III
THE HEART OF MAN AND THE HEART OF GOD
"Lord, teach us to pray."--Luke xi. 1.
"Trust in Him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart
before Him: God is a refuge for us."--Ps. lxii. 8.
EVER
since the days of St. Augustine, it has been a
proverb that God has made the heart of man for
Himself, and that the heart of man finds no true
rest till it finds its rest in God. But long before
the days of St. Augustine, the Psalmist had said
the same thing in the text. The heart of man,
the Psalmist had said, is such that it can pour itself
out nowhere but before God. In His sovereignty,
in His wisdom, and in His love, God has made the
heart of man so that at its deepest--but for Himself--it
is absolutely solitary and alone. So much
so that,
Not even the tenderest heart, and next our own,
Knows half the reasons why we smile or sigh.
They see us smile, and they hear us sigh, but the
reasons why we smile or why we sigh are fully
known to God alone.
Now we all have hearts. Whatever else we have
or have not, we all have hearts; and all our hearts
are of the same secret, solitary, undiscovered, unsatisfied
kind. And then, along with our hearts,
we all have God. Wherever in all the world there
is a human heart, God also is there. And He is
there in order to have that heart poured out before
Him. And out of that, out of the aloneness of the
human heart, and out of the nearness of God to
every human heart, there immediately arises this
supreme duty to every man who has a heart,--that
he shall at all times pour his heart out before God.
It is not the duty and privilege of psalmists and
great saints only. It is every man's duty, and
every man's privilege. And, indeed, all our duties
to God are already summed up in this one great
duty; and all our privileges are held out to us at
once in this unspeakable privilege. "
Trust in
Him at all times: ye people, pour out your heart
before Him: God is a refuge for us."
Now the whole profit of this fine text to us will
lie in our particular application of it to ourselves.
It is with this view that the text has been written.
The text rose, at first, out of David's experience,
and it is offered to us for our experience also. That
is the reason why those holy men of old wrote out,
to all the world, their most secret experiences.
They were moved to do so by the Holy Ghost in
order that we might learn to follow them in their
walk with God, and in their deepest spiritual life.
Come then, my brethren, and let us take lessons
from those saints of God in their high and holy
art. Let us go to their divine school, and learn of
them how we also are to pour our hearts out before
God. And let us take our first lesson from David
in this fine psalm now open before us. When we
really study the lesson he has set to us, we easily
see how David came to be so tempted to bad passions
and to evil thoughts of all kinds; to revenge and
retaliation against his enemies, and to doubt and
despair of God's fatherly attention and care. As
we also are often tempted in our adverse circumstances;
and that, in ways and at times that,
like David, we can tell to no one. No man, we say
with David, cares for our souls. But then, that is
just our opportunity. That is just the very moment
for which God has been working and waiting in our
case. Do not let us miss it. Our immortal soul
is in it. Our eternal life is in it. Only let us pour
out all our loneliness and all our distress, and all
our gloom, before God, as David did, and all will
immediately be well. For either, He will remove
our trouble at once and altogether; or else, He will
do better,--He will make His love and His peace
so to fill our heart that we will break out with
David and will sing: "
In God is my salvation
and my glory; the rock of my strength, and my
refuge is in God."
And, as with all our trouble, so let us do with all
our sins. For our sin is the mother of all our trouble:
get rid of the mother, and you will soon get rid of
her offspring. And the only way to get rid of sin--as
well as of sorrow--is to pour it out before God.
For one thing, you are often tormented and polluted,
--are you not?--with sinful thoughts. Now as
soon as they enter, as soon as they arise,--pour
them out before God. Pour them out before they
are well in. Cleanse your heart of all unclean
thoughts, of all angry and revengeful thoughts;
of all envious and jealous thoughts; of all malicious
and murderous thoughts,--sweep them out as you
would be saved. Repudiate them. Deny them.
Denounce them. Declare before God, as He shall
judge you, that all these evil thoughts of yours
are not yours at all. Protest to Him that it is
some enemy of yours and His who always puts them,
somehow, into your heart. And pour them out like
poison. Pour them out like leprosy. For poison
and leprosy can but kill the body; but bad thoughts,
entertained in the heart, will kill both body and
soul in hell. Let no sinful thought settle in your
heart for a moment. Call aloud on God the instant
you discover its presence. Wherever you are, and
however you are employed, and in whatever
company,--that moment call on God. That moment
pour out your heart before Him. He knows all
that is in your heart in that moment of temptation;
and He waits to see what you will say to Him
about your heart, and what you will do with it.
Disappoint Him not. Neglect Him not. Displease
Him not. He has told you a thousand times
what you are to do at that moment. Do it. Do
what David did. Do what God's tempted and
tried people are doing every moment all around
about you. "
Trust in Him at all times: ye people,
pour out your heart before Him: God is a refuge
for us."
"My sin is ever before me," says David in his
greatest psalm. And as often as his sin comes up
again before him, he makes another psalm concerning
his sin and pours it out again before God. Do
the same. Do like David. His awful story is told
for your salvation. Speak then, to God, like David.
Say to God, like David, that that former sin of
yours is ever before you also. Say to Him that the
more you cleanse it away,--nay, the more He Himself
cleanses it away,--the more somehow it is ever
before you. Say to Him that you cannot understand
it, but that, the more you repent and turn
from your sin, the more you remember your own
evil ways, and your doings that were not good;
and, the more you wash your hands in innocency,
the more you loathe yourself for your iniquities
and for your abominations. As often as such
terrible experiences as these visit you,--just
remember poor sin-pursued David, and pour out all the
undying remorse of your heart again and again
before God. When your guilty conscience awakens
again on you, like the fury it is; when you are not
able to look up for absolute shame; even in the
hour of absolute despair; even when death and
hell would almost be a hiding-place to you in your
agony,--fall down, and pour out all that before
God. For it is neither death nor hell that is a
refuge for you. Almighty God, and Almighty God
alone, is your refuge and the rock of your salvation,
and though you may have poured all that sin out
of your heart ten thousand times before,--pour it
all out again. And say to Him in your excuse
that your sin is ever before you. Ask Him to whom
you can go. Ask Him, tell Him, what is His name,
and what is His Son's name. And, as you pour
out your heart as never before, say as never before,--
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee!
"
And a man shall be as an hiding-place from the
wind, and a covert from the tempest: as rivers of
water in a dry place, as the shadow of a great rock
in a weary land."
"At all times," is a most precious expression.
And as God would have it, for your instruction and
for mine, as to "times," I came the other day upon
these half-legible entries in an old black-letter Diary.
And indeed it was when I was spelling my way
through the rusty pages of that old diary that it
came into my head to preach this sermon. The
entries that specially bear on this text are these,--I
copy verbatim:
"The fourth day of the week--Wednesday. All
day, my heart has been full of wonder and praise
at God's extraordinary goodness to me. I went
back and back all day on the Lord's leading. Till
all day my heart has been one pool of love and
admiration as I poured it out before God."
"The fifth day of the week--Thursday," writes
this diarist, "is always a day of peculiar temptation
to me, and to-day has been no exception. I could
not go up into my bed till I had poured out all the
corruptions of my heart before God. And because
I could not sleep, I rose and went over the evil day
again, and made a more and more clean breast of it
all before God.
"Die Dom." (a Latin contraction for the Lord's
Day). "Passed a poor day, but the clouds scattered
before sunset."
I was much struck with this, as I think you will
be. "Communion Day. For some time past I have
had to live in the same house, and even to eat at the
same table, with one I cannot bear with. I went on
sinning against him in my heart till the fast day.
When the Lord sent me a message by His servant
out of the 62nd Psalm"--our psalm, you see!--"and
I was able to lay His message to heart. On
the fast night I went to specially secret prayer and
poured out again and again and again my whole evil
heart before God. Next morning I found it easy to
be civil and even benevolent to my neighbour. And
I felt at the Lord's Table to-day as if I would yet
live to love that man. I feel sure I will." Yes,
ye people! Pour out your heart in that way before
Him at all times, and on all the days of the week;
Gad is a refuge for
us also.
But with all that about God and about His people,
psalmists, and saints since then, the half has not
been told. After all that, I have something still to
say that will add immensely to the wonder and the
praise of the text. And it is this. We do not,
properly speaking, pour out our hearts before God
we pour our hearts upon God. We do not pour out
our hearts before His feet: we pour out our hearts
upon His heart. We do that with one another.
When we pour out a confession or a complaint or
a petition before any one we try to get at his heart.
We try to get at his ear indeed ; but it is really at
his heart that our aim is; and much more so with
Gad. We throw ourselves at His feet indeed ;
but, beyond His feet, we throw ourselves into His
bosom. We press and pass through all His angels
round about Him. We shut our eyes to all the
blinding glory. We pass in through all His power,
and all His majesty, and all His other overwhelming
surroundings,--and we are not content till we come
to His heart, to God's very, very heart. What a
thought! Oh, all ye thinking men! What a
thought! What a heart must God's heart be!
What knowledge it must have! What pity it
must hold! What compassion! What love!
How deep it must be! How wide! How tender!
What a mystery! What a universe we belong to!
What creatures we are! and what a Creator we
have! and what a God! "Oh, the depth of the
riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways
past finding out! For of Him, and through Him,
and to Him are all things, to whom be glory for
ever. Amen."
And then, over and above all that, there is this
to crown it all. Not only do God's saints pour out
their hearts upon His heart: He pours out His
heart upon their hearts. His Son has come to us
straight out of His Father's heart. His Eternal
Son is ever in, and He is ever coming forth from,
the bosom of the Father. And then the Holy Ghost
comes into our hearts and brings God's heart with
Him. Which heart, it cannot be too often said,
He, the Holy Ghost, indeed is. That, O many
of my brethren, that is God's very heart, already
poured out this day upon your heart ! That softening
of heart under the Word, that strong, sweet,
tender, holy, heavenly spirit that has taken possession
of your heart in this house. What is that?
What can it be, but God's very heart beginning to
drop its overflowing strength and sweetness into
your open and uplifted heart? Pour out your
thanks for that outpouring of His heart upon you.
And pour out your prayer for still more of His Holy
Spirit. Beseech Him not to take His Holy Spirit
away from you: say to Him that, in your estimation,
His loving-kindness is far, far better than life. Say
to Him that you have seen His power and His glory
this day, as His saints are wont to see Him in His
sanctuary; and as He sees that you truly desire
it and truly enjoy it, He will say to you also:
" A new heart will I give you, and a new spirit will
I put within you. I will put My Spirit"--My own
Holy Spirit!--"within you, and cause you to walk
in my statutes, and ye shall keep My judgments
and do them."
I will not dwell on them, but I must mention
four reflections that have been much in my mind
all through this meditation.
First, the greatness, the all but Divine greatness
of the heart of man. I do not know that the highest
and most rewarded archangel of them all has an
honour and excellency of grace bestowed upon him
anything like this,--to be able to exchange hearts,
so to speak, with God: we pouring our heart upon
God, and He pouring His heart out upon us.
Second, the unspeakable happiness, even in this
life, of the man who pours out his heart, at all times,
upon God.
Third, the awful folly--were it nothing worse--
of carrying about a heart, and hiding a heart and all
it contains, and never pouring it out upon God, even
when permitted and commanded so to do.
And fourth, never for a day, never for an hour,
forget this golden Scripture:
"Trust in Him at all
times: ye people, pour out your heart before Him:
God is a refuge for us."
