Sermons of Robert Murray MCheyne 9. The Good Way of Coming before the Lord

Extract

“Wherewith shall I come before the Lord, and bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt- offerings, with calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, or ten thousands of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul? He hath showed thee, O man, what is good: and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” Micah 6:6-8.

Doctrine — The good way of coming before the Lord.

The question of an awakened soul. — “Wherewith shall I come before the Lord?” An unawakened man never puts that question. A natural man has no desire to come before God, or to bow himself before the High God. He does not like to think of God. He would rather think of any other subject. He easily forgets what he is told about God. A natural man has no memory for divine things, because he has no heart for them. He has no desire to come before God in prayer. There is nothing a natural man hates more than prayer. He would far rather spend half an hour every morning in bodily exercise or in hard labour, than in the presence of God. He has no desire to come before God when he dies. He knows that he must appear before God, but it gives him no joy. He had rather sink into nothing; he had rather never see the face of God. Ah! my friends, is this your condition? How surely you may know that you have “the carnal mind which is enmity against God.” You are like Pharaoh — “Who is the Lord, that I should obey Him?” You say to God, “Depart from me, for I desire not the knowledge of Thy ways.” What an awful state it is to be in to have no desire after Him who is the fountain of living waters!

I. Here is the piercing question of every awakened soul. 1. An awakened soul feels that his chief happiness is in coming before God. This was unfallen Adam’s happiness. He felt like a child under a loving Father’s eye. It was his chief joy to come before God — to be loved by Him — to be like a mote in the …