xxx. 19. _He will be very gracious unto thee at the voice
of thy cry._
+I. There are persons before me for whom this gracious assurance is
particularly suitable.+ It is most comforting--
1. _To all afflicted people._ You are depressed; things have gone
amiss; you do not prosper in business, or you are sickening in body,
or a dear one lies at home pining away. In your straits possibly you
may be ready to try some wrong way of helping yourself out of your
difficulties. Yield not to Satan. There is help in God for you now.
The Lord is not now visiting you in wrath; there is kindness in His
severity. By yielding yourself to God, and trusting Him in this your
evil plight, you will obtain deliverance (ver. 15).
2. _To those who are troubled on account of sin._ In order to escape
from sin and punishment, the very first thing with you is to come
back to your God whom you have offended, since He alone can pardon
you. There must be a turning of the face in repentance, and a looking
of the eye by faith unto God in Christ Jesus, or you will die in your
sins (H. E. I., 1479-1484). The natural tendency of your heart, even
when under a sense of sin, will be to keep from the Lord. Alas! you
will look at your sin again and again till you are ready to pine away
in despair, but you will not look to Christ Jesus and be saved.
Possibly you may conclude that there is no hope for you in better
things, and that therefore you had better enjoy such pleasures as may
be found in sin, and take your swing while you may. Do not believe
this lie of Satan. There is hope; you are in the land of mercy still.
You need do nothing to make the Lord propitious, He is love already;
you need not undergo penance, nor pass through grievous anguish of
spirit in order to render God more merciful, for His grace aboundeth.
Therefore we say to you, go to Him and test Him, for He will be
gracious to the voice of your cry.
3. _To backsliders filled with their own ways,_ who are alarmed and
distressed at their grievous departures from God. You may well be
grieved, for you have done much dishonour to the name of God amongst
the ungodly; you have pierced His saints with many sorrows. If you
were cast off for ever as a traitor and left to die as a son of
perdition, what could be said but that you were reaping the fruit of
your own ways? Yet the text rings in your ears at this time like a
clear silver bell, and its one note is grace. "He will be very
gracious unto thee" (Jer. iii. 14; H. E. I., 424).
4. _To all believers in Christ who are at all exercised in heart;_
and we are all in that condition at times. Even when by full
assurance we can read our title clear to-day, we become anxious as to
the morrow. If trials multiply, how will faith be able to stand? When
the days of weakness arrive, what shall we do in our old age? Behind
all stands the skeleton form of death. "What shall we do in the
swellings of Jordan?" We recollect how we ran with the footmen in our
former trials, and they wearied us, and we ask ourselves, "How shall
we contend with horsemen?" When standing, as we shall, on the brink
of eternity, will our religion thus prove a reality, or will our hope
dissolve like a dream? Such questions torment our souls. Let all such
fears vanish. In child-like confidence come to God, and go no more
from Him. Let this verse smile on you, and beckon you to your
Father's heart.
+II. The assurance here given is very firmly based.+ It rests--1. _On
the plain promise of God_ as given in the text, and in many similar
declarations scattered all over the Scriptures. 2. _On the gracious
nature of God._ It is His nature to be gracious. Judgment is His
strange work, but He delighteth in mercy. Nothing pleases Him more
than to pass by transgression, iniquity, and sin when we lie humble
and penitent before Him. 3. _On the prevalence of prayer._ This we
know, an experience of eight-and-twenty years has proved that God
heareth prayer; therefore we say to you, go to Him and test Him, for
He will be gracious to the voice of your cry.
+III. The well-confirmed assurance of the text should be practically
accepted at once.+ 1. _Let us renounce at once all earth-born
confidence._ What is your confidence? Your wealth? Your strong
common-sense? Your stalwart frame? What are you relying on? Will it
support you in death? Will it stand you in good stead in eternity? It
will not if it be anything short of the love of God in Christ Jesus
our Lord. Let us flee from all creature-confidence as from a filthy
thing, for it is base to the last degree to be trusting in another
creature and putting that creature into the place of the Creator.
2. _Refuse despair._ 3. _Try now the power of prayer and child-like
confidence in God._--_C. H. Spurgeon: Metropolitan Tabernacle
Pulpit,_ vol. xxiv. pp. 337-348.