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  SPURGEONS SERMONS VOLUME 29 1883
  by C.H. Spurgeon
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Volume 29 of Spurgeon's collected sermons, containing messages preached during
1883 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: 7

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS
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    0. Spurgeons Sermons Volume 29 1883
    1. Supposing Him to be the Gardener
    2. All Joy in All Trials
    3. Earnest Expostulation
    4. Beginning at Jerusalem
    5. In Him: Like Him
    6. The Doctrines of Grace Do Not Lead to Sin

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  CHAPTER 0: SPURGEONS SERMONS VOLUME 29 1883
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  CHAPTER 1: SUPPOSING HIM TO BE THE GARDENER
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A Sermon (No.1699) Delivered on Lord's Day Morning, December 31st, 1882, by C.
H. SPURGEON, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. "Supposing him to be the
gardener." -- John 20:15. I WAS sitting about a fortnight ago in a very lovely
garden, in the midst of all kinds of flowers which were blooming in delightful
abundance all around. Screening myself from the heat of the sun under the
overhanging boughs of an olive, I cast my eyes upon palms and bananas, roses and
camellias, oranges and aloes, lavender and heliotrope. The garden was full of
color and beauty, perfume and fruitfulness. Surely the gardener, whoever he
might be, who had framed, and fashioned, and kept in order that lovely spot,
deserved great commendation. So I thought, and then it came to me to meditate
upon the church of God as a garden, and to suppose the Lord Jesus to be the
gardener, and then to think of what would most assuredly happen if it were so.
"Supposing him to be the gardener," my mind conceived of a paradise where all
sweet things flourish and all evil things are rooted up. If an ordinary worker
had produced such beauty as I then saw and enjoyed on earth, what beauty and
glory must surely be brought forth "supposing him to be the gardener"! You know
the "him" to whom we refer, the ever-blessed Son of God, whom Mary Magdalene in
our text mistook for the gardener. We will for once follow a saint in her
mistaken track; and yet we shall find ourselves going in a right way. She was
mistaken when she fell into "supposing him to be the gardener"; but if we are
under his Spirit's teaching we shall not make a mistake if now we indulge
ourselves in a quiet meditation upon our ever-blessed Lord, "supposing him to be
the gardener." It is not an unnatural supposition, surely; for if we may truly
sing "We are a garden walled around, Chosen and made peculiar ground," that
enclosure needs a gardener. Are we not all the plants of his right hand
planting? Do we not all need watering and tending by his constant and gracious
care? He says, "I am the true vine: my Father is the husbandman," and that is
one view of it; but we may also sing, "My well-beloved hath a vineyard in a very
fruitful hill: and he fenced it, and gathered out the stones thereof, and
planted it with the choicest vine" -- that is to say, he acted as gardener to
it. Thus has Isaiah taught us to sing a song of the Well-beloved touching his
vineyard. We read of our Lord just now under these terms -- "Thou that dwellest
in the gardens, the companions hearken to thy voice." To what purpose does he
dwell in the vineyards but that he may see how the vines flourish and care for
all the plants? The image, I say, is so far from being unnatural that it is most
pregnant with suggestions and full of useful teaching. We are not going against
the harmonies of nature when we are "supposing him to be the gardener." Neither
is the figure unscriptural; for in one of his own parables our Lord makes
himself to be the dresser of the vineyard. We read just now that parable so full
of warning. When the "certain man" came in and saw the fig tree that it brought
forth no fruit, he said unto the dresser of his vineyard, "Cut it down: why
cumbereth it the ground?" Who was it that intervened between that profitless
tree and the axe but our great Intercessor and Interposer? He it is who
continually comes forward with "Let it alone this year also till I shall dig
about it and dung it." In this case he himself takes upon himself the character
of the vine-dresser, and we are not wrong in "supposing him to be the
gardener."If we would be supported by a type, our Lord takes the name of "the
Second Adam," and the first Adam was a gardener. Moses tells us that the Lord
God placed the man in the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. Man in his
best estate was not to live in this world in a paradise of indolent luxury, but
in a garden of recompensed toil. Behold, the church is Christ's Eden, watered by
the river of life, and so fertilized that all manner of fruits are brought forth
unto God; and he, our second Adam, walks in this spiritual Eden to dress it and
to keep it; and so by a type we see that we are right in "supposing him to be
the gardener." Thus also Solomon thought of him when he described the royal
Bridegroom as going down with his spouse to the garden when the flowers appeared
on the earth and the fig tree had put forth her green figs; he went out with his
beloved for the preservation of the gardens, saying, "Take us the foxes, the
little foxes, that spoil the vines: for our vines have tender grapes." Neither
nature, nor Scripture, nor type, nor song forbids us to think of our adorable
Lord Jesus as one that careth for the flowers and fruits of his church. We err
not when we speak of him, "supposing him to be the gardener." And so I sat me
still, and indulged the suggested line of thought, which I now repeat in your
hearing, hoping that I may open many roads of meditation for your hearts also. I
shall not attempt to think out such a subject thoroughly, but only to indicate
in which direction you may look for a vein of precious ore.I. "Supposing him to
be the gardener," we have here THE KEY TO MANY WONDERS in the garden of his
church.The first wonder is that there should be a church at all in the world;
that there should be a garden blooming in the midst of this sterile waste. Upon
a hard and flinty rock the Lord has made the Eden of his church to grow. How
came it to be -- here an oasis of life in a desert of death? how came faith in
the midst of unbelief, and hope where all is servile fear, and love where hate
abounds? "Ye are of God, little children, and the whole world lieth in the
wicked one." Whence this being "of God" where all beside is fast shut up in the
devil? How came there to be a people for God, separated, and sanctified, and
consecrated, and ordained to bring forth fruit unto his name? Assuredly it could
not have been so at all if the doing of it had been left to man. We understand
its existence, "supposing him to be the gardener," but nothing else can account
for it. He can cause the fir tree to flourish instead of the thorn, and the
myrtle instead of the briar; but no one else can accomplish such a change. The
garden in which I sat was made on the bare face of the rock, and almost all the
earth of which its terraces were composed had been brought up there, from the
shore below, by hard labor, and so upon the rock a soil had been created. It was
not by its own nature that the garden was found in such a place; but by skill
and labor it had been formed: even so the church of God has had to be
constructed by the Lord Jesus, who is the author as well as the perfecter of his
garden. Painfully, with wounded hands, has he built each terrace, and fashioned
each bed, and planted each plant. All the flowers have had to be watered with
his bloody sweat, and watched by his tearful eyes the nail-prints in his hands,
and the wound in his side are the tokens of what it cost him to make a new
Paradise. He has given his life for the life of every plant that is in the
garden, and not one of them had been there on any other theory than "supposing
him to be the gardener."Besides, there is another wonder. How comes the church
of God to flourish in such a clime? This present evil world is very uncongenial
to the growth of grace, and the church is not able by herself alone to resist
the evil influences which surround her. The church contains within itself
elements which tend to its own disorder and destruction if left alone; even as
the garden has present in its soil all the germs of a tangled thicket of weeds.
The best church that ever Christ had on earth would within a few years
apostatise from the truth if deserted by the Spirit of God. The world never
helps the church; it is all in arms against it; there is nothing in the world's
air or soil that can fertilise the church even to the least degree. How is it,
then, that notwithstanding all this, the church is a fair garden unto God, and
there are sweet spices grown in its beds, and lovely flowers are gathered by the
Divine hand from its borders? The continuance and prosperity of the church can
only be accounted for by "supposing him to be the gardener." Almighty strength
is put to the otherwise impossible work of sustaining a holy people among men;
almighty wisdom exercises itself upon this otherwise insuperable difficulty.
Hear ye the word of the Lord, and learn hence the reason for the growth of his
church below. "I, the Lord, do keep it: I will water it every moment; lest any
hurt it, I will keep it night and day." That is the reason for the existence of
a spiritual people still in the midst of a godless and perverse generation. This
is the reason for an election of grace in the midst of surrounding vice, and
worldliness, and unbelief. "Supposing him to be the gardener," I can see why
there should be fruitfulness, and beauty, and sweetness even in the center of
the wilderness of sin. Another mystery is also cleared up by this supposition.
The wonder is that ever you and I should have been placed among the plants of
the Lord. Why are we allowed to grow in the garden of his grace? Why me, Lord?
Why me? How is it that we have been kept there, and borne with in our
barrenness, when he might long ago have said, "Cut it down: why cumbereth it the
ground?" Who else would have borne with such waywardness as ours? Who could have
manifested such infinite patience? Who could have tended us with such care, and
when the care was so ill-rewarded who would have renewed it so long from day to
day, and persisted in designs of boundless love? Who could have done more for
his vineyard? who could or would have done so much? An mere man would have
repented of his good intent, provoked by our ingratitude. None but God could
have had patience with some of us! That we have not long ago been slipped off as
fruitless branches of the vine; that we are left still upon the stem, in the
hope that we may ultimately bring forth fruit, is a great marvel. I know not how
it is that we have been spared, except upon this ground -- "supposing him to be
the gardener" -- for Jesus is all gentleness and grace, so slow with his knife,
so tardy with his axe, so hopeful if we do but show a bud or two, or, perchance,
yield a little sour berry -- so hopeful, I say, that these may be hopeful
prognostics of something better by-and-by. Infinite patience! Immeasurable
longsuffering! where are ye to be found save in the breast of the Well-beloved?
Surely the hoe has spared many of us simply and only because he who is meek and
lowly in heart is the gardener.Dear friends, there is one mercy with regard to
this church which I have often had to thank God for, namely, that evils should
have been shut out for so long a time. During the period in which we have been
together as pastor and people, and that is now some twenty-nine years, we have
enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity, going from strength to strength in the work of
the Lord. Alas! we have seen many other churches that were quite as hopeful as
our own rent with strife, brought low by declension, or overthrown by heresy. I
hope we have not been apt to judge their faults severely; but we must be
thankful for our own deliverance from the evils which have afflicted them. I do
not know how it is that we have been kept together in love, helped to abound in
labor, and enabled to be firm in the faith, unless it be that special grace has
watched over us. We are full of faults; we have nothing to boast of; and yet no
church has been more divinely favored: I wonder that the blessing should have
lasted so long, and I cannot make it out except when I fall into "supposing him
to be the gardener." I cannot trace our prosperity to the pastor, certainly; nor
even to my beloved friends the elders and deacons, nor even to the best of you
with your fervent love and holy zeal. I think it must be that Jesus has been the
gardener, and he has shut the gate when I am afraid I have left it open; and he
has driven out the wild boar of the wood just when he had entered to root up the
weaker plants. He must have been about at nights to keep off the prowling
thieves, and he must have been here, too, in the noontide heat to guard those of
you who have prospered in worldly goods, from the glare of too bright a sun.
Yes, he has been with us, blessed be his name! Hence all this peace, and unity,
and enthusiasm. May we never grieve him so that he shall turn away from us; but
rather let us entreat him, saying, "Abide with us. Thou that dwellest in the
gardens, let this be one of the gardens in which thou dost deign to dwell until
the day break and the shadows flea away." Thus our supposition is a key to many
wonders.II. Let your imaginations run along with mine while I say that
"supposing him to be the gardener" should be A SPUR TO MANY DUTIES.One of the
duties of a Christian is joy. That is a blessed religion which among its
precepts commands men to be happy. When joy becomes a duty, who would wish to
neglect it? Surely it must help every little plant to drink in the sunlight when
it is whispered among the flowers that Jesus is the gardener. "Oh," you say, "I
am such a little plant; I do not grow well; I do not put forth so much leafage,
nor are there so many flowers on me as on many round about me!" It is quite
right that you should think little of yourself: perhaps to droop your head is a
part of your beauty: many flowers had not been half so lovely if they had not
practiced the art of hanging their heads. But supposing him to be the gardener,"
then he is as much a gardener to you as he is to the most lordly palm in the
whole domain. In the Mentone garden right before me grew the orange and the
aloe, and others of the finer and more noticeable plants; but on a wall to my
left grew common wallflowers and saxifrages, and tiny herbs such as we find on
our own rocky places. Now, the gardener had cared for all of these, little as
well as great; in fact, there were hundreds of specimens of the most
insignificant growths all duly labelled and described. The smallest saxifrage
could say, "He is my gardener just as surely as he is the gardener of the Gloire
de Dijon or Mar'chal Neil." Oh feeble child of God, the Lord taketh care of you!
Your heavenly Father feedeth ravens, and guides the flight of sparrows: should
he not much more care for you, oh ye of little faith? Oh little plants, you will
grow rightly enough. Perhaps you are growing downward just now rather than
upward. Remember that there are plants of which we value the underground root
much more than we do the hull above ground. Perhaps it is not yours to grow very
fast; you may be a slow-growing shrub by nature, and you would not be healthy if
you were to run to wood. Anyhow, be this your joy, you are in the garden of the
Lord, and, "supposing him to be the gardener," he will make the best of you. You
cannot be in better hands. Another duty is that of valuing the Lord's presence,
and praying for it. We ought whenever the Sabbath morning dawns to pray our
Well-beloved to come into his garden and eat his pleasant fruits. What can we do
without him? All day long our cry should go up to him, "O Lord, behold and visit
this vine, and the vineyard which thy right hand has planted." We ought to
agonize with him that he would come and manifest himself to us as he does not
unto the world. For what is a garden if the gardener never comes near it? What
is the difference between it and the wilderness if he to whom it belongs never
lifts up spade or pruning-hook upon it? So that it is our necessity that we have
Christ with us, "supposing him to be the gardener;" and it is our bliss that we
have Christ walking between our beds and borders, watching every plant,
training, tending, maturing all. "Supposing him to be the gardener," it is well,
for from him is our fruit found. Divided from him we are nothing; only as he
watches over us can we bring, forth fruit. Let us have done with confidence in
man, let us forego all attempts to supply facts of his spiritual presence by
routine or rant, ritualism or rowdyism; but let us pray our Lord to be ever
present with us, and by that presence to make our garden grow."Supposing him to
be the gardener," there is another duty, and that is, let each one of us yield
himself up entirely to him. A plant does not know how it ought to be treated; it
knows not when it should be watered or when it should be kept dry: a fruit-tree
is no judge of when it needs to be pruned, or digged, or dunged. The wit and
wisdom of the garden lieth not in the flowers and shrubs, but in the gardener.
Now, then, if you and I are here to-day with any self-will and carnal judgment
about us, let us seek to lay it all aside that we may be absolutely at our
Lord's disposal. You might not be willing to put yourself implicitly into the
hand of any mere man (pity that you should); but, surely, thou plant of the
Lord's right-hand planting, thou mayest put thyself without a question into his
dear hand. " Supposing him to be the gardener," thou mayest well say, "I would
neither have will, nor wish, nor wit, nor whim, nor way, but I would be as
nothing in the gardener's hands, that he may be to me my wisdom and my all.
Here, kind gardener, thy poor plant bows itself to thy hand; train me as thou
wilt. Depend upon it, happiness lives next door to the spirit of complete
acquiescence in the will of God, and it will be easy to exercise that perfect
acquiescence when we suppose the Lord Jesus to be the gardener. If the Lord hath
done it; what has a saint to say? Oh thou afflicted one, the Lord hath done it:
wouldest thou have it otherwise? Nay, art thou not thankful that it is even so,
because so is the will of him in whose hand thy life is, and whose are all thy
ways? The duty of submission is very plain, "supposing him to be the
gardener."One more duty I would mention, though others suggest themselves.
"Supposing him to be the gardener," then let us bring forth fruit to him. I do
not address a people this morning who feel no care as to whether they serve God
or not. I believe that most of you do desire to glorify God; for being saved by
grace, you feel a holy ambition to show forth his praises who has called you out
of darkness into his marvellous light. You wish to bring others to Christ,
because you yourselves have been brought to life and liberty in him. Now, let
this be a stimulus to your fruitbearing, that Jesus is the gardener. Where you
have brought forth a single cluster, bring, forth a hundred! "supposing him to
be the gardener." If he is to have the honor of it, then labor to do that which
will give him great renown. If our spiritual state were to be attributed to
ourselves, or to our minister, or to some of our fellow Christians, we might not
feel that we were tinder a great necessity to be fruitful; but if Jesus be the
gardener, and is to bear the blame or the honor of what we produce, then let us
use up every drop of sap and strain every fibre, that, to the utmost of which
our manhood is capable, we may produce a fair reward for our Lord's travail.
Under such tutorship and care we ought to become eminent scholars. Doth Christ
train us? Oh let us never cause the world to think meanly of our Master.
Students feel that their alma mater deserves great things of them, so they labor
to make their university renowned. And so, since Jesus is tutor and university
to us, let us feel that we are bound to reflect credit upon so great a teacher,
upon so divine a name. I do not know how to put it, but surely we ought to do
something worthy of such a Lord. Each little flower in the garden of the Lord
should wear its, brightest hues, and poor forth its rarest perfume, because
Jesus cares for it. The best of all possible good should be yielded by every
plant in our Father's garden, supposing Jesus to the gardener.Thus much, then,
on those two points -- a key to many wonders, and a spur to many duties.III.
Thirdly, I have found in this supposition A RELIEF FROM CRUSHING RESPONSIBILITY.
One has a work given him of God to do, and if he does it rightly he cannot do it
carelessly. The first thing when he wakes he asks, "How is the work prospering?"
and the last thought at night is, "What can I do to fulfill my calling?"
Sometimes the anxiety even troubles his dreams, and he sighs, "O Lord, send now
prosperity!" How is the garden prospering which we are set to tend? Are we
broken-hearted because, nothing appears to flourish? Is it a bad season? or is
the soil lean and hungry? It is a very blessed relief to an excess of care if we
can fall into the habit of "supposing him to be the gardener." If Jesus be the
Master and Lord in all things it is not mine to keep all the church in order. I
am not responsible for the growth of every Christian, nor for every backslider's
errors, nor for every professor's faults of life. This burden must not lie on me
so that I shall be crushed thereby. "Supposing him to be the gardener," then,
the church enjoys a better oversight than mine; better care is taken of the
garden than could be taken by the most vigilant watchers, even though by night
the frost devoured them, and by day the heat. "Supposing him to be the
gardener," then all must go well in the long run. He that keepeth Israel doth
neither slumber nor sleep; we need not fret and despond. I beg you earnest
workers, who are becoming depressed, to think this out a little. You see it is
yours to work under the Lord Jesus; but it is not yours to take the anxiety of
his office into your souls as though you were to bear his burdens. The
under-gardener, the work-man in the garden, needs not fret about the whole
garden as though it were all left to him. No, no; let him not take too much upon
himself. I pray you, bound your anxiety by the facts of the case. So you have a
number of young people around you, and you are watching for their souls as they
that must give account. This is well; but do not be worried and wearied; for,
after all, the saving and the keeping of those souls is not in your hands, but
it rests with One far more able than yourself. Just think that the Lord is the
gardener. I know it is so in matters of providence. A certain man of God in
troublous times became quite unable to do his duty because he laid to heart so
much the ills of the age; he became depressed and disturbed, and he went on
board a vessel, wanting to leave the country, which was getting into such a
state that he could no longer endure it. Then one said to him, Mr. Whitelock,
are you the manager of the world? No, he was not quite that. "Did not God get on
pretty well with it before you were born, and don't you think he will do very
well with it when you are dead?" That reflection helped to relieve the good
man's mind, and he went back to do his duty. I want you thus to perceive the
limit of your responsibility: you are not the gardener himself; you are only one
of the gardener's boys, set to run on errands, or to do a bit of digging, or to
sweep the paths. The garden is well enough managed even though you are not head
manager in it. While this relieves us of anxiety it makes labor for Christ very
sweet, because if the garden does not seem to repay us for our trouble we say to
ourselves, "It is not, my garden after all. Supposing him to be the gardener,' I
am quite willing to work on a barren piece of rock, or tie up an old withered
bough, or dig a worthless sod; for, if it only pleases Jesus, the work is for
that one sole reason profitable to the last degree. It is not mine to question
the wisdom of my task, but to set about it in the name of my Master and Lord.
Supposing him to be the gardener,' lifts the ponderous responsibility of it from
me, and my work becomes pleasant and delightful."In dealing with the souls of
men, we meet with cases which are extremely difficult. Some persons are so timid
and fearful that you do not know how to comfort them; others are so fast and
presumptuous that you hardly know how to help them. A few are so double-faced
that you cannot understand them, and others so fickle that you cannot hold them.
Some flowers puzzle the ordinary gardener: we meet with plants which are covered
with prickles, and when you try to train them they wound the hand that would
help them. These strange growths would make a great muddle for you if you were
the gardener; but "supposing him to be the gardener," you have the happiness of
being able to go to him constantly, saying, "Good Lord, I do not understand this
singular creature; it is as odd a plant as I am myself. Oh, that thou wouldest
manage it, or tell me how. I have come to tell thee of it."Constantly our
trouble is that we have so many plants to look after that we have not time to
cultivate any one in the best manner, because we have fifty more all wanting
attention at the time; and then before we have done with the watering-pot we
have to fetch the hoe and the rake and the spade, and we are puzzled with these
multitudinous cares, even as Paul was when he said, "That which cometh upon me
daily, the care of all the churches." Ah, then, it is a blessed thing to do the
little we can do and leave the rest to Jesus, "supposing him to be the
gardener."In the church of God there is a discipline which we cannot exercise. I
do not think it is half so hard to exercise discipline as it is not to be able
to exercise it when yet you feel that it ought to be done. The servants of the
householder were perplexed when they might not root up the tares. "Didst thou
not sow good seed in thy field? From whence then hath it tares?" "An enemy hath
done this." "Wilt thou then that we go and gather them up?" "Not so," said he,
"lest ye root, up the wheat with them." This afflicts the Christian minister
when he must not remove a pestilent, hindering weed. Yes, but "supposing him to
be the gardener," and it is his will to let that weed remain, what have you and
I to do but to hold our peace? He has a discipline more sure and safe than ours,
and in due time the tares shall know it. In patience let us possess our
souls.And then, again, there is that succession in the garden which we can not
keep up. Plants will die down, and others must be put into their places or the
garden will grow bare, but we know not where to find these fresh flowers. We
say, "When yonder good man dies who will succeed him?" That is a question I have
heard many a time, till I am rather weary of it. Who is to follow such a man?
Let us wait till he is gone and needs following. Why sell the man's coat when he
can wear it himself? We are apt to think when this race of good brethren shalt
die of it that none will arise worthy to unloose the latchets of their shoes.
Well, friend, I could suppose a great many things, but this morning my text is,
"Supposing him to be the gardener," and on that supposition I expect that the
Lord has other plants in reserve which you have not yet, seen, and these wilt
exactly fit into our places when they become empty, and the Lord will keep up
the true apostolical succession till the day or his second advent. In every time
of darkness and dismay, when the heart sinks and the spirits decline, and we
think it is all over with the church of God, let us fall back on this,
"Supposing him to be the gardener," and expect to see greater and better things
than these. We are at the end of our wits, but he is not at the beginning of his
yet: we are nonplussed, but he never will be; therefore let us wait and be
tranquil, "supposing him to be the gardener."IV. Fourthly, I want you to notice
that this supposition will give you A DELIVERANCE FROM MANY GLOOMY FEARS. I
walked down the garden, and I saw a place where all the path was strewn with
leaves and broken branches, and stones, and I saw the earth upon the
flower-beds, tossed about, and roots lying quite out of the ground: all was in
disorder. Had a dog been amusing himself? or had a mischievous child been at
work? If so, it was a great pity. But no: in a minute or two I saw the gardener
come back, and I perceived that he had been making all this disarrangement. He
had been cutting, and digging, and hacking, and mess-making; and all for the
good of the garden. It may be it has happened to some of you that you have been
a good deal clipped lately, and in your domestic affairs things have not been in
so fair a state as you could have wished: it may be in the Church we have seen
ill weeds plucked up, and barren branches lopped, so that everything is en
deshabille. Well, if the Lord has done it out, gloomy fears are idle. "Supposing
him to he the gardener," all is well. As I was talking this over with my friend,
I said to him -- "Supposing him to be the gardener," then the serpent will have
a bad time of it. Supposing Adam to be the gardener, then the serpent gets in
and has a chat with his wife, and mischief comes of it; but supposing Jesus to
be the gardener, woe to thee, serpent: there is a blow for thy head within half
a minute if thou dost but show thyself within the boundary. So, if we are afraid
that the devil should get in among us let us always in prayer entreat that there
may be no space for the devil, because the Lord Jesus Christ fills all, and
keeps out the adversary. Other creatures besides serpents intrude into gardens;
caterpillars and palmerworms, and all sorts of destroying creatures are apt to
devour our churches. How can we keep them out? The highest wall cannot exclude
them: there is no protection except one, and that is, "supposing him to be the
gardener." Thus it is written, "I will rebuke the devourer for your sakes, and
he shall not destroy the fruits of your ground; neither shall your vine cast her
fruit before the time in the field, saith the Lord of hosts."I am sometimes
troubled by the question, What if roots of bitterness should spring up among us
to trouble us? We are all such fallible creatures, supposing some brother should
permit the seed of discord to grow in his bosom, then there may be a sister in
whose heart the seeds will also spring up, and from her they will fly to another
sister, and be blown about till brethren and sisters are all bearing rue and
wormwood in their hearts. Who is to prevent this? Only the Lord, Jesus by his
Spirit. He can keep out this evil, "supposing him to be the gardener." The root
which beareth wormwood will grow but little where Jesus is. Dwell with us, Lord,
as a church and people: by thy Holy Spirit reside with us and in us, and never
depart from us, and then no root of bitterness shall spring up to trouble
us.Then comes another fear. Suppose the living waters of God's Spirit should not
come to water the garden, what then? We cannot, make them flow, for the Spirit
is a sovereign, and he flows where he pleases. Ah, but the Spirit of God will he
in our garden, "supposing our Lord to be the gardener." There is no fear of our
not being watered when Jesus undertakes to do it. "He will pour water on him
that is thirsty, and floods upon the dry ground." But what if the sunlight of
his love should not shine on the garden? If the fruits should never ripen, if
there should be no peace, no joy in the Lord? That cannot happen "supposing him
to be the gardener;" for his face is the sun, and his countenance scatters those
health-giving beams, and nurturing warmths, and perfecting influences which are
needful for maturing the saints in all the sweetness of grace to the glory of
God. So, "supposing him to be the gardener" at this the close of the year, I
fling away my doubts and fears, and invite you who bear the church upon your
heart to do the same. It is all well with Christ's cause because it is in his
own hands. He shall not fail nor be discouraged. The pleasure of the, Lord shall
prosper in his hands.V. Fifthly, here is A WARNING FOR THE CARELESS, "supposing
him to be the gardener." In this great congregation many are to the church what
weeds are to a garden. They are not planted by God; they are not growing under
his nurture, they are bringing forth no fruit to his glory. My dear friend, I
have tried often to get at you, to impress you, but I cannot. Take heed; for one
of these days, "supposing him to be the gardener," he will reach you, and you
shall know what that word meaneth, "Every plant which my heavenly Father hath,
not planted shall be rooted up." Take heed to yourselves, I pray.Others among us
are like the branches of the vine which bear no fruit. We have often spoken very
sharply to these, speaking honest truth in unmistakable language, and yet we
have not touched their consciences. Ah, but "supposing him to be the gardener,"
he will fulfill that sentence: "Every branch in me that beareth not fruit he
taketh away." He will get at you, if we cannot. Would God, ere this old year
were quite dead, you would turn unto the Lord with full purpose of heart; so
that instead of being a weed you might become a choice flower; that instead of a
dry stick, you might be a sappy, fruit-bearing, branch of the vine. The Lord
make it to be so; but if any here need the caution, I pray them to take it to
heart at once. "Supposing him to be the gardener," there will be no escaping
from his eye; there will be no deliverance from his hand. As "he will thoroughly
purge his floor, and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire," so he will
thoroughly cleanse his garden and cast out every worthless thing.VI. Another set
of thoughts may well arise as A QUIETUS TO THOSE WHO COMPLAIN, "Supposing him to
be the gardener." Certain of us have been made to suffer much physical pain,
which often bites into the spirits, and makes the heart to stoop: others have
suffered heavy temporal losses, having had no success in business, but, on the
contrary, having had to endure privation, perhaps even to penury. Are you ready
to complain against the Lord for all this? I pray you, do not so. Take the
supposition of the text into your mind this morning. The Lord has been pruning
you sharply, cutting off your best boughs, and you seem to be like a thing
despised that is constantly tormented with the knife. Yes, but "supposing him to
be the gardener," suppose that your loving Lord has wrought it all, that from
his own hand all your grief has come, every cut, and every gash, and every slip:
does not this alter the case? Hath not the Lord done it? Well, then, if it be
so, put your finger to your lip and be quiet, until you are able from your heart
to say, "The Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, and blessed be the name of
the Lord." I am persuaded that the Lord hath done nothing amiss to any one of
his people; that no child of his can rightly complain that he has been whipped
with too much severity; and that no one branch of the vine can truthfully
declare that it has been pruned with too sharp an edge. No; what the Lord has
done is the best that could have been done, the very thing that you and I, if we
could have possessed infinite wisdom and love, would have wished to have done;
therefore let us stop each thought of murmuring, and say, "The Lord hath done
it," and be glad. Especially I speak to those who have suffered bereavement. I
can hardly express to you how strange I feel at this moment when my sermon
revives a memory so sweet dashed with such exceeding bitterness. I sat with my
friend and secretary in that garden some fifteen days ago, and we were then in
perfect health, rejoicing in the goodness of the Lord. We returned home, and
within five days I was smitten with disabling pain; and worse, far worse than
that, he was called upon to lose his wife. We said to one another as we sat
there reading the word of God and meditating, "How happy we are! Dare we think
of being so happy? Must it not speedily end?" I little thought I should have to
say for him, "Alas, my brother, thou art brought very low, for the delight of
thine eyes is taken from thee." But here is our comfort: the Lord hath done it.
The best rose in the garden is gone. Who has taken it? The gardener came this
way and gathered it. He planted it and watched over it, and now he has taken it.
Is not this most natural? Does anybody weep because of that? No; everybody knows
that it is right, and according to the order of nature that he should come and
gather the best in the garden. If you are sore troubled by the loss of your
beloved, yet dry your grief by supposing him to be the gardener." Kiss the hand
that has wrought you such grief? Brethren beloved, remember the next time the
Lord comes to your part of the garden, and he may do so within the next week, he
will only gather his own flowers, and would you prevent his doing so even if you
could?VII. "Supposing him to be the gardener," then there is AN OUTLOOK FOR THE
HOPEFUL. "Supposing him to be the gardener," then I expect to see in the garden
where he works the best possible prosperity: I expect to see no flower dried up,
no tree without fruit: I expect to see the richest, rarest fruit, with the
daintiest bloom upon it, daily presented to the great Owner of the garden. Let
us expect that in this church, and pray for it. oh, if we have but faith we
shall see great things. It is our unbelief that straitens God. Let us believe
great things from the work of Christ by his Spirit in the midst of his people's
hearts, and we shall not be disappointed."Supposing him to be the gardener,"
then, dear friends, we may expect divine intercourse of unspeakable
preciousness. Go back to Eden for a minute. When Adam was the gardener, what
happened? The Lord God walked in the garden in the cool of the day. But
"supposing him to be the gardener," then we shall have the Lord God dwelling
among us, and revealing himself in all the glory of his power, and the plenitude
or his Fatherly heart; making us to know him, that we may be filled with all the
fullness of God. What joy is this!One other thought. "Supposing him to be the
gardener," and God to come and walk among the trees of the garden, then I expect
he will remove the whole of the garden upward with himself to fairer skies; for
he rose, and his people must rise with him. I expect a blessed transplantation
of all these flowers below to a clearer atmosphere above, away from all this
smoke and fog and damp, up where the sun is never clouded, where flowers never
wither, where fruits never decay. Oh, the glory we shall then enjoy up yonder,
on the hills of spices in the garden of God. "Supposing him to be the gardener"
what a garden will he form above, and how shall you and I grow therein,
developing beyond imagination." It doth not yet appear what we shall be, but we
know that when he shall appear we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he
is." Since he is the author and finisher or our faith, to what perfection will
he conduct us, and to what glory will he bring us! Oh, to be found in him! God
grant we may be! To be plants in his garden, "Supposing him to be the gardener,"
is all the heaven we can desire.By C. H. SpurgeonThe Gospel for the People.Sixty
Short Sermons, with a Skech of Mr. Spurgeon's Life, andFourteen Portraits and
Engravings, with a Preface by Pastor ThomasSpurgeon. Cloth Gilt, 5s.These Short
Sermons have been selected from the Series with a view totheir being used in
Mission Halls, and other similar places. Theyare about half the length of the
ordinary Sermons.PASSMORE & ALABASTER, 4, Paternoster Buildings, London, E.C.


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  CHAPTER 2: ALL JOY IN ALL TRIALS
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A Sermon (No.1704) Delivered on Lord's Day Morning, February 4th, 1883, by C. H.
SPURGEON, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington "My brethren, count it all
joy when ye fall into divers temptations; knowing this, that the trying of your
faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be
perfect and entire, wanting nothing." -- James 1:2-4. James calls the converted
among the twelve tribes his brethren. Christianity has a great uniting power: it
both discovers and creates relationships among the sons of men. It reminds us of
the ties of nature, and binds us with the bonds of grace. Every one that is born
of the Spirit of God is brother to every other that is born of the same Spirit.
Well may we be called brethren, for we are redeemed by one blood; we are
partakers of the same life; we feed upon the same heavenly food; we are united
to the same living head; we seek the same ends; we love the same Father: we are
heirs of the same promises; and we shall dwell for ever together in the same
heaven. Wherefore, let brotherly love continue; let us love one another with a
pure heart fervently, and manifest that love, not in word only, but in deed and
in truth. Whatever brotherhood may be a sham, let the brotherhood of believers
be the most real thing beneath the stars. Beginning with this word "brethren,"
James shows a true brotherly sympathy with believers in their trials, and this
is a main part of Christian fellowship. "Bear ye one another's burdens, and so
fulfil the law of Christ." If we are not tempted ourselves at this moment,
others are: let us remember them in our prayers; for in due time our turn will
come, and we shall be put into the crucible. As we would desire to receive
sympathy and help in our hour of need, let us render it freely to those who are
now enduring trial. Let us remember those that are in bonds, as bound with them,
and those that suffer affliction as being ourselves in the body. Remembering the
trials of his brethren, James tries to cheer them, and therefore he says, "My
brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers trials." It is a part of our
high calling to rise ourselves into confidence; and it is also our duty to see
that none of our brethren despond, much less despair. The whole tendency of our
holy faith is to elevate and to encourage. Grace breeds no sorrow, except the
healthy sorrow which comes with saving repentance and leads to the joy of
pardon: it comes not to make men miserable, but to wipe all tears from their
eyes. Our dream is not of devils descending a dreary staircase to hell, but of
angels ascending and descending upon a ladder, the top of which leads to the
shining throne of God. The message of the gospel is one of joy and gladness, and
were it universally understood and received this world would be no longer a
wilderness, but it would rejoice and blossom as the rose. Let grace reign in all
hearts, and this earth will become a temple filled with perpetual song; and even
the trials of life will become causes of the highest joy, so beautifully
described by James as "all joy," as if every possible delight were crowded into
it. Blessed be God, it is our work, not to upbraid, but to cheer all the
brotherhood: we walk in a light which glorifies everything upon which it falls,
and turns losses into gains. We are able in sober earnest to speak with the
afflicted, and bid them be patient under the chastening hand of God; yea, to
count it all joy when they fall into divers trials because those trials will
work out for them such signal, such lasting good. They may be well content to
sow in tears since they are sure to reap in joy. Without further preface we will
come at once to the text; and observe that in speaking about affliction, for
that is the subject of the text, the apostle notes, first, the essential point
which is assailed by temptation, namely, your faith. Your faith is the target
that all the arrows are shot at; the furnace is kindled for the trial of your
faith. Notice, secondly, the invaluable blessing which is thus gained, namely,
the proving of your faith, discovering whether it be the right faith or no. This
proof of our faith is a blessing of which I cannot speak too highly. Then,
thirdly, we may not overlook the priceless virtue which is produced by this
process of testing, namely, patience; for the proving of your faith produces
patience, and this is the soul's surest enrichment. Lastly, in connection with
that patience we shall note the spiritual completeness which is thus promoted:
-- "That ye may be perfect and entire, lacking nothing." Perhaps you have
noticed that little variations I have made in the text; but I am now following
the Revised Version, which gives an admirable rendering. I will read it. "Count
it all joy, my brethren, when ye fall into manifold temptations; knowing that
the proof of your faith worketh patience. And let patience have its perfect
work, that ye may be perfect and entire, lacking in nothing." I. First, let us
think a little upon THE ESSENTIAL POINT WHICH IS ASSAILED by temptation or
trial. It is your faith which is tried. It is supposed that you have that faith.
You are not the people of God, you are not truly brethren unless you are
believers. It is this faith of yours which is peculiarly obnoxious to Satan and
to the world which lieth in the wicked one. If you had not faith they would not
be enemies of yours; but faith is the mark of the chosen of God, and therefore
his foes become the foes of all the faithful, spitting their venom specially
upon their faith. God Himself hath put enmity between the serpent and the woman,
between the serpent's seed and the woman's seed; and that enmity must show
itself. The serpent bites at the heel of the true seed: hence mockings,
persecutions, temptations, and trials are sure to beset the pathway to faith.
The hand of faith is against all evil, and all evil is against faith. Faith is
that blessed grace which is most pleasing to God, and hence it is the most
displeasing to the devil. By faith God is greatly glorified, and hence by faith
Satan is greatly annoyed. He rages at faith because he sees therein his own
defeat and the victory of grace. Because the trial of your faith brings honour
to the Lord, therefore the Lord Himself is sure to try it that out of its trial
praise may come to his grace by which faith is sustained. Our chief end is to
glorify God, and if our trials enable us more fully to answer the end of our
being it is well that they should happen unto us. So early in our discourse we
see reason to count it all joy when we fall into manifold trials. It is by our
faith that we are saved, justified, and brought near to God, and therefore it is
no marvel that it is attacked. It is by believing in Christ that we are
delivered from the reigning power of sin, and receive power to become the sons
of God. Faith is as vital to salvation as the heart is vital to the body: hence
the javelins of the enemy are mainly aimed at this essential grace. Faith is the
standard bearer, and the object of the enemy is to strike him down that the
battle may be gained. If the foundations be removed what can the righteous do?
If the cable can be snapped whither will the vessel drift? All the powers of
darkness which are opposed to right and truth are sure to fight against our
faith, and manifold temptations will march in their legions against our
confidence in God.It is by our faith that we live; we began to live by it, and
continue to live by it, for "the just shall live by faith." Once let faith go
and our life is gone; and hence it is that the powers which war against us make
their main assault upon this royal castle, this key of the whole position. Faith
is your jewel, your joy, your glory; and the thieves who haunt the pilgrim way
are all in league to tear it from you. Hold fast, therefore, this your choice
treasure.It is by faith, too, that Christians perform exploits. If men of old
wrought daring and heroic deeds it was by faith. Faith is the fighting principle
and the conquering principle: therefore it is Satan's policy to slay it even as
Pharaoh sought to kill the male children when Israel dwelt in Egypt. Rob a
Christian of his faith and he will be like Samson when his locks were cut away:
the Philistines will be upon him and the Lord will have departed from him.
Marvel not if the full force of the current shall beat upon your faith, for it
is the foundation of your spiritual house. Oh that your faith may abide
steadfast and unmovable in all present trials, that so it may be found true in
the hour of death and in the day of judgment. Woe unto that man whose faith
fails him in this land of peace, for what will he do in the swelling of
Jordan?Now, think of how faith is tried. According to the text we are said to
fall into "manifold temptations" or into "divers temptations" -- that is to say,
we may expect very many and very different troubles. In any case these trials
will be most real. The twelve tribes to whom this epistle was written were a
specially tried people, for in the first place they were, as Jews, greatly
persecuted by all other nations, and when they became Christians they were
cruelly persecuted by their own people. A Gentile convert was somewhat less in
peril than a Jewish Christian, for the latter was crushed between the upper and
nether millstones of Paganism and Judaism. The Israelitish Christian was usually
so persecuted by his own kith and kin that he had to flee from them, and whither
could he go, for all other people abhorred the Jews? We are not in such a
plight, but God's people even to this day will find that trial is no sham word.
The rod in God's house is no toy to play with. The furnace, believe me, is no
mere place of extra warmth to which you may soon accustom yourself: it is often
heated seven times hotter, like the furnace of Nebuchadnezzar and God's children
are made to know that the fire burns and devours. Our temptations are no
inventions of nervousness nor hobgoblins of dreamy fear. Ye have heard of the
patience of Job -- his was real patience, for his afflictions were real. Could
each tried believer among us tell his own story I do not doubt we would convince
all who heard us that the troubles and temptations which we have endured are no
fictions of romance, but must be ranked among the stern realities of actual
life.Ay, and note too, that the trials of Christians are such as would in
themselves lead us into sin, for I take it that our translators would not have
placed the word "temptation" in the text, and the Revisionists would not have
retained it, if they had not felt that there was a colouring of temptation in
its meaning, and that "trial" was hardly the word. The natural tendency of
trouble is not to sanctify, but to induce sin. A man is very apt to become
unbelieving under affliction: that is a sin. He is apt to murmur against God
under it: that is a sin. He is apt to put forth his hand to some ill way of
escaping from his difficulty: and that would be sin. Hence we are taught to
pray, "Lead us not into temptation; because trial has in itself a measure of
temptation"; and if it were not neutralized by abundant grace it would bear us
towards sin. I suppose that every test must have in it a measure of temptation.
The Lord cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man; but this is to
be understood of his end and design. He entices no man to do evil; but yet He
tries the sincerity and faithfulness of men by placing them where sin comes in
their way, and does its best or its worst to ensnare them: His design being that
the uprightness of His servants may thus be proved, both to themselves and
others. We are not taken out of this world of temptation, but we are kept in it
for our good. Because our nature is depraved it makes occasions for sin, both
out of our joys and our trials, but by grace we overcome the tendency of nature,
and so derive benefit from tribulation. Do I not speak to many here who at times
feel strong impulses towards evil, especially in the darksome hour when the
spirit of evil walks abroad? Have you not been made to tremble for yourselves in
season of fierce trial, for your feet were almost gone, your steps had well-nigh
slipped. Is there any virtue that has not been weather-beaten? Is there any love
that has not at times been so tried that it threatened to curdle into hate? Is
there any good thing this side heaven which has marched all the way in silver
slippers? Did ever a flower of grace blossom in this wretched clime without
being tried with frost or blight? Our way is up the river; we have to stem the
current, and struggle against a flood which would readily bear us to
destruction. Thus, not only trials, but black temptations assail the Christian's
faith. As to what shape they take, we may say this much: the trial or temptation
of each man is distinct from that of every other. When God did tempt Abraham he
was bidden to take his son, his only son, and offer him upon a mountain for a
sacrifice. Nobody here was ever tried in that way: nobody ever will be. We may
have the trial of losing our child, but certainly not the trial of having a
command to offer him in sacrifice. That was a trial peculiar to Abraham:
necessary and useful to him, though never proposed to us. In the case of the
young man in the gospels, our Lord Jesus tried him with, "If thou wouldest be
perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have
treasure in heaven." Some have dreamed that it must therefore be the duty of
everybody to part with their possessions: but this is idle. It would not be the
duty of any man to offer up his only son; and it is not the duty of every man to
part with all his goods. These were tests to particular persons; and others
equally special and searching have been applied in other cases. We are not to
try ourselves, nor to desire other men's trials; it will be well if we endure
those which the Lord appoints for us, for they will be wisely chosen. That which
would most severely test me would perhaps be no trial to you; and that which
tries you might be no temptation to me. This is one reason why we often judge
one another so severely, because feeling ourselves to be strong in that
particular point we argue that the fallen one must have been strong in that
point too, and therefore must have willfully and earnestly have determined to do
wrong. This may be a cruel supposition. We hastily conclude that the temptation
must have been as feeble in his case as it would have been in our own; which is
a great mistake, for a temptation which to you or to me would be no temptation
at all, may be to another individual, of a peculiar constitution and under
singular circumstances, a most fierce and terrible blast from the adversary,
before which he falls mournfully, but not with malice aforethought. Divers
trials, says the apostle, and he knew what he said.And, dear friends, sometimes
these divers trials derive great force from their seemingly surrounding us, and
cutting off escape: James says, -- "Ye fall into divers temptations": like men
who fall into a pit, and do not know how to get out; or like soldiers who fall
into an ambuscade; or travellers in the good old times when two or three
footpaths surrounded them and made them feel that they had fallen into bad
hands. The tempted see not which way to turn; they appear to be hemmed in; they
are as a bird that is taken in the fowler's snare. This it is that makes
calamity of our manifold temptations, that they hedge up our way, and unless
faith finds the clue we wander in a thorny maze.At times temptation comes
suddenly upon us, and so we fall into it. When we were at rest, and were quiet,
suddenly the evil came, like a lion leaping from the thicket. When Job's
children were eating and drinking in their elder brother's house, then suddenly
a wind came from the wilderness, and the patriarch was bereaved: the cattle were
ploughing, the sheep were grazing, the camels were at their service, and in a
moment, by fire from heaven, and by robber bands, the whole of these possessions
vanished. One messenger had not told his story before another followed at his
heels; Job had no breathing time, the blows fell thick and fast. The trial of
our faith is most severe when divers trials happen to us when we look not for
them. It is not strange in the light of these things that James should say,
"Count it all joy when ye fall into divers trials"?Those were the days of
tumults, imprisonment, crucifixion, sword, and fire. Then the amphitheatre
devoured Christians by thousands. The general cry was "The Christians to the
lions!" Do you wonder if sometimes the bravest were made to say, Is our faith
really true? This faith which is abhorred of all mankind, can it be divine? Has
it come from God? Why, then, does He not interpose and deliver His people? Shall
we apostatise? Shall we deny Christ and live, or shall we go on with our
confession through innumerable torments even to a bloody death? Will fidelity
answer after all? Is there a crown of glory? is there an eternity of bliss? Is
there in very deed a resurrection of the dead? These questions came into men's
minds then, and were fairly faced: the faith of martyrs was not taken up at
second hand, or borrowed from their parents; they believed for themselves in
downright earnest. Men and women in those days believed in such a way that they
never flinched nor started aside from fear of death; indeed, they pressed
forward to confess their faith in Jesus in such crowds that at last the heathen
cried, "There must be something in it: it must be a religion of God, or how
could these men so gladly bear their troubles?" This was the faith of God's
elect, the work of the Holy Ghost.You see, then, the main point of attack is our
faith, and happy is the man whose shield can catch and quench all the fiery
darts of the enemy. II. That we may make the text more clear we shall next
notice THE INVALUABLE BLESSING WHICH IS GAINED BY THE TRIAL OF OUR FAITH. The
blessing gained is this, that our faith is tried and proved. Two Sabbaths ago I
addressed you upon the man whose bad foundations led to the overthrow of his
house; and I know that many said after the sermon: -- "God grant that we may not
be like him: may we have a firm foundation for our soul to rest on." Then you
went home, and you sat down and said, "Have I this sure foundation?" You began
to question, argue, reason, and so on, and your design was a good one. But I do
not reckon that much came of it; our own looking within seldom yields solid
comfort. Actual trial is far more satisfactory; but you must not try yourself.
The effectual proof is by trials of God's sending. The way of trying whether you
are a good soldier is to go down to the battle: the way to try whether a ship is
well built is, not merely to order the surveyor to examine her, but tosend her
to sea: a storm will be the best test of her staunchness. They have built a new
lighthouse upon the Eddystone: how do we know that it will stand? We judge by
certain laws and principles, and feel tolerably safe about the structure; but,
after all, we shall know best if after-years when a thousand tempests have
beaten upon the lighthouse in vain. We need trials as a test as much as we need
divine truth as our food. Admire the ancient types placed in the ark of the
covenant of old: two things were laid close together, -- the pot of manna and
the rod. See how heavenly food and heavenly rule go together: how our sustenance
and our chastening are equally provided for! A Christian cannot live without the
manna nor without the rod. The two must go together. I mean this, that it is as
great a mercy to have your salvation proved to you under trial as it is to have
it sustained in you by the consolations of the Spirit of God. Sanctified
tribulations work the proof of our faith, and this is more precious than that of
gold which perisheth, though it be tried by fire.Now, when we are able to bear
it without starting aside, the trial proves our sincerity. Coming out of a
trouble the Christian says to himself, "Yes, I held fast mine integrity, and did
not let it go. Blessed be God, I was not afraid of threatening; I was not
crushed by losses; I was kept true to God under pressure. Now, I am sure that my
religion is not a mere profession, but a real consecration to God. It has
endured the fire, being kept by the power of God."Next, it proves the
truthfulness of our doctrinal belief. Oh, yes, you may say, "I have heard Mr.
Spurgeon expound the doctrines, and I have believed them." This is poor work;
but if you have been sick, and found a comfort in those doctrines, then you are
assured of their truth. If you have been on the borders of the grave, and the
gospel has given you joy and gladness, then you know how true it is.
Experimental knowledge is the best and surest. If you have seen others pass
through death itself triumphantly you have said, "This is proof to me: my faith
is no guess-work: I have seen for myself." Is not this assurance cheaply
purchased at any price? May we not count it all joy when the Lord puts us in the
way of getting it? It seems to me that doubt is worse than trial. I had sooner
suffer any affliction than be left to question the gospel or my own interest in
it. Certainly it is a jewel worth purchasing even with our heart's blood.Next,
your own faith in God is proved when you can cling to Him under temptation. Not
only your sincerity, but the divinity of your faith is proved; for a faith that
is never tried, how can you depend upon it? But if in the darkest hour you have
still said, "I cast my burden upon the Lord, and He will sustain me," and you
find He does sustain you, then is your faith that of God's elect. If in
temptation you cry to God in prayer that you may keep your garment unspotted,
and He helps you to do so, then also are you sure that yours is the faith which
the Spirit begets in the soul. After a great fight of affliction, when I come
forth a conqueror, I know that I do believe in God, and I know that this faith
makes me a partaker of covenant blessings; from this I may fairly argue that my
faith is of the right kind.I find it especially sweet to learn the great
strength of the Lord in my own weakness. We find out under trial where we are
most weak, and just then in answer to prayer strength is given answerable to the
need. The Lord suits the help to the hindrance, and puts the plaster on the
wound. In the very hour when it is needed the needed grace is given. Does this
not tend to breed assurance of faith?It is a splendid thing to be able to prove
even to Satan the purity of your motives. That was the great gain of Job. There
was no question about his outward conduct, but the question was about his
motive. "Ah," says the devil, "he serves God for what he gets out of Him. Hast
Thou not set a hedge about him and all that he has? His is cupboard love: he
cares nothing for God Himself, he only cares for the reward of his virtue."
Well, he is tried, and everything is taken away, and when he cries, "Though He
slay me, yet will I trust in Him," when he blesses the taking as well as the
giving God, then the devil himself could not have the prudence to accuse him
again. As to Job's own conscience, it would be quite settled and confirmed as to
his pure love to God. My brethren, I reckon that the endurance of every
imaginable suffering and trial would be a small price to pay for a settled
assurance, which would for ever prevent the possibility of doubt. Never mind the
waves if they wash you upon this rock. Therefore, when you are tempted, "Count
it all joy" that you are tried, because you will thus receive a proof of your
love, a proof of your faith, a proof of your being the true-born children of
God. James says, "Count it." A man requires to be trained to be a good
accountant; it is an art which needs to be learned. What muddles some of us
would make if we had to settle accounts and manage disbursements and incomings
without the aid of a clerk! How we should get entangled with balances and
deficits! We could much easier spend money than count it. But when a man once
knows the science of book-keeping, and gets into the way of it, he readily
arrives at the true position of affairs. He has learned to count, and no error
escapes his eye. James gives us a ready reckoner, and teaches us in our troubles
how to count. He sets before us a different kind of measure from that which
carnal reason would use: the shekel of the sanctuary was very different from the
shekel in common commerce, and so is the counting of faith far other than that
of human judgment. He bids us take our pen and sit down quickly and write at his
correct dictation. You are going to write down, "Manifold temptations;" that
would be so much on the wrong side: but instead thereof he bids you set down the
proving of your faith, and this one asset transforms the transaction into a
substantial gain. Trials are like a fire; they burn up nothing in us but the
dross, and they make the gold all the purer. Put down the testing process as a
clear gain, and, instead of being sorry about it, count it all joy when ye fall
into divers trials, for this bestows upon you a proof of your faith. So far
there is sufficient ground for counting all trials joy. Now, let us go a little
further.III. Let us think of THE PRICELESS VIRTUE WHICH IS PRODUCED BY TRIAL,
namely, patience; for the proof of your "faith worketh patience." Patience! We
all have a large stock of it -- until we need it, and then we have none. The man
who truly possesses patience is the man that has been tried. What kind of
patience does he get by the grace of God? First, he obtains a patience that
accepts the trials as from God without a murmur. Calm resignation does not come
all at once; often long years of physical pain, or mental depression, or
disappointment in business, or multiplied bereavements, are needed to bring the
soul into full submission to the will of the Lord. After much crying the child
is weaned; after much chastening the son is made obedient to his Father's will.
By degrees we learn to end our quarrel with God, and to desire that there may
not be two wills between God and ourselves, but that God's will may be our will.
Oh, brother, if your troubles work you to that, you are a gainer, I am sure, and
you may count them all joy.The next kind of patience is when experience enables
a man to bear ill-treatment, slander, and injury without resentment. He feels it
keenly, but he bears it meekly. Like his Master, he opens not his mouth to
reply, and refuses to return railing for railing. Contrariwise he gives blessing
in return for cursing; like the sandal-wood tree which perfumes the axe which
cuts it. Blessed is that holy charity which hopeth all things, endureth all
things, and is not easily provoked. Ah, friend, if the grace of God by trial
shall work in you the quiet patience which never grows angry, and never ceases
to love, you may have lost a trifle of comfort, but you have gained a solid
weight of character.The patience which God works in us by tribulation also takes
another form, namely, that of acting without undue haste. Before wisdom has
balanced our zeal we are eager to serve God all in a hurry, with a rush and a
spurt, as if everything must be done within the hour or nothing would ever be
accomplished. We set about holy service with somewhat more of preparedness of
heart after we have been drilled in the school of trial. We go steadily and
resolutely about work for Jesus, knowing what poor creatures we are, and what a
glorious Master we serve. The Lord our God is in no hurry because He is strong
and wise. In proportion as we grow like the Lord Jesus we shall cast aside
disturbance of mind and fury of spirit. His was a grand life-work, but He never
seemed to be confused, excited, worried, or hurried, as certain of His people
are. He did not strive nor cry, nor cause His voice to be heard in the streets.
He knew His hour was not yet come, and there were so many days in which He could
work, and therefore He went steadily on till He had finished the work which His
Father had given Him to do. That kind of patience is a jewel more to be desired
than the gem which glitters on the imperial brow. Sometimes we blunder into a
deal of mischief, making more haste than speed; and we are sure to do so when we
forget to pray, and fail to commit our matters into the Divine hands. We may run
with such vehemence that we may stumble, or lose our breath: there may be in our
random efforts as much undoing as doing, for want of possessing our souls in
patience.That is a grand kind of patience, too, when we can wait without
unbelief. Two little words are good for every Christian to learn and to practise
-- pray and stay. Waiting on the Lord implies both praying and staying. What if
the world is not converted this year! What if the Lord Jesus does not come
to-morrow! What if still our tribulations are lengthened out! What if the
conflict is continued! He that has been tried and by grace has obtained the true
profit of his trials, both quietly waits and joyfully hopes for the salvation of
God. Patience, brother! Is this high virtue scarce with thee? The Holy Spirit
shall bestow it upon thee through suffering. This patience also takes the shape
of believing without wavering, in the very teeth of strange providences and
singular statements, and perhaps inward misgivings. The established Christian
says, "I believe my God, and therefore if the vision tarry I will wait for it.
My time is not yet come. I am to have my worst things first and my best things
afterwards, and so I sit me down at Jesus' feet and tarry his leisure."Brothers
and sisters, if, in a word, we learn endurance we have taken a high degree. You
look at the weather-beaten sailor, the man who is at home on the sea: he has a
bronzed face and mahogany-coloured flesh, he looks as tough as heart of oak, and
as hardy as if he were made of iron. How different from us poor landsmen. How
did the man become so inured to hardship, so able to breast the storm, so that
he does not care whether the wind blows south-west or north-west? He can go out
to sea in any kind of weather; he has his sea legs on: how did he come to this
strength? By doing business in great waters. He could not have become a hardy
seaman by tarrying on shore. Now, trial works in the saints that spiritual
hardihood which cannot be learned in ease. You may go to school for ever, but
you cannot learn endurance there: you may colour your cheek with paint, but you
cannot give it that ingrained brown which comes of stormy seas and howling
winds. Strong faith and brave patience come of trouble, and a few men in the
church who have thus been prepared are worth anything in times of tempest. To
reach that condition of firm endurance and sacred hardihood is worth all the
expense of all the heaped-up troubles that ever come upon us from above or from
beneath. When trial worketh patience we are incalculably enriched. The Lord give
us more of this choice grace. As Peter's fish had the money in its mouth, so
have sanctified trials spiritual riches for those who endure them graciously.IV.
Lastly, all this works something better still, and this is our fourth head: THE
SPIRITUAL COMPLETENESS PROMOTED. "That ye may be perfect and entire, wanting
nothing." Brethren, the most valuable thing a man can get in this world is that
which has most to do with his truest self. A man gets a good house; well, that
is something: but suppose he is in bad health, what is the good of his fine
mansion? A man is well clothed and well fed: that is something: but suppose he
shivers with ague, and has no appetite through indigestion. That spoils it all.
If a man is in robust health this is a far more valuable boon. Health is far
more to be prized than wealth, or honour, or learning: we all allow that, but
then suppose that a man's innermost self is diseased while his body is healthy,
so that he is disgraced by vice or fevered with passion, he is in a poor plight,
notwithstanding that he has such a robust frame? The very best thing is that
which will make the man himself a better man; make him right, and true, and
pure, and holy. When the man himself is better, he has made an unquestionable
gain. So, if our afflictions tend, by trying our faith, to breed patience, and
that patience tends to make us into perfect men in Christ Jesus, then we may be
glad of trials. Afflictions by God's grace make us all-around men, developing
every spiritual faculty, and therefore they are our friends, our helpers, and
should be welcomed with "all joy."Afflictions find out our weak points, and this
makes us attend to them. Being tried, we discover our failures, and then going
to God about those failures we are helped to be perfect and entire, wanting
nothing.Moreover, our trials, when blessed of God to make us patient, ripen us.
I do not know how to explain what I mean by ripening, but there is a sort of
mellowness about believers who have endured a great deal of affliction that you
never meet in other people. It cannot be mistaken or imitated. A certain measure
of sunlight is wanted to bring out the real flavour of fruits, and when a fruit
has felt its measure of burning sun it develops a lusciousness which we all
delight in. So is it in men and women: a certain amount of trouble appears to be
needful to create a certain sugar of graciousness in them, so that they may
contain the rich, ripe juice of a gracious character. You must have known such
men and such women, and have said to yourselves, "I wish I could be like them,
so calm, so quiet, so self-contained, so happy, and when not happy, yet so
content not to be happy; so mature in judgment, so spiritual in conversation, so
truly ripe." This only comes to those in whom the proof of their faith works
experience, and then experience brings forth the fruits of the Spirit. Dear
brothers and sisters, there is a certain all-roundness of spiritual manhood
which never comes to us except by manifold temptations. Let me attempt to show
you what I mean. Sanctified trials produce a chastened spirit. Some of us by
nature are rough and untender; but after awhile friends notice that the
roughness is departing, and they are quite glad to be more gently handled. Ah,
that sick chamber did the polishing; under God's grace, that depression of
spirit, that loss, that cross, that bereavement, -- these softened the natural
ruggedness, and made the man meek and lowly, like his Lord. Sanctified trouble
has a great tendency to breed sympathy, and sympathy is to the church as oil to
machinery. A man that has never suffered feels very awkward when he tries to
sympathize with a tried child of God. He kindly does his best, but he does not
know how to go to work at it; but those repeated blows from the rod make us feel
for others who are smarting, and by degrees we are recognized as being the
Lord's anointed comforters, made meet by temptation to succour those who are
tempted. Have you never noticed how tried men, too, when their trouble is
thoroughly sanctified, become cautious and humble? They cannot speak quite so
fast as they used to do: they do not talk of being absolutely perfect, though
thy are the very men who are Scripturally perfect; they say little about their
doings, and much about the tender mercy of the Lord. They recollect the whipping
they had behind the door from their Father's hands, and they speak gently to
other erring ones. Affliction is the stone which our Lord Jesus throws at the
brow of our giant pride, and patience is the sword which cuts off its
head.Those, too, are the kind of people who are most grateful. I have known what
it is to praise God for the power to move one leg in bed. It may not seem much
to you, but it was a great blessing to me. They that are heavily afflicted come
to bless God for everything. I am sure that woman who took a piece of bread and
a cup of water for her breakfast, and said, "What, all this, and Christ too!"
must have been a tried woman, or she would not have exhibited so much gratitude.
And that old Puritan minister was surely a tried man, for when his family had
only a herring and a few potatoes for dinner, he said, "Lord, we bless Thee that
Thou hast ransacked sea and land to find food for us this day." If he had not
been a tried man, he might have turned up his nose at the meal, as many do at
much more sumptuous fare. Troubled men get to be grateful men, and that is no
small thing.As a rule, where God's grace works, these come to be hopeful men.
Where others think the storm will destroy the vessel, they can remember storms
equally fierce which did not destroy it, and so they are so calm that their
courage keeps others from despair.These men, too, become unworldly men. They
have had too much trouble to think that they can ever build their nest in this
black forest. There are too many thorns in their nest for them to reckon that
this can be their home. These birds of paradise take to their wings, and are
ready to fly away to the land of unfading flowers.And these much-tempted ones
are frequently the most spiritual men, and out of this spirituality comes
usefulness. Mr. Greatheart, who led the band of pilgrims up to the celestial
city, was a man of many trials, or he would not have been fit to lead so many to
their heavenly rest; and you, dear brother, if ever you are to be a leader and a
helper, as you would wish to be, in the church of God, it must be by such means
as this that you must be prepared for it. Do you not wish to have every virtue
developed? Do you not wish to become a perfect man in Christ Jesus? If so,
welcome with all joy divers trials and temptations; fly to God with them; bless
Him for having sent them: ask Him to help you to bear them with patience, and
then let that patience have its perfect work, and so by the Spirit of God you
shall become "perfect and entire, lacking in nothing." May the Comforter bless
this word to your hearts, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.


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  CHAPTER 3: EARNEST EXPOSTULATION
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A Sermon (No.1714) Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, April 1st, 1883, by C. H.
SPURGEON, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington "Or despisest thou the
riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the
goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?" -- Romans 2:4. The apostle is
intensely personal in his address. This verse is not spoken to us all in the
mass, but to some one in particular. The apostle fixes his eyes upon a single
person, and speaks to him as "Thee" and "Thou." "Despisest thou the riches of
his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of
God leadeth thee to repentance?" It should ever be the intent of the preacher to
convey his message to each hearer in his own separate individuality. It is
always a very happy sign when a man begins to think of himself as an individual,
and when the expostulations and invitations of the gospel are seen by him to be
directed to himself personally. I will give nothing for that indirect,
essay-like preaching which is as the sheet lightning of summer, dazzling for the
moment, and flaming over a broad expanse, but altogether harmless, since no bolt
is launched from it, and its ineffectual fires leave no trace behind. I will
give nothing for that kind of hearing which consists in the word being heard by
everybody in general, and by no one in particular. It is when the preacher can
"Thee" and "Thou" his hearers that he is likely to do them good. When each man
is made to say, "This is for me," then the power of God is present in the word.
One personal, intentional touch of the hem of Christ's garment conveys more
blessing than all the pressure of the crowd that thronged about the Master. The
laying of his healing hand upon the individual who was suffering had more virtue
in it than all those heavenly addresses which fell from his lips upon minds that
did not receive the truth for themselves. I do pray that we may come to personal
dealings with the Lord each one for himself, and that the Spirit of God may
convince each man and each woman, according as the case may stand before the
living God. O my hearer, thou art now to be lovingly spoken with: I speak not to
You as unto many, but unto thee, as one by thyself. Observe that the apostle
singled out an individual who had condemned others for transgressions, in which
he himself indulged. This man owned so much spiritual light that he knew right
from wrong, and he diligently used his knowledge to judge others, condemning
them for their transgressions. As for himself, he preferred the shade, where no
fierce light might beat on his own conscience and disturb his unholy peace. His
judgment was spared the pain of dealing with his home offenses by being set to
work upon the faults of others. He had a candle, but he did not place it on the
table to light his own room; he held it out at the front door to inspect
therewith his neighbours who passed by. Ho! my good friend, my sermon is for
thee. Paul looks this man in the face and says, "Therefore thou art inexcusable,
O man, whoever thou art, that judgest: for wherein thou judgest another thou
condemnest thyself; for thou that judgest doest the same things:" and then he
pointedly says to him: "Thinkest thou this, O man, that judgest them which do
such things, and doest the same, that thou shalt escape the judgment of God?"
Well did the apostle aim that piercing arrow; it hits the center of the target
and strikes a folly common to mankind. The poet of the night-watches wrote, --
All men think all men mortal but themselves. As truly might I say, "All men
think all men guilty but themselves." The punishment which is due to sin the
guilty reckon to be surely impending upon others, but they scarce believe that
it can ever fall upon themselves. A personal doom for themselves is an idea
which they will not harbour: if the dread thought should light upon them they
shake it off as men shake snow-flakes from their cloaks. The thought of personal
guilt, judgment, and condemnation is inconvenient; it breeds too much trouble
within, and so they refuse it lodging. Vain men go maundering on their way,
whispering of peace and safety; doting as if God had passed an act of amnesty
and oblivion for them, and had made for them an exception to all the rules of
justice, and all the manner of his courts. Do men indeed believe that they alone
shall go unpunished? No man will subscribe to that notion when it is written
down in black and white, and yet the mass of men live as if this were true; I
mean the mass of men who have sufficient light to condemn sin in others. They
start back from the fact of their own personal guiltiness and condemnation, and
go on in their ungodliness as if there were no great white throne for them, no
last assize, no judge, no word of condemnation, and no hell of wrath. Alas, poor
madmen, thus to dream! O Spirit of Truth save them from this fatal infatuation.
Sin is always on the downward grade, so that when a man proceeds a certain
length he inevitably goes beyond it. The person addressed by the apostle first
thought to escape judgment, and then he came to think lightly of the goodness,
forbearance, and longsuffering of God. He thinks he shall escape in the future,
and because of that he despises the present goodness and longsuffering of the
Most High. Of course he does. If he does not believe in the terrors of the world
to come for himself, he naturally reckons it to be a small thing to have been
spared their immediate experience. Barren tree as he is, he does not believe
that he will ever be cut down, and therefore he feels no gratitude to the
dresser of the vineyard for pleading, "Let it alone yet another year, till I dig
about it, and dung it." I wish, as God shall help me, to drive hard at the
consciences of men upon this matter. I would be to you, my careless friend, what
Jonah was to Nineveh: I would warn you, and bestir you to repentance. Oh that
the Holy Ghost would make this sermon effectual for the arousing of every
unsaved soul that shall hear or read it! I. First, let me speak this morning to
thee, O unregenerate, impenitent man, concerning THE GOODNESS OF GOD WHICH THOU
HAST EXPERIENCED. Thou hast known the goodness, and forbearance, and
longsuffering of God. According to the text, "riches" of these have been spent
upon unconverted, ungodly men, and upon thee as one of them. Let me speak with
thee first, O man, and remind thee how favoured thou hast been of God by being
made a partaker of "the riches of his goodness." In many cases this is true of
temporal things. Men may be without the fear of God, and yet, for all that, God
may be pleased to prosper their endeavours in business. They succeed almost
beyond their expectation -- I mean some of them; probably the description
applies to thee. They rise from the lowest position, and accumulate about them
the comforts and luxuries of life. Though they have no religion, they have wit,
and prudence, and thrift, and so they compete with others, and God permits them
to be winners in the race for wealth. Moreover, he allows them to enjoy good
health, vigour of mind, and strength of constitution: they are happy in the wife
of their youth, and their children are about them. Theirs is an envied lot.
Death seems for awhile forbidden to knock at their door, even though he has been
ravaging the neighbourhood; even sickness does not molest their household. They
are not in trouble as other men, neither are they plagued like other men.
Abraham had to prepare a Machpelah, and David mourned over his sons; but these
have had to make scant provision for family sepulchre; a hedge has in very deed
been set about them and all that they have. I know that it is thus with many who
do not love God, and have never yielded to the entreaties of his grace. They
love not the hand which enriches them, they praise not the Lord who daily
loadeth them with benefits. How is it that men can receive such kindness, and
yield no return? O sirs, you are to-day blessed with all that need requires; but
I pray you remember that you might have been in the depths of poverty. An
illness would have lost you your situation; or a slight turn in trade would have
left you bankrupt. You are well to-day; but you might have been tossing to and
fro upon a bed of sickness; you might have been in the hospital, about to lose a
limb. Shall not God be praised for health and freedom from pain? You might have
been shut up in yonder asylum, in the agonies of madness. A thousand ills have
been kept from you; you have been exceedingly favoured by the goodness of the
Most High. Is it not so? And truly it is a wonderful thing that God should give
his bread to those that lift up their heel against him, that he should cause his
light to shine upon those who never perceive his goodness therein, that he
should multiply his mercies upon ungodly men who only multiply their rebellions
against him, and turn the gifts of his love into instruments of
transgression.Furthermore, this goodness of God had not only come to you in a
temporal form, O impenitent man, but it has also visited you in a spiritual
manner. Myriads of our fellow men have never had an opportunity of knowing
Christ. The missionary's foot has never trodden the cities wherein they dwell,
and so they die in the dark. Multitudes are going downward, downward; but they
do not know the upward road; their minds have never been enlightened by the
teachings of God's word, and hence they sin with less grievousness of fault. You
are placed in the very focus of Christian light, and yet you follow evil! Will
you not think of this? Time was when a man would have to work for years to earn
enough money to buy a Bible. There were times when he could not have earned one
even with that toil; now the word of God lies upon your table, you have a copy
of it in almost every room of your house; is not this a boon from God? This is
the land of the open Bible, and the land of the preached word of God; in this
you prove the riches of God's goodness. Do you despise this wealth of mercy?
Possibly you have enjoyed the further privilege of sitting under a ministry
which has been particularly plain and earnest; you have not had sermons preached
before you, they have been preached at you: the minister has seized upon you and
tugged at your conscience, as though he would force you to the Saviour. With
cries and entreaties you have been invited to your heavenly Father, and yet you
have not come. Is this a small thing?What is more, you have been favoured with a
tender conscience. When you do wrong you know it, and smart for it. What mean
those wakeful nights after you have yielded to a temptation? What means that
miserable feeling of shame? that fever of unrest? You find it hard to stifle the
inward monitor, and difficult to resist the Spirit of God. Your road to
perdition is made peculiarly hard; do you mean to follow it at all costs, and go
over hedge and ditch to hell?You have not only been aroused by conscience, but
the good Spirit has striven with you, and have been almost persuaded to be a
Christian. Such has been the blessed work of the Spirit upon your heart that you
have at times been melted down, and ready to be moulded by grace. A strange
softness has come over you, and if you had not gathered up all your evil
strength, and if the devil had not helped you to resist, you had by this time
dropped into the Saviour's arms. Oh, the riches of the goodness of God to have
thus wooed you, and pressed his love upon you! You have scarcely had a stripe,
or a frown, or an ill word from God; his ways have been all kindness, and
gentleness, and longsuffering from the first day of your memory even until now.
"Despisest thou the riches of his goodness?" O man, answer this, I implore thee.
The apostle then dwells upon the riches of "forbearance." Forbearance comes in
when men having offended, God withholds the punishment that is due to them; when
men, having been invited to mercy, have refused it, and yet God continues to
stretch out his hands, and invite them to come to him. Patient endurance of
offenses and insults has been manifested by God to many of you, who now hear
these words of warning. The Lord knows to whom I speak and may he make you,
also, know that I am speaking to you, even to you. Some men have gone back to
the very sin of which for awhile they repented; they have suffered for their
folly, but have turned again to it with suicidal determination. They are
desperately set on their own ruin and nothing can save them. The burnt child has
run to the fire again; the singed moth has plunged again into the flame of the
candle; who can pity such self-inflicted miseries? They are given over to
perdition, for they will not be warned. They have returned to the haunt of vice,
though they seemed to have been snatched from the deep ditch of its filthiness.
They have wantonly and wilfully returned to their cups, though the poison of
former draughts is yet burning in their veins. Yet, despite this folly, God
shows forbearance towards them. They have grievously provoked him when they have
done despite to his word, and have even turned to laughter the solemnities of
his worship, against their own consciences, and to their own confusion: yet when
his hand has been lifted up he has withdrawn it in mercy. See how God has always
tempered his providence with kindness to them. He laid them low so that they
were sore sick, but at the voice of their moaning he restored them. They
trembled on the brink of death, yet he permitted them to recover strength; and
now, despite their vows of amendment, here they are, callous and careless,
unmindful of the mercy which gave them a reprieve.Did you ever think what is
included in the riches of forbearance. There are quick tempered individuals who
only need to be a little provoked, and hard words and blows come quick and
furious: but, oh, the forbearance of God when he is provoked to his face by
ungodly men! By men, I mean, who hear his word, and yet refuse it! They slight
his love, and yet he perseveres in it. Justice lays its hand on the sword, but
mercy holds it back in its scabbard. Well might each spared one say, -- "O
unexhausted GraceO Love unspeakable!I am not gone to my own place;I am not yet
in hell!Earth doth not open yet,My soul to swallow up:And, hanging o'er the
burning pit,I still am forced to hope."Our apostle adds to goodness and
forbearance the riches of "longsuffering." We draw a distinction between
forbearance and longsuffering. Forbearance has to do with the magnitude of sin;
longsuffering with the multiplicity of it: forbearance has to do with present
provocation; longsuffering relates to that provocation repeated, and continued
for a length of time. Oh, how long doth God suffer the ill manners of men! Forty
years long was he grieved with that generation whose carcasses fell in the
wilderness. Has it come to forty years yet with you, dear hearer? Possibly it
may have passed even that time, and a half-century of provocation may have gone
into eternity to bear witness against you. What if I should even have to say
that sixty and seventy years have continued to heap up the loads of their
transgressions, until the Lord saith, "I am pressed down under your sins; as a
cart that is full of sheaves I am pressed down under you." Yet for all that,
here you are on praying ground and pleading terms with God; here you are where
yet the Saviour reigns upon the throne of grace; here you are where mercy is to
be had for the asking, where free grace and dying love ring out their charming
bells of invitation to joy and peace! Oh, the riches of his goodness, and
forbearance, and longsuffering. Three-fold is the claim: will you not regard it?
Can you continue to despise it?I should like to set all this in a striking light
if I could, and therefore I would remind you of who and what that God is who has
exhibited this goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering to men. Remember how
great he is. When men insult a great prince the offence is thought to be highly
heinous. If anyone should openly insult our own beloved Queen, and continue to
do so, all the nation would be clamorous to have the impertinence ended
speedily. We cannot bear that a beloved ruler should be publicly insulted. And
what think you of the sin which provokes God? which to his face defies him? and
in his very courts resists him? Shall this always be forborne with? Is there not
a limit to longsuffering? Goodness also adds another item to the provocation;
for we naturally say, "Why should one so good be treated so cruelly?" If God
were a tyrant, if he were unrighteous or unkind, it were not so much amiss that
men stood out against him; but when his very name is love, and when he manifests
the bowels of a Father towards his wandering children it is shameful that he
should be so wantonly provoked. Those words of Jesus were extremely touching
when he pointed to his miracles, and asked, "For which of these things do you
stone me?" When I think of God I may well say -- for which of his deeds do you
provoke him? Every morning he draws the curtain and glads the earth with light,
and gives you eyes to see it; he sends his rain upon the ground to bring forth
bread for man, and he gives you life to eat thereof -- is this a ground for
revolting from him? Every single minute of our life is cheered with the tender
kindness of God, and every spot is gladdened with his love. I wonder that the
Lord does not sweep away the moral nuisance of a guilty race from off the face
of earth. Man's sin must have been terribly offensive to God from day to day,
and yet still he shows kindness, love, forbearance. This adds an excessive venom
to man's disobedience. How can he grieve such goodness? How can divine goodness
fail to resent such base ingratitude? Think also of God's knowledge; for he
knows all the transgressions of men. "What the eye does not see the heart does
not rue," is a truthful proverb; but every transgression is committed in the
very presence of God, so that penitent David cried, "Against thee, thee only
have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight." Transgression is committed in
the sight of God, from whose eyes nothing is hidden. Remember also, that the
Lord never can forget; before his eyes all things stand out in clear light, not
only the things of to-day, but all the transgressions of a life. Yet for all
this he doth forbear. With evil reeking before his face, he is slow to anger,
and waiteth that he may be gracious.All this while, remember, the Lord is great
in power. Some are patient because they are powerless: they bear and forbear
because they cannot well help themselves; but it is not so with God. Had he but
willed it, you had been swept into hell; only a word from him and the impenitent
had fallen in the wilderness, and their spirits would have passed into the
realms of endless woe. In a moment the Lord could have eased him of his
adversary; he could have stopped that flippant tongue, and closed that lustful
eye in an instant. That wicked heart would have failed to beat if God had
withdrawn his power, and that rebellious breath would have ceased also. Had it
not been for longsuffering you unbelievers would long since have known what it
is to fall into the hands of an angry God. Will you continue to grieve the God
who so patiently bears with you?Be it never forgotten that sin is to God much
more intolerable than it is to us. He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity.
Things which we call little sins are great and grievous evils to him: they do,
as it were, touch the apple of his eye. "Oh, do not," he says, "do not this
abominable thing that I hate!" His Spirit is grieved and vexed with every idle
word and every sensual thought; and hence it is a wonder of wonders that a God
so sensitive of sin, a God so able to avenge himself of his adversaries, a God
who knows the abundance of human evil, and marks it all, should nevertheless
exhibit riches of goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; yet this is what
you, my ungodly hearer, have been experiencing many a long year. Here let us
pause; and oh that each one who is still unsaved would sing most sincerely the
words of Watts: -- "Lord, we have long abused thy love,Too long indulged our
sin,Our aching hearts e'en bleed to seeWhat rebels we have been."No more, ye
lusts, shall ye command,No more will we obey;Stretch out, O God, thy conqu'ring
hand,And drive thy foes away."II. Come with me, friend, and let me speak to thee
of THE SIN OF WHICH THOU ART SUSPECTED. Hear me, unconverted sinner: the sin of
which thou art suspected is this, -- "Despisest thou the riches of his goodness
and forbearance and longsuffering?" The Lord's goodness ought to be admired and
to be adored, and dost thou despise it? His goodness ought to be wondered at and
told as a marvel in the ears of others, and dost thou despise it? That I may
rake thy conscience a little, lend me thine ear.Some despise God's goodness,
forbearance, and longsuffering, because they never even gave a thought to it.
God has given you life to keep you in being, and he has indulged you with his
kindness, but it has not yet occurred to you that this patience is at all
remarkable or worthy of the smallest thanks. You have been a drunkard, have you?
a swearer? a Sabbath-breaker? a lover of sinful pleasure? Perhaps not quite so;
but still you have forgotten God altogether, and yet he has abounded in goodness
to you: is not this a great wrong? The Lord saith, Hear, O heavens, and give
ear, O earth: I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled
against me. The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib: but these
my creatures do not know, my favoured ones do not consider. Why, you have no
such forbearance with others as God has had with you. You would not keep a dog
if it never followed at your heel, but snarled at you: you would not even keep a
potter's vessel if it held no water, and was of no service to you; you would
break it in pieces, and throw it on the dunghill. As for yourself, you are
fearfully and wonderfully made, both as to your body and as to your soul, and
yet you have been of no service to your Maker, nor even thought of being of
service to him. Still, he has spared you all these years, and it has never
occurred to you that there has been any wonderful forbearance in it. Assuredly,
O man, thou despisest the longsuffering of thy God.Others have, perhaps, thought
of it, but have never seriously meditated thereon. When we offend a man, if we
are right-minded, we not only note the fact with regret, but we sit down and
weigh the matter, and seek to rectify it; for we would not be unjust to any
person, and if we felt that we had been acting unfairly it would press upon our
minds until we could make amends. But are there not some of you who have never
given half an hour's consideration to your relation to your God? He has spared
you all this while, and yet it has never occurred to you to enter into your
chamber and sit down and consider your conduct towards him. It would seem to be
too much trouble even to think of your Creator. His longsuffering leads you to
repentance, but you have not repented; in fact, you have not thought it worth
your while to consider the question at all: you have thought it far more
important to enquire, "What shall I eat and what shall I drink?" Bread and
broadcloth have shut out the thought of God. Ah me, you will stand at his
judgment bar before long -- and then? Perhaps ere this week is finished you may
have to answer, not to me, but unto him that sits upon the throne; therefore I
do implore you now, for the first time give this matter thought. Despise no
longer the goodness and longsuffering of God. This longsuffering is despised,
further, by those who have imagined that God does not take any great account of
what they do. So long as they do not go into gross and open sin, and offend the
laws of their country, they do not believe that it is of any consequence whether
they love God or not, whether they do righteousness or not, whether they are
sober and temperate, or drunken and wanton; whether they are clean in heart by
God's Spirit, or defiled in soul and life. Thou thinkest that God is altogether
such an one as thyself, and that he will wink at thy transgression and cover up
thy sin; but thou shalt not find it so. That base thought proves that thou
despisest his longsuffering.Some even get to think that the warnings of love are
so much wind, and that the threatenings of God will never be fulfilled. They
have gone on for many years without being punished, and instead of drawing the
conclusion that the longer the blow is in falling the heavier it will be when it
does come, they imagine that because it is long delayed the judgment will never
come at all; and so they sport and trifle between the jaws of death and hell.
They hear warnings as if they were all moonshine, and fancy that this holy Book,
with its threatenings, is but a bugbear to keep fools quiet. If thou thinkest
so, sir, then indeed thou hast despised the goodness and forbearance and
longsuffering of God. Do you imagine that this forbearance will last for ever?
Do you dream that at least it will continue with you for many years? I know your
secret thoughts: you see other men die suddenly, but your secret thought is that
you will have long space ad ample time: you hear of one struck down with
paralysis, and another carried off by apoplexy, but you flatter yourselves that
you will have plenty of leisure to think about these things. Oh, how can you be
so secure? How can you thus tempt the Lord? False prophets in these evil days
play into men's hands and hold out the hope that you may go into the next world
wrong, and yet be set right in the end. This is a vile flattery of your wicked
hearts; but yet remember that even according to their maundering centuries may
elapse before this fancied restoration may occur. A sensible man would not like
to run the risk of even a year of agony. Half-an-hour of acute pain is dreaded
by most people. Can it be that the very men who start back from the dentist's
door, afraid of the pinch which extricates an aching tooth, will run the risk of
years of misery? Take the future of the impenitent even on this footing, it is a
thing to be dreaded, and by every means avoided. I say, these flattering
prophets themselves, if rightly understood, give you little enough of hope; but
what will come to you if the old doctrine proves to be true and you go away into
everlasting fire in hell, as the Scripture puts it? Will you live an hour in
jeopardy of such a doom? Will you so despise the longsuffering and forbearance
of the Lord?I will not enlarge and use many words, for I am myself weary of
words: I want to persuade you even with tears. My whole soul would attract you
to your God, your Father. I would come to close quarters with you, and say, --
Do you not think that, even though you fall into no doctrinal error, and indulge
no hazy hope as to either restitution or annihilation, yet still it is a
dreadful despising of God's mercy when you keep on playing with God, and saying
to his grace, "Go thy way for this time; when I have a more convenient season I
will send for thee"? The more gentle God is the more you procrastinate, and the
more in tenderness he speaks of pardon the more you transgress. Is this
generous? Is it right? Is it wise? Can it be a fit and proper thing to do? Oh,
my dear hearer, why will you act thus shamefully? Some of you delight to come
and hear me preach, and drink in all I have to say, and you will even commend me
for being earnest with your souls; and yet, after all, you will not decide for
God, for Christ, for heaven. You are between good and evil, neither cold nor
hot. I would ye were either cold or hot; I could even wish that ye either
thought this word of mine to be false, or else that, believing it to be true,
you at once acted upon it. How can you incur the double guilt of offending God
and of knowing that it is an evil thing to do so? You reject Christ, and yet
admit that he ought to be received by you! You speak well of a gospel which you
will not accept for yourselves! You believe great things of a Saviour whom you
will not have to be your Saviour! Jesus himself says, "If I tell you the truth,
why do you not believe me?""Despisest thou the longsuffering of God?" Dare you
do it? I tremble as I think of a man despising God's goodness. Is not this
practical blasphemy? Darest thou do it? Oh, if thou hast done it hitherto, do it
no more. Ere yon sun goes down again, say within thy heart, "I will be a
despiser of God's goodness no longer; I will arise and go unto my Father, and I
will say unto him, -- Father, I have sinned. I will not rest until in the
precious blood he has washed my sins away." III. In closing this sermon I desire
to remind thee, O ungodly man, of THE KNOWLEDGE OF WHICH THOU ART FORGETFUL.
Read my text, -- "Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and
longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?"
Now there are many here who know as a matter of doctrine that the goodness of
God leads them to repentance, and yet they do not know it as a practical truth
affecting their lives: indeed, they so act that it is not true to them at all.
Yet, if they do not know this they are wilfully ignorant; not willing to retain
in their minds a fact so disagreeable to them. None are so blind as those who
will not see: but he who does not see, and yet hath eyes, has a criminality
about his blindness which is not found in that of those who have no sight. Dear
hearer, whether you know this truth or not, I would remind you that God's
patience with you is meant to lead you to repentance. "How?" say you. Why, first
by giving you an opportunity to repent. These years, which are now coming to a
considerable number with you, have been given you in order that you might turn
to God. By the time you were twenty-one you had sinned quite enough; perhaps you
had even then begun to mislead other youths, and to instruct in evil those under
your influence. Why did not God take you away at once? It might have been for
the benefit of the world if he had done so; but yet you were spared till you
were thirty. Did not each year of your lengthened life prove that the Lord was
saying "I will spare him, for perhaps he will yet amend and think upon his God.
I will give him more light, and increase his comforts; I will give him better
teaching, better preaching; peradventure he will repent." Yet you have not done
so. Have you lived to be forty, and are you where you were when you were twenty?
Are you still out of Christ? Then you are worse than you were; for you have
sinned more deeply and you have provoked the Lord more terribly. You have now
had space enough. What more do you need? When the child has offended, you say,
"Child, unless you beg pardon at once, I must punish you": would you give a boy
so many minutes to repent in as God has given you years? I think not. If a
servant is continually robbing you; if he is careless, slothful, disobedient,
you say to him, "I have passed over your faults several times, but one of these
days I shall discharge you. I cannot always put up with this slovenliness, this
blundering, this idleness: one of these times you will have to go." Have you not
so spoken to your female servant, and thought it kind on your part to give her
another chance? The lord has said the same to you; yet here you are, a living
but impenitent man; spared, but spared only to multiply your transgressions.
This know, that his forbearance gives you an opportunity to repent; do not turn
it into an occasion for hardening your heart.But next, the Lord in this is
pleased to give a suggestion to you to repent. It seems to me that every morning
when a man wakes up still impenitent, and finds himself out of hell, the
sunlight seems to say, "I shine on thee yet another day, as that in this day
thou mayest repent." When your bed receives you at night I think it seems to
say, "I will give you another night's rest, that you may live to turn from your
sins and trust in Jesus." Every mouthful of bread that comes to the table says,
"I have to support your body that still you may have space for repentance."
Every time you open the Bible the pages say, "We speak with you that you may
repent." Every time you hear a sermon, if it be such a sermon as God would have
us preach, it pleads with you to turn unto the Lord and live. Surely the time
past of your life may suffice you to have wrought the will of the Gentiles. "The
times of your ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth men everywhere to
repent." Do not life and death, and heaven and hell, call upon you so to do?
Thus you have in God's goodness space for repentance, and a suggestion to
repent.But something more is here; for I want you to notice that the text does
not say, "The goodness of God calleth thee to repentance," but "leadeth thee."
This is a much stronger word. God calls to repentance by the gospel; God leads
to repentance by his goodness. It is as though he plucked at your sleeve and
said, "Come this way." His goodness lays its gentle hand on you, drawing you
with cords of love and bands of a man. God's forbearance cries, "Why wilt thou
hate me? What wrong have I done thee? I have spared thee; I have spared thy wife
and children to thee; I have raised thee up from the bed of sickness; I have
loaded thy board; I have filled thy wardrobe; I have done thee a thousand good
turns; wherefore dost thou disobey me? Turn unto thy God and Father, and live in
Christ Jesus."If, on the other hand, you have not received rich temporal
favours, yet the Lord still leads you to repentance by a rougher hand; as when
the prodigal fain would have filled his belly with husks, but could not, and the
pangs of hunger came upon him; those pains were a powerful message from the
Father to lead him to the home where there was bread enough and to spare. "The
goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance." Oh, that thou wouldest yield to its
sweet leading, and follow as a child follows the guidance of a nurse. Let thy
crosses lead thee to the cross; let thy joys lead thee to find joy in Christ. Do
you not think that all this should encourage you to repent, since God himself
leads you that way? If God leads you to repentance he does not mean to cast you
away. If he bids you repent, then he is willing to accept your repentance, and
to be reconciled to you. If he bids you change your mind, it is because his own
mind is love. Repentance implies a radical change in your view of things, and in
your estimate of matters; it is a change in your purposes, a change in your
thoughts and in your conduct. If the Lord leads you that way he will help you in
it. follow his gracious leading till his divine Spirit shall lead you with still
greater power and still greater efficacy, till at last you find that he has
wrought in you both repentance and faith, and you are saved in the Lord with an
everlasting salvation. If "the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance," then
be sure of this, that the goodness of God will receive thee when thou dost
repent, and thou shalt live in his sight as his well-beloved and forgiven
child.I close now, but I am sorry so to do, for I have not pleaded one-half as I
could have wished. Yet what more can I say? I will put it to yourselves. If you
were in God's stead, could you bear to be treated as you have treated him? If
you were all goodness and tenderness, and had borne with a creature now for
thirty or forty years, how would you bear to see that creature still stand out,
and even draw an inference from your gentleness to encourage him in his
rebellion? Would you not say, "Well, if my longsuffering makes him think little
of sin, I will change my hand. If tenderness cannot win him, I must leave him;
if even my love does not affect him, I will let him along. He is given unto his
evil ways -- I will cease from him, and see what his end will be"? O Lord, say
not so, say not so unto anyone in this house, but of thy great mercy make this
day to be as the beginning of life to many. Oh that hearts may be touched with
pity for their slighted Saviour, that they may seek his face! Here is the way of
salvation: "Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." You know
how the Master bade us put it. "Go ye into all the world and preach the gospel
to every creature: he that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." First, we
are to preach faith, whereby we lay hold on Christ; then baptism, whereby we
confess that faith, and own that we are dead and buried with Christ that we may
live with him in newness of life. Those are the two points he bids us set before
you, and I do set them before you. Weary, but not quite wearied out, O
impenitent man, I plead with thee! Though thou hast so often been pleaded with
in vain, once more I speak with thee in Christ's stead, and say -- Repent of thy
sin, look to thy Saviour, and confess thy faith in his own appointed way. I
verily believe that if I had been pleading with some of you to save the life of
a dog I should have prevailed with you a great while ago. And will you not care
about the saving of your own souls? Oh, strange infatuation -- that men will not
consent to be themselves saved; but foolishly, madly, hold out against the mercy
of God which leads them to repentance. God bless you, beloved, and may none of
you despise his goodness, and forbearance, and longsuffering.


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  CHAPTER 4: BEGINNING AT JERUSALEM
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A Sermon (No.1729) Delivered on Thursday Evening, June 14th, 1883, by C. H.
SPURGEON, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington "And that repentance and
remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at
Jerusalem." -- Luke 24:47. The servants of God were not left to originate a
gospel for themselves, as certain modern teachers appear to do, nor were they
even left to map out their mode of procedure in the spreading of the glad
tidings. They were told by their great Master what to preach, and where to
preach it, and how to preach it, and even where to begin to preach it. There is
ample room for the exercise of our thought in obeying Christ's commands; but the
worldly wise in these days call no one a thoughtful person who is content to be
a docile follower of Jesus. They call themselves "thoughtful and cultured"
simply because they set up their own thoughts in opposition to the thoughts of
God. It were well if they would remember the old proverb -- "Let another praise
thee, and not thine own lips." As a rule those who call themselves
"intellectual" are by no means persons of great intellect. Great minds seldom
proclaim their own greatness. These boasters are not satisfied to be "followers
of God, as dear children," but must strike out a path for themselves; this
reveals their folly rather than their culture. We shall find use for every
faculty which we possess, even if we are endowed with ten talents, in doing just
as we are bidden by our Lord. Implicit obedience is not thoughtless: on the
contrary, it is necessary to its completeness that heart and mind should be
active in it. I. Ye that would faithfully serve Christ note carefully how he
taught his disciples WHAT THEY WERE TO PREACH. We find different descriptions of
the subject of our preaching, but on this occasion it is comprised in two things
-- repentance and remission of sins. I am glad to find in this verse that old-
fashioned virtue called repentance. It used to be preached, but it has gone out
of fashion now. Indeed, we are told that we always misunderstood the meaning of
the word "repentance"; and that it simply means a "change of mind," and nothing
more. I wish that those who are so wise in their Greek knew a little more of
that language, for they would not be so ready with their infallible statements.
True, the word does signify a change of mind, but in its Scriptural connection
it indicates a change of mind of an unusual character. It is not such a fitful
thing as men mean when they speak of changing their minds, as some people do
fifty times a day; but it is a change of mind of a deeper kind. Gospel
repentance is a change of mind of the most radical sort -- such a change as
never was wrought in any man except by the Spirit of God. We mean to teach
repentance, the old-fashioned repentance, too; and I do not know a better
description of it that the child's verse: -- "Repentance is to leave The things
we loved before, And show that we in earnest grieve By doing so no more."Let
every man understand that he will never have remission of sin while he is in
love with sin; and that if he abides in sin he cannot obtain the pardon of sin.
There must be a hatred of sin, a loathing of it, and a turning from it, or it is
not blotted out. We are to preach repentance as a duty. "The times of this
ignorance God winked at, but now commandeth all men everywhere to repent."
"Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the
remission of sins." He that has sinned is bound to repent of having sinned: it
is the least that he can do. How can any man ask God for mercy while he abides
in his sin?We are to preach the acceptableness of repentance. In itself
considered there is nothing in repentance deserving of the favour of God; but,
the Lord Jesus Christ having come, we read, "He that confesseth and forsaketh
his sin shall find mercy." God accepts repentance for the sake of his dear Son.
He smiles upon the penitent sinner, and puts away his iniquities. this we are to
make known on all sides.We are also to preach the motives of repentance -- that
men may not repent from mere fear of hell, but they must repent of sin itself.
Every thief is sorry when he has to go to prison: every murderer is sorry when
the noose is about his neck: the sinner must repent, not because of the
punishment of sin, but because his sin is sin against a pardoning God, sin
against a bleeding Saviour, sin against a holy law, sin against a tender gospel.
The true penitent repents of sin against God, and he would do so even if there
were no punishment. When he is forgiven, he repents of sin more than ever; for
he sees more clearly than ever the wickedness of offending so gracious a God.We
are to preach repentance in its perpetuity. Repentance is not a grace which is
only to be exercised by us for a week or so at the beginning of our Christian
career: it is to attend us all the way to heaven. Faith and repentance are to be
inseparable companions throughout our pilgrimage to glory. Repenting of our sin,
and trusting in the great Sinbearer, is to be the tenor of our lives; and we are
to preach to men that it must be so.We are to tell them of the source of
repentance, namely, that the Lord Jesus Christ is exalted on high to give
repentance and remission of sins. Repentance is a plant that never grows on
nature's dunghill: the nature must be changed, and repentance must be implanted
by the Holy Spirit, or it will never flourish in our hearts. We preach
repentance as a fruit of the Spirit, or else we greatly err.Our second theme is
to be remission of sins. What a blessed subject is this! To preach the full
pardon of sin -- that it is blotted out once for all; the free pardon of sin --
that God forgives voluntarily of his own grace; free forgiveness for the very
chief of sinners for all their sins, however black they may be; is not this a
grand subject? We are to preach a final and irreversible remission; not a pardon
which is given and taken back again, so that a man may have his sins forgiven
and yet be punished for them. I loathe such a gospel as that, and could not
preach it. It would come with an ill grace from these lips. But the pardon of
God once given stands for ever. If he has cast our sin into the depths of the
sea it will never be washed up again.If he has removed our transgressions from
us as far as the east is from the west, how can they return to condemn us? Once
washed in the blood of the Lamb we are clean. The deed is done: the one offering
has put away for ever all the guilt of believers.Now this is what we are to
preach -- free, full, irreversible pardon for all that repent of sin, and lay
hold on Christ by faith. O servants of the Lord, be not ashamed to declare it,
for this is your message!II. Next to this, we are told WHERE IT IS TO BE
PREACHED. The text says that repentance and remission of sins should be preached
in his name among all nations. Here, then, we have the divine warrant for
missions. They are no speculations, or enthusiastic dreams; they are matters of
divine command. I daresay you have heard of what the Duke of Wellington said to
a missionary in India who was questioning whether it was of any use to preach
the gospel to the Hindus. "What are your marching orders?" said this man of
discipline and obedience. "What are your marching orders?" that is the deciding
question. Now the marching orders are, "Go ye into all the world and preach the
gospel to every creature." What a wonder it is that the church did not see this
long before. After her first days she seems to have fallen asleep, and it is
scarcely a hundred years ago since in the providence and grace of God the church
began to wake to her high enterprise. We are to preach the gospel everywhere:
missions are to be universal. All nations need the preaching of the word. The
gospel is a remedy for every human ill among all the races that live upon the
face of the earth. Some out of all nations shall receive it; for there shall be
gathered before the eternal throne men out of every kindred, and nation, and
tongue. No nation will utterly refuse it: there will be found a remnant
according to the election of grace even among the most perverse of the tribes of
men. We ought to preach it to every creature, for it is written that it behoved
to be so. Read the forty-sixth verse: "Thus it is written, and thus it behoved
Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day: . . . and that
repentance and remission of sins should be preached among all nations."
Brethren, there was a divine necessity that Christ should die, and an equally
imperative must that he should arise again from the dead; but there is an
equally absolute necessity that Jesus should be preached to every creature under
heaven. It behooves to be so. Who, then, will linger? Let us each one, according
to his ability and opportunity, tell to all around us the story of the
forgiveness of sin through the Mediator's sacrifice to as many as confess their
sin and forsake it. We are bidden to preach repentance of sin and faith in our
Lord Jesus Christ, let us not be slow to do so.III. But this is not all . We are
actually told HOW TO PREACH IT. Repentance and remission are to be preached in
Christ's name. What does this mean? Ought we not to learn from this that we are
to tell the gospel to others, because Christ orders us to do so? In Christ's
name we must do it. Silence is sin when salvation is the theme. If these should
hold their peace, the stones would cry out against them. My brethren, you must
proclaim the gospel according to your ability: it is not a thing which you may
do or may not do at your own discretion; but you must do it if you have any
respect for your Saviour's name. If you dare pray in that name, if you dare hope
in that name, if you hear the music of joy in that name, then in the name of
Jesus Christ preach the gospel in every land.But it means more than that. Not
only preach it under his orders, but preach it on his authority. The true
servant of Christ has his Master to back him up. The Lord Jesus will seal by
threatening or by grace the word of his faithful messengers. If we threaten the
ungodly, the threatening shall be fulfilled. If we announce God's promise to the
penitent, that promise shall be surely kept. The Lord Jesus will not let the
words of his own ambassadors fall to the ground. "Lo, I am with you alway," says
he, "even to the end of the world. Go ye therefore and teach all nations." You
have Christ with you: teach the nations by his authority.But does it not mean,
also, that the repentance and the remission which are so bound together come to
men by virtue of his name? Oh, sinner, there would be no acceptance of your
repentance if it were not for that dear name! Oh, guilty conscience, there would
be no ease for you through the remission of sin if it were not that the blessed
name of Jesus is sweet to the Lord God of hosts! We dare preach pardon to you in
his name. The blood has been shed and sprinkled on the burning throne: the
Christ has gone in within the veil, and stands there "able to save to the
uttermost them that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make
intercession for them." Salvation in his name there is assuredly, and this is
our glory; but "there is none other name given under heaven among men whereby we
must be saved." That name has a fullness of saving efficacy, and if you will but
rest in it, you shall find salvation, and find it now. Thus you see we are not
bidden to go forth and say -- We preach you the gospel in the name of our own
reason; or we preach you the gospel in the name of the church to which we
belong, or by the authority of a synod, or a bishop, or a creed, or a whole
church. No, we declare the truth in the name of Christ. Christ has set his
honour to pawn for the truth of the gospel. He will lose his glory if sinners
that believe and repent are not saved. Dishonour will come to the Son of God if
any man repenting of sin is not accepted before God. For his name's sake he will
not cast away one that comes to him. O chief of sinners! he will receive you if
you will come. He cannot reject you; that were to be false to his own promise,
untrue to his own nature.Be sure then that you preach in Christ's name. If you
preach in your own name it is poor work. A man says to me, "I cannot tell a dead
sinner to live. I cannot tell a blind sinner to see. I cannot invite an
insensible sinner; it is absurd; for the sinner is altogether without strength."
No, dear sir, I do not suppose you can do so while you speak according to carnal
reason. Does the good man say that God has not sent him to bid the dead arise?
Then let him not do it. Pray let him not try to do what God never sent him to
do. Let him go home and go to bed; he will probably do as much good asleep as
awake. But as for me, I am sent to preach in Jesus' name, "Believe and live,"
and therefore I am not slow to do so. I am sent on purpose to say, Ye dry bones,
live, and I dare do no otherwise. No faithful minister who knows what faith
means looks to the sinner for power to believe, or looks to himself for power;
but he looks to the Master that sent him for power; and in the name of Christ he
says to the withered hand, "Be stretched out," and he says to the dead, "Come
forth!" and he does not speak in vain. Oh, yes, it is in Christ's name that we
fulfill our office! We are miracle-workers: he endows us with his power if in
faith we tell out his gospel. All of you who try to speak the gospel may do it
without fear of failure; for the power lies in the gospel and in the Spirit who
goes with it, not in the preacher or in the sinner. Blessed be the name of God,
we have this treasure in earthen vessels but the excellency of the power is of
God, and not of us. So he tells us, then, what to preach, and where to preach
it, and how to preach it. IV. Now, I shall ask your attention to the principal
topic of the present discourse, and that is, that he told his disciples WHERE TO
BEGIN.I have heard of a Puritan who had in his sermon forty-five main divisions,
and about ten subdivisions under every head. He might be said largely to divide
the word of truth, even if he did not rightly divide it. Now,I have nine
subheads to-night, and yet I hope I shall not detain you beyond the usual time.
I cannot make fewer of them and give the full meaning of this sentence --
"Beginning at Jerusalem." The apostles were not to pick and choose where they
should start, but they were to begin at Jerusalem. Why?First, because it was
written in the Scriptures that they were to begin at Jerusalem: "Thus it is
written,and thus it behooves, that repentance and remission of sin should be
preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." It was so
written: I will give you two or three proofs. Read in the second chapter of
Isaiah, at the third verse: "Out of Zion shall come forth the law, and the word
of the Lord from Jerusalem." Isaiah's word would have fallen to the ground if
the preaching had not begun at Jerusalem; but now, to the very letter, this
prediction of the evangelical prophet is kept. In Joel, that famous Joel who
prophesied the descent of the Spirit and the speaking of the servants and the
handmaidens, we read in the second chapter, at the thirty-second verse, "In
mount Zion and in Jerusalem shall be deliverance;" and again in the sixteenth
verse of the third chapter of the same prophet -- "The Lord shall roar out of
Zion, and utter his voice from Jerusalem." As if the Lord were as a strong lion
in the midst of Jerusalem, and as if the sounding forth of the gospel was like
the roaring of his voice, that the nations might hear and tremble. How could
those promises have been kept if the gospel had begun to be preached in the
deserts of Arabia, or if the first church of Christ had been set up at Damascus?
Note another passage. Obadiah in his twenty-first verse says, "Saviours shall
come up on mount Zion." Who were these saviours but those who instrumentally
became so by proclaiming the Saviour Jesus Christ. And Zechariah, who is full of
visions, but not visionary, says in his fourteenth chapter at the eighth verse,
"Living waters shall flow out of Jerusalem," and then he describes the course of
those waters till they flowed even unto the Dead Sea, and made its waters sweet.
Because the Bible said so, therefore they must begin at Jerusalem, and I call
your attention to this, for our Lord Jesus was particular that every jot and
tittle of the Old Testament should be fulfilled. Do you not think that this
reads us a lesson that we should be very reverent towards every sentence of both
the Old and the New Testaments; and if there be anything taught by our Lord
ought not his people to consider well, and act according to the divine
ordinance? I am afraid that many take their religion from their parents, or from
the church that is nearest to them, without weighing it. "I counsel thee to keep
the King's commandment." Oh, that we may be more faithful servants of the Lord;
for if we are faithful we shall be careful upon what men call small points, such
as the doctrine of baptism, the manner of the Lord's Supper, or this small point
of where the gospel should be first preached. It must begin at Jerusalem and
nowhere else; for the Scripture cannot be broken. See ye to it, then, that ye
walk according to the word of God, and that ye test everything by it. "To the
law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is
because there is no light in them." So much on that first head.Secondly, I
suppose that our Lord bade his disciples begin to preach the gospel at
Jerusalem, because it was at Jerusalem that the facts which make up the gospel
had occurred. It was there that Jesus Christ died, that he was buried, that he
rose again, and that he ascended into heaven. All these things happened at
Jerusalem, or not far from it. Therefore the witness-bearing of the apostles
must be upon the spot where if they lie they can be confuted, and where persons
can come forward and say, "It was not so; you are deceivers." If our Lord had
said, "Do not say anything in Jerusalem. Go away to Rome and begin preaching
there," it would not have looked quite so straightforward as it now does when he
says, "Preach this before the scribes and the priests. They know that it is so.
They have bribed the soldiers to say otherwise, but they know that I have
risen." The disciples were to preach the gospel in the streets of Jerusalem.
There were people in that city who were once lame, and who leaped like a hart
when Jesus healed them. There were men and women there who ate of the fish and
that bread that Jesus multiplied. There were people in Jerusalem who had seen
their children and their friends healed of dreadful diseases. Jesus bids his
disciples beard the lion in his den, and declare the gospel on the spot where,
if it had been untrue, it would have been contradicted with violence. Our Lord
seemed to say, "Point to the very place where my death took place. Tell them
that they crucified me; and see if they dare deny it. Bring it home to their
consciences that they rejected the Christ of God." Hence it was that, coming to
the very people who had seen these things, the preaching of Peter had unusual
force about it: in addition to the power of the Holy Spirit there was also this
-- that he was telling them of a crime which they had newly committed, and could
not deny: and when they saw their error they turned to God with penitent hearts.
I like this thought -- that they were to begin at Jerusalem, because there the
events of the gospel occurred. This is a direction for you, dear friend: if you
have been newly converted, do not be ashamed to tell those who know you. A
religion which will not stand the test of the fireside is not worth much! "Oh,"
says one. "I have never told my husband. I get out on a Thursday night, but he
does not know where I am going, and I steal in here. I have never even told my
children that I am a believer. I do not like to let it be known. I am afraid
that all my family would oppose me." Oh, yes; you are going to heaven, round by
the back lanes. Going to sneak into glory as a rat crawls into a room through a
hole in the floor! Do not attempt it. Never be ashamed of Christ. Come straight
out and say to your friends, "You know what I was; but now I have become a
disciple of Jesus Christ." Begin at Jerusalem: it was your Lord's command. He
had nothing to be ashamed of. There was no falsehood in what he bade his
disciples preach, and therefore he did as good as say, "Hang up my gospel to the
light. It is nothing but truth, therefore display it before mine enemies' eyes."
If yours is a true, genuine, thorough conversion, I do not say that you are to
go up and down the street crying out that you are converted; but on due
occasions you must not hide your convictions. Conceal not what the Lord has done
for you, but hold up your candle in your own house. The third reason why the
Lord Jesus told them to begin at Jerusalem may have been that he knew that there
would come a time when some of his disciples would despise the Jews, and
therefore he said -- When you preach my gospel, begin with them. This is a
standing commandment, and everywhere we ought to preach the gospel to the Jew as
well as to the Gentile; Paul even says, "to the Jew first." Some seem to think
that there ought to be no mission to the Jews -- that there is no hope of
converting them, that they are of no use when they are converted, and so on. I
have even heard some who call themselves Christians speak slightingly of the
Jewish people. What! and your Lord and Master a Jew! There is no race on earth
so exalted as they are. They are the seed of Abraham, God's friend. We have
nobles and dukes in England, but how far could they trace their pedigree? Why,
up to a nobody. But the poorest Jew on earth is descended linearly from Jacob,
and Isaac, and Abraham. Instead of treating them with anything like disrespect,
the Saviour says, "Begin at Jerusalem." Just as we say, "Ladies first," so it is
"the Jew first." They take precedence among races, and are to be first waited on
at the gospel feast. Jesus would have us entertain a deep regard to that nation
which God chose of old, and out of which Christ also came, for he is of the seed
of Abraham according to the flesh. He puts those first who knew him first. Let
us never sneer at a Jew again; for our Lord teaches us the rule of his house
when he says, "Begin at Jerusalem." Let the seed of Israel first have the gospel
presented to them, and if they reject it we shall be clear of their blood. But
we shall not be faithful to our orders unless we have taken note of Jews as well
as Gentiles.The fourth reason for beginning at Jerusalem is a practical lesson
for you. Begin where you are tempted not to begin. Naturally these disciples
would have said one to another when they met, "We cannot do much here in
Jerusalem. The first night that we met together the doors were shut for fear of
the Jews. It is of no use for us to go out into the street; these people are all
in such an excited frame of mind that they will not receive us; we had better go
up to Damascus, or take a long journey and then commence preaching; and when
this excitement is cooled down, and they have forgotten about the crucifixion,
we will come and introduce Christ gradually, and say as little as we can about
putting him to death." That would have been the rule of policy -- that rule
which often governs men who ought to be led by faith. But our Lord had said,
"Beginning at Jerusalem," and so Peter must stand up in the midst of that motley
throng, and he must tell them, "This Jesus whom ye have with wicked hands
crucified and slain is now risen from the dead." Instead of tearing Peter to
pieces they come crowding up, crying, "We believe in Jesus: let us be baptized
into his sacred name." The same day there were added to the church three
thousand souls, and a day or two afterwards five thousand were converted by the
same kind of preaching. We ought always to try to do good where we think that it
will not succeed. If we have a very strong aversion as a token that we are not
called to it, we may regard it as a sign that we ought at least to try it. The
devil knows you, dear friend, better than you know yourself. You see, he has
been longer in the world than you have, and he knows a great deal more about
human nature than you do; and so he comes to you, and he reckons you up pretty
accurately, and says, "This brother would be very useful in a certain sphere of
labour, and I must keep him from it." So he tells the brother that he is not
called to it, and that it is not the sort of thing for him, and so on; and then
he says to himself, "I have turned aside one foe from harming my cause." Yonder
is a good sister. Oh, how much she might do for Christ, but Satan guides her
into a work in which she will never shine; while the holy work which she could
do right well is dreaded by her. I heard a beautiful story last Wednesday, when
I was sitting to see inquirers, and I cannot help mentioning it here, for it may
be a suggestion to some Christian who is present. A brother, who will be
received into the church, was converted in the following way. He came up to
London, and worked in a certain parish in the West- end. He was at work on a
sewer, and a lady from one of the best houses in the West-end came to the men
that were making the sewer and said, "You men, come into my servants' hall and
eat your dinners. I will give you either tea or coffee with your meal, and then
you will not have to go into the public-house." Some of them went in, but others
did not. So the next day the lady came out, and said, "Now, I know that you
think my place too fine for you. You do not like to come; so I have come out to
fetch you in. While this sewer is being done I should like you to eat your
dinners in my house." She got them all in; and when they had done their dinners
and drank their tea or coffee she began to talk to them about Jesus Christ. The
work was a month or so about, and it was every day the same. Our friend does not
know the lady's name, but he knows the name of Jesus through her teaching.
Friends, we lose hosts of opportunities; I am sure we do. Many ways of doing
good have never occurred to our minds, but they ought to occur to us; and when
they do occur we should use them. Let us crucify the flesh about this. Let us
overcome natural timidity. Let us in some way or other begin at Jerusalem, which
is just where we thought that we never could begin. Now fifthly. We are getting
on, you see. "Beginning at Jerusalem," must surely mean begin at home. Jerusalem
was the capital city of their own country. You know the old proverb, "The
cobbler's wife goes barefoot." I am afraid that this proverb is verified by some
Christians. They do a deal of good five miles off home, but none at home. I knew
a man who used to go out with preachers every night in the week, and try to
preach himself, poor soul that he was; but his children were so neglected that
they were the most wicked children in the street, and they grew up in all manner
of vice. The father was prancing about and looking after other people, and did
not care for his own family. Now, if you are going to serve Christ to the very
ends of the earth, take care that you begin at home. Dear parents, need I urge
you to look to your own children? It is a great joy to me to know that the
members of the church for the most part do this. When a dear sister came to me
on Wednesday night with three of her children, making four that had come within
the last six weeks, I felt grateful to God that parents were looking after their
offspring. But if any of you are in the Sabbath-school, and never have a
Sabbath-school at home; if any of you talk to strangers in the aisles, but are
neglecting your own sons and daughters -- oh, let it not be so! The power of a
father's prayers with his arms about his boy's neck I know full well. The power
of a mother's prayers with her children all kneeling round her is far greater
with the young than any public ministry will be. Look well to your children:
begin at Jerusalem.Begin with your servants. Do not let a servant live in your
house in ignorance of the gospel. Do not have family prayer merely as a matter
of form, but let it be a reality. Do not have one person working for you to whom
you have never spoken about his or her soul.Begin with your brothers. Oh, the
influence of sisters over brothers! I have a friend -- a dear friend, too -- who
has long been a man of God, but in his young days he was a very loose fellow,
and often he was all the night away from home. His sister used to write letters
to him, and frequently while half tipsy he has read them under the street lamp.
One letter which he read cut him to the quick. His sister's grief about him was
too much for him, and he was compelled to seek and find the Saviour. Well has
the sister been rewarded for all her love to him. Oh, dear friends, begin at
Jerusalem! Begin with your brothers and sisters.Begin with your neighbours. Oh,
this London of ours! It is a horrible place for Christian people to live in!
Round about this neighbourhood scarcely can a decent person remain by reason of
the vice that abounds, and the language that is heard on every side. Many of you
are as much vexed to-day as Lot was when he was in Sodom. Well, bear your
witness. Do not be dumb dogs, but speak up for your Lord and Master whenever you
are. Look at our dear brother Lazenby, who entered a workshop where none feared
the Lord, and has been the means of bringing all in the shop to God. Another
shop has felt his influence, and the first recruit has come to join the church:
I should not wonder if the whole of the workmen in the second shop should come,
too. The Lord grant it. It is marvelous how the gospel spreads when men are in
earnest, and their lives are right. God make you so to live that you show piety
at home.Then, sixthly, begin where much has been already done. Begin at
Jerusalem. It is hard work, dear friends, to preach to certain people: they have
been preached to so long, like the people at Jerusalem. They know all about the
gospel, it is hard to tell them anything fresh, and yet they have felt nothing,
but remain wedded to their sins. The Jerusalem people had been taught for
centuries in vain; and yet Christ's disciples were to speak to them first. We
must not pass the gospel-hardened; we must labour for the conversion of those
who have enjoyed privileges but have neglected them, those who have had
impressions and have crushed them out, those who seem now as if they had sealed
their own death-warrants and would never be saved. Do not hesitate to go to
them. The Lord has done much already: it may be that he has laid the fire, and
you are to strike the match and set it all alight. Many people have a love to
the gospel, a love to the house of God, a love to God's people, and yet they
have no saving faith. What a pity! Do not hesitate to address them. I think I
hear you say, "I would rather go and preach to the outcasts." So would I; but
you and I are not allowed to pick our work. Virgin soil yields the best harvest;
and if a man might choose a congregation that is likely to be fruitful, he might
well select those that have never heard the word before. But we have not our
choice. The Saviour's disciples were to begin where the prophets had prophesied,
and had been put to death; where sinners had rejected God's voice times out of
mind. Therefore do not pass by your fellow-seatholders. Perhaps you say, "Sir, I
have spoken to them a great many times, but I cannot make anything of them." No,
you cannot; but God can. Try again. Suppose that for twenty years you were to
sit in this Tabernacle side by side with an unconverted person, and you were to
speak to that person twice every Sunday and twice in the week, and all the
twenty years it should be in vain; yet if the individual was brought to Christ
at last would not his conversion repay you? Is your time so very precious? Is
your ability so very great? Oh, my dear friend, if you were an archangel it
would be worth while for you to work a thousand years to bring one soul to
Christ! A soul is such a precious jewel that you would be abundantly rewarded if
a century of service only brought you one conversion. Wherefore, in working for
Christ, do not hesitate to go to those who have refused the gospel hitherto, for
you may yet prevail. Seventhly, begin where the gospel day is short. If you ask
me where I get that thought, it is from the fact that within a very short time
Jerusalem was to be destroyed. The Romans were to come there to slay men, women,
and children, and break down the walls and leave not one stone upon another. And
Christ's disciples knew this; wherefore their Lord said, "Begin at Jerusalem."
Now, then, if you have any choice as to the person you shall speak to, select an
old man. He is near his journey's end, and if he is unsaved there is but a
little bit of candle left by the light of which he may come to Christ. Choose
the old man, and do not let him remain ignorant of the gospel. Fish him up at
once, for with him it is now or never, since he is on the borders of the grave.
Or when any of you notice a girl upon whose cheek you see that hectic flush
which marks consumption -- if you notice during service the deep "churchyard"
cough -- say to yourself, "I will not let you go without speaking to you, for
you may soon be dead." How many a time have I seen a consumptive at Mentone
apparently getting better; but I have noticed him rise from dinner with his
handkerchief to his mouth and soon they have whispered, "He died of hemorrhage"
-- suddenly taken off. When you meet with a pining case, do not wait to be
introduced, but introduce yourself; and tenderly, gently, quietly, lovingly say
a word about coming to Christ at once. We ought speedily to look up those whose
day of grace is short. Perhaps, also, there is a stranger near you who is going
far away to a distant land, and may never hear the gospel again; therefore, if
you have an opportunity, take care that you avail yourself of it, and reason
with him for Jesus at once. Begin at Jerusalem: begin where the day of grace is
short.Eighthly, begin, dear friend, where you may expect opposition. That is a
singular thing to advise, but I recommend it because the Saviour advised it. It
was as certain as that twice two are four that if they preached Christ in
Jerusalem, there would be a noise, for there were persons living there who hated
the very name of Jesus, for they had conspired to put him to death. If they
began at Jerusalem they would arouse a ferocious opposition. But nothing is much
better for the gospel than opposition. A man comes into the Tabernacle to-night,
and as he goes away he says, "Yes, I was pleased and satisfied." In that man's
case I have failed. But another man keeps biting his tongue, for he cannot
endure the preaching. He is very angry; something in the doctrine dos not suit
him, and he cries, "As long as I live I will never come here again." That man is
hopeful. He begins to think. The hook has taken hold of him. Give us time, and
we will have that fish. It is no ill omen when a man gets angry with the gospel.
It is bad enough, but it is infinitely better than that horrible lethargy into
which men fall when they do not think. Some are not good enough even to oppose
the gospel of Jesus Christ. Be hopeful of the man who will not let you speak to
him, he is one that you must approach again; and if, when he does let you speak
to him, he seems as if he would spit on you, be grateful for it. He feels your
words. You are touching him on a sore place. You will have him yet. When he
swears that he does not believe a word of what you say, do not believe a word of
what he says; for often the man who openly objects secretly believes. Just as
boys whistle when they go through a churchyard in order to keep their courage
up, so many a blasphemer is profane in order to silence his conscience. When he
feels the hook, like the fish, the man will drag away from it. Give him line.
Let him go. The hook will hold, and in due time you will have him. Do not
despair. Do not think it a horrible thing that he should oppose you; you should
rather be grateful for it, and go to God and cry that he will give you that soul
for your hire. Begin courageously where you may expect opposition.And, lastly,
to come to the meaning which Mr John Bunyan has put upon the text in his famous
book called "The Jerusalem Sinner Saved," I have no doubt that the Saviour bade
them begin at Jerusalem, because the biggest sinners lived there. There they
lived who had crucified him. The loving Jesus bids them preach repentance and
remission to them. There he lived who had pierced the Saviour's side, and they
that had plaited the crown of thorns, and put it on his head. There dwell those
who had mocked him and spat upon him; therefore the loving Jesus, who so freely
forgives, says, "Go and preach the gospel first to them." The greatest sinners
are the objects of the greatest mercy. Preach first to them. Are there any such
here? My dear friend, we must preach the gospel first to you because you want it
most. You are dying; your wounds are bleeding; the heavenly surgeon bids us
staunch your wounds first. Others who are not so badly hurt may wait awhile, but
you must be first served lest you die of your injuries. Should not this
encourage you great sinners to come to Jesus, when he bids us preach to you
first? We are to preach to you first because, when you have received him, you
will praise him most. If you are saved you will encourage others to come, and
you will cheer up those who have come already. We shall be glad to get fresh
blood poured into the veins of the church by the conversion of big sinners who
love much because they have had much forgiven. Therefore, we are to come to you
first. Will you not come to Christ at once? Oh, that you would believe in him!
Oh that you would believe in him to-night! To you is the word of this salvation
sent. You old sinners -- you that have added sin to sin, and done all you can do
with both hands wickedly -- you that have cursed his name -- you that have
robbed others -- you that have told lies -- you that have blackened yourselves
with every crime, come and welcome to Jesus. Come to Christ and live at once.
Mercy's door is set wide open on purpose that the vilest of the vile may come;
and they are called to come first. Just as you are, come along with you. Tarry
not to cleanse or mend, but now "believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt
be saved." This night if you believe in Jesus you shall go out of these doors
rejoicing that the Lord has put away your sin. To believe is to trust -- simply
to trust in Christ. It seems a very simple thing, but that is why it is so hard.
If it were a hard thing you would more readily attend to it; but being so easy
you cannot believe that it is effectual. But it is so; faith does save. Christ
wants nothing of you but that you accept what he freely presents to you. Put out
an empty hand, a black hand, a trembling hand; accept what Jesus gives, and
salvation is yours.Thus have I tried to expound "Beginning at Jerusalem," O that
my Lord would begin with you. Amen.PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON --
MATTHEW 28.HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK" -- 486, 537.


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  CHAPTER 5: IN HIM: LIKE HIM
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A Sermon (No.1732) Delivered on Thursday Evening, May 17th, 1883, by C. H.
SPURGEON, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington "He that saith he abideth in
him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked." -- 1 John 2:6. He that
saith he abideth in him: " -- that is exactly what every Christian does say. He
cannot be a Christian unless this be true of him, and be cannot fully enjoy his
religion unless he assuredly knows that he is in Christ, and can boldly say as
much. We must be in Christ, and abidingly in Christ, or else We are not saved in
the Lord. It is our union with the Christ that makes us Christians: by union
with him as our life we truly live, -- live in the favour of God. -- We are in
Christ, dear brethren, as the manslayer was in the city of refuge: I hope that
we can say we abide in him as our sanctuary and shelter. We have fled for refuge
to him who is the hope set before us in the gospel; even as David and his men
sheltered themselves in the eaves of En-gedi, so we hide ourselves in Christ. We
each one sing, and our heart goes with the words -- "Rock of ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in thee." We have entered into Christ as into the shadow of a
great rock in a weary land, as guest; into a banquet-hall, as returning
travellers into their home. And now we abide -- in Christ in this sense, that we
are joined to him : as the stone is, in the wall, as the wave is in the sea, as
the branch is in the vine, so are we in Christ. As the branch receives all its
sap from the stem, so all the sap of spiritual life flows from Christ into us.
If we were separated from him, we should be as branches cut off from the vine,
only fit to be gathered up for the fire, and to be burned. So that we abide in
Christ as our shelter, our home, and our life. Today we remain in Christ, and
hope for ever to remain in him, as our Head. Ours is no transient union; while
he lives as our Head we shall remain his members. We are nothing apart from him.
As a finger is nothing without the head, as the whole body is nothing without
the head, so should we be nothing without our Lord Jesus Christ. But we are in
him vitally, and therefore we dare ask the question, "Who shall separate us from
the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord?" Beloved, since we, then, are
the people who say that we abide in him, it is upon us that the obligation of
the text falls: we ought ourselves also so to walk even as he walked. A Bible
ought has great weight with a conscientious man. Ought it to be so? Then it
shall be so, God helping me. If we say we must do. If we talk, we must walk, or
it will, be mere talk. If we make the profession of abiding in Christ, we must
prove it by our practice of walking with Christ. If we say that we are in Christ
and abide in him, we must take care that our life and character are conformed to
Christ, or else we shall be making an empty boast. This is true of every man who
says he is in Christ, for the text is put in the most general and absolute
manner: be the man old or young, rich or poor, learned or simple, pastor or
hearer, it is incumbent upon him to live like Christ if he professes to live in
Christ. The first thing about a Christian is initiation, initiation into Christ:
the next thing is imitation, the imitation of Christ. We cannot be Christians
unless we are in Christ; and we are not truly in Christ unless in him we live
and move and have our being, and the life of Christ is lived over again by us
according to our measure. "Be ye imitators of God, as dear children." It is the
nature of children to imitate their parents. Be ye imitators; of Christ as good
soldiers, who cannot have a better model for their soldierly life than their
Captain and Lord. Ought we not to be very grateful to Christ that he deigns to
be our example? If he were not perfectly able to meet all our other wants, if he
were an expiation and nothing else, we should glory in him as our atoning
sacrifice, for we always put that to the front, and magnify the virtue of his
precious blood beyond everything: but at the same time we need an example, and
it is delightful to find it where we find our pardon and justification. They
that are saved from the death of sin need to be guided in the life of holiness,
and it is infinitely condescending on the part of Christ that he becomes an
example to such poor creatures as we are. It is said to have been the
distinguishing mark of Caesar as a soldier that he never said to his followers
"Go!" but he always said "Come!" Of Alexander, also, it was noted that in weary
marches he was sure to be on foot with his warriors, and in fierce attack's he
always was in the van. The most persuasive sermon is the example which leads the
way. This certainly is one trait in the Good Shepherd's character, "when he
putteth forth his own sheep he goeth before them." If Jesus bids us do anything,
he first does it himself. He would have us wash one another's feet; and this is
the argument -- "Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well; for so I am. If I,
then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one
another's feet." Shall we not do as he does whom we profess to follow? He has
left his footprints that we may set our feet in them.Will we not joyfully fix
our feet upon this royal road?That is our theme at this time. We do many of us
say that we are in Christ: let us hear how obliged we are by this to walk even
as he walked. Oh, Holy Spirit, let us feel the weight of the sacred
obligation!But I stop a minute. I know that there are some here who cannot say
that they are in Christ. Then, if you are not in Christ, you are out of Christ;
and out of Christ your position is dangerous, terrible, ruinous. If we saw a man
hanging over a deep pit, if we saw a man exposed to a sea of fire, and likely to
perish in it, all our tenderest emotions would begin to flow, and we should pray
in an agony of spirit, "Oh, God, save this man from danger!" My brethren, there
are some among us tonight who are in the utmost danger; in a most emphatic sense
they are lost already, for they are without God, and without Christ, strangers
to the commonwealth of Israel. Oh, my hearers, how shall I speak of you without
tears? Poor souls, abiding under the wrath of God! Poor souls! The mercy is that
you are not past hope. There is an arm that can reach you: there is a voice that
calls you -- calls you even now; hear it: "Look unto me, and be ye saved, all
the ends of the earth; for I am God, and besides me there is none else." Can you
not even now give one look to him who died for you? Will you not turn the eye of
faith that way, and trust him who was nailed to the tree on your behalf? God
grant that you may, and then I may include you also in the blessed instruction
of the text. "He that saith he abideth in him, ought himself also so to walk,
even as he walked."I. I shall first of all ask you to CONSIDER HOW THIS
OBLIGATION IS PROVED. Let us spend a few minutes over the question, Why ought we
to walk as Jesus did?When we read the word "ought," if we are honest men, we
begin to look about us and to make enquiries as to the reason and the measure of
this obligation. An "ought" is a compulsion to a true heart. There is a "needs
be" to every godly man that he should do what he ought.What, then, is the ground
upon which this "ought" is fixed?First, it is the design of God that those who
are in Christ should walk as Christ walked. It is a part of the original
covenant purpose; for "whom he did foreknow be also did predestinate to be
conformed to the image of his Son." That is the drift of the plan of grace, the
aim of the covenant. Grace looks towards holiness, that there should be a people
called forth to whom Christ should be the elder brother, the firstborn among
many brethren. You certainly have not had the purpose of God fulfilled in you,
dear friend, unless you have been conformed to the image of his dear Son. "He
hath chosen us in Christ Jesus before the foundation of the world, that we
should be holy and without blame before him in love." This is the aim of
election; this is the object of redemption; this is the fruit of calling; this
is the concomitant of justification; this is the evidence of adoption; this is
the earnest of glory; that we should be holy, even as Christ is holy, and in
this respect should wear the lineaments of the Son of God. He hath given his own
Son to die for us, that we may die to sin; he has given him to live that we may
live like him. In every one of us the Father desires to see Christ, that so
Christ may be glorified in every one of us. Do you not feel this to be an
imperative necessity to be laid upon you? Would you have the Lord miss his
purpose? You are chosen of God to this end, that you should be "a chosen
generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, zealous of
good works," and what is this but that you should walk even as he walked?
Observe, again, another point of this necessity: it is necessary to the mystical
Christ that we should walk as he walked, for we are joined unto the Lord Jesus
in one body. Now, Christ cannot be made a monster that would be a blasphemous
notion. And yet if any man had eyes, ears, hands, or other members that were not
conformable to the head, he would be a strange being. The mouth of a lion, the
eye of an ox, the feathers of a bird -- these things would have no consistency
with the head of a man. We read of the image in Nebuchadnezzar's dream, that it
had a head of fine gold, but legs of iron, and feet part of iron and part of
clay. Surely, Christ's spiritual body is not compounded of such discordant
elements. No, no. He must be all of a piece. The mystical body must be the most
beautiful and precious production of God; for the church is Christ's body, "the
fulness of him that filleth all in all." And shall that mysterious fulness be
something defiled, deformed, full of sin, subject to Satan? God forbid! "As he
which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy," and as your HEAD is holy, so be
ye, as members of his body, holy too. Ought it not to be so? Does anybody raise
a question? Does not every member of Christ, by the very fact that he is joined
to him by living union, feel at once that he must walk even as Christ walked?And
this, beloved, again, must all be the fruit of the one Spirit that is in Christ
and in us. The Father anointed Christ of old with the same anointing, which
rests on us in our measure. The Holy Spirit descended upon him, and rested upon
him, and we have an unction from the same Holy One. The Spirit of God has
anointed all the chosen of God who are regenerated, and he dwelleth with them
and in them. Now, the Spirit of God in every case works to the same result. It
cannot be supposed that the Spirit of God in any case produces unholiness: the
thought were blasphemy. The fruit of the Spirit is everything that is
delightful, right, and good towards God, and generous towards man. The Spirit of
God, wherever He works, works according to the mind of God; and God is hymned as
"Holy, holy, holy," by those pure spirits who know him best. He is altogether
without spot or trace of sin, and so shall we be when the Spirit's work is done.
If, then, the Spirit of God dwell in you (and if it do not, you are not in
Christ), it must work in you conformity to Christ that you should walk even as
he walked.Perhaps further argument is not needed; but I would have true
Christians remember that this is one article of the agreement which we make with
Christ when we become his disciples. It is taken for granted that when we enter
the service of Jesus we by that act and deed undertake by his help to follow his
example. "Whosoever doth not bear his cross and come after me, cannot be my
disciple." "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, and ye shall find rest unto
your souls." You know, if any man love Christ, he must follow him: -- "If ye
love me, keep my commandments." When we took Christ's cross to be our salvation
we took it also to be our heavenly burden. When we yielded ourselves up to
Christ to be saved by him, we in spirit renounced every sin. We felt that we had
come out from under the yoke of Satan, and that we made no reserve for the lusts
of the flesh that we might obey them, but bowed our necks to the yoke of the
Lord Jesus. We put ourselves into Christ's hands unreservedly, and we said,
"Lord, sanctify me, and then use me. Take my body and all its members; take my
mind and all its faculties; take my spirit and all the new powers which thou
hast bestowed upon me with it; and let all these be thine. Reign in me; rule me
absolutely, sovereignly, always and alone. I do not ask to be my own, for I am
not my own, I am bought with a price." After we have learned the grand truth
that, "if one died for all, then all died," we infer that "Christ died for all,
that we that live might not henceforth live unto ourselves, but unto him that
died for us, and rose again." Are we not, then, to be true to this blessed
compact? "I do remember my faults this day," says one. Ay, but remember also the
vows that still engage you. Do not desire to escape from the sacred bond. This
day remember the Lord to whom you dedicated yourself in the days of your youth,
perhaps long, years ago, and again entreat him to take full possession of the
purchased possession, and hold it against all comers, for ever. So it ought to
be. He that says, "I am in him" ought also so to walk even as he walked. Obey
the sacrifice of Jesus, yield yourselves as living sacrifices; by your hope of
being saved by him put your whole being into his hands to love and serve him all
your days.For, once more, inasmuch as we are in Christ, we are now bound to live
to Christ's glory, and this is a great means of glorifying Christ. What can we
do to glorify Christ if we do not walk even as he walked? If I came and preached
to you, and if I had the tongues of men and of angels, yet if I did not seek to
do as my Master did, what avails all that I can say? It is but "sounding brass
and a tinkling cymbal." You know what men say to unholy preachers: they bid them
be silent or be consistent. Unholy ministers are a derision, and a scoff, and a
by-word. And so it is with unholy Christians, too. You may teach your children
at home, or teach them in the Sunday-school class; but if they see your lives to
be Christless, prayerless, godless, they will not learn any good from you. They
will rather learn from what you do amiss, than from what you say that is right.
Do you blame them that it is so? Are not actions far more forcible than words?
Suppose you church-members are unjust in your trade; suppose that in your common
conversation you are loose; suppose that in your acts you are licentious or
untrue; what does the world say of your Christianity? Why, it becomes to them a
thing of contempt. They sniff at it. It is so much dung and sweepings of the
street to them, and so it ought to be. In the early ages some of the worst
opponents of Christianity used to wing their shafts with the inconsistencies of
Christian professors, and they were wise in their generation. One of them said,
"Where is that catholic holiness of which we have often heard so much?" and
another said, "We heard of these people that they love their Christ, and love
other men so that they would even die for love of their brethren; but many of
them do not love as well as the heathen whom they despise." I dare say there was
a good deal of slander and scandal in what they said; but I am also afraid that,
if it were said today, there would be a vast deal of sorrowful truth in it.
Christian love is by no means so plentiful as it might be, nor holy living,
either. Is not this the thing that weakens the preaching, of the gospel -- the
want of living the gospel? If all the professed Christians who live in London
really walked as Christ walked, would not the salt have more effect upon the
corrupt mass than the stuff which is now called salt seems to have? We preach
here in the pulpit; but what can we do, unless you preach yonder at home? It is
you preaching in your shops, in your kitchens, in your nurseries, in your
parlours, in the streets, which will tell on the masses. This is the preaching
-- the best preaching in the world, for it is seen as well as heard. I heard one
say he liked to see men preach with their feet; and this is it, " they ought
also so to walk even as Christ walked." No testimony excels that which is borne
in ordinary life. Christ ought to be glorified by us, and therefore we ought to
be like him, for if we are not, we cannot glorify him, but must dishonor him.
Now, that is my first point. Consider how this obligation is proved, and when
you have weighed the argument pray the Holy Ghost to make you yield to its
gentle pressure.II. Now, secondly, CONSIDER WHEREIN THIS WALKING WITH CHRIST AS
HE WALKED CONSISTS. Here is a wide subject. I have a sea before me with as much
sailing, room as Noah in the ark. I can only just point out the direction in
which you should sail if you would make a prosperous voyage.First, brothers to
put it all together in one word, the first thing that every Christian has to see
to is holiness. I will not try at any great length to explain what that word
means, but it always sounds to me as if it explained itself. You know what
wholeness is -- a thing, without a crack, or flaw, or break; complete, entire,
uninjured, whole. Well, that is the main meaning of holy. The character of God
is perfectly holy; in it nothing is lacking; nothing is redundant. When a thing,
is complete it is whole, and this applied to moral and spiritual things gives
you the inner meaning of "holy." When a man is healthy, perfectly healthy, in
spirit, soul, and body, then he is perfectly holy; for sin is a moral disorder,
and righteousness is the right state of every faculty. The man whose spiritual
health is altogether right is right towards God, right towards himself, right
towards men, right towards time, right towards eternity. He is right towards the
first table of the law, and right towards the second table. He is an all-round
man; he is a whole man, a holy man. Truth is within him; truth is spoken by him;
truth is acted by him. Righteousness is in him; he thinks the right thing, and
chooses that which is according to the law of uprightness. There is justice in
him; he abhors that which is evil. There is goodness in him; he follows after
that which will benefit his fellow-men. I cannot spare time to tell you all that
the word "holy" means; but if you wish to see holiness, look at Christ. In him
you see a perfect character, an all-round character. He is the perfect one; be
ye like him in all holiness.We must go a little into detail; so I say, next, one
main point in which we ought to walk according to the walk of our great Exemplar
is obedience. Our Lord Jesus Christ took upon himself the form of a servant; and
what service it was that he rendered! "He was a son; yet learned he obedience by
the things that he suffered." And what obedience that dear Son of God rendered
to the Father! He did not come to do his own will, but the will of him that sent
him. He yielded himself up to come under law to God, and to do the Fathers will.
Now in this respect we ought also to walk even as he walked. We have not come
into the world to do what we like, to possess what we choose, or to say, "That
is my notion, and therefore so shall it be." Sin promised freedom, and brought
us bondage; grace now binds us, and ensures us liberty. Obedience is the law of
every spiritual nature. It is the Lord's will that in his house his word should
be the supreme law, for so only can our fallen natures be restored to their
original glory. Set the wandering stars in their spheres, and rule them by the
majestic sway of the sun, and then they will keep their happy estate, but not
else. Understanding, heart, life, lip, everything, is now to enter into the
service of God, even the Father, and it is to be ours to say, "Lord, show me
what thou wouldest have me to do." Surely, beyond any other quality, we see in
the career of the Son of God the perfection of self-abnegation. No man was ever
so truly free as Jesus, and yet no man was so fully subservient to the heavenly
will. Never saw these seas a pilot so able to steer according to his own
judgment, and never one so carefully to follow the channel as marked down in the
chart. His was the unique originality of absolute obedience. Dear friends, you
see how it ought to be with you also. It is ours to walk in cheerful
subservience to the mind of the Father, even as Jesus did. Does this strike you
as an easy thing? It is child's work, certainly; but assuredly it is not child's
play.Such a life would necessarily be one of great activity, for the life of
Jesus was intensely energetic. The life of Christ was as fall as it could hold.
After he had been developed and disciplined by thirty years of seclusion, he
showed himself among men as one moved to vehemence with love: "he was clad with
zeal as with a cloak." From the day of his baptism till his death he went about
doing good. It is wonderful what was packed into about three years: each action
had a world of meaning within its own self, and there were thousands of such
acts; each sermon was a complete revelation, and every day heard him pour forth
such sermons. His biography is made up of the essence of life. Some one remarks
that it is wonderful that he did not begin his active life when he was younger.
We reply, that it is beautiful that he did not, because he was not called to it,
and he was best obeying the Father by living in obscurity. Those thirty years at
Nazareth were thirty wonderful years of obedience -- obedience; tested by
obscurity, patience, restraint, and perhaps dulness. Who among us would find
such obedience easy? Would we not far rather rush into notice and make to
ourselves a name? Some of us, perhaps, never learned the obedience of being
quiet -- but it is a wonderful one. Oh, for more of it! Do we know the obedience
of being hidden when our light seems needed? -- the obedience of going into the
desert for forty years, like Moses, with nothing, to do but wait upon God till
God shall put us in commission? There is a wonderful service in waiting till the
order comes for us actively to be at it. Samuel said, "To obey is better than
sacrifice;" it is in fact better than anything which we can possibly present to
God. But when our Lord was at length loosed from his obscurity, with what force
he sped along his life-way. How he spent himself! It was a candle burning not
only at both ends, but altogether. He not only had zeal burning at his heart,
but, like a sheet of flame, it covered him from head to foot There is never an
idle hour in the life of Christ. It is wonderful how he sustained the toil.
Perhaps he measured out his zeal and his open industry by the fact that he was
only to be for a short time here below. It might not be possible to others that
they should do as much as he did in so short a space, because they are intended
to live longer here, and must not destroy future usefulness by present
indiscretion: but still, activity was the rule of our Master's existence. At it,
always at it, altogether at it, spending and being spent for his Father; such
was his mode of walking, among, men. Oh, friends, if we, indeed, are in him, we
ought also so to walk even. as he walked! Wake up, you lazy ones! Next, we ought
to walk as Christ did in the matter of self-denial. Of course, in this work of
self-denial we are not called to imitate Christ in offering up ourselves as a
propitiatory sacrifice. That would be a vain intrusion into things which are his
peculiar domain. The self-denials which we practise should be such as he
prescribes us. There is a will-worship which is practised in the Church of Rome
of self-denials which are absurd, and must, I think, be hateful in the sight of
God rather than pleasing to him. Saint Bernard was a man whom I admire to the
last degree, and I count him to be one of the Lord's choice ones; yet in the
early part of his life there is no doubt that he lessened his powers of
usefulness to a large extent by the emaciation which he endured, and the way in
which he brought himself to death's door. At times he was incapable of activity
by reason of the weakness which he had incurred through fasting, and colds and
exposure, There is no need to inflict useless torture upon the body. When did
the Saviour thus behave himself? Point me to a single mortification of a
needless kind. Enough self-denials come naturally in every Christian man's way
to make him try whether he can deny himself in very deed for the Lord's sake.
You are thus tested when you are put in positions where you might get gain by an
unrighteous act, or win fame by withholding a truth, or earn love and honour by
pandering to the passions of those about you. May you have grace enough to say,
"No; it cannot be. I love not myself, but my Lord. I seek not myself, but
Christ. I desire to propagate nothing but his truth, and not my own ideas": then
will you have exhibited the self-denial of Jesus. These self-denials will
sometimes be hard to flesh and blood. And then in the Church of God to be able
to give all your substance, to devote all your time, to lay out all your ability
-- this is to walk as Jesus walked. When weary and worn, still to be busy; to
deny, yourself things which may be allowable, but which if allowable to you
would be dangerous to others -- this also is like the Lord. Such self-denial as
may be helpful to the weak you ought to practise. Think what Christ would do in
such a case, and do it; and, whenever you can glorify him by denying yourself,
do it. So walk as he did who made himself of no reputation, but took upon
himself the form of a servant. and who, though he was rich, brought himself down
to poverty for our sakes, that we might be rich unto God. Think of that.Another
point in which we ought to imitate Christ most certainly is that of lowliness. I
wish that all Christians did this. When I see some Christian women dressed out
-- well, like women of the world, though not with half a worldling's taste, and
when I see men so big that they cannot speak to poor people, as if they were
made of something better than ordinary flesh and blood; when I notice a haughty,
high, hectoring disposition anywhere, it grates upon my feelings, and makes me
wonder whether these blunderers hope to go to the heaven of the lowly. The Lord
Jesus would never have been half as big as some of his followers are. What great
folk some of his disciples are, as compared with him! He was lowly, meek,
gentle, a man who so loved the souls of others that he forgot himself. You never
detect in the Lord Jesus Christ any tendency towards pride or self-exaltation.
Quite the reverse: he is ever compassionate and condescending to men of low
estate.And then note again another point, and that is his great tenderness, and
gentleness, and readiness to forgive. His dying words ought to ring in the ear
of all who find it hard to pass by affronts, "Father, forgive them, for they
know not what they do." Did he not set us an example of bearing and forbearing?
"Who, when he was reviled, reviled not again." For every curse he gave a
blessing,,. You cannot be Christians if this spirit of love is foreign to you.
"Oh," say you, "we endorse the confession." I do not care. You must love your
enemies, or you will die with the Creed in your throats. "Oh," say you, "we are
regular in our pews, hearing the gospel." I do not care; you must forgive them
that trespass against you, or you will go from your pews to perdition "Oh, but
we have been baptized, and we come to the communion." I do not care even about
that; for unless you are made meek and lowly in heart you will not find rest
unto your souls. Pride goeth not before salvation, but before destruction; and a
haughty spirit is no prophecy of elevation, but the herald of a fall. Take care,
take care, you that say that you are in Christ; you ought also to walk in all
the lowliness and in all the tenderness of Christ, or else at the end you will
be discovered to be none of his. Hard, cruel, unrelenting, iron-hearted
professors will no more go to heaven than the hogs they fatten.There is one
little big word which tells us more than all this about how Christ walked, and
that is the word "love." Jesus was incarnate love. "God is love," but God is a
spirit, therefore if you wish to see love embodied, look at Christ. He loves the
little children, and suffers them to come to him. He loves the widow, and he is
tender to her, and raises her dead son. He loves the sinners, and they draw near
to him. He loves all sinful and tempted and tried ones, and therefore he comes
to seek and to save. He loves the Father first, and then for the Father's sake
he loves the myriads of men. Do you love nobody? Do you live within yourself?
Are you immured within your own ribs? Is self all your world? Then you will go
to hell. There is no help for it; for the place of unloving spirits is the
bottomless pit. Only he that loves can live in heaven, for heaven is love: and
you cannot go to glory unless you have learned to love, and to find it your very
life to do good to those about you. Let me add to all this, that he who says
that Christ is in him ought also to live as Christ lived in secret. And how was
this?His life was spent in abounding devotion. Ah, me! I fear I shall condemn
some here when I remind them of the hymn we just now sang -- "Cold mountains and
the midnight airWitnessed the fervour of his prayer."If the perfect Christ could
not live without prayer, how can such poor imperfect ones as we are live without
it? He had no sin within him, and yet he had need to pray. He was pure and holy,
and yet he must needs wait upon God all day long, and often speak with his
Father; and then when the night came, and others went to their beds, he withdrew
himself into the wilderness and prayed. If the Lord Jesus be in you, you must
walk as he walked in that matter.And, then, think of his delight in God. How
wonderful was Christ's delight in his God! I can never think of his life as an
unhappy one. He was, it is true, "a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief";
but still there was a deep spring of wondrous happiness in the midst of his
heart, which made him always blessed; for he said to his Father, "I delight to
do thy will, my God! Yea, thy law is within heart." He delighted in God. Many a
sweet night he spent in those prayer-times of his in fellowship with the Father.
Why, it was that which prepared him for the agony of his bloody sweat, and for
the "Why hast thou forsaken me?" Those love-visits, those near and dear
communings which his holy heart had with the Father were his secret meat and
drink. And you and I also must delight in God. This charming duty is far too
much neglected. Strange that this honey should so seldom be in men's mouths!
Listen to this text, "Delight thyself also in the Lord, and he shall give thee
the desires of thine heart." Many a man says, "I should like to have the desires
of my heart" Brother, here is the royal road thereto, the King's ascent to his
treasury -- "Delight thyself also in the Lord." But, listen. it is very likely
you would not obtain the desire that is now in your heart if you did that; for
he that delights himself in God rises above the desires of the flesh and of the
mind, and comes to desire that which God desires, and therefore it is that he
wins the desire of his heart. But, oh, the pleasure, the joy, the bliss of
delighting in God! How many times have I sung to myself that last dear stanza of
the psalm, wherein the inspired poet sings -- "For yet I know I shall him
praise,Who graciously to me,The health is of my countenance,Yea, mine own God is
he."Oh, what a pleasure! "Mine own God is he." Rich men glory in wealth, famous
men in valour, great men in honour, and I in "mine own God." There is nothing
about God but what is delightful to a saint. The infinite God is infinitely
delightful to his people. Once get really to know God and to be like him, and
even his sternest attributes -- his power, his justice, his indignation against
sin -- will come to be delightful to you. Those men who are cavilling at what
God does, questioning over what God has revealed, do not know him, for to know
him is to adore him. Oh, brethren, let us find our pleasure, our treasure, our
heaven, our all, in the Lord our God, even as our Lord Jesus did. In this thing
let us walk even as he walked.I have not quite done. Dear friends, we ought to
walk in holy contentment. Jesus was perfectly content with his lot. When the
foxes had holes and the birds of the air had nests, and he had not where to lay
his head, yet he never murmured, but found rest in pursuing his life-work. The
cravings of covetousness and pinings of ambition never touched our Lord.
Friends, if you do, indeed, say that you abide in him, I pray you be of the same
contented spirit. "I have learned," said the apostle, as if it were a thing
which had to be taught, "in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be content."In a
word, Christ lived above this world; let us walk as he walked. Christ lived for
God, and for God alone; let us live after his fashion. And Christ persevered in
such living; he never turned aside from it at all; but as he lived so he died,
still serving his God, obedient to his Father's will, even unto death. May our
lives be a mosaic of perfect obedience, and our deaths the completion of the
fair design. From our Bethlehem to our Gethsemane may our walk run parallel with
the pathway of the Well-beloved! Oh, Holy Spirit, work us to this sacred
pattern!III. I close now by saying, in the last place, consider, dear friends,
WHAT IS NEEDFUL TO ALL THIS.First, it is needful to have a nature like that of
Christ. You cannot give out sweet waters so long as the fountains are impure.
"Ye must be born again." There is no walking with Jesus in newness of life
unless we have a new heart and a right spirit. See to it, dear friends, that
your nature is renewed -- that the Holy Ghost has wrought in you a resurrection
from among the dead; for, if not, your walk and conversation will savour of
death and corruption. A new creature is essential to likeness to Christ: it is
not possible that the carnal mind should wear the image of Jesus. That being
done, the next thing that is necessary is a constant anointing of the Holy
Spirit. Can any Christian here do without the Holy Spirit? Then I am afraid that
he is no Christian. But, as for us, we feel every day that we must cry for a
fresh visitation of the Spirit, a renewed sense of indwelling, a fresh anointing
from the Holy One of Israel, or else we cannot walk as Christ walked.And then,
again, there must be in us a strong resolve that we will walk as Christ walked;
for our Lord himself did not lead in that holy life without stern resolution. He
set his face like a flint that he would do the right; and he did the right. Do
not, I pray you, be led astray by thoughtlessly following your fellow-men: it is
a poor, sheepish business, that running in crowds. Dare to be singular dare to
stand alone. Stand to it firmly that you will follow Christ. A Christian man in
a discussion attempted to defend the truth, but his opponent grew angry, and
cried out vehemently again and again, "Hear me! Hear me!" At last the good man
answered, "No, I shall not hear you, nor shall you hear me; but let us both sit
down and hear the word of the Lord." And that is the thing to do, brethren, to
be hearing Christ and following him; not I to learn of you, nor you of me, but
both of Christ: so shall we end all controversy in a blessed agreement at his
feet. God help us to get there.And so, once again, I add that if we want to walk
as Christ walked, we must have much communion with him. We cannot possibly get
to be like Christ except by being with him. I wish that we could rise to be so
much like the Saviour that we should resemble a certain ancient saint who died a
martyr's death, to whom the world said, "What are you?" He said, "I am a
Christian." They asked, , What trade do you follow?" And he said, "I am a
Christian." They inquired, "What language do you speak?" And he said, "I am a
Christian." "But what treasures have you?" said they; and he replied, "I am a
Christian." They asked him what friends he had, and he said, "I am a Christian;"
for all he was, and all he had, and all he wished to be, and all he hoped to be,
were all wrapped up in Christ. If you live with Christ you will be absorbed by
him, and he will embrace the whole of your existence: and, in consequence, your
walk will be like his.Take care that you do not in all things copy any but
Christ; for if I set my watch by the watch of one of my friends, and be sets his
watch by that of another friend, we may all be wrong together. If we shall, each
one, take his time from the sun, we shall all be right. There is nothing like
going to.the fountain-head. Take your lessons in holiness, not from a poor
erring disciple, but from the infallible Master. God help you to do so.A person
has written to me this morning to say that he has painted my portrait, but that
he cannot finish it until he sees me. I should think not. Certainly you cannot
paint a portrait of Christ in your own life unless you see him -- see him
clearly, see him continually. You may have it general notion of what Christ is
like, and you may put a good deal of colour into your copy; but I am sure you
will fail unless you see the grand original. You must get to commune with Jesus.
You know what we did when we went to school. Our schoolmasters were not quite so
wise then as schoolmasters are now. They wrote at the top of the page a certain
line for us to follow, and a poor following it was. When I wrote my first line I
copied the writing-master's model, but when I wrote the next line I copied my
copy of the top line; so that when I reached the bottom of the page I produced a
copy of my copy of my copy of my copy of the top line. Thus my handwriting fed
upon itself, and was nothing bettered but rather grew worse. So one man copies
Christ, perhaps; a friend who hears him preach copies him, and his wife at home
copies the hearer, and somebody copies her; and so it goes on all down the line,
till we all miss that glorious hand-writing which Jesus has come to teach us.
Keep your eye on Christ, dear brother. Never mind me: never mind your friend:
never mind the old doctor that you have been hearing so long. Look to Jesus, and
to him alone. We have had our sects and our divisions all through that copying
of the lines of the boys, instead of looking to the top-line that the Master
wrote. "He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk even as he
walked" May the Spirit of God cause us to do it! Amen and Amen.PORTION OF
SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON -- 1 John 2.HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK." -- 425,
262, 646.


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  CHAPTER 6: THE DOCTRINES OF GRACE DO NOT LEAD TO SIN
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A Sermon (No.1735) Delivered on Lord's Day Morning, August 19th, 1883, by C. H.
SPURGEON, At Exeter-Hall. "For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are
not under the law, but under grace. What then? shall we sin, because we are not
under the law, but under grace? God forbid." -- Romans 6:14, 15. Last Sabbath
morning I tried to show that the substance and essence of the true gospel is the
doctrine of God's grace -- that, in fact, if you take away the grace of God from
the gospel you have extracted from it its very life-blood, and there is nothing
left worth preaching, worth believing, or worth contending for. Grace is the
soul of the gospel: without it the gospel is dead. Grace is the music of the
gospel: without it the gospel is silent as to all comfort. I endeavoured also to
set forth the doctrine of grace in brief terms, teaching that God deals with
sinful men upon the footing of pure mercy: finding them guilty and condemned, he
gives free pardons, altogether irrespective of past character, or of any good
works which may be foreseen. Moved only by pity he devises a plan for their
rescue from sin and its consequences -- a plan in which grace is the leading
feature. Out of free favour he has provided, in the death of his dear Son, an
atonement by means of which his mercy can be justly bestowed. He accepts all
those who place their trust in this atonement, selecting faith as the way of
salvation, that it may be all of grace. In this he acts, from a motive found
within himself, and not because of any reason found in the sinner's conduct,
past, present, or future. I tried to show that this grace of God flows towards
the sinner from of old, and begins its operations upon him when there is nothing
good in him: it works in him that which is good and acceptable, and continues so
to work in him till the deed of grace is complete, and the believer is received
up into the glory for which he is made meet. Grace commences to save, and it
perseveres till all is done. From first to last, from the "A" to the "Z" of the
heavenly alphabet, everything in salvation is of grace, and grace alone; all is
of free favour, nothing of merit. "By grace are ye saved through faith; and that
not of yourselves; it is the gift of God," "So then it is not of him that
willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy." No sooner is
this doctrine set forth in a clear light than men begin to cavil at it. It is
the target for all carnal logic to shoot at. Unrenewed minds never did like it,
and they never will; it is so humbling to human pride, making so light of the
nobility of human nature. That men are to be saved by divine charity, that they
must as condemned criminals receive pardon by the exercise of the royal
prerogative, or else perish in their sins, is a teaching which they cannot
endure. God alone is exalted in the sovereignty of his mercy; and the sinner can
do no better than meekly touch the silver scepter, and accept undeserved favour
just because God wills to give it: -- this is not pleasant to the great minds of
our philosophers, and the broad phylacteries of our moralists, and therefore
they turn aside, and fight against the empire of grace. Straightway the
unrenewed man seeks out artillery with which to fight against the gospel of the
grace of God, and one of the biggest guns he has ever brought to the front is
the declaration that the doctrine of the grace of God must lead to
licentiousness. If great sinners are freely saved, then men will more readily
become great sinners; and if when God's grace regenerates a man it abides with
him, then men will infer that they may live as they like, and yet be saved. This
is the constantly-repeated objection which I have heard till it wearies me with
its vain and false noise. I am almost ashamed to have to refute so rotten an
argument. They dare to assert that men will take license to be guilty because
God is gracious, and they do not hesitate to say that if men are not to be saved
by their works they will come to the conclusion that their conduct is a matter
of indifference, and that they may as well sin that grace may abound. This
morning I want to talk a little about this notion; for in part it is a great
mistake, and in part it is a great lie. In part it is a mistake because it
arises from misconception, and in part it is a lie because men know better, or
might know better if they pleased. I begin by admitting that the charge does
appear somewhat probable. It does seem very likely that if we are to go up and
down the country, and say, "The very chief of sinners may be forgiven through
believing in Jesus Christ, for God is displaying mercy to the very vilest of the
vile," then sin will seem to be a cheap thing. If we are everywhere to cry,
"Come, ye sinners, come and welcome, and receive free and immediate pardon
through the sovereign grace of God," it does seem probable that some may basely
reply, "Let us sin without stint, for we can easily obtain forgiveness." But
that which looks to be probable is not, therefore, certain: on the contrary, the
improbable and the unexpected full often come to pass. In questions of moral
influence nothing is more deceptive than theory. The ways of the human mind are
not to be laid down with a pencil and compasses; man is a singular being. Even
that which is logical is not always inevitable, for men's minds are not governed
by the rules of the schools. I believe that the inference which would lead men
to sin because grace reigns is not logical, but the very reverse; and I venture
to assert that, as a matter of fact, ungodly men do not, as a rule plead the
grace of God as an excuse for their sin. As a rule they are too indifferent to
care about reasons at all; and if they do offer an excuse it is usually more
flimsy and superficial. There may be a few men of perverse minds who have used
this argument, but there is no accounting for the freaks of the fallen
understanding. I shrewdly suspect that in any cases in which such reasoning has
been put forward it was a mere pretence, and by no means a plea which satisfied
the sinner's own conscience. If men do thus excuse themselves, it is generally
in some veiled manner, for the most of them would be utterly ashamed to state
the argument in plain terms. I question whether the devil himself would be found
reasoning thus -- "God is merciful, therefore let us be more sinful." It is so
diabolical an inference, that I do not like to charge my fellow-men with it,
though our moralist opposers do not hesitate thus to degrade them. Surely, no
intelligent being can really persuade itself that the goodness of God is a
reason for offending him more than ever. Moral insanity produces strange
reasonings, but it is my solemn conviction that very rarely do men practically
consider the grace of God to be a motive for sin. That which seems so probable
at the first blush, is not so when we come to consider it. I have admitted that
a few human beings have turned the grace of God into lasciviousness; but I trust
no one will ever argue against any doctrine on account of the perverse use made
of it by the baser sort. Cannot every truth be perverted? Is there a single
doctrine of Scripture which graceless hands have not twisted into mischief? Is
there not an almost infinite ingenuity in wicked men for making evil out of
good? If we are to condemn a truth because of the misbehaviour of individuals
who profess to believe it, we should be found condemning our Lord himself for
what Judas did, and our holy faith would die at the hands of apostates and
hypocrites. Let us act like rational men. We do not find fault with ropes
because poor insane creatures have hanged themselves therewith; nor do we ask
that the wares of Sheffield may be destroyed because edged tools are the
murderer's instruments. It may appear probable that the doctrine of free grace
will be made into a license for sin, but a better acquaintance with the curious
working of the human mind corrects the notion. Fallen as human nature is, it is
still human, and therefore does not take kindly to certain forms of evil --
such, for instance, as inhuman ingratitude. It is hardly human to multiply
injuries upon those who return us continued benefits. The case reminds me of the
story of half-a-dozen boys who had severe fathers, accustomed to flog them
within an inch of their lives. Another boy was with them who was tenderly
beloved by his parents, and known to do so. These young gentlemen met together
to hold a council of war about robbing an orchard. They were all of them anxious
to get about it except the favoured youth, who did not enjoy the proposal. One
of them cried out, "You need not be afraid: if our fathers catch us at this
work, we shall be half-killed, but your father won't lay a hand upon you." The
little boy answered, "And do you think because my father is kind to me, that
therefore I will do wrong and grieve him? I will do nothing of the sort to my
dear father. He is so good to me that I cannot vex him." It would appear that
the argument of the many boys was not overpoweringly convincing to their
companion: the opposite conclusion was quite as logical, and evidently carried
weight with it. If God is good to the undeserving, some men will go into sin,
but there are others of a nobler order whom the goodness of God leadeth to
repentance. They scorn the beast-like argument -- that the more loving God is,
the more rebellious we may be; and they feel that against a God of goodness it
is an evil thing to rebel.By-the-way I cannot help observing that I have known
persons object to the evil influence of the doctrines of grace who were by no
means qualified by their own morality to be judges of the subject. Morals must
be in a poor way when immoral persons become their guardians. The doctrine of
justification by faith is frequently objected to as injurious to morals. A
newspaper some time ago quoted a verse from one of our popular hymns -- "Weary,
working, plodding one,Why toil you so?Cease your doing; all was doneLong, long
ago."Till to Jesus' work you clingBy a simple faith,'Doing' is a deadly
thing,'Doing' ends in death."This is styled mischievous teaching. When I read
the article I felt a deep interest in this corrector of Luther and Paul, and I
wondered how much he had drunk in order to elevate his mind to such a pitch of
theological knowledge. I have found men pleading against the doctrines of grace
on the ground that they did not promote morality, to whom I could have justly
replied, "What has morality to do with you, or you with it?" These sticklers for
good works are not often the doers of them. Let legalists look to their own
hands and tongues, and leave the gospel of grace and its advocates to answer for
themselves.Looking back in history, I see upon its pages a refutation of the
oft-repeated calumny. Who dares to suggest that the men who believed in the
grace of God have been sinners above other sinners? With all their faults, those
who throw stones at them will be few if they first prove themselves to be their
superiors in character. When have they been the patrons of vice, or the
defenders of injustice? Pitch upon the point in English history when this
doctrine was very strong in the land; who were the men that held these doctrines
most firmly? Men like Owen, Charnock, Manton, Howe, and I hesitate not to add
Oliver Cromwell. What kind of men were these? Did they pander to the
licentiousness of a court? Did they invent a Book of Sports for Sabbath
diversion? Did they haunt ale-houses and places of revelry? Every historian will
tell you, the greatest fault of these men in the eyes of their enemies was that
they were too precise for the generation in which they lived, so that they
called them Puritans, and condemned them as holding a gloomy theology. Sirs, if
there was iniquity in the land in that day, it was to be found with the
theological party which preached up salvation by works. The gentlemen with their
womanish locks and essenced hair, whose speech savoured of profanity, were the
advocates of salvation by works, and all bedabbled with lust they pleaded for
human merit; but the men who believed in grace alone were of another style. They
were not in the chambers of rioting and wantonness; where were they? They might
be found on their knees crying to God for help in temptation; and in persecuting
times they might be found in prison, cheerfully suffering the loss of all things
for the truth's sake. The Puritans were the godliest men on the face of the
earth. Are men so inconsistent as to nickname them for their purity, and yet say
that their doctrines lead to sin?Nor is this a solitary instance -- this
instance of Puritanism; all history confirms the rule: and when it is said that
these doctrines will create sin, I appeal to facts, and leave the oracle to
answer as it may. If we are ever to see a pure and godly England we must have a
gospelized England: if we are to put down drunkenness and the social evil it
must be by the proclamation of the grace of God. Men must be forgiven by grace,
renewed by grace, transformed by grace, sanctified by grace, preserved by grace;
and when that comes to pass the golden age will dawn; but while they are merely
taught their duty, and left to do it of themselves in their own strength, it is
labour in vain. You may flog a dead horse a long while before it will stir: you
need to put life into it, for else all your flogging will fail. To teach men to
walk who have no feet is poor work, and such is instruction in morals before
grace gives a heart to love holiness. The gospel alone supplies men with motive
and strength, and therefore it is to the gospel that we must look as the real
reformer of men. I shall fight this morning with the objection before us as I
shall find strength. The doctrine of grace, the whole plan of salvation by
grace, is most promotive of holiness. Wherever it comes it helps us to say, "God
forbid," to the question, "Shall we sin, because we are not under the law, but
under grace?" This I would set out in the clear sunlight.I wish to call your
attention to some six or seven points.I. First, you will see that the gospel of
the grace of God promotes real holiness in men by remembering that THE SALVATION
WHICH IT BRINGS IS SALVATION FROM THE POWER OF SIN. When we preach salvation to
the vilest of men, some suppose we mean by that a mere deliverance from hell and
an entrance into heaven. It includes all that, and results in that, but that is
not what we mean. What we mean by salvation is this -- deliverance from the love
of sin, rescue from the habit of sin, setting free from the desire to sin. Now
listen. If it be so, that that boon of deliverance from sin is the gift of
divine grace, in what way will that gift, or the free distribution of it,
produce sin? I fail to see any such danger. On the contrary, I say to the man
who proclaims a gracious promise of victory over sin, "Make all speed: go up and
down throughout the world, and tell the vilest of mankind that God is willing by
his grace to set them free from the love of sin and to make new creatures of
them." Suppose the salvation we preach be this: -- you that have lived ungodly
and wicked lives may enjoy your sins, and yet escape the penalty -- that would
be mischievous indeed; but if it be this, -- you that live the most ungodly and
wicked lives may yet by believing in the Lord Jesus be enabled to change those
lives, so that you shall live unto God instead of serving sin and Satan, -- what
harm can come to the most prudish morals? Why, I say spread such a gospel, and
let it circulate through every part of our vast empire, and let all men hear it,
whether they rule in the House of Lords or suffer in the house of bondage. Tell
them everywhere that God freely and of infinite grace is willing to renew men,
and make them new creatures in Christ Jesus. Can any evil consequences come of
the freest proclamation of this news? The worse men are, the more gladly would
we see them embracing this truth, for these are they who most need it. I say to
every one of you, whoever you may be, whatever your past condition, God can
renew you according to the power of his grace; so that you who are to him like
dead, dry bones, can be made to live by his Spirit. That renewal will be seen in
holy thoughts, and pure words, and righteous acts to the glory of God. In great
love he is prepared to work all these things in all who believe. Why should any
men be angry at such a statement? What possible harm can come of it? I defy the
most cunning adversary to object, upon the ground of morals, to God's giving men
new hearts and right spirits even as he pleases.II. Secondly, let it not be
forgotten as a matter of fact that THE PRINCIPLE OF LOVE HAS BEEN FOUND TO
POSSESS VERY GREAT POWER OVER MEN. In the infancy of history nations dream that
crime can be put down by severity, and they rely upon fierce punishments; but
experience corrects the error. Our forefathers dreaded forgery, which is a
troublesome fraud, and interferes with the confidence which should exist between
man and man. To put it down they made forgery a capital offence. Alas for the
murders committed by that law! Yet the constant use of the gallows was never
sufficient to stamp out the crime. Many offences have been created and
multiplied by the penalty which was meant to suppress them. Some offences have
almost ceased when the penalty against them has been lightened.It is a notable
fact as to men, that if they are forbidden to do a thing they straightway pine
to do it, though they had never thought of doing it before. Law commands
obedience, but does not promote it; it often creates disobedience, and an
over-weighted penalty has been known to provoke an offence. Law fails, but love
wins.Love in any case makes sin infamous. If one should rob another it would be
sufficiently bad; but suppose a man robbed his friend, who had helped him often
when he was in need, everyone would say that his crime was most disgraceful.
Love brands sin on the forehead with a red-hot iron. If a man should kill an
enemy, the offence would be grievous; but if he slew his father, to whom he owes
his life, or his mother, on whose breasts he was nursed in infancy, then all
would cry out against the monster. In the light of love sin is seen to be
exceeding sinful.Nor is this all. Love has a great constraining power towards
the highest form of virtue. Deeds to which a man could not be compelled on the
ground of law, men have cheerfully done because of love. Would our brave seamen
man the life-boat to obey an Act of Parliament? No, they would indignantly
revolt against being forced to risk their lives; but they will do it freely to
save their fellow-men. Remember that text of the apostle, "Scarcely for a
righteous (or merely just) man will one die: yet peradventure," says he, "for a
good (benevolent) man some would even dare to die." Goodness wins the heart, and
one is ready to die for the kind and generous. Look how men have thrown away
their lives for great leaders. That was an immortal saying of the wounded French
soldier. When searching for the bullet the surgeon cut deeply, and the patient
cried out, "A little lower and you will touch the Emperor," meaning that the
Emperor's name was written on his heart. In several notable instances men have
thrown themselves into the jaws of death to save a leader whom they loved. Duty
holds the fort, but love casts its body in the way of the deadly bullet. Who
would think of sacrificing his life on the ground of law? Love alone counts not
life so dear as the service of the beloved. Love to Jesus creates a heroism of
which law knows nothing. All the history of the church of Christ, when it has
been true to its Lord, is a proof of this. Kindness also, working by the law of
love, has often changed the most unworthy, and therein proved that it is not a
factor of evil. We have often heard the story of the soldier who had been
degraded to the ranks, and flogged and imprisoned, and yet for all that he would
get drunk and misbehave himself. The commanding officer said one day, "I have
tried almost everything with this man, and can do nothing with him. I will try
one thing more." When he was brought in, the officer addressed him, and said,
"You seem incorrigible: we have tried everything with you; there seems to be no
hope of a change in your wicked conduct. I am determined to try if another plan
will have any effect. Though you deserve flogging and long imprisonment, I shall
freely forgive you." The man was greatly moved by the unexpected and undeserved
pardon, and became a good soldier. The story wears truth on its brow: we all see
that it would probably end so.That anecdote is such good argument that I will
give you another. A drunkard woke up one morning from his drunken sleep, with
his clothes on him just as he had rolled down the night before. He saw his only
child, his daughter Millie, getting his breakfast. Coming to his senses he said
to her, "Millie, why do you stay with me?" She answered, "Because you are my
father, and because I love you." He looked at himself, and saw what a sottish,
ragged, good-for-nothing creature he was, and he answered her, "Millie, do you
really love me?" The child cried, "Yes, father, I do, and I will never leave
you, because when mother died she said, Millie, stick to your father, and always
pray for him, and one of these days he will give up drink, and be a good father
to you'; so I will never leave you." Is it wonderful when I add that, as the
story has it, Millie's father cast away his drink, and became a Christian man?
It would have been more remarkable if he had not. Millie was trying free grace,
was she not? According to our moralists she should have said, "Father, you are a
horrible wretch! I have stuck to you long enough: I must now leave you, or else
I shall be encouraging other fathers to get drunk." Under such proper dealing I
fear Millie's father would have continued a drunkard till he drank himself into
perdition. But the power of love made a better man of him. Do not these
instances prove that undeserved love has a great influence for good?Hear another
story: In the old persecuting times there lived in Cheapside one who feared God
and attended the secret meetings of the saints; and near him there dwelt a poor
cobbler, whose wants were often relieved by the merchant; but the poor man was a
cross-grained being, and, most ungratefully, from hope of reward, laid an
information against his kind friend on the score of religion. This accusation
would have brought the merchant to death by burning if he had not found a means
of escape. Returning to his house, the injured man did not change his generous
behaviour to the malignant cobbler, but, on the contrary, was more liberal than
ever. The cobbler was, however, in an ill mood, and avoided the good man with
all his might, running away at his approach. One day he was obliged to meet him
face to face, and the Christian man asked him gently, "Why do you shun me? I am
not your enemy. I know all that you did to injure me, but I never had an angry
thought against you. I have helped you, and I am willing to do so as long as I
live, only let us be friends." Do you marvel that they clasped hands? Would you
wonder if ere long the poor man was found at the Lollards' meeting? All such
anecdotes rest upon the assured fact that grace has a strange subduing power,
and leads men to goodness, drawing them with cords of love, and bands of a man.
The Lord knows that bad as men are the key of their hearts hangs on the nail of
love. He knows that his almighty goodness, though often baffled, will triumph in
the end. I believe my point is proved. To myself it is so. However, we must pass
on.III. There is no fear that the doctrine of the grace of God will lead men to
sin, because ITS OPERATIONS ARE CONNECTED WITH A SPECIAL REVELATION OF THE EVIL
OF SIN. Iniquity is made to be exceeding bitter before it is forgiven or when it
is forgiven. When God begins to deal with a man with a view of blotting out his
sins and making him his child, he usually causes him to see his evil ways in all
their heinousness; he makes him look on sin with fixed eyes, till he cries with
David, "My sin is ever before me." In my own case, when under conviction of sin,
no cheering object met my mental eye, my soul saw only darkness and a horrible
tempest. It seemed as though a horrible spot were painted on my eyeballs. Guilt,
like a grim chamberlain, drew the curtains of my bed, so that I rested not, but
in my slumbers anticipated the wrath to come. I felt that I had offended God,
and that this was the most awful thing a human being could do. I was out of
order with my Creator, out of order with the universe; I had damned myself for
ever, and I wondered that I did not immediately feel the gnawing of the undying
worm. Even to this hour a sight of sin causes the most dreadful emotions in my
heart. Any man or woman here who has passed through that experience, or anything
like it, will henceforth feel a deep horror of sin. A burnt child dreads the
fire. "No," says the sinner to his tempter, "you once deceived me, and I so
smarted in consequence, that I will not again be deluded. I have been delivered,
like a brand from the burning, and I cannot go back to the fire." By the
operations of grace we are made weary of sin; we loathe both it and its
imaginary pleasures. We would utterly exterminate it from the soil of our
nature. It is a thing accursed, even as Amalek was to Israel. If you, my friend,
do not detest every sinful thing, I fear you are still in the gall of
bitterness; for one of the sure fruits of the Spirit is a love of holiness, and
a loathing of every false way. A deep inward experience forbids the child of God
to sin: he has known within himself its judgment and its condemnation, and
henceforth it is a thing abhorrent to him. An enmity both fierce and endless
exists between the chosen seed and the serpent brood of evil: hence the fear
that grace will be abused is abundantly safeguarded. IV. Remember also that not
only is the forgiven man thus set against sin by the process of conviction, but
EVERY MAN WHO TASTES OF THE SAVING GRACE OF GOD IS MADE A NEW CREATURE IN CHRIST
JESUS. Now if the doctrine of grace in the hands of an ordinary man might be
dangerous, yet it would cease to be so in the hands of one who is quickened by
the Spirit, and created anew in the image of God. The Holy Spirit comes upon the
chosen one, and transforms him: his ignorance is removed, his affections are
changed, his understanding is enlightened, his will is subdued, his desires are
refined, his life is changed -- in fact, he is as one new-born, to whom all
things have become new. This change is compared in Scripture to the resurrection
from the dead, to a creation, and to a new birth. This takes place in every man
who becomes a partaker of the free grace of God. "Ye must be born again," said
Christ to Nicodemus; and gracious men are born again. One said the other day,
"If I believed that I was eternally saved, I should live in sin." Perhaps you
would; but if you were renewed in heart you would not. "But," says one, "if I
believed God loved me from before the foundation of the world, and that
therefore I should be saved, I would take a full swing of sin." Perhaps you and
the devil would; but God's regenerate children are not of so base a nature. To
them the abounding grace of the Father is a bond to righteousness which they
never think of breaking: they feel the sweet constraints of sacred gratitude,
and desire to perfect holiness in the fear of the Lord. All beings live
according to their nature, and the regenerated man works out the holy instincts
of his renewed mind: crying after holiness, warring against sin, labouring to be
pure in all things, the regenerate man puts forth all his strength towards that
which is pure and perfect. A new heart makes all the difference. Given a new
nature, and then all the propensities run in a different way, and the blessings
of almighty love no longer involve peril, but suggest the loftiest
aspirations.V. One of the chief securities for the holiness of the pardoned is
found in the way of CLEANSING THROUGH ATONEMENT. The blood of Jesus sanctifies
as well as pardons. The sinner learns that his free pardon cost the life of his
best Friend; that in order to his salvation the Son of God himself agonized even
to a bloody sweat, and died forsaken of his God. This causes a sacred mourning
for sin, as he looks upon the Lord whom he pierced. Love to Jesus burns within
the pardoned sinner's breast, for the Lord is his Redeemer; and therefore he
feels a burning indignation against the murderous evil of sin. To him all manner
of evil is detestable, since it is stained with the Saviour's heart's blood. As
the penitent sinner hears the cry of, "Eloi, sabachthani!" he is horrified to
think that one so pure and good should be forsaken of heaven because of the sin
which he bore in his people's stead. From the death of Jesus the mind draws the
conclusion that sin is exceedingly sinful in the sight of the Lord; for if
eternal justice would not spare even the Well-beloved Jesus when imputed sin was
upon him, how much less will it spare guilty men? It must be a thing unutterably
full of poison which could make even the immaculate Jesus suffer so terribly.
Nothing can be imagined which can have greater power over gracious minds than
the vision of a crucified Saviour denouncing sin by all his wounds, and by every
falling drop of blood. What! live in the sin which slew Jesus? Find pleasure in
that which wrought his death? Trifle with that which laid his glory in the dust?
Impossible! Thus you see that the gifts of free grace, when handed down by a
pierced hand, are never likely to suggest self-indulgence in sin, but the very
reverse.VI. Sixthly, a man who becomes a partaker of divine grace, and receives
the new nature, is ever afterwards A PARTAKER OF DAILY HELPS FROM GOD'S HOLY
SPIRIT. God the Holy Ghost deigns to dwell in the bosom, of every man whom God
has saved by his grace. Is not that a wonderful means of sanctifying? By what
process can men be better kept from sin than by having the Holy Spirit himself
to dwell as Vice-regent within their hearts? The Ever- blessed Spirit leads
believers to be much in prayer, and what a power for holiness is found in the
child of grace speaking to the heavenly Father! The tempted man flies to his
chamber, unbosoms his grief to God, looks to the flowing wounds of his Redeemer,
and comes down strong to resist temptation. The divine word also, with its
precepts and promises, is a never-failing source of sanctification. Were it not
that we every day bathe in the sacred fountain of eternal strength we might soon
be weak and irresolute; but fellowship with God renews us in our vigorous
warfare with sin. How is it possible that the doctrines of grace should suggest
sin to men who constantly draw near to God? The renewed man is also by God's
Spirit frequently quickened in conscience; so that things which heretofore did
not strike him as sinful are seen in a clearer light, and are consequently
condemned. I know that certain matters are sinful to me today which did not
appear so ten years ago: my judgment has, I trust, been more and more cleared of
the blindness of sin. The natural conscience is callous and hard; but the
gracious conscience grows more and more tender till at last it becomes as
sensitive as a raw wound. He who has most grace is most conscious of his need of
more grace. The gracious are often afraid to put one foot before another for
fear of doing wrong. Have you not felt this holy fear, this sacred caution? It
is by this means that the Holy Spirit prevents your ever turning your Christian
liberty into licentiousness, or daring to make the grace of God an argument for
folly. Then, in addition to this, the good Spirit leads us into high and
hallowed intercourse with God, and I defy a man to live upon the mount with God,
and then come down to transgress like men of the world. If thou hast walked the
palace floor of glory, and seen the King in his beauty, till the light of his
countenance has been thy heaven, thou canst not be content with the gloom and
murkiness of the tents of wickedness. To lie, to deceive, to feign, as the men
of the world do, will no longer beseem thee. Thou art of another race, and thy
conversation is above them: "Thy speech betrayeth thee." If thou dost indeed
dwell with God, the perfume of the ivory palaces will be about thee, and men
will know that thou hast been in other haunts than theirs. If the child of God
goes wrong in any degree, he loses to some extent the sweetness of his
communion, and only as he walks carefully with God does he enjoy full
fellowship; so that this rising or falling in communion becomes a sort of
parental discipline in the house of the Lord. We have no court with a judge, but
we have home with its fatherhood, its smile and its rod. We lack not for order
in the family of love, for our Father dealeth with us as with sons. Thus, in a
thousand ways, all danger of our presuming upon the grace of God is effectually
removed.VII. THE ENTIRE ELEVATION OF THE MAN WHO IS MADE A PARTAKER OF THE GRACE
OF GOD is also a special preservative against sin. I venture to say, though it
may be controverted, that the man who believes the glorious doctrines of grace
is usually a much higher style of man than the person who has no opinion upon
the matter. What do most men think about? Bread-and-butter, house-rent and
clothes. But the men who consider the doctrines of the gospel muse upon the
everlasting covenant, predestination, immutable love, effectual calling, God in
Christ Jesus, the work of the Spirit, justification, sanctification, adoption,
and such like noble themes. Why, it is a refreshment merely to look over the
catalogue of these grand truths! Others are as children playing with little
sand-heaps on the seashore; but the believer in free grace walks among hills and
mountains. The themes of thought around him tower upward, Alps on Alps; the
man's mental stature rises with his surroundings, and he becomes a thoughtful
being, communing with sublimities. No small matter this, for a thing so apt to
grovel as the average human intellect. So far as deliverance from mean vices and
degrading lusts must in this way be promoted, I say, it is no small thing.
Thoughtlessness is the prolific mother of iniquity. It is a hopeful sign when
minds begin to roam among lofty truths. The man who has been taught of God to
think will not so readily sin as the being whose mind is buried beneath his
flesh. The man has now obtained a different view of himself from that which led
him to trifle away his time with the idea that there was nothing better for him
than to be merry while he could. He says, "I am one of God's chosen, ordained to
be his son, his heir, joint-heir with Jesus Christ. I am set apart to be a king
and priest unto God, and as such I cannot be godless, nor live for the common
objects of life." He rises in the object of his pursuit: he cannot henceforth
live unto himself, for he is not his own, he is bought with a price. Now he
dwells in the presence of God, and life to him is real, earnest, and sublime. He
cares not to scrape together gold with the muck-rake of the covetous, for he is
immortal, and must needs seek eternal gains. He feels that he is born for divine
purposes, and enquires "Lord, what wouldst thou have me to do?" He feels that
God has loved him that his love may flow forth to others. God's choice of any
one man has a bearing upon all the rest: he elects a Joseph that a whole family,
a whole nation, nay, the whole world, may be preserved alive when famine had
broken the staff of bread. We are each one as a lamp kindled that we may shine
in the dark, and light up other lamps.New hopes come crowding on the man who is
saved by grace. His immortal spirit enjoys glimpses of the endless. As God has
loved him in time, he believes that the like love will bless him in eternity. He
knows that his Redeemer lives, and that in the latter days he shall behold him;
and therefore he has no fears for the future. Even while here below he begins to
sing the songs of the angels, for his spirit spies from afar the dawn of the
glory which is yet to be revealed. Thus with joyous heart and light footstep he
goes forward to the unknown future as merrily as to a wedding-feast.Is there a
sinner here, a guilty sinner, one who has no merit, no claim to mercy whatever;
is there one willing to be saved by God's free grace through believing in Jesus
Christ? Then let me tell thee, sinner, there is not a word in God's book against
thee, not a line or syllable, but everything is in thy favour. "This is a
faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners," even the chief. Jesus came into the world to save thee.
Only do thou trust him, and rest in him. I will tell thee what ought to fetch
thee to Christ at once, it is the thought of his amazing love. A profligate son
had been a great grief to his father; he had robbed him and disgraced him, and
at last he ended by bringing his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. He was a
horrible wretch of a son: no one could have been more graceless. However, he
attended his father's funeral, and he stayed to hear the will read: perhaps it
was the chief reason why he was there. He had fully made up his mind that his
father would cut him off with a shilling, and he meant to make it very
unpleasant for the rest of the family. To his great astonishment, as the will
was read it ran something like this: "As for my son Richard, though he has
fearfully wasted my substance, and though he has often grieved my heart, I would
have him know that I consider him still to be my own dear child, and therefore,
in token of my undying love, I leave him the same share as the rest of his
brothers." He left the room; he could not stand it, the surprising love of his
father had mastered him. He came down to the executor the next morning, and
said, "You surely did not read correctly?" "Yes I did; there it stands." "Then,"
he said, "I feel ready to curse myself that I ever grieved my dear old father.
Oh, that I could fetch him back again!" Love was born in that base heart by an
unexpected display of love. May not your case be similar? Our Lord Jesus Christ
is dead, but he has left it in his will that the chief of sinners are objects of
his choicest mercy. Dying he prayed, "Father, forgive them." Risen he pleads for
transgressors. Sinners are ever on his mind: their salvation is his great
object. His blood is for them, his heart for them, his righteousness for them,
his heaven for them. Come, O ye guilty ones, and receive your legacy. Put out
the hand of faith and grasp your portion. Trust Jesus with your souls, and he
will save you. God bless you. Amen. PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON --
Romans 6.HYMNS FROM "OUR OWN HYMN BOOK" -- 136, 980 645.


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