Chapter 19
david and his friends a series of revival sermons by louis albert banks lean souls in the midst of fat pastures he gave them their request but sent leanness into their soul psalm one hundred six verse fifteen in beryl's dream which was an important factor in the chain of events which brought joseph to the front as the great statesman of egypt he saw seven well-favored and fat-fleshed kine come up out of the river and feed in a meadow and as he looked on them seven other kine ill-favored and lean-fleshed came up out of the river as if following them and came and stood by the other kine by the brink of the river and while he watched in wonder the ill-favored and lean-fleshed kine turned on the fat ones and ate them up and when they had eaten them up they were still as scrawny and lean as they were in the beginning pharaoh's dream in many ways vividly illustrates the story of men and women who live in the midst of this wonderful world which god has filled with such abundant opportunities for doing good and gathering good
so rich in privileges for the development of the spiritual nature who yet go lean and hungry amid all and though they devour the good things of god get no good because they fail to be nourished by them through lack of reverent and loving motive on their part a selfish man can absorb like a sponge the richest blessings god can give and be lean and starving in the end in the psalm from which our text is taken attention is called to the fact that when god delivered the children of israel by the miracle at the red sea and their enemies were overthrown and destroyed as they pursued after them the people at first naturally were very grateful and sang anthems of praise to god but they soon forgot all god's wonderful works in their behalf it was not long before they became stubborn and self-willed and refused to hearken to the counsels of god they gave themselves over to their own lusts and followed their own way they were like the people now who are determined to get on in a worldly way at any cost
they will succeed by fair methods if they can but they do not intend to let their church or religion or conscience stand in the way of their worldly success and god gave these people as he does similar people now over to their own ways and they seemed to succeed but leanness of soul came to them as it does to their followers to-day and in the end they found that they had been cheated terribly fatally cheated it is a good lesson for all of us to learn both those who are christians and those who are yet neglecting their return to god that it is only by giving up the heart to a complete and earnest service of god that the soul may be fat and flourishing god cannot give spiritual riches and blessings to men and women who still cherish sinful desires and purposes in their hearts you may hear sermons till you are grey-headed and say prayers all your days and yet die lean and starved at last unless you give your soul to whole-hearted doing of the will of god
dr merle smith speaking last summer at northfield of the secret of peter's power draws a very graphic picture of the way peter escaped his leanness of soul and came to be so rich in spiritual power and blessing He says, he thinks if Peter were here to tell us all about his Christian experience on earth, he would say, three times during those years, I and the other disciples disputed as to who should be prime minister in the earthly kingdom that we thought Jesus was about to establish. I felt some way that I ought to be first, because Jesus had said to me, Peter,
thou art a rock, and on this rock will I build my church. But Thomas and James and John each thought they ought to be first, so we were all the time striving and looking out for ourselves. As I look back upon it, I can see how unfaithful I was to Jesus all that time. Some way, we didn't understand that Jesus was to die.
He told us, but we didn't really get hold of it. And by and by, there came that awful night when, in the high priest's house, I denied my Lord. I went out and wept bitterly. For three days, the scalding tears coursed down my cheeks. No man ever went down so near to the depths of hell or was ever rescued by such loving grace as was I. On the morning of the third day, Mary Magdalene came to me and said,
Peter, the Lord has risen. I said, it is impossible. She said, yes, Peter, more than that, too, the Lord wants to see the disciples. The angel told me that he especially wanted to see you. I said, Mary, did he say that, that he wanted especially to see me? Yes, the angel told me to tell you that the Lord wanted especially to see you.
And then Peter would tell us about that secret meeting between him and Jesus and would doubtless say, It was so sacred, I cannot describe it to you, for there is nothing told about it in the Bible. But no doubt, he would tell us how he lay with a broken heart
right down at the feet of Jesus, and how the Lord just poured out of the wealth of his forgiving love upon him. Then, no doubt, Peter would go on and point out how Jesus, at that wonderful breakfast on the shore of the Sea of Galilee, said to him, Simon, you said a few weeks ago that you loved me more than these other brethren. Simon, lovest thou me more than these? He would tell us how he answered three times, Yea, Lord, thou knowest that I love thee. Then Peter would take up the story of
those wonderful days before Pentecost. Jesus ascended, and we all went back to Jerusalem, into that upper chamber where the Lord had eaten his last supper. It was endeared to us by many a sacred memory, and we went there and waited for the power which he had promised. We thought it would come in the morning, and we began to pray, but the power didn't come. We prayed one day, two days, three days for the power, and it did not come. One day, Thomas of Rosa said,
Brethren, I believe the trouble is in me. I do not believe I am entirely cleansed from doubt. I think there is a lot of sin in me, and the Spirit cannot come because of the sin that is in me. Then I began to see what the trouble was. And I began to see that it was with me, that my own sin had not been entirely cleared away. And I asked the brethren to pray for me.
We just went round in a circle and we stopped praying for power and prayed for cleansing. We prayed that our sins might be revealed and all our defilement might be shown to us and be cleansed away through the sanctifying grace of the Holy Ghost. We did not think much about the power. We were not praying for the power.
What we wanted was to get clean in the sight of God, to get the consciousness of defilement away, to feel that we had been cleansed in that precious blood that was shed for the cleansing of sin. By and by, I don't know how it was,
but on the morning of the tenth day, there came such a wonderful power upon us through the spirit that he had promised. We had been cowardly before, so that we hardly dared to leave that room.
But after that, we went out and preached that Jesus had risen from the dead, and with what wonderful power! There were three thousand men converted under one sermon. I don't understand how it was, but ever since, wherever I have gone, even the shadow that has fallen for me has been a blessing to others. I do not understand what it means, but the power of God seems to be on me, and it all came when the cleansing of God was made complete in my own heart. sure it is that pentecost is the story of a hundred and twenty men and women whose souls were fat with joy coming from conscious communion with christ and from the assurance that they were the accepted children of god
lean-hearted discouraged men and women never could have won that victory and if we would win victories in the name of the lord we must not cherish anything in our hearts that will cause god to send leanness there david said if i regard iniquity in my heart the lord will not hear me and if he will not hear us he will not use us and cannot use us for we shall be so starved and beggared in our spiritual life that there will be no overflow to bless any one else is not this the secret of the fact that there are many men and women who have sought to live christian lives and have come into the church but live without peace with god have no religious enjoyment and their influence brings no one to christ is the secret not in this that they are cherishing in their hearts some sin that makes it impossible for god to nourish their souls if i speak to any this evening who are thus lean-hearted i beg you to fly to the great physician that you may be healed of your dire malady and god may be able again to bestow upon you the riches of his grace dr j wilbur chapman
tells how he was once preaching in one of the cities of massachusetts when one of the ministers of the place introducing a gentleman to him remarked that he was the principal merchant in the city he was a professing christian but they had never been able to get him to do anything in christian work they were much pleased because he was then acting as chairman of the usher's committee for the meetings in his first sermon dr chapman said that god never used a man who had sin in his heart soon afterward he saw this merchant rise and leave the church as soon as he got a chance the minister who had introduced the merchant to dr chapman said you made an awful mistake you ought not to have said that at the first meeting for three days they did not see that man in the meetings but on the morning of the fourth day he sought out dr chapman and told him this story when i began business here my partner was in springfield with the same kind of business When I figured the first year of business, there was $125 that belonged to no particular department and which would never be noticed in balancing the books.
I had not made very much money, and I took the $125. The second year came around, and there was $175 over, and I took the $175. When the third year came, I saw where I was going. There was the $300. I was afraid to tell my partner for fear he would break the partnership, and I could not afford that.
But when you said that God never used a man if he had sin in his heart, I knew that was the reason why all the years that I had been in the church, I had had no power with God and no power with man. I went over to Springfield and took the $300. My partner was not a Christian, but when I told him about it and put the money down on his desk,
he got up and put his arms on my shoulders and said, I think if I could be a Christian like that, I would begin today myself. Dr. Chapman said that during the series of meetings, a minister from one of the little neighboring towns came in to know if someone would not come and speak to them.
This merchant, whose lips had been sealed for years, came up and said he would take the service. On Monday morning, the minister reported that the merchant rose up at the time of the sermon and took the text, God so loved the world, but all he could say was the text. Then the tears came, and the sobs stopped his utterance.
After he had repeated it the second time, he simply told his own story, that for twelve years he had been lost in the house of God, going lean-hearted and useless, that only the week before his lips had been unsealed. And while, with the tears running down his cheeks, the merchant told his own story and how God had sent the fat joys of salvation to him when he put sin out of his heart and life, every unconverted person in the house, man and woman, boy and girl, came to Christ.
God help us to search our hearts, our own hearts, to see if there be any wicked way in us. And if we have been cherishing any unholy desires, any selfish motives and purposes that have caused us to go with lean hearts and silent lips, or what is worse, with a testimony that has sounded hollow and hypocritical, let us pray God's mercy and forgiveness. And as we first came to the Lord, come again in humble repentance. But I am sure there is here a message for those
who have never yet started to be Christians, as well as to the backslider who has fallen away from his first love. Sin makes all its victims lean-hearted. Sin forever starves and beggars the soul. The prodigal found only hunger and leanness among the husks, and I am sure you have found no fatness or joy or peace, as you have turned from God by sin and neglect. But thank God, you need not go on that way. This is the day of grace and mercy. This very message I bring to you tonight
may be for you the trump of jubilee i come to call you away from the husks of sin that are ever promising much to the sinner but are always deceiving him the prodigal went away from home to find the good time and found the swineherds and the husks and the hunger when he came back home he found that there was where the good time was in his father's house the rich robe of sonship the kiss the ring of love the feast the music the loving welcome all these were at home and so i say to you to-night the devil will promise you that you will find fatness and joy in self-indulgence and in simple pleasures but he is false and every sinner that ever trusted him has found him so turn back before you reach the depths of sin's beggary turn back while this rich opportunity is offered and christ is saying him that cometh to me i will in no wise cast out end of section nineteen
