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  SPURGEONS SERMONS VOLUME 13 1867
  by C.H. Spurgeon
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Volume 13 of Spurgeon's collected sermons, containing messages preached during
1867 at the Metropolitan Tabernacle. These sermons showcase Spurgeon's powerful
biblical exposition, vivid illustrations, and passionate gospel proclamation
that drew thousands to hear the 'Prince of Preachers' during his Metropolitan
Tabernacle ministry.

  Chapters: 5

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    0. Spurgeons Sermons Volume 13 1867
    1. Loving Advice for Anxious Seekers
    2. A Sermon to Open Neglecters and Nominal Followers of Religion
    3. Alive or Dead--Which?
    4. Songs of Deliverance

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  CHAPTER 0: SPURGEONS SERMONS VOLUME 13 1867
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  CHAPTER 1: LOVING ADVICE FOR ANXIOUS SEEKERS
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A Sermon (No.735) Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, February 17th, 1866, by C. H.
SPURGEON, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington "If any of you lack wisdom,
let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it
shall be given him." -- James 1:5. IF YOU ARE acquainted with the context, you
will at once perceive that this verse has a special reference to persons in
trouble. Much-tempted and severely-tried saints are frequently at their wits'
end, and though they may be persuaded that in the end good will come out of all
their afflictions, yet for the present they may be so distracted as not to know
what to do. How fitly spoken and how seasonable is this word of the apostle, "If
any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God;" and such wisdom shall the Lord
afford his afflicted sons, that the trying of their faith shall produce
patience, and they themselves shall count it all joy that they have fallen in
divers trials. However, the promise is not to be limited to any one particular
application, for the word, "If any of you," is so wide, so extensive, that
whatever may be our necessity, whatever the dilemma which perplexes us, this
text consoles us with the counsel, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God."
This text might be peculiarly comforting to some of you who are working for God.
You cannot work long for your heavenly Lord without perceiving that you need a
greater wisdom than you own. Why, even in directing an enquirer to the cross of
Christ, simple work as that may seem to be, we shall often discover our own
inability and folly. In rebuking the backslider, in comforting the desponding,
in restoring the fallen, in guiding the ignorant, we shall need to be taught of
God, or else we shall meet with more failures than successes. To every honest
Christian worker this text speaks with all the soft melody of an angel's
whisper. "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God." Thy lips shall
overflow with knowledge, and thy tongue shall drop with words of wisdom, if thou
wilt but wait on God and hear him before thou speakest to thy fellow men. Thou
shalt be made wise to win souls if thou wilt learn to sit at the Master's feet,
that he may teach thee the art which he followed when on earth, and follows
still. But the class of persons who just now win my heart's warmest sympathies
are those who are seeking the Saviour; and, as the text says, "If any of you," I
thought I should be quite right in giving seekers a share in it. They are
seeking Christ, but they are in the dark: their soul desires Him, but it has
little light, little guidance, and their cry is. "O that I knew where I might
find him! that I might come even to his seat!" I thought that this text might be
as the balm of Gilead to some of these unwise ones, who have found out all of a
sudden their own sin and folly. I thought it would say to them, "If you, poor
si" Let us put ourselves, then, at once in order for this work of comforting
seekers, and may God, the Holy Ghost, make it effectual. I. First, I shall call
your attention to THE GREAT LACK OF MANY SEEKERS, NAMELY, WISDOM. This lack
occurs from divers reasons. Sometimes it is their pride which makes them fools.
Like Naaman, they would do some great thing if the prophet had bidden them, but
they will not wash and be clean. The natural heart rebels against the simplicity
of the way of salvation. "What! am I to do nothing but simply accept the
righteousness already finished? Am I to leave off doing, and merely to look unto
Him who was nailed to the tree, and find all my salvation in Him? "Well, then,"
saith the proud heart, "I cannot understand it." It cannot understand it because
it doth not love it. Now, soul, if this be thy difficulty, and I believe, in
nine cases out of ten, a proud heart is at the root of all difficulty about the
sinner's coming to Christ -- if this it is which turns you aside and makes you
foolish, then go to God about it, and seek wisdom from Him. He will show you the
folly of this pride of yours, and teach you that simply to trust in Jesus is at
once the safest and most suitable way of salvation. He will make you see that if
the way of salvation had been by doing, the method would not have suited you,
for what could you do? If it had been by feeling, it would not have suited you
either, for what can your hard heart feel? How can you make yourself tender of
heart? But, seeing that it is by faith, it is therefore by grace. O that you may
be made wise enough to stoop and kiss the silver sceptre which is outstretched
to you, to come and buy this wine and milk, without money and without price, and
accept with you whole heart, with intense joy, this perfect righteousness, this
finished salvation which Christ hath wrought out and brought in for every
seeking soul.Many persons also, are made foolish, so that they lack wisdom
through their despair. Probably, nothing makes a man seem so much like a maniac
as the loss of hope. When the mariner feels that the vessel is sinking, that the
proud waves must soon overwhelm her, then he reels to and fro, and staggers like
a drunken man, because he is at his wits' end. Ah! poor heart, when thou seest
the blackness of sin, I do not wonder that thou art driven to despair; and when
thy sins come howling behind thee, like so many ravenous wolves, all seeking to
devour thee, I do not marvel that thou shouldst be ready even to lay violent
hands upon thyself. It is no strange thing for men to be sorely tempted when
they are under a sense of sin. And now thou knowest not what to do. If thou
couldst be calm and quiet, we could tell you plainly the way of peace, and you
might understand that there is no reason for despair, since Jesus died and rose
again, and is "able to save to the uttermost them that come unto God by him;"
but you cannot give us a calm hearing, for you are distracted, and you think
that this comfort applies to everybody but you. You lack wisdom because you are
in such a worry and turmoil. As John Bunyan used to say, you are much troubled
up and down in your thoughts. I pray you, then, ask wisdom of God, and even out
of the depths if you cry unto him, he will be pleased to instruct you and bring
you out into a safe way.No doubt many other persons lack wisdom because they are
not instructed in gospel doctrine. It is wonderful how Satan will plague many
timid hearts with the doctrine of election. That doctrine, rightly understood,
is full of comfort; but, distorted and misrepresented, it often appears to be a
bolt to shut sinners out from mercy -- the fact being that it shuts none out,
but shuts tens of thousands in. Why, the very doctrine of the atonement is not
understood by many, while they are under a sense of sin. If they could see that
Christ took their sins and carried their sorrows; if they could perceive the
meaning of the word, "substitution," light might break in. The window of the
understanding is blocked up with ignorance, if we could but clean away the
cobwebs and filth, then might the light of the knowledge of Christ come
streaming in, and they might rejoice in his salvation. Well, dear friends, if
you are be-mired and be-puzzled with difficult doctrine, the text comes to you
and says, "If any man lacks wisdom, let him ask of God."Ignorance also of
Christian experience is another cause for the lack of wisdom. I have seen many
enquirers who have told me what they have felt, and to them it was so amazing,
that they half expected to see every individual hair of my head stand upright
while they told me their feelings; and when I said, "Oh! yes, yes, I have felt
just like that; that is the common way of most souls that come to Christ;" they
have looked surprised beyond measure. The very road which is most safe, you
think to be most dangerous; and that which leads to Christ, you fancy leads to
hell. Little do you know the value of that stripping work which you so much
dread. "Surely," say you, "I am being stripped that I may be cast away;" whereas
the Lord only strips those whom he intends afterwards to clothe with the robe of
his salvation. Those cuttings of the lancet are sharp, and you think that the
surgeon means to kill, but he intends to cure. When God is making you feel the
burden of your guilt , you suppose that now he has forgotten to be gracious,
whereas it is now that he is gracious to you in very deed, and is using the best
means of making you understand and value his grace. The way of life is a new
road to you, poor seeking soul, and therefore you lack wisdom in it and make
many mistakes about it. The text lovingly advises, "Ask of God;" "Ask of God."
Very likely, in addition to all this, which may well enough make you lack
wisdom, there are certain singularities in the action of providence towards you,
which will fill you with dismay. Ever since you have begun to think about the
Lord Jesus, things have gone cross with you in the outward world. You have not
only trouble within, but, strange as you think it is, you have now trouble
without: it partly arises from friends who say you are mad -- would God they
were bitten with the same madness! -- partly from circumstances over which you
can have no control. It is not at all unusual for God to make a complete
shipwreck of that vessel in which his people sail, although he fulfills his
promise, that not a hair of their heads shall perish. I should not wonder if he
would cause two seas to meet around your barque, so that there should not be
more than a few boards and broken pieces of the ship left to you, but oh! if you
have faith in Christ, he will certainly bring you safe to shore. It is not at
all an uncommon thing for the Lord to add to the inward scourgings of conscience
the outward lashings of affliction. These double scourgings are meant for proud,
stubborn hearts, that they may be humbly brought to Jesus' feet, for of us it
may be said, in truth, as Solomon saith of the child, "Foolishness is bound in
his heart; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him." God is thus,
dear hearer, bringing folly out of you by the smarts of his rod. It is written,
"The blueness of a wound cleanseth away evil," and therefore the Lord is making
your wounds to be black and blue, and I should not wonder if he will even let
them putrefy, till you have to say with Isaiah, "From the sole of the foot even
unto the head there is no soundness in it; but wounds, and bruises, and
putrifying sores." Then it is that eternal mercy will take advantage of your
dire extremity, and your deep distress shall bring you to Christ who never would
have been brought by any other means. To close this somewhat painful picture.
Many lack wisdom beause in addition to all their fears and their ignorance, they
are fiercely attacked by Satan. John Bunyan tells us of Apollyon, that he said,
"No king will willingly lose his subjects." Of course, he will not; and
Apollyon, as he sees his subjects one after another desert him to enlist under
the banner of King Jesus, howls at his loses, and he leaves no stone unturned to
keep souls back from mercy. Just at that critical momen himself, "It is now or
never. If I do not nip these buds, they will become flowers and fruits; but if I
can bring in a withering frost, I shall kill the young plant." The great enemy
makes a dead set at anxious souls. He it is who digs that Slough of Despond
right in front of the wicket gate, and keeps the big dog to howl before the
door, so that poor trembling Mercy may go into a fainting fit, and find herself
too weak to knock at the door. "Now," saith he to all is servants, "shoot your
arrows at that awakened soul; it is about to escape from me: empty your quivers,
ye soldiers of the pit; launch your hot temptations, ye fiends of hell! Sting
that soul with infidel insinuations and hideous blasphemies, for if I once lose
it I have lost it forever; therefore, hold it, ye princes of the pit, hold it
fast, if ye can." Now, in such a plight as that, with your foolish heart, and
the wicked world, and the evil one, and your sins in dreadful alliance to
destroy you, what could such a poor timid one as you do, if it were not for this
precious word, "If any of you" -- that must mean you -- "If any of you lack
wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth
not"? II. We shall now mention the second point in the text. THE PROPER PLACE OF
A SEEKERS RESORT -- "Let him ask of God."My dear friends, bear me witness that
it is my constant effort to teach you the spirituality of true religion, and the
necessity of our own hearts having personal dealings with the living God. Now,
though this you have heard thousands of times, I was about to say from me, yet,
once again, I must remind you of it: the text says, "Let him ask of God." Now,
you perceive, that the man is directed at once to God, without any intermediate
object, or ceremony, or person. You are not told here to seek direction from
good books; they may become very useful as auxiliary helps, but the best of
human books, if followed slavishly, will mislead. For instance, I am sure that
hundreds of persons have been kept in unnecessary bondage through that wonderful
and admirable book, "Doddridge's Rise and Progress of Religion in the Soul." It
has been the means of the conversion of hundreds; it has been profitable to
thousands more; but there is a point in which it fails, so that, if you
slavishly follow it, you may read the book through, and I undertake to say, you
will not find comfort by following its exhortations. It fails, as all human
guides must, if we trust in them and forget the Great Shepard of Israel. When a
man is really under concern of soul, he is in a condition of considerable
danger. Then it is that an artful false teacher may get hold of him, and cozen
him into heresy and unscriptural doctrine. Hence the text does not say, "If any
man lacks wisdom, let him ask his priest;" that is about the worst thing he can
do; for he who sets himself up for a priest, is either a deceiver or deceived.
"Let him ask of God," that is the advice of the Scripture. We are all so ready
to go to books, to go to men, to go to ceremonies, to anything except God. Man
will worship God with his eyes, and his arms, and his knees, and his mouth --
with anything but his heart -- and we are all of us anxious, more or less, until
we are renewed by grace, to get off the heart-worship of God. Juan de Valdey
says, that, "Just as an ignorant man takes a crucifix and says, This crucifix
will help me to think of Christ,' so he bows before it and never does think of
Christ at all, but stops short at the crucifix; so," says he, "the learned man
takes his book and says, This book will teach me the mysteries of the kingdom,'
but instead of giving his thoughts to the mysteries of godliness, he reads his
book mechanically and stops at the book, instead of meditating and diving into
the truth." It is the action of the mind that God accepts, not the motion of the
body; it is the thought communing with him; it is the soul coming into contact
with the soul of God; it is the spirit-worship which the Lord accepts.
Consequently, the text does not say, "Let him ask books," nor "ask priests," but
, "let him ask of God."Above all, do not let the seeker ask of himself and
follow his own imaginings and feelings. All human guides are bad, but you
yourself will be your own worst guide. "Let him ask of God." When a man can
fairly and honestly say, "I have bowed the knee unto the Lord God of Israel, and
asked him, for Jesus' sake, to guide me and to direct me by his Spirit, and then
I turned to the Book of God, asking God to be my guide into the book," I cannot
believe but what such a man will soon obtain saving wisdom.I beg to caution all
of you against stopping short of really asking of God. I conjure you by the
living God, do not be satisfied with asking of me. I am no priest, except as all
believers are priests, thank God. I wear no title of ecclesiastical dominion. Be
not content with asking my brethren, the deacons and elders: God has made many
of them wise in helping souls out of difficulties; do not be satisfied with the
advice of any man, however godly and holy, but go direct to the Lord God of
heaven and earth, and say unto him, "Lord, teach thou me! Show me thy way, O
God! Teach me in thy truth!" You are not bidden to go to any second-hand source
of wisdom, but to God the only wise, who alone can direct you. "Let him ask of
God."Such advice as this must be good. You cannot suspect us of any interested
motive in exhorting you to this. It is your good which we seek, and not out own
glory. It must be the best to go to head-quarters: you will surely be lead
aright if so you seek direction. Some say, Lo, here! others say, Lo, there! But
if you go to God, and then with his guidance study his word, you shall not fail
of wisdom. How can you?Moreover, remember that there is one blessed person of
the divine Unity who makes it his especial office to teach us! Hense, if you go
to God for wisdom, you only go for that which it is his nature and his office to
give. The Holy Ghost is given to this end: "He shall teach you all things, and
bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I have said unto you." When you
go to God, you may say to him these words, "O Father, you have been pleased to
reveal to us the Holy Spirit, who is to lighten our darkness, and to remove our
ignorance. Oh, let that Spirit of thine dwell in me; I am willing to be taught
by thy Spirit, through thy word, or through thy ministers, but I come first to
thee because I know that thy word and thy ministers, apart from thyself, cannot
teach me anything. O Lord, teach thou me." I do not mean by any word of mine to
make you think little of Scripture -- God forbid! -- nor little of those who may
speak to you with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, but I did mean to make
you look even at that Book, and at God's ministers, as being subservient to the
Holy Ghost himself. Go to him; ask him: for there in the Book is the letter that
killeth; he, he alone can make you to know the living essence and the quickening
power of that word. Without the Holy Ghost, my dear hearer, you must still be as
blind with the light as you would have been without it. You will be as foolish
after having been taught the gospel in the theory of it, as you were before you
knew it. Let the Holy Spirit, however, teach you, and you shall know all things
that are necessary for this life and godliness. Thus, then, we have brought two
points before you: the great lack of the seeker is "wisdom;" and the right place
to get that lack removed.III. Thirdly, THE RIGHT MODE IN WHICH TO GO TO GOD.
"Let him ask." Oh! That simple word, "Let him ask" -- "let him ask!" No form of
asking is precribed, no words laid down, no method dictated, no hour set apart,
no rubric printed; but there it stands in gracious simplicity, "let him ask."
Hewho will not have mercy when it is to be had for the asking for, deserves to
die without it. While I am thinking of this word, before I plunge into its
fullest meaning, I may well say, if God will give wisdom to the seeker only
because he asks for it, what shall I say of the folly which will not even ask to
be made wise? May God forgive you such folly for the past, and deliver you from
it for the future.The text says, "Let him ask," which is a method implying that
ignorance is confessed. No man will ask wisdom till he knows that he is
ignorant. Come, dear hearer, confess your ignorance into the ear of God, who is
as present here as you are; say unto him, "Lord, I have discovered now that I am
not so wise as I thought I was; I am foolish and vain. Lord, teach thou me."
Make a full confession, and this shall be a good beginning for prayer.Asking has
also in it the fact the God is believed in. We cannot ask of a person of whose
existence we have any doubt, and we will not ask of a person of whose hearing us
we have serious suspicions. Who would stand in the desert of Sahara and cry
aloud, where there is no living ear to hear? Now, my dear hearer, thou believest
that there is a God. Ask, then! Dost thou not believe that he is here, that he
will hear thy cry, that he will be pleased in answer to thy cry to give thee
what thou askest for? Now, if thou canst believe that there is a God, that he is
here and that he will hear thee, then confess thy ignorance, and ask him now to
give thee the promised wisdom for Jesus' sake.There is in this method of
approaching God by asking, also, a clear sight that salvation is by grace. It
does not say, "Let him buy of God, let him demand of God, let him earn from
God." Oh! no -- "let him ask of God." It is the beggar's word. The beggar asks
an alms. You are to ask as the beggar asks of you in the street, and God will
give to you far more liberally than ye to the poor. You must confess that you
have no merit of your own. If you will not acknowledge that, neither will God
hear your prayers; but come now with the acknowledgment of ignorance, with the
confession of sin, and believing that God is the rewarder of them that
diligently seek him, and he will even now give you the wisdom which saves the
soul.Observe here, what an acknowledgment of dependence there is. The man sees
that he cannot find wisdom anywhere else, but that it must come from God. He
turns his eye to the only fountain, and leaves the broken cisterns. Do this,
dear hearer. I feel as if the text did not want any explanation from me, but
only wanted carrying out by you. Let him ask of God. I think I can hear
fifty-thousand objections from different parts of the building. One is saying,
"But I don't understand, ask of God." If thou has made some difficulties for
thyself, if thou art such a fool as to be tying knots and wanting to get them
untied before thou wilt believe in Jesus, then I have nothing to say to thee,
except it were, beware lest thou dost tie a knot that shall destroy thy soul;
but if thou be troubled with an honest objection, I say to thee now, in God's
name, "Ask of God." You need not wait till you get home, you need not stay till
you have left that seat, but now, silently, in your soul, as Hannah did when she
went up to the tabernacle, breathe the prayer, "O God, teach thou me: lead me to
the foot of the cross; help me to see Jesus; save my soul this day; end the
doubtful strife; answer these questions; bring me, as an humble seeker, to lie
before the footstool of thy sovereign mercy, and to receive pardon through the
mediatorial sacrifice. "Let him ask -- that is all -- let him ask."IV. Fourthly,
the text has in it ABUNDANT ENCOURAGEMENT for such a seeker.There are four
encouagements here. "Let him ask of God, who giveth to all men." What a wide
statement -- Who "giveth to all men!" I will take it in its broadest extent. In
natural things, God does give to all men life, health, food, raiment. Who
"maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good;" who causeth the rain to
descend upon the fields of the just and of the unjust. Every creature is
favoured with divine benevolence; and there is not a creature, from the tiniest
ephemera which creepeth upon the green leaf of the forest, up to the
swift-winged angel who adoringly flies upon his Master's will, which is not made
to partake of the gifts of the Great Father of Lights. Now, if God hath gifts
for all men, how much more will he have gifts for that man who earnestly turns
his tearful eye to heaven and cries, "My Father, give me wisdom, that I may be
reconciled to thee through the death of thy Son"? Why, the grass, as Herbert
says, never asked for the dew, and yet every blade has its own drop; and shall
you daily cry for the dew of grace, and there be no drop of heaven's grace for
you? Impossible. Fancy your own child saying, "My father, my father, I want to
be obedient, I want to be holy;" and suppose that you have power to make your
child so, could you find it in your heart to refuse? No; it would be a greater
joy to you to give than it could be to the child to accept. But it has been
said, the text ought not be understood in that broad sense. Very probably it
ought not so to be. I conceive that there is implied the limitation that God
giveth to all who seek. Though the limitation is not stated, yet I think it is
intended, because of spiritual mercies God does not give to all men liberally.
There are some men who live and die without the liberal favours of grace,
because they wantonly and wickedly refuse them; but he gives to all true seekers
liberally. We may take that view of it, and we may find you hundreds of
witnesses to prove the truth of it, and can find them in this very place this
morning. Here is one witness; I myself personally sought the Lord, and he heard
me, and delivered me from all my fears. My dear brethern, and my sisters too, I
know that you could spring up like a great army, if it were a fitting thing to
asy you to do, and you could say, "This poor man cried, and the Lord heard him.'
The God of Jacob hath not despised nor abhorred the cries of his people.'" Now,
soul, if God has heard so many who sought his face, why should he not hear you?
Is it not a comfort to think that hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands
have gone to God, and there has never been a case in which he has refused one?
Will he begin with you? Shall you be the first rejected seeker? Oh! then, what a
strange destiny yours will be, to have to say to another world, "I am the first
who sought grace, and found it not; I wept at the foot if the cross, and I found
no mercy; I said, Lord, remember me,' but he would not remember me." You will
never be able to say that. Hell will never make its boast over such a case;
heaven will never have its honour tarnished by one such solitary instance. Seek
the Lord and his strength; seek his face evermore. Your hearts shall live that
seek him.The next comfort is, he gives to all men liberally. God does not give
as we do, a mere trifle to the beggar, but he bestows his wealth by handsful.
Solomon asked for wisdom: God gave him wealth and power. In nearly every
instance of prayer in the Old Testament, God gives ten times as much as is asked
for. Jacob asked that he might have bread to eat, and raiment to put on: God
made him to be two bands. The Lord will "do exceedingly abundantly above all
that we ask or think." This is the divine habit. He not only redeems his
promises, but when he might meet them in silver he prefers to pay them in gold.
He is exceedingly bountiful. Dear hearers, we have found him so when we have
tried him, and do you think that he will begin to be niggardly with you? If he
should liberally forgive your sins, he will be none the poorer; if he withhold
forgiveness, he will be none the richer. Why should he stint his favour? You
want to wash away your sins: there is a river of grace to wash in. You want
grace to refresh your souls: he has floods to pour upon the dry ground. We read
of the unsearchable riches of Christ. Ho! ye leviathan sinners, here is an ocean
of mercy for you to swim in. Ho! you elephantine sinners, here is an ark large
enough to hold you and float you above the waters of the deluge! Ho! ye gigantic
sinners, whose sins of pride reach up to heaven, and whose feet of lust are
plunged in the mire of hell, the sacred hiding-place is large enough to hide
even you. The Lord is great in mercy. Oh! who would not ask of so liberal a God,
whose thoughts as the heavens are above the earth.It is added as a third
comfort, "and upbraideth not." That is a sweet word. If you help a friend who is
in debt, and wants to borrow money, you say, "Remember, I do not like it, you
ought not to be in such a state." Your brother wants some aid; you have helped
him many times, and will again, but still you upbraid him and tell him he is
very imprudent; he ought not to get into these messes; he ought to manage his
business better." If you do not tell him so with the mouth, you look at him, and
he thinks to himself, "It's very kind of him to give me the help, but really it
is very humiliating to me to have to ask him because I get so severe a lesson."
I suppose we do right to upbraid. I have no doubt we do so with good motives.
But God never does upbraid seeking souls. He giveth liberally, and does not dim
the lustre of his grace by harsh rebukes. He does not say. "Ah! you sinner, how
came you to commit such sin; I will forgive you, but -- -- -- -- -- ." The
Father does not talk thus to the returning prodigal. One would have supposed
that when the prodigal came back, the father would have said, "Well, dear boy,
you are forgiven, but never let me see you do that again. How wrong of you to
take that portion of my goods, and spend it in that way! I shall never be so
well off as before; you have wasted half my living; and now think where you have
been: what a dishonour you have cast upon your father's name and character
through wasting your living with harlots. I forgive: I cannot forget." My
brethren, it was not so. The prodigal remembered his sins, but his father forgot
them all, and exclaimed with joy, "This my son was dead, and is alive again; he
was lost, and is found." O soul, if thou didst but know the heart of the
Saviour, thou wouldst not tarry in sin. If thou couldst but know the overflowing
love of the divine Father, thou wouldst not linger in unbelief." "His heart is
made of tenderness,His bowels melt with love."Fool as thou art, be not such a
fool as to be unwilling to ask for wisdom, but now breathe the prayer, "Teach
me, O God, to trust thy dear Son this day."Then comes the last encouragement.
"It shall be given him." Looking through my text last night, I asked the
question -- Is that last sentence wanted? "Let him ask of God, which giveth to
all men liberally, and upbraideth not." Now, if the Lord gives to all men, he
will certainly give to the seeker. Is that last promise wanted? And I came to
this conclusion, that it would have not been there if it was not required. There
are some sinners that cannot be contented to draw obvious inferences; they must
have it in black and white. Such is the fearfulness of their nature, they must
have the promise in so many express words. Here they have it, "it shall be given
him." You are not left to suppose that it shall be, or infer that it may be, but
it is written, "it shall be given him."But to whom shall it be given? If any of
you lack wisdom. "Well," says one, "I am quite out of all catalogues; I am one
by myself." Well, but you are surely contained in this "any of you." "Ah!" says
one, "but I have a private fault, a sin, an offense which I would not dare to
mention, which I believe has damned me for ever." Yet the text says, "If any of
you." If I saw a door open, and it said "If any of you be hungry, let him come
in here," I should not stop outside because I feared that I was not quite the
person intended, I should say "It is their business who mean to keep me out, to
be more specific in their invitation. They have put it 'any of you.' I am
certainly one of the sons of men, and I will step in to the feast." Ah soul! if
God had meant to shut thee out, he would have been more plain about it, but here
is not a shutting-out word at all. It says, "If any of you lack wisdom" -- well,
that is you, surely -- that lack of wisdom helps to include you within the
boundary. It does not limit the character; it widens it to you, because you feel
how foolish you are. The promise is, "it shall be given him." "Suppose I do not
get it," you say. You must not suppose God to be a liar. How can you suppose
such a blasphemy? "Let him ask of God, and it shall be given him." "But," says
one, "suppose my sins should prove to be too great!" I cannot, will not suppose
anything which can come in conflict with the positive word of God. "Let him ask
of God, and it shall be given him." Do you think God does not mean what he says?
O sinner, will you add to all your other sins this sin of thinking that God
would lie? O man, he invites you to ask of him wisdom, and he says he will give
it to you; doubt not the Lord, distrust not the veracity of Jehovah, but come at
once humbly, trembling, to the foot of the Saviour's cross. View him lifted on
high, as the great atoning sacrifice; look to his streaming wounds; behold his
brow still covered with the crimson drops which flow from the wounds caused by
his thorny crown. Look to him and live. There's life in a look at the Crucified
One: look to him, and the promise is that you should be saved. I commend the
text to the careful, thoughtful, believing acceptation of every sinner here. Ask
that the sun may not go down until you each and all have received the promise
which the test presents to you. May the Holy Spirit now give his own blessing,
for Jesus' sake. Amen.PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON -- Matthew 5:1-12.


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  CHAPTER 2: A SERMON TO OPEN NEGLECTERS AND NOMINAL FOLLOWERS OF RELIGION
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A Sermon (No.742) Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, March 24th, 1866, by C. H.
SPURGEON, At the Agricultural Hall, Islington "But what think ye? A certain man
had two sons; and he came to the first, and said, Son, go work to day in my
vineyard. He answered and said, I will not: but afterward he repented, and went.
And he came to the second, and said likewise. And he answered and said, I go,
sir: and went not. Whether of them twain did the will of his father? They say
unto him, The first. Jesus saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That the
publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came
unto you in the way of righteousness, and ye believed him not: but the publicans
and the harlots believed him: and ye, when ye had seen it, repented not
afterward, that ye might believe him." -- Matthew 21:28-32. THE SIGHT OF THIS
VAST ARENA, and of this crowded assembly, reminds me of other spectacles which,
in days happily long past, were seen in the amphitheatres of the old Roman
Empire. Around, tier upon tier, were the assembled multitudes, with their cruel
eyes and iron hearts; and in the center stood a solitary, friendless man,
waiting till the doors of the lion's den should be uplifted, that he might yield
himself up a witness for Christ and a sacrifice to the popular fury. There would
have been no difficulty then to have divided the precious from the vile in that
audience. The most thoughtless wayfarer who should enter into the amphitheatre,
would know at once who was the disciple of Christ and who were the enemies of
the Crucified One. There stood the bravely-calm disciple, about to die, but all
around, in those mighty tiers of the Colosseum, or of the amphitheatre of some
provincial town, as the case might be, there sat matrons and nobles, princes and
peasants, plebeians and patricians, senators and soldiers, all gazing downward
with the same fierce, unpitying look; all boisterous for their heathen gods, and
all vociferous in the joy with which they gazed upon the agonies of the disciple
of the hated Galilean, butchered to make a Roman holiday. Another sight is
before us to-day, with far more happy associations; but alas! it is a far more
difficult task this day to separate the chaff from the wheat, the precious from
the vile, than in the day when the apostle fought with beasts at Ephesus. Here,
in this arena, I hope there are hundreds, if not thousands, who would be
prepared to die for our Lord Jesus; and in yonder crowded seats, we may count by
hundreds those who bear the name and accept the gospel of the Man of Nazareth;
and yet, I fear me, that both in these living hills on either side, and upon
this vast floor, there are many enemies of the Son of God, who are forgetful of
his righteous claims -- who have cast from them those cords of love which should
bind them to his throne, and have never submitted to the mighty love which
showed itself in his cross and in his wounds. I cannot attempt the separation.
You must grow together until the harvest. To divide you were a task which at
this hour angels could not perform, but which one day they will easily
accomplish, when at their Master's bidding, the harvest being come, they shall
gather together first the tares in bundles to burn them, and afterwards the
wheat into Jehovah's barn. I shall not attempt the division, but I shall ask
each man to attempt it for himself in his own case. I say unto you, young men
and maidens, old men and fathers, this day examine yourselves whether you be in
the faith. Let no man take it for granted that he is a Christian because he has
helped to swell the numbers of a Christian assembly. Let no man judge his
fellow, but let each man judge himself. To each one of you I say, with deepest
earnestness, let a division be made by your conscience, and let your
understandings separate between him that feareth God and him that feareth him
not. Though no man clothed in linen, with a writer's inkhorn by his side, shall
go through the midst of you to set a mark upon the foreheads of the men that
sigh and cry for all the abominations of this city, let conscience take the
inkhorn and honestly make the mark, or leave the favored sign unmade, and let
each man question himself this morning, "Am I on the Lord's side? Am I for
Christ, or for his enemies? Do I gather with him, or do I scatter abroad?"
"Divide! divide!" they say in the House of Commons; let us say the same in this
great congregation this day. Political divisions are but trifles compared with
the all-important distinction which I would have you consider. Divide as you
will be divided to the right and to the left in the great day when Christ shall
judge the world in righteousness. Divide as you will be divided when the bliss
of heaven, or the woes of hell, shall be your everlasting portion. If the whole
of us were thus divided into two camps, and we could say these have made a
covenant with God by sacrifice, and those on the other hand are still enemies to
God by wicked works, looking at the last class we might still feel it necessary
by way of personal application to make a division among them; for although all
unbelievers are alike unpardoned and unsaved, yet they are not alike in the
circumstances of their case and the outward forms of their sins. Alike in being
without Christ, they are still very varied in their mental and moral condition.
I trust I was guided by the Spirit of God to my text this morning, for it is of
such a character, that while it enables me to address the whole mass of the
unconverted, it gives me a hopeful opportunity of getting at the conscience of
each by dividing the great company of the unconverted into two distinct classes.
O that for each tribe of unbelievers, there may be a blessing in store this day.
First, we shall speak to those who are avowedly disobedient to God; and,
secondly, to those who are deceptively submissive to him. I. First, we have a
word for THOSE WHO ARE AVOWEDLY DISOBEDIENT TO GOD. There are many such here.
God has said to you as he says to all who hear the gospel, "Son, go work to day
in my vineyard;" and you have replied, perhaps honestly, but certainly very
boldly, very unkindly, very unjustly, "I will not." You have made no bones about
it, but given a refusal point-blank to the claims of your Creator. You have
spoken your mind right out, not only in words, but in a more forcible and
unmistakable manner, for actions speak far more loudly than words. You have
said, over and over again, by your actions, "I will not serve God, or believe in
his Son Jesus." My dear friend, I am glad to see you here this morning, and
trust that matters will change with you ere you leave this hall; but at present
you have not yielded even an outward obedience to God, but in all ways have
said, "I will not." Practically you have said, "I will not worship God, I will
not attend a place of worship on the Sunday -- it is a weariness intolerable to
me. I shall not sing the praise of my Maker -- I will not pretend to bless the
God for whom I have no love. In public prayer I shall not join -- I have no
heart for it. I shall not make a pretense of repeating morning and nightly
prayer in private -- what is the good of it? I will not pray at all; I do not
believe in its efficacy, and I will not be such a hypocrite as to follow a vain
practice in which I have no belief whatever. As for what is called sin, I love
it and will not give it up." You are proud of being called an honest man, for
you own the claims of your fellow men upon you, but you scorn to be thought
religious, for you do not admit the rights of your Maker. To the righteous
requests of others you yield a cheerful obedience, but to the just and tender
requests of God you give a plain and evident denial. As clearly as actions can
speak, you say by your neglect of the Sabbath, by your disregard of prayer, by
your never reading the Bible, by your perseverance in known sin, and by the
whole course of your life, "I will not." Like Pharaoh, you have demanded, "Who
is the Lord that I should obey his voice?" You are of the same mind as those of
old, who said, "It is vain to serve God, and what profit is there if we keep his
ordinances?" Moreover, my friend, you have not as yet given an assent to the
doctrines of God's Word; on the contrary, intellectually as well as practically,
you go not at God's bidding. You have set up in your mind the idea that you must
understand everything before you will believe it -- an idea, let me tell you,
which you will never be able to carry out, for you cannot understand your own
existence; and there are ten thousand other things around you which you never
can comprehend, but which you must believe or remain for ever a gigantic fool.
Still you cavil at this doctrine and that doctrine, railing at the gospel system
in general; and if you were asked at a working man's conference, why you did not
go to a place of worship, you would perhaps say that you kept away from worship
because you did not like this doctrine or that. Let me say on my own account,
that as far as I am personally concerned, it is a very small consideration to me
whether you do like my doctrine or do not; for your own sake I am anxious above
measure that you should believe the truth as it is in Jesus; but while you live
in sin, your dislike of a doctrine will very probably only make me feel the more
sure of its truth, and lead me to preach it with more confidence and vehemence.
Think you that we are to learn God's truth from the likings or dislikings of
those who refuse to worship him, and want an excuse for their sins? O
unconverted men and women, it is very long before we shall come to you to learn
what you would have us preach, and when we fall so low as to do that, you
yourselves will despise us. What! shall the physician ask his patient what kind
of medicine he would wish to have prescribed? Then the man needs no physician,
he can prescribe for himself. Show the doctor out at the back door directly.
What is the use of such a physician? Of what service is a minister who will
truckle to depraved tastes and sinful appetites, and say, "How would you like me
to preach to you? What smooth things shall I offer you?" Ah souls! we have some
higher end to be served than merely pleasing you. We would save you by
distasteful truths, for honeyed lies will ruin you. That teaching which the
carnal mind most delights in, is the most deadly and delusive. With many of you,
your beliefs, and tastes, and likes, must be changed, or else you will never
enter heaven. I admit that in a measure I like your honesty in having said
outright, "I will not serve God;" but it is an honesty which makes me shudder,
for it betrays a heart hard as the nether millstone. Again, you have said, "I
will not serve God," and up to this time it is very possible that you have never
been in the humor to repent of having said it, for the ways of sin are sweet to
you, and your heart is fixed in its rebellion. You have never felt that
conviction of sin, which the Holy Spirit has wrought in some of us; if you had
felt it, you would soon have been shaken out of your "I will not." If God's
power of grace, of which thousands of us bear witness that it is as real a power
as that which guides the stars or wings the wind -- if God's almighty grace
should once get a hold of you, you would no longer say, "I do not believe this
or that;" for, as tremblingly as any of those whom you now despise, you would
cry out, "What must I do to be saved?" Up till now you have never felt that
power, and therefore I cannot wonder that you do not acknowledge it, although
the testimony of honest witnesses ought to have some weight with you. You are
practically, intellectually, and avowedly no Christian; you have never deceived
yourself and others by making a profession which you do not honor, but you have
gone on in your own chosen path, saying with more or less resolution, in answer
to every call of the gospel, "I will not."We said just now that the answer of
the son to his father as recorded in our text was very plain; it was not,
however, very genuine, or such as his father might have expected. His father
said, "Son, go work to day in my vineyard;" and the son rudely said, "I will
not, that is flat;" and without another word of apology or reason went his way.
This is not quite as it should be. Is it? Even so, my friend, you may have been
too hasty and so have been unjust. Is it not very possible you have denied to
God and to his gospel the respect which both really deserve? You have spoken
very plainly, but at the same time very thoughtlessly, very harshly to the God
who has deserved better things of you. Have you ever given the claims of the
Lord Jesus a fair consideration? Have you not dismissed the gospel with a sneer
quite unworthy of you? Have you not been afraid to look the matters between God
and your soul fairly in the face? I believe it to be the case of hundreds here;
I know it to be the case of thousands and tens of thousands in London. They have
put their foot down, and they have said, "None of your religion for me! I have
made up my mind and I will never alter; I hate it and will not listen to it."
Does no small voice within ever tell them that this is not fair to themselves or
to God? Is the matter so easily to be decided? Suppose it should turn out that
the religion of Jesus is true, what then? What will be the lot of those who
despised him? My hearer, the religion of Jesus is true, and I have proved its
truth in my own case; do, I pray you, consider it, and do not trifle away your
immortal soul. Thus saith the Lord, "Consider your ways."It is now time for me
to tell the openly ungodly what is his real state. You have been more than a
little proud of your honesty; and looking down upon certain professors of
religion you have said, "Ah! I make no such pretences as they do, I am honest, I
am." Friend, you cannot have a greater abhorrence of hypocrites than I have; if
you can find a fair chance of laughing at them, pray do so. If by any means you
can stick pins into their wind-bags, and let the gas of their profession out,
pray do so. I try to do a little of it in my way, do you do the same! You and I
are agreed in this, I hope, in heartily hating anything like sham and falsehood;
but if you begin to hold your head up, and think yourself so very superior
because you make no profession, I must take you down a little by reminding you
that it is no credit to a thief that he makes no profession of being honest, and
it is not thought to be exceedingly honorable to a man that he makes no
profession of speaking the truth. For the fact is, that a man who does not
profess to be honest is a professed thief, and he who does not claim to speak
the truth is an acknowledged liar; thus in escaping one horn you are thrown upon
another, you miss the rock but run upon the quicksand. You are a confessed and
avowed neglecter of God, a professed despiser of the great salvation, an
acknowledged disbeliever in the Christ of God. When our Government at any time
arrests persons suspected of Fenianism, they have no difficulty about those
gentlemen who glory in wearing the green uniform and flaunting the big feather.
"Come along," says the constable, "you are the man, for you wear the regimentals
of a rebel." Even so when the angel of justice arrests the enemies of the Lord,
he will have no difficulty in accusing and arresting you, for, laying his hand
upon your shoulder, he will say, "You wear the regimentals of an enemy of God;
you plainly, and unblushingly, acknowledge that you do not fear God nor trust in
his salvation." No witnesses need be called concerning you at the last great
day; you will stand up, not quite so bravely as you do to-day, for, when the
heavens are on a blaze, and the earth is rocking to and fro, and the great white
cloud fills the field of vision, and the eyes of the great Judge shall burn like
lamps of fire, you will put on a different mien and a different carriage from
that which you maintain before a poor preacher of the gospel Ah! my ungodly
hearer, with such a case as thine there shall be no need to judge, for out of
thine own mouth shalt thou be condemned. Yet I came not here to tell you of your
sins only, but to help you to escape from them. It is necessary that this much
should be said, but we now turn to something far more pleasant. I am in hopes
this day that some of you will listen to that little word in the text,
"afterward." He said, "I will not; but afterward he repented, and went." It is a
long lane, which has no turning, let us trust that we have come to the turning
now. There is space left you for repentance; though you may have been a
drunkard, or a swearer, or unchaste, the die is not yet cast, a change is yet
possible. May God grant that you may have reached the time when it shall be said
of you, "Afterward he repented; he changed his mind; he believed upon Jesus, and
obeyed the word of the Lord, and went." Perhaps the son in the parable thought a
little more calmly about it. He said to himself, "I will consider the matter,
second thoughts are often best. I growled at my good father, and gave him a
sharp answer, and I saw the tear standing in the good man's eye. I am sorry I
grieved him. The thought of grieving him makes me change my mind. I said No' to
him," said he, "but I did not think about it. I forgot that if I go and work in
my father's vineyard, I shall be working for myself, for I am his eldest son,
and all that he has will belong to me, so that I am very foolish to refuse to
work to my own advantage. Ah! now I see my father had my advantage at heart, I
will even go as he bade me." See, he shoulders his tools, and away he marches to
labor with all his might. He said, "I will not," but he repented and went, and
it is admitted by all that he did the will of his father. Oh, I hope that many a
man and woman now in this Agricultural Hall will this day cry, "I do retract
what I have said. I will go to my Father, and will say to him, I will do thy
bidding. I will not grieve thy love. I will not lose the opportunity of
advancing my soul's best interest; I obey the gospel command.'" I will suppose
that I see one such before me, and I will speak to him. Perhaps he said, "I will
not," because he really did not understand what religion was. How few after all
know what the way of salvation is; though they go to church, and to chapel, they
have not yet learned God's plan of pardoning sinners. Do you know the plan of
salvation? Hear it and live by it. You have offended God; God must punish sin;
it is a fixed law that sin must be punished; how then can God have mercy upon
you? Why, only in this way: Jesus Christ came from heaven and he suffered in the
room, place, and stead of all who trust him; suffered what they ought to have
suffered, so that God is just, and yet at the same time he is able to forgive
the very chief of sinners through the merits of his dear Son. Your debts, if you
be a believer in him, Christ has paid on your behalf. If you do but come and
rest upon Jesus and upon Jesus only, God cannot punish you for your sins, for he
punished Jesus for them, and it would not be just of him to punish Christ and
then to punish you, to exact payment first from the Surety and afterwards from
the debtor. My dear hearer, whoever thou mayst be, whatever thy past life may
have been, if thou wilt trust Christ, thou shalt be saved from all thy sin in a
moment, the whole of thy past life shall be blotted out; there shall not remain
in God's book so much as a single charge against thy soul, for Christ who died
for thee, shall take thy guilt away and leave thee without a blot before the
face of God. Read the last verse of my text, and you will see that it was by
believing that men entered into the kingdom of God of old, and it is still by
believing that men are saved. "Behold the Lamb of God," said John the Baptist,
and if you look to that bleeding Lamb, you shall live. Do you understand this?
Is it not simple? Is it not suitable to you. Will you still refuse to obey it?
Does not the Holy Spirit prompt you to relent? Do you not even now say, "Is it
so simple? I will even trust in Jesus:'Guilty, but with heart relenting,To the
Savior's wounds I'll fly.'I will come, by God's help, this morning, lest death
should come before the sun sets. I will trust Christ to save me. Precious way of
salvation! Why should I not be saved?"It is possible too, that you may have
said, "I will not," because you really thought there was no hope for you. Ah! my
friend, let me assure you -- and oh! how glad I am to be able to do it -- that
there is hope for the vilest through the precious blood of Jesus. No man can
have gone too far for the long arm of Christ to reach him. Christ delights to
save the biggest sinners. He said to his apostles, "Preach the gospel to every
creature, but begin" -- where? "begin at Jerusalem. There live the wretches who
spat in my face. There live the cruel ones that drove the nails throught my
hands. Go and preach the gospel to them first. Tell them that I am able to save,
not little sinners merely, but the very chief of sinners. Tell them to trust in
me and they shall live." Where are you, you despairing one? I know the devil
will try to keep the sound of the gospel from your ears if he can, and
therefore, I would "cry aloud and spare not." O ye despairing sinners, there is
no room for despair this side the gates of hell. If you have gone through the
foulest kennels of iniquity, no stain can stand out against the power of the
cleansing blood. "There is a fountain filled with blood,Drawn from Immanuel's
veins,And sinners plunged beneath that flood,Lose ALL their guilty stains."Oh, I
trust, now that you know there is hope for you, you will say, "I will even come
at once, and put my trust in Jesus."While I would thus encourage you to repent
of your neglect of God, let me invite you to come to Jesus, and press it upon
you yet again. Ah! my dear friend, you will soon be dying, and though some
wicked men, in their stupid insensibility, die very calmly, and as David said,
"They are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men,
but their strength is firm," yet, whether they perceive it or not, it is a
dreadful thing to die with unpardoned sin hanging about you. What will your
guilty soul do when it leaves the body? Think of it a minute. It is a matter
worthy of your thought. Some of you, in all probability, will die this week. It
is not probable that so many thousands of us will march through a whole week,
and be found alive at the other end of it. Well then, as we may some of us go
soon, and all of us must go ere long, let us look before us and think a bit.
Imagine your soul unclothed of the body. You have left the body behind you, and
your disembodied spirit finds itself in a new world. Oh, it will be a glorious
thing if that separated spirit shall see Jesus whom it has loved, and fly at
once into his bosom, and drink for ever of the crystal fountain of ever-flowing
bliss: but it will be a horrible thing if instead of it, your naked shivering
spirit should wake up to find itself friendless, homeless, helpless, hopeless,
tormented with remorse, afflicted with despair. What if it should have to cry
out forever, "I knew my duty but I did it not, I knew the way of salvation but I
would not run in it. I heard the gospel, but I shut my ears to it. I lived and
at length left the world without Christ, and here I am, past hope, no repenting
now, no believing now, no escaping now, for mercy and love no longer rule the
hour." Have pity on thyself, my hearer. I have pity on thee. Oh, if my hand
could pluck thee from that flame, how cheerfully would I do it! Shall I pity
thee and wilt thou not pity thyself? Oh, if my pleadings should by God's grace
persuade you to trust in Christ this morning, I would plead with you while
voice, and lungs, and heart, and life held out! But oh, have pity on thyself!
Pity that poor naked spirit which so soon will be quivering with utmost agony, a
self-caused agony, an agony from which it would not escape, an agony of which it
was warned, but which it chose to endure sooner than give up sin and yield to
the scepter of sovereign grace.I would fain hope that you are saying, "I do now
repent, and by God's grace I will go." If so, let me tell you there are a great
many in heaven who once, like you, said, "I will not," but they afterwards
repented and are now saved. I will give you one picture. Yonder, I see a company
of men on horseback, and there is one, the proudest of them all, to whom they
act as a guard; they are going to Damascus, that he may take Christians to
prison and compel them to blaspheme. Saul of Tarsus is the name of that cruel,
murderous persecutor. When Stephen was put to death, God said to this man Saul,
"Go, work in my vineyard," but Saul said plainly, "I will not," and to prove his
emnity, he helped to put Stephen to death. There he is riding in hot haste, upon
his evil errand, none more set and determined against the Lord. Yet my Lord
Jesus can tame the lion, and even make a lamb of him. As he rides along, a
bright light is seen, brighter than the sun at noonday; he falls from his horse,
he lies trembling on the ground, and he hears a voice out of heaven, saying,
"Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me?" Lifting up his eyes with astonishment, he
sees that he had ignorantly been persecuting the Son of God. What a change that
one discovery wrought in him. That voice, "I am Jesus, whom thou persecutest,"
broke his hard heart, and won him to the cause. You know how three days after
that, that once proud and bigoted man was baptized upon profession of the faith
of Christ, whom he had just now persecuted! and if you want to see an earnest
preacher, where can you find a better than the apostle Paul, who, with heart on
fire, writes again and again, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross
of our Lord Jesus Christ." I hope there is a Saul here, who is to be struck down
this morning. Lord, strike him down! Eternal Spirit strike him down now! You did
not know perhaps, that you had been fighting God, but you thought the religion
of Jesus to be a foolish dream. You did not know that you had insulted the dying
Savior; now you do know it, may your conscience be affected, and from this day
forth may you serve the Lord.I must leave this second point when I have just
said this. If there be one here who after a long refusal, at last relents, and
is willing to become a servant of God by faith in Jesus Christ, let me tell him
for his encouragement, he shall not be one whit behind those who have been so
long making a profession without being true to it, for the text says, "The
publicans and harlots go into the kingdom;" but what else? "Go into the kingdom"
before those who made a profession of serving God, but who were not true to it.
You great sinners shall have no back seats in heaven! There shall be no outer
court for you. You great sinners shall have as much love as the best, as much
joy as the brightest of saints. You shall be near to Christ; you shall sit with
him upon his throne; you shall wear the crown; your fingers shall touch the
golden harps; you shall rejoice with the joy which is unspeakable and fall of
glory. Will ye not come? Christ forgets your past ill manners, and bids ye come
to-day. "Come," saith he, "unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden and I
will give you rest." Thirty years of sin shall be forgiven, and it shall not
take thirty minutes to do it in. Fifty, sixty, seventy years of iniquity shall
all disappear as the morning's hoar-frost disappears before the sun. Come and
trust my Master, hiding in his bleeding wounds. "Raise thy downcast eyes, and
seeWhat throngs His throne surround!These, though sinners once like thee,Have
full salvation found.Yield not then to unbelief;He says, There yet is
room:'Though of sinners thou art chief,Since Jesus calls thee, come."II. Bear
with me a little time while I speak to the second character, THE DECEPTIVELY
SUBMISSIVE, by far the most numerous everywhere in England, probably the most
numerous in this assembly. Oh! you, my own regular hearers, you who have heard
my voice these thirteen years many of you are in this class. You have said to
the Great Father, "I go, sir!" but you have not gone. Let me sorrowfully sketch
your portraits: you have regularly frequented a place of worship, and you would
shudder to waste a single Sunday in an excursion, or in any form of Sabbath
breaking. Outwardly you have said," I go, sir." When the hymn is given out, you
stand up and sing, and yet you do not sing with the heart. When I say, "Let us
pray!" you cover your faces, but you do not pray with real prayer. You utter a
polite, respectful "I go, sir," but you do not go. You give a notional assent to
the gospel. If I were to mention any doctrine, you would say, "Yes, that is
true. I believe that." But your heart does not believe: you do not believe the
gospel in the core of your nature, for if you did, it would have an effect upon
you. A man may say, "I believe my house is on fire," but if he goes to bed and
falls to sleep, it does not look as if he believed it, for when a man's house is
on fire he tries to escape. If some of you really believed that there is a hell,
and that there is a heaven, as you believe other things, you would act very
differently from what you now do. I must add that many of you say, "I go, sir,"
in a very solemn sense, for when we preach earnestly the tears run down your
cheeks, and you go home to your bedrooms, and you pray a little, and everybody
thinks that your concern of mind will end in conversion: but your goodness is
"like the morning cloud and the early dew." You are like dunghills with snow
upon them: while the snow lasts you look white and fair, but when the snow melts
the dunghill remains a dunghill still. Oh, how many very impressible hearts are
like that! You sin, and yet you come to a place of worship, and tremble under
the word; you transgress, and you weep and transgress again; you feel the power
of the gospel after a fashion, and yet you revolt against it more and more. Ah!
my friends, I can look some of you in the face and know that I am describing
some of your cases to the letter. You have been telling lies to God all these
years, by saying, "I go, sir," while you have not gone. You know that to be
saved you must believe in Jesus, but you have not believed. You know that you
must be born again, but you are still strangers to the new birth. You are as
religious as the seats you sit on, but no more; and you are as likely to get to
heaven as those seats are, but not one whit more, for you are dead in sin, and
death cannot enter heaven. O my dear hearers, I lament that ever I should be
called to say such a thing as this, and not be more affected by the fact; and,
wonder of wonders, that you, some of you, know it to be true, and yet do not
feel alarmed thereby! It is the easiest thing in the world to impress some of
you by a sermon, but, I fear me, you never will get beyond mere transient
impressions. Like the water when lashed, the wound soon heals. You know, and you
know, and you know; and you feel, and feel, and feel again, and yet your sins,
your self-righteousness, your carelessness, or your willful wickedness, cause
you, after having said, "I go, sir," to forget the promise and lie unto God.Now,
I spoke very honestly to the other class, and must be equally plain with you.
You, too, criminate yourselves. There will be no need of witnesses against you.
You have admitted that the gospel is true. You did not quarrel with the doctrine
of future punishment or future glory. You attended a place of worship, and you
said that God was good and worthy to be served; you confessed that you owed
allegiance to him, and ought to render it. You have even knelt down and in
prayer you have said, "Lord, I deserve thy wrath." The great God has only to
turn to some of your formal prayers to find quite enough evidence to secure your
condemnation. Those morning prayers of yours, those evening prayers,
hypocritical every one of them, will be more than sufficient to condemn you of
your own mouth. Take heed! take heed, I pray you, while you are yet in the land
of hope.All this while, as the thirty-second verse reminds me, while you have
remained unsaved, you have seen publicans and harlots saved by the very gospel
which has had no power upon you. Do not you know it, young man? You, I mean, the
son of a godly mother? You know that you are not saved, and yet you had a
drunken workman in your father's employment, and he has been these last few
years a sober Christian man, he is saved, and you perhaps have taken to the
habits which he has forsaken. You know that there have been picked off of the
streets poor fallen women who have been brought to know Christ, who are among
the sweetest and fairest flowers in Christ's garden now, though they were once
castaways; and yet some of you respectable people who never committed any
outward vice in your lives, are still unconverted, and still saying to Christ,
"I go, sir," but you have not gone. You are still without God! Without Christ!
Lost, lost, lost! Yet fairer outward characters could scarcely be found. I could
fain weep for you! Oh! beware, beware of being like the apples of Sodom, which
are green to look upon, but when crushed, crumble to ashes. Beware of being like
John Bunyan's trees that were green outside, but inwardly rotten, and only fit
to be tinder for the devil's tinder-box. Oh! beware of saying as some of you do,
"I go, sir," while you go not. I sometimes see sick people who quite alarm and
distress me. I say to them, "My dear friend, you are dying; have you a hope?"
There is no answer. "Do you know your lost state?" "Yes, sir. "Christ died for
sinners." "Yes, sir." "Faith gives us of his grace." "Yes, sir. They say, "Yes,
sir; yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir; yes, sir." I sometimes wish before God they
would contradict me, for if they would but have honesty enough to say, "I do not
believe a word of it," I should know how to deal with them. Stubborn oaks are
leveled by the gale, but those who bend like the willow before every wind, what
wind shall break them? O dear brethren, beware of being gospel hardened; or,
what is the same thing, softened but for a season. Beware of being a promising
hearer of the word, and nothing more! I do not mean to close my discourse by
speaking to you in this apparently harsh way, which; harsh as it seems, is full
of love to your soul. I have a good word for you too. I trust that you, in this
Agricultural Hall, will have a change wrought in you by the Holy Ghost, for
although these many years you have made false professions before God; there is
yet room in his gospel feast for you. Did you notice the text? "The publicans
and sinners enter into the kingdom of heaven before you." Then it is clear you
may come after them, because it could not be said they entered before you, if
you did not come after them. If the Lord shall break your heart, you will be
willing to take the Lord Jesus for your all in all in just the same way as a
drunkard must, though you have not been a drunkard. You will be willing to rest
in the merit of Jesus just as a harlot must, though you have never been such.
There is room for you, young people, yet, though you have broken your vows, and
quenched your convictions. Ay, and you grey-headed people may be brought yet,
though you have lived so long in the outward means, but have never given up your
hearts to Jesus. Oh, come! This twenty-fourth day of March, may the Lord bring
you in this very place may the Lord lead you to say silently, "By the grace of
God I will not be an open pretender any longer; I will give myself up to those
dear hands that bled for me, and that dear heart that was pierced for me, and I
will this day submit to Jesus' way.The fact is, to close the subject, there is,
my dear friends, the same gospel to be preached to one class of men as to every
other class. I pray God the day may never come when we shall be found in our
preaching talking about working classes, and middle classes, and upper classes.
I know no difference between you, you are the same to me when I preach the
gospel, whether you are kings and queens, or crossing sweepers; satin and
cotton, broadcloth and fustian, are alike to the gospel. If you are peers of the
realm, we trim not our gospel to suit you, and if you are the basest of thieves,
we do not exclude you from the voice of mercy. The gospel comes to men as
sinners, all equally fallen in Adam, equally lost and ruined by sin. I have not
one gospel for Her Majesty the Queen, and another gospel for the beggar-woman.
No, there is but one way of salvation, but one foundation, but one propitiation,
but one gospel. Look to the cross of Christ and live. High was the brazen
serpent lifted, and all that Moses said was, "Look." Was a prince of the house
of Judah bitten, he was told to look; without looking his lion standard of
costly emblazonry could not avail him; was some poor wretch in the camp bitten,
he must look, and the efficacy was the same for him as for the greatest of the
host. Look! look! look to Jesus. Believe in the Son of God and live! One brazen
serpent for all the camp, one Christ for all ranks and conditions of men. What a
blessing would it be if we were all enabled to trust Christ this morning! My
brethren, why not? -- He is worthy of the confidence of all. The Spirit of God
is able to work faith in all. O poor sinner, look to him! Dear hearers, I may
never speak to some of you again, and I would therefore be pressing with you; by
the hour of death, by the solemnities of eternity, I do implore and beseech you
accept the only remedy for sin which even God himself will ever offer to the
dying sons of men, the remedy of a bleeding Substitute, suffering in your room
and stead, believed on and accepted in the heart. Cast yourself flat upon
Christ. The way of salvation is just this -- rest alone upon Christ! Depend
wholly upon him. The negro was asked what he did, and he said, "I jest fall down
on de rock, and he dat is down on de rock cannot fall no lower." Down on the
rock, sinner! Down on the rock! The everlasting rock of ages! You cannot fall
lower than that. I will conclude with a well-known illustration. Your condition
is like that of a child in a burning house, who, having escaped to the edge of
the window, hung on by the window-sill. The flames were pouring out of the
window underneath, and the poor lad would soon be burnt, or falling would be
dashed to pieces; he therefore held on with the clutch of death. He did not dare
to relax his grasp till a strong man stood underneath, and said, "Boy! drop!
drop! I'll catch you." Now, it was no saving faith for the boy to believe that
the man was strong -- that was a good help towards faith -- but he might have
known that and yet have perished; it was faith when the boy let go and dropped
down into his big friend's arms. There are you, sinner, clinging to your sins or
to your good works. The Savior cries, "Drop! drop into my arms!" It is not
doing, it is leaving off doing. It is not working, it is trusting in that work
which Jesus has already done. Trust! that is the word, simple, solid, hearty,
earnest trust. Trust and it will not take an hour to save you, the moment you
trust you are saved. You may have come in here as black as hell, but if you
trust in Jesus you are wholly forgiven. In an instant, swifter than a flash of
lightning the deed of grace is done. O may God the Spirit do it now, bringing
you to trust, that you may be saved. PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON --
Psalm 103.


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  CHAPTER 3: ALIVE OR DEAD--WHICH?
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A Sermon (No.755) Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, June 16th, 1867, by C. H.
SPURGEON, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. "He that hath the Son hath
life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life." -- 1 John 5:12. LAST
Sabbath morning we addressed you upon the gracious operations of the Holy Spirit
in the believer, and upon the glorious fad of his dwelling in the hearts of the
regenerate. Now, it frequently happens that when we discourse upon the work of
the Holy Spirit, there are certain weak and uninstructed brethren who
straightway fall into questionings and despondencies, because they in some point
or other are unable to discern the work of grace within themselves. That work
may be prospering within them, but through the turmoil of their spirits and the
dimness of their mental vision, they do not at once perceive it, and therefore
they are distracted and alarmed. There is a consoling doctrine which is intended
to yield comfort to souls thus afflicted; it is the great truth, that "Whosoever
believeth on the Lord Jesus Christ, hath everlasting life." If they would
remember this gospel-declaration, they might also with advantage consider the
other spiritual fact, and by weighing the two truths in their minds, they might
receive much permanent blessing; while at the present, by having an eye to one
only, they throw themselves off their balance, and make to themselves many
sorrows. It is not, however, the easiest thing in the world to preach clearly,
with judicious blending, the operations of the Spirit, and the doctrine of
complete salvation by faith in Jesus Christ; however clear our utterance, we
shall seem sometimes to make one truth entrench upon the other. It is the mark
of the Christian minister, who is taught of God, that he rightly divides the
Word of truth; but this right dividing is so far from being an easy thing, that
it must be taught us by no less a teacher than God the Holy Spirit. When our
Lord addressed Nicodemus, he experienced the same difficulty which at this day
every watchful minister observes in his hearers; he found that a description of
the inner work must be accompanied by the publication of the gospel of faith, or
it would only cause bewilderment and depression. Our Lord began, in the third
chapter of John's gospel, by telling Nicodemus that he must be born again, and
explaining to him the mysterious character of the new birth. Whereupon Nicodemus
was filled with wonder, and unbelievingly exclaimed, "How can these things be?"
He does not seem to have made the smallest advance towards faith by hearing of
the new birth, and therefore on the selfsame occasion our Lord turned aside from
the doctrine of regeneration, the inner work, to speak to him of the doctrine of
faith, or the work of Christ, which is the object of saving faith. Thus it comes
to pass that the very same chapter which has in it that searching passage,
"Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God," contains also these encouraging words, "As Moses lifted up the
serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that
whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life." From which
I gather, my brethren, that those unwise revivalists who perpetually cry up,
"Believe and live!" and by their silence, and sometimes by their unguarded
remarks, disparage repentance and other works of the Holy Spirit, have not our
Saviour's example for so doing; and on the other hand, those conservative
divines who continually cry up inward experience, and preach the work of the
Spirit, but forget to publish the gospel message, "He that believeth and is
baptized shall be saved," these also have neither example nor precedent from our
Lord Jesus Christ or his apostles, but mar the truth by leaving out a portion of
it. If we can with all boldness and distinctness declare the inward work which
the Holy Ghost accomplishes in the soul by working in us to will and to do of
God's good pleasure, and at the same time can tell the sinner most plainly that
the object of his faith is not the work within, but the work which Jesus Christ
accomplished upon the cross for him, we shall have dealt faithfully with divine
truth, and wisely with our hearer's soul. The faith which brings salvation,
looks away from everything that is inward to that which was accomplished and
completed by our once slain but now ascended Lord; and yet no man has this faith
except as it is wrought in him by the quickening Spirit. If we can preach both
these truths in harmonious proportion, it seems to me that we shall have hit
upon that form of Christian teaching which, while it is consistent with truth,
is also healthful to the soul. Having on the previous Sabbath done our best with
the one subject, we now seek to give the other its fair prominence. We have in
the text mention made of certain men who are living, and of others who are dead;
and, as the two are put together in the text, we shall close by some
observations upon the conduct of those who have life towards those who are
destitute of it. I. First, then, CONCERNING THE LIVING. Our text testifies that
"He that hath the Son hath life." Of course, by "life" here is meant not mere
existence, or natural life; for we all have that whether we have the Son of God
or no -- in the image of the first Adam we are all created living souls, and
continue in life until the Lord recalls the breath from our nostrils -- but the
life here intended is spiritual life, the life received at the new birth, by
which we perceive and enter into the heavenly kingdom, come under new and
spiritual laws, are moved by new motives, and exist in a new world. The life
here meant is the life of God in the soul, which is given us when we are new
created in the image of the second Adam, who was made a quickening spirit; a
celestial form of life inwardly perceptible to the person who possesses it, and
outwardly discernible to spiritual observers by its holy effects and heavenly
fruits. This spiritual life is the sure mark of deliverance from the penal death
which the sentence of the law pronounced. Man under the law is condemned,
sentence of death is recorded against him; but man under grace is free from the
law, and is not adjudged to death, but lives by virtue of a legal justification,
which absolves him from guilt, and consequently liberates him from death. These
two kinds of life, the life which is given by the judge to the offender when he
is pardoned, and the life which is imparted from the divine Father, the heir of
heaven is begotten again unto a lively hope -- these two lives blend together
and ensure for us the life eternal, such as they possess who stand upon the "sea
of glass," and tune their tongues to the music of celestial hosts. Eternal life
is spiritual life made perfect. If we live by virtue of our pardon and
justification, and if, moreover, we live because we are quickened by the Holy
Spirit, we shall also live in the glory of the eternal Father, being made in the
likeness of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is the true God and eternal life. This is
the life here intended -- life spiritual, life eternal. By the term "having the
Son," we understand possessing the Lord Jesus Christ. There is the finished work
of Jesus, and faith appropriates it. We trust in Christ, and Christ becomes
ours. As the result of grace in our souls, we chose the Lord Jesus as the ground
of our dependence, and then we accept him as the Lord of our hearts, the guide
of our actions, and supreme delight of our souls. He that hath the Son, then, is
a man who is trusting alone in Jesus, in whom Jesus Christ rules and reigns; and
such a man is most surely the possessor of spiritual and eternal life at the
present moment. It is not said "he shall have life " -- he has it, he enjoys it
now, he is at this hour quickened spirit; God has breathed into him a new life,
by which he is made a partaker of the divine nature, and is one of the seed
according to promise, and this life he has by virtue of his having received the
Son of God to be his all. I have thus briefly opened up the words of the text,
and having broken the bone, let us now discuss the marrow and fatness of it.
Whoever in this world possesses Christ by faith is most certainly alive unto God
by a life eternal. I shall remark, in the first place, that having the Son is
good evidence of eternal life, from the fact that faith by which a man receives
Christ is in itself a living act. Faith is the hand of the soul, but a dead man
cannot stretch out his icy limbs to take of that which is presented to him. If
I, as a guilty, needy sinner, with my empty hand receive the fullness of Christ,
I have performed a living act; the hand may quiver with weakness, but life is
there. Faith is the eye of the soul, by which the sin-bitten sinner looks to
Christ, lifted up as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness; but from
forth the stony eyes of death no glance of faith can dart. There may be all the
organization by which it should look, but if life be absent the eye cannot see.
If, therefore, my eye of faith has looked alone to Jesus, and I depend upon him,
I must be a living soul, that act has proved me to be alive unto God. Looking to
Jesus is a very simple act, indeed, it is a childlike act, but still it is a
living one: no sight gleams from the eyeballs of death. Faith, again, is the
mouth of the soul; by faith we feed upon Christ. Jesus Christ is digested and
inwardly assimilated, so that our soul lives upon him; but a dead man cannot
eat. Whoever heard of carcasses gathering to a banquet? There may be the mouth,
the teeth, and the palate, and so forth, the organization may be perfect, but
the dead man neither tastes the sweet nor relishes the delicious. If, then, I
have received Christ Jesus as the bread, which came down from heaven, as the
spiritual drink from the rock, I have performed an action which is in itself a
clear evidence that I belong to the living in Zion.Now, my dear friends, perhaps
some of you have hardly any other evidence of grace but this, you know that you
have received Christ; you know that you do look to Jesus and lay hold upon him.
Well, then, you could not have done this if you had not obtained eternal life,
and the text is evidently true, "He that hath the Son hath life."Furthermore,
faith in Jesus is good evidence of life, because of the things, which accompany
it. Now, no man ever did come to Jesus Christ and receive him until he had felt
his need of a Saviour: no sickness, no physician: no wound, no surgeon. No soul
asks for pardon or obtains it till he has felt that sin is an evil for which
pardon is necessary; that is to say, repentance always comes with faith. There
must be a loathing of sin and a dread of its consequences, or there is no faith.
Now, as repentance is an evident sign of life, faith in Jesus must involve
spiritual life. What if I say that repentance is like the cry of the new-born
babe, which indicates that the child is alive? That cry of "God be merciful to
me a sinner 1" is as sure a sign of life as the song of cherubim before the
throne. There could have been no laying hold of Christ without true repentance
of sin, which repentance becomes in its turn a clear proof of the possession of
the inner life which springs from incorruptible seed, and therefore liveth and
abideth for ever.Where there is faith, again, there is always prayer. Depend
upon it, that if Saul of Tarsus cries, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" it
will ere long be said of him," Behold, he prayeth." No soul believes in Jesus
Christ without exercising its faith and its desires in prayer; but prayer is the
breath of the soul, and where there is breath there must be life. Can the dead
pray unto God? Shall a dead soul cry out for mercy? No, beloved, the falling of
a tear, the upward glancing of an eye when none but God is near -- these may be
very weak prayers as men judge them, but they are as much signs of life as
Jacob's wrestling at the brook Jabbok, or Elijah's prevailing with God on
Carmel's brow. So, then, he that hath an interest in the Lord Jesus, since his
faith is attended by repentance and prayer, and many other holy graces, has a
multitude of sure and certain evidences of eternal life within the soul.So might
I say, that the consequences of receiving Christ are also good evidences of
heavenly life; for when a man receives the Son of God, he obtains a measure of
peace and joy; and peace with God and joy in the Holy Ghost are not to be found
in the sepulchres of dead souls. When Ezekiel saw the dry bones in the valley, I
do not find that any of them were singing for joy of heart, or silently musing
in unutterable thankfulness. There was a sort of peace in the valley, the
horrible repose of death, the grim silence of the grave; but living, sparkling
peace, flowing like a river, those dry bones could not know. Job says of the
hypocrite, "Will he delight himself in the Almighty?" Joy in God is too
wonderful a work of God for mere professors to forge a passable counterfeit of
it. Artificial flowers may be very like the real beauties of the garden, but
they lack the joyous perfume and honeyed stores of life, and the bees soon find
out the difference: the honey juice and the delicate aroma are not to be
matched. The like might be said of all the results of faith, which are far too
numerous for me to speak of them in detail this morning, such as purging the
conscience from dead works, enlightenment by the Spirit, godly fear, the spirit
of adoption, brotherly love, separation from the world, the consecration of
life, holy gratitude which mounts like flame to heaven, and sacred affection
which ascends like altar-smoke -- none of these can be found in the
charnel-house of fallen humanity; they can only be discovered in the house of
life, where God worketh according to his good pleasure. He that hath the Son, it
is clear, has life, because the act by which he lays hold upon the Son of God,
the concomitants of that act, and the consequences of that act, all infallibly
betoken the possession of life eternal. The possession of the Lord Jesus Christ
is the evidence of faith in many ways. It is God's mark upon a living soul. See
you yonder battle-field, strewn with men who have fallen in the terrible
conflict! many have been slain, many more are wounded, and there they lie in
ghastly confusion, the dead all stark and stiff, covered with their own crimson,
and the wounded faint and bleeding, unable to leave the spot whereon they have
fallen. Surgeons have gone over the field rapidly, ascertaining which are
corpses beyond the reach of mercy's healing hand, and which are men faint with
loss of blood. Each living man has a paper fastened conspicuously on his breast,
and when the soldiers are sent out with the ambulances to gather up the wounded,
they do not themselves need to stay and judge which may be living and which may
be dead; they see a mark upon the living, and lifting them up right tenderly
they bear them to the hospital, where their wounds may be dressed. Now, faith in
the Son is God's infallible mark, which he has set upon every poor wounded
sinner whose bleeding heart has received the Lord Jesus; though he faints and
feels as lifeless as though he were mortally wounded, yet he most surely lives
if he believes, for the possession of Jesus is the token which cannot deceive.
Faith is God's mark witnessing in unmistakable language -- "this soul liveth."
Jesus saith, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me hath
everlasting life." Tenderly, tenderly, ye ministers of Christ, and ye
blood-bought ones who care for the broken-hearted, lift up this wounded one,
bear him away, bind up his wounds with comfortable promises, and restore his
ebbing life with precious consolations from the Book of God. Whatever else we
cannot see, if a simple trust in Jesus is discernible in a convert, we need feel
no suspicions, but receive him at once as a brother beloved; for this is the
Father's will, that every one that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, may have
everlasting life.Moreover, the possession of the Lord Jesus Christ becomes a
clear evidence of life, because, indeed, it is in some sense the source,
fountain, and nourishment of life. Here is a hand, "Is it alive?" Many questions
may be asked about it which will be unsatisfactory as evidence of life. "Has it
a delicate complexion? Are the fingers well fashioned?" The answers may be, as
you please, yes or no, and yet life may be present or absent. "Is it adorned wit
gold rings, set with emeralds or diamonds? Or, does it wear an elegant,
well-fitting glove?" The answer may be whichever you please; none of those
things will at all effect the life of the hand, It may be white as ivory, or
brown as autumn leaves; it may be clad in mailed gauntlet, or soiled with stains
of blood, and yet it may be either clay cold in death or warm with life. But
here is a question which cuts at the main point, "Is the hand vitally connected
with a living head?" If it be so, then the conclusion is inevitable, that the
hand is most surely alive. Now, faith by which we receive the Son of God, is the
grace which vitally unites the members with Christ, their living Head; and where
there is a vital union with the Son of God, there must be life. While the branch
is vitally in the stem, it will have life; if it is not always bearing fruit,
yet it always has life in itself, because it is in union with the living stem;
and thus, beloved, the fact of having the Son becomes an evidence of life,
because it is the source of life.In another aspect of it, having the Son is not
only the source of life, but the result of life. When the great doors were
opened of the Black Hole in Calcutta, and the pure air went streaming in, there
were many lungs which did not receive that air, for the simple reason that the
most of those who had been so barbarously confined were dead, and to them the
fresh oxygen had come too late; but there were a few which gladly and at once
received the breath of heaven, and such as were still alive walked forth from
amidst the corpses into the open air. Now, when a man receives Jesus into his
soul as life from the dead, his faith is the sure indicator of a spiritual and
mysterious life within him, in the power of which he is able to receive the
Lord. Jesus is freely preached to you, his grace is free as the air, but the
dead do not breathe that air -- those who breathe it are, beyond all doubt,
alive. Christ is presented to you in the preaching of the gospel as freely as
the water from the drinking fountain at the corner of the street; but the dead
man drinketh not, his lips care not for the flowing crystal He who drinks is
evidently alive. The reception of Jesus Christ is the sure result of a heavenly
life palpitating within the soul Thus you see the evidence is good, from several
points of the compass; looking at the soul's business from several ways, faith
still becomes with equal clearness a witness that the man who has it possesses
the divine life within him.Let me further remark, that the possession of the
Lord Jesus Christ by faith is sufficient evidence of eternal life. "I do not
know," says one, "when I was converted." My dear friend, have you the Son of
God? Do you trust in Jesus Christ? That is quite enough. If thou canst from the
heart say, "I trust Jesus Christ," though thou hast no spiritual biography worth
recording, thou hast life. Many aged persons have either forgotten their
birthdays, or have lost the register, and cannot tell exactly how old they are;
but that does not at all prove that they are not alive; so your not knowing
precisely when you were converted, is no evidence that you are not saved. No
doubt, it is very comfortable to be able to refer to a distinct date and place
when the great change took place, but in many instances, there could be no such
reference made, because the change was extremely gradual. In some parts of the
world the sun rises on a sudden, and sets just as quickly; but here, in England,
we enjoy those delightful twilight's which herald the morning and foreshadow the
night. With many converts, there is a long twilight of soul, in which they are
not all darkness, but certainly not all light; they can scarcely tell where the
darkness ended and where the light began. Dear friends, do not worry yourselves
about the almanac of grace; care more about its present reality and less about
its past history. "He that hath the Son of God, hath life;" though he may not
know when he laid hold upon the Son of God, yet if he hath him now, he has no
need to harbour the raven of mistrust. Faith is sufficient evidence, even in the
absence of any great knowledge. I would to God that we were all taught in the
word, and could enter into the doctrines which are food for strong men in
Christ, but yet then we should know very little of election; though the
difference between sanctification and justification might seem too high for us
to comprehend, yet if we have the Son of God we have life. No doubt there have
been some who have entered heaven who were little better than half-witted, and
yet, through simple faith in Jesus, they were as surely saved as a Newton or a
Locke, who, with all their understanding and all their philosophy, could not
rest upon a better foundation than the merit of that condescending Redeemer upon
whom the poorest fool in the kingdom may depend with safety. If thou hast
Christ, learn as much as thou canst; seek to grow in grace and in the knowledge
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ; but if thine understanding be dull, do not
tremble as though thy soul depended upon thy knowledge, for "He that hath the
Son hath life," however ignorant he may be.So, again, it may be that you have
never passed through any special horrors and alarms. When some pilgrims come to
the wicket gate, the Slough of Despond pours forth its filth, and the black dog
howls at them as they knock at mercy's door, but many others are brought to
Jesus gently, being carried like lambs in his bosom. Many of Christ's flowers
bloom in sheltered spots, and feel not the frosts of sharp temptation. Jesus has
bands of love to draw with, as well as a scourge of small cords to draw with.
Many gentle spirits are led to find their all in the Christ of God, and yet they
know very little of the depths of their inward depravity, and less still of the
evil suggestions of Satan. My dear friends, do not let this distress you, I was
about to say, even be thankful for it. Have you looked to Jesus Christ have you
depended alone in him? That is, for the present, sufficient evidence without
anything else. "He that hath the Son of God hath life."Methinks I hear some one
say, "Ah! but I have been reading the biography of such-and-such a good man, and
I find him frequently in the seventh heaven of communion, so full of joy and
rapture. Oh, that I knew something about that!', Well, I wish you did. I would
have you covet earnestly the best gifts. But, my dear friend, you must not think
that because you have not enjoyed these raptures, therefore you are not saved.
Many go to heaven with very little comfort on the road. I do not commend them
for their want of comfort; but I do advise you, instead of loading to singular
experiences as a ground of confidence, look to the bleeding Saviour, and rest
alone in him, for if you have him you have eternal life. To compare ourselves
among ourselves is not wise. Experiences greatly differ. All Israelites are of
the loins of Jacob, but all are not of the tribe of Judah. I do not doubt that
the physiognomies of all the Jewish tribes differed; yet still the great type of
father Jacob could be seen in the face of every Jew. So the spiritual
physiognomies of all the children of God will differ, for there are diversities
of operations; but notwithstanding, there is a unity of spirit which cannot be
broken. Beloved, have you the Son of God? If so, you have life; and even if that
life should be somewhat sickly, which is not desirable, yet it will help to make
it stronger if you distinctly know that it is the life eternal. When a man's
life becomes feeble, it would be of no service to him to doubt whether it is
life at all; but it helps him much to know that it is the life of God, and is
therefore sure to be victorious over death and hell, and though it be but a
spark, it is such a spark that all the devils in hell cannot tread it but, and
all the waters of affliction cannot quench it. If thou hast the Son, poor feeble
trembling one, thou hast a life which will co-exist with the life of God; a life
which "neither things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor
any other creature," shall be able to destroy; because they cannot separate thee
from the Lord Jesus; and because he lives thou shalt live also.It is a great
mercy that having the Son is abiding evidence. "He that hath the Son hath life."
I know what it is to see every other evidence I ever gloried in go drifting down
the stream far out of sight. It is frequently my inward experience to see sin
and unworthiness marked upon everything I have ever done for God. As far as he
has done any good thing by me or in me, it lives; but oftentimes as I look back
upon my years of ministry, and see multitudes of sermons, and prayers, and other
efforts, I have thought of them all as being less than nothing and vanity,
tainted, and marred, and spoiled by my personal imperfections. I could not
depend on the whole of them to make so much as a feather weight towards my
salvation. When you begin to doubt your inward graces, and to judge all your
past life, and find it wanting, it is sweet even then to say, "One thing I know,
I rest in Jesus. Whatever else may be false, this is clearly true -- 'Other
refuge have I none,Hangs my helpless soul on thee.'"Job says that the poor man
clings to the rock for shelter, and that poor man is blessed who remains in that
position, evermore clinging to that Rock of his salvation."For ever here my rest
shall be,Close to thy wounded side;This all my trust and all my plea,For me the
Saviour died."I suppose, dear friends, that your experience, like mine, leads
you to lean less on self and more upon the Lord. You sometimes come out in full
feather, all glorious to behold, and you shine like a full developed and
advanced saint; but how soon your mountain moves, for the Lord hides his face! a
moulting season sets in, and soon all your plumes and honors are trailed in the
mire, and you hasten to hide yourself from your own sight, for you feel utterly
ashamed. It is very probable that at such a time you have a much truer opinion
of yourself than in your prosperity -- you are much nearer the mark when you
despise yourself than when you find somewhat wherein to glory. It is unspeakably
precious in hours of discouragement, then, to fly straight away to Jesus, with
the contrite cry of -- "Just as I am -- without one pleaBut that thy blood was
shed for me,And that thou bidd'st me come to thee.O Lamb of God, I come."I have
heard of persons boasting that they had outgrown that hymn, but I know 1 never
shall. I must be content still to come to Jesus with no qualification for mercy
except that which my sin and misery may give me in the eyes of his free grace.
It is a thousand mercies that, although clouds may obscure other evidences, they
cannot prevent our coming to the great propitiation, and casting ourselves upon
its cleansing power.Dear friends, I may close this first head by saying, that
having the Son is infallible evidence of life. "He that hath the Son hath life."
It is not said that he may, perhaps, have it, or that some who have the Son have
life, but there is no exception to the rule. As sure as God's word is true, "He
that hath the Son hath life," be he who he may, or what he may. This gracious
assurance includes those of you who labor in the depths of poverty, you who are
in the furnace of affliction, you returning backsliders who still hang on
Christ, you believers under a cloud, you who mourn your many shortcomings: by
faith you dare to rest in Jesus, and you have therefore passed from death unto
life. Be of good cheer, beloved, drink of the well of hope, and in joyful
confidence in the Lord, press forward in your heavenward pilgrimage.II. Now a
word CONCERNING THE DEAD."He that hath not the Son of God hath not life" -- that
is, he hath not spiritual life, sentence of death is recorded against him in the
book of God. His natural life is spared him in this world, but he is condemned
already, and is in the eye of the law dead while he lives. Think of that, some
of you, for these words refer to you. The unbeliever has no spiritual life; he
neither laments his soul's need, nor rejoices that it may be supplied; he lives
without prayer, and he knows nothing of secret fellowship with God, because he
has no inward life to produce these priceless things, consequently, he will have
no eternal life; he will exist for ever, but his existence will be a protracted
death -- of life he would not taste; he will have none of the joys of paradise,
no sight of God's face; he will not swell the song of eternal happiness, nor
drink of the river of ever-flowing bliss. He is a walking corpse, a moving
carcass, a body in which death holds the place of life. He hath not the Son of
God -- that is, he has never trusted in Jesus to save him, and never submitted
himself to the guidance and governing of the King in Zion.Now observe that the
not having the Son of God is clear evidence of the absence of spiritual life;
for the man who has not trusted in Jesus has made God a liar. Shall pure
spiritual life make God a liar? Shall he receive life from God who persists in
denying God's testimony? How shall God blot out his sentence of condemnation
while the criminal remains such an enemy to his own Creator as to count him a
liar? The history of his unbelief proves that be is not a spiritually living
man, for up till now he has chosen darkness, which is the lit dwelling-place of
death, and has loved corruption, which is the fruit of the grave. Would the
spiritually quickened have done this? He has quenched his conscience; he has
done despite to the Spirit of grace; he has preferred sin to righteousness, and
the pleasures of this world to the joys' of heaven; he has seen no beauty in
Christ, no suitability in his salvation: the man must be blind, he must be
devoid of all spiritual sense -- in fact, he must be dead, or he would not have
acted so.Let me tell you that for a hearer of the gospel not to believe on the
Son of God must be, in the judgment of angels, a very astounding crime. How they
must marvel when they see that God was made flesh to redeem the sons of men, and
yet men do not believe in the incarnate Saviour! The "faithful saying, that
Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners," is not depended upon by tens
of thousands; though it is worthy of all acceptation," yet the mass of mankind
give it no acceptation. What must angels think of such men? They no doubt
understand the reason of it, that the mind is so perverted and corrupt that
manhood is nothing better than a reeking sepulcher. Unbelief of the gospel is
the great damning sin of man; the not laying hold of Jesus is the sin of sins --
it is like Jeroboam, of whom we read that he sinned and made Israel to sin. It
is the egg in which all manner of mischief lies. Not believing in Jesus Christ
is the condemnation emphatically. "This is the condemnation, that light is come
into the world, and men love darkness rather than light." Recollect, my dear
hearers, if you have never received Christ, that this is overwhelming evidence
that you are dead in sin. You have been sprinkled in your infancy; you have been
confirmed, perhaps you have been immersed, possibly you have joined the church;
but if you have not the Son of God, all those outward things have not the weight
of a grain of sand in the scale. "Oh! but," you may say, "I have been assured on
good authority that I was made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven,' in my baptism!" You were so assured upon
the authority of a book which has deceived many, and will, I fear, deceive tens
of thousands more. It is not true that you are an inheritor of heaven, if you
have not Christ. If thou hast believed in Christ thou hast life, but if thou
hast not the Son of God thou hast no heavenly life; and let all the priests that
ever lived assure thee of thy being a child of God by thy baptism, I tell them
flat to their faces that they lie in their throats, and that some of them know
they do. The Word of God is to be taken and not theirs, and that word saith, "He
that hath not the Son hath not life." Out on these false priests and their
infant sprinkling too -- what have they to do to pretend to be the servants of
God when they are deceivers of souls? No outward ceremonies, though they be
multiplied ten thousand-fold, and rendered gorgeous by all the pomp and glory of
the world; nay, even though God himself should command them, could even give to
thee spiritual life. Thou must have Christ, for he is the life of the soul, and
without him thou art dead in sin. "Oh! but," perhaps you may say, "I have aways
lived a chaste, upright, moral life; I have been attentive to religious duties;
I could allege many particulars which might go to prove that I live unto God."
Ay, but all thy particulars, however well they might be alleged, would prove
nothing in the teeth of such a text as this, "He that hath not the Son of God
hath not life." I tell thee, moralist, what thou art; thou art a corpse well
washed and decently laid out, daintily robed in fair white linen, sprinkled
plenteously with sweet perfumes, and wrapped in myrrh, and cassia, and aloes,
with flowers wreathed about thy brow, and thy bosom bedecked by the hand of
affection with sweetly blushing roses; but thou hast no life, and therefore thy
destiny is the grave, corruption is thine heritage, and thy place of abode is
fixed, "where their worm dieth not, and the fire not quenened," for, "He that
believeth not shall be damned." With all his excellencies and moralities, with
all his baptisms and his sacraments, "He that believeth not shall be damned."
There is no middle place, no specially reserved and superior abodes for these
noble and virtuous unbelievers. If they have not believed, they shall be bound
up in bundles with the rest, for God has appointed to unbelievers their portion
with liars, and thieves, and whoremongers, and drunkards, and idolaters. Beware,
ye unbelievers, for your unbelief will be to the Judge himself, at the great
assize, and to the attendant angels most condemning evidence against you. "Take
him away; Christ has not known him, and he has not known Christ; he had not the
Son, and he shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him."Now, if
such things were spoken concerning some people in Africa or New Zealand, you
ought to be concerned about these miserable souls, though they are so far away;
but they are spoken about some of you: some of you are dead. Is not this
terrible? Oh, if by some touch of an angel's wand our bodies should all become
as our souls are, how many corpses would fill these aisles, and crowd these
pews! John once wished for Gaius, that his body might prosper and be in health
even as his soul prospered. Now, suppose our bodies were to prosper just as our
souls do! Why, there would sit in one place a living woman, and side by side
with her a dead husband; further on, a living child, and then a dead grey headed
grandsire. Oh! what a sight this place would be! We should hasten to gather up
our skirts, those of us who are alive, and say, "Let us begone! How can we sit
side by side with corpses?" The effect would be startling to the last degree,
and yet, most probably, the spiritual fact does not disturb us at all; we know
it to be true, but we take it as a matter of course, and we go our way with
scarce a prayer for our poor dead neighbors.III. I close the sermon by a few
observations CONCERNING THE LIVING AS THEY DWELL AMONG THE DEAD. As the living
are constrained to live among the dead, as the children of God are mixed up by
Providence with the heirs of wrath, what manner of persons ought they to be?In
the first place, let us take care that we do not become contaminated by the
corruption of the dead. You who have the Son of God, mind that you are not
injured by those who have not the Son. We have heard of such accidents when the
anatomist has been making an examination of a dead body: he has been prying with
his scalpel among the bones, and nerves, and sinews, and perhaps he has pricked
his finger, and the dead matter has infected his blood, and death has been swift
and sure. Now, I have heard of some professed Christians, wanting to see, they
said, the ways of the ungodly, going into low places of amusement, to spy out
the land, to judge for themselves. Such conduct is dangerous and worse. My dear
friends, I never found it necessary, in my ministry, to do anything of the kind,
and yet I think I have had no small success in winning souls. I must confess, I
should feel very much afraid to go into hell, to put my head between the lion's
Jaws, for the sake of looking down his throat. I should think I was guilty of a
gross presumption if I went into the company of the lewd and the profane to see
what they were doing. I should fear that perhaps it might turn out that I was
only a mere professor, and so should taint myself with the dead matter of the
sin of those with whom I mingled, and perish in my iniquity. "Come out from
among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing
I" The resort of the ungodly is not the place for you. "Let the dead bury their
dead, but as for thee," said Christ, "follow thou me." If we must in this life,
in a measure, mingle with the dead, let us take care that we never suffer the
supremacy of the dead to be acknowledged over the living. It would be a strange
thing if the dead were to rule the living: the dead must be laid into their
coffins, and put away in their narrow cells according as the living may decree.
Yet sometimes I have seen the dead have the dominion of this world; that is to
say, they have set the fashion, and living Christians have followed. The carnal
world has said, "This is the way of trade!" and the Christian man has replied,
"I will follow the custom." Christian, this must not be. "Ay, but," saith one,
"I must do as others do, for you know we must live." This also is not true, for
there is no necessity for our living; there is a very great necessity for our
dying sooner than living, if we cannot live without doing wrong. O Christian,
you must never endure that corruption should conquer grace. By God's grace, if
you get at all under the power of custom, you must cry out, "O wretched man that
I am! who shall deliver me?" You must wrestle till you conquer, and cry, "Thanks
be unto God, who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ."What I
think we should do towards dead souls is this -- we should pity them. When the
early Christians dwelt in the catacombs, where they could not go about without
seeing graves, they must have had strange thoughts arising in their minds. Now,
my brethren, you are in a similar plight, you cannot walk through London without
thinking," The most of these I meet with are dead in sin." Some of these dead
souls live in your own house; they are your own children, your own servants.
When you go out to work, you have to stand at the same bench with spiritually
dead men. You cannot turn aside from your daily labor to enter the house of God
but what you meet the dead even there. Ought not this to make us pray for them:
"Eternal Spirit, quicken them! They cannot have life unless they have the Son of
God. O bring them to receive the Son of God"? Beloved, in connection with such
prayer, be diligent to deliver the quickening message. The quickening message
is, "Believe, and live." "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born
of God." Ought you not, you living ones, to be perpetually repeating the great
life-word, depending upon the Holy Spirit to put energy into it. Do, I pray you,
seek to win souls, and from this day separating yourselves from the world as to
its maxims and its customs, plunge into the very thick of it wherein you can
serve your Master, plucking brands from the burning, and winning souls from
going down to the pit.May the Lord bless this simple word this morning, for his
name's sake. Amen.PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON -- 1 John 5.


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  CHAPTER 4: SONGS OF DELIVERANCE
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A Sermon (No.763) Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, July 28TH, 1867, by C. H.
SPURGEON, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. "They that are delivered
from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water, there shall they
rehearse the righteous acts of the Lord, even the righteous acts toward the
inhabitants of his villages in Israel: then shall the people of the Lord go down
to the gates." -- Judges 5:11. DEBORAH sang concerning the overthrow of Israel's
enemies, and the deliverance vouchsafed to the tribes: we have a far richer
theme for music; we have been delivered from worse enemies, and saved by a
greater salvation. Let our gratitude be deeper; let our song be more jubilant.
Glory be unto God, we can say that our sins, which were like mighty hosts, have
been swept away, not by that ancient river, the river Kishon, but by streams
which flowed from Jesus' side. Oar great enemy has been overcome, and his head
is broken. Not Sisera, but Satan has been overthrown: the "seed of the woman has
bruised his head" for ever. We are now ransomed from the galling yoke; we walk
at liberty through the power of the great Liberator, the Lord Jesus. The results
which accrued from the conquest achieved by Barak, are upon a small scale
similar to those which come to us through the deliverance wrought out by the
Lord Jesus Christ. I shall take our text and spiritualize it, viewing its joyous
details as emblematic of the blessings granted to us through our Redeemer. Those
who went to draw water at the wells after Barak's victory, were no longer
disturbed by the robbers who lurked at the fountains for purposes of plunder;
and instead of drawing the water by stealth and in hasty fear, the women joined
their voices around the well head, and sang of the mighty acts of God; and the
citizens who had been cooped up within the town walls, and dared not show
themselves in the suburbs, ventured beyond the gates into the open country,
transacted their business openly, and enjoyed the sweets of security. I think we
can readily see that this is an instructive type of the condition into which our
Lord Jesus Christ has brought us, through the destruction of our sins and the
overthrow of the powers of darkness. We shall, this morning, first, for a little
time, think of the wells of salvation as cleared of enemies; then we shall talk
together upon the songs of praise to be rehearsed at the wells; and, thirdly, we
shall have a little to say upon the visitation of the gates, which we can now
enjoy with safety. I. Our text tells us of WELLS CLEARED FROM THE FOE, and
speaks of those who "are delivered from the noise of archers in the places of
drawing water." We thank God that we who are the children of the Most High, have
wells to go to. The world is a wilderness; say what we will of it, we cannot
make it into anything else. "This is not our rest; it is polluted." We are
passing through the desert of earth to the Promised Land of heaven, but we
praise God that we have wells to drink of on the road. As Israel drank at Elim,
and as the patriarchs drank at Beersheba, so have we wells of salvation, out of
which we joyfully draw the living water. Our great inexhaustible well is the
Lord Jesus Christ. He is, indeed, the great "deep that lieth under," the "deep
that coucheth beneath," the secret spring and source from which the crystal
streams of life flow, through the wells of instrumentality and ordinance. "All
my fresh springs are in thee." Whenever we come to the Lord Jesus Christ, we
drink and are refreshed. No thirst can abide where he is. "He that drinketh of
the water that I shall give him," saith he, "shall never thirst." Glory be to
his name, we know the truth of this -- "I came to Jesus, and I drankOf that
life-giving stream;My thirst was quenched, my soul revived,And now I live in
him."As often as we muse upon his person, commune with him in holy fellowship,
think of his wounds, triumph in his ascension, and long for his second advent,
so often doth our spirit drink of the water of the well of Bethlehem, and we
lift up our head.Arising out of this greatest fountain, we have wells from which
we draw the waters of comfort. First there is this book, this golden book, this
book of God, this god of books, the word of God, with its thousands of promises,
suitable to every case, applicable to all seasons, faithful and true, yea and
Amen in Christ Jesus. Oh! how frequently when we have been fainting and ready to
die, we have found that promise true, "I will pour water upon him that is
thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground I" when we have turned to the word, and
searched there and found the promise, and fed upon it, as one that findeth great
spoil have we rejoiced in God's word. The doctrines of this book are
inexpressibly reviving to us. He that understandeth them shall find them to be a
well of life and comfort. I need not instance those doctrines, for you know
them, you feed upon them, they are your daily bread. Beloved, when we think of
God's eternal love to his people, when we meditate upon redemption by blood,
when we consider the truth of effectual calling by the Holy Spirit, when we
remember the immutable faithfulness of the Most High, the covenant suretyship of
our Lord Jesus, when we look forward to the perfection which will be ultimately
ours, and to the haven of eternal rest to which every one of the Lord's people
shall be brought, we do indeed find that -- "Here in the fair gospel-field,Wells
of free salvation yieldStreams of life, a plenteous store,And our soul shall
thirst no more."As the word read is thus precious, so is the word preached. If
we listen to one whom God helps to speak in his name, we shall often find
ourselves returning from the place of worship in a very different state from
that in which we entered it. How often have you lost your burdens when you have
been sitting in the assembly of the saints! I know, ye feeble ones, ye have
oftentimes been refreshed; ye have bowed yourselves down to Siloah's brook that
flows hard by the oracle of God, and as you drank of its cooling streams, you
have felt as though you could face the enemy once more, and go back to a world
of toil and trouble, strong for labor, and patient for the endurance of
suffering. Happy are ye to whom the word has come with demonstration of the
Spirit and with power. The fruitful lips of the preacher who speaks
experimentally, who speaks clearly, who speaks of that which he has tasted and
handled of the good word of truth -- these sanctified lips, I say, "drop as the
rain," and "distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb." The
mouth of the righteous becometh a well of life unto the people of God.So, my
brethren, it is also with the well of the ordinances. I think we shall never
forget the time when we drew water out of the well of baptism -- when we were
baptized into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost,
upon our profession of faith. We found believers' immersion to be a most
instructive emblem of our death, burial, and resurrection with the Lord Jesus;
and we have not forgotten, to this day, that we then avowed ourselves to be dead
to the world, dead to the law, dead to self, dead with Christ; nor has the
thought of resurrection with Jesus, as typified by the uplifting out of the
pool, been forgotten by us. We know and feel that we are dead, and our life is
hid with Christ in God, and we rejoice that he "hath raised us up together, and
made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus." The recollection of
that happy day when we gave ourselves up publicly and unreservedly to Jesus, is
still fragrant. Oh! how sweet to sing humbly but heartily -- "Tis done! the
great transaction's done;I am my Lord's, and he is mine:He drew me, and I
followed on,Charm'd to confess the voice divine."So with the Lord's Supper. My
witness is, and I think I speak the mind of many of God's people now present,
that coming as some of us do, weekly, to the Lord's table, we do not find the
breaking of bread to have lost its significance -- it is always fresh to us. I
have often remarked on Lord's-day evening, whatever the subject may have been,
whether Sinai has thundered over our heads, or the plaintive notes of Calvary
have pierced our hearts, it always seems equally appropriate to come to the
breaking of bread. Shame on the Christian church that she should put it off to
once a month, and mar the first day of the week by depriving it of its glory in
the meeting together for fellowship and breaking of bread, and showing forth of
the death of Christ till he come. They who once know the sweetness of each
Lord's-day celebrating his Supper, will not be content, I am sure, to put it off
to less frequent seasons. Beloved, when the Holy Ghost is with us, ordinances
are wells to the Christian, wells of rich comfort and of near communion. But I
must not forget the mercy seat. What a well that is to the Christian when he can
draw nigh unto God with true heart! It is a glorious thing to have such a well
as that in the family, where, in prayer with the children, you can bring all the
necessities of the household before God, and mention each child if you will, and
all the troubles of the past, or all the expected difficulties of the coming
day. Let us never give up that well. But, as for private prayer, brethren, this
world were drear indeed if we could not pour out our sorrows into our Father's
ear. This is the poor man's riches; this is the sick man's medicine; this is the
faint man's cordial; this is the weak one's strength; this is the ignorant man's
school; this is the strong man's confidence. Neglect prayer, and you will soon
discover that all your spiritual powers wax weak; but be much in supplication --
and he that is mighty on his knees, is mighty everywhere. He that looketh God in
the face every morning, will never fear the face of man; and he who looketh
Christ in the face each evening, may well close his eyes in sweet repose,
feeling that, if he should never wake to this world of care, he shall wake up in
the likeness of his Lord. Oh, yes! the mercy seat is a well of refreshment
indeed! Over and above this, every form of fellowship with Jesus, wrought in us
by the Spirit, is a well of salvation. This is an unknown thing to the ungodly,
he entereth not into this secret; but you, my fellow Christians, know what
communion with God means, for ofttimes, even when we are in business, or taken
up with the world's cares, our hearts are away with our Beloved on the mountains
of myrrh and in the beds of spices; we get us away from the world's toils to
lean our head upon his bosom, to set in his banqueting-house, and see the
love-banner waving over our heads. Beloved, we are no strangers to Jesus Christ,
blessed be his name, and he is no stranger to us; we have seen him through the
lattices of the ordinances; we have found the means of grace to be like windows
of agate and gates of carbuncle, through which we have beheld him; we have him
in our hearts full often, he embraces our soul -- we carry the fire of his love
flaming on the altar of our affections. He is our dear companion, our ever
present help in time of trouble.Thus have I mentioned some of the wells. Now,
concerning them all, it may be said, that they can never be stopped up by our
foes. We read that in old times the enemies stopped up the wells, but neither
hell nor its infernal train can ever fill up one of the wells which the Lord has
digged and filled by his Spirit. If outward ordinances be stopped, yet the great
deep that lieth under will find a vent somewhere; and if we were forbidden to
draw near to the Lord's table, or to meet to listen to the word, yet, blessed be
God, we could pray, and we could have secret fellowship with Jesus, and so the
wells could not so be stopped that the thirsty Christian should be deprived of
his drink in due season.Moreover, as they cannot be stopped, so neither can they
be taken away from us. The Philistine king, Abimelech, strove with Abraham and
with Isaac to take away the wells; but these are ours by covenant engagements,
these are given to us in the eternal council, they are guaranteed to us by the
solemn league of the eternal Three; and none of these covenant blessings shall
be wrested from the heirs of life, who are heirs of all things in Christ
Jesus.Though these fountains cannot be stopped up or taken away, yet we can be
molested in coming near to them. It seems that archers and wells frequently go
together. It was the blessing of Joseph -- "Joseph is a fruitful bough, even a
fruitful bough by a well; whose branches run over the wall." But what next? "The
archers have sorely grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him." And so in the
text: here are wells, but there is the noise of archers, which greatly disturbs
those who go to draw water. Brethren and sisters -- I think you know, but I will
refresh your memories -- you know what the noise of archers has been to you when
you have tried to draw water. Years ago, with some of us, our sins were the
archers that shot at us when we would fain come to Christ and drink of his
salvation. When we bowed the knee in prayer, a fiery arrow would dart into our
hearts -- "How dare you pray? God heareth not sinners!" When we read the word of
God, another barbed shaft would be shot against us -- "What hast thou to do with
God's word? There can be no promise there for such as thou art. Knowest thou not
that thou art a condemned sinner, and that book curses thee solemnly? Turn away
from it, of what service can it be to thee?" Do you not remember how you were
wont to come up to this house sighing for comfort, and though the preacher
frequently invited you to Christ, and tried to exhibit a crucified Saviour
before your eyes, yet the noise of the archers prevented you drawing from the
well? Arrow after arrow of remorse, conviction, terror, and alarm, pierced your
soul, so that you could not obtain peace with God. You used to envy the very
least of the Lord's people when you saw them rejoicing in Christ, while you
could not so much as hope yourself. You were told to believe, but faith seemed
impossible to you. You were hidden to rest upon the finished work, but you only
could say, "I would, but cannot trust." The twanging of the bow and the whizzing
of the shaft were a terrible noise which prevented all drawing of water; while
sometimes Satan beat the big hell drum in your ears: "The wrath to come! The
wrath to come! The wrath to come!" And as you thought about the judgment day,
and the great white throne, and the resurrection, and the dividing of the sheep
from the goats, and the "Depart, ye cursed," and the everlasting fire, and all
the terrors of a dread eternity, divested of every beam of hope, it seemed
impossible for you to draw water out of any one of the wells, though perhaps you
tried them all, and tried them again and again, as I did, year after year, and
yet could not obtain so much as a single drop to cool your parched tongue, while
it seemed as if it would cleave to the roof of your mouth in utter despair. Ah!
but beloved, you are delivered from the noise of archers now; your sins which
are many, are forgiven you; now you can come to Jesus, now you can come to the
ordinances, now you can read the Bible, now you can hear the word, and you find
that God's paths drop fatness. There is to you a river, the streams whereof make
glad all your powers. Oh! how precious now these wells have become, because you
can in unmolested peace draw water; and though sometimes the devil would fain
shoot at you, yet you know you have a glorious shield, who is the Lord's
anointed, and has turned away all wrath from you, so that none can lay anything
to your charge, for you are accepted in the Beloved, justified by faith, and
have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ. Will not you who are
delivered from the noise of archers in the places of drawing water, bless the
Lord? But I should not wonder if since that first race of archers called sins
has died out, some of you have been much molested by another tribe of bowmen,
who a great deal trouble me at times, namely, the archers called doubts and
fears. These sad villains will, if they can, attack every soul that desires to
enjoy the means of grace and the grace of the means. "Ah!" says Satan, even to
God's child, "remember your slips and your failings! Recollect your
shortcomings, your slackness in prayer, your indifference to God's glory, your
hardness of heart! How can you think of receiving a promise?" Just as you are
going to grasp some divine word out of your Bible and suck out its honey, it
seems as though something smote your hand, and you were obliged to drop the text
altogether, lest you should be acting presumptuously. No hymn of joyful
assurance suited you, but you began moaning out -- "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?"It is poor work coming to the Lord's table when you are afraid that you are
none of his; it is wretched work even listening to the ministry when you dare
not claim the precious things which are delivered; yes, and even the word of God
is a comfortless book when you cannot feel that you have a saving interest in
its promises. Yet I thank God, when our faith is in exercise, and our hope is
clear, we can see our interest in Christ; we come to him just as we came at
first, and cast ourselves wholly upon him. Then we no longer fear the archers,
but are rid of every fear; we "know whom we have believed, and are persuaded
that he is able to keep that which we have committed unto him;" and, no longer
disturbed by our enemies, we sit by the well's brink, and are refreshed.Yet, I
should not wonder if another band of archers has sometimes attacked you when you
have been at the wells, namely, your cares. Dear mother, the thought of the
children at home, has frequently disturbed your devotions in the assembly of the
saints. Good friend engaged in business, you do not always find it easy to put a
hedge between Saturday and Sunday. The cares of the week will stray into the
sacred enclosure of the day of rest, and thus the cruel archers worry you. Ay,
and perhaps in the case of those of us who are engaged in God's work, even our
solemn engagements enlist against us a set of archers unknown to others; I mean
anxieties about the right conducting of services, and arranging the various
departments of the church. We become, like Martha, cumbered with much serving,
even though we are serving the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and this deprives us
of the delightful sitting at his feet, which is heaven below. It is well to be
able to cast all our cares on him who careth for us, and thus, by an act of
faith in our heavenly Father, to be delivered from the noise of these
archers.One thing you have, dear friends, for which you cannot be too thankful,
namely, you have a deliverance from the archers of ecclesiastical discord. We
have peace within our borders. We have not this bickering and that division, we
are not divided brother against brother, as some of our churches are, which are
rent by schisms, torn in pieces by stripes, which might well cause them great
searchings of heart; when we do come together, we come to edify one another in
peace, for we love each other in the Lord. We have not to lament that the house
of God is a place of our sorest wounding; it is to us a place of rest -- where
our best friends, our kindred dwell, where God our Saviour reigns. We are
delivered from that noise of archers at church-meetings; and you who know how
sharply some can shoot, may well be glad of rest.Again, we are happily delivered
from political persecutions. We have not to set scouts upon the mountains, as
the covenants of old, when they met in some lonely glen for worship. We have not
to put one of the deacons at the door to warn us when the constables were coming
to arrest us, as the members of this very church did according to our records,
in years gone by. The minister has not to escape and hide himself from the
officers, and the members have no need to hasten to their homes like scattered
sheep, hunted by the wolf in the form of an armed band, but every man under his
own vine and fig tree we sit, none making us afraid, for which we are not
thankful enough, I am quite sure. May God grant that, recollecting our peaceful
privileges in being now screened from persecutions, from ecclesiastical
troubles, from carnal cares, from inward doubts, and above all, from the plague
of sin, we may be like those who in the days of Deborah, were delivered from the
noise of archers in the places of the drawing of water.Enough upon that, only
make sure that you pay your need of gratitude to your gracious God. This
reminding you of your mercies I am afraid is dull work to some of you, but if
you had them taken away, you would think differently. One might almost sigh for
a brush of persecution to wake some of you up! Just a little salt cast here and
there to make some of the sore places smart! Surely we go to sleep unless the
whip be now and then laid on. A stake or two at Smithfield might once again give
back the old fire of enthusiasm to the church, but in these warm sunny days we
forget our mercies. We go to sleep upon the bench, instead of tugging at the
oar; and when we ought to be serving God with all our might and soul, I fear
that the most of us who are saved are dreaming our lonely way to heaven,
indifferent to a very great extent to the glory of God, and forgetful of our
indebtedness to Christ for what he has done for us. II. Now we turn the subject,
and come secondly to notice THE SONGS BY THE WELL.As when the people came to the
wells of old, they were wont to talk with one another if all was peaceful, so
when we come up to the ordinances of God's house, and enjoy fellowship with
Jesus, we should not spend our time in idle chat, but we should rehearse the
works of the Lord. In Deborah's day, when one friend came to the well and met
another, and half-a-dozen gathered together, one would say, "Delightful change
this! We could not come to the well a month ago without being afraid that an
arrow would pierce our hearts." "Ah!" said another, "our family went without
water for a long time. We were all bitten with thirst because we dare not come
to the well." Then, another would say, "But have you heard how it is? It was
that woman, the wife of Lapidoth, Deborah, who called out Barak, and went with
him to the battle. Have you not heard of the glorious fight they had, and how
the river Kishon swept Jabin away, and Jacl smote Sisera through the temples?"
"The Lord hath done it," said another. "It was the Lord's doing, and is not it
marvelous in our eyes?" And so, around the well's brink, when they were
delivered from the noise of archers, they rehearsed the works of God; and before
they wended their way to their several homes, they said one to another, "Let us
sing unto the praise of God who has set our country free;" and so, catching the
tune, each woman went back to her village home, bearing the pitcher for her
household, and singing as she went. This is very much what we ought to do. When
we come together, we ought to rehearse the work that Jesus Christ has done for
us, the great work which he did on Calvary; the great work which he is doing
now, as he stands before the Father's throne. We should talk experimentally, and
tell one another of what we have known, what Christ has done for us; through
what troubles we have been sustained; in what perils we have been preserved;
what blessings we have enjoyed; what ills, so well deserved, have been averted
from us. We have not enough of this rehearsing the works of the Lord. It was a
sign of the saints in the olden times, that "They that feared the Lord spake
often one to another: and the Lord hearkened, and heard." O let us get back to
that primitive simplicity of conversation, and let us rehearse, as the text
says, the righteous acts of Jehovah; let us go through our rehearsals for the
grand orchestra of the skies. Let us begin to praise God and stir each other up
to gratitude here, that we may be getting ready to join the overwhelming
hallelujah with the ten thousand times ten thousand who for ever praise God and
the Lamb. Around all the wells, whichever they may be, of which we drink, let
our conversation be concerning Christ and his dying love; concerning the Holy
Spirit and his conquering power; concerning the providence of God and its
goodness and its faithfulness; and then, as we wend our way to our different
homes, let us go with music in our hearts, and music on our lips, to take music
to our households, each man and woman magnifying the name of the Lord.Did you
observe carefully what it was they sang of? "The acts of the Lord." But there is
an adjective appended, "The righteous acts of the Lord." Righteousness is that
attribute which the carnal man fears but be who sees the righteousness of God
satisfied by the atonement of Christ, is charmed even by the severe aspect of
God dressed as a judge. The justified child of God is not afraid of the
righteousness of God, for he can meet all its demands. He likens it to the
golden lions which stood in pairs upon the steps of the throne of Solomon -- not
meant to drive away the petitioner, but to let him see how strong, how powerful,
was that throne upon which Israel leaned. I see the righteousness and holiness
of God like huge colossal lions, as I look at his throne, and I delight, as I
ascend the steps to bow before the glorious Father's face, to know that his
righteousness is engaged to save those for whom Jesus died. Let us recount the
righteous vengeance of Calvary, the terrors that God cast forth upon his Son
when he cursed our sins by making Christ to be a curse for us, though he knew no
sin. This is a subject upon which we should delight to dwell.Then, if you
observe, it was "the righteous acts of the Lord toward his people." Yes; the
very marrow of the gospel lies in special, discriminating, distinguishing grace.
As for your universal grace, let those have it who care for such meatless bones;
but the special gospel of electing love, of distinguishing grace, this is the
gospel which is like butter in a lordly dish to a child of God, and he that has
once fed on it will take no meaner fare. I delight to believe in the universal
benevolence of God -- he is good to all, and his tender mercies are over all his
works; but his saints shall bless him, for they are not received with
benevolence merely, but with complacency; they are not only his servants, but
his sons; not so much the works of his hands, as the children of his loins, the
darlings of his bosom, the favourites of his heart, the objects of his eternal
choice, the delight of his eyes, his peculiar treasure, his chosen portion, his
precious jewels, his rest and delight. The Lord prizes his saints above all the
world beside. He gave Egypt and Ethiopia for them -- he did more, he gave his
Son for them; he gave heaven's brightest jewel, heaven's glory, heaven's heaven
he gave that he might redeem them from all iniquity, to be his own peculiar
people. Thus, my beloved brethren, take care when you converse upon the Lord's
acts, that you speak of his peculiar favor towards Israel, his chosen, his
elect. Note with care that the works which are to be rehearsed are done towards
the inhabitants of the villages of Israel. Does not this suggest that we ought
frequently to magnify the Lord's choice favor and tender indulgence towards the
least and feeblest of his family? Those villagers, those who knew so little,
those who possessed so little, those who could do so little, those who were so
weak, so undefended, these were rescued by the divine hand. Speak, then, of the
mercy of God towards the little ones of Israel, and you will have no narrow
field of speech. Why, if there be a choice word in the Bible, it is always for
the weak ones; if there be a peculiarly precious promise, it is generally for
the feeble minded. The best carriage in all the world that I ever heard of is
Jesus' bosom, but then that is for the lamb, not for those who are strong, but
for the tender and frail. Those most compassionate of sentences in which Jesus
seems to have most fully expressed his gentleness, and to have employed the
tenderest similes, are evidently spoken with an eye to the trembling and timid.
Take for instance that one, "The bruised reed shall he not break, and the
smoking flax shall he not quench." "Fear not, little flock; for it is your
Father's good pleasure to give you the kingdom." Such words as these we may well
talk of together when we meet at the wells of ordinances, and so rehearse the
praise of God and his righteous acts, even his righteous acts towards the
villagers of Israel.III. Lastly, the text says, "Then shall the people of the
Lord GO DOWN TO THE GATES;" by which, several things may be intended.First, when
the people of God are altogether delivered from their sins, and their cares, and
their troubles, by the great redemption of the Lord Jesus and the power of his
Spirit, then they enjoy great liberty. At times we are like Jeremiah, who said,
"I am shut up and cannot come forth;" or like another whose way was hedged up
with thorns; but when we live in great nearness to Christ, the gates are all
opened, and we are the Lord's freemen: instead of needing to keep within the
limits which fear prescribes, we take our walks abroad in the fields of blessed
liberty and gospel privilege. We walk from Dan to Beersheba in covenant mercies.
Do you know what the liberty of a child of God is, dear friends, or are you all
your lifetime subject to bondage? If you are a child of God, you do know
something of it, but if you are not initiated into the mystery of the inner
life, you will very probably confound liberty with license. The liberty of the
man of the world is liberty to commit evil without restraint: the liberty of a
child of God is to walk in holiness without hindrance. When the believer's ways
are enlarged, he delights to run in the statutes of the Lord; obedience is
freedom to the Lord's servant. Christ's yoke is easy, and his burden is light. I
fear that very many of you who are present this morning are slaves -- some of
you slaves to fashion, you wear the fettems most conspicuously. You are the
serfs of custom, and you have not the moral courage to rebel. You bow your necks
to human dictation, and own that you must do what others do. You have neither
the man hood nor the grace to strike out a path of your own. Now, the true child
of God does not care one snap of his finger what others may do, to his own
Master he stands or falls. He does what is right, and would sooner take the lion
of hell by the beard than do wrong. If others like his integrity, so much the
better for them; if they do not like it, they are condemned out of their own
mouths. I take it that the genuine Christian who has once come to fear God,
fears nobody else; that he scorns to hamper himself with the sinful customs
which sway the slavish hordes of mankind. He chooses for himself by the light of
God's word, and when he sees a thing to be right, he does it, and he asks no man
liberty on that account. It is a most glorious liberty which a man possesses
when he is no longer in bondage to me, to smart under their threats or to fatten
in their smiles. Glorious was that ancient father who threw back the
threatenings of his enemies, and laughed them to scorn. "We will banish you!"
said they. "No!" said the Christian hero, "you cannot do that, because I shall
be at home anywhere; I am a citizen of heaven; I am a stranger and a pilgrim
upon earth." "But we will shut you out from all your friends!" "No!" he said,
"you are not able even to do that, since my best Friend will always be with me."
"We shall deprive you of your goods!" But he replied, "That I know you cannot
do, for I gave them all away to the poor but yesterday." "Well, we will take
away your life!" "In that, too, I am undismayed," said he, "for death will only
give me the life for which I long." No wounds could be inflicted upon a warrior
so invulnerable; just so secure is every man who is clad in the armor of faith.
He is above the molestation of mankind, for his life is hidden with Christ; his
Conversation is in heaven; he is free from fear, since he has nothing to fear;
all his interests are secure. He has cast himself upon his God in Christ, and
since God has made him free, he is free indeed. "He is the freeman whom the
truth makes free, and all are slaves beside." You do not know what a joy it is
to walk erect in conscious, mental, moral, spiritual, God-given freedom. Slaves
of priest-craft, we pity you, your chains we would not wear for all the wealth
of India! Bondslaves of the law, we mourn for you, for your service is heavy,
and your captivity is terrible. Serfs of custom, you are more to be scorned than
pitied: break your bands asunder, and wear the yoke no more. This day we feel as
emancipated slaves must have felt when the last fetter fell to the ground. O
glorious liberty, no price can show thine excellence, and all the things which
we can desire are not to be compared with thee. To go down to the gates,
however, means something else, for citizens went down to the gates to exercise
authority and judgment. He that is in Christ discerneth spirits, and separateth
between the excellent and the reprobate. "The spiritual judgeth all things, yet
he himself is judged of no man." The saints, being led of the Spirit, discern
between the precious and the vile; they know the voice of their Shepherd, but a
stranger will they not follow, for they know not the voice of strangers. The
saints judge this world, and by their living testimony condemn its sin. "Know ye
not that we shall judge angels" in the day of the appearing of the Lord Jesus
Christ? Instead of being judged and following others, they who love God become
the leaders in right, and are as God's mouth rebuking iniquity.To go down to the
gates signified also to go forth to war. When a Christian man is saved, he is
not content with his own safety, he longs to see others blessed. He can now go
out of the gates to attack the foe who once held him in bondage, and therefore
he girds on his weapon. When will the church of God be inflamed by the sacred
desire of carrying the war for Christ into the enemy's territory? I think I see
a great deal in our churches now of a dangerously lethargic conservatism, a
settling down contented with our churches, delighted to strengthen our own hands
to keep together what we have, and careless about enlargement. The object of
many churches of considerable age seems to be consolidation, and nothing more:
but rest assured that the truest consolidation is enlargement, the best
conservatism is progress, the truest way to keep what you have is to get more,
the best way to retain the grace you now possess is to crave for more and more
of the blessed spiritual gift. Brethren, if Christ has delivered us from the
noise of archers, and we are at perfect peace with heaven, do not let us fold
our arms and say, "The work is done, let us sleep in peace." O you saved men,
hasten to the armoury, array yourselves in the panoply, and grasp the sword, for
now you are called by Christ to a holy warfare. If you are saved, you must seek
to save others; if you have received the light, carry it into the dark places.
If you have escaped from the jaw of the lion, and the paw of the bear, now go
forth to fight with the monster and tear others from his power. I trust that the
most of you are engaged in some Christian service, but so often as I come into
this pulpit and think of the numbers of believers in this church, I feel
concerned that we should not suffer any part of our territory to lie idle as
waste ground, that we should not have a single member in this church who is
doing nothing. I shall be satisfied, perfectly satisfied, if each one is doing
what he can; we cannot expect more, neither does the Lord expect according to
what a man has not, but according to what he has. But are you, my brethren, who
have been lifted up into the glorious position of saved souls, are you
glorifying Christ and finishing the work which is given you to do? I fear that
some of you are not. You can eat the fat and drink the sweet, but you make but
small return unto your Lord. I speak to you as a loving brother in Christ, and I
pray you think how life will look in the light of its last hour. Think of your
residence on earth as you will view it from those summits of bliss beyond the
river! Will you wish then to have wasted time, to have lost opportunities? If
you could know regrets in the realm of blessedness, would not these be the
regrets that you have not served Christ better, loved him more, spoken of him
oftener, given more generously to his cause, and more uniformly proved
yourselves to be consecrated to him? I am afraid that such would be the form of
the regrets of paradise, if any could intrude within those gates of pearl. Come,
let us live while we live! Let us live up to the utmost stretch of our manhood!
Let us ask the Lord to brace our nerves, to string our sinews, and make us true
crusaders, knights of the blood-red cross consecrated men and women, who, for
the love we bear Christ's name, will count labor to be ease, and suffering to be
joy, and reproach to be honor, and loss to be gain! If we have never yet given
ourselves wholly up to Christ as his disciples, now hard by his cross, where we
see his wounds still bleeding afresh, and himself quivering in pain for us, let
us pledge ourselves in his strength, that we give ourselves wholly to him
without reserve, and so may he help us by his Spirit, that the vow may be
redeemed and the resolve may be carried out, that we may love Christ, and dying
may find it gain.Brethren and sisters, I cannot press this home to you as I
would; I must leave it with your own consciences and with the eternal Spirit. If
Jesus be not worthy, do not serve him; but if he be right honorable, serve him
as he ought to be served. If heaven and eternal things be not weighty, then
trifle with them; but if they be solemn realities, I beseech you as honest men
treat them as realities. If there be a day coming when all your business, and
your worldly cares, and your fleeting pleasures, will seem to be mere children's
toys, if there be an hour coming when to have served God will be glory, when to
have won souls will be renown, then live as in the light of that truth, and God
help you by his blessed Spirit. Amen and Amen. PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE
SERMON -- Judges 5.


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Source: https://sermonindex.net/books/spurgeons-sermons-volume-13-1867/
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