Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1173
“I thought.” 2 Kings 5:11.
OUR great object in preaching today will be the conversion of sinners. There is a great deal else to be done— Believers need building up, comforting and quickening—but while myriads of men remain careless until they are swept away into Perdition, it becomes us to lend our strength to the most necessary work of winning souls for Jesus. Therefore, again this morning, I shall leave the 99 in the wilderness and go after that which has gone astray, pleading earnestly with God that He will bless my pleading with men so that while I discourse with them concerning their folly in rejecting the Savior, His Spirit may discourse with them, also, and lead them to flee to Jesus for eternal life!
They are like the children of Israel when they came out of Egypt. There is a straight road to Canaan—why are they not allowed to take it? Instead of a direct march onward they are led round about with ever-varying experiences. Their course is by turns progressive, retrograde and standing still—to the right and to the left, forward and retreat. Does not Providence often perplex you and run counter, not only to your wishes, but to your deliberate judgment? That which for many reasons seems to be the best does not happen to you, while that which appears to be distressingly injurious overtakes you! Your forecasts do not come true, your daydreams are not realized, your schemes for life are not carried out. You cannot understand why!
Why is it that you are kept in poverty when you could have made such good use of riches? How is it you are laid aside just when you could have been most useful? Why have talents been denied to you when you feel you would have used them with such diligence and fidelity? How is it that others, who waste away life, are endowed with 10 talents, while you who are industrious and zealous have scarcely one? You have ventured to propose such inquiries, but you have not been able to answer them. It is as well that you should not, for our business is not the solution of problems, but the performance of precepts. Let us cease from our own wisdom and leave all arrangements in the hand of our heavenly Father. Our thoughts are vanity, His thoughts are precious.
The like fault will arise in connection with our prayers. We pray believingly and an answer comes, for believing prayer never fails, but the answer comes in an unexpected fashion and not at all as we thought! We prayed God to bless our family, and, lo, our wife is taken away, or our child sickens! We besought the Lord to make us more spiritual and He has sent a severe affliction to grieve us—
“I asked the Lord that I might grow
In faith, and love and every Grace,
Might more of His salvation know,
And seek more earnestly His face.
I hoped that in some favored hour
And by His love’s constraining power
Subdue my sins, and give me rest.
Instead of this, He made me feel
The hidden evils of my heart
And let the angry powers of Hell
Assault my soul in every part.
Yes, more, with His own hand He seemed
Intent to aggra vate my woe.
Crossed all the fair designs I schemed,
Blasted my gourds and laid me low.
‘Lord, why is this?‘I trembling cried.
‘Will You pursue Your worm to death?’
”Tis in this way,’ the Lord replied,
‘I answer prayer for Grace and faith.’” “I thought,” you say, “but oh, how different from my thoughts!” Yes, but how much better than your thoughts! You shall find that the Lord is doing for you exceeding abundantly above all that you asked or even thought! God is enriching you by your poverty. He is healing you by your sickness and drawing you nearer to Himself by driving you further away from creature confidence.
Often and often we fail to see God’s gracious answers to prayer because we make up our minds as to the way in which they will come. We refuse letters from Heaven because they are sent in black-bordered envelopes. We thought our Lord would send us bread and meat by angels, but instead, He sent it by ravens. When we see the Lord’s hand in unexpected ways, we are apt to say, half in disappointment, “I thought it would have been otherwise.” Perhaps we have carried these preconceptions of ours still further—for we have actually thought beforehand that God would not bless us at all! He has been graciously designing our good by affliction and we have written bitter things both against Him and against ourselves, for we have thought that He had utterly forsaken us. We have cried with Jacob, “Joseph is not, Simeon is not, and you will take Benjamin away. All these things are against me!”
When the good old Patriarch stood up in the chariot and felt Joseph’s warm kiss upon his cheek, he might have said, “I thought that all things were against me, but now I see that I misjudged my God. He sent my Joseph here to provide for me and for my household in the days of famine. And He fetched my Simeon and my Benjamin away, that it might be all the more easy for me to come down to the place where my sons had been before me. The Lord has dealt well with His servant, but I thought not so.” Dear Brothers and Sisters, leave off these forecasts, for blind unbelief is sure to err—the trade of a Prophet does not suit many of God’s servants. We look into the telescope, for we are curious to peer into the future, and having breathed upon the glass with anxious breath, we cry out in dismay, “I see nothing but clouds and darkness before me!”