The Bellows Burned
A sermon
(No. 890)
Delivered on Sunday Morning, SEPTEMBER 12, 1869, by
C.H.SPURGEON,
At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"The bellows are burned."- Jeremiah 6:29.
THE Prophets frequently spoke in parables. They did this partly to
excite the attention of their hearers. Those to whom they spoke might
not have listened to didactic truth expressed in abstract terms, but
when they heard mention of common things, such as bellows and lead and
brass, they turned aside and asked, "What is this which this man has to
say?" Moreover, metaphors often convey to the mind truth which
otherwise would not have reached the understanding, for men frequently
see under the guise and form of an illustration a doctrine which, if it
had been nakedly stated, they could not have comprehended.
Illustrations, like windows, let light into the chambers of the mind.
There is this use also in a metaphor, that even if it is not understood
at first, it excites thought and men exercise their minds upon it as
children upon an enigma and so they learn, perhaps, more through a dark
saying than through a sentence at first sight transparent. Yet further,
metaphoric speech is apt to abide upon the memory–it retains its hold,
even upon the unwilling mind–like a lion which has leaped upon a
giraffe in the desert. Mere bald statements are soon forgotten, but
illustrations stick in the soul like hooks in a fish's mouth.
Therefore I thought it right, this morning, to take the simple and
homely illustration of the text, which Jeremiah before had so well
used, and see if we cannot impart thereby some arousing Truths of God
to your minds. Perhaps you may with more pleasure attend to them,
exercise more thought upon them and embrace them more earnestly in your
memory because they come in homely pictorial garb.
I. "The bellows are burned." This short sentence, as Jeremiah used it,
was intended to apply to THE PROPHET HIMSELF. He likens the people of
Israel to a mass of metal. This mass of metal claimed to be precious
ore, such as gold or silver. It was put into the furnace, the object
being to fuse it, so that the pure metal should be extracted from the
dross. Lead was put in with the ore to act as a flux (that being relied
upon by the ancient smelters, as quicksilver now is in these more
instructed days). A fire was kindled and then the bellows were used to
create an intense heat, the bellows being the Prophet himself.
He complains that he spoke with such pathos, such energy, such force of
heart, that he exhausted himself without being able to melt the
people's hearts–so hard was the ore that the bellows were burned
before the metal was melted– the Prophet was exhausted before the
people were impressed! He had worn out his lungs, his powers of
utterance. He had exhausted his mind, his powers of thought. He had
broken his heart, his powers of emotion. But he could not divide the
people from their sins and separate the precious from the vile. Now,
alas, this is no solitary case, for throughout the whole history of the
line of Heaven-sent ambassadors, this has been the rule and not the
exception! The bellows have in almost every case been burnt, but the
metal has not been melted.
It was so with Noah. For 120 years that preacher of righteousness
continued to warn the people of the coming deluge. He added to his
words the more powerful eloquence of deeds, for, moved with fear, he
prepared an ark so that his preaching and his practice agreed. And yet
by the space of 120 years he labored on, but not one single person was
led to find a shelter in the ark which he prepared. And, with the
exception of himself and family, the whole of his hearers perished in
the judgment against which he warned mankind! In later times God's
servants seldom fared better–the most of them were despitefully
persecuted and at best they were treated with neglect.
Listen to the mournful question of Isaiah, "Who has believed our
report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?…All day long,"
he says, "I have stretched out my hands to a disobedient and obstinate
people." As for Jeremiah, from whom we borrow our text today, he was,
indeed, like the bellows burned in the fire, for you hear him
crying, "O that my head were waters and my eyes a fountain of tears,
that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughters of my
people." And that famous lament of Jeremy, at the end of his prophecy,
remains on record as one of the most amazing utterances of woe that
could be poured out by a patriot and a Prophet over a captive people.
Need I add that even to the days of John the Baptist, the servants of
God wearied themselves in vain with a graceless people?
Say, it was not so with Prophets only, for He, our Lord and King, the
chief of all teachers, fared no less cruelly at the hands of men! Never
man spoke like that Man. He was, indeed, a bellows that might well,
with His vehement force, have created a heat that might melt an adamant
stone–but yet, after one of His most mighty sermons, His hearers would
have cast Him down headlong from the brow of the hill where their city
was built! And at the end of His life's sermon you know how the Cross
and the crown of thorns were the honors meted out to Him. Sooner than
the people would repent and become as molten metal, the Messiah,
Himself, was made like the bellows which are burnt by long use at the
fire.
Nor has this ceased to be the fact. Since the days of Christ,
civilization, with all its progress, has not softened the human heart.
Men are no mere amenable to the jurisdiction of God than they used to
be. That heart which, in prophetic times, was like the nether
millstone, is not today like wax. Looking down the list of the Apostles
and of the confessors who followed them, we perceive what were the
rewards accorded to the messengers of the Lord–they were stoned, were
burned, were cast to beasts or drowned in the sea. The faithful
servants of God and Truth were housed only in desert caves or
sepulchral catacombs or loathsome dungeons. The comforts afforded them
were the stocks, the fetter and the rack.
Their dying honors were the illuminations of the stake or the glitter
of the headsman's axe. And as for burial, full often they found no
sextons but the dogs. The world was not worthy of them and yet it cast
them out as too vile to live. Instead of the nations returning to their
God, they took the messengers of the King, one by one, and treated them
despitefully and slew them and cast them out of the vineyard. This
iron-hearted world could not be melted–let the preachers of
righteousness blow their vital breath upon the coals, the fire would
burn the bellows–but not melt the ore.
Now, what does this say to us? Does it not tell the preacher and each
one of us, who are laboring for Christ, that we ought never to be
discouraged when we meet with little rebuffs from those whom we seek to
bless? You have not yet resisted unto blood striving against sin! What
if you have been ridiculed? What if your best endeavors have been
misrepresented? What is this compared with the sufferings of those who
have gone before you? Do you run with the footmen and do they weary
you? What would you have done if you had been destined to contend with
horses? If these light afflictions, which are but for a moment, make
you cry, "I will speak no more in the name of the Lord," of what coward
blood are you?
How little worthy are you to be written in the same muster-roll with
those who counted not their lives dear unto them that they might be
with Christ and gather in His redeemed! If you try to be like the
bellows to melt these hard hearts and make them flow into the mold of
Christ's Gospel, you must expect to be burned in the fire! And because
you encounter a little persecution, or disrespect, or difficulty, do
you flee to your chamber and cry, "I will give it up"? Shame upon you!
Rather, redouble your efforts and pray God to give you a greater
blessing by way of success, or if not, greater patience to bear His
will. For mark you, Brethren, though the bellows were burnt and the
metal was not molten, the work was only lost so far as the metal was
concerned, the Great Founder was not confounded!
Men shall glorify God one way or the other whenever the Gospel is
preached to them. If they reject that message of love, yet they have
made manifest in them the longsuffering of God in having borne with
their hardheartedness. They show the mercy of God in having sent the
Gospel to such unworthy persons. They cast all slurs away from the
severity of God, for clearly it cannot be too severe to visit with
vengeance those who have willfully rejected mercy. Those who weary the
preacher, who brings them nothing but good news, deserve to be left in
misery! It can by no means be complained of that, by-and-by, another
preacher with heavier tidings is sent to summon them to judgment! The
damned in Hell who heard the Gospel–oh, say not that the minister's
toil was lost because they rejected his entreaties!
May we labor not in vain and spend not our strength for nothing, for
God's honor is vindicated and His justice cleared from all manner of
accusation, since the lost from among these, our cities, perished not
without the opportunities of mercy! And they went not down to the Pit
because relentless justice would not accept repentance! They had space
for repentance–they had invitations to return–but they resolved on
daring the wrath of God. The wooing of mercy was
used and the entreaties of love were spent upon them, but inasmuch as
they would not come, their blood is upon their own heads and even in
the terrible wrath of God His rejected mercy is honored!
The preacher must not suppose that if men are not converted, he has
lost his work. We are unto God a sweet savor as well in them that
perish as in them that are saved–though in them that perish we are
unto the men, themselves, a savor of death unto death–yet we are still
a sweet savor unto God. If we do but proclaim the Gospel and are
willing to wear ourselves out in so doing, if the bellows are burned,
yet, verily I say unto you, we shall not lack our reward! If we receive
no recompense in the conversion of souls, we shall have it from the
lips of Him who shall say, "Well done, good and faithful servant! If
you have not been successful, yet you have been faithful–enter into
the joy of your Lord!"
We must not pass from this first meaning of the text without noticing
that while it is the preacher's business to continue to labor till he
is worn out like the bellows that are burnt, yet his so doing involves
many solemn consequences upon those for whom he labors so
unsuccessfully. O my Hearers, this is the great test that discerns
between the precious and the vile, between the chosen and the
reprobate! The Gospel is the infallible test! If it comes to you being
preached affectionately and with the Holy Spirit, if it does not save
you, it confirms you in your ruin! If it does not lift you up to
Heaven, it will be like a millstone about your neck to sink you to the
lowest Hell! I know of none who are in a more hopeless case than those
who have long listened to the Gospel preached to them with all
affection and earnestness and yet have resolved to continue in the
error of their ways.
We cannot tell what the metal is till we get it in the fire. But the
fire tries it and if you have lain long in the white heat of an
impressive Gospel ministry–the love of Jesus being like coals of
juniper–and yet you have never been melted, if you do not tremble for
yourself, I take leave to tremble for you! If a mother has pleaded with
you. If she has even gone to her grave with sorrow because of the
hardness of your heart, oh, surely this will testify against you in the
day of reckoning! This marks you, even today, as hardened by the
deceitfulness of sin. If you have worn out one after another of
faithful friends who would gladly have conducted you to the Cross. If
you have made your God to be, as Amos says, like a cart that is loaded
with sheaves and pressed down, beware, O Man, beware! You are filling
up the measure of the Almighty's wrath! It is almost full and when it
is filled, beware! Beware! Beware!
God is long in being provoked, but when His anger is at last stirred
within Him, woe unto those against whom He lifts up Himself! Oil is a
smooth and gentle thing, but once set it on a blaze and how it burns!
And love, that tender thing, if once it turns to jealousy, how terrible
its flame! Christ is the Lamb today, but tomorrow He may be a lion to
you if you reject Him. That face which wept over Jerusalem–that dear
face which is the very mirror of everything that is
compassionate–will, if you continue hardened in heart, become the
image of everything that is terrible, so that you shall call to the
rocks, "Hide us," and to the mountains, "Cover us! Hide us from the
face of Him that sits upon the Throne."
I wish that I had power to plead with you with the pathetic earnestness
of Jeremiah. I fall far short of that, but I can at least speak with
all his sincerity. I pray you do not wear us out with entreaties. Turn
unto God while yet He gives you space. I pray you, if you have long
rejected, harden no more your neck lest you suddenly be destroyed, and
that without remedy. It may seem a slight thing to reject the preacher,
but what if he is God's ambassador! An insult to the Lord's ambassador
may be avenged by the Lord Himself! Since we come to you with nothing
but terms of love and invitations of mercy and say to you, "Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved," we pray you, in Christ's
place, put not away our invitations, lest while we are exhausted you
also should be condemned!
God bless this gentle word of admonition to many of you, and Christ
shall have Glory by it.
II. We turn now to a second interpretation of the text. This does not
materially vary from the first. The bellows may be here meant, and
according to many expositors it is so meant, THE AFFLICTIONS WHICH GOD
SENDS UPON UNGODLY MEN. These afflictions are sent with the design of
seeing whether they will melt in the furnace or not. If words of
admonition have not been successful with them, God often, in His great
mercy, tries with the ungodly the judgments of Providence, if perhaps
by humbling them in their estate, or paining them in their bodies, or
bereaving them of their friends, they may be brought into a humbler and
better mind and may then seek the favor of God.
Now where Divine Grace comes with these afflictions, it often happens
that this good result is answered and like Manasseh, the sinner being
taken among thorns, seeks unto the Lord and finds salvation. But
without Grace, without the Holy Spirit's softening power, all the
afflictions in the world are but like bellows that blow the fire but
they are sooner
burnt–I mean the afflictions themselves are sooner exhausted–than the
sinner's heart is made to melt under the heat caused. It is clear
enough in history that many men have been utterly insensible under
Divine judgments. Chief and foremost among these was Pharaoh.
God sent upon him plague upon plague–the great bellows poured in a
terrific blast upon the furnace into which the Egyptian was cast! Ten
great and vehement tempests of wrath followed each other. The huge
furnace might well have melted granite, but Pharaoh's heart was
hardened and he would not let the people go. In the full blast of the
bellows he did, for a moment, relent and he said, "Entreat the Lord for
me," but it was all false repentance, for no sooner were the flogs or
flies taken away, than once more he said, "Who is Jehovah? I will not
let the people go." He was raised up for this very purpose–to show
forth the power of God to break those whom His mercy could not melt.
There have been others like he. There are others like he, I fear, in
this congregation this morning!
Like Israel, given up to successive afflictions, they have, for awhile,
repented, but then have returned, again, to their idols as fast as the
judgments have been removed. They are like Ahaz, afflicted again and
again, of whom it is written, "When he was afflicted, he sinned yet
more and more: this is that king Ahaz." Jerusalem was often chastened
for her sins with siege and famine, plague and pestilence–but all this
refining fire refined her not and at last the incorrigible city was
given over to her doom. Her streets became rivers of blood, her palaces
became a heap of ashes and her very site was sown with salt and her
doom a theme of horror, making both the ears of him that heard it to
tingle. Metal that will not melt must be cast away.
I say there have been and there still are sinners upon whom the
judgments of God seem to exert no melting power– they only grow harder
the more severe the judgments of God become. Ah, my Hearers, I fear
there are some such among you! You have now suffered a long series of
trials, one after another they have come upon you. Your heavenly Father
will not let you perish without at least, by His Providence, giving you
line upon line, warning upon warning. He has not left you like Moab to
be settled on your lees, but He has emptied you from vessel to vessel.
Now, if all this has not brought you to His feet, you may expect to
endure still more trials. If slight strokes will not suffice, they
shall grow thicker and heavier, or mark, you, the Lord may say, "Let
him alone, he is given unto idols." And then if He never strike you
again, it shall be worse with you still, for whom God gives up, Hell
shall swallow up and where God's Providence and Grace leave off, there
God's Justice and His Wrath begin–never to leave off–world without
end!
O you that have just escaped from a sick bed, saved as by the skin of
your teeth from the jaws of death! O you that have lost your property
and have been brought down from opulence to penury! O you that have
suffered bereavements following each other, whose scars are fresh upon
your soul–throw yourselves into the arms of Him who strikes you and
yield to Him at once! It is far too unequal a combat! Let not the
stubble contend with the fire! Let not the straw defy the flame! You
shall be utterly consumed in the day of His terrors when He lays bare
His arm to deal with you! If His rod makes you smart, what will His
sword do? And if the hidings of His power have been so terrible, what
will it be when He puts on His armor and comes forth to fight against
you?
Let not God exhaust His afflictions on you. O let not the Lord be made
to say, "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto you? O Judah, what shall I do
unto you?" Behold, He has dug about you. He has done for His vineyard
all that could be done, yet if there is no more to be done in mercy,
there will be much more to be done in vengeance! If the bellows are
burned, yet the fire is not quenched and that fire shall burn even to
the hottest Hell. God save you from it for His mercy's sake.
III. A third application of the text may be allowed. The bellows are
burned. This may be an allusion to THE CHASTISEMENTS WHICH GOD SENDS
UPON HIS OWN PEOPLE which are not always as successful as they ought to
be, by reason of the hardness of His servants' hearts. In such cases it
seems as if affliction, itself, would be exhausted before they would be
purified–the bellows would be burned before the metal would be melted.
My dear fellow Christians, you and I, if we are walking very near to
God, ought to know and do know, that God gives us much instruction by
little hints. When two persons perfectly understand each other, they
can say almost as much with their eyes as others can with their
tongues.
Now, you who are the King's favorites will sometimes suffer a little
twitch of bodily pain, or a little trial in business, or some slight
relative affliction–that little trouble may be the Lord speaking to
you with, as it were, a shake of the
head or a lifting of the finger. There is something in you which your
loving Lord would have you purge out, something displeasing to Him or
dangerous to you. Now search and look for this upon the faintest hint.
He has said, "I will guide you with My eyes," but He has added, "Be you
not as the horse, or as the mule, which have no understanding"–for
mark, dear Brothers and Sisters, if you do not observe those motions of
God's eyes–He loves you too well to let you sin and therefore the
hints will become stronger, and they will be more painful.
Notice how the Psalmist proceeds–"Be you not as the horse, or as the
mule, which have no understanding: whose mouth must be held in with bit
and bridle, lest they come near unto you." God does not wish to bit and
bridle you. He would have you guided with the gentle warnings of His
eyes. But if you will not accept the more tender guidance, why, then,
it must come to the bit and the whip. If you will not be melted at a
common heat, you shall find the temperature rising higher and higher!
And if one severe trial is not sanctified to you, you may expect
another of a still hotter sort, for the Great Refiner will have His
gold pure and will utterly remove our tin.
I do not lay down the doctrine that all our afflictions are indications
of indwelling sin! On the contrary, I believe that some afflictions may
be Sovereign, that other afflictions are sent for a trial of our Graces
that God may be glorified by our victories, and yet a third class are
intended to promote our advance in Grace. But yet I am persuaded that
the rod in God's house is principally used because of the offences of
the children, and I am persuaded that if you would be spared that rod,
so far as it is a chastening rod, you can only escape it by obedience
and by a very careful observance of the gentle motions of your Father's
eyes.
Why, a dear child, when he is living obediently and lovingly with his
father, does not need, in order to repentance, to have done so much
amiss as to cause his father to speak–he is grieved if he has done
enough to make his father shake his head! That shake of the head cuts
him to the quick. And should he unhappily provoke a sharp word from his
father, why then his tender heart communicates with his weeping eyes
and he cannot forgive himself. Yet there are unloving children who will
even rebel until they draw down blows upon themselves and, even then,
hold out till the strokes are multiplied and the father proceeds from
chastening to repeated chastening.
I am afraid the most of us are such children. We cause our Father to
chasten us very frequently and if we have to mourn amid many
tribulations, we may well say, "Why does a living man complain–a man
for the punishment of his sins?" Brothers and Sisters, do not let it be
said of us that the bellows are used till they are worn out before our
afflictions melt us to repentance and cause us to let go our sins! But
let us seek of the Lord a spirit that is amenable to His rod, a filial
heart, a sensitive nature. O that the breath of His Word may make fire
enough to melt our hearts to repentance and that we may never provoke
trials which shall even burn the bellows!
IV. Fourthly, I may, without violence to propriety, use the text as if
it taught that the time is coming when THE EXCITEMENT OF UNGODLY MEN,
which now keeps the fire of their activity vigorously burning, will be
taken away from them and then they will flag and die out in sorrow. The
fire in the smithy burns gaily and merrily and sends forth troops of
leaping sparks dancing into the air like stars–but no sooner do the
bellows cease to blow than there remains only a little fire, and
by-and-by only cold coals and dead ashes–for everything depends on the
bellows.
Perhaps, my Hearer, this morning you are like a furnace excited by the
bellows and your excitement is the pursuit of wealth. You can rise
early, you can sit up late, you can work, you can bear a deal of
exertion and mental strain because you are bent on accumulating a
fortune. Yes, but what would you do, what have some done when sudden
reverses have swept away the accumulations of a life, or when a panic
has blown down their speculations like card houses? Oh, what tears have
strong men shed in this city, tears which fell not outside the cheek,
these had been harmless–but they dropped within the soul to scald and
sear it with ever-abiding melancholy! That which cheered and comforted
them–the gain of wealth–has gone and the busy merchants have been
ready for the lunatic asylum or for suicide.
How these golden bellows will cease to blow when men come to die! Ah,
how little will wealth stimulate the joys of the last moment! Fool, you
have only bought yourself a marble tomb and what is that to your poor
dust-red ashes? You are now to leave all you have–you are as the
partridge that sits on the eggs but hatches them not. Your joys are all
for another and not for you. Oh, how often do men that have been happy
enough in the accumulation of riches, die in utter misery with all
their gold and silver about them because their bellows of avaricious
acquisition have been burned by their very success and the flame of
hope and ambition has hopelessly died out!
Many activities are kept up by the love of fame. Men have climbed step
by step the ladder of public esteem and loved the dizzy height. How men
will flame and blaze while fame blows the bellows! How content men are
to burn away their lives for the approbation of their fellow creatures,
yet many of them have lost all joy in honor long before they have
departed this life! And certainly those who have nothing else to
inspire the flame of hope in the last article of death but the
approbation of men will find their fires dwindling sadly low and
dark–dark, dark must be their departure! How sad for a soul to know
that the clangor of fame's trumpet is dying away from its ears to be
superseded by the blast of that awful trumpet ordained to wake the dead
and call them to their last account! Dear Hearers, live not with such
aims as these or your bellows will be burned.
Often, alas, conspicuously often, men live for pleasure and for
pleasure they destroy body and soul. But after awhile satiety follows
lust, enjoyment palls and the man's vigor decays and his mirth is gone.
The last days of the votary of fleshly pleasure are like that dwindling
fire which, despite its temporary blaze, is a poor dying thing when the
bellows foster it no longer. Alas for the wretch who is dead while he
lives, standing amid his fellows like a blasted tree amid the forest
that has been split by lightning–a little lingering verdure proves
that life is yet there–but the decaying trunk and sapless branches
show how near it is to death. Make not pleasure the bellows of your
life, lest these bellows be burned in the fire and the flame of your
joy go out.
Others have made the great bellows of their life hypocrisy. They have
been religious that they might be esteemed. They have frequented God's
House that they might be thought respectable. But at last they have
been unmasked, or if not, in the last hour Death has knocked off their
mask and let the man see in the looking glass of truth what he really
is. The silver veil has been taken from the pretender's leprous brow
and he has seen himself to be accursed and then, poor wretch, how the
bellows have been burned in the fire–no longer could he keep up his
reigned zeal and pretended joy– his hopes turn to ashes and his
consolations die out in despair!
My dear Hearers, have nothing for your stimulus but that which will
last as long as you last! Have nothing for your master motive but than
which you can take with you beyond the grave! Seek nothing as the grand
object of your existence but that which may be suitable for an
immortal's pursuit. Remember, this life is not all and the grave is not
the goal of being. You are not dumb driven cattle–going to the
shambles of death, there to be slaughtered and forgotten–you are about
to enter through the porch of this life into the palace of eternity,
or, if you will dare to make it so, the dungeon of eternity.
Your future shall be as this life foretells it. O that you may be
helped by Divine Grace to spend this life in a way that from it you may
pass into the better and not to waste the present that from it you may
descend into that worst of ills which has no end.
V. The last use we shall make of the text, "The bellows are burned," is
this–this may be applied to THOSE EXCITMENTS WHICH KEEP ALIVE THE
CHRISTIAN'S ZEAL. The mercy is that I can only apply this negatively,
for I trust we are well assured that the bellows which maintains our
spirit's ardor are not burned. My dear Friends, we have, in our time,
seen in certain Churches great blazes of enthusiasm, as if Vesuvius and
Etna had both taken to work. These outbursts of flame have been
misnamed revivals, but might just as well have been called agitations.
I have known, in my short time, certain Churches in the paroxysms of
delirium, meeting houses crowded, aisles filled, preachers stamping and
thundering, hearers intoxicated with excitement and persons converted
wholesale–even children converted by hundreds–they said thousands.
Well, and a month or two after, where were the congregations? Where
were the converts? Echo has answered, "Where, where?" Why, the converts
were worse sinners than they were before! Or they were mere professors,
puffed up into a superficial religion from which they soon fell into a
hopeless coldness which has rendered it difficult ever to stir them
again.
I love all genuine revivals–with all my heart I would aid and support
them–but I now speak of certain spurious things which I have seen and
which are not uncommon, even now, where there has not been God's Holy
Spirit, but mere excitement, loudness of talk, big words, fanaticism
and rant and nothing more. Now, in such cases, why was it the fire went
out? Why, the man who blew the bellows went away to use his lungs
elsewhere! And as soon as ever the good man, who, by his remarkable
manner and telling style, had created this stir, was gone, the fire
went out! I have known quiet Churches in which the same thing has
happened in a manner equally grievous. The people have been very
earnest and
much good work has been done, but the departure to Heaven of their
excellent minister has been to this people what the death of a judge
was to the children of Israel.
O may God spare those valued lives which in our Churches promote the
earnestness of God's people and may it be long before the bellows are
burned! But, still, mark you, our zeal ought no to be so sustained. The
fervor of the Church ought never to be dependent upon the eloquence of
any man. Our reason for earnestness should not depend on the
ministrations of any particular individual. Principle ought to sway us
and not passion–real fervor and not the excitement which may be
gathered from vehement speech and crowded assemblies. Brothers and
Sisters, I shall not enlarge upon this except to come home to you.
There may be those here who in years now past were very earnest, and
the fire in their soul was burning very vehemently. To you I speak. You
were generous in your gifts. You were constant in your attendance upon
the means of Divine Grace. You were always at the Prayer Meetings. You
were diligent in pious labors, you were happy and useful– but now you
have subsided into a state of lethargy. You give but little, you pray
but little, you work less and feel scarcely anything. You have grown
colder and colder, and colder by degrees, till you are now as cold as
the North Pole itself! Now, Brother, how is it that your bellows are
burned? How is it that the excitements which kept you alive are gone?
Ought they to have departed? Am I not right in saying that your
obligations remain the same as ever they did? Ten years ago you owed
your salvation to the precious blood of Jesus Christ–to what do you
owe it now? Ten years ago you were nothing but a sinner looking up to
the crucified Savior–what are you now? How much of your debt to Christ
Jesus have you paid? Can you boast of not being as much in debt as
then? I frankly confess that if I owed my Lord much 20 years ago, I owe
Him far more today. Instead of rising out of His debt, I sink the
deeper and the deeper in it, for I am all over in debt to Him.
Your obligations, my Brother, my Sister, remain. If they made you
zealous 10 years ago, why not now? If it was but right and just that
you should live for Christ, who bought you then, in the name of right
and justice what shall excuse you now? As your obligations remain the
same, so your Master abides the same. If you loved Jesus, then, and for
the Glory of His name you sprang into the forefront of the battle, is
He less worthy now? Is Christ less lovely? Does He love you less? Has
He been less faithful? Is He today less kind? Is His intercession
failing? Is His precious blood losing its cleansing power? Can you
afford, therefore, to treat Him worse when He is still the same
yesterday, today and forever? Why, if it really was obligation to
Christ and attachment to His Person that acted as the bellows to keep
your zeal blazing, there are the same bellows today! So why not be just
as earnest, or even more so?
My dear Friend, surely at this moment the strength that keeps your soul
alive is the same as it used to be. You were sustained in the past by
the Holy Spirit. If the Holy Spirit has grown old and His power is
palsied, I can understand your zeal becoming feeble and your being
excused for it. But since the Holy Spirit is always the same, ought not
the fruits to be the same? If you only had your native strength, I can
understand your decaying, as we all must, by the lapse of years. But
the Immortal Life within you is not affected by the decay of the
body–it ought to bring forth fruit in old age to show that the Lord is
upright. Since your Strength is still the same, the bellows are not
burned–so let the fire flame up afresh today.
Moreover, you that served God in your youth should remember that the
objects for which you served God remain the same. Souls are as precious
today as they were when you, as a lad, gave your heart to Christ. Ah,
you thought, then, you could do anything to win a soul! But men are
damned today as they were then. Hell is as hot now as it was then.
Death is as terrible a thing, today, as it was 20 years ago, and
therefore let not the bellows be burned, but return to the fullness of
your zeal and serve your Master as you did in the days of your
espousals. My dear Friend, for you to decline as you grow older will be
to make the world say, "That man gets wiser, and the wiser he gets the
less he loves God. Therefore," say they, "it is foolish to love God at
all."
Will you put such pleas into the mouths of blasphemers? Will you be an
advocate for the devil? Will you thus practically help the ungodly to
sleep on in their careless disregard of God? I pray you now to do so!
As you grow in Divine Grace, and I trust you do so if you are, indeed,
a Christian, is it consistent that the stronger the tree grows the less
it should bear? Is it consistent that if the child worked, the man
should sleep? If the boy carried his burden, is the full grown man to
carry none? Are you, because you progress in the Divine life, to be
gradually excused of all Christian
service? Shall only the recruits march to battle and the veterans never
bear the banner nor wave the sword? Oh, it must not be!
Besides, you are drawing nearer Heaven and are you to be less heavenly
as you get nearer to the New Jerusalem? Are you to serve God less as
you approach nearer to the place where you are to serve Him day and
night without weariness? Are you to be less like Christ as you approach
nearer to the place where you are to be altogether like He is? No!
Scorn such insinuations–
"Let every flying hour confess
We bring Your Gospel fresh renown!
And when our lives and labors cease
May we possess the promised crown." Suspect, dear Brothers and Sisters,
that if your zeal is flagging there must have been some other motive
than a heavenly one that made it so lively at first, for heavenly
motives never cease and neither do they lose their reasonableness, or
their efficacy. Ask yourselves if you were genuinely converted. Examine
yourselves whether you are really in the faith, for if you are not, it
is no wonder that your piety declines!
But if you are true converts, your faith must be as the shining light
that shines more and more unto the perfect day. Instead of bellows
burned in the fire, Brethren, may it be yours and mine to go to our
grave in a hale old age with more earnestness within than our bodies
can execute! May we serve our Master till the last minute! If the
scabbard is worn out, let the sword be sharp. God grant us every day we
live to serve Him better! May every hour that He gives us here be
getting more and more spiritually-minded, more and more anxious to tell
abroad the glories of His name. God bless you for Christ's sake. Amen.
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–Jeremiah 6