Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (41 page)

Reflect, my dear friends, upon all the trying and changeful scenes through which you have passed since the time of your conversion. You have been rich perhaps and increased in goods: you were tempted to forget your Lord, but he was a friend who loved you at all times, and he would not suffer your prosperity to ruin you, but still made his love to dart with healing beams into your soul. But you have been also very poor. The cupboard has been bare and you have said, "Whence shall I find sufficient to supply my need?" But Christ has not gone away because your suit was threadbare, or your house ill furnished; nay, he has been nearer than ever, and if he revealed himself to you in your prosperity, much more in your adversity. You have found him a faithful friend when all others were unfaithful, true when every one else was a liar. You have been sore sick sometimes, but he it was that made the pillow, and that softened the bed of your affliction. It may be you have been slandered and those who loved you have passed you by. Some ill word has been spoken in which there was no truth, but it has sufficed to turn away the esteem of many; but your Lord has gone with you through shame and abuse, and never for a single moment has he even hinted that he only loved you because you were had in respect by men. Ever faithful, ever true has been this friend who loveth at all times. Ah, there have been times, it may be with you, when you could fain have thrown your very self away, for you felt so empty, so good-for-nothing, so undeserving, ill deserving, hell deserving; you felt fitter to die than to live; you could hardly entertain a hope that any good thing could ever spring from you: but when you have least esteemed yourself, his esteem of you has been just the same; when you were ready to die in a ditch, he has been ready to lift you to a throne; when you felt yourself a castaway, you have still been pressed to his dear bosom, an object of his peculiar regard.

Soon, very soon, your time will come to die: you shall pass through the valley of deathshade, but you need not fear for the friend that loveth at all times will be with you then. That eminent servant of God, Jonathan Edwards, when he was at his last, said, "Where is Jesus of Nazareth, my old and faithful friend? I know he will be with me now that I need his help," and so he was, for that faithful servant died triumphant. You shall enquire in that last day for Jesus of Nazareth and you shall hear him say, "Here I am;" you shall find the deathshade vale lit up with supernal splendor, it shall be no death to you, but a passing into life eternal, because he who is the resurrection and the life shall be your helper.

Thus I have hastily run through the life of Christ's love from the beginning that had no beginning, down to the end that knoweth no end, and in every case we see that he is a friend that loveth at all times.

Now brethren, I shall vary the strain though still keeping to the same subject. Let us consider the reality of Christ's love at all times. The text says, "A friend loveth at all times," not professes to love, not talks of love, but really does so. Now in Christ's case the love has become intensely practical. His love has never been a thing of mere words or pretensions; his love has acted out itself in mighty deeds, and signs, and wonders, worthy of a God, such as heaven itself shall not sufficiently extol with all its golden harps.

See then brethren, Christ has practically loved us at all times. It is not long ago that you and I were slaves to sin, we wore the fetters, nor could we break them from our wrists. We were held fast by evil passions and worldly habits, and there seemed no hope of liberty for us. Jesus loved us at all times, but the love did not let us lie prisoners any longer. He came and paid the ransom price for us. In drops of blood from his own heart he counted down the price of our redemption, and by his eternal Spirit he broke every fetter from us, and to-day his believing people rejoice in the liberty wherewith Christ makes them free. See how practical his love was! He did not leave the slave in his chains and let him remain a captive, but he loved us right out of our prison-house into a sacred freedom. Our Lord found us not long ago standing upon our trial. There we were prisoners at the bar, we had nothing to plead in our defense. The accuser stood up to plead against us, and as he laid many charges and heavy, we were not able to answer so much as one of them. Our great High Priest stood there and saw us thus arraigned as prisoners at the bar; he loved us, but oh! how efficient was his love--he became an advocate for us; he did more, he stood in our place and stead, stood where the felon ought to stand. He suffered what was due to us and then covering us with his perfect righteousness, he said before the blaze of the ineffable throne of justice, "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect? It is Christ that died, yea, rather that hath risen again." He did not love the prisoner at the bar and leave him there to be condemned; he loved him until this day we stand acquitted, and there is therefore now no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Believer, lift up your heart now, and bless his name who hath done all this for thee.

Our Lord when he came in mercy to us, found us in the rags of our selfrighteousness, and in the abject poverty of our natural condition. We were houseless, fatherless; we were without spiritual bread, we were sick and sore, we were as low and degraded as sin could make us. He loved us but he did not leave us where love found us. Ah! do you not remember how he washed us in the fountain which flowed from his veins; how he wrapped us about with the fair white linen, which is the righteousness of his saints; how he gave us bread to eat that the world knoweth not of; how he supplied all our wants and gave us a promise that whatsoever we should ask in prayer, if we did but believe his name, we should receive it? We were aliens, but his love has made us citizens; we were far off, but his love has brought us nigh; we were perishing, but his love hath enriched us; we were serfs, but his love has made us sons; we were condemned criminals, but his love has made us "heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ."
I shall not enlarge here, but I shall appeal to the experience of every believer. In your needs, has not Christ always helped you? you have been in doubt which way to take and you have gone to him for guidance: did you ever go wrong when you left it to him? Your heart has been very heavy and you had no friend that you could communicate with, but you have talked with him, and have not you always found solace in pouring out your hearts before him? When did he ever fail you? when did you find his arm shortened, or his ear heavy? Up to this moment has it been mere talk with Christ? no, you know it has been most true and real love--and now in the recollection of it, I beseech you give him true and real praise, not that of the head only, or of the lip, but of your whole spirit, soul, and body, as you consecrate yourself afresh to him. See then the endurance of Christ's love, and see then also the reality of it.

By your patience, I shall notice in the next place the nature of the love of Christ, accounting for its endurance and reality. The love of our good friend to us sprang from the purest possible motives, he has nought to gain by loving us. Some friendship may be supposed to be tinged with a desire of self advantage, to that extent it is degraded and valueless. But Jesus Christ had nought to gain, but everything to lose. "Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became poor." The love he bears to his people was not a love which sprang from anything in them. I have no doubt it had a reason, for Christ never acts unreasonably, but that reason did not lie in us. Love between us and our fellows sometimes springs from personal beauty, sometimes for traits of character which we admire, and at other times from obligations which we have incurred, but with Christ none of these things could avail. There was no personal beauty in any one of his elect: there were no traits of character in them that could enchant him, very much on the other hand that might have disgusted him; he certainly was under no obligations to us, for we had not a being then when his heart was set upon us. The love of man to man is sustained by something drawn from the object of love, but the love of Christ to us has its deep springs within himself. As his own courts maintain the grandeur of his throne without drawing a revenue from the creatures, so his own love maintains itself without drawing any motives and reasons from us, and hence my brethren, you see why this love is the same at all times. If it had to subsist upon us and what we do and what we merit, ah! it would always be at the lowest conceivable ebb, but since it leaps up from the great deep of the divine heart, it never changes, it never shall.

Be it also remembered that Christ's love was a wise love, not blind as ours often is. He loved us knowing exactly what we were whom he loved. There is nothing in the constitution of man that Jesus Christ had not perceived; there is nothing in your individuality but what Christ had foreknown. Remember Christ loved his people before they began to sin, but not in the dark. He knew exactly everything they would think or do or be; and if he resolved to love them at all you may rest assured he never will change in that love, since nothing fresh can ever occur to his divine mind. Had he begun to love us and we had deceived and disappointed him, he might have turned us out of doors, but he knew right well that we should revolt, that we should backslide and should provoke him to jealousy; he loved us knowing all this, and therefore it is that his love abides and endures and shall even remain faithful to the end.

Brethren, the love of Christ is associated continually with an infinite degree of patience and pity. Our Lord knows that we are but dust, and like as a father pitieth his children so he pities us. We are but short-tempered, but our Lord is longsuffering. When he sees us sin he saith within himself, "Alas! poor souls, what folly in them thus to injure themselves." He takes not our cold words in umbrage so as to put himself in wrathful fume therewith; but he saith, "Poor child, how he hurteth himself by this, and how much he loseth thereby." He even hath a kind look for us when we sin, for he knows it is blotted out through his own blood, and he sees rather the mischief which it is quite sure to bring to the poor soul than the evil of the sin itself. Jesus hath infinite condescension and patience, and we cannot so provoke him as to turn him from his purpose of grace. He is at all times ready to pardon and never slow to be moved to forgiveness. Oh, the provocations of men! but the patience of Christ reacheth over the mountains of our provocation and drowns them all.

Methinks one reason why Christ is so constant in his love and so patient with us is that he sees us as what we are to be. He does not look at us merely as what we are to-day in Adam's fall-- ruined and lost, nor as we are to-day but partly delivered from indwelling sin; but he remembers that we are to lie in his bosom for ever, that we are to be exactly like himself and to be partakers of his glory; and as he sees us in the glass of futurity, as by-and-by to be his companions in the world of the perfect, he passes by transgression, iniquity and sin, and like a true friend he loveth us at all times.

I shall not weary those who know this love. They need no gaudy sentences or eloquent periods to set it forth. Its sweetness lies in itself. You may drink such wine as this out of any cup. He that knoweth the flavour of this divine dainty, asketh not that it be carved this way or that, he rejoiceth but to have it, for the meditation upon it must be sweet. "A friend loveth at all times."
The next sentence of the text is, "and a brother is born for adversity." That is to say, a true brother comes out and shows his brotherhood in the time of the trouble of the family. Now let every believer in Jesus here catch the meaning of this with regard to Christ. Jesus Christ was born for you. "Unto us a child is born, unto us a Son is given;" but if at any one time more than another Christ is peculiarly yours by birth, it is in the time of adversity. A brother born for adversity.

Observe that Christ was born in the first place for our adversity, to deliver us from the great adversity of the fall. When our parents' sin had blasted Eden and destroyed our hopes, when the summer of our joy had turned into the winter of our discontent, then Christ was born in Bethlehem's manger that the race might be lifted up to hope, and his elect be elevated to salvation. He restored that which he took not away, he rebuilt that which he cast not down. He had never come to be a Savior if we had not been lost; because our adversity was so great, therefore so great a Savior was required, and so great a Savior came.

Our Lord is born for adversity because he has the peculiar art of sympathising with all in adversity. No other but he can claim that he has ranged high and low through all the territories of grief, but this, Jesus Christ can justly claim. Every pang that ever rends a human heart has first tried its keen edge on him. It is not possible even in the extremities of anguish to which some are exposed, that any man can go beyond Christ in the endurance of pain. Christ is crowned king of misery, he is the emperor of the domains of woe. He is able therefore to succor all such as are tempted and tried, seeing he is compassed about himself also with a feeling of our infirmities. Look to him suffering on the tree, look to him throughout all his life of shame and pain and you will see that he was born into adversity, and through being born into it, was born to sympathise with our trials, having learned, as the Captain of our salvation, to be made perfect in sympathy with those many sons whom he brings to glory.

Brethren, the text means more than this however. Jesus Christ is a brother born for adversity because he always gives his choicest presence to his saints when they are in tribulation. I know many men will think that the presence of Christ with the sick and with the depressed is mere fancy. Ah, blessed fancy! such a fancy as makes them laugh at pain and rejoice in deep distress, and take joyfully the spoiling of their goods. A blessed fancy truly! Let me declare my heart's witness, and assert that if there be anything real anywhere to the spiritual mind, the presence of Christ is intensely so. Though we do not see his form bending over us, nor mark the lovely light of those eyes that once were red with weeping, though we touch not that hand which felt the nails, and hear no soft footfalls of the feet that were fastened to the cross, yet are we inwardly as certainly conscious of the shadow of Christ falling upon us as ever were his disciples when he stood in the tempest-tossed vessel, and said to winds and waves, "Peace, be still." Believe me, it is not imagination, nor is it barely faith. It is faith that brings him, but there is a kind of spiritual sense that discovers his presence and that rejoices in the bliss flowing therefrom. We speak what we do know and testify what we have seen when we say that he is a brother born for adversity in very deed, most tenderly revealing himself to his people, as he doth not unto the world.