THE ORPHAN’S FATHER – Charles Spurgeon
THE ORPHAN’S FATHER
“For in You the fatherless finds mercy.” Hosea 14:3.
The Lord God of Israel, the one only living and true God, has this as a special mark of His character—that in Him, the fatherless finds mercy. “A Father of the fatherless, and a Judge of the widows, is God in His holy habitation.” False gods of the heathen are usually notable for their supposed power or cunning, or even for their wickedness, falsehood, lustfulness, and cruelty. But our God, who made the heavens, is the Thrice Holy One. He is the Holy God, and He is also full of love. Indeed, it is not only His name and character but His very nature, for “God is love.” Among the acts which exhibit His love is this—that He executes righteousness and judgment for all who are oppressed and especially takes under His wings the defenseless ones, such as the widow and the fatherless. This is very notable if you look into the subject in connection with Holy Scripture.
We see this soon after the giving of the law. We have the law in the 20th chapter of Exodus, and in the 22nd chapter of the same book, close upon the heels of the law, you have God’s word concerning the fatherless. Listen to Jehovah’s words; they are strong and forceful, there is thunder in their sound: “You shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child. If you afflict them in any way, and they cry at all unto Me, I will surely hear their cry; and My wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.” These are the words of that Jehovah who spoke the Ten Commandments on Sinai. See how very near to the heart of our God lies the cause of the widow and the fatherless.
The Lord gave the law a second time in the book of Deuteronomy. If you turn to the 10th chapter of that book, at the 17th verse, you will find such a statute as this: “For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regards not persons, nor takes reward: He does execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loves the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.” Those are two strong and striking proofs of the fact that the cause of the fatherless lies near to the heart of God. Laws were made on their behalf, and among the rest was the institution of tithes. I have read some amazing statements about the divine right of tithes. It seems to be established in the minds of some that if God gave the tithes to Levi, He must, therefore, have given them to Episcopalian ministers—an inference which I fail to see. I should just as soon draw the inference that He had given them to Baptist ministers. Certainly, it would be no more illogical. The idea of our being priests or Levites in order to get compulsory tithes would be too abhorrent to entertain for a moment.
But while I have often seen the divine right of tithes stated and argued, I have never heard it urged that the tithes should go to those for whom God set them apart under the legal dispensation. Now, if you will turn to Scripture, you will find that the tithe of all the produce of the land was to be given to the Levite, the stranger, the widow, and the fatherless. And whenever tithes come to be properly distributed, if there is any divine right in it at all, it will most certainly be given to the widow and the fatherless. We should agree to its being given in part to the Levite when he turns up, but as we do not know who the Levite is at present, we may keep his portion in abeyance till he appears. But the widow and the fatherless are still here among us, and the poor shall never cease out of the land, and as the institution of the tithe was as much for them as it was for the tribe of Levi, let them have their share.
The tribe of Levi had certain rights because, while the other tribes each had a portion, that tribe had no inheritance and therefore took its share in having a part of the tithe, and certain cities to dwell in. Read Deuteronomy 14:29—“And the Levite, (because he has no part or inheritance with you), and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within your gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hand which you do.”
I do not know that Episcopalian clergymen have given up their earthly inheritances any more than Non-Conformist ministers, and I cannot therefore see that they have the Levite’s claim, but I see clearly the right of the widow and the fatherless, and I pray that the day may come when they will get their share of what is undoubtedly theirs, if it is anybody’s at all.
Another ordinance was made about the widow and the fatherless—that when the people gathered in the harvest, if they omitted a sheaf of corn, they were never to go back for it, but were to leave it for the widow and the fatherless. “When you cut down your harvest in your field, and have forgotten a sheaf in the field, you shall not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord your God may bless you in all the work of your hands.”
In gathering in the corn, the field was not raked, but all that fell was left to the widow and the fatherless. It was expressly commanded that when they gathered the grapes, they were never to gather a second time, but were to leave bunches to be ripened for the widow and the fatherless. “When you beat your olive tree, you shall not go over the boughs again: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow.”
Nobody was forgotten in the divine rule when Jehovah was King in Israel, but special mention was continually being made of these two classes—the widow and the fatherless, and the poor strangers that happened to be within Israel’s gates. “You shall be kind to the stranger,” said the Lord, “because you were a stranger in the land of Egypt, and you know the heart of a stranger.”
I call your special attention to this and beg you to look through Scripture and see how again and again God calls upon His people to take care of the widow and the fatherless. Job, that upright man whom God accepted, denied for himself the charge that he had ever forgotten the widow and the fatherless. And you know how, under the New Testament, it is written, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, to visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”
It is established, then, that God, even the God of Israel, is one in whom the fatherless finds mercy. Let us take care of them too. “Be you imitators of God as dear children,” and select as the objects of your charity those whom God specially cares for. This, however, is not my subject at this time. I wish you to become yourselves objects of the divine charity by coming to God as orphans, and putting yourselves under His protection, that you, like the fatherless, may find mercy at His hands. If we are sad at heart, troubled in spirit, full of needs, full of wants and trials, let us be encouraged to come to God because in Him the fatherless find mercy.
I. ENCOURAGEMENT
Here is encouragement, though such as none spy out but needy ones. You notice that the people who said, “In You the fatherless finds mercy,” are the people who had fallen by their iniquity, and who were bid to return unto the Lord, saying, “Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously.” They were a people who renounced all self-confidence, and cried out, “Ashur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, you are our gods.” They were a people with whom God’s Holy Spirit had so dealt that they were stripped of their pride, and made conscious of their guilt. Then it was that they spied out this precious fact, that in God the fatherless finds mercy.
A tear in the eye is a fine thing to clear it. He that never saw his sin has never seen the mercy of God. David never sang of the loving-kindness and tender mercies of God as well as in that 51st Psalm, when he mourned his great sin. A broken-hearted sinner has a sort of instinct for finding out the tender points in God’s character. The ungodly man, who is self-satisfied and has never been made to know the truth about his condition, often likens God to an austere man, reaping where he has not sown, and gathering where he has not harvested. But, once let the man know his guilt and mourn it, and then he looks with all his eyes to God to spy out mercy in Him, and he is the man who delights to learn that God is merciful to the fatherless. This becomes a fountain of hope to him.
Have I here any sin-stricken sinner? Are you desponding and despairing? Did you come here feeling that there could be no mercy for you? Catch at this word. “In You the fatherless finds mercy.” He is a merciful God; He is tender, kind, and considerate. He evidently looks after the helpless and hopeless. He is the patron of those whom others desert. Widows without friends, the fatherless without protectors—these are the care of God. May you not hope that He will care for you? May you not, in the depth of your sin and brokenness of heart, come to Him and say, “O Lord, I hear You are the Friend of the friendless, be a Friend to me”?
It looks like a candle put in the window of your father’s house to guide you home through the darkness. May God help you to see it, but I know that you will not care to see it if there is not a tear in your eye, for none but the needy perceive this gracious truth.
This encouragement is, moreover, one which is a strong inducement to cast away all other confidences. If God is the Friend of the fatherless, He may be a Friend to me. Would it not be well for me to trust Him, and leave off trusting those other things that I have relied upon? You see how the text runs, “Ashur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses.” These were their great trust and confidence, and then they go on to say—neither will we worship false gods, for we can see that the true God is kind, kind to the fatherless ones and therefore we may come and trust Him.
When a man gets some little hope, then he says to himself, “I will even venture to look to the Lord.” When the prodigal son in the far-off country had spent all his living, what was it that brought him back? Why, it was this thought—“How many hired servants of my father have bread enough and to spare!” This made him resolve to go home again.
I know what the devil will do; he will tell you that there is no mercy for you. He is an old liar. There is abundant mercy for the greatest sinner. What does the devil know about it? He never sought mercy, and he has never had any, and never will have any, for he will never seek it. But for you, poor soul, there is bread enough and to spare in your Father’s house, and why do you perish with hunger? Why not arise and go to your Father?
II. ENCOURAGEMENT AS TO WHAT TO DO
First, if you want to find salvation tonight, take the text as a sort of spiritual guidebook, and plead your need. Do not say anything about your merits; the less said about them the better. Your position is like that of the Irish servant, who said, when asked for his character references, that the gentleman at his last place told him he would do better without his character than with it. You are just in that case, only that you will be asked for your character references, and the best thing you can do is to say, “My character is as bad as it can be,” and then plead for mercy.
III. ENCOURAGEMENT AS TO WHAT TO EXPECT OF GOD
What do the fatherless expect of us when we stand in God’s place for them, and take them into our orphanage, and try to be as a father to them? What do they expect of us? Well, I do not know that the younger ones have intellect enough to know all they expect, but they expect everything. They expect all that they want, and though they do not quite know what they want, they leave it to us. They believe that all will be found that they require.
I like a poor Christian who does not know all he wants but yet knows that his God will supply all his needs. He trusts Jesus for all. He trusts his heavenly Father as a child. He does not know what he may require today, and require in the unknown future, but then his heavenly Father knows, and he leaves it all to Him.
So is it with us when we come to the great Father. We say—all that I would provide for my children, if I had everything, and could give them all that wisdom could desire, my God will provide for me, for He will be a Father to me. If you, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, much more shall He, who has taken you into His family, though you once were fatherless, give all good things to you.
You shall have food and raiment, and sufficient for this life. You shall have protection, guidance, instruction, and tender affection. You shall have a touch or two of the rod every now and then, and that is among your choice mercies, but you shall also have all the cherishing of His sweet love. And by and by, when you are fit for it, He will take you home from school, and you shall see His face, and you shall live forever in His house above, where the many mansions are.
Oh, if you come and put yourselves by a simple faith into the blessed custody and keeping of God, He will admit you into His Salvation Orphanage, and He will take care of you, and you shall find Him a better Father than you will be to your own children—a better Father than the best of fathers could ever be to the best beloved of sons. “I will be a Father unto you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
I will not say more, but I should like to leave John’s choice sentence as my last word. “Behold what manner of love the Father has bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God!” Blessed be Your name, O Lord, that we also have been led of Your Spirit to prove that in You the fatherless finds mercy!