Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (90 page)

"The close pursuer's busy hands do plant

 

Snares in thy substance; snares attend thy want;

 

Snares in thy credit, snares in thy disgrace;

 

Snares in high estate, snares in thy base

 

Snares tuck thy bed; and snares surround thy board;

 

Snares watch thy thoughts; and snares attach thy word;

 

Snares in thy quiet, snares in thy commotion;

 

Snares in thy diet; snares in thy devotion Snares lurk in thy resolves, snares in thy doubt

 

Snares lie within thy heart, and snares without,

 

Snares are above thy head, and snares beneath

 

Snares in thy sickness, snares are in thy death."

Besides that, dear friends--in addition to having a store of dry tinder within our heart and showers of sparks falling near us-- besides having a great heap of gunpowder within our nature, and being constantly exposed to the fires that burn all around us, we must remember that there is such a thing as self-deception in the world. This is a great and a common danger. Do you not yourselves know some who have been self-deceived? I have had a wide experience in watching over the souls of others, and many persons have come under my notice who have thought themselves Christians, and I have often wondered how they could think so. I have seen that in their lives which has let me to feel sure--as sure as one man can feel concerning another--that the grace of God could not be in them; yet they have not had any doubt or suspicion concerning their Christianity. Now brethren and sisters, do not you know some people like that? Well then, is it not possible that the judgment which you have formed concerning them is the very same that others have formed concerning you? And perhaps that judgment is true. There have been great preachers who have been very eloquent men, and God has even condescended to use them in his service; yet afterwards it has been discovered that they were living in gross sin all the while that they were preaching holiness to others. If that has been the case with only one preacher, might it not also be the case with me? Have you never heard of church members who have come regularly to the communion table, and been very prominent in the work of the church, and apparently leading the way in all good things; yet after all they were rotten at the core? They had made a mistake altogether--unless they had wilfully deceived others instead of themselves,--in professing to be Christ's people at all. Well then, if some have acted like that, may not you do the same? I do not wish to say anything unpleasant merely for the sake of making you feel uncomfortable; but I want you to remember that my text says, "Happy is the man that feareth alway." Sometimes to examine the foundation on which we are building for eternity, to look into the profession which we have made, to see whether it will stand the wear and tear of daily life, and to judge whether it will be likely to endure the best of our dying day, and the still sterner test of the day of judgment--is a wise occupation for every one of us. The man who dares not have his ship examined is the man who knows that some of the timbers are rotten; and if you do not like being examined you are the very men who ought to put yourself through that process without a moment's delay, obeying the injunctions of the apostle, "Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates?"

There is also great cause for fear because some Christians have been "saved; yet so as by fire." Oh, with what difficulty have some of God's ships entered the eternal harbour! They have lost their masts, the deck has been swept clear of everything, they have been well-nigh abandoned as derelict; and if it had not been that the eternal grace of God had ensured the safety of the vessels, they must have drifted away to destruction and gone to the bottom of the sea. And what bugging there has been to get some souls into heaven! Do you not know some of that sort? I saw one not long ago. I had highly esteemed him at one time; but from what I learned afterwards I saw how little cause there was in him for my esteem. He had professed to be a child of God, but he was weeping and wailing and asking whether there was any hope for him. As a contrast to such a sad case, I may say that I have stood by the bedsides of many others and have learned from them lessons that I can never forget; for they have told me something of the joys of heaven by the very glances of their eyes, and the wondrous words which have fallen from their lips, often more full of poetry than poetry itself. They have seemed to be inspired, and to be favored with visions of the hereafter as they have looked through the veil which had become so blind to them. But I have also seen some, such as the one I mentioned just now, who have not lived near to God, who have neglected prayer, who have done but little service for Christ; and when they have come to die they have been "saved; yet so as by fire." They have had to come in their last moments without any comfort or hope, without any joy in the Lord, and cry "What must we do to be saved?"--just as though they had never known the way of salvation, although they have been professors for years. Instead of having an abundant entrance into heaven they have just been saved, and no more. Now you and I do not want to have such an experience as that; and therefore, let us always fear lest we should get into such a state of heart that this should be our case. Let us fear lest we lose communion with God, let us fear lest we misuse any grace which the Holy Spirit has given to us, let us fear lest we become fruitless and unprofitable, let us fear lest we lose the light of
Jehovah's countenance; if we do so fear we shall understand what Solomon meant when he wrote, "Blessed is the man that feareth alway."

II. Now, secondly, I want to prove to you that the man who does so fear is a happy man. I will show you that by a few contrasts.

The word "happy" in our text may not exactly mean that the man enjoys happiness just now, but that he is really happy, he has the root of true happiness in him, and he will have the fruit in due time. Now, here are two men. One of them says, "I am a child of God; I have had a very deep experience; I know all the doctrines of grace, blessed be God; and I feel that I am thoroughly confirmed in Christian habits. I may be tempted to sin, but I shall be able to resist the temptation. Take a good look at that man so that you will know him when you see him again. With a formal prayer he leaves his bedroom in the morning and he goes forth to his business, perfectly satisfied with himself whatever may happen. Here is another man. He says, "I believe I am a child of God for I have trusted in Jesus Christ as my Savior, and I know that I am safe in his hands; but I dare not trust myself. I feel that unless he shall uphold me all through this day, I may by my words or my actions bring dishonor upon his holy name; and I tremble lest I should do so." See him kneeling down there by his bedside, and hear how earnestly he pleads with God. His prayer is something like this, "O Lord, I am as helpless as a little child; hold thou me up or I shall surely fall! I am like a lamb going out among wolves; O Lord, preserve me! "Now, which of the two do you regard as the really happy man? The happiness of the two men may, to a superficial observer, appear to be about equal, but which happiness would you prefer to have? I say--and I think most of you will agree with me--God save me from the so-called happiness which is careless and prayerless, and give me that holy fear which drives me often to my knees and makes me cry to God to keep me. Well now, night has come on, and the two men have reached their homes. Neither of them has fallen into any gross sin during the day; they have both been preserved from that evil. One of them retires to his bed after a few sentences of formal prayer, with no life or earnestness in it, and no expression of his gratitude to God, and he soon falls asleep in perfect contentment with himself. The other man looks carefully over all that has happened during the day, for he is afraid lest he may have sinned against God even unconsciously, and he takes notice of things which the other man does not think anything of, and he says, "Lord, I fear that I erred there, and that I failed there; forgive thy child and help me to do better in the future." Then he says, "I thank thee, Lord, that thou hast kept me by thy grace from being surprised by sudden temptation, and thou hast enabled me to honor thy name at least in some degree. I give all the glory for this to thee; and now my Lord,-

"Sprinkled afresh with pardoning blood,

 

I lay me down to rest,

 

In the embraces of my God, Or on my Savior's breast.'"

Now, which is the happy man of these two? I know which I should like to be--the man who is so fearful and so full of trembling that he wonders that he has not fallen, and who is sometimes almost afraid that he has; and who therefore walks humbly before his God. Is he not infinitely to be preferred to the other man who thinks it is a matter of course that he shall always stand, and who has no qualms of conscience about what he calls little faults. You may rest assured that the seeds of untold misery are already sown in that other man's heart.

Think of these two men under another aspect. Imagine that they are sailors out at sea. One of them is well aware that a certain course is very dangerous. Some captains have been able to take it and have made "a short cut" by doing so, and he decides that he will take that course. He can see that his vessel is bound to go near some very ugly-looking rocks, and among a number of sharp ledges where many others have been wrecked; but he is a bold daredevil sort of fellow; he believes that all will be right and he has no fear. But here is the other captain, and he says, "My motto is to keep as far away from danger as I possibly can. I know that in fair weather that passage may be safe; but then I cannot reckon on fair weather. I may to caught in a fog and not know where I am; or a terrible storm may come on and drive me where I do not wish to go. I shall therefore take the longer course, which is also the safer course." Now in which of these two vessels would you like to sail, and which of the two captains do you esteem to be that happy man? Of course you say the second one. We admire courage, but we do not admire foolhardiness; and the Christian man who seeks to steer clear of temptation, who endeavors to be precise and exact in his mode of living so as not to go near to sin, but to avoid it, and keep away from it must be judged to be in the best sense of the word a happier man than the one who courts temptation and heedlessly rushes into a position of peril.

Look at the difference between what these two men regard as happiness. The one who was not afraid said "Why should I fear? Am I not getting to be an old-established Christian now? Have I not resisted temptation for such a long while that I need not fear it now? I feel that I may do what young people must not do; it would too dangerous for them, but it will never hurt me." So he talked, but look at him now. He has become so fond of the drunkard's cup that he was seen reeling through the streets, or else he has been so enchanted by the lusts of the flesh that he has committed himself fatally. Or it may be that he was strongly tempted to make money very quickly--and quick money-making and honesty never go together except by a very extraordinary concatenation of circumstances-- and this man thought it would end all right, and that he should make a great haul; so he asked the devil to help him throw the net in just that once, and now he has got into the clutches of the law, and he names the name of a man who once made a profession of religion-- is bracketed with that of other rogues and vagabonds! But now look at the timid man--the man who said "I know that I shall never be intoxicated if I never take anything that is intoxicating; I know that I shall not be a thief if I never take anybody's money but my own; I know that if I never indulge even in indelicate expressions, if I never think of or look at anything that is impure, I shall not be likely to go in that evil way which I utterly abhor;"-- that is the man who is both safe and happy, "the man that feareth alway." Some people call him a milksop, and say that he has not spirit enough to do as others do; but just look at him. He can go in and out of the house of God as an honorable Christian man, while the other one of whom I have told you, is a moral wreck, and his name is a by-word and a reproach. I can bear my testimony that I have seen high professors so act as to become a stench in our nostrils; and on the other hand, I have seen poor timid girls who were half afraid they were hypocrites, and poor trembling men who used to come to me for comfort and counsel lest they should be deceiving themselves. I have seen many of the latter class enter the port of glory like ships in full sail coming into the harbor, while those other vessels with their painted hulls, that seemed to tempt a lot from the enemy, have gone to the bottom and they have been lost to us, and lost to themselves.

Now I will suppose that both these men whom I have been describing have fallen into a certain sin; see what a difference there is between them now. The man who has not any fear says, "Well, yes, there is no doubt that I did wrong; but then"--and he begins telling all about the circumstances under which he says that he was "overtaken." He tries to make out that he was an innocent victim who was deceived by somebody else. Now listen to "the man that feareth alway." "Ah!" says he, "I have sinned," and he hangs his head in shame; and then adds "I have no excuse to make; and you cannot say anything to me that will be half so heavy and so hard as what I say to myself. God will forgive me, I have no doubt, for I have truly repented; but I can never forgive myself." The first man has a dry eye and a proud defiant spirit; and it is very likely that having committed that one great sin he will go on and commit another, and yet, another, and get harder and harder in his heart continually, yet all the while talk about being one of God's elect who will be saved at last. Well now, that man is not a happy man. I pray that none of us may ever experience the wretchedness of having a seared conscience, and get into a state of indifference in which we can trifle with sin and yet pretend to be the servants of God. But oh, if we do fall into sin, may the Lord make us very tender about it! Let this be our prayer-
"Quick as the apple of an eye,