Kicking Against the Pricks

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Acts 9:5

And he said, Who are you, Lord? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom you persecute: it is hard for you to kick against the pricks.

This expression is highly characteristic of the Saviour —

1. From its figurative form. While He was on earth, without a parable spake He not unto the people; and speaking out of heaven He still adopts the parabolic style, as He did in Patmos. He does not say to Saul, "It is injurious to thee to resist My appeals," that would be mere abstract fact, but He puts it more pictorially, "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks."

2. From the tenderness of the rebuke. It is not, "It is wicked of thee to resist Me." The Saviour leaves Saul's conscience to say that; nor "It is hard for My people to bear thy cruelties"; nor "It is very provoking to Me, and I shall ere long smite thee in My wrath." No, it is not, "It is hard for Me," but "It is hard for thee." We have in the parable of the text —

I. An ox. No other beast is driven by a goad.

1. "How low is man fallen that he can be compared to a brute beast!" "Oh," saith the proud heart, "cloth God compare me to a beast?" Ah! and it is the beast which hath cause to complain rather than you; for what beast is that who has rebelled against God? Do not be angry, for if you knew yourself you would cry with Asaph, "So foolish was I and ignorant, I was as a beast before Thee." Penitent sinners have wished that they had been beasts rather than men, feeling as if sin had degraded their nature below the meanest reptile.

2. But courage! The ox is a valuable animal. The text does not liken a man to a wild beast without an owner, but to an ox for which its master careth, and for which he hath paid a price. "I," says Jesus, "whom Thou persecutest, redeemed thee, with My own precious blood; thou art Mine, and I will break thee in. Why dost thou kick against Me? I have paid for thee too dearly to let thee be lost."

3. The ox is dependent upon its master for the supply of its needs. "The ox knoweth its owner." Thou, who art an enemy to God, dost thou not know that thou art the object of His daily providence? We have been worse than oxen. We have not known the hand that feeds us, but have kicked against the God from whom all our mercies have been flowing.

4. An ox is a creature of which service is rightly demanded. So does God expect of those creatures whose wants He supplies that they should do His bidding. Wherefore should God keep them, and they do Him no service? For if He gets nothing out of thee, He will not forever spare thee. The bullock which is not good for its master in the furrows shall soon be good for the butcher in the shambles.

5. The ox is a perverse creature, not easily made accustomed to the yoke. Hence the rough and cruel instrument used by the Eastern husbandman — a long stick with a sharp prong at the end. Ah, how perverse are our wills! We will not go in the right way; we choose the wrong naturally. We go to the fire of sin, and we put our finger in it, and we burn it; but we do not learn better; we then thrust our hands into it, and though we suffer for it we return and plunge our arm into the flame.

6. Yet the ox is a creature which can be of great service to its master. When it becomes docile, it is one of the most valuable possessions of the Oriental husbandman. And when once the brutish heart of man is conquered by Divine grace, of what use he is.

II. THE OX GOAD. A cruel instrument, but one thought by the Oriental husbandman to be needful for the stubborn nature of the ox. God has many ways of goading us, but He does not use that where gentler means will avail. I should think that a kind man would speak to his ox, and might get it into such a condition that it would be obedient to his word. Now God does bring His people into such a state as that. God does not come to blows with men till He has first tried words with them. Before the tree is cut down there is a time of sparing, in which it is digged about if haply it may bring forth fruit. But when words are of no avail, then the Lord in tender mercy adopts sharper means, and comes from words to blows and wounds — that He may come in all His power to heal.

1. Some of us felt the ox goad when we were children. Under the government of our parents we were often very restive, and felt it hard to sin.

2. Since that time some of you have felt the irksome goad in the good advice of friends with whom you have been situated. You do not like to be talked to about religion.

3. The teachings of God's Word acts like a goad to unconverted men. I have known people come in here, and the sermon has made them feel so angry that they could almost have knocked the preacher down, but yet they could not help coming again. They could not tell why, but they could not stop away; and yet they hated the truth they heard. When a man thinks enough about the truth to begin to fight against it, I am in hope that the truth will never let him go till it has fairly beaten him into better things.

4. At times the Lord will goad us by personal afflictions; a sickness, a failure in business, a loss of property, a disappointment in marriage, or the death of friends, or a gradual decay of the constitution, or the loss of a limb or an eye. Loud voices these, if men had ears to hear. Some of you have had so many afflictions that the Lord might well inquire, "Why should ye be stricken any more? ye will revolt more and more."

5. Sometimes God stirs men with the common operations of the Holy Ghost in their consciences. Saul was being goaded at that very moment when Christ said, "Why persecutest thou Me?" And take care you do not resist these goadings. "See that ye refuse not Him that speaketh. For if they escaped not," etc.

III. THE KICKS. The ox when wounded is so foolish as to dash its foot against the goad, and consequently drives it deeper into himself and hurts himself the more. This is the natural manner of men till God makes something more than beasts of them.

1. Even when we were children we rebelled against our teachers; prayer was distasteful, the Sabbath was dull, and the house of God wearisome, and therefore we kicked against them.

2. As some of you grow up, you took to sneering at those who kindly advised you. Many, the moment they get a word of counsel from any person, treat him at once as an enemy, and vow that they will take no further notice of such a "cant." Many sinners when the Word of God is too hot for them, take to cavilling at it, or disputing over it. A man who is reproved by a sermon will perhaps feel that he must give up his drunkenness. "But," say she, "I will not give up my drunkenness; I do not want to do that, and therefore I do not believe that the sermon is true." Or another says, "If this is correct, I must shut up my shop on the Sunday, and so lose my Sunday's profits. I cannot afford to lose money, and therefore I will abuse the preacher." The guilty conscience cries, "I will pick a hole in the minister's coat, because he has found one in mine."

3. There are many who persecute God's people. They cannot burn them, nor shut them up in prison; but they vex them with cruel mockings, they twist their innocent actions into something wrong, and then they throw it in their teeth.

4. Certain profane men have gone so far as to kick at God Himself. Mind that He does not answer you, blasphemer.

IV. THE RESULT. Christ says, "It is hard." It has been very hard for your mother, for your families, for your neighbours and employers; Christ says it is hard for you. You know that sin does not make you happy. You have had your swing of it, and you are miserable. You are afraid to die. Do you know what will very likely be your history if you run into sin and persist in it? You will make your present afflictions grow worse, and cause your present losses to accumulate. You are kicking against the pricks, and are making the wounds already received ten times worse, and so it always will be so long as you keep on kicking. He that is converted to God finds it hard to have been a sinner so long. His repentance is bitter in proportion to the greatness of his sin. Those who are saved late in life feel that their sins will be their plague till they die. A man does not go and plunge into the ditch of sin without bearing the stench of its vileness in his memory all his life. An old song that you used to sing will come up and defile your closet prayers, and perhaps the recollection of some unholy scene will trouble you even when you are at the sacramental table. The apostle Paul always bore the memory of his sin. "God forgives me," said one, "but I never can forgive myself."

V. THE GOOD COUNSEL.

1. Since it is hard for you to kick against the pricks, and there is nothing to be got by it, cease.

2. Yield thy heart to the goadings of Divine love.

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