God Always Hears

Mic 7:7  Therefore I will look unto the LORD; I will wait for the God of my salvation: my God will hear me.

Friends may be unfaithful...

But the LORD will not turn away from the gracious soul...

On the contrary, He will hear all its desires. 

The prophet says,  Keep the doors of thy mouth from her that lieth in thy bosom. 

A man's enemies are the men of his own house.

This is a wretched state of affairs...

But even in such a case the Best Friend remains true, and we may tell Him all our grief.

Our wisdom is to look unto the LORD and not to quarrel with men or women. 

If our loving appeals are disregarded by our relatives, let us wait upon the God of our salvation, for He will hear us.

He will hear us all the more because of the unkindness and oppression of others...

And we shall soon have reason to cry, "Rejoice not against me, O mine enemy!"

Because God is the living God, He can hear; because He is a loving God...

He will hear; because He is our covenant God...

He has bound Him-self to hear us. 

If we can each one speak of Him as "My God," we may with absolute certainty say, "My God will hear me."

Come, then, O bleeding heart, and let thy sorrows tell themselves out to the LORD thy God!

I will bow the knee in secret and inwardly whisper, "My God will hear me."

~Charles Spurgeon~

Deliverance From The Snare

Psalm 91:3  Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

God delivers his people from the snare of the fowler in two senses...

From, and out of...

First, he delivers them from the snare-does not let them enter it...

And secondly, if they should be caught therein, he delivers them out of it. 

The first promise is the most precious to some; the second is the best to others.

He shall deliver thee from the snare.

How?

Trouble is often the means whereby God delivers us. 

God knows that our backsliding will soon end in our destruction, and he in mercy sends the rod. 

We say, “Lord, why is this?”...

Not knowing that our trouble has been the means of delivering us from far greater evil. 

Many have been thus saved from ruin by their sorrows and their crosses...

These have frightened the birds from the net.

At other times, God keeps his people from the snare of the fowler by giving them great spiritual strength...

So that when they are tempted to do evil they say, “How can I do this great wickedness, and
sin against God?”

But what a blessed thing it is that if the believer shall, in an evil hour, come into the net, yet God will bring him out of it! 

O backslider, be cast down, but do not despair.

Wanderer though thou hast been, hear what thy Redeemer saith...

Return, O backsliding children; I will have mercy upon you...

But you say you cannot return, for you are a captive.

Then listen to the promise...“Surely he shall deliver thee out of the snare of the fowler.”

Thou shalt yet be brought out of all evil into which thou hast fallen...

And though thou shalt never cease to repent of thy ways, yet he that hath loved thee will not cast thee away...

He will receive thee, and give thee joy and gladness...

That the bones which he has broken may rejoice.

No bird of paradise shall die in the fowler’s net.

~Charles Spurgeon~

God's Enemies Shall Bow

Exodus 7:5  And the Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch forth mine hand upon Egypt, and bring out the children of Israel from among them.  

The ungodly world is hard to teach. 

Egypt does not know Jehovah and therefore dares to set up its idols and even ventures to ask, "Who is the LORD?"

Yet the LORD means to break proud hearts, whether they will or not. 

When His judgments thunder over their heads...

Darken their skies, destroy their harvests, and slay their sons, they begin to discern somewhat of Jehovah's power. 

There will yet be such things done in the earth as shall bring skeptics to their knees. 

Let us not be dismayed because of their blasphemies, for the LORD can take care of His own name, and He will do so in a very effectual manner.

The salvation of His own people was another potent means of making Egypt know that the God of Israel was Jehovah, the living and true God.

No Israelite died by any one of the ten plagues. 

None of the chosen seed were drowned in the Red Sea. 

Even so, the salvation of the elect and the sure glorification of all true believers will make the most obstinate of God's enemies acknowledge that Jehovah, He is the God.

Oh, that His convincing power would go forth by His Holy Spirit in the preaching of the gospel...Till all nations shall bow at the name of Jesus and call Him LORD!

~Charles Spurgeon~

Even The Faintest Call

Why do I not call on His name?

Why do I run to this neighbor and that when God is so near and will hear my faintest call?

Why do I sit down and devise schemes and invent plans! 

Why not at once roll my- self and my burden upon the LORD?

Straightforward is the best runner -- why do I not run at once to the living God?

In vain shall I look for deliverance anywhere else...

But with God I shall find it; for here I have His royal "shall" to make it sure.

I need not ask whether I may call on Him or not, for that word whosoever is a very wide and comprehensive one. 

Whosoever means me, for it means anybody and everybody who calls upon God. 

I will therefore follow the leading of the text and at once call upon the glorious LORD who has made so large a promise.

My case is urgent, and I do not see how I am to be delivered; but this is no business of mine. 

He who makes the promise will find out ways and means of keeping it.

It is mine to obey His commands; it is not mine to direct His counsels. 

I am His servant, not His solicitor. 

I call upon Him, and He will deliver me.

~Charles Spurgeon~

Christ Sometimes Delays His Help

Son 5:6  I opened to my beloved; but my beloved had withdrawn himself, and was gone: my soul failed when he spake: I sought him, but I could not find him; I called him, but he gave me no answer.

The Lord, when He hath given great faith, hath been known to try it by long delayings.

He has suffered His servants voices to echo in their ears as from a brazen sky.

They have knocked at the golden gate, but it has remained unmovable, as though it were rusted upon its hinges.

Like Jeremiah, they have cried, "Thou hast covered thyself with a cloud, that our prayer should not pass through."

Thus have true saints continued long in patient waiting without reply...

Not because their prayers were not vehement...

Nor because they were unaccepted...

But because it so pleased Him who is a Sovereign, and who gives according to His own pleasure.

If it pleases Him to bid our patience exercise itself, shall He not do as He will with His own!

No prayer is lost.

Praying breath was never spent in vain.

There is no such thing as prayer unanswered or unnoticed by God...

And some things that we count refusals or denials are simply delays.

~H. Bonar~
     
Christ sometimes delays His help that He may try our faith and quicken our prayers. 

The boat may be covered with the waves, and He sleeps on; but He will wake up before it sinks. 

He sleeps, but He never oversleeps; and there are no "too lates" with Him.

~Alexander Maclaren~
     
Be still, sad soul!

Lift thou no passionate cry...

But spread the desert of thy being bare To the full searching of the All-seeing eye...

Wait!

And through dark misgiving, black despair...

God will come down in pity...

And fill the dry Dead place with light, and life, and vernal air.

~J. C. Shairp~

Divine Recompense

Pro 11:25  The liberal soul shall be made fat: and he that watereth shall be watered also himself.  

If I carefully consider others, God will consider me...

And in some way or other He will recompense me. 

Let me consider the poor, and the LORD will consider me. 

Let me look after little children, and the LORD will treat me as His child. 

Let me feed His flock, and He will feed me. 

Let me water His garden, and He will make a watered garden of my soul. 

This is the LORD's own promise; 

Be it mine to fulfill the condition and then to expect its fulfillment. 

I may care about myself till I grow morbid...

I may watch over my own feelings till I feel nothing...

And I may lament my own weakness till I grow almost too weak to lament.

It will be far more profitable for me to become unselfish...

And out of love to my LORD Jesus begin to care for the souls of those around me. 

My tank is getting very low; no fresh rain comes to fill it...

What shall l do... 

I will pull up the plug and let its contents run out to water the withering plants around me.

What do I see? 

My cistern seems to fill as it flows. 

A secret spring is at work. 

While all was stagnant, the fresh spring was sealed... 

But as my stock Rows out to water others the LORD thinketh upon me. 

Hallelujah!

~Charles Spurgeon~

Help From Without

Yesterday's promise secured us strength for what we have to do, but this guarantees us aid in cases where we cannot act alone. 

The LORD says, "I will help thee." 

Strength within is supplemented by help without. 

God can raise us up allies in our warfare if so it seems good in His sight...

And even if He does not send us human assistance...

He Himself will be at our side...

And this is better still. 

Our August Ally is better than legions of mortal helpers.

His help is timely...

He is a very present help in time of trouble. 

His help is very wise...

He knows how to give each man help meet and fit for him. 

His help is most effectual, though vain is the help of man. 

His help is more than help, for He bears All the burden and supplies All the need.

The LORD is my helper, I will not fear what man can do unto me.

Because He has already been our help, we feel confidence in Him for the present and the future.

Our prayer is, "LORD, by thou my helper"...

Our experience is, "The Spirit also helpeth our infirmities"...

Our expectation is, "I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help"...

And our song soon will be, "Thou, LORD, hast holden me."

~Charles Spurgeon~

The Achan Factor

Joshua 7:20  And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the LORD God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done:

Joshua 7:21  When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.

The Achan factor is significant.

There were two things connected with Achan's sin, or which were the forms of expression which that sin took.

There was the wedge of gold, and the Babylonish garment.

The wedge of gold incidentally is of interest, inasmuch as it has been discovered that wedges of gold, not coins, formed the currency of that part of the world at that time.

Business was transacted, and payments were made in this way, and, in a word, credit hung upon these wedges of gold.

It was one of those wedges of gold representing the commercial values of this world which Achan took.

The Babylonish garment, on the other hand, is a foreign element, which has proved to have been a link with a religious system, the Babylonish religious system...

For that Babylonish garment was nothing other than something connected with the system of worship in Babylon.
 
It might have been a garment of a priestess.

The gold was claimed by Jehovah.

When the city was taken it was commanded that the gold should be devoted to the Lord for His purposes...

That is, the Lord laid claim to the gold...

And all the gold was the Lord's property, the Lord's by right.

Achan, therefore, appropriated what belonged to the Lord, and sought to turn it to his own account.

That is what the flesh Always does.

The flesh Always takes to itself the glory that belongs to the Lord.

The flesh is Always taking God's rights from Him.

The flesh is Always putting itself in the place of the Lord.

As to the Babylonish garment: that was a part of the whole system of things which was to be utterly destroyed from the Lord...

And it represented a spiritual order which was in antagonism to God...

A worship which was energized by the god of this world, his religious system, in usurping God's place as God...

And that whole system, with every accompaniment, every feature, was to be utterly destroyed.

But Achan preserved something which was a representation of a spiritual antagonism to God as the only God...

So that Achan's sin was a Very Deep Sin.

You see how inclusive Jericho was, in that its every feature foreshadowed, or represented, what the conquest of the land was to be.

The judgment of Achan's sin showed that God had first rights...

And the flesh must not appropriate what belongs to God...

Must not take God's place.

It showed that the land represents a false spiritual system which had to be blotted out...

And not one fragment of it left to survive.

When Achan took the Babylonish garment he was violating a law which had to govern the conquest of the land...

And he became the enemy's instrument of breaking into the Divine order, so that Jericho gathered up everything through the whole land.

We are told in the Book of the Acts that the Lord cast out seven nations greater than Israel.

The "seven" of Jericho is symbolic of the seven nations which are to be destroyed, and they are virtually destroyed in Jericho.

Thus you have the flesh as energized by Satan...

And Calvary's inclusive victory over the whole.

That is what Jericho speaks of to begin with.

~T. Austin Sparks