A Supply for Every Need

"But my God shall supply all your need according to his riches in glory by Christ Jesus." –Phil. 4:19

With what confidence the Apostle speaks here! There is not in his mind the shadow of a doubt--but he declares it as a positive certainty, that his God would supply all their need. Whence arose this confidence? Not from the flesh, we may be well certain. But it arose from two causes--first, from the deep conviction, lodged by the Holy Spirit in the heart of the Apostle, that God would supply all the needs of his church and people; and secondly, because he had himself experienced, in his own particular case, this gracious and perpetual supply.

But why should both these be necessary? Would not one be sufficient? I do not think. Say that the ground of his confidence was his own personal experience, and disjoin that experience of his from the truth which I have said was lodged in his heart that God would supply all the needs of his church; take, I say, that great truth away, and his experience would afford him no solid ground for confidence that God would supply all their needs. Or look at the other side of the question--suppose the doctrinal truth only was lodged in his heart that God would supply all the needs of his church, but that he himself had not a personal experience of that supply, there would still be lacking a sufficient ground of confidence. His confidence would stand upon one foot only, if it stood on either of these truths alone, and would thus be liable to be blown down by every gust of temptation. But when his confidence stood in the firm conviction of a general truth on the one hand, and a blessed experience of that truth in his own case on the other, it then stood firmly upon two feet--and no storm or gust that might arise, could drive him down from his standing.

And this must be the ground of our confidence also. No Arminian could consistently believe that God would for a certainty supply the needs of the Philippian Church, because, according to his creed, they might be God's children today, and the devil's children tomorrow. Nor, again, if we had not had some experience of God's mercy and faithfulness in our own souls, supplying us from time to time, could we rest upon the mere doctrinal truth, that God will supply the needs of his church? But when the truth of the DOCTRINE, and the truth of the EXPERIENCE meet together in the same heart, then there is a solid foundation on which spiritual confidence can rest.

If we look at the words of the text, I think we shall find three things in them. NEED is the first--"my God shall supply all your need." SUPPLY is the second--"my God shall supply." And the CHANNEL, through which this supply comes, is the third, "according to his riches in glory, by Christ Jesus."

1. The NEED. "My God shall supply all your need." A man has no felt spiritual needs until he is made a spiritual man; this is, to God-taught souls, a self-evident truth. Therefore, until the Lord is pleased to quicken the soul into spiritual life, it has not one spiritual panting after God, not one spiritual desire, for it has not one spiritual necessity. But no sooner does life commence in the soul, than needs and necessities commence with it. As the life of the new-born babe is manifested by its desiring the mother's breast, so is the life of the new-born soul manifested by its desiring, as the Apostle says, "the sincere milk of the word, that it may grow thereby."

He, then, that has no needs is dead in sin, or dead in a profession. But, just in proportion to the depth of God's work upon the soul, will be the depth of the needs; and just in proportion to the continued carrying on of that work with power, will there be the continual springing up of these wants in the soul.

With God's blessing, we will look at a few of these spiritual needs, which God will supply; he himself having caused them to be felt in the soul.

Until the Lord gives us eyes to see, and a heart to feel our real state and case, our true character and condition before him, we can feel no need to be saved from this state--to be delivered from this condition. The very word, salvation--deliverance--implies a being saved, a being delivered out of something--and that, a state of ruin, wretchedness, and misery. Whatever, then, a man may know doctrinally of the truths of the gospel, until he is brought by the special teaching of the Spirit to need something which God alone can give him, he cannot be said to have any spiritual life or feeling in his soul.

1. But what is the first need that the living soul most pressingly and most urgently feels? Mercy. Was not that the first cry which was raised up in the heart of the tax-collector--"God be merciful to me, a sinner." Mercy was a word that never before had been in his lips--the craving after mercy was an experience utterly unknown in his soul. But no sooner did sin and guilt fall upon his conscience, no sooner was he spiritually convinced of his state as a sinner before God, than a need of mercy was sensibly opened up in his heart; and no sooner was the need raised up in his heart, than the groaning cry burst forth from his lips, "God be merciful to me, a sinner."

Now, I believe, in my conscience, that there are hundreds, if not thousands of persons, in a profession of religion, who never once, from their hearts, lifted up that earnest cry to God; the words may have passed through their lips, but the groaning cry before a heart-searching God to visit their souls with mercy, never really burst forth from a broken heart. And if a man has not taken that first step in the divine life, there is no use his talking about how established he is in the doctrines of grace. If he has not come in by "the door," he has climbed over the wall, and is but a thief and a robber. The sweetness of mercy, its suitability to our ruined condition, can only be felt by one who has groaned under the pressure of guilt--and when guilt is really laid upon a man's conscience, nothing but manifested mercy can ever heal his wound, or suit his case. Nor will this need of, and cry for mercy, be confined just to one or two periods in a man's life--but he will often be, as Deer says– "Begging mercy every hour."

Daily sinners need daily mercies; hourly iniquities cry out for hourly pardon; whatever, therefore, a man may have experienced in his soul in times past of granted mercy, yet, as he is perpetually a sinner against God, and is continually doing things, which his conscience bears its solemn testimony against as evil, there will be from time to time a cry in his soul, that God would look down upon him in mercy, and heal his perpetual backslidings from him.

2. Pardon--forgiveness--and an inward testimony that the blood of Jesus Christ has been shed for his sins, is a need, a spiritual need, that God brings every one of his children to experience. It is this need which effectually teaches a man to believe in particular redemption. A man who holds universal redemption can never want to have pardon sealed upon his conscience--he cannot value the blood of Christ, until he knows that that blood was specially shed; nor can he behold the efficacy of atoning blood, until he sees that that blood was shed for particular objects. As long, therefore, as a man is buried in free-will errors, until he is effectually purged by "the spirit of judgment, and the spirit of burning" out of freewill and self-righteousness, and has had all his Arminian sentiments dashed to a thousand shivers in his conscience, he can never know what it is to groan out from the depths of his soul for manifested pardon and forgiveness. But, when he is taught of God to view the depth, the dreadful depth of his iniquities with one eye, and to behold the virtue and efficacy of the atoning blood of Christ with the other, and yet feels his conscience filthy, guilty, burdened, and in bondage, he, and he alone, will then effectually plead for the manifestation and application of that atoning blood to his soul.

3. Righteousness--that he may stand righteous before God, "accepted in the Beloved," his own "filthy rags" cast to the ash-heap, and Christ's glorious robe of righteousness imputed unto and put upon him--is "a need" felt by every quickened vessel of mercy, before the Lord assures him that he stands complete in Christ. His own "righteousness" being opened up to him as "filthy rags," he views himself, as the Lord showed the prophet Zechariah (Zec 3:3) as Joshua, the high priest, clothed with filthy garments, before the angel of the Lord. Nothing can satisfy him, therefore, but that which satisfies God; nothing is acceptable in his eyes, but that which is acceptable in the eyes of infinite Purity--a robe "without spot or blemish, or any such thing." And it is the sigh, the cry, and the groaning desire of his soul, to have that blessed robe brought out of the heavenly wardrobe, where it is stored up for those who believe in Jesus, and experimentally put upon him by the Spirit of the living God.

4. Wisdom--that he may understand the mind and will of God--that he may have a spiritual and feeling perception of, and acquaintance with, "the truth as it is in Jesus"--is a "need," a spiritual need, felt in every living soul. What poor, blind fools are we by nature! How insufficient is all our earthly wisdom and all our natural knowledge, to guide us into the truth! When the soul really is under divine teaching, how ignorant it feels as to every single thing it desires to know! What clouds of darkness perpetually hang over the mind! What a veil of ignorance seems continually spread over the heart! The simplest truths of God's word seem hidden in the deepest obscurity, and the soul can neither see the truth, nor see or feel its personal interest in it.

Now, when a man is here, he does not go to the Lord with lying lips and a mocking tongue, and ask him to give him wisdom, merely because he has heard that other people have asked it of God, or because he reads in the Bible that Christ is made of God "wisdom" to his people; but he goes as a poor blind fool, as one completely ignorant, as one totally unable to understand a single spiritual truth of himself, as one thoroughly helpless to get into the marrow of vital godliness, into the mysteries of true religion, or into the very heart of Christ. For it is not a few doctrines received into the head, nor a sound creed, that can satisfy a soul convinced of its ignorance. No; nothing can satisfy him, but to have that divine illumination, whereby he "sees light in God's light," that spiritual wisdom communicated, whereby he feels himself "made wise unto salvation;" that unctuous light shed abroad in the heart, which is the only key to gospel truth, and is its own blessed evidence, that he knows the truth by a divine application of it to his soul.

5. Strength, also, to walk in God's ways, to believe God's promises, to lay hold of the Mediator's righteousness, to tread in the strait and narrow path that Jesus walked in before him, "leaving us an example that we should follow his steps." Every quickened child of God is deeply convinced of his utter helplessness and weakness in divine things; and he feels, to his very heart's core, in the inward recesses of his soul, that he is as weak as water against all temptations, and utterly unable to do a single thing that God can approve of, unless he is pleased to work it in him with his own powerful and blessed hand.

Until a man gets experimentally acquainted with temptation, he can never know anything of the weakness of the flesh--he may seem to have stood for years in the truth, and made a most flourishing profession, and yet be completely ignorant of his own heart, and of the mountains that lie on the road to glory. But, sooner or later, temptation will come upon him--and temptation, sooner or later, will prove him what he is. If he is nothing but a heady, high-minded professor, a powerful and suitable temptation will probably sweep him at once out of the path in which he has professed to walk--and even if he is a child of God, the first effect of it may be for a time to beat him down. The wind sometimes sweeps over the branches as though it would bow the noblest and strongest oak in the dust--and yet, when the blast has passed away, the tree springs again to its place. So a living soul, when the blast of temptation comes down violently upon it, may seem at first almost laid prostrate; and yet there is a secret strength in a living man, whereby, when the temptation has passed over, he is again restored to his place.

The dead tree has no vitality in it, so as to recover itself when the storm has passed over, and therefore it falls, and great is the fall of it; but where there is vitality in stem and root, there is a springing back of every branch and twig to its place, when the first gust of the storm has blown over. So it is with the living soul; "the root of the matter" is in it; the grace and teaching of God are in the heart; "underneath are the everlasting arms;" and the Lord his God upholds him with his powerful hand. So that though the first effect of temptation may seem to be almost overwhelming, so as to beat him utterly down, yet there is, by the grace and mercy of God, a returning to his standing, so as not to be utterly prostrated by the very roots.

And so with respect to sin. No man knows what sin really is, until its nature and power are experimentally made known to him. Many go on for years in a sort of dreamy profession of religion, knowing nothing experimentally of the amazing power of sin in their carnal minds. Many a professor walks consistently for years, sin all the while lying dead and torpid in him, until some mine, which Satan perhaps has been secretly digging for weeks, months, or years, suddenly explodes, and sets all the sin of his heart a fire; and he, not being possessed of grace, and God, therefore, not upholding him by his powerful hand, is at once driven into secret or open licentiousness--and hardly knows what sin is before he is plunged headlong into it.

A child of God never knows what he really is, and what a poor weak creature he is against temptation, until the power of sin is opened up in his carnal mind. But when sin is opened up, when temptation and his fallen nature come together, when Satan is permitted to blow a blast from hell into his carnal mind, and to suit the temptation to the lust, and the lust to the temptation, then a child of God begins experimentally to know the overwhelming power of sin, and to feel as utterly unable to stand against sin and Satan as to perform an immediate miracle before your eyes. But, by this painful experience, he learns his need of divine strength and the necessity of being kept by the power of God from falling a prey to his own corruptions. This unexpected discovery of his own weakness effectually convinces him that God himself must work in him deliverance from the power of evil, and "strengthen him with might by his Spirit in the inner man," against the swelling tide of his own corruptions, or sooner or later he must be utterly carried away by them.

I believe, in many cases, we go on for some time receiving doctrines as revealed in the Scriptures, and giving, as we think, our full adherence to them, being quite convinced they are true; but not being as yet 'experimentally' grounded in them, after a time we begin to find that we have only half learned them. For instance, we may, perhaps, for years have assented to this doctrine, that Christ's strength is made perfect in our weakness. We have heard ministers preach from it, we have approved of all they said upon it; we have been well convinced it is a gospel truth; but what did we know of it all the time experimentally? Why, perhaps, nothing, positively nothing, absolutely nothing. And so we continued ignorant of our own ignorance until some powerful temptation came upon us, or some lust or corruption was opened up in our heart, when we felt all our fancied strength give way, and found we had no more power to stand against this temptation, or to overcome that evil, than we had power to raise up the dead from their graves.

Thus we learn our need of divine strength; and we now no longer believe it merely upon the testimony of the written word, no longer receive it as a truth because good and gracious men preach it, but we receive it into our conscience as an experimental reality, the weight and power of which we have known for ourselves.

But the words of the text are very extensive. It does not say, "My God shall supply some of your need." but, "My God shall supply all your need." If, then, we are the people of God, we cannot come into any one state of mind, into any one exercise of soul, into any one perplexing circumstance, into any one spiritual or temporal trouble, to which this promise does not apply. If the word "all" could be struck out, what a blank it would leave! How it would foster the doubts, and fears, and suspicions, that arise in the mind! It would at once be suggested by unbelief, "God has not said 'all;' therefore your need is excluded."

The tempted soul would say, "My temptation is not there;" the poor creature, perplexed in providence, would say, "My providential trial is not there;" the tender conscience, groaning under the power of sin, would say, "My exercise is not there;" and thus all might be so continually bringing forward each his own exercises to his own peculiar exclusion, that, by the omission of that little word 'all', Satan might rob every child, of his manifested interest in this promise. And, therefore, to block him out, to keep the Church of God in its right place, as a needy dependant upon the divine bounty, and yet to open up a sweet source of consolation to the living family, that word "all" has been introduced by the blessed Spirit, that a child of God may never be in any circumstances, to which the promise should not apply.

But, my friends, we feel (those of us I mean whom God has taught anything of the truth) that the Lord must not only give us needs, in the first instance, but that he must from time to time keep alive a sense of those needs in our souls. There are many times with us, when we seem not to have a single spiritual need; when we are, in our feelings, as cold and carnal, careless and stupid, dead and unfeeling, as if a single groaning cry had never gone up out of our heart--as if there had never been any breathing after the presence of God, as if the power of truth had never once been felt, and as if we had no more to do with truth, and truth had no more to do with us, than if there were no God to know or fear, no Jesus to believe in or love, no Spirit to teach or lead us, no hell to dread, nor heaven to enjoy. Through this wretched carnality and recklessness we learn that an experience of our urgent needs must, by a divine power, be again and again brought into our hearts.

But what painful ways does the Lord employ to keep a feeling sense of these needs in exercise! It is not to stretch ourselves in an evening in our arm chair, and say--"I have this need, and I have that need; I will therefore go to the Lord with this need, and ask him, to supply that need!" No, that is not the way whereby the Lord usually raises up a sense of need in our souls; but he permits, in his providence, some powerful temptation to assault us that we would not have for the world; or he lays some heavy affliction upon us, that brings us down into the dust; or he brings some trouble which we would escape from if we could, and the very sight of which fills us with dread.

He thus raises up needs, by putting us into situations, which the flesh naturally shrinks from, and at which, if left to ourselves, we can only murmur and rebel. When he puts us, then, into these spots, where we would never have put ourselves, which we hate when we are put into them, and where we kick sometimes "as a wild bull in a net;" and when he keeps us down in these spots by his own powerful hand--then is the time, and that is the way, that he raises up needs in our souls. But wherever the Lord raises up, by the power of his blessed Spirit, these needs within, he, at the same time, mercifully enables us to pour them out at his footstool, and to ask him to supply them, because it is written upon our consciences that he alone can grant our desires, and mercifully appear on our behalf.

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