Charles Spurgeon's Sermons

Love's Labours


A Sermon
(No. 1617)

Delivered on Lord's-Day Morning, September 4th, 1881, by
C. H. SPURGEON,

At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington

"Charity beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."—1 Corinthians 13:7.

THE grace of charity, or love, of which so much is most admirably spoken in this chapter, is absolutely essential to true godliness. So essential is it that, if we have everything beside, but have not charity, it profiteth us nothing. The absence of charity is absolutely fatal to vital godliness; so saith the Holy Ghost in this chapter. When, then, you read the apostle's high encomiums of charity, do not say, "This is a fancy virtue to which certain special saints have attained, and we are bound to admire them for it, but we need not imitate them." Far from it. This charity is the common, everyday livery of the people of God. It is not the prerogative of a few; it must be the possession of all. Do not, therefore, however lofty the model may be, look up to it as though you could not reach it: you must reach it. It is put before you not only as a thing greatly desirable, but as absolutely needful; for if you excelled in every spiritual gift, yet if you had not this all the rest would profit you nothing whatever. One would think that such excellent gifts might benefit us a little, but no, the apostle sums them all up, and saith of the whole, "it profiteth me nothing." I pray that this may be understood of us at the very beginning, lest we should manage to slip away from the truth taught us by the Holy Ghost in this place, and should excuse ourselves from being loving by the notion that we are so inconsiderable that such high virtue cannot be required of us, or so feeble that we cannot be expected to attain to it. You must attain it, or you cannot enter into eternal life, for if any man have not the Spirit of Christ he is none of his, and the Spirit of Christ is sure to beget the charity of our text, which "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things."
What does this teach us at the outset, but that a salvation which leads to this must be of God, and must be wrought in us by his power? Such a comely grace can never grow out of our fallen nature. Shall such a clean thing as this be brought out of an unclean? This glorious salvation unto pure love must be grasped by faith, and wrought in us by the operation of the Spirit of God. If we consider salvation to be a little thing, we bring it, as it were, within the sphere of human possibility, but if we set it forth in its true proportions as involving the possession of a pure, loving, elevated state of heart, then we perceive that it is a divine wonder. When we estimate the renewed nature aright we cry, "This is the finger of God," and right gladly do we then subscribe to Jonah's creed, "Salvation is of the Lord." If charity be in any man and abound, God must have the glory of it; for assuredly it was never attained by mere natural effort, but must have been bestowed by that same hand which made the heavens. So then, brethren, I shall hope when I conclude to leave upon your minds the impression of your need of the grace of God for the attainment of love. I would not discourage you, but I would have you feel how great a labour lies before you, and how impossible it will be unless you are girt with a strength beyond your own. This shall be your solace that if it cannot be the outcome of your own effort, yet "the fruit of the Spirit is love," and the Spirit is ready and willing to bear fruit in us also.
Notice then, first, the multitude of love's difficulties; it has to bear all things, believe all things, hope all things, and endure all things: secondly, observe the triumph of love's labour; it does all these four things, it "beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things": and then, thirdly, this will bring us back to the point we have started from, the sources of love's energy, and how it is she is able thus to win her fourfold victory over countless difficulties.
I. Consider well THE MULTITUDE OF LOVE'S DIFFICULTIES. When the grace of God comes into a man he is born at once to love. He that loveth is born of God, and he that is born of God loveth. He loveth him that begat, even God, and he loveth him that is begotten of him, even all the saved ones. He commences to obey the great command to love his neighbour as himself. His motto is no longer that of an earthly kingdom, Dieu et mon droit—God and my right; but he bears another word on his escutcheon, Dieu et mon frŠre—God and my brother.
No sooner is love born than she finds herself at war. Everything is against her, for the world is full of envy, hate, and ill-will. I would warn the most loving-hearted that they have entered upon a war for peace, a strife for love: they are born to hate hatred, and to contend against contention. As the lily among thorns, so is love among the sons of men. As the hind among the dogs, so is charity among the selfish multitude.
Evidently the difficulties of love are many, for the apostle speaks of them as "all things," and as if this were not enough he repeats the words, and sets forth the opposing armies as four times "all things." I do not know whether you can calculate this mighty host. "All things" would seem to comprehend as much as can be, but here in the text you have this amount multiplied by four. For, my brother, you will have to contend with all that is within yourself. Nothing in your original nature will help you. God has put within you a new life, but the old life seeks to smother it. You will find it a severe struggle to master yourself, and if you succeed therein you will be a conqueror indeed. Besides that you will have to contend with "all things" in the persons whom you are called upon to love. You must have fervent charity towards the saints, but you will find very much about the best of them which will try your patience; for, like yourself, they are imperfect, and they will not always turn their best side towards you, but sometimes sadly exhibit their infirmities. Be prepared, therefore, to contend with "all things" in them. As for the ungodly whom you are to love to Christ, you will find everything in them that will oppose the drawings of your love, for they, like yourself, by nature are born in sin, and they are rooted in their iniquities. When you have mastered that kind of "all things" you will have to contend with "all things" in the world, for the world lieth in the wicked one, and all its forces run towards self, and contention, and hate. Every man's hand is against his fellow, and few there be who honour the gentle laws of love; they know not that divine charity which "seeketh not her own." The seed of the serpent is at enmity with all that is kind, and tender, and self-sacrificing, for these are the marks of the woman's seed. Marvel not, my brethren, if the world hate you. And then remember that "all things" in hell are against you. What a seething mass of rebellious life, all venomous with hate, is seen in the regions of darkness. The prince of the power of the air leads the van, and the host of fallen spirits eagerly follow him, like bloodhounds behind their leader. All these evil spirits will endeavour to create dissension, and enmity, and malice, and oppression among men, and the soldier of love must wrestle against all these. See, O my brother, what a battle is yours! Speak of crusades against the Paynim, what a crusade is this against hate and evil. Yet we shrink not from the fray.
Happily, though love has many difficulties, it overcomes them all, and overcomes them four times. There is such vitality in evil that it leaps up from the field whereon it seemed to be slain, and rages with all its former fury. First, we overcome evil by patience, which "beareth all things." Let the injury be inflicted, we will forgive it, and not be provoked: even seventy times seven will we bear in silence. If this suffice not, by God's grace we will overcome by faith: we trust in Jesus Christ, we rely upon our principles, we look for divine succour, and so we "believe all things." We overcome a third time by hope: we rest in expectation that gentleness will win, and that long-suffering will wear out malice, for we look for the ultimate victory of everything that is true and gracious, and so we "hope all things." We finish the battle by perseverance: we abide faithful to our resolve to love, we will not be irritated into unkindness, we will not be perverted from generous, all-forgiving affection, and so we win the battle by steadfast non-resistance. We have set our helm towards the port of love, and towards it we will steer, come what may. Baffled often, love "endureth all things."
Yes, brethren, and love conquers on all four sides. Love does, as it were, make a hollow square, and she sets the face of her warriors towards all quarters of the compass. Does God seem himself to smite love with afflictions? She "beareth all things." Do her fellow Christians misrepresent her, and treat her ill? She believes everything that is good about them, and nothing that is injurious. Do the wicked rise against her? When she tries to convert them, do they return evil for good? She turns her hopefulness to the front in that direction, and hopes that yet the Spirit of God will bring them to a better mind. And does it happen that all her spiritual foes attack her with temptations and desperate insinuations? She lifteth up the banner of patience against them, and by the power of God's grace she putteth the infernal enemy to the rout, for she "endureth all things." What a brave mode of battle is this! Is not love a man-of-war? Is it not invincible? Hear love's heroic cry as she shouts her defiance—

"Come one, come all, this rock shall fly,
From its firm base as soon as I."

If once taught in the school of Christ to turn love to every point of the compass, and so to meet every assault against our heart, we have learned the secret of victory.
It seems to me that I might read my text as if it said that love conquers in all stages of her life. She begins in conversion, and straightway those that mark her birth are angry, and the powers of evil are at once aroused to seek her destruction. Then she "beareth all things." Let them mock, love never renders railing for railing: Isaac is not to be provoked by Ishmael's jeers.
She gathers strength and begins to tell out to others what she knows of her Lord and his salvation. She "believeth all things," and so she confesses her faith, and her fellow Christians are confirmed by her witness. It is her time of energy, and so she tries to woo and win others, by teaching them the things which she believes.
She advances a little farther; and, though often disappointed by the unbelief of men and the coldness of her fellow Christians, she nevertheless "hopes all things," and pushes on in the expectation of winning more of them. Her dove's eyes see in the dark, and she advances to victory through ever-growing conflict.
Ay, and when infirmities thicken upon her, and old age comes, and she can do little else but sit still, and bear and believe and hope, she still perseveres, and accepts even the stroke of death itself without complaining, for love "endureth all things."
I do not think I need say more upon the difficulties of love. I am sure that every experienced person knows that these difficulties are supreme, and that we require superlative grace if we are to master them. Love does not ask to have an easy life of it: self-love makes that her aim. Love denies herself, sacrifices herself, that she may win victories for God, and bring blessings on her fellow-men. Hers is no easy pathway, and hers shall be no tinsel crown.
II. Secondly, let us survey THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE'S LABOUR. Her labours are fourfold.
First, in bearing all things. The word here rendered "bear" might as correctly have been translated "cover." You that have the Revised Version will find in the margin, "Love covereth all things." "Covereth" is the meaning of the word in ordinary Greek, but Paul generally uses the word in the sense of "bear." Our translators, therefore, had to choose between the usual meaning and the Pauline usage, and they selected Paul's meaning, and put it down in the first place as "beareth," giving us in the margin the other sense of "covereth." The two ideas may be blended, if we understand it to mean that love bears all things in silence, concealing injuries as much as possible even from herself.
Let us just think of this word "covers" in reference to the brethren. True love refuses to see faults, unless it be that she may kindly help in their removal. Love has no wish to see faults. Noah's younger son discovered and declared the shame of his father, but his other sons took a garment and went backward and covered the nakedness of their father: after this fashion does love deal with the sins of her brethren. She painfully fears that there may be something wrong, but she is loath to be convinced of it: she ignores it as long as she can, and wishes that she could deny it altogether. Love covers; that is, it never proclaims the errors of good men. There are busybodies abroad who never spy out a fault in a brother but they must needs hurry off to their next neighbour with the savoury news, and then they run up and down the street as though they had been elected common criers. It is by no means honourable to men or women to set up to be common informers. Yet I know some who are not half so eager to publish the gospel as to publish slander. Love stands in the presence of a fault, with a finger on her lip. If anyone is to smite a child of God, let it not be a brother. Even if a professor be a hypocrite, love prefers that he should fall by any hand rather than her own. Love covers all injuries by being silent about them, and acting as if they had never been. She sitteth alone, and keepeth silence. To speak and publish her wrong is too painful for her, for she fears to offend against the Lord's people. She would rather suffer than murmur, and so, like a sheep before her shearers, she is dumb under injury.
I would, brothers and sisters, that we could all imitate the pearl oyster. A hurtful particle intrudes itself into its shell, and this vexes and grieves it. It cannot eject the evil, and what does it do but cover it with a precious substance extracted out of its own life, by which it turns the intruder into a pearl. Oh, that we could do so with the provocations we receive from our fellow Christians, so that pearls of patience, gentleness, long-suffering, and forgiveness might be bred within us by that which else had harmed us. I would desire to keep ready for my fellow Christians, a bath of silver, in which I could electroplate all their mistakes into occasions for love. As the dripping well covers with its own deposit all that is placed within its drip, so would love cover all within its range with love, thus turning even curses into blessings. Oh that we had such love that it would cover all, and conceal all, so far as it is right and just that it should be covered and concealed.
As to bearing all, taking the words as they stand in our version, I wish to apply the text mainly to our trials in seeking the conversion of the unconverted. Those who love the souls of men must be prepared to cover much when they deal with them, and to bear much from them in silence. When I begin to seek the conversion of anyone, I must try as much as ever I can to ignore any repulsiveness that there may be in his character. I know that he is a sinner, else I should not seek his salvation; but if he happens to be one who has fallen very low in the esteem of others, I must not treat him as such, but cover his worst points. You cannot possibly bring the Samaritan woman who has had five husbands into a right state of mind by "wondering that he spake with the woman." Thus the disciples acted, but not so their Master, for he sat on the well and talked with her, and made himself her willing companion that he might be her gracious Saviour; he ignored her sin so far as to converse with her for her good.
You will not long have begun this holy work before you will discover in the heart you seek to win much ignorance of the gospel. Bear with it, and bring forward the text which sheds light on that darkness, and teach the truth which will remove that error. Ere long you will have to contend with hardness of heart, for when a man knows the truth he is not always willing to receive it. Bear it, and be not vexed. Did you not expect the heart to be hard? Do not you know what business you are upon? You are sent to turn men from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God. Be not astonished if these things should not prove to be child's play. In addition to this perhaps you will have ridicule poured upon you; your attempts to convert will be converted into jests. Bear it; bear all things! Remember how the multitude thrust out the tongue at your Lord and Master when he was dying, and be not you so proud as to think yourself too good to be laughed at. Still speak concerning Christ, and whatever happens, bear all things. I will not attempt to make a catalogue of your provocations, you shall make one yourself after you have tried to convert men to Christ; but all that you can possibly meet with is included in my text, for it says, "beareth all things." If you should meet with some extraordinary sinner who opens his mouth with cruel speeches such as you have never heard before, and if by attempting to do him good you only excite him to ribaldry and blasphemy, do not be astonished; have at him again, for charity "beareth all things," whatever they may be. Push on and say, "Yes, all this proves to me how much you want saving. You are my man; if I get you to Christ there will be all the greater glory to God." O blessed charity, which can thus cover all things and bear all things for Christ's sake.
Do you want an example of it? Would you see the very mirror and perfection of the charity that beareth all things? Behold your divine Lord. Oh, what he has covered! It is a tempting topic, but I will not dwell on it. How his glorious righteousness, his wondrous splendour of love, has covered all our faults and all their consequences, treating us as if he saw no sin in Jacob, neither perversity in Israel. Think what he bore when he came unto his own and his own received him not! What a covering was that when he said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." What a pitying sight of the fearful misery of man our Lord Jesus had when holy tears bedewed those sacred eyes! What a generous blindness to their infamous cruelty he manifested when he prayed for his bloodthirsty enemies. O beloved, you will never be tempted, and taunted, and tried as he was; yet in your own shorter measure may you possess that love which can silently bear all things for the elect's sake and for Christ's sake, that the multitude of the redeemed may be accomplished, and that Christ through you may see of the travail of his soul.
Now let us look at the second of love's great labours. You have heard of the labours of Hercules, but the fabulous hero is far outdone by the veritable achievements of love. Love works miracles which only grace can enable her to perform. Here is the second of them—love "believeth all things." In reference, first, to our fellow Christians, love always believes the best of them. I wish we had more of this faith abroad in all the churches, for a horrid blight falls upon some communities through suspicion and mistrust. Though everything may be pure and right, yet certain weak minds are suddenly fevered with anxiety through the notion that all is wrong and rotten. This unholy mis-trust is in the air, a blight upon all peace: it is a sort of fusty mildew of the soul by which all sweet perfume of confidence is killed. The best man is suspected of being a designing knave, though he is honest as the day, and the smallest fault or error is frightfully exaggerated, till we seem to dwell among criminals and to be all villains together. If I did not believe in my brethren I would not profess to be one of them. I believe that with all their faults they are the best people in the world, and that, although the church of God is not perfect, yet she is the bride of One who is. I have the utmost respect for her, for her Lord's sake. The Roman matron said "Where my husband is Caias I am Caia"; where Christ is King, she who stands at his right hand is "the queen in gold of Ophir." God forbid that I should rail at her of whom her Lord says, "Since thou wast precious in my sight, thou hast been honourable, and I have loved thee." True love believes good of others as long as ever it can, and when it is forced to fear that wrong has been done, love will not readily yield to evidence, but she gives the accused brother the benefit of many a doubt. When the thing is too clear, love says, "Yes, but the friend must have been under very strong temptation, and if I had been there I dare say I should have done worse;" or else love hopes that the erring one may have offended from a good though mistaken motive; she believes that the good man must have been mistaken, or he would not have acted so. Love, as far as she can, believes in her fellows. I know some persons who habitually believe everything that is bad, but they are not the children of love. Only tell them that their minister or their brother has killed his wife, and they would believe it immediately, and send out for a policeman: but if you tell them anything good of their neighbour, they are in no such hurry to believe you. Did you ever hear of gossips tittle-tattling approval of their neighbours? I wish the chatterers would take a turn at exaggerating other people's virtues, and go from house to house trumping up pretty stories of their acquaintances. I do not recommend lying even in kindness, but that side of it would be such a novelty that I could almost bear with its evils for a change. Love, though it will not speak an untruth in praise of another, yet has a quick eye to see the best qualities of others, and it is habitually a little blind to their failings. Her blind eye is to the fault, and her bright is for the excellence. Somewhere or other I met with an old legend—I do not suppose it to be literally true, but its spirit is correct. It is said that, once upon a time, in the streets of Jerusalem, there lay a dead dog, and everyone kicked at it and reviled it. One spoke of its currish breed, another of its lean and ugly form, and so forth; but one passed by who paused a moment over the dead dog, and said, "What white teeth it has." Men said, as he went on his way, "That is Jesus of Nazareth." Surely it is ever our Lord's way to see good points wherever he can. Brethren, think as well as you can even of a dead dog. If you should ever be led into disappointments and sorrows by thinking too well of your fellow-men, you need not greatly blame yourself. I met, in Anthony Farrindon's Sermons, a line which struck me. He says the old proverb has it, "Humanum est errare," to err is human, but, saith he, when we err by thinking too kindly of others we may say, "Christianum est errare," it is Christian to err in such a fashion. I would not have you credulous, but I would have you trustful, for suspicion is a cruel evil. Few fall into the blessed error of valuing their fellow Christians at too high a rate.
In reference to the unconverted this is a very important matter. Love "believeth all things" in their case. She does not believe that the unconverted are converted, for, if so, she would not seek their conversion. She believes that they are lost and ruined by the Fall, but she believes that God can save them. Love believes that the precious blood of Christ can redeem the bondslaves of sin and Satan, and break their iron chains; she believes that the power of the Holy Spirit can change a heart of granite into a heart of flesh. Love, therefore, believing this, believes also that God can save this sinner by herself, and she therefore begins to speak to him, expecting that the word she speaks will be God's instrument of salvation. When she finds herself sitting next to a sinner, she believes that there was a necessity for her to be there, even as Christ must needs go through Samaria. She saith to herself, "Now will I tell to this poor soul what Christ hath done, for I believe that even out of my poor lips eternal life may flow, and in such a babe as I am God may perfect praise to his own glory." She does not refrain from preaching Christ through fear of failure, but she believes in the great possibilities which lie in the gospel and in the Spirit of God, and so she deals earnestly with the man next her. She believes in her own principles, she believes in the grace of God, she believes in the power of the Spirit of God, she believes in the force of truth, she believes in the existence of conscience, and so she is moved to set about her saving work. She believeth all things.
Brethren, do you want a model of this? Then I beseech you look to your divine Master once again. See him in the morning when the sheep are counted, missing one of them, and so full of faith is he that he can find the lost one, that he leaves the ninety and nine, and cheerfully enters the pathless wilderness. See how he bounds over the mountains! How he descends the ravines! He is seeking his sheep until he finds it, for he is fully assured that he shall find it. He shall not fail nor be discouraged, for his faith is great in the salvation of men, and he goes forth to it believing that sinners shall be saved. I delight in the deep, calm faith of our Lord Jesus Christ. He had no faith in man's goodness, for "he knew what was in man"; but he had great faith in what could be done in men and what could be wrought for them, and for the joy that was set before him in this he endured the cross, despising the shame. He had faith that grand things would come of his salvation—men would be purified, error would be driven out, false-hood would be slain, and love would reign supreme.
Here is the second grand victory of love, she "believeth all things." Herein let us exercise ourselves till we are skilled in it.
Love's third great labour is in "hoping all things." Love never despairs. She believes in good things yet to come in her fellow-men, even if she cannot believe in any present good in them. Hope all things about your brethren. Suppose a friend is a member of the church, and you cannot see any clear signs of grace in him, hope all things about him. Many true believers are weak in faith, and the operations of grace are dim in them; and some are placed in positions where the grace they have is much hindered and hampered: let us take these things into consideration. It is hard to tell how little grace may yet suffice for salvation: it is not ours to judge. Hope all things, and if you should be forced to see sad signs in them, which make you fear that they have no grace, yet, remember that some of the brightest believers have had their faults, and grave ones too. Remember yourself, lest you also be tempted. If you cannot hope that these persons are saved at all, hope that they will be, and do all that you can to promote so blessed an end.
Hope all things. If thy brother has been very angry with thee without a cause, hope that thou wilt win him; and set about the task. If thou hast tried and failed, hope to succeed next time, and try again. Hope that though thou hast failed seven times, and he still speaks bitterly, yet in his heart he is really ashamed, or at least that he will be so very soon. Never despair of your fellow Christians.
As to the unconverted, you will never do anything with them unless you hope great things about them. When the good Samaritan found the poor man half dead, if he had not hoped about him he would never have poured in the oil and the wine, but would have left him there to die. Cultivate great hopefulness about sinners. Always hope of them that they will be saved yet: though no good signs are apparent in them. If you have done your best for them, and have been disappointed and defeated, still hope for them. Sometimes you will find cause for hope in the fact that they begin to attend a place of worship. Grasp at that, and say, "Who can tell? God may bless them." Or if they have long been hearers, and no good has come of it, still hope that the minister will one day have a shot at them, and the arrow shall pierce through the joints of the harness. When you last spoke to them there seemed a little tenderness: be thankful for it, and have hope. If there has been a little amendment in their life, be hopeful about them. Even if you can see nothing at all hopeful in them, yet hope that there may be something which you cannot see, and perhaps an effect has been produced which they are endeavouring to conceal. Hope because you are moved to pray for them. Get other people to pray for them, for as long as they have some one to pray for them their case is not given over. If you get others to pray, there will be another string to your bow. If they are very ill, and you cannot get at them, or they are on their dying beds, still have hope about them, and try to send them a message in some form or other. Pray the Lord to visit and save them; and always keep up your hope about them. Till they are dead let not your hope be dead.
Would you see a model of this? Ah, look at our blessed Lord, and all his hopefulness for US: how, despairing of none, he went after those whom others would have given up. If you ask a proof, remember how he went after you. Will you despair of anybody since Christ did not despair of you? Wonders of grace belong to God, and all those wonders have been displayed in many among us. If you and I had been there when they brought the adulterous woman taken in the very act, I am afraid that we should have said, "This is too bad; put her away, she cannot be borne with." But oh, the hopefulness of the blessed Master when even to her he said, "Woman, where are thine accusers? Neither do I condemn thee. Go, and sin no more." What wonderful patience, and gentleness, and hopefulness our Lord displayed in all his converse with the twelve! It was a noble hopefulness in Christ which led him to trust Peter as he did: after he had denied his Master with oaths, our Lord trusted him to feed his sheep and lambs, and set him in the forefront of apostolic service. He has also had compassion on some of us, putting us into the ministry, and putting us in trust with the gospel, for he knew what love would do for us, and he was certain he could yet make something of us to his own glory.
The last victory of love is in enduring all things, by which I understand a patient perseverance in loving. This is perhaps the hardest work of all, for many people can be affectionate and patient for a time, but the task is to hold on year after year. I have known some men earnestly check their temper under provocation, and bear a great many slights, but at last they have said, "There is an end to everything: I am not going to put up with it any longer. I cannot stand it." Blessed be God, the love that Christ gives us endureth all things. As his love endured to the end, so does the love which the Spirit works in us endure to the end.
In reference first to our fellow Christians, love holds out under all rebuffs. You mean that I shall not love you, my good man, but I shall love you. You give me the rough side of your tongue, and make me see that you are not a very lovable person, but I can love you notwithstanding all. What? Will you do me a further unkindness? I will oppose you by doing you a greater kindness than before. You said a vile thing about me; I will not hear it, but if it be possible I will say a kind thing of you. I will cover you up with hot coals till I melt you; I will war against you with flames of love till your anger is consumed. I will master you by being kinder to you than you have been unkind to me. What hosts of misrepresentations and unkindnesses there are; but if you go on to be a true Christian you must endure all these. If you have to deal with people who will put up with nothing from you, take care to be doubly patient with them. What credit is there in bearing with those who bear with you? If your brethren are angry without a cause, be sorry for them, but do not let them conquer you by driving you into a bad temper. Stand fast in love; endure not some things, but all things, for Christ's sake; so shall you prove yourself to be a Christian indeed.
As to your dealing with the unconverted, if ever you go into the field after souls, be sure to carry your gun with you, and that gun is love. You gentlemen who go out shooting partridges and other birds at this time of the year, no doubt find it a pleasant pastime; but for real excitement, joy, and pleasure, commend me to soul-winning. What did our Lord say, "I will make you fishers of men." If you go out fishing for souls you will have to endure all things, for it will come to pass that some whom you have been seeking for a long time will grow worse instead of better. Endure this among the all things. Those whom you seek to bless may seem to be altogether unteachable, they may shut their ears and refuse to hear you; never mind, endure all things. They may grow sour and sullen, and revile you in their anger, but be not put about by them, let them struggle till they are wearied, and meanwhile do you quietly wait, saying to yourself, "I must save them." A warder who has to take care of insane persons will frequently be attacked by them, and have to suffer hard blows; but what does he do? Strike the patient and make a fight of it? No, he holds him down and pins him fast; but not in anger, for he pities him too much to be angry with him. Does a nurse with a delirious patient take any notice of his cross words, and grumbling, and outcries? Not she. She says, "I must try to save this man's life," and so with great kindness she "endureth all things." If you were a fireman, and found a person in an upper room, and the house was on fire, would you not struggle with him rather than let him remain in the room and burn. You would say, "I will save you in spite of yourself." Perhaps the foolish body would call you names, and say, "Let me alone, why should you intrude into my chamber?" But you would say, "Never mind my intrusion; I will apologize afterwards for my rudeness, but you must be out of the fire first." I pray God give you this blessed unmannerliness, this sweet casting of all things to the wind, if by any means you may save some.
If you desire to see the mirror and the paragon of persevering endurance, look you there! I wish you could see it. I wish these eyes could see the sight as I have sometimes seen it. Behold the cross! See the patient Sufferer and that ribald multitude: they thrust out the tongue, they sneer, they jest, they blaspheme; and there he hangs, triumphant in his patience, conquering the world, and death and hell by enduring "all things." O love, thou didst never sit on a throne so imperial as the cross, when there, in the person of the Son of God, thou didst all things endure. Oh that we might copy in some humble measure that perfect pattern which is here set before us. If you would be saviours, if you would bless your generation, let no unkindness daunt you; let no considerations of your own character, or honour, or peace of mind keep you back, but of you may it be said, even as of your Lord, "He saved others, himself he could not save."
Have not I shown you four grand battles far excelling all the Waterloos, and Trafalgars, and Almas, and Inkermans on record? Heroes are they that fight and win them, and the Lord God of love shall crown them.
III. I close by noting THE SOURCES OF LOVE'S ENERGY. The time is gone, as I thought it would be, but it has brought us round in a circle to where we started from. The Holy Ghost alone can teach men how to love, and give them power to do so. Love's art is learned at no other school but at the feet of Jesus, where the Spirit of love doth rest on those who learn of him. Beloved, the Spirit of God puts love into us, and helps us to maintain it, thus—first, love wins these victories, for it is her nature. The nature of love is self-sacrifice. Love is the reverse of seeking her own. Love is intense; love is burning; therefore she burneth her way to victory. Love! Look at it in the mother. Is it any hardship to her to lose rest and peace and comfort for her child? If it costs her pain, she makes it pleasure by the ardour of her affection. It is the nature of love to court difficulties, and to rejoice in suffering for the beloved object. If you have fervent love to the souls of men, you will know how true this is.
Next to this, love has four sweet companions. There are with her tenderness that "beareth all things," faith that "believeth all things," hope that "hopeth all things," and patience which "endureth all things," and he that hath tenderness, and faith, and hope, and patience hath a brave quaternion of graces to guard him, and he need not be afraid. Best of all, love sucks her life from the wounds of Christ. Love can bear, believe, hope, and endure because Christ has borne, believed, and hoped, and endured for her. I have heard of one that had a twist: they say that he saw something that others never saw, and heard a voice that others never heard, and he became such a strange man that others wondered at him. Oh, that I had more and more of that most solemn twist which comes through feeling a pierced hand laid on my shoulder, and hearing in my ear a sorrowful voice, that selfsame voice which cried, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" I would see that vision and hear that voice, and then—what then? Why, I must love; I must love; I must love. That would be the soul's strange bias and sweet twist. Love makes us love; love bought us, sought us, and brought us to the Saviour's feet, and it shall henceforth constrain us to deeds which else would be impossible. You have heard of men sometimes in a mad fit doing things that ordinary flesh and blood could never have performed. Oh to be distracted from selfishness by the love of Christ, and maddened into self-oblivion by a supreme passion for the Crucified. I know not how otherwise to put my thoughts into words so that they may hint at my burning meaning. May the Lord of love look into your very eyes with those eyes which once were red with weeping over human sin: may he touch your hands with those hands that were nailed to the cross, and impress the blessed nailmarks upon your feet, and then may he pierce your heart till it pour forth a life for love, and flow out in streams of kind desires, and generous deeds, and holy sacrifices for God and for his people. God grant it, for Jesus' sake. Amen.
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON—1 Corinthians 13.

Sermons
by C H Spurgeon

On Hosea

Hosea 13:5-8 The Prosperous Man's Reminder

NO. 1441

DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, OCTOBER 27TH, 1878,
BY C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me. Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.”-Hosea 13:5-8.

OUR text will lead me at this time to speak upon the perils of prosperity, and as those who are prospering in worldly circumstances make up a comparatively slender portion of any congregation the sermon must mainly aim at a small class. Still it is my duty to speak to these for every word of scriptural warning should have its tongue in a complete ministry, and every condition of soul must be duly met by a watchful pastor. May the Holy Spirit enable me to make full proof of my ministry by declaring the whole counsel of God to all characters. Suffer me, however, to observe that, if the subject should seem to take a narrow range, it is in your power to alter it very rapidly; for, while those who are prospering will kindly take note of the voice of God’s word to themselves, those of you who are not prospering may be profited by becoming the more contented with your lowly lot, since it will be plain to you that had you succeeded in life you might have fallen into the sins denounced in our text. It may be that you would never have known the holy joy and sacred peace which you now possess if you had been allowed to climb to those heights of wealth which you have longed to reach. God who knows your frame knew that you were not able to bear the trial of prosperity, and therefore he has kept you where you are,-more safe and more happy, though less enriched.

Another class of persons may have enjoyed fair weather in times past, but now a cloud has come over them and they are troubled. Possibly they may be taught by our discourse to say each one to himself, “God has taken me not so much out of the sunlight as out of the furnace. He saw that evils were generated by my success which would have caused me solemn injury, .and so he has removed me out of their reach. He has transplanted me out of the glare of the sunlight and set me in a place more shaded but more suited to my spiritual growth. There may also be some present who are eagerly aspiring after great things, and these may learn a lesson of sobriety. A desire to rise is laudable, but the winged horse needs to be well bitted and reined lest it fly away with its rider. Some spirits are dissatisfied with moderate success; they pine to reach the front ranks, and to climb to the high places of the earth. Ambition has become the star of their life, perhaps, I had better say-the will-o’-the-wisp of their folly. Let them learn from this morning’s word that all is not gold that glitters, that outward prosperity doth not make men truly prosper, and that there is a way of growing rich without being rich towards God. I would lay a cool hand upon a fevered brow, and remind the ardent youth that a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

Another word remains to be said before I proceed further: Hosea speaks of Ephraim, or Israel, the kingdom of the ten tribes, and we may profitably view that people as a type of ourselves. Israel represents the church, and yet not altogether the true spiritual church of God. They were not all Israel that were of Israel, for they were a seed according to the flesh, and hence they were a mixed multitude, and represent rather the professing Christian world than the elect Christian church. Now, I must take the text as I find it, and use it for those to whom it can fairly be applied, namely, general Christendom, the nominal people of God. For this reason the lines of distinction this morning between God’s regenerated people and mere professors will be but faintly drawn in my address. It must be so, for I shall be speaking upon a truth which relates to a mixed people: and you must be the more careful in self-examination, so that each one may take home that which belongs to him. I speak to all Israel this morning, whether they be of Israel in spirit or not: to all the professing people of God, to all who meet with them at any time for public worship, or are numbered with them by general repute. “He that hath ears to hear, let him hear,” and may the Holy Spirit bless the hearing.

And now to our discourse.

I. The first subject suggested by the text is Memories Of Adversity.

The Lord says to many of us, “I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.” Carefully consider this by taking a review of the past. Have you risen in the world? Have your circumstances changed? Or have you been raised up from a sick bed, or delivered from depths of anxiety? Are you now happily circumstanced, abounding in good things, and blessed with the temporal favor of God? I ask you to look back upon the way by which the Lord’s hand has led you. Look back upon your early trials and the mercy which sustained you under them. To some of the prosperous their early difficulties were very severe, comparable even to the great drought of the wilderness. They were so unhappy and so bereft of all comfort that it may be said of them that they sought water and there was none, and their tongue failed for thirst. Thirst is one of the most terrible ills that can happen to men, and such were the wants and anxieties of many a man’s early days: they rendered existence misery, and life itself a perpetual death. The children of Israel went three days without water: they came to wells where they expected to drink, and found them brackish, so that they could not drink of them. Do not many of the Lord’s people remember when things were very scant with them, when even the necessities of life were scarcely to be had, when they sought to friends for help but were disappointed? They were driven to their wits’ end, their little store began to run out, and they counted out their last few pence almost as men sell their lives. Ah, those were wilderness days indeed! So, also, were those weeks which we spent upon a bed of sickness, when at night we cried, “Would God it were morning,” and when daylight came the garish sun fatigued us, and we wished it were evening that we might sleep again. Perhaps neither of these were our particular trial, but we were distracted with many cares,, and knew not on whom to depend for advice; we could not see our way; the thread of our life was a tangled skein, and we were sore perplexed in the attempt to unravel it. Often we held our poor head with both our hands, and felt as if we should lose our reason if fresh distractions assailed us. It was a land of great drought, a wilderness infested with serpents and scorpions. Do not let us forget that we traversed that desert road. Surely it is not difficult for us to refresh our memories upon that subject, for we usually retain a vivid recollection of our sorrows, and that vivid recollection I would now make use of to cause the past to live again before you.

The good point about those times was the fact that you did think of God. Why, then you went to him for every meal, and depended upon him from hour to hour as much as the Israelites depended upon him for the daily manna. The crust was hard but it was sweet, for the Lord gave it. Do you not recollect when everything in business seemed as if it must go to pieces: one large house failed on the one side, and another firm tottered at the other; your own case was hazardous, it seemed the turn of a hair whether you would be bankrupt or not? Ah, you remember it now, and you acknowledge that then you turned to God in real earnest, for you had nowhere else to turn. What times of prayer you had then! How sweet was that passage of Scripture which came like a prophecy to your heart! How you prized the prayers of God’s people who cried to the Lord for you! Or was it sickness which tried you? Ah, then you remember how you turned your face to the wall, and like Hezekiah you sought the Lord with tears, pleading to be raised up again. The bitterness of pain made you cry, “My Father, help, strengthen, and relieve me.” Those were times when you felt that you could not live without God. If there had been no God to go to you would have been driven to desperation. So though you knew him not as you would wish to know him, yet there was a God to you just as there was a God to Israel when the chosen tribes went through the wilderness and saw his glorious marchings in the pillar of cloud by day and the pillar of fire by might.

God was manifest to your spirit then; ay, and what is better, he knew you. How beautiful are the words, “I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.” He was not ashamed to acknowledge you then, and to have dealings with you. Those poor prayers of yours, which you would not have prayed at all if it had not been for your stern necessity, were, nevertheless, answered by him, and he heard you, and comforted you in a very wonderful way. Looking back you can see how he delivered you. It is true no manna dropped from heaven, yet your daily bread was given and you wondered, and felt as thankful as if it had fallen from the skies. It is true no rock of flint gave forth a stream for you to drink, and yet help came from people from whom you expected it as little as you would hope to see a fountain leap from a flinty rock. Somehow by the hand of the Lord you were sustained in trouble, and ultimately delivered out of it. The scene is marvellous in retrospect, and unless you believed that God’s hand was in it, it would remain to you a perfect riddle; you feel that the only way of explaining your life is to believe in the everlasting hand of the Almighty. He succoured you, and your losses turned to gains. The burden which you thought would crush you was readily carried. The draught which was thought to be deadly turned out to be medicinal. You have now left the famine of the wilderness for plenty and ease; you have all that heart can wish, and your mouth is satisfied with good things; do not, however, forget for a moment how the Lord did know you in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.

Looking back upon that time, you see nothing that you can now boast of, because it was not so much that you did know God as that he did know you. You did pray and did believe after a sort, but it was very poor praying and very weak believing, yet the mercy of the Lord was great, and he did know you. He knew your whereabouts, he knew your temptations, he knew your weaknesses, he knew your wants; ay, and he knew how to meet the time of your need to the very tick of the clock. If he had waited five minutes later in relieving you it would have been too late, but he was punctual in his tenderness. He never is before his time: he never is too late. He helped you marvellously, though you were ready to faint at one time, and at other times were fall of worldliness, murmuring, and rebellion. In looking back you feel compelled to say, “He knew me in the land of drought, but as for me even then I walked not faithfully before him, but there were wanderings of heart, even as in the case of Israel, who made a calf at Horeb and bowed before it, defiling even that holy place, the mountain of the Lord, where Jehovah had revealed himself.”

The Lord knew us, blessed be his name, when we were in a desert land, in the howling wilderness, and his knowledge showed itself in practical help. Now, brethren and sisters, have you forgotten the lovingkindness of the Lord in the cloudy and dark day? If you have, he has not. Often in Scripture the Lord speaks of Israel’s early days. He says, “I remember thee, the love of thine espousals when thou wentest after me into the wilderness:” as much as to say, “I recollect you when you were a young Christian, and how you were willing to suffer the loss of all things for my name’s sake. I remember when you were poor and blessed my name for every morsel of bread which I gave you. I recollect when you lived in the poor little cottage in the back street, and how you cried unto me for help in your deep poverty, and praised me with tears standing in your eyes when your bread and your water were handed out to you.” The Lord remembers a thousand things which we forget. The receiver seldom remembers the gift so long as the giver does. Ingratitude is a grievous fault, but it is sadly common, and forgetfulness grows out of it. Yet it seems inevitable that the doer of kindness should have a better memory than the receiver of it. Our children forget what we did for them when they were little; but the mother cannot fail to remember all she suffered for her babe, neither does she forget the anxiety and care with which in her tenderness she brought her child through its varied sicknesses. The Lord remembers all that he has done for us, and he now by the word of his servant recalls it to our thoughts, saying, “I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought.” Now, therefore, let us remember it also.

Assuredly to have received special mercy from God in time of sorrow should bind us with cords of gratitude. Do we not feel the force of the obligation? I will not delay you even with a word upon that subject, because your pure minds need but to be stirred up by way of remembrance, and you will be filled with thankfulness to the Lord, who helped you so graciously. Should it not also lead us to great humility when we recollect what we were? How dare we be proud?-we whom God lifted from the dunghill? He made David a king, but he reminded him of the time when he followed the ewes great with young, to pick up their lambs, like any other common shepherd boy. What if he did become great in Israel, yet once the sum total of his possessions was a staff, a wallet, and a sling, Some of us had no more when we began life. This should make us humble, and it will be well to mingle the humility and the gratitude together, and sing like Hannah of old: “The Lord maketh poor, and maketh rich: he bringeth low, and lifteth up. He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes, and to make them inherit the throne of glory: for the pillars of the earth are the Lord’s, and he hath set the world upon them.”

All this I bring before you now, my brethren, and I could wish that, as with the wand of a magician, I could make the past march before your very eyes. Then were the days of scanty bread but abundant thankfulness; of few changes of raiment, but many cries unto the Lord, of little gold but much grace, of small incomes but large outgoings of praise and zeal. Then you drank not the wine of indulgence, nor anointed yourselves with the oil of luxury, but yet the Lord knew you, and made your spirit glad. Necessity often drove you to your knees in prayer, and prompt answers turned your hearts to praise, and thus your soul was refreshed. Let it not now be said, “Of the rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee.”

II. We must now enter upon a sadder subject, and, with the memories of adversity fresh upon us, consider The Tendencies Of Prosperity. I hope, beloved friends, that many of you have, through divine grace, proved superior to these tendencies, and have been able to swim against the stream: if so, you will beyond all others be aware that such tendencies exist, for you have had to resist them with no small effort. I fear, on the other hand, that I should be a flatterer if I professed to hope that all of you have so escaped. In so large a number of professed Christians as we have here, we dare not hope that all have escaped unhurt from the furnace of worldly prosperity. At least the smell of the fire lingers upon some of us. Let us with much searching of heart look to the text, and then judge ourselves; and the more so if Providence has dealt bountifully with us.

We read in our text, “According to their pasture, so were they filled;” that is to say, the Israelites became earthly-minded. They were filled according to their pasture, and not according to their God. They satisfied themselves with temporal good, and asked for nothing more. They lived upon their possessions, not above them. They made a God of their goods; they filled their desires and their affections with the good things of this life, and knew nothing of the fullness of God. They entered into Canaan, where they ate the fat and drank the sweet, and there they settled down, content without the higher blessings of grace. They did not want their God now, for now they were neither dependent on the manna nor on the stream which leaped from the rock. If God had been their pasture it would have been well to have been filled according to their pasture; but foolishly they tried to live on bread alone, and the word of God was despised. Alas, this is an evil into which many fall. They increase in riches and they set their hearts upon them.

Permit me, dear friends, to recall your hearts to your first love, and to the highest and best things. Know you not that God usually gives. the most of earthly wealth to those for whom he has no love? Those who are masters of earth’s treasures are seldom the favourites of heaven. It is a wonder when an Ethiopian treasurer is baptized, or a Joseph of Arimathea confesses himself a disciple of Jesus. Gold and the gospel usually go two different ways. Those who roll in wealth seldom rest in God. How many among the princes of the earth are also heirs of heaven? Is it not true that not many of the great men after the flesh are chosen? Worldly possessions are evidently lightly esteemed of God, for he gives little of them to his children, and the most of them he shoots out at the feet of worldlings, as men cast husks in plenty into the trough for swine. Do not, therefore, set a high price on that which the Lord lightly esteems. Your Lord and Master had none of the world’s goods, Jesus had not where to lay his head; do not, therefore, covet what he despised.

Remember, again, that the quality of earthly things is very inferior, and altogether unworthy of the love of an immortal soul. What is there in broad acres to satisfy the heart? What is there in bonds, and mortgages, amid debentures, and gold, and silver to stay a soul when it fainteth, or to make a spirit rejoice when it is heavy? Earthly gear hath its uses, advantages, and benefits, otherwise we could not ask you to be thankful for it. Wealth is a thing to be grateful for, since it may be turned to admirable account for God’s glory, but the tendency will be for you to think too much of it, and if you do I would remind you that you are coming down from the position which a Christian ought to occupy, and are acting like a man of the world who has his portion in this life. A child of God should continually say, “Whom have I in heaven but thee? and there is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.” It will never do for you to dote upon your property. What! are you going to dethrone your God, and set up wealth in his place? Then in what do you differ from the Israelites, who bowed before a calf of gold, and said, “These be thy gods, O Israel”? Far be it from us to sin in that fashion, but let us love the Lord for his mercies, and the more we have of them the more let us be devoted to his fear.

Recollect, again, that earthly things ought not to be too highly esteemed, for they may vanish from our sight. How many instances of this have happened around us of late! The Lord have pity upon the many who have had grievously to suffer by the misconduct of others. Truly in their case riches have taken to themselves wings, and those who ought to have held the birds have been among the first to cause their flight. Hundreds were yesterday in comfortable circumstances, and are to-day deprived of all, and know not where the matter will end. You perhaps say, “The like could not happen to me. I have no shares in a bank. My liabilities are all limited; I cannot lose my property.” How do you know? No man till his last hour is beyond the reach of those calamities which are common to men. There was never a garment yet which moth could not eat, or time devour; nor is there gold or silver in human coffer which the thief could not steal somehow or other, despite iron safes, legal documents, sound investments, and experienced prudence. Riches are but as the mist of the morning, or the smoke from the chimney. They will certainly perish in the using, take care that you do not perish with them.

Once more, recollect that even if wealth does not fly away you may soon lose all power to enjoy it. What is the value of a thousand a year to a man who is paralysed? To one who lies upon his back from morning till night, of what use is the park and the estate which he cannot see? To one who has to be confined to his chamber, of what avail is it that he has the means of travelling round the world? The Lord can take away from a man his taste, and of what use are his dainties? his eyesight, and of what value are his works of art? his hearing, and of what avail are the daughters of music? The Lord can leave us the apparent blessing, and yet the soul of it may have gone with the power to enjoy it. Moreover, how soon must you leave these temporal comforts! The day must come when you must bid farewell to house and garden, and children and friends, and all that you possess, and “Earth to earth, dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” must be the end of you as well as of the poorest man that ever begged his bread. Do not, therefore, set your heart upon these toys, nor let your mind be filled by them, for if you do you have already met with one of the most serious of the evils which haunt a successful life.

The next peril is that of greediness, for, according to the text, these people were filled twice. “According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled.” Their fullness is twice mentioned. They were not satisfied with being filled; they must be filled again. What numbers of persons there are who, when they were in their low estate, thought if they could ever amass a certain sum they would be perfectly satisfied; but when they reached that point, they laughed at their own folly. “Oh,” they said, “if I might double, or treble, or multiply it tenfold, then I should reckon that I had enough of this world, and I would begin to think of eternal matters.” But even when they reach that tenfold height they are not one whit more content. Still they long for something more. They are like men who drink sea water to quench their thirst; they become more thirsty still. The danger of worldly wealth lies in this, that a man at last gets to be nothing better than an ox yoked to the plough, clogged with thick clay. Like a horse harnessed to a chariot, the more there is attached to such a man the heavier his toil. Instead of gaining greater enjoyment many a rich man only accumulates heavier care as his fortune increases. In the case of those in the text, they cared only for themselves; “they were filled,-they were filled.” They never thought of consecrating their substance to God. No, it was retained for filling themselves. They thought not of blessing the name of God for enabling them to get wealth, nor of making every mercy to be a wing upon which the grateful soul would soar on high. No, their whole mind was given to filling and being filled again. There was no living above it all, but they lived for it, they lived by it, and lived under it, like moles burrowing in the earth. “They were filled, they were filled.” Alas, for those who can be filled with this poor earth: they will have no portion in the world to come, for they have received their good things, and their turn will come to dwell with that rich man of whom our Lord spake, who went from faring sumptuously to suffering eternally.

What came next? They were filled, and their heart was exalted. This is that of which the Lord warned his people in Deuteronomy 8:12-14. “Lest when thou hast eaten and art full, and hast built goodly houses, and dwelt therein; and when thy herds and thy flocks multiply, and thy silver and thy gold is multiplied, and all that thou hast ms multiplied; then thine heart be lifted up, and thou forget the Lord thy God, which brought thee forth out of the land of Egypt, from the house of bondage.” As for those in our text, they were rich, and felt that they were somebodies. When they were in the wilderness, in the land of drought, their God was everything; but now they were filled, and they were swollen with self-importance. Their bags were full, their barns were bursting, their lands were far-reaching, and therefore they thought highly of themselves; as if a man could be measured by the rood, or reckoned up in pounds, shillings, and pence. “A man’s a man for a’ that,” said the homely poet, when he sang of those who have neither rank nor money. Many men are swollen by the meat they feed on, poisoned by their mercies, till they are bloated with arrogance, and begin to despise their fellows. Children of God whom they were once pleased to associate with are now “so very vulgar.” They despise those who are much better than themselves, more prayerful and more holy, and they leave their company to go into society; as if the children of God were not the best society under heaven. Alas, some professors choose their company not by rules of grace, but of pelf; the saints have not so much corn and wine and oil, nor can they ride so high a horse as the prosperous sinners, and therefore the base-born professor turns his back on them. Poor Lazarus, whom once they would have honored, now lies at their gate full of sores for dogs to lick. They value not the people of God for their character; but because they are poor they speak lightly of them.

When the deceitfulness of riches works its way there is no longer any walking humbly with God, nor simple dependence upon him. There is little or no prizing of grace, and seeking after it as for hid treasure, for are not the barns full, and is not that enough? And now the spiritual worship of God becomes too plain and commonplace, and something more pleasing to the eye, and to the flesh, must be sought after. The Israelite only saw the temple on certain days of the year, and then the main sight was a sacrifice, and so the great ones asked for something more pompous, more impressive to the eye: hence came the oxen set up at Daniel and Bethel, with services most pompous and performances most abundant. To-day, also, the simple worshippers of the unseen God carry on a worship which is too bare and unadorned, there is nothing aesthetic about it, and therefore the great ones must go off to the national religion, even as Ephraim did in the days of Jeroboam, for there they can have dainty dresses, fine music, the smell of incense, and all that can charm the taste. Besides, do not all the rest of the wealthy of the land go that way? Hence we see men forsake their former associates, having men’s persons in admiration because of advantage. Their hearts are exalted by their prosperity, and God and his people and his truth may all go. Better far that riches had never come near them. Examples are close at hand.

And what next? It is further written, “They have forgotten me.” Their God was forgotten, even him to whom they owed all things Ah, they would talk much about him in their humble days, when they met with those that thought upon his name, but now there is not a word for God. Then they spake often one to another, but now God is seldom mentioned, for he is not much known in fashionable society. The Lord Jesus is seldom spoken of, for how should the carpenter’s Son be the theme of polite conversation? I am not saying that this is the case with any one here present, but as this is the tendency of prosperity, I should not wonder if some of you are yielding to it. Therefore, arouse yourselves to escape the evil, no forget that God alone is fullness, and that outward possessions are emptiness apart from him. The tendency of the outward possession is to make us forget that it is only the shell, and God must be the kernel of all true comfort and delight. Prosperous men are apt to forget that they will find out very soon how much they need the Lord. While the prosperous man is looking over his accounts and storing up his gold he may dare to forget God, but when he comes to himself and repents of his worldliness he will have to creep to Jesus’ feet like the poorest servant on. his farm. If saved from his idolatry of money he will have to cry unto the Lord to manifest himself to him, even as he did when he could scarcely find himself with bread from day to day. It will not do, my brethren, for us to exalt ourselves and act as if we were independent of God, for our very being rests on his will, and we are nothings and nobodies after all. It would not do for the successful preacher to pride himself upon the number of his congregation or upon the power which he wields over men’s minds, for he is nothing but a poor sinner after all, spared through the compassion of God and pardoned through Jesus Christ, even as others. Humble gratitude is the only safe and right and happy condition of the mind in prosperity. Now, have you not seen, even if you have not felt it in yourself, that many persons who prosper in the world forsake religion altogether? While they were in humble circumstances one had hope of them, but now they seem quite out of reach of sanctifying influences. Have you not seen others grow cold and worldly? I will not ask if you have felt this declension in yourselves, but have you not noticed it in others? They used to be at every prayer meeting, but now they cannot find time: they worked hard in the Sunday-school, but now their energies are overtaxed with doing nothing. Now that they have much more opportunity of serving God, and more to serve him with than they ever had before, they do less than in their humbler times. Do you not know some-may it not he so with yourselves-who do not walk anything like so near to God now as they used to do? Barefooted they kept the way of the Lord, but in velvet slippers they go astray. Richer times have come for them, but they are not happier, because they are further off from God. Is not this very grievous, and will it not provoke the Lord?

I will put to you one question. Can you find in the Word of God one instance of a man of God who was injured by his troubles? Do they not all, like Job, come out of the furnace of affliction much profited thereby? Let me then ask another question. Is it not almost a rule with us, though it ought not to be, that our prosperity is our loss? David, when hunted like a partridge on the mountains, glorified the Lord his God; but David, when he abode in a palace, sinned again and again, so that the Holy Spirit draws a distinction between his earlier and his latter life, for it is written. of Jehoshaphat that he walked before the Lord in the first ways of his father David. Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived, was not proof against prosperity. He had all he could desire, and then his earthly loves stole away his heart. Take one case, which will give both sides of the matter. See Hezekiah with Sennacherib’s letter spreading it before the Lord in faith: he is then an example in history, a man of God to be envied for his prayer of faith. He is far fallen when his realm is at peace and his riches are multiplied, for he becomes vainglorious and displays to the Babylonian ambassadors all his treasures, and provokes the Lord his God. Brethren and sisters, I wish you great prosperity, but far more do I wish you great grace, that you may carry a full cup with a steady hand. There is need to pray for men who are going up hill, lest they fall upon their high places. In our low estate grace will surely be given, for the Lord pities us, but when we are rising we have double need to pray, for God resisteth the proud.

III. Under the third head we must consider Visitations Of Retribution. Ingratitude to God, of the kind I have described, is sure to bring with it, in the case of the believer, heavy chastisements, and in the case of the unbeliever, sure and overwhelming punishments.

Now please notice what the Lord says, “Therefore I will be unto them as a lion; as a leopard by the way will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.” In the case of men who have prospered in this world and turned aside from God it often happens that fierce trials come upon them, such as are here described under the figure of a lion, a leopard, a bear, and a wild beast. In. the case of the Israelitish nation this prophecy was singularly fulfilled, for, according to the seventh chapter of the book of Daniel, nations comparable to the lion, the leopard, the bear, and the wild beast. namely the Babylonian, the Persian, the Greek, and the Roman empires all dealt with the Jews and brought them into subjection. I do not lay any stress upon that, as though I were interpreting prophecy, but it is very singular that those four beasts mentioned here should be the very four afterwards mentioned in the visions of Daniel. I rather take the metaphorical meaning. We are here taught that as God visited his people Israel with stroke upon stroke, and made his great wrath to be known, so has he often done against backsliding believers. God is a shepherd to his people to guard them from the lion, but when his people depart from him he himself becomes as a lion to them. I have seen rich professors with God against them. I have seen the man multiplying wealth, and multiplying sorrow. His sons have grown up to vice and profligacy, using their father’s wealth to indulge their passions, till the old man has been ready to tear his hair in anguish. His own children have been as lions to him. Have we never known such persons too, living entirely to themselves, become the victims of wretched manias which have made them believe themselves to be poor while surrounded with luxury? Such despondencies are worse than a bear robbed of her whelps. Have we not known millionaires haunted with the dread of sudden disaster, as though God would leap upon them like a leopard? Men have been struck down with depression of spirit, so that they could not rejoice in anything: they seemed to be torn by their own thoughts, as by wild beasts, and yet they had more than heart could wish. When the Lord had multiplied mercies around them they had not used them for his glory, but only filled themselves with them, and therefore the Lord visited them in anger for their selfish ingratitude. It is often a great mercy when God sends these heavy trials, for if they befall his own children, it is by such trials that he drives them home to himself; the lions roar them back to Christ, and the leopards and the bears drive them home to their old standing, so that they return unto their Savior, and Jesus is again precious to them.

But sometimes these wild beasts are of a spiritual character. Doubts, fears, horrors come forth from the Lord against the backsliders in heart. The Lord, who was all gentleness, and kindness, and love to them, now seems to have become their enemy. This is sadly the case with any of us when we forget God. We turn to his word, and it threatens us: we get to our knees, and we cannot pray; thoughts of our past sins haunt us; we have no peace with God, no rest day nor night: God lets loose all the wild beasts upon us, and we cannot escape, they tear and rend us. Ah, he knew us in the laud of drought, and then he multiplied our mercies; but we went away from him, and became cold of heart, and it is, therefore, no wonder that now he withdraws his consolations, and sends furious convictions to hunt us down. It is God’s way of saving us, making our very destructions to be the means of our salvation, by driving us out of ourselves. Our God will not suffer his people to build their nests here. You may be sure of that. We are not of the earth, neither will our heavenly Father suffer us to be filled with the earth. If he has ordained us to eternal life by Christ Jesus he will drive us out of the haunts of deadly selfishness by lions, by bears, by leopards, by wild beasts, or by some means or other, and he will fetch us to himself.

Did you notice one passage here in this threatening, where the Lord speaks of the trouble as coming terribly home to his people’s hearts? “I will rend the caul of their heart.” That is to say, he will rend that which encloses and shuts up their heart. When a man loves the world it shuts up his heart, blocks it all round, and leaves no room for God. It is a great blessing when God rends the caul of a man’s heart and opens it once again to the entrance of the truth. It is a sweet thing to have the heart opened as Lydia’s was, by the sacred latch-key of love; but when we forget God, and backslide, the keyhole is stuffed up, and the latch-key will not act. The heart suffers from fatty degeneration, until it might almost be said of the children of God even as of worldlings, “Their heart is as fat as grease.” There is no getting at them, no making them feel: they have but little life, little love, little zeal for God, therefore the Lord sends these lions, leopards and bears, and they rage and rend until at last they tear the caul of the heart. Then the man undergoes a death of despair; but what a mercy it is that the Lord raises him up by-and-by to the life of hope, even as a little further down in this chapter we read that precious word, “I will ransom them from the power of the grave; I will redeem them from death.” The Lord brings up his poor dead child again and gives him life and joy, and then he truly lives in the service of his Lord.

Now, sinners, if, after God has been very gracious to you, you will not learn the lesson of his love, but refuse Christ, you will be given up to destruction, and as for lions, leopards, bears, or worms that never die, and fires that never can be quenched, these are only faint emblems of the woe which will come upon you because you have refused the Lord. As for you who are believers, he will not utterly destroy you; but if you turn aside from him you will make a rod for yourselves, and let loose bears and lions which the Lord would have kept caged if you had walked near to him. “When a man’s ways please the Lord be maketh his enemies to be at peace with him;” so that the beasts of the field and the stones of the field are at league with the man that is living near to God. But if you walk contrary to him he will walk contrary to you, and he will call for his lions and beasts of prey, that they may trouble and molest you. He will give you water, that you die not for thirst, but it shall be the water of bitterness; and he will give you bread to eat, that you faint not, but it shall be mingled with ashes, till your soul shall abhor its ingratitude and turn unto the Lord.

If I had time I should have spoken upon a fourth head, but I can do no more than say that close upon the text there a — Intimations Of Mercy. See what intimations of mercy there are in the next verse. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help.” There is help for the wanderer, and help for the man who has grieved his God. Read also these words, with which the next chapter opens, and may the Holy Ghost help you to carry them out, “O Israel, return unto the Lord thy God; for thou hast fallen by thine iniquity. Take with you words, and turn to the Lord: say unto him, Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously: so will we render the calves of our lips. I will heal their backsliding, I will love them freely: for mine anger is turned away from him.” The Lord fulfill that word for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

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Hosea 13:6: Forgetting God

NO. 2975
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15TH, 1906,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
ON THURSDAY MORNING, SEP. 9TH, 1876.

“Therefore have they forgotten me.” — Hosea 13:6.

Our text reminds us that God does take notice of what men do, or of what they do not do. Here he complains, — and there is a kind of mournful plaintiveness about his words, — “Therefore have they forgotten me.” It is not a matter of indifference to God whether men remember him or not. It seemed to be a subject of surprise to David that God should think of man, for he wrote, “When I consider thy heavens, like work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars which thou hast ordained; what is man, that thou art mindful of him? “Yet God is mindful of man, and it grieves him that man is not mindful of him. It would not disturb our minds if one tiny emmet should forget or ignore us; yet we did not create it, and we have not the claims upon it that God has upon us. Yet, little though we are, and so insignificant that the emmet itself is a great thing in comparison with us if we reckon what we are in comparison with God, — it seems that he does want us to remember him, to think of him, and to trust, and love, and love him; and when we do not, he is vexed and grieved. At least, speaking after the manner of men, we are taught to believe that it pains him at his heart, so that he cries out by the mouth of his servant the prophet, “They have forgotten me, — their Maker, their best Friend, and their greatest Helper.”

I am afraid, dear friends, that the accusation in our text may be brought against a very large number of us. Certainly, it can be laid to the charge of all those who have lived without thinking of God, and who have never turned to him with repentance and faith, and who, consequently, are still strangers to him. How many such people there are, God alone can accurately compute; the great mass of our fellow-creatures would come under that category. But, worst of all, among the Lord’s own people there are, alas! some against whom this accusation can be brought. They have forgotten their God; — not absolutely, so as to be utterly and altogether like the thoughtless sinner, yet very sadly and grievously, so that God himself complains of them, “They have forgotten me.” For, mark you, if God observes what ordinary men do, much more does he take notice of what his own people do. An unkind word from a stranger may have a very slight effect upon us; but if such a word should come from the lips of one whom we love, it would cut us to the quick. We could put up with a thousand things from those who are mere acquaintances; but from a beloved child, or from the wife of our bosom, such a thing would be very hard to bear. Remember, O Christian, that ancient declaration, “The Lord thy God is a jealous God.” Because he loves us so much, he is in that very proportion jealous; for the greatest jealousy grows out of limitless love; and the Lord our God, who bought us with the heart’s blood of His dear Son, counts us so dear to him that a wandering thought in our mind becomes a crime against him, and the giving up of any part of our heart to love of the world, or of self, or sin, or Satan, or any other of his rivals, becomes to him a cause of grief and sadness. If there are any children of God here, — and I fear there may be many, — who have grown cold in heart, and who have wandered from the Lord, I hope the text will come like a lament from him who hung upon the cross of Calvary, “Therefore have they forgotten me. Therefore have they forgotten me.”

I. I am going to call your attention, first, to The Time When This Sin Was Committed. “Therefore,” says the Lord, “have they forgotten me.” When was that? If we ascertain that, we shall also find out when we ought to be most upon our guard against falling into a similar sin.

It appears, dear friends, to have been when the Israelites had come out of the wilderness into Canaan — when they had escaped from troubles, and had come into an easy condition, for so the context reads: “I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me.” It is a very sorrowful fact that, in this case, the greater God’s goodness was to his people, the less was their gratitude to him; just in proportion as he was kind to them, they were cold to him. These people had been delivered from excessive toil. In Egypt, they had been a nation of slaves; and in the wilderness, they had been for forty years pilgrims with weary feet. They seldom tarried long in any place, but backwards and forwards across that “waste howling wilderness” they marched almost continuously, and concerning all that time God says, “I did know thee in the wilderness.” He knew them, morning by morning, as the manna fell. He knew them when the quails came on swift wings to bring them flesh to eat. He knew them when the morning and evening lambs were offered in sacrifice for them, sinners as they were, all the while; they were in the wilderness, and he says, “I did know thee then.” So, brethren, it has happened to some men that, when they have had hard times, long hours, and stern labor, they have managed to be up in the morning early to get a quiet season of communion with God; and, though they scarcely could have been thought capable of doing it, for they worked so hard, yet they could find leisure to teach a few children in the Sunday-school, or to distribute tracts, or to speak a word for Christ at an open-air service. They had very hard bondage in their daily occupation; yet, whenever there was a week-night service, they always managed to get there. They were very apt to fall asleep when they sat down in the pew, out of sheer weariness because they had been toiling so hard during the day; still, they said that half a loaf was better than no bread, and they were glad to get a message from any of the Lord’s servants in those trying days.

But, dear friends, you remember that, in due time, the children of Israel came to Canaan. Then there was no more marching to and fro in the wilderness for them. They found houses built ready for them to occupy, and they could sit every man under his own vine, and under his own fig tree; and then it was that the Lord said, “They were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me.” It is just the same with the man who used to come to the house of God, Sabbath-days and week-nights, though he was sorely weary with his heavy work. He has what men call “an easy berth” now, and has very little to do; so, being no longer a poor galley-slave, tugging at the oar, you might have thought, that he would have given the more time to God’s service, and have become one of the most industrious Christians living; instead of which, he does not do as much now as he used to do with the legends of time which his hard toil allowed him. Ah, brethren! when you get into smooth and easy places, then is the time when you should be most anxious, lest of you, as of the Israelites, the Lord should have to say, “Therefore have they forgotten me. I would fain wish for every one of you that you may be able to earn your daily bread without any excessive labor. I would that every man, who has to toil beyond due and reasonable hours, were delivered from such semi-slavery; yet do I know that there are many who make an ill use of any leisure that they get, and some who are not nearly as fervent in the cause of God, now that they have leisure, as they used to be before they were so privileged.

These Israelites, also, were now delivered from the pressure of urgent want. At the very beginning of their wilderness journey, they had to go for three days without water. “And when they came to Marah, they could not drink of the waters of Marah, for they were bitter.” They cried to Moses, “What shall we drink?” and he cried to the Lord, and soon the bitter waters were made sweet. Before long, they had eaten up all that they had brought with them out of the land of Egypt, and they murmured again, and then the Lord gave them a daily supply of manna; their bread dropped from the sky morning by morning. But now that they have got into Canaan, that have broad fields that are very fruitful, they reap abundant harvest, their barns are full to bursting, and the hillsides are clad with vines, and olive trees, and fig trees, and all manner of dainties. Instead of having to gather one day’s food at a time, they have many months’ supplies laid up in store. Some of them became very rich; but, alas! it was of them that the Lord had to say, “According to their pasture, so were they filled; ....therefore have they forgotten me.” You must have, known or heard of men and women, who have loved the Lord when in poverty, — or, at least, who have seemed to do so, and who were very fervent and active while they had to look up to the Lord from day to day, and pray, “Give us this day our daily bread;” but, in the word of God’s providential dealings, they have been lifted up into another station in life. You would naturally have supposed that they would have loved the Lord more, and have done more for his cause, and laid themselves out with greater alacrity for his service; but, instead of that, it has been the very reverse with them. When they were financially poor, they were spiritually rich; but now that they are financially rich, they are spiritually poor. As they have gone up temporally, they have gone down spiritually. Their barn has become full, but their heart has become empty. Their wine press has overflowed, but the joy of the Lord has departed from them. It is a sad, sad thing wherever this happens; some of us know that it often happens. Let it not be so with any of you, beloved.

Then, again, these Israelites had become very self-indulgent. They enjoyed themselves, and lived only for pleasure; and they despised everybody who would not or could not do the same. Being “rich, and increased with goods,” they looked down upon those who were not rich; and, worse than that, they began to forget their God. O my brothers and sisters, I have often looked upon they who have been in sore trouble, and I have wished that, by some magic touch, I could lift the daughters of sorrow out of their sad state, but I have lived long enough to feel that, if I could do it, I would deliberately stay my hand until I had consulted with infinite wisdom to know whether it would be for their good or not. If it were in my power to lift the cross from every brother and every sister’s shoulders here, and to give all of you your heart’s desire, I would not do so, however much I might feel prompted to do it. As I see how often the plant, that bloomed in the shade, is burnt up in the sunshine, — and how some natures have never yielded the sweetest perfume except in grief’s sad dripping-well, — when I perceive that some of God’s saints never seem to honor him when they are lifted up into high places, — I feel that you and I had better be satisfied to let the Lord put his people wherever he pleases, and keep them on “short commons” sometimes, and even chasten them every morning, as the psalmist says was done to him. Perhaps, some of them, if the Lord did not make them cry every morning, would make themselves cry twice as much before night; and if he did not afflict them, they would very soon bring far worse afflictions upon themselves by falling into some great sin. I think I know the reason why God does not trust some of us with the bright eye and the elastic step which he bestows upon others. I think I can see why he does not give some of us more prominent positions in his Church, and greater influence amongst the works for him. I think I can tell why that sister is lame, and that brother is blind; why that one hangs her harp upon the willows, and that other toils amid continual poverty. It is because God will not risk all his ships on the roughest sea. He has constructed some of his vessels so that they can stand the storm, and these he sends away into the thick of the tempest; but his little ships he keeps nearer the shore. Some of his seamen see less of his wonders in the deep because they are not able to bear the sight as others can. I think it is so; and, certainly, this is true, — that seasons of prosperity, of any sort, are seasons of great trial to Christians. According to our text, it was at the time of their prosperity that the Israelites forgot their God.

II. Now, secondly, let me indicate The Progress Of This Evil Whenever It Happens To A Man.

It has happened that some men have lived all their lives forgetting God. It may be that some of you, who are here at this service, have never really thought of God, you have forgotten all about him. A gentleman was walking down a country road, one Sabbath morning, and he met a man with a cartload of hay; he was asked by the man who was driving the cart whether he had seen two lads on in front. “Yes,” said the gentleman, “I have, and I think they are the boys of a father with a short memory, are they not?” He said he did not know whether it was so or not, but they were his lads. “Well,” said the gentleman, “I thought that you were their father, and that you had a short memory, for you do not seem to have recollected that there is a text of Scripture which says, ’Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.’” That short memory concerning the Sabbath day affects a great many people concerning everything else that is good. Some of you, I fear, have such short memories that you have never even recollected the God who made you. You have eaten just as the cattle eat, and you have drunk as they drink; but you have never blessed the Giver of the unnumbered mercies that you have received, any more than the cattle have done. Some of you go on from morning to night without any recognition of God. There are hundreds of men who might be compared — as Rowland Hill did once compare them, — to hogs under an oak. “They eat the acorns,” said he, “but they never look up, and thank the oak.” They live in this world, and feed upon the bounties which God has provided for them, yet they have no thought of him. It is his air that they breathe, and it is by his power that they breathe-out air; they could not exist for a single moment if it were not for him; yet he is not in all their thoughts. If God were blotted out of the universe, — if such a thing could be, that he should no longer exist, but that they could still exist, they certainly would not be grieved; possibly, they would feel all the easier in their mind because there would be no judgment to come, and no punishment for all their ill-doing. Ah, my friend! you must be in a very bad plight if you think you can get on better without God than with him. If your boy were to say concerning you, “I wish I might never see my father again;” — if that little child, who eats at your table every day, whom you clothed but the other day with new garments, — if he were to say, “I never want to speak to my father again; I wish he were dead!” — there must be something radically wrong in that child, his morals must be thoroughly bad. Even if nobody has ever found him out in deceiving or lying, I am sure, from that one fact, that he is a bad boy. Now, my friend, even if I cannot point to any sinful act of yours, I am sure that there must be something very wrong with you if you have lived in this world all these years without thinking of God.

If I am invited to go and stay with a friend in the country, and I simply see his beautiful park and his fine gardens, and indoors I have all that I want in the way of refreshment during the day, and a comfortable bed at night, but my host never puts in an appearance, and I do not know whether he is anywhere about the premises, — I do not enjoy my visit. I came down to see him, so I cannot be content with seeing his park, and his gardens, and so on. I say to the servants, “Where is your master? I came down here to pay a visit to him, and I cannot find any pleasure here without I see him.” And, dear friends, I feel just like that with regard to my God. When I look at this beautiful world which he has made, — and it is a beautiful world, after all, let who will speak against it, — I always feel that I want to see him who made it. Even our lovely gardens, which seem to me to be a thousand times more beautiful than all the vineyards of the Continent, would give me no pleasure in looking at them unless I could always realize that God is there. The sea itself, — the wide and open sea, — what is it if there is no God to rule its waves, and to speak in its storms? I must see traces of God in everything that happens; but some of you have lived all this while, and God’s cry concerning you, — over hill and dale, up and down the street, in the house where you live, across the table at which you eat, and over the pillow on which you sleep, — is, “They have forgotten me. I have made them, and kept them alive, and blessed them in a thousand ways, yet they have forgotten me! — me, of whom they ought first to have thoughts, for it was essential with them that they should first have thought of me; and through not thinking of me they have bred within themselves all manner of evils.” O unconverted people, I wish you could put yourselves into God’s place for a few minutes, and just think how you would feel if others had treated you as you have treated him! Let the sharp arrows of conviction stick fast in your conscience as you realize that you have acted in a mean, dastardly, ungenerous, ungrateful way towards your God, — the tender, loving, gracious Creator, Preserver, and Friend of men.

But, now, turning to you Christian people, I want to ask of the progress of this evil in you. I will show you how it often works. When God prospers you in business, and takes away sickness, and removes cause of sorrow, it sometimes happens that the evil of forgetting God begins with an almost imperceptible alienation of heart from him. You do not notice it; you would be very grieved if you did; but your heart begins to grow cold, and the love to your Lord, that once burned in your soul, is not as fervent as it used to be, and this condition of spirit very speedily shows itself in increasing fondness for worldly things. To have riches may be a blessing to you; but for the riches to have you, must be a great curse to you. There are some, who have abundance of temporal things given to them, and they make a good use of them, so they may be thankful for them; but there are others, who are carried away by these temporal things, which thus become the source of all sorts of calamities. A man may have a fine house and a beautiful garden, and he may be thankful for them; so far, so good: but he may fall into the sin of making a heaven of that house and garden, and so they will be the cause of sin. He may be wealthy, and that will be a good thing if he uses his money aright; but, by-and-by, he may begin to feel that the one thing worth living for is to have money, and that will be an evil. If you have acquired a certain amount of money, and you feel that you are a person of importance simply because you have so much wealth, you are putting earthly things into the place which God alone should occupy. As old Master Brooks says, it is as when a husband, whose wife used to dote upon him, has given her rings, and chains, and other ornaments, and now that she has them, she dotes upon them, and forgets him. It is very sad when this is the case; and it is often so with some who profess to be the Lord’s. If we accept his gifts as tokens of love from him, and see him in them, than they are helpful, and not hurtful; but when we get thinking of them, and not of him, then they become mischievous to us.

This is an evil which continually grows; for this man, who is beginning to mind earthly things, keeps on indulging himself. He takes more of what he calls pleasure than he used to do; and, indulging himself thus, he gets into a wrong state for prayer, for searching the Bible, for attending the means of grace; and the more he enjoys this world, the less does he think of the next world. As the things that are seen eat like a canker into him, the things that are unseen seem to lose their power over him. If he still attends the place where he went aforetime to hear the gospel, he says that the minister does not preach as he used to do, and the singing is not as lively as it used to be. Other Christian people say that they cannot see any difference at all, but he can. You know, dear friends, what is very often the difference between one dinner and another. It is not the fault of the cook; it is the want of an appetite. Here are some brethren who have lost their spiritual appetite. They cannot eat this, and they cannot eat that, and they cannot eat the other. They have lost their appetite, that is the reason. “To the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet,” says Solomon; but this man, who has prospered in the world, and has had much enjoyment in it, is now beginning to lose all relish even for those very spiritual things that were once the delight of his soul. So he begins to drop off coming to the house of God, and gradually declines, first a little in this way, and then in that. He has more money now than he used to have, so it takes him a longer time to count it. He has more business than he used to have, and it takes more time to look after it. He cannot come to week-night services; and if, on the Lord’s-day, for appearance sake, he does not cease going to the place of prayer, he carries his ledger with him in his carriage, — metaphorically, if not literally. There is many a man who comes into his pew with acres of land hanging to his boots; and there is many a woman who sits there in a fine new dress, — not only the one she has on, but the other one that is to be made up on Monday.

It is sad when worldly things then get into the soul, and come right into God’s house. Why, the preacher himself knows what it is to find a thousand distracting thoughts come to his mind while he is addressing you; and, therefore, he knows that they must come to your minds while you are listening to the Word of the Lord. Thus it happens that, in one thing after another, the love of God and his Word withers, and the love of the world grows. By-and-by, family prayer gets pushed into a corner, — very short, and not very sweet; and private prayer hardly knows where to find a place for the sole of its feet. Private prayer, as there are none but yourselves to note its observance, in a very convenient place for retrenchment. You want to save time, as you have so much to do, and therefore you snip off a piece here, and another piece there, and who but God is the wiser? You do not yourselves perceive any very great difference; for your conscience is getting seared. So, by degrees, a Christian, who is declining in spiritual things, gives up private prayer; — not altogether, perhaps, but the sweetness and the enjoyment of it depart as he trifles with it, instead of entering into the holy exercise with all his heart and soul.

In some professing Christians, this declension goes further still. At last, they give up all religious profession. I wonder whether there is any man here, who once declared, and probably believed, that he was a Christian, but who has now given up even the name of Christian. If so, my friend, one of two things is true concerning you, — either you never were converted at all, and so have been a mere professor; or else, if you ever were truly converted, you will have to come back again. As surely as ever the Lord looked upon you with an eye of love, you must come back to him; for, after he has once set his seal upon you, he cannot and will not let you go. Oh, that you would come back to him now! You will have to come back, poor wandering sheep, for you belong to the good Shepherd who will not lose one of his flock. Wayward as you are, he will have you with him; and if you will not come back to him when he calls you, he keeps some rough dogs that will worry you back; but back from the paths of sin you must come, and I pray God that you may come back right speedily, and so once more enjoy the blessings of peace with him. I sometimes pass persons, who used to sit in these pews, and who were, I thought, ardent Christians. Even now, some of them have respect for me; but I fear that they have none for my Master. If I get anywhere near them, they slink away, for fear I should speak to them. I wish they had as much anxiety about the grief they have caused my Lord as they have about any grief they may have caused me. May God grant, through his sovereign grace, that all of us, who have professed to be his, may be preserved, lest, — “When any turn from Zion’s way (Alas, what numbers do!)” — we also should turn away, as we shall certainly do unless his grace shall hold us fast!

III. Now, thirdly, and very briefly, a few words about The Peculiar Evil Of This Sad Condition: “They have forgotten me”

It is so grossly ungrateful that every Christian, who realizes that he is apt to slide into such a condition, should at once bestir himself, and watch against it. What! shall I love the Lord less because he gives me more? Shall I set the gifts, which his goodness bestows upon me, upon his throne, and let them be idols to deprive him of my heart’s love and worship? If I do this, surely I shall be worse than the brute beasts. God grant, dear brethren, that we may be ashamed of such a condition as this, and fly from it!

Remember that, if any of us do begin to set our hearts upon the things of this world, whatever we gain, we must be losers. The man who has scarcely a rag to cover him, but who delights in God, may be the beau ideal of a happy man; but the man who is robed in purple, and who calls an empire his own, but who has forgotten his God, is to me the model of misery mocked by majesty. God save you from being able to delight yourselves in anything but your God! May he put so much bitterness into every other cup that you will be compelled to take the cup of salvation, and calling upon the name of the Lord, to drink only of that! You will be dreadful and eternal losers, whatever else you gain, if you lose the Lord.

If you forget God, you who are indeed his children, — and I am speaking only to such people just now, — it must be a terrible thing for you to be led into a condition in which you forget your Heavenly Father. If there were a wife, who was very poor, but who, as long as she was poor, clung to her husband, and found all her delight in his love; but who, when they became rich, no longer cared for him, it would be wretched riches that could burn away her heart from him who ought to possess it all. If I love my brother, and find great comfort in fellowship with him, and I should suddenly get to be so great that I should not know my brother, what a miserable being I should be! Many a man does not know his own relations when he begins to get rich. He thinks he is somebody of importance, but really he is a big nobody, — a very great and dreadful nobody; and when a man, just because God prospers him, does not know Jesus Christ, his great elder Brother, and gets to be ashamed of mixing with God’s poor people who go to the little Ebenezer Chapel or of being seen with those poor commonplace sort of Christians who try to follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth, — he is a poor, poor specimen of a man, much less of a Christian man. God give us minds and hearts quickened by his grace, that will enable us to live above all such meanness as that!

A sad part of the wretchedness of this condition is that, it involves so much trifing with God. If we have forgotten God, dear brethren, we have forgotten the many deliverances we have had in the days that are past. We have forgotten the wiping away of our tears of sorrow. Worse still, we have forgotten the precious blood of Jesus, that spoke peace to our soul; and we have forgotten the Holy Ghost, who came into our hearts, and gave us joy and rest in Jesus Christ. And if we have forgotten God, we have forgotten his gracious promises which are yet to be fulfilled, and the glorious covenant of his grace, ordered in all things and sure, on which our hopes of heaven are based. We have also forgotten his claims upon us, — forgotten that we are his children, his beloved, his elect, his redeemed. We have forgotten as that, and we are living in such a condition that we are trifling even with his threatenings. He has threatened that he will chasten us, and we seem to make light of his threatenings, and to defy his chastisements. We must have got into a state that is piteous and lamentable to the last degree if we can live from day to day in forgetfulness of God.

IV. I will say no more about this sad decline, but finish my discourse by telling you How This Evil Can Be Cured.

If any of us, brethren and sisters in Christ, are suffering from this dreadful decline, it is a good help towards its being cured when we see the mischief of it. When a man has this sad condition pointed out to him, and the Spirit of God enables him to see it, that is a great help towards lifting him out of it. But I think that the best thing for us all to do is, just for the moment, to sink all differences, and not ask any questions about whether we are saints or sinners, — whether we ever did love the Lord, or whether we did not; and let us all go straight away to the cross, just as if we had never gone there before. By nature, and by practice too, we are all guilty, and we all deserve to be cast into hell, — the best of us as well as the worst. So, let us all go where the Savior carried the great load of sin upon himself, and bore the consequences, that he might set us free from it for ever. Let us look up to him, and, by faith, view the flowing of the blood from those many wounds that he received on our behalf. Let us look into that dear face of his, — the image of matchless misery and majesty combined; let us note the thorn-crown, and all the marks of ignominy and shame that cruel men put upon him. Let us hear him cry, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” and, as we see him die, let us believe in him again, or believe in him for the first time. My Savior, my Redeemer, wherever I may have wandered, I come back to thee. My soul believes in thee, trusts thee, hangs all her hopes for time and eternity upon thee; wilt thou not speak peace and pardon to my guilty spirit? Ah, if you come to him with such a confession and cry as this, you will get your love back again. The best place to get it back again is the place where it was born. It was born at the cross, and you will get it back again if you go to the cross, just as you went at the first, and stand there, with this as your soul’s confession of faith, —

“I the chief of sinners am,
But Jesus died for me.”

I cannot say more except just this, — if God is prospering you, keep very close to the cross. Do you not see that if, the richer you get, the oftener you go to the cross, it will be safe for you to be trusted with wealth? Take care to sanctify everything that God gives you by giving him his proper portion, and do not use your own portion till you have given him his. Then, if you look at every blessing as coming to you by the way of the cross, and say, “Jesus Christ has sent me this, for —


“’There’s ne’er a gift his hand bestows
But cost his heart a groan,’” —

if you receive everything as through him, and then desire to use everything for him, you may be as rich as the Rothschilds and yet you may be as gracious as the apostle Paul. You might have all the world given you, and yet, for all that, it would not hurt you. If you had as much of God as you had of gold, God would see that the gold was safe in your hands. He would trust us with prosperity if he saw that all our prosperity only bound us more closely and more completely to the cross of his dear Son. So, if any of you have forgotten him, conclude this evening’s service by coming to the cross; and, thus, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit shall get glory from you. May it be so, for Christ’s sake! Amen.

(Copyright AGES Software. Used by permission. All rights reserved. See AGES Software for their full selection of highly recommended resources)

Hosea 13:9 Self-Destroyed, Yet Saved

NO. 2425
INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD’S-DAY, AUGUST 11TH 1 1895,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,
ON THURSDAY EVENING, AUGUST 11TH, 1887.

“O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.”-Hosea 13:9.

IT would be a very important subject for our meditation if we kept to the text, and thought upon its great truth,-that the ruin of man is altogether of himself, and the salvation of man is altogether of God. These two statements, I believe, comprehend the main points of a sound theology. There have been divisions in the Church over these points where there ought not to have been any. The Calvinist has said, and said right bravely, that salvation is of grace alone; and the Arminian has said, and said most truthfully, that damnation is of man’s will alone, and as the result of man’s sin, and of that only. Then they have fallen out with one another. The fact is, they had each one laid hold of a truth, and if they could have put their heads together, and accepted both truths, it might have been greatly for the advantage of the Church of Christ. These two doctrines are like tram lines that you can travel on with safety and comfort, these parallel lines-ruin, of man; restoration, of God: sin, of man’s will; salvation, of God’s will: reprobation, of man’s demerit; election, of God’s free and sovereign grace: the sinner lost in hell through himself alone, the saint lifted up to heaven wholly and alone by the power and grace of God.

Get those two truths thoroughly engraven upon your heart, and you will then hold comprehensively the great truths of Scripture. You will not need to crowd them into one narrow system of theology, but you will have a sort of duplicate system, which will contain, as far as the mind of man, being finite, can contain, the great truths revealed by the infinite God. I am not, however, at this time going so much into the doctrinal point as to try and make use of my text for practical soul-saving purposes.

You notice in this text, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself,” how God comes to close terms with men. He speaks, calling the persons addressed by name, “O Israel,” and then he uses a singular pronoun, “thou hast destroyed thyself.” It is something like Nelson’s way of fighting. When he came alongside the enemy, he brought his ship as close as ever he could, and then sent in a raking broadside from stem to stern. So does this text, it seems to get alongside of the man, puts its guns right close up to him, and then discharges its volley: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

There is nothing said here that is at all flattering: “Thou hast destroyed thyself.” God bids a man look at himself as a blighted, blasted, ruined thing when he tells him that he is a self-destroyer. He has done it all; he has no need to ask, as Jesus did, “Who slew all these?” Thine own red right hand has done it, O thou guilty sinner, thou hast ruined thyself! See how plainly God speaks, how he lays judgment to the line, and righteousness to the plummet, and with his storm of hail sweeps away all refuges of lies: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

But though he does not flatter, observe that the Lord does not conclude his address to the sinner by leaving him in despair, for the second part of the text is, “In me is thine help.” We should never so preach the law as to show only the naked sword of divine justice; the sweet invitations and promises of the gospel must come in after the dreadful verdict of judgment. Let the thunders roll, let the lightnings set the heavens on a blaze, but conclude not till some silver drops have fallen, and a shower of mercy has refreshed the thirsty earth. No; God will not have us preach alone the law and its terrors, but the gospel must also be brought into our message: “Thou hast destroyed thyself, O Israel: there is no concealing from thee that grim and terrible fact. But in me is thine help: there is no keeping back from thee that cheering and blessed information.” When these two things work together, breeding self-despair and hope in God, this is the way by which eternal life is wrought in the souls of men.

I am going to speak, then, of those two themes; and first, here is a sad fact: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” Secondly, here is a hopeful assurance: “In me is thine help;” and, ore I finish, I wish to notice, in the third place, an instructive warning, which is given by this text as you read it in the Revised Version: “It is thy destruction, O Israel, that thou art against me, against thy help.” It is a warning to men not to fight against their own salvation, or contend against the only Helper who can aid them to any purpose.

I. First, then, here is A Sad Fact: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

Now, dear friends, I do believe that there is a message here to every one of us. The text speaks in tones of thunder to each unconverted person, and says, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” But if any child of God has lost his first love, his joy, his comfort, if he has become a backslider, if he has fallen into a sad, melancholy condition, he has done it himself, and the text tells him so, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” If there be about any of us that which we have to mourn over, by reason of an evil heart of unbelief in departing from the living God, the text puts its finger on the sore, and says, “Thou hast destroyed thyself; thou hast thyself done all this mischief.”

But, addressing myself mainly now to those who do not as yet know the Lord, I want you, dear friends, to notice that this sad fact stared Israel in the face: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” He could see it, he could feel it, he could not escape from knowing it; for this was the singular fact, that God himself seemed to have turned against him. I read you, just now, those seventh and eighth verses where God says, “I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the call of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.’ It happens to some men, as it has happened to many who have come under my observation, that they have gone on pleasantly in sin for a time, till, on a sudden, the hand of God has gone out against them. They have been smitten with sickness,-those same strong young fellows, who never ailed anything, and who thought that they could indulge their passions to the utmost without fear, have been on a sudden laid low. Perhaps the hand of God has gone out against them in business. They were prospering, they added field to field, they could afford to spend money freely in various ways; but, by-and-by, the stream of business began to run low, and then to dry up altogether. What they attempted did not prosper however hard they labored. They rose up early, they sat up late, they ate the bread of carefulness; but all went amiss with them. Whatever they did seemed to have a light upon it. Truly God met them as a lion, and as a bear bereaved of her whelps.

At such a time as this, the man begins to see that there must be something wrong with him. He did not know it before; perhaps he even thought that his prosperity was a proof that God was not angry with him, and he went on from sin to sin, and said within himself, “Why, I do not suffer even as Christian people do! Surely, I must be right, after all, for I increase in riches, and my eyes stand out with fatness.” Oh, if thou art one of God’s chosen, there will come to thee a day of darkness in which thou shalt not see thy way along the road of sin! God will hedge up thy path with thorns, and dig deep ditches in thy way, and thou shalt stumble and fall, and then shalt thou say, “I perceive that something is amiss with me, I see that I am on the wrong track. Oh, how shall I escape, how shall T get into the right road?” I say again, when a man is in that condition, as Israel was in my text, then his sad state stares him in the face. You cannot convince the worldling that he is in evil case when he is living without God, and yet prospering. Oh, no; he is satisfied as long as he gets the things of this world; what cares he for the world to come? Therefore, one of the first means that God uses to arouse men from the dangerous slumber of their natural estate is himself to go to war with them, and to be like one who is cruel to them, that he may tear them away from themselves, and from their follies.

Notice, next, that while this grief stared them in the face, it was attributed to themselves, it lay at their own door: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” There is always hope for a man when he knows this and confesses this. The worst of it is that, by nature, we lay our ruin at anybody’s door but our own. “It was all the fault of our bringing up; how can we help it? It was God’s purpose, or it was the devil’s temptation.” We put the saddle anywhere but on the right horse; we will not accept this great and certain truth, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” Now, be you sure of this, O man, that the sin which will ruin you is your own sin. That for which you will suffer, that for which you do suffer now, is the sin which you yourself have committed, the evil which you have willfully committed.

There are some to whom this truth has a special reference. Let me see whether I can find them out. There are some of us who went into sin without any previous training whatever. Some of us were born of Christian parents, and our earliest days were spent in a holy circle. We heard no ill language, we saw no ill example, we cannot recollect anything that was wrong that crossed our path as children; yet we went astray from childhood unto youth, pursuing evil as eagerly as did the children of the vicious. Wherever this is the case, does not the text come home with great sharpness, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself”? You cannot say, “The fathers have eaten sour grapes, and the children’s teeth are set on edge.” You have eaten the sour grapes yourselves, and set your own teeth on edge. Perhaps some here are the children of Christian ministers, and they know where they spent last night; I do not. Perhaps some here were borne and trained by mothers whose purity was most exemplary; but they themselves, though they never had an ill example, have plunged into sin as naturally as the young crocodile takes to the Nile. This is, with an emphasis, for a man to destroy himself.

So there are some, who are not the victims of temptation, but they have deliberately gone into sin. I feel great pity for some that, from their peculiar constitution, seem as if their very flesh led their soul into mischief; from their birth they appeared to have a tendency towards such and such evils. We do not excuse these guilty ones; but, at the same time, are they so blameworthy as others who, without any particular pressure from without or from within, nevertheless deliberately sin? Oh, my dear friends, if you can sit down, and look at sin coolly, and calculate and turn it over, and then, after weighing it in the scales, can go after it, then I must say, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” Yours was wanton, deliberate mischief; and who shall justify you before the bar of God at the great judgment day?

There are some who have to take a great deal of plotting and planning in order to be able to manage to sin at all. Their surroundings are such that they seem to be shielded and guarded against iniquities which are natural enough to others; they have to dodge the inspection of the household, they have to practice as many tricks to escape the eye of wife or daughter as the burglar does when he tries to break into the house at night. Now, what shall I say of such, who put all their wits to work to damn their souls, and are far more busy to ruin themselves than the greatest schemers and merchants are to a fortune? Yet there are many such, and of these we have to say emphatically, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

Yes, and I have even seen them act thus against warnings given them with tears, warnings which have brought tears to their own eyes. They have pushed through the most loving obstacles downward to the pit as if resolved to perish, and they have sinned against enlightenment, for Mr. Conscience has flashed his bull’s-eye lantern in their eyes. They have stood for a time astonished at themselves, and have felt that they could not sin thus, yet they have soon said that they would, and they have pushed good Mr. Conscience on one side, and still pursued the downward track. Oh, this is terrible! When a man acts thus, we must say of him, “Thou hast destroyed thyself.”

Some will act thus distinctly against providence’s. When God has stepped in their path, and blocked them out of one sin, they have edged about, and gone to another; and when they could not effect their purpose, when it seemed as if the very earth and the stars in their courses would fight against them in their pursuit of sin, they have selected another road, as if to baffle the God of mercy, and destroy themselves whether he would let them do so or not. I am giving a terrible description, but I am painting sinners to the life; I know I am. There are some here who will recognize their own portraits if they have any eyes left: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

Further, notice that, in the text, God himself remind8 the sinner of this sad fact? Ought he not to have known it without being told of it? Yes, he should. Might he not have discovered it by listening to the prophets who would have told him so? Assuredly he should. But God himself breaks through all reserve, and comes to this guilty sinner, and says to him, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself. See what has come of thine iniquity. Did I not tell thee it would be so? Look, and see for thyself. It is not a man like thyself who tells thee that it is so, but God who knows God who never exaggerates. He tells thee that thou hast destroyed thyself.” O my dear hearer, it may be that while I am speaking to you in truth and soberness about this weighty matter, God himself is speaking through my lips. Indeed, it is so; it is the Lord who says to thee, “Thou hast destroyed thyself; thou hast destroyed thine innocence, thou hast destroyed thy righteousness, thou hast destroyed thy tenderness, thou hast well-nigh destroyed thy conscience, thou hast destroyed thy hopes, thou hast destroyed thy best years, thou has destroyed thy usefulness, and now thou hast brought thyself to death’s dark door,-

“’Buried in sorrow and in sin.”

God himself can say no less than this to thee, “Thou hast destroyed thyself.” God who loves men, God the tender-hearted and the generous, God who says, “How can I give thee up?” even he is forced to give this solemn verdict, “O Israel, thou hast not only hurt thyself, and wounded thyself, but thou hast damned thyself, thou hast destroyed thyself, thou hast ruined thyself; thy last hope is put out, like the last flicker of the candle, and thou art left in the dark.”

It may be that some here will confess the truth of this fact. If so, bow your heads; solemnly bow before the living God, and own that it is so, “Yes, I have destroyed myself.” It will be a bitter, bitter moment, and yet it will be the best moment you have ever lived, in which you sob out this confession, “O God, I have destroyed myself!” How I wish that I could make men act thus, but I cannot. We try to preach truth with all the earnestness we possess, but we cannot get the truth into our hearer’s soul. On such a sultry night as this, you sit and listen to me with as much attention as you can in the closeness of the atmosphere; but O ungodly one, if this truth really entered your heart, I question whether you would be able to keep your seat! It would fill you with an inward anguish, and you would be ready to cry aloud, “What shall I do, what shall I do, for I have ruined myself?” If you could see the pit that yawns for you, if you saw the chasm that is just before you,-your foot is even now well-nigh over a bottomless gulf, yet you do not perceive it;-if you did perceive it, it would be another matter for me to preach, and for you to hear this message,
“O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.”

II. I am very happy to be permitted by my text now to change my strain, praying that what has been said already may have its due effect, and prepare the way for this more pleasing note. Here is, secondly, A Hopeful Assurance: “But in me is thine help.”

Notice that this assurance came at a very fit time. Just when the man was made to know that he had destroyed himself, then it was that God said to him, “But in me is thine help.” What is the use of a Savior when you do not need saving? The point is to have a Savior when you are lost; and this is the glory of Christ, that he is a timely Redeemer, who does not redeem those who are not slaves, but ransoms us when we are sold under sin. Thou wilt never know the gospel till thou hast known the law. If thou hast not felt the crushing power of the first sentence of my text, “Thou hast destroyed thyself,” thou wilt not care for the cheering note that makes up the second sentence, “In me is thine help.” Remember that, when you have sinned, it is then that Christ washes you from sin, When you are lost, it is then that Christ saves you; and if you are now full of sin, it is now that Christ can begin to bless you. If now you feel so leprous that there is not a sound spot in you, it is now that Christ can come and heal you. “Oh!” say you, “if I did not feel as I now do, I think that Christ could heal me.” He can heal you as you now feel, or as you do not feel; for if you be in such a condition that you do not even feel, but are brought to acknowledge that death has seized you, and seems to have petrified your very heart, yet where you are, and as you are, Christ is an all-sufficient Savior for you. If you have gone down seven pairs of stairs into the dungeon where the light never comes, yet Jesus can come to you even there, and set you free at once. I do not know where to pick words strong enough to make this truth quite plain and emphatic; it is not your goodness that makes you fit for Christ, it is your badness, in which Christ shall be glorified by delivering you from it. The need may be never so great, but Christ can meet it! The distress may be never so urgent, but Christ can come and remove it. So, then, this assurance was hopeful because it came at a fit time. When Israel was destroyed, then God was his help.

Notice, next, that it came as a contrast to their condition: “thou hast destroyed thyself.” Yes, yes; “but-but in me is thine help.” “Thou hast destroyed thyself. Thou canst not save thyself. Thou hast destroyed thyself: that is true; but then I have come, not to destroy thee; not to do the work which thou hast done, thou hast done that effectually enough. There is no need for me to come in and do more destroying; but I have come to undo the work that thou hast done. I have come to give thee a righteousness better than the one thou hast lost. I have come to give thee a tenderness of heart far better than any thou hadst by nature. I am come to give thee a new heart and a right spirit. I am come to work in thee again all that thou hast destroyed; yea, and to work in thee something better than thou hast destroyed, to make thee a new man in Christ Jesus. In me is thine help.” What a contrast is this to the condition of the one who has destroyed himself!

Observe, also, that this assurance comes from God himself: “In me is thine help.” O soul, I wish that I could make thee turn thine eyes once for all away from thyself and all that comes of thyself, for thou wilt never get help there; and I would have thee look to God, to God in Christ Jesus, to God the Holy Ghost, to God the Divine Father; for if ever there be help for such an one as thou art, that help must be in God. As an old friend said to me yesterday, “Nothing will do for you and me but grace.” I said to him, “Yes, and that won’t do unless it is the grace of God.” It must be God’s own grace, redeeming us from all iniquity, and working in us to will and to do of his own good pleasure, or else we never can be saved. But then God tells us that we can be saved, for though he says that we have destroyed ourselves, he adds, “But in me is thine help.”

Sitting in the pew, over yonder, is one who says, “Oh, but I am full of the most accursed sin!” I know that thou art, but God is full of the most blessed mercy, and in him is thine help. “Oh, but I am all failure, and shortcoming, and unrighteousness!” Yes, but God is all righteousness, and grace, and faithfulness; and there is where thy hope lies. “Oh, but I am powerless; I can do nothing!” I know that, and I would have thee know it; but the Lord is almighty, and he can do everything. Cast thyself upon him. This is faith, to go out of thyself to God, to get away from all this hampering mass of rottenness, this ruin, this destruction, the fallen manhood of the flesh, and the self-confidence that grows like a fungus out of it, and come to the eternal God who is pure holiness, and rest in him as he reveals himself in the person of his dear Son.

“I know,” says one, “that there is help in God.” Thou knowest something; but thou dost not know everything yet, for the text says, “In me is thine help;” not only for Mary and for Thomas, but help for thee. “In me is thine help.” “Surely,” exclaims one, “it does not mean me, for I am a destroyed one.” I tell thee that it means exactly thee, for this help is for the destroyed one. “Thou hast destroyed thyself, but in me is thine help.” “Possibly there may be help for So-and-so, who has a good natural disposition, and has never gone astray as I have gone.” That may be, I do not know anything about him; but I have to deal with one now who has no good natural disposition, and nothing whatever to recommend him. I have to deal with thee, thou destroyed one, thou who art like an old ruin, broken and cast down, inhabited by moles and bats, a foul and filthy thing. Thou standest in the darkness there, and it is Christ who comes to rebuild such as thou art, and make a temple for himself out of even thee. I see thee black and foul, not worthy to be picked off a dunghill; and it is such as thou art that the splendor of almighty love has chosen, that in thee, in all thy rottenness and abomination, the glory of his grace may be manifested by making something out of thee though thou art nothing, making a glorious righteousness to cover thee though thou art naked, and thy very righteousnesses are but as filthy rags. “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself.” Bury him. Bury the dead out of our sight. Cast him into the pit. “No,” says Mercy, “stop that dreadful procession. Let the bearers stand still. Christ comes to this dead young man, and he says, ’Thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.’“ Look, the dead man lives! I see him sit upright. He is delivered to his mother, and God is glorified in the resurrection of the dead. “Thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help.”

What sayest thou, sinner? Wilt thou have this help? “Have it?” thou sayest, “have it? Yes, but I am not worthy.” Now, away with that nonsense! Have I not told thee that the Lord comes to bless thee, not because of thy worthiness, but because of his grace? “What am I to do to have it?” Thou hast nothing to do but take it. He freely gives it to thee. “But surely there is something expected of me.” Thou art a fool if thou expectest anything of thyself but sin. All thy expectation of good must be from God. Thou mayest expect great things of God, and then there will be great things wrought in thee; but what thou hast now to do is just to accept the infinite mercy of God, and submit to him as the clay on the wheel yields to the hand of the potter, that he may mould and fashion thee, and make thee to be a vessel of mercy fitted for his use.

God bless these words of mine to the salvation of some of you! I travail in birth for you till Christ be formed in you. I remember times when, if I had heard such an assuring word as this, when I was burdened with guilt and full of fears, I think I should have leaped forward to lay hold upon it; and if there are any such here, this message should be as though a rift were made in the clouds to let them see into heaven. “In me is thine help,” says Christ on yonder eternal throne. “In me is thine help,” says the Father in the splendor of his glory. “In me is thine help,” says the Spirit who, like a dove, is hovering here, waiting to enter into some heart, and work his gracious will.

III. I close with what I mentioned to you, the rendering of the Revised Version, which has much to be said in its favor. This gives us AN Instructive Warning: “It is thy destruction, O Israel, that thou art against me, against thy help.”

Dear friends, do not any of you fight against your only true Helper. Is not this a dreadful thing for anyone to do? We sometimes say of a man, “Now, you are standing in your own light. You know that it is only yourself that is hindering yourself.” We say this to the drunkard, who is earning good wages, and yet spending so much of his money in poisoning himself. We say to him, “You cannot keep on like this; you are ruining your health, you are robbing your family, you cannot prosper while you act thus, you are standing in your own light.” It is a very sad thing when this is the fact concerning a man’s temporal prosperity; but what shall I say of a man when he himself is his own soul’s destroyer, when he himself stands in the way of his own joy and peace through believing?

Let me close by beseeching you not to stand in your own light, any of you, or to act in antagonism to your only Helper. “How can we do that?” says one. Well, first, by disbelieving the gospel. I have seen some do this very foolishly. I heard one say, the other day, “Well now, that is a very precious gospel. I think, somehow, that I could believe it if it were not so good as it is, but it seems too good to be true.” Well, if you keep on with that kind of talk, you will be very foolish, you will be standing in your own light. Suppose somebody were to come to your house, and say to you, “You know such a mansion.” “Yes.” “You know that it has a beautiful park around it.” “Yes.” “Well, I have brought you the title-deeds of that estate. I am going to make you a present of it.” Perhaps you would smile, and say, “There are a great many practical jokes being played nowadays, and I suppose this is one of them.” But suppose that this person said, “No, this is a reality, it is no joke, it is a fact, there are the title-deeds of this estate made out in your name.” Suppose that month after month you said, “It is too good to be true,” you would be very unwise. I think that, if it were said to me, I should go and see, for I should say, “There are so many strange things that happen nowadays that one begins to expect the unexpected; and, at any rate, I would sooner be made a fool of by being led to believe something more than is true, than I would make a fool of myself by not believing what is really true.” If you were shut up in a prison, condemned to die to-morrow morning, and expected that, at eight o’clock, you would be hanged by the neck till you were dead, if anyone stood at the prison door, and said to you, “There is a free pardon for you,” I can imagine your saying, “Don’t tantalize me. It is too good to be true” But if you actually went out to be hanged, refusing the pardon because you thought that it was too good to be true,-well, I do not know what I should say of you. The gospel cannot be too good to be true. Whatever God says must be grandly good, it must be divinely, infinitely good. Do you believe it? Do not quarrel with God’s mercy because it is so great. Little mercy would not serve your turn. Therefore, do not cry out against it because it is so great, but come and accept it cheerfully, and say, “God be thanked for it! I will gladly receive this great favor which he so freely presents to me.”

Then, do not fight against God by trifling with his mercy, How often are persons impressed and aroused, yet they go straight away into some silly or even wicked company! It is a terrible thing for some people that, on the Sabbath day, they are often rendered serious by what they hear, and then on the week day they go into amusements which distract them from better things, and lead them on to evil things; and so the good Word of God is forgotten. Their goodness is as the morning cloud and as the early dew. What have any of you to do with mirth while you are unsaved? What have you to do with sightseeing till you have seen your Savior? There is not a moment you ought to waste, not an hour that you can spare, till you have found Christ, and are saved in the Lord with an everlasting salvation.

Lastly, I pray you, do not fight against your best Friend, or contend against your only Helper, by hardening your hearts. Ask to have them softened. Better still, whether hardened or softened, obey that blessed gospel precept, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Remember how he himself puts the matter, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” Or as Paul put it, “If thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.” Obey the heavenly message. Pause not, hesitate not; but hasten to obey the voice of Christ; and when this is done, then thou shalt find that, despite thy self-destruction, help enough was laid up in God even for thee, and thou shalt sing for ever to the praise of his free and sovereign grace.

The Lord bless you, and this simple testimony of mine, for Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.

(Copyright AGES Software. Used by permission. All rights reserved. See AGES Software for their full selection of highly recommended resources)

Hosea 13:10 Theocracy

NO. 2848
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 10TH, 1903,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON
ON LORD’S-DAY EVENING, SEP. 23RD, 1877.

“I will be thy King.” Hosea 13:10.

“Thou art my King, O God.” — Psalm 44:4.

Those of you who were present, this morning, will remember that I preached upon the Kingship of the Lord Jesus Christ, and that I earnestly entreated my hearers to submit themselves to his Kingly authority. See Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 1,375, “Now then, Do it.” I hope that many, who were with us, felt that an almighty force was operating upon them, making them willing to surrender themselves to the control of the great King of kings. I dwelt, then, mainly upon the need of decision for Christ, and upon our duty to yield ourselves up wholly to him. That is the human side of the question, and is, by no means, to be kept in the background; but, on this occasion I want to speak to you upon the privilege of having Christ for our King, and upon the graciousness of Christ in allowing himself to be our King, and permitting us to become his subjects. My purpose, at this time, is rather to set forth what God does for us in this matter than what he demands of us. To me, it seems inexpressibly beautiful that, while we are, in one place, bidden to “kiss the Son,” and accept him as our King, we have, in another portion of Scripture, such a delightful declaration as this, “I will be thy King.” It is always interesting to trace great rivers to their sources. You usually find that their springs lie far up among the mountains; and if you trace back to their springs certain practical subjects that you find in the Word of God, you get to the eternal hills of everlasting love.
I am going, first, to run away from my text, and to take another. If you look in the 10th verse of the 13th chapter of Hosea, which contains our text, you will see these words near the end of the verse: “Give me a King.” So, our first head is, the need of nature; then, in the second part of my discourse, I shall keep strictly to my first text: “I will be thy King.” That is the answer of grace; and then, thirdly, we shall go back to the 44th Psalm, and at the 4th verse we shall find the acknowledgment of faith: “Thou art my King, O God.” That is our programme; may we be helped by the Spirit to carry it out, and may we be able, in our hearts, to go from step to step all through!

I. First, then, we are to consider The Need Of Nature: Give me a King.”

Man was once happy in Eden, for God was his King; but when he cast off his allegiance to God, and became a rebel and a traitor, then he lost both his paradise and his peace. Ever since then, man has, morally and spiritually, needed a King, and the deep groaning of the natural man is, “Give me a King.”

Now, first, this is the cry of weakness. Man finds himself to be a poor puny creature, and he feels that he wants to look up to someone greater, stronger, wiser, more enduring than himself. There are some plants that cannot grow much unless they can get something stronger than themselves to which they can cling, and around which they can twine. You may, perhaps, have seen them, when they have been away from a wall or a tree, stretching out their tendrils, and seeking for something to climb upon; and if they do not find it, they fall to the ground till, in the damp weather, their leaves grow wet, and rot, and the plant is in a sickly state, in which it can barely exist. Such is human nature. It is a trailing thing, and it fain would be a climbing thing, and a clinging thing. In some persons, this trait is very conspicuous. They are always wanting somebody to whom they can cling; and this tendency is the source of the greatest possible danger and sorrow to them. They select wrong objects for their love and trust; and, consequently, they are betrayed, they are disappointed, and they sadly learn the meaning of that text, “Cursed be the man that trusteth in man, and maketh flesh his arm, and whose heart departeth from the Lord.” That is the result when this clinging tendency is wrongly used; but many people have this tendency. Man is weak, and he knows that he is weak; and, therefore, he cries, “’Give me a King,’ — someone who will guide me, direct me, govern me, rule me, take care of me.”

Besides being the cry of weakness, it is also, oftentimes, the sigh of distress. In the 9th verse of this chapter, we read, “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help. “Then follows my first text, “I will be thy King.’ Do you see the connection of the two passages? A King is promised to them because they had destroyed themselves. When a man feels that he has destroyed himself, brought himself down to destruction by his sin and folly, then he, too, cries, “Give me a King. He wants help that he may be brought up out of his sad condition. When a soul is really convinced of its sin, and made to see that it is brought under the sentence of God’s righteous law, it, naturally, cries out for something, or someone, that can give it the help which it does not find in itself; and this craving is often the cause of our being duped, for a so-called “priest” comes in, and he says, “I can help you; I am ordained of God to rescue you from destruction.” Many people are willing to trust in anything that has certain robes upon it; but, for my part, I will trust neither in chasubles, nor albs, nor stoles, nor any decorations or dresses, whether they are on linen-horses or on men-milliners. What can there be, in man, or in his clothes, that can be of help to his fellow-man in such a case as this? Besides, God has not entrusted such a ministry as that to any man. He has bidden his servants preach the gospel; and that gospel conveys help, and light, and power to all who believe it; but as for forms and ceremonies, musical performances, ornate ritual, masses, and the like, they are sheer deceptions through and through. Trust not the weight of a feather to them; much less your souls. But again I remind you that there is in man a craving which makes him long for someone who can rescue him from destruction; and the mercy is, that God meets that craving by setting before us his dear Son, who is Prophet, Priest, and King, Prophet to reveal to us the mind of God, Priest to cleanse us by his own blood, and to make us acceptable to his Father, and King to rule and control us and bring us into conformity to his own will. I know that cry right well, and for years I sent it up from the very depths of my soul, “’Give me a King,’ one who is wise enough, and strong enough, and willing enough to help my soul in its greatest extremity.”

Further, dear friends, if sinners were wise, this would also be the prayer of thoughtfulness. I will suppose that I am addressing a young man, to whom God has given a wise and understanding heart. He has passed his majority, and is just about to leave his father’s roof, and he feels that, now, everything must depend upon himself, and his own character; he cannot depend upon others as he has done in the past. Now, if he is a wise young man, he will say to God, “Give me a King,” for he will know from observation, I hope, rather than from experience, that anarchy in the soul is a truly terrible thing. There have been men of great talents, who, it seems to me, in the providence of God, have been permitted to live on purpose to show what a man is when there is no King in his soul, when every passion, that rules him, leads the mob of his faculties to tumult and revolt. If his thirst said, “Drink,” the man drank till he was drunken. If his natural appetite and taste said to him, “Gratify us,” he gratified them even though, thereby, he plunged into all manner of licentiousness and excess. There have been men, I say again, of great talents, who have blazed in the moral firmament like meteors, and have astonished many with the brilliance, yet luridness, of their light; yet their influence has been baleful to the nation, and mischievous to all men except those who learnt from them not to try to govern their own passions in their own strength. To let all the powers within us be without a supreme Ruler is the most terrible thing that can happen to any man. Young man, never believe that it can be for your good to follow the leading of your own evil passions. No, it is in restraining yourself that your welfare and your happiness will lie, not in throwing the reins upon the neck of carnal desires, but in reining in these fiery steeds, and keeping them well in hand; and, to do that, you need to pray, “Give me a King.”

It is a dreadful thing to lead an aimless life. I know no person, in the whole world, who is more wretched than a man who has no true object in life. His father, perhaps, left him all the wealth that he could desire; and, now, the sole occupation of his being is to kill time, and to dig its grave, and his own also, as quickly as he can. He does not live to benefit others, he has no high and noble object as his guiding star; but he simply squanders his time till it is all gone. Now, that is the most miserable man I know. A man, who is toiling hard to bring up a large family, may be, and very often is, among the happiest of men. A man, who has an object in life, especially if it be an unselfish one, and who strains all his faculties in order that he may attain it, is sure to be happy; possibly, happier while he is pursuing that object than after he has attained it. Trying to win a race warms a man, and produces in him joy, the joy of activity, the joy of competition, and, often, the joy of success; but there are some young men, who start out in life intending to do nothing, and they do it very thoroughly; they are great consumers of bread, and meat, and wine, and such-like things; but, beyond that, I know not what is to be said about them. Such poor, aimless beings are always unhappy. They pretend to be merry, and they make a great noise which is supposed to imply joy, but it is only like “the crackling of thorns under a pot.” They know nothing of what substantial pleasure means. I would as lief never have been born as live without an object; and, long ago, I said, “’Give me a King.’ Give me something to live for, something to die for, something that commands all my faculties, and wakens up all my powers, something that stirs my spirit, and makes a man of me. ’Give me a King.’ I must have a King, or else what is life worth to me.”

Any thoughtful man will also have noticed that selfishness, if it controls our life, is a mean thing. Look over there! Do not tell me that So-and-so is a man; tell me that he is one of a herd of swine greedily devouring all that he can grasp. He simply lives that he may be rich, that he may be famous, that he may be called respectable; he lives only for himself, his soul is so small that it is trooped up within his own ribs, his heart if he has one, is so cramped that it never goes out on behalf of others, but only beats one tune, and that is, “Take care of Number One.” That is a wretched kind of life, and any thoughtful young man must say, “I don’t want to live like that, ’Give me a King.’ Let me keep clear of all selfishness; I do not want to be under the sway of the tyrant, Self. Let me have something that will rule and govern me. Give me a constitutional monarchy Give me someone who is worthy to have the control of my whole life. “I recollect that the thoughts, which passed through my mind, when I was starting in life, were something like these. I distrusted self-guidance, for I saw how unsafe it was. I have told you before that I knew one, who-was at school with me, who used to be held up as a pattern and example to me, such a good boy, such an excellent young man. He came to London; but, within a few weeks, London was too much for him: and I saw him come home in disgrace, his employer would not have such a fellow in his house. Then I said to myself, “That may be my experience if I trust to myself. I should not like to begin life, away from home, in disgrace, to continue it in dishonor, and to die with everybody feeling that it was a relief to the world when I was gone;” so I said to myself, “By what means can I ensure my character? Can I get a guarantee that I shall be kept?” And when I turned to this blessed Book, and found that the Lord Jesus Christ had promised to keep those who committed themselves unto him, I accepted him upon this ground, as well as upon others, that he was able to keep that which I had committed unto him until the great day of his appearing. In that sense, my prayer was, “’Give me a King,’ somebody who will take charge of me, and care for me, and protect me.” And I believe that such a cry as that is a very wise one for any young man to utter, and also for anyone else who has not yet owned the Lord Jesus Christ as King.

Once more concerning this cry of nature, it often comes up as the result of experience. Ah, how little do we learn except as we go to school to Dame Experience, who raps us on the knuckles very hard! When a man discovers, to his surprise, that he has played the fool, as soon as he becomes wiser, he says, “Give me a King.” How many a man, who has made shipwreck of his life, and has only discovered it when he has been upon the rocks, has at last cried, “Oh, that some strength, greater than my own, had saved me from this ruin!” I have known men, when they have been under a sense of danger, when they have seen death approaching, begin to cry, “’Give me a King,’ one who can fight the last enemy for me, one who can ensure my safety when I pass through the valley of death-shade.”

This experience, too, sometimes makes a man feel the weight of responsibility. He says, “How can I bear it?” And he wants someone who is his superior, someone who will tell him what to do; so that, when he does it, the responsibility will no longer be with himself. Have not many of you, who are without Christ felt a desire to have somebody with whom you could leave our responsibilities? Well, this is just what the Christian finds in Christ, that he can bring all the difficulties in his life to his great Lord and King, and leave them there, and find in his King, when he obeys him, the promise that, in obedience, shall be the path of safety. It is a blessed thing to have such a King. When we have once yielded ourselves to him, our care is ended, and we are at peace.
So much about the need of nature.

II. Now, secondly, and but briefly, I have to speak upon The Answer Of Grace: I will be thy King. Listen to this short sentence, ye who are longing for a Master-Spirit to rule your spirits: “I will be thy King:”

Notice the condescension of this promise. Here is a ruined kingdom: “O Israel, thou hast destroyed thyself; but in me is thine help. I will be thy King.” Who will care to wear the destroyed, and whose land is sown with salt? The great Lord and King of mercy says, “I will. Lost and ruined as you are, I will accept the monarchy of your soul. I will be your King. You have had many lords who have had dominion over you, yet I will be your King; and those pretenders are yet alive, and they seek to set up their old claims over you, and to get the mastery over you again. It is an uneasy throne, yet I will occupy it, I will be your King. Besides this, you are very unruly subjects; in this kingdom, there are many thoughts, and forgings, and lustings, that are in rebellion against me; yet I will be your King. Many disloyal subjects are there within my town of Mansoul, yet will I be the Prince of it, and drive out all the followers of Diabolus. Enemies are threatening on the right hand and on the left, and whoever becomes King must carry on a long and serious war, yet I will take this thorny crown, and wear it; I will be your King.” Is not this wonderful condescension on God’s part? Do not you, beloved, feel ready to spring up, and say, “Blessed Lord, if thou wilt be our King, we will gladly be thy subjects, rejoicing that we may have such a King as thou art”?

Notice next, how suitable and satisfactory such a King as this is to be! If a man must have a King, and yet can have his choice as to which King shall be his, it is well for him to have the One whom wisdom itself would select, for there is none to equal him. He is a King who is able to subdue the whole territory of our nature through his almighty power by which he is able to subdue all things unto himself. O blessed King, we are glad to have thee to rule over us and to have our stubborn and rebellious passions brought under the power of thy grace! This gracious King is in every way worthy to rule over us. Think, beloved, what your God is, what your Savior is. Ought he not to be King over you? Yes, verily; then let us set him up on a glorious high throne, and let us rejoice that we can bow down before one whom it is an honor to obey. What wisdom he has to govern us aright! Fools should not be kings; but infinite wisdom is fully qualified to rule us altogether. Then, what perfect goodness there is in the Lord Jesus Christ, what unspeakable goodness in the Divine Father, and in the ever-blessed Spirit! Happy are the people whose King is the Lord of hosts. Besides, think what love he has shown to his subjects! Behold his head, his hands, his feet, look upon the spear-mark in his side, for it was by those wounds that he bought us. Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to be crowned as our King, and to receive the loyal homage of our hearts.

“Let him be crown’d with majesty
Who bow’d his head to death;
And be his honors sounded high
By all things that have breath.

“Jesus, our Lord, how wondrous great
Is thine exalted name,
The glories of thy heav’nly state
Let the whole earth proclaim.”

So, it is a proof of infinite condescension, on God’s part, for him to say, “I will be thy King;” and we realize what a suitable King he is for us, and how satisfactory it is for us to have such a blessed Master and Lord!

Then, brethren, how unspeakably consoling it is that the Lord should be our King! I say “consoling”, for who could feel unsafe or uneasy when Jehovah becomes his King? If the eternal and invincible God becomes our King, what foe can harm us? His shield can protect us from all the arrows that fly by night or by day. How consolatory it is to us to submit to such a God, no longer to stand up in opposition to him, but to lie down at his feet as his loyal subjects, no longer to have a will and a way of our own, but to submit unreservedly to the will of God, to lie passive in his hands, and let him be our King! Have you never experienced this kind of consolation in a time of deep affliction or bereavement? You have lost the delight of your heart, the joy of your eyes, the dearest one you ever had; and you have somewhat rebelled. In that rebellion has been the very bitterness of your grief; but you have said, “The Lord hath done it; he is my King, so he has the right to do with me just as he wills.” That is the great source of your consolation; you never get relief from the anguish of your spirit till you see Jesus as your crowned King and only Lord and lay your hand upon your mouth, and, in the silence of your soul say, ’It is the Lord; let him do what seemeth him good.”

And, oftentimes, this same precious truth has consoled you when you have been in great difficulties and embarrassments. I often sing to my Lord those lines by F. T. Faber, —

“When obstacles and trials seem
Like prison walls to be,
I do the little I can do,
And leave the rest to thee.

“And when it seems no chance nor change
From grief can set me free,
Hope finds its strength in helplessness, and, patient, waits on thee.”

I do not know a stronger force in all the world than utter helplessness for that is the end of all care. Many and many a time, I have tried, till my head has ached, to work out a problem in church government, but have not discovered the solution, I could not see any way out of it. So I have just done as a schoolboy would who shuts up the two parts of his slate, and puts it on the shelf. I have said to myself, “I will never have anything more to do with the matter, but will leave it for the Lord to solve;” and I have found that the proposition has been worked out for me in due time. So, dear friends, your strength is to sit still, and to feel that you have a King who can settle all your difficulties. When the servant at the door is puzzled by the many questions that are put to her, she says, if she is wise, “I cannot answer you, but I will go, and ask my master;” and when she has received the message from her master, she has no further trouble about the matter; and she simply says, “I have told you what my master says; if you do not like it, I cannot help that, for I am only his messenger.” That is the way to end all controversy. A young man, or anyone else, who has a number of questions put to him by various persons, will be wise if he says, “Well, I have searched my Bible, and found what the King says about these points; if that does not satisfy you, I am sure I cannot. Your quarrel is no longer with me, but with my Master you must settle the matter with him.” This is a blessed consolation; it gives joy to the spirit to have God for your King. No man is so free, no man is so happy, as he who loyally bows before the King of kings. To serve God, is to reign. He who has God for his King is himself a king.

Further, think how gloriously inspiring it is to have God as our King. I should not like to be a soldier in the armies of certain kings whom I might mention; if I were in their service, I should try to run away as soon as ever I could, for I should feel ashamed to have anything to do with them. If you were a soldier in the army of some little, mean, beggarly tyrant, I think that you would be glad to leave your regimentals at home whenever you could. It is strange that any man could be found to fight for some of the miserable miscreants who have been found in the ranks of kings. But, with Alexander as leader, every Greek became a hero; he was so great a warrior that each man in his army felt that he was himself great. Now, when the Lord Jesus Christ becomes our King, it is most inspiring to us, for he leads us on to fight with sin, to fight with selfishness, to overcome evil by love, and to conquer hate by kindness. It is a grand thing to serve the King whose fights are all of that sort, and to have him for a King who never shirked a battle, but who was always to the front, the bravest of the brave. It is grand even to unloose the ratchets of his shoes. To be trodden on by him, would be a high honor. To do anything, however little, in his cause, makes us feel ourselves elevated. My dear young friend, if you have God in Christ Jesus to be your King, your life will be sublime; with him for your Example, with his grace to lead you on, you shall continually rise higher and yet higher still until even your common-place life shall be made sublime. Oh, blessed, blessed, blessed, thrice blessed, is everyone to whom Jesus Christ is King and Lord! If we are linked with him, we are ready either to live or to die.

III. Now turn with me to my second text, which you wild find in the 44th Psalm, and the 4th verse: “Thou art my King, O God.” That is The Acknowledgment Of Faith.

Let me just pause a moment, and ask each one of you here, “Can you say that?” Can you say that, my brother? Can you say that, my sister. At the close of this morning’s service, we sang,

“’Tis done, the real transaction’s done I am my Lord’s, and he is mine;”

and it was noticed by careful observers, that there were some persons in the congregation who did not sing that verse; they shut their mouths quite firmly while others around them were singing. I was glad that they were honest enough to do so, and that they would not sing what they could not truthfully sing. At the same time, I was very sorry that their honesty compelled them to make such a silent confession of their lack of subjection to the Lord Jesus Christ. He is not your King, then? He is your Creator, but not your King! He is your Preserver, but not your King! He will be the Judge of quick and dead, yet he is not your King! He is the one and only Savior of the lost, yet he is not your King! Sadly sorrowfully, let this thought eat into your spirit, “Then, I am a rebel against the Lord Jesus Christ.” For he is, lawfully and rightly, your King, and you are a traitor, for your heart plots against him. Remember also that, if you die without accepting him as your King, there is a text which I scarcely dare to quote, yet I must; and, as I do so, let it fall like fiery hail upon your spirit: “But those mine enemies, which would not that I should reign over them, bring hither, and slay them before me.” God grant that none of you may ever know what that terrible verse means!

But now, having given you that word of warning, I ask you to think of the blessedness of having the Lord to be your King. If you look at this 44th Psalm, you will see that, when God is our King, we may confidently expect to enter upon our inheritance in the skies: “Thou didst drive out the heathen with thy hand, and plantedst them.” That is to say, each one of the tribes, that entered Canaan under Joshua, obtained its proper portion in the covenant given land of promise; and we, who are under the leadership of King Jesus, the true Joshua, the one and only Savior, shall win the heritage above, and each one of us shall stand in his lot at the end of the days, blessed for ever and ever in our portion in the heavenly Canaan.

Notice, next, that, if the Lord be our King, we may expect help in the time of trouble. Read the whole of verse 4: “Thou art my King. O God: command deliverances for Jacob.” If ever you are in poverty, if ever you are in sickness, if ever you are under slander and reproach, if ever your spirit is depressed, if ever family trials affect you, if ever the clouds in your sky are heavy, and the days are dark, you may go to your King, and tell him all, and expect him to “command deliverances” for you; for, if he be your King, he will see you through, and bear you up, and make what appears to be evil to work for your good, and cause your troubles to prove to be the best of blessings to you. Who would not have such a King as this?

Next, notice, that, if the Lord be our King, we should repose in him entirely, as the psalmist says, “For I will not trust in my bow, neither shall my sword save me.” What a mercy it is to be able to put up your weapon, to feel that there is Another who fights for you, — to have done with care, worry, distress, and just to feel that you have left everything with Jesus your King! If he cannot do it, then it must be left undone. Oh, it is blessed to feel that you have put the affairs of your soul into your King’s hands, and that you have left the whole of them with him, in the utmost confidence! Who would not have a King upon whom it is perfectly safe to rely?

More than this, he who has God for his King knows that he is saved. Read the 7th verse: “But thou hast saved us from our enemies, and hast put them to shame that hated us.” He, who owns Christ as his Lord and Master, knows that he is saved. His salvation is not a thing that is to be accomplished to-morrow; it is done now. It is not a privilege to be enjoyed only in the last few moments of our life, but it is to be enjoyed now, for our King hath covered us with the garments of salvation. “Being justified by faith, we have peace with God,” even now. Our salvation is finished; our great Messiah said so on the tree, and he spake the truth. “He that believeth on him is not condemned.”

And, last of all, he who takes Christ to be his King has cause for great joy and rejoicing. In the 8th verse, the psalmist says, “In God we boast all the day long, and praise thy name for ever.” He who has Christ for his King, need never be ashamed of his Monarch, or of his Monarch’s livery, or of his Monarch’s laws, or of his Monarch’s friends. He may, rather, adopt the high strain of boasting in his God, and triumphing in him all the day long.

So I end by repeating the question I asked earlier in my discourse, can each of you say, “Thou art my King, O God”? If not, what is your position with regard to him? If you do not own him as your King, you are a rebel; yet, if you are ready to own that fact, you come under the act of amnesty which is available for regicides, — for you rebels are just that, and even deicides in having conspired to put the King of glory to death by your sin, and you shall have even this high crime of God-killing blotted out from the King’s records. You shall be just as though you had never sinned at all if you are willing to take Christ to be your King and Savior. “Him hath God exalted with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, for to give repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins.” Will you have him? I mean, the Son of God, who was also the Son of Mary. I mean the man of Nazareth, who is also very God of very God. Trust to the atonement which flowed from his wounds. Accept the power which God has given to him for all power in heaven and in earth is given unto him. God hath given him power over all flesh, that he should give eternal life to as many as his Father hath given unto him. Only trust him; cast your souls upon him; yield yourselves to his sway. Repent of sin, if you lay hold upon his perfect righteousness, at once, the guilt of the past is gone, and you shall be admitted into the full privileges appertaining to citizens of the heavenly kingdom, and subjects of the great King of kings. I trust that, even before this service closes, some of you will say. “By the grace of God, and through the power of the Holy Spirit, I yield myself to Jesus, my Lord and King, to be his loyal subject and faithful servant for ever and ever.”

God grant it, for his dear Son’s sake! Amen.

(Copyright AGES Software. Used by permission. All rights reserved. See AGES Software for their full selection of highly recommended resources)

Hosea 14:3 The Orphan's Father

NO. 1695
DELIVERED AT THE THURSDAY EVENING LECTURE,
BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

“For in thee the fatherless findeth mercy.”-Hosea 14:3.

THE Lord God of Israel, the one only living and true God, has this for a special mark of his character, that in him the fatherless findeth mercy. “A Father of the fatherless, and a Judge of the widows, is God in his holy habitation.” False gods of the heathen are usually notable for their supposed power or cunning, or even for their wickedness, falsehood, lustfulness, and cruelty; but our God, who made the heavens, is the Thrice Holy One. He is the holy God, and he is also fall of love. Indeed, it is not only his name, and his character, but his very nature, for “God is love.” Among the acts which exhibit his love is this-that he executeth righteousness and judgment for all that are oppressed, and specially takes under his wing the defenceless ones, such as the widow and the fatherless.

This is very notable if you look into the subject in connection with holy Scripture. We see this soon after the giving of the law. We have the law in the twentieth chapter of Exodus; and in the twenty-second chapter of the same book, close upon the heels of the law, you have God’s word concerning the fatherless. Listen to Jehovah’s words: they are strong and forceful; there is a thunder about their sound. “Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in anywise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry; and my wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill you with the sword; and your wives shall be widows, and your children fatherless.” These are the words of that Jehovah who spoke the ten commands on Sinai. See how very near to the heart of our God lies the cause of the widow and the fatherless.

The Lord gave the law a second time in the book of Deuteronomy. If you turn to the tenth chapter of that book, at the seventeenth verse, you will find such a statute as this,- “For the Lord your God is God of gods, and Lord of lords, a great God, a mighty, and a terrible, which regardeth not persons, nor taketh reward: he doth execute the judgment of the fatherless and widow, and loveth the stranger, in giving him food and raiment.” Those are two strong and striking proofs of the fact that the cause of the fatherless lies near to the heart of God.

Laws were made on their behalf, and among the rest was the institution of tithes. I have read some amazing statements upon the divine right of tithes. it seems to be established in the minds of some that if God gave the tithes to Levi he must, therefore, have given them to Episcopalian ministers: an inference which I fail to see. I should just as soon draw the inference that he had given them to Baptist ministers; certainly it would be no more illogical. The idea of our being priests, or Levites, in order to get compulsory tithes, would be too abhorrent to be entertained for a moment. But while I have often seen the divine right of tithes stated and argued, I have never heard it urged that the tithes should go to those for whom God set them apart under the legal dispensation. Now, if you will turn to Scripture, you will find that the tithe of all the produce of the land was to be given to the Levite and to the stranger, and to the widow and the fatherless; and whenever tithe comes to be properly distributed, if there be any divine right in it at all, it will most certainly be given to the widow and the fatherless. We should agree to its being given in part to the Levite when he turns up, but as we do not know who the Levite is at present, we may keep his portion in abeyance till he appears. But the widow and the fatherless are still here among us, and the poor shall never cease out of the land; and as the institution of the tithe was as much for them as it was for the tribe of Levi, let them have their share. The tribe of Levi had certain rights, because, while the other tribes had each one a portion, that tribe had no inheritance, and therefore took out its share in having a part of the tithe, and certain cities to dwell in. Read Deuteronomy 14:29- “And the Levite, (because he hath no part nor inheritance with thee,) and the stranger, and the fatherless, and the widow, which are within thy gates, shall come, and shall eat and be satisfied; that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hand which thou doest.” I do not know that Episcopalian clergymen have given up their earthly inheritances any more than Nonconformist ministers, and I cannot therefore see that they have the Levite’s claim; but I see clearly the right of the widow and the fatherless, and I pray that the day may come when they will get their share of what is undoubtedly theirs, if it is anybody’s at all.

Another ordinance was made about the widow and the fatherless- that when the people gathered in the harvest, if they omitted a sheaf of corn, they were never to go back for it, but were to leave it for the widow and the fatherless. “When thou cuttest down thine harvest in thy field, and hast forgot a sheaf in the field, thou shalt not go again to fetch it: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow: that the Lord thy God may bless thee in all the work of thine hands.” In gathering in the corn the field was not raked, but all that fell was left to the widow and the fatherless. It was expressly commanded that when they gathered the grapes they were never to gather a second time, but were to leave the bunches to be ripened for the widow and the fatherless. “When thou beatest thine olive-tree, thou shalt riot go over the boughs again: it shall be for the stranger, for the fatherless, and for the widow.” Nobody was forgotten in the divine rule when Jehovah was King in Israel; but especial mention was continually being made of these two classes-the widow and the fatherless, and the poor strangers that happened to be within Israel’s gates. “Thou shalt be kind to the stranger,” said the Lord, “because thou wast a stranger in the land of Egypt, and thou knowest the heart of a stranger.” I call your special attention to this, and beg you to look through Scripture, and see how again and again God calls upon his people to take care of the widow and the fatherless. Job, that upright man whom God accepted, disclaimed for himself the charge that he had ever forgotten the widow and the fatherless; and you know how, under the New Testament, it is written, “Pure religion and undefiled before God and the Father is this, To visit the fatherless and widows in their affliction, and to keep himself unspotted from the world.”

It is established, then, that God, even the God of Israel, is one in whom the fatherless findeth mercy let us take care of them too. “Be ye imitators of God as dear children,” and select as the objects of your charity those whom God specially cares for.

This, however, is not my subject at this time. I wish you to become yourselves objects of the divine charity by coming to God as orphans, and putting yourselves under his protection, that you, like the fatherless, may find mercy at his hands. If we ourselves are sad at heart, troubled in spirit, full of needs, full of wants and trials, let us be encouraged to come to God, because in him the fatherless findeth mercy.

First, here is encouragement; secondly, here is encouragement as to what to do; and, thirdly, here is encouragement as to what to expect.

I. First, here is Encouragement.

Here is encouragement, though such as none spy out but needy ones. You notice that the people who said, “In thee the fatherless findeth mercy,” are the people who had fallen by their iniquity, and who were bidden to return unto the Lord, saying “Take away all iniquity, and receive us graciously.” They were a people who renounced all self-confidence, and cried out, “Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses: neither will we say any more to the work of our hands, Ye are our gods.” They were a people with whom God’s Holy Spirit had so dealt that they were stripped of their pride, and made conscious of their guilt. Then it was that they spied out this precious fact, that in God the fatherless findeth mercy. A tear in the eye is a fine thing to clear it. He that never saw his sin has never seen the mercy of God. David never sang of the lovingkindness and tender mercies of God so well as in that fifty-first Psalm, when he mourned his great sin. A broken-hearted sinner has a sort of instinct for finding out the tender points in God’s character. The ungodly man who is self-satisfied, and has never been made to know the truth about his condition, often likens God to an austere man, reaping where he has not sown, and gathering where he has not strawed; but once let the man know his guilt and mourn it, and then he looks with all his eyes to God to spy out mercy in him; and he is the man who delights to learn that God is merciful to the fatherless. This becomes a fountain of hope to him.

Have I here any sin-stricken sinner? Are you desponding and despairing? Did you come here feeling that there could be no mercy for you? Catch at this word. “In thee the fatherless findeth mercy. He is a merciful God; he is tender, kind, considerate. He evidently looks after the helpless and hopeless. He is the patron of those whom others desert. Widows without friends, the fatherless without protectors-these are the care of God. May you not hope that he will care for you? May you not in the depth of your sin and brokenness of heart come to him and say, “O Lord, I hear thou art the Friend of the friendless, be a Friend to me”? It looks like a candle put in the window of your Father’s house to guide you home through the darkness. May God help you to see it; but I know that you will not care to see it if there is not a tear in your eye, for none but the needy perceive this gracious truth.

This encouragement is, moreover, one which is a strong inducement to cast away all other confidences. If God be the Friend of the fatherless, he may be a Friend to me: would it not be well for me to trust him, and leave off trusting those other things that I have relied upon? You see how the text runs, “Asshur shall not save us; we will not ride upon horses.” These were their great trust and confidence, and then they go on to say-neither will we worship false gods, for we can see that the true God is kind, kind to the fatherless ones, and therefore we may come and trust him. When a man gets some little hope, then he says to himself,” I will even venture to look to the Lord.” When the prodigal son in the far-off country had spent all his living, what was it that brought him back? Why, it was this thought,- “How many hired servants of my father have bread enough and to spare!” This made him resolve to go home again. I know what the devil will do: he will tell you that there is no mercy for you. He is an old liar. There is abundant mercy for the greatest sinner. What does the devil know about it? He never sought mercy, and he has never had any, and never will have any, for he will never seek it; but for you, poor soul, there is bread enough and to spare in your Father’s house; and why do you perish with hunger? Why not arise and go unto your Father? If God be the Father of the fatherless, this should induce us to hasten to him, and rest in him. “May I trust in Jesus Christ?” says one. “May I?” Of course you may; it is your sin if you do not, and, indeed, the chief and most ruinous of sins. Many of you are trusting in your sacraments and your priests, or in your good works and your prayers, or your own feelings, because you think that you may not trust Christ. But you may! for he who takes the fatherless under his blessed wing invites you to come to him. “Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” If he had ever repulsed one, he might repulse you. But since the fatherless find mercy in him, and all that come to him find mercy in him, come along with you, and trust in the merciful One at once.

Furthermore, there is much encouragement in my text, because it gives us a clear look into the heart of God. I always like to see how a man treats children. You learn a great deal about a man when you see that. Some men abhor children, and almost wish that they could exterminate them. As to the fatherless children they say, “Let them go to the workhouse: we cannot be troubled with them.” The gentle-hearted one never sees a little child in want without feeling the utmost pity. I feel more sorry for a suffering child than even for a man or a woman. Adults have a measure of a power to help themselves; but if there be poverty in the house, the little one may pine away, but it cannot get relief. Little boys and girls have suffered much in this great city when their parents’ home has been desolated by poverty, frequently caused by drink and other sins. Who knows the sufferings of the little ones when father dies? I confess it touches my heart that little children should suffer as they do. When men are wicked, one is almost thankful that there should be poverty following their sin to whip them out of it; but these lambs, what have they done? Any tender heart feels this. Is not this a wonderful text which lets us gaze into the heart of God while we read, “In thee the fatherless findeth mercy”? Great God, the seraphim adore thee. Angels, day without night, in serried ranks stand waiting to do thy bidding. Thy voice is the thunder, and the glance of thine eye is the lightning. At thy bidding kings die, dynasties decay, and empires are blotted out, and yet thou carest for little children and widows. It is very beautiful to me. I feel as if I could trust him all the better for that, and come with my daily burden and daily cares- ay, and my sins too, and feel sure that he will not refuse me. This is the Father of Jesus, I am sure of it. Oh, how like the Son is to the Father, for if the Father is thus the children’s Patron, what think ye of the Son, and of his likeness to his Father, when he said, “Suffer the little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Does not this encourage you to come, as you see the heart of God laid bare in the blessed statement of the text, “In thee the fatherless findeth mercy”?

There is this encouragement too, that our cases are like those of the widow and the fatherless. The orphan has no father, no helper, no means of sustenance. And you, my hearer, are in that state, without God. If there be no God, you have no father. If you have no God to trust to, you have no protector, and you are undone. There is no light for you if God be not your light, no hope for you if Christ be not your hope. Do you feel that? Well, then, you are an orphan; you are a fatherless one. Come along, for Jesus has said, “I will not leave you orphans. I will come unto you.” Come to him, and look up into the face of the orphan’s Father, and say, I plead that word of thine, “In thee the fatherless findeth mercy.” Lord, let me find mercy, for my case runs parallel with theirs.

If there is a heart here that wants encouraging, it will spell out my meaning. But if you do not need it, and some of you do not, for you are fine fellows, full of your own righteousness, then I have nothing to say to you but this, “The whole have no need of a physician, but they that are sick. Christ came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”

II. Secondly, for every poor, needy sinner here is Encouragement As To What To Do.

First, if you want to find salvation to-night, take the text as a sort of spiritual guide-book, and plead your need. Do not say anything about your merits: the less said about them the better. Your position is like that of the Irish servant, who said, when asked for his character, that the gentleman at his last place told him he would do better without his character than with it. You are just in that case, only that you will be asked for your character, and the best thing you can do is to say, “My character is as bad as it can be”; and then plead for mercy. “Lord,” it says in the text, “in thee the fatherless findeth mercy. It does not say that they are good and holy, but simply that they are fatherless. It does not say that they find reward, but that they find mercy. Lord, that is all I have to say to thee. I am in need:-I am in awful need; and because I am such a sinner, it makes my need all the worse, for that is where my need lies; I need righteousness; I need a new heart; I need a right spirit. I need a total change. I need everything, for I have nothing but sin and misery. O Lord, I only urge that as thou dost help the fatherless, simply and only because they are needy, I pray thee save me irrespective of my character, for my need is great.

The next lesson for you is this; be sure to take a hold of this text by the handle, and ask for mercy. “In thee the fatherless findeth,” -what? Findeth mercy. Mercy is the handle of the text. When you go to God, ask for mercy, not for justice. A mother once went to the Emperor Napoleon to ask for mercy for her son. He had committed some breach of the French law; and the emperor replied, “Madam, this is the second time the boy has offended; justice requires that he should die,” She answered, “Sire, I did not come to ask for justice. I beg for mercy.” He answered, “He does not deserve mercy.” “Sire,” said she, “it would not be mercy if he deserved it. I ask for mercy.” When she put it in that way, the emperor replied, “Well, then, I will have mercy.” My unsaved hearer, you deserve to be in hell tonight. It is of the Lord’s mercy that you are not consumed. Do not dream of asking for justice, for justice will be your ruin; but get a hold of this word, “Lord, I ask for mercy,” and if something whispers, “Why, you have been a hardened sinner,” say, “Lord, it is true; but Lord, I ask for mercy.” “But you have been a backslider.” Reply, “Lord, that I have; but I ask for mercy on that account.” “But you have resisted and rejected grace.” “Lord, that is true; but I shall want all the more mercy because of that.” “But there is nothing in you to argue for forgiveness.” Say, “Lord, I know there is not, and that is why I ask for mercy. I put it wholly on that ground. Display thy mercy in me, I beseech thee.” That is the way to plead. Mind you keep to it. That is the straight way. You will get heaven so, for you will get Christ so, since his mercy endureth for ever. “In thee the fatherless findeth mercy.”

Learn another lesson, you that want to get peace with God at once, and I hope that some of you do. Cast your sin, trial, and sorrow upon God. The text says, “In thee the fatherless findeth mercy;” so the business of the fatherless ones is to come to God, and just look to him for mercy; and that is your business. Do not, I charge you, look to anybody else but the living God to help you. It is a snare, and a horrible one, for people to trust to priests; and I will say, in addition to that, to trust to ministers, to trust to any man whatever. I have known persons when they have heard an address and have been impressed, to say, “Oh, I shall find Christ in the enquiry-room!” That enquiry-room may be a snare to you if you talk thus. You want to speak to the man who preached to you, do you? Do not speak to him; go to Jesus direct. “But I wish to see that good man who spoke to me the other day.” Very well, so you may by-and-by, but mind you do not put that good man or that good woman in the place of Christ. The text says, “In thee the fatherless findeth mercy,” and it is in Christ, and in him alone, that mercy is to be found. Go directly and distinctly to Jesus, and, by the help of his Spirit, you can do that while sitting in the pew. God is everywhere. Let your spirit be conscious that God is present, and now let your heart speak to him. To him confess your sin do not pour that rubbish into the ear of mortal man. To God lay bare your heart, and to him alone it is not a fit sight for any human being. Tell the Lord Jesus all your wants and woes, and he will help you, for in the Son of God is the help of the sons of men. Oh, that I knew how to speak these things, but they will surely go home to those who are in spiritual need! You that are not in need, you that are good, you that are self-righteous, will see nothing in the text for you. No, and there was not meant to be, for the Lord has a people that he will draw unto himself, and these people are known by this-that they are weary of themselves.

God’s chosen people exercise the natural art of the weak, namely, clinging. They are made to feel their poverty and their need, and then when they hear of the fullness of Christ they haste to lay hold on him. Have you never noticed how the plants that God has made weak are all endowed with a natural faculty for clinging? One of the first things that the vine does is to put forth its tendrils for something to cling to. The hop, the woodhine, the sweet pea, they have all a little hook ready to lay hold on a support. Now, if God is about to bless you at this hour, you have a little tendril that is being put out to find something to lay hold of, and as the gardener carefully puts his stick for the sweet pea, or as the farmer puts his pole for the hop, I have tried to set my text in your way. I would set the blessed Lord before you, and say, In him the fatherless findeth mercy, cling to him; cling to him. It is your life to do it. Cling firmly! The limpet by the sea-shore can do little, but it can cling, and so it does cling, and very firmly too. That is the one thing you can do, poor sinner, and I pray the Holy Spirit to lead you to do it at once. God help you at this moment to cling to Christ, and if you do, you are saved, yes, saved at once. In him the fatherless findeth mercy. Cling to him, and you shall find mercy too.

III. Now, lastly, here is Encouragement As To What To Expect Of God. “In thee the fatherless findeth mercy.”

What do the fatherless expect of us when we stand in God’s place to them, and take them into our Orphanage, and try to be as a father to them? What do they expect of us? Well, I do not know that the younger ones have intellect enough to know all they expect, but they expect everything. They expect all that they want, and, though they do not quite know what they do want, they leave it to us. They believe that all will be found that they require. I like a poor Christian who does not know all he wants; but yet knows that his God will supply all his needs. He trusts Jesus for all. He trusts his heavenly Father as a child: he does not know what he may require to-day, and require in the unknown future, but then his heavenly Father knows, and he leaves it all to him. As our orphan boys grow older, however, they begin to have a perception of their wants, and they trust that they shall have everything provided which their own fathers would have provided for them, and more, perhaps. So is it with us when we come to the great Father. We say: all that I would provide for my children, if I had everything, and could give them all that wisdom could desire, my God will provide for me, for he will be a Father to me. If ye, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, much more shall he, who has taken you into his family, though you once were fatherless, give all good things to you. You shall have food and raiment, and sufficient for this life. You shall have protection, guidance, instruction, and tender affection. You shall have a touch or two of the rod every now and then, and that is among your choice mercies; but you shall also have all the cherishing of his sweet love; and by-and-by, when you are fit for it, he will take you home from school, and you shall see his face, and you shall live for ever in his house above, where the many mansions be. Oh, if you come and put yourselves by a simple faith into the blessed custody and keeping of God, he will admit you into his Salvation Orphanage, and he will take care of you, and you shall find him a better Father than you will be to your own children-a better Father than the best of fathers could ever be to the best beloved of sons. “I will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” I will not say more, but I should like to leave John’s choice sentence as my last word. “Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should he called the sons of God!” Blessed be thy name, O Lord, that we also have been led of thy Spirit to prove that in thee the fatherless findeth mercy!

The Holy Spirit and the One Church

A Sermon
(No. 167)
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, December 13, 1857, by the
REV. C. H. Spurgeon
at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.


"These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit."—Jude 1:19.

WHEN a farmer comes to thrash out his wheat, and get it ready for the market there are two things that he desires—that there may be plenty of it, of the right sort, and that when he takes it to market, he may be able to carry a clean sample there. He does not look upon the quantity alone; for what is the chaff to the wheat? He would rather have a little clean than he would have a great heap containing a vast quantity of chaff, but less of the precious corn. On the other hand, he would not so winnow his wheat as to drive away any of the good grain, and so make the quantity less than it need to be. He wants to have as much as possible—to have as little loss as possible in the winnowing, and yet to have it as well winnowed as may be. Now, that is what I desire for Christ's Church, and what every Christian will desire. We wish Christ's church to be as large as possible. God forbid that by any of our winnowing, we should ever cast away one of the precious sons of Zion. When we rebuke sharply, we would be anxious lest the rebuke should fall where it is not needed, and should bruise and hurt the feelings of any who God hath chosen. But on the other hand, we have no wish to see the church multiplied at the expense of its purity. We do not wish to have a charity so large that it takes in chaff as well as wheat: we wish to be just charitable enough to use the fan thoroughly to purge God's floor, but yet charitable enough to pick up the most shrivelled ear of wheat, to preserve it for the Master's sake, who is the husbandman. I trust, in preaching this morning, God may help me so to discern between the precious and the vile that I may say nothing uncharitable, which would cut off any of God's people from being part of his true and living and visible church; and yet at the same time I pray that I may not speak so loosely, and so without God's direction, as to embrace any in the arms of Christian affection whom the Lord hath not received in the eternal covenant of his love.
Our text suggests to us three things: first, an inquiry—Have we the Spirit? secondly, a caution—if we have not the spirit we are sensual; thirdly, a suspicion—there are many persons that separate themselves. Our suspicion concerning them is, that notwithstanding their extra-superfine profession, they are sensual, not having the Spirit; for our text says, "These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit."
I. First, then, our text suggests AN INQUIRY—Have we the Spirit? This is an inquiry so important, that the philosopher may well suspend all his investigations to find an answer to this question on his own personal account. All the great debates of politics, all the most engrossing subjects of human discussion, may well stop to-day, and give us pause to ask ourselves the solemn question—"Have I the Spirit?" For this question does not deal with any externals of religion, but it deals with religion in its most vital point. He that hath the Spirit, although he be wrong in fifty things, being right in this, is saved; he that hath not the Spirit, be he never so orthodox, be his creed as correct as Scripture-ay and in his morals outwardly as pure as the law, is still unsaved; he is destitute of the essential part of salvation—the Spirit of God dwelling in him.
To help us to answer this question, I shall try to set forth the effects of the Spirit in our hearts under sundry Scriptural metaphors. Have I the Spirit? I reply, And what is the operation of the, Spirit? How am I to discern it? Now the Spirit operates in divers ways, all of them mysterious, and supernatural, all of them bearing the real marks of his own power, and having certain signs following whereby they may be discovered and recognised.
1. The first work of the Spirit in the heart is a work during which the Spirit is compared to the wind. You remember that when our Saviour spoke to Nicodemus he represented the first work of the Spirit in the heart as being like the wind, "which bloweth where it listeth;" "even so;" saith he, "is every one that is born of the Spirit." Now you know that the wind is a most mysterious thing; and although there be certain definitions of it which pretend to be explanations of the phenomenon, yet they certainly leave the great question of how the wind blows, and what is the cause of its blowing in a certain direction, where it was before. Breath within us, wind without us, all motions of air, are to us mysterious. And the renewing work of the Spirit in the heart is exceedingly mysterious. It is possible that at this moment the Spirit of God may be breathing into some of the thousand hearts before me; yet it would be blasphemous if any one should ask, "Which way went the Spirit from God to such a heart? How entered it there?" And it would be foolish for a person who is under the operation of the Spirit to ask how it operates: thou knowest not where is the storehouse of the thunder; thou knowest not where the clouds are balanced; neither canst thou know how the Spirit goeth forth from the Most High and enters into the heart of man. It may be, that during a sermon two men are listening to the same truth; one of them hears as attentively as the other and remembers as much of it; the other is melted to tears or moved with solemn thoughts; but the one though equally attentive, sees nothing in the sermon, except, maybe, certain important truths well set forth; as for the other, his heart is broken within him and his soul is melted. Ask me how it is that the same truth has an effect upon the one, and not upon his fellow: I reply, because the mysterious Spirit of the living God goes with the truth to one heart and not to the other. The one only feels the force of truth, and that may be strong enough to make him tremble, like Felix; but the other feels the Spirit going with the truth, and that renews the man, regenerates him, and causes him to pass into that gracious condition which is called the state of salvation. This change takes place instantaneously. It is as miraculous a change as any miracle of which we read in Scripture. It is supremely supernatural. It may be mimicked, but no imitation of it can be true and real. Men may pretend to be regenerated without the Spirit, but regenerated they cannot be. It is a change so marvellous that the highest attempts of man can never reach it. We may reason as long as we please, but we cannot reason ourselves into regeneration; we may meditate till our hairs are grey with study; but we cannot meditate ourselves into the new birth. That is worked in us by the sovereign will of God alone.

"The Spirit, like some heavenly wind,
Blows on the sons of flesh,
Inspires us with a heavenly mind,
And forms the man afresh."

But ask the man how: he cannot tell you. Ask him when: he may recognize the time, but as to the manner thereof he knoweth no more of it than you do. It is to him a mystery.
You remember the story of the valley of vision. Ezekiel saw dry bones lying scattered here and there in the valley. The command came to Ezekiel, "Say to:these dry bones, live." He said, "Live," and the bones came together, "bone to his bone, and flesh came upon them;" but as yet they did not live. "Prophesy, son of man; say to the wind, breathe upon these slain, that they may live." They looked just like life: there was flesh and blood there; there were the eyes and hands and feet; but when Ezekiel had spoken there was a mysterious something given which men call life, and it was given in a mysterious way, like the blowing of the wind. It is even so to-day. Unconverted and ungodly persons may be very, moral and excellent; they are like the dry bones, when they are put together and clothed with flesh and blood. But to make them live spiritually it needs the divine afflatus from the breath of the Almighty, the divine pneuma, the divine Spirit, the divine wind should blow on them, and then they would live. Say, my hearer, hast thou ever had any supernatural influence on thine Heart? For if not I may seem to be harsh with thee, but I am faithful: if thou hast never had more than nature in thy heart, thou art "in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity." Nay, sir, sneer not at that utterance; it is as true as this Bible, for tis from this Bible it was taken, and for proof thereof hear thou me. "except a man be born again (from above) of water and of the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God." What sayest thou to that? It is in vain for thee to talk of making thyself to be born again; thou canst not be born again except by the Spirit, and thou must perish, unless thou art. You see, then, the first effect of the Spirit, and by that you may answer the question.
2. In the next place, the Spirit in the word of God is often compared to fire. After the Spirit, like the wind, has made the dead sinner live, then comes the Spirit like fire. Now, fire has a searching and tormenting power. It is purifying, but it purifies by a terrible process. Now, after the Holy Spirit has given us the life of Christianity, there immediately begins a burning in our heart: the Lord searches and tries our reins, and lights a candle within our spirits which discovers the wickedness of our nature, and the loathsomeness of our iniquities. Say, my hearer, dost thou know anything about that fire in thine heart? For if not, thou hast not yet received the Spirit. To explain what I mean, let me just tell a piece of my own experience, by way of illustrating the fiery effects of the Spirit. I lived careless and thoughtless; I could indulge in sin as well as others, and did do so. Sometimes my conscience pricked me, but not enough to make me cease from vice. I could indulge in transgression, and I could love it: not so much as others loved it—mine early training would not let me do that—but still enough to prove that my heart was debased and corrupt. Once on a time something more than conscience pricked me: I knew not then what it was. I was like Samuel, when the Lord called him; I heard the voice, but I knew not whence it came. A stirring began in my heart, and I began to feel that in the sight of God I was a lost, ruined, and condemned sinner. That conviction I could not shake off. Do what I might it followed me. If I sought to amuse my mind and take it off from serious thoughts it was of no use; I was obliged still to carry about with me a heavy burden on my back. I went to my bed, and there I dreamed about hell, and about "the wrath to come." I woke up, and this dreary nightmare, this incubus, still brooded on me. What could I do? I renounced first one vicious habit, then another: it mattered not; all this was like pulling one firebrand from a flame, that fed itself with blazing forests. Do what I might, my conscience found no rest. Up to the house of God I went to hear the gospel: there was no gospel for me; the fire burned but the more fiercely, and the very breath of the gospel seemed to fan the flame. Away I went to my chamber and my closet to pray: the heavens were like brass, and the windows of the sky were barred against me. No answer could I get; the fire burned more vehemently. Then I thought, "I would not live always; would God I had never been born!" But I dared not die, for there was hell when I was dead; and I dared not live, for life had become intolerable. Still the fire blazed right vehemently; till at last I came to this resolve: "If there be salvation in Christ, I will have it. I have nothing of my own to trust to; I do this hour, O God, renounce my sin, and renounce my own righteousness too." And the fire blazed again, and burned up all my good works, ay, and my sins with them. And then I saw that all this burning was to bring me to Christ. And oh! the joy and gladness of my heart, when Jesus came and sprinkled water on the flame, and said, "I have bought thee with my blood; put thy trust in me; I will do for thee what thou canst not do for thyself; I will take thy sins away; I will clothe thee with a spotless robe of righteousness; I will guide thee all thy journey through, and land thee at last in heaven." Say, my dear hearer, Dost know anything about the Spirit of burning? For if not, again I say, I am not harsh, I am but true; if thou hast never felt this, thou knowest not the Spirit.
3. To proceed a little further. When the Spirit has thus quickened the soul and convinced it of sin, then he comes under another metaphor. He comes under the metaphor of oil. The Holy Spirit is very frequently in Scripture compared to oil. "Thou anointest mine head with oil; my cup runneth over." Ah! brethren, though the beginning of the Spirit is by fire, it does not end there. We may be first of all convinced and brought to Christ by misery; but when we get to Christ there is no misery in him, and our sorrow results from not getting close enough to him. The Holy Spirit comes, like the good Samaritan, and pours in the oil and the wine. And oh! what oil it is with which he anoints our head, and with which he heals our wounds! How soft the liniments which he binds round our bruises! How blessed the eye-salve with which he anoints our eyes! How heavenly the ointment with which he binds up our sores, and wounds, and bruises, and makes us whole, and sets our feet upon a rock, and establishes our goings! The Spirit, after he has convinced, begins to comfort; and ye that have felt the comforting power of the Holy Spirit, will bear me witness there is no comforter like him that is the Paraclete. Oh! bring hither the music, the voice of song, and the sound of harps; they are both as vinegar upon nitre to him that hath a heavy heart. Bring me here the enchantments of the magic world, and all the enjoyments of its pleasures; they do but torment the soul and prick it with many thorns. But oh! Spirit of the living God, when thou dost blow upon the heart, there is not a wave of that tempestuous sea which does not sleep for ever when thou biddest it be still; there is not one single breath of the proud hurricane and tempest which doth not cease to howl and which doth not lie still, when thou sayest to it, "Peace be unto thee; thy sins are forgiven thee." Say, do you know the Spirit under the figure of oil? Have you felt him at work in your spirits, comforting you, anointing your head, making you glad, and causing you to rejoice?
There are many people that never felt this. They hope they are religious; but their religion never makes them happy. There are scores of professors who have just enough religion to make them miserable. Let them be afraid that they have any religion at all; for religion makes people happy; when it has its full sway with man it makes him glad. It may begin in agony, but it does not end there. Say, hast thou ever had thine heart leaping for joy? Hath thy lip ever warbled songs of ecstatic praise? Doth thine eye ever flash the fire of joy? If these things be not so, I fear lest thou art still without God, and without Christ; for where the Spirit comes, his fruits are, joy in the Spirit, and peace, and love, and confidence, and assurance for ever.
4. Bear with me once more. I have to show you one more figure of the Spirit, and by that also you will be able to ascertain whether you are under his operation. When the Spirit has acted as wind, as fire, and as oil, he then acts like water. We are told that we are "born again of water and of the Spirit." Now I do not think you foolish enough to need that I should say that no water, either of immersion or of sprinkling, can in the least degree operate in the salvation of a soul. There may be some few poor creatures, whose heads were put on their shoulders the wrong way, who still believe that a few drops of water from a priest's hands can regenerate souls. There may be such a few, but I hope the race will soon die out. We trust that the day will come when all those gentry will have no "other Gospel" to preach in our churches, but will have clean gone over to Rome, and when that terrible plague-spot upon the Protestant Church, called Puseyism, will have been cut out like a cancer, and torn out by its very roots. The sooner we get rid of that the better; and whenever we hear of any of them going over to Rome, let them go—I wish we could as easily get rid of the devil, they may go together—we do not want either of them in the Protestant Church, anyhow. But the Holy Spirit when he comes in the heart comes like water. That is to say, he comes to purify the soul. He that is to-day as foul a liver as he was before his pretended conversion is a hypocrite and a liar; he that this day loveth sin and liveth in it just as he was wont to do, let him know that the truth is not in him, but he hath received the strong delusion to believe a lie: God's people are a holy people; God's Spirit works by love, and purifies the soul. Once let it get into our hearts, and it will have no rest till it has turned every sin out. God's Holy Spirit and man's sin cannot live together peaceably; they may both be in the same heart, but they cannot both reign there, nor can they both be quiet there; for "the Spirit lusteth against the flesh, and the flesh lusteth against the Spirit;" they cannot rest, but there will be a perpetual warring in the soul, so that the Christian will have to cry, "O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?" But in due time the Spirit will drive out all sin, and will present us blameless before the throne of his Majesty with exceeding great joy.
Now, my hearer, answer thou this question for thyself, and not for another man. Hast thou received this Spirit? Answer me, anyhow; if it be with a scoff, answer me; if thou sneerest and sayest, "I know nothing of your enthusiastic rant," be it so, sir; say, nay, then. It may be thou carest not to reply at all. I beseech thee do not put away my entreaty. Yes or no. Hast thou received the Spirit? "Sir no man can find fault with my character; I believe I shall enter heaven through my own virtues." It is not the question, sir. Hast thou received the Spirit? All that thou sayest thou mayest have done; but if thou hast left the other undone, and hast not received the Spirit, it will go ill with thee at last. Hast thou had a supernatural operation upon thine own heart? Hast thou been made a new man in Christ Jesus! For if not, depend on it, as God's Word is true, thou art out of Christ, and dying as thou art thou wilt be shut out of heaven, be thou who thou mayest and what thou mayest.
II. Thus, I have tried to help you to answer the first question—the inquiry, Have we received the Spirit? And this brings me to the CAUTION. He that has not received the Spirit is said to be sensual. Oh, what a gulf there is between the least Christian and the greatest moralist! What a wide distinction there is between the greatest professor destitute of grace, and the least of God's believers who has grace in his heart. As great a difference as there is between light and darkness between death and life, between heaven and hell, is there between a saint and a sinner; for mark, my text says, in no very polite phrase, that if we have not the Spirit we are sensual. " Sensual!" says one; "well, I am not converted man—I don t pretend to be; but I am not sensual." Well, friend, and it is very likely that you are not—not in the common acceptation of the term sensual; but understand that this word, in the Greek, really means what an English word like this would mean, if we had such a one—soulish. We have not such a word—we want such a one. There is a great distinction between mere animals and men, because man hath a soul, and the mere animal hath none. There is another distinction between mere men and a converted man. The converted man hath the Spirit—the unconverted man hath none; he is a soulish man—not a spiritual man; he has got no further than mere nature and has no inheritance in the spiritual kingdom of grace. Strange it is that soulish and sensual should after all mean the same! Friend, thou hast not the Spirit. Then thou art nothing better—be thou what thou art, or whatsoever thou mayest be—than the fall of Adam left thee. That is to say, thou art a fallen creature, having only capacities to live here in sin, and to live for ever in torment; but thou hast not the capacity to live in heaven at all, for thou hast no Spirit; and therefore thou art unable to know or enjoy spiritual things. And mark you, a man may be in this state, and be a sensual man, and yet he may have all the virtues that could grace a Christian; but with all these, if he has not the Spirit, he has got not an inch further than where Adam's fall left him—that is, condemned and under the curse. Ay, and he may attend to religion with all his might—he may take the sacrament, and be baptized, and may be the most devout professor; but if he hath not the Spirit he hath not started a solitary inch from where he was, for he is still in "the bonds of iniquity," a lost soul. Nay, further, he may pick up religious phrases till he may talk very fast about religion; he may read biographies till he seems to be a deep taught child of God; he may be able to write an article upon the deep experience of a believer; but if this experience be not his own, if he hath not received it by the Spirit of the living God, he is still nothing more than a carnal man, and heaven is to him a place to which there is no entrance. Nay, further, he might go so far as to become a minister of the gospel, and a successful minister too, and God may bless the word that he preaches to the salvation of sinners, but unless he has received the Spirit, be he as eloquent as Apollos, and as earnest as Paul, he is nothing more than a mere soulish man, without capacity for spiritual things.
Nay, to crown all, he might even have the power of working miracles, as Judas had—he might even be received into the church as a believer, as was Simon Magus, and after all that, though he had cast out devils, though he had healed the sick, though he had worked miracles, he might have the gates of heaven shut in his teeth, if he had not received the Spirit. For this is the essential thing, without which all others are in vain—the reception of the Spirit of the living God. It is a searching truth, is it not, my friends? Do not run away from it. If I am preaching to you falsehood, reject it; but if this be a truth which I can substantiate by Scripture, I beseech you, rest not till you have answered this question: Hast thou the Spirit, living, dwelling, working in thy heart?
III. This brings me, in the third place, to THE SUSPICION. How singular that "separation" should be the opposite of having the Spirit. Hark! I hear a gentle man saying, "Oh! I like to hear you preach smartly and sharply; I am persuaded, sir, there are a great many people in the church that ought not to be there; and so I, because there is such a corrupt mixture in the church, have determined not to join anywhere at all. I do not think that the Church of Christ now a days is at all clean and pure enough to allow of my joining with it. At least, sir, I did join a church once, but I made such a deal of noise in it they were very glad when I went away. And now I am just like David's men; I am one that is in debt and discontented, and I go round to hear all new preachers that arise. I have heard you now these three months; I mean to go and hear some one else in a very little time if you do not say something to flatter me. But I am quite sure I am one of God's special elect. I don't join any church because a church is not good enough for me; I don't become a member of any denomination, because they are all wrong, every one of them." Hark ye brother, I have something to tell you, that will not please you. "These be they that separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit." I hope you enjoy the text: it certainly belongs to you, above every man in the world. "These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit." When I read this over I thought to myself, there be some who say, "Well, you are a dissenter, how do you make this agreeable with the text, 'These be they who separate themselves;' " you are separated from the Church of England. Ah, my friends, that a man may be, and be all the better for it; but the separation here intended is separation from the one universal Church of Christ. The Church of England was not known in Jude's day: so the apostle did not allude to that. "These be they who separate themselves,"—that is from the Church of Christ; from the great universal body of the elect. Moreover, let us just say one thing. We did not separate ourselves—we were turned out. Dissenters did not separate themselves from the Church of England, from the Episcopal church; but when the Act of Uniformity was passed, they were turned out of their pulpits. Our forefathers were as sound Churchmen as any in the world, but they could not take in all the errors of the Prayer Book, and they were therefore hounded to their graves by the intolerance of the conforming professors. So they did not separate themselves. Moreover, we do not separate ourselves. There is not a Christian beneath the scope of God's heaven from whom I am separated. At the Lord's table I always invite all Churches to come and sit down and commune with us. If any man were to tell me that I am separate from the Episcopalian, the Presbyterian, or the Methodist, I would tell him he did not know me, for I love them with a pure heart fervently, and I am not separate from them. I may hold different views from them, and in that point truly I may be said to be separate; but I am not separate in heart, I will work with them—I will work with them heartily; nay, though my Church of England brother sends me in, as he has done, a summons to pay a churchrate that I cannot in conscience pay, I will love him still; and if he takes chairs and tables it matters not—I will love him for all that; and if there be a ragged-school or anything else for which I can work with him to promote the glory of God, therein will I unite with him with all my heart. I think this bears rather hard on our friends—the Strict Communion Baptists. I should not like to say anything hard against them, for they are about the best people in the world, but they really do separate themselves from the great body of Christ's people. The Spirit of the living God will not let them do this really, but they do it professedly. They separate themselves from the great Universal Church. They say they will not commune with it; and if any one comes to their table who has not been baptized, they turn him away. They "separate," certainly. I do not believe it is willful schism that makes them thus act; but at the same time I think the old man within has some hand in it.
Oh, how my heart loves the doctrine of the one church. The nearer I get to my Master in prayer and communion, the closer am I knit to all his disciples. The more I see of my own errors and failings, the more ready am I to deal gently with them that I believe to be erring. The pulse of Christ's body is communion; and woe to the church that seeks to cure the ills of Christ's body by stopping its pulse. I think it sin to refuse to commune with anyone who is a member of the Church of our Lord Jesus Christ. I desire this morning to preach the unity of Christ's church. I have sought to use the fan to blow away the chaff. I have said no man belongs to Christ's church unless he has the Spirit; but, if he hath the Spirit, woe be to the man that separates himself from him. Oh! I should think myself grossly in fault if at the foot of these stairs I should meet a truly converted child of God, who called himself a Primitive Methodist, or a Wesleyan. or a Churchman, or an Independent, and I should say, "No, sir, you do not agree with me on certain points; I believe you are a child of God, but I will have nothing to do with you." I should then think that this text would bear very hard on me. "These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit." But would we do so, beloved? No, we would give them both our hands, and say, God speed to you in your journey to heaven; so long as you have got the Spirit we are one family, and we will not be separate from one another. God grant the day may come when every wall of separation shall be beaten down! See how to this day we are separate. There! you will find a Baptist who could not say a good word to a Poedo-Baptist if you were to give him a world. You find to this day Episcopalians who hate that ugly word, "Dissent;" and it is enough for them that a Dissenter has done a thing; they will not do it then, be it never so good.
Ah! and furthermore, there are some to be found in the Church of England that will not only hate dissent, but hate one another into the bargain. Men are to be found that cannot let brother ministers of their own church preach in their parish. What an anachronism such men are! They would seem to have been sent into the world in our time purely by mistake. Their proper era would have been the time of the dark ages. If they had lived then, what fine Bonners they would have made! What splendid fellows they would have been to have helped to poke the fire in Smithfield! But they are quite out of date in these times, and I look upon such a curious clergyman in the same way that I do upon a Dodo—as an extraordinary animal whose race is almost, if not quite extinct. Well, you may look, and look and wonder. The animal will be extinct soon. It will not be long, I trust, before not only the Church of England shall love itself, but when all who love the Lord Jesus shall be ready to preach in each other's pulpits, preaching the same truth, holding the same faith, and mightily contending for it. Then shall the world "see how these Christians love one another; " and then shall it be known in heaven that Christ s kingdom has come, and that his will is about to be done on earth as it is in heaven.
My hearer, dost thou belong to the church? For out of the church there is no salvation. But mark what the church is. It is not the Episcopalian, Baptist, or Presbyterian: the church is a company of men who have received the Spirit. If thou canst not say thou hast the Spirit, go thy way and tremble; go thy way and think of thy lost condition; and may Jesus by his Spirit so bless thee, that thou mayest be led to renounce thy works and ways with grief, and fly to him who died upon the cross, and find a shelter there from the wrath of God.
I may have said some rough things this morning, but I am not given much to cutting and trimming, and I do not suppose I shall begin to learn that art now. If the thing is untrue, it is with you to reject it; if it be true, at your own peril reject what God stamps with divine authority. May the blessing of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit rest upon the one church of Israel's one Jehovah. Amen and Amen.

The Power of the Holy Ghost

A Sermon
(No. 30)
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, June 17, 1855, by the
REV. C. H. Spurgeon
At New Park Street Chapel, Southwark.





"The power of the Holy Ghost."—Romans 15:13.

POWER is the special and peculiar prerogative of God, and God alone. "Twice have I heard this; that power belongeth unto God." God is God; and power belongeth to him. If he delegates a portion of it to his creatures, yet still it is his power. The sun, although he is "like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a strong man to run his race," yet has no power to perform his motions except as God directs him. The stars, although they travel in their orbits, and none could stay them, yet have neither might nor force, except that which God daily infuses into them. The tall archangel, near his throne, who outshines a comet in its blaze, though he is one of those who excel in strength, and hearken to the voice of the commands of God, yet has no might except that which his Maker gives to him. As for Leviathan, who so maketh the sea to boil like a pot, that one would think the deep were hoary; as for Behemoth, who drinketh up Jordan at a draught, and boasteth that he can snuff up rivers; as for those majestic creatures that are found on earth, they owe their strength to him who fashioned their bones of steel, and made their sinews of brass. And when we think of man, if he has might or power, it is so small and insignificant, that we can scarcely call it such; yea, when it is at its greatest—when he sways his sceptre, when he commands hosts, when he rules nations—still the power belongeth unto God; and it is true, "Twice have I heard this, that power belongeth unto God." This exclusive prerogative of God, is to be found in each of the three persons of the glorious Trinity. The Father hath power; for by his word were the heavens made, and all the hosts of them; by his strength all things stand, and through him they fulfil their destiny. The Son hath power; for, like his Father, he is the Creator of all things; "Without him was not anything made that was made," and "by him all things consist." And the Holy Spirit hath power. It is concerning the power of the Holy Ghost that I shall speak this morning; and may you have a practical exemplification of that attribute in your own hearts, when you shall feel that the influence of the Holy Ghost is being poured out upon me, so that I am speaking the words of the living God to your souls, and bestowed upon you when you are feeling the effects of it in your own spirits.

We shall look at the power of the Holy Ghost in three ways this morning. First, the outward and visible displays of it; second, the inward and spiritual manifestations of it; and third, the future and expected works thereof. The power of the Spirit will thus, I trust, be made clearly present to your souls.

I. First, then, we are to view the power of the Spirit in the OUTWARD AND VISIBLE DISPLAYS OF IT. The power of the Sprit has not been dormant; it has exerted itself. Much has been done by the Spirit of God already; more than could have been accomplished by any being except the Infinite, Eternal, Almighty Jehovah, of whom the Holy Spirit is one person. There are four works which are the outward and manifest signs of the power of the Spirit; creation works; resurrection works; works of attestation, or of witness; and works of grace. Of each of these works I shall speak very briefly.

1. First, the Spirit has manifested the omnipotence of his power in creation works; for though not very frequently in Scripture, yet sometimes creation is ascribed to the Holy Ghost, as well as to the Father and the Son. The creation of the heavens above us, is said to be the work of God's Spirit. This you will see at once by referring to the sacred Scriptures, Job 26, 13th verse, "By his Spirit he hath garnished the heavens; his hand hath formed the crooked serpent." All the stars of heaven are said to have been placed aloft by the Spirit, and one particular constellation called the "crooked serpent," is specially pointed out as his handiwork. He looseth the bands of Orion; he bindeth the sweet influences of the Pleiades, and binds Arcturus with his suns. He made all those stars that shine in heaven. The heavens were garnished by his hands, and he formed the crooked serpent by his might. So, also, in those continued acts of creation which are still performed in the world; as the bringing forth of man and animals, their birth and generation. These are ascribed also to the Holy Ghost. If you look at the 104th Psalm, at the 29th verse you will read, "Thou hidest thy face, they are troubled; thou takest away their breath, they die, and return to their dust. Thou sendest forth thy Spirit, they are created; and thou renewest the face of the earth." So that the creation of every man is the work of the Spirit; and the creation of all life, and all flesh-existence in this world, is as much to be ascribed to the power of the Spirit, as the first garnishing of the heavens, or the fashioning of the crooked serpent. But if you look in the first chapter of Genesis, you will there see more particularly set forth that peculiar operation of power upon the universe which was put forth by the Holy Spirit; you will then discover what was his special work. In the 2d verse of the first chapter of Genesis, we read, "And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." We know not how remote the period of the creation of this globe may be—certainly many millions of years before the time of Adam. Our planet has passed through various stages of existence, and different kinds of creatures have lived on its surface, all of which have been fashioned by God. But before that era came, wherein man should be its principal tenant and monarch, the Creator gave up the world to confusion. He allowed the inward fires to burst up from beneath, and melt all the solid matter, so that all kinds of substances were commingled in one vast mass of disorder. The only name you could give to the world, then, was that it was a chaotic mass of matter; what it should be, you could not guess or define. It was entirely "without form and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep." The Spirit came, and stretching his broad wings, bade the darkness disperse, and as he moved over it, all the different portions of matter came into their places, and it was no longer "without form, and void;" but became round, like its sister planets, and moved, singing the high praises of God—not discordantly, as it had done before, but as one great note in the vast scale of creation. Milton very beautifully describes this work of the Spirit, in thus bringing order out of confusion, when the King of Glory, in his powerful Word and Spirit, came to create new worlds:—



"On heavenly ground they stood; and from the shore
They viewed the vast, immeasurable abyss,
Outrageous as a sea, dark, wasteful, wild,
Up from the bottom turned by furious winds
And surging waves, as mountains, to assault
Heaven's height, and with the centre mix the pole.
"Silence, ye troubled waves, and thou deep, peace,
Said then the Omnific Word; your discord end.
Then on the watery calm,
His brooding wings the Spirit of God outspread
And vital virtue infused, and vital warmth
Throughout the fluid mass."

This you see, then, is the power of the Spirit. Could we have seen that earth all in confusion, we should have said, "Who can make a world out of this?" The answer would have been, "The power of the Spirit can do it. By the simple spreading of his dove-like wings, he can make all the things come together. Upon that there shall be order where there was naught but confusion." Nor is this all the power of the Spirit. We have seen some of his works in creation. But there was one particular instance of creation in which the Holy Spirit was more especially concerned; viz., the formation of the body of our Lord Jesus Christ. Though our Lord Jesus Christ was born of a woman, and made in the likeness of sinful flesh, yet, the power that begat him was entirely in God the Holy Spirit—as the Scriptures express it, "The Holy One of Israel shall overshadow thee." He was begotten, as the Apostles' Creed says, begotten of the Holy Ghost. "That holy thing which is born of thee shall be called the Son of the Highest." The corporeal frame of the Lord Jesus Christ was a master-piece of the Holy Spirit. I suppose his body to have excelled all others in beauty; to have been like that of the first man, the very pattern of what the body is to be in heaven, when it shall shine forth in all its glory. That fabric, in all its beauty and perfection, was modeled by the Spirit. "In his book were all the members written, when as yet there were none of them." He fashioned and formed him; and here again we have another instance of the creative energy of the Spirit.

2. A second manifestation of the Holy Spirit's power is to be found in the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ. If ye have ever studied this subject, ye have perhaps been rather perplexed to find that sometimes the resurrection of Christ is ascribed to himself. By his own power and godhead he could not be held by the bond of death, but as he willingly gave up his life he had power to take it up again. In another portion of Scripture, you find it ascribed to God the Father: "He raised him up from the dead:" "Him hath God the Father exalted." And many other passages of similar import. But, again, it is said in Scripture that Jesus Christ was raised by the Holy Spirit. Now, all these things were true. He was raised by the Father Because the Father said, "Loose the prisoner—let him go. Justice is satisfied. My law requires no more satisfaction—vengeance has had its due—let him go." Here he gave an official message which delivered Jesus from the grave. He was raised by his own majesty and power, because he had a right to come out; and he felt he had, and therefore "burst the bonds of death: he could be no longer holden of them." But he was raised by the Spirit as to that energy which his mortal frame received, by the which it rose again from the grave after having lain there for three days and nights. If you want proofs of this you must open your Bibles again, 1 Peter 3:18. "For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God, being put to death in the flesh but quickened by the Spirit." And a further proof you may find in Romans 8:11—(I love sometimes to be textual, for I believe the great fault of Christians is that they do not search the Scriptures enough, and I will make them search them when they are here if they do not do so anywhere else.)—"But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you."
The resurrection of Christ, then, was effected by the agency of the Spirit! And here we have a noble illustration of his omnipotence. Could you have stepped, as angels did, into the grave of Jesus, and seen his sleeping body, you would have found it cold as any other corpse. Lift up the hand; it falls by the side. Look at the eye; it is glazed. And there is a death-thrust which must have annihilated life. See his hands: the blood distills not from them. They are cold and motionless. Can that body live? Can it start up? Yes; and be an illustration of the might of the Spirit. For when the power of the Spirit came on him, as it was when it fell upon the dry bones of the valley, "he arose in the majesty of his divinity, and, bright and shining, astonished the watchmen so that they fled away; yea, he arose no more to die, but to live forever, King of kings and Prince of the kings of the earth."

3. The third of the works of the Holy Spirit, which have so wonderfully demonstrated his power, are attestation works. I mean by this—works of witnessing. When Jesus Christ went into the stream of baptism in the river Jordan, the Holy Spirit descended upon him like a dove, and proclaimed him God's beloved son. That was what I style an attestation work. And when afterwards Jesus Christ raised the dead, when he healed the leper, when he spoke to diseases and they fled apace, when demons rushed in thousands from those who were possessed of them, it was done by the power of the Spirit. The Spirit dwelt in Jesus without measure, and by that power all those miracles were worked. These were attestation works. And when Jesus Christ was gone, you will remember that master attestation of the Spirit, when he came like a rushing mighty wind upon the assembled apostles, and cloven tongues sat upon them; and you will remember how he attested their ministry, by giving them to speak with tongues as he gave them utterance; and how, also, miraculous deeds were wrought by them, how they taught, how Peter raised Dorcas, how he breathed life into Enticus, how great deeds were wrought by the apostles as well as their Master—so that "mighty signs and wonders were done by the Holy Ghost, and many believed thereby." Who will doubt the power of the Holy Spirit after that? Ah! Those Socinians who deny the existence of the Holy Ghost and his absolute personality, what will they do when we get them on creation, resurrection, and attestation? They must rush in the very teeth of Scripture. But mark! It is a stone upon which if any man fall he shall be bruised; but if it fall upon him, as it will do if he resists it, it shall grind him to powder. The Holy Spirit has power omnipotent, even the power of God.

4. Once more, if we want another outward and visible sign of the power of the Spirit, we may look at the works of grace. Behold a city where a soothsayer hath the power—who has given out himself to be some great one, a Philip enters it and preaches the Word of God; straightway a Simon Magus loses his power and himself seeks for the power of the Spirit to be given to him, fancying it might be purchased with money. See, in modern times, a country where the inhabitants live in miserable wigwams, feeding on reptiles and the meanest creatures; observe them bowing down before their idols and worshiping their false gods, and so plunged in superstition, so degraded and debased, that it became a question whether they had souls or not; behold a Moffat go with the Word of God in his hand, hear him preach as the Spirit gives him utterance, and accompanies that Word with power. They cast aside their idols—they hate and abhor their former lusts; they build houses, wherein they dwell; they become clothed, and in their right mind. They break the bow, and cut the spear in sunder; the uncivilized become civilized; the savage becomes polite; he who knew nothing begins to read the Scriptures: thus out of the mouths of Hottentots, God attests the power of his mighty Spirit. Take a household in this city—and we could guide you to many such—the father is a drunkard; he has been the most desperate of characters; see him in his madness, and you might just as well meet an unchained tiger as meet such a man. He seems as if he could rend a man to pieces who should offend him. Mark his wife. She, too, has a spirit in her, and when he treats her ill she can resist him; many broils have been seen in that house. And often has the neighborhood been disturbed by the noise created there. As for the poor little children—see them in their rags and nakedness, poor untaught things. Untaught, did I say? They are taught and well taught in the devil's school, and are growing up to be the heirs of damnation. But some one whom God has blessed by his Spirit is guided to the house. He may be but an humble city missionary, perhaps, but he speaks to such a one: "Oh!" says he, "come and listen to the voice of God." Whether it is by his own agency, or a minister's preaching, the Word, which is quick and powerful, cuts to the sinner's heart. The tears run down his cheeks—such as had never been seen before. He shakes and quivers. The strong man bows down—the mighty man trembles—and those knees that never shook begin to knock together. That heart which never quailed before now begins to shake before the power of the Spirit. He sits down on an humble bench by the penitent; he lets his knees bend, whilst his lips utter a child's prayer; but, whilst a child's prayer, a prayer of a child of God. He becomes a changed character. Mark the reformation in his house! That wife of his becomes the decent matron. Those children are the credit of the house, and in due time they grow up like olive branches round his table, adorning his house like polished stones. Pass by the house—no noise or broils, but songs of Zion. See him—no drunken revelry; he has drained his last cup, and, now forswearing it, he comes to God and is his servant. Now, you will not hear at midnight the bacchanalian shout; but should there be a noise, it will be the sound of the solemn hymn of praise to God. And, now, is there not such a thing as the power of the Spirit? Yes! And those must have witnessed it, and seen it. I know a village, once perhaps the most profane in England—a village inundated by drunkenness and debauchery of the worst kind, where it was impossible almost for an honest traveler to stop in the public house without being annoyed by blasphemy; a place noted for incendiaries and robbers. One man, the ringleader of all, listened to the voice of God. That man's heart was broken. The whole gang came to hear the gospel preached, and they sat and seemed to reverence the preacher as if he were a God, and not a man. These men became changed and reformed; and every one who knows the place affirms that such a change had never been wrought but by the power of the Holy Ghost. Let the gospel be preached and the Spirit poured out, and you will see that it has such power to change the conscience, to ameliorate the conduct, to raise the debased, to chastise and to curb the wickedness of the race, that you must glory in it. I say, there is naught like the power of the Spirit. Only let that come, and, indeed, everything can be accomplished.


II. Now for the second point, THE INWARD AND SPIRITUAL POWER OF THE HOLY SPIRIT. What I have already spoken of may be seen; what I am about to speak of must be felt, and no man will apprehend what I say with truth unless he has felt it. The other, even the infidel must confess; the other, the greatest blasphemer cannot deny, if he speaks the truth; but this is what the one will laugh at as enthusiasm, and what the other will say is but the invention of our fevered fancies. However, we have a more sure word of testimony than all that they may say. We have a witness within. We know it is the truth, and we are not afraid to speak of the inward spiritual power of the Holy Ghost. Let us notice two or three things wherein the inward and spiritual power of the Holy Ghost is very greatly to be seen and extolled.

1. First, in that the Holy Ghost has a power over men's hearts. Now, men's hearts are very hard to affect. If you want to get at them for any worldly object, you can do it. A cheating world can win man's heart; a little gold can win man's heart; a trump of fame and a little clamor of applause can win man's heart. But there is not a minister breathing that can win man's heart himself. He can win his ears and make them listen; he can win his eyes, and fix those eyes upon him; he can win the attention, but the heart is very slippery. Yes! The heart is a fish that troubles all gospel fishermen to hold. You may sometimes pull it almost all out of the water; but, slimy as an eel, it slippeth between your fingers, and you have not captured it after all. Many a man has fancied that he has caught the heart, but has been disappointed. It would take a strong hunter to overtake the hart on the mountains. It is too fleet for human foot to approach. The Spirit alone has power over man's heart. Do you every try your power on a heart? If any man thinks that a minister can convert the soul, I wish he would try. Let him go and be a Sabbath School teacher. He shall take his class, he shall have the best books that can be obtained, he shall have the best rules, he shall draw his lines of circumvallation about his spiritual Sebastopol, he shall take the best boy in his class, and if he is not tired in a week I shall be very much mistaken. Let him spend four or five Sabbaths in trying; but he will say, "the young fellow is incorrigible." Let him try another. And he will have to try another, and another and another before he will manage to convert one. He will soon find "it is not by might nor power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." Can a minister convert? Can he touch the heart? David said, "Your hearts are as fat as grease." Aye, that is quite true; and we cannot get through so much grease at all. Our sword cannot get at the heart, it is encased in so much fatness; it is harder than a nether millstone. Many a good old Jerusalem blade has been blunted against the hard heart. Many a piece of the true steel that God has put into the hand of his servants has had the edge turned by being set up against the sinner's heart. We cannot reach the soul, but the Holy Spirit can. "My beloved can put in his hand by the hole in the door, and my bowels will move for sin." He can give a sense of blood-bought pardon that shall dissolve a heart of stone. He can


"Speak with that voice which wakes the dead
And bids the sinner rise;
And makes the guilty conscience dread
The death that never dies."

He can make Sinai's thunders audible; yea, and he can make the sweet whisperings of Calvary enter into the soul. He has power over the heart of man. And here is a glorious proof of the omnipotence of the Spirit that he has rule over the heart.

2. But if there is one thing more stubborn than the heart, it is the will. "My lord Will-be-will," as Bunyan calls him in his "Holy War," is a fellow who will not easily be bent. The will, especially in some men, is a very stubborn thing; and in all men, if the will is once stirred up to opposition, there is nothing can be done with them. Free-will somebody believes in. Free-will many dream of. Free-will! Wherever is that to be found? Once there was Free-will in Paradise, and a terrible mess Free-will made there; for it spoiled all Paradise and turned Adam out of the garden. Free-will was once in heaven; but it turned the glorious archangel out, and a third part of the stars of heaven fell into the abyss. I want nothing to do with Free-will, but I will try to see whether I have got a Free-will within. And I find I have. Very free will to evil but very poor will to that which is good. Free-will enough when I sin, but when I would do good, evil is present with me, and how to do that which I would I find not. Yet some boast of Free-will. I wonder whether those who believe in it have any more power over persons' wills than I have? I know I have not any. I find the old proverb very true, "One man can bring a horse to the water but a hundred cannot make him drink." I find that I can bring you all to the water, and a great many more than can get into this chapel; but I cannot make you drink; and I don't think a hundred ministers could make you drink. I have read old Rowland Hill, and Whitefield, and several others, to see what they did; but I cannot discover a plan of turning your will. I cannot coax you, and you will not yield by any manner of means. I do not think any man has power over his fellow-creature's will, but the Spirit of God has. "I will make them willing in the day of my power." He maketh the unwilling sinner so willing that he is impetuous after the gospel; he who was obstinate now hurries to the cross. He who laughed at Jesus now hangs on his mercy; and he who would not believe is now made by the Holy Spirit to do it, not only willingly, but eagerly; he is happy, is glad to do it, rejoices in the sound of Jesus' name, and delights to run in the way of God's commandments. The Holy Spirit has power over the will.

3. And yet there is one thing more which I think is rather worse than the will. You will guess what I mean. The will is somewhat worse than the heart to bend, but there is one thing that excels the will in its naughtiness, and that is the imagination. I hope that my will is managed by Divine Grace. But I am afraid my imagination is not at times. Those who have a fair share of imagination know what a difficult thing it is to control. You cannot restrain it. It will break the reins. You will never be able to manage it. The imagination will sometimes fly up to God with such a power that eagles' wings cannot match it. It sometimes has such might that it can almost see the King in his beauty, and the land which is very far off. With regard to myself, my imagination will sometimes take me over the gates of iron, across the infinite unknown, to the very gates of pearl, and discover the blessed glorified. But, if it is potent one way, it is another: for my imagination has taken me down to the vilest kennels and sewers of earth. It has given me thoughts so dreadful, that, while I could not avoid them, yet I was thoroughly horrified at them. These thoughts will come; and when I feel in the holiest frame, the most devoted to God, and the most earnest in prayer, it often happens that that is the very time when the plague breaks out the worst. But I rejoice and think of one thing, that I can cry out when this imagination comes upon me. I know it is said in the Book of Leviticus, when an act of evil was committed, if the maiden cried out against it, then her life was to be spared. So it is with the Christian. If he cries out, there is hope. Can you chain your imagination? No; but the power of the Holy Ghost can. Ah, it shall do it! And it does do it at last, it does it even on earth.

III. But the last thing was, THE FUTURE AND DESIRED EFFECTS; for, after all, though the Holy Spirit has done so much, he cannot say, "It is finished." Jesus Christ could exclaim concerning his own labor—"It is finished." But the Holy Spirit cannot say that. He has more to do yet: and until the consummation of all things, when the Son himself becomes subject to the Father, it shall not be said by the Holy Spirit, "It is finished." What, then, has the Holy Spirit to do?

1. First, he has to perfect us in holiness. There are two kinds of perfection which a Christian needs: one is the perfection of justification in the person of Jesus; and the other is, the perfection of sanctification worked in him by the Holy Spirit. At present corruption still rests even in the breasts of the regenerate. At present the heart is partially impure. At present there are still lusts and evil imaginations. But, oh! My soul rejoices to know that the day is coming when God shall finish the work which he has begun; and he shall present my soul, not only perfect in Christ, but perfect in the Spirit, without spot or blemish, or any such thing. And is it true that this poor depraved heart is to become as holy as that of God? And is it true that this poor spirit, which often cries, "O, wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this sin an death!" shall get rid of sin and death? I shall have no evil things to vex my ears, and no unholy thoughts to disturb my peace. Oh happy hour! May it be hastened! Just before I die sanctification will be finished; but not till that moment shall I ever claim perfection in myself. But at that moment when I depart, my spirit shall have its last baptism in the Holy Spirit's fire. It shall be put in the crucible for its last trying in the furnace; and then, free from all dross, and fine, like a wedge of pure gold, it shall be presented at the feet of God without the least degree of dross or mixture. O glorious hour! O blessed moment! Methinks I long to die if there were no heaven, if I might but have that last purification come up from Jordan's stream most white from the washing. Oh! To be washed white, clean, pure, perfect! Not an angel more pure than I shall be—yea, not God himself more holy! And I shall be able to say, in a double sense, "Great God, I am clean—through Jesus' blood I am clean, through the Spirit's work I am clean too!" Must you not extol the power of the Holy Ghost in thus making us fit to stand before our Father in heaven?
2. Another great work of the Holy Spirit, which is not accomplished, is the bringing on of the latter-day glory. In a few more years—I know not when, I know not how—the Holy Spirit will be poured out in a far different style from the present. There are diversities of operations; and during the last few years it has been the case that the diversified operations have consisted in very little pouring out of the Spirit. Ministers have gone on in dull routine, continually preaching—preaching—preaching, and little good has been done. I do hope that perhaps a fresh era has dawned upon us, and that there is a better pouring out of the Spirit even now. For the hour is coming, and it may be even now is, when the Holy Ghost shall be poured out again in such a wonderful manner, that many shall run to and fro, and knowledge shall be increased—the knowledge of the Lord shall cover the earth as the waters cover the surface of the great deep; when his kingdom shall come, and his will shall be done on earth even as it is in heaven. We are not going to be dragging on forever like Pharoah, with the wheels off his chariot. My heart exults, and my eyes flash with the thought that very likely I shall live to see the outpouring of the Spirit; when "the sons and the daughters of God again shall prophesy, and the young men shall see visions and the old men shall dream dreams." Perhaps there shall be no miraculous gifts—for they will not be required; but yet there shall be such a miraculous amount of holiness, such an extraordinary fervor of prayer, such a real communion with God, and so much vital religion, and such a spread of the doctrines of the cross, that every one will see that verily the Spirit is poured out like water, and the rains are descending from above. For that let us pray; let us continually labor for it, and seek it of God.
3. One more work of the Spirit, which will especially manifest his power—the general resurrection. We have reason to believe from Scripture, that the resurrection of the dead, whilst it will be effected by the voice of God and of his Word(the Son), shall also be brought about by the Spirit. The same power which raised Jesus Christ from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies. The power of the resurrection is, perhaps, one of the finest proofs of the works of the Spirit. Ah! My friends, if this earth could but have its mantle torn away for a little while, if the green sod could be cut from it, and we could look about six feet deep into its bowels, what a world it would seem! What should we see? Bones, carcasses, rottenness, worms, corruption. And you would say, Can these dry bones live? Can they start up? Yes! "In a moment! In the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump, the dead shall be raised." He speaks; they are alive! See them scattered! Bone comes to his bone! See them naked; flesh comes upon them! See them still lifeless; "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain!" When the wind of the Holy Spirit comes, they live; and they stand upon their feet an exceeding great army.
I have thus attempted to speak of the power of the Spirit, and I trust I have shown it to you. We must now have a moment or two for practical inference. The Spirit is very powerful, Christian! What do you infer from that fact? Why, that you never need distrust the power of God to carry you to heaven. O how that sweet verse was laid to my soul yesterday!


"His tried Almighty arm
is raised for your defense;
Where is the power can reach you there?
Or what can pluck you thence?"

The power of the Holy Spirit is your bulwark, and all his omnipotence defends you. Can your enemies overcome omnipotence? Then they can conquer you. Can they wrestle with Deity, and hurl him to the ground? Then they might conquer you. For the power of the Spirit is our power; the power of the Spirit is our might.
Once again, Christians, if this is the power of the Spirit, why should you doubt anything? There is your son. There is that wife of yours, for whom you have supplicated so frequently; do not doubt the Spirit's power. "Though he tarry, wait for him." There is thy husband, O holy woman! And thou hast wrestled for his soul. And though he is ever so hardened and desperate a wretch, and treats thee ill, there is power in the Spirit. And, O ye who have come from barren churches, with scarcely a leaf upon the tree, do not doubt the power of the Spirit to raise you up. For it shall be a "pasture for flocks, a den of wild asses," open but deserted, until the Spirit is poured out from on high. And then the parched ground shall be made a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water; and in the habitations of dragons, where each lay shall be grass with reeds and rushes. And, O ye members of Park Street! Ye who remember what your God has done for you especially, never distrust the power of the Spirit. Ye have seen the wilderness blossom like Carmel, ye have seen the desert blossom like the rose, trust him for the future. Then go out and labor with this conviction, that the power of the Holy Ghost is able to do anything. Go to your missionary enterprise; go to your preaching in your rooms, with the conviction that the power of the Spirit is our great help.
And now, lastly, to you sinners:—What is there to be said to you about this power of the Spirit? Why, to me, there is some hope for some of you. I cannot save you; I cannot get at you. I make you cry sometimes—you wipe your eyes, and it is all over. But I know my Master can. That is my consolation. Chief of sinners, there is hope for thee! This power can save you as well as anybody else. It is able to break your heart, though it is an iron one; to make your eyes run with tears, though they have been like rocks before. His power is able this morning, if he will, to change your heart, to turn the current of all your ideas; to make you at once a child of God, to justify you in Christ. There is power enough in the Holy Spirit. Ye are not straightened in him, but in your own bowels. He is able to bring sinners to Jesus; he is able to make you willing in the day of his power. Are you willing this morning? Has he gone so far as to make you desire his name; to make you wish for Jesus? Then, O sinner! Whilst he draws you, say, "Draw me, I am wretched without thee." Follow him, follow him; and, while he leads, tread you in his footsteps, and rejoice that he has begun a good work in you, for there is an evidence that he will continue it even unto the end. And, O desponding one! Put thy trust in the power of the Spirit. Rest on the blood of Jesus, and thy soul is safe, not only now, but throughout eternity. God bless you, my hearers. Amen.

Chastisement

Anxiety, Ambition, Indecision


A Sermon
(No. 2871)
Published on Thursday, February 18th, 1904,
Delivered by
C. H. SPURGEON,
At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
On Thursday Evening, January 27th, 1876.




"Neither be ye of doubtful mind."—Luke 12:29,

HE CHIEF CONCERN of a man should be, to see that his own soul is right in the sight of God. Solomon said, "Keep thy heart with all diligence; for out of it are the issues of life." Many persons think a great deal about the adorning of the body, but do not think anything about the ornaments of the soul. The feeding of the physical frame engrosses much care, but the supply of spiritual food is often neglected. Yet, O man, thou thyself art better than thy body! Thine immortal soul is worth far more than that poor carcase of thine which will soon become food for worms; pad all the things that thou hast, what are they compared with thine inner self,—thy real self,—thy heart, thy soul, thy spirit?
In our text, our Savior bids us see to the condition of our mind: "Neither be ye of doubtful mind." He thus calls our attention to the higher and nobler part of our mind, and bids us see to it that it is in a right state. No doubt there are some people who are in easier circumstances than others,—some who are in positions where they enjoy many comforts, while others are in places where they suffer many hardships; but, after all, happiness lies more in the mind than it does in the circumstances in which any individual is found, and the man within has far more to do with his own joy or sorrow than anything outside of him has. There have been some who have been perfectly free in a prison, while others have been in absolute bondage with wide estates to roam over. We have known some, whose spirits have triumphed when all around has tended to depress them; and we have seen others, who were wretched and desponding when they had, apparently, all that heart could wish. It is the mind which is the main thing; it will bring thee daylight or midnight, wealth or poverty, peace or war. I wish, dear friends, that half the time we spend in trying to better our circumstances were spent in bettering ourselves after the right fashion; and that even a tenth of the trouble we take to fit our circumstances to our desires were used in fitting our desires to our circumstances. If we did that, how much happier men and women we should be! Try as you may, you cannot alter the world in which your lot is cast, and you cannot alter God's providential arrangements; So, would it not be better that you should be altered so as to suit the providence, and be resigned to the will of God? It is beautiful to see how often the inspired writers of Holy Scripture were busy with what I may call indoor work,—the work that has to be done within one's own heart. "Bless the Lord, O my soul," says David, in the 103rd Psalm; "and all that is within me, bless his holy name." This indoor work, brethren and sisters in Christ, will always pay us best; and our Lord Jesus, in his exhortations, often bids us attend to it. Did he not say to his disciples, "Let not your heart be troubled"? A little later, he said to them, "In the world ye shall have tribulation;" and he says the same to his disciples in every age. It is no use for you to try to avoid that, for you will have tribulation; yet, "Let not your heart be troubled." All the water in the sea will not hurt your vessel so long as you keep it outside; the danger begins when it gets inside the ship. So, it matters little what is outside you, if all is right within. Have that little bird in your bosom that sings sweetly of the love of God; wear the flower called heart's-ease in your button-hole; and you may go merrily through a perfect wilderness of trouble and a desert of care. A hurricane of afflictions may beat about you, yet you shall be a blessed man, for all the elements of blessedness are within your own heart. God has given them to you, and the devil himself cannot take them away.
In speaking upon this text, I mean to preach a good part of the sermon to myself, for I need it as much as anybody does; but I ask each brother and sister to take home to themselves any part that suits them. And before I have done, I shall have a word for you unconverted people, and I pray God that that word may do you good, and that you may cease to be of a doubtful mind. The original of the text is not easy to explain, for the word translated "doubtful" is not used anywhere else in the New Testament. It appears to have something to do with meteors, so that the passage might be rendered, "Neither be ye of meteoric mind."
As the word is so singular, there have been a great many different opinions as to its meaning. Some have said that it relates to high things that float above, such as the clouds. If they are right, our text says to us, "Do not be like the clouds,—do not have cloudy minds, blown about with every wind of doctrine." Others render it, "Do not be like the birds, high up in the air, always on the wing, unsettled and uncertain, ever dying about, and never at rest." Others find an allusion to the ship that is far out upon the sea, and the text says to them, "Do not always be at sea, tossed up and down; have some anchorage; do not be always drifting to and fro." The word "doubtful" means so much that I do not expect to be able to tell you all that it means, but shall rather give you a few practical thoughts concerning it.
I. "Neither be ye of doubtful mind." That is, first, CHILDREN OF GOD, BE NOT ANXIOUS. Be not tossed up and down by your outward circumstances. If God prospers you, do not ride high, as the vessel does when the tide lifts it up; and if he does not prosper you, do not sink down as the vessel does when the tide ebbs away again. Do not be so affected by external things as to got into a state of worry, and fretfulness, and care, and anxiety, and distress.
Our Savior's injunction means, "Do not be anxious about your temporal affairs." Be prudent; you have no right to spend the money of other people, nor yet your own, in wastefulness. You are to be careful and discreet, for every Christian should remember that he is only a steward, and that he is accountable to his Master for whatever he has, and the use he makes of it. But when you have done your best with your little, do not worry because you cannot make it more. And when you have done your best to meet your expenses, do not sit down, and wring your hands because you cannot lessen them. You cannot make a shilling into a sovereign, but be thankful if you have the shilling; and if you sometimes find that you must live from hand to mouth, recollect that you are not the first child of God who has had his manna every morning, nor the first of God's servants to have bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and flesh in the evening, with nothing to lay by for the morrow. If this is your case, be not staggered and astonished, as though some new thing had happened unto you; and do not begin to fret, and fume, and worry, and trouble yourself about what you cannot help. Can you alter it with all your worrying?
Have you,—you who are in the habit of worrying and fretting,—ever made any profit by doing so? How much a year do you think that anybody would give you for all your fretting? How much has it brought you in, Come, brother, if it is a good business, I would like to go into partnership with you; but I should like first to know something about your profits. As I look at your face, I notice that it is careworn and anxious. That does not seem to indicate that the business is a profitable one. If I listen to your speech, I hear you murmuring a great deal instead of praising God. That does not seem to me to be a profitable concern. In fact, as far as I have ascertained, either by my own experience or by the observation of others, I have never discovered that anxiety has comforted anybody, or that it has brought any grist to the mill, or any meal to the barrel. Well, if a thing does not pay, what is the good of it?
But perhaps you say, "I cannot help fretting and worrying." No, my good brother or sister, but do you not think that the Lord can help you to help it, and that your faith in him, if it were what it ought to be, would soon be the end of your distress and trouble? Have you not found out yet—I have,—that the very anxiety, which arises through your being in a difficulty, unfits you to meet that difficulty? You are in a great hurry to do something or other, and that something or other does more mischief than could possibly have happened if you had kept still, resting in the Lord, and waiting patiently for him. Instead of doing so, you rush this way, and that way, and so add to your worries instead of decreasing them. You are like the servant with the basket of eggs on her head, who shakes her head because she is afraid her eggs will fall, and makes them fall by the very process of her trembling. So, you go and make ten troubles in endeavoring to get out of one. There is a text that is very easy to repeat, but not always so easy to obey: "Stand still, and see the salvation of God." But you want to see your own salvation, so you cannot stand still. There is many a man who has run before God's cloud, and who has been very glad to run or even to crawl back again. Some people are so anxious to carve for themselves that they cub their own fingers; they had better leave the carving in the hands of God, and take what he gives them, for he knows far better than they do what is good for them, and his hand is infinitely wiser than theirs can possibly be.
"Oh, but!" says one, "I feel that I must be doing something." That "doing"will just be your undoing unless you stop and consider what God would have you do. The probability is that your action will be unwiso and hasty while you are in your present feverish condition. Wait till you get quite cool, brother; you will see your way far better then. At the present moment, you are in such a fidget and flutter that you are very apt to mistake your right hand for your left; and to put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter.
You say again that you cannot help being anxious. Then, my dear friend, I must very solemnly ask you what is the difference between you and the man of the world? There is an orphan child, and it is afraid it will not be fed; but you have a Father in heaven, and if you are afraid, surely, it is of little use for you to have such a Father. Are you not dishonoring his holy name by such conduct as that? Do you not think that others, who see you in this condition, will say, "There is not much power in religion, for these people, who profess to be Christians, are not comforted by it in their time of trouble, and it will not be of much use to them in the hour of their death." Remember Jeremiah's questions, "If thou hast run with the footmen, and they have wearied thee, then how canst thou contend with horses? and if in the land of peace, wherein thou trustest, they wearied thee, then how wilt thou do in the swelling of Jordan?" Surely it is time that we plucked up courage, and were not so easily disheartened, for we have worse trials on ahead than any we have yet been called to endure.
"That is just what I dread," says one. What would you do, then, brother? "I have been thinking that perhaps I had better turn back." But you have no armor for your back; and the perils of going back are far worse than the perils of going forward. Therefore, I charge thee, if thou art indeed a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, to play the man, and let thy faith overcome thy fear. Obey that gracious word, "Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you." Do you not believe that "all things work together for good to them thas love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose"? You say that you do. Do you not believe that?



"He sits a Sovereign on his throne
And ruleth all things well"?

You say that you do. Do you not believe he loves you with an everlasting love? Do you not know that he spared not his only begotten Son, but delivered him up for you; and do you think that, after having done so much for you, he will withhold from you anything that is necessary for your well-being? You must not think so. Brother, sister, it would be unkind, ungenerous, ungrateful to think so. Therefore, be not of anxious or doubtful mind concerning temporal things.
"Well," says one, "as far as temporal supplies are concerned, I can leave them entirely in the hands of God; but my anxieties arise from quite another form of trouble. There is a Christian brother who is at enmity against me, and he has been spreading an ill report about me, although I have earnestly sought to walk before God in holy fear, and have watched every step that I have taken, and I feel so worried that I do not know what to do." Well, dear friend, there is one rule which you will generally find to be applicable in such a case as yours. When you do not know what to do, do not do anything at all; and, usually, if the trouble has arisen through false reports about your own character, "the least said, the soonest mended." I believe that, if there is anything you want to have well done, you had better do it yourself; but there is one exception to that rule, and that is the matter of defending yourself. No defense is needed for a good man who can say, "By the grace of God I am what I am." You may leave that matter of your own character, therefore; and as to the good brother not getting on with you, if you have done anything that has grieved him, confess the wrong. "Well, perhaps, if I did, he might not meet me in the same spirit." You have nothing to do with that, dear friend; that is his business, and God a You go and do the right thing, and then be no longer anxious about it, but leave the result with God
I hear another brother say, "My anxiety has nothing to do with my personal affairs; I am anxious about the cause of God,—the church over which I preside,—the Bible-class that I conduct,—the mission-field that I try to cultivate. Somehow, things do not go as I could wish, and I am greatly concerned that they are not more prosperous." And what are you doing, good friend, to bring about that result? Are you telling the Lord about it, and agonizing before him in prayer? That is right; but if you are telling yourself about it, and your anxiety is confined to yourself, no good will come of that. "But, sir, all things seem to be going amiss." Yes, I am constantly hearing that. There are some of our friends who believe that we have fallen upon the worst days that have ever been known in this world. Well, it may be so, I cannot say much about that; but I will say this, my dear friends,—that you and I are not of anything like so much importance to the Church of God as we may have imagined; and that the particular department of work which has been entrusted to us, though we ought to think well of it, and to do it well, is not, after all, the hinge upon which the whole universe turns. God managed the world very well before we were born, and he will manage it quite as well—when we are dead; his Church will not die, for the Lord still liveth, and his Spirit still abides in the Church, and therefore it must live.
But there will be trouble for us if we begin to think that everything depends upon us Uzzah was well intentioned, no doubt; yet God smote him for putting forth his hand to stay the ark of the Lord from falling. Let none of us become guilty of Uzzah's sin. It is our business to serve the Lord with all our heart and soul, just as Martha, with all her energy, sought to prepare a supper for Jesus; but when we begin to be cumbered about our service, then we may expect the Master to say to us, as he did to Martha, "Thou art careful and troubled about many things: but one thing is needful; and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her." It is not well that we should be cumbered about our service. No, brethren; the Lord loves his Church far better than we do, and he knows far better than we do how to manage her affairs, so we must


"Just do the little we can do,
And leave the rest with him."

May his blessed Spirit help us so to get rid of all improper anxieties!
II. Another meaning of the text will make a second division of our subject. "BE NOT AMBITIOUS." That is, do not fly high; do not be as the clouds and the meteors, that not only move about, and are uncertain in their movements, but are also high and lofty.
Some people are troubled because they are aiming at amassing great wealth. Years ago, if anybody had told them they would one day possess what they have already obtained, they would have thought it was a wonderful sum, more than sufficient to satisfy all their desires. If somebody had asked them, "Will you retire from business then, and be quite happy and content?" they would have answered, "Oh, yes, certainly! "Well, they have gathered far more than that already, yet they are as grasping as ever, and they want more, and more, and more and they are by no means content with what they have, much as it is. We should all be happier than we are if we were more contented with what is really all that we need, namely having food and raiment, having neither poverty nor riches. Many men have been like that dog, in the fable, that had the meat in his mouth, but did not eat it because he saw the shadow of it in the water, and was so anxious to get that shadow as well as the substance that he already had that he lost the piece that he might have eaten. Such people are always trying to grasp the shadow, instead of enjoying what God has given to them. Let us not be of such a mind as that.
There are others, who are ambitious to attain a higher position. They might be very well content with the kind, good friends they have, but there was a lord, who once looked at them; and ever since that time, they have thought it a very wonderful thing to know a real, live lord. I have heard of a man who used to boast that the king once spoke to him; and though his majesty only told him to get out of the way, he was very proud of having been addressed by the king; and there are many people who think a great deal of that sort of thing. They are only shillings now, but they are anxious to get among the sovereigns. I have no sympathy with that desire; the best society in the world for me is a company of the Lord's people; and whether they are poor or rich, so long as they are God's saints, I feel myself at home with them. If a brother spoils the Queen's English, and makes a great many mistakes in pronunciation, that does not matter to me. The real piety that is, in the man, the grace of God that is in his soul,—that is the thing which ought to please us. To be proud of our association with the great ones of the earth, is both a folly and a sin on the part of any child of God.
Sometimes, we are ambitious in the service of God beyond what we ought to be. You are doing well in that little chapel, my brother; the place is full, and God is blessing you; but you want a bigger place, or you want to get away from those poor people whom the Lord has helped through your ministry. Possibly, my friend, you are a Sunday-school teacher, and you have charge of the infants, and they love you, and you are fitted for the work; yet you are not content to be an infant class teacher, you would like a senior class, and a great stupid you would make of yourself, if you had such a class, for you are not adapted for it. It is well always to be seeking to do more for the Lord Jesus Christ, but I would earnestly discourage you from endeavoring to attain to a higher position merely for the sake of occupying it. Dear brethren and sisters, be not ambitious in this sense; for, after all, what is human greatness." Have you ever met with a really great man who would have given a penny for his own greatness? Do you not know that the higher you rise, even in the Church of Christ, the more responsibility you have, and the heavier burdens you have to carry? Do you not also know that the way to be really great is to be little, and that he who is greatest of all is the one who has learned to be least of all? He who is chief in the Church of Christ is he who serves the Church most, and who is willing to go lowest for Christ's sake. Cultivate that kind of greatness as much as you like; but put aside the other, and be not of ambitious mind even in your Lord's service.
I meet, every now and then, people who are, I hope, God's children, but they seem to me to have got into a very curious state of mind. They have notions, that are not at all according to the realities of every-day life,—flighty notions,—romantic notions about their own rights, and dignities, and importance, and so on. Ah, dear brethren and sisters, some of us were, in our own estimation, very important individuals, were we not, before the grace of God came into us? But when the grace of God works in us, we are made to feel that the very lowest and meanest place is a better position than we have any right to take. When we are in our right senses, we never give ourselves those high and mighty airs. A truly humble believer does not say, "So-and-so did not treat me with proper respect." Oh, dear me! what is the proper respect to which you and I are entitled? May the Lord preserve us from such a spirit as that! But there are some people,—professing Christians, too,—whose heads are always being filled with that kind of nonsense. They do not seem to have learned that the spirit of Christ is a spirit of meekness, which teaches us to bear and forbear, to forgive until seventy times seven, to expect to have our rights trampled on, and to be willing to lay them all down for any who please to tread upon them. It is blessed to feel, "I will be content to take any place, so long as I can love others, and do them good by loving them, so long as I can but love them to Christ, and help them to love Christ, and manifest the love of Christ to them." O brothers and sisters, we all need to go to school to our dear Lord and Master! You have never read that he said anything about his rights, or about defending his dignity. No, he who is the King of kings, and Lord of lords, was the servant of servants when he was here upon earth; and, truly, he that serves most is the most royal of all. Therefore, "let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus," and then you will not be anxious or ambitious to be great.
III. A third meaning of the text is this, "BE YE NOT OF IRRESOLUTE MIND, WITHOUT DECISION OF CHARACTER."
If you look at the connection of the passage, you will see that this meaning fits in exceedingly well. There are persons, in the world, who may be described as time-servers. The main consideration with them is, what they shall eat, or what they shall drink, or how they shall be clothed; so they are always watching to see which is the best way to go in reference to those matters. As the old proverb has it, they know on which side their bread is buttered; or, according to another familiar saying, they are waiting to see which way the cat jumps; and when they have ascertained that, their "principles" will lead them to jump in that particular direction. Mr. John Bunyan, in "The Pilgrim's Progress," has well described just such persons,—Mr. By-ends and Mr. Fair-speech; and some of us have known their descendants. You remember hearing of the waterman, who got his living by looking one way, and pulling another; and that waterman has had a great many sons, of very much the same character as himself, and they have made a certain kind of progress in the world by that sort of scheming. But you and I, beloved, are not to be of irresolute mind. Every Christian should say, "By the grace of God, my mind is made up to serve him, cost what it may. Does my Lord desire me to keep the Sabbath day holy? Sunday is the best day in my particular line of business, but that does not matter to me. My mind is made up to serve the Lord; and whatever it costs, will make no difference to me. There is a party to be held to-night; and I know that, if I go to it, I shall have to witness the utmost frivolity, and I shall have to be a partaker in what will be, to me, a good deal of sin. Uncle Jonas will be angry if I don't go; but I mean to do the right thing, whether Uncle Jonas is pleased, or no." That is the way all you, who have the love of God shed abroad in your hearts, ought to speak. The question, " What is right?" being answered, you have only to do the right, whatever happens. This is what our Lord meant when he said to his disciples, "Neither be ye of doubtful mind."
"Oh, but!" say some, "we really must look at both sides of that question. There may come a time when we know that a certain course is right; but, if we take it, we may bring ruin upon ourselves and upon others, too." Let me read the 4th and 5th verses of this chapter, and when I have done so, there will to no need for you to say anything: "Be not afraid of them that kill the body, and after that have no more that they can do. But I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear: Fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell; yea, I say unto you, Fear him; and the 8th and 9th verses: "Whosoever shall confess me before men, him shall the Son of man also confess before the angels of God: but he that denieth me before men shall be denied before the angels of God." Does not that decide you to God grant that it may, and that you may henceforth say, "I will confess Christ, and act for the right and the true; and, by the aid of his blessed Spirit I will never hesitate to do as he bids me.


"'Through floods and flames, if Jesus lead,
I'll follow where He goes;'—

"neither will I be of doubtful mind."
IV. A fourth meaning of the text is, BE YE NOT AT SEA SO FAR AS YOUR OWN PERSONAL SALVATION IS CONCERNED.
Brothers and sisters, there are some, who are not saved, who yet imagine that they are. There are many, who know nothing of vital godliness, yet who sing as joyfully as the brightest of saints, never suspecting their real condition in the sight of God. Whenever I meet with a man who never has had a doubt about his own condition, I feel inclined to quote to him those lines of Cowper,—


"He has no hope who never had a fear
And he that never doubted of his state,
He may perhaps-perhaps he may—too late."

Beware of all presumption. There are some, who even decry any thing like self-examination. They cannot bear for us to look for the signs and tokens of the Holy Spirit's work within them; and if we talk about practical—holiness, they say that we are getting upon legal ground, and turning aside to the "beggarly elements" of the law. From all such turn away, for they can do you no good. You are exhorted, in the Scriptures to examine yourselves, to see whether you are in the faith, and to prove your own selves; nay, self-examination alone is not sufficient, and you must cry, with the psalmist, "Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in this way everlasting."
But, on the other hand, there are some, who think that doubts and fears are necessary to a child of God. I draw a very grave distinction between doubting the truth of God's promise, and questioning whether that promise is made to me; they are two very different things. To doubt the power of the blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse from all sin, is one thing; but, sometimes, to question whether I really have trusted in that blood, is quite another thing. The first is sinful; the second is only proper and discreet. I would advise everyone often to look-to the foundation of his faith, to see whether he really has believed in Jesus, and has, in his heart, the true life which grows out of such faith. But, brethren, there is really no reason in a man saying, "Whether I am a child of God, or not, I am sure I do not know; I sometimes hope I am;" and so on. I suppose there are few men who have not, at some time or other suffered pain; but it is not necessary for us always to have the toothache in order to prove that we really are men. And, in like manner, there are few Christians who have never had any doubts, yet it is not necessary to be always doubting in order to prove that we are Christians; but, as we are glad enough to get rid of pain, so are we to be glad to get rid of doubt by fully trusting our Lord who is so worthy of our trust. Dear brethren, you ought to know, you can know, you can know now, whether you are saved, or not. At any rate, if I did not know myself to be saved, I would give no sleep to my eyes, nor slumber to my eyelids, till I had found the Savior. If a shadow of a doubt about my being washed in the blood of Christ were on my soul, I would get to my knees, and not rise from them until I did really know that Christ had saved me. If you are in doubt, and yet are content about your condition, I fear that you know nothing at all about the matter; for the true child of God, if he is in any doubt about his salvation, is uneasy till that doubt is gone. He cannot rest till he knows that he is saved; and, after all, that is not a very difficult thing to know, for we are told, over and over again, in this blessed Book, that he that believeth in Christ is not condemned, but hath everlasting life. If you have believed in him, you are not condemned, you have his own word for it. He who trusts to Jesus only, builds on a sure foundation; so, if you are trusting in him, you may have the full assurance that you have passed from death unto life, and shall never come into condemnation. Do not, brother, go limping along all your life when you might run in the way of God's commandments. A good old minister, of my acquaintance, when people used to say to him that they hoped, and hoped, and never got any further than that, was in the habit of replying, "You are always hoping, and hopping; I hope you will learn to run one of these days,—to run without weariness in the ways of God."
The last thing I have to do is to bid all here present, who have not believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, to do so at once. My dear friends, my text says, "Neither be ye of doubtful mind. But you cannot help being of doubtful mind while you remain as you are, and I really wish that your conscience would trouble you even more than it now does,—that your uneasiness might become even greater, and your unrest yet more unrestful. Look at yourself, my dear hearer. You have not believed in Christ, so you are in debt to divine justice, and you are hopelessly bankrupt, for you cannot meet one in a million of the claims that are recorded against you; how can you rest as long as you are thus indebted to God? You are a prisoner, too. When Marshal Bazaine had many of the comforts of life on the Isle of St. Marguerite, off the coast of the South of France, he could not rest till he had regained his liberty; and I marvel how you can be so happy, even with the joys of this world, while you are without the great blessing of spiritual liberty. I wish you felt that you could not rest till you had become emancipated from the bondage of sin, and been made the Lord's freeman. How would you like be in a condemned cell, and not to know when your execution was to take place! I am sure that you would pity any poor creature, whatever his crime, if you could see him under such circumstances. Perhaps you say that you are living in a wide world, and not in a prison; yet you are condemned already. It was said of the old Roman Empire that, if a man once broke the law, the whole world was a prison for him, for Caesar had almost universal sway; and God sees you wherever you are, and everywhere you are in the condemned cell; and, perhaps, before the sun shall rise again, your execution will have taken place.
I have been told that, some years ago, there went into the chamber of horrors at Madame Tussaud's exhibition a young gentleman, who was foolish enough to put himself under the guillotine—in the place which had been occupied by criminals; and as he lay there, with his bare neck exposed to the terrible knife, he was so struck with horror that he was unable to move; and people who went by thought he was one of the waxwork figures and he could not stir until someone took him away. And, oh! if you did but know where you readily are, with that dreadful axe of divine justice just above your head, you might well be paralyzed with horror! Only let your breath fail, or your pulse stop, and down it descends to your utter destruction. But alas! you are insensible to these things. May the Spirit of God arouse you! May he make you feel your true position, and then I am sure you will not be content to remain a moment longer of a doubtful and undecided mind. Hearken, my friend. That sin of thine can be forgiven, for Jesus died for sinners. That heart of thine can be renewed by grace, for Jesus lives again. You can be delivered from the wrath to come, for Jesus has gone up on high to plead for just such sinners as you are. What are you to do in order that you may have Christ as your Savior? Why, as the hymn says,—


"Only trust him, only trust him,
Only trust him now."





EXPOSITION BY C. H. Spurgeon

Psalm 57:1-6.

Verse 1. Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me: for my soul trusteth in thee: yea, in the shadow of thy wings will I make my refuge, until these calamities be overpast.
The heading of this Psalm—"To the chief musician, AI-taschith Michtam of David, when he fled from Saul in the cave,"—tells us when it was written. It is one of David's " golden Psalms." What a mixture of feebleness and strength there is in this first verse,—the feebleness so beautified by being clothed with the strength of faith! What a turning away from man, and what a turning wholly unto the Lord! And, in coming to the Lord, what humility, and what pleading for mercy, and for mercy only! "Be merciful unto me, O God, be merciful unto me." Yet what holy boldness also! " For my soul trusteth in thee." And what joyous confidence and what sweet repose in God! "Yea, in the shadow of thy wings, will I make my refuge." "If I cannot see the brightness of thy face, the shadow of thy wings shall be enough for me. Only let me get near thee,—only permit me humbly to trust thee, and it shall be enough for me, 'unto these calamities be overpass.'"
2. I will cry unto God most high; unto God that performeth all things for me.
Do you pray like that, my brother, my sister? I hope you do "cry unto God most high;" but do you pray to him as the One "that performeth all things" for you;—not merely who can perform all things for you, but who is actually doing it at the present moment,—working out your lasting good by everything that is transpiring around you?
3. He shall send from heaven, and save me from the reproach of him that would swallow me up. Selah.
If all the forces on earth are not sufficient to save his saint, God will send sufficient reserves from the ranks of the heavenly host to preserve his people; or if he does not determine to preserve them on earth, he will take them away from the earth, to be with him in glory; but, in one way, or another, they shall be eternally secure.
Mark what the psalmist says of the voracity of his enemy: he speaks of Saul as "him that would swallow me up;" and the believer in Jesus is, at times, such an object of the unbeliever's detestation that he would annihilate him if he could; but God will sooner send help from heaven for his people than that ouch a calamity should ever happen.
3, 4. God shall send forth his mercy and his truth. My soul is among lions:
What peril David was in, and what dangers often surround the best of the men,—if not from arrows, and swords, and spears, from the hellish artillery of unbridled tongues! A human tongue is soft, but it can cut to the very quick; and the wounds from a cruel tongue are not easily healed. Many a man will bear, as long as he lives, the scars that were made by a slanderous tongue. God can save us, however, even from this great trial, and enable us actually to rejoice in this sharp affliction. It is no strange thing that has happened unto us, for so evil men persecuted the prophets that were before us, as they said all manner of evil against them falsely. God himself was slandered by the old serpent in the garden of Eden, so it is not surprising that his children should be still slandered by the serpent's seed.
6. And I lie even among them that are set on fire, even the sons of men, whose teeth are spears and arrows, and their tongue a sharp sword. Be thou exalted, O God, above the heavens; let thy glory be above all the earth.
A grand burst of praise, and all the grander because of the condition of the man from whom it came. "My soul is among lions," says he; "but, 'be thou exalted, O God;'" as if he would say, "It does not matter what becomes of me, I shall be content even in this den of lions, so long as thou art exalted above the heavens, and thy glory above all the earth."
6. They have prepared a net for my steps; my soul is bowed down: they have digged a pit before me, into the midst whereof they are fallen themselves. Selah.
He knew that it would be so, and he looked upon it as already accomplished; their nets and pits would only injure themselves.
Now look at the next verse in the light of the prayer David had been praying. See what a marvellous act of faith, and what a grand result of unwavering confidence in God it is, for a man to be able to sing as David does even when his soul is among lions, and fierce and powerful enemies are all round him, seeking his hurt.