Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (82 page)

Let me add another exhortation, do not give up praying. It is a common device of Satan to say to the seeking soul, "The Lord will never hear you; you are one of the reprobate; he has never written your name in the Book of Life." Soul, pray as long as you have breath. Let it be your firm resolve to remain at the throne of grace; say to yourself,-

It is not said that the gate of mercy will open at the first knock. If it were, there would be no room for the virtue of importunity. But the Lord who delights in our importunity encourages us with the promise that one day the gate will be opened. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." And who knows how soon this may be? Why, before you close your eyes tonight you may be able to look to Christ crucified and find joy and peace in believing. Instead of the weeping prayer at the bedside there may be a happy prayer of another kind; not with tears of sorrow but with tears of holy joy, to think that the Lord has enlightened your darkness, that you have looked unto Christ, and now your face is not ashamed. Why should it not be so tonight? Why should it not be so on the morrow? God grant, poor disconsolate one, that it may be very speedily!

At any rate, wilt thou let me repeat the advice I have already given? Since thou canst not know that God will not hear thee; since it never was revealed to any man, and never will be, that God will not regard his cry; if thou canst get no further than the king of Nineveh did, yet go on and who can tell what may be, for thou knowest not what a day may bring forth. I will tell thee one thing, and thou mayest take it as being God's own truth; if thou goest to Christ empty-handed, guilty, yet willing to take all thy salvation from him as a free gift, and if thou castest thyself upon him, I will tell thee what the day will bring forth. It will bring forth eternal life to thee --salvation, joy, and peace. It will bring forth adoption, for thou shalt be received into the divine family. It will bring forth to thee the foretaste of the heaven which God has prepared for his people. Thou shalt know a blessed day here that shall be a foretaste of a never-ending day hereafter, a day that shall be as one of the days of heaven upon earth.

I wish that the Lord would bless these words of mine to disconsolate ones. I think there may be some who may be sustained for a while and kept up by what I have said; but it will be better still if they shall now be filled with a desperate resolve to cast themselves at the foot of the cross; then little do they know what the day will bring forth! They cannot imagine the joy they shall have, nor the peace they shall receive. The pardon which Christ shall give them is far more rich than they have thought it could be, and the success with which their prayers shall be crowned is far more marvellous than even their best hopes have conceived. "Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth."

III. Now thirdly, turning this time not to those who are fearing the future, nor yet to those who are disconsolate about present affliction, I thought of addressing a few words to those who are toil worn in the Master's service

I can scarcely sympathize as I could wish to do with those who have worked for Christ unsuccessfully. To say, "Master, I have toiled all the night and have taken nothing," has never been my lot, and therefore I can only speak from what I suppose to be the feeling of unsuccessful men. For these many years I have been preaching the gospel in this great London and I know not that at any time God has blessed us more than he is blessing us now, neither can I even say that at any time he has blessed us less, for it seems as if he has always been giving us more than we can receive, and blessing the Word exceedingly abundantly above what we asked or ever thought. There is room for nothing in my case but gratitude and encouragement, for humble dependence upon God for the future, and adoring joy for the past and the present.

But what hard work it must be for a minister or a Sunday-school teacher to go on preaching and laboring positively without success, or with so little that it is only like a cluster hole and there upon the topmost bough! I can imagine such brethren and sisters feeling that they can speak no more in the name of the Lord; and as they weep over their failure, saying with Isaiah, "Who hath believed our report, and to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" I should not wonder but that my text may whisper in their ears a comfortable thought, "Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth."

Do not cease from thy labor dear brother! Thou art fainting to-day, but tomorrow thou mayest arise with new strength; or feeling as if thou wert but weakness itself in the morning, though thou mayest hardly know how it came about, in the evening thou mayest be happy and cheerful. The divine presence may overshadow their heart and drive thy fears away, consoling thee in thy distress, and making thee feel as if it were well to be God's servant even if one had no present reward.

And what if coming at the back of this, thou shouldst find thyself, next time thou goest to thy work discharging it with unusual zest and with new power? What if the pulpit, instead of being as it has been, a prison to thee, should suddenly come to be a palace? What if, instead of there being a mere bush in the wilderness, God should dwell in the bush and make it all ablaze, like that unconsumed burning bush which Moses saw? What if the stammering tongue should suddenly be unloosed, and the cold heart be all aglow with divine enthusiasm? What if the poor tongue of clay should suddenly become a tongue of fire? What a change it would be! Ah! but "thou knowst not what a day may bring forth."

And what if whilst thou art thyself thus quickened, there should fall a like spirit upon the people, upon the children in the class, upon the hearers in the house of prayer? What if, instead of the dull leaden eyes which looked as if death itself were gazing from them --what if instead of stony and motionless hearers there should suddenly be a holy sensitiveness given to the people--what wouldst thou say to that? Yet why should there not be? Sometimes such grace comes all at once. The rock has been long smitten yet it would not break; but on a sudden there has come a blow of the hammer, and that perhaps not so hard as many that have fallen before, but it has hit the rock in the right place and lo! the mass of stone flies to shivers! "Oh!" you say, "I could keep on at my work if I thought that this would happen." Keep on at your work then brother, for you do not know what will come next. Pray for great things and you may then expect them. Now you may not make sure of such blessing, of course, if you have not prayed for it; but having sought it, why should it not come?

I believe all Sunday-school teachers find that sometimes such sudden meltings come over their classes, and ministers often realize that on a sudden they scarcely know how there is a change in the very aspect of their hearers, so that it is quite a different thing to preach. I am very conscious of the difference there is between the various congregations I address. Almost every day, and sometimes twice a day, I am preaching. Occasionally it is dreadful misery because, say what we will, we know we have not a sympathizing audience. We feel as though we were dragging a plough over the rough ground; but when we feel that the Spirit of God is there then we realize that we are sowing this good seed, that it is falling on good ground, and we expect the joyful sheaves which are to be our reward. And yet brethren, we are as much the servants of God when we are doing the one thing as when we are doing the other, and are as much in his service when we are unsuccessful as when we are successful. We are not responsible to God for the souls that are saved, but we are responsible for the gospel that we preach, and for the way in which we preach it. And "who can tell" whether those of us who have been least successful may not suddenly exchange our heavy toil for the most delightful service, for we know not what a day may bring forth?

And how dost thou know my brother what may yet happen? Thou wert saying this morning, "It is a dark age for the church." Well so it is. You were saying, "I believe it is quite a crisis." So it is. Every year in fact seems to be a crisis. "Ah!" you say, "but there are peculiar dangers now." No doubt there are, and I think the oldest man here recollects that there were peculiar dangers when he was a boy; there always have been and always will be peculiar dangers. But if there is danger from this revival of Ritualism--and no doubt there is --yet who among us can tell what a day may bring forth? Are we certain that God will not yet turn back the tide of Romanizing error? Are we sure that he has not a man somewhere, or even fifty men, who shall be the instruments of accomplishing this? Has it not often occurred that the very men who have been the hottest advocates of a certain system have afterwards been the greatest enemies of that system? The Christian Church could never have expected to get an apostle from among the Pharisees, and least of all could they have supposed that they would find in Saul of Tarsus, the blood-thirsty persecutor, the great apostle of the Gentiles, not one whit behind the very chiefest of the twelve. You and I do not know what God has in store. There may be somewhere at this very moment a man, unknown to you, who is reading the Word, and as he reads it he may, like the monk Luther, get such light through the reading that he who once helped to build up will be the instrument in God's hand to destroy. I am getting more and more hopeful about these matters. I entertain, the most sanguine expectation that the God who has put his enemies to rout in years gone by will do it Now once again; and instead of sitting down in anything like heaviness of spirit or oppression of heart, I would speak hopefully and have you, my brethren, tell hopefully, for we do not know what a day may bring forth.

Suddenly the whole current of the public mind may be turned. There may come a great tide of conversions which shall be the strength and the joy of the Christian Church. On a sudden, slumbering churches may awake, racious revivals may come! Upon the land the holy fire may once again descend from heaven. The Christian Church may start up to find that the God who answered by fire is still in her midst. The mourning Christian may put off his ashes and sackcloth, and put on his beautiful array, and a shout of joy may go up, "Hallelujah! Hallelujah!" where you and I expected to hear nothing but "Crucify him! Crucify him!"

Let us then, if we are working for the Master, instead of growing tired with service hear him say to us, "Be not weary in well doing, for in due season ye shall reap if ye faint not." Let us, my beloved brethren, be steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as we know that our labor is not in vain in the Lord. You know not how soon you shall see this success, for you know not what a day may bring forth. I hope every city missionary who hears me, every Biblewoman, every minister, every tract-distributor, every
Sunday-school teacher, will try and look this very sweet thought in the face. Expect that God is going to do great things and he will do them, for he does very much according to his people's expectations. According to your faith shall it be done unto you.

IV. I will now say a few words, in the fourth place, to those who are dispirited in prayer, to some who have been engaged in special supplication for some object but who up till now have received no answer, and are ready to give up praying. Let me encourage such to persevere by repeating to them the words of Solomon, "Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth."

There is a story I have often heard told by our Methodist friends of a woman who had long prayed for her husband. She resolved that she would pray for him every day a certain number of times, I think it was for ten years; and that after that she would pray no longer, supposing that if her prayer were not heard by that time, it would be an intimation that God did not intend to grant the blessing. I do not think she was right in setting any limit to God at all, or that she had any right so to act. However, on this occasion God winked at his servant's infirmity, and so the story goes--and I do not doubt its correctness, on the day on which she was to cease from prayer her husband suddenly turned thoughtful and asked her the question which she had so longed to hear from him, "What must I do to be saved?" I am sure that those who have watched over their success in prayer will have met with cases quite as startling as that-- things which your neighbor would not believe if you were to tell him, but which you treasure up amongst those inward experiences which are true to you, however improbable they may seem to other people. You know, dear friends, that you have obtained answers to prayer, very singular ones, and have obtained them very promptly and very punctually. You have had your prayers met just as an honest merchant meets his bills at the appointed time. On the expected day God has met with you and given you what you wanted, and what you sought for, just at the very time you needed it.

But now I will suppose that you are tried thus. That dear child of yours, instead of hopefully rewarding your prayers, seems to be going from bad to worse. Perhaps dear brother it is your son, and I know there are many such cases; the devil has told you that it is no use to pray for him, for God will never hear you. Or else good sister, it is your brother, and your prayer for him has been incessant; indeed, it has been a constant burden on your mind. Now in such cases I charge you, I earnestly entreat you never to listen to the malicious
insinuation of Satan that "you may as well leave off praying, for you will not be heard," for at the very least, and I am now putting it on the very lowest ground possible, "Thou knowest not what a day may bring forth." You cannot tell but that too-hard heart may yet be softened, and the rebellious will be subdued. You would be surprised to go home and find your son converted, would you not? Well, but such things have occurred. You would be surprised if your wife came in some Sunday evening and said, "I have been hearing So-and-so, and God has met with me." Yet why should it not be so? Is anything too hard for the Lord? Is his arm shortened that it cannot save? Is his ear heavy that it cannot hear? Even if you should die without seeing your children converted or your dear ones brought in, you do not know, even then, what a day may bring forth. They may be converted after you are dead; and it will tend possibly to swell the joy of Heaven when you shall see them, after years of wandering, brought to follow their father, their father whom in life they despised, but whom after he was gone they came to imitate. Persevere in prayer Christian. "Men ought always to pray and not to faint." Praying breath is never spent in vain. Still besiege the throne. The city may hold out for a while, but prayer should capture it. Beleaguer the throne of grace; it is to be taken. Never raise the siege until you get the blessing: the blessing shall certainly be yours.