Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1116
“In the multitude of my thoughts within me Your comforts delight my soul.” Psalm 94:19.
GODLY people are thoughtful people. Indeed, it is often a sign of the beginning of Grace in a man when he begins to consider. Lack of thought has to do with the ruin of most of those who perish—it is not so much that they despise as that they neglect the great salvation. They have no time for thinking. They fly through life like mere butterflies and they rush upon destruction like wanton moths. Alas, that they should be so brutish! It is shameful and grievous that men whose noblest attribute is an intellect akin to angels should live like “dumb, driven cattle.” Even men who call themselves religious often seek for priests or ministers to do their thinking for them. They cannot be induced to give personal heed to their eternal welfare.
Good men are, none the less, full of thought because they are men of faith—believing is not the death of thinking, it is the sanctification of it. When our Savior said, according to our version, “Take no thought,” He was very far from meaning what those words would seem to imply. He meant take no carking care, no anxious thought. It was anxiety, not prudence, which He condemned. Christians are among the most thoughtful and contemplative of men. It is the foolish man who leaps before he looks and therefore often looks backward with vain regret after he has leaped. Men of Belial hate meditation, but men of God delight in it. The Gospel excites thoughts and perfumes them. It does not allow the mind to lie fallow, but sows it with heavenly seed from which spring meditations of the Truth of God, contemplations of purity and purposes of virtue.
Believing in God opens up to us the stores of Divine wisdom and then, by holy meditation, we feed on them. Faith gathers the handfuls of sacred corn from which contemplation threshes out the ears and prepares soul-sustaining bread. Gracious men take much account of their thoughts and make a conscience of them. Other men are scarcely alarmed in conscience by their actions unless they happen to commit some glaring crime. But the saint has lost his heart of stone and his heart of flesh is conscious of God’s displeasure and trembles at it when an impure thought has defiled his soul. Regenerates have sensitive minds so that a word wrongly spoken grieves them sorely. And if it should never go so far as a word, but only an evil thought like an unclean bird flits through their mind, they are troubled lest they should have invited or secretly entertained so foul a lodger.
They dread the sparks of desire, for they know what flames may be kindled by them. They have a horror of sin in any shape—it is a deadly poison—and they dread the very odor of it. If they thought that they had lost their sensitiveness in any degree it would grieve them and make them pray—
“Quid as the apple of an eye, O God, my conscience make; Awake my heart when sin is near, And keep it still awake.”
They judge their thoughts severely and cannot be induced to imagine that they are mere trifles. In this they are fully justified, for thought is the foundation and formation of character. “As a man thinks in his heart so is he.” If you had not thought of evil you had never spoken it. If your thought had never conceived, your hand had never executed. Thoughts lie upon the anvil like rough iron and time hammers them into actions. If there were no plastic clay of evil thoughts there were no potters’ vessels of evil deeds. The thought is the man, the essence of himself, the core of his humanity. The outward act is but the bone—the marrow lies in the motive intent and design—therefore he who desires to be right looks mainly at his thoughts.
And as thought makes character—and therefore good men cannot afford to trifle with it—so thought makes happiness or woe. In the present life it is certainly so. Many a man never possessed a diamond or a chain of gold, and yet he is not unhappy, because he wears the pearl of content and his thoughts of future bliss are as an ornament about his neck. Men who have their breasts made brilliant with stars and gems might well envy those whose jewels flash within their bosoms and light up the secret chambers of their souls. Thoughts have more to do with true wealth than all the miser’s stores. The soul makes the estate. He is a poor man who ranks with emperors and yet is a stranger to inward peace. And he is rich who has not a foot of land to call his own, whose heritage is altogether in another world, but who nevertheless can say—
“My God, You are mine,
What a comfort Divine,
What a blessing to know
That my Jesus is mine! In the heavenly Lamb,
Thrice happy I am,
And my heart, it does leap,
Thought does it all. If thoughts are full of faith in Jesus, confidence in the great Father, hope of Heaven and love to his follow men, the man has a young Heaven within the boundaries of his manhood! But if his thoughts are full of sadness, despondency, ambition, prim, selfishness, revenge, discontent and the like, the man is and must be unhappy—he creates his own Hell and is his own tormentor. We must, then, look well to our thoughts and keep our heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life. We must watch thought, think upon thought and pray about thought—and happy shall we be if we can say, in the language of the text—“In the multitude of my thoughts within me Your comforts delight my soul.”