The Wanderer Restored
Psalm xxiii. 3. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
It is remarkably characteristic of the Scriptures, that in their free and abundant use of figurative language, they borrow their imagery from the simplest objects. They do not have recourse to the fine arts, nor to the extended circle of the sciences; for these are familiar only to the learned; but, for the most part, they illustrate and impress truth by images borrowed from the appearances and productions that are familiar to common minds.
This twenty-third Psalm furnishes a beautiful illustration of this remark. “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness, for his name’s sake.” In our reflections upon this clause of the Psalm, three things deserve our consideration. Men are wanderers from God: God himself is their Restorer: the evidence of their restoration is the fact, that they are led in the paths of righteousness.
I. Men are wanderers from God.
There are not a few severe and humbling delineations of human apostasy presented in the Bible; while there are those that are marked by affecting, touching tenderness. “All we,” says the Prophet Isaiah, “have gone astray like lost sheep; we have turned every one to his own way.” There is not a good man on earth, nor a redeemed sinner in heaven, but has been brought to this sad confession. “I have gone astray,” says the Psalmist, “like a lost sheep; seek thy servant, for I have not forgotten thy commandments.” “My people,” saith God, by the mouth of the Prophet Jeremiah, “hath been like lost sheep; they have gone from mountain to hill, they have forgotten their resting place.”
Some have indeed wandered farther, and more visibly than others. Some have been restrained from outbreaking aberrations, and more aggravated sins, by the power of conscience, by the force of education, by afflictions, and by the strong bonds of society; but all are wanderers. The time was when they took no delight in God, paid no regard to his authority, and had no thought of their eternal interests. The “green pastures” of his truth and grace had nothing inviting to their corrupted taste; and the “still waters” where the divine Shepherd would fain lead them, had to them lost all their sweetness. A desert and dry land as it is, this world was their portion; and here, under its sultry skies and barren sands, heedless of their everlasting good, they sought their joys from the phantoms of earth, and time, and sense.
This spirit of wandering is never effectually cured this side the grave. Within the bosom of every regenerated man, there is still “an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God.” God is not always his chief joy; there are innate and strong tendencies to forsake him; there are backslidings of heart, and many a sad hour when, in bitterness of spirit, he utters the wish,” O that it were with me, as in months past!’* His closet is sometimes neglected, or the devotions of it are hurried over and slightly performed. The word of God remains for days and weeks unconsulted, and when consulted, is a sealed book. He forsakes the assemblies of God’s people, some idol intrudes itself into his heart, the Tempter intwines his snares about him, and he falls from his steadfastness. He is a wanderer from the fold. He is houseless and homeless; he strays amid the dense wilderness; beetling cliffs confront him, and he trembles on the steep precipice. His retrospect is the retrospect of a wanderer; throughout his whole course, he gives painful proof that the natural disposition of his heart is to wander from God.
Yet he does not wander fatally, nor beyond recall. He may look to a happy end to his wanderings and his journey, in the Canaan above. The wanderer shall be restored; for our text assures us,
II. In the second place, that God is the restorer of his people.
“He restoreth my soul.” The Psalmist himself had been a good shepherd, and had jeopardized his life for his sheep. He knew the toils and cares of that occupation, and the attention that was necessary, especially in Eastern countries, to the most useful, and, at the same time, most defenceless of all the creatures which God has formed for the service of man. None knew better than he, how to bless God for restoring grace. Who does not need it? Who will not prize it? Who does not implore it?
To restore those who had gone astray, to “call sinners to repentance,” is the employment of him who, in the parable of the ‘’ lost sheep,” is represented as executing the part of the good Shepherd. None return unsought. “The Son of Man came to seek as well as to save.” It is not the mere note of alarm sounding in the lands where they wander, that reclaims them; nor are they brought back by the mere language of expostulation and kindness; these are often heard and repeated, but the wanderer heeds not, because he knows not the voice that invites him. No earthly and no angelic messenger, be his message ever so rich in instruction, ever so terrific, or ever so winning, can persuade him to retrace his steps. “Thus saith the Lord God, behold I, even I, will both search my sheep, and seek them out. As a shepherd seeketh out his flock in the day that he is among his sheep that are scattered, so will I seek out my sheep, and will deliver them out of all the places where they have been scattered in the cloudy and dark day. And I will feed them in a good pasture, and upon the high mountains of Israel shall their fold be. I will feed my flock, and will cause them to lie down, saith the Lord God. And I will set up one Shepherd over them, and he shall feed them, even my servant David; he shall feed them, and he shall be their Shepherd.”
“Jesus sought me when a stranger,
Wandering from the fold of God;
He, to rescue me from danger,
Interposed his precious blood.”
It is through him as the atoning Saviour that men have access to God; it is to him as the reigning Saviour, that they look for protection and guidance. His Spirit makes the message of his truth and grace effective. If you ask his restored flock how, after all their wanderings, they got in the fold; they will all tell you, “I was a child of wrath even as others, a poor, blind, miserable wanderer as ever the God of grace smiled upon. But from being once far off, I have been brought nigh. And I long to tell the world, that it is by the grace of God I am what I am.”
The methods of divine grace in restoring his wandering people, are not always such as they themselves anticipate, or would desire. They are affecting lessons which they have to learn, before they are ever sensible of their wandering. It may be that idols which have ensnared them must be taken away. It may be that this world, with all its wealth and honor, its pride and pleasure, is to be obscured and made darker, before the crown of glory shall invite and allure them. It may be that “lover and friend must be put far from them, and their acquaintance into darkness.” Obstructions in the path of holiness must be removed, besetting sins must be mortified and crushed, before they will lay aside every weight, and press forward to the mark of the prize of their high calling. God himself interposes, and in ways that bring his hand distinctly to their view, and that constrain them to see and acknowledge that he is displeased, and has a controversy with them. Their heart is lifted up, and he humbles them. They are presumptuous, and he blasts their hopes. They trust to themselves, and he covers them with shame. He knows how to restore them, and by what means, and when to apply those means the most effectually. His power is above their obduracy; his grace abounds even more than their abounding sin. He subdues them by that grace, and by that grace they are comforted. Not till then, do they return to their forsaken God; but then they do so most willingly. They come back into the fold; and he maketh them to “lie down in green pastures, and leadeth them beside the still waters.”
But, in order to put the sincerity of their return to its true and proper test, we are instructed,
III. In the third place, that the evidence of their restoration is the fact, that they are led in the paths of righteousness.
“He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness.” This is true both of the sinner who is just brought home from his wanderings, and of the saint, who, though once brought home, has wandered, and been brought back. In the experience of every restored wanderer, there is,
1. In the first place, ingenuous reiientance fo7’ the past. There is a thorough conviction of departure from God; of its reality, its inexcusable wickedness, its unspeakable folly, its ruinous tendency. There is ingenuous sorrow on account of it, and abhorrence of it as committed against God, and deep self-loa.thing for it as in itself vile. There is the spirit of humiliation, of self-abasement before God, and of shame in the wrong done, and for the wrong-doing. There is a resolution henceforth to forsake sin; while there is no purpose of allowance for it in time to come. The sources of godly sorrow are opened by every discovery of pardoning mercy. The restored “remembers, and is confounded, and never opens his mouth any more because of his shame,” when the Lord God “is pacified toward him for all that he has done.”
2. There is in the second place, a hearty acquiescence in God’s method of restoring and saving the wandering and the lost. There is a delightful view of that way of recovery, which demonstrates his righteousness, and magnifies his law, through the mediation of that Saviour on whom the Lord hath laid the iniquities of us all. When God set him forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, he required men to believe in him, and to submit to him as the only Saviour. Whenever the sinner truly returns to God, he renounces his own works as the ground of his justification; he consents to the law that it is holy, just, and good, though it condemns him; he receives Christ as “the end of the law for righteousness.” He complies with these self-abasing and humbling terms of the gospel; gives God the throne, and lies at his footstool. Such views of sin and of Christ constitute the very elements of his return, and the first principles of his obedience. These evidences of his restoration.
3. Extend themselves, in the third place, to a cautious and watchful obedience of the commandments of God. His faith is but a name, if it do not work by love; “it is dead, being alone.” And his repentance is but a painful regret for the past, if it bring not forth “fruits meet for repentance.” Without this, all his apparently religious emotions, and all his professions of return, are sounding brass and tinkling cymbal. “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments; and his commandments are not grievous.” True piety is not an impulse of momentary tenderness; it is not a flush, or pang of emotion. In returning to the God from whom they have wandered, men obey not impulses, but principles. They are not the suggestions of the imagination which govern them, but the commandments of God. These are the supreme laws of tneir reUgion and their lives. They love to have it so. They desire to honor his name, who has brought them out of darkness into his marvellous light. They are devoted to his service, because they choose him for their Master. They dare to be singular in the view of men, that they may please him and receive his approbation. They do indeed sin; every day they sin; but their purposes are purposes of new obedience. None are more sensible of their infirmity, their weakness, and their exposure than they; but depending on the power of God, they are bold to say, that they mean to go forward in every obvious path of duty. They have no stronger desire than to be led in ways of righteousness, for his name’s sake; to make progress in these ways; to walk onward as pilgrims toward the heavenly city, till the Good Shepherd shall house them safely in his celestial fold.
There is one more thought suggested by the text, which deserves consideration. It is,
IV. In the fourth place, the motive and end which God has in view in thus restoring them.
God hath made all things for himself. Everything is to the praise of his glory. “He restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake When the often wandering sheep of his fold come to look back, from the boundaries of their heavenly heritage, upon his care and love, they will say, “he hath wrought all for his own name’s sake, and not for our righteousness!” It is all from the riches of his grace, and that they might be to the praise of his glory, who hath made them accepted in the Beloved. They are not few who will finally be gathered into that heavenly fold; John saw them “an exceeding great multitude, which no man can number.” Notwithstanding all their original departures from God, and all their backslidings, when once brought to him, they shall then come in the perfection and beauty of holiness, and be presented a glorious Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such thing. A vast and delightful scene of contemplation will then be opened to the view of those who love to think of the ways of God to man. The original design of recovering, and saving such multitudes of frail and sinning men, the several steps by which it was accomplished, its progress, and final completion, will all show forth the “riches both of the wisdom and the knowledge of God!” They will show forth his power, who, from creatures thus abject, forms minds that shall “shine as the brightness of the firmament, and as the stars forever and ever!” They will show forth his truth and faithfulness, which could not be provoked, nor vitiated by all their unfaithfulness. They will show forth his love and mercy, always the worker of wonders, now “glorified in his saints, and admired in all them that believe!” Well did God say to his ancient people, even in view of lesser mercies, “Not for your sakes, do I this, O house of Israel, but for my great name’s sake!” And well does he utter the same truth in our ears. Innumerable are our transgressions, grievous is our unfaithfulness. But where we have multiplied offences, God has multiplied pardons. How patiently has he borne with us, restored our souls, and healed our backslidings. Forget not how often he has delivered you from evil, and kept you from falling; how graciously he has assisted you in your duty, supported you under sufferings, and brought your trials to a happy issue. Forget not how he has defeated the plots of his and your adversaries to ensnare you; nor how punctually he has fulfilled his promises; nor how amply he stands pledged for all that remains to be accomplished in order to secure your final salvation. What he thus performs for his name’s sake, is your hope. We have no hope but this. Blessed hope it is! “If God be for us, who can be against us?” He must have all the praise. His love is everlasting and immutable.’ He has no desire to change his mind. O let us admire and adore the Lord our Shepherd, and acknowledge our obligations to his matchless grace, and give him all the glory.
In the conclusion of these remarks, let the subject admonish all of the sin and danger of wandering from God. It is natural for us, my friends, to “go astray.” The natural tendencies of our minds are evil; they are all on the wrong side; and though, in varied, and often opposite and contradictory forms, there is a leaning within us to what God has forbidden. Our sources of exposure may not be all alike; but they are all real, and unless closely watched, they will all be found to have great power. Temptation yielded to, unfits for present duty, and takes away the heart from God. And then, when once the heart is taken away from God, it is prepared for every sin; and it will be wondrous mercy if we are preserved from perdition. The day of the Lord is at hand. “Take heed to yourselves.” Watch and pray. Seek the supply of the Spirit of grace, to mortify every sinful propensity, to regulate every internal desire, to preside over all your conduct, and to keep your heart fixed on God. It is easier, safer, and happier, more useful and more honorable to yourselves and to God, to live habitually near to him, than it is to return to him when you have once wandered.
Let those, then, who are now wanderers from the fold of Christ, return to him in this, their day of hope and mercy. It is a fearful thing to be a wanderer from the fold of God. It is a fearful state of mind, and the way of the wanderer is dark. You cannot lay your hand upon your heart and say you have a clear conscience; nor can you say that you are a happy man, so long as you wander from God. It is a dry and thirsty land where no water is — no living water, no wells of salvation, nothing to satisfy the cravings of the thirsty, perishing soul.
Are there none of you, my friends, who would fain belong to the flock of Christ? Perhaps you feel exiled from it, here on the great ocean. But his flock is found on the sea, as well as an the land. You may sing here as truly as David did on the mountains of Judea, “The Lord is niy Shepherd, I shall not want; he maketh me to lie downi in green pastures, he leadeth me beside the still waters; he restoreth my soul; he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” He is the Good Shepherd, who gave his life for his sheep. To those who follow him, he will give eternal life, and they shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of his hand. He gathers the lambs with his arm, and carries them in his bosom. God grant, that when this divine Shepherd houses his flock at the Last Day, you may all be found within his fold!