Steps of Thankful Praise 2
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C. But now take another point into your spiritual view—God never forgives by halves. We look at this sin and we look at that sin, we call to mind this and that slip or fall, and sometimes say with bitter grief and mournful cry, "O, that I had never committed that sin! O, that I had never broken out in this or that direction! O, that my lust, my pride, my covetousness, my angry temper, my foolish lightness, my carelessness, and carnality had never overcome me at that time! O, that I had never spoken that foolish word, done that sad thing, that I had never fallen into that snare of the flesh! O, that I had never got entangled in that awful trap of the devil!" Have you not sometimes pondered over the various ways in which you have been drawn aside into some bye-path, until you are almost ready to give up all hope and to sink into despair, as scarcely believing it possible that grace could be in your heart? Thus we keep looking at 'individual sins', weighing this and that in the balance of conscience, not seeing the awful number of the whole as 'an overwhelming mass'; and we expect perhaps that God will forgive this particular sin and that particular sin, as if that were the great thing to be done. God does not forgive so. He forgives all or none. It is either a full remission of all our sins, or pardon of no single one of them. Have I not already brought before you that gracious word from the Colossians, "having forgiven you all trespasses?" (Col. 2:13.) And what a testimony there is through the Scriptures to the same precious truth. How John says, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin." (1 John 1:7.) How our gracious Lord declares, "all manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men." (Matt. 12:31.) How the prophet declares, "you will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea" (Micah 7:19); and how blessedly does the Lord himself speak, "I have blotted out as a thick cloud your transgressions, and, as a cloud, your sins" (Isaiah 44:22); and again, "In those days, and in that time, says the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found—for I will pardon them whom I reserve." (Jer. 50:20.) How plainly and clearly do all these testimonies preach as with one united, harmonious voice that precious, glorious doctrine, that where there is forgiveness there is a forgiving of all iniquities, a casting of all trespasses behind God's back, a full and free, eternal, irreversible blotting out and putting away of every sin and every transgression.
Now nothing short of such a full, free, complete and perfect forgiveness could satisfy God or satisfy us. It could not satisfy God; for one unforgiven sin would shut us out of heaven as much as a thousand. It could not satisfy us, either in earth or heaven. If the guilt of one sin remained upon our conscience at death, it would fill us with fear, and could we enter heaven with it? The guilt of that one sin would make us ever tremble before the purity of God, and mar ever rising joy. Neither sin in its guilt nor sin in its filth, though it be, so to speak, but the smallest that could be committed by man, could stand before the purity of God in glory. We thus see why all sin must be forgiven, washed away, cast behind God's back, or there is no standing before him, who is a consuming fire. We need not then be ever dwelling upon individual sins, but should be ever casting ourselves into that sea of love and blood in which all are drowned and forever washed away.
II. But I now pass on to my next point, where I find the Psalmist rising a step higher in what I have called the "ascending scale:" "Who heals all your diseases."
A. The general character of disease. When the Lord first begins his work of grace upon our heart, we are not sensible of the disease of sin as thoroughly infecting the whole of our nature. We are like a person attacked with some incipient disease. He feels himself what is called 'out of sorts', his general health impaired, his nerves unstrung, his appetite capricious, his flesh and strength wasting. He sees these symptoms of illness, but does not know what those symptoms indicate– that they are very probably are marks of some fatal disease. He spits blood, perhaps, and has a pain in his side, a hacking cough, perspires much at night, and has other marks of consumption, but he does not see that these are merely indications of a very grave malady. So we look at this sin or that sin, which are merely symptoms of a thoroughly corrupt and diseased nature; far deeper than the outbreakings of it, which, comparatively speaking, are but eruptions in the skin; or to speak more scripturally, like those signs of leprosy which Moses describes in Leviticus. (Lev. 13.) We are, perhaps, like a consumptive patient, who thinks that if he can but get the cough cured, or the pain removed, or the shaking chills abated, get a little flesh put upon his bones, and feel more strong and active, he would soon be well. And so he would; but, alas! these are but symptoms, and there is no use curing the symptoms while the disease remains and is daily gaining strength.
So there is no use looking at this or that sin, and trying to cure this or that evil when, as the prophet speaks, "from the sole of the foot, even unto the head, there is no soundness in it, but wounds and bruises and putrefying sores." (Isa. 1:6.) We may go on sometimes in this way for a long time, hoping and hoping that as this and that sin is cured, we shall, by and by, get cured of the whole. But after a time God the Spirit, as he keeps searching the heart and casting fresh light into the mind, discovers the fatal secret by leading us to see, feel, and realize the disease of sin as infecting the whole of our nature. But this discovery fills a man with consternation and dismay; for this is now his language, "I have committed iniquity; I have sinned against God. These sins he has mercifully pardoned. But O! after he has pardoned all these sins and healed all these backslidings, to find that there is a secret something within me which is ever breeding additional sins!"
We thus learn that there is no making a clean bill of health, and reporting that all taint of infection has disappeared; no casting off and throwing away all sin like a worn-out filthy garment, without a rag being left behind to hold and spread further disease. But it is rather like destroying one crop of vermin, and leaving behind a whole host which have slyly crept away, and are ever breeding additional vermin in the dark. Or it is like some malady that may seem for a time subdued and apparently cured, and then breaks forth again with double virulence. How, for instance, we see sometimes consumption or cancer apparently cured, and yet how they break forth again worse than before. So it is with that dreadful disease of sin which has infected the whole of our being. It may for a time seem subdued, removed, and almost if not fully healed; but again and again it breaks forth worse than before—not worse I mean in outward act, but worse in inward sense and experimental feeling.
But have you ever considered the meaning of the word "disease," as descriptive of our state by nature? You know what a diseased body is, or, what is worse, a diseased mind; how in both of these cases everything is wrong, out of order, thrown off its right balance, and the consequence perpetual pain and suffering. So it is with the disease of sin. It makes everybody wrong and everything wrong; disorders the eye, distempers the ear, turns every benefit into bane, and wholesome food into little less than poison. Everything is a burden, full of labor, weariness, and dissatisfaction; life a misery, days wearisome, and nights sleepless.
B. But having thus seen the general character of disease, let us now look at some of the special diseases which infect our nature, and two above all others as most generally known and felt with which God's people are afflicted.
1. The first which I shall name is the disease of UNBELIEF. When the blessed Spirit convinces of sin, he convinces also of unbelief. (John 16:9.) But this sin of unbelief usually is not felt so much as the guilt of particular and more open sins. At any rate, we do not usually see and feel it at first as an inbred disease. When faith was strong, as it was when the Lord appeared to us, unbelief did not come to the fore. It hung behind, as it were, invisible in the shade; it lurked in the secret recesses of the heart, undiscovered, like a thief in the night. But after a time, when faith begins to slacken, this disease of unbelief comes to view; it crops out to the surface, like the hard rock that was covered over with soft herbage; when flowers and grass grew upon it, its depth and hardness were not seen. But we soon begin to find under all this soft and springy turf there lies a hard rock, going down into the very affections of the earth. O how this wretched unbelief rises to view as the turf is stripped off!
How like an unbidden and unwelcome guest at a marriage feast, its very presence mars all comfort, beats out of the hand every sweet morsel of food or cheerful cup, arising like a spectre at the very time when we want its company least, robbing us of all peace and happiness, and as if dropping poison into the very springs of life. There is, I believe, scarcely any other disease of the soul which seems so thoroughly to have spread itself through the whole of our being, to produce such distempered views of God and ourselves, and set itself so determinately against the word of God itself. In these points it much resembles a diseased mind, such as we often see in unhappy individuals, which sees nothing aright and takes everything wrong; which you can neither rectify nor comfort, persuade nor guide, but which is ever listening to its own persuasions, and can listen to nothing else.
2. But another disease is HELPLESSNESS. It is so naturally. Weakness, prostration of strength, inability to raise hand or foot may be and is a mark of very serious disease; no, a disease in itself. Look at that poor paralytic lying helpless upon his bed—what a miserable object he is. Look at that poor saint, as unable to raise hand or foot, as unable to move any one of his spiritual limbs as the paralytic patient himself. Is not his helplessness a disease as great and dangerous as unbelief can be? Some diseases are attended with much bodily pain and suffering. How sharp, how lacerating are the pains of cancer. How torturing is the kidney-stone, how painful is pleurisy, how racking and severe is headache. So it is with some spiritual diseases. What fiery darts Satan can shoot into our mind; what painful corruptions he can stir up; what vile suggestions he can infuse. What sudden sharp pains there are in the soul under the injection of these fiery darts of Satan, like the lacerating pangs of cancer, or the acute throb of sudden kidney-stone.
But there are complaints in which the patient gradually sinks without any very great pain, without much apparently severe disease. In consumption, though it is a great mistake to think that usually it is a painless disease, yet some gradually seem to decay until they die of sheer exhaustion, without suffering acute pain. So in paralysis and similar complaints, as softening of the brain. May we not trace a similar analogy in the case of spiritual diseases? Some of God's people are not so painfully exercised as others with the fiery darts of the devil, nor so tormented with the workings of inward corruption, nor so pressed down by the power of unbelief. Their chief complaint is a sense of helplessness. They seem so languid in the things of God, have such a fainting spirit, such an inability to press forward, such a gradual weakening of every faculty, and a sinking down into self as though they must sink away and die under positive exhaustion. Now all this is the effect of spiritual disease; it springs from the corruption which entered into and took possession of us at the fall.
3. But let us look a little further still. The effect of the fall was not only to produce special diseases, but to fill us with disease throughout. It is so sometimes naturally. Some people are full of disease, like the man spoken of in the gospel, "full of leprosy" (Luke 5:12); their whole system and constitution thoroughly vitiated by hereditary complaints. So sin has thoroughly diseased us, poisoned our very blood. It has diseased our understanding, so as to disable it from receiving the truth; it has diseased our conscience, so as to make it dull and heavy, and undiscerning of right and wrong; it has diseased our imagination, polluting it with every idle, foolish, and licentious fancy; it has diseased our memory, making it swift to retain what is evil, slow to retain what is good; it has diseased our affections, perverting them from all that is heavenly and holy, and fixing them on all that is earthly and vile.
But O what an unspeakable mercy it is that God has provided not only a Redeemer in the Lord Jesus, so as to insure the forgiveness of sins through the redemption which he has wrought, but has made him also the Healer of diseases; not only constituted him as a Savior, and a great one, but a Physician—not only given him out of his own bosom to shed his precious blood to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself, but raised him from the dead, and set him at his own right hand, that he might heal by his word "all manner of sickness and all manner of disease." He thus becomes "Jehovah Rophi," the Lord my healer. As he testifies of himself—"I am the Lord who heals you." (Exodus 15:26.) View, then, God's poor diseased people; see them lying as it were in Bethesda's porch, all waiting for the approach of the great Physician; knowing that one look of his eye, one touch of his hand, one word of his mouth, can heal all their diseases. See this poor, diseased family of God, some complaining of one disease, some of another, some of a third; but all like a number of sick folk, gathered at the door of a dispensary, or patients lying in the wards of a hospital, or such a suffering mass of humanity as would meet your eye after some dreadful railway collision, where you would see some almost dying, others fainting away with pain and terror, others lying upon the road with broken limbs and blood streaming down their faces, but all feeling the terrible shock. So it is with God's poor, diseased family—one you may hear complaining of his broken limbs, another of his fluttering, agitated heart, a third of the internal wounds of his conscience, a fourth of his bruised hands and maimed feet; but each and all mourning and languishing under a sense of the disease of sin, and the sad effects which the collision of the fall has wrought.
But turn your eyes away and look in another direction. See here approaching the gracious Lord, and going round, so to speak, from ward to ward, addressing a kind word to this patient, administering a healing balm to that, giving a smile of encouragement to a third. See too how every eye follows him, all seeking some help from his hand. Now when this gracious healer sends his word, for it is by his word that he heals (Psalm 107:20), it brings with it instantaneously a medicinal power. Was it not so in the days of his flesh? How, at a word from his lips, a touch from his hand, every disease fled. So it is now. When he speaks all complaint ceases; disease disappears under its touch; pain and suffering are assuaged by his kind look, his sympathizing voice, his gracious smile—and the very appearance of the Physician, though but for a few moments, does the patient good.
But how does he heal these diseases? He heals them chiefly by subduing them; for in this life they are never thoroughly healed. The promise runs—"He will subdue our iniquities." (Micah 6:7.) To subdue them is to restrain their power. Thus he sees one suffering under the power of unbelief. He gives him faith; this subdues his unbelief. Here is another poor languid patient, dying of exhaustion—he gives him strength. Here is a third mourning under his corruptions—he gives a drop of his blood to purge his conscience, and a taste of his love to warm his heart. He sees a fourth crying under the strong assaults of Satan—with one look Satan flies and the soul is set free. Thus with infinite wisdom blended with infinite love and power, he passes on from bed to bed of every sick patient, administering health wherever he goes.
O what a blessed thing it is to know something of having our diseases healed; that there is one who can sympathize with his poor afflicted people, who can stretch forth his hand to heal, or apply a word suitable to their case! With infinite skill and power, this blessed physician has a remedy for every disease, and the remedy is always felt to be exactly suitable to the urgency of the case. It goes, so to speak, at once to the right spot—it heals the malady wherever it is, and whatever it be, just in the right way, and just at the right time. No disease is too deep for it to reach, no complaint too complicated for it to cure, and no secret complaint, hidden even from the patient's own eyes, which he cannot dispel by his look and heal by his word. O then how good it is to bring all our diseases before the Lord! In a case of bodily sickness or painful complaint we freely uncover our malady to a physician whom we can trust; we tell him every circumstance and disclose every symptom. So should we go to the Lord with all our diseases, tell him all our complaints, unfold to him all our sorrows, and fully and freely lay before him everything that burdens the conscience, pains the mind, distresses the soul, looking and waiting until he speaks the word, and every malady is healed.
III. But we pass on to the next step in the ascending scale. "He redeems my life from destruction."
The first step was the forgiveness of all iniquities; the second the healing of all diseases; the third is the redemption of life itself from destruction, insuring thereby the certain salvation of the soul.
When God commences the work of grace, he plants spiritual life in his people's hearts. But this life is exposed to a thousand foes and a thousand fears. The preservation then of this life is in some points a greater miracle and a richer mercy, than the healing of disease. Would it not be a greater triumph of medical skill, if a physician could protect you from all attacks of illness, or prolong your life for ten years; than if he cured you of some passing illness? To redeem then our life from destruction, is a higher mercy and a greater miracle than healing present disease. For let us consider what this life is exposed to, and then we shall see what a marvel it is that it is kept alive in a sinner's bosom, when he is surrounded on every hand with that, which but for the mighty power of God, must inevitably destroy it.
For we may be said to be spiritual suicides, as God declared to Ephraim—"O, Ephraim, you have destroyed yourself." Is not this a true charge? Does not your conscience fall under it as a well founded accusation? Have you not willingly with your eyes open run into some sin, which, but for God's mercy and upholding hand, would have proved your certain destruction? Have you not stood upon the very brink of some deep pit down into which another step would have plunged you? You do not learn this lesson at first. You look back sometimes to the time when God was pleased to deposit his life in your bosom. It was a memorable season with you, for he then communicated his fear, and made your conscience alive and tender. But though convinced of sin you did not then know the evils of your heart. But if your profession has been of any long standing, and especially if you have been much exercised with temptation, you now look back and wonder how the life of God has been preserved so many years in your soul. You have been sunk sometimes into such carnality that you could find scarcely any difference between yourself and the most carnal professor. You have felt such emptiness of all good, such proneness to all evil, and seemingly such a careless abandonment of the things which at one time you held with such warmth and tenderness, that you trembled lest you should prove a poor empty professor, worse than those against whom you have so often spoken.
Now when you have been sunk under the weight and guilt of these things laid upon your conscience, you have wondered how you stood in days past, where you stand now, how and why you are what you are, and have not been swallowed up, overcome, and carried away into the pit of destruction. Sometimes Satan has tempted you to suicide; sometimes to give up all your profession; sometimes to blaspheme the name of God; sometimes to disbelieve every sacred truth; sometimes to think the Bible altogether inconsistent, confused, and contradictory, and that all religion itself was but a delusion. You have had all these things working in your mind until you have trembled lest you should turn out at last a vile infidel, or die in despair. Yet hitherto God has kept you—he has preserved your life from destruction.
David said, "I am as a wonder to many" (Psalm 71:7), but you can say, "I am a wonder to myself!" The world, the devil, and your own evil heart all have been for years aiming to destroy the precious life of God in your soul, all stretching out their hands to strangle and suffocate it! And yet, mysterious wisdom, unspeakable grace, and tender compassion! how he has kept the holy principle alive, not allowed his fire to die out from the altar, or the lamp in the temple to expire for want of fresh oil. O, the mystery of redeeming love! O, the blessedness of preserving grace to have our life redeemed from destruction! We can look back, it may be, to sundry places in our lives, when, like David, we could say, there was but a step between us and death, and yet we have been preserved, upheld, and kept by the power of God through faith unto salvation.
Observe the expression, "REDEEMED," and how it connects the soul with the work of redemption by the Lord Jesus. Christ has redeemed our life by his own precious blood. Such a price being paid for it, it cannot be lost.
A sight and sense of this sinks the soul very low, and yet sets the Lord very high. It makes us see how great a thing redemption is, how wonderful the love of God, how incessant his tender care and preserving power, how blessed and yet how mysterious the work of grace upon the soul is, that sin cannot defile it, Satan cannot quench it, nor anything in earth or hell effectually destroy it.
IV. But we now come to our last point, the crowning point of all, the highest point in the ascending scale, which seems to set its seal upon all the foregoing—"He crowns you with loving-kindness and tender mercies."
A. Crowning. The coronation of a king puts the last and highest seal upon his reigning authority. This made the spouse say, "Go forth, O daughters of Zion, and behold king Solomon with the crown with which his mother crowned him in the day of his espousals, and in the day of the gladness of his heart." (Song Sol. 3:11.) And what a day will that be when the anti-typical Solomon is crowned Lord of all. Thus there is a crown put upon the soul which is healed of all its diseases, and whose life is redeemed from destruction. It is as if God could not be satisfied until he had put the crown of his loving-kindness upon the soul, until he had himself crowned the heart with his own love. And not only love, but "loving-kindness"—kindness mingled with love, love overflowing with kindness. Thus when God is pleased to reveal a sense of his loving-kindness, to show how he has been at once so kind and at once so loving; so kind in forgiving sin, so kind in healing disease, so kind in preserving life from destruction, and all flowing out of the bosom of his eternal love—it is a putting on the crown of all his goodness. And he does it with his own hand—"He crowns you." God from heaven his dwelling place puts upon the soul the crown of his loving-kindness and tender mercies. And what is the effect? The soul puts a crown of glory upon his head. So the soul has the "crown of grace", and God has the "crown of glory". This is being crowned with loving-kindness and tender mercies.
And O what a crown it is! How it crowns all our iniquities, hides them from God's sight as a crown covers a monarch's brow. How it crowns all our trials that we have had to pass through, severe and cutting as they were at the time to the flesh. How it crowns all our bereavements by putting upon the bereaved heart the crown of God's loving-kindness. How it crowns all our prayers by enabling us to see their gracious answer. How it crowns all God's dealings with us in providence and in grace, and stamps loving-kindness upon them all; for the crown includes everything in it. As the Queen's crown includes her royalty, her dignity, her power—for all are symboled thereby—so God's loving-kindness, put upon the heart as a crown, includes and secures every blessing for time and eternity.
B. And what an EFFECT it produces. "He crowns you with loving-kindness and tender mercies." It is a sense of God's tender mercies which breaks the heart and produces real repentance and godly sorrow for sin; for this is the feeling of the soul—"O that I could have sinned against such tender mercy as revealed in the Person and work, sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus. O what a wretch ever to have sinned as I have done. O what a monster to have given way to this and that sin and temptation, provoking God, if possible, to cast me away forever from his presence." And yet his loving-kindness, his tender mercies, prevailed over all. He would not take an advantage of me. He would not seize me in the very act of sin and overwhelm my soul in hell. But he mercifully brought me out of sin, and crowned me with loving-kindness and tender mercies. This not only brings forth a song of praise unto God, but constrains the soul, by every sweet constraint, to walk in his fear and live to his honor and glory. O these things come warm upon the heart wherever they are truly felt. They are urgent motives to live to his praise and walk in his fear; not to grieve his holy Spirit; but, being such debtors to grace, to live, walk, and act in such a way as to bring honor to his worthy name.
I have endeavored this evening to lay my hand upon the state and case of God's family, and speak a word for their encouragement. Those who travel in the strait and narrow path long to hear their case touched upon and entered into, and some testimony given to the reality of the work of grace upon their heart. So I leave it in his gracious hands, who can do with it as seems good in his sight, and put on another crown, even the crown of his own blessing, which makes rich, and he adds no sorrow with it.
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