Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 2578
“My soul refused to be comforted.” Psalm 77:2.
WHEN you meet with a person in great distress, you feel at once a desire to comfort him. That is to say, if you have an ordinarily tender heart. You cannot bear to see another in trouble without trying to minister to that diseased heart. But supposing that the person refuses to be comforted? Then you are foiled. What can you do? It is as though you met with a hungry man and offered him bread, but he rejected it. You tried to give him daintier food, but he scorned it. You asked him what he could eat, but he altogether refused to accept any form of nourishment. Then what could you do? Your cupboard might be full and the door might be freely opened, but if the man would not eat, you could not remove his hunger. So, if a man in trouble refuses to be comforted, how are you to cheer and solace him? One man can lead a horse to the water, but a thousand cannot make him drink if he will not—and when a man in trouble refuses to be comforted, then lover and friend are put far from him—and his acquaintance into darkness. Indeed, they soon need to be comforted, for disquietude is contagious and, sometimes, those who come to comfort another, go away provoked by his perversity. Many a man, whose heart was full of pity, has, at last, become indignant, and so has increased the sorrow which he intended to comfort—he has grown angry with the man who willfully put aside what was intended to encourage him.
With those few prefatory remarks, let us come to the text. “My soul refused to be comforted.” Note, concerning a man in such a case, first, possibly he may be right. Secondly, he is probably wrong. Thirdly, he may one day regret his conduct, as did Asaph, for, while he tells us that his soul refused to be comforted, he writes it down—not as an example for us to follow, but for our warning!
I. First, then, when a man’s soul refuses to be comforted, POSSIBLY HE MAY BE RIGHT.
He may have a great spiritual sorrow and someone who does not at all understand his grief may proffer to him a consolation which is far too slight. Not knowing how deep the wound is, this foolish physician may think that it can be healed with any common ointment. I have known men to say to a person in deep distress things which have really aggravated him and his malady, too. “As he that takes away a garment in cold weather, and as vinegar upon nitre, so is he that singes songs to a heavy heart.” “Oh,” they have said, “there is really nothing the matter with you, after all!” When the arrows of God were drinking up your soul, they have said, “you are low-spirited.” Who would not be low-spirited when he has to face an angry God? “You are very nervous,” says another. “I am afraid you are going off into religious melancholy—you need cheerful society and amusement.” That is poor consolation for one who feels that he is ready to die and that his soul chooses strangling rather than life! Reduced as he is to such a point of agony in his spirit, it is no wonder that the man should put away these comforters and say with Job, “‘Miserable comforters are you all.’ Mine is not a sorrow that can be removed by the bowl or by the violin. Mine is not a grief that can be charmed away with your merriment, or laid to sleep by your ridicule. The wound is too deep and too severe for you to cure.” The man acts rightly when he puts aside these physicians without skill, of whom it may be said, “They have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace, where there is no peace.” You may send such comforters away from you, for it is right to refuse to be comforted by them. You will do well to say, with Toplady—
“If my Lord Himself reveals, No other good I want, Only Christ my wounds can heal, Or silence my complaint. He that suffered in my stead, Shall my Physician be. I will not be comforted Till Jesus comforts me.”
So, too, it is equally right to refuse to be comforted when the comfort is untrue. When a man is under a sense of sin, I have known his friends say to him, “You should not fret; you have not been so very bad. You have been, indeed, a very good sort of fellow.” One says, “I can recollect how kind you were to So-and-So and how honestly you behaved under such-and-such a temptation. You have not committed any very terrible sin—God help the world if you are a great sinner! I do not know what will become of the rest of us.” Another says, “You have only to pray and go to a place of worship, perhaps be a little more regular in your attention to religion and it will all come right again. You are not so bad as you think you are.” Be off with you! Such talk as that is a lie and the man whom God has really awakened to feel his state by nature will refuse to be comforted by such falsehoods as those! However friendship may flatter, the man himself says, “I know that I have broken God’s Law and that I deserve His wrath.” Conscience will not be quieted by all the soft speeches of officious but ignorant friends! I charge you, before God, if the Spirit of Truth has begun to trouble you, never drink these sweet but poisonous consolations! Never think that you are good, or that you can make yourself good. Refuse to be comforted in any such way. That comfort which does not come from truth and from God’s Word, applied by the Holy Spirit, is a comfort to be rejected with scorn!