FLESH AND SPIRIT-A RIDDLE, A Sermon DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, AUGUST 31ST, 1862, BY AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee. Nevertheless I am continually with thee: thou hast holden me by my right hand. Thou shall guide me with thy counsel, and afterward receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee."-Psalm lxxiii. 22-25. OUR Lord Jesus was tempted in all points like as we are. With some reserve we might almost say the same of David. Of all the worthies whose lives are written out at length in Holy Writ, David possesses an experience of the most striking, varied, and instructive character. In his history we meet with temptations and complications of temptations not to be discovered, at least as a connected whole, in other saints of ancient times. Trials which stand out in the lives of other men as isolated hills, form whole chains and ranges of mountains in the case of the son of Jesse. David knew the trials of all ranks and conditions of men. Kings have their troubles, and David wore a crown: the peasant has his cares, and David handled the shepherd's crook. The wanderer has many hardships, and David abode in the caves of Engedi: the captain has his difficulties, and David found the sons of Zeruiah too hard for him. The psalmist of Israel was tried by his friends, his counsellor Ahithophel forsook him. "He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me." His worst foes were they of his own household. His children were his greatest afflictions. Amnon disgraces him, Absalom excites revolt, Adonijah disturbs his dying bed. The temptations of poverty and wealth, of honour and reproach, of health and sickness, all tried their power upon him. He had tribulations from without; it needs not that I should remind you that during his long life they came from every quarter. He had temptations from within, for the man after God's own heart not only knew what it was to be assailed, but to be carried by storm, by fierce and terrible passions. I may grant, perhaps, that Job's trial was more severe than any one that fell to David; but yet I know not; possibly the burning of Ziklag, when his wives were carried away captive, and all that he had was consumed, and his men spake of stoning him, may have been even a severer trial than Job's when he sat upon a dunghill and scraped himself with a potsherd; and I am not sure, but I think that mournful procession over the brook Kedron in David's later life, when his own son thirsted for his blood, had in it a Gethsemane bitterness that is hardly to be found in the tribulation which fell to the patriarch of Uz. Job must fairly yield the palm in one respect, for his was no life-long siege, but only one sharp and furious attack; David, however, no sooner escaped from one trial than he fell into another; no sooner emerged from one season of despondency and alarm, than he was again brought into the lowest depths, and all God's waves and billows rolled over him Now, it is from this cause, I take it, that David's psalms are so universally the delight of experienced Christians. Into whatsoever frame of mind we may be cast, David seems to have described our emotions, whether they be of ecstasy or depression, to the very letter. He was an able master of the human heart, because he had been tutored in that best of all schools, the school of real, heartfelt, personal experience. You will find that as we grow matured in grace and in years, we love the psalms better. Many young believers are most fond of the doctrinal parts of Scripture, and I admire that holy curiosity which leads them to desire to understand all the revelation of God in the doctrine of grace: practical Christians are often more fond of studying the Evangelists and Proverbs, but I find that the grey-headed veterans, the sorely-troubled Christians-those who have done business on great waters-while they love the doctrine, while they delight in the practice as set forth in the life of Christ, yet somehow or other the Psalms of the sweet singer of Israel yield them savoury meat such as their soul loveth, and they are made in the Psalms to "lie down in green pastures" of tender grass. Probably the first remark which will be suggested by reading the Psalms will be this-how varied they are. What an extraordinary man David is, what changes there are in the weather of his soul, what bright sunlight days, what dark cloudy nights, what calms as though his life were a sea of glass, what terrible trials as if the glass were mingled with fire. One time we find him crying, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me," and anon he sings, "Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me bless his holy name." One hour we hear him sigh forth, "I sink in deep mire where there is no standing," and then we find him exulting, "The Lord is my light and my salvation, whom shall I fear the Lord is the strength of my life, of whom shall I be afraid." How wondrously he rises to heaven, and how awfully he dives into the deeps. Surely, brethren, we who have known anything of spiritual and inner life do not marvel at this, for we also change. Alas! what a contrast between the sin that doth so easily beset us, and the grace which gives us to reign in heavenly places. How different the sorrow of an abject distrust which breaketh us in pieces as with a strong east wind, and the joy of a holy confidence which bears us on to heaven as with a propitious gale! What changes between walking with God to-day, and falling into the mire to-morrow, triumphing over sin, death, and hell yesterday, and to-day led captive by the lusts of the flesh and of the mind. Verily, we cannot understand ourselves, and a description which would suit us yesterday would be ill-adapted for today, and quite out of place for to-morrow. Scarcely ever are we in the same mind an hour. Great God, how infinitely glorious art thou in thine immutability, when contrasted with thy fickle, frail, unstable creature-man. It falls to my lot, this morning, to open up in some humble measure, the secrets of inward experience. I can but hope to do it in a very shallow measure, for I am but a youth, and am not worthy to instruct some of you who have been men of war from your youth up. Yet, I may serve the weaklings of the flock, if I inform them of the strife they must expect from the flesh, and comfort their hearts with a foretaste of the certain victory which the Lord has secured to them through the spirit. We shall first listen to the confessions of the psalmist concerning the flesh; then, to his expressions with regard to the spirit; then, to his soul's exultation when looking to both flesh and spirit, he crieth out, "Whom have I in heaven but thee? there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee." I. First, we are to listen to THE PSALMIST'S CONFESSION CONCERNING THE FLESH. Remember, beloved, this is a saint of God; this is a highly advanced saint; this is the man after God's own heart; this is one of the special favourites of heaven-one of the men to whom God revealed himself as he doth not unto the world; and yet you hear him telling us his inner life, and he begins by saying, "So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before thee." The word "foolish," when it issues from David's mouth, means more than it signifies in ordinary language. To be called a fool is no great compliment to any man; but when that word means atheist, despiser of that which is good-when it means a forgetter of God, a lover of evil, a destroyer of one's own soul, then to be called a fool is something at which a man may take umbrage indeed. David, in one of the former verses of the Psalm, writes, "I was envious of the foolish when I saw the prosperity of the wicked," which shows that the folly he intended had sin in it. Now, he puts himself down as being one of these fools, and adds a little word which is to give intensity to the adjective-" SO foolish was I." How foolish he could not tell. It was a sinful folly, a folly which was not to be excused by frailty, but to be condemned because of its perverseness and wilful ignorance. What, and do we call ourselves wise? Do we, followers of the lowly Saviour, profess that we have attained perfection, or have been so chastened that the rod has whipped all our wilfulness out of us? Ah, this were pride indeed! If David was foolish, what fools would you and I be in our own esteem if we could but see ourselves. Look back, believer: think of your doubting God when he hath been so faithful to you think of your foolish outcry of "Not so my Father," when he crossed his hands in affliction to give you the larger blessing; think, I say, of the many times when you have read his providences in the dark, misinterpreting his dispensations, and groaning out, "All these things are against me, when they were all working together for your good! Think how often you have chosen sin because of its pleasure, when indeed, that pleasure was a root of pain and bitterness to you! How often you have forgotten to honour God when you had noble opportunities of serving him, I for one must take my place at the bar and plead guilty to the indictment of a sinful folly; and I think everyone who knows his own heart, however far advanced in grace he may be, must do the same. In the present tense I put it sorrowfully, "So foolish am I." Further, our psalmist adds, "and ignorant." A man who, after years of such experience as David, should yet say "I am ignorant," must either be very humble, or else there must be such a force upon his conscience that he cannot resist the confession. And indeed, if you will read the Psalm and see into what a mistake David had fallen-that of envying the present prosperity of the ungodly, you may grant that he was ignorant indeed, to forget the dreadful end of those who only prosper that they may be fattened like bullocks for the slaughter. But you and I have been quite as ignorant. We said yesterday, "Now I shall never doubt God again; he has helped me through this great trouble, and I know that I shall be able to trust him come what may." But this very morning you awoke with a distrustful thought. What ignorance is this, to forget the lesson which you learned but yesterday, and which you thought you knew by heart! Here you have been trying for months to resign yourself to God's will. He took away from you one very dear to you, and you longed to say, "The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord;" and you did say it by an overwhelming effort, but you cannot say it now, for feeling has trodden down faith; you are so foolish and so ignorant that you have forgotten what you vowed to learn; and what you meant to say perpetually, you have failed to say in this, perhaps the first great trial in your life. Some men think when they have learned half-adozen doctrines, that now they know everything; and certain other folks I know of, when they pass through a few years of experience, set themselves up for standards. Ah, beloved, when we think we know best, and fancy that we have grown wise, then we prove our folly; our impudence is engraven on our foreheads, and FOOL is written there in capital letters, when we think we are wise. Oh! the depths of the wisdom of God! Who can understand the full meaning of the doctrines of grace! Oh! the depths of the experience of the believer who shall dare to profess that he has passed over all the seas, and has crossed all the mountains over which a believer must climb. If we could but see ourselves, we should consider our knowledge to be nothing, and our ignorance to be all. We are in the twilight, let us not call it noon; we are in the mists and fogs, let us not suppose that we are in an unclouded atmosphere. When we think we see all wisdom, it is because we are blind; and when we fancy we have discovered everything, it is because we are mocked by the illusions of our pride, and see nothing as yet aright. I know I address some of you who, when you are alone quietly engaged in meditation, think to yourselves "Well, if ever there was such a stupid saint as I am, I am much mistaken. I seem to have the least understanding of any man. I read the Scriptures, and I sometimes get a hold of them, but at seasons I cannot for the life of me even believe them to be true; I know the power of prayer, but yet there are times when I could not pray if my soul depended on it, and can only groan. In fact, sometimes "if aught is felt, 'tis only pain to find I cannot feel." Yet I have been fed under the ministry; I have had many troubles, and much communion with Christ, but yet here am I, knowing nothing, just a schoolboy, sitting on the lowest form, and trying to spell out his A, B, C, such a thorough fool that I often pride myself upon my knowledge, and condemn my brother for ignorance, not seeing the beam that is in my own eye, trying to pull the mote from his eye." Is this the soliloquy of your heart? I know it has often been mine. If it be yours, we have just hit the meaning of David when he uses this expression-"So foolish was I, and ignorant." But now comes the crowning word, which you would think too degrading for David--" I was as a beast before thee." Indeed, the original has in it no word of comparison; it ought to be rather translated "I was a very beast before thee," and we are told that the Hebrew word being in the plural number gives it a peculiar emphasis, indicating some monstrous or astonishing beast. It is the word used by Job which is interpreted "Behemoth," "I was a very monster before thee"-not only a beast, but one of the most brutish of all beasts, one of the most stubborn and intractable of all beasts. I think no man can go much lower than this in humble confession. This is a description of human nature and of the old man in the renewed saint which is not to be excelled. How far does this hold true in your experience and mine? Well, I think first, we have often been made to compare ourselves to beasts because of our worldly-mindedness. There is the swine grubbing in the earth for its roots; what cares it about the stars? And even the fleet courser as it crosses the mead, what knoweth it about the angels and the harps of heaven? Educate the beast as you may, it hath no care beyond its fleshly appetite. Oh, how much are we like this, even we who are renewed by divine grace! The last six days it has been "Shop, shop, shop," with you from morning to night. You bowed to the family altar, and you tried to pray at eventide, carking care depressed you till it was hard to offer real supplication. A thousand things have bewildered you; the cash-book, the day-book; those losses; those many workmen to be looked after, or the servants in the house have distracted your mind, and the world comes in till you feel, "O that I could get rid of these things for a moment! O that I had wings like a dove, that I might fly away and be at rest!" But you cannot, for your soul lies cleaving to the dust. Perhaps there comes a knock at the door just when you want to be knocking at God's door, and some one wants to see you when you want to see your God. You cannot rest in Jesus as you would; you are called upon to look after accounts, shillings, five-pound-notes, creditors and debtors, until you cry, "O God, I am like a beast before thee. How can I ever hope to enter heaven?" You remember that hymn of Dr. Watts, commencing "Come holy Spirit, heavenly dove." What a sweet begining, but how dolefully true are the middle verses. Surely they never ought to be sung, but to be sighed : "Dear Lord and shall we ever live At this poor dying rate : Our love so faint, so cold to thee, |
