Hebrews 8:10
The Wondrous Covenant
NO. 3326
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, OCTOBER 31ST, 1912,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
“For this is the covenant that I
will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I
will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts; and I
will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people.” — Hebrews
8:10.
THE doctrine of the divine covenant
lies at the root of all true theology. It has been said that he who well
understands the distinction between the covenant of works and the covenant
of grace is a master of divinity. I am persuaded that most of the mistakes
which men make concerning the doctrines of Scripture are based upon
fundamental errors with regard to the covenants of law and of grace. May
God grant us now the power to instruct, and you the grace to receive
instruction on this vital subject.
The human race in the order of history, so far as this world is concerned,
first stood in subjection to God under the covenant of works. Adam was the
representative man. A certain law was given him. If he kept it, he and all
his posterity would be blessed as the result of obedience. If he broke it,
he would incur the curse himself, and entail it on all represented by him.
That covenant our first father broke. He fell; he failed to fulfil his
obligations; in his fall he involved us all, for we were all in his loins,
and he represented us before God. Our ruin, then, was complete before we
were born; we were ruined by him who stood as our first representative. To
be saved by the works of the law is impossible, far under that covenant we
are already lost. If saved at all it must be all quite a different plan,
not on the plan of doing and being rewarded for it, for that has been
tried, and the representative man upon whom it was tried has failed for us
all. We have all failed in his failure; it is hopeless, therefore, to
expect to win divine favour by anything that we can do, or merit divine
blessing by way of reward.
But divine mercy has interposed, and
provided a plan of salvation from the fall. That plan is another covenant,
a covenant made with Christ Jesus the Son of God, who is fitly called by
the apostle, “the Second Adam,” because he stood again as the
representative of man. Now, the second covenant, so far as Christ was
concerned, was a covenant of works quite as much as the other. It was an
this wise. Christ shall come into the world and perfectly obey the divine
law. He shall also, inasmuch as the first Adam has broken the law, suffer
the penalty of sin. If he shall do both of these, then all whom he
represents shall be blessed in his blessedness, and saved because of his
merit. You see, then, that until our Lord came into this world it was a
covenant of works towards him. He had certain works to perform, upon
condition of which certain blessings should be given to us. Our Lord has
kept that covenant. His part in it has been fulfilled to the last letter.
There is no commandment which he has not honoured; there is no penalty of
the broken law which he has not endured. He became a servant and obedient,
yea, obedient to death, even the death of the cross. He has thus done what
the first Adam could not accomplish, and he has retrieved what the first
Adam forfeited by his transgression. He has established the covenant, and
now it ceases to be a covenant of works, for the works are all done.
“Jesus did them, did them all, Long, long ago.”
And now what remaineth of the covenant? God on his part has solemnly
pledged himself to give undeserved favour to as many as were represented
in Christ Jesus. For as many as the Saviour died for, there is stored up a
boundless mass of blessing which shall be given to them, not through their
works, but as the sovereign gift of the grace of God, according to his
covenant promise by which they shall be saved.
Behold, my brethren, the hope of the sons of man. The hope of their saving
themselves is crushed, for they are already lost. The hope of their being
saved by work is a fallacious one, for they cannot keep the law; they have
already broken it, but there is a way of salvation opened on this wise.
Whosoever believes in the Lord Jesus Christ, receives and partakes of the
bliss which Christ has bought. All the blessings which belong to the
covenant of grace through the work of Christ shall belong to every soul
that believeth in Jesus. Whosoever worketh not, but believeth on him that
justifieth the ungodly, unto him shall the blessing of the new covenant of
grace be undoubtedly given.
I hope that this explanation is plain enough. If Adam had kept the law we
should have been blessed by his keeping it. He broke it, and we have been
cursed through him. Now the second Adam, Christ Jesus, has kept the law,
we are, therefore, if believers, represented in Christ and blessed with
the results of the obedience of Jesus Christ to his Father’s will. He said
of old, “Lo, I come, to do thy will, O God! thy law is my delight.” He
has done that will, and the blessings of grace are now freely given to the
sons of men.
I shall ask your attention then, first, to the privileges of the covenant
of grace; and, secondly, to the parties concerned in it. This will be
quite enough, I am sure, for consideration this evening during the brief
period allotted to our sermon.
—————
I. As to The Privileges Of The Covenant Of Grace.
The first privilege is, that to as many as are interested in it there
shall be given an illumination of their minds. “I will put my law in
their minds.” By nature we are dark towards God’s will. Conscience keeps
up in us a sort of broken recollection of what God’s will was. It is a
monument of God’s will, but it is often hardly legible. A man does not
care to read it, he is averse to what he reads there. “Their foolish
heart was dark,” is the expression of Scripture with regard to the mind
of man. But the Holy Spirit is promised to those interested in the
covenant. He shall come upon their minds and shed light instead of
darkness, illuminating them as to what the will of God is. The ungodly man
has some degree of light, but it is merely intellectual. It is a light
that he does not love. He loves darkness rather than light, because his
deeds are evil. But where the Holy Spirit comes, he floods the soul with a
divine lustre, in which the soul delights and desires to participate to
the fullest degree. Brethren, the renewed man, the man under the covenant
of grace, does not need constantly to resort to his Bible to learn what he
ought to do, nor to go to some fellow-Christian to ask instruction. He has
not got the law of God now written on a table of stone, or upon parchment,
or upon paper; he has got the law written upon his own mind. There is now
a divine, infallible Spirit dwelling within him which tell him the right
and the wrong, and by this he speedily discerns between the good and the
evil. He no longer puts darkness for light, and light for darkness, bitter
for sweet, and sweet for bitter. His mind is enlightened as to the true
holiness and the true purity which God requires.
Just mark the men to whom this light comes. By nature some of them are
deeply depraved. All of them are depraved, but by practice some of them
become yet further dark. Is it not marvellous that a poor heathen who
scarcely seemed to recognize the distinction between right and wrong,
before the Spirit of God entered his mind, has afterwards, without needing
to be taught all the precepts individually, received at once the quick
light of a tender conscience, which has led him to know the right and love
it, and to see the evil and eschew it. If you want to civilize the world
it must be by preaching the gospel. If you want to have men well
instructed as to the right and the wrong, it must be by this divine
instruction which only God himself can impart. “I will do it,” and oh!
how blessedly he doeth it, when he takes the man that loved evil and
called it good, and so sheds a divine beam into his soul, that henceforth
he cannot be perverse, cannot be obstinate, but submits himself to the
divine will. That is one of the first blessings of the covenant — the
illumination of the understanding.
The next blessing is, “And I will write my law in their hearts.“ This is
more than knowing the law — infinitely more. “I will write the law, not
merely on their understandings, where it may guide them, but in their
hearts where it shall lead them.” Brethren, the Holy Spirit makes men
love the will of God, makes them delight in all in which God delights, and
abhor that which Lord abhorreth. It is well said in the text that God will
do this, for certainly it is not what a man can do for himself. The
Ethiopian might sooner change his skin or the leopard his spots. It is not
what the minister can do, for though he may preach to the ear, he cannot
write God’s law on the affections. I have marvelled at the expression used
in the text, “I will write my law in their hearts.” To write on a heart
must be difficult work, but to write in a heart, in the very centre of the
heart, who can do this but God? A man cuts his name upon a tree in the
bark, and there it stands, and the letters grow with the tree; but to cut
his name in the heart of the tree — how shall he accomplish this? And yet
God doth divinely engrave his will and his law in the very heart and
nature of man!
I know what the notion is about Christian people, that they do not conform
to this and that custom because they are afraid; they would like to revel
in the vanities of the world, but they do not care to encounter the
penalties. Ah! ye sons of men, ye comprehend not the mysterious work of
the Spirit! He doeth nothing of this sort. He maketh not the child of God
to be a serf, a slave, in fear of bondage, but he so changes the nature of
men that they do not love what they once loved; they turn away with
loathing from the things they once delighted in, and can no more indulge
in the sins which were once sweet to them than an angel could plunge
himself down and wallow in the mire with the engine. Oh! this is a
gracious work, and this is a blessed covenant in which it is promised that
we shall be taught the right, to know and love the right, and to do the
right with a willing mind.
Am I addressing some to-night who have been saying, “I wish I could be
saved.” What do you mean by that? Do you mean you wish you might escape
from hell? Ah! well, I would to God you had another wish namely, “Oh,
that I could escape from sin! Oh, that I could be made pure, that my
passions could be bridled! Oh, that my longings and my likings could be
changed! “If that is your wish see what a gospel I have to preach to you.
I have not to come and tell you — do this, and do not do that. Moses tells
you that, and the preacher of the law speaks to you after that fashion,
but I, the preacher of the gospel, unveiling the covenant of grace
to-night, tell you that Jesus Christ has done such a work for sinners that
God now for Christ’s sake comes to them, makes them see the right, and by
a divine work upon them in them makes them love holiness and follow after
righteousness. I protest, I count this one of the greatest blessings of
which ever tongue could speak. I would sooner be holy than happy if the
two things could be divorced. Were it possible for a man always to sorrow
and yet to be pure, I would choose the sorrow if I might win the purity;
for, beloved, to be free from the power of sin, to be made to love
holiness though I have spoken after the manner of men to you, is true
happiness. A man that is holy is in order with the creation; he is in
harmony with God. It is impossible for that man long to suffer. He may for
awhile endure for his lasting good, but as sure as God is happy the holy
must be happy. This world is not so constituted that in the long run
holiness shall go with sorrow, for in eternity God shall show that to be
pure is to be blessed, to be obedient to the divine will is to be
eternally glorified. In preaching to you, then, these two blessings of the
covenant I have virtually preached to you the open kingdom of heaven, open
to all such whom God’s grace shall look upon with an eye of mercy.
The next blessing of the covenant is — ”I will be to them a God.“ If any
ask me what this means, I must reply, Give me a month to consider over it.
And when I had considered the text for a month, I should ask another
month; and when I had waited a year, I should ask another year; and when I
had waited till I grew grey, I would still ask the postponement of any
attempt to fully open it up until eternity. “I will be to them a God.”
Now, mark you, where the Spirit of God has come to teach you the divine
will, and make you love the divine will, God becomes to you — what! a
father? Ay, a loving, tender Father. A shepherd? Ay, a watchful Guardian
of his flock. A friend? Ay, a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother.
A rock? A refuge? A fortress? A high tower? A castle of defence? A home? A
heaven? Ay, all that, but when he said “I will be their God,” he said
more than all these put together, for “I will be to them a God,”
comprehendeth all gracious titles, all blessed promises, and all divine
privileges. It comprehendeth — ay, now I halt, for this is infinite, and
the infinite comprehendeth all blessings. “I will be to them a God.” Do
you want provision? The cattle on a thousand hills are his; it is nothing
to him to give; it will not impoverish him; he will give to you like a
God. Do you want comfort? He is the God of all consolation; he will
comfort you like a Lord. Do you want guidance? There is infinite wisdom
waiting at your beck. Do you want support? There is eternal power, the
same which guards the everlasting hills waiting to be your stay. Do you
want grace? He delighteth in mercy, and all that mercy is yours. Every
attribute of God belongs to his people in covenant with him. All that God
is or can be — and what is there not in that? — all that you can conceive
and more; all the angels have and more; all that heaven is and more; all
that is in Christ, even the boundless fulness of Godhead — all this
belongs to you, if you are in covenant with God through Jesus Christ. How
rich, how blessed, how august, how noble are those in covenant with God,
confederate with heaven! Infinity belongs to you. Lift up your head, O
child of God, and rejoice in a promise that I cannot expound, and you
cannot explore. There I must leave it; it is a deep which we strive in
vain to fathom.
Notice the next blessing, “And they shall be to me a people.“ All flesh
belongs to God in a certain sense. All men are his by rights of creation,
and he hath an infinite sovereignty over them. But he looks down upon the
sons of men, and he selects some, and he says, “These shall be my people,
not the rest; these shall be my peculiar people.” When the King of
Navarre was fighting for his throne, the writer who hymns the battle, says
—
“He looked upon the foemen, and his glance was stern and high;
He looked upon his people, and the
tear was in his eye.”
And when he saw some of the French in
arms against him —
“Then out spoke gentle Henry,
No Frenchman is my foe
Down, down, with every foreigner,
but let your brethren go.”
The king looked for his people even if they were in rebellion against him,
and he had a different thought towards them from what he had towards
others. “Let them go,” he seemed to say, “they are my people.” So,
mark you, in the great battles and strifes of this world, when Lord lets
loose the dread artillery of heaven his glance is stern upon his enemies,
but the tear is in his eye towards his people. He is always tender towards
them. “Spare my people,” saith he, and the angels interpose lest these
chosen ones should dash their feet against a stone.
People have their treasures, their pearls, their jewels, their rubies,
their diamonds, and these are their peculiar stones. Now, all in the
covenant of grace are the peculiar stones of God. He values them above all
things else besides. In fact, he keeps the world spinning for them. The
world is but a scaffold for the Church. He will send creation packing when
once it has done with his saints; yea, sun, and moon, and stars shall pass
away like worn-out rags when once he has gathered together his own elect,
and enfolded them for ever within the safety of the walls of heaven. For
them time moves; for them the world exists. He measures the nation
according to their number, and he makes the very stars of heaven to fight
against their enemies, and to defend them against their foes. “They shall
be to me a people.” The favour which is contained in such love it is not
for tongue to express. Perhaps on some of those quiet resting-places
prepared for the saints in heaven, it shall be a part of our eternal
enjoyment to contemplate the heights and depths of these golden lines.
—————
II. And now, brethren, I wish I had time to go over the other parts
contained in the eleventh and twelfth verses of the chapter, but I have
not, for I have a practical business to do, and it is to enquire —
For Whom Hath God Made This Covenant? I said he made it with Christ, but
he made it with Christ as the representative of his people. The question
to-night for you, and for me, and for each one is, “Am I interested in
Christ? Did Christ Jesus stand for me?” Now, if I were to say that Christ
was the representative of the whole world you would not find any
substantial advantage in that, because the great proportion of mankind
being lost, whatever interest they may have in Christ, it is certainly of
no beneficial value to them as to their eternal salvation. The question I
ask is — have I such a special interest in Christ that this covenant holds
good towards me; so that I shall have, or so that I now have, the
enlightened mind, and the sanctified affections, and the possession of God
to be my God? Be not deceived, my brethren; I cannot, and you cannot, turn
over the leaves of the book of destiny. It is impossible for us to force
our way into the cabinet chamber of the Eternal, I hope you are not
deluded by superstitious ideas that you have had a revelation made to you,
or that there has been some special sound or dream which makes any one of
you think you are a Christian.
Yet on sounder premises I will try to help you a little. Have you obtained
already any of these covenant blessings? Have you got the enlightened
mind? Do you find now that your spirit tells you which is the right and
which is the wrong? Better still, have you got a love for that which is
good? Have you got a hatred for that which is evil? If so, as you have got
one covenant blessing all the rest go with it. Now, men and women, have
you passed through a great change. Have you come to hate that which you
once loved? If you have, the covenant lies before you like Canaan before
the ravished eyes of Moses on top of the mountain. Look now, for it is
yours. It flows with milk and honey, and it belongs to you, and you shall
inherit it. But if there has been no such change wrought in you, I cannot
hold you out any congratulation, but I thank God I can do what may serve
your turn. I can hold you out divine direction, and the direction for the
obtaining an interest in this covenant, and for clearing up your interest
in it, is simple. It is contained in few words. Mark well those three
words — “Believe and live,” for whosoever believeth in Christ Jesus hath
everlasting life, which is the blessing of the covenant. The argument is
obvious. Having the blessing of the covenant you must needs be in the
covenant, and being in the covenant Christ evidently must have
representatively stood sponsor for you. But saith one, “What is it to
believe in Christ?” Another word is a synonym to it. It is — trust
Christ. “How do I know whether he died for me in particular?” Trust him
whether thou knowest that or not. Jesus Christ is lifted up upon the cross
of Calvary as the atonement for sin; and the proclamation is given out,
“Look, look; look and live,” and whosoever will cast away his
self-righteousness, cast away everything upon which he now dependeth, and
will come and trust in the finished work or our exalted Saviour, has in
that very faith the token that he is one of those who were in Christ when
he went up to the cross and wrought out eternal redemption for his elect.
I do not believe that Christ died on the tree to render men salvable, but
to save them; not that some men might be saved “if,” but really to
redeem them, and he did there and them give himself a ransom; he there
paid their debts, there cast their sins into the Red Sea, and there made a
clean sweep of everything that could be laid to the charge of God’s elect.
Thou art one of his elect if thou believest. Christ died for thee if thou
believest in him, and thy sins are forgiven, thee. “Well but,” saith
one, “how about that change of nature?” It always comes with faith. It
is the next akin to faith. Wherever there is genuine faith in Christ,
faith works love. A sense of mercy breeds affection; affection to Christ
breeds hatred to sin; hatred to sin purges the soul; the soul being purged
the life is changed.
You must not begin with mending yourselves externally; you must begin with
the new internal life, and it is thus to be had — the gift of God through
simply believing in Jesus. A negro who had been for some time attending at
a place of worship had imbibed the idea, and a very natural one too, that
he was saved because he had been baptized. He had been to one of those
places where they teach little children to say after this fashion, “In my
baptism, wherein I was made a member of Christ, a child of God, and an
inheritor of the kingdom of heaven.” “Now,” said he, very simply and
very plainly, for so the catechism teaches, and a gross delusion it is,
“I am saved because I have been baptized; that has made me a child of
God.” Now the good man who sought to instruct him better, would find no
metaphor to suite his intellect better than taking him into the kitchen
and showing him a black ink-bottle. “Now,” said he, “I will wash it,”
and he washed the outside of the black ink-bottle, and invited the man to
drink out of it because it was clean. “No,” said the man, “it is all
black; it is all black; it is not clean because you have washed the
outside.” “Ah!” said he, “and so it is with you; all that these drops
of water could do for you, all that baptism could do for you, is to wash
the outside, but that does not make you clean, for the filth is all
within.” Now, the work of the covenant of grace is not to wash the
outside, not to clean the flesh, not to pass you through rites and
ceremonies, and episcopal hands, but to wash the inside; to purge the
heart, to cleanse the vitals, to renew the soul, and this is the only
salvation that will ever bring a man to enter heaven. You may go tonight
and renounce all your outward vices — I hope you will; you may go and
practice all church ceremonies, and if they are scriptural I wish you may;
but they will do nothing for you, nothing whatever as to your entering
heaven, if you miss one thing else, that is, getting the covenant blessing
of the renewed nature which can only be got as a gift of God through;
Jesus Christ, and as the result of a simple faith in him who did die upon
the tree.
I press the work of self-examination upon you all, I press it earnestly
upon you church members. It is of no avail that you have been baptized; it
is of no avail that you take the sacrament. Avail? Indeed it shall bring a
greater responsibility and a curse upon you unless your hearts have been
by the Holy Spirit made anew according to the covenant of promise. If you
have not a new heart, oh! go to your chambers, fall upon your knees, and
cry to God for it. May the Holy Spirit constrain you so to do, and while
you are pleading remember the new heart comes from the bleeding heart, the
changed nature comes from the suffering nature. You must look to Jesus,
and looking to Jesus, know that —
“There is life in a look at the crucified one,
There is life at this moment for
thee.”
These blessings I have spoken of seem to me to be a great consolation and
inspiration. They are a great consolation to believers. You are in the
covenant, my dear brother, but you tell me you are very poor. But God has
said, “I will be your God.” Why, you are very rich. A man may not have a
penny in the world, but if he has a diamond he is rich. So if a man has
neither penny nor diamond, if he has his God he is rich. Ah, but your coat
is threadbare, and you do not see where means are to come from to renew
your apparel. “Consider the lilies how they grow; they toil not neither
do they spin, and yet I say unto you that Solomon in all his glory was not
arrayed like one of these.” You have the same God that the lilies have,
and shall he so clothe the grass of the field which to-day is and tomorrow
is cast into the oven, and shall he not much more clothe you, O ye of
little faith? I said also it would be an inspiration, and I think it is.
It is an inspiration for us all to work for Christ, because we are sure to
have some results. I would, indeed I would, that the nations were
converted to Christ. I would that all this London belonged to my Lord and
Master, and that every street were inhabited by those who loved his name;
but when I see sin abounding and the gospel often put to the rout, I fall
back upon this: “Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure; the
Lord knoweth them that are his.” He shall have his own. The infernal
powers shall not rot Christ, he shall see of the travail of his soul and
shall be satisfied. Calvary does not mean defeat. Gethsemane a defeat?
Impossible! The Mighty Man who went up to the cross to bleed and die for
us, being also the Son of God, did not there achieve a defeat but a
victory. He shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days, and the
pleasure in the Lord shall prosper in his hands. If some will not be saved
others shall. If, being bidden, some count themselves not worthy to come
to the feast others should be brought in, even the blind, and the halt and
the lame, and the supper shall be furnished with guests. If they come not
from England they shall come from the east, and from the west, from the
north and from the south. If it should come to pass that Israel be not
gathered, lo! the heathen shall be gathered unto Christ. Ethiopia shall
stretch out her arms, Sinim shall yield herself to the Redeemer; the
desert-ranger shall bow the knee, and the far-off stranger enquire for
Christ. Oh, no, beloved, the purposes of God are not frustrate; the
eternal will of God is not defeated. Christ has died a glorious death, and
he shall have a full reward for all his pain. “Therefore, be ye
steadfast, immovable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch
as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord.”
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Hebrews
9:22 With or Without Blood Shedding
NO. 2951
A SERMON PUBLISHED ON THURSDAY, AUGUST 31ST, 1905,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,
ON LORD’S-DAY EVENING, MAY 30TH, 1875.
“Without shedding of blood is no remission.” — Hebrews 9:22.
Week after week, standing before this congregation to preach the things
concerning the kingdom of Christ, I sometimes say to myself, “I wonder
how much longer I shall have to point out to some of these people the way
of salvation before they will walk in it; — I wonder how many times I
shall have to preach to them the doctrine of justification by faith in the
crucified Christ of Calvary, and how often I shall have to urge them to
immediate decision for Christ, the renunciation of their self-confidence,
and the forsaking of their sins.” It seems to me that, after I have done
this, the right thing for me to do is to keep on asking you, “Have you
given due attention to thee truths? Do you know them in your soul?” For,
“if ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them;” but the very
opposite of happy are ye if ye leave them undone.
I am going to try to enlist the attention of any earnest, thoughtful
persons who are here, any of those who are still unconverted, but who have
begun to consider their ways, and to turn unto the Lord. To you, dear
friends, I mean to preach nothing but the simple gospel of Jesus Christ,
and not to preach it as though I were addressing the settlers in Australia
or the pundits of Hindustan, but to preach it distinctly to you, and to
urge you to accept it here and now. If you have not accepted it by the
time the sermon is done, it shall be through no fault of mine; but the
blame must lie at your own door, that you have been directed to the way of
salvation, but have not walked in it; or that, having heard the gospel,
and taken some interest in it, you have wilfully rejected it.
The subject of my discourse is to be the remission, the putting away and
getting rid of sin, and that concerns every one of us, from the youngest
child to the oldest man or woman, for we are all sinners. It is very
common for people to say, “Oh, yes! we are all sinners.” But I do not
use that expression as they do; I mean that you have done wrong, and that
I have done wrong, and that we have all of us done wrong. We have done the
things which we ought not to have done, and we have left undone the things
which we ought to have done, and there is no health in us.” We have
chosen the wrong instead of the right, we have chosen to please ourselves
rather than to please God; we have even lived as if there were no God; if
there had really been no, God, our conduct, might not have been materially
affected. We have all sinned in some way or other, —
“Each wandering in a different way,
But all the downward road.”
And, dear friends, we all of us need to be cleansed from this sin. There
is not one among us who can afford to live in sin, or who can afford to
die in sin. We may find a temporary pleasure in it, but it must end in
eternal loss to us unless there comes a time when God’s grace saves us
from it; we cannot be truly happy while we are out of gear with God. And
since we are immortal beings, and our soul will not die, but will live on
for ever, there will come a time in which the sin, which is unforgiven,
will be a sore plague to us, so it is vitally important that we should
enquire whether, being sinners, we have been forgiven or not.
I hope I shall be able to reach the conscience of each person here while I
try to, talk to, you about two contrasts. First we have, in our text, sin
unremitted, and sin remitted, and then, secondly, we have without
blood-shedding, and with blood-shedding.
—————
I. So, first, we will consider these two things which are so opposite
to each other, Sin Unremitted, And Sin Remitted.
The apostle says, “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” I do not
like the sound of those words, “no remission.” They seem to me like a
funeral knell, — “no remission.” That might have been the sound in the
ear of every sinner from the time of Adam until now, — “no remission.”
It, would have made this world a dreadful prison-house if everywhere, when
we, sat down to bethink ourselves of sin, there stared us in the face the
words “no remission.” This is, indeed, one of the inscriptions across
the vault of hell, — “no remission,” “no remission.” I say that I
cannot bear the sound of those words, yet must they be sounded aloud, for
there are still some persons to whom they apply; I trust that the sounding
of those words in their ears may be the means of their awakening.
What does it mean when we say that a man has sinned, and that there is no
remission for him? It means, first, that he is the object of the daily
anger of God. God has a benevolent regard for him as one of his creatures,
and is not willing that he should perish. God would infinitely prefer that
the sinner should turn unto him, and live; but, viewing him as an
impenitent sinner, we read that “God is angry with the wicked every
day.” I have learned not to take much notice of other people’s opinions,
yet I do not like to make anybody angry if I can help it. If I have ever
done so, — and sometimes it has happened unintentionally, — I have had no
pleasure in reflecting that someone was angry with me; and if it was
somebody who would not be angry without a cause, it has been a very
painful thing to live under a consciousness of his displeasure. I want
you, whose sins are unforgiven, to, reflect that God is angry with you
every day. When he looks upon you, he cannot regard you as a father
regards a dear child who has done everything he can to please him, but he
must look upon you as a rebel, as one who has revolted against him, and
defied him to his face. When he looks upon your sin, his anger must flame
forth. A man, who is not angry with sin, must be himself a guilty man;
and, in proportion to the holiness of God must be his abhorrence of evil.
Reflect, then, upon what a sad condition you are in. If God should never
smite you in his righteous wrath, — if he should continue to give you the
mercies of this life every day just as he has done, I think, dear friend,
that it ought to trouble you all the more that you are still provoking him
by your continued sin. If you really are of the noble spirit that I hope
you are, you will not be so ungenerous as merely to regret your faults
because of the suffering it will bring to yourself, but you will lament it
because it offends so loving, so good, so tender, so gracious a being as
the God of the whole earth. Were he vindictive, — had he no bowels of
compassion, — if he had made no proclamation of mercy and no terms of
grace, — I could understand how you could brazen your forehead, and defy
his; but how can you live in enmity against the God who has been so
gracious to you? Let the thought of the mercy of God make your unremitted
sin such a burden upon your conscience that you will not rest until you
have repented of it, and been forgiven.
Remember, deal friends, that, in addition to being the object of the daily
anger of God, you are in constant peril of suffering that anger to the
full. A single step may cause you to fall, and that fall may lead is the
grave. Who among us can tell all the perils of this mortal life? I
remember reading a work in which there were collected together numerous
instances of the simple means by which men have died, such as the
swallowing of a fruit stone, or the sticking of a small bone in the
throat, the breathing of some invisible noxious gas, or the failure of
some almost imperceptible organ in the body to perform its usual
functions. How suddenly death often comes! A friend said to me, this
morning, “Do you know that So-and-so is dead?” He was a dear
fellow-servant of Christ, an eminent preacher of the gospel. I had no
idea, when I saw him a little while ago in robust health, that he and I
should never speak to each other again in this world. You also must often
have heard of the death of friends, and some day people will tell the
survivors that you too are gone. With unremitted sin upon you, you know
where you will go, do you not I need not tell you where, they are driven
whose sin has never been forgiven, and whose sin never will be forgiven,
as they have passed out of this world unwashed in the precious blood of
Jesus.
May I very earnestly put to all of you who are still unsaved this
question, — “How will you be able to die with unremitted sin upon you?
“There are some of us who believe that there is a spot on this earth
where our mortal remains are to lie, and it is possible that the tree, of
which the planks will form our coffin, has already been cut down. We
expect to die unless the Lord shall soon come, and that will amount to
much the same thing; and, expecting to die, we would like to be ready to
die, and to have our house in order. I like to meet a sensible, man, who
insures his life so as not to leave his wife and family in poverty, or
who, when he has means at his disposal, lays by for a rainy day, that,
should he be out of work, he will not need to go and beg. Now, if such
provision as this is commendable, — and who, will say that it is not? — is
it not much more commendable with regard to eternal things. Are we to be
careful about lesser matters, and yet to make no preparation for that last
moment in which we must pass out of this world to undergo the solemn
testing in the scales of unerring justice? If unremitted sin be upon you,
— and it is to, be fearful that it is upon very many of you, — I pray you
to consider what you will do in that dread hour when the immortal tenant
of your house of clay males her fatal leap without a wing to buoy her up,
and sinks into despair, and into yet deeper despair in the bottomless
abyss. God grant that none of our spirits may ever know what it is to be
found disembodied with sin unforgiven, and afterwards to hear the trumpet
of the great day of judgment ring out, and to go back into our risen
bodies with sin unforgiven, and shall to be cast, body and soul, into, the
lake that burneth for ever and ever.
This is, surely, enough for me to say upon that sorrowful theme, so let us
now think upon the brighter theme of remission. Our text seems to me to be
musical with hope: “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” Then, it
is clearly implied that, with shedding of blood, there is remission. In
the gospel, we always have glad news to tell. Unconverted sinner, with thy
unremitted sin, we have glad news to tell thee, and it is this. Thy sin
may be remitted. There is no sin, of which you can repent, which may not
be forgiven you. There lives not a mortal man who, if he repenteth of his
sin, shall not find mercy. There is a sin which is unto death, but those
who commit it never ask for mercy, or desire it. They are dead even while
they live, their conscience is seared as with a hot iron, and they rush to
hell willingly; but never has a man, sincerely anxious for salvation,
committed that sin. Let no penitent man despair, for there is remission
for every sin of which any man truly repenteth, and for which he
exerciseth faith in the precious blood of the Lord Jesus Christ.
The remission of sin, which God gives to his people, is complete; that is
to say, it wipes out all his sins, whatever they may have been. Now look,
believer, there is the list of your sins, it is a huge roll; if I were to
unroll it, how long would it be? Would it not belt the globe, and reach
from the earth to the sun and back again? Can you see all the sin that is
recorded there? Yet, the moment that the blood of Jesus is applied to that
roll, the whole record is blotted out, and there shall never be any more
sin inscribed there, for Jesus Christ, never yet divided a man’s sins,
forgiving some, and leaving others unforgiven. He deals with sin in the
mass, and takes it all up, and flings it, into the sea, or buries it in
his own sepulcher, and never shall it have a resurrection, for, saith the
Lord, “the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for, and there shall be
none; and the sins of Judah, and they shall not be found.” In the Epistle
from which our text is taken, the Lord says, “I will put my laws into
their hearts, and in their minds will I write them; and their sins and
iniquities will I remember no more.” King Hezekiah said is the Lord,
“Thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back;” and King David wrote, “As
far as the east is from the west,” — and that is an infinite distance, —
“so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.” So you see that God
completely sweeps away our sins when he remits them.
Further, the man, who gets remission of sin, gets a clearance from all
danger of any penalty resulting from sin, so that he can sing, —
“If sin be pardoned, I’m secure,
Death hath no sting beside;
The law gave in its damning power,
But Christ, my Ransom, died.”
In dying, Christ bought my pardon, so that I have no cause to fear the
punishment of my sin. What a blessing it is that the sin is gone, and the
penalty is gone too! When a man’s sin is remitted, he comes to the
position which would have been his if he had never sinned. We fell,
federally, in Adam, and we fell, actually, by our own sin; but Christ has
put us back where Adam was in his state of innocence; nay, he has done
more than that for us, for man was but man before he fell, but now man is
linked to the Eternal in the person of the God-man, Christ Jesus, so we
are nearer to God than Adam was before he fell. I said, sinner, that God
was angry with you; but if your sin is remitted, his anger is gone. What
does a forgiven sinner say to God? “Though thou wast angry with me, thine
anger is turned away, and thou comfortest me.” “Like as a father pitieth
his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear him.” Jeremiah wrote,
“The Lord hath appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee
with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn
thee.” It is sin that separates us from God; when that is put away, there
is no longer any separation, but we are one in bleed amity, and sacred
relationship, and holy concord, and near and dear communion.
Do all of you, dear friends, know what this remission of sin is? There are
some of us who could boast of this; — not that we could boast of anything
that we are, but we could boast and glory in the great goodness of the
Lord to us, the very chief of sinners. There are many here, who could join
with me in this declaration, “We were guilty and hell-deserving; but,
having believed in the Lord Jesus Christ, we know that our sins, which
were many, are all forgiven. We are clothed in the righteousness of
Christ, and are accepted in the Beloved,’ and we know it; and there is,
therefore, now no condemnation to us who are in Christ Jesus, and we are
not afraid of any, for, ’being justified by faith, we have peace with God
through our Lord Jesus Christ.’ The peace we have, through believing in
Jesus, is so full, so rich, so deep, that it cannot be broken. Death
itself will only deepen it. We are not afraid now to die; why should we
be? With the robe of his righteousness upon us, we shall stand boldly even
in the great day of judgment; and with the name of Jesus named upon us, he
will welcome us, and say to us, ’Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.’”
I wish, with all my heart and soul, that every one of you had received the
remission of your sin. I bless God that there are many, in this place, who
are humbly resting on the great atoning sacrifice. My brothers and sisters
in Christ, do not question the remission of your sins; for, to question
that is to question the Word of God itself. God himself there declares
that every believer in Christ is justified and saved. But many of you, who
have heard the gospel, have not believed it. “This is the condemnation,
that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than
light, because their deeds were evil.” This is your greatest sin, that ye
have not believed on Jesus Christ, whom God hath sent. Oh, that God the
Holy Spirit would convince you of the sin of unbelief, and enable you to
repent of it, and to lay hold on Jesus Christ by a act of childlike faith,
that you might live through him!
—————
II. This brings me to the second point of my discourse, which divides
itself into two parts, — Without Blood-Shedding, And With Blood-Shedding.
“Without shedding of blood,” says the apostle, — wherever that is the
case, there is no remission. It is not possible that any sin should ever
be forgiven to any man without shedding of blood. This has been known from
the very first. As soon as man had sinned, God taught him that he needed a
sacrifice. Adam and Eve, after they had sinned, tried to clothe themselves
with fig leaves; but, that was not a sufficient covering. God must kill
some animals, shedding their blood, and in their skins our first parents
must be clothed. When Cain and Abel had grown up, the only sacrifice that,
God could accept was the slain lamb. To Cain and his sacrifice of the
fruits of the earth, God had no respect. Job is, perhaps, the earliest of
the patriarchs, but he offered sacrifice for his children lest they should
have offended God while they were feasting. He did not think nor did any
of those ancient men who feared God think, of finding acceptance with him,
and remission of sin, without shedding of blood. This belief has been
almost universally held; there is scarcely to be found a tribe of men who
have not believed in this. Wherever explorers go, they find that, wherever
there is any conception of God, there is a sacrifice in some form or
other. Many people have thought it necessary to make very great
sacrifices, and some have imagined that they could only expiate their
guilt by offering up their own children, so deeply-seated is the thought
in our humanity that there must be a sacrifice for sin. I scarcely know of
any religion, except Socinianism, without a sacrifice. Humanity craves for
it, and cannot do without it. If anyone should proclaim a religion without
a sacrifice, you would soon see how quickly this building would be
emptied, or any other place of worship. There are always more spiders than
people where, the atonement is left out. Men must have a sacrifice; in
their inmost hearts, they knew their absolute need of it when they seek to
approach the Lord.
The old Mosaic law revealed this need of a sacrifice for sin; the most
prominent thing about it, that which must have stuck everybody, was the
blood. I do not know whether you have ever realized that the tabernacle,
which was praised for its beauty, must have looked like a veritable
shambles, and the gorgeous temple itself must have needed abundant
arrangements for its cleansing because of the continual sacrifices offered
there, and because so much of the service consisted in the shedding and
sprinkling of blood. The most prominent idea that a worshipper would get
would be that there was something for which an atonement was needed, and
that this involved time presentation of life before God; and that is just
the thought that God would have us still retain in our minds, for,
“without shedding of blood is no remission.”
Do not quarrel with this truth, dear friends, for you cannot alter it. It
is not for me is stand here to justify the ways of God to men, or to
propound any theories of atonement. I have no theory; I simply say what
the apostle says, “Without shedding of blood is no remission;” and there
is no remission otherwise. You may stand and weep for sin till you become
a very Niobe, or be transformed into a dripping well, and waste away in
one continual shower of penitential lamentation; but no sin will ever be
washed away so. To repent of sin is a part of your natural duty; and
attention to one part of duty cannot atone for the neglect of another
part.
“Oh, but!” you say, “in addition to this weeping and lamentation, I
mean to amend.” Well, suppose you do so; if, from this time forth, you
never sin again, — if a wrong thought, or word, or act should never stain
your character again, you will have done no more than it was your duty to
do, and the fulfillment of your duty so far will be no atonement for the
faults of the past; all your tears and all your efforts’ cannot put away
the guilt of the past, for “without shedding of blood is no remission,”
and repentance and good works are, not blood-shedding.
Suppose you add to these things what you call religiousness. Very well; do
so. Attend the house of prayer, join in the petitions of the saints as far
as you can, sing with them; but, all time while, mind what you are doing,
for you may be adding to your sin, instead of decreasing it, by relying
upon such things as those. I repeat the declaration that you have only
done what you ought to have done, and that cannot make amends for your
previous misdeeds and neglects, so that there too you rest upon a broken
reed.
Are you so foolish as to hope that sin can be put away by some legerdemain
that may be practiced by so-called “priests”? A plague upon them! They
swarm on the face of this earth, — these men who say that, they are endued
with some strange power by which they can remit human guilt, by the
muttering of certain words, and by passing you through certain
performances which are generally attended with the transference of some
part of your substance to the pockets of the so-called “priests.” O
sirs, be not deceived by them! Open your eyes, and see for yourselves what
there can be in one of your fellow-men just because there have been laid
upon his head the hands of a man wearing lawn sleeves, that he should have
the power to put away your sins. If this folly is to be believed, do not
let us hear any more about “the enlightened nineteenth century.” It
would be a disgrace to the people of any century to believe in such a
transparent lie as that. Go you to the living God for pardon, for he alone
can give it. Make your confessions at his feet; they will be valid only
there. And when you have confessed your sin to God, do not in any degree
rely on sacramental efficacy, or on priestly power; but trust wholly to
the blood-shedding. There is your hope; but, without shedding of blood,
priest or no priest, sacrament or no sacrament, you will be lost, as
surely as you are a human being and a sinner.
My last point is to be, with the blood-shedding, there is remission; that
is a much more delightful topic. If God had not provided the sacrifice for
sin, my text would have sounded the death-knell of all our hopes.
“Without shedding of blood — no remission,” would have been like the
flaming sword of the cherubim keeping us back from the tree of life. “My
son, God will provide himself a lamb for a burnt offering,” was the sweet
assurance of Abraham to Isaac; but to us there is a still sweeter
assurance, God has provided the Lamb for a burnt offering. Listen to this,
ye who would have remission. God himself came into this world; he who was
offended by man’s sin condescended to become the sacrifice to put away
that sin; and coming here, he took upon himself a human body, spotless and
without taint of original sin; and here he lived as man, perfect man, yet
just as truly very God of very God. When he had reached the appointed
time, he offered himself upon the altar as the one sacrifice for human
sin; and, by the shedding of his blood, there is remission for sin. Think
of this great truth. Here was an innocent Sufferer, the value of whose
life was worth more than an innumerable number of ours. It did more for
the honor of God’s law for Christ to die than if we had all died; for all
created beings will see how just God is when he will not let his own Son
escape even when guilt is only imputed to him.
Jesus Christ has died; the Son of God has offered himself as a sacrifice
for sin; so, now, whosoever believeth on him shall have immediate
remission of sin. It hardly matters how I tell you this great truth so
long as I make it clear to you; if I spoke it ungrammatically, if I
uttered it so that you had to lean forward, and strain your ears to catch
the message, it would not matter, so long as you were able to understand
it. You are bound to lay hold of this truth, for it is your life. If you
do not grasp it, whose fault will it be? If I stood in the midst of a
company of criminals condemned to die, and told them that a free pardon
could be obtained in a certain way, there would not be one of them who
would criticize my voice or my manner; because, if they really wanted
pardon, they would all be taken up with the thought of getting it. It does
not matter to me what criticism you may happen to make upon me. I shall
sleep just as well, I daresay, for all that, and live as long; but I
beseech you not to let any remarks or thoughts about me, or the place, or
anything else, drive any one of you from this conviction — that you must
either be saved or lost, that you must have your sins forgiven, or else
you will be ruined for ever, that the only way of getting them forgiven is
through the shedding of blood, and that the only way of availing
yourselves of the efficacy of the blood-shedding of Christ is by simple
confidence in him. Does anybody misunderstand that expression? Then I put
it thus, — give yourself up deliberately into the hands of Christ to save
you from the consequences of your sin. As one who is falling drops,
because he must; but drops cheerfully, because another stands with
outstretched arms to catch him, so drop into the Savior’s arms. We are all
prone to sin; but, if we give ourselves up to Christ, he will change our
natures, and make us love holiness. He will renew our hearts, so that we
shall seek after that which is good, and pure, and lovely, and excellent
in the sight of God. Salvation from the propensity to sin, as well as from
the guilt of sin, will be given at once to everyone who believes in the
Lord Jesus Christ.
“But I do not feel right,” says one.
Feeling right is not the
all-important matter.
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and then shalt be saved.”
“I will go home and pray,” says another. That is not what I urge you to
do first of all. First believe, and then pray; to put prayer in the place
of faith, is to suggest is God that he should change the plan of
salvation, which is, as I just reminded another friend, “Believe on the
Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” “What am I to, do, then? Am
I to believe that Jesus Christ died for me in particular?” I did not say
that; you are to trust Jesus Christ whether you have any particular
interest in him or not. You will find out your particular interest in
Christ in due time. Just now, look at Christ upon the cross. That is a
spectacle that is well worthy of your careful observation. There he hangs,
he who made all worlds; with hands and feet fastened to the accursed tree,
he hangs there to die the death of a slave, — the death that the Romans
would scarcely inflict upon slaves unless they had committed some
extraordinary crimes. He, whom the angels worship, hangs there to die,
“the Just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” Can you not
trust your soul with him? Will you not believe that God, for Christ’s
sake, can forgive you? Will you not now rush into his arms, and there
confess your sin, yet look up, and say, “I know that thou canst forgive,
for Christ has died, and I do rest my soul on his atoning sacrifice?
I remember — though it was many years ago — when first I really understood
that I was simply to look to Jesus Christ and that, doing so, I should be
saved. I felt, in my heart, that I wished I had known it long before, for
I had been for years seeking rest, and finding none, and I only needed
just to be told that there was nothing for me to do but simply to look to
Christ. Oh, how I did leap at that message! It was the best sermon I ever
heard, yet it was, in itself, a very poor one; but it had in it that which
was the means of saving my soul. I trusted Christ then with my soul, and I
have nothing else to rest on now. I have preached some thousands of times
since that day, and God has given me many souls, but I have not found out
any improvement as to the way of salvation. I trusted wholly in Christ
then, and well I might, for I had nothing else to trust to, and I trust in
nothing but Jesus Christ now, and well I may, for I have nothing else to
trust to. If there is a poor sinner here, who sees the lifeboat of faith
come close up to him, and he is afraid to step in, if it is any comfort to
you, sinner, let me tell you that, if you step into that lifeboat, and are
lost, I must be lost too, for I do not know of any other way of escape. If
there is anyone, who trusts in Jesus Christ, and is damned, I must be
damned with him, I am perfectly willing to go with him to prison and to
death. If my Lord Jesus Christ is not able to save a sinner just as he is,
then he is not able to save me: and if the blood of Jesus Christ cannot
wash out sin, then mine will never be washed out, for I have nothing but
the blood of Jesus Christ to trust to, and I say to him, —
“Other refuge have I none:
Hangs my helpless soul on thee.”
O sinner, you can hang where I can hang, and where all God’s people are
hanging. “Ah!” you say, “you do not know what a great sinner I am.”
No, and you do not know what a great Savior he is. “Ah, but I have such a
hard heart!” But his heart was broken, and he can break yours. “Ay, but
it will be a wonderful thing if he ever saves me.” Ah! there you are
right, and so it is when he saves anybody, and he delights to work wonders
of grace. I wonder which will be the biggest wonder in heaven, — you or I,
or someone else here or elsewhere. Well, we shall see when we get there;
but mind that you do get there. God bless you, for his dear Son’s sake!
Amen.
><>><>><>
Hebrews
10:9 The First and the Second
NO. 2698
INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD’S-DAY, OCTOBER 28TH, 1900,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,
ON LORD’S-DAY EVENING, OCTOBER 9TH, 1881
“He takes away the first, that he may establish the second.” — Hebrews
10:9.
The way of God with men is to go from good to better, and from better to
best. In the creation, “the evening and the morning were the first,
day?” “and the evening and the morning were the second day;” and so on
to the sixth day. God often gives us darkness before he gives us light,
and he gives us some measure of light in the rising sun before he gives us
the full glory of noontide. And this, I suppose, is not because God needs
any such rule for himself. He can give the best first if so he chooses;
but I imagine that this arrangement is needful because of our infirmity.
It would never do for weak eyes to have the full light of the sun pouring
down upon theta. Often, when men are faint, and nearly dying of hunger,
they would be killed outright if strong meat were at once set before them;
they must be gently fed as they are able to bear it. So God, knowing the
feebleness of his creatures, and especially the feebleness of his sinful
creatures, is pleased to bestow his mercies with great wisdom and
prudence. Little by little, first a very little, it; may be, and then
rather more, and then still more, and then much more, and then most of
all, until he does exceedingly abound in mercy towards us according to the
riches of his grace.
It often happens that the lesser blessing is a sort of preparatory school
before the greater favor. The law of Moses acted as an education for men
to prepare them to receive the gospel of Jesus Christ. The types and
shadows of the twilight of the tabernacle and temple services helped men,
by-and-by, to appreciate the substance when the True Light began to shine
among the sons of men. We have need to be continually educated and trained
for that which lies before us. Even heaven itself we are not fit to enter
until we have learnt something of the heavenly things here below. There is
a first in order that there be a second; and the first has to be taken
away, when it has fulfilled its design, in order that then we may enter
upon the second. Some lower good precedes the higher; and when the lower
good has educated us for the higher, then it is removed, and the greater
blessing fills its place, even as it says in our text, “He takes away the
first, that he may establish the second.” I am going to sever these two
sentences from their connection, just for the time being, because they
seem to me to contain a valuable general principle, which may be used for
comfort and instruction in many ways.
—————
I. I shall ask you to notice, first, the grand instance of this rule
given in the chapter from which our text is taken, the instance which was
the occasion of the utterance of the rule.
“He taketh away the first;” that is,
the sacrifices and offerings of the ceremonial law; — “He taketh away the
first;” that is, the blood of bulls and of goats; — “that he may
establish the second,” which second is Christ himself, the one effectual
propitiation for sin, the great burnt-offering which the Lord accepts, and
by which he is reconciled to all who trust in it.
The taking away of “the first” involved the removal of instructive and
consoling ordinances. Let us never forget that “the first” was given for
the wisest possible purposes, and was itself exceedingly useful. God
forbid that we should ever find fault with the first dispensation, for it
was the means of great comfort, and of much instruction, to the people of
God who lived under it. Though it was, in itself, little better than a
piece of glass, yet the Old Testament believers saw much through it. Those
of them who had clear vision saw through it the same Christ whom we, by
faith, see at this day; so that window was to them a very precious thing
because of the future glory which they were able to see through it. I can
understand how David enjoyed the ceremonies of the holy place in his day;
and how, when he was obliged to be absent, he longed once more to stand
within the tabernacles of God, and envied the very sparrows and swallows
that could fly or build their nests around the courts Of the Lord’s house.
I can realize how earnestly he desired again to stand and see the priests
presenting the holy offerings before the shrine of the Most High; and I
can easily comprehend that. to tell him that all these observances were to
be put away, would give him some cause for disquietude. But when he
understood that they were to be removed in order that a second, and a
better dispensation: should be established in their place, then his
disquietude would altogether cease.
Brethren, we ought this day to be far more happy than ever the Jews were
when God had accepted their richest sacrifices; for what, after all, were
holocausts of bullocks, what were thousands upon thousands of lambs
compared with the only-begotten Son of God who has sacrificed himself on
our behalf? Of what avail were all the rivers of blood that were shed, and
the seas of oil that were poured out? What comfort could, they bring to
Jewish believers compared with that which we derive from the flowing
wounds of the Christ of Calvary, and from the fact that he who suffered on
the cross, that he who was dead and buried, has risen again, and gone back
into the glory, and is there pleading, on our behalf, the merit of his one
finished, perfect sacrifice? Yes, beloved, let “the first” go; we need
not drop a single tear over its departure, seeing that “the second,”
which is established in its place, is so infinitely superior to it.
Many Jewish believers tried, as long as ever they could, to keep some
relic of the old dispensation. For many a year, they sought at least to
teach that converts to Christianity must be circumcised; but they
gradually learned that, with the coming of Christ, — rather, through his
death, the old dispensation was all taken away. Every fragment of it is
gone; and, if we are wise, we shall say, “Let it go; why should we seek
to preserve it? Why should we keep that which is dead now that the
ever-living One has come, and dwells among us? So, let ’the first’ go, and
let ’the second’ be established.”
I want, dear friends, to urge all of you to come to this decision very
emphatically. I beseech you never to try to bring back “the first.” I do
not suppose you will ever literally imitate the Jews, and offer the
sacrifices enjoined under the ceremonial law; but there is, in certain
quarters, an attempt to bring back portions of it, — ill-formed, broken
bones of that which has long since been dead. For instance, when men
insist upon it that such an unscriptural ceremony as infant sprinkling is
necessary to salvation, and that another man-made rite must be performed,
or else grace will not come to us, if we yield to their pretensions for a
single moment, we shall be putting ourselves under the bondage of a
ceremonial law, which has not even the authority which the law given by
Moses had. The two ordinances of baptism and the Lord’s supper, which
Christ has left us, are blessed means of instruction and comfort to living
men and living women, but they are not saving ordinances; and he who tries
to make them so, in any measure whatever, is to that extent, seeking to
bring back “the first” dispensation, which God has for ever abolished.
He is also endeavoring to disestablish “the second” dispensation; as far
as he can, he is overthrowing it. But Christ will not share with rites and
ceremonies the glory of our salvation. We are either saved by grace
through faith, or else by the works and ceremonies of the law; there can
be no mingling of the two, for they are diametrically opposed to each
other. There must be a clean taking away of “the first” that there may
be an establishing of “the second.”
Then I want you, next, to take care that you do regard “the second” as
being really established; that is to say, that there has been offered one
great Sacrifice for sin, and that Christ’s sacrifice has put away sin, and
has put it away once for all. This is the establishment of the real,
perfect, everlasting atonement. Now, Christian people, you do believe this
as a matter of doctrine; but have you truly appropriated all the
blessedness of it? Do you know that your sins are forgiven you for his
names sake; that an atonement has been presented for you, by which you are
so effectually purged from guilt that you will never need to bring any
other purgation, or to look for any other atonement? Do you really regard
yourself as one who will never have to offer smother sacrifice for sin
because your conscience is completely purged already, and you are clean
every whit? I know that some professors do not like Kent’s verse, but I
like it, for I quite agree with him when he says, —
“Here’s pardon full for sin that’s past,
It matters not how
Black its cast;
And, O my soul, with wonder view,
For sins to come, here’s pardon,
too!”
The Christ who died on Calvary’s cross, will not have to die again for my
new sins, or to offer a fresh atonement for any transgressions that I may
yet commit. No; but, once for all, gathering up the whole mass of his
people’s sins into one colossal burden, he took it upon his shoulders, and
flung the whole of it into the sepulcher wherein Once he slept, and there
it is buried, never to be raised again to bear witness against the
redeemed any more for ever. Do regard Christ’s sacrifice, then, as firmly
established, and, having been once offered, never to be repeated, that one
offering having completed the redemption of all the blood-bought throng,
and so finishing the great work that nothing needs to be added to it.
—————
II. Now, secondly, I want to give you some historical instances in
which the same rule has been carried out. I must speak very briefly upon
each point, so try to catch the words as they fly.
First, God took away the earthly paradise, but he has given us Christ and
heaven. God gave to man, originally, perfect happiness. In the garden of
Eden, there were all manner of delights; and under the covenant made with
our first father, all of these would have been ours if he had persevered
in obedience. But Adam sinned, and so the covenant of works was broken. He
fell, and we fell in him; and, therefore, paradise was taken away from
him, and from us also. There is no hope of our ever going through the gate
of that garden. Even if it had remained perfect, and we could find it, we
should see there the cherubim with a flaming sword turning every way to
keep us out of the garden. Why hast thou taken away this paradise, Lord?
The apostle here gives us the answer to our question, “He taketh away the
first, that he may establish the second;”’ for, now, as many as believe
in Jesus are brought into another and a better Paradise. They are saved in
the Lord with an everlasting salvation, and there is prepared for them a
place of joy and delight compared with which the bliss of Eden shall not
even be mentioned, neither shall that earthly paradise be brought to mind,
or be spoken of any more.
Next, the first man has failed; but behold the second Man, the Lord from
heaven; and see again the moaning of our text: “He taketh away the first,
that he may establish the second.” There was a man in that first
paradise; he was the first man, Adam; and you and I were representatively
in him; for he was the federal head of the human race. But he fell, and he
was taken away. Do we regret this, and mourn over it as though it were an
irreparable calamity? By no means; for the Lord hath taken away the first
man, Adam, that he may establish the second Man, the Lord Jesus Christ.
Concerning these two, the apostle Paul wrote to the Corinthians, “The
first man is of the earth, earthy: the second Man is the Lord from
heaven.” The first man has ruined us; but we have the second Man now, who
heads up his people, having become their federal Representative; and in
him they are saved beyond all fear of falling.
“He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second,” is
illustrated again in the case of Adam and Noah. Adam was not only the
federal head of the human race, but he was also its first father and
founder; but, although God took away our first father, he gave the race a
second father, even Noah, from whom we have all sprung as much as from the
loins of Adam. Now, Adam’s safety depended upon the perfection of a
creature, the obedience of a human being; but Noah’s safety lay in a
figurative death, burial, and resurrection, went into the ark, and died to
that old world in which he had lived so long. Inside that ark, as in a
coffin, he was buried beneath the descending floods; and he was floated
into a new world, to be the father of a race that should live through his
death, burial, and resurrection; as the apostle Peter says, “The like
figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us;” — not that baptism
saves us, but it is another figure of how we are saved by death, burial,
and resurrection, as Peter goes on to say, “not the putting away of the
filth of the flesh, but the answer of a good conscience toward God, by the
resurrection of Jesus Christ: who is gone into heaven, and is on the right
hand of God.” “He taketh away the first, that he may establish the
second.” Father Adam was taken away, but Father Noah was given to be the
new head of the race, and to him the Lord said, “This is the token of the
covenant which I make between me and you and every living creature that is
with you, for perpetual generations: I do set my bow in the cloud, and it
shall be for a token of a covenant between me and the earth.” That second
covenant, which God made with Noah, is infinitely more secure than the
first covenant which was broken by Adam.
Brethren, there is another great historical instance of the rule mentioned
in our text in the case of the covenants made with the literal and the
spiritual Israel. There was a first covenant to which the Israelites gave
their consent soon after they came out of Egypt. That was a covenant of
works, and when Moses rehearsed in the ears of the people the terms of
that covenant, “All the people answered together, and said, All that the
Lord hath spoken we will do.” Yet they soon forgot their solemn promise.
You remember how the commandments were “written with the finger of God”
upon “two tables of testimony, tables of stone;” but when the people
turned aside to worship the golden calf which Aaron had made, we read
concerning Moses, “it came to pass, as soon as he came nigh unto the
camp, that he saw the calf, and the dancing: and Moses anger ’waxed hot,’
and he cast the tables out of his hands, and brake them beneath the
mount.” In God’s great longsuffering, the commandments were given a
second time, though Moses, and not God, wrote on the second tables of
stone, and they were put away for safety into the golden ark, above which
was placed the mercy seat of pure gold. This was another symbolical
illustration of our text: “He taketh away the first, that he may
establish the second.” The law in the hand of Moses is broken that we may
have the law in the heart of Christ hidden away under the sacred covering
of divine mercy in the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High. The
first covenant of “This do, and thou shalt live,” is taken away, that
God may establish the second, which is, “Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” The first covenant, because it waxed
old, has passed away; and now God has established a second covenant, the
covenant of grace: “They shall be my people, and I will be their God: and
I will give them one heart, and one way, that they may fear me for ever,
for the good of them, and of their children after them: and I will make an
everlasting covenant with them, that I will not turn away from them, to do
them good; but I will put my fear in their hearts, that they shall lot
depart from me.’
Thus I might keep on showing you how, all the way along in history, there
has been a first, and then there has been a second, as there was in the
case of the temple at Jerusalem. Solomon built the first temple, but God
permitted that to be taken away that he might establish that second temple
into which Christ came, and so made the glory of the latter house to be
greater than that of the former one. All history seems to me to say,
“This is God’s usual method of procedure, to give the dim twilight first,
and then to follow it with the full glory of the noontide brightness.” We
must, therefore, expect that it will be so in our time.
—————
III. But, now, leaving history in
general, I come to your own individual history, so as to give you some
instances in your own experience of the working of this rule: “He taketh
away the first, that he may establish the second.’”
First, this is true of our own righteousness and Christ’s. I shall speak
of myself because, then, I shall be speaking of many of you also. I once
thought that I had a very fine righteousness of my own; and, in looking
back upon it, I am not at all sure whether it was not about as respectable
as the righteousness which the most of my friends have possessed. Like the
young man who came to our Lord, I could have said, concerning the ten
commandments, “All these things have I kept from my youth up: what lack I
yet?” But I well recollect the time when God’s Holy Spirit began to pull
my righteousness away from me. Oh, how fiercely I fought to keep it! There
Was a terrible tugging between my pride and my conscience, for even my
conscience joined with the Spirit of God, and the Word of God, in telling
me, that, though outwardly righteous, yet I was inwardly wicked. Still,
for a long while, I could not understand and believe that I, the child of
godly parents, who had never fallen asleep from the days of infancy
without the repetition of the prayer my mother taught me, and who had
never left my bedroom in the morning without having presented the
petitions which I had learnt as a child, — I could not bring myself to
think that I, who was so regular in attendance at the house of God, who
read my Bible, who tried to understand theological books, and so on, —
could not admit that I had a righteousness which was only like filthy
rags, fit for nothing but to be burned. I tell you, dear friends, I did
not like that ugly truth, and I fought very hard against it; but I bless
God that he took away “the first” righteousness that he might establish
’the second.” That second — “the righteousness which is of God by
faith,” — the righteousness which is imputed to everyone who believeth in
Jesus, — is so much superior to “the first” that I can truly say with
the apostle Paul, “What things were gain to me, those I counted loss for
Christ. Yea doubtless, and I count all things but loss for the excellency
of the knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord: for whom I have suffererd the
loss of all things, and do count them but dung, that I may win Christ, and
be found in him, not having mine own righteousness, which is of the law,
but that which is through the faith of Christ, the righteousness which is
of God by faith.”
Is there anybody here who is having his righteousness tugged at as mine
was? Is that beautiful but flimsy house of your own righteousness
beginning to tumble about your ears? Did a big brick-bat come down just
now? Was there a slate or two blown off the roof, or did the chimney-pots
begin to fall? Thank God for it! Thank God for it! If you have a very fine
robe of righteousness, all of your own weaving, I am not desirous that you
should be unclothed, and left naked to your shame, but I am anxious that
you should be clothed with that spotless robe which was woven in heaving;
and I know that you will never wear that wondrous garment until your own
dirty rags are pulled off you. Christ never comes and puts his glorious
robes over our poor, beggarly, leprous rags. No; they must come off before
he will clothe us, so he takers away “the first” that he may give us
“the second.” O poor sinner, be wise enough to cry to him, “Pull off
my’ rags, Lord, if thou wilt condescend to touch them. I do not want to
keep one of them a moment longer.” As for you who are so good, and
respectable, and righteous in your own esteem, I tell you plainly that
those fine robes, of which you axe so proud, are only rotten rags whatever
you may think of them. Off with them! They must come off if you are to be
saved; so ask God to take them off now, and to clothe you in that wondrous
raiment which Christ has prepared for all who trust him.
There is another first thing which God has taken away from us, and that
is, our false peace. There are many of you who used to be perfectly happy
although you were unsaved; you were full of peace, and were not disturbed
in mind at all. Why should you be? You used to say to yourselves, “Well,
if it goes ill with me, I am sure it will be worm for my neighbors. If I
am not all right, there are very few people who are.” Yes, you said to
yourself, “Peace, peace,” when there was no peace. If, sometimes, your
minister preached a sermon that came rather too closely home to you, and
troubled your conscience, you said to yourself, “Now, that is the kind of
preaching that I do not like. I do not think I shall go to hear that man
any more; for, in my opinion, people ought not to be made so uncomfortable
as I have been made.” There are some people who would never have been
saved if the Holy Spirit had not broken down their refuges of lies.
There is another “first” that people do not like to lose; that is, their
fancied strength. You thought, dear friend, that you could repent and
believe in Christ whenever you pleased, and you said to yourself, “There
is no hurry for me to decide to be a Christian. I can keep on attending
the means of grace; and one of these days, when it is convenient, I will
break my own heart, renew my own will, create myself a new creature in
Christ Jesus.” That was your meaning; though, possibly, you did not
express it quite so plainly. Ah! I recollect well when first I began to
discover my own inability in spiritual things; it was a horrible
discovery. I wanted to do good, but I found that evil was present with me.
I longed to repent, but my heart was as hard as a stone. I earnestly
desired to pray, but I could not pray a believing prayer; I could as
easily have leaped over the moon as have prayed such a prayer by my own
unaided efforts. I really wished to believe in Christ; and though now it
seems as plain and simple a thing as anything can be; yet, at that time, I
could no more believe in Christ than I could make a new world. Oh, the
horror of having one’s strength all taken away! But what a blessed thing
it is to lose all our first strength, to be reduced to utter weakness, and
to be quite incapable of any spiritual action, so that Christ says to us,
“Without me ye can do nothing;” and all this in order that he may
establish the second and better strength, and enable us each one to say,
“In the Lord have I righteousness and strength.”
The Lord Jesus Christ becomes a strength and a power to us when we have
lost our own; but we shall never get his strength while we have our own,
for he will never yoke his omnipotence with our poor pretense of power.
That cannot be: “He taketh away the first.” He brings you to a swooning
state, he brings you to a fainting fit, he brings you to death’s door, he
brings you to the very grave of your own personal confidence and strength;
and then he comes in, and gives you life in himself, and clothes you with
power from on high: “He taketh away the first, that he may establish the
second.
Further On in the Christian life, it often happens that the same rule
holds good, that the Lord takes away many first things to establish the
second. After people are converted, it frequently happens that they have a
great deal too much confidence in their minister, or in some Christian
friend. At first, it is very helpful to their infant footsteps to have a
little go-cart, to which they can hold lest they should tumble down; but,
after a while, when God means to teach them something for themselves, and
to make them exercise their own judgments, perhaps he takes away that
minister, or he takes away from them the pleasure that they once had in
hearing him. Sometimes, I have known men so much depended upon that God
has left those good men to themselves for a while, that their hearers
might see what poor souls they were, and so might never depend upon them
again as they had done in the past. Why does the Lord take away that
comfortable repose that his poor babes enjoy on the breasts of their
teachers? Why, in order that they may find a better and sweeter repose on
his own breast; that they may get away from all confidence in men, and
come to full confidence in the Lord their God and Savior. It is often a
very hard lesson for some to learn; but it must be learned. As the apostle
Paul says, “Henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we
have known Christ after the flesh, yet now henceforth know we him no
more.” There are some who seem to know Christ only by the teaching of
other people; but it is far better to know him by personal contact with
him, by coming close to him for yourself; and that blessing is often not
realized except at a great expense of things once highly prized. In that
sense also our text is true: “He taketh away the first, that he may
establish the second.”
So, too, there is an early joy that young Christians have. Oh, how full of
delight they are! Some of them have a great deal more of flame than they
have of real fire. Just as, when a fire is first kindled, and the
shavings, and the sticks are burning, there is not half the fire that
there will be when the coals themselves are all aglow; — there is not half
the fire but there is more blaze and more crackle; so is it with many
young people, they have no end of a blaze! Oh, they are so happy! They
cannot tell how happy they are! But, after a while, that exuberance of joy
goes, and the quiet delight in the Lord which comes afterwards, instead of
it, is much more solid and deep. They can give good reasons for their joy;
and though they are not so full of exhilaration as they were, their
delight is really firmer, and stronger, and deeper than before: “He
taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.”
I have known many of God’s dear people to be very frightened by some of
their first experiences. They thought they were going to be lost because
their early joy had departed from them; yet there was no need for
cherishing such fears. You know that children lose their first teeth; it
is good that they should do so, because there is a better set coming. And,
often, it is very much like that with the Christian. He has a wisdom tooth
to cut that he did not cut in the first stages of his spiritual life; and
the first milk teeth that he has will have to come out, some of them, with
many a painful tug; but they will have to come out in order that he may
grow to a spiritual manhood: “He taketh away the first, that he may
establish the second.”
Oh, how many things you and I have still to gain by losing! How much we
are to be enriched by our losses! How we are to make progress by going
backward! How we have yet to mount by sinking! How we have yet to rise by
descending! Paradoxical as all this may seem it is to be so, according to
the rule laid down in our text: “He taketh away the first, that he may
establish the second.” There may be a lesson here, not only for young
converts, but, also for you who are experienced Christians. This passage
may help you to understand some things which, perhaps, have seemed dark to
you.
—————
IV. Now I close by giving you some instances to be expected to which
the rule of the text will apply: “He taketh away the first, that he may
establish the second.”
Let all Who are of the family of Christ remember that God will soon take
away from us everything that we have here below. He will take us away from
it, which is the same thing as taking it away from us. But, as you
anticipate this great change, do not look forward to it with sorrow; do
not shed a single tear of regret at the thought of parting with anything
that you now possess. Regret not the dear old house at home,
notwithstanding all its happy associations. Mourn not that you must leave
your beloved country, of which you say that, wherever you wander, it is
still the joy of your heart, You will have to leave your native land, and
to leave your happy home; but you may be comforted by the assurance of the
text, “He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second;” for
there is a better country, that is, the heavenly land. We, who believe in
Jesus, are citizens of the New Jerusalem; and as all earthly cities and
the fair prospects of the country shall melt away from our eyes, we shall
look upon a fairer land, and a more glorious city, where no fog or blight
shall over come; but where —
“Rocks and hills, and brooks and vales,
With milk and honey flow.
“All o’er those wide extended plains,
Shines one eternal day;
There God the Sun for ever reigns,
And scatters night away.
“No chilling winds, or poisonous breath,
Can reach that healthful shore:
Sickness and sorrow, pain and death,
Are felt and fear’d no more.”
God will take away our home on earth; but in our Father’s house above,
there are many mansions; therefore you may go, cheerful fireside; you may
go, happy home; all that was loved, all that was delighted in may melt
away, as I sing, —
“My Father’s house on high,
Home of my soul! how near,
At times, to faith’s foreseeing eye,
Thy golden gates appear!”
If Moses, from the top of Pisgah, was glad to die with the earthly Canaan
in sight, how much more may we be happy to die with the heavenly Canaan
just before us, into which we are to enter! “He taketh away the first,
that he may establish the second.”
The Lord has been taking away from some of you considerable portions of
your family. Some dear children, who were once nestling at your breast,
are now with him in glory. Father also has gone, and mother; husband or
wife, brother or sister, some of these dear ones are gone home. The
members of your family have nearly all gone now, and you are left alone.
You begin to count the friends of your youth upon your fingers. God is
evidently taking away “the first.” But do not forget how blessedly he is
establishing the second.” When you enter heaven, you will be no stranger
inside those pearly gates. There will be many there, whom you knew and
loved on earth, whom you will know and love above. They will meet you at
the gates, and they will joy and rejoice with you before the great
Father’s throne.
“Alas!” says one, “I have lost all my family, and I am left alone and
desolate.” But if you are a child of God, remember what the apostle once
Wrote, “I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom
the whole family in heaven and earth is named.” Though God has taken away
that first family, he has established that second, and far more numerous,
and more glorious one. “Go, setteth the solitary in families.” That is
what he has done for you; he has taken away your first family connections,
your first bonds of brotherhood and sisterhood, in order that he may
establish the second higher relationships. He has dissolved the ties of
blood that you may find better spiritual relationships among such as Jesus
spoke of when he said, “Whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is
in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.” Even so we
say of the saints on earth, ampi the saints before the throne of God in
heaven, “These are sister, and brother, and father, and mother to us.”
“He taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.”
And, brothers’ and sisters, this poor body of ours, which is so full of
aches and pains at times, will be taken away to make room for a more
glorious one. This one is getting worn-out; some parts of it have fallen
away already. It is like an old lath-and-plaster building, and cannot last
much longer; it very seldom stands to the end of the ninety-nine years’
lease, but it soon crumbles away; and, by-and-by, with all of us, the old
house will fall to pieces, and be done with. Shall we fret over it? Shall
our soul cry, concerning the body, “Alas, my sister! Alas, my brother?”
No; “he taketh away the first, that he may establish the second;” and as
we have, in this body of our humiliation, borne the image of the earthy,
we shall, in the second condition of this body, bear the image of the
heavenly. It shall be sown in dishonor, but it shall be raised in glory.
It shall be sown in weakness, but it shall be raised in power. It; shall
be sown a natural body, but it shall be raised a spiritual body. “He
taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.” And, oh! what a
glorious second that will be! Our resurrection body will know no pain, no
weariness, no weakness, no taint of disease or sin, no possibility of
corruption or death. Well may we sing, —
“O glorious hour! O blest abode!”
when this poor body shall be made like unto the glorious body of Christ
Jesus our Ssvior. “He taketh away the first, that he may establish the
second.” Let the first go, then, without a murmur or a sigh.
Once more, this earth shall be taken away to make room for the new one. In
a little while, there shall be heard the blast of the archangel’s trumpet.
I know not when or how the various dosing events will happen, so as to put
them together in chronological order; but I do know that, at God’s
bidding, this fair earth shall suddenly be wrapt in flames. It is a
beautiful world, say what you will a,bout it. In many other parts besides
Ceylon, —
“Every prospect pleases,
And only man is vile.”
Wherever man squats down, and raises up his long ranges of bricks and
mortar, there everything is ugly; but out yonder, in God’s forests, and on
God’s hills, and by God’s sea, there everything is fair, and grand, and
God-like, as if God himself might come and sojourn here, and not be
ashamed of the world he has made, for still it is good. But in a moment,
it will be wrapt in flames, and it wild be utterly consumed. Nothing of
this present creation shall abide in its present condition. The apostle
Peter says, “The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in
the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements
shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are
therein shall be burned up.” Yet weep not, beloved, neither lament, for
Peter also says, “Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new
heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness.” “He taketh
away the first, that he may establish the second; and, on a brighter
morning than your eyes have ever seen, you shall wake up and see the new
heavens and the new earth; and you, with all the spirits of just men made
perfect, shall come hither to sing sweeter songs than the morning stars
chanted when the world was first created. There will be a second creation,
a second world, for the Lord will have taken away the first, but he will
have established the second. The work of destruction will have been
accomplished; but the work of re-creation will also have been finished;
and, oh, what joy and bliss it will be for the redeemed from among men,
and for the holy angels, too, when the New Jerusalem shall come down from
God out of heaven, prepared as a ’bride adorned for her husband, and the
tabernacle of God shall be with men, and he shall dwell among them! “He
taketh away the first, that he may establish the second.
I close by Saying that it is my earnest prayer that some of you may, by
God’s grace, have, your “first” taken away from you this very hour, that
you may have “the second” given to you. Salvation lies not In “the
first.” That is all ruin and woe; the trail of the serpent is over it
all. You will never go to heaven if you remain in the same nature as you
had when you were born. You must be born a second time; or else, if there
be not a second birth, you will have to endure the second death. God give
you the grace to believe in Jesus, and to find in him that second, higher,
better life that you may enter into the second and perfect world; for,
then, you will give him all the praise for ever and ever. Amen.
><>><>><>
Hebrews
11:6 What Is Essential in Coming to God?
NO. 2740
INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD’S-DAY, AUGUST 18TH, 1901,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON,
ON LORD’S-DAY EVENING, DEC. 12TH, 1880
“Without faith it is impossible to
please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he
is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.”—Hebrews 11:6
THE apostle had put Enoch down among
the heroes of faith; and, to prove that Enoch was a man of faith, he says,
“Before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”
“Then,” argues Paul, “if he pleased God, he must have been a believing
man, for the very lowest form of approach to God needs faith: ’He that
cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them
that diligently seek him.’ So, if the very lowest grade of approach to God
needs faith, much more does that highest form of it in which a man walks
with God so as to obtain the testimony that he pleases God.” The argument
of the apostle is clear and convincing; if any man shall be pleasing to
God, as Enoch was, it must be the result of faith; since, even to come to
God at all, in the very first steps that we take, we must have a measure
of faith in him, we must at least believe that God is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him.
—————
I. I am not going into the argument so far as it relates to Enoch, but
I want you to join with me in examining Paul’s state-sent concerning what
is essential in coming to God. That will be my first division, The
Essentials Of Faith In Our Coming To God.
The first essential is, that we must believe “that he is,” we must
believe that there is a God,—that these things, which we see, do not
spring of themselves, or come by chance, or in any way whatever except
that there is a personal God, who created all things, and by whom all
things consist. If you do not believe that, you certainly will never come
to God. How is it possible for a man to come to One whose very existence
he doubts? That matter must be settled, or there cannot be any real coming
to God. More than that, he that would come to God must believe that there
is but one God, that the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob, is the
only living and true God. If we are to come to God,—to the God of the Old
and the New Testament,—we must accept him as he is there pleased to reveal
himself. We must not try to fashion a god such as we would like to have,
for that would be idolatry; but we must accept God as he is made known in
the Scriptures, and especially as he has manifested himself in Christ
Jesus, for it is in him that God has revealed himself to us for the
practical purpose of our reconciliation. If we wish really to come to God,
it must be by the way in which he has come to us; that is, through his
Son, Jesus Christ. Neither, let me add, shall we ever come to God aright
unless we ask for the assistance of the Holy Spirit, the third Person of
the blessed Trinity in Unity.
To believe that God is, means, however, much more than this. It means
that, when I pray, I believe that he is where I am. I do not know whether
any of us have yet been able really to get a grip of this first thought,
that God is, for there is something wonderful about that truth; for, if
God is, then God is everywhere; so, with what awe and reverence ought we
to spend every moment of our lives! There is no place to sin in, for God
is there. There is no place in which to trifle, for God is there. There is
no place for blasphemy, for God is there: will you blaspheme him to his
face? There is no place for rebellion, for God is there: wilt thou rebel
against the King in his own courts? This makes all space most solemn, and
all time truly sacred. Of every spot of ground whereon we stand, we may
say, with Jacob, “How dreadful is this place!” Though it was a place
abounding in stones, which served for his pillows, he said, when he awoke,
“Surely the Lord is in this place; and I knew it not. This is none other
but the house of God, and this is the gate of heaven.”
I passed a church, the other day, and I saw on one of its doors the words,
“The house of God.” I thought, “Is it?” On the next door, I saw the
words, “The gate of heaven; “and I said to myself, “It is not so, any
more than any other door is.” Is this Tabernacle God’s house? While we
worship him here, it is; but it is not any more holy than our own house
is. One place is as sacred as another, for God’s presence has consecrated
it all. “The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands.” Every
part of my garden, as I meditate upon God in it, is as holy as the aisles
of the most venerable cathedral; your bed-chamber, as you kneel in prayer
ere you lie down to sleep, is as sacred as the temple, of Solomon. Every
spot, where there is a devout worshipper, is the abode of Deity; it is no
more and no less so in one place than in another.
If you begin to fancy that one place is sacred above others, you will
tread there with superstitious reverence; you will scarcely dare to put
your foot upon the chance pavement, and you will bow to the East, as I
have seen some do, as if there were something more holy in that direction
than at other points of the compass. Ugh! but this is idolatry, and
nothing better. The right thing is to look upon the street pavements as
too sacred for you to sin there, and to turn to the East or West, to the
North or South, and to say concerning every place, “God is before my eyes
there, so that is a sacred spot; God is everywhere, and therefore I must
not dare to offend against him anywhere.”
They who would come to God must believe that he is everywhere, and that he
is specially where they are praying to him. When we pray aright, we speak
into God’s ear,—into his very heart, for he is wherever there is a praying
soul; and when you truly praise him, you are not singing to the wind, for
God is there, and he hears you. How solemn would our praise be, and how
intense would our prayers be, if we always realized God’s presence! Yet,
perhaps, when you go to bed, you drop down on your knees, and wearily
repeat a few sentences; but you have not really prayed unless you have
been conscious that God was there, and you have communed with him. Then,
in the morning, if you are late in rising, you hurry over what you call
your devotions; but there is no devotion in them unless you believe that
God is there, and you really draw near to him in prayer. We should pray,
dear friends, in the same spirit as that in which the angels worship
before the throne, with covered faces, and in lowly adoration; and thus we
should pray if we did really believe in God’s presence with us. But for
anyone to say, “Yes, I know that there is a God, but I do not realize
that he is here; when I am at my work, or at my recreation, I do not feel
that he is specially with me; “is a sort of atheism, from which may God,
in his great mercy, deliver all of us! If there be a place where God is
not, you may go there, and sin; but there is no such spot in the whole
universe. Remember what David says: “Whither shall I go from thy spirit?
or whither shall I flee from thy presence? If I ascend up into heaven,
thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there. If I
take the wings of the morning, and dwell in the uttermost parts of the
sea; even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold
me.”
The belief that God is, moreover, seems to me to involve, not only that he
exists, and is everywhere present, but that he knows what we are
doing,—that he perceives the wishes of our hearts,—that he is aware of all
that we say, and all that we think. The Epicureans held the theory that
God had a great many things to do of far more importance than listening to
the prayers of men and women, yet that is not the teaching of the
Scriptures. He counts the hairs on our head, and notices the falling of a
sparrow to the ground; and he is as truly great in looking upon the lilies
of the field, as in ordering the revolutions of the ponderous orbs of
heaven.
It is not believing that God is when you say, “Oh, yes, there is a God,
and God is everywhere; but, still, he does not concern himself about us,
and no practical end will be served by prayer, for he will not interfere
in our affairs.” Ah, no! you will never come to him in that way, and I do
not see any inducement for you to try. I do not want to approach a dead
god; there are sufficient dead things in the world to sorrow over without
a dead deity. I do not care for the Pantheist’s god; what is he? An
insensible, impalpable, something or nothing. I need a personal God, a
living Person, a sympathetic Person, a Divine Person, and I find him in
that blessed One who is the Son of God, and who, with the Father and the
Spirit, is the one living and true God. I hope, dear friends, that you
have come as far as this; even if you have not yet actually come to God, I
hope you know, in the senses that I have mentioned, that “he is.”
But, according to our text, there is a second thing to be believed before
we can come to God,—that is, “that he is a rewarder of them that
diligently seek him.” By which I understand the apostle to mean that we
must believe that God hears prayer, and answers it, too. You will not pray
unless you believe that; at least, you will be very foolish, if you do. I
suppose there are persons who think that the mere repetition of a certain
form of words may do them good, but their intellect must be on a level
with that of those who used to think that the word “abracadabra” could
cure diseases or keep away ghosts and witches. I am afraid there is a kind
of religion which is only on a level with witchcraft; when people think a
particular place is sacred, and that a man is holy because he has certain
clothes on, and reads out of a holy book, on a holy day, and performs with
holy water, and a holy cup to hold it in, and holy this, and holy that,—I
know not what,—it is all a mass of silly superstition. Let us keep clear
of all that nonsense, and feel that, when we speak with God, there is
reality in it, and that God hears us just as surely as we hear one
another, and that he is prepared to answer our petitions;—I mean,
literally to do so, not in some mysterious, unreal fashion, but actually
and truly to give us that which is fitting for him to bestow, and right
for us to ask. We cannot pray, as we ought, unless we believe that.
If we are to come to God, we must believe also, that he will bless those
who endeavor thus to come to him; and, further, that it is a good thing to
know God, to love God, to be reconciled to God, to be under the operations
of God’s Spirit, to be saved by God’s Son. If we do not really believe all
this, if we fancy that it is a mere matter of form, and has no vitality in
it, we shall not care to come to God, for sensible men do not wish to deal
in counterfeits and shams, they want realities.
To put the matter very plainly, he who would truly come to God must
believe that a life of godliness will pay,—that it will answer his purpose
to come to God, because “he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek
him.” A man with any sense will not follow after that which he conceives
has no advantage in it; but when a man can honestly say, “The best
interests of my highest nature depend upon my getting to God, becoming his
servant, and having him as my Father and my Friend,” then it is that he
diligently seeks him. Dear friends, I believe that, if you would have the
best of life, the highest bliss, the supremest, noblest, divinest joys of
which our mortal nature is capable, you cannot find all this anywhere but
in coming to God, through Jesus Christ his Son, and yielding yourselves up
entirely to him, and becoming his faithful followers for ever. We must
believe that diligently to seek him is the most profitable thing possible
to us, or we shall never rightly come to God. Some will say, “To be
moderately religious is a good thing, no doubt; but to be righteous
overmuch, would be a very bad thing.” Ah! you will never come to God if
that is what you think; for, depend upon this, of all the miserable things
in the world, a little religion is about the worst of all. I know some men
who have just about enough religion not to be able comfortably to sin, but
they have no comfort in Christ. The joys of the world,—and it has its
delusions which worldlings call joys,—they dare not go after; and for want
of faith they dare not claim the joys of the Spirit of God; so they are
wretched. They are like bats, which fly by night, or which, in the
twilight, come out, and get a little exercise. They are between-ites,—if
there is such a word,—neither servants of God, nor yet out-and-out
servants of Satan,—a miserable crew; let none of us belong to them. That
man gets the most out of godliness who gives himself most to it. He whom
the world calls a fanatic is often just the one who is thorough, sincere,
and earnest; and he it is who finds that God is his rewarder, because he
diligently seeks him;—-not only seeks him, but seeks him with all his
heart, and mind, and soul, and strength.
—————
II. This brings me to my second division, which is this.
Coming To God Should Be The Result Of
Any Man’s Having These Essentials. I thought, as I looked upon this great
assembly, that there might be a few here who doubted whether there was a
God, or whether God was” a rewarder of them that diligently seek him;”
but I know that almost everyone here says, “I believe there is a God, I
never doubted it; and I believe that it is a good thing, a blessed thing,
to serve him.”
Very well, then; as you believe that there is a God, seek him. If I am
addressing any who have been delivered from infidelity in the head, I want
you also to be delivered from practical infidelity of the heart. Reason
itself says to you, “If there be a God, and God is all around you, how
can you continue to be his enemy?” Now, friend, if thou believest that
there is a God, canst thou sit easily on thy seat so long as the
Omnipotent One is angry with thee? Bow thy head, and confess thy
transgression to him; pray to him to forgive thee for Christ’s sake, to be
reconciled to thee, and to reconcile thee to himself; for he has promised
that he will forgive those who confess their transgressions to him, and
who come unto him through Christ Jesus his Son. If there be a God, O ye
burdened ones, ye weary ones, ye feeble ones, ask him to help you. You
have no helper, perhaps, on earth; then cast yourself at his feet, and see
what he can do for you. If you do indeed believe that God is,—that the
Ever-merciful lives, and hears and pities those who trust him, rely upon
his care now, and come unto him with your heartbreaking grief.
As there is a God, I am sure I do but reason rightly when I say, then let
us serve him. Is it not right that he should be our Master, seeing that he
made us, and that his service is so glorious that he makes into kings all
those who enter it? Come, my soul, enlist afresh in the army of Emmanuel;
and you who have not yet served him, yield yourselves up to him this very
hour. As there is a God, we cannot be happy apart from him; and there is
no happiness like that of having him for our Friend and Helper. Come,
then, dear hearts, can you refuse this invitation? If you say, “There is
no God,” I am not speaking to you just now; but if you say, “Oh, yes! I
know that God is, and that he is here, and I believe in Father, Son, and
Spirit;—prove that you really believe in God by yielding to him, by being
reconciled to him, by obeying him, by trusting his Son, and so finding
eternal life. God grant you may!
Further, if you believe that God is “a rewarder of them that diligently
seek him,” come unto him. You say, “Oh, yes! I know that a Christian
life is a happy life; I believe that the service of God is one that pays,
that it is full of rewards, and full of happiness.” Very well, then, will
you not enter at once upon that service which has such gracious rewards
attached to it? Will you not run away from your old master? You need not
give him any notice; the prodigal did not. He was sent into the fields to
feed swine, but he never gave his master a day’s notice; if he had waited
to do that, he would never have come away. He slipped right off, and left
the swine to eat all the husks. I advise you to act in the same fashion.
“Steal away to Jesus,” without any delays, or hesitation, or
questioning. I do not think that any man gets saved by thinking about it,
and saying that it shall be by-and-by. No; now is the all-important
moment; strike while the iron is hot, and, by God’s grace, that one blow
shall break the fetter, and set the captive free.
As there is a God, and he is “a rewarder of them that diligently seek
him,” it behoves us, who do seek him, to seek him with the utmost
diligence. David said, “Verily there is a reward for the righteous; “and
though it is not of debt, but of grace, yet there is a reward, and we find
it to be so even now. Let us, therefore, give ourselves more than ever to
prayer and to Christian service, and more than ever let us devote
ourselves to his glory whose we are, and whom we serve.
Let me pull thee by the sleeve, my brother,—thou who sayest, “I am a
Christian.” You believe that God is “a rewarder of them that diligently
seek him;” do you seek him diligently? How much of the Scriptures have
you read during the last week? How many hours have you spent in prayer?
“Hours?” say you; “say minutes.” How much have you lived for God
during the past month? What have you done distinctly with a view to his
glory? What souls have you tried to win? What truths have you tried to
teach? What virtues have you tried to set forth? Thou sayest that he is
“a rewarder of them that diligently seek him;” dost thou despise the
reward? Art thou content with having made a profession of religion? Some
professors remind me of the reply of the child, who was asked at the
Sunday-school about her father, who never went to any place of worship.
“Is your father a Christian, Jane?” “Yes,” she replied, “but he has
not worked much at it lately.” There are many professors of that sort;
they are like certain tradesmen, who have a notice on their door to say
that they have gone out for a fortnight. They will not make a fortune in
that way, I am persuaded; such a method of doing business generally ends
in bankruptcy. What can I say of some professedly Christian people? They
have no stock, they are doing no business for their Master, and their
chief employment is that of asking,—
“Do I love the Lord, or no?”
Just so, brother; that is what I was thinking about you.
“Am I his, or am I not?”
Just so, sister; it is quite right of you to ask that question, and there
are a good many more who are asking it concerning you; but why should you
and I live in such a way that we are obliged to ask these questions? He
who is, by God’s grace, bringing forth fruit to God’s glory does not need
to sing that sorrowful tune; so may God grant to all his professing people
grace to be thorough, to give themselves up to the utmost diligence in his
holy service, for it can only be by his grace that we shall do this!
—————
III. Now I close by bearing testimony to the fact that The Result Of
Coming To God Will Justify The Act Of Coming, And The Faith Which Was
Essential To The Coming.
First, many have come to God, so they must have had faith in him, for no
man can come to God without believing “that he is, and that he is a
rewarder of them that diligently seek him.” There have been men, who have
believed this, who have not come to God; but there have been others who
have come to God because they believed in him. In the olden time, Abraham
rose up early in the morning, and went to a certain place where he prayed,
and where God met with him, and spoke with him in words which Abraham
could hear. God does not now utter words which our ears can hear; yet
there are men—and they are honest, upright, truthful men,—who will tell
you solemnly that they have often met with God, and have been as certain
of his special presence as of their own existence. There have been times
when our fellowship with the Father, and with the Son, has been as real to
us as the atmosphere which we cannot see, but which we breathe. We cannot
see God; yet “in him we live, and move, and have our being; “and we have
been conscious of it. There is a mystic touch that comes not from any
angelic hand; there is a sacred breathing upon the heart which comes not
from mere wind; there is a whisper within the soul—-a movement, a
stirring, a brooding, an overshadowing,—I cannot describe it, but I have
often felt it, and so have many of you, and you have been sure that God
has come to you, and that you have come to God. I am bearing witness to
what is as sure a fact to me as that I am speaking to you now; and it is
not a fact to me alone, but to hundreds and thousands of living men and
women to whom this life is made happy because they dwell with God, and
abide in Christ Jesus.
Beside that, having come to God, we have found that God is. It has not
been a dream, but a blessed reality. We have struggled to get to God; we
have prayed to him; we have cried to him; we have longed for him; and we
deliberately declare that God has come to us. When he has come to us, has
there been any reality about it? Reality? Why, he has sometimes lifted us
up out of the horrible pit of despair into unutterable ecstasies of joy.
At times, when we have cried out to him in our distress, he has walked
over the waters, and they have been like marble beneath his feet; and very
soon, all has been calm and peaceful within our spirit. Tell us that God
is not real, when we have been almost on the verge of sin,—one more step,
and we should have been over the precipice,—but we have seen him, and we
have started back; or, on the other hand, we were shirking a duty which
seemed too hard for us, but we realized his presence, and then we
shouldered the lead; and though it seemed as heavy as the world, we became
like Atlas, by God’s strength, and so we were able to bear the burden. Do
you think I talk too boldly? Perhaps you are a bigger man than I am; if
so, talk according to your size; but, to me, it has been enough to have
been helped of God in my little world; and it has been the same with many
a poor widow with half-a-dozen children about her. You may say, “Her case
is a very small affair.” It is not small to her; and when she has gone
before the living God, with that heavy lead which to her is like a world,
God has helped her, and has been the Advocate of the widow, and the Father
of the fatherless; and it has not been in a dream, or in sentimental
fiction, but in sober reality. I could find you many who would bear
witness to such deliverances as this, and they would declare that God is.
They have also found that God rewards them. Does he? I will answer in the
name of them all,—-Yes, he does. How does he reward them? Well, sometimes,
in a measure, in this life. He gives to his children, as he did to Abraham
and to Isaac, happiness and prosperity, so that, even in this life, they
feel that his ways are ways of pleasantness, and all his paths are peace.
But this is not the greatest reward he gives. He gives himself to his
children, he becomes their portion. They are poor, and sick, and
heavy-hearted; but he comes to them, as he did to Abraham, and says,
“Fear not; I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward.” He himself
is their reward; and, possessing him as their God, they are happier
without the riches of this world than the wealthiest man can be without
God. Ask the Lord’s servants how they get on with their Master. There are
so many of them that, if he were not faithful, some one or other would
tell the story. It is a thing that ought to be noticed, that, out of the
millions of Christians who have died,—and death-beds are places where
people usually speak the truth,—there has never been an instance of one
person sitting up in his bed, and saying, “I am sorry I ever served the
Lord. I regret that I was so diligent in seeking him, for I found no
reward in it. My life would have been a great deal happier if I had served
myself, or lived for the world; but I made a mistake, and I lived for
God.”
Now, surely, if this were the fact, there would have been one or two
somewhere who would have said it; but the universal testimony—there is no
exception—of all dying children of God has been this, “We wish we had
sought him earlier, and loved him more, and served him better; we wish we
had been more consecrated to him, and had practiced more self-denial, and
given more generously to his cause; for, after all, the reality of our
life lies in what he did for us, and in what he enabled us to do for him.
All the rest was but the chaff of life; the best of our life is what we
lived by faith upon the Son of God, who loved us, and gave himself for
us.” They all say so; and, therefore, we must accept their testimony. If
a mistress has a large number of maids, somebody might ask them, “What
kind of mistress have you?” and they might all say, “Oh, she is a most
delightful person,” and so on, because they were afraid to speak the
truth; but if there should be a dozen of them, by-and-by one would be
found in the street, who would say, “You heard what those maids said, but
it was not true, for she is a termagant.” The truth would ooze out
somehow; and if our God were not faithful, one or other of his servants
would be sure to tell of it; but we have none of us anything to complain
of.
“But,” say you, “there are many of God’s people, who serve him
faithfully, and they do not get any reward; they are very poor and
needy.” Yet they will tell you that they are more than satisfied with the
way their Lord has treated them; and, moreover, they will tell you that
they are strangers and pilgrims here, and that their chief reward is yet
to come. They are looking, by faith, for the everlasting remunerations
that will follow the life of holiness, when this poor world and all its
joys shall have melted like the morning mist, and gone for ever. Eternity,
eternity, eternity,—we shall soon know, brothers and sisters, what it will
be to be in eternity. There is not one of us who can live here for ever.
When a very few years have gone, we shall all have departed. Imagine
yourselves in the future state; if you have not lived for God, but have
lived for the world, for yourself, what is your portion? Endless darkness;
infinite despair; woe unutterable. But if you have lived for God; if, by
his grace, you have put your trust in Jesus Christ, what is your portion?
On yonder glittering hills you stand, in the midst of the white-robed
host, and Christ is with you, and you are looking back upon what you
suffered for his sake on earh, and you say, “Oh, it was nothing at all; I
wish I had suffered far more for him who suffered so much for me!” As for
what you did for him, you will say, “That is not worth mentioning; oh,
that I had lived more intensely for him!” As for what you gave for him,
“Oh!” you will say, “I never gave a thousandth part of what I would
give now if I had it. I reckon that! wasted what was not spent upon his
Kingdom; I reckon that I lost the time that I did not use for glorifying
him; and only did I live as I ought to live, and as in heaven I now wish I
had lived, when I lived entirely to him.” Then will you see, from before
the throne of God, that “he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that
diligently seek him.”
So may it be with every one of us, for Christ’s sake! Amen.
Hebrews
11:34 God's Cure For Man's Weakness
NO. 697
DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 24TH, 1866,
BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
“Out of weakness were made strong.”-Hebrews 11:34.
SOME kinds of weakness are of God’s appointment, and necessarily incident
to manhood; they are not sinful, and, therefore, we may continue to be
subject to them without regret. In reference to such weaknesses it may be
that after beseeching the Lord even thrice to remove them, it may be for
our good that they should remain. Then will our gracious God give us, in
place of removing the weakness, this reply, “My grace shall be sufficient
for thee.” This is a case of in weakness made strong, and there are many
of God’s saints who daily experience so blessed a privilege. They are
weak, and continue weak; they have infirmities which they once wished to
have removed, but which now they are content to bear; for now they are of
the same mind with the apostle, that they glory in their infirmity,
because when they are weak they are strong. But, dear friends, there is
another kind of weakness which is sinful, a weakness which springs not
from nature but from fallen nature; not from God’s appointment, but from
our sinfulness, and out of this we should desire to be delivered. We
cannot pray for strength in sinful weakness, but must earnestly plead for
strength to come out of it and to be made strong. This seems to me to be
the particular blessing which faith is said to have obtained in the text;
“out of weakness were made strong.” It is the inestimable privilege of
many a Christian to be strong in weakness when the weakness is only one of
infirmity, but it is an equally precious boon to be made strong out of
weakness, when that weakness is of a sinful kind. Looking round the church
at large, with as impartial an eye as we can summon, we are afraid that
for the most part it is now-a-days comparable to a huge infirmary rather
than a camp filled with brave soldiers.
Both ministers and private members of the church are very generally weakly
in one way or other. They are living, but they are sickly. They are
working for God, but they are working in a feeble, inefficient manner. If
I look upon the camps of the Lord’s enemies, whether Puseyite or Broad
Church, I see intelligence and vigor so apparent that I am apt to think
that never was error more earnest, more active, more intense than just
now; there is a reality about the efforts of our opponents which may well
alarm us: but when I look to the camp of the Lord Jesus Christ I lament a
predominant luke-warmness, a want of enthusiasm, and deficiency in force,
which, if it does not betoken a departure from God in heart, certainly
indicates very great feebleness in the vital parts, producing comparative
weakness in all the parts. I desire this morning to speak to those who are
weak-weak where they ought not to be-and who feel a growing tendency to
rest content in that weakness; I would stir up those who are beginning to
imagine that weakness is the normal and proper state of a Christian; that
to be unbelieving, desponding, nervous, timid, cowardly, inactive,
heartless, is at worst a very exensable thing. I want, if God wills, to
show to the sinfully weak ones that their condition is not proper at all,
and that it is the work of faith to lift us right out of it; not to help
us in our evil weakness, but to deliver us out of it and to make us
strong, reversing our present condition by enabling us to be mighty in the
work of God. Since the text teaches that faith is the grand cure for
spiritual feebleness, I shall, first, cite a few cases of cure; in the
second place, I shall analyse the remedy; in the third place, I shall
endeavor to administer it; and in the fourth place, I shall say a word of
praise to the Physician who prescribes it.
—————
I. At the outset, we have said that faith is the cure for spiritual
weakness, and I have to Mention Cases Of Cure.
I shalt not now cite cases from the Old Testament of bodily cures which
have been wrought by faith, though I might mention Hezekiah, who being
sick unto death was by faith in God’s promise restored to life, and his
period of existence lengthened for fifteen years. In the apostolic times
it was through faith that many sicknesses were made to fly before the
healing touch of the apostles. That power of healing has probably become
extinct, or is lying dormant in the church; yet there are still
indications that faith has some power in that direction. I cannot but
think that when honest John Wickliffe, raising himself up in the bed of
sickness, said to the monks who surrounded his much expecting him to die
and tempting him to recant, “I shall not die, but live to declare the
wicked deeds of the monks” -I cannot but think that his faith had much to
do with his cure; had he been a man of a timorous, wavering frame of mind,
his sick bed might have been his death bed, but the vital forces were all
thrown into energetic action by the mental energy of his faith, and the
crisis was safely passed. I do not know how far faith may still operate
upon the bodily frame, for there is certainly an intimate connection
between the soul and the body. Those wondrous cases recorded in the life
of Dorothea Trudel of Zurich, indicate the singular power of faith to
assist in the cure of the body by its calming influence on the mind. That
admirable woman, who has but just departed this life, became the foundness
of a hospital in which cures were wrought mainly by the means of prayer
and faith, cures which have been substantiated in the best possible
manner, namely, by her enemies having dragged her before the law courts of
Zurich for practising physic without a diploma, when she proved that the
only physic used was directing the mind to Christ and proclaiming the
gospel, by which a holy calm spread over the mind and the body derived
manifest benefit. Such cases, and others, which we have noticed, go to
show that if we had more faith in the living God, it might sometimes be
possible for the soul so to overmaster the body that out of weakness we
might still in Hezekiah’s fashion be made strong. These hints are not
however to the point, and relate rather to a theory than to revealed
truth.
That faith strengthens Christian men has been proved often in the history
of the church of God. The church’s weakness springs mainly and mostly from
a want of faith in her God, and in the revelation, which God has entrusted
to her. When men believe intensely they act vigorously, and when their
principles penetrate their very souls, and become precious to them as life
itself, then no suffering is too severe, and no undertaking is too
laborious, and no conflict too heroic. They will enter upon
impossibilities, laugh at them, and overcome them, when once they know of
a surety that the principles, which move them are most certainly from God.
This seems to me to be the great work, which Luther did in his day, under
God the Holy Spirit’s power. He brought back the church to the strength of
faith, and then her whole force returned. The man knew but very little of
truth upon the doctrine of justification by faith; he was clear as the sun
at noonday, but he was half a Romanist in most other respects, but this
one all-important thing he did for the church, he made her believe in God
and in God’s truth with a vigorous decision, which had almost ceased from
among men.
Though he knew not all the weapons of the divine armoury, yet the one he
did know he wielded with such bravery of faith, and such tremendous
dogmatism, that his resolute soul shamed others into steadfastness. See
the man as he goes into Worms, defying a host of devils, though they were
as many as the tiles on the roofs of the houses; see him standing up in
the Diet of Worms, and alleging that he could not retract, So help him
God! See him in his earlier days, nailing up his theses upon the church
doors, as sailors nail their colors to the mast; or rending the Pope’s
bull in pieces and casting it into the fire, as men resolved on conquest
break down the bridges behind them and render retreat impossible: it was
the man’s faith in God that helped him to do great exploits, and the
church learned from him to believe that “God everywhere hath sway, and
all things serve his might.” When the church once more believed firmly,
her spirit returned to her, and like a giant refreshed with new wine, she
recommenced her race.
In the modern revival under Whitfield and Wesley the restoration of faith
was the source of restored strength. Those brethren, differing in doctrine
as they did, had this point in common, namely, that they were intense
believers in the indwelling power and presence of the Holy Ghost in the
church. Men had been disputing, and trying to prove or disprove
everything. Sermons were frequent upon such topics as whether there were a
God or no. Now, you never find Whitfield or Wesley wasting time over such
matters; they were so full of God’s Spirit, and could see him so clearly
everywhere at work, that they felt no need of proving it. While men were
discussing as to whether the Scriptures were inspired, and divines were
writing books upon the evidences, these men preached the gospel, and
infidelity fled before them. An age destitute of spiritual life generally
amuses itself by trying to prove what is not worth proving, or wasting its
energy upon external things to the neglect of the inward; an age
spiritually alive takes itself to the Lord’s work, and treats all doubt as
folly and sin. The followers of Whitfield and Wesley, instead of proving
with diffidence, and apologising for the gospel with half-heartedness,
came forth with, “Thus and thus saith the Lord.” They mounted their
pulpits as monarchs mount their thrones; and stood forward not as timid
apologists, but as ambassadors armed with divine authority they proclaimed
the truth, and men owned its power, till from one end of the land to the
other the dry bones arose to life and stood as an exceeding great army.
Brethren, our churches must come back to the old faith, and to a firm
belief in it. If you do not believe the articles of your faith reject
them, and do not be sham believers. If the doctrines, which you profess be
indeed true, grip them, hold them fast, get them engraven upon your souls,
and burnt into your consciences. Have faith in God, and the truth-that the
truth cannot be destroyed nor God defeated. Vitality and power in your
faith will soon send force and life into all the other parts of your
spiritual manhood. What has been proved upon the largest scale has been
true in all other instances. For instance, the weakness of depraved human
nature always gives way before the energy of that faith which the Spirit
works in us. The sinner in his weakness being aroused, sighs dolefully-
“I would but cannot sing,
I would but cannot pray.”
I would but cannot break the bonds of sin, I would but cannot melt my
heart and soften it in penitence. When the sinner is pointed to the cross,
and comes to trust himself with Jesus, viewing the blood sprinkled and the
righteousness wrought out, then the man can pray, can sing, can melt in
penitence, or can rise up in flames of love. The inability of human nature
is instrumentally removed by the energy of faith. It was through believing
that you became strong; if you had continued to live by work, or by
feeling you would have been still as week as ever, but when you looked out
of self to Christ and trusted him, it was then your strength came to you.
The same is tine of subsequent spiritual debility. Christians who are
alive unto God, and are endowed with some divine strength, are attacked at
times with a spiritual, universal decline. Just as we sometimes see a
strong and healthy person growing pale and wan, losing appetite and
falling into sickness, until he becomes a mere skeleton, because a general
sapping and undermining of the constitution has come upon him: so have I
seen it with Christians; they do not lose life, but they do lose all their
energy, and become as listless and lifeless as some of you probably now
are in body through the heat of the air. Then they can scarce walk, much
less run, and mounting with wings as eagles were quite out of the
question. Such persons will bear witness that the only way of recruiting
their strength is by faith. They must come again to the first principles,
and trust their souls anew with Jesus, believing over again with a novelty
of energy the old doctrines of the gospel. They must go to God as to a
real God in believing prayer, and they will not long remain weak. Out of
weakness faith is sure to make us strong, and the change effected in us is
equal to that which we see in a man who having been long confined to his
couch at last returns to his labor showing no tokens whatever of disease.
I have still been dealing with the great principle of the text on a large
scale; we will now particularise a little more. Take a few forms of
weakness. Many believers who are vigorous in many respects are troubled
with a hesitancy in testimony; they cannot speak up for Jesus. Whenever
they try to say a good word. nervousness, or something akin to it,
restrains them. They say with Moses, “Lord, I am slow of speech.” They
hesitate, or are still. There is no cure for hesitancy in the confession
of Christ equal to faith; observe Moses, he is so hesitating that God
gives him Aaron to be his spokesman, and yet read through the history, and
Moses is the better orator of the two. Aaron has a golden mouth, but, by
degrees the confidence that Moses feels in his commission enables him to
rebuke Aaron, and when Aaron goes up to Mount Hor to sleep in the arms of
God, Moses stands up and in that last sermon he delivered, and that psalm
he sung before the assembled multitude, you cannot detect the slightest
trace of slowness of speech. The man hits overcome his weakness by faith;
a holy faith has given him a holy courage, and the tongue once bound has
become unloosed. I should advise some of you to try it. A strong dose of
the essential oil of believing taken every morning and evening would
enable you to tell to sinners round what a dear Savior you have found.
Another common weakness among Christians is timidity. Modesty is
beautiful, but it may degenerate to cowardice. It is well to be humble, it
is never well to be weakly fearful. Some are always afraid, they dare not
try this, and dare not try that; and if they happen to be placed in office
where they can influence others by their counsels, they are shockingly bad
officers, because they are always keeping the church back from victory
from a fear of defeat. What is a sure cure for timidity? Faith, belief in
the truth, in the right, in God, in invisible energy, in helps which we
cannot see, and aids which we should not have dreamed or. This shakes off
timidity. Take as a specimen Barak. Barak is slow to go up against the
enemies of God, till Deborah the mother of Israel says she will go with
him. Woman sometimes lends superior courage to man, and the weaker sex
proves itself the stronger. Look at Barak; after he has once believed in
the power of God, he marches to the fight and wins the victory, and is
commemorated in soul-stirring words by the poetess, “Awake, awake,
Deborah; awake, awake, utter a song; arise, Barak, and lead thy captivity
captive, thou son of Abinoam.” Mighty to conquer was the man who was
timid to fight: when faith gave him courage, it made him triumph. Carry a
vial of strong faith along with you, and a good draught thereof will drive
off fainting fits. This is the true strong water, the genuine Elixir, the
famous cordial, the heavenly Aqua Vitae.
A frequent form of weakness is despondency, which is so common in English
churches as to be as much a national disorder as consumption, it is not so
common among you as it was, but still more so than I could wish. We are
not so gay and frivolous as our Gallican neighbors, and we are not quite
so go-ahead as our trans-Atlantic friends, and I am afraid, as Englishmen,
we have a natural tendency to become despondent. I know I feel it myself,
and in the circle where I move it is not at all uncommon. Brethren,
despondency is not a virtue, I believe it is a vice, I am heartily ashamed
of myself for falling into it, but I am sure there is no remedy for it
like a holy faith in God. Asaph, of old, was very subject to this
weakness, and he said to himself, “Why art thou cast down, O my soul, why
art thou disquieted within me?” But what was the medicine he took? “Hope
thou in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance.”
That was the remedy, and David prescribes it too, when he says, “Trust in
him at all times, ye people; pour out your hearts before him.”
Despondency hamstrings a man; it makes him weak in the arena of conflict,
when he ought to be like a well-trained athlete struggling with his foe,
and contending for the mastery. Christian, beseech your Lord to increase
your faith in him, your trust in the Unseen, your reliance upon his
promise and fidelity; for when you get more faith you will rise superior
to that weakness, and out of the weakness you will be made strong.
Impatience too, impatient murmuring, is another form of Christian weakness
in which we must not expect to be made strong in grace, but must plead for
grace to get out of it. It strikes me that Job may naturally have been an
impatient body. He utters sundry very tart and snappish things to his
friends, not one whit more sharp than they deserved, but he held fast to
his integrity as if he had been a very Pharisee at first; but how strong
he was, and how clear of his weakness, when by divine grace he could say,
“Though he slay me, yet will I trust in him!” There was the medicine you
see, trusting in God. Job, full of faith, sitting on a dunghill, is a far
more splendid sight than the Great Mogul upon his throne. I do not believe
heaven and earth ever saw a more majestic spectacle, than the Patriarch on
the dunghill covered with sore boils, scraping himself with a potsherd and
yet saying, “Shall I receive good from the hands of the Lord, and not
receive evil?” Princes, potentates, and kings, your power never reached
to this, and even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed so gloriously
as poor Job! Brethren, if we had more faith in God, that he makes all
things work together for good to them that love him, we should not grow so
impatient, we should bear the pain, the cross and the loss, with greater
equanimity, feeling, “My Father sent it; my Father overrules it; good
will come of it.”
Perhaps you are weary of this list of weaknesses, but I must add one more,
namely, weakness in overcoming besetting sins. I hope we are not among
those who make light of sin. A genuine Christian dreads sin. He will not
say, “Is it not a little one?” for he knows that a little sin is like a
small dose of a very potent poison: it is sufficient to destroy our peace
and comfort. There are some sins, which really seem as if we could not get
the mastery over them. I will instance one, namely, a passionate
disposition. A person who is of quick temper may get into the condition of
thinking, “Well, I was born so and cannot help it, I always shall be of a
quick temper.” You always will be if you think that; but it strikes me
that the grace of God must have power to overcome evil tempers, and that
your hope will be in believing that yours can be overcome, and in
struggling to mortify this among the other affections of the flesh. I know
personally men who were once very passionate, but now are gentle; they
were once likely to take fire as readily as tinder at a spark, bat now
they would stand fire right well; and if I had to select patient men, I
would select those very men who were notorious for their fearful
passionateness in years gone by. “Well,” my dear friend, you will say,
“I cannot do it, sir.” No, I know you cannot, but there is one who can.
The eternal God who is your helper can surely help to make you a
reasonable being and rid you of this madness; for anger is temporary
insanity. Surely God can make you morally sane, and bring you back to a
calm state of mind; only believe in his power, and seek to be wholly
sanctified by his grace, spirit, soul and body, and you will see that as
he cast a legion of devils out of a man in days gone by he can now cast
this devil out of you, so that you will not be pestered with it any
longer. You may have to watch it as a householder watches a thief, but you
will get it out of doors and keep it at arm’s length. Oh for grace to get
our temper under our foot and keep it there, that though it may have a
tendency to rise we may keep it down. Anyhow, whatever may be our
besetting sin-and we all have something against which we ought to
strive-there have been cases in which such weaknesses have been cured by
faith. We have not time to stop to mention any modern instances, but we
know such. I trust some of us could adduce our own history as an instance
of what faith in God can do. “Out of weakness they were made strong.”
—————
II. We will turn to our second head and Analyse The Medicine.
The subject is so very wide that I must confine myself to one instance,
and shall speak of the medicine as it would be mixed and compounded for a
man struggling at very dreadful odds against a gigantic system of evil. He
was very weak, but through faith he becomes strong. One of the first
ingredients of faith’s medicine is a sense of right. Everybody admits that
when a man is sure that right is on his side, he finds strength in that
belief. Even if two men are going to law with one another, the one who
knows that his case is founded upon justice enters the court with much
more strength of mind than he who is conscious of several flaws in his
suit, and only trusts to the blessed uncertainty of the law. There is
truth in the old saying, that “a good conscience is the best armor.” It
is of no very great use in a real battle, for unfortunately the shots have
no respect for saint or sinner, but when in the way are pretty sure to
kill anybody who stops them; but of the utmost value in the battle of
principle. A man who cannot argue, yet, when he knows he is right will
somehow or other stand his ground. He says, “my opponent has more wit
than I have; he understands logic better than I, but I know I am right;”
and to know you are right necessarily gives you strength. Faith is a
belief in the rightness of that which God reveals, a trusting in its
truth, and who wonders that a man who believes, therefore becomes strong?
A second ingredient is heavenly authority. Everybody knows that a man who
is naturally weak will often act very bravely when he has authority to
back him. Let the Christian combatant feel-as feel he will when he has
faith-that he is armed with divine authority, and you will not wonder if
from a dwarf he rises to a giant. “This,” saith he, “is not my quarrel;
I believe it to be God’s war: the truth which I maintain at such hazards
is no dogma of my own invention, it is God’s own offspring; God has sent
me to fight for it: God puts the word into my mouth.” A man thus
conscious that he has a mission from heaven cannot be afraid; he must be
mighty; and when a man feels in addition to that, that God’s decree
appoints him to accomplish a certain end, that God’s promise declares that
he shall succeed, and that from the eternal nature of truth it cannot
sustain defeat; then surely he stands like a rook in the midst of the
billows, and he cannot waver, he casts all thought of fear to the winds.
Mixed with this is a consciousness of heavenly companionship, which makes
the believer courageous. Many a man who would have been afraid to go to
battle alone has marched along very cheerily because of the many thousands
who are hurrying to the same attack. The Christian feels that he has the
companionship of his God and Savior. Jesu’s name is “Emmanuel, God with
us.” The best of all is, God is with us. If we suffer, Jesus suffers in
one of his members; if we are slandered and reproached for Jesus’ sake, it
is the cross of Christ, which we are carrying, and Jesus bears it with us.
We hear the more than angel whisper, “Fear not, I am with thee.” Come
then, let us sing as we march onward-
“If on my face for thy dear name,
Shame said reproach shall be
I’ll hail reproach and welcome
shame,
If thou remember me.”
In addition to all this, faith has an expectation of supernatural help
Faith hears the wheels of Providence working on her behalf. Mahomet in his
earlier career, though his faith was but mere fanaticism, yet gave great
courage to his men by the daring things, which he said and did. As he
threw the handful of dust into the air, he believed that his foes were
blinded, and his soldiers won an easy victory; he declared that he heard
the noise of angels’ horses as they came to the fight, and no sooner had
he thus spoken than every man grew brave. Now the Christian, not in
imagination, but in spiritual fact, can hear the wings of angels flying to
the rescue of divine truth. Here I see to-day the hand of a man, but I see
also with it the wing of an angel. God worketh for his people; the evil he
hindereth and restricteth, the good he speedeth and multiplieth, and,
therefore, strong in invisible succours, we must not wonder that out of
weakness the believer is made strong. I must not omit one powerful
ingredient in faith’s life-draught, it is the prospect of ultimate reward.
Faith bows her head in the day of battle when the poisoned arrows fly like
hail. She whispers to herself, “I may fall, but I shall rise again,” and
she vows by the eternal God that when she rises, it shall be with the
self-same banner in her hand for which she tell. She knows that in the end
she cannot, must not, tall-that she s hall conquer. When a man fears
defeat he will probably bring it upon himself, for his fear ensures it;
but when a man does not know how to be defeated, the little petty
disasters of the way all conduce to his ultimate victory. So, Christians,
you who are warring for God and his truth, I hope you will not despair
because of the gloomy aspect of the present age. It may appear as if
infidelity and Puseyism together would eat out the very bowels of God’s
church, but courage, my brethren, courage,-these foes will eat up one
another one of these days, or there shall rise a man out of their own
ranks, who will be their downfall. We yet may live to thank God for the
apparent retrograde movements of to-day, for upon this the Lord may ride
to a brighter ultimate triumph. Faith is strong because she is sure of
victory. Faith takes to herself this thought, that in the victory she
shall share her reward. What will not men do for a crown? even for an ivy
crown the Grecian Athlete would strain every nerve. Now they did it for a
corruptible crown, but we for an incorruptible. Faith makes the crown of
eternal life glitter before the believer’s eye; it waves before him the
palm branch. Sense pictures the grave, loss, suffering, defeat, death,
forgetfulness: but faith points to the resurrection, the pompous
appearance of the Son of Man, the calling of the saints from every corner
of the earth, the clothing of them all in their triumphant array, and the
entrance of the blood-washed conquerors into the presence of God with
eternal joy. Thus faith makes us out of weakness to become strong. Let me
remind you that the essential ingredients of faith’s comfort are just
these: faith sees the invisible and beholds the substance of that which is
afar off: faith believes in God, a present, powerful God, full of love and
wisdom effecting his decree, accomplishing his purpose, fulfilling his
promise, glorifying his Son. Faith believes in the blood of Jesus, in the
effectual redemption on the bloody tree, it believes in the power of the
Holy Spirit, his might to soften the stone and to put life into the very
ribs of death. Faith grasps the reality of this Book; she does not look
upon it as a sepulcher with a stone laid thereon, but as temple in which
Christ reigns; as an ivory palace out of which he comes riding in his
chariot, conquering and to conquer. Faith does not believe the gospel to
be a worn-out scroll, to be rolled up and put away; she believes that the
gospel instead of being in its dotage is in its youth; she anticipates for
it a manhood of mighty strugglings, and a grand maturity of blessedness
and triumph. Faith does not shirk the fight; she longs for it, because she
foresees the victory. I would compare faith to an emperor, of whom we have
read that he summoned his counsellors and generally judged as to whether
he should go to war by their opinion, but he did it in the following
manner:-if they warned him that it would be a very fearful war, if they
said that the enemy’s cities would never be taken, that the armies on the
other side were too numerous to be conquered, and the provinces too
extensive to be held, he would reply, “We will do it then, for if there
be anything which you, gentlemen, think to be easy, it is beneath the
dignity of the emperor and the troops whom he commands, but if you reckon
it impossible there is a clear field for honor.” Was it not a man fit to
be a soldier of such a prince, who when told that the Persian arrows were
so numerous that they would obscure the light of the sun, replied, “We
shall fight splendidly in the shade.” Surely he was akin to Alexander,
who, when they said that the Persians were as the sands on the seashore,
replied, “One butcher is not afraid of a whole flock of sheep.” So let
it be with us; let us feel that we are men of another mould than to be
afraid, that believing in God, we do not know how to spell “Cowardice,”
and as to fear of defeat or fear of man, we give that up for the craven
dogs who slink at their master’s heels, and wear their master’s collar,
and eat the garbage which his bounty throws to them. We care not for the
things that are seen; we have learned to live upon angels’ diet, and to
eat the bread which cometh down from heaven. Our motto is, “Courage,
courage;” and our belief is that the day shall come-
“When the might with the right,
And the right with the might
For evermore shall be,
And come what there may
To stand in the way,
That day the world shall see.”
—————
III. The third point is to Administer This Medicine, but no time
remains, and besides I cannot do it; you must go to him who compounded it,
namely, the blessed Spirit of the living God; and take with you this
prayer, “Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief,” and this other one,
“Lord, increase our faith;” but I will just give you a few hints.
Some of you are going through a present
personal difficulty; you are embarrassed in money matters, or a child is
sick, or the wife is dying, or some other providential trial is vexing
you,-you are saying, “I cannot bear it!” I will not pray with you that
you may be comforted in that sinful weakness, but I will and do beseech
you to ask for faith in that Father’s hand which wields the rod, that you
may get out of the weakness, and may now be made strong to suffer with
holy patience what your loving Father’s wisdom appoints for you. Others
have a spiritual duty before you, but you are shirking it because of its
difficulty. You do not like to “go through the ordeal” -that is what you
call it. You are disobediently timid. Now, I shall not ask God to comfort
you in that weakness; you know your Master’s will, and you do it not; may
you be beaten with many stripes, and may the stripes be blessed to you. I
will ask that, knowing your duty, you may rise out of that weakness by
believing that God will help you to obey, and so out of weakness you may
be made strong. Some of you are called where you live to contend earnestly
for God and for his truth. You have many adversaries; now your weakness
makes you withhold your testimony. You have been trimming a good deal; you
have been worshipping that modern Diana called Charity, which is the devil
in the form of an angel of light, and instead of bringing out all the
truth you have given up the corners of it, I shall not ask that you may
have any comfort in such weakness. May you be ashamed of having been
ashamed of Christ and of his cross; but I do plead with God for you that
believing the very sweepings of truth to be precious, and the very
cuttings of the diamond of the gospel to be worth fighting for, you may
escape from your weakness and be made strong in life and death to declare
God’s truth boldly. Some or you are always doubting your Father’s love,
the faithfulness of Christ, and your own interest in him; I will not
comfort you in such a state. I will not pray God to comfort you while you
are in it, but I do ask you to pray that you fly from such weakness. Do
not doubt your God till you have cause to doubt him. Oh, brethren, if you
will never distrust the Lord Jesus till he gives you an occasion for
distrust, and till there is something in his character which should
rationally excite your suspicion, you will never disbelieve again. I pray
you seek more faith, and you will rise out of your fears. You who are
afraid of dying-and there are some such here-shall I ask that you may be
made strong while in that weakness? No. I dare not. Jesus Christ did not
come to give you comfort while you are under the fear of death; but he
came to deliver those who through fear of death are all their lifetime
subject to bondage. The plea shall be, therefore, that you may have such
faith in God and such a view of the Canaan on the other side the flood,
that you may look forward with delight, or at least with resignation, to
the time when you shall pass the river and be for ever with the Lord. The
text says out of weakness, brethren, and oh, may God grant that some of
you who have been lying spiritually on a sick bed may through this sermon
be made to take up your bed and walk; may all weakness be left behind even
as the child leaves the little garments of the nursery behind him when he
becomes a man.
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IV. My last work was to Praise The Physician, and who is this?
Who is it that has taught us to believe? It is our Father who is in
heaven, who has taught us and bidden us trust him: blessed be his name.
Join with me-you need not sing with those lips-let your heart sing as you
say, “Blessed he our heavenly Father, who has given us like precious
faith in him. Source of all goodness, foundation of all confidence, we
adore thee for teaching us the sweet art of trusting thee! Let us also
with equal thankfulness, bless the Lord Jesus, for we had never been
capable of faith in the invisible God if there had not been a Mediator by
whom we might come to him. Blessed be those wounds and those agonies, and
that death which is the door of our faith in the Father’s love. Blessed
moreover be that mysterious person, the Holy Spirit, for faith is his
gift, and if it is to be increased in us, he must increase it. O blessed
Spirit, be thou for ever praised for putting such a jewel as faith into
our poor hearts; and blessed be thy power for keeping it there, for Satan
would long ago have stolen it; and blessed be thine energy which shall
keep it till I am beyond the reach of the foe.”
Brethren and sisters, do not let what I have said this morning merely pass
your ears. I am persuaded that though I have not put it as I could wish,
there is a great deal of practical value in the truth, which I have
stated. You must be strong. This is not an age in which weak Christianity
will do. It is strong, energetic religion that we want now, and you cannot
obtain it except by gaining strong faith, and much of it. Plead for it,
and then, when you shall have obtained it, the world shall feel your
power. God shall be glorified, and Christ’s name shall be lifted high.
You who have no faith at all may learn something here. It is only by faith
that the impotence and inability of human nature is overcome, so that the
soul receives Christ unto salvation. May the Holy Spirit work that faith
in you to your eternal salvation, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.
