The Backslider'S Way Hedged Up
DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, SEPTEMBER 18, 1864, BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
She said, I will go after my lovers, who give me my bread and my water,
my wool and my flax, my oil and my drink. Therefore, behold, I will
hedge up your way with thorns and make a wall, that she shall not find
her paths. And she shall follow after her lovers, but she shall not
overtake them. And she shall seek them, but shall not find them: then
shall she say, I will go and return to my first husband; for then was
it better with me than now." Hosea 2:5-7.
GREAT and grievous was the apostasy of the seed of Abraham from the
Lord their God. They had been chosen by special Grace from among all
people and had the high honor to receive the oracles of God–yet they
were bent on backsliding from God and were unfaithful to the Most High.
The gods of the surrounding heathen were constantly a snare to them and
they forsook the only living and true God to prostrate themselves
before blocks of wood and stone. Though chastened a thousand times they
learned nothing by the rod. And though as frequently forgiven and
visited with mercy, the holy bonds of gratitude did not bind them to
their God. As an abandoned woman leaves a kind and tender husband for
the base love of the vilest of the vile, even so both Israel and Judah
played the harlot towards the Lord who had espoused them in infinite
love.
Yet God has not even now written a bill of divorcement, or cast away
the people whom He did foreknow. Through eighteen hundred years the
sons of Israel have had to wander to and fro without a settled dwelling
place, yet God has not utterly given them up or broken His Covenant
with them. For the day shall come when Israel shall return, when again
she shall be called Hephzibah, and her land Beulah. Come, long expected
day! Appear, glorious King of the Jews! And you, O Judah, return from
your captivity! Shake yourself from the dust–put on your beautiful
garments and salute the Lord, your Ishi, your tender loving Husband!
Beloved Brothers and Sisters, the apostasy of the children of Israel
has been recorded for our learning. As they were prone to wander, so
are we–and the methods by which God brought them back of old are
precisely those which He uses with His erring children at the present
day. Instead of wondering at Israel's wickedness, let us examine
ourselves and repent for our sins! And while we see the hand of God
upon them, let us learn to admire those methods of unerring wisdom by
which Divine love preserves the ransomed ones from going down into the
pit.
In considering our text, my aim will be to be used as the Holy Spirit's
instrument to arouse, instruct and restore backsliders. Such wanderers
may be present now. Their first love they have lost and their zeal is
quenched. There may be some here who have gone further still and have
forsaken the Church of God altogether, having given up their profession
and all attendance upon Divine worship. O that the voice of Israel's
God may be heard in their hearts this morning, crying, "If a man puts
away his wife and she goes from him and becomes another man's, shall he
return unto her again? Shall not that land be greatly polluted? But you
have played the harlot with many lovers, yet return again to Me, says
the Lord."
I. We commence the consideration of the passage before us with the
remark that WHILE SINFUL MEN ARE IN PROSPERITY THEY PERVERT THE MERCIES
OF GOD TO THEIR OWN INJURY, making them instruments of sin and weapons
of warfare against God. While the children of Israel enjoyed an
abundance of temporal comforts they ascribed all these blessings to
their false gods. Hear the wicked and treacherous words–"I will go
after my lovers who give me my bread and my water, my wool and my flax,
my oil and my drink." Oh, base ingratitude to their bounteous Jehovah!
Infamous ascription of His Glory to graven images!
Prosperous sinners make three great mistakes. At the outset they give
their temporal mercies the first place in their hearts. Because their
business prospers they do not consider that their soul is perishing!
Because there is enough on the table for themselves and for their
children they forget that their soul is famished for lack of Heaven's
bread! They put the shadows of time before the realities of eternity.
They say, "We must live." But they forget that they must also die. So
long as the current glides smoothly and the gentle flow of the river of
their joy is undisturbed they forget the waterfall, red with the blood
of souls, down whose tremendous steeps those treacherous waters will
soon hurry them!
Is it not a gross mistake to attach so much importance to this poor
body of clay and forget the priceless jewel of the immortal soul? Why
do you think so much of a world in which we only tarry for a few evil
years and neglect the world where we must dwell forever? Such folly is
most shameful in one who was once a professed Christian, because he
knew, or professed to know, somewhat of the superiority of the eternal
over the temporal. He supposedly knew of the vanity of things earthly
and the glory of things heavenly.
Yet because things go well with him–because his wife is in health, his
children blooming, his house well furnished, his property increasing,
he says, "Soul, take your ease," and disturbs not himself though Heaven
is black with lowering tempest and the light of God's countenance is
hidden from him. The loss of God's Presence, the man thinks to be a
trifle because he is succeeding in the world–as though a man should
count it nothing to lose his life if he may but keep his raiment whole
to be buried in!
O Fools, why do you put the last things first and the first things
last? One error leads to another and therefore such people hold their
temporal things upon a wrong tenure. Do observe how many times the word
"my" is found in the text. "Give me my bread and my water and my wool
and my flax, my oil and my drink." Why, they were not hers but God's,
for the Lord expressly claims them all in the ninth verse and threatens
to take them all away! Backslider, there was a time when you did
confess yourself to be God's steward–when you said, "I am not my own,
but bought with a price." Yet now you have so set your heart upon
worldly things that all your talk runs in this fashion–my horses, my
houses, my lands, my profits, my children and an endless list of things
which you think to be altogether yours.
Why, Man, they are not yours! They are only lent you for a season! You
are but God's under-bailiff. You have possession only as
tenant-at-will, or as a borrower holding a loan. The Lord claims even
now the prior right to all you have and the day shall come when He
shall show you this! For if He has mercy upon you–and I pray He
may–He may take these from you one by one and make you cry out in
abject wretchedness of soul, "O God, forgive me that I made these my
gods and claimed them as my own!"
Then further, backsliders are apt to ascribe their prosperity and their
mercies to their sins. I have even heard one say, "Ever since I gave up
a profession of religion I have made more headway in business than I
did before." Some apostates have boasted, "Since I broke through
Puritanical restraint and went out into worldly company, I have been
better in spirits and better in purse than ever I was before." Thus
they ascribe the mercies which God has given them to their sins and
wickedly bow down before their lusts, as Israel did before the golden
calf and cry, "These are your gods, O Israel, which brought us up out
of the land of Egypt!"
Sinner, if you did but know it, a long-suffering God has given you
these things! Even to you who will perish He has given many mercies as
your portion in this life, seeing that you have no heritage hereafter.
O take heed, lest you be fattened upon them as beasts for the
slaughter. Unto you, Backsliders, He has given these things to try you,
to see how far you will go–to what extravagances of ingratitude you
will descend and how far you will despise His tender means. O
Backslider, is it not marvelous that God has not long ago stretched you
upon a bed of sickness, when you consider how much you have brought
dishonor upon Christ's name–how you have vexed God's people–how you
have made the wicked open their mouths against God?
Is it not a wonder that He did not take you away with a stroke when you
first forsook Him? And yet, see–instead of this, He multiplies your
mercies! Does He not as good as say, "Return unto your rest for I have
dealt bountifully with you. I am married unto you and therefore I treat
you as a husband treats his spouse. Although I might well proclaim a
divorce against you, yet since I have betrothed you unto Me forever, My
goodness and mercy shall not leave you even in your sins." Herein lies
the gross mistake of the backslider–that he will attribute his present
happiness and comfort to his sins rather than to the forbearance of
God.
Here are three great errors and oh, I fear they are so deadly that
unless God interposes in Providence and in Grace, they will be as fatal
as the three darts which Joab thrust through the heart of Absalom as he
was dangling by his proud hair in the wood of Ephraim! I fear that the
goodly Babylonian garment and the talents of silver and the wedge of
gold will ruin you as they did Achan of old. These three falsehoods,
like the three daughters of the horseleech, will never be satisfied
until they have utterly destroyed your soul! You will be wrapped in
fine linen and fare sumptuously and all this shall but ensure you the
torments of the damned.
Go now, weep and howl for the miseries which shall come upon you–your
riches are corrupted! Your garments are moth-eaten! Your gold and
silver are cankered and the rust of them shall be a witness against you
and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. You have forsaken the right
way and are gone astray–following the way of Balaam who loved the
wages of unrighteousness. Hear the Word of the Lord by the mouth of His
servant Peter! Tremble at it and be afraid–"If after they have escaped
the pollutions of the world through the knowledge of the Lord and
Savior Jesus Christ, they are again entangled therein and overcome, the
latter end is worse with them than the beginning. For it had been
better for them not to have known the way of righteousness, than, after
they have known it, to turn from the holy commandment delivered unto
them. But it is happened unto them according to the proverb, The dog is
turned to his own vomit again. And the sow that was washed, to her
wallowing in the mire."
II. Let us turn from this gloomy side of our subject and observe with
gratitude that THE LORD INTERPOSES
ADVERSITY IN ORDER TO BRING BACK HIS WANDERING CHILDREN. Let us
consider for a moment the hindrances which a God of Love frequently
puts in the way of His elect when they backslide from Him. Here we have
the matter opened up to our attention. "Therefore, behold, I will hedge
up your way with thorns and make a wall, that she shall not find her
paths."
Here you see that it is an unexpected hindrance, for it is placed right
in the woman's way–"I will hedge up your way"–it was her way, her
habit–she had fallen into it and she meant to keep on. But suddenly
she met with an unlooked-for obstacle. Just as farmers, when a public
path runs through their field and persons begin to wander too much into
the grass or corn, will put up bushes to keep the public to the path.
Or just as ranchers, to keep their cattle in their fields, make thick
thorn hedges which the beasts cannot break through, so God puts a thorn
hedge of troubles right in the way of His chosen to stop them in their
sins.
This hedge may be placed in your way in different shapes–perhaps you
will meet with it this day. I see the hand of God as it touches the
elect but erring man! Suddenly business grows slack–customers fall off
one by one–bad debts multiply. Bankruptcy stares him in the face.
Where he had enough to lavish on his pleasures he now has not enough to
supply his needs. A mighty famine has arisen in the land of sin and he
begins to be in need. He little expected this. If anybody had told him
when he was so proudly driving that fast-trotting horse along the
streets that he would come to hard work, he would have laughed him to
scorn!
He thought he should live like a millionaire, but now he seems far more
likely to die a pauper. Or it may be that sudden sickness has fallen
upon his once strong and healthy person. He could drink with the most
drunken and no voice could ring so loud as his in the midnight revelry.
But now he is paralyzed–he has lost the use of half his limbs! Or
perhaps some internal complaint has weakened him and made him totter
along the road in constant jeopardy of sudden death. Now the smooth
road is rough, indeed, and the world has lost its many charms.
Ah, Sinner, the sound of music is hushed for you and the joys of the
flowing bowl are yours no more. Your foaming tankards, your wantonness
and chambering are gone–Mercy has torn them from you in love to your
soul! Possibly the hedge is made of other thorns–perhaps the man's
children sickened. There are many funerals in the house in quick
succession. That first-born son, the expected heir, the joy of his
father's heart falls like a withered flower. His wife is cut off as a
lily snapped from its stalk and he stands weeping–a widowed husband–a
childless man. Any of these ways, and thousands more which I need not
here recount, are God's methods of building walls across the way of
those whom He ordains to bless.
When the man breaks through one hedge, the Lord of Mercy will build
another and maintains His hedges at such a degree of strength that the
bullock which is most accustomed to the yoke shall not be able to push
through. O Backslider, the Divine finger can touch you in the most
tender part and though up to this moment you have boasted, "Nobody can
make me wretched! Nothing shall ever make me fret," yet He can shut you
up in such despair that none can remove the heavy bar! Think of what
your brain may yet become–it is cool and calculating now and you can
clearly see that your fellows are left behind in the race of
competition–but remember how soon an unseen cause may soften that
brain into imbecility, or excite it into incipient insanity! How soon
may that boasted brain become like a burning sea throbbing with waves
of fire!
Beware lest such a visitation become the prelude of the wrath eternal!
My prayer for you is that more gentle means may bring you to
repentance. But to that you will never come unless the Lord hedges up
your way with thorns. Observe that it was a very disappointing
impediment. While the prosperous sinner was securely pursuing his way
he was stopped. "Why," says the man, "if it had not been for that, I
should have made a fortune. Why did death come just when my fair girl
looked so lovely in the bloom of opening womanhood and when my dear boy
had grown so engaging that his company was my delight? Ah, this is
trouble, indeed! To meet with misfortune just when I had built that new
house and held my head so high, and expected to see my daughters so
respectably married–why, this is very disappointing."
And the man kicks. And though once he professed to be a child of God,
yet it is painfully possible that he is ready to curse God and die. But
if he knew–oh, if he knew the Divine motive–he would thank God for
his troubles on bended knees! You remember that story of the painter in
St. Paul's when on high he painted his picture upon the ceiling? As he
went backward upon the stage to look at it and was so engrossed with
his occupation he was just on the edge of the stage and in great danger
of being dashed to pieces by a fall from that dizzy height. A friend
saw him and knowing that if he called out to him he would be startled
and thus his fall might be hastened, he took up a brush full of paint
and threw it at the picture. The desired effect was produced, for the
painter in great anger rushed forward to upbraid him and thus his life
was spared!
God seeing you painting a fair scene of life and happiness on earth
suddenly spoils it all–you rush forward, crying out against Him. But
oh, what reason have you to thank Him for that disappointment which has
robbed Satan of his prey and saved your soul! Moreover, what painful
hindrances our heavenly Father often uses. He hedges the sinner's path
not with rhododendrons and azaleas, not with roses and laurels, but
with thorns. Prickly thorns which curse the soil and tear the flesh are
God's instrument of restraint. Nothing but a thorn hedge would have
stopped the man–he was so madly set upon his present course that he
would dash through anything else.
But God, whose eternal mercy has marked that man out as a special
object of love, uses the most effectual remedies and plants a fence of
thorns. Are you smarting this morning–so smarting that you wish you
had never been born? Do you feel so much the cuts and lashes of evil
fortune that you would sooner end your existence than continue any
longer as you are? I bless God for this, if you are one of His
children, for it is this and this only, that will change your ways!
Furthermore, the fence is effectual if the thorn hedge will not
suffice–it is written, "I will make a wall." There are some so
desperate in sin that they will break through ordinary restraints. Then
a wall shall be tried through which there is no breaking, over which
there is no climbing. Ah, Backslider! Backslider! Perhaps you have
already broken through the thorn hedge–your trials have not been
sanctified. I have known some who have had enough trials, one would
think, to have melted a heart of adamant and yet they have set their
faces like a flint against God and gone on worse than ever. "Who is
Jehovah, that I should obey Him?" said Pharaoh, when he was vexed with
many plagues. And so have you said!
God, I trust, will not destroy you as He did Pharaoh, but He will
break, one way or another, the iron sinew of your proud neck. For when
it comes to a wrestle between God and you, you may be sure of a fall!
The Lord never was defeated, even by the stoutest adversary and He will
not, in your case, be frustrated in His design. If you are really one
of His chosen, you shall meet with an affliction such as perhaps you
never heard of in any other man. And if nothing but this will stop you,
He will invent some new form of disease, some fresh method of pain in
order to get at your soul. If you cannot be saved by the gentle wind,
He will send the storm.
If this suffices not, He will try the hurricane and if you will not run
into port even then, tornado shall follow tornado till you are broken
to pieces like a wreck and compelled to swim to the Rock of Ages for
rescue. These are but parts of His ways and even His hard things are
full of mercy. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel, but the
cruel things of God are full of tender mercy! He only uses these
methods because nothing else will do and He would sooner that you
should enter into Heaven with every bone broken, than that you should
descend into Hell with the full use of your powers.
III. In the third place, you would think that the sinner would now
stop, but instead of it, according to the text,
EVEN THOUGH GOD WALLS UP THE WAY OF SIN, MEN WILL TRY TO FOLLOW IT, BUT
IN THE CHOSEN
THIS RESOLVE WILL BE IN VAIN. "She shall follow after her lovers, but
she shall not overtake them. And she shall seek them, but shall not
find them." Do you see the man? He has suffered such loss that he
cannot find the means to sin as he used to do! Where he had money to
spend to indulge himself he now finds an empty purse but yet he tries
to do his worst.
He goes up and down that wall to see if there is not a hole in it
somewhere. He tries to scramble over it where there is a projecting
stone–he climbs half-way up, and falling, cuts his hands–but he will
try again and again. He runs all along that thorn hedge and looks and
looks again for a gap and oh, if he could find but one! If he could but
escape from God's boundaries! If he could but scrape enough money
together to have another debauch. If he could find just enough to play
the gentleman again. But he cannot–he has no means whatever to indulge
his sin.
Perhaps the case runs another way–God has taken away from the man all
the pleasure of sin. He cannot be so satisfied as he used to be with
his money. As he puts it into the till he despises it–and when he sees
it accumulating at his banker's it only brings him care and no content
as once it did. His children turn out, one by one, a curse to him. In
business everything seems determined to plague him. Whereas at the
theater he could gaze and listen with ecstasy, the whole affair is now
tame and dull. Those wines, so full of flavor, have now, through his
satiety lost their usual charm. Let him do what he will, the world is
all a blank and wretchedness for him!
Like Tiberius he would give a mint of gold to anyone who would invent
him a new pleasure or restore the vigor of the old. But no, the thorn
hedge is too well made–the Great Farmer has planted it too well. The
sinner would become a spiritual suicide but he cannot, let him desire
it as he may. He is desperately set on destruction as though it were to
be desired. O Sinner, how is this–how has the fall spoilt us that we
should be so enamored of our own destruction? O my God, what a creature
is man! Though he knows that sin will be his ruin, yet he hugs it as
though it were his chief mercy! He heaps to himself destruction as
though it were gold and digs for his own ruin as for hid treasure!
Oh, if the righteous were half as intent in seeking after goodness as
the wicked are in hunting after sin, how much more active would they
be! If we were half as strongly set upon the things of God as sinners
are set upon their own ways and their own pleasures, we should have no
waverers, no timid, cowardly spirits! Truly this love of sin is so
strange that if we did not see it in ourselves we should wonder at it!
But Christian, this is in you as much as in the worst of men! You, too,
if it had not been for Divine mercy, would have plunged on from bad to
worse. If Omnipotence itself had not seized the reins and turned us
into the way of Truth, we should at this moment have been dashing on in
the road of sin!
I say if Omnipotence itself had not interposed–it was not the
minister, it was not conscience, it was not merely Providence. It was
more than this–Jehovah's own right arm threw back the horse on its
haunches and cast the rider to the ground as He did Saul at Damascus,
or else we should have hastened on to our destruction and perished
through the hardness of our hearts. Let us sing unto Him whose mighty
mercy has rescued us and let us pity those whom the restraints of
Providence cannot bind–those who will, if they can–leap through stone
walls to have their way and their sin.
Thus, dear Friends, we have presented to you the deplorable picture of
the infatuated sinner, perfectly infatuated and drunken with the love
of sin and enmity to God! And Mercy itself, so far as we have gone,
foiled of its purpose. The thorn hedge not enough–the stone wall not
enough. What shall come now?
IV. Our next business is to consider THAT THE BACKSLIDER'S FAILURE IS
FOLLOWED BY A BLESSED RESULT. The hunt was very arduous but the greedy
hunter has missed his prey and there he sits weary with the chase and
ashamed of himself. What comes of it? Do observe it, for the result is
one which I hope you and I know already. "Then shall she say, I will go
and return to my first husband; for then it was better with me than
now." O Lord, teach some who are here this morning to pray this prayer!
Observe here is repentance attended with sorrow. The poor creature in
this case feels, deeply feels to the very soul, the wretchedness of her
condition. She is in so bad a plight that though she had despised her
former state she now confesses it to be better. Observe that it is an
active repentance. It is not merely "I will return," but, "I will go
and return." When the Grace of God sets a backslider upon returning, he
will stir up all the powers of his soul to seek after God. He cries,
"My soul waits for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning."
I say more than they that watch for the morning.
There is much earnestness in a sinner seeking Christ, but, if possible,
there is more in a backslider returning from the error of his ways–for
he has not only the guilt of sin to mourn over–but the double guilt of
having despised the Sav- ior, of having known the way of righteousness
and having turned from it. Here are two spurs to make him speed on in
his course. Observe, dear Friends, that the confession which this poor
soul makes of folly is one which is sustained by the best of reasons.
She says, "Then was it better with me than now." Let us see whether
this is not true with you.
Well, Backslider, what have you gained by it, after all? Have you
gained anything more comfortable than the light of your Father's face.
You once could say, "Abba, Father!" You rejoiced to know that God was
at peace with you. You were reconciled to Him by the death of His Son.
Now God is angry with you! Your fears tell you that He has forgotten to
be gracious. What can make up for this loss? When God lights a candle,
what brightness is in the room! But when God's candle is gone, where is
the sun and where the moon? They give no light to you.
Before, when you were in your right senses, you had the privilege of
going to the Throne of Grace. You could tell your needs before God and
spread your sorrows there. But you have no Throne of Grace to go to
now. Why, you scarcely dare pray! As for your friends, you would not
like to tell them your troubles. Poor Prodigal, what sorry friends are
those who waited on you in your days of wealth! They sat with their
legs under your mahogany and drank your wine while you had any–but you
know that you would be a fool to expect any help from them now that you
need it.
Your lovers have forsaken you and those who once were so kind–where is
their love now? Do I see one among you who has been cast off by her
companion in sin and shame! Ah, Woman! Poor wretched Woman! Have you
been made to feel that smart so common to those who sin as you have
done–cast into the street by him who first decoyed you by his fair
promises of love? Your case is but one of many and there are thousands
who find that the world knows not what faithfulness means.
First sin deludes, deceives, and pretends to love and then afterwards
it casts off its victims. Ah, you had a father's house to go to and a
father's mercy to plead. But you do not have it now–it was better with
you then than now. And then, you had God's promises to fall back upon.
If you had any trouble, you opened your Bible and there was a passage
to cheer you. When you had losses, the cheering words exactly met your
case. But now that Book is full of fire–it flashes lightning upon you
as you read it–there is not a promise there which smiles on you!
Your fears whisper that the treasury of God is shut against you. Once
you had communion with Christ Jesus–ah, now I touch a tender
string–you did sit at the banqueting table of Christ! Unless you were
awfully deceived and a gross hypocrite, you could say, "He has kissed
me with the kisses of His mouth." After this, how could you go to the
door of that deceiver Madame Wanton! How is this? O Soul, if you have
ever known the love of Christ I am sure you will say, "It was better
with me then than now."
What can the world afford you comparable to fellowship with Jesus? One
hour upon His bosom is worth ten thousand years in the palaces and
courts of the world's wealth and royalty and you know that it is so.
There is no room to entertain a comparison for a moment–
"What peaceful hours you once enjoyed, How sweet their memory still But
they have left an aching void The world can never fill."
O that your repentance, fixed upon such reasons as these, may be deep!
May you make a confession of your extreme folly and now fall down
before God and find mercy!
To close this point, this repentance was acceptable. It is not often
that a husband is willing to take back his wife when she has so grossly
sinned, as the metaphor here implies. And yet observe that God is
willing to receive the sinner, though his sin is even more aggravated.
By the mouth of Jeremiah He speaks these words–"Return unto Me, for I
am married unto you." I do not know anything which should make the
backslider's heart break like the doctrine of God's immutable love to
His people! Some say that if we preach that "whom once He loves He
never leaves, but loves them to the end," it will be an inducement to
man to sin.
Well I know man is very vile and he can turn even love itself into a
reason for sinning, but where there is as much as even one spark of
Grace, a man cannot do that. A child does not say, "I will offend my
father because he loves me." It is not even in fallen human nature,
generally, unless inspired by the devil, to find motives for sin in
God's love and certainly no backsliding child of God can say, "I will
continue in sin that Grace may abound." They who do so show that they
are reprobates and their damnation is just.
But the backslider who is a child of God at the bottom, will, I think,
feel no cord so strong to hold him back from sin as this. Backslider, I
hope it will also be a golden chain to draw you to Christ. Jesus meets
you, meets you this morning. You were excommunicated. You were driven
out from among God's people with shame but Jesus meets you, and
pointing to the wounds which He received in the house of His friends at
your hands, He nevertheless says, "Return unto Me, for I am married
unto you." It is a relationship which you have broken and it might
legally be broken forever if He willed it–but He does not will it–for
He hates divorce.
You are married to Jesus. Come back to your first Husband, for He is
your Husband still! The Fountain which washed you once can wash you
again. "Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as
snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." The
robe of righteousness which covered you once can cover you again!
Though you have cast it from you with scorn, yet it is yours and the
Father bids His servants bring forth the best robe and put it on you.
He says, "Come to Me!" You have forgotten the Lord, but He has not
forgotten youl You love sin, but He will change your will and set your
heart upon Himself, for He is determined that you shall be His forever!
Is not this a soul-melting doctrine? If there is so much as a spark of
spiritual life in you, I think you will say, "Against such love as this
I cannot sin! Against such tender mercy I will not rebel–I will return
unto my first husband, for then it was better with me than now." I do
not know, but I may be speaking very pointedly and personally to some
here–I hope I am. I know that the most of you are not in this
condition and for this I thank my God. I pray you, however, lift up
your hearts in prayer for those who are and ask my Master that as this
bow is drawn at a venture He may direct the arrow.
There are some such here–I know there are. There are some here who
have come this very morning with no idea that God would meet with them.
You have put the reins upon your neck and you have given yourselves up.
The restraints of morality can scarcely bind you and yet once you
prayed at the Prayer Meeting and sat at the sacramental table and you
put on the Lord Jesus Christ by profession in Baptism. But oh, what are
you now? Your life would not bear to be talked of. Your conduct has
become so gross and vile you might have expected to have heard this
morning some word that should have cut you off forever from hope! But,
by God's Grace, instead of it the silver trumpet sounds today with
notes of love and pity. Return! Return !–Your Husband woos you over
again–return! For then it was better with you than now.
V. Not to be longer on the point, let us observe in the fifth place
that THERE IS AN AWFUL CONTRAST TO ALL THIS. There are some who prosper
in this world until, like a wide-spread tree, they are cut down and
cast into the fire. There are backsliders, who, never having had the
root of the matter in them, go back unto their own ways to the land
from which they came out and continue there forever. I beseech you
never trifle with backsliding. I have put God's Free Grace in the
boldest manner that I could just now, but oh, let me warn any man who
would pervert that Free Grace into an excuse for sin!
Let me warn him against playing with backsliding! One man may roll down
a precipice and may scarcely be injured, but I would not try it, for I
might break my neck. One man took poison and he was hurried off to the
hospital and by the use of proper antidotes was spared, but I would not
advise you to try it–no I would beg you to put it away from you.
Chosen vessels of mercy, notwithstanding their backslidings, are
brought back. But ah, remember that nine out of ten of those who
backslide never were God's people! They go out from us because they
were not of us and this is the history of their lives and may be the
history of your life–ah, and may be the history of mine yet!
They joined the Church. They had been greatly impressed under a sermon.
They were young, they knew little as yet of the trials of life–being
in the Church they walked consistently for years. They kept the faith.
But the Church was cold and they grew cold, too. They neglected weekday
services. The closet was forsaken. Family prayer was hardly attended
to. Then they forsook the sanctuary altogether, but they were still
moral and upright. They began soon to associate with those whom once
they avoided–their business went on well.
They had risen from the lowest grade of society to occupy a middle
position. They still prospered–gold accumulated. They were the
successful people. There was a worm at the root of it all, it is true,
but nevertheless it looked so fair and seemed so well. The man did not
like to remember that he ever had gone to that little Meeting House–he
felt ashamed that ever he had associated with those whom once he knew
to be the people of God. He went on still accumulating wealth, but one
day he was found dead! Shall I pursue his history? In Hell he lifts up
his eyes in torments forever!
With this as the special worm that never could die to gnaw his
conscience–that he did know in his head the way of right-eousness–but
had turned away from it in his heart!
In letters of fire he sees written across that burning sky: "YOU KNEW
YOUR DUTY BUT YOU DID IT NOT. You have come from the cup of the Lord to
the cup of devils–you turned aside from the people of God to the
children of Satan! You deliberately chose the evil and you forsook the
good–you perished not as the ignorant perish, not as they perished who
were careless from their birth–not as those who were unvisited by
pangs of conscience, or who knew not the Word! You perished in the
light of the Gospel, with the sun of mercy shining upon your eyeballs!
You perished, though you stood, as it were, on the very doorstep of
Heaven! You drifted back to Hell in the teeth of a tide of mercy."
"This, I say, may be your case and mine, if we are not really rooted
and grounded in Christ–we may fall by little and little. We may even
continue till we die to be Church members and yet backslide in heart by
slow degrees until we become rotten through and through and God casts
us on the dunghill. I say by the special and miraculous mercy of God
His elect will be ingathered, but take heed, Sirs, that you build not
on your profession, for profession is no proof of election. You must be
born again and only the man who continues to the end shall be saved.
May we have such perseverance given us, for His name's sake.
VI. With this last we conclude–IS NOT THIS SUBJECT A VERY SOLEMN
WARNING TO THE PEOPLE OF
GOD? What some do others may do. If one man falls, another may. If one
professor turned out to be a hypocrite, so may another. If one minister
reels from the pinnacle of honor and is dashed upon the rocks beneath,
so may another. I want to make a personal application of this to myself
and I pray my Brothers in office behind me, venerable though some of
them are in years, to remember that this may be their case.
And you, my associates and fellow members, many of you united to the
Church before I was born, remember that age and habit are no security
against apostasy! There must be the continual keeping and anointing of
the Holy Spirit. I beseech you, and here I do beseech myself also, let
us watch against the beginnings of backsliding. Let us take care of the
little sins. O let us watch against the little coolnesses of heart.
Brethren, no man backslides all at once. Few men who profess to be
saints become outward sinners in one step. It is usually by little and
by little. I pray you do not forsake the assembling of yourselves
together!
Wake up from your coldness in private prayer if this has come over you.
If your love to Christ has grown cold stay not in this state of danger
but pray to the Master to inflame your heart again! If any of you have
in any respect whatever fallen from your first love–if that old
enthusiasm which was in us as a Church has departed from any of
you–pray God to give it back to you. If any of you are not bringing
forth such fruit unto God as you used to do, O be suspicious of
yourselves! Carnal security may be the Heaven of fools, but it is the
ruin of Believers–
"Be watchful, be vigilant, dangers may be, In an hour when all seems
secure to you"
Especially at this time when the eyes of the world are fixed upon you
as a Church and upon me as a witness for God, let us walk carefully. If
ever I might ask your prayers, no, claim them as my right, it is now! I
beseech you who love God, ask for me my Lord's upholding Grace that His
servant may not flinch nor turn his back in the day of battle. Ask for
yourselves the same, that when the fight shall grow less hot and there
shall come an hour of calm and quiet thought, I, your pastor and
yourselves, my fellow soldiers in Christ, may look down the ranks and
say, "Not one comrade has fallen. The arrows flew thick about them but
their armor was complete! The enemy was fierce, but the Master gave
them strength equal to their day. He has kept those whom He gave to us
and not one of them is lost."
May it be yours and mine on Heaven's starry steeps to look back upon
the superlatively glorious Grace which shall have kept us to the end
and brought us to the land where there shall be no more sin! Let us
trust the Savior. There is the sinner's hope–there is the saint's
strength! Let us cling to the Cross again and may Almighty Grace keep
us there and so glorify itself forever. Amen.