Hope, Yet No Hope 2
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I shall be accused, I know, of dispiriting you — I shall desire to plead guilty to the accusation; and if it shall even be urged again that I drive you todespair, I shall again plead guilty, and glory in the result. I wish to preach every one who would save himself into utter despair! If any man is hoping to save himself, I ask God that he may smite that hope dead on the spot, that it may be renounced for ever. Sinner! oh that you would consent to yield up all confidence in yourself, for then there would be hope for you!
Most men must have a secret hope somewhere of a false kind; for, look at the way in which they are employing themselves. The most of men are not seeking to escape from the wrath to come: they are busy in worldly things while hell is near them. Like idiots catching flies on board a ship which is in the very act of going down. Surely those men must have some fictitious hope somewhere, or they would not act like this. We see many people busy about their bodies, decorating their bodies when their soul is in ruin; like a man painting the front door when the house is in flames! Surely they must harbor some baseless hope which makes them thus insensible. We see men who do not quail and tremble, though they profess to believe the Bible which tells them that God is angry with them every day. Surely their quietness of heart must arise from some secret hope lurking in their spirits.
The rope of mercy is cast to the sinner, and he will not lay hold of it. Surely he cannot be such a fool as to love to die; he must have some hope somewhere that he can swim by his own exertions, and it is this hopefulness of the man in himself that is his ruin and his destruction. Until you are completely separate from all consciousness of hope in yourself, there is no hope that the gospel will ever be any power to you. But when you shall throw up your hands like a drowning man, feeling, "It is all over with me! I am lost, lost, unless a stronger one than I shall interpose." Oh sinner, then there is hope for you. If we can once get you to say, "One thing I know, I cannot save myself. One thing I feel, I must have a stronger arm than mine to rescue me from ruin." When you have come to this, O soul, we will begin to rejoice over you, and may God grant that our rejoicing may not be in vain!
II. We shall now turn to the second text. "And they said, there is no hope.
We will continue with our own plans — each of us will follow the stubbornness of his evil heart." Here we have NO HOPE — AND YET HOPE. When the sinner has at last been driven by stress of weather from the castle of his own confidence, then he flies to the dreary harbor of despair. He is convinced now that there is no hope in himself, and like a simpleton he goes to the other extreme, and concludes, "Then I cannot be saved at all." As if there were nobody in the world but himself, and as if he were to measure God’s power and God’s grace by his own merit and power.
Some before me, convinced of their own powerlessness, are ready to lie down in a fit of despair and die. "The preacher has been telling us there is no hope, then we will give up." My dear friend, I know what will be the result, if you go away with that impression — you will go off to your sins, fordespair is the mother of all sorts of evil. When a man says, "There is no hope of heaven for me;" then he throws the reins upon the neck of his lusts, and goes on from bad to worse. You will thoroughly misunderstand me if you go away with that impression. There is no hope for you in yourself, but there is hope for you in Him whom God has provided to be the Savior of such as you are. Hopelessness in self is what we want to bring you to, but hopelessness in itself, and especially in connection with God, would be a sin from which we would urge you to escape. If you are sitting down in despair, I want to speak to you first of the God of hope. Dear friend, there is that in God — Father, Son, and Spirit — which may remove your fears, so that you need never utter a single doubting word again.
You are saying, "I am full of sin;" that is true; and you are much fuller of sin than you think you are! "But I have been a great sinner." That is likely; and you are a greater sinner than you will ever know yourself to have been! "But I don’t feel my sinnership as I ought to do." That is very likely; and you never will do so. No man on earth ever did feel sin in all its guiltiness, for God alone knows the blackness of sin. "But I am altogether such a one that there is nothing in me to recommend me. I could almost wish I had been a great sinner, that I might feel a great repentance. I have nothing to recommend me." Now, think of the loving kindness of God the Father.
Do you remember how he revealed himself in that parable of the prodigal son? That prodigal son had been ungrateful, wicked — very wicked; he had spent his life in all sorts of vice, and had become filthy in person and loathsome in character. His associates were of the lowest race of men, and then brutes themselves. Yet the goodness which he had not in himself, his father had. He was all sin, but his father was all mercy! He was all iniquity, but his father was all loving kindness! Now can you not see, if the prodigal were here, we might say to him, "There is no hope for you in yourself.
Those rags cannot recommend you; the swine trough cannot be used as an argument." But then that would not be a ground for his stopping where he is, for "there is hope for you in your father; he is so good, so tender, he rejoices to receive his returning children." And, sinner, there is hope in God for you. His name is God, which means 'good'. He delights in mercy — it is his soul’s highest joy to clasp his Ephraims to his bosom. This very morning he has sent me to say to you, "Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool."
But you meet this invitation with another desponding suggestion. You say, "With what shall I come before the Most High God? I have sinned, and what shall I bring as a recompense? Rivers of oil and ten thousands of the fat of fed beasts, if I could bring them, would not be acceptable to him. If I had a mint of merits, if I had godly impressions, if I had high moral excellence, I would come with that to God, and hope to obtain a healing."
But hearken, sinner, do you not know the name of the second person in the Trinity? It is Jesus Christ, the Son. Now, if you need merit, has not he enough of it? For what cause do you think he lived on earth three and thirty years, and kept God’s law? Did he keep that for himself? Then what need for God to be a man, and to become subject to law at all? He must have kept that law for someone, then, not for righteous men, for such have kept the law themselves, he must have kept it for the unrighteous.
Now, can you not take that which Christ has wrought out, and take it to yourself, when he freely bids you take it? You talk of sin, but have you never heard that my Lord Jesus died? Why man, you have heard this hundreds of times; but I beg you open your eyes and see it. Do you see that cross, the center one of the three? Thieves hang upon the other two, but God himself hangs upon the one in the middle! God, in the form of Mary’s Son, hangs bleeding out his life in sufferings acute, vehement and unutterable! For whom does he die? Not for himself. What cause that God should be a man and die? He suffers; suffers for sin. For whose sin, then? Not for his own, for he had none. For the sins of good people? What is the need of that? He dies for the sins of those who have committed sins, for the sins of transgressors, such as you and I. Oh soul, do you not hear the voice that says, "Look unto me and live"? What, Jesus! Am I not to do anything, by way of merit? Am I not to be anything, by way of preparation? Am I to stand and simply look at you, and feel my sins forgiven? Blessed be your name!
What a simple plan of salvation! Now I feel my heart begin to melt. Now I hate the sins that nailed you there! Now do I give myself to you, to serve you all my life. This is good evidence of salvation when a man can thus speak: "I hate sin, and I desire to serve Christ." You can see that he is saved from the power of sin; the power of the cross has made him a new man! Oh sinner, if you have no merit, you need not wish for any. Take Christ in your hand, for he is made of God unto you, wisdom, righteousness, sanctification, and redemption; and all this for every soul of Adam born who trusts in him alone.
But I hear you complaining again, "Oh, but I have not the power to repent. You have told me this, and I cannot believe: I cannot soften my heart; I cannot do anything; I am so powerless. You have been teaching me that."
I know I have; but there is another person in the Trinity, and what is his name? It is the Holy Spirit. And do you not know that the Holy Spirit helps our infirmity? Though we know not what to pray for as we ought, yet he teaches us to pray. It is true you are darkness, but then he is your light. It is true you are naturally dead, but the Holy Spirit gives us life. And the light of God is the Holy Spirit as he shows himself to you. It is clear that you can do nothing without that Spirit; that should make you despair of self. But you can do everything with that Spirit. Now, lift that eye of yours which he has already taught to weep; lift that up to the throne and say, "My Father, if I may dare to call you by that name, help me to trust your Son! My God, I see in yourself a Father’s love, in your Son a Savior’s power, and in your Spirit the quickener’s life. Oh give me to feel yourself within me; or, O God, if I may not feel it I will still believe it, for you can not lie, and whether I have a comfortable evidence or not, I do this morning — utterly hopeless of anything in myself — I do this morning cast myself on you. "Lord, I believe; help my unbelief." Why, sinner, I do not know what it is that you may need, but I know one thing, it is provided for you in Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And resting upon the great Savior whom God has provided, there is hope for you, my dear fellow creature, there is the brightness of a ray of hope this very morning, only may God turn it from a possible into anactual hope, and give you a good hope of eternal life through believing in Jesus Christ.
Thus I have tried to turn you away from self to the Lord; but it may be I have some very hard case to deal with. And so, two or three suggestions by way of smiting at the despair which some of you feel. A great divine has said — and I think there is some truth in it — that a very great number of souls are destroyed through the fear that they cannot be saved. I think it is very likely. If some of you really thought that Christ could save you, if you felt a hope that you might yet be numbered with his people, you would say, "I will forsake my sins, I will leave my present evil way, and I will fly unto the strong for strength." Now though I have laid judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, and sought to put the axe to the tree of all creature confidence, yet there is hope in Jesus Christ. There is hope in Jesus Christ, my dear hearer, even for you, and I will give you these two or three hints.
In the first place, would it not be wise even if there were only a "peradventure," to go to Christ, and trust him on the strength of that? The king of Nineveh had no gospel message, he had simply the law preached by Jonah, and that very shortly and sternly. Jonah’s message was, "Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown;" but the king of Nineveh said, "Who can tell?" And having nothing to rest upon, not a single word of promise, he humbled himself before God, he and his people on the strength of a "Who can tell?" Ah, my dear hearers, take care lest the men of Nineveh rise up in judgment against you. You have got much more than a "Who can tell?" Oh sinner, you are saying, "I cannot be saved;" but I ask you, Who can tell?"But I do not feel that there is hope." Who can tell? "But I am such a sinner." Who can tell? "Oh, but I am such a dull, heavy spirit; I cannot feel: there cannot be mercy for me." But who can tell? Surely if but on the presumption of "Who can tell?" the men of Nineveh went and did find mercy, you will be inexcusable if you do not act upon the same, having much more than that to be your comfort. Go, sinner, to the cross, for who can tell?
But, in the next place, you have had many clear and positive examples. In reading Scripture through you find that many have been to Christ, and that there never was one cast out yet. If you had seen some repulsed, you might conclude that you must be among them, but not one has been rejectedby the Savior. Why should you be? We need not turn to books, there are living people here saved by grace. I myself am one. I had no more preparation for Christ than you have. I had not the shadow of anything to trust to any more than you have. When I heard the gospel precept, "Look unto me and be you saved, all you ends of the earth," I did look, and I am saved! Oh my soul, I am the witness for my Master that he is true! In a moment, no sooner had I looked than I had joy and peace, and I can promise you the like.
Those wounds of Christ still stream with mercy, that head crowned with thorns still beams with the splendor of grace. Do but look into his pierced side and you shall see a fount most deep and full, still flowing with blood and water to cleanse you, even you, from sin! Do not say you cannot come to Christ for he is not here; you cannot come upon your feet, but then your thoughts are the feet of your soul. Come to him in thought, come to him in confidence. Come to him in trust, and you cannot trust Christ and yet be cast away. You have living examples.
Moreover you have comfortable promises in the Word of God. I was thinking much yesterday of this promise — I wonder whether God has sent it to my heart for any of you — "Your hearts shall live that seek him." I was wondering whether I should preach from it, but anyhow it kept following me about — "Your hearts shall live that seek him." If you do seek him your heart shall live. Leap on the back of that promise, and let it bear you, as the Samaritan’s beast bore the dying man to an inn, where you may rest — I mean to Christ — where you may have confidence. Here is another. "Whosoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." Now you do call upon his name. There are many other promises — they have been quoted in your ears until you know them by heart. "Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely." And you know that precious one, "Come unto me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."
You see I had some black things to say at first — I had to tell you that the disease was incurable by natural means; but then the supernatural Physician can remove it. I had to tell you that the ship was sinking and could not be saved, but I have now to point you to the lifeboat, which can never be wrecked. I had to warn you that your own arm is palsied, but I have to assure you that the Lord’s arm is not shortened that it cannot save, neither is his ear heavy that it cannot hear. I had to remind you that you were hopeless bankrupts, and could not pay a farthing in the pound, but I have to assure you that he has paid all believers’ debts! I had to tell you that you were all so black in his sight that, in yourselves considered, you never could be accepted, but I have now to say, on the other hand, that every believer is so white and fair after being washed in Jesus’ blood, that he is without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing! Away, you broken cisterns.
Oh! for the hammer of God to dash you into shivers! But come, come, come you thirsty ones to the ever-flowing, over-flowing fountain! Here is nothing stinted! here is no shortness of supply! no illiberality of gift! Come as you are! The fountain flows freely and richly for you, who, having nothing in yourselves, are willing to have everything in Christ Jesus. Do not be saying, "There is no hope," for there is hope. There is more — there issecurity, there is certainty to every soul that trusts in Jesus.
To conclude, do you not know, poor sinner, you who believe in Jesus this morning — do you not know the news? Then I will tell you a secret. Do you not know that if you now prostrate yourself at the foot of the cross, you are God’s chosen one? Your name is engraved on the hand of Jesus, on the heart of God. Before the day-star knew its place or planets ran their round, before the primeval darkness was pierced by the sun’s first ray, you were dear to the heart of Deity — you are his elect, his beloved one — and do you not know that the mountains may depart and the hills be removed, but the covenant of his love shall never depart from you, neither shall his grace be removed, says the Lord, who this morning has manifested his mercy towards you. Though you are but just now converted, there is laid up for you in heaven a crown of life that fades not away. Jesus pleads for you this very day. He this day prepares one of the many mansions for your eternal dwelling-place. Be you of good courage. Angels are singing, heaven is rejoicing over’ you, the church on earth is glad concerning you; and one day, when the great Shepherd shall appear, you also shall appear with him in glory, and all this for you, poor helplessly ruined sinner; helpless in yourself, but saved in Christ Jesus.
May God add a blessing to this simple testimony this morning, and to him shall be the praise.
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