Evening and Morning
By Charles Haddon Spurgeon
December 18
Morning
"Rend
your heart, and not your garments."—Joel 2:13.
Garment-rending and other outward signs of
religious emotion, are easily manifested and are frequently hypocritical;
but to feel true repentance is far more difficult, and consequently far less common.
Men will attend to the most multiplied and minute ceremonial
regulations—for such things are pleasing to the flesh—but
true religion is too humbling, too heart-searching, too thorough for the tastes
of the carnal men; they prefer something more ostentatious, flimsy, and
worldly. Outward observances are temporarily comfortable; eye and ear
are pleased; self-conceit is fed, and self-righteousness is puffed up: but they
are ultimately delusive, for in the article of death, and at the day of
judgment, the soul needs something more substantial than ceremonies and rituals
to lean upon. Apart from vital godliness all religion is utterly vain; offered
without a sincere heart, every form of worship is a solemn sham and an impudent
mockery of the majesty of heaven.
Heart-rending is divinely
wrought and solemnly felt. It is a secret grief which is personally
experienced, not in mere form, but as a deep, soul-moving work of the Holy
Spirit upon the inmost heart of each believer. It is not a matter to be merely
talked of and believed in, but keenly and sensitively felt in every living
child of the living God. It is powerfully humiliating, and completely
sin-purging; but then it is sweetly preparative for those gracious
consolations which proud unhumbled spirits are unable
to receive; and it is distinctly discriminating, for it belongs to the
elect of God, and to them alone.
The text commands us to
rend our hearts, but they are naturally hard as marble: how, then, can this be done? We must take them to Calvary: a dying Saviour's voice rent the rocks once, and it is as powerful
now. O blessed Spirit, let us hear the death-cries of Jesus, and our hearts
shall be rent even as men rend their vestures in the day of lamentation.
Evening
"Be thou
diligent to know the state of thy flocks, and look well to thy
herds."—Proverbs 27:23.
Every wise merchant will
occasionally hold a stock-taking, when he will cast up his accounts, examine
what he has on hand, and ascertain decisively whether his trade is prosperous
or declining. Every man who is wise in the kingdom of heaven, will cry,
"Search me, O God, and try me"; and he will frequently set apart
special seasons for self-examination, to discover whether things are right
between God and his soul. The God whom we worship is a great heart-searcher;
and of old His servants knew Him as "the Lord which
searcheth the heart and trieth
the reins of the children of men." Let me stir you up in His name to make
diligent search and solemn trial of your state, lest you come short of the
promised rest. That which every wise man does, that which God Himself does with
us all, I exhort you to do with yourself this evening. Let the oldest saint
look well to the fundamentals of his piety, for grey heads may cover black
hearts: and let not the young professor despise the word of warning, for the
greenness of youth may be joined to the rottenness of hypocrisy. Every now and
then a cedar falls into our midst. The enemy still continues to sow tares among
the wheat. It is not my aim to introduce doubts and fears into your mind; nay,
verily, but I shall hope the rather that the rough wind of self-examination may
help to drive them away. It is not security, but carnal security, which we
would kill; not confidence, but fleshly confidence, which we would overthrow;
not peace, but false peace, which we would destroy. By the precious blood of
Christ, which was not shed to make you a hypocrite, but that sincere souls might
show forth His praise, I beseech you, search and look, lest at the last it be
said of you, "Mene, Mene,
Tekel: thou art weighed in the balances, and art
found wanting."