Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1323
“And He said unto the disciples, The days will come when you shall desire to see one of the days of the Son of Man, and you shall not see it” Luke 17:22.
WHILE the Lord was yet on earth the days of the Son of Man were but lightly esteemed. The Pharisees spoke of them with a sneer and demanded when the kingdom of God should come. As much as to say, “Is this the coming of your promised kingdom? Are these fishermen and peasants your courtiers? Are these the days for which Prophets and kings waited so long?” “Yes,” Jesus tells them, “these are the very days. The kingdom of God is set up within men’s hearts and is among you even now. And the time will come when you will wish for these days back again. And even those who best appreciate them, shall, before long, confess that they thought too little of them, and sigh in their hearts for their return.”
This suggests the remark that we are bad judges of our present experiences. Those days of which we think very little while they were passing over us come, by-and-by, to be remembered with great regret. Have you not found it so in your own lives? Has it not been so that the very experience which caused you anxiety while you were passing through it was, afterwards, appeared to be so excellent in your eyes that you have wished to have it back again? I have said unto my soul sometimes, “How heavy you are! How are you bowed down! How little do you rejoice in the Lord! It is sad that you should fall into this condition.”
The period of heaviness has passed away and then I have chided my heart in another way, saying, “Soul, how careless and unfeeling you are! It were better for you if you were as heavy, now, as you were a little while ago, for then you were in earnest—then you were driven to mighty and prevailing prayer—but now you are steeped in lethargy! You have lost your fervency and are scarcely alive at all!” This stage has gone by and I have again had to look back and feel that when I thought myself insensible I was really very spiritual and sensitive—and that my fears of falling into carnal ease were sure proofs that I was carefully upon the watch. Thus are we delivered from carnal security by being made to see more beauty in past experiences than in those now passing over us.
Holy anxiety, when it broods over us, is often mistaken for unbelief. Full assurance is suspected to be presumption and joy is doubted and stinted for fear it should be pride and self-deception! When our spiritual spring is with us, we are fearful of its March winds and April showers. But when it is gone and we are parched with summer heat, we wish we had the winds and showers back again. So, too, when autumn comes, we mistake ripening for decaying and mournfully wish the roses of summer would return—while all through winter we are sighing for those summer hours we once enjoyed and those mellow autumn fruits which were so sweet to our taste. Thus, Brothers and Sisters, we continue, if we permit ourselves to do so, to judge each state in which we have been to be better than that in which we are, and to shed useless tears of regret over times and seasons which are gone past recall!
While they are with us, we see their deficiencies. When they are gone, we remember only their excellencies. It were wiser if we took each time and season, and state and experience, while yet it was on the wing, turned it to the best account for God’s Glory and rejoiced in it! It will be time, enough, to mourn when it is gone from us. After all, each season has its fruits and it were a pity to wither them with idle regrets. Let us turn to good account the old worldling’s motto, and live while we live. Let us live one day at a time, enjoy the present good and leave yesterday with our pardoning God. The days of the Son of Man, of which the Apostles thought comparatively little, they afterwards sighed for. And these present days, of which we are complaining, may yet come to be regarded as among the choicest portions of our lives.
Our second remark is a very commonplace one, you have heard it a thousand times—we seldom value our mercies till we lose them. We best appreciate their excellence when we have to deplore their absence. This has been so often said that I wish it did not continue to be true, for it is an atrocious piece of folly that, after all, we should be obliged to lose our
blessings in order to learn gratitude for them! Are we such dolts that we never shall know better than this? Such conduct is only worthy of the idiot or the insane! Can we not put away such childishness and thus remove one occasion for our sorrows? Would it not be well to resolve, in God’s strength, to estimate the blessing while we have it, and so to use it that when it is gone we may remember that we turned it to the best account for our soul’s profit, for the benefit of others, and for God’s Glory?