The faintin soul Revived: A sermon by Phil Johnson

"When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the Lord."—Jonah 2:7.
When man was first made, there
was no fear of his forgetting God
for it was his highest privilege and
delight to have communion with
his Maker. "The Lord God walked in
the garden in the cool of the day," and Adam was
privileged to hold fellowship with God, closer,
perhaps, than even the angels had in heaven. But
the spell of that sacred harmony was rudely broken
by man's disobedience and his dreadful fall. Ever
since our first parent tasted of the forbidden
fruit, which brought death into our world, and all
its train of woes, his mortal race has been
naturally prone to forget God. The evil
propensities of flesh and blood have made it
impossible to persuade man to remember his
Creator. The complaint of God against the Jews is
true as an indictment against the whole human
family. "Hear, O heaven, and give ear. O earth: I
have nourished and brought up children, and they
have rebelled against me; the ox knoweth its
owner, and the ass its master's crib, but Israel
doth not know, my people doth not consider." Man
is foolish; he flies from the highest good. Man is
wicked; he turns his back upon supreme holiness.
Man is worldly: he forgets the kingdom of God and
the world to come. Man is wilful; he follows his own
vain imaginations, and, with head-strong
rebellion, opposes himself to his God, that he may
pursue his own wayward course, and gratify his
wanton passions.
To convince a man of his error, to arrest him
in his evil pursuits, to reclaim him to the paths of
righteousness—this is seldom accomplished without
dire trouble and deep affliction. Some men, it is
true, are brought to God by gentle means; they are
drawn by soft but mighty bonds; still, a much
larger class of persons remains, upon whom these
silken cords would exert no influence. They must
not be handled softly, but must be dealt with
heavily. The picklock will never open their hearts;
there must be the crowbar, and even the battering
ram, to give a furious cannonade. Some hearts can
never be captured for God and for truth except by
storm. Sword in hand, God's law must scale the
ramparts. With thundering report, God's Word
must dash down the walls of their confidence, and
make breach after breach in the bastions of their
pride, and even then they will fight it out, and
never yield, until, driven to an awful extremity,
they see that they must either yield at once, or
else be lost for ever. It is with such persons that I
now particularly want to deal. There are those who
have forgotten God after having once known him,
and they are not likely to be brought back without
great trouble; and there are others who never did
know God, and they never will enquire after him,
unless they are driven to their wits' end by
calamity, as when a great famine in the land where
he dwelt compelled the prodigal for very lack of
bread to seek his Father's house. So I have first to
remonstrate:—
I. WITH THE BACKSLIDER.
Let me, however, before I go into the matter
with you, describe a little more minutely the
individuals I wish to address. There is no need to
call out your names; it will suffice if we portray
your character and describe your conduct. There
are some of you who used to be members of
Christian churches years ago, but you have
gradually declined, and so reckless has your career
at length become, that it is a wonder that you have
not utterly perished in your sin. You seemed to
run well on the outset, and for a time you held on
in the way; but where are you now? Well, you
happen at this present to be in God's house, and I
do trust that God's own hour has come, when he
will meet you and bring you back. What we have to
say of Jonah, I do entreat you to apply to
yourselves; if the cap seems to fit you, put it on
and wear it, even though it should be a fool's cap:
wear it till you are ashamed of yourselves, and are
led to confess your folly before the God who is able
to remove it, and to make you wise unto salvation.
Observe, dear friends, that though Jonah
remembered the Lord, it was not till he got into
the whale's belly, nor even then till his soul fainted
within him. He did not remember the Lord all the
time he was going down to Joppa to find a ship,
nor yet when he got on board that ship. His Master
had said to him, Jonah, go to Nineveh," but Jonah
was a strong-willed, head-strong fellow. Though a
true servant of God, and a prophet, yet he fled
from the presence of the Lord. To Nineveh, he
resolved within himself, he would not go. He could
foresee no honour to himself out of the journey,
no increase of his own reputation, no deference
that would come to him amongst those proud
Assyrians, so, in direct defiance of the divine
command, he set off to Joppa, to take a ship and to
flee from God's presence. Into the ship he got, paid
the fare, and went sallying down the sea to go to
Tarshish; but all this while he never thought of
God. Not unlikely in this assembly there may be a
woman who used to be a member of a Christian
church, but she married an ungodly man; after
that there was no going to the house of God, much
less anything like keeping up her church
membership. The shop was kept open on Sunday,
or there was a pleasure party to be entertained at
home, or an excursion taken into the country. All
this seemed very pleasant. The disquietude of
conscience she might feel at first wore off as habit
made it familiar, until, year after year, this
woman, who once seemed to be a true servant of
Christ, lives in carelessness and indifference, not
to say profanity, with hardly any thoughts of God.
Perhaps she has not quite given up prayer; she
could not absolutely become an enemy of Christ, or
entertain a dislike to his people. Still, God was
forgotten. So long as the business prospered, the
husband was in good health, and the world smiled,
God was never thought of. Can I be mistaken in
supposing that there is a man here who in his
youth was a loud talker, a vehement professor of
religion, and a companion of those that fear the
Lord? But after a time there seemed to be a way of
getting money rather faster than the ordinary
methods of honest labour or simple merchandise;
so he entered into, a speculation, which soon ate
out the vitals of his piety. His new projects
involved new companions; in their fellowship he
stifled his old convictions, and, as he would not
play the hypocrite, he ceased to make any
profession at all. Perhaps months have passed
since he has been in a place of worship; even now
he would rather be unrecognised, for he has only
come here because a friend from the country
asked him company to me the place and to hear the
preacher. Ah! my dear sir, it is strange indeed, if
you be a child of God, that you could have walked so
contrary to God as you have. Yet so did Jonah. Do
I, then, hold up his case before your eyes to
comfort you? Nay; but let me hope that you will
apply the bitter rebuke to your own soul, and be
led to do as Jonah did. All the while the ship sailed
smoothly over the sea, Jonah forgot his God. You
could not have distinguished him from the veriest
heathen on board. He was just as bad as they
were. Yet was there a spark of fire among the
embers, which God in due time fanned into a
flame. Happy for you if this better part of his
experience should tally with your own.
Such, too, was Jonah's blank forgetfulness,
that he does not appear to have thought upon his
God all the while the storm raged, the billows
rolled, and the ship was tossed with tempest. The
poor heathen sailors were all on their knees crying
for mercy, but Jonah was asleep in the vessel, till
the superstitious captain himself was amazed at
his apathy: "What meanest thou, O sleeper; carest
thou not that we all perish?" He went down and
upbraided him, and asked him how it was that he
could sleep while the passengers and crew were all
crying. "Arise," said he, "and call upon thy God." He
was stirred up to his danger and his duty, even by
a heathen! Now maybe there are some here who
have had a host of troubles. Is husband dead? Are
you a lone woman with a family to provide for? Or
are you a widower, looking on your children with
pity, whom you once regarded with a homely pride?
Possibly you may have another form of trial. Your
business has gone to the bad; you expected to have
realised large profits by it, but you encountered
loss upon loss, till your little capital has been
scattered. Still, all this while you have not thought
about God. Mayhap that child after child has been
taken from you, and yet you have not remembered
God. Is it really so, that the Lord loves you, and,
because he loves you, therefore chastens you?
Mark my word, you will continue to suffer loss
upon loss, till you have lost all you have and all you
count dear, and you will be brought to death's door
yourself, but he will save you at last. If you ever
were his, he never will let you sink into hell; but,
oh! it will be hard work for you to get to heaven.
You will be saved, but it will be so as by fire. You
will be saved as by the skin of your teeth—scarcely
saved, and the way in which you are saved will be a
most terrible one to you. Oh! friend, I wish you
would turn while God is smiting you gently, for
know of a certainty if rods will not do, he will come
to scourges, and if the scourge will not do, he will
take the knife, and if the knife will not do, he will
take the sword, and you shall have to feel it, for,
as sure as God is God, he will never lose his child,
and he will cut that child, as it were, into pieces,
but he will save his soul. He will undermine your
constitution by disease, and make you toss upon
the bed of anguish, but he will bring you back. Oh!
that you had grace to come back by gentler means
before these terrible actions are tried!
So, then, Jonah did not think of God all this
time. Now at length the vessel begins to creak, and
seems as if she must go to pieces. Then they cast
lots, and the lot fell upon Jonah. He is about to be
thrown into the sea. At that moment a pair of
huge jaws open wide, shut again, and swallow him
up. "Where am I now?" says Jonah, as he is taken
down deep by the motions of this monstrous fish,
till the weeds come into the fish and wrap about
his head, and his life is only preserved by a miracle.
Then, oh! then Jonah thinks upon his God. "When
my soul fainted within me." Now why did his soul
faint within him? Was it not because he thought,
"Now I am in a hopeless case; I shall never come
out of this; it is a wonder I am not drowned; it is a
marvel I was not snapped in pieces by those huge
jaws; what a hopeless case I am in! I will but linger
a little while, then perish I must in this horrible
prison of a whale's belly." I dare say he thought
that never was man in such a plight before; never
a person that was alive inside a fish; and how
comfortless he must have felt with nothing but the
cold deep round him. Instead of garments, weeds
were wrapped about his head. How his heart
throbbed, and his head ached, with no cheer, no
light, no friendly voice, no succour, no help;
faraway from dry land, out on the boundless deep,
without a comrade to sympathise with his strange
plight.
Now when a child of God goes astray, it is not
at all unusual for God to bring him into just such a
state as that, a condition in which he cannot help
himself; forlorn and friendless, with no one that
can relieve or minister to him. This dreary thought
will meanwhile ever haunt his mind, "I brought it
all upon myself!" Hast thou not procured this unto
thyself? Like a woman who has left her husband's
house, deserted her home, and betrayed her kind
and tender protector, what fruit can she expect to
reap of her wickedness? When she is ready to
starve, when the wind blows through her tattered
raiment, when her face is swollen with weeping,
and her soul is full of anguish, she has only herself
to upbraid, as she cries, "I have brought this upon
myself; would God I had never left my cheerful
homestead, however humble the lodgings might
have been; would God I had never deserted the
husband who loved me, and spread his aegis over
me, however roughly he sometimes spake! Oh! that
I had been more scrupulously obedient, and less
prone to discontent!" The afterthought of sin—I
think they call it remorse. Thus it was that Jonah
thought upon his God, when the shame of his
transgressions overwhelmed him.
Oh! how merciful our God is to allow us to
think about him, and turn to him when in so
pitiable a plight! "Yes," said a tradesman once to a
customer for whose favours he felt little cause to
be grateful, "you come to me, I know why; you
have been to every other shop in the town for the
article you require, and you could not obtain it;
and now you come back to me whom you had no
good cause ever to leave, I shall not serve you."
This is not how the Lord speaks to us. He does not
resent our ingratitude. "My child, my poor child,"
says he, "though you have gone and spent your
substance; though you have been feeding swine:
though you are all black, and foul and filthy, yet
you are my dear child still, and my heart yearns
towards you." Without a word of rebuke, or even a
taunting look, so soon as ever a poor sinner comes
back to the Father's house, the Father's arms are
round about his neck, and the kiss of pardon is
pressed on his cheek. "I remember thee well," says
he; "I have blotted out thy sins like a cloud, and
like a thick cloud thine iniquities." Now if there be
a backslider here—and I know there are several—I
can only hope that God will bring you into Jonah's
peril. You shall have no pity from me if he does; I
will rather be thankful to God that he has brought
you there, because I shall know then that he has
some designs of love towards you. But when you
get into the regions of despair, do as Jonah did—
think upon your God. What, do any of you objects?
Do you imagine that to think about God would
make you worse? Well, think that you were once
his child, and think again that he has found you
out, and knows where you are. Jonah felt that God
knew where he was, because he had sent the fish.
God knows your whereabouts, my good woman; he
knows what quarters you are now in, my fellow-
sinner. Remember, too, that you are yet alive!
what a wonder it is that you are still permitted to
hear the voice which says, "Return, return; oh!
backslider, return." God is immutable; he cannot
change; his covenant is steadfast; he will not alter
it. If he has loved you once, he loves you now. If I
bought you, I will have you. Come back to him,
then; he is your husband still. Return! return! he
is your Father still—return! return! But, oh! my
hearer, perhaps you have no pretensions to be a
child of his! Perhaps you may have played the
hypocrite and made a profession in your own
strength. You turned back from the company of
those who fear the Lord, because you never were
truly converted. If it be so, let the mercy, which
God shows to sinners, embolden you to cry to him.
And may he break you to pieces now with the
hammer of his Word. So may he save you, and so
shall his praise be exceedingly great in your
salvation.
Though I have tried thus to reach the
backslider, it is likely enough that I have missed my
mark, honest as my intention has been. Oh! it
seems so dreadful that any of you should perish in
your sins, who know the way of hope! Some of you
were candled on the knees of piety. There are
those now in heaven who look down upon you, and
could they weep, you might feel their tears
dropping on your brow. You know very well that
time was when the hope of a better world yielded
you some kind of comfort and joy. You do not
think, at any rate, that you were feigning piety
then, but you did account yourself, a sinner. By
the compassion of the Most High, by the love of
God, I pray you stop! Do not drink the cup of devils
after having drank the cup of the Lord, and give
not that soul to damnation which once seemed to
bid fair for salvation. Eternal life is too rich a
prize to trifle with. May the Spirit of God do what
I cannot. May he send home these things to the
persons for whom they are intended.
And now we have, in the second place, to deal
with the careless, the thoughtless, the profligate—
with:—
II. THOSE WHO NEVER WERE AWAKENED—
mora1 or immoral in the world's reckoning. Jonah
did not remember God till his soul fainted within
him; and the reckless sinner, as a rule, never does
remember God till under the stress of law, or the
distress of pain and penalty; his soul is ready to
faint within him. Now I hope some of you will be
brought to feel this faintness.
What kind of faintness do persons who are
under the saved discipline of the Spirit of God
generally feel?
There is faintness of horror at their present
condition. I can imagine a person lying down on
the edge of a cliff and falling asleep. On suddenly
waking up, having moved during his sleep, he finds
himself within an inch of the precipice, and looks
down and sees, far beneath him, the jagged rocks
and the boiling sea. How his nerves would quiver as
he realized his position and his jeopardy! Many a
sinner has thus opened his eyes to discern his
terrible hazard. He has suddenly waked up to find
that he is on the brink of eternal wrath, standing
where an angry God is waving a dreadful sword,
and certain to plunge it into his heart before long.
Every unconverted person here is poising over the
mouth of hell upon a single plank, and that plank is
rotten; he is hanging over the jaws of perdition by
one rope, and the strands of that rope are
snapping every moment. If a man does but
apprehend this and feels it, I do not wonder that
he faints.
Faintness, moreover, arises from a dread of
horrors yet to come. Who can conceive the heart-
sinking of those poor passengers on board that
vessel which so lately foundered in the open sea,
at the prospect of being swallowed up alive, and
sinking they knew not whither! It would be no
easy thing, one would think, to keep from fainting
at a time when such a doom was imminent. So
when God awakens the soul by the noise of the
tempest, it looks out and sees the ocean of divine
wrath about to engulf it. The cries of lost spirits
appal it, and it says to itself, "I shall soon mingle
with those shrieks; my voice will aid the wailings of
their dolorous company ore long; I shall be driven
from his presence with a fiery sword at my heels
before many hours are over." Then the soul faints
with alarm at the thought of judgment to come.
Faint, too, is the soul of the sinner through a
sense of weakness. "I cannot do anything to avert
the catastrophe" seems to be the leading idea of a
person when he has fainted. Over the awakened
sinner there comes this sense of weakness. When a
sinner does not know himself, he thinks that being
saved is the easiest thing in the world. He
supposes that to come to Christ to get peace is a
matter that can be done just as readily as one
snaps his fingers. But when God begins to deal
with him, he says. "I would believe, but I cannot";
and he cries out, "Oh! God, I find that faith is as
impossible to me as keeping thy law, except thou
help me!" Once he thought he could reform himself,
and become as holy as an angel; but now he can do
nothing, and he cries out for very faintness, "Oh!
God, what a poor, helpless, shiftless creature I
am!"
And then there will sometimes come over him
faintness of such a kind as I must call horrible. Well
do I remember when I was in that state! I thought
I would give up prayer, because it seemed of no
use to pray, and yet I could not help praying; I
must pray, and yet I felt that I did not pray. I
thought I would not go to hear the gospel any
more; there was nothing in it for me, and yet
there was a fascination about the preaching of the
gospel that made me go and hear it. I heard that
Christ was very gracious to sinners but I could not
believe that he would be gracious to me. Little did
it matter whether I heard a promise or a
threatening. I liked the threatening best.
Threatenings appeared to me to be just what I
deserved, and they provoked some kind of emotion
in my breast. But when I heard a promise I
shuddered with a gloomy feeling that it was of no
use to me; I felt condemned already. The pains of
hell got hold upon me, so tortured was my soul with
the forebodings of an endless doom. I heard, the
other day, of a young minister becoming an
infidel, and I prayed for him. What, think you, was
the burden of my petition? I prayed that God
would make him feel the weight of his hand; for I
cannot imagine that a man who has once felt the
weight of God's hand can ever afterwards doubt
his being, his sovereignty, or his power. Believe
me, brethren, there is such an unutterable
anguish, as a man could not long endure without
becoming absolutely insane, which God makes some
people feel in order to crush their love of sin, to
purge them of their self-righteousness, and bring
them to a sense of their dependence on himself.
Some men can never be brought in any other way.
I may be addressing the patients I am describing. I
sincerely hope I am. You are feeling God's hand.
The whole weight of it rests upon you, and under
it you are crushed, as a moth is crushed beneath
one's finger. Now I have a message from God for
you. When Jonah was in your case he remembered
his God. Tell me, what sayest thou, poor heart—
what sayest thou to remembering thy God?
The case I am going to describe is not exactly
that of John Newton, but it is from his experience
that I gather my picture. There is a young man
with a very good father, a holy father. As the
young man grows up he does not like his trade: he
cannot bear it, no he says to his father, "While I
succumb to your government I mean to have my
own way; other people enjoy themselves, and so
will I; and as I cannot do it under your roof. I will
follow my fancy elsewhere." He goes to sea. When
he is at sea he discovers that all is not quite to his
taste; the work he has to do is very different from
what he had been accustomed to; still, he doesn't
flinch. At the first port he reaches he gives loose
to his passions. "Ah!" says he, "this is a jolly life!
This is far better than being at home with my
father, and being kept tied to my mother's apron-
strings all my days. I say a merry life is the thing
to suit me, sir." He goes on board again, and
wherever the vessel puts in, each port becomes an
outlet for his vices. He is a rare boy to swear and
drink, and when he comes back to England he has
no words too bitter to utter against religion in
general, and against his father's scruples of
conscience in particular. It so happens that one
day there comes on a dreadful storm. He has to
take a long spell at the pumps, and when that is
over he must begin to pump again, for the ship is
ready to founder, and every man must keep hard
at it hour after hour. There is a driving wind and a
heavy tempest. At 1ast they are told that nothing
can save them; there are breakers ahead, and the
vessel will be on shore! He lashes himself to the
mast and floats about all night, and the next day,
and the next, with faint hope of life. He has some
twitches of conscience now; he cannot help
thinking of his father and mother. However, he is
not going to be broken down by a trifle. He has a
hard heart, and he will not give way yet. He is
crashed on shore, and finds himself among a
barbarous people. He is taken care of by the
barbarians; they give him food; albeit his meal is
scant, and he is presently set to work as a slave.
His master proves harsh to him, and his master's
wife especially cruel. He gets but little to eat, and
he is often beaten. Still, he bears up, and hopes
for better days. But, half-starved and hard
worked, his bodily health and his mental energy are
reduced to a low degree. No marvel that fever
overtakes him. Who has he to nurse him? What
friend to care for him? The people treat him as a
dog, and take no notice of him. He can neither stir
nor move. In vain he pines for a drop of water in
the dead of the night; he feels that he must die of
thirst. He lifts his voice, but there is nobody to
hear him. To his piteous appeal there is no answer.
Then it is he thinks, "Oh! God, if I might but get
back to my father!" Then it is, when he is at the
last extremity, that he thinks of home.
Now what did happen in the case of John
Newton will happen, and has happened, in the case
of many a sinner. He never would come back to
God, but at last he felt that it was no use trying
anywhere else. He was driven to utter
desperation. In this dilemma his heart said, "Oh!
that I might find the Lord." Hark, now: I will tell
you a tale. A lot of sailors were going to sea. When
about to start, the owner said, "There! I have
bought a lifeboat; put it on board." They reply,
"No, never! We don't believe in lifeboats; they are
new-fangled things. We do not understand them,
and we shall never use one." "Put it on board, and
let it bide there," says the captain. "Well, captain,"
says the boatswain, "a tom fool of a boat—isn't it?
I cannot think what the owner meant by putting
such a thing as this on board." Old tars, as they
walk along the deck say to themselves, "Ah! I never
saw such a thing in all my life as that! Think of old
Ben Bolt taking a lifeboat with him! Don't believe
in such gimcracks!" Presently a stiff breeze
springs up, it comes to a gale—a hurricane—a
perfect tornado! Now let down the lifeboat,
captain. "No, no, no; nonsense!" Let down the
lifeboat! No; the other boats are got out, but they
are stove in, one after another, and capsized.
They bring out another; she cannot ride out the
storm. There she goes, right up on the crest of the
waves and she has gone over, bottom uppermost.
It is all over with them! "What shall we do,
captain?" "Try the lifeboat, boatswain." Just so;
when every spar is gone, when every other boat is
washed overboard, and when the ship is going
down, they will take to the lifeboat. So be it. The
Lord wash all your boats overboard. May it please
God to wreck your vessel; may he shiver every
timber, and make you take to the lifeboat. I fear
me some of you will never take counsel till you
reach the crisis. May there come, then, such a
storm that you will be driven to take to Christ.
That done there is no storm you need ever fear.
That done, let the loudest tempest roar, you are
safe; you have Christ in the vessel with you. Two
or three more words, and I have done. God has
been pleased to give his dear Son, his only-
begotten Son, to die a most dreadful death, not
for righteous ones, but for sinners. Jesus Christ
came into the world to seek and to save that which
was lost. If you are a sinner, you are the sort of
person Christ came to save. If you are a lost one,
you are the sort of man that Jesus Christ came to
seek. Let your present sorrow comfort you,
because it is an indication that you are the kind of
person that Christ will bless. Let your despair
deliver you from despair, for when you despair
there is hope for you. When you can do nothing,
God will do everything. When you are empty of
your own conceits, there is room for Christ to
enter your heart. When you are stripped, Christ's
garments are provided for you. When you are
hungry, the bread that cometh down from heaven
is provided for you. When you are thirsty, the
water of life is yours. Let this broken-
heartedness, this terror, this alarm, this
faintness, this weakness of yours, only lead you to
say, "I am such as Christ invited to himself. I will
go to him, and if I perish, I will perish only there";
and if you trust Jesus, you shall never perish,
neither shall any pluck you out of his hand. May
you trust him here and now. Amen.