of caring for him; and there is many a hungry and weary child of God who needs food and rest more than anything else. The spirit needs to be fed, and the body needs feeding also. Do not forget these matters; it may seem to some people that I ought not to mention such small things as food and rest, but these may be the very first elements in really helping a poor depressed servant of God. It is not surprising that God becomes Cake-maker to his children, for we know that he is their Bed-maker. David said, concerning the man who considers the poor, “The Lord will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing: thou wilt make all his bed in his sickness.” There is nothing that is really necessary or beneficial which God will not do for his children. If they serve him so zealously that they get knocked up in his service, he will care for them, and bring them round again, for he knows how to do it; and very likely, like Elijah, they shall have their sleep first, and then their cake.

The next comfort that Elijah had was, blessed nursing. He had an angelic visitor to keep him company. The angel came to him, and delivered the Lord’s message, “Arise: eat.” He only uttered two words, but two words from an angel are better than a great many from some other persons. “Arise: eat.” That was God’s message to Elijah; and, beloved, it is very sweet when God lets his servants know that his angels are round about them, encompassing them, taking care of them, as when Jacob was met at Mahanaim by the host of God, and was comforted before he met his brother Esau. And many weary ones still find that God’s angelic messengers are round about them, so that they should not be left alone in the time of their trial.

The next thing that God did for Elijah, after he had allowed him to finish his journey, and get to Horeb, was that he permitted him to tell his grief. You may have noticed that he told the story twice; he knew what he was grieving about, so he stated it very definitely; and the Lord allowed him to tell it. It is often a wonderful relief to be able to tell out your grief, to pull up the sluices, and let the waters of sorrow run away. If no one but God shall hear it, if no human ear should listen to thy complaining, yet it is a very sweet thing to unburden your heart. One hymn-writer says,-

“Bear and forbear, and silent be;

Tell no man thy misery;”-

but I am not sure about the wisdom of that advice. At any rate, tell it to God, for he suffered his poor servant Elijah to pour out into his ear the sad tale of his woe.

This done, the Lord helped to restore his servant by revealing himself, and revealing his ways to him. He made Elijah see that God is not so apparent in terrific agencies as in quieter forms, that he does not always accomplish his purposes by earthquake and fire. The Lord let him see that “a still small voice” was being heard throughout Israel, although the prophet thought that no good had come of his testimony; and thus he was cheered.

Next, the Lord gave him good news. He told Elijah that he still had seven thousand in Israel, who had not bowed the knee to Baal; and that revelation still further cheered the prophet’s heart. Then the Lord did what perhaps was best of all for Elijah, he gave him some more work to do. He sent him off about his Master’s business again; and I warrant you that, when Elijah went back over that road, it was with a very different step from that which brought him down to Beer-sheba. He had come along terrified and distressed; but now he goes back with the majesty that belongs to the Tishbite, he is afraid of no Jezebel now. He calls out Elisha to be his successor, and he denounces Ahab, and does it bravely and boldly, and no one hears of his wanting to hide away again. God had brought his servant up out of his depression, in the way I have described, and he never went back again to that sad condition.

Now I come to the practical conclusion of the matter, which is this. Let us learn, from Elijah’s experience, first, that it is very seldom right for us to pray that we may die. It was not right for Elijah, and it is very seldom right for anybody to do so. It is never right for any of you, whose death would be your eternal ruin, to wish to die. Perhaps I am addressing some unconverted people who, in their impatience against God, have wished to die. What would you have gained by death? That day would be all darkness and not light to you; it would devour you as stubble. For any man to lay violent hands on himself in order to escape from trouble, is the maddest of all actions; it is leaping into the fire to escape the sparks; casting yourself into hell in order to avoid some temporary depression of spirit. Oh, if you are ever tempted in that way, God grant you grace at once to say, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Even if you feel a desire to die in order to get out of this world of misery, crush it down. If you are an unconverted man, whatever the misery of this world is, it is nothing compared with the misery of the world to come. It is far better to bear the ills you have than to fly to others that you know not of; even common sense should teach you that.

As for the man of God, it is seldom, if ever, that he should get into such a state of heart as to wish for death. I know, beloved, that we may sometimes very properly desire death; when we have had a more than usually clear sight of Christ, we have longed to be with him. May not the bride desire to be perpetually in the Bridegroom’s company? When sacred song has sometimes carried us, on its bright wings of silver, up into the clear atmosphere that is round about the gates of heaven, we have wished to enter; we have longed that we might see our God. I have no doubt it is right enough, when we are wearied, to wish for the everlasting rest; when we are conscious of sin, it is right enough to wish to be where sin can never come, and temptation can never more annoy. There must be such wishes; there must be such aspirations; for, to depart, and to be with Christ, is far better than to abide here; but we must never get into such a craving and longing for heaven that we are not content to bide our time here. We do not like men, who work for us, to be always looking for Saturday night to come; and there are some Christians who are always wanting their Saturday night to arrive. Be willing to do a good day’s work, to do a good week’s work; and then the Sabbath will be all the sweeter to you when you get up-

“Where congregations ne’er break up,

And Sabbaths have no end.”

How long you and I are to be here, is no concern of ours. After all, we are not our own masters; we are our Lord’s servants. If he thinks we can glorify him better here than there, it must be our choice to remain here. I remember a good woman, to whom the question was put, when she was very sick, and very full of pain, “Do you wish to die or to live?” She answered, “I wish to have no wish about the matter, but to leave it in the hands of God.” “But suppose the Lord Jesus Christ were to say to you, ‘You are to have whichever you wish,’ what would you choose?” She said, “I would ask him to decide for me, but I would not like to have my choice.” You see, if we were dying, and we said, “This is our own choice,” we should lack some comfort which we might otherwise have had; but when we feel, “It was no choice of ours, it was the choice of God that we should die,” then it is sweet; and if you live, you can say, “I am not living now in answer to an impatient cry of mine; I am living because God willed it, and there is a purpose to be served by it,” and then it is sweet to live. So leave the matter alone, dear friend, and let the Lord do as he wills with you. Elijah wished to die, and prayed an unwise prayer; but our blessed Master said to his Father, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt;” and in all the throes of his death-agony, there was not a syllable of impatience, but a perfect resignation to the will of God. That is the first practical lesson.

And the second is, that whenever we do wish to die, we must take care that it is from the very best of motives, and that there is no selfishness in it,-no wish to escape from suffering, or from service; but we must wish to depart to be with Christ because it is far better.

“Let me be with thee where thou art,

My Saviour, my eternal rest!

Then only will this longing heart

Be fully and for ever blest.”

And, lastly, there is one more practical lesson for us to learn that is, you and I have not the slightest idea of what is in store for us on earth. “Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him” up yonder; and you do not know what be has prepared for you even here. Elijah says, “Let me die.” But, Elijah, would you not like to live to veil your face in the presence of God on Horeb? “Oh, yes!” he would say, “let me live till then.” And, Elijah, would you not like to live to rebuke Ahab for his sin against Naboth? “Oh, yes! I should like to live till then,” Would you not like to live till you have cast your mantle over that blessed servant of God, Elisha, who is to succeed you? “Oh, yes!” he would say, “let me live till then.” And would you not like to live, Elijah, till you have seen the schools of the prophets, raised by your influence, which shall live, after both you and Elisha are gone, to keep alive the work of God? I think I hear the old man say, “Oh, yes! let me live till then. Happy shall I be if I can see schools instituted for the training of ministers who shall go and preach in God’s name. Yes, let me live till then.” And you do not know, brother, how much there is for you yet to live for; and you, my sister, do not talk about dying, for you also have a great deal more to do before you get to heaven, service for your Saviour that will make heaven all the better when you get there. God has such blessings in store for some of you that, when they come to you, you will be like men that dream; and your mouth shall be filled with laughter, and your tongue with singing, and you will say, “The Lord hath done great things for us; whereof we are glad.” Wherefore, be of good courage, and strengthen your hearts, and wait still upon the Lord until he cometh; and may his blessing be with you for ever! Amen.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-196, 686, 116 (Song I).

FOURFOLD SATISFACTION

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, May 12th, 1901, delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, July 4th, 1880.

“And I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith the Lord.… For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.”-Jeremiah 31:14, 25.

The subject of this morning* was spiritual thirst, and the promises made thereto. I tried to encourage those who are not at rest concerning the state of their souls,-those who have strong and ardent desires to escape from the wrath to come,-I tried to encourage them to partake of Christ, by faith, that they might find peace of heart, and so might be perfectly satisfied. I believe that some did find peace this morning. We shall be on the look-out for them, and hope that they will speedily come, and tell us what God has done for their souls.

But, on this occasion, our subject is the very opposite of that of this morning. It is neither thirst nor hunger, but perfect satisfaction, not strength of agonizing desire, but rest of holy satiety of which I am about to speak, in the earnest hope that all of you, who are believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, may enjoy this perfect satisfaction even at this very hour. There are four forms of satisfaction described in the four sentences of the two verses which form our text.

The first is, God’s servants are satisfied with the appointed sacrifice. Read the first sentence of verse 14: “I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness.”

God’s people are his children, but they are also his servants; and their service, viewed from one special point, is that of priests. Christ has made all of us, who believe in him, to be kings and priests unto our God. It is the business of every Christian man to be a priest. There is no special order of priests now, apart from the general body of believers in Christ. We regard the use of the term “priests” as relating to any other persons as utterly misleading and untrue. Every man, who is a Christian, is a priest unto God, and he daily offers unto God the acceptable sacrifice of prayer and thanksgiving. In fact, his whole life should be a sacrifice; his ordinary garments should be his priestly vestments; and wherever he is, the place should be a temple for God’s worship. His own house, and every room in it, should be consecrated to the Lord’s service; and every action of his life should be the act of one who is holy unto the Lord, and who does everything with a view to the glory of God.

Priests, of course, must have a sacrifice, and it is the special privilege of the priests of God that they shall be satisfied by eating the fat of that sacrifice. If you read, when you are at home, in the 7th chapter of the Book of Leviticus, you will find that the Aaronic priests were forbidden to eat the fat of the sacrifice; and, in fact, to eat any portion of the fat of a beast that had been sacrificed to God, was a crime that was punishable with death. There were certain portions of the sacrificial animals that were allotted to the priests; but all that was described as “the fat thereof” was for God, and for God alone; so that, under the Jewish dispensation, the priest could never be satisfied with fatness. But Christ has made us priests after another order than that of Aaron, and the richest part of the sacrifice, the very fat of it, is ours to feed upon now.

Dear brethren, what is the sacrifice, of which we speak to-day, but the Lord Jesus Christ? We know of no other atoning sacrifice but the blessed person, body, soul, spirit, and blood of Jesus Christ, our incarnate God and Saviour. It is with this sacrifice that believers are perfectly satisfied.

First, we are satisfied with Christ as our sin-offering. Brethren, he did really take upon himself our sin, and he did make an end of it upon the cross. Believing in Christ Jesus, we have no more consciousness of sin so far as its guilt is concerned. A thing cannot be in two places at one time. When Christ took our sins, we had not one of them left. We were clear of them, in God’s sight, the moment that Christ became our Substitute; and when, by faith, we laid our hand on that dear head of his, and made confession of our transgression, we received the personal assurance that our sin was made to meet upon him more than eighteen hundred years ago. When he was nailed to the accursed tree, without the gate, he presented a sin-offering for our sake, and that one offering was effectual, for by it he has fulfilled the great prophecy concerning Messiah the Prince, “to finish the transgression, and to make an end of sins, to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring in everlasting righteousness.” Brethren, you believe this great truth, I know you do; but are you satisfied with it? If you are not, you ought to be; for what better fount of cleansing can you desire than the precious blood of Christ? What better way of atonement do you want than that Christ should bear the wrath of God for you,-that he should take your sin, and hurl it into the depths of the sea where it can never be found again? When he had done this, he cried, “It is finished;” and it was finished for ever, so are you not perfectly satisfied with Christ as your sin-offering?

Next, we are satisfied with Christ as our burnt-offering. Under that aspect also, he was well pleasing to God. Man was bound to bring to God a perfect obedience which should please his Maker; by himself, man could never do this; but Christ has done it, and you and I who believe in him are perfectly satisfied that God is well pleased with him, and also well pleased with us who are representatively in him. By faith, wrapped in the righteousness of Jesus Christ, with his finished work imputed to us, and his perfect robe covering us as with raiment of wrought gold, we do believe that we are beautiful in the sight of God, “accepted in the Beloved,” so that he can use his words to the spouse in the Canticles, and say to us, “Thou art all fair, my love; there is no spot in thee.” If you believe this, and have really a firm grip of it, you are perfectly satisfied with Christ as your justifying righteousness, the burnt-offering with which God is well pleased so that he smelleth in it a savour of rest.

There was another offering, called the peace-offering, in which the worshipper partook with God of the sacrifice in token of complete reconciliation between God and the sinner. Are you not perfectly satisfied with Christ as your peace-offering? You feed upon him, and God feeds upon him; and, therefore, you feel yourself to be at perfect peace with God, do you not? “Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Have you that peace, beloved? If you are looking to Christ alone as your Saviour, I know that you do feel within you that deep “peace of God, which passeth all understanding,” which doth “keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.” Do you want any better peace with God than Christ has made? Do you want any better reconciliation than Christ has accomplished? I know you do not; and you can, at this moment, from your inmost soul say, “God has satisfied my soul with the sacrifice of his dear Son. The fatness of that sacrifice has filled me, and I am delighted with it. Christ has put away all my sin; he has made me acceptable unto God; he has given me the enjoyment of peace with God and communion with him. Now am I fully contented.”

Dear brothers and sisters, when a man truly lays hold of Christ, he gets fully satisfied. People come to us, and say, “Why don’t you take up the modern-thought doctrines? Why don’t you study the new theories that so many have accepted?” Well, the reason is that, when we have the best object for our faith that we ever can get, we feel as if that was quite good enough for us. We cannot imagine anything that could give such rest to our entire nature as a belief in Christ has done. If you can really prove to us that there is something better, we are not fools, and we shall be quite willing to accept it; but we greatly question whether you ever will bring us to your way of thinking, for this Christ of ours, in whom we have believed, is so good, and great, and gracious, and glorious, that he fills and overfills us, and we do not see what more we could ever want or have.

Oh! how long was my mind in bitter anguish till I came to eat the fat of Christ’s sacrifice; and when I trusted in him as my Substitute, he at once satisfied the demands of my intellect. I seemed to think that it was the most glorious invention possible even to God that Christ should die, “the Just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” Then I understood how God could be justified, and yet be the Justifier of him that believeth in Jesus;-how he could pardon me, and yet punish my sin;-how there should be no violation of his justice, and yet no limitation of his mercy, because Christ stepped in, and paid all my debt, so that it was justly as well as mercifully struck out from the record of God. There are some very great intellects in the world, no doubt there are much greater ones than mine; but, as far as mine is concerned, that doctrine of Christ’s substitution perfectly satisfies me.

Words fail me when I try to tell you how fully this truth also satisfies my conscience. My conscience, burdened, troubled, and perplexed when it was once aroused, used to plague me day and night. I said to myself, “If God does not punish me for my sins, he ought to do so.” I could not believe in any love of God that did not punish my sin; but when I saw that he bade his sword awake against his own dear Son who stood in my stead,-when I saw that he was too just to wink at sin, and pass by transgression, but visited it upon a willing Substitute,-blessed be his name, then my conscience found a place of perfect rest. I felt that I could love God, and trust God, because he had not winked at sin, but had punished it, in the person of his dear Son, on my behalf. Oh, this fat of the sacrifice satisfies God’s servants as to their conscience!

And now it also satisfies my affections; and it will satisfy yours, dear friend, if you trust to it. You want somebody to love; everybody does. You cannot go through the world, simply living inside your own ribs. You must live in somebody’s heart; and if you give your heart altogether to any human being, you will be disappointed. But, oh! when you love Christ with all your heart, when you live wholly for him, then you have something that fills your heart right up. Here your love can rest; it can roost and build its nest in the wounds of Jesus. There is nothing that can fill the affections of any one of us like the dear person of our suffering Lord.

And I am sure that he also satisfies all our hopes. Large as they may be, there is enough in Christ fully to gratify them; and as for our fears, he fills them up so that we seem to have nothing to fear. “If God be for us,” in Christ, “who can be against us?” If Christ has died for us, who is he that condemneth us; and what is there that can now separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord? Oh, if you would all but try this blessed plan of believing in Jesus as the Lamb of God slain for your sin; if you would but eat the fat of this great sacrifice, you also would prove the truth of the first sentence of our text, “I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness.” In that way, you would have all you could take in, and a great deal more than all you want.

Now let us turn to the second sentence of our text: “My people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith the Lord.” This teaches us that, as God’s people, we are satisfied with God’s goodness. All through my discourse, I shall be appealing to you, dear friends, and asking you whether it is not as I say. Come now, beloved, you who are the Lord’s people, I want to ask you a few questions concerning his goodness to you.

First, are you satisfied with God’s eternal purposes? Your names are written in his book of life, he chose you from eternity to be his. Before the torch of light had kindled the first shining orb, he had looked upon you with prescient eye, and loved you. You are satisfied about that great truth, I hope: “I have loved thee with an everlasting love.” “Satisfied?” did I say? That word seems scarcely good enough. Sit down, and turn over in your mind this eternal love of God, and you will feel such delight within your soul, if you feel as I do, that you will soon have the tears streaming down your cheeks for very joy as you sing,-

“Loved of my God, for him again

With love intense I burn:

Chosen of thee ere time began,

I choose thee in return.”

Well, now, out of that eternal love comes adoption into God’s family. Taking us out of the family of the prince of darkness, he has made us his own sons and daughters. Are you satisfied with that adoption? Do you want any higher honour than to be a child of God? For, “if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ.” Earthly sovereigns are accustomed to confer titles of nobility upon certain of their subjects; I suppose there is something in the honour, though not much; but when God makes a man his child, he puts him among the princes of the blood royal of heaven, the imperial family of the skies. The peerages of heaven are so glorious that all the nobilities of earth sink into utter insignificance in comparison with them. You, poor man, and you, humble woman, believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, are allied to the God that made heaven and earth; you have been admitted distinctly into the one divinely royal family of the universe; are you not satisfied with this honour? You should be, indeed, more than satisfied with this goodness of the Lord.

Well, now, since you have become the subject of this adoption, all God’s dealings with you have been the dealings of a father. He treats you now as his sons Perhaps, at the present moment, you do not feel quite satisfied with God’s dealings with you; but if you are in a right spirit, you will be. It may be that God has stripped you of your wealth, and pulled you down from the high places you once occupied; you now stand in a very lowly position compared with that which you once filled. Yet, beloved, if faith be in active exercise, you will say concerning the Lord’s dealings with you, “What pleases him, pleases me. Whether he lifts me up, or casts me down, since he does it out of fatherly love, and makes all things work for my good, I will be satisfied with whatever he does, for it is all goodness, and it is written, ‘My people shall be satisfied with my goodness.’ ” O dear friends, this is a happy state of mind to be in, to be content with all that happens to us,-to have done with wishing for any alteration in God’s dealings with us,-to be satisfied with whatever he gives, and just as satisfied when he withholds,-to be even as a weaned child, crying no more after this poor world, but giving yourself up entirely to your loving Father’s care! May God grant to each one of you this privilege of being perfectly satisfied with his providential dealings with you! You will be a very naughty child if you are not; and you will bring upon yourself a heap of trouble if you kick against what God has done. It will cost you more pain to rebel against God’s will than that will ever can cause you if you yield to it.

Are you not also satisfied with the goodness of God in his promises? Take your Bible; is it not a galaxy of stars,-every one of them infinitely more precious than the whole of the wealth of this world? All that you need for time and for eternity is included in the promises of God’s Word.

“What more can he say than to you he hath said,

You who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?”

I am quite sure that you are also satisfied with your prospects. Why, methinks, that you will each one say, “I am infinitely more than satisfied with the prospect before me; it is too bright, too good, too glorious.” I am sure that God’s people, when they are in a right state of heart, are so satisfied with his goodness that they do not wish for anything more. They can hardly conceive of more than God has prepared for them that love him. Let me but have God’s goodness, and all may be as God wills. Only grant me thy favour, O my God, and I will make no choice of continent or climate, of poverty or wealth, of sickness or health, of time to live or time to die. If I have thy goodness, all else is but a trifle. God’s people show that they are satisfied with God’s goodness for they have no wish to change it for anything else. They would not give up their God if all the kingdoms of the world could be delivered over to them; they do not desire anything better for their children than God’s goodness. When you, who are parents, think of your dear ones growing up around you, you are naturally anxious about their prospects. If you did but know that they were all the Lord’s children, you would say, “We really care for nothing more than that; their fortune is made when once their father’s God has become their God.”

This spirit of resignation makes you content to wait here below, whether it be threescore years and ten, or fourscore years, or less, or more. That question will not trouble you so long as God’s goodness follows you. And this satisfaction also makes you happy in the thought of departure out of this world;-not impatient, but still expectant, hoping for the day soon to come when, borne on wings sublime, you shall leave behind you all the fret and care of this poor undeveloped life, and shall enter into the glory where your spirit shall expand itself in the full light of God, and you shall know what God has prepared for them that love him.

I can only speak very briefly upon the third sentence of our text, which is found in the 25th verse: “I have satiated the weary soul.” This satisfaction is meant for weary pilgrims.

First, they are to be satisfied with divine refreshments. Was it not so with you, beloved, when you started on the heavenly pilgrimage? I should like to recall to you, my brothers and sisters, that memorable day when first you knew the Lord. In my own case, I can testify that I was very heavy of heart and very weary in spirit. Often did Satan tempt me to give up seeking rest, for I had sought so long in vain. I had attended the ordinances of God’s house, and used the means of grace with great diligence; yet I think I was none the better, but rather grew worse. But the moment that I looked to Christ upon the cross, the very instant I understood that all I had to do was to look unto him, and be saved, truly he had satiated my weary soul. I could have danced for joy, or shouted “Hallelujah!” at that moment; and by the hour together my spirit was singing, “Praise the Lord!” I did not know how to express my delight sufficiently. You recollect that time yourselves, do you not, when the Lord satiated your weary soul? He had given you all that your soul could feed upon, and a great deal more. You were like a mouse that gets into a dairy full of cheese; you knew that you could not eat it all, you seemed to bury yourself in the fatness and fulness of the Lord’s mercy. There was no hope that you would be able to take it all in. It was so with me, I know; I felt like a little fish in the Atlantic, swimming where I pleased; above, beneath, around on all sides, there was an infinity of delight that much more than filled my soul. That is what the Lord does for us when we begin to trust in Jesus. How has it been with us since then?

Well, brethren, I for one testify that he has continued to revive us. We have often been weary since those early days; sometimes, weary in the Lord’s service, though never weary of it. We have been wearied with pain; we have been wearied with trials; we have been wearied with doubts and fears; we have been wearied with the assaults of Satan; we have been wearied with the unkindness of men; and weary in a great many ways; but, oh! whenever we have come to Christ, how speedily he has satiated our weary soul! We could laugh at opposition then; we could cheerfully take up our heaviest cross, and find it light as a feather; and we marched onward singing-

“In darkest shades if he appear,

My dawning is begun;

He is my soul’s sweet morning star,

And he my rising sun.”

Perhaps our greatest weariness is weariness of ourselves. The one person that troubles me most is the one from whom I cannot get away as long as I am here. There is, I expect, a troublesome fellow who worries and bothers you a great deal; that is, your own self. Well, dear friend, when you are weary of self, you will find it a blessed thing just to look away to Christ, and to say, “Lord, I am empty, but thou art my fulness; I am weakness itself, but thou art my strength; I am a mass of sin and misery, but thou art my righteousness and my salvation; I am less than nothing, but thou art all in all to me.” It is when we are most sick of self that we are most fond of our Saviour, and it is when we get most weary of sinning that we find the sweetest repose in our sin-conquering Redeemer.

So, you see, there is perfect satisfaction for weary souls, and well there may be, for look, ye weary ones, and see what you have to give you this satisfaction. God the Father is yours, to be your Father; God the Son is yours, to be your Husband, your Head; God the Holy Ghost is yours, to be your Comforter, your perpetual Indweller. “All things are yours; … the world, or life, or death, or things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s.” The covenant, in which the “all things” are wrapped up, is yours, for he hath made with you “an everlasting covenant, ordered in all things and sure.” Heaven is yours, with its golden streets, its green inviting fields, its endless glories, its boundless bliss, all is yours. Are you not satisfied, O poor weary one? Throw thyself down upon the couch of God’s goodness, and take thy fill of rest, for this is the rest, and this is the refreshing, and “so he giveth his beloved sleep.”

The last sentence of our text can only just be touched upon; it speaks of satisfaction for mourners: “I have replenished every sorrowful soul.”

There are plenty of sorrowful souls about, and no doubt there are many in this congregation. As we look into their faces, they appear tolerably cheerful; but “the heart knoweth his own bitterness.” There are some of us who are, at times, very heavy of heart; but when we do wear sackcloth, we always wear it next our skin. I can speak for myself upon that matter; I do not like to wear sackcloth outside, for everybody to see, because, if we do that, we make other people wear it, too, for we set a fashion of mourning, and this is our Lord’s command: “When ye fast, be not, as the hypocrites, of a sad countenance: for they disfigure their faces, that they may appear unto men to fast. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward. But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face; that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.”

But, now, where are you, sorrowful ones? Here is satisfaction for you, whatever may be the cause of your weeping and grieving. Are you sorrowing about past sin? Well, the Lord has given you perfect satisfaction concerning that matter, if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, for he tells you that he has put away all your iniquity: “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy trangressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins.” “Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” You need not be downcast concerning the sins that God tells you have ceased to be. Remember that wonderful declaration in Jeremiah 50:20: “In those days, and in that time, saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found: for I will pardon them whom I reserve.”

Perhaps you are sorrowful about inbred sin. You grieve because you cannot live as you would like to live. That is a blessed kind of sorrow; all God’s servants have to fight with inward corruption, more or less, and it often makes us cry, with the apostle, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” But do not stop at that question; go on to say with Paul, on another occasion, “Thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Your inward sins will be all conquered. There is not one Canaanite in the land who will not be destroyed by the power of your glorious Joshua, Jesus, who is leading you on to the battle. You shall be perfect one day; before the presence of God, with exceeding joy, you shall be presented, “without spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing.”

Perhaps, however, some of you may be sorrowing because of your present troubles. Then the Lord comforts you by telling you that your troubles are working for your lasting good. I should like to bear my own witness to the Lord’s goodness to me, and I desire to bless him as much for the cups full of bitterness as for the chalices of sweet delight; and I really and honestly believe that, of the two, I have gained more by affliction than by joy; and I have more reason to praise God, at this moment, for deep depression and heart sorrow than for all the joys I have ever known, with but one exception, that is, the joy of believing in Christ, and having fellowship with him. Put all earthly enjoyments together, and I do not think that they are worthy to be compared with the benefit of sanctified sorrow.

There may be some of you who are sorrowing because of dear children whom you have lost. The text says, “I have replenished every sorrowful soul;” so that you must not sorrow over these dear ones who have died, especially after you have read in this chapter about God comforting Rachel concerning her slain children. You know how the innocents were murdered at Bethlehem by the cruel Herod, and Rachel mourned for them in this prophetic lamentation; but the Lord said to her, “They shall come again from the land of the enemy.” It is a high honour to be the mother of a child in heaven; it is something still higher to be mother to many sweet little ones who have gone on before you, and who are singing up there an everlasting song of praise unto the King. It is a wondrous joy to be the father of those who, day and night, wait upon God in heaven, and see his face, and serve him evermore; so be not sad or downcast if that is your case. As for all who die in the Lord, we sorrow not as those who are without hope. There will be blessed meetings by-and-by. You look back, with great sorrow, to the loss of a dear husband, wife, brother, sister, father, mother; yes, but you know where they are, and you have the blessed assurance that you shall meet them again in the day when the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised, and you with them shall form an unbroken family around the throne of God in heaven.

What is your sorrow, dear friend? I will not stop to go into any further particulars; but whatsoever it may be, there is grace stored up in Christ sufficient to take all your sorrow away. Come, aching head, lay thyself down upon the bosom of the loving Jesus. Come, weary heart, lean thy whole weight upon his wounded side. Come, child of God with the sad countenance, and the red eyes of sorrow, look to the Man of sorrows, grief’s close acquaintance, and learn from him where the river of salvation perpetually flows. If the Lord will but reveal himself to you, you will want no other consolation, for he is himself the Consolation of Israel. Some of you may not come to this place many times more perhaps; you are getting old now, and very feeble. Well, suppose you never come again, we shall be sorry to miss you if we ourselves remain, but you will not be sorry to be “for ever with the Lord.” You are going from good to better, and from better to best; and what will the best be? If, at the Lord’s table down here, you have sometimes had such raptures that you hardly knew how to bear the joy,-and I know that you have had such bliss,-what will it be to see your Saviour face to face, and to be for ever with him where you can never grieve him again, and where he will pour out all the love that is in his heart into your glorified spirit? All that may happen to you within a week, within an hour, within a moment. Nobody knows how near we are to the King’s pearly gate, so let us not sorrow too much, nor be too much cast down. Hark to the music of the golden harps; they are ringing out so sweetly that, if we could but open these ears of ours a little more, we might catch at least some stray notes from the everlasting harmonies. Some of you are nearer to heaven than you think you are. If these eyes could but be opened, or be taken away altogether, so that the spirit might see without the hindrance of these poor dim glasses, what a sight it would be! The jewelled city, with its twelve foundations all formed of precious stones, and the eternal light shining out of it from the face of God and the Lamb, for no other light is needed there.

“What must it be to be there?”

Just think that we may be there within the next ten minutes; and this thought should make us bear without a sigh the sorrows of the present moment, whatever they may be.

“The road may be rough, but it cannot be long,”

so let us-

“Smooth it with hope, and cheer it with song;”-

and God be with us evermore, for Christ’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

JEREMIAH 31:1-26.

Verses 1-3. At the same time, saith the Lord, will I be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be my people. Thus saith the Lord, The people which were left of the sword found grace in the wilderness; even Israel, when I went to cause him to rest. The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.

Was there ever a sweeter word from heaven than this,-everlasting love proved by the drawings of divine grace? I know that your hearts will be full of music if ever the Spirit of God has spoken home to your soul such a message as this. Let us read it again. “The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.”

4, 5. Again I will build thee, and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel: thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets, and shalt go forth in the dances of them that make merry. Thou shalt yet plant vines upon the mountains of Samaria: the planters shall plant, and shall eat them as common things.

God has kind purposes of love towards his ancient people, and he will yet bring Israel again to her own land. And, spiritually, he has like purposes of love to all his elect; and they shall joy and rejoice with unspeakable delight. What though you are barren for a while? God shall yet come to you, and you shall be fruitful.

6-9. For there shall be a day, that the watchmen upon the mount Ephraim shall cry, Arise ye, and let us go up to Zion unto the Lord our God. For thus saith the Lord; Sing with gladness for Jacob, and shout among the chief of the nations: publish ye, praise ye, and say, O Lord, save thy people, the remnant of Israel. 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. They shall come with weeping, and with supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.

Do not forget the first meaning of this passage in its reference to Israel, but suck in also the consolation which comes from it to all who are believers in Christ. The Lord will certainly bring all his chosen ones to himself. Blind as they are,-wandering as they have been,-they shall come back to him; they shall come back with tears of repentance, and with refreshments of mercy: “by the rivers of water.” They shall come back to their God, who says, “I am a father to Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.”

10, 11. Hear the word of the Lord, O ye nations, and declare it in the isles afar off, and say, He that scattered Israel will gather him, and keep him, as a shepherd doth his flock. For the Lord hath redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he.

Redemption lies at the bottom of every favour that we receive from God. He blesses us because he has redeemed us. He has bought us with so great a price that we are too dear for him ever to lose us. Because he has bought his flock, therefore will he fetch it away from the enemy.

12-14. Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord, for wheat, and for wine, and for oil, and for the young of the flock and of the herd: and their soul shall be as a watered garden; and they shall not sorrow any more at all. Then shall the virgin rejoice in the dance, both young men and old together: for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow. And I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people shall be satisfied with my goodness, saith the Lord.

Why, these very words are full of marrow and fatness! The promise is inexpressibly sweet; what must the fulfilment of it be? Oh, for faith to lay hold upon it!

Yet there is a note of sorrow mingled with the pealing of the joy-bells:-

15, 16. Thus saith the Lord; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not. Thus saith the Lord; Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord; and they shall come again from the land of the enemy.

“Your lost; babes shall live; their very bodies, mouldering in the earth, shall rise again. Be not grieved or vexed overmuch; for ‘they shall come again from the land of the enemy.’ ”

17. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border.

There is another sorrow,-a deeper sorrow than grief over children, that is, sorrow for sin:-

18. I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus; Thou hast chastised me, and I was chastised,-

And there was an end of it,-

18. As a bullock unaccustomed to the yoke:

Since thy chastisements have been of little service to me, lay thine hand upon me:-

18, 19. Turn thou me, and I shall be turned; for thou art the Lord my God. Surely after that I was turned, I repented;

Repentance is a turning from sin unto the Lord.

19. And after that I was instructed, I smote upon my thigh:

In very grief of heart, as if I could not smite myself enough for having sinned.

19. I was ashamed, yea, even confounded, because I did bear the reproach of my youth.

Now when a man talks like that, how does God speak?

20. Is Ephraim my dear son? is he a pleasant child? for since I spake against him, I do earnestly remember him still:

“Not only do I remember him, but ‘I do earnestly remember him still.’ ”

20. Therefore my bowels are troubled for him;

“I cannot bear to see his misery.”

20. I will surely have mercy upon him, saith the Lord.

Oh, what blessedness there is in this gracious promise!

21-26. Set thee up waymarks, make thee high heaps: set thine heart toward the highway, even the way which thou wentest: turn again, O virgin of Israel, turn again to these thy cities. How long unit thou go about, O thou backsliding daughter? for the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; As yet they shall use this speech in the land of Judah and in the cities thereof, when I shall bring again their captivity; The Lord bless thee, O habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness. And there shall dwell in Judah itself, and in all the cities thereof together, husbandmen, and they that go forth with flocks. For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul. Upon this I awaked, and beheld; and my sleep was sweet unto me.

I should think it was. If a man could dream like that, he might well wish to go to sleep again. To dream of everlasting love, of gracious drawings, of heavenly restorations, of sin forgiven sorrow removed, and desire satisfied, well may the prophet say, “My sleep was sweet unto me.” May we, when we are awake, learn what the prophet heard in his sleep!

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-774, 801, 746.

BITTER HERBS

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, May 19th, 1901, delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, July 25th, 1880.

“With bitter herbs they shall eat it.”-Exodus 12:8.

Perhaps, before I come to the consideration of this sentence, it may be profitable, especially to the younger folk amongst us, if we think of the many points in which the passover was a type of our Lord Jesus Christ. Paul tells us that “Christ our passover is sacrificed for us;” and hence he informs us, by inspiration,-and therefore it is not a matter of conjecture or fancy,-that the passover was instituted to be a type of Jesus Christ who is the Lamb of God, the one appointed sacrifice for the sins of all his people.

In our reading, we have already noticed that great care was to be taken in the selection of the paschal lamb. It was to be without blemish, even as Jesus Christ, our Saviour, had no sin in him. The prince of this world watched him narrowly, but he found nothing of evil in him; all his enemies, as well as his friends, agreed that he was without fault. The paschal lamb was to be in the fulness of its strength, “a male of the first year;” even as our Lord Jesus Christ was offered as a sacrifice in the fulness of his manhood. He was perfect both as God and man, and hence was fit to become the sacrifice for the sins of men. Admire and adore your perfect Saviour, who, though he had no sin of his own, took upon himself your sin, that you might be made the righteousness of God in him.

The most important parts of the passover celebration were the killing of the lamb, and the sprinkling of the side posts of the door and the lintel with its blood. That was the ordained method by which the safety of those who dwelt within the house was secured. God looked with angry eye on Egypt, and bade his destroying angel avenge him of his adversaries. “At midnight the Lord smote all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh that sat on his throne unto the firstborn of the captive that was in the dungeon.” There was no exception; every house was filled with lamentation, except where the blood-mark was over and beside the door. The angel passed over that house, smiting none there; and we are expressly told that it was God’s sight of the sprinkled blood by which the firstborn in Israel were preserved from destruction. This is the main type of Christ’s atonement. Christ Jesus died as the Substitute for all who believe in him; and because he bore the punishment of sin for them, God righteously withholds it from them. How could he twice demand payment of sin’s debt, first at the bleeding Surety’s hand, and then again at the hand of those for whom he stood as Surety? Christ is the Substitute for all his elect; his elect are all those who believe in him; and by this sign ye may know them, they are sheltering beneath his sprinkled blood; and when God sees the blood, he passes over them. So, let each one of us ask himself, “Am I hiding behind the blood of Jesus? Is my confidence entirely fixed in the great reconciliation and propitiation which Christ has made? If so, I shall live; no destroyer can ever smite me; God himself must pass over me in the day of judgment, and I shall be ‘accepted in the Beloved.’ ”

There was in Egypt, that night, a saved Israel;-saved because of the blood sprinkled outside their houses;-and I hope we have here many members of a saved nation,-saved not because of anything they are or ever will be in themselves, but because Jesus has suffered in their stead, and his blood interposes between God and them.

After this, followed the feeding upon the lamb; the lamb, which had been slain, was to be roasted and eaten; and you who are saved by Christ’s death must continue to live upon Christ, as he said to the Jews, “Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.” This is, of course, a figure, meaning that Christ must be food to your minds, and nutriment to your hearts. You must love him, and trust him, and endeavour to know more and more concerning him. Your hearts must stay themselves upon him as your Brother, having taken your nature; and as your Saviour, having put away your sin.

This feeding upon the lamb was to be upon a roasted lamb,-not raw, nor sodden, “but roast with fire.” Christ is food for our hearts as having suffered for us,-as having passed through the fire of God’s wrath against sin. I do rejoice in Christ as he is now exalted at the right hand of the Father; but, first of all, I must know him as despised and rejected of men. Christ’s second advent is proper and lawful ground for joy, but not until you understand his first advent, and see him in his humiliation on Calvary. Christ on the cross is to be the one object of your faith; you must look to him there even as the Israelite was to look upon and feed upon the lamb roasted in the fire. Think what Christ has endured for you, beloved. I tried, this morning,* to speak about his griefs; but I know that I failed to set them forth at all adequately. Oh, what a fire was that through which our Lord Jesus Christ passed that he might become food for our souls!

Notice, next, that the Israelites were to eat the whole lamb; and you who want to have Christ must have the whole of him or none of him. There are some who are willing to take his example, but not his doctrine; they cannot have him. Others wish to take his doctrine, but not his precepts; they cannot have him. Nothing of him must be left, for there is no more in Christ than sinners absolutely need. You cannot satisfy your soul’s craving with half a Christ; neither will God allow you to insinuate that there is anything superfluous about his Son. The Jews had to eat all the lamb, and he who would have Christ must have the whole of Christ;-not only Christ as your Substitute, but Christ as your King; not merely Christ to trust, but Christ to obey. He must be to you all that God sets him forth to be, or else he will be nothing at all. Dear hearer, art thou willing thus to accept Christ as the Lamb of God? Art thou willing to have him altogether, to leave nothing of him, and to set aside nothing that appertains to him? Then, thou mayest freely take him as thine own.

The paschal lamb was to be eaten that very night, nothing of it was to remain till the morning; the whole lamb was to be eaten at once, or to be consumed by fire. Now, dear friends, I put the question to you,-Are you willing to have Christ to-night? If there is anyone who wants to have him to-morrow, I cannot promise that he shall have him; but he, who wants Christ to-night, is welcome to have him. If thou canst truly say, “I am willing, at this moment, to take the whole of Christ to be mine, and to accept him just as God gives him,” thou hast him already. Wherefore, be of good cheer, for God denies this Lamb to none who are willing unreservedly to receive him. If thou wilt have him, that will of thine is given thee of his grace, so take him freely. As when one cometh to a river, and asks no leave to drink, but quenches his thirst at once, so come to Christ, and freely take what God has provided on purpose for every willing soul. If thou wilt have the whole of Christ, to save thee from living in sin as well as from dying in sin, then thou mayest have him, and have him now; only delay not to take him, lest thou shouldst even die while hearing about him. Remember that solemn injunction, which we united in singing only a few minutes ago,-

“Hasten, sinner, to be blest,

Stay not for the morrow’s sun,

Lest perdition thee arrest

Ere the morrow is begun.”

Another instruction, which was given to the Israelites concerning this paschal feast was, that they were to eat it with unleavened bread. Leaven, you know, is usually regarded in Scripture as the type of hypocrisy and other evils; so, in accordance with this symbol, Christ is to be received sincerely. He who wishes to know the value of Christ must not play at receiving him; he must not say that he has him when he has him not. No, dear friend, thy whole heart must be yielded to Christ, and thou must take a whole Christ to thyself, or else he never can be thine. I seem to think chat there must be some here who are saying, “Yes, the Lord is drawing us to himself, and we are willing enough to be drawn to him.” Come along, then, look not back, but yield to the gentle pressure of his sacred love; and do it thoroughly. Be out and out in thy surrender to Christ; have no leavened cake of hypocrisy to mar the paschal feast; do not try to be other than thou honestly meanest to be. I beseech thee, trifle not with my Lord and Master. If thou must play the fool, do it with something else, but not with religion. If you will gamble, play with halfpence, as bad boys do; your immortal soul is too precious to be thrown away in a game of pitch and toss. Be in earnest in dealing with the Lord Jesus Christ; put away all leaven out of thy house, and out of thy heart; and let it be with the unleavened bread of real sincerity of heart that thou dost partake of the Lamb of God.

I have thus hurriedly gone over these instructions concerning the passover in order to lead up to this one, which is to be the special theme of my discourse: “With bitter herbs they shall eat it.”

My first remark with regard to this command is, that Jesus Christ, who is the Lamb of God, is always received in this fashion at the first.

Those bitter herbs were a kind of salad or condiment to be eaten with the lamb, and are generally thought to have been lettuce, and endive, and chicory, and such-like green meats, as we call them;-not nauseously bitter, but having a sufficient degree of bitterness to add a relish to the lamb; now, when souls come to Christ, they carry out spiritually what is here set forth in metaphor: “with bitter herbs they shall eat it.”

That is to say, whenever anyone really believes in Jesus Christ, there is always, mingled with the joyful belief, a measure of sorrowful repentance. “Yes,” says the truthful heart, “Jesus Christ died for me; but how grieved I am that I should ever have lived such a life as to need that he should die for me! I read about his terrible agonies, and I perceive that I was the cause of them. It was all for love of me that he came from heaven to earth; because he knew how guilty I should be, therefore was he nailed up to the cross, and put to death.” So the penitent soul does not know whether to rejoice or to sorrow. There is a mixture of emotions, there is a bitter sweet and a sweet bitter. I rejoice that Christ has put away my sin, but I sorrow that he should ever have had to do it.

“Alas! and did my Saviour bleed?

And did my Sovereign die?

Would he devote that sacred head

For such a worm as I?”

I do not believe in that faith which has not a tear in its eye when it looks to Jesus. Dry-eyed faith seems to me to be bastard faith, not born of the Spirit of God. With our joy over pardoned guilt, we must mourn that we pierced the Lord. We think of our past sins; perhaps some of them were very black ones; and as they come up before our recollection, we wish that they could be blotted out of all remembrance. We mourn over the many times in which we resisted the Spirit of God, and rejected the Saviour; and while we know that all these sins are now forgiven, we cannot help being grieved because of them; and we sorrowfully sing,-

“I know they are forgiven,

But still their pain to me

Is all the grief and anguish

They laid, my Lord, on thee.”

There is another set of bitter herbs that we eat at the time of our conversion, when there comes a distaste for the things in which we once took pleasure. As soon as a man knows that he is saved by the shedding of Christ’s blood, he begins to dislike the things he once enjoyed; pleasures and amusements of a polluting character, nay, even those of a doubtful sort, at once lose all their former charm. Of course, worldlings say, “The man is a fool; he has turned Puritan; he has gone mad.” These are some of the bitter herbs which you will have to eat; things that once seemed quite sweet will appear utterly loathsome, and you will turn away from them with disgust. Your tastes will completely change; your desires will alter; you will not be able always to understand yourself; and, oftentimes, your mouth will be filled with bitter herbs on this account.

It may be that some of you will have to eat more bitter herbs than others have. For instance, a man who has been a thief, one who has secretly plundered his employer, must make restitution when he is converted; and that is often a very bitter herb. I have known some who did not like eating it, but there was no rest to their conscience until that was done. Friend, if thou hast anything which belongs to another, restore it, and restore it speedily; how canst thou expect God’s blessing to rest upon thee while thou dost retain that which thou hast stolen? Let him that stole steal no more, and let him, as far as he can, make amends for the wrong that he has done. If you have been engaged in an evil trade while unconverted, as soon as you find Christ, you must clear out of that bad business; and if you have gained your livelihood in questionable ways, you must end all that sort of thing, and come right straight out from it, if you would be a follower of Christ. I have known a man, who felt that he must go to one with whom he had been at enmity, and say to him, “I am a Christian now, so let us be friends.” I have known some go and humble themselves very much, and eat a lot of their own words; they had a proud spirit, so they would never have acted as they have done if Christ had not changed them by his grace; but when he had met with them, they were ready to do anything that he wished if they might but glorify his holy name. They found that, in eating the lamb, they had also to eat the bitter herbs; yet, surely, none of us need be unwilling to eat the bitter herbs if he may but have the privilege of eating the lamb. If I may but feed on Jesus, I will seek to bring forth fruits meet for repentance, and so let him see that I do not follow him in name only, but in deed and in truth.

There are other bitter herbs, too, which we eat when we first come to Christ; they may be called the herbs of holy anxiety. When first you find the Lord, you are half afraid to put one foot before the other, lest you should tread where you ought not. I know that, in my early Christian life, I used to be afraid to speak lest I should say anything amiss; and I was continually on the watch lest I should grieve my blessed Master. I wish we all had this holy tenderness; it is a very proper thing to keep up all your life long But we always begin with it if we begin aright; we are very tender and sensitive in spirit at first. Perhaps, afterwards, we learn to mix more confidence in God with our proper doubtfulness of ourselves; but, at the beginning of our Christian career, not having as much confidence as we ought to have in the promises of God, our anxieties are very real; so that, while we eat the lamb, we take a mouthful of bitter herbs at the same time.

If any of you are feeling sad just now, and are afraid that you may not come to Christ because you are so sad, let me tell you that is the very reason why you may come to him. You have the bitter herbs; now come, and eat the lamb. Your heart is sorrowful; so come, and have it made glad. Come with your burden of sin, come with your brokenness of heart, come with your despair, come just as you are, and partake of the rich provision which God has prepared for you in Christ; and then go on your way with rejoicing.

Thus, I hope I have made it clear to you that Jesus is received at the first as the paschal lamb had to be eaten, that is, with bitter herbs.

Now, secondly, it is the same whenever we feed upon him afterwards.

At least, I find it to be so in my own case; I confess that my Lord Jesus is never so sweet to me as when I am thoroughly bowed down under a sense of my own unworthiness. I often feel far more unworthy than any one of you can feel; for the Lord’s grace and mercy towards me make me tremble, and feel ashamed that I am not more earnest about your souls, and not more anxious to bring sinners to Christ. Yet I say again that he is a precious Christ to me; and he is never so precious as when I am most vile in my own sight. Is it not so with you also, beloved? When you are very great in your own esteem, Christ appears little to you; but when you are very little, then Christ becomes all the greater to you; is it not so? When you feel that you are poor, guilty sinners, Christ is regarded by you as a glorious Saviour; but if any of you have begun to spread out the fine peacock feathers of perfectionism, Christ must seem very insignificant to you. It is a bad sign whenever you feel that you do not need to confess sin, or to look to Christ as you did at the first when you said,-

“I’m a poor sinner, and nothing at all,

But Jesus Christ is my All-in-all.”

Even after you have known Christ for thirty years or more, there is no feeding upon him like feeding upon him with the bitter herbs, with a sense of continued unworthiness pressing upon you, and then does Christ become exceedingly sweet unto your taste.

And I believe, brethren, that it is a blessed thing to feed upon Christ with a soft subduedness of spirit. Full assurance is a grand thing, but I think I have known a kind of full assurance that I would never covet, though it speaks very glibly as though its warfare were accomplished, and its victory were perfectly secure. It is a good thing to be able to read your title clear “to mansions in the skies;” and happy is the man who can always do it; but it is a safe thing to feel the tears of repentance in your eyes, through a deep sense of your unfitness for the skies at present, and to have your heart burdened because you do not feel heaven within you, and you are therefore afraid lest you should not be fit to be within heaven. Cowper wisely wrote,-

“He has no hope who never had a fear;

And he that never doubted of his state,

He may perhaps-perhaps he may-too late.”

I would sooner shiver, in dread anxiety, with the poorest sincere soul who ever trembled before God than I would stand in an unwarrantable confidence as to my own security, and boast and brag of my wonderful attainments. God deliver us from that sort of spirit! A quiet, peaceful frame of mind,-a gentle, humble, tender walk with God, seems to me to be the thing that is specially to be desired. When you fear and tremble for all the goodness that God makes to pass before you,-not because you doubt, but because you believe, you become anxious after a holy and gracious fashion. You think I am talking paradoxes; but I know what I mean, even if I cannot make you understand it. You know that you are a child of God, and you realize that you are favoured of the Most High, and therefore you are afraid to do anything that would be derogatory to his divine dignity. I believe that there is no way of eating the lamb acceptably, and that there is no possibility of enjoying Christ to the full without such bitter herbs as these. I know that I never yet had a single mouthful of this paschal supper, which my heart did really digest and assimilate, without having at the same time a bowedness and brokenness of spirit to be as a bitter herb to help the digestion of the heavenly meat.

Now, thirdly, dear friends, as our text is true in relation to Christ, who is the blessed gift of God, “his unspeakable gift,” I think you will not at all wonder if I say that this rule runs through all our spiritual gifts,-ay, and our temporal ones, too.

God may give us many temporal blessings; but if we are his children, this principle will hold good, that bitter herbs will be mingled with all the sweets of life. If any of you are favoured with great success, you will find that our text is true in your case. God sends bountiful harvests, but not without the oppressive heat that makes the labourer sweat and faint as he gathers in the golden grain. God uplifts men in his gracious providence, as he did David; but David had to eat any quantity of bitter herbs before he reached the throne, and even after he became king, with bitter herbs did he eat his royal dainties; and his son Solomon, who had fewer trials, found so many bitter herbs that he cried out, “Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.” God never intends that there shall be any sweet in this world without something sour to go with it. The rose must have its thorn; and amongst the wheat, the poppies must still continue to grow.

You child of God, especially, will find it so; for what if your Heavenly Father gave you all sweet and no bitter? You would soon grow sick; eating nothing but honey would cause you many a qualm and pain. God does not mean us to build our nests here, so he sends a high wind that makes the trees rock to and fro, that we may look for a more secure place of abode. If we had all that we wanted here, we should never wish to be up and away to that better world which is the goal of all our desires. If the bread was always plentiful upon the table, and the fruits were always abundant in the garden, and the sky was always blue, and the fleece was always ready for the garment, and the brain was always clear, and the feet were always nimble, should we not then forget our God? I am afraid that we should; and, therefore, he sends us these bitter herbs that nothing on earth may content us, and that we may cry, with the psalmist, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” Go on, young man, get your degree, and call your friends together to a festival; but “with bitter herbs shall they eat it.” And you, young woman, your marriage feast draws nigh; but with bitter herbs shalt thou eat it. Push on, good sir, with that business of yours; you shall enjoy prosperity, but with bitter herbs shall you eat it. Whatever there is, here below, that is the object of lawful desire, you may seek; but always believe that, if you gain it, there will come some salutary medicine with it. Else, if it be not so, thou mayest question whether thou art really a child of God. If there be no stone in thy road, and no cloud in thy sky, and if there has never been such a thing, but thou hast had unbroken prosperity, I tremble for thee, and I say, with David, “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green say tree. Yet he passed away, and, lo, he was not: yea, I sought him, but he could not be found.”

I will not now dwell upon many other points which I might mention, but will just briefly show you that our text also applies to us in living a godly life.

It may be fulfilled to us through persecution from the world. You who have fed upon Christ, and now wish to serve the Lord with your whole heart, must not reckon that you will be able to do it without paying a heavy price for the privilege. You will have many bitter herbs to eat, whoever may be allowed to go without them. A man who tries to be honest will find many people who will give him bitter herbs to eat. If you speak the truth wherever you are, you will often have bitter herbs handed to you. Try to do that which is right, either amongst working-men or amongst merchant princes; try to lead a really gracious, separated life, and see whether the seed of the serpent does not hiss at you, and try to bite and sting you. There is no need for you to try to grow your own bitter herbs; your enemies will supply them to you for nothing, and you shall have them often when you would rather be without them. If you tack about, and shift your course with every wind, perhaps you may curry favour with your foes, and they may allow you to eat your lamb without any bitter herbs. But if you are straight as a pikestaff, and clear as the light, you shall soon have bitter herbs to eat, depend upon it.

If nobody should give you any, you will find some growing in your own garden; for, even beside that sweet flower called heartsease, there will grow in our breast many herbs that are anything but sweet. For instance, if a man wishes to be downright true, he will sometimes detect himself in being false; his very love of truth will make him see that fault, and it will be a bitter herb for him to eat. One who wishes never to exaggerate in speaking, may himself discover that he has done so; he must eat that herb, bitter as it is. One who wishes to be scrupulously correct in all his business transactions, may find that he has made a mistake across the counter; he may easily be entrapped into a dishonest action, and then he will have many bitter herbs to eat. We cannot gain a victory over the natural tendencies of our corrupt nature, even through divine grace, without having some bitter herbs to eat. Then eat them like men; they will help to cleanse you, they will be a blessing to you, and they will make the struggle after righteousness, and honour, and virtue, for God’s sake, and for Christ’s sake, to be all the easier to you. May the Lord graciously enable you, in that struggle, to come off more than conquerors through him who hath loved you!

The next point is, that even in trying to win souls for Christ, you will have to eat some bitter herbs.

I am very thankful that I am addressing so large a company of dear Christian friends who help to bring others to Christ. I wish that I could say that of all of you who are members of the church, but I can truly say it of most of you. Ye are our glory, and our crown of rejoicing, because ye live to bless others. Now, I believe that you will join with me in confessing that, this holy work has been accompanied by much soul-humbling. If ever you have brought a soul to Christ, there have been bitter herbs in your feast of joy over it. I mean, that you have never brought anyone to Christ without a great deal of trouble. Does anybody think that our sermons and our Sunday-school teaching cost us nothing? “Oh!” says one, “I can preach off-hand.” Yes, I daresay you can, but I never heard of an off-hand farm that brought forth an off-hand crop. “Oh! I have nothing to do but to sit down, and when the Bible is opened, just explain it to the boys and girls gathered around me; and I keep good order among them.” Yes, perhaps you do; but the best order that could be given to you would be an order to go home; if you go to your class with no agony of spirit, no anguish of heart, what good can come of your teaching? Dear brothers and sisters, I am certain that, if God has ever honoured you by making you the means of the conversion of any of your fellow-sinners, you have rejoiced greatly; but you have known that it was, under God, the result of much previous agony of spirit on their behalf. Ay! and, often, at the very time when God has blessed you, you have had a bitter disappointment. You thought that dear girl really was brought to Christ, yet she turns out, before long, to be a giddy chit; and there is that bright boy, you did believe that he was saved. So he is, perhaps, yet you see grave faults in him, and you are very much grieved about him. Yes, that will always be the case with our work here, and it is only another illustration of our text: “with bitter herbs shall they eat it.”

Possibly, if God gives you very great success, he will take away from you, to a large extent, the power to rejoice in it. I know one, who seldom lives through a day without hearing of many who have been brought to Christ by him, but who, nevertheless, has long been incapable of taking any delight in anything he does, and who is obliged to live out of himself entirely, and on God alone; and I think, brothers and sisters, that in proportion as you know the truth about this matter, you will agree with me that it is so with you as well, and that, somehow or other, if God means to bless you, he takes care to break the neck of your pride, lest you should be lifted up with conceit, and fall into the snare of the devil. It is a high honour to be used by God as his instrument in blessing the poorest chimney-sweep, or the humblest child; but you may depend upon it that, if he honours you in public, he will whip you behind the door, and he will make you feel that you are nothing when he gets you by yourself.

I expect that the rule of our text will hold good with us to the last, and that it will be applied in meetening us for heaven.

Some of us will, within a very short time, eat our passover supper in another sense, for we shall pass over Jordan, and enter the heavenly Canaan. We shall go to the top of Pisgah, not to view the landscape, and go down again, but to fall asleep there, and so spiritually to pass over the Jordan of death, into the land of the blessed, where God will reveal himself fully to us. You will stand before long, dear brother or sister, with your staff in your hand, just as the Israelites did, and with your loins girt, and those who see you will say to you, “Whither away? Whither away?” and you will answer, “We are going to our own country,-to the Promised Land above.” It may be that you will have bitter herbs to eat at that time; do not, however, think any more of them than you do of those which you eat at your own table. Nobody ever turns away from the lamb because the sauce that goes with it seems sharp; you say, “No; it gives a relish to the meat.” So, when you and I come to die, it may be painful to bid farewell to dear ones here below; but that will be like eating bitter herbs. They will only give the greater zest to that last supper on earth which will melt into a blessed breaking of the fast in heaven. You have often seen the sun go down, have you not? What a fine sight it is! He often seems to look far larger in the setting than he ever did before; and if the clouds come round about him, are they not often the very glory of the sunset? And have you not seen his departing rays brighten them all up? No painter could ever have put together such charming colours; the mighty Artist of heaven has himself displayed his skill, but how did he make all that splendour? It was out of clouds; they were the canvas which was bespattered with the hues of heaven by the sublime Artist. So shall it be with you, dear friend, at last. Your old age, your pains, your groans, shall only be a part of the splendour which God gives to his people when they set at the last like the sun. Be of good courage, then, and fear not. Nobody stops away from a feast because of the salad that is served with the viands; so let nobody stop away from Christ, or away from heaven, because of the little griefs he may have to bear, the light afflictions, which are but for a moment, which work for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory. God bless you, beloved, for Christ’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

EXODUS 12:1-20.

Verses 1, 2. And the Lord spake unto Moses and Aaron in the land of Egypt, saying, This month shall be unto you the beginning of months: it shall be the first month of the year to you.

God thinks a great deal of the redemption of his people. When he redeemed them out of their Egyptian bondage, he took care that the mighty deed should be worthily commemorated. Thenceforth, the Jewish year was to begin with the celebration of the national deliverance; and now, when any of us are converted to God, and so are set free from the slavery of sin, we should reckon that then we really begin to live. All the previous part of our life has been wasted; but when we are brought truly to know God, through faith in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, then have we realized, indeed, what life is. The month of our conversion should be to us the beginning of months, the first month of the year to us.

3, 4. Speak ye unto all the congregation of Israel, saying, In the tenth day of this month they shall take to them every man a lamb, according to the house of their fathers, a lamb for an house: and if the household be too little for the lamb, let him and his neighbour next unto his house take it according to the number of the souls; every man according to his eating shall make your count for the lamb.

The worship of God must be rendered in an orderly manner, with due thoughtfulness and preparation. This paschal supper was not to be celebrated in any fashion that the people might choose; but they were to take time to have the lamb properly examined, that it might be found perfect in every respect, and that everything might be set in order so that the feast should be observed with due reverence and solemnity. Let us take care that we act thus in all our devotions; let us never rush to prayer or hasten to praise; but let us pause a while, and think what we are about to do, lest we offer the sacrifice of fools, and so cause the Lord to bid us take back that which we have brought to put upon his altar without due thoughtfulness.

5. Your lamb shall be without blemish, a male of the first year: ye shall take it out from the sheep, or from the goats:

It was to be a type of Christ, and, therefore, it must be the best that they had. It must be in the prime of its strength, otherwise it would not be a fit emblem of the “strong Son of God” whose mighty love moved him to give himself to death for us.

6-10. And ye shall keep it up until the fourteenth day of the same month: and the whole assembly of the congregation of Israel shall kill it in the evening. And they shall take of the blood, and strike it on the two side posts and on the upper door post of the houses, wherein they shall eat it. And they shall eat the flesh in that night, roast with fire; and unleavened bread; and with bitter herbs they shall eat it. Eat no of it raw, nor sodden at all with water, but roast with fire; his head with his legs, and with the purtenance thereof. And ye shall let nothing of it remain until the morning; and that which remaineth of it until the morning ye shall burn with fire.

Everything was to be done exactly according to God’s order; the alteration of the slightest detail would have spoiled it all. I wish that all Christians would remember this rule with regard to the ordinances of God’s house. They are not for us to make, or for us to alter, but for us to keep.

11. And thus shall ye eat it; with your loins girded, your shoes on your feet, and your staff in your hand; and ye shall eat it in haste: it is the Lord’s passover.

They were thus to exercise an act of faith. Why were they to eat in haste, but that they expected soon to be gone? They were to stand like travellers who are starting upon a journey, believing that God was about to set them free. Oh, that we would always exercise faith in all our devotions, for without faith it must ever be impossible to please God.

12, 13. For I will pass through the land of Egypt this night, and will smite all the firstborn in the land of Egypt, both man and beast; and against all the gods of Egypt I will execute judgment: I am the Lord. And the blood shall be to you for a token upon the houses where ye are: and when I see the blood, I will pass over you,-

What a grand gospel statement that is! When the sinner sees the blood, it is for his comfort; but it is God’s sight of the blood that is, after all, the grand thing; and when is it that he does not see it?

13-20. And the plague shall not be upon you to destroy you, when I smite the land of Egypt. And this day shall be unto you for a memorial; and ye shall keep it a feast to the Lord throughout your generations; ye shall keep it a feast by an ordinance for ever. Seven days shall ye eat unleavened bread; even the first day ye shall put away leaven out of your houses: for whosoever eateth leavened bread from the first day until the seventh day, that soul shall be cut off from Israel. And in the first day there shall be an holy convocation, and in the seventh day there shall be an holy convocation to you; no manner of work shall be done in them, save that which every man must eat, that only may be done of you. And ye shall observe the feast of unleavened bread; for in this selfsame day have I brought your armies out of the land of Egypt: therefore shall ye observe this day in your generations by an ordinance for ever. In the first month, on the fourteenth day of the month at even, ye shall eat unleavened bread, until the one and twentieth day of the month at even. Seven days shall there be no leaven found in your houses: for whosoever eateth that which is leavened, even that soul shall be cut off from the congregation of Israel, whether he be a stranger, or born in the land. Ye shall eat nothing leavened; in all your habitations shall ye eat unleavened bread.

Thus we see God instituting a commemoration of the deliverance of his people out of Egypt. How much more ought you and I, with joyful gladness, to remember the deliverance of our soul from the slavery of sin and Satan! Let us never forget it. I should like to refresh the memories of bygone times with you who know the Lord; the Lord help you now, with deepest gratitude, to recollect the day when first you saw your Saviour, and the yoke was taken from your neck, and the burden from your shoulder, glory be to the delivering Lord!

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-728, 561, 520.