"My Own Idle Words in My Preaching, in My Praise, and in My Prayer, and the Account I Give of Them to God"

fORDS, to begin with, are very wonderful things. Among all our wonderful things there is nothing more wonderful than our words. For all we think within ourselves we think by means of words. And when we tell out our thoughts to other men we do so by means of words. All we read and all we hear and all we pray and all we praise we do it all by means of words. Without words indeed we the children of men and the sons of God would be as the beasts that perish, And much more wonderful than all that, when the Holy Ghost takes most profoundly of the things of Christ and reveals them to us, of all the great names and noble titles He gives to the Son of God He gives Him no name and no title that is so full of all magnificence and all nobleness and all wonderfulness as when He names Him The Word — The E

Word of God. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

Amid the eternal silences
God’s endless Word was spoken;
None heard but He who always spake,
And the silence was unbroken.

O marvellous! O worshipful!
No song nor sound is heard,
But everywhere, and every hour,
In loye, in wisdom, and in power,
The Father speaks His dear Eternal Word.

But of all the multitudinous kinds and varieties and qualities of our words our Lord in one of His sermons singles out and denounces what He characterises as ‘idle words.’ Now what exactly does our Lord mean by idle words? There can be no mystery about that. For idle words are just idle words. Idle words are just those words of ours that do no work. ‘They stand all the day idle. They perform no appointed task. They bring no help to men and they contribute no glory to God. But our Lord specially brands and denounces all those words of ours that are so idle and so worthless and so hypocritical and so offensive in our pretended worship of God. All our idle words of all kinds will have to be given an account of one day, but above all those divine words and those human words about divine persons and divine things that we so idly take up on our idle lips. It is of the greatest and the best words in heaven and on earth that our Lord speaks in such scathing language, when He says that of every such word we speak so idly and so irreverently we shall be called upon to give an account thereof in the day of judgment.

But before we enter on any of our greatest and best words, let us begin with our very worst word, that worst word in our whole world of words, our own worst word Sin. Let us begin with that worst of words because it is the true and it is the only keyword, it is the true and it is the only password into every other word, good and bad, human and divine. For just as our bodily diseases alone explain and alone justify and alone account for all our physicians with all their vocabularies of diseases as well as all theirmedical training, and all their instruments of healing and all their operations and all their medicines and all their treatments of their patients, just so Sin, our spiritual disease, alone explains and justifies and fully accounts for our Divine Physician with all His authoritative and true vocabulary and all His instruments and all His medicines; all His sin-atoning blood, and all His regenerating and sanctifying Spirit, with all His other divine and soul-saving means of grace and truth. And thus it is that God always begins with our sin when He would truly save us. And thus it is that till we see sin somewhat aright, and think about sin somewhat aright, and speak about sin somewhat aright, all our other words in that whole world of things, and indeed in every other world of things will be idle and worse than idle in the sight of God and in the last judgment of Jesus Christ. Now with all that the simple and incontestable truth is that among all our idle words there is no word so idle in most men’s mouths as just this most awful of all words, Sin. ‘ All men see and speak the word Sin,’ says Shepard, that past master of the subject, ‘but few men see the thing.’ No man indeed has ever seen Sin aright; no man but that one Man who was made Sin. But at the same time to those men who have seen even a little into the exceeding sinfulness of sin, to them from that time all other words in the moral and spiritual worlds, and indeed in all other worlds, henceforth take on a new reality, a new sincerity, a new height and a new depth. ‘ Paul,’ says Shepard, ‘ was a Pharisee till he saw sin. But when once he saw sin and his own sinfulness, from that time he became the Paul that all true and great sinners know so well and love so much. And thus it is that all Paul’s apostolical successors in the pulpit labour to bring home to all men that new sight and sense that makes a new man, the sight and sense of sin. For just in the measure and just in the intensity that any man sees sin, and his own sinfulness in its guilt and in its malignity and in its deadliness, just in that measure and just in that inwardness and just in that intensity will all he reads and all he hears about God’s salvation become every day the best of news to him. But on the other hand take any evangelical and experimental scripture you like, take any prayer or psalm or hymn you like, and they will all be so many absolutely idle words to you unless you first see and feel yourself to be a sinner and the chief of sinners. Go over all God’s words of salvation and you will see that to be so. Go back to the beginning and take the pascal lamb and its sprinkled blood, take the brazen serpent and its healing power, take the sin-broken psalmist and his Fifty-first Psalm, take the evangelical prophet and his Fifty-third chapter, take John the Baptist and his ‘ Behold the Lamb of God,’ take the Lamb of God Himself, from His cradle to His cross, and from His cross to His throne; take Paul and his great Epistles, take Luther and his Pauline doctrines, and so on all through our truest theology, our truest preaching, and our truest religious literature; and all that glorious world of things, with all its glorious words, all is full of idleness to him who has not the true key to all

these things in his own awful and unspeakable sinfulness. But that happiest of men who has that true and only key of all these things in himself, and who takes that key and puts it out to constant use, he will thereby be able to unlock, both for himself and for other men, all the treasures of grace and truth that are laid up in Jesus Christ. ‘The distinction, says an able Anglican divine, ‘which our Lord and the New Testament continually make, is not that some men are sinners and some are not. But that some men are so content to be sinners that they do not know they are sinners. While some other men are so convicted and convinced of their own sinfulness that they are conscious of nothing else in themselves but their sin. Blessed are we, he continues, ‘even that we are sinners, if we see and know our sin; if through knowledge of the curse of sin we have been brought to know the supreme blessedness of holiness. For beings like ourselves the consummate joy of holiness would be incomprehensible and impossible, save through a corresponding and an equal sense of sin. All our true joy, he adds, ‘in what we are yet to be is born of our true sorrow for what we now are.’

There is a well-known aphorism in our English literature which, if we would only carry it over into our religious literature and would continually practice it would change everything; that would in course of time transform all our religious words from all their present idleness to a great fruitfulness and a great acceptableness. ‘ Read, so the fine aphorism runs, ‘ Read always with your eye on the object.’ That is to say, read not so much with your eye on the words as on the things. And the best literary critic of the past generation has said in illustration of that aphorism that Homer, his blindness and all, stands at the head of all subsequent poets simply because he always sang with his whole inward eye fastened on the thing about which he was singing. But we do not need to go so far afield as Homer. For we have another man of that same genius, John Bunyan. Hear him: ‘’’There was not one part of the Gospel of the Lord Jesus but I was orderly led into it. For always as I read it methought I was as if I had seen Him born; as if I had seen Him grow up; as if I had seen Him walk through this world from His cradle to His cross; to which also, when He came, I saw how gently He gave Himself to be nailed and hanged upon it for my sins and my wicked doings. Also asI mused upon this His progress, that Scripture dropped upon my spirit — He was ordained to the slaughter. My brethren, to read about your Saviour in that seeing way is the whole secret. Only see what you read about, and hear about, and sing about, and pray about, and preach about, and all the rest will follow. Your eye, like the prophet’s eye, will always affect your heart. And when your heart is properly and sufficiently affected that will soon drive all the idleness out of all your words, till all you think, and all you say, and all you do will be well-pleasing in the sight of God. And what a reward that will be!

So much on reading Holy Scripture in that idleness-dispersing way. Now just for a moment take the praise of God in the same way. And we cannot take a better example for our purpose than that heavenly hymn, ‘ Rock of Ages, cleft for me.’ For that hymn is both prayer and praise of the first order. Now to-night just repeat or chant to yourselves ‘Rock of Ages,’ with your eye all the time on the Object, that is to say on Christ crucified for you. That is to say doing the thing all the time you are saying or singing the words. As thus: cleft for me! Always as you utter the great words think you are standing on Mount Calvary and are looking on Christ actually being crucified on that cross for you. See Him and come up close to Him, and as if there were no one near Him but you, say to Him: Let me hide myself in Thee! Let me hide myself in Thee from all my past sins, from all my present temptations of all kinds and of all degrees, and even from my evil and unseemly self. Look up and say to Him — Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to Thy cross I cling. And let that not be an idle word in such a place and at such a moment. But throw your arms around His bleeding Body, and so hide yourself for ever in His sin-atoning and debt-discharging sacrifice. And so on as the Spirit of God and your own believing heart will teach you to the end of your great hymn of Christ-appropriating praise. Do that once to-night and you will feel such a sense of reality and truth and power that you will sing in the same way all your days. And that not only with that heavenly hymn but with all the psalms and hymns and spiritual songs that have hitherto been such a tissue of idle words to you. Always sing with your eye on the Divine Object and your eye will infallibly both satisfy and sanctify your heart. Intercessory prayer is not seldom a very idle and a very unprofitable performance even when it is performed at all. For how often our friends in their distress ask us to pray for them and how seldom we do it to any purpose! I wonder if I can venture to tell you what is in my mind about intercessory prayer at this moment. I wonder if I dare tell you, I wonder if it would be wise to speak, as I feel compelled to speak, to such a mixed multitude as you are. Yes I will venture and will risk. For I am debtor to all the devout and serious-minded people among you with a debt I can never fully discharge. And then, who knows, but it may be the same with some of you some day as it was with me. Well, a dear friend of mine was sick and was seemingly nigh unto death. And I was much in prayer for him that he might be spared to his family and to his friends and to his great work. And one night as I was in that intercessory prayer a Voice suddenly spake and said to me — ‘ Are you in real earnest in what you ask? Or are you uttering, as usual, so many of your idle words in this solemn matter? Now to prove the sincerity and the integrity of your love for your friend, and to seal the truth of what you say about the value of his life, will you give Me and yourself a solid proof that you are in real earnest in what you say?? ‘What is the proof?’ I asked, all trembling, and without looking up. And the Voice said, ‘ Will you consent to transfer to your sick friend the half of your remaining years? Suppose you have two more years to live and work yourself, will you give over one of them to your friend? Or if you have ten years yet before you, will you let your friend have five of them?’ I sprang to my feet in a torrent of sweat. It was a kind of garden of Gethsemane to me. But, like Gethsemane, I got strength to say, ‘Let it be as Thou hast said. Thy will be done. Not my will but Thine be done.’ ‘Till I lay down that never-to-be-forgotten night with a clean heart and a good conscience as never

before both toward God and toward my much-talented friend. How the matter is to end I know not. How the case is to work out I cannot tell. Enough for me and for you that my story is true and is no idle tale.