The Sweet Loathed and the Bitter Relished 2
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II. "But to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." We have, then, a contrast here. We have seen the "full soul." We have been looking at him, analyzing him, trying to pull off a few of the coverings from him, just peeping under the mask, and taking a glance at his features. Let us now look at the other side of the subject, and see what the "hungry soul" is. We will begin with what the Lord Himself says upon this point—"Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled" (Mat. 5:6).
A. But what is implied by the expression "hunger"? When the Holy Spirit uses natural figures, it is that we may get a spiritual meaning out of them. What then are the chief causes of hunger? Hard labor is one; scanty portions is another; and long intervals between taking our food is a third. Take these three ideas into spiritual hunger—hard labor, scanty portions, and long intervals between nourishment—and, if you know these three things spiritually, I will say that you are a "hungry soul."
1. The first requisite, then, to hunger is hard labor. But what is spiritual labor? There is, first, a laboring underthe law, when a man tries to be righteous in the sight of God; and that is something like a steep street not very far from this place called "Labor-in-vain Hill." There are many people who have toiled and struggled up "Labor-in-vain Hill." And when they have reached, as they thought, got to the top, they have slipped down to the bottom, and had to try to climb up it again.
There is no more painful labor than to labor to establish our own righteousness. The hardest manual labor that a man can undergo is nothing compared to the labor of a poor soul to "do its duty," and to work out its salvation, that God may look upon it with satisfaction. And why so? Why, when the manual laborer at the end of the day looks at his work, he sees that he has accomplished something. He has ploughed so many furrows; he has threshed so many bushels of corn; he has raised up so many bales; he has carried so many loads on his back. He has something to look at as done.
But when the poor child of God, working at the law, looks at what he has done, he finds not only that he has done nothing, but that he has been undoing all that he had been trying to do! Instead of getting forward, he has only been going backward; and so he has not only lost all his labor, but at the end of the day he is further from the place for which he set out than he was in the morning. No manual labor therefore can ever be compared to the labor of a soul trying to establish its own righteousness.
Again, there is laboring under sharp and painful temptations; and this is labor indeed. Labor naturally will bring the sweat to a man's brow; and labor spiritually will send the sweat through the pores of a man's skin. To have the devil tempting a man to all kinds of infidelity, to all horrible blasphemy, all foul obscenity, all vile sensuality—continually harassing the attention, and suggesting all kinds of filthy abominations to a man's mind—this is labor; and if this does not force the sweat through a man's skin, not all the hard manual labor in the world can do it.
There is also a laboring under trials and afflictions, under burdens put upon a man's shoulders, under difficulty of circumstances, with a distressed family and children; all these things, when they come upon a man, make him labor. Talk of laboring for the good of others; talk of the labor of Bible societies and missionary societies—it is all 'mere play', compared to the labor of a soul exercised with afflictions and temptations.
2. But I hinted that there is another thing which makes a man very hungry, and that is scanty portions; when he could eat a good piece of a loaf, to have only just a quarter or an eighth of what he could consume. Scanty portions, then, will make and keep a man hungry; and I believe that God's people are, for the most part, kept in very scanty portions. They are not, for the most part, turned into rich pastures, where they can feed and lie down at ease; but they have a nibble here and a nibble there. Real spiritual blessings, depend upon it, my friends, are very rare! If you listen indeed to what people say at the doors of chapels and elsewhere, you would think that God showered down blessings as thick as hail, or drops of rain in a thunderstorm. But you must not always attend to what people say at the doors of chapels—where one cries, "What a blessed man is this!" and another, "What a blessed man is that!" and a third, "What a precious sermon we have had today!" If you believed all this chit-chat, you would think that gospel blessings were rained down from on high; but God's true children know that they are very rare indeed.
I have heard that a good man once said, "If he could get six crumbs of blessing in his life, and go to heaven at last, it was as much as he could expect." Not six loaves, mind you, but six crumbs. Now this man had been taught the difference between real blessings and mock blessings. And I believe when one comes to know the difference between nature and grace, between what God gives to man and 'what man steals for himself'—when a man's eyes are thus opened to see and feel what are real blessings, he begins to feel how few they are.
Why, there are some people who if they hear a minister preach, can carry away pretty well the whole of his sermon; can tell how it was divided, and how the subject was treated; and will go home chattering to everybody about it. While perhaps some of God's poor broken-hearted children all the time they were listening to it, had the devil pouring all manner of filth into their minds, and setting all sorts of worldly schemes before them. Or if they have just got a few words to touch their consciences, or a little drop of divine comfort in their hearts, they have to live upon it for weeks. Such is the difference between reality and imitation; such is the difference between what nature can furnish, and the real work of the Holy Spirit in the soul.
Now, when you go home tonight, take—if the Lord shall enable you—a solemn review of how many times the Lord has blessed you in your lives—how many times you can solemnly say, "God blessed my soul at this time and at that;" and if you can count half a dozen conspicuous times when God signally blessed your soul, and made it like a watered garden, you are a highly favored man indeed. I do not mean to say that there may not have been 'sips and drops'—a little nibble here and there, and that your soul may not have been sensibly encouraged and kept alive; but if you examine how many conspicuous blessings there were, and sum up the number of times that the God of Israel has visited, watered, comforted, and blessed your soul, I believe that, if God has made you honest, you will find the fingers of one or two hands will suffice to count them.
3. And this leads me to the third thing that makes a man hungry, and that is, long intervals between taking food—not five meals a day, breakfast, luncheon, dinner, tea, and supper. God's people are not like well-fed ministers, reveling and rioting on all the delicacies and luxuries of the season; but what they get is given at very long intervals; not merely scanty in quantity when it does come, but coming at great and distant intervals, so that if they are blessed—really blessed—once in six months, or once a year, they are well off.
These three things, then, working together make a "hungry soul." But to be a "hungry soul," a man must want something. The "full soul" wants nothing; he "loathes a honeycomb." But the "hungry soul" wants something; and what is it that he wants? He wants suitable food. Take a hungry man naturally; give him a lump of clay, a piece of chalk, or a bit of wood. Can he eat it? No! however hungry he may be, it is not food for him. He wants something to nourish and support him, something to relieve his famished appetite.
So it is spiritually. (I love to run the comparisons together, for out of them we can sometimes extract that spiritual nourishment which the soul requires.) If a man is hungry, would you give him ashes? If you do, they will not feed him. There is a disease in the West Indies, which I have sometimes thought is applicable to many a spiritual sickness in England. It is called "dirt-eating;" and I will tell you what it is. The negro children, and sometimes the negro men, are afflicted with a depraved appetite; and this is continually craving after and feeding on dirt. The poor children are constantly found rolling in the dirt, and by stealth feeding upon it, and the filthiest muck they can procure. And what is the consequence? They gradually pine away and die; so that when this "dirt-eating" gets into a plantation (for the custom becomes infectious), the planter knows that unless it is stopped he will lose all the children.
I think there is a good deal of this negro "dirt-eating" in the religious community—that is to say, there is a depraved appetite which loathes wholesome food, and which can feed upon everything and upon anything except the flesh and blood of God's dear Son. And what is the consequence? Why, these people must need pine away and die. If they can feast upon dirt, and eat husks and ashes; if they can feed upon anything short of the savory flesh of the Lamb of God, they are nothing but "dirt-eaters;" and "dirt-eating" will bring them to eternal death. The children of God want nutritious food; they hunger after divine truth and consolation. Nutritious food is as needful for the "hungry soul" spiritually, as nutritious food is needful for the hungry body naturally.
B. But the text says, "to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet." What does that mean? Does it mean that the bitter thing is sweet at the time it is eaten? I cannot think that it does. But it is sweet after it is eaten. And the "hungry soul" so craves solid nutriment, that he can put up with a considerable measure of bitterness in his food, in order to get at the nutriment it contains. Some of us when very hungry may have had bitter bread set before us; yet we have eaten it, and we have found that the bitter bread did not disagree with our stomachs—that after we had lost the bitterness on the palate, we felt refreshed by the nutriment in it. But we could only taste the bitterness at the time we ate it—the bread itself was not sweet, but the nutriment which we afterwards got out of it was so. As the apostle says, "No chastening for the present seems to be joyous but grievous; nevertheless afterwardit yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness unto those who are exercised thereby." The bitter then is not converted into sweet, but there is a blessed nutriment in it which becomes sweet afterwards.
1. What bitter things, for instance, temptations are—temptations to unbelief, to blasphemy, to obscenity, and all the other base temptations of the devil—how bitter they are to a man's conscience, when made tender in God's fear! But then temptations, when they have passed away, have left a sweetness behind them; there has been a good resulting from them. They have brought the Christian out of the world; they have made him abhor himself; they have broken to pieces his former idols—they have made him to know himself to be a lost and ruined wretch before God. The man is glad he passed through them; he feels it sweet that he has been tempted, on account of the good he has got out of these exercises.
2. So of afflictions, trials, and sorrows; they are very bitter things. And they must needs be bitter, for God never meant that they should be otherwise. God does not deal with His children as an indulgent parent does with a spoiled child, when he just tips him with the end of the rod by a kind of make-believe, or perhaps strikes, in a fit of apparent indignation, the child's clothes, but takes good care not to hit him. God does not play at make believe in this way. But when He takes the rod, it is to make it felt; and when He brings trouble on His children, it is that they may be pained under it.
Our text therefore, does not, I believe, mean that the "bitter thing" is sweet when it is taken; for then it would cease to be bitter; but it is sweet on account of the blessed nourishment that is brought to the soul out of it. I remember reading many years ago the travels of Franklin to the North Pole; and a very interesting book it is naturally. But there is one incident mentioned in it which just strikes my mind. In wandering over the snows of the polar regions, there was no food to be gotten for days, and I think weeks, except a lichen or kind of moss, which grew upon the rocks, and that was so exceedingly bitter that it could only be taken with the greatest disgust—and yet upon that they lived. They had no alternative—they must either eat that—or die. But that bitter moss became sweet after it had passed their palates; for it had a nutriment in it which kept their bodies alive.
And thus many of God's people who have endured the most dreadful trials, have afterwards found nutriment to spring out of them. What bitter things are God's reproofs and rebukes in the conscience! And yet who would be without them? I appeal to you who fear God, whether you would deliberately choose never to experience marks of divine disapprobation, and never feel the frowns of God's anger every time that you go wrong? I believe in my conscience that you whose hearts are tender in God's fear would say, "Lord, let me have Your frowns; for if I have not Your frowns and a conscience to feel them, what sins would I not recklessly plunge into? Where would not my wicked nature carry me, if I had not Your solemn reproofs!" These very rebukes then become sweet, not in themselves, nor at the time, but because of the solid profit that comes out of them.
And thus an experimental minister who pulls you down from your lofty tower, strips you and leaves you bare, and sends you home hanging down your head, and exclaiming, "O Lord, look down upon me in Your mercy!"—such a minister may say things that are felt at the time to be very bitter; but you will afterwards find that solid good has been produced. If I were to come to London to please all God's people, I would have come in vain. I like to see people at times hanging down their heads, and crying to the Lord, "Am I right, or am I wrong?" I like to see some purpose effected, some hearts wounded, some secret device of Satan unmasked, that people may not go home buzzing and fluttering about like so many flies—but humbled and broken down, and if need be, troubled. And that when they go to bed they may begin to roll about, and cry, "Search me, O Lord, and try me."
I was at Bradford, in the north of England, a few weeks ago, and the Lord enabled me, I trust, to be a little faithful with the people there. They heard me with much attention; and I was not sorry to learn next morning that there had been among them some who had spent nearly a sleepless night. I think that was a better mark for them and for me too, than to see them flitting about on the wings of self-congratulation. It is a bitter thing, I know by experience, to roll backwards and forwards on one's bed in soul trouble and anxiety; but it is far better than to lay one's head comfortably upon the pillow, and say, "I care not what the man says; God has done this, and Christ has done that, and I am safe and secure," when the poor deluded creature has no work or witness of the Spirit in his soul. It is better to have an honest heart crying to the Lord with many groans—than to have one puffed up with self-pride and importance. To have one's religion all pulled to pieces, brought out of the secret depths of the heart, and exposed to the light of day, is a bitter thing; but you may depend upon it, that it is sweet in the end; for a man will find that there is a solid good in these dealings of God with his soul. He will find that there is a sweetness coming out of these very bitters; and thus, while "the full soul loathes a honeycomb, to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet."
Now, which are you? A "full soul" or "a hungry soul?" Do you loathe the honeycomb? Do you dislike experimental preaching? Do you hate to have 'the fingers of the minister' inside your conscience? Do you hate to have your heart probed and searched, and all your religion torn to pieces? Oh! you may depend upon it that if you do, you are a "full soul."
But if you are a "hungry soul," you "hunger and thirst after righteousness." If you hunger and thirst, you must experience painful craving at times. There may be here many poor people—and it is the poor whom God has for the most part chosen to be rich in faith—there may be here many poor people, who know what it is to have a hungry belly. But does not that make you want food? So the hungry soul too has its desires. Yes, it is full of desires; and what it desires is something that God alone can supply. And the mercy is, that spiritual desires shall never be unrelieved—for the Lord has promised to feed the hungry with good things—while He sends the rich empty away.
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