If the Lord teaches us the privileges of His statutes, He will teach us compassion for those who keep them not.

Posted : 29 Jul, 2013 02:13 AM

Psalm 119:136 Rivers of waters run down my eyes, (Comp. Jer. 9:1; 14:17; Lam. 2:18) because they keep not Your law.





If the Lord teaches us the privileges of His statutes, He will

teach us compassion for those who keep them not. This was

the mind of Jesus. His life exhibited one, whose "heart was

made of tenderness." But there were some occasions, when

the display of His compassion was peculiarly striking. Near

the close of His life, it is recorded, that, "when He was come

near, and beheld the city"-"beautiful for situation, the joy of the

whole earth"-but now given up to its own ways, and "wrath

coming upon it to the uttermost," He "wept over it." It was then

a moment of triumph. The air was rent with hosannas. The

road was strewed with branches from the trees, and all was

joy and praise. Amid all this exultation, the Savior alone,

seemed to have no voice for the triumph-no heart for joy. His

omniscient mind embraced all the spiritual desolation of this

sad case; and He could only weep in the midst of a solemn

triumph. Rivers of waters run down my eyes, because they

keep not Your law.

Now a Christian, in this as in every other feature, will be

conformed to the image of his Lord. His heart will therefore be

touched with a tender concern for the honor of his God, and

pitying concern for those wretched sinners, that keep not His

law, and are perishing in their own transgressions. Thus was

"just Lot" in Sodom "vexed with the filthy conversation of the

wicked." Thus did Moses "fall down before the Lord, as at the

first, forty days and forty nights; he did neither eat bread nor

drink water; because of all their sins which they had sinned, in

doing wickedly in the sight of the Lord to provoke Him to

anger." Thus also Samuel, in the anticipation of the Lord's

judgments upon Saul, "grieved himself, and cried unto the

Lord all night." Ezra, on a similar occasion, in the deepest

prostration of sorrow, "rent his garment and his mantle, and

plucked off the hair of his head and of his beard, and sat down

astonished until the evening sacrifice." And if David was now suffering from the oppression of man, yet his own injuries

never drew from him such expressions of overwhelming

sorrow, as did the sight of the despised law of his God.

Need we advert to this tender spirit, as a special characteristic

of "the ministers of the Lord?" Can they fail in this day of

abounding wickedness- even within the bounds of their own

sphere-to hear the call to "weep between the porch and the

altar?" How instructive is the posture of the ancient prophet first pleading openly with the rebellion of the people-then "his

soul weeping in secret places for their pride!" Not less

instructive is the great apostle-his "conscience bearing

witness in the Holy Spirit to his great heaviness and continued

sorrow in his heart for his brethren, his kinsmen according to

the flesh." In reproving transgressors, he could only write to

them, "Out of much affliction and anguish of heart with many

tears," and in speaking of them to others, with the same

tenderness of spirit, he adds-"Of whom I tell you even

weeping." Tears were these of Christian eloquence no less

than of Christian compassion.

Thus uniformly is the character of God's people represented not merely as those that are free from, but as "those that sigh

and that cry for all the abominations that be done in the midst

of the land." They-they alone-are marked out for mercy in the

midst of impending, universal ruin. The want of this spirit is

ever a feature of hardness and pride-a painful blot upon the

profession of the gospel. How wide the sphere presenting

itself on every side for the unrestrained exercise of this

yearning compassion! The appalling spectacle of a world

apostatized from God, of multitudes sporting with everlasting

destruction-as if the God of heaven were "a man that He

should lie," is surely enough to force rivers of waters from the

hearts of those who are concerned for His honor. What a

mass of sin ascends as a cloud before the Lord, from a single

heart! Add the aggregate of a village-a town-a country-a world! every day-every hour-every moment-well might the

rivers of waters rise to an overflowing tide, ready to burst its

barriers. We speak not of outward sensibility (in which some

may be constitutionally deficient, and the exuberance of which

may be no sign of real spiritual affection), but we ask-Do we

lay to heart the perishing condition of our fellow-sinners?

Could we witness a house on fire, without speedy and

practical evidence of our compassion for the inhabitants? And

yet, alas! how often do we witness souls on the brink of

destruction-unconscious of danger, or bidding defiance to it with comparative indifference! How are we Christians, if we

believe not the Scripture warnings of their danger? or if,

believing them, we do not bestir ourselves to their help? What

hypocrisy is it to pray for their conversion, while we are

making no effort to promote it! Oh! let it be our daily

supplication, that this indifference concerning their everlasting

state may give place to a spirit of weeping tenderness; that He

may not be living as if this world were really, what it appears

to be, a world without souls; that we may never see the

Sabbaths of God profaned, His laws trampled under foot, the

ungodly "breaking their bands asunder, and casting away their

cords from them," without a more determined resolution

ourselves to keep these laws of our God, and to plead for their

honor with these obstinate transgressors. Have we no near

and dear relatives, yet "lying in wickedness- dead in

trespasses and sins?" To what blessed family, reader, do you

belong, where there are no such objects of pity? Be it so-it is

well. Yet are you silent? Have you no ungodly, ignorant

neighbors around you? And are they unwarned, as well as

unconverted? Do we visit them in the way of courtesy or

kindness, yet give them no word of affectionate entreaty on

the concerns of eternity? Let our families indeed possess, as

they ought to possess, the first claim to our compassionate

regard. Then let our parishes, our neighborhood, our country,

the world, find a place in our affectionate, prayerful, and

earnest consideration. Nor let it be supposed, that the doctrine of sovereign and

effectual grace has any tendency to paralyze exertion. So far

from it, the most powerful supports to perseverance are

derived from this source. Left to himself-with only the

invitations of the Gospel-not a sinner could ever have been

saved. Added to these-there must be the Almighty energy of

God-the seal of His secret purpose-working upon the sinner's

will, and winning the heart to God. Not that this sovereign

work prevents any from being saved. But it prevents the

salvation from being in vain to all, by securing its application

to some. The invitations manifest the pardoning love of God;

but they change not the rebel heart of man. They show his

enmity; yet they slay it not. They leave him without excuse;

yet at the same time-they may be applied without salvation.

The moment of life in the history of the saved sinner is, when

he is "made willing in the day of the Lord's power"-when he

comes-he looks-he lives. It is this dispensation alone that

gives the Christian laborer the spring of energy and hope. The

palpable and awful proofs on every side, of the "enmity

of the carnal mind against God," rejecting alike both His law

and His Gospel, threaten to sink him in despondency. And

nothing sustains his tender and compassionate interest, but

the assurance of the power of God to remove the resisting

medium, and of His purpose to accomplish the subjugation of

natural corruption in a countless multitude of His redeemed

people.

The same yearning sympathy forms the life, the pulse, and

the strength of Missionary exertion, and has ever

distinguished those honored servants of God who have

devoted their time, their health, their talent, their all, to the

blessed work of "saving souls from death, and covering a

multitude of sins." Can we conceive a Missionary living in the

spirit of his work-surrounded with thousands of mad idolaters,

hearing their shouts, and witnessing their abominations, without a weeping spirit? Indignant grief for the dishonor done

to God-amazement at the affecting spectacle of human

blindness- detestation of human impiety-compassionate

yearnings over human wretchedness and ruin-all combine to

force tears of the deepest sorrow from a heart enlightened

and constrained by the influence of a Savior's love. This, as

we have seen, was our Master's spirit. And let none presume

themselves to be Christians, if they are destitute of "this mind

that was in Christ Jesus;" if they know nothing of His melting

compassion for a lost world, or of His burning zeal for His

heavenly Father's glory.

Oh, for that deep realizing sense of the preciousness of

immortal souls, that would make us look at every sinner we

meet as a soul to be "pulled out of the fire," and to be drawn

to Christ;-which would render us willing to endure suffering,

reproach, and the loss of all, so that we might win one soul to

God, and raise one monument to His everlasting praise!

Happy mourner in Zion! whose tears over the guilt and

wretchedness of a perishing world are the outward indications

of your secret pleadings with God, and the effusion of a heart

solemnly dedicated to the salvation of your fellow-sinners!

'But feeble my compassion proves, And can but weep, where

most it loves; Your own all-saving arm employ, And turn these

drops of grief to joy.'



by

Charles Bridges

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