(Luke 5:1-111And it came to pass, that, as the people pressed upon him to hear the word of God, he stood by the lake of Gennesaret, 2And saw two ships standing by the lake: but the fishermen were gone out of them, and were washing their nets. 3And he entered into one of the ships, which was Simon's, and prayed him that he would thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down, and taught the people out of the ship. 4Now when he had left speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught. 5And Simon answering said unto him, Master, we have toiled all the night, and have taken nothing: nevertheless at thy word I will let down the net. 6And when they had this done, they inclosed a great multitude of fishes: and their net brake. 7And they beckoned unto their partners, which were in the other ship, that they should come and help them. And they came, and filled both the ships, so that they began to sink. 8When Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus' knees, saying, Depart from me; for I am a sinful man, O Lord. 9For he was astonished, and all that were with him, at the draught of the fishes which they had taken: 10And so was also James, and John, the sons of Zebedee, which were partners with Simon. And Jesus said unto Simon, Fear not; from henceforth thou shalt catch men. 11And when they had brought their ships to land, they forsook all, and followed him. (Luke 5:1‑11))
I read those verses simply to suggest a subject for consideration, if the Lord should put it into the hearts of others to take it up; and that subject is, How the Conscience is really brought into the light of God’s presence.
I suppose there are none of us who would question the importance of such a truth as the conscience in the light of the presence of God; because it makes little matter how extensive our knowledge of the things of God may be if the conscience is not right. Let me note one thing before I enter a little more into it, and I throw it out simply in the way of anxiety as to the subject, and that is the tendency of all our hearts to judge of things from what is outside. I believe that herein consists a great deal of the deficiency of spiritual discrimination or judgment with respect to ourselves, or with respect to anything else whereon we may be called upon to discriminate or judge. When we look at things in the fruits, rather than the root, from which these fruits come, we are almost certain to err. It is only, I believe in my soul before God, as anything is seen in the light with God, where God is, in all the manifested light which His presence sheds upon it, that we have a proper and correct judgment, and understanding either of ourselves, as to motives or springs of action, or anything else of that character.
Let me illustrate it for a moment. Occupation of the heart with self, although there may be the greatest diligence in that respect, never gives the soul a sense of what it is. You see people occupied with wrong in themselves; but there is never a divine judgment as far as I see with respect to what is truly of God, through mere occupation of heart with evil. Take any person who goes through that process of constant occupation with the evil they find in themselves; they never have a correct judgment or divine intelligence, as to the nature of that evil, by simply looking at it. I do not question for a moment that the knowledge of oneself is acquired, if I may use the expression, through a process which entails a most painful exercise of that order; but I am not speaking exactly of that, I am speaking of the divine judgment we arrive at with reference to what is within, not by looking at the fruits that it produces outside. All outside may be commendable and unquestionable; but the entire root and spring of our whole moral well-being can alone be exposed in the light of God’s presence, while perhaps there is no action at all that would lead you to form an unfavorable judgment concerning it. There was no action on the part of Peter, as narrated in the fifth chapter of Luke, which any one could reason from, as to the fact which God forced home upon his conscience in the light of His presence, that he was a sinful man. There was no outward blot; on the contrary, everything was externally favorable at the time to Peter. These outward actions were correct so far; but when he was brought into the very light of God’s presence, because Jesus was God—and that is exactly the point as it seems to me in the fifth chapter of Luke—his conscience is divinely illuminated as to all that he was in himself; and he gives the verdict which that light created in his heart, “I am a sinful man.”
I feel there is an amount of solemnity connected with all this, and an importance due to this subject, and I only touch upon it because of the necessity at the present moment pressed upon my own heart, by reason of the increase of intelligence and understanding all around, as well as amongst ourselves, that the conscience should be in a condition in which Satan could not get the advantage of us.
There is nothing so terrible as to see a conscience that is not in the light of the presence of God handling the things of God. Do you not feel it in your own heart? Do you not shrink from it? The whole edge, and force, and power of divine truth are taken away, no matter how intelligently you receive it outwardly into the understanding, if the conscience is not in the light of the presence of God. And when I say, “is not in the light of the presence of God,” I do not mean to say that there is not a particular moment—such as we find in the fifth chapter of Luke—in a person’s history, when they enter that presence, so to speak, for the first time; but I maintain that the moral judgment which is produced at that moment is kept up in the soul. It is not that a person gets into the thing once and for all, and there it is left. I quite own there is a moment when we reach the sanctuary, that is, the presence of God, the place where we must see things as God sees them, in the divine light of His presence; and unless that is kept up in the soul, Satan has a loophole through which he gets advantage over us with respect to conscience, and that is the first step down with every one.
It is a wonderfully solemn thing for the conscience to be in the light of the presence of God. I ask myself, and humbly and affectionately you, the question, Do you know what it is to walk with your conscience in the light of God’s presence? Do you feel the light of God penetrating down to the very deepest depths of your whole moral being, reflecting God’s judgment as to all that is within, exposing and detecting everything in a way you could never know by simply looking at the results and fruits of things outside? There is another remark I would make, and that is, that I believe nothing tends to break the confidence, the natural confidence, of our hearts in ourselves like this, the habitual maintenance of conscience in the light of God’s presence. Peter was a man into whose heart the truth had reached, I apprehend, a long time before the incident narrated in the fifth chapter of Luke; that is to say, that was not the occasion of Peter’s conversion, but there was at that time this further action on Peter, that he learned not merely the springs that were in himself—and that is the point that was on my mind—but the natural confidence of his heart, in measure at least, was broken. Because the moment this light reaches him, the moment his conscience is intro- duced into this penetrating light, he was obliged to give a verdict of all he felt himself to be as under it. Then it was that Peter learned to confide in the One that convicted him; and faith knows very well how to put these two things together, that you never really confide in Christ or in God—you never have real genuine confidence in Christ and in God—until Christ has taken the confidence in self from you. And how does He do that? By showing you what you are in the light of God’s presence. Because the very blessed word that comes immediately afterwards comes from the same place as this convicting power—“Fear not.”
Where did that come from? It came from His lips who caused a little ray of the glory that belonged to Him to shine around Peter’s heart when He commanded the treasure of the deep into Peter’s net. He commanded, as the mighty God, the treasure of the deep into Peter’s net, and He commanded the light of His presence to shine into Peter’s heart; and when He gives Peter the sense of it, He breaks in that way in measure the confidence Peter had in himself, then He ministers this blessed comfort to him, “Fear not.” I do not believe there can be any real devotedness to Christ, after the order and pattern and fashion that God looks for, until the confidence of the heart is broken in ourselves.
Turn with me for a moment and glance at the sixth chapter of Isaiah; it is a scripture of the Old Testament, but it is interesting to see the moral principle the same there.
In the year that King Uzziah died I saw also the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up, and his train filled the temple. Above it stood the seraphims: each one had six wings; with twain he covered his face, and with twain he covered his feet, and with twain he did fly. And one cried unto another, and said, Holy, holy, holy, is the Lord of Hosts: the whole earth is full of his glory. And the posts of the door moved at the voice of him that cried, and the house was filled with smoke. Then said I, Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts. Then flew one of the seraphims unto me, having a live coal in his hand, which he had taken with the tongs from off the altar; and he laid it upon my mouth, and said, Lo, this hath touched thy lips; and thine iniquity is taken away, and thy sin purged. Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.
What renders this scripture interesting and instructive to the heart is, that here was a real genuine prophet of God, which Isaiah was, for he was called before, and had a vision too, as we find in the second chapter, and yet he was not free to go. He does not run before this moment, because he has not measured himself. And, oh! beloved friends, would God that our hearts had a sense of the greatness of it; may God, in some measure, give your hearts a sense of the importance of what I am feebly trying to bring before you, the wonderful blessedness of measuring oneself by contrast. Just think of it for an instant. It is not measuring yourself with the badness of your past history, but by the contrast of all that you know in yourself, and in your own mind, with the perfect, exquisite blessedness and purity of the goodness of God in His own nature; this gives a sense of the horrible iniquity and badness of the springs of our moral being. That was what it was to the prophet here. He sees all this glory, and the moment he sees it, he says, “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts.” And from the very spot where all that glory of God reached his conscience, when he is detected and exposed, comes the coal from off the altar, that removes everything that God detects. Is not that blessed? Is it not blessed to have the light of God shining into the inmost recesses of conscience, in order that we may know the love that takes away everything the light makes manifest? You will never get a divine sense of what the love is until you know what the light is. And these are the two very things spoken of as to what God is in His nature.
In the New Testament God is light and God is love; and is not that the order—the moral order—in which we are really brought to know those things in our souls when God is dealing with us. I feel the word spoken yesterday in respect to conscience, that it is ever the case that the intelligence is reached through conscience. I feel in my heart the power of that word, that God reaches our souls through the avenue of the conscience—that conscience is the avenue of the soul; and if the understanding in an intellectual way grasps anything of God apart from the conscience, there is a person in a terrible exposed state. I feel it. I feel the power of that word in my own soul and heart. And you see that order everywhere through scripture, that it is the conscience that is reached—that the conscience is brought out before God and set in the light of His presence; that confidence is correspondingly created in the heart, because it is broken in self, and that you never trust in God, you never trust in Christ, as you trust in Him when He has broken the ground for confidence in your heart. I simply refer to this, and throw it out as a subject for inquiry before the Lord, as to the blessedness of really having our consciences maintained in the light where God is, of having His judgment and His verdict according to His own blessed light, and power made known to us there, so that we may really trust and confide in Him and have the ground of the confidence, which I suppose is natural to all of us, broken as to ourselves, and have greater confidence than ever in God, and more thorough distrust of every single thing except what is in Him. May the Lord keep us in these days when Satan is looking for loopholes and advantages to seek to thrust us down from where God would have us. Lord, keep us with consciences thoroughly maintained in the light, that we may be free to go where Thou wouldst have us to go, according to Thy own wisdom.