Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2546
“When men are cast down, then you shall say, there is lifting up; and He shall save the humble person.” Job 22:29.
THIS is Eliphaz, the Temanite, who is speaking, and he is telling Job what he thinks would be the condition of a man who had been sincere. He says that surely, God’s Presence would be with him, the light would shine upon his ways and then, when he was, himself, happy in the Light of God, when other men were cast down, he would be able to say to them, “there is lifting up.” Keeping that thought in mind, I will commence my discourse, this evening, by observing that if any of us have the Light of God, it is not given to us for ourselves alone. There is nothing selfish in the gifts of God. The Jews were elected to receive the Oracles of God, but it was in order that they might keep them for the rest of us, that in the midst of Israel the lamp of the Truth of God might be trimmed and kept burning for the nations that then waited in darkness.
When God calls any man by His Grace, it is with a view to others. Your salvation has many hooks to it with which to draw on the salvation of many more. If a man is truly converted, the influence of his conversion will spread to others—it is an act of mercy from God to him with a view also to his children, his friends, his neighbors, his dependents. It is the same with the Light in the Believer’s heart. When you are very merry, shut not up your mirth within your own soul, but sing Psalms that others may hear your gladness. When God makes you a feast, eat not your morsel, alone, but call in many of the poor, the lame, the halt and the blind, that they may feast with you, for there are many such in God’s family and they will be glad to come to spiritual as well as to temporal feasts. If your face is made to shine in the Light of God, it is not that you may see it, for Moses “knew not that the skin of his face shone,” but it is that others may see what a Light God has put in your countenance and may rejoice in that Light.
I fear that many Christian people have lost their comfort through trying to keep it to themselves. The manna was sweet and they had gathered more than they could eat. They went, therefore, to their chest and stored it up, and expected to go on the morrow and have another feast all to themselves. But when they lifted the lid—ah, you know what happened to manna if they kept it till the morning! And our joys will also breed worms and stink (that is the plain English of it), when we keep them to ourselves! They are meant to be scattered abroad. In this respect, “There is that which scatters and yet increases and there is that which withholds more than is meet, but it tends to poverty.”
Now, coming to our text, my talk will be on this wise. First, I will try to show you what the happy Christian ought to do. And, secondly, what downcast people ought to do.
I. first, then, WHAT THE HAPPY BELIEVER OUGHT TO DO. “When men are cast down, then you shall say, there is lifting up.”
Well, he ought to do this, first—he should notice those who are cast down. We are such foolish creatures that sometimes, when the Lord trusts us with a happy experience, we begin to grow mightily proud and we look down upon His tried and afflicted people. Even among those who know the Lord, if they have a very charming experience and enter into high fellowship with God, there is a tendency to begin to think that the poor doubting and fearing ones are very much to be censured and blamed, or, at any rate, that they are to be ignored and left to themselves. “Well,” says someone, “really it quite depresses me to talk with old Mrs. So-and-So, and I could not keep my joy if I were to go and try to encourage that young man who is always so cast down.” Ah, my dear Friend, but if you begin to talk like that, it may not be long before you will even envy that old lady you now despise—and wish you were half as hopeful of salvation as that young man whom you just now condemned! Remember that when the fat cattle begin to push with horn and with shoulder, the Lord knows how to bring their fat down very speedily, so that they can be trusted among the lean cattle without being so domineering over them. The duty of a happy Christian is to take notice of those who are not so joyous as he is, to seek them out, to condescend to men of low estate. When you have abundant provision in your house, it is your duty to send portions to those for whom nothing is prepared. Mind that you attend to this matter lest your Lord should put you on short commons, too, and make you feel a little more as you ought to towards the afflicted.
The next thing a happy Christian ought to do when he has noticed and found out the sad ones, he should go and talk to them. “When men are cast down, then you shall say, there is lifting up.” I often speak upon this subject and, therefore, I cannot say anything new. But I do wish to say over again that if all joyful Believers who have attained to full assurance of faith would more often speak to troubled ones, they might do a vast amount of good. I think, dear Friends, that you miss many opportunities of serving the Lord through forgetfulness or through diffidence. I notice that when converts do not begin to speak a little for Christ very early in their Christian career, they become tongue-tied—that is how we get so many dumb members of the Church who seem as if they could not offer up a prayer to save their lives. And what is worse, they cannot talk to their personal friends about the things of God. It is a very great pity that it is so and I think I must have an operation performed on some of you children who are dumb. It is a very sad thing for the father of a family to have a number of children who never speak. There is a sweetness about every child’s voice, is there not? There is a different tone, a different form of speech with each child, and it would not content the head of the household if he could say, “I can hear the older ones speak, but the youngest is quite silent.” We want them all to open their mouths, to begin their speech with childlike prattle—then we shall be glad when they can all speak plainly the language of the land in which they were born.