MAN has turned his back upon God, he does not want God in this world, and he does not want to think about the future; indeed he won’t think about it until he is in trouble. He seeks a position in this life, money to enjoy the pleasures of sin, friends to flatter him, lands to call after his name — in fact, anything and everything except God. Then, like the poor prodigal in Luke 15 when he has spent all, he begins to be in want; for man’s resources do not last, and when they are exhausted, he finds only hard treatment in the far country.
Yet God is so gracious, that directly man says, “I want God,” there is a response from His heart, and His promise is fulfilled, “Call upon Me in the day of trouble, I will deliver thee, and thou shalt glorify Me.” God has many ways of producing a famine in souls. It may be through sickness, or loss of fortune or friends; and when such is the case, God’s dealings are often said to be hard and unkind, for man has his own ideas of God’s love, learned in the darkness of his own heart. He is in darkness and cannot know God’s love. He thinks God ought to love him in such a way as to make him happy in this world, that he should have no privations and no trials, but he forgets that he has to pass out of this world some day, and that God wants to make him happy throughout eternity.
One of the malefactors on the cross said, “If thou be Christ, save Thyself and us,” that we may live happily in this world, but Jesus takes the repentant thief with Him into Paradise instead. What a blessed exchange from this poor earth, with all its misery and sin, to the Paradise of God with Christ, and this is divine love. God loves man even though his heart is full of hatred to Him, and He must do so, because it is His nature to love. God showed His love to man by giving His only Son to die. What must He have felt, when after every possible insult had been heaped on Christ during His life, He saw Him crucified, and His precious blood spilt. Ah! dear reader, it was the blood that cleanseth from all sin. And if you have spent all in the far country, and are beginning to be in want, just turn your face homewards, like the prodigal, and say, “Father, I have sinned against heaven and in Thy sight.” It makes no difference if you have taken a lifetime to spend all, God will receive you in His infinite love and grace. It is against heaven, against Him, that you have sinned, no matter what your outward conduct has been. Doubtless the poor woman which was a sinner (Luke 7) wept more over her secret sins, than over those which the proud Pharisees had against her. “Thou hast set our secret sins in the light of Thy countenance.” “Cleanse Thou me from secret faults.”
Have you ever read carefully Psalms 107? Four times it says, “Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses.” Each time they cry to God in their affliction, it is because He has had to bring them low to force them to cry to Him. “Hungry and thirsty, their soul fainted in them. Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble,” &c. “Because they rebelled against the words of God, and condemned the counsel of the Most High, therefore He brought down their heart with labor. Then they cried,” &c. “Fools, because of their transgressions, and because of their iniquities, are afflicted... they draw near unto the gates of death. Then they cry,” &c. “He commandeth and raiseth the stormy wind, which lifteth up the waves thereof,... their soul is melted because of trouble. They reel to and fro... and are at their wit’s end. Then they cry,” &c. “Again, they are minished and brought low through oppression, affliction, and sorrow.” And after all this, God says, “Whoso is wise, and will observe these things, even they shall understand the loving-kindness of the Lord.”
God is not hard, dear friends, when He sends trouble to bring the sinner back to Himself. “He doth not willingly afflict nor grieve the children of men.” He does it out of loving-kindness — “All day long have I stretched out My hands unto a disobedient and gainsaying people;” but it is often quite at the close of day that man will take those proffered hands of love, and then only because he is in desperate need.
Psalms 107 relates primarily to Israel, but there have been millions of similar cases for centuries past, and I will tell you of one that came within the circle of my acquaintance. It was that of a man who had been brought up in a Christian home under the frequent sound of the gospel. His parents prayed for him daily, and he had many a time knelt with them at the throne of grace and sat beside them when God’s Word was read. Yet as he grew up he deliberately chose the world in preference to Christ, the world on which his parents and most of his family had turned their backs.
Years passed — the parents died without seeing their prayers answered, and it seemed as though the son had completely forgotten all that he had heard from their lips and witnessed in their lives. But God answers the prayer of faith, and He had watched those parents agonizing on their knees before Him for their first-born son, and He found means of reaching this lost one. It was through affliction that He brought him to own his need. The years drew nigh when he would say, “I have no pleasure in them,” and then God laid him low on a bed of sickness, and there He spoke to him, when he was past recognizing any human voice. He had chosen to enjoy the pleasures of this world during his life, and it was only when he drew nigh to the gates of death, when he was in fact at his wit’s end, that he bowed to Him whom he had slighted for a lifetime. Could anyone say it was hard of God to melt him then in the furnace of affliction?
One who was closely related to him by the ties of nature, wrote as follows of his last moments: ―
“The accounts of our poor― have made my heart rejoice, for now I feel assured that the faithful Shepherd took away all mental power and bodily hindrances, to speak life to his soul, and make him as a little child. While senseless to everything around and not recognizing any one, he insisted time after time on rising to pray. ‘I must pray.’ ‘Speak reverently.’ ‘Be silent.’ ‘I must kneel on my knees.’ Such sentences came again and again, and he insisted on kneeling up in his bed, burying his face in his hands and praying, but no distinct words could be heard. He saveth to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him. ‘Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and He saved them out of their distresses.’”
Have you cried unto the Lord in your trouble and been saved by Him? G. P. V.