Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (83 page)
Read Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs Online
Authors: Charles Spurgeon
I hope there are many of us who are neither afraid and fretting about the future, nor depressed about the present, neither worn out with toil in the Master's service, nor dispirited in prayer. There are some of us to whom the Lord is so gracious that our cup runneth over. Now, we may just put another drop on the top of the full cup. Dear friend, "thou knowest not what a day may bring forth." It may perhaps bring forth to you and to me our last day. What a blessed day that would be, our last day! Our dying day! No, do not call it so, but the day of our translation, the day of our great change, the day of our being taken up, that of our being carried away in the fiery chariot to be for ever with the Lord!
Thou knowest not but what this may be thy case tomorrow. Oh what joy! I am doubting and fearing to-day, but I may see his face tomorrow, and see it so as never to lose sight of it again. From my poor tenement of poverty I am going to the mansions of eternal blessedness. From the sick-bed where I have tossed in pain I shall mount to everlasting joy. The streets of gold may be trodden tomorrow, and the palm branch of victory may be waved tomorrow, the streets trodden by these weary feet, and the palm branch waved by these toil-worn hands tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow the chants of angels may be in your ears, and the swell of celestial music may made glad your soul. Tomorrow you may see the beautific vision, and may behold the King in his beauty in the land that is very far off. I do like to live in the constant anticipation of being "with Christ, which is far better." Do not put it off Christian, as though it were far away. If we had to wait a hundred years they would soon pass like a watch in the night; but we shall not live so long as that. We may be with our Lord tomorrow. We may sup here on earth and breakfast in heaven. We may breakfast on earth, and hear Christ say "Come and dine," or we may go from our communion table here to the great supper of the Lamb above, to be with him for ever.
This is the best of it. When somebody said to a Christian minister, "I suppose you are on the wrong side of fifty?" "No," he said, "thank God, I am on the right side of fifty, for I am sixty, and am therefore nearer heaven." Old age should never be looked upon with dismay by us; it should be our joy. If our hearts were right in this matter, instead of being at all afraid at the thought of parting from this life we should say,-
I have not time to say much to others here who are not concerned in these sweet themes, but I will at least say this. Let the careless and thoughtless here remember that they do not know what a day may bring forth. Tomorrow it may not be that grand party to which you are
intending to go; tomorrow it may not be that sweet sin of which your evil nature is thinking. Tomorrow may see you on a sick-bed, tomorrow may see you on your dying bed. Tomorrow, worst of all, may see you in hell! O sinner, what a state to live in, to be in daily jeopardy of
eternal ruin, to have the wrath of God, who is always angry with the
wicked, abiding on you; and not to know but that tomorrow you may be where you can find no escape, no hope, no comfort! Tomorrow in
eternity! Tomorrow banished from his presence for ever! Tomorrow to have that awful sentence thrilling in your soul, "Depart from me, ye
cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels."
It is a great blessing when food and appetite meet together. Some have appetite and no meat, they need our pity; others have meat but no appetite, they may not perhaps win our pity but they certainly require it. We have heard of a gentleman who was accustomed to take an early morning walk and frequently met a poor man hastening to his labor. One morning he said to him, "I have to walk thus early of a morning to get a stomach for my meat." "Ah," said the other, "and I have to trudge to work thus early to get meat for my stomach." Neither of them was quite satisfied with his position: the happy conjunction of the appetite and the food could alone secure content. Are we thankful enough when we have both?
It has often happened that men have been so luxuriously fed that appetite has departed from them altogether. The Israelites when they were in the wilderness became at last so squeamish that though they were fed with the bread of heaven, and for once men did eat angels' food, yet they said, "Our soul loatheth this light bread;" and thousands in the world are in great danger of falling into the same condition, for the rarest luxuries are unenjoyed by them. They pick and choose as if nothing were good enough for them, and like the old Roman gluttons they require sea and land, earth and air to be ransacked for their gratification, and then crave pungent sauces and strange flavourings ere they can eat. The fact is, the old proverb is true, that the best sauce for meat is hunger, and while the confectioner and the cook may labor with a thousand arts to produce a dainty dish, nature teaches us the way to enjoy our meat; namely, not to eat it till we want it, and then to partake of only so much as our bodies require. That hunger gives a relish even to objectionable diet is certain. Our forefathers found it possible to live upon food which we could not touch. Even so late as the reign of Queen Elizabeth, the mass of the poor seldom tasted wheaten bread but fed on rye or barley cakes, and often had to be content with bread made of beans, peas, tares, oats, or lentils, and even these had to be frequently mixed with acorns. They had a saying that "hunger setteth his foot in the horse's manger," meaning that food which was only fit for horses was devoured by men in the time of famine. Those delicate people who are for ever complaining of this and that and regretting the "good old times," would change their tune if they had a trial of such fare, and could earnestly pray to be projected again into the times in which we live.
The rules which apply to the bodily appetite equally hold true of the mind. We easily lose our taste for anything of which we have our fill. Many men of the world have gone the round of amusement, and now nothing can please them; they have worn out all their playthings and are tired of every game. Poor things, more wearied of their follies than the slave by his servitude! For them laughter and mirth have become ghastly mockeries, men singers and women singers are no delight, and instruments of music are discordant, gardens and palaces are dreary, and treasures of art a vexation of spirit. By the road of folly they have reached the very point to which Solomon came with all his wisdom, and like him they cry "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity."
In a higher order of things the same process can be observed. In the pursuit of knowledge men may come to loathe honeycombs through sheer repletion. Many a literary man has reached such a condition of fastidiousness that the books which he can enjoy are as few as the fingers of his hand. With a toss of the head he passes by volumes with which ordinary readers are charmed. His delicate poetical taste is shocked by the hymns which delight his countrymen, and his ear is tortured by the tunes to which they are sung. For my part, I would sooner retain the power of enjoying a simple hymn sung to a tune which delights the multitude, than find myself proclaimed king of critics, and I would sooner be able to sit down and read a child's story book with interest, than rise into the sublime condition of those literary gentlemen who glance over every book with a sharp critical eye, and see nothing meriting their attention; in fact, never will see anything worth reading unless the book is written by themselves or one of their party. "The full soul loatheth an honeycomb; but to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet."
I should not have said so much upon this principle of our nature if it had not happened to enter into religion. It is upon religious fastidiousness that I have to speak this morning. Men in the things of God have not always an appetite for the sweetest and most precious truth. The gospel of Jesus revealed from heaven is full of marrow and fatness, but the condition of men's minds is such that they cannot perceive its excellence, but regard it as a tasteless thing at best, while some even treat it as though it were wormwood and gall to them. They feed upon the husks of the world with greedy relish, but turn from the provisions of mercy with disdain. They are full of the meat from the flesh pots of Egypt, and for the bread of heaven they have no desire; nor will they till the Holy Spirit quickens them into spiritual life and makes them feel the keen pangs of spiritual hunger.
The three points of my discourse will be as follows:--first, that Jesus Christ is in himself sweeter than the honeycomb; secondly, there are those that loathe even him; and then thirdly, blessed be his name, there are others who appreciate him.--"To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet."
I. Let us begin then with the assured truth that Jesus Christ is himself sweeter than the honeycomb. Whether you believe it or not the fact remains, the incarnate Word is sweeter than honey or the honeycomb: whether it be your privilege to revel in the delightful knowledge of his love or not, that love will still be equally precious. That Jesus Christ is sweeter than the honeycomb is clear if we consider who he is and what he gives and does. If you think of it you will see that it must be so. Our Lord is the incarnation of divine love. The love of God is sweet, and Jesus is that love made manifest. "God so loved the world,"--I pause to ask how much? Where shall we see at a glance the fullness of that love? Turn your eyes to Jesus, he alone answers the question. "God so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son." There bleeding upon Calvary we see the heart of the Father revealed in the pierced heart of his only-begotten Son. Jesus is the focus of the love of God. The boundless goodness of the ever-loving God finds its best expression in the person of the Redeemer:--surely then he must be sweet beyond compare. When God takes his love and culls the choicest flower from it, and hands it down to earth for men to gaze upon it as the token of his favor, we may be sure that its fragrance surpasses conception. God is love, and when that love is concentrated in one individual that it may be afterwards diffused through multitudes, there must be an infinite sweetness in that blessed person. Judge ye what I say;--must it not be so?
Moreover, Jesus Christ is in himself the embodiment of boundless mercy to sinners, as well as love to creatures. God loved men, for he had made them, but he could not bless them for he must judge them for their offenses. Lo, Jesus Christ has vindicated the divine honor, satisfied the law, and now the mercy of God can descend freely to men, even to the rebellious and the undeserving. He who would find mercy, let him look where Jesus died upon the tree and he shall find it blooming freely from the crimsoned ground. He who would behold mercy in all its plenitude, let him go where Jesus stands with open hands welcoming the vilest of the vile to the feast of love, cleansing their every stain, and robing them in garments of salvation. He must be sweet from whom such sweetness flows that he makes the foulest and most offensive of mankind acceptable to God. If his merits turn our hell to heaven, our gall of bitterness into joy and peace, it is not possible that even the honeycomb dripping with virgin honey should fitly set him forth. Ye bees that wander over fairest flowers, your choicest gatherings can never rival the quintessences of delight which must dwell in one in whom the mercy of God is concentrated.
Ye poverty-stricken sons of men, Christ must be sweet for he meets all your wants. Sweet is liberty to the captive, and when the Son makes you free you are free indeed; sweet is pardon to the condemned, and Jesus proclaims full forgiveness and salvation; sweet is health to the sick, and Jesus is the great physician of souls; sweet is light to those who are in darkness and to eyes that are dim, and Jesus is both sun to our darkness and eyes to our blindness: all that men can want, all that the most famished souls can pine after, is to be found in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, and therefore sweet he must be.
He is sweet because whenever he comes into a man's heart, he breathes into it the sweetness of abounding peace. Oh the rest our souls have known when we have leaned upon his bosom! "The peace of God which passeth all understanding" has kept our heart and mind by Jesus Christ. Our soul has drank nectar from his wounds. Nor has it been bare peace alone, the glassy pools of rest have bubbled up into fountains of joy. In Jesus we have rejoiced and do rejoice and will rejoice all the day. No happiness can be more divine than the bliss of knowing him and feeding upon him and being one with him. All the true peace and joy that are known on earth--I might have said that are known in heaven among the ransomed throng--all come through Jesus Christ our Lord whose name is the sum of delights. Those spices must be sweet indeed from which the sacred oil of joy distill; that honey must be infinitely sweet of which one single drop fills a whole life with rejoicing.
It is clear that sweet our Lord must be, because his very name is redolent of celestial hope to believers. No sooner do we taste of Jesus than, like Jonathan in the wood, our eyes are enlightened and we see the invisible; the veil is taken away and we behold a way of access to our Father God and to the joys of his right hand. Once understand that Jesus has borne our sins and carried our sorrows, and we see that the felicities of eternity are prepared for us. His name is the open sesame of the gates of Paradise; learn but to pronounce the name of Jesus from your heart as all your confidence, and you have learned a magic word which will scatter troops of opposing foes, and will open the two-leaved gates, and cut the bars of iron in sunder if they stand betwixt your soul and heaven. Since Jesus is all this and vastly more than any human tongue can tell, it is clear upon the very face of it that he must be sweet.
