Moreover, you have listened to their prayers; you have been edified, you have been aroused, and you have also been driven to tremble. Seeing Jacob in his wrestlings at Jabbok you have cried, “Would God I could wrestle like that man; but as I cannot, woe is me!” You have noticed Daniel go to his chamber and cry unto his God three times a day, and then you have remembered your own forgetfulness and wandering thoughts in the matter of prayer, and you have concluded that you could have no hope of speeding at his throne of grace.
Other aspects of the piety of believers have also discouraged you. To see how they walk with God, how their speech is perfumed with love to Jesus, how their manner of life is above that of the world— all this has made you fear that you could never enter into their heritage. These gracious men seem so far above you that you cry, “Surely I am more brutish than any man.”
You have noticed also their usefulness—how many souls they have brought to Christ; how God has helped them to guide the bewildered and to instruct the ignorant; and then you have felt that it was natural that such men should have confidence towards God; but as for yourself, what is the use of you? You have felt good for nothing in the presence of persons privileged to do so much for God and men.
You have been even more cast down when you have heard them talk of their high joys. The other day you met with one who wore heaven on his face and you said to yourself, “I wish I knew such joy as beams in this man’s countenance.” You heard your minister describe the deep peace and holy calm which come with full assurance of faith; and every word he spoke about his own joy in the Lord was like a dagger at your heart; for you felt that you could not speak of such a blissful experience. You were never on the top of Tabor never did you behold the transfigured Lord. You are afraid to trust God because you cannot compare with other men in their heights.
Carefully notice two or three little points which I will mention. First, remember that you see these good people at their best. You have not seen their seamy side. Perhaps they have not told you of how at times their feet were almost gone, their steps had well-nigh slipped. You see their days, and not their nights. I think it is a very sweet trait in your character that you do so. In this you differ from the wicked world. The ungodly always notice the bad points in the saints; they eat up the sins of God’s people as they eat bread: it is nourishment to them. As for you, poor troubled one! you observe only the virtues of believers, and you overlook their shortcomings. Surely God has wrought a change in you. In this there is some ground of hope: the Lord who has taken away your envy, malice, and all uncharitableness, will remove the rest of your sins if you bring them before him in repentant faith.
Recollect also that you now see men who have faith in God, and you see in them the result of that faith. Do not imagine that their graces existed before their faith. If you have not the result of faith before you have faith itself, do not be astonished; they had not these excellences before they believed in Jesus. Some of the brightest of them were once the blackest of sinners. “Such were some of you,” said Paul: “but ye are washed.” Can it be a wise thing to say, “I have not those fruits of the Spirit and therefore I will not cultivate the tree of faith from which they grow”? Nay, rather say, “The Lord who made these men what they are, can make me what they are. He that could beautify them with righteousness can also hang my neck with the jewels of holiness.”
Do you not think it would be very great folly on your part if you should refrain from believing in the Lord Jesus on the ground that you had greater need to seek him than other men? Because you lack these things which you see in the saints, and know that you can only have them of the Lord by faith, is that a reason why you should not go to God in faith? This is a grand argument for going at once. Should a man plead his poverty as a reason why he should not ask an alms? Is nakedness a reason for refusing to be dressed? Is hunger a motive for rejecting food? or sickness a motive for shutting out the physician? I argue in the opposite way. Your urgent need is the strongest reason why you should claim of the Lord by faith these promises which he has made to needy souls. If you are more brutish than any man go to the Lord that he may instruct you!
The greater your need, the greater opportunity you have of glorifying God by believing in him for an all-sufficient supply. If you lack all these lovely and needful things which you so much admire in others, it is a sad and grievous want; but if you can believe that the Lord of mercy can and will give you all, you will do great honor to his name. Is it not written, “If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God”? If you were a little sinner and had little needs, God could only be a little merciful and give you a little supply; but the more brutish you are and the less of true understanding you have, the greater opportunity have you of glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ by believing in him for the great things which you evidently need. If you are the greatest fool that ever lived, you will give to Christ all the more honor when you believe that he can make you wise unto salvation. God grant that the heights to which other men reach may never keep you back from faith in God, but may the rather urge you on to believe great things of God!
But further, I said—and perhaps I surprised you— that the depths of other men have often kept tremblers from a simple faith in God. I know many who say, “I cannot feel as others feel—my heart is hard and insensible, and when I listen to what believers tell me of their sharp distresses I fear that I cannot be saved; for into these deep places I have never gone.” These depths are of many kinds; but the mention of one or two may suffice. Some believers have been brought to the Lord through fearful conviction of sin, conviction most overwhelming: they seem to have found their way to heaven round by the brink of hell. “Ah!” say you, “I was never thus shaken over the pit.” Another, after he has been converted, experience awful conflicts: from day to day he struggles with inbred corruptions, and therefore he goes sighing and crying to heaven. There is among the best of men an amount of sorrow which I need not here dwell upon. Ploughing, harrowing, scarifying, fall to the lot of the best of soils. Saints go through fire and through water in their spiritual march to the land of bliss. Perhaps some of you escape these agonies and know but little of the grinding process. Will you therefore fear to believe because you think you are more unfeeling than other men? Will you refuse the cup of life because God has not infused all his bitters into it?
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
