No. 3060
A Sermon Published on Thursday, October 3, 1907,
Delivered by C.H. Spurgeon,
At New Park Street Chapel, Southwark
“The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want.” — Psalm 23:1
DOES not this sound just, like poetry or like singing? If you read the entire Psalm through, it is written in such poetic prose that, though it is not translated into meter, as it should have been, it reads just like it. “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.” It sounds like, music for this, among other reasons, because it came from David’s heart. That which cometh from the heart always hath melody in it. When men speak of what they do, know, and from the depths of their souls testify to what they have seen, they speak with what we call eloquence, for true eloquence is speaking from the soul. Thus David spake of what he knew, what he had verified all his life long, and this rendered him truly eloquent.
As “truth is stranger than fiction,” so the truth that David spake is more sweet than even fancy could have imagined; and it hath more beauty than even the dream of the enthusiast could have pictured. “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” How naturally it seems to strike on the ear as uttered by David, who had himself been a shepherd boy! He remembers how he, had led his flock by the waters in the warm summer, how he had made them lie down in shady nooks by the side of the river; how, on sultry days, he had led them, on the high hills that they might feel the cool air; and how, when the winter set in, he had led them into the valleys that they might be hidden from the stormy blast; well could he remember the tender care with which he protected the lambs, and carried them; and how he had tended the wounded of the flock. And now, appropriating to himself the, familiar figure of a sheep, he says, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” I will try to preach experimentally tonight, and I wonder how many of you will be able to follow the psalmist with me whilst I attempt to do so.
First of all, there are some preliminaries before a man can say this: it is absolutely necessary that he should feel himself to be like a sheep by nature, for he cannot know that God is his Shepherd unless he feels in himself that he has the nature of a sheep. Secondly, there is a sweet assurance; a man must have had some testimony of divine care and goodness in the past, otherwise he cannot appropriate, to himself this verse, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” And thirdly, there is a holy confidence. I wonder how many there are here who can place, all their future in the, hand of God, and call join with David in uttering the last sentence, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”
I. First, then, we say THERE IS A CERTAIN CONFESSION NECESSARY BEFORE A MAN CAN JOIN IN THESE WORDS; we must feel that there is something in us which is akin to the sheep; we must, acknowledge that, in some measure, we exactly resemble it, or else we cannot call God our Shepherd.
I think the first, apprehension we shall have, if the Lord has brought us into, this condition, is this, — we shall be, conscious of our own folly; we shall feel how unwise we always are. A sheep is one of the most unwise of creatures. It. will go anywhere except, in the right direction; it will leave a fat pasture to wander into a barren one; it will find out many ways, but not the right way; it would wander through a wood, and find its way through ravines into the wolf’s jaws, but never by its wariness turn away from the wolf; it could wander near his den, but it would not instinctively turn aside from the place of danger; it, knoweth how to go. astray, but, it, knoweth not how to come home again. Left to itself, it, would not know in what pasture to feed in summer, or whither to, retire in winter.
Have we ever been brought to feel that, in matters of providence, as well as in things of grace, we are truly and entirely foolish? Me-thinks, no. man can trust, providence, till he distrusts himself; and no one can say, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” until he has given up every idle notion that he can control himself, or manage his own interests. Alas! we are, most of us wise, above that which is written, and we are too vain to acknowledge the wisdom of God. In our self-esteem, we fancy our reason can rule: our purposes, and we never doubt our own power to accomplish our own intentions, and then, by a little maneuvering, we think to extricate ourselves from our difficulties. Could we steer in such a direction as we have planned, we entertain not a doubt that we should avoid at once the Scylla and the Charybdis, and have fair sailing all our life long. O beloved, surely it, needs but little teaching in the school of grace to make out that, we are fools. True wisdom is sure to set folly in a strong light.
I have heard of a young man who went to college; and when he had been there a year, his father said to him, “Do you know more than when you went?” “Oh, yes!” said he, “I do.” Then he went the second year, and was asked the same question, “Do you know more than when you went?” “Oh, no!” said he, “I know a great deal less.” “Well,” said the father, “you are getting on.” Then he went the third year, and was asked, “What do you know now?” “Oh!” said he, “I don’t think I know anything.” “That is right,” said the father; “you have now learnt to profit, since you say you know nothing.” He who, is convinced that he knows nothing as he ought to know, gives up steering his ship, and lets God put. his hand on the rudder. He lays aside his own wisdom, and cries, “O God, my little wisdom is cast at thy feet. Such as it is, I surrender it to thee. I am prepared to renounce it, for it hath caused me, many an ill, and many a tear of regret, that I should have followed my own devices, but, henceforth I will delight in thy statutes. As the, eyes of servants look unto the hand of their masters, and as the eyes of a maiden unto the hand of her mistress, so shall mine eyes wait upon the Lord my God. I will not trust in horses or in chariots; but the name of the God of Jacob shall be my refuge. Too long, alas! here I sought my own pleasure, and labored to do everything for my own gratification. Now would I ask, O Lord, thy help, that I may seek first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and leave all the rest to thee.” Do you, O my friends, feel persuaded that you are foolish? Have, you been brought to confess the sheepishness of your nature? Or are you flattering your hearts with the: fond conceit that you are wise? If so, you are indeed fools. But if brought to see yourself like Agur when he said, “I am more brutish than any man, and have not the understanding of a man,” then even Solomon might pronounce thee wise. And if thou art thus brought to confess, “I am a silly sheep,” I hope thou wilt be able to say: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I cannot have any other, I want none other; he is enough for me.”
Again, a sheep is not only foolish, but it is a very dependent creature. The sheep, at least in its domesticated state, as we, know it, must ever be dependent. If we should take a horse, we might turn him loose upon the prairie, and there he would find sufficient few his sustenance; and years after we might see him in no worse condition than that in which we left him. Even the ox might thus be treated, and still be able to provide for itself. But, as for the silly sheep, set it alone in the wilderness, let it pursue its own course unheeded, and what would be its fate? Presently, if it did not wander into places where it would be starved, it would ultimately come to ruin, for assuredly some wild beast would lay held upon it, and it, hath no means of defense for itself.
Beloved, have we been brought to feel that we have of ourselves, no means of subsistence and no power of defense against our fees? Do we perceive the necessity for our dependence upon God? If so, then we have learnt another part of the great lesson, that the Lord is our Shepherd. Some of us have yet this lesson to learn. Fain would we cater for ourselves, and carve for ourselves; but, as the good old Puritan says, “No child of God ever carves for himself without cutting his fingers” We sometimes fancy that we can do a little for ourselves; but we shall have that conceit taken out of us very soon. If we indeed be God’s people, he will bring us to depend absolutely upon him day by day. He will make us pray, “Give us this day our daily bread;” and make us acknowledge that he openeth his hand, and giveth us our meat, in due season. Sweet, is the meal that we eat, as it were, out of his hand. Yet some will rebel against this dependence as very humiliating. Men like to vaunt their independence; nothing is more respectable in their eyes than to live in independent circumstances. But it is no use: for us to talk of being independent; we never can be. I remember a dear Christian man, who prayed very sweetly, each Sunday morning, at a certain prayer-meeting that I once attended, “O Lord, we are independent creatures upon thee.” Except in such a sense as that, I never knew any independence worth having. Of course he meant, “we are dependent creatures upon thee.” So we must be. We cannot, be independent even of one another, and certainly we are not independent of God: for, when we have health and strength, we are dependent upon him for their continuance; and if we have them not, we are, dependent on him to restore them to us. In all matters whatsoever, it, is sweet, it is blessed, to see the tokens of his watchful care. If I had a thing of which I could say, “God has not given me this,” I hope, by divine grace, I should turn it out, of doors. Food, raiment, health, breath, strength, everything, cometh from him, and we are constantly dependent upon him. As Huntington used to say, “My God gives me a hand-basket portion. He does not give me an abundance at, once; but, he gives it, basket by basket, and I live from hand to mouth.” Or, as old Hardy once said, “I am a gentleman commoner on the bounty of God; I live, day by day upon morning commons and evening commons; and thus I am dependent upon him, independent of the world, but dependent upon God.”
The sheep is a dependent creature, always needing some help; and so is the Christian; and he realizes the blessedness of his dependence when he can say, “The Lord is my Shepherd.”
These are the two principal points upon which we vicar this truth with regard to providence. I might, wander from what I wished to be the subject of this evening, and I might be doing good if I were to show you some other points of comparison between the Christian and the sheep. O beloved, there are some of you here present, who know yourselves to be sheep by reason of your frequent wanderings. How often have we made this confession, “We, have erred and strayed from thy ways like lost sheep,” and we do feel it this night, bitterly ruing the waywardness of our hearts. But it is well to be the sheep of God’s pasture, even if we have been wandering sheep. We do not read of wandering dogs, because dogs are naturally wild, while sheep are always accounted to be someone’s property. The straying sheep has an owner; and however far it may stray from the fold, it ceases not to belong to that owner. I believe that God will yet bring bask into the fold every one of his own sheep, and they shall all be saved. It is something to feel our wanderings, for if we feel ourselves to be lost, we shall certainly be saved; if we feel ourselves to have wandered, we shall certainly be brought back.
Again, we are just like sheep by reason of the perverseness of our wills. People talk about free will Christians, and tell us of persons being saved and coming to God of their own free will. It is a very curious thing, but though I have heard a great nanny free-will sermons, I never heard any free-will prayers. I have heard Arminianism in preaching: and talking, but I have never heard any Arminian praying. In fact, I do not think there can be any prayer of that sort; it is a style that does not suit prayer. The theory may look very nice in argument, and sound very proper in discourse, though we somewhat differ from it; but for practical purposes it is useless. The language will not suit us in prayer, and this alone would be sufficient reason to condemn it. If a man cannot pray in the spirit of his own convictions it shows they are a delusion from beginning to end; for if they were true he could pray in that language as well as in any other. Blessed be God, the doctrines of grace are as good to pray with as to preach with! We do not find ourselves out of order in any act of worship when once we have the old fundamental doctrines of the blessed gospel of grace. Persons talk about free-will Christisms coming back to Jesus of themselves. I intend to believe them when, they find me a free-will sheep that has come back of itself; when they have discovered some sheep, after it has gone from its fold stand bleating at its master’s door, asking to be taken in again. You will not find such a sheep, and you will not find a free-will Christian; for they will all confess, if you thoroughly probe the matter, that it was grace, and grace alone that restored their souls,—
“Grace taught our souls to pray,
And made our eyes o’erflow;
‘Tis grace that keeps us to this day,
And will not let us go.”
II. The next thing is, THE ASSURANCE THAT THE LORD IS OUR SHEPHERD.
It is very easy to say, “The Lord is a Shepherd;” but how shall we appropriate the blessedness to ourselves, and be able to say, “The Lord is our Shepherd?” I answer, that he hath had certain dealings with our souls in the past, which have taught us that he is our Shepherd. If every man and every woman in this assembly should rise up and say, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” I feel convinced it would be, in many instances, the solemn utterance, of an untruth; for there are, it is to be feared, many here, who have not God for their Shepherd. He is their Guide, it is true, in some sense, because he, overrules all the hearts and center. Is all the affairs of the children of men; but they are not the people of his pasture, they are not the sheep of his hand; they do not believe, therefore they are not of his fold. And if some of you should say that you are your own conscience would belie you. How, then, does a man come to know that the Lord is his Shepherd?
He knows it, first, because Jesus Christ has brought him back from his wanderings. If there be anyone here who, after a course of folly and sin, has been fetched back from the mountains of error and the haunts of evil, if there, be one here who has been stopped in a mad career of vice, and has been reclaimed by the power of Jehovah Jesus, such a one will know, by a happy experience, that the Lord is his: Shepherd. If I once wandered on yon mountain top, and Jesus climbed up, and caught me, and put me on his shoulders, and carried me home, I cannot and dare not doubt that he is my Shepherd if I had belonged to some other sheep-owner, he would not have sought me; and from the fact, that he did seek me, I learn that he must be my Shepherd. Did I think that any man convinced me of sin, or that any human power had converted me, I should fear I was that man’s sheep, and that he was my shepherd. Could I trace, my deliverance to the hand of a creature, I should think that a creature might, be my shepherd; but, since he who has been reclaimed of God must and will confess that God alone has done it, and will ascribe to his free grace, and to that alone, his deliverance from sin, such a one will feel persuaded that the Lord must be his Shepherd, because he fetched him back from his wanderings, he snatched him out of the jaw of the, lion and out of the paw of the barn.
We know still further that, like a shepherd, he has supplied our wants. Some of you, beloved, know of a surety that God is your Provider. You have been brought, sometimes, into such straits that, if it had not been for an interposition of heaven itself, you never could have had deliverance. You have sunk so deep down into poverty, and levees and acquaintances have stood so far aloof from you, that you know there is but one arm which could have fetched you up. You have been reduced, perhaps, to such straits that all you could do, was to pray. You have wrestled at the throne, and sought for an answer, but it has not come; you have used every effort to extricate yourself, and still darkness has compassed your path. Again and again you have, tried, till hope has well-nigh vanished from your heart, and then, adding vows to your prayer, you have said in your agony, “O God, if thou will deliver me this time, I will never doubt thee again?” Look back on the path of your pilgrimage. Some of you can count as many Ebenezers as there are milestones from here to York; Ebenezers piled up, with oil poured on the top of them; places where you have said, “Hitherto, the Lord hath helped me.” Look through the pages of your diary, and you will sometime after time, when your perils and exigencies were such as no earthly skill could relieve, and you felt constrained to witness what others among you have never felt,—that there is a God, that there is a providence—a God who compasseth your path, and is acquainted with all your ways. Yon have received deliverance in so marvelous a way, from so unseen a hand, and so unlikely a source, under circumstances, perhaps, so foreign to your wishes, and yet the deliverance has been so perfect, so complete, and wonderful, that you have been obliged to say, “The Lord is my Shepherd.” Yes; he is. The sheep, we know, fed day by day in. good pasture, may forget its shepherd; but if for a time, it is taken from the pasture, and then brought home again, after having been nearly starved, it says, “Truly, he is my shepherd.” If I had always been supplied with bread, without the pinch of anxiety, I might have doubted whether he had given it, and ascribed it to the ordinary course of passing events; but, seeing that “everywhere and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to, be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need,” I own that it is my God who supplies all my need; yea, and with gratitude I will write it down for a certainty, The Lord is my Shepherd.”
But, beloved, do not be distressed, oven, though you should not have had these particular trials and deliverances, for there is a way whereby we can tell that the Lord is our Shepherd without encountering so many rough and rugged passes, as I will show you presently. I have heard it said, by some, that a man cannot be a child of God unless he has gone through a certain set of trials and troubles. I recollect hearing a sermon from these words, “Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well.” Certainly, the preacher did not make his sermon a well, far it was as dry as a stick, and not worth hearing. There was nothing like cheerfulness in it; but a flood of declamation, all the way through, against hopeful Christians, against people going to heaven who are not always grumbling, and murmuring, and doubting, fumbling for their evidences amidst the exercises of their own hearts, over reading and striving to rival Job and Jeremiah in grief, taking the Lamentations as the fit expression of their own lips, troubling their poor brains, and vexing their poor hearts, and smarting, and crying, and wearying themselves with the perpetual habit, of complaining against God, saying with poor Job, “My stroke is heavier than my groaning.” Such persons measure themselves by their troubles, and trials, and distresses, and tribulations, and perplexities, and no end of these, things that we will not stop to recount. We believe, indeed, that such things will come to a child of God; we, think every Christian will be corrected in due measure; we should be the last to deny that God’s people are a tried people. They must all pass through the furnace, of affliction, and he has chosen them there, but still, we believe that religion is a blessed and a happy thing and we love to sing that verse,—
“The men of grace have found
Glory begun below;
Celestial fruits on earthly ground
From faith and hope may grow.”
And what though some of my hearers have not yes had to swim through the rivers, though they may not have had to pass through the fiery furnace of providential trial, they have had trials enough, and trials that no heart has known except their own sufferings which they could not tell to flesh and blood, which have gnawed their very souls, and catered into the marrow of their spirits; bitter anguish and aching voids such as those who boast about their trials nearer felt, such as mere babbling troublers did never know, deep rushings of the stream of woe with which little bubbling narrow brooks could never compare. Such persons fear to murmur, they cannot tell their sufferings, because, they think it would be showing some want of trust, in God; they keep their trials to themselves, and only tell them into that ear which heareth, and hath no lips to babble afterwards.
“But,” you say, “how can you tell that the Lord is your Shepherd if you have not been tried in any of those great deeps?” We know that he is, because he has fed us day by day in good pasture. And if he has not, suffered us to wander so, far away as others, we can lift up our egos to him, and each one of us say, “Lord, thou art my Shepherd; I can as fully prove that thou art my Shepherd by thy keeping me, in the grassy field, as by thy fetching me back when I have wandered; I know thou art as much my Shepherd when thou hast supplied my wants day by day as if thou hadst suffered me, to go into poverty, and given me bitterness; I know thou art as much my Shepherd when granting me a continua1 stream, of mercy, as if that stream had stopped for a moment, and these had beam to flow again.” Persons say, if they have had an accident, and been nearly killed, or have narrowly escaped, “What a providence!” Yet it is as much a providence when you have no accident at all. A good man once went to a certain place to meet his son. Both his son and himself had ridden from some distance. When the son arrived, he exclaimed, “Oh father! I had such a providence on the road.” “Why, what was that?” “My horse stumbled six times, and yet I was not thrown.” “Dear me!” said his father, “but I have had a providence too.” “And what was that?”
“Why, my horse never stumbled at all, and that is just as muck a providence as if the horse had stumbled six times, and I had not been thrown.” It, is a great providence when you have lost your property, and God provides for you; but it is quite as much a providence when you have no loss at all, and when you are still able to live above the depths of penury; and so God provides for you. I say this to some of you when God has blessed, and continually provided for from your earliest youth; you, too, can each of you say, “The Lord is, my Shepherd.” You can see, this title stamped on your mercies; though they come, daily, they are, given to you by God; and you will say, by humble faith, the word “my” as loudly as anyone can. Do not get despising the little ones of the flock because they have not had so many trials as you have had; do not get cutting the children of God in pieces because, they have not been in such fights as you have. The Shepherd leads the sheep where he pleases, and be you sure that he will lead them rightly; and as long as they can say from their hearts, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want,”’ do not trouble yourselves about, where or how they learned it.
III. Now, we finish up with, THE HOLY CONFIDENCE OF THE PSALMIST: “I shall not want.”
“There,” poor unbelief says, “ I am wanting in everything; I am wanting in spirituals, I am wanting in temporals; and I shall want, Ah! such distress as I had a little while ago you cannot tell what it was; it was enough to break one’s heart; and it is coming again; I shall want.” That is what you say unbelief, but you must write your own name at the bottom, and thee I will repeat to you this, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” That is what, David said, and I think David’s faith, far preferable, to your unbelief. I might take your evidence in some matters, but I really would not take it before David’s. I would accept your testimony as an honest man in some respects, but the words of inspiration must be preferable to your words of apprehension. When I find it written, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” I would rather take one of David’s affirmations than fifty of your negations.
Methinks I hear someone saying, “I would bear the want of any temporal good, if I could but obtain spiritual blessings. I am in want this night of more faith, more love, more holiness, more communion with my Savior.” Well, beloved, the Lord is thy Shepherd, thou shalt not want even these blessings; if thou askest of him,, he will give them to thee, though it may be by terrible things in righteousness that he will save thee. He often answers his people in an unexpected manner; many of God’s answers to, our letters come down in black-edged envelopes; yet, mark you, they will come. If you want peace, joy, sanctification, and such blessings, they shall be given to you, for God hath, promised them. The Lord is your Shepherd, you shall not want. I have often thought of that great promise written in the Bible,— I do not, know where there is a larger one,—” No good thing will he withhold from them that walk uprightly.” “No good thing!” It is a mercy that the word “good” was put in, for if it had said, “He, will withhold nothing,” we should have been asking for many things that would be bad for us, but, it says, “no good thing!” Now, spiritual mercies are good things, and not only good things, but the best things, so, that you may well ask for them; for if no, good thing will be withholden, much more will none of the best things. Ask, then, Christian, for he is thy Shepherd, and thou shalt not want; he will supply thy need; he will give, thee whatever thou requirest; ask in faith, nothing doubting, and he shall give thee what than really needest.
But still there are some who say, “The text applies to temporal matters,” and persist in it. Well, then, I will accept this sense, the Lord is your Shepherd, you shall not want for temporal blessings. “Ah!” cries one, “I was once in affluence, and now I am brought down to penury. I once stood among the mighty and was rich, now I walk amongst the lowly and am poor.” Well, David does not say, “The Lord is your Shepherd, and you shall not come down in society;” he does not say, “The Lord is your Shepherd, and therefore you shall have five hundred or a thousand pounds a year;” he does not, say, “The Lord is your Shepherd, and therefore you shall have whatsoever your soul lusteth after.” All David says is, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” There are different ways of wanting. There are many people whose foolish craving and restless anxiety make them always in want. If you gave them a house to live in, and fed them day by day, they would always be wanting something more. And after you had just relieved their necessities, they would want still. The fact is theirs are not real wants, but simply fancied wants. David does not say, “The Lord is my Shepherd, therefore I shall not fancy that I want,” for though God might promise that, it would need his omnipotence to carry it out; for his people often get fancying that they want, when they do not. It is real wants that are referred to. “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not really want.” There are many things we wish for that we do, not really need, but there is no promise given that, we shal1 have all we wish for. God hath not said that he would give us anything more than we need, but he will give us that. So, lift up thy head, and do not be, afraid. Fear not, thy God is with thee; he, shall prevent, evil from hurting thee; he shall turn darkness into light, and bitter into sweet. All the way he hath led thee, and all the way he shall lead thee; this shall be thy constant joy. He is my Shepherd, I shall not really want that which is absolutely necessary. Whatever I really require shall be given by the lavish hand of a tender Father. Believer, here is thy jointure, here is thine inheritance, here is thine income, here is thy yearly living: “He is thy Shepherd, and thou shalt not want.” What is thy income, believer? “Why,” you say, “it varies with some and others of us.” Well, but, a believer’s income, is still the same. This is it: “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want.” That is my income, and it is yours, poor little one. That is the income of the poorest pauper in the workhouse who hath an interest, in the grater of God; the, Lord is her Shepherd, she shall not want. That, is the income of the poor foundling child who has come to know the Lord in early life, and has no other friend; the Lord is his Shepherd, he shal1 not, want. That is the widow’s inheritance; the Lord is her Shepherd, she shall not want. That is the orphan’s fortune; the Lord is his Shepherd, he shall not want. That is the believer’s portion, his inheritance, his blessing.
“Well now,” some, may say, “what is this truth worth?” Beloved, if we could change this truth for a world of gold, we would not; we had rather live; on this truth than live, on the finest fortune in creation; we reckon that, this is an inheritance that makes us rich indeed: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want..” Give me ten thousand pounds, and one, reverse, of fortune may scatter it all away; but let me have a spiritual hold of this divine assurance, “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want,” then I am set up for life. I cannot, break with such stock as this in hand; I never can be a bankrupt, for I hold this security: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” Do not give me ready money now; give me, a chequebook, and let, me draw what I like. That is what God does with the believer. He does not immediately transfer his inheritance to him, but lets him draw what he needs out of the riches of his fullness in Christ Jesus. The Lord is his Shepherd; he shall not want. What a glorious inheritance! Walk up, and down it, Christian; lie down upon it, it will do for thy pillow; it will be soft as down for thee to lie upon: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want,” Climb up that creaking staircase to the top of thy house, lie down on thy hard mattress, wrap thyself round with a blanket, look out for the winter when hard times are coming, and say not, “What shall I do?” but just hum over to thyself these words, “The, Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” That will be like the hush of lullaby to your poor soul, and you will soon sink to slumber. Go, thou business man, to thy counting-house again, after this little hour of recreation in God’s house, and again cast up those wearisome books. Thou art saying, “How about business? These prices may be my ruin. What shall I do?” When. thou hast cast up thine accounts, put this down against all thy fears, and see what a balance it, will leave, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” There is another man. He does not, lack anything, but still he feels that some great loss may injure him considerably. Go and write this down in thy cash-book. If thou hast made out thy cash-account truly, put this down: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” Put this down for something better than gold and silver: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.” He who disregards this truth, knows nothing about its preciousness, but he who apprehends it, says, “Ah, yes! it is true, “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.’” He will find this promise like China wind of which the ancients said that it was flavored to the lip of him that tasted it; so this truth shall taste sweet to thee if thy spiritual palate is pure, yet it shall be worth not.hint to thee but mere froth if thy taste, is not healthy.
But beloved, we must divide our congregation before we send you away, and remind you that, there are some of you to whom this truth does not belong. Perhaps some of you professors of religion may want this truth badly enough; but, it is not yours. The Lord is not, your Shepherd; you are not the sheep of his pasture and the flock of his hand. You are not sheep, but goats; unclean creatures, not harmless and undefiled as sheep, but everything that is the very reverse. Oh! it is not only eternal loss, it is not only everlasting injury that you have to regret,—it is also present loss, and present injury; the loss of a jointure, on earth, the loss of an inheritance below. To be deprived of such a comfort as this, is a terrible privation. Oh! it is enough to make men long for religion if it were, only for that sweet placidity and calm of mind which it giveth here below. Well might men wish for this heavenly oil to be cast on the troubled waters of this mortal life, even if they did not anoint their heads therewith, and enter into glory with the joy of their Lord upon their countenance. Beloved, there are some I know here,—and your conscience tells you whom I mean,—who have a voice, within your own hearts which says, “I am not one of Christ’s sheep.” Well then, there is no promise, for you that you shall not want the promise and the providence are for believers, not for you. There is no promise that all things shall work together for your good; but rather, cursed shalt thou be in thy basket and cursed in thy store, cursed in the field, cursed in thy house, cursed in thy goings out, and cursed in thy comings in, for “the curse of the Lord is in the house of the wicked.” It doth not merely peep in at his window, but it is in his house. Yet God “blesseth the habitation of the just.” If you do not repent, the curse shall follow you until your dying day, and not having Christ for your Shepherd, you shall wander where that hungry wolf, the devil, shall at last, seize upon your soul, and everlasting misery and destruction from the presence of Jehovah must be your inevitable, miserable, and inexpressibly awful doom. May the Lord in mercy deliver you from it! And this is the way of salvation: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” “He that believeth and is baptized “—we omit nothing that God has said. “He that believeth and is baptized “—not he that is baptized and then believeth (which would be reversing God’s order), but “He that believeth and is baptized”—not he that is baptized without believing, but the two joined together,—he that believeth with his heart., arid is baptized, confessing with his mouth,—”he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” Do you neglect one part of it? It is at your peril, sir! “He that believeth and is baptized,” says God. If any of you have neglected one portion of it, if you have believed, and have not been baptized, God will save you. Still, this promise saith not so. “He that, believeth and is baptized;” it puts the two together; and “what God hath joined together, let no man put asunder;” what he hath ordered let, no man disarrange. “He that believeth”—that, is, he that trusts in Jesus; he that relies upon his blood, his merits, and his righteousness,—”and is baptized, shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.”