The Christian’s strength lies in the Lord, not in himself. The strength of an earthly general lies in his troops; he flies, as a great commander once said to his soldiers, upon their wings; if their feathers be clipped, their power broken, he is lost. But in the army of saints, the strength of every saint, yea, of the whole host of saints, lies in the Lord of Hosts. God can overcome His enemies without their hands; but they cannot so much as defend themselves without His arm. 2. It is one of God’s names, “The Strength of Israel” (1 Sam. 15: 29). “Without Me ye can do nothing.” (John 15: 5). Thinking strength is of God: “Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God.” (2 Cor. 3: 5). We apostles, we saints have habitual grace; yet this lies like water at the bottom of a well, which will not ascend with all our pumping, till God pours in His exciting grace, and then it comes. To will is more than to think; to exert our will into action, more than both; these are of God. “It is God that worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.” (Ph. 2: 13). He makes the heart new; and having made it fit for heavenly motion, setting every wheel (as it were) in its right place, then He winds it up by His actuating grace, and sets it going, the thoughts stirring, and the will moving toward the holy object presented; yet here the chariot is set, and cannot ascend the hill of action till God puts His shoulder to the wheel: “To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not.” (Rom. 7). God is at the bottom of the ladder, and at the top also, the Author and Finisher; yea, helping and lifting the soul at every round, in his ascent to any holy action. Well, now the Christian is set on work, how long will he keep close to it? Alas, poor soul! no longer than he is held up by the same hand that empowered him at first. He hath soon wrought out the strength received; and therefore to maintain the tenure of a holy course, there must be renewing strength from Heaven every moment; which David knew, and therefore, when his heart was in as holy a frame as ever he felt it, and his people by their free-will offering declared the same, yet even then he prays that God would “keep this for ever in the imagination of the thoughts of the heart” of His people, and establish their hearts to Him. (Chron. 29: 18). The Christian, when fullest of Divine communications, is but a glass without a foot; he cannot stand, or hold what he hath received, any longer than God holds him in His strong hand. Therefore Christ, when bound for Heaven, and ready to take His leave of His children, bespeaks His Father’s care of them in His absence—”Father, keep them.” (John 17). As if He had said, “They must not be left alone; they are poor, helpless children that can neither stand nor go without assistance: they will lose the grace I have given them, and fall into those temptations which I kept them from while I was with them, if they be out of Thine eye or arm but one moment; and therefore, “Father, keep them.“
Again. Consider the Christian as addressing himself to any duty of God’s worship; still his strength is in the Lord. Wou’d he pray? Where will he find matter for his prayer? Alas! he knows not what to pray for as he ought. Let him alone, and he will soon pray himself into some temptation or other, and cry for that which were cruelty in God to give; and therefore God puts words in our mouths: “Take words with you, and say.” (Hos. 14: 2). Well, now He hath put words in his mouth, alas, they will freeze in his very lips, if he hath not some heart-heating affections to thaw them. And where shall this fire be had? Not a spark to be found on his own hearth; except it be some strange fire of natural desires, which will not serve. Whence then must the fire come to thaw the iciness of the heart, but from Heaven? The Holy Spirit must stretch Himself upon the soul (as the prophet on the child), and then the soul will come to some kindly warmth and heavenly heat in his affections; the Spirit must groan, and then the soul will groan; He helps us to these sighs and groans, which turn the sail of prayer; He dissolves the heart, and then it bursts out of the heart by groans of the lips, by heavenly rhetoric; out of the yes, as from a flood-gate with tears. Yet farther, now the creature is enabled to wrestle with God in prayer, what will he get by all this? Suppose he be weak in grace, is he able to pray himself strong, or corruption weak? No, this is not to be found in prayer, as an act of the creature; this drops from Heaven also: “In the day that I cried, Thou answeredst me, and strengthenedst me with strength in my soul.” (Ps. 138: 3). David received it in duty, but had it not from his duty, but from his God. He did not pray himself strong, but God strengthened him in prayer. Well, cast your eye once more upon the Christian as engaging in another ordinance, of hearing the Word preached. The soul’s strength to hear the Word is from God; He opens the heart to attend. (Acts 16: 14). Yea, He opens the understanding of the saint to receive the Word, so as to conceive what it means . . . Now how becoming this is to both, that saints should have all their ability from God for every step they take in the way to Heaven, will soon appear.
1. This way of communicating strength to saints gives a double accent to God’s love and mercy.
First.
It distils a sweetness into all that the believer hath or doth when he finds any comfort in his bosom, any enlargement of heart to duty, any support under temptation: to consider whence come all these, what Friend sends them in: “They come not from my own cistern, or any creature’s: O it is in my bosom; my God, that hath been here, and left this sweet perfume of comfort behind Him in my bosom; my God, that hath (unawares to me) filled my sails with the gales of His Spirit, and brought me off the flats of my own deadness, where I lay aground! O it is His sweet Spirit that held my head, stayed my heart in such an affliction and temptation, or else I had gone away in a fainting fit of unbelief!” Can this but endear God to a gracious soul—his succours coming so immediately from Heaven: which would be lost if the Christian had any strength to help himself, though this stock of strength came at first from God? which, think you, speaks more love and condescension, for a prince to give a pension to a favourite, on which he may live by his own care; or for this prince to take the chief care upon himself, and come from day to day to this man’s house and look into his cupboard, and see what provision he hath, what expense he is at, and so constantly to provide for the man from time to time? Possibly some proud spirit, that likes to be his own man, or loves his means better than his prince, would prefer the former; but one that is ambitious to have the heart and love of his prince, would be ravished with the latter. Thus God doth with His saints;—He comes and looks into their cupboard, sees how they are provided, and sends in accordingly as He finds them. He knows you have need of these things, and you shall have them. He knows you need strength to pray, hear, suffer for Him, and in that very hour it is due.
Secondly.
This way of God’s dealing with His saints adds to the fulness and stability of their strength. Were the stock in our own hands, we should soon prove broken merchants. God knows we are but leaking vessels; when fullest, we could not hold it long; and therefore to make all sure, He sets us under the streamings forth of His strength; and a leaking vessel, under a cock, gets what it loseth. Thus we have our leakage supplied continually. This was the provision God made for Israel in the wilderness: He clave the rock, and the rock followed them. They had not only a draught at present, but it ran in a stream after them; so that you hear no more of their complaints for water: this rock was Christ. Every believer hath Christ at his back, following him with strength as he goes, for every condition and trial. One flower with the root, is worth many in a posy, which, though sweet, do not grow, but wither as we wear them in our bosoms. God’s strength, as the root, keeps our grace lively; without which it would die.
2. The second design God hath in His saints’ happiness is that He may so express His mercy and love to them as may rebound to Him in the highest advance of His own glory therein (Eph. 1, 4: 12); which is fully attained in His way of empowering saints by a strength not of their own, but of their God’s sending.
Had God given His saints a stock of grace to have set up with, and left them to the improvement of it, He had been magnified indeed, because it was more than He owed the creature; but not as now, when not only the Christian’s first strength to close with Christ is from God, but he is beholden to Him for the exercise of that strength, in every action of his Christian course. As a child that travels in his father’s company, all is paid for, but his father carries the purse, not himself; so the Christian’s shot is discharged in every condition, but he cannot say, “This I did,” or, “That I suffered,” but, “God wrought all in me, and for me.” The very comb of pride is cut here; no room for any self-exalting thoughts. The Christian cannot say, when his faith is strong, “This is the child of my own care and watchfulness.” Alas, poor Christian! who kept thine eye waking, and stirred up thy care? Was not this the offspring of God, as well as thy faith at first? No saint shall say of Heaven, when he comes there, “This is Heaven which I have built in the power of my might.” No, Jerusalem above is a city whose Builder and Maker is God. Every grace, yea, degree of grace, is a stone in that building, the topstone whereof is laid in glory; where saints shall more plainly see how God was not only Founder, to begin, but Benefactor also to finish the same. The glory of the work shall not be crumbed and piece-mealed out, some to God, and some to the creature; but all entirely paid in to God, and He acknowledged All in all.