Look at the difference between what these two men regard as happiness. The one who was not afraid said “Why should I fear? Am I not getting to be an old-established Christian now? Have I not resisted temptation for such a long while that I need not fear it now? I feel that I may do what young people must not do; it would too dangerous for them, but it will never hurt me.” So he talked, but look at him now. He has become so fond of the drunkard’s cup that he was seen reeling through the streets, or else he has been so enchanted by the lusts of the flesh that he has committed himself fatally. Or it may be that he was strongly tempted to make money very quickly—and quick money-making and honesty never go together except by a very extraordinary concatenation of circumstances— and this man thought it would end all right, and that he should make a great haul; so he asked the devil to help him throw the net in just that once, and now he has got into the clutches of the law, and he names the name of a man who once made a profession of religion— is bracketed with that of other rogues and vagabonds! But now look at the timid man—the man who said “I know that I shall never be intoxicated if I never take anything that is intoxicating; I know that I shall not be a thief if I never take anybody’s money but my own; I know that if I never indulge even in indelicate expressions, if I never think of or look at anything that is impure, I shall not be likely to go in that evil way which I utterly abhor;”— that is the man who is both safe and happy, “the man that feareth alway.” Some people call him a milksop, and say that he has not spirit enough to do as others do; but just look at him. He can go in and out of the house of God as an honorable Christian man, while the other one of whom I have told you, is a moral wreck, and his name is a by-word and a reproach. I can bear my testimony that I have seen high professors so act as to become a stench in our nostrils; and on the other hand, I have seen poor timid girls who were half afraid they were hypocrites, and poor trembling men who used to come to me for comfort and counsel lest they should be deceiving themselves. I have seen many of the latter class enter the port of glory like ships in full sail coming into the harbor, while those other vessels with their painted hulls, that seemed to tempt a lot from the enemy, have gone to the bottom and they have been lost to us, and lost to themselves.
Now I will suppose that both these men whom I have been describing have fallen into a certain sin; see what a difference there is between them now. The man who has not any fear says, “Well, yes, there is no doubt that I did wrong; but then”—and he begins telling all about the circumstances under which he says that he was “overtaken.” He tries to make out that he was an innocent victim who was deceived by somebody else. Now listen to “the man that feareth alway.” “Ah!” says he, “I have sinned,” and he hangs his head in shame; and then adds “I have no excuse to make; and you cannot say anything to me that will be half so heavy and so hard as what I say to myself. God will forgive me, I have no doubt, for I have truly repented; but I can never forgive myself.” The first man has a dry eye and a proud defiant spirit; and it is very likely that having committed that one great sin he will go on and commit another, and yet, another, and get harder and harder in his heart continually, yet all the while talk about being one of God’s elect who will be saved at last. Well now, that man is not a happy man. I pray that none of us may ever experience the wretchedness of having a seared conscience, and get into a state of indifference in which we can trifle with sin and yet pretend to be the servants of God. But oh, if we do fall into sin, may the Lord make us very tender about it! Let this be our prayer—
“Quick as the apple of an eye,
O Lord, my conscience make!
Awake my soul, when sin is nigh,
And keep it still awake.”
Dear brothers and sisters, may you by God’s grace be preserved from sin; but if sin should come upon you unawares, may your bones be broken by it, and may you feel that your very heart is wounded because you have wounded your God! To repent of sin is one of the hallmarks of a Christian; but to have a hardened, untrembling heart, is one of the sure marks of the reprobate who are far off from God.
I might thus continue to show you, by a hundred contrasts, that the man who feareth alway is the really happy man. Suppose that we are fishing and that we have cast our line into the water. There is one fish that is altogether afraid of our bait, and of all our arrangements, and he swims as far as ever he can up or down the stream away from us. But here are some fish that are quite charmed with our worm. They say that they do not mean to swallow the hook, but we do not believe them. They say that they mean to get the worm off without letting the hook catch hold of them. They have very clever ways of sucking worms off hooks, and they are going to show what they can do; and soon they are caught. But happy is the fish that fears the bait as well as the hook, and so keeps right away from both of them. When some of us were boys we used to set traps for the sparrows and other birds in winter time, and we would watch to see them go in to eat our crumbs inside the trap. Sometimes there would come a bird that had seen our arrangement before, and had been almost caught in it, and knew all about it. Well, as soon as ever he looked at it he made up his mind that he would give our trap a very wide berth, so he flew away as far as he could. But there were some other birds that would come and look at the trap, and even perch on it, and presently some of them would get into it. Of course they did not mean to be caught; they thought they knew the way to go just far enough into the trap to get those grains of wheat, and then to fly out; but once in, they could not fly out. And sinners are just as foolish as those sparrows. Of course they do not mean to be caught; they will fly out of the trap all right when they have eaten the wheat! Yes, but I say, happy is the bird that feareth always, and that keeps far off the trap; and unhappy is the bird that thinks it can go just so far into the trap, but fully intends to go no further. Oh, how many young men and young women have been ruined because they have gone just so far into sin, meaning to stop there! But they could not stop there; they began to slide and it carried them along where they never meant to go. The only safe plan is to keep off the ice altogether. If you do not take the first wrong step, dear friend, you will not take the second; and if divine grace makes you fear and tremble before you begin to go down the hill, you are not likely to be found amongst those who have fallen to the bottom. Happy is the man, in this sense, that feareth alway.
“This article originally appeared here at Bible Bulletin Board.”
