Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 743
Delivered on Lord’s-day Morning, MARCH 31, 1867, by, the Agricultural Hall, Newington.
“I have surely heard Ephraim bemoaning himself thus: You have chastised me, and I was chastised as a bull unaccustomed to the yoke. Turn You me, and I shall be turned, for You are the Lord my God.”- Jeremiah 31:18.
THE heathen described their fabled deity, Jove, as sitting far aloft regardless of the common affairs of this lower world. Upon a few kings and princes he might turn an observant eye, but the most of men were creatures far too insignificant to affect the mind of Jove. Whether they lived or died was nothing to him—they fulfilled their destinies and passed away, while Jove remained serenely still, or nodded as his august will might be.
Not such is Jehovah, the God of Heaven and of earth! He compasses our path and our lying down, and is acquainted with all our ways. “The ways of man are before the eyes of the Lord, and He ponders all his going.” He regards the cries of the afflicted. “He heals the broken in heart, and binds up their wounds.” “Though the Lord is high, yet has He respect unto the lowly.” Though He is so great a God that the Heaven of heavens cannot contain Him, yet He deigns to dwell with the man who is of a contrite and humble spirit.
God has not left us as the ostrich leaves her young. Say not that we are left without a Friend to care for us—our Maker has not gone away! He has not shut up the gates of Heaven! He has not closed His ear from hearing, neither has He restrained His hand from helping us! Still does He hear His Ephraims when they bemoan themselves, and He sends them the mercy for which they pine. Let us conceive, as far as may be, of the nearness of God to every mourning soul, for it is marvelous and worthy of admiration.
When her Majesty, some months ago, heard of the desolation which had been caused by an accident in the pits, her tender heart hastened to the relief of the widows and the fatherless, but at the moment of the calamity she was not on the spot in person. She could not be in the pit to hear the groans and sustain the faith of the dying. No, she could not be in the cottage to mark the tears of the widow and to cheer her with heavenly promises. But our God is on the spot where calamity occurs, for in Him we live and move and have our being! He is the greatest of comforters, and He is also the most approachable.
He is “a very present help in time of trouble.” He needs no messengers to bear to Him the news of our grief or penitence, for He is not far from any of us. Mourner, your sigh is known to God as soon as you have heaved it! No, before your grief thus found a vent He saw it struggling within you! Yes, and the grief which you cannot express in words God can see and interpret! He knows the language of our grief, the meaning of our tears. Blessed be the ever-present God that He is upon the spot where the bemoaning of penitents are heard and bends a gracious ear to the cry of His children!
This morning my first desire is that each of us may feel that God is here and may be reached by us—that whatever our condition of mind may be, the Lord is well aware of it—and that if there should be caused by this service even so much as the faintest ripple of a desire towards Him, He will note it in His book—and if that desire should increase into a wave of prayer, it will not be lost upon Him. “He will regard the prayer of the destitute, and not despise their prayer.”
I shall now, as I am strengthened by God, first ask your kind attention to a sinner bemoaning himself. Secondly, I shall wish you to remember God as hearing Him. And thirdly, our largest subject probably will be God fulfilling the desire of that bemoaning penitent, and turning him effectually from his sins.
I. First, observe carefully, A SINNER BEMOANING HIMSELF. Last Sunday we preached upon two sinners, but we had little or no bemoaning [#742—“A Sermon to Open Neglecters and Nominal Followers of Religion.] One of them said, “I will not go,” and the other said, “I go, Sir,” but went not. We are a stage farther this morning. We introduce to you one whose heart has been affected by Divine Grace—whose conscience has been awakened, whose soul has been quickened—and we find him, according to the expressive word of the text, “bemoaning himself.”
The very word is doleful to the ear—it reminds us of the mourning of doves—we cannot pronounce it without feeling that it reveals a depth of sorrow. It is a word which tells of pain, anguish, fear, restlessness, sad remembrances, terrible forebodings and raging desires. Ephraim was “bemoaning himself.” Viewing the sorrow before us, we note that he who bemoaned himself was bowed down with a peculiar grief. He did not lament for his children with the bitter weeping of Rachel. He did not mourn oven friends and kinsfolk withered under the blast of death. He was not as one crying out through pangs of bodily pain because a limb was crushed, or a bone was broken.