The Chariots of Amminadab 2

We may sometimes, without any willfulness on our part, as a necessary result of the weakness of our nature, or the stress of our toil and care, have brought ourselves into a condition in which we cannot feel like the chariots of Amminadab, and it is no use for us to attempt it. The body does affect the soul materially; and a thousand outside agencies will tell upon our mental susceptibilities. I have known people come into this Tabernacle who have, perhaps, been annoyed with somebody in their pew, or somebody outside. It ought not to be so, but it is so. A little fly buzzing about one's face- as small a thing as that, will disturb one's devotion, so that you cannot pray as you would and as you desire.

And then, alas, our sins are a much more serious hindrance to our devotion. A sense of guilt puts us into such a state that we cannot be bold in our faith and childlike in our confidence when we appear before God. Perhaps we have been angry. How can we come before the Lord calmly when our spirit has been just now tossed with tempest? Probably we have been seeking the world, and going after it with all our might. How can we suddenly pull up, and put all our strength into a vigorous seeking of the kingdom of God and his righteousness in a moment?

It is possible, too, that there is a sick child at home, or a wife lying suffering, or serious losses and crosses about business and domestic affairs. Perhaps one has a very heavy heart to bring before the Lord. Now God's grace can help us to overcome all these things, and can even make our souls like the chariots of Amminadab. We do need grace for such emergencies. The soul, in its different phases and states, has need of help from the sanctuary to which it repairs.

"Well," perhaps one here will say, "I always do what I think right every Sunday in much the same manner. I always pray the same, and I don't know but what I can always sing God's praises the same." Yes, let me answer our good friend, I have on doubt of your thorough sameness, or of your habitual self-content. If you were to ask one of the statues in St. Paul's Cathedral how it felt, I have no doubt it would say that it always felt the same, because it never had any feeling. Appeal to anything destitute of life, you will find that it has no change. But where there is life, and that which is intensely delicate-- spiritual life, and where it is placed in circumstances so hostile to it as the circumstances which surround us here, you will find that not only the revolutions of the seasons, but the variations of the temperature, affect it.

And every man who has this life in him experiences such changes. We have read of those who have no changes, and therefore they fear not God. The fact that a believer cannot at all times draw near to God as his spirit would desire, becomes accordingly the key which interprets to him the grace and goodness whereby he sometimes gains access after a manner that surprises and delights his spirit.

III. This leads cheerfully up to our third observation, THERE ARE SEASONS WHEN OUR HEART IS SWEETLY MOVED TOWARDS GOD. "Before ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadab." Have you not proved welcome opportunities when all your thoughts have been quickened, enlivened, and stimulated to activity in the highest degree about your highest interests? At such times we have ceased to moan--

"Our souls, how heavily they go

To reach eternal joys"

and we have been all wings, and could soar and mount aloft. Like David, we could have danced before the ark of God for very joy, and if any had said to us that we might ourselves fall by our enthusiasm, while we seemed vile by our hilarity, we should have replied that we purposed to be viler still.

All within us was awake; there was not a slumbering faculty. Our memory told us of the goodness of the Lord in days gone by; and our hopes were regaled by the mercy which we had not tasted yet, but which was made sure to us by promise, and brought near to us by faith. Our faith was active and bright of eye. Our love especially shed a clear light over all our prospects. Oh, we have had blessed times, when our soul has been light and rapid as the chariots of Amminadab!

And at such times we were conscious of great elevation of spirit. The chariots of Amminadab were those of a prince. And oh, we were no more low, and beggarly, and groveling, but we saw Christ, and were made kings and princes and priests with him. Then we longed to crown his head. Then we could have performed martyrs' deeds. Then we were no cowards, we were afraid of no foes, we sat down at the feet of Jesus, and thought everything little compared with him; sufferings for his sake would have been a gain, and reproach would have been an honor.

We had princely thoughts then, large, liberal, generous, capacious thoughts concerning Christ and his people, his cause, and his conquests: our souls were like the chariots of Amminadab. At the same time they were full of power; for, when the chariots of Amminadab went forth, who could stop them? Who could lay his hand upon the reins and turn the coursers as they went onward in their mighty tramping?

Such was our spirit. We laughed at thoughts of death, and poured contempt upon the trials of life. We were "strong in the Lord and in the power of his might." Oh, what splendid times we have had when God has been with us. Do you remember when you had them? I recollect, when newly converted, how full my spirit was of love and holy triumph, like the chariots of Amminadab. Yours, no doubt, were much like mine. The love of your espousals was upon you. With what pleasing rapture you embraced your Lord and said, "I will never let him go."

Stronger is love than death or hell. You felt it to be so. You flamed and burned and glowed, and though in yourself you were like low brushwood, yet you were like the bush in the desert, that burned with fire because God was in your soul. Do you remember that? Well, now, since then, in private prayer sometimes, you have had gracious access, and meditation has been added to prayer, and the love of Christ has come in upon you like a great flood tide, and drowned everything in your soul except itself.

There have been periods when a sense of the eternal, immutable, never-ending love of God, his electing sovereign favor, that love of God-- the love of God in giving his Son for you, have told upon your spirit with a mighty influence that has laid you prostrate for very joy, when you could not speak, because words were too poor to express the emotions of your soul. You had to feel the force of James Thomson's hymn of the seasons: "Come, then, expressive silence, contemplate his praise," for you could not speak it.

You know it has been so with you sometimes, and has not it been so sometimes under the word, when you have been ready to stand up and clap your hands for joy? Have not I seen gratitude and exultation reflected on your faces sometimes when the Lord has been present in the preaching of the gospel, and the truth has come to you like marrow and fatness from the King's own hands, until Dr. Watts has proved to be a faithful interpreter of the very scene and circumstance that ravished your heart--

"The King himself draws near
And feasts his saints today;
Here we may sit and see him here,
And love, and praise, and pray."

Oh, yes! in God's house you have known the days of heaven upon earth. Might I speak for the rest of you I should pronounce the choicest periods of fellowship those we have found at the Lord's table. When the bread has been broken and the wine poured out down in the Lecture Hall, he has been with us in the breaking of bread. If ever we have come near to Christ, surely it has been in that blessed communion. These are the windows of agate and the gates of carbuncle through which Christ comes to his people in the ordinances he has ordained. We will never slight them. We cannot.

The Master puts such reality and fullness of joy into them. Apart from him they are idols; but with him, when he is there, when we have the real presence not the superstitious presence some speak about, but the real presence which his own Spirit imparts, and our waiting souls participate-- ah, then we have said --

"No beams of cedar or of fir
Can with his courts on earth compare,
As myrrh new bleeding from the tree,
Such is a dying Christ to me."

Not infrequently too have I known that the Lord has appeared to his people and warmed their hearts when they have been 'working for him'. Some idle, indolent, sluggish professors who have used the ordinances have not found benefit in the ordinances, because the Lord has intended to rebuke their sloth; but when they have got up and gone forth among the poor, when they have gone forth to visit the sick, the sorrowful, and the dying, they have heard such delightful expressions from the lips of holy, suffering men and women, or felt their hearts so kindled by a sight of divine compassion in the midst of desperate poverty and gracious pardon for grievous sin, that a quickening has come over them; and whereas they did not seem to care before whether souls were lost or saved, they have gone out into the world with zeal to win fresh trophies for the Messiah, their hearts being like the chariots of Amminadab, through the benefits they have received from Christian service.

A great many Christian people never will be happy, and never fully alive to the destinies that wait on their Redeemer, until they get something to do to give them an interest in those mighty issues. The rule of the Christian life is, "If any man will not work, neither shall he eat." If you will not serve God as Christians, you shall not feed upon the sweet things of the kingdom to your own soul's comfort. A little more service, and your soul would become like the chariots of Amminadab.

Beloved, there is no need that I should enlarge; I merely say this to bring up your grateful memories that you may thank God for what he has done, for remember whatever he has done in the past he will do again in the future. When the Lord has come once to his people he says, "I will see you again, I will come to you again, and your hearts shall rejoice." Of everything he has ever given you, he has got as much in store, and he is quite as able to give it to you now as he was before. You have never gone so high in joy but you may go higher yet; you have never drunk such draughts from the well of Bethlehem as left the well empty; you shall drink again of it.

Do not say, "I had those sweet times when I was young, I shall never have them again." You shall have precious times again. Get back to your first love, dear brother, dear sister; get forward to a higher love than ever you had, for God will help you. Say you, "I look back and think --

"What peaceful hours I once enjoyed!
How sweet their memory still!
But they have left an aching void
The world can never fill."

Thank God for that ache. Bless God for the aching void. If your soul aches for God, he, will be to your relief before long. Whenever a soul puts up a flag of distress at the mast-head, he may be sure that Christ is on the look-out for just such a soul. He has thrown up the windows of heaven, and wherever he sees a soul that does what is right and longs to find joy and reconciliation with God, he will come to it, and before long it shall be better for you than even the chariots of Amminadab, and more desirable.

IV. Our last observation is this -- SOMETIMES THE SWEET SEASONS COME TO US WHEN WE DO NOT EXPECT THEM. "Before ever I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadab." Some poor hearts do not reckon ever to have these joys again. They say, "No, no, they are all gone; the last leaf has blown from the tree; the last flower has faded in the garden. My summer is past. It is all over with me!

That is the bitter complaint and the hollow murmuring of unbelief. But the Lord for whom you wait can suddenly appear, and while you are saying hard things of yourself, he can refute them with the beams of his countenance. Even at this very moment you may stand like Hannah, a woman of sorrowful spirit, feeling as if you would be sent away empty; yes, and God's servant himself may address you with rough words as Eli did to her, and may even tell you that you are drunken, when it is deep grief that enfeebles your steps and chokes your voice; and all the while the Lord may have in store for you such a blessing as you have never dreamed of; and he may say to you, "Go your way, my daughter; I have heard your petition, your soul shall have its desire." Before ever I was aware, while my unbelief led me to think such a thing impossible, you have made me like the chariots of Amminadab. "Before ever I was aware," as if it came upon me almost without my own consent. Glad enough I was when it did come, but it took me by surprise; it led me captive.

Now, is not that the way that the Lord dealt with you when you were not aware of it, when you had no reason to expect him, when you found and felt yourself to be utterly lost, ruined, and undone? Did he not surprise you with his mercy, and arrest you with his loving-kindness? Again, you are diminished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow. There is nothing that leads you to expect a season of joy; you are just as empty and unworthy as you can be; you feel as if your heart were of stone, and you cannot stir it, and you are saying, "I only wish I could enjoy the freedom that my companions have, and keep the solemn feasts with their holy gladness: but alas for me! I am afraid I have got to be a mere mechanical Christian, without the lively instincts and lofty inspirations of spiritual worship."

Thus are you writing bitter things against yourself. Oh, beloved, the Lord is looking down upon you now as his son or daughter, as his own dear child, and is about to surprise you with his infinite love! Let me give you one text to put into your mouth and take home with you. The Lord has said, concerning every one of his people, "You are all fair, my love; there is no spot in you." "Why, now, I am all covered over with spots and blemishes," you say, "and have no beauty." But the Lord Jesus Christ has washed you with his blood, and covered you with his righteousness. Do you think he can see any imperfection in that?

You are members of his body, united to him. In Christ you are without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. You are all spots in yourself, but he sees you as he intends to make you, before he is done with you, and he can discern unspeakable beauties in you. "Oh," say you, "does he think that? Surely then I see unspeakable beauties in him! His love to me opens my eyes to see how dear an one he must be. Is he enamored of me? Has he given his whole heart to me? Did he prove his love to me by bleeding on the cross? Oh, then, I must love him, if he will but let me! Shall such a poor worm as I am, love infinite perfection? Oh, yes, I must, since infinite perfection condescends to love me, and since the Sun of Righteousness in all his glory deigns to shine on my soul!"

You are beginning to warm already, I see you are. Before ever you are aware, your soul is making you like the chariots of Amminadab. And if you keep on with those holy contemplations, you will leave off all misgivings about your love to him, so deeply absorbed will you be in musing on his love to you. You will forget all the while about your sin, while you recollect the blood that has put that sin away, the perfect righteousness that has made you accepted in the Beloved, and the everlasting covenant which through grace has put your feet upon a rock, and saved your eyes from tears and your feet from falling. Engaged in such sweet soliloquies, before ever you are aware, your soul will make you like the chariots of Amminadab. The Lord make it so!

God grant that surprising grace may come likewise even to sinners, and lead them to Jesus, and constrain them to look to Jesus. Then, while looking, faith will breathe in their spirit, so that they will sing--

"Your mercy is more than a match for my heart,
Which wonders to feel its own hardness depart;
Dissolved by your goodness, I fall to the ground
And weep to the praise of the glory I've found."

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