Young beginners in grace are very apt to compare themselves with advanced disciples, and so to become discouraged; and tried saints fall into the like habit. They see those of God’s people who are upon the mount, enjoying the light of their Redeemer’s countenance, and, comparing their own condition with the joy of the saints, they write bitter things against themselves, and conclude that surely they are not the people of God. This course is as foolish as though the lambs should suspect themselves not to be of the flock because they are not sheep, or as though a sick man should doubt his existence because he is not able to walk or run as a man in good health. But since this evil habit is very common, it is our duty to seek after the dispirited and cast-down ones, and comfort them. That is our errand in this short discourse. We hear the Master’s words, “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people,” and we will endeavour to obey them by his Spirit’s help.

Upon the matter of prayer, many are dispirited because they cannot yet pray as advanced believers do, or because, during some peculiar crisis of their spiritual history, their prayers do not appear to them to be so fervent and acceptable as is the case with other Christians. Perhaps God may have a message to some troubled ones in the present address, and may the Holy Ghost apply it with power to such!

“Hide not thine ear at my breathing.” This is a singular description of prayer, is it not? Frequently, prayer is said to have a voice; it is so in this verse: “Thou hast heard my voice.” Prayer has a melodious voice in the ear of our Heavenly Father. Frequently, too, prayer is expressed by a cry. It is so in this verse: “Hide not thine ear at my cry.” A cry is the natural, plaintive utterance of sorrow, and has as much power to move the heart of God as a babe’s cry to touch a mother’s tenderness. But there are times when we cannot speak with the voice, nor even cry, and then a prayer may be expressed by a moan, or a groan, or a tear,-“the heaving of a sigh, the falling of a tear.” But, possibly, we may not even get so far as that, and may have to say, like one of old, “Like a crane or a swallow, so do I chatter.” Our prayer, as heard by others, may be a kind of irrational utterance. We may feel as if we moaned like wounded beasts, rather than prayed like intelligent men; and we may even fall below that, for, in the text, we have a kind of prayer which is less than a moan or a sigh. It is called a breathing: “Hide not thine ear at my breathing.” The man is too far gone for a glance of the eye, or the moaning of the heart, he scarcely breathes, but that faint breath is prayer. Though unuttered and unexpressed by any sounds which could reach a human ear, yet God hears the breathing of his servant’s soul, and hides not his ear from it.

We shall teach three or four lessons from the present use of the expression “breathing.”

When we cannot pray as we would, it is good to pray as we can.

Bodily weakness should never be urged by us as a reason for ceasing to pray; in fact, no living child of God will ever think of such a thing. If I cannot bend the knees of my body because I am so weak, my prayers from my bed shall be on their knees, my heart shall be on its knees, and pray as acceptably as aforetime. Instead of relaxing prayer because the body suffers, true hearts, at such times, usually double their petitions. Like Hezekiah, they turn their face to the wall that they may see no earthly object, and then they look at the things invisible, and talk with the Most High, ay, and often in a sweeter and more familiar manner than they did in the days of their health and strength. If we are so faint that we can only lie still and breathe, let every breath be prayer.

Nor should a true Christian relax his prayer through mental difficulties, I mean those perturbations which distract the mind, and prevent the concentration of our thoughts. Such ills will happen to us. Some of us are often much depressed, and are frequently so tossed to and fro in mind that, if prayer were an operation which required the faculties to be all at their best, as in the working of abstruse mathematical problems, we should not at such times be able to pray at all. But, brethren, when the mind is very heavy, then is not the time to give up praying, but rather to redouble our supplications. Our blessed Lord and Master was driven by distress of mind into the most sad condition; he said, “My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death;” yet he did not for that reason say, “I cannot pray;” but, on the contrary, he sought the well-known shades of the olive grove, and there unburdened his heavy heart, and poured out his soul like water before the Lord. Never let us consider ourselves to be too ill or too distracted to pray. A Christian ought never to be in such a state of mind that he feels bound to say, “I do not feel that I could pray;” or, if he does, let him pray till he feels he can pray. Not to pray because you do not feel fit to pray is like saying, “I will not take medicine because I am too ill.” Pray for prayer: pray yourself, by the Spirit’s assistance, into a praying frame. It is good to strike when the iron is hot, but some make cold iron hot by striking. We have sometimes eaten till we have gained an appetite, so let us pray till we pray. God will help you in the pursuit of duty, not in the neglect of it.

The same is the case with regard to spiritual sicknesses. Sometimes it is not merely the body or the mind which is affected, but our inner nature is dull, stupid, lethargic, so that, when it is time for prayer, we do not feel the spirit of prayer. Moreover, perhaps our faith is flagging, and how shall we pray when faith is so weak? Possibly we are suspicious as to whether we are the people of God at all, and we are molested by the recollection of our shortcomings. Now the tempter will whisper, “Do not pray just now; your heart is not in a fit condition for it.” My dear brother, you will not become fit for prayer by keeping away from the mercy-seat, but to lie groaning or breathing at its foot is the best preparation for pleading before the Lord. We are not to aim at a self-wrought preparation of our hearts that we may come to God aright, but “the preparations of the heart in man, and the answer of the tongue, are from the Lord.” If I feel myself disinclined to pray, then is the time when I need to pray more than ever. Possibly, when the soul leaps and exults in communion with God, it might more safely refrain from prayer than at those seasons when it drags heavily in devotion. Alas! my Lord, does my soul go wandering away from thee? Then, come back my heart, I will drag thee back by force of grace, I will not cease to cry till the Spirit of God has made thee return to thine allegiance. What, my Christian brother, because thou feelest idle, is that a reason why thou shouldst stay thine hand, and not serve thy God? Nay, but away with thine idleness, and resolutely bend thy soul to service. So, under a sense of prayerlessness, be more intent on prayer. Repent that thou canst not repent, groan that thou canst not groan, and pray until thou dost pray; in so doing God will help thee.

But, it may be objected, that sometimes we are placed in great difficulty as to circumstances, so that we may be excused from prayer. Brethren, there are no circumstances in which we should cease to pray in some form of other. “But I have so many cares.” Who among us has not? If we are never to pray till all our cares are over, surely then we shall either never pray at all, or pray when we have no more need for it. What did Abram do when he offered sacrifice to God? When the patriarch had slaughtered the appointed creatures, and laid them on the altar, certain vultures and kites came hovering around, ready to pounce upon the consecrated flesh. What did the patriarch do then? “When the fowls came down upon the carcases, Abram drove them away.”* So must we ask for grace to drive our cares away from our devotions. That was a wise direction which the prophet gave to the poor woman when the Lord was about to multiply her oil. “Go, take the cruse,” he said, “pour out the oil, and fill the borrowed vessels;” but what did he also say? “Shut the door upon thee.” If the door had been open, some of her gossiping neighbours would have looked in, and said, “What are you doing? Do you really hope to fill all these jars out of that little oil cruse? Why, woman, you must be mad!” I am afraid she would not have been able to perform that act of faith if the objectors had not been shut out. It is a grand thing when the soul can bolt the doors against distractions, and keep out those intruders; for then it is that prayer and faith will perform their miracle, and our soul shall be filled with the blessing of the Lord. Oh, for grace to overcome circumstances, and, at least to breathe out prayer, if we cannot reach to a more powerful form of it!

Perhaps, however, you declare that your circumstances are more difficult than I can imagine, for you are surrounded by those who mock you, and, besides, Satan himself molests you. Ah! then, dear brother or sister, under such circumstances, instead of restraining prayer, be ten times more diligent. Your position is pre-eminently perilous, you cannot afford to live away from the throne of grace, do not therefore attempt it. As to threatened persecution, pray in defiance of it. Remember how Daniel opened his window, and prayed to his God as he had done aforetime. Let the God of Daniel be your God in the chamber of prayer, and he will be your God in the lions’ den. As for the devil, be sure that nothing will drive him away like prayer. That couplet is correct which declares that-

“Satan trembles when he sees

The Weakest saint upon his knees.”

Whatever thy position, if thou canst not speak, cry; if thou canst not cry, groan; if thou canst not groan, let there be “groanings which cannot be uttered;” and if thou canst not even rise to that point, let thy prayer be at least a breathing,-a vital, sincere desire, the outpouring of thine inner life in the simplest and weakest form, and God will accept it. In a word, when you cannot pray as you would, take care to pray as you can.

But now, a second word of instruction. It is clear from the text, from many other passages of Scripture, and from general observation, that the best of men have usually found the greatest fault with their own prayers.

This arises from the fact that they present living prayers in real earnest, and feel far more than they can express. A mere formalist can always pray so as to please himself. What has he to do but to open his book, and read the prescribed words, or bow his knee, and repeat such phrases as suggest themselves to his memory or his fancy? Like the Tartarian Praying Machine, give but the wind and the wheel, and the business is fully arranged. So much knee-bending and talking, and the prayer is done. The formalist’s prayers are always good, or, rather, always bad, alike. But the living child of God never offers a prayer which pleases himself; his standard is above his attainments; he wonders that God listens to him, and though he knows he will be heard for Christ’s sake, yet he accounts it a wonderful instance of condescending mercy that such poor prayers as his should ever reach the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth.

If it be asked in what respect holy men find fault with their prayers, we reply, that they complain of the narrowness of their desires. O God, thou hast bidden me open my mouth wide, and thou wilt fill it, but I do not open my mouth! Thou art ready to bestow great things upon me, but I am not ready to receive great things. I am straitened, but it is not in thee; I am straitened in my own desires. Dear brethren, when we read of Hugh Latimer on his knees perpetually crying out, “O God, give back the gospel to England,” and sometimes praying so long that he could not rise, being an aged man, and they had to lift him up from the prison-floor, and he would still keep on crying, “O God, give back the gospel to poor England,” we may well wonder that some of us do not pray in the same way. The times are as bad as Latimer’s, and we have as great need to pray as he had, “O God, drive away this Popery once again, and give back the gospel to England.” Then, think of John Knox. Why, that man’s prayers were like great armies for power, and he would wrestle all night with God that he would kindle the light of the gospel in Scotland. He averred that he had gained his desire, and I believe he had, and that the light which burns so brightly in Scotland is much to be attributed to that man’s supplications. We do not pray like these men; we have no heart to ask for great things. A revival is waiting, the cloud is hovering over England, and we do not know how to bring it down. Oh, that God may find some true spirits who shall be as conductors to bring down the fire divine! We want it much, but our poor breathings-they do not come to much more,-have no force, no expansiveness, no great-heartedness, no prevalence in them.

Then, how far we fail in the matter of faith! We do not pray as if we believed. Believing prayer is a grasping and a wrestling, but ours is a mere puffing and blowing, a little breathing,-not much more. God is true, and we pray to him as if he were false. He means what he says, and we treat his Word as if it were spoken in jest. The master-fault of our prayer is want of faith.

How often do we lack earnestness! Such men as Luther had their will of heaven because they would have it. God’s Spirit made them resolute in intercession, and they would not come away from the mercy-seat till their suit was granted; but we are cold, and consequently feeble, and our poor, poor prayers, in the prayer-meeting, in the closet, and at the family altar, languish and almost die.

How much, alas, is there of impurity of motive to mar our prayers! We ask for revival, but we want our own church to get the blessing, that we may have the credit of it. We pray God to bless our work, and it is because we wish to hear men say what good workers we are. The prayer is good in itself, but our smutty fingers spoil it. Oh, that we could offer supplication as it should be offered! Blessed be God, there is One who can wash our prayers for us; but, truly, our very tears need to be wept over, and our prayers want praying over again. The best thing we ever do needs to be washed in the fountain filled with blood, or God can only look upon it as a sin.

Another fault good men see in their supplications is this, that they stand at such a distance from God in praying, they do not draw near enough to him. Are not some of you oppressed with a sense of the distance there is between you and God? You know there is a God, and you believe he will answer you; but it is not always that you come right up to him, even to his feet, and, as it were, lay hold upon him, and say, “O my Father, hearken to the voice of thy chosen, and let the cry of the blood of thy Son come up before thee!” Oh, for prayers which enter within the veil, and approach to the mercy-seat! Oh, for petitioners who are familiar with the cherubim, and the brightness which shines between their wings! May God help us to pray better! But this I feel sure of,-you who plead most prevalently are just those who will think the least of your own prayers, and be most grateful to God that he deigns to listen to you, and most anxious that he would help you to pray after a nobler sort.

A third lesson is this,-the power of prayer is not to be measured by its outward expression.

A breathing is a prayer from which God does not hide his ear. It is a great truth undoubtedly, and full of much comfort too, that our prayers are not powerful in proportion to their expression; for, if so, the Pharisee would have succeeded, since he evidently had greater gifts than the Publican had. I have no doubt, if there had been a regular prayer-meeting, and the Pharisee and the Publican had attended, we should have called on the Pharisee to pray. I do not think the people of God would have enjoyed his prayer, nor have felt any kinship of spirit with him; and yet, very naturally, on account of his gifts, he would have taken upon himself to engage in public devotion; or, if that Pharisee would not have done so, I have heard of other Pharisees who would. No doubt the man’s spirit was bad, but then his expression was good. He could put his oration so neatly, and pour it out so accurately Let all men know that God does not care for that. The sigh of the Publican reached his ear, and won the blessing but the boastful phrases of the Pharisee were an abomination unto him.

If our prayers were forcible according to their expression, then rhetoric would be more valuable than grace, and a scholastic education would be better than sanctification; but it is not so. Some of us may be able to express ourselves very fluently from the force of natural gifts, but it should always be to us an anxious question whether our prayer is a prayer which God will receive; for we ought to know, and must know by this time, that we often pray best when we stammer and stutter, and we pray worst when words come rolling like a torrent, one after another. God is not moved by words; they are but a noise to him. He is only moved by the deep thought and the heaving emotion which dwell in the innermost spirit. It were a sorry business for you, who are poor, if God only heard us according to the beauty of our utterances; for it may be that your education was so neglected that there is no hope of your ever being able to speak grammatically; and, besides, it may be, from your limited information, that you could not use the phrases which sound so well. But the Lord hears the poor, and the ignorant, and the needy; he loves to hear their cry. What cares he for the grammar of the prayer? It is the soul of it that he wants; and if you cannot string three words of the Queen’s English together correctly, yet, if your soul can breathe itself out before the Most High anyhow, if it be but warm, hearty, sincere, earnest petitioning, there is power in your prayer, and none the less power in it because of its broken words, nor would it be an advantage to you, so far as the Lord is concerned, if those words were not broken, but were well composed. Ought not this to comfort us, then?

Even if we are gifted with facility of expression, we sometimes find that our power of utterance fails us. Under very heavy grief, a man cannot speak as he was wont to do. Circumstances can make the most eloquent tongue grow slow of speech; it matters not, your prayer is as good as it was before. You call upon God in public, and you sit down, and think that your confused prayer was of no service to the church. You know not in what scales God weighs your prayer; not by quantity, but by quality, not by the outward dress of verbiage, but by the inner soul and the intense earnestness that was in it does he compute its value. Do you not sometimes rise from your knees in your little room, and say, “I do not think I have prayed, I could not feel at home in prayer”? Nine times out of every ten, those prayers are most prevalent with God which we think are the least acceptable; but when we glory in our prayer, God will have nothing to do with it. If you see any beauty in your own supplication, God will not; for you have evidently been looking at your prayer, and not at him. But when your soul sees so much his glory that she cries, “How shall I speak unto thee,-I who am but dust and ashes?” when she sees so much his goodness that she is hampered in expression by the depth of her own humiliation, oh, then it is that your prayer is best. There may be more prayer in a groan than in an entire liturgy; there may be more acceptable devotion in a tear that damps the floor of yonder pew than in all the hymns we have sung, or in all the supplications which we have uttered. It is not the outward, it is the inward; it is not the lips, it is the heart which the Lord regards; if you can only breathe, still your prayer is accepted by the Most High.

I desire that this truth may come home to any one of you who says, “I cannot pray.” It is not true. If it were necessary that, in order to pray, you should talk for a quarter of an hour together, or that you should say pretty things, why then I would admit that you could not pray; but if it is only to say from your heart, “God be merciful to me a sinner;” ay, and if prayer is not saying anything at all, but desiring, longing, hoping for mercy, for pardon, for salvation, no man may say, “I cannot,” unless he is honest enough to add, “I cannot because I will not; I love my sins too well, and have no faith in Christ; I do not desire to be saved.” If you will to pray, O my hearer, you can pray! He who gives the will joins the ability to it.

And oh! let me say, do not sleep this night until you have tried and proved the power of prayer. If you feel a burden on your heart, tell the Lord of it. Cover your face, and speak with him. Even that you need not do, for I suppose that Hannah did not cover her face when Eli saw her lips move, and supposed that she was drunken. Nay, your lips need not even move; your soul can now say, “Save me, my God, convince me of sin, lead me to the cross; save me to-night; let me not end another day as thine enemy; let me not go into the cares of another week unabsolved, with thy wrath hanging over me like a thunder-cloud! Save me, save me, O my God!” Such prayers, though utterly wordless, shall not be powerless, but shall be heard in heaven.

We will close with a fourth practical lesson,-feeble prayers are heard in heaven.

Why is it that feeble prayers are understood of God and heard in heaven? There are three reasons.

First, the feeblest prayer, if it be sincere, is written by the Holy Spirit upon the heart, and God will always own the handwriting of the Holy Spirit. Frequently, certain kind friends from Scotland send me for the Orphanage some portions of what one of them called the other day “filthy lucre,”-namely, dirty £1 notes. Now these £1 notes certainly look as if they were of small value. Still, they bear the proper signature, and they pass well enough, and I am very grateful for them. Many a prayer that is written on the heart by the Holy Spirit seems written with faint ink, and, moreover, it appears to be blotted and defiled by our imperfection; but the Holy Spirit can always read his own handwriting. He knows his own notes; and when he has issued a prayer, he will not disown it. Therefore, the breathing which the Holy Ghost works in us will be acceptable with God.

Moreover, God, our ever-blessed Father, has a quick ear to hear the breathing of any of his children. When a mother has a sick child, it is marvellous how quick her ears become while attending it. Good woman, we wonder she does not fall asleep. If you hired a nurse, it is ten to one she would. But the dear child, in the middle of the night, does not need to cry for water, or even speak; there is a little quick breathing,-who will hear it? No one would except the mother; but her ears are quick, for they are in her child’s heart. So, if there is a heart in the world that longs for God, God’s ear is already in that poor sinner’s heart. He will hear it. There is not a good desire on earth but the Lord has heard it. I recollect when, at one time, I was a little afraid to preach the gospel to sinners as sinners, and yet I wanted to do so, so I used to say, “If you have but a millionth part of a desire, come to Christ.” I dare say more than that now; but, at the same time, I will say that at once,-if you have a millionth part of a desire, if you have only a little breathing,-if you desire to be reconciled, if you desire to be pardoned, if you would be forgiven, if there is only half a good thought formed in your soul, do not check it, do not stifle it, and do not think that God will reject it.

And, then, there is another reason, namely, that the Lord Jesus Christ is always ready to take the most imperfect prayer, and perfect it for us. If our prayers had to go up to heaven as they are, they would never succeed; but they find a Friend on the way, and therefore they prosper. A poor person has a petition to be sent in to some government personage, and if he had to write it himself, it would puzzle all the officers in Downing-street to make out what he meant; but he is wise enough to find out a friend who can write, or he comes round to his minister, and says, “Sir, will you make this petition right for me? Will you put it into good English, so that it can be presented?” And then the petition goes in a very different form. Even thus, the Lord Jesus Christ takes our poor prayers, fashions them over again, and presents the petition with the addition of his own signature, and the Lord sends us answers of peace.

The feeblest prayer in the world is heard when it has Christ’s seal to it. I mean, he puts his precious blood upon it; and wherever God sees the blood of Jesus, he must and will accept the desire which it endorses. Go thou to Jesus, sinner, even if thou canst not pray, and let the breathing of thy soul be, “Be merciful to me, wash me, cleanse me, save me,” and it shall be done; for God will not hear your prayer so much as hear his Son’s blood, “which speaketh better things than that of Abel.” A louder voice than yours shall prevail for you, and your feeble breathings shall come up to God covered over with the omnipotent pleadings of the great High Priest who never asks in vain.

I have been aiming thus to comfort those distressed ones who say they cannot pray; but, ere I close, I must add, how inexcusable are those who, knowing all this, continue prayerless, Godless, and Christless! If there were no mercy to be had, you could not be blamed for not having it. If there were no Saviour for sinners, a sinner might be excused for remaining in his sin. But there is a fountain, and it is open; why then wash ye not in it? Mercy is to be had “without money and without price,”-it is to be had by asking for it. Sometimes poor men are shut up in the condemned cell, sentenced to be hanged; but suppose they could have a free pardon by asking for it, and they did not do so, who would pity them? God will give his blessing to everyone who is moved to seek for it sincerely at his hands on this one sole and only condition,-that that soul will trust in Jesus; and even that is not a condition, for he gives repentance and faith, and enables sinners to believe in his dear Son. Behold Christ crucified, the saddest and yet the gladdest sight the sun ever beheld! Behold the eternal Son of God made flesh, and bleeding out his life! A surpassing marvel of woe and love! A look at him will save you. Though ye are on the borders of the grave, and on the brink of hell, by one look at Jesus crucified your guilt shall be cancelled, your debts for ever discharged before the throne of God, and yourselves led into joy and peace. Oh, that you would give that look! Breathe the prayer, “Lord, give me the faith of thine elect, and save me with a great salvation!” Though it be only a breathing, yet, as the old Puritan says, when God feels the breath of his child upon his face, he smiles; and he will feel your breath, and smile on you, and bless you. May he do so, for his name’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

LAMENTATIONS 3:1-36

The first part of this chapter is one of the saddest in the whole Book of God; yet I expect it has ministered as much consolation as some of the brightest pages of Holy Writ, because there are children of God who are the subjects of great suffering and sorrow, and when they turn to such a passage as this, they see that one of the Lord’s own prophets has gone that way before them; and when they see the footprints of another of God’s people in the dark and gloomy valley that they are themselves traversing, they are encouraged. Besides, the chapter does not end as it begins. There is daylight for the poor sufferer after all, so we shall read the sad utterances of the prophet in the hope that, if we have ever known experiences similar to his, we may learn where to find comfort even as he did.

Verses 1, 2. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath. He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.

This seems to be the hardest part of our lot,-that God should lead us into darkness: “He hath led me, and brought me into darkness.” Yet, dear brethren, that is, on the other hand, the sweetest thing about our trial; because, if the darkness be in the place where God has led us, it is best for us to be in the dark. A child in the dark should derive much comfort from the thought, “My father brought me here, and he loves me so much that he would not bring me where I should be in danger; he must have had some good end and object in view in what he has done.” Surely, there is something comforting to the tried child of God in that thought.

3-5. Surely against me is he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day. My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones. He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travel.

“I am like a besieged city that has strong forts built all round it to shut it in on all sides.”

6, 7. He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old. He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.

Ah, dear friends, it is easy for some people to read such a passage as this, but there are others who have read it with aching brows and eyes red with weeping; and often, I doubt not, as they have read the prophet’s descriptions of just such sorrows as they are themselves feeling, they have said, “Then, after all, we are not alone in our griefs, and we may yet be delivered even as Jeremiah was.”

8. Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.

What a sorrow is this,-to feel that even prayer itself is unavailing! Yet this suppliant was no graceless sinner; he was a dear child of God, one of the noblest of the Lord’s ancient prophets, one of the most faithful of his ministers. You must not think, because sometimes your prayers seem to be unheard or unheeded, and you are allowed to continue in sorrow, that therefore the Lord does not love you. “Whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth, and scourgeth every son whom he receiveth;” and that word “scourgeth” is a very strong one, meaning much more than just an ordinary whipping.

9. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone,

“The Lord has shut me right up, as if he had built a wall around me on every side.”

9-13. He hath made my paths crooked. He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places. He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate. He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.

The King’s arrows had wounded him to the very quick. Perhaps some of you may know what it is to go to the Bible, and yet to find no comfort in it, for the precious promises have seemed to be too good to be true to you, and you seem to have hunted out every dark and threatening passage at once, and you have said, “Ah, that belongs to me!” You have written bitter things against yourself, and have thought that surely you were the target at which God was shooting his sharpest arrows.*

14-17. I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity.

“It seems so long since I have had any prosperity that I have forgotten it. I have become so accustomed to trouble and sorrow that it seems as if I had never known what joy was.” The original is even more sad, “I forgat good.”

18-21. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord; remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.

And as long as your afflictions, poor troubled souls, have really humbled you, you may have hope. Recall to your mind the fact that God’s chastising blows have brought you down to his feet in humble submission, and ended all your boastings, and therein you may have hope.†

22. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

See where Jeremiah gets his comfort; he seems to say, “Bad as my case is, it might have been worse, for I might have been consumed; and I should have been consumed if the Lord’s compassions had failed.” Ah, brethren and sisters, and we too might have been in hell at this very moment! Amidst the hottest flames of that hopeless place we might have been enduring the wrath of God; but we are not there, and blessed be his name for that! “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.” He still has compassion upon us; if he had not, he would have given us up altogether; but there is love in his heart, even while there is a frown upon his brow, and while his hand is smiting us, his heart is loving us still.

23. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

If every day brings its trouble, every day also brings its mercy. Up to this day, at all events, we have not perished. The Lord has chastened us, but he has not crushed us. We have been cast down, but we have not been destroyed.

“Great is thy faithfulness.” No man can say that so truly as the one who has known what it is to prove that great faithfulness in great affliction. But when there has been a great trial, the believing soul has cast itself upon the ever-faithful God, and so has been able to set its seal to this truth, “Great is thy faithfulness.”

24. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul;

What! With his mouth full of gravel stones, and made drunken with wormwood, overwhelmed with sorrow, yet he says,” the “Lord is my portion.” Oh, yes, beloved; whatever else we have lost, we have not lost our God! The thieves have robbed us of our little spare cash, but they could not get at the gold that we have in the bank, they could not break into the great treasure-house of everlasting love. John Bunyan say, “Little-faith lost his spending-money, but the thieves could not find his jewels.” Nor can they find ours; they are all safe. “The Lord is my portion, saith my soul;”-

24. Therefore will I hope in him.

If I cannot cast the anchor of hope anywhere else, I may “hope in him;” and what better hope do I want than that?

25. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.

Do not be in a hurry; do not expect to be delivered out of your trouble the first time you begin to cry unto God. Oh, no: “the Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.”*

26. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation, of the Lord.

God’s time is always the best time. To deliver you just now might be to deprive you of the benefit of the trouble. You must bear it till it produces “the peaceable fruit of righteousness.” When the doctor puts on a blister, we are not to take it off the next minute. No; patience must have her perfect work, that we “may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.”

27, 28. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.† He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him.

When it makes a man get alone, to contemplate and meditate, affliction is already doing him good.

29. He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope.‡

That is the way to find it;-not lifting your mouth up to defy the Lord, or to murmur at him, nor yet opening your mouth in boastfulness; but putting your mouth in the dust, that is the way to find hope. A humble, penitent, resigned, silent, submissive spirit will soon find hope.

30, 31. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him: he is filled full with reproach. For the Lord will not cast off for ever:

Oh, get a grip of that blessed truth! I pray you, O ye sons of trouble, lay hold of it, and never let it go! The Lord may, to all appearance, cast off for a little while, but he will not cast off for ever.

32-34. But though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men. To crush under his feet all the prisoners of the earth,

That is not God’s way of acting. Tyrants may do so, but the tender, compassionate God, our gracious, loving Father, will never do that. If you lie in the dust before him, he will not tread on you.

35, 36. To turn aside the right of a man before the face of the most High, to subvert a man in his cause, the Lord approveth not.

Again I say, that is not God’s way of acting.

PAUL’S PARENTHESIS

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, March 19th, 1908,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, April 26th, 1874.

“By the grace of God I am what I am.”-1 Corinthian 15:10.*

If you will read the context of this passage, you will find that these words occur in one of Paul’s digressions, or parentheses. He was a writer who very frequently went off at a tangent; he often left the subject on which he was writing, turned his thoughts in quite another direction, and then came back, and went on with the subject which he had left for a while. In this respect, I have often, in my own mind, likened the apostle Paul to Samson. When he was on the road to Timnath with his father and mother, he turned aside to slay the lion, and afterwards to find the honey in the carcase, and each time he came back to his parents just as if nothing had happened. So the apostle Paul often turns aside from some grand argument upon which he is engaged, and says something very valuable and important upon quite another topic, and than comes back again, and calmly and deliberately goes on with his argument.

There are some kinds of parentheses which we can always excuse, and, indeed, commend; for instance, the parenthesis of prayer. When we are engaged in any duty, it will not delay us, really we shall make all the better speed, if we pause for a while to pray. I like to think of the apostle Paul, while he was writing that grand Epistle to the Ephesians, turning aside from his main argument to offer that great prayer, “For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith; that ye, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all saints what is the breadth, and length, and depth, and height; and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God.”* His argument would not suffer in the least, indeed, it would be all the stronger for that little interval of prayer. At another time, it is very sweet to see how he pauses, after recording the Lord’s abundant mercy to him, to write that notable doxology, “Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever and ever. Amen.” Such parentheses of prayer and praise must be acceptable to the Most High.

Our text, then, is found in a digression of an exceedingly blessed kind. It would be well if preachers would digress thus nowadays, if by digressing they preached more of free grace and more about the Lord Jesus Christ. I have heard of a preacher who, on one occasion, when he entered his pulpit, found himself suddenly stricken with blindness. I think it was old Dr. Gouge, the great Puritan. Being unable to read the discourse which he had taken up with him, and being a man of unusual calmness of spirit, instead of making any outcry, or telling the people that he had lost the use of his eyes, he preached extemporaneously; and when he came down from the pulpit, a woman thanked him for the sermon. “Alas!” said the good man, “a great calamity has happened to me; I have lost my sight.” “Blessed be God for that,” said the woman, “if it makes you give up reading your sermons, and enables you to preach as you have just done.” It is a good thing when a preacher loses the thread of his discourse if his discourse is made of thread, and he goes straight away to the cross, and begins talking about Jesus Christ and him crucified; or if he has been wandering in the mazes of modern thought, it is well when he gets back into the old paths, and preaches about the grace of God; that is, if he can declare, as Paul does here, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” God grant that they who preach free grace doctrines may never get out of the habit of doing so; and may those who have almost forgotten the sound of the word grace, and those who never knew the music of it, be made to lose their way until they ramble into the blessed purlieus of the sovereign grace of God, for sure am I that nothing but the gospel of the grace of God will ever drive Popery out of this country. The only antagonist that can ever overcome the self-righteousness and priestcraft of Romanism and Ritualism is a clear, bold, outspoken declaration of the great truth that by the grace of God the saints of God are what they are.

Coming to the text, and speaking simply and plainly, and praying that God may speak to your hearts through my words, I want to prove to you, first, that the text contains a doctrinal statement: “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

And that statement may be read, first, as meaning this,-that Paul ascribed his own salvation to the free favour of God. He believed himself to be a regenerate man, a forgiven man, a saved man, and he believed that condition of his was the result of the unmerited favour of God. He did not imagine that he was saved because he deserved salvation, or that he had been forgiven because his repentance had made an atonement for his sin. He did not reckon that his prayers had merited salvation, or that his abundant labours and many sufferings had earned that boon for him at God’s hands. No, he does not for a moment speak of merit, it is a word which Paul’s mouth could not pronounce in such a connection as that; but his declaration is, “It is by God’s free favour that I, Saul of Tarsus, have been converted, and made into Paul the apostle, the servant of Jesus Christ. I attribute this great change entirely to the good-will, the sovereign benignity, the undeserved favour of the ever-blessed God.”

Now, my dear hearers, let me put this truth very plainly, so that you may not mistake it. If you are saved, you do not owe your salvation to anything that you have done; nor, if you ever are to be saved, will it be the result of any goodness of your own. You may spin, but if you are ever saved, the first thing God will do will be to unravel that which you have spun. You may clothe yourself in the gaudy garments of a self-made righteousness, but God’s first act of grace will be to strip you of them, and to make you feel that all such garments are nothing but filthy rags, fit only for the fire. You must deny your own merits, or you cannot have the merits of Christ. Your church-goings, your chapel-goings, your baptism, your so-called sacraments, your confirmation, your private prayers, your family prayers, your Bible readings, your good thoughts, your alms deeds,-all these put together have no merit in them that could help you to go an inch towards salvation. Salvation is not of works, but of grace alone; and they who do not obtain salvation in this way will as surely perish as the blasphemer and the drunkard. There is but one way of salvation, the way of free favour. That was the way in which Paul went, and that is the way in which we must go if we would enter into eternal life.

The word grace, in Scripture, also means something else besides free favour; it very often means operative power. When the Spirit of God works savingly upon the heart, the influence which he exerts is called his grace; so the apostle means here, “By the grace of God I am what I am;” that is, “Whatever I am that is right, God made me that. If I am regenerate, I must have been born again from above by the power of God. If I have repented, my repentance was the gift of God. If I have believed, my faith was the work of God. If I have perseverance in faith, that perseverance has been the effect of the work of God in my soul. If I have ever prayed an acceptable prayer, it was God’s grace that enabled me to do it. If I have ever sung God’s praise so as to please him, that praise was first written in my heart by the Holy Spirit.” “What hast thou which thou hast not received?” is a question to which the answer from every true heart is, “I have nothing which I have not received, except it be my sin; but all I have that is good must have come from God.” If any of you are to be saved, God must save you. Sinner, you are lost, and lost beyond recovery by any hand but that which is divine and omnipotent. “It is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.” Let that text roll like thunder over the heads of those who think that they can save themselves. The Lord must do it from first to last. His is the first act of grace when he quickeneth the spiritually dead, and his must be the last act of grace when we lay down our vile bodies, and our spirit enters into the joy of our Lord.

Now, these two things being true, and being surely believed among us, that salvation is by the free favour of God, and that it is by the power of divine grace, I think I may say that, if Paul had been here, he would have pushed this matter a little further. There are some of our dear brethren, and true brethren, too, who do not see the doctrines of grace quite clearly. They see men as trees walking, for they seem to attribute the fact of their salvation in part to themselves. I do not say as to merit, for I believe they abhor that idea; and I do not say as to power, for I believe they hold as earnestly as we do that the sinner is dead in sin, and that the power to act comes from the Holy Ghost. But, somehow or other, they make a great deal more of man’s will than I think they should; just as, on the other hand, some speak too little of the will of man, and treat men as if they had not any wills, but were so many logs of wood. There is truth on both sides of the question; and, as some of my brethren preach the other view of the truth, I will preach that view of it which my text gives me.

If I am a saved man, how came I to be saved? Somebody asks, “But why are you saved, and not other men?” My dear friend, there are two questions there, so I must take them one at a time. Will you kindly let me take the first one, only altering it thus,-Why are you saved? If you are saved, there is a great difference between you and others who are not saved. You were once a lover of pleasure and of the world, and you are now a lover of God. Now, somebody made that difference, and whoever did it, did a good action, so let his head be crowned. Here is the crown. Now, sirs, upon whose head shall I put it? Have you made yourself to differ from what you used to be, and from what others still are? Are you prepared to wear the crown? You bow your head, and say, “Oh, no! Let the Lord have the glory of it.” Well, then, it is quite evident that God has made a difference between you and others, and that it was a commendable thing for him to do so; and as it was commendable for God to do it, it must have been so for God to purpose to do it; and if it was commendable for him to purpose to do it the day he did it, it was commendable for him to purpose to do it from all eternity; and thus we get back to the old and glorious decrees and covenant of divine grace of which some are so afraid, though, as surely as this Book is written of God, it stands there that he hath “from the beginning” chosen his people unto salvation.

“By the grace of God I am what I am.” If there is an Antinomian here, he will very boldly declare the meaning of this passage; but I will speak as boldly as he does, and dare to do it with the truth on my side. I am sure that this is pure unadulterated truth, that grace, grace, grace, grace saves the soul from beginning to end; but if you ask me, “Why is a man lost?” then the Antinomian and I will differ altogether. I say, if he is lost, it is his own fault; it is his sin and his wilful rejection of Christ that cause him to be lost. And if there is any Arminian here, who will lay the guilt of sin on the sinner’s conscience, I can do that as much as he can, and I believe I shall have Scripture with me in so doing. Damnation is all of man from first to last, and salvation is all of grace from first to last. Someone asks, “How do these two things agree?” Nay, brother, how do these two things disagree? If you will tell me when they quarrel, I will try to reconcile them. They stand in this Book side by side as two grand inspired truths, and they should be preached side by side. They never did fall out, and they never will. If you love self-righteousness, they will quarrel with you; but they will never quarrel with each other.

Now, Secondly, I shall briefly treat our text as a grateful acknowledgment. Here is a child of God who stood very high among his fellow-believers, one who had many gifts, much grace, great success, and high honour in the church; yet he says, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” It would be right for any of us who are nobodies, and who never did anything, to talk thus; but this is Paul who is speaking, the one who could truthfully say, “I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles;” yet he says, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

Paul’s grateful acknowledgment means, first, that he forbade himself ever to boast. Why should he boast? Whatever he had that was good had been given to him by the great Benefactor, so he might well have said, “What have I in which I can glory? I am nothing, and I have done nothing, except what God has made me, and what his grace has wrought in me and by me.” Beloved friends, it is an astonishing thing that we should be the subjects of pride; yet, considering what poor creatures we are, it is not astonishing that we are proud, or that we are anything that is bad. But if we are proud, what fools we are! Proud?-just a heap of dust and ashes that the wind would blow away if it were not for a daily miracle,-just a mass of corruption that would be putrefying in a few hours if the life were gone out of it, yet we swell out, and think ourselves some great ones; and, oh, what big somebodies we are until the grace of God brings us down to our proper level! The heavens themselves are scarcely high enough for our tall heads, we think ourselves so great; but it is a death-blow to boasting when anyone can say, “By the grace of God I am what I am.”

And, dear friends, this grateful acknowledgment incites us to holy service. If everything that we have already received has come from God, let us surrender ourselves and all we have to God. As he has made us, let us live for our Creator. As he has wrought all our works in us, let us give up to him our spirit, soul, and body as our reasonable service. Debtors to free grace as we are, if others talk about good works, let us go and do them. While the idle dream of self-righteousness leads some men to make sacrifices, let gratitude for free grace constrain us to make greater sacrifices still.

Moreover, our text, I think, as a grateful acknowledgment, leads us to further confidence in God. If by the grace of God I am what I am, then by the grace of God I shall be, by-and-by, something better still. He who hath brought us to repent and to believe will bring us to greater faith, to fuller assurance, and to completer conformity to Christ, and will preserve us unto the end. When any tell us that God will leave us to perish at the last, I never care to answer them, for it always seems to me that those who talk so of my Master do not know him. What, leave his beloved, leave his spouse, leave the members of his own body to perish? It is useless to tell us that. He loves his own with too mighty a love ever to cast them away. Let others say what they will, I join with Paul in saying, “By the grace of God I am what I am;” and I am persuaded that, by that same grace, I shall one day be with Christ, and be like him. You who are not the subjects of divine grace may well fear that you will perish; but you who have received God’s grace may rest assured that, since grace was the motive which began the good work in you, the same motive will continue even to the end. If God had begun saving us because we were good, he would of course leave off saving us when we were not good. If he had begun to save us because we were pure in heart, and gracious in life, he would leave off when we ceased to be so; but as he began to save us from no motive but his own sovereign determination to save us, how can that be affected by anything that may happen to us? So let us fall back upon this comforting assurance, by the grace of God we are what we are, and by the grace of God we shall one day share Christ’s glory.

I will not say more upon that part of the subject, though it is one upon which I might profitably talk for an hour; but, in the third place, I want you to regard the text as a sweet encouragement.

A sweet encouragement to whom? Why, first, to the minister. Beloved friends, he who is now speaking to you feels himself to be a marvel of the grace of God, and he can say to you honestly, and without any mock humility, that since God saved him, he has never doubted the possibility of the salvation of anyone else of the whole human race. Preserved from outward sin of the grosser kind, I, nevertheless, had for some years such a full sense of my own depravity, and such a horror of darkness on account of the evil that I saw within myself, that I can have sympathy with the most despairing soul that is here. If you are sitting at hell’s dark door, I can tell you that I sat there month after month; and if you are tempted even to destroy yourself, I can assure you that I have known the misery that Job felt when he said, “My soul chooseth strangling, and death rather than my life.” Yet am I saved by the sovereign grace of God, glory be to his holy name! If the Lord sent me to preach the gospel to the devil himself, I should believe that God was able to convert even him. I know that he never will do so; but if there be any man who is as bad as the devil, and the gospel is sent to him, I shall never despair of the possibility of that man being reclaimed, and made to stand among the redeemed at the last. I know that there are many here, who were drunkards and swearers, and worse than that; but they have obtained mercy, they have been washed in the precious blood of Jesus, and they are rejoicing to-night that their many sins have been forgiven them for Christ’s sake. Those who have been in such a plight as that, do not despair of the salvation of the greatest sinners here. You have gone far into sin, but you have seen another saved who was once just what you now are, so why should not you be saved? There have been murderers saved, then why not you if your hands are red with the blood of others? There was a thief who was saved at the last hour, then why not you if you are a thief? There have been many Magdalens saved, then why not you if you belong to that sad sisterhood? O ye who lie despairing, at the gates of hell, the silver trumpet of the gospel is sounded in your ears by one who has enjoyed the music of it in his own soul. What an encouragement it is to the preacher when he can say, “By the grace of God I am what I am”!

And what an encouragement it should be to the hearer when he is told that salvation is all of grace! If Christ came to you, and said, “You cannot be saved unless you perform so many good works,” there would be no hope for the most of you, though I fear that there are some who think that such a message would just suit them, for they fancy that they have done a great many good works. In cherishing that delusion, they are like a Hindoo of whom I once heard. He believed that he must not eat any animal substance, or that if he did he would perish. A missionary said to him, “That idea is ridiculous. Why, you cannot drink a glass of water without swallowing thousands of living creatures.” He did not believe it, so the missionary took a drop of water, and put it under the microscope. When the man saw the innumerable living creatures in the drop of water, what did he do? Why, he broke the microscope; that was his way of settling the question. So, when we meet with persons who say, “Our works are pure, and clean, and excellent,” we bring the great microscope of the law of the Lord, and we bid them look through that; and when they do look through it, and discover that even one sinful thought destroys their hope of salvation by self-righteousness, and when they see a whole host of sins in every one of their prayers, or acts, or thoughts, them they are angry with the preacher, and they try to break the microscope. But, for all that, the truth remains, “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin.”

But salvation comes by grace. Catch at that, sinner; for, if it is by grace that sinners are saved, why should not you be saved? If a thing is given away, nobody can be too poor to have it. If it is the gift of charity, poverty is a recommendation rather than a hindrance. My Lord and Master does not tell me to come and say to you that salvation is by your own feelings. It would be as impossible for you to feel aright as to do aright; but salvation is entirely by God’s grace. “But,” says someone, “my heart is hard.” Then, come to God to have it softened. “But I have no good thing to bring him.” Then come to him for every good thing. “But I cannot even bring a sense of need.” Then, come without a sense of need; for the man who feels that he has not a sense of need is often the one who has the best sense of need. He who says, “I have at last a sense of need,” shows that be has not got to the bottom yet; for if he were brought to the bottom, he would feel that he had not any feeling, he would groan that he could not groan, and grieve that he could not grieve. Dear friends, you have to do nothing, and to be nothing, and to feel nothing by way of fitness for salvation, but just to come and accept, free, gratis, for nothing, the abundant mercy of God in Christ Jesus. He is the empty sinner’s fulness, the dead sinner’s life, the perishing sinner’s salvation. I do not know any truth that can encourage poor sinful souls to pray, to repent, and to believe in Jesus except the truth that salvation is all of grace from first to last. As the apostle was saved by grace, so must it be with all the rest of us, and so may it be with you!

Now, to close, I think our text gives us a suggestion for self-examination.

“By the grace of God I am what I am,” says Paul, and I want each one of you to ask yourself, “What am I?” My eye cannot reach you all, but I want you to feel that God’s eye is looking at you, and that he puts this question to you, “What are you?” Paul tells us what he is, but what are you? An unregenerate sinner? An unpardoned sinner? An impenitent sinner? An unbelieving sinner? Will you put on the right label, and wear it? I almost wish I had some labels to put on you, but let your own consciences do it; and when you get home, will you take your pen, and write down what you really are? You are either condemned or uncondemned; write down whichever you are, and look the truth in the face. No man is usually so near bankruptcy as the one who dare not look into his books, and that man must be bad who dare not search his own heart. What are you, then, dear friend? Let that question begin your self-examination.

Here is another question, How much do you know about the grace of God? Paul says, “By the grace of God I am what I am.” You see that the mark of a child of God is that by the grace of God he is what he is; what do you know about the grace of God? “Well, I attend my place of worship regularly.” But what do you know about the grace of God? “I have always been an upright, honest, truthful, respectable man.” I am glad to hear it; but what do you know about the grace of God? You think you do not need it, though you are not a saved soul; yet none are so certainly lost as those who think they do not need the grace of God. Has that grace ever changed you? “Well, I was born again in baptism.” Yes, I have seen a great many of those who were said to have been born again in baptism, but I have not seen any difference between them and those who were not born again in baptism, nor can anybody else. “Ye must be born again,” even ye baptized heathens who know no more about the grace of God than if you had never lived in a land where the gospel is preached.

I will put to you another straight question, Is Christ Jesus your only hope? Were you ever made to feel that there was no merit in anything that you ever did? Were you ever thrown flat on your face on the grace and mercy of God, and made to pray, in the name of Jesus Christ, “God be merciful to me a sinner”? If not, what is your hope? If there be, in the matter of your supposed salvation, anything that is not of the grace of God, do with it what the man did with the forged bill, bury it in the earth, and run away from it, and be afraid that anybody should think it was yours. Your own righteousness is such an abominable thing that it will as surely damn you as the greatest profanity; and the best thing for you to do with it is to bury it, and run away from it.

If you cannot say that you are what you want to be, if you cannot say that you know anything experimentally about the grace of God, the last question I will put to you is this, What must that principle be which does rule you? The grace of God made Paul what he was; what has made you what you are? “Well, sir, I think I am as good as my neighbours, and rather better than most of them.” Who made you so? I suppose you are a self-made man; and it is a matter of fact that everybody worships his creator, so that if you believe that you made yourself, I am not surprised that you worship yourself. But I do wonder where you expect to go when you die, you who have never done any wrong, and have been so good that you do not need a Saviour. Do you expect to go to heaven? Well, if you could go there, what would you do? I read, of the multitude that no man could number, “These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are they before the throne of God, and serve him day and night in his temple.” But if you could get there because your garments never wanted any washing, surely you would throw up your cap, and say, “Well done myself!” And what a discord that would cause in the music of heaven! What a stranger you would feel amongst those multitudes who would all praise the blessed God! But you will never go there until you fling that righteousness of yours back to the pit from whence it came, for there is nothing in it that God can look upon with pleasure. It is a vile compound of pride and ignorance. May the light of the Holy Spirit shine upon it, and make you loathe it and abominate it, and flee from it, and may he teach you that there is life in Jesus, there is pardon in Jesus, there is salvation in Jesus for every soul that comes to him! If you say, “By my own merits and abilities I am what I am,” may God save you from that dreadful delusion, and bring you humbly to trust in the merits and sacrifice of his dear Son! So you shall find salvation, and he shall have the glory, world without end. Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

ACTS 9:1-31

Verse 1. And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest,-

Notice that little word “yet.” “Saul yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord;” but there was to be a point beyond which he could not go. I pray God that there may be such a “yet” as that put into the histories of any here who are opposing God and his Christ. “Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter,”-as if they were his very breath, as if he only lived to blaspheme the name of Christ, and to persecute his followers,-“went unto the high priest,”-

2. And desired of him letters to Damascus to the synagogues, that if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.

He wanted his hunting-ground enlarged; he had not enough to gratify his malice among the thousands of believers in Jerusalem, so he must go to Damascus to hunt out the Christians there. Paul was always very thorough in all that he did; so, when he was a persecutor, he was a very bitter one It mattered not to him whether the saints were men or women. In ordinary warfare, it is the custom to spare the women. A brave man is satisfied to fight with men like himself; but a bigot’s zeal knows no bounds; and so Saul asked for letters, so that “if he found any of this way, whether they were men or women, he might bring them bound unto Jerusalem.”

3. And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus:

The lion is about to leap upon his prey. The sheep-fold lies in the valley, and the wolf surveys it from the hill-side. “Alas for the Church of God at Damascus!” you and I would have said if we had been there.

3. And suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven:

A supernatural blaze, as though heaven’s gate had been thrown open, and the glory had come streaming down upon this rebellious man.

4. And he fell to the earth, and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?

Most people are converted in a somewhat similar fashion to this. There is “a light from heaven” shining through the gospel upon them, they fall to the ground in penitent self-abasement, and then they hear the voice of the Son of God speaking to their hearts. I do not mean that the external phenomena are the same as in the case of Saul of Tarsus, but the work is the same in its effects, and in some of its processes. Saul “heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?” It was a voice divine, majestic, piercing, affectionate, convincing. Saul’s mind was of a deeply-logical kind, so Christ’s question was an appeal to his reasoning faculties: “Give the reason for thy present action. ‘Why persecutest thou me?’ ”

5. And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest: it is hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

I do not doubt that he had been already pricked in his conscience, and he had kicked out as an ox kicks against the ox-goad when he is pricked by it to make him go forward. Saul was a man of strong will and determined purpose. He had already felt in his own heart some of the sorrows that follow from a wrong course of life, yet he resolved to persevere in it, so the Lord said to him, “It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks;” and if any of you resist the thrusts of conscience and the strivings of God’s Spirit, you will be like a man, with naked feet, kicking against iron spikes, and hurting himself, but not injuring that against which he kicks.

6. And he trembling and astonished said, Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?

This was a very natural question from one who had always tried to live by doing. He had been a work-monger up to that very moment, so he naturally cried, “Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?”

6. And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do.

“Thou must become a disciple, and sit at the feet of another man, of a humbler sort, and thou must learn from him.” Christ will never teach us by visions what we can learn by the ordinary means of instruction, nor will he work miracles where common methods may suffice.

7. And the men which journeyed with him stood speechless,-

They were struck with astonishment,-

7. Hearing a voice, but seeing no man.

A loud voice stunned their ears, but they could not understand its message.

8, 9. And Saul arose from the earth; and when his eyes were opened, he saw no man: but they led him by the hand, and brought him into Damascus. And he was three days without sight, and neither did eat nor drink.

What a whirl of anguish must his mind have been in all that time! The panorama of Stephen’s martyrdom and of the holy men and women against whom he had breathed out threatenings and slaughter would pass before his inward eyes, even though his outward eyes were closed.

10, 11. And there was a certain disciple at Damascus, named Ananias; and to him said the Lord in a vision, Ananias. And he said, Behold, I am here, Lord. And the Lord said unto him, Arise, and go into the street which is called Straight, and enquire in the house of Judas for one called Saul, of Tarsus: for, behold, he prayeth,

God knows where every sinner is,-the street he lives in, the number of the house, and the name of the owner of the house, so that he can find him when he pleases, or send one of his servants to him. You remember what John Bunyan said to the Quaker who came to see him in prison. The Quaker said to him, “Friend John, I am glad I have found thee at last, for the Lord sent me to thee, and I have been through half the prisons in England trying to find thee.” “No, no,” said Bunyan, “do not tell me that. The Lord did not send thee to me, for he knows I have been here all these years. If he had sent thee, thou wouldst have come straight to the prison door.” When the Lord calls a man to go on an errand for him, he puts his finger on the right spot, and says, “Go there.”

12. And hath seen in a vision a man named Ananias coming in, and putting his hand on him, that he might receive his sight.

You see how true revelations fit into each other. Something is revealed to Ananias, and it is also revealed to Saul, and therefore it is proved to be true. Some years ago, a brother told me that he had had it revealed to him that I was to let him preach for me in the Tabernacle. I said that of course I would agree to that when it was revealed to me that I was to let him, but I did not believe in lopsided revelations. You will find a great many of those crazy revelations about, and you may generally judge them in some such common-sense way as that.

13-16. Then Ananias answered, Lord, I have heard by many of this man, how much evil he hath done to thy saints at Jerusalem: and here he hath authority from the chief priests to bind all that call on thy name. But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will shew him how great things he must suffer for my name’s sake.

He had made God’s people suffer because of their loyalty to Christ, so it seemed only right that he himself should suffer for the same reason.

17, 18. And Ananias went his way, and entered into the house; and putting his hands on him said, Brother Saul, the Lord, even Jesus, that appeared unto thee in the way as thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mightest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost. And immediately there fell from his eyes as it had been scales; and he received sight forthwith, and arose, and was baptized.

As he believed in Jesus, it was right that he should confess his faith in the way that Christ appointed.

19. And when he had received meat, he was strengthened.

Do admire the tenderness of the Holy Spirit in recording that Saul received meat, and was strengthened. He had been without food or drink for three days and nights, so that it was as right for him to partake of food as to confess his faith by being baptized.

19. Then was Saul certain days with the disciples which were at Damascus.

Thus did the lion lie down with the lamb, and the wolf with the kid.

20. And straightway he preached Christ in the synagogues, that he is the Son of God.

How he must have startled his Jewish brethren that day! They knew why he had come to Damascus; but, behold, he was preaching the very faith that he had gone there to destroy!

21-25. But all that heard him were amazed, and said; Is not this he that destroyed them which called on this name in Jerusalem, and came hither for that intent, that he might bring them bound unto the chief priests? But Saul increased the more in strength, and confounded the Jews which dwelt at Damascus, proving that this is very Christ. And after that many days were fulfilled, the Jews took counsel to kill him: but their laying await was Known of Saul. And they watched the gates day and night to kill him. Then the disciples took him by night, and let him down by the wall in a basket.

I never heard of a more precious basketful of material than that. Sometimes, the greatest of men may owe their safety to the very poorest of instruments; add I think it is the duty of a Christian to avoid trouble if he can, just as our Lord bade his disciples, when they were persecuted in one city, to flee to another. Paul was carrying out that command of his Master. It was not cowardice, it was the very soul of courage, that he might go elsewhere to proclaim the gospel that he had received in Damascus.

26. And when Saul was come to Jerusalem, he assayed to join himself to the disciples: but they were all afraid of him, and believed not that he was a disciple.

They did not admit anybody and everybody into the Church. They guarded it as Christ’s Church should be guarded, that unworthy people might not enter it. If any of you should be kept back a little while, you can say to yourself, “Well, they kept back Paul.” We are poor fallible creatures, but we try to judge rightly concerning those who wish to unite with us.

27-31. But Barnabas took him, and brought him to the apostles, and declared unto them how he had seen the Lord in the way, and that he had spoken to him, and how he had preached boldly at Damascus in the name of Jesus. And he was with them coming in and going out at Jerusalem. And he spake boldly in the name of the Lord Jesus, and disputed against the Grecians: but they went about to slay him. Which when the brethren knew, they brought him down to Cæsarea, and sent him forth to Tarsus. Then had the churches rest throughout all Judæa and Galilee and Samaria, and were edified; and walking in the fear of the Lord, and in the comfort of the Holy Ghost, were multiplied.

Blessed be God for such a conversion as that of Saul of Tarsus!