God's help for unbelieving sinners (Quality: Average)

[0:00] Chapter 25 in the Gospel according to Matthew, speaking again with the Lord's help from verse 25.

[0:12] Chapter 15, the Gospel according to Matthew, verse 25. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help thee.

[0:30] Faith that is founded upon the Word of God must of necessity be the gift and work of the Holy Spirit.

[0:49] For without faith all our preaching and hearing is in vain. Faith is the great touchstone of every exercised soul, matter over which they ponder and pray, concerning which they feel that if they have, as the Word of God describes, but of grain of it, they will be the possessors of something of infinite value.

[1:31] Gradual revelation of the Lord Jesus Christ in his person and his office, in his present mediatorial work in heaven, is essential to salvation.

[1:49] It must be a look as Jonah looked, not some look at random to an unknown Athenian god, not a name merely, but a living, knowable, and in measure known person.

[2:20] Not only so, but it must be accompanied with heart feelings, warmth, desire, desire, a going out in secret, not propped up by anyone else, a secret going to the Lord, a secret being driven to the Lord, without these things we are very hollow, and indeed we are but hypocrites.

[3:06] And it pleases the Lord to work these things in the hearts of Zion and his people in her. Let us not then underestimate the privileges that are ours still, and the things that we love.

[3:27] We may have a plain chapel, unadorned in every respect. We want no grandeur and greatness, either upon the walls or upon houses.

[3:45] But what we do want is the humble, gracious Saviour to come into our midst so that there be that heart burning and the resultant constraint abide with us.

[4:06] And we have these things. Let us not cover them up as if they were unfit to be shown in this twentieth century of sad declension.

[4:22] The things that remain are worthy to be strengthened. And the gospel is, as it ever has been, to the glory of God and to the comfort of his living people.

[4:42] There is a mark of grace in this text. a sure word for which a sinner may rest and will rest.

[4:56] Not by logical putting two and two together. not by that ill-fated thought. Christ died for sinners and I am a sinner, therefore he died for me.

[5:14] not by that ill-fated thought. Not by that ill-fated thought. Not by that ill-fated thought. But a sweet saint, born of a good hope, the prayers of the scripture are indeed and in truth your prayers.

[5:32] You have stolen them. You have been pressed into them and they pressed into you. They have not come to you from your parents.

[5:50] They have been laid in your heart by one whom you may not know the Holy Ghost.

[6:04] You may not know him in his blessed work of the Pope. And so, as we mentioned this afternoon, here is a contrast and something upon which you who tremble at the word of the Lord may look.

[6:26] Are you tempted that you are a double-minded man? You have a sharp shot at you sometimes and perhaps not altogether without cause.

[6:42] that you are not what you appear to be. the antidote then is in this pressure which puts this cry, help.

[6:56] Help! the drowning man does not whether someone shall plug in after him or whether they shall throw him a lifeline or a lifeboid.

[7:12] His cry is help. He leaves the issue with those that hear him. The person that has fallen over a precipice does not complain that the safety or rescue harness is uncomfortable.

[7:29] Does not complain that that drag up the sheer cliff has bruised and scratched them.

[7:41] help such as in this text leaves the issue with the Lord.

[7:52] help. This is not so easy as it may at first sight appear. Some are ready to be helped but they like to prescribe help.

[8:07] Naaman was anxious to get rid of his leprosy but he did not like the beast. At first, and it may well be in some of your hearts, you are convicted of your sin but you have yet to be brought down to the waters of Jordan.

[8:37] I mean the precious blood of Christ. This cry for help from the good woman left the when, the where, and the by what means to his wisdom.

[9:00] And so it is in every case. And therefore, to come to this condition there must be what you nor I like.

[9:14] Try. There must be as Hezekiah found a letter in coming, on coming foe which brings forth this neither know we what to do but our eyes are up under this.

[9:42] I know not what is best for me, Lord. I know not how to get out of this and I know not how to be kept in it.

[9:55] I know not what the issue will be. My heart with it abiding, abiding not the sin of one day and then none tomorrow but every day.

[10:20] Was it Herbert that said daily to feel thyself undone? Daily, he said.

[10:33] When you come into particular trouble, when you are brought into church exercise, when you are brought into office, when you stand upon Zion's walls, whatever it may be, you cannot in these extremities such as I stand in before you today, an extremity prescribe to the Lord how he can do it or what to do but help.

[11:19] Help. This cry reached the heart of Jesus and every such cry will reach his heart for he has trodden in the same place heart.

[11:40] There is a wonderful suitability in the word of God for all occasions. When the time came after some five years of exercise for me to stand before the church and to speak for the first time, this was the most suitable word that is to thee, help me, O God, my God, save me according to thy mercy that they may know that this is thy hand that thou Lord has done but this prayer is the prayer of the

[12:41] Lord Jesus Christ. And it was some years afterwards before I realized that he cried for help.

[12:58] he was in a condition necessitated he learned obedience by the things that he suffered.

[13:14] He trod the path of prayer from sheer necessity he pleaded words which we have no record but a few of them this heavenly friend of sin understand you take the appearances of prayer meetings when praying men can scarce tumble out a few words when they pray Lord help when they seem to be told look at these old godly men in the churches who had to tread years on and can't cry now and have to say

[14:15] Lord teach me to you who understand this you don't say of the old deacon well you've been at it for 50 years surely you've got beyond that do you your heart goes out to it you love it that's a 50 one and that's the same only magnified in the heart of the receiver in him he knows what it is to have had to pray help under the excruciating suffering and the impenetrable darkness when his father hid his face when he was made sin and bore the iniquity of his feet when he felt in his holy soul the envious nature of imputed sin and you know what it is to feel it to yourself that yours that he in his holy spotless humanity was made sin father if it is possible let this cup pass from me nevertheless not my will have died begun

[15:59] Moon the Lord how the Lord has beenikh May the ministry do you in exulting and precious with me.

[16:24] Put these together. Your prayer is to brand them a shot in the dark, a boat of entry. Why your eyes are open to the finished source, the finished work.

[16:48] You know, you believe. Don't say you do not. Don't underestimate again, I say.

[16:59] Don't underestimate the Lord helping you what he's done for your soul. Satan will try to do this. He's made you a believer in the righteousness of the Savior.

[17:15] When you go to this blessed man with your sin, you're a believer, aren't you? You say, am I?

[17:26] What says the scripture? I am the bread of life. He that cometh to me should never come.

[17:38] He that, now here's your word, believeth on me, should never come.

[17:49] Coming and believing. Oh, you say it's true. Yes. I didn't say so.

[18:02] It is the word of the Lord of life, the bread of life. He that cometh. He that believeth. One and the same thing.

[18:13] Of course it is. Help, cried this holy, powerless one. His feelings and hearts engage them.

[18:31] In this matter that you, through unbelief, have rather tempted to think he won't deal with you and your sins and your case.

[18:46] You are the least. It may be in your father's house, but that isn't any argument against you. There are several very comprehensive, as well as sweet, references to both great and small.

[19:08] It's been a comfort to me sometimes. Both great and small. Not a hoof shall be left behind.

[19:25] So, this word, help, runs through the sacred page like a scarlet thread. I have laid help upon one that is mighty.

[19:39] Obviously, obviously, he does want it for himself. Help, laid upon one that is mighty.

[19:52] Why, if the Holy Spirit enabled you to meditate for that, to take your night to get through it, and long help upon one that is mighty.

[20:08] He does want it for himself. You do. And it's laid upon him to dispense it. There is a sweet willingness brought in the heart when this prayer is there that the Lord would help just as he sees best.

[20:32] the cry is all in the word of help.

[20:42] and it's come from some of our very low places. those of you who have been turning this over in your hearts today, I expect to come to some of the deep places in your life, haven't you?

[21:02] when this has been the one word, perhaps faintness of body and heart, affliction, a worn-out mind, incapable of putting prayer as it were before the Lord has dropped into this help.

[21:24] Help. Help. How blessed is the cry as it comes forth from us pain in this.

[21:38] You mean it, don't you? Can't you help yourself? Have you tried? Your answer is yes, I have tried.

[21:52] I've tried all other means. I've got the spirit of Naaman in me still who says I surely thought he would come out and put his hand over the place.

[22:08] Now, you surely thought a good many things you surely thought the Lord would take the child away. You thought that in some favoured hour at once he'd answer my request.

[22:24] But no. But as with the growth in grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ and the grace and the peace that flow from him increases increases so this knowledge brings with it experience and experience brings with it patience.

[22:53] The time comes when that cross, that loss, that affliction which you could only see relief in by being taken away, that abiding cross, that thing that in your life permits.

[23:16] You've got it haven't you? Cast it. And you say of this I shall never be free from this now you were.

[23:30] but there is another way is there? Can I bear this? Can I suffer and endure this?

[23:42] Must I know my unfitness? Must I ever feel this thought in my flesh? Shall I never be able to preach?

[23:54] Will the day never come when I can sit down and say the Lord's sermon and feel that I've preached a good sermon? No, it never will.

[24:06] Never. Why not? Because of the way over it and the way is this. My grace is sufficient for me.

[24:23] This is how wonderful I've taken my cross to the Lord once and twice and been enabled to see this that no other cross would do for me.

[24:45] And that wisdom has placed it where it is. And that cross under such favor but for a moment it may be but it has beat his sword.

[25:04] I am unworthy that thou shouldest take the trouble to deal with me in this way as to lay this cross and shall that shall be out.

[25:24] You don't complain of the prudent. You don't say, Lord, it's too rough. But what you do do, you say, is this to give me more of what Paul desired for every church he wrote to, grace.

[25:42] Give me more grace, Lord. Wonderful, Lord, Lord. And it must, of course, soften the hardest heart and silence the most rebellious heart.

[26:03] But we come to the word me, me. Now, my friends, they put blinkers on horses and them, so that they shan't see what to decide of.

[26:20] I hope the Lord may be pleased to put such a banassio in my place. Forget each other. You husbands, forget your wives.

[26:34] You wives, forget your husbands. You mothers, you children, you fathers, you children, me. Lord, help me.

[26:50] where shall we find the leaves? Look at Abraham first. Me, trying to put my hand to the word, to hasten the promise, to hurry up thy word, to connive with my own wife, some rearrangement of thy eternal plan.

[27:19] help me, Lord, the father of the faith, the man after God's own heart, the one who stands at a monument of faith, could not endure the years of waiting for his son Isaac.

[27:42] He put his hand to it. Lord, let's him get on with it. Help me. I, who have been put my hand to thy wish, who have been dissatisfied with the Lord, I, Sarah, who have laughed in my heart and said, ah, this shall never be.

[28:14] I, who have looked at the Lord's word and promise, have said, I could never see this. I'm too far gone, too rich.

[28:29] My case is so different from everybody else's. Not me, not me, says blind unbelief, not me.

[28:42] The gospel's invitation, no, not me. The sweet exhortations and promises, blind unbelief, said, no, not you.

[28:57] Help me. Do you know what it is? He gave them their desire to send these into their soul.

[29:09] How many of you, and especially you who are, have been the threshold of your life, who have perhaps served this lesson yet, I say, be very careful.

[29:23] Commit thy way unto the Lord, and remember the next thing. Trust also in him.

[29:36] You say, well, he's kept me too long. I've waited. Abraham said, I've waited, and I'm still waiting.

[29:51] Hason. Oh, you say, I haven't got. You haven't got any? No. Of course you haven't. And that's what you're being given. Hason.

[30:03] glibly people say, well, I took it to the Lord. But it's well worth the hearing when they're able to say that the Lord kept them waiting.

[30:22] That he purposed in their patience. And after he had patiently endured, you see, divine mercy over and covered over that latch in Abraham's life, the sacred record said, if they didn't know to the contrary, one would think that Abraham had been faithful all those years of waiting, but he hasn't seen the review.

[30:52] Now, but it says after he had patiently ended. How could you learn patience except you learn needless threatfulness, hate?

[31:09] Lord, help me. Look at Joseph. Where should we find a man like him?

[31:24] Well, when the butler was delivered from prison, he made this strange request to him. Here is a man who had the word of the Lord in his heart and the word of the Lord was trying him, but he got out of patience with it and he said to the butler, when it is well with thee, remember me.

[31:48] Joseph, and very pitterly, the word followed, nevertheless, did not the butler remember Joseph, but forget him.

[32:04] Then goes on the next chapter, the 41st of Genesis, and after two full years, Pharaoh dreamed and dreamed Lord help, two pulls in prison, expecting the door to be open every day until he realized that the butler had forgotten all about him.

[32:36] And then down he goes, and what else? He trusted in an arm of him. Lord, help not to trust in an arm of flesh.

[32:52] Your pastor here has got no arms of flesh that he can trust in for his ministry. You may stand by him lovingly and loyally as the people, I hope you do, but he can't turn to his dearest and dearest and say, will this text do?

[33:14] He can't go home and say, well, what sort of a sermon was it today? Can he go home before his car and he'll tell his Lord what he feels the sermon was.

[33:34] But it's this Lord cannot help me from trusting and harming me. I don't want to. I don't want to.

[33:49] Look at Sam to toying with a delight playing with seeing how far he could go seeing how much poison he could drink to poison himself.

[34:10] Like some people do with error, they go and go and go and they take another sip and another sip and think and think, well, this is right and this is right, and see how much they can take till they poison themselves.

[34:29] So with Sam he toyed with that ungodly people, you young people be very careful who you choose to your friends.

[34:42] They may have a nice nature, they may have an appealing disposition, but if they have the fear of God in their heart and new hands, need I say any more?

[35:02] And Samson is brought into the prison house, his eyes taken out, he comes to this, when they call for sport, they bring him out, and he pleads this, Lord, just this once, this last night, give me my hand.

[35:30] Like Abraham, when he pleaded for Sodom and Gomorrah, he said, let not the Lord be angry with me and I will speak, but this once, just once more, Lord, have you never said that?

[35:52] Just once more, help me, help me once more, Lord, just once more, support me, self-abasing, humbling, but oh, it's, in the word, you say, it's there, the path that the Lord has brought his things.

[36:16] Look at Gideon, you want a token, some of you here want an evidence.

[36:29] The Lord may have begun his work in you, and bringing you up to the stage now, where he intends to open the flower in your life. you want a token.

[36:44] You know what it is to sing from your heart, show me a token, Lord, for good. You know what it is like Rahab wanted, a true token.

[36:59] Where you've got you've got to get it? Where is it coming? You don't know, do you? But you say, Lord, help. Me, in this matter, your exercise about joining the church?

[37:16] your Lord, help. Give me a token. You're exercised about taking a major step in your life?

[37:29] Lord, help. Me, where did Gideon get his help from? He'd have a good many tokens beforehand, sufficient, one would think, to set any man on his feet.

[37:47] But now, even with the fleece, he still wasn't satisfied. The Lord dealt very tenderly with him, but where did he get his true token from that finally moved him?

[38:02] Josiah arrived. You know where he got him. Went down to the camp of Midian, cheeked by girl with the enemy, he overheard two men.

[38:20] You know the issue. He got his truest token from his closest proximity to the enemy. Now, now on to sin and Satan's throne, to rend my soul from thee, my God.

[38:44] When you are suffered and permitted to get down into the depravity of your own heart, and the Holy Ghost is pleased to say to you, sinners, you can say, and only they, how precious is the saved.

[39:04] settles that gospel light, and a part of gospel divinity, that is the freedom of the gospel, that it is sinners, not part sinners, but sinners in their full feeling.

[39:34] And so we might go on to look at the footsteps of the flock, to look at jokes, disobedient, rebellious, flying from God, taking the ship, to go away from the Lord altogether, and anxious to get away from God.

[40:06] That's what Jonah desired. He fled from the presence of the Lord, Job did. But Jonah wanted to get away from God.

[40:19] Now I don't know whether you have faced it as this. I did on one occasion, and a bitterly on it.

[40:31] In respect of the servitude of the Lord's house, I determined one Sabbath morning to sleep on it. And I felt it was utterly possible for me to go.

[40:50] And I would have lost, but a secret something took me to the Lord's house, angry, rebellious, no test, no, not till I got into the Lord's house.

[41:08] Then these words came with humbling house, no, no, no, no, no, when the enemy will come in like a flood. Spirit of the Lord will lift up a standard against him.

[41:23] It doesn't say when he should try to come in. No, when he's in, it was in my heart that he was in Jonah's house.

[41:36] The issue of that day's service is to say no more of him, was a very comforting one, and in one case of blessing.

[41:54] Is there anyone here in blind, disobedient, rebellious, anger against God, and listening?

[42:04] Do it so well to be angry? Yes, indeed I do. Lord, help me, rebellious, disobedient, me, your pastor here too, doesn't come with air every Sabbath to the sanctuary of that.

[42:32] Help me, God, help me, help me, in God's love. He feels it may come pretty close to some of his love. He feels, Lord, I wish I had got to speak from this text.

[42:47] Lord, help me, give me a tender heart. Don't let me take the hammer and the nails. Give me a gospel spirit to free connection at this.

[43:00] Help me to speak, in gospel terms. Help the preacher to seek out acceptable words. Lord, help me, so we might go on just one more.

[43:21] When David was at zinc-legged and the enemy came and took and sacked the city, when David was playing the traitor's part in the enemy's camp, came to the lowest moment of his life when his own friend, his faithful, lifelong friend, almost spake a stone, and what do we read?

[43:57] And David encouraged himself as a sword in the hand. I know what it has been to drink and I heard it. What did David find then?

[44:12] I believe he found a faithful God. A faithful God. Here he was and prayed. his own people were so dissatisfied with it.

[44:27] He encouraged himself in divine and faithful Lord himself. Me, the traitor. Me, the turncoat.

[44:43] We have to feel it in our hearts. I do. it is enough, say the light, can't go any further.

[44:55] Any of you different trees I doubt not grows in leather heads that weathered out. Can't go any further, Lord. Faith.

[45:09] The side, oh, the side, is the altar to the little death, not of this. The same, ah, but surely my behavior is going to make him altered, the same, but surely, surely I, I, who am so pickled and full, surely, Lord, I'm going to change you the same yesterday and today and today.

[45:39] Lord, help me. And so we might go on, but there is one other happy, blessed sequel to this work, Lord, and it is this, King of Kings, and Lord of Lords.

[46:04] You children care to whom and when you get home, you'll find that that is his capital letter. I don't want to fly up words, but Lord of Lords, he who was helped out in the way he thought then, by the deeds that he designed, will one day receive at your hands, your crown, you will say, Lord, you were right, you will say, Lord, and it will be bold in your heart, Lord, you've done all things well.

[46:57] I'm murmuring, teavish, fretful, unbelieving, wretched heart, Lord, Lord, it's all God, King of kings, and Lord of lords, and the me of the text of the Syrophoenician woman will be attached to this blessed acclamation, crown him, praise, unto him that love us.

[47:27] and you see, when you use the pronoun, you are bringing it either, you can bring it to the person, when you sing a hymn together, and it's us, and you sing it with your heart, that means me.

[47:47] And so it will be in that happy, blessed, solemn day, when we are brought to love him, as we all, and to see this wonderful word, help, help, help, help, sent to them in everything, and with a goodly, godly, Shunammite, able to say, with a son, strength from the prophet, there is his God, and this is the God, we have to serve the Lord, the bottom rung of the land, vast, acceptable, lovest thou me, thou knowest all things, leave it there, don't answer a bold unexperienced yes, will you?

[48:50] Peter couldn't that to matter, knowest much of the fall and depravity, but what he did say was this, Lord, thou knowest it, Lord, have, it is due to us, take you to heaven, we friends, good, good helper for our inferno, it is this, how many times shall we not have to you, but there it is, in all its blessed simplicity, the Lord help you to take it, and you, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, it is, and that does help you to help you