Part 13 (1/2)
And all the while they knew that it was wrong, did those poor foolish lads. If you had asked one of them openly, ”Do you not know that G.o.d has forbidden you to do this?” they would have either been forced to say, ”Yes,” or else they would have tried to laugh the matter off, or perhaps held their tongues and looked silly, or perhaps again answered insolently; showing by each and all of these ways of taking it, that the Lord's message had come home to their consciences, and convinced them of their sin, though they were determined not to own it or obey it. And the way they would have put the matter by and excused themselves to themselves would have been just the way in which Pharaoh did it. They would have tried to forget that the Lord had warned them, and tried to make out to themselves that it was all the preacher's doing, and to make it a personal quarrel between him and them. Just so Pharaoh did when he hardened his heart. He made the Lord's message a ground for hating and threatening Moses and Aaron, as if it was any fault of theirs. He knew in his heart that the Lord had sent them; but he tried to forget that, and drove them out from his presence, and told them that if they dared to appear before him again they should surely die. And just so, my friends, people will be angry with the preacher for telling them unpleasant truths, as if it was any more pleasure to him to speak than for them to hear. Oh, why will you forget that the words which I speak from this pulpit are not my words, but G.o.d's? It is not I who warn you of what you are bringing on yourselves by your sins, it is G.o.d Himself.
There it is written in His Bible--judge for yourselves. Read your Bibles for yourselves, and you will see that I am not speaking my own thoughts and words. And as for being angry with me for telling you truth, read the ordination service which is read whenever a clergyman is ordained, and judge for yourselves. What is a clergyman sent into the world for at all, but to say to you what I am saying now? What should I be but a hypocrite and a traitor to the blessed Lord who died for me, and saved me from my sins, and ordained me to preach to sinners, that they too may be saved from their sins,--what should I be but a traitor to Him, if I did not say to you, whenever I see you going wrong:
”O come, let us wors.h.i.+p, and fall down and kneel before the Lord our Maker.
”For He is the Lord our G.o.d; and we are the people of His pasture, and the sheep of His hand.
”To-day, if ye will hear His voice, harden not your hearts,
”Lest He sware in His wrath that you shall not enter into His rest!”
And now, my friends, I will tell you what will happen to you. You see that I know something, without having been told of what has been going on in your hearts. I beseech you, believe me when I tell you what will go on in them. G.o.d will chastise you for your sins. He will; just because He loves you, and does not hate you; just because you are His children, and not dumb animals born to perish. Troubles will come upon you as you grow older. Of what sort they will be I cannot tell; but that they will come, I can tell full well. And when the Lord sends trouble to you, shall it harden your hearts or soften them? It depends on you, altogether on you, whether the Lord hardens your hearts by sending those sorrows, or whether He softens and turns them and brings them back to the only right place for them--home to Him. But your trouble may only harden your heart all the more. The sorrows and sore judgments which the Lord sent Pharaoh only hardened his heart. It all depends upon the way in which you take these troubles, my friends. And that not so much when they come as after they come. Almost all, let their hearts be right with G.o.d or not, seem to take sorrow as they ought, while the sorrow is on them.
Pharaoh did so too. He said to Moses and Aaron: ”I have sinned this time. The Lord is righteous, and I and my people are wicked.
Entreat the Lord that there be no more mighty thunderings and hail; and I will let you go.” What could be more right or better spoken?
Was not Pharaoh in a proper state of mind then? Was not his heart humbled, and his will resigned to G.o.d? Moses thought not. For while he promised Pharaoh to pray that the storm might pa.s.s over, yet he warned him: ”But as for thee and thy servants, I know that ye will not yet fear the Lord your G.o.d.” And so it happened; for, ”when Pharaoh saw that the rain, and hail, and thunder had ceased, he sinned yet more, and hardened his heart, he and his servants.
Neither would he let the children of Israel go.” ... And so, alas!
it happens to many a man and woman nowadays. They find themselves on a sick-bed. They are in fear of death, in fear of poverty, in fear of shame and punishment for their misdeeds. And then they say: ”It is G.o.d's judgment. I have been very wicked. I know G.o.d is punis.h.i.+ng me. Oh, if G.o.d will but raise me up off this sick-bed; if He will but help me out of this trouble, I will give up all my wicked ways.
I will repent and amend.” So said Pharaoh; and yet, as soon as he was safe out of his distress, he hardened his heart. And so does many a man and woman, who, when they get safe through their troubles, never give up one of their sins, any more than Pharaoh did. They really believe that G.o.d has punished them. They really intend to amend, while they are in the trouble: but as soon as they are out of it, they try to persuade themselves that it was not G.o.d who sent the sorrow, that it came ”by accident,” or that ”people must have trouble in this life,” or that ”if they had taken better care, they might have prevented it.”--All of them excuses to themselves for forgetting G.o.d in the matter, and, therefore, for forgetting what they promised to G.o.d in trouble; and so, after all, they go on just as they went on before. And yet not as they went on before. For every such sin hardens their hearts; every such sin makes them less able to see G.o.d's hand in what happens to them; every such sin makes them more bold and confident in disobeying G.o.d, and saying to themselves: ”After all, why should I be so frightened when I am in trouble, and make such promises to amend my life? For the trouble goes away, whether I mend my life or not; and nothing happens to me; G.o.d does not punish me for not keeping my promises to Him. I may as well go on in my own way, for I seem not the worse off in body or in purse for so doing.” Thus do people harden their hearts after each trouble, as Pharaoh did; so that you will see people, by one affliction after another, one loss after another, all their lives through, warned by G.o.d that sin will not prosper them; and confessing that their sins have brought G.o.d's punishment on them: and yet going on steadily in the very sins which have brought on their troubles, and gaining besides, as time runs on, a heart more and more hardened.
And why?
Because they, like Pharaoh, love to have their own way. They will not submit to G.o.d, and do what He bids them, and believe that what He bids them must be right--good for them, and for all around them.
They promised to mend. But they promised as Pharaoh did. ”If G.o.d will take away this trouble, then I will mend”--meaning, though they do not dare to say it: ”And if G.o.d will not take away this trouble, of course He cannot expect me to mend.” In plain English--If G.o.d will not act toward them as they like, then they will not act toward Him as He likes. My friends, G.o.d does not need us to bargain with Him. We must obey Him whether we like it or not; whether it seems to pay us or not; whether He takes our trouble off us or not; we must obey, for He is the Lord; and if we will not obey, He will prove His power on us, as He did on Pharaoh, by showing plainly what is the end of those who resist His will.
What, then, are we to do when our sins bring us, as they certainly will some day bring us, into trouble?
What we ought to have done at first, my friends. What we ought to have done in the wild days of youth, and so have saved ourselves many a dark day, many a sleepless night, many a bitter shame and heartache. To open our eyes, and see that the only thing for men and women, whom G.o.d has made, is to obey the G.o.d who has made them. He is the Lord. He has made us. He will have us do one thing. How can we hope to prosper by doing anything else? It is ill fighting against G.o.d. Which is the stronger, my friends, you or G.o.d? Make up your minds on that. It surely will not take you long.
But someone may say: ”I do wish and long to obey G.o.d; but I am so weak, and my sins have so entangled me with bad company, or debts, or--, or--.” We all know, alas! into what a net everyone who gives way to sin gets his feet: ”And therefore I cannot obey G.o.d. I long to do so. I feel, I know, when I look back, that all my sin, and shame, and unhappiness, come from being proud and self-willed, and determined to have my own way, and do what I choose. But I cannot mend.” Do not despair, poor soul! I had a thousand times sooner hear you say you cannot mend, than that you can. For those who say they can mend, are apt to say: ”I can mend; and therefore I shall mend when I choose, and no sooner.” But those who really feel they cannot mend--those who are really weary and worn out with the burden of their sins--those who are really tired out with their own wilfulness, and feel ready to lie down and die, like a spent horse, and say: ”G.o.d, take me away, no matter to what place; I am not fit to live here on earth, a shame and a torment to myself day and night”--those who are in that state of mind, are very near--very near finding out glorious news.
Those who cannot mend themselves and know it, G.o.d will mend. G.o.d will mend your lives for you. He knows as well as you what you have to struggle against; ay, a thousand times better. He knows--what does He not know? Pray to Him, and try what He does not know. Cry to Him to rid you of your bad companions; He will find a way of doing it. Cry to Him to bring you out of the temptations you feel too strong for you; He will find a way for doing it. Cry to Him to teach you what you ought to do, and He will send someone, and that the right person, doubt it not, to teach you in His own good time. Above all, cry and pray to Him to conquer the pride, and self-conceit, and wilfulness in your heart; to take the hard proud heart of stone out of you, and give you instead a heart of flesh, loving, and tender, and kindly to every human creature; and He will do it. Cry to Him to make your will like His own will, that you may love what He loves, and hate what He hates, and do what He wishes you to do. And then you will surely find my words come true: ”Those who long to mend, and yet know that they cannot mend themselves, let them but pray, and G.o.d will mend them.”
x.x.xIII--THE RED SEA TRIUMPH
Preached Easter-day Morning, 1852.
This is a night to be much observed unto the Lord, for bringing the children of Israel out of the land of Egypt.--EXODUS xii. 42.
You all, my friends, know what is the meaning of Easter-day--that it is the Day on which The Lord rose again from the dead. You must have seen that most of the special services for this day, the Collect, Epistle, and Gospel, and the second lessons, both morning and evening, reminded you of Christ's rising again; and so did the proper Psalms for this day, though it may seem at first sight more difficult to see what they have to do with the Lord's rising again.
Now the first lessons, both for the morning and evening services, were also meant to remind us of the very same thing, though it may seem even more difficult still, at first sight, to understand how they do so.
Let us see what these two first lessons are about. The morning one was from the twelfth chapter of Exodus, and told us what the Pa.s.sover was, and what it meant. The first lesson for this afternoon was the fourteenth chapter of Exodus. Surely you must remember it. Surely the most careless of you must have listened to that glorious story, how the Jews went through the Red Sea as if it had been dry land, while Pharaoh and the Egyptian army, trying to follow them, were overwhelmed in the water. Surely you cannot have heard how the poor Jews looked back from the farther sh.o.r.e, and hardly believed their own eyes for joy and wonder, when they saw their proud masters swept away for ever, and themselves safe and free out of the hateful land where they had been slaves for hundreds of years. You cannot surely, my friends, have heard that glorious story, and forgotten it again already. I hope not; for G.o.d knows, that tale of the Jews coming safe through the Red Sea has a deep and blessed meaning enough for you, if you could but see it.
But some of you may be saying to yourselves: ”No doubt it is a very n.o.ble story; and a man cannot help rejoicing at the poor Jews'
escape, and at the downfall of those cruel Egyptians. It is a pleasant thought, no doubt, that if it were but for that once, G.o.d interfered to help poor suffering creatures, and rid them of their tyrants. But what has that to do with Easter Day and Christ's rising again?”
I will try to show you, my friends. The Jews' Pa.s.sover is the same as our Easter-day, as you know already. But they are not merely alike in being kept on the same day. They are alike because they are both of them remembrances and tokens of the Lord Jesus Christ's delivering men out of misery and slavery. For never forget--though, indeed, in these strange times, I ought rather to say, I beseech you to read your Bibles and see--that it was Jesus Christ Himself who brought the Jews out of Egypt. St. Paul tells us so positively, again and again. In 1 Cor. x. 4 he tells us that it was Christ who followed them through the wilderness. In verse 9 of the same chapter, he says that it was Christ Himself whom they tempted in the wilderness. He was the Angel of the Covenant who went with them. He was the G.o.d of Israel whom the elders of the Jews saw, a few weeks afterwards, on Mount Sinai, and under His feet a pavement like a sapphire stone. True, the Lord did not take flesh upon Him till nearly two thousand years after. But from the very beginning of all things, while He was in the bosom of the Father, He was the King of men. Man was made in His image, and therefore in the image of the Father, whose perfect likeness He is--”the brightness of His glory, and the express image of His person.” It was He who took care of men, guided and taught them, and delivered them out of misery, from the very beginning of the world. St. Paul says the same thing, in many different ways, all through the epistle to the Hebrews. He says, for instance, that Moses, when he fled from Pharaoh's court in Egypt, esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt; for he endured as seeing Him who is invisible.
The Lord said the same thing of Himself. He said openly that He was the person who is called, all through the Old Testament, ”The Lord.”
He asked the Pharisees: ”What think ye of Christ? whose son is He?