__________________________________________________________________ Title: Spurgeon's Sermons Volume 36: 1890 Creator(s): Spurgeon, Charles Haddon (1834-1892) CCEL Subjects: All; Sermons; LC Call no: BV42 LC Subjects: Practical theology Worship (Public and Private) Including the church year, Christian symbols, liturgy, prayer, hymnology Times and Seasons. The church year __________________________________________________________________ The Keynote of the Year A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JANUARY 5, 1890, DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, MARCH 7, 1889. "Bless the Lord, O my Soul: and all that is within me, bless His holy name." Psalm 103:1. BEFORE our friend who leads us in singing begins, we sometimes hear his tuning fork. He is getting the keynote into his ear. When he comes forward he often sounds out that keynote before he begins to sing. This is what David does in this wonderful Psalm. He sounds the tuning fork with this clear note--"Bless the Lord, O my Soul." It is well for all to be ready to sing harmoniously--it is a pity when those who gather to worship do not know what they are doing. I wish I could always have you spiritually in tune and keep in tune myself. Alas, I fear we are often half a note too flat. The words before us are the keynote of this Psalm and all the music is set to it and closes with it. Notice that the Psalm begins, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul," and it ends in the same way, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul," as if to show us that praise is the Alpha and the Omega of a Christian life. Praise is the life of life. So we begin; so we continue; so shall we end, world without end. This Psalm has just as many verses in the original as there are letters in the Hebrew alphabet. It is an alphabetical Psalm as to number and so I may say that the A of it is, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul," and the Z of it is, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." Oh, that our infancy would bless the Lord and our childhood and our youth bless the Lord--and our manhood and our old age bless the Lord! From the cradle to the tomb one line of sapphire, one streak of sparkling crystal should run through the entire mass of life--and that should be praise unto God.-- I would begin the music here, And so my soul should rise Oh, for some heavenly notes to bear My passions to the skies!" Oh, to have Heaven's employment and Heaven's enjoyment here below by never-ceasing praise! We need never make a pause in that of which we shall never make an end. As I said in the exposition, there is no prayer in this Psalm--it is all praise right through and through. There are times in a Christian's life when he feels as if praise employed the whole of his faculties and his own needs and faults and all about himself sank into insignificance. Usually we mix prayer and praise and they make up a delightful incense of mingled fragrance--but sometimes, when on Tabor's top we stand transfigured with the light of God's goodness--all we can do is praise His name. All that is within us is blessing Him and there is no faculty left with which to pray Him to bless us! This is an anticipation of the occupation and enjoyment of Heaven, where forever and forever we shall bless and praise and magnify the Thrice-holy God. At this time I pray that while I talk about this verse I may be carrying it out--and may you be, each one, carrying it out, too, if, indeed, the Lord has blessed you! Let us preach and hear with harps in our hands and songs in our hearts! If I am to lead your thoughts, I will lead them to the place of adoration. If you are His blessed people, be His blessing people! If He has blessed you for many a day, bless Him this day! I. I call your attention, then, first to THE BLESSED OCCUPATION. "Bless the Lord, O my Soul" A truly wonderful word is this! How can we bless the Lord? For God to bless me I can understand and enjoy! But that it should be mentioned in Scripture that I can bless God is one of those incomprehensible things which, though certainly true, is not to be explained. For man to bless God is a sort of Incarnation--God in human flesh. God blessing me--that is Divine! But mysel/blessing Him--there is something of the human, but also somewhat of the Divine. The Divine blesses the human or the human could not bless the Divine! God is with us or we could not be thus with God! Our blessing Him can only be the echo of His blessing us! The more you turn it over the more you will wonder at it. If it had said, "Praise the Lord, O my Soul," that would have been reasonable--but, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul," rises out of the region of reason into a still higher and more spiritual atmosphere! These are heavenly words--"Bless the Lord, O my Soul." But how can we bless God? We cannot add to His happiness, or increase His greatness, or enlarge His goodness. "O my Soul, you have said unto the Lord, You are my Lord: my goodness extends not unto You!" What can our poor drops contribute to the ocean? What can our nothingness bring to His all-sufficiency? What can our darkness contribute to His light? And yet, if the Bible says so, it must be so, for it never speaks in vain. Idle words are in the speech of man, not in the writings of Jehovah. If the Scripture teaches us to say, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul," then it is a correct word. We may wonder at it, but we may not dispute it. How, then, can we bless God? I answer, first, God blesses us by thinking well of us and we bless God by thinking well of Him. When the Lord says in His heart, "This people shall be blessed," before ever He has stretched out His hand to give anything, we are blessed by His favorable regard for us. I beg you, in the same respect, to bless God by sweet, holy, adoring, loving, grateful thoughts of Him. Think well of Him who thinks so graciously of you! This, surely, is no task, no burden. Such thinking is the happiest exercise of the mental powers! To think of what God has done for me--why, it makes my heart begin to beat more quickly than usual! My God! The very word is music! My Lord! How pleasant the sound! How sweet it is to speak of our Father who is in Heaven! "How precious also are Your thoughts unto me, O God!" To turn over thoughts of what God is, what He has done, what He has been, how He has dealt with us, how He has revealed Himself unto us, how He has glorified His holy name--why, this is a heavenly pleasure! Some of the best moments of devotion I have ever been able to enjoy I have spent in entire silence--looking up. I sat still and wondered that God should ever love me and I found a dew gathering about my eyes. I thought of how He loved me and what that love had worked in me and for me, till, not venturing to speak, I have been content to be silent before the Lord in inexpressible rapture. It was not possible for me to see Him, but yet I felt that He was very near and I looked up to Him as my Father, my Friend, my All in All. My heart felt an inward glow under a sense of Divine love and I could not have been happier if I had possessed 10,000 worlds. Oh, this is blessing God, whom your heart, not venturing to use words, has learned with every pulse to beat His praise and with every throb to mean an inward love to Him. Spend some time in that quiet, rapt devotion which gets beyond the use of words into a communion of gratitude and love. Words are weak when Love has to load them with her treasures and therefore she is content to spare them the burden. "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." My soul shall do what my tongue cannot! Think deeply of what the Lord has done. Do not pass His mercies over superficially, but look into them. Pry into their very heart--look into the deep things of God. Do not cease to think of the Covenant of electing love, of everlasting faithfulness, of redeeming blood, of pardoning Grace and all the ways in which Eternal Love has shown Himself since that day when you first heard Him speak in your ear, "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you." To think well of God is one of the chief ways in which we can bless Him. We also bless God when we wish Him well. You can do a great deal in this way of wishing well and desiring great things for the Lord's honor and glory. God's wishes are all practically carried out. We cannot carry out ours, but, at the same time, we ought to indulge them freely. He that taught us to pray bade us begin, "Our Father which are in Heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come. Your will be done in earth as it is in Heaven." Our prayers are not sufficiently directed to the glory of the Lord. How seldom do we begin with praying for God's name and kingdom! We put that last which should always be first. We ought to pray far more than we do for the Lord Jesus Christ. Is it not written, "Prayer also shall be made for Him continually and daily shall He be praised"? Do you continually pray for Jesus and daily praise Him? Pray for yourself, certainly, "Give us this day our daily bread." But this comes after, "Your kingdom come. Your will be done." Sit down and wish that all men knew God, that all men worshipped Him--and let your wishes blaze up into prayers. Wish that all idols were abolished and that Jehovah's name would be sung through every land by every tongue. Wish well for His name, His glory, His Truth. Lay home to your hearts the burden of His Church and long for the success of its work. When you see His Truth dishonored and His Word, itself, defamed and despised--be grieved, for this is a way of blessing Him--when you abhor all that dishonors Him. Wish well for His Church, His cause, His Truth, His people and all that concerns His glory. Pray without ceasing, "Father, glorify Your Son." Turn your wishes into prayers and as the first stage of thinking well is a blessing of God by meditation, so this second stage of wishing well will be a blessing of God by supplication. "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." Think well, wish well. Then, next, you can bless God by speaking well of Him. Perhaps you say very little about Him. Chide yourself for your reticence. Perhaps you have even spoken against Him though you are His child. I mean that you have fallen into such a state of heart that you imagine that He deals harshly with you. Ah, this is the opposite of blessing Him! Perhaps you have lost your husband or child, or in health or property you are a sufferer--and it may be that the devil says to you, "Curse God and die." Surely you will not listen to this vile suggestion! No, no! A thousand times, "No!" Beloved, if you are His child, far be it from you to curse your Father! And yet, in a modified sense, you may do it by inward quarrelling with the will of the Lord in His Providential acts towards you. God's people provoke His Holy Spirit when they murmur against Him in their hearts. A murmuring spirit is the very reverse of blessing the Lord--especially when the murmurs take a loud voice--when they are not merely choked and concealed within the bosom but when, every time you speak, you complain bitterly of how the Lord deals with you and think that He acts in a very harsh and trying way. Away with every rebellious though! "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." "He has not dealt with us after our sins." "Why does a living man complain, a man for the punishment of his sins?" said Jeremiah in his Lamentations. Let us lament for sin but let us not complain because of chastisement. Indeed, some of us have nothing to complain of. We have everything for which to praise Him and if we do not do so we deserve to be banished to the Siberia of Despair. How can we complain? If we are not in Hell, everything is mercy! If you, a pardoned sinner, had to spend the rest of your days on earth in a stone cell with no food but bread and water, performing the labor of a convict, yet, so long as you know that you are pardoned and delivered from going down to Hell, you have a thousand reasons why you should bless the Lord and you have no single reason to complain! So long as you can say, "His mercy endures forever," you have enough cause for unceasing praise. But when the Lord gives you all things to enjoy. When He gives you food to eat and raiment to put on. When He allows you to come up to His house in peace and hear the Gospel--and have it sweetly applied to your own heart--why, Beloved, you ought to speak well of the Lord who deals so bountifully with you! Have you said anything to praise God today? "I have had nobody to speak to," says one. Do you mean to say that you have not said anything today to the Lord's praise? What? My dear Brothers and Sisters, have you been silent all day? You are a rare sort of people! How quiet your houses must be! You have said something, I am sure. Do you not think that God ought to have a tithe of our words, at the very least, and that somehow or other, to somebody or other, we ought to speak well of His dear name every day? "I have nothing to say," says one. Do not say it, then. But some of us have a great deal to say and we dare not be silent about it! The wicked speak loudly enough against God. You cannot quiet them. Why should we be silent in any company? We have as much right to speak for God as they have to speak against Him! If they ever complain of people singing hymns in the street they have little cause to find fault--for they sing in the street quite enough--and some of them at very unseemly hours. If they say that we impose our religion--some of them impose their blasphemies and assuredly we may take as much liberty as they take! We shall not be muzzled like dogs either to please the world or its master. "Bless the Lord, O my Soul!" Speak well of His name and let men know that you have a God who is gracious to you in a wonderful manner. Once more--be not satisfied with thinking well and wishing well, and speaking well--but act well for God. "Bless the Lord, O my Soul," and as He blesses you with real gifts--with gifts unspeakably precious--bless His name by acts and deeds of holy service and consecration. Sometimes indulge yourself with the delight of breaking an alabaster box, very precious, and pouring its fragrance on your Lord Jesus. Fetch out something rare and costly from your store and give to His cause, and bless His name. Every now and then think to yourself, "I must do something fresh for Jesus." Let your heart say-- "Oh, what shall I do my Sa vior to praise?" Invent for yourself some little thing which may give pleasure to the Lord that He may not say to you, "You have bought Me no sweet cane with money, neither have you filled Me with the fat of your sacrifices." "Bless the Lord, O my Soul," and do it with hand, purse, substance and sacrifice. If you do truly bless Him, you will not be content with singing hymns such as-- "Fly abroad, you mighty Gospel," but you will long to put a feather or two into the wing of the Gospel to make it fly abroad! You will not only say, "All hail the power of Jesus' name," but you will be wanting to make that name known to others! You will endeavor to spread abroad His praise by work in the Sunday school, or at the village station, or on the tract district, or at the Dorcas Meeting! Bless the Lord not in word only, but in deed and in truth, even as He blesses you! "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." I cannot enlarge farther. I have given you hints, bare hints, but they may show you how you may bless the Lord after the manner in which He blesses you, though the measure is far below what He does. As the whole heavens may be reflected in a drop of water, so may infinite love be mirrored in our affections. II. And now, secondly, let us consider THE COMMENDABLE MANNER mentioned. Half the virtue of a thing lies in the way in which it is done. Indeed, there is usually a good deal more in the manner of an action than in the action itself. One person would relieve a poor man in such a way as to break his heart and another will give him nothing and yet cheer him up. You can praise a man till he loathes you and censure him till he loves you. Now, in the service of God, it is not only what you bring but in what spirit you bring it. The Lord loves adverbs as much as adjectives. How is as important as What. So here it is, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul, and all that is within me, bless His holy name." That mode of blessing God to which we are called is very spiritual--a matter of soul and spirit. I am not to bless God with my voice only, nor merely with the help of a fine organ or a trained choir. But I am to do it after a far more difficult manner. "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." Soul music is the soul of music. The music of the soul is that which pleases the ear of God--the great Spirit is delighted with that which comes from our spirit. Why? Surely you do not think that even the music of the best orchestra, majestic though it is, affords pleasure to God in the sense in which sweet sounds are pleasing to us! As for all human melody, it must seem so imperfect to the All-Glorious One that it is no more to Him than the grating of an old saw to Mozart or Beethoven! His idea of music is framed on a far higher and nobler platform of taste than ever can be reached by mortal man. The songs of cherubim and seraphim infinitely exceed all that we can ever raise, so far as mere sound is concerned--and mere sound is as nothing to God. He could set the winds to music, tune the roaring of the sea and harmonize the crash of tempests! If He needed music, He would not ask of human lips and mouths! A heart that loves Him makes music to Him! A heart that praises Him has within itself all the harmonies that He delights in! The sigh of love is to Him a lyric! The sob of repentance is melody! The inward cries of His own children are an oratorio and their heart-songs are true hallelujahs! "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." The unheard of man is often best heard of God. Speechless praise--the heart's deep meaning--this is what He loves. Spiritual worship! Spiritual worship! Spiritual worship! And how often this is neglected! You can go to a very fine Church where there is a very grand service and there may be spiritual service there but, alas, it is more probable that there will be no trace of it. You may go to a Quaker's room where there are four bare whitewashed walls and a window with a Holland blind drawn down and there may be spiritual worship there--but, on the other hand, there may be stolid indifference and a formalism as fatal as the gorgeous ceremonial. It is neither the outward sumptuousness nor the plainness that will ensure spirituality. And yet this is the life of all worship. Only the conscious Presence of the Spirit of God will enable us to worship with the soul--and that is the main thing--yes, the only important thing! I do not greatly care whether a man wears a plain coat or a gown in worship. I shall not make a fool of myself by putting on a gown, I assure you! But I do not think that even if I did it would make much difference so long as my heart was right in the sight of God. If one man feels that he can worship God best in one way and another feels that he can worship Him best in another way, it is not for his brother to judge him--let each have his own way--only let each see to it that he worships God, who is a Spirit, in spirit and in truth! This is the vital point--the heart must be in every word--the spirit must go with every note. Everything which does not arise from a devout exercise of the mental powers and even with the full occupation of the spiritual faculties, falls short of that to which we exhort God at this time. The right note is, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." It is spiritual worship--it is worship not from the teeth outwards, but from the heart that lies deep within the man. When we bless God, the sacred exercise should be intense. "All that is within me, bless His holy name." We ought not to worship God in a half-hearted sort of way as if it were our duty to bless God and we felt it to be a weary business that needed to be taken care of as quickly as we could and have done with it--and the sooner the better. No, no! "All that is within me, bless His holy name." Come, my heart, wake up and summon all the powers which wait upon you! Mechanical worship is easy but worthless! Come, rouse yourself, my Brothers and Sisters! Rouse yourself, O my Soul! "All that is within me, bless His holy name." What we need is a universal suffrage of praise from every member of our manhood's commonwealth. Every faculty within our nature is to praise God--our memory, our hope, our fear, our desire, our imagination--all our capacities and all our Graces. There is not one part of a man's constitution which is really a part of his manhood which should not praise God. Yes, even the sense of humor should be sanctified to the service of the Most High! Whatever faculty God has given you, O my Soul, it has its place in the choir! Summon it to praise! If Nebuchadnezzar praised his idol god with flute, harp, sackbut, dulcimer, psaltery and all kinds of music, mind that you praise your God with every faculty that you have within you so that there is no part or power of your nature which is not used in Jehovah's praise. What a difference there is between an unconcerned man and a man really awakened! In your own case I can believe you to be bright and intelligent--but your portrait--I will say nothing about it. When the photographer fits that iron rest at the back of your head and keeps you waiting 10 minutes while he gets his plates ready, why, your soul goes out of town and nothing remains but that heavy look! When the work of art is finished it is you and yet it is not you! You were driven out by the touch of that iron! Another time, perhaps, your portrait is taken instantaneously, while you are in an animated attitude--while your whole soul is there--and your friends say, "Yes, that is your very self!" I want you to bless the Lord with your soul at home as in that last portrait! I saw a book today where the writer says in the preface, "We have given a portrait of our mother, but there was a kind of sacred twinkle about her eyes which no photograph could reproduce." Now, it is my heart's desire that you praise God with that sacred twinkle--with that feature or faculty which is most characteristic of you. Let your eyes praise Him! Let your brow praise Him! Let every part of your manhood be aroused and so aroused as to be in fine form. I would have your soul rise to the high-water mark! Give me a man on fire when God is to be praised! Let "all that is within me bless His holy name." God is not to be half praised. A whole God and a holy God should have the whole of our powers engaged in blessing His holy name. Our blessing of God must be intense--so intense that all our powers, faculties and forces are unanimous in it. The text seems to remind me that we ought to do this repeatedly, because in my text the word "bless" occurs twice. "Bless the Lord, O my Soul, bless His holy name." And in the next verse there is, "bless the Lord," again. He is a Triune God--render Him triune praise! Bless Him! Bless Him! Bless Him--be always blessing Him! How you have looked at that dear child at times, you loving mothers! You have pressed him to your bosom and you have said, "Bless him, and bless him, and bless him again." Shall our children enjoy such affectionate repetitions and will we not bless God and bless Him and bless Him, and bless Him again? "Oh," you say, "it is a very little thing to do!" I know it is little in itself, but take care that you do not rob Him of it. If your gratitude can only render a small return, this must not be a reason for withholding it. Thank Him! Praise Him! Bless Him! Begin your days with blessing Him. Begin your meals with blessing Him. Go not to your beds without blessing Him. Wake not in the morning without blessing Him. Even in the dead of night, if you lie sleepless, still bless Him. Oh, what happy lives we should live if we were always blessing Him! Let us resolve to institute a new era and from this hour commence the age of praise-- I will praise Him in life; I will praise Him in death; And praise Him as long as He lends me breath." May this be the holy resolution of every blood-bought one in this assembly! We are all needed for this work. Who among us would like to be excused from so honorable a service? Thus have I shown you the blessed occupation and the commendable manner of it. May the Holy Spirit help us to love praise and live praise till we perfect praise! III. But I ask your attention earnestly for a minute to a third point and that is THE SACRED OBJECT of this blessing. The text is, in the original, "Bless Jehovah, O my Soul." In the reading of the Psalms, as a rule, I frequently put the word, "Jehovah," before you instead of, "the Lord," for you know that wherever we get, the "LORD," in capital letters, it is "Jehovah" in the original--and why should we not know that the sacred name is used by the inspired writer? I am afraid that a great many so-called Christians do not worship Jehovah at all. The god of the present period is a new god, newly sprung up. The Old Testament is looked upon by some as if it were a worn-out Book and the God of Israel is regarded as a deity of the olden time and not the only living and true God. "Ah!" they say, "He is a very imperfect Revelation" and then they go on to reverence their own effeminate version of the Godhead. For my own part I know nothing of a new god. I adore the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob--the God that made the heavens and the earth. I worship the God that cut Rahab and wounded the crocodile at the Red Sea--the God that led His people through the wilderness. I worship the God that gave them the land of Canaan for a heritage. "This God is our God forever and ever. He shall be our guide even unto death." "Bless Jehovah, O my Soul." Let who will worship Baal or Moloch--let who will turn to the gods of Greece or Rome. My Soul, bless Jehovah and adore His sacred name! The gods of evolution and agnosticism are none of mine! These invented deities, or demons, I leave to those who dote on them. Be it mine to lead this great congregation with such a Psalm as this-- "Before Jehovah's awful Throne, You nations bow with sacred joy Know that the Lord is God alone; He can create, and He destroy." But the text says, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul: and all that is within me, bless His holy name." What is meant by blessing His name? The name of God is that by which He reveals Himself, so that the God we have to worship is the Jehovah of Revelation. Here, again, we fall foul of many. They worship the god of reason--the conception of the cultured mind--the god whom they have invented for themselves by their great wisdom. The god whom men find out for themselves is not the true God. I think that this day it is true as in Paul's day, "The world by wisdom knew not God." "Can you, by searching, find God?" As well might you search for the springs of the sea as expect to find God by science ! I often hear people say, "They go from Nature up to Nature's God." It is a very long step--too far for human strength! Stand on the highest Alp and you will perceive that you will never step into Heaven from there. It is far easier to go from Nature's God to Nature and far safer to believe in Him who stoops out of the heavens and reveals Himself to you. However, let me say to all Believers--"Bless His holy name," that is, bless the God who is revealed to us and bless Him as He is revealed to us. Do not look around you for another god. Begin with the God with whom the Bible begins. Read its first word--"In the beginning God." Begin with the God with whom the New Testament begins in the Gospel of John--"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Keep to Revelation. There is God's name spelled out in capitals! Believe the inspired Word, for it will never mislead you. O Friends, if I did not believe in the Infallibility of Scripture--the absolute Infallibility of it from cover to cover--I would never enter this pulpit again! If it is left to me to discriminate and to judge how much of this Book is true and how much false, then I must, myself, become Infallible, or what guide do I have? If my compass always points to the north I know how to use it--but if it veers to other points of the compass, and I am to judge out of my own mind whether it is correct or not--I am as well without the thing as with it. If my Bible is always right, it will lead me right--and as I believe it is so, I shall follow it, God helping me! I will not judge the Book--the Book judges me-- "This is the Judge that ends the strife, Where wit and reason fail." God has revealed Himself in different ways and manners through His Prophets and Apostles, and as such let us bless Him tonight. We rejoice in Him who, in the Person of the Lord Jesus and in the Scriptures of Truth has graciously unveiled His face. "Bless His holy name." But then notice that the Psalm dwells especially upon one point. "Bless His holy name." Now, a babe in Divine Grace can bless God for His goodness, but only a grown Believer will bless God for His holiness. His holiness is an august attribute, an attribute which comprehends all the rest, for it means His wholeness, His perfection, His holiness. It is an attribute which looks darkly on sinful men. Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, it seems to thunder and lighten against the sinner. But as for those of us who are reconciled to God by the death of His Son, it smiles upon us! These see holiness resplendent in the great Sacrifice of Calvary, for they perceive how God would not ever pardon sin so as to violate His justice, but in His infinite holiness would sooner die Himself upon the Cross than that His Law should not be vindicated! Saints conspicuously see God's holiness! Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, we worship You! We bless You! Beloved, do you love a holy God? Do you bless a holy God? While you bless Him for His mercy? Do you equally bless Him for His holiness? You bless Him for His bounty, but do you feel that you could not thus bless Him if you were not fully aware that He is perfectly righteous? "Bless His holy name." Yes, when that holiness burns like fire and threatens to devour the guilty, let us still bless His holy name! When we see His holiness consuming the great Sacrifice we bow before the Lord in deep dread of soul, but we still bless His holy name. An unholy God? It were absurd to think of such a Being! But a thrice-holy God--let us bless and praise Him! When men or women can say, "We love and bless and praise a holy God," there is something of holiness in them! God the Holy Spirit has begun to make you holy--since to appreciate holiness you must yourself be holy! No man can see the beauty of holiness until his eyes have been washed in the river of the Water of Life--and if God has made you pure so that you can praise His holiness--He has given you to be a partaker of His holiness! So I have put before you in a few words the Truth of God that the one blessed Object of your praise is the God of Abraham--the God of the Old and New Testaments--who has revealed His name, the God of perfect holiness. "Bless Jehovah, O my Soul: and all that is within me, bless His holy name." IV. I have done when I add this fourth point. Let us remember THE SUITABLE MONITOR. In the text a suitable monitor appears. A Christian man who wants somebody to look after him is a very imperfect Christian man, for he who has the love of God in his soul will look after himself. Who is it that says to David, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul"? Why, it is David talking to David. The man speaks to himself! Beloved, may my voice be useful to you at this time--but the proof of it will be that from now on your own voice will suffice and you will often give yourself the exhortation--"Bless the Lord, O my Soul." Some of you go out preaching or you teach a class in a Sunday school. Keep on with that but do not forget to look after one pupil of yours who needs your care very greatly. I mean, look to yourself and every now and then say, "My Soul, bless the Lord." Where are you, now? You have been grumbling of late. Wake up and say, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." You have been dull and cold-hearted of late. Chide yourself, for this will not do. If you have this monitor, you will have one that is always at home. You will not have to send across the road for a minister. Here is a spiritual chaplain who will be resident with you and always ready with his personal advice. Will you not try to practice your ministry upon yourself and begin at once to apply to yourself all that you would say to another whom you would excite to bless the Lord? Ought you not to do it? Are you not afraid of growing cold in this holy service? "No," you say, "I am not." Then I am afraid that you are cold already! "No," you say, "I am full of life." Will you always be so? Man's security is the devil's opportunity. Whenever you say to yourself, "All is well with me," I fear for you! A foul fiend is watching for your halting and he laughs as he sees how you delude yourself! You are not all you think you are! Stir yourself and praise the Lord! Practice this praising of God when you are stimulated by the example of others. If you hear others praising God, say to yourself, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." Do not let any man praise God more than you do. When you see your Brothers and Sisters aglow with praising God, do not grovel in the dust and moan, "Our souls can neither fly, nor go to reach eternal joys," but stretch your wings and rise to hallelujahs! Rest not till a gracious example has stimulated you! But if you happen to be where there is nobody to stimulate you and where everybody goes the other way, then praise God alone. Say to yourself, "Bless the Lord, O my Soul. I dwell among lions. But none the less for their roaring, bless the Lord, O my Soul." That will stop the lions' mouths. What if you are in prison, like Paul and Silas? Bless the Lord! Nothing shakes prison walls and breaks jailers' hearts like the praises of the Lord! Here I am where everybody doubts the holy God. Bless the Lord, O my Soul and be all the firmer and all the bolder! If everybody sneers at Divine Truth, bless the Lord, O my Soul. Let all men know that there is one in the world who does not sneer at Revelation! Let opposition be like a strong blast to make the furnace seven times hotter. "Bless the Lord, O my Soul." What have I to do with whether other people bless God or not? I must praise Him all the more if others are dumb before Him! This, dear Friends, is how it ought to be from me personally. If I do not praise the Lord the stones in the wall will cry out against me--and it will complain of you, also, if you are silent. You owe Him more than many. If all forget, yet you remember. This is pleasant as well as profitable. Praise is not medicine--it is meat and drink. It is salutary and it is also sweet. Is any other occupation comparable to blessing the Lord? Is there anything that you can do which surpasses the spending of your life in magnifying the Lord? If you practice it, it will be profitable to you. It will make you grow in Divine Grace. It will make your burden light. It will make your way to Heaven seem short. It will make you fearlessly face the world. If you have God within your heart and you are blessing His name, you will not mind your outward circumstances. Whether God gives or takes, you will continue to bless Him. This will be useful to you in saving others. A praising heart is a soul-winning heart. If we bless God more we shall bless our neighbors more. A happy Christian attracts others by his joy. Lastly, to bless God will prepare us for Heaven. Praise is the rehearsal of our eternal song. By Grace we learn to sing and in Glory we continue to sing. What will some of you do when you get to Heaven if you go on grumbling all the way? Do not hope to get to Heaven in that style! But now, begin to bless the name of the Lord! I have not spoken thus to all of you. Some of you cannot bless the Lord as yet. Will you try? Think how sad it is to be in a state of mind in which you cannot render acceptable praise. You must be born-again before you can bless the Lord. May the Lord convince you of the necessity that He should bless you before you can bless Him! May you receive His blessing in a moment by faith in the Lord Jesus! The Lord grant it, for Jesus' sake! Amen. PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Psalm 103. __________________________________________________________________ A Straight Talk A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JANUARY 12, 1890, DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, MAY 19, 1889. "I cannot come." Luke 14:20. THERE are different ways of replying to the invitation of the Gospel when you mean to refuse it. They are all, at best, bad, and they may all be classed under one head, for, "they all with one consent began to make excuses." But yet some are more decently worded than others and have a greater show of reason about them. The first two sets of people who were invited to the supper said to the servant, apologetically, with some appearance of courtesy, "I pray you have me excused." But the third man did not beat about the bush at all, or pray to be excused--he said tersely, bluntly, sharply--"/ cannot come." This was a final reply. He did not intend, nor wish to come to the supper. "I cannot come," was a snappish reply but as he had married a wife, he thought the idea of his coming was utterly unreasonable and he needed no sort of excuse. Now, what did that mean? Well, it meant that he thought very lightly of the giver of the feast. He had no respect for this "certain man," who had made a great supper. He had an opportunity of slighting him by refusing his invitation and he did so outspokenly, saying, "/ cannot come." It also showed that he had a very low opinion of the supper itself. It might be a respectable meal, but he did not need it--he could have quite as good a supper at home. He was better off than those people in the streets. Those hedge birds might be glad enough to get a supper for nothing, but he was not dependent upon anybody and he could do very well for himself. Do you not know many in this world who have no opinion of Christ, no love to God? Religion is to them mere nonsense--an unpractical, dreamy matter about which they have no time to concern themselves. It is a pitiful thing that they will not even think of the God whom angels worship! And the Christ who is the loveliest of the lovely--in Him they see no beauty! And the priceless provisions of mercy, the pardon of sin, the salvation of the soul, Heaven of God--they neglect these things as if they did not need them--or could get them whenever they please. Thousands are proudly independent of the free Grace of God--they are good enough and virtuous enough--they need not cry for mercy as the wicked and profane. In their own judgment they are quite able to fight their own way to Heaven. They need not the charities of the Gospel. Contempt of the great Feast-Maker and contempt of the feast itself--these two pieces of proud disdain induce a man to say, "/ cannot come." But there was more than common pride in this brief, gruff speech, for this man had, at the first, made a promise to come. He had been invited to come and it is implied in the parable that he had, at that time, accepted the invitation. He had accepted the cards of invitation to the supper and, though he had done so, he now flies in the face of himself and says, "I cannot come." I think that I am addressing some here who have pledged themselves many a time to come to Christ. If I remember rightly you asked the prayers of friends and promised that you would be in real earnest. You looked your wife in the face and said, "I hope that it will not be long before I am with you in the Church of God and shall no longer have to go away and leave you alone at the Lord's Table." You asked some of your Christian friends to make a point of praying for you-- but you have never carried out your intention of becoming a true Christian. Your resolutions may be still read in God's eternal book of record--but they are there as witnesses to your falseness and changeableness. The counterfoils are there but there is no fulfillment of any of the resolutions. God remembers them although you have forgotten to carry them out. You accepted the invitation on the spur of the moment but when worldliness got the upper hand with you, you went back to your old obstinacy and said, "I cannot come." Perhaps you have not said it in quite as sharp a tone as I used just now, but it has come to the same thing, for you have not come to the Gospel Supper. It matters little whether you say it angrily or quietly--if you do not come, the practical result is the same. I think I hear some of you, even now, say, "Do not ask me so often. I cannot come! It is of no use to worry me about it. I do not wish to be uncivil or unkind. Though I said I would come, I retract my words! I cannot come." In saying, "I cannot come," the man intended, as it were, to dismiss the matter. He wished to be understood as having made up his mind and he was no longer open to argument. He did not parley. He did not talk. He just said, matter-of-factly, "I need no more persuading! I cannot come and that settles it." Certain of our hearers have come to such a condition of heart that they would gladly silence our Gospel expostulations--with a kind but determined tone they would say--"/ cannot come. Do not trouble me anymore." I suppose that this man, after he had made that positive declaration, felt that there was truth in what he had stated. He said, "Therefore I cannot come." He had a reason to support him in what he said and he went home, sat down and enjoyed himself. He felt that he was a righteous man, quite as good as those who had gone to the supper and perhaps rather better. He could not blame himself, for when a man cannot do it, why, of course, he cannot do it! And why should he be censured for an impossibility? "I cannot come"--how can I help that? So he sat down with a cool indifference to eat his own supper. It was nothing to him whether the great giver of the feast was grieved or not--whether his oxen and fatlings were wasted or not. He had said it to his conscience so often that he half believed it--"I cannot come, and there is no disputing it." I have no doubt that many who have never come to Christ have made themselves content to be without Him by the belief that they cannot come. Although the impossibility, if it did exist, would involve the greatest of all calamities, yet they speak of it with very little concern. Practically, they say, "I cannot be saved. I must remain an unbeliever." What an awful thing for any mortal to say! Yet you have said it till you almost believe it and you wish us, now, to leave you quite alone for this dreadful reason. You do not want to be troubled tonight. The text already begins to startle you a little and you do not like it. You are almost sorry that you are here. If the Lord helps me, I will trouble you far more before you go out of this place! I have heavy tidings from the Lord for you! I shall endeavor, if I can, to pull away those downy pillows from your sleepy head and wake you up to immediate anxiety lest you perish in your sins! With kindly importunity I will plead with you and try to show you that this little speech of yours, "/ cannot come," is a wretched speech! You must throw it to the winds and prove that you can come by coming at once and receiving of the great feast of love and honoring Him that spreads it for hungry souls. Two or three things I would like to say about this case, for it is very serious. It was bad enough for this man to say, "I cannot come," but it is far worse for you to say, "I cannot come to Christ." Remember, if the invited guests did not come, and come at once, they could never come for there was only that one supper and not a series of banquets. The great man who made the feast did not intend to prepare another. A very grave offense would be committed by their not coming to the one supper. My dear Hearers, there is only one time of Divine Grace for you and if that is ended you will not have a second opportunity! There is only one Christ Jesus--there is no more sacrifice for sin. There is only one way of eternal love and mercy--do not forsake it. I pray you, do not turn away from the one door of life, the one way of salvation! If it is slighted now and the feast is over--as it will be when you die--then you will have lost the great privilege and you will have been guilty of a gross neglect, from the consequences of which you never will be able to escape! Note this and beware! Besides, it is not merely a supper that you will lose when you say, "I cannot come." To lose a supper would be little and might soon be set right when breakfast came round. But you lose eternal life and that lost in time can never be found in eternity! You lose the pardon of sin, reconciliation to God, adoption into the family of love--those are heavy losses! You lose the joy of faith for life and you lose comfort in death--who can estimate this damage? Lose not your immortal soul! Oh, lose not that! For if you gain the whole world it will not recompense you for such a loss! Lose what you will, but lose not your soul, I pray you! Seek that salvation without which it had been better for you that you had never been born. Besides, once more, if you do not come to Christ it will imply the greatest insult that you can put upon your Maker. You have already grieved Him by breaking His Laws--but what will be His indignation when you refuse His mercy? When you turn your back on His Son? When you refuse not only your God, but your crucified Savior hanging there with outstretched arms, bleeding His life away, that He may save you? Do not turn your back on your own redemption! No blood was ever sprinkled on the threshold of an Israelite's house for he must not trample on it--that would be ruinous, indeed. The blood was on the lintel and on the two side posts, but never underfoot. Trample not upon the blood of Christ! And you will do so if you refuse His great salvation. If you will not come to Him to be saved, you have as good as said that you will be damned rather than be loved by God--that you will be damned rather than be saved through Jesus Christ His Son. It will prove a costly insult to you, as well as a grievous affront to your Lord. Having said so much by way of preface, I am now going to take those words, "/ cannot come," and handle them a little with the hope that you may grow ashamed of them. I. First, this man declared, "I cannot come because," he said, "I HAVE MARRIED A WIFE." He had promised to come to the supper and he was bound to fulfill his promise. Why did he want to get married just then? Surely he had not been compelled to marry all in a hurry so that he could not keep engagements already made! He was bound to keep his promise to the maker of the feast and that promise was claimed of him by the messenger. He could not say that his wife would not let him come. Such a declaration might be true in England but in the East the men are always masters of the situation and women seldom bear rule in the family! No Oriental would say that his wife would not let him come! Nor in these Western regions, where the woman more nearly gains her rights, can any man truthfully say that his wife will not allow him to be a Christian. I do not believe that any of you will be able to say, when you come to die, that your wife was responsible for your not being a Christian. Most men would be angry if we told them that they were hen-pecked and could not call their souls their own. He must be a fool, indeed, who would let a woman lead him down to Hell against his will! The fact is, a man is a mean creature when he tries to throw the blame of his sin upon his wife. I know that Father Adam set us a bad example in that respect, but the fact that this was a part of the sin which caused the ruin of our race should act as a beacon to us. You certainly, as a man, ought not to demean yourself so much as to say, "I cannot come, for my wife will not let me." If one of you, however, continues to whine, "My wife is my ruin. I am unable to be a Christian because of my wife," I must ask you a question or two before I believe your pitiable story. Do you let her rule you in everything else? Does she keep you at home each evening? Does she pick all your companions for you? Why, my dear Man, if I am not much mistaken, you are a self-willed, cross-grained, pig-headed animal about everything else! And then, when it comes to the matter of religion, you turn round and whine about being governed by your wife? I have no patience with you! It is more than probable that the very best thing that could happen to you would be to have your wife on the throne of England for the next few years. Upon such a solemn matter as this do not talk nonsense. You know that the blame lies with yourself alone--if you wished to seek the best things--the little woman at home would be no hindrance to you. This man said, "/ cannot come." Why? Because he had a wife! Strange plea! For surely that was a reason why he should come and bring her with him! If any man, unhappily, has a wife opposed to the things of God, instead of saying, "I cannot be a Christian, for I have an unconverted wife," he should seek for double Grace that he may win his wife to Christ. If a woman laments that she has an unconverted husband, let her live nearer to God that she may save her husband. If a servant has an unconverted master, let him labor with double diligence to glorify God that he may win his master. Thus you see there are two reasons why you should come to the Gospel banquet--not only for your own sake, but for the sake of your unconverted relatives. My neighbor's candle is blown out--is that a reason why I must not light mine? No, but that is a reason why I should be all the more careful to keep mine burning, that I may light my neighbor's candle, too. It is a pity that my wife should be lost, but I cannot help her by being lost myself. No, but I may help her if I take my stand and follow Christ the more resolutely because my wife opposes me. Good Man, do not allow your wife to draw you aside! Good Woman, do not let your husband hinder you! Do not say, "I cannot attend the house of God, nor be a Christian while I have such a husband as I have." No, that is the reason why you should take your stand the more bravely in the name of God that, by your example, those whom you love may be rescued from destruction. How do you know, O Wife, but that you may save your unbelieving husband? How do you know, O Servant, but that you may save your unbelieving master? I remember hearing Mr. Jay tell a story about a Nonconformist servant girl who went to live in a family of worldly people who attended the Church of England. Although they were not real Believers--they were outside buttresses of the Church but they had very little to do with the inside of it--and outsiders are generally the most bigoted. They were very angry with their servant for going to the little Meeting House and threatened to discharge her if she went again. But she went all the same and very kindly but firmly assured them that she must continue to do so. At last she received notice to go--they could not, as good Church people--have a Dissenter living with them! She took their rough treatment very patiently and it came to pass that the day before she was to leave her situation a conversation took place somewhat of this sort. The master said, "It is a pity, after all, that Jane should go. We never had such a good girl. She is very industrious, truthful, and attentive." The wife said, "Well, I have thought that it is hardly the thing to send her away for going to her Chapel. You always speak up for religious liberty and it does not look quite like religious liberty to turn our girl away for worshipping God according to her conscience. I am sure she is a deal more careful about her religion than we are about ours." So they talked it over and they decided, "She has never answered us pertly, nor found fault with us about our going to Church. Her religion is a greater comfort to her than ours is to us. We had better let her stay with us, and go where she likes." "Yes," said the husband, "and I think we had better go and hear the minister that she goes to hear. Evidently she has got something that we have not got. Instead of sending her away for going to Chapel, we will go with her next Sunday and judge the matter for ourselves." And they did, and it was not long before the master and mistress were members of that same Church! Do not say, therefore, "I cannot come because my master and mistress object to it." Do not make idle excuses out of painful facts which are reasons why you should be more determined than ever, even if you have to go to Heaven alone, that you will be a follower of Christ. Keep to your resolve and you may entertain the hope and belief that you will, by His Grace, lead others to the Savior's feet. II. A second reason is even more common. It is not everybody who can say, "I have married a wife," but everywhere you can meet with a person who pleads, "I HAVE NO TIME." You say, "Sir, I cannot attend to religion, for I have no time." I remember hearing an old lady say to a man who said that he had no time, "Well, you have got all the time there is." I thought that it was a very conclusive answer. You have had the time and you still have all the time there is--why do you not use it? Nobody has more than 24 hours in a day and you have no less. You have no time? That is very singular! What have you done with it--you certainly have had it! Time flies with you, I know, but so does it with me and with everybody. What do you do with it? "Oh, I have no time," says one. I say again, you have had the time and that time was due, in part, to a solemn consideration of the things of God. You have robbed God of that part of time which was due to Him and you have given up to some inferior thing what your great Lord and Master could rightly claim for the highest purposes. You have time enough for common things. See here, I never meet any of you in the middle of the day in the street in your shirtsleeves. I do not find you going up and down Cheapside half-dressed. "Oh, no, of course not! We have time to put on our clothes." You have time to dress your bodies and no time to dress your souls with the robe of Christ's righteousness? Do not tell me that! I do not meet any one of our friends saying, towards evening, "I am ready to faint, for I have had nothing to eat since I got up. I have had no time to get a morsel of meat." No, no! They have had their breakfast and they have had their dinner, and so on. "Oh, yes, we have time to eat," says one. Do you tell me that you have time to feed your bodies and that God has not given you time in which to feed your souls? Why, it is not commonsense! Such statements will not hold water for a moment! You must have time to feed your souls if you have time to feed your bodies! People find time to look in the mirror and wash their faces and brush their hair. Have you no time whatever to look at yourself, to see your spiritual spots and to wash in the fountain that is open for sin and for uncleanness? O dear Sirs, you have time for common things and you must certainly have time for those much more serious and important matters which concern your souls and immortality! You have no time? How is this, when you waste a good deal? How much do many of us spend in silly talk? How much time do certain persons spend in frivolous amusements? I have heard people say that they have no time whom I am sure I do not know what they can have to occupy themselves! Are there not many people about who, if they were tied in a knot and thrown into the Bay of Biscay, would be missed by nobody for they do no good to any mortal being? They are living without an object--purposeless, aimless lives--and yet they talk about not having time! Such pretences will not do. When you plead with God, say something that looks like commonsense. You have no time and yet you undertake more secular work? You keep a shop, do you not? "Yes, I have a large shop." You are going to enlarge it, are you not? Will you have time, do you think, to attend to it when the business grows? "Oh, yes, I dare say that I shall find time--at any rate, I must make time, somehow or other." You are going to take a second shop, are you not? How will you manage it? "Oh, I shall find time." Yes, my dear Sirs, you can find time for all those enlargements and speculations and engagements! Now let me be frank with you and say that you could find time for thought about your soul if you had a mind to do so. To plead that you have no time for religion is a fraud! It will not do! It is lying to God to say that you have no time! When a man wants to do a thing, if he has no time, he makes time. I beg the idle man not to go on deceiving himself with the notion that he has no time. "Where there's a will there's a way." Where there is a heart to religion there is plenty of time for it. Blame your unwilling minds and not your scanty hours! You will have time enough when your hearts are once turned in the right direction. Besides, time is not the great matter. Did the Lord demand of you a month's retirement from business? Did we command you to spend two days a week in prayer? Did we tell you that you could not be saved unless you shut yourself up an hour every morning for meditation? I would to God you could have an hour for meditation! But, if you cannot, who has demanded it of you? The command is that you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and forsake your sin--and this is a matter which will not interfere with your daily work. A man can turn the potter's wheel and pray. A man can lay bricks and pray. A man can drive the carriage and pray. A man can walk behind a plow and yet he can be walking with God. A woman can scrub a floor and commune with God. A man can be riding on horseback and yet he can still be in communion with the Most High. A woman can be sewing dresses and growing in Divine Grace. It is not a matter in which time comes in so much as to interfere with any of the ordinary duties of life. Therefore throw away that excuse and do not say any longer, "I cannot come because I have no time." At once repent of your sin and believe in the Lord Jesus--and then all your time will be free for the service of the Lord and yet you will have not a moment less for the needful duties of your calling. III. There is a third form of this excuse and a very common one--"I HAVE MORE IMPORTANT THINGS TO DO." Now, come on! I will have you by the throat over that. I shall contradict you daily. You have nothing more important to do. That would be utterly impossible! Nothing under Heaven can be of one-hundredth part of the importance of your being reconciled to God and saved through Jesus Christ! What is that more important business? To make money? Where is the importance of that? You may get a pile of it and the net result will be greater care and the more to leave when you die! But you tell me you must have an opportunity for study. Well, that is better, but what are you going to study? Science? Art? Politics? Are these important compared with the saving of your soul? Why, if you have an educated mind and it is lost, it will be as bad to lose it in culture and learning as to lose it in ignorance. Your first duty is to be right with your God who made you! Put nothing before your God. Has Christ redeemed you? Rest not till you know the truth of that redemption by being reconciled to God through the death of His Son. Nothing can be so important to a man as to be obedient to his Maker and enjoy his Maker's love. Nothing, therefore, can be so important to a man as to be pardoned through the Savior and changed by the power of the Holy Spirit from an enemy of God into a friend of God. "Oh!" you say, "But my business occupies so much of my time." Yes, but do you not know that very likely your business would go on better if you were right with God? Many a time a business goes wrong because the man is wrong-- and sometimes it is even incumbent upon God to be at cross-purposes with a man because a man is at cross-purposes with Him. If you walk disobediently towards Him, He will walk contrary to you--but when you are obedient to Him, He can make other things subservient to you. In a little church on the Italian mountains I saw, among many absurd paintings, one picture which struck me. There was a plowman who had turned aside at a certain hour to pray. The rustic artist drew him upon his knees before the opened heavens and, lest there should be any waste of time occasioned by his devotion, an angel was going on with the plowing for him! I like the idea. I do not think an angel ever did go on with a man's plowing while he was praying, but I think that the same result often comes to pass and that when we give our hearts to God and seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, all these things are added unto us. If religion does not make you richer, which it may not do, it will make you more content with what you have. The blessing of God with a dinner of herbs will make it better than a stalled ox without that benediction. He that would make the best of this world and have the greatest enjoyment here of the truest and best kind will do well to give his first attention to his Savior--and his whole heart to faith in Him--and diligence in His service. You have no more important business, I am quite sure, that the business which concerns God and eternity. IV. I have heard some use the excuse "I CANNOT AFFORD TO BE A CHRISTIAN." Well, my Friend, let us have a talk about that. Cost you more than you can afford? What do you mean? What cost? Cost you money? It need not. It will cost you no more than you like to spend upon it with a glad heart. God will give you a generous spirit which will make you love to support His cause and to help the poor and contribute your share to all Christian mission work. But in the Kingdom of Christ there is no taxation! Giving becomes a gratification, liberality a luxury! Nothing will be dragged from you by force. Surely our God abhors money that comes into His treasury by anything but the freewill offerings of loving hearts. It will not cost you much in that way, I am sure, for you are only to give as God has prospered you. Suppose man should say, "Well, I must take a seat in the chapel if I would comfortably hear the Gospel." Very well. Will it be unjust that you bear your proportion of necessary expenses in supporting the man who gives all his time, thought and ability to you? Will you pay as much in a year to hear the Gospel as many pay for one night at the play? Yes, and do not many at a horserace spend a hundred times more than they ever gave throughout their whole existence either to the poor or to the Church of God? What you save by holy, gracious, thrifty habits will render this no loss to you, but a gain! "Oh, but I meant that I could not afford it, for I should have to lose several friends." Is that friend worth keeping who is an enemy to God? The woman who would lead you away from God or the man who would keep you out of Heaven--are friends of that sort worth having? Be brave and end a connection which will otherwise endlessly connect you with the bottomless pit. "Oh," says one, "but I mean that I should lose so much in trade." Ah, well, I will not ask you to explain what you mean by that--for there is an ugly look about that statement. You know more about your trade than I do. No doubt there are trades which pander to the vices of men and become all the more profitable in proportion to the growth of drunkenness and impurity. These must be given up! Moreover, there are traders who live by puffery and lying and cheating--and I do not recommend you to profess to be a Christian if that is your line of things. It is better to give up all profession of religion when you go in for unrighteous gain. What? Did I hear a hint about adulteration? Did I also hear that you do not give full weight and true measure? Ah, my dear Fellow, give up that game at once, whether you become a Christian or not! But certainly, if that is what you mean, the loss of dishonest profits will be a great gain to you--both for this life and the next. "Well," says one, "I should have to give up a good many pleasures." Pleasures which block the road to Heaven ought to be given up at once! You may think me a very melancholy sort of person but I fancy that I am about as happy as any man in England. I appreciate a merry thought and a cheerful speech as much as anybody. I can laugh and I can enjoy good, clean, humorous remarks as well as most people. And having now served the Lord for nearly 40 years I bear my witness that I have never had to relinquish a single pleasure for which I have felt a deliberate desire. As soon as you are renewed in heart, you are changed in your pleasures--and that which might have been a pleasure to you, once, would then be a misery. If I had to sit in some people's company and hear what some people talk about, it would be Hell to me! One night, having to preach up in the North of England, this unfortunate circumstance occurred to me. When I got down to the railway, I was put into a first-class carriage with five racing gentlemen who were going to the Doncaster races. Happily they did not know me but from the beginning to the end the conversation of these gentlemen was garnished with expressions which tortured me. And at last they fell upon a subject which was unutterably loathsome. I pray God that I may not be condemned to dwell with such people forever, for it would be Hell to me! Ladies and Gentlemen, you need not think that I rob myself of any pleasure when I do not go to racetrack, or associate with the licentious! It is my pleasure to keep far off from the pleasures of those men of pleasure, in whose company I was forced to spend that evening. The pleasures of this world are so full of dust, dirt and grit that he who has once washed his mouth clean of them, declines another meal of such bunk. You will lose no pleasure if you come to Christ! V. I hear one other person say, "I cannot come." Why not? "Well, Sir, I do not mean that I shall not come one of these days, but IT WOULD NOT BE CONVENIENT JUST NOW. I could not yield my heart to the Lord tonight." No. I know. You have an engagement tomorrow which must be attended to and it would not be quite the thing for a Christian. Just so. It would not be convenient tonight, nor on Monday, nor will it be on Tuesday, depend upon it--your anxious thoughts will have gone by then. It will not be convenient to be saved? You want to see a little "life," do you not? "Life" in London means death. "Oh, but just now I am only an apprentice!" Then at once be bound apprentice to Christ! "But I am a journeyman. When I get a little business of my own, then will be the time." Will it? Oh that you would become a journeyman to Christ! "But I have associations just now that render it difficult." That is to say God must wait your convenience. Is that the way the poor treat the doctors who receive patients gratis? Do they say, "Doctor, it is not convenient for me to call upon you before 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning. It is not convenient for me to come to your house. I shall be glad to see you if you come to my house about half-past 11 in the evening." Would you send a message to a physician in the West End that you will be pleased for him to attend to you for nothing if he will come at your time? "Oh," you say, "I should not think of insulting a doctor like that, if he is kind enough to attend to me for nothing." And yet you will insult your God! You mean that God is not worthy of your strength and health now--but when you are old and worn out--then you mean to sneak into Heaven and cheat the devil! It is dirt mean of you! I can say no better. Though the Lord is exceedingly gracious and merciful, yet when men make up their minds to it that they will only give Him the worst end of life--it is small wonder that they die in their sins! What must God think of such treatment? Do not say, "I cannot come." Come at once. The Lord help you to come! VI. I have heard people say, "I cannot come, Sir, for I CANNOT UNDERSTAND IT. I am a poor man. I never had any education." What is it that you cannot understand? Can you not understand that you have broken God's Law and that the just God must punish you for it? You can understand that! Can you not understand that if you trust the Lord Jesus Christ, then it is certain that He took your sin and bore it in His own body on the Cross and put your sin away, for His name is the "Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world"? Can you not understand that if you trust in Him you have Him to stand in your place--for the Scripture says, "He has made Him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him"? You can understand it if you wish to do so. There is nothing in the Gospel which the poorest and the least educated cannot understand if their minds are made willing to know and receive the Truth of God. If the Spirit of God will come upon them, they cannot only understand the Gospel, but grasp it and enjoy it and begin to teach it to others, too--for the Lord makes the babes to have knowledge and discretion in His ways--while the wise and learned in scientific matters often miss the way to the eternal kingdom. I have done. The sound of the bell tells me that my time has fled. Another bell will one day warn you that you have done and that your life is over, even as my sermon is over. But I need to say just this. If there is any man here who says, "I cannot come," I beg him to express himself properly and speak out the sad fact as it ought to be spoken. Here is the style--"Unhappy wretch, I cannot come to Christ! Millions in Heaven have come but I cannot come! My mother died in a good hope, but, 'Mother, I cannot come.' My father has gone home to be with Jesus but I cannot come." I thank God that this statement is not true, but if you say it and believe it, you ought never to rest anymore, for if you cannot come to Christ you are the unhappiest person in the world! Is there any woman that cries, "I cannot come," or any man that pleads, "I cannot come"? Wherever you are sitting or standing, let the bell that told out the death of the last hour warn you of your spiritual death! For if you cannot come to Christ and eat of His supper, you cannot be saved! You cannot escape from the wrath to come--you are doomed forever! May I ask you to do another thing? If you still intend to say, "I cannot come," will you speak the truth now? Will you alter a word and get nearer the truth? Say, "I will not come." "I cannot come," is Greek, or double Dutch--but the plain English is, "I WILL NOT COME." I wish you would say that rather than the other because the recoil of saying, "I will not come; I will not believe in Jesus; I will not repent of sin; I will not turn from my wicked ways"--the recoil, I say, from that might be blessed by God to you to make you see your desperate state. I wish you would then cry, "I cannot sit down and make my own damnation sure by saying that I will not come to Christ." Will you now, instead of refusing to come, resolve to come at once? Say, "I will come to Jesus. Tell me how." You can only come to Christ by trusting Him. Trust yourself with Him and He will save you! Never did anyone trust Jesus in vain! Trust has a powerful influence over the Lord Jesus. He comes to the rescue of a soul that leans wholly upon Him. He will do all things for you--He will change your nature as well as forgive your sin! And your nature being changed, you shall lead a new life from this time forth and grow in Divine Grace until you become like He in whom you trust! And then He will take you to be forever with Him. Washed in the blood of the Lamb, you shall walk with Him in white amidst the glorified! Thus I have talked tonight in a very homely way. I pray the Lord to bless words which are intended to be faithful, plain and impressive. May we meet in Heaven! There are very many strangers here tonight--may you not be strangers to the Lord Jesus! Many of our friends are away and some of you have come out although it is a nasty wet evening--I take this as a token for good. God bless you! I pray that you may get the double blessing and may remember this gloomy, dark, December-like evening in May by the blessing that God shall put upon you through Jesus Christ His Son. Amen. PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Luke 14. __________________________________________________________________ Help for Your Sickness DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "When evening was come, they brought unto Him many that were possessed with devils: and He cast out the spirits with His word, and healed all that were sick: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the Prophet, saying, He took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses." Matthew 8:16,17. IT was the evening--in all probability it was the evening of a Sabbath day. The Jews were so tender not to break the Sabbath that they did not even bring forth the sick to the Savior until the evening was come. The Savior would gladly have healed them on the Sabbath, for that was to Him a high day for holy work--but they did not think it right--and so they kept back their sick till the day was ended. If any of you have thought that the time has not come for you to approach the Savior, you have labored under a great error for He would not have you delay for a single hour! But I hope you are now satisfied that you have waited long enough and that at last the evening is near in which you should come to Jesus. God grant that any superstition which has kept you back may be removed and may this be the set time, the hour of Divine Grace to your souls! Whether it was a Sabbath evening or not, the day had been spent by the Savior in diligent labor, for our Savior took care, when the people would listen to Him on the seventh day, to preach with all His might. As soon as the sun was up, He began to proclaim saving Truth. He was tired when evening was come and He might have sought rest, but instead of that they brought out the sick to Him to heal and He must close up a weary day by a yet more arduous task. Until darkness had covered the earth He must continue, still, to scatter blessings right and left. At this hour our blessed Master has laid aside all weariness and now at eventide He is waiting to bless. Whatever has been done during the day, yet if some poor, weary soul has spurned the Divine voice through all the former hours, He is still waiting to save before yet the sun has quite gone down. When evening was come they brought unto Him those that were sick. We are in like case. Let us put up this prayer to Him, "O You who did bless the sick in the evening, come, now, and bless us while all is cool and still and let us find Your salvation!" What a strange sight that evening saw! They brought forth to the Savior those that were possessed of evil spirits and those that were sick. They brought them on their mattresses and laid them in the streets. It must have been a very difficult thing to bring out some that were possessed because they struggled and raved--but nevertheless they brought them. The streets were turned into a hospital and in the still evening air you could hear the cries of those poor creatures who were possessed of evil spirits and the moans of those in acute pain. It was a sad sight, a piteous sight, to look upon--and as far as Christ's eyes could see, every nook and corner were occupied with these sick people. But what a glorious thing it must have been to see Him, the Divine Physician, with tears of pity in His eyes and yet with beaming joy on His Countenance! He was suffering intensely all the while because of their suffering and yet joyous because He was able to bless them. You see Him go along and lay His hands on one sick man and he leaped up from his bed! And you hear Him speak to another and the foul spirit flees--and he that was madness itself becomes calm and rational! See Him cast a look over yonder and with that glance He expels the fever! Hear Him speak a word to one far away and with that word He dries up dropsy or opens a blind eye! It was grand to see the Savior thus fighting with Satan and with foul diseases and everywhere victorious! That was one of the happiest evenings that ever ended a day in Palestine! I want you to feel that we can have its parallel tonight. We have Jesus here! We have been seeking Him. There are some here who dwell with Him. Jesus is here and the sick folk are here and He is just as able to heal tonight as He was in days gone by. I am going to speak about His works of healing and to draw encouragement from them. And then we shall go into the explanation of His power to heal which is given us in the second verse of our text--"He took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses." I. Let us notice, first, OUR LORD'S WORKS OF HEALING. On that occasion and on many others He cured all sorts of sickness. I think I am right in saying that there is not in the whole list of diseases one which the Savior did not heal. They may be known by new names, for they say the doctors have invented a dozen new diseases lately--but they are only old diseases to which they have given new names. Our great grandfathers died of diseases the names of which they never knew, or else they had other names than those which are given to them now. But as man has always been much the same, most diseases have continued as long as the human race. We have to be very grateful that leprosy, which was the great scourge of the Jews, is almost extinct now. But in our Savior's day it seems to have been exceedingly common. And leprosy and all forms of disease came under the Savior's power and became deaf at His word. Now the parallel of that is this--Jesus Christ can forgive sins of all sorts. There are different grades of sin. Some are exceedingly defiling and loathsome. Other sins are scarcely hurtful to the general commonwealth and so are often almost unnoticed. Yet any sin will ruin a soul forever. It may be thought to be little, but as a little prick with a poisoned arrow will heat all the blood and bring on death, so is sin such a venomous disease that the least of it is fatal. But from whatever kind of sin you are suffering, I would encourage you to come to Jesus with it--be it what it may. Is yours an extreme case? Have you been grossly guilty? Come with it, then, for our Lord healed the worst diseases. On the other hand, have you been kept out of gross sin from your early youth? Have you been preserved from outward vice? It may be that your chief sin is the forgetting of God and living without love to Christ--a deadly sin, let me tell you-- but bring it to the Savior! Have you been idle? Have you been proud? Have you been lascivious? Have you been untruthful? Have you been profane? Have you been malicious? I cannot tell, but God--who can read your heart as readily as we read a book--knows. But whatever the sin may be, remember that all manner of sin and of blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men. "The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin." Oh, hear this and look up to the Savior and pray Him of His great mercy to exercise the healing art of His redeeming love on you, this evening, now that the sun has set! They brought to Jesus all sorts of diseases. Note, next, that Jesus can deal with special cases of devilry. Possession with evil spirits was probably peculiar to that age. I sometimes think that when the Savior came down on earth, the devil had the impudence to ask to be let loose, that he and all his servants might come on earth and, in person, might meet the Savior. Satan is still busy, going about, seeking whom he may devour--but not exactly in the particular way in which he raged in Christ's day. He cannot take possession of men's bodies as he did then. So the Savior met Satan foot to foot and face to face--and the devil made a poor fight of it--for whenever the Lord Jesus made His appearance, the devil wanted to be off! And if he did not want to go, the Savior soon moved him by saying, "Come out of him." Like a whipped dog he did not dare to make a sound, but fled. A whole legion of demons were glad to get into a herd of swine and ran violently down a steep place into the sea to escape from the frown of our Lord! Satan found somebody that was more than a match for him! The parallel to that is this. There are some men that we meet with in whom the devil evidently reigns--and there are such women, too--for when women are bad, they can be bad and there can be no mistake about it. The devil can make more mischief out of a woman than out of a man when he thoroughly gets possession of her. Well, whether men or women, there are some who might be called "the devil's own." One man is a drunk--there is no stopping him--he must drink on. He seems to be infatuated by it. He takes the pledge and abstains for a little while but, by-and-by, the devil gets hold of him again and he goes back to his taps. Though he has drunk himself into delirium tremens and to Death's door, yet still he gives way to this loathsome vice. Others are possessed with the devil of lasciviousness and it does not matter what they suffer--they will always be defiling themselves--ruining body and soul by their iniquity. We know persons who seem to have a devil in them in the matter of passion. They are but a little provoked and they lose all command of themselves. You would think that they ought to be put in a padded room in Bethlehem Hospital and kept there till they cooled down--otherwise they might do mischief to themselves and to others. Surely some men, who can scarcely speak without swearing, have the devil in them! How one's blood runs chill, in going down our streets, to hear how commonly our working men degrade themselves with filthy conversation! It is not exactly cursing--it is less honest and more vile! Is there any hope for such? These are the very people in whom Jesus Christ has often displayed His healing power! I could tell you tonight of lions that have been turned to lambs--men of furious passions who have become gentle, quiet and loving--men of profane speech who would be shocked at the very remembrance of what they once said and whose voices have been often heard in prayer. I could tell you of men and women, too, who loved the wages of iniquity and lost their character and defiled themselves--but they are washed and they are sanctified! I have blessed the name of God when giving the right hand of Christian fellowship to ransomed ones to whom we could not have given our right hand a little while ago, for it would have been wrong to join with them in the wickedness of their pursuits. Oh, yes, my Master still casts devils out of men! If there are any such here tonight, let your cry for help go up to our blessed Master! Come again, great Lord, and cast out the evil spirit from men and get to Yourself the victory in many a heart, to the praise of the glory of Your Grace! The remarkable point about this miracle-working was that all were healed and there was never a failure. When a man brings out a patent medicine he publishes verifications of the efficacy of his product. He gets a number of cases and he advertises them. I suppose they are genuine. I should not like to be hanged if they were not. I suppose, therefore, they are all accurate and authentic. But there is one thing which you never knew a medicine advertiser to do--he never advertises the failures of the medicine. The number of persons that have been induced to buy the remedy and have derived no good from it--if these were all advertised it might occupy more room in the newspaper than those who write of a cure! My Lord Jesus Christ is a Physician who never had a failure yet--never once! Never did a soul wash in Christ's blood without being made whiter than snow! Never did a man, besotted with the worst of vice, trust in Jesus without receiving power to conquer his evil habits! Not even in the lowest pit of Hell is there one that dares to say, "I trusted Christ but I am lost. I sought His face with all my heart and He cast me away." There is not a man living that could say that unless he dared to lie! Not one has with heart and soul sought the Savior and trusted in Him--and then had a negative from Him. He must save you if you trust Him! As surely as He lives He must save you, for He has put it, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." I will repeat it--"Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." You have never come if He has not received you for He must save those who trust in Him. Notice that His word was the sole medicine He used: "He cast out the spirits with His word." No other medicine, no charms, no long performances, no striking of His hand over the place--He spoke and it was done! He said to the devil, "Come out of him," and it came out. He said to the disease, "Go," and away it went! In that way the Lord saves men today--by His Word. While I am speaking it tonight, or when you shall be reading it, His Word will be the power of God unto salvation. I am glad that you are here to hear it, for faith comes by hearing. I shall be glad if you diligently read it, for reading is a kind of hearing and many are brought to the Savior that way. Jesus Christ does not need to put you through a long "purgatory" and keep you for months getting ready to be saved. He has only this night to open your ears to hear His Word and when you hear it He can bless it to your soul so that you shall live and your sin shall die! And you shall become changed and renewed by His matchless Grace. I speak His Word tonight, praying that He will make it effectual as He has done before--and to Him shall be the praise! We have the same medicine tonight that Jesus used for we have His Word. We have got Himself here in answer to the prayers of His people and we have the same sort of sick people here--therefore we expect to see the same wonders worked! II. May God give you a hearing ear and save you while I speak, secondly, of OUR LORD'S PERSONAL POWER TO HEAL! Why was it that He was able to save? We are pointed to the secret of His power by these words, "That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Isaiah the Prophet, saying, He took our infirmities, and bore our sicknesses." Christ was able to heal the diseases of men because He bore them Himself. Do not think that our Lord Jesus was actually diseased--He suffered greatly but I read not that any disease was upon Him. Probably there was no man in whom there was less tendency to natural disease than in Him. His pure and blessed body was not subject to the diseases which are brought upon men through sin being in them. How, then, did He take upon Him our sicknesses and our sorrows? First, He bore our sicknesses by intense sympathy. When Christ looked at all those sick people, He did, as it were, take all their sicknesses upon Himself. You know what I mean. If you talk with a person who is very ill and you feel for him, you seem to lay his pains upon yourself and then you have power to comfort him. When I am seeing troubled people, I enter into one sorrowful case after another till I am more sad than any of them. I try as far as I can to have fellowship with the case of each one in order to be able to speak a word of comfort to him. And I can say, from personal experience, that I know of nothing that wears the soul down so fast as the outflow of sincere sympathy with sorrowing, desponding, depressed ones. I have sometimes been the means in God's hand of helping a man who suffered with a desponding spirit--but the help I have rendered has cost me dearly. Hours after, I have been myself depressed and I have felt an inability to shake it off. You and I have not a thousandth part of the sympathy that was in Christ. He sympathized with all the aggregate of human woe and so sympathized that He made His heart a great reservoir into which all streams of grief poured themselves. My Master is just the same today. Though He is in Heaven He is just as tender as He was on earth. I never heard of anybody losing tenderness by going to Heaven. People get better by going there--and so is Christ--if it were possible, even more tender than when on earth. Think of this. Somebody might not sympathize with you, poor Sinner, but Jesus does! You would not like to tell some people what you have done, for they would turn upon their heels and give you a wide berth--but it is not so with Jesus. He looks upon sin not with the eye of a judge, but with the eye of a physician. He looks at it as a disease and He deals with it that He may heal it. He has great sympathy with sinners though He has no sympathy with sin. He takes the sinner's sorrows to Himself. "Ah!" says one, "no man cares for my soul." Dear Friend, man or woman, whoever you may be--One greatly cares for you and He speaks to you tonight by these lips. Oh, that these lips were better fitted to be used by Him! He says, "Come unto Me and I will give you rest." He bids you take of the Water of Life freely. He is ready at this moment to bestow salvation. "Nobody knows my case," cries one. But Jesus knows it. He knows that dark spot in it. He knows that hard core which will not go away. He knows that filthy thing which you remember tonight and shiver as you remember it. He knows it all and yet He says, "Return, you backsliding daughter." He bids the vilest of the vile come to Him for He still has sympathy with them. Jesus Christ took upon Himself our sicknesses by His championship of our humanity. Satan misled our first parents and the powers of darkness held us captive. In consequence of sin we have become sick and infirm and liable to suffer. Now, when our Lord Jesus came on earth, He as good as said, "I am the Seed of the woman and I have come to bruise the head of men's adversary." So Christ, in that respect, took upon Himself all the consequences which come of sin. He stood forth as the Champion of fallen manhood to fight Satan and cast him out of men's bodies--to battle with disease and to overthrow the evil which lies at the root of it--that men might be made healthy. He is still our Champion. I delight to preach Him to you, you suffering, you sorrowing, you sinful, you lost, you castaways! One has come who has taken up your cause--the sinner's Redeemer, next-of-kin to man--who has come to avenge him of his adversary and to buy back his lost inheritance. Behold in Jesus the Champion of sinners, the David who comes and defies the Goliath that has long afflicted men! Oh, I wish you would trust our glorious Champion! Remember how He met the adversary alone and vanquished him? "It was on that dark, that dreadful night." The enemy sprang upon Him in the garden like a lion and the Savior received him on His breast. He brought the Savior to His knees but there He grasped the lion, hugged him, crushed him, tore him and flung him from Him! Our Samson, sweat, as it were, great drops of blood falling down to the ground--and though He had won that victory He afterwards bowed His head and gave up the ghost. He lives again, however--and He is now the Champion of the cause of all the suffering, the sorrowing and the sinful--if they will but come and put their case into His hands! He Himself took our sicknesses and our infirmities by championing our cause and standing in our place to fight our battles! Give Him your cause! Trust your soul in His hands and He will redeem you out of the jaw of the Lion, yes, out of the very mouth of Hell! But here is the pith of the whole matter. The reason why Jesus is able to heal all the mischief that sin has worked is this-- because He Himself took our sin upon Himself by His sacred Substitution. Sin is the root of our infirmities and diseases and so, in taking the root, He took all the bitter fruit which that root did bear. Oh, proclaim it again and again and every day! And shout it in the dead of night and tell it in the glare of noonday! Proclaim it in the market and shout in the streets and everywhere that God took sin from off the back of sinners and laid it on His innocent and only-begotten Son! mystery Divine, never to be known if God had not revealed it, and not even now to be believed if God Himself had not assured us of it! He laid sin upon Christ! "All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned, every one, to his own way and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Hearken, then, you guilty ones! Hear how freely God can forgive and yet not injure His justice. If you trust Christ you may be sure that you are among the number of those whose sins were laid on Christ. He was punished in your place! Now, if Another was punished in your place it is not just that you should be punished, too. And therefore the very justice of God requires that if Christ suffered in your place, you should not suffer. Do you see that? "But did He suffer in my place?" I must answer this question by another, "Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ? Will you trust your soul with Him?" Well, if you do, your transgressions are not yours, for they were laid on Him. They are not on you, for, like everything else, they cannot be in two places at one time. And if they were laid on Christ, they are not laid on you. "But what did Jesus do with the sins that were laid on Him? Can they not come back to us?" No, never! For He took them to the sepulcher and there He buried them forever. And now, what do the Scriptures say? "In those days, and in that time, says the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for and there shall be none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found." "I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, your transgressions; and, as a cloud, your sins." "You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea." Our sins are gone! Christ has carried them away. "As far as the east is from the west, so far has He removed our transgressions from us." Believers are the seed for whom the victory has been gained. They are the seed to whom the promise is sure. It is not to those who are of works, but to those who are offaith. Those that are born-again of the Spirit of God through faith which is in Christ Jesus--these are "redeemed from among men." Suppose I owed 10,000 pounds? If a dear friend should call on my creditor and pay that 10,000 pounds for me, I should then owe the creditor nothing. I could meet him with a smiling face. He may tomorrow morning bring his account books if he likes and say, "There, you see, there are 10,000 pounds down there against you." I would joyfully answer, "Yes, but look on the other side. You have been paid. Here are the words at the foot of your bill, 'Received in full of all demands.'" Now, when Jesus took the sins of Believers upon Himself He discharged them by His death--and every man that believes has the receipt in full in our Lord's Resurrection! "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God." Yes, those that believe in Christ have the complete forgiveness of every sin! As for me, I like to sing with Kent-- "Here's pardon for transgressions past, It matters not how black their cast And O my Soul, with wonder view, For sins to come here's pardon too!" All blotted out at once with one stroke of the sacred pen--obliterated once and for all! God does not again lay to the charge of men what He has once forgiven them. He does not forgive them half their sins and visit them for the rest--once given, the blessing is irrevocable! As it is written, "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance." He never draws back nor repents of what He has done. He saves and the salvation which saves is everlasting salvation. Now I see why Christ can heal! Dear Heart, you have come here tonight full of the disease of sin and you are saying, "Will He heal me?" Look to Him! Look to Him! Look to Him! The morning that I found Christ I did not think to find Him. I went to hear the Word as I had heard it before, but I did not hope to find Jesus then and there. Yet I did find Him! When I heard that there was nothing to be done but simply to look to Jesus--and when the exhortation came so sharp and shrill and clear, "Look! Look! Look!" I looked and I bear witness to the change that passed over me--such a change as though I died and rose again! And such a change, my Hearer, shall pass over you if you believe-- "There is life for a look at the Crucified One; There is life at this moment for you." God give you the look and give you the life, even now, for Jesus Christ's sake! Amen. PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Isaiah 53. __________________________________________________________________ Hope for Your Future We knew, then, we were newly cleansed sinners! Oh, that blessed period! Our earthly comforts were forgotten in the greater sweetness and our earthly sorrows ceased because guilt was gone. Taken out of the bonds of iniquity, our hearts danced at the very sound of the redeeming name. We sang, "I am forgiven! I am forgiven!" We wanted to tell the angels this strange wonder of almighty love. That was one of the good things of our beginning. We recollect very well, too, that we had, then, a delicious enjoyment of the good things of the Covenant of Grace. We did not know a tenth of what we know now, but we intensely enjoyed what we did know. When the Israelites first came into Canaan they found it to be a land that flowed with milk and honey. It became afterwards a stony land through their sins, but rare clusters then grew in Eshcol and the wild bees made honey plentifully, even in such a strange place as the carcass of a lion. When we first came to Christ it was so with us as to the things of God--they were all sweets. We saw one Covenant blessing, then another and then another. And we were enraptured with each one. Whether in the body or out of the body we could scarcely tell, for we did not look, then, without tasting and we did not taste, then, without feasting--and we did not feast, then, without feasting again! We grudged the world the hours we spent in business--we wanted to get back to our Bibles--or to the assembly of the saints. Our Lord was a precious Christ, then, and exceedingly lovely in our eyes that had been so newly opened. Everything about Him, His people, His Word, His day and His Cross was astonishing to us and filled us with an intense delight! It was "happy days," indeed, with us then. That was another blessed point in our beginnings. And, at that time, we were like the children of Israel in a third matter, namely, that we had repeated victories. Do you remember when your Jericho fell down--when a high walled-up sin that you feared would never yield to you, was brought down suddenly? As Israel went from victory to victory and slew king after king, so in those early days did you. As quickly as conscience revealed a sin you smote it as with a two-edged sword. You sometimes wondered at professors, that they could live as they did. You felt you could not. Your hand was in for fighting and, like Joshua, you did not stop. The day was not long enough for you in which to slay your sins! You felt inclined to bid the sun stand still and the moon rest so that you might make full work of blessed carnage in putting sin altogether to the sword. You have had a good many defeats since then, it may be, for which you cannot excuse yourself--but then, "Victory!" was your watchword and you went on to realize it in the name of the eternal God. From day to day, though attacked by the uprising of corruptions, you said, "In the name of the Lord I will destroy them." And you sometimes cried like she of old, "O my Soul, you have trodden down strength!" You marveled to see how the adversary was subdued beneath the feet of your faith! Those were good times, were they not--those beginnings? In those days, you had great delight in prayer. When alone with Christ, it was Heaven below--and in Prayer Meetings, when God's people were warm at heart--how you delighted to unite with them! The preaching was marrow and fatness to you. You did not mind walking a long way on a wet night to hear about your Lord and Master. It may be there was no cushion to the seat or you had to stand in the aisle. You did not mind that--but you are getting wonderfully dainty now--you cannot hear the poor preacher whose voice was once like music to you. You cannot enjoy the things of God as you once did. Whose fault is that? The kitchen is the same and the food the same-- I fear the appetite has gone. How ravenous I was after God's Word--how I would wake early in the morning to read those books that are full of the deep things of God! I wanted none of your nonsensical novels, nor your weekly tales for which some of you pine, like children for sugar sticks. Then one fed on Manna that came from Heaven, on Christ Himself! Those were good times in which everything was delightful. You heard a Gospel preacher and perhaps he spoiled the Queen's English--but you did not care a bit about that. You were hungry and you minded not the knives and the tablecloths--you wanted meat, and plenty of it--and so long as it was good spiritual meat, your souls were delighted! That is one of the good things of our beginnings. In those days we were full of living fruitfulness. I hope we have not lost it. Just as the mountains of Judea dropped with wine and ran with milk through the abundance of the soil, so was it with us, then. We could do anything! Sometimes, in looking back, we wonder how we ever attempted so much. We were not so anxious to keep up our spiritual life as we were to spend what we had got. We thought, then, we would push the Church before us and drag the world behind us! What marvels we were going to do! Yes, and we did many of them by God's good Grace! Then, if we had but little strength, yet we kept the Lord's Word. If we had but one talent, we made as much use of it, perhaps, as some do with ten. I love to see you young Christians as active as ever you can be--and I am going to put my hand on young heads and say, "This is right. Do all you can. You may not be so lively by-and-by." If you are not earnest when you begin, what will you soon be? I want you to maintain that earnestness and to let it increase, for no man is doing too much for Jesus! No one is too consecrated! No one is too self-denying! No one is too enthusiastic! There has never been seen on the face of the earth, yet, a man who has laid himself out too much for the cause and kingdom of our Master. That will never be. But it is one of the good points of our beginnings that we were full of fruitfulness for the Lord our God. This is because the saints begin generally with abounding love. Oh, how we loved the Savior when first we discovered how He had loved us with an everlasting love! When we see that the dunghill is never to be our portion again, but yon bright Glory at the right hand of the Eternal--oh, then we love our Savior with all our hearts! I am not saying that we do not now love even more--but it is a good beginning when we overflow with love to our Lord Jesus. II. I could thus keep on reminding you of the days gone by, but I do not care to do so. I am going now, in the second place, to answer the question, CAN ANYTHING BE BETTER THAN THIS? Well, it would be a very great pity if there could not be because I am sure we, when we were young beginners, were not much to boast of and all the joy we had was, after all, but little compared with what is revealed in the Word of God! We ought to get to something better--and it would be a miserable thing if we were to get "small by degrees, and miserably less." It would not look like Christian perseverance if our light were to shine less and less unto the perfect darkness! No, but it is to shine more and more unto the perfect day--and in the beginning our day is only twilight! In coming to God at first we are only in the outer courts--we have not yet entered the Holy of Holies of inward experience--we stand in the outer court. We are wheat in the blade as yet. Ask the farmer whether he thinks that the green blade is the best thing on the farm. He says, "Yes, for the present." But if it is a green blade next July he will not think so. There is something better than before. All the good that God gives us draws something better behind it. And let me whisper it--there is a best thing yet to come--not yet revealed unto eye or ear of saint, but it will be ours by-and-by when our Lord comes. In what respects, then, can our future be better than that which is behind? I answer very readily, faith may be stronger. By the Grace of God it will be firmer and more robust. At first it shoots up like the lily, very beautiful but fragile. Afterwards it is like the oak with great roots that grip the soil and rugged branches that defy the winds. Faith in the young beginner is soon cast down and doubts and fears prevail--but if we grow in Divine Grace we become rooted and grounded. In these days, when it is fashionable to sneer at the doctrines of Scripture and nobody is thought to be sensible who believes anything, the young Believer is apt to be staggered. But it would take a great many of the critics and divines of the present day, with all their skepticism, to shake some of us. We have tasted and handled and lived upon these things-- and being established in them we are not to be moved from the hope of our calling! Though all the wiseacres in the world should dip their pens in tenfold darkness and write it down as proven that there is no such thing as light, we have seen it with our eyes--we live in it and we are not to be moved from the eternal verities. This is something better than early faith, is it not? Go on and obtain it! Again, God gives to His people, as they advance, much more knowledge. At first they enjoy what they know, but they hardly know what they enjoy! As we grow in Grace we know more. We are surprised to see that what we thought to be one blessing is 50 blessings in one. We learn the art of dissecting the Truth of God--taking it to pieces and seeing the different veins of Divine thought that run through it! And then we see with delight blessing after blessing conveyed to us by the Person and Sacrifice of our exalted Lord. Brothers and Sisters, if years and experience make us know more, our present is better than our beginnings! Love to Christ gets to be more constant. It is a passion always, but with Believers who grow in Grace it comes to be a principle as well as a passion. If they are not always blazing with love, there is a good fire banked up within the soul. You know how you bank your fire up when you come to chapel in the evening, and have nobody at home, and want to keep the fire alight till you get home? That is often the condition of a Christian. Even if we do not talk much about assurance and say nothing about getting near perfection, yet we lie humbly before God and do not doubt that we love Him. We are sure that we do, for it becomes a daily delight to us to speak with Christ and, in the speaking, we feel our love glowing! You do not always feel that you love those whom you never see--but when you talk to the dear objects of your love, your heart is moved. As one of the old Puritans used to say, our Graces are not apparent unless they are in exercise. You walk through a preserve and there may be partridges and pheasants and hares all round you--but you will not see them till one flies out of its hiding, or a hare starts up before you. You see them in motion--but while they were quiet in the bushes you did not observe them. So may love to Christ and all Christian virtues lie concealed till they are called into action. Our Lord's dear Presence attracts them all out of their hiding places and then you perceive that love was always there, and there in strength, too, though it was not always on your lips nor even in your thoughts. As Christians grow in Divine Grace, prayer becomes more mighty. If the Lord builds you up into true spiritual manhood, you will know how to wrestle. Why did not Jacob meet the angel the first time when he went to Bethel? He lay down and slept, and dreamed a dream. He was a spiritual babe and a dream suited his capacity. But when he came back--a man who had grown by years of experience--then the Angel of God came and wrestled with him! It is one part of the teaching of Divine experience that we grow stronger in the art of prayer and know how to win from God greater things than we ever dreamt of asking at first. God grant you better things in the matter of prayer than at your beginnings! So, I think, it is in usefulness. Growing Christians and full-grown Christians are more useful than beginners. They may not, apparently, be doing so much but they are doing it better and there is more result. Their fruit, if not quite so plentiful, is of better quality and more mellow. If there are fewer fruits, they are larger ones and each one of a finer flavor. In fact, this one thing is clear of all Believers who have grown in Grace--that the work of Grace in them is nearer completion. They are getting nearer Heaven and they are getting more fit for it. Some of you are sitting very loose by this world. You are expecting very soon to hear the summons which will call you to quit these earth-born things. As ripe fruit comes from the tree with a gentle touch, so is it getting to be with you--the world had a greater hold upon you when you were young than it has now--and your thoughts of departure from it are more frequent and more full of desire than they used to be. You have come to look at death as though it were only a removal to a neighboring town, or like stepping across the street. You have looked at it so long that you can say like one I knew, "I have dipped my foot in the river every morning and I shall not be at all afraid to ford it when the time comes." The Lord has made you to stand on tiptoe, ready to rise. You can say, "The time of my departure is at hand." Your chariot is at the door! Well, now, this is something better than your beginnings! The old Christian may look back upon the new wine and say regretfully, "How it sparkled and effervesced! But the old is better." You may think of the days of your youthful vigor when the body kept pace with the spirit--and you were young and full of nerve and muscle and enthusiasm. Those animal spirits have now gone from you and you are sobered and even slow. You have become old, and, perhaps, forgetful of many things. You go over the old story, now, instead of inventing new ones. But then, the old story--the old, old story--is as new to you as at the first and you love it better than ever before! You cannot be driven from it now. I should think Satan himself would hardly like to meddle with some of you--he feels that he cannot shake your faith in the living God! Or if he should shake you, you would in turn shake him! He has had so many brushes with you during the last 50 years that he begins to know that you carry the true Jerusalem blade-- and he had rather deal with other folks who are fond of the "modern thought" wooden sword! You have come to the land Beulah and you are sitting on the brink of Jordan, waiting to cross over to the Celestial City. Surely, you have realized that God is dealing better with you than at your beginnings! III. I will end with the last, which is a practical matter. How can we, dear Friends, we who are beginning a Christian life, HOW CAN WE SECURE THAT IT WILL BE BETTER WITH US, BY-AND-BY, THAN IT IS NOW? Alas, we have seen some start splendidly in appearance. They did run well but they were soon out of breath or turned aside. We hear no more of them. Our fear should be lest the like should happen to us. How can we act so as to hold on our way and go from good to better? I answer, first, keep to the simplicity of your first faith. Never get away from that! You remember the story we used to tell of poor Jack the huckster, who sang-- "I'm a poor sinner and nothing at all, But Jesus Christ is my All in All"? Questioners could not make him doubt. He said that he could not doubt that he was a poor sinner and nothing at all, for he knew he was! And why should he doubt that Jesus Christ was his All in All? The Word of God says so--why should he doubt it? Here he stood and would not budge an inch. By God's Grace, neither will I. The coney is safe in the rock and he knows better than to come out. I hide in Jesus, and there I mean to remain, whatever the critics or the cultured may say. Jesus is my All in All and I am nobody! My life cost Him His death and His death is my life. He took my sin and died--I take His righteousness and live. You may laugh, but I win. You may sneer, but I sing. O dear Friend, fly to Jesus and hide in Him and stay there! Never get an inch beyond the Cross, for, if you do, you will have to come back. That is your place till you die--you are nothing-- Christ is everything! You have to sink lower, and lower and lower--and in your esteem Christ must rise higher, and higher and higher. The "nothing at all" must be more emphatic the older you grow--and the "All in All" must be more emphatic, too. If you get to borrowing wings and trying to fly up with speculations about what you may be in yourself, you will end in coming down heavily with a bruised heart--if not with broken bones. Keep at the foot of the Cross and you will maintain--no, you will increase your joy in the Lord! At the same time, dear Friends, practice great watchfulness. Many a child of God has to weep for months because he did not watch for minutes. He closed his eyes a little while and said, "It is all right with me." And in that little while the enemy came and sowed tares among his wheat and great mischief came because of a little nap. We ought to have the eyes of a lynx and they ought never to be closed. We know not which way the most temptation will come. We need to be guarded on all sides and remember the words of our Master, "What I say unto you, I say unto all, Watch." You will not keep your joy and grow in Divine Grace unless you watch. The next advice is grow in dependence upon God. For your watchfulness, depend upon His watching. You cannot keep yourself unless He keeps you. You must watch, but it is He that keeps Israel and does neither slumber nor sleep. Remember that. Determine, dear Friends, at the very beginning, to be thorough. I love to see young Christians very scrupulous about the mind of the Lord. I would not have you say, "Oh, that is nonessential!" Obedience to a command may not be essential to your salvation but it must be essential to the completeness of your holiness. "Whatever He says to you, do it." Safe walking can only come of careful walking. I have known the time when I felt afraid to put down one foot before the other for fear I should go wrong--and I believe I was never so right as when that feeling was on me continually. You young people must cultivate more and more the Grace of holy fear. You must dread daily lest in anything you should omit to do your Lord's will, or should trespass against Him. In this way your joy shall be maintained and you shall be settled after your old estates--and God will do better unto you than at your beginnings. Lastly, seek for more instruction. Try to grow in the knowledge of God that your joy may be full. It will be ill for you to say, "I know I was converted and therefore need not care any further." That will not do. No, no, in conversion you began a race from which you are never to cease! You have been born-again and therefore you need spiritual food. You enjoy spiritual life and you are to nurture that life till it is conformed to the perfect image of Christ. Onward, Brothers and Sisters! Onward, for that which is beyond will repay your labor! PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Ezekiel 36:1-15;23-34. __________________________________________________________________ Something Done for Jesus A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JANUARY 26, 1890, DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "She has worked a good work upon Me." Matthew 26:10. STUDY carefully the story of the enthusiastic Christian woman who poured the alabaster box of very precious ointment upon the head of our ever-blessed Lord and Savior. Honored as that action is by the universal Church of God, it did not escape criticism among the religious people of her own day. The disciples censured her but Christ defended her--and in the course of His vindication of her He said, "Why trouble you the women? For she has worked a good work upon Me." There is no reason for troubling gracious men and women--and specially no cause for so doing when their work is good and is done for their Lord. Yet are there plenty of critics around us this day and we could spare a few of them from our own immediate neighborhood. They are only able to worry us so far as we think of them and therefore we will let the wasps alone and feed upon the honey which flows from the lips of our Lord Jesus. Observe that this woman had worked a good work--good in intent and good in itself. Her Lord said so and His verdict ends all debate. Observe especially that her good work was a good work upon the Lord Jesus. It was of no immediate benefit to anybody else nor was it meant to be. "This ointment might have been sold for much and given to the poor." So Judas and the other disciples said. The 500 pence which it would have produced might have been spent on bread and so have fed many poor people. But she expended it on Jesus and meant that it should all be used in His honor and that only. Poor or not poor, she thought only of Him. The ointment might have been used for certain purposes at festivals, or otherwise, and so have been more or less beneficial to a number of persons--but on this occasion the benefit was to the Lord alone--and she meant it to be so. On this account the practical philanthropist called it, "waste." Is anything wasted which is all for Jesus? It might rather seem as if all would be wasted which was not given to Him! This box of precious ointment was all for Him. Other persons in the room might smell the sweet perfume but that was not what the grateful woman aimed at--she intended all the sweetness for Jesus--it was a good work worked upon Him. The woman's thought was that she would honor the Lord. Her only intention was to show her reverence for Him--and provided He should be pleased with her deed, she would be perfectly content--though no one else might be gratified. Her first and last thoughts were for the Lord Jesus Himself. We know from another Evangelist that she broke the alabaster box. Was there need for that? Not in order that the ointment might be poured forth. She might, we should suppose, have opened the box in a less hasty manner. But the manner of a gift has frequently as much in it as the matter of a gift. She broke the box to display her eagerness and to show that the choicest thing she had was not good enough for Jesus. She banished every notion of economy when she thought of her Lord. If she had possessed 10,000 times as much, she would have given it all to Him and have poured it out without a thought! She did not count her offering a lavish expenditure--she would have made it lavish if it had been in her power. She would have no saving of pots and calculating of pennyworths when He was in the case--there should be no trace of stinginess in her homage to her Lord. It was, therefore, as necessary that she should break the box as that she should pour out the ointment, for she wanted to show that she loved her Savior immeasurably--and she wished to express to Him, as best she could--her intense veneration of Him and her ardent affection for Him. Had some of us been there, we might have called it eccentricity, or fanaticism, or precipitancy, or waste. But she did not care what onlookers might have to say--her only consideration was what Jesus might think. To please Him was the height and range of her ambition. Happy woman, to have reached this gracious absorption! The good work which she performed was, far beyond her own thought, a most appropriate one. Love is ever wise. Jesus was a King. He had ridden through the streets of Jerusalem in triumph. The multitude had strewn branches in His path. They had saluted Him with hosannas. They had done much by way of coronation, but they had not anointed Him. Why this omission? She will anoint Him if no one else will. Her hands shall bring out the perfumed nerd and pour the precious ointment upon the King of Israel! He was a Priest, too, and especially a pardoning Priest to her. She recognized His sacred priesthood--but the oil that fell on Aaron's head had never, literally, fallen upon the head of Jesus and therefore she must anoint Him plenteously till the oil not only ran to the skirts of His garment, but filled all the house where they were sitting. As King and as Priest she will take care that He is not without a costly anointing. Moreover, it was customary to anoint pilgrims for their refreshment at the end of a long journey when they came into the house. The host on this occasion had neglected this act of courtesy. It was most suitable, then, that when this great Lord of Pilgrims, whose path had been weary and woeful and had, at length, nearly ended His years of travel in this thorny wilderness--it was, I say, most suitable that He should receive refreshment from the woman's hospitable hand. Weary and worn was He and she would gladly anoint Him with the oil of gladness. Though others had rejected Him, she anointed His head and acknowledged the way-worn Traveler as the noblest Guest earth ever entertained! In all this her good deed was fit and seasonable. Do you disagree? Our Lord said--and here I am free from all charge of following my own fancy, and am sure to be correct--that there was another meaning more remarkable by far. Whether this woman, with some prophetic spirit resting upon her, saw further into our Lord's words than His disciples did, we do not know--but Jesus declared that she did it for His burial--as it were, embalming Him a little before the time for His closely-approaching sojourn in the tomb. There was a great appropriateness, then, in the act! And we think more appropriateness than she, herself, knew of at the time she did it! But it is ever so with loving hearts--reason does not guide them--by a kind of holy instinct they hit upon the right thing. Where reason laboriously finds out wisdom, love discovers it at once. There are instincts of pure hearts that are more to be trusted than the conclusions of argumentative minds. The safest logic is often that of the heart when at once it devises liberal things for Jesus. Mind you never set that logic aside. Here love devised the very deed that was required-- the fittest action that could have been imagined under the sad circumstances so near at hand. To come back to the point, however, which the woman was aiming at, she did all this, appropriate or not, to Jesus. It was a good work--but the point of it was that it was a good work worked on Him. On this occasion I wish to speak of good works worked on Jesus and therefore I shall not be speaking to you all. Many of you are incapable of working a good work for Christ for you are not saved yet. How can an evil tree bring forth good fruit? How can those who do not believe in Jesus do anything for Him? It is not yet time for you to do anything for Him. Your first business is that He should do everything for you. You must go to Him as guilty sinners and find mercy in Him. I speak at this time only to those who have trusted in the Lord Jesus and so have been set apart by Him and sanctified forever by His one Sacrifice. These, owing as they do, so much to their Lord, are those to whom I would speak now, and say, Render unto Him good works that shall terminate in Him and shall be made to express your love to Him. Good works worked upon Jesus or solely in reference to Him are to be our subject. Very briefly we shall notice the feelings prompting this kind of service. Secondly, we shall mention modes of such service. Thirdly, we shall give counsel or careful notes to be observed in such service. And then we shall conclude with a word by way of defense of service of this sort. I. And first, THERE ARE FEELINGS WHICH PROMPT TRUE BELIEVERS TO DO WORKS AS UNTO CHRIST. To bring forth these peculiar services, certain feelings move within the Believer's bosom. The first and the most powerful, probably, is gratitude. "We love Him because He first loved us." He lived for us. He died for us. He rose for us. He pleads for us. We owe all to Him. The natural impulse of the renewed heart is to say, "What can I do for Him? I love His people, but I love Him best. I love His ministers, but He is beyond them all. I love His cause on the earth, but I love Him better. While I owe much to His Church and to His ministers, I owe most to Him. I want to tell Him how I love Him. I want to show Him, by some direct act done for Him, that my heart adores Him for all that He has done for me." Beloved Brothers and Sisters, have you ever felt that way? I have often felt, even towards a kind earthly friend, that while I have been thankful for his gift and for his help rendered, I have longed, also, to do something for the person helping me. When I have not known the person who helped me in my good work, I have wanted to know him--not from curiosity, but that I might say how grateful I felt to the giver of such kindness. How often I have had my hand grasped by loving persons who have said, "I wanted to tell you that you led me to the Savior!" They wanted to say it to me and often have they written to me and cheered my heart because they felt a personal gratitude which needed a personal expression. A poor woman once forced me with tears to receive a small sum of money for myself. I declined it till I saw that it would hurt her feelings, for she had evidently longed for this opportunity for expressing her thankfulness for the sermons she had read. If we feel thus towards an earthly friend, how much more shall we feel it towards Him who has saved us by His blood! Do you not want to behold Him, that you may tell Him how you love Him? Do you not feel prompted to devise some new method by which your love can manifest itself before the Beloved's eyes, not in word only, but in deed and in truth? Another feeling that will prompt us to the same course is that of deep veneration. One has admired the personal Character of Jesus with a sacred admiration, thinking of Him as the Son of Man in perfection and then as God over all, blessed forever. We have first fallen at His feet in humble worship and then, when we have risen, we have said to our altogether-lovely Lord, "Oh, that I could serve such a One as You are! Show me what You would have me do. Only do me the honor to allot me a service which I may render unto You, for he is more than a king who is honored to be the lowest menial in Your court. He who reigns over nations is not so happy as the man who is subject to Your rule. It is a delight to pay You homage." It is our Heaven to think that we may be permitted to serve such a Christ and to work a good work upon Him. Then, oftentimes, the feeling of sympathy will come in and blend itself with veneration. Such sympathy is by no means to be condemned, but to be commended. I mean by sympathy, this--have you not felt, when you have heard of our Redeemer's sufferings and death, that He deserved a great reward for them? Have you not wished that you could put a crown upon His head for having so disinterestedly laid down His life for His enemies? We have sometimes sung in this house with all our hearts those words-- "Let Him be crowned with majesty Who bowed His head to death; And be His honor sounded high By all things that have breath." We have said in our hearts, "How can we fitly honor this paragon of perfection, this mirror of unbounded love? Such a One as He is, having suffered so deeply, ought to be rewarded plenteously with the honor of all who can appreciate a great and noble deed." That feeling of sympathy has been intensified when we have seen that, instead of honor, our Lord Jesus Christ receives coldness from the sons of men. No, worse than that, He is persecuted by their blasphemy and hounded by their hatred! Have you not felt, when you have heard His holy name blasphemed, as if you would blot that blasphemy out with your blood if you could? When you have seen His sacred Day dishonored and the truths of the Gospel denied, has not your soul burned within you? Have you not said, "What shall I do for this despised Savior--maltreated by those whom He has blessed--and crucified afresh and put to an open shame, even by these who profess to be His disciples--maligned by those who call themselves His ministers? O Master, might I but do something to wipe out these blots--to remove these slurs upon Your sacred name?" That feeling of sympathy with Jesus, working with veneration and backed with gratitude will lead us to attempt brave deeds of love for Him--for Him personally, I mean. In the midst of all this, as a central flame burning like the sun in the center of the lesser lights, our affection for Jesus will make us long to serve Him. We love our dear ones upon earth, but we love Jesus better than all of them put together. We love our Brethren for Jesus' sake, but He is the chief among 10,000 and the altogether lovely. We could not live without Him! To enjoy His company is bliss to us--for Him to hide His face from us is our midnight of sorrow. In comparison with that, all other sorrows are but the shades of grief, but His departure would be the substance of distress. And, Master, when we have looked at You and seen the nail prints and beheld the scar on Your side. When we have beheld You standing before Your Father's Throne still pleading for us and revealing Your undying affection towards us, Your chosen--in Your intercession for us--we have said, "We must serve Him. We must find out some way by which we may give Him more honor." Oh, that I had a crown to cast at His feet! Oh, that I could make new songs to be sung before Him! Oh, that I could write fresh music for angelic harps! Oh, for the power to live, to die, to labor, to suffer as unto Him and unto Him alone! You know better than I can tell you, many of you, what these aspirations are. I am merely traversing a road with which you are continually familiar. Let us keep company in thought and may I beg that, on some sunny day, when my Lord gives me special work to do for Him, you will be at my side with your gifts and efforts of love for His dear name! II. I shall pass on, in the next place, to notice THE MODES IN WHICH THIS SUGGESTED SERVICE OF GOOD WORKS DONE UNTO HIM MAY SHOW ITSELF. Holy Spirit, help me! We will begin, as it were, at the base of the pyramid and go upward. And we may commence by saying that the entire life of the Christian ought to be, in many respects, a good work done unto Christ. Albeit that there must be in our life an eye to the good of our fellow men, yet may we do it all unto the Lord. The same Law which says, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength," adds, "and your neighbor as yourself," which proves that it does not necessarily take away any part of our love from God when we act in love to our fellow men. The duties of life, though they are to be done with a view to our neighbor as God's will requires, still ought, in the highest sense, to be performed mainly with an eye to the glory of Christ and out of love to Him. The servant is bid to work, "as unto the Lord and not unto men." The master, also, ought to discharge his duties knowing that he has a Master in Heaven--and the thought of that Master above should guide him in all he does. Christian Brothers and Sisters, whatever your calling, discharge the duties of it with a view to glorifying Him whose name, as Christians, you bear! So let it be in every relation of life. Should not the child seek to honor Christ by being like the holy Child Jesus? Should not the parent devote his child to Christ, earnestly praying that he may grow up in the fear of the Lord and may serve the Lord? Every lawful relationship can be consecrated! In every condition of life we can glorify Jesus! In all the moral obligations of life, Jesus should be before us. We should be honest not only for our reputation's sake--for that would be an unworthy motive--but for Christ's sake! Would we have Christ's disciples called "thieves"? We should be sternly upright, never by any means under suspicion of untruth or double-dealing--because we serve the Lord Christ who is faithful and true. Of us more is expected than of others since we serve a better Master than all others. God has done more for us! We have a clearer interest in the precious blood of Jesus and therefore the common virtues of life ought to be exhibited in us to their fullest extent by the help of the Holy Spirit--so shall we do everything as unto the Lord Jesus. The Christian must look to certain matters ordinarily overlooked in common life, for Christ's sake. For instance, that of forgiveness of injuries. Some will not forgive at all--this is fatal to all hope of salvation. Others will forgive but not till after some considerable time of wrath--good delayed is evil indulged. But you, Christian, you are to do a good work upon Christ by forgiving for His sake. He has forgiven you and therefore you will forgive others freely and continually. Your revenge is the noble vengeance of heaping coals of the fire of kindness upon your enemy's head! You might have struck him, but for Christ's sake you bless him! No words of wrath shall defile your lips for love commands silence within those gates of coral. You see Christ, as it were, covering your foe with His own merit, and you say, "For His sake I forgive you." May your whole life, then, ordinarily be lived as unto Jesus and may special gems of forgiveness glisten in it! Now go a step higher. That which is purely Christian work ought to be done also upon Him and for Him. I mean by Christian work, evangelical service which grows out of the plan of salvation. I refer to those things peculiar to Christians--such as spreading the Gospel, teaching, instructing, consoling, almsgiving and the like. All this should be done for Jesus more really than it often is. And that other part of Christian service, namely, endurance--the bearing of shame for Christ's sake, the patient suffering of the will of God in Providence--all this should be done for Christ most distinctly. 1 know there will be a second motive here, as in the former, and properly so. When I preach, I have an earnest desire to do good to my hearers--I ought to have such a desire. But yet, I desire to be moved by a higher motive than love to your souls. I desire that, by the stirring up of your minds, Christ may get glory--that you may be led to do something for Him which will bring Him honor and please Him. May you as saints be prospered that the Lord of saints may be honored! I look through you to Jesus. We ought to go to our Sunday school class with the view of doing good to the children. Yet, above that object must rise the higher object, namely, the honoring of Christ through those children. We seek the good of the children for Christ's sake. Visit the sick, or preach in the street, or distribute your tracts--dear Brothers and Sisters, in doing these things you do well--but do not forget to perform these acts as unto the Lord or else you will miss the flower and crown of your service. I am sure it will be sweeter to do your work and easier to do it and at the same time it will be better for your own souls and you may more surely expect the Divine blessing if you do all for Jesus' sake. And the same with the other branch of Christian service, namely, endurance--let us take up our cross because it is His Cross and we bear it after Him. Oh, to lie still and suffer without a murmur! Oh, to be silent under the shears because our own blessed Lord was like a sheep before her shearers and opened not His mouth! Oh, to be able to bear sarcasm, ridicule, misrepresentation and even actual loss of this world's goods for the sake of Jesus--and to bear them meekly and even joyfully--because it comes for His sake! To bear suffering for Jesus would be a novelty to some Christians, but to the true Believer it is an exquisite delicacy. To suffer distinctly for Jesus is to work a work on His most blessed Self. I place this on a higher range than the last set of duties which I mentioned, but still, we have not yet come to the purest form of good works worked upon the Person of our Lord Jesus. We will go a step higher. There are works of the consecration of our substance. In these all Christians ought to abound. It is ours to give often, give largely, give even till we feel the pinch of giving! But we must take care that we truly give as to the Lord. When you give your money to the Church of God to maintain the preaching of the Gospel, or to assist missionary enterprise, or whatever else the Church has in hand, you are doing a good work to others. You are helping on the Gospel which has been a blessing to you and will be a blessing to them. But, over and above that, your desire should be to do it as unto the Lord. In giving what we can of our substance it is sweet to lay it at His feet--not regarding it so much as going into the treasury of the Church--as going into the hands of the crucified Savior. We give for His sake who gave Himself for us. We long that His kingdom may come and that He may see of the travail of His soul. The same should be true of what is bestowed upon the poor. When you noiselessly and quietly give to the poor, who need your help, you are doing it for Christ--if such, indeed, is your motive--and it ought always to be so. We are getting still nearer to the point when we give to the Lord's poor because the poor saints are in living union with Jesus--they are a part of Christ's body--and in giving to them we are giving to Christ Jesus Himself. When we feed and clothe and cherish poor aged Believers because they belong to Christ, we are getting very near to that state of mind in which this good woman was when she worked the good work upon Christ. I suppose the day will come in this age of novel reforms when we must not dare to help the poor and needy. We can hardly do so now without coming under the censure of the school of hard economists. I see notices in the windows requesting us by no means to give alms. I should like to put at the bottom of such placards the text of Scripture which commands us to give to him that asks of us! Law or no law, I trust when a Christian sees a case of necessity, he will not be held back by any motives of political economy, or any of the hard and fast teachings of the social scientists. In your almsgivings see to it that while you do good unto all men, you do it specially unto the household of faith. "Oh," cries one, "you may very soon be found helping a person that does not deserve it." No doubt about it! But you have a great deal better to do than neglect those who should have your aid. If we give as unto the Lord because He bids us do it, and for His sake, if any put our charity to an evil use the sin will lie with them, and not with us. If in any cases applicants have deceived us, yet our act of charity is acceptable to God. Never give for the sake of being thought generous--that spoils it all--that is not giving, but buying a certain amount of respect at so much a pound. Never contribute to Church work, nor to the help of the poor merely to gratify the instinct within you which finds it hard to say, "No"--but do it because, if Christ asked you, you would give Him anything and you feel that when His poor have need you are bound to help them for His sake. We will go a step higher, dear Brethren. There are two great duties which the Lord has appointed for His people, only--and these we should observe because they are appointed by Him. I refer to the two commands regarding Baptism and the Supper of the Lord. In keeping these commandments there is a great reward to our own souls but we ought to come as Believers to be baptized out of love to Jesus. We ought not to ask, "What is the good of this?" We may not say, "Shall I get anything by it?" But we are to simply say this, "He bade me and I will do it for the love I bear His name." I feel shocked when I hear people say, "But it is not essential to salvation." You mean and beggarly spirit! Will you do nothing but what is essential to your own salvation? A Pharisee or a harlot might talk so! Is this your love to Christ--that you will not obey Him unless He shall pay you for it? Unless He shall make your soul's salvation depend upon it? Oh, if you love the Master, the least of His commandments will seem very precious in your sight and you will feel that because you love Him you obey Him! If obedience to an ordinance should bring you no good whatever--if Jesus bade you, it is enough for you--whatever it may be. Indeed, it is all the sweeter to do the Lord's bidding when no trace of personal gain can be found mingling with the motive. So, too, when we approach the table of communion we shall get a blessing there if we come aright--but I think we too often fail to remember that we should sit at the holy table with the sole view of honoring the Lord who in that festival is remembered. He says that we are to show His death until He comes. It is to Him that the feast is dedicated. To keep up the memory of His death and to testify the fact to others we eat of the bread and drink of the cup. We celebrate the sacred supper for our Lord's sake--not because of Church rules, nor because it is the custom of the brotherhood so to do--nor even because it is a hallowed refreshment to our own hearts. We commune at the sacred feast out of love to the Well-Beloved. But I will come to the point by saying, dear Brothers and Sisters, seek to do something for Jesus which shall even be above all this a secret sacrifice of pure love to Jesus. Do special and private work towards your Lord. Between you and your Lord let there be secret love tokens. You will say to me, "What shall I do?" I decline to answer. I am not to be a judge for you--especially as to a private deed of love. The good woman in our text did not say to Peter, "What shall I give?" nor to John, "What shall I do?" Her heart was inventive. I will only say that we might offer more private prayer for the Lord Jesus. "Prayer also shall be made for Him continually." Intercede for your neighbors. Pray for yourselves. But could you not set apart a little time each day in which prayer should be all for Jesus? Could you not at such seasons cry with secret pleadings, "Hallowed be Your name! Your kingdom come! Your will be done on earth, as it is in Heaven"? Would it not be a sweet thing to feel at such a time--"I shall now go up to my chamber and give my Lord a few minutes of my heart's warmest prayer that He may see of the travail of His soul"? That is one thing which all saints can attend to. Another holy offering is adoration--the adoring of Jesus. Do we not too often forget this adoration in our assemblies, or thrust it into a corner? The best part of all our public engagements is the worship--the direct worship. And in this the first place should be given to the worship of the Lord Jesus. We sing at times to edify one another with Psalms and hymns, but we should also sing simply and only to glorify Jesus. We are to do this in company, but should we not do it alone, also? Ought we not all, if we can, to find a season in which we shall spend the time--not in seeking the good of our fellow men, not in seeking our own good--but in adoring Jesus, blessing Him, magnifying Him, praising Him, pouring forth our heart's love towards Him and presenting our soul's reverence and penitence? I suggest this to you--I cannot teach you how to do it. God's Holy Spirit must show your hearts the way. But let me entreat you to believe that it will be no wasted thing if on Him the good work of prayer and adoration shall begin and end on Him. It will be a right thing and well done of you if the Lord Jesus has for Himself the choicest of your thoughts, emotions, words and deeds. Oh, that all that we have could be laid at His feet! It would be no waste, but the proper use of all our good things. III. But time fails me and therefore I must, thirdly, and with extreme brevity, OFFER YOU A WORD OR TWO OF ADVICE ABOUT DOING GOOD WORKS FOR JESUS. Take care that self never creeps in. It is to be all for Jesus--let not the foul fingers of self-seeking stain your work. Never do anything for Jesus out of love for popularity. Be always glad if your right hand does not know what your left hand does. Hide your works as much as possible from the praise of the most judicious friend. At the same time let me also add, never have any fear of censure from those who know not your love to Jesus. This good woman did her work publicly because it was the best way to honor her Lord. And if you can honor Him by doing a good work in the marketplace before all men, do not be afraid. To some the temptation may be to court the public eye-- to others the temptation may be to dread it. Serve your Lord as if no eyes beheld you--and do not blush though all the eyes in the universe should gaze upon you. Let not self, in either case, come in to defile the service. Never congratulate yourself after you have worked a work for Jesus. If you say unto yourself, "Well done!" you have sacrificed unto yourself. Always feel that if you had done all as it should be done it would still be but your reasonable service. Remember that deeds of self-sacrifice are most acceptable to Jesus. He loves His people's gifts when they give and feel that they have given. Oftentimes we are to measure what we do for Him not by what we have given, but by what we have left after giving--and if we have much left we have not given as much as that widow who gave two mites--no, for certain we have not--for she gave "all her living." Let us, above all, keep out of our heart the thought which is so common in this general life--that nothing is worth doing unless something practical comes out of it--meaning by "practical" some manifest result upon the morals or temporals of others. It is almost universal to ask the question, Cui bono?--"What is the good of it? What good will it do to me? What good will it do to my neighbor? To what purpose is this waste?" No, but if it will glorify Christ, do it! And accept that motive as the highest and most conclusive of reasons. If a deed done for Christ should bring you into disesteem and threaten to deprive you of usefulness, do it none the less! I count my own character, popularity and usefulness to be as the small dust of the balance compared with fidelity to the Lord Jesus. It is the devil's logic which says, "You see I cannot come out and avow the Truth of God because I have a sphere of usefulness which I hold by temporizing with what I fear may be false." O Sirs, what have we to do with consequences? Let the heavens fall but let the good man be obedient to his Master and loyal to His Truth. O man of God, be just and fear not! The consequences are with God-- not with you! If you have done a good work unto Christ, though it should seem to your poor bleared eyes as if great evil has come of it, yet you have done it, Christ has accepted it and He will note it down and in your conscience He will smile you His approval. IV. I will not detain you longer, but just close by saying that THERE IS A GOOD DEFENSE FOR ANY KIND OF WORK WHICH YOU MAY DO UNTO JESUS AND UNTO JESUS ONLY. However large the cost, nothing is wasted which is expended upon the Lord, for Jesus deserves it. What if it did no service to any other--did it please Him? He has a right to it! Is nothing to be done for the Master of the feast? Are we to be so looking after the sheep as never to do honor to the Shepherd? Are the servants to be cared for and may we do nothing for the Well-Beloved Lord Himself? I have sometimes felt in my soul the wish that I had none to serve but my Lord. When I have tried to do my best to serve God and a cool-blooded critic has pulled my work to pieces, I have thought, "I did not do it for you! I would not have done it for you! I did it for my Lord! Your judgment is a small matter. You condemn my zeal for the Truth of God. You condemn what He commends." Thus may you go about your service, my Brothers and Sisters, and feel, "I do it for Christ, and I believe that Christ accepts my service and I am well content." Jesus deserves that there should be much done altogether for Him. Do you doubt it? There is brought into the house, on his birthday, a present for Father. That present is of no use to Mother, or to the children. It cannot be eaten. It cannot be worn, but Father would not give it away to anybody--it is of no value to anybody but himself. Does anybody say, "What a pity it was to select such a gift, even though Father is pleased"? No, everybody says, "That is just the thing we like to give to Father, since he must keep it for himself. We meant it to be for him! We had no thought of anything else--and we are glad that he must use our gift for his own pleasure." So with regard to Jesus. Find out what will please Him and do it for Him! Think of no one else in the matter. He deserves all you can do and infinitely more. Besides, you may depend upon it that any action which appears to you useless, if you do it prompted by love, it has a place in Christ's plan and will be turned to high account. This anointing of our Lord's head was said to be useless. "No," said Jesus, "it falls in just in its proper place--she has done it for My burial." There have been men who have done an heroic deed for Christ and at the time they did it they might have asked, "How will this serve my Lord's purpose?" But somehow it was the very thing that was needed. When Whitefield and Wesley turned out into the fields to preach, it was thought to be a fanatical innovation and perhaps they, themselves, would not have ventured upon it if there had not been an absolute necessity. But by what seemed to that age a daring deed they set the example to all England and open-air preaching has become an accepted agency of large value! If you, for Christ's sake, become Quixotic, never mind--your folly may be the wisdom of ages to come! Once again, the woman's loving act was not wasted for it has helped us all down to this very moment. There it has stood in the Bible--and all who have read it and are right in heart--have been fired by it to sacred consecration out of love to Jesus. That woman has been a preacher to 19 centuries--the influence of that alabaster box is not exhausted today and never will be! Whenever you meet a friend in Europe, Asia, Africa, or America who has done anything unto our Lord Jesus, you still smell the perfume of the sacred spikenard! Her consecrated act is doing all of us good at this hour--it is filling this house with fragrance! If you are serving Christ in your own secret way in which you do not so much seek to benefit others as to honor Him, it may be you will be an instructive example to saints in ages to come. Oh, that I could stir some hearts here to a personal consecration to Jesus, my Lord! Young men, we need missionaries to go abroad--are none of you ready to go? Young women, we need those who will look after the sick in the lowest haunts of London--will none of you consecrate yourselves to Jesus, the Savior? I shook hands, after the sermon this morning, with a good missionary of Christ from Western Africa. He had been there 16 years. I believe that they reckon four years to be the average of a missionary's life in that malaria region. He had buried 12 of his companions in the time. For 12 years he has scarcely seen the face of a white man. He was going to Africa to live a little while longer, perhaps, but he expected to die soon. And then he added, (I thought sweetly), as I shook his hand, "Well, many of us may die--perhaps hundreds of us will do so--but Christ will win at the last! Africa will know and will fear our Lord Jesus! And what does it matter what becomes of us--our name, our reputation, our health, our life--if Jesus wins at the last?" What heroic words! What a missionary spirit! Live in that spirit, dear Brothers and Sisters, and in that spirit come now to the communion table! Amen. PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Matthew 26:1-16. __________________________________________________________________ Love's Competition A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 2, 1890, DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "Tell Me therefore, which of them will love him most? Simon answered and said, I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most. And He said unto him, You have rightly judged." Luke 7:42, 43. I REMEMBER seeing, somewhere or other, as a sign upon an inn, the words, "The First and Last." I do not know what that may happen to be among men, but I know that love is God's first and last. It is there that He begins with us in mercy--"We love Him, because He first loved us." His love at the first springs up like a fountain in the midst of a desert and freely flows along the wilderness to the unworthy sons of men. In the end, the result of that love is that men love Him--they cannot help it any more than the rock can prevent the echo when the voice falls upon it. Love is not a creature of law--it comes not on demand--it must be free or not at all. It has its reasons why it springs up in our hearts, but it is not a mercenary thing which can be procured at such-and-such a price. It is not a matter of argument--it is not of itself an act performed as a matter of duty. Love is a duty, certainly, but it does not come to us that way--it comes to us like a roe or a young hart, over every mountain and hill, leaping and bounding. It comes not as a heavy burden dragged along an iron way. If a man should give all the substance of his house for love, it would utterly be despised. Men do not make themselves love by a course of calculation--they are overtaken with it and carried away by its power. When godly men consider and enjoy the great love of God to them, they begin to love God in return, just as the bud, when it feels the sunshine, opens to it of its own accord. Love to God is a sort of natural consequence which follows from a sight and sense of the love of God to us. I think it is Aristotle who said that it is impossible for a person to know that he is loved without feeling some degree of love in return. I do not know how that may be for I am no philosopher, but I am sure that it is so with those who taste the love of God. As love is the first blessing coming from God to us, so it is the last return from us to God--He comes to us loving--we go home to Him loving. I. I intend to keep to my text and handle it red hot, by first noticing that IT IS TAKEN FOR GRANTED THAT PARDONED SINNERS WILL LOVE. "Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most?" It is implied that the two debtors who had been frankly forgiven would both love their benefactor. The question was not, "Which of them will love him?" but, "Which of them will love him most?" So, then, I say, it is taken for granted in the text that those who are pardoned will love him who has so freely pardoned them. And this, first, because it seems most natural that where kindness is received gratitude should be felt. This is so generally admitted that gratitude is found among the lowest and worst of mankind. "If you love them who love you, what thanks have you? For sinners also love those that love them." It is man-like to return good for good and ingratitude is looked upon most rightly as one of the basest of the vices. Why we find gratitude not only in men and women--intelligent creatures--but we find it in the very beasts of the field! "The ox knows his owner and the ass his master's crib." A dog that has received benefits from you will be attached to you and by every possible means will endeavor to show his affection! The ancients had many rare stories of the gratitude of wild beasts. You remember that of Androcles and the lion. The man was condemned to be torn to pieces by beasts, but a lion, to which he was cast, instead of devouring him, licked his feet because at some former time Androcles had extracted a thorn from the grateful creature's foot. We have heard of an eagle that so loved a boy with whom he had played that, when the child was sick, the eagle sickened, too. And when the child slept, this wild, strange bird of the air would sleep, but only then. And when the child awoke, the eagle awoke. When the child died, the bird died, too. You remember that there is a picture in which Napoleon is represented as riding over the battlefield and he stops his horse, as he sees a slain man with his favorite dog lying upon his bosom doing what he can to defend his poor dead master. Even the great man-slayer paused at such a sight! There is gratitude among the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air. And surely, if we receive favors from God and do not feel love to Him in return, we are worse than brute beasts! And so the Lord, in that pathetic verse in Isaiah, pleads against us, "The ox knows his owner and the ass his master's crib: but Israel does not know, My people do not consider." If we receive favors from God, it is but natural that we should love Him in return. Alas, that many should be so unnatural, so false to every noble instinct, so dead to the gratitude which goodness deserves! Gratitude should surely arise when the benefit is surpassingly great. Surely love must spring up with the greatest force and freedom when favors are far above the common run of blessings--when these favors are not such as are confined to time and to the body, but when they reach to eternity and bless the soul. When favors are of such weight as the forgiveness of sin and the salvation of the soul from wrath to come I would stand and sing to the fountain of the heart as Israel did in the wilderness, "Spring up, O well; sing you unto it: The princes dug the well." And has not our great Prince who has been struck upon the cheek dug this well by giving us, through His free Grace and dying love, to taste of full remission and of complete pardon of our guilt? Shall we not, must we not love the Redeemer in return? I call common ingratitude worse than brutish--but to have sin forgiven and not to love God--in this case where shall I go for a word? I must call it devilish. It were worse than infernal to receive a deliverance from guilt so great, from punishment so justly terrible and not to love the Lord, through whom it is given to us! Oh, love the Lord, whose mercy endures forever! If, indeed, you have tasted of that mercy, you must love Him. It cannot be otherwise-- you are bound to God by bonds of love and these draw you, by a secret but irresistible force, to love the Lord in return! And moreover, not only is this natural and necessary, because of the greatness of the mercy, but the Grace of God always takes care that wherever pardon is given love shall be ensured--for the Holy Spirit co-operates with the work of Christ. And if we are cleansed from the stain of our former evil through the blood of Christ, we are renewed and changed in the spirit of our minds by the Holy Spirit. He does not take away our sin and then leave us that old heart of stone, insensible, ungrateful--but as He gives us a garment of righteousness He gives us a heart of flesh. The Spirit works in us a degree of love at the same time that He creates the first look of faith. And soon our faith increases and then He works in us more and more of that love to Christ by which we cling to Him. This love works in us a hatred of sin and a spirit of obedience whereby we yield ourselves up to the service of Him who has bought us with His precious blood. You know that it is so, Brothers and Sisters. Where pardon comes, delight in God comes with it. You know that God does not divide His gifts and give justification to one and sanctification to another--the Covenant is one--and the blessings of the Covenant are threaded on the one string of infinite wisdom, so that when there comes the washing in the blood, there comes also a cleansing with water by the Word. The Holy Spirit washes us from the power of sin as the blood of Christ cleanses us from the guilt of sin. Where sin is forgiven, there must be love to the God who forgave it because the Spirit of God makes sure work upon the heart of the Believer--and one of his first works is love. I need not argue this further because all Christians know this as a matter of fact--where there is no love there is no pardon. You cannot be pardoned and not love God as a result of His loving forgiveness! What was the very first emotion that you and I felt when we had a sense of guilt removed? We felt joy for our own sake, but immediately after, or at the same instant, we felt such intense gratitude to God that we loved Him beyond all expression! We have sometimes been half afraid that we do not love God as much, now, as we did at that moment, though I trust that the fear is groundless. But at that moment there was nothing too hot or too heavy for us to have attempted on behalf of Him who had taken the burden from off our shoulders. We would have said at that moment, "Here am I, send me," if it had been to prison, or to death! Oh, the joy of those first days! They are rightly called the days of our espousals. And what love we had then! We were willing to leave all for Christ's sake. We snapped fond connections at His command. Truly, like Israel of old, we would have gone after our God into the wilderness--yes, after our Savior into the grave! Nothing could have kept us back or have caused us to wander from Him, then. Do you not remember how you used to long for Sundays to hear of Jesus and praise His name with His people? If there was a weeknight service, you were always there, though no one persuaded you to go. Then, any corner in the Meeting House was good enough for you. Now, perhaps, you need a very soft cushion to sit upon. You sat, then, in a straight-backed pew and did not know it! Now, you need very tender dealing and the preacher must mind that he interests you by illustrations and poetical allusions. But then the Gospel, itself, interested you! And however dull the preacher might have been, you were so willing to hear about Jesus and to know of His love, that there you were--eager to hear the most humble evangelist! Wisdom did not need to press you into her house, for you were earnestly waiting at the posts of her doors, glad to hear even the footsteps of those who came in and out. Oh, those were brave days! I hope that we have braver days now. But, for certain, as sure as we knew our pardon, we felt that we loved the Lord with all our hearts. Now I want to make a little practical use of this inference from the text. That pardoned souls love their pardoning God is a great Truth and a very solemn one in its bearings upon us at this time, for there are persons in this house of prayer who were never forgiven--and we are sure of that unhappy fact since they do not love God. Their sins must be still upon them because they have not the token of pardon, inasmuch as they have no love to Jesus Christ our Lord. Oh, listen to me, you that do not love God and yet, perhaps, dream that you are saved! Are there not some here that seldom think of God--who do not care if a day, a week, a month, a year should pass over their heads--and yet they have no thought of the Almighty Judge of all the earth? They receive His mercies but they do not thank Him! They feel His power but they do not fear Him! "God is not in all their thoughts." O my Hearer, if this is your case, you do not love Him--for if we love any person we are sure to think of him! Thoughts fly that way in which the heart moves. I do not say that we are always thinking of those we love--but I do say that our thoughts will fly that way when they can. You know at sunset where the crows live. Perhaps all day long you are unable to tell for they may fly from one plowed field to another to find their meat. But watch when night comes on and when they are free from other obligations and wish to find rest--they fly straight to those tall trees where they have built their nests. A man may, in the busy time of the day, think about 50 things--but let him be free from pressing labor and care-- and he returns to his love as birds fly to their nests at night! His thought flies to Jesus because Jesus is the home of his heart. If your hearts love God your thoughts will run to Him as the rivers run to the sea. Yes, and often in the very middle of business the man who loves his God will be speaking with Him! He may not interrupt the conversation and those in the shop may not know what is on his mind, but his heart will be up above the mountains where the angels dwell, communing with the great Father of lights! But where there is no thought of God, there is no love to Him. Are there not many who never do anything for God? He has made them and He preserves them, and yet they never make Him any return by way of willing action designed to give Him pleasure. I may put it to some of you--did you ever do anything distinctly for God in all your lives? What? Not so much as once? Ah, me, a man so curiously made by the Divine finger--displaying infinite skill in every blood vessel, nerve and muscle that is necessary for his life and motion-- and yet he has never thought of the Great One who has set all this machinery in motion and keeps it in action! To live only by God and yet to live without Him! Strange! Can there exist a man who never does anything for his God who is constantly doing so much for him? If so, I would say to such a one--"You have never been pardoned for you do not love God since you never think of Him and do nothing for Him." Some men evidently do not love God for they have no care about anything that concerns Him. They do not refrain from sin because sin would grieve God. The idea of grieving God, perhaps, has not crossed their minds-- so they vex the Holy Spirit most thoughtlessly. But, ah, if you love anyone, you will not likely cause him grief--you will not do the evil thing which he hates. He that loves God will often have a check put upon him and feel that he cannot do this great wickedness and sin against God. To sin against God is the greatest of sin and the essence of sin. The venom of sin lies there. This makes sin so exceedingly sinful that it is against the God of Love. But if you never felt that, then you do not love Him and, for certain, you are not forgiven. Look at others--they do not love God, for they do not care for His house where His people meet. They seldom come to the meeting for worship, and if they come it is from some other motive than to meet with God. They do not care for His day. Sundays are very dreary in London, so they say. There is nothing to interest them for they have no interest in the great Father, or His Incarnate Son--they have no desire to hear of Him or to praise Him, or to pray to Him. They do not care for His Bible though it is a world of delights and comforts. The Bible is perfumed with the love of God but they perceive not its fragrance. The Savior's face is to be seen reflected in almost every page and yet some think that the Bible is more dull than an old almanac and though they must keep it in their house--for it is respectable to have a copy of it--yet to read it and to read it with pleasure--why, that has never happened to them! Nor is there any likelihood that it ever will unless they get made anew. Nor do they care for God's people. In fact, they like a quiet joke against Christian people and sometimes, if they can see faults in them--and, oh, how readily they may!--they report those faults with considerable exaggerations and feel pleased to eat up the faults of God's people as they eat bread! Lack of love to the children argues lack of love to their Father. "He that loves Him that begat, loves him also that is begotten of Him." We know that we love God when we love His children. But if in your heart there is no such love to His children, to His Book, to His day, to His house, or to His service, you may rest quite certain, my Friend, that your guilt still clings to you. You are not pardoned and God will require that which is past and call you to account. For every secret thing He will bring you into judgment and for every idle word that you have spoken He will take reckoning of you. Ah, how sad it is that when I am longing to speak joyously about the love that arises out of pardoned sin, I am compelled, for pity's sake, to turn aside to give a warning to many who, having no love to God, prove by that fact that they have never been forgiven! So I leave the first point. It is supposed in the text and taken for granted that all pardoned sinners will love Him who has pardoned them. II. But now, secondly, IT IS SUGGESTED IN THE TEXT THAT THERE ARE DIFFERENCES IN THE DEGREES OF LOVE TO GOD. "Tell me therefore, which of them will love him most." These words evidently show that some persons love God more than others and that, albeit there must be a sincere love to God in all pardoned sinners, yet there is not the same degree of love. Love is evidently a Divine Grace which is not stereotyped and cast in a mold so as to be the same in every case and at every time. Love is a thing of life--it is, therefore, a thing of growth. It is certainly so in our own selves. There was a time when we did not love God so much as we do now. And I grieve to say that there are even now times when we do not love God so much as we once did, for we grow cold and backsliding. Love is not like a piece of cast iron, fixed and set. It grows and has its times of budding, flowering and leaf-shedding. It is like a fire--at one time it may burn low and at another time it may be blown up to a very vehement heat. Love rises and falls--I speak not of God's love to us--but of our love to God. It has its ups and downs, its summers and its winters, its flood tides and its ebbs. And if we find a change in love in the same heart, we are not at all astonished that it should differ in different hearts! Besides, we know that there are differences in love because there are differences in all the other Divine Graces. Faith-- some men have much faith. God be thanked that there are men of strong faith still on the face of the earth! But there are others who have a faith which, though a true faith, is a very weak one. It is a trembling faith. It cannot walk the waves with Peter, but it can sink with him and it can cry out for deliverance. Faith, in some Christians, seems to be a very feeble affair. As I said the other day, they hardly know whether it is faith or unbelief. Their cry is, "Lord, I believe! Help my unbelief," as if they had made a mistake in calling it faith at all for it was so mixed with unbelief. It is not always such an infant Grace, for there are strong Believers who have turned to fight the armies of the aliens--men who have borne their cross without impatience and their testimony without cowardice--men who have conquered sin and lived in holiness and brought glory to God. Faith, like a ladder, has its lower and its higher rounds. Faith has its dawning, its noon, its shade. We are sure that it is so, for we have observed it in ourselves and seen it in others. We have seen it great and we have seen it little. The practical point I would reach is just this. Let us look, first of all, to our love in its sincerity. What if my love may not be compared with yours as to degree? Yet the Lord grant that I may truly love Him. Peter could not say that he loved Christ more than others, but he did say, "You know all things; You know that I love You." A little pearl is a pearl as much as a great one, though every one of us would sooner have the greater pearl. There is the Queen's image on a four-penny piece as certainly as there is upon the sovereign--though we would all prefer the golden coin! There is the image of God on all His people's faith and love, whether great or little. The main thing with the coin is to be sure that it is genuine metal. So, if love is real love, that is the main point. Do you love the Lord with all your heart? If so, strive to have more love but do not fling away what you have, for you would thus despise what the Spirit of God has worked in you. Endeavor also, dear Friends, to have growing love. Do not be satisfied to be today what you were 12 months ago. I am afraid that some Christians do not grow much. I am very glad when I see them grow downward when they are rooted in humility, when they have truer views of themselves than they ever had and a deeper sense of their indebtedness to God. That is good growth. Try to have, however, a love that grows so that you may more forcibly love Jesus Christ than you did in days that are past. Say to yourself, "Well, if I have ever so little love, it shall be practical love, I will show it. I will be doing something for my Lord." The woman, by whose means this parable was called forth, loved Christ so that she brought her alabaster box of ointment and anointed His feet and washed them with tears--and wiped them with the hair of her head. And one of the best ways to make love grow is to use all the love you have. Is it not so with merchants and their money? If they want to increase their capital, they trade with it. If you want to increase your love to Jesus, use it! Do not merely talk about it but actually serve Him under its sweet constraint. It is a very poor Christianity that consists in sitting still and dreaming and never attempting any practical service for Jesus, our Lord. He that thinks that he will quietly enjoy religion all alone will soon find that he has very little of it to enjoy--for doubts and fears will breed in swarms in a stagnant atmosphere. Where there is none of the blessed wind of activity, there will soon be mists and damp--perhaps foul gas and fevers. And if you have but little love at present, cry to God to give you a more intense love and, though I have said that to use your love is a good way to increase it, yet there is something still better, and that is to know more and feel more of the love of Christ to you. If you exercise, you will increase your sense of warmth--but it will be a far surer thing if you get where the sun shines with equatorial heat--so other means are good but to get near to Jesus is best of all. In proportion as you live close to the glorious central sun of the love of Christ, you will, yourself, be warm. I was about to compare the heart of my Lord to a volcanic mountain constantly streaming with the burning lava of love. Oh, that my soul could but get that fire-stream poured into it to set the whole of my nature on fire and consume me in the flame-torrent of love! You see that it is suggested in the text that there are differences in the degrees of love and there let us leave it, for we must come to the third point. III. Thirdly, THE TEXT PUTS TO US A QUESTION, "WHO WILL LOVE HIM MOST?" I want to introduce the question to you by saying that it is a very interesting one. After what the Lord has done for us, one takes pleasure in thinking what will come of it. One likes to think of the farmer's harvest. After all that plowing and sowing, what will come of it? It is interesting to begin to calculate the crop and to anticipate the shouts of harvest home. Now, what will come of infinite love--the supreme act of God's heart to men? What will come out of the gift of His Only-Begotten Son and the putting away of sin through the death of Jesus? What will men do for God after this? How much will they love Him? It is an interesting question. What have you to say upon it? And it is a personal question which the Lord puts to each one of us. You know He put it to Simon. "Tell Me," He said, "which of them will love him most?" And He puts it to us to consider it, to turn it over and to give our own verdict because there may be some blunder in our heart which this question is meant to set right--and the thoughts which the enquiry will cause in the spirit are meant to correct our judgments. Therefore do not put it aside, but try now to answer it as the Lord puts it. It is a practical question--"Which of them will love him most?"--for everything in conduct depends upon love. Where there is much love, there is sure to be much service in proportion to the strength. Give us a Church that loves Christ Jesus much--you will have mighty Prayer Meetings! You will have a holy membership! You will have liberal giving to the cause of Christ! You will have hearty praising of His name! You will have careful walking before the world! You will have earnest endeavors for the conversion of sinners! Missions at home and abroad will be set on foot when love is fervent. When the heart is right, everything is likely to be right. But when the heart goes wrong, oh, what a fatal thing it is! A disease of the heart is looked upon as the worst of mischiefs that can happen to a man. One old doctor of my acquaintance used to say, "We can do nothing with the heart." God keep us from a diseased heart--a fatty degeneration of the heart, or an ossification of the heart towards the Lord Jesus Christ! The question asked in the text is, however, a somewhat limited one. It is this. The question is not, "Who in all the world will love Christ most?"--but who out of two persons, in whom there is no particular difference of character, but only this one difference--that the one owes 500 pence and the other 50--which out of these two will love Christ more? We will suppose that they are equally tender of heart and equally regenerate and that they do know, each of them, certainly, that his debt has been discharged. The only difference between them is that one has been a grosser sinner than the other. And the question asked is, "Which of those two will love the Savior most?" It is a very simple question, too, not at all hard to answer--for even this Simon, the Pharisee, who, like the rest of the Pharisees, was very badly instructed, yet, nevertheless, could see his way to answer the question correctly. So he answered, "I suppose that he, to whom he forgave most." And the Lord replied, "You have rightly judged." Thus I have set before you the question. IV. And so, lastly, IT IS EXPECTED THAT WE GIVE A REPLY. And I wish for myself--and therefore wish the same for you--that each one of us may say, "I am the man that ought to love the Lord Jesus most and, by His Grace, I will surely do so." The most indebted should love most. Have we not here many 500-pence debtors? Some of my dear Brethren, here present, were, among outward sinners, the very chief--men who could drink and swear and lie-- ringleaders in everything that was evil. Blessed be God that such have been here led to Jesus! We heard the other night a dear Brother tell us of what he used to be. With modesty and shamefacedness he mentioned how great his sin had been--but his sin was put away--he was pardoned and he knew it! And he rejoiced in it. Such a man must say, "I will love Him most." Where there has been overt sin, palpable, undeniable--where the outward character has been defiled and stained with it--forgiveness involves us in deep obligation to grateful love. You may stand in the front rank and love Jesus most. But I am not going to let you rise to that eminence of obligation, or rather sink to that depth of indebtedness without having a struggle for it myself. Some of us take that place of eminent obligation on another ground and yet it is the same ground--for while some of us were never openly profane, or drunken, or immoral--we have to confess the equal greatness of our sin on account of our offending against light and knowledge. We sinned greatly against early convictions, against a holy training, against a tender conscience, against singular favors received from God--and therefore with shame we begin to take the lowest place--acknowledging that to us belongs the greatest debt of grateful praise to God. When I was preaching once, I said--and I meant it--that I should be the deepest debtor to Divine Grace that ever entered the gates of Glory--and I ventured to say-- "Then loudest of the crowd I'll sing, While Heaven's resounding mansions ring, With shouts of Sovereign Grace." It was in a country place and as I came down the pulpit stairs many clustered about me to shake hands. And one old lady said to me, "You made one great blunder in your sermon." I said, "My dear Soul, I dare say I made a dozen. I am a great blunderer." "No," she said, "but you said that you would sing the loudest when you get to Heaven--but you shall not, for I owe more to Divine Grace than you possibly can. I was once a great sinner and I have had much forgiven. And therefore I shall praise God more than you." I did not yield the point, but I held my tongue. I could let her be first and yet take the same place myself! As I went down the aisle many friends declared that they would not give way to me in that point and that they ought to praise God more than I, for they owed Him more. It was a happy controversy! It reminded me of Ralph Erskine's, Contention among the Birds of Paradise, where he represents the saints in Glory, each saying that he shall lie the lowest and shall praise the most sweetly the infinite love of God. I think that there are grounds upon which some here, who have been kept from everything which is outwardly evil, may, nevertheless, feel that inwardly they are 500-pence debtors--and so, when the question is asked, "Which will love Him most?" they will say, "Why, I! I was not so honest as some of those wicked fellows. I did not dare to say all they said, nor to be openly vile as they were--but I was quite as bad at heart and if I dare have had my full swing--I should have been as base as they were." But I do not think that the spirit of the parable is exhausted by either of these cases. I think it includes more. There are some who evidently have not had more forgiven than others as to outward sin. On the contrary, they have been prudently brought up from their childhood and yet for many a year they have been foremost in service and have been special lovers of the Lord. Though by no means great offenders in their unconverted state, they are certainly great saints now--they are intense in their service, consistent in their character, fervent in their love. How is it that some who shout that they have been snatched from the burning and according to their own statement were the very chief of sinners--and make a great trumpet-blowing over their own conversion--yet do not love the Lord Jesus one half so much as these dear, quiet souls who never went into open sin? I take it the reason is this. Our estimate of sin is, after all, the thing which will create and inflame our love. If a man thinks sin to be exceedingly sinful and feels it to be so, he has a deeper sense of his indebtedness than the man who may have committed grosser vices but has never seen them in their real blackness--as they appear in the light of God's Countenance. Too many Believers know little of what it is to be amazed and astounded at the heinousness of their transgressions. Why, time was with me--and is now--when, if I had inadvertently spoken a word that was not exactly true, it cost me more pain to think of what was only a hasty error than it has cost many men to repent of their cursing and swearing! I am sorry to say it, but I believe that some make a glory of their shame and dare to brag of what they used to be. They stand up and make confession without a tear in their eye, or a blush on their cheek. Such testimony ought never to be heard for it is a positive creator of evil in the minds of those that hear it! I am sorry to have to say it but I know that it is so. Testimonies are published which are inducements to vice and tend to make men immoral, rather than to make them turn to God! In certain circles he is treated as a hero who can prove that he has been a great rascal. It was not thus that the prodigal was received by his father--he never hung up his old rags as a trophy! O Brothers and Sisters, when we talk about what we were, we had better veil our faces! Our former follies are things to be confessed to God in secret--and if they must be spoken in public, to the praise of Divine Grace--there must be a careful avoidance of anything like boasting, for it is a shame even to speak of the things that were done of them in secret. When there is really a deep sense of sin, there is a holy, delicate way of speaking of it. Old sins are not to be talked of as an old soldier shoulders his crutch and shows how fields were won. A crimson blush is the best color to wear when we speak of our lost estate. To talk smilingly of injuries done to the delicacy of our own conscience--of awful injuries done to others by foul example--is not to glorify God but to enthrone vice! And, dear Friends, I believe that some whom God has preserved by preventing Grace from going into great sin, will, nevertheless, love Him most because they have a clearer view than others of what it cost in order that they might be pardoned. Happy are they who remember well the griefs of our Lord in the Garden of Gethsemane-- "There's never a gift His hand bestows But cost His heart a groan." Oh, if your heart dwells on Calvary, where falls the crimson shower of Christ's most precious blood--if you gaze intently upon the wounds of Jesus till you die into the death of the Crucified--then do you love Him much! It is well to have the soul torn with anguish because-- "It cost HIM cries and tears To bring us near to God: Great was our debt, And He appears To make the payment good." Remember, in proportion as you estimate the Sacrifice, you will love Him who was the Sacrifice for sin. Brothers and Sisters, I hope you all love Christ Jesus more than I do, for I would have Him possess the highest love of every human heart--and yet I will not be willingly excelled by any one of you in a competition of love to Jesus. I will run my very best that no man take my crown But supposing, dear Friends, any of you do love Him most--then show it just as that woman did who brought the alabaster box of precious ointment. If you love Him most, do most. Do everything that is humanly possible, quickened by the Spirit of God. If you have done much, do 10 times more! Never talk of what you have done, but go on to something else. An officer rode up to his general, and said, "Sir, we have taken two guns from the enemy." "It is well," said the general, "Take two more." If you have most love to Christ, do most spiritual good to men. Yet do something distinctly for Jesus. It is a blessed token for good when our work among men is not so much for the sake of sinners as for love of Jesus. When we love the Brethren it should be because they belong to Christ. It is sweet to serve the Lord Christ Himself. See how the holy woman offered homage distinctly to her Lord--tears for His travel stains--hair to wipe His feet, ointment to anoint His flesh. Do your choicest and best for Jesus, for Jesus personally. Try to do it most humbly. Stand behind Him. Do not ask anybody to look at you. Do it very quietly. Do it feeling that it is a great honor to be permitted to do the least service for Jesus. Do not dream of saying, "I am somebody. I am doing great things. I do more, even, than Simon the Pharisee. Come see my zeal for the Lord of Hosts." Jehu talked in that fashion--but he was good for nothing. Do your personal part without seeking to be seen of men. Do it self-sacrificingly. Bring your best ointment. Pinch yourself for Christ. Make sacrifices--go without this and that to have something which you can do Him honor. Do it very penitently. When you serve Him best, still let the tears fall on His feet, mingling with the costly ointment. The tears and the ointment go well together. Mourn your guilt while you rejoice in His Grace. Do it continuously. "This woman," said Christ, "since I came in has not ceased to kiss My feet." Do not leave off loving Him and serving Him. Do it on and on and on--however much the flesh may ask for respite from service. Do it enthusiastically. See how she kissed His feet--nothing less than this would express her love! Stoop down and kiss and kiss again those blessed feet which traveled so far in love for you! Throw your whole soul into your deed of love. "Why," they will say, "Mrs. So-and-So is enthusiastic! She is quite carried away by her zeal." Let it be true more and more! Never mind what the cold-hearted think, for they cannot understand you. They will say, "Ah, that young person is too fast by half." Never mind. Be faster still! Wise people cry out, "He has too many irons in the fire." But I say to you, heat up the fire! Get all the irons red hot and hammer away with all your might! With all your strength and energy plunge into the service of your Master! If you love your Master, you can best show your love by ardent service. The Lord bless you with the utmost degree of love, for Jesus Christ's sake! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Psalm 18. __________________________________________________________________ Heaven Above and Heaven Below A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 2, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat. For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them unto living fountains of waters." Revelation 7:16,17. "They shall not hunger nor thirst, neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for He that has mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall He guide them." Isaiah 49:10. JORDAN is a very narrow stream. It made a sort of boundary for Canaan but it hardly sufficed to divide it from the rest of the world since a part of the possessions of Israel was on the eastern side of it. Those who saw the Red Sea divided and all Israel marching through its depths must have thought it no small thing for the Jordan to be dried up and for the people to pass through it to Canaan. The greatest barrier between Believers and Heaven has been safely passed. In the day when we believed in the Lord Jesus Christ we passed through our Red Sea and the Egyptians of our sins were drowned. Great was the marvel of mercy! To enter fully into our eternal inheritance we have only to cross the narrow stream of Death--and scarcely that--for the kingdom of Heaven is on this side of the river as well as on the other. I begin by reminding you of this because we are very apt to imagine that we must endure a kind of purgatory while we are on earth and then, if we are Believers, we may break loose into Heaven after we have shuffled off this mortal coil. But it is not so. Heaven must be in us before we can be in Heaven--and while we are yet in the wilderness we may spy out the land--and may eat of the clusters of Eshcol. There is no such gulf between earth and Heaven as gloomy thoughts suggest. Our dreams should not be of an abyss, but of a ladder whose foot is on the earth and whose top is in Glory. There would not be one hundredth part so much difference between earth and Heaven if we did not live so far below our privileges. We live on the ground, when we might rise as on the wings of eagles! We are all too conscious of this body. Oh, that we were more often where Paul was when he said, "Whether in the body or out of the body, I cannot tell: God knows"! If not caught up into Paradise, yet may our daily life be as the garden of the Lord. Listen a while, you children of God, for I speak to you and not to others. To unbelievers, what can I say? They know nothing of spiritual things and will not believe them though a man should show them to them! They are spiritually blind and dead--may the Lord quicken and enlighten them! But to you that are begotten again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead I speak with joy! Think of what you are by Divine Grace and remember that what you will be in Glory is already outlined and foreshadowed in your life in Christ! Being born from above, you are the same men that will be in Heaven! You have within you the Divine life--the same life which is to enjoy eternal immortality! "He that believes on the Son has everlasting life"--it is your possession now. As the quickened ones of the Holy Spirit, the life which is to last on forever has begun in you. At this moment you are already, in many respects, the same as you always will be. I might almost repeat this passage in Revelation concerning some of you at this very hour--"What are these? And from where did they come? These are they that came out of great tribulation and have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." I might even go on to say, "Therefore are they before the Throne of God"--for you abide in close communion with the King--"and serve Him day and night in His temple: and He that sits on the Throne shall dwell among them." I am straining no point when I thus speak of the sanctified. Beloved, you are now, "elect according to the foreknowledge of God," and you are, "the called according to His purpose." Already you are as much forgiven as you will be when you stand without fault before the Throne of God. The Lord Jesus has washed you whiter than snow and none can lay anything to your charge. You are as completely justified by the righteousness of Christ as you ever can be--you are covered with His righteousness--and Heaven itself cannot provide a robe more spotless! "Beloved, now are we the sons of God." "He has made us accepted in the Beloved." Today we have the spirit of adoption and enjoy access to the Throne of the heavenly Grace. Yes, and today by faith we are raised up in Christ and made to sit in the heavenlies in Him. We are now united to Christ, now indwelt by the Holy Spirit--are not these great things and heavenly things? The Lord has brought us out of darkness into His marvelous light! Although we may, from one point of view, lament the dimness of the day, yet, as compared with our former darkness, the light is marvelous and, best of all, it is the same light which is to brighten from dawn into midday! What is Divine Grace but the morning twilight of Glory? Look, Beloved--the inheritance that is to be yours tomorrow, is, in very truth, yours today--for in Christ Jesus you have received the inheritance and you have the earnest of it in the present possession of the Holy Spirit who dwells in you! It has been well said that all the streets of the New Jerusalem begin here. See, here is the High Street of Peace which leads to the central palace of God--and now we set our foot on it! "Being justified by faith, we have peace with God." The heavenly street of Victory, where the palms and the harps are-- surely we are at the lower end of it here--for "this is the victory that overcomes the world, even our faith." Everything that is to be ours in the Home Country is, in measure, ours at this moment. As sleeps the oak within the acorn, so slumbers Heaven within the first cry of, "Abba, Father!" Yes, and the hallelujahs of eternity lie hidden within the groans of penitence! "God be merciful to me, a sinner," has in its heart the endless, "We praise You, O Lord." O saints, little do you know how much you have in what you have! If I could bring Believers consciously nearer to the state of Glory by their more complete enjoyment of the privileges of the state of Grace, I would be exceedingly glad. Beloved, you will never have a better God--and "this God is our God forever and ever." Delight yourselves in Him this day! The richest saint in Glory has no greater possession than his God--and even I can say, in the words of the Psalm-- "Yes, my own God is He." Despite your tribulation take full delight in God, your exceeding joy this morning, and be happy in Him. They in Heaven are shepherded by the Lamb of God and so are you--He still carries the lambs in His bosom and does gently lead those that are with young. Even here He makes us to lie down in green pastures--what more could we have? With such a God and such a Savior, all you can want is that indwelling Spirit who shall help you to realize your God and to rejoice in your Savior--and you have this also--for the Spirit of God dwells with you and is in you--"Know you not that you are the temple of God?"! God the Holy Spirit is not far away, neither have we to entreat His influence as though it were rays from a far-off star--Brothers and Sisters, He abides in His people evermore! I will not say that heavenly perfection is not far superior to the highest state that we will ever reach on earth--but the difference lies more in our own failure than in the nature of things. Grace, if realized to its fullest, would brighten off into Glory. When the Holy Spirit fully possesses our being and we yield ourselves to His power, our weakness is strength and our infirmity is to be gloried in! Then is it true that on earth God is with us--and there is but a step between us and Heaven--where we are with God! Thus I have conducted you to my two texts which I have put together as an illustration of what I would teach. In the New Testament text we have the heavenly state above and in the Old Testament text we have the state of the Lord's flock while on the way to their eternal rest. Very singular, to my mind, is the sameness of the description of the flock in the fold and the flock feeding in the ways. The verses are almost, word for word, the same. When John would describe the white-robed host, he can say no more of them than Isaiah said of the band of pilgrims led by the God of mercy. I. First, LET US CONSIDER THE HEAVENLY STATE ABOVE. The Beloved John tells us what he heard and saw. The first part of the description assures us of the supply of every need. "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more." In Heaven no need is unsatisfied and no desire ungratified. They can have no need as to their bodies, for they are as the angels of God. Children of poverty, your lack of bread will soon be ended and your care shall end in plenty! The worst hunger is that of the heart and this will be unknown above. There is a ravenous hunger, fierce as a wolf, which possesses some men--all the world cannot satisfy their greed. A thousand worlds would be scarcely a mouthful for their lust. Now, in Heaven there are no sinful and selfish desires. The ravaging of covetousness or of ambition enters not the sacred gate. In Glory there are no desires which should not be and those desires which should be are all so tempered or so fulfilled that they can never become the cause of sorrow or pain, for, "they shall hunger no more." Even the saints need love, fellowship, rest--they have all these in union to God, in the communion of saints and in the rest of Jesus. The unrenewed man is always thirsting but Christ satisfies this even now, for He says, "He that drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." Be assured, then, that from the golden cup of Glory we shall drink that which will quench all thirst forever! There is not, in all the golden streets of Heaven, a single person who is desiring what he may not have or needing what he cannot obtain, or even wishing for that which he has not in his hands. O happy state! Their mouth is satisfied with good things! They are filled with all the fullness of God! And as there is in Heaven a supply for every need, so is there the removal of every ill. Thus says the Spirit, "Neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat." We are such poor creatures that excesses of good soon become evils to us. I love the sun--if you have ever seen it shining in the clear blue heavens, you would not wonder that I speak with emphasis. Life, joy and health stream from it in lands where it is enough of pleasure to bask in its beams. But too much of the sun overpowers us--his warmth makes men faint--his stroke destroys them. Too great a blessing may prove too heavy a cargo for the ship of life. Therefore we need guarding from dangers which, at the first sight, look as if they were not perilous. In the beatific state, if these bodies of flesh and blood were still our dwelling place, we could not live under the celestial conditions. Even here, too much of spiritual joy may prostrate a man and cast him into a swoon. I would like to die of the disease, but still, a sickness comes upon one to whom heavenly things are revealed in great measure and enjoyed with special vividness. One of the saints cried out in an agony of delight, "Hold, Lord, hold! Remember I am but an earthen vessel and can contain no more!" The Lord has to limit His revelations because we cannot bear them now. I have heard of one who looked upon the sun imprudently and was blinded by the light. The very sunlight of Divine revelation, favor and fellowship could readily prove too much for our feeble vision, heart and brain. Therefore, in the glorious state flesh and blood shall be removed and the raised body shall be strengthened to endure that fierce light which beats about the throne of Deity. As for us, as we now are, we might well cry, "Who among us shall dwell with the devouring fire?" But when the redemption of the body has come about and the soul has been strengthened with all might, we shall be able to be at home with our God, who is a consuming fire. "Neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat." May God grant us to enjoy the anticipation of that happy period when we shall behold His face; when His secret shall be with us and we shall know even as we are known! Oh, for that day when we shall enter into the Holiest and shall stand before the Presence of His Glory! And yet, we will be so far from being afraid we shall be filled with exceeding joy! But, further, the description of the heavenly life has this conspicuous feature--the leading of the Lamb. "The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and shall lead them." It is Heaven to be personally shepherded by Him who is the Great Sacrifice. In this present state we have earthly shepherds and when God graciously feeds us by men after His own heart, whom He Himself instructs, we prize them much. Those whom the Lord ordains to feed His flock we love and we follow their faith for the Lord makes them of great service to us. But still, they are only underlings and we do not forget their imperfections and their dependence upon their Lord. But in Heaven "that Great Shepherd of the sheep" will Himself personally minister to us. Those dear lips that are as lilies dropping sweet smelling myrrh shall speak directly to each one of our hearts. We shall hear His voice! We shall behold His face! We shall be fed by His hands! We shall follow at His heels! How gloriously will He "stand and feed"! How restfully shall we lie down in green pastures! He shall feed us in His dearest Character. As the Lamb He revealed His greatest love and as the Lamb will He lead and feed us forever! The Revised Version wisely renders the passage, "The Lamb in the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd." We are never fed so sweetly by our Lord Himself as when He reveals to us most clearly His Character as the Sacrifice for sin. The atoning Sacrifice is the center of the sun of infinite love, the light of light. There is no Truth like it for the Revelation of God. Christ in His wounds and bloody sweat is Christ, indeed. "He His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree." With this Truth of God before us, His flesh is meat, indeed, and His blood is drink, indeed. In Heaven we shall know Him far better than we do now as the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world--the Lamb of God's Passover--"the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world." That deep peace, that eternally unbroken rest which we shall derive from a sight of the Great Sacrifice will be a chief ingredient in the bliss of Heaven. "The Lamb shall feed them." But though we shall see our Lord as a Lamb, it will not be in a state of humiliation but in a condition of power and honor. "The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them." Heaven will largely consist of expanded views of King Jesus and closer views of the Glory which follows upon His sacrificial grief. Ah, Brothers and Sisters, how little do we know His Glory! We scarcely know who He is that has befriended us! We hold the doctrine of His Deity tenaciously--but in Heaven we shall perceive His Godhead in its Truth so far as the finite can apprehend the infinite! We have known His friendship to us, but when we shall behold the King in His beauty in His own halls and our eyes shall look into His royal countenance and His face, which outshines the sun, shall beam ineffable affection upon each one of us, then shall we find our Heaven in His Glory! We ask no thrones--His Throne is ours! The enthroned Lamb Himself is all the Heaven we desire! Then the last point of the description is full of meaning. The drinking at the fountain is the secret of the ineffable bliss. "The Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them and lead them unto living fountains of waters." We are compelled to thirst, at times, like the poor flock of slaughter which we see driven through our London streets. And alas, we stop at the very puddles by the way and would refresh ourselves at them if we could. This will never happen to us when we reach the land where flows the river of the Water of Life! There the sheep drink of no stagnant waters or bitter wells--they are satisfied from living fountains of waters! Comfort is measurably to be found in the streams of Providential mercies and therefore they are to be received with gratitude--but common blessings are unfilling things to souls quickened by Divine Grace. Corn can fill the barn, but not the heart. Of the wells of earth we may say, "Whoever drinks of this water shall thirst again." But when we go beyond temporal supplies and live upon God Himself, then the soul receives a draught of far truer and more enduring refreshment--even as our Lord Jesus said to the woman at the well--"He that drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." In Heaven the happy ones live not on bread, which is the staff of life, but on God, who is Life itself! The second cause is passed over and the first cause, alone, is seen. In the Home Country souls have no need of the means of Grace, for they have reached the God of Grace. The means of Grace are like pipes which bring down the living water to us--but we have found them fail us--and at times we have used them in so faulty a way that the water has lost its freshness, or has even been made to taste of the pipe through which it flowed. Fruit is best when gathered fresh from the garden--the handling of the market destroys the bloom. We have too much of this in our ministries. Brethren, we shall soon drink living water at the wellhead and gather the golden fruit from Him who is "as the apple tree among the trees of the wood." We shall have no need of Baptisms and breakings of bread, nor of churches and pastors. We shall not need the golden chalices or the earthen vessels which now serve us so well, but we shall come to the river's Source and drink our full. "He shall lead them unto living fountains of water." At times, alas, we know what it is to come to the pits and find no water--and then we try to live on happy memories. We sing, and sigh--or sigh, and sing-- "What peaceful hours I once enjoyed, How sweet their memory still! But they have left an aching void The world can never fill." A cake made of memories will do for a bite now and then, but it makes poor daily bread. We need the present enjoyment of God. We need, still, to go to the fountain for new supplies--for water which stands long in the pitcher loses its cool and refreshing excellence. Happy is the man that is not living upon the memories of what he used to enjoy but is even now in the banqueting house! The present and perpetual renewal of first love and first delight in God is Heaven. Heaven is to know the substance and the secret of the Divine life--not to hold a cup, but to drink of the living water. The doctrine is precious, but it is far better to know the thing about which the doctrine speaks. The doctrine is the tray of silver, but the blessing itself is the apple of gold. Blessed are they that are always fed on the substance of the Truth of God, the verity of verities, the essence of essential things. "He shall lead them unto fountains." There the eternal source is unveiled--they not only receive the mercy, but they see how it comes and from where it flows--they not only drink, but they drink with their eyes upon the glorious Wellhead. Did you ever see a boy on a hot day lie down, when he has been thirsty, and put his mouth down to the top of the water at the brim of the well? How he draws up the cool refreshment! Drink away, poor child! He has no fear that he will drink the well dry, nor have we. How pleasant it is to take from the inexhaustible! That which we drink is all the sweeter because of the measureless remainder. Enough is not enough--but when we have God for our All in All, then are we content. When I am near to God and dwell in the overflowing of His love, I feel like the cattle on a burning summer's day when they take to the brook which ripples around them up to their knees--and there they stand, filled, cooled and sweetly refreshed. O my God, in You I feel that I have not only all that I can contain, but all that contains me! In You I live and move with perfect content! Such is Heaven! We shall have bliss within and bliss around us--we ourselves drinking at the Source and dwelling by the well forever! The fact is that Heaven is God, fully enjoyed. The evil that God hates will be wholly cast out--the capacity which God gives will be enlarged and prepared for full fruition and our whole being will be taken up with God, the Ever-Blessed, from whom we came and to whom it will be Heaven to return! Whoever knows God knows Heaven! The Source of all things is our fountain of living waters! Thus I could occupy all the morning with my first head but I must not tarry, or I shall miss my aim which is to show you that, even here, we may outline Glory and in the wilderness we may have the pattern of things in the heavens. This you will see by carefully referring to the second text. ' II. LET US CONSIDER THE HEAVENLY STATE BELOW. I think I have heard you saying, "Ah, this is all about Heaven but we have not yet come to it. We are still wrestling here below." Well, well--if we cannot go to Heaven at once, Heaven can come to us! The words which I will now read refer to the days of earth, the times when the sheep feed in the ways and come from the north and from the south at the call of the shepherd. "They shall not hunger nor thirst; neither shall the heat nor sun smite them: for He that has mercy on them shall lead them, even by the springs of water shall He guide them." Look at the former passage and at this one. The whole description is the same! When I noticed this parallel, I stood amazed. John, you are a great artist! I entreat you, paint me a picture of Heaven! Isaiah, you also have a great soul-- draw me a picture of the life of the saintly ones on earth when their Lord is with them! I have both pictures. They are masterpieces! I look at them and they are so much alike that I wonder if there is not some mistake. Surely they are depicting the same thing! The forms, the lights and shades, the touches and the tones are not only alike, but identical! Amazed, I cry, "Which is Heaven, and which is the heavenly life on earth?" The artists know their own work and by their instruction I will be led. Isaiah painted our Lord's sheep in His Presence on the way to Heaven. John drew the same flock in Glory with the Lamb. And the fact that the pictures are so much alike is full of suggestive teaching. Here are the same ideas in the same words. Brothers and Sisters, may you and I as fully believe and enjoy the second passage as we hope to realize and enjoy the first Scripture when we get home to Heaven! First, here is a promise that every need shall he supplied. "They shall not hunger nor thirst." If we are the Lord's people and are trusting in Him, this shall be true in every possible sense. Literally, "your bread shall be given you, your water shall be sure." You shall have no anxious thought concerning what you shall eat and what you shall drink. But, mark you, if you should know the trials of poverty and should be greatly tried and brought very low in temporal things, yet the Lord's Presence and sensible consolations shall so sustain you that spiritually and inwardly you shall know neither hunger nor thirst. Many saints have found riches in poverty, ease in labor, rest in pain and delight in affliction! Our Lord can so adapt our minds to our circumstances that the bitter is sweet and the burden is light. Paul speaks of the saints "as sorrowful, yet always rejoicing." Note well that the sorrow has an "as" connected with it--but the rejoicing is a fact! "They shall not hunger nor thirst." If you live in God, you shall have no ungratified desire. "Delight yourself also in the Lord and He shall give you the desires of your heart." There may be many things that you would like to have and you may never have them--but then you will prefer to be without them, saying, "Nevertheless, not as I will, but as You will." If Christ is with you, you will be so happy in Him that wanton, wandering wishes will be like the birds which may fly over your head but dare not make their nests in your hair. You will be without a peevish craving, or a pining ambition, or a carking care. "Oh," says a Believer, "I wish I could reach that state." You will reach it--you are on the way to it. Only love Christ more and be more like He and you shall be satisfied with favor, and sing, "All my springs are in You." "My Soul, wait only upon God; for my expectation is from Him." I do not mean that the saints find a full content in this world's goods, but that they find such content in God that with them or without them they live in wealth. A man's life consists not in the abundance of that which he possesses-- many a man who has had next to nothing that could be seen with eyes or handled with hands--has been a very millionaire for true wealth in possessing the kingdom of the Most High! The Lord has brought some of us into that state in which we have all things in Him--and it is true of us--"They shall not hunger nor thirst." Then, next, there is such a thing as having every evil removed from you while yet in this wilderness. "Neither shall the heat nor sun smite them." Suppose God favors you with prosperity? If you live near to God you will not be rendered proud or worldly-minded by your prosperity. Suppose you should become popular because of your usefulness? You will not be puffed up if Christ Jesus is your continual Leader and Shepherd. If you live near to Him you will be lowly. If your days are spent in sunlight and you go from joy to joy, yet shall no sunstroke smite you. If still you dwell in God and your heart is full of Christ and you are led as a sheep by Him--no measure of heat shall overpower you. It is a mistake to think that our safety or our danger is according to our circumstances--our safety or our danger is according to our nearness to God or our distance from Him. A man who is near to God can stand on the pinnacle of the temple and the devil may tempt him to throw himself down and yet he will be firm as the temple itself. A man that is without God may be in the safest part of the road and traverse a level way and yet he will stumble! It is not the road, but the Lord that keeps the pilgrim's feet. O heir of Heaven, commit your way unto God and make Him your All in All and rise above the creature into the Creator! And then shall you hunger no more, neither thirst any more, neither shall the heat nor the sun smite you. Further, it is said that on earth we may enjoy the leading of the Lord. See how it is put--"For He that has mercy on them shall lead them." Here we have not quite the same words as in Revelation, for there we read, "The Lamb that is in the midst of the throne shall lead them." Yet the sense is but another shade of the same meaning. Oh, but that is a sweet, sweet name, is it not? "He that has mercy on them." He has saved them and so has had mercy on them. Yes, that is very precious, but the word is sweeter, still--"He that has mercy on them"--He that is always having mercy on them--He that follows them with mercy all the days of their lives! He that continually pardons, upholds, supplies, strengthens and thus daily loads them with benefits--"He that has mercy on them shall lead them." Do you know, beloved Friends, what it is to be led of the Lord? Many are led by their own tastes and fancies. They will go wrong. Others are led by their own judgments. But these are not infallible and they may go wrong. More are led by other people--these may go right, but it is far from likely that they will. He that is led of God--he is the happy man--he shall not err. He shall be conducted Providentially in a right way to the city of habitations. Commit your way unto the Lord! Trust, also, in Him and He will bring it to pass. It may be a rough way, but it must be a right way if we follow the track of the Lord's feet! The true Believer shall be lead by the Spirit of God in sacred matters--"He will guide you into all truth." He that has mercy on us in other things will have mercy on us by teaching us to profit. We shall each one sing, "He leads me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake." We shall be led into duty and through struggles. We shall be led to happy attainments and gracious enjoyments. We shall go from strength to strength. In the case of the gracious soul, earth becomes like Heaven because he walks with God. He that has mercy on him, visits him, communes with him and manifests Himself to him! A shepherd goes before his flock and the true sheep follow him. Blessed are they who follow the Lamb where ever He goes. They have a love to their Lord and therefore they only want to know which way He would have them go and they feel drawn along it by the cords of love and the bands of a man. If they can get a glance from their Lord's eyes it suffices them. As it is written, "I will guide you with My eyes." Every day they stand anxiously attentive to do the King's commandment, be it what it may. They yield themselves and their members to Him to be instruments of righteousness, vessels fit for the Master's use. Beloved, this is Heaven below! If you have ever tried it, you know it is so. If you have never fully tried it, try it now and you will find a new joy in it. Jesus says to you, "Take My yoke upon you and learn of Me, and you shall find rest unto your souls." I do not know anything more delightful than to be such a fool, as the world will call you, as to yield your intellect to the teaching of the Lord--and to be so weak that you cannot judge but accept His will--and so incapable that even to will and to do must be worked in you of the Lord! Oh, to be so unselfish as to take anything from Christ far more gladly than you would choose of your own accord! If your Lord puts His hand into the bitter box, you will think the potion sweet. And if He scourges you, you will thank Him for being so kind as to think of you at all! When you get to that point--that you are as a sheep to whom God Himself is the Shepherd--it is well with you. Then you will realize, even in the pastures of the wilderness, how the rain from Heaven drops upon the inheritance of the Lord and refreshes it when it is weary. "The peace of God, which passes all understanding, shall keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." God give you to know it, dear Friends! I can speak experimentally of it--it is not only the foretaste of Heaven, but a part of the banquet itself! But now the last touch is the drinking at the springhead. We were not surprised to find, in our description of Heaven, that the Lamb led them to the fountains of waters. But we are delighted to find that, here below, "even by the springs of water shall He guide them." Beloved, covet earnestly this drinking at the springs! It is not all who profess to be Christians who will know what I am talking about this morning--they will think I have got into the way of the mystics and am dreaming of things unpractical. I will not argue with them, but let me speak to those who understand me. Beloved in the Lord, you can even now live upon God Himself and there is no living comparable to it. You can get beyond all the cisterns and come to the river of the Water of Life even as they do in Heaven. To live by second causes is a very secondary life--to live on the First Cause is the first of living! I exhort you to do this with regard to the inspired Word. This is a day of man's opinions, views, judgments, criticisms. Leave them all--good, bad and indifferent--and come to this Book which is the pure fount of Inspiration undefiled! When you study the Word of God, live upon it as His Word. I am not going to defend it--it needs no defense. I am not going to argue about its Inspiration--if you know the Lord aright, His Word is Inspired to you--if to no one else. You know not only that it was Inspired when it was written, but that it is still Inspired and, moreover, its Inspiration affects you in a way in which no other writings can ever touch you. It breathes upon you--it breathes life into you and makes you to speak words for God which prove to be words from God to other souls. Oh, it is wonderful if you read the Word of God in a little company, morning by morning--simply read it and pray over it--what an effect it may have upon all who listen! I speak what I know. If you read the Inspired Words themselves and look up to Him who spoke them, their spiritual effect will be the witness of their Inspiration. This is a miracle-working Book! It may be opposed, but never conquered! It may be buried under unbelief, but it must rise again! Blessed are they to whom the Word is meat and drink! They quit the cistern of man for the fountain of God and they do well. "By the springs of water shall He guide them." Yet I would exhort you not to tarry at the letter of God's Word, but believingly and humbly advance to drink from the Holy Spirit Himself! He will not teach you anything which is not in the Bible, but He will take of the things of Christ and will show them unto you. A Truth of God may be like a jewel in the Word of God and yet we may not see its brilliance until the Holy Spirit holds it up in the light and bids us mark its luster. The Spirit of God brings up the pearl from the deeps of Revelation and sets it where its radiance is perceived by the believing eye. We are such poor scholars that we learn little from the Book till "the Interpreter, one of a thousand," opens our heart to the Word and opens the Word to our heart! The Holy Spirit, who revealed Truth in the Book, must also personally reveal it to the individual. If ever you get hold of a Truth in that way, you will never give it up. A man who has learned a Truth of God from one minister, may unlearn it from another minister. But he that has been taught it of the Holy Spirit has a treasure which no man takes from him! Beloved, we would exhort you to drink of the springs of living water while you are here. Be often going back to fundamental doctrines. Especially get back to the consideration of Covenant engagements. From where do all the deeds of mercy from God our Father and from our Lord Jesus Christ come? Come they not from eternal purposes and from that Covenant, "ordered in all things, and sure," made before the earth was, between the Father and the ever-blessed Son? Get often to the well of the Covenant. I know of nothing that can make you so happy as to know in your very soul how the Father pledged Himself by oath to the Son and the Son pledged Himself to the eternal Father concerning the great mystery of our redemption. Eternal love and Covenant faithfulness--these are ancient wells! Do not hesitate to drink deep at the fountain of electing love. The Lord Himself chose you, having loved you with an everlasting love. Everything comes to the saints "according as He has chosen us in Him before the foundation of the world." The Philistines have stopped this well full many a time, but they cannot prevent its waters bubbling up from among the stones which they have cast into it. There it stands. "I have loved you with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you." Get back to the love that had no cause but the First Cause--to the love that knows no change--to the love that knows no limit, no hesitancy, no diminution! Get back to the love that stands, like the Godhead itself, eternal and immovable! Drink from eternal springs--and if you do so, your life will be more and more "as the days of Heaven upon the earth." God grant us to get away from the deceitful brooks to "the deep which lies under" and with joy may we draw water! Christ's Presence and fountain drinking--give me these two things and I ask no more! The Lamb to feed me and the Fountain to supply me--these are enough. Lord, whom have I in Heaven but You? Come poverty, come sickness, come shame, come casting out by Brethren--yes, come death itself--nothing can I need and nothing can harm me if the Lamb is my Shepherd and the Lord my Fountain! Before another Sunday some of us may be in Heaven. Before this month has finished, some of us may know infinitely more about the eternal world than the whole assembly of divines could tell us! Others of us may have to linger here a while. Yet are we not in banishment. Here we dwell with the King for His work. We will endeavor to keep close to our Master and if we may serve Him and see His face, we will not grudge the glorified their fuller joys. You that know nothing about these things, God grant you spiritual sense to know that you do not know--and then give you further Grace to pray to Him, "Lord, lead me to the living Fountain." There is an inner life, there is a heavenly secret, there is a surpassing joy--some of us know it--we wish that you, also, had it! Cry for it! Jesus can give it to you at once! Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall live forever! The new birth goes with faith in Christ. May He give it to you this morning and may you begin to be heavenly here, that you may be fit for Heaven hereafter! The Lord bless you, dear Friends, for Jesus' sake! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Revelation 7:9-17; Isaiah 49:1-10. __________________________________________________________________ Pleading, Not Contradicting A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 9, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "She said, Truth, Lord:yet." Matthew 15:27. DID YOU notice, in the reading of this narrative of the Syro-Phoenician woman, the two facts mentioned in the 21st and 22nd verses? "Then Jesus went from there and departed into the coasts of Tyre and Sidon. And, behold, a woman of Canaan came from that region." See, Jesus goes towards the coast of Sidon on the land side and the woman of Canaan comes from the seashore to meet Him and so they come to the same town. May we find that case repeated this morning in this Tabernacle! May our Lord Jesus come into this congregation with power to cast out the devil and may someone-- no, may many--have come to this place on purpose to seek Divine Grace at His hands! Blessed shall be this day's meeting! See how the Grace of God arranges things. Jesus and the seeker have a common attraction. He comes and she comes. It would have been of no use her coming from the coast of Tyre and Sidon if the Lord Jesus had not also come down to the Israelite border of Phoenicia to meet her. His coming makes her coming a success. What a happy circumstance when Christ meets the sinner and the sinner meets his Lord! Our Lord Jesus, as the Good Shepherd, came that way, drawn by the instincts of His heart--He was seeking after lost ones and He seemed to feel that there was one to be found on the borders of Tyre and Sidon and, therefore, He must go that way to find that one. It does not appear that He preached, or did anything special upon the road. He left the 99 by the sea of Galilee to seek that one lost sheep by the Mediterranean shore! When He had dealt with her He went back again to His old haunts in Galilee. Our Lord was drawn towards this woman, but she, also, was driven towards Him. What made her seek Him? Strange to say, a devil had a hand in it--but not so as to give the devil any of the praise. The truth was that a gracious God used the devil, himself, to drive this woman to Jesus--for her daughter was "grievously vexed with a devil" and she could not bear to stay at home and see her child in such misery. Oh, how often does a great sorrow drive men and women to Christ, even as a fierce wind compels the mariner to hasten to the harbor! I have known a domestic affliction--a daughter sorely vexed--influence the heart of a mother to seek the Savior. And, no doubt, many a father, broken in spirit by the likelihood of losing a darling child, has turned his face towards the Lord Jesus in his distress. Ah, my Lord! You have many ways of bringing Your wandering sheep back and among them You even send the black dog of sorrow and of sickness after them. This dog comes into the house and his howls are so dreadful that the poor lost sheep flies to the Shepherd for shelter! God make it so this morning with any of you who have a great trouble at home! May your boy's sickness work your health! Yes, may your girl's death be the means of the father's spiritual life! Oh, that your soul and Jesus may meet this day! Your Savior drawn by love and your poor heart driven by anguish--may you thus be brought to a gracious meeting! Now, you would suppose that as the two were seeking each other, the happy meeting and the gracious blessing would be very easily brought about--but we have an old proverb that, "the course of true love never runs smooth," and the course of true faith, for certain, is seldom without trials. Here was genuine love in the heart of Christ towards this woman and genuine faith in her heart towards Christ--but difficulties sprang up which we should never have looked for. It is for the good of us all that they occurred but we could not have anticipated them. Perhaps there were more difficulties in the way of this woman than of anybody else that ever came to Jesus in the days of His flesh. I never saw the Savior in such a mood as when He spoke to this woman of great faith. Did you ever read of His speaking such rough words? Did such a hard sentence, at any other time, ever fall from His lips as, "It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs"? Ah, He knew her well and He knew that she could stand the trial and would be greatly benefited by it--and that He would be glorified by her faith throughout all future ages! Therefore with good reason He put her through the athletic exercises which train a vigorous faith. Doubtless, for our sakes, He drew her through a test to which He would never have exposed her had she been a weakling unable to sustain it. She was trained and developed by His rebuffs. While His wisdom tried her, His Grace sustained her! Now, see how He began. The Savior came to the town, wherever it was--but He was not there in public--on the contrary, He sought seclusion. Mark tells us, in his seventh chapter, at the 24th verse, "From there He arose and went into the borders of Tyre and Sidon and entered into an house, and would have no man know it: but He could not be hid. For a certain woman, whose young daughter had an unclean spirit, heard of Him, and came and fell at His feet." Why is He hiding from her? He does not usually avoid the quest of the seeking soul. "Where is He?" she asks His disciples. They give her no information--they had their Master's orders to let Him remain in hiding. He sought quiet and needed it, and so they discreetly held their tongues. Yet she found Him and fell at His feet. Half a hint was dropped--she took up the trail and followed it until she discovered the house--and sought the Lord in His abode. Here was the beginning of her trial--the Savior was in hiding. "But He could not be hid" from her eager search. She was all eyes and ears for Him and nothing can be hid from an anxious mother eager to bless her child! Disturbed by her, the Blessed One comes into the street and His disciples surround Him. She determines to be heard over their heads and therefore she begins to cry aloud, "Have mercy upon me, O Lord, You son of David." As He walks along, she still cries out with mighty cries and pleadings till the streets ring with her voice--and He who "would have no man know it" is proclaimed in the market place. Peter does not like it--he prefers quiet worship. John feels a great deal disturbed by the noise--he lost a sentence just now--a very precious sentence which the Lord was uttering. The woman's noise was very distracting to everybody and so the disciples came to Jesus, and they said, "Send her away, send her away! Do something for her or tell her to be gone, for she cries after us. We have no peace for her clamor--we cannot hear You speak because of her piteous cries." Meanwhile, she, perceiving them speaking to Jesus, comes nearer, breaks into the inner circle, falls down before Him, worships Him and utters this plaintive prayer--"Lord, help me." There is more power in worship than in noise! She has taken a step in advance. Our Lord has not yet answered her a single word. He has heard what she said, no doubt, but He has not answered a word to her as yet. All that He has done is to say to His disciples, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." That has not prevented her nearer approach or stopped her prayer, for now she pleads, "Lord, help me." At length the Blessed One speaks to her. Greatly to our surprise, it is a chill rebuff. What a cold word it is! How cutting! I dare not say how cruel--yet it seemed so. "It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs." Now what will the woman do? She is near the Savior--she has an audience with Him, such as it is. She is on her knees before Him and He appears to repulse her! How will she act now? Here is the point about which I am going to speak-- she will not be repulsed, she perseveres, she advances nearer--she actually turns the rebuff into a plea! She has come for a blessing and a blessing she believes that she shall have! And she means to plead for it till she wins it! So she deals with the Savior after a very heroic manner and in the wisest possible style--from which I want every seeker to learn a lesson at this time, that he, like she, may win with Christ and hear the Master say to him this morning, "Great is your faith; be it unto you even as you will." Three pieces of advice I gather from this woman's example. First, agree with the Lord whatever He says. Say, "Truth, Lord; truth, Lord." Say, "Yes," to all His words. Secondly, plead with the Lord--"Truth, Lord; yet." "Yet." Think of another Truth of God and mention it to Him as a plea. Say, "Lord, I must maintain my hold. I must plead with You yet." And thirdly, in any case have faith in the Lord, whatever He says. However He tries you, still believe in Him with unstaggering faith and know for sure that He deserves your utmost confidence in His love and power. I. My first advice to every heart here seeking the Savior is this, AGREE WITH THE LORD. In the Revised Version we read that she said, "Yes, Lord." Whatever Jesus said, she did not contradict Him in the least. I like the old translation, "Truth, Lord," for it is very expressive. She did not say, "It is hard, or unkind," but, "It is true. It is true that it is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs. It is true that compared with Israel I am a dog--for me to gain this blessing would be like a dog's feeding on the children's bread. Truth, Lord. Truth, Lord." Now, dear Friends, if you are dealing with the Lord for life and death, never contradict His Word. You will never come unto perfect peace if you are in a contradicting humor, for that is a proud and unacceptable condition of mind. He that reads his Bible to find fault with it will soon discover that the Bible finds fault with him. It may be said of the Book of God as of its Author--"If you walk contrary to Me, I will walk contrary to you." Of this Book I may truly say, "With the obstinate You will show Yourself obstinate." Remember, dear Friends, that if the Lord reminds you of your unworthiness and your unfitness, He only tells you what is true and it will be your wisdom to say, "Truth, Lord." Scripture describes you as having a depraved nature--say, "Truth, Lord." It describes you as going astray like a lost sheep and the charge is true. It describes you as having a deceitful heart and just such a heart you have. Therefore say, "Truth, Lord." It represents you as, "without strength," and, "without hope." Let your answer be, "Truth, Lord." The Bible never gives unrenewed human nature a good word, nor does it deserve it. It exposes our corruptions and lays bare our falseness, pride and unbelief. Quibble not at the faithfulness of the Word of God. Take the lowest place and admit you are a sinner--lost, ruined and undone. If the Scripture should seem to degrade you, do not take offense, but feel that it deals honestly with you. Never let proud nature contradict the Lord, for this is to increase your sin. This woman took the very lowest possible place. She not only admitted that she was like one of the little dogs, but she put herself under the table and under the children's table, rather than under the master's table. She said, "The dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." Most of you have supposed that she referred to the crumbs that fell from the table of the master of the house himself. If you will kindly look at the passage you will see that it is not so. "Their masters'" refers to several masters--the word is plural and refers to the children who were the little masters of the little dogs. Thus she humbled herself to be not only as a dog to the Lord, but as a dog to the house of Israel--to the Jews. This was going very far, indeed, for a woman of proud Sidonian blood, to admit that the house of Israel were to her as masters--that these disciples who had said just now, "Send her away," stood in the same relation to her as the children of the family stand in towards the little dogs under the table! Great faith is always sister to great humility. It does not matter how low Christ puts her, she sits there. "Truth, Lord." I earnestly recommend every hearer of mine to consent unto the Lord's verdict and never to raise an argument against the sinner's Friend. When your heart is heavy. When you have a sense of being the greatest of sinners, I pray you remember that you are a greater sinner than you think yourself to be! Though conscience has rated you very low, you may go lower, still, and yet be in your right place, for, to tell the truth, you are as bad as bad can be--you are worse than your darkest thoughts have ever painted you--you are a wretch most undeserving and Hell-deserving! And apart from Sovereign Grace your case is hopeless. If you were now in Hell you would have no cause to complain against the justice of God for you deserve to be there. I would to God that every hearer here who has not yet found mercy would consent to the severest declarations of God's Word--for they are all true and true to him in particular. Oh, that you would say, "Yes, Lord--I have not a syllable to say in self-defense"! And, next, if it should appear to your humbled heart to be a very strange thing for you to think of being saved, do not fight against that belief. If a sense of Divine justice should suggest to you--"What? You saved? Then you will be the greatest wonder on earth! What? You saved? Surely God will have gone beyond all former mercy in pardoning such a one as you are! In your case He would have taken the children's bread and cast it to a dog! You are so unworthy and so insignificant and useless, that even if you are saved, you will be good for nothing in holy service." How can you expect the blessing? Do not attempt to argue to the contrary. Seek not to magnify yourself, but cry, "Lord, I agree with Your valuation of me. I freely admit that if I am forgiven; if I am made a child of God and if I enter Heaven, I shall be the greatest marvel of immeasurable love and boundless Grace that ever lived on earth or in Heaven." We should be the more ready to give our assent and consent to every syllable of the Divine Word since Jesus knows better than we know ourselves. The Word of God knows more about us than we can ever discover about ourselves. We are partial to ourselves and hence we are half blind. Our judgment always fails to hold the balance evenly when our own case is in the weighing. What man is there who is not on good terms with himself? Your faults, of course, are always excusable--and if you do a little good, why, it deserves to be talked of and to be estimated at the rate of diamonds of the first water! Each one of us is a very superior person--so our proud heart tells us. Our Lord Jesus does not flatter us. He lets us see our case as it is--His searching eyes perceive the naked truth of things and as "the faithful and true Witness" He deals with us after the rule of uprightness. O seeking Soul, Jesus loves you too well to flatter you! Therefore I pray you, have such confidence in Him that, however much He, by His Word and Spirit may rebuke, reprove and even condemn you, you may without hesitation reply, "Truth, Lord! Truth, Lord!" Nothing can be gained by arguing with the Savior. A beggar stands at your door and asks for charity. He goes the wrong way to work if he begins a discussion with you and contradicts your statements. If beggars must not be choosers, certainly they must not be controversialists! If a beggar will dispute, let him dispute--but let him give up begging! If he cavils as to how he shall receive your gift, or how or what you shall give him, he is likely to be sent about his business. A critical sinner disputing with his Savior is a fool in capitals! As for me, my mind is made up that I will quarrel with anybody sooner than with my Savior--and especially I will contend with myself and pick a desperate quarrel with my own pride rather than have a shade of difference with my Lord! To contend with one's Benefactor is folly, indeed! For the justly condemned to quibble with the Law-Giver in whom is vested the prerogative of pardon would be folly! Instead of that, with heart and soul I cry, "Lord, whatever I find in Your Word. Whatever I read in Holy Scripture which is the revelation of Your mind, I do believe it! I will believe it! I must believe it! And I, therefore, say, 'Truth, Lord!' It is all true, though it condemns me forever." Now, mark this--if you find your heart agreeing with what Jesus says, even when He answers you roughly, you may depend upon it, this is a work of Divine Grace--for human nature is very upstart and stands very much upon its silly dignity. And therefore it contradicts the Lord when He deals truthfully with it and humbles it. Human nature, if you want to see it in its true condition, is that naked thing over yonder which so proudly aims at covering itself with a dress of its own devising. See, it sews fig leaves together to make itself an apron! What a destitute object! With its withered leaves about it, it seems worse than naked! Yet this wretched human nature proudly rebels against salvation by Christ! It will not hear of imputed righteousness--its own righteousness is far dearer. Woe be to the crown of pride which rivals the Lord Christ! If, my Hearer, you are of another mind and are willing to call yourself a sinner--lost, ruined and condemned--it is well with you. If you are of this mind--that whatever humbling Truth the Spirit of God may teach you in the Word, or teach by the conviction of your conscience, you will at once agree with and confess, "It is even so"--then the Spirit of God has brought you to this humble and truthful and obedient condition and things are going hopefully with you! The Lord Jesus has not come to save you proud and arrogant ones who sit on your thrones and look down contemptuously on others. Sit there as long as you can! Sit there until your thrones and yourselves dissolve into perdition--there is no hope for you! But you who lie upon the dunghill. You who feel as worthless as the broken potsherds around you. You who mourn that you cannot rise from that dunghill without Divine help--you are the men and women whom He will lift from your mean estate and set you among princes, even the princes of His people! See the spokes of yonder wheel! They that are highest shall be lowest--they that are lowest shall be raised on high! This is how the Lord turns things upside down-- "He has put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich He has sent empty away." If you find it in your heart to say, "Truth, Lord," to all that the Holy Spirit teaches, then surely that same Spirit is at work upon your soul, leading you to look to Jesus and causing you to give your heart's consent to the way of salvation through the merit of the Redeemer's blood. II. And now my second point is this--although you must not argue with Christ, you may PLEAD WITH HIM. "Truth, Lord," she says. But she adds, "yet." Here, then, is my first lesson--set one Truth over against another. Do not contradict a frowning Truth of God, but bring up a smiling one to meet it! Remember how the Jews were saved out of the hands of their enemies in the days of Haman and Mordecai? The king issued a decree that on a certain day the people might rise up against the Jews and slay them and take their possessions as a spoil. Now, according to the laws of the Medes and Persians, this could not be altered--the decree must stand. What then? How was it to be overturned? Why, by meeting that ordinance by another! Another decree is issued that although the people might rise against the Jews, yet the Jews might defend themselves! And if anybody dared to hurt them, the Jew might slay them and take their property! One decree thus counteracted another. How often we may use the holy art of looking from one doctrine to another! If a Truth of God looks black upon me, I shall not be wise to be always dwelling upon it--but it will be my wisdom to examine the whole range of the Truth of God and see if there is not some other doctrine which will give me hope. David practiced this when he said of himself, "So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before You." And then he most confidently added, "Nevertheless I am continually with You: You have held me by my right hand." He does not contradict himself--and yet the second utterance removes all the bitterness which the first sentence left upon the palate. The two sentences together set forth the supreme Grace of God who enabled a poor beast-like being to commune with Himself. I beg you to learn this holy art of setting one Truth side by side with another, that thus you may have a fair view of the whole situation and may not despair. For instance, I meet with men who say, "O Sir, sin is an awful thing! It condemns me! I feel I can never answer the Lord for my iniquities, nor stand in His holy Presence." This is assuredly true. But remember another Truth of God: "The Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." "He was made sin for us, who knew no sin." "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus." Set the Truth of the sin-bearing of our Lord over against the guilt and curse of sin due to yourself apart from your great Substitute. "The Lord has an elect people," cries one, "and this discourages me." Why should it? Do not contradict that Truth of God--believe it as you read it in God's Word--but hear how Jesus puts it: "I thank You, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because You have hid these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them unto babes." To you who are weak, simple and trustful as babes, the doctrine is full of comfort! If the Lord will save a number that no man can number, why should He not save you? It is true it is written, "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me," but it is also written, "And him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." Let the second half of the saying be accepted as well as the first half! Some are stumbled by the Sovereignty of God. He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy. He may justly ask, "Shall I not do as I will with My own?" Beloved, do not dispute the rights of the eternal God! It is the Lord--let Him do as seems good to Him. Do not quarrel with the King--but come humbly to Him, and plead--"O Lord, You alone have the right to pardon. But Your Word declares that if we confess our sins, You are faithful and just to forgive us our sins. And You have said, that whoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ shall be saved." This pleading will prevail! Kick not at the Truth of God lest you dash your naked foot against iron pricks. Yet, dwell not on one Truth till it distracts you, but look at others till they cheer you! Submit to all the Truth of God but plead on your own behalf that which seems to you to look favorably upon you. When you read, "You must be born-again," do not be angry! It is true that to be born-again is a work beyond your power--it is the work of the Holy Spirit--and this need of a work beyond your reach may well distress you. But that third chapter of John says, "You must be born-again," also says, "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." Thus it is clear that he that believes in Jesus is born-again! I pray you, have an eye to all the land of Truth and when you seem to be persecuted in one city of Truth, go to another--for there is a City of Refuge even for you! Besides, there is a bright side to every Truth of God if you have but the wit to spy it out. The same key which locks will also unlock--very much depends on the turn of the key--and still more on the turn of your thoughts. This brings me to a second remark--draw comfort even from a hard Truth. Take this advice in preference to that which I have already given. The Authorized translation here is very good, but I must confess that it is not quite so true to the woman's meaning as the Revised Version. She did not say, "Truth, Lord: yet," as if she were raising an objection, as I have already put it to you. But she said, "Truth, Lord, for." I have gone with the old translation because it expresses the way in which our mind too generally looks at things. We fancy that we set one Truth over against another, whereas all Truths of God are agreed and cannot be in conflict. Out of the very Truth which looks darkest we may gain consolation! She said, "Yes, Lord; for the dogs eat the crumbs which fall from their masters' table." She did not draw comfort from another truth which seemed to neutralize the first--but, as the bee sucks honey from the nettle, so did she gather encouragement from the severe Word of the Lord--"It is not meet to take the children's bread and to cast it to dogs." She said, "That is true, Lord, for even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their masters' table." She had not to turn what Christ said upside down--she took it as it stood and spied out comfort in it. Earnestly would I urge you to learn the art of deriving comfort from every statement of God's Word--not necessarily bringing up a second doctrine--but believing that even the present Truth which bears a threatening aspect is yet your friend. Do I hear you say, "How can I have hope? For salvation is of the Lord." Why, that is the very reason why you should be filled with hope and seek salvation of the Lord alone! If it were of yourself, you might despair! But as it is of the Lord, you may have hope. Do you groan out, "Alas, I can do nothing"? What of that? The Lord can do everything! Since salvation is of the Lord alone, ask Him to be its Alpha and Omega to you. Do you groan, "I know I must repent but I am so unfeeling that I cannot reach the right measure of tenderness"? This is true and therefore the Lord Jesus is exalted on high to give repentance! You will no more repent in your own power than you will go to Heaven in your own merit--but the Lord will grant you repentance unto life--for this, also, is a fruit of the Spirit! Beloved, when I was under a sense of sin I heard the doctrine of Divine Sovereignty--"He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy"--but that did not frighten me at all, for I felt more hopeful of Divine Grace through the sovereign will of God than by any other way! If pardon is not a matter of human deserving, but of Divine prerogative, then there is hope for me! Why should not I be forgiven as well as others? If the Lord had only three elect ones and these were chosen according to His own good pleasure, why should I not be one of them? I laid myself at His feet and gave up every hope but that which flowed from His mercy. Knowing that He would save a number that no man could number and that He would save every soul that believed in Jesus, I believed and was saved! It was well for me that salvation did not turn upon merit for I had no merit whatever! If it remained with Sovereign Grace, then I, also, could go through that door--for the Lord might as well save me as any other sinner. And inasmuch as I read, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out," I came, by His Grace, and He did not cast me out! Rightly understood, every Truth in God's Word leads to Jesus and no single Word drives the seeking sinner back. If you are a fine fellow, full of your own righteousness, every Gospel Truth looks black to you. But if you are a sinner deserving nothing of God but wrath--if in your heart you confess that you deserve condemnation--you are the kind of man that Christ came to save! You are the sort of man that God chose from before the foundation of the world and you may, without any hesitancy, come and put your trust in Jesus who is the sinner's Savior! Believing in Him you shall receive immediate salvation! I will not give you further instances and particulars for time would fail me. I leave you just there with this advice--it is not yours to raise questions but submissively to say, "Truth, Lord." Then it is your wisdom to set one Truth of God over against another till you have learned the better plan of finding light in the dark Truth itself. God help you to fetch honey from the rock and oil out of the flinty rock by a simple and unquestioning faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. III. Thirdly, in any case, whatever Christ says or does not say, HAVE FAITH IN HIM. Look at this woman's faith and try to copy it. It grew in its apprehension of Jesus. First, He is the Lord of mercy--she cried, "Have mercy on me." Have faith enough, dear Hearer, to believe that you need mercy. Mercy is not for the meritorious--the claim of the meritorious is for justice--not for mercy. Only the guilty need and seek mercy. Believe that God delights in mercy, delights to give Grace where it cannot be deserved, delights to forgive where there is no reason for forgiveness but His own goodness. Believe also that the Lord Jesus Christ whom we preach to you is the Incarnation of mercy--His very existence is mercy to you, His every word means mercy--His life, His death, His intercession in Heaven, all mean mercy, mercy, mercy, nothing but mercy! You need Divine mercy and Jesus is the embodiment of Divine mercy--He is the Savior for you! Believe in Him and the mercy of God is yours. This woman also called Him Son of David in which she recognized His manhood and His kingship towards man. Think of Jesus Christ as God over all, blessed forever--He that made the heaven and the earth and upholds all things by the word of His power. Know that He became man, veiling His Godhead in this poor clay of ours--He hung as a babe upon a woman's breast. He sat as a weary man upon the curb of a well. He died with malefactors on the Cross--and all this out of love to man! Can you not trust this Son of David? David was very popular because he went in and out among the people and proved himself the people's king. Jesus is such. David gathered to him a company of men who were greatly attached to him because when they came to him they were a broken-down crew--they were in debt and discontented--all the outcasts from Saul's dominions came around David and he became a captain to them. My Lord Jesus Christ is One chosen out of the people, chosen by God on purpose to be a Brother to us, a Brother born for adversity, a Brother who has come to associate with us despite our meanness and misery. He is the Friend of men and women who are ruined by their guilt and sin. "This Man receives sinners and eats with them." Jesus is the willing Leader of a people sinful and defiled whom He raises to justification and holiness and makes to dwell with Himself in Glory forever! Oh, will you not trust such a Savior as this? My Lord did not come into the world to save superior people who think themselves born saints. I say again, you may sit upon thrones till you and your thrones go down to perdition! But Jesus came to save the lost, the ruined, the guilty, the unworthy. Let such come clustering round Him like the bees around the queen bee, for He is ordained on purpose to collect the Lord's chosen ones. As it is written, "Unto Him shall the gathering of the people be." This believing woman might have been cheered by another theme. Our Lord said to His disciples, "I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel." "Ah," she thinks, "He is a Shepherd for lost sheep. Whatever His flock may be, He is a Shepherd, and He has a heart of compassion for poor lost sheep--surely He is One to whom I may look with confidence." Ah, dear Hearer! My Lord Jesus Christ is a Shepherd by office and by Nature, and if you are a lost sheep this is good tidings for you! There is a holy instinct in Him which makes Him gather the lambs with His arms and causes Him to search out the lost ones who were scattered in the cloudy and dark day. Trust Him to seek you! Yes, come to Him now and leave yourselves with Him. Further than that, this woman had a faith in Christ that He was like a great Householder. She seems to say, "Those disciples are children who sit at table and He feeds them on the bread of His love. He makes for them so great a feast and He gives to them so much food that if my daughter were healed, it would be a great and blessed thing to me, but to Him it would be no more than if a crumb fell under the table and a dog fed upon it." She does not ask to have a crumb thrown to her, but only to be allowed to pick up a crumb that has fallen from the table. She asks not even for a crumb which the Lord may drop--but for one which the children have let fall--they are generally great crumb-makers. I notice in the Greek, that as the word for "dogs" is, "little dogs," so the word rendered, "crumbs," is, "little crumbs"--small, inconsequential morsels which fall by accident. Think of this faith! To have the devil cast out of her daughter was the greatest thing she could imagine and yet she had such a belief in the greatness of the Lord Christ that she thought it would be no more to Him to make her daughter well than for a great housekeeper to let a poor little dog eat a tiny crumb that had been dropped by a child! Is not that splendid faith? And now, can you exercise such a faith? Can you believe it--you, a condemned, lost sinner--that if God saves you it will be the greatest wonder that ever was--and yet that to Jesus, who made Himself a Sacrifice for sin--it will be no more than if this day your dog or your cat should eat a tiny morsel that one of your children had dropped from the table? Can you think Jesus to be so great that what is Heaven to you will be only a crumb to Him? Can you believe that He can save you readily? As for me, I believe my Lord to be such a Savior that I can trust my soul wholly to Him and that without difficulty! And I will tell you something else--if I had all your souls in my body, I would trust them all to Jesus! Yes, and if I had a million sinful souls of my own I would freely trust the Lord Christ with the whole of them and I would say, "I am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed to Him against that day." Do not suppose that I speak thus because I am conscious of any goodness of my own? Far from it--my trust is in no degree in myself or anything I can do or be. If I were good I could not trust in Jesus. Why should I? I should trust myself! But because I have nothing of my own, I am obliged to live by trust and I am rejoiced that I may do so. My Lord gives me unlimited credit at the Bank of Faith! I am very deeply in debt to Him and I am resolved to be more indebted, still! Sinner as I am--if I were a million times as sinful as I am and then had a million souls, each one a million times more sinful than my own--I would still trust His atoning blood to cleanse me and Him to save me! By Your agony and bloody sweat. By Your Cross and passion. By Your precious death and burial. By Your glorious resurrection and ascension. By Your intercession for the guilty at the right hand of God, O Christ, I feel that I can repose in You! May you come to this point, all of you--that Jesus is abundantly able to save. You have been a thief, have you? The last person that was in our Lord's near company on earth was the dying thief. "Oh, but," you say, "I have been foul in life. I have defiled myself with all manner of evil." But those with whom He associates now were, all of them, once unclean--for they confess that they have washed their robes and made them white in His blood! Their robes were once so filthy that nothing but His heart's blood could make them white! Jesus is a great Savior, greater than my tongue can tell. I fail to speak His worth and I should still fail to do so, even if I could speak Heaven in every word and express infinity in every sentence! Not all the tongues of men or of angels can fully set forth the greatness of the Grace of our Redeemer. Trust Him! Are you afraid to trust Him? Then make a dash for it. Venture to do so-- "Venture on Him, venture wholly; Let no other trust intrude." "Look unto Me," He says, "and be you saved, all the ends of the earth: for I am God and there is none else." Look! Look now! Look to Him alone and as you look to Him with the look of faith He will look on you with loving acceptance and say, "Great is your faith: be it unto you even as you will." You shall be saved at this very hour! And though you came into this house of prayer grievously vexed with a devil, you shall go out at peace with God and as restful as an angel! God grant you this blessing for Christ's sake. Amen. __________________________________________________________________ The Deceitfulness of Sin A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 16, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "But exhort one another daily, while it is called Today; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." Hebrews 3:13. SIN is the greatest evil in the universe. It is the parent of all other ills. All manner of evils draw their bitterness from this fountain of wormwood and gall. If a man had every possession a mortal could desire, sin could turn every blessing into a curse. And, on the other hand, if a man had nothing for his inheritance but suffering and stood clear from all sin, his afflictions, his losses, his deprivations might each one be a gain to him. We ought not to pray so much against sickness, or trial, or temptation, or even against death itself, as against sin! Satan, himself, cannot hurt us except as he is armed with the poisoned arrows of sin. Lord, keep us from sin. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil." There is no evil like the evil of sin-- deliver us from it, O Lord! Alas, we are sadly prone to sin and evil has great influence over us. When I say this, I refer not only to those who are "dead in trespasses and sins," in whom sin is the great reigning power--for they are the servants of sin--but I refer also to the people of God. Even we that have been born-again and are, in a measure, sanctified by the Spirit of God--even we, I say--have a fleshly nature whose tendencies are evil, whose desires draw towards sin. How soon we slip! How much we need to be held up! How ought we daily to cry for Divine Grace lest we, also, should be "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin"! Upon that subject I am going to speak this morning, dwelling, for the most part, upon "the deceitfulness of sin." To God's people this is a very important matter--for in the deceit of sin lies our main danger. If sin comes to us as sin, we are swift to hate it and strong to repel it, by the Grace of God. When we are walking with God, we only need to know that an action is forbidden and straightway we avoid it--we shun the evil thing when it is plainly evil. But when sin puts on another dress and comes to us speaking a language which is not its own--even those who would avoid sin as sin, may, by degrees, be tempted to evil and deluded into wrong. It is well when sin carries its black flag at the masthead for then we know what we are dealing with. The deceitfulness of sin is most ruinous. We have grave cause to watch and pray against secret sins, veiled sins, popular sins, fascinating sins, deceitful sins. May God grant that the words which I may now utter may set us on our watchtower and excite all our faculties to enquire diligently, lest we be "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." Let us come at once to the center of our subject. Our first head is, sin has a singular power to deceive. Secondly, its deceivableness has hardening influence upon the soul--we may grow "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." And, therefore, thirdly, there is great need that this be fought against. We must strive against our cunning enemy and resist him in many ways, one of which is mentioned in the text--"Exhort one another daily, while it is called Today." May the Holy Spirit put power into our meditation at this hour! I. First, then, SIN HAS A SINGULAR POWER TO DECEIVE. We have only to look back to the beginning of our race to be sure of this. Eve, in the Garden, was pure, intelligent and filled with good dispositions. Her faculties were well balanced for no original sin or natural depravity had put her mind out of order. Yet that lovely woman, without a taint upon her heart or will--perfect as she came from her Maker's hand--was overcome by Satan who embodied in himself the deceitfulness of sin. The serpent played his part right cunningly with the woman and soon withdrew her from her loyal obedience to the Lord God. She began to question, to parley, to argue with rebellious suggestions and after a while she put forth her hand and took of the fruit which had been forbidden. And she also gave it to her husband with her and he did eat of it. If man in his perfection was so readily deceived by sin, what do you think of yourself, fallen and inclined to evil as you are? Will not sin soon deceive you? I will even go further back than the Garden--for the serpent who was the instrument of evil in the Garden was once an angel of God! Lucifer, the light-bearer, Son of the Morning, once stood high in the hierarchy of spirits. But sin entered into his heart and the sublime angel became a loathsome fiend! Lucifer became Satan, as prompt for evil as once he had been swift for good. If sin overcame angels, can we fight with it? If sin entangled in its thrice-accursed net even the pure spirits of Heaven, what do you think, sons and daughters of fallen parents--will you not soon be deceived by it unless the Grace of God shall make you wise unto salvation? Since your hearts are deceitful and sin is deceitful, you are in peril, indeed! The deceitfulness of sin will be seen in several points to which I call your attention. Its deceit may be seen in the manner of its approaches to us. Sin does not uncover all its hideousness nor reveal its horrible consequences--but it comes to us in a very subtle way offering us advantages. Intellectually, it comes with a question, or an inquiry. Ought we not to question and to enquire? Are we to receive everything implicitly? The question is, however, full often the thin end of the wedge which Satan drives home in the form of carnal wisdom, doubt, infidelity and practical atheism. The practice of sin may be encouraged by a doubt as to its penalty. "Yes, has God said?" is the speculative question which is meant to undermine the foundations of godly fear in the heart. How tiny a drop of sinful distrust of God's Word will poison all the thoughts of the soul! Sin frequently comes as a bare suggestion or an imagination--an airy thing spun of such stuff as dreams are made of. You do not think of committing the fault, nor even of talking of it--but you think of it pleasantly and view it as a thing bright and lustrous to the imagination. The thought fascinates and then the spell of evil begins its deadly work--thought condenses into desire and desire grows to purpose--and purpose ripens into act. So slyly does sin come into the soul that it is there before we are aware of it. I have known a sin insinuate itself by the way of the repulsion of another sin. A man has wasted his substance in profligacy--and by way of repentance in later days he becomes a miser--greedy, wretched, living only for himself and his hoard. So have I seen the publican reform and develop into a Pharisee. The pendulum went sadly far in this direction and now, to make amends, it swings too far the other way. The shivering fit follows upon the burning heat--it is but the same fever of sin in different phases. A man will fly from pride to meanness, from moroseness to jollity, from obstinacy to laxity. Thus the shutting of one gate may open another and one sin may crawl in as another creeps out. You set all your guards to keep the northern border and the enemies come up from the south, taking you unawares. You pursue a virtue till you hurry into a vice and shun one evil so much that you fall into a worse. Sin has a way of adapting itself to us and to our circumstances. One man is of a sanguine temperament and he is tempted to speculate, to gamble and ultimately to become dishonest. Another man is of a sober frame of mind and he is tempted to be melancholy, disputatious, peevish, rebellious against God. To the young man sin will come with fire for passions which are all too ready to blaze. To the old man sin will come with the chill frost of parsimony, or the frost of sloth, or the canker of care. Sin's quiver has an arrow for the rich and a dart for the poor--it has one form of poison for the prosperous and another for the unsuccessful. This master fisherman in the sea of life does not use the same bait for all sorts of fish but he knows the creatures he would capture! If sin finds you poor as an owlet, it will tempt you to envy, or to steal, or to doubt God, or to follow crooked ways of gain. If sin finds you abounding in riches, it will follow quite another tack and lure you on to self-indulgence, or to pride, or worldly fashion. Satan knows more about us than we know about ourselves--he knows our raw places and our weak points--and in what joint there was a breakage in our youth. Sin, like the north wind, finds out every cranny in the house of manhood and comes whistling in where we fondly dreamed that we were quite screened from its intrusion. Sin creeps towards us as a lion stealthily draws near to his prey, or as the enemy creeps towards his victim without sound of foot or stir of twig. Beware of the sin which, like Agag, comes delicately! Watch well against the temptation whose words are smoother than butter but inwardly they are drawn swords. Next, sin is deceitful in its object, for the object which it puts before us is not that which is its actual result. We are not tempted to provoke our Maker, or willfully cast off the authority of righteousness. We are not invited to do these things for their own sake. No, no--we are moved to do evil under the idea that some present good will come of it! The man thinks, when he yields to sin, that he shall enjoy an additional pleasure or shall gain an extra profit--or at least shall avoid a measure of evil and escape from something which he dreads. He does the wrong for the sake of what he hopes will come of it. In brief, he does evil that good may come! Thus, the seemingly good is dangled before the short-sighted creature, man, as the bait before the fish. In every case, this object is a piece of deceit. Evil does not lead to good, nor sin promote our real profit--we are fooled if we think so. Yet, in most cases the man does not commit the sin with the design of breaking the Law of God and defying his Maker, but because he fancies that something is to be gained--and, in his judgment, he better understands what is good for him even than the Lord God by whose wisdom he ought to be guided. Just as in the case of the old serpent, the argument is, "God refuses you that which would be for your advantage and you will be wise to take it." The arch-deceiver insinuated that God knew that if Adam and Eve ate of the forbidden fruit their eyes would be opened and they would be as gods--and therefore, to keep them under subjection, He denied them the charming fruit. Perhaps Milton's idea is right. "See what this fruit has done for me," says the serpent. "I, a mere reptile, am now able to speak and argue like a man! Go, take the fruit and you, as men, will rise to the rank of God." Thus are we lured and limed like the silly fowls of the air! The object set before us is delusive--the reward of sin may glitter, but it is not gold--but yet, as gold, it thrusts itself upon our erring judgment. This deceitfulness of sin is present everywhere--the street, the house, the private room--all come to be enchanted ground unless we dwell in God. Are we not often caused to think that we could make at least a little gain, or do a measure of extra good if we might just to a small degree quit the strait and narrow way? This is falsehood, base as Hell. Sin is deceitful, next, in the names it wears. It is very apt to change its title. It seldom cares for its own true description. Fine words are often used to cover foul deeds. We read, at times, in the newspapers, of gentlemen who have an alias, or possibly half-a-dozen--in such cases there is always a reason for it. Sin has many names by which it would disguise its real character. In his, "Holy War," Mr. Bunyan tells us that Covetousness called himself by the name of Prudent-Thrifty. Lasciviousness was named Harmless-Mirth and Anger was known as Good-Zeal. Nowadays anger is known as "proper spirit," and infidelity is "Advanced Theology." Almost every sin, nowadays, has a pretty name to be called by on Sundays and silver slippers to wear in fine society. The paintbrush and the powder box are much used upon the wrinkled countenance of sin to make it look fair and beautiful. The fig leaf is not only worn on the man's body--sin itself puts on the apron. To hide the nakedness of sin is the great desire of Satan, for thus he hopes that even the better sort may fall in love with a decent evil though they might have shunned an odious transgression. Alas, how sadly prone are men to call things by false names! Even those who profess to be godly men--when they are indulging sin--will speak of it as though it were no raven, black as night, but a dove, with its wings covered with silver. I knew one who often drank to excess but he spoke of himself as obliged to "take a little for his health." He was not drunk, but excited. And if he shouted uproariously, it was caused by his convivial temperament. This dear innocent only took "a glass" or a "drop" and yet one might not be further off the truth if he described him as taking a barrel or a hogshead! Diminutives are names of endearment and men would not talk of their sins as such little things unless they loved them dearly. Today, "worldliness" is "being abreast of the age." False doctrine is described as "advanced thought." Indifference to the Truth of God is liberality; heresy is breadth of view. Yet names do not alter things! Call garlic perfume and it remains a rank odor. Style the fiend an angel of light and he is none the less a devil. Sin--call it by what names you may--is still evil, only evil and that continually. Hear how our God cries concerning it--"Oh, do not this abominable thing that I hate!" Lord, save us from the wolf in the sheep's clothing! May we have Grace to see through the mask of sin, detect its loathsome face and turn from it with full purpose of heart! Sin also shows its special deceitfulness in the argument which it uses with men. Have you never heard its voice whispering to you, "Do not make much ado about nothing. Is it not a little one? There is no need to boggle over so small a matter as this. It is not right, but still it is a mere trifle, unworthy of notice. Do it! Do it!" My Friends, can there be such a thing as a small sin? The point of the rapier is small and for that reason the more deadly. That which grieves the Lord cannot be a little evil. To pluck the fruit from the forbidden tree was, of all actions, the simplest--yet it brought death into the world with all its train of woe--and that which seems most trifling may have infinite consequences following in its track. Then sin will raise the question, and say, "Is this really wrong? May we not be too precise? Are not the times changed? Do not circumstances alter the command?" Sin is great at raising difficult points of reasoning. "Are there not some points of view in which this act may be allowable, though from more usual points of view it must certainly be regarded as an unhallowed thing?" He that wills to do wrong is eager to find a loophole for himself. He that has begun to seek an excuse is on the border of the enemy. He that is loyal to the core and true to his King in everything makes short work of questions, for when he is not sure that a thing is right he leaves it alone. The deceitfulness of sin creates in the mind a tendency to do evil because others have done so. We have known people so eager to excuse sin that they cry, "Look at Noah, at David, at Peter," and so on--as if the fault of others were an excuse for them. It is true that these men did wrong and were restored--but they suffered greatly. That is a vile mind which eats up the sins of God's people as men eat bread. Arguing for the indulgence of sin because of the failings of good men is not only folly, but wickedness! What if a man was saved who had taken poison? Shall I, therefore, drink the deadly draught? Some time ago a person sought to blow out his brains with a pistol. He still lives--and shall I, therefore, put a revolver to my forehead? Yet such detestable arguments often suffice to mislead men through the deceitfulness of sin! Beware of the witchery of sin! With feeble minds the argument is, "Beware lest you be singular. As well be out of the world as out of fashion. When you are at Rome you must do as Rome does." Weak minds are plentiful and to these, to be thought singular and odd is a thing to be dreaded and shunned--they must be in the swim though the water should be of the foulest. To them it would be next door to a crime or a calamity to be out of fashion. To some of us this is no temptation for we prefer to quit the crowd and walk alone--but to the bulk of people this is a mighty argument and yet a most deceitful one. Sin has often whispered in the vain minds of men, "This action might be very wrong for other people, but it will not be evil in you. Under your present circumstances you may take leave to overlook the command of God. True, you would severely condemn such a sin in another, but in yourself it is quite another matter. Things must be left to your superior discretion. You who do so much that is good and are such a remarkable person, you may venture where others should not." Sin will also plead with you that your circumstances are such that they furnish you with an excellent justification-- you cannot do otherwise than make an exception to the general rule under the singular conditions in which you are now placed. It tempts you to put forth your hand unto iniquity, arguing that it is the quick way and the only way out of your present difficulties. This is specious reasoning--yet are men foolish enough to be swayed by it. Sin will also flatter a man with the notion that he can go just so far and no farther and retreat with ease. He can tread the verge of crime and yet be innocent. Another person would be in great danger--but this self-satisfied fool thinks that he has such power over himself and that he is so intelligent and so experienced--that he can stop at a safe point. This moth can play with the candle and not singe its wings. This child can put its finger between the bars and yet never burn himself. I know you, my self-contained Friend, and I know your boast that you can stand on the edge of a cliff and look down upon the foaming sea and while other people's heads grow giddy, your brain is clear and your foot is firm. You may try the experiment once too often! The deceivableness of sin is such that it makes those most secure who are most in peril. Oh, for Grace to watch and pray lest we, also, become "hardened through the deceitfulness of sin"! This deceivableness is further seen in the excuses which it frames afterwards. It needs a great general to cover a retreat and conduct it to a safe conclusion. Sin knows how to furnish a rear-guard for itself lest it be assailed by the troops of repentance. To screen the conscience from regret is one of the efforts of deceitful sin. "Ah," says the man to himself, "I did wrong but what can you expect of poor flesh and blood?" To hear him talk you would think him a pitiable victim, rather than a blameworthy offender! With a sham tear in his eyes he lays this flattering unction to his soul--that he is weak but not wicked--he was compelled to do wrong! He deludes himself into thinking he would not have thought of it had there not been a necessity. Beware of aptness in the making of an excuse! And above all beware of casting the blame of sin on Providence, or on God. Sin will also add, "And, after all, though you were wrong, yet you were not so bad as you might have been. And considering the temptation, you may wonder at your own moderation in transgression. On the whole, you have behaved better than others would have done." Thus the sinner will weave a garment out of the cobwebs of his sins. Self-righteousness is poor stuff when it can be fashioned even out of our faults! Such is the deceivableness of sin, that it makes itself out to be praiseworthy. Then sin will suggest, "Well, you can soon make up for lost time. Live nearer to God and be more useful! And then your little divergence will soon be made up." It even ventures coarsely to propose a price for pardon. "Give something extra to a good cause and make amends for offenses." The old Popish idea of purchasing pardon by some extra piece of religion comes up in many forms. "Ah!" you say, "surely nobody hears such deceitful talk!" Has sin never whispered all this to you? If it has not, then it has taken another way of deceiving you--but deceive you it will unless Almighty Grace shall keep you ever on the watch against its devices! The deceitfulness of sin is seen again in its promises. We shall not go far into sin without finding out how greatly it lies to us. It promises liberty and the man who yields to it becomes a slave. It promises light and the man gives up the old faith to go after the new light and before long the darkness thickens about him into sevenfold midnight! Sin promises elevation of mind and spirit and before long the wretch is worldly, pleasure-loving, groveling, superstitious! Sin keeps none of its promises, save only to the ears. Holiness is truth--but sin is a lie. Sin is false through and through--it promises pleasure and it leads to misery--it feigns a Heaven, but inflicts a real Hell. Once more, sin is deceitful in the influence which it carries with it. At first sin cultivates a free and easy bearing and it says to the sinner, "Don't think. Leave consideration to older heads."-- "I count it one of the wisest things To drive dull care away." The guilty one goes on day after day without looking to his way. His happiness lies in carelessness. He hurries downward to destruction and it is enough to him that the road is easy. With a laugh and a joke he puts off serious things till tomorrow. He is a free-thinker and, to a large extent, a free actor, too--those who are near him often find him making too free. Yes, but he is being deceived and by-and-by, when conscience wakes up, he will find it so. Out of his own mouth will come the death warrant of his jollity. In these more serious days, what does sin say?--"You have provoked the Spirit of God and there is no mercy for you. Do not listen to the preacher of the Gospel, it is impossible that you should be forgiven. Your case is hopeless--you are finally condemned--and there is no changing the verdict. As for the promises of God, they are not for such a sinner as you are. You are given up to despair and you will, without doubt, perish everlastingly." This is the opposite pole of sin's deceiving, for, though it has changed sides, it is still deceiving. Despair is as much a sin as profanity--to doubt God is as truly a crime as to take pleasure in uncleanness. Thus will sin, by any means, by all means, endeavor to keep men under its tyranny so as to work their ruin. Let no man in this place think that he cannot be deceived--he is already deluded by his pride. Let no woman dream that she has come to such a state of perfection that she cannot be deluded by sin--she is even now in imminent peril. We have a cunning enemy and we have no wit of our own wherewith to match the subtlety of the old serpent and the deceitfulness of sin. Unless we call in the help of Him who is "the Wisdom of God," we shall be led as an ox to the slaughter and perish in our folly. II. I want you, in the second place, to notice very carefully that THIS DECEITFULNESS HAS A HARDENING POWER OVER THE HEART--"Lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin." How does that come about? Partly through our familiarity with sin. We may look at hateful sin till we love it. It has the eyes of a basilisk and its gaze is fascinating. At first you are shocked by sin--but if you see it every day it will cease to distress you. Persons who have never heard profane language are greatly grieved as they go down the streets of London--and yet even good people who live in certain localities come to hear it without horror. This is one of the sad influences of sin--it makes the heart rough by contact with it. The lion in the fable alarmed the fox when first he saw him but soon he ceased to tremble at him and at last made him his companion. Familiarity with sin makes the conscience dull and at length deadens sensibility. Security in wrongdoing also leads to this kind of hardening. A man has been dishonest--he is found out and he suffers for it. I could almost thank God, for now he may cease from his evil course. But one of the greatest curses that can happen to a man is for him to do wrong with impunity--he will do it again and again and again and he will proceed from bad to worse. I am always glad when I hear of a young gambler whose pocket is cleaned out at his first venture--if he has any wit he will quit the way of destruction--at least we hope he will. But if he gains at first he will stake more and more and become a confirmed gamester. It is just so with sin. Its deceitfulness is assisted by a man's being able to go a little further and a little further without any great hurt appearing to come of it--and so the heart grows used to the increasing heat and is hardened to it--until he can live in a furnace heated seven times hotter by sin. Sinners descend by an inclined plane till they find themselves far down in the abyss and think it impossible to rise out of it. Then there follows on the back of this insensibility to sin an insensibility to the Gospel. I think I could mention some who come here who once trembled under the Word--but they do not tremble now. They still come because they like to pick out the few smart bits the preacher may say, or the witty anecdotes that he may let fall--but nothing touches their conscience or arouses their fears. If there is a sermon that is likely to disturb them, they play the part of the adder which will not hear. I think with sadness, of one, who, in reply to the remark, "What a terrible sermon we had this morning!" answered, "I never pay any attention to that kind of thing. I only listen to him when he is comforting us." Hypocrites get into such a condition at last, that if all the Apostles were to preach to them and Jesus Himself were to denounce the judgments of God, they would simply make an observation upon the style of the address, or remark that it was a very searching discourse. But as for themselves being moved, they are so "past feeling" that nothing comes home to them. The devils believe and tremble-- these profess to believe every Truth of God--but trembling is not for them. In time comes in the help of unbelief. When a man begins to doubt his Bible, to doubt the Atonement, to doubt the wrath to come and so on, there is generally a cause for it--and that cause is not always intellectual, but moral and spiritual. "There is something rotten in Denmark." I mean something rotten in the heart and this makes something rotten in the head. Very naturally a man does not like that Truth of God which does not like him. That which condemns him he tries to condemn. A Truth makes him uneasy and so he tries to doubt it--and the tone of society soon helps him to discover a stale objection which will answer his turn and enable him to set up in business as an unbeliever. Then he ceases to feel the preaching, for, as a rule, we only feel under the Gospel in proportion as we believe it to be true! And if we persuade ourselves that it is all a myth, or a fiction, we have made a pillow for our guilty heads. One of the worst points about hardening in sin is companionship in it. Evil men seek other evil men to be their associates. Oh, how many are ruined by company! We do not wonder that they get no good on Sundays when we know where they spend their week evenings. Who are their chosen companions when they take their pleasure? Many a man will do, when connected with others, what he himself would never have thought of doing. Inasmuch as others are of the same mind, he joins hand in hand with them and encourages himself in evil. The daring, the looseness, the profanity, the infidelity of abler persons tempt the weak-minded to venture where they would have been afraid to go. So the deceitfulness of sin which led the man to seek evil company leads to the further hardening of his heart by that company. O Sirs! Your hearts are every day either softening or hardening! The sun that shines with vehement heat melts the wax, but it, at the same time, hardens the clay. The effect of the Gospel is always present in some degree--it is a savor of life unto life--or a savor of death unto death--to all who hear it. You cannot listen to my plain rebukes and earnest warnings without growing worse, if you do not grow better! Pray God to give you a lively conscience and when you have it, do nothing to deaden it. It is much better, even, to be morbidly sensitive and fear that you are wrong when you are right than to grow careless as to whether you are right or wrong--and so to go on blindly till you fall into the ditch of open sin. "Do professing Christians ever do this?" Do they not do it? Is not this the heartbreak of pastors, the dishonor of the Church, the crucifying of our Lord afresh? O Lord, preserve us from it, lest any one of us is hardened through the deceitfulness of sin! III. Now I conclude by a practical observation that THIS DECEITFULNESS OF SIN AND THIS TENDENCY TO BECOME HARDENED NEED TO BE FOUGHT AGAINST. How is it to be done? I will not keep to my text just now, but enlarge the scope of my discourse by taking in the context. The way to keep from hardness of heart and from the deceitfulness of sin is to believe. We read, "To whom swore He that they should not enter into His rest, but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief." Believe!--Faith has saved you. Believe!--Faith will save you! Believe!--Faith has brought you to Christ! Believe!--Faith will keep you in Christ! Believe against the present temptation. Believe against all future deceitfulness of sin. You shall find that just in proportion as faith grows strong, the deceit of sin will be baffled. Under the strong light of a living faith you see through the sinful imposture and you no longer put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter! But under the half light, the twilight, the darkness of a questioning, half-hearted faith you cannot see the true color of an act and you are easily deceived. Believe in the living God and in His righteousness and in your obligation to serve Him-- then sin will appear exceeding sinful. Believe in Christ, who took your sin, and bore it in His own body on the Cross-- then sin will be seen in its black colors. Believe in the Holy Spirit, by whose power you can be delivered from the deceitfulness of sin and as you believe, so shall it be unto you and you shall stand fast where the half-Believer slides. The next advice I would give is this--if you would be saved from the deceitfulness of sin confess it honestly before God. It is necessary to lay bare your heart before the living God. Though sin calls itself by another name, you call it by its right name. When you have sinned, make no excuses for yourself, but with weeping and lamentation cry, "Lord, I have sinned." Tell the Lord all the evil connected with your transgression and try to spy out and humbly learn the villainy of your heart, the falseness of your nature, the crookedness of your disposition and the loathsomeness of your corruptions. Pray that sin may appear sin--it cannot appear in a worse light. Thus you shall not so readily be caught in its traps and lures. It lays its snares in the darkness--keep yours eyes open. It digs its pits and covers them most cunningly--look before you put your foot down. Tread very cautiously, for your way is full of pitfalls. When you have sinned, then confess the great evil of your wickedness--for this humble penitence will be not only your way to pardon--but to future purity. Oh, that the Spirit of God may teach you this! Again, cultivate great tenderness of heart. Do not believe that to grieve over sin is lowering to manhood--indulge yourself largely in sweet repentance. Do not think that to yield to the power of the Word and to be greatly affected by it, shows you to be weak--think, rather, that this is an infirmity in which your strength lies. As for myself, I would be swayed by the Word of God as the ripe corn is swayed by the summer wind. I would be by God's Spirit as readily moved as the leaves of the aspen by the breeze. I would be sensitive to the gentlest breath of my Lord. God grant that we may have a conscience quick as the apple of an eye! A conscience seared as with a hot iron is the sure prelude of destruction. God save us from a heart over which sin has cast a coat of callous insensibility! But the text, itself, says, "Exhort one another daily," from which I gather two lessons. First, hear exhortation from others and, secondly, practice exhortation to others. I have known people of this kind, that if a word is spoken to them, however gently, as to a wrong which they are doing, their temper is up in a moment. Who are they that they should be spoken to? Dear Friend, who are you that you should not be spoken to? Are you such an off-cast and such an outcast that your Christian Brothers and Sisters must give you up? Surely you do not want to bear that title! I have even known persons take offense because the Word has been spoken from the pulpit too pointedly. This is to take offense where we ought to show gratitude! "Oh," says one, "I will never hear that man again! He is too personal." What kind of a man would you like to hear? Will you give your ear to one who will please you to your ruin and flatter you to your destruction? Surely you are not so foolish! Do you choose that kind of doctor who never tells you the truth about your bodily health? Do you trust one who falsely assured you that there was nothing the matter with you when all the while a terrible disease was folding its cruel arms around you? Your doctor would not hurt your feelings. He washes his hands with invisible soap and gives you a portion of the same. He will send you just a little pill and you will be all right. He would not have you think of that painful operation which a certain surgeon has suggested to you. He smirks and smiles until, after a little while of him and his pills, you say to yourself, "I am getting worse and worse and yet he smiles and smiles and flatters and soothes me. I will have done with him and his little pills and go to one who will examine me honestly and treat me properly. He may take his soap and his smile elsewhere." O Sirs, believe me, I would think it a waste of time--no, a crime like that of murder--to stand here and prophesy smooth things to you! We must all learn to hear what we do not like. The question is not, "Is it pleasant?" but, "Is it true?" We ought to be able to take a loving exhortation from our Brothers and Sisters. We must do so if we are to be preserved from the deceitfulness of sin. Another eye may see for me what I cannot see myself. Reproofs should be given with great tenderness but even if they wound us, we must bear them. "Let the righteous smite me. It shall be a kindness: and let him reprove me, it shall be an excellent oil." Let us be thankful that some saints love us well enough to give themselves the pain and trouble of exhorting us. And then let us endeavor, if the Lord is keeping us by His Grace, to "exhort one another daily." We are not to scold one another daily, nor to suspect one another daily, nor to pick holes in one another's coats daily--but when we see a manifest fault in a Brother, we are bound to tell him of it in love--and when we do not see any fault of commission, but the Brother is evidently growing lax and cold, it is well to stir him up to greater zeal by a loving exhortation. Wisely said, a word may save a soul from declension and sin. A good fire may need a little stirring. The best of Believers may grow better by the communications of his friends. Alas, we do not care enough for the souls of our Brethren! If we thought more carefully of others, we should probably think more carefully about ourselves. "Exhort one another daily." Watch over your own children, your wife, your husband and then do not forget your neighbors and fellow workmen. Cry to God to give us union of spirit with all the Lord's chosen and may that union of spirit be a living and loving one! We would not be frozen together in chill propriety, but we would be welded together at a white heat of loving earnestness, so as to be truly one in Christ Jesus! Let us take for our motto, "One and all." Let us maintain individuality by each one watching against personal sin and merging individuality in the commonwealth of saints by each one laboring for the sanctification of his brother. But, oh, dear Friends, after all that I have said, he is well kept whom the Lord keeps! Commit yourselves unto the Lord--the Holy Spirit who is able to keep you from stumbling. Let us, by a renewed act of faith, hand ourselves over to the Lord Jesus that He may save us. You that have never done so, I pray that you may be moved to it. You cannot keep yourselves. Up till now you may have been virtuous, sober, honest, respected and beloved--but will it last? Take a life assurance policy upon your moral character by going to Jesus Himself and asking Him to renew you in heart and soul, by His Spirit, that you may be in Christ Jesus and in Him may abide forever. If you have been greatly deceived by sin, yet come to Jesus now! He can undeceive you and undo the damage you have suffered. Trust in Him, who is the faithful and true Witness, to deliver you from all falsehood and sin and to keep you true to the end. The Lord bless these words of mine, which, however feeble, have been earnestly meant for your good, for Jesus' sake! Amen. __________________________________________________________________ To Those Who Feel Unfit for Communion DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "For there were many in the congregation that were not sanctified: therefore the Levites had the charge of the killing of the Passover lambs for everyone that was not clean to sanctify them unto the Lord. For a multitude of the people, even many of Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar, and Zebulun, had not cleansed themselves, yet did they eat the Passover contrary to what was written. But Hezekiah prayed for them, saying "The good Lord pardon everyone that prepares his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers, though he is not cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary. And the Lord listened to Hezekiah, and healed the people." 2 Chronicles 30:17-20. BRETHREN, it should be much to our joy that we do not serve under the ceremonial Law, nor live within the legal dispensation. The legal economy exhibited to the people a multitude of types and figures and consequently it laid down many rules and rituals--and these were enacted with such solemn and terrible penalties that the people were in constant fear of offending and found obedience irksome by reason of the weakness of their flesh and the unspirituality of their minds. As for our Lord Jesus, His yoke is easy and His burden is light. But concerning the Law, even Peter speaks of it as "a yoke which neither our fathers nor we were able to bear." We are now brought into the glorious liberty of the children of God, a liberty which those who had been in the bondage could best appreciate. Those who are still under legal restrictions feel the pressure of them when they see the liberty of others. Sitting at dinner with a Samaritan who considered himself under the Law of the Pentateuch, I noticed that the worthy man refused first one dish and then another, and at length he exclaimed, "Moses very hard," evidently feeling that the limit upon his diet involved a good deal of self-denial. Some of us could cheerfully bear such small matters as abstinence from certain meats and drinks, but if we were surrounded with regulations and prescriptions entering into minute details, our life would be full of cares and we should feel ill at ease. We have attained the liberty of the Gospel and we are not called upon to observe days, and months and years--nor to border our garments with a certain color, nor to trim our hair by rule. Neither are we called to practice different washing and purifying, or to observe laws and regulations amounting to a continual round of rites. The "free Spirit" dwells in us--to us every place is hallowed! Our religion is not of the outward and in the matter of meats we call nothing common or unclean. We have ordinances, it is true, but they are few and simple. They are but two and each of them is instructive and easy. Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, which are for the Lord's people only, are easy of observance and are for our help and comfort, but are by no means burdensome. These are not laid upon us as yokes but given to us as privileges. Neither are they enforced by such a sentence as this--"The soul that forbears to keep the Passover shall be cut off from among his people." Gospel ordinances are choice enjoyments, enjoined upon us by the loving rule of Him whom we call Master and Lord. We accept them with joy and delight. In keeping these commandments there is great reward--but they are not presented to us as matters of servitude. In Baptism we are made to see the burial of our Lord and are helped to enter into spiritual fellowship with Him therein--this is not a burdensome ordinance, but a delight! The Lord's own Supper is a joyful festival, a feast of fat things--of fat things full of marrow--of wines on the lees well-refined. All is joy and rest about these two ordinances. In enjoying them we feel that we are not under Law, but under Grace. I would not have you come to this table with the same trembling with which an Israelite ate the Passover, or stand there as the Israelite did, with your loins girt and your staff in your hand, eating in haste and apprehension. No, but you may sit at ease, or even recline to express the rest which you enjoy at the Lord's Table and the close communion to which your Redeemer invites you. He has called you His friends and He has honored you to be His table companions, to sit and feast with Him without reserve. Lest liberty should degenerate into license, I am bound to remind you that we are not left without command and direction. The Law of Love is as binding on us as ever the Law of Works could have been. We are still called to obedience--the obedience of faith. A most strict but most happy service grows out of sonship and no true son wishes to disown it. Should not the son honor his Father? Does not the Lord Himself say, "If I am a father, where is My honor?" There is a service of which we read that God spares such a one, "as a man spares his own son that serves him." We are not under the Law, but yet we are not without law to Christ--and concerning these ordinances which I have described as the privilege of the Lord's free men, there is an order of the Lord's house and a discipline of His family which must by no means be set aside by the loving child. We are not slaves fearing the lash, but we are sons who have a filial fear of grieving our heavenly Father. The rules concerning the Passover and the right keeping of that high festival were plain and definite--and to break them would have been a great offense to the God of Israel. These rules required a certain ceremonial cleanness on the part of all who partook of the Paschal lamb and those who were defiled were kept back so that they could not present the offering of the Lord in its appointed season. The sacred rite was not to be celebrated in heedless formalism, but with a careful cleansing out of the old leaven that they might keep the feast aright. Now, concerning the memorial Supper of the Lord, we have no rubric as to the bread or the wine and no prescribed regulation as to posture or manner of procedure. But there are certain notes of guidance which we shall do well to follow with loving care. For instance, when we come to this Table of the Lord, it should not be without a preparedness of heart for it--"Let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of this bread and drink of this cup." To come here irreverently, or with sinister motive, is to secure condemnation! To come here idly and carelessly is to lose the blessing. We should approach the Table with hearts full of humility, gratitude, faith and expectation. We should receive the bread and wine with sincere longing after fellowship with Christ, tender love to His blessed Person and great joy in His finished work. If we do not thus partake of the sacred feast we shall miss its high design. Yet, nevertheless, since I fear that there may be a certain number here tonight of the Lord's own people who are in the condition of the multitude in Hezekiah's day out of Manasseh and Zebulun--who have not sufficiently cleansed themselves after the manner of the purification of the sanctuary--I am anxious to show them how they may, even now, come to the Divine ordinance and realize profit from it through the abundance of Divine Grace. God helping them, from this moment they may commence the necessary preparedness of heart and may speedily attain to it. So long as they do sincerely wish to meet with God and to enjoy fellowship with Him in His ordinance, there is no reason why they should retire from the assembly of the saints. They may begin, even now, I say, to make ready for this festival and by Divine Grace they may so partake of this Supper as to find in it all that their hearts desire. Our Lord is able, by His Spirit, to wash away their present defilement and quicken them in mind and soul so that they may both draw near to God with true heart and discern the Lord's body with clear understanding. Such is the power of Divine Grace, that in a few moments the Lord can take away all iniquity and receive us graciously! Our Great High Priest, in the sacred authority of His Divine office, can confer perfect cleansing and give us full right to sit with the family and partake of the Lamb and to rest beneath the roof, whose door has been marked for safety by the sprinkled blood. I. So I will begin by saying, first, that as in the case before us in the text, so at this very time, THERE ARE SEASONS WHEN WE FEEL UNFIT FOR THE SACRED ORDINANCE OF THE LORD'S TABLE. It may be that at this hour there are many in the congregation who are not sanctified for the feast and are not cleansed according to the due order. I speak not of you all--there are choice spirits in this place who "walk in the light, as God is in the light," and have fellowship with God perpetually--so that the blood of Jesus cleanses them from all sin. Why should we not all seek this acceptable preparedness so that we may never be unfit for the most hallowed of all engagements? Ought we ever to be unfit for our Lord's Table? Those two disciples who walked from Jerusalem to Emmaus talking together by the way--what a mercy it was that when their Lord asked them the manner of their conversation they could give this for their short answer--"Concerning Jesus of Nazareth"! Could you answer in such commendable style when you talk together? Consider, my Brothers and Sisters, and answer to your consciences. It is well to be in such a condition that in our common talk we are still keeping near to Jesus of Nazareth. The transition from our private dialogue to our Lord's actual company and even to His being made known unto us in the breaking of bread should be just like the gliding of a stream from one part of its channel to another as it hastens its constant flow towards the boundless sea. I fear that many of us have to complain of ourselves at times that we feel unfit for any holy thing--but most of all for the solemn engagements of this hallowed ordinance. Let us think of the ways in which the Israelites were rendered unfit for the Passover and see how far they tally with our unfitness for the Supper. Some were kept away by defilement. Read in Numbers, 9th chapter, 6th verse--"And there were certain men who were defiled by the dead body of a man, that they could not keep the Passover on that day: and they came before Moses and before Aaron on that day." For these men it was provided that they should keep the Passover a month later, but they were to keep it without fail. Read the 9th and 10th verses--"And the Lord spoke unto Moses, saying, Speak unto the children of Israel, saying, If any man of you or of your posterity shall be unclean by reason of a dead body, or be in a journey afar off, yet he shall keep the Passover unto the Lord." I am afraid that you and I touch a great many dead bodies and are often defiled. You cannot go out to your business tomorrow morning but you will meet with that spiritual death which loads with corruption the air of "this present evil world." The dead in sin lie all around us--contact with their ways and motives, unless we are continually cleansed by Divine Grace--is defiling in many ways. Worse, still, we cannot even stay at home without finding sin in our own dwellings. Yes, the mass of sin within your own selves, "the body of this death," as Paul calls it, is a constant source of defilement. Some quickness of temper, or levity of language, or excess of care, or thought of pride, or desire of covetousness will occur. Oh, that we were delivered from the liability! These dead and corrupt things lie not only in a corner but on the table, in the bed and everywhere--and when we touch them we are defiled. Whatever kind of sin it may be, whether of act, or of word, or of thought, or of imagination, or desire, it defiles more than most men imagine. Oh, that those who prate about perfection knew their own uncleanness! It were for their humbling, if they knew the sadly all-pervading influence of evil. How shall we pass through this huge morgue of a world, so full of everything that is corrupt, without becoming daily defiled? There are sins even in our holy things! Who shall deliver us? A sense of defilement sadly tends to hinder fellowship. I know that if you are laboring, tonight, under a sense of sin you do not feel the joyful liberty you would desire in coming to the hallowed Table of your Divine Lord. You long to have that sense of defilement sweetly removed by the application of the precious blood which cleanses from all sin. Thank God, that sacred purification is always available! You can at once wash and be clean and know yourself to be "accepted in the Beloved." Thus may you eat the Passover even "as it is written." But in any case, even if burdened with sin, the Lord does not forbid you to remember the death of His dear Son. Like the men of Ephraim you shall find pardon. Perhaps, however, you are not conscious of having fallen into any known sin, but you feel like one who is not at home with God--even at some measure of a distance from Him. You are out of your usual walk and rest. That calm and holy frame--that perfect peace which once you enjoyed from hour to hour has gone from you. Thus you have about you, spiritually, the second disqualification for the Passover. When a man was on a journey afar off he could not keep the Passover. The Passover was a household institution. It required a house wherein the lamb could be slain and prepared for eating and a door where the lintel and two side posts could be sprinkled with blood so that, when a man was moving rapidly from place to place and had no house where to sojourn, he could not observe the holy festival. Even thus, when you and I are out of our usual abode in Christ Jesus and are wandering in anxiety, care and doubt, we do not feel able to commune with our Lord as our hearts would desire. Brethren, do we not sometimes flit to and fro, like Noah's dove, finding no rest? How hard, then, is it to get into the full teaching of this holy Supper! It is well to sing, "Return unto your rest, O my Soul, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you." But till the prayer is answered the ordinance is not enjoyed. The heart's blood of the Eucharist is nearness to God--and when we are afar off it is a poor, dead ceremony. Its crown and joy is rest--and if we are tossed to and fro like the locust and are like a rolling thing before the whirlwind--what use can we make of the mere form of the feast? Then are we very sadly disqualified for the sweets of communion and feel disposed to go home and leave the holy feast to others. Yet such going home would be painful, and might even be injurious. O Lord, what shall Your servants do? We feel like men on a battlefield and this ordinance is as green pastures where the sheep feed and lie down while the Shepherd comes among them, manifesting Himself to them. Gracious Lord, quiet the inward warfare and make us to lie down, as says the Psalmist, "He makes me to lie down," for if You do not thus give us rest, we shall trample down even these holy pastures and grieve Your Spirit! Beloved Friends, some of you have come here tonight weary with the greatness of the way. You have been on a journey all this week and you came to a halt on Saturday night afar off from that spirit of devotion which you should cultivate. Life of late has been full of troubles and perplexities. I pray the Lord to give you sweet rest at this moment and bring you near to Himself. "Cast your care on Him; for He cares for you." Lay your burdens down at the foot of the great Burden-Bearer's Cross. Be quiet even as a weaned child. At the same time, cry unto the Well-Beloved, "Draw me, we will run after You" and, before you are aware, your soul shall make you "like the chariots of Amminadab." If you cannot come to the Beloved, He can come to you, "leaping over the mountains, skipping upon the hills" and all your distance and disquiet will cease at once--so shall you keep the feast. It may so happen that up to this moment you have been in an evil case from unknown causes. You cannot say how or why, but certainly it is not with you as in days past. Marring influences not mentioned in the Book of Numbers and possibly not mentionable at all--but none the less real for all that--may have been keeping you from eating the spiritual Passover to your heart's content and may now tend to keep you from a truly happy approach to the Lord's Table in spirit and in truth. Whatever the cause may be I want you to confess it frankly, just as those men in Numbers confessed to Moses that they had touched a dead body. So far as you know the cause of defilement and division, admit it. Look at the mischief as best you can and mourn over it as far as it is sinful. Then carefully put it away from you, so far as it is a matter of care or distrust, and labor earnestly at this moment to prepare your heart to seek the Lord your God--even though you cannot quite feel that you are cleansed according to the purification of the sanctuary--I mean even though you do not feel in the best possible frame of mind for holy fellowship. Some supposed disqualifications may be removed by an act offaith or by a fuller knowledge. Do you fear to come because you have such little faith? May not the little children have their supper as well as the grown sons? Are not these precisely the members of the family who most need to be fed and comforted? The utter absence of faith could shut you out, but not the feebleness of it. Come, you little one! To you I say, "Come in, you blessed of the Lord! Why do you stand outside?" Do you hesitate because your joy is not now overflowing? Is this a sufficient reason for refusing to obey the command, "This do in remembrance of Me"? Were the 12 full ofjoy at the founding of this feast? Had they no questions, saying, "Lord, is it I?" May not the feast, itself, furnish the joy? Is not the Lord of the feast your exceeding joy? If you cannot bring joy with you, come that you may find it here! Do you say, I am spiritually weak in all points? Again I ask, is that a reason why you should not feed on the best of food? It seems to me that it is a chief reason why you should feed often and heartily! "Eat you that which is good" is a safe prescription for you and a generous invitation from your Lord. Greatly you need it--freely take it! The supply of heavenly bread is intended for those who are faint. "He has filled the hungry with good things." He will fill you! Do you complain that you feel so useless? This is a deplorable fact--but what has it to do with the matter in hand? Are you to come to your Lord's Table because you are useful to Him? No, but that the Lord Jesus may be useful to you! Surely this is not a wage, but a provision of free Grace. You do not bring the feast--your part is to receive it. So you can only become useful to Christ as Christ is abundantly useful to you! You cannot help to feed the multitude till your Lord first puts the bread into your hands. Come, now, and take what He has blessed. I know that for many reasons the choicest saints at times deem themselves disqualified for this holy banquet and I have sometimes thought that that is not altogether an ill feeling. At any rate, it is a symptom of many healthy things. If I felt myself worthy in any sense except the Scriptural one, I should infer from my self-satisfaction that I was unworthy. This Table is no place for Pharisees. Where the Savior presides there may come none but sinners saved by His Grace. If you have merits of your own which you can boast and no sin to confess, you are not the man for whose salvation the Substitute has shed His precious blood! How could He atone for those who have no fault? But if you are a sinner, you are the sort of person whom Jesus came to save. Jesus is the sinner's Friend. He will be yours if you go to Him in that capacity. How can we commemorate the shedding of His blood unless we daily feel that we have solemn need to be washed by it? How can we remember Him except as we see how we derive all from Him? Jesus is never seen to be a full Christ except by those who feel their own emptiness apart from Him. He is never prized at a true value by those who have a high esteem of themselves. A broken heart knows best His power to comfort. A bleeding heart sees best His power to heal. If you are sensible of your unworthiness you are not unworthy in the Scriptural sense, but may freely come. For my own part, I enjoy my holiest seasons when my heart lies low before the Lord. No communion is more intensely sweet than that which washes His feet with tears and covers them with kisses of penitential love. When I have been most ashamed of myself, my Lord has been most glorious in my eyes. When I have, in shame, covered my face, He has, in love, uncovered His own Countenance. Come, then, you weeping saints, for I know that you seek Jesus--and you are such as He welcomes to His table! Bring your disqualifications and turn them into confessions of sin! And these, by increasing your hunger--will enable you the better to enjoy the provisions of that sacred Table where Jesus is both the Host and the Food--the bread and the wine and yet the Master of the feast. Thus much upon those hindrances and disqualifications. It is not a cheering theme. II. But now, secondly, though we feel and lament our lack of preparation, WE MAY STILL COME TO THE FEAST. Let us, to some extent, follow in the tracks of the men of Hezekiah's time. They forgot their differences. The one nation had been torn into two and even in Hezekiah's time there was ill feeling between Ephraim and Judah. But the king of Judah overlooked his boundaries and we read that the posts passed from city to city through the country of Ephraim and Manasseh, even unto Zebulun--and many of Asher and Manasseh and Zebulun humbled themselves and came to Jerusalem. Political and personal feuds were forgotten. They were one family and they recognized the relationship--and gathered to the one table. I trust none of us are at variance with others--but if we are--let us make peace at once! This we can do on the spot--let us put away every angry and unkind thought. From this foul stuff let all our bosoms be purged at once. The memorials of our dying Lord have slain all our enmity and given life to our love. This will be a great help towards coming fitly to the Table. We read that when the tribes assembled they removed the idols. They took all the altars that were in Jerusalem and cast them into the brook Kidron. This was a fine beginning for men who did not feel quite up to the mark. Come, Brethren, let us tear down our altars of creature worship, cut down the groves of carnal confidence and break up the graven images of unholy love. If there is anything in our heart that has usurped our Lord's place, let us each one to himself sing very softly this verse-- "The dearest idol I have known, Whatever that idol be, Help me to tear it from its throne And worship only You." NOW, open your heart to Jesus and give Him all your love! He is worthy of much more. Young man, have you any ambitions that are apart from Christ's glory? Break them as with a sledge hammer at this moment! Christian man, have you any glory apart from the Cross of Jesus? At this moment crucify it! Nail your glory to His Cross and have done with it. Dear Sister, are there any loves of yours that are alien to the love of Christ? Have you any secret delight which you could not expose to His view? Any alabaster box which you would not cheerfully break for Him? Come, cast away all idols! You cannot keep the feast aright till this, at least, is done--but this accomplished--you may observe it with gladness! How I long to hear the breaker's hammer going! Can it not be done at once? Unless those idols have been so long set up in your heart that there is a question whether you love the Lord at all they will readily fall from their pedestals. If you love Jesus, your spirit will make your hands quick at this sacred iconoclasm till you shall have broken down every image which now defiles the temple of your soul! That done, those who were not all that they desired to be, yet endeavored to prepare their hearts. "Hezekiah prayed for them, saying, The good Lord pardon every one that prepares his heart to seek God, the Lord God of his fathers." Do you long to seek God tonight? Then there is access for you! I can truly say for myself that I long, above everything, to meet with my God and Savior at the Table. Though I am in myself unworthy, yet I cannot live without my Lord. I must have Him and nothing else will satisfy me short of fellowship with Him. No outward sign, no bread, no wine, no fellowship with God's people will content me--my heart is hungering for her Savior! My Lord, my God, my heart cries after You! As the thirsty hart in the wilderness pants for the water brooks, so does my heart cry out for God, the living God! Is it so with you? Surely the best sort of preparation is already commencing in your soul. Let your heart take its full of this longing and pining--that is the way in which you will be enabled to come to the sacred Table without being an intruder and without missing the blessing. Note, next, that Hezekiah made open and explicit confession unto God that these people were not as they should have been. He did not excuse them. He came before God and cried, "The good Lord pardon everyone that prepares his heart." Herein is wisdom. If our hearts are longing after God, let us confess our neglect of meditation, our failure in private prayer, our forgetfulness of self-examination and our failure in all those other preparations which are so appropriate to this blessed memorial of our Lord. Thus drawing near, with sorrow and regret and with the humble resolve that in the future your heart shall endeavor to dwell nearer to the Lord--and further off from the defiling influences of a dead world--you will in spirit and in truth commune with Him who never yet sent a penitent from His Presence without saying, "Peace be unto you." Confession made, let prayer ascend to Heaven--"The good Lord pardon every one of us everything in which we have been lax, or deficient, or erring. O You heart-searching God, forgive Your servants and accept us in Christ Jesus!" Thus purified and made white by instantaneous pardon, we need not hesitate to keep the feast. With holy desire have we desired to feed upon our Lord who is the true Passover--and He will not refuse us! Even to Laodicea He said, "Behold, I stand at the door and knock"--even to those who dwell in that lukewarm Church He promises to sup with them, if they will but admit Him! And therefore we are sure that He will sup with us--even with us--though we come blushingly and with shame upon our faces. III. We come, in the last place, to notice, that IN SO COMING, WE MAY EXPECT A BLESSING. If we do but come with a prepared heart and great longing of soul, even though we confess ourselves to be disorderly and have to plead with the Lord to forgive our unfitness, yet He will, without fail, meet with us and enrich us with the blessing which we seek. God's ways of acting are the same in all ages and if Hezekiah and his people won the blessing and "praised the Lord day by day, singing with loud instruments unto the Lord," even we may look for the same joy and holy exultation! We read that they "kept the feast of unleavened bread seven days with great gladness." Beloved, I want you to enter into that great gladness tonight! If there is any place where we are bound to be glad, it is at the Lord's Supper. Remember, this is no funeral feast--it is no memorial of one who lies rotting in the grave. Here we remember that Jesus died, but we also bear those prophetic words, "Until I come." He lives! And He shall shortly come with all the glory and majesty of Heaven to claim the kingdoms as His own and to judge the nations in equity. Therefore have we joy as we come to the Table. It is a memorial of a death by which the life of myriads was purchased. It is the memorial of a great struggle which ended in the most glorious of all victories! "It is finished," is the banner which waves over us. Such a victory is a joy forever--let it be gladly commemorated. Here we celebrate the feast of pardoning love delighting itself in being enabled justly to spare the guilty! Here is the feast of redeemed bondsmen, the jubilee of emancipation from everlasting slavery! We come here as those that are alive from the dead to feast with Him, who, in very truth was slain but who has risen again and has become our Life and our Joy! Oh, for a well-tuned harp! Bring an instrument of ten strings and the psaltery and let every string be awakened to ecstasy on behalf of Jesus--to set forth in worthy notes His passion and His triumph. There was great gladness in Israel, even among the men of Ephraim who were not ceremonially fit to keep the Passover. And following upon this, there was great praise to God. They continued singing unto the Lord all the day! The Levites and the priests and the people joined with them and they brought forth loud instruments to add to the volume of their music. Notice the words, "singing with loud instruments unto the Lord." They employed everything by which to express their overflowing gratitude--their glowing joy! I pray that my Lord's servants may fetch out their loud instruments tonight to sing unto Him who loved us and gave Himself for us. Let us lift up the song, "Worthy is the Lamb, for You were slain and have redeemed us unto God by Your blood. You shall reign forever and ever, King of kings and Lord of lords. Unto Your name be hallelujahs throughout eternity." Oh, for the cymbals, the high-sounding cymbals that, with their mighty clash, we might express something of the overpowering joy of our spirit before the living God! Brothers and Sisters, these were the very people who kept the Passover, "not according as it was written." They came ill-prepared, unpurified and utterly unfit--but God blessed them and helped them to get ready for the holy feast then and there--and I trust He will do so now to those who desire it. How much I long that all of you Christians--half-asleep Christians, lukewarm Christians of a doubtful sort, Christians whose right to commune is gravely questioned by yourselves--I long that you may be quickened right now by the Holy Spirit, who is still in the midst of the Church, that you may at once delight yourselves in the Lord and feel a holy nearness to Christ and a heavenly exhilaration at the mention of His name! So will you eagerly praise the Beloved of your soul and bid all that is within you bless His holy name! Added to this, in the Passover in Hezekiah's days, there was great communion with God, at least the outward sign of it, for "they did eat throughout the feast seven days, offering peace offerings and making confession to the Lord God of their fathers." In those sacrifices other than sin offerings, a part was put on the altar for God and a part was given to the priest and the worshipper to feast upon that they might thus, in symbol, hold fellowship with God. Oh, for a measure of hallowed fellowship with God at this time! Many of you know what it means. If you do not, I cannot explain it to you. You must taste and see for yourselves. May it be with us tonight as it was with the elders on the side of Sinai, of whom it is written, "They did see God and did eat and drink." What a wonderful combination! Yet what an instructive conjunction! "They did see God and did eat and drink." Oh that we might eat and drink with our Lord at this time as men eat with their friends! May we now see that Face which no earthly eye can see! May we hear that Voice which sounds not in mortal ears but penetrates the soul! Oh, that we may see Him who is invisible! We may do so even now--I mean even you who feel least prepared can yet enjoy this supreme delight! Oh that you may do so till you assure me that I have not told you the half of what you now taste and feel! I pray the Lord that the soft south wind may blow warmly across this congregation till all the winter is gone from your spirits and you feel the icebergs within your souls dissolved and running away in streams of praise and gratitude to Him who has loved you of old and now manifests Himself to you! There is a secret charm, a silent energy of the Holy Spirit, which, in quiet, He can exert over the minds of His people. I pray that you may know it now, even you that are least prepared for the engagement which at this moment lies before us. Then there came upon the people a great enthusiasm, inasmuch that they resolved to have another seven days of holy convocation, just as Solomon did when they consecrated the temple. We are told, "they took counsel to keep other seven days: and they kept other seven days with gladness." I love to find people so possessed with the Spirit of God that they say, "That service was by far too short. I wish it had kept on for another hour." I love to see them lingering, as if they could not quit a place in which they have been so greatly blessed. How pleasant to go away, not loathing but longing and watching till another Sabbath shall come, that we may hear again of the same sacred matter and feel again the same dew from the Lord! How we tremble lest the heavenly blessings should be withdrawn! For we feel that we can no more command them than we could bind the sweet influences of the Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion. Since we have been in the sacred chambers of the King, we have feared lest our golden keys should be missing so that we could not enter into His treasury again, or again approach His seat. You know how you feel when your heart sings of the place-- "Where congregations never break up, And Sabbaths have no end." When you long for that protracted worship it shows that God is very present with you--and it was so with the people in Hezekiah's days, who, nevertheless, were at first unprepared for the Paschal festival! May you who are now dull become so joyous that you are eager to turn a seven days' feast into fourteen! May your enthusiasm know no bounds! May you rise as on wings of eagles and maintain your highest soaring for many a day! Furthermore, this brought about a great liberality. Everybody wanted to offer sacrifices! Everybody was anxious to feed his poorer brethren--the king gave a thousand bullocks and 7,000 sheep--and the princes would not be outdone by him! They must go just a touch beyond him, for they gave a thousand bullocks and 10,000 sheep! Meanwhile, a host of priests came and more fully surrendered themselves to the service of Jehovah, their God. How I wish that such a result would follow the present service! Oh that many of you would give largely of your substance to the cause of God and may others give themselves more fully to the great Master's service! From this time forth may devoted men and consecrated women be found in all our families and may the kraals of Africa and the zenanas of India be the better for it. Did you observe in the reading how the people finished the festival? They had another great breaking of idols. The hammers gave forth their music again and the images went to pieces. All that which was displeasing to God became displeasing to the people and they swept it away! That was the finale, for when God goes up, the devil goes down! As sure as ever you love God, you must hate idols. You cannot rejoice in Him and yet rejoice in the world, the flesh and the devil. What sacred jealousy, what holy revenge, what destruction of every evil thing within the soul is sure to follow when the Beloved unveils His charming face and all our soul is melted with the beams of His love! Nothing hastens sanctification like communion with God! May this Table be to all of you the place of your renewed trust with Jesus! May you again take Him by the hand and surrender to Him--while He shall take you by the hand and work in you all the good pleasure of His will! Let marriage vows with Jesus be repeated here. May our living union with Him become more consciously a matter of fact! May this be a sanctifying season! May this be so even with you who were just now saying, "I do not think that I dare stop for the communion! I do not feel aright, nor desire aright. I am dead, stupid, heavy--and I fear I should only profane the sacred Table." Cry to the Lord as Hezekiah did! Mingle your confessions and your prayers before the Mercy Seat and may the good Lord pardon each one of you, even though you are not purged after the purification of the sanctuary as you could desire! The Lord bless His waiting people, for Jesus' sake! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Numbers 9; 2 Chronicles 30. __________________________________________________________________ Christ Put On A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 23, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "But put you on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." Romans 13:14. Christ must be in us before He can be on us. Divine Grace puts Christ within and enables us to put on Christ without. Christ must be in the heart by faith before He can be in the life by holiness. If you need light from a lantern, the first business is to light the candle inside it--and then, as a consequence--the light shines through to be seen of men. When Christ is formed in you, the hope of Glory--do not conceal your love to Him but put Him on in your conduct as the Glory of your hope! As you have Christ within as your Savior, the secret of your inner life, so put on Christ to be the beauty of your daily life. Let the external be brightened by the internal and this shall be to you that "armor of light" which all the soldiers of the Lord Jesus are privileged to wear. As Christ is your Food, nourishing the inner man, so put Him on as your garments covering the outer man. "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." It is a very wonderful expression. It is most condescending on our Lord's part to allow such an exhortation. Paul speaks the mind of the Holy Spirit and the word is full of meaning. Oh, for Divine Grace to learn its teaching! It is full of very solemn warning to us, for we need a covering thus divinely perfect. Oh, for Grace to practice the command to put it on! The Apostle does not so much say, "Take up the Lord Jesus Christ and bear Him with you," but, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ" and thus wear Him as the garment of your life! A man takes up his staff for a journey or his sword for a battle--but he lays these down again after a while. You are to put on the Lord Jesus as you put on your garments and thus He is to cover you and to become part and parcel of your outward appearance, surrounding your very self as a visible part of your manifest personality. "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." This we do when we believe in Him--then we put on the Lord Jesus Christ as our robe of righteousness. It is a very beautiful picture of what faith does. Faith finds our manhood naked to its shame-- faith sees that Christ Jesus is the Robe of Righteousness provided for our need. And faith, at the command of the Gospel, appropriates Him and gets the benefit of Him for it. By faith the soul covers her weakness with His strength, her sin with His atonement, her folly with His wisdom, her failure with His triumphs, her death with His life, her wanderings with His constancy. By faith, I say, the soul hides itself within Jesus till Jesus, only, is seen and the man is seen in Him. We take not only His righteousness as being imputed to us, but we take Himself to be really ours. And so His righteousness becomes ours as a matter of fact. "By the obedience of One shall many be made righteous." His righteousness is set to our account and becomes ours because He is ours. I, though long unrighteous in myself, believe in the testimony of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ and I am accounted righteous, even as it is written, "Abraham believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness." The riches of God in Christ Jesus become mine as I take the Lord Jesus Christ to be everything to me. But, you see, the text does not distinctly refer to this great matter for the Apostle is not referring to the imputed righteousness of Christ. The text stands in connection with precepts concerning matters of everyday practical life and to these it must refer. It is not justification, but sanctification that we have here. Moreover, we cannot be said to put on the imputed righteousness of Christ after we have believed, for that is upon us as soon as we believe and needs no more putting on! The command before us is given to those who have the imputed righteousness of Christ--who are justified--who are accepted in Christ Jesus. "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ" is a word to you that are saved by Christ and justified by His righteousness! You are to put on Christ and keep putting Him on in the sanctifying of your lives unto your God. You are, everyday, to continually more and more wear as the garment of your lives the Character of your Lord. I will handle this subject by answering questions. First, Where are we to go for our daily garment? "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." Secondly, What is this daily garment? "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." Thirdly, How are we to act towards evil when we are thus clad? "and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." And then I will finish with the consideration of the question, Why should we hasten to put on this matchless garment? For, "The night is far spent, the day is at hand: let us put on the armor of light." I. May the Holy Spirit help us while we, in the first place, answer the inquiry, WHERE ARE WE TO GO FOR OUR DAILY GARMENT? Beloved, there is but one answer to all questions as to our necessities. We go to the Lord Jesus Christ for everything! To us, "Christ is All." "He is made of God unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption." When you have come to Christ for pardon and justification you are not to go elsewhere for the next thing. Having begun with Jesus you are to go on with Him, even to the end, "for you are complete in Him," perfectly stored in Christ, fully equipped in Him. "It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell." Every necessity that can ever press upon you between this life in the wilderness and yonder sea of glass before the Throne of God will be found in Christ Jesus! You ask, "What am I to do for a vesture which will befit the courts of the Lord? For armor that will protect me from the assaults of the foe? For a robe that will enable me to act as a priest and king unto God?" The one answer to the much-including question is, "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." You have no further need. You need not look elsewhere for a thread or a shoe lace. So, dear Friends, I gather from this that if we seek an example, we may not look elsewhere than to our Lord Jesus Christ. It is not written, "Put you on this man or that," but, "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." The model for a saint is His Savior. We are very apt to select some eminently gracious or useful man to be a pattern for us. A measure of good may result from such a course, but a degree of evil may also come of it. There will always be some fault about the most excellent of our fellow mortals and as our tendency is to caricature virtues till we make them faults, so is it our greater folly to mistake faults for excellences and copy them with careful exactness and generally with abundant exaggeration! By this plan, with the best intentions, we may reach very sad results. Follow Jesus in the way and you will not err. Let your feet go down exactly in His footprints and you can not slide. As His Grace enables us, let us make it true that, "as He was, so are we in this world." You need not look beyond your Lord for an example under any circumstances. Of Him you may enquire as of an unfailing oracle. You need never enquire what is the general custom of those about you--the broad road of the many is no way for you. You may not ask, "What are the rulers of the people doing?" You follow not the fashion of the great, but the example of the Greatest of all! "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ" will apply to each one of us. If I am a tradesman, I am not to ask myself--On what principles do other traders conduct their business? Not so. What the world may do is no rule for me. If I am a student I should not enquire--How do others feel towards religion? Let others do as they will, it is for us to serve the Lord! In every relationship in the domestic circle, in the literary world, in the sphere of friendship, or in business connections, I am to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ." If I am perplexed, I am bound to ask--"What would Jesus do?" And His example is to guide me. If I cannot conceive of His acting in a certain way, neither must I allow myself to do so--but if I perceive, from His precepts, His spirit or His actions, that He would follow such-and-such a course--to that line I must keep. I am not to put on the philosopher, the politician, the priest or the popularity hunter--I am to put on the Lord Jesus Christ by taking His life to be the model upon which I fashion my own life. From our text I should also gather that we are to go to the Lord Jesus Christ for stimulus. We want not only an example, but a motive--an impulse and constraining power to keep us true to that example. We need to put on zeal as a cloak and to be covered with a holy influence which will urge us onward. Let us go to the Lord Jesus for motives. Some fly to Moses and would drive themselves to duty by the thunders of Sinai. Their design in service is to earn eternal life or prevent the loss of the favor of God. Thus they come under Law and forsake the true way of the Believer which is faith. Not from dread of punishment or hope of reward do Believers serve the living God--we put on Christ and the love of Christ constrains us. Here is the spring of true holiness--"Sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the Law, but under Grace." A stronger force than Law has gripped you--you serve God, not as servants whose sole thought is the wage--but as children, whose eye is on the Father and His love. Your motive is gratitude to Him by whose precious blood you are redeemed. He has put on your cause and therefore you would take up His cause. I pray you, go not to the steep sides of Sinai to find motives for holiness--but hasten to Calvary and there find those sweet herbs of love which shall be the medicine of your soul. "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." Covered with a consciousness of His love and fired with love to Him in return, you will be strong to be, to do, or to suffer as the Lord God may appoint. Need I say never find a reason for doing right in a desire to win the approbation of your fellow men? Do not say, "I must do this or that in order to please my company." That is poor life which is sustained by the breath of other men's nostrils! Followers of Jesus will not wear the livery of custom or stand in awe of human censure. Love of commendation and fear of disapprobation are low and beggarly motives--they sway the feeble many-- but they ought not to rule the man in Christ. You must be moved by a far higher consideration--you serve the Lord Christ and must not, therefore, become the lackey of men. His Glory is to be your one aim! And for the joy of this you must treat all else as a light thing. Here we find our spur--"The love of Christ constrains us." Beloved, the text means more than this! "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ," that is, find in Jesus your strength. Although you are saved and are quickened by the Holy Spirit so as to be a living child of the living God, yet you have no strength for heavenly duty except as you receive it from above. Go to Jesus for power! I charge you, never say, "I shall do the right because I have resolved to do it. I am a man of strong mind. I am determined to resist this evil and I know I shall not yield. I have made up my mind and there is no fear of my turning aside." Brother, if you rely upon yourself in that way, you will soon prove to be a broken reed. Failure follows at the heel of self-confidence. "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." I charge you, do not rely upon what you have acquired in the past. Say not in your heart, "I am a man of experience and therefore I can resist temptation which would crush the younger and greener folk. I have now spent so many years in persistent well-doing that I may reckon myself out of danger. Is it likely that I should ever be led astray?" O Sir, it is more than likely! It is a fact already! The moment that a man declares he cannot fall, he has already fallen from sobriety and humility! Your head is turned, my Brother, or you would not talk of your inward perfection! And when the head turns, the feet are not very safe. Inward conceit is the mother of open sin. Make Christ your strength and not yourself--nor your acquirements or experiences. "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ" day by day and make not the rags of yesterday to be the raiment of the future. Get fresh Grace. Say with David, "All my fresh springs are in You." Get all your power for holiness and usefulness from Jesus and from Him alone. "Surely in the Lord have I righteousness and strength." Rely not on resolves, pledges, methods, prayers. Lean on Jesus, only, as the strength of your life. "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." This is a wonderful word to me because it indicates that in the Lord Jesus we have perfection. I shall in a moment or two show you some of the virtues and Graces which are resplendent in the Character of our Lord Jesus Christ. These may be likened to different parts of our armor or garments--the helmet, the shoes, the breast-plate. But the text does not say, "Put on this quality or virtue of the Lord Christ," but, "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." He Himself--as a whole--is to be our array! Not this excellence or that, but Himself. He must be to us a sacred overall. I know not by what other means to bring out my meaning--He is to cover us from head to foot. We do not so much copy His humility, His gentleness, His love, His zeal, His prayerfulness as Himself. Endeavor to come into such communion with Jesus Himself that His Character is reproduced in you! Oh to be wrapped about with Jesus--feeling, desiring, acting as He felt, desired and acted! What a raiment for our spiritual nature is our Lord Jesus Christ! What an honorable robe for men to wear! Why, in that case our life would be hid in Christ and He would be seen of us in a life quickened by His Spirit, swayed by His motives, sweetened with His sympathy, pursuing His designs and following in His steps! When we read, "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ," it means, Receive the whole Character of Christ and let your whole character be conformed to His will. Cover your whole being with the whole of the Lord Jesus Christ! What a wonderful precept! Oh, for Grace to carry it out! May the Lord turn the command into an actual fact. Throughout the rest of our lives may we be more and more like Jesus that the purpose of God may be fulfilled wherein we are "predestinated to be conformed to the image of His Son." Once more, observe the specialty which is seen in this garment. It is specially adapted to each individual Believer. Paul does not say merely to one person, "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ," but to all of us, "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." Can all the saints put on Christ, whether babes, young men or fathers? You could not all of you wear my coat, I am quite certain--and I am equally certain that I could not wear the garments of many of the young people now present. But here is a matchless Garment which will be found suitable for every Believer--without expansion or contraction! Whoever puts on the Lord Jesus Christ has put on a robe which will be his glory and beauty! In every case the example of Jesus is admirably suited for copying. Suppose a child of God should be a king--what better advice could I give to him, when about to rule a nation, than this--"Put on the Lord Jesus Christ"? Be such a king as Jesus would have been! No, copy His royal Character! Suppose, on the other hand, that the person before us is a poor woman from the workhouse--shall I say the same to her? Yes, and with equal propriety--for Jesus was very poor and is a most suitable Example for those who have no home of their own. O Worker, put on Christ and be full of zeal! O Sufferer, put on the Lord Jesus Christ and abound in patience! Yonder friend is going to the Sunday school this afternoon. Well, in order to win those dear children to the Savior, "put on the Lord Jesus Christ," who said, "Suffer the little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not." In His sacred raiment you will make a good teacher! Are you a preacher and about to address thousands of persons? How better can I advise you than that you put on Christ and preach the Gospel in His own loving, pleading, earnest style? The preacher's Model should be His Lord. This is our preaching gown, our praying surplice, our pastoral robe-- the Character and Spirit of the Lord Jesus--and it admirably suits each form of service! No man's example will precisely fit his fellow man, but there is this strange virtue about the Character of Christ that you may all imitate it and yet be none of you mere imitators. He is perfectly natural who is perfectly like Christ. There need be no affectation, no painful restraint, no straining. In a life thus fashioned there will be nothing grotesque or disproportionate, unmanly or romantic. So wonderfully is Jesus the Second Adam of the new-born race, that each member of that family may bear a likeness to Him and yet exhibit a clear individuality. A man advanced in years and wisdom may put Him on and so may the least instructed and the freshest comer among us! Please remember this--we may not choose examples--but each one is bound to copy the Lord Jesus Christ. You, dear Friend, have a special personality--you are such a person that there is not another exactly like you and you are placed in circumstances so peculiar that no one else is tried exactly as you are--to you, then, is this exhortation sent, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ." It is absolutely certain that for you, with your personal singularity and peculiar circumstances, there can be nothing better than that you array yourself in this more than royal robe. You, too, who live in ordinary circumstances and are only tried by common temptations--you are to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ"--for He will also be suitable for you. "Oh," cries one, "but the Lord Jesus never was exactly where I am!" You say this from lack of knowing better, or from lack of thought. He has been tempted in all points like as you are. There are certain relationships which the Lord Jesus could not literally occupy, but then He took their spiritual counterpart. For instance, Jesus could not be a husband after the flesh. Does anyone demand how He could be an example for husbands? Hearken! "Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the Church and gave Himself for it." He is your Model in relationship which, naturally, He never sustained but which, in very deed He has more than fulfilled. Wherever you may be, you find that the Lord Jesus has occupied the counterpart of your position, or else the position is sinful and ought to be stopped. In any place, at any hour, under any circumstances, in any matter you may put on the Lord Jesus Christ and never fear that your array will be unsuitable. Here you have a summer and winter garment--good in prosperity as well as in adversity. Here you have a garment for the private chamber or the public forum, for sickness or for health, for honor or for reproach, for life or for death. "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ" and in this raiment of worked gold you may enter into the King's palace and stand among the spirits ofjust men made perfect! II. Secondly, trusting to the Holy Spirit, let us enquire WHAT IS THIS DAILY GARMENT? The Lord Jesus Christ is to be put on. May the Spirit of God help us to do so! We see how the sacred Garment is here described in three words. The sacred titles of the Son of God are spread out at length--"Put you on the Lord--Jesus--Christ." Put Him on as Lord. Call Him your Master and Lord and you will do well. Be His servant in everything! Submit every faculty, every capacity, every talent, every possession to His government. Submit all that you have and are to Him and delight to own His superior right and His royal claim to you. Be Christ's man--His servant, under bonds to His service forever--finding therein life and liberty. Let the dominion of your Lord cover the kingdom of your nature. Then put on Jesus. Jesus means a Savior--in every part be covered by Him in that blessed capacity. You, a sinner, hide yourself in Jesus, your Savior who shall save you from your sins. He is your Sanctifier driving out sin and your Preserver keeping sin from returning. Jesus is your Armor against sin. You overcome through His blood. In Him you are defended against every weapon of the enemy. He is your Shield, keeping you from all evil. He covers you all over like a complete suit of armor so that when arrows of temptation fly like a fiery shower, they may be quenched upon heavenly mail and you may stand unharmed amid a shower of deaths. Put on Jesus, and then put on Christ. You know that Christ signifies "anointed." Now, our Lord is anointed as Prophet, Priest and King, and as such we put Him on. What a splendid thing it is to put on Christ as the anointed Prophet and to accept His teaching as our creed! I believe it. Why? Because He said it. This is argument enough for me. Mine not to argue, or doubt, or criticize--the Christ has said it and I, putting Him on, find in His authority the end of all strife. What Christ declares, I believe--discussion ends where Christ begins. Put Him on, also, as your Priest. Notwithstanding your sin, your unworthiness, your defilement, go to the altar of the Lord by Him who, as Priest, has taken away your sin, clothed you with His merit and made you acceptable to God! In our great High Priest we enter within the veil. We are in Him. By faith we realize this and so put Him on as our Priest and lose ourselves in His accepted Sacrifice. Our Lord Jesus is also anointed to be King. Oh, put Him on in all His imperial majesty by yielding your every wish and thought to His sway! Set Him on the throne of your heart. As you have submitted your thoughts and understanding to His prophetic instructions, submit your action and your practical life to His kingly government. As you put on His priesthood and find Atonement in Him, so put on His royalty and find holiness in Him. I now wish to show the description given in Colossians 3--from the 12th verse. I will take you to the wardrobe for a minute and ask you to look over the articles of our outfit. See here, "Put on therefore"--you see everything is to be put on--nothing is to be left on the pegs for the moths to eat, nor in the window to be idly stared at. You put on the whole armor of God. In true religion everything is designed for practical use. We keep no garments in the drawer--we have to put on all that is provided. "Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, tender mercies, kindness." Here are two choice things--mercy and kindness--silken robes, indeed! Have you put them on? I am to be as merciful, as tender-hearted, as kind, as sympathetic, as loving to my fellow men as Christ Himself was. Have I reached this point? Have I ever aimed at it? Who among us has put on these royal robes? See what follows--these choice things come in pairs--"humbleness of mind, meekness." These choice garments are not so much esteemed as they should be. The cloth of one called, "Proud-of-Heart," is very fashionable and the trimmings of Mr. Masterful are much in request. It is a melancholy thing to see what great men some Christians are. Truly the footman is bigger than his master! How some who would be thought saints can bluster and bully! Is this to put on the Lord Jesus Christ? Point me to a word of our Lord's in which He scolded and tyrannized and overrode any man! He was meek and lowly, even He, the Lord of All--what ought we to be who are not worthy to loose the laces of His shoes? Permit me to say to any dear Brother or Sister who has not a very tender nature--who is naturally hard and rasping, "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ," my Brother, my Sister--and make not provision for that unfeeling nature of yours! Endeavor to be lowly in mind that you may be gentle in spirit. See, next, we are to put on longsuffering and forbearance. Some men have no patience with others--how can they expect God to have patience with them? If everything is not done to their mind they are in a fine fury. Dear me! Whom have we here? Is this a servant of Mars, or of the Fire God? Surely this fighting man does not profess to be a worshipper of Christ! Do not tell me that the man lost his temper. It would be a mercy if he had lost it, so as never to find it again! He is selfish, petulant, exacting and easily provoked! Has this man the Spirit of Christ? If he is a Christian, he is a naked Christian and I would urge Him to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ," that he may be fully clothed. Our Lord was full of forbearance. "Consider Him that endured such contradiction of sinners against Himself, lest you become wearied and faint in your minds." Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and bear and forbear. Put up with a great deal that really ought not to be inflicted upon you--and be ready to bear still more rather than give or take offense. "Forgiving one another, if any man has a quarrel against any, even as Christ forgave you, so also do you." Is not this heavenly teaching? Put it in practice! Put you on your Lord! Have you fallen to loggerheads with one another, and did I hear one of you growling, "I'll, I'll, I'll----"? Stop, Brother! What will you do? If you are true to the Lord Jesus Christ you will not avenge yourself but give place unto wrath. Put the Lord Jesus on your tongue and you will not talk so bitterly! Put Him on your heart and you will not feel so fiercely! Put Him on your whole character and you will readily forgive--not only this once, but unto 70 times seven! If you have been unjustly treated by one who should have been your friend, lay aside wrath and begin again--and perhaps your Brother will begin again, also, and both of you, by love, will overcome evil. "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." "And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfection." Love is the belt which binds up the other garments and keeps all the other Graces well braced and in their right places. Put on love--what a golden belt! Are we all putting on love? We have been baptized into Christ and we profess to have put on Christ--but do we daily try to put on love? Our Baptism was not true if we are not buried to all old enmities. We may have a great many faults but God grant that we may be full of love to Jesus, to His people and to all mankind! How much I wish that we could all put on, and keep on, the next article of this wardrobe! "And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to which also you were called in one body; and be thankful." Oh, for a peaceful mind! Oh, to rest in the Lord! I recommend that last little word, "Be thankful," to farmers and others whose interests are depressed. I might equally recommend it to certain trades people whose trade is quite as good as they could expect. "Things are a little better," said one to me--and at that time he was heaping up riches. When things are extremely well, people say they are "middling," or a "little better." But when there is a slight falling off they cry out about, "nothing doing, stagnation, universal ruin." Thankfulness is a rare virtue--but let the lover of the Lord Jesus abound in it. The possession of your mind in peace, keeping yourself quiet, calm, self-possessed, content--this is a blessed state. And in such a state Jesus was--therefore, "put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." He was never in a fret or fume. He was never hurried or worried. He never repined or coveted. Had He nothing to worry Him? More than you have, Brothers and Sisters. And did He not have many things to distress Him? More than all of us put together! Yet He was not ruffled but showed a prince-like calm, a Divine serenity. This our Lord would have us wear. His peace He leaves with us and His joy He would have fulfilled in us. He wishes us to go through life with the peace of God keeping our hearts and minds from the assaults of the enemy. He would have us quiet and strong--strong because quiet--quiet because strong. I have read of a great man, that he took two hours and a half to dress himself every morning. In this he showed littleness rather than greatness--but if any of you put on the Lord Jesus Christ you may take what time you will in dressing yourself. It will take you all your lives, my Brothers and Sisters, to fully put on the Lord Jesus Christ and to keep Him on! Let me say again that you are not only to put on all these garments which I have shown you in the wardrobe of the Colossians, but, more than this--you are to put on all else that makes up Christ Himself. What a wardrobe is this! "Put on Christ," says the text. Put on the Lord Jesus Christ for daily wear. Not for high days and holy days only, but for all time and every time! Put on the Lord Jesus Christ on the Lord's-Day but do not lay Him aside during the week. Ladies have ornaments which they put on occasionally for display on grand occasions. As a rule, these jewels are hidden away in a jewel case. Christians, you must wear your jewels always! Put on the Lord Jesus Christ and have no case in which to conceal any part of Him. Put on Christ to keep Him on! I saw a missionary from the cold north the other day and he was wearing a coat of moose skin which he had worn among the Red Indians. "It is a capital coat," he said. "There's nothing like leather. I have worn it for 11 years." In the arctic region through which he had traveled he had worn this garment both night and by day--for the climate was much too cold to allow the taking off of anything. Brethren, the world is far too cold to allow our taking off Christ even for an hour! So many arrows are flying about that we dare not remove a single piece of our armor even for an instant. Thank God we have in our Lord a Garment which we may always wear. We can live in it and die in it--we can work in it, rest in it and, like the raiment of Israel in the wilderness--it will never wax old. If you have put on something of Christ, put on more of Christ. I dare not say much in commendation of apparel here in England, for the tendency is to exceed in that direction. But I noticed, the other day, the remark of a missionary in the South Sea Islands. He stated that as the heathen people became converted they began to clothe themselves. And as they acquired tenderness of conscience and delicacy of feeling, they gave more attention to their clothes--wearing more and of a bettor sort. However that may be as to dress for the body, it is certainly so as to the arraying of the soul. As we make spiritual progress we have more Graces and more virtues than in the beginning. Once we were content to wear only faith, but now we put on hope and love. Once if we wore humbleness, we failed to wear thankfulness--but our text exhorts us to wear a full dress, a court suit--for we are to "put on the Lord Jesus Christ." You cannot wear too much of Him! Be covered from head to foot with Him. Put on the Lord in every time of trial. Do not take Him off when it comes to the test. Quaint Henry Smith says that some people wear the Lord Jesus as a man wears his hat which he takes off to everybody he meets. I am afraid I know persons of that kind--they wear Christ in private, but they take Him off in company--especially in the company of the worldly, the sarcastic and the unbelieving. Put on Christ, intending never to take Him off again. When tempted, tried, ridiculed, hear in your ears this voice, "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ." III. My time fails me, and I must hurriedly notice, in the third place, HOW ARE WE TO ACT TOWARDS EVIL IN THESE GARMENTS? The text says, "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." By the flesh is here meant the evil part of us which is so greatly aided by the appetites and desires of the body. When a man puts on Christ, has he still the flesh about him? Alas, it is so! I hear some brethren say that they have no remaining corruptions. I claim liberty to believe as much as I like of a man's statements as to his own personal character. When he bears witness concerning himself, his witness may or may not be true. When a man tells me that he is perfect, I hear what he has to say but I quietly think within myself that if he had been so, he would not have felt the necessity of spreading the information. Good wine needs no compliment and when our town once holds a perfect man within its boundary there will be no need to advertise him! Goods that are puffed probably need puffery. Brethren, I fear we have all very much of the flesh about us and therefore we need be on our guard against it. What does the Apostle say? "Make no provision for the flesh." By this he means several things. First, give no tolerance to it. Do not say, "Christ has sanctified me so far, but you see I have a bad temper naturally and you cannot expect it to be removed." Dear Brother, do not make provision for thus sheltering and sparing one of your soul's enemies! Another cries, "You know I always was a good deal desponding and therefore I can never have much joy in the Lord." Don't make room for your unbelief! If you find a kennel for this dog, it will always lie in it! "But," says another, "I was always rather fond of gaiety and so I must mix up with the world." Well if you cook a dinner for Satan, he will surely take a seat at your table! This is to make provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts of it. Do not do so, but slay the Canaanites--break their idols, throw down their altars--and cut down their groves. Moreover, give sin no time. Allow no furlough to your obedience. Do not say to yourself, "At all other times I am exact, but one time in a year, at a family meeting, I take a little liberty." Is it liberty to you to sin? I am afraid there is something rotten in your heart. "Ah!" cries one, "I only allow myself an hour or two occasionally with questionable company. I know it does me harm but we must all have a little relaxation and the talk is very amusing, though rather loose." Is evil a relaxation to you? It ought to be worse than slavery! What a trial is foolish talking to a child of God! How can you find pleasure in it? Give no license to the flesh! You cannot tell how far it will go. Keep it always under subjection and make no space for its indulgence. Provide no food for it. Carve it no rations. Starve it out--at any rate, if it needs fodder--let it look elsewhere. When you are allotting your provision to the body, the soul, the spirit--allot nothing to the depraved passions. If the flesh says, "What is for me?" say, "Nothing." Some people like a little bit of reading for the flesh. As some people like a little bit of what they call "rather high" meat, so do these folk enjoy a portion of tainted doctrine or questionable morality. Thus they make provision for the flesh and the flesh takes care to feed on it and to give its lusts a meal. I have known professors whom I would not dare to judge, dabble just a little in matters which they would forbid to others but they think them allowable to themselves if done in secret. "You must not be too exact," they say. But the Apostle says, "Make not provision for the flesh." Do not give it a morsel--do not even allow it the crumbs that fall from your table. The flesh is greedy and never has enough--and if you give it some provision it will steal much more. "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ," and then you will leave no place for the lusts of the flesh. That which Christ does not cover is naked unto sin. If Christ is my Livery and I wear Him and so am known to be His avowed servant--then I place myself entirely in His hands always and forever--and the flesh has no claim whatever upon me! If, before I put on Christ, I might make some reserve and duty did not call, yet now that the Lord Jesus Christ is upon me, I have done with reserves and am openly and confessedly my Lord's. "Know you not," says the Apostle, "that as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ?" Being buried with Him we are dead to the world and live only unto Him. The Lord bring us up to this mark by His mighty Spirit and He shall have the glory of it. IV. If this is the case and we have, indeed, "put on the Lord Jesus Christ," we will thank God evermore. But if it is not so, let us not delay to be arrayed in these garments. WHY SHOULD WE HASTEN TO PUT ON CHRIST? A moment is all that remains. It is dark. Here is armor made of solid light--let us put on this attire at once--then the night will be light about us and others beholding us will glorify God and ask for the same raiment. With so dense a night round about us a man needs to be dressed in luminous robes. He needs to wear the light of God. He needs to be practically protected from the darkness around him. "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ," moreover, for the night will soon be over and the morning will soon dawn. The rags of sin--the sordid robes of worldliness--are not fit attire for the heavenly morning. Let us dress for the sunrise. Let us go forth to meet the dawn with garments of light about us. "Put on the Lord Jesus Christ," for He is coming, the Beloved of our souls! Over the hills we hear the trumpet sounding! The heralds are crying aloud, "The Bridegroom comes! The Bridegroom comes!" Though He has seemed to tarry, He has been always coming post haste. Today we hear His chariot wheels in the distance. Nearer and nearer is His advent. Let us not sleep as others do. Blessed are they who will be ready for the wedding when the Bridegroom comes! What is that wedding dress that shall make us ready? Nothing can make us more fit to meet Christ and to be with Him in His glory than for us to put on Christ today! If I wear Christ as my garment I do great honor to Christ as my Bridegroom. If I take Him for my glory and my beauty while I am here, I may be sure that He will be all that and more to me in eternity! If I take pleasure in Jesus here, Jesus will take pleasure in me when He shall meet me in the air and take me up to dwell with Him forever. Put on the wedding dress, you beloved of the Lord! Put on the wedding dress, you brides of the Lamb and put it on at once, for behold He comes! Haste, haste, you slumbering virgins! Arise and trim your lamps! Put on your robes and be ready to behold His Glory and to take part in it! O you virgin souls, go forth to meet Him! With joy and gladness go forth, wearing Himself as your gorgeous apparel, fit for the daughters of a king! The Lord bless you, for Christ's sake! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Romans 12; 13:8-14. __________________________________________________________________ "My God, My God, Why Have You Forsaken Me?" A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 2, 1890, C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "And about the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, crying, Eli, Eli, lama Sabachthani? that is to say, My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Matthew 27:46. "THERE was darkness over all the land unto the ninth hour"--this cry came out of that darkness! Expect not to see through its every word, as though it came from on high as a beam from the unclouded Sun of Righteousness. There is light in it--bright, flashing light--but there is a center of impenetrable gloom where the soul is ready to faint because of the terrible darkness. Our Lord was then in the darkest part of His way. He had trodden the winepress now for hours and the work was almost finished. He had reached the culminating point of His anguish. This is His dolorous lament from the lowest pit of misery--"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" I do not think that the records of time, or even of eternity, contain a sentence more full of anguish. Here the wormwood, the gall and all the other bitterness are outdone. Here you may look as into a vast abyss--and though you strain your eyes and gaze till sight fails you, yet you perceive no bottom--it is measureless, unfathomable, inconceivable. This anguish of the Savior on your behalf and mine is no more to be measured and weighed than the sin which needed it, or the love which endured it. We will adore where we cannot comprehend. I have chosen this subject that it may help the children of God to understand a little of their infinite obligations to their redeeming Lord. You shall measure the height of His love, if it can be measured, by the depth of His grief, if that can ever be known. See with what a price He has redeemed us from the curse of the Law! As you see this, say to yourselves--What manner of people ought we to be? What measure of love ought we to return to One who bore the utmost penalty that we might be delivered from the wrath to come? I do not profess that I can dive into this deep--I will only venture to the edge of the precipice and bid you look down and pray the Spirit of God to concentrate your mind upon this lamentation of our dying Lord as it rises up through the thick darkness--"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Our first subject of thought will be the fact, or what He suffered--God had forsaken Him. Secondly, we will note the enquiry, or why He suffered--this word, "why," is the edge of the text. "Why have You forsaken Me?" Then, thirdly, we will consider the answer, or what came of His suffering. The answer flowed softly into the soul of the Lord Jesus without the need of words, for He ceased from His anguish with the triumphant shout of, "It is finished." His work was finished and His bearing of desertion was a chief part of the work He had undertaken for our sake. I. By the help of the Holy Spirit let us first dwell upon THE FACT, or what our Lord suffered. God had forsaken Him. Grief of mind is harder to bear than pain of body. You can pluck up courage and endure the pang of sickness and pain so long as the spirit is hale and brave. But if the soul itself is touched and the mind becomes diseased with anguish, then every pain is increased in severity and there is nothing with which to sustain it. Spiritual sorrows are the worst of mental miseries. A man may bear great depression of spirit about worldly matters if he feels that he has his God to go to. He is cast down, but not in despair. Like David he dialogues with himself and he enquires, "Why are you cast down, O my Soul? And why are you disquieted in me? Hope you in God: for I shall yet praise Him." But if the Lord is once withdrawn--if the comfortable light of His Presence is shadowed even for an hour--there is a torment within the breast which I can only liken to the prelude of Hell. This is the greatest of all weights that can press upon the heart. This made the Psalmist plead, "Hide not Your face from me! Put not Your servant away in anger." We can bear a bleeding body and even a wounded spirit--but a soul conscious of desertion by God is beyond conception unendurable! When He holds back the face of His Throne and spreads His cloud upon it, who can endure the darkness? This voice out of "the belly of Hell" marks the lowest depth of the Savior's grief. The desertion was real. Though under some aspects our Lord could say, "The Father is with Me," yet was it solemnly true that God did forsake Him. It was not a failure of faith on His part which led Him to imagine what was not actual fact. Our faith fails us and then we think that God has forsaken us--but our Lord's faith did not, for a moment, falter, for He says twice, "My God, My God." Oh, the mighty double grip of His unhesitating faith! He seems to say, "Even if You have forsaken Me, I have not forsaken You." Faith triumphs and there is no sign of any faintness of heart towards the living God. Yet, strong as is His faith, He feels that God has withdrawn His comfortable fellowship and He shivers under the terrible deprivation. It was no fancy or delirium of mind caused by His weakness of body, the heat of the fever, the depression of His spirit or the near approach of death. He was clear of mind even to this last. He bore up under pain, loss of blood, scorn, thirst and desolation--making no complaint of the Cross, the nails or the scoffing. We read not in the Gospels of anything more than the natural cry of weakness, "I thirst." All the tortures of His body He endured in silence. But when it came to being forsaken of God, then His great heart burst out into its "Lama Sabachthani?" His one moan is concerning His God! It is not, "Why has Peter forsaken Me? Why has Judas betrayed Me?" These were sharp griefs, but this is the sharpest. This stroke has cut Him to the quick--"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" It was no phantom of the gloom--it was a real absence which He mourned. This was a very remarkable desertion. It is not the way of God to leave either His sons or His servants. His saints, when they come to die in their great weakness and pain, find Him near. They are made to sing because of the Presence of God--"Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for You are with me." Dying saints have clear visions of the living God! Our observation has taught us that if the Lord is away at other times, He is never absent from His people in the article of death or in the furnace of affliction. Concerning the three holy children we do not read that the Lord was ever visibly with them till they walked the fires of Nebuchadnezzar's furnace--but then and there the Lord met with them. Yes, Beloved, it is God's way and habit to keep company with His afflicted people. And yet He forsook His Son in the hour of His tribulation! How usual it is to see the Lord with His faithful witnesses when resisting even unto blood! Read the Book of Martyrs and I care not whether you study the former or the later persecutions, you will find them all lit up with the evident Presence of the Lord with His witnesses. Did the Lord ever fail to support a martyr at the stake? Did He ever forsake one of His testifiers upon the scaffold? The testimony of the Church has always been that while the Lord has permitted His saints to suffer in body He has so divinely sustained their spirits that they have been more than conquerors and have treated their sufferings as light afflictions! The fire has not been a "bed of roses," but it has been a chariot of victory! The sword is sharp and death is bitter--but the love of Christ is sweet and to die for Him has been turned into glory! No, it is not God's way to forsake His champions nor to leave even the least of His children in their hour of trial. As to our Lord, this forsaking was singular. Did His Father ever leave Him before? Will you read the four Evangelists through and find any previous instance in which He complains of His Father for having forsaken Him? No. He said, "I know that you hear Me always." He lived in constant touch with God. His fellowship with the Father was always near and dear and clear. But now, for the first time, He cries, "Why have You forsaken Me?" It was very remarkable! It was a riddle only to be solved by the fact that He loved us and gave Himself for us and in the execution of His loving purpose came even unto this sorrow of mourning the absence of His God. This forsaking was very terrible. Who can fully tell what it is to be forsaken of God? We can only form a guess by what we have ourselves felt under temporary and partial desertion. God has never left us altogether, for He has expressly said, "I will never leave you, nor forsake you." Yet we have sometimes felt as if He had cast us off. We have cried, "Oh, that I knew where I might find Him!" The clear shining rays of His love have been withdrawn. Thus we are able to form some little idea of how the Savior felt when His God had forsaken Him. The mind of Jesus was left to dwell upon one dark subject and no cheering theme consoled Him. It was the hour in which He was made to stand before God as consciously the Sin-Bearer according to that ancient prophecy, "He shall bear their iniquities." Then was it true, "He has made Him to be sin for us." Peter puts it, "He His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree." Sin, sin--sin was everywhere around and about Christ. He had no sin of His own but the Lord had "laid on Him the iniquity of us all." He had no strength given Him from on high, no secret oil and wine poured into His wounds--He was made to appear in the lone Character of the Lamb of God which takes away the sin of the world--and therefore He must feel the weight of sin and the turning away of that sacred face which cannot look thereon. His Father, at that time, gave Him no open acknowledgment. On certain other occasions a voice had been heard, saying, "This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." But now, when such a testimony seemed most of all required, the oracle was not there! He was hung up as an accursed Thing upon the Cross, for He was "made a curse for us, as it is written, Cursed is everyone that hangs on a tree." And the Lord His God did not own Him before men. If it had pleased the Father He might have sent Him 12 legions of angels--but not an angel came after Christ had left Gethsemane. His despisers might spit in His face but no swift seraph came to avenge the indignity. They might bind Him and scourge Him, but none of all the heavenly host would interpose to screen His shoulders from the lash. They might fasten him to the tree with nails and lift Him up and scoff at Him--but no cohort of ministering spirits hastened to drive back the rabble and release the Prince of Life. No, He appeared to be forsaken, "smitten of God and afflicted," delivered into the hands of cruel men whose wicked hands worked Him misery without stint. Well might He ask, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" But this was not all. His Father now dried up that sacred stream of peaceful communion and loving fellowship which had flowed, up to now, throughout His whole earthly life. He said, Himself, as you remember, "You shall be scattered, every man to His own, and shall leave Me alone: and yet I am not alone, because the Father is with Me." Here was His constant comfort--but all comfort from this Source was to be withdrawn. The Divine Spirit did not minister to His human spirit. No communications with His Father's love poured into His heart. It was not possible that the Judge should smile upon One who represented the prisoner at the bar. Our Lord's faith did not fail Him, as I have already shown you, for He said, "My God, My God," yet no sensible supports were given to His heart and no comforts were poured into His mind. One writer declares that Jesus did not taste of Divine wrath but only suffered a withdrawal of Divine fellowship. What is the difference? Whether God withdraws heat or creates cold is all the same! He was not smiled upon, nor allowed to feel that He was near to God--and this, to His tender spirit, was grief of the keenest order! A certain saint once said that in his sorrow he had from God, "that which was meet, but not that which was sweet." Our Lord suffered to the extreme point of deprivation. He had not the light which makes existence to be life and life to be a blessing. You who know, in your degree, what it is to lose the conscious Presence and love of God--you can faintly guess what the sorrow of the Savior was now that He felt He had been forsaken of His God. "If the foundations are removed, what can the righteous do?" To our Lord, the Father's love was the foundation of everything--and when that was gone, all was gone. Nothing remained, within, without, above, when His own God, the God of His entire confidence, turned from Him. Yes, God in very deed forsook our Savior. To be forsaken of God was much more a source of anguish to Jesus than it would be to us. "Oh," you say, "how is that?" I answer because He was perfectly holy. A rupture between a perfectly holy Being and the thrice holy God must be in the highest degree strange, abnormal, perplexing and painful. If any man here who is not at peace with God could only know His true condition, he would swoon with fright! If you unforgiven ones only knew where you are and what you are at this moment, in the sight of God, you would never smile again till you were reconciled to Him. Alas, we are insensible--hardened by the deceitfulness of sin--and therefore we do not feel our true condition! His perfect holiness made it to our Lord a dreadful calamity to be forsaken of the thrice holy God. I remember, also, that our blessed Lord had lived in unbroken fellowship with God and to be forsaken was a new grief to Him. He had never known what the dark was till then--His life had been lived in the light of God. Think, dear child of God, if you had always dwelt in full communion with God, your days would have been as the days of Heaven upon earth! And how cold it would strike your heart to find yourself in the darkness of desertion. If you can conceive such a thing as happening to a perfect man, you can see why, to our Well-Beloved, it was a special trial. Remember, He had enjoyed fellowship with God more richly, as well as more constantly, than any of us. His fellowship with the Father was of the highest, deepest, fullest order--and what must the loss of it have been? We lose but drops when we lose our joyful experience of heavenly fellowship, and yet the loss is killing! But to our Lord Jesus Christ the sea was dried up--I mean His sea of fellowship with the Infinite God. Do not forget that He was such a One that to Him to be without God must have been an overwhelming calamity. In every part He was perfect and in every part fitted for communion with God to a supreme degree. A sinful man has an awful need of God but he does not know it and therefore he does not feel that hunger and thirst after God which would come upon a perfect man could he be deprived of God. The very perfection of his nature renders it inevitable that the holy man must either be in communion with God or be desolate. Imagine a stray angel--a seraph who has lost His God! Conceive him to be perfect in holiness and yet to have fallen into a condition in which he cannot find His God! I cannot picture him! Perhaps Milton might have done so. He is sinless and trustful and yet he has an overpowering feeling that God is absent from him. He has drifted into the nowhere--the unimaginable region behind the back of God. I think I hear the wailing of the cherub, "My God, my God, my God, where are You?" What a sorrow for one of the sons of the morning! But here we have the lament of a Being far more capable of fellowship with the Godhead! In proportion as He is more fitted to receive the love of the great Father, in that proportion is His pining after it the more intense. As a Son, He is more able to commune with God than ever a servant angel could be--and now that He is forsaken of God, the void within is greater and the anguish more bitter. Our Lord's heart and all His Nature were, morally and spiritually, so delicately formed, so sensitive, so tender, that to be without God was to Him a grief which could not be weighed. I see Him in the text bearing desertion and yet I perceive that He cannot bear it. I know not how to express my meaning except by such a paradox. He cannot endure to be without God. He had surrendered Himself to be left of God, as the representative of sinners must be, but His pure and holy Nature, after three hours of silence, finds the position unendurable to love and purity! And breaking forth from it, now that the hour was over, He exclaims, "Why have You forsaken Me?" He quarrels not with the suffering, but He cannot abide in the position which caused it. He seems as if He must end the ordeal--not because of the pain--but because of the moral shock! We have here the repetition after His passion of that loathing which He felt before it, when He cried, "If it is possible let this cup pass from Me: nevertheless not as I will, but as You will." "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" is the holiness of Christ amazed at the position of Substitute for guilty men! There, Friends. I have done my best, but I seem to myself to have been prattling like a little child talking about something infinitely above me. So I leave the solemn fact that our Lord Jesus was on the Cross forsaken of His God. II. This brings us to consider THE ENQUIRY, or why He suffered. Note carefully this cry--"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" It is pure anguish, undiluted agony, which cries like this--but it is the agony of a godly soul-- for only a man of that order would have used such an expression. Let us learn from it useful lessons. This cry is taken from "the Book." Does it not show our Lord's love of the sacred volume, that when He felt His sharpest grief, He turned to the Scripture to find a fit utterance for it? Here we have the opening sentence of the 22nd Psalm. Oh that we may so love the inspired Word that we may not only sing to its score but even weep to its music! Note, again, that our Lord's lament is an address to God. The godly, in their anguish, turn to the hand which smites them. The Savior's outcry is not against God, but to God. "My God, My God"--He makes a double effort to draw near. True Sonship is here! The child in the dark is crying after His Father--"My God, My God." Both the Bible and prayer were dear to Jesus in His agony. Still, observe it is a faith-cry, for though it asks, "Why have You forsaken Me?" it first says, twice, "My God, My God." The grip of appropriation is in the word "My." But the reverence of humility is in the word, "God." It is, "My God, My God, You are ever God to Me, and I a poor creature. I do not quarrel with You. Your rights are unquestioned, for You are My God. You can do as You will and I yield to Your sacred sovereignty. I kiss the hand that smites Me, and with all My heart I cry, 'My God, My God.'" When you are delirious with pain, think of your Bible--when your mind wonders, let it roam towards the Mercy Seat--and when your heart and your flesh fail, still live by faith and still cry, "My God, my God." Let us come close to the enquiry. It looked to me, at first sight, like a question as of one distraught, driven from the balance of His mind-- not unreasonable, but too much reasoning and therefore tossed about. "Why have You forsaken Me?" Did not Jesus know? Did He not know why He was forsaken? He knew it most distinctly and yet His Manhood, while it was being crushed, pounded and dissolved, seemed as though it could not understand the reason for so great a grief. He must be forsaken--but could there be a sufficient cause for so sickening a sorrow? The cup must be bitter--but why this most nauseous of ingredients? I tremble lest I say what I ought not to say. I have said it and I think there is truth--the Man of Sorrows was overborne with horror! At that moment the finite soul of the Man Christ Jesus came into awful contact with the infinite Justice of God! The one Mediator between God and man, the Man Christ Jesus, beheld the holiness of God in arms against the sin of man whose nature He had espoused. God was for Him and with Him in a certain unquestionable sense--but for the time, so far as His feelings went-- God was against Him and necessarily withdrawn from Him. It is not surprising that the holy Soul of Christ should shudder at finding itself brought into painful contact with the infinite Justice of God, even though its design was only to vindicate that Justice and glorify the Law-Giver. Our Lord could now say, "All Your waves and Your billows are gone over Me," and therefore He uses language which is all too hot with anguish to be dissected by the cold hand of a logical criticism. Grief has small regard for the laws of the grammarian. Even the holiest, when in extreme agony, though they cannot speak otherwise than according to purity and truth, yet use a language of their own which only the ear of sympathy can fully receive. I see not all that is here, but what I can see I am not able to put in words for you. I think I see in the expression, submission and resolve. Our Lord does not draw back. There is a forward movement in the question--they who quit a business ask no more questions about it. He does not ask that the forsaking may end prematurely--He would only understand anew its meaning. He does not shrink, but dedicates Himself anew to God by the words, "My God, My God," and by seeking to review the ground and reason of that anguish which He is resolute to bear even to the bitter end. He would gladly feel anew the motive which has sustained Him and must sustain Him to the end. The cry sounds to me like deep submission and strong resolve, pleading with God. Do you not think that the amazement of our Lord, when He was "made sin for us" (2 Cor. 5:21), led Him thus to cry out? For such a sacred and pure Being to be made a Sin-Offering was an amazing experience! Sin was laid on Him and He was treated as if He had been guilty, though He had personally never sinned. And now the infinite horror of rebellion against the most holy God fills His holy Soul, the unrighteousness of sin breaks His heart and He starts back from it, crying, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Why must I bear the dread result of conduct I so much abhor? Do you not see, moreover, there was here a glance at His eternal purpose and at His secret Source of joy? That "why" is the silver lining of the dark cloud and our Lord looked wishfully at it. He knew that the desertion was necessary in order that He might save the guilty and He had an eye to that salvation as His comfort. He is not forsaken needlessly, nor without a worthy design. The design is in itself so dear to His heart that He yields to the passing evil, even though that evil is like death to Him. He looks at that "why," and through that narrow window the light of Heaven comes streaming into His darkened life! "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Surely our Lord dwelt on that, "why," that we might also turn our eyes that way. He would have us see the why and the why of His grief. He would have us mark the gracious motive for its endurance. Think much of all your Lord suffered, but do not overlook the reason for it. If you cannot always understand how this or that grief worked toward the great end of the whole passion, yet believe that it has its share in the grand, "why." Make a life-study of that bitter but blessed question, "Why have You forsaken Me?" Thus the Savior raises an inquiry not so much for Himself as for us--and not so much because of any despair within His heart as because of a hope and a joy set before Him which were wells of comfort to Him in His wilderness of woe. Think, for a moment, that the Lord God, in the broadest and most unreserved sense, could never, in very deed, have forsaken His most obedient Son. He was ever with Him in the grand design of salvation. Towards the Lord Jesus, personally, God Himself, personally, must ever have stood on terms of infinite love. Truly the Only Begotten was never more lovely to the Father than when He was obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross! But we must look upon God here as the Judge of all the earth and we must look upon the Lord Jesus in His official capacity as the Surety of the Covenant and the Sacrifice for sin. The great Judge of all cannot smile upon Him who has become the Substitute for the guilty. Sin is loathed of God and if, in order to its removal, His own Son is made to bear it, yet, as sin, it is still loathsome and He who bears it cannot be in happy communion with God! This was the dread necessity of expiation--but in the essence of things the love of the great Father to His Son never ceased, nor ever knew a diminution. Restrained in its flow it must be, but lessened at its fountainhead it could not be. Therefore, wonder not at the question, "Why have You forsaken Me?" III. Hoping to be guided by the Holy Spirit, I am coming to THE ANSWER concerning which I can only use the few minutes which remain to me. "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" What is the outcome of this suffering? What was the reason for it? Our Savior could answer His own question. If for a moment His Manhood was perplexed, yet His mind soon came to clear apprehension for He said, "It is finished." And as I have already said, He then referred to the work which in His lonely agony He had been performing. Why, then, did God forsake His Son? I cannot conceive any other answer than this--He stood in our place. There was no reason in Christ why the Father should forsake Him--He was perfect and His life was without spot. God never acts without reason and since there were no reasons in the Character and Person of the Lord Jesus why His Father should forsake Him, we must look elsewhere. I do not know how others answer the question. I can only answer it in this one way-- "All the griefs He felt were ours, Ours were the woes He bore. Pang not His own, His spotless soul With bitter anguish bore. We held Him as condemned of Heaven An outcast from His God While for our sins He groaned, He bled, Beneath His Father's rod." He bore the sinner's sin and He had to be treated, therefore, as though He were a sinner, though sinner He could never be! With His own full consent He suffered as though He had committed the transgressions which were laid on Him. Our sin and His taking it upon Himself is the answer to the question, "Why have You forsaken Me?" In this case we now see that His obedience was perfect. He came into the world to obey the Father and He rendered that obedience to the very uttermost. The spirit of obedience could go no farther than for one who feels forsaken of God still to cling to Him in solemn, avowed allegiance--still declaring before a mocking multitude His confidence in the afflicting God! It is noble to cry, "My God, My God," when One is asking, "Why have You forsaken He?" How much farther can obedience go? I see nothing beyond it. The soldier at the gate of Pompeii, remaining at his post as sentry when the shower of burning ashes was falling, was not more true to his trust than He who adheres to a forsaking God with loyalty of hope. Our Lord's suffering in this particular form was appropriate and necessary. It would not have sufficed for our Lord merely to have been pained in body, nor even to have been grieved in mind in other ways--He must suffer in this particular way. He must feel forsaken of God because this is the necessary consequence of sin. For a man to be forsaken of God is the penalty which naturally and inevitably follows upon his breaking his relationship with God. What is death? What was the death that was threatened to Adam? "In the day that you eat thereof you shall surely die." Is death annihilation? Was Adam annihilated that day? Assuredly not! He lived many a year afterwards. But in the day in which he ate of the forbidden fruit he died by being separated from God. The separation of the soul from God is spiritual death, just as the separation of the soul from the body is natural death. The sacrifice for sin must be put in the place of separation and must bow to the penalty of death. By this placing of the Great Sacrifice under forsaking and death, it would be seen by all creatures throughout the universe that God cannot have fellowship with sin. If even the Holy One, who stood the Just for the unjust, found God forsaking Him--what must the doom of the actual sinner be? Sin is evidently always, in every case, a dividing influence, putting even the Christ Himself, as a Sin-Bearer, in the place of distance. This was necessary for another reason--there could have been no laying on of suffering for sin without the forsaking of the vicarious Sacrifice by the Lord God. So long as the smile of God rests on the man, the Law is not afflicting him. The approving look of the great Judge cannot fall upon a man who is viewed as standing in the place of the guilty. Christ not only suffered from sin, but for sin. If God will cheer and sustain Him, He is not suffering for sin. The Judge is not inflicting suffering for sin if He is manifestly encouraging the smitten One. There could have been no vicarious suffering on the part of Christ for human guilt if He had continued, consciously, to enjoy the full sunshine of the Father's Presence. It was essential to being a Victim in our place that He should cry, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Beloved, see how marvelously, in the Person of Christ, the Lord our God has vindicated His Law? If to make His Law glorious He had said, "These multitudes of men have broken My Law and therefore they shall perish," the Law would have been terribly magnified. But, instead, He says, "Here is My Only Begotten Son, My other Self--He takes on Himself the Nature of these rebellious creatures and He consents that I should lay on Him the load of their iniquity and visit in His Person the offenses which might have been punished in the persons of all these multitudes of men--and I will have it so." When Jesus bows His head to the stroke of the Law--when He submissively consents that His Father shall turn away His face from Him--then myriads of worlds are astonished at the perfect holiness and stern justice of the Lawgiver! There are, probably, worlds innumerable throughout the boundless creation of God and all these will see, in the death of God's dear Son, a declaration of His determination never to allow sin to be trifled with! If His own Son is brought before Him, bearing the sin of others upon Him, He will hide His face from Him as well as from the actually guilty. In God infinite Love shines over all--but it does not eclipse His absolute Justice any more than His Justice is permitted to destroy His Love. God has all perfections in Perfection and in Christ Jesus we see the reflection of them. Beloved, this is a wonderful theme! Oh, that I had a tongue worthy of this subject! But who could ever reach the height of this great argument? Once more, when enquiring, "Why did Jesus suffer to be forsaken of the Father?" we see the fact that the Captain of our salvation was thus made perfect through suffering. Every part of the road has been traversed by our Lord's own feet. Suppose, Beloved, the Lord Jesus had never been thus forsaken? Then one of His disciples might have been called to that sharp endurance and the Lord Jesus could not have sympathized with him in it. He would turn to His Leader and Captain and say to Him, "Did You, my Lord, ever feel this darkness?" Then the Lord Jesus would answer, "No. This is a descent such as I never made." What a dreadful lack would the tried one have felt! For the servant to bear a grief his Master never knew would be sad, indeed. There would have been a wound for which there was no ointment--a pain for which there was no balm. But it is not so now. "In all their affliction He was afflicted." "He was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." Whereas we greatly rejoice at this time and as often as we are cast down, underneath us is the deep experience of our forsaken Lord. I have done when I have said three things. The first is, you and I that are Believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and are resting in Him alone for salvation, let us lean hard. Let us bear all our weight on our Lord. He will bear the full weight of all our sin and care. As to my sin, I hear its harsh accusations no more when I hear Jesus cry, "Why have You forsaken Me?" I know that I deserve the deepest Hell at the hand of God's vengeance but I am not afraid! He will never forsake me, for He forsook His Son on my behalf. I shall not suffer for my sin, for Jesus has suffered to the full in my place--yes, suffered so far as to cry, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Behind this brazen wall of Substitution a sinner is safe! These "munitions of rock" guard all Believers and they may rest secure. The rock is cleft for me--I hide in its rifts and no harm can reach me. You have a full Atonement, a great Sacrifice, a glorious vindication of the Law--you can rest at peace, all you that put your trust in Jesus. Next, if ever, from now on, in our lives we should think that God has deserted us, let us learn from our Lord's example how to behave ourselves. If God has left you, do not shut up your Bible--no, open it as your Lord did--and find a text that will suit you. If God has left you, or you think so, do not give up prayer! No, pray as your Lord did and be more earnest than ever. If you think God has forsaken you, do not give up your faith in Him, but, like your Lord, cry, "My God, my God," again and again! If you have had one anchor before, cast out two anchors now and double the hold of your faith. If you cannot call Jehovah, "Father," as was Christ's habit, yet call Him your "God." Let the personal pronouns take their hold--"My God, my God." Let nothing drive you from your faith. Still hold on Jesus, sink or swim. As for me, if ever I am lost it shall be at the foot of the Cross! To this pass have I come, that if I never see the face of God with acceptance, yet I will believe that He will be faithful to His Son and true to the Covenant sealed by oaths and blood. He that believes in Jesus has everlasting life--there I cling, like the limpet to the rock. There is but one gate of Heaven and even if I may not enter it, I will cling to the posts of its door! What am I saying? I shall enter in for that gate was never shut against a soul that accepted Jesus! And Jesus says, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." The last of the three points is this, let us abhor the sin which brought such agony upon our Beloved Lord. What an accursed thing is sin which crucified the Lord Jesus! Do you laugh at it? Will you go and spend an evening to see a mimic performance of it? Do you roll sin under your tongue as a sweet morsel and then come to God's house on the Lord's-Day morning and think to worship Him? Worship Him? Worship Him with sin indulged in your breast? Worship Him with sin loved and pampered in your life? O Sirs, if I had a dear brother who had been murdered, what would you think of me if I valued the knife which had been crimsoned with his blood--if I made a friend of the murderer and daily consorted with the assassin who drove the dagger into my brother's heart? Surely I, too, must be an accomplice in the crime! Sin murdered Christ--will you be a friend to it? Sin pierced the heart of the Incarnate God--can you love it? Oh that there was an abyss as deep as Christ's misery, that I might at once hurl this dagger of sin into its depths--where it might never be brought to light again! Begone, O Sin! You are banished from the heart where Jesus reigns! Begone, for you have crucified my Lord and made Him cry, "Why have You forsaken Me?"! O my Hearers, if you did but know yourselves and know the love of Christ, you would each one vow that you would harbor sin no longer! You would be indignant at sin and cry-- "The dearest idol I have known, Whatever that idol is, Lord, I will tear it from its throne, And worship only You." May that be the issue of my morning's discourse and then I shall be well content. The Lord bless you! May the Christ who suffered for you bless you, and out of His darkness may your light arise! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Psalm 22. __________________________________________________________________ The Rough Hewer A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 9, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "O Ephraim, what shall I do to you? O Judah, what shall I do to you? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goes away. Therefore ha ve I hewed them by the Prophets; I have slain them by the Words of My mouth: and your judgments are as the light that goes forth." Hosea 6:4,5. VERY simple is the way of salvation--very plain is the road home. The chapter begins with it--"Come, and let us return unto the Lord." By going away from the Lord we have lost our privileges, have become wounded and have lost ourselves. To find all these things again we must go back to the Lord, from Whom we have wandered. We must cry with the repenting prodigal, "I will arise and go to my Father"--and if we at once begin to carry out the resolve--the way home is not far to seek. Concerning salvation we need only preach one sermon by way of explanation--but men need 10 sermons by way of exhortation. Turn to the right when you come to the Cross and keep straight on and you will get home, however much you have wandered from the right way. Alas, too many of our hearers complicate this sweet simplicity! They will not be content to take the plain way--they love more winding paths. They will not drink of the cool flowing waters--they look for a mingled cup of their own filling. They are waiting. For what are they waiting? They are looking about. For what are they looking? They choose a thorny maze instead of a straight road. The Lord God, when He is resolved to save, sees it necessary to use peculiar methods with these who will not be satisfied to receive the kingdom of Heaven as a little child. Because they will not come when they are bidden, the Lord adds blows to His words. Because they will not come when they are gently drawn, they shall be roughly driven. Because the cords of love and the bonds of a man fail to bring them, they shall have the goad of the ox and the bit and bridle of the mule. If gentle breezes will not waft the ship, the tempestuous Euroclydon shall force it to the haven! When the Lord resolves to save, He will lay on His chastisement until the whole head is sick and the whole heart faints. He will smite until, from the crown of the head to the sole of the feet, the body is all wounds and bruises and putrefying sores. By strong measures and strange methods He will bring back the stray sheep. "Yet does He devise means that His banished are not expelled from Him." It is a great pity that there should be need for these unusual means, for the method of salvation is simple--and if we are willing and obedient we shall find her ways to be ways of pleasantness. "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved," is a command which is plain as a pike-staff. The Gospel precept is such as a child can understand and its commandment is not grievous. Alas, men will not follow this path of peace--and even those whom God eternally ordains to save are, for many a day, most rebellious against His easy plan. Therefore does God go about and use all sorts of wise dealings with men, that He may hide pride from them and may make them willing to accept the humbling terms of salvation by Grace alone through Jesus Christ. In the case before us, love seems to have reached its nonplus. Infinite Love and boundless Wisdom seem, in this instance, to be brought to a dead halt. God has been dealing with Judah and Ephraim in ways as wide as the poles asunder--He has been as a moth, which, without noise eats the garment--and thus He has caused them a grave disquiet in a gentle and secret manner. But as this sufficed not, He has also turned His lion upon them and by sharp afflictions and terrible visitations they have been torn and wounded--as when a wild beast rends his prey in pieces. But neither the gentle nor the terrible has availed--they have remained hardened. What treatment can now be tried? The Lord asks the question. He appeals to those whom He would bless and puts it to them. Infinite Wisdom is pictured as crying in bewilderment, "O Ephraim, what shall I do unto you?" What is the next thing? "O Judah, what shall I do unto you?" What else can be hopefully used after so many failures? In what terms shall I now address you? By what methods shall I now attempt to win you? Ah, it is a thousand pities that the case should ever wear this complexion. Why should the line of Love be thrown into such a tangle? For, after all, today, at this very moment, the way of salvation is plain, open and simple to those of you whose cases are most perplexing! All else is intricate, but this is plain--"Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." "Look unto Me and be you saved, all the ends of the earth." Since men will complicate it, the Lord pursues them in His infinite compassion and follows them, despite their devious ways, double dealings, inconstancies and falsehoods. Our text tells us, first, of the disappointments of Love--"What shall I do unto you? for your goodness is as a morning cloud, and as the early dew it goes away." Secondly, it mentions the devices of Mercy--"Therefore have I hewed them by the prophets; I have slain them by the words of My mouth." When we have thought of these two things, we shall be led, very briefly, to notice the declaration of Justice. If all these ways of longsuffering are despised, God's Justice will be abundantly vindicated--"Your judgments are as the light that goes forth." The condemnation of those who disappoint Love and defy Wisdom will be richly deserved. In closing, we shall, in the fourth place, come back to where we began and remind you of the direction of Wisdom which stands before us in the first verse--"Come, and let us return unto the Lord." I. First, then, THE DISAPPOINTMENTS OF LOVE. May the Holy Spirit aid us in this meditation! We have a number of persons about us of whose conversion we have been very hopeful. We know those who for years have presented cheering signs of a gracious work within them and yet, up to now, they have occasioned us grave disappointment. They bud, but they never fruit. Long have they disappointed us and our fear is that they will disappoint us even to the end. These people give very speedy promise. We have hardly begun with them but we feel optimistic of success. Theirs is the religion of haste but it never speeds. They are as the morning cloud--we have not to wait until evening--and like the mists on the hills they are visible before the break of day. Some people are up early and yet do nothing--such are these. We reckon on them at once but we reckon wrongfully. We have not preached long before we see tears. We have not talked long before we perceive emotions. We feel sure that the Word of God will not return void from them--for they attend carefully and are moved by the Word as the boughs of the forest are swayed by the wind. It all comes to nothing. These are the stony-ground hearers. That scanty soil with a hard piece of rock below it no sooner received the Seed than, because there was no depth of earth, the Seed began to spring up. The same cause which made them so easy come made them so easy go--because of the lack of root and soil they speedily withered away. Oh, these stony-ground hearers--what a fraud they are! These come by scores to the Penitent Form--but where are they afterwards? These throng the Inquiry Room but never unite with the Church. They make a great display of emotion but it is all a flash in the pan. They are very impressionable, but they are as impetuous as they are impressible! They never stop to think, but go for a matter blindly. They never look before they leap--they leap and then they look--and come to the conclusion to jump back again. They are quick to promise but slow performers. Thus they act treacherously with God. These people give striking promises. For the morning cloud was a very striking promise of rain. Looking out of his door in the morning, the Eastern farmer saw a heavy mist hanging over his fields and he said, "It will rain, and let the Lord be praised, who waters the hills from His chambers." Very soon he perceived that the sign was not fulfilled, for the dew and the cloud were gone as quickly as they came. But at the time, the tokens were very impressive and full of hope. So have some of you, my dear Hearers, greatly cheered us with a fair prospect of your conversion. You were so broken down under an address that we hoped you were about to display true repentance. You were so pleased to hear the Word of God that we thought you really had received Christ into your heart. You made some very plain and decided remarks and your life, for a while, appeared happily altered so that we and others said, "We trust it is a work of Divine Grace." But you have deceived us! And, worse than that, you have dealt treacherously with God in this matter--for you have gone back to your old ways though you know them to be evil. You yourself thought that you were converted and you openly avowed that you were so. You determined to be this, that and the other--and yet you are none of these beings. I will not go into detail about your promises but I would have you remember that these are so many bonds and notes-of-hand which you have not taken up and they will be brought out against you at the Last Great Day. We could stand and weep over you, for we know not what to do next. God Himself seems to enquire of you, "What shall I do to you? What shall I do to you? Your goodness is as the morning cloud, and as the early dew it goes away." These persons give repeated promises. Though they have failed once, they very freely promise again--though they have failed 20 times--they confidently resolve anew. They are always beginning, never going on. The work of a minister with such people is endless. A mason who is hewing stone has hard enough work--the chips fly in his face and his tool is often worn down--yet when he leaves off at night, he continues in the morning where he left off. But what would be his toil if what he took off in the day grew again at night? What would the hewer of trees do if the tree grew so fast as to fill up the gashes which his axe had made? This would be a case of labor in vain. Such is my work with many of you, my Hearers. Practically, I have to deal with you as I began 30 years ago--if, indeed, you are not worse! If I were the hewer of timber, I should feel pleasure in the woodman's craft. But if each time I had half felled a tree its wound would heal up, I think I should give up in despair. Yet how does this differ from my case with some of you? O my Hearers, it is heart-breaking work to seek your salvation! For the more eager we are, the more bitter are the disappointments with which you recompense our loving anxieties. I have said, "Surely that tree will soon fall." But, lo, every mark of the axe is effaced and the tree looks as if it had never seen a woodman! I wish you had a little consideration for pastors and teachers who desire your eternal welfare, for you send us home lamenting, "Their goodness is as the morning cloud, and as the early dew it goes away." After all, these persons do but give us empty promises. Their vow has no more substance in it than cloud or dew. Shall I show you how it is that they are so quick to promise and so ready to yield to our persuasions--and yet do not come up to the mark and carry out their resolves? In some cases they have a very impressible nature. Many men seem made of hard, unworkable metal. I cannot say I am very fond of them, but others are made of very soft metal and I cannot say that I am any fonder of them! These are your men of willow, easy to bend. These are your lumps of unbaked clay--you can mark them at pleasure with your thumb or your little finger--they are easily affected by their surroundings. Hundreds of these people come to places of worship and are encouraging till they become disappointing. Better still, there are many who have a naturally tender conscience. Such are here now. When you were boys you could not do wrong without being troubled about it. You have wept yourselves to sleep when you have felt that you grieved your father or mother. What a mercy it is to have a tender conscience! And yet a conscience which is only naturally tender, but has never been renewed by the Spirit of God may be very deceptive--for we may think we have spiritually repented when we have done nothing of the sort. These people weep about sin but go on sinning! They desire faith but remain unbelievers. They soon feel but they quickly leave off feeling. They are superficial and hence untrue. Many are affected by a strong tendency to imitate those about them. We all imitate one another more or less--but evidently many are not born to set examples, but to follow examples--these easily promise but as easily forget. The love of approbation acts upon many with great force. Especially will young people follow each other and follow leaders if they are praised for it. Converts may easily be made by mutual admiration. If it happens to be a religious time and it is the fashion to profess conversion, many of all ages go with the rush and yet are by no means truly called into the kingdom of God. That religion which lives upon companionship is apt to die when the company is changed. Beware of the godliness which is carried off its feet by the crowd--true religion is the personal conviction of one who has repented and believed on his own account No man can be carried to Heaven by the stream of outside influence--there must be a work within--"You must be born-again." No doubt we have many who disappoint our hopes because they are moving in the right way--but they are not going there from a force within--but are being compelled to go by an influence from without. One person of great strength of mind may have a vast influence over others--but subjecting to the best influence can never take the place of personal conversion. We read, in the Word of God, of a young king who did that which was right in the sight of God all the days of the venerable high priest who had been his guardian--but when the gracious man was gone, the king went his own way--and that way was an evil one. Many persons are under the holy influence of godly relatives and friends, but they are by no means gracious themselves--their real character is concealed by the godly one who overshadows them. Oh, how sad, to be going the right way openly and yet in heart to be treading the downward road! We are before God what we are in heart and not what our surroundings compel us to be. No doubt some give us early promise of better things because they are under temporary excitement and hardly know what they say. Or they are afraid because of prevailing sickness, or fear of death and judgment. They have no sense of sin but they feel a fear of Hell. They have no wish to escape from doing wrong, but they want to save their skins from the punishment which follows upon wrong-doing. When they are ill they not only send for the doctor, but send for the Christian man to come and pray with them. They send for the doctor because they would be freed from pain and for the other because they would be freed from Hell. Every murderer would, of course, escape the gallows if he could--but this desire is no proof of repentance and no sign of reformation. In such cases their goodness is as the morning cloud, and as the early dew it passes away. These people involve themselves in greater sin by breaking their promises for, according to the 7th verse, these breaches of contract are treacheries to God. "There have they dealt treacherously against Me." A man cannot have lived in this world year after year, vowing and promising, proposing and delaying without hardening his heart in the process. It is perilous to promise faith and remain in unbelief. I say a man cannot have lived in idle promises and vain resolves without the crimson dye of falsehood soaking into his inmost soul. His very heart and thoughts will become tinctured with a practical untruthfulness and superficiality. Beware of violating your conscience-- even once tampering with convictions is like once taking the leprosy. To put down conviction is a species of soul-stifling. To drive out a holy thought and crush a right desire is spiritual suicide. If you have not carried it to the last degree of actually killing your soul, yet in its essence, every lie to one's soul is a dagger at the heart of its best life. To resist the Spirit of God is a deadly sin and to quench the Spirit is a capital offense. I cannot, even if I forget his future, look upon any man who has disappointed our just hopes without a horror of soul that anyone should have acted in this fashion against Almighty God, the God of infinite long-suffering, who has borne with him so long. II. But I must hasten now to notice, in the second place, with a view to the comfort of some here, THE DEVICES OF MERCY. "Therefore," says the text--what? Therefore I gave them up? Therefore I left them to themselves? No, but, "Therefore have I hewed them by the Prophets; I have slain them by the Words of My mouth." To many men whom God has predestinated unto eternal life it has happened that, after they have long resisted the drawings of Divine Grace, the Lord has dealt with them in quite another fashion, though with the same end and design. In this case, according to the text, He hewed them by the Prophets--but I have seen the Lord hew men with cutting Providences. One man would not think till the Lord laid him on a bed of sickness. Even there he tried to brazen it out-- but the sickness grew worse and a more painful disease followed upon the first. He began to be shaken in mind by his pains, especially when he had to lie awake night after night. Depression of spirit followed upon weakness of body and suddenly the curtain seemed to lift and the man was compelled to look into the eternal future--black and grim. He had always shunned that sight but now it haunted him. He who would not think nor care about eternal things began to be exceedingly thoughtful and careful about such matters! The Lord was hewing him with personal sickness and it was of no use for him to attempt to stand out against Him. Or the hewing has been by bereavements. His wife, who was the delight of his eyes, suddenly sickened and died. A little child followed--the darling of the household was laid upon its mother's coffin. When the second stroke came the man cried, "O God, I cannot bear this! What would You have me to do?" But he still held out and continued impenitent. He had one left--his daughter--the lone star of his life. On a sudden she was taken from him. Then he wept in the bitterness of his spirit, for he was a heart-broken man. In my experience in dealing with anxious souls, I often meet with men and women who find life through the death of their beloved children. An open grave has been God's doorway to their hearts. The arrows of the Lord have struck one after another and, when deprived of earthly lovers, they have turned to the heavenly Friend. They will have reason to bless God to all eternity for those sad days of bereavement wherein the pruning knife cut away from them the wild wood of worldliness and carelessness! There are many who can say, "Before I was afflicted I went astray; but now have I kept Your Word"! The rough hewing has often taken another shape and has come in the form of loss and impoverishment. The man was getting on wonderfully in business--everything prospered with him and his increasing wealth ministered to his presumption. He had an excursion for God's day, a jest for God's Word, a contempt for God's house and an ill word for God's people. But suddenly there came a turn of the tide and he was carried down stream. He struggled against it but he found himself hastening to the lower reaches of the river of debt and drawing near to the sea of bankruptcy. He did not see that the hand of God had gone out against him. He cursed his bad luck and resolved to fight it out. He had to leave his comfortable house and live in a very reduced fashion. But he did not yield. He would find a situation--he would earn his living by harder work. But he could not find a situation--he tramped London in vain till his bare feet almost touched the stones of the pavement--and his clothes grew ragged about him. Now, the prospect was grim, indeed, for no citizen of the far country would even send him into his fields to feed swine. Then it was that he said, "I will arise and go to my Father." The extremity of his need was the opportunity of the good Spirit. If you will not come to God while you have a good coat on your back, I could almost pray that you might come to rags! May a hungry belly bring you, if nothing else will! I am glad to see your worldly estate prosper--but if your soul is perishing you are in a sad case. Better far that the flock be cut off from the fold and there be no herd in the stall than that you should be cut off from Christ and have no Grace in your heart! If some of you are passing, just now, through very trying Providences, I pray with all my heart that they may be sanctified to you. It will be no ill wind which wrecks your ship if the tempest casts you upon the Rock of Ages. I trust that the Lord is laying you low that He may build you up upon a sure Foundation. With certain others, the Lord does not so much deal with cutting Providences as by sharp and convincing ministries. Do you not remember, some of you, before you found the Lord, how quietly you heard your minister and were comfortable and sleepy under him? But the Lord came forth by that ministry against you and you were sorely wounded by it! You had amended your faults, rectified your life and you felt very much at ease. The evil spirit had gone out and the house was empty, swept and garnished--you were in a very hopeful and happy condition! Do you remember that dreadful sermon which, like a bombshell, broke through the roof of your house and set the whole place on fire? You were very angry, but the deed was done! Sometimes it has been my business, in the name of God, deliberately to break in pieces the choice ornaments of self-righteous men. This has made them feel ferocious! The special things wherein they delighted themselves have been destroyed before their eyes! The ministry has been as a hammer breaking their idols in pieces! Do you not know that the Spirit of God is a destroyer? Is it not written, "The grass withers because the Spirit of the Lord blows upon it: surely the people are grass"? Everything that grows out of human nature is dried up when the Spirit of God blows upon it and reveals its imperfection. The Holy Spirit is to self-confidence a Spirit ofjudgment and a Spirit of burning. To many it is necessary that the Lord's servant should be a rough hewer. Then is a man famous according as he lifts up his axe upon the thick trees! The faithful preacher lops away many a goodly bough and as the man's natural state is made bare, he cries, "Why is all this? What sharp preaching is this?" I have known hearers exclaim, "I will never hear that man again. He makes me miserable." Why not hear him again? Do you want him to flatter you? I have no such commission. O my Hearers, do you think that I come here on the Lord's-Day with an anxious heart aiming at your gratification? Do you think that I play a fiddle that you may dance to it? God forbid that I should so ruin both you and myself! A minister flings his soul away if he spends his energies in the attempt to please his congregation! It may not be well that some of you should be pleased. Sometimes when a man grows outrageously angry with a sermon, he is getting more good than when he retires saying, "What an eloquent discourse!" I have never yet heard of a salmon that liked the hook which had taken sure hold of it--nor do men admire sermons which enter their souls. When the Word of God becomes as an arrow in a man's heart, he writhes--he would gladly tear it out--but it is a barbed shaft. He gnashes his teeth, he grows indignant--but he is wounded and the arrow is rankling. The preaching which pleases us may not be the Truth of God but the doctrine which grieves our heart and troubles our conscience, is, in all probability, true. At any rate, there are grave reasons for suspecting that it is so. It is not the way of the Truth of God to flatter guilty men. I say the Lord uses ministries of a cutting kind to make men uneasy in their sins and cause them to flee to Christ for peace. It is well for the preacher to remind men that they are lost by nature and that in their flesh there dwells no good thing. It is well that sin should be made to appear sin and that self-righteousness should be made to look like filthy rags. Human inability and the need of the Holy Spirit must be set forth clearly and the Sovereignty of God must be proclaimed solemnly. The Lord has a right to pass over whom He pleases--and if mercy comes to any man it will be by the sovereign act of God--because God wills to do it and not because any man deserves it. We must preach the need of cleansing in the precious blood and the necessity of being born-again from above. While the preacher thunders out the doctrine of death by sin and life in Christ, and other kindred truths, then it is that the Lord hews men by the Prophets and they fall slain by the Words of His mouth. "I shall never hope again," says one. "That sermon drove me to despair." Self-despair is the beginning of true hope in Christ! Go and hear that man again! "Oh, but he hung up all my hopes like so many criminals on the gallows." Go and hear him again! For more of that hanging needs to be done till your last carnal hope is executed. "But he hits so hard." Thank God he does! There is no hewing stone without hard blows! Oh, it is well to be riddled by the Gospel, for God never heals those whom He has not struck and He never binds up those who have no wounds. Why should the physician come to those who are not sick? It is to you who are bleeding to death that Mercy flies on wings of wind! There shall be no delay when you are at Death's door spiritually. Look unto the Lord and live! He waits to heal the wounds He has made. Beyond this the Lord uses, with many men, very cutting operations within their souls. They feel spiritual hewing within which are most terrible. It is my lot almost every day in the week to meet with those who are pressed beneath the heavy hand of conviction of sin. By long experience of the Lord's hewing I feel at home where the axe has made gaping gashes and the chips lie deep about me. But this is awful work in certain instances, for the tree seems cut down close by the roots. The Holy Spirit comes to some men and makes a discovery to them of what their past lives have been and oh, the horror of it! They were most respectable people in their own esteem--if not Christians, they were quite as good as the most of those who are and far better than some--but how soon was this changed! When the Lord pulls back a shutter and lets a little light into the dark room of the soul, what filth and loathsomeness appear where all seemed clean! The Lord does more than that--He takes up the cellar flap and lets the man peer beneath the surface into the dark vault of his heart. What a sink of depravity! What an abyss of deceit! No man's reason would survive a full sight of his own inner self. A cage of unclean birds is nothing to it. The lusts and filthy imaginations, the pride, the wrath, the deceit, the meanness of our natures--who can know them? When we see these hidden evils revealed by the Scriptures we are, indeed, slain by the Words of the Lord's mouth! I have known persons, under horror of sin, try to pray but prayer has died in their throats. They have read their Bibles and every chapter has thundered at them. The Word of the Lord has seemed like a red hot harrow full of burning spikes and it has been dragged up and down the field of their tender hearts. Even the Gospel has forgotten its sweetness to their ears. The ambassador of peace has had no kind word for them. I have met with those who have even tried to believe in Christ but they have been so overloaded with fear that they failed to hope in His mercy. I spoke to one the other day who said, "Sir, I am spiritually dead." I answered, "Jesus says, 'He that believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.'" He replied that he was without hope and I reminded him that at one time we, also, were without Christ and without hope, and yet we were made near. "Alas," he said, "I have no strength for anything." I bade him remember that it is written, "When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly." "O Sir," he said, "You are very skillful to turn things about. But I am lost." "Yes," I said, "And 'the Son of Man is come to seek and to save that which was lost.' If you will describe yourself as a pretty gentleman I shall find nothing in the Bible to comfort you. But as long as you have only black words and condemning words with which to daub yourself, I feel that you are Christ's man for you describe yourself just as the Scriptures describe those whom Jesus came to save." Painful as are God's strokes, I rejoice to hear His axe going--for those whom the Lord hews today He will help tomorrow! When the Lord is hewing a man and making him feel that he is nothing and nobody, or worse than that--when He is making him feel that he is just a heap of sin and misery only fit to be shoveled into the bottomless pit--then I know that salvation is near! When God brings a man down there will soon be a lifting up. When the night is darkest, the dawn is nearest. When carnal hope is killed, spiritual hope begins to live. Thus have we seen the rough methods of tender Love and spied out the devices of effectual Grace. III. And now I have to notice with deep solemnity, for a moment only, THE DECLARATION OF JUSTICE which is placed in the midst of this Revelation of mercy. What does the Word say? "Your judgments are as the light that goes forth." Perhaps I address one this morning who has promised fair for Heaven but has deceived everybody and now God has been dealing with him in another way and made him feel the axe of affliction--if, after all, he remains obstinate and will not yield to the love of God his condemnation will be just. If, despite all this, he is determined to be lost, God's judgments will be as clear as the light of the morning, or as the flash of lightning in a storm. All you have suffered you have well deserved--you have been brought very low, but it is of the Lord's mercies that you are not consumed. It is true He seems to have struck you with cruel blows--but had He dealt with you after your sins and rewarded you according to your iniquities--you would have been where hope can never come. If God had not been longsuffering, you would long ago have been where they ask in vain for a drop of water to cool their tongue, tormented in the flame. It is great mercy that has dealt so unmercifully with your temporal estate. It is great love that has taken away those you love. In any case you have deserved it all and God's dealings with you are clearly righteous. You cannot question His procedure. But if all this is in vain and you pass into another state unsaved, God's eternal judgment against you will be "as the light that goes forth." Who will plead for you? I think I see you in that Last Dread Day. Yes, here you come! This is the man who knew all about Christ and His precious blood and salvation by Grace through faith! This is he who knew, but did not act as he knew. Who will be his advocate? Here he comes, the man who 52 Sundays in the year heard the Gospel faithfully preached and yet closed his ears to it. What excuse has he? Here he comes--the man who was pleaded with but would not come-- who will lament for him? Here he comes, the man that was the subject of many prayers and many anxious pleadings--the man that was so near to the kingdom as to be almost persuaded to be a Christian! What can be said for him? For this man so much was done that the Lord said, "What could have been done more to My vineyard that I have not done in it?" Mercy itself came to a pause and said, "What shall I do to you? What shall I do to you?" Surely, it is now the turn for Justice to ask the same question. Here he comes, the man on whom the Gospel has exhausted all its pleadings and God's ambassadors have spent all their arguments! Here he comes and, when the Judge asks him what he has to say in his own defense, what answer can he make? Will it not be another case of, "He stood speechless; and the King said, Bind him hand and foot and cast him into outer darkness; there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth"? My God! Am I speaking to anyone this morning whose case this will be? I pray, of Your mercy, that it may not be so! If I had the misery of knowing that one soul here would be lost and if I was bidden to point out the one that should be cast away forever--how could I bear it? No, my Lord, blot my name out of Your book sooner than one of these should perish! I tremble as I stand before You! Yet there are those here who are as unaffected as the seats they sit upon. When such go down to destruction, who shall act as advocate for them? If one would plead for them, what could he say?-- "How they deserve the deepest Hell Who slight thejoys above! What chains of vengeance must they feel That break such cords of love!" IV. So, then, I finish with my fourth head, which is not in the text and yet is the true drift of the text--consider THE PATH OF WISDOM. Leave all I have said, if you please, but listen to the voice which says, "Come, let us return unto the Lord!" Why should you be struck any more--you will only revolt more and more! Why should you be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle? Why should you be "like dumb driven cattle?" Listen to the voice of Wisdom and be reconciled to God by the death of His Son. "Come, and let us return unto the Lord." This is very simple. So much the better for you. Think of it. No, practice it! What is the way back to God? The Lord Jesus answers--"I am the way." Take Him to be your door of access to the great God on whom you have before turned your backs. Along the blood-sprinkled way of the atoning Sacrifice return unto the Lord your God. Not only are the words simple, but they are encouraging. It is put here in a way that ought to cheer you--for others invite you lest you be afraid to go alone--"Come, and let us return unto the Lord." Let us go together. Here, take my hand. I, too, will go to Jesus as a sinner. All of us who have gone to Him before will go to Him again with you. Come! Do you hesitate? Come, let us go at once. Let us go together. We will pray with you and for you--we know the road and will point it out to you. You are sitting side by side with your wife this morning and you are, neither of you, saved. Oh, that the two of you would seize each other's hands and say, "Come and let us return unto the Lord!" And you, Brothers and Sisters, or you, Friends, who know each other well--would it not be a happy thing if, hand in hand, before you leave this place--you did return unto the Lord? Come! Come! Come! Let us return! Why do we linger? Oh, that all here present who have not come back to God by Jesus Christ would come in a great company to the Lord! Does it seem too bold a thing for you to go back to God? Be not dismayed! Take heart because of the word of promise. You cry, "He has torn me! He has wounded me!" Yes, that is why you should come to Him, for it is written, "He has torn and He will heal us; He has smitten and He will bind us up." "Look!" cries the sick man, "see what a gash the surgeon made! He has gone away! Do you think he will come again to me?" Come again? Of course he will. He must come again. If he made that wound, he had a purpose in it and he will go through with his design. He has made the open wound because it was necessary to make it and he has thereby bound himself to attend to you till you are healed. In conviction there is promise of consolation. It is not the nature of our good Lord to cause needless grief. His wounds intend a cure. The Lord, who has broken your heart, will bind it up! The Lord, who has made you tremble at His name, will yet make you rejoice in His salvation. He has said it--"To this man will I look, even to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and trembles at My Word." The Lord will come to you in the grave of despair and bid you live! Behold His gracious promise and believe it to be true--"After two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight." May we all live in His sight by faith in Christ Jesus. And to Him be glory forever! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Hosea 5:11-15; Hosea 6. __________________________________________________________________ The Warnings and the Rewards of the Word of God A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 16, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "Moreover by them is Your servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward." Psalm 19:11. THIS is the declaration of one of God's servants--"by them is Your servant warned." Only for men made obedient by Divine Grace is this passage written. My Hearer, are you God's servant? Let us begin with that question. Remember that if you are not God's servant you are the bond-slave of sin and the wages of sin is death. The Psalmist, in this Psalm, has compared the Word of God to the sun. The sun in the heavens is everything to the natural world--and the Word of God in the heart is everything in the spiritual world. The world would be dark, dead and fruitless without the sun--and what would the mind of the Christian be without the illuminating influence of the Word of God? If you despise Holy Scripture, you are like one that despises the sun! It would seem that you are blind and worse than blind, for even those without sight enjoy the warmth of the sun. How depraved are you if you can perceive no heavenly luster about the Book of God! The Word of the Lord makes our day! It makes our spring! It makes our summer! It prepares and ripens all our fruit! Without the Word of God we should be in the outer darkness of spiritual death. I have not time, this morning, to sum up the blessings which are showered upon us through the sun's light, heat and other influences. So is it with the perfect Law of the Lord--when it comes in the power of the Spirit of God upon the soul, it brings unnumbered blessings--blessings more than we, ourselves, are able to discern. David, for a moment, dwelt upon the delights of God's Word. He said, "More to be desired are they than gold, yes, than much fine gold: sweeter also than honey and the honeycomb." The Revelation of God enriches the mind with knowledge, the heart with comfort, the life with holiness, the whole man with Divine strength. He that studies, understands and appropriates the statutes of the Lord is rich in the truest sense--rich in holiness for this life and rich in preparedness for the life to come. You have mines of treasure if you have the Word of God dwelling richly in your heart. But in the sacred Book we find not only an enrichment of gold laid up, but a present abundance of sweetness to be now enjoyed. He that lives upon God's Word tastes the honey of life--a sweetness far superior to honey--for honey satiates, though it never satisfies. The more you have of Divine teaching, the more you will wish to have and the more will you be capable of enjoying. He that loves the Inspired Book shall have wealth for his mind and sweetness for his heart. But David is mainly aiming at the practical. So, having introduced the sun as the symbol of God's Word because of its pleasurable influence, he adds, "Moreover by them is Your servant warned: and in keeping of them there is great reward." On these two things we will meditate under the following heads--First, their keeping us--"By them is Your servant warned." Secondly, our keeping them--"And in keeping of them there is great reward." I. First, THEIR KEEPING US--"By them is Your servant warned." We are in an enemy's country. We are always in danger--we are most in peril when we think ourselves most secure. You will find in the histories of the Bible that the most crushing defeats have fallen upon armies suddenly--when they were off their guard. The army of Christ has need always to set its pickets and appoint its sentinels lest the adversary take us unawares. We can never tell when we are likely to be assailed--we shall be wise to assume that we are always surrounded by enemies. God's Word is our keeper, the watcher of our souls--and when a danger is approaching it rings the alarm and gives us warning. The different parts of Scripture--the statutes, the doctrines, the ordinances, the promises, the precepts--all of these act like pickets to the army and arouse the Lord's soldiers to resist sudden assaults. "By them is Your servant warned." In what way does God's Word warn us? In many forms it thus operates. I would say, first of all, by pointing out sin and describing its nature and danger. We have here the mind of the Lord as to moral conduct and so we are not left to guesswork--we know by unerring teaching what it is that the Lord abhors. Those Ten Commandments are the lanterns set around an opening in the street that no traveler may drive into danger. God only forbids that which would injure us and He only commands that which will be for our lasting good. Spread out before you the Law of God and you may say of it as you read it, "By these commandments is Your servant warned." In my walks I see notices bearing the words, "TRESPASSERS BEWARE!" And I am kept from wandering. It is well to be acquainted, not only with the letter of the Law of the Lord, but with the spirit of it. Numberless sins are condemned by the Ten Commandments--truly we may say of the Law of God, "Your commandment is exceedingly broad." All of these are foghorns warning us of dangers which may cause shipwreck to our souls. Studying the Word of God, we are made to see that sin is exceedingly sinful since it dishonors God, makes us enemies to our best Friend--yes--and drives us madly to destroy our own souls. Sin, according to God's Word, is murderous--it slew the Savior of men. Wherever sin comes, death follows it. Sin may bear pleasure in its face but it has ruin at its heels. Eternal destruction is the finishing of the work of sin. God's Word is very plain and explicit about these grave facts. It forbids our trifling even with the appearance of evil--it warns us against sins of thought and temper as well as against transgressions of speech and act. He that is graciously familiar with his Bible will be preserved from those pitfalls into which so many have rushed in their careless contempt of God's Word and holy commandments. A precept of Scripture is like a lighthouse upon a quicksand or a rock. It quietly bids the wise helmsman steer his vessel another way. The whole coast of life is guarded by these protecting lights and he that will take note of them may make safe navigation. But remember, it is one thing for the Scripture to give warning and another for us to take it! And if we do not take warning, we cannot say, "By them is Your servant warned." Oh, that our hearts may be in such a state that a hint from the Word may set us on our watch against evil! Next, the Word of God warns us by reminding us of our duties. We are not only taught negatively what we should not do, but positively what we ought to do--and thus we are warned against sins of omission. I wish that professors who are neglectful of many points in the Savior's example would study His Character more, marking down the points where they come short of it. If we were to read the lives of holy men recorded in Scripture and notice where we fail to be like they, it might do us much service. Truly, Lord, Your servants would be profitably warned if we more often enquired, "Lord, what would You have me do?" Turning over these sacred pages we remark a choice blessing coming upon a man of God in connection with a certain virtue. Then we are warned to cultivate that virtue if we would have that blessing. The Lord does not pay us for our work as though we were hirelings and our labor meritorious. But still, according to His Grace, He rewards His faithful servants and so diligently encourages them to obey. Every Bible precept should be an arrow aimed at the heart of our carelessness and forgetfulness. Then should we often say with David, "By them is Your servant warned." Like our Lord in His youth, we must be about our Father's business and we must continue there till, like He, we can say, "I have finished the work which You gave me to do." The Word of God also warns us of our weakness in those duties which it commands and of our tendency to fall into those sins which it forbids. It sets before us a noble example, but it bids us remember that only by Divine power can we follow it. It spreads before us a program of perfect holiness, but it does not flatter us with the notion that by our own strength we can carry it out! It humbles us by showing that we cannot even pray as we ought without the Spirit's teaching, nor so much as think a good thought without His aid. Scripture is continually warning us of the deceitfulness of our hearts and of the tendency of sin to advance from one stage of evil to another. Holy Scripture shows us our spiritual inability, apart from the Divine Spirit--and greatly do we need warnings in this way, for we are given to be self-sufficient. Pride will shoot forth with the very least encouragement. We buckle on our harness and begin at once to shout as if the battle were won. How soon we think ourselves near perfection when, indeed, we are near a fall! We are apt to sit down and imagine that we have won the race when we have not yet traversed one half the way. The Word of God continually checks our carnal confidence and disturbs our self-satisfaction. It bears constant protest against our imagining that we have already attained when we are as yet only babes in Divine Grace. How plainly it tells us, "He that trusts in his own heart is a fool!" It shows us where our great strength lies, but it calls us off from all trust in our own past experience, or firmness of character, or strength of determination, or depth of sanctification to lean solely and alone upon heavenly Grace which we must receive hour by hour. If we give way to pride, it is against the admonitions of the Divine statutes, for in this matter, "By them is Your servant warned." So does the Word continually warn us against the temptations which are in the world in which we live. Read its story from the first day of Adam's Fall to the last chapter of its record and you shall find it continually representing the world as a place of trial for the heir of Heaven. It is, indeed, as a sieve in which the true corn has no rest, but much tossing to and fro. Christ seems praying over us every day as we read the Scripture, "I pray not that You should take them out of the world, but that You should keep them from the Evil One." If you fancy that your position in life puts you beyond temptation, you are sadly deluded. Poverty has its evil side and riches are full of snares. Even in a Christian family we may be seduced into great sin as well as among the ungodly. There is no place under Heaven where the arrows of temptation cannot reach us. With this also comes persecution, for because we are not of the world, the world hates us. "In the world you shall have tribulation," is a sure prophecy. If you meet with no persecution you should remember that the smiles of the world are even more dangerous than its frowns. Beware of prosperity! Thank God if you have the world's wealth, but hold it tenderly and watch over your heart carefully lest you bow before the golden calf. Adversity has less power to harm than prosperity. Of the evils peculiar to various positions, the Holy Spirit tells us in these sacred pages: "By them is Your servant warned." We are continually warned to put on the whole armor of God and not to lay aside the shield of faith for a moment. We are urged to watch at all times and to pray without ceasing--for in the most quiet life, in the most pious company and in the regular work of the day--dangers are lurking. Where we think we may be very much at ease, lying down as on a bank of flowers, we are most likely to be stung by the deadly serpent. We are like the first settlers in America--the cunning Red Indians of temptation may be upon us with the deadly tomahawk of lust while we are dreaming of peace and safety. Here, let me add, we are warned over and over again against the temptations of Satan. Certain theologians, nowadays, do not believe in the existence of Satan. It is singular when children do not believe in the existence of their own father! But it is so that those who are most deluded by him are the loudest in repudiating all faith in his existence. Any man who has had experience of his temptations knows that there is a certain mysterious personage--invisible, but almost invincible--who goes about seeking whom he may devour. He has a power far beyond that which is human--and a cunning that is equal to that of a thousand of the most clever of men. Satan will endeavor to influence our minds in a way which is contrary to their true intent--to turn our thoughts in directions which we abhor--to suggest questions about Truths of God of which we are certain and even blasphemies against Him who, in our heart of hearts, we worship lovingly. But, Beloved, the power of Satan in a Christian's life is a force with which he must reckon, or he may fail through ignorance. Some especially have had sore conflicts with this Evil One and certain tried ones are scarcely a day without being tormented either by the howling of this dog or else by his snapping at their heels. He cannot possess us as he possesses many of the ungodly, but he worries whom he can't devour with a malicious joy. Whatever "modern thought" ministers may have to say about Satan, the Inspired Scripture does not leave us ignorant of his devices, but sets us on our guard against his terrible power, bidding us pray, "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the Evil One." The temptations of the world and of the flesh are more upon our level than the assaults of Satan--he is the Prince of the evil forces and his attacks are so mysterious, so cunningly adapted to our infirmities and so ingeniously adjusted to our circumstances that unless the Lord, the Holy Spirit, shall daily cover us with His broad shield of Divine Grace, we shall be in the utmost jeopardy. O Lord, by these words of Yours is Your servant warned to resist the enemy and escape his wiles! Glory be to Your loving care! The teachings of the Lord also warn us to expect trial. The Bible never promises the true Believer an easy life. Rather it assures him that he is born to trouble as the sparks fly upward. There is no soaring to Heaven on the wings of luxurious ease--we must painfully plod along the pilgrim way. We see on the pages of Inspiration that we cannot be crowned without warfare, nor honored without suffering. Jesus went to Heaven by a rough road and we must follow Him. Every Believer in the Cross must bear a cross. If things go easily with you for a long time, do not, therefore, say, "My mountain stands firm, I shall never be moved," for God has only to hide His face and you will be troubled. Those happiest of men, of whom it could be said that God had set a hedge about them and all that they had--these, in due course--had to take their turn at the whipping post and smart under the scourge. Even Job, that perfect and upright man, was not without his troubles. Beloved, expect to be tried! And when the trial comes, count it not a strange thing. Your sea will be rough like that which tossed your Lord. Your way will be hot and weary like that which your Master trod. The world is a wilderness to you as it was to Him. "Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to you." Seek not to build your mansion here, for a voice cries to you out of the Word, "This is not your rest, for it is polluted." Think of that verse of our favorite hymn-- "Why should/complain of want or distress, Temptation, or pain? He told me no less. The heirs of salvation, I know from His Word. Through much tribulation must follow their Lord." Therefore, Beloved, you are forewarned that you may be forearmed. God's Word also warns us by prophesying to us of things to come. I cannot enter, just now, into what is a very interesting point of experience, namely, the singular fact that the Bible is used of God to warn individuals of events about to occur to them. The Book is full of prophecies for nations, but at times it becomes prophetic to individual Believers. Have you never had impressed upon your mind a passage of Scripture which has followed you for hours and even days, and you could not tell why, till an event has happened which has so exactly tallied with that Scripture that you could not but remark it as having prepared you for the circumstance? Will not your morning reading sometimes forestall the sorrow or the duty of the day? Have you not often found that if you read the Bible consecutively, somehow or other, the passage which comes in due course will prove to be as truly a lesson for the day as if it had been written on purpose to meet your case? I am far from being superstitious, or wishful to encourage faith in mere impressions--but I cannot shut my eyes to facts which have happened to myself. I know that I have received, through this Book of God, messages to my heart which have come with peculiar power and suitability so that I have been compelled to say, with emphasis, "Moreover by them is Your servant warned." But the Bible warns us all of certain great events, especially of the Second Advent of the Lord and the coming judgment. It does not clearly tell us when our Lord will appear, but it warns us that to the unprepared He will come as a thief in the night. It warns us of the General Judgment and of the day when all men shall live again and stand before the Great White Throne. It warns us of the day when every secret shall be revealed and when every man shall receive for the things that he has done in his body, according to what he has done, whether it is good or evil. "By them is Your servant warned." If I live like one of yonder cattle, in the immediate present, or if I have no eye for the future that is hurrying on--if my soul never places herself in vision before the Judgment Seat of Christ, or if I never foresee the day when Heaven and earth, before the Presence of the great Judge, shall flee away--why then I cannot be a diligent reader of the Word of God! If I search the Scriptures I shall be called to walk in the light of the Last Day and shall be made to gird up my loins to face the dread account. Oh, that we might all be warned to be ready, that we may give our account with joy! Oh, that we may so take the warnings of Holy Writ as to be ready for death, ready for judgment and ready for that final sentence which can never be reversed! If we were truly wise these warnings would put salt into our lives and preserve them from the corruption which is in the world through lust. Beloved, I trust that every one of us who knows the Lord will use His Holy Book as the constant guard of his life. Let it be like a fog signal to you, going off in warning when the road is hidden by a cloud. Let it be like the red lamp on the railway suggesting to you to come to a stop for the road is dangerous. Let it be like a dog at night, waking you from sleep because a robber is breaking in, or as the watch on board a ship who shouts aloud, "Breakers ahead!" Let the Word of God be like one who, during the great flood in America, rode on a white horse down the valley, crying out, as he rode along, "To the hills! To the hills! To the hills!" The waters were following fast behind him and he would have the people escape to the mountains lest they should be destroyed. O precious Book, thus bid me seek the hills! Ring the alarm bell in my ears and compel me to flee from the wrath to come! Day and night, wherever I may be, may a Word from the oracle of God sound in my ears and keep me from sleeping on the brink of the abyss! May no enemy be able to steal upon us when sleeping in false security, for it is high time that we awake out of sleep! And this Book tells us so. So far have we spoken upon the Word as keeping us. II. And now, secondly, I have to speak to you upon OUR KEEPING THE WORD OF GOD. "In keeping of them there is great reward." What is meant by keeping the testimonies of God's Word? You know right well that it will not suffice to have the Holy Book in your houses to lie upon a table so that visitors may see that you have a family Bible! Nor is it enough to place it on the bookshelf where the dust may thickly cover it because it is never used. That is not keeping the Bible, but burying it! It does not warn you, for you smother it--you do not keep it, for you dishonor it by neglect. You must have a reverent esteem for it and a growing familiarity with it if you would keep it. "Let the Word of God dwell in you richly." To keep the Word of God is, first of all, earnestly to study it so as to become acquainted with its contents. Know your Bible from beginning to end. I am afraid there is but little Bible searching nowadays. If the Word of God had been diligently studied there would not have been so general a departure from its teachings. Bible-reading people seldom go off to modern theology. Those who feed upon the Word of God enjoy it too much to give it up. Comparing spiritual things with spiritual, they learn to prize all the revealed Truths of God and they hold fast the faith once and for all delivered to the saints. Dear young people, if you never read a single book of romance you will lose nothing--but if you do not read your Bibles you will lose everything! This is the age of fiction and therefore the age of speculation and error--leave fiction and give yourself wholly to the Truth of God! Eat that which is good and spend not your money on that which is not bread. The Bible is the Thesaurus of heavenly knowledge, the encyclopedia of Divine science--read, mark, learn and inwardly digest the same--and then you will be keeping the sayings of God! But we cannot keep them without going further than this--we must be zealous in their defense. May it be said of each one of us, "You have kept My Word." When you find others denying God's Truth, hold the faster to it! When they argue against it, be prepared to give a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. It is not an easy task to stand fast in the faith, today, for the current which runs towards unbelief is strong as a torrent and many have been taken off their feet by it and are being carried down to the cataracts of error. May God help you to say with the pilgrims in Vanity Fair, "We buy the Truth"! Buy it at any price and sell it at no price! It ought to be dearer than life, for it was so to the martyrs of our own country and to the Covenanters of Scotland in whose steps we would tread. They cared little whether their heads were struck off or not, but they cared everything for King Jesus and the statutes of His Word. Beloved, happy in the end will that man be who for a while has suffered contempt and misrepresentation and separation from his Brethren because of fidelity to the Truth of God! Come what may, he that sides with Truth will be no loser in the end. Oh, for more Luthers nowadays--we need them! Those who buckle to error are everywhere--even those in whom we trusted have betrayed their Lord. But this is not all, we must go much further--there must be a careful observance of the Law of the Lord. We cannot be said to keep God's Word if we never carry it out in our own lives. If we know the Commandments but do not obey them, we increase our sin. If we understand the Truth of God and talk about it but are slow to live according to it, what will become of us? This is not to keep God's Word, but to hold the Truth of God in unrighteousness! This may, in some cases, be a presumptuous sin. When your knowledge far exceeds your practice, take heed lest you are guilty of sinning willfully. We must keep the Word of God in the sense in which our Lord used the word when He said, "If you love Me, keep My commandments." Once more, even this is not enough--we are to keep the Truth of God not only by reverent study of it, by zealous propagation of it, by careful observance of it, but also by an inward cleaving to it in love and a cherishing of it in our heart of hearts. What you believe you must also love if you are to keep it. If it comes to you in the power of God, it may humble you, it may chasten you, it may refine you as with fire--but you will love it as your life. It will be as music to your ears, as honey to your palate, as gold to your purse, as Heaven to your soul! Let your very self be knit to the faithful Word. As new-born babes desire the unadulterated milk, so desire the teachings of the Spirit that you may grow thereby. Every Word of God must be bread to us after which we hunger and with which we are satisfied. We must love it even more than our necessary food. For that which God has spoken we must have an ever-burning, fervent love which no floods of destructive criticism can quench or even damp. But now the text says, "In keeping of them there is great reward"--and here you must have patience with me while I set out the great reward which comes to obedient Believers. There are many rewards and the first is, great peace of mind. "Great peace have they which love Your Law: and nothing shall offend them." When a man has done what God bids him do, his conscience is at peace and this is a choice gift. I can bear anybody to be my foe rather than my conscience. We read of David, "David's heart smote him." That was an awkward knock! When a man's own conscience is his foe, where can he run for shelter? Conscience smites home and the wound is deep. But when a man can conscientiously say, "I did the right thing. I held the Truth. I honored my God," then the censures of other men go for little. In such a case you have no trouble about the consequences of your action for if any bad consequence should follow, the responsibility would not lie with you--you did what you were told. Having done what God Himself commanded you, the consequences are with your Lord and not with you. If the heavens were likely to fall, it would not be our duty to shore them up with a lie. If the whole Church of God threatened to go to pieces, it would be no business of ours to bind it up by an unhallowed compromise! If you should fail to achieve success in life--what men call success--that is no fault of yours if you cannot succeed without being dishonest. It will be a greater success to be honest and to be poor, than to grow rich through trickery. If, through Divine Grace, you have done the will of God, your peace shall be like a river and your righteousness like the waves of the sea. Can you think of a greater reward than this? I cannot. A quiet conscience is a little Heaven. A martyr was fastened to the stake and the sheriff who was to execute him expressed his sorrow that he should persevere in his opinions and compel him to set fire to the pile. The martyr answered, "Do not trouble yourself, for I am not troubling myself. Come and lay your hand upon my heart and see if it does not beat quietly." His request was complied with and he was found to be quite calm. "Now," he said, "lay your hand on your own heart and see ifyou are not more troubled than I am! And then go your way and, instead of pitying me, pity yourself." When we have done right we need no man's pity, however painful the immediate consequence. To do right is better than to prosper. A heart sound in the Truth of God is greater riches than a houseful of silver and gold. There is more honor in being defeated in truth than in a thousand victories gained by trickery and falsehood. Though Fame should give you the monopoly of her bronze trumpet for the next 10 centuries, she could not honor you so much as you will be honored by following right and the Truths of God, even though your integrity is unknown to men. In keeping the Word of the Lord there is great reward, even if it bring no reward. The approbation of God is more than the admiration of nations. Verily this is great reward! The next great reward is increase of Divine knowledge. If any man will know the will of Christ, let him do that will. When a young man is put to learn a trade, he does so by working at it--and we learn the Truth which our Lord teaches by obeying His commands. To reach the shores of heavenly wisdom every man must work his passage. Holiness is the royal road to Scriptural knowledge. We know as much as we do. "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine." It may be you sit down and consider the doctrine but you cannot understand it. You turn it over and consult a learned divine--but still you cannot understand it. Be obedient, pray for a willing heart to do the will of God and you have already received enlarged capacity--and with it a new light for your eyes--you will learn more by holy practice than by wearisome study. The Lord help us to follow on to know the Lord, for then shall we know! Practice makes perfect. Obedience is the best of schools and Love is the ablest of teachers. To know the love of Christ which passes knowledge is the gift of Grace to the faithful--is not this a great reward? Moreover, in keeping the commandments we increase in conformity to Christ and, consequently, in communion with God. He that does as Christ did is like Christ, for our likeness is moral and spiritual. In measure we receive His image as we work His deeds and then, as Christ lived in constant fellowship with God because He always did the things that pleased God, so do we walk in the light as God is in the light--when we yield obedience to the Divine will. If you walk in sin, you cannot walk with God. If you will be obedient, then shall all clouds be chased away and your light shall shine brighter and brighter unto the perfect day. Sinning will make you leave off communion with God, or else communion with God will make you leave off sinning--one of the two things must occur. If you are kept from sin and made to be obedient you shall bear the image of the heavenly and with the heavenly you shall have daily communion. This will be followed by the fourth great reward, namely power in prayer. Jesus says, "If you abide in Me, and My Words abide in you, you shall ask what you will, and it shall be done unto you." If you will read in the Gospel of John, you will frequently see how success in prayer is, in the case of the Believer, made to depend upon his complete obedience. If you will not listen to God's Word, neither will He listen to your word! Some people complain that they have no power with God--but has God any power with them? Look to the faultiness of your lives and cease to wonder at the failure of your prayers! An inconsistent life downstairs means unprofitable prayer upstairs--if, indeed, there is any prayer at all! You cannot have God's ear in the closet if He never has your ear in the shop. If you live as worldlings live, the Lord will treat you as He did Cain, to whose offering He had no respect. Wonder not at your leanness in private devotions if there is license in your public life! O Lord God the Holy Spirit, sanctify us in our daily lives and so shall we obtain access to God through Jesus Christ and our pleading shall be accepted in Him! One great reward is habitual holiness. The man who has, by Divine Grace, long kept the way of the Lord, finds it more easy to do so because he has acquired the habit of obedience. All things are difficult at the beginning, but all things grow easy as we proceed. I do not say that holiness is ever easy to us--it must always be a labor and we must always be helped by the Holy Spirit--but at the same time it is far easier for a man to obey who has obeyed than for one to obey who has lived in constant rebellion. If you have faith you will have more faith almost as a necessary consequence. If you pray much you will pray more--it is all but inevitable that you should do so. There are Believers whom the Lord has put on the rails of life--they do not run on the road like common vehicles-- they are placed on tram lines of habit and so they keep the ways of the Lord. Sometimes a stone gets on the track and there is an unhappy jolt, but still they do no iniquity but keep on in one straight line even to their journey's end. This is a great reward of Divine Grace. If you are obedient, you shall be rewarded by being made more obedient. As the diligent workman becomes expert in his art so shall you grow skillful in holiness. What a joy it is when holiness becomes our second nature--when prayer becomes habitual as breathing and praise is as continual as our heart-beats! May hatred to sin be spontaneous and may desire for the best things be the habit of our soul! I scarcely know of a greater reward than this habitual holiness which the Lord in His Grace bestows on us. This will generally be followed by another great reward, namely, usefulness to others. He that keeps the Commandments of the Lord will become an example that others may copy and he will wield an influence which shall constrain them to copy him. Don't you think that many Christians are spiritually childless because they are disobedient? How can God allow me to bring others to Himself if I myself backslide from Him? The power to bless others must first be a power within ourselves. It is useless to pump yourself up into a pretended earnestness at a meeting and then to think that this sort of thing will work a real work of Grace in others--the seed of pretence will yield a harvest of pretenders-- and nothing more. Nothing can come out of a man unless it is first in him and if it is in him it will be seen in his life as well as in his teaching. If I do not live as I preach, my preaching is not living preaching. I could mention men of great talent who see no conversions--and one does not wonder--for even in their lives there is no holiness, no spirituality, no communion with God! I could mention Christian people with very considerable gifts who have no corresponding measure of Divine Grace and therefore their labor comes to nothing. Oh, for more holiness! Where that is manifest there will be more usefulness. Lastly, we shall have the great reward of bringing glory to the Grace of God. If we are made holy, men seeing our good works will glorify our Father who is in Heaven--and is not this the very end of our existence? Is not this the flower and fruit of life? I pray you, therefore, walk humbly and carefully with God that He may be honored in you. There are two things I want to say before I sit down. The first is, let us holdfast, tenaciously, doggedly--with a death grip--the Truth of the Inspiration of God's Word. If it is not Inspired and Infallible, it cannot be of use in warning us. I see little use in being warned when the warning may be like the idle cry of, "Wolf!" when there is no wolf. Everything in the railway service depends upon the accuracy of the signals--when these are wrong lives will be sacrificed. On the road to Heaven we need unerring signals or the catastrophes will be far more terrible. It is difficult enough to set myself right and carefully drive the train of conduct, but if, in addition to this, I am to set the Bible right and thus manage the signals along the permanent way, I am in an evil plight, indeed! If the red light or the green light may deceive me, I am as well without signals as to trust to such faulty guides. We must have something fixed and certain, or where is the foundation? Where is the fulcrum for our lever if nothing is certain? If I may not implicitly trust my Bible, you may burn it, for it is of no more use to me. If it is not Inspired, it ceases to be a power either to warn or to command obedience. Beloved, others may say what they will, but here I stand bearing this witness--"The testimony of the Lord is sure, making wise the simple." While you hold fast its Inspiration, pray God to prove its Inspiration to you. Its gentle but effectual warning will prove its Inspiration to you. This precious Book has pulled me up many times and put me to a pause, when otherwise I had gone on to sin. At another time I should have sat still had it not made me leap to my feet to flee from evil or seek good. To me it is a monitor whose voice I prize! There is a power about this Book which is not in any other. I do not care whether it is the highest poetry or the freshest science--each must yield to the power of the Word of God! Nothing ever plays on the cords of a man's soul like the finger of God's Spirit. This Book can touch the deep springs of my being and make the life floods flow forth. The Word of God is the great power of God and it is well that you should know it to be so by its power over you. One said, "I cannot believe the Bible." Another answered, "I cannot disbelieve it." When the question was raised--"Why do you believe?" the Believer answered, "I know the Author and I am sure of His truthfulness." There is the point--if we know the Author, we know that His witness is true--and knowing it to be true, we take His warnings and follow His commands. May the Lord work in us to will and to do of His own good pleasure--then shall the Book be more and more precious in our eyes--and this sense of its preciousness will be one of the rewards which come to us in keeping the statutes of the Lord. So be it unto you through Christ Jesus! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Psalm 19. __________________________________________________________________ Possessing Possessions A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MARCH 23, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "But upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions." Obadiah 1:17. THIS is a remarkable passage. Its wording is singular. It begins with a, "but," because the previous verses have been denouncing judgments upon Edom. When God comes forth to punish His enemies He also comes forth to bless His friends. When Pharaoh is overthrown in the Red Sea, it is that Israel may pass onward to Canaan. When Amalek is overcome, it is that Israel may be at peace. There is a black cloud as well as the silvery rain. The acceptable year of the Lord is the day of vengeance of our God. This combination so constantly occurs that the Psalmist said, "I will sing of mercy and judgment." The sword of vengeance is displayed at the same time as the scepter of Divine Grace. In that Last Great Day--that coming of the Lord which is the joy and expectation of His people--there will be confusion to His adversaries. To the ungodly, "the day of the Lord will be darkness and not light." When He comes forth there will as surely be a curse to the left hand as a blessing to the right--and both will be everlasting. Hell is as deep as Heaven is high, for God, who delights in mercy, also hates iniquity and will put away the wicked of the earth like dross. God grant to you and to me that we may know on which side we stand and may be found in Christ, wearing His righteousness and accepted in the Beloved so that whenever the Lord comes forth with plagues for His adversaries, He may have favor towards us. When, in the words of verse 16, His foes, "shall be as though they had not been," may the full force of the present text be revealed in our case--"But upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness; and the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions." I have no doubt that this promise has been fulfilled already and that there was a time when the house of Israel, restored from captivity, came back to Zion and Edom was utterly consumed. "The house of Jacob shall be a fire and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau for stubble and they shall kindle in them, and devour them; and there shall not be any remaining of the house of Esau; for the Lord has spoken it." But the former fulfillment of a promise does not make it useless like a cashed check--the promise may be presented again--and it will again be honored. God's rules of action are immutable and therefore what He did to one company of His people He will do to others of them. God is Sovereign but yet He acts according to His unchanging Nature so that from one of His proceedings we may infer the rest. The temporary restoration of the captives to Jerusalem can only have fulfilled the promise upon a very small scale--it has a wider meaning than such an event could exhaust. The Lord is prepared to do the same on a larger scale for all those who put their trust in Him. Taking the text as containing a general principle, I shall use it for our own encouragement and edification, praying God the Holy Spirit to make it truly useful. I notice, in the text, first, a privilege to be desired--"The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions." Secondly, a favor to be remembered--"Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance." And, thirdly, a character to be conspicuous--"And there shall be holiness." I. First of all, consider A PRIVILEGE TO BE DESIRED. The land of Canaan had been granted to Israel by the Lord of All. Each family had a lot and portion which belonged to it forever, being entailed upon it by a Covenant of salt. Through their sins the tribes were carried into captivity--the land was taken from them by their conquerors and they could no longer possess their possessions. Now, the promise comes to them by the prophet Obadiah: "The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions." A property may be my lawful possession and yet, for different reasons, I may not be able to get at it--it may be in the hands of one who defrauded me of it, or I may be far away and unable to reach it. The words are singular, but their meaning is distinct--"They shall possess their possessions." Let us use the words as applicable to souls who shall be led to take what is promised to Believers. "The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions." We set before many of you, every Lord's-Day, the great possessions of eternal life, of pardon, of justification, of the new birth, sanctification and all the other treasures of the Covenant of Grace. But though they are set before you and you long after them, many of you feel unable to grasp them as your own. You know that the tenure of these possessions is faith, but either you do not understand what faith is, or you, for some other reason, fail to exercise it and so you do not appropriate what the Gospel freely gives to you. You are either confused by ignorance, dazed by fear as to your sin or held back by the temptations of the devil. I pray that you may be granted Divine Grace speedily to take what Jesus freely gives so that you may come to possess your possessions. If you have the power given you today, by faith, to take the Lord Jesus Christ as yours--and if you now trust in His most precious blood--you need not be afraid that you will be taking possession of what does not belong to you, for every believing soul may know that what he takes by faith was bestowed upon him in the Covenant of Grace from before the foundation of the world! If you believe in Christ, you were chosen of God before the world began! For Believers, redemption was specially offered by our Lord upon the Cross--He bought for them the Covenant heritage and He has made it over to them so that it shall be theirs forever. You cannot know this before you believe! But faith reveals the Divine choice and gift. You who now believe were once strangers to such an extraordinary joy as that which comes by faith. You wandered up and down in sin, knowing nothing of what free Grace and dying love had done for you--but now you have come to God and you have ventured by faith to take possession of what the Lord so freely offers in the Gospel--and behold, it is revealed to you that these things were yours in the purpose of God, even from everlasting! Now is it fulfilled to you--"The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions." God gave you all Covenant blessings in Christ Jesus according as He chose you, in Him, from before the foundation of the world. God saw you in Christ as His elect, His Beloved, His redeemed and therefore for you He prepared a kingdom which you inherit through His Grace. If you have now the confidence to believe in Christ Jesus and to say, "My Beloved is mine, and I am His," then you shall know that in grasping gracious blessings you do but come to your own! You possess your possessions! Let it be the prayer of everyone here who by faith has entered into rest, that others may now be brought in that so the number of the elect may be accomplished and that all Covenant provisions may be received by those for whom they are prepared. Oh, for the bringing home to their God and to their own possessions those who are now prodigals, starving in the far-off country! Let us go a step further. Beloved Friends, many by faith have laid hold upon the Covenant possessions, but yet they do not fully possess them. The text leads me to pray that Believers may enjoy fully what they have grasped by faith. Christ is mine, but, Beloved, who among us knows all that is ours in Christ? He is a case which is all ours, but we do not open its doors and take out all its treasures! Our possessions in Christ are very wide but we need to be bid, like Abraham, to lift up our eyes to the north and to the south and to the east and to the west, that we may form a clearer idea of the goodly land which the Lord our God has given us! We see the blessings of the Covenant but do we feed on them as we might! Do we drink deep into them and is our soul satisfied as with marrow and fatness by them? I fear we do not by enjoyment possess our possessions! Alas, with many Believers times of actual realization and enjoyment are rare--they can talk about the blessing--but they do not habitually rejoice in it themselves. "Oh, yes," they say, "it is a very delightful thing to be washed in the blood of the Lamb." But do they enjoy the peace which flows from cleansing? Have they "received the Atonement" and with it that peace with God which follows upon justification by faith? Do they delight in "the peace of God which passes all understanding"? You know, dear Brothers and Sisters, that it is your high privilege to have access to the Mercy Seat--but do you use that access and come often and boldly to the Throne of Grace? Do you avail yourselves of your opportunities? Do you make the utmost use of prayer? In other holy matters do you really stand where God would have you stand? Are you as rich as Christ has made you? A man may have large possessions and yet be practically poor because he is miserly in his expenditure. Is it not so with many a child of God? All things are ours and yet we live as if nothing were ours! Like a horse shut out of the pastures we nibble round the hedges--better far for us to be like sheep which enter in and lie down in green pastures. Oh, for Grace to appropriate by enjoyment those treasures of the Covenant which make the soul to rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory! I pray that we may not look in at the windows of the banqueting hall, but may sit at the table and possess our possessions. Why should we be hungry and thirsty when Christ has given us His flesh to be meat, indeed, and His blood to be drink, indeed? Why should we be hanging down our heads like bulrushes when the Lord loves us and would have His joy to be in us that our joy may be full? Why are we so dispirited by our infirmities when we know that Jehovah is our strength and our song--He also has become our salvation? I tell you, Brothers and Sisters, we do not possess our possessions! We are like an Israelite who should say, "Yes, those terraces of land are mine. Those vineyards, olives, figs and pomegranates are mine. Those fields of wheat and barley are mine, yet I am starving." Why do you not drink the blood of the grapes? He answers, "I can scarcely tell you why, but so it is--I walk through the vineyards and I admire the clusters, but I never taste them. I gather the harvest and I thrash it on the barn floor, but I never grind it into corn, nor comfort my heart with a morsel of bread." Surely this is wretched work! Is it not folly carried to an extreme? I trust the children of God will not copy this madness! Let our prayer be that we may use and enjoy to the utmost all that the Lord has given us by His Grace and so possess our possessions! Go a step further. We possess our possessions when we hold firmly what we enjoy. Too many Christians hold their blessings with a feeble hand--they expect where they ought to enjoy--and think where they ought to know. They are never sure and thus they do not "possess their possessions." They are not sufficiently at home with spiritual things to be said to possess them. At times they rise into rapturous joy--I think I heard one of them sing the other day-- "My willing soul would stay In such a frame as this And sit and sing herself away To everlasting bliss." But the Brother very soon came down from that mountain--the Sister soon quit Tabor and made her way to the place of Wailing. Why this fickleness? Some do not stay long enough in the garden of Assurance to see a single fruit ripen--they do not possess their possessions. It is a grand thing when the Grace of God enables a man to say, "I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him." When happy feelings vanish, faith abides the same. Be it night or be it day, our soul waits only upon God, for our expectation is from Him! When you have such a grip of the Everlasting Covenant that if all the devils in Hell were to try to drag it from you, you would defy their efforts, it is well with you! We know, then, that we have passed from death unto life! We know that Christ is ours and that we are His. We are resting in Him and are saved in Him with an everlasting salvation. Who shall separate us from the love of God which is in Jesus Christ our Lord? When we are thus assured, we then really possess our possessions--our title deeds are before us--and the inheritance is within sight of our faith. If a man is living in a house which does not belong to him, he can hardly be said to possess it. He may be at any moment disturbed, if not ejected altogether. If one who can prove his claim comes that way, out he must go! Beloved, our God has given us a Covenant right in Christ Jesus to the blessings of His Grace--we cannot be ejected! Justice is on our side as well as Grace since Jesus died. Our tenure is not uncertain--because Jesus lives we shall live, also. Blessed is he who, having believed in the Lord Jesus, is able to sing-- "Now I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies, I bid farewell to every fear, And wipe my weeping eyes." May this be the lot of all the members of this Church and of all my Lord's servants in every place! I have not come to the end of my tether yet. I will fix another meaning upon these words and apply them to souls realizing things to come. Brothers and Sisters, we have possessions which we have not yet seen and cannot as yet enter upon-- "I have a heritage of joy Which yet I must not see. The hand that bled to make it mine Is keeping it for me." We believe in the Second Coming of our Lord from Heaven and in the Glory that shall follow. We believe in the resurrection of the dead and the eternal bliss of the godly in Heaven. We believe that we shall dwell with Christ forever and ever. Can we possess these possessions even now? We cannot now rise from the dead, for we are not yet buried. We cannot yet walk the golden streets, for we have not passed through the gate of pearl. Yet, by the realizations offaith, we may make these things to be so near that we may measurably enjoy them even now--and so already possess our possessions! "He has raised us up together and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." Though we are not actually in Heaven, yet in union with our Lord we are virtually there. We have been buried and risen with Him in Baptism. We have been raised from spiritual death into newness of life and we have gone up above all earthly things into the heavenlies, where we dwell. Yes, Beloved, faith has a strange realizing faculty--imagination can do much in this direction--but faith can do far more. By imagination a man can make fiction appear fact--faith has nothing to do with fiction, but it makes the sure hopes of the future to be the pleasures of the present. Earth can become the vestibule of Heaven! Life here may be the rehearsal of the Glory-Life above. Even here we may possess our possessions by enjoying a period of rest, "as the days of Heaven upon the earth." Already we have the earnest of the inheritance in the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and we have obtained that inheritance in Christ-- "The men of grace ha ve found Glory begun below Celestial fruits on earthly ground From faith and hope do grow." More and more may we enjoy the peace, the rest, the purity, the victory of Heaven--and thus possess our possessions! One other meaning and upon this I am going to lay emphasis--we long to see souls winning others for Jesus. I think when it says, "The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions," it may also mean the possessions of their enemies, for, in the 19th and 20th verses, we read--"They of the south shall possess the Mount of Esau and they of the plain the Philistines: and they shall possess the fields of Ephraim, and the fields of Samaria: and Benjamin shall possess Gilead. And the captivity of this host of the children of Israel shall possess that of the Canaanites, even unto Zarephath; and the captivity of Jerusalem, which is in Zarephath, shall possess the cities of the south." The saints annex the territories of their enemies which are theirs in Christ Jesus. The whole world belongs to Christ and in His name we are to possess it for Him. As yet we see not all things put under Him--the enemy abides in His strongholds. Ah, how terribly does the enemy keep his hold on London! Beloved, we long that this text may prove true to us by our achieving the capture of this great city. "There is very much land yet to be possessed," and we must press on our conquest in the name of Jesus! We must carry the war into the enemy's country and storm fort after fort for Jesus! This land is a part of Christ's own kingdom--let us take it! Is this to be done? It must be done! We must not be satisfied till millions bow at our Lord's feet--until Jesus, by the Grace of God, possesses the east and the west, the north and the south. I regard this as a promise to us--"The house of Jacob shall possess their possessions." Drunkenness must come down like Jericho before the trumpets of Israel! Sin and lechery, like the iron chariots of the Canaanites, must be broken in pieces before our holy faith. Unbelief and superstition, like the hosts of Jabin, must give way before the everlasting Gospel which must and shall conquer. Oh that the whole Church would be up and doing for the Lord our King! Oh, for a dauntless faith to go up and possess the gates of our enemies! This is one of God's great designs. He has chosen us and brought us to Zion that there we may find deliverance for ourselves and then may lead others to the Deliverer! Is it not written in the 21st verse, "And saviors shall come up on Mount Zion to judge the Mount of Esau; and the kingdom shall be the Lord's"? If we have been chosen of God we have been chosen with this objective--that we gather out from the world the rest of the Lord's redeemed--and win for our King the nations now in revolt against Him. Many of us are, just now, praying day and night that this may be our best year--that we may have a larger increase than ever before. I invite you all to join with me in this continual supplication and may it come to pass before our own eyes, that, in this Tabernacle, "the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions." II. So much upon the main part of our discourse. There are two other things to be handled and, first, comes this--A FAVOR TO BE REMEMBERED--"Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance." This fact should help us to possess our possessions! See what God has done for us! What can He not do? Is anything too hard for the Lord? That you may see the force of the passage, let me work out its meaning. We have been saved, for, "Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance" and we have found it so. In Christ Jesus we have been saved! The Revised Version has it, "In Mount Zion there shall be those that escape." We have escaped from sin, death and Hell. One of the greatest expositors of the Minor Prophets reads it, "Upon Mount Zion there shall be an escaped remnant," which indicates a people small and weak but effectually rescued--and such are we. This rendering reminds us of that other Prophet who said, "In Mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance, and in the remnant whom the Lord shall call" (Joel 2:32). Glory be to God! We are saved! Delitzsch reads it, "Upon Mount Zion will be that which has been saved." Yes, we have been saved--saved from spiritual death, saved from punishment, saved from sin itself--saved unto the glory of our God! We have been saved, not on Mount Sinai, for there the Law thunders terribly--but on Mount Zion where the blood of sprinkling speaks better things than that of Abel! Because of this deliverance let us go up and publish salvation and proclaim the name of our Deliverer! Hearken unto His voice, you captives, that you, also, may be delivered! Look to Him, you perishing, that you also may be saved! Now may we cheerfully possess our possessions, since we are saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation! We are daily saved, for the text says, "Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance." Salvation abides there at all times. Not only have we been saved, but we are saved continually from all evil. If we fall into trouble at any time, we fly to Jesus. If we have hourly temptations, we look to Jesus for hourly succor. We have present salvation. Let us not think of our salvation as a matter which was finished in us on a certain day and then and there ended. Conversion is the beginning of sanctification and sanctification is the life-long working out of salvation. Grace will always be needed from day to day until we enter into Glory. In Mount Zion, in Christ Jesus, in the Word, and in the Church of God there is a fountain of salvation which never dries up. If it is so, let us enjoy it, without stint, now and always! Let us be rich in abiding treasure. Let us be happy in never-failing safety and let us seek to bring this deliverance to others. We are few, comparatively. I reminded you of that reading of the text--"Upon Mount Zion shall be an escaped remnant." I will not make guesses as to what the number of God's chosen will be in the end. But at present, taking the most charitable view of things, the saved ones are as a handful of corn on the top of the mountains, or as the gleanings of the vintage. The world lies in the Wicked One, and those who are in Christ Jesus are a small remnant. That cheering word, "Fear not, little flock, it is your Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom," is still applicable to the Church. When we accept the most enlarged notion of the numbers making up the Church of God at the present day and compare that slender company with the population of the globe, it is like comparing a drop in a bucket to the favor of the temple. Ah, me! Let us not despair--if God has saved us, though we are but few, He will accomplish His purposes by us. He saves not by many nor by few--His own right arm gets unto Him the victory. You are able to possess the land, few as you are! Only go forth in the same spirit as the 12 did when the Holy Spirit rested upon them at Pentecost--and few as you may be--you can yet subdue the nations for Christ. We are chosen by Divine Grace. In Mount Zion the escaped remnant are men chosen by Grace and ordained unto this deliverance. If you believe that God has chosen you, nothing should daunt you. More courage comes into the heart through a grip of the doctrine of election than by any other Truth of God. Let a man believe that God has ordained him to this or that and he goes forward with irresistible resolve! The man impressed with his election crashes through every difficulty as though he were a bolt of iron shot from some tremendous cannon by a master marksman. Who shall hinder my accomplishing that to which God has appointed me? I shall fulfill my destiny! Who shall hinder me? In this there is a mighty motive for pressing on to possess our possessions and win for Christ the purchase of His blood. "The remnant has obtained it." The victory remains with the people whom the Lord has chosen! Notice this, that we are set for the deliverance of others. The Lord's purpose of Grace to any man does not end with that one man. He chooses one man with a view to others. When God chooses a company of men to eternal life, it is that they may be the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Jehovah chose Israel that the favored nation might receive the oracles of God and preserve them for the ages to come. If He has chosen us and brought us to His Mount Zion, it is that, finding deliverance for ourselves, we may go forth and bear the tidings of it to the ends of the earth! Is it not written, "Out of Zion shall go forth the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Jerusalem"? Brothers and Sisters, we ought to go in and possess the land and win the people for Jesus, for that is why we are we chosen! Has He saved you? Has He taken you out from among the fallen mass of mankind? Has He chosen you by His discriminating Grace? Oh, then you are not your own--you are His forever--and you are not to live for yourselves, but for His Glory and for the making known of His salvation among your fellow men! Beloved, take heart and courage and let your souls be big with high enterprise and noble purpose! Say to yourselves, "It shall be true, 'the house of Jacob shall possess their possessions,' for we know of a truth that there is deliverance upon Mount Zion." III. Our final word is perhaps the most important of all. I call your attention to a third matter, namely, THE CHARACTER TO BE CONSPICUOUS. "Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be holiness." It is through holiness that the house of Jacob shall enter into that possession of which I have spoken at so great length. If there is no holiness, then there has been no deliverance--and there shall be no possessing of possessions. Holiness is a link which is essential to the golden chain of blessings. If we are without holiness, we shall not see the Lord on our side. To give you the bearing of the words before us, I remark, first, that it might be translated, "Upon Mount Zion shall be deliverance, and there shall be a sanctuary," or, "a holy place"--an inviolate sanctuary of God. The people of God are the Temple of God. The Church of God should be God's peculiar dwelling place where He walks as King in His own palace. The Temple of the Godhead, is, first of all, the Person of Christ, and next the Church of the living God. "This is My rest; here will I dwell, for I have desired it." With what dignity is the Church invested, when it is, in very deed, the Temple of God! When we come together in our solemn gatherings and especially when we surround the communion table and are visibly seen as a Church, let us be filled with solemn awe and holy trembling--for the Lord is among us as He was in Sinai--or, better still, as He was in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle of old. True saints are living stones of the living Temple where the Lord Jehovah deigns to make Himself known! Unless we can realize this we shall not possess our possessions. If your Church membership is a mere trifle to you. If you think that a Church is simply a community of people who meet together for religious purposes you miss the mark. The Church must be the sanctuary of God--the place where God reveals Himself--and if it is not so, the men and women who make up that Church have never tasted the Divine deliverance and neither will they possess their possessions! Without the Presence of God in the Church it has no power to subdue the world to the faith. The great thing that makes God's people a holy people, is the Presence of God with them. He sanctifies both the place of His abode and those that come near to Him. It is holy ground where Jehovah reveals Himself, though it is but in a bush. God is everywhere but He is not everywhere as He is in His Church. There is a special, gracious Presence of God in the midst of His chosen people and this it is that makes them "holiness unto the Lord." Have you ever been forced to cry with Jacob, "How dreadful is this place!" and that because you had also cried, "Surely God was in this place!"? In a gathering of saints, when you have drawn near in solemn prayer to God and have laid hold upon the Covenant Angel and prevailed, have you not felt that you were the Lord's? We are never so holy as when we are near to God! God's overshadowing Presence sanctifies the man whom it covers! Beloved, we must have this or we cannot conquer the nations! If God is not with us and the shout of a King is not in the camp, there will be no brave deeds done in the battle! The Church needs reviving at home. We hear men talk of "getting up a revival." What idle talk is this! If the Church of God becomes spiritually quickened, the revival will come--but no way else. Let us carefully see to our holiness and God will see to our success. Next to this, there must be holy teaching-- "there shall be holiness." All the teaching that goes forth from us must be God's holy Truth and not the dream of human wisdom. If I hear of a ministry under which there are no conversions, I usually find that it is not a holy ministry. If in the teaching there is nothing which is calculated to convert sinners, we cannot wonder that it is not used to that end. If I go fishing with a torn net, is it any wonder that I catch no fish? God will not convert souls by unholy sermons, for it would not be to His Glory to do so. Instrumentality must be fitted for what it aims at, and soul-saving sermons must deal with sin, salvation and with the blood of Jesus! What have we to do with themes which are foreign to our design? If I were to come here and talk to you about strikes, or Home Rule, or Socialism and should you pray to God to convert souls by my discourse--would it not be a mockery or worse? I think so. Zion must have holy preaching if she is to have conquering power. Whatever our ministry lacks, it must be said of it, "There shall be holiness," or there will be death in the pot. Oh that the preacher might always be holy! Unless we preach a holy God, a holy doctrine, a holy Gospel and holy practice, we sow the wind! Beloved, we must maintain holy ordinances. God forbid that we should put a slight upon Baptism and the Supper of the Lord! Some have rejected these sacred institutions--and how they will answer for it in the day when Christ shall come! If the Lord Jesus has ordained these institutions, how dare we set them aside? Surely this is presumptuously mounting to the Throne of Christ, pushing Him from the seat of legislation and daring to make laws for ourselves! No--there shall be holiness and then we shall possess our possessions and find in the ordinances means of instruction and usefulness. There must be holiness in the form of holy pleading. If every member of this Church, which has enjoyed so much of Divine favor, could be aroused to mighty intercession for the souls of men, should we not see great things? If every member were in earnest in praying for the visitations of God and if everyone pleaded day and night for the display of Divine power--and added to his pleading that which would prove it to be sincere, namely, his own individual effort-- what a day would break upon us! It would be a morning without clouds! I see no reason why it should not be so. I pray it may be realized at once. May our ideal become a fact! May God Himself fulfill the promise, "There shall be holiness"! Holiness will breed prayer and prayer will bring power--and that power will work mightily for the Glory of the Lord. One thing more--there must be holy living. Prayer Meetings--what are they if they are held by a number of people who do not serve the Lord at home? Preaching--what is that if the preacher preaches what he has never experienced and is not prepared to practice? Teaching in Sunday schools--what is that if the children are taught by frivolous persons whose lives are destitute of piety? God will not bless us to the effecting of His purposes of salvation unless we are clothed with holiness as with a garment. Zion's priests must put on their snow-white garments of holy living if they are to offer an acceptable sacrifice before Jehovah! If I might plead on my knees with tears in my eyes, I would beseech every Brother and Sister here to be holy! Hear how the Lord says, "Be you holy, for I am holy." "Be you imitators of God as dear children." "Put you on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh." "Let your conversation be as it becomes the Gospel of Christ." You cannot possess your possessions to your own joy unless your lives are holiness unto the Lord! You cannot have full assurance; you cannot rise to close communion with Christ; you cannot anticipate the joys of Heaven--you cannot be useful to men unless you carefully obey the Lord and walk in holiness before Him. Our hearts can truly pray-- "Yet one thing we need, More holiness grant, For more of Your mind And Your Spirit we pant." If this panting is fulfilled, all things will go well with us. Suffer the word of exhortation. As we so eagerly desire that we may have a great increase to this Church through numerous conversions, let us lay this to our hearts that we must be holy--for if we are not holy we shall not be fit to be blessed. The unholy worker is not really in earnest. He may have a factitious or fictitious earnestness but heart-passion for souls is not found in unholy men. Unless you are thoroughly consecrated to God and then sanctified by the Spirit, you will not speak with that accent of conviction which carries the Truth of God home to the hearer. Do you not know yourselves that when you have listened to a clever preacher who has no spirituality--but is a mere actor and known to be of worldly habits--his preaching has no power in it for you? What he said was all very well but it fell flat--he was a clever and eloquent man but he did not touch you. When I heard George Muller some years ago, there was nothing of oratory in what he said--but then there was George Muller behind it--and every syllable had weight. That blessed man spoke as one who had experienced what he said. His long life of faith in God made every word powerful with the heart and conscience. Teachers of Bible classes and schools--a holy life must be your power in your classes or your words will be to your children as idle tales! If they see your lives to be unholy, the ungodly will reject your testimony and it will be no wonder that they do so! They need to reject it. They are looking for excuses to reject it and they will gladly find an argument in your unhallowed conversation. They will say, "The man does not believe it, himself, or else he would not live as he does." I heard of one who was asked by her minister whether she remembered last Sunday's sermon. "No," she said, "it is all gone." "But you ought to remember it," said the minister. "No," she replied, "I am not to be expected to do so, for you did not remember it yourself--you read it all from a paper." The argument is if the preacher does not remember his own preaching to put it into practice, how can he expect others to do so? Shall the taught excel the teacher? Brother, you lose your leverage of power if you fail in holiness! What is more, saints cannot pray for a blessing on a work which is not holy. If you work for God in an unholy way or work for God rightly, yet, nevertheless, are inconsistent in your ordinary life, the people of God will be grieved and will find it impossible to pray for you. "Ah!" said one to me, talking of his minister of whom I was sorry that he should have so to speak, "You may well have a blessing, for God's people love to pray for you--but as for our minister, he is a fine preacher but there is nothing gracious about him--and none of the Lord's people feel drawn to him." This is a grievous loss to a man--a leak which will sink his ship. Can any good come of a ministry for which saints cannot pray? Unless the people of God see in a man downright consecration to God and holiness of spirit and life, they cannot feel that union of heart which produces intercession. Lastly, God Himself will not honor a ministry which is not accompanied by holy character. How can God set His seal to an unholy life? Ah, Brothers! If we can go into the world and sin as others do all the days of the week, it will be in vain to pull over us the garb of sanctity on Sunday and say, "I am a witness for Christ." What does God think of such conduct? Does He call on evil men to be His witnesses? He hates hypocrisy and therefore He cannot append the "signs following" to a ministry which is impure. O my Brothers, we desire honor from the Lord in conversions. We would not be as Saul, when he laid hold on Samuel and cried, "Honor me before the people!" All the honor which rhetoric and oratory could bring would be nothing to us if we did not see souls saved! O you that are not yet Believers in Jesus, how much I wish that you were so! May you be led to believe at once in Him whose death must be your life! Who must Himself be your salvation! Look to Him and live! And you that are Christ's, I beg you to remember the remarkable expression of the text and may you "possess your possessions"! Amen. PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Psalm 44. __________________________________________________________________ The Shank-bone Sermon--Or, True Believers and Their Helpers A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, APRIL 13, 1890. DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING, MARCH 23, 1890. "Who, when he was come, helped them much which had believed through Grace." Acts 18:27. APOLLOS is not Paul, and Paul is not Apollos. To blend the two in one would be to spoil each one of the two without producing a good third. It is a great mercy that we have Paul, Apollos, Cephas and other varieties of preachers, for not only is variety charming, but it is necessary. It is not everybody that can be profited by Paul, for it requires a great deal of fixed attention to follow him and many hearers cannot concentrate their thoughts for long. It is not everybody that can be profited by Apollos, for fine speech is thrown away on simple souls. It is written, "Then shall the lambs feed after their manner," and assuredly each one of them have a peculiar manner of feeding. Some of God's people are edified by one minister and some by another--it is not mere whim--it arises out of conformation of character and habit of mind. Let Paul be Paul and edify the Pauline class--and let Apollos be Apollos and instruct those of his own sort. For my part, I would try to profit by either Paul, Apollos, Cephas, John, or James but, alas, I do not know where to go to hear them! I am happy in hoping that their successors are still with us, each one with his peculiar style of things. I am not going to compare them with each other but I would commend each one and thank God by whose Grace he is what he is. It would be a very bad day's work, if we could do it, to reduce Paul to Apollos, or to bring Apollos to the style of Paul. In the body there are different members and all members have not the same office--and in the Church of God there are different ministries and all ministries do not work after like manner though they all work towards the same end. If, my dear Friend, God gives you Grace to bring sinners to Christ and to plant churches, be thankful that you can imitate Paul. And if you cannot do that, but can help those who are already converted, be thankful for such a gift and imitate Apollos. Let not the man who plants envy the man who waters--and let not the man who waters boast over the man who simply plants and goes his way--for Paul has his place and is honored of his Master as a planter and Apollos has his place and shall not lack his reward as someone who waters. You see that the Holy Spirit has been pleased, by the pen of Luke, to give to Paul's travels and labors a very large proportion of the Book of the Acts of the Apostles. This passage from the 24th to the 28th verse is an episode--a corner marked off to be a record of Apollos. What Apollos did afterwards we do not know. He may have been a very great evangelist--he certainly was an exceedingly useful Brother. But, dear Friends, I find no complaint from Apollos because, being mentioned in the sacred dispatches, he has so small a space allotted to him. He does not sulk because he has only four or five verses while Paul is described at great length! If you and I should work for Christ and never be mentioned in the records of earth at all, let us not be sorry--there is most peace to those who are least talked about. God, who is Sovereign, dispenses according to His will and it may be that one working Brother will have all his story told and his life will make a useful biography, instructing and stimulating many for generations. Be it so. Another Brother, equally earnest and fervent, may never have his life written--there may only remain in the traditions of the Church one or two anecdotes about him, helpful and good. But let him not mind his obscurity--his real usefulness may have been great, none the less. Our record is on high! If the chronicles of earth are faulty, the registers of Heaven are perfect. Many a man who has been forgotten here shall be remembered there. And I know that in Heaven it will give no saint the least trouble that he was not honored among men. What if no monument was set up, yet all true work is immortal. The diligent workman will be perfectly contented when his Master says to him, "Well done, good and faithful servant." The echo of those words shall be Heaven to him! Sweeter than all the harps of angels shall be the voice of his Lord's approval! Go on, Apollos! Work on, though there is little said about you and do not envy Paul, whose name the halls of the Church are ringing! He did not seek himself any more than you did and his content in the published record lies only in the fact that it honors his Lord. But now, to come close to the text, I want you to notice these words--"When he was come, he helped them much which had believed through Grace." Apollos, following Paul at Corinth, did useful service by confirming those who had already believed in the Lord Jesus. Our first head is--true Believers have believed through Grace. Secondly, such Believers need help, and thirdly, it is a worthy work in which to engage--to help those who have believed through Grace. May the Holy Spirit use many of us in this hallowed service! May we ourselves be helped through Divine Grace at this time! I. First, then, THOSE WHO HAVE TRULY BELIEVED HAVE BELIEVED THROUGH DIVINE GRACE. I suppose Luke felt it necessary to insert those words, "through Grace." Nobody in his day doubted the fact that salvation is worked in men by the Grace of God--but the Holy Spirit foresaw that many, in later days, would conceal or obscure this Truth of God and therefore He moved the Evangelist to note it very plainly. We have it under hand and seal from the Holy Spirit that those who believed in the Lord Jesus believed through Divine Grace. Surely Grace is to the front in all good things. And here let me say, it is Grace that gives us the Gospel which we believe-- "Grace first contrived the way To save rebellious man And all the steps that Grace display Which drew the wondrous plan." It was Grace that chose the people whom God would save and gave them over to the Lord Jesus. It was Grace that gave Jesus Christ to stand in their place and bear for them that which was due to the justice of God on account of their sin. It was Grace which led the Savior to undertake and carry through the work of Substitution. Grace wrote the first letter of the Gospel--Divine Grace will write the last letter of it. Salvation is all of Divine Grace from first to last. I would to God that all preachers and hearers knew the meaning of that word, "Grace," and did not confuse it and mix it up with human endeavors and creature merits, for, indeed, "it is not of him that wills, nor of him that runs, but of God that shows mercy." If it is of Grace, it is no more of works, otherwise Grace is no more Grace. And if it is of works, it is not of Grace, otherwise work is no more work. "By Grace are you saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God." Grace signifies free, undeserved favor and as it comes from God to us, it is Sovereign Grace which is moved only by the good pleasure of Jehovah's will. Grace is the active movement of the Divine will to produce the results which have been graciously determined. Grace makes a distinction between man and man and it must have all the glory of what it does. Grace is exercised according to the will of God and not according to the will of man, for the Lord has said it--"I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." Grace sat in the council chamber of eternity and devised the scheme of mercy, the plan of redemption, the method of peace through the blood, the whole dispensation of salvation by Grace through faith in Christ Jesus! I say, then, that while Grace gives us the Gospel to believe, Grace also gives us to believe the Gospel. We are personally to believe the Gospel and so only can we be saved. But if I came before you tonight and had nothing further to say than, "Believe the Gospel and you shall be saved," the message would add to your solemn responsibility and yet it would not save you--for you would not believe but would continue in your sins. Man left to himself is an unbeliever and an unbeliever he will remain. To meet the deep depravity of our nature and its settled unbelief, He who gave the Gospel to be believed also gives the faith that believes the Gospel! This is a wonder of Divine Grace! But then, in the realm of Grace everything is wonderful. We are so set on mischief, so proud, so vain-glorious, so unbelieving that we never do come to receive the Gospel except through the operation of the Grace of God upon our consciences and wills. The faith which comes to God first came from God. I remember when I believed in Christ and took Him to be my Trust and was saved--I believed, and thus I entered into life and peace. It was not till some time after that that I understood the reason why I had believed. I said to myself, "How is it that I have believed in Christ while others who have attended the same Gospel ministry and have enjoyed the same advantages, have not believed in Him?" The enquiry was not, "Why did they refuse to believe?" I saw at once that their unbelief was their own fault and folly and that the blame must be laid at their door for they willfully refused the Savior. But this was not the question--I was not judging them--I was examining myself and enquiring why I had believed in the Lord Jesus. I saw that if I had believed it was not to be set down to my personal credit. I could not take to myself any honor because of it. My believing, when they did not believe, did not spring from any better nature on my part. God forbid that I should dream such a thing! It did not spring from any natural excellence of my will. There was a submissive will in me--but a something from above made that will submissive--and that something lay at the back of everything. Then I understood that it was God's Grace that had made me to differ--and I gave to God, then and there, the glory of my faith--and the credit of my choice of Christ. I have never met with any Christian man, whatever his doctrinal views, but he has been willing to give to God the glory of his conversion. He has ascribed it to the working of the Holy Spirit and not to himself--and he has joined with me in praising God for it. Though the Brother may quibble at the doctrine of Distinguishing Grace in the Cross, yet, in his own case in particular, he has been willing to confess that not only did Divine Grace give him a Gospel to believe, but Grace gave him to believe the Gospel. We come--but God draws. We come to God because He draws us! We came to believe in Christ because His Spirit enlightened and persuaded us and brought us into the happy state of salvation by faith in Christ. Furthermore, I wish to add that such believing is a sure evidence of Divine Grace. If you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ with all your heart--you have the Grace of God in you. There is no surer proof of it than this. Where there is faith there is Grace--the one is the inseparable fruit of the other. "He that believes on Him has everlasting life." "He that believes on Him is not condemned." These are not sentences of mine! I am quoting Holy Scripture to you and the Scripture cannot be broken. "Therefore being justified by faith, we have peace with God." It is the believing that brings us into this condition of peace with God! I care not what works you shall bring me, be they ever so many--if you do not bring with you faith, which is the chief of all works--you have brought me nothing. If you believe in Jesus Christ, whom God has sent, you have the one sure and certain evidence of Divine Grace! If you believe in Christ, alone, and are resting your salvation upon His finished righteousness, you have the clearest evidence that the Grace of God is in your heart. Will you not search and see whether you have real faith in the Lord Jesus? Make sure work on this point! If you believe not, you are condemned already. And what is more, if you believe through Grace, that Grace which made you believe is the best guarantee that you shall keep on believing. Faith which is born of self will die of self--but that which is the child of Grace will live forever! If you have begun to believe of yourself you will leave off of yourself--but if God's Grace began your believing--God's Grace will continue your believing and you will abide in this faith wherein you stand even to the end. This gives me great comfort whenever I think of it, for I desire certainty for days to come. If the faith whereby I have laid hold on Christ to be my Savior is altogether worked in me by the Holy Spirit, through Grace, then I defy the devil to take away that which he never gave, or to crush that which Jehovah Himself created in me! I defy my free will to fling away what it never brought to me! What God has given, created, introduced and established in the heart He will maintain there! "Every plant which My heavenly Father has not planted shall be rooted up," but what He has planted none shall root up, for it is written, "I the Lord do keep it; I will water it every moment: lest any hurt it, I will keep it night and day." The men of Corinth to whom Apollos came had believed through Divine Grace. Beloved, there is a sweet ring about this description. They "had believed," and their faith secured their souls. But they "had believed through Grace," and that secured their faith. "Through Grace" is the hallmark upon the precious metal of believing. There is no such thing as true believing where Grace is not present. We believe--it is an act of our own mind. But we believe through Grace--it is the result of God's Grace working upon our mind. We both will and do because God works in us to will and to do. We believe because the Holy Spirit leads us to trust in the Lord Jesus. So much upon the first point. May Divine Grace work in us true believing! O my Hearers, how I wish that you were all such Believers! II. Now for the second consideration. SUCH BELIEVERS NEED HELP. I know they do, because we are told in the text that Apollos, "helped them much which had believed through Grace," and his work was not a superfluous one, or it would not have been mentioned here with commendation. In what respects do those who have Grace need help? In what ways can true Believers be helped? Many Believers need help in further instruction. Young Christians cannot be supposed to know much when they first come to Christ--but they come to be disciples, that is to say, learners. They know the three R's--Ruin, Redemption, and Regeneration--and that is by no means a small part of spiritual education. But they do not know these elementary Truths of God so fully as they might know them--and even about these things they will be the better for more teaching. Oftentimes they need somebody to open up passages of Scripture, to expound to them the analogy of faith and to help them to compare spiritual things with spiritual. Beloved, you may be a great help to new converts if you will teach them "the way of God more perfectly." Oh, that ministries were more instructive! Alas, it seems often as if the preacher skimmed the surface and did not dare to enter into the treasure house of doctrine and open up the deep things of God! If public ministry falls short, private Christians must try to make up for it. We need the people instructed, for ignorance is the mother of superstition and skepticism. The uninstructed are easily carried away with novelties and delusions. Those who are established in the faith and know what they believe generally stand fast. Had the teaching from the pulpit been more clear and decisive during the past 20 years we should not, now, be living in an age of uncertainty. Many who have believed through Grace also need help by way of consolation. You would be astonished if you knew the large number of Believers in Christ who are tempted to doubt, despondency and distress of mind. In the present congregation there are a number of persons so depressed in spirit they can hardly look up--but who will judge, when I am speaking--that I am referring to them. And I must confess that I am thinking of them and do very often think about them--and long to see them come forth from their present gloom. It is a great joy to me if I can help them at all by describing my own experiences of being downcast and lifted up. These bruised and broken ones need binding up! Brothers, if you are like Barnabas, "sons of consolation," be not slack in your blessed service! O you spiritual men, trained in the school of sorrow, put forth your best endeavors to minister to diseased minds! Pour in the oil and wine of the Gospel wherever there is a gaping and bleeding wound. A word fitly spoken, a promise seasonably quoted may help much those who have believed through Grace. Apollos helped them much, also, by defending them against opponents. We find that, "he mightily convinced the Jews," and in doing this he screened believing Gentiles from many a rude assault. He disputed with all his might and with great fervor of spirit against those who tried to subvert the faith of the Christians. Nowadays the Christian had better go fully armored, for arrows fly thick as sleet in a storm. Objections are always being raised--doubts are always being insinuated. It is hard for a man to keep his feet amidst the present torrents of unbelief that sweep down our streets. You that can stand fast should help those who cannot. You that are strong ought to bear the infirmities of the weak in the matter of doubt. Give tremblers a word to encourage them in "the faith once delivered to the saints." Older Christians can do much in this direction by mentioning their own experiences of the certainty of Divine Truth. Tell the young people how God has helped you in the days of trial. Tell them how He has answered your prayers. Tell them what joy and peace you have had in dark times by trusting in God. Tell them, I pray you, the way by which the Lord has led you--and when you do this they will not be so likely to be staggered and cast down by every quibbler who may assault them. "He helped them much which had believed through Grace." Elderly Christians can do very much of this by baffling the adversary with those blessed facts of their own lives which, even to skeptics, are stubborn things. And we can also help those who have believed through Grace by giving them a word of direction. They frequently do not know what to do. They come to the end of their wits and their knowledge-- and then the Christian who, by reason of use has had his senses exercised--may be of great service to the bewildered. We are commissioned by the Lord to be eyes to the blind, feet to the lame and guides to wanderers. It is the lot of some of us to be employed by the King to conduct trains of pilgrims to the Celestial City--and full often we have to put ourselves in front of the women and the children to fight with Giant Grim or Giant Despair. For their sakes we enter the fight with lions, dragons and other monsters. The journey of the weaker ones to Heaven is a personally-conducted tour and the Lord of the Way employs us to be their guardians. All that have spiritual strength should carry out the commission which is implied in the very possession of that strength. You should help the weak and give a brotherly word of advice to the inexperienced. Beloved, do we lay ourselves out for this--those of us who have been long the people of God--as we ought to do? Do you not think that there is a tendency among many to despise the weak and leave them to themselves? How are they to grow wise and more instructed if they have no better society than their own? Do I hear an older one say, "Oh, that young lad, what does he know? What can he do towards my edification?" This is a very selfish question--let it not be heard among you! "I never got much out of the Church," one said to me--and he was somewhat surprised when I replied, "I never joined the Church to get anything out of it." "What did you join it for?" "Why, to do all I could for all who are in it." This wretched self-seeking poisons everything it touches. A certain lady went out with a number of Christian friends and being very easily displeased, she was soon complaining. Turning to a friend she asked him if he enjoyed himself. "No," he said, "I did not come here to enjoy myself, I came here to enjoy other people." There is a great deal in that. If you live for yourself, your object is mean and unsatisfactory. In fact if you live to yourself, you will die. But if you will learn to live to help the feeble and guide the doubtful--and to be a Great-Heart for King Jesus--you will live abundantly, for God will bless you. Dear Friends, the bulk of Christians, when first converted, need leaders. They need somebody to show them the way and to go before them. I would to God that many here present who have been taught of God, if they do not become preachers and ministers, may, nevertheless, by their conduct and conversation vie with Apollos in this blessed work of helping much those who have believed through Divine Grace! By word and by example may the Holy Spirit teach you how to be convoys to the little ships which are now making the voyage of life. III. So I come to the third observation which is this--IT IS A WORTHY WORK IN WHICH TO ENGAGE. Helping those who have believed through Grace is a work worthy of the highest talent and the greatest experience. I want to impress upon many of my instructed Brothers and Sisters that they should engage in it at once and keep at it continually. We are going to have a great number of converts in this place. We have been praying for them and we are sure to have them, for the Lord hears prayer and blesses His own Truth. 1 want you to get ready to receive the new converts and nurse them for Christ. Whenever children are expected, somebody is warned of it and a skilled person is in readiness to cherish the weaklings. God will not send His babes to a Church that is not prepared to nurse them--and I want to stir you up to be ready to help much those who shall believe through Divine Grace. I claim this assistance of you and I feel sure that you will cheerfully render it, even as Apollos thus aided Paul. I feel you will help, first, because you have been helped. Apollos became a helper because he had himself been helped. He began to preach and he preached all that he knew--but his knowledge was very defective. What he said was good-- very good--but it was not fully the Gospel, for he had only learned of John the Baptist and had not yet been taught the doctrine of Jesus. Apollos teaches very eloquently, but still there is something missing in his teaching. He has not yet reached the full chord--he does not sound out the blessed music of the Gospel to perfection. Aquila and Priscilla ask him into their tent warehouse and they say to him, "Dear Friend, do you notice you went just so far, but you should have gone a little farther. You spoke about the Lamb of God--but you did not tell them that Jesus was the Lamb of God and that He had died to take away sin." Apollos replied, "I pray you, tell me all about it." And when they further informed him of the death, the resurrection and the ascension of the Lord Jesus--and of the coming of the Holy Spirit--Apollos said, "Thank you. Thank you. Now I have grand Truths to preach and my message will be more full and gracious than it has been! I shall go forth to the synagogue tomorrow to tell them about the Messiah who has truly come and I shall speak with greater freedom concerning Him." Apollos had been helped and therefore Apollos was bound to help other people! Do you not think, you Christian people, that you owe something to the Church of God as well as to the Christ of God? You were converted--was it not by a pastor's preaching, or by a teacher's instruction in the school, or by a book that had been written by a Christian man? Will you not repay the Church of God that which you owe to her instrumentality? If you have been helped as well as converted, you are especially bound to lay yourself out to help others. When a person who has bean very despondent comes out into comfort, he should look out for desponding spirits and use his own experience as a cordial to the fainting. I do not think that I ever feel so much at home in any work as when I am trying to encourage a heart which is on the verge of despair, for I have been in that plight myself. It is a high honor to nurse our Lord's wounded children. It is a great gift to have learned by experience how to sympathize. "Ah!" I say to them, "I have been where you are!" They look at me and their eyes say, "No, surely you never felt as we do." I therefore go further and say, "If you feel worse than I did, I pity you, indeed, for I could say with Job, 'My soul chooses strangling rather than life.' I could readily enough have laid violent hands upon myself to escape from my misery of spirit." In talking to those who are in that wretched condition, I find myself at home--he who has been in the dark dungeon knows the way to the bread and the water. If you have passed through depression and the Lord has appeared to your comfort, lay yourself out to help others who are where you used to be. If you are in prison and you get out, do not enjoy your liberty alone--hasten to set free another captive! Are your chains broken? Then be a chain-breaker in the Lord's name! A sailor who had long been a prisoner in France, gained his liberty. He went into Seven Dials, bought a cage full of birds, and when he had paid for them, he opened the cage and let them all fly! People cried with wonder, "What did you buy them for?" "Oh," he said, "I bought them to let them fly. I know what it is to be a prisoner, myself, and I cannot bear that birds should be shut up in a cage." Go to those who are what you were--caged birds--and let them fly by telling them of Jesus and the ransom price! Seek out poor, bound sinners and proclaim freedom to them. Proclaim liberty at the market in the name of Christ! I speak to some here who have a measure of natural ability for this work. Perhaps you resemble Apollos, because Apollos was an eloquent man. "Ah," says one, "I am not eloquent." I do not think that. There may be a difference of opinion as to what eloquence is. Eloquence is speaking out from the heart. I will tell you what I call eloquence in a child--it is the whole child working itself up to gain its wish and have its way. There is a pretty thing that the child wants. He is very little, but he tries to speak about it and does his best to express his longings. He points to what he wants and clutches at it--he cries after it. Still he does not succeed and then he works himself up into an agony of desire. The boy cries all over--every bit of him pleads, demands, strives. Every hair of his head is pleading for what he wants. He not only cries with his eyes and with his tongue, but he cries with his fingers and his hair! He thinks of nothing but the one thing on which his little heart is set. I call that eloquence. There is, in the Vatican, the famous group of the Laocoon. I stood one day looking at it. You remember how the father and his sons are twisted about with venomous snakes and they are writhing in agony as the deadly folds enclose them? As I stood looking at the priceless group, a gentleman said to me, "Mr. Spurgeon, look at that eloquent statue." Well, yes, I had looked at that statue. It was like a live thing, though only marble. I had not called it "eloquent" till he gave me the word--but certainly it was eloquent, though silent. It spoke of anguish and deadly pain. When a man speaks in earnest he is eloquent even though he may be slow of speech. His whole nature is stirred as he pleads with sinners for the Lord Jesus--and this makes him eloquent! O my Brothers, you know not what you can do till you get at it with your whole souls! But if you happen to have the gift of fluent speech, I pray you use it in helping those who have believed through Divine Grace. "I have not the gift of speech," says one. Well, dear Brother, have you tried? Have you tried? Many a man has great powers of speech but he has been too bashful to develop them. Shall I put it in Saxon? He has been too much of a coward to find out his own capacity! If he could but have got rid of his fear under the impulse of a strong affection for others, he could have spoken and, by degrees, he would have spoken well. We need more young men in this Church to go forth and preach the Gospel. Where are you, you dumb dogs? How will you answer for it if your Lord is robbed through your sinful silence? All our organizations are in need of speaking men and of earnest, loving Christian women who can plead with souls. I believe that there are more gifts lying idle than we have ever suspected. I charge you--place your talent in the Lord's treasury at once lest its rust should witness against you! But if you have not a great measure of gift, never mind about that. I do not know but what Apollos did mischief through being too gifted and too ready of speech. When he went to Corinth he could speak better than Paul and, after a while, to his grief, he weaned the fickle ones from the Apostle. Apollos did not do this intentionally--it was not his fault--but some of them said, "Listen to Apollos! Is he not a splendid speaker? Did you ever hear such eloquence? Paul cannot talk in that way." One said, "I like Paul, for he is so deep but yet he is neither a polished scholar, nor an elegant speaker like Apollos. He has never been to the college at Alexandria--he has never been polished by Egyptian philosophy. Apollos is the man for me." One cried, "I am of Paul!" And another, "I am of Apollos!" And another, "I am of Cephas!" While a few even said, "I am of Christ"--as if Christ could head a party within His own Church! This led to a grievous dividing into parties and wretched following of men. When he saw it, Paul told them they were carnal and mere babes in Christ. Talent and education may stand in the way of a Believer and may not help him. But in your infirmity there is no such danger--so get to work in spite of your weakness! If you can only stutter, go and stutter the Gospel! And it is the Gospel that God will bless--not your stuttering nor your orating! If you can only write a letter in the simplest words about Jesus, go and do it! And the simplicity with which you write, while it looks like a weakness, may really be a source of strength fitting it the better for God to use! If we have a measure of natural ability, be it great or small, let us use it--but if we have not that ability, we may acquire one form of capacity in which Apollos abounded. He was mighty in the Scriptures. Now we can all study our Bibles. If we believe in Jesus in our hearts we ought to have the Bible at our fingertips--and, if so, we shall help many by our instructive talk. The good Bible student has lips like a springing well. When the Word of God dwells in a man richly his speech drops fatness. Those who speak Scripture sow seed--and it is living and growing seed--whose harvest is salvation! It is God's Word, not our comment on God's Word, that saves men! Keep on quoting God's Inspired Truth and be yourself inspired by it so as to explain it by your own experience--and in that way you will help much them that have believed through Grace. But, dear Friends, in addition to this, you will not do much unless you are like Apollos, fervent in spirit. Notice that 25th verse--"fervent in spirit." He was a burning man--a man on fire. He burned his way by his zeal. He was not content to speak calmly and coolly--he threw his soul into his preaching. That is half the battle! I do not know whether it is not three-quarters of it. "Fervent in spirit." If you are full of fire, full of life and full of heart, you will be a blessing to others. "How can I get warmth of heart?" asks one. Live in the Presence of God! I cannot give you any other prescription. Let the Lord shine upon you as the Sun of Righteousness and you will be fervent--all other methods are mere speculations and will fail. The famous naturalist, Buffon, had, once, a large number of the wise men of the Academy of France at his estate. They were all philosophers--and you know what a philosopher is. If you do not know, you should meet one and I do not think that your appreciation of the sect will be increased. However, these were all philosophers--great men walking in a great man's gardens--all great together. In the grounds there was a glass globe and when one of these profound philosophers touched this glass globe on the shady side, he found that it was very, very warm--while on the side that was exposed to the sun it was comparatively cool. Herein was a marvelous thing! He called his brother philosophers around him and I picture them as they gave out their various theories why this glass globe was hotter on the side away from the sun than on the side which was bearing the full blaze of noonday. One had a theory of reflection, another of refraction, another of absorption--I cannot give you all their words for they were wonderful words and wonderful theories--and they discussed, and discussed and discussed. Finally, Buffon, not quite satisfied with the philosophical conclusions which they had reached, called the gardener and said, "Gardener, can you tell me why this side of the globe, away from the sun, is hotter than the other side upon which the sun is shining?" "Yes, Sir," said the gardener, "Just now I turned the globe round because it was getting too hot on one side." This did not uphold the new philosophical theories, but it maintained an old-fashioned doctrine--namely, that the sun gives heat! You may depend upon it that the only answer to the question why a man is fervent in spirit is that he keeps his heart near his Lord! You need not enter upon any philosophical disquisitions as to how to maintain fervor and enthusiasm and all that. That is the most fervent heart which enjoys most of the light of God and that is the end of the whole matter. If you live in the light of God's Countenance you will be fervent--and if you turn away from Him you will grow cool. God give us to be fervent in spirit! But now notice one thing more. Apollos greatly helped these people because he preached Christ to them. "For he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, showing by the Scriptures that Jesus was Christ." If we are going to help those who have believed in Christ our conversation with them must be full of Christ. Nothing will really feed the soul but Jesus! His flesh is meat, indeed! His blood is drink, indeed! All else is froth, or wind. Reading yesterday, in "Israel my Glory," a book by Mr. Wilkinson who is the director of the Jewish mission at Mildmay, I saw a statement there which was quite new to me. He is speaking of the Jewish Passover at the present day. Now you know what the Passover was according to the law of Moses--how a lamb was killed and the blood was sprinkled on the lintel and the two side-posts--while the flesh was roasted and eaten. The Jews at this day observe the Passover, but they observe it in a way which is according to the Rabbis and not according to Moses. On the table there are Passover cakes, lettuce, chervil and parsley as the bitter herbs. This I understand, but what is this concoction--a mixture of lime and mortar? And from where do they get the egg and the salt water? Moses knows nothing of eggs and mortar! What is there, do you suppose, besides? "Oh," you say, "the Paschal Lamb." No, no--they have left that out! What is there at the Jewish Passover at the present time instead of the lamb? A shank-bone! A shank-bone, mark you--with no meat upon it! Only a shank-bone! The blood is gone and in place of it is an egg. The Lamb is gone and instead there is a shank-bone. "Ah, me! How can they thus make void the Law of God?" This I said involuntarily but very soon I remembered that I could not blame the Jews, for they are only imitating the Christians! Go and hear many who pretend to preach the Gospel. Where is the Lamb, the Sacrifice, to be fed upon? Where is the sprinkled blood? Why they are ashamed to speak of "the blood"! They think the very word is vulgar. But what do they give us? A bone! A bone! A bone that no dog would care for--a bone of modern thought put in the place of the Lamb who ought to be fed upon by all the living Israel of God! I thank Mr. Wilkinson for such a simile. I smile to think of my Israelite friends sitting down to the table with their shank-bone and calling it the Passover--but they are quite as near the mark as my Christian friends sitting down to their divinity out of which the great doctrine of the Atonement has been taken--and calling it the Christian faith! There is no food for bodies in the shank-bone, nor any food for souls in the modern theology--but in Christ Crucified there is every help that a soul can need. Are you burdened with sin? He bore it on the Cross. Are you afraid that sin will conquer you? You shall overcome by the blood of the Lamb. Trust in the atoning Sacrifice, alone and entirely, and you shall enter into a peace and joy which shall be the strength of your soul in future conflicts with evil. I need not say more--but I would press upon my dear friends who know the Lord to go "help them much that have believed through Grace." As for those who have not yet believed in Jesus, may they now come and trust Him! The moment that you trust Him you are saved. "Look unto Me," He says, "and be you saved, all the ends of the earth." Look at once! Look and live! "There is life in a look at the Crucified One." The Lord, by His Grace, constrain and enable you to give that look and to Him be glory forever and ever! Amen. PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Acts 18. __________________________________________________________________ The Prince of Life A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 20, 1890. DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 6, 1890. "And killed the Prince of Life, whom God has raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses." Acts 3:15. PETER does not conceal the death of Christ--he is not ashamed of the fact that his Lord was crucified. God forbid that any of us should be ashamed of the Cross--may we speak of it without a blush! Peter does not flatter his hearers but he declares that they "killed the Prince of Life." This was literally true and it was necessary that they should know and feel it. There is no Gospel without the Cross and no useful preaching which does not appeal to the conscience--yes, there must be the Cross for doctrine and honest rebuke as the trumpet to awaken men's hearts. You ministers take note of this! Mark well that in the same sentence in which he testified to the Lord's death, Peter bears witness to His Resurrection. The verse is very short and yet contains the two greatest events of human history--"You killed the Prince of Life, whom God raised from the dead." The Crucifixion and the Resurrection come close together. There are no intervening words in Peter's speech, as there was scarcely an interval as a matter of fact. Our Redeemer is laid in the grave Friday evening and He rises from it early Sunday morning. It is called "three days" by Oriental custom, but, as a matter of fact, the interval only consisted of parts of two days and one whole day. God has a way of handling time which makes a day as a thousand years and a thousand years as a day--and in this case He compressed into the smallest space the three days during which the Great Hostage remained in the grave. Beloved, I wish you would learn a lesson here--never draw out sorrow and dread beyond the shortest necessary period. You that have been made to feel your death and are at this time, as it were, wrapped in your grave clothes, I pray that you may know no long interval between the time when you are slain by the Law and made alive again by Divine Grace! Why should we tarry longer than we should under the bondage of the Law? Dark is that night in which Jesus has not yet come and yet the storm is raging. When the soul has only life enough to mourn its death, it is a painful condition. Let that period be made as short as possible. Is it not written, "After two days will He revive us: in the third day He will raise us up, and we shall live in His sight"? Why should we make months and years of that which need be scarcely three days? If God contracts three days into one, may we not, by holy faith, make short work of our time of conviction and fear? When we know our death, we have, in measure, begun to live--and we should be eager that our life should quit the sepulcher of doubt and enjoy the light of joy! I am about to speak of our Lord for that very purpose. I hope that the music of His charming name may bring rejoicing to sad hearts. Here is your power to quit your spiritual death! Here is your sole hope of spiritual life--Jesus who rose from the dead is "the Prince of Life." We will begin with that. Consider a title--"Prince of Life." When we have done with that, we will look further into our text and unfold a roll of wonder--"You killed the Prince of Life, whom God has raised from the dead, of which we are witnesses." There are many riddles in that paradoxical statement--"You killed the Prince of Life." When we have done with these points, we will come to a speedy close as we suggest an inquiry which may be practically profitable to you. I. First, then, let us CONSIDER A TITLE--"The Prince of Life." This is not a literal translation, though it is a valuable interpretation. The word here is that which is translated, "Author," in that place wherein our Lord is said to be "the Author and Finisher of our faith" (Heb. 12:2). And yet it is also rendered "Captain" (Heb. 2:10), where He is called "the Captain of our salvation" made perfect through suffering. The word "Prince" is not inaccurate, for the idea of princedom lies on the surface of the Greek word and therefore I shall keep to our own thrice precious version, which, take it for all in all, remains the Queen of all the versions. Still, you will not forget that it does include the sense of "Author of life" Here it may be well to say that we think that Christ is, indeed, the Creator of all things and especially of life--"All things were made by Him; and without Him was not anything made that was made. In Him was life." Our Lord Jesus is peculiarly the Creator in connection with life and I take pleasure in thinking of all life as proceeding from Him by whom all things consist. But this is assuredly true of all spiritual life which is a higher and a nobler thing than vegetable life, animal life or mental life. From Him, the Sun of Righteousness, every vital spark of heavenly flame has been sent forth-- He is the quickening Spirit and by union with Him we live unto God, if, indeed, we so live. There is no spiritual life of which He is not the Author and there never will be. When you and I come to deal with men for their salvation, we discover our inability for we perceive that the creation of life is out of our power since it remains the sole prerogative of the Son of God. To Him is given power over all flesh that He may give eternal life to as many as the Father has given Him. "As the Father raises up the dead and quickens them; even so the Son quickens whom He will." All our preaching is in vain unless Jesus sends forth life. "He that has the Son has life; and he that has not the Son of God has not life" (1 John 5:12) and what can we do among the dead? Come, Lord and Giver of life, for without You we are but as the dead burying the dead! But now we will handle our text as it stands in our version. It is a beautiful name this--"the Prince of Life." Though seldom preached upon, it is one of our Lord's famous titles. He will be gloriously known by this name in the day of His appearing when He shall raise the dead! But it is a title which belonged to Him before He was nailed to the Cross for, they "killed the Prince of Life." The title belonged to Him even when He was dead, for when killed He was still, "the Prince of Life." The title is His to the fullest now that He is risen and ever lives to make intercession for us. None can share it with Him, much less can any take it away from Him. He alone is "the Prince of Life." Upon this famous title we would remark that it is justified by the fact that He possesses life supremely. In Him is life emphatically, to its deepest and highest degree. In Him is life superlatively and beyond all others. Of Him John well said, "The Life was manifested and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that Eternal Life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us." He bears the name of "The Life" in that famous passage, "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life." He says of Himself, "I am He that lives." As surely as we have a living God we have a living Savior. He is Life self-existent, sustained by nothing from without. He is Life essential, Life eternal. He is the Prince of Life because in Him life dwells in all its fullness, force and independence. "As the Father has life in Himself; so has He given to the Son to have life in Himself" (John 5:26). Jesus lives--He must live--He cannot cease to live. All things else may pass away and like the bubbles on the wave dissolve into their native nothingness--but the Christ of God must live and live in full energy--and therefore He is "the Prince of Life." Life is His natural inheritance. Life is His royal heritage. We hear of ladies who are peeresses in their own right--so is Christ the Prince of Life in His own right--not only by purchase, or attainment, or reward, but by His Nature and relationship to the Highest--for He is, in Himself, God that lives forever. Moreover, He has power over His own life in a way in which none of us can imitate Him. As the God-Man His life is absolutely at His own disposal. In the realm of life He is Prince and we are only subjects. He says of His own life, "I have power to lay it down and I have power to take it again." This is not our case. We pay the debt of Nature and die. But our Lord owed no debt to Nature, seeing He is the Maker of all. He died voluntarily and of His own accord--you and I may not do this except under the compulsion of obedience to God. He resumed possession of life at His own will which you and I could not do. He had the right, the authority, the power thus to deal with His own life. If this had not been so, He could not have offered Himself to die in our place, but, having a power and princedom over His own life, such as we have not, He could lay down His life for us and He could take it again. O Man, you have not life in your own right--it is lent to you by Him who is still owner of it! You can not lay down your life at will for it is not yours, but God's! Live your appointed time, else will you commit a crime against the majesty of the Life-Giver! Our Lord Jesus assumed the life of man and when He chose, He could lay it down--for He was still the ever-living God. When He chose, He could raise His human body from among the dead and walk again among the sons of men--this He has done and many witnesses have attested the fact! Let us rejoice that we worship the living God through a living Mediator! How glad we are that we are comforted by the same assurance which sustained the heart of Job, "I know that my Redeemer lives"! In an hour of great depression of spirit Luther was seen to write on the table before him these two words--Vivit! Vivit!--and when he had so written he arose and went about his business calmly and quietly, as well he might, since his Almighty Helper lived. "The Lord is risen, indeed!" Is not this enough to make us all Luthers if we could but drink it in? If Jehovah Jesus lives, His cause can never die--and our acceptance before God can never fail! The great Redeemer lives emphatically and eternally--therefore let our faith in Him rise to full assurance and let that full assurance lift us to the summit of delight-- "He lives, He lives and sits above, Forever interceding there! Who shall divide us from His love? Or what shall tempt us to despair?" In the next place, consider that our Lord is "the Prince of Life" because He won it for us right gloriously. We had forfeited life and had come under the sentence, "You shall surely die." We fell under bondage to the power of death and became dead to God, righteousness and hope. Our Lord Jesus entered into the battle against our great adversary who had the power of death, that is, the devil. He had skirmishes with him in the wilderness and He struggled with him in the garden, even to a bloody sweat. Our enemy was strong through our sin and the curse of the Law which follows it--but our Lord was strong in love to bear our sin in His own body and to endure the chastisement of our peace upon the Cross. He fought the foes of our souls and returned with dyed garments from Edom, having trampled under His feet all the powers of darkness, as the grapes are trod in the winepress. He Himself bowed His head to death and by death He overcame the Prince of Darkness! By His patient suffering and painful death He won for us the right to live forever! His endurance of the death penalty blotted out the writ of judgment which had been issued against us--He Himself putting it out of the way, nailing it to His Cross-- "Bruised is the serpent's head, Hell is vanquished, Death is dead And to Christ gone up on high, Captive is captivity." By dying, the Just for the unjust, our Lord, who was both Victim and Victor, became our "Prince of Life," handing us the pardon and justification by which our eternal life is secured. As by the first Adam came death, so by the second Adam life has been bestowed. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus," for the condemnation has been placed upon Him--and by this grand transference, while death has passed upon Him--life has come to us. Our life is the glorious spoil which "the Prince of Life" has snatched from the Destroyer and granted freely to us! Well may we crown Him Prince of Life "who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel"! Thirdly, our Lord may well be called "the Prince of Life" because He gives it so plentifully. With both hands He scatters it where all had been death. As He has life most abundantly and has won for us the right to it, so He actually imparts it to His chosen by the Spirit of Life. Where the Tartar's horse trod, the grass never grew--but where Christ's feet tread, life springs up in the midst of the arid wilderness! He cannot live without scattering life all around Him, even as the sun cannot exist without giving out his light on all sides. None but He can give life to men--but He can give it without measure. To those furthest sunk in death, even to the corrupt in heart who stink in the nostrils of their fellow men, He can give life! His voice can be heard in the innermost prison of spiritual death. As He called Lazarus and made him live by His own supreme power, so can He quicken the corrupt sinner to sweetness and heavenliness of life. None have yet been met who were so far gone in corruption as to be beyond His quickening energy! None have ever trusted Him without receiving life though their case seemed desperate. Yes, the feeblest trust in Him is life! They live that believe-- "There is life in a look at the Crucified One." On all sides He dispenses that everlasting life which He compares to water springing up within a well. They that come under His benign influence live forever because of their contact with Him--for this is life eternal--to know the Lord Jesus, as sent of God. Beloved, the day will come when our Lord will prove His life-giving power on a grand scale by causing the resurrection of the dead! When He shall come in the glory of the Father, they that are in the grave shall hear the voice of the Son of God and they that hear shall live! What an Exodus it will be! The slaves of death shall quit the Egypt of the sepulcher and march forth from the house of bondage. Land and sea shall teem with the uncountable multitude and He that called them forth shall be seen to be "the Prince of Life." Who but He could have released this vast multitude from their long prison? The Roman Emperor, Theodosius, in a fit of great good humor, set at liberty all persons in prison or in captivity-- and then he sighed and wished that he could release the dead from their graves. Theodosius could not reach the keys of the grave--these hang at the belt of "the Prince of Life." He shall open the iron gate and bid the myriads pour forth as bees from the hive! They sleep together in the dust, but when He calls they shall answer Him. Hear this, O Mourner-- "Your brother shall rise again!" Every man's brother shall rise again! An exceedingly great army shall be seen where now we mourn a valley of dry bones. Until that glorious morning, nothing pleases our Lord better than to be working spiritual resurrections. He says, "He that believes in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this?" Do you know anything about being quickened from the death wherein you lay dead in trespasses and sins? Remember that marvelous sentence--"I am the Resurrection and the Life." Your Lord Himself is the Resurrection--do you know this? Those who have Him have life eternal. Have you proved this Truth of God? God grant that we may have many examples of that fact in this house at this moment! May many of you look to Jesus and begin the life which never ends! Next, I think we may fitly style our Lord, "Prince of Life," because He so wondrously sustains it. If you have life you still need food. You know where to find food for your body--the fields and the floods yield it to you--but where will you find food for your soul? There is but one place to which you can resort. Apart from Christ Jesus not even Heaven itself can yield it to you, though it drop with manna, "for your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness and are dead." Heaven itself can only give us the nutriment of spiritual life in that one form, namely, Christ Jesus. He says, "I am the living Bread which came down from Heaven: if any man eat of this Bread, he shall live forever: and the Bread that I will give is My flesh, which I will give for the Life of the world." He says again, "Whoever eats My flesh, and drinks My blood, has eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For My flesh is meat, indeed, and My blood is drink, indeed. As the living Father has sent Me, and I live by the Father: so he that eats Me, even he shall live by Me." Brothers and Sisters, do you know this Bread from Heaven by handling and tasting it? If so, renew your acquaintance with it by receiving it anew. O Soul, there is supreme virtue in this food which Jesus gives you! Are you faint this morning? Resort again to Him who first gave you Life. Do you hunger? Come to Him who is that Word of God by whom men live. He shall satisfy your mouth with good things and renew your youth like the eagle's. He does not bid you take Life from Him and then go elsewhere for bread which to nourish it--no, He causes you to live by your constant and never-ending union with Him, even as the branch lives in the vine. Pray, "Lord, evermore give us this Bread." If you feed upon Him whom God has set forth to be the Bread that never perishes, you also shall never perish, but live forever! Oh, for a banquet upon this heavenly Bread this morning! "Eat you that which is good and let your soul delight yourself in fatness." Then, rising from the table well satisfied, you shall each one say, "Truly He is the Prince of Life, for we live by Him." Brethren, this name may be illustrated yet further by the fact that He rules life most lovingly. "The Prince of Life" is not a mere title. I suppose the Prince of Wales does not govern Wales, as a matter of fact--and other princes who derive their names from different places do not necessarily rule over those places--they merely wear a title which means little or nothing. Our Lord Jesus wears no empty title! He is really Prince and Lord wherever He is Quickener. There is no spiritual life in the world which does not yield obedience to Jesus Christ! Other life may be rebellious, struggling against His sway, for, "the kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together, saying, Let us break His bands asunder and cast away His cords from us." But the spiritually living, quickened by faith in Him, cry each one to Him at the very first moment of their life, "Lord, what would You have me to do?" The spirit of life in Christ Jesus is the spirit of obedience. The life that Jesus gives does not go off at a tangent from Him--it remains circulating about Him as the planet around the sun. The life that Jesus gives is like the life of a body which is obedient to the head. My head says, "Lift your hand." Up goes the hand. "Close the fingers"--they close. "Open the hand"--it opens at once--without so much as a wish to rebel. The rule is where the life is, namely, in the head. Such is Christ to all truly living men and women--their life, their rule--is in Christ Jesus. Where Jesus lives He reigns. I know there is in us another law working against the law of our mind and sometimes bringing us into captivity to the law of sin and death--but this appertains not to our new-born life--it is a relic of our death. Sin comes of that "body of this death" over which we groan so deeply, crying, "Who shall deliver me?" As for the life which comes to us through our Lord Jesus, it is pure and heavenly. That which is born of God sins not--it follows after righteousness and keeps the way of holiness--and must do so eternally. The Prince of Life is a real ruler and the life He has created is subservient to His sway. He is Head over all things in His Church as well as to His Church. Ruling with a mysterious, Omnipotent and effective power, He works in the spiritual so that they gladly pay their heart's homage to Him. I must give you the sixth observation, otherwise I cannot bring out all my thoughts on this marvelous name, "the Prince of Life." Our Lord is He who is the Crown and Glory of our life. The prince, as the representative of the country, stands for it in the place of dignity and honor. At great ceremonies a country is represented and honored by the presence of its crown prince. Among men it is but nominally that the prince is the glory of the nation--but in the Divine life Christ is, indeed, the flower, Crown and Glory of the people who are in Him--even all the living in Zion. If you want to see the spiritual life, you may see it in any one of the members of the mystical body--but not to perfection. There is life in the hand. There is life in the foot. There is life, even, in our uncomely parts--but if you want to see the life of a man, you naturally look in his face. If you would see eternal life, behold it in the face of Jesus! In Him dwells eternal life to the fullest! He is the embodied, Incarnate Life of God for men and in Him is that life made perfect. Beloved, the Glory of our manhood, as it is spiritually renewed and quickened, is Christ! He it is that has raised our nature to the right hand of God. It is something to be a man, now that the Son of God is also Man! It is much to be alive unto God, now that our life is hid with Christ in God! What a noble second Adam we have! How glorious He makes our nature! He is the flower of our manhood! All else is the branch, leaf, and bud--but the supreme beauty, the Image of God in man, finds full expression in the Firstborn from the dead, the altogether-lovely One. He is the glory of our life and hence He is well called "the Prince of Life." And, seventhly, which must bring this discussion of the title to a close--it is He who Himself is glorified by spiritual life. Princes and kings reckon that the prosperity of their country reflects honor upon them. That monarch is great because he rules a great country--this king is famous because his armies have made him so. The people make the king. In our Lord's case, His living ones are His joy and crown. From Him and through Him, and therefore to Him, are all things in the realm of spiritual life! All spiritual life glorifies the living Christ! There is not a beat of the spiritual heart--there is not a breath of the spiritual lung--but what means love and loyalty to the Christ of God! That we should repent. That we should believe. That we should do good works--all this is to make Jesus a glorious Prince, glorified by such holy and heavenly life. Your highest ambition, you quickened ones, is that you may crown Him Lord of All! If you had a wish and could now obtain your highest desire, your wish would be that He might be extolled and be very high. I am sure it is so with you! You would forego at once 10,000 desires that lurk within your spirit and that might, in themselves, be lawful enough! You would, I say, forego them all without regret if He might have a glorious high throne and be great unto the ends of the earth! I am sure it is so among the glorified in the New Jerusalem. In Heaven they rejoice, but they joy before their Lord! In Heaven they worship, but they worship the Lamb! In Heaven they sing, but the song is, "Unto Him that loved us and washed us from our sins in His own blood." As in the aloe, all those long years of green leafage are tending to the production of one glorious flower in the end, as, at last, a flower stalk shoots upward like a tree! And then it is hung about with abundant flowers so that the whole plant spends itself upon its blossoms--living only till they are displayed. And so is it with the life of the saints of God! The aloe has no other reason for its growing than to bear that towering glory in the end--and so is it with the entire mass of spiritual life which God has made--it is growing and gathering up all its strength throughout these ages that Christ may be glorified! In the ages to come Christ is to be manifested to principalities and powers in the heavenlies, in and through His Church. We who live spiritually make up His body--and as all the body ministers to the head--so do we all strive to bring honor and dominion to our Lord Jesus. It pleases the Holy Spirit in us to reveal Christ and magnify His name. Are we not, all of us, children of God--all of us so many younger sons increasing the honor of the "Firstborn among many brethren?" All spiritual life is for Him who is our Life. "He shall live, and daily shall He be praised." We live for this. Bring forth your trophies to Him, you conquerors of sin! Pour out your treasures at His feet, you who are rich toward God! Crown Him King of kings and Lord of lords. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! All spiritual life that was and is and ever shall be, is to the glory of Him who says, "I am He that lives, and was dead, and am alive forever more; and have the keys of Hell and of Death." It is clear that He is well named "the Prince of Life." I have been doing my work very badly because it is beyond me. My subject masters me. I am reminded of a story about Mr. Moody. Mr. Moody finished his sermon and as he walked away dissatisfied with himself, he said to a good Scotchman with whom he was staying, "I cannot get to the end of it." "Man," said the other, "did you think you ever could?" Who can compass the Infinite? I did not imagine that I could reach the height of this great argument, but still I hoped to do better than this. The Lord forgive my feebleness and yet use it to His Glory! I am not astonished at my failure, but I am weary of the ignorance which makes me fail. I wish I could glorify my Lord more. Help to make up for my deficiencies. Let this precious name lie like a sweet wafer on your tongue. Go to sleep tonight with it in your mouth and may it flavor your very dreams--and may you wake up in the morning and find yourselves still with Him who is "the Prince of Life"! II. Now, secondly, I have to UNFOLD A ROLL OF WONDERS which I see in my text: "You killed the Prince of Life." See here, Beloved, in the murder of Christ, the height and infamy of human sin. They chose a murderer, but they killed "the Prince of Life." He lived for their sakes, but they slew Him--He would die that men might live--and they killed Him. You blame the Jews? No! Rather blame yourselves! Those who did this deed were representatives of the whole race. We, also, put the Lord to death. Our hands were crimsoned in His blood-- "'Twas you my sins, my cruel sins, His chief tormentors were. Each of my crimes became a nail, And unbelief the spear." Sin is Christicide. I have in my reading, in old books, found holy men speaking of sins as "accursed kill-Christs." The name was well deserved. When sin was full-blown it brought forth Christ-murder as its chief product. Hear how the wicked husbandmen cry-"This is the heir; come, let us kill him and the inheritance shall be ours." He had nothing to do with our death but to bear the penalty of it and He came here only to make us live--but we, with wicked hands, have crucified Him! What an evil and a bitter thing is sin! What a malicious and bloodthirsty monster! Oh, for Grace to escape from it! A sevenfold depth of cursing lies within the heart of man--for he would kill his God, his Savior. You, my Hearer, will either be guilty of the death of Christ or you will live by it. Which shall it be? You either kill Him or you live by Him. Another wonder is our Lord's condescension. How could He stoop to di'e? To die by the hands of wicked men? Behold the condescension of Christ, that being the Prince of Life He should deign to die! A look of His would have made His murderers melt away--as it shall one day make Heaven and earth flee from His face. One word from Him and where would Caiaphas, Annas, Pilate and the Roman soldiers have been? They would have become as the fat of rams which is speedily consumed in smoke had He but willed it--for by His will the old creation shall be dissolved. When He hung on the Cross the nails could not have kept Him there of themselves. He could have stepped from the tree among His adversaries and made them scatter like sheep when a wolf leaps into the flock. He died, but that loud cry of, "It is finished!" proved that His strength was in Him and that He died not of necessity. He could have lived--but for our sakes He submitted to death. How was it that there was a possibility for the Prince of Life to die? I cannot enter into that mystery, but it was so. Though He was Lord of Life, He could die--and He could yet continue to have such power that soon His Spirit would return to His Body which remained dead in the tomb but could not see corruption. As I unroll my text I see another wonder and that is the folly of rebellion against Christ. They killed the Prince of Life! What was the effect of this vain malice? Could they really kill the Prince of Life? Go and extinguish the sun! Go stop the heart of this great earth so that there shall be no more pulse in her tides--but you can never, in very deed, destroy "Him who only has immortality." Yet they thought they had killed the Prince of Life, and, in a sense, they had done so. And this is the idle dream of men to this day--they hope to quench the Gospel, to silence the Doctrines of Grace--to exterminate the ancient orthodoxy and to put modern heresies in its place. Vanity of vanities! Even as the Resurrection mocked the guards, the watch, the stone, so shall the revival of true godliness and the restoration of true doctrine baffle the devices of men! They that count the towers, to pull them down and go about Zion in the hope of destroying her bulwarks, shall yet know that the virgin daughter of Zion has shaken her head at them and laughed them to scorn! As the Lord Jesus lives, "the Way, the Truth, and the Life" shall remain eternally the same! You fools! When will you be wise and quit your vain rebellions? The text also exhibits the triumph of His life. "The Prince of Life, whom God has raised from the dead." His Godhead raised Him. His Father raised Him. His Spirit raised Him. He resumed His life and thus was declared to be the Son of God with power! This glorious Resurrection of Christ should cause the universe to sing! Rejoice, for Jesus has left the dead, no more to die! A dead Christ? Then there would have been a dead Gospel! What had we to preach to you if Jesus had not risen? Now that He has risen again we have justification to proclaim! Go, tell it all the world over--"The Lord has risen, indeed! The Lord has risen, indeed!" His Resurrection is the cornerstone of the good news which the Lord has sent to believing men. Therefore, with such a Truth to publish, we faint not! This moved the Apostles to preach with such boldness because they knew that He whom they preached lived again. Notice here in the text the assurance of that fact--"Of which we are witnesses." There stood Peter and John, two evidently honest men. Everything about them was straightforward--they had nothing to conceal and nothing to gain by their testimony. They could have called upon all the 12 and even upon above 400 brethren who at once had seen the risen Lord! The witness is perfect and unquestionable. Jesus assuredly overcame the pains of death. His Soul was not left among the dead. His victory is proven. "Oh," you say, "those witnesses died nearly 1,900 years ago." Yes, yes. But testimony does not lose certainty by the lapse of years. If what they witnessed was true when they witnessed it, it is true now. They saw the Lord Jesus alive after His Resurrection and that settles the question. If hundreds of persons saw the Lord Jesus after He was risen, then He did certainly rise! Hallelujah! Here is a stone to build upon which the Goths and Vandals of modern doubt cannot tear from its place. The Resurrection is as certain as any fact recorded in history! Jesus of Nazareth, though He was killed, did rise from the dead and we rejoice therein! Let us put the Resurrection of Christ to its proper uses. Let us believe in Him as "able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them." Let us feel that our justification is certified by His Resurrection and our own resurrection is guaranteed by the same fact! We are safe in the hands of His living wisdom, His living power, His living love. Above all, let us look for our Lord's second coming, for He lives and cannot forever stay away from His people. He that brought again from the dead that great Shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the Everlasting Covenant will also cause Him to appear as the chief Shepherd in the latter days. The heavens have received Him for a while, but He must come to gather in His people and cause them to reign with Him. "Therefore comfort one another with these words." III. I have done when I have taken time to SUGGEST AN ENQUIRY. Let each hearer say, "What has the Prince of Life to do with me?" Beloved, do you know the Lord Jesus Christ? Is He alive to you and do you live by Him--or are you dead in sin? Which is it? A man must be either dead or alive! There is no space between death and life. You are either dead in sin or alive unto righteousness--which are you? Everyone may know--if he will make a searching enquiry into his own state. A Brother said to me this morning, "When you preach I generally find I have enough to do to mind my own business." May you all find it so! Mind your own business and enquire, "Have I received Divine Life from Christ?" I will suppose the answer comes from one, "No, I am afraid I have not received it." Well, then, do you wish for it? Is there in your heart a desire to possess this new Life? "The Prince of Life" is to be found if you seek Him! Scripture gives us this as one of the rules of the kingdom, "He that seeks finds." But mind that you make a thorough and sincere search. A farmer, by some means, lost a five-pound note in his barn. It was of great importance to him that he should find it, for it was the most of what he possessed. So he said to himself, "I am certain that I lost this note in the barn. And as I must find it, I will turn over every straw in the barn rather than lose it. I will never leave off looking for it till I find it." After some days' search, as "for a needle in a haystack," he spied out his precious bank-note among the straw and came home greatly rejoicing. Sometime afterward, it pleased God to visit him with a deep sense of sin and he said to his wife, "I wish I could believe in the Savior, but alas, I cannot find Him!" She wisely replied, "If you will look for Him as you looked for that bank-note in the barn, you will find Him." "Well," said he, "that is what I will do." And by Divine Grace his seeking of Jesus led to finding and he was saved and knew it! O Brothers, turn over those trusses of memories of the Word which you heard long ago and among them you may find the Savior! O Sisters, stir up the dust of what you learned in Sunday school and you shall come upon your Lord before long! It is written, "You shall seek Me and find Me when you shall search for Me with all your heart." If Christ were dead and motionless He would be hard to discover. But Life cannot long be hidden! On the hillside yonder soldiers are waiting to come down upon our army and our watchers cannot see them because the men lie quiet behind rocks and trees. The moment the soldiers begin to move we shall discern them--a living and moving object our glasses will soon detect. O Souls, the Lord Jesus is living and moving! He is visible to the naked eye of faith! Look for Him and then look to Him! Because He is Life He cannot be hid! Oh, that you may behold Him soon! "Oh," says one, "I do long to find eternal life!" Then seek it in the right way! Follow only one track--Jesus is the one and only way to Life. In the old times of slavery in the States, when men escaped from their masters, they did so by knowing that the north star would lead them to freedom. They had to travel by night for fear of being captured and taken back--therefore they learned little of the geography of the country--they cared for nothing but the star. As they hastened through the woods they did not study botany! As they flitted through towns and villages along the road, they learned nothing of poetics or social reform! They knew one thing and minded that one thing only--they kept on following the pole-star. Brothers and Sisters, there are hosts of things that you do not know at present and many things that you will never know. But see to it that you know Jesus who is the pole-star of salvation! Keep Christ in your eyes! Follow the Crucified and Risen One! Trust Him! Rely upon Him! Follow Him! Receive the Life of which He is the Prince and it shall be well with your soul! May you live in Christ Jesus and glorify Him as "the Prince of Life" forever and ever! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Acts 3; 4:1-14. __________________________________________________________________ A Homily for Humble Folks A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY, APRIL 27, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 13, 1890. "Surely I am more stupid than any man, and have not the understanding of a man." Proverbs 30:2. SOMETIMES it is necessary for a speaker to refer to himself and he may feel it necessary to do so in a way peculiar to the occasion. When Elihu addressed himself to Job and the three wise men, he commended himself to them saying, "I am full of matter, the spirit within me constrains me." But when Agur instructed his two disciples, Ithiel and Ucal, he spoke in the lowliest terms of himself and declared that he was "more stupid than any man." Wisdom is justified of her children. Neither of these men was to blame for his opening words to his hearers. Elihu was a young man talking to elderly men of great note for learning--he saw that they had blundered terribly--he felt convinced that he had the right view of the matter under discussion, but he thought it discreet to introduce himself by modestly stating the reasons why he thought he should be patiently heard. Agur was probably a man of years and honor, and possibly his two young friends looked up to him more than was necessary and therefore his principal endeavor was to wean them from undue confidence in himself. He passed the gravest censure upon himself so that his hearers might not suffer their faith to stand in the wisdom of men. I can suppose that both Elihu and Agur were equally humble--the one so modest that he felt that he needed to commend himself to gain a hearing--and the other so lowly that he feared the hearing he should win would place his personal influence in too high a place. But did Agur really mean all he said? I cannot doubt it. Forcible expressions are not always to be understood in their strictest sense, yet I have no doubt Agur meant to describe himself as he felt himself to be apart from the Grace of God. Or better and more likely, he felt thus stupid and foolish after he had been enlightened by the Spirit of God. One mark of a man's true wisdom is his knowledge of his ignorance. Have you ever noticed how the clean heart always mourns its uncleanness--and the wise man always laments his folly? It needs holiness to detect our own unholiness and it needs wisdom to discover our own folly. When a man talks of his own cleanness, his very lips are foul with pride--and when a man boasts of his wisdom, he proclaims his folly with trumpet sound! Because God had taught Agur much, he felt that he knew but little. Especially I think the truth of our text relates to one particular line of things. This man was a naturalist. We have nothing of his save this chapter, but his allusions to natural history all through it are exceedingly abundant. He was an instructed scientist, but he felt that he could not, by searching, find out God, nor fashion an idea of Him from his own thoughts. When he heard of the great discoveries of those who judged themselves to be superior persons, he disowned such wisdom as theirs. Other men with their great understanding might be fishing up pearls of truth from the sea--as for himself he knew nothing but that which he found in God's Word. He had none of that boasted understanding which climbed the heavens, bound the winds and swathed the sea and so discovered the sacred name--he was content with Revelation and felt that "every Word of God is pure." Not in any earthly school learned he the knowledge of the Holy. All that he knew he had been taught by God's Book. He had in thought climbed to Heaven and come down again--he had listened to the speech of winds, waves and mountains--but he protested that in all this he had not discovered God's name nor His Son's name by his own understanding. All his light had come through the Lord's own Word--and he shrewdly gave this caution to those who thought themselves supremely wise above what is written--"Add you not unto His Words, lest He reprove you and you be found a liar." Philosophy had failed him and Revelation was his ONLY confidence. As for himself, he did not claim that degree of perception and profundity which enabled him to think out God, but he went to God Himself and learned from Him, first hand, through His revealed Wisdom. This I take to be his meaning but I shall not use the text in that way this morning. Here was a man, who, whatever he really was, held himself in his own opinion and judgment to be an inferior person--and yet, nevertheless--was a firm believer in his God. He was not only a firm believer, but he was an earnest student of the sacred Oracles. All the more because of his ignorance he pressed on to learn more and more of God. Nor was this all, he was a willing worker, for he spoke prophetically in the name of the Lord. Nor do we even end here, for from this short writing it is clear that he was a joyful truster in God. Brutish as he judged himself to be, he rose into supreme content at every thought of God. Those four points I am going to handle at this time, as the Lord may help me by His Holy Spirit. I. The first is this--A SENSE OF INFERIORITY MUST NOT KEEP US BACK FROM FAITH IN GOD. I will suppose that someone here is saying, "Surely I am more stupid than any man and have not the understanding of a man." Our text brings before us a wise man who said this of himself and yet he had firm faith in God! If we have to say what Agur said, let us also trust as Agur did! If only wise men might put their trust in God, what would become of nine out of 10 of us? I hope there is nobody here so foolish as to say, "I could trust in God if I were a man of mark." Ah, Sirs! To be a man of mark is no help in the matter of faith! I hope no one is so silly as to say, "If I were possessed of great riches I could, then, come to Jesus." "How hardly shall they that have riches enter into the kingdom of God!" Nor may you say, "If I had great gifts I could trust in the Lord Christ." Talents involve responsibility but they do not help towards salvation. Gifts may even drag a man down--only Divine Grace can lift him up. The gifted man may be so full of pride that he may never submit himself to the free-Grace Gospel of our Lord Jesus. I shall deal with more sensible objections than these. There are some who seem as if they cannot trust Christ and believe in God because they cannot go with other men in their heights--and there are others, strange to say--who have the same difficulty because they cannot follow others into their depths. I will have a word, first, with those who say, "We cannot hope to be saved because we cannot reach the heights of other men." You have marked the holy conduct of certain godly men and, placing your own imperfections side by side with their excellences, you have not only been humbled but greatly discouraged. You have concluded that you could be saved if you were like these gracious men, but since you fall so far short of their noble character you must be lost. You have seen them in sickness and marked their patience and joy--and their acquiescence in the Divine will and you have been greatly humbled, which was well--but you have also fallen into unbelief--which is not well. Since you cannot play the man under fire as these champions do, you fear that you may not hope for eternal life. Moreover, you have listened to their prayers--you have been edified, you have been excited--and you have also been driven to tremble. Seeing Jacob in his wrestling at Jabbok, you have cried, "Would God I could wrestle like that man! But, as I cannot, woe is me!" You have noticed Daniel go to his chamber and cry unto his God three times a day and then you have remembered your own forgetfulness and wandering thoughts in the matter of prayer--and you have concluded that you could have no hope of pleading at the Throne of Grace. Other aspects of the piety of Believers have also discouraged you. To see how they walk with God; how their speech is perfumed with love to Jesus; how their manner of life is above that of the world--all this has made you fear that you could never enter into their heritage. These gracious men seem so far above you that you cry, "Surely I am more stupid than any man." You have noticed, also, their usefulness--how many souls they have brought to Christ. How God has helped them to guide the bewildered and to instruct the ignorant. And then you have felt that it was natural that such men should have confidence towards God--but as for yourself, what is the use of you? You have felt good for nothing in the presence of persons privileged to do so much for God and men. You have been even more cast down when you have heard them talk of their high joys. The other day you met with one who wore Heaven on his face and you said to yourself, "I wish I knew such joy as beams in this man's countenance." You heard your minister describe the deep peace and holy calm which come with full assurance of faith and every word he spoke about his own joy in the Lord was like a dagger in your heart for you felt that you could not speak of such a blissful experience. You were never on the top of Tabor. You never beheld the transfigured Lord. You are afraid to trust God because you cannot compare with other men in their heights. Carefully notice two or three little points which I will mention. First, remember that you see these good people at their best. You have not seen their seamy side. Perhaps they have not told you of how, at times, their feet were almost gone, their steps had well-near slipped. You see their days and not their nights! I think it is a very sweet trait in your character that you do so. In this you differ from the wicked world. The ungodly always notice the bad points in the saints--they eat up the sins of God's people as they eat bread--it is nourishment to them. As for you, poor troubled one, you observe only the virtues of Believers and you overlook their shortcomings. Surely God has worked a change in you! In this there is some ground of hope--the Lord, who has taken away your envy, malice and all uncharitableness--will remove the rest of your sins if you bring them before Him in repentant faith! Remember, also, that you now see men who have faith in God and you see in them the result of that faith. Do not imagine that their Graces existed before their faith. If you have not the result of faith before, you have faith itself--do not be astonished--they had not these excellences before they believed in Jesus! Some of the brightest of them were once the blackest of sinners. "Such were some of you," said Paul--"but you are washed." Can it be a wise thing to say, "I have not those fruits of the Spirit and therefore I will not cultivate the tree of faith from which they grow"? No, rather say, "The Lord, who made these men what they are, can make me what they are. He that could beautify them with righteousness can also hang my neck with the jewels of holiness." Do you not think it would be very great folly on your part if you should refrain from believing in the Lord Jesus on the ground that you had greater need to seek Him than other men? Because you lack these things which you see in the saints and know that you can only have them of the Lord by faith--is that a reason why you should not go to God in faith? This is a grand argument for going at once! Should a man plead his poverty as a reason why he should not ask for alms? Is nakedness a reason for refusing to be dressed? Is hunger a motive for rejecting food? Is sickness a motive for shutting out the physician? I argue in the opposite way! Your urgent need is the strongest reason why you should claim of the Lord, by faith, these promises which He has made to needy souls! If you are more stupid than any man, go to the Lord, that He may instruct you! The greater your need, the greater opportunity you have of glorifying God by believing in Him for an all-sufficient supply. If you lack all these lovely and necessary things which you so much admire in others, it is a sad and grievous need--but if you can believe that the Lord of Mercy can and will give you all--you will do great honor to His name. Is it not written, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God"? If you were a little sinner and had little needs, God could only be a little merciful and give you a little supply--but the more stupid you are and the less of true understanding you have--the greater opportunity have you of glorifying the Lord Jesus Christ by believing in Him for the great things which you evidently need. If you are the greatest fool that ever lived you will give to Christ all the more honor when you believe that He can make you wise unto salvation! God grant that the heights to which other men reach may never keep you back from faith in God but may they, rather, urge you on to believe great things of God! But, further, I said--and perhaps I surprised you--that the depths of other men have often kept tremblers from a simple faith in God. I know many who say, "I cannot feel as others feel--my heart is hard and insensible and when I listen to what Believers tell me of their sharp distresses, I fear that I cannot be saved--for into these deep places I have never gone." These depths are of many kinds but the mention of one or two may suffice. Some Believers have been brought to the Lord through fearful conviction of sin--conviction most overwhelming--they seem to have found their way to Heaven round by the brink of Hell. "Ah!" you say, "I was never thus shaken over the Pit." Another, after he has been converted, experiences awful conflicts--from day to day he struggles with inbred corruptions and therefore he goes sighing and crying to Heaven. There is, among the best of men, an amount of sorrow which I need not here dwell upon. Plowing, harrowing, breaking up is the lot of the best of soils. Saints go through fire and through water in their spiritual march to the land of bliss. Perhaps some of you escape these agonies and know but little of the grinding process. Will you therefore fear to believe because you think you are more unfeeling than other men? Will you refuse the cup of Life because God has not infused all His bitters into it? Listen to me, you that are so readily cast down! Some of these depths you never need wish to know, for they would not be to your advantage, but to your loss! The dark side of much that is called "Christian experience" is not the work of the Holy Spirit at all! In many it is occasioned by a natural crabby disposition--some are so hard that God must use iron wedges with them before their hearts will be reached. There are men with such proud spirits that they need to be brought down to feed swine before they will arise and go to their Father! Others are obstinate and wear a brow of brass--and these must be made faint with labor before they will yield. In many instances the mental distress which attends the work of the Spirit is produced by sickness of body--it is not repentance but indigestion or some other evil agency depressing the spirits. A sluggish liver will produce most of those fearsome forebodings which we are so ready to regard as spiritual emotions! There is such a blending of the physical with the mental that it is hard to name our feelings. All the experience of a Christian man is not Christian experience. The troubled man experiences a good deal not because he is a Christian, but because he is a man--a sickly man--a man inclined to melancholy. Why will you envy such a person? Do you want to feel his despondency? Do you really desire disease? Do you think you could trust God better if you had a morbid mind and a disordered body? What nonsense! I do not admire your taste. I think you are very foolish. In multitudes of instances the strange depressions which befall some excellent people are the result of external trouble, of grinding poverty, of frequent bereavements or of excessive labor. These things may greatly intensify the bitterness of spiritual distress. Do you desire affliction? Do you really think that poverty or bankruptcy would help you to believe in God? Give some men a holiday by the sea and their dark thoughts vanish! Were they ever desirable? In desiring what would only grieve you, you remind me of a child that would always cry until its mother said, "What? Do you cry for nothing? You shall have something to cry for before long." If you covet grief and even dare to threaten the Lord that you will not believe Him unless He vexes you, it may be that He will deal with you according to your desires--and then you will cry in earnest on the other side of your mouth! Frequently the great darkness through which many true people of God pass is occasioned by Satan. He delights to torment the child of God with blasphemous suggestions or with foul imaginations. Do any of you say, because you are a stranger to this, "We cannot believe"? Why, dear Soul, you must be out of your mind to talk so! Bless God with all your heart that you are a stranger to these horrible temptations. Never be so insane as to wish for this dreadful trial. These temptations may come quite soon enough. Desire them? Never, while reason remains to you! Do you not think, too, that many are more deeply convicted of sin, more seriously tried and more fiercely tempted than others because the Lord has a special design to answer in them? Even when the terrible searching work within is all real you need not wish for it, for it may not be necessary in your case since God has not the same intention towards you that He has towards the much-tempted one. Much more is needed by way of foundation for a lofty tower than for a humble cottage--and so the grand public life of such a man may need more digging out by inward sorrow than your more private life can possibly require. Our Lord may also be shaping the tried soul for special work. If a man is to be a son of consolation to others, he must be much exercised himself. Barnabas had to taste the wormwood and the gall or he cannot mix the cup of consolation for others. Remember that all Christians are not and cannot be of the same caliber. We are all soldiers, Brothers and Sisters, but we are not all champions. God calls upon everyone that believes in Christ to fight His battles, but many of us are happy to belong to the rank and file. We cannot all be captains. Only here and there shall we find a David, who, with his sling and his stone shall go forth, a solitary champion, against gigantic Philistines. For David it was necessary that he should fight lions and bears in his youth or he would not have faced the giant. If God gives us less of inward and outward trials than others, He knows best. We need enough sorrow to drive us from self and carnal confidence--and when that is effected it would be folly to sigh for more. Our wisdom is to leave our experience with the Lord who will appoint us sun or shade as best will suit our growth. Let us envy no man his standing upon Tabor, or Pisgah--and, on the other hand--let us never desire to make excursions with the Lord's Jonahs and go with them to the bottom of the mountains! Seek not to copy another man's ups or downs but wait on God and put your trust in Him even though you should seem to yourself to be more foolish than any other living man. II. Secondly, and very briefly--A SENSE OF INFERIORITY MUST NOT KEEP US FROM LEARNING. Suppose you have to say, "I am more stupid than any man"--you have so much the more need of being taught the things of God. If you have not the understanding of a man, that is so much more cause that you should go to school to the Holy Spirit till the eyes of your understanding shall be enlightened and you shall know the Truth and the Truth of God shall make you free. Vital Truth is simple. A great many things are hard to understand, but that which is essential to salvation is not difficult. To know yourself a sinner and Christ a Savior--is this a deep mystery? To quit your own self and your own trusts--simply to rely upon the Person and work of the Son of God--is this exceedingly difficult to understand? The safest Truth of God is the simplest! Commonly an invention in machinery grows more simple as it nears perfection--and because God's way of salvation is perfect--therefore it is simplicity itself! You can know the Gospel for it is not a tough metaphysical problem, but a Revelation which he that runs may read. If you are staggered by the sublimity of heavenly learning, consider that these things are revealed to babes. Our Lord said, "I thank You, O Father, Lord of Heaven and earth, because You have hid these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them unto babes." Therefore, if you are more than ever conscious of your spiritual babyhood, be none the less assured that the Lord can and will reveal His Truths to you! Remember, also, that the Holy Spirit is a great Teacher. The best earthly teacher may be able to do very little with such slow scholars as we are. Therefore let us go to our heavenly Teacher, that He may give us of His Spirit with which we may learn the Truths of God. He can teach young men wisdom and give to babes knowledge and discretion. When the Lord teaches, it is wonderful how quickly we learn! We have frequently met with young children, deep-taught in the things of God, because the Holy Spirit has been their Teacher. Let me comfort you by the remark that a sense of ignorance is a very good beginning for a learner. The doorstep of the Palace of Wisdom is a humble sense of ignorance. When you are empty of all fancied wisdom there is room for God to fill you with heavenly instruction. If you are more stupid than any man, I should hope you are more surely on the way to be made wise from the very foundation--by the teaching of the Spirit of God. Hang your hope upon that promise--"All your children shall be taught of the Lord." You are one of those children, though you are a little one, and therefore you are included in the number of those who shall be taught of the Lord. The Lord will not give up one of the children of Zion as incorrigible. Dunces, whom no other master would tolerate, the gentle Spirit will tenderly instruct! Therefore I say unto you, let not a sense of inferiority keep you from following on to know the Lord. III. I have been very brief upon that second point and I must be much the same on the third: A SENSE OF INFERIORITY MUST NOT KEEP US BACK FROM SERVING GOD. What if, like Agur, we take the very lowest place? Like he did, let us speak on God's behalf. Who knows, He may prophesy by us, also? Agur's simple word is called "the prophecy." If God shall speak by you, my Friend, your thinking so little of yourself will give a charm to your speech. If God shall use such as you are, He will have all the glory of it, will He not? When the Lord uses a very clever man there is always the fear that people will ascribe the success to the human instrument. But when the Lord uses the man who admits he is a poor foolish creature, then the honor is not divided, but all men see that this is the finger of God. The Lord loves to use tools which are not rusted with self-conceit. An axe which boasts itself shall not be used upon the thick trees. God can use inferior persons for grand purposes! He has often done so. Go into His armory and see how He has worked by flies and lice, by worms and caterpillars, by frogs and serpents! His greatest victories were won by a hammer and a tent-pin, by an ox-goad, by the jawbone of an ass, by a sling and a stone and such like. His greatest Prophets at the first tried to excuse themselves on the ground of unfitness. In the armory of the Lord you will find few swords with golden scabbards, but you will find many unlikely weapons. God uses what no one else would look upon. The Lord can get much glory out of you, my poor desponding Friend! Bestir yourself! Though you think yourself quite unworthy, go on in consecration of heart to yield yourself wholly to God and He will not pass you by. Remember, the Lord does not expect of you more than you can do--it is accepted if it is according to what a man has-- and not according to what he has not. In building a house there must be the common bricks for the wall as well as the carved stone for the corner. Are you so ambitious that nothing but the chief place will suit you? Shame upon you! Let no man despise anything that may come in to complete the building of the house that God inhabits. Suppose you feel that you are more stupid than any man, shall I give you a little advice? If you can do but little, make the best of yourself by intensity. In the natural world, that creature is most to be feared which is the most energetic, rather than that which is greatest. You shall find your life more in danger from the slender viper than from the huge ox. That which is the fullest of fire and energy will achieve the most. A small musket ball in full speed will do more execution than a great cannonball which lies still. Make the best of yourself, also, by perseverance. If you are a little axe and can give only a small chip at a time, keep on striking and even the oak will yield to your blows. If you are only a drop, remember that constant dripping wears away stones. Keep on at holy service and do so all the more because you do so little at any one time. Many littles will make much. Pennies given every day will make pounds. Make up, by spiritual force what you lack in natural ability. If you lack talent, get all the more Divine Grace and you will be no loser. If you love God more, even though you know less of science, you will live a successful, because a holy, life. If you have a greater love for the souls of your hearers than the man who has 10 talents, you may be 10 times more a soul-winner than he. It is spiritual power, not mental power, which avails in conversion. Agur, a little further on in his one chapter, cheers up the humbler sort of people by his talk about little things. In his 24th verse, he says--"There are four things which are little upon the earth, but they are exceedingly wise: the ants are a people not strong, yet they prepare their meat in the summer." You that cannot do very much, take care never to lose an opportunity. Make hay while the sun shines--seize the seasons and turn them to account. If you were a great man and could at one speech sway the minds of thousands, even then you ought not to be idle. But if you can only deal with one at a time, do not let that one escape you! Copy the bees and the ants and use the summer hours right diligently. Next, read verse twenty-six. You are feeble, but remember, "The conies are but a feeble folk, yet make they their houses in the rocks." Keep to the Rock. Keep to eternal Truths. Keep to the things which cannot be moved. Never run away from the Gospel. There is not much in you, but there is a great deal in Christ--always keep to Him. You cannot say much, but let all you do say savor of Christ. Never quit the Gospel, or you leave the Rock of your shelter. Keep to the Rock and you will do much good and run no risk. Next, if you are very little, you should, like the locusts, associate with others and go forth in an orderly way to work. Make yourself useful by dropping into rank and in holy companionship doing your part in connection with the rest. One locust is a thing to be laughed at but when they go forth in bands they make nations tremble. One Believer may accomplish little--but in the ranks of the Sunday school the many can do wonders! Suppose you are as little thought of as a spider, yet copy the spider in the two things which Agur mentions. Take hold with your hands. Always be taking hold upon the promise of the great King by the hand of faith. Let your faith come out of your own heart as the spider spins her web out of her own bowels. Be always hanging on to one promise or another and constantly add to your holding. Have also a holy courage like the spider, who is in king's palaces. She is not satisfied with being hidden away in a barn or a cottage--she pays a visit to Solomon and makes her abode in his painted halls. If you can go anywhere for Christ, go and spin your web of Gospel from your inmost soul! Make up your mind that whatever company you are in you will begin to spin about Christ and spin a web in which to catch a soul for your Lord! In this way, though you fear you are more stupid than any man, God will make as much use of you as if you were the wisest of men! I pray you, O feeble one, render to your Lord such service as you can. IV. Lastly--A SENSE OF INFERIORITY MUST NOT HINDER OUR FAITH IN THE LORD. Suppose you have to say, this morning, very groaningly, "I am more stupid than any man, I have not the understanding of a man." What then? Are you going to fret and worry about it? Will you, therefore, refuse to believe in your God? I do not see, if it is true to the fullest extent, that there is any reasonable cause for being cast down in reference to the Lord your God! Would you expect to be saved because you were not stupid? Would you look for Heaven because you had a fine understanding and could place a third of the letters of the alphabet at the end of your name? If everybody said, "What a highly-cultured man this is!" do you think Heaven's gate would open any the more readily to you? You are on the wrong tack, my Friend, if you think so. Capacities and attainments put plumes into the hat but they do not protect the head from error. Answer me this. Are not the little things in creation full of joy? Do not the dewdrops sparkle on the hedges? When the summer comes, walk down your garden and see the thousands of gnats. What are they doing? They are dancing up and down in the sunbeams. The very flies are full of delight. Will you be shamed by a gnat or a fly? No! Take to dancing, too, but let it be like that of David when he danced before the Ark of God! Rejoice in the Lord always! God gives small creatures great delight. Why should not you be as happy, after your measure, as the angels are? Little stars twinkle for very brightness. If you need humbler examples, look at the little birds and hear how they sing. Great birds seldom have the gift of song. You may listen long before you will hear an ostrich or an emu singing. In our own farmyards neither the turkey nor the peacock charm us with their melody. Little birds awake the sun with their harmonies and make the morning sacred with their Psalmody. Tell me, you that feel as if you were less than the least--is there any reason why you should not rejoice in the Lord? Who had most joy out of the Lord Jesus when He was here? Or rather, who expressed their delight most exultingly? It was not great Peter, nor active James, nor holy John--it was the children in the temple-- " Children of Jerusalem Sang the praise of Jesus 'name." They shouted "Hosanna!" "Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings He has perfected praise," if nothing else. The little ones can praise, for they are happy in the sweet simplicity of their faith and in the warmth of their hearts. My dear Friend, do the same. Delight yourself also in the Lord. Be glad in the Lord and express your gladness. "Ah, Sir! I am foolish and ignorant." Yes, but did you notice in the 73rd Psalm, which we read just now, that I called your attention to the singular language used by Asaph? He says, "So foolish was I, and ignorant: I was as a beast before You. Nevertheless I am continually with You: You have held me by my hand." God takes care of the foolish and guards the feeble--let them rest in His love and be glad in His care. Remember that if, by reason of our inferiority, you and I have to take a back seat, the back seats are still in the house. Our littleness does not alter God's promise! It is the same promise to the small as to the great--to the weak as to the strong. Our deficiency does not alter our God. He is as full of Grace and Truth as ever. He does not increase because we are enlarged--neither is He diminished because we have declined. As a babe in Grace, my God is the same God as those rejoice in who have attained to fullness of stature in Christ Jesus. What a blessed God we have! Only to think of Him is hope--to know Him is fruition. "Yes, my own God is He," said David. And he could never have uttered a grander word. "This God is our God forever and ever," is a sentence which might as fairly have been spoken in Heaven as upon this lower earth. It has a glory tone about it. Come, you little ones, you backward ones, you foolish ones, dwell upon the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit with your hearts' delight! The triune God is yours--your Father, your Redeemer, your Comforter--a triple blessing is thus secured to you! Let your triple nature of body, soul and spirit rejoice therein! This makes no difference to the Covenant of Grace. Babes in their baby clothes, if they are heirs, have quite as sure a right to their inheritance as have those who are of full age. One is as legally protected as if he were one-and-twenty. The children cannot yet take full possession by reason of their tender years, but the law defies a rogue to rob even an infant heir of his lawful inheritance! Enjoy, therefore, O you little ones, the infinite wealth of the Covenant and doubt not your right and title in Christ Jesus! However little you may be, this makes no difference to God's love to you. Ask yourselves, do you love that full-grown son of yours of 25 so much that you have the less love left for your chubby little boy of two or three at home? Bless his little heart! When he climbs into your knees today and asks whether you have a kiss for him, will you answer, "No, Johnny, I cannot love you, for you are so little that I gave all my love to your older brother because he knows so much more than you do and can be so useful to me"? Oh, no! You love the last one, perhaps, better than any of them--certainly not less! They say that if there is a child in the family who is a little weak, the mother always loves it most. It is so with our God--He is most tender and most gracious to the weakest and least known. Our Shepherd carries the lambs in His bosom and does gently lead those that are with young--why, be not cast down because of your conscious inferiority--but admire the condescending Grace of God. If you feel that you are more stupid than anybody else, yet believe in God up to the hilt--believe in Him and trust Him with all your heart--and then feel all the more gratitude that He should have loved such a worthless one as you are. Feel all the more content with that free, rich, sovereign Grace which has chosen you and ordained you to eternal life. Glorify God by your very weakness. Glory in your infirmity, because the power of Christ rests upon you. Be all the more trustful in God since you have nothing in yourself to rely upon. Say, "The great ones may run alone, but I am a babe and I must be carried in my Father's arms. Therefore I will have the greater faith to match my greater need." Our deep sense of folly and weakness should also keep us humble before the Lord. Where is room for boasting? What have we to glory in? We owe all to Mercy and to Mercy shall be all the praise! Lastly, be more tender to others who, like yourself, are feeble. It is wonderful how gracious little ones care for other little ones--sympathize with them, pray for them and comfort them. I believe that the saying is strictly true, that "the poor help the poor." And I know it is so among the spiritually poor. High and mighty ones cannot help downcast saints--only those who have been afflicted can console the afflicted. In the East, among the Bedouins, in a shepherd's family, the little children, as soon as they can walk, learn to keep the lambs. You see the little boy who can only go slowly can lead the little lambs admirably, for he and they go well together. The big father would have taken long strides and so have tired the little lambs. But his little son can only go at a slow pace and that pace suits the lambs. The weak lambs are pleased with their little shepherd who is a lamb like themselves--he is fond of the lambs and the lambs feel at home with him. So, dear Friends, if the Lord permits you to be among the little ones, look after the little ones--and whereas some would have to bend their backs too much to look after the lowly--you are on their level and will naturally care for their state. Thus will you find your sphere of usefulness and in it you will earn to yourselves a good degree. Though, like Agur, you feel more stupid than any man, you will so live that nobody would have thought so if you had not told them--and few will believe it when you do tell them! To God alone be glory. Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Psalm 73; Proverbs 30:1-9. __________________________________________________________________ The Question of Questions A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY, MAY 4, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 20, 1890. "Jesus heard that they had cast him out; and when He had found him, He said unto him, Do you believe on the Son of God?" John 9:35. THE eyes of the Lord Jesus are always on His chosen and He knows every circumstance which occurs to them. "Jesus heard that they had cast him out." Our Lord had done too much for this man to forget him. Where Divine Grace has worked a great work its memory lingers. As it is written, "You will have a desire to the work of your hands." In this let us take comfort--if anything has happened to grieve us--Jesus has heard of it and will act accordingly. Our Lord sought for the outcast one. Unasked, He had opened his eyes. Unsought, He looks after him in his hour of trouble. He was not easy to find but our Lord is great at searching out His lost sheep and He persevered until He found him. If we, at any time, should seem cast off from Christ as well as cast out by proud religionists, He will find us when we cannot find Him. Blessed be His name! Our Lord's objective was to do this man real service--he had been cast out of the synagogue and he, therefore, needed comfort--and it would be a grand thing so to comfort him as to lead him onward and upward in the Divine life! Our Lord's way of comforting was to ask a question which would lead to heart-searching and suggest spiritual advance. It is not the way that you and I might take, but His ways are not our ways, neither are His thoughts our thoughts. Wisdom is justified of her methods. It is the best thing, when a man is in soul trouble, to make him look to his own condition before God and specially to his faith--for when he finds that he is right on the main point--this assurance will be to him a wellspring of comfort. We are sure that our Lord took the very best means to bring this man to well-grounded confidence when He said to him, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" He helped him, by this question, to make a considerable advance in faith, for although the poor man had believed in Jesus up to the measure of his knowledge, his knowledge had been slender. But now he was to learn that the opener of his eyes was the Son of God! This is such faith as the Person of our Lord deserves, but such as many have never rendered to Him and for lack of this they miss the great power of His Grace. The man was excommunicated and was then placed under the ban of the Jewish Church--but trust in the Son of God would quickly remove from him any alarm which he might feel on that account. He that enjoys the favor of the Son of God will not tremble at the frown of the Sanhedrim! Oh, that the Lord would comfort many this morning while I press upon each one of you this one personal question, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" To young and old, to rich and poor I shall direct this solemn enquiry. It is not a perplexing question upon an abstruse point, but a simple and urgent enquiry relating to everybody here present. It is not a problem profound and intricate--a question of free will or predestination, of postmillennial or premillennial advents--it is a practical question--pressing and present and one that concerns every man in his everyday life at this very moment. I wish each one of you to think that I now put my hand on your shoulder and look you in the face and say earnestly, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" This is not a question out of which angry controversy can possibly arise, for it has to do with yourself and yourself only! Whatever discussion there may be will be confined within your own bosom. It concerns yourself, only, and it is put in the singular, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" It was put by Jesus Himself to this man--consider, then, that Jesus puts it to you, also this morning, even to you, apart even from your spouse or friend. I. I shall begin pressing home the question, by the help of the Holy Spirit, by making the remark that THE QUESTION NEEDS TO BE RAISED. It must not be taken for granted that you believe on the Son of God. "Oh, yes, I am a Christian," says one. "I was born in a Christian country. I was taken to Church while a babe and was duly christened and I now repeat the creed. Surely this is sufficient proof of my faith!" Or possibly you say, "My mother took me to the Meeting House before I could walk and ever since I have never quit the ways of old-fashioned Nonconformity." All this may be so, but it is not to the point. "Do you believe on the Son of God?" This is a spiritual and vital question which cannot be thus set aside. You reply, "My moral character has always been correct. In business I have always discharged my liabilities and I have always been ready to help every charitable institution." I am glad to hear all this. Still, it does not touch the matter now in hand--this query goes deeper than outward conduct. Hear it again--"Do you believe on the Son of God?" Numbers of moral, amiable, generous and even religious people have not believed on the Son of God. Excuse me, I cannot let you slip through in the crowd. I must lay hold upon you with a holy vehemence that even forgets courtesy for the moment and I must say to the best of you, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" Though this man had been scrupulously obedient, yet our Lord asked the question! It may be I speak to some who say, "I have been at all times obedient to the duties of religion. Whatever I have found to be commanded of God in His Word I have carefully carried out." Was it not so, also, with this man born blind? The Savior put clay upon his eyes and told him to go to the pool of Siloam and wash off the clay--the man did exactly as he was told. He did not go to another pool, but to the pool of Siloam. And he did not attempt to get the clay from his eyes by any other process than that of washing. He was very obedient to Christ, yet the Lord said to him, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" No outward observances, however carefully carried out, will obviate the need of the enquiry, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" I am afraid some of you have not been very careful in fulfilling outward ordinances and for this you are blameworthy--but if you had been scrupulously exact--no outward observances, however carefully followed out, can exempt you from the question, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" This man, in addition, had passed through a very remarkable experience. He could say, "One thing I know, that whereas I was blind, now I see." He could never forget those long nights while a child, a youth and a man. All those years no ray of light had ever gladdened him--to him night and day were much the same. He had sat in deep poverty all through that dreary darkness and learned no art but that of begging. As the cooling water touched his eyes and washed away the clay, the sunlight streamed in upon the midnight and he saw! He had undergone all that change and yet the Savior said to him, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" So, my dear Hearer, you may be a very altered man and yet you may not be a believer on the Son of God! You, my dear Sister, may be a very different woman from what you used to be--and when you tell your experience it may be very remarkable and well worthy of being recorded in a book--and yet this question must be pressed upon you! Whatever your experience may be, do not forget self-examination. Say not, "I never need question myself--such experience as I have had settles my position. I am not so childish as to look within or have a doubt about my faith. So remarkable a case as mine may not be suspected." Talk not so--for if our Lord, who knew the change this man had undergone, yet said to him, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" I also must take liberty to press home, upon the most remarkable person here, the same personal enquiry--"Do you believe on the Son of God?" This man, in addition to his reception of bodily sight, had exercised a degree of faith in the Lord Jesus. If you follow the chapter through you will see that he had some sort of faith in Christ while he was blind, or he would not have gone to Siloam to wash away the clay. And when he saw, he did not doubt that Jesus had really made him whole--and he avowed the fact. He also said, "He is a Prophet." He went further still, for he said, "If this Man were not of God, He could do nothing." He had believed as far as his light helped him to believe so that the germs of faith were in him. Yet our Lord Jesus Christ pressed him with the enquiry, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" Beloved Friends, you, too, may never have been troubled with skepticism. It may be you have not even examined the grounds of your faith because you have never been tempted to suspect them. You have taken in the Gospel from your youth as clearly true and so you have believed it without being much perplexed. I am thankful that you have done so. Still, do you believe in Jesus Christ as the Son of God? Is Jesus God to you? Do you trust Him as able to do anything and everything for you? Is He to you "able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him"? If not, may the Lord help you to take this higher step, for short of this you have not received the true Christ of God! It is of very small use to say, "Oh, yes, I believe in Christ, the noblest of examples. I believe in Christ, the most instructive of Prophets." Do you believe in Him also as the Sacrifice, as the Priest, the Savior, the Salvation? And gathering all up in one, do you believe in Him as the Son of God? Do you believe in the Son of God, as revealed in Holy Scripture? Furthermore, this man had spoken out bravely for Christ, as you saw in the chapter which we read just now. "He spoke out like a Trojan," said one. Say, rather, "like a Spartan." He was cute, shrewd, sharp, and unanswerable. The learned doctors were nowhere in comparison with the blind beggar whose eyes had been opened! He stood up for the Man who had given him sight and allowed no charge to lie against Him. His statements were short but full and his answers were, themselves, unanswerable. Who would have thought that a blind beggar could have fashioned such a logical argument as he did? Yet to this bold confessor the Savior had to say, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" Ah, my Friend! As a preacher you may be able to declare the Gospel very clearly to others and you may enforce it with powerful arguments--but, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" Even in your case the question must be plied. Some of you may remember that story which is told in one of Krummacher's books. I half forget it myself, but it was somewhat on this wise. The preacher had delivered himself of a solemn discourse and was waited upon, on the following Monday, by one of his hearers, who said, "Sir, if what you said last Sunday was true, what will become of us?" Now, if he had said, "What will become of me?" the preacher would have explained still further to him the Gospel in the usual way. As it was, he parried the word, "us." But his visitor almost unconsciously, said, "Alas, dear Sir! If these things are so, what shall we do?" The Lord used that plural pronoun to the awakening of the preacher who had not been converted though he thought he had been! Oh, that we who speak for God may also hear the Lord speak to us! I know the good preacher and love him right well, who, when he was himself preaching, as he had done for years, was saved through the personal application of his own sermon. He is a minister of the Church of England but he did not know the Lord. While he was preaching the Lord applied to his heart with power a Gospel Truth which so affected him that he spoke with the accent of conviction which is natural to the renewed man. At last a Methodist, who was in the church, shouted out, "The parson's converted! Hallelujah!" and all the people broke out with cries of praise. The preacher himself joined in the universal joy and they sang together, "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow!" Oh, what a mercy it is when the waiter at the Lord's feast is himself fed! Should not those who are to bear the healing balm to the sick be themselves healed? I have not been ashamed to speak in my Lord's name, nor have I blushed to defend His cause before His enemies. Yet I would remember that I may have done all this and yet I may not know the King to whom I have been a herald. O Friends, how terrible it would be to have cast out devils in His name and yet to be unknown of Him! Therefore, we press the question, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" This man had gone further, still, for he had suffered for Christ. He had been put out of the synagogue for bearing witness to the power of Jesus--but none the less for this he had to hear the question--"Do you believe?" Yes, you, dear Friend, may have been laughed at by your relatives for your religiousness. You may have had to quit a good situation because of your determination to be honest, temperate and pure. You may at the present moment stand under the ban of some cold-hearted Church because you have been more earnest than was desired. But as much as I appreciate your fidelity, you must excuse me if I buttonhole you in the Lord's name and say, as Christ did to this man, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" It is one thing to play the hero before our fellowmen and another to be true in the secret chamber of our own soul. You are bold in your confession but do you really believe in the Lord Jesus? Can that bold confession be supported by your life? I hope you are not a Defender of the Faith after the manner of Henry the Eighth who wore the title but was by no means worthy of it! Come, my eloquent Friend, do you live as you talk? Do you feel, yourself, as you would make me feel? "Do you believe on the Son of God?" You will see, dear Friends, from the run of my talk, that I am not for letting anybody here escape the personal question. My venerable Friend who has been an officer of this Church longer than anybody else will not refuse to ask himself this question. My beloved Sister in Christ who has conducted a Bible class for years and that other who has been so useful in the schools--neither of these will refuse to answer this searching word, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" I must dare to make enquiry of yonder minister. My father in Christ whose shoe lace I am not worthy to unloose--I must even ask of you, as I do ask of myself, "Do you, for yourself, in very deed, believe on the Son of God?" This question must thus be raised and raised for everybody because many people nowadays do not believe on the Son of God. There are many about who would be mightily offended if we denied their right to the name of Christian, who, nevertheless, know not "the Son of God." These folks admire a man who will concoct a sermon to show that they may be Christians and not believe on Jesus as God. I shall preach no such sermon until I lose my reason--but I shall press upon this unbelieving age this vital question--"Do you believe on the Son of God?" Man, if you do not so believe, your faith falls short of that which Christ would have you possess and you had need take heed lest it fall short of landing you in Heaven. With a Savior less than Divine you have a religion less than saving. How is it with you? Will you believe on the Son of God, alone, or run with the vain multitude who see nothing in Him but a man? I think every man here will say, "You need not apologize, dear Sir, for asking the question, for it is one we have to ask ourselves." Indeed, I know it is so. Who is there that lives after so pure a sort that he never has to try this issue? We have heard persons cry out against the hymn-- "'Tis a point I long to know Oft it causes anxious thought: Do I love the Lord or no? Am I His, or am I not?" But if a man never has an anxious thought about his state, I should have a great many anxious thoughts about him! One of our poets has well said-- "He that never doubted of his state He may, perhaps, he may too late." There are so many things about us all which we need to mourn over and these set us asking the questions, "Is my faith the faith which works by love and purifies the soul? Do I truly believe on the Son of God?" At times we rejoice in an absolute certainty as to our faith in Christ and the Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the children of God. But at other seasons we are exercised with great searchings of heart and no question causes us greater anguish than this--"Do I believe on the Son of God?" It will be woe to us if, after all our profession, experience and effort we should, after all, have no more than the name of faith and the notion of faith--but be found devoid of the life of it in our souls. Yes, the enquiry of our text is a question which ought to be raised. II. But, secondly, THE QUESTION CAN BE ANSWERED. I am sure it can be answered, or our Lord would not have asked it, for He was never so unpractical as to go about the world asking men questions about themselves which it was not possible to answer. "Do you believe on the Son of God?" is an inquiry to which you can give the answer if you will--"Yes," or, "No." I beg to press you to practical action upon it. It were, indeed, a most unhappy thing if this question could not be answered. Suppose we were condemned to live in a state of perpetual doubt as to our being believers in the Lord Jesus? This would involve an awakened man in a condition of constant anxiety. If I am not sure whether I am in the favor of God or not, I am in a condition of decided sorrow. I remember hearing a Christian minister say one day in company that no man could be sure that he was saved. Then I wondered what he had to preach that was worth preaching--for if we cannot know that we are saved, then we cannot be sure that we are at peace with God--and this is to be in jeopardy every hour! There can be no peace to the mind of the awakened man if he does not know that he is saved. It is like one at sea who is half afraid that his ship is out of the track and may soon strike upon rock or quicksand, but is not quite sure whether it is so or not. The captain should take no rest till he has taken his bearings and found out his position in reference to the dangers of the sea and the hope of reaching the desired haven. To leave his position a moot point would be to continue in fear and to court danger. To leave your faith in question is to imperil a vital point. He must be sadly seared in conscience who can leave this hinge of the soul's condition unexamined. There is a possibility of knowing to a certainty that you believe on the Son of God. Did I say there is a possibility of it? Thousands have attained to this certainty. You can know that you believe on the Son of God as surely as you know that there is a Queen of England or as surely as you know that you, yourself, exist--and this without falling into fanaticism or presumption! Many among us are so habituated to faith in the Lord Jesus that we could no more question the existence of faith in our own hearts than we could dispute the fact that our hearts beat! Such assured persons shirk no examination--for them the more examination the better--for their hope has firm and deep foundations. They can give a reason for the hope that is in them. As sure as mathematical certainty is the confidence of the Believer in the Lord Jesus--for we know whom we have believed--and we are persuaded that He is able to keep that which we have committed to Him. There are Believers in our Lord Jesus who have gone on for the space of 30 years without a doubt of their faith in Him because that faith has been in daily, happy exercise upon Him. You can answer the question, "Do you believe?" because you are at this moment believing--distinctly and intensely believing. Those who abide in the Light of God's Countenance and feel the Holy Spirit within them, bearing witness with their spirits, are in no doubt as to their possession of faith! If we feel a burning love to God, a growing hatred of sin, a struggle against the evil which is in the world and somewhat of the likeness to Christ, we may safely infer that these fruits of faith come from the root of faith. By the work of the Holy Spirit upon life and heart we know and are sure that we have believed in Jesus as the Son of God. I hope I speak to many this morning who are enjoying assurance and know that they have passed from death unto life. It is with some a matter of consciousness. How do I know that I live, breathe, stand, walk? I cannot explain to you the mode by which I arrive at certainty on this matter, but I am quite sure that I do live and breathe, and so on. Indeed, the power to question the fact implies it! So a Believer may be sure that he believes that Jesus is the Son of God--and while he may not be able to give logical proof--yet he may be, none the less, conscious in his own soul that it is so. And he is correct in his assurance, for even the very power to be anxious after Divine Grace is an evidence of Divine Grace. If there is any question about whether you have been a Believer or not for the last 20 years, do not fight that question--begin at once to believe, the Lord helping you! Turn your eyes to the Cross and trust yourself wholly with Christ from this good hour, and then you will believe, and the act will shine out its own proof! Say from your heart-- "Just as I am--without one plea But that Your blood was shed for me And that You bid me come to You-- O Lamb of God, I come!" Thus coming you will know that you have come and by continuing to come you will grow assured that you have come! Let not the past be the main enquiry, but settle the immediate present. May the Holy Spirit cause the sacred fire to burn and then you will feel the flame before long. To say, "I do now believe on the Son of God," is the best way of answering the question about your condition. If you want further help to solve the question, there are marks and evidences of true faith by which you can readily test yourself. Do you enquire, "Do I believe on the Son of God?" Then answer this--Is Christ precious to you? "For unto you who believe He is precious." If you love and prize Him as the most precious thing on earth or in Heaven, you could not have this appreciation of Him if you were not a true Believer. Tell me again, have you undergone the change called the new birth? Have you passed through a process which could be described as being brought out of darkness into marvelous light? If so, your new birth is a sure evidence of faith, for these things go together. Faith is a proof of regeneration and regeneration is also a proof that you have faith in the Son of God. Again, are you obedient to Christ? For faith works by love and purifies the soul. Is it so with you? Has sin become bitter? Do you loathe it? Has holiness become sweet? Do you follow after it? I do not ask whether you are perfect--but is the whole current of your soul towards being perfect? Can you say that if you could live entirely without sin it would be the greatest delight you could have? That absolute perfection would be Heaven to you? Ah, then it shows which way your mind goes! It shows that there is a change of Nature for no unrenewed heart pines after perfect holiness! Your heart is bending towards Christ's perfect rule and sovereignty and I am sure that you have believed that He is the Son of God. You are resting upon Him with a true and living faith if you take up His Cross heartily and follow Him. Again, do you love God? Do you love His people? "We know that we have passed from death unto life because we love the Brethren." Do you love His Word? Do you delight in His worship? Do you bow in patience before His rod so that you take up the bitter cup and say, "Your will be done"? These things prove that you have faith in Jesus. Look well to them. But supposing, after using all enquiries and tests, you still say, "Sir, this is a grave question and requires great care. I have not settled it yet"? Then follow this man in his method. When he was asked, "Do you believe on the Son of God?" he turned to the Lord and replied with another question to the Lord Jesus. We may resort to Jesus for aid. He who had once been blind eagerly asked, "Who is He, Lord, that I may believe on Him?" Turn, then, O Enquirer, in the moment of your distress and cry, "Lord Jesus, I beseech You teach me to know You better, that I may have more faith in You." Go to Jesus for faith in Jesus! Moreover, there are certain great Truths upon which faith feeds and, to be sure that you have faith you had better think of these Truths of God. May the Lord be pleased especially to reveal Himself to you so that you may know Him and thus may believe on Him! O Soul, you will not long be in any doubt if you perceive those glorious things which concern your Lord! Know who He is and what He is, and what He has done and this will enable you to believe in Him as the Son of God. As men were accustomed, when hardly pressed before the courts to say, "I appeal unto Caesar," so do you appeal unto Christ Himself and rest assured that in Him you will find deliverance! If your faith is hidden from yourself it is not hidden from Him--and if you cannot call it forth by thoughts of the work of Grace within, turn your mind towards your Savior and Covenant Head in Heaven--and faith will open itself as the cups of the flowers open to the sun. The question can be answered. III. Thirdly, THE QUESTION SHOULD BE ANSWERED AND SHOULD BE ANSWERED AT ONCE. If I could, I would concentrate all your thoughts upon this one investigation which to each man so vitally concerns himself--"Do you believe on the Son of God?" Answer this from your own soul. I am no father confessor--be father confessors to yourselves. Let each man give his verdict at the bar of his conscience. Answer, also, as in the Presence of Christ for, like the man in the narrative, you are in His Presence now. Answer for yourself before the heart-searching, heart-trying God. Answer it to men, also, for this your Savior deserves of you. Be not ashamed to say outright, "I do believe on the Son of God." This fact must not be hidden away in a corner. Remember how our Lord in Holy Scripture always puts open confession side by side with faith as a part of the plan of salvation? You will never find anywhere in the Word of God--"He that believes and takes the Lord's Supper shall be saved"--but you do find it written, "He that believes and is baptized shall be saved." Why does baptism take such a prominent place? Partly because it is the ordained form of open confession of faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The passage is parallel with that other, "He that with his heart believes and with his mouth makes confession of Him, shall be saved." What less can Christ expect than an outspoken faith if there is any faith at all? Will you bring to Him who redeemed you a cowardly faith? To Him that intercedes for you a dumb faith? To Him that opened your eyes a faith which dares not look your fellow men in the face? No! No! Speak! And speak out and let the world know that He who died on Calvary is to you, if not to anybody else, the Son of God! The question ought to be answered--answered before men--and answered at once. Do not delay, but make haste to keep your Lord's command. The question ought to be answered at once because it is of first importance. If you do not believe on the Son of God, where are you? You are not alive unto God, "For the just shall live by faith." You cannot stand, for it is written, "You stand by faith." You cannot work for God, for it is faith that works by love. Where is your justification if you have no faith? "We are justified by faith." Where is your sanctification? Does not the Lord say, "Sanctified by faith that is in Me"? Where is your salvation without faith? "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and you shall be saved." You cannot be or do anything acceptable without faith for, "without faith it is impossible to please God." You are in an evil case and will soon be in a worse one unless you can say--"I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and I trust Him as my All in All." He that does not believe on the Lord Jesus Christ is under present condemnation for, "He that believes not is condemned already." Condemned already--and therefore this question must be answered immediately--unless you are content to abide under wrath and content to live unreconciled to God! While sitting here you are in danger of the wrath to come. Can you be at ease? Remember, you are losing time while you are in ignorance as to your faith. If you are not believing in Jesus you are spending your days in death and in alienation from God. If it is a question whether you have believed on the Son of God, it is no question that you are losing comfort and happiness. If you go up and down this troubled world without a knowledge of your own salvation--without an assurance of your acceptance with God--you are losing power to honor the name of the Lord by a joyful conversation. You are in an inconsistent position and in an inconvenient one. If you really have not believed in Jesus Christ, the Son of God, you are resting short of eternal life! Meanwhile, you come up to the Lord's house and unite avowedly in worshipping Him while you deny Him the first essential of true worship--namely, your faith in Him! Ah, dear Friend, if you have not believed that Jesus is the Son of God, the hope that you will ever do so grows fainter every day. The longer a man lingers in any state, the more likely it is that he will continue there. When men have long been accustomed to do evil the Prophet cries over them, "Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard his spots?" It is an awful thing to have heard the Gospel so long in vain. If even the appeals of Calvary are lost on you, what remains? Gospel-hardened sinners are hardened, indeed. Some of you have been unbelievers in the Lord Jesus Christ for 50 years and, I fear, will die in unbelief--and what then? The portion of unbelievers is terrible. "If you believe not that I am He, you shall die in your sins." Horrendous words! "Die in your sins." That is what will, in all probability, happen to many of you--no, it will surely happen unless you believe on the Son of God! Come, therefore, to this question at once. Do not delay for an hour. If the answer is unsatisfactory, the case can be altered if attended to at once. He that has not as yet believed on the Son of God may yet do so. Still is time afforded you--do not despise the respite of mercy. Upon you shines the light of another Sunday--long-suffering is not yet exhausted. The Gospel is still preached in your ears--the day of hope is not over! The Bible is still open before you and the gate of Mercy is open, also, for all who will enter by faith. Therefore I pray you to now believe on the Son of God! You may not live to see another Lord's-Day--therefore snatch the present opportunity. Soon will the tidings come to us about you, as they have so often come about others, "He is dead," or, "She has gone." Since eternity can be molded by today, I pray you, awaken yourselves! Look to your faith in Jesus, for if that is right, all is well--but if that is found wanting, all is wanting. IV. So I close with my fourth point which is this--THE QUESTION MAY BE OF THE UTMOST IMPORTANCE TO US IF WE ANSWER IT. "Do you believe on the Son of God?" Suppose that the question has to be answered in the negative. If you are compelled to sigh and say, "No, no!" then be it so and look the truth in the face. It will tend to awaken you from your carelessness if you know where you are. One came to join the Christian Church the other day who said, "While I was at my work in the parlor, this thought suddenly came to me, 'You are an unsaved woman.' I could not shake it off. I went down to my cooking in the kitchen but it followed me. From the fire and from the water I seemed to hear the accusation, 'You are an unsaved woman.' When I went in to my meals I could scarcely eat my bread because of this choking thought. It haunted me, 'You are an unsaved woman!'" It was not long before that unsaved woman sought the Lord and became a saved woman by faith in Christ Jesus! Oh, that I might put this idea into some minds this morning! You are an unsaved man! You do not believe on the Son of God and therefore you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity! I would like to make the seat you sit upon grow hard and the very house to grow uncomfortable, so that you should vow, "Please, God, I can but stagger home. I will seek my bedside and cry for mercy." I wish you were under even greater urgency and would entreat the Lord for mercy at once, on the spot! You would do so, I think, if you fairly answered this question and felt that the reply must be, "No." But, supposing you are able to say, "Yes"--this question will have done great service--for it will have brought you great peace. As long as you leave this matter in doubt you will be tossed about. But when it is decided, you will enter into rest. Peace, like a river, shall flow into your soul when you can say-- "I do believe, I will believe, That Jesus died for me; That on the Cross He shed His blood, From sin to set me free." Know that He is yours and you will rejoice in Him! You cannot obtain settled peace till you settle this question. This done, you will try to do something for Jesus to show your gratitude for His salvation. Until I know that I am saved I shall have no heart for holy work. A wise man stops at home and looks after his own concerns when he feels that they are in peril--but when they are all safe he can look to the interests of his neighbors. When I know I am saved and that there is nothing more for me to do in that matter, for Christ has finished it all, then I enquire what I can do for Him who has done so much for me! Where is the child or the man I can talk to about my Savior? I will go and hunt up lost ones and tell them of a present salvation. Perhaps I have never dared to speak to my wife or to my children about eternal life--but now that I possess it and know that I do--because I believe on the Son of God I will begin to instruct others in this good doctrine. Yes, diligence grows out of assurance. And what a help assurance will be in the time of trouble! You have a great affliction coming on, but if you can say, "I know that I believe in Jesus Christ the Son of God," you will face it with quietness. Is it a surgical operation? You will lie still and yield yourself up to the surgeon's knife, come life or death--and you will do it easily. Is it a cruel persecution which you have to face tomorrow? You will not be afraid--but, believing in Jesus--you will take up His Cross. Are you growing old and thinking of the time when you must die? It will not matter--for you know that you will only be going Home since you believe on the Son of God! He never lets a soul believe on Him in vain. He never casts away a poor heart that trusts Him. What strength your faith will give you! You will be a hero whereas you might have been a coward. Now that you know and are sure that you believe on the Son of God, you will fear no evil. This, I think, will fire you with holy zeal and praise. You have been saying, "I do not know how it is that I am so dull and stupid! I go to the house of God and I do not feel the power of the Word--I am afraid I am not a Christian." Just so. As long as you have that chilling fear upon you, you will not be sensitive to the cheering truth--but when you know that you believe on the Son of God and are sure of your salvation-- your heart will beat to another tune and the music of the upper spheres will take possession of your bosom. I should not wonder if you should sing, as Toplady does-- "Yes, I to the end shall endure As sure as the earnest is given; More happy, but not more secure, The glorified spirits in Heaven." You will begin to taste heavenly happiness when you have a sense of heavenly certainty. Being thus moved with gratitude and filled with joy, the result will be a great concern for others who have not believed on the Son of God. You will look upon unbelievers with sorrow and alarm. They are very wealthy, perhaps--but you will despise their gold because it blinds their eyes. They are very clever, perhaps--but you will not worship their abilities because the eternal light is hid from their eyes. You will say to yourself, "They may have all their wealth and all their cleverness, but I have the Son of God!" In having Christ, you have more than Alexander possessed when he had won the world! He could conquer the earth, but he could not win Heaven, for he knew nothing of believing on the Son of God! In this respect you have done more than an angel could do--for an angel has no lost soul to trust with the Son of God--no sin to wash away in the Savior's blood. But you have trusted Him and you have been washed in His blood-- and you are clean. Go home and sing, my Brothers and Sisters! Go home and tell it out among your fellows that Jesus is the Son of God and abundantly able to save! Go home and weep some poor sinner to Jesus! Go home and never rest until you can say to God--"Here am I, and the souls that You have given me. We are believing on the Son of God." Peace be with you! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- John 9. __________________________________________________________________ Our Lord's Triumphant Ascension A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY, MAY 11, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, APRIL 27, 1890. "You have ascended on high, You have led captivity captive: You ha ve received gifts for men; yes, for the rebellious, also, that the Lord God might dwell among them." Psalm 68:18. The hill of Zion had been taken out of the hand of the Jebusites. They had held it long after the rest of the country had been subdued, but David, at last, had taken it from them. This was the mountain ordained of Jehovah of old to be the place of the Temple. David, therefore, with songs and shouts of rejoicing, brought up the Ark from the house of Obed-edom to the place where it should remain. That is the literal fact upon which the figure of the text is based. We are at no loss for the spiritual interpretation, for we turn to Ephesians 4:8 where, quoting rather the sense of the passage than the exact words, Paul says, "When He ascended up on high, He led captivity captive, and gave gifts unto men." The same sense is found in Colossians 2:15: "And having spoiled principalities and powers, He made a show of them openly, triumphing over them in it." Not misled by the will-o'-the-wisp of fancy, but guided by the clear light of the Infallible Word, we see our way to expound our text. In the words of David we have an address to our Lord Jesus Christ concerning His ascent to His Glory. "You have ascended on high, You have led captivity captive: You have received gifts for men; yes, for the rebellious also, that the Lord God might dwell among them." Our Savior descended when He came to the manger of Bethlehem, a Babe--and further descended when He became "a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." He descended lower, still, when He was obedient to death, even the death of the Cross--and further yet when His dead body was laid in the grave. "Well," says our Apostle, "Now that He ascended, what is it but that He also descended first into the lower parts of the earth?" Long and dark was the descent-- there were no depths of humiliation, temptation or affliction which He did not fathom. Seeing He stood in their place, He went as low as Justice required that sinners should go who had dared to violate the Law of God. The utmost abyss of desertion heard Him cry, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Low in the grave He lay, but He had His face upward, for He could not see corruption. On the third day He left the couch of the dead and rose to the light of the living! He had commenced His glorious ascent! To prove how real was His Resurrection, He stayed on earth some 40 days and showed Himself to many witnesses. Magdalene and Peter saw Him alone--the 11 beheld Him in their midst. The two on the road conversed with Him. Five hundred Brethren at once beheld Him! He gave Infallible proofs that He was really risen from the dead and these remain with us unto this day as historic facts. He ate a piece of a broiled fish and honeycomb to prove that He was no phantom. He said to the Apostles, "Handle Me, and see that it is I, Myself, for a spirit has not flesh and bones as you see I have." One laid his finger in the print of the nails and even thrust his hand into His side! Their very doubts were used to make the evidence clearer. The fact that Jesus died was put beyond question by the thrust of the spear--and the fact that He was alive, in a material form, was equally well established by the touch of Thomas. Beyond a doubt, Christ Jesus has risen from the dead and become the first-fruits of them that slept. This being settled beyond question, the time came for our Lord to continue His homeward, upward journey and return unto the Glory from which He had come down. From "the mount called Olivet," while His disciples surrounded Him, "He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out of their sight." The rest of His upward progress we cannot describe. Imagination and faith step in and conceive of Him as rising beyond all regions known to us--far above all imaginable height. He draws near to the suburbs of Heaven and surely the poet is not wrong when he says of the angels-- "They brought His chariot from on high To bear Him to His Throne; Clapped their triumphant wings and cried, 'The glorious work is done.'" "Lift up your heads, O you gates, and be you lift up, you everlasting doors, that the King of Glory may come in." How high He ascended after He passed the pearly portal Paul cannot tell us, save that he says, "He ascended up far above all heavens," and describes Him as, "set at God's right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, and power, and might, and dominion." He describes our Master as, "dwelling in the light which no man can approach unto." The Man Christ Jesus has gone back to the place from where His Godhead came! You are the King of Glory, O Christ! You are the eternal Son of the Father! You sit forever in the highest Heaven, enthroned with all Glory, clothed with all power, King of kings and Lord of lords! Unto Your name we humbly present our hallelujahs, both now and forever. I. Now, concerning the text itself, which speaks of the ascent of our ever blessed Lord, we shall say, first, that OUR LORD'S TRIUMPH WAS SET FORTH BY HIS ASCENSION. He came here to fight the foes of God and man. It was a tremendous battle--not against flesh and blood--but against spiritual wickedness and evil powers. Our Lord fought against sin, death, Hell, hate of God and love of falsehood. He came to earth to be our Champion. For you and for me, Beloved, He entered the battle and wrestled till He sweat great drops of blood--yes, "He poured out His soul unto death." When He had ended the struggle He declared His victory by ascending to the Father's Throne. Now His descent is ended. There was no need for Him to remain amid the men who despised Him. The shame, suffering, blasphemy and rebuke are far beneath Him now. The sun has risen and the darkness of night has fled. He has gone up beyond the reach of sneering Sadducees and accusing Pharisees. The traitor cannot again kiss Him. Pilate cannot scourge Him. Herod cannot mock Him. He is far above the reach of priestly taunt and vulgar jest-- "No more the cruel spear, The Cross and nails no more; For Hell itself shakes at His frown, And all the hea vens adore." Now, also, our Lord's work is done. We are sure that the purpose of His love is secure or He would not have returned to His rest. The love that brought Him here would have kept Him here if all things necessary for our salvation had not been finished. Our Lord Jesus is no sudden enthusiast who rashly commences an enterprise of which He wearies before it is accomplished. He does not give up a work which He has once undertaken. Because He said, "I have finished the work which You gave Me to do," and then ascended to the Father, I feel safe in asserting that all that was required of the Lord Christ for the overthrow of the powers of darkness is performed and endured--all that is needed for the salvation of His redeemed is fully done! Whatever was the design of Christ's death, it will be accomplished to the fullest for had He not secured its accomplishment He would not have gone back. I do not believe in a defeated and disappointed Savior, nor in a Divine Sacrifice which fails to effect its purpose. I do not believe in an atonement which is admirably wide but fatally ineffectual. I rejoice to hear my Lord say, "All that the Father gives Me shall come to Me." Whatever was the purpose of the Christ of God in the great transaction of the Cross, it must be fully effected--to conceive a failure, even of a partial kind--is scarcely reverent. Jesus has seen to it that in no point shall His work be frustrated. Nothing is left undone of all His covenanted engagements. "It is finished" is a description of every item of the Divine labor and, therefore, has He ascended on high. There are no dropped stitches in the robe of Christ! I say again, the love that brought our Lord here would have kept Him here if He had not been absolutely sure that all His work and warfare for our salvation had been accomplished to the fullest. Further, as we see here the ending of our Lord's descent and the accomplishment of His work, remember that His ascent to the Father is representative. Every Believer rose with Him and grasped the inheritance. When He rose up, ascending high, He taught our feet the way. At the last His people shall be caught up together with the Lord in the air and so shall they be forever with the Lord. He has made a stairway for His saints to climb to their bliss and He has traveled it Himself to assure us that the new and living way is available for us. In His Ascension He bore all His people with Him. As Levi was in the loins of Abraham, when Melchisedec met him, so were all the saints in the loins of Christ when He ascended up on high. Not one of the number shall fail to come where the Head has entered, else were Jesus the Head of an imperfect and mutilated body! Though you have no other means of getting to Glory but faith in Jesus, that way will bring you there without fail! Not only will He not be in Glory and leave us behind, but He cannot be so since we are one with Him--and where He is His people must be. We are in the highest Glory in Jesus as our Representative and by faith we are raised up together and made to sit together in the heavenlies, even in Him. Our Lord's ascent is to the highest Heaven. I have noted this already but let me remind you of it again, lest you miss an essential point. Our Lord Jesus is in no inferior place in the Glory land. He was a servant here, but He is not so there. I know that He intercedes and thus carries on a form of service on our behalf--but no striving, vying and tears are mingled with His present pleading. With authority He pleads. He is a Priest upon His Throne, blending with His plea the authority of His personal merit. He says, "All power is given unto Me in Heaven and in earth" and, therefore, He is glorious in His prayers for us! He is Lord of every place and of everything--He guides the wheels of Providence and directs the flight of angels-- His kingdom rules over all. He is exalted above every name that is named and all things are put under Him. Oh, what a Christ we have to trust in and to love! And on this account we are called upon in the text to think much of His blessed Person. When we speak of what Christ has done, we must think much of the doing, but still more of the Doer. We must not forget the Benefactor in the benefits which come to us through Him. Note well how David puts it. To him the Lord is first and most prominent. He sees Him. He speaks to Him. "You have ascended on high. You have led captivity captive. You have received gifts for men." Three times he addresses Him by that personal pronoun, "You." Dwell on the fact that He, the Son of David, who for our sakes came down on earth and lay in the manger--and hung upon a woman's breast--has gone up on high into Glory! He that trod the weary ways of Palestine now reigns as a King in His palace. He that sighed, hungered, wept, bled and died is now above all heavens! Behold your Lord upon the Cross--mark the five ghastly wounds and all the shameful scourging and spitting which men have worked upon Him! See how that blessed body, prepared of the Holy Spirit for the indwelling of the Second Person of the adorable Trinity, was evilly treated! But there is an end to all this. "You have ascended on high." He that was earth's scorn is now Heaven's wonder! I saw You laid in the tomb, wrapped about with cerements and embalmed in spices--but You have ascended on high where death cannot touch You! The Christ that was buried here is now upon the Throne! The heart which was broken here is palpitating in His bosom this minute, as full of love and condescension as when He dwelt among men! He has not forgotten us, for He has not forgotten Himself and we are part and parcel of Himself! He is still mindful of Calvary and Gethsemane. Even when you are dazzled by the superlative splendor of His exalted state, still believe that He is a Brother born for adversity. Let us rejoice in the ascent of Christ as being the ensign of His victory and the symbol of it! He has accomplished His work. If You had not led captivity captive, O Christ, You had never ascended on high. And if You had not won gifts of salvation for the sins of men, You had been here still suffering! You would never have relinquished Your chosen task if You had not perfected it. You are so set on the salvation of men that for the joy that was set before You, You did endure the Cross, despising the shame--and we know that all must have been achieved or You would still be working out Your gracious enterprise. The voice of the ascension is--CONSUMMATUM EST--"It is finished." II. Having led your thoughts that way, I would, secondly, remind you that THE LORD'S TRIUMPHAL ASCENT DEMONSTRATED THE DEFEAT OF ALL OUR FOES. "You have led captivity captive" is as certain as, "You have ascended on high." Brethren, we were once captives--captives to tyrants who worked us woe and would soon have worked us death. We were captives to sin. We were captives to Satan and therefore captives under spiritual death. We were captives under many lusts and imaginations of our own hearts--we were captives to error, captives to deceit. But the Lord Jesus Christ has led captivity captive! There is our comfort! Forget not that we were hopeless captives to all these--they were too strong for us and we could not escape from their cruel bondage. The Lord Jesus, by His glorious victory here below, has subdued all our adversaries and in His going up on high He has triumphed over them all, exhibiting them as trophies. The imagery may be illustrated by the triumph of Roman conquerors. They were known to pass along the Via Sacra and climb up to the Capitol, dragging at their chariot wheels the vanquished princes with their hands bound behind their backs. All those powers which held you captive have been vanquished by Christ. Whatever form your spiritual slavery took, you are fully delivered from it, for the Lord Christ has made captives those whose captives you were. "Sin shall not have dominion over you." Concerning Satan, our Lord has bruised his head beneath His heel. Death also is overcome and his sting is taken away. Death is no more the King of Dread--"The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the Law. But thanks be to God, which gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." Whatever there was or is which can oppress our soul and hold it in bondage, the Lord Jesus has subdued and made it captive to Himself. What then? Why, from now on the power of all our adversaries is broken. Courage, Christians! You can fight your way to Heaven for the foes who dispute your passage have been already beaten in the field! They bear upon them the proofs of the valor of your Leader. True, the flock of the Lord is too feeble to force its way--but listen--"The Breaker is come up before them and the King at the head of them." Easily may the sheep follow where the Shepherd leads the way! We have but to follow those heavenly feet which once were pierced and none of our steps shall slide! Move on, O soldiers of Jesus, for your Captain cries, "Follow Me!" Would He lead you into evil? Has He not said, "You shall tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shall you trample under feet." Your Lord has set His foot on the necks of your enemies--you wage war with vanquished foes! What encouragement this glorious ascension of Christ should give to every tried Believer! Remember, again, that the victory of our Lord Christ is the victory of all who are in Him. "The Seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head." Now, the Seed of the woman is, first of all, the Lord Jesus--but also it is all who are in union with Him. There are still two seeds in the world--the seed of the serpent which cannot enter into this rest--and the Seed of the woman who are born, not of blood, nor of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. In these last is the living and incorruptible Seed which lives and abides forever. Jesus, our Lord, represents them in all that He does--they died in Him, were buried in Him, are raised in Him and in the day when He triumphed they led captivity captive in Him. Looking at the great battle now raging in the world, I gaze with joyful confidence. We are fighting now with Popery, with Mohammedanism, with idolatry in the foulest forms--but the battle is, in effect, won! We are struggling with the terrible infidelity which has fixed itself like a cancer upon the Church of God and our spirit sinks as we survey the horrors of this almost civil war. How often we groan because the battle does not go as we would desire it! Yet there is no reason for dismay. God is in no hurry as we are. He dwells in the leisure of eternity and is not the prey of fear as we are. We read concerning the multitude, when they needed to be fed, that Jesus asked Philip a question--but yet it is added, "However Jesus knew what He would do." So today the Lord may put many questions to His valiant ones and, "for the divisions of Reuben there may be great searchings of heart," but He knows what He is going to do and we may lay our heads upon His bosom and rest quietly. If He does not tell us how He will effect His purpose, yet assuredly He will not fail. His cause is sure to win the victory--how can the Lord be defeated? A vanquished Christ?! We have not yet learned to blaspheme and so we put the notion far from us! No, Brothers and Sisters, by those bleeding hands and feet He has secured the struggle. By that side opened down to His heart we feel that His heart is fixed in our cause. Especially by His Resurrection and by His climbing to the Throne of God, He has made the victory of His Truth, the victory of His Church--the victory of Himself--most sure and certain! III. Let us notice, thirdly, that OUR LORD'S TRIUMPHANT ASCENSION WAS CELEBRATED BY GIFTS. The custom of bestowing gifts after victory was practiced among the Easterns, according to the song of Deborah. Those to whom a triumph was decreed in old Rome scattered money among the populace. Sometimes it seemed as if every man in the city was made rich by his share of the spoils of vanquished princes. Thus our Lord, when He ascended on high, received gifts for men and scattered largess all around. The Psalm says: "You have received gifts for men." The Hebrew has it, "You have received gifts in Adam"--that is, in human nature. Our Lord Christ had everything as Lord--but as the Man, the Mediator--He has received gifts from the Father. "The King eternal, immortal, invisible," has bestowed upon His triumphant General a portion with the great and He has ordained that He shall divide the spoil with the strong. This our Lord values, for He speaks of all that the Father has given Him with the resolve that He will possess it. When Paul quotes the passage, he says, "He gave gifts to men." Did Paul quote incorrectly? I think not. He quoted, no doubt, from the Greek version. Is the Greek version, therefore, compatible with the Hebrew? Assuredly! Dr. Owen says that the word rendered "received" may be read "gave." And if not, for Christ to receive for men is the same thing as to give to men for He never receives for Himself, but at once gives it to those who are in Him. Paul looks to the central meaning of the passage and gives us the heart and soul of its sense. He is not intending to quote it verbatim, but to give in brief its innermost teaching. Our Lord Jesus Christ has nothing which He does not give to His Church. He gave Himself for us and He continues, still, to give Himself to us. He receives the gifts, but He only acts as the conduit through which the Grace of God flows to us. It pleased the Father that in Him should all fullness dwell--and of His fullness have we all received. What are these great ascension gifts? I answer that the sum of them is the Holy Spirit. I invite your adoring attention to the sacred Trinity manifested to us here. How delightful it is to see the Trinity working out in unity the salvation of men! "You have ascended on high"--there is Christ Jesus. "You have received gifts for men"--there is the Father, bestowing those gifts. The Gift itself is the Holy Spirit. This is the great generosity of Christ's Ascension which He bestowed on His Church at Pentecost. Thus you have Father, Son and Holy Spirit blessedly co-working for the benediction of men, the conquest of evil, the establishment of righteousness. O my Soul, delight yourself in Father, Son and Holy Spirit! One of the sins of modern theology is keeping these divine Persons in the background so that they are scarcely mentioned in their several workings and offices. The theology which can feed your souls must be full of Godhead and yield to Father, Son and Holy Spirit perpetual praise. Beloved, the gifts here spoken of are those brought by the Holy Spirit. "The water that I shall give him," said Christ, "shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." He said again, "If any man thirst, let him come unto Me, and drink." We read that He, "spoke of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him should receive." "If you, then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children: how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him?" To conquer the world for Christ we need nothing but the Holy Spirit and in the hour of His personal victory He secured us this Gift. If the Holy Spirit is but given we have in Him all the weapons of our holy war. But observe, according to Paul, these gifts which our Lord gave are embodied in men, for the Holy Spirit comes upon men whom He has chosen and works through them according to His good pleasure. Therefore He gave some Apostles, some evangelists and some pastors and teachers. No one may be judged to be given of God to the Church in any of these offices unless the Spirit dwells upon him. All are given of God upon whom the Holy Spirit rests, whatever their office may be. It is ours to accept with great joy the men who are chosen and anointed to speak in the name of the Lord, be they what they may. Paul, Apollos, Cephas--they are all the gifts of the risen Christ to His redeemed ones for their edifying and perfecting! The Holy Spirit, in proportion as He abides in these servants of God, makes them to be precious blessings of Heaven to His people and they become the champions by whom the world is subdued to the Lord Jesus Christ. These gifts, given in the form of men, are given for men. Churches do not exist for preachers, but preachers for Churches. We have sometimes feared that certain Brothers thought that the assemblies of Believers were formed to provide situations for clerical persons--but, indeed, it is not so. My Brothers and Sisters in the Church, we who are your pastors are your servants for Christ's sake. Our rule is not that of lordship, but of love. Every God-sent minister, if he discharges his duty aright, waits upon the bride of Christ with loving diligence and delights greatly to hear the Bridegroom's voice. I wish that you who talk of my Lord's servants as if they were rival performers would cease, thus, to profane the gifts of the ascended King. The varying abilities of those by whom the Lord builds up His Church are all arranged by infinite wisdom and it should be ours to make the most we can of them. Comparing and contrasting the Lord's gifts is unprofitable work. It is better to drink of the well of Elim than to grow hot and feverish in disputing as to whether it is better or worse than Beersheba or Sychar. One minister may be better for you than another, but another may be better for somebody else than the one you prefer. The least gifted may be essential to a certain class of mind--therefore despise no one. When God gives gifts, shall you turn them away contemptuously and say, "I like this one but the other I do not"? Did the Father bestow these gifts upon His Son and has the Holy Spirit put them into different earthen vessels that the excellency of the power might be of God--and will you begin judging them? No, Beloved, the Lord has sent me to preach His Gospel and I rejoice to feel that I am sent for your sake. I entreat you to profit as much as you can by me by frequent hearing, by abounding faith, by practical obedience to the Word. Use all God's servants as you are able to profit by them. Hear them prayerfully--not for the indulgence of your curiosity, nor for the pleasing of your ear with rhetoric--but that you, through the Word of God, may feel His Spirit working in our hearts all the purpose of His will. Our conversion, sanctification, comfort, instruction and usefulness all come to us by the Holy Spirit--and that Spirit sends His powerful message by the men whom He has given to be His mouths to men. See how wonderful, then, was that ascension of our Lord in which He scattered down mercies so rich and appropriate among the sons of men! From His glorious elevation above all heavens He sends forth pastors, preachers and evangelists, through whom the Holy Spirit works mightily in them that believe. By them He gathers the redeemed together and builds them up as a Church to His glory! IV. I want the attention, now, of all who are unconverted for I have glorious tidings for them. To them I speak under my fourth head, OUR LORD'S TRIUMPH HAS A VERY SPECIAL BEARING. "You have received gifts for men"-- not for angels, not for devils, but for men--poor fallen men. I read not that it is said, "for bishops or ministers," but, "for men." And yet there is a special character mentioned. Does the text particularly mention, "saints," or those that have not defiled their garments? No, I do not read of them here. What a strange sovereignty there is about the Grace of God! Truly He will have mercy on whom He will have mercy, for in this instance He selects for special mention those that you and I would have passed over without a word! "Yes, for the rebellious, also." I must pause to brush my tears away! Where are you, you rebels? Where are those who have lived in rebellion against God all their lives? Alas, you have been in open revolt against Him--you have raged against Him in your hearts and spoken against Him with your tongues! Some have sinned as drunkards. Others have broken the laws of purity, truth, honesty. Many rebel against the light, violate conscience and disobey the Word--these, also, are among the rebellious. So are the proud, the wrathful, the slothful, the profane, the unbelieving, the unjust. Hear, all of you, these words and carry them home! And if they do not break your hearts with tender gratitude, you are hard, indeed. "Yes, for the rebellious also." When our Lord rode Home in triumph He had a pitying heart towards the rebellious! When He entered the highest place to which He could ascend He was still the sinner's Friend! When all His pains and griefs were being rewarded with endless horror He turned His eyes upon those who had crucified Him and bestowed gifts upon them! This description includes those who have rebelled against God, though once they professed to be His loyal subjects. Perhaps I am addressing some who have so far backslidden that they have thrown up all religion and have gone back into the world and its sins--these are apostates from the profession which once they made. To these I would give a word of encouragement if they will turn to the Lord. Once upon a time John Bunyan was under great temptation from the devil. This trial he records in his, "Grace Abounding." He thought that God had given him up and that he was cast away forever and yet he found hope in this text. I have copied out a little bit which refers to it--"I feared, also, that this was the mark that the Lord set on Cain, even continual fear and trembling under the heavy load of guilt that He had charged him for the blood of his brother Abel. "Then did I wind and twine and shrink under the burden that was upon me, which burden did also so oppress me that I could neither stand, nor go, nor lie, either at rest or quiet. Yet that saying would sometimes come into my mind, 'He has received gifts for the rebellious.' Rebellious, thought I, why surely they are such as once were under subjection to their Prince, even those who, after they had sworn subjection to His government, have taken up arms against Him; and this, thought I, is my very condition! Once I loved Him, feared Him, served Him--but now I am a rebel and I have sold Him. I said, let Him go if He will, but yet He has gifts for rebels; and then why not for me?" Oh, that I could cause every despairing heart to reason in this way! Oh, that the Holy Spirit would put this argument into every troubled mind at this moment--"And then why not for me?" Come home, dear Brothers and Sisters, come home, for there are gifts for the rebellious--and why not for you? I know you deserted the Lord's Table, but the Lord of the Table has not deserted you! I know you have, as far as you could, forsworn the name of Christ and even wished you could be unbaptized--but that cannot be, nor can the Lord leave you to perish! I know you have eagerly done evil with both hands and perhaps now you are living in a known sin--and when you go home today you will see it before your eyes. Nevertheless, I charge you, Return unto the Lord at once! Come to your Lord and Savior who still prays, "Father, forgive them for they know not what they do." Behold how in His Glory He "has received gifts for men; yes, for the rebellious also." O my Soul, I charge you, on your own account, hang on to this most precious declaration, for you, too, have been a rebel! Would God that all my Brothers and Sisters would be cheered by this dear Word and take it home to themselves with a believing repentance and a holy hatred of sin! I would print the words in stars across the brow of night--"Yes, for the rebellious, also." V. I have done when I have handled the fifth point, which is this--OUR LORD'S TRIUMPHANT ASCENSION SECURES THE CONSUMMATION OF HIS WHOLE WORK. What does it say? "That the Lord God might dwell among them." When our Lord Christ came here at the first He was willing enough to "dwell" among us, but it could not be. "The Word was made flesh and tabernacled among us," like a Bedouin in his tent, but not as a dweller at home. He could not "dwell" here on that occasion. He was but a Visitor and badly treated at that. "There was no room for Him in the inn," where everybody else was freely welcome. "He came unto His own"-- surely they will lodge Him--"but His own received Him not." There was no room for Him in the Temple--there He had to use the scourge. There was no room for Him in the open streets for they took up stones to stone Him. Out of the synagogue they hurried him, to cast him down headlong from the brow of the hill. "Away with Him! Away with Him!" was the cry of the ribald crowd. This dear Visitor who came here all unarmed, without sword or bow--they treated as though He had been a spy or an assassin who had stolen among them to do them ill. And so they ran upon Him with a spear and He, quitting these inhospitable realms which knew Him not, took Home with Him the marks of man's discourtesy. O Earth, Earth! How could you drive away your dearest Friend and compel Him to be as a wayfaring man that tarries but for a night? No, worse--as a man astonished who meets with wounding in the house of his friends? After He had risen again He went Home--that from His Throne He might direct a work by which earth should become a place where God could abide. Again is the Temple of God to be with men and He shall dwell among them. This world of ours has been sprinkled with the precious blood of the Lamb of God and it is no longer as an unclean thing. Jesus is the Lamb of God who so takes away the sin of the world that God can treat with men on terms of Divine Grace and publish free salvation. The Lord God Himself had long been a stranger in the land! Did not the holy man of old say, "I am a stranger with you and a sojourner, as all my fathers were"? But Jesus, the Ascended One, is pouring down such gifts upon this sin-polluted world that it will yet become a new earth wherein dwells righteousness and the God of Righteousness! This promise is partly fulfilled before your own eyes this day for the Holy Spirit came at Pentecost and He has never returned. Jesus said, "He shall abide with you forever." The Holy Dove has often been greatly grieved but He has never spread His wings to depart. This is still the dispensation of the Spirit. You hardly need to pray to have the Spirit poured out for that has been done. What you need is a Baptism of the Holy Spirit--namely, to go down personally into that glorious flood which has been poured forth. Oh, to be immersed into the Holy Spirit and into fire--covered with His holy influence--"plunged in the Godhead's deepest sea and lost in His immensity!" Here is our life and power, for thus the Lord God does dwell among us! Ever since the Ascension, the Holy Spirit has remained among men though He has not been, at all seasons, equally active. All through the night of Romanism and the schoolmen He still tarried--there were humble hearts which rejoiced to be His temples even in those doleful days. Today He is still with His regenerated ones. In spite of impudent striving against the Divine Inspiration of His Holy Scripture and, notwithstanding the follies of ecclesiastical amusements, He is with His chosen. Lord, what is man that Your Spirit should dwell with him? But so it is and this is why our Lord went up to Heaven and received Divine gifts that by Him the Lord God might dwell among us. But there comes a day when this shall be carried out to the letter. I think I hear the angels say, "You men of Galilee, why do you stand gazing up into Heaven? This same Jesus, which is taken up from you into Heaven, shall so come in like manner as you have seen Him go into Heaven." Now, "in like manner," must mean in Person. In Person our Lord was taken up into Heaven and in Person He will come again! And when He comes the Lord God will, indeed, dwell among us! Oh, that the day would come! We wait and watch for His glorious appearing--for then will He dwell among men in a perfect fashion. What happy days shall we have when Jesus is here! What a millennium His Presence will bring--there can be no such auspicious era without it--any more than there can be summer without the sun! He must come, first, and then will the golden age begin! The central glory of that period shall be that the Lord is here. "The Lord God shall dwell among them." Then shall be heard the song which will never end--earth's homage to the Lord who renewed the heavens and the earth--and has taken up His dwelling in them. "They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun light on them, nor any heat; for He that sits on the Throne shall dwell among them." Up till now this work has been going on and as yet it is incomplete. "Every prospect pleases and only man is vile," is still most sadly true. The rankness of sin destroys the sweet odors of this world so that the pure and holy God cannot abide in it. But since the Lord Jesus has sweetened it with His sacred merits and the Spirit is purifying it by His residence in men, the Lord smells a savor of rest and He will not give up this poor fallen planet. Even now His angels come and go in heavenly traffic with the chosen. Soon the little boat of this globe shall be drawn nearer to the great ship and earth shall lie alongside Heaven. Then shall men praise God day and night in His Temple. Heaven shall find her choristers among the ransomed from among men. The whole world shall be as a censer filled with incense for the Lord of Hosts. All this will be because of those gifts received and bestowed by our Lord Jesus in the day when He returned to His Glory, leading captivity captive! O Lord, hasten Your coming! We are sure that Your abiding Presence and glorious reign will come in due season. Your coming down secured Your going up--Your going up secures Your coming down again. Therefore we bless and magnify You, O ascended Lord, with all our hearts and rise after You as You draw us upward from groveling things. So be it! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Psalm 68; Ephesians 4:1-13. __________________________________________________________________ The Shining of the Face of Moses A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY, MAY 18, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 4, 1890. "And it came to pass when Moses came down from mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses' hand, when he came do wn from the mount, that Moses knew not that the skin of his face shone while he talked with Him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone, and they were afraid to come near him. And Moses called unto them, and Aaron and all the rulers of the congregation returned unto him: and Moses talked with them. And afterward all the children of Israel came near: and he gave them in commandment all that the Lord had spoken with him in mount Sinai. And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a veil on his face. But when Moses went in before the Lord to speak with Him, he took the veil off, until he came out. And he came out, and spoke unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded. And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses'face shone: and Moses put the veil upon his face again, until he went in to speak with Him." Exodus 34:29-36. A FAST of 40 days does not improve the appearance of a man's countenance--he looks starved, wrinkled, old, haggard. Moses had fasted 40 days twice, at least, and, according to many competent authorities, the 10th chapter of Deuteronomy seems to imply that he fasted 40 days three times in quick succession. I will not assert or deny the third 40 days, but it is certain that, with a very slight interval, Moses fasted 40 days and then 40 days more--and it is probable that to these must be added a third forty. Small attractiveness would naturally remain in a face which had endured so stern an ordeal, but the Lord whom he served made his face brilliant with an unusual luster! The glory of the Light of God upon his countenance may have been the reason why he remained so free from infirmity in later years of old age. This man of 80 spent 40 more years in guiding Israel and in the end his eyes had not dimmed nor his natural force abated! He that could fast 40 days would be a hard morsel for death. Those eyes which had looked upon the Glory of God were not likely to wax dim amid earthly scenes-- and that natural force which had endured the vision of the Supernatural could well support the fatigues of the wilderness. God so sustained His servant that his long and repeated fasts, during which he did not even drink water, did no harm to his physical constitution! The abstinence, even from water, renders the fast the more remarkable and lifts it out of similarity to modern feats of fasting. Moses did not know, at the time, that his face was shining--but he did know it afterwards--and he has here recorded it. He gives in detail the fact of the brightness of his own face, how others were struck with it and what he had to do in order to associate with them. We are sure that this record was not made by reason of vanity, for Moses writes about himself in great lowliness of spirit--it was written under Divine direction--with a worthy object. The man Moses was very meek and his meekness entered into his authorship as into all the other acts of his life--we are therefore sure that this record is for our profit. I am afraid, Brothers and Sisters, that God could not afford to make our faces shine--we would grow too proud. It needs a very meek and lowly spirit to bear the brightness of God! We only read of two men whose faces shone--and both were very meek. The one is Moses in the Old Testament--the other is Stephen, in the New--whose last words proved his meekness for, when the Jews were stoning him, he prayed, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Gentleness of nature and lowliness of mind are a fine background on which God may lay the brightness of His Glory! Where these things abound it may be safe for the Lord not only to put His beauty upon a man, but also to make a record of the fact. Moses wrote this record with a reluctant pen. Since he did not write it out of vanity, let us not read it out of curiosity. He wrote it for our learning. Let us learn by it and may God the Holy Spirit cause our faces to shine, today, as we read of the shining face of Moses! It would appear, so far as we can make out the narrative, that his face continued to shine long afterward. After Moses had come down from the mountain the brightness began to diminish. Paul tells us that it was a "glory to be done away"--but when he went into the holy place to commune with God, the brightness was revived and he came out again and spoke to the people with that same glowing Heaven upon his brow. When he addressed the people in the name of God he took off the veil and let them see the brightness of God in His ambassador. But as soon as he had done speaking and fell back into his own private character, he drew a veil over his face that none might be kept at a distance thereby. The man Moses was as meek with the glory on his countenance as before it gathered there. God put great honor upon him but Moses did not desire to make a display of that honor, nor childishly wish that it should be seen of men. For the people's sakes and for typical purposes, he veiled his face while in ordinary conversation with the people and only unveiled it when he spoke in the name of the Lord. Brethren, if God honors you as preachers or teachers, accept the honor but do not attribute it to your own worthiness, or even to your own personality--ascribe it to the office to which the Lord has called you. "I magnify my office," said Paul--but you never find Paul magnifying himself! He wears the glory as an ambassador of God, not as a private individual. The dignity that God gives to His servants is bestowed upon their office, not upon themselves apart from it. They must never run away with it into daily life and think that they themselves are "reverend," because their Lord is so--nor may they claim for their own thoughts the serious attention which they rightly demand for the Word of the Lord. Ministers do not pretend to be a class of sacred beings like the Brahmins of India--the only vantage-ground they occupy is that the Lord speaks through them according to the gift of His Holy Spirit. Unveiled are our faces when we speak to God and for God--and among our Brethren we would hide anything from which we might claim superiority for ourselves. I. With this as my preface I shall now come immediately to my subject. Here is Moses with a strange glory upon his countenance. We will first answer the question, HOW CAME THIS GLORY TO LIE THERE? The skin of Moses' face shone--why? The answer is, first, it was a reflection of the Glory which he had seen when he was with God in the holy mount. It was the result of that partly-answered prayer, "I beseech You, show me Your Glory." God could not, at that time, grant the prayer in its fullness for Moses was not capable of the vision--and the Lord told him, "You can not see My face and live." I look upon that prayer, however, as a very wonderful one for this reason, that it was answered to the full, 1,400 years after it was presented! The glory of God is only to be seen in the face of Christ Jesus--and on the top of Tabor Moses saw the Son of God transfigured--and his prayer was then and there answered to its utmost bounds! In the Transfiguration, God showed to Moses His full Glory, for he was then made able to behold it. But though on the top of Mount Sinai he could not see the full Glory of Jehovah, yet he had seen enough to make an impression upon him of such a kind that the skin of his face shone. God is Light and they that look upon Him are enlightened and reflect Light around them! Moses spoke with God face to face as a man speaks with his friend and this made his countenance glow. As the sun shining upon a reflector has its light thrown back again, often in a most brilliant fashion, so that the reflector looks like a minor sun, so was it with the face of Moses when it reflected the Glory of the Lord. The face of Moses was to God what the moon is to the sun. A saint shines on men when God has shone on him. We are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, as by the Presence of the Lord. Would you shine in the valley?-- first go up the mountain and commune with God! Would you shine, my Brothers and Sisters, with superior radiance? Then be this your fervent prayer, "Make Your face to shine upon Your servant." If the Lord lifts upon you the Light of His Countenance there will be no lack of Light in your countenance! In God's Light you shall give Light. The Light on the face of Moses was the result of fellowship with God. That fellowship was of no common order. It was special and distinguished. I do not doubt that Moses walked with God after the fashion of believing men in the pursuit of his daily calling-- but he spent two periods of 40 days each in solitary fellowship with God. Everybody was away--Aaron, Joshua and all the rest were far down below and Moses was alone with God. His communion with God was intense, close and familiar-- and that not for one day but for 80 days at least! Protracted fellowship brings a nearness which brief communion cannot attain. Each morning's sun found him still in the Light of God. Each evening's dew found his soul still saturated with the Divine influence. What must be the effect of such whole-hearted, undisturbed fellowship with God? He heard no hum of the camp below--not even the lowing of cattle, or bleating of sheep came up from the foot of the mountain. Moses had forgotten the world, save only as he pleaded for the people in an agony of prayer. No interests, either personal or family, disturbed his communion. He was oblivious of everything but Jehovah, the Glorious One, who completely overshadowed him. Oh, for the enjoyment of such heavenly communion! My Brothers and Sisters, have we not lost a great deal by so seldom dwelling apart--so little seeking continuous absorbing fellowship with the Most High? I am sure we have. We snatch a hasty minute of prayer. We afford a hurried quarter of an hour for Bible reading and we think we have done well. Very far am I from saying that it is not well. But if for minutes we had hours, the gain might increase in proportion! Oh, for nights of prayer! Oh, for the close shutting of the closet door and a believing drawing near to God! There is no limit to the power we might obtain if such were the case. Though our faces might not be lit up with splendor, our lives would shine, our characters would become more pure and transparent--and our whole spirit would be so heavenly that men would regard with wonder the brightness of our being! Thus, you see, the face of Moses shone because he had long looked upon the face of God. I would have you note that this communion with God included intense intercession for the people. God will not have fellowship with our selfishness. Moses came out of himself and became an intense pleader for the people--and thus he became like the Son of God and the Glory descended on him. How he pleaded! With what sighs and cries he besought Jehovah not to destroy the men who had vexed His Holy Spirit! They had degraded the Godhead by likening it unto a bullock which eats grass! They made a calf in Horeb and bowed before it, saying, "These are your gods, O Israel"! Moses pleaded for the people down below and not for himself. Here is a point in which, it may be, we fail. The Lord turned again the captivity of Job when Moses prayed for his friends. The Lord loves intercessory prayer! And if ever He makes a man's face to shine, it is when he, like Christ, has made intercession for the transgressors and poured out his soul, not for himself, but for a guilty company! More than that. In that intercession Moses had exhibited a degree of self-abnegation reaching to the sublime. God said to him, "Let Me alone, that I may destroy them. I will make of you a great nation." The Lord's covenant with Abraham was that Abraham's seed should possess the land--but the Lord might have destroyed all the existing tribes except Moses--and then have made of the family of Moses a race in which the Covenant with Abraham could have been kept to the letter. What a prospect was set before him! The children of Moses should grow into an elect nation, heirs of all the promises of God. But no--Moses not only goes the length of putting aside the proffered honor, but he cries, "Blot me, I pray You, out of Your book which You have written." Instead of his name being written in the place of the people, he would let their names stand at the expense of his own! When a man can come to that, he is the man, the skin of whose face is a fit parchment on which God may write the Glory of His love! The less of self the more of God! When we can renounce all for God's Glory and the good of His Church, the Lord will not fail to smile upon us. Yet once more. This man Moses not only obtained this brightness by his long communion and his intercessory prayer and self-oblivion, but by his faithfulness among the people. When he went down in the interval between the two fasts and found the people worshipping the golden calf he did not spare them. He loved them, but he did not keep back the stern blow ofjustice. He said, "Who is on the Lord's side?" And there came to him the tribe of Levi. And he said, "Go through the camp and slay every man his brother who shall be found rebelling against the Lord." At once they cut off the idolaters who were guilty of open treason against the King of Israel! But this was not enough--the whole nation must be chastened for its great sin--and humbled by a symbolical punishment. I think I see Moses, having broken the tablets in his holy wrath, now taking down their idol god, grinding it, pounding it, dissolving it in water and sternly compelling the tribes to drink of the water. He made a nauseous, bitter draught out of their idol--and made them drink it so that their bellies might be filled with their own iniquity and they might know what it was to turn away from the Lord their God! Grand old Moses! Faithful servant of God! Unbending executioner of Divine Justice! Meek were you, Moses, but by no means indifferent to truth and righteousness! God chooses not milksops, destitute of backbone, to wear His Glory upon their faces! We have plenty of men made of sugar, nowadays, that melt into the stream of popular opinion--but these shall never ascend into the hill of the Lord, nor stand in His Holy Place, nor wear the tokens of His Glory. O my Brothers and Sisters, it is necessary that you be true to the Lord in public if you would have His fellowship in private! If the Lord can challenge you for yours unfaithfulness among men He will never honor you with His own peculiar seal of Light. Moses was no trimmer, no hunter after popularity. He was sternly true to his Lord and therefore he was such that the Lord could safely make his face shine! Enough of this, though much more might be said--learn the useful lesson which this part of the subject teaches. II. But, secondly, WHAT DID THIS SHINING OF HIS FACE MEAN? This brightness on his face--what did it signify? Very briefly it meant this--God's special favor for Moses. God seemed to say, "This is My man. I have chosen him above all others. Among those that are born of women there is no greater than he. I have put a measure of My own Glory upon him and the token thereof shines in his face." Surely it also meant special favor for Israel. If they could but have understood it they would not have been afraid, but conscience made them cowards. God, in effect, said to them, by the shining of the face of Moses, "I have had favor upon you for I have accepted your intercessor. My servant Moses has been pleading for your lives and in proof that I have accepted you and will spare you, I have written your pardon across his shining brow." Favor to the Lord Jesus is favor to us. Lord, when I hear You say, "This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well-pleased," I rejoice that You are well-pleased with me in Christ Jesus. When God looks on the face of His Anointed, He looks with favor upon us. This brightness on the face of Moses was also God's witness to his commission. He had sent him, for He had glorified him. The people could not doubt his commission when they looked upon his shining face! I suppose rays of light proceeded from it. Michael Angelo, in his famous statue of Moses, represents him with horns--the strange fancy is founded in the Vulgate version, which mistook the meaning of a Hebrew word and translated it "horns." Beams of light seemed to rise from that marvelous face! A halo of Glory surrounded that solemn countenance and the people could not but perceive that this was a man on whom God had looked! And more. It was not only a witness of his office, but it was an increase of his power. The people were overawed by this strange light. They dared, even after this, to murmur against Moses for they dared to murmur against God Himself--but still, to a people of such a temper as theirs, the supernatural light must have been a source of wonder and of awe-- "They gazed and looked, and lo, on brow and face, A glory and a brightness not of earth! The eyes lit up with fire of heavenly birth, The whole man bright with beams of God's great Grace." It gave their Prophet authority with them--it made them tremble before him. They would not dare to contradict one who looked on them with such a face of Glory! His speech was as a flame of fire because his face was on a blaze! The pith of the whole thing, I think, lies in this--the face of Moses shone typically, to show that there is a great glory about the Law of God. It has a glory all its own from its spirituality, its holiness, its perfection, its justice, its immutability, its power over the conscience and so forth. It has eminent glory because it has been ordained of God Himself and therefore stands as the sacred Rule of the universe. But this is not what Paul understands by the glory of the Law. He makes the glory "of that which was to be abolished," the glory of the ceremonial Law, to lie in its end. The end of the Law for righteousness is Christ. The Law is given to point us to Christ, to drive us to Christ--to be our schoolmaster to whip us to Christ, to convince us of our need of Christ--and to shut us out from every other hope but that which begins and ends with Christ! The Glory of the Law is Christ! And so Moses comes with a Glory on his face which the children of Israel could not perceive, nor steadfastly look into-- "They looked and saw the Glory and they shrank From that dread vision, dazzling man frail sight." Even as today men see outward rites that God has given but see not their glorious meaning, so was it with Israel in the wilderness--they saw sacrifices, but they knew not the Great Sacrifice. They saw the oil and the water--but they knew not the Holy Spirit. They saw 10,000 tokens dear and manifest of the ever-blessed Messiah, but they did not perceive Him so as to know Him when He came. Every type and ceremony might say, "Who has believed our report? And to whom is the arm of the Lord revealed?" The Law is overlaid with the Glory of Christ, as the face of Moses was covered with Light! This is the deepest and innermost meaning of the sacred Light which glowed upon the skin of the face of Moses. III. And now, thirdly, this Glory upon the face of Moses--WHY DID NOT MOSES KNOW OF IT? For we read that "Moses knew not that the skin of his face shone." I answer, first, that it is not easy for a man to see his own face unless he can borrow a looking-glass. Speaking in parable, the meaning I intend is this--it is not easy for a man to form an accurate judgment of his own character. There are people in the world who think they see their own faces clearly and that they shine like suns--yet they do not shine at all unless it is with brazen impudence and self-conceit. In other cases lowly men are afraid that their faces do not shine at all--and yet they are brightness itself. It is no small part of the shining of some faces that their owners are modest and humble. Brothers and Sisters, you cannot see your own faces--and until you can do so you must not imagine that you know your own characters. Upon study you may arrive at something like a judgment, but it is not one which you may safely rely upon. Since Moses had no looking-glass, how could he tell that the skin of his face shone? Our own judgment of our own character usually errs on the side of partiality to ourselves. Nor is the evil so readily cured as some suppose, for the gift of seeing ourselves, "as others see us," is not so corrective as might be supposed. Some persist in seeing us through the colored spectacles of prejudice and ill-will. And this injustice is apt to create in us a further partiality to ourselves. If other men make mistakes about us who can see us, they probably do not make such great blunders about us as we do about ourselves, since we cannot see our own faces! The truth is that we are very fond of ourselves and have our own characters in high esteem--therefore we are unfair judges on points of difficulty about ourselves. Our temptation is to gross self-flattery! We dream of strength where all is weakness--of wisdom where all is folly. A man does not need to see his own face if that face is washed to purity--it will be enough that God sees it and approves its beauty. But I will tell you, further, why Moses did not see the Glory of his own face. It was because he had seen the Glory of God. When a man gets a clear view of the holiness of God it is all over with all claim of personal excellence. From that day he abhors himself in dust and ashes. I might have thought myself pure, but how can I be when I find that the heavens are not clean in God's sight? I might have thought myself wise, but how can I be when I read that He charged His angels with folly? How can I speak of perfect purity as a thing of which I am possessed after I have seen the King, the Lord of Hosts? A vision of God is the quietus of boasting! He that has looked into the face of the sun is blinded to all other light. Having given one sufficient reason, I am, perhaps, unwise to add another--but yet it may be profitable to remember that Moses had not seen the shining of his own face because it had never once entered his thoughts to wish that his face should shine. That is true beauty of character which comes without being sought--I mean unconscious excellence--a character which commands an admiration which it has never desired. Are we not too apt to wish to be bright that others may see us? Have we not labored to grow in Grace that we might outgrow others? Does no man pray for success in his ministry with a little squint of his eyes towards an ambition to be thought "so useful"? Does no sister ever seek the salvation of her class that she may be esteemed in the Church as a remarkable soul-winner? Did you never pray for holiness and really mean that you wished to be considered holy? Have you never prayed in public with great fervor with a half-suppressed wish to be thought a special man of God? Would it not have greatly gratified you to hear men cry, "What a prayer that was"? Have you not ever labored to be humble that you might rejoice in your humility? I am afraid it is so. We are always praying, "Lord, make my face to shine." But Moses never had such a wish and, therefore, when it did shine, he did not know it. He had not laid his plans for such an honor. Let us not set traps for personal reputation or even glance a thought that way. Another reason why he had not thought of it was that he was so much engaged in doing good for others. He gave himself up for those stiff-necked Israelites! He actually lived for them and offered himself before God to die for them! He carried the whole people in his bosom as a nurse carries her child. He fed his flock like a shepherd and like the Good Shepherd, he would have given his life for the sheep. Oh, the self-sacrifice of the man Moses! He never thought about his own face for he was thinking about their faces. What would he have given if they had been capable of such nearness to God as he himself enjoyed! Oh, to be so absorbed in doing good that we have not a thought or a care for our own personal reputation! Then a man may do good in self-forgetfulness and may find himself famous to his own amazement! Once more, Moses could not very well have thought of his own face shining, for he had no example of such a thing to suggest the idea. Out of all those around him nobody else's face shone. When you live with men whose faces shine, then you enquire about yourself, for you naturally wish your face to shine like theirs. Aaron's face did not shine. Alas, poor Aaron! Nobody's face shone in all that camp and so there was nothing to cause Moses to look for such a radiance on his own brow. Mr. Bunyan, in his beautiful picture of Christiana and Mercy and the children coming up from the bath, represents the opposite state of things, for he says, "When the women were thus adorned, they seemed to be a terror one to the other; for that they could not see that Glory each one on herself which they could see in each other. "Now, therefore, they began to esteem each other better than themselves. 'For you are fairer than I am,' said one. And, 'You are more comely than I am,' said another. The children also stood amazed to see into what fashion they were brought." It is a great treat to see and admire the Christian virtues of our Brothers and Sisters in Christ--every Christian delights to see his friends comely in all the Graces of the Holy Spirit. Moses had but little to gratify him in that way, especially at the period when he came down from the mountain and found Aaron weakly yielding to the people's sin. Even the choicest of the elders were far inferior to Moses and therefore it was not suggested by his surroundings that his own face might shine. It is well when men are not self-conscious. It is best, my beloved Brothers and Sisters, that our faces should shine to others and not to ourselves. If you might know your own excelling, do not know it--for there is an ill savor about self-consciousness. To come forward and say, "I am perfectly holy," is babyish. It is like a child who cries, "See my new frock! Look at my pretty new frock!" I tremble to hear one say, "I have quite passed out of the conflict mentioned in the seventh of Romans. I have got this and I have got that." I am reminded of Jehu, when he said, "Come with me and see my zeal for the Lord"--and yet Jehu was not right at heart before the Lord. There is not much to see when you wish men to see it. God save us from knowing too much about the shining of our own faces! May the light of His Countenance fill the whole circle of our being while we lie at His feet, mastered by a reverent awe of Him! IV. I must hasten on to another interesting point. WHY DID MOSES WEAR A VEIL? Having this brightness on his face, why did he hide it? I answer, in part the natural meekness of the man led him to do so. He was forced into the position of leader. He never wished to be prominent, but the Lord put great pressure upon him in the desert and drove him on to be as king in Jeshurun. He had no ambitions. Though made to be as God to Pharaoh, he never exalted himself in the Egyptian court. Among the Israelites he did not monopolize power--he gladly yielded to the chosen elders a portion of his magisterial dignity. The man Moses was very meek and so to hide the brightness of his face was a pleasure and not a trial to him. Like many a lovely woman, he shrank from the public gaze. We shall do well to possess the Grace of humility. He veiled his face in tender condescension to the people. When they ran away from him, he called to them to know why they were afraid. "My lord, we fear that splendor on your brow." "Then, let me veil it," says he. "I would not terrify, but win." It was their fault that they could not bear the brightness--their fault! I say again, their fault and yet he does not upbraid, nor stand upon his rights. He had compassion on their folly as well as on their weakness. It may happen that a gracious man may be so evidently right that when others are offended at him, the offense is to be greatly blamed--and yet he will do well to yield in anything which does not involve principle. There is a modest veiling of excellences which shows a Brother to be still more excellent than his excellences which have proven him. Quench not the light of your sternest principle, but veil it with abounding love. He always sinks himself, this man Moses. The God-given Glory of his face he does not slight, nor seek to abate--but so far as it would bring him honor from men--he puts it under a veil. That he may come closer to the people whom he loves, he is content to hide his glory. Let us also seek to bless the people and to keep in touch with them. But, Beloved, the chief reason lies elsewhere. Why did Moses veil his face? The answer is this--it was a judicial symbol, setting forth the sentence of God upon the people. The Lord, by this token, as good as said, "You are so rebellious, so given to your idolatries, so unwilling to see that from now on you shall not see the brightness of My Glory in the dispensation of the Law in which you live. Moses shall veil his face because the veil is upon your hearts." It is a dreadful thing when God gives men up to judicial blindness--when He permits the veil which they have woven to abide over their minds, "that seeing they might not see and hearing they might not understand." As I told you in the reading, the veil was literally on Moses' face, but spiritually it was on their hearts. From that time on they were not to see because they had not wished to see. He that willfully shuts his eyes will find that God takes away his sight. If you refuse to understand, justice will make you foolish. The shadow of destruction is insensibility. The eyes are blindfolded before the fatal volley is fired. The practical warning I would earnestly apply. Do you not think we have a great many people around us--may we not belong to them ourselves?--whose foolish hearts are blinded so that the light of the Glory of God in the face of Christ is veiled from them? Are not many suffering from veiled hearts? In your circle there is a rare man of God--you have heard of his faith-- he walks with God. Many have told you what beauties they see in his character. You cannot see anything particular in him. You, on the contrary, despise him and avoid his company. He wears a veil for you. Here is the Bible. "O Book, exquisite sweetness!" Your dear mother calls it beyond all things precious. Dear Soul, how her face brightens when she tells you how she has been sustained by it in the day of trouble! You read it now and then but you do not see anything remarkable in it, certainly nothing that charms you--the Book is veiled to you. Here is the glorious Gospel of the blessed God! You have heard us say what a wonderful Gospel it is. We have been overjoyed in describing it. You feel no enthusiasm. The Gospel is veiled to you. You have heard a sermon on some grand doctrine. Believers are ready to leap for joy but you are utterly indifferent. The Truth of God is veiled to you. This is a sad omen of a lost estate. The veil is on your heart and your soul is in darkness which may be felt. Am I not speaking the truth about many of you? O my Friends, when you hear about Christ and do not admire Him, conclude that you must be blind! When you hear the glorious Gospel of the blessed God and it does not charm you, conclude that the veil is on your hearts! Oh, that you would turn unto the Lord! For when you turn to God, the veil shall be taken away. Oh, that God the Holy Spirit would come and turn you by His almighty power! May He constrain you to seek the Lord today--then shall the veil be taken away and you shall see the beauty of the Lord Jesus in His salvation! Here is a little prayer for you--use it often--"Open my eyes, O God, that I may behold wondrous things out of Your Law." The wondrous things are in the Law--may you behold them. The Holy Spirit must take the veil away and remove the scales from your eyes--then you will see, but not till then. This is why Moses wore the veil--as a testimony that God had given them over to judicial blindness because they refused to know His will. O Lord, deal not thus with this people! V. I close with this question. WHAT OTHER LESSONS MAY WE LEARN FROM THE FACE OF MOSES? First, learn the exceeding Glory of our lord Jesus Christ. HOW SO? Well, this was, so to speak, in a minor degree, the transfiguration of Moses and all it came to was that his face shone. But when Christ came He was transfigured as to His whole Person! Not only His face shone but His whole Person and His garments, also! Moses could veil his face, but the shining of our Lord could not be thus veiled for it streamed through His raiment which became "white like snow." The veil of Moses was, so to speak, a raiment for his face and it was able to keep in the Glory--but our Lord was wearing His usual garment without seam, woven from the top throughout, and the Light shone through His raiment so that He and His clothing were, alike, bright. Nothing could conceal the Glory of our Lord, which was so great that whereas Israel saw it tremblingly, the disciples were cast into a deep sleep thereby. A word is used by an instructive commentator in reference to Christ's Transfiguration which expresses a forcible idea--he speaks of it as incandescence. He was all brightness and light--surpassing the mere shining of the skin even as the sun far surpasses every form of its redaction. The Glory of Christ is beyond all comparison--the glory which excels. Oh, that I knew how to speak of it! But I feel like Paul when he said, "I could not see for the Glory of that Light." It overpowers me! The Lamb is the Light of Heaven itself--what more shall I say? John on the rock of Patmos saw our Lord in vision and he said His "countenance was as the sun shines in his strength. And when I saw Him I fell at His feet as dead." Moses wore a light on his face that might be covered, but Jesus was, and is, all Light and in Him is no darkness at all. "That was the true Light, which lights every man that comes into the world." "The Law was given by Moses, but Grace and Truth came by Jesus Christ." Another lesson is just this. See the possibilities of Glory which await human nature. If Moses' face can shine here, I can understand how, in the next state, when we are risen from the dead, our bodies may be all light and bright and we ourselves like flames of fire. "This corruptible must put on incorruption and this mortal must put on immortality." Unless our Well-Beloved comes quickly, our bodies will be sown in dishonor--and now I see how they can be raised in Glory. Then shall we put on "the Glory of the celestial." We shall be among the shining ones and shall, ourselves, shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of our Father! If the wrinkled face of the Patriarch Moses, bronzed and browned by 40 years in the Arabian desert and lined by the long fast on the top of the mountain--if the dry parchment of his face could shine so marvelously--why should not our bodies be endowed with Glory when God shall raise them, again, from the grave? As a crocus bulb looks up from the soil wherein it was buried and boldly lifts up a golden cup which the sun fills with glory from the heavens, why should not we, also, bloom into perfection? "Beloved, now are we the sons of God and it does not yet appear what we shall be"-- any more than it did appear what Moses should be--"but we know that, when He shall appear"--whose appearing is more glorious than that of Moses--"we shall be like He is for we shall see Him as He is." Lastly, here is one more lesson. What honor God may put upon any one of us if we really put honor upon Him! My Brothers, my Sisters, if you are consecrated to God as Moses was, He can give you an unconscious influence which others will be compelled to recognize. Upon your brow the heavenly Light of Divine Grace will rest! From your eyes the lamp of the Truth of God will shine! Walk in the Light, as God is in the Light, and have fellowship with Him--and then you, too, shall shine as God's Light-bearers and your whole life shall be as the star which guided the wise men to Christ! Influencing men for God, the gracious will follow you and the wicked will be awed by you, even as "Herod feared John, knowing that he was a just man and holy." O Spirit of God, rest on every one of us according to our capacity to endure the tongue of fire! Say unto us, O Savior, this morning, "Go forth, My Friends and be burning and shining Lights to My praise." Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Exodus34:28-35; 2 Corinthians 3,4:1-6. __________________________________________________________________ Believers Sent by Christ, As Christ Is Sent By the Father A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 11, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "As You have sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." John 17:18. HERE is a great fact mentioned, namely, that the Father sent the Son into the world. Our Lord's disciples believed this. Jesus says Himself, "They have believed that You did send me." It is one of the first essentials of saving faith to believe in Christ as the Sent One of God. They had proved, in their own experience, that Jesus was sent of God, for they had found Him to be sent to them. Especially they knew this because they had found in Him eternal life. To them it had been eternal life "to know the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom He had sent." They had entered into the possession of a new and heavenly life and they rejoiced in it so that to them the fact that God had sent His Son into the world was indisputable. It was a fact upon which they based their salvation! It was their hope, their joy, their theme of thought and subject of conversation. They declared it with the accent of assurance. Our Lord based upon that fact another. He says to His Father, "As You have sent Me into the world, even so have I also sent them into the world." As surely as Christ was sent into the world by the Father, so surely are the saints sent into the world by Christ. Note well that I say, "the saints"--I mean not the Apostles only--but all Believers. I dare not limit the reference to what are called ordained ministers or Apostles, for I believe it includes all the chosen of God. Was the prayer, contained in this 17th chapter of John, for the Apostles only? I think not! Surely our Lord prayed for all whom the Father had given to Him and not for ministers only. Beyond question, our great Intercessor pleaded for all those whom the Father gave to Him and therefore it is of all these that He speaks in the words of our text. He mentions not only the officers, but the rank and file of the chosen host who have been called by Divine Grace to know Him as sent of God. He says to them all without exception, "As the Father has sent Me, even so I send you." I do not for a moment dispute the need of a special call to the office of pastor or elder in the Church of God. Nor do I question that there are officers in the Church of God upon whom peculiar responsibility rests--but no class of men may be exalted into a caste of Brahmins who are, alone, sent into the world by the great Head of the Church. We who spend our lives in teaching are your servants for Christ's sake and we rejoice that you, also, have a high calling of God in Christ Jesus. If we have more knowledge of Scripture or larger gifts of utterance, accept us as your fellow servants whose talents are cheerfully employed for your sakes! But if you have not these same talents, you have others and you are equally given to Christ, to be by Him sent into the world. This is no trifle, but a very solemn business. To our Lord it was a special matter of prayer. It is here in that prayer which always seemed to me to be the core of the whole Bible. Our Lord pleads not only about our being saved, but about our being sent. There is something here which deserves our deepest thought. There are two petitions in our Lord's prayer which bear upon this. First comes the petition--"Holy Father, keep them." You cannot serve God unless He preserves you. You will never keep the Lord's flock unless He first shepherds you. The Lord of the vineyard must keep the keepers or their vineyards will not be kept. The other prayer immediately precedes the text--"Sanctify them." You cannot go out into the world as the sent ones of Christ unless you are sanctified. God will use no unholy messenger--you must be consecrated and cleansed-- devoted and dedicated to God, alone, or else you will not have the first qualification for the Divine mission. Christ's prayer is, "Sanctify them through Your Truth." The more Truth of God you believe, the more sanctified you will be. The operation of the Truth of God upon the mind is to separate a man from the world unto the service of God. Just in proportion as Truth is given up, worldliness and frivolity are sure to prevail. A Church which grows so enlightened as to neglect the Doctrines of Grace also falls in love with the vain amusements of the world. It has been so in all past ages and it is sadly so today. But a Church which, in a living way, holds fast the Truth once and for all delivered to the saints will also separate itself from the ways of the world--in fact, the world and the worldly Church will shun it--and push it into the place of separation. The more separated we are, after our Master's fashion, the more fit shall we be to do His bidding! Our Lord was evidently most careful as to our commission which He bases upon His own commission and declares to be as certain and real as His own sending by the Father. He so values this that He prays, "Father, keep them," and, "Father, sanctify them." May those two prayers be heard for us and then we shall stand with our loins girt, our shoes on our feet, our lamps trimmed and our lights burning-- ready to go forth at the command of the Most High to the very ends of the earth. Our mission by Jesus grows out of His mission by the Father--and we may learn much about it by considering how the Father sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. I. I would open up this subject by asking you, first, WHAT OUR LORD'S BEING SENT INVOLVED TO HIMSELF, for, to a large extent, there will be a parallel between His being sent and ours. The parallel is drawn by way of quality, not of equality. Christ's commission is on a higher scale than ours, for He was sent to be a Propitiation and Covenant-Head and so came into positions which it would be presumption for us to dream of occupying. Still, there is a likeness, though it is only that of a drop in the sea. Our Lord's mission involved complete subjection to the Father's will. He said, "My Father is greater than I"--this did not relate to His essential Nature and dignity as God, but to the position which He took up in reference to the Father when He was sent to be our Savior. He that sends is greater than He that is sent--the Savior took up that subordinate position that He might do the Father's will. From that time forth, so long as He remained under His commission, He did not speak His own words nor do His own deeds--but He listened to the Father's will--and what the Father said to Him He both spoke and did. That is exactly where you and I have to place ourselves now, deliberately and unreservedly. Our Lord sends us and we are to be, in very deed, subordinate to His command in all things. We are no longer masters--we have become servants. Our will is lost in the will of our glorious Superior. If we are ambitious and our ambition is guided by wisdom, it will take us down to that basin and the towel and we shall be willing to wash the disciples' feet to show that we are sent by our condescending Lord. We shall, from now on, have no respect unto our own dignity or interest, but shall lay ourselves out to serve Him to whom we belong. Whatever He says to us we shall aim to do. Although we are sons of God, yet now we are also servants and we would not do our own will but the will of Him that sent us. Oh, to be sound on this point so as to yield our members in perfect obedience and even bring every thought into subjection to Christ! Oh, to die to self and live in Christ! Can you drink of this cup and be baptized with this Baptism? I trust you can and, if so, you shall fulfill the errand upon which He sends you. This meant for our Lord the quitting of His rest. He reigned in Heaven--all angels paid Him homage--but when the Father sent Him, He left His high abode. He was laid in the manger, for there was no room for Him in the inn. Where the horned oxen fed, there must the Holy Child be cradled. The royalties of Heaven are left behind--the rest which He enjoyed in the bosom of the Father must be renounced for toil, hunger, thirst and weariness--and the death of the Cross. Dear Friends, you may serve the Lord and yet be as happy as your Lord was. But if Jesus has sent you into the world you are not to seek ease or comfort--you are not even to make your own spiritual comfort the first object of your thought. How nice that evening at home would be! But you are sent and therefore must turn out to win souls. How delightful it would be to read that book through and to leave the class alone! But you must not, for you are sent to instruct and save. From now on you are to consider nothing but how you can answer the design of Him who has sent you. Your aim must be to do the utmost possible for your Lord. The Christian who does much is still an idler if he could do more. We have never reached the point of diligence till we are doing all that lies in us and are, even then, wishing to do far more. Bought with His precious blood, the vows of the Lord are upon us and we renounce our natural love of ease that we may please Him who has sent us. When sent of God, the Savior also had to forego even Heaven itself. He was here on earth the God-Man, the Mediator and He did not return to the splendor of His Father's court till He could say, "I have finished the work which You gave me to do and now, O Father, glorify You Me." We must not sigh for Heaven while so much is to be done on earth. The rest of Glory will come soon--but just now we have to do with the work of Grace. Let us stick to our work here below and do it thoroughly, for our Lord has gone above and is preparing a place for us. Is it not wonderful how God, even now, denies Himself for the salvation of men? Why does not our Lord come at once in His Glory? Why do we not see the millennial reign begin? It is because of the long-suffering of God--He waits and puts off the closing scene because He is "not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance." He keeps back even the glorious Advent to give men space for salvation! That for which Jesus longs, and the Spirit longs, and the spouse longs, is kept back in mercy to the guilty! The Bridegroom postpones His marriage day that men may be brought to Him by the Divine long-suffering. If Jesus can do this, surely we may well wait out of compassion to our fellow men. Even our hope of being forever with the Lord may wait a while. So long as there is another sinner for us to rescue we will remain in this land of our exile. That is what our Lord means--the Father has sent Me from Heaven and kept Me out of Heaven for the sake of men--and even so shall I detain you among the tents of Kedar for a while that you may bring in My redeemed through the Gospel. The words of our text are, "As you have sent Me into the world" and this implies affinity with men. Our Lord was not sent to the edge of the world to look over the fence and converse hopefully from a distance. He was sent right into the world. He took on human Nature and became bone of our bone. We read, "Then drew near unto Him all the publicans and sinners for to hear Him." He was a Man among men. In this way Jesus has sent you, my Brothers and Sisters, into families, into offices, into establishments, into places where you labor for daily bread among a company of ungodly men. Do not cry out because you have thus to mingle with them. Your Lord was sent into the world, not, I say, to the outskirts of it, nor to some elevated mountain high above it from which He might look down. He was sent into the world in an emphatic sense and so are you sent, wisely sent, to tarry even among unconverted, infidel and impure men that you may do for Christ His great work and make known His salvation! He was sent into the world and this involved abiding in humiliation. "The world knew Him not," therefore the world knows us not because it knew Him not. You are not sent into the world to be honored and pampered--nor even to receive your righteous due. If God aimed at your immediate glorification He would take you to Heaven. But He aims at your humiliation, that you may be like His First-Born. You are to have fellowship with the Only-Begotten in many ways and among the rest you are to be partakers of His suffering! Expect to be misunderstood, misrepresented, belied, ridiculed and so forth--for so was the Sent of the Father. You are to expect evil treatment--for as the Father sent His Son into a world which was sure to treat Him ill, so has He sent you into the same world which will treat you in the same manner if you are like your Lord. Be not surprised at persecution but expect it and take it as part of the Covenant consequences, for as Ishmael mocked Isaac, so will the seed after the flesh persecute that which is born according to promise. In a word, your being sent of Christ involves unreserved dedication to His work. When Christ came into the world He did nothing but what His Father sent Him to do. He had no secondary objective of any sort. From the reservoir of His being no little stream trickled away in waste--the whole of it went to turn the great mill-wheel of His life. The whole current and force of His Nature went in one way, working out one design. Now, as the Father sent Jesus, so has Jesus sent you to be from now on by occupation a Christian. You are to be consecrated wholly and alone to the one object for which Christ has set you apart. There may be other lawful objectives but these you render subsidiary to the one objective of your life. You have but two eyes and those eyes looks to your Lord. From now on you belong to Christ--body, soul and spirit--from the morning light to the evening shade and through the night watches. There is not a hair of your head but what Jesus values, for He has put it down in the inventory--"the very hairs of your head are all numbered." Give Him, then, every single power, however feeble. Give Him every pert of your nature, however insignificant. Let your whole being be the Lord's for, "you are not your own; you are bought with a price." "This is a high standard," says one. My Brothers and Sisters, it is none too high and it is sad that any should think it so. God help you to know that you are sent and clearly to perceive what your mission involves. We, too, are missioned from above! We, too, are to have a hand in the saving of the world! II. Secondly, having thus shown you the parallel so far, I now ask you to CONSIDER WHY OUR LORD WAS SENT INTO THE WORLD. Our Lord came here with one design. Christ was not sent to teach a correct system of philosophy. He was not Plato, but Jesus--not a sage, but a Savior. He could have solved the problems of the universe but He did not even allude to them. He was not an Aristotle, ruling the world of human thought, although He could have done so easily had He chosen. Blessed be His name, He came to save from sin and this no Plato or Aristotle could have done! All the sages and philosophers put together are not worth so much as the little finger of Christ! Christ entered into no rivalry with the academy--He came on a very different errand. Neither was our Lord sent to be an inventor or a discoverer. All the discoveries that have been made in modern times could have been at once revealed by Him but that was not His objective and He kept scrupulously to His one design. He could have told us the secret of the Dark Continent but He was not sent for that end. He could have anticipated all that we have slowly learned and saved the world the long processes of experiment and observation--but this was not the objective of His mission. He did not come to be a conqueror. God gave us in Him neither Alexander nor Caesar--of such slaughterers the world has always had enough and to spare. He conquers evil but not by the sword. Our Lord did not come even to be a politician, a reformer of governments, a rectifier of social economics. There came one to Him who said, "Master, speak to my brother, that he divide the inheritance with me." You might have supposed that the Lord would have arbitrated in that case but He did not do so, for He said, "Who made Me a judge or a divider over you?" He kept to His one business and we shall be wise to do the same. Point me to a single instance in which He interfered with the government of Pilate or of Herod! Had He anything to say about the tyranny of Caesar? When He takes Caesar's penny in His hand, He simply says, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's, and unto God the things that are God's." He was none of Caesar's for He belonged to God and to God alone! Should not Christian people take heed that they follow Christ in this unity of aim and purpose? This I know, I am not sent to preach to you any new philosophical system nor to advocate any political party, nor to meddle with any of those social matters which can be better managed by others. It is mine to preach the Gospel of the Grace of God and this one thing I do! If you can serve Christ and your fellow man in any way, do it--but never get away from your one aim and purpose. If we are enabled to save men's souls by the Holy Spirit resting upon our teaching we may die content even though we have left 50 other excellent things undone. There are enough of the dead to bury the dead. Burying the dead is a good work--but this will be a labor more congenial to the dead around us than to ourselves--let us leave it to them. We cannot do everything--let us do that which we are sent to do. Oh, that every Christian would feel that whatever else he would like to be, his first business is to be a servant of Christ! Your first concern is to serve Christ and it ought to be your second concern to serve Christ! Then I would claim that it should be your third and I shall get far on in numbers before I should allow any other character to take a leading position. May no possible objective bear any comparison in your desires and endeavors in comparison with your resolve to glorify God your Savior! Notice, further, that our Lord was not sent to be ministered unto, but to minister. I fear that many of His professed servants think they have been sent to be ministered unto. Their religion consists in coming to places of worship to be ministered unto. Through the week they would like to have very particular attention from the pastor and the Church officers--and you hear them grumbling that they are not sufficiently looked after. Surely they must have been sent, not to minister, but to be ministered unto! Brethren, let us give them as much as we can of our services for they evidently need them, but Jesus was not sent to be visited and waited on, and served--He came to minister to others and He did so to the fullest! He could truly say, "I am among you as He that serves." Beloved Friend, you know that it is more blessed to give than to receive--therefore feel it to be your joy to live as one who is sent by Jesus to be the servant of the Church and the winner of souls! Let us enquire what was Christ's work upon earth. It was, first, to teach. Wherever He went He was an instructor of the ignorant. He preached of the kingdom and of faith and of Divine Grace. We are to teach. "I do not know anything," says one. Then do not tell it but first go to the Lord and ask Him to teach you something. And as soon as ever you know the A B Cs of the Gospel, go and teach somebody that A B C. You need not teach him D E F and G H I till you have advanced so far yourself--but teach all you are taught. Learn first, but when you have learned, then let others learn from you. As your Master, be teaching the Gospel everywhere. Forget not that He lived and His living was teaching. His actions were so many heads of His life-sermon. His every movement was instructive. He went about doing good. Make your life tally with your teaching and make your life to be a part of your teaching--no, make it the best part of your discourse. The most solid and most emphatic teaching that comes from you should be what you do rather than what you say--and Christ has sent you into the world for that end. Our Lord came, also, to suffer for the cause of truth and righteousness. If you follow Him closely, you must expect to suffer, also. Do not cry out about it, as though some strange thing had happened to you. Take joyfully the spoiling of your good name. If Christ has sent you forth like sheep in the midst of wolves, wonder not that the wolf gives you a bite or two--is it not his nature? Let the wolf howl, but do not trouble yourself about it for what else should a wolf do? When pain, weakness and bodily infirmity seize on you and you lie for days and weeks tossed with pain all through the sleepless nights, take it all patiently and say, "I am sent to show patience, that men may see what Grace can do." You are sent to save men. It is true that you have not to redeem them by blood--that the Lord has done most effectually! You have not to suffer as a substitute--for His one Sacrifice has sufficed. But you are sent to seek and to save that which was lost by proclaiming salvation by Christ Jesus. Every man who is saved, himself, should feel that he is called at once to labor for the salvation of others! Your election is not only election to personal salvation but to personal service. You are chosen that, through your being saved, others may be called into the like felicity. View this very clearly and get it fixed in your minds--then carry it out in your daily lives. "Ah," you say, "our Lord might very well give Himself up to His work, for if He had not done so the whole world must have perished." Listen, your work is also indispensable. How is the work of Christ to be made effectual among the sons of men for their salvation? Must they not hear it that they may believe it? How shall they hear without a preacher? I venture to say that as the salvation of man depended upon Christ, so, in another sense, the salvation of men at this hour depends upon the Church of God. If Believers do not go and preach Christ, who will? If you that love Him do not commend Him, who will? Do you think that the Houses of Parliament will ever meet together to consider the evangelization of the heathen? If the Government did take such work in hand, it could do nothing for it is not a fit agent and it would hinder rather than help the good design. Do you think the worldlings, the skeptics, the critics will ever unite to spread the kingdom of Christ and save the souls of men? Do not dream it! If the Church of God does not go forth on her holy errand, nothing will be done. "But it might be done by angels," says one. I know it might, but, "unto the angels has He not put in subjection the world to come, whereof we speak." He has committed unto us the word of reconciliation, even to us who are men--and we must attend to it, or great guilt will lie upon us. I should like every Christian to feel that he has to be the instrument of salvation to certain persons. It is all allotted--the whole country is measured and divided, and we have each our portion which we must conquer for our Lord. If I belong to the tribe of Judah, I have to help my Brothers and Sisters to drive out the Canaanites from our portion. If you belong to the tribe of Issachar, or Benjamin, you must look to your own allotment and clear it of the enemy. Joshua is the leader, but every Israelite is in His army. Christ has power over all flesh, as the Head of the body, and He has given to each of His members a portion of His power so that each member of His body has power over some portion of the "all flesh," and that power must be used in the giving of eternal life to as many as the Father has given to Jesus! God grant that you may feel this and may go to your work as Christ went to His! III. This leads me a little further and I now invite you to CONSIDER HOW OUR LORD CAME, for this will show us how we ought to go forward when we are sent. First, our Lord came with alacrity. The work of our Redeemer was no forced work. He was sent, but He willingly came-- "Down from the shining seats above With joyful haste He fled." "Lo, I come to do Your will, O God," He said. He came cheerfully among the sons of men. You that are sent of Christ must always go gladly to your service--never look as if you were driven to the field like oxen which love not the plow. God does not delight in a slavish spirit. If we serve Christ because of the yoke of duty, we shall serve badly. But when our service is our pleasure--when we thank God that to us is this Grace given that we should "preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ"--then we shall labor wisely, zealously and acceptably. Next, our Lord came with authority. The Lord God had sent Him. He had the Father at His back. Be sure that when Jesus sends you, you are invested with authority and they that despise you do it at their peril. Your blunders and mistakes are not authorized--but so far as you speak His Word with a desire for His Glory--he that receives you receives Christ, even as our Lord said, "He that receives Me receives Him that sent Me." God is with you, be not afraid--your Lord will not let your words fall to the ground. Our Lord came with ability, too. What did His ability consist in? Mainly in this--"The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, because He has anointed Me." This is also where your sufficiency must be found and you can have as much as you please of it. You cannot get every faculty of the brain, but you can have every influence of the Spirit. It may be you cannot reach the highest form of education or of utterance, but these things are not vital--God can speak by your stammering tongue, even as in the case of Moses. You shall do the Lord's work and do it well, if you are anointed of the Holy Spirit. He who does Christ's work in Christ's power works an abiding work which will eternally glorify God. He who sends us out into the world to carry the Gospel to every creature will give us Divine Grace to obey His bidding. Our Lord came with absorption. Jesus came, as I have said before, to do what He was sent to do and nothing else. He meddled with nothing beyond His vocation--every thought of His Manhood, every power of His Godhead He devoted to fulfilling the errand on which He came. His zeal had eaten Him up. He was covered with it as with a cloak. The Man Christ was all on fire and all on fire with one desire--that He might finish the work which His Father had given Him to do--for this joy He endured the Cross, despising the shame. Our Lord came with abiding resolve to go through with His mission to the end. He never thought of going back. He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem. He pressed through shame and through death to accomplish our redemption. In these days we shall not do much unless we have a desperate determination to persevere in the teeth of difficulties. Those who can go back will go back. Remember how Gideon proclaimed throughout the host that if any man was faint-hearted he might go home? So do we proclaim today--go home if you are wavering! If you do not love Christ enough to be resolved to serve Him to the last, what is the good of you? You will break down and lose us the victory at some important crisis. He that has been bought with the blood of Christ and knows it, feels that he must endure to the end--for only he that endures to the end shall be saved. We go because our Lord's sending constrains us. "Woe is unto me if I preach not the Gospel!" Woe is unto you if you do not teach the children, or speak to individuals, or write letters, or in some way fulfill your mission! IV. Bear with me a little, while I bid you CONSIDER HOW OUR LORD BEHAVED AS THE SENT ONE. Oh, that we may learn from Him how to fulfill our own mission! Our Lord began early. While He was yet a youth, He said, "Know you not that I must be about My Father's business?" As soon as ever a man is converted, he should enquire, "Lord, what will You have me do?" Young Believer, do not let many weeks pass over your head before you have attempted something for your Lord. I will correct that exhortation--I wish you would not let a single day pass away without your bearing testimony for your Master. But, next, our Lord waited very patiently. He was 30 years old before He preached openly. We do not know all that He did in the workshop at Nazareth. Is it not possible that He supported His widowed mother by His labor? We do not know, but of this we are sure, that it is the first duty of many young men to look after their parents. It is the duty of all to "show piety at home." Many Christian women will have done well if they have carried out home duties. She was a holy woman upon whose grave they placed this epitaph, "She made home happy." This is what Jesus did for the first 30 years of His life. He was doing the Father's will when He was a young Man at home. Though He did not preach, yet while He was working and learning He was carrying out the purpose for which He was sent. When the time came for Him to commence His more public service, He sought proper entrance into it. He did not blunder into God's work by a rush and a leap--He went to John to be baptized and to be publicly recognized as the Messiah. John was the porter and he opened the gate to the Good Shepherd who came in by the door and did not climb up some other way. He came to John who represented the prophetic chair of the Jewish Church and so He entered into His work as Minister in a lawful and proper way. I like our young friends, when they feel their time has come for public service, to begin in right style and due order, carrying out the Lord's mind in the Lord's way. Willfulness in beginning may throw a man out of gear as to his future work and it argues a spirit ill-prepared for acceptable service. That being passed, see how He labored at His work. He was always doing the Father's will. He worked all day and every day and everywhere, with everybody. Some Christian people can only render occasional service. They are very good at a Convention. They save up their holiness for meetings. At a religious gathering they are in fine form, but they are not everyday saints. The kind of person the Church needs most is the maid-of-all-work--the worker who can turn his hand to anything which Providence allots him and is glad to do so, however humbling it may be. My venerated grandmother owned a set of choice china, which, I believe, is, part of it, in existence today. Why does it exist now? It has seen little service! It only came out on high-days and holidays--maybe once in six months when ministers and friends came to tea. It was a very nice set of old china--too good for children to break. Some Christians are like that fine old ware--it would not do to use them too often. They are too good for everyday. They do not teach their servants and try to win the poor people in their own neighborhood to Christ--but they talk well at a Conference. Oh, you fine bits of egg-shell china, I know you! Don't fear! I am not going to break you. Yet I would somewhat trouble you by the remark that in the case of such ware as you are more pieces get broken in the cupboard than on the table! You will last all the longer if you get to work for Christ in everyday work. Jesus was not sent out for particular occasions and neither are you. We use our Lord for a thousand hallowed purposes and even so will He use us from time to time if we are but ready and willing. Notice about our Lord's service, that His prayers always kept pace with His work. This is where most of us fail. When our Lord had a long day's work, we find Him taking a long night's prayer. "I have so much to do," says one, "that I could not be long in prayer." That is putting the case upwards the wrong way! When you have most to do, you have most need to pray--and unless you keep up the proportion, your offering will fail in quality. The holy incense was sweet before God because in that sacred compound there was a proportion of each spice. And so, in our lives, there must be a due measure of Word, work, prayer and praise. I may say of prayer what one said of salt in the Scripture, "Salt without prescribing how much." Prayer can never be in excess. You can salt meat too much but you cannot salt your service too much with prayer. If you are accustomed to pray in your walk and works at all hours and seasons you do not err. There never will be in any of us a superfluity of devotion. God help you to be like His Son, who, though He was sent and had the Father with Him, yet could not live without prayer! May you not only feel your need of prayer but fill up that need abundantly! Once more, in all that Jesus did He remained in constant fellowship with the Father. He said, "He that sent Me is with Me." That is a beautiful sentence. Let me repeat it--"He that sent Me is with Me." The great Father had never to call to Jesus and say, "Come nearer. You are departing from Me. You are too busy with Mary and Lazarus and Peter and John and so You are forgetting Me." No, no. He did always the things that pleased God and He was always in communion with the great Father in everything that He did. "Ah!" says one, "it is hard to commune with God and be very busy." Yes, but it will prove harder, still, to have been very busy and not to have dwelt with God. It is easy to do much when you walk with God--and easier, still, to make a great fuss and do nothing because the Lord is away. To get near Omnipotence will not make you omnipotent, but it will make you feel Omnipotence working with you. Oh, that we might thus dwell with God as Jesus did, for He has sent us for this, even as the Father sent Him! I would leave with you four words. We are sent, therefore whenever we try to press Christ upon men we are not guilty of intrusion. We have sometimes known strangers asked in this place about their souls, by certain of our friends, and they have grown angry at such a question. This is very silly of them, is it not? But I hope the friend who meets with an angry answer will not be at all hurt. You are not intrusive though the angry person says you are. You are sent and where Jesus sends you, you have a right to go. The postman frequently knocks at the door as late as ten o'clock. I suppose you need to be asleep. Do you cry out--"How dare you make that noise?" No, he is the postman--an officer of Her Majesty--and he is sent out with the last mail and must deliver the letters. You cannot blame him for doing that for which he is sent! Go and knock at the doors of the careless and the sleepy! Give them a startling word. Do not let them perish for lack of a warning or an invitation. Go on without fear--your commission is your warrant--if Jesus has sent you, you have a right to speak even to princes and kings! Next, we are sent, therefore we dare not ran away. If Jesus bids us go forward, we must not retreat. If what we have preached and taught is of God, if we are ridiculed for it let us take no notice but steam ahead. Put more coals in the furnace! Get the steam up and go faster than ever in the same course. We defy the devil to stop us for we are sent! Next, we are sent, therefore we are sure to be helped. Our King never sends a servant on an errand at his own charges. Our own power fails us, but He never allows His power to fail us when engaged in His service. Those who are sent shall be sustained! But, if we are sent, remember, lastly, we have to give an account. Our Lord does not call for the timesheet every night, but a timesheet is kept, all the same--and there will be a day for passing in the checks and we shall have to answer for what we have done. I speak not now to you ungodly ones, whose account will be terrible at that Last Great Day. God save you! May you believe on Him whom God has sent! But now I speak to Christian people--you will have to render in your account and may God grant you may not have to make a lamentable return in this fashion--"On such a day so much wood, and on such a day so much hay, and on such a day so much stubble." Let there be down in your book nothing but gold, silver and precious stones--for it must all be tried with fire--and if you yourself are saved, if your work is burned up you will suffer loss. What pain to find your lifework to be a lot of wood, hay and stubble which will blaze furiously and die out in ashes! You know what I mean--so much time spent in planning frivolous amusements for the people, so much talent expended in teaching what is not the Gospel, so much zeal consumed upon matters which do not concern eternal things--all this will burn. Beloved, do your Master's work! Win souls! Preach Christ! Expound your Bibles! Pray men to be reconciled to God--plead with men to come to Christ! This kind of work will stand the fire and when the Last Great Day shall dawn, this will remain to glory and honor! God bless you, Brethren, for Christ's sake! PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- John 17. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--257, 258, 262. __________________________________________________________________ Scriptural Salvation A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 18, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "For the Scripture says, Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." Romans 10:11. THE shepherd on the hill is most of all anxious about his sheep--he cares for his cottage, he trains the woodbine around his porch, sows flowers before his door and digs his little plot of garden ground--but, since he is a shepherd, his chief thought follows his flock and especially any of the sheep that are wandering, or the lambs that are tender. Even so I feel that my main business is the saving of souls. I may fitly preach to you upon any Scriptural subject and I may minister to the delight of the family of the redeemed. I may lead them into the deep things of God--but my principal business must always be watching for souls. This one thing I do. When a city is to be stored for a siege it will be well for those who attend to the commissariat to lay in a proportion of everything that is necessary for human comfort and even a measure of certain luxuries--but it will be of first importance to bring in great quantities of corn. The necessities of life must be the chief provision. These we place in storehouses by the tons, whereas in other articles pounds may suffice. If there is a failure of bread, what will the people do? For this reason, I feel I must preach over and over again the plain Gospel of salvation by Divine Grace through faith in Christ Jesus! While I would withhold nothing that may minister to edification, to comfort, to growth or to the perfecting of the saints, yet, first and foremost in abundance, even to overflowing, I must gather for you the Bread of Life and set forth Christ Crucified as the sinner's only hope. Faith must be urged upon you, for without it there is no salvation. Paul, in this case, was acting upon this safe principle as he always did, for he is speaking of salvation in the plainest terms. His heart's desire and prayer for Israel was that they might be saved and he proved the truth of that desire by setting forth that which would save them--he keeps to faith in Christ--and hammers upon that nail to fasten it securely. I. I shall begin my sermon this morning by reminding you that HERE IS AN OLD-FASHIONED WAY OF PROOF--"The Scripture says." In this enlightened age little is made of Scripture. The tendency is to undermine men's faith in the Bible and persuade them to rest on something else. It is not so with us, as it certainly was not so with Paul. He enforced and substantiated his teaching by declaring, "The Scripture says." In this he follows the manner of Christ Jesus, our Lord. Though quite able to speak of Himself, our Lord continually referred to Holy Scripture. His first public sermon was based upon the Book of the Prophet Isaiah. All along to the very end He was always quoting the Old Testament. So did His Apostles. One is struck with their continual reference to Moses and the Prophets. While they set the Truth of God in a fresh light, they fell back continually upon the old Revelation. "As says the Scripture," "According to the Scriptures"--these are phrases constantly repeated. Paul declared that he spent his life "witnessing both to small and great, saying no other things than those which the Prophets and Moses did say should come." Evidently they regarded the statements of Scripture as conclusive. They took counsel of the Scriptures and so they ended the matter. "It is written," was to them proof positive and indisputable. "Thus says the Lord," was the final word--enough for their mind and heart--enough for their conscience and understanding. To go beyond Scripture did not occur to the first teachers of our faith. They heard the Oracle of Divine Testimony and bowed their heads in reverence. So it ought to be with us! We have erred from the faith and we shall pierce ourselves through with many sorrows unless we feel that if the Scripture says it, it is even so. "Holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit," and therefore they spoke not erroneously, nor even dubiously. In the passage before us we have an instance of Inspiration endorsing Inspiration and building thereon. Paul wrote by the direction of the Holy Spirit. He was himself a fully inspired man and he had no lack of original speech--yet he falls back upon the Scripture. He calls the Old Testament to bear witness to the doctrine of the New and in the same act expresses the agreement of the New with the Old. How far have they diverged from the Christian spirit, who begin to question the authenticity and authority of the books of Moses and the Prophets! Brothers and Sisters, had Paul been without Inspiration, he was so great a saint and so eminent a confessor that his reverence for the Old Testament would have been a lesson to us! But since we believe this Epistle to have been Inspired of the Holy Spirit we are bound, as by Divine Law, to treat the ancient Scriptures as the great Apostle treated them, namely, with absolute deference, regarding them as the sure Word of the Lord. To us it matters not what critics may say to shake faith in Holy Writ--their efforts will be all in vain if we are intimate with the Author of these books and by His Holy Spirit possess a personal sense of His truth, His wisdom and His faithfulness. After God has spoken, it little concerns us what the wise men of the world may have to say. They have always spoken against the Word of the Lord--and they have always spoken in vain--and so will they speak even to the world's end. Paul, in saying here, "For the Scripture says," is referring, I think, to the general sense of Scripture rather than to any one passage. There are several texts from which it may be gathered that Believers shall not be put to shame, such as, "They looked unto Him, and were lightened: and their faces were not ashamed." But if the Apostle is referring to any one passage of the Old Testament, he is not quoting it verbatim but he is expounding it and giving its general sense. Assuming that he refers to Isaiah 28:16, I am glad of the lesson which he affords us in a kind of instructive criticism. When the Spirit of God Himself deals with Scripture, we can gather from His example how we may deal with it. It is best, as far as possible, to quote the very words of Scripture, lest we should err, but we have, here, a permit to quote the clear and evident sense--and we are allowed to regard that sense as equally authoritative with the exact words. Paul quotes, if he quotes at all, from the Septuagint translation rather than from the Hebrew, thus sanctioning a translation. Let us read the words in Isaiah 28:16. "Therefore thus says the Lord God, Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation, a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believes shall not make haste." You see at once the difference between the text as Paul gives it to us and the original Hebrew. Observe, first, that under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, Paul reads the passage in its largest sense. The original text is, "He that believes," but Paul makes it, "Whoever believes." That is the true meaning. "He that believes," means any "he" that believes. And to make this fact clear, Paul says, "Whoever believes." We ought to take the promises of Holy Scripture in their widest possible application. When we meet with a passage distinctly referring to one person only, we are allowed to remember that no Scripture is exhausted by one fulfillment. You, being like that person and in similar circumstances to him, may quote the promise as made to you--for it is intended for the whole class of persons of whom that one person is the representative. "He that believes," is, in Paul's judgment--no, in the judgment of the Holy Spirit--tantamount to, "Whoever believes." A promise made by man will legally be interpreted in its narrowest sense--but a promise made by God may always be taken in its major sense, since God's thoughts are higher than our thoughts and His ways than our ways. Everything it will honestly bear, you may pile upon the back of a Divine promise! God loves to see faith taking Him at His word and He will do for it exceeding abundantly above what we ask or even think. Next, note that Paul reads the verse with the context. In the Hebrew it is, "He that believes," but Paul reads it, "Whoever believes on Him." Did he do right to supply the, "on Him"? Certainly, since he thus gives the sense of the quotation as it stands in the Prophet. I said before that Paul is not quoting verbatim et literatim--he aims at giving the sense of the passage and, therefore, paraphrases it so as to remind you of its connection. "On Him" is necessary to a perfect quotation of the passage as it stands. Let us read again: "Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner stone, a sure foundation: he that believes"--evidently it is, "He that believes" in this foundation--"shall not make haste." That foundation is not an "it," but an "Him," for it refers to Christ. Expressions separated from that which comes before them and follows after them, may not express the writer's mind and, therefore, when we quote from Holy Scripture we should endeavor not merely to give the words which are actually in the text, but to add such words as duly set forth the context. This lesson is worth learning. Once more, the Apostle gives us the true and plain meaning of the text. He leaves the figure which was suitable for Isaiah, but might have been misunderstood by the Romans, and he gives the sense intended by Isaiah in plainer language. The Prophet said, "He that believes shall not make haste." That "making haste," means being fluttered and alarmed and so being led to run from the foundation. Such a person fled in haste because he was ashamed of his hope. Paul puts aside the drapery of the metaphor to let the uncovered sense stand out boldly! He expounds the Scripture under Infallible guidance and gives its meaning to us in this form, "Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." The true sense of the passage our Apostle uses by way of argument--he enforces the promise of the Gospel by the teaching of the Prophet. Dear Friend, when you go to win souls, go with a clear understanding of the Scriptures and then quote those Scriptures frequently if you would have power over the minds of men. Do not think to convince sinners by your own fine phrases, but use the words which the Holy Spirit teaches. If you want to bring souls to faith in Christ, remember that faith is begotten by the Word--"faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God." The more of the true sense of the Word of God we can compress into our exhortations, the more likely shall we be to succeed in our gracious design. This is Paul's mode of argument, "the Scripture says"--and we know no better. II. And now, secondly, we have before us A SIMPLE STATEMENT OF THE WAY OF SALVATION--"The Scripture says, Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." The way of salvation is to believe on Christ, whom God has laid in Zion for a foundation. What is believing on Him? It is trusting in Him. The language is not "Believe Him"-- such belief is a part of faith but not the whole. We believe everything which the Lord Jesus has taught, but we must go a step further and trust Him. It is not even enough to believe in Him as being the Son of God and the Anointed of the Lord--we must believe on Him, just as in the building (for that is the figure used by Isaiah) the builder takes his stone and lays it on the foundation. There it rests with all its weight--there it abides. The faith that saves is not believing certain Truths of God nor even believing that Jesus is a Savior--but it is resting on Him, depending on Him, lying with all your weight on Christ as the foundation of your hope. Believe that He can save you! Believe that He will save you! At any rate, leave the whole matter of your salvation with Him in unquestioning confidence. Depend upon Him without fear as to your present and eternal salvation. This is the faith which saves the soul. Notice, next, that this faith is believing on a Person--"He that believes on--it"? No! On, "Him." Our faith is not based on a doctrine, or a ceremony, or an experience--but on "Him!" Our Lord Jesus Christ is God. He is also Man-- He is the appointed and anointed Savior. In His death He is the Propitiation for sin. In His Resurrection He is the justification of His people. And in His intercession He is the eternal guarantee of their preservation. Believe "on Him." Our faith fixes herself upon the Person of the Lord Jesus as seen in His sufferings, His offices and His achievements. "Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." The text refers to the truth of the trusting. The Apostle does not say, "Whoever believes on Him with full assurance, or with a high degree of confidence shall not be ashamed." No, it is not the measure of our faith, but the sincerity of our faith which is the great question! If we believe on Him at all we shall not be ashamed. Our faith may be very trembling and this will cause us sorrow--but a trembling faith will save. The greater your faith, the more comfortable for you. But if your faith is small as a grain of mustard seed, it will save you. If your faith can only touch the hem of the Savior's garment behind Him, it will heal your soul, for, "Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." Is there not blessed comfort about this assurance? Observe, again, that all depends upon the presence of this trusting and not upon the age of it. "He that believes on Him"--this relates to the immediate present. Perhaps the truster has only believed on Jesus during the last five minutes. Very well, he does believe on Him and he shall not be ashamed! Some of us are glad to remember that we were built on the sure Foundation more than 40 years ago. But the length of years during which we have believed does not enter into the essence of the matter--Believers are saved whether their faith has lasted through half a century or half an hour. "Whoever believes on Him," takes in the convert of this morning as well as the hero of a thousand fights. My newly-believing Friend, I am sorry you have put off faith so long but, still, I am greatly glad that you have believed at all--for your faith shall not be put to shame! One other remark needs to be made before I leave this point. Note the Object of faith. "Whoever believes on Him." Nothing else is mentioned in connection with the Lord Jesus, who is the sole Foundation. It is not written, "He that believes on Jesus nine parts out of ten and on himself for the other tenth." No! "Whoever believes on Him"--on Him alone. Jesus will never be a part Savior! We must not rest in part upon what we hope to do in the future, nor in part upon the efficacy of an outward ceremony. No! The faith must be "on Him." Both feet must be on the Rock of Ages. The whole stone must rest on the Foundation. Take Christ to be the sole Savior of your soul! I saw written at the foot of a cross in France, "SPES UNICA"--"Jesus is the lone hope of men." There is but one star in your sky, Sinner, and that star is the Star of Bethlehem! There is but one light for the tempest-tossed mariner on the stormy sea of conviction of sin--and that Light is the Pharos of the Cross. Look there! Look there! Only there-- "For the Scripture says, Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." Now if any soul here perishes, it will not be my fault. However feebly I may preach this morning, I shall go home satisfied that I have set before you enough for your salvation, if you are willing and obedient. I have most plainly set before you the way of salvation. What more can I do? I can bring the horse to water but I cannot make him drink! I can set the Water of Life before you, but I can do no more if you turn away from Him. If you accept the Lord Jesus and believe on Him you shall not be ashamed--but if you put Him far from you, you will die in your sins--and your blood will be upon your own heads! III. So I pass on to the third point--THE GLORIOUS PROMISE TO THOSE WHO OBEY THE GOSPEL. "The Scripture says, Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." Take the Hebrew form of it first--"shall not make haste." When a man builds his hope upon the Lord Christ he is not driven into worry and hurry. He quietly walks with God and does not hasten through fear. They say that the floods are out, that the winds are howling, that the rains are descending--he that trusts in a refuge of lies may well make haste to flee--but he that has built his house upon the rock, quietly answers, "The flood is coming. I supposed it would. The rains are falling. I expected that they would. The winds are blowing. I was forewarned of the tempest and I am prepared for it by being on the rock!" His house will stand. He will never be ashamed of its foundation. In patience he possesses his soul-- "Calm 'mid the bewildering cry; Confident of victory." The Holy Spirit's reading of the Holy Spirit's Word in the Old Testament is, "He shall not be ashamed," and this means that he shall not be ashamed at any time by discovering that he has been deluded. Men are ashamed when their hopes fail. If a man has an expectation of eternal life and all of a sudden he sees his hope dashed to shivers, is he not ashamed? If on his dying bed his confidence should turn out to be based on a falsehood, how ashamed he will be! He will then say, "I am ashamed to think I did not take more care. I am ashamed that I followed my own judgment instead of God's Word." They shall lie down in sorrow who find their hope to be as a spider's web. It will be an awful thing in our last moments, when we most need comfort, to be driven to despair by the wreck of our confidence! If any of you are trusting in your gold, it will turn out to be a poor confidence when you are called upon to leave all earthly things. I have heard of one, who, on his deathbed laid bags of money to his heart--but he was forced to lay them away and cry, "These will not do! These will not do!" It will be a sorry business if we have been trusting in our good temper, our charity, our patriotism, our courage, or our honesty and when we come to die shall be made to feel that these cannot satisfy the claims of Divine Justice or give us a passport to the skies! How sad to see robes turn to rags and comeliness into corruption! How wretched to regard one's self as covered with a garment fit for Christ's great wedding feast and then to wake out of a dream and find one's self naked! You will never have this vexation of spirit if you take Christ Jesus to be your confidence. So far from being ashamed, you will boast in the crucified Savior! Yes, you will vow with Paul, "God forbid that I should glory save in the Cross of our Lord Jesus Christ." Furthermore, dear Friends, he that believes on Christ shall not be ashamed to admit his faith. This is a sharp saying and it cuts as a razor. I wish it would make a great gash in cowardly spirits. "Whoever believes on him shall not be ashamed." Some think they believe on Christ and yet they are ashamed to admit their faith in the Lord's appointed way or, indeed, in any way. If they are in ungodly company, they do with their faith as they do with their dog when a friend comes in--they say, "Lie down, Sir." Because it is inconvenient to be known to be a Believer they treat the Lord Christ as they would treat a dog. Some of you have never made a confession of your Lord--what will become of you? "Oh," you say, "do not say hard things!" I do not say them out of my own head--let me read the passage to you from verse ten--"For with the heart man believes unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, Whoever believes on him shall not be ashamed." What is the meaning of the whole passage? I cannot shut my eyes to the Truth of God--that it speaks of confessing Christ--and declares that he who really believes on him will not be ashamed of it. If you, my Hearer, are ashamed of your Lord, your faith is not real! Or, to say the least of it, you have cause to suspect that it is not. If you are ashamed, you are an unbeliever for, "Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." The Christian's song is-- "I'm not ashamed to own my Lord, Or to defend His cause; Maintain the honor of His Word, The glory of His Cross." For my own part, I have often said and I cannot help repeating it yet again-- "Ever since by faith I saw the stream His flowing wounds supply, Redeeming lo ve has been my theme, And shall be tiil I die." I am not ashamed of my hope! I love to state it, to glory in it and to make it widely known. I heard of a "modern-thought" minister of some repute, that a person asked him, "Sir, what is your theory of the Atonement?" He replied, "My dear Sir, I have never told that to any living person, although I have been a preacher for years. And I am not going to commit myself now." He seemed to think that this was rather a wise thing. My course runs in the opposite direction--I believe in the vicarious Sacrifice of Christ and I am not ashamed of the old-fashioned doctrine. "He loved me and gave Himself for me"--why should I be ashamed to admit it? I will not believe anything that I dare not preach! I have a grave suspicion that it will go ill at last with the man who has one faith for the public and another for himself! We should be ashamed at being ashamed of Christ and His Truth! Still, this is not all the meaning of our text--the Believer shall have no cause to be ashamed. Let me try to illustrate this assertion. We shall not be ashamed because our faith is proved to be unreasonable. When a man is convicted of believing an absurdity, he is ashamed. But there is nothing unreasonable in the Truth that, "God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life." I will not say that reason teaches this grand fact--for reason could not reach so high! This Truth of God is above reason, but it is not contrary to reason. When you get some idea of the Infinite goodness and justice of God, it will not seem unreasonable that He should be willing to forgive sinners, nor unreasonable that He should devise a way by which He can do this without injury to His moral government. There is a sweet reasonableness in the provision of a Substitute for guilty men and a still sweeter reasonableness in the salvation of those who believe in the Lamb of God. In fact the Gospel system is so blessedly reasonable that when it comes home to the enlightened understanding it carries the mind by storm! I have seen love at first sight with many a man who, for the first time, has heard how God is "just, and the Justifier of him which believes in Jesus." It has seemed so Godlike a method that the man has accepted it at once! It bore its proof on its face. Next, we are not ashamed because our faith has been disproved, for it has never been disproved. No man has been able to prove that the Son of God was not here on earth and that He did not die on the Cross, the "Just for the unjust, to bring us to God." The Resurrection has never been disproved, nor the Ascension, nor the descent of the Holy Spirit. Nothing has overthrown Apostolic testimony! To quibble at a statement is not to disprove it. To make it a matter of coarse jest is not to disprove it. The Apostles and their companions bore public witness and died because of their solemn conviction of the truth of their testimony! They were simple men who could not have invented the Gospel story if they could--and they were good men who would not have invented it if they could. Until men can prove that there was no Christ and no propitiation for sin, we shall not be ashamed to believe on Him. We shall never be ashamed of believing on Jesus, because by experience we shall find it to be unsatisfactory to our conscience. No, no! We are more than content with the ground of our trust in this respect. Well do I remember when I first gripped the thought that Jesus suffered in my place and that I, looking to Him, was saved. I felt a peace like a river, ever flowing, ever deepening, ever widening. My former trouble had arisen from the question--how could God, as a righteous Judge, pass by my violation of His holy Law? Sin is not to be viewed as a personal offense to God, as a Being, but a rebellion against His Laws as the Judge of all the earth, who must do right. How could He wink at sin? How could He treat the guilty as the innocent? When I saw that He did not wink at sin, but that Jesus came to vindicate the Divine Law by suffering in our place, I rested with all confidence on that blessed fact! My heart said, "It is enough," and today it still cries, "It is enough." My conscience has never raised a question about the security furnished by the ransom of the Lord Jesus. My heart remains perfectly at ease now she knows that "He His own self bore our sins in His own body on the tree." If the Nature of God had not required an atonement for sin, the conscience of the sinner might have needed it! The righteous apprehension of conscience as to wrath to come demands a vindication of the Law. Because we have this vindication in Christ we are not ashamed. We are not ashamed of the Gospel of salvation by faith in Christ because it proves inoperative upon our lives. I remember the witty clergyman Sidney Smith who managed to come into collision with the Methodists--he charged them with so much preaching faith that good works were at a discount! Surely he never heard Mr. Wesley! I venture to say that the Methodists produced more good works than Mr. Smith's preaching ever did! If any say to us, "This faith of yours takes you off from trusting in works," we answer, "It does--but it does not take us off from practicing them." Faith is the mother of holiness and the nurse of virtue. The lives of the Puritans who taught the Gospel of faith in Christ were infinitely preferable to the lives of those Cavaliers who believed in human merit. The fact is that men who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ have even been ridiculed for being too righteous and rated for a sort of moroseness of morality! But history has never afforded the least support to the charge that they were indifferent to morality. Indifferent to morality? We never knew what holiness was until we believed in Jesus! We had no aspirations after purity till we were saved by Him! The spiritual effect of faith in Jesus is of the noblest. Oh that we could display more of it! We are not ashamed to challenge investigation as to the philanthropic effect of faith in the Gospel. If anyone should sneer and say, "You Believers think yourselves saved and so you are comfortably unconcerned as to what becomes of others." I should answer, "What a lie!" We love the souls of men and we have proved it in our ministry and in our incessant efforts to save them! We have gone with breaking heart and bowed head because certain of our hearers remain in unbelief! I can appeal to you all, that my ministry has been full of earnest expostulations, affectionate appeals and tearful entreaties. God is our witness how truly we can say our heart's desire and prayer to God for others is that they may be saved! We are not ashamed to say that the ministry of those who believe alone in Christ and who know assuredly that they are saved by Divine Grace, has about it, as a rule, a greater power to win souls than the ministry of those who preach other gospels. We say no more, lest we become fools in glorying. We are not ashamed of our hope on this ground. We are never ashamed of it, again, as to its operation upon others. When I look back through my life, having preached nothing in this place but faith in Christ as the way of salvation, I can, without any effort of memory, remember many drunkards made sober, harlots made chaste, lovers of pleasure made lovers of God! Many have been reclaimed from among the poorest and most degraded and some from the rich and vicious. We have seen what faith in God has done by lifting them from the level of selfishness to the heights of Divine Grace. If we had to go down into the worst slum of London we would not wish for anything better than to preach Christ Crucified--and if we had to visit the wildest hells of the West End, we would not wish for any theme more powerful than the Cross of our Lord Jesus! "Believe and live" is still a charm most potent. We have no cause to be ashamed of what the Truth of God has done in ages past and is doing even at this day. I will tell you when we should be ashamed of our hope and that would be if we saw it repudiated by dying saints. It is all very well to be a Believer when you are young, in health and can go about your business--but how will it fare with men and women when they are called to go upstairs and suffer--and never to come down again till carried to their long home? How does the Gospel serve them when they know that they cannot live another week? What is the condition of Believers on the brink of the grave? Those who believe in Jesus are calm and happy! Frequently they are exultant and the bed can scarcely hold them because of their supreme joy in the prospect of being with their Lord! I am not telling you idle tales, Brothers and Sisters. Many of you know that I speak the truth--for it is of your own relatives that I am speaking of now. Our people die well. We have no occasion to be ashamed. Tested by the dying of our fellow Believers, we are not ashamed of the Gospel! We might be ashamed, once more, if we could be outbid in our prospects by some other system. What form of religion offers more to the Believer than the system of Grace and simple faith in Jesus? Nowhere in the world, that I know of, is there any other system of religion which promises sure salvation to its followers. The Roman Catholic system does not at all provide for present and everlasting salvation. What does it provide for? For your getting out of "purgatory" in due time and no more. When I was in the Church of St. John Lateran, at Rome, I read a request for prayer for the repose of the soul of his Eminence, Cardinal Wiseman. Now Cardinal Wiseman was a great man, a prince of the church, but yet he is somewhere in the other world where he is not in repose--so this request indicates. That must mean a very poor outlook for an ordinary Catholic! For my part I would give up so cheerless a hope and become a Believer in the Lord Jesus Christ and go to Heaven! "Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." When the best Catholic finds himself in "purgatory" he will be ashamed and will say, "Oh, that I had taken to the way of trust in the all-sufficient merit of the Lord Jesus, for then I should have been covered with His righteousness and should have been with Him where He is." Beloved Friends, our rivals do not outbid us! Our Gospel brings immediate pardon for every sin, a gracious change of Nature, the regeneration of the heart and the preservation of the soul to Christ's eternal kingdom and glory. Hallelujah! IV. I have done, when I say to you, lastly, that in my text we see A WIDE DOOR OF HOPE FOR THE SEEKER. Read that word, "whoever," whoever, whoever. I must keep on ringing that silver bell! It rings in the 13th verse-- "Whoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved." It rings in the text--"Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." No secret decree has ever been made to shut out any soul that believes on Him! God has not spoken in secret, in a dark place of the earth and said, "Such a man may believe in Christ and yet he shall be lost." Do not be afraid of this, for it is impossible! No measure of sin in your past life can deprive you of this promise. "Whoever believes on Him," though he had been a murderer, or a thief, or a drunkard, or an adulterer, or a liar, or a blasphemer--he shall find his faith removing his sins through the blood of Jesus and renewing his heart by the Holy Spirit. "Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." Says one, "I shall always be ashamed that I have so greatly transgressed." Yes, I know, but still you shall be so perfectly pardoned that your sin shall be blotted out and you shall not remember the shame of your youth. "But I do not feel as I ought," says one. You shall feel aright if you will believe on Him. You shall not be shut out of the promise through any lack of sensitiveness. It is not said, "Whoever believes on Him and is sensitive to a high degree shall be saved." No--"Whoever believes on Him." You ought to be sensitive. You ought to be tender. You ought to be grieved for sin and you shall be if you believe on Him. If you believe on Jesus, He will give you true repentance and deep self-abhorrence--but you must come to Jesus for these things and not try to find them in your own depraved hearts. Nothing limits this "whoever"! "Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." "Alas," cries one, "I have a strong besetting sin, I have a hot temper, or fierce lusts, or a desperate thirst for drink." Yes, I know. But if you believe on Him you shall not be ashamed, for these shall be conquered and destroyed. You shall be helped to fight against them until you get a complete victory and so you shall never be ashamed. "Ah," says one, "but I once made a profession and I have gone back." Yes, but, "whoever" does not shut out the wanderer! Backsliding is a great and bitter evil but he that believes is justified from every sin. "Though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow. Though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool." Come, then, with your heaped-up sins and be unburdened! Come, though seven devils dwell within you! Come to have them driven out and yourself made white in the blood of the Lamb! Come, for you shall not be ashamed! Let no man stand back and say, "I dare not come." Remember the word of the Savior, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." "In no wise." That is, for no possible reason. "Oh, but my birth was shameful." I may be speaking to one who is illegitimate. This is no barrier, for children of shame may be made heirs of Glory! The Lord rejects none, however uneducated, coarse or dull they may be. Neither does race offer hindrance. Be you an Englishman or a Chinaman, there is no difference. White, black, brown, red, or blue--still does the promise stand--"Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." There is no distinction as to rank, name, class, or reputation. "Oh, but look at my occupation!" I am sorry if it is an evil profession--get out of it and do something honest--but whatever you may be by trade, come to Jesus and believe on Him, for, "Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." "Alas, I am too old!" says another. What are you? Two hundred? "No, not so old as that." Then you are still under age! Never mind how old you are--"Whoever believes on Him shall not be ashamed." If you have one foot in the grave, faith may put both feet on the Rock of Ages! You are yet on praying ground and pleading terms with God, therefore come to Jesus, for He has said, "Him that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out." Come with your little faith, your trembling hope and believe on the Lord Jesus and you shall not be ashamed! Lastly, in that day when the earth and Heaven shall melt and nothing shall be seen but Christ upon the Throne, judging all the earth, those who have not believed in Him will be ashamed. They will have no excuse to offer--they have none even now! They will be ashamed, then, that they did not take the counsel of their godly friends and heed the pleadings of their minister. They will be ashamed to think how they put off thoughts of Christ and lingered until they found themselves in Hell! The face of the Lord Jesus will be terrible to unbelievers to the last degree! One young person, in great trouble of soul, said to me the other day, "When I am lost, I shall always see your face--it will accuse and condemn me." She will not be lost, dear girl--I trust she will soon find peace with God through Jesus Christ. It will be terrible, for those who refuse the Gospel, even to remember the preacher of it--but infinitely more so to see the face of Him who bled and died and loved unto the uttermost. Oh, to think, "I would not have Him! I would not be saved by Him! I preferred to trust to myself or not to think at all--and now here I am." Assuredly, the flames of Hell will be more tolerable than a sight of His face! The bitterest wail of Tophet is this--"Hide us from the face of Him that sits upon the Throne!" You sinners seek His face, whose wrath you cannot bear. God help you to seek it now! Before you leave this house may you seek it and find it! He says, "Seek you My face." May God the Holy Spirit lead you to obey the call. Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Romans 10. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--907, 118, 531. __________________________________________________________________ Joy, Joy Forever A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, MAY 25, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "But let all those that put their trust in You rejoice: let them always shout for joy, because You defend them: let those also that love Your name be joyful in You." Psalm 5:11. "THE Lord does put a difference between the Egyptians and Israel." There is an ancient difference which He has made in His eternal purpose and this is seen in every item of the Covenant of Grace. "The Lord has set apart him that is godly for Himself." But it is also written, "The foolish shall not stand in Your sight: You hate all workers of iniquity." You that have believed are of the house of Israel and heirs according to promise, for they that are of faith are the true seed of faithful Abraham. See that you make manifest this difference by the holiness of your lives. "Come out from among them and be you separate, says the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing." Display this difference always by the joyfulness of your spirits. Let not noisome cares invade you, for we read, "I will sever in that day the land of Goshen, in which My people dwell, that no swarms of flies shall be there." Fear not that the wrathful judgment of God will fall indiscriminately, for we read, "Only in the land of Goshen, where the children of Israel were, was there no hail." The servants of the Lord should wear the royal garments--those garments are made of the fine cloth of holiness, trimmed with the lace of joy! Take care that you exhibit both holiness of character and joyfulness of spirit, for where these two things are in us, and abound, they prove that we are not barren nor unfruitful. To us there should be joy to strikingly contrast with the unrest of the unbeliever. Over all the land of Egypt there was darkness which might be felt, even thick darkness, for three days--"They saw not one another, neither rose any from his place for three days--but all the children of Israel had light in their dwellings." If it is so with you, that the Lord has given you the light of joy, let your faces shine with it! If you walk in the light as God is in the light, go forth and let men see the brightness of your countenances and take knowledge of you that you have been with Jesus and have learned of Him His gracious calm as well as His holiness. "Rejoice in the Lord always." Your Lord desires that your joy may be full. He gives you a joy which no man takes from you--it is His legacy. "Peace I leave with you, My peace I give unto you: not as the world gives, give I unto you." The subject for this morning is joy, the joy of faith, the joy which is the fruit of the Spirit from the root of trust in God. May we not only talk about it at this hour, but enjoy it now and always! It is pleasant to read and hear and think about joy--but to be filled with joy and peace through believing is a far more satisfying thing! I want you to see not only the sparkling fountain of joy, but to drink deep drafts of it--yes, and drink all week and all month, and all the year-- and all the rest of your lives, both in time and in eternity! "Let the children of Zion be joyful in their King." I. First, let us speak a little upon THE KIND OF JOY WHICH IS ALLOTTED TO BELIEVERS--"Let all those that put their trust in You rejoice: let them always shout for joy, because You defend them: let those also that love Your name be joyful in You." Note, first, concerning this joy, that it is to be universal to all who trust-- "Let all those that put their trust in You rejoice." This is not only for the healthy, but for the sick--not only for the successful, but for the disappointed. It is not only for those who have the bird in the hand, but for those who only see it in the bush. Let all rejoice! If you have but a little faith, yet if you are trusting in the Lord, you have a right to joy. It may be your joy will not rise so high as it might do if your faith were greater but still, where faith is true, it gives sure ground for joy. O you babes in Divine Grace! You little children! You that have been newly converted and sadly feel your feebleness--rejoice, for the Lord will bless them that fear Him--"both small and great"! "Fear not, you worm, Jacob." "Fear not, little flock." There is a joy which is as milk to nourish babes--a joy which is not as meat with bones in it--for the Lord adds no sorrow to it. The little ones of the flock need not vex themselves concerning the deep things of God, for there is joy in those shallows of simple Truth where lambs may safely wade! The joy of the Lord is softened down to feeble constitutions lest it overpower them. The same great sea which floods the vast bays also flows into the tiny creeks. "Let all those that put their trust in You rejoice." You, Miss Much-Afraid over yonder, you are to rejoice! You, Mr. Despondency, hardly daring to look up--you must yet learn to sing. As for Mr. Ready-to-Halt, he must dance on his crutches and Feeble-Mind must play the music for him. It is the mind of the Holy Spirit that those who trust in the Lord should rejoice before Him. This joy, in the next place, is to be as constant as to time as it is universal as to persons. "Let them always shout for joy." Do not be content that a good time in the morning should be followed by dreariness in the afternoon! Do not cultivate an occasional delight--aim at perpetual joy! To be happy at a revival meeting and then go home to groan is a poor business. We should "feel like singing all the time." The Believer has abiding arguments for abiding consolation. There is never a time when the saint of God has not great cause for gladness--and if he never doubts and worries till he has a justifiable reason for distrust he will never doubt nor worry! "Rejoice in the Lord always and again"--what? "Always" and yet does the Apostle say, "and again"? Yes, he would have us rejoice and keep on rejoicing and then rejoice more and more! Brothers and Sisters, go on piling up your delights! You are the blessed of the Lord and His blessing reaches "unto the utmost bound of the everlasting hills." Next, let your joy be manifested. "Let them always shout for joy." Shouting is an enthusiastic utterance, a method which men use when they have won a victory--when they divide the spoil, when they bear home the harvest, when they tread the vintage--when they drain the goblet. Believers, you may shout for joy with unreserved delight! Some religionists shout and we would not wish to stop them--but we wish certain of them knew better what they were shouting for. Brothers and Sisters, since you know Whom you have believed and what you have believed and what are the deep sources of your joy, do not be so sobered by your knowledge as to become dumb! Imitate the children in the Temple, who, if they knew little, loved much and so shouted in praise of Him they loved. "Let them shout for joy." A touch of enthusiasm would be the salvation of many a man's religion. Some Christians are good enough people-- they are like wax candles--but they are not lit. Oh, for a touch of flame! Then would they scatter light and thus become of service to their families. "Let them shout for joy." Why not? Let not orderly folks object. One said to me the other day, "When I hear you preach I feel as if I must have a shout!" My Friend, shout if you feel forced to do so. [Here a Hearer cried, "Glory!"] Our Brother cries, "Glory!" and I say so, too. "Glory!" The shouting need not always be done in a public service, or it might hinder devout hearing--but there are times and places where a glorious outburst of enthusiastic joy would quicken life in all around. The ungodly are not half so restrained in their blasphemy as we are in our praise! How is this? They go home making night hideous with their yells. Are we never to have an outbreak of consecrated delight? Yes, we will have our high days and holidays and we will sing and shout for joy till even the heathens say, "The Lord has done great things for them." This joy is to be repeated with variations. One likes, in music, to hear the same tune played in different ways. So here you have it. "Let them rejoice. Let them always shout for joy. Let them be joyful in You." There is no monotony in real joy. In the presence of mirth one grows dull, but in living joy there is exhilaration. Commend me to the springing well of heavenly joy--its waters are always fresh, clear, sparkling--springing up unto everlasting life! Joy blends many colors in its one ray of light. At times it is quiet and sits still beneath a weight of glory. I have known it weep, not salt drops, but sweet showers. Have you never cried because of your joy in the Lord? Sometimes joy labors for expression till it is ready to faint and others it sings till it rivals the angels! Singing is the natural language of joy, but oftentimes silence suits it even better. Our joy abides in Christ whether we are quiet or shouting, whether we fall at our Lord's feet as dead, or lean on His bosom in calm delight. This joy is logical. When I was a child and went to school, I remember learning out of a book called, "Why and Because." Things one learns as a child stick in the memory and therefore I like a text which has a "because" in it. Here it is: "Let them always shout for joy, because You defend them." Emotions are not fired by logic and yet reasons furnish fuel for the flame. A man may be sad though he cannot explain his sadness, or he may be greatly glad though he cannot set forth the reasons for his joy. The joy of a Believer in God has a firm foundation--it is not the baseless fabric of a vision. The joy of faith burns like coals of juniper and yet it can be calmly explained and justified. The joyful Believer is no lunatic, carried away by a delusion--he has a "because" with which to account for all his joy--a reason which he can consider on his bed in the night watches, or defend against a scoffing world! We have a satisfactory reason for our most exuberant joy--"The Lord has done great things for us; thereof we are glad." Philosophers can be happy without music and saints can be happy despite circumstances. With joy we draw water out of deeper and fuller wells than such as father Jacob dug. Our mirth is as soberly reasonable as the worldling's fears. Once more, the happiness is a thing of the heart, for the text runs thus--"Let them that love Your name be joyful in You." We love God. I trust I am speaking to many who could say, "Lord, You know all things; You know that I love You." Is it not a very happy emotion? What is sweeter than to say, with tears in one's eyes--"My God, I love You, too!" To sit down and have nothing to ask for, no words to utter, but only for the soul to love--is not this heavenly? Measureless depths of unutterable love are in the soul and in those depths we find the pearl of joy. When the heart is taken up with so delightful an object as the ever-blessed God, it feels an intensity of joy which cannot be rivaled. When our whole being is steeped in adoring love, then Heaven comes streaming down and we rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory. I feel I am talking in a poor way about the richest things which are enjoyed by saintly men. Many of you know as much about these matters as I do, perhaps more. But my soul does even now magnify the Lord and my spirit does rejoice in God my Savior. Although I feel unworthy and unfit to speak to this vast throng, yet I have a great sympathy with my text, for I am "glad in the Lord."-- "Oh, what immortal joys I feel, And raptures al divine For Jesus tells me I am His, And my Belo ved mine!" If you sit before the Lord at this time and indulge your souls with an outflow of love to God and His Son Jesus Christ-- and at the same time perceive an inflowing of heavenly joy--it will not much matter how the poor preacher speaks to your ear, for the Lord Himself will be heard in your soul and Heaven will flood your being! II. Now I come to the second head, where we will consider THE GROUND AND REASON OF HOLY JOY. I am bound to speak upon this matter, for I have told you that the joy of the Believer is logical and can be defended by facts and so, indeed, it is. First, the Believer's joy arises from the God in whom He trusts. "Let all those that put their trust in You rejoice." When, after many a weary wandering, the dove of your soul has at last come back to the ark and Noah has put out his hand and "pulled her in unto him," the poor, weary creature is happy. Taken into Noah's hand and made to nestle in his bosom, she feels so safe, so peaceful! The weary leagues of the wild waste of waters are all forgotten, or only remembered to give zest to the repose. So, when you trust in God your soul has found a quiet resting place, a pavilion of repose! The little chick runs to and fro in fear. The mother hen calls it home. She spreads her soft wings over the brood. Have you ever seen the little chicks, when they are housed under the hen, how they put out their little heads through the feathers and peep and twitter so prettily? It is a chick's Heaven to hide under its mother's bosom! It is perfectly happy. It could not be more content. Its little chick nature is full to the brim with delight. This is your joy, also--"He shall cover you with His feathers and under His wings shall you trust: His Truth shall be your shield and buckler." My Nature gets all its needs supplied, all its desires gratified when it rests in God. Oh, you that have never trusted God in Christ Jesus, you do not know what real happiness means! You may search all the theatres in London and ransack all the music halls, clubs and public-houses, but you will find no happiness in any of their mirth, or show, or wine! True joy dwells where dwells the living God and nowhere else. In your own home with God, even though that home is only a single room and your meal is very scanty, you will see more of Heaven than in the palaces of kings! Have God for your sole trust and you shall never lack for joy! Our joy arises next from what the Lord does for us. "Let them shout for joy, because You defend them." God always guards His people from whomever may attack them. "The Lord is your keeper." Angels are our guardians, Providence is our protector--but God Himself is the Preserver of His chosen. "You shall not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flies by day; nor for the pestilence that walks in darkness; nor for the destruction that wastes at noonday." No fortress guards the soldier so well as God guards His redeemed. The God of our salvation will defend us from all evil. He will defend our souls. "Though an host should encamp against me, my heart shall not fear: though war should rise against me, in this will I be confident." Further, our joy arises out of the love we have towards our God. "Let them that love Your name be joyful in You." The more you love God, the more you will delight in Him. It is the profusion of a mother's love to her child which makes her take such delight in it. Her boy is her joy because of her love. If we loved Jesus better, we should be happier in Him. You do not, perhaps, see the connection between the two things--but there is a connection so intimate that little love to Christ brings little joy in Christ--and great love to Christ brings great joy in Christ. God grant that in a full Christ we may have a full joy! Do you see what I mean? When a man comes to God in Christ and says, "This Savior is my Savior. This Father is my Father. This God is my God forever and ever," then he has everything and he must be joyful! He has no fear about the past--God has forgiven him. He has no distress about the present--the Lord is with him. He is not afraid about the future for the Lord has said--"I will never leave you, nor forsake you." If you understand my text and put it into practice, you possess the quintessence of happiness, the essential oil of joy! He that has joy on his barn floor may see it bare! He that has joy in his wine vats may see them dry! He that has joy in his children may bury that joy in the grave! He that has joy in himself will find his beauty consume away--but he that has joy in God drinks from "the deep which lies under"--his springs shall always flow, "in summer and in winter shall it be." I have pointed to the deep sources from which the joy of the Believer wells up, but I must also add, it is by faith that this joy comes to us. Faith makes joyful discoveries. I speak to those of you who have faith. When you first believed in Christ you found that you were saved and knew that you were forgiven. Some little while after that you discovered that you were chosen of God from before the foundation of the world. Oh, the rapture of your soul when the Lord appeared of old unto you, saying, "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you"! The glorious doctrine of election is as wines on the lees well-refined to those who by faith receive it. It brings with it a new, intense and refined joy such as the world knows nothing of. Having discovered your election of God, you looked further into your justification--"for whom He called, them He also justified." What a pearl is justification! In Christ the Believer is as just in the sight of God as if he had never sinned! He is covered with a perfect righteousness and is accepted in the Beloved. What a joy is justification by faith, when it is well understood! What bliss, also, to learn our union to Christ! Believers are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones. Because He lives we shall live also. One with Jesus! Wonderful discovery, this! Equally full of joy is our adoption! "Beloved, now are we the sons of God," "And if children, then heirs; heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ." Faith thus heaps fuel on the fire of our joy, for it keeps on making discoveries out of the Word of the Lord! The more you search the Scriptures and the nearer you live to God, the more you will enjoy that great goodness which the Lord has laid up in store for them that fear Him. Though "eye has not seen, nor ear heard the things which God has prepared for them that love Him," yet, "He has revealed them unto us by His Spirit" and thereby He puts gladness into our hearts more than increasing corn and wine could bring! Furthermore, faith gives cheering interpretations. Faith is a Prophet who can charmingly interpret a fearsome dream. Faith sees a gain in every loss, a joy in every grief. Read aright and you will see that a child of God in trouble is on the way to greater blessing. Faith views affliction hopefully. Sorrow may come to us, as it did to David, as a chastisement for sin. Faith reads--"Whom the Lord loves He chastens and scourges every son whom He receives." Better to be chastened with God's children, here, than to be condemned with the world hereafter! Faith also sees that affliction may be sent by way of discovery to make the man know himself, his God and the promises better. Faith perceives that affliction may be most precious as a test, acting as does the fire when it shows what is pure gold and what is base metal. Faith joys in a test so valuable. Faith spies out the Truth of God that affliction is sent to develop and mature the Christian life. "Ah, well!" says Faith, "then, thank God for it. No trial for the present seems to be joyous, but grievous; nevertheless, afterwards it works out the peaceable fruit of righteousness in those that are exercised thereby." Faith sees sweet love in every bitter cup. Faith knows that whenever she gets a black envelope from the heavenly post office, there is treasure in it. When the Lord's black horses call at our door they bring us double loads of blessing. Up to this moment I, God's servant, beg to bear my unreserved testimony to the fact that it is good for me to have been afflicted. In spiritual life and knowledge and power, I have grown but little except when under the hand of trouble. I set my door open and am half-inclined to say to pain and sickness and sadness, "Turn in here, for I know that you will leave a blessing behind. Come, crosses, if you will, for you always turn to crowns." Thus faith glories in tribulations, also, and in the lion of adversity finds the honey of joy. I have said that trial comes to us as chastisement, as we see in the case of David--as a discoverer of Divine Grace, as we see in Abraham--or as a test, as we see in Job. It can also be a preventive, as in the case of Paul, who wrote, "Lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan to buffet me." In every tribulation God is moved by love to His people and by nothing else. If He cuts the vine with a sharp knife, it is because He would have fruit from it. If He whips His child till he cries, like David, "All the day long have I been plagued and chastened every morning," it is for his profit, that he may learn obedience by the things which he suffers. All things work together for the Believer's good--and so faith interprets sorrow itself into joy. Moreover, faith believes great promises. This opens other wells of joy. I cannot stop to quote them to you this morning, but the Book of the Lord is full of them. What more can the Lord say than He has said? The promises of God are full and as varied as they are full, and as sure as they are varied and as rich as they are sure. "Exceedingly great and precious promises." When I wrote "The Check Book of the Bank of Faith" I was at no loss to find a promise for every day in the year--the difficulty was which to leave out! The promises are like the bells on the garments of our Great High Priest forever ringing out holy melodies. When a man gets a promise fairly into the hand of faith and goes to God with it, he must rejoice! The children of the promise are, all of them, worthy to be called Isaac, that is, "Laughter," for God has made him to laugh who lives according to promise. To live on the promises of man would be starvation--but to live on the promises of God is to feed on fat things full of marrow! Above all, faith has an eye to the eternal reward. She rejoices in her prospects. She takes into her hands the birds which to others are in the bush. To be with Christ in Glory is the joy of hope, the hope which makes not ashamed. Our hope is no dream--as sure as we are here today, we who are trusting in Christ will be in Heaven before long--for He prays that we may be with Him where He is and may behold His Glory! Let us not wish to postpone the happy day! Shall our bridal day be kept back? No, let the Bridegroom speedily come and take us to Himself. What a joy to know that this head shall wear a crown of glory and these hands shall wave the palm branch of victory! I speak not of myself alone, my Brothers and Sisters, but of you, also, and of all them that love His appearing. There is a crown of life laid up for you which the righteous Judge will give you. Therefore, have patience a little while. Bear, still, your cross. Put up with the difficulties of the way, for the end is almost within sight-- "The way may be rough, but it cannot be long: So we'll smooth it with hope, and cheer it with song." May the Lord give us the ears of faith with which to hear the bells of Heaven ringing out from afar over the waters of time! Faith has always reason for joy since God is always the same, His promises are the same and His power and will to fulfill are the same. In an unchanging God we find unchanging reasons for joy! If we draw water from the well of God, we may draw one day as well as another and never find the water abated. But if we make our joy to depend in part upon creatures and circumstances, we may find our joy leak out through the cracks in the cistern. Last Sunday morning I cried out to you, "Both feet on the Rock! Both feet on the Rock!" and the words led one poor heart to try the power of undivided faith in God. This is the road to joy and there is no other! Drink waters from your own fountain and do not gad abroad after others. Is not the Lord enough for you? Is it not sufficient to say, "All my fresh springs are in You"? Neither life, nor death, nor poverty, nor sickness, nor bereavement, nor slander, nor death, itself, shall quench your joy if it is founded in God alone! III. We will look, for a minute or two, into a third matter which is THE FAILURES REPORTED CONCERNING THIS JOY. I think I hear somebody say, "It is all very well for you to tell us that Believers are joyful and have logical reasons for gladness, but some of them are about as dull as can be and create dullness in others." I am obliged to speak very carefully here, for I am afraid that certain Christians give cause for this objection. Let me say to some of you who love to raise objections, What do you know about this joy? Are you unbelievers? Well, then, you are out of court--you are not competent to judge. The griefs of Believers you do not know and with their joy you cannot intermeddle. You have no spiritual taste or discernment and what judgment can you form? A genuine Believer may be as happy as the angels and yet you may not know his joy because you are not in the secret. You have not a spiritual mind and the carnal mind cannot discern spiritual things. I would have you speak with bated breath when you talk on this matter. When a blind man goes to the Royal Academy, his criticisms on the pictures are not worth much, but they are quite equal in value to yours when you speak of spiritual things! You cannot know what joy in the Lord means for, alas, you are a stranger to such heavenly things. Alas, some professors of religion are mere pretenders--these have no joy of the Lord. To carry out their presence, these persons even imagine that it is necessary to pull a long face and to talk very solemnly, not to say dismally! Their idea of religion is that black is the color of Heaven. But, dear Friends, we cannot prevent hypocrites arising--it is only a proof that true religion is worth having. You took a bad half-sovereign the other night, did you? Did you say, "All half-sovereigns are worthless, I will never take another"? Of course not!--you became more careful--and you were quite sure that there were good half-sovereigns in currency, or else people would not make counterfeit ones. It would not pay anybody to be a hypocrite unless there were enough genuine Christians to make the hypocrites pass current. Therefore do not say too much about hypocritical weepers, lest you slander true men. Next, remember that some persons are constitutionally sad. They cried as soon as they were born. They cried when they cut their teeth and they have cried ever since. Their spirits are very low down and when the Grace of God gets into their hearts it lifts them a great deal to bring them up to a decent level of joy. Think of what they would have been without it! Many would have died in despair if it had not been for faith. The Grace of God has kept them up or they would have lost their reason. I am sorry there should be persons who have bad livers, feeble digestions, or irritated brains, but there are such. Pity them, even if you blame them. They must not so pity themselves as to make an excuse for their unbelief--but we must remember that often the spirit truly is willing, but the flesh is weak. When you have met with Christians who are not happy, did it never strike you that their depression might only be for a time under very severe trial? You may go to the South of France, where the days are sunny and you may happen to be there for a couple of days, only, and it may rain all the time--it would be unfair on that account to say that it is a gloomy place! So it may be that the Christian is under extreme pressure for the time and when that is moderated he will be very joyful. I do not excuse his loss of joy but still, there is a November of fogs in the year of most men. Judge no man by the day, but watch his spirit on a larger scale and see whether he does not usually delight himself in God. Moreover, I would like to say a very pointed thing to some people who charge the saints with undue sadness. May you not be guilty of making them so? There is an unkind, morose, wicked, drinking husband and he says, "My wife's religion makes her miserable." No. It is not her religion, but her husband! You are enough to make 20 people unhappy--you know you are--and therefore do not blame the poor woman, if, when she sees you, tears are in her eyes. Alas, when she thinks of your going down to Hell and knows that she will be parted from you forever, the more she loves you the more sad she is to think of you. "Oh," says some wild boy here, "my mother is wretched!" I do not wonder! I should be wretched, too, if you were my son! If any of you are living ungodly lives, it makes your parents' hearts ache to see you going headlong to perdition. Is it not abominable that a man should make another miserable and then blame him for being so? If you were but saved, how your mother's face would brighten up! If your father saw his boy turn to the Lord, he would be as happy as the birds in spring! Speak tenderly on this matter lest you accuse yourself! If you say that some Christians are unhappy, must you not also admit that many of them are very happy? I was once waited upon by an enthusiast who had a new religion to publish. Numbers of people have a crack which lets in new light and this man was going to convert me to his new ideas. After I had heard him, I said, "I have heard your story, will you hear mine?" When I talked to him of my lot and portion in the love of a Covenant God and the safety of the Believer in Christ, he said, "Now, Sir, if you believe all this, you ought to be the happiest man in the world." I admitted that his inference was true and then I said to him, which rather surprised him, "So I am. And I am going to be more so all the rest of my life." If a man is chosen of God from before the foundation of the world. If he is redeemed by the precious blood of Christ. If he is quickened by the Holy Spirit and renewed in the spirit of his mind. If he is one with Christ and on his way to Heaven--if he is not happy, he ought to be! Surely we ought to rejoice abundantly, dear Friends, for ours is a happy lot! "Happy are the people whose God is the Lord." If God's people are not happy at times, it is not their faith which makes them unhappy--ask them. It is not what you believe that makes you unhappy--it is your lack of faith, is it not? If a man begins to doubt, he begins to sorrow, but as far as his faith goes, he has joy. Oh, for more faith! Faith does create joy. We can answer all objections by the fact that "we that have believed do enter into rest." IV. I close by mentioning THE ARGUMENTS FOR ABOUNDING IN JOY. You cannot argue a man into gladness, but you may possibly stir him up to see that which will make him happy. First, you see in my text a permit to be glad-- "Let all those that put their trust in You rejoice." You have, here, a ticket to the banquets ofjoy! You may be as happy as ever you like. You have Divine permission to shout for joy! Yonder is the inner sanctuary of happiness. You cry, "May I come in?" Yes, if by faith you can grasp the text, "Let all those that put their trust in You rejoice." "But may I be happy?" asks one. "May I be glad? May I? Is there joy for me?" Do you trust in the Lord? Then you have your passport--travel in the land of light! But the text is not only a permit, it is a precept. When it says, "Let them shout for joy," it means that they are commanded to do so. Blessed is that religion wherein it is a duty to be happy! Come, you mournful ones, be glad! You discontented grumblers, come out of that dog house! Enter the palace of the King! Quit your dunghills! Ascend your thrones! The precept commands it--"Rejoice in the Lord always: and again I say, Rejoice." We have here more than a permit and a precept, it is a prayer. David prays it--the Lord Jesus prays it by David. Let them rejoice, let them be joyful in You! Will He not grant the prayer which He has inspired by causing us to rejoice through lifting upon us the light of His Countenance? Pray for joy yourself, saying with David, "Restore unto me the joy of Your salvation." The text might be read as a promise--"All those that put their trust in You shall rejoice." God promises joy and gladness to Believers. Light is sown for them--the Lord will turn their night into day. Listen to the following line of argument which shall be very brief. You only act reasonably when you rejoice. If you are chosen of God and redeemed by blood and have been made an heir of Heaven, you ought to rejoice. We pray you act not contrary to Nature and reason. Do not fly in the face of great and precious Truths of God. From what you profess, you are bound to be joyful. You will best baffle your adversaries by being happy. "They say." "They say"--let them say! "Rest in the Lord and wait patiently for Him." But the attack is cruel. No doubt it is, but the Lord knows all about it. Do not cease to rest in Him. If your heart is full of God's love you can easily bear all that the enemy may cast upon you. Abound in joy, for then you will behave best to those who are round about you. When a man is unhappy he usually makes other people so--and a person that is miserable is generally unkind and frequently unjust. It is often indigestion that makes a man find fault with his servants and wife and children. If a man is at peace with himself, he is peaceful with others. Get right within and you will be right without. One of the best medicines for a good temper is communion with God and consequent joy of heart. You yourself, also, if you are happy, will be strong--"The joy of the Lord is your strength." If you lose your joy in your religion, you will be a poor worker--you cannot bear strong testimony, you cannot bear stern trial--you cannot lead a powerful life. In proportion as you maintain your joy, you will be strong in the Lord, and for the Lord. Do you not know that if you are full of joy you will be turning the charming side of religion where men can see it? I should not like to wear my coat with the seamy side out--some religionists always do that. It was said of one great professor that he looked as if his religion did not agree with him. Godliness is not a rack or a thumbscrew. Behave not to religion as if you felt that you must take it, like so much medicine but you had rather not. If it tastes like nauseous medicine to you, I should fear you have got the wrong sort and are poisoning yourself! Believe not that true godliness is akin to sourness. Cheerfulness is next to godliness! "When you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, that you appear not unto men to fast." Weed out levity, but cultivate joy. Thus will you win other hearts to follow Jesus. Remember that if you are always joyful, you are rehearsing the music of the skies. We are going there very soon--let us not be ignorant of the music of its choirs. I should not like to crowd into my seat and hear the choirmaster say, "Do you know your part?" and then have to answer, "Oh, no, I have never sung while I was on earth, for I had no joy in the Lord." I think I shall answer to the choirmaster and say, "Yes, I have long since sung, 'Worthy is the Lamb'"-- "I would begin the music here And so my soul shall rise: Oh, for some heavenly notes, to bear My passions to the skies!" With joy we rehearse the song of songs! We pay glad homage now before Jehovah's Throne. We sing unto the Lord our gladsome harmonies and we will do so as long as we have any being. Pass me that score, O chief musician of the skies, for I can take it up and sing my part in bass, or tenor, or treble, or alto, or soprano as my voice may be! The key is joy in God! Whatever the part assigned us, the music is all for Jesus! May some of you that have never joyed in Jesus Christ learn how to praise Him today by being washed in His precious blood! You that have praised Him long, may you learn your score yet more fully and sing in better tune from now on and for evermore! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Psalms 4 and 5. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--136 (SONG I); 4; 103 (VERS. II). __________________________________________________________________ Noah's Faith, Fear, Obedience, and Salvation A Sermon (No. 2147) Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, June 1st, 1890, C. H. SPURGEON, At [1]the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark to the saving of his house; by the which he condemned the world, and became heir of the righteousness which is by faith." Hebrews 11:7. THE APOSTLE COULD NOT AVOID mentioning Noah; for in him faith shone forth eminently. He has placed him in due order of time after Abel and Enoch; but he had also another reason for the arrangement. These three ancient believers are declared in Holy Writ to have pleased God. Of Abel, it is said that God testified of his gifts. Enoch, before his translation, had this testimony, that he pleased God: and Noah "found grace in the eyes of the Lord." Again, it was meet that Noah should follow close upon Enoch, as one of two who are described as having "walked with God." "Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him"; and we read in the sixth chapter of Genesis, verse eight, that Noah also "walked with God." These two spent their lives in such constant communion with the Most High that they could be fully described as walking with God. Oh, that we may, through almighty grace, be so pleasing unto the Lord that we may abide in fellowship with him! We may take pleasure in thinking of Noah as a kind of contrast to Enoch. Enoch was taken away from the evil to come: he saw not the flood, nor heard the wailing of those who were swept away by the waterfloods. His was a delightful deliverance from the harvest of wrath which followed the universal godlessness of the race. It was not his to fight the battle of righteousness to the bitter end; but by a secret rapture he avoided death, and escaped those evil days in which his grandson's lot was cast. Noah is the picture of one who is the Lord's witness during evil days, and lives through them faithfully, enduring unto the end. It was his to be delivered from death by death. The ark was, so to speak, a coffin to him: he entered it, and became a dead man to the old world; and within its enclosure he was floated into a new world, to become the founder and father of a new race. As in the figure of baptism we see life by burial, so was it with this chosen patriarch; he passed by burial in the ark into a new life. In Enoch we see a type of those of God's people who will go home peacefully before the last closing struggle. Ere the first clash of swords at Armageddon, such Enochs will be taken from the evil to come. But in Noah we see those who will engage in the conflict, and bear themselves bravely amid backsliding and apostasy, until they shall see the powers of evil trodden under their feet as straw is trodden for the dunghill. The fire-flood will devour the wicked, and only the righteous shall inherit the new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. Let these few words stand as the preface to my discourse; and now let us carefully consider Noah's faith, trusting that the Holy Spirit may bless its teaching to our own souls. I. First, notice that in Noah's case FAITH WAS THE FIRST PRINCIPLE. The text begins, "By faith Noah." We shall have to speak about his fear being "moved by fear"; we shall also remember his obedience, for he "prepared an ark to the saving of his house." But you must take distinct note that at the back of everything was his faith in God. His faith begat his fear: his faith and his fear produced his obedience. Nothing in Noah is held up before us as an example, but that which grew out of his faith. To begin with, we must look well to our faith. May I pass the question round these galleries, and put it to you also in this vast area? Have you faith? Let each one hear the question in the singular number. "Hast thou faith? Dost thou believe on the Son of God? Art thou resting in the promise of a faithful God?" If not, thou art nothing as to spiritual things. Without faith thou art out of the kingdom of grace, a stranger to the commonwealth of Israel. Thou hast neither part nor lot in this matter if thou hast no faith. But if thou hast even a trembling faith, thou hast the root of the matter within thee. Even if other gracious things be not in thee as yet, they will be ere long produced by faith. Faith is the acorn, from which the oak of holiness will grow. Faith is that handful of corn, the fruit whereof shall shake like Lebanon. Without faith it is impossible to please God, but with faith we become "accepted in the Beloved." Notice, first, that Noah believed in God in his ordinary life. Before the great test came, before he heard the oracle from the secret place, Noah believed in God. We know that he did, for we read that he walked with God, and in his common conduct he is described as being "a just man, and perfect in his generations." To be just in the sight of God is never possible apart from faith; for "the just shall live by faith." It is a great thing to have faith in the presence of a terrible trial; but the first essential is to have faith for ordinary every-day consumption. Hast thou faith in God as to thy daily bread? Hast thou faith as to thy children and thy house? Hast thou faith about thy trade and business? Hast thou faith in the God of providence? Faith in the God who answers prayer? Is it habitual with thee to roll thy burden upon the Lord? If it be not so with thee, what wilt thou do when the floods break forth? Faith will not come to thee all of a sudden, in the dark night, if thou hast shut it out through all the bright days. Faith must be a constant tenant, not an occasional guest. I have heard of Latter-day Saints, and I do not think much of them: I far more admire Every-day Saints. Thou needest faith this Sabbath-day: have it, and come to the communion-table with it. But thou needest faith on Monday, when the shutters are taken down to begin another six days' trading. Thou wilt need faith the next day; for who can tell thee what will happen? To the end of the week thou wilt need to look to the hills whence cometh thine help. Thou needest faith anywhere and everywhere. A man of God alone in his chamber still needs faith, or solitude may be a nest for temptation. When the servant of Christ is at his ease, and has no work pressing upon him, he has need of faith to keep him, lest, like David, he fall into temptation, and commit folly. Rest days or work days, we alike need faith. By faith Noah did everything before he entered the ark. This is an important observation, though it may appear a very simple one. I could not omit it; for I feel that a practical work-day faith is what we most of all need. Men think that they need faith in building a temple; but faith is also needed in building a haystack. We need faith for ploughing, for buying, for selling, for working, quite as much as for praying, and singing, and preaching. We want faith on the market as well as in the prayer-meeting. We wish everywhere to please God, and we cannot do it anywhere unless we have unfeigned faith in him. The Lord teach us to have faith seven days in the week! Note, next, that Noah had faith in the warning and threatening of God. Faith is to be exercised about the commandments; for David says, "I have believed thy commandments." Faith is to be exercised upon the promises; for there its sweetest business lies. But, believe me, you cannot have faith in the promise unless you are prepared to have faith in the threatening also. If you truly believe a man, you believe all that he says. He who does not believe that God will punish sin, will not believe that God will pardon it through the atoning blood. He who does not believe that God will cast unbelievers into hell, will not be sure that he will take believers into heaven. If we doubt God's Word about one thing, we shall have small confidence in it upon another thing. Sincere faith in God must treat all God's Word alike; for the faith which accepts one word of God and rejects another is evidently not faith in God, but faith in our own judgment, faith in our own taste. Only that is true faith which believes everything that is revealed by the Holy Spirit, whether it be joyous or distressing. Noah had, in this case, received a promise; but, as the dark background to it, he had listened to the terrible threatening that God would destroy all living things with a flood: his faith believed both the warning and the promise. If he had not believed the threat, he would not have prepared an ark, and so would not have received the promise. Men do not prepare an ark to escape from a flood unless they believe that there will be a flood. I charge you who profess to be the Lord's not to be unbelieving with regard to the terrible threatenings of God to the ungodly. Believe the threat, even though it should chill your blood; believe, though nature shrinks from the overwhelming doom; for, if you do not believe, the act of disbelieving God about one point will drive you to disbelieve him upon the other parts of revealed truth, and you will never come to that true, child-like faith which God will accept and honour. "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark." With solemn awe believe the bitter word of judgment, that the word of mercy may be sweet to you. Furthermore, Noah believed what seemed highly improbable, if not absolutely impossible. There was no sea where Noah laid the keel of his ark: I do not even know that there was a river there. He was to prepare a sea-going vessel, and construct it on dry land. How could water be brought there to float it? O mad old man! how canst thou play the fool on so huge a scale as to build a three-decked vessel of vast dimensions where no waters can ever come? Yet he was bidden of the Lord to do it, and he was persuaded that the Lord's command involved no blunder. The floods would fill the valley, rise up the hills, and prevail above the tops of the mountains. He believed all this, although it did seem an unlikely thing. That faith which believes in the probable is anybody's faith: publicans and sinners can so believe. The faith which believes that which is barely possible is in better form; but that faith which cares nothing for probability or possibility, but rests alone in the Word of the Lord, is the faith of God's elect. God deserves such faith, "for with God all things are possible." Not probability, but certainty, is the groundwork of faith when God has spoken. Noah believed firmly, and therefore prepared his ship on dry land, quite as cheerfully as he would have built it by the sea. At times you and I are assailed as to our faith in the Bible, by people who say, "How do you make that out? It is in the Scriptures, certainly, but how do you reconcile it with science?" Let your reply be We no longer live in the region of argument as to the Word of the Lord; but we dwell in the realm of faith. We are not squabblers, itching to prove our superiority in reasoning, but we are children of light, worshipping our God by bowing our whole minds to the obedience of faith. We would be humble, and learn to believe what we cannot altogether comprehend, and to expect what we should never have looked for, had not the Lord declared it. It is our ambition to be great believers, rather than great thinkers; to be child-like in faith, rather than subtle in intellect. We are sure that God is true! Like Noah, we stagger not at the Word of God, because of evident improbability and apparent impossibility. What the Lord has spoken he is able to make good; and none of his words shall fall to the ground. Note well, that Noah believed alone, and preached on though none followed him. There were no other believers, if you except his wife and his sons and daughters. There were eight in all; but I am afraid that some of these rather believed in father Noah than in the living God. Noah shone as a lone star. He stood like yonder solitary column in the midst of a ruined temple. He believed with an unbuttressed faith. How pleasant it is to associate with our fellow-believers! It is a great refreshment for a solitary Christian to get into a large congregation, and to feel in unison with the child's hymn' "Lord, how delightful 'tis to see A great assembly worship thee! At once they sing, at once they pray, They hear of heaven and learn the way. I have been there, and still would go, 'Tis like a little heaven below." But how would you fare if you were alone, or were surrounded by those who called you a fool for believing in the Lord? To dwell where everybody is sceptical is as injurious to faith as for a man to live where the yellow fever is raging. To have your faith pulled to pieces, and held up to ridicule, is an ordeal which some cannot stand. What if you should be like Noah, a preacher of righteousness; how stern the duty of being a solitary witness! He preached for one hundred and twenty years, and at the end of it not one person was ready to go with him into the ark. His own family was saved, but nobody else-not a solitary one. What a trial! How it has made my heart glad, during the month of May, to see and propose for church-fellowship no less than sixty-nine! But if I had to preach for a year with no converts, what should I do? I hope I should persevere, in the name of the Lord God; but what a trial! What if life were prolonged for one hundred and twenty years, and after all that preaching nobody believed your word! That would be an infliction indeed. Many people may have been converted under Noah, and may have died before the deluge came; but he had not one convert in the ark with him. His wife had not even a servant to help her in domestic work, and his sons' wives had to wait on themselves. There was not even a boy to clean the shoes, or help feed the animals. Many were called, but only the eight were chosen. Noah had preached apparently in vain, and yet he believed with none the less of dogged resolve. The old man was not to be moved. That ark of his would float; he knew it would. The world would be destroyed; he was sure of it; as sure as if he had seen it. "Things not seen as yet" were to his faith substantial and evident. Noah believed through a hundred and twenty solitary years! It was a long martyrdom. Our life is quite long enough for the trial of faith. Even if a man lives to be eighty, and has sixty years of that life spent in the exercise of faith, it is only by almighty grace that he holds out. Noah lived two of our lives in this way. If a little flood had happened and moved his ark a little, he would have had some evidence for his faith; but there was no flood at all; and his ark lay high and dry for a century and a quarter! How few could endure this! Yonder dear friend has been praying for the last six months, and the Lord has not heard him, and he begins to doubt whether the Lord does hear prayer at all. You are not much like Noah. You can hardly believe for one hundred and twenty days. "Alas!" says one, "I have prayed for my husband these twenty years!" It is a long time to wait; but what would you do with a hundred added on to it? Years made Noah's faith more mature, and not more feeble. This grey father of the age went on with his preaching, went on with his intercession, and, without a doubt, waited for God in his own time to justify his servant before the eyes of men. Once more: Noah believed even to separation from the world. See Noah and his family entering the ark! I do not think I should have selected the ark as a place of residence myself, nor would you have chosen to live in a place pitched within and without with pitch, with only one door and one window to it, and a great menagerie of birds, and beasts, and reptiles inside it. Whether that window ran all round the top just under the roof, so as to let light into the whole structure, I cannot tell; but I have no doubt that the jeering world said to Noah, "Well, old man, you have built a prison for yourself, and the sooner you go inside and shut yourself in the better; for we have had enough of your preaching!" When the good man and his family went in, and the Lord shut the door, they were dead to the world. Had Mrs. Noah been like some of you she would have said, "The girls cannot go out to any more parties, and our sons are shut out from all society. We are out of the world, and shall soon be forgotten." Yes, yes, and Noah was glad of it, since it was the Lord that shut him in. When the Lord shuts you off from the world, you are best alone. Nowadays professors have not faith enough to dwell alone. They want two or three doors in the back of the ark, so that they may slip out every now and then, and do a little pleasuring with the world, and then glide back again and look like saints. As to being shut in with God and separated from the world religious and irreligious' how few will endure it! How little is ever heard of that cry "Come out from among them, and be ye separate!" "You might as well be dead," cries one, "as be out of society." Exactly so: and that is what the child of God looks for. "Ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God." "Buried with him by baptism into death." "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world." That separatedness which Noah took upon himself so willingly was involved in his salvation; for if he had lived with the world, he would have died with the world. Only in separation is salvation. Thus have I worked out the idea that the first principle which actuated Noah's heart was faith in the living God. II. Secondly, FEAR WAS THE MOVING FORCE. Faith was the living principle, but fear was the moving power; for the text puts it, "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear." Faith moulded him, but fear moved him. How was this? "I thought," says one, "that perfect love casteth out fear." Yes, fear of a certain sort; but there is another fear which perfect love embraces and nourishes. Noah had no evil fear. He had not a servile fear: he was not afraid of God as a culprit is afraid of a judge, or a convict of the hangman. He knew whom he believed, and was persuaded that he had a favour towards him. Noah had not a careless fear, as some here have. Fools say, "We never shall be saved, and therefore it would be useless to care about it. We may as well gather the rosebuds while we may. There is no heaven for us hereafter, let us make the best of the present." No, Noah was a witness against such sensual carelessness. He so believed, that fear came upon him, and that fear made him act as God bade him. Beware of the unbelief which enables you to trifle; for trifling with eternal things is the suicide of the soul. Noah, on the other hand, had not a despairing fear, as some have. They say, "There is no hope. We have gone too far in sin already to dream of pardon and favour. We may as well let things take their course." Beware of the poison-cup of despair. While life lasts hope lasts; and we beseech you not to lie down in sullen hopelessness. Noah was a stranger to this paralyzing fear: he bestirred himself, and built an ark. Some allow a presuming fear: "If I am to be saved," say they, "I shall be saved; and if I am to be lost, I shall be lost. I may as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb, and so I will have my fling, and go into sin even as I please." Noah never spoke thus; for with his fear he had a good hope. He prepared an ark. He knew that none could save him but God; but as God bade him prepare an ark, an ark he prepared, and thus he was saved and his house. What kind of fear was that of Noah? Well, Noah had a loyal reverence of God. He feared him as the King of kings and Lord of lords, and when he went about through the wicked world Noah often said to himself, "I wonder the Judge of all the earth does not destroy these rebels, who dare to be so vile and violent." When he saw their gluttony, their infidelity, their lasciviousness, their oppression of one another, the preacher of righteousness had a holy fear of judgment. Often his righteous spirit indignantly cried, "Cut it down; why cumbereth it the ground?" He wondered how God could be so long-suffering. When it was revealed to him that God was going to destroy the whole race from off the face of the earth by a flood, he said to himself, "I thought he would." He felt exceedingly afraid; for he knew that when God once makes bare his arm for vengeance, the pillars of the earth must shake, and the stars of heaven cease their shining. Thus the holy man of God passed the time of his sojourning here in fear. Who among us would not fear if we were to consider at this time the holiness of God, and the provocations inflicted upon him by our guilty race? What sin defiles this earth! Oh, the wrath to come! How awful will the judgment be! It has not come yet; it may not come for years; but, when the Lord begins to deal with men in justice, how will that day burn as an oven! "Who may abide the day of his coming?" Noah by faith heard the cries of men and women swept from their feet by the torrent. He heard the cries of strong swimmers in their agony yielding to the overflowing death, and sinking to their doom. Do you wonder that his heart sank within him, and that he was moved with fear? He had a holy awe of God, and a solemn dread of the judgments which sin was drawing down upon the giddy world. Noah had a very humble distrust of himself. I wish we all had such a fear. Let us fear God because of his greatness; let us fear ourselves because of our sinfulness. Let us fear lest we should fall into sin, and perish with the rest of the sinners. Let no man say, "I shall never fall." Alas! those are the most likely to slip. Did you never note that those who seem least likely to fall into a sin are the very people who commit it? You would not have dreamed that sober Noah should be found drunk; nor that righteous Lot should commit incest; nor that David, whose heart smote him when he only cut off the lap of Saul's garment, should be guilty of murder; nor that Peter, who said, "Though all men should forsake thee, yet will not I," would have denied his Master with oaths and cursing. Ah, friends! we may not trust ourselves; but we ought to stand in daily fear lest we be guilty before God. Here was Noah filled with such a holy fear of himself, that he took care to do what the Lord bade him, even to the most minute particular. He did not choose another sort of wood, nor alter the shape of the vessel, nor make more stories, nor more windows, nor more doors; but he distrusted his own judgment, and leaned not to his own understanding. He did exactly what he was told to do, and thus left the consequences with the Lord who commanded him. He feared his own wisdom: for he knew that man is like to vanity, and no more to be relied upon than the mist of the morning. Fear made Noah hew the trees and square the timbers, and wield the axe and the hammer. Fear wrought in him diligence and speed. It made him despise the observations of onlookers, and build for his life in brave defiance of the spirit of the age, and the judgment of the wise. Perhaps I speak to persons who are in fear of the wrath to come. I rejoice that you have faith enough to fear. By the way of that faith which brings you unto fear, you will be brought out of it. Believe God in justice till you tremble; then see that justice vindicated in the suffering and death of the Lord Jesus, and rest in the mercy of God, which, through the cross, comes justly down to guilty men. A holy fear will put wings upon your heels, and help you to fly to Jesus. Moved by fear, may you be drawn and driven to the Lord Jesus! III. Thirdly, OBEDIENCE WAS THE GRACIOUS FRUIT. Faith and fear together led Noah to do as God commanded him. When fear is grafted upon faith, it brings forth good fruit, as in this case. Noah obeyed the Lord exactly. How often does the Scripture say, "Thus did Noah; according to all that God commanded him, so did he"! See again and again, "Noah did according unto all that the Lord commanded him." Those who have faith in God should show it by a holy fear, which makes them zealous to leave nothing undone which is commanded of the Lord, and to add nothing of will-worship to the perfect law of God. "Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it;" was the wise word of the Virgin. Obey the Lord with all your mind and all your heart, in the way of faith, if you would find salvation. Prove that you have grace, by your accurate obedience. Noah obeyed the Lord very carefully. God said to him, "Make an ark"; and we read in answer thereto that he prepared an ark. There was careful preparation, and not hurried, thoughtless activity. He prepared the right materials; he prepared the different parts so as to fit together: he prepared his mind, and then prepared his work. In seeking the Lord, let us exercise our best thoughts. People do not go to heaven in the fashion of "hop, skip, and jump." Carelessness cannot tread the highway of holiness. If you would know the way to hell, you may shut your eyes and find it: a little matter of neglect will surely ruin you "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" But if you desire to go to heaven, I beg you to remember that "the kingdom of heaven suffereth violence, and the violent take it by force." There must be determination, thought, care, attention; and faith must work with all these to produce obedience to the will of the Lord. Men are never right by accident, nor obedient to the Lord by chance; preparation of heart is wanted, and this the Lord must give. Alas! I fear some of you will miss eternal life, for you trifle about it! If you had a business to settle which involved the gain or loss of ten thousand pounds, how particular you would be; but when your whole soul is at stake, how many take up such matters at haphazard and risk eternal destruction! Not so Noah: he was precise in his obedience, and careful to remain so. Noah obeyed at all costs. To build the huge vessel called "the ark" must have cost Noah a great deal of money and labour. He could not get everybody to work at the absurd task of building a vessel on dry land. As they would be laughed at, his workmen would be sure to demand extra pay. Possibly he had to pay double wages to every wright employed on the ark. The patriarch was content to sink all his capital and all his income in this singular venture. It was a poor speculation so everybody told him; and yet he was quite willing to put all his eggs into that one basket. God had bidden him build, and build he would, feeling that the divine command insured him against risk. Can we do the same? Noah went on obeying under daily scorn. The men of that generation mocked him. He went out and preached to them; but many would not hear him, for they thought him mad. Those who did listen to him said to each other, "He is building a vessel upon dry land: is he sane? We are scientific, and therefore we know how absurd his preaching is; for none ever heard of the world being drowned by a flood." They called his warning "an old wives' fable," and he himself was "an old fossil." Doubtless he was the frequent subject of sarcastic remark. I cannot reproduce the letters that were written about the sturdy patriarch, nor can I recount the spiteful things which were said by the gossips; but I have no doubt they were very clever, and very sarcastic. Those productions of genius are all forgotten now; but Noah is remembered still. For all the scorning of many he went on obeying his God: he stuck to the lines on which God had placed him, and he could not be turned to the right hand or to the left, because he had a real faith in God. Noah's obedience followed the command as he learned it. I admire his going into the ark without a question. All the cattle and the beasts and flying things are in the ark with him, and he does not pray to be let out. We may equally admire him for coming out again when called upon to do so. After we have once been shut in, some of us had rather stop in. We are not fond of changes. We grow accustomed to a certain line of things, and find in use a second nature; and we wish to remain as we are. It is so safe in the ark, and we are so peaceful, so conscious of being in the hollow of God's hand, that we fear to come forth into a world so lately cursed. Noah came out without a question, and the first thing he did was to build an altar to the Lord, and so to prove that he was at home with God. Oh, for faith that will obey God anyhow and anywhere! You remember how God said to Elijah, "Hide thyself"; and away went the prophet to the brook Cherith, where none saw him but the fowls of heaven. A brave prophet like Elijah finds it hard to be in hiding; yet he does not disobey. Presently comes the command, "Go, show thyself"; and out he comes from his exile and stands before King Ahab, according to the word of the Lord. Whether God bids his true servants show themselves or hide themselves, they do his will at once. "Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to dare and die." The will of the Lord is to be done by his servants, whether on earth or in heaven. If he saith, "Go," they go; if he saith, "Stay," they abide in their places. Oh, for such a faith as this! It was easier for Noah to build the ark than to render so complete an obedience; but the Lord wrought in him by his grace. IV. And now I come to my last point, upon which hear me patiently. RESULTS DID NOT FAIL TO COME. One hundred and twenty years preaching, and no converts remaining! One hundred and twenty years building a ship, and yet no water to float it! One hundred and twenty years warning people that God is about to destroy them, and yet no flood! Surely, the good man's life is a failure. No doubt wise folks said of him, "He is a good old man, but he is uncharitable, and has become an alarmist." Some style him a "pessimist," others say, "He is a bigot"; others, again, affect to deplore that the good man has made such a great mistake, and is wasting his influence under a delusion. I hear fine gentlemen saying, "Do not take much notice of the old gentleman. No doubt he is a very good man, but at the same time he is only one, and his views are very peculiar. He has gone on chopping this logic for one hundred and twenty years, and the world is not drowned yet: it is really too ridiculous." The wilder spirits meet him in the morning, and they say, "Well, father Noah, when is this flood coming? The country would be improved by a good soaking. You have raised our expectations so long, that it ought to pour when it does come. You ought to have minded the old saying, 'Never prophesy till you are sure.'" Thus would they jest at the preacher of righteousness; but Noah knew what he was at, and was not silenced. All that he did was simply to repeat his warning, and go on with his ship-building. God's time was coming on: the storm was gathering, and before long the deluge would end the mirth of the godless. What did come of it? The first result was, He was saved and his house. Oh, that God would give to every preacher of righteousness this full reward himself and his house! O my brothers in the ministry, there is no greater joy for us than to know that our children walk in the truth! Perhaps some of you fear the Lord; and yet he has never given you your Shem, Ham, and Japhet. Alas! it may even happen that she that lieth in your bosom does not yet know the Lord. Nevertheless, be you faithful to your God, and to the souls of men. Hold the truth, if you stand alone. Even if in your own house you find your worst foes, hold on, and never doubt. Do not come down a stop or two as to holiness, nor seek a lower platform upon which to meet more cordially an ungodly world. Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and in the power of the ever-blessed gospel. That is the one business of your life; and I believe that if you have faith in the Lord as to your family, your beloved ones shall be given you as a prey. Remember the Philippian jailer, to whom Paul said, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." Do not rest content with half the promise. Grasp firmly the words, "and thy house." Have you an Ishmael? then get alone, and, like Abraham, cry to God, "O that Ishmael might live before thee!" God will hear your prayer and bless Ishmael also. Oh, what a privilege it will be if you yourself and all your house are saved! The next result was, that he condemned the world. Read, "By which he condemned the world." "Ha! ha! ha!" they said, "we judge the old man to be out of his mind." But he was their judge. The merriest jest that flashed forth at the banquet of wine was pointed with a sarcasm about old Noah and his dry-land ship; but all the while he was solemnly judging and condemning that ribald world. The Lord had made him serenely bear witness against iniquity; yes, and even to sit on the throne and condemn the world. I do not read that Noah ever entered into any dispute with the men of his times. He never argued or cavilled, much less did he wish them ill; he simply believed and told them the truth, kept his own faith intact, and went on building his ark; thus practising what he believed. In this way he condemned those who criticized him. Ah! you may laugh, ye worldlings; but the man of God is your master after all! His preaching condemned them: they know the way, and wickedly refused to run in it. His warning condemned them: they would not regard it and escape. His life condemned them, for he walked with the God whom they despised. Most of all, the ark condemned them. Did none of them ever say, as he passed it in the morning, "This is the strangest fabric that ever was. There is not, in all the world besides, such another thing as this. Yet Noah is no fool. He can make a bargain, as I found to my cost, when he was buying nails, and I tried to get double their value from him. The man is cool and calm, shrewd and sharp. He bought my wood upon the hill; but he first made an accurate estimate of the timber in it, and its worth: he bought as well as any man could do. How is it that on this one particular point he is so strange?" Did not such men at times think that there must be something in it after all? If they did not think so, at any rate the fact that Noah carried out his principles to the full, and invested all he had in the building of this strange ark, would have forced them to conviction if they had not been hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. How his faith condemned them! When the floods began to rise, and the door was shut, how the sight of the ark condemned them! I can imagine, when the water began to get knee-deep, there would be frightened ones around the ark door; but it could not be opened, since God had shut it. When the ark began to float, some of them fled to the sides of the mountains; and what a condemnation the sight of the floating ark was to them! Noah could not help them then. The day in which they might have entered was gone by. If they ever saw Noah look out of the ark, how the face which once pleaded with them would condemn them! Oh, my hearers, how often have I warned you to flee from the wrath to come! I have warned you of those dread waves of fire, and of that horrible tempest, which will sweep over all the earth, and destroy ungodly men and their works. How often have I spoken of the pit which God hath digged for the wicked, into which your feet will slide in due time unless you seek the Saviour! May be, in those days of terror, the face of the preacher will condemn you, as you remember how he looked at you with earnest love, but you would have none of his pleading, and chose to perish in your sin. Your blood shall be upon your own heads. It is a solemn thought, that one lone man condemned a world. It was one against millions! Yet the one condemned the millions. If God is with a man, though that man be only one, he is in the majority. Men of the world wilt soon become a weeping, wailing, and despairing company; but he that stands alone for God shall be had in honour, and shall both judge and condemn the guilty world. The last thing Noah earned by his faith was this, he became heir of the righteousness which is by faith; for God said of him, when he bade him come into the ark, "Thee have I seen righteous before me in this generation." God declared him righteous; not righteous by his works, although his works, following upon his faith, proved him to be righteous; but righteous by his faith. He believed God, and found grace in the eyes of the Lord. He received the righteousness which God gives through Jesus Christ to all them that believe. Wrapt in this he stood before the Lord, justified and approved. By faith he was adopted and became a son, an heir. For him the promise of the woman's seed, though it was all the Bible that he had, was quite enough. The woman's seed, and the Lamb's sacrifice, which Abel had seen, these were almost all the revelation he had known. He had no Pentateuch, no Psalms, no Gospels, no Epistles; but he so believed that little Bible of his, that he expected that Christ in him would bruise the serpent in the world. God honoured his faith, and he condemned the world. He lived when the rest perished; he was secure in his ark when the myriads were sinking in the deluge: he became "heir of the righteousness which is by faith" when others were condemned. May God make us all so, and unto his name shall be the glory through Jesus Christ our Lord! Amen. PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON Genesis 6:5,22; Hebrews 11:1-7. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK" 913, 652, 504. __________________________________________________________________ The Tenderness of Jesus A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 8, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "We have not a High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." Hebrews 4:15. BELOVED, we have a High Priest. All that Israel had under the Law we still retain, only we have the substance of which they had only the shadow. "We have an Altar, of which they have no right to eat which serve the tabernacle." We have a Sacrifice, which, being once offered, forever avails. We have "One greater than the temple," and He is to us the Mercy Seat and the High Priest. Take it for granted that all the blessings of the Law remain under the Gospel. Christ has restored that which He took not away, but He has not taken away one single possible blessing of the Law--on the contrary, He has secured all to His people. I look to the Old Testament and I see certain blessings appended to the Covenant of Works and I say to myself by faith, "Those blessings are mine, for I have kept the Covenant of Works in the Person of my Covenant Head and Surety. Every blessing which is promised to perfect obedience belongs to me, since I present to God a perfect obedience in the Person of my great Representative, the Lord Jesus Christ." Every real spiritual blessing which Israel had, you have as a Christian. Note, next, not only do we read that there is a High Priest, but in the 14th verse we read, "We have a High Priest." It would be a small matter to us to know that such-and-such blessings existed--the great point is to know by faith that we personally possess them! What is the great High Priest to me unless He is mine? What is a Savior but a word to tantalize my despairing spirit, until I can say that this Savior is mine? Every blessing of the Covenant is prized in proportion as it is had-- "We have a High Priest." I pray you, never talk of the blessings and Doctrines of Grace as matters apart from personal possession, but seek habitually to enjoy and experience them! That was a grand exclamation of Thomas, "My Lord, and my God," and this is a sweet word for the saints--"We have a High Priest." Beloved, come boldly to the Throne of God for you have a High Priest. Grasp firmly by faith the choice favors which your interest in the Lord Jesus secures to you. It is precious to reflect that Jesus, as High Priest, is still ours, though, according to the text, He "is passed into the heavens." He does not forget us now that He has passed through the lower heavens into the Heaven of heavens where He reigns supreme in His Father's Glory. He is still touched with a feeling of our infirmities. Though He has left behind Him all pain, suffering and infirmity, He retains to the fullest the fellow feelings which His life of humiliation has developed in Him. "The Man is near of kin unto us" and no difference of situation or condition has changed His kinship or the boundless love which goes with it. Our Joseph, though Lord of all Egypt, is our Brother, still, and beneath the vestments of a king there beats the heart of love. Think of our High Priest as not having laid aside that breastplate of His on which our names are engraved, nor the "two onyx stones, set in pouches of gold," which He wore upon His shoulders, inscribed in the same manner. On His heart and on His shoulders our exalted High Priest bears all His people--His heart and His arms are both engaged for them--His love and His power are engrossed by them. Our Lord carries in His pierced hands, feet and side, the memorials of His redeemed, as it is written, "I have engraved you upon the palms of My hands." We have in Him who has passed into the heavens as truly merciful a High Priest as if He were still on this side of the veil ministering as in the day of His humiliation. Put those things together and read them experimentally, each Believer for himself. We have a High Priest--we have Him now--and while He is beyond the heavens, in the Glory of glories, He is still ours, in all tenderness exercising His Grace and power towards us. Observe here that the Apostle delights to dwell upon the majesty and glory of our High Priest. What does he say? "Seeing, then, that we have a great High Priest," as if Aaron and all his sons were little personages compared with Him! In Jesus, the Son of God, we have "a great High Priest." The long succeeding line of priests called of God to stand before Him in the holy place on earth have all passed away--but we have "a great High Priest," seeing He never dies. These men were all faulty--but we have a "great High Priest," who is absolutely perfect. These men did but humbly represent Him, as in a dewdrop the sun may be reflected. But He is the true High Priest between God and man and therefore the epithet "great" is put before His name as it could not be before any other. He is "the great High Priest," for He has passed, not within a material veil into some inner sanctuary encompassed with curtains, but into the heavens where God dwells! His name is Jesus. There is His Manhood--He was born of a woman to save His people from their sins. But we read further, "Jesus, the Son of God." There is His Deity. He is the Only-Begotten of the Father--as glorious in His Godhead as He is gracious in His Manhood. Paul delights to dwell upon these points of glory. But when he has done so, it seems to occur to him that when we consider the greatness of our High Priest, some poor trembling sinners may be afraid to draw near to Him--and the Apostle ever has a longing eye towards drawing souls to Jesus. Therefore he falls back upon our Lord's tenderness. Great as He is, our High Priest is not One who "cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." He puts a negative on that fear which might naturally arise in trembling bosoms. This morning, being myself more than usually compassed with infirmities, I desire to speak, as a weak and suffering preacher, of that High Priest who is full of compassion--and my longing is that any who are low in spirit, faint, despondent, or even at the point of total despair, may take heart to approach the Lord Jesus! Let no man be afraid of Him who is the embodiment of gentleness and compassion! Though conscious of your own infirmities, you may feel free to come to Him who will not break the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax! I want to speak so tenderly that even the despairing may look up and may feel a drawing towards our Beloved Master who is so graciously touched with a feeling of our infirmities. I. So I am going to begin my sermon by saying of our blessed Lord, HE HAS ASSUMED A VERY TENDER OFFICE. If the office of high priest had been fully carried out, as it ought to have been, it would have been one of the most tenderly helpful that could have been devised. A king may render great aid to the unhappy, but, on the other hand, he is a terror to evil-doers--a high priest is in the highest sense "ordained for men," and he is the friend and benefactor of the most wretched. It was intended, first, that by the high priest God should commune with men. That needs a person of great tenderness. A mind that is capable of listening to God and understanding, in a measure, what He teaches, had need be very tender so as to interpret the lofty sense into the lowly language of humanity. If the man is to come from among the Infinite down to the ignorance and narrow capacities of mortal men, he had need be tender as a nurse to her children. Great philosophers have not always been great teachers--their very profundity has prevented their translating their great thoughts into the speech of common minds. There is a possibility of knowing so much that the knowledge becomes crowded up and there remains no possible gate for the orderly going out of such a multitude of thoughts. Great knowledge needs great patience if it would instruct the ignorant. The great loaves of wisdom must be broken and crumbed into a basin of milk for the children. How few remember the words, "Let the children first be filled"! Now, the high priest had to be a man who could commune with God and listen to the sacred Oracle--and then he was bound to come out to common men of the wilderness, or men of the farm, and tell them what he had heard in secret from the Infinite God! He must mediate and allow his mouth to be God's mouth to the people--for "the priest's lips should keep knowledge." What he had grasped from the Lord he must so put that the people could grasp it and act upon it. This is what our Lord has done in the most tender manner. He reveals the Father. The things of God which He knows, He makes known unto us by His Holy Spirit, as we are able to bear them. We are to learn of Him. Some say that they will go from Nature up to Nature's God--they will do no such thing--the steps are much too steep for their feeble climbing! They fall into some such abyss of absurdity as evolution and come not near to God. You have not to go from Jesus Christ to God, for He Himself is God! "In Him dwells all the fullness of the Godhead bodily. And you are complete in Him." Come, then, and learn of the great High Priest! His office, itself, is a compassionate one and you may learn all of God from Him the more readily because He is meek and lowly of heart and will count it no drudgery to teach you the very A B Cs of Divine Truth. But a high priest took the other side also--he was to communicate with God from men. Here, also, he needed the most tender spirit to rule his faculties and to move his affections. He must sit down and hear all the trembling petitions of troubled mothers who had come from the utmost end of Israel laden with their domestic burdens. He must listen to all the complaints of the oppressed, the woes of the afflicted, the trials of the poor, the perplexities of the distracted. And then, as a man of God, he was ordained to take all these things in prayer before the Host High and in fitter language to present the requests of the broken in heart. What a tender office! How few could carry it out! Even some well-meaning ministers do not seem able to enter into the struggles of a seeking sinner, or into the conflicts of a tempted soul. Those who go to them, that they may enjoy their intercessions, are disappointed. Our High Priest is quite at home with mourners and enters into their case as a good physician understands the symptoms of his patients. When we tell our Lord the story of our inward grief, He understands it better than we do. He rightly reads our case and then wisely presents it before the Majesty on high, pleading His Sacrifice, that the Lord may deal graciously with us. Beloved, this is what Jesus Christ will do for all who desire to speak with God. He is the "Interpreter, one of a thousand," by whom our sighs will be reported to Heaven! If you wish to communicate your needs to the great Father who is able to help in time of need--here is the Ambassador between earth and Heaven who can plead the cause of your soul at that Throne from which succor always comes! Is it not gracious on our Lord's part to undertake so tender an office for those who need it so greatly and have no other way of access to the God of Grace? But if I understand the high priest's office aright, he had many things to do which come under this general description, but which might not suggest themselves if you did not have the items set before you. The high priest was one who had to deal with sin and judgment for the people. We read in Exodus 28:29, "Aaron shall bear the judgment of the children of Israel upon his heart before the Lord continually." In consequence, he was called upon to hear confessions of sin and pleas for pardon. Many came to him and acknowledged known transgressions, or wished for aid in discovering sins of ignorance. As God's representative, he judged the errors of those who came to offer sacrifice for their sins and helped them to deal rightly in the things of God. This is a very tender post to occupy. No mere man is fitted to hear, as a rule, the confessions of all sorts of people and certainly he should not seek to do so. Yet the man whom God calls to feed His flock is forced, at times, to enter into the soul-conflicts of his fellow men and to hear the mournful story of their wanderings. And he needs great tenderness in so doing. We have a High Priest into whose ears we may pour all the confessions of our penitence without fear. Go and do so! It is a wonderful easement to the mind to tell Jesus all. Men who have consciences that tear them to pieces will find perfect repose follows upon a full pouring out of their soul before the Lord Jesus. Our merciful High Priest will never make a harsh observation, nor ask a rasping question, nor pronounce a crushing sentence. Go to Him, only, for there is none like He. He will come so near to you that you shall unburden your soul at His feet. No doubt the high priest was resorted to that he might console the sorrowful. It must have been a great relief for those who were of a sorrowful spirit, to go unto the sanctuary of the Lord and sit at the feet of a man of God who could remind the stricken one of the promises made to meet such sorrow. Only to tell the story was helpful. Mourners often get more comfort from telling their griefs than they do from the remarks of those to whom they unburden themselves. Go to Jesus, dear Friend, if a sharp grief is now gnawing at your heart. If it is a trouble which you could not tell to your father or your husband, go to Jesus with it! That holy woman, Hannah, when she sat in the court of the Lord's house, got but little at first from Eli--she was telling her Lord her secret--but the aged priest thought that she was drunk because her lips were moving and she spoke not aloud! He rebuked her roughly. But when she explained herself, then he bade her go in peace, for her prayer would be granted her--and she went away no more sad. Jesus will make no mistake as to your meaning, dear Friend, even though you should be as one drunk with sorrow. Go to your chamber all alone. Tell Jesus your troubles and He will meet it in the fullness of His compassion and wisdom. Through Him the Comforter shall come to you and your sorrow shall be turned into joy! Try it. I cannot preach to you this morning with any power of words, but words are not needed if you will put everything to the test which I tell you concerning the tender-hearted Savior. Hasten to lay Rabshakeh's letter before your Lord! Pour out the wormwood and the gall before Him--He knows their bitterness and He will surely make them to be swallowed up in victory. This is the purpose of His office and He will not fail in it. The high priest would hear, also, the desire and wishes of the people. When men in Israel had some great longing, some overwhelming desire, they not only prayed in private but they would make a journey up to the Temple to ask the high priest to present their petitions before the Lord. Hannah only told Eli her heart's longing after it had been gratified, for she could not have summoned courage to mention so special a desire to a man who had so harshly judged her. She had evidently gone to Shiloh to make petition for a child, since her husband's other wife had been cruel to her because of her barrenness. She told Eli that the Lord had heard her and then she consulted him as to the dedication of her son to the Lord. My Friend, you may have some very peculiar, delicate desire as to spiritual things that only God and your own soul may know, but fear not to mention it to your tender High Priest who will know your meaning and deal graciously with you! It was the high priest's business to instruct and to reprove the people. To instruct is delightful, but to reprove is difficult. Only a tender spirit can wisely utter rebuke. Israel's high priest needed to be meek as Moses in his rebukes of the erring. Our Lord Jesus Christ tells us our faults in tones of love. His rebukes never break our heart. He never upbraids in bitterness, though He does so in faithfulness. Oh, the tenderness of Christ! I feel my subject deeply, but I cannot speak it as I would. He has been most gracious in correcting me. I know His Word is true: "As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten." We can take anything from Jesus--His hands make the bitter sweet. There are men whom you would shun in the hour of your wounding even though you believe that they would do their best to help you, for you do not feel that you could reveal your heart to them, nor feel happy to be under obligation to them. Their kindness is hard and cold. Their counsel is without the sweetening of compassion. They are as keen as a sword and as cutting. It may be they are so much above us that we cannot reach up to them, nor expect them to reach down to us. But there are other men, blessed among their fellows, who seem to be like havens for ships--you rejoice to cast anchor under their shelter. You feel, "I could tell that man anything. I know that he would have patience with me and pity for me, and that his heart would go out towards me." Now, Beloved, you will often be disappointed if you select a man or woman to be your confidante. But if you will resort to the Lord Jesus, whom God has commissioned to be High Priest for this very end and purpose, you will find Him just the Friend you need. He loves the troubled, for "in all their affliction He was afflicted." He is very careful of the feebleminded and of the little ones, for is it not written--"He shall gather the lambs with His arms and carry them in His bosom, and shall gently lead those that are with young"? When circumstances are peculiarly trying, Jesus is peculiarly tender. When we are grieved, He is gentle. Did you ever hear any of His people say of their Lord, that He is overbearing? Did His spouse, in the song, ever say that her Beloved had a rough side to His hand, or a cold place in His heart? He can and does chide, for His love is wise, but he has much pity and His love knows no limit. His heart is made of tenderness and His soul melts for love of His chosen. We adore our High Priest, not only for the greatness of His merit, but for the sweetness of His mercy. I wish I could fitly speak of Him. But this much I must and will say--Come to Him and rest in Him, for He calls you. He is near at all times and in all places, and you can come to Him while you sit in the pew, or when you walk by the way. Come, you that labor and are heavy laden, and lay your burdens at His feet! Come, you whose souls sink down within you under a sense of sin, come to Him who, as your great High Priest, has offered a guilt-removing Sacrifice! He sits at the door of the house of mercy--He waits to be gracious. This is my first head. II. Now, secondly, as our Lord Jesus has a tender office, so, next, HE HAS TENDER FEELINGS. "We have not a High Priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." Note that it is not said, "touched by," but touched with. Many a man can be touched by the sorrow of another, but he is not touched with that sorrow. He has feeling, but not fellow feeling. He pities the sorrowing, but he does not sorrow with them. How many of the rich are sorry for the poor, but they were never poor themselves, so they may be touched by the woe of poverty, but they are not touched with a feeling for it. Our Lord is touched with a feeling of our infirmities. You are touched and He is touched at the same time. A pang shoots through my heart--that pang has been felt by my Lord, also. A grief has stirred the waters of my spirit and the spirit of the great High Priest has moved in harmony with me. They say, but I know not that it is true, that when the strings of one harp are touched, if there is another harp in the room, it gently responds in unison, though not touched by any hand. Assuredly it is so with the Believer and his Lord. Touch any one of His members and you touch the Head of the spiritual body. Your present trouble is upon the heart of our Well-Beloved-- "He, in His measure, feels afresh What every member bears." It is not merely true that He is apprised of our infirmities, since the Lord has said, "I know their sorrows," but He "is touched with the feeling of our infirmities." Hold that thought! It is a great matter that our God should note the trials of His people, that His condescending Omniscience should concern itself with their everyday distresses! But this word goes further--He feels with His people--He is "touched with the feeling of our infirmities." The sense of feeling is more intense, vivid and acute than the sense of sight. It is one thing to see pain, but another thing to be touched with the feeling of it. Treasure up this view of your Lord's sympathy, for it may be a great support in the hour of agony and a grand restorative in the day of weakness. Note again, "The feeling of our infirmities." Whose infirmities? Does not "our" mean yours and mine? Jesus is touched with the feeling of your infirmities and mine. You, my venerable Brother, and you, my younger Sister--you who have come here from a fresh grave and you that will return to a bed shortly to be emptied of your dearest one--you that are slandered and you that are sick. You that can scarcely hold up your head for sadness--and you that are distracted with fear--He is "touched with a feeling of our infirmities." I do not know how you feel about it, but the text draws me very near to all of you who are under infirmities even as I am. We nestle together in that little word, "our." We meet in the hospital ward of that other word, "infirmities." The best of all is that Jesus meets us all there and is touched with the feeling of the infirmities, not only of renowned divines in their pulpits and of great saints in their closets, but with "our" infirmities--even ours, who are "less than the least of all saints." Note well that word, "infirmities"--"touched with the feeling of our infirmities." If it had only said sorrows, there would have been a sound of the sublime about it. But our Master stoops to "infirmities." He is not only touched with the feeling of the heroic endurance of the martyrs, but He sympathizes with those of us who are not heroes but can only plead--"the spirit, indeed, is willing, but the flesh is weak." While you are entreating the Lord, thrice, to take away the thorn in the flesh He is sympathizing with you! Is it not well that it does not say, touched with the feeling of our patience? Our self-denial, our valor? But "with a feeling of our infirmities"--that is, our weakness, our littleness--the points in which we are not strong nor happy. Our pain, our depression, our trembling, our sensitiveness--He is touched with these though He falls not into the sin which so often comes of them. Hold fast this Truth of God, for it may greatly tend to your consolation some day. Jesus is touched, not with a feeling of your strength, but of your infirmity. Down here, poor, feeble nothings affect the heart of their great High Priest on high who is crowned with glory and honor! As the mother feels the weakness of her babe, so does Jesus feel with the poorest, saddest and weakest of His chosen! Why is this, Brothers and Sisters? Let us think of it a while! Our Lord has a tender Nature. Some people are not sympathetic and never will be. Their spirit is not generous. We are all made of clay, but some clay is stiffer and more gritty than another--and in some cases very hard grit is in it. Some men have no more feeling than granite. They will say about the collection today, "I shall not give anything to the hospitals. Let the people take care of themselves. If they were more thrifty they would have a little laid by for a rainy day and would not need to have hospitals provided for them." This gentleman can supply wagon-loads of the same sort of hard material. I know you, my Friend. I have known you, too, a long time. I was going to say, "I would be happy to attend your funeral," but I will not say so, lest it seem that I am hardening myself under your influence. And besides, there are so many of your order, that one more or less is of no great consequence. You know the people who are always griping against charity and finding a shilling's worth of reasons why they should not give a penny. Such people will not willingly put anything into the box--but as it will come round to them, anyway--possibly they will do so for fear of being known! Jesus, our Lord, is tender by Nature. Amid the bliss of Heaven He foresaw the miseries of earth and resolved to leave His Glory that He might come here to rescue man. His innate tenderness brought Him from the Throne to the manger, from the manger to the Cross. Our Lord is not only tender of Nature but quick of understanding as to the infirmities of men. Lack of sense often prevents men being sensitive and sympathetic. If you have never suffered a disease, you need a little imagination to realize it so as to be touched with the feeling of it. I noticed a very able address delivered by Mr. Hutchinson before the Lord Mayor, last Friday, in which he advises a person who mourns his lack of sympathy to go for a week to his usual city vocation with a black patch over one eye, or wearing a wooden leg. "If this does not effect the business," he says, "let him choose some leisure day in the country in bright spring and resolutely, for 24 hours, keep a bandage firmly placed over both eyes. His organization is, I fear, in this direction, well-near hopeless if next morning he does not feel inclined to send a liberal donation to some hospital that has for its mission the prevention of blindness." I have no doubt that improvable persons might be all the better for some such attempt to gain feeling for their fellows. The same doctor thinks that the wearing of a truss, or a spinal apparatus for one day might be a help to tenderness. I will not urge these modes of cure, but the thought is good and it might be tried in other directions. Suppose the squire of the parish who thinks 10 or 12 shillings abundant wages for a week, should say to his lady, "We have always said that our agricultural laborers have quite enough money to live upon--let us try their fare. We will leave this house for a week and take one of the old cottages in the village and live, all of us, on the wages we pay our men." What a capital school for social economy! How well would some people know the value of our silver currency and of the copper coinage, also! Only we would like members of Parliament to have a longer experience than one week, lest it might be a pleasant change from feasting to fasting! Say six months for the honorable member! This might foster sympathy. Our blessed Lord had real experience and, beside that, the faculty of being able to put Himself into the place of sufferers and so to be "acquainted with grief." His quick understanding made Him realize, as High Priest, the sorrows of His people. Too many people are so wrapped up in their own grief that they have no room in their souls for sympathy. Do you not know them? The first thing when they rise in the morning is the dreadful story of the night they have passed. Ah, dear, and they have not quite eaten a hearty breakfast before their usual pain is somewhere or other coming over them! They must have the special care and pity of the whole household. All the day long the one great business is to keep everybody aware of how much the great sufferer is enduring. It is this person's patent right to monopolize all the sympathy which the market can supply and then there will be none to spare for the rest of the afflicted! If you are greatly taken up with self, there is not enough of you to run over to anybody else. How different this from our Lord, who never cried, "Have pity upon Me! Have pity upon Me, O My friends!" He is described as "enduring the Cross, despising the shame." So strong was He in love that, though He saved others, Himself He could not save! Though He succored the afflicted, none succored Him! Men who are wrapped up in their own glories are not sympathetic. Is it not a fine thing to spend life in contemplating one's own magnificence? Those who are amazed at their own greatness have no thought to spare for the suffering. "No," says the man, "the masses must obey the laws of supply and demand and get on as well as they can. Let them do as I have done. I might have been as poor as they are if I had shown as little push and enterprise as they do." The gentleman talks on a great scale and he has no sympathy for the small woes of common life. His sympathy is needed at home and his charity begins there--and is so satisfied with its beginning that it never goes any further. Our Lord is at the opposite pole from all this. He never glorified Himself. He "made Himself of no reputation and took upon Him the form of a servant," thus displaying the tenderness of His heart. Let me say, once more, our Lord is tender to us without any effort--not only because of the reasons I have mentioned, but because He has made our cause His own. We are His friends and does not a friend act tenderly to a friend? We are more than that--we are married to Him and shall not a husband be tender to his spouse? More than that, "we are members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones"--and shall not the Head feel every pain of the members? It must be so! Jesus has so identified Himself with His own redeemed that He must forevermore be in living, loving, lasting sympathy with them! III. I must now notice very briefly, in the third place, that our LORD HAD TENDER TRAINING. Hear what Paul says of it. He "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin." Beloved, our Lord was tried as we are--that is one meaning of the passage. As to all manner of bodily ills, He was subject to them all. Hungry, weary, faint, without a place to lay His head, He was tried in all the points to which poverty exposes its victims. "He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses." Even to the death-sweat and the cry, "I thirst!" Jesus has gone along our pathway of pain and grief. No step of it has been spared Him. Our Lord has been tried mentally. There is never an exceeding heaviness, nor a sore amazement, nor a wound of treachery, nor a stab of ingratitude of which He did not feel. The sharpest arrows in the quiver of anguish have been shot at His dear heart. "Oh," says one, "I do not think anybody has been tried as I have been by cruel unkindness." Say not so, for Jesus was forsaken of all and betrayed by the friend in whom He trusted. As to spiritual distress, our Lord has been there, also. Where any sinless foot could go, He has gone. The abyss has heard Him cry, "My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?" Tried in all points from above and from below, from without and from within, He can sympathize with every form of tribulation. "Like as we are." Who are meant by the "we"? That again is like the "our"--it means you and I. Jesus Christ passed through a training similar to ours. The discipline of life for all the children is much the same. The first-born is tried as the rest of the household are tried. But the text says, "tempted" and that bears a darker meaning than "tried." Our Lord could never have fallen the victim of temptation, but through life He was the object of it. He could never have been so tempted as that the sin of a temptation could spot His soul. Far from it! Yet remember that in the wilderness He was tempted to unbelief The Evil One said, "If you are the Son of God." Most of us know how he can hiss that "if into our ears. "If you are the Son of God." Upon our Lord that "if" fell painfully but harmlessly. Then came the temptation to help Himself and anticipate the Providence of God by selfish action--"Command that these stones be made bread." We, too, have had this rash act suggested to us. The tempter has said, "You could get out of your difficulties by doing a wrong thing--do it! It is not a very wrong thing, either--indeed, it is questionable whether it might not be justifiable under the circumstances! In vain will you wait for the Lord--put out your own hand and provide for yourself! The way of faith in God is slow and you are in pressing need." Our Lord was tempted just like that. When no bread in the house is made the background of a great temptation, remember that our Lord has undergone the counterpart of that temptation. Next, the Lord Jesus was tempted to presumption. Set on the pinnacle of the temple, He heard a voice saying, "If You are the Son of God cast Yourself down from here, for it is written, He shall give His angels charge over You, to keep You." Are you haunted by a similar suggestion to presume? Is it suggested that you quit your old standing and try the new notions, or that you speculate in business, or that you profess to understand what God has never taught you? Resist earnestly! Ah, dear Friends, your Lord knows all about this and as He escaped that temptation, you shall do the same. Then Satan--how often I have wondered at him--dared to say to Christ, "All these things will I give You if You will fall down and worship me." Picture the Lord of angels, with all the royalty of Heaven shining on His brow, and the black fiend daring to say, "Fall down and worship me." It may be that a like temptation is coming home to you--live for gold, live for fame, live for pleasure--in some form or other worship the devil and renounce faith in God. "Worship me," says the Prince of Darkness--"take to the new doctrines. Practice the current worldliness. Leave the Word of God for the wisdom of the philosophers." In some such form will the temptation come, but even though Satan could fulfill his promise and all the world should be ours, we are bound to resist unto the death and we are encouraged to do so by the fact that we are upon the old ground where our Redeemer fought and conquered! He can enter into the distress which this temptation is causing you, for He has felt the same. How the Lord Jesus must have started back with horror from the suggestions of the devil! He never entertained them for an instant, but the mere passing of those temptations over the drum of His ear and the apprehension of His mind must have caused Him the sharpest wounding--for He hated sin with immeasurable hate. Beloved, our Lord has endured so much of temptation that He will be tender towards you this morning, "touched with the feeling of your infirmities," because He was tempted at all points as you are. Even though temptation follows you as the serpent which bites at the horses' heels, your Lord knows it and will deliver you. IV. I am happy to come to my last point, through Divine aid. OUR LORD HAS A PERFECT TENDERNESS. As I read the verse--"In all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin," I thought I heard you say, "But that is just the pinch of the matter. He cannot sympathize with me in sin and that is my great trouble!" Brother, do you wish that your Lord had become a sinner like yourself? Abhor the idea! It would be blasphemy if understood and indulged. You see at once that you could not wish anything of the kind! But listen to me--do not imagine that if the Lord Jesus had sinned He would have been any more tender toward you--for sin is always of a hardening nature. If the Christ of God could have sinned, He would have lost the perfection of His sympathetic Nature. It needs perfection of heart to lay self all aside and to be touched with a feeling of the infirmities of others. Listen again--do you not think that sympathy in sin would be a poisonous sweet? A child, for instance, has done wrong and he has been wisely chastened by his father. I have known cases in which a foolish mother has sympathized with the child. This may seem affectionate, but it is wickedly injurious to the child. Such conduct would lead the child to love the evil which it is necessary he should hate. Have you not felt, yourself, that in unbelieving moments it would have been a great evil for a Christian Brother to have petted you in your unbelief? Have you not felt it was far better for you to have heard a bracing word of upbraiding? We ought not to wish for sympathy in wrong. Sympathy in sin is conspiracy in crime. We must show sympathy with sinners but not with their sins. If, then, you dream that our Lord Jesus would have derived any gracious power to sympathize with us from Himself sinning, you greatly err! Such sympathy, had it been possible, would have been to the last degree injurious to us. Inasmuch as He had no sin we can drink in His words of comfort without fear. His oil and wine will bring no evil to our wounds. His holy experience comforts us and puts us in no risk. It is a blessed thing for a sinner to have the sympathies of one who never sinned! Rejoice, you people of God! Rejoice in this, that the Sinless One has perfect sympathy with you in your infirmities! He sympathizes all the more graciously because He is without sin. I have done when I have said this--if our Lord was thus sympathetic, let us be tender to our fellow men. Let us not restrain our tender feelings, but encourage them. Love is the brightest of the Graces of God and most sweetly adorns the Gospel. Love to the sorrowing, the suffering, the needy, is a charming flower which grows in the garden of a renewed heart. Cultivate it! Make your love practical! Love the poor not in word only, but in actual gifts to them! Love the sick and help them to a cure! Today I cannot conceive of you as thinking of the sick poor of London without wishing that you could house them all, relieve them all with medical skill and then send them for a little respite into the country, or by the seaside, to gather strength! It is a painful fact that our great hospitals have so many beds unoccupied while patients are in need of them! As a governor of St. Thomas's Hospital, I have seen, from time to time, how the endowments have decreased in value through the agricultural depression and the lowering of rents. Surely London is rich enough to make up the deficit of 100,000 pounds! To do this the collections must be at least doubled. Will you allow the poor to pine in their narrow rooms? Shall they perish for lack of surgical care and medical help? Do you call yourselves followers of the tender Jesus? Do you hope to be saved through his compassion? On this Hospital Sunday I charge rich Christians to delay no longer but to be touched with the feeling of the sufferings of those who are made of one flesh with them. Let all of us do our best. I will not insult you by pleading with you as though you were unwilling. You are eager to give for His dear sake who sympathizes with you so tenderly and helps you so graciously. Let the collection be made at once! PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Hebrews 4:14-16; 5:1-14. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--306, 328, 326. __________________________________________________________________ Everlasting Love Revealed A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 15, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "The Lord has appeared of old unto me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love: therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you." Jeremiah 31:3. THUS speaks the Israel of God. She seems to wake up as if she had long been asleep and had forgotten a grand fact-- a fact which she ought to have treasured up in her fondest memory. Suddenly startling into recollection, she cries, "The Lord has appeared of old unto me." How strange that she should have forgotten it! Her spiritual lethargy had dimmed her memory and caused her to feel and act as if it were not true, as if her God had never revealed Himself to her. Then she saw with amazement that notwithstanding all the heavy chastisement which the Lord had sent her and notwithstanding all her backslidings, there was still a hope of mercy, no, there was the certainty of it, for the unchanging God had said, "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love." Are any of you forgetful or unaware of this sacred Truth of God? Has it never occurred to you that God has spoken to His people? Though you are a child of God, have you been taken up with so many inferior things that you have let go the blessed memory of former appearances of the Lord to your soul? May the Holy Spirit awake you at this time! May there come a blessed awakening hour to your drowsy spirits! This startling remembrance came to Israel at a time when her sorrows were very great and her sins were greater, still. She had been wounded so that she was sick and sore--and she found no healing medicine--and none to bind up her wounds. In her distress she remembered not only her faults, but also the former loving kindnesses of her Lord. She gathered from that ancient assurance of Divine Grace that her God loved her, still, and would return to her in great mercy. She dwelt with hope upon that Divine assurance of irrevocable favor--"I have loved you with an everlasting love." When earthly joys ebb out, it is a blessed thing if they make room for memories of heavenly visitations and gracious assurances! When you are at your lowest, it may happen that then the God of All Grace comes in and brings to your remembrance the love of your espousals and the joy of former days, when the candle of the Lord shone round about you. At the same time, it was not merely a time of inward sorrow, but a period of refreshing from the Presence of the Lord, for Jehovah was speaking in tones of Sovereign Grace and pouring forth great rivers of promises and seas of mercy. See the first verse--"At the same time, says the Lord, will I be the God of all the families of Israel and they shall be My people." Sometimes you pour water down a dry pump and that sets it working so that it pours forth streams of its own and so, when our gracious God pours in His love into the soul, our own love begins to flow and with it memories awake and a thousand recollections cause us to bring to mind the ancient love in which we before delighted, and we cry, "The Lord has appeared of old unto me." It only needs a touch, this morning, of that pierced hand to make our hard hearts soft! If our Divine Lord will only come by His Spirit and visit us as we sit in these pews, the waters of love will flow within until the wilderness shall become a pool and the dry land springs of water! Long may we have suffered a great decay of spiritual life, but we shall, on a sudden, be restored and then our hearts will burn and glow with holy attachment to Him whose love has not changed, though we have so sadly fallen. God grant it may be so! May a renewed appearing of the Lord revive our joy in His appearing of old! While you are sitting there, listening to my words, may a still small voice be heard within your souls, melting your hearts and causing you to say, "Yes, I had almost forgotten it, but 'The Lord has appeared of old unto me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love.'" May the grand discovery of everlasting love be made by many of you for the first time in your lives! Oh, for the surprises of Almighty Grace! As when one in plowing stumbles on treasure hid in a field and rejoices exceedingly, even so may you rejoice in newly discovered love! Or if you know it already, may you feel its drawings for the thousandth time and may it be to you still fresh and new, as though you had never felt it before. The visits of God's Grace and the discoveries of His love to our hearts never grow stale! We can go over this heavenly ground again and again and always behold new glories in it! May an overpowering memory of the Lord's love come over us all at this time, by the power of the Holy Spirit! I shall handle the text, first, by calling your attention to the marvelous appearing--"The Lord has appeared of old unto me." Secondly, to the matchless declaration--"Saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love." And thirdly, to the manifest evidence of this love--"Therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you." May the Holy Spirit be poured forth, anointing every word I speak with Divine unction and may this discourse be precious to His people! I. First, consider THE MARVELLOUS APPEARING--"The Lord has appeared of old unto me." Here are two persons, but how different in degree! Here we have, "me," a good-for-nothing creature, apt to forget my Lord and to live as if there were no God--yet He has not ignored or neglected me. There is the High and Holy One, whom the Heaven of heavens cannot contain and He has appeared to me. Between me and the great Jehovah there have been communications--the solitary silences have been broken--"The Lord has appeared," has appeared "unto me." He has looked through the window. He has shown Himself through the lattices--"The Lord has appeared." Hundreds in this House of Prayer can each one say, without doubt or hesitation, "The Lord has appeared unto me." Perhaps of late the Lord has manifested Himself to you as He does not unto the world, but even if it has not been so just now, yet there was a happy time, now in the old long ago, when you saw the Lord. This is a very wonderful thing, that Jehovah the Eternal should reveal Himself to the creature of an hour--that the thrice Holy should speak to the greatly guilty! See here we have "the Lord" and "me"--and between these two, this is the golden link, an appearance in infinite love--"The Lord has appeared unto me." That the All-Glorious should put in an appearance among His angels and unveil Himself to Cherubim and Seraphim, I can more easily understand. But it is incomprehensible that the Creator of the ends of the earth, of whose understanding there is no searching, should visit me, a sinful child of man! Yet this which surpasses understanding is undoubtedly true. My Brothers and Sisters, we have enjoyed the Supernatural--we have risen out of the region of materialism into the spirit realm where God dwells and condescends to commune with mortal men! We can say, "The Lord has appeared unto me." It was necessary that He should do so, for nothing but His appearing could have scattered our darkness, removed our death and brought us salvation. It needed that He should appear, for nothing but a vision of His love could have won our hearts for Himself and delivered them from the fascinations of this present evil world. Tell it among the skeptics and the earthworms--"The Lord has appeared unto me." I care not who questions it, for the results of His gracious visit are in my Nature and my life! The event is recorded in the diary of my memory in indelible ink! But it is also written in my soul and the experience of every day deepens the inscription! Is not this even as the Lord promised of old, "They shall all know Me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them"? Do I hear some asking, How is this? I understand that God appeared to Israel, but how to me? Let me picture the discovery of Grace as it comes to the awakening mind, when it learns to sit at the feet of Jesus, saved by faith in the great Sacrifice. Touched by the Spirit of God, we find that the Lord appeared to each one of us in the promises of His work. Every promise in God's Word is a promise to every Believer, or to every character such as that to which it was first given. When God said this or that to the saints of old, my Soul, He said it to you! I read the word as first spoken to Abraham, Moses, or David--but in very deed each utterance is for me! What a discovery! This Bible is God's letter of love to me! No promise of the Word of God is for one individual only. Though the promise was whispered in one ear at first, that one favored person was the representative of all who have like faith. With what delight you will now read your Bibles, when you can see that in them the Lord has appeared of old unto you and spoken words of love to you personally! Does the Word of God speak to Believers? I am a Believer and therefore it speaks to me. Does the Word speak to praying men and women? I pray--it speaks to me. The richest word in all that Book is as much the inheritance of the Believer today as it was the heritage of David and we may find the words of the Lord and eat them as the Bread of our souls, as Jeremiah did, for, in this sacred Book, "The Lord has appeared of old" to each one of His believing family. Furthermore, "The Lord has appeared of old unto me," in the Person of His Son. God came to each Believer in Christ Jesus. God came in boundless love to each one of us as "Immanuel, God with us." Towards each one of us He "took upon Him the form of a servant, and humbled Himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the Cross." Listen, my Heart! In His Manhood and humiliation the Lord God appeared to you! On the Cross your Lord Jesus showed Himself to you in love. Now you have found it out, is it not a glorious discovery? It was not only for the innumerable multitude that Jesus died, but for you, my Soul, for YOU! I wish, Beloved, we could always look upon Jesus as God's embodied love to us--to us in particular. Will you take a faith-view of Jesus at this time as dying for sinners and for you as a sinner in particular? Say, "Yes, 1,800 years ago and more, the Lord in the Person of His dear Son appeared unto me in Gethsemane and on Calvary as my Lord and my God, and yet my Substitute and Savior." Since then, the Lord has constantly appeared unto us in the power of His Holy Spirit. Do you remember when first your sin was set in order before your tearful eyes and you trembled for fear of the justice which you had provoked? Do you remember when you heard the story of the Crucified Redeemer? When you saw the atoning Sacrifice? When you looked to Jesus and were lightened? It was the Holy Spirit who was leading you out of yourself--and God by the Holy Spirit was appearing unto you. How long has it been? I hope I speak to some who have lately been renewed by the Holy Spirit and to you this appearing is fresh as morning dew! But I speak to many more whose call by Divine Grace was long ago. It was "of old" that the Holy Spirit came into saving contact with your spirit and drew you with the cords of love and with the bands of a man. These past appearances have been eclipsed by others still more clear and full but, at the same time, as Israel remembered the first Passover as the beginning of things with the nation, so do you remember those first appearances of the Lord--for then you began to live! Some of us can remember where the Lord Jesus first met with us. Though it had been in the desert as with Moses, or by the brook as with Jacob, or by the city as with Joshua, or in the furnace as with Shadrach, we have forever reckoned the place to be holiness unto the Lord. Call it Jehovah-Shammah for the Lord was there! Now, dear Friends, we hold this appearance in precious memory--"The Lord has appeared of old unto me." Many things are preserved in the treasure house of memory, but this is the choicest of our jewels. How gracious, how glorious was the appearance of God in Christ Jesus to our soul! God full of mercy, God mighty to save, God the salvation of His people--what a sight is this! There was nothing like it at first! There is nothing like it now! Nothing that has ever been discovered by us since has borne comparison in preciousness to that marvelous manifestation of the ever-loving God! Time may obliterate a thousand memories but it can never wear away the recollection of the Lord's appearances unto us! This appearance came in private assurance. To me it was as personal as it was sure. I used to hear the preacher, but then I heard my God! I used to see the congregation but then I saw Him who is invisible. I used to feel the power of words but now I have felt the immeasurable energy of their substance. God Himself filled and thrilled my soul! Through and through, His almighty love pierced my heart. I know that some of you think that if God were to show Himself to you, as He did to Moses or Elijah, it would be a vast blessing to you. But the Lord's present appearances are not a whit less comforting and establishing. Manifestations by His Word and Spirit are by no means second in value to those of a miraculous sort. In no case can God, who is pure Spirit, be seen by the eye--He is only known by our spirit--and therefore His spiritual appearing is all we should desire. Oh, the encompassing of Divine Love, when it wraps us about as a cloud enfolded the disciples upon Tabor! When the sacred hand of Love grasps our very heart, we feel the heavenly grip and every part and power of our being is moved! God has an indescribable way of putting Himself into communication with His people through Jesus Christ, by His Holy Spirit and when this occurs, they say, "The Lord has appeared unto me." There is, then, no hearing and seeing for other people--"The Lord has appeared unto me." Come, my Brothers and Sisters, shall we go back to that time of love when first the Lord said to us, "Live"? That was a word, indeed! Then every word in the Bible seemed for us. When we went up to the house of God every hymn and Scripture lesson was for us. And when we heard the sermon the Lord manifested Himself in it to us. "He loved me, and gave Himself for me" was our daily song, for He had, personally, and of a surety, drawn near unto our soul and shed abroad His love there by the Holy Spirit. I cannot help calling your attention to the fact that the Lord came in positive certainty. The text does not say, "I hoped so," or, "I thought so," but, "The Lord has appeared of old unto me, saying." She who spoke thus saw the appearance and heard the speech. Brethren, be sure about your spiritual experience! It would be a horrible thing to leave spiritual things a matter of question, or to regard them as visionary and uncertain. To me it is bliss to say, "I know Whom I have believed." My soul cannot content herself with less than certainty. I desire never to take a step upon an, "if," or a, "perhaps." I have often waited as to spiritual movements till I could find beneath my foot one of God's shalls and wills upon which I could securely stand. I can never be content with the bare hope that I may be a child of God--I must have the Spirit bearing witness with my spirit that I am born of God. Give me Infallible Truth. I want facts, not fancies. O Beloved, let your experience be made up of facts and not of notions and ideas! Seek to use the plain, straightforward utterance of my text--"The Lord appeared of old unto me, saying." If that is your case, you are happy. If it is not so, you are in an evil plight, for you are evidently without God and therefore without hope. II. My second head is THE MATCHLESS DECLARATION--"The Lord has appeared of old unto me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love." I do not want you, at this moment, so much to hear me and to consider my statement, as to behold the appearance of the Lord and enjoy for yourself personally and at once, the gracious assurance of heavenly Grace. Here is a word from God of amazing love--Jehovah says, "I have loved you." Think it over. Believe it. Stagger not at it. If the husband should say to his wife, "I have loved you," she would believe him--it would seem only natural that he should do so. And when Jehovah says to you, a feeble woman, an unknown man, "I have loved you," He means it. This is no fiction. God means by love what we mean by it--only His love is higher, deeper, fuller, holier than ours can ever be. Looking from His Throne, the insufferable light of which your eye could not endure, Jehovah speaks in accents of fervent affection and He says to you, "I have loved you." Get hold of this Truth that God really loves you--that you are the object of the intense delight of the Host High--and what more would you have? God's heart to you is Love! Be amazed. Be enraptured with this! Note, next, it is a declaration of unalloyed love. The Lord had been bruising, wounding and crushing His people and yet He says, "I have loved you." These cruel wounds were all in love. What? When He struck, did He love? "Yes, I have loved you." What? When she was past human help and foul with sin? "Yes," says He, "I have loved you." "But, Lord, I have never been worthy of it." "No," He says, "but I have loved you all the same." But, Lord, I have not been conscious of it. "I have loved you all the same." But, Lord, I have run away from Your loving guidance. "I have loved you all the same." God's heart to His people is love, love, love, love, only love! Without beginning, without end, without measure, without change is the love of Jehovah to His elect. "I have loved you." Oh, when I sat at home and tried to eat this roll, as the Prophet did, it satiated my soul with fatness! I ardently wished that I might have voice and strength to tell out this blessed Truth to you. And then I thought--Well, what does it matter if I should be faint and feeble, if they will only think of the text believingly--and get it into their hearts by present enjoyment--it may even be better that the preacher should be nowhere and the Truth should be all in all. When we drink from the well we do not want the water to taste of the pitcher. If you have nothing from me I hope you will have the more from my Master. You will have no taste of me this morning, but only of this precious declaration of the Lord. "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love." It is love, love only, love always, love perfect, love to the uttermost. This statement is a declaration of love in contrast with certain other things. Did you notice in the 14th verse of the 30th chapter, "All your lovers have forgotten you; they seek you not"? Let me sound those two notes in sharp contrast--"All your lovers have forgotten you," but--"I have loved you with an everlasting love." What a difference between the false friendship of the world and sin--and the changeless love of God! You, being earth-bound in heart, have been going after your idols and they have all deceived you. You have been trusting here and there and your trusts have all betrayed you! But the Lord Jehovah says, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." You have provoked Him to jealousy by gods which were no gods, but He has never ceased His love. O Friends, how sadly have we erred by spiritual idolatry! How often have we hewed out broken cisterns which hold no water and yet our God loves us the same as always! What a miracle of Grace is this! As for our love to Him, how fickle! We have been hot today and cold tomorrow. Our love has been an April day--warm sunshine and cold showers--but the Lord has loved us with infinite constancy, even with an everlasting love! He has never changed. He could not love us more--He would not love us less. "I have loved you with an everlasting love." The contrast is very beautiful if we place over against it either the world's love to us, or our own love to God. Jehovah, when He came to His people in Egypt, made Himself known as, "I Am that I Am"--the immutable God who abides forever the same. As such He has revealed Himself to us, for He is without variableness or shadow of turning. How sweetly does Immutability smile on us as we hear it say, "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love"! Thus, dear Friends, our text is a word of love in the past--"I have loved you." We were rebels and He loved us. We were dead in trespasses and in sins and He loved us. We rejected His Divine Grace and defied His warnings, but He loved us. We came to His feet all trembling and afraid--and He loved us and washed us and robed us. He loved us and therefore He saved us. Since then we have been earthly, sinful, changeful, unbelieving, proud, foolish--but He has loved us without pause. We have been ill and racked with pain, but He has loved us. We have lost our dearest relatives by the Lord's hand, but even in this He loved us. Everything has been in a whirl round about us, but He has loved us with fixed affection. Our life has been a strange labyrinth, but He has loved us and that love has been the clue of the maze. How sweet it is, Beloved, to roll up the years gone by and put them away with this label--"Days of the loving kindness of the Lord!" The matchless declaration of the text is a voice of love in the present. The Lord loves the Believer now. Whatever discomfort you are in, the Lord loves you. In this house, perhaps, your heart is failing you with fear, but the Lord still says to you, "Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love." "Everlasting" includes today. Things present are provided for as well as things to come. External circumstances do not change the love of God nor will your internal condition do so. Has He not said, "I am God, I change not"? Everlasting love makes no leaps and jumps so as to leave out this day of trouble and that hour of temptation. Even at this dark hour your name is on the heart of your God. The text is a voice of love in the future. It means, "I will love you forever." God has not loved us with a love which will die out after a certain length of time--His love is like Himself-- "from everlasting to everlasting." If you will read the chapter through to the end, you will see how God was about to deal with His chosen. He says, "I will build you, and you shall be built." "He that scattered Israel will gather him." "I will turn their mourning into joy." "I will be their God, and they shall be My people." These are outpourings of a love which goes on forever-- "Father, 'twas Your love that knew us Earth's foundations long before: That same lo ve to Jesus drew us By its sweet constraining power, And will keep us Safely now, and evermore." It is a joy worth 10,000 worlds to have this assurance sealed in the heart by the Holy Spirit! "I have loved you with an everlasting love." This is a declaration of love secured to us--secured in many ways. Did you observe in this chapter how the Lord secures His love to His people, first, by a Covenant? Read the first verse--"I will be the God of all the families of Israel, and they shall be My people." See further on from verse 31 to thirty-four. The Covenant is summed up in these words, "I will be their God, and they shall be My people." And if it is so, the Lord's love must, indeed, be everlasting. God has pledged Himself to His saints by a Covenant of salt, "an Everlasting Covenant, ordered in all things, and sure." The tenor of the Covenant is, "I will, and they shall." How my heart delights in this! God loves me with an everlasting love and He embodies that love in an Everlasting Covenant. Further, this love is secured by relationship. Will you dart your eye on to the 9th verse and read the last part of it? "I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn." A man cannot get rid of fatherhood by any possible means. Yes, though my boy should transgress and dishonor his father's name, yet I am still his father. There is no getting out of this relationship by any conceivable method and so, if, indeed, the Lord is unto you a Father, He will always give you a father's love. In your adoption and regeneration the Lord has avowed Himself to be your Father and has virtually said, "I have loved you with an everlasting love." "The son abides always." "If children, then heirs." His love is pledged again by redemption. Read the 11th verse-- "For the Lord has redeemed Jacob, and ransomed him from the hand of him that was stronger than he." Would you see the indenture of God's Covenant love? Behold it in the indented hands and feet of the Crucified Redeemer! How shall Christ leave off loving His people when He has their names engraved on the palms of His hands? Redemption has sealed everlasting love. That spear which found His heart and set flowing its blood and its water has killed all doubts as to the eternal endurance of our Lord's love! From now on let no man question our Well-Beloved, for He bears in His body the marks of His everlasting love! Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever--and His love to His chosen is at this time what it was before time began! Once more, in this passage of the book of the Prophet Jeremiah, the Lord certifies His love to His people in a very solemn way by calling Heaven and earth to witness it. Let me read from the 35th verse. "Thus says the Lord, which gives the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divides the sea when the waves thereof roar; the Lord of Hosts is His name: if those ordinances depart from before Me, says the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before Me forever. Thus says the Lord; If Heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, says the Lord." Thus are the laws of Nature made to seal the Law of Love! God, that cannot lie, thus makes the whole creation to be a guarantee of His abiding love to His own. I pray you, believe Him and be joyful in His House of Prayer. This is a declaration of love divinely confessed. The Lord has not sent this assurance to us by a Prophet, but He has made it Himself--"The Lord has appeared." This declaration does not come through another tongue or lips, but the Divine Lover Himself breathes His own love words to His chosen--"The Lord has appeared of old unto me, saying, Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love." Notice, that it is love sealed with a "yes." God would have us go no further in our ordinary speech than to say, "yes, yes"--and surely we may be content with so much from Himself. His "yes" amounts to a sacred declaration--"Yes, I have loved you with an everlasting love." He lifts His hand to Heaven and He swears--swears by Himself, because He can swear by no greater--"That by two immutable things, in which it was impossible for God to lie, we might have a strong consolation, who have fled for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us." Beloved, feast upon this! I am very conscious of the feebleness of my exposition, but I am equally conscious of the great strength of the precious doctrines which I have set before you. III. We finish, thirdly, with THE MANIFEST EVIDENCE. "I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore with loving kindness have I drawn you." Here are drawings mentioned. Have you not felt them? We have not seen God, Beloved, but we have felt Him drawing us. Oh, what tugs He gave to some of us when we were children! Do you remember, when you were boys and girls, when you could not sleep at nights for heavenly drawings towards Divine things? Do you remember, when you were alone in the country, how you would sit down under a hedge and cry--you scarcely knew why--longing for something better than you had as yet reached? Do you remember when the Lord Jesus drew you out of the horrible pit? Out of the midnight of despair? Do you remember how He drew you till He set your feet upon a rock? He drew you from spiritual death, from the corruption of sin, from the dominion of the devil! He drew you into life, love and liberty. He drew you to the foot of the Cross, to the Throne of Grace, to the Church of Christ! How well do I recall the hour when I was drawn to the place where I saw One hanging on a tree in agonies and blood--then and there I looked--and as I looked I lived! Since then the Lord has drawn me along the paths of duty and delight, of faith and peace, of love and joy, of hope and rapture. These were drawings resulting from love. He drew us because He loved us with an everlasting love. Other drawings of Divine goodness are resisted--resisted, in some cases, to the bitter end--and men justly perish. But the drawings of everlasting love effect their purpose. If you have been drawn to Christ, it is because God loved you before the world began! Do not think the Lord began to love you when you began to love Him. Oh, no! If God loves you now, He loved you before He created the earth. If this day He loves you, He loved you when there were no days, but the Ancient of Days. He saw you through the glass of His prescience and He loved you and predestinated you to be conformed unto the image of His Son--and from this purpose of love He will never turn aside. "The gifts and calling of God are without repentance [change]." He will not alter the thing which has gone out of His lips. Here are drawings mentioned--these were drawings from God. How sweetly, how Omnipotently God can draw! When He begins to draw a man, that person may pull back and perhaps, even for years, may stand out against Divine Grace--but when the Lord puts forth His Omnipotence the man is bound to yield. Without violating the will of man or making him less a free agent than he used to be, the loving kindness of the Lord can act as a charm upon him and win him completely with his full consent. "Draw me; we will run after You." He draws, and we run. When Jehovah would have Israel come to Zion, it soon comes to pass that Israel longs to go there. See in the sixth verse: "For there shall be a day, that the watchmen upon the mount Ephraim shall cry, Arise you, and let us go up to Zion unto the Lord our God." We yield to the drawings because they come from the Lord's own hand and their power lies in His love. As the drawings come from God, so are they drawings to God. Blessed is he whose heart is being drawn nearer and nearer to the Most High. Naturally, we struggle back to carnal things--we get taken up with business, with family, and with a thousand groveling cares--but when the Holy Spirit draws, it is upward and heavenward! He draws us to repentance, to faith, to love, to holiness and to continuance in well-doing. Oh, that we may now feel Divine drawings towards Him who is our All in All! The Lord assures us that these are drawings of His loving kindness. However He draws, it is in love and whenever He draws, it is in love. Observe that the Church does not here say, "The Lord drew me," but the Lord Himself says, "With loving kindness have I drawn you." God knows better about His drawings than we do. We think that He pulls and snatches in anger, but He knows that He has always drawn in loving kindness! Because the horse is willful, it thinks the driver stern--our waywardness makes us think our Lord austere. The forces which He puts forth to work upon us are tender, gentle, kind and loving. He has drawn you and me "with loving kindness." I am sure He has thus dealt with me. Will you think of your own case and bless His name? Lord, You have drawn me when I did not know it. You have drawn me when I thought I was willingly moving of my own accord. I see it now and I bless Your name for it. Draw me, still, that I may still say, "Your gentleness has made me great." What a wonderful word is that--"loving kindness"--"loving," "kindness"--two of the choicest jewels set side by side! Kindness is "kin-nedness," and the Lord Jesus treats us as His kin--and He does this in the most loving manner. "With loving kindness have I drawn you." He might have whipped me to Himself. He might have dragged me to the City of Refuge. He might have threatened me into repentance. He might have thundered me into submission. But no, "with loving kindness have I drawn you." I spoke to a Brother in Christ, yesterday, who called himself--and I think he spoke the truth--"a specially favored one." I take that title, also. Take it, my Sister! Take it, my Brother! Does it not fit you well? Has not the Lord been specially good to you? "With loving kindness have I drawn you." "Alas," cries one, "but I have been whipped." "You have chastised me and I was chastised." Very true, but how few have been the strokes compared with what you deserved! "Oh, but God has rebuked me sharply," says another. I answer, again, how few have been His chidings compared with what we might have expected considering our evil ways! Prevailingly His cords have been cords of love and His bands have been the bands of a man. Bless the Lord, O my Soul! He leads me beside the still waters. Only one thing more. These drawings are to be continuous. "With loving kindness have I drawn you" and He means to do the same forevermore. If you will look the chapter through, you will see that God promises to keep on drawing. See verse eight--"Behold, I will bring them from the north country, and gather them from the coasts of the earth." Verse nine--"They shall come. I will cause them to walk by the rivers of waters in a straight way." Read verse 10--"He that scattered Israel will gather him." See verse 12--"Therefore they shall come and sing in the height of Zion, and shall flow together to the goodness of the Lord." He that has begun to draw will go on drawing us till He has safely landed us where His everlasting love shall be our endless theme of song--even in Heaven where we shall dwell in eternal fellowship with the Eternal God! The everlastingness of Divine Love is the crown of it all! I would not care to preach to you a Gospel which has no final perseverance in it. Spiritual life which can die is not the eternal life promised in the Gospel--and heavenly love which can fail is not the everlasting love of our text! Whenever I find that doctrine left out, I feel as if they had taken away the wheat from the barn and the grapes from the winepress. If the salvation which you set forth to be that of Christ is a temporary one, you may have it that like it--I will have none of it! I believe in everlasting love and I can do with nothing less! My hope to get to Heaven lies in this--as far as I have come on the road, the Lord has drawn me and He will draw me the rest of the way. I have had no strength of my own until now--I have had no might but what He has afforded me--and I look to the Lord, still, for all the Grace I shall need between this spot and the gate of pearl! Such a magnificent text as ours ought to make us consider two things. The first is, Is it so? Am I drawn? If God loves you with an everlasting love, He has drawn you by His loving kindness--is it so or not? Has He drawn you by His Holy Spirit so that you have followed? Are you a Believer? Do you carry Christ's Cross? You have been drawn to this. Then take home these gracious words--"I have loved you with an everlasting love." If you have not been so drawn, do you not wish you were? Oh, it were worth dying a thousand deaths to be a Christian after that fashion of Christianity which is based on everlasting love! Here is a glorious foundation--love without beginning, love without end--free, sovereign, unchangeable love! Not love bought by merit in us, nor produced by our efforts or entreaties--but love which comes to us because God will love and has chosen in His Divine Sovereignty to love us. "Everlasting love!" Why, the syllables are music! If you can climb that height, you have climbed where it is worth while to abide forever! O Friends, if you cannot claim this, at any rate desire it and go humbly on your knees to Christ Jesus and look to Him and live! But, child of God, if you know these drawings and if it is true that God loves you with an everlasting love, then are you resting? "I have a feeble hope," says one. What? How can you talk so? He who is loved with an everlasting love and knows it, should swim in an ocean of joy! Not a wave of trouble should disturb the glassy sea of his delight! What is to make a man happy if this will not? Come, come! We must have no more hanging heads. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! If the Lord has loved me with an everlasting love, I will not be cast down though the earth is removed! His love is better than wealth! His love is better than health (great blessing as that is)! His love is better than honor, better than usefulness! Everlasting love--and you have it! Man alive, wipe the tears out of your eyes and lift up your head! "Oh, rest in the Lord, and wait patiently for Him," for if He has loved you so, what have you to fear? What is to be done but to love Him in return who has loved us so much? One thing I know-- "All that remains for me Is but to love and sing, And wait until the angels come To bear me to my King." PORTIONS OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON-- Jeremiah 30:12-17; 31:1-14. HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK"--220, 229, 748. __________________________________________________________________ "All the Day Long" A SERMON DELIVERED ON LORD'S-DAY MORNING, JUNE 22, 1890, BY C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "Let not your heart envy sinners: but be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long. For surely there is an end, and your expectation shall not be cut off." Proverbs 23:17,18. LAST Lord's-Day we had for our texts two promises [EverlastingLove Revealed, #2149.] I trust they were full of comfort to the tried people of God and to souls in the anguish of conviction. Today we will consider two precepts so that we may not seem to neglect any part of the Word of God, for the precept is as Divine as the promise. Here we have a command given of the Holy Spirit through the wisest of men and therefore both on the Divine and on the human side it is most weighty. I said that Solomon was the wisest of men and yet he became, in practice, the most foolish. By his folly he gained a fresh store of experience of the saddest sort and we trust that he turned to God with a penitent heart and so became wiser than ever--wiser with a second wisdom which the Grace of God had given him--to consecrate his earthly wisdom. He who had been a voluptuous prince became the wise preacher in Israel--let us give our hearts to know the wisdom which he taught. The words of Solomon to his own son are not only wise, but full of tender anxiety. They are worthy, therefore, to be set in the highest degree as to value and to be received with heartiness as the language of fatherly affection. These verses are found in the Book of Proverbs--let them pass current as Proverbs in the Church of God as they did in Israel of old. Let them be "familiar in our mouths as household words." Let them be often quoted, frequently weighed and then carried into daily practice. God grant that this particular text may become proverbial in this Church from this day forward. May the Holy Spirit impress it on every memory and heart! May it be embodied in all our lives! If you will look steadily at the text you will see, first, the prescribed course of the godly man--"Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long." Secondly, you will note the probable interruption of that course. It occurred in those past ages and it still occurs--"Let not your heart envy sinners." We are often tempted to repine because the wicked prosper. When we do, the fear of the Lord within us is disturbed and envious thoughts arise--which will lead on to murmuring and to distrust of our heavenly Father unless they are speedily checked. So foolish and ignorant are we, that we lose our walk with God by fretting because of evildoers. Thirdly, we shall notice, before we close, the helpful consideration which may enable us to hold on our way and to cease from fretting about the proud prosperity of the ungodly--"For surely there is an end, and your expectation shall not be cut off." I. Oh, for Divine Grace to practice what the Spirit of God says with regard to our first point, THE PRESCRIBED COURSE OF THE BELIEVER--"Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long!" The fear of the Lord is a brief description for true religion. It is an inward condition causing hearty submission to our heavenly Father. It consists very much in a holy reverence of God and a sacred awe of Him. This is accompanied by a child-like trust in Him which leads to loving obedience, tender submission and lowly adoration. It is a filial fear. Not the fear which has torment, but that which accompanies joy when we "rejoice with trembling." We must, first of all, be in the fear of God before we can remain in it "all the day long." This can never be our condition except as the fruit of the new birth. To be in the fear of the Lord, "you must be born again." The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, as we are taught by the Holy Spirit who is the sole Author of all Grace. Where this fear exists, it is the token of eternal life and it proves the abiding indwelling of the Holy Spirit. "Happy is the man that fears always." "The Lord takes pleasure in them that fear Him." This holy fear of the living God is the life of God showing itself in the quickened ones. This fear, according to the text, is for all the day and for every day--the longest day is not to be too long for our reverence, nor for our obedience. If our days are lengthened until the day of life declines into the evening of old age, still are we to be in the fear of God--yes, as the day grows longer, our holy fear must be deeper. This is contrary to the habit of those persons who have a religion of show. They are very fine, very holy, very devout--when anybody looks at them--but this is the love of human approbation, not the fear of the Lord. The Pharisee, with a half-penny in one hand and a trumpet in the other, is a picture of the man who gives an alms only that his praises may be sounded forth. The Pharisee, standing at the corner of the street, saying his prayers, is a picture of the man who never prays in secret but is very glib in pious assemblies. "Verily, I say unto you, They have their reward." Show religion is a vain show! Do nothing to be seen of men or you will ripen into a mere hypocrite. Neither may we regard godliness as something off the common--an extraordinary thing. Have not a religion of spasms. We have heard of men and women who have been singularly excellent on one occasion, but never again--they blazed out like comets, the wonders of a season--and they disappeared like comets, never to be seen again. Religion produced at high pressure for a supreme occasion is not a healthy growth. We need an ordinary, common, everyday godliness, which may be compared to the light of the fixed stars which shines forevermore. Religion must not be thought of as something apart from daily life--it should be the most vital part of our existence. Our praying should be like our breathing, natural and constant. Our communion with God should be like our taking of food, a happy and natural privilege. Brethren, it is a great pity when people draw a hard and fast line across their life, dividing it into the sacred and the secular. Say not, "This is religion and the other is business," but sanctify all things. Our most common acts should be sanctified by the Word of God and prayer and thus made into sacred deeds. The best of men have the least change of tone in their lives. When the great Elijah knew that he was to be taken up, what did he do? If you knew that tonight you would be carried away to Heaven, you would probably think of something special with which to quit this earthly scene. But the most fitting thing to do would be to continue in your duty, as you would have done if nothing had been revealed to you. It was Elijah's business to go to the schools of the Prophets and instruct the young students--and he went about that business until he took his seat in the chariot of fire. He said to Elisha, "The Lord has sent me to Bethel." When he had exhorted the Bethel students he thought of the other college and said to his attendant, "The Lord has sent me to Jericho." He took his journey with as much composure as if he had a lifetime before him and thus fulfilled his tutorship till the Lord sent him to Jordan, from where he went up by a whirlwind into Heaven. What is there better for a man of God than to abide in his calling in which he glorifies God? That which God has given you to do you should do. That, and nothing else, come what may! If any of you should, tomorrow, have a revelation that you must die, it would not be wise to go upstairs and sit down and read, or pray until the usual day's work was finished. Go on, good woman, and send the children to school and cook the dinner. Go about the proper business of the day and then if you are to die you will have left no ends of life's web to ravel out. So live that your death shall not be a piece of strange metal soldered on to your life, but part and parcel of all that has gone before. "Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long." Living or dying we are the Lord's and let us live as such. Ours must never be a religion that is periodic in its flow like certain, intermittent springs which flow and ebb, and flow only to ebb again. Beware of the spirit which is in a rapture one hour and in a rage the next. Beware of serving Christ on Sunday and Mammon on Monday. Beware of the godliness which varies with the calendar. Every Sunday morning some folks take out their godliness and touch it up while they are turning the brush round their best hat. Many women, after a fashion, put on the fear of God with their new bonnet. When Sunday is over and their best things are put away, they have also put away their best thoughts and their best behavior. We must have a seven-days' religion, or else we have none at all! Periodical godliness is perpetual hypocrisy! He that towards Jesus can be enemy and friend by turns, is in truth always an enemy. We need a religion which, like the poor, we always have with us, which, like our heart, is always throbbing and, like our breath, is always moving. Some people have strange notions on this point--they are holy only on holy days and in holy places. There was a man who was always pious on Good Friday. He showed no token of religion on any other Friday or, indeed, on any other day--but on Good Friday nothing would stop him from going to church in the morning after he had eaten a hotcross bun for breakfast. That day he took the Sacrament and felt much better--surely he might well enough do so since on his theory he had taken in grace enough to last him for another year! You and I believe such ideas to be ignorant and superstitious, but we must take heed that we do not err after a similar manner. Every Friday must be a Good Friday to us. May we become so truly gracious that to us every day becomes a holy day! May our garments be vestments. May our meals be sacraments. May our houses be temples. May our families be churches. May our lives be sacrifices and ourselves kings and priests unto God! May the bells upon our horses be "holiness unto the Lord"! God send us religion of this kind, for this will involve our being "in the fear of the Lord all the day long." Let us practically note the details which are comprised in the exhortation, "Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long." The sun is up and we awake. May we each one feel, "When I awake I am still with You." It is wise to rise in proper time, for drowsiness may waste an hour and cause us to be behind all day, so that we cannot get into order and act as those who quietly walk with God. If I am bound to be in the fear of God all the day long, I am bound to begin well, with earnest prayer and sweet communion with God. On rising it is as essential to prepare the heart as to wash the face--as necessary to put on Christ as to put on one's garments. Our first word should be with our heavenly Father. It is good for the soul's health to begin the day by taking a satisfying draught from the river of the Water of Life. Very much more depends upon beginnings than some men think. How you go to bed tonight may be determined by your getting up this morning. If you get out of bed on the wrong side, you may keep on the wrong side all day. If your heart is right when you wake, it will be a help towards its being right till you go to sleep in the evening. Go not forth into a dry world till the morning dew lies on your branch. Baptize your heart in devotion before you wade into the stream of daily care. See not the face of man until you have first seen the face of God. Let your first thoughts fly heavenward and let your first breathings be prayer. And now we are downstairs and are off to business, or to labor. As you hurry along the street, think of these words, "Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long." Leave not your God at home--you need Him most abroad. In mingling with your fellow men, be with them, but be not of them if that would involve your forgetting your Lord. That early interview which you have had with your Beloved should perfume your conversation all day long. A smile from Jesus in the morning will be sunshine all the day. Endeavor, when you are plying the trowel, or driving the plane, or guiding the plow, or using the needle or the pen, to keep up constant communication with your Father and your Lord. Let the telephone between you and the Eternal never cease from its use-- put your ear to it and hear what the Lord shall speak to you--and put your mouth to it and ask counsel from the Oracle above. Whether you work long hours or short hours, "Be in the fear of the Lord all the day long." But it is time for meals. Be in the fear of the Lord at your table. The soul may be poisoned while the body is being nourished if we turn the hour of refreshment into an hour of indulgence. Some have been gluttonous--more have been drunken. Do not think of your table as though it were a hog's trough where the animal might gorge to the full, but watch your appetite and by holy thanksgiving make your table to be the Lord's table. Eat the bread of earth as to eat bread at last in the kingdom of God! Drink that your head and heart may be in the best condition to serve God. When God feeds you, do not profane the occasion by excess, or defile it by loose conversation. During the day our business calls us into company. Our associations in labor may not be so choice as we could wish, but he that earns his bread is often thrown where his own will would not lead him. If we were never to deal with ungodly men it would be necessary for us to go out of the world. He that is in the fear of God all the day long will watch his own spirit, language and actions--that these may be such as become the Gospel of Christ in whatever society his lot may be cast. Seek not to be a hermit or a monk--be a man of God among men! When making a bargain, or selling your goods to customers, be in the fear of God. It may be necessary to go into the market, or on the exchange--but be in the fear of the Lord amid the throng. It may be you will seldom be able to speak of that which is most dear to you, lest you cast pearls before swine--but you must abide always under holy and heavenly influence so as to be always ready to give a reason for the hope which is in you with meekness and fear. "Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long," though yours ears may be vexed and your heart grieved with the evil around you. He that cannot be in the fear of God in London cannot in the country. The company has now gone and you are alone--maintain the fear of the Lord in your solitude. Beware of falling into solitary sin. Certain young men and women, when alone, pull out a wicked novel which they would not like to be seen reading. Others will have their sly nips though they would be reputed very temperate. If a man is right with God he is in his best company when alone and he seeks therein to honor his God and not to grieve Him. Surely, when I am alone with God, I am bound to use my best manners. Do nothing which you would be afraid to have known. Be in the fear of the Lord when you are so much alone that you have no fear of men. The evening draws in, the shop is closed and you have a little time to yourself. Our young people in shops need a rest and a walk. Is this your case? "Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long." In the evening, as well as in the morning, be true to your Lord. Beware of ill company in the evening! Take care that you never say, "Surely the darkness shall cover me." "Be you in the fear of the Lord" when sinners entice you. Refuse any offer which is not pleasing to God. "Recreation," says one. Yes, recreation. There are many helpful and healthy recreations which can, in moderation, be used to advantage. But engage in no pastime which would hinder your continuing in the fear of the Lord! In your recreation forget not your higher recreation in which you were created anew in Christ Jesus! Our chief rest lies in a change of service for our Lord. Our fullest pleasure in fellowship with Jesus. Night has fallen around us and we are home with our families--let us not forget to close the day with family prayer and private prayer as we opened it. Our chamber must see nothing which angels might blush to look upon. Those holy beings come and go where holy ones repose. Angels have a special liking for sleeping saints. Did they not put a ladder from Heaven down to the place where Jacob lay? Though he had only a stone for his pillow, the earth for his bed, the hedges for his curtains and the skies for his canopy, yet God was there and angels flocked about him. Between God's Throne and the beds of holy men there has long been a much frequented road. Sleep in Jesus every night so that you may sleep in Jesus at the last. From dawn to midnight "be you in the fear of the Lord." Let us now remember special occasions. All days are not quite the same. Exceptional events will happen and these are all included in the day. You sustain, perhaps one day, a great loss and unexpectedly find yourself far poorer than when you left your bed. "Be you in the fear of the Lord" when under losses and adversities. When the great floods prevail and storms of trials sweep over you, remain in the ark of the fear of the Lord and you shall be as safe as Noah was. Possibly you may have a wonderful day of success--but be not always grasping for it. Yet your ship may come home--your windfall may drop at your feet. Beyond anything you have expected, a surprising gain may fall into your lap--be not unduly excited, but remain in the fear of the Lord. Take heed that you be not lifted up with pride, so as to dote upon your wealth, for then your God may find it necessary to afflict you out of love to your soul. It may happen, during the day, that you are assailed by an unusual temptation. Christian men are well armed against common temptations, but sudden assaults may injure them. Therefore, "be in the fear of the Lord all the day long" and then surprises will not overthrow you. You shall not be afraid of evil tidings, neither shall you be betrayed by evil suggestions if you are rooted and grounded in the constant fear of the Lord. During the day, perhaps, you are maliciously provoked. An evil person assails you with envenomed speech and if you lose your temper a little your adversary takes advantage of your weakness and becomes more bitter and slanderous. He hurls at you things which ought not to be thought of, much less to be said. "Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long." "Cease from anger and forsake wrath." "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good." The adversary knows your tender place and therefore he says the most atrocious things against God and holy things. Heed him not, but in patience possess your soul and in the fear of the Lord you will find an armor which his poisoned arrows cannot pierce. "May the peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus." It may be, that during the day you will have to act in a very difficult business. Common transactions between man and man are easy enough to honest minds--but every now and then a nice point is raised--a point of conscience, a matter not to be decided off-hand. "Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long." Spread the hard case before the Lord. Judge a matter as it will be judged before His bar and if this is too much for your judgment, then wait upon God for further light. No man goes astray, even in a difficult case, if he is accustomed to cry, like David, "Bring here the ephod." This Holy Bible and the Divine Spirit will guide us aright when our best judgment wavers. "Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long." But, alas, you are feeling very unwell--this day will differ from those of activity. You cannot go to business. You have to keep to your bed. Fret not, but "be in the fear of the Lord all the day long." If the day has to last through the night because sleep forsakes you, be still with your thoughts soaring toward Heaven, your desires quiet in your Father's bosom and your mind happy in the sympathy of Christ! To have our whole being bathed and baptized in the Holy Spirit is to find health in sickness and joy in pain. It may be, also, that you suffer from a mental sickness in the form of depression of spirit. Things look very dark and your heart is very heavy. Mourner, "Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long." When life is like a foggy day--when Providence is cloudy and stormy and you are caught in a hurricane--still "be in the fear of the Lord." When your soul is exceedingly sorrowful and you are bruised as a cluster trod in the winepress, yet cling close to God and never let go your reverent fear of Him. However exceptional and unusual may be your trial, yet know within your soul, "Though He slay me, yet will I trust in Him." I have sketched the matter roughly. Let me now suggest to you excellent reasons for being always in the fear of the Lord. Ought we not to be in the fear of the Lord all the day long, since He sees us all the day long? Does the Lord ever take His eyes from off us? Does the Keeper of Israel ever slumber? If God were not our God, but only our lawful master, I should say, "Let us not be eye-servants"--but since we cannot escape His all-seeing eyes--let us be the more careful how we behave ourselves. "Be you in the fear of the Lord all the day long" for Jehovah, whom you fear, sees you without ceasing. Remember, also, that sin is equally evil all the day long. Is there an hour when it would be right to disobey God? Is there some interval in which the law of holiness has no force? I think not. Therefore, never consent to sin. To fear God is always right--to put away the fear of God from before our eyes would be always criminal--therefore, be ever in the fear of God. Remember the strictness of Nehemiah's integrity and how he said, "So did not I because of the fear of the Lord." Walk in the fear of the Lord at all times because you always belong to Christ. The blood-mark is always upon you--will you ever belie it? You have been chosen and you are always chosen--you have been bought with a price and you are always your Lord's. You have been called out from the world by the Holy Spirit and He is always calling you. You have been preserved by Sovereign Grace and you are always so preserved--therefore, by the privileges you enjoy, you are bound to abide in the fear of the Lord. How could you lay down your God-given and Heaven-honored character of a child of God? No, rather cling forever to your adoption and the heritage it secures you. You can never tell when Satan will attack you, therefore be always in the fear of the Lord. You are in an enemy's country. Soldiers, be always on the watch! Soldiers, keep in order of fight! You might straggle from the ranks and begin to lie about in the hedges and sleep without sentries if you were in your own country. But you are marching through the enemy's land where an enemy lurks behind every bush. The fear of the Lord is your sword and shield--never lay it down! Furthermore, remember that your Lord may come at any hour. Before the word can travel from my lips to your ears Jesus may be here. While you are in business, or on your bed, or in the field, the flaming heavens may proclaim His Advent. Stand, therefore, with your loins girt and your lamps trimmed, ready to go into the supper whenever the Bridegroom comes. Or you may die. As a Church we have had a double warning, during the last few days, in the departure of our two Beloved elders, Messrs. Hellier and Croker. They have been carried home like shocks of corn, fully ripe. They have departed in peace and have joyfully entered into rest. We, also, are on the margin of the dividing stream--our feet are dipped in the waters which wash the river's brim. We, too, shall soon ford the black torrent. In a moment, suddenly, we may be called away--let every action be such that we would not object to have it quoted as our last action. Let every day be so spent that it might fitly be the close of life on earth. Let our near and approaching end help to keep us "in the fear of the Lord all the day long." If we keep in that state, observe the admirable results! To abide in the fear of the Lord is to dwell safely. To forsake the Lord would be to court danger. In the fear of the Lord there is strong confidence, but apart from it there is no security. How honorable is such a state! Men ridicule the religion which is not uniform. I heard of a Brother who claimed to have long been a teetotaler, but some doubted. When he was