The Difficulty of Conversion

So difficult and superhuman is the work of turning a soul from sin and Satan unto God, that God only can do it. Accordingly in our text every part of the process is attributed solely to Him. “He brought me up out of an horrible pit, He took me from the miry clay, He set my feet upon a rock, He established my goings, and He put a new song in my mouth.” God, and God alone, then, is the author of conversion. He who created man at first, alone can create him anew in Christ Jesus unto good works. And the reason for this we shall see clearly by going over the parts of the work here described.

The first deliverance is imaged forth to us in the words: “He brought me up out of an horrible pit”; and the counterpart or corresponding Messing to that is: “He set my feet upon a rock.”

There can hardly be imagined a more hopeless situation than that of being placed, like Joseph, in a pit, and especially an horrible pit, or a pit of destruction, as the psalmist calls it. Hemmed in on every side by damp and gloomy walls, with scarcely an outlet into the open air, in vain you struggle to clamber up to the light and fresh atmosphere of the open day. You are a prisoner in the bowels of the earth, the tenant of a pit of horrors.

Such is your state, if you be unconverted. You are lying in a pit of destruction; you are dead while you live, buried alive, as it were; dead in trespasses and sins, while yet you walk in them. You cannot possibly ascend to the light of day and the fresh atmosphere above you; for the pit in which you are is indeed your prison house. Except you be drawn up from it by the cords of grace, it will usher you into that yawning pit which the Bible says is bottomless.

Such is your state, if you be unconverted. You are under the curse; for “cursed is every one that continueth not in all things written in the book of the law to do them.” You have never continued in any of these things, doing them from the heart, as unto the Lord, which only can be called doing them. You have never savingly believed on the Son of God; and therefore you are “condemned already.” You have never been lifted out of the pit of condemnation. “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life; but he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him”; that is, it is never lifted off him. The pit of wrath and destruction, in which you are by nature, is never exchanged by you until you leave it for the pit of wrath eternal.

Since this horrible pit, then, represents the state of wrath and condemnation in which we are by nature, how impossible is it that we can extricate ourselves from it! To escape from the prison house of earthly kings is a hard and daring enterprise; but who shall break loose from the prison house of the eternal God? Who shall clamber up from the pit of condemnation in which He confines the soul? Who can work out a pardon for past offenses? Who can blot out the sin of his past life?

Look back upon your lives, brethren, spent in forgetfulness of God, in desires and deeds contrary to God. And then, remembering that He is infinitely just, that He cannot lie, that He cannot repent, say if you think it an easy thing, or a possible thing, to deliver yourselves from the fearful pit in which you are now reserved for His wrath.

But if you cannot save yourself from the pit and set your feet upon a rock, much less can you extricate yourself from the miry clay and establish your own goings. The pit of destruction represents the wrath you are in by nature; the miry clay represents the corruption you are in by nature. To be standing in a dry pit, as Joseph was, is bad enough; but how hopeless and wretched when you are standing in miry clay!

To be under condemnation for past sins, one would think to be misery sufficient; but your case is far more desperate, for you are also sinking daily under the power of present corruptions. Every struggle which you make to get up from your wretched condition only makes you sink deeper in the miry clay; and every hour you remain where you are, you are sinking the deeper. Your ever getting out becomes more hopeless.

How truly does the growth of sinful habits in you resemble the sinking of your feet in miry clay! Which of your habits does not grow inveterate by exercise? How does the habit of swearing grow upon a man until he is absolutely its slave, and so with those more refined sins whose seat is in the heart! Every day gives them new power over the soul, every new indulgence binds your feet more indissolubly than ever in the evil way. Though you may, nay, in the course of nature, you must, change your lusts, your passions, and desires, yet every change is but like extricating one foot from the miry clay, only to set it down in another spot to sink again.

Ah! the undoneness of an unconverted heart, what imagination is bold enough to paint all its horrors? Look in upon your own hearts, ye who are unchanged in heart and life. If the Spirit of grace may but use the passage we are speaking of to convince you this day of your sin, you shall see how truly there is within you a dark chamber of imagery, a depth of spiritual wretchedness and inability either to forgive your own self, or to make your heart new; either to set your feet upon a rock, or to establish your goings; which can be described only by such ideas as those of an horrible pit, and sinking in miry clay.

A third step in conversion you cannot take for yourself, and that is, the putting of a new song in your mouth. A song is the sign of gladness and light-heartedness, and hence James said, “Is any merry? let him sing psalms.” And the spoilers of Jerusalem, when they would put mockery on the sorrows of the exiled Israelites, required of them mirth, saying, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion.” But to sing a new song, even praise to our God, is a privilege of the believer alone. To be merry and glad in heart, while a holy God is before the thoughts, that is a privilege only of him whose feet are settled on the Rock, Christ.

It is true, the unconverted have a mirth of their own, and they, too, can sing the song of gladness. But here lies the difference: they can be glad and merry only when God is not in all their thoughts, only when a veil of oblivion is cast over the realities of death and judgment. Keep away all serious thoughts of these things, and they can revel, like Belshazzar and his thousand lords when they drank wine and praised the gods of gold and silver. But unveil to their eyes the grand realities of a holy and omnipresent God, of death at the door, and after death the judgment, and then is their countenance changed (as was Belshazzar's at the appearance of the mysterious hand). Their thoughts trouble them, so that the joints of their loins are loosed, and their knees smite one against another.

But to the believer a holy God is the very subject of his song, “Praise to our God”; and the views of death and judgment do not break in upon this divine melody. On his dying bed he may begin the song which shall be finished only when he wakes up in glory. Now, what unconverted man has the power to put this supernatural song in his mouth, this strange joy in his heart?

Gladness cannot be forced, and least of all the Christian's gladness. If thou be unforgiven, unjustified, still at enmity with God, how canst thou raise one note of praise to Him? In the fourteenth chapter of Revelation, where the redeemed sing, as it were, a new song before the throne and before the four beasts and the elders, it is added: “And no man could learn that song, but the hundred and forty and four thousand which were redeemed from the earth.” None but new creatures can learn this new song. Angels cannot join in it, for it is the hymn of the redeemed, of those who were sinners and have been made new. And, oh! if angels cannot, how much less can unconverted, unredeemed sinners join in that eternal harmony.

In every way, then, how unspeakably hard a work is conversion! How impossible with man! But with God all things are possible. He has provided the Rock, Christ; and His ear is not heavy that it should not hear, if we but cry; His arm is not shortened that it cannot save, if only we will inquire of Him for this.

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