GOD’S PEOPLE MELTED AND TRIED – Charles Spurgeon
GOD’S PEOPLE MELTED AND TRIED
“Therefore thus says the LORD of hosts, Behold, I will melt them, and try them; for how shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” Jeremiah 9:7.
OBSERVE here that God represents Himself as greatly concerned to know what to do with His people. Of course, He speaks after the manner of men, for as the infinitely wise God, knowing all things from the beginning, Jehovah knew what He would do. But yet, in order that we may understand something of the workings of the divine mind, He represents Himself as brought to a perplexity and saying, in the words of our text, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” There are some men and women in the world who seem to greatly perplex those who love them and who desire their welfare. They are a great perplexity to those with whom they live and who labor for their good—and it seems as if God Himself regarded it as a matter of perplexity when He said, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?”
But notice, next, the Lord is so resolved to save His people that He will use the sternest possible means rather than lose any of those whom He loves. He says here, “I will melt them and try them; I will cast them into the furnace, and put them into the melting pot. I will make the fire so hot that their iron hearts shall melt and though they are like hell-hardened steel, devoid of feeling, I will make it so hot for them that they shall be melted. As men assay metal, pouring out the molten mass in a red-hot or white state, I will melt them and try them.”
Sinners, that God may save you, He will do the roughest things with you. He will not spare you any kind of sorrow here, or any sort of loss, or any measure of despair of spirit, so that He may bring you to Himself. He asks the question as though He were very anxious to avoid using His rough ways, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” But He answers the question with all the severity of almighty love, “Behold, I will melt them and try them. There is nothing else to be done with them, so I will do that by which alone they can be saved.”
Observe once more in our preface that God’s concern about His people and His resolve to use strange ways with them springs out of His relationship to them, for He says, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” “My people.” They were His, though they were very far away from Him through their evil ways. Though they had gone from evil to evil, though their lives provoked Him to the highest degree, yet He did not disown them. He remembered the covenant that He made for them with Abraham, and with Isaac, and with Jacob—and because of that covenant, He thought upon them for good and resolved to somehow save them.
When God has chosen a man from before the foundation of the world, and when He has given that man over to Christ to be a part of the reward of His soul’s travail, He will adopt strange means to accomplish His sacred purpose. And He will carry out that purpose; let it cost Him what it may.
We are going to apply these principles in three ways. First, to the matter of conversion; secondly, to the matter of Christian life; and thirdly, to the Church of God in its corporate capacity.
I. THE MATTER OF CONVERSION
There is a very simple way of being saved. It should be. I hope it is the common way. It is the simple way of following the call of grace. This should be your way. I hope it is. The gospel is preached, you believe it. Christ is set before you, you accept Him, you trust Him, you are saved. Without any violence, your heart is opened, as with the picklock of grace. God puts the key into the door and steps into your heart without a word. “Whose heart the Lord opened,” we read of Lydia.
Even if you have known nothing of the terror of the Lord, if you have had no strange convulsion of feeling, no earthquake, tempest, and thunder—God is in the still small voice—and you are saved by His grace as much as those who have had a deeper experience.
This is the way of salvation, but there are some who will not come this way. There is the Wicket Gate. They have but to knock and it will be opened, but they prefer to go round about through the Slough of Despond, or to get under the care of Mr. Worldly Wiseman who leads them round by the house of Mr. Legality, who dwells in the village of Morality. And there they go with their burdens on their backs, which they need not carry even for a single hour, for they would roll off directly if they would but look to Jesus and believe in Him. But they will not do this.
There are some of whom God has to say, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” Why is this? Well, some of them have a crooked sort of mind. They never can believe anything straight—they must go round about. I know a friend whose conversation is always of this kind. If he were in King William Street and I were in the Borough, he could not come across London Bridge to me—he would find it necessary to go at least as far as Hammersmith before he crossed the river—and then he would come round to me. That is how he always talks. I sometimes get a little tired of that style and I wish he would come to the point at once. There are some minds of that sort. You say to some people, “Believe and live.” Then they begin scratching their heads a bit and saying, “What is it to believe, and what is it to live? And how can a man live by believing, and does he believe first, or does he live first? And if he lives before he believes, then how does believing make him live?” I could puzzle away like that all night if I liked—any fool can put stools in the way for people to tumble over.
There are some minds that seem to be made with what I may call a circumbendibus that cannot take the truth as God puts it, believing Him as a child believes his father. They must somehow twist it about, wrest it, distort it, contort it. Oh, that the Lord would give them another mind! “Except you are converted, and become as little children, you shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.” O you wise people, you deep and subtle people, you very thoughtful folk who cannot think that God means what He says when He says that a sinner has only to look to Christ and live—but imagine that there must be some particular kind of spectacles to be worn through which you are to look, or that you are to get to some point of the compass from which to look, or that you are to do something else beside look—oh, that you would lay aside all this, for you are making the work of your salvation needlessly difficult!
It is of such as you that God says, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” But some others are obstinate in sin. They are not happy in it, but they will not give it up. They have had some very serious talks with their conscience and they know that they are wrong, yet they persist in continuing to be wrong. They mean to be right some day but not yet. They wish somehow that they had overcome the difficulty, but they cannot face it—they cannot give up their evil habits. They still cling to them and though often persuaded, threatened and moved, they still stand where they always stood—obstinately continuing in sin—while God repeats the inquiry, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?”
II. THE MATTER OF CHRISTIAN LIFE
In the second place, I want to say something to Christians, for IN THE MATTER OF CHRISTIAN LIFE, God seems to say, “What shall I do for the daughter of My people? I will melt them and try them.”
Some Christians go from joy to joy. Their path, like that of the light, shines more and more unto the perfect day. Why should you and I not be like that? Why should we not simply believe and keep on believing, and go on rejoicing, serving God with all our heart and resting in the precious blood of Jesus?
There are other Christians who appear to make much progress in divine things, but it is not true progress. Some appear to have a great deal of knowledge. They talk as if they knew everything, but when you come to examine them closely, you find that they do not know hardly anything that they ought to know. Some, too, get a very wonderful experience. You see them swagger about. You hear them brag of it until you are disgusted with them. That experience which a man boasts of is an experience he ought to be ashamed of.
Some, too, seem to have great ability. To hear them talk of what they can do, you would imagine that they could drive the church before them and drag the world behind them, and I do not know what besides. Paul said, “When I am weak, then am I strong,” but these people are so strong that they never know what weakness means.
As for the progress that some professors make in sanctification, why, just look at some of them, and listen to their tall talk! They have not sinned for years! The very principle of sin seems to have died out of them! Poor deluded souls! This is what they say, mark you, not what I believe.
As for their graces, they have all things and abound. They are as patient as martyrs. They believe as strongly as John Knox or Martin Luther. You ordinary Christians cannot attain to their stature. If they were to stand bolt upright, they would strike the stars from their places, they are so great and tall. And yet—and yet, there is nothing in their boasting after all. I do not say that they know that much of their wonderful religion is false. No, but they have wrong ideas, confused notions, addled brains, and so they do not know their own real state. Whereas they say that they are rich, increased in goods and have need of nothing, they are all the while naked, blind, poor, and miserable. The worst thing about their condition is that some of them do not want to know their real state. They half suspect that it is not what they say it is, but they do not like to be told so. In fact, they get very cross when anyone even hints at the truth.
No one’s temper is so imperfect as the perfect man. He soon shows his imperfection. He is the brother who must not be touched. You must stand a long way off and look at him with reverence or else he is soon sorely grieved at you. Some do not want to know their real condition. They have an idea that perhaps they are not what they seem to be, but they would not have their dream roughly broken. Instruction is not desired by them. Why are they to be instructed? They know a great deal more than anybody else can teach them and they like the man who will speak flatteringly to them—and who will make them believe that what they say is all gospel.
Now, there are such people in all our congregations, of whom God might well say, “How shall I deal with the daughter of My people?” This is what He will do with a great many who are now inflated with a false kind of grace—“I will melt them and try them,” says the Lord of hosts. He will put them to a test.
III. THE CHURCH OF GOD IN ITS CORPORATE CAPACITY
This you may take for granted, that if God has chosen us, but we are not willing to go in His way and humbly trust in Jesus, and have Him to be our all in all, the Lord will not give us up, but He will melt us, and try us till we are fit to run in any mold that He likes to use.
God bless you, and save you, and comfort you, for Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.
EXPANSION BY C. H. SPURGEON JEREMIAH 9
Verses 1-26
(Refer to the original text for an in-depth exposition.)