Suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment.
Sudden sorrow
Jeremiah was describing the havoc of war, a war which was devastating his country and bringing untold miseries upon the people. How grateful we ought to be that war is not raging in our own land. Blessed be the Lord, who has given centuries of peace to the fertile hills and valleys of His chosen isle. There are, however, in this land, and in all lands, whether at war or peace, many calamities which come suddenly upon the sons of men, concerning which they may bitterly lament, “How suddenly are my tents spoiled and my curtains in a moment.” This world at its best is not our rest. There is nothing settled below the moon. We call this terra firma, but there is nothing firm upon it; it is tossed to and fro like a troubled sea evermore. We are never for any long time in one stay; change is perpetually operating. Nothing is sure but that which is Divine; nothing is abiding except that which cometh down from heaven.
I. A sudden spoiling happens to human righteousness.
1. Let us look at the history of human righteousness, and begin in the garden of Eden, and lament the fall. Adam in his perfection could not maintain his righteousness, how can you and I, who are imperfect from the very birth, hope to do so?
2. A second instance of this very commonly occurs in the failure of the moralist’s resolutions. See yonder young people, tutored from their childhood in everything that is good: their character is excellent and admirable, but will it so abide? Will not the enemy despoil their tents?
3. Another liability of human righteousness is one which I must not call a calamity, seeing it is the commencement of the greatest blessing: I mean when the Spirit of God comes to deal with human righteousness, by way of illumination and conviction. Here we can speak of what we know experimentally. How beautiful our righteousness is, and how it flourishes like a comely flower till the Spirit of God blows upon it, and then it withers quite away, like the grass in the hot sirocco. The first lesson of the Holy Ghost to the heart is to lay bare its deceivableness, and to uncover before us its loathsomeness, where we thought that everything was true and acceptable. I would ask all who are under conviction of sin to answer this question, “When thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do?” May you reply, “We know what we will do. We will flee from self to Jesus. Our precious things are removed, and our choice treasure is taken from us; therefore do we take the Lord Jesus to be our all in all.”
4. But there will come to all human righteousness one other time of spoiling, if neither of those should happen which I have mentioned before. Remorse will come, and that very probably in the hour of death, if not before.
II. The words of our text are exceedingly applicable to the spoiling of all earthly comforts.
1. Sudden destruction to all our earthly comforts is common to all sorts of men. It may happen to the best as well as to the worst. As darts the hawk upon its prey, so does affliction fall upon the unsuspecting sons of Adam. As the earthquake on a sudden overthrows a city, so does adversity shake the estate of mortals.
2. Sudden trial comes in various forms. Here below nothing is certain but universal uncertainty. One way or another, God knoweth how to bring the rod home to us, and to make us smart till we cry out, “How suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment.”
3. Now this might well be expected. Do we wonder when we are suddenly deprived of our earthly comforts? Are they not fleeting things? When they came to us did we receive a lease of them, or were we promised that they should last forever? All that we possess here below is God’s property; He has only loaned it out to us, and what He lends He has a right to take back again. We hold our possessions and our friends, not upon freehold, but upon lease terminable at the Supreme Owner’s option; do you wonder when the holding ceases?
4. Since these calamities may be expected, let us be prepared for them. “How?” say you. Why, by holding all earthly things loosely; by having them as though you had them not; by looking at them as fleeting, and never expecting them to abide with you.
5. Let us take care to make good use of our comforts while we possess them. Since they hastily fly by us, let us catch them on the wing, and diligently employ them for God’s glory. Let us commit our all to the custody of God, who is our all in all. Such a blessed thing is faith in God that if the believer should lose everything he possesses here below he would have small cause for sorrow so long as he kept his faith.
6. But let us solemnly remind you that in times when we meet with sudden calamity God is putting you to the test, and trying the love and faith of those who profess to be His people. “When thou art spoiled, what writ thou do?” You thought you loved God: do you love Him now? You said He was your Father, but that was when He kissed you; is He your Father now that He chastens you?
III. There may come a sudden spoiling of life itself. In a moment prostrated by disease and brought to death’s door, frail man may well cry out, How suddenly are my tents spoiled, and my curtains in a moment!”
1. It is by no means unusual for men to die on a sudden.
2. Not one man or woman here has a guarantee that he or she shall live till tomorrow. It is almost a misuse of language to talk about life insurance, for we cannot insure our lives; they must forever remain uninsured as to their continuance here. “When thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do?” When on a sudden the curtains of our tent shall rend in twain, and the tent pole shall be snapped, and the body shall lie a desolate ruin, what shall we then do? I will tell you what some of us know that we shall do. We know that when the earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved we have a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. As poor, guilty sinners we have fled to Christ for refuge, and He is ours, and we know that He will surely keep what we have committed to Him until that day: therefore are we not afraid of all that the spoilers can do. We are not afraid of the spoiler; but, O worldling, when thou art spoiled, what wilt thou do? (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The wailing of the bereaved
I.Our first sorrowful theme is sudden bereavements. Alas! alas! how soon may we be childless; how soon may we be widowed of the dearest objects of our affections! Ah! this were a sad world indeed, if the ties of kindred, of affection, and of friendship all be snapped; and yet it is such a world that they must be sundered, and may be divided at any moment.
1. Let us learn to sit loose by our dearest friends that we have on earth. Let us love them--love them we may, love them we should--but let us always learn to love them as dying things. Oh, build not thy nest on any of these trees, for they are all marked for the axe. See thou the disease of mortality on every cheek, and write not “eternal” upon the creature of an hour.
2. Take care that thou puttest all thy dear ones into God’s hand. Thou hast put thy soul there, put them there. Thou canst trust them for temporals for thyself, trust thy jewels with Him. Feel that they are not thine own, but that they are God’s loans to thee; loans which may be recalled at any moment--precious benisons of heaven, not entailed upon thee, but of which thou art but a tenant at will.
3. Further, you who are blessed with wife and children and friends, take care that you bless God for them. Sing a song of praise to God who hath blessed you so much more than others.
4. And then permit me to remind you that if these sudden bereavements may come, and there may be a dark chamber in any house in a moment, and the coffin may be in any one of our habitations, let us so act to our kinsfolk and relatives as though we knew they were soon about to die.
II. Sudden death, as we view it more particularly in relation to ourselves. There are a thousand gates to death. How many there be who have fallen dead in the streets! How many sitting in their own homes! Well, our turn must come. Perhaps we shall die falling asleep in our beds after long sickness, but probably we shall be suddenly called in such an hour as we think not to face the realities of eternity. Well, if it be so, if there be a thousand gates to death, if all means and any means may be sufficient to stop the current of our life, if really, after all, spiders’ webs and bubbles are more substantial things than human life, if we are but a vapour, or a dying taper that soon expires in darkness, what then?
1. Why, first, I say, let us all look upon ourselves as dying men, let us not reckon on tomorrow. Oh! let us not procrastinate; for taken in Satan’s great net of procrastination, we may wait, and wait, and wait, till time is gone, and the great knell of eternity shall toll our dissolution.
2. And then take care, I pray you, that you who do know Christ not only live as though you meant to die, but live while you live. Oh, what a work we have to do, and how short the time to do it in!
3. And let us learn never to do anything which we should not wish to be found doing if we were to die. We are sometimes asked by young people whether they may go to the theatre, whether they may dance, or whether they may do this or that. You may do anything which you would not be ashamed to be doing when Christ shall come.
III. The sudden change which a sudden death will cause. You see yonder Christian man, he is full of a thousand fears,--he is afraid even of his interest in Christ, he is troubled spiritually, and vexed with temporal cares. You see him cast down and exceeding troubled, his faith but very weak; he steps outside yon door, and there meets him a messenger from God, who smites him to the heart, and he is dead. Can you conceive the change? Death has cured him of his fears, his tears are wiped away once for all from his eyes; and, to his surprise, he stands where he feared he should never be, in the midst of the redeemed of God, in the general assembly and church of the first-born. If he should think of such things, would he not upbraid himself for thinking so much of his trials and of his troubles, and for looking into a future which he was never to see? See yonder man, he can scarcely walk, he has a hundred pains in his body, he is more tried and pained than any man. Death puts his skeleton hand upon him, and he dies. How marvellous the change! No aches now, no casting down of spirit, he then is supremely blest, the decrepit has become perfect, the weak has become strong, the trembling one has become a David, and David has become as the angel of the Lord. But what must be the change to the unconverted man? His joys are over forever. His death is the death of his happiness--his funeral is the funeral of his mirth.(C. H. Spurgeon.)
Wise to do evil.--
Readier to do evil than good
This is a mystery, and yet nothing is more palpable and provable. How easily we learn to go down to hell! What a toil it is in all life to climb, until we get into the meaning of it, and become real mountaineers; then we say, Let us go upward, for we feed upon the very wind, we grow strong by the very exercise; we pant to stand upon the highest pinnacles of nature. But how easy it is not to obey! how easy not to go to church! How delightfully easy to throw off the yoke and to terminate the discipline of life! Employers of labour know this; labourers themselves are well acquainted with it; all schoolmasters and trainers of the young would assent to the proposition instantly and without reserve, and every living man would say, That is true. If that is true, the whole point is yielded. Why should it be true? The direct contrary ought to be the case: it ought to be hard to be crooked and rough and foolish and vain and worldly. It ought to be almost impossible for a man made in the image and likeness of God to drink himself to death, to rob his neighbour, to play the fool, to sleep with the devil. Given creation at the beginning, and it never could occur to the finite intellect as a possibility that man should think one ignoble thought, utter one untrue word, commit himself to one dishonourable policy; the exclamation would be, It is impossible! But we have done it I We have broken all the ten commandments one by one; we have shattered them in their totality; we have run away from God. We have done miracles which have astounded the heavens. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Godlessness is supreme folly
Do you count him a wise man who is wise in anything but in his own proper profession and employment, wise for everybody but himself, who is ingenious to contrive his own misery and to do himself a mischief, but is dull and stupid as to the designing of any real benefit and advantage to himself? Such a one is he who is ingenious in his calling but a bad Christian, for Christianity is more our proper calling and profession than the very trades we live upon; and such is every sinner who is “wise to do evil, but to do good has no understanding.” (J. Tillotson.)
Piety-the truest wisdom
If any man’s head or tongue should grow apace, and all the rest of the body not grow, it would certainly make him a monster; and they are no other that are knowing and talkative Christians, and grow daily in these respects, but not at all in holiness of heart and life, which is the proper growth of the children of God.(H. G. Salter.)
