Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (94 page)

Other aspects of the piety of believers have also discouraged you. To see how they walk with God, how their speech is perfumed with love to Jesus, how their manner of life is above that of the world-- all this has made you fear that you could never enter into their heritage. These gracious men seem so far above you that you cry, "Surely I am more brutish than any man."

You have noticed also their usefulness--how many souls they have brought to Christ; how God has helped them to guide the bewildered and to instruct the ignorant; and then you have felt that it was natural that such men should have confidence towards God; but as for yourself, what is the use of you? You have felt good for nothing in the presence of persons privileged to do so much for God and men.

You have been even more cast down when you have heard them talk of their high joys. The other day you met with one who wore heaven on his face and you said to yourself, "I wish I knew such joy as beams in this man's countenance." You heard your minister describe the deep peace and holy calm which come with full assurance of faith; and every word he spoke about his own joy in the Lord was like a dagger at your heart; for you felt that you could not speak of such a blissful experience. You were never on the top of Tabor never did you behold the transfigured Lord. You are afraid to trust God because you cannot compare with other men in their heights.

Carefully notice two or three little points which I will mention. First, remember that you see these good people at their best. You have not seen their seamy side. Perhaps they have not told you of how at times their feet were almost gone, their steps had well-nigh slipped. You see their days, and not their nights. I think it is a very sweet trait in your character that you do so. In this you differ from the wicked world. The ungodly always notice the bad points in the saints; they eat up the sins of God's people as they eat bread: it is nourishment to them. As for you, poor troubled one! you observe only the virtues of believers, and you overlook their shortcomings. Surely God has wrought a change in you. In this there is some ground of hope: the Lord who has taken away your envy, malice, and all
uncharitableness, will remove the rest of your sins if you bring them before him in repentant faith.

Recollect also that you now see men who have faith in God, and you see in them the result of that faith. Do not imagine that their graces existed before their faith. If you have not the result of faith before you have faith itself, do not be astonished; they had not these excellences before they believed in Jesus. Some of the brightest of them were once the blackest of sinners. "Such were some of you," said Paul: "but ye are washed." Can it be a wise thing to say, "I have not those fruits of the Spirit and therefore I will not cultivate the tree of faith from which they grow"? Nay, rather say, "The Lord who made these men what they are, can make me what they are. He that could beautify them with righteousness can also hang my neck with the jewels of holiness."

Do you not think it would be very great folly on your part if you should refrain from believing in the Lord Jesus on the ground that you had greater need to seek him than other men? Because you lack these things which you see in the saints, and know that you can only have them of the Lord by faith, is that a reason why you should not go to God in faith? This is a grand argument for going at once. Should a man plead his poverty as a reason why he should not ask an alms? Is nakedness a reason for refusing to be dressed? Is hunger a motive for rejecting food? or sickness a motive for shutting out the physician? I argue in the opposite way. Your urgent need is the strongest reason why you should claim of the Lord by faith these promises which he has made to needy souls. If you are more brutish than any man go to the Lord that he may instruct you!

The greater your need, the greater opportunity you have of glorifying God by believing in him for an all-sufficient supply. If you lack all these lovely and needful things which you so much admire in others, it is a sad and grievous want; but if you can believe that the Lord of mercy can and will give you all, you will do great honor to his name. Is it not written, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God"? If you were a little sinner and had little needs, God could only be a little merciful and give you a little supply; but the more brutish you are and the less of true understanding you have, the greater opportunity have you of glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ by believing in him for the great things which you evidently need. If you are the greatest fool that ever lived, you will give to Christ all the more honor when you believe that he can make you wise unto salvation. God grant that the heights to which other men reach may never keep you back from faith in God, but may the rather urge you on to believe great things of God!

But further, I said--and perhaps I surprised you-- that the depths of other men have often kept tremblers from a simple faith in God. I know many who say, "I cannot feel as others feel--my heart is hard and insensible, and when I listen to what believers tell me of their sharp distresses I fear that I cannot be saved; for into these deep places I have never gone." These depths are of many kinds; but the mention of one or two may suffice. Some believers have been brought to the Lord through fearful conviction of sin, conviction most overwhelming: they seem to have found their way to heaven round by the brink of hell. "Ah!" say you, "I was never thus shaken over the pit." Another, after he has been converted, experience awful conflicts: from day to day he struggles with inbred corruptions, and therefore he goes sighing and crying to heaven. There is among the best of men an amount of sorrow which I need not here dwell upon. Ploughing, harrowing, scarifying, fall to the lot of the best of soils. Saints go through fire and through water in their spiritual march to the land of bliss. Perhaps some of you escape these agonies and know but little of the grinding process. Will you therefore fear to believe because you think you are more unfeeling than other men? Will you refuse the cup of life because God has not infused all his bitters into it?

Hearken to me, ye that are so readily cast down: some of these depths you never need wish to know, for they would not be to your advantage but to your loss. The dark side of much that is called Christian experience is not the work of the Holy Spirit at all. In many it is occasioned by a natural crabbedness of disposition: some are so hard that God must use iron wedges with them before their hearts will be reached. There are men with such a proud spirit that they need to be brought down to feed swine before they will arise and go to their Father. Others are obstinate, and wear a brow of brass; and these must be made faint with labor before they will yield. In many instances, the mental distress which attends the work of the Spirit is produced by sickness of body: it is not repentance but indigestion or some other evil agency depressing the spirits. A sluggish liver will produce most of those fearsome forebodings which we are so ready to regard as spiritual emotions. There is such a blending of the physical with the mental that it is hard to name our feelings. All the experience of a Christian man is not Christian experience. The troubled man experiences a good deal, not because he is a Christian, but because he is a man, a sickly man, a man inclined to melancholy. Why will you envy such a person? Do you want to feel his despondency? Do you really desire disease? Do you think you could trust God better if you had a morbid mind and a disordered body? What nonsense! I do not admire your taste; I think you are very foolish.

In multitudes of instances the strange depressions which befall some excellent people are the result of external trouble, of grinding poverty, of frequent bereavements, or of excessive labor. These things may greatly intensify the bitterness of spiritual distress. Do you want affliction? Do you really think that poverty or bankruptcy would help you to believe in God? Give some men a holiday by the sea and their dark thoughts vanish. Were they ever desirable? In desiring what would only grieve you, you remind me of a child that would always cry until its mother said, "What! Do you cry for nothing? You shall have something to cry for before long." If you covet grief, and even dare to threaten the Lord that you will not believe him unless he vexes you, it may be that he will deal with you according to your desires, and then you will cry in earnest on the other side of your mouth.

Frequently the great darkness through which many true people of God pass is occasioned by Satan. He delights to torment the child of God with blasphemous suggestions or with foul imaginations. Do any of you say, because you are a stranger to this, "We cannot believe"? Why, dear soul, you must be out of your mind to talk so. Bless God with all your heart that you are a stranger to this horrible temptation. Never be so insane as to wish for this dreadful trial. These temptations may come quite soon enough. Desire them? Never, while reason remains to you!

Do you not think too, that many are more deeply convinced of sin and more seriously tried and more fiercely tempted than others, because the Lord has a special design to answer in them? Even when the terrible searching work within is all real, you need not wish for it, for it may not be needful in your case, since God has not the same intention towards you that he has towards the much tempted one. Much more is wanted by way of foundation for a lofty tower than for a humble cottage; and so the grand public life of such a man may need more digging out by inward sorrow than your more private life can possibly require. Our Lord may also be shaping the tried soul for special work. If a man is to be a son of consolation to others, he must be much exercised himself. Barnabas must have tasted the wormwood and the gall, or he cannot mix the cup of consolation for others.

Remember that all Christians are not, and cannot be, of the same calibre. We are all soldiers brethren, but we are not all champions. God calls upon everyone that believes in Christ to fight his battles, but many of us are happy to belong to the rank and file. We cannot all be captains. Only here and there shall we find a David, who with his sling and his stone shall go forth, a solitary champion against gigantic Philistines. For David it was needful that he should fight lions and boars in his youth, or he would not have faced the giant. If God sends us less of inward and outward trials than others, he knows best. We need enough sorrow to drive us from self and carnal confidence, and when that is effected it would be folly to sigh for more. Our wisdom is to leave our experience with the Lord, who will appoint us sun or shade as best will suit our growth. Let us envy no man his standing upon Tabor or Pisgah, and on the other hand let us never desire to make excursions with the Lord's Jonahs, and go with them to the bottoms of the mountains. Seek not to copy another man's ups or downs, but wait on God, and put thy trust in him, even though thou shouldst seem to thyself to be more foolish than any other living man.

II. Secondly and very briefly: a sense of inferiority must not keep us from learning. Suppose you have to say "I am more brutish than any man," you have so much the more need of being taught the things of God. If you have not the understanding of a man there is so much more cause that you should go to school to the Holy Spirit, till the eyes of your understanding shall be enlightened, and you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.

Vital truth is simple. A great many things are hard to understand, but that which is essential to salvation is not difficult. To know thyself a sinner and Christ a Savior, is this a deep mystery? To quit thine own self and thine own trusts simply to rely upon the person and work of the Son of God, is this exceedingly difficult to understand? The safest truth is the simplest. Commonly an invention in machinery grows more simple as it nears perfection; and because God's way of salvation is perfect, therefore it is simplicity itself. You can know the gospel, for it is not a tough metaphysical problem, but a revelation which he that runs may read.

If thou art staggered by the sublimity of heavenly learning, consider that these things are revealed to babes. Our Lord said, "I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes." Therefore, if you are more than ever conscious of your spiritual babyhood, be none the less assured that the Lord can and will reveal his truths to you.

Remember also that the Holy Ghost is a great Teacher. The best earthly teacher may be able to do very little with such slow scholars as we are; therefore let us go to our heavenly Teacher, that he may give us of his Spirit wherewith we may learn the truth. He can teach young men wisdom, and give to babes knowledge and discretion. When the Lord teaches it is wonderful how quickly we learn. We have frequently met with young children deep-taught in the things of God because the Holy Ghost has been their Teacher.

Let me comfort you by the remark that a sense of ignorance is a very good beginning for a learner. The doorstep of the Palace of Wisdom is a humble sense of ignorance. When thou art empty of all fancied wisdom, there is room for God to fill thee with heavenly instruction. If thou art more brutish than any man, I should hope thou art more surely on the way to be made wise from the very foundation, by the teaching of the Spirit of God.

Hang your hope upon that promise: "All thy children shall be taught of the Lord." You are one of those children, though you are a little one, and therefore you are included in the number of those who shall be taught of the Lord. The Lord will not give up one of the children of Zion as incorrigible. Dunces, whom no other master would tolerate, the gentle Spirit will tenderly instruct. Therefore I say unto you let not a sense of inferiority keep you from following on to know the Lord.

III. I have been very brief upon that second point, and I must be much the same on the third: a sense of inferiority must not keep us back from serving God. What if like Agur we take the very lowest place; yet, like him let us speak on God's behalf. Who knoweth he may prophesy by us also? Agur's simple word is called "the prophecy." If God shall speak by thee my friend, thy thinking so little of thyself will give a charm to thy speech. If God shall use such as thou art he will have all the glory of it, will he not? When the Lord uses a very clever man, there is always the fear that people will ascribe the success to the human instrument. But when the Lord uses the man who owns himself to be a poor foolish creature, then the honor is not divided, but all men see that this is the finger of God. The Lord loves to use tools which are not rusted with self-conceit. An axe which boasteth itself shall not be used upon the thick trees.