Now, of course, there is no doubt that what the chronicler meant to
describe by the phrase, 'seeking the Lord,' was largely the mere
external acts of ritual worship, the superficial turning from idols to
a purely external recognition of God as the God of Israel. But while
there may have been nothing deeper than a change in the nominal object
of nominal worship, so far as many were concerned, no doubt a very
real turning of heart to God underlay the external change in many
other cases, of which the destruction of idols and the renewed
observance of the form of Jehovah's worship were the consequence and
sign. That turning of mind, will, and affection towards God must be
ours if we are to be among those wise and happy seekers who are sure
to find that which--or rather Him whom--they seek and to rest in Him
whom they find. That search is not after a lost treasure, nor does it
imply ignorance of where its object is to be found. We seek that which
we know, and which we may be assured of finding. Therefore there need
be no tremors of uncertainty in our quest, and the blessedness of the
search is as real as, though different from, the blessedness of the
possession which ends it. The famous saying which prefers the search
after, to the possession of truth, is more proud than wise; but the
comparison which it institutes is so far true that there is a joy in
the aspiration after and the efforts towards truth only less joyous
than that which attends its attainment. But truth divorced from God is
finite and may pall, become familiar and lose its radiance, like a
gathered flower; and hence the preference for the search is
intelligible though one-sided. But God does not pall, and the more we
find Him the more we delight in Him; the highest bliss is to find Him,
the next highest is to seek Him; and, since seeking and finding Him
are never wholly separate, these kindred joys blend their lights in
the experience of all His children.
But our text lays emphasis on the whole-heartedness of the people's
seeking of God. The search must be earnest and engaged in with the
whole energy of our whole being, if any blessing is to come from it.
Why! one reason why the great mass of professing Christians make so
little of their religion is because they are only half-hearted in it.
If you divide a river into two streams the force of each is less than
half the power of the original current; and the chances are that you
will make a stagnant marsh where there used to be a flowing stream.
'All in all, or not at all,' is the rule for life, in all departments.
It is the rule in daily business. A man that puts only half himself in
his profession or trade, while the other half of his wits is gone
woolgathering and dreaming, is predestined from all eternity to fail.
The same is true about our religion. If you and I attend to it as a
kind of by-occupation; if we give the balance of our time and the
superfluity of our energy, after we have done a hard day's work--say,
an hour upon a Sunday--to seeking God, and devote all the rest of the
week to seeking worldly prosperity, it is no wonder if our religion
languishes, and is mainly a matter of forms, as it is with such hosts
of people that call themselves Christians.
Oh! dear brethren, I do believe there is more unconscious unreality in
the average Christian man's endeavour to be a better Christian than
there is in almost anything else in the world:--
'One foot on sea, and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.'
That is why so many of us know nothing of a progressive strengthening
of our faith, and an increasing conquest of ourselves, and a firmer
grasp of God, and a fuller realisation of the blessedness of walking
in His ways.
'They sought Him with all their heart.' That does not mean, remember,
that there are to be no other desires, for it is a great mistake to
pit religion against other things which are meant to be its
instruments and its helps. We are not required to seek nothing else in
order to seek God wholly. He demands no impossible and fantastic
detachment of ourselves from the ordinary and legitimate occupations,
affections, and duties of human life, but He does ask that the
dominant desire after Him should be powerful enough to express itself
through all our actions, and that we should seek for God in them, and
for them in God.
Whilst thus we are to give the right interpretation to that
whole-heartedness in our seeking God, on which the text lays stress,
do not let us forget that the one token of it which the text specifies
is, casting out our idols. There must be detachment if there is to be
attachment. If some climbing plant, for instance, has twisted itself
round the unprofitable thorns in the hedge, the gardener, before he
can get it to go up the support that it is meant to encircle, has
carefully to detach it from the stays to which it has wantonly clung,
taking care that in the process he does not break its tendrils and
destroy its power of growth. So, to train our souls to cleave to God,
and to grow up round the great Stay that is provided for us, there is
needed, as an essential part of the process, the voluntary, conscious,
conscientious, and constant guarding of ourselves from the vagrancies
of our desires, which send out their shoots away from Him; and when
the objects of these become idols, then there is nothing for it but
that, like Asa and his people, we should hew them to pieces and make a
bonfire of them; and then renew our covenant before God. I desire to
press that upon you and upon myself. The heart must be emptied of
baser liquors, if the new wine of the Kingdom is to be poured into it.
True it is, of course--and thank God for it!--that the most powerful
agent in effecting that detachment of ourselves from lower things is
our fruition of higher. It is when God comes into the temple that
Dagon falls on the threshold. It is when a new affection begins to
spring in the heart that old loves are thrust out of it. But whilst
that is true, it is also true that the two processes run on
simultaneously; and that whilst, on the one hand, if we are ever to
overcome our love of the world it must be through the love of God, on
the other hand, if we are ever to be confirmed in a whole-hearted love
of God, it must be through our conquest of our love of the world.
'Unite my heart to fear Thy name' was the profound prayer of the old
Psalmist; and the 'heart,' according to Old Testament usage, is the
central fountain from which flow all the streams of conscious life. To
seek Him with the whole heart is to engage the whole self in the
quest, and that is the only kind of seeking which has the certainty of
success.