The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, A Paradox, a sermon
intended for reading on Lord's Day, November 4th,
1888, delivered by C.
H.
Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, on a
Thursday evening in the year 1886.
2 Corinthians 12, verse 10.
When I am weak, then am I strong.
The expression is paradoxical and seems somewhat singular,
yet it was the experience of the Apostle
Paul, a man of calm spirit, by no
means fanciful, a wise man, and far removed
from a fanatic.
It was the experience of one who was
led of the Spirit of God, and therefore
it was a gracious experience, the experience of
one who was a father in Israel, who
could safely bid us be imitators of him,
even as he imitated the Lord Jesus Christ,
and therefore it was a safe experience.
If we are weak, so was Paul.
And if, like him, we are strong in
our weakness, we shall be in the best
of company.
If the same things be seen in us
which were wrought in the Apostle of the
Gentiles, we may join with him in glorying
in infirmities, because the power of Christ doth
rest upon us.
And we may count ourselves happy that with
such a saint we can cry, When I
am weak, then am I strong.
Perhaps I can expound the text best if
I first turn it the other way up
and use it as a warning.
When I am strong, then am I weak.
Perhaps while thinking of the text thus turned
inside out, we shall be getting light upon
it to be used when we view it
with the right side outwards, and see that
when we are weak, then we are strong.
I am quite sure that some people think
themselves very strong, and are not so.
Their proud consciousness of fancied strength is the
indication of a terrible weakness.
We have among us certain persons who think
that they can do all that is needful
for their own salvation whenever they please to
do so.
They can perform all sorts of good works,
or at least quite enough to carry them
to heaven.
Their first idea is that they are to
be saved by their own doings, and they
really expect to be so saved.
They may admit that they have a few
faults and flaws in their character, but these
are so trifling as to be hardly worth
mentioning, and God Almighty is too merciful to
be very particular.
Their lives have been excellent, their tempers amiable,
their manners courteous, their spirit generous, and they
quite believe that by keeping on at the
same pace they will win the prize.
If they do not, who will?
The ship of their character is in fine
condition.
They have no leaks which the pumps cannot
keep down.
Their sails are not rent, and they hope
to sail into the haven of peace with
a glorious cargo of merit, having an abundance
entrance and hearing aloud, Well done, ah my
friend!
That consciousness of legal strength is a mere
delusion, and it will have to be taken
out of you.
There is no going to heaven that way
by self and the works of self.
Your error is a common one, but it
is fatal.
I have seen many epitaphs of persons placed
by the mistaken kindness of friends upon their
tombstones, which I felt sure have been sufficient
to shut them out of heaven if they
had been true.
These departed worthies do not appear to have
been sinners at all.
Their virtues were superlative, their faults non-existent.
Such wonderful people would appear from their epitaphs
to have flown up to the gates of
heaven upon the wings of their own virtues,
and to have entered there without a passport
of mercy as burgesses by their own right
of the new Jerusalem.
I wonder how they would behave themselves in
heaven if they were really admitted there.
All the rest are singing, We have washed
our robes and made them white in the
blood of the Lamb.
But these needed no washing, and so they
would be likely to strike up a little
song by themselves and sing, Our robes never
needed washing, we kept them white as snow.
What a discord that would create in the
music of the skies!
What a division of character and feeling would
be found among celestials!
I cannot see how there could be any
harmony of sentiment amongst sinners saved by grace,
and righteous ones who owe nothing to mercy,
nothing to the atoning sacrifice.
Now my strong and virtuous hear, you are
under a grave delusion.
There is a great similarity between your talk
and the talk of that religious individual who
went up to the temple in our Savior's
days, and standing before the thrice holy God,
dared to say, God, I thank Thee that
I am not as other men are.
He was not justified that day, nor will
you be.
A poor tax-gatherer, despised by himself, and
an offcast from his own people, stood in
the temple at the same time, and all
that he dared to say was, God, be
merciful to me a sinner.
This unworthy sinner went to his house justified,
while the other worthy person was not accepted.
If you think yourself strong enough to procure
heaven by your own efforts, you are ignorantly
insulting the cross of Christ.
For you seem to insinuate that your virtues
can avail you without Jesus.
If you really mean this, there is more
venom of rebellion against God in your self
-righteousness than in the outward vice of those
who make no pretense to godliness.
For you to put your works in the
place of Jesus is a blasphemy against the
Savior's blood and righteousness.
Why needed Christ to die if men could
save themselves?
Why need he bleed upon the cross if
your merits will suffice to gain you a
place among the blessed?
There is a fatal weakness in the claim
of that man who thinks himself strong enough
to force his own passage to the throne
of God.
That weakness lies in the pride which insults
the crucified, the disloyalty which prefers itself to
the royal Savior.
Perish the virtue as it ought abhorred, and
the fool with it who insults his Lord.
Listen to me a moment and quit your
fancied strength.
You, my dear, cannot keep the law of
God, for you have already broken it.
How can you preserve a crystal vase entire
when you have already dashed it into atoms?
You must now be saved by the merits
and the strength of another or not at
all, for your own merit is out of
question through past failure.
That strength of yours upon which you dote
so much is perfect weakness.
May the Lord show you this and make
you faint at heart on that account, for
then you shall be strong with real and
saving strength.
Now your imaginary strength is making you really
weak, and that boasted merit of yours is
shutting you out from true righteousness.
He that is strong in the notion of
merit is weak even to utter folly before
the God of truth.
Yes, we hear you reply.
There is a gospel way of salvation.
We know that there is, for you preach
it continually.
You tell us that men must repent and
believe the gospel, that they must be renewed
in the spirit of their minds and must
both overcome sin and follow after holiness.
Yes, I do all that.
But what do you say to it?
Is it really so that you find here
a ground for your own strength?
Do you say, I feel that I can
repent whenever I please and believe in Jesus
when I choose?
Ah, then I must assure you that when
you are strong in that way, you are
weak.
I never yet knew anybody repent who gloried
in his own power to repent.
I never yet knew a man heartbroken for
sin who boasted that he could break his
own heart when and where he pleased.
What cries one?
Surely I can believe in Jesus Christ when
I please.
I have not denied that statement, have I?
But I tell you that your notion of
power to believe is your weakness, and I
would rather by half hear your cry with
deep solemnity.
Oh, that God would give me faith.
Lord, help my unbelief.
Your sense of inability to believe in Christ
would be a far better token for good
in my judgment than your present flippant talk
about believing when you like.
Men who are in earnest talk not so.
Whatever their strength may be, they find it
little enough in the hour of need.
I beg to assure you that I have
never known a man believe in Jesus who
trusted that he could so believe, for his
trust in his own believing kept him from
trusting the Jesus.
But I have known many a poor, struggling
soul lie at the cross foot and say,
Lord, help me to look to Jesus and
live, and God has helped him to give
that look in which there is eternal life.
While he has been praying his prayer, yes,
his weeping prayer has had in it that
very look to Jesus for which he was
pleading.
His sense of inability to believe has made
him look to Jesus for believing, and he
has found it in him.
You say that you can turn your heart
towards God whenever you please.
I am not going into any dispute with
you about your assertion nor the doctrine which
is supposed to support you in your profession
of strength, but I will say this, that
your idea of having personal strength with which
to purify and renew your own heart, your
idea that you can create in yourself a
right spirit, your idea that you can raise
yourself from your death in sin is to
me a prophecy of much evil for yourself.
Where self is conspicuous, I see an omen
of mischief.
I see no good in this fine opinion
of yourself.
But if I heard you cry, create in
me a clean heart, O God.
If I heard you say, Lord, quicken me
out of my death in sin, if I
saw you lying down before the Most High
and praying, turn me and I shall be
turned, I should have a far brighter hope
for you.
In your weakness you would become strong, but
in your present strength I am sure I
see a great weakness which is likely to
be your ruin.
O dear hearts, your best friend does not
lie within your own doors.
Your hope for better things shines yonder at
the right hand of God, where the living
Saviour has all power given to him in
heaven and in earth.
Sinner, if you grow no sweeter flowers than
the dunghill of your own nature can nourish,
you will die amid poisonous weeds.
If you never drink a better water than
the filthy well of your own heart will
yield, you will perish of thirst or of
a deadly draught.
Another and a better helper than one born
in your house must come this way.
Help must be laid upon one that is
mighty, exalted of the Lord out of the
people and endowed with divine power and Godhead,
for only such a Saviour, infinitely good and
great, can save a soul so lost as
yours.
When you get down, down, down into utter
weakness, then you will be strong, because then
you will rest upon the Lord's salvation.
But as you are strong in your thoughts
of yourself, you are kept from Jesus and
our weakness itself.
So far I have spoken by way of
warning to unconverted people.
I desire now to say a word to
those who profess to be Christians, and let
us hope are so.
But they are, in a measure, erring in
the same way as those to whom I
have spoken.
They are remarkably strong.
At least in their own esteem, they are
very Samsons, although others fear that the Philistines
will capture them.
By this token, may they know their own
weakness, even by this, that they think themselves
strong.
First, many are wonderfully strongest in knowledge.
They know almost everything.
If in any department they are a little
short, they make up for it by knowing
so much more in another direction.
If they are too narrow here, they overlap
there.
They are knowing men, and need no man
to tell them so.
They are instructed in the faith from pole
to pole.
They know both that which is afar off
and that which is nigh.
An argument is a pleasure to them.
They go into company where the eternal verities
are denied, and feel a delight in taking
sides.
They will sit where the vital simplicities of
God's word are set up like marks for
boys to throw at, and they like the
amusement, for it exercises their knowing faculty, and
gives them a chance of showing their mental
power.
They are not children, but quite able to
think for themselves.
They are not credulous, but amazingly clear-headed
and cultured.
I have noticed that these fine gentlemen have
been the first to deny the faith, and
to fall into all manner of heresies.
Do you wonder?
Those who are so very sure are always
the most uncertain.
I could instant some that had such confidence
in themselves that they would have argued with
the very fiend of hell on any question,
for they felt that not even satanic craft
could conquer them.
But at this present moment the Prince of
Darkness holds them in his power.
They hold no controversy with the devil now,
for they are very largely agreed with him
in assailing the gospel of God's grace.
They have gone entirely over to the denial
of everything that is gracious and holy and
scriptural, and the main cause of their apostasy
is their own invincible self-confidence.
They were so strong that they became weaker
than others.
O brethren, when we are very wise in
our own esteem, we are bordering upon fools,
even if we have not already entered into
that company.
When we tremblingly sit at Jesus' feet to
learn everything fresh and fresh from Him, when
we shudder at anything that questions His deity
or lures His sacrifice, when we shut up
a book and cast it from us because
we feel that it pollutes us with unbelief,
then we are wise and strong.
When the word of the Lord is enough,
then are we in the way of wisdom
and strength.
The man of one book is proverbially a
terrible man, but the man of ten thousand
books, who can baffle all adversaries and foil
all foes, shall soon lie wounded on the
plain if he be not slain outright.
Let us take heed unto ourselves that we
fall not through being headstrong or strong in
the head, which is much the same thing.
Again, I have noticed some professedly Christian people
wonderfully strong through experience.
Their experience has been very extensive, and the
knowledge it has brought them they consider to
be specially profound, and consequently they are not
afraid of temptation, for they feel that they
are too wise to be entrapped.
They are so experienced now, that things which
young people ought not to think of, they
can do with impunity, so they foolishly dream.
They can go just so far and then
stop, for they are fitted with the patent
brakes of prudence.
They are such good mountain climbers that they
can stand on the edge of a precipice
and look over and even hang over without
fear of their ever being giddy and falling
over.
Of course, they would not advise other people
to go quite so far as they may
safely go, but then what is temptation to
other men is no temptation to them.
Their vessel is so tight and trim, and
they understand navigation so perfectly that they rather
like a tempest than not, just to show
how well their vessel can behave in a
storm.
Ah me, when you next read the list
of wrecks, you may expect to see the
name of their ship among the castaways.
Old birds may not be caught with chaff,
but they can be shot with a gun.
No one is out of danger, and no
one is more in danger than the man
who is carnally secure.
Those who feel that their experience, be it
what it may, only teaches them that the
farther they can keep the temptation, the better.
These are in a better state.
When experience drives us to pray with emphasis,
the prayer, lead us not into temptation, then
it is working aright, and the idea of
strength and wisdom lurks an awfully perilous weakness,
but in a sense of personal weakness dwells
a real strength.
If you are extremely jealous, conscientious, and watchful,
many will tell you how weak you are,
but you are in reality a strong man
because of your fear to encounter evil influences.
In that fear lies one essential element of
holy strength, while he that rather braves temptation,
because he feels so strong, shall find it
may be to his everlasting sorrow how great
his weakness is.
He that shuns the appearance of evil because
of conscious weakness shall find therein his security
and strength.
Oh, let none of us, because we are
getting gray, suppose that we are invulnerable to
sin.
Let us not dream that because we have
been church members so many years, or even
because we have sustained a long and youthful
ministry, we are therefore beyond gunshot of the
enemy, or without necessity to seek daily strength
for daily duty.
My brethren, we cannot perform the smallest duty
aright apart from the help of God, and
neither can we be secure against even the
grossest sin apart from the perpetual guard of
Him that keepeth Israel.
If we in our self-conceit write ourselves
down among the mightiest and forget our entire
dependence upon heavenly grace, we may be left
to prove by unhappy experience that pride goeth
before destruction and a haughty spirit before a
fall.
Let us note another point.
I have known certain Christian people who thought
themselves singularly strong in the matter of wisdom
and prudence.
They have been gifted with clear insight and
a measure of shrewdness, and have therefore felt
that their judgment on most subjects was that
of an umpire.
Have you ever noticed that the raw material
of a very grossly foolish person is a
cautious individual?
The cunning are the readiest dupes when craft
is busy in taking its prey.
So, too, a wise man is needed if
there is to be worst form of folly.
If we were called upon to select a
man who, as to his life as a
whole, perpetrated the greatest folly, we should mention
Solomon, and yet he was the wisest of
men.
Yes, the cream of wisdom when curdled makes
the worst of folly.
Was ever man so insanely enthusiastic in vain
pursuits as this master of all knowledge?
Then, brethren, whenever we feel sure of our
own superior intelligence, let us suspect ourselves of
weakness.
Let the same fear come upon us when
we feel sure about our way, so sure
that we think we need not pray about
it or in any manner wait for divine
direction.
Beware of those matters in which you think
you cannot err.
Men who have been wise in great difficulties
have blundered fearfully where all was simple.
The Israelites thought that the men who came
to them begging for a league of brotherhood
could not deceive them.
It must be safe to be on good
terms with those interesting strangers.
Why, look, their shoes are well nigh worn
from their feet and patched and clouded to
the last degree.
Their clothes, which we doubt not were new
when they left their distant homes, are now
threadbare, and their biscuit, which they took fresh
from the oven, is still with age.
It is evident upon the face of it
that they must have come from a very
remote part of the world, and therefore a
treaty with them will not interfere with the
divine command.
There can be no need to pray about
a case so clear.
Thus the Gibeonites overreach them, as we also
shall be overreached when we are so exceedingly
sure of our cause.
Brethren, let us not be so wise as
to dispense with our heavenly counselor and guide.
Would not that be the height of madness?
It is a salutary thing to feel that
your case requires you to trust the helm
of your ship with the divine pilot.
It is even a blessed thing to feel
that you are shut up to faith and
must by absolute trust in God throw the
responsibility of your action upon him.
I will give you an instance.
Abraham, the father of the faithful, is placed
in a peculiar position.
God has commanded him to take his son
Isaac and offer him for a sacrifice.
Here is a terrible puzzle.
Here was enough to stagger any human mind.
Surely it could not be right for a
father to slay his son.
How could it be wise to kill the
son in whom all the promises of God
were vested?
The more you think of the case from
a father's standpoint, the more it will perplex
you.
Abraham could not make anything out of it
by his judgment, but he met it all
by faith.
All that he could say to Isaac was,
my son, God will provide himself a lamb.
He was thus saying to himself, the Lord
will get me out of this difficulty.
He had no wisdom with which to conjecture
how the affair would end.
He had to cease from guessing and just
trust in his God.
Abraham made no mistake in this.
Oh, that we could do the same.
Observe that same Abraham when he goes down
to Egypt.
His wife is exceedingly beautiful, and he fears
that the king of Egypt will kill him
in order to obtain his wife.
What will he do?
I can see a great many ways in
which he might have warded off that evil.
He was not called upon to go to
Egypt at all if he thereby risked his
wife's honor, or if he must go, he
should have gone boldly acknowledging his wife and
trusting both her and himself with the Lord.
Instead of that, the patriarch begins by inducing
Sarah to join with him in equivocation.
Say thou art my sister.
She was in some sense his sister, but
it was using a word in a double
sense for a deceitful purpose, and it was
a pitiful thing for Abraham to do, nor
was it a prudent scheme after all.
In fact, it was the cause of the
very trouble which he sought to prevent.
Sarah would not have been taken away from
Abraham at all if Pharaoh had known that
she was his wife, so that the wise
was snared by his own craftiness.
The Lord graciously delivered him, but in the
very act left a root of bitterness behind
to be his future plague.
Pharaoh gave to him women servants, and I
doubt not among the rest was Hagar, who
became the object of sin and the source
of sorrow to the household.
In the fancied strength of Abraham, by which
he emulated the craft of other Orientals, he
displayed his weakness.
But in the other case, where no wit
or wisdom could assist him, he cast himself
upon the Lord, and in his weakness he
behaved like the grand man that he really
was.
Brothers, let us confess ourselves fools that we
may be wise, for otherwise we shall fall
into that other condition of professing ourselves wise
and becoming fools.
Let us ignore our wisdom, if we have
any.
God alone is wise.
He that trusteth either his own heart or
head is a fool.
Lean not to thine own understanding, but lean
wholly upon the Lord, so shalt thou be
established.
Further, dear friends, we shall often find that
our strength will lie in patience.
In extreme weakness, which yields itself up to
the will of God without the power or
will to murmur, we sang in our hymn
just now, And when it seems no chance
nor change from grief can set me free,
hope finds its strength in helplessness, and patient
waits on thee.
I am sure that in reference to power,
either to do or to suffer rightly, we
are not strong when we compliment ourselves upon
our ability, and we are strong when, under
a sense of absolute inability, we depend wholly
upon God.
That sermon preached in the glory of our
oratory turned out to be mere husks for
swine, while that discourse which we delivered in
weakness with a humble hope that God would
use it proved to be royal meat for
the Lord's chosen.
That work which you performed in the vigor
of your unquestioned talent came to nothing, while
that quiet act which you washed with your
tears and perfumed with your prayers will live
and yield you sheaves.
Creature's strength brings forth nothing which has life
in it.
Only the seed which the Creator puts into
the hand of our weakness will produce a
harvest.
It is well to be nothing, it is
better still to be less than nothing.
We ought to dread a sense of capacity,
for it will render us incapable, but a
sense of utter incapacity apart from God is
a fit preparation for being used by the
Lord.
Unto them that have no might He increaseth
strength, and so it is in bearing as
well as acting.
If we say concerning sickness, I shall never
be impatient.
I can bear it like a stoic.
What of that?
You will then have done no more than
many have done before you with no great
gain to themselves or to others.
But if, bowing your head before the Lord,
you wait His sovereign will and say, Lord,
help me.
If thy left hand shall smite me, let
thy right hand sustain me.
I am willing to drink this bitter cup,
saying, not as I will, but as thou
wilt.
Lord, help me.
You shall bear up triumphantly and come out
of the furnace refined to the praise and
the glory of your God.
When you fancy that you are strong to
suffer, you will fail.
But in conscious weakness you will be enabled
to play the man.
I have now done with the text as
I have turned it upside down.
May God bless it to any here who
feel high and mighty by causing it to
put them in their proper place.
Now let us take our text the right
way upwards.
When I am weak, then am I strong.
When and then are the two pivots of
the text, the hinges upon which it turns.
When I am weak, what does that mean?
It means when the believer is consciously weak,
when he painfully feels and distinctly recognizes that
he is weak, then he is strong.
In truth, we are always weak, whether we
know it or not.
But when we not only believe this to
be the fact, but see it to be
the fact, then it is that we are
strong.
When it is forced home upon us that
we are less than nothing and vanity, when
our very soul echoes and reechoes that word
without me, you can do nothing.
Then it is that we are strong when
he is growingly weak.
Yes, for he sees his own weakness more
and more clearly as he advances.
As he grows stronger in faith, he is
much more conscious of the weakness of the
flesh.
I talked about my weakness from this platform
five and twenty years ago, but I stand
here and tremble under it now to a
far greater degree than I did in my
younger and more vigorous time.
I knew it three and thirty years ago
when I first spoke to you, but I
did not know it as I know it
now.
I was then weak and I owned it,
but I am now weak and grown about
it almost involuntarily.
Yes, and I sometimes sing because of my
weakness, learning to glory in my infirmities because
the power of Christ doth rest upon me.
When we are growingly weak, when we become
weaker and weaker, when we seem to faint
into a deeper swoon than ever as to
our own strength, till death is written upon
every power that we once thought we had
and we feel that we can do absolutely
nothing apart from the Holy Spirit, then we
are strong indeed.
We are strong too when we feel painfully
weak.
It is well when we mourn because we
are so weak and cry out to ourselves,
my weakness, my weakness, woe unto me.
When I would do good, evil is present
with me.
When I would rise to heaven, the body
of this death detains me.
I would do great things for God, but
I have no might to last for my
weakness.
At such a time we are really rising
and are bringing most glory to God.
These are growing pains, agonies such as none
know but the truly and growingly spiritual.
A painful weakness is strength.
It may seem a paradox, but it is
true.
We are strong when we are contritely weak,
when we confess that much of our weakness
is our fault, a weakness which we ought
to have overcome, even then we have in
that weakness a real strength.
The sort of weakness that makes a man
say, I cannot be any stronger, I am
doing my best, is not strength but folly.
But that weakness which makes you lament your
failures and deplore your shortcomings has in it
a holy stimulus and force.
That weakness which makes you dissatisfied with all
you are and all you do is goading
you on to better and stronger things.
If you feel that even when most earnest
you have not prayed as you could wish,
there is evidently strength in your desires and
your desires are prayers.
If after any service you pour forth showers
of penitential tears because the service was imperfect,
there is evidently a strong soul of obedience
within you.
When you can neither repent nor believe nor
love as you wish to do, you are
repenting, believing and loving with a strength which
is more true than apparent.
It is the will with which we act
which is the strength of the action.
And when the will is so powerful that
it makes us mourn because we cannot find
how to perform its bidding, then we are
strong according to the divine measurement of strength.
Contrite weakness is spiritual strength.
When a man is thoroughly weak, not only
partially, but altogether weak, then he is strong.
When apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, he
is utter weakness and nothing more, then it
is that he is strong.
Let me persuade you to make a full
confession of weakness to the Lord.
Say, Lord, I cannot do what I ought
to do.
I cannot do what I want to do.
I cannot do what I used to do.
I cannot do what other people do.
I cannot do what I mean to do.
I cannot do what I am sure I
shall do.
I cannot do what I feel impelled to
do.
And over this sinful weakness, I mourn.
And then add, Lord, I long to serve
thee perfectly, yet I cannot do it.
Unless thou help me, I can do nothing
aright.
There will be no good in my actions,
my words, my feelings, or my desires, unless
thou continue to fill me with thine holy
energy.
Lord, help me.
Brother, you are strong while you plead in
that fashion.
You can do all things through Christ who
strengtheneth you, and he will strengthen you now
that you are emptied of self.
How true it is.
When I am weak, then am I strong.
I have brought out the when.
Now lend me your ears and hearts just
for a minute while I bring out the
then.
Then am I strong.
When is that?
Why, a man is strong when he is
consciously weak, because now he has reached the
truth.
He really is weak, and if he does
not know that he is so, he is
under the influence of falsehood.
Now, a lie is a thing of weakness.
Lying strength is all fluff and foam, a
mere appearance, a mockery, a delusion.
Nothing hinders from getting the reality like contentment
with a mere appearance.
The true heart is heartily sick of shows
and shams, and it cries, Lord, help me
to get rid of these shadows.
Help me to come at the truth.
Help me to deal with realities.
When you are made to feel your utter
weakness, you are on sure ground of truth,
unpleasant truth, no doubt, yet sure truth.
You are now on safe ground touching fundamentals
and making sure work.
What you now do will be soundly done.
All the while that we keep building on
a sandy, made-up foundation, we are piling
up that which will in all probability come
down even faster than we put it up.
While the rotten rubbish remains on the spot,
you cannot do anything worth doing.
But if that accumulation can be carted away,
there will seem to be a great hole.
But you will get down to the real
bottom and get a foundation, and then what
you build will be worth putting up because
it will stand.
Therefore, a man becomes strong when he is
consciously weak, because he is on the truth
and it is not being flattered by false
hopes.
Next he will be strong because he will
only go with a commission to support him.
He will not be eager to run without
being sent.
He says within himself when he proposes a
service to himself, No, I am too weak
to undertake anything of my own head.
He will wait for a call.
This is not the kind of man that
will climb up into a pulpit and from
a dizzy brain pour out nonsense.
He will not crave to lead, for he
feels that he needs much help even to
follow.
He feels himself too weak to set up
for a master in Israel.
This is not the kind of man that
will venture into argument with skeptics for the
fun or for the glory of the thing.
Oh no, he is too weak for that.
He says, If I am called to defend
the faith, I will do it in God's
strength, hoping that it will be given me
in the same hour what I shall speak.
If I am called to preach, I will
preach and nobody shall stop me, for the
Lord will be my mouth.
But you see, until the man is conscious
of his own weakness, he will run without
being sent and there is nobody so weak
as that man.
No one so weak as the man who
has no commission from God and no promise
of help from him.
Such a man will be thinking of this
and thinking of that and running for this,
that and the other, because he has a
lot of waste energy which he wants to
use somewhere, somehow.
Could we once see him consciously weak, we
should hear him say, Here am I, send
me.
In answer to the question, whom shall I
send?
Then he would not go a warfare at
his own charges, but he would draw upon
the all-sufficiency of God and find himself
equal to every emergency.
The man who is consciously weak is strong
next, because of the holy caution that he
will be sure to use.
He will be on his guard, because he
does not feel able to cope with adversaries.
He will ask for a convoy for his
little bark, for he is aware of pirates.
If this weak man has to pass through
the valley of the shadow of death, depend
upon it, he will carry in his hand
the weapon of all prayer, like a drawn
sword.
The man that has strength goes hurrying on
over hedge and ditch and soon comes into
mischief, but the consciously weak pilgrim keeps to
the high road and travels carefully, and hence
he is strong.
Fear is a notably good housekeeper.
She may not keep a luxurious table, but
she always locks the doors at night and
takes care of all under her charge.
Holy caution begets prudence, and prudence, by fostering
vigor and crying for heavenly aid, becomes strength.
Moreover, when a man is weak, then is
he strong, because he is sure to pray,
and prayer is power.
The man who laments his weakness is sure
to cry to the strong for strength, the
more his weakness presses on him, the more
will he pray.
What he can do without his God, he
will do without his God, but when his
own weakness becomes utter and entire, and he
is ready to perish, then he turns unto
his Lord and is made strong.
The utterly weak cry out unto God as
nobody else does.
He is too weak to play at praying.
He groans, he sighs, he weeps.
In his abject weakness he prevails as Jacob
did.
He wrestled all night, but now at last
the angel has touched the hollow of his
thigh and made his sinew shrink, and he
cannot wrestle any longer.
What will he do now?
He falls, and as he falls he grasps
his antagonist and holds him fast, crying, I
will not let thee go except thou bless
me.
As much as to say, I cannot wrestle
with thee, I cannot try another fall, but
I can and I will hold thee fast.
The dead weight of my weakness makes me
hold thee as an anchor holds a ship,
and I will not let thee go except
thou bless me.
The weaker a man is in himself, the
stronger he is in prayer.
If he makes use of his weakness as
an appealing argument, Lord, if I were strong,
thou mightest leave me.
Do not leave me, for I am weakness
itself.
I am the feeblest child in all thy
family.
Leave me not, neither forsake me.
If thou leavest any, leave not thy poor
dying infant that can hardly wail out its
griefs.
Weakness, as a plea with God in prayer,
becomes a source of strength.
When we are weak, we are strong again,
because then we are driven away from self
to God.
All strength is in God, and it is
well to come to the one solitary storehouse
and source of might.
There is no power apart from God.
As long as you and I look to
the creature, we are looking to a cracked,
broken cistern that holds no water.
But when we know that it is broken,
and that there is not a drop of
water in it, then we hasten to the
great fountain and wellhead.
While we rest in any measure upon self
or the creature, we are standing with one
foot on the sand.
But when we get right away from human
nature, because we are too weak to have
the least reliance upon self whatever, then we
have both feet on the rock, and this
is safe standing.
If thou believest in the living God, and
if all thy known existence is by believing,
thou livest at a mighty rate.
But if thou believest in God in a
measure, and if at the same time thou
trustest thyself in a measure, thou art living
at a dying rate, and half the joy
which is possible to thee is lost.
Thou art taking bread with one hand and
poison with the other.
Thou art feeding thy soul with substance and
with shadow, and that makes a sorry mixture.
When the shadow is clean, taken away, and
thou hast nothing but the substance, then art
thou a strong man, fed upon substantial meat.
Last of all, dear friends, I believe that
when a man is weak, he becomes strong
to a large extent, because his weakness compels
him to concentrate all his faculties.
A sense of weakness brings out all the
forces of a resolute spirit and leads him
to call in all the energy within his
reach.
When I have preached to you in extreme
weakness, as I have often done, when I
have afterwards read the sermon, I have been
much more satisfied with it than I have
been with others in which I felt more
pleasure at the time.
God helps us most when we most need
His help, and besides that, the man himself
is by his weakness forced to use himself
right up.
When a man feels himself to be rather
a large vessel, he puts in the tap
somewhere near the top, and only a small
supply flows out to the people.
But when he is in his own feelings,
like a poor little cask with only a
small supply in it, he puts the tap
right down at the bottom and permits all
that is in the barrel to flow forth.
Many a poor weak brother, who says all
the little that he knows, gives forth more
instruction than the learned divine who only favors
his people with a small portion of his
vast stores.
When a man in serving God spends himself
to the last farthing, he will often far
more enrich his ears than the man of
ten talents who uses his resources with a
prudent parsimony.
Dear brother, it will often be a good
thing for you to feel, now God helping
me, I must do my very utmost at
this time.
I have so little ability that every faculty
within me must be wide awake and serve
God at its best.
Thus your weakness will arouse you and set
you on fire, and by the blessing of
God it will be the means of gaining
you strength.
Very well then, let us pick up our
tools and go to our work rejoicing, feeling,
well, I may be weaker or I may
be stronger in myself, but my strength is
in my God.
If I should ever become stronger, then I
must pray for a deeper sense of weakness,
lest I become weak through my strength.
And if I should ever become weaker than
I am, then I must hope and believe
that I am really becoming stronger in the
Lord.
Whether I am weak or strong, what matters
it?
He who never fails and never changes will
perfect his strength in my weakness, and this
is glory to me.
Amen.