The same event may happen alike to all, yet it may have a very different meaning to different individuals. Ungodly men are brought low by affliction or poverty, for sinners have no immunity from suffering. Saints also are led into trying circumstances, for the utmost holiness will not preserve any man from trial. But what a difference there is between the downfall of the prosperous sinner and of the man whom God loves! The wicked man, who continueth in his wickedness, falleth for ever; but the righteous man, though he may fall seven times, riseth up again, for he shall not fall finally. How dreadful is the language of Jehovah when speaking of the ungodly! “To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.”

The wicked man, who prospers in this world, carries his head very high; he is proud and conceited, and he treads the poor under his feet. His career seems to be one of uninterrupted prosperity; higher, and higher, and higher, and yet higher he mounts; he becomes more wealthy and famous, and, meanwhile, he also becomes more boastful, and more arrogant towards God. He asks, “Who is the Lord that I should obey his voice?” He breathes defiance against the Most High; his heart grows harder and harder, like the heart of Pharaoh. Do you see where he is now? He has climbed to the very mountain’s brow; he is rejoicing that he has reached the topmost pinnacle of fame. Who can ever pull him down from that height? Who can even disturb his peace? Wait a while, tarry but a brief season. High places are full of danger, and the terrible prophecy shall yet be fulfilled in his experience, and in that of many others who are like him, “Their feet shall slide in due time;” and when men in such a position do begin to slip and slide, their fall is irrevocable. Down, down they go, falling from precipice to precipice, until they are utterly broken in pieces. Am I addressing any man who thinks that he is beyond the reach of the arrows of the Almighty? Ere another week has passed over your head, sir, you may lie gazing into eternity, and the joints of your loins shall be loosed as you begin to realize that you must so soon stand before the judgment seat of Christ. Vain, then, will be all your wealth and all your wit. You may now deride the godly, who seek mercy at the hands of God; but, then, you will cry out worse than they have ever done. You have often, in your pride, mocked them in the hour of their distress; but, in the day of your calamity, it may be that, ere you shall have even time to present one prayer to God, your foot shall slide, you will find yourself lost, and for ever have to wring your hands in anguish at your own folly in having despised eternal love, and rejected the mercy of God in Christ Jesus.

I would not change places with the greatest man who is living without the Saviour; if I could have the whole world given to me, if I could be the possessor of a thousand worlds, and yet live for a single moment without having my sin forgiven, and without the love of God shed abroad in my heart, it would be a living death to me. I think it should be so with each one of you, and it would be if you carefully thought the matter over; and I invite you to do so, and I earnestly ask you to imagine how dreadful must be the doom of an ungodly man. When he dies, he sinks into the abyss of hell. When his light goes out, there is no means of lighting it again; the tenfold midnight, thick as Egypt’s darkness, shall never be broken by the gleaming of a solitary star of hope. I want you to think all the more of this solemn truth because I am going to speak of others, who do fall very low, and suffer very much, yet, after all, their descent is followed by an ascent, their declining leads to a revival, for, according to our text, “the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.”

I shall apply the text, first of all, to the Lord’s own Church.

It may relate to any sorely-tried church. I may be addressing some brethren, up from the country, who are members of churches that are sadly declining. If that is the case, let me remind you, dear friends, that God may have a true church which is very severely tried. The track of the ship of the Church has lain full often over very boisterous waters. Sometimes the sea has seethed and the billows have boiled through the fury of persecution; the prow of the vessel has been crimsoned with blood, but onward has she moved. Still has the divine wind speeded her on her way; and, despite the kings of the earth, and all the infernal tortures that Rome’s inquisitors could invent, the sturdy ship has gone straight on towards her desired haven. The days of persecution have not yet ceased, but when any churches are brought very low through the attacks of cruel enemies, there is still hope for them in this promise of the living God.

What is far worse for a church even than persecution, it may be minished and brought low through the folly of its own members. Mine eyes could weep day and night over some churches that I know, which seem to me to be determined to commit spiritual suicide. They fall to quarrelling, when they are weak enough already, and need what little strength they have for fighting against the common foe. Often, they divide into parties about nothing at all; and where there should be unbroken brotherhood, there is an absence of anything like Christian love, and therefore the Spirit of God departs from them.

Many churches are, alas! brought low through a faulty ministry. A ministry, that does not ring out, in tones as clear as a clarion, “Salvation by grace, through faith in the precious blood of Jesus Christ,” is an impoverishing ministry. If there is no nourishing food for the soul, how can it be in spiritual health? Where will the gathering of the people be if the Shiloh is not present? If Christ be absent from the assembly, is not everything lacking that can build up a true Christian church? In many and many a place that I wot of, the members of the church have become few and feeble because the ministry has not fed their souls. And, sometimes, a church may get down so very low that it appears as if it would become altogether extinct. One is afraid that the doors of the chapel will have to be closed, that the altar-fire will go out, and that the testimony for God will cease in that particular hamlet, or village, or township.

Now, brethren, if any of you are members of such a church as that, what you have to make sure of is that it is a church of Christ, and that you are God’s people and God’s servants, for our text speaks of God’s favour to “his people” and “his servants.” This passage does not apply to every nominal church, nor to every conglomeration of merely moral men who call themselves Christians; but it does concern every real church of God, however low it may have been brought.

When you are in such a state as this, what you have to do is to lay the condition of the church to heart, and to cry unto God to raise it up again. Use every possible and right means to bring a revival; but if your way is blocked up, and there seems to be no possibility of success attending your efforts, then fall back upon this text, and plead it with God in prayer: “For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.”

For, next, if you pray in faith, God will return to you. I believe that half-a-dozen persons, with vital religion in their souls, and really in earnest, may pray a church right out of any ditch into which it may have fallen, or bring it up even from the sepulchre where it has been buried, and make it live again in fulness of life; only there must be an intense determination that it shall be so, and real anguish and travail of soul until the desired end is attained. The fact that the church has come to her extremity of weakness should cheer you, rather than drive you to despair; for when a thing is so low that it cannot get any lower, there is some consolation in that fact. Now is the time to hope that the tide will turn; if it has ebbed out to the very uttermost, now let us trust that it will soon begin to flow again. I do not know whether the common saying is true, that the darkest hour of the night is that which precedes the dawn of day; but let us hope that it is so with your church, and that, when it has got very, very, very low, it has reached its limit of weakness, and that God will raise it up again.

There are some friends, whom I meet every now and then, who tell me that there are very dreadful times coming upon the world; I am not sure that they are right in all their forecasts; but one thing I do know, and that is, if ever the Church of God should get into a worse state than she has ever yet been in, if I am alive at such a time, I will still call together the last half-dozen faithful ones if I am one of them, and I will get them to read with me this verse, “For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.”

You remember that, when John Huss was being burned to death, he said, “Within a hundred years, there will come a man whom the persecutors will not be able to burn.” The name Huss signified goose, and he said, “there will come a swan that you will never be able to roast;” that was Martin Luther, who was many times in great peril, and yet was not killed by the persecutors. When he was converted, the world was as dark spiritually as it well could be; yet God then found, even in the monastery, a monk whose preaching of the gospel shook the world. Never be afraid of the ultimate issue of the great battle; God will beat the devil yet. Never admit into your mind thoughts that shall lead you to despond concerning the end of the conflict. The battle is the Lord’s, and he will give the victory to his gospel yet. If some of the young people here should live to see all those who now preach the gospel laid in the silent grave, if any of you should live to see this place of worship empty, if ever this pulpit should cease to resound with the gospel of Christ, do not give up hope, my brethren; still stick together, even if there are only a few of you left, and cry mightily unto God, pleading the promise of our text, for he will remember you, and will “repent himself for his servants,” and his cause shall yet again revive.

Now, in the second place, I want to show you that our text is applicable to the tried believer. I may be addressing someone to whom these words of Moses shall drop as the rain, and distil as the dew.

Beloved brethren, God may bring his people, in the order of his providence, into such a state that “their power is gone.” Apparently, they are in such a condition that they are quite unable to help themselves. They have struggled against many difficulties; but, at last, the difficulties have proved more than a match for them. All earthly help has quite failed them; to quote the words of the text, “their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left,”-no garrison left in the city, no soldier left in the field, no helper anywhere. You may be like Job, who had no friends left, except the miserable comforters, who spoke more like enemies than friends. You are not the first of God’s servants whose power is gone, and whose friends are gone. The worst about your trial may be that it may seem to you, and seem truly, that some of your suffering is the result of sin. You may not have been walking with God as you ought to have done, your heart may have grown cold; so that which has come upon you may be a chastisement for your wandering, it may be a rod in the hand of your loving Father, smiting you because of your folly. But I beseech you, now that all human power is gone, do not run away from God, but fly to him. Do not give up your hope in him. However deplorable your circumstances may be, let them drive you to God, and not from him. Your only hope now lies in the compassion of your God. Let me read this text again to you, and I pray that your faith may enable you to grasp it: “for the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.” There is a gracious purpose behind your present trial, even though you do not yet perceive it.

It is possible that it was absolutely necessary that you should be brought as low as you are in order to cure you of your sin. You have come to your last shilling, have you? I have known a doctor to keep his patient almost without food, and bring the man down very low in order to starve out the complaint from which he was suffering; and in a surgical case, the knife has had to go in very deeply so as to get at the roots of the cancer. In like manner, it may be that it was necessary that your affliction should not be stopped midway, but should be allowed to proceed to the bitter end, in order that it might be the means of curing you of the evils which were rankling in your spirit.

Possibly, too, the affliction was permitted to develop to the uttermost in order that you might be induced to return to your God. It may be that, in your prosperity, you had grown so careless and so fond of the world, and you had so little delight in God, that it was necessary for you to have your gourds withered, and your flowers all made to decay, in order that you might, in your abject distress, turn again unto your God.

Or it may be that God intends that you should for ever bear a testimony to his faithfulness such as no ordinary man can bear. Those people who only sail in a little boat on a lake have no stories to tell of adventures at sea; but he who is to write a book describing long voyages must travel far out of sight of land, and behold the sea in the time of storm, as well as in a calm. You are to become, perhaps, an experienced Christian, you are to bring great honour to God by being the means of comforting others who will be tried in a similar way to yours; you are to be trained into a hero, and that cannot be done except by great and bitter griefs coming upon you. I believe that there are some of us whom God cannot trust with much joy. If we carry much sail, his wisdom and his love compel him to give us much ballast also, or else we shall be blown over. There must be many a man who knows within himself that he cannot be trusted with success. His head would turn dizzy if he were set upon a high pinnacle, and he would get proud, and self-sufficient, and so be ruined. God will not kill his children with sweets any more than he will destroy them with bitters. They shall have a tonic when they need it; but when that tonic is so bitter that they seem as if they could not drink it and live, their Lord will either take the tonic away, or give them some delicious sweetness to remove all the bitter taste.

I will read the text to you again; I cannot preach from it as I should like to do, but the text itself is full of comfort to the Lord’s own chosen ones who are in sore straits: “For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.” Tried child of God, I wish I could grasp thy hand in tenderest sympathy, and whisper in thine ear, “In thy lowest moments, do not despair. ‘Hath God forgotten to be gracious? hath he in anger shut up his tender mercies?’ Nay, verily, ‘for the Lord will not cast off for ever: but though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies.’ ‘Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.’ The Lord himself saith to thee, ‘I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee;’ ‘when thou passest through the waters, I will be with thee; and through the rivers, they shall not overflow thee: when thou walkest through the fire, thou shalt not be burned; neither shall the flame kindle upon thee.’ ‘He shall deliver thee in six troubles: yea, in seven there shall no evil touch thee.’ Therefore, if thou walkest in darkness, and seest no light, trust in the Lord, and stay thyself upon thy God, for he will have compassion upon thee; he will take away his wrath, and smile again upon thy soul, and turn thy lamentation into singing, and thy mourning into dancing.”

This must suffice for the tried child of God, for I want to show that the text also applies to the convicted sinner.

Are there any of you who cannot say that you are the children of God, but who wish that you were? I said to one, the other day, “Are you a Christian?” and he replied, “No, sir; but, oh! how I wish that I were!” When I heard with what emphasis he spoke, I thought that he must be not far from the kingdom; for is not he who wishes to be a Christian, almost one already? Is there not the beginning of a work of grace in his heart which the Holy Spirit will carry on to completion? So I will read the text now to you who wish to be saved, but fear that you shall not be, for you have such a dreadful sense of sin: “For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.”

Do these words describe your present condition? First, is your self-righteousness all gone? A few months ago, you were a fine fellow according to your own estimate; you thought that there were few as good as you. But, to-night, you came slinking in as if you felt afraid even to sit down with the people of God. You remember that line of the hymn,-

“Then look, sinner,-look unto him, and be saved,”-

and you feel that you would like to look to the Crucified One, you can go as far as that, but you cannot yet say that you have looked unto him, and that you are saved, for you have such an awful sense of your guilt in the sight of God. I know you, my friend; I “know the heart of a stranger;” for such was my heart in the time of my conviction on account of sin. Oh, the heaviness of a guilty conscience! Oh, the long, dark, dreary winter of the soul, when sin blots out the sun, turns even mercy into misery, and sorrow makes the day into night! Ah! I know you, my brother; your self-righteousness is all gone, and I am glad of it; I rejoice that the Lord has broken the iron sinew of your neck, and that your fine feathers and ornaments have all been stripped off you, and that you have put on sackcloth in place of your former comely array. The Lord help you to keep it on till Jesus Christ takes it off, for it is fit livery for a sinner to wear!

Then, next, you say that your power is all gone. Not many months ago, you thought that you could believe in the Lord Jesus Christ whenever you liked, that it was the easiest thing in all the world to become a Christian, and that you would trust the Saviour, some fine day or other, whenever you pleased. Yet, at this moment, you are sighing, “I would, but can’t believe. Lord, relieve my load of guilt. All my help must come from thee.” You are the gentleman who was going to conquer his evil temper, and give up his bad habits, and be a saint, and do it all yourself! Oh, yes, yes! then, you thought you could do anything and everything, but now you have come to realize that, apart from Christ, you can do nothing. Only the other morning, when you got up, you prayed to God, and you thought that you would lead a very good life throughout that whole day, yet you were out of temper before breakfast was over. You went to your business, and you were going to be quite an example there; and a pretty example you were! You felt that, as you went home at night, all your attempts to be better, and to do right, had failed. I am glad you have learnt your weakness, and I hope that your consciousness of weakness will become deeper and more painful still; for, until every bone in your body is broken, I am afraid that you will not turn to God. You are, I fear, one of the men who, as long as they can lift a little finger to help themselves, will still put all their trust in that little finger, and will not turn to the Strong for strength. To cure them of that evil, you must grind them to powder; you must do with them what Solomon says concerning the fool, bray them “in a mortar among wheat with a pestle,” before you can get this folly of supposed self-strength out of them. Even, then, sometimes, every atom of their ground and pounded being seems still to say, “I am somebody, after all.” So, it is a blessed thing when God makes us to know that all our power is gone.

Is my text true concerning any of you? “Their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.” Are you brought to such a pass that you have not anything in the whole world that you dare to rely upon? You look back upon all your church-going and your chapel-going, but you dare not rely upon them, for you feel that you have been a hypocrite in the house of God, and that your heart has not been right towards him. You look back upon your attempts to pray,-for you have been trying to pray lately,-but you feel as if you could not pray aright, the words stuck in your throat, and the very desires were dead within your spirit. Have you come to such a pass that, when you read the Bible, it condemns you; and when you hear the gospel, the preacher seems as if he excluded you from its provisions? Is it so? Is there no my of hope for you anywhere? You used to have some kind of hope in reserve, some secret, mysterious confidence that still buoyed you up: is that all gone? Do you realize that you are lost? Do you know that the sentence of death has been pronounced against you? Do you even begin to wonder why it has not been executed? Do you seem to feel in your heart the working of the Spirit, as if even now he would take you away, and cast you into hell? Blessed be the Lord if you have come to such a pass as that! Your extremity is God’s opportunity. The difficulty all along has been to get to the end of you; for when a man gets to the end of himself, he has reached the beginning of God’s working. When you are cleaned right out, and have not anything at all left, then all the mercy of the covenant of grace is yours. I may have doubts about whether God’s grace will be exercised in certain cases; but I cannot raise any question about the freeness of divine grace to a soul that is empty, to a soul that is ready to perish, to a soul that is enquiring after God, to a soul that is hungering and thirsting after righteousness. If you, poor sinner, are covered with leprosy from head to foot; if, though the priest should thoroughly examine you, he would have to declare that there is not one sound speck in you even of the size of a pin’s head, let me tell you what the law itself says,-you are clean; therefore, go your way. When once your soul is so conscious of your sin that every hope of salvation by your own works is entirely abandoned, and you feel that you are utterly condemned, then is Jesus Christ yours, for he came, not to call the righteous, but sinners. So, accept him as yours; take him, receive him now. He is made of God fulness to our emptiness, righteousness to our unrighteousness, life to our death, salvation to our condemnation, all in all to our poverty, our wretchedness, our sin.

Now let me read the text to you yet once more, and see if God the Holy Spirit does not press it home upon your conscience and heart: “For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left.” There is no hope for you except in the pity of God, no hope except in his mercy, and no hope of mercy except in the freeness of his mercy; and no hope even of the freeness of mercy except in the sovereignty of God, who hath mercy on those upon whom he will have mercy, and who gives his grace to the most unworthy, that it may be proved to be all the greater grace because it saves the very chief of sinners. If there is one of you who says, “I am the most unlikely man in all the world ever to be saved; I have the least claim upon God of any man that lives; the only claim I have is the right to be damned, for I have so grievously transgressed against God; I feel myself to be so guilty, that my only claim upon justice is the demand to be tried, condemned, and executed;”-if you really mean what you say, then you are the man to whom the gospel of the grace of God is specially sent, for it is written, “when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die: yet peradventure for a good (a benevolent) man some would even dare to die. But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” He gave himself for our sins, not for our righteousness; and he himself said, “They that are whole have no need of the physician, but they that are sick: I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.” Trust Christ, thou who darest not trust thyself. Fling thyself, all broken to pieces, at the feet of the broken-hearted Saviour, and he will turn again, and have compassion upon you. Yea, look unto him, and live, for-

“There is life for a look at the Crucified One;

There is life at this moment for thee.”

Give but one believing glance at that dear dying Son of God, and thou shalt hear him say to thee, “Go thy way; thy sins, which are many, are all forgiven thee.” The Lord grant it, for his name’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

DEUTERONOMY 32:1-43.

Verse 1. Give ear, O ye heavens, and I will speak; and hear, O earth, the words of my mouth.

Because men are so slow of hearing, Moses calls on the heavens and the earth to bear witness against them; and because of the sublimity of his subject, he calls upon the heavens and the earth to pay attention to it.

2. My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender herb, and as the showers upon the grass:

It is good preaching, and good hearing, too, when the gospel comes like a gentle shower which saturates and soaks into the soil, and refreshes and makes it fruitful. May God the Holy Spirit make it to be so whenever we gather together for worship! The Word of the Lord may be as a driving hail, breaking everything upon which it falls, and so becoming the savour of death unto death. But may God make it to us as the dew and the small rain from heaven, that it may be a savour of life unto life!

3-5. Because I will publish the name of the Lord: ascribe ye greatness unto our God. He is the Rock, his work is perfect: for all his ways are judgment: a God of truth and without iniquity, just and right is he. They have corrupted themselves,-

What a contrast there is between the incorruptible and immutable God and corruptible man! “They have corrupted themselves,”-

5. Their spot is not the spot of his children: they are a perverse and crooked generation.

God’s children have spots,-the spots caused by sin, which are recognized, mourned over, and struggled against by them; the ungodly have the same sort of spots, but they have no repentance concerning the sin which causes them.

6. Do ye thus requite the Lord, O foolish people and unwise? is not he thy father that hath bought thee? hath he not made thee, and established thee?

Sin is the basest form of ingratitude. We owe everything to God, and we ought therefore to treat him as our Creator and Father should be treated. On the contrary, how often have we requited him evil for good, and acted as if we regarded him as our enemy rather than as our best Friend!

7, 8. Remember the days of old, consider the years of many generations: ask thy father, and he will shew thee; thy elders, and they will tell thee. When the Most High divided to the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel.

His first thought was concerning his own people. He provided Canaan for them; it was just the very land for them, with space enough, and yet with not too much room, so that they might cultivate it all, and prove it to be a land flowing with milk and honey. Yet these special thoughts of God, with regard to his own chosen people, did not exclude kind thoughts towards the rest of mankind, for “he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people,” that is, the people belonging to other nations; but, still, his deepest and his highest thoughts were concerning the children of Israel.

9, 10. For the Lord’s portion is his people; Jacob is the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye.

And is not this also a true description of God’s love and kindness to you and to me, beloved in the Lord? Did he not find us in the wilderness? Has he not led us about, and by our experience instructed us, and has he not guarded us with as much watchful care as a man bestows upon the apple of his eye? Oh, blessed be his holy name, we owe everything to him! He giveth us everything that we have.

11-14. As an eagle stirreth up her nest, fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings: so the Lord alone did lead him, and there was no strange god with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, that he might eat the increase of the fields; and he made him to suck honey out of the rock, and oil out of the flinty rock; butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs, and rams of the breed of Bashan, and goats, with the fat of kidneys of wheat; and thou didst drink the pure blood of the grape.

God fed his ancient people with the best of the best, and gave it to them with no stinted hand; and, oh! when I think of the spiritual food which God has prepared for his people, surely “butter of kine, and milk of sheep, with fat of lambs,” and all such carnal things are but poor in comparison with the provisions of his grace. In a spiritual sense, the Lord hath indeed given to us “a feast of fat things, a feast of wines on the lees, of fat things full of marrow, of wines on the lees well refined.”

But now look again at the contrast between the Lord and his ancient people. God’s great goodness makes man’s sin appear all the blacker:-

15. But Jeshurun waxed fat, and kicked: thou art waxen fat, thou art grown thick, thou art covered with fatness; then he forsook God which made him, and lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation.

Many can endure the trials of adversity who cannot escape the perils of prosperity. Solomon truly said, “As the fining pot for silver, and the furnace for gold; so is a man to his praise;” and many a man has failed in that time of testing. When you come to be wealthy, to be admired, to receive honour among men, then is the time of your severest trial.

16, 17. They provoked him to jealousy with strange gods, with abominations provoked they him to anger. They sacrificed unto devils, not to God; to gods whom they knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared not.

Moses multiplies expressions to show the folly of Israel’s idolatry. Only think of “new gods that came newly up,” as if that which is new could be a god! The same thing may be said of the “new truth” of which we hear so much nowadays. That which is new cannot be true. Certainly, there is nothing new in theology but that which is utterly false.

The idols, which the Israelites worshipped, were not only new gods, but they were strange gods, which their fathers feared not. Worse than that, they were demons: “they sacrificed unto devils, not to God.” How low had even the chosen people sunk!

18-27. Of the Rock that begat thee thou art unmindful, and hast forgotten God that formed thee. And when the Lord saw it, he abhorred them, because of the provoking of his sons, and of his daughters. And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be: for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith. They have moved me to jealousy with that which is not God; they have provoked me to anger with their vanities: and I will move them to jealousy with those which are not a people; I will provoke them to anger with a foolish nation. For a fire is kindled in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, and set on fire the foundations of the mountains. I will heap mischiefs upon them; I will spend mine arrows upon them. They shall be burnt with hunger, and devoured with burning heat, and with bitter destruction: I will also send the teeth of beasts upon them, with the poison of serpents of the dust. The sword without, and terror within, shall destroy both the young man and the virgin, the suckling also with the man of gray hairs. I said, I would scatter them into corners, I would make the remembrance of them to cease from among men: were it not-

Here is a sweet word of grace amid the just judgments of Jehovah: “Were it not”-

27. That I feared the wrath of the enemy, lest their adversaries should behave themselves strangely, and lest they should say, Our hand is high, and the Lord hath not done all this.

So he spared them for his own name’s sake; and, to this day, when God can find no other reason for showing mercy to the guilty, he does it for his name’s sake; and this is a blessed plea to be urged by a man who can see no reason why God should have mercy upon him. He may say, “Lord, do it for thy name’s sake, to make thy grace and thy mercy illustrious, in the salvation of such a poor, hopeless wretch as I am.”

28-32. For they are a nation void of counsel, neither is there any understanding in them. O that they were wise, that they understood this, that they would consider their latter end! How should one chase a thousand, and two put ten thousand to flight, except their Rock had sold them, and the Lord had shut them up? For their rock is not as our Rock, even our enemies themselves being judges. For their vine-

That is, the vine of God’s enemies,-

32-34. Is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields of Gomorrah: their grapes are grapes of gall, their clusters are bitter: their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps. Is not this laid up in store with me, and sealed up among my treasures?

What a striking and startling question that is, as though God laid up the memory of man’s sin, sealed it up, and kept it in a secret place against the day when he shall call sinners to account, and visit them for their iniquities! What an awful thing it is to have the sins of one’s youth laid up, sealed up, and put away in God’s treasury; and the sins of middle life, and perhaps the sins of old age, too, to be brought out, by-and-by, and laid to our charge! Who shall be able to stand in that great day? Only those who are washed in the blood and robed in the righteousness of Christ Jesus our Lord.

35-38. To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste. For the Lord shall judge his people, and repent himself for his servants, when he seeth that their power is gone, and there is none shut up, or left. And he shall say, Where are their gods, their rock in whom they trusted, which did eat the fat of their sacrifices, and drank the wine of their drink offerings? let them rise up and help you, and be your protection.

To you who trust in anything except God, the day will come when you will hear such terrible words as these-“Now let your riches save you, let your pleasures and your vices cheer you; go ye now in your own wicked ways, and see if you can find any comfort in them!” What holy sarcasm there is in these words, which will out to the quick the conscience when it is once fairly aroused!

39-43. See now that I, even I, am he, and there is no god with me: I kill, and I make alive; I wound, and I heal: neither is there any that can deliver out of my hand. For I lift up my hand to heaven, and say, I live for ever. If I whet my glittering sword, and mine hand take hold on judgment; I will render vengeance to mine enemies, and will reward them that hate me. I will make mine arrows drunk with blood, and my sword shall devour flesh; and that with the blood of the slain and of the captives, from the beginning of revenges upon the enemy. Rejoice, O ye nations, with his people: for he will avenge the blood of his servants, and will render vengeance to his adversaries, and will be merciful unto his land, and to his people.

It is only in mercy, you see, that the Lord deals with his people; they cannot stand before him on the ground of justice, but in his mercy is their place of refuge. May we all find that mercy by fleeing for refuge to lay hold upon the hope set before us in Christ Jesus and his glorious gospel! Amen.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-406, 544, 538.

THE TENSES

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, March 17th, 1901, delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Thursday Evening, May 13th, 1880.

“Who delivered us from so great a death, and doth deliver: in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us.”-2 Corinthians 1:10.

When children are learning their grammar, they have to pay particular attention to the tenses of the verbs; and it is important for Christians also to remember their tenses,-to recollect the past, the present, and the future. Our text brings all three very vividly before us, and reminds us that God hath delivered, doth deliver, and will yet deliver.

First, let us think for a little while concerning the past. How old art thou, my friend? How many of thy years hast thou employed profitably, and how many hast thou allowed to run to waste? For how many years hast thou wrought the will of the flesh, and been a servant of sin and Satan? How long hast thou been born again? What is thine age spiritually? Take down the record of thy life, and examine it, from the days of thy childhood, through youth and early manhood, up till now. It is a book which should do us good to read; in some respects, all its pages may make us weep; and yet, viewed in another light, many of them may give us cause to sing. This is the one book in the library that many people do not like to take down and read, for there are so many blots in it, and so many humbling records; yet “God requireth that which is past,” and it is a token of wisdom for a man to talk with his past years, and to learn from them the many lessons they are able to teach. All the days we have lived will go before us to the judgment seat, and each one will bear its record, and leave it there; so let us not be oblivious of that which God remembers, but let us recollect it that we may be penitent for all that has been wrong in it, and that we may be grateful for all that has been right.

Next, think about the second part of life, namely, the time present; and here let me urge upon you, dear friends, the importance of valuing the present. In fact, time present is the only time that you have. The past has gone, and you cannot recall it; the future will never really be yours, for, when it comes, it will be present, too. It is only in the present that we live; so that, if we waste these precious hours that are with us now, we waste all that we have. If we serve not God to-day, when will we serve him? To-morrow? Nay, for when that opportunity comes, “to-morrow” will have been changed into “to-day.” Let us endeavour, as God shall help us, even to watch our moments so as not to waste one of them. It is a good thing to have our life divided up into short periods. The other day, I saw John Wesley’s diary, or rather, horary, for it had in it not merely an entry for every day, but for every hour; and not only for every hour, but usually there was a distinct occupation for every twenty minutes. The good man made his days to have many hours in them, and his hours seemed to have more minutes in them than most men’s hours have, because he did not waste any of them, but diligently used them all in his Master’s service. God help us all to do the same by paying great attention to the present portion of our life!

As for the future, there is an idle curiosity which prompts men to try to live in it; that we must renounce. But there is a gracious expectation which enables us to live in it, a holy anxiety which prompts us to prepare for it. It is greatly wise for us to talk with those years that are to come if we talk with them in view of their end. I would have you familiar with your graves, for you will soon be in them; and more familiar still with your resurrection dwelling-place, remembering that God “hath raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.” Let us often project ourselves beyond the present into the future; to gather strength from the future, is frequently the best way to deal with the present. You will be able more easily to bear your present burdens when you think how short is the time in which you will have to carry them. Your “light affliction, which is but for a moment,” will seem scarcely like a feather’s weight to you when you anticipate the “far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory” which God hath prepared for you.

I recommend to you, therefore, this rule of three, and advise you always to consider the past, the present, and the future; and just now I invite you to do so in connection with the delivering mercy of God. He hath delivered us; he doth deliver us; he will deliver us. And, first, I am going to point out to you three trains of thought; next, three lines of argument; and, thirdly, three inferences.

First, the text suggests three trains of thought.

The first is this, memory, which tells us of the deliverances in the past: “who delivered us from so great a death.” Take the words exactly as Paul wrote them, and recall how God has delivered some of us from death. A few here, perhaps, have been very near to death in battle or in tempest; many more of us have been very near to death in sickness. Some of us have several times in our lives looked into eternity; our illness has been no child’s play, and we have realized the possibility, or even the probability of our soon passing away from all the engagements of this mortal life, and standing before our God. But we have been raised up again; we have come forth from our chamber, tottering on our staff, perhaps, through weakness, yet we are still preserved, the living, the living, to praise the Lord, as we do this day. I have no doubt that almost all of you have had, at one time or another, some very special proof that “unto God the Lord belong the issues from death.”

Our past deliverances, however, have not only been from physical death; we have had greater deliverances than that. There was, first of all, our deliverance from spiritual death. Do you not remember the time, dear brother, dear sister, when you were brought out of nature’s darkness into God’s marvellous light? You say that you do not know the day when this great change took place; never mind if you do not, it is not at all essential if you can now say, “One thing I know, that, whereas I was blind, now I see.” Some of us do remember the very day when we came to Christ, and rested in him; and we do, with our whole heart and soul, bless him that we were delivered from that terrible death which had so long held us in captivity. God rescued us by his grace, and enabled us to come forth from our grave of sin, looking unto Jesus, and longing to be made like him.

Further, some of you remember when you were delivered from despair. It is an awful thing to be driven away from all hope of salvation, and to be at your wits’ end. You were not all brought to Christ in a terrible tempest, as some of us were; many of you came to him under happier circumstances. Be very thankful that it was so; but some of us were hard put to it when we tried to touch the hem of his garment, we were pressed and crushed in the crowd, and seemed to lose our very breath. I remember how, when I was under conviction of sin, my soul rolled to and fro, and staggered like a drunken man; yet the Lord delivered me, and taught me to rest upon him, and thus even full assurance became possible although I had thought, aforetime, that mercy could never reach me. Beloved, if I am describing your experience as well as my own, let us together bless the Lord for his mercy in delivering us from so great a death. The remembrance of our deliverance from sin and despair must take the first rank amongst our grateful reminiscences.

But, since then, have you not been many times delivered out of temptation? You said, with the psalmist, “My feet were almost gone; my steps had well nigh slipped;” yet the Lord graciously preserved you. If you look back with careful eye, you will see many occasions where, if it had not been for interposing mercy, you would either have fallen into the bog on your right hand, or into the quagmire on your left. If the Lord had not piloted your vessel, it would have been wrecked on the rocks of Scylla or engulfed in the whirlpool of Charybdis. Do you not wonder, sometimes, how you ever got through that peculiar temptation, which was so suitable to your circumstances, and so fascinating to your flesh? Yet you did not know, at the time, that it was a temptation; and you had not the wisdom necessary to meet the craft of Satan; yet you were not taken captive in the Satanic net, cunningly as it was spread; and for that deliverance you must bless the name of the Lord. There are some of you who ought to praise him for deliverances over which you wept at the time. He would not let you have what you desired; you were disappointed, and you talked about your heart being broken. Ah! but the Lord’s dealings with you saved you from having a broken heart. You said, “Alas! alas! I have lost something which I fondly cherished.” It was well that you did lose it, for that which you thought was a bracelet sparkling with jewels was a viper, which, had you grasped it, would have stung you to death. Blessed be God for not hearing some of our prayers! Blessed be the Lord for not gratifying many of our desires!

We ought to praise him, too, for our deliverances in the time of trouble. You are not all tried alike. I am very thankful that some of you are not troubled as others are; but I know that I am addressing some whose trials have been very many and very heavy. Your road has been a very rough one. John Bunyan truly says, “A Christian man is seldom long at ease; when one trouble’s gone, another doth him seize;” and that has been true in the lives of many of us. We can say, with the psalmist. “We went through fire and through water.” Some of God’s children have been brought very low in their circumstances, so that they have had to live “from hand to mouth,”-though I do not know that many of us live very differently from that;-but there are some godly people who never have any reserve store even if they do not actually come to want. I do not know that there is anything very grievous in that, for the sparrows and the ravens live in that style, yet God cares for them. But some of you find it to be a trial to have scantiness in the home, or sickness in your own person, or one who is dear to you as your own life constantly afflicted. There are all sorts of losses and crosses, trials and troubles, for the godly to endure. Yes; but none of these things have crushed us yet, for the Lord hath delivered us. Here is a poor widow, and she wonders how she ever brought up that large family of little children. She scarcely knew how to provide for them all when she had a husband, and yet, when the head of the house was gone, they were provided for; it is very wonderful, yet it was done; and you, who seemed to see all your prospects suddenly dissolve, like the mirage of the desert, were helped. You said, at one time, “If such-and-such a thing should happen, it would kill me.” It did happen, yet it did not kill you, for you are here to testify to the Lord’s delivering mercy. One Job’s messenger after another came to bring you evil tidings, yet the Lord delivered you from the trials which threatened to crush you. I cannot stay to mention all those past deliverances; and, probably, most of them are not even known to us. Glory be to God for unknown mercies,-favours which came in the night when we most needed them, favours which helped us to sleep and to awake refreshed, favours that stole, with silent footfall, into our home and our heart, and went away leaving traces of the sacred oil of divine mercy behind them.

That is the first train of thought,-memory, which tells of deliverances in the past.

The second is observation, which calls attention to present deliverance: “and doth deliver.” Open your eyes, my brethren and sisters, and see how God is delivering you at this moment. I do not say that, with the most widely opened eye, you will perceive all your deliverances; for, many times, you have been saved from trouble, while, on other occasions, you have been delivered out of it. I have often told you the story of the good old Puritan who met his son at a half-way house. When the young man came in, he said, “Father, I had a very special providence as I rode here to-day.” “What was that, my son?” “My horse stumbled three times very badly, yet I was not thrown.” “And I have had an equally special providence in riding here.” “What was that?” “My horse never stumbled all the way, so I was not thrown.” You know that, if we are in a railway accident, and escape from any hurt, we say, “What a providence!” Yes, but what a providence it was when you were preserved from a railway accident by stopping at home! Oftentimes, we do not see the very thing that has the most of mercy in it. What evidences of divine deliverance there are in the fact that you are here at this moment! A comparatively trifling incident might have resulted in your death. You may be, tomorrow morning, in doubt as to which of two ways you should take; but there will be the providence of God directing you which to choose, and your choice of that one may affect the whole of the rest of your life.

If you are not just now being assailed by any temptation, it is because God is delivering you from it. Yet it may be that Satan is planning some fresh temptation with which to assail you; but, though he desires to have you that he may sift you as wheat, Christ is praying for you, that your faith fail not. We might have fallen into doctrinal error had it not been for God’s restraining mercy. How apt thoughtful people are to be carried away by the particular novelty of the hour! It seems as if they could not resist the cogency of the argument by which the new teaching is supported, but we have been kept from yielding to it by having our hearts established in the faith, so that we have not believed every novel doctrine, but have judged it by the Word of God, and so have been kept from wandering into devious ways.

How graciously God is preserving many of us from the tongue of slander! It is a wonderful thing for any man to live much in public without being accused of some vile crime; and the woman who lives in the most retired position, the housewife who does nothing but look after her own children, will find somebody or other slandering her. You cannot always escape from the envenomed tongue of slander, be you what you will and where you will; and for God to keep the reputation of any Christian man unstained year after year, is a subject for the greatest thankfulness.

We do not know where or what we might have been if God’s gracious protection had not been like a wall of fire round about us, as it is even now, for still doth the Lord deliver all those who put their trust in him. I want you, dear brothers and sisters, to believe with unquestioning confidence that God is delivering you just now. You know that he has delivered you, be quite as sure that he is delivering you at this moment. “Oh!” says one, “I am shut up in the dungeon of despair.” Yes; but your Lord has a key that can open the door, and so let you out. “Ay; but I am in great want.” But he knows all about it, and he has his basket in his hand full of good things with which he is going to supply all your needs. “Oh!” says another, “but I am sinking in the flood.” But he is throwing the life-belt over you. “Oh, but I am fainting!” But he is putting a bottle of sweet perfume to your nose to refresh your spirit. God is near thee, to revive and cheer thy fainting soul. Perhaps someone says, “I find faith concerning the past and concerning the ultimate future tolerably easy; but it is faith for the next hour or two I cannot so readily exercise.” At certain times, it is found that trial is peculiarly present, but one cannot always realize that God is “a very present help in trouble;” yet it is true. He hath delivered, and he doth deliver.

The third train of thought is this,-expectation looks out of the window upon the future: “in whom we trust that he will yet deliver us.” Yes, dear friends, there may be many trials before you yet; but there is a mass of mercy laid up in store to meet those trials. Troubles such as you have never yet known, as well as repetitions of those you have experienced, will surely come upon you; but as your days are, so shall your strength be, for your Lord will continue to deliver you. As the eyes gradually fail, and the limbs grow weak, and the infirmities of age creep over us, we are apt to be distressed; yet our Lord will not forsake us. When severe sickness invades our mortal frame, and our pains are multiplied and intensified, we wonder how we shall hold out to the end; and especially as we look forward to the time of death,-not always viewing it in the true light, we say, “What shall we do in the swellings of Jordan? How shall we be able to bear the stern realities of our last hours?” Be of good comfort, my brother, my sister; he who hath delivered, and doth deliver, will yet deliver. As surely as the trial comes, the way of escape shall be opened up for you by your Lord. Will you try to realize all this of which I have been speaking? He hath delivered you; then, give him your gratitude: he is delivering you; then, give him your confidence: he will deliver you; then, give him a full and joyful expectation, and begin even now to praise him for mercies which are yet to come, and for grace which you have not tasted yet, but which you shall taste in his good time.

Now, in the second place, the text supplies three lines of argument, all running to the same point.

The point to be proved is that the Lord will deliver his people; and I argue that he will deliver us in the future because he has already begun to deliver us. There is a chain of continuity here; he hath delivered, he doth deliver, and he will deliver. He began to work for our deliverance long before we sought him. The first movement was not from us to God, but from God to us. We were lying dead in trespasses and sins, and he came and quickened us. He gave his Son to die for us many centuries before we were born; he provided the gospel for us long before you and I had ever sinned; in all things he had the start, and was beforehand with us. Yet he need not have done all this, except that it was by his own choice and free will that he acted. I do rejoice in the free will of God which moved him to deliver us.

Surely, then, since the motive that impelled him to save us must have been in himself alone, that motive is still there. If he had begun to deliver us because he saw some goodness in us, or because we first applied to him, then he might leave us after all; but as the commencement was with himself, out of his own heart, spontaneously, depend upon it that, as he began the work, he will carry it on. God has no more knowledge of any one of us than he had at the first. When he began with us, he knew what we should be; foresaw all our sins and all our follies, all our ingratitude and all our backsliding. He did not enter, blindfold, upon a task which, after second thoughts, he would have to relinquish; but, even from eternity, he saw us just as we have turned out to be. Yet he began with us; and having begun with the deliberation of eternal love, let us be quite sure that he will prosecute his gracious purpose with the perseverance of eternal love. If there had been, at the first, some reason in us why God should begin to deliver us, then, that reason being removed from us, God might cease to deliver us; but as the reason was not in us, but in himself, since he can never change, the reason for our deliverance abides the same, and the argument is good and clear,-God hath delivered us, then he will deliver us.

The next argument comes from the fact that, as he is now delivering us, therefore he will continue to do so. Here is the continuity of his grace. Now look, beloved; he has, up to this hour, continued to deliver you and me who have trusted him. How many times has he delivered me? Out of how many troubles have I been delivered? From how many sins have I been delivered? Well, then, if the Lord has kept on delivering me so long, I argue that, if he had ever meant to stop, he would have stopped before now; and, therefore,-

“His love in time past forbids me to think

He’ll leave me at last in trouble to sink;

Each sweet Ebenezer I have in review,

Confirms his good pleasure to help me quite through.”

When a man begins to build, we reckon that he will finish the building if he can. We know that our God can complete what he has commenced, so we conclude that he will do so. I feel that he has gone so far with me that he cannot give me up now.

“Can he have taught me to trust in his name,

And thus far have brought me to put me to shame?”

No, that can never be; and many of you must feel just as I do about this matter. Some of you are, as it were, sitting on the very doorstep of heaven; you are over eighty years of age, so you cannot be here long; cannot you trust the Lord for the few months or years you have yet to live? He has been helping you, my aged sister, ever since you were a girl; and he has delivered you out of all sorts of troubles, do you think that he will leave you now? And my dear venerable brother, you knew the Lord when you were but a boy, and he has never left you yet; will he forsake you now? No; blessed be his name, he will not! All those years of his favour go to confirm us in the conviction that he will keep on delivering us till he brings us safely home.

The Lord has not only delivered us so often, but he has also done it in such a wonderful way, that he must go on working in a similar fashion. What marvellous wisdom has he sometimes displayed in delivering us from the consequences of our own folly! Often hath he seemed to lavish his mercy upon us that he might help us in our time of need, and not once has he failed us. There is not one broken promise of his, nor one covenant blessing that he has ever withheld from us. If any of you, who have known him the longest, have aught to say against your God, say it; but you have not. You have never had any reason for doubting him, nor have you ever had any suspicion of his faithfulness raised in your mind by anything that he has done which might lead you to mistrust him in the future. He hath delivered, he is delivering, and he will yet deliver. There are two arguments drawn from the past and the present.

The best argument, however, comes from God himself: “in whom we trust.” He is always the same, and everything is ever present to his unchanging mind. What was the nature of God when he first determined to deliver me? Was it love? Then, it is love now. What was the motive which impelled the Son of God when he came from above, and snatched me from the deep waters? It was love, surprising love; and it is surprising love which still moves him to deliver me. Did I sing about his faithfulness, the other day? That faithfulness is just the same to-day. Have I adored his wisdom? That wisdom is not exhausted.

There is not only the same nature in God as there always was, but there is also the same unchanging purpose. You and I shift and change; and we are obliged to do so, because we make rash promises and faulty plans; but God, who is infinitely wise, always keeps to his purpose. Now, if it was his original purpose to save us,-and it must have been, or he would never have delivered us as he has done,-that purpose still stands, and shall for ever stand. Though earth’s old columns bow, though heaven and earth shall pass away, as the morning rime dissolves in the beams of the rising sun, yet the decree of the immutable Jehovah shall never be changed. “For the Lord of hosts hath purposed, and who shall disannul it? and his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn it back?”

Time fails me, so I can only very briefly show you that the text is open to three inferences.

The first inference I draw from it is, that we shall always be in danger so long as we are here. The Lord hath delivered, doth deliver, and he will deliver, so we shall always need divine deliverance while we are in this world. We must not expect here to be ever out of gun-shot of the enemy. You may depend upon it, brethren and sisters in Christ, that you will always have tribulation as long as you are in the world, you will have trials in the flesh, you will have trials in the spirit, you will have trials from God, and trials from Satan; and if, at any time, you are a long while without any trouble, keep a good look-out for it, for it is probably on the way to you. We should always suspect some danger nigh when we perceive too much delight. When God has given us a long stretch of smooth sailing, it well behoves us to steer our vessel cautiously, and to be ready to furl our sails at any moment, for a cyclone may be upon us before we know where we are. We need not ask the Lord to send us trouble, but when it comes, let us have the grace to accept it, and to glorify God in it. While we are in this world, we shall always know that it is the world, so let us not make any mistake about the matter; the devil is the devil, the world is the world, and the flesh is the flesh. None of these things have changed, and the mercy is that God has not changed, he is still the same as ever he was. If I found that the world was not the world, I might be afraid that God was not God; but that can never be the case. So, as trials are always arising, I may fairly suspect that they always will come while this time-state lasts; but I also fully believe that God will be always the same, and that he will deliver all who trust in him.

The second inference from the text is, that we may constantly expect a display of God’s delivering grace. The past says, “He has delivered;” the present says, “He doth deliver;” and the future says, “He will yet deliver.” Yesterday, God was very gracious to me, I need not tell you how; to-day he has been very gracious to me; to-morrow he will be very gracious to me; and the same will be true the next day, and the next day, and the next day, until there shall be no more days, and time shall be swallowed up in eternity. Between here and heaven, every minute that the Christian lives will be a minute of grace. From here to the throne of the Highest, you will have to be continually supplied with new grace from the Lord who sits on high. Dear brother, you never live a truly holy, happy, blessed day, except by divine grace. You never think a right thought, never do a right act, you never make any advance heavenward except by grace. I like to think that it is so, that every day I am a monument of mercy; that every day a fresh display of sovereign grace is made to me; every day my Father feeds me, my Saviour cleanses me, the Comforter sustains me. Every day, new manifestations of the lovingkindness of the Lord break forth upon my wondering soul, and give me fresh visions of his miraculous love. I could not find another word to express what I wanted to say, that one seemed to leap into my mouth just then,-his miraculous love! And so it is, miracle-working love, making the Christian’s life to be a series of miracles, at which angels shall gaze for ever in astonished adoration of the amazing love of God to guilty men. So I reckon that we may go onward with great confidence; for, although every day will bring dangers, every day will also witness divine deliverances.

Thirdly, the last inference I draw from the text is, that our whole life should be filled with praise of God our Deliverer. How doth it run? He delivered us, and now we deliver ourselves? No, no, no! He delivered us; he doth deliver us;-but what about the future? We must deliver ourselves? No, no, no! He hath delivered; he doth deliver; and he will yet deliver;-the same Person, working in the beginning, in the centre, and at the close. It is all of God from first to last; there is not one deliverance which you have ever had which you can ascribe to anyone but the Lord alone. Inside heaven’s gate, all the praise is given to the Triune Jehovah: “Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be;” and outside heaven’s gate, let us sing the same song, to the same tune; let it always be to the praise of grace, grace, grace; to the God of grace, the Father of grace, the Christ of grace, the Holy Ghost and his grace; and to God be all the glory, for ever and for ever! Amen.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-196, 733, 735.

Expositions by C. H. Spurgeon

PSALMS 16, and 63

Psalm 16 Verse 1. Preserve me, O God: for in thee do I put my trust.

Ah, brethren! when we think of our daily dangers, and when we remember the sinfulness of our nature, this petition may well be our frequent prayer: “Preserve me, O God;” and this may well be our plea, as well as the psalmist’s: “for in thee do I put my trust.” We do trust in the name of the Lord, for we can never expect to be preserved except by his protecting grace.

2, 3. O my soul, thou hast said unto the Lord, Thou art my Lord: my goodness extendeth not to thee; but to the saints that are in the earth, and to the excellent, in whom is all my delight.

“My God, I would fain prove my gratitude to thee if I could; but what can I do for One so great as thou art? Thou art infinitely above me; thou needest nothing at my hands. What, then, can I do to show my love to thee? By my care for thy people I may prove what I would do for thee if I could. Are they hungry? I will feed them. Are they sick? I will visit them. If my goodness cannot reach the great Head of the Church, it shall at least wash the feet, for I do love thee, O my God; and I want, in some practical way, to show that I love thee!”

4. Their sorrows shall be multiplied that hasten after another god: their drink offerings of blood will I not offer, nor take up their names into my lips.

He who sincerely loves the true God cannot have any regard for his rivals; he will have no communion with false gods in any shape or form.

5. The Lord is the portion of mine inheritance and of my cup:

That is the believer’s portion,-his God. The Levites, as a tribe, had no inheritance in the land of Canaan; but God was their portion, and who shall dare to say that they had not the best of it? Now, child of God, if you could have your choice, what would you choose,-goods or God? Earthly wealth, or the God who is the source of all good things?

5. Thou maintainest my lot.

One of oar great men has for his motto, “I will maintain it.” But the psalmist’s is a much better one: “Thou maintainest my lot.” It is better to have God for our Guardian than to have all possible human strength with which to defend ourselves.

6. The lines are fallen unto me in pleasant places; yea, I have a goodly heritage.

The Jewish rulers stretched the measuring or dividing lines over the plots of land that fell to the different members of the family; but here the man of God declares that, since God was his portion, the lines had fallen to him in pleasant places. There is no choice of places, or times, or circumstances, with the man who thoroughly loves his God. He can find God in loneliness, and so enjoy the best company. If he has God in poverty, he has great riches. O happy man, who has God to be his all!

7. I will bless the Lord, who hath given me counsel:

“He has talked with me, checked me, rebuked me, instructed me, encouraged me: ‘I will bless Jehovah, who hath given me counsel.’ ” That does not, at first sight, look as if it were one of the choicest of blessings, yet the psalmist mentions it immediately after he has declared that the lines have fallen unto him in pleasant places,-as if he felt that one of the choicest blessings of the covenant was that God had been his Counsellor.

7. My reins also instruct me in the night seasons.

“God makes my heart, my conscience, my inmost being, to give me instruction.” What a blessing that must have been to David! A man who has no inward monitor, because he has stifled his conscience, so that it no longer holds him by the ear, and speaks with him, is poor indeed; but blessed is he who has his God and his conscience to counsel and instruct him.

8. I have set the Lord always before me: because he is at my right hand, I shall not be moved.

Brother, have you always acted on the straight? Have you so conducted your business that you need not be ashamed for God himself to look at it? Then do not be afraid of anything that may happen to you, for you will come out all right at the last. There may be great trouble in store for you, and you may be stripped of all that you possess; but you shall never be ashamed.

9. Therefore my heart is glad, and my glory rejoiceth: my flesh also shall rest in hope.

Every good thing belongs to the man who belongs to God. He need not be afraid even of the grave, for he can adopt the language which is here prophetically used for Christ himself. He is not afraid to die, for he can say:-

10. For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell;

“Sheol”-the place of the departed, the intermediate state into which the soul passes at death.

10. Neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see corruption.

In the fullest sense, this verse belongs to Christ alone; but, still, what belongs to the Head is also the portion of the members of his mystical body.

11. Thou wilt shew me the path of life: in thy presence is fulness of joy; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore.

And this is the portion of every believer. “Here little, but hereafter much,” says Bunyan; but I will venture to alter it, and say, “Here much, but hereafter more shall be our inheritance from age to age.”

Psalm 63 Verse 1. O God, thou art my God; early will I seek thee:

“Because thou art mine, therefore will I seek thee.” A sense of possession makes us long for the enjoyment of all that is really ours.

1. My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is;

“Nothing but thyself can content me; everything else, or everyone else falls short of my desire. There is no water that can slake such a thirst as mine unless I drink from thee, thou overflowing well.”

2. To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.

Past enjoyment of our Lord’s presence inspires us with earnest desire for fresh manifestations of his face. If we have ever seen God’s power and glory, when we have come into the courts of his house, we long to see them again, whether we are in the wilderness or in the sanctuary.

3. Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee.

Is not that word “lovingkindness” one of the noblest terms in our own or any other language? The word kin is at the root of kind and kindred, so that lovingkindness, loving-kinnedness, or loving-kinness, is such conduct as we may expect from those who are akin to us. God’s kinness to us, through Jesus Christ his Son, and our Saviour, brings to us a lovingkindness that is better than life, and for which our lips can never praise him enough.

4. Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name.

“For very joy, I will lift them up, and clap them before thee. Though, aforetime, they hung down, as though I were dispirited, and could never work again, yet now, ‘I will lift up my hands in thy name.’ ”

5. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness;-

God’s flowers always bloom double. God’s blessings are like marrow and fatness; there is in them a double satisfaction of the most intense kind: “My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness;”-

5. And my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips:

The psalmist speaks as if each of his lips had a separate joy; and as though, together, they would express the double joy for the double satisfaction which his God had given to him.

6. When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches.

“Even then shall I have joy, for thy presence makes even the darkness to be light.”

7. Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.

“If I cannot get into the light of thy countenance, the very shadow of thy wings shall make me glad. Only let me be near thee; that is all I crave.”

7. My soul followeth hard after thee:

“I am like a dog who loves to keep close to his master’s heels.”

8-11. Thy right hand upholdeth me. But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth. They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes. But the king shall rejoice in God; every one that sweareth by him shall glory: but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.

Stopped with a shovelful of earth, in many cases; for it seems as if some liars would never cease lying as long as they are alive.

TRUE LEARNING

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, March 24th, 1901, delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Thursday Evening, May 20th, 1880.

“But ye have not so learned Christ; if so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.”-Ephesians 4:20, 21.

The first two words of our text call attention to the distinction which must always be drawn between true Christians and other people: “But ye.” The apostle had been writing concerning other Gentiles, and the evil lives they lived; so, to the believers at Ephesus, he said that they were not to walk as unbelievers ordinarily did. Thus we learn, at the very opening of our subject, that, if we are indeed Christians, there is a manifest distinction between us and the men of the world. I may be told that, of course, there was a great contrast between Christ’s followers and the heathen who lived in the apostle’s day; and some persons will, perhaps, say that we cannot expect that there should be the same difference now between Christian men and unbelievers. I reply that there may be a variation as to the outward form of that contrast; but, essentially, it must be quite as true and real.

Someone was asking, the other day, how it was that the church, nowadays, was not so separate from the world as it used to be; and one who heard the question suggested that, possibly, the world had grown better; but another more truly said that, probably, the church had grown worse. There are two ways of our coming together;-the world may rise to our proper height, or we may descend to the world’s level. Well, now, I am quite certain that candour requires us to say that, in some respects, the condition of society is much better than it was. There are some of the grosser vices, which were common enough fifty years ago, which are now held in general reprobation. To a very considerable extent, Christianity has leavened society; men are not, as a rule, so coarsely vicious as they were in the days of our grandsires; yet, after making all the abatement I possibly can on that score, I cannot help feeling that the difference between the church and the world has been mainly changed by the church coming down from what it used to be. I wish we were as liable to be called fanatics as the first Methodists were, simply because men judged us to be as earnest as they were; I should be glad if we were as worthy to be called Puritans as were the men of the days of Dr. John Owen and Oliver Cromwell. For my part, I think that, nowadays, we are not Puritanic enough, or precise enough; and, without any hesitation, we may make the assertion, which we are sure God’s Word will support, that whatever improvements there may be in the world, there must always be a marked distinction between the children of God and the seed of the serpent. There can never be a time in which death and life will be exactly alike, nor a season in which darkness will be the same thing as light. We must still, to the end of the chapter, be either born of God, born from above, or else continue to lie under the power of Satan; we must either be dead in trespasses and sins or else be quickened by divine grace; we must either have passed from nature’s darkness into God’s marvellous light, or else we are still abiding in that darkness.

You must also recollect, my brethren, whoever you may be, that if there is no distinction between you and the world around you, you may be certain that you are of the world; for, in the children of God, there must always be some marks to distinguish them from the rest of mankind, so that we can contrast them with the ungodly, and address to them the words of our text, “But ye have not so learned Christ.” There is a something in them which is not to be found in the best worldling, something which is not to be discovered in the most admirable carnal man; a something in their character which can be readily perceived, and which marks them as belonging to another and a higher race, the twice-born, the elect of God, eternally chosen by him, and therefore made to be choice ones through the effectual working of his grace. Note this fact at the very commencement of our meditation, that there is a clear distinction between Christians and all other people.

Further, it appears from the text that the great means of this distinction is our being made into disciples to be taught of God, for the apostle says, “But ye have not so learned Christ.” So that it is something which we have learned that makes us different from the rest of mankind. In our spiritual life, the first essential is conversion. This great change is like the turning of the helm, which makes the boat head up in a new direction; but conversion is not everything. After the boat is turned, it has to be rowed, or else it will drift down the stream. If a man becomes Christ’s disciple by conversion, he must remain Christ’s disciple, throughout the rest of his life, by sitting at his Master’s feet, and receiving instruction from him; for it is only as we are taught of God that we shall be able to keep up the high spiritual distinction between ourselves and the rest of mankind. We are under the tutorship of the Holy Spirit; he has taken us into his school; he has taught us something already, he is teaching us more now, and he will keep on teaching us more and more till we shall know even as we are known.

I want, at this time, as his divine power rests upon me, to try to speak a little, first, upon our lesson: “ye have not so learned Christ;” secondly, I will say something upon how we have not learned that lesson: “ye have not so learned Christ;” and then, thirdly, I will endeavour to tell you how we have learned it. We have learned it in this fashion: “If so be that ye have heard him, and have been taught by him, as the truth is in Jesus.”

First, then, we are to think about the Christian’s lesson: “Ye have not so learned Christ.”

It is a very uncommon expression which the apostle here employs, for it is not usual to learn a person; yet Paul says, “Ye have not so learned Christ,” by which he did not mean merely learning the doctrine of Christ. Many a man knows what Christ taught, and yet has not learned Christ. He has read the Bible, he may even have studied it after a fashion, and may know what orthodox doctrine is, so that he does not care to hear any other; he could stand up and tell you very correctly what the teachings of Jesus Christ are, yet he has not learned Christ. It is quite right that we should learn the teachings of Christ, and value every word that he has spoken; still, that is not the main lesson that the Christian has to learn.

Nor is it merely learning Christ’s precepts; for we might learn them all, and yet not have learned the one lesson that is essential to our Christian life, which is, to learn Christ. Some men are very earnest, and rightly so, to learn all the ceremonies that Christ has taught us. There are not many of those ceremonies, and people make great mistakes concerning them, notwithstanding their earnest zeal to be correct; but, supposing a man should know all about believers’ baptism and the Lord’s supper, according to their Scriptural mode and meaning, still, that is not the lesson spoken of in the text. Neither doctrines, nor precepts, nor ordinances will suffice as the life-lesson of a Christian; it is the blessed person of our Lord that we must learn.

Paul also meant a great deal more than merely learning about Christ. I think the distinction will readily strike you. A man may know much about Christ, whose Son he is, what work he came to do, what he is still doing, and what he will yet do at his glorious appearing; he may know sufficient about Christ to be able to be a teacher of others, and to be reckoned a theologian; and yet, for all this, he may never have learned Christ. That is quite another thing. I know much about many people so far as their history can be known by a stranger to them, yet I do not know them; I have never spoken to them, I have never even seen them. There are many persons, I am sure, of whom you can truly say that you know everything that can be known about them; for their whole career is so well known, and you have been told so much concerning them; yet you do not know them; to use Paul’s word, you have never “learned” them. Beware, then, of being satisfied with knowing about Christ, for the life-lesson of a Christian is to know him,-to learn him. What does this mean?

It means, first, that you and I must know him as a personal Christ. We must know him as being a real Saviour, actually existing, to whom we have come, with whom we have spoken, and who has also spoken to us, and of whose existence we can have no manner of doubt, because we know him, and are known of him. It does not mean that he is so little known to us that we can just detect and discover him; but that we have so learned him that we know him,-know his heart, know his voice, know that secret of the Lord which only he can reveal, and which he tells to none but those who are truly his own. This is the very essence of true religion,-personally living with a personal Saviour, personally trusting a personal Redeemer, personally crying out to a personal Intercessor, and receiving personal answers from a Person who loves us, and who manifests himself to us as he does not unto the world. To many people, Christ is only a name to bow at, not a person to embrace. To some, Christ is merely the name by which they designate their religion, such as it is; but to us, beloved, I trust that he is much more than a name,-“a living, bright reality,” who abides with us, and in whom also we abide.

Next to this realization of his personality, and the entering into communion with him, learning Christ means knowing his nature. As long as we have known Christ, we have known that he is Divine; indeed, many of us knew that before we really and savingly knew him. Since we were little children, we never had any question about Jesus Christ being “very God of very God;” and if anybody had called us Socinians or Unitarians, we should have been deeply grieved, because we always held the doctrine of his Divinity; but, now, we know that he is God, for “his eternal power and Godhead” have been proved in our spirit; he has taken away from us a mass of sin which none but God could have removed; he has breathed peace into us, even the peace of God which passeth all understanding; he has helped us when we have been staggering under a burden too heavy for us to bear, and he has borne it for us as none but God could have done. Our Lord Jesus has not only revealed himself to us, but he has also made our true selves known to ourselves by that omniscient power which dwells in none but God, and we have said to him as emphatically as Thomas did when he put his finger into the print of the nails, “My Lord and my God.” I never care to read any arguments about the Deity of Christ; I should as soon think of reading a book which sought to prove the existence of my mother. This is a matter which I know for myself; I have tried it, and proved it, and felt its power.

As to the humanity of Christ, beloved friends, we always knew that he was human. I suppose that none of us ever had a doubt about that as a matter of head knowledge; but, now, we know him to be human because we have been with him. He has felt for us as none but a brother born for adversity could feel. He has looked at us, sometimes, in our griefs, with such an eye as no angel ever had; and only such a wondrous Person as the Son of Mary, the Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, would have given us such a look as we have received from him; and he has spoken home to our heart words of such matchless tenderness as only one who was akin to us, and who had been tempted in all points like as we are, could ever have invented, and uttered to us. Just as truly as we know him to be God, we also know him to be man. It is not now to us a matter of doctrine alone; it is not a matter needing to be proved, we do not now desire even Scriptural proof, for we have seen him ourselves, we have spoken with him personally; and now we not only believe his Word, but our own heart has proved and tested beyond all question that he is Emmanuel,-God with us. I hope I have made plain the distinction between knowing doctrinally that Christ is God and man, and personally learning him in his combined nature.

The next part of the lesson we have to learn is, to know Christ in his various offices. Did they not tell us, in our first Sunday-school, that Christ is Prophet, Priest, and King? Yes, and from our childhood’s days we believed that he was all that; but now, beloved, many of us know that he is a Prophet, for, as I have already observed, he has read our hearts, and he has told us things that none but a prophet of God could know; he has revealed the condition of our hearts to us, he has shown us our sins, he has discovered our needs, and he has also supplied those needs, and restored peace to us, and brought us to himself, and revealed to us the truth of God as we were able to bear it.

We have no question also concerning his priesthood. We always did believe in it, but now we have learned it in another fashion. Not long ago, some of us stood, covered with filth from head to foot, and we heard one sing,-

“There is a fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins:

And sinners, plunged beneath that flood,

Lose all their guilty stains;”-

and we came to that fountain, and were plunged beneath that flood, and we lost all our guilty stains. By faith, we saw the Lord Jesus, as our great High Priest, standing at the altar, and offering himself as the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world; and now that he has taken away our sins, and our conscience has a sweet rest in a sense of acceptance in the Beloved, we have learned Christ’s priesthood, not only out of the Book, but because the blood of his atonement has been sprinkled upon us. God has seen the blood, and has passed over us; the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, has cleansed us from all sin, that blood has brought us nigh to God, and at this very hour it is speaking to our heart better things than the blood of Abel ever spake; and, thus, we have learned Christ as our Priest.

It is the same with his kingship; some of us never doubted that Christ is a King, we were brought up to believe it; but, in a much higher sense, we feel him to be our King now. We have bowed our willing neck to his gracious rule, and we can feel him reigning over our stubborn but subdued lusts, which would never have been conquered, and we ourselves should never have been led into happy captivity except through his gracious sovereignty; and, now, we do rejoice that, within our spirit, we have learned Christ for ourselves, and we know him as “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.”

Dear hearers, can you follow me in all this? Do you know anything experimentally concerning what I have been saying? Perhaps some of you do not; and that is not altogether surprising, for there is many “a master of Israel,” like Nicodemus, who knows not these things. It is one thing to be a fluent talker about theological truths, but it is quite another thing to know Christ personally, to lay hold of him by faith so as to be able to say, “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine;” “let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth: for thy love is better than wine.” Where that declaration is true, there is more in it than in all the eloquence of Demosthenes and Cicero. Doctors of divinity may know many things, and yet not have learned Christ; but he who has learned Christ has been taught of God.

This blessed instruction will go further still, dear friends, when we come to know Christ as to his character. I advise you all frequently to read the life of Christ as it is recorded by the four Evangelists; that is the best “Life of Christ” that ever was written, or ever will be; and all the rest of the “Lives of Christ” might as well be burnt; for you can get a better idea of Christ’s life from the four Gospels than from all other books put together. If you read aright the life of Christ as it is recorded in the Inspired Word, you will be struck with it, and delighted with it; and if you are a candid person, you must be charmed with it; but you will never truly learn it until God the Holy Spirit renews your own heart, and teaches you to love it, and makes you to be like Christ himself was. A man has not learned writing till he can write, and a man has not fully learned Christ till he lives like Christ; and that fact puts many of us on a very low form in the school of the Divine Teacher. If a man wants to learn a trade, he will have to do a great deal beside walking in and out of a workshop, and seeing how everybody else does certain things; he who properly learns a trade must learn it himself by practically working at it, and he who really learns Christ’s character is the man who himself has Christ’s character, there is at least something of likeness to Christ about him. I hope I can say of many here present that they are learning Christ, and that they have learned Christ, so that, in one point and another, there is something about you which should make men say, “They have been with Jesus,”-“they have learned him.” He who lies down in beds of spices will smell of their sweetness, and he who lives with Christ will soon catch the savour of Christ. This is what we are aiming at,-to learn how to write as Christ did, imitating both the upstrokes and the downstrokes that are in the perfect copy;-to learn the trade and business of holiness, after the manner in which Christ carried it on while here below. There will be, doubtless, many flaws and imperfections in our imitation of him; but, still, we shall have learned something of the sacred art of doing our Father’s business, and giving ourselves up wholly to his glory. I pray that we may all practically learn Christ in this way.

When that comes to pass, and we know the character of Christ, we then come to know the sweet influences of Christ’s person. Knowing him, we see what charms there are in him, and what power he has over human beings under all manner of circumstances. Did you ever feel Christ’s power to break the heart? You have not learned him till you know that, for he has a way of speaking in such loving tones that the heart seems broken all in pieces. Have you ever learned his power to heal the heart that he has broken? Do you know it for yourself? Has your poor broken spirit, bleeding at a thousand wounds, suddenly found an effectual remedy for its impending destruction, and rested in peace? Oh, what charms there are in Christ to all true Christians! If you have ever really learned him, you know how he can take you up out of the cold world where you are lying freezing at his door, and lift you right inside where the fire is brightly burning, and fill you with intense delight. You know how, when you are creeping along the road, he can come, and bear you up as on eagle’s wings; and how, when you can scarcely stir a foot towards heaven, he can, on a sudden, make your soul like the chariots of Amminadib. Have you never felt such raptures as Paul experienced when he was caught up to the third heaven, and did not know whether he was in the body or out of the body? Have you never felt that influence of Christ which makes a man’s life to become sublime, and causes his every action to become something far beyond what mortal man unaided could ever perform? Have you never known what it is, through the power of Christ, to sit with him in the heavenly places, and from that altitude to look down on all the world, and to despise it utterly as a thing for babes to play with, or as a fool’s bauble, while you have revelled in the eternal glories and the infinite bliss that God has prepared for you? Read Rutherford’s letters, and if you have a spiritual understanding, you will say, “This man had indeed learned Christ.” He was, like a harp, responsive to Christ’s lightest touch. His Master did but lay his hand upon the strings, and the music came out at once; but you and I are often like an untuned harp, even our Lord’s hand brings no music out of us because we are not in a fit condition. Oh, that we might all truly know Christ, and the power of his resurrection,-ay, and the power of his glorious second coming,-and the power of his spiritual presence when he draws near to us in all his love and grace! So, dear brethren, learning Christ really comes to this,-personal acquaintance with Christ, personal knowledge of his nature and his offices, a personal experience of his power over the human heart, a personal knowledge of him by the surrender of yourself to him, and by his coming to incorporate you with himself till, as it were, Christ shall live in you, and you shall live in Christ, and you twain shall be one henceforth and evermore. There is a great deal more in this subject than I can bring out of it, but I must leave this part of it with you for your quiet meditations.

Now, secondly, and very briefly, the apostle says something about how we have not learned our lesson: “ye have not so learned Christ.”

There are some people who say that they have learned Christ, yet they remain just as they were before. They say that they are Christiana, yet their lives give the lie to their language. They walk as other Gentiles walk, yet they go to godly assemblies, and they sing pious hymns. But, beloved, “ye have not so learned Christ.”

Some even profess to have learned Christ so as to make an excuse for their sin out of the very fact that he is so ready to pardon. They think that sin is a small matter, and that it will have no serious consequences; “but ye have not so learned Christ.” We never hated sin so much as we have done since we learned what it cost our Lord to put it away. There are some who say that they have learned Christ, yet they never obey him, nor serve him, nor try to imitate him. “Ye have not so learned Christ.” God save us from a dry doctrinal knowledge of Christ! God save us from any kind of knowledge of Christ which is not in connection with true saving faith in him, and with a practical obedience to him! There are some who talk much of what they know concerning Christ, who even commit sin in his name. We have nations marching to battle, to kill and plunder and murder in the name of Christ! What did the Spaniards do, in years gone by, with the Indians, but plunder and slaughter them professedly in the name of Jesus Christ? And there are some, in nominally Christian countries to-day, who act in the same fashion. The Lord have mercy upon them! “But ye have not so learned Christ.”

We have met with some people who imagine that they cannot have their sin conquered. They think that they will be saved, but that sin is to have the mastery over them; but we have not so learned Christ, we have learned him after this fashion, that we desire to be perfectly like him, and we believe that we shall be. We are aiming at this, and asking him, by his Spirit, to change us into his own image from glory unto glory; and we are looking forward to the day when we shall see him as he is, and shall be altogether like him. When a man enters a room where the walls are covered with mirrors, he sees his own likeness reproduced on all sides; here, and there, and there, and there; so is it with Christ in heaven; all the saints reflect his image, and he sees himself in them all. This is their glory, and it is also his glory that he has given his image to them; and it is that image which we desire to reproduce even now.

Beware, dear friends, of trying to learn Christ in any other way but this practical way of which I have been speaking. Never be satisfied with a theoretical knowledge of Christ, nor with mere head knowledge of Christ, nor with a hypocritical knowledge of Christ.

Now, in the third place, we will notice how we have learned Christ.

I call your particular attention to the latter part of the text: “If so be that ye have heard him.” We must be taught by Christ, and by the Holy Spirit. Dear brethren, do you say that you know Christ, that you have learned Christ? Tell me how you have learned him. “I heard our minister preach.” Yes, yes; but did you hear Christ? The only way of learning Christ is this: “If so be that ye have heard him.” You never know Christ by merely hearing men, you must hear Christ himself. Do you not recollect his own words, “My sheep hear my voice”? They not only hear the voice of the under-shepherd, but they hear the voice of the chief Shepherd, the good Shepherd, that great Shepherd who laid down his life for the sheep, and you never can know Christ unless you have thus heard him speaking personally to you. You must regard the various sayings of Christ, recorded in this Book, not merely as things written in the Bible, but as the very words of the living Christ spoken afresh to you, each time you read them, just as though they had never been uttered before.

Perhaps you say, “Well, sir, all I know of Christ, I have learned from the Bible.” It is quite right that it should be so; but how did you read the Bible? Did you merely become familiar with the letter of it, and get what you could out of it by your own wit and wisdom? Then you have not yet learned Christ, for it is only as the Holy Ghost shall make the printed letter to be the very voice of Jesus Christ himself to you that you will ever truly know him. I do not see how I am to know a man to whom I have never spoken, and who has never spoken to me. He may pass my house day by day, yet if we never speak to one another, I cannot get to know him. A certain philosopher once said, “Speak, and I shall see you.” So we may say to the Lord Jesus Christ, “Speak to me, Lord, and then I shall know thee.” None but Christ can manifest Christ. You cannot see the sun except by its own light, neither can you see Christ except by his own light, that is, by the Holy Spirit.

Now notice the next sentence: “and have been taught by him.” The Greek is “in” him: “and have been taught in him;” that is to say, the only way of learning more of Christ is by being in fellowship with him. It very frequently happens to me that somebody calls to see me professing to have a message from God to deliver to me; it is usually some crack-brained individual or other, who is not quite right in the upper story; but I will not receive messages that come in that fashion; if the Lord wants to say anything to me, he knows where I live. I feel inclined to talk to these people as John Bunyan did to the Quaker who went to Bedford jail, and said to him, “Friend Bunyan, the Lord has sent me with a message for thee, and I have been half over England trying to find thee.” “Nay,” said honest John, “thou art telling a lie, friend; for if the Lord had sent thee to me, he would have directed thee straight here. I have been in this prison for the last twelve years, and he has known all the time where I was.” These roundabout, cross-country messages do not come from Christ at all. We learn him by being with him. Is it not said that, if you want to know a man, you must live with him? Mr. Whitefield was once asked the character of a certain person, but he replied, “I cannot tell you.” “Why not?” the enquirer asked. “Because I have never lived with him; after I have lived with him for a while, I shall be able to tell you what I think of him.” So, if you want to know the Lord Jesus Christ, you must live with him. First he must himself speak to you, and afterwards you must abide in him. He must be the choice Companion of your morning hours, he must be with you throughout the day, and with him you must also close the night; and as often as you may wake during the night, you must say, “When I awake, I am still with thee.” There is no way of fully learning Christ except by being perpetually with him. I should suppose that a man, who has been in heaven five minutes, actually beholding Christ, knows more of him than the most instructed member of the assembly of divines ever learns here below. Oh, how much we shall learn of Christ in our first glimpse of him! Oh, that these eyes could behold him even now! Some people talk and write a great deal about what we shall see in heaven; but I do not pay much heed to what they say. It will be a long while before I shall want to take my eyes off my Saviour. I agree with Dr. Watts in that verse which we have often sung,-

“Millions of years my wondering eyes

Shall o’er thy beauties rove;

And endless ages I’ll adore

The glories of thy love.”

We shall learn Christ faster there than we can here because we shall be always with him, and we shall see him as he is.

The last part of the text says, “and have been taught in him, as truth is in Jesus;” there is no word “the” in the original, it is “as truth is in Jesus.” That is to say, we must truly know Christ as truth, and it should be our desire to know truth even as it is in him. Truth is in Christ fully, so we must seek to know it fully. Truth is also in Christ practically,-it is embodied in him. Truth in Christ was not a mere philosophy, not simply dry doctrine; but he lived the truth, yea, he was the truth. This is how we want to know Christ,-till truth in Christ shall be truth revealed to us, truth embodied in us, truth lived out again by us “as truth is in Jesus,”-every lie put far away from us, all guile and deceit for ever banished. As truth was in Jesus, with no fiction, and no guile, as he was pure, simple-minded, child-like, so shall we become through learning him, and being made like him; we too shall become true, transparent, candid, honest, upright, Christlike men. I wish we were all like that, dear friends; but we know too much, or think we do, we are too cunning, and look too much round about us, to be as Christ was. People laugh at us if we wear our hearts upon our sleeve for daws to peck at; and we think that we should keep ourselves to ourselves, and be careful, and cautious, and even suspicious of all we meet. Oh, but I would rather be taken in a thousand times than suspect other people! It is better to wear your heart wide open, though men laugh at its every movement, than it is to cover it up, and try to conceal what we really are. God make us like the holy child Jesus,-children of God, with Christ Jesus for our elder Brother! That is what we shall be when we have learned Christ, and have heard him, and have been taught by him as truth is in him. May it be so with all of us! God bless you, and help you to cherish and to realize this desire, for Christ’s own name’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

ZECHARIAH 13

Verse 1. In that day there shall be a fountain opened to the house of David and to the inhabitants of Jerusalem for sin and for uncleanness.

They shall see their pardon when they have truly seen their sin. When once the foulness of their transgression is perceived, then the fountain of cleansing shall be perceived, too. No man ever knows the preciousness of the God-given remedy till he has felt the force of the terrible disease. No one by faith plunges into the crystal fount of perfect cleansing without first lamenting the filthiness which needs to be removed.

2. And it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will cut off the names of the idols out of the land and they shall no more be remembered: and also I will cause the prophets and the unclean spirit to pass out of the land.

Where there is pardon, there is sure to be sanctification. The idols must fall, and the false prophets must go. We cannot have our sins and have a Saviour, too. If we have Christ to blot out our sin, we must have the same Christ to remove sin as to its authority, and power, and dominion over us.

3. And it shall come to pass, that when any shall yet prophesy,-

When any false prophet shall still pretend to prophesy,-

3. Then his father and his mother that begat him shall say unto him, Thou shalt not live; for thou speakest lies in the name of the Lord: and his father and his mother that begat him shall thrust him through when he prophesieth.

So intense shall be the hatred of false prophets, that men shall not spare even their own children. They shall abhor them when they stand up against the Lord of hosts, and against his truth.

4. And it shall come to pass in that day, that the prophets shall be ashamed every one of his vision, when he hath prophesied; neither shall they wear a rough garment to deceive:

They shall give up this wicked employment at once and for ever. Just as when one, who has pretended to tell fortunes, is converted, and he forsakes that evil occupation; so converted men must never be in association with those who are familiar with the spirits of the dead, and who practise sorcery and the like abominations. Everything of the kind is to be abhorred by godly men, and they must turn away from it with holy horror and disgust.

5, 6. But he shall say, I am no prophet, I am an husbandman; for man taught me to keep cattle from my youth. And one shall say unto him, What are these wounds in thine hands?

What are these marks of the idol gods and goddesses? Have you not been branded with them? Did you not belong to the accursed fraternity that worship idols, and receive the stigmata in their hands?

6. Then he shall answer, Those with which I was wounded in the house of my friends.

Idolatry shall become so detestable a thing that he will say anything rather than acknowledge that he has had aught to do with idols. Those very marks in which the false prophets once gloried, they shall loathe. The Brahmin shall throw away his sacred thread, and those who have been tattooed in honour of other false gods shall hate the marks of shame that are upon their persons.

Now, brethren, inasmuch as the heathen prophets received in their bodies the marks of their gods, we understand something of what Paul meant when he wrote to the Galatians, “From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.” He regarded his baptism as a kind of water-mark that could not be removed; he looked upon the marks of the scourge, with which he had been beaten again and again for Christ’s sake, as being proofs that he belonged to Jesus. They stamped him with the broad arrow of the great King, so that all men might know that he was dedicated to him and to his service, tattooed with marks in his flesh that were indelible, and never to be removed.

7, 8. Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, and against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts: smite the shepherd, and the sheep shall be scattered: and I will turn mine hand upon the little ones. And it shall come to pass, that in all the land, saith the Lord, two parts therein shall be cut off and die; but the third shall be left therein.

So, in the times of God’s fiercest judgments, he has a remnant according to the election of grace who shall escape the sword, because that sword has been awakened against him who was their Representative, their Surety, and who stood as Substitute in their place.

9. And I will bring the third part through the fire,-

“Saved; yet so as by fire.” This is true in a certain sense of all the righteous; they shall certainly be saved, and though the fires of persecution should rage around, the Lord will bring them through the fire. They shall not perish in it, but they shall even derive good from it: “I will bring the third part through the fire,”-

9. And will refine them as silver is refined, and will try them as gold is tried:

If you are God’s people, you will certainly be tried and tested. As surely as ever God has put you in the third part that he will save, he has also ordained that you should pass through the fire. You shall have, both within and without, that which shall test your sincerity, and prove whether your faith is of divine origin or not. There is no easy road to heaven.

“The path of sorrow, and that path alone,

Leads to the land where sorrow is unknown.”

Yet we who believe in Jesus are not an unhappy people; the character of God’s saints is still according to Paul’s paradoxes, “As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.”

9. They shall call on my name, and I will hear them:

What a precious little sentence: “they shall call on my name”! And God will give ear to their prayer: “and I will hear them.” The “shall” and the “will” are put close together, and the one is as much the work of God’s grace as the other is: “They shall call on my name, and I will hear them.”

9. I will say, It is my people: and they shall say, The Lord is my God.

Note these quick responses,-echoes, as it were. They call, and God hears. God speaks, and they reply. God says, “It is my people.” They answer, “The Lord is my God.” Blessed are you if you can join in these heart-echoes, or can say, with the spouse, “My Beloved is mine, and I am his.” Is there this mutual interchange of love between you and the all-glorious Lord? If so, thrice happy are you; but if not, God grant that you may speedily enter into this secret of the Lord! May he bless to every one of us the reading of his Word, for his dear Son’s sake! Amen.