Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 3373
“My friends scorn me; but my eyes pour out tears unto God.” Job 16:20.
WE know that Job’s sorrows were recorded, not for his honor, but for our profit. We are told to consider the patience of Job and truly we might often be sustained, cheered and comforted if we would but look upon that Patriarch in the depths of his grief. We are “born to sorrow” and if our cup is not embittered with it tonight, we must not expect to be long without a taste of the gall in our mouths.
There is one particular sorrow, however, which appertains to the early days of our spiritual life, concerning which I intend to speak tonight. It is the sorrow caused by the scorning of us by our friends. This becomes a very little sorrow to us in later days, but at the first it is a “trial of cruel mocking,” and a very severe one. I suppose the advanced Christian at last can even come to “rejoice in tribulations” of this sort—he counts it to be an honor—he rejoices and is exceedingly glad when men say all manner of evil against him falsely for Christ’s name’s sake. But at the first there is nothing, perhaps, more staggering to the young Christian than to find that his “worst foes” are they of his own household and that they who should have cherished and nurtured in him the piety which is so excellent a flower, do their cruel worst to nip it in the bud!
Without further preface, therefore, we shall try, as the Holy Spirit shall teach and help us, to speak to you upon a very common trial, ’ ‘My friends scorn me.” And then, yet again, meditate on a remarkable resort and exercise, ’ ‘But my eyes pour out tears unto God.” First, then, let us think upon— I. A VERY COMMON TRIAL.
“My friends scorn me.” What is it they do? They scorn me. I shall apply the text tonight to scorn on account of religion. It is lately, my dear young friends—I address myself particularly to you—it is lately that you have been impressed. It is lately that you have considered your ways. There has been an evident alteration in you. You have become of a serious cast of mind. You are now a seeker—you desire salvation. For this reason your friends scorn you. Perhaps they say that you are so miserable that they cannot bear your company. Probably the remark is correct and you feel it to be so, but they do not know that this misery of yours will end in perfect joy. They do not comprehend this rough plowing of your soul, which is preparatory to the joyful harvest. They do not understand that the good Physician often uses the lancet and opens wide the wound before He comes with His downy fingers to close it and to heal it. You are miserable and you might expect them, therefore, to be the more gentle with you and to help your faith as much as possible, but instead of that, they continually tell you that your company is altogether unbearable—and so they scorn you. Meanwhile, they also insinuate that the attention which you are now paying to religious matters is with a sinister motive and design. They say that you are a hypocrite! They cannot understand that there can be such a thing as religious sincerity. To them it is all hypocrisy. They suppose that all those who seek to live godly lives in Christ Jesus are merely making a pretense with a view to some personal advantage. Do not be surprised if they insinuate that you “cant,” if they mimic any tone that may be peculiar to you—if in any and every way possible they throw in your face the insinuation that you are false and hypocritical. And, perhaps, they also twit you with your faults, which are, alas, too many—and are near the surface—and so very easily visible to them.
The old proverb says, “It is easy enough to find a stick with which to beat a dog,” and it is very easy for our friends with whom we live to rake up some fault of ours, to exaggerate it, and then to strike us as hard as they can with it! Very
difficult, indeed, would it be for us to live so as to give them no such opportunity. Even when most careful, our very carefulness is sneered at as sanctimoniousness! And if we are particular, then we are severe, rigid, and, worst of all, “Puritanical.”
So that, do what we will, we must expect to have faults laid at our door. This is hard to bear. Your friends, in this respect, scorn you. And all the while they also tell you that, make what pretences you may, it is not at all likely that any good will come out of your religion. It is, they say, an old wives’ fable and a cunning story. They have never proved the power of it in their own souls—they know no better and, therefore, they tell you to eat, drink, and be merry—fools as they are to think that this poor flesh and blood ought to have the first care before the soul that is born for better things! Fools, I say, as they are, to think that it ever can be wisdom to live for this little span of time and to forget eternity, which knows no end! Yet they will tell you to live while you live, that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush, to snatch the present joy. They say, “Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die and leave the spirit-world and the land that is to be revealed to those speculative minds who may care for such things!” And so, with a hoarse laugh, they would dismiss religion from you, or persuade you, if possible, to forget it. But, my dear Friends, you cannot forget it, for if God is dealing with you! His arrows stick fast in the soul. When the Spirit of God comes to deal with a man, if all the devils in Hell and all the sinners on earth should laugh around him all day long, it would only drive the shafts deeper into his soul! He who has never felt the power of the world to come is easily driven out of his profession, but he who has once been plowed and harrowed by the mighty Plowman of Conviction can never forget it! I recollect when my sins lay heavy upon me. I would not have been ashamed to have stood up before a parliament of kings and said that I knew sin to be exceedingly sinful, and that I thought that the sentence of my condemnation had gone forth from God. Yet, as to having any Scriptural thoughts, they were squeezed out of me by the rough hand of my conscience. I knew that sin was evil before God and that sin would destroy my soul. How could I doubt it when the hot sweat of horror stood on my brow at the thought of my past life? Doubts then soon fled to the winds! Ah, if God is so dealing with you, sore as the trial is, of being mocked by unbelieving friends, you will bear it and will come out of the ordeal none the worse! But still, meanwhile, I remind you that Job himself had to say, “My friends scorn me.”