Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 847
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, December 27, 1868, by C. H. SPURGEON, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington..
“I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight.” Isaiah 42:16
IN the pursuit of holiness the pilgrim is often surrounded with darkness. While in the pathway of evil the traveler is dazzled with a glare of light. It is the way of the Tempter to make the downward path as attractive as possible with the flaring splendor of carnal pleasure. Sin is surrounded with a fascinating luster which enchants the unwary seeker of pleasure and leads him to his own destruction. Look at the palace of firewater, dedicated to the demon of drunkenness— it is brighter than any other house in the street! See how it glitters with abundant lamps, and mirrors, and burnished brass! Rich with color are the flowers which bloom at the mouth of the old serpent’s den.
As the sirens in the old classic fable enchanted mariners with their songs, so that, beneath the spell of their music they turned the prows of their vessels towards the rocks of sure destruction, even so sin constrains the sons of men to make shipwreck of their souls. Evil seems to be surrounded evermore with a light that dazzles and fascinates, even as the brightness of the candle attracts the moth to its destruction. As for the way of righteousness and truth, it appears from the text that murky clouds frequently rest upon it and the way appears rough and crooked, otherwise it were not necessary to say, “I will make darkness light before them.”
Neither were it necessary that a Divine hand should interfere to make the crooked straight. Brothers and Sisters, the day of evil commences with a flattering morning and changes into a tenfold night, but God’s day, the day of good, begins at eventide. Like the primeval days of the creation, the evening and the morning were the first day. We who follow the Lord Jesus have our night first and our day has yet to dawn—the sun of which shall no more go down. God keeps the best wine until the last for us, while at the banquet of Satan they set forth the best wine and afterwards that which is worse. Yes, the dregs are wrung out in the end for the wicked of the earth to drink. As for the righteous, they have their draughts of wormwood here, before their high festival begins, to give them appetite and zest for the banquets where wines on the lees well-refined shall satiate their souls!
The subject of this morning is the great promise of God, that although His people shall sometimes be enveloped in gloom, their darkness shall be turned to light. Before the advance of faith the most terrible things lose their terror. We shall use this one Truth of God in reference to Believers first, and then briefly turn it to the encouragement of earnest seekers.
I. First, in addressing THE BELIEVER, let us ring the bell of the text again. It has a sweet silver voice—“I will make darkness light before them, and crooked things straight.” Believer, observe that there often lies before you a grim darkness. Upon that darkness let us make these comforting observations—first, that much of the darkness is of your own imagining. As we feel a thousand deaths in fearing one, so do we feel a thousand afflictions in the fear of sorrows which will never come.
Probably the major part of our griefs are born, nourished, and perfected entirely in an anxious, imaginative brain. Many of our sorrows are not woven in the loom of Providence, but are purely homespun and the pattern of our own invention. Some minds are specially fertile in self-torture—they have the creative faculty for all that is melancholy, desponding, and wretched. If they were placed in the brightest isles beneath unclouded skies where birds of fairest wing poured out perpetual melody and earth was rich with color and perfume, they would not be content till they had imagined for themselves a sevenfold Styx, an infernal Tartarus, a valley of death-shade! Their ingenuity is stimulated even by the mercies of God, and that which would make others rejoice causes them to tremble lest the enjoyment should prove short-lived. Like certain painters, they delight in heavy masses of shade.
My Brother, you may, perhaps, have before your mind this very morning what seems a thick wall of horror, and yet it is nothing but a cloud! Waiting, you imagine the obstruction to increase. But plucking up courage and advancing to meet the imaginary horror, you will yet laugh at yourself and at your foolish fears! And you will wonder how it was that you ever could have been cast down at nothing at all—and distressed by that which had no existence except in your dreams.
I remember well, one night, having been preaching the Word in a country village. I was walking home alone along a lonely footpath. I do not know what it was that ailed me, but I was prepared to be alarmed. When, sure enough, I saw something standing in the hedge—ghastly, giant-like—and with outstretched arms. Surely, I thought, for once I have come across the supernatural! Here is some restless spirit performing its midnight march beneath the moon, or some demon of the pit! I deliberated with myself a moment, and having no faith in ghosts I plucked up courage, and resolved to solve the mystery. The monster stood on the other side of a ditch, right in the hedge. I jumped the ditch and found myself grasping an old tree which some waggish body had taken pains to color with a little whitewash—with a view to frighten simpletons! That old tree has served me a good turn full often, for I have learned to leap at difficulties and find them vanish or turn to triumphs!