The Unkept Vineyard; Or, Personal Work Neglected

Delivered on Lord’s-Day Evening, September 19th, 1886, by

“They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.” — Song of Solomon i. 6.

The teztis spoken in the first person singular; “They made me.” Therefore let the preaching to-night be personal to you, dear friends: personal to the preacher first, and then to each one of this mixed multitude. May we at this hour think less of others than of ourselves! May the sermon be of practical value to our own hearts! I do not suppose that it will be a pleasing sermon: on the other hand it may be a saddening one. I may bring unhappy memories before you; but let us not be afraid of that holy sorrow which is health to the soul. Since the spouse in this text speaketh of herself, “They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept”: let each one of us copy her example, and think of our own selves.

The text is the language of complaint. We are all pretty ready at complaining, especially of other people. Not much good comes of picking holes in other men’s characters; and yet many spend hours in that unprofitable occupation. It will be well for us, at this time, to let our complaint, like that of the text, deal with ourselves. If there is something wrong at home, iet the father blame himself; if there is something ill with the children, let the mother look to her own personal conduct as their instructor. Do not let us lend out our ears, but let us keep them at home for our own use. Let us clear out an open passage to the heart, so that everything that is said shall go down into the spirit, and purify our inner man, Let us from the heart make the confession — ‘‘ They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

Let us make the text practical. Do not let us be satisfied to have uttered the language of complaint; but let us get rid of the evils which we deplore. If we have been wrong, let us labour to be right. If we have neglected our own vineyard, let us confess it with due humiliation; but let us not continue to neglect it. Let us ask of God that holy results may flow out of our self-lamentations, so that before many days we may begin to keep our own vineyards carefully by the grace of God; and then we shall better carry out the office of keeper of the vineyards of others, if we are called to such an employment.

There are two things upon which I am going to dwell at this time. The first is, that there are many Christian people — I hope they are Christian people — who will be compelled to confess that the greater part of their life is spent in labour which is not of the highest kind, and is not properly their own. I shall find out the worker who has forgotten his heavenly calling. And when I have done with this case — and I am afraid that there will be much about it that may touch many of us — I shall then take a more general view, and deal with any who are undertaking other works, and neglecting their own proper vocation.

I. First, then, let me begin with THE CHRISTIAN MAN WHO HAS FORGOTTEN HIS HIGH AND HEAVENLY CALLING. In the day when you and I were born again, my brethren, we were born for God. In the day when we saw that Christ died for us, we were bound henceforth to be dead to the world. In the day when we were quickened by the Holy Ghost into newness of life, that life was bound to be a consecrated one. For a thousand reasons it is true that, “Ye are not your own: ye are bought with a price.” The ideal Christian is one who has been made alive with a life which he lives for God. He has risen out of the dominion of the world, the flesh, and the devil. He reckons that ‘if one died for all, then were all dead: and that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again.” This you will not deny. Christian friends, you admit that you have a high, holy, and heavenly calling!

Now let us look back. We have not spent our life idly: we have been forced to be keepers of the vineyards. I hope I am not addressing anybody here who has tried to live without employment and labour of some kind. No, we have worked, and we have worked hard. Most men speak of their wages as “hard-earned,” and I believe that in many cases they speak the bare truth. Many hours in the day have to be spent upon our occupations. We wake up in the morning, and think of what we have to do. We go to bed wearied at night by what we have done. This is as it should be, for God did not make us that we might sport and play, like leviathan in the deep. Even in Paradise man was bidden to dress the garden. There is something to be done by each man, and specially by each Christian man.

Come back to what I began with. In the day when we were born again, as many of us as are new creatures in Christ Jesus, we began to live to God, and not to ourselves. Have we carried out that life? We have worked, we have even worked hard; but the question comes to us — What have we worked for? Who has been our master? With what object have we toiled? Of course, if I have been true to my profession as a Christian, I have lived and worked for God, for Christ, for the kingdom of heaven. But has it been so? And is it so now? Many are working very hard for wealth, which means, of course, for self, that they may be enriched. Some are working simply for a competence, which means, if it goes no farther, still for self. Others work for their families, a motive good enough in its way, but still only an enlargement, after all, of self. To the Christian there must always be a far higher, deeper, purer, truer motive than self in its widest sense; or else the day must come when he will look back upon his life, and say, ‘“They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard” — that is, the service of Christ, the glory of him that bought me with his blood — “have I not kept.” It seems to me to be a terrible calamity to have to look back on twenty years, and say, “What have I done in all those twenty years for Christ? How much of my energy has been spent in striving to glorify him? I have had talents: how many of those talents have been used for him who gave them tome? I have had wealth, or I have had influence. How much of that money have I spent distinctly for my Lord? How much of that influence have I used for the promotion of his kingdom?” You have been busy with this notion, and that motive, and the other endeavour; but have you lived as you will wish to have lived when you stand at his right hand amidst his glories? Have you so acted that you will then judge yourself to have well lived when your Lord and Master shall come to call you to account? Ask yourself, “Am I an earnest labourer together with God, or am I, after all, only a laborious trifler, an industrious doer of nothing, working hard to accomplish no purpose of the sort for which I ought to work, since I ought to live unto my Lord alone?” I invite all my fellow-servants to take a retrospect, and just to see whether they have kept their own vineyards. I suppose that they have worked hard. I only put the question — Have they kept their own vineyards? Have they served the Lord in all things?

I a half afraid to go a step farther. To a very large degree we have not been true to our own professions: our highest work has been neglected, we have not kept our own vineyards. In looking back, how little time has been spent by us in communion with God! How little a part of our thoughts has been occupied with meditation, contemplation, adoration, and other acts of devotion! How little have we surveyed the beauties of Christ, his person, his work, his sufferings, his glory! We say that it is “heaven below” to commune with Christ; but do we do it? We profess that there is no place like the mercy-seat. How much are we at that mercy-seat? We often say that the Word of God is precious — that every page of it glows with a heavenly light. Do we study it? Friends, how much time do you spend upon it? I venture to say that the bulk of Christians spend more time in reading the newspaper than they do in reading the Word of God. I trust that I am too severe in this statement, but I am afraid, greatly afraid, that I am not. The last new book, perhaps the last sentimental story, will win attentive reading, when the divine, mysterious, unutterable depths of heavenly knowledge are disregarded by us. Our Puritan forefathers were strong men, because they lived on the Scriptures. None stood against them in their day, for they fed on good meat, whereas their degenerate children are far too fond of unwholesome food. The chaff of fiction, and the bran of the Quarterlies, are poor substitutes for the old corn of Scripture, the fine flour of spiritual truth. Alas, my brethren, too many eat the unripe fruit of the vineyards of Satan, and the fruits of the J.ord’s vines they utterly despise! if.

Think of our neglect of our God, and see whether it is not true that we have treated him very ill We have been in the shop, we have been on the exchange, we have been at the markets, we have been in the fields, we have been in the public libraries, we have been in the lecture-room, we have been in the forum of debate; but our own closets and studies, our walk with God, and our fellowship with Jesus, we have far too much neglected.

Moreover, the vineyard of holy service for God we have too much left to go to ruin. I would ask you — How about the work your God has called you to do? Men are dying; are you saving them? This great city is like a seething caldron, boiling and bubbling up with infamous iniquity; are we doing anything by way of antidote to the hell-broth concocted in that caldron? Are we indeed a power working towards righteousness? How much good have we done? What have I done to pluck brands from the burning? What have I done to find the lost sheep for whom my Saviour laid down his life? Come, put the questions, and answer them honestly! Nay, do not back out, and say, “I have no ability.” I fear you have more ability than you will give an account of with joy at the last great day. I remember a young man who complained that the little church over which he presided was so small. He said, “I cannot do much good. I have not above two hundred hearers.” An older man replied, “Two hundred hearers are a great many to have to give an account of at the last great day.” As I came in at yonder door this evening, and looked into these thousands of faces, I could not help trembling. How shall I answer for this solemn charge, for this enormous flock, in that last great day? You have all a flock of some kind, larger or smaller. You have all, as Christian people, somebody for whom you will have to answer. Have you done your Master’s work in reference to those entrusted to you? O men and women, have you sought to save others from going down into the pit? You have the divine remedy: have you handed it out to these sick and dying ones? You have the heavenly word which can deliver them from destruction: have you spoken it in their ears, praying all the while that God might bless it to their souls. Might not many a man among you say to himself, “I have been a tailor,” or “I have been a shop-keeper,” or “I have been a mechanic,” or “I have been a merchant,” or “I have been a physician, and I have attended to these callings; but mine own vineyard, which was my Master’s, which I was bound to look to first of all, I have not kept”?

Well, now, what is the remedy for this? We need not talk of our fault any more; let us make each one his own personal confession, and then seek amendment. I believe the remedy is a very sweet one. It is not often that medicine is pleasant, but at this time I prescribe for you a charming potion. It is that you follow up the next verse to my text. Read it — Mine own vineyard have I not kept. Tell me, O thou whom my soul loveth, where thou feedest, where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon; for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions?” Get to your Lord, and in him you will find recovery from your neglects. Ask him where he feeds his flock, and go with him. They have warm hearts who commune with Christ. They are prompt in duty who enjoy his fellowship. I cannot help reminding you of what I have often spoken of, namely, our Lord’s language to the church at Laodicea. That church had come to be so bad that he said, “I will spue thee out of my mouth.” And yet what was the remedy for that church? “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.” After supping with Christ you will not be lukewarm. Nobody can say, “I am neither cold nor hot” when they have been in his company. Rather they will enquire, “Did not our heart burn within us, while he talked with us by the way?” If there be an angel, as Milton sings, whose name is Uriel, who lives in the sun, I will warrant you he is never cold; so he that lives in Christ, and walks with him, is never chill, nor slow in the divine service. Away to your Lord, then!

Hasten to your Lord, and you will soon begin to keep your vineyard; for in the Song you will see a happy change effected. The spouse began to keep her vineyard directly, and to do it in the best fashion. Within a very short time you find her saying, “Take us the foxes, the little foxes, that spoil the vines.” See, she is hunting out her sins and her follies. Farther on you find her with her Lord in the vineyard, crying, “Awake, O north wind; and come, thou south; blow upon my garden, that the spices thereof may flow out!” She is evidently keeping her garden, and asking for heavenly influences to make the spices and flowers yield their perfume. She went down to see whether the vines flourished, and the pomegranates budded. Anon, with her beloved, she rises early to go to the vineyard, and watch the growth of the plants. Farther on you find her talking about all manner of fruits that she has laid up for her beloved. Thus you see that to walk with Christ is the way to keep your vineyard, and serve your Lord. Come and sit at his feet; lean on his bosom; rest on his arm; and make him to be the joy of your spirit. The Lord grant, dear brethren, that this gentle word, which I have spoken as much to myself as to you, may be blessed to us all!

II. Now, I turn to the congregation in general, and speak with THE MAN WHO IN ANY PLACE HAS TAKEN OTHER WORK, AND NEGLECTED HIS OWN. He can use the words of the text — ‘‘They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

We know many persons who are always doing a great deal, and yet do nothing; fussy people, people to the front in every movement, persons who could set the whole world right, but are not right themselves. Just before a general election there is a manifestation of most remarkable men — generally persons who know everything, and a few things besides, who, if they could but be sent to Parliament, would turn the whole world upside down, and put even Pandemonium to rights. They would pay the National Debt within six months, and do any other trifle that might occur to them. Very eminent men are these! I have come across impossibly great men. None could be so great as these feel themselves to be. “They are an order of very superior persons: reformers, or philosophers, who know what nobody else knows, only, happily, they have not patented the secret, but are prepared to tell it out to others, and thereby illuminate us all. vE: y i

I suggest to our highly-gifted friends that it is possible to be looking after a great many things, and yet to be neglecting your own vineyard. There is a vineyard that a great many neglect, and that is thew own heart. It is well to have talent; it is well to have influence; but it is better to be right within yourself. It is well for a man to see to his cattle, and look well to his flocks and to his herds; but let him not forget to cultivate that little patch of ground that lies in the centre of his being. Let him educate his head, and intermeddle with all knowledge; but let him not forget that there is another plot of ground called the heart, the character, which is more important still. Right principles are spiritual gold, and he that hath them, and is ruled by them, is the man who truly lives. He hath not life, whatever else he hath, who hath not his heart cultivated, and made right and pure. Have you ever thought about your heart yet? Oh, I do not mean whether you have palpitations! I am no doctor. I am speaking now about the heart in its moral and spiritual aspect. What is your character, and do you seek to cultivate it? Do you ever use the hoe upon those weeds which are so plentiful in us all? Do you water those tiny plants of goodness which have begun to grow? Do you watch them to keep away the little foxes which would destroy them? Are you hopeful that yet there may be a harvest in your character which God may look upon with approval? I pray that we may all look to our hearts. “Keep your heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life.’ Pray daily, “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me”; for if not, you will go up and down in the world, and do a great deal, and when it comes to the end you will have neglected your noblest nature, and your poor starved soul will die that second death, which is the more dreadful because it is everlasting death. How terrible for a soul to die of neglect! How can we escape who neglect this great salvation? If we pay every attention to our bodies, but none to our immortal souls, how shall we justify our folly? God save us from suicide by neglect! May we not have to moan out eternally, “They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept”!

Now, pass over that point, and think of another vineyard. Are not some people neglecting their families? Next to our hearts, our households are the vineyards which we are most bound to cultivate. I shall never forget 2 man whom I knew in my youth, who used to accompany me at times in my walks to the villages to preach. He was always willing to go with me any evening; but I did not need to ask him, for he asked himself, until I purposely put him off from it. He liked also to preach himself much better than others liked to hear him; but he was a man who was sure to be somewhere to the front if he could. Even if you snuffed him out, he had a way of lighting himself up again, He was good-natured and irrepressible. He was, I believe, sincerely earnest in doing good. But two boys of his were well known to me, and they would swear horribly. They were ready for every vice, and were under no restraint. One of them drank himself into a dying state with brandy, though he was a mere boy. I do not believe his father had ever spoken to him about the habit of intoxication, though he certainly was sober and virtuous himself. I had no fault to find with him except this grave fault — that he was seldom at home, was not master of the house, and could not control his children. Neither husband nor wife occupied any place of influence in the household; they were simply the slaves of their children: their children made themselves vile, and they restrained them not! This brother would pray for his children at the prayer-meeting, but I do not think he ever practised family prayer. It is shocking to find men and women speaking fluently about religion, and yet their houses are a disgrace to Christianity. I suppose that none of you are as bad as that; but, if it be so, please spell this text over: “They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.” The most careful and prayerful father cannot be held accountable for having wicked sons, if he has done his best to instruct them. The most anxious and tearful mother cannot be blamed if her daughter dishonours the family, provided her mother has done her best to train her up in the right way. But if the parents cannot say that they have done their best, and their children go astray, then they are blameworthy. If any of them have come to the Tabernacle to-night, and their boys and girls are — they do not know where, let them go home quickly, and look them up. If any of my hearers exercise no parental discipline, nor seek to bring their children to Christ, I do implore them to give up every kind of public work till they have first done their work at home. Has anybody made you a minister, and you are not trying to save your own children? I tell you, sir, I do not believe that God made you a minister; for if he had, he would have begun with making you a minister to your own family. “They made me the keeper of the vineyards.” “They” ought to have known better, and you ought to have known better than to accept the call. How can you be a steward in the great household of the Lord when you cannot even rule your own house? A Sunday-school teacher, teaching other people’s children, and never praying with her own! Is not this a sad business? A teacher of a large class of youths who never has taken a class of his own sons and daughters! Why, what will he do when he lives to see his children plunged into vice and sin, and remembers that he has utterly neglected them? ‘This is plain dealing; but I never wear gloves when I preach. I know not where this knife may cut; but if it wounds, I pray you do not blunt its edge. Do you say that this is “very personal”? It is meant to be personal; and if anybody is offended by it, let him be offended with himself, and mend his ways. No longer let it be true of any of us, “They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

Besides that, every man who knows the Lord should feel that his vineyard lies also rownd about his own house. If God has saved your children, then, dear friend, try to do something for your neighbours, for your work-people, for those with whom you associate in daily labour. God has appointed you to take care of those nearest home. They say the cobbler’s wife goes barefooted. Do not let it be true. Begin at home, and go on with those nearest home. Manifest Christian love to your neighbours. It is a great pity that yonder Christian man, living in a very dark part of London, comes to the Tabernacle, and does good in our societies but never speaks a word for Jesus in the court where he lives. Poor stuff, poor stuff, is that salt which is only salt when it is in the salt-box! Throw that kind of salt away. We want a kind of salt that begins to bite into any bit of meat it touches. Put it where you like, if it is good salt, it begins to operate upon that which is nearest to it. Some people are capital salt in the box: they are also good in the cake, they are beautifully white to look at, and you can cut them into ornamental shapes; but they are never used; they are merely kept for show. If salt does not preserve anything, throw it away. Ask the farmer whether he would like it for his fields. “No,” he says, “there is no goodness in it.” Salt that has no saltness in it is of no use. You can make the garden path of it. It is good to be trodden under foot of men; but that is all the use to which you can put it. O my beloved fellow Christians, do not let it be said that you reside in a place to which you do no good whatever. I am sure if there were individual, personal work on the part of Christians in the localities where they reside, God the Holy Ghost would bless the unanimous action of his earnest, quickened church, and London would soon know that God has a people in the midst of it. If we keep away from the masses — if we cannot think of labouring in a district because it is too low or too poor — we shall have missed our vocation, and at the last we shall have to lament, “They made me the keeper of the vineyards; but mine own vineyard have I not kept.”

You and I must cry mightily to the Holy Spirit to help us to live really and truly the lives which our professions demand of us. A day will come when all church-goings, and chapel-goings, and preachings, and singings, and sacraments, will seem fluff and useless stuff, if there has not been the substance of real living for Christ in all our religiousness. Oh that we would rouse ourselves to something like a divine earnestness! Oh that we felt the grandeur of our heavenly surroundings! We are no common men! We are loved with no common love! Jesus died for us! He died for us! He died for us! And is this poor life of ours, so often dull and worldly, our sole return? Behold that piece of land! He that bought it paid his life for it, watered it with bloody sweat, and sowed in it a divine seed. And what is the harvest? We naturally expect great things. Is the poor starveling life of many a professor a fit harvest for Christ’s sowing his heart’s blood? God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost, all in action — what is the result? Omnipotence linking hands with love, and working out a miracle of grace! What comes of it? A half-hearted professor of religion. Is this all the result? O Lord, was there ever so small an effect from so great a cause? You might almost need a microscone to discover the result of the work of grace in some people’s lives. Ought it to be so? Shall it be so? In the name of him that liveth and was dead, dare you let it be so? Help us, O God, to begin to live, and keep the vineyard which thou thyself hast given to us to keep, that we may render in our account at last with joy, and not with grief! Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Matthew v. 1 — 20.

Hymns From “Our Own Hymn Booxk” — 672, 649, 454.

A MINGLED STRAIN.
A Sacranpgntal S eran
C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.’’ — Psalm li. 7.

In what state of heart should we come to the communion-table? It is no light matter: in what manner shall we come before the Lord in so sacred an ordinance? By the very nature of the sacred supper we are taught that there should be a mixture of emotions. The bitter and the sweet, the joyful and the sorrowful, are here intermingled. The sacrifice of Christ for sin — is it more a subject of sorrow or of joy? Can we look to the cross without mourning for sin? Can we look at it without rejoicing in pardon bought with blood? Is not the most suitable state of heart for coming to the communion-table just this — mourning for our transgression, and joy because of the great salvation? There is a double character about this holy rite: it is a festival of life, and yet it is a memorial of death. Here isa cup; it is filled with wine; this surely betokens gladness. Hearken to me; that wine is the symbol of blood! This as surely betokens sorrow. In my hand is bread — bread to be eaten, bread which strengtheneth man’s heart; shall we not eat bread with thankfulness? But that bread is broken, to represent a body afflicted with pain and anguish: there must be mourning on account of that agony. At the Paschal supper, the lamb of the Lord’s Passover had a special sweetness in it: yet the commandment expressly ran — ‘ with bitter herbs they shall eat it.” So is it at this table. Here we with joy commemorate the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, but with deep sorrow we recall the sin which, though taken away, causes us in the recollection of it to repent with great bitterness of heart.

Our text is the expression of one who is deeply conscious of sin, and yet is absolutely certain that God can put away that sin. Thus it holds in one sentence a double thread of meaning. Here is a depth of sorrow, and a still greater deep of hopeful joy: “deep calleth unto deep.” I thought that this expression of mixed feeling might guide us as to our emotions at this holy festival.

I. Ishall handle the text by making three observations. The first will be this: THERE ARE TIMES WHEN THE LANGUAGE OF A SINNER IS MOST SUITABLE TO A CHILD OF God. There are seasons when it is about the only language that he can use, when he seems shut up to it, and he uses it without the slightest suspicion that it is out of place upon his lips; and, indeed, it is not out of place at all. I suppose that everybody will agree that the language of David in this psalm was most suitable to his condition. When he prayed, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and, I shall be whiter than snow,” he prayed a proper prayer, did he not? Surely no one is going to cavil with David over this petition; and yet I cannot be sure. The modern way of handling the Bible is to correct it here, and amend it there; tear it to pieces, give a bit to the Jews, and a bit to the Gentiles, and a bit to the church, and a bit to everybody, and then make it out that sometimes the old servants of God made great blunders. We, in modern times, are supposed to be more spiritual, and to know a great deal better than the inspired saints of the Old and New Testaments. But still, I should not think that anybody would say that David was wrong; and if he did, I should reply: This is an inspired psalm, and there 1s not half a hint given that there is any incorrectness in the language of it, or that David used language under an exaggerated state of feeling, which was not truly applicable to a child of God. I think that nobody will doubt that David was a child of God, and that, even when he had defiled himself, he was still dear to the great Father’s heart. I gather, therefore — I feel sure of it — that he was quite right in praying the language of this fifty-first psalm, and saying, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness; according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions; wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin!” Yet this is precisely the way in which an unconverted man ought to pray, just the way in which every soul that comes to God may pray. It is only an enlargement of the prayer of the publican, “God be merciful to me a sinner!” This language, so suitable to the sinner, was not out of place in the mouth of one who was not only a believer, but an advanced believer, an experienced believer, an inspired believer, a teacher of others, who, with all his faults, was such a one as we shall rarely see the like of again. Yes, amongst the highest of saints, there was a time with one of them, at least when the lowliest language was appropriate to his condition. ‘There is a spirit abroad which tells us that children of God ought not to ask for pardon of their sins, for they have been pardoned; that they need not use such language as this, which is appropriate to sinners, for they stand in a totally different position. What I want to know is this: where are we to draw the line? If, on account of a certain sin, David was perfectly justified in appealing to God in the same style as a poor, unforgiven sinner would have done, am I never justified in doing so? Is it only a certain form of evil which puts a man under the necessities of humiliation? It may be that the man has never fallen into adultery, or any other gross sin; but is there a certain extent of sin to which a man may go before, as a child of God, he is to pray like this? And is all that falls below that high-water mark of sin a something so inconsiderable that he need not go and ask any particular forgiveness for it, or pray like a sinner at all about it? May f under most sins speak very confidently as a child of God, who has already been forgiven, to whom it is a somewhat remarkable circumstance that he should have done wrong, but

still by no means a serious disaster? I defy anybody to draw the line; and if they do draw it, I will strike it out, for they have no right to draw it. There is no hint in the Word of God that for a certain amount of sin there is to be one style of praying, and for a certain lower amount of sin another style of praying.

I venture to say this, brethren, going farther — that, as this language is certainly appropriate in David’s mouth, and as it would be impossible to draw any line at which it would cease to be appropriate, the safest and best plan for you and for me is this — seeing that we are sinners, if we have not been permitted to backslide so much as David, yet we had better come in the same way: we had better take the lowest place, urge the lowliest plea, and so make sure work of our salvation. It is safest to assume the greatest supposable need. Let us put ourselves into the humblest position before the throne of the heavenly grace, and cry, “Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions!”

But is not a man of God forgiven? Ay, that he is! Is he not justified? Ay, that he is. “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” Let that all stand true in the highest sense that you can give to it; but, for all that, the sinner’s cry is not thereby hushed into silence. True children of God cry, and let me tell you they cry after a stronger fashion than other children. They have their confessions of sin, and these are deeper and more intense than those of others. Whatever our confidence may be, our Lord Jesus Christ never told us to pray, “Lord, I thank thee that I am forgiven, and therefore have no sin to confess: I thank thee that I need not come to thee asa sinner!” But he put into the mouth of his disciples such words as these: ‘ Our Father, which art in heaven, forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive them that trespass against us.” I reckon that the Lord’s Prayer is never out of date. I expect to be able to pray it when I am on the brink of heaven; and if I should ever be sanctified to the fullest extent, I shall never turn round to the Saviour, and say, “Now, my Lord, I have got beyond thy prayer! Now, Saviour, I can no more address my Father who is in heaven in this language, for I have outgrown thy prayer!” Brethren, the notion sounds to me like blasphemy. Never shall I say to my Saviour, “I have no necessity now to come to thy precious blood, or to say to thee, ‘Wash me, and I shall be whitér thansnow.’” Listen, brethren: “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another,” and what then? Why, even then “the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” We still want the blood when walking in the light, as God himself is in the light.

While we are here below we shall need to use just such language as David did. Appropriate as our text is to the sinner, it is equally appropriate to the saint, and he may continue to use it till he gets to heaven. Remark, brethren, that when our hearts cannot honestly use such language, we may think that we are upraised by faith, but it is possible that we may be upblown by presumption. When we do not bow into the very dust, and kiss the Saviour’s feet, and wash them with our tears, we may think that it is because we are growing in grace, but it is far more likely that we cre swelling with self-esteem. The more holy a man is, the more humble he is. The more really sanctified he is, the more does he cry about his sin, whatever it may be — Oh, wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” When you get the clearest possible view of God, what will be the result? Why, the deepest downcasting in your own spirit. Look at Job. He can answer his wretched accusers, but when he sees God — ah, then he abhors himself in dust and ashes! Was Job wrong in heart? I question whether any of us are half as good as Job. I am sure few of us could have played the man as he did under his sorrows. With all the failure of his patience, the Holy Ghost does not call it a failure, for he says, “Ye have heard of the patience of Job.” He says not “of his impatience”, but ‘ of his patience”; and yet this blessed, patient man, patient even by God’s own testimony, when he saw God, abhorred himself. Look at Isaiah, again. Was there ever a tongue more eloquent, more consecrated, more pure? Were there ever lips more circumcised to God than those of that mighty evangelical prophet? And yet, when he beheld the glory of the Lord, the train of the Lord filling the temple, he said, ‘‘ Woe is me! for I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips.” Those of you that can do so may come to my Master’s table to-night as saints: I shall come asa sinner. You that feel that you can come there glorying in your growth in grace may so come if you like: I shall come feeling that I am nothing, less than nothing. I shall endeavour to come to the cross just as I came at first, for I find that if I get beyond the position of a believing sinner, I get into a dangerous condition. Safety lies in conformity to truth, and truth will not allow any of us to glory before God. The more I know the Lord, and the more [ live in communion with him, the more do I feel happy in lying at his feet, and looking up to him to be my all in all. I would be nothing, and let Christ be everything. Take this from one who has been a preacher of the gospel for more than thirty-five years, and a soul-winner who needs not to be ashamed — I am as entirely dependent upon the free mercy of the Lord this day as ever I was, and I look to be saved in the same manner as the thief upon the cross.

II. Secondly, let me make another observation. It shall be this: AN EXTRAORDINARY SENSE OF GUILT IS QUITE CONSISTENT WITH THE STRONGEST FAITH. It is a blessed thing when the two go together. David was under an extraordinary sense of sin, and right well he might be, for he had committed an extravagant transgression. He had done a very grievous wrong to man, and committed great lewdness before the Lord; and when the Spirit of God at last aroused his conscience, through the rebuke of Nathan, it is not at all wonderful that he should have bowed down under a deeply humiliating sense of his own guiltiness. He was guilty, deeply guilty — more guilty than even he himself knew. You and I, perhaps, may also be by God’s grace favoured with a deep sense of sin. But I hear some people say, “Did I understand you rightly, sir, or did my ears deceive me? Favoured with a deep sense of sin?” Yes, I said that; for while sin is horrible, a thorough sense of it, bitter as it is, is one of the greatest favours with which God blesses his chosen. I am sure that there are some of God’s children whose experience is shallow and superficial, for they do not know the heights and depths of redeeming love, neither are they established in the doctrines of grace, and all because they never were deeply ploughed with a sharp sense of sin. These know nothing of subsoil ploughing, so as to turn their very hearts up under the keen ploughshare of the law. But that man who knows what sin means, and has had it burned with a hot iron into the core of his spirit, is the man who knows what grace means, and is likely to understand its freeness and fulness. He who knows the evil of sin is likely to know the value of the precious blood. I could scarcely ask for any of you a better thing than that you should fully know in your own spirit the horribleness of sin as far as your mind is capable of bearing the strain.

David was so conscious of his guilt that he compares himself to a leper. The language of the text refers, I believe, to the cleansing of lepers. Hyssop was dipped in blood, and then the sacrificial blood was sprinkled upon the polluted individuals to make them clean. David felt that he had become a leprous man. He felt like one who has contracted the horrible, the polluting, the incurable disease of leprosy. He felt that he was not fit to come near to God, nor even to associate with his fellow-man. He confessed that his guilt was such that he ought to be put away, shut out from the assembly of the people. His guilt had polluted a whole nation, of whom he was the representative, and to whom he was the example. Did you ever feel like that? I tell you that you do not know all the pollution of sin unless you have been made to feel yourself to be a polluted thing. If you had fifty leprosies, they would not pollute you like sin, for a poor leper is not really polluted: he may bear a grand and noble soul within that rotting body. Sin alone is real pollution, hellish pollution, abominable pollution. There is nothing in hell that is worse than sin; even the devil is only a devil because sin made him a devil: so that sin is the most horrible and intolerable evil that can fall upon the spirit of man. David felt that dreadful truth. But yet, mark you, though he felt the horror of the disease of sin, his faith was strong enough to make him use the confident language of the text,“Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” Black as my sin is, filthy as it is, if thou do but purge me, O my God, I shall be clean.

Yes, David is sure that God can cleanse him. He pleads as one who has no question upon the matter towards God. His prayer is — “Do thou purge me, and I shall be clean! Apply the precious blood of the great Sacrifice to me, O God, and I shall be whiter than snow!” There is about the Hebrew a sense which I could hardly give you, except I were to put it thus: “Thou wilt un-sin me.” As though God would take his sin right away, and leave him without a speck of sin, without a single grain of it upon him. God could make him as if he had never sinned at all. Such is the power of the cleansing work of God upon the heart that he can restore innocence to us, and make us as if we had never been stained with transgression at all. Believest thou this? Believest thou this? Oh, thou art a happy man, if, under the deepest conceivable sense of sin, thou canst still say, “Yes, I believe that he can wash me, and make me whiter than snow!”

But will you follow me while I go a step farther? The words of our text are in the Hebrew in the future tense, and they might be read, “Thou shalt purge me, and I shall be clean;” so that David was not only certain about the power of God to cleanse him, but about the fact that God would do it: ‘Thou shalt purge me.” He cast himself, confessing his sin, at the feet of his God, and he said, “My God, I believe that, through the great Atonement, thou wilt make me clean!” Have you faith like that of David? Believest thou this? Beloved, some of us can boldly say, “Ay, that we do; we believe not only that God can pardon us, but that he will, ay, that he has pardoned us; and we come to him now, and plead that he would renew in us the cleansing work of the precious blood, and of the water, which flowed from the side of Christ, and so make us perfectly clean! Yea, we believe that he will do it; we are sure that he will: and we believe that he will continue to cleanse us till we shall need no more cleansing. Hart’s hymn sings concerning the precious blood —

“If guilt removéd return and remain,
Its power may be provéd again and again,”

This witness is true, and we set our seal to it.

The Psalmist David believed that, although his sin was what it was, yet God could make a rapid cleansing of it. He speaks of the matter as wrought promptly, and speedily. It took seven days to cleanse a leper; but David does not follow the type when the reality excels it. He says, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” It is done directly, done at once ; — washed, and whiter than snow. It will not take seven days to wipe out the crimes of seven years; nay, if a man had lived seventy years in sin, if he did but come to his God with humble confession, and if the precious blood of Jesus were applied to him, his sins would vanish in the twinkling of an eye. The two facts come together. “Purge me: I shall be clean. Wash me: I shall be whiter than snow.”. It is done at once. Note the rapidity of the cleansing.

Mark the effectual character of the purgation. “Purge me, and I shall be clean.” Not “I shall think that I am,” but “I shall be. I shall be like a man perfectly healed of leprosy.” Such a man was not purged in theory, but in reality; so that he could go up to the court of the Lord’s house, and offer his sacrifice among the rest of Israel. So, if thou wash me, Lord, I shall be really clean! I shall have access to thee, and I shall have fellowship with all thy saints.

Once more — David believed that God could give him internal cleansing. ‘In the hidden parts,” says he, “thou shalt make me to know wisdom.” I do like that about the text. It is “Purge me with hyssop, and J shall be clean.” Where ? — Hands? Yes. Feet? Yes, Head? Yes. All this is good; but what about the heart? There is the part that you and I cannot cleanse, but God can. Imagination, conscience, memory, every inward faculty, the Lord can purge us in all these. “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.” This includes the whole man. And this declaration falls from the lip of a man who knew himself to be as defiled as he could be, a very lepen only fit to be put away into his own several house, and shut up there for fear of contaminating the rest of mankind. He boldly says, “If the Lord wash me, I shall be clean, I am certain of it. I shall be perfectly clean, and fit to have communion with himself,”

Notice one more remark on this point, namely, that David, while thus conscious of his sins, is so full of faith towards God that he appropriates all the cleansing power of God to himself. ‘Wash me, and J shall be whiter than snow. Purge me with hyssop, and J shall be clean.” There are four personal words in one verse. It is easy to believe that God can forgive sin in general, but that he can forgive mine in particular — that is the point. Ay, it is easy to believe that he can forgive man, but to believe that he will forgive such a poor specimen of the race as I am is quite another matter! To take personal hold upon divine blessings is a most blessed faculty. Let us exercise it. Canyoudoit? Brothers and sisters, can you do it? You that cannot call yourselves brothers and sisters, you far-away ones, can you come to Christ, all black and defiled as you are, and just believe in him, that you shall be made whole? You will not be believing too much the Great Sinners’ Friend. According to your faith be it unto you.

II. This brings us to our third and last point, upon which I will speak with great brevity. Notice that A DEEP SENSE OF SIN AND A CONFIDENT FAITH IN GOD MAKE THE LORD’S NAME AND GLORY PRE-EMINENTLY CONSPICUOUS. God is the great actor in the text before us. He purges and he washes, and none but he. The sins and the cleansing are both of them too great to allow of any inferior handling.

“Purge me.” He makes it all God’s work. He does not say anything about the Aaronic priest. What a poor miserable creature the priest is when a soul is under a sense of sin! Have you ever met with a person who has been really broken in heart who has gone to a priest? If so, he has been made ashamed of his looking to man, for he has found him to be a broken cistern that can hold no water. Why, my brethren, if we had this platform full of popes, and one poor soul under a sense of sin to be comforted, the whole lot of them could not touch the sinner’s wound, nor do anything to stanch the bleeding of his heart! No, no, the words of the best of men fall short of our need. As the dying monk said, “Tua vulnera, Jesu!” — “Thy wounds, Jesus!” These can heal, but nothing else can. God must himself wash us. Nothing short of his personal interposition will suffice.

Now, notice the next word, “Purge me with hyssop.” We must have faith, which is represented by hyssop. How little David makes of faith! He thinks of it only as the poor “hyssop.” Many questions have been raised as to what hyssop was. I do not think that anybody knows. Whatever it may have been, it was a plant that had many little shoots and leaves, because its particular fitness was that the blood would cling to its many branches. Its use was that it stored the blood, and held it there in ruby drops upon each one of its sprays: and that is the particular suitability of faith for its peculiar office. It is an excellent thing in itself; but the particular virtue of faith lies in this — that it holds the blood so as to apply it. Scarlet wool was used in the ceremony of cleansing, and the scarlet wool was useful because it soaked in the blood, and held it within itself: but the hyssop was still more useful because, while it held the blood, it held it ready to drop. That is how faith holds the great Sacrifice: it holds the atoning blood upon every spray, ready to drop upon the tortured conscience. Faith is the sprinkling hyssop: it is nothing in itself, but it applies to the soul that which is our cleansing and our life.

David, moreover, seems to me to say, “Lord, if thou wilt purge me with the blood of the great Sacrifice, it does not matter how itisdone! Doit with the little hyssop from off the wall. However tiny and insignificant the plant may be, yet it will hold the precious drops, and bring them to my heart, and I shall be whiter than snow.” It is God, you see — it is God all the way through.

“And I’’ — there is just that mention of himself; but what of himself? Why, “I shall be the receiver. Ishall be clean.” “I.” What about that intensive “I”? “TI shall be whiter than snow” ; — I shall be the material on which thou workest — the guilty pardoned — the polluted made clean — the leper made whole, and permitted to come up to thy house.

That is all I ask my Lord to-night — that he will let me come to his table, and be the receiver, the eater, the drinker, the cleansed one, the debtor, the bankrupt debtor, plunged over head and ears in debt to the heavenly Creditor. Oh, to be nothing; to lie at his feet! Oh, to be nothing, but washed — washed in the blood! How sweet it is no longer to ride on horses, but to have God for your all in all; no longer to go forth sword in hand, boasting our strength, and glorying in what we can do, but to sit down at Jesus’ feet, and sing the victory which he alone has won! Come, let us pray from our very hearts, “Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” God bless you, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Psgalm li.

Hymns rrom “Our Own Hymn Boox”” — 406, 375.

The Preacher is still ‘‘detained before the Lord” in affliction; but he is thankful that he can salute his friends with the comfortable prospect of speedy recovery. Will they in their compassion pray that it may be so? Up hill and down dale we have plodded on thus far, and have come a good distance on our life-journey. It is a cause of great rejoicing that, for these many years, the weekly testimony for Jesus has not ceased from these sermons, even when the witness-bearer has himself been laid aside by sickness. With eyes wet with intense gratitude, and heart ablaze with ardent praise, we conclude another year, and see the

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