A SECOND WORD TO SEEKERS – Charles Spurgeon
A Second Word to Seekers
Introduction: Encouragement and Discrimination
“And you shall seek Me, and find Me, when you shall search for Me with all your heart.” – Jeremiah 29:13
Last Sabbath morning we gave forth words of good cheer to those who seek the Lord, dwelling upon those encouraging words of the Savior upon the cross, “They shall praise the Lord that seek Him.” We aimed only at the one point of encouraging seekers, for a single objective is always enough for one discourse, and the impression made is more likely to be permanent. We had neither time nor desire to qualify our language with discriminating remarks which would help to show who are true seekers and who are not. One cannot reap and winnow with the same machine.
I think it is right, therefore, that we should follow up that discourse by another in which we shall discern between those who truly seek and those who only nominally seek the Lord. Such discrimination will be useful in many ways. Perhaps, dear friend, after last Lord’s Day, you said, “I do not understand this promise that seekers shall praise God, for I have been seeking for many months, but I have not been able to praise Him. Surely the promise cannot be true for me.” Rest assured, dear friend, that the promise is true for you if you are true to it. The word of the Lord is sure. There can be no question upon that point—the questions to be raised must deal with yourself and your searching—either you do not seek or else you seek amiss.
Always conclude that if a general promise does not turn out to be true in your particular instance, there is something in you that hinders it. You must have fallen short of the character to which the promise is made—the promise, itself, cannot be suspect. “Let God be true and every man a liar.” You may account for your not obtaining the blessing which you have asked upon any theory which humbles yourself, but you must never suppose that the Lord will break His promise, for that would be to dishonor His holy name, deny His faithfulness, and pour contempt upon His truth!
If His good word appears to fail toward you, is there not a cause? Does not sin lie at the door? Is there not some idol in the inner chamber which must be searched for and taken away? “Are the consolations of God small with you? Is there any secret thing with you?” It is a general truth that proper food will build up the human frame, but if food is eaten and yet no nourishment whatever is obtained from it, we conclude that the system is thrown out of order by some inward disease. The meat is good—it must, therefore, be the stomach or some other organ that ails and turns that which is good into evil. If a fire is kindled and a person is placed close to it, and yet he declares that he is not warmed by the heat, we do not, because of this, entertain any doubt of the power of fire to warm the human body! We conclude that the man has a chill or some other malady which prevents his feeling the natural warmth of the fire. The failure of warmth cannot lie in the fire—it must be in the man—for fire must warm any healthy limbs which are held near to it.
If a medicine which has been known to produce a cure in hundreds of cases is taken by an individual and it is found to have no result, or to work in a manner contrary to its natural and ordinary effect, we conclude that either the state of the case has been badly judged, or that there is present some other potent drug which neutralizes its effect. The man, himself, may not be aware that he is eating or imbibing that which acts in an opposite direction to the prescription of his physician and yet it may be so and, therefore, the medicine is not to be distrusted, but the interposing substance must bear all the blame.
For this reason, we will try, this morning, to discriminate a little, with no wish whatever to grieve any seeking soul, but with a strong desire to indicate any weak point in the seeking, any counteracting habit which may be, at this time, preventing the soul from entering at once into the peace and joy for which it is seeking. “He that seeks finds” is an indisputable fact. But, as all is not gold that glitters, so all is not seeking which bears the name!
I. The Quality Required in the Seeker: Wholeheartedness
We come at once to our point by noticing the quality required in every true seeker. The verse tells us—“You shall seek Me, and find Me, when you shall search for Me with all your heart.” Wholeheartedness is the quality required.
First, in order to find the Lord there must be an undivided objective in the seeker’s mind. See how the text runs—“You shall seek Me, and find Me, when you shall search for Me with all your heart.” The objective is one and only one. The sinner is at a distance from God and guilt divides him from his God. He longs to draw near to the heavenly Father and to be reconciled—he therefore seeks after God and God, alone. “My soul thirsts for God, for the living God.” “O that I knew where I might find HIM!”
Now, the Lord is to be found by the guilty only in Christ Jesus, who is the mercy seat where God meets sinners and hears their prayers. It is there that the fullness of the Godhead dwells bodily and there the fullness of divine grace and the truth of God are stored up so that we may receive of them. We must turn our eyes, then, to God in Christ Jesus, and keep our eyes fixed there. “My soul, wait you only upon God, for my expectation is from Him.” If the eyes are not only on Christ and in desire of salvation through Him, it will be no wonder if we seek for God’s mercy but seek in vain! How can a man run in two ways at the same time? Brothers and sisters, you must shake off from you all trust in self, for God will have none of it!
You must not seek God by the works of the law, or by any supposed merit that is or ever can be in yourself, for this He utterly refuses. If you attempt to mix law with gospel, self with Christ, and merit with mercy, you will certainly miss your aim—your whole soul must concentrate itself upon this—to find God as He is revealed in Christ, a God of grace and love, the God who justifies the ungodly when He looks upon the merit of His Son and sees the sinner’s confidence in Him.
You must so seek the Lord as to make no provision for the lusts of the flesh and the desires of the mind. If it costs you the giving up of every pleasure that you have, yet in searching after the Lord you must seek Him so entirely that you would cut off right arms and pluck out right eyes sooner than you should miss Him and so miss eternal life! However sweet the sin may have been to your palate, you must cast it out of your mouth, for it is as poisonous as it is pleasant and, therefore, it is to be put away far from you. “Make no provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof,” for if you do, you have not sought the Lord with all your heart.
There must be one objective and that must be neither self nor sin, but you must feel and say, “In God is my salvation, and my glory. The rock of my strength and my refuge is in God. Therefore with strong desire do I follow after the Lord, even the Lord, alone.”
Moreover, there must be no reservations made in this search to gratify pride in any of its shapes. If you say within your heart, “I will only accept mercy if it comes to me in a certain way”—you put yourself out of all hope of grace, for God is a sovereign, and will do as He wills with His own. Some will not have Christ without signs and wonders—they demand singular experiences, horrible depressions, or delirious excitements—and they will not believe unless some marvelous thing is worked in them or before them.
You must make no conditions with God, either of this or of any other kind. You shall find Him if you will seek Him without bargains and terms and demands—for what are you that you should demand anything of your Maker—and lay down rules and regulations for the dispensing of a mercy to which you have no claim? Come as you are, poor sinner, and without any reservation submit yourself to the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, only desiring this one thing—that you may find God and His love in Christ Jesus.
II. The Reason for Wholehearted Seeking
The requirement is so natural that it needs no excusing—it must recommend itself to every thoughtful person. But since it may help us to be earnest if we are told why it is required of us, I would answer first, that in every other pursuit where the objective is at all worthy of a man’s efforts, whole-heartedness is required.
I knew a man who had a business, but if you called to see him upon any matter you seldom found him in—he was taking a holiday, or else he had not risen. He made an appointment with you, but he never kept it, or came in so late that you were weary with waiting. Commissions that he was entrusted with were often left unexecuted by the week together, or attended to in a slovenly manner. Do you wonder that when I passed by his shop one day I saw the shutters up and learned that he had failed? Do you not know that success in life depends upon earnestness in it?
Do you not teach your sons this important lesson? And if it is so in the lower things of this mortal life, how much more is it in the matters of the world to come? No man becomes learned by sleeping with a book for his pillow, or famous by slumbering at the foot of the ladder of honor. You find, everywhere, that the kingdom of this world suffers violence and never more so than in these days of increasing competition. Surely you cannot expect that if you must run for this world, you may creep and win the next! No, no, you shall find the Lord, seeker, if you seek Him with all your heart, but no other way! Spiritual sluggards shall starve! Labor, therefore, for the meat which endures to eternal life.
The danger from which the need to escape is so great, that the utmost earnestness is none too much! Consider for a moment the imminence of our peril and the overwhelming nature of it. The unsaved man lies under the wrath of God and if any man did but know what the wrath of God is, he would think Nebuchadnezzar’s furnace to be cool compared with that burning oven! He is, in instant danger of death and of the Judgment, and of that second death which follows on the heels of condemnation and consists in banishment from the presence of God and the glory of His power.
Oh, if a man did but know, while he lived, what it is to die—if he could but guess what it is to stand before God’s bar and if he could have an inkling of what it must be to be cast where their worm dies not and their fire is not quenched—this would surely make him seek the Lord with all his heart!
III. Hindrances to Wholehearted Seeking
I am going to mention, in the third place, one or two of the hindrances which stand in the way of a sincere, whole-hearted, persevering search after the Lord and His salvation. I verily believe that a principal hindrance is presumption. The ungodly say within themselves, “God is very merciful and ready to forgive. We like to hear the preacher set forth the abundant mercy of God. We are pleased to hear him show how willing the Father is to forgive and how He delights to receive returning prodigals.” Yes, and after saying this you continue in sin—your mean, dastardly, worse than brutish heart resolves to sin because God is merciful!
I know not how to find adjectives sufficiently strong to set forth the degradation of a nature which can multiply offenses because the offended one is of a forgiving spirit! How worse than brutish are they who say, “Because God is so merciful, therefore we will go on in sin!”
Are you not ashamed of yourselves? I am sure I am ashamed of you, that such a thought should ever dwell in your mind! It is so ungrateful, so ungenerous—I was going to say, it is so devilish—but the devil himself has never been so guilty, for he has never had any hope of mercy! To sin because of mercy is a step lower than even the devil has descended.
Because God is merciful, therefore, you will not seek His mercy, but will continue in sin. Ah, be ashamed and be ashamed! You hear us continually say that whoever believes in Jesus is not condemned. And you say to yourself in the secret of your heart, “This is very easy. Only believe, and you shall be saved. Simply put your confidence in Christ,” and from this you take license to go on in sin! Let me put this to you again that you may see the meanness of such a course.
Do you say, “Because the way of salvation is so simple, therefore I will not attend to it at present. Any day will do. I will put it off”? Oh, man, can it be that you have fallen so low as this? Oh, the deep depravity of your spirit, that if God is so ready to forgive, you are, therefore, all the more unready to be forgiven! And because He puts it on such easy terms, you, therefore, turn upon your heels and refuse His love! What is this but virtually to crucify Christ afresh by sinning because He is gracious?
What is this but mocking Him and spitting in His face by refusing His salvation because it is so free? Oh, do not do this! Be not so unmanly, so cruel to yourself, and so ungenerous to the Christ of God.
Conclusion
The Lord make us to be in downright earnest, so we may hope that toward us He will fulfill that ancient promise, “I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear Me forever, for the good of them, and of their children after them: and I will make an everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do them good; but I will put My fear in their hearts, that they shall not depart from Me. Yes, I will rejoice over them to do them good, and I will plant them in this land assuredly with My whole heart and with My whole soul.”
Think of God thus blessing us with His whole heart and His whole soul. Amen, Lord, so let it be!
Charles Spurgeon