DELIVERED BY
C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
"They shall know that I am the Lord when I ha ve broken the bars of
their yoke." Ezekiel 34:27.
BUT do not all men know that God is the Lord? They should know it, for
He is clearly to be seen in the works of Nature. Even where no
Revelation has come, yet Heaven and earth and sea and the rain which
brings with it fruitful seasons–filling men's hearts with food and
gladness–all proclaim the Most High! But man, by wisdom, knows not
God. He shuts his eyes to evidences brighter than the sun and in his
willful blindness he sets up an image of wood or stone or gold or
silver–bows before it and calls that his God! This is the sin of the
nations, that they changed the Glory of the incorruptible God into an
image made like to corruptible man and to birds and four-footed beasts
and creeping things.
But do not all know God in this land–this land where there is so much
Gospel teaching–where we boast of our open Bible and of our Protestant
pulpit? Alas, no! There are multitudes who have heard of God and who
say that they believe in Him, but who have no personal acquaintance
with Him and do not, in the sense of the text, know that He is the
Lord. Ah, dear Friends, there is no knowing God except by personal
acquaintance with Him! And there is no personal acquaintance with Him
except by His own revealing of Himself to our spirit! You may read as
much as ever you will and hear as long as ever you please, but until
your own spirit comes into contact with the Spirit of God, you do not
and cannot know the Lord! You know the report of Him which you have
heard with the hearing of the ear, but that is a small matter unless it
leads to something higher.
There are, I fear, a great many "Christian" people whom we must not
judge, for they keep up outwardly all that is to be expected in the
Christian character according to the common run of profession,
nowadays, who, nevertheless, do not truly know God by spiritual
fellowship with Him. Their faith stands upon reason–it is based upon
argument and appeals to the intellect–but it has never led to personal
knowledge and acquaintance. The Lord is, to them, a logical
abstraction, not a beloved Person. Or, perhaps, which is somewhat
worse, their faith as to God rests upon excitement, upon association,
upon the eloquence of a favorite preacher, or something of that sort.
Now, in such cases as this, God is not so known as He should be and,
after a while, if another god is preached, a different god from the God
of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, they leave the true God for the false. In
these days of worldly wisdom men set up a fresh deity who is more
effeminate and pliable than the glorious God of Moses and of Aaron, the
God of the fathers and the Prophets! And, straightway, those who know
not the only living and true God, for there is but one, run after this
new god, newly set up by these modern Divines who have manufactured him
in their studies as certainly as ever the Hindu manufactures mud gods
by the river Ganges! They bow before this new god and cry out against
the Jehovah of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as if He were to be judged by
them and to be no more accounted Lord!
It is amazing to hear them speak of the, "stern Deity of the Old
Testament," and of, "the semi-enlightened views of Moses and Isaiah."
As for us, we heartily love Him who made known His ways unto Moses and
His acts unto the children of Israel–and we desire no other God. Those
who know the Lord know that He is still the I AM THAT I AM,
unchangeable in all respects! And we know that the God of our Lord
Jesus Christ, the Father of Glory, is the same God who revealed Himself
at Paran and came with sound of thunder at Sinai! The God who manifests
Himself in Jesus Christ is He who spoke to our fathers and the
Prophets, for He is the one glorious Lord God!
Now, my Brothers and Sisters, there is no fear of your running after
the new gods if you have once known the true God! If, by experience you
have been brought into fellowship with the Most High and felt His power
and seen His Glory, you will be confirmed in those things which He has
taught you and which His Spirit has engraved upon your soul as with an
iron pen and written with the point of a diamond.
It appears from the text that there is a process by which God's own
people are brought to know the Lord. This process takes place when He
breaks the bars of their yoke. Then they know that the Lord is God! It
is clear, therefore,
that He must first of all permit His own chosen, for a wise purpose, to
come into bondage. They must be in bondage, or else they would not wear
the yoke and there would be no opportunity for the Lord to break that
yoke. I do not commend the bondage–it is a thing to be deplored–but,
as Augustine once cried out, "Beata culpa!" "Happy fault!" when he saw
how sin had made space for the wonderful display of Divine Grace. So I
venture to say, "Blessed bondage, which gives an opportunity for our
God to come in and set His children free! And by thus breaking the bars
of their yoke to teach them that He, Himself is the Lord."
Let us now describe, by the help of God's Spirit, who alone can teach
us, this process of breaking the bars of the yoke by which the
emancipated know that the Lord is God. There are two things to be
considered. First, that the Lord does break the bars of the yoke of His
people. And, secondly, that then they know Him to be the Lord. It is
not difficult to show that THE LORD BREAKS THE BARS OF THE YOKE OF HIS
PEOPLE, for the yokes which they wear at different times are many and,
in the breaking of each one of these, they learn that He is the Lord.
You cannot forget the first yoke of which you were conscious. It was a
yoke of iron–but you had worn it for many years without feeling it. A
spark of Divine Life dropped into your bosom and then you began to
perceive that a yoke of sin, of guilt, of condemnation under the Law
was firmly fixed upon your neck. If you felt as I felt, it was, indeed,
an iron bondage and the iron entered into your soul! We can well
understand the feeling of some, who, when wearing this yoke, wish that
God had made them frogs, or toads, or snakes, or anything sooner than
that they should be men and, being men, should be sinful and obnoxious
to Divine wrath!
It is a horrible thing to be a sinner–and when the horror is fully
perceived it brings a little Hell into the soul. What stings of
scorpions, or teeth of lions, or lashes of a whip of wire can be more
sharp and cutting than reflections such as these–"I have sinned and
cannot undo the sin. I have provoked God and can make no atonement for
my provocation. I deserve His wrath and can present no plea why that
wrath should not come upon me"? The fabled Atlas, when the world
pressed on his shoulders, was not more loaded than an awakened
conscience pressed with its own iniquities! It is easy to talk of
conviction of sin, but to feel it is quite another matter! It puts the
soul under saws and under harrows of iron and makes it pass through the
brick kiln.
Sin on the conscience is a specter which will haunt you by night as
well as by day–and drive sleep away from your eyes till your soul
chooses strangling rather than life. I say not that conviction is
equally terrible in all cases, but some have felt this yoke to be
exceedingly heavy and I believe that all God's people, when the Lord
begins to deal with them, to a greater or lesser degree, are bowed down
beneath the oppressive bondage. Happy is the hour when the Lord breaks
that yoke! He, alone, can remove it but He does it most
effectually–and then we know that He is Jehovah our God that brought
us out of the house of bondage! To emancipate a soul from the thralldom
of sin is a labor worthy of God–and to His liberating hand be Glory
forever and ever!
Then the awakened soul begins to be conscious of a second yoke. More or
less, according to temperament and circumstances and so on, but still,
in each case we somewhat feel the yoke of natural corruption and inbred
sin. The moment we become Christians, an inward battle begins. The old
self will not tolerate the intruder–the new creature in Christ
Jesus–and a conflict ensues. The converted man will be clean rid of
some sins and scarcely ever feel a temptation to them. Notably, some
men who have been given to certain evil habits have never been tempted
that way again, but the flesh has taken a turn and rebelled in another
direction.
I have known a man, after conversion, tempted to commit a totally new
sin for him and the suggestion has been a galling yoke. A passion which
before he did not know to be in his soul has been awakened and he has
seen the meshes of a net gradually encompassing him–then has he cried
out because of the oppression put upon his sin-hating heart! If a
Believer has gone very deep in sin before conversion, he will often
have a hard battle of it arising from the recollection of old
transgressions, old habits and old lusts. You may get the serpent out,
but the slime of the reptile still remains–it needs the sanctifying
power of the Spirit of God to purge its former lurking places.
If a lion has long had his lair in a thicket, the hunters may chase him
out, but his den is there and likely enough, cubs will come forth when
least expected. And so it is with evil in the heart of man. An old cask
smells of the wine it held. It will need a great deal of scalding to
sweeten it and even then, if you put pure water into it, there will
soon be a taste of the old liquor about it. In certain of our petty
wars we never seem to come to an end–the natives are not at peace nor
will they keep quiet–they watch for an opportunity and break out
again.
It is so with the war in the Christian's soul. You may presume that sin
is completely dead in you, but it laughs while you are boasting and
before long it will make you weep to think that you were so readily
deceived. I have known a Christian man to have a temptation come upon
him and though he has not yielded to it in any degree, it has clouded
his joy and put a yoke on his neck. The temptation comes. He hates it,
but it comes. He goes to God and prays against it, but it comes. He
watches every step he takes, but there it comes! It seems to pursue him
like his shadow. He would go to the ends of the earth to get rid of it,
but there it is–it dogs his footsteps.
He kneels down to pray and there it is. It is like the old story of the
Scot people who thought they had ghosts in their house so moved away to
be rid of them–but as they moved, they heard a noise in the butter
churn–the mischievous spirits were going with them! So have we known a
Christian man move and shift and try to get away from a temptation–but
there it has been–the torment of his life, a sword in his bones
piercing him to the heart with daily anguish. To some men of God,
temptation to a certain sin has been a galling yoke for years without
end! They have cried to God, with their hair almost on end for horror
of the sin and yet the suggestion to the evil has thrust itself upon
them, as if it would not be refused!
Read in Bunyan's, "Grace Abounding," how he was haunted with that
thought of selling Christ and how the words seemed to ring in his
ears–"Sell Him! Sell Him! Sell Him! Sell Him! Sell Him!" till at last
he inadvertently said, or thought he said, "Let Him go if He will." And
then the devil gloried over him and said, "You have sold Christ!" For
the ten thousandth time Satan was a liar in his accusations. Honest
John had done nothing of the sort, but he had been so plagued and
perplexed with the temptation that he scarcely knew what he said or
thought! Madame Bubble, too, is difficult to shake off when she courts
a poor pilgrim. Her seductions are only to be resisted on our knees and
even then they give us terrible twists. You do not all understand this
and I do not wish you should. But if you are now experiencing what I
describe, I would have you remember that the Lord can break this yoke,
also, and tear away each one of its bars. Very joyful is the
deliverance and when it comes, the text is abundantly fulfilled–"They
shall know that I am the Lord when I have broken the bars of their
yoke."
Another yoke which the Lord's people have too often borne is that of a
perpetual tendency to unbelief. Unbelief lies in us all! It is the sin
of mankind–the root sin–the taproot of all sorts of iniquity. Blessed
are those who believe and are strong in faith! The Lord be praised
whenever He brings us to full assurance! But there are certain of God's
people who are so very prone to unbelief that on the very slightest
turn of circumstances they begin to fret. At little troubles they grow
nervous and as to their own spiritual state, they appear to themselves
to be in jeopardy every hour. Often the only proof of their spiritual
life which they can, themselves, perceive, is their wish to be right,
their desire to avoid sin and their longing after God.
They cannot say that they have much joy or much peace through
believing, neither can they expect it, for their faith is so
exceedingly weak. Others call them, "killjoys," because they mope and
mourn so much and, in truth, they reflect but small credit upon their
religion. They act more as scarecrows to keep others away than as
attractions to draw them in. Some of the Lord's people seem to be born
in the shade and to live in the shade, as if they were descended from
the old troglodytes, or cave dwellers, and love to be buried before
they are dead. This habit of mind is to be condemned, nor should any
who fall into it think lightly of it.
But, dear Friends, we must not be severe upon others, or condemn them.
We must, on the contrary, feel that they are putting a very heavy yoke
upon themselves and that the burden weighs down their spirits and
crushes the joy out of them. There are many about whose interest in
Christ nobody who knows them can have any doubt at all, whose Christian
consistency is beyond all question, whose prayerfulness, whose love of
the Word of God, whose simple, child-like trust in Jesus Christ is
manifested to everybody except themselves. They are, nevertheless, in
heaviness through anxiety as to their state. Their faces shine to
others, but they share not in the brightness. No one has a doubt about
them, but they are full of doubts for themselves! May the Lord bring up
such Brothers and Sisters out of their prison and then shall they know
that He is the Lord when He has broken the bars of their yoke.
Some Christians are also loaded with a yoke through great trouble. We
come together and we look cheerful and happy, but we do not know the
burden of the person sitting in the pew with us. In such an assembly as
this on Thursday nights I know there is many a merchant who has come
from the City where he has been driven to his wits' end all day long
and he scarcely knows what he shall do. So he has said, "Well, I will
just run into the House of God and I will hear what
the Lord may have to say to my soul." Many and many a time a sweet
promise has come home to the bewildered child of God and he has gone
away feeling that the Master had sent a message to Him through His
servant.
I have known the housewife come up to the House of God in the same
state–one child is sick and another sickening. The husband, perhaps,
walking in a way that grieves the tender Christian heart of the wife,
and home affairs are anything but as they should be. But while she has
sat before the Lord, there has come a Word from the Oracle of comfort
and Hannah has been no more sad! Some of our Brothers and Sisters have
a perpetual cross to carry. If we knew what they have to suffer in
business, suffer in body, suffer in the domestic circle–if we knew the
weight they have to carry–we should very often communicate to them
words of comfort, whereas now, through our not knowing, they are left
unheeded and there is little or no Christian sympathy manifested.
Ah, dear Brother, it may be that you have been made to carry a very
heavy yoke for years, but when the Lord shall break the bars of your
yoke, then shall you know that He is the Lord! I can bear witness that
trial has been a great blessing to me. I do not know that I have
learned much except in trouble! What little I know has been whipped
into me and I suspect it is so with most of my Master's family. By
scourging He instructs every son that He receives! But when you have
been in sore perplexity and difficulty and did not see your way out of
it and could not, in fact, get out of it yourself–then have you known
that the Lord was God when He has, Himself, appeared before you and
broken the bars of your yoke! With a song you have magnified His
surprising Grace and blessed His delivering love!
I have not time, however, to mention all the various yokes, but I would
say, next, that many yokes which God's people bear they cannot break
themselves. When the sinner bears the yoke of sin he cannot get it off.
He may tug and tug, but he only galls himself and fixes the yoke
tighter than ever. The riveted fetter of sin is not to be shaken off!
Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? If so,
then he who is accustomed to do evil may learn to do well by himself,
apart from Divine Grace! The yoke of despondency of mind and, very
frequently, the yoke of temporal trouble, will be such that a man
cannot free himself from them.
"Stand still and see the salvation of God," is sometimes the very best
advice you can give to a man in distress. He is like a drowning
man–the more he struggles, the quicker he goes down. He cannot help
himself. The Lord often puts His people, on purpose, into positions
where there is an end of the creature, where all carnal hope fails,
where you look all around and not a single ray of light gladdens your
weary eyes till the star of Bethlehem breaks forth and heralds the
morning! But, dear Friends, let us remember that though yokes are very
many and some of them are such that we cannot possibly break them off,
yet there is no yoke but what the Lord can readily enough take from His
people. To remove the yoke of sin He brings the pardoning blood of
Jesus near and our heavy load departs. As for the power of sin over us,
we overcome it through the blood of the Lamb.
As for our daily cares, we cast our cares on Him who cares for us. As
for our despondencies of spirit, our soul has heard Him say, "Let not
your heart be troubled; you believe in God, believe also in Me."
Nothing is impossible with God and, therefore, dear Friends, though the
peculiar form of your distress at this time is known to none but your
heavenly Father and yourself, I am quite safe in saying that God can
remove it in an instant if He pleases. He lifts the beggar from the
dunghill and sits him among princes. He brings forth those that are
bound with chains. Though you have lain among the pots, yet shall you
be as the wings of a dove covered with silver and her feathers with
yellow gold.
One of His saints of old recorded his experience in these words, "Out
of the depths have I cried unto You, O God, and You heard me." His
experience is that of all the captives who trust in the Lord. No
condition is so dark that He cannot, at once, enlighten it and no case
is so hopeless that He cannot instantly relieve it. Do you believe
that? Are you sure of it? Why, the very belief of that fact ought to
minister comfort to your mind! One other reflection comes to me and it
is this. We may expect the Lord to break the bars of our yoke. If He
can do it and we are His people, we may expect Him to do it. Our
children look for a great deal from their fathers and I think you will
find that friends and relatives frequently expect much more of you than
they are likely to get–but none ever expected more of God than God has
been pleased to bestow.
"My soul, wait only upon God, for my expectation is from Him." You
know, if your child were sick and you could heal him, he would not be
rash in expecting you to do it. And if your child were carrying an
intolerable load and you, as his father, could release him from it, it
would be only a natural expectation that he should reckon that you
would do so. Oh you, then, that are oppressed–expect to be set free!
Captives under the bondage of sin, since you feel sin to be a slavery,
you are the Lord's prisoners of hope! Oh, you that have the deepest
sense of guilt and have written the blackest
things against yourselves, expect the Lord to set you free! If He had
meant to destroy you, He would have left you to bear your sin in utter
indifference and would not have convinced you of it.
What can be the good of His giving you two Hells–one here and another
hereafter? No, He is judging you now! He is bringing you to pronounce
sentence against yourself that you may plead guilty and that He may
absolve you through His abounding Grace! Christian, He is bringing you
low; He is stripping you; He is casting you into the mire; He is
beating you small as the dust of the streets and all because by this
means He will make you see your nothingness and will cause you more
fully to appreciate the splendor of His Grace and the all-sufficiency
of His power! Knowing this, faith may help us to rejoice in tribulation
the moment it arrives, saying, "Here is my Father's black horse come to
my door to bring me a new token of love from Him."
"We glory in tribulation, also, knowing that tribulation works
patience, and patience experience, and experience hope." O Ground,
welcome the spade that is to turn you into a garden! O Soul, welcome
the affliction that is, through infinite mercy, to make you bring forth
fruit unto your God! Then shall you know that the Lord is God when He
has broken the bars of your yoke–and this you may expect Him to do!
Thus much upon the first head, namely, that the Lord does break the
bars of His people.
II. Now, secondly, WHEN HE DOES THIS, THEN THEY KNOW HIM TO BE THE
LORD. Here we come to
personal experience. Beloved, when we have great deliverances from
bondage, then we begin to see the Divine attributes displayed. You all
believe God to be very powerful, for you have heard His voice in the
thunder and seen His might in the tempest. But when you have been
brought into very deep distress and God has brought you out of it with
a high hand and an outstretched arm, then you have said, "Now I see His
power! No hand but His could have moved that burden and He has done
it."
I do not suppose that all of you can go with me in this, but you who
have done business in great waters have seen the works of the Lord and
His wonders in the deep. You have known times when if anybody had told
you that you would be delivered you would have said, "Impossible!
Impossible!" Yet you have been delivered and you have cried out, "This
is the finger of God! Now I know that there is a God in Israel, for He
has done for me what no man could have accomplished, no, nor the angels
of God!" You have felt the power of God come so near to you that you
have said, like Jacob, "How dreadful is this place!" Awe has
overwhelmed you at the thought that God should display such power
towards such an unworthy one as you, to lift you up from such depths of
trouble!
You must also have seen with wonderful vividness the attribute of
wisdom. You have been all in a snarl. You have done your best and you
have made things worse. You have gone for advice and the advice has
perplexed you. You have looked in all directions and the more you have
looked, the less hope you have seen. And then, all of a sudden, God's
finger has seemed to be put out and all the knots have been untied and
His Word has been fulfilled–"I will make the crooked places straight
and the rough places plain."
You have had clear sailing where rocks appeared to hem you in–and when
you have safely passed both Scylla and Charybdis you have magnified the
Divine Pilot and been astounded at His Infallible wisdom! Then have you
called Him, "the only wise God," and felt that He has abounded towards
you in all wisdom and prudence. The path of your feet, as you have
looked back upon it, has shone with mercy and you have said, "What a
blessed road is this by which I have been led! I thank God that I came
this way! It is the best path that I have ever trod–the most
soul-enriching yet! What wisdom has been shown towards me! I have had a
considerable trouble, but it has saved me from one a thousand times
worse. I have been a great loser but, still, I am a greater gainer than
a loser! I would not have missed this trial though I dreaded it! I
would not have missed it for a thousand worlds! No one could have told
me how this was to be done, nor by what process I was to be released,
but now I know that the Lord is exceedingly wise and wonderful in
counsel–blessed be His name!"
If any caviler had answered you, "I do not believe in Providence–it is
all stuff and nonsense!" I do not suppose that you would have had much
more patience with such a person than I should have and that is
wonderfully little, for I am of the mind of a good old man to whom I
was speaking yesterday, who said, "Mainly I read my Bible and having
read it about 50 years and having tried it and lived by faith upon
God–the modern humbug of the free-thinkers does not bother me. I know
better! I never argue about it. I have lived upon the old doctrines and
know the truth of them." You will see, as I quote his words, that he
put it rather strongly! But I am altogether of the old man's mind.
Gentlemen waste their words when they try to make me doubt the
overruling Presence and personal interference of the Lord in the
affairs of His people. They might as well tell me that I have no
father, or that I never had a mother and that my parents never treated
me kindly. I know what I know and I know this–the Lord is kind in all
His ways and that His Providence does continually interpose on behalf
of His praying people! If the learned doubters cannot see a
Providence–well, perhaps no special Providence has been sought for by
them or vouchsafed to them. If they have no God and no Providence, of
course they cannot bear witness to what they do not know! Let them go
home and pray God to teach them.
But we know that God does appear for us and are not to be beaten out of
it. And we expect to accumulate much more personal evidence upon that
subject between this and Heaven, for we shall again suffer times of
dark distress in which God will appeal for us and we shall know that He
is the Lord by His breaking the bars off our neck! The Lord's love is
also clearly revealed in our deliverances. Have you not sat down with
tears of gladness in your eyes and said to yourself, "What a God He is!
Oh, what a God He is!" Have you not almost wanted to get up into a high
pulpit, with all the world around you, that you might bear witness to
His Grace to you on each particular occasion? My feet were almost gone,
my steps had well-near slipped. I was in a great strait. I was hemmed
in. I knew not what to do and I had grieved Him by my sin and wandered
from Him.
But though I had forgotten Him, He did not forget me! Though I was
unbelieving, He was faithful! Though I was foolish, He was wise and He
set my feet into a large room–therefore is my mouth opened and my
heart constrains me to speak well of His name before many witnesses. I
know that there are some of you who never will be able to tell what
love God has manifested to you. The poet, though he strained the sense,
yet spoke the truth when he said–
"But O eternity's too short To utter half Your praise."
We shall never get through it, Brothers and Sisters! There is no fear
of our stopping the eternal music for lack of matter, for the goodness,
the Grace and the love of God to us are past finding out and are
altogether infinite! When we have had the bars of our yoke suddenly
broken, then the Divine love in its boundless length and breadth has
been conspicuously before us and we have known the Lord.
Thus I might speak of each of the Divine attributes, but I choose
rather to pass to another topic. It is this. When the bars of our yoke
have been broken, it is often in answer to prayer and because that
liberty has come in answer to prayer, we have exclaimed, "Now I know
the Lord." If you have gone to God 20 times about a thing–(no, 20
times would be nothing). If you have risen in the night watches and
cried with groans and tears about your burden! If you have walked your
garden or walked the streets and all the while your soul has been
crying, "My Father, deliver me!" pleading every argument your soul knew
with God that He would come to your rescue–then, when the rescue has
come–you have known the Lord! An answered prayer is a window into
God's existence, a proof of His faithfulness, an evidence of His
Presence. There you see that He is and that He is the Rewarder of them
that diligently seek Him.
So, again, we know Him from another reason–the special hand of God is
often seen in the breaking of the yoke of His people–the special hand.
Those who look at Providences carefully, will often wonder at the
specialties of God about little things. For instance, about the
time–the exact time. God never is before His time and He is never
late. He times His mercies to the tick of the clock. If they had come a
little before, they might have been misused. If they came a little
later, our spirit might have been broken and the steed might have been
starved while the grass was growing. There it is–the moment the hand
of the devil lifted the dart, the hand of the Eternal lifted the shield
so that the dart was turned aside. Wonderful are the punctualities of
God!
You have noticed them. I am sure you must have done so. You have met a
friend by accidentally going down one street when you generally went
another–and that very friend has been the one that you most needed to
see. I have known what it is to go out of my way and to complain of
myself for having made such a blunder and thus wasting
half-an-hour–till I have seen the person that I wanted to meet above
all men, but had not thought of him as the right person to enquire
of–and he has told me exactly what I wanted to know! I was going the
right way when I was going out of the way! But often it is so and so
you shall find it and you shall have to lift up your hands and say,
"Now, also, do I know the Lord–time, place, circumstances, words,
little petty details, small things–He has had a hand in them all."
"Blessed be God," I said, to a dear one today, "for our great God, that
He loves us in great troubles." "And," she replied, "blessed be His
name that nothing is too little for Him." So do I say tonight! Blessed
be His name for breaking the little bars of our yoke and for removing
the great yokes by such small but effectual means! We most admire those
little touches which are so Omnipotent! The magicians of Egypt turned
water into blood, or pretended to do it, and they brought forth
frogs–but when once Aaron began to make the dust into tiny life, they
could not counterfeit the wonder and they said, "This is the finger of
God!" Frequently by minute marvels God reveals Himself most clearly to
the secret souls of His people and they hear, in His still small voice,
more of His mind than in His thunder and mighty wind.
Dear Friends, if you have passed through any great and special
deliverances, you will join with me in feeling that the Presence of God
is often vividly perceived. I fear that the Presence of God is not
often felt as it ought to be at a dinner table when a number of people
are met together and are enjoying themselves. But I remember my feeling
the Presence of God at a dinner table on a memorable occasion. There
was a very large sum of money to be paid for the building of the
Orphanage and I was up with certain friends at Regent's Park–dining at
the house of one of our Brothers. I there mentioned that I was short of
some 2,000 pounds to meet an account which would very soon be due, but
that I was sure that God would graciously give it, for it was His work
and He would supply its needs in answer to prayer.
We were discussing as to whether it was not rather bold to speak too
positively about answers to a prayer of such a kind and while we were
still discoursing, there came a telegram from the Tabernacle to me,
saying, "A person unknown has called and left 2,000 pounds in bank
notes for the Orphanage." I read the telegram to the friends assembled
and their gratitude and astonishment abounded! My dear old friend, Dr.
Brock, who is now with God, said, "Put down your knives and forks and
let us bless the name of the Lord." And he stood up and poured out His
heart in a most wonderful manner in devout thankfulness to the Answerer
of prayer! We all heartily joined in that act of devotion. The Lord was
there–we felt His Presence as much as if it had been a sacramental
supper, for the Lord had drawn so near to us. If someone had said to us
just then, "Well, you know, this is a coincidence, a mere coincidence,"
we should have laughed and I, for one, would have said, "It is a very
blessed coincidence and I hope it will go on coinciding, for truly it
coincides with the promise and with my faith in God."
The devil does not give his followers such coincidences! Let me say
that I have prayed and God has heard me and we can boldly say, "Now I
know the Lord, for He has broken the bars of my yoke in answer to
prayer and I have felt Him near." Yes, and we feel Him so near that
often we are obliged to utter words of praise!
See what the Israelites did when they had been in Egypt making bricks
without straw and seeing their male children destroyed by a merciless
tyrant. It was a happy, happy time for them when, at midnight, they
came out of Egypt! Do you wonder, after they had crossed the Red Sea
and Pharaoh and his chariots had all been drowned in the midst of it,
that when they saw their enemies dead upon the shore, Miriam took her
timbrel and all the daughters of Israel went forth with music chanting,
"Sing unto the Lord, for He has triumphed gloriously. The horse and his
rider has He thrown into the sea"?
"Be quiet, good women! The philosophers have discovered that God is the
'totality of existence' and that He has no personality and,
consequently, never interferes with the fixed laws of matter! You must
not believe that He drowned those Egyptians by His own act and deed! It
was an extraordinary natural phenomenon which occasionally happens just
about that time and place! You ought rather to wonder at the marvelous
laws of gravitation by which these Egyptians have sunk under the
water."
Thus some superfluously wise fool might have prated to the women of
Israel! But what would they have thought of him? What would Miriam have
said to that? Modern philosophers explain all miracles away and
Colenso, with a slate, figures the whole story of the Exodus into thin
air! What would Moses have said to him for a bishop? In the presence of
that miracle, with their shoulders still red with the lash, their faces
still grimed with the brick dust, conscious that they had been in
bondage and knew it–and were now free and that none but the eternal
Jehovah could have set them free– the sons of Jacob would have pitched
the philosophers into the Red Sea along with the Egyptians! I almost
wish they were there, for they are of no use among us nowadays!
Infinite Mercy lets the creatures live, but we shall not cease from our
glorying in our God because of what they call their criticism. In our
case is fulfilled the promise, "They shall know that I am the Lord when
I break the bars of their yoke." Beloved, if you do not know the Lord
personally, do not talk about Him, nor pretend to know Him! But if you
know Him, be not afraid of being called dogmatic because you speak
confidently! Read the Epistles of John and see how the beloved disciple
harps upon that word. He says, "we know." "We know." "We know." "We
know." The word occurs, perhaps, 40 times in those short Epistles. Know
what you know, and when you know it, do not be driven from it, but let
the text be fulfilled in your experience, "They shall know that I am
the Lord when I have broken the bars of their
yoke."
If your sins have been forgiven, if you have been brought up out of the
horrible pit and out of the miry clay. If you have been delivered from
the power of sin, so as, "to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord,"
or aim at it. And if you have been blessed in Providence with answers
to prayer and many a time rescued as from between the lion's jaws, then
say, "The Lord lives and blessed be my Rock–and I will walk by faith
in Him. As for others, let them say what they will and doubt what they
please–my soul follows hard after the Lord, for His right hand upholds
me."
There I leave the subject, praying that every one of you may have the
bars of your yoke broken, for then shall you know the Lord, and not
till then. The Lord bless you evermore. Amen.
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–Ezekiel 34 HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN
HYMN BOOK"–708, 126, 660.
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The Gazelles and the Deer