The Fruit of the Lips

"I create the fruit of the lips; Peace, peace to him who is far off, and to him who is near, says the Lord; and I will heal him." Isaiah 57:19

The Lord had said in Isaiah 57:16 of this chapter--"For I will not fight against you forever; I will not always show my anger. If I did, all people would pass away—all the souls I have made." As though the Lord saw, so to speak, the fruitlessness of contending with man that--all his stripes were thrown away upon him; that his severest chastisements, unaccompanied by grace, did not bring him into submission and humility; that all his heaviest strokes could do would but wear the spirit out and make it fail before him--but that his contending in anger would never make him a partaker of godly sorrow, nor cause him to lie low at his feet. "For the iniquity of his covetousness was I angry and smote him--I hid my face in anger; yet he went right on sinning." (Isaiah 57:17).

The Lord tells us here why he smote his people. It was for the iniquity of their covetousness; the word "covetousness" pointing out what the human heart is chiefly engaged upon. For we must not limit the expression merely to avarice after money, but consider it as embracing the going out of the heart of man after the things of time and sense, the insatiable desire of the carnal mind after earthly and sensual gratification. This covetousness God speaks of as iniquity--the iniquity of man lying in this--that he loves everything earthly and sensual better than God, that he seeks pleasure from every object but the Lord, that he wilfully and greedily runs into every base lust, making carnal things his delight and happiness.

Now the Lord, provoked by the iniquity of his covetousness, smote him with stroke upon stroke, with disappointment upon disappointment, with affliction upon affliction, with trouble upon trouble. But it was all thrown away! It did not raise up in him a spiritual work, it did not bring him to the Lord's feet, it did not change his will; it did not renew him in the spirit of his mind, but it left him as it found him--earthly, sensual, and dead; or rather, it left him worse than it found him; for his heart became more hardened and his conscience more stupefied than before.

The Lord, therefore, adds--"I hid myself;" as though he would try what that would do. He took no apparent notice of him. The Lord would not appear conspicuously in a way of providence. He shut himself up, as it were, in his own glory, and covered himself with a cloud, so that no ray should pass through. But that failed also. "I hid me, and was wroth, and he went on forwardly in the way of his heart." So obstinate, rebellious, wayward, perverse a wretch is man that no step which the Lord could take in a way of judgement or anger, independent of the Spirit's operations (for that is the point I am endeavouring to enforce) could ever have the least effect upon him.

Now do not you parents often see this very thing in your children naturally? You sometimes cannot make anything of them; there is such a frowardness and perversity of disposition in them, that all your chastisements and every means you employ to make them better, only seem to make them worse. They go on forwardly in the way of their heart; and you cannot, with all the pains you take with them, make them one whit better. Now what children often are to their parents, such are we toward God. His stripes, his frowns, his hiding himself, his sharp afflictions, do not produce in us any spiritual good; but we go on forwardly in the way of our heart, muttering perverseness, full of rebellion, peevishness, and discontent; and though we may feel the rod of God upon us, yet there is no breaking down of heart, no submission of soul, no contrition of spirit before him.

The Lord therefore says, "I have seen his ways, but I will heal him; I will guide him and restore comfort to him" (Isaiah 57:17). What a creature he is! What an obstinate, perverse, rebellious wretch, that wrath and judgements will not mend him. It is, then, as though he added--"I will alter my plan altogether. I see that there is no use in smiting and afflicting him with these sharp troubles; he is only the worse for it; only the more rebellious, more perverse, more froward. I have seen his ways, and will heal him." The Lord speaks as though he would change his conduct towards him. If he could not frown him into obedience, he would kiss him into it. If, he could not by the manifestation of his anger, make him walk in a right way, he would do so by love, and as he could not bend the heart by trouble, he would break it by an overwhelming sense of grace, mercy, and pardon. In that way, then, does the Lord gain his point and bring about his blessed purpose, warming the soul into fruitfulness by summer suns, which wintry blasts could never produce--pardoning sin, and thus making it hateful; overcoming the soul with his goodness, so as to new model it into obedience; and by communicating a new heart and a new spirit, bring out of it freely and cheerfully that humility, submission, devotedness, and affection, which stripes and blows could never have extorted. (There is of course no intention here of suggesting that the Lord can adopt, as experiments, unsuitable means or fail his purpose. Rather, it is to discover the method of his grace and to manifest its invincible power in effecting the divine purpose in due time toward the unworthy objects of his love; that they have some apprehension of their utter demerit, and of his great patience and forbearance towards them.)

This, then, is the connection of the text. And this slight sketch of the context may, with God's blessing better prepare our minds to see and feel something of the sweetness and beauty of the text.

I. What are we to understand by the expression which meets us in the first clause--"I create the fruit of the lips?" I understand by it that which grows upon, or rather out of the lips. Just in the same way as the fruit naturally is that which grows upon or grows out of a tree, so spiritually that which grows upon and out of a gracious man's lips is here called "the fruit of the lips." But cannot a man say just what he pleases? Not to God's honour and glory. If it is true that God creates the fruit of the lips, and that there is not a single word which man's lips can speak for the honour of God except what the Lord himself creates by as great a miracle--as when he called the world into existence--what a death-blow to human merit, creature righteousness, fleshly sanctification, legal obedience, free will, and the whole spawn of Arminianism! What a sweeping off at a single stroke all the piety and holiness of the creature, if it is true, as most true it is, that a man not only cannot create a spiritual thought, nor perform a spiritual action, but that he cannot even create a spiritual word, that he cannot actually bring forth from the door of his lips anything which God calls fruit, except it be created in him by a miraculous putting forth of supernatural power.

But, however the wise and learned may call this enthusiasm, or however Pharisees and Free-willers may rebel against God's sovereignty and man's helplessness, yet all the living family are taught, sometimes by painful and sometimes by pleasurable experience, that they cannot find in their lips a single spiritual word to breathe out secretly into the ears of God or before the ears of their fellow men, except the Lord the Spirit create it for and in them. The word of the lip, when it is such as the Lord calls fruit, is that which comes from the heart--"Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer." It is the heart which must prompt the tongue, as we read--"The heart of the wise teaches his mouth, and adds learning to his lips." Unless heart and tongue go together, there is neither fruit in the one or the other.

The Lord, then, by his blessed hand in the soul, creates a spiritual work within, and raises up spiritual feelings, spiritual desires, spiritual sensations; and as he produces this spiritual experience by putting forth his power in the heart, he creates also the fruit of the lips, that these spiritual sensations may find a vent through them. For it is as necessary that the Lord should create the fruit of the lips to express them, as that the Lord should create the fruit of the heart to feel them.

We have, for instance, sometimes spiritual sensations heaving, fermenting, and working in our bosoms, but we cannot give them vent. They are sometimes too deep for utterance, "groaning which cannot be uttered," as says the apostle. Many of God's people cannot express what they feel, they have a clear experience, but a confused speech, they know what experimental truth and divine teachings are, but cannot defend the one nor explain the other. The Lord, therefore, must not only create the spiritual sensations, but he must create the spiritual expressions, that out of the heart, through the mouth, the fruit may come to his honour and praise. "

1. The first sensation usually that God creates in the soul, is a feeling of its own guilt, ruin, and misery; and the first fruit of the lips that he creates as springing out of and corresponding with this spiritual sensation is confession. "He that covers his sins shall not prosper--but whoever confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy." "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." But of all humbling things, confession is one of the most humbling. It is so even to man. We often feel ourselves to be wrong, but we cannot confess it. There is that wretched pride and self-justification often working in a man's heart that he absolutely will not confess his faults to a fellow-creature, when his conscience all the time is condemning him.

And so it is spiritually. It is a very hard spot to come into the presence of God with confession. Confession must be, as it were, 'squeezed out of us', pressed out of our heart by heavy burdens laid upon the conscience. An honest heaven-taught soul knows that there is no use mocking God with hypocritical confession, that to confess iniquity with the mouth and hug it in the bosom, is but to add sin to sin--that it must not, with Gehazi, stow the two talents of silver in the house, and then go and stand before its Master unabashed.

But wherever the soul is truly humbled before God, and confession is created as the fruit of the lips, it always implies a desire to be spiritually delivered from the filth, guilt, and the power of the sin acknowledged. Thus confession, as one of the first and the earliest fruits of the lips, flows from a spiritual feeling of the burden of sin, a solemn hatred to it and abhorrence of it, as laid upon the conscience, a cry to the Lord to pardon it, and an earnest desire, in the strength of the Lord to be delivered from its dominion. Honest confession, then, as springing out of a heart made tender in God's fear, is a supernatural creation of the Lord's. To mock God with saying we are sorry, and then rush the next moment into the sin we profess to be sorry for, is but to deceive ourselves and insult him. Yet this is what we have done a thousand times, and shall do again if grace does not prevent us. So that no man comes to honest confession except God works confession in his heart; and thus making the heart and tongue move together, he creates confession as the fruit of the lips.

Now there is no promise of pardon of sin until there is confession of sin. "IF we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." But how many there are who talk about pardon and forgiveness, who have never yet been brought to an honest confession; who have never yet put their mouth in the dust, bewailed themselves in the sight of God, nor acknowledged their sins in the bitterness of soul-trouble, with tears of contrition flowing down their cheeks and the sobs of godly sorrow heaving from their bosoms!

2. Another fruit of the lips which God creates is prayer. The Lord himself must pour out upon every child of his "the spirit of grace and of supplication," for unless he is pleased to create this fruit of the lips, there is no more spiritual prayer in our heart than there is in a corpse! We may indeed mock God by carnal petitions, or go through a formal round of daily prayer; but as to any spiritual breathing out of our wants into the bosom of God, as to any faith in blessed exercise whereby we come to the throne of mercy and grace, and, according to the injunction of the Holy Spirit, pour out our heart before him, there is not a single grain of this fruit until the Lord himself by a supernatural operation upon conscience, first creates the desire, and then gives power to breathe forth that desire in supplication at his feet.

Now of this spirit of prayer, every living soul has a measure. When the Lord quickens the soul into spiritual life, he always gives "this spirit of grace and supplication;" and when once given, it is never wholly lost out of the heart. For the Lord who first creates this fruit of the lips, mercifully keeps it alive in the soul. "I will water it every moment," he says. He therefore feeds the 'lamp of intercession' in the soul with the oil of the blessed Spirit, the unction of the Holy One; and though to our feelings we are often as dead and prayer-less as if we had never felt the breath of the Spirit within, yet the Lord secretly again and again works upon the heart and causes this fruit to grow upon the lips.

In this respect, as in others, we pass through many changes. We may sometimes, for instance, be in trouble, and yet cannot pray; be exercised in our minds, and yet cannot go to the throne of grace, nor vent our desire for deliverance into the ears of the Most High. We are often, too, in a state where there is no sigh nor cry going up out of the heart; when the world seems to have full possession of us, and there is scarcely even the faintest desire to be brought out of this state, and to feel the weight and power of eternal things. Nor can we even feel what a sad state this is to be in, nor cry to the Lord to revive us again that we may rejoice in him, unless he once more creates this fruit of the lips, and draw out our heart towards him.

3. But praise and thanksgivingis also a fruit of the lips, and as such is the special creation of God. What a sweet thing it is to bless and praise God! There is no feeling upon earth to equal it. To bless God for his unmerited mercy, for his undeserved favor, and for the testimonies of his goodness, is indeed a sweet employment. It may indeed be called a feeling and a foretaste of heaven, for will not the bliss of heaven much consist in blessing and praising God, in singing the "song of the Lamb," in giving vent to the happy feelings which will occupy and fill the soul?

God teaches all his people, sooner or later, to bless and praise his name. But then they must go into very dark holes and corners, must often sink very low in their feelings, must be taught very sharp lessons within, must see themselves to be utterly helpless, and at times feel almost hopeless, in order that this fruit of the lips may be created by the hand of God in them.

How often are we in that state when we can neither pray nor praise; when sullenness, frowardness, and peevishness seem to take such complete possession--that so far from praising God, there is no power even to seek his face; and so far from blessing him, there are even dreadful things working up in the heart against him, which awfully manifest the enmity of the carnal mind! Those who are painfully exercised with such feelings are certain therefore that it is God's work alone, which can enable them to praise and bless his holy Name.

And does not the heaven-taught soul come sometimes into this spot--"O that the Lord would give me something to praise him for; bring me out of this trial; break this wretched snare; remove this dreadful temptation; lift me out of this providential difficulty; bless and water my soul; comfort my heart; strengthen my spirit; give me some testimony of his covenant love!" Says the soul--"O how I would then bless and praise him! I would spend all my breath in exalting his holy Name." But when the Lord withholds from the soul the blessings it so eagerly covets, it can only look at them at a great distance, view them wistfully, and long to experience them. But it says--"Until they come with power to my soul, until they are brought in with sweetness, until they are sealed upon my very heart, so as to take full possession of my breast, I cannot, I dare not, bless and praise his holy Name."

O what a dependent creature a heaven-taught soul is! How it hangs upon the Spirit of God to work in it that which is well pleasing in his sight, how convinced it is that it cannot feel nor confess sin, that it cannot breathe forth prayer nor praise, unless the God of all grace creates by his own powerful hand these blessed fruits of the lips!

Are you so helpless in your feelings as this? Are you such complete dependants upon sovereign grace? Then you are spiritually taught of God; for it is God's teaching in the soul which brings a man to an experimental knowledge of his own complete helplessness before him.

Next Part The Fruit of the Lips 2

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