3336. Beauty for Ashes

A Sermon Published On Thursday, January 9, 1913.

To give to those [who mourn in Zion] beauty for ashes. {Isa 61:3}

For other sermons on this text:

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1016, “Beauty for Ashes” 1007}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3325, “Solace for Sad Hearts” 3327}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3336, “Beauty for Ashes” 3338}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3341, “Oil of Joy for Mourning, The” 3343}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3349, “Garment of Praise, The” 3351}

   Exposition on 2Sa 15:13-23 Isa 61; Mr 14:22-41 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3431, “King Crossing Over Kidron, The” 3433 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Isa 61 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2478, “Christ’s Perfection and Precedence” 2479 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Isa 61 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2543, “Good Reasons for a Good Resolution” 2544 @@ "Exposition"}

1. I would remind you that the mission of our Lord Jesus Christ related to mourners in Zion. He did not come into the world to exalt those who are high, to give greater power to the strong, or to clothe those who are already clad in their own righteousness. No! the Spirit of God was on him, that he might preach good news to the meek, that broken hearts should be bound up, captives redeemed, and prisoners released. He came with blessings for the poor, not with luxuries for the rich. This ought to be a very great subject of thanksgiving for those who are heavy-hearted. Is it not sweet to think that the Anointed of the Lord came for your sakes, so that you of the rueful countenance, whose eyelids are fringed with beaded tears, you whose songs are dirges, you who dwell at death’s door, may be brought out into the sunlight? Most men choose cheerful company with which they may be entertained, but the Lord Jesus evidently selects mourners, and delights in those whom he may encourage and cheer. Blessed be his name! How meek and lowly is he in all his ways! How forgetful of self and how thoughtful towards his poor servants. He looks at them with a pitying eye, and makes untold blessings their portion.

2. Notice with pleasure that in dealing with mourners, according to the text before us, the Lord acts on terms of exchange or barter. He gives them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, and the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness. It is a gracious exchange, but it is tantamount to everything being a free gift. “To give to them beauty for ashes” is a free gift, because what he takes away is of no value, and they are glad to be rid of it. In condescending compassion he took our ashes upon himself. Ah, how they once covered his sacred head and marred his beauty! He took our mourning. Alas, how it made him the man of sorrows in the day of his humiliation! He took our spirit of heaviness; and as he lay prostrate in the garden beneath the load he was very heavy and sorrowful even to death. He took a loss to give us a gain, and so it is a barter in which there is a double profit on our side. We lose a loss, and the gain is pure gain. From our Lord the blessings of love are all by free grace, and therefore let him have all the praise. I am sure that no mourner would hesitate to deal with Jesus on these special terms, of which only divine love could have thought. If you have ashes, will you not be glad to exchange them for beauty? If you are mourning, will you not willingly cease from weeping to be anointed with the oil of joy? And if the spirit of heaviness presses on you like a nightmare, will you not be glad to be set free, and to be arrayed in the glittering garments of praise? Yes, there could not be better terms than those that grace has invented; we accept them with delight. Poor mourner, they are especially ordained for you, that by a twofold grace in removing evil and bestowing good, you might be doubly enriched and comforted.

3. In our present meditation I shall call attention, first, to the lamentable condition in which many of the Lord’s mourners are found: they sit in ashes, expressive of deep sorrow. Secondly, we shall observe the divine intervention on their behalf, for the ashes are removed; and, thirdly, we shall notice the sacred gift — “Beauty for ashes.”

4. I. Let us begin with — THE MOURNER’S CONDITION, — he is covered with ashes as the emblem of his sad state.

5. Let us now like Cinderella sit down among the cinders for a while, in order that we may come out from the ashes with something better than glass slippers, adorned with a beauty which shall befit the king’s courts. The fairy fable which has often made our childhood smile shall now be actually experienced in our own souls, yes, we shall see how far truth outshines romance; how much grander are the facts of God than the fictions of men.

6. It seems, from the text, that the righteous are sometimes covered with grief. Orientals were always excessive in the use of symbols, and hence, if they were in sorrow, they endeavoured to make their outward appearance describe their inward misery. They took off all their soft clothing and put on sackcloth, and this they rent and tore into rags; and then on their heads, instead of perfumed oil which they were so fond of using, they threw ashes, and so disfigured themselves, and made themselves objects of pity. Ashes were of old signs of mourning, and they continued to be so down to Popish times, of which we have a trace in the day called Ash Wednesday, which was the beginning of the time of fasting known as Lent. It was supposed that those who began to fast sat in ashes to begin with. Such symbols we leave to those who believe in the bodily exercises and outward rites of will-worship. However, God’s servants have their spiritual fasts, and their heads are metaphorically covered with ashes. I will not stop to read to you the list of the occasions in which the princes of the blood-royal of heaven are found sitting in the place of humiliation and distress.

7. Suffice it to say that they began their new life among the ashes. Like Jabez who was more honourable than his brethren they were born in sorrow. Some of us will never forget our grief for sin: it was a bitterness which no stranger could understand. We shall never forget the anguish of our soul, and our deep humiliation, which no ashes could sufficiently symbolize. Like the patriarch of old, we cried, “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes.”

8. Repentance since then has always had a large degree of mourning connected with it: sorrow has salted all our penitential tears. It is right it should be so; and it is equally right that we should never stop repenting. Repentance and faith are two inseparable companions, they flourish or decline together like the two arms of the human body. If faith could enter heaven, repentance would certainly pass the gate at the same time. That they will not both enter there, or something near akin to them, I will not venture to assert quite so confidently as some have done. Whether in eternity I shall regret that I have sinned and shall still believe in Jesus, and find my everlasting safety in doing so, I will not positively say; but if I so asserted who could refute the statement? Assuredly we shall mourn for sin as long as we are on the earth, and we do not desire to do otherwise. Grief for sin and love for Jesus will endure through life; there will never come a time when we shall refuse to bathe with tears the pierced feet, and kiss them with warmest love.

   Sorrow and love go side by side;

   Nor height nor depth can e’er divide

      Their heaven-appointed bands.

   Those dear associates still are one,

   Nor till the race of life is run

      Disjoin their wedded hands.

9. We have to mourn bitterly when we have fallen on times of strong temptation, and, alas, of surprising sin. We grieve to confess the fact, but it is sadly true that faults have overtaken us. Who among God’s chosen sheep has not gone astray? As a result of such sin we have had to return to the sackcloth and the ashes, and our heart has sunk within us. By reason of our old nature we have transgressed like David, and then by reason of our new nature we have wept like David, and mourned our broken bones. If a foul spot has defiled our clothing, we have been led by the Holy Spirit to go at once to Jesus, and, while he has washed it out with his blood, we have lamented our offence. Whenever believers permit the fires of sin to burn, they are made before long to cast the ashes of repentance on their heads and shrink into the dust.

10. Beloved friends, we have also covered our heads with ashes on account of the sins of others. Parents have been compelled to sorrow very grievously for their sons and daughters. The wail of David is no unusual sound. “Oh Absalom, my son, my son! Oh that I had died for you, oh Absalom, my son, my son!” Many a woman sits in ashes half her life because of her ungodly husband, who makes her life bitter: many a loving sister pines inwardly because of a profligate brother who persists in ruining himself. The crimes of the world are the burdens of the saints. We cannot make the ungodly mourn for their guilt, but we can and do deeply mourn over their insensitivity. How can we bear to see our fellow men choosing everlasting destruction, rejecting their own mercies, and plunging themselves into eternal misery? If Hagar said, “Do not let me see the death of the child,” and if the prophet’s eye ran with ceaseless tears over the slain of his people, shall we not mourn in dust and ashes the wilful soul-suicide of our neighbours, who perish before our very eyes with mercy at their doors?

11. Moreover, we pity the Christian who does not frequently mourn over the depravity of the times in which he lives. Infidelity has in these last days stolen the garb of religion, so that now we frequently find volumes in which the fundamentals of the faith are denied, written by ministers of churches whose professed creed is orthodox. Our grandfathers would have shuddered at reading from a disciple of Tom Paine sentiments which pretended ministers of the gospel have given to the world. Things have reached a painful impasse when those who are called to office on purpose to proclaim the gospel are allowed to use their position to sow doubts about it, and sap and undermine all belief in it. Such conduct is baseness itself, and it is amazing that the churches tolerate it. Only Satan himself could have put it into a man’s heart to become a salaried preacher of the gospel in order to deny its fundamental truths. He who does this is Judas Redivivus, Iscariot the second. May God save us from all complicity with such practical falsehood and fraud! But when the child of God sees this, and sees besides ritualism and latitudinarianism spreading on all sides, he feels a sympathy with Mordecai of whom we read that “when he perceived all that was done, he tore his clothes and put on sackcloth with ashes, and went out into the midst of the city, and cried with a loud and a bitter cry.” It would be a happy omen if there were more of this, and especially if many could be found to imitate Daniel, who said, “I set my face to the Lord God to seek by prayer and supplication, with fasting, and sackcloth, and ashes.” We should soon behold the dawn of better days if such ashes were commonly found on saintly heads.

12. Yes, the best of God’s people must sometimes sit down among the ashes, and cry, “Woe is me.” When the saints mourn, it will sometimes happen that they cannot help showing their sorrow; it is too great to be controlled or concealed. Usually a spiritual man tries to conceal his soul’s distress, and he has his Master’s command for doing so, for Jesus said: “When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to fast.” In personal trouble we would rather bear our burden alone than load others with it, and therefore we endeavour to maintain a cheerful manner even when our heart is sinking like a millstone in the flood. As for spiritual depressions, we cannot show these to men who know nothing about them, and in the presence of the ungodly we are dumb on such topics; but there are sorrows which will have a tongue, concerning which we may even be asked to speak; as says the prophet, “Oh daughter of my people, gird yourself with sackcloth, and wallow in ashes.” At such times we must express our inward grief, and then the men of the world begin to ask, “What ails him?” and jeeringly to cry, “He is melancholy: religion has turned his brain.” Notice that mourning young woman. Her mother said only the other night, “What makes Jane so sorrowful?” She did not know that her girl was under a sense of sin. Your work-mates asked you, my good friend, the other morning, “What makes you so dull?” They did not understand that their vile language had helped to vex your heart, and had wounded you so that your heart was bleeding inwardly. Just as we have joys that worldlings cannot share, so we have sorrows which they cannot understand; and yet we are obliged now and then to let them see that we are cast down, even though this brings us new reproach. The ashes must sometimes be on our head, and we must cry, “They have heard that I sigh; all my enemies have heard of my trouble.” Do not, therefore, beloved friends, when you see a mournful believer, condemn him, nor even depreciate him, for his sorrow may be a necessity of nature, yes it may even be a direct result of his eminence in grace. He may, perhaps, love the souls of men more than you think; he may have a more tender sense of the sinfulness of sin than you have; and, perhaps, if you knew his family trials, and if you knew the jealousy of his walk with God, or if you knew how the Lord has hidden his face from him, you would not wonder at his rueful countenance. You might even marvel that he was not more cast down, and you might be ready to give him your pity, and even your admiration, instead of your cold censure. Be sure of this, that some of the holiest of men have mourned as David did: “I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink with weeping.”

13. Next let us note that such grief disfigures them. I gather that from the contrast intended by the words of our text — “Beauty for ashes.” Ashes are nor beautifiers, and mournful faces are seldom attractive. A believer when he is in a mourning frame of mind wears a marred countenance. He is disfigured before his friends: he makes bad company for them, and they are apt to see his weak points. He is disfigured before his fellow Christians: they delight to see a brother rejoicing in the Lord, for this is an obvious sign of favour, but sorrow of heart is often contagious, and therefore it is not admired. The mourning Christian is especially disfigured in his own esteem. When he looks in the mirror and sees his rueful visage he cries to himself, “Why are you cast down, oh my soul? Can all be right within? If it is so, why am I like this?” He questions, upbraids, and condemns himself. If his eyes were not so weakened by tears he might see a beauty in his sorrow, yet just now he cannot, but views himself as a mass of unsightliness: nor is he altogether in error, for generally with spiritual mourning there is a measure of real disfigurement. Unbelief, for example, is a terrible blot on any man’s beauty. Doubt of God is a horrible blotch. Discontentment very greatly injures mental and spiritual loveliness. We are not lovely when we are unbelieving, petulant, envious, or discontented. We are not beautiful when we are doubting and unbelieving, self-willed and rebellious; yet these evils often go with soul-sorrow, and we may truthfully say that some Christians are not only at times very sorrowful, but their beauty is marred by their misery.

14. The grief of good men’s hearts is often a very expressive one, as the language before us suggests. When sorrow puts ashes on its head, what does it say? It makes the man eloquently declare that he feels himself to be as worthless as the dust and ashes of his house. “I cover my head,” he says, “with ashes to show that the very noblest part of me, my head, my intellect, is a poor fallen earthly thing of which I dare not boast: I consider the best thing there is in me is to be dust and ashes only fit to be cast away.” You mourners often despise yourselves like this. Well, if it is any consolation to you to know it, I know a minister of Christ who the longer he lives thinks less and less of himself, and utterly abhors himself before God. It is a wonder of divine grace that the Lord should ever have loved us at all, for there is nothing in our nature that is lovely. Through our fall there is everything in us to be hated by his pure and holy mind, but nothing to esteem; and the best of the best, when they are at their best, are poor creatures. “Lord, what is man that you are mindful of him?” If the righteous Judge had swept the whole race away at the first with the besom of destruction, he would still have been as great, and glorious, and blessed as he is; he only spares us because he is infinite in mercy. When Abraham said, “I have taken it on myself to speak to the Lord, I who am only dust and ashes,” he did not have too lowly an opinion of himself, for even the father of the faithful, though a prince among men, was nothing in himself but a son of fallen Adam, and nothing but undeserved mercy made him to differ from the idolatrous race out of which he was chosen and called. “Earth to earth, ashes to ashes,” is our last memorial, and all along we are tending that way by nature, for we are of the earth earthy. When we put ashes on our head we only confess ourselves to be what we really are.

15. The use of ashes would seem to indicate that the fire is out. Men would not place burning coals on their heads, but, when they cast ashes there, they intend to say, “These ashes from which all fire is gone are like ourselves: we too are spent, our fire of hope has burned out, our joy, our confidence, our strength have all departed from us, and left us only the black ashes of despair.” Is this not suggestive of a state of feeling common enough to truly humbled men? Let me ask my brethren — Have you never felt as if your coal were quenched in Israel? Have you not acknowledged that, apart from any salvation which might come to you from your dear Lord and Saviour, you had no hope whatever? Have you not felt as if every spark of faith, and love, and gratitude, and all that was good, was gone out in darkness? Some of you young Christians have never yet stumbled into that slough, and I hope you never will; but if you ever do, it may console you if I let you know that older saints have been there before you, and have had to cry to the strong for strength or they would have perished. Some of us know what it is to feel as if we had not even a spark of grace left. We cry —

                     If aught is felt

   ’Tis only pain to find we cannot feel.

At such times we have felt that if there was any prayer in us it was only a prayer to be helped to pray, or to be helped to mourn that we could not pray, for our stock was lying dead, and our poor husbandry yielded us no increase, for lack of dew from above. Our soul has been in a state of drought, the rain from heaven has been withheld, and the earth has broken and chapped beneath our feet, devouring rather than nourishing the seed. God’s children have their droughts and famines, and then dust and ashes are fit emblems of their dry and dead condition.

16. Ashes, too, as the symbol of sorrow, might also indicate having passed through the fire of trial, even as these ashes have been burned. Truly, some of God’s best servants have been most often through the furnace, and have been so long in the heat that strength fails them, and hope almost expires. They cry to God for patience to endure all his holy will, but they feel that their own power is as much spent as if they were burnt to nothing but ash, and there was nothing more left of them on which the fire could kindle. Is it not a mercy that the Lord looks at such as these — the utterly spent ones who are ready to be blown away, and to perish, even as smoke and dry ashes are borne away by the wind and lost? You who are at ease in Zion know little about these terrible feelings, but you should be grateful to God and sympathize with those who are more exposed to tribulation. Join with them in magnifying the Lord because he promises beauty instead of these ashes of the furnace.

17. Ashes, also, as you know, are the emblem of death. The Romans placed in sepulchral urns the ashes of the dead. We say “Dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” when we bury the departed. It is no uncommon thing for tried saints to complain that they are brought into the dust of death by a faintness of mind which renders life a difficulty. We come to look at the grave as a refuge and a relief. “Ah,” one cries, “they may as well bury me, for I am more dead than alive. Well may I heap ashes on my head.” Like Elijah they say, “Let me die, for I am no better than my forefathers.” To such depths of grief the best of men have sometimes descended; many of the most peaceful and joyful spirits have joined in David’s description of himself — “I am as a man who has no strength: free among the dead, like the slain who lie in the grave, whom you remember no more: and they are cut off from your hand.”

18. But enough of this dolorous ditty, let us now change the subject. We have shown you the believer in the ashes, let us now rejoice that some better thing is in store for him.

19. II. Secondly, there is — A DIVINE INTERVENTION.

20. The Lord himself breaks in on the mourner’s misery, and makes the most gracious arrangements for his consolation. When a man is in serious trouble he naturally begins to look this way and that way for deliverance, and by doing so much of the man’s mind and heart are revealed. You may readily judge whether you are a child of God or a hypocrite by seeing in what direction your soul turns in seasons of severe trial. The hypocrite flees to the world and finds a kind of comfort there, but the child of God runs to his Father, and expects consolation only from the Lord’s hand. True grace resides with God and submits itself to his will. This is always good for us. Brother, if the Lord makes you sick, remain sick until the Lord restores you, for it is dangerous to call in any other physician for your soul but your Lord. If the Lord frowns do not ask others to smile, for you can derive no joy from that source. If it is God’s wrath that breaks you, let God’s love mend you, or else remain broken.

   I will not be comforted

      Till Jesus comfort me,

is a sweet resolve of a truly penitent soul, for has not the Lord said, “I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal. I the Lord do all these things.” Will you take the healing and the making alive out of Jehovah’s hand? God forbid! Where you have received your smart there get your sweet. Where you do drink the gall of sorrow, there drink the wine of joy, for in the Lord’s hand there is abundant mercy to be found, and he will end your misery.

21. According to the text, the way in which believers rise out of their mourning is through the coming of Jesus. Read the chapter again. What does the Lord say? “The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because the Lord has anointed me.” Yes, beloved, our hope lies in the mission of Christ, in the person of Christ, in the work of Christ, in the application of the blood of Christ to our hearts. We always turn our eyes towards the hills where our help comes from. Look, oh sinner, always to the bronze serpent whatever serpent bites you. Whether it is the old serpent himself, or some smaller serpent of the same brood, which lurks in the way and bites at the horse’s heels, still look to the one appointed cure. Never speculate in healing drugs, but stick with the one antidote which never fails. Jesus is the consolation of Israel, and do not let Israel place her hope elsewhere.

22. And, notice that, it is Jesus coming in the gospel which is the mourner’s hope: for this coming of the Lord is to preach good news to the meek, and so to bind up the broken-hearted. I have little confidence in those people who speak of having received direct revelations from the Lord, as though he appeared otherwise than by and through the gospel. His word is so full, so perfect, that for God to make any new revelation to you or me is quite needless. To do so would be to put a dishonour on the perfection of that word. In “the most sure word of testimony” there is a release from every difficulty, a bandage for every sore, a medicine for every disease. My dear sorrowing friend, it is very dangerous to look for consolation from dreams, or from the opening of the Bible on certain texts, or from imagined voices, or from any other of those foolish superstitions in which weak-minded people seek for comfort. Go to what God has said in the Scriptures, and when you find your character described, and promises made to such a character as your own, then take them home, for they are plainly spoken to you. Do not go about to look for comfort in the cloudland of fancy or the moonshine of superstition, but believe in the Lord Jesus, who comes to bless broken hearts in no other way than by preaching to them the good news of his grace.

23. You are not to expect the Lord Jesus to speak with you in any other way than by the written word applied to the soul by the Holy Spirit. Look for no new revelation; drive out the very idea as deceptive. If an angel were to come to my bedroom and inform me that he brought a message from God which would tell me more than is written in the Scriptures of truth, I would not listen to him for a moment, but say, “Get behind me, Satan. The end of these revelations has come: the stars no more appear for the sun has risen.” Our heavenly Father has already sent the Lord Jesus, and it is written, “last of all he sent his Son.” In Christ Jesus there is such a fulness of truth and grace that all the angels combined could not increase it. He who looks for more revelation should beware lest he receive the curse with which the Bible concludes, which will certainly come upon any who either add to, or take from, the inspired words of God. The sum of the matter is this — if there is any comfort to be received, it is in Christ, and if there are any ashes to be taken away, and any beauty to be given, it will be through the Lord Jesus in the preaching and reading of the Word. This much by way of protest against the superstitions of weak minds.

24. But now I want you to notice something which does not appear in our English version, but is clear in the Hebrew. It is that the Lord very easily makes a change in his people’s condition, for the word in the Hebrew for ashes is epheer, and the word for beauty is peer. The change is very slight in the original. Some idea of the similarity of the words may be given you in English if I quote from Master Trapp. “The Lord promises to turn all their sighing into singing, all their musing into music, all their sadness into gladness, and all their tears into triumph.” Perhaps I may myself give you an even closer imitation, and more according to the Hebrew model, by saying he turns our mourning into morning. In the case before us we might say, “He gives us splendours for cinders,” beauty for ashes. Now, as readily as we change a word by a single letter, so easily does the God of all comfort alter the state of his own people. With him nothing is hard, much less impossible. From the cross to the crown, from the thorn to the throne, from misery to majesty, is only a hand’s turn with the Lord. Often he calls his people like Mordecai from sitting at the gate to riding on the king’s horse, like Joseph from lying in the dungeon to ruling in the land, like Job from the dunghill to double wealth, like David from the caves of Engedi to the palace in Jerusalem. He does this both suddenly and easily, as when a man lights a candle and the darkness departs at once. How charming and astonishing the change: to pass in a moment from winter into summer, from midnight into noon, from storm into profound calm! This is the finger of God, and it is often seen.

25. When you are at your lowest do not conclude that it will be months before you can rise. Not so. From the nadir {a} to the zenith you will spring at a single leap when the Almighty Helper girds you with power. David in the psalms describes the Lord coming to his rescue in most marvellous haste. Out of the depths he was snatched by the flash of Jehovah’s power.

   On cherub and on cherubim

      Right royally he rode,

   And on the wings of mighty winds

      Came flying all abroad.

   And so deliver’d he my soul:

      Who is a rock but he?

   He liveth — Blessed be my Rock!

      My God exalted be!

How joyfully he sings! And well he may after so special a rescue. There is no slow travelling with God when his people are in sorrow. Before they have time to call he answers them; while they are yet speaking he hears their requests. He hears them chanting “De Profundis,” and he lifts them to sing aloud, “Gloria in Excelsis”: from “Out of the depths” their tune changes to “Glory in the highest.” Nor are there slow pauses of weary hope, but the Lord works a world of wonders in the twinkling of an eye. So we see how our Lord gives beauty for ashes.

26. III. We now turn to the last point, which is, — WHAT HE BESTOWS INSTEAD OF THE ASHES — beauty.

27. All disfigurement is removed. The ashes had made the person to be defiled, uncomely to others and unpleasant to himself; but all this is removed. Beauty is given, and his countenance is not marred with dust and grime. His face is bright with joy and beaming with hope. No more unpleasant to the eye, the person has even become attractive and delightful. The original Hebrew implies that occasions for joy and emblems of joy are also given, for it might be read, “A chaplet for ashes.” The ashes were on the head, and now a crown is placed there. The allusion is to the nuptial tiara which men wore on their marriage day. The Lord’s mourners are to be decked with crowns of delight instead of being disfigured with ashes of grief. When does that happen to us? Do you remember when you first obtained a sense of forgiveness? How gloriously were you then arrayed! When the father said of his prodigal son, “Bring out the best robe and put it on him, put a ring on his hand, and shoes on his feet,” that was a high day; and so it was with us when we also were delivered from our filthy rags and clothed in divine righteousness. Our ashes were gone, then, and a crown adorned our heads. Forgiven! It was a joy of joys. Even now as we look back on it we begin to sing again —

   Happy day! happy day!

   When Jesus washed my sins away.

28. We went a little further on in spiritual life, and then we discovered that we were the children of God. We did not at first know our adoption; but it burst gloriously on us like a newly kindled sun. Do you remember when you first learned the meaning of the word, and perceived that adoption secured eternal salvation? For the heavenly Father does not cast his children away, nor can they cease to be the objects of his love. How can any child be unchilded? And, if still a child, he must be still beloved, and still an heir. When you once drank consolation from that doctrine, did you not receive a tiara for ashes? How lovely a thing it is to be a child of God! “Behold, what kind of love the Father has bestowed on us, that we should be called the sons of God!”

29. We lived a little longer, and we began to understand the doctrine of vital union with Christ. We had not dreamed of it at the first. We discovered then that there is a vital, actual, conjugal union between us and Christ — that we are married to him. It is a great mystery, but yet it is a great truth. It is all but inconceivable that we should be members of his body, of his flesh, and of his bones; and yet it is even so. That was a heavenly day when we perceived that we were one with Jesus, — “by eternal union one.” Then we rejoiced as wearers of a marriage crown, and we sang —

   “My Beloved is mine and I am his.”

Since then we have learned other truths, and on each occasion of being taught like this by the Lord we have again obtained a crown for ashes; another and yet another chaplet, has adorned our brow. We have felt ourselves to be made priests and kings to God, and the beauty of the Lord our God has rested on us. All glory be to his name!

30. Let us remark that the contrast of our text is particularly suggestive, because it is not quite what we might expect. The Lord takes away our ashes, but what does he give in exchange? The natural contrast would be joy, but the Lord bestows what is better, namely, beauty, because that is not only joy for ourselves but for others. “A thing of beauty,” as we say, “is a joy for ever.” A beautiful person gives pleasure to everyone around. Now, child of God, you are not only to have those ashes taken away which have so far disfigured you, but you are actually to become the source of joy for others. How pleasant that will be for you who have for so long touched the mournful string that you have distressed your family.

31. Yes, young friend, you are to make your mother rejoice by telling her that you have found peace with God. You are yet to cheer your father’s heart, young woman, when you shall say to him, “Father, I have found him in whom you trust, and I am trusting in him too.” Yes, poor mourner, you yourself will be comforting other mourners one of these days. You who have been in Giant Despair’s castle shall help in pulling down the monster’s den. You can hardly believe it, but it shall be so.

32. In the sense of being a joy to others many of the Lord’s people are very beautiful indeed: you cannot help being charmed with them, especially with those of deep experience. Good men are glad of the company of those to whom the Lord has given the beauty of grace. Even the ungodly, though they do not confess it, have a respect for the majesty of holy characters. There is a charm about beauty which makes her ride as on a lion through the midst of her foes; every man’s hand is bound to defend her, and none dare to injure her. The beauty which the Lord gives to his people is as a queen among all beauties, and sways a potent sceptre.

33. Yes, and when the Lord makes his people beautiful they are a delight even to God himself, for the Lord rejoices in his works, and his grace-works are the noblest labour of his hands, and as being fullest of grace are most graceful. The Lord delights in his people. We read of the Lord Jesus, that his delights were with the sons of men, and even now, though angelic harps ring out his praises, he loves to be here in our churches, and to commune with us as a man speaks with his friend. Beloved, cultivate his company: remain with him, and if he can find any reason for delight in you, which is a wonder of wonders, put all your delight in him.

34. Let us have this gracious beauty about us, and even our heavenly Bridegroom will have to say, “Turn away your eyes from me, for they have overcome me. You have ravished my heart with one of your eyes.” May we be kept from marring this beauty, and be for ever so fair that even our Lord himself may look and love. Amen.

{a} Nadir: The lowest point (of anything); the place or time of greatest depression or degradation. OED.