A Supply for Every Need 2
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2. The SUPPLY. And this leads us to consider the second thing that we mentioned as contained in the text; which is supply. "My God shall supply all your need."
Oh! what should we do without a supply? Need could not satisfy us. Many seem to rest upon needs; they have, they say, a sense of their lost and ruined state, are troubled with doubts and fears, have exercises of mind, and are often assailed by temptations. So far, so good. But their error is, that they rest upon these exercises as satisfactory evidences of a work of grace. Needs are very good when they lead the soul to seek after and prize their supply. But can mere need satisfy us? Suppose we had this year a deficient harvest--suppose the Lord, in anger for our sins as a nation, were to smite down the very wheat from the soil, and not give us our daily bread, would need and famine satisfy us? Suppose the noble river Thames, which flows by this metropolis, were dried up, so that no ships freighted with merchandise could come up to the city of London, would we think, in that case, that need would serve for supply--and that a dry channel would be as good as the present liquid highway?
The need indeed makes the supply precious; but who could rest upon the need? No, it is the supply; it is the Lord causing, year after year, the ground to bring forth its abundant harvests, that supplies our table with bread. It is the same munificent God sending rain, and causing the sea to ebb and flow, that bids the noble river go down into the sea, and bring up the ships. So it is spiritually. It is not having needs (though spiritual needs are evidences of the divine life, and are so far good) but it is the supply of the needs, which is the real marrow of vital godliness--and in the receiving of this supply does all the enjoyment and comfort of spiritual religion consist.
Now the Lord has promised that he will "supply all our need;" that we shall not pine away in need, shall not die of hunger, shall not perish with thirst, shall not be utterly carried away by temptation, shall not be borne down the current of sin into hell; but that he will graciously supply those needs which he himself has kindled in the soul. And does he not, from time to time, graciously supply them? Do you not know it so, from time to time, in soul experience, that there is a supply opened up in proportion to the reality and depth of your needs?
Have you not sometimes been under heavy afflictions, and deeply, sensibly needed the hand of God to appear, either to remove the affliction or else to give you patience and resignation under it? And has not the Lord, in his own time and way, done both for you? Has he not sometimes removed the affliction? and has he not at other times given you patience and resignation to submit to it, and to look up unto him that it may work in you "the peaceable fruit of righteousness"?
So with respect to temptations--did we ever go to the Lord with a temptation, which was not more or less taken away? I have known what it is to labor under a temptation so strong and powerful, that I thought it would utterly overthrow me--and I have known what it is to go with groans, and sighs, and tears to the Lord to take the temptation away--and I have had it taken away, so as not to come with the same power again. It is the removing of temptation, in answer to prayer, in this marked and sensible way, that raises up in our souls gratitude to God for his delivering hand.
But temptations, at least, many of them, are such as people naturally love, and so far from their being a pain, they are a pleasure to them, to gratify which is their chief delight. A change, therefore, must take place in us before we can desire to be delivered from them. Few will sincerely and spiritually go to the Lord, and cry from their hearts to deliver them from the power of a temptation, until it presses so weightily upon their conscience, and lies so heavy a burden upon their soul, that none but God can remove it. But when we really feel the burden of a temptation; when, though our flesh may love it, our spirit hates it; when, though there may be in our carnal mind a cleaving to it, our conscience bleeds under it, and we are brought spiritually to loathe it and to loathe ourselves for it; when we are enabled to go to the Lord in real sincerity of soul and honesty of heart, beseeching him to deliver us from it, I believe, that the Lord will sooner or later, either remove that temptation entirely in his providence or by his grace, or so weaken its power that it shall cease to be what it was before, drawing our feet into paths of darkness and evil.
As long, however, as we are in that state of which the prophet speaks, "Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty" (Hosea 10:2) as long as we are in that carnal, wavering mind, which James describes--"A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways;" as long as we are hankering after the temptation, casting longing, lingering side glances after it, rolling it as a sweet morsel under our tongue, and, though conscience may testify against it, yet not willing to have it taken away; there is no hearty cry, nor sigh, nor spiritual breathing of our soul, that God would remove it from us.
But when we are brought, as in the presence of a heart-searching God, to hate the evil to which we are tempted, and cry to him that he would, for his honor and for our soul's good, take the temptation away, or dull and deaden its power; sooner or later (I can speak from soul experience on more than one occasion, and, if I thought it right to mention them, could bring forward several instances), the Lord will hear the cry of those who groan to be delivered from those temptations, which are so powerfully pressing them down to the dust.
So with respect to the Lord's strength. When is it we find DIVINE strength? It is only when we are experimentally sensible of our own weakness, and feel utterly unable to think, to speak, or to do anything acceptable in God's sight; when weakness is not a doctrine, but an experience; when man's thorough helplessness is believed by us, not merely because we read it in the Scripture, but because we really know it in our own hearts. Then it is, and then alone, that we find the strength of the Lord made perfect in weakness. If we go forward in our own strength, we are sure to get baffled; none of our anticipations are realized; disappointment and mortification are the only crop we reap. But when we feel all weakness and emptiness, we find at times secret and unexpected strength communicated to us.
So with respect to righteousness. When we go to the Lord, hating ourselves, abhorring and loathing ourselves in dust and ashes, and see no more reason why God should have mercy upon us than upon the vilest sinner who is daringly fighting against his Majesty, this is the time when he often gives to the soul a sweet testimony of its interest in Christ's righteousness. When we go puffed up with some conceit of our own righteousness, and thinking, "surely we are not so bad as others, surely there are those who are or have been more inconsistent than we," and thus, as Berridge says, "squint and peep another way, some creature-help to spy," there is a denial, on the Lord's part, to indulge us with a spiritual view of Christ's glorious righteousness. But when the soul stands naked and bare, clothed with humility, and filled with contrition, then the Lord, from time to time, opens up a sight of Christ's glorious righteousness as unto all and upon all those who believe.
And so with respect to every kind of deliverance; for instance, deliverances in providence. Until we get into providential difficulties, we know nothing of providential deliverances; until we get into straits, where our own wisdom is utterly at fault, we do not find the Lord stretching forth his hand to guide and deliver us. But when we are brought to this point, that our way is completely blocked up, that we do not know what step to take, and unless the Lord appears--we must certainly go wrong--when, under these exercises, we are brought honestly and sincerely to cry to the Lord mercifully to appear on our behalf, sooner or later, a secret light will be cast upon the path, and there will be a fulfillment of that gracious promise, "Your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, this is the way, walk in it, when you turn to the right hand, and when you turn to the left." Isa 30:21
It was so with the children of Israel. Until they had come out of Egypt, and "the wilderness had shut them in," until they were encamped by the Red Sea, with the rolling waves before, and their furious enemies behind, there was no deliverance from the power and rage of Pharaoh. But the Lord did not tell them there should be deliverance in that way. He left the deliverance to come when the danger came; yet no sooner did the danger come than the deliverance came with it. Have we not ever found it thus? and thus we shall continue to find it. It is when the danger comes, when the perplexity arises, and we have no strength, wisdom, or power, to deliver ourselves, that then, and not until then, the deliverance comes.
We would not know what a God the Lord was, unless things were thus managed. We profess to believe in an Almighty, All-present, All-seeing God. But we would be highly offended if a person said to us, "you do not really believe that God sees everything, that he is everywhere present, that he is an Almighty Jehovah;" we would almost think that he was taking us for an atheist. And yet 'practical atheists', we daily prove ourselves to be.
For instance, we profess to believe that God sees everything, and yet we are plotting and planning as though he saw nothing. We profess to know that God can do everything, and yet we are always cutting out schemes, and carving out contrivances, as though he were like the gods of the heathen, looking on and taking no notice. We profess to believe that God is everywhere present to relieve every difficulty and bring his people out of every trial, and yet when we get into the difficulty and into the trial, we speak, think, and act, as though there were no such omnipresent God, who knows the circumstances of our case, and can stretch forth his hand to bring us out of it.
Thus the Lord is obliged (to speak with all reverence) to thrust us into trials and afflictions, because we are such blind fools, that we cannot learn what a God we have to deal with, until we come experimentally into those spots of difficulty and trial, out of which none but such a God can deliver us. This, then, is one reason why the Lord often plunges his people so deeply into a sense of sin; it is to show them what a wonderful salvation from the guilt, filth, and power of sin, there is in the Person, blood, and righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. For the same reason, too, they walk in such scenes of temptation; it is in order to show them what a wonder working God he is in bringing them out. This too is the reason why many of them are so harassed and plagued; it is that they may not live and act as though there were no God to go to, no Almighty friend to consult, no kind Jesus to rest their weary heads upon; it is in order to teach them experimentally and inwardly those lessons of grace and truth which they never would know until the Lord, as it were, thus compels them to learn, and actually forces them to believe what they profess to believe. Such pains is he obliged to take with us; such poor scholars, such dull creatures we are. No child at a school ever gave his master a thousandth part of the trouble that we have (so to speak) given the Lord to teach us.
If your child were as stupid, as dull, as intractable, in learning his A B C's, as we are learning the A B C's of religion, I know not how many times a day he would be put into the corner; I know not how many cuffs our natural impetuosity might not be provoked to give him. But we are such stupid wretches, that God has actually to put us into places where he would not otherwise put us, in order that we may learn the letter of the great A of true religion; in order just to teach us, as the prophet says, "line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, and there a little." But when we have got a little way into our alphabet, such dull scholars are we that we almost immediately forget it all, and have to go back, and begin with letter A again. So we go on learning and forgetting, learning and forgetting; and, with all the pains taken with us, when we most wish to put our lesson into practice, feeling as if we had not yet learned a single truth aright.
In order, then, to teach us what a God he is, what a merciful and compassionate High Priest--in order to open up the heights, and depths, and lengths, and breadths of his love, he is compelled to treat, at times, his people very roughly, and handle them very sharply; he is obliged to make very great use of his rod, because he sees that "foolishness is so bound up in the hearts" of his children that nothing but the repeated "rod of correction will ever drive it far from them."
Now to learn religion in this way, is not like getting hold of a few doctrines in the 'judgment', and then setting up to be a very bright professor; like a tradesman who borrows all his capital, and then, by puffing and advertising drives for a time a flourishing trade, until the bubble bursts. God's people cannot thus borrow from books and ministers a number of doctrines and texts, and then set up with these as a stock in trade. No; they have to be emptied and stripped of all such borrowed stock and brought into darkness and confusion, that they may learn all they really know from the lips of the Lord himself. They have to pass through many painful exercises and troubles, and all for one purpose--that they may be scholars in the school of tribulation, and thus walk in the footsteps of a suffering Jesus.
3. The CHANNEL. And this leads us to the Channel, through which God supplies all the varied needs of his people. "My God," says Paul, "shall supply all your need, according to his riches in glory, by Christ Jesus."
Oh! If there was no Christ Jesus, there could be no "supply." Howling in hell would our miserable souls be, unless there was a Mediator at the right hand of the Father--a blessed Jesus, full of love, pity, and power, co-equal and co-eternal in his Divine nature with the Father and the Holy Spirit, and yet the God-Man in whom "it has pleased the Father that all fullness should dwell." If there was not such a blessed Mediator at the right hand of God, then not one drop of spiritual comfort, not one particle of hope, not one grace or fruit of the Spirit to distinguish us from the damned in hell, would ever be our lot or portion. Oh! we should never forget the channel through which these mercies come; we should never, for one moment, think that they could come through any other person or in any other way, than through God's only begotten Son, now in our nature, at his right hand, as our Advocate, Mediator, and Intercessor with the Father.
And this supply is "according to the riches of his glory;" which, I believe, is a Hebrew idiom, signifying his glorious riches– riches so great, so unlimited, so unfathomable, raising up the soul to such a height of glory, that they may well be called "glorious." And these "in Christ Jesus," stored up in him, locked up in him, and supplied freely out of him, just according to the needs and exercises of God's people.
Oh! my friends, when the channel through which these mercies come into the soul, is in a measure opened up to the eye of faith--when we see that we have not to deal with pure Deity, with offended purity, with a justly incensed Jehovah, with a holy God, who, with one glance of his righteous eye, could frown our souls into a never-ending hell, but have to plead with "the God and Father of the Lord Jesus Christ," with a merciful God, who has sent his dear Son into the world that those who believe in his name should not die, but live forever. When we see, also, by the eye of faith what this blessed God-Man has done and suffered--when we mark him coming down from heaven to earth, when we view him in the manger, when we trace all his sorrowing and suffering path through life, and see him at the end suspended between two malefactors, groaning out that agonizing cry, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"--when we accompany his dead body to the tomb, and see him raised up thence with power and glory, to sit at the right hand of the Father--oh! I say, when faith receives this blessed truth of Christ's mediation in the love of it, in the sweetness of it, and in the power of it, how it opens up a way for the poor and needy to plead at Jehovah's footstool? How it encourages them to go to the throne of grace, with all their needs, troubles, and exercises! And how it draws forth their soul into admiring views, hopes, and love towards the Lord Jesus, for having done and suffered such things on their behalf!
The channel, then, through which every gospel blessing and mercy comes into the soul, is through the Mediator at God's right hand--and in him God can be "just and the justifier of him that believes in Jesus." This is our plea. Not that WE have done anything, not that we can do anything; not that we have lived good and holy lives; not that we have said, or done this or that--all such carnal pleas and vain hopes must be swept away. Our only warrant to draw near to the throne is this--the blessed teachings of the Spirit in the soul, whereby he gives the eye of faith to see Jesus, and to approach the Father through his atoning sacrifice and his meritorious obedience, as the Scripture speaks, "for through him we both have access by one Spirit, unto the Father."
And as through this channel alone do our prayers flow upward, so through this channel, and through this channel only, does every mercy, and every blessing, and every grace flow downward into the hearts of those who fear God. If it were not so, long ago must we have died in despair--if it were not so, long ago must God have banished us from his presence forever. But now that there is One in our nature, who has suffered, bled, and died, and made an atonement for sin, God can be holy and merciful at the same moment; he can forgive sin, and yet not have his justice for a moment sullied.
If, then, you are a child of God, a poor and needy soul, a tempted and tried believer in Christ, "God shall supply all your need." It may be very great; it may seem to you, sometimes, as though there were not upon all the face of the earth such a wretch as you, as though there never could be a child of God in your state; so dark, so stupid, so blind and ignorant, so proud and worldly, so presumptuous and hypocritical, so continually backsliding after idols, so continually doing things that you know are hateful in God's sight. And if you think that you are the worst, I could find you a companion; I could find you one who could walk side by side with you in every step; who could put his arm into yours, and compare notes, and if you thought yourself one of the basest, vilest, and worst of all who are hanging upon Jesus, could, from the same lips whose breath you now hear, whisper the same things into your ear that you might whisper into his.
But whatever our need be, it is not beyond the reach of divine supply; and the deeper our need, the more is Jesus glorified in supplying it. It is not 'little sinners' that will go to heaven; little sinners can know nothing experimentally of the blood of the atonement. It is not those who can make themselves religious, that God will take any pains with--it is not those who can make a ladder and climb up the rounds of their own piety, that will reach the heavenly Canaan--but those will run the race and gain the prize who often feel themselves too base and too black, too filthy and too vile to be saved. It is not those who are walking upon the stilts of their own religion, and raising themselves so many feet higher, who are accepted by him who searches the heart--but it is those, who have no power to walk at all, and who cannot move a single step except as God is pleased to "work in those who which is well pleasing in his sight," who eventually will come off more than conquerors through him that loved them, and gave himself for them.
Do not say then, that your case is too bad, that your needs are too many, your perplexities too great, your temptations too powerful. No case can be too bad; no temptations can be too powerful; no sin, except the sin against the Holy Spirit, can be too black; no enigma can be too hard; no state in which the soul can get is beyond the reach of the almighty and compassionate love, that burns in the breast of the Redeemer.
But do you try him? How many there are who seem to have needs, and yet their needs are not pressing enough to force the cry for mercy out of their souls! How many in religion are like some people, naturally, that are ailing all their lives, and yet are never bad enough to go to a doctor! They have their dyspepsia, and their bilious attacks, and their rheumatic pains, and their nervous complaints, but they go croaking and croaking on, and yet do not apply to any physician, or medical man; they are not bad enough for that. So are there not many of God's people, who go croaking and croaking on with their doubts and fears, questionings and suspicions, convictions and complaints, and their other numerous ailments, but in whom the disease of sin is not so deeply felt as to make them sigh, cry, and groan out their souls, and breathe their very hearts into the ears of Jehovah Rophi, that that blessed Physician would apply the balm of his atoning blood to their bleeding consciences?
Until we know what it is to have a disease deeply fixed in our vital parts, we shall never have recourse to the Almighty Physician; until we are brought into the depths of poverty, we shall never know nor value Christ's riches; and until our own case is utterly unmanageable by our own wisdom, we shall never find that Christ is made "wisdom" to his church. But when we come into those desperate circumstances, that all the help of men and angels combined could never bring a moment's peace into our hearts--when we come into those straits and difficulties, wherein God must appear, or we must perish at his feet, the supply then will not be long delayed--the answer to prayer then will not be long in tarrying--the wheels of deliverance will be heard approaching; and the Conqueror who rides in that chariot, the bottom of which is "paved with love," will come into the heart of his Hephzibah, and ravish her with his smile.
But as long as we can do without him, he, so to speak, will do without us; as long as we trifle and play with our ailments, our doubts, and fears, the Lord will stand back--but when nobody can bless us but he, and nobody can do us good but he, he will not be long in tarrying. "His heart is full of tenderness, His affections melt with love" for poor sinners. He is now behind the lattice, hidden only by the wall; he only waits to hear a few more knocks; and when the soul is so pressed down that it cannot do without him, he will shine from behind the lattice, blessedly appear, and make it happy in himself.
It is a truth, then, which will stand forever, that "God will supply all our need, according to his riches in glory, by Christ Jesus." If any of his people lived and died without their spiritual need being supplied (I say it with all reverence), God would forfeit his word. But he will never allow any one to charge him with that; he will never let any one say that he was not faithful to his promise. He will prove, before men and devils, saints and sinners, that he has never given a promise in the Scripture which he has not fulfilled, or which he will not fulfill to the very letter.
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