← Back to the beginning of Restless! Peaceless!
“Sin, like a venomous disease,
Infects our vital blood.
The only balm is Sovereign Grace
And the Physician God.
Madness by nature reigns within—
The passions burn and rage
Till God’s own Son, with skill Divine,
The inward fire assuage.”
Such, too, is envy—a very common sin which is not spoken of as often as it should be. This is the sin of the poor man who cannot bear to see another man better off than he is. This is the sin of the sick man who is envious of the healthy. Yes, but envy may be found not only among the poor, but also among princes—not only among the sick, but also among the strong. And when a man once becomes so envious that another man’s joy is his sorrow and another man’s gain is his loss—and he cannot be content with his own lot because another man has more honor, or more money, or more friends than he has—he has a poisoned arrow rankling within him which will breed a thousand woes and make rest of heart impossible to him. Envy even grows by feeding upon itself! Therefore I charge you, whatever you do, get rid of it if you desire to find real rest!
Pride is another enemy of peace and rest. If you see a proud man, you may feel sure that he is not a restful man. It is in the Valley of Humiliation that the flowers of peace will be discovered. As for the pompous people who are so high in their own esteem that they look down on all others—pity them, my Brothers and Sisters—do not get angry with them. It is a sad disease from which they are suffering—their brain is turned, so deal gently with them. Think as kindly of them as you can and pray to God to heal them. Mind, also, that you do not catch their complaint, for it is very contagious and there are many who are proud of their humility—and who condemn the pride of others when, all the while, they are really still prouder, themselves!
Then there is avarice. And when a man is once possessed by the desire to amass gain, there is no peace or rest for him. Suppose he acquires what he reckons to be wealth? It ceases to be wealth as soon as he has gained it. He thought that if ever he should secure a certain sum which he had set his heart on, he would retire from business, but, having saved that amount, he now regards it as quite insufficient and ten times as much is the mark at which he now aims. If he should ever
succeed in hoarding that amount, he will find that he is further off the goal of his desire than he was when he started. Some there are, I do verily believe, who, if they could claim the whole world as their own, would want the sun and moon and stars as well, for nothing could ever satisfy them. Once get into the grip of avarice and rest is impossible.
And it is also much the same with ambition—not the desire to use one’s capacities to the fullest, especially for God’s Glory and the good of our fellow creatures—but that craving for so-called “glory” which makes a man court the homage of his fellow men and which will not let him be content unless he is set up on a high pedestal for fools to stare at! Ah, Sir, if you are ambitious in that sense, you and peace have parted company and are not likely to meet again! But if you will do the right thing and leave your reputation in the hands of God—and especially if you will leave those lofty pathways which, after all, lead only to the grave—then may you find peace. But you cannot find it as long as any of these evils that I have mentioned are reigning within your heart.
The first reason, then, why the wicked man’s heart is like the troubled sea is because there are evil passions within it which will not let it rest.
The next reason is because the wicked man is agitated by the memory of his old sins. Suppose him to have been for some years engaged in an evil course—in dishonesty or unchastity? He cannot, even if he tries, forget his sins. They have burnt themselves into his very soul and, what is even worse than the memory of sin—every sin breeds other sins so that every time you sin, you have a still greater tendency to commit more sin! This is a fact that is strangely true both as to the body and as to the soul—we wear tracks for ourselves where there were none before. If we have, at first, to force our way through the brush of conscience and to cut down, as it were, the old timber of our early instruction and the gracious examples set before us in our childhood, by-and-by we make a trail for ourselves and then a beaten track so that it becomes always easier and yet easier to sin. No, more than that, there seems to be a pressure put by habit upon a wicked man so that what he once did from choice, he comes, at last, to do because he must. Sin in the soul is like leaven in the dough—it heaves, ferments and though it was, perhaps, put into you 20 years ago or more—it will go on fermenting and working until the whole of your manhood shall be soured by it!
Beside all this, the ungodly man is like the sea for restlessness because, like the sea, he is governed by a greater power than his own. The sea feels the force of the moon and is agitated and stirred by the mysterious agency of the winds. And the wicked man is under the dominion of the prince of the power of the air. If, for a while, he would be at rest, Satan will not permit him to be in peace. He puts opportunities of sinning before him and then excites the desire to indulge in the evil thing. Satan is no myth—they who think that he is cannot, surely, have opened their eyes—or else they would have discovered in their very unbelief, his existence and that he had given them that unbelief! Those who have stood foot to foot with Apollyon and fought with him and overcome him in the hour of temptation, will never doubt that there is a great fallen spirit who strives to lead men into sin! Satan and his myriads of followers still lie in wait for the ungodly, or openly drive them into fierce lusts and evil passions so that they sin again and again.
Nor is this all. For wicked men—those who go into open sin—are kept by the action of others from becoming quiet. If it were not for the restraints of society, what horrible places would those be where the utterly dissolute and abandoned assemble! Even as it is, every now and then we read in the newspapers records of the doings of so-called “gentlemen” that reveal to us something of what goes on when Bacchus rules or riots. Then there are the brutalized beings at the other end of the social ladder, the “fiends” who use their boots so heavily upon their wives. Put a few dozen of them together and let them have their own sweet will—do not restrain them at all and see what they will do! Only God knows what wondrous patience He has with such men when they get together and egg each other on in sin. I have often marvelled that He does not speedily put an end to their blasphemy and indecency and cruelty. Yet they are spared, notwithstanding their sin—but they cannot rest, for one will not let the others be quiet. And if, at any time, a good resolution should be formed by one of the company, another laughs that resolution down and keeps the whole society “like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.”
I do not wonder that a wicked man cannot rest because such a man is out of gear with the entire universe of God. Lift up your eyes to yonder starry orbs and remember there is not one of them disobedient to the law of its Maker. The comet which was thought to be eccentric, obeys in all respects its great Creator’s will. Everything that you can see, from the tiny atom of dust that is borne along by the wind, up to the huge Atlantic billow in which the leviathan feels at home, is under the power of the Divine Law. From the archangel before the Throne of God, down to the gnat that dances in the
summer sunbeam, everything is obedient to the Lord of All—except the wicked man—and he says, “I will not obey Him.” Well, as he is out of gear with all the rest of the universe, is it any wonder that he is restless as the waves of the sea and that there is no peace for him? If you were to set yourselves to disobey the physical laws of the universe—for instance paying no regard to the law of gravitation but leaping from a church spire, or falling down a precipice—you know what would come of such madness! If you ever set yourself up in opposition to the law, you may depend upon it that the law will got the mastery over you. And the man who lives in disobedience to God’s moral Law will find that it will be the same with him and he will have no rest forever and ever. As God’s servant, I must say to you, very plainly, and very ear-nestly—You cannot possibly find rest and peace in the course you are now pursuing. May God enable you to escape from your sins and to trust in Jesus Christ, His Son, that you may have both joy and peace in believing!
Now I have to speak, very briefly, to those who cannot be put down among the outwardly and notoriously wicked. I thank God that you cannot, but still, you have heard the Gospel, perhaps for many years, and you understand it, yet you have never received it. There is reconciliation with God to be had, yet you remain His enemy. Now, I will not say, for a moment, that the moral man who is not a Christian, is to be put in the same category as the immoral. In many respects, he does not do as much harm in the world as the other man does. But let me tell you this, my Friend, if you sin against the Light of God and knowledge, there may be an intensity of guilt in your sin which may not be found in the man who is apparently worse than you are! He may never have had such teaching and advantages, nor such a tender conscience as you have had and hence his sin, bad as it is, like that of Sodom and Gomorrah, may be such that it shall be more tolerable for him at the Day of Judgment than for you who have not sinned one tenth as much according to the judgment of others, but who have sinned against the Gospel—sinned against the dying Savior’s blood—sinned against the Holy Spirit! God grant that you may never run this terrible risk!
Let me say to you, who are living without Christ, that however excellent and amiable you may be, I know that you are like the troubled sea when it cannot rest. I know some special times when you cannot rest—when you hear of others being converted—your brothers or sisters coming forward to confess Christ—your friends or relatives rejoicing in Jesus as their Savior. “Ah,” you say to yourself, “they are restful and peaceful, but I am not.” I know how you feel, on Communion nights, sometimes, when you have to go away, or to look on at others gathered around the Table of the Lord. You do not feel easy, then, do you? And you feel very uneasy, too, when any of your companions die—those who are very much of your own sort. You attend their funeral and the thought strikes you, “Shall I die as they have done, without Christ and without hope? Shall I pass away from under the sound of the Gospel without having given any evidence of conversion?” You do not feel easy then, I know and, sometimes, you feel very much like the troubled sea when conscience begins to call you to account.
John Bunyan, in his “Holy War,” gives a graphic description of what happened to Mr. Conscience when Mansoul was being besieged by Immanuel—and that is very much what has happened to some of you. They said that he was out of his wits, but he was never more truly in his wits than when he was crying out for Mansoul to yield to the great King Shaddai! And I feel sure that some of you have felt, upon the door of your conscience, the blows of the great battering-ram that Bunyan describes—and you have been ready to open it! Still you are not at rest, for you have not come to Christ who alone can give you rest. It is still true, as Dr. Watts wrote, long ago—
“In vain the trembling conscience seeks Some solid ground to rest upon! With long despair the spirit breaks, Till we apply to Christ alone.” If you hear the Gospel faithfully preached, you cannot be at rest. Some of you try to be satisfied with a false peace, but, by God’s Grace, we will plague you yet to Christ. We will love you to Christ. We will incessantly worry you till, at last, you yield yourself up to Jesus! Some of you are getting on in business. God has been very gracious in preserving you in life, restoring you from sickness, or keeping you in health. You have a better situation now than you ever had before, yet you are not restful. You feel grateful to God for all His goodness to you, yet you say, “There is something more needed.” Yes, and that something is the one thing necessary. I am thankful that God is prospering you, but I hope you will never be able to rest until you have that one thing necessary—the Grace of God!
Some of you are very thoughtful and when you get alone for half an hour, it is very awkward for you, for there are certain problems that you cannot solve and they sorely perplex you. Worst of all are your forecasts of the future. Some-
times, you look ahead and you picture yourself upon a sick bed and you say, “Can I die triumphantly as I am?” You know you cannot! And then, sometimes, you picture yourself rising from the dead, when the angel’s trumpet blast is sounding and the quick and the dead are standing before the Judgment Seat of Christ. You cannot bear to think of that Great White Throne and the separation of the righteous from the wicked, for you know where you shall go unless a great change is worked in you! Though not outwardly wicked, you do not belong to the sheep—then you must go with the goats. And when you think of this and the future stands, for the moment, present before your mind’s eye, your spirit is “like the troubled sea when it cannot rest, whose waters cast up mire and dirt.” I would that you had rest. God grant it to you this very hour! May Toplady’s prayer be your prayer, also—
“Oh, may I never rest
Till I find rest in You!
Till of my pardon here possessed,
I feel Your love to me!
Turn not Your face away,
Your look can make me clean.
Me in Your wedding robes array
And cover all my sin.
Tell me, my Good, for whom
Your precious blood was shed.
For sinners? Lord, as such I come,
For such the Savior bled.”
II. Now, secondly, and only for a minute or two, in our text there is A SENTENCE PRONOUNCED—“No peace”—you notice that the words, “there is” are in italics because they are not in the original. So the text runs, “No peace, says my God, to the wicked.”
It is God Himself who says it! There may be a truce, for God is slow to anger, but there is “no peace.” God is at war with you if you are among “the wicked.” You may be under the delusion that there is peace, but God’s voice of Truth shatters that delusion to pieces. There can be no peace where there is unpardoned sin. Until you have humbled yourself before God and sought and found mercy, God is at war with you and you are at war with Him. There can be no peace where there is no purity. God has no peace with sin and never can have. Like a devouring fire, His holiness burns against sin and you must be made pure—your nature must to changed, the love of sin must be killed in you and you must as vehemently love that which is good and right—or else God’s voice still thunders from Heaven’s burning Throne, “No peace! No peace! No peace!”
“But I will go to church and receive the sacrament,” says one. You will get no peace that way, except a false peace that is worse than none! “But I will attend the means of Grace with the Dissenters,” says another. You will get no peace that way, if that is all that you do. If your sin is unforgiven by God and if your nature is unchanged by the Holy Spirit, all the religiousness in the world will bring you no peace! “But I will weep an ocean of tears and I will offer prayers continually.” No peace will come to you that way as long as you remain wicked, for God says. “No peace! No peace!” And “wicked” you must remain until Jesus washes you white in the fountain filled with His precious blood and until the Spirit of God renews your nature—
“Not all the outward forms on earth, Nor rites that God has given, Nor will of man, nor blood, nor birth, Can raise a soul to Heaven! The Sovereign will of God alone Creates us heirs of Grace— Born in the image of His Son, A new peculiar race. The Spirit, like some heavenly wind Blows on the sons of flesh— Creates a new—a heavenly mind— And forms the man afresh.”
“Oh,” says another, “but I will promise to be better and to do better—I will amend my ways!” So you may and so you should! But my God still says unto the wicked, “No peace!” What say you to all this? Behold your God in arms against you! Omnipotence comes forth to war against you, the creature of an hour! Will you submit? Be wise, I pray you! Cast down your weapons, cry for mercy, accept the reconciliation which Christ has worked. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has suffered, “the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God.” If you will but trust Him, what He did shall be accounted as yours. That is to say, the punishment that He suffered shall be reckoned as if you had suffered it and the righteousness He worked shall be counted as if you had worked it! And God shall accept you in His Son’s place and for His Son’s sake. More than that, the Spirit of God will overshadow you and give you a new heart and a right spirit and take away the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. Are you willing now to yield and end this unequal war—and be at peace with God? Then the Lord who gave His Son once, gives you His Son over again into your heart and He says, “Peace! Peace! Go in peace, your sins, which are many, are forgiven you.”
He who with his heart forsakes his sin and unfeignedly believes in Jesus shall have the peace of God which passes all understanding! But he who will keep his sin and so remain among the wicked, or who will keep his self-righteousness and so refuse the salvation of Christ, has nothing to go home with but this, “No peace! No peace!” And, oh, to die with that terrible knell ringing in one’s ears! To look up to God and to hear Him say, “No peace!” To have the prayers of your friends for you, but to feel no peace! To lift your eyes to Heaven, but to find prayer freeze upon your soul as you hear again this sentence from God the Judge, “No peace!” And then follows the eternity in which there is no peace! God grant this may not be the sad portion of any one of us, but may the Lord give to each of us peace, perfect peace, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.
Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon: Psalm 23; Isaiah 55
We will first read that choicest of all the Psalms—the twenty-third. It is like a precious pearl shining with a mild luster. This Psalm is, among the other Psalms, what the lark is among the other birds—it soars and sings till it is lost in the heights to which it ascends!
Psalm 23:1. The LORD is my Shepherd. What a precious title the Psalmist used in speaking of his God! It is right to call the Lord a Shepherd. “The Shepherd of Israel” is a very blessed and true title for Him, but, “myShepherd” is best of all. I wish, Beloved, that each of you would truthfully say with David, “‘The Lord is my Shepherd.’ He owns me and as I am His property, He will preserve me, protect me, provide for me, guide me and be everything to my weakness, folly and necessity that a shepherd is to a sheep.” “The Lord is my Shepherd.”
1. I shall not want “Not only do I not want at the present moment, but I shall never want. I may sometimes foolishly fancy that I shall come to want, but I shall never as long as God provides for me. How could such a Shepherd as He is— Almighty and All-Sufficient—ever allow one of His sheep to lack any good thing? No, ‘I shall not want.’ All the world besides may want, but I shall not while Jehovah is my Provider. Famine may be in the land—there may be neither dew nor rain and even the brook Cherith may at last be dried up, but since Jehovah is my Shepherd, I shall not want.’” As a guarantee of His care of us in the future, we turn to our experience in the past and the present. What is our experience of our great Shepherd even now?
2. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. Here is blessed rest and here is also gracious provision for the needs of the sheep. The pasture is sweet and tender and there is so much of the green grass that it cannot all be eaten—and the superabundance makes a soft bed for the tired sheep! “He makes me to lie down in green pastures.” Repose, O Believer, in the abundant provision of God’s Grace! A sheep sometimes needs to lie down. It is as necessary for its health that it should have time to digest its food as that it should have proper and sufficient food to eat. May the Lord graciously give to each of you the sweet rest of meditation and contemplation—that blessed rest to which faith attains when it grows into firm confidence and full assurance, so that you may be able to say with David, “He makes me to lie down in green pastures.” But our spiritual life is not to be all spent in lying down—there must some a time for going forward, so David adds—
2. He leads me. What a peerless Guide He is, since Infallible Wisdom is His! And how gracious and condescending it is on His part to go first in the way which He means us to take! David does not say, “He drives me,” but, “He leads me.”
2. 3. Beside the still waters. He restores my soul: He leads me in the paths of righteousness. ’ ‘In each one of them He is my Exemplar in every virtue, for He, Himself, has endured all temptations that are incident to my life’s pathway and, all the way, ‘He leads me in the paths of righteousness.’”
3. For His name’s sake. “Not because of any goodness in me, but because of the goodness that is in Him and for the glory of His holy name, ‘He leads me in the paths of righteousness.’” “Also, ‘He restores my soul.’ When I wander, He restores my soul to the right road. When I become empty, He restores my soul again with good things. He restores my
soul.”
4. Yes, though I walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, I will fear no evil’ ‘Not only shall there be none, but I will fear none.” A sense of the Lord’s Presence lifts a Christian above fear! You know how often it is true that we “feel a thousand deaths in fearing one.” But if we have a sense of our Savior’s Presence, when we really do walk through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, not a trace of fear shall come across our peaceful souls!
4. For You are with me. The Presence of Christ is all that His people can ever need. The All-Powerful, Ever-Faithful, Infinitely-Compassionate One being with us—what cause for fear can possibly remain?
4. Your rod and Your staff they comfort me. “To see Your scepter and even to feel Your chastising rod—to know that You are a King and that You rule over Israel—to know that as a Shepherd You carry “a crook to guide Your flock, shall be enough to comfort my heart and to sustain my spirit.” How sweet is the next verse!
5. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. How calmly the Psalmist writes! He realizes that he has enemies, yet he means to sit down to a feast! He is not going to snatch a hurried mouthful or two, but “a table” is “prepared” for him as though for a banquet! His enemies may look on while he is feasting, but they cannot take away his enjoyment of the feast.
5. You anoint my head with oil. He receives a fresh anointing for new service, even the anointing of the Holy Spirit.
5. My cup runs over.”I have all I want and even more than I need, so that others, not as favored as I am, may come and catch some of the droppings from my overflowing cup! It is so full, O Lord, that it cannot hold all that You gave me! Until You enlarge my capacity, I shall still have to say, “My cup runs over.” The Psalmist’s next words also have much meaning and force in them.
6. Surely. There are no ifs, no doubts, no fears about the matter. “Surely.”
6. Goodness and mercy shall follow me. “These two holy angels shall watch over my footsteps and follow me wherever I go—‘Goodness’ to preserve me and ‘Mercy’ to pardon me! ‘Goodness’ to supply my needs and ‘Mercy’ to blot out my sins.” And these angels shall follow me.
6. All the days of my life. “Not merely now and then, but all my days—my dark days as well as my bright ones— these heavenly messengers will never forsake me,”
6. And I will dwell in the house of the LORD forever. This life begins here, for this earth is but the lower part of God’s House. And when the time shall come for us to leave this earth, we, who are the Lord’s own children, shall only go upstairs to the higher rooms to “dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” This, then, is the portion of the children of God. But there are some to whom David’s language will seem strange. They cannot sing this sweet Psalm, for their life is as restless as the waves of the sea. No quiet pastoral poem could set forth their joy, for the sound of war is heard in the streets of their city of Mansoul. If any such souls are seeking rest and peace, let them hearken to the voice of God as it speaks to them from the Book of the Prophet Isaiah, chapter fifty-five.
Isaiah 55:1, 2. Ho, everyone who thirsts, come you to the waters, and he that has no money; come you, buy, and eat; yes, come buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend money for that which is not bread? And your labor for that which satisfies not?Why have you sought rest where it can never be found? Why have you craved delights which can never satisfy you? Cease from such folly!
2. Hearken diligently unto Me. Thus speaks the Lord Jehovah—“Hearken diligently unto Me.”
2, 3. And eat you that which is good, and let your soul delight itself in fatness. Incline your ear, and come unto Me: hear, and your soul shall live, and I will make an everlasting covenant with you.’ ‘With you” who have any desire for
it—“with you” who hunger and thirst after righteousness and who have no other recommendation than that, poor as it is. “I will make an everlasting covenant with you.”
3, 4. Even the sure mercies of David. Behold, I have given Him. The Son of David—“great David’s greater Son”— and God’s own well-beloved and only-begotten Son, even Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior. God says “I have given
Him”—
4-7. For a witness to the people, a leader and commander to the people. Behold, you shall call a nation that you know not, and nations that knew you not shall run unto you because of the LORD your God, and for the Holy One of Israel, for He has glorified you. Seek you the LORD while He may be found, call you upon Him while He is near: let the wicked forsake his ways and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the LORD, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will abundantly pardon. Blessed be His holy name!
8-13. For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, says the LORD. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts. For as the rain comes down, and the snow from Heaven, and returns not there, but waters the earth, and makes it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: so shall My word be that goes forth out of My mouth: it shall not return unto Me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it For you shall go out with joy and be led forth with peace: the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree, and instead of the briar shall come up the myrtle tree: and it shall be to the LORD for a name, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off