The Sheep Before The Shearers

DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, JUNE 20, 1880,

BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"As a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so He opens not His mouth."
Isaiah 53:7.

It is very suggestive of the way in which our Lord Jesus took the
sinner's place that we are here, in the context, compared to
sheep–"All we like sheep have gone astray," and then He who comes to
take our place is also compared to a sheep–"As a sheep before her
shearers is dumb." It is wonderful how complete was the interchange of
positions between Christ and His people so that what they were He
became in order that what He is they may become! See how closely He
became like His brethren? I can very well understand how we should be
compared to the sheep and He to the shepherd, but I should never have
dared to coin the comparison which likens Him to a sheep! I dare try to
explain, but I should never have dared to utter it if I had not found
it here.

To liken the Son of the Highest to a sheep would have been unpardonable
presumption had not His own Spirit employed the condescending figure.
Though the emblem is very gracious, it is by no means novel, for our
Lord had been long before Isaiah's day typified in the Lamb of the
Passover. To call Him, "the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the
world," is a very frequent mode of explaining to us how He made
expiation for our transgressions and, indeed, even in His Glory He is
the Lamb in the midst of the Throne before whom angels and the redeemed
are bowing. I delight to bring before your minds the amazing communion
between yourselves and Jesus–you "like sheep" and He "as a sheep"–you
like sheep in your wanderings, He like a sheep in His patience. You
more like sheep–I mean myself and you–more like sheep for
foolishness, but He only like a sheep for the sweet submissiveness of
His Spirit, so that beneath the shearer's hand, "He opens not His
mouth."

I will not keep you with any preface, but invite you to consider,
first, OUR SAVIOR'S PATIENCE under the figure of a sheep before her
shearers. Let us view our Lord's patience by the help of the Holy
Spirit. I do not think I will preach to you, but I will set before you
as open a window as I can and ask you to look in and behold the Lamb of
God. Our Lord was brought to the slaughter and brought, in another
sense, by another figure, to the shearers. He was brought to the
slaughter that He might die–to the shearers that He might be shorn of
His comfort and of His honors– shorn, even, of His good name and
shorn, at last, of life itself.

While He was before the slaughterers He was quiet as a lamb that is
led–when He was under the shearers He was as silent as a sheep that
lies to be shorn. You know the story of how patient He was before
Pilate and Herod and Caiaphas and on the Cross. You have no record of
His groaning, or of His uttering any exclamation as though impatient of
the pain and shame which He received at the hands of wicked men. You
have not one bitter word, one hard speech. Pilate cries, "Answer You
nothing? Behold how many things they witness against You!" And Herod is
bitterly disappointed, for he expected to see some miracle worked by
Jesus. All that He says is like the bleating of a sheep, only so
infinitely more full of meaning. He utters sentences likes these–"For
this purpose was I born and came into the world, that I might bear
witness to the Truth" and, "Father, forgive them, for they know not
what they do." He is all patience and silence.

Now remember, first, that our Lord was silent and opened not His mouth
against His adversaries and did not accuse one of them of cruelty or
injustice. They slandered Him, but He replied not. False witnesses
arose, but He answered them not. He did not say, like Paul, "God shall
smite you, you white wall." I am not going to condemn Paul, but I
certainly am not going to commend him, either. In contrast with the
Master, how differently he behaves! Jesus lets not fall a word against
anybody, though they are doing everything that malice can invent
against Him. For Pilate He even makes a half apology, "He that
delivered Me unto you has the greater sin."

One would have thought He must have spoken when they spat in His face.
Might He not have said, "Friend, why are you doing this? For which of
all My works do you insult Me?" But the time for such expostulations
was over. When they struck Him on the face with the palms of their
hands, it would have been understandable if He had said, "Why do you
strike Me so?" But no, He speaks not. He brings no accusation to His
Father. He had only to have lifted His eyes to Heaven, or to have felt
a wrathful wish and legions of angels would have chased out the ribald
soldiers–one flash of a seraph's wing and Herod had been eaten by
worms and Pilate had died the death he well deserved as an unjust
judge!

The hill of the Cross might have become a volcano's mouth to swallow up
the whole multitude who stood there jesting and jeering at Him. But no,
nothing of the kind–there was no display of power, or rather there was
so great a display of power over Himself that He did not use His might
against His most bitter foes! He restrained Omnipotence, itself, with a
strength which can never be measured, for His mighty love availed even
to restrain Divine Wrath! He kept back the natural indignation which
must have come over His spirit against the injustice, the lies, the
shameful malice of His foes. He held it all back and was patient, meek,
silent to the end.

Again, as He did not utter a word against His adversaries, so He did
not say a word against any one of us. You remember how Zipporah said to
Moses, "Surely a bloody husband you are to me," as she saw her child
bleeding? And surely Jesus might have said to His Church, "You are a
costly spouse to Me, to bring Me all this shame and blood shedding."
But He gives liberally, He opens the very fountain of His heart and He
upbraids not. He had reckoned on the uttermost expenditure and endured
the Cross, despising the shame–

"This was compassion like a God, That when the Savior knew The price of
pardon was His blood, His pity never withdrew."

No doubt He looked across the ages, for those eyes of His were not dim
even when bloodshot on the Cross and He might have looked at your
indifference and mine, at our coldness of heart and unfaithfulness–and
He might have left on record some such words as these–"I am suffering
for those who are utterly unworthy of My regard; their love will be a
very poor return for Mine. Though I give My whole heart for them, how
lukewarm is their love to Me! I am sick of them. I am weary of them and
it is woe to Me that I should be laying down My heart's blood for such
a worthless race as these, My people, are."

But there is not a hint of such a feeling, not a trace of it! He is
silent before the shearers. They shear away everything from Him. They
strip Him to the last rag, till, as He hangs upon the tree, He says, "I
can count all My bones, they look and stare upon Me," and yet He
murmurs not against our cruel sins! He was stripped because we were
naked, that He might cover our nakedness and yet He makes no complaint
against us, nor utters a single syllable by way of regret that He had
entered upon so severe an enterprise and that He was paying so heavy a
price. No. "For the joy that was set before Him He endured the Cross,
despising the shame," and not a syllable is uttered that looks like
murmuring, or wishing that He had not commenced the work.

And again, as there was not a word against His adversaries, nor a word
against you or me, so there was not a word against His Father or of
repining at the severity of the punishment of our sin. You know how
Cain said, "My punishment is greater than I can bear," and yet to me he
seems to have been treated with strange leniency, that first red-handed
murderer. Sometimes you and I have cried, when under a comparatively
light grief, "Surely my grief cannot be weighed in the scales, nor
measured in the balances!" We have thought ourselves treated very
harshly. We have dared to cry out against God, "My face is foul with
weeping and on my eyelids is the shadow of death; not for any injustice
in my hands: also my prayer is pure."

But not so the Savior. In His mouth were no complaints. And yet it is
quite impossible for us to conceive how the Father pressed and bruised
Him. How often did that olive press revolve? How was the screw
tightened again and again and again, to bring the stones together, to
bruise out of Him His very life! "It pleased the Lord to bruise Him; He
has put Him to grief." He, alone, of all mankind could truly say, "All
Your waves and Your billows have gone over Me." Yet there is not a
complaint, for, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" is a cry of
grief–it is not a cry of repining. It shows manhood in its weakness,
but not manhood in revolt! There is the cry of grief, but there is not
the voice of rebellion there, nor even of despair.

We have the Lamentations of Jeremiah, but where are the lamentations of
Jesus? Jesus wept and Jesus sweated great drops of blood, but He never
murmured nor felt rebellion in His heart. Beloved, I feel as if I
cannot preach upon this, but ask you just to look in there, within the
open door and see Jesus, the Lamb, waiting in the shambles. He is not
struggling when the knife is at His throat, but waiting there to die
and dying with His own consent–laying down His life willingly for our
sakes. Look again and see your Lord and Savior lying down stretched out
in passive resignation beneath the shearers as they take away
everything that is dear to Him and yet He opens not His mouth!

I see in this, in Christ our Lord, complete submission. He gives
Himself up. There is no reserve about it. The Sacrifice did not need
binding with cords to the horns of the altar. How different from your
case and mine! He stands there willing to suffer, to be spit upon, to
be shamefully treated and to die, for in Him there was a complete
surrender. There was no reserve about His body, soul, or spirit. He was
wholly given up to do the Father's will and work out our redemption.
There was a complete self-conquest, too. In Him no faculty arose to
plead for liberty and ask to be exempted from the general strain. No
limb of the body, no portion of the mind, no faculty of the spirit
complained–all submitted–a whole Christ giving up His whole being
unto God that He might perfectly offer Himself without spot for our
redemption.

There was not only self-conquest, but there was a complete absorption
in His work. The sheep, lying there, thinks no more of the pastures. It
just gives itself up to the shearer. And Christ forsook His Father that
He might be one flesh with us–that was at the very first and,
therefore, He came here and was joined unto us at Bethlehem. He kept up
the union to the end and, therefore, He was one with us in death. The
zeal of God's house did eat Him up in Pilate's hall as well as
everywhere else, for there He witnessed a good confession. No thought
had He but for the clearing of the Divine honor and the salvation of
God's elect.

His powers were concentrated into one desire and the passion of love to
men made His heart hot within Him till it melted and ran out in a
stream of love and blood. Oh, Brothers and Sisters, I wish we could
always get to this–to submit our whole spirit to God, to resign
ourselves completely, to learn self-conquest and then the delivering up
of conquered self entirely to God–the absorption of it all in one
desire, the burning up of the sacrifice till it should be like Elijah's
sacrifice on Carmel when the fire came down from Heaven and consumed
not only the bullock, but the wood and the stones of the altar and
licked up the water that was in the trenches and the whole sacrifice
went up in one vast cloud of fire and smoke to Heaven, a whole burnt
offering to the living God!

This is just what one could wish might happen to us, even as it
happened unto the Lord's Christ on that day. The wonderful serenity and
submissiveness of our Lord are still better set forth by our text, if
it is, indeed, true that sheep in the east are even more docile than
with us. Those who have seen the noise and roughness of many of our
washings and shearings will hardly believe the testimony of that
ancient writer Philo-Judaeus when he affirms that the sheep came
voluntarily to be shorn. He says–"Wooly rams laden with thick fleeces
put themselves into his hands [the shepherd's] to have their wool
shorn, being thus accustomed to pay their yearly tribute to man, their
king by nature. The sheep stands in a silent inclining posture,
unconstrained under the hand of the shearer. These things may appear
strange to those who do not know the docility of the sheep, but they
are true."

II. Thus I have very feebly, indeed, set before you, dear Friends, the
patience of our beloved Master. Now I want you to follow me, in the
second place, to view our own case under the same metaphor as that
which is used in reference to our Lord. Did not I begin by saying that
because we were sheep, He deigns to compare Himself to a sheep? Now,
just go back again. Our Lord was as a sheep under the shearers and as
He is, so are we, also, in this world. Though we shall never be offered
up like a lamb in the temple by way of expiation, yet the saints, for
ages, were the flock of slaughter, as it is written, "For Your sake we
are killed all the day long, we are accounted as sheep for the
slaughter!" Jesus sends us forth as sheep in the midst of wolves and we
are to regard ourselves as living sacrifices, ready to be offered up.

I dwell, however, more particularly upon the second symbol–we can go
and do go as sheep under the shearers' hands. I want to speak to you a
little, this evening, about this figure, as I have no doubt it has been
worked out in the lives of many here present and may perhaps be worked
out at this present time and in future days in the rest of you. Just as
a sheep is taken by the shearer and its wool is all cut off, so does
the Lord take His people and shear them, taking away all their comforts
at times–all their earthly comforts and leaving them bare as shorn
sheep. I wish when it came to our turn to undergo this shearing
operation it could be said of us as of our Lord, "As a sheep before her
shearers, so He opens not His mouth."

I fear that we open our mouths a great deal and make no end of
complaint. But now to the figure. We need to be reconciled to the
shearing process and to that end I shall speak at this time. First,
remember that a sheep rewards its owner for all his care and trouble by
being shorn. There is nothing else that I know of that a sheep can do.
It yields food when it is killed, but while it is alive the one payment
that the sheep can make to the shepherd is to yield its fleece in due
season. And so, dear Friends, a sheep, if it were intelligent, might
well be reconciled to be shorn because it would say, "The shepherd
deserves to be rewarded for his pains and so I am content to go down to
the shearing house, to yield my fleece that he may be repaid."

Some of God's people can give to Christ a tribute of gratitude by
active service and they should do so gladly every day of their lives,
but many others cannot do much in active service and about the only
reward they can give to their Lord is to give up their fleece by
suffering when He calls upon them to suffer. They can submissively
yield to be shorn of their personal comfort when the time comes for
patient endurance. And mark you, those who serve Christ actively ought
to feel that what they do in that way is all too little and if they can
supplement it by passive service, by yielding themselves to be shorn as
others are, they ought to rejoice that in this way they can show forth
to Christ the more abundant gratitude for what He has done for them.

Here comes the shearer. He takes the sheep and begins to cut, cut, cut,
cut, taking away the wool by wholesale. Affliction is often used as the
big shears. The husband is taken away, or perhaps the wife. Little
children are taken away, property is taken away, health is taken away.
Sometimes the shears even cut off your good name–slander comes–
everything seems to come and remove your consolations till all comforts
vanish. Well, this is your shearing time and it may be that you are not
able to glorify God to any very large extent except by undergoing this
process. And if this is the case, do you not think that you and I, like
good sheep of Christ, should surrender cheerfully and say, "I lay
myself down with this intent, that You should take from me anything and
everything and do what You will with me, for I am not my own–I am
bought with a price and so I would cheerfully yield to anything by
which You may get some honor out of me.

"O, You great Shepherd of the sheep, clip and shear me as You will, so
long as You see some sort of return for all Your tender care and bitter
woe." Notice that the sheep is, itself, benefited by the operation of
shearing. Before they begin to shear the sheep the wool is long and old
and every bush that catches it, every thistle with which it gets
entangled, every briar that it passes by, tears off a bit of the wool
and the sheep looks ragged and forlorn. If the wool were left on it
when the heat of summer came, it would not able to bear it–it would be
so overloaded with clothing that it would be as we, ourselves, are when
we have kept on our borrowed wool, our flannels and broadcloths too
late.

After the heat of summer has come we have to throw off our thick
clothes. We cannot bear them–and so the sheep is the better for losing
its wool–it would become a hindrance to it and not a comfort if it had
to retain it. So, Brothers and Sisters, when the Lord shears us, we do
not like the operation any more than the sheep does, but first, it is
for His Glory and secondly, it is really for our benefit and,
therefore, we are bound most willingly to submit. There are many things
which we should have liked to have kept which, if we had kept them,
would not have proved blessings, but curses. Remember, a stale blessing
is a curse.

The bronze serpent preserved as a relic became a snare to the people
till it was broken up and called Nehushtan, a piece of brass. The
manna, though it came from Heaven, was only good so long as God's
command made it a blessing and when they kept it over its due time it
bred worms and stank and then it was no blessing. I do believe that
many persons, if they could, would keep their blessings stinking in the
house till they filled their cupboards with worms! But God will not
have it so. Up to a certain point for you to be wealthy was a
blessing–it would not have been a blessing any longer and so the Lord
took your riches away. Up to that point your child was a gift, but it
would have been no longer so and, therefore, it fell sick and died. You
may not be able to see it, but it must certainly be that God, when He
withdraws a blessing from His people, takes it away because it would
not be a blessing any longer.

Remember this text, "No good thing will I withhold from them that walk
uprightly," and if that is true, then this is true, "No really good
thing will I take away from them that walk uprightly," for that is
something more than withholding. When the wool goes, it is because the
sheep does not really need it–it is better without it. Mr. Jonatt, who
has written upon sheep, tells us, "As the spring advances, the old wool
is no longer needed to defend the animal from the cold and it becomes,
from its weight and its warmth, a nuisance rather than a comfort." When
the Lord Jesus Christ sends afflic-

tion and trial to shear us, while we hope to glory Him in the process,
it is also good for us that we should have it cut away. Though we do
not like it at the time, it is working our lasting good.

You who know something about sheep will remember that before sheep are
shorn they are always washed. Were you ever present at the scene when
they drive them down to the brook, to the place where they have dammed
up the stream to make a pool for washing? There the men stand in rows,
while the shepherd stands in the water, breast high. The sheep are
driven down and the men seize them, throw them into the water, keeping
their faces above water and swill them round and round and round to
wash the wool before they clip it off. You see them come out on the
other side frightened to death, poor things, wondering whatever is
coming, no doubt under the impression that they are going to be
drowned. And when they escape, they stand bleating on the other shore
as, one by one, they finish their swim.

I want to suggest to you, Brethren, that whenever a trial threatens to
overtake you, before it actually arrives you should ask the Lord to
sanctify you. If He is going to clip the wool, ask Him to wash it
before He takes it off. Ask to be cleansed in spirit, soul and body.
That is a very good custom Christian people have of asking a blessing
on their meals before they eat bread. Do you not think it is even more
necessary to ask a blessing on our troubles before we get into them?
Here is your dear child likely to die–will you not, dear parents, meet
together and ask God to bless the death of that child if it is to
happen? Here are things going badly in trade–would it not be a good
thing to hold a special meeting in the family and ask God to bless your
declining business to you? There is a bad crop. The harvest
fails–would it not be well to say, "Lord, sanctify this poverty, this
loss, this year's bad harvest. Cause it to be a means of Grace to us.
The evil is coming and before it comes we would ask a blessing on it."

Why not ask a blessing on the cup of bitterness as well as upon the cup
of thanksgiving? Ask to be washed before you are shorn and if the
shearing must come, let that be your chief concern. "Lord, if You are
coming to take my wool, make it clean before You take it. Wash what You
take and wash me, also, and I shall be clean. Yes, wash me and I shall
be whiter than snow." After the washing and the sheep has dried, the
sheep actually loses what was its comfort. It is thrown down and you
see the shearers. You wonder at them and pity the poor sheep. The sheep
is losing what was its comfort. It will happen to you that you shall
lose what is your comfort. Will you remember this? Because the next
time you receive a fresh comfort you must say it is a loan.

Oh sheep, there is no wool on your back but what will come off! Child
of God, there is no comfort in your possession but what will either
leave you, or you will leave it! Nothing is our own except our God.
"Why," says one, "not our sin?" That was our own, I admit that, but
Jesus has taken that upon Himself and we call it no more our own. There
is nothing our own but our God and there is no blessing that we have
but what, when the Lord sends it to us, it is with the agreement that
we shall have it only for a time. It is held on lease, terminable at
the will of the Lord. We foolishly consider that our mercies belong to
us and when the Lord takes them away we half grumble. If you borrow
anything of a neighbor, you ought not to send it back with tears, or
say, "I am sorry you need it back."

A loan, they say, should go laughing home and so should what God loans
us. We should rejoice. He gives and, blessed be His name, He takes but
what He gave. He does not take to Himself anything of ours–He takes to
Himself what He lent us. All our possessions are but favors borrowed
here to be eventually returned. So as the sheep yields up its wool and
loses its comfort, so must we yield up all our comforts one by one. Or
if they remain with us till we die, we shall part with them, then–we
shall not take so much as one of them across the stream of death. Our
spiritual riches are of another kind and they are laid up already in
Heaven–but of all things here below we shall take not a thread with
us.

The shearers, when they are taking the wool off the sheep, take care
not to hurt the sheep. They clip as close as they can, but they do not
cut the skin. If possible, they will not make a gash or a wound, or
draw blood even in the smallest degree. When they do make a gash, it is
because the sheep does not lie still. But a careful shearer has
bloodless shears. Of this Thomson sings in his Seasons and the passage
is so good an illustration of the whole subject that I will adorn my
discourse with it–

"How meek, how patient, the mild creature lies! What softness in its
melancholy face, What dumb complaining innocence appears! Fear not, you
gentle tribes! 'tis not the knife Of horrid slaughter that is o'er you
waved. No, 'tis the tender swain's well guided shears,

Who having no w, to pay his annual care, Borrowed your fleece, to you a
cumbrous load, Will send you bounding to your hills again." You can be
sure that when the Lord is clipping and shearing us He will not hurt
us. He will take our comforts away, but He will not really injure us,
or cause a wound to our spirits. Has He not said, "In the world you
shall have tribulation, but in Me you shall have peace"?

If ever the shears make us bleed, it is because we kick, because we
struggle. If we were patient as the sheep, we should just lie still and
the process would cost us very little pain. What pain there was would
become delightful, seeing we had submitted ourselves entirely to the
Divine will. Pain grows into pleasure when you come to feel that God
wills it–you are glad to suffer because He ordains you should. It is
the kicking and the struggling that make the shearing work at all hard.
But if we are silent before the shearers, no hurt can come. The Lord
may clip wonderfully close–I have known Him clip some very close who
did not seem to have a bit of wool left, for they were stripped
entirely, just as Job was when He cried, "Naked came I out of my
mother's womb and naked shall I return there," but still, he was able
to add, "The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away and blessed be the
name of the Lord."

You will notice about sheep shearing that the shearers always shear at
a suitable time. It would be a very wicked, cruel and unwise thing to
begin shearing sheep in winter time. There is a proverb which talks
about God "tempering the wind to the shorn lamb." It may be so, but it
is a very wicked practice to shear lambs while winds need tempering.
Sheep are shorn when it is warm, genial weather–when they can afford
to lose their fleece and are all the better for being relieved of it.
As the summer comes on sheep shearing time comes. Have you ever noticed
that whenever the Lord afflicts us, He selects the best possible time?
There is a prayer that He puts into His disciples' mouths, "Pray that
your flight is not in the winter"–the spirit of that prayer may be
seen in the seasonableness of our sorrows. He will not send us our
worst troubles at our worst times.

I have frequently noticed and I have treasured it up with gratitude,
that when I have had strong inclinations to sin, the opportunity has
not come–that if ever I have had opportunities of sinning temptingly
put before me–then I have had no inward longing towards the sin. When
the inward desire and the opportunity meet, that is a very dangerous
case, indeed, but the Lord keeps His people from that. So if you notice
your soul is depressed, the Lord does not send you a very heavy burden
but reserves such a load for times when you have had joy in the Lord
and that joy has been your strength. It has got to be a kind of feeling
with us that when we have much delight, a trial is near–and when
sorrow thickens, deliverance is approaching. The Lord does not send us
two burdens at a time, or if He does, He sends double strength.

It is an observation which I suppose no one would make but an Irishman
and I am not one, that you never knew the west wind blow when the east
wind is troubling you. You never knew the wind blow from the north when
it was blowing from the south. As a rule, unless it is in a tornado or
a cyclone, the wind blows from some one quarter. "He stays His rough
wind in the day of the east wind." He knows how to prevent our
suffering more tribulation than we can bear. He shears us, but not to
injure us. He clips away the wool, but sends the genial temperature so
that we may be able to flourish under our loss. Let that be noted and
let God be thanked for it.

There is another thing to remember. When God takes away our mercies He
is ready to supply us with more. It is with us as with the sheep–there
is new wool coming. Whenever the Lord takes away our earthly comforts
with one hand, one, two, three–He restores with the other hand–six,
12, scores, a hundred! He takes away by spoonfuls and He gives by
carloads! We are crying and whining about the little loss and yet it is
necessary in order that we may be able to receive the great mercy! Yes,
it will be so–we shall yet have cause for rejoicing–"joy comes in the
morning." There is always as good fish in the sea as ever came out of
it and when one set of favors is taken away there are more mercies to
come. The great sea of Divine Love has bigger fish in it than ever we
have taken out of it. If we have lost one position, there is another
position for us.

If we have been driven out of one place, there is yet a refuge for us.
God opens a second door when He shuts the first. If He takes away the
manna, as He did from His people Israel, it is because there is the
corn of Canaan for them to live on. If the water of the Rock did not
follow the tribes any longer, it was because they could drink of the
Jordan and of the

brooks that flowed in that land of hills and valleys. Yes, there is new
wool coming! Do not, therefore, fret at the shearing. I have given
these thoughts in brief, that we may come to this last word.

III. Let us, in the third place, endeavor to imitate the example of our
blessed Lord when our turn comes to be shorn. Let us be silent before
the shearers, submissive, quiescent, even as He was. I have been
giving, in everything I have said, a reason for so doing. I have shown
that it glorifies God, rewards the Shepherd and benefits ourselves. I
have shown that He measures and tempers our affliction and sends the
trial at the right time. I have shown you in many ways that we are wise
to submit ourselves as the sheep does to the shearer and the more
completely we do so the better. Oh, Brothers and Sisters, we shall be
happy when we have done with self! It will be well with us, whatever we
may have gone through, when we learn that verse of Toplady's–

"Sweet to lie passive in Your hands And know no will but Yours."

I know we struggle a good deal and we make excuses for struggling.
Sometimes we say, "Oh, this is so painful, I cannot be patient! I could
have borne anything else, but not this." When a father is going to
correct his child, does he select something that is pleasant? Oh, dear,
no! The painfulness of the chastisement is the essence of it and even
so the bitterness of your sorrow will be a blessing to you. By the
blueness of the wound the heart will be made better. Do not rebel
because your trial seems strange. It is as good as saying, "If I have
it all my own way I will not rebel, but if everything does not please
me I will not endure it."

Sometimes we complain because of our great weakness. "Lord, were I
stronger I would not mind this heavy loss. I am like a sere leaf driven
by the storm." But who is to be the judge of the suitability of your
trial? You or God? Since the Lord judges this trial to be suitable to
your weakness, depend upon it, it is so. Lie still, lie still, lie
quite still! "Alas," you say, "my grief comes from the most cruel
quarter. This trouble did not arise directly from God, it came through
my cousin or my brother who ought to have treated me with gratitude. I
could have borne it if it had not come in that way, but since it was
not an enemy, I am unable to bear it!" Then let me tell you, it is not
a traitor, after all. God is at the bottom of all your
tribulation–look through the second causes to the great First Cause!

It is a great mistake when we fret over the human instrument which
smites us and forget the hand which uses the rod. If I strike a dog
with a stick, he bites my stick–that is because he is stupid. If he
thought a little, he would bite me, or else take the blow and bow in
obedience. Now, you must not begin biting the stick! After all, it is
God that uses that staff, though it is of ebony or of blackthorn. It is
well to have done with all this picking and choosing and to leave the
whole matter in the hands of Infinite Wisdom. A sweet singer has put
this matter very prettily, let me quote the lines–

"But when my Lord did ask me

On what side I were content,

The grief whereby I must be purified,

To me was sent,

As each imagined anguish did appear, Each withering bliss Before my
soul, I cried, 'Oh! Spare me here, Oh, no, not this!' Like one that
having need of, Deep within, the surgeon's knife, Would hardly bear
that It should graze the skin, Though for his life. No, then, but He,
who Best does understand Both what we need, And what can bear, Did take
my case in hand, Nor crying heed.

This is the pith of my sermon–oh sheep, yield yourself, yield
yourself! Oh Believer, yield yourself, lie passive, lie passive,
struggle not! There is no use in struggling, for our great Shearer, if
He means to shear, will do it. If He means to send us trials and
troubles He will not spare us for our crying. He will not listen to our
whining–He will do His will and carry out His purpose. What is the
good, therefore, of rebellion? Did not I say, just now, that the sheep,
by struggling, might be cut by the shears? So you and I, if we struggle
against God, we shall get two troubles instead of one and after all,
there is not half so much trouble in a trouble as there is in our
kicking against the trouble!

The Eastern farmer, when he plows, has a goad and pricks the ox to make
it move along. He does not hurt it much, but suppose the ox flings out
the moment it touches him? He drives the goad into himself and bleeds.
So is it with us. If we kick out against Divine Providences, we shall
get a sore wound–much more than was ever necessary–we shall endure
much more pain than would have come if we had yielded to the Divine
will. What is the use of kicking and struggling, then, you fretful
ones? You cannot make one hair white or black. You that are troubled,
rest with us, for you cannot make shower or sunshine, rain or fine
weather with all your groaning.

Did you ever bring a penny into the till by fretting, or put a loaf on
the table by complaint, or get a shilling in your pocket by murmuring?
Murmuring is wasted breath and fretting is wasted time. I wish that I
could be more quiet, calm and self-possessed, but an active mind is apt
to turn upon itself to its own wounding when all the cares of a Church
and a great work press heavily. I long to cry habitually, "Lord, do
what You will, when You will, as You will with me, Your
servant–appoint me honor or dishonor, wealth or poverty, sickness or
health, exhilaration or depression and I will take all right gladly
from Your hands." A man is not far from the gates of Heaven when he is
fully submissive to the Lord's will.

Though Heaven is uphill, the road to it is downhill–and when a man has
gone down so much that he is dead to self, he is not far from entering
into that Eternal Life where God shall be All in All, in bliss forever
and ever. You that have been shorn have, I hope, received a word of
comfort today through the ever blessed Spirit of God. May God bless it
to you. Oh that the sinner, too, would submit himself to God, yield
himself up and rebel no longer! Submit yourselves to God, let every
thought be brought into captivity to Him and the Lord send His
blessing, for Christ's sake. Amen.
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Mahanaim–or, Hosts Of Angels