A MIGHTY PLEA – Charles Spurgeon
A MIGHTY PLEA
“You have been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me.” Psalm 27:9.
I. EXPERIENCE GRATEFULLY TELLING HER TALE: “You Have Been My Help”
In times of distress, it is somewhat a difficulty to have a choice of helpers because, while we are making our selection, the danger may have overtaken us. While the fox was considering which way to run, the hounds had seized him. While the sick man was selecting the physician and considering the medicine, his disease carried him off. It is well to be shut up to one sole help if that help is all we need. It is for our good, in such a case, to have no alternative, but to have, as the old proverb has it, Hobson’s choice—that or none. The believer is exactly in that condition. He must trust in his God or remain without hope. He dares not look to others as he once did, for he has discovered their incompetence. He cannot rely upon himself as once he was foolish enough to do, for he has learned, by bitter experience, the folly of self-confidence. He is compelled to look to the Lord alone. Blessed is that wind which drives the ship into the harbor, blessed is that wave which washes the mariner upon the rock of safety, and blessed is that distress which forces a man to rest only in his God. Such was the condition of the psalmist when he wrote the text. His spirit looked to God alone. In his past experience, the goodness of the Lord shone forth as the pole star of his life’s voyage, and therefore, as to the future, he fixed his eyes steadily on that one sure guiding light and trusted in the God of his salvation.
In supplicating the Lord, it is well to have a plea ready for use, a plea available under all circumstances and conditions, a plea of our own, not borrowed from the mouths of other men, and perhaps but half-suitable to ourselves. A plea which wells up from our inner consciousness and is our own personal plea, felt to be weighty in our own souls, and therefore, confidently urged before the throne of grace. It is well to have a simple plea, and one which we can understand ourselves. For when we are in doubt, we are like men in a mist, and must have plain directions or we miss our way. If we have a chart in a fog, we need it to be a very clear one, or else we shall not be able to see it. And when we plead with God in trouble, we need the plea to be a very plain one, or else our minds may be so confused we shall not be able to urge it. A soul in sore distress is in no fit condition to puzzle itself over deep and dark reasonings; it needs a child’s plea, just as Dr. Guthrie, when near dying, needed “Bairn’s Hymns.” Blessed, then, is it if we have a plea like this of the text, “You have been my help,” for this is a homely, personal, suitable, simple argument, not fetched from afar by subtle wit, but grown at home in our own experience. He that runs may read it, and poor wayfaring men may comprehend it. The illiterate can use it as well as the learned. “You have been my help; leave me not, neither forsake me.”
Besides, this plea is good and full of real power, and I hope, before we have done this morning, we shall be able to show that there is much heavenly logic in it, and that it is eminently full of that kind of argument which is most sure to prevail with the Most High. Perhaps it may be well, here, to confess that the plea before us is not one which would ordinarily be available with our fellow creatures. For if they have helped us before, they generally conclude that the next time we ought to knock at some other door. Francis Quarles has well expressed the usual manner of men— “Man’s plea to man is, that he never more Will beg, and that he never begged before— Man’s plea to God is, that he did obtain A former suit, and therefore sues again.”
How good a God we serve, that, when we sue, makes His old gifts the examples of His new!
Yet there are exceptions to the general custom of mankind, for I read the other day a case in point, in Mr. Moody Stuart’s Recollections of Dr. John Duncan, of Edinburgh, who was a beautiful character, and a famous Hebrew scholar, and has lately gone to heaven, much to the loss of the Free Church. In that book I met with the following passage—“He was easily imposed upon, but the imposition never soured him, and he was willing to submit to it for the chance of doing good. He said, ‘I find they know how to get round me. They say, “You helped me before,” and I can never resist that. It teaches me how to pray.’”
And now I think of it, many of us like to help our old pensioners, and they come up very boldly to our door remembering the many times in which they have succeeded. If you grant a man a favor several times, he becomes very free in seeking it again. So it seems that even among men it may be a plea, “You have been my help,” and most assuredly it is the most prevalent argument with God. No man shall be repulsed from the gate of Mercy who comes with this upon his lips— “You have helped in every need, This emboldens me to plead. After so much mercy past, Will You let me sink at last?”
II. NECESSITY PLEADING EXPERIENCE: “You Have Been My Help; Leave Me Not, Neither Forsake Me”
First, You have been my help, therefore it is consistent with Your holiness to help me. Lord, I am a poor sinner, unworthy to be noticed, and my doubts and fears sometimes tell me that it would not be fit for Your infinitely holy majesty to look upon such a rebellious worm as I am. But, Lord, You have done it already, You have been my help. And if it were not wrong for You to help me once, it will not be wrong for You to help me twice. If it did not stain Your spotless robe to hold out your hand to a fallen and condemned soul in years gone by, it will not stain Your purity to lend me Your hand again. I therefore bless Your condescending goodness, and ask You not to leave me!
You have been my help, therefore, in the second place; it is within Your power to help me. For, Lord, my case today is not worse than it was when You helped me before, or, if it is, You are all-sufficient. Lord, help me out of this affliction, for You did redeem me on a former occasion. I was weak and friendless then, and could not help myself, but Your own arm of mercy was fully equal to the emergency. Lord, I know it is still quite sufficient now. If You had never delivered my soul out of such a puzzling, perplexing, and intricate case as mine, I might have doubted. But as You have already been my help in times of great straits, when no way of relief was visible, You are able to help me again. Therefore, I lay hold upon the hand of Your power, and the arm of Your strength. You have been my help. Therefore You can help me again, O Jehovah! I know You can!
Again, my appeal is to Your wisdom. Lord, You have been my help, and if You do not help me now, all that help will go for nothing. It is of no use to have helped me so far, if You do not help me to the end. Now, Lord, I know You do not begin to build, and then leave the work incomplete, so that they that go by may say, “He began to build, but was not able to finish.” You have made an investment in me, good Lord; You have gone deep in expenditures of mercy and love with a poor worm like me, and if You stop Your hand, Lord, You will lose all You have invested. You must go right through with it, Lord, or else You will have lost all the works of Your love, and Your power, and Your goodness which You have already so lavishly spent upon me.
Is not that good pleading? “You have been my help”—Lord, if it were wise to help me so far, it must be wise to go through with it. Would it have been wise to bring Israel into the wilderness and feed them with manna for 40 years, and then let them die of starvation? What would the Egyptians say? Would they not ask, “Why did He bring them into the wilderness? Why did He conduct them so far, and afterwards allow them to perish?”
Well does our poet put it— “The work which wisdom undertakes, Eternal mercy never forsakes.”
For if it is wise to begin with, it must be wise to carry it on. Lord Jesus, You have loved my soul as Jacob loved Rachel, and he was bound to serve for seven years to win her. And if he had served six and a half years, and then left off, he would never have had his Rachel. And You have, in Your infinite love, served for me these years, but if You leave off now, I shall never be Yours at last. My poor soul must perish, unless, till the last hour of life, You shall still wait upon me in mercy, and refresh me with Your grace. To my own soul at this moment this plea, “You have been my help,” is a very powerful hold upon divine wisdom, and is an urgent reason why I may still ask for grace to be given me.
III. EXPERIENCE INSTRUCTING FAITH
My venerable brothers and sisters, the first word of this instruction is to you. Experience says to faith, “Trust God, for He has been your help so long.” How long? Fifty years for some of you. How old are you, seventy or eighty? God has been your help, then, all that time. How long do you expect to live, to be eighty? You are seventy now. All you have seen through seven-eighths of life is that He is a faithful God. Can you not trust Him for the other eighth? Your sun is going down, its shadows are lengthening, but from early dawn all through the hot noontide He has been good to you. Can you not trust Him for the last few hours of eventide? Surely, surely God deserves that such long-continued kindness should not be received with ungrateful doubts. If He had meant to be a liar to you, you would have found Him out before this. If His promises were intended to be failures, they would have been failures to you before you had gone so far.
Oh, believe Him for the rest of life, and go singing into heaven, “You have been my help.” May the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, enable you to put down all unbelief! The Lord has been our help so constantly that the fact confirms our faith. If in looking back upon our lives, we could find a point or two where God had failed us, we might then let our faith flag. I can only speak as I find, I cannot find one instance in all my life in which God was untrue or unkind to me.
If we never doubt God till we have cause for it, we shall never entertain any doubts so long as we live. Yesterday, as I looked at some little birds in a cage, I thought to myself, “These poor little creatures are entirely dependent upon those who feed them. If seed and water are not supplied to them, they cannot help themselves, and must die. And yet there they sit and sing with all their might. Their state of dependence never distresses them. They have perfect confidence in their keepers.”
And I thought, that is just my position. I am God’s singing bird. Perhaps I wonder where I shall get my bread from, or my sermon for next Sunday, and a great many cares and troubles come to me. But why should I be troubled? Instead of mistrusting my keeper, who has fed me these many years, had I not better sit and sing as loudly as I can? Would not that be the best thing to do? The bird does it, and why should not a man do it, who is supposed to have more brains than a bird, but who sometimes does not seem to have half as much?
Come, brethren, come! The Lord has constantly been true, let us not doubt. And then He has helped us so singularly. Some here present have been in very remarkable tribulations, trials the like of which have not befallen other people—at least, so they think—have fallen to their lot, and yet they have had singular rescues and helps. Well, then, when you come into the singular predicament of dying, you shall have the singular grace of being able to rejoice when you die. Or, if any other remarkable trial should waylay you between here and heaven, you shall find extraordinary deliverance from Him who has been your help. And I might say, in closing, God up to now has helped us in such a way that He has glorified Himself. We could not have believed that He could have so delightfully illustrated His divine attributes as He has done in our past biography. There have been such flashes of light out of His excellent glory that we have been astounded. So it will be to the last. God will be glorified in our mortal bodies while we live, and when we come to die. He has been our help, and He will be our help till, like a scroll, this world is rolled up, and time itself expires, and we have reached eternity.
I have two or three more thoughts to utter, and I have done. To self-righteous persons, our text can have no sweetness. You have always done your best, and have been very religious. You have believed that you deserve eternal life, and you have been on very good terms with yourselves. God has not been your help, you did not want it. You have done very well without it. You do not need washing in the blood of Jesus, for you were never a very great sinner. You do not require help from the Holy Spirit. You have always been able to attend to the formalities of religion without assistance from supernatural power. This is your secret judgment of your condition. You cannot say, “You have been my help,” and I dare say you do not pray, “Leave me not, neither forsake me.” You do not see the need of it. Well, your fancied salvation is such a one that the sooner you are rid of it the better. It is such a one that if you can put a millstone about its neck, and sink it in the sea, you will do well. For if you do not do that, it will sink you in hell forever. That hope of salvation which is not grounded upon Christ and the power of God, but which rests in self, is nothing but counterfeit. It is damnation gilded, nothing better. Away with it! Away with it!
And oh, may you be made to go as guilty, as helpless, as dependent entirely upon mercy and divine strength, and then you will be in the way of salvation, but not till then. Oh, may the Spirit of God teach you this!
I have, here, some poor trembling soul who is seeking Christ, and he says, “O sir, I could not use the plea of the text this morning.” Well, beloved friend, perhaps not in the strong sense in which the Christian can, but you may still use it in a measure. For instance, you need to be forgiven; you need to be saved. You can say to your heavenly Father, “O God, You have preserved my miserable life. You have bid the sun to shine upon the evil as well as the good. You have sent the showers and the harvest for me as well as for the best of Your servants. Oh, if You have done this, do more, and send me the gifts of Your grace.”
Besides, poor heart, you can say, “You have given me the Sabbath. You have permitted me to go and sit with Your servants. Though the meanest of them all, You permit me to hear the voice of gospel invitation. You speak to me, and say, ‘Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.’ Oh, crown these gifts by giving me faith, by granting me life, the life of Your Holy Spirit. Save me, save me with a great salvation.”
I think that is good pleading and especially if you can add, “O God, You have set forth Your Son Jesus to be a propitiation for sin, and declared that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. I do trust in Him, and rest my soul upon Him alone. Do not reject me! Let me know Your great salvation, or I languish, faint, and die.”
You shall not be long in such a case as that. If you believe, all things are yours. If your only hope is in Him who bled on the cross, your transgressions are already blotted out. Go, and sin no more! Peace be unto you! Be of good courage! The Lord has looked upon you already with an eye of love. You are His, and He will never leave you nor forsake you, world without end. God bless you all, dear friends, and He shall have the honor and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.
Charles Spurgeon