098. One Day, As I Was Passing In The Field, Having Some Dashes On My Conscience, This Fell Upon...

XCVIII ‘One Day, As I Was Passing In The Field, Having Some Dashes On My Conscience, This Fell Upon My Soul: Thy Righteousness Is In Heaven.’

LOOK at that tinker of Bedford as he leaves the open road and scrambles through the hedge into the lonely field. Why has the man such a hunted look this morning? And why does he turn his back so sullenly on his own house and on all the walks of his fellow-townsmen? Look well at him as he sets out to pursue his calling this morning with his satchel of tools on his shoulder and takes his solitary way across the lonely fields and through the dark and silent woods. What is the matter this morning with John Bunyan who was wont to frequent the roads and the streets of Bedford and to salute so genially every man he met? It is his conscience. It is his dashed conscience. He does not tell us what exactly it was that had so dashed his conscience and had so darkened his heart that morning. And thus it is that we are left to guess for ourselves what it may have been. Well, it may have been this. He may have dashed his wife’s heart that morning at breakfast by his cruel words to her. Or he may have dashed the heart of his blind child by his unkind impatience with her, till he left both his wife and his child in tears together. Or he may have lost his temper and let loose his tongue on some apprentice or some fellowworkman of his. Or again he may have been guilty of some great outbreak of ill-will against some other tinker in the town. Or again it may have been some of his ‘seven abominations’ that had so broken out that morning as to leave his conscience one mass of remorse and wounds and blood. I have my own guess what it was, but I cannot be absolutely sure. At any rate, there he is stumbling through the ploughed field, laden to the earth with that millstone of a satchel, and nigh unto death with those great dashes on his conscience. And then there was this also. As he stumbled on among the deep furrows of that lonely field that terrible breakdown of his religious life at home that morning set him a-questioning as to the reality of his conversion, and as to the truth of all his professions of religion. ‘I must have been deceiving myself all along,’ he said to himself.

‘And I must have been deceiving my minister and all the devout people of Bedford all along. For no man that had ever been truly born again could ever so misbehave himself, both to God and man, as I have again misbehaved myself this morning. No. I see now that I am a reprobate and a castaway as I so richly deserve to be.’ But the miserable man had scarcely said that to himself when suddenly this sentence fell from God on his soul:

‘Thy Righteousness is in Heaven. ‘Hear himself about it.’ Now, methought, withal, I saw, with the eyes of my soul, Jesus Christ at God’s Right Hand. There, I say, I saw my Righteousness; so that, wherever I was, or whatever I was a-doing, God could not say of me that He wanted my Righteousness; for, there it was just beside Him. I also saw, moreover, that it was not my good frame of heart that made my Righteousness better; nor yet my bad frame of heart that made my Righteousness worse. For, my Righteousness was Jesus Christ Himself: the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Now did my chains fall off my legs indeed. I was loosed from all my affliction and iron. My temptations also fled away. And now I went home that night rejoicing in the grace and in the love of God. O methought, Christ! Christ! There was nothing but Christ that was before my eyes. Because I could now look from myself to Him; and should reckon that all those graces of God, that now were but green on me, were yet but like those crack-groats and fourpence-halfpennies that rich men carry in their purses, when their gold is in their trunks at home! O yes: I saw that my gold was in my trunk at home! Even in Christ, my Lord and Saviour! Now Christ was all to me. He was all my Wisdom, all my Righteousness, all my Sanctification, and all my Redemption. Now could I see myself in heaven, and on earth, and both at once. In heaven by my Christ, by my Head, by my Righteousness, and by my Life: though on earth by my body or person.’

Now is there any man in this house this evening with a dashed conscience? What have you been doing, Sir? When was it, and where was it? Was it at breakfast this morning, or was it at dinner this afternoon? Was it an outburst of bitter anger and bad temper? Or was it your enmity at some innocent and unsuspecting man? Have you struck again at your neighbour with your wicked tongue or with your wicked pen? After all that both God and man have done for your soul have you gone back again as a dog to his vomit, and as a sow that is washed to her wallowing in the mire? No wonder then, that your conscience is dashed to pieces to-night. No wonder that you are avoiding the eyes of good men. No wonder that you are in such shame and despair. But God delights in mercy to miserable men like you. And He has been beforehand with His mercy to you. For, among other things, He has had Grace Abounding written for you. And as God’s much experienced servant hands down his golden book to you, he says to you, and to all his readers:

‘My children, Grace be with you, Amen. I have sent you here enclosed a drop of that honey which I have taken out of the carcase of a lion. I have eaten thereof myself also, and I have been much refreshed thereby. This book of mine is something of a relation of the work of God upon my own soul; even from the very first till now. Wherein you may see my castings down, and my raisings up. For He woundeth, and His hands make whole. It is written in the Scriptures that the father to the children shall make known the truth of God. Yea, it was for this reason that I lay so long at Sinai, to see the fire, and the cloud, and the darkness, and the tempest, that I might fear the Lord all the days of my life on earth, and so tell of God’s wonderful works to the ears of my children.’

Now the one sure lesson for you out of all that of John Bunyan is this: God, who justifies the ungodly, and Jesus Christ, who is the sinner’s Righteousness, are both the very same in this house this evening as they were in that Bedford field that forenoon. The only difference is that you have taken John Bunyan’s place before God. John Bunyan is no longer in Bedford with such dashes on his conscience. He is now for ever with Christ and for ever like Christ. He is now where his Righteousness and his Sanctification have always been. And you are in his identical place in this house this Sabbath evening. Like him that forenoon your conscience is sorely dashed with your sins; sorely dashed with the re-awakened remembrance of old sins, as well as with the fresh dashes of new sins. When suddenly this same sentence falls on your soul: O chief of sinners! Do not despair, for thy Righteousness is in heaven! Now after that heavenly voice has fallen on your soul, all that you have got to do to-night is to believe it so as not to make God a liar about it. All that you have got to do to-night is to look up, and to keep on looking up, till like John Bunyan you clearly see with the eyes of your soul Jesus Christ at God’s right hand, and there representing you, and appearing for you, and transacting for you. All you have got to do to-night, and every day and every night till you die, is to see continually, and to believe continually, and to assure yourself continually, that it is not your good frame of heart that makes your Righteousness better, nor your bad frame of heart that makes your Righteousness worse. Now, if you believe and receive that and continue to believe and receive that — and you have the same right and title and command to believe that as Paul and Luther and Hooker and Bunyan had — then your chains also will fall off your legs. You will be loosed from all your affliction and iron. And all your temptations to be a boor and a brute at home and abroad will more and more flee away, till you will find yourself exclaiming continually with John Bunyan, O Christ! O Christ! O Christ! And till there will be nothing but Jesus Christ before your eyes. You are frightened to have your name coupled with the names of such saints as Paul and Luther and Hooker and Bunyan. And no wonder. But all the difference between those four great saints and you is this: they are all men of great spiritual genius, and you are in your own eyes a cheap and a commonplace sinner. And that is quite true. But then you have Paul himself to comfort you and to encourage you in that respect in a great passage of his where he says:

‘Not many wise men, not many noble, not many mighty are called. But base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen. And therefore of Him are you also in Christ Jesus — if you will only consent to have it so — who of God is made unto you, not Righteousness alone, but Wisdom, and Sanctification, and Redemption also. That, according as it is written, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.’

What a glorious ‘device’ is the gospel of our justification, — William Guthrie is always exclaiming in his Saving Interest. That Almighty God should devise and should discover to us such a way in order to show forth His holiness and His justice and His grace; and all working together into such a deep plot of divine wisdom! Yes, indeed, what a deep device! And how like God Himself in every respect! That, to begin with, He should place us sinful men under a law of His which is so holy, and which is so spiritual in its holiness, that no mortal man can, by any possibility, obey it so as to attain to eternal life by the obedience of it. A law so spiritual and so holy that we only break it the more hopelessly the more deeply we enter into it. And then that God should make His own Son, Jesus Christ, under that same holy and spiritual law, and that He should magnify the universally broken law, and make it honourable; should obey it and fulfil it in every thought and word and deed of His down to every jot and tittle of it. And should, both by His obedience and by His blood, finish for us what Paul by the Holy Ghost always calls the ‘Righteousness of God.’ And then that Jesus Christ should be made to us our immediate and everlasting Righteousness — what a ‘device’ of combined holiness and justice and grace is that! No wonder that Bunyan never ceased exclaiming: O Christ! O Christ! O Christ! And no wonder that Christiana exclaimed after Greatheart had expounded Christ’s righteousness to her: ‘O this is brave!’ she exclaimed. ‘Good Mercy, let us labour to keep this well in mind. And do you also, all my children, remember it all your days on earth.’ But with all that some of you will still say that you cannot believe it and receive it so as at all times to stay and rest your whole soul upon it. You cannot believe it, that the very next moment after some fresh outbreak of your deep-seated sinfulness you should have no more to do but just to look up to heaven and say: The Lord Jesus Christ, up there, is my complete Righteousness! You are concerned, for one thing, for God’s honour, and for the honour and for the authority of His holy law. And at other times you cannot be too much concerned about all that. But not now. Look up on the spot and claim Christ as your all-justifying righteousness, and leave God’s honour and the honour of His holy law in His own hands. You may depend upon it that both God and His Son have looked well to all that long before they had the gospel of your free and full and immediate and everlasting forgiveness preached to you. And more than that, as a matter of sure fact and of indisputable experience, God has had His great device of an imputed Righteousness vindicated by two thousand years of the holiest men on the face of the earth. No; you need not take fear for God and His holy law. For neither you nor any other divinely forgiven man will ever be found sinning that grace may abound. No; but you will always find yourself, in the hour and in the opportunity of temptation, instinctively and indignantly protesting and saying, God forbid! Shall I, who am dead to sin, live any longer therein? Just put this immense matter upon an immediate experiment. The next time you fall, inwardly or outwardly, look up that moment to your Righteousness in heaven; and see if that sight will not, in the end, wholly sanctify you as well as wholly justify you. It will; it most certainly will; if Paul is right in his Romans, and if Bunyan is right in his Grace Abounding, and if Hooker is right in his immortal sermon. Paul’s Romans you all know, and Hooker’s sermon you have all heard of, and Bunyan’s experience you are every Sabbath evening coming more and more to know. But Luther, Paul’s best gospel scholar, you only know by name as yet. Take, then, this taste of the great Reformer before you go home. He is writing to an Augustinian monk, and he says:

‘I should be very glad, my dear Spentein, to know what is the state of your soul. Are you not clean tired of working out your own righteousness? In our day pride seduces many, and especially those who labour, with all their might, to make themselves righteous. When you were living with me, you were in that fatal error, and so was I. And I am still struggling against that so fatal error. I have not even yet entirely triumphed over it. O, my dear brother, learn to know Christ, and Him crucified! Learn this new song, and sing it unceasingly to Christ: “Thou, O Lord Jesus Christ, art my Righteousness, and I am Thy sin. Thou hast taken what was mine, and hast, in room of it, given me what was Thine. What Thou wast not Thou didst become, in order that I might become and might remain, what, at one time, I was not.” Sing and say that to Christ continually. Beware, O my brother, of ever pretending to such purity of heart and life as no longer to confess thyself a sinner; for Christ dwells only with sinners. If our labours and our afflictions could have given us peace of conscience why should Christ have died for us? Dear Spentein, you will find no peace save in Christ. And Christ is always opening His arms to you; He is always taking all your sins upon Himself, and giving you all His Righteousness.’

Learn that by heart, my brethren; as also this: ‘One day, as I was passing in the field, and that, too, with some dashes on my conscience, fearing lest yet all was not right, suddenly this sentence fell upon my soul: Thy Righteousness is in Heaven.’