Twenty-Five Village Sermons

Next, to speak of Scripture.  I might quote texts innumerable to prove that what I say Scripture says also.  Consider but this one thing,—that there is a whole book in the Bible written to prove this one thing,—that our good and bad deeds are repaid us with interest in this life—the Proverbs of Solomon I mean—in which there is little or no mention of heaven or hell, or any world to come.  It is all one noble, and awful, and yet cheering sermon on that one text, “The righteous shall be recompensed in the earth, much more the wicked and the sinner,”—put in a thousand different lights; brought home to us a thousand different roads, comes the same everlasting doom,—“Vain man, who thinkest that thou canst live in God’s world and yet despise His will, know that, in every smiling, comfortable sin, thou art hatching an adder to sting thee in the days of old age, to poison thy cup of sinful joy, even when it is at thy lips; to haunt thy restless thoughts, and dog thee day and night; to rise up before thee, in the silent, sleepless hours of night, like an angry ghost!  An awful foretaste of the doom that is to come; and yet a merciful foretaste, if thou wilt be but taught by the disappointment, the unsatisfied craving, the gnawing shame of a guilty conscience, to see the heinousness of sin, and would turn before it be too late.”

What, my friends,—what will you make of such texts as this, “That he who soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption?”  Do you not see that comes true far too often?  Can it help always coming true, seeing that God’s apostle spoke it?  What will you make of this, too, “That the wicked is snared by the working of his own hands;”—“That evil”—the evil which we do of its own self—“shall slay the wicked?”  What says the whole noble 37th Psalm of David, but that same awful truth of God, that sin is its own punishment?

Why should I go on quoting texts?  Look for yourselves, you who fancy that it is only on the other side of the grave that God will trouble Himself about you and your meanness, your profligacy, your falsehood.  Look for yourselves in the book of God, and see if there be any writer there,—lawgiver, prophet, psalmist, apostle, up to Christ the Lord Himself,—who does not warn men again and again, that here, on earth, their sins will find them out.  Our Saviour, indeed, when on earth, said less about this subject than any of the prophets before Him, or the apostles after Him, and for the best of reasons.  The Jews had got rooted in their minds a superstitious notion, that all disease, all sorrow, was the punishment in each case of some particular sin; and thus, instead of looking with pity and loving awe upon the sick and the afflicted, they were accustomed, too often, to turn from them as sinners, smitten of God, bearing in their distress the token of His anger.  The blessed One,—He who came to heal the sick and save the lost,—reproved that error more than once.  When the disciples fancied a certain poor man’s blindness to be a judgment from God, “Neither did he sin,” said the Lord, “nor his parents, but that the glory of God might be made manifest in him.”  And yet, on the other hand, when He healed a certain man of an old infirmity at the pool of Bethesda, what were His words to him?  “Go thy way, sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee;”—a clear and weighty warning that all his long misery of eight-and-thirty years had been the punishment of some sin of his, and that the sin repeated would bring on him a still severer judgment.

What, again, does the apostle mean, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, when he tells us how God scourges every son whom he receives, and talks of His chastisements, whereof all are partakers.  Why do we need chastising if we have nothing which needs mending?  And though the innocent may sometimes be afflicted to make them strong as well as innocent, and the holy chastened to make them humble as well as holy, yet if the good cannot escape their share of affliction, how will the bad get off?  “If the righteous scarcely be saved, where will the ungodly and the sinner appear?”  But what use in arguing when you know that my words are true?  You know that your sins will find you out.  Look boldly and honestly into your own hearts.  Look through the history of your past lives, and confess to God, at least, that the far greater number of your sorrows have been your own fault; that there is hardly a day’s misery which you ever endured in your life of which you might not say, ‘If I had listened to the voice of God in my conscience—if I had earnestly considered what my duty was—if I had prayed to God to determine my judgment right, I should have been spared this sorrow now?’  Am I not right?  Those who know most of God and their own souls will agree most with me; those who know little about God and their own souls will agree but hardly with me, for they provoke God’s chastisements, and writhe under them for the time, and then go and do the same wrong again, as the wild beast will turn and bite the stone thrown at him without having the sense to see why it was thrown.

Think, again, of your past lives, and answer in God’s sight, how many wrong things have you ever done which have succeeded, that is, how many sins which you would not be right glad were undone if you could but put back the wheels of Time?  They may have succeeded outwardly; meanness will succeed so—lies—oppression—theft—adultery—drunkenness—godlessness—they are all pleasant enough while they last, I suppose; and a man may reap what he calls substantial benefits from them in money, and suchlike, and keep that safe enough; but has his sin succeeded?  Has it not found him out?—found him out never to lose him again?  Is he the happier for it?  Does he feel freer for it?  Does he respect himself the more for it?—No!  And even though he may prosper now, yet does there not run though all his selfish pleasure a certain fearful looking forward to a fiery judgment to which he would gladly shut his eyes, but cannot?

Cunning, fair-spoken oppressor of the poor, has not thy sin found thee out?  Then be sure it will.  In the shame of thine own heart it will find thee out;—in the curses of the poor it will find thee out;—in a friendless, restless, hopeless death-bed, thy covetousness and thy cruelty will glare before thee in their true colours, and thy sin will find thee out!

Profligate woman, who art now casting away thy honest name, thy self-respect, thy womanhood, thy baptism-vows, that thou mayest enjoy the foul pleasures of sin for a season, has not thy sin found thee out?  Then be sure it will hereafter, when thou hast become disgusted at thyself and thine own infamy,—and youth, and health, and friends, are gone, and a shameful and despised old age creeps over thee, and death stalks nearer and nearer, and God vanishes further and further off, then thy sin will find thee out!

Foolish, improvident young man, who art wasting the noble strength of youth, and manly spirits which God has given thee on sin and folly, throwing away thine honest earnings in cards and drunkenness, instead of laying them by against a time of need—has not thy sin found thee out?  Then be sure it will some day, when thou hast to bring home thy bride to a cheerless, unfurnished house, and there to live from hand to mouth,—without money to provide for her sickness,—without money to give her the means of keeping things neat and comfortable when she is well,—without a farthing laid by against distress, and illness, and old age:—then your sin will find you out: then, perhaps, my text,—my words—may come across you as you sigh in vain in your comfortless home, in your impoverished old age, for the money which you wasted in your youth!  My friends, my friends, for your own sakes consider, and mend ere that day come, as else it surely will!

And, lastly, you who, without running into any especial sins, as those which the world calls sins, still live careless about religion, without loyalty to Christ the Lord, without any honest attempt, or even wish, to serve the God above you, or to rejoice in remembering that you are His children, working for Him and under Him,—be sure your sin will find you out.  When affliction, or sickness, or disappointment come, as come they will, if God has not cast you off;—when the dark day dawns, and your fool’s paradise of worldly prosperity is cut away from under your feet, then you will find out your folly—you will find that you have insulted the only Friend who can bring you out of affliction—cast off the only comfort which can strengthen you to bear affliction—forgotten the only knowledge which will enable you to be the wiser for affliction.  Then, I say, the sin of your godlessness will find you out; if you do not intend to fall, soured and sickened merely by God’s chastisements, either into stupid despair or peevish discontent, you will have to go back, to go back to God and cry, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before Thee, and am no more worthy to be called Thy son.”

Go back at once before it be too late.  Find out your sins and mend them—before they find you out, and break your hearts.

SERMON VIII

SELF-DESTRUCTION

1 Kings, xxii. 23

“The Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets.”

The chapter from which my text is taken, which is the first lesson for this evening’s service, is a very awful chapter, for it gives us an insight into the meaning of that most awful and terrible word—temptation.  And yet it is a most comforting chapter, for it shews us how God is long-suffering and merciful, even to the most hardened sinner; how to the last He puts before him good and evil, to choose between them, and warns him to the last of his path, and the ruin to which it leads.

We read of Ahab in the first lesson this morning as a thoroughly wicked man,—mean and weak, cruel and ungodly, governed by his wife Jezebel, a heathen woman, in marrying whom he had broken God’s law,—a woman so famous for cruelty and fierceness, vanity and wickedness, that her name is a by-word even here in England now—“as bad as Jezebel,” we say to this day.  We heard of Ahab in this morning’s lesson letting Jezebel murder the righteous Naboth, by perjury and slander, to get possession of his vineyard; and then, instead of shrinking with abhorrence from his wife’s iniquity, going down and taking possession of the land which he had gained by her sin.  We read of God’s curse on him, and yet of God’s long-suffering and pardon to him on his repentance.  Yet, neither God’s curse nor God’s mercy seem to have moved him.  But he had been always the same.  “He did evil,” the Bible tells us, “in the sight of the Lord above all that were before him.”  He deserted the true God for his wife’s idols and false gods; and in spite of Elijah’s miracle at Carmel—of which you heard last Sunday—by which he proved by fire which was the true God, and in spite of the wonderful victory which God had given him, by means of one of God’s prophets, over the Syrians, he still remained an idolater.  He would not be taught, nor understand; neither God’s threats nor mercies could move him; he went on sinning against light and knowledge; and now his cup was full—his days were numbered, and God’s vengeance was ready at the door.

He consulted all his false prophets as to whether or not he should go to attack the Syrians at Ramoth-Gilead.  They knew what to say—they knew that their business was to prophesy what would pay them—what would be pleasant to him.  They did not care whether what they said was true or not—they lied for the sake of gain, for the Lord had put a lying spirit into their mouths.  They were rogues and villains from the first.  They had turned prophets, not to speak God’s truth, but to make money, to flatter King Ahab, to get themselves a reputation.  We do not hear that they were all heathens.  Many of them may have believed in the true God.  But they were cheats and liars, and so they had given place to the devil, the father of lies: and now he had taken possession of them in spite of themselves, and they lied to Ahab, and told him that he would prosper in the battle at Ramoth-Gilead.  It was a dangerous thing for them to say; for if he had been defeated, and returned disappointed, his rage would have most probably fallen on them for deceiving them.  And as in those Eastern countries kings do whatever they like without laws or parliaments, Ahab would have most likely put them all to a miserable death on the spot.  But however dangerous it might be for them to lie, they could not help lying.  A spirit of lies had seized them, and they who began by lying, because it paid them, now could not help doing so whether it paid them or not.

But the good king of Judah, Jehoshaphat, had no faith in these flattering villains.  He asked whether there was not another prophet of the Lord to inquire of?  Ahab told him that there was one, Micaiah the son of Imlah, but that he hated him, because he only prophesied evil of him.  What a thorough picture of a hardened sinner—a man who has become a slave to his own lusts, till he cares nothing for a thing being true, provided only it is pleasant!  Thus the wilful sinner, like Ahab, becomes both fool and coward, afraid to look at things as they are; and when God’s judgments stare him in the face, the wretched man shuts his eyes tight, and swears that the evil is not there, just because he does not choose to see it.

But the evil was there, ready for Ahab, and it found him.  When he forced Micaiah to speak, Micaiah told him the whole truth.  He told him a vision, or dream, which he had seen.  “Hear thou therefore the word of the Lord: I saw the Lord sitting on His throne, and all the host of heaven standing by Him.  And the Lord said, Who shall persuade Ahab, that he may go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead?  And there came forth a spirit, and said, I will go forth, and be a lying spirit in the mouth of all his prophets.  And the Lord said, Thou shalt persuade him, and prevail also: go forth, and do so.  Now therefore, behold, the Lord hath put a lying spirit in the mouth of all these thy prophets, and the Lord hath spoken evil concerning thee.”

What warning could be more awful, and yet more plain?  Ahab was told that he was listening to a lie.  He had free choice to follow that lie or not, and he did follow it.  After having put Micaiah into prison for speaking the truth to him, he went up to Ramoth-Gilead; and yet he felt he was not safe.  He had his doubts and his fears.  He would not go openly into the battle, but disguised himself, hoping that by this means he should keep himself safe from evil.  Fool!  God’s vengeance could not be stopped by his paltry cunning.  In spite of all his disguises, a chance shot struck him down between the joints of his armour.  His chariot-driver carried him out of the battle, and “he was stayed up in his chariot against the Syrians, and died at even: and the blood ran out of his wound into the midst of the chariot.  And one washed the chariot in the pool of Samaria; and the dogs licked up his blood there,” according to the word of the Lord, which He spoke by the mouth of His prophet Elijah, saying, “In the place where dogs licked the blood of Naboth, whom thou slewest, shall dogs lick thy blood, even thine.”

And do not fancy, my friends, that because this is a miraculous story of ancient times, it has nothing to do with us.  All these things were written for our example.  This chapter tells us not merely how Ahab was tempted, but it tells us how we are tempted, every one of us, here in England, in these very days.  As it was with Ahab, so it is with us.  Every wilful sin that we commit we give room to the devil.  Every wrong step that we take knowingly, we give a handle to some evil spirit to lead us seven steps further wrong.  And yet in every temptation God gives us a fair chance.  He is no cruel tyrant who will deliver us over to the devil, to be led helpless and blindfold to our ruin.  He did not give Ahab over to him so.  He sent a lying spirit to deceive Ahab’s prophets, that Ahab might go up and fall at Ramoth-Gilead; but at the very same time, see, he sends a holy and a true man, a man whom Ahab could trust, and did trust at the bottom of his heart, to tell him that the lie was a lie, to warn him of his ruin, so that he might have no excuse for listening to those false prophets—no excuse for following his own pride, his own ambition, to his destruction.  So you see, “Let no man say, when he is tempted, I am tempted of God, for God tempteth no man, but every one is tempted when he is led away by his own lust and enticed.”  Ahab was led away by his own lust; his cowardly love of hearing what was pleasant and flattering to him, rather than what was true—rather than what he knew he deserved; that was what enticed him to listen to Zedekiah and the false prophets, rather than to Micaiah the son of Imlah.  That is what entices us to sin—the lust of believing what is pleasant to us, what suits our own self-will—what is pleasant to our bodies—pleasant to our purses—pleasant to our pride and self-conceit.  Then, when the lying spirit comes and whispers to us, by bad thoughts, by bad books, by bad men, that we shall prosper in our wickedness, does God leave us alone to listen to those evil voices without warning?  No!  He sends His prophets to us, as He sent Micaiah to Ahab, to tell us that the wages of sin is death—to tell us that those who sow the wind shall reap the whirlwind—to set before us at every turn good or evil, that we may choose between them, and live or die according to our choice.  For do not fancy that there are no prophets in our days, unless the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is promised to all who believe, be a dream and a lie.  There are prophets nowadays,—yea, I say unto you, and more than prophets.  Is not the Bible a prophet?  Is not every page in it a prophecy to us, foretelling God’s mercies and God’s punishments towards men.  Is not every holy and wise book, every holy and wise preacher and writer, a prophet, expounding to us God’s laws, foretelling to us God’s opinions of our deeds, both good and evil?  Ay, is not every man a prophet to himself?  That “still small voice” in a man’s heart, which warns him of what is evil—that feeling which makes him cheerful and free when he has done right, sad and ashamed when he has done wrong—is not that a prophecy in a man’s own heart?  Truly it is.  It is the voice of God within us—it is the Spirit of God striving with our spirits, whether we will hear, or whether we will forbear—setting before us what is righteous, and noble, and pure, and what is manly and God-like—to see whether we will obey that voice, or whether we will obey our own selfish lusts, which tempt us to please ourselves—to pamper ourselves, our greediness, covetousness, ambition, or self-conceit.  And again, I say, we have our prophets.  Every preacher of righteousness is a prophet.  Every good tract is a prophet.  That Prayer-book, those Psalms, those Creeds, those Collects, which you take into your mouths every Sunday, what are they but written prophecies, crying unto us with the words of holy men of old, greater than Micaiah, or David, or Elijah, “Hear thou the word of the Lord?”  The spirits of those who wrote that Prayer-book—the spirits of just men made perfect, filled with the Spirit of the Lord—they call to us to learn the wisdom which they knew, to avoid the temptations which they conquered, that we may share in the glory in which they shared round the throne of Christ for evermore.

And if you ask me how to try the spirits, how to know whether your own thoughts, whether the sermons which you hear, the books which you read, are speaking to you God’s truth, or some lying spirit’s falsehood, I can only answer you, “To the law and to the testimony”—to the Bible; if they speak not according to that word, there is no truth in them.  But how to understand the Bible? for the fleshly man understands not the things of God.  The fleshly man, he who cares only about pleasing himself, he who goes to the Bible full of self-conceit and selfishness, wanting the Bible to tell him only just what he likes to hear, will only find it a sealed book to him, and will very likely wrest the Scriptures to his own destruction.  Take up your Bible humbly, praying to God to shew you its meaning, whether it be pleasant to you or not, and then you will find that God will shew you a blessed meaning in it; He will open your eyes, that you may understand the wondrous things of His law; He will shew you how to try the spirit of all you are taught, and to find out whether it comes from God.

SERMON IX

HELL ON EARTH

Matthew, viii. 29

“And behold the evil spirits cried out, saying, What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?  Art Thou come hither to torment us before the time?”

This account of the man possessed with devils, and of his language to our Lord, of our Lord’s casting the devils out of the poor sufferer, and His allowing them to enter into a herd of swine, is one that is well worth serious thought; and I think a few words on it will follow fitly after my last Sunday’s sermon on Ahab and his temptations by evil spirits.  In that sermon I shewed you what temper of mind it was which laid a man open to the cunning of evil spirits; I wish now to shew you something of what those evil spirits are.  It is very little that we can know about them.  We were intended to know very little, just as much as would enable us to guard against them, and no more.  The accounts of them in the Scriptures are for our use, not to satisfy our curiosity.  But we may find out a great deal about them from this very chapter, from this very story, which is repeated almost word for word in three different Gospels, as if to make us more certain of so curious and important a matter, by having three distinct and independent writers to witness for its truth.  I advise all those who have Bibles to look for this story in the 8th chapter of St. Matthew, and follow me as I explain it. 1

Now, first, we may learn from this account, that evil spirits are real persons.  There is a notion got abroad that it is only a figure of speech to talk of evil spirits, that all the Bible means by them are certain bad habits, or bad qualities, or diseases.  There are many who will say when they read this story, ‘This poor man was only a madman.  It was the fashion of the old Jews when a man was mad to say that he was possessed by evil spirits.  All they meant was that the man’s own spirit was in an evil diseased state, or that his brain and mind were out of order.’

When I hear such language—and it is very common—I cannot help thinking how pleased the devil must be to hear people talk in such a way.  How can people help him better than by saying that there is no devil?  A thief would be very glad to hear you say, ‘There are no such things as thieves; it is all an old superstition, so I may leave my house open at night without danger;’ and I believe, my friends, from the very bottom of my heart, that this new-fangled disbelief in evil spirits is put into men’s hearts by the evil spirits themselves.  As it was once said, ‘The devil has tried every plan to catch men’s souls, and now, as the last and most cunning trick of all, he is shamming dead.’  These may seem homely words, but the homeliest words are very often the deepest.  I advise you all to think seriously on them.

But it is impossible surely to read this story without seeing that the Bible considers evil spirits as distinct persons, just as much as each one of us is a person, and that our Lord spoke to them and treated them as persons.  “What have we to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?  Art Thou come hither to torment us before the time?”  And again, “If Thou cast us out, suffer us to go into the herd of swine.”  What can shew more plainly that there were some persons in that poor man, besides himself, his own spirit, his own person? and that he knew it, and Jesus knew it too? and that He spoke to these spirits, these persons, who possessed that man, and not to the man himself?  No doubt there was a terrible confusion in the poor madman’s mind about these evil spirits, who were tormenting him, making him miserable, foul, and savage, in mind and body—a terrible confusion!  We find, when Jesus asked him his name, he answers “Legion,” that is an army, a multitude, “for we are many,” he says.  Again, one gospel tells us that he says, “What have I to do with Thee, Jesus, Thou Son of God?”  While in another Gospel we are told that he said, “What have we to do with Thee?”  He seems not to have been able to distinguish between his own spirit, and these spirits who possessed him.  They put the furious and despairing thoughts into his heart; they spoke through his mouth; they made a slave and a puppet of him.  But though he could not distinguish between his own soul and the devils who were in it, Christ could and Christ did.