THE CHRISTIAN IN HIS LONELINESS

Sermon excerpt from . . .

CHRIST’S LONELINESS AND OURS

by C.H. Spurgeon

“II. The Christian In His Loneliness

No believer traverses all the road to heaven in company; lonely spots there must be here and there, though the greater part of our heavenward pilgrimage is made cheerful by the society of fellow-travellers. ‘They go from company to company; every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.’ Christ’s sheep love to go in flocks. ‘They that feared the Lord spake often one to another.’ We take sweet counsel together, and walk to the house of God in company; yet, somewhere or other on the road, every man will find narrow defiles, and close places where pilgrims must march in single file.

Sometimes, the child of God endures loneliness arising from the absence of godly society. It may be that, in his early days as a Christian, he mixed much with gracious persons, was able to attend many of their meetings, and to converse in private with the excellent of the earth; but now his lot is cast where he is as a sparrow alone on the housetop. No others in the family think as he does, he enjoys no familiar converse concerning his Lord, and has no one to counsel or console him. He often wishes he could find friends to whom he could open his mind. He would rejoice to see a Christian minister, or an advanced believer; but, like Joseph in Egypt, he is a stranger in a strange land. This is a very great trial to the Christian, an ordeal of the most severe character; even the strong may dread it, and the weak are sorely shaken by it. To such lonely ones, our Lord’s words, now before us, are commended, with the prayer that they may make them their own: “I am alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” When Jacob was alone, at Bethel, he laid him down to sleep, and soon was in a region peopled by spirits innumerable, above whom was God Himself. That vision made the night at Bethel the least lonely season that Jacob ever spent. Your meditations, O solitary ones, as you read the Bible in secret, and your prayers, as you draw near to God in your lonely room, and your Saviour Himself in His blessed person, will be to you what the ladder was to Jacob. The words of God’s Book, made living to you, shall be to your mind the angels, and God Himself shall have fellowship with you. If you lament your loneliness, cure it by seeking heavenly company. If you have no companions below who are holy, seek all the more to commune with those who are in heaven, where Christ sitteth at the right hand of God.

God’s people are frequently made lonely through obedience to honest convictions. It may happen that you live in the midst of professing Christians, but you have received light upon a part of God’s Word which you had formerly neglected, either a doctrine merely, or an ordinance, or some other matter, and having received that light, if you are as you should be, you are at once obedient to it. It will frequently result, from this action on your part, that you will greatly vex many good people whom you love and respect, but to whose wishes you cannot yield. Your Master’s will once known, father or mother may not stand in your way; you do not wish to be singular, or obstinate, or offensive, but you must do the Lord’s will even if it should sever every fond connection. Perhaps, for a time, prejudiced persons may almost deny you Christian fellowship; many a baptized believer has been made to know what it means to be almost tabooed and shut out because he cannot see as others see, but is resolved to follow his conscience at all hazards. Under such circumstances, even in a godly household, a Christian who fully carries out his convictions may find himself treading a separated path. Be bold, my dear brethren, and do not flinch. Your Saviour walked alone, and you must do so too.

Perhaps this lone obedience is to be a test of your faith. Persevere; yield not a particle of truth. These very friends, who now turn their backs on you, if they are good for anything, will respect you all the more for having the courage to be honest, and perhaps the day will come when, through your example, they will be led in the same obedient way. At any rate, do not mar your testimony by hesitancy or wavering, but ‘follow the Lamb whithersoever He goeth.’ Fall back upon this truth: you may displease and alienate friends, and be charged with bigotry, self-will, and obstinacy, but you are not alone when you follow the path of obedience, for the Father is with you. If what you hold is God’s truth, God is with you in maintaining it. If the ordinance to which you submit was ordained by Christ, Jesus is with you in it. Care not how either the church or the world reviles you; serve you your Master, and He will not desert you. With all due deference to others, pay yet greater deference to the Lord who bought you with His blood; and where He leads, follow without delay; the Father will be with you in so doing.

The solitary way is appointed to believers who rise to eminence of faith. In these days, the common run of Christians have but struggling faith. Should you sift the great mountain of visible Christianity very carefully, will you find so much as ten grains of faith in the whole? When the Son of man comes, keen as His eyes are to discover faith, shall He find it on the earth? Here and there, we meet a man to whom it is given to believe in God with mighty faith. As soon as such a man strikes out a project, and sets about a work which none but men of his mould would venture upon, straightway there arises a clamour, “The man is over zealous,” or he will be charged with an innovating spirit, rashness, fanaticism, or absurdity. Should the work go on, the opposers whisper together, “Wait a little while, and you’ll see the end of all this wildfire.” Have we not heard them criticize an earnest evangelist by saying, “His preaching is mere excitement, the result of it is spasmodic;” at another time, “The enterprise which he carries out is Quixotic; his designs are Utopian”? What said the sober semi-faith of men to Luther? Luther had read this passage, ‘By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in His sight’ He went to a venerable divine about it, and complained of the enormities of Rome. What was the good but weak brother’s reply? “Go thou to thy cell, and pray and study for thyself, and leave these weighty matters alone.” Here it would have ended had the brave Reformer continued to consult with flesh and blood, but his faith enabled him to go alone, if none would accompany him. He nailed up his theses on the church door, and showed that one man at least had faith in the gospel and in its God. Then trouble came, but Luther minded it not because the Father was with him. We also must be prepared, if God gives us strong faith, to ride far ahead like spiritual Uhlans, who bravely pioneer the way for the rank and file of the army. It were well if the Church of God had more sons swifter than eagles, and bolder than lions, in God’s service; men who can do and dare alone, till laggards gain courage from them, and follow in their track. These Valiant-for-truths full often pursue a solitary path, but let them console themselves with this word of the solitary Saviour, “Yet I am not alone, because the Father is with me.” If we can but believe in God, He will never be behindhand with us; if we can dare, God will do; if we can trust, God will never suffer us to be confounded, world without end. It is sweet beyond expression to climb where only God can lead, and plant the standard on the highest towers of the foe.

Another form of loneliness is the portion of Christians when they come into deep soul-conflict. My brethren, some of you understand what I mean by that. Our faith, at times, has to fight for very existence. The old Adam within us rages mightily, and the new spirit within us, like a young lion, disdains to be vanquished, and so these two mighty ones contend till our spirit is full of agony. Some of us know what it is to be tempted with blasphemies we should not dare to repeat, to be vexed with horrid temptations which we have grappled with and overcome, but which have almost cost us resistance unto blood. In such inward conflicts, saints must be alone. They cannot tell their feelings to others, they would not dare to do so; and if they did, their own brethren would despise or upbraid them, for the most of professors would not even know what they meant, and even those who have trodden other fiery ways would not be able to sympathize in all, but would answer them thus, “Those are points in which I cannot go with you.” Christ alone was tempted in all points like as we are, though without sin. No one man is tempted in all points exactly like another man, and each man has certain trials in which he must stand alone amid the rage of war, with not even a book to help him, or a biography to assist him, no man ever having gone that way before except that one Man whose trail reveals His nail-pierced feet. He alone knows all the devious paths of sorrow. Yet, even in such by-ways, the Father is with us, helping, sustaining, and giving us grace to conquer at the close.

We will not, however, dwell on this aspect of solitary walking, for we have three others to mention. Many dear brethren have to endure the solitude of unnoticed labour. They are serving God in a way which is exceedingly useful, but not at all noticeable. How very sweet to many workers are those little corners of the newspapers and magazines which describe their labours and successes; yet some, who are doing what God will think a great deal more of at the last, never saw their names in print. Yonder beloved brother is plodding away in a little country village; nobody knows anything about him, but he is bringing souls to God. Unknown to fame, the angels are acquainted with him, and a few precious ones whom he has led to Jesus know Him well. Perhaps yonder sister has a little class in the Sundayschool; there is nothing striking in her or in her class; now and then, a little child ascends to heaven to report her success, and occasionally another comes into the church; but nobody thinks of her as a very remarkable worker; she is a flower that blooms almost unseen, but she is none the less fragrant. Or shall we think of the humble City Missionary? The Superintendent of the District knows that he goes his regular rounds, but he has no idea of the earnest prayers and deep devotedness of that obscure lover of Jesus. The City Mission Magazine puts him down as trying to do his duty, but nobody knows what it costs him to cry and sigh over souls. There is a Bible-woman; she is mentioned in the Report as making so many visits a week, but nobody discovers all that she is doing for the poor and needy, and how many are saved in the Lord through her instrumentality. Hundreds of God’s dear servants are serving Him without the encouragement of man’s approving eye; yet God is with them.

Never mind where you work; care more about how you work! Never mind who sees or does not see you, so long as God approves your efforts. If He smiles, be content. We cannot be always sure when we are most useful. A certain minister with very great difficulty reached a place where he had promised to preach. There was deep snow upon the ground, therefore only one hearer came. However, he preached as zealously as if there had been a thousand. Years after, when he was travelling in that same part of the country, he met a man who had been the founder of a church in the village, and from it scores of others had been established. The man came to see him, and said, “I have good reason to remember you, sir, for I was once your only hearer; and what has been done here has been brought about instrumentally through my conversion under that sermon.” We cannot estimate our success. One child in the Sabbath-school, converted, may turn out to be worth five hundred others, because he may be the means of bringing ten thousand to Christ. It is not the acreage you sow, it is the multiplication which God gives to the seed, which will make up the harvest. You have less to do with being successful than with being faithful. Your main comfort is that, in your labour, you are not alone, for God, the eternal One, who guides the marches of the stars, is with you.

There is such a thing — I would that we might reach it, — as the solitude of elevated piety. In the plain, everything is in company; but, the higher you ascend, the more lonely is the mountain path. At this moment, there must be an awful solitude on the top of Mont Blanc. Where the stars look silently on the monarch of mountains, how deep the silence above the untrodden snows! How lonely is the summit of the Matterhorn, or the peak of Monte Rosa! When a man grows in grace, he rises out of the fellowship of the many, and draws nearer to God. Unless placed in very happy circumstances, he will find very few who understand the higher life, and can thoroughly commune with him. But then the man will be as humble as he is high, and he will fall back, necessarily, and naturally, upon the eternal fellowship of God. As the mountain pierces the skies, and offers its massive peak to be the footstool of the throne of God, so the good man passes within the veil, unseen by mortal eyes, into the secret place, of the tabernacle of the Most High, where he abides under the shadow of the Almighty.

The last solitude will come to us all in the hour of death. Down to the river’s brink they may go with us, a weeping company, — wife, and children, and friends. Their kind looks will mean the help they cannot give; to that river’s brink they may go in fond companionship, but then, as with our Lord the cloud received Him out of His disciples’ sight, so must we be received out of sight of our beloved ones. The chariot of fire must take Elijah away from Elisha. We must ascend alone. Bunyan may picture Christian and Hopeful together in the stream, but it is not so; they pass each one alone through the river. Yet we shall not be alone, my brethren; we correct our speech; the Father will be with us; Jesus will be with us; the eternal Comforter will be with us; the everlasting Godhead in the Trinity of persons shall be with us, and the angels of God shall be our convoy. Let us go our way, rejoicing that, when we shall be alone, we shall not be alone, because the Father will be with us, as He is with us even now.”