III. My time has gone; I shall, therefore, ask you to listen to the outline of what I would have said upon the third point, and that is, WHEN GOD DOES GET AT MEN, HE ACCOMPLISHES GREAT PURPOSES.
His purpose is, first, to withdraw man from his own purpose. We have often admired the drawings of God; let us also admire the withdrawings of God: “That he may withdraw man from his purpose.”
Sometimes, a man has purposed at a certain moment to commit a sin, and God stops him from doing it. Perhaps, if he had committed that one sin, the current of his life might have been turned so as never to be altered again; but God stopped him there and then. “Hitherto,” saith he, “you have gone; but you shall go no further. That is your last oath, your last bout of drunkenness, your last act of uncleanness. Stop!” It is the Lord who doeth this; he did it with some of us, he withdrew us from our purpose.
He also withdraws men from their general purpose of continuing in sin. They purpose to procrastinate, but God purposes that they shall postpone the acceptance of grace no longer. They purpose that they will go a little further in sin, but God stays them there and then.
I find the translation may be, that God withdraweth man from his work, from that which has been his life-work; from the whole run and tenor of his conversation, God withdraws him. A man goes out after having received the Word of the Lord, and he is a different man from that hour. I remember one, who kept a low public-house, and who heard the Word of God, and he had no sooner heard it than, when he reached home, he smashed up his signboard with the first axe he could find, and shut up the house, resolving that he would have no more to do with the evil traffic. There is many a man who has been just as decided and earnest as that. God has stopped him, and withdrawn him from his purpose. Oh, there are some, whose lives have been spent in infamy; and in an instant God has made them forsake it all, and they have loathed themselves, and the change has been so sudden, as well as so radical, that all about them have gazed, and admired, and wondered at what the grace of God has wrought! When the Lord visits a man’s heart, he withdraws him from his purpose. I have it impressed upon me to believe that there is some soul here that is to be withdrawn from his purpose at once. I do not know what purpose you had upon your heart this afternoon, nor what your purpose is about where you are going to spend to-night; but I beseech you, if it was a purpose of sin, stop at once. Heed the word of warning; go no further. If you have resolved to-morrow, or at any time during the week, that you will commit this or that sin, O love divine, turn the man, and he shall be turned! Deal with him this moment, O God, according to thy glorious Godhead, not according to the fickleness of his will, but according to thine almighty grace! Change the lion into a lamb, the raven to a dove! Thus, the Lord withdraws man from his purpose.
Then what else does God do? He hides pride from man. That is a very strange expression, certainly, to “hide pride from man.” Did none of you ever hide away a knife from a child? Have you never hidden away fruit from your little children when they have had enough, and they would have eaten more if they could find it? God often hides pride from men because, if man can find anything to be proud of, he will be. Look at him, he is proud of his fine form. Look at that woman, how proud she is of her clothes, poor thing! One is proud of his ability, proud of his success, proud of his situation, proud of his youth, proud of his old age, proud of what he never did, proud of what he did do but could not help doing. There is no one of us who has even a pennyworth of stuff to be proud of, whatever we may be; but unless God hides it all away, we go and find something, and come strutting out just like our little children, when they say, “See my pretty coat! see my new shoes!” Some of you mothers, in teaching your children to say that, bring them up to habits of pride. Well, they will only be like yourself; and that is the way with us all, we will be proud, and he who has the least to be proud of is often prouder than all the rest. My Lord Mayor is not more proud of his badge and chain than many a crossing-sweeper is of his ragged trousers. Pride can live upon a dunghill as well as upon a throne; but God will hide pride from us, till, if we look about, we cannot find it, and cannot see any reason for being proud. I pray God to hide from all of us self-righteous pride, and self-seeking pride, and self-glorifying pride, to lay us low at the foot of the cross. Whenever I find anybody saying, “I have attained to a perfectly sanctified life, I have no sinful propensities, I, I, I, I”—. Ah, yes! if God had really dealt with you, he would have clipped your I’s down. They will not be half so straight in the back, and so tall, when God takes you in hand.
He hides pride from men. Some of the Lord’s workers have grown so big that the least thing offends them; everything must be according to their own way, or they will have nothing to do with it. Oh, it will not do, brothers and sisters! If God is with us, he will hide pride from man. There is nothing he dislikes more than pride; what does he say of it? “The proud he knoweth afar off.” That is as much as to say that he will not tough them with a pair of tongs. He knows enough of them at a distance, he does not want them near to him. When he deals with us in the way of grace, he hides pride from man.
Then, lastly, he thus secures man’s salvation from destruction. “He keepeth back his soul from the pit, and his life from perishing by the sword.” How wonderfully has God kept some of us back from what would have been our destruction if we had gone on! Perhaps I speak to some here who have had many hairbreadth escapes; should not they live to God? I recollect with what solemn awe I spoke to an officer who rode in the famous charge at Balaclava. It must be twenty years ago or more, I think, since I was with him, and he was telling me of that terrible ride when the saddles were emptying on every side, and he rode on, and rode back unharmed. I could not but lay my hand upon him with great earnestness, and say, “Are you not God’s man, since he spared you so? Will you not live to his glory, and give your heart to him?” And I would say that to all of you who have been in fevers oft, or who have been near the gates of death. If you have been preserved, for what purpose was it? Surely, that you might yield yourselves to God, for he has interposed on purpose that your life should not go down to the pit. I hope also that he has the higher design that you yourselves, with your truest life, should never go down into that pit from which there is no escape.
Oh, that he would deliver every man, and woman, and child here, from the wrath to come; for, believe me, there is a wrath to come, a fire that burneth, and never shall be quenched! Oh, for that visitation of God, that shall hide pride from us, and reveal a Savior to us, that shall withdraw us from our own purpose, to fulfill in us the divine purpose! Then shall we be saved from going down into the pit. The Lord enable us to believe in his dear Son, Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
