Truth Stranger Than Fiction

Truth Stranger Than Fiction

DELIVERED ON LORD'S DAY EVENING, MAY 30, 1886,

BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"And I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten." Joel
2:25.

LOST years can never be restored literally. Time once past is gone
forever. Let no man make any mistake about this or trifle with the
present moment under any notion that the flying hour will ever wing its
way back to him. As well call back the north wind or fill again the
emptied rain cloud, or put back into their quiver the arrows of the
lord of day. As well bid the river which has hastened onward to the sea
bring back its rolling floods, as imagine that the years that have once
gone can ever be restored to us. It will strike you at once that the
locusts did not eat the years–the locusts ate the fruits of the years'
labor–the harvests of the fields.

So the meaning of the restoration of the years must be the restoration
of those fruits and of those harvests which the locusts consumed. You
cannot have back your time. But there is a strange and wonderful way in
which God can give back to you the wasted blessings, the unripened
fruits of years over which you mourned. The fruits of wasted years may
yet be yours. It is a pity that they should have been eaten by your
folly and negligence. But if they have been so, be not hopeless
concerning them. "All things are possible to him that believes." There
is a power which is beyond all things and can work great marvels.

Who can make the all-devouring locust restore his prey? No man, by
wisdom or power, can recover what has been utterly destroyed. God alone
can do for you what seems impossible. And here is the promise of His
Grace–"I will restore to you the years that the locust has eaten." By
giving to His repentant people larger harvests than the land could
naturally yield, God could give back to them, as it were, all they
would have had if the locusts had never come. And God can restore your
life which has up to now been blighted and eaten up with the locust and
sin, by giving you Divine Grace in the present and in the future. He
can yet make it complete and blessed and useful to His praise and
glory. It is a great wonder–but Jehovah is a God of wonders and in the
kingdom of His Grace miracles are common things.

We shall go into this subject, which I think will be very interesting
to those here present who have wasted years to mourn over, since they
have up to now done nothing for God, nor even for themselves. The
locust has eaten everything. The prospect of recovering the wreckage of
a life must be full of interest to them.

I. I shall first speak upon locust-eaten years. YEARS WHICH THE LOCUST
HAS EATEN–what sort of years are

these?

First and darkest of all, there are the dead years of sin, of
reprobation, impenitence and unbelief. Those years without God and
without Christ. Those years without life as to spiritual things! What a
condition to be in! Oh, how many, many years have some passed in this
horrible state! We, all of us–those of us with whom God has dealt very
graciously–always feel sorry that even our most early days should have
been spent in sin. I was brought to know the Lord when I was fifteen
years of age and I have often said that I could wish I had known Him
fifteen years before. Oh, that one could, from the very earliest
openings of one's eyes have seen the light of the Eternal!

Oh, that the first pulsing of life had been with Jesus! Oh, that the
first flowing of the blood had been consecrated with the life of God
within the soul! But yet I fear there are very many to whom the idea of
conversion in boyhood and youth seems almost too good to be true. They
have now reached thirty, forty, fifty years of age, and are still
unregenerate, unrenewed. I could weep over you! We frequently meet with
people older, still, whose many years have all been graceless,
locust-eaten years. Ah me, how sad to be old and unsaved–feeble with
age and yet without strength unto

God!

Now remember. That eating of the locust–that devouring of everything
by the caterpillars, meant a laborious year, because that year the
people plowed and sowed and watched their crops, and their labor was
all in vain. So, he that does

nothing for God and has no spiritual blessing, still has to work and to
labor. None toil harder than those who are the slaves of lust,
pleasure, self and Satan. These people often labor as in the very fire.
The way of transgressors is hard. They have to toil and slave and tug
and strive. The yoke of the world is not easy and its burden is not
light. And nothing comes of it. This is the gall of the bitterness. One
does not mind working when there is a good reward for it. But to plow
and sow and then to reap nothing because the locust has eaten it! This
is misery.

The wage sweetens the toil. But when the wage is death, the toil is
horrible. Yet this is the way of unregenerate men–they spend years in
laborious rebellion and the harvest is not after their desire. They
toil under the impulse of some strong desire and their desire perishes.
They work, they slave–but nothing comes of it. It is a year of labor
but it is labor in vain.

The locust year was particularly a year of great disappointment. The
people looked for a harvest. In fact, they seemed to see it spring up
and then it was devoured before their eyes. Even so, the ungodly
man–the man who has no faith in Christ–is often charmed with the
prospect of a happiness which he never reaches. A little more and he
will be content. He gets a little more. And this increases his thirst
for yet another draught from the golden cup. Run as we may when the
heart shoots with its far-reaching bow, still the arrows are beyond us.
The student must know a little more. The ambitious must climb a little
higher upon the ladder of honor and then he will be at ease. He learns,
he reaches the honor–but the ease is still as distant as ever–perhaps
it is even further off.

Earth's cups, when they seem most sweet, only hold salt water which
beget a growing thirst. We swallow the horseleech when we drain the
chalice at the feasts of this world and an insatiable craving follows.
The locust-eaten years of sin are years of labor and years of bitter
disappointment.

And, alas, they are fruitless years. O Sirs, what have some of you ever
done in this world? I heard of one who had made a half a million pounds
of money and he died. A Christian man said, "Now, I call that man's
life a dead failure. What has he done? He has accumulated what he could
not enjoy. He has scraped it together and he has made no use of it
whatever." Such persons remind me of crows who will hoard, I know not
what–all kinds of treasures and trash. And what do they do but hide
them in a hole behind the door? They cannot do anything with them. They
have no sense to use them–whether they steal the abbot's ring or a bit
of wire, it is all the same to them. And to misers what can be the
difference between a thousand pounds or a thousand pins, since they use
neither? Alas, many have the power to get, but have not the faculty to
use what they have gotten. Their years are eaten with the locust.

Think again–are there not numbers of men that are just living
strainers of bread and meat and beer and that is all that you can say
of them? They go to and fro in the world but if they were tied neck and
heels together and flung into the Atlantic nobody would miss them,
except perhaps the poor wife and children who would be more comfortable
without them than with them. I speak not too severely, for we meet with
many such persons who are nature's blot–creation's blank. These are
clouds without rain, wells without water–the wrapping and packing of
what should have been useful lives. Why have they burdened the earth at
all?

Others who are decent, respectable and quiet people–what does their
whole life come to? It is like some of those sponge plants which appear
very large when you have them in your hand but you can compress them
into the tenth part of nothing. Are not many mere blown-up appearances?
It is a biggish sort of life–especially when the man himself describes
it. But if it comes to the reality of it, the good that is done is
nothing. God is not glorified, broken hearts are not healed, holiness
is not extended–nothing is in the whole performance but the very
reverse of what should have been. It is a drawback rather than an
addition to that which is good in the world.

What an awful thing for a man to have lived to be forty-five and to
have done nothing! If we will not spare a fruitless tree in the
orchard, which, year after year has brought forth nothing–if we quite
understand the justice of the verdict, "Cut it down. Why cumbers it the
ground?"–surely such a sharp sentence followed up by a swift blow of
the axe, might go out against many here present! For up to now they
have been wasters, cumberers, doing nothing worth the doing. The locust
has eaten up every year that they have plowed and sown. Nothing has
come of the whole of their lives. Yet, listen to me–if you are led by
Divine Grace to confess your sin and turn unto the Lord your God and
"rend your hearts and not your garments"–even to you God can restore
the years which the locust has eaten! I beseech you, hear this
marvelous promise. And think of it and do not miss it from want of
effort.

Now, very briefly let me mention that there is another sense in which
the text can be used. There are some whose years have been eaten by the
locust through great sorrow, depression and disappointment. They
remember those happy springtide days when they greatly rejoiced in God.
But for some reason they dropped their confidence and lost their hope.
Their sky was darkened and the wintry winds of despair howled around
them. I am grieved for dear friends on whom the chill of long
depression has fallen with terrible power. I frequently meet with these
sons and daughters of melancholy and my sorrow is that I am so often
unable to deal wisely with them.

It has been my privilege in many cases to be the bearer of comfort but
in the very act my own soul has often been heavily burdened. Very
precious children of God may fall into the Slough of Doubt. Diamonds
may be hidden away in dark mines. Some of God's rarest pearls lie deep
in the dark waters. Now you that are thus losing year after year and
sighing–

"Where is the blessedness I Anew When first I sa w the Lord? Where is
the soul-refreshing view Of Jesus and His Word?"

do not lose all heart about it. Prisoners who have been confined till
it almost seemed that the moss would grow on their eyelids have yet
been set free. Do not utterly despair, for here stands this gracious
promise–"I will restore unto you the years which the locust has
eaten." God can give you back all those years of sorrow and you shall
yet be the better for them.

You shall have to thank God for all this sadness of heart. It is a
strange story that I tell you. Perhaps you will not believe me tonight,
but you shall live to see it true–God will grind sunlight for you out
of your black nights–in the oven of affliction Divine Grace will
prepare the bread of delight. I said this to a friend with whom I have
often conversed–an earnest Christian woman who for three years had
defied all attempts to comfort her. We had prayed with her. Her godly,
gracious husband, a minister of Christ, had laid out his heart to cheer
her but she had refused to be comforted.

And yet to my great joy, the other day I received a letter saying, "The
Lord has opened the gates of my dungeon. My captivity has ended. And
though I am sick in body, that does not matter, for I am restored in
spirit." Yes, the Lord can loose the captives and He does it. There are
dear children of God who have been ten or twenty years the victims of
despair to whom, nevertheless, this promise has, in the fullness of
time, been sweetly fulfilled, "I will restore unto you the years which
the locust has eaten."

And now, having given you those two versions of the text, let me give
you another. I speak of those whose years have been wasted by their
being in a low state of Grace. Many Christians are barely Christians.
We may not be judges of our Brethren. But if some professors are
Christians, it is in a very small way. They remind me of the answer
given by the American boy when he went to Sunday school and the teacher
asked him, "Is your mother a Christian?" "Yes, Sir," he said, "she is a
Christian." "Is your father a Christian?" The boy answered, "Well, Sir,
he may be a Christian but he has not worked at it much lately."

We know quite a company of that kind–perhaps they fear the Lord but
they have not worked at it much. Their religion has no practical power
over them. Salvation is not by works. But when a man is saved, then
straightway he begins, by God's Grace, to work for the Lord. And
therefore where nothing is done for Jesus we are apt to fear that
nothing has been done by Jesus. There are talkers around us whose years
are eaten up by the locust of idleness, the worm of worldliness, the
worm of frivolous amusement. They seem to be like Hosea's "silly dove"
without heart. I do not judge them–but I look at them with pitying
wonder. How can they be content to be such useless things? How can they
be satisfied to be so neutral, so double-minded, when all around them
the stern conflict rages?

I wish they would give us a little more evidence upon which to judge
whether they are for us or for our enemies. They attend a place of
worship. They come to a Prayer Meeting once in twelve months if any
friend calls in and asks them to do so. They are glad that there is a
Sunday school connected with the Church–they do not know what it is
doing. They have never entered it. They love their minister but do not
contribute to his maintenance. They admire the Doctrines of Grace but
never attempt to spread them. In fact they spend their time in
diligently doing nothing and in quietly wearing the cloak of a
profession which has nothing in it.

Well, now, dear Friend, this is a wretched kind of thing. If you are a
Christian, be a Christian. Let your heart be warm towards holy things
or else let them alone. Cold meats are well enough but cold religion is
the sickliest diet upon which a man can live. Serve up religion hot,
Sir, or not at all! If it grows lukewarm, neither God nor man will have
it. For Jesus, who is both God and Man, has said, "I will spit you out
of My mouth." He cannot endure it, who is the most patient of all
beings.

The years which the locust has eaten in some professors are far too
many. And I would earnestly exhort any Brother or Sister here who has
had the locusts at him for a long time–remember the promise stands, if
you will avail yourself of it, "I will restore unto you the years that
the locust has eaten." It is high time that you saw to it, for your
case is a bad one. It is ill to be trading so ill, when a merchandise
so precious as time is being lost.

Once more only, lest by these varied instances I should weary you.
There are some in whom their years have been eaten up by the locusts in
a worse way than that of mere idleness, namely, by the sin of open
backsliding. This is one of the plagues of the Church of God. Alas, for
the many who did run well but have suddenly stopped and run no longer
in the Divine road! This is our frequent sorrow, even to heartbreak. We
believe in the perseverance of the saints but many are not saints and
therefore do not persevere.

Nominal saints exhibit no final perseverance. Saints who have only the
name of saints last but for a time and then die away. In too many, the
life of God rather lingers, than grows–their religion is so very weak
that they exhibit the signs of disease rather than of health. They
wander away from their Lord and Master because they do not sufficiently
feel His attractive power. Oh, that the Lord would be gracious in
restoring such wanderers! Do I address any who have almost given up
attendance on the means of Divine Grace? I know you have no comfort in
such a course. I am sure, if you are a child of God, you cannot be
happy in the world–you cannot be content while leaving Christ, but are
in a miserable way.

Grace has spoiled you for the world and it is of no use your attempting
to get comfort out of it. Your only hope of happiness lies Godward. You
must come back. You must come back to the good old way. Do not linger,
but return at once. Every hour that you linger the locusts are eating
up every green and fruitful thing within your spirit–why give the
Destroyer so much space? You are doing no good. You are getting no
good. Why remain as you are? You are doing mischief. You are grieving
the Spirit of God–wake up from so deplorable a state. You are not
winning souls but you are ruining souls by your inconsistency.

God have mercy upon you! Come, and receive His restoring mercy. He will
not cast you away but He bids me say to you that if you turn to Him
according to the teaching of this chapter, He will yet restore to you
the years that the locust has eaten. It is a great wonder. But you
shall see it–if you will seek the Lord yet again. So much then about
locust-eaten years, for I want to get at a happier subject.

II. What does God say? "I will restore unto you the years that the
locust has eaten." This is our second head–

LOCUST-EATEN YEARS RESTORED.

Notice, this is Divine Work, "I will restore unto you the years that
the locust has eaten." You cannot get them back. Nobody can give them
back to you. But the Omnipotent Jehovah says, "I will restore them to
you." Can you believe that? All things are possible with God. Those
dead years, those doleful years, those desponding years, those idle
years, those backsliding years–all the harvests of them, God can give
them back to you. Look away from yourself and trust in the
miracle-working God while you hear this word of promise, "I will
restore unto you the years which the locust has eaten."

But notice that this restoration follows upon a true and genuine
repentance. Let me read the Words of the Lord to you and you listen to
them and obey. "Therefore also now, says the Lord, turn you even to Me
with all your heart and with fasting and with weeping and with
mourning: and rend your heart and not your garments and turn unto the
Lord your God: for He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and of
great kindness and repents Him of the evil. Let the priests, the
ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar and let
them say, Spare Your people, O Lord and give not Your heritage to
reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they
say among the people, Where is their God? Then will the Lord be jealous
for His land and pity His people."

Repent, then. This is the great teaching and operation of the Gospel at
its commencement upon the heart. "Repent and be baptized everyone of
you," is its first cry from the wilderness. "Turn you every man from
his evil ways." "Turn you, turn you, why will you die, O house of
Israel?" To go on in impenitence is to miss the blessing of my text. To
go on

in spiritual deadness–to go on in backsliding–will never bring the
restoration of lost years. But he that shall genuinely confess his
sin–shall heartily hate it and shall turn unto God through Jesus
Christ, trusting in the precious blood of His atonement–shall receive
the unspeakably precious benediction of the Lord, the Restorer. Such a
man shall plead this promise with God and have it graciously
fulfilled–"I will restore unto you the years that the locust has
eaten." It is a very remarkable promise but you see to whom it is
given.

Yet linger a moment over this mystery of love. Picture the spirits of
evil, year after year, bearing away from the fields of human life all
their harvests. Where have they borne the precious products? Ask where
has the fire carried the forests it has devoured? Or where has the
flood borne away the navies it has swallowed up? To call back these
harvests would be a task which only madness could attempt. Fly,
swift-winged angels! But you cannot overtake the spoilers–neither
could your eyes of fire detect the caverns in which the robbers have
stored their wealth. The fruits of wasted years are gone, gone past
hope. Yet, behold, the Lord who called light out of darkness and will
yet bring forth life from the tomb, declares that these long-lost
spoils shall be restored!

And shall it not be done? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Does not
the very difficulty, yes, impossibility of the enterprise make it the
more worthy of the Almighty? Here is a marvelous thing and here is,
therefore, a work fit for Him who does great marvels. To him that
believes all things are possible and this also is among the "all
things." Never was a fairy tale more strange, or a dream of Arabian
nights more romantic. Yet here it stands in sober words and many a time
in solid fact these words have been true. When we come into the region
where the Lord works, we come at once into contact with miracles and
walk in the midst of marvels. Then as we see Grace upon Divine Grace,
we have to cry, "O world of wonders! I can say no less."

This promise is only fulfilled by the exceeding Grace of God. And it
shall be my business for a minute to show you how the Grace of God
works it out. We take, for instance, a man or a woman who has been
living for many years in known sin. Those years have all been wasted.
How can God give us back the fruit of those wasted years? He can. He
can. See that woman? She is a sinner, a common sinner of the town. She
has spent her days and her nights in wantonness. She comes into the
room where the Savior lies reclining at the dinner table and His feet
are not far from the door. She bears a choice box of ointment. She has,
besides that, eyes full of tears and she stands behind Him weeping.

She washes His feet with those tears. She loosens the luxuriant tresses
of her head, those nets in which she had entangled many a living soul
and she bows down and wipes those feet which with her tears she washed.
While she kisses them with her lips, she wipes them with her hair. Now,
that woman, in that day, had through Grace restored to her the years
which the locust had eaten. Who shall dare to say that she stands
second to anybody in the service of her Lord and Master? She loves much
because she has had much forgiven. And though I say not that the
greatness of her sin could ever be an advantage, yet I do say that the
greatness of her love that springs out of the greatness of her Lord's
forgiveness did put her in the very front rank of those who served and
loved Him.

She had been last but mighty Grace placed her among the first and she
has never lost that leading position. And you, too, my Hearer, though
you may have been so many years a sinner, can yet be so transformed as
to overtake the saints. God can give you such a true repentance, such a
burning love, such an enthusiastic consecration that during the rest of
your days you shall make up for all those wasted years. The prey shall
be taken from the mighty–years seized by evil shall be dragged back
from the devil's den. And all the memory and outcome of them
transformed by the action of Divine Grace and gratitude shall be laid
as treasure at your Redeemer's feet. By giving you a deeper love, a
more tense passion, a fuller consecration on account of the greatness
of your sin, the Lord can restore to you the years that the locust has
eaten. Did Paul lose those years in which he was a persecutor and
injurious? Did not his quickened pace and his deeper self-knowledge
make all the after years of his life ten times more full of power for
good?

I will suppose the locust has eaten many years by your being in great
sorrow–and I believe that the Lord can easily make up to you that
grievous loss. The wear and fret of grief are very great but there is a
remedy. Have I not seen some that have passed through years of deep
soul distress who have been all their lifetime much the better for it?
They have been more able to sympathize with poor, tried saints. They
have had a truer, deeper, richer experience. And, as a rule, they have
known the Gospel of Christ better and they have had a more tender love
to Him who brought them up out of the horrible pit and out of the miry
clay.

Personally I have been much the gainer by my sad hours and my sick
days. I reckoned those times lost in which I was unfit for service. But
I think I was in error–for I perceive that the fields which have lain
fallow repay the unfertile season sevenfold when the bearing time
returns. Do not think, dear children of God, if you have been for years
in despondency that it need turn out to be a total loss to you. It is a
great evil and mischief. But God can restore to you the years that the
locust has eaten. Your ills may become wells of comfort for others. The
Lord can bring so much good out of the evil, so much light out of the
darkness, so much joy out of the sorrow that you shall one day say, "I
thank God that I was shut up in Doubting Castle. I thank God I did sink
in the deep mire where there was no standing for He has restored to me
the years that the locust has eaten."

And if, again, the locust has eaten up your years through your being
cold and indifferent and idle, God can recover you from this sad
mischief. He will grant you Divine Grace to repent bitterly of this
great sin. For a great sin it is to lose a moment which should be used
for Jesus. But yet, if the Lord shall visit you with an intense hatred
of such idleness and sting you into action and at the same time draw
you by the cords of love into full consecration, you will, perhaps, by
redoubled zeal, recover the lost seasons. Oh, that God would make it so
with those who up to now have sadly loitered in the race! Oh, that our
smoldering logs would become flaming firebrands! Oh, that our sluggards
could be aroused into enthusiasts!

I have known men living orderly and regular lives for many years and
yet they have done nothing for their Lord. Such sober people move on
and on and on and on. But they make little progress. Steady, steady,
steady, steady, jog– trot–life has no fire in it for them and they
know no reason for ardor. They never get out of breath with zeal. They
never exhaust themselves with excitement. They accomplish little from
want of fire. I have known a great many Christians about whom I have
never had any fear of their being consumed by their vehemence. They are
such proper people that even if the Lord Himself were to come they
would never cry "Hosanna!" in the street. They are never warmed into
anything like enthusiasm–as soon hope to warm a marble statue.

These are the folks who, after a while, grow negligent and the locusts
eat up the years of their regularity and all the gains of their
sobriety. I am sorry, indeed, to hear of a broken reputation, or a
profession openly disgraced. But what a mercy it is when, even by this
terrible means, dead professors are driven to turn to God with full
purpose of heart! When these, who slept in all the chill propriety of
spiritual death are aroused to seek the Lord penitently, we see no more
of their dull commonplace. If restored by a renewal of spiritual
strength before they have openly declined into sin, the change is
equally manifest.

Now they must fly like the wind, though before they could only creep
like the snail. They must do everything at a great heat with all their
heart and soul and strength. A month or so of such quickened, intense
work full often effects more result than years of slow, feeble, formal
routine. Oh, to live while we live! Once fully charged with the Divine
Power we can achieve as much in a day as before we performed in a year!
If you, as a preacher, come back to God and get the Holy Spirit to
anoint you, one sermon preached in the power of the Holy Spirit will be
worth ten thousand preached without it.

If you, as a worker, go to your Sunday school class with a Divine
Anointing resting upon you, there will be more children brought to
Christ by a little of your living, loving, teaching than ever would
have been by whole years of your unspiritual talk. Thus the Lord God
can, by His endowing us with greater power and firing us with fuller
zeal restore to us the years that the locust has eaten. The strong
swimmer will soon recover the space through which he has drifted– when
omnipotence is in every stroke the man is soon back to his right place,
and before long he is ahead of where he would have been.

Do not invite the locusts to come, I pray you, in the hope of getting
back that which they devour. No! No! No–a thousand times NO! We do not
want the locusts at all–we cannot endure sin, or doubt, or trifling.
We want every year to be fruitful–fruitful with a hundred-fold
increase. But if the evils have come, let us turn to God with penitence
and faith and He can yet restore to us the losses they have caused.

I think I said, also, that in certain cases the locust has eaten up
much of the fruit of life through backslidings. Many are in this case.
But if they will return from their backslidings, the Lord can give them
back whatever they have lost. I have known persons backsliding very
sorrowfully, very much to the grief of the Church. But God has visited
them in Divine Grace and brought them back and they have been better
men afterwards. Yes, I venture to say, even better men

than before they actually offended. I have not been thankful for their
open offense. But I have been very thankful for their restoration and
for the humility and other graces which have been the result of their
bitter experience.

They used to be very top-lofty once, but now they carry no flags and
banners. Such grand fellows they were! But after their wandering, when
they came back, they were willing to be in the rear rank and to do
commonplace work. They were once very reserved–you could not get near
them. But now they value a kind word and return a loving salutation
very gratefully. They are now more like their Brethren and more willing
to be on a level with them, and yet their religion is a great deal
deeper and more sincere. They do not carry so much sail–but they have
more cargo.

I have known some that, at first conversion, have not been very clear
in the Gospel but who have been made evangelical by their discoveries
of their own need of mercy. They could not spell the word "grace." They
began with a "G" but they very soon went on with an "F," till it spelt
very much like "free will" before they had done with it. But after they
have learned their weaknesses–after they have fallen into serious
fault and God has restored them–or after they have passed through deep
depression, they have sung a new song. In the school of repentance they
have learned to spell. They began to write the word "free," but they
went on from free, not to "will," but to "grace" and there it stood in
capitals, "FREE GRACE."

By coming to know themselves they came also to understand what Divine
Grace meant and they began to read their title written in the blood of
Christ, instead of reading it in themselves. And they became clearer in
their divinity and truer in their faith than ever they were before. I
do not want you to know the locusts of backsliding but if they have
ever come and you have been eaten up by them, I pray that God may
restore to you the years that the locust has eaten. I want you to lay
hold of this promise and go home and plead with God that it may be
fulfilled to you so that the rest of your life may be so bright and so
clear, with the light of the Spirit of God, that as much as possible,
you may make up for lost time. God grant that your desire may be
fulfilled!

III. I have done when I have said just a word or two upon a third
point. Here are locust-eaten years and here are those locust-eaten
years restored–and now, WHAT IS TO COME OF IT? If God restores to us
the years that the locust has eaten, He has done a great deal for us.
But notice that He is able to do more and will do it, for what does He
say? He says, in the twenty-sixth verse, "And you shall eat in plenty,
and be satisfied, and praise the name of the Lord your God, that has
dealt wondrously with you: and My people shall never be ashamed."

What a promise! You half-starved professors–you that are moping and
mourning–who rise from the tables of the world unsatisfied–devoured
with a griping hunger! If you turn to God with full purpose of heart He
will fill you with heavenly bread and give you as real enjoyment as
ever He gave to the best of His people. You, too, shall have your mouth
satisfied with good things and your youth shall be renewed like the
eagle's. The Lord does nothing by halves–if He receives a prodigal
back, He does not send him down into the kitchen to be fed with broken
victuals–He receives him into the best parlor and puts on him the best
robe and kills for him the fatted calf.

O you cast-down and troubled ones, you do not know how near you are to
joy! O sad Hearts, the morning is breaking in the east for you! You are
heavy tonight. And well you may be! You know your sin and that may well
make you mourn. But ring the bells of Heaven, the sinner is repenting!
And if he turns with repentance to God, the richest joy, the choicest
Covenant blessings that belong only to the chosen family shall be his
portion at once! Is it not written, "You shall eat in plenty and shall
be satisfied and shall praise the name of the Lord"?

What shall come of it? Why this shall come of it–that you who have had
the most to mourn over shall be among the loudest singers. You shall
praise the name of the Lord your God that has dealt wondrously with
you. You will cry, with tears running down your cheeks, "Who is a God
like unto You, passing by transgression, iniquity and sin?" I was a
sinner up to the neck in filth. A despairing soul shut up in the
blackest darkness. But He has washed me and He has brought me out into
the light and put a new song into my mouth. He is a glorious God–this
God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! I pray you may have
intense enjoyment of His marvelous Grace and may pour forth your whole
souls in His praise.

Next, you shall have most clear and sweet communion with God. Hear what
the Prophet further says, "And you shall know that I am in the midst of
Israel and that I am the Lord your God and none else and My people
shall never be ashamed." Wonderful! Wonderful that a far-off outcast
sinner should know his Covenant God and should say, "He is my God," and
should enter into fellowship with Him and should enjoy all the
privileges of a friend of God. Wonderful that

all his fear should be gone and that he should, instead, be full of
holy confidence and have a right to hold up his head and never be
ashamed! It shall be so, dear Hearer. True repentance shall bring rest
to you. Only trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and your fellowship shall
be with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ henceforth and
evermore.

And then, best of all, the anointing shall come upon you. You remember
how the chapter goes on to say that God would pour out His spirit upon
all flesh so that even the handmaiden and the servant, the very least
of the people of God, should be moved by the Spirit of God to speak in
God's name and should be enabled to realize things which before had
been deemed mere visions and dreams? I hope that the Lord has some
here, at this hour, who did not know Him when they came within these
walls, who, at this time, shall be called by His Grace and before long
shall begin to tell to others what the Lord has done for them.

O Lord, find ministers among these miserable sinners! Raise up for
yourself witnesses from among these careless youths! I think I see the
angel even now, and hear the voice from off the Throne, crying, "Whom
shall I send and who will go for Us?" Oh, that one of the seraphims
might take from off the altar the live coal and touch some unclean lip
and inflame some cold heart and make the purified man to answer, "Here
am I, send me." Then shall you be sent to tell abroad the riches of the
Divine Grace of which you have tasted–the freeness of the love which
has been manifested to you. May the Lord grant it!

May the locusts all be blown away by a strong north wind and never
darken the air again! May these wasted years all be given back to you
and may you become the Lord's living, loving servants from this time
forth. Oh for the highest form of spiritual life! Oh for the greatest
possible usefulness! Oh for grace to fill out our poor shriveled lives
till they arrive at a heavenly fullness! Oh for the sacred breath of
God to fill out all the canvas of our capacity! Lord, the sail flaps.
The boat scarcely moves. We lie becalmed in indolence! Send us a
breeze, my God! Grant us the wind of Your Spirit to fill out every sail
that by Your Grace we may fly over the waves. Amen.