SUNSHINE IN THE HEART. A Sermon DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 15TH, 1862, BY AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "Delight thyself also in the Lord; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart."-Psalm xxxvii. 4. THERE are two teachings in our text which must be very surprising to those who are strangers to vital godliness; to sincere believers these marvels are recognised facts, but to the outside world they will appear passing strange. We have here, first of all, the life of a believer described as a delight in God; and thus we are certified of the great truth that true religion overflows with happiness and joy. Ungodly persons and mere professors never look upon religion as a joyful thing, to them it is service, duty, or necessity, but never pleasure and delight. Wherefore go they up to the house of God? Is it not because of custom-a custom which they would fain avoid if they dare? Wherefore do they attend to the ordinances of the Church? Is it not either out of Pharisaic hope of merit, or from a superstitions dread? How many view the forms of religion as charms to avert ill, or as lesser evils by which they escape from dreaded judgment? What is their service but drudgery, and their worship but weariness? Ask ye the worldlings what they think of religion,-and even when they practise its outward rites they snuff at it as a dull and dreary thing. "What a weariness it is!" They love it as much as the ass loves labour, or the horse the whip, or the prisoner the treadmill. They cry for short sermons; indeed, none at all would suit them better. How cheerfully would they clip the hours of Sunday; indeed, if Sabbaths only came but once in the month, they would prefer it. The heavy necessity of pious customs weighs upon them as tribute upon a conquered province. They pay to religion an observance of the character of a tax or toll which custom demands; but free will offerings they know not, and loving enjoyment of hallowed fellowship they cannot understand. They serve God as Cain did, who brought his offering it is true, but brought it late; brought it because it was the family custom, and he would not be outdone by his brother; brought it of the common fruit of the ground, and with a sullen, loveless heart. These Cainites bring such as they are forced to bring, and mingle no faith in Jesus' blood with their offerings; they come with leaden heels to the house of God, and they go away as if they had feathers to their feet; they serve God, but it is either that they may gain thereby, or else because they dare not do otherwise. The thought of delight in religion is so strange to most men, that no two words in their language stand farther apart than "holiness" and "delight." Ah, but believers who know Christ, understand that delight and faith are so blessedly married, that the gates of hell cannot prevail to divorce them. They who love God with all their hearts, find that his ways are ways of pleasantness, and all his paths are peace. Such joy, such brimful delights, such overflowing bliss, do the saints discover in their Lord, that so far from serving him from custom, they would follow him should all the world cast out his name as evil. We fear not God because of any compulsion, our faith is no fetter, our profession is no prison; we are not dragged to holiness, nor driven to duty. No, sirs, our religion is our recreation, our hope is our happiness, our duty is our delight. I know it always will be a calumny against Christ's religion that it makes men miserable; but a greater misapprehension, or a baser falsehood, never cursed the world. Because we cannot trifle so foolishly, nor sin so boldly, nor brag so lustily as the servants of sin, therefore ye think us miserable! Ah, sirs, it is well written, "A stranger intermeddleth not with our joy." The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and their joy no man taketh from them. Let us remind you, however, that still waters run the deepest. The rill which rattles o'er the stones dries up in the summer; but the deep-flowing river speeds on, come drought or heat, and yet glideth silently along the meads. We do not talk so loudly of our joys as you of your merriments, because we have no need to do so; ours are known as well in silence as in exciting company. We need not your society to make us glad, much less the varied accompaniments which prop your bliss; we need neither bowl, nor feast, nor viol, nor dance, to make us glad: nor even the stalled ox, and the bursting winefat to make us rich. Our happiness lies not on passing creatures, but in the eternal, immutable Creator. I know, despite all we shall say, this slander will survive from generation to generation: that God's people are a wretched people. But, at least, let us clear our conscience of you, and let us make you without excuse if you believe it again. We do have joy; we do have delights, such that we would not part with one dram of ours for tons of yours; not drops of our joy for rivers of your delights. Ours are no tinsel or painted joys, but solid realities; ours are joys that we can take with us to our bed in the silent dust-joys that shall sleep with us in the tomb, and that shall awake with us in eternity-joys that we can look back upon and so live them o'er again in retrospect-joys that we can anticipate and so know both here and hereafter. Ours are not bubbles which only glitter to burst; ours are not apples of Sodom, turning to ashes in our hand; our delights are substantial, real, true, solid, lasting, everlasting! What more shall I say? Dismiss from your minds this mistake. Delight and true religion are as allied as root and flower, as indivisible as truth and certainty; they are, in fact, two precious jewels set side-by-side in the same socket of gold. But there is another wonder in our text to wordly men, though it is a wonder well understood by Christians. The text says, He shall give 66 thee the desires of thine heart." "Why," the worldly man says, "I thought religion was all self-denial; I never imagined that in loving God we could have our desires; I thought that godliness consisted in killing, destroying, and keeping back our desires." Does not the religion of most men consist in an open abstinence from sins which they secretly love? Negative godliness is very common in this age. It is supposed by most men that our religion consists in things which we must not do, rather than in pleasures which we may enjoy. We must not go to a theatre; we must not sing songs, trade on Sundays, use ill words, and so on; we must not do this, and we must not do that. And they suppose us to be a crabbed, miserable race of persons who, no doubt, make up by some private allowance for denying ourselves in public. Now, it is true that religion is self-denial; it is equally true that it is not self-denial. Christian men have two selves; there is the old self, and therein they do deny the flesh with its affections and lusts; but there is a new self; there is a new-born spirit, the new man in Christ Jesus; and, brethren, our religion does not consist in any self-denial of that. No, let it have the full swing of its wishes and desires; for all that it can wish for, all that it can pant after, all that it can long to enjoy, it may most safely obtain. When I hear persons say, "Well, you know my religion consists in some things that I must do, and in some things that I must not do," I reply, "Mine consists in things that I love to do, and in avoiding things that I hate and would scorn to do." I feel no chain in my religion, for I am free, and never man more free. He who fears God and is wholly God's servant, has no chains about him. He may live as he lists, for he lists to live as he ought. He may have his full desires, for his desires are holy, heavenly, divine. He may take the full range of the utmost capacity of his wishes and desires, and have all he wants and all he wishes, for God has given him the promise and God will give him the fulfilment of it. But do not go away with the idea that we are always afraid to put one foot before the other, because there is some must not in our way; and that we do not go that way to the right or that way to the left because we dare not. Oh, sirs, we would not if we might; we would not if the law were altered, we would not have your pleasures if we might. If we could go to heaven and live as sinners live, we would not choose their way and conversation. It would be a hell to us to be compelled to sin, even if sin could go unpunished. If we could have your drunkenness, if we could have your lusts-oh, ye ungodly ones-if we could have your mirth and your joy, we would not have them. We do not deny ourselves when we give these up. We despise your mirth, we abominate it, and tread it beneath our feet. "I can't understand," once said a bird to a fish, "how it is that you always live in the cold element; I could not live there. It must be a great self-denial to you not to fly up to the trees. See how I can mount aloft." "Ah," said the fish, "it is no self-denial to me to live here, it is my element; I never aspire to fly, for it would not suit me. If I were taken out of my element I should die unless I was restored to it very soon, and the sooner the better." So the believer feels that God is his native element. He does not escape from his God, or from his Master's will and service; and if for a time he were taken out of it, the sooner he could get back to it the better. If he is thrown into bad company he is miserable and wretched until he gets out of it again. Does the dove deny itself when it does not eat carrion? No, verily the dove could not delight in blood, it would not feed thereon if it could. When a man sees a company of swine under the oak delighting themselves in their acorns, and grunting out their satisfaction does he deny himself when he passes them by without sharing their feast? No, verily, he has better bread at home whereof he can eat, and swines' meat is no dainty to him. So it is with the believer; his religion is a matter of delight, a matter of satisfaction; and that which he avoids and turns from is very little self-denial to him. His tastes are changed, his wishes are altered. He delights himself in his God, and joyously receives the desire of his heart. This by way of preface. Now to come to our text itself. There are two things in the text very plainly. The first is a precept written upon sparkling jewels, "Delight thyself in the Lord." The second is a promise priceless beyond rubies," He shall give thee the desires of thine heart." I. The first is A PRECEPT WRITTEN UPON SPARKLING JEWELS. I have added those last words, because the law of the ten commands was written upon stone-perhaps hard granite, in which men could take but little delight. But this law of one command, "Delight thyself in the Lord" is no stony law to be written upon tablets of granite, but it contains a precept for sparkling brightness, worthy to be written on amethysts and pearls. "Delight thyself in the Lord." Why, brethren, when delight becomes a duty, then certainly duty is a delight. When it becomes my duty to be happy, when I have an express command to be glad, then indeed I must be a sinner if I refuse my own joys, and turn aside from my own bliss. Oh, what a God we have, who has made it our duty to be happy! What a gracious God, who accounts no obedience to be so worthy of his acceptance as a gladsome obedience rendered by a joyous heart. "Delight thyself in the Lord." 1. Now, first, What is this delight. I have been thinking the word "delight" over, and I cannot explain it. You know it is a word by itself. A delightful word-I cannot use anything but its own self to describe it. If you look at it-it is flashing with light, it sparkles like a a star, nay, like a bright constellation, radiant with sweet influences like the Pleiades. It is joy, yet is it more, it is joy running over; it is rest, but such a rest as allows of the utmost activity of every passion of the soul. Delight! it is mirth without its froth. Delight! it is peace, yet it is more than that: it is peace celebrated with festivity, with all the streamers hanging in the streets and all the music playing in the soul. Delight! whereunto shall I compare it? It is a stray word that belongs to the language of Paradise, and when the holy words of Eden flew away to heaven at the fall, this one being entangled in the silken meshes of the net of the first promise, was retained on earth to sing in believers' ears. Where shall I find metaphors to set it out. Man fails me, let me turn then to the unsinning creatures of God. Go to the sea-side when the sea is going down, and in some parts of the coast you will see a little fringe just at the edge of the wave. It looks like a mist, but on closer examination you will find there are millions of very small shrimps, leaping up in all manner of postures and forms out of the receding wave, in exuberance of glee and merriment. Or look on a summer eve at the gnats as they dance untiringly, scarcely knowing how to enjoy themselves enough! Or see the lambs in the field, how they skip and leap! Hark to the morning song of the birds of the air, and listen again to their delicious notes at eventide; see the fish as they leap from the stream, and hear the insects as they hum in the air, these may give faint glimmerings of the light of delight. Wing your flight to heaven if you would know what delight means. See the spirits there, as their fingers sweep the golden strings! Hark to their voices, as with peals of joy unknown to human ears, they sing unto him that hath loved them and washed them from their sins in his blood! Mark them as they keep eternal Sabbath in the great temple of the living God, and gaze upon his throne, and gaze, and gaze, and gaze again, absorbed in glory, beatified in Jesus, full of heaven, overflowing with exceeding joy. This is delight! I fail in the description, I know. You must take the word and spell it over letter by letter; and then you must pray God to put your hearts into a sweet frame of mind, made up of the following ingredients: a perfect rest from all earthly care; a perfect resignation of yourself into God's hands; an intense confidence in his love to you; a divine love to him, so that you feel you would be anything or do anything for him; then, there must be added to all this, a joy in him; and when you have these, they must be all set a-boiling, and then you have delight in the Lord your God. Matthew Henry says, "desire is love in action, like a bird on the wing; delight is love in rest, like a bird on its nest." Such is the meaning of the word, and such the duty prescribed. "Delight thyself also in the Lord." 2. Secondly, Whence comes this delight? The text tells us, "Delight thyself in the Lord." Delight thyself in Jehovah, in his very existence. That there is a God is enough to make the most wretched man happy if he believeth. The nations crash, dynasties fall, kingdoms reel, what mattereth it, for there is a God. The father has gone to the tomb, the mother sleeps in the dust, the wife has fallen from our side, the children are removed, but there is a God. This alone is enough to be a wellspring of joy for ever and ever to all true believers. Delight also in his dominion. "The Lord reigneth, let the earth rejoice." Jehovah is King! Come what may of it, he sits upon the throne and ruleth all things well. The Lord hath prepared his throne in the heavens, and his kingdom ruleth over all. Standing in the chariot of providence, he holds the reins, and guides the dashing coursers according to his own will. God is exalted above the mountains and above the hills: he hath sway in all things, both the magnificent and the minute. Be glad, O daughter of Zion, for the Lord is King for ever and ever, hallelujah, hallelujah. Every attribute of God should become a fresh ray in this sunlight of delight. That he is wise should make us glad who know our folly. That he is mighty should cause us to rejoice who tremble at our own weakness. That he is everlasting should always be a theme for our music, when we know that we are grass and wither as the green herb. That he is unchanging should always give us a song, since we change every hour and are never long the same. That he |
