This is one of the many instances in the Word of God of his free, rich, sovereign grace. The Lord has set the children of Israel before us as a great model. They are our beacons with regard to sin, but they are a pattern to us when we see in them the gracious dealings of a covenant-keeping God. Oft did they rebel, but just as often did the Lord forgive them. Frequently did he smite them with his rod, but he never turned them over to destruction; he still remembered his covenant made with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and he suffered not his faithfulness to fail.

We have, in the prophecy of Hosea, an instance of what God thought of the sins of his people. He commands the prophet to speak in rough earnest language of their constant rebellion; and yet, no sooner has he directed Hosea to deal hardly with his erring spouse, than he seems to stop him in the full career of his furious prophecy, and bids him now address to her words of comfort. This is the connection in which our text is found set in the black letters of the volume of threatenings against guilty Israel. This precious jewel shines all the more brightly in the thick darkness of their sin and despair; this torch of love and kindness sheds a heavenly light, and makes their eyes and hearts rejoice.

Let us now turn to these words of the Lord, and regard them under the following aspects. First, I see, in the text, the singular reasons for divine grace: “Therefore, behold!” I see, in the next place, the strange dispensations of divine grace: “I will bring her into the wilderness.” In the third place, matchless consolations: “I will speak comfortably unto her;” and, in the fourth place, sweet persuasions: “I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness, and speak comfortably unto her.”

In the first place, we have, in our text, the singular reasons for divine grace: “Therefore, behold!”

It is not without cause that the word “therefore” is here inserted. We are to look to the context to find what are the premises from which a conclusion of mercy is drawn. You might naturally conceive, judging according to human logic, that the preceding verses described either Israel’s goodness, or else her abject repentance, if she has gone astray and rebelled; but, on the contrary, there is no mention of these things at all. They speak not of her goodness, but of her badness; and, in fact, they speak so strongly, that the prophet uses terms that are never employed except after excessive iniquity. He charges Israel with whoredom, and speaks of her as having committed uncleanness with many lovers. This is strong language, and shows that he means to declare the excessive character of her sin; and instead of speaking of her as being a penitent, he declares that she was still impenitent. Notwithstanding many, many providences, and the hedging up of her way with thorns, she would break through, and run after her many false lovers. And then, strange to say, contrary to all human reasoning, there comes the inference, if I may so call it,-an inference of sunshine from a dark cloud, an inference of mercy from a whole mass of sin and iniquity. If the inference had been, “Therefore I will destroy her, I will cut her in pieces, and give her children to the sword, and her women to be carried away captive,” our reason could well have seen that it was the natural consequence, we could easily have seen that the logical terms agreed; but here it seems as if it were quite a non sequitur. How can it be that a “therefore” should spring up, when the previous verses have been filled with a description of her sins?

Here let us pause to remember that the reasons for God’s grace to us are far above all human reason, for he himself has told us, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Nay, I will go further than this, and say that, not only are God’s modes of reasoning far above our own, but they often seem as if they were even contradictory to ours. Where we should draw one inference, God draws the very opposite. See you poor penitent sinner; he “would not lift up so much as his eyes unto heaven; but he smote upon his breast, and cried, God be merciful to me a sinner.” What is our inference from this, looking at the publican as he stands there? Why, that he is a rebellious creature, and that God cannot and will not accept him, but must punish him. Doth God draw this inference? Nay; for “this man went down to his house justified.” See yonder Pharisee; with outstretched hands he stands, and prays thus with himself, “God, I thank thee, that I am not as other men are,” and so on. What is our inference therefrom? Surely God will accept so good a man as this; he will be sure to justify a man so holy and so moral. Not so; for that man went down to his house without justification, unsatisfied, unblessed with the smile of heaven, while you sorrowing publican received God’s gracious forgiveness.

We, ever since the Fall, have learned to reason badly; our reasoning faculty has been as much confused as any other power that we possessed; we have turned aside from the straightforward path, and we know not how to draw the true inference which God draws from our sins. So, then, it seemeth, from our text, that, so far from looking at any reason for mercy to anything that is good in man,-if God ever seeks in the creature a reason why he should show mercy, he looketh not to the good, but to the evil. When we come before God, it would be well if we would always remember this. We are committing great folly if, when we are spreading our case before him, we dare for one moment to speak of ourselves as good or excellent. We shall never succeed in that way; he will not listen to us, for this plan has no power with him; but if, when we come to him; we can plead our sin and our misery, then shall we prevail. Nay, we may even go the length of the psalmist, David, when he prayed, “For thy name’s sake, O Lord, pardon mine iniquity;”-and for a strange reason, you would say,-“for it is great.” He used the greatness of his sin as an argument why God should have mercy on him. O ye legalists, who are looking to yourselves for some arguments with which to prevail with God; O ye who look to your sacraments, to your outward forms, to your pious deeds and your almsgivings, for something that will move the heart of God; know this, that these things are no lever that can ever move him to love. Nothing but your sin and misery can ever stir his mercy, and you look to the wrong place when you look to your merits to find a plea why he should show pity upon you.

And yet, albeit that this reasoning seems extremely strange, I may use an illustration which will justify such reasoning as this in the mind of every thoughtful man. Here is a poor creature shivering in the cold with nakedness; and there is one who hath warm garments to give away. Will not the nakedness of the man be his claim to benevolence? If there be any generous soul who desireth to feed the hungry, it is not likely that he will bestow his bread upon one that hath abundance; but if he heareth a soul uttering the wail which is excited by the pangs of hunger, that very wail shall make him move his hands to supply the needed food. Generosity, liberality, and mercy know of nothing that can move them as misery can, and the very reverse argument is formed from that which men are so fond of using. They will go to God with a plea analogous to this,-as if a beggar should meet me in the street, and say, “Sir, give me charity; I am not very poor, I am not very hungry, therefore give me charity.” He would not use such a foolish argument as that. He, like a wise man, saith, “I am hungry, I am starving; therefore give me food.” Would that ye would use the like sensible argument, when ye come before God, and plead, not for your merit’s sake, but for your misery’s sake. Think not that you are to tip the arrows of your prayers with the feathers of your own merit; that shall never make them fly to heaven. It will be better if ye can wing them with a sense of your own miseries, for then they shall reach the heart of God, and he will send you the promised blessing in return. Strange reasoning, you say, this of grace,-that God will save man, not for their goodness, but, if there be any reason that can be found in them, it is rather for their sin and for their misery than for anything good in them.

If you will carefully look at the text again, you will notice that, after the word “therefore” there comes a word of exclamation: “behold!” Whenever we see the word “behold” in Scripture, we may be sure that there is something well worthy of our attention. It strikes me that Hosea, when the Lord commanded him to write this verse, was quite staggered. “Lord,” saith he, “how can this be?” He was filled with amazement. “I have been threatening thy children; thou hast told me to set their iniquities before their face, and now thou biddest me say, ‘Therefore I will have mercy upon them.’ ” The conclusion seemed to him so strange, that he was utterly astonished; and the Lord permitted his servant to record his astonishment by putting in that word “behold.”

Nor do I think that is the only reason for the use of the word. It is also, I think, put there that we may admire the grace here displayed, and that we may remember the mercy of God, and especially the deep-rooted secret reasons for that mercy. They will continue to be, on earth, the theme of admiration; and, in heaven itself, the object of eternal astonishment. When we shall be permitted to see why God had mercy upon man, and especially why, out of the human race, he had mercy upon us,-why he chose us while others were suffered to perish,-we shall be compelled incessantly to lift up our hands in astonishment, and even in the heavenly city itself joy shall sometimes be superseded by wonder, and we shall, even there, be astonished to find such matchless grace displayed for such singular reasons. “Therefore, behold!” Again I would say to those who are trusting in themselves,-Give up your foolish hopes. Men and brethren, look not to the empty cisterns; but come away at once to the fountain, the divine, kingly fount of sovereign grace, for there, and there only, it is that your hope of pardon can be realized; for, in yourself, there is nothing but that which would lead to your destruction, and only in Jehovah can reasons for salvation be discovered.

The second point is, the strange dispensations of divine grace.

God is about to have mercy upon poor fallen Israel, so what does he say? “I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness.” This may seem to some a strange way of showing his love, yet it is not an unusual one, for it is the common method by which God manifests his love towards his chosen ones. You will, perhaps, smile when I make the observation that there was nothing which a Roman slave more anxiously desired than to have a box on the ear from his master. “That was a singular desire,” you will say; yet that box on the ear was the object of the morning and evening prayer of many a slave in Rome; for, you must know, if a master once gave his servant a box on the ear, he was free from that day forth, and was no longer a slave. Now, that strange manner of manumitting a slave is analogous to that which God uses when he is about to set free one of Satan’s bondsmen.

He first of all gives us the blow of conviction, and then he gives us the liberty of grace. Is it not singular that God should begin to show his love to his people by taking them into the wilderness? Is it not a strange manifestation of divine favour that he should bring us, not into Canaan, not to the grapes of Eshcol, not to all the riches of the land which flowed with milk and honey, but that he should bring us, first of all, into the wilderness? Your experience, if you are a child of God, will help you to understand this. “The wilderness” may be explained thus:-when God is about to save a man, he first of all brings him into a state of spiritual destitution. He thinks himself rich and increased in goods, and that he has need of nothing; talk to him about the sinful state of a natural man, and he is insulted; he says he is as good as his neighbours, he does not know that he has much to confess when he is on his knees; indeed, be hardly sees the use of confessing to God at all. If such as he do not get to heaven at last, he does not know who will! Now, when God means to have mercy upon a man of that sort, instead of feeling that he has every virtue and all strength, on a sudden he finds himself without one good thing to recommend him to God; and, worse than this, he finds that he has no strength to perform a single good act. “Oh!” saith he, “I once thought I could repent and believe whenever I pleased; but, now, all my strength is gone, my heart is hard, and I can scarcely compel a tear to flow. I imagined that, in the last moment of my life, I could say, ‘O God, have mercy upon me!’ and that, then, I should be saved; but, now, I find faith to be quite another thing from what I thought it was. Now I am stripped of all self-confidence, my comeliness is departed, I must robe myself in sackcloth, and cast dust and ashes upon my head; my soul is spiritually shut up, I find no food, nothing comes from within, and nothing comes from without.” This state of spiritual destitution is set forth by this wilderness state.

Moreover, by the wilderness, doubtless, is meant affliction, for, full often, when God means to bring a man to himself, he sends affliction upon him. This is the good Shepherd’s black dog with which he brings his wandering sheep back to him; it comes howling after us, and biting at our heels, and then we fly away to Christ. How many there are, among you, who were first brought to repentance by the loss of your property, or the death of someone dear to you! If everything had gone on smoothly, the stream would have wafted you along down to the gulf of black despair; but, on a sudden, the flood boiled around you, and the tempest gathered above your devoted head; then you cried unto God in your trouble, your losses were more than recompensed, your God was found, and your soul was saved. Happy are you who lose a fortune to find a Saviour! Blessed is the burial of a friend, or relative, that leads to the new birth of our own souls, and brings us to trust in the Lord Jesus Christ! We have, many of us, great cause to bless that rough right hand of God which has smitten us so sternly, but which has always been moved with love whenever it hath given us a blow of chastisement.

Further, I think this wilderness may mean, not only spiritual destitution, and affliction, but also loneliness. When God means to save a man, he always makes that man to feel himself to be all alone. There was a time with me, I know, when I went up to the house of God, and I knew not whether there was anyone else there while the sermon was being delivered. I seemed to be shut in by a black wall while the minister’s eye appeared to be looking down into my soul. I believed that the good man meant me when he used the word sinner; I could not think he was referring to anybody else. I loved not society, but was always seeking solitary places for prayer, trying to draw near to God in prayer, to tell him my wants, and to ask for his mercy. It is a happy sign when the divine Hunter singleth out one from the herd. He looketh round, singleth out his prey, and hunts him, until, at last, he brings him down, and carries him home rejoicing. The deer, when wounded, retires to weep, and bleed, and die alone; and so, too, hearts when wounded love shady solitudes, that they may weep alone before God. This is, I believe, the meaning of “I will allure her, and bring her into the wilderness.”

I will give you one more picture, and then I think I shall have described this wilderness sufficiently. Can you, for a moment, imagine yourself taken away, on a sudden, and carried by some giant hand swiftly through the air, and deposited in the midst of the Desert of Sahara? You look around you, and there is nothing to be seen that can afford you hope. Above you is the burning vault of heaven, with the furnace sun sending forth its fire upon you. Beneath you is the arid sand, with no track of a traveller anywhere. At first, you rush on, hoping soon to find the desert’s verge, and to escape. Night succeeds day, and in the thick darkness you still travel on, fear and hope together winging your feet. Day dawns again, but you are as far from deliverance as ever; and I can imagine that, with your throat parched, and with your soul melted within you, you would cast yourself down upon the sand, and cry, “Lost, lost, lost!” The echo of your words would come back to you from the burning heaven above you, and you would be the complete picture of despair,-lost, lost, lost! Yet this is where God brings the man whom he means to save. He puts him into such a position that, above him, seems to be an angry God; beneath him, a desert of sin, and not a glimpse of hope; and he lies down, helpless and despairing, and cries, “Lost, lost, lost!” My hearer, art thou in such a position? Then, remember that the Son of man has come to seek and to save that which was lost, and that thou art one of those whom he came to save, for thou art manifestly lost. He will never be disappointed with the result of his work; those whom he came to save, he will save; and if thou dost trust him, he will save thee, thou shalt be brought in among his redeemed people here on earth, and thou shalt see his face, and rejoice in his great salvation, in the day when he shall come in the glory of his Father with all his holy angels with him.

Now, note the next division of the passage,-God’s matchless consolations.

Does he bring her into the wilderness that she may be the prey of the vultures, or that the jackals may devour her? Oh, no! He brings her there that he may “speak comfortably unto her.” You see how the two things go together. There is a precious golden band in the text,-a band which neither death nor hell can ever shatter, which, like a sacred rivet or heavenly link, joins the two sentences together. “I will bring her into the wilderness,”-that is true, we know;-“and I will speak comfortably unto her,” that is true also. The two are linked together, and cannot be separated. Those that are brought into such a wilderness as I have described, shall hear the comforting words of Jehovah spoken to their hearts.

Now, with regard to these comforts, I would remark that they are sure comforts. We may take the words, “I will,” which stand at the beginning of the verse, as relating to each clause, and therefore we may read it, “I will speak comfortably unto her.” Therefore we have, first of all, sure mercies,-“I will.” Good old Joseph Irons used to say, “Our shalls and wills are impotent and impracticable, but God’s shalls and wills are omnipotent.” Hath he said it, and shall it not be done? Hath he decreed it, or promised it, and shall it not stand fast? Rest assured, poor soul, that whatever may not be or whatever may be, if thou art brought into the wilderness by God, he will assuredly speak comfortably unto thee there. It may be a long while that thou wilt have to wait; but, though the promise tarry, wait for it, for the time for its fulfilment shall surely come, it shall not fail. In due season, the Lord will remember thee, and will not forget thee in thy low estate, for his mercy endureth for ever, and his faithfulness knows no end. He will speak comfortably unto thee.

Note, next, that they are not only sure consolations, but divine consolations: “I will speak comfortably unto her.” Many ministers have tried what they could do to cheer the sad, but they have done nothing. I have never learnt so much of my own weakness as when, in preaching, I have sought to comfort some of God’s tried ones. I have sometimes, in my sermons, put in a little honey on purpose for them; but, somehow, that honey has seemed to ferment and become sour, so that they could not feed upon it. I have talked with them, and done all I could to comfort them; and, sometimes, I have had to turn them over to my brethren in the eldership, and they have done their best, and failed. What, then, shall I say, Lord? Thy poor servant can do nothing here; wilt thou do it, Lord? Wilt thou, O blessed Spirit, who art the Comforter, take them by the hand, and “speak comfortably” unto them? If thou dost speak, they cannot refuse to hear, and then shall they indeed be comforted. O poor, tried soul, is not this a rich promise, indeed? “I will speak comfortably unto her.” He will not merely send thee an angel or minister to comfort thee, but he will himself do the work: “I will speak comfortably unto her.”

The third remark I make upon these consolations is, that they are effectual consolations. The Hebrew bears the interpretation, “I will speak to her heart.” We speak to your ears, but God speaks to your heart. Oh, what speaking that is, when God speaks right from his heart into our hearts! Some of us have experienced this at times. We have found the Word of God to well up, as it were, from him; and then, as it has welled up, it has gone down deep into our hearts, and we have been made to drink of it to the very full. “I will speak to her heart.” Poor soul, if thou art brought into the wilderness, God will effectually comfort thee. He has effectually convicted thee, and he will effectually console thee. If he has brought thee into the wilderness of humility and sore distress, he will as surely bring thee into the Canaan of faith and joy.

I remark, in the next place, that these consolations are not only sure, divine, and effectual, but they are full: “I will speak comfortably unto her.” What rich words of comfort are those which God addresses to his people! He pardons them, he justifies them, he sanctifies them, he preserves them, he upholds them, he prevents them, he brings them safely home at last; and all this he speaks to the heart of the poor, tried, and tempted soul in the wilderness, and thus he makes it “rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory.”

It is not in my power, my dear friends, to speak to your hearts, I can only speak to your outward ear; but let me repeat some of those things which God says when he speaks to the heart. “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” “I even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions for mine own sake, and will not remember thy sins.” “Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely.” “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” “He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them.” Thus God speaks rich promises of pardon, and anon he says, “A new heart also will I give you, and a new spirit will I put within you.” How sweetly he speaks concerning the trials and troubles of this world! “Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.” And how graciously he tells his people, “In the world ye shall have tribulation: but be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” And how comfortably does he remind his people that, come what may, they shall still be secure! “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.” And then, when his poor people think he can hardly remember them, he says, “Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee.” And then, lest even this should be of no avail, he says, “The mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee, neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee.” “For this is as the waters of Noah unto me: for as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth; so have I sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee.” Truly did I speak, when I remarked that this consolation is full, and well doth one of our poets express the same sentiment when he says,-

“What more can he say than to you he hath said,

You who unto Jesus for refuge have fled?”

We have a Bible that cannot be enlarged; we have promises that cannot be extended; we have blessings that cannot be exaggerated; and imagination’s utmost stretch could not make us conceive of anything beyond. Oh! may God, who hath brought you into the wilderness of sore trouble, bring each one now present into his gracious presence, that you may know that he himself thus speaks comfortably unto you!

Now I close by coming back to the first clause of the text, and meditating on the sweet persuasions with which God draws us to himself: “I will allure her.”

There are many who are very much afraid they are not converted, because they have not had a thunder-and-lightning experience; they were not converted in stormy weather; they had not the terrors of the law, and the shakings over hell’s mouth that some have experienced. They have read of John Bunyan and his desperate struggles, but they have not gone through anything of the kind. They can say that they have felt their need of a Saviour, and realized their sin; but the accounts they have heard of what others have known of the terrors of hell have been so impressed upon them that they have feared that they could not be God’s people. Read our text; it says, “I will allure her.” It does not say, “I will drive her;” it does not say, “I will drag her;” it does not even say, “I will compel her;” it does not say, “I will make her to run into the wilderness for fear of me.” No; but the Lord says, “I will allure her.”

What does this mean? I cannot explain it better than by a very simple figure. I see the fowlers come, sometimes, to Clapham Common. I once saw a man with a robin redbreast in a cage. This poor little bird was made to sing, and so tried to decoy other birds from the sky. The fowler was luring birds, catching them by the lure; and, my brethren, this is how God brings many of his children to himself. We have all been like wild birds; but he has converted some of us by his grace, and put us into the cage of the pulpit, and made us sing as best we can, so as to lure poor sinners to come to the divine Fowler, the Lord Jesus Christ. I wish I could sing better; I would that I were a better decoy, that I might bring more to Jesus. Many a sister has been a decoy to her brother; many a wife has lured her husband to Christ. You cannot drag them, but you may draw them. All that you can do, in your daily life, and in your house, or wherever else you may meet with these poor worldlings, is to lure them to Christ by letting them hear how sweetly you sing, and see how happy you are, even while you are, as they say, a poor caged bird. Let them see how you enjoy your liberty in Christ, and so seek, with all earnestness, to bring them also to the Saviour.

There is another figure which will explain the Lord’s words, “I will allure her.” When your little children are learning to walk, they are set up by the side of the table. They are quite frightened at first, for they have hardly tried their little legs yet. The nurse desires that the child may walk a little way. Well, what does she do? She holds out an apple, or a sweetmeat, to tempt it; and it tries to come to her, but it is ready to fall; so the nurse’s finger is held out, and the child is supported. It rests a moment, and it is lured on again with some toy or picture, something that tempts it on; and thus it learns to walk. Possibly you say that I ought not to use such a simple figure. Nay, but I ought, for it is used in Scripture: “I taught Ephraim to go, taking them by their arms,” just as a father might hold up his little one by the arms, and let its feet just lightly touch the ground. The Lord condescendeth thus to speak, and surely I may do the same. May not a man speak thus with his fellows? Yes; surely, this is the way in which God brings many of his children to Christ. He lures them; he does not thunder forth, and frighten them; but he tempts them on by mercies and baits of heavenly pleasure, and so are they drawn to the cross of Christ.

Some have been lured by the sweetness of the character of Christ. They have taken his yoke upon them, because he is “meek and lowly in heart,” and they have found rest unto their souls. Others have been lured by the blessings of religion. They have said, “Her ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace;” and have said to the people of God, “We will go with you.” Many have been lured by the prospect of heaven, and the joy which has been set before them; and they have counted their lives as less than nothing in order that they might first suffer the reproach of Christ, and then inherit his glory. Do not be cast down because you have not had this terrible experience. Perhaps you are among those whom God sweetly lured to himself.

So I conclude my discourse by bidding every Christian here to go forth, and endeavour to lure poor souls to Christ. You must alter the shape of that face of yours that is so long and miserable. You are not luring souls to Christ; you are doing quite the reverse, you will drive them away from him. Put away, I beseech you, that constant habit of murmuring and grumbling at everything and everybody; come, take your harp down from the willows, and sing us one of the songs of Zion. Let us have no more groaning; that will frighten away the poor wild birds. They see your misery, and how can they be lured to come when they see you so unhappy? I do think that the long faces of God’s people do a good deal of mischief. I see nothing to cause them, but just the reverse. Our Lord Jesus says that the hypocrites are of a sad countenance, so I should not like to have a sad countenance, for fear any man should think me a hypocrite. What does he further say? “But thou, when thou fastest, anoint thine head, and wash thy face: that thou appear not unto men to fast, but unto thy Father which is in secret: and thy Father, which seeth in secret, shall reward thee openly.” Do not let the worldling know that you are fasting; if you have troubles, keep them within you, do not let him know of them; let him see a happy exterior. In this way, you will allure him to Christ; and take care, by the gentleness and kindness of your conversation, to bring him to think of that religion which he has hitherto rejected. I have heard it related of some Methodist that, after praying a long while for his wife’s conversion, he threatened to beat her if she were not converted in a certain time. I believe she was not converted; that was not the way to bring her to the Saviour. Instead of wooing sinners, and alluring them, there are some who, if they do not go to the length of physical force, nevertheless seem as if they would bully them to Christ, they speak to them so sharply and sternly. There is never any good done in that way. There are more flies caught with honey than with vinegar, and more souls are brought to Christ by sweet words than by sour and bitter ones. Let our life be like that of Christ,-“holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners;”-and then, added to this, let us have a heavenly cheerfulness about us which will lead others to see that, though our religion takes away from us the pleasures of the wicked, it gives us something so much better that Isaac Watts was right when he said-

“Religion never was design’d

To make our pleasures less.”

Go, beloved, and lure others to Christ; and may God the Holy Spirit bless each one of you! If in the wilderness, may he speak comfortably unto you; if hardened in your sin, may he bring you into the wilderness; and if he hath already spoken comfortably to you, may he help you to speak comfortably to others! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

LUKE 9:51-56.

Verse 51. And it came to pass, when the time was come that he should be received up, he stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,

It is a very remarkable expression that is here used: “when the time was come that he should be received up.” It does not say “that he should depart,” or “that he should die.” It overleaps that, and speaks only of his glorious ascension into heaven. When that time was drawing near,-and, of course, his death would come before it,-Christ “stedfastly set his face to go to Jerusalem,” where he knew that he should die upon the cross.

52, 53. And sent messengers before his face: and they went, and entered into a village of the Samaritans, to make ready for him. And they did not receive him, because his face was as though he would go to Jerusalem.

And, of course, Jerusalem was a sort of rival of Samaria; and if he was going there to worship, they did not want him to stay with them. Yet the Samaritans were believers in the first five Books of the Bible; they accepted the Pentateuch, and they ought therefore to have practised hospitality, imitating Abraham’s noble example. They erred both against their own Scriptures and against the dictates of humanity when they refused to receive Christ because he was on his way to Jerusalem.

54. And when his disciples James and John saw this, they said, Lord, wilt thou that we command fire to come down from heaven, and consume them, even as Elias did?

James and John, two of the most loving of Christ’s disciples, John the most loving of all, startle us all by failing in the matter of love, and so being as bad as the Samaritans themselves. I have often noticed that very “liberal-minded” people, who denounce bigotry in general, do it with about seven times as much bigotry as those who are out-and-out bigots. In fact, it is a wonderfully easy thing to be a bigot against all bigotry, and to be illiberal towards everybody except fellow-liberals. Well, that is a pity; it is better far to have the spirit of Christ, even when the Samaritans refuse to exercise hospitality. At any rate, let them live.

You notice that John quotes the example of Elijah; and this should teach us that the best men mentioned in Scripture did things which we may not copy, and that they did some things rightly which it would be wrong for us to do. Under special inspiration of God, Elijah, the prophet of fire, may call down fire from heaven; but you and I must not do so; we are not sent for any such purpose. Let us, therefore, be cautious how we make even prophets our exemplars in everything,

55, 56. But he turned and rebuked them, and said, Ye know not what manner of spirit ye are of. For the Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.

If that principle had been always remembered, and followed, there would have been no persecution. To cause a man to suffer in his person, or in his estate, because of his religious opinions, be they what they may, is a violation of Christianity. Consciences belong to God alone; and it is not for us to be calling for fire, the stake, the rack, or imprisonment, for men because they do not believe as we do. “The Son of man is not come to destroy men’s lives, but to save them.”

56. And they went to another village.

That was the easiest thing for them to do, and a great deal better than calling for fire from heaven upon anybody. If one village would not receive them, another would; and if you cannot get on with one person, get on with somebody else. Do not grow angry with people; that is not the way to make them better. To fight God’s battles with the devil’s weapons is generally, in the end, to fight the devil’s battles on his behalf; let none of us make such a mistake as that.

MUST HE?

A Sermon

Intended for Reading on Lord’s-day, December 1st, 1901, delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, July 27th, 1879.

“And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchæus, make haste, and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house.”-Luke 19:5.

I think this is the only instance in which, our Lord invited himself to anybody’s house. He often went when he was bidden; but this time, if I may use the expression, he did the bidding himself. Usually, we must seek the Lord if we want to find him. To the eye, at any rate, the apparent work of grace goes on in this way;-a man begins to cry for mercy, as the blind man, who heard that Jesus of Nazareth was passing by, cried to him, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” But God is so rich in grace that he does not restrict himself to this usual method. Generally, he is found of them that seek him; but, sometimes, he is found of them that seek him not. Yea, if I tell the whole truth, if you go down to the bed-rock of actual fact, it is always God who seeks sinners. He always calls them a people who are not a people; and the first movement, between God and the sinner, is never on the sinner’s part, but on God’s part. Still, apparently, men begin to pray to God, and begin to seek the Lord; and this is the usual order in which salvation comes to them. The prodigal said, “I will arise and go to my father;” “and he arose, and came to his father.” The blind man cried, “Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.”

Our text, however, describes a case which shows the freeness of divine mercy; for, although Zacchæus did not invite Christ to his house, Christ invited himself. Though there was no asking him to be a guest, much less any pressing entreaty on the part of Zacchæus, Christ pressed himself upon him, and said to him, “Make haste, and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house.” I reckon that there are some here who are on an errand something like that of Zacchæus. They want, perhaps, to see the preacher which is not nearly so good a thing as wanting to see the preachers Master. Still, that curiosity has brought them into the place where Jesus of Nazareth is wont to come; and I do pray that he may find many to whom he will say, “Make haste, and come and receive me; for I must abide, this very night, with you, and dwell in your house and heart at this time and for ever.”

The first thing I am going to talk about is, the divine necessity which pressed upon the Saviour. He says, “I must.” “Today I must abide at thy house.”

I do not think of this so much as a necessity upon Zacchæus as upon Christ. You know that he felt this “must” at other times. In John 4:4, we read, “He must needs go through Samaria.” There was a sacred necessity that he should go that way. The most notable instance of all was when “Jesus began to shew unto his disciples, how that he must go unto Jerusalem, and suffer many things of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and be raised again the third day.” In this case, the “must” was of another kind; he must abide in the house of Zacchæus. What necessity was this which pressed so urgently upon our blessed Master? There were many other houses in Jericho beside that of the tax-gatherer. I daresay there were other persons who would, apparently, have been more suitable hosts for the Lord Jesus Christ; yet it was not really so. There was a mighty pressure upon him who is the omnipotent Lord of all. Necessity was laid upon him who is “the blessed and only Potentate, the King of kings, and Lord of lords.” He was his own Master, yet he must do something to which he was constrained by an urgent necessity; he must go and lodge that night nowhere else but at the house of Zacchsæus. What did this “must” mean?

I answer, first, it was a necessity of love. Our Lord Jesus wanted to bless somebody; he had seen Zacchæus, and he knew what his occupation was, and what his sin was, and he felt that he must bless him. As he looked at him, he felt as a mother does concerning her child when it is ill, and she must nurse it; or as you might feel concerning a starving man, whom you saw to be ready to expire with hunger, and you felt that you must feed him; or as some men have felt when they have seen a fellow-creature drowning, and they have plunged in to save him. They did not stop to think, they dared to do the brave deed without a thought, for they felt that they “must” do it. The compulsions of charity, the necessities of benevolence,-these urgent things laid violent hands upon them, so they must do it. Thus Jesus felt-only in a much higher sense,-that he must bless Zacchæus. He must go to his house, that he might enter his heart, to abide there, and to make Zacchæus holy and happy henceforth and for ever. And he is the same Christ now that he was then; he is not less loving, he is the same gracious Saviour, and he feels the same necessity, the same hunger after souls, the same thirst of love to bless the sons of men; and I, therefore, hopefully expect that there will be, even in this place, and, I hope, in many other parts of the world, some of whom it will be true that the Lord Jesus Christ must come to their house and heart. So, this was a necessity arising out of our Saviour’s divine benevolence and love.

Next, I think it was a necessity of his sovereignty: “I must abide at thy house.” Here were scribes, and Pharisees, and all sorts of people round about him, who were saying, “He is a prophet; he has opened a blind man’s eyes; and he must, therefore, as a prophet, be entertained by some notable Pharisee. Some very respectable person must find him a lodging to-night.” But our Lord Jesus Christ seems to say, “I cannot be bound; I will not be fettered; I must exert my own will; I must display my sovereignty; and though these people will all murmur, I cannot help that. Zacchæus, I will come and stay with you, just to show them that I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.”

You see, this man was in bad odour;-we are not very fond of tax-gatherers here; but, in the East, they like them still less than we do; and, among the Jews, a tax-gatherer, if he was himself a Jew, who came to collect an obnoxious impost by a foreign power upon a people who thought that they were the people of God, and ought to be free, was a man who was intensely hated for having stooped to become one of the farmers of taxes; and if he was the head-farmer, the chief contractor of customs, as Zacchæus was, he had a very bad name indeed. People did not cultivate his acquaintance; they seldom dropped in to tea at his house; and, as a general rule, they fought very shy of him. When they mentioned sinners, they always reckoned that Zacchæus, who had made a fine thing out of the business they specially loathed, and was reputed to be very rich, was one of the very worst; nobody thought much of him. I think, too, that he had been excommunicated by a law of the Sanhedrim, for the publicans were generally regarded as excommunicated persons;-shut out, certainly, from the society of more respectable people.

Besides, to my mind, Zacchæus was an eccentric sort of body. That running of his was a very strange action for such a man; wealthy men, even though they happen to be short of stature, do not generally take to running through the streets, and climbing trees. I should think Zacchæus was the sort of man who kept himself to himself; and who, when he meant to do a thing, would do it; and if it was to climb a tree, as a boy might, he did not mind that, for he had got beyond caring for public opinion. He was an oddity;-he may have been a very good sort of fellow, in some respects; but it is quite clear that he was an odd sort of person. So our Lord Jesus Christ seemed to say, “I will show these people that, when I save men, it is not because they stand well in society, or because they enjoy an excellent repute, or because there are some beautiful points in their character. I will save this odd man, this Zacchæus, this despised tax-gatherer. I must have him; he is just the sort of man in whom I can best display the sovereignty of my grace.” To this day, men cannot bear that doctrine. Free will suits them very well, but free grace does not. They would not let Christ choose his own wife; I say it with the utmost reverence. I mean, they would not let him have the choice of his own bride, his church; but say that must be left to the will of men. But Christ will have his way, whatever they may say. He has a sacred determination, in his blessed heart, that he will do as he pleases; and so, for that reason, he says to Zacchæus, “I must abide at thy house.”

Our Lord Jesus was also under another necessity, he wanted someone in whom he could display the great power of his grace. He needed a sinner, to begin with; that was to be the raw material out of which he was going to make a saint, and a saint of a very special character. Is there a Christian in this place who comes up to the standard of Zacchæus after he was converted? I do not wish to be censorious, but I doubt if there is one. Is there anybody here who gives away half his income to the poor? I think that was going a long way in grace in the matter of almsgiving; and then remember that he was but a babe in grace when he did that; so what he did when he grew older, I do not know. But the first day he was born to Christ, he was a saint of that kind; so, what kind of a saint he grew to be by-and-by, I can scarcely imagine. Lord, out of what material didst thou make such a generous soul as this? Why, out of a grasping, grinding tax-gatherer, who sought to grab all he could lay his hands on! The mighty grace of God, better than a magic wand, opened his closed heart, and made it gush forth like a fountain flowing in a thousand generous streams. Jesus seems to say, “I must have Zacchæus, so that the men of the world may see what I can make out of the most unlikely material;-how I can take coarse pebbles from the brook, and transmute them into diamonds;-how I can bedeck my crown with jewels of the first water, which were originally but as the common stones of the street.” I wonder whether there is anybody here, who feels that he has not anything at all in him that is any good whatever. If so, the Lord could say, “I will make something of that man that will cause all who know him to marvel. I will make his wife wonder what has changed him; I will make all his children say, ‘What has come over father?’ I will make the whole parish say, ‘What a miracle! What a miracle!’ ” This was the kind of “must” that was laid upon our Saviour, and I hope such a “must” is laid upon him now.

There was one more “must” upon him, namely, he must abide in the house of Zacchæus because Zacchæus was to be his host at Jericho. Even the Saviour must be lodged somewhere; and, in most places, his Father had appointed some gracious spirit to entertain him, and Zacchæus was to be his host that day; and if he ever came that way again, I feel certain that he would go to his old quarters. Blessed be my Master’s dear name, he still has some hosts left where the guestchamber is always ready for him! In every town, and village, and hamlet, there is some house where there is a prophet’s chamber; and if you were to ask, “Is there anybody here who will entertain the Lord Jesus Christ?” you would soon find people who would be glad to have his company. Perhaps there is a large upper room, furnished and prepared, where they might break bread together; or a little room, where two or three might meet with Jesus, a place that never seems so bright as when there are a few praying people met together in it. The Lord must be entertained in this world, and Zacchæus was to be the man to entertain him in Jericho.

Who is the one here now who will take Jesus in? A stranger from the country, perhaps; there is no preaching-place in your village, the gospel is not often proclaimed within miles of the place where you live, and few people go to hear it when it is preached. That is all the more reason why Jesus must come to your house, for he means to have your best room, or that old shed of yours, or that big barn, that the gospel may be preached there. There is a divine necessity laid upon him to have your heart for himself, so that he may come and dwell with you, and make your house his headquarters, whence his disciples may go forth to attack the enemy where you live, and that all in your region may know that the true Salvation Army has come there, and that the Captain of our salvation has himself come to make his abode in your house and your heart.

There is plenty of room for enlargement upon this point, but we must go on to the next one.

So, secondly, let us enquire whether there is such a necessity in reference to ourselves. Has the Lord Jesus Christ any necessity to come and stay at your house, to come and abide in your heart? I can answer that question best by putting to you a few enquiries.

First, are you willing to receive Christ at once? Then, there is a necessity laid upon him to come to you, for he never sent the will into a man without also sending his grace with the will; indeed, the willingness to receive him is the proof of the working of his grace. Dost thou long and sigh that Christ might be thine? Then, thou shalt surely have him. Art thou earnestly anxious to be reconciled to God by Jesus Christ? Then thou mayest have that great blessing at once. Are you thirsting after righteousness? Then you shall be filled; for what saith the Scripture? “Let him that is athirst come;” and lest anybody should say, “Oh! but there is some preparation implied in that word thirst, and I am afraid that I do not thirst enough;” what does the Scripture further say? “And whosoever will,-whosoever will,-let him take the water of life freely.”

Next, wilt thou heartily receive Jesus? Zacchæus “received him joyfully;” and if thou wilt do the same, then he must abide at thy house. I think I hear somebody say, “Receive him joyfully? Ah! that I would if he would but come to me. I would give all I have to have Christ as my Saviour, to have the new life implanted within me, and to have Jesus dwelling in my heart. I would be willing to live, or willing to die, if I might but have him as mine.” So you will receive him joyfully, will you? Ah, then! he is bound to come to you. When the door of your heart is opened, Jesus will not be long before he enters. He will stand and knock even at a closed door; therefore, I am sure that he will enter an open one. It is written of Lydia, “whose heart the Lord opened;” and her heart was not long open before the Lord entered it; and if yours is open to Christ, that is a proof that you are one of those in whom he must abide at this time.

Let me ask you another question. Will you receive Christ, whatever the murmurers may say? Suppose he comes to you, they will begin to murmur, as they did when he went to be the guest of Zacchæus. I do not know where you live, but those around you will be sure to find fault both with you and with your Lord, too. “They all murmured, saying, That he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner.” So, you see, they were murmuring at Zacchæus as well as at Christ, and you will have the same sort of treatment when you receive Christ. Those who used to say, “You are a fine fellow,” when they find that you have become a Christian, will call you a mean-spirited wretch. As long as you give them something to drink, they will say what a jolly dog you are; but as soon as ever you have done with their ways, you will be literally like a dog to them, and they will have nothing for you but kicks and curses. In more respectable society, you know how they give a Christian the cold shoulder. Nothing is actually said, but there is a very clear intimation that your room is preferred to your company when you once become a Christian. Can you bear that? Can you dare that? Because, if Christ comes to your house and heart, you must expect that he will bring his cross with him. Are you willing to have Christ, cross and all; and to say, “Let the murmurers say what they will, and do what they will, my mind is made up, Christ for me, Christ for me; I cannot give him up”?

Further, will you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord? Zacchæus did so, for he said, “Behold, Lord.” Now, are you willing to give up all to Christ, and to let him be Lord over you? Are you willing to do what he bids you, as he bids you, when he bids you, and simply because he bids you? For, verily, I say unto you, you cannot have Christ for your Saviour unless you also have him as your Lord. He must rule over us as well as forgive us; as one of our poets says,-

“Yet know, nor of the terms complain,

Where Jesus comes, he comes to reign;

To reign, and with no partial sway;

Thoughts must be slain that disobey.”

Sins must be given up, evil practices must be forsaken, you must follow after holiness, and endeavour in all things to imitate your Saviour, who has left you an example that you should follow his steps. Are you ready for that? Because, if you are, then Christ is ready to abide at your house, and to dwell in your heart.

Once more, will you be prepared to defend him? If Jesus comes to a house, it becomes the duty of the host to defend him. So Zacchæus, not in boasting, but as a kind of answer to the sneers of the murmurers, when they said that Christ had gone to dwell with a sinner, seemed to say, “But I am no longer a sinner, as I used to be. If I have wronged anybody, I will restore it fourfold; and, henceforth, the half of my income shall be given in alms to the poor.” That was the best defence he could give, and Christ must be defended by the changed lives of his disciples. You must so live that, when men attempt to attack the Saviour, they may be compelled to say, “Well, after all, that man is the better for being a Christian.” Your children may rail at religion, but they will be compelled to say, “We could speak against Christ and Christians generally, but when we think of how our mother lived, and how she died, our tongues are silenced. Then, there is our old nurse, who feared the Lord;-many a joke did we crack about her religion; but, ah! there was something about her that was so heavenly that we were obliged to believe in the reality of it whether we would or not.” Yes, dear friends, if the Lord Jesus Christ should come to your house, you must say, “It shall be my heart’s ambition, as long as I live, to defend his cause by the holiness of the character which I trust his Holy Spirit will work in me.” If this is the case with any of you, then he must abide at your house to-night. God grant that he may do so!

Now I must close by reminding you of what will happen if Christ comes to abide in your house.

First, you must be ready to meet objections at home. You who say that you are willing to receive my Master, are you quite sure that you know what that reception involves? Christ says that he wishes to abide at your house, and that he must do so; and you say, “Yes, my Lord, I gladly welcome thee to my heart and my home.” But stay a moment, my friend; have you asked your wife about that matter? You know that you must not bring home strangers; she will be down upon you if you do; have you counted the cost of your decision? And, my good woman, you say, “I want to bring Christ home with me.” Have you asked your husband about it? Sometimes, a dear child says, “Jesus Christ shall abide with me;” but what will father say? For, alas! often, the father is at enmity against God. If that is the case in your home, are you prepared to endure hardness for Christ’s sake? Our Lord himself said, “A man’s foes shall be they of his own household;” and it is often so. David said to Jonathan, “What if thy father answer thee roughly?” Suppose that is your experience, can you keep true to Christ under such circumstances? Can you say, “I love my wife; I love my child; I love my father; but I love Jesus more than all of them; and I must have Christ in my heart, and in my house, even if it brings war there”? Ah! then, he will come to your house if that be your resolve; but if not, he will not come to take the second place. He will not come there if you turn coward at the first jest that is made against you, or the first hard thing that is spoken against your Lord; but he will come to your house if, despite all rebuffs and rebukes, you are determined that he shall make his abode with you.

But, next, is your house fit for him to enter, and abide there? I know some houses where my Lord could not lodge for a single night, the table, the talk, the whole surroundings would be so uncongenial to him. Are you prepared, then, to put away everything that would displease him, and to have your house cleansed of all that is evil? You cannot expect the Lord Jesus to come into your house if you invite the devil to come, too. Christ would not remain in the same heaven with the devil; as soon as ever Satan sinned, he hurled him out of the holy place; he could not endure to have a sinful spirit, the spirit of evil, there; and he will not come and live in your house if you make provision for the lusts of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, and all those evil things that he abhors. Are you prepared, by his grace, to make a clean sweep of these things? He will not come to you on any other terms.

Further, we must admit none who would grieve our Guest. It is hard to lodge with some people because their children are so badly behaved. My Lord loves not to dwell in families where Eli is at the head of the household, and where the children and young people live as they like; but if he comes to your house, he will want you to be like Abraham, of whom he said, “I know him, that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord.” If he comes to your house, you must ask him to come in the same way that he came to the house of the jailor at Philippi. How was that? I have often heard half of that passage quoted without the context: “Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.” Many leave out those last three words, “and thy house;” but what a mercy it is when all in the house, as well as the head of the family, have faith in the Lord Jesus Christ! Do you not wish that it may be so in your house? Do you not ardently desire it? I trust that you do.

Once more, when the Lord Jesus Christ comes into your house, you must entertain him. He wants no riches at your hands, yet he wants the best that you have. What is the best that you have? Why, your heart, your soul! Give him your heart, give him your life, give him your very self. If you had to entertain the Queen,-if she had promised to come and spend an evening with you,-I will warrant that you would be fidgeting and worrying for weeks about what you should get for such an occasion; and if you have but little means, you would try to get the very best that you could.

I frequently used to go and preach in a country place, where I stayed at a farm; and the dear old man, who lived there, used to have about a hundred pounds of beef, at the very least, on his table; and when, year after year, I noticed such enormous joints, I said to him, one day, “You must have a very curious idea of my appetite; it is not possible that I should ever get through these masses of meat that you put on your table.” “Oh!” he replied, “we get through it all very easily, after you are gone, for there are plenty of poor people, and plenty of farm labourers round about, and they soon clear it up.” “But,” I enquired, “why do you have so much when I come?” “Bless you, sir,” he answered, “I would give you a piece as big as a house if I could get it,-I would, indeed,-just to show you how welcome you are to my home.” I understood what he meant, and appreciated his kindness; and, in a far higher sense, let us all do as much as ever we possibly can to show the Lord Jesus how welcome he is to our heart and our home.

How welcome he ought always to be when he comes, as our blessed Saviour, to put away our sin, and change our nature, and honour us with his royal company, and keep and preserve us even to the end, that he may take us up, and our children, too, to dwell at his right hand for ever! Oh, there ought to be grand entertainment for such a Guest as he is! Where is the man who is going to ask him home to-night? Here stands my Master, and in his name I ask,-who will take him home to-night? With whom shall Jesus lodge to-night? “Oh!” says one, “if he would but come to me, I would be glad enough to welcome him.” He is glad enough to come, for he delights to be entertained in human hearts. O you soldiers, over there, with the red coats on,-I am always glad to see you here,-shall Jesus Christ abide with you to-night? And you others, in black coats, or in coloured dresses, shall Jesus Christ abide with you to-night? You good friends who are up from the country, if you have not taken Christ into your hearts, will you not take him in now? I cannot hear what you say, but he can; and if this be the reply, “God be merciful to me a sinner, and come and lodge with me to-night,” it shall be done, and his shall be the praise.

Now the time has gone, but I must say just these few words more. I recollect that, when I was crying to God for mercy, and I could get no answer to my supplication, so that I feared I must really give up prayer as hopeless, the thought which kept me praying was this, “Well, if I do not get salvation, I shall perish.” I seemed to fancy that the Lord had kept me waiting;-that was only my foolish way of thinking, and it was not true;-but I said to myself, “If the Lord keeps me waiting, I also kept him waiting a long while. Was I not for many years resisting him, and refusing him? So that, if he makes me wait for salvation, I must not complain.” Then I thought, “Well, now, if I were to keep on praying, and I did not find Christ for twenty years, yet, if I found him at last, the blessing would be well worth having, and worth waiting for, so I will never leave off praying for it.” And then I thought, “Why should I expect that I must be heard, the moment I choose to come to the mercy-seat, when I would not hear God’s call when he so often spoke to me?” So I still persevered in prayer, yet with this thought,-What can I do else?-like a whip ever upon my back. I felt that this must be my resolve,-

“I can but perish if I go;

I am resolved to try;

For if I stay away, I know

I must for ever die.”

I like that plan which I have known to be followed by some who have gone to their room, and shut the door, determined not to go out till they had found the Saviour. They have read the Word, especially such passages as these, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;” “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life;” and they have gone down on their knees, and have said, “Lord, this is thy promise. Help me now to believe in Jesus, and give me salvation, for his sake, for I will not leave this place without thy blessing!” Such vehemence, such importunity, is sure to prevail. How dare any one of you continue to live unsaved? How dare you, sir, again close your eyes in sleep while you are unreconciled to God? What if, instead of waking up in that bedroom of yours, you should lift up your eyes, and say, “Where, am I? What is this dreadful place? Where are the things I once loved? Where are the things I lived for? Where am I? Where is Christ? Where is the gospel? Where are Sabbath days? Where are the warning words I used to despise? Where is the power to pray? Is all this gone for ever? And where am I? In dark, dark, dire despair; an enemy to thee, O God, and an enemy to thee for ever! Horror and dismay have taken hold upon me.”

The very attempt to depict that awful scene makes me feel as though dread would stop my tongue. Oh, I pray you, go not there! There are some who deny the eternity of future punishment; but, for my part, I would not risk such suffering for an hour even if it should end then. What woe it would be to be only an hour in hell! Oh, how you would wish then that you had sought the Saviour, and had found him! But, alas! there is no such thing as an hour in hell; once lost, you are lost for ever! Therefore, seek the Lord now; cry, with Jeremiah, “O Lord our God, we will wait upon thee.” You cannot brazen it out; you cannot escape from everlasting wrath unless you trust in Jesus, so let this be your cry,-

“Thou, O Christ, art all I want

More than all in thee I find!

“Other refuge have I none,

Hangs my helpless soul on thee!”

So, Christ of God, we cast ourselves into thine arms! Save us, save us, save us, for thy sweet mercy’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

LUKE 18:35-43; and 19:1-10.

Chapter 18 Verses 35-38. And it came to pass, that as he was come nigh unto Jericho, a certain blind man sat by the way side begging: and hearing the multitude pass by, he asked what it meant. And they told him, that Jesus of Nazareth passeth by. And he cried, saying, Jesus, thou son of David, have mercy on me.

He did not need to be told twice who was passing by, nor did he need any exhortation to seek Christ’s help. It was enough for him that Jesus of Nazareth was near him; so he would cry to him for the help he alone could give. Oh, that we were half as sensible! Oh, that the blindness did not get into men’s hearts! If it were not so, every blind soul would at once begin to cry to God for mercy; there is not one poor sinner here, who knows that Jesus often passes this way, who would not begin at once to cry, “Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.”

39. And they which went before rebuked him,

“Be quiet,” they cried.

39. That he should hold his peace:

“Do not interrupt the flow of those marvellous words, or break the thread of that matchless discourse.”

39. But he cried so much the more, Thou son of David, have mercy on me.

They could not quench the fire that burned within his breast; they did but increase its intensity by all their efforts to put it out. The blind man was so earnest to get his eyes opened that his voice could not be silenced. This was a proof of his common sense and true wisdom. It is remarkable how clearly the blind people mentioned in the Scriptures could see. Oh, that these who think they can see could really see as plainly as this blind man could, and would act as wisely as he did! “He cried so much the more, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me.” This was his only hope;-perhaps, his last opportunity; so he availed himself of it to the full.

40, 41. And Jesus stood, and commanded him to be brought unto him: and when he was come near, he asked him, saying, What wilt thou that I shall do unto thee? And he said, Lord, that I may receive my sight.

There was no waste of words. He said what he meant, and he meant what he said, and he knew what he wanted. It is a great thing, in prayer, to know what we really need,-a very important thing to be sensible enough not to multiply words, but to cry to the Lord with a definite object, as this blind man said, “Lord, that I may receive my sight.”

42, 43. And Jesus said unto him, Receive thy sight: thy faith hath saved thee. And immediately he received his sight, and followed him, glorifying God: and all the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God.

That was a blessed praise-meeting, brought about by the healing of that one man. Now that his eyes were opened, he showed that his mouth was not closed. He proved that he could pray well; now he proves that he can also praise well. He prayed when they tried to stop him, and now nobody shall stop him from praise; and he so praised the great Physician that, with the flaming firebrand of his gratitude he set all other hearts in a blaze: “All the people, when they saw it, gave praise unto God.”

Chapter 19 Verse 1. And Jesus entered-

That is, he entered at one end of the town,-

1. And passed through Jericho.

And so came out at the other end of it.

2. And, behold, there was a man named Zacchæus, which was the chief among the publicans, and he was rich.

It was an important station for the collection of customs; there was a good deal of produce at Jericho upon which there was a tax, so Zacchæus had a good post: “he was rich.”

3-7. And he sought to see Jesus who he was; and could not for the press, because he was little of stature. And he ran before, and climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, he looked up, and saw him, and said unto him, Zacchæus, make haste, and come down; for to day I must abide at thy house. And he made haste, and came down, and received him joyfully. And when they saw it, they all murmured,-

Some of the very people, I suppose, who had just before given praise to God. So fickle are the judgments of men that we need not be elated when all of them speak well of us. It only needs that the wind should veer just half a point, and they will all speak ill of us. The cry of men, even when it is most clear and strong, is not to be depended on. They shout “Hosannah,” to-day; but, before the week is out, they cry, “Crucify him; crucify him.” So, here, “They murmured,”-

7. Saying, That he was gone to be guest with a man that is a sinner.

I do not know where else he could have gone, for they were all sinners; but they meant that this tax-gatherer was “a sinner” by public reputation, he was an excommunicated person, who was regarded by everybody as “a sinner” in a very special sense.

8. And Zacchæus stood, and said unto the Lord; Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor;-

“Henceforth, one half of my income shall go in almsgiving;”-

8. And if I have taken any thing from any man by false accusation, I restore him fourfold.

“I will not give to the poor or to God that which is not lawfully mine. I will not steal a sheep, and give the feet to the poor; but I will give back, four times over, anything that I may have taken wrongfully, and still the half of my future income shall go to the poor.”

9, 10. And Jesus said unto him, This day is salvation come to this house, forsomuch as he also is a son of Abraham. For the Son of man it come to seek and to save that which was lost.

Hymns from “Our Own Hymn Book”-408, 538, 576.