Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1586
Delivered on Lord’s-Day Morning, February 27, 1881
“My soul breaks with longing for Your Judgments at all times.” Psalm 119:20.
ONE of the best tests of a man’s character will be found in his deepest and heartiest longings. You cannot always judge a man by what he is doing at any one time, for he may be under constraints which compel him to act contrary to his true self, or he may be under an impulse from which he will soon be free. He may, for a while, back off from that which is evil and yet he may be radically bad. Or he may be constrained by force of temptation to that which is wrong, yet his real self may rejoice in righteousness. A man may not be pronounced to be good because, for the moment, what he is doing may be condemned as evil because, under certain constraints, he may be committing sin. A man’s longings are more inward and more near to his real self than his outward acts—they are more natural, in that they are entirely free and beyond compulsion or restraint.
As a man longs in his heart, so is he. I mean not every idle wish, as I now speak, but strong desires of the heart— these are the true life of a man’s nature. You shall know whether you, yourself, are evil by answering this question. To which have you the greatest desire? Do you continually long after selfish pleasures? Then you are evil beyond all question! Do you sigh to be and feel and do that which is good? Is this the great aim of your life? Then in the core of your being there is some good thing towards the Lord God of Israel. So then, dear Hearers, your heart-longings may furnish you with helps for self-examination and I beg you to apply them, as things of the heart touch the root of the matter. Unbelievers are “a people that do err in their heart” and men truly find the Lord when they “seek Him with their whole heart”—so that the heart is all-important and its longings are among the surest marks of its condition.
Moreover, heart-longings are prophecies of what a man will be. It is not always capacity, if we could ascertain it, which will certify us as to what a man will do, for many men of large abilities achieve nothing for lack of inclination— their talents lie hidden in the earth and, albeit they might have succeeded marvelously well in certain pursuits—they do nothing at all remarkable because they have no tendencies in that direction. An individual may have the means to relieve the poor and yet never perform a charitable act from lack of generosity. Or he may have great mental powers and yet never produce a line of useful literature because he is eaten up with idleness. But other things being equal, the longings of a man are a pretty sure index of what he will be—they cannot create capacity, but they develop it—they lead to the use of means for its increase and they make the mind keen to seize opportunities.
By some means or other a man usually becomes what he intensely longs to be, especially if those desires are formed in early youth while yet the world is all before him where to choose. Hence our proverb—“The child is father to the man.” Even in little children tastes and pursuits have been prophetic—the young artist sketches his sister in the cradle—the youthful engineer is busy with his boyish inventions. If his longings deepen, strengthen and become vehement with the increase of his years, the young man’s character is being molded from within and this is often a greater force than that of circumstances acting from without.
Thus it is in spiritual things—we may form forecasts as to what we shall be from our burning and pressing desires. Desires are the buds out of which words and deeds will ultimately be developed. Spiritual desires are the shadows of coming blessings. What God intends to give us, He first sets us longing for. Therefore the wonderful efficacy of prayer, because prayer is the embodiment of a longing inspired of God because He intends to bestow the blessing! What are your longings, then, my Hearer? Do you long to be holy? The Lord will make you holy! Do you long to conquer sin? You shall overcome it by faith in Jesus!. Are you pining after fellowship with Christ? He will come and make His abode with you! Does your soul thirst, yes, even pant after God as the hart for the water brooks? Then you shall be filled with all His
fullness, for all these longings are prophetic of that which is to be, even as the snowdrop and crocus and anemone foretell the approach of Spring.
I say not that it is so with all human wishes, for “the sluggard desires and has nothing” and many a man has such evil cravings within his heart that it were contrary to the purity of God for Him to grant them. But where there are intense, heart-breaking yearnings of a holy order, depend upon it, they are tokens of good things to come! Where the Grace of God reigns in the soul, it makes a man become a stranger among his fellows and it breeds in him peculiar affections and novel desires. The verse which precedes my text runs thus—“I am a stranger in the earth”—he was a king surrounded by courtiers and friends and yet he was not at home, but like one banished from his native land. And being thus a stranger in the earth, he had a remarkable desire which worldlings could not understand and that singular craving he here ex-presses—“My soul breaks with longing for Your Judgments at all times.”