Hey Church!

The always-brilliant “Prince of Preachers,” Charles Spurgeon once gave a sermon titled “Songs in the Night” based on Job 35:10: 

“But none says, ‘Where is God my Maker, who gives songs in the night?’” 

I will quote the transcript of that sermon extensively here.1

Spurgeon said, “Any man can sing in the day. When the cup is full, man draws inspiration from it… It is easy enough for an Aeolian harp to whisper music when the winds blow, the difficulty is for music to come when no wind blows. It is easy to sing when we can read the notes by daylight, but he is the skillful singer who can sing when there is not a ray of light by which to read…” 

By “night,” of course, Spurgeon means that shadowed valley of the soul we all experience in life to one degree or another. For many, darkness comes and goes with momentary afflictions. Others rarely see the sun. How can one so sorely bruised in spirit sing of the goodness of God? 

First, we must know that songs in the night are not natural to man, but are given only by God. “I think, on the margin of the Red Sea, any man could have made a song like that of Moses, ‘The horse and his rider hath he thrown into the sea,’ the difficulty would have been to compose a song before the Red Sea had been divided, and to sing it before Pharaoh’s hosts had been drowned, while yet the darkness of doubt and fear was resting on Israel’s hosts. Songs in the night come only from God, they are not in the power of man.” So, ask God to open your lips to declare His praise in the night (Ps. 51:15). 

Second, Spurgeon says that there are three things we can sing about in the night: the day that is over, the night itself, or the day that is to come. 

Of the day that is over: “Remember, it was not always night with you… [If you have almost forgotten], then surely you have some precious milestone along the road of life that is not quite overgrown with moss, on which you can read some happy inscription of God’s mercy towards you… Come, man! I beseech you, go to the river of your experience, and pull up a few bulrushes, and weave them into an ark, wherein your infant faith may float safely on the stream… Have you never been fetched from the den of lions? Have you never escaped the jaw of the lion, and the paw of the bear? Nay, O man, I know you have! Go back then a little way, to the mercies of the past, and though it is dark now, light up the lamps of yesterday, and they shall glitter through the darkness, and you shall find that God has given you a song in the night.” 

Of the night itself: “[T]here is never so dark a night but there is something to sing about, even concerning that night, for there is one thing I am sure we can sing about, let the night be ever so dark, and that is, ‘It is of the LORD’s mercies that we are not consumed, and because his compassions fail not.’ If we cannot sing very loudly, yet we can sing a little low tune, something like this, ‘He hath not dealt with us after our sins, nor rewarded us according to our iniquities.’”

Of the day to come: “The shout shall be heard, ‘Alleluia! Alleluia! The Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.’ For that day do I look, it is to the bright horizon of Christ’s second coming that I turn my eyes. My anxious expectation is that the blessed Sun of righteousness will soon arise with healing in His wings, that the oppressed shall be righted, that despotism shall be cut down, that liberty shall be established, [and] that peace shall be made lasting… Let us go on therefore, and if the night be ever so dark, remember there is not a night that shall not have a morning, and that morning is to come by and by.” 

Lastly, it is good to remember that God uses your voice in at least three ways whenever we gather to worship Him in song: to preach hope to your own soul, to inspire hope in fellow valley-pilgrims, and to demonstrate a living faith to those who do not yet believe. “I tell you, we may preach fifty thousand sermons to prove the Gospel, but we shall not prove it half so well as you will through singing in the night.” 

Ask God to help you find your song and come ready to sing it with a full heart this Sunday.