The Way to God and How to Find It Shan Knew-U-Ministries

The Way to God and How to Find It

By Dwight L. Moody

The Way to Godand How to Find It – Backsliding “I will heal their backsliding; I will love them freely: for Mine anger is turned away.”— HOSEA xiv. 4.

THERE are two kinds of backsliders. Some have never been converted: they have gone through the form of joining a Christian community and claim to be backsliders; but they never have, if I may use the expression, “slid forward.” They may talk of backsliding; but they have never really been born again. They need to be treated differently from real back-sliders—those who have been born of the incorruptible seed, but who have turned aside. We want to bring the latter back to the same road on which they left their first love.

Turn to Psalm lxxxv. 5. There you read: “Wilt Thou be angry with us forever? wilt Thou draw out Thine anger to all generations? wilt Thou not revive us again: that Thy people may rejoice in Thee? Show us Thy mercy, O Lord; and grant us Thy salvation.” Now look again: “I will hear what God the Lord will speak: for He will speak peace unto His people, and to His saints; but let them not turn again to folly” (verse 8).

There is nothing that will do back-sliders so much good as to come in contact with the Word of God; and for them the Old Testament is as full of help as the New. The book of Jeremiah has some wonderful passages for wanderers. What we want to do is to get back-sliders to hear what God the Lord will say.

Look for a moment at Jeremiah vi. 10. “To whom shall I speak, and give warning, that they may hear? behold, their ear is uncircumcised, and they cannot hearken: behold, the word of the Lord is unto them a reproach; they have no delight in it.” That is the condition of back-sliders. They have no delight whatever in the word of God. But we want to bring them back, and let God get their ear.

Read from the 14th verse: “They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of My people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore, they shall fall among them that fall: at the time that I visit them they shall be cast down, saith the Lord. Thus, saith the Lord, Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein; and ye shall find rest for your souls. But they said, We will not walk therein. Also, I set watchmen over you, saying, Hearken to the sound of the trumpet. But they said, We will not hearken.”

That was the condition of the Jews when they had backslidden. They had turned away from the old paths. And that is the condition of backsliders. They have got away from the good old book. Adam and Eve fell by not hearkening to the word of God.

They did not believe God’s word; but they believed the tempter. That is the way backsliders fall by turning away from the word of God.

In Jeremiah ii. we find God pleading with them as a father would plead with a son. “Thus, saith the Lord, what iniquity have your fathers found in Me, that they are gone from Me, and have walked after vanity, and are become vain? . . . Wherefore I will yet plead with you, saith the Lord; and with your children’s children will I plead . . . For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken Me, the Fountain of living waters, and hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.”

Now there is one thing to which we wish to call the attention of backsliders; and that is, that the Lord never forsook them; but that they forsook Him! The Lord never left them; but they left Him! And this, too, without any cause! He says, “What iniquity have your fathers found in Me, that they are gone far from Me?” Is not God the same to-day as when you came to Him first? Has God changed? Men are apt to think that God has changed; but the fault is with them.

Backslider, I would ask you, “What iniquity is there in God, that you have left Him and gone far from Him?” You have, He says, hewed out to yourselves broken cisterns that hold no water. The world cannot satisfy the new nature. No earthly well can satisfy the soul that has become a partaker of heavenly nature. Honor, wealth and the pleasures of this world will not satisfy those who, having tasted the water of life, have gone astray, seeking refreshment at the world’s fountains. Earthly wells will get dry. They cannot quench spiritual thirst.

Again, in the 32d verse: “Can a maid forget her ornaments, or a bride her attire? yet My people have forgotten Me, days without number.” That is the charge which God brings against the backslider. They “have forgotten Me, days without number.”

I have often startled young ladies when I have said to them, “My friend, you think more of your earrings than of the Lord.” The reply has been, “No, I do not.” But when I have asked, “Would you not be troubled if you lost one; and would you not set about seeking for it?” the answer has been, “Well, yes, I think I should.” But though they had turned from the Lord, it did not give them any trouble; nor did they seek after Him that they might find Him.

How many once in fellowship and in daily communion with the Lord now think more of their dresses and ornaments than of their precious souls! Love does not like to be forgotten. Mothers would have broken hearts if their children left them and never wrote a word or sent any memento of their affection; and God pleads over backsliders as a parent over loved ones who have gone astray. He tries to woo them back. He asks: “What have I done that you should have forsaken Me?”

The most tender and loving words to be found in the whole of the Bible are from Jehovah to those who have left Him without a cause. Jer. ii. 19

Hear how He argues with such: (Jer. xi. 19.) “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee, and thy backslidings shall reprove thee; know, therefore, and see, that it is an evil thing and bitter, that thou hast forsaken the Lord thy God, and that My fear is not in thee, saith the Lord God of hosts.”

I do not exaggerate when I say that I have seen hundreds of backsliders come back; and I have asked them if they have not found it an evil and a bitter thing to leave the Lord. You cannot find a real backslider, who has known the Lord, but will admit that it is an evil and a bitter thing to turn away from Him; and I do not know of any one verse more used to bring back wanderers than that very one. May it bring you back if you have wandered into the far country.

Look at Lot. Did he not find it an evil and a bitter thing? He was twenty years in Sodom, and never made a convert. He got on well in the sight of the world. Men would have told you that he was one of the most influential and worthy men in all Sodom. But alas! alas! He ruined his family. And it is a pitiful sight to see that old backslider going through the streets of Sodom at midnight, after he has warned his children, and they have turned a deaf ear.

I have never known a man and his wife backslide, without its proving utter ruin to their children. They will make a mockery of religion and will deride their parents: “Thine own wickedness shall correct thee; and thy backsliding shall reprove thee!”

Did not David find it so? Mark him, crying, “O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! would God I had died for thee; O Absalom, my son, my son!” I think it was the ruin, rather than the death of his son that caused this anguish.

I remember being engaged in conversation some years ago, till past midnight, with an old man. He had been for years wandering on the barren mountains of sin. That night he wanted to get back. We prayed, and prayed, and prayed, till light broke in upon him; and he went away rejoicing.

The next night he sat in front of me when I was preaching, and I think that I never saw any one look so sad and wretched in all my life. He followed me into the enquiry room. “What is the trouble?” I asked. “Is your eye off the Saviour? Have your doubts come back?” “No; it is not that,” he said. “I did not go to business, but spent all this day visiting my children.

They are all married and in this city. I went from house to house, but there was not one but mocked me. It is the darkest day of my life. I have awoken up to what I have done. I have taken my children into the world; and now I cannot get them out.” The Lord had restored unto him the joy of His salvation; yet there was the bitter consequence of his transgression. You can run through your experience; and you can find just such instances repeated again and again.

Many who came to your city years ago serving God, in their prosperity has forgotten Him: and where are their sons and daughters? Show me the father and mother who have deserted the Lord and gone back to the beggarly elements of the world; and I am mistaken if their children are not on the high road to ruin.

As we desire to be faithful, we warn these backsliders. It is a sign of love to warn of danger. We may be looked upon as enemies for a while; but the truest friends are those who lift up the voice of warning. Israel had no truer friend than Moses.

In Jeremiah God gave His people a weeping prophet to bring them back to Him; but they cast off God. They forgot the God who brought them out of Egypt, and who led them through the desert into the promised land. In their prosperity they forget Him and turn away. The Lord had told them what would happen. (Deut. xxviii.) And see what happened. The king who makes light of the word of God was taken captive by Nebuchadnezzar, and his children brought up in front of him and every one slain: his eyes were put out of his head; and he was bound in fetters of brass and cast into a dungeon in Babylon. (2 Kings xxv. 7.) That is the way he reaped what he had sown. Surely it is an evil and a bitter thing to backslide, but the Lord would win you back with the message of His Work.

In Jeremiah viii. 5, we read: “Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden by a perpetual backsliding? They hold fast deceit; They refuse to return.” That is what the Lord brings against them. “THEY REFUSE TO RETURN.” “I hearkened and heard; but they spake not aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, what have I done? Everyone turned to his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle. Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but My people know not the judgment of the Lord.”

Now look: “I hearkened and heard; but they spake not aright.” No family altar! No reading the Bible! No closet devotion! God stoops to hear; but His people have turned away! If there be a penitent backslider, one who is anxious for pardon and restoration, you will find no words more tender than are to be found in Jeremiah iii. 12: “Go, and proclaim these words toward
the north, and say, Return, thou backsliding Israel, saith the Lord; and I will not cause Mine anger to fall upon you: for I am merciful, saith the Lord, and I will not keep anger forever.”

Now notice: “Only acknowledge thine iniquity, that thou hast transgressed against the Lord thy God, and hast scattered thy ways to the stranger under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed My voice, saith the Lord. Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you”— think of God coming and saying, “I am married unto you! —and I will take you one of a city, and two of a family, and I will bring you to Zion.”

“Only acknowledge thine iniquity.” How many times have I held that passage up to a backslider! “Acknowledge” it; and God says I will forgive you. I remember a man asking, “who said that? Is that there?” And I held up to him the passage, “Only acknowledge thine iniquity;” and the man went down on his knees, and cried, “My God, I have sinned”; and the Lord restored him there and then.

If you have wandered, He wants you to come back.

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