Hope, Yet No Hope

"You were wearied by all your ways, but you would not say, There is no hope." Isaiah 57:10. (False hope of self-salvation)

"And they said, there is no hope. We will continue with ourown plans; each of us will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart." Jeremiah 18:12.(Despair of true hope)

Who can understand the subtlety of the human heart? Well said the prophet, "The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked." The physician of the body had need be skillful to track disease to its secret origin and to follow it through all its mysterious pathways in the mazes of the human body; but he who has to deal with souls has a task harder far, inasmuch as sin is more subtle than the virus of the most incurable disease, and the way in which it intertwists itself with every power of humanity is even more marvelous than the strange influences of plague and pestilence upon the human body. Those whose business and office it is to deal with sick souls, set it as their great object to be instruments in the hands of God of bringing diseased souls to trust in the great salvation which God has provided in the person of our Lord Jesus Christ; and simple as such a work may seem to be, every truly experienced minister is brought to confess that it needs a divine art and omnipotent power to bring a soul to rest simply upon Christ.

All the subtlety of the human heart exerts itself to the utmost to prevent that heart from trusting in the Savior, and while evil is always cunning, it shows itself to be supremely so in its efforts to guard the cross against the approaches of sinners. By the cross, as the Savior said, the thoughts of many hearts are revealed: the cross manifests the subtlety of man, when we see his strugglings and contortions to avoid resting upon its glorious provisions of grace. There are two phases in spiritual life which well illustrate the deceitfulness of the heart. The first is that described in my first text, in which the man, though wearied in his many attempts, is not and cannot be convinced of the hopelessness of self-salvation; but still clings to the delusion that he shall be able somehow, he knows not how, to deliver himself from ruin. When you shall have hunted the man out of this, you will then meet with a new difficulty, which is described in the second text. Finding there is no hope in himself, the man draws the unwarrantable conclusion that there is no hope for him in God. In the first, you had to battle with his self-confidence, now you have to wrestle with his despair. It is self-righteousness in both cases! In the first case it is the soul content with self-righteousness, in the second place it is man sullenly preferring to perish rather than receive the righteousness of Christ.

I ask the children of God to pray that I may be enabled simply, but earnestly, to deal with men’s souls this morning. It is their conversion that I am aiming at. I shall neither strive to please your ears nor your tastes, nor do I court an opportunity for oratorical display; all I want is to lead the sinner, by God’s grace, out of himself, and then afterwards to lead him out from his self-despair; and oh! may God the Holy Spirit bring some souls by my means this morning to the foot of the cross, and may they look up and know themselves to be saved, through the finished sacrifice of our Great High Priest!

I. Considering the first text, we have to speak of A HOPE WHICH IS NO HOPE. "You were wearied by all your ways, but you would not say, There is no hope. You found renewal of your strength, and so you did not faint." This well pictures the pursuit of men after satisfaction in earthly things.

They will hunt the purlieus of wealth, they will travel the pathways of fame, they will dig into the mines of knowledge, they will exhaust themselves in the deceitful delights of sin, and, finding them all to be vanity and emptiness, they will become very perplexed and disappointed; but they will still continue their fruitless search. Wearied with the greatness of their way, they still stagger forward under the influence of spiritual madness, and though there be no result to be reached except that of everlasting disappointment, yet they press forward with as much ardor as if a full assurance of success sustained their spirits. Worldlings seem far more resolved to die than some Christians are to live; they are more desperate in seeking their own destruction than believers are in enjoying spiritual life. They are quite content because they have found mere physical life.

Living from hand to month is enough for them; that they are still alive, that they possess present comforts and present enjoyments, this contents the many. As for the future, they say, "Let it take care of itself;" as for eternity, they leave others to care for its realities; their present life is enough for them. Their motto is, "Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die." They have no foresight for their eternal state; the present hour absorbs them. Carnal minds pursue with all their might earth’s vanities, and when they are wearied in their pursuit they still do not say, "There is no hope," butchange the direction, and continue the idle chase. They turn to another and another of earth’s broken cisterns, hoping to find water where not a drop was ever discovered yet.

That, however, is not the subject of this morning. The text applies very eminently to those who are seeking salvation by CEREMONIES.

This is a very numerous and increasing class. It is getting to be the current and fashionable belief that we are to be saved by going to holy places, receiving priestly baptism, episcopal confirmation, eating consecrated bread, drinking hallowed wine, and repeating devout expressions. We are going back to the beggarly elements of Rome about as fast as we can, and in a very short time we shall see the whole of this country covered by an Anglican Popery which will be far more hard to deal with than the more manifest Popery of Rome.

It is surprising that in an age, which was supposed to be one of thought and common sense, men should so soon be dazzled with the gaudy toys of Romanism. I marvel that the childish processions, the babyism, the effeminate millinery, the infantile nurseryisms of Rome, should have charms for reasonable men and women. Some of the churches during the past week would have made little children scream with delight; they would have felt that they were in the prettiest nurseries and toyshops which they had ever seen. O age of folly, in which men think to worship God with displays fit only for children’s sports.

There may be some hearer here who is pursuing salvation by outward ceremonies. Your path is certainly a very tedious one, and it will end in disappointment. If you shall addict yourself to the fullest ceremonies, if you should be obedient to it in all its jots and tittles, keeping its fast days and its feast days, its vigils, and matins and vespers, bowing down before its priesthood, its altars, and its millinery, giving up your reason, and binding yourself in the fetters of superstition; after you have done all this, you will find an emptiness and a vexation of spirit as the only result. But it is probable that when you have once committed yourself to that course, you will go on, wearied with the road, but too bewitched to be able to leave it; pressing forward, unwilling to confess that you have been mistaken; conscious that you feel but little consolation, but yet pursuing your downward course as if glory surely shone before you. It is only grace that can enable us to follow Luther’s example, who, after going up and down Pilate’s staircase on his knees, muttering so many Ave Marias and Paternosters, called to mind that old text, "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God," and springing up from his knees forsook once and forever all dependence upon outward formalities, and abandoned the cloistered cell and all its austerities to live the life of a believer, knowing that by the works of the law there shall no flesh living be justified.

Yet, dear friends, albeit that I know only divine grace can turn you from the delusive path of vain ceremonies, I would like to suggest a doubt or two to you which may be helpful one of these days to make you choose a wiser course. Does it not seem to you to be inconsistent with the character of the God of nature that be should have instituted a plan of salvation so singularly complicated and theatrical as that which is now-a-days taught us by priests? Nature is simple: her grandeur lies in her simplicity. If you walk in the fields of our own happy land, or climb the lofty ranges of the Alps, you are delighted with the beautiful simplicity of nature, in which there is an utter absence of everything gaudy, showy, and theatrical.

Everything has a practical design, and even the colors of the flowers, which are not without intent and design, enable the plant to drink in certain rays of light, which shall best satisfy its need. There is nothing in nature for mere display; but you step inside a place of worship dedicated tosalvation by ceremonies, and I am persuaded that your taste will be outraged, if that taste has been formed upon the model of nature. Frequently, on the Continent, I turned with loathing from gaudily decorated churches, daubed with paint, smothered with gilt, and bedizened with pictures, dolls, and all sorts of baby prettinesses; I turned aside from them in uttering, "If your god accepts such rubbish as this he is no God to me; the God of yon rolling cloud and crashing thunder, yon foaming billow and towering rock, is the God whom I adore. Too sublime, too noble, too great-minded to take delight in your genuflections, and stage-play devotions."

When I beheld processions with banners, and crosses, and smoking censers, and saw men who claimed to be sent of God, and yet dress themselves like Tom fools, I did not care for their God, but reckoned that he was some heathenish idol whom I counted it my glory as a man to scoff at and to despise. Do not fall into the notion that the God of nature is different from the God of grace. He who wrote the book of nature wrote the book ofScripture, and writes the book of experience within the human heart. Do not therefore choose a way of salvation utterly at variance with the divine character.

Has it never struck you that ceremonial salvation would be a very wicked way of salvation? What is there, for instance, about drops of baptismal water which could make men better? What is there about confirmation that should assure you of the forgiveness of your sins? What is there about receiving a piece of bread and drinking a drop of wine that should confer grace? Might you not remain as bad at heart and as wicked after all this, as you were? And is it not a violation of the eternal principles of morality that a man should be endowed with grace while still his soul clings to sin?

Now, if there is no effect in water to make you hate sin, and no result from the priest’s hands to make you love God, and no result from sacramentsto make you holy and heavenly-minded, why can you trust in them? Surely there must be some sort of congruity between the means and the result! Surely it is immoral in the highest degree to tell a man that by outward things, which cannot change the life, he shall have his sin forgiven! We shall have the iniquity of the middle ages back again if we have the faith of the middle ages proclaimed, and from all that may God in his grace deliver us!

The votaries of superstition have furnished us with a very solemn argument, for many of them when they have lain dying have turned their eyes to other places, and have anxiously begged for full assurance of eternal life. Superstition, strange to say, has been truthful enough to reply, "I have no rest to offer you." For what does Rome offer when you have done all? Only Purgatory and its pains! It tells you that when you have done all, you may have to lie for hundreds of years in a place full of misery until you have been purged from sin. How very different from the gospel which the Word of God reveals to you, that whosoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ is saved not only from the guilt of sin but from the love of sin, is enabled to be holy, is made a new creature, and without any purgatorial cleansing shall ascend to his Father and his God to dwell with him for ever!

So simple, so God-like, so divine; how is it that so many cast it aside, and take up with these sillinesses which are the inventions of man? This whole book through, salvation is never said to be by anything done by priests; but salvation is everywhere spoken of as being by Christ through faith. There is not a place that gives a vestige of confidence to anybody who hopes to be saved by the performances of ritualism; but everywhere salvation is presented to those humble, contrite souls who know and trust the Savior’s blood.

Perhaps these words of mine may not apply to many of you, and therefore we will turn to another phase of the same thing. A great mass of people, even though they reject priestcraft, make themselves priests, and rely upon their good works.

A poor and wretched man dreamed that he was counting out gold. There it stood upon the table before him in great bags, and, as he untied string after string, he found himself wealthy beyond the treasures of Croesus. He was lying upon a bed of straw in the midst of filth and squalor, a mass of rags and wretchedness — but he dreamed of riches. A charitable friend who had brought him help stood at the sleeper’s side and said, "I have brought you help, for I know your urgent need." Now the man was in deep sleep, and the voice mingled with his dream as though it were part of it. The sleeper replied, therefore, with scornful indignation,

"Get out, I need no miserable charity from you; I am possessor of heaps of gold, can you not see them? I will open a bag and pour out a heap that shall glitter before your eyes." Thus foolishly he talked on, babbling of a treasure which existed only in his dream, until he who came to help him accepted his repulse and departed mournfully. When the man awakened he had no comfort from his dream, but found that he had been duped by it into rejecting his only friend.

Such is the position of every person who is hoping to be saved by his good works. You have no good works except in your dreams! Those things, which you supposed to be excellent are really defiled with sin and spoiled with impurity. Jesus stands this morning by you, and cries, "Soul, I have come from heaven to redeem you. If you had any good works, there had been no need for me to come to save you; but, inasmuch as you are naked, and poor, and miserable, I came to earth, and this face was bedewed with sweat of blood, and these hands were pierced, and this side was opened to work out your salvation. Take it; I freely present it to you." Will you, in your sleep, this morning, make that sad reply, "Jesus, we are rich and increased in goods, and have need of nothing? We have neither cursed your Father’s name, nor broken your Sabbath, nor done anything amiss"? If so, dear friends, you are resting upon a delusion, and will find it so when it is too late.

The way of salvation by works, if it were possible, would be a very wearisome way. How many good works would carry a man to heaven, would be a question, which it were very hard to answer. It would be such a way that though a man should work his fingers to the bone, yet he will never be able to climb up the precipice, for Sinai is too steep and high for mortal feet to force a passage to the skies up its terrible battlements.

The way of salvation by works is wholly contrary to what is revealed in the Bible, for if there is anything plain there, this is plain, "By the works of the law there shall no flesh living be justified, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." The way of salvation by works is a proud rebellious way, by whichman hopes to avoid humiliating himself before his God. How should the Lord bestow his favor upon the man who refuses to trust in his own dear Son? Shall the Lord yield to save men, and yet let them remain proud and boastful? Shall he save a man who refuses to owe that salvation to divine mercy? You weariest yourself, my hearer, in your resolutions, and doings, and workings, in the greatness of your way, and yet you will not confess that "There is no hope." May the Lord force that conviction upon you until you shall turn aside from all self-confidence, and rest in Jesus Christ alone!

Many people are looking for salvation to another form of self-deception, namely, the way of repentance and reformation. It is thought by some that if they pray a certain number of prayers, and repent up to a certain amount, they will then be saved as the result of their praying and repenting. This again is another way of winning salvation, which is not spoken of in Scripture. This is a way by which neither law or gospel receive honor. To repent is a Christian’s duty, but to hope for salvation by virtue of that alone is a delusion of the most fearful kind. The reason for salvation lies not in my repentings, but in Christ’s sufferings; not in my renunciation of sin, but in Christ’s having borne my sin in his own body on the tree. Oh, that by God’s grace, I may be done with relying upon anything that comes from myself!

The idea of trying to repent in order to save yourself by it is so ridiculous that it has sometimes reminded me of the old story of the Dutchman, who, having no family, but having a great many cousins, left his estate in this way. All the cousins were to meet in the Town Hall on a certain day, and whosoever could cry for him first, and could honestly say he wept out of sorrow for his death, should have the estate. Now there was a very great difficulty here, because of the remarkable mingling of feelings. Could they get themselves into a state of mind so as to lament his death, et the largeness of the fortune and the desirableness of the estate at once dried up the tears. I forget how the story ends, but it sufficiently shows the impossibility of lamenting in order to gain an object. The hopeful joy and the sorrow, if both possible in themselves, would effectually neutralize each other.

The 'tear of true repentance' must be as much the gift of God as heaven itself, and if we were to have an offer to be saved on account of our repenting, repenting would be an impossibility to us. Repentance is a part of salvation, and when Christ saves us he saves us by making us repent, but repentance does not save. Salvation is the work of God, and the work of God alone. Now why do you weary yourself in this way also? for surely in it "There is no hope."

My drift in all this rambling talk is just this. Whatever it is, my dear hearer, that you are looking to as a ground of confidence — if it be anything inyourself — I beg you give up all hope, for though you have not seen it to be true, it is nevertheless assuredly so that there is no hope whatever by it. Where you have to do with the work it will be marred and spoiled, and will end in confusion. Salvation is of the Lord, and your deliverance from your present state of sin and guilt must come from the right hand of the Most High; it cannot in any degree, or in any measure, come from yourself.You have destroyed yourself, that is, your work; but your help must be found in another from the first to the last.

Next Part Hope, Yet No Hope 2

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