God is often exceedingly good to those who are utterly unworthy of such treatment. “He maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good;” indeed, sometimes, the evil seem to have more of the sunshine than the good have. David said, “I have seen the wicked in great power, and spreading himself like a green bay tree.” God’s forbearance has been misinterpreted, and even misrepresented, by some who have implied, or actually asserted that God winks at sin, and does not care how men behave, but treats all alike, whether they are good or evil. Some have wickedly asked, as Job reminded his friends, “What is the Almighty, that we should serve him?” Many have said, “Do not the wicked prosper? Do they not even die in peace? Is it not written concerning them, ‘There are no bands in their death; but their strength is firm’?” This is a misinterpretation of the merciful design of God towards the ungodly, and is corrected by the apostle in the verse from which our text is selected: “Despisest thou the riches of his goodness and forbearance and longsuffering; not knowing that the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance?” The goodness of God to a man of evil life is not intended to encourage him to continue in his sin, but it is meant to woo and win him away from it. God manifests his infinite gentleness and love that he may thereby kill man’s sin; and that, by his tender mercy, he may win man’s hard heart unto himself; and that, by his abundant lovingkindness, he may awaken man’s conscience to a sense of his true position in his Maker’s sight, that he may turn away from the sin which he now loves, and may seek his God, whom he has despised and neglected. My fellow-man, if thou art still ungodly, yet thou hast been prospered by thy God, understand clearly the Lord’s intention in thy prosperity: “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” Thou must not be so unwise, thou must not be so wicked, as to say, “I am prospering although I am living in sin; therefore, I will continue to do so.” Remember what the Lord said through Isaiah the prophet: “The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master’s crib.” Be thou, at least, as wise as these brute beasts are, and recognize from whom thy prosperity cometh; and then accept as true God’s explanation of his actions, as given by the Holy Spirit through the apostle, and believe that “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.”

My object, at this time, is that those who are enjoying the goodness of God, but yet have never repented of sin, may see their conduct in its true light, and may be brought to a sincere and hearty repentance of their sin. To that end, I shall, first of all, spend a little time in mentioning some of the tokens of the goodness of God which he has lavished upon many with the view of leading them to repentance.

I commence with this remark; it is a great blessing to have been born of Christian parents, or even of parents who were respectable and moral; it gives one a good start in life where this is the case. On the other hand, I do not doubt that some have strong propensities to evil which have been at work within them from their very birth, so that they were more likely than certain others were to plunge into gross sin. Therefore, it is no small mercy to have been started in this world under a roof where the name of Jesus was often heard, where holy things were constantly brought before one’s eye, where blasphemy was never heard, where uncleanness would have been put outside the door with the utmost abhorrence; so, if any of you have been the recipients of these marks of God’s favourable regard, and yet are not godly,-perhaps, not even moral,-it is clear, from our text, that this goodness of God to you ought to lead you to repentance. Let me just remind you of your gracious mother, who is now, perhaps, with God in glory. Your godly father, possibly, lives to sorrow over you. If they could have known, when you were a fair-haired boy at home, that you would ever be what you now are, they might have wished that you had never been born. Try to recall those early, happy days; imagine that you can hear again your mother’s earnest pleadings both with and for her boy; think once more of how you felt when you were sitting at the table on which the family Bible lay open, and, morning and evening, prayer was offered unto the Most High; and, as you do so, may the Lord, by some soft and gentle voice within your conscience, call you to repentance!

Next, it is a mark of the great goodness and forbearance of God as he continues to spare the lives of men. We often marvel that he does not more quickly cut them down as cumberers of the ground. If the first wanton transgression had been followed by a solemn warning, and if the next wilful sin had involved severe chastisement with the threatening that the third offence should be the last, we might not have been surprised; yet God, in his abounding mercy, allows men to sin over and over again,-to sin against light and knowledge, against rebuke and instruction, against conscience and reason, and even against the love of Christ. Singularly enough, God often spares, in an extraordinary manner, the lives of some of the most atrocious rebels against his righteous rule. There are some men, who are so wicked that, if they were dead, the moral atmosphere of the world would be much purer; yet they live on, and seem as if they could not die. Disease after disease has laid them low,-for they sin against their own bodies, and bring themselves into a truly horrible condition, yet they rise from their sick-bed only to sin again more foully than ever. How is it that such sinners are spared, while an earnest and zealous foreign missionary sickens, and dies, and an eminent saint, who did but pass through a street where fever raged, was stricken with the fell disease, and speedily carried off by it? If I understand why the miscreants are spared when the godly are taken,-and I am sure I do, for my text instructs me,-the goodness of God is manifested in order to lead such sinners to repentance. He spares them that they may turn unto him. The sailor who, a little while before, was blaspheming the name of the Lord; and then working at the pumps, with all his might, to try to save the ship, sees the vessel go down, but he clings to a spar that floats upon the raging sea. His shipmates have been sinking all around him, but he finds himself washed up high and dry upon a rock. To what end, seaman, are you spared? Is it not that the goodness of God may lead to repentance even you, who could scarcely speak without an oath? God means, I trust, that you should, henceforth, live a new life, and serve him as you have never yet done. And the soldier, too, I have heard of him, in the day of battle, when the bullets have whistled close by his ears, and comrade after comrade has fallen at his side. I remember speaking, many years ago, with one who rode in that celebrated charge at Balaclava when the saddles were being emptied right and left, yet on to the end he rode, and back again through the valley of death; and, though a stranger to him, I could not help laying my hand upon his shoulder, and claiming him for the Christ who had spared his life in that terrible time. Am I addressing anyone who has been in imminent peril of any sort,-by railway accident or in shipwreck, in battle or in storm, when it seemed as if you must die, yet you did not die? Then, surely, your preservation means that God was saying to grim Death, “Spare him, for he is mine. I intend to save his soul as well as to spare his life.” If that is the case with any of you, God’s goodness is meant to lead you to repentance.

Nor is this all,-though there is great mercy in a godly parentage, and in life preserved in times of peril;-for, sometimes, ungodly men enjoy, for many years, the privilege of perfect health. “I never had a day’s illness in my life,” says one; yet he has not been careful of his constitution; on the contrary, he has done much to injure it. Another says, “I never missed a day’s work, and never was kept away from business, by suffering of any kind; I scarcely know what aches and pains mean.” Well, friend, God deals with you, in that respect, in a very different way from the treatment he metes out to some of us, who, nevertheless, try to serve him. Surely, you ought seriously to think of this matter, and to say to yourself, “He does not even give me as much of the rod as he gives to his own children. It cannot be that he loves me better than he loves them; it must be because I am not his child. As a man does not punish another person’s boy, but leaves him to go his own way, so I must not reckon that God is specially showing his love to me in this long-continued health and strength, and I must solemnly ask myself, ‘Am I his child?’ And then, on the other hand, I must say to him, ‘Dost thou, O Lord, indulge me with health and strength? Dost thou favour me with this long immunity from pain,-I, who never lived to serve thee, and never even thanked thee for all thy goodness to me? Then am I thoroughly ashamed of myself, and I implore thee, O my gracious Preserver, to forgive my forgetfulness and ingratitude, and to receive me, and to put me among thy children!’ ”

Nor is this all, for I know some ungodly people who are greatly prospering in this world. When they started in life, perhaps things were a little hard with them; and they thought that, if God would but give them enough to eat and drink, it would be a great mercy. Possibly, they soon found a position which just suited their capacities; but, ere long, they began to aspire to something higher, and God gave it to them. So it has gone on until, now, they have pretty nearly all that they could wish to have. Well, dear friends, if this has been your experience, recollect that all has come to you from the Giver of every good and perfect gift. Each one of these blessings has been sent to you marked with some such message as this from the Lord himself, “Will not my creature consider what return should be rendered to me for this mercy, and that mercy, and the other mercy, which I have given to him,-more even than I have given to some of the best of my own people;-will he not turn unto me, and bless the Giver of all this goodness to him?”

I would like to take you by the hand, young man,-you who have been signally helped, perhaps, out of a difficulty in business, when it seemed as if you must fail. You have, since then, had many severe storms and trials to face, yet you have always been delivered out of them all, and now you have come into a channel where it is all smooth sailing. Is it not time for you to begin to consider your ways, and to turn unto the Lord? You were blessed with a happy marriage; your children are growing up around you, and whereas many others have had to bury their offspring, yours have all been spared to you. Do you not see how God has blessed you in all sorts of ways? Will you not, therefore, give him your heart? Will you not cast away from you the sin that he hates? Will you not turn unto him, trusting and loving Christ with all your heart, and mind, and soul, and strength? The goodness of God to you, coming in so many different forms and ways, should lead you to repentance.

Notice, dear friends, that the Lord does not drive you to repentance. Cain was driven away, as a fugitive and a vagabond, when he had killed his righteous brother Abel; Judas went and hanged himself, being driven by an anguish of remorse because of what he had done in betraying his Lord; but the sweetest and best repentance is that which comes, not by driving, but by drawing: “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” It is a wretched spirit that needs to be continually flogged with the whip of a slave-holder; I hope I am addressing those who can be affected by other motives than those of dread. The good God, the gracious God, who has abounded in mercy and goodness so wonderfully to many of you,-should you not feel that something is drawing you towards him? At least, do him the justice to look at him as he reveals himself in Christ Jesus, and see if he is not worth serving,-if it is not meet and right that you should serve him. Having provided his Son to be the Saviour of sinners, is it not meet that you should turn unto him, and find eternal life through believing in him?

I have only given a brief outline of the many forms of God’s goodness to many of us; but your experiences are so different that you must, each one, fill up his or her own. I know that you all have reason to bless God for some special goodness. We sang, just now,-

“Tell it unto sinners, tell,

I am, I am out of hell;”-

but I may add that we are also not in the lunatic asylum, not in the workhouse, not in prison, not upon the bed of sickness; and all these things are tokens of God’s goodness to us, which ought to lead us to repentance.

Now, secondly, I will try to show you in what way the goodness of God is an argument for our repentance.

First, God has been so good to us, He cannot be a hard taskmaster. The ungodly man cannot truly say to God what the man in the parable said to his lord, “I feared thee, because thou art an austere man.” How can God be austere when he has manifested all this goodness to you? Your house has been without prayer, yet you have had no fire to burn it down, no thieves to ransack it, no fever to invade it; you have lived for forty, fifty, sixty, or even seventy or eighty years without ever serving your Maker; yet you are surrounded with every earthly comfort; after all that, can you call God a hard task-master? No; it is proved beyond all question that God is good, and only good, and that he doeth good even to the unthankful and the evil. Well, then, what a shame it is that such a generous, magnanimous God as he is should be treated as the careless and indifferent treat him! When a man is simply a just man, that is well so far as it goes; but he may be hard and stern; but when a man is generous, forgiving, tender-hearted,-surely, the most coarse-minded among us would be unwilling to inflict pain upon such a heart as that! But the heart of God is more loving than that of any man who has ever lived; and more tender than ever any mother was with her child. He cannot bear that you should love evil instead of loving him. And after he has done all this for you of which I have been speaking, wherefore do you turn against him? Did I hear you make use of a blasphemous expression? For which of all the good things that he has done for you did you blaspheme his holy name? For sparing your life when you had that terrible fever; or for raising up your dear little child from the very brink of the grave? Do you neglect to worship the Lord, do you rail at his people, do you scoff at all religion, because of the many tokens of God’s goodness that he has manifested toward you? Come, now, be a man; sink not below the level of a brute, for even a brute will render good for good. It is the devil who renders evil for good; yet you are sinking to his level if you continue in sin, and turn not unto God, who has dealt so kindly and so graciously with you.

The next reflection to help you to repentance is this. As God has dealt so kindly with you while you have been living in sin, then it is untrue, as you thought, that he is unwilling to forgive. There are many, who do not seek God’s mercy, because they think it is not to be obtained by them, but that is one of the devil’s lies. Why, man, as he has spared you so long, he must be willing to forgive you. There are some, who even dare to invoke their Maker’s curse upon their own limbs and eyes; if any of you have ever done that, and yet the Lord has not done what you blasphemously asked him to do,-the reason for his forbearance must have been that he is full of longsuffering and gentleness Turn to him, I pray you; and, with broken heart and contrite spirit, ask him to forgive you, and you shall see how quickly he will do it, for it is still true that “he is good: for his mercy endureth for ever.” “He delighteth in mercy.” “As I live, saith the Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way, and live.” The great goodness of God to rebellious sinners is proof positive that he is willing to bestow his forgiving mercy upon them as soon as they repent of their sin; so it should be a great inducement to them to turn unto him, and live.

The argument, however, will appear to be stronger still if, in reading our text, we lay the emphasis upon the personal pronoun: “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” Now, dear friend, if God has taken the trouble to be specially good to you, in order to lead you to repentance, you may be certain that he would not have picked you out in this remarkable manner unless he had intended to welcome you if you do but come unto him. I will not point my finger at any particular person, nor will I intentionally direct a glance of my eye at any special individual; but I feel persuaded that there are some here who have been, in the providence of God, very signally favoured. If your life-story could be written, it would, perhaps, scarcely be believed; and as you look back upon difficulties and trials that you have been enabled to surmount, and upon the many blessings that have been showered upon you, it must sometimes seem to you almost like a dream. You cannot understand it; you say to yourself that you have been one of the darlings of destiny. If you have said that, do not talk any more about destiny, but think of what the apostle says in our text: “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.” I hope that thou art one of his elect,-chosen in Christ long before the foundation of the world, and that thou hast in thy heart heard him say to thee, by his Holy Spirit, though not in words audible to thine outward ear, “I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.” Think of John Newton, the godless sailor, reduced to the level of a slave on the coast of Africa; yet, after going from sin to sin, being spared to stand in the church of St. Mary Woolnoth, for many a year to preach the gospel of “free grace and dying love.” So, the many fevers from which he suffered could not kill him, and his various shipwrecks could not drown him, for God had ordained that he must come home, find the Lord Jesus Christ as his Saviour, and be his faithful servant all the rest of his days. And you, my friend, who have long been roaming about the world, must come to that same Saviour if you really wish to be saved. You are like a besieged city; yet something more powerful than great guns is now ranged against you. The batteries of almighty love have come into the field. Providence after providence has surrounded you with the gracious artillery of divine mercy. You cannot escape; therefore, surrender to your best Friend! Surrender to your God! Surrender to holiness, and happiness, and everlasting life! God help you to do so, for the legitimate argument of undeserved goodness, given to the worst of men, is that it should lead them speedily to repentance and to eternal life. This personal pronoun is in the singular, so I pray thee, my brother, and thee, my sister, to take home to thine own heart the message of the text: “The goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance.”

Now I want, just for a minute or two, before I close, to address myself to those who have repented. Beloved friends, shall I tell you what your experience has been? I think I can, if I tell you what mine has been. First of all, when I really came to know the Lord Jesus Christ, I discovered that he loved sinners. Before I made that discovery, I thought he loved only the good and the righteous; but when I read his Word, I found that he came, not to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance. I thought, for a long while, that he wanted my good works, and I had none to bring to him; but, as I read his Word, I found that he gave himself for our sins, not for our righteousnesses. Then I understood, as I read his Word, that whosoever believed in him should not be condemned. I believed in him, and I knew at once, from his Word, that I was not condemned,-that he had died for me,-that my sins were all pardoned. And, let me tell you, I never repented before as I repented then. It semed to me-if it was really true that he had forgiven me all my sin, and suffered and died that he might be able justly to forgive me,-that I must have been almost as bad as the devil himself to have sinned against him as I had done. Even while I rejoiced in being pardoned, I felt almost ashamed to look him in the face, and claim his mercy. To think that I should have sinned against such a Friend, who was so ready to forgive me all my guilt, made me ready to hide my head in the very dust. If he had bidden the thunders of his wrath to roll around me, I should not have been surprised; but when, instead of thunders, he gently said, “I love thee, and I forgive thee,” then was my heart broken.

“Dissolved by his mercy I fell to the ground,

And wept to the praise of the mercy I’d found.”

After that, I found that he was not only willing to pardon me, but that he had come to robe me in his own righteousness that I might stand accepted in his place. At this, I wondered much; but when I saw that he really did impute to me his own righteousness, and that I, a sinner, stood before God “accepted in the Beloved,”-that pulled the sluices up again, and I repented more than I did before as I realized that I, whom he had ordained to bless with such a wondrous righteousness as that, should ever have been a lover of sin instead of a lover of the Lord.

Then a voice whispered to me that, being pardoned, and justified, I was also adopted into the family of God, whereat I wondered, more than ever, how it could be that an heir of wrath should be able to say, “Abba, Father.” As I understood this, I said, “Father, I did not know that thou wert my Father, or I would not have trespassed against thee, and gone away from thee as I have done.” My voice was almost choked, my heart was full, and my tears freely flowed, as I grieved that I had so long offended my Father and my God. To make a long story short, I find myself, I thank his name, repenting more and more every day I live. I am more and more angry with myself to think I should not have kept my Father’s commands in my mind, and served him with my whole heart.

I expect that, as I learn more of his goodness, it will always continue to lead me to repentance; and I trust, beloved brethren and sisters in Christ, you can bear me witness that I do but speak what is in your mind also. The dearer Christ is to us, the blacker is sin in our sight. The sweeter the love of God is to us, the more bitter is the thought of having so long sinned against it. The more you see, in these shoreless, bottomless deeps, what divine grace has done for you, and to you, the more you smite upon your breast, and cry, “How could I ever have sinned against the Lord as I have done; and how can I sin against him as I still continue to do?”

“Ah!” says one, “but mine is a very bad case, for I have had a relapse. I did think I was saved once, but I have been just as bad or even worse since then.” Ah, but my Master delights to forgive his backsliding children! He has put this invitation in the Scriptures on purpose for you: “Turn, O backsliding children, saith the Lord; for I am married unto you.” Again and again he saith, “Return! Return! Return! You, whom the Church, in God’s name, has excommunicated, I yet invite you to return. It is an awful thing to lie under the ban of God’s Church, for what is so done on earth is confirmed in heaven; but, though you lie under this ban, I yet invite you to return unto me, for I will receive you graciously, and love you freely.”

“Ah!” says one, “but I do not feel my need of Christ as I could wish to feel it. I believe it in theory, but I do not feel it as I should.” Well, be humbled about this; weep because you do not weep; be grieved to think that you should be so hard-hearted; but, oh! remember that Christ can cure hard hearts quite as well as sinful ones. Come just as you are. You have a real need of Christ, whether you feel it or not. It is not your sense of need, but your real need of Christ that must draw you to come to him. O ye who are sick,-and who is there among us who is not?-come to the great Physician, and be made whole! I would gladly move your souls if I could, but this is not in man’s power. There have been times when I have been able to stir you through and through, as the waves of the sea are moved by the wind; but I know that when man only has done this, all the tempest has soon subsided, and you have gone your way, and have been as before; but, oh! if God shall own this poor and imperfect statement of most precious truth, then unto him shall be the glory. Payson says, “Looking back on my sermons, I often wonder that God should ever have blessed a soul through them;” and often do I think the same. I pray God to bless the message. Young man, what say you to haul down the black flag, and run up the blood-red cross to-night? You may yet be a minister of Christ, perhaps a missionary of the cross. In the name of Jesus of Nazareth, I bid you believe on him, and you shall live; and all of you who are gathered here, I command you, as well as beseech, implore, and entreat you, do not put away from you the gospel which is preached in your hearing. Trust Christ, and you shall live; if you will not do so, it may be that you will never again be exhorted to come to Christ. You may never again be told that he is willing and able to receive you. Oh, will ye again go your ways, and despise the Lord? Will ye go to your merchandise and to your trade, and neglect the salvation of your souls, and let them become still worse in this foul disease which ends in death and damnation? “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways, for why will ye die?” By that cross where hung the Son of God in mortal flesh, by those five wounds, and by the agonies he endured, I do implore you to look to him and live. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so lift I up the Son of man to you now, ye sin-bitten sinners. Though ye feel not the venom, yet look! look! look! Sinner, look, and thou art saved! By the living God, whose splendours of grace I now proclaim, and whose splendours of wrath ye shall one day feel if ye reject his Son, look! look yonder, see the blood,-it flows for you, sinner! See the hands of Jesus, they are fast nailed to the tree! See his feet there, fastened by the nails as if they would stop there till you come to him! See that heart of his; how it streams with blood to wash away your many sins! O sinner, look and live! I cannot say more. God knows I cannot do more; I can only testify to you the gospel. If ye turn not at my message, I must be a swift witness against you at the day of judgment;-I must say it,-I must be a swift witness against you. Your blood is on your own heads! Christ is preached to you. Look and live! Believe and be saved! But reject him, and he that believeth not shall be damned; and I can only say “Amen” to that, if you reject so great a salvation.

Yet, I pray you, think not so much of the law as of the gospel, nor think so much of hell as of the Christ who has delivered his people from hell, nor so much of divine wrath as of God’s goodness. It is a good God whom I have to set before you. I never so much wish to be eloquent as when I have to speak of him, and all his love to guilty sinners. What has he done to any of us but that which is good? Even if he has sorely smitten us, it has been in mercy that he has done it. Though you may have lain for weeks upon a sick-bed, it was meant to cure your souls of the fatal disease of sin. That limb was broken that your spirit might be healed. That loss of sight was sent that you might learn, by inward sight, to see the Lord Jesus as your Saviour. God is all goodness, and mercy, and love, and tenderness, and he has set his own dear Son before you, saying to you, “Believe in him, and ye shall be saved. ‘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.’ ” Will you not turn unto him, and live? Eternal Spirit, turn them, and they shall be turned, for Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

LUKE 13:11-35

Verses 11, 12. And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.

Observe the word “Behold” here. Sometimes, in old books, they used to put a hand in the margin to call attention to something special in the text; so, this word seems as though nobody in the synagogue was worthy of such special notice as the most forlorn and desolate individual there: “a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself.” It was to be a happy Sabbath for her, though she did not know it. She used to go to the synagogue, though it must have been painful for her to be present; possibly, she could not even see the minister, she was so “bowed together.” It must have been a great surprise to her when the Saviour called her to him, and said to her, “Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity.”

13. And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God.

I should think she did. We have no record of what she said; she may have merely cried out, “Hallelujah”; but the very look of her, her streaming eyes filled with gratitude, her face beaming with delight, all tended to glorify God. Even if she had said nothing, her being made straight would of itself have glorified God; and, just as that once crooked woman could glorify God, so can a guilty sinner, crushed and helpless, glorify God. It was when Christ’s hands were laid upon her that she was made straight. Oh, that he would lay his hands on some of you! May this be to you the saving Sabbath of the year, that God may be glorified in you.

14. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation,

Poor soul! Surely he was more crooked than the infirm woman was; but, alas! he did not get healed.

14. Because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day.

The Lord then answered him; and what an answer it was!

15-17. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering. And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day? And when he had said these things, all his adversaries were ashamed: and all the people rejoiced for all the glorious things that were done by him.

His reply was unanswerable.

18. Then said he,

They were in a right frame for hearing, having been rendered attentive by their admiration for his miraculous work and his wondrous word.

18-22. Unto what is the kingdom of God like? and whereunto shall I resemble it? It is like a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and cast into his garden; and it grew, and waxed a great tree; and the fowls of the air lodged in the branches of it. And again he said, When unto shall I liken the kingdom of God? It is like leaven, which a woman took and hid in three measures of meal, till the whole was leavened. And he went through the cities and villages, teaching, and journeying toward Jerusalem.

Practically, that is what he was always doing, “journeying to ward Jerusalem,” toward that great climax of his life, his substitutionary death upon the cross of Calvary.

23. Then said one unto him, Lord, are there few that be saved?

That is a question that many have asked, and some have vainly tried to answer. What did Jesus reply?

23, 24. And he said unto them, Strive to enter in at the strait gate:

Instead of gratifying idle curiosity, he excites to diligence in seeking entrance into the narrow way.

24. For many, I say unto you, will seek to enter in, and shall not be able.

They will only seek, not strive, to enter in. There will also come, in the future, a time when they may seek as they will, and strive as they will, to enter in, but it will be too late then. Once having passed into another world, there will be no hope for any seeker or striver.

25. When once the master of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door,-

They do not like to go away, they are reluctant to meet their final doom. Oh, that they had been wise enough to cry for mercy when it was to be had! Now they stand, and begin to knock; and more than that, they begin to plead:-

25. Saying, Lord, Lord, open unto us;

All this earnestness, all this deference, all this reverence have come too late.

25, 26. And he shall answer and say unto you, I know you not whence ye are: then shall ye begin to say, We have eaten and drunk in thy presence, and thou hast taught in our streets.

“We were regular hearers of the Word; we observed all the usual forms of religion, we even went to the communion table.”

27, 28. But he shall say, I tell you, I know you not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of iniquity. There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out.

Driven away; yet they could see the saintly ones there, and see their own kith and kin there, for they were Jews, and they could see “Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets” there, but they themselves were cast out; and what was worse for them:-

29. And they shall come from the east, and from the west, and from the north, and from the south, and shall sit down in the kingdom of God.

Rank outsiders, far-off heathen, outrageous sinners, harlots; “they shall come,” and repent, and “sit down in the kingdom of God;” and this shall out to the quick those who were hearers of the Word, but who perished because they were workers of iniquity.

30. And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.

Many who, to-day, seem to be unlikely to be converted, those who are “last” in character, will yet be “first” in repentance; and there are “first” in privileges, and even in hopefulness, who will be “last” in the great day of account. May we take home to our hearts this solemn warning!

31. The same day there came certain of the Pharisees, saying unto him, Get thee out, and depart hence: for Herod will kill thee.

Think of the Pharisees being concerned about Christ’s life! What an affectation of regard! Yet it was only affectation. We must always be on our guard against the foes of God even when they speak most fairly; indeed, it is their agreeable, affectionate words that we have most cause to dread.

32. And he said unto them, Go ye, and tell that fox,

Jesus called Herod a fox because he wanted to get Christ out of his territory without having the opprobrium of driving him away. So he sent this roundabout message to try to make a coward of the Lord, and to get him to go off on his own account.

32. Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures to day and to morrow, and the third day I shall be perfected.

That is, “I shall stay my full time here; while I have work to do, I shall do it, and I am not going away until it is finished. I am not afraid of Herod threatening to kill me, for I am immortal till my work is done.” He is not even flurried, or put about by such a message as that. Besides, when men mean to bite, they do not usually bark; and if Herod had meant to kill Christ just then, he would not have told him what he was going to do.

33. Nevertheless I must walk to day, and to morrow, and the day following; for it cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem.

What a sad thing for Christ to have to say! So many holy men had been murdered in Jerusalem that he roughly put it as being true, in the main, that all the prophets were martyred there, the exceptions only proving the rule.

34. O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!

There was their weakness, they were like a brood of chickens; there was his power to protect them, like a hen gathers her brood under her wings; yet there was their infatuation, that they would rather perish than come and be sheltered beneath his almighty wings: “and ye would not.”

35. Behold, your house is left unto you desolate: and verily I say unto you, Ye shall not see me, until the time come when ye shall say, Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord.

There will be no true glory for Jerusalem until the Jews are converted; there will be no return of Christ to that royal city until they shall welcome him with louder hosannas than they gave when he rode in triumph through the streets, and entered into the temple. The Lord grant that we may never reject Christ! Let us run, even now, like little chicks, and hide beneath the wings of the Eternal.

MIGRATORY BIRDS

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, November 19th, 1903,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, August 28th, 1870.

“Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the Lord.”-Jeremiah 8:7.

In our text, the prophet makes use of the flight of migratory birds to teach a valuable lesson. He mentions the swallow, which is the most prominent among the summer visitors to our own country; but he also names the stork, the crane, and the turtle-dove,-all of them familiar instances of birds that came, at a certain season, to Palestine; and, punctual to the hour, at given changes of the weather, winged their way back again to warmer climes. Too many careless observers, like the peasant of whom Wordsworth write,-

“A primrose by a river’s brim

A yellow primrose was to him,

And it was nothing more,”-

would have seen those birds, and soon forgotten all about them; but the prophet, observing the wisdom of these wanderers of the air, contrasts it with the folly of man, who knows not “the judgment of the Lord,” and obeys not so readily the monitions of his God as the birds do the instinct by which he guides them to and fro. We shall mark these migratory birds, and set the wisdom of their instinct in contrast with the folly of mankind.

The first thing that strikes us is, the fact that the stork, and the swallow, and the crane, and the turtle-dove, know when to come and go.

So far as we know, no audible intimation is given to them. You and I might forget, in the beginning of summer, that then is the period when the swallow will put in an appearance in our land; and that, towards autumn, he must take himself away, across the purple sea, to the African strand, or wherever he can find a suitable climate. But these birds know when to come or go; they tell, by some mysterious means, exactly when to start on their long flight. They were never known to go too soon: they are never known to stay too late. The bulk of them depart at one period, and the rest a few days later. If we are living in the suburbs, we hear a twittering congregation gathering around the gables of the houses; and, in the evening, we miss the swift-winged hawkers who had, during the summer, found their evening meal among the dancing insects. Their shrill, joyous twitterings are hushed, for they have perceived that the heavy dews of autumn, and the long nights of winter, are coming to strew the earth with fading flowers and falling leaves; and, by-and-by, with frost and snow; and, therefore, they have flown off to fairer lands where other summers await them. They will come back again in due time, true as the calendar. Whether we look for them, or not, they will be punctual to nature’s appointment. As sure as the summer’s sun will be their return. They know, without any special instruction, when to come, and when to go.

It is worthy of observation that the young birds, which have been born in this country, and have never made the long journey before, yet set forth with the older ones at the appointed time. They are novices in the art of travelling, yet they try their callow wings, and away they fly to the far-off land where the sun shines as it does not in this higher latitude. I wish that our young people were all as wise as the young swallows are;-that they knew their appointed time,-that they understood that there is no period in life which has so much of hopefulness about it as the period of childhood and youth,-that it is the best time in which to seek the Saviour, for it has a special promise attached to it: “Those that seek me early shall find me.” I would that they could hear the Lord Jesus Christ’s peculiarly sweet and tender message concerning them: “Suffer the little children, and forbid them not, to come unto me: for of such is the kingdom of heaven.” Yet, alas! young storks, and swallows, and cranes, and turtle-doves fly at the appointed season; but many young men and maidens delay, and waste the joyous hours of the morning of their lives in the ways of sin and folly,-yes, waste the hours which, if consecrated to Christ, and to his service, would have brought them a rich return in this life; and, in the life to come, would have tended to increase and intensify their everlasting felicity.

Further, the parent birds also go their way at the right time. They can, and doubtless do, help to guide the young. They may have made that journey but once before, but they know all about it;-they remember how long and how weary a way it was to them;-but, when the hour has struck, away they go, attended by their little ones. I would that all you, who are parents among mankind, were as wise as these parent-fowls of heaven; you have your children around you, hut whither are you leading them? Your example, if not your precept, is guiding them somewhere, you are influencing them for good or evil. You cannot help doing so; I think you would hardly wish to help it; for a child of yours, over whom you had no influence whatever, would be a strange occupant of your home. Oh, that you would be as wise as these migratory birds! May God’s own wisdom make you so, that your own flight to heaven may be an impulse to your child to take flight thither also! May your faith help his faith; may your holiness check him from sin; may your consecration to God, under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, induce him to give his heart to God while he is yet young! I speak to you who are in middle life, and remind you that these birds, which have come to the prime of their days, take their flight at the appointed time; and if ever there is a set time for turning unto God, with you who have come so far on life’s journey without seeking the Lord, it surely is now. You who have reached the full strength of your manhood, and have your households about you, and yet are not saved, be not like the rich man whom God called a fool because he had much of this world’s goods stored up, and yet had not thought of making provision for his soul. Do not set your affections upon those well-feathered nests which you are so soon to leave; but seek an enduring portion in that better land where joy maintains eternal spring. Stretch your wings, now, for the flight Christward and heavenward, and may you have the happiness of seeing your sons and daughters following in the same blessed track!

Some of the migratory birds are growing old. Their wings are somewhat worn, and their flight is a very weary one. Life, to them, has lost its early brilliance; yet, when the time comes, they too, the veterans of the sea-passage, are measuring the leagues of ocean-waves, when the waters are calm, or in times of storm, when favouring gales may better serve their purpose. These birds add experience to instinct, and rightly follow the guidance of nature; yet there are old men, and old women, who are not as wise as the old swallows are. They linger in the plains of sin though the harvest is past, and the summer is ended, and the winter is coming fast upon them. I see the first flakes of snow on their frost-crowned heads. Already, their leaf begins to wither. The light of their day is darkening, and the flower of their beauty fading, and the shadows of their weakness lengthening. What! not away yet, old greybeard? Not away yet, when the killing frost is already upon thee? Stretch thy soul’s wings at once. ’Tis late, ’tis very late; the sere leaf of autumn warns thee; the white rime of the early frost chides thee! Oh, that thou wouldst know the seasons and the judgments of God, even as the birds of the air do, and that thou wouldst seek him now ere it be too late! It is the eleventh hour with thee, man! Thou hast reached thy three-score years and ten, yet thou art unsaved. May divine grace visit thee, and make thee wise and if it does, thou wilt not sleep till thou hast found the Saviour, lest thy couch should become thy tomb. Thou wilt not dare to go into another week of work-days until thou hast made this first day of the week, the appointed Sabbath, a day of rest unto thy soul in the bosom of thy Saviour.

Observe well that these birds-the young, the parents, and the older birds, all go at the right time. Perhaps the bright days linger a while; our autumns sometimes are protracted and tempting. When the winter months have come, we may have some almost summer days in this changeful climate of ours, but no bright second-summer tempts the swallow to linger. That interesting bird may have an eye for fair scenes and lovely views; and, methinks, wherever he may fly, he will see no fairer land than this, and no greener dells and fresher woodlands than those that adorn our happy isle; yet he lingers not for them. Though it be Afric’s brown unattractive sand that calls him, on he goes, for he must go or die; his food will fail him here, the damps will be deadly to him; so away he must go. He has built his nest, and birds love their nests as we love our homes; he has formed associations and acquaintances, it may be, for birds have friendships; but the time has come when, with his companions, or without them, he must without fail proceed on his long voyage to the sunny shore. He performs his predestined journey at the ordained time; and let nothing tempt anyone to linger in love of sin, and love of this world, when he ought to be seeking those things which are above. Let not the world’s pleasures, nor its gains, nor its tenderest associations beguile thee. Thou, O man, like the swallow, must go or die! It is with thee as it was with Lot in Sodom;-the city of thy habitation is soon to be destroyed; this world, in a little while, must meet destruction. Up, and away! for the fiery hail is ready to descend. The angel of God comes to warn thee, saying, “Escape for thy life; look not behind thee, neither stay thou in all the plain; escape to the mountain, lest thou be consumed.” So, let nothing hinder thee, but speed thou on till thou dost reach God, thy Father, and Christ, thy Brother, and art washed in his precious blood, and made meet to dwell with him in heaven for ever.

But alas! alas! it is still true that men “know not the judgment of the Lord;” they know not, as the birds do, their “appointed times.” There have been, with some of you, times of very gracious visitation, when your heart has been made soft and impressible. I beseech you, “know” that time, and avail yourself of it. You know that the preacher’s word is not always with equal power. Even the inspired Word of God has not always the same effect when it is read; therefore, cherish every tender emotion that you do feel. You know what was said to David, “And let it be, when thou hearest the sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, that then thou shalt bestir thyself: for then shall the Lord go out before thee.” So, when there is a movement within thy spirit,-when there is a revival in the church,-when there are manifest tokens of earnestness in the assembly,-then, I pray thee, know thine appointed time and “bestir thyself.”

There are other times, also, which should not be forgotten. For instance, times of sickness. Have you been laid aside lately, and are you able again to come out of doors? This is a loud call to you,-an admonition, a very kind and tender one; yet one that ought to say to you, “Prepare to meet your God.” If sicknesses do not soften, they harden. If we get no good from our chastisements, we are sure to get harm from them. So, my afflicted but restored friend, know thy time, recognize that thou hast been smitten by thy God, and turn not away from the hand that smites thee. Sometimes, the visitation comes in the form of death. Possibly, death has come into your home, and carried off your child. O mother, follow your dear babe to the skies! Or, is it your husband who has been called away? Then, O widow, take thy Maker for thy Husband! Is it your Christian father who has been taken from you, and yet you, his child, are still unsaved? Your father beckons to you from the skies, and bids you seek his Saviour. Is it your brother who is gone? It might have been yourself, so let the tolling of the knell for him have a message for you; let it say to you, “Consider your ways; for your soul shall soon be required of you.” Make this period, when God is summoning others to himself, to be the time when you also take flight to the better land;-I mean not heaven, but I mean the heart of Christ, that is the true heaven of this life, and makes this life to be the foretaste of the unending life that is yet to come.

It is very sad that seasons like these, of which I have been speaking, are often the very times when people become mare hardened than before. Death itself may grow so familiar that it loses all its impressiveness. The grave-digger is often the last man to be affected by the thought of dying. It must have been a grim spectacle when, during the French Revolution, a certain cemetery was levelled, and turned into a dancing-saloon; and there, with the tombstones still in sight, they danced, and sang a song in which part of the refrain was, “We dance among the tombs.” Their hair was dressed in the same way as those had their hair dressed who were prepared for execution by the guillotine, and no one was admitted to the dance unless he or she had lost a father, or brother, or some other relative, by the guillotine; and knowing that they themselves would, in all probability, die in the same terrible fashion, they gathered in the place of the graves, and whirled in the merry dance among the tombs. It was a strange sight. Surely, none would have dared to act like that had they not been carried away by the madness of that awful period. Literally, of course, we do not act as they did; but, spiritually, this is just what many are doing,-they are dancing and singing among the tombs. In utter carelessness and wantonness of spirit, they dance within the very jaws of death; and, unless God shall cure their madness, and teach them wisdom, even as he has taught the birds of heaven, they will dance themselves into hell.

But, next, it is very remarkable-indeed, it is one of the wonders of nature-that they know where to go.

Many of them-those newly-hatched birds-have never seen the land towards which they speed; yet they go there, and go to the very place where their parents went before them. They have never seen that sunny shore, yet onward they fly towards it, straight to the mark, as if they were arrows shot from a bow. They have no swift-winged messenger to proclaim the time of going, and to describe the country so temptingly as to induce them to go; but, feeling the motion of a mysterious impulse within them, they fly, at the appointed time, to the far-off land where they may dwell, through the winter, in a more genial clime. Why do they go south? Why don’t they fly north, east, or west? If we were left to seek other shores, and we knew nothing of geography, we could not find a suitable place; but these birds, untaught, find out the exact spot where it is best for them to spend the many months until they can return to this more northerly land.

The pity concerning poor foolish man is that, by nature, he does not know where to go. When our Lord Jesus Christ said to his disciples, “Whither I go ye know, and the way ye know,” Thomas said to him, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?” The cry of many aroused souls is, “Whither shall we go? We know not the way.” Men want happiness, where shall they go for it? If the swallow were to fly straight for the north pole in the hope of finding a genial clime, he would nit be more foolish than most men are in their supposed pursuit of happiness. Some fly to unchastity and lasciviousness; and, in this way, both wreck their bodies and damn their souls. Some fly to money-grubbing, raking up their gold and silver till they fancy that they are wealthy; whereas, often, the more a man hath of these things, the more he craveth; and it is a poor thing that makes us want more than we have any need of. Some fancy that they shall find pleasure in the approbation of their fellow-men; but, ere long, they discover that the breath of man’s nostrils can never fill an immortal soul. We need something better than the blasts of fame’s trumpet to satisfy the spirit, which is to live for ever and ever, in raptures or in woe. Some fly to strong drink,-some to one thing, and some to another,-all fools alike! for there is but one kind of true happiness, and only one place where it can be found. Solid satisfaction can only come from reconciliation to God, and that reconciliation can only come to us through Jesus Christ his Son. Man is never right till he is right with God, and never happy till he is happy in the happy God. Man needs peace and rest; every man needs these blessings. In these feverish days, rest is the great need of the age; and, to find it, man flies sometimes to superstition, and sometimes to unbelief. He must be quiet, he says, for there are thoughts that vex and perturb his spirit; and Jesus stands, and says again, as he said of old, “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” But, to a sadly terrible extent, man heeds not his gracious invitation, and flies anywhere but to the true place of rest.

When man is spiritually awakened, he sees that he needs pardon; and pardon is to be obtained nowhere but in the precious blood that flowed from the wounds of the crucified Son of God. Yet many men try to get it by almsgiving, and penances, and outward reformations; they will even look to priestly lips for absolution, though none can forgive sins but God alone. They fly hither and thither,-anywhere except to God, and to the one Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus. O men, as I look upon you, I see the contrast between you and the stork, and the turtle-dove, and the crane, and the swallow; for, when the time comes for these birds to fly, they stretch their wings, and away they go as though they could even see the far-off land. They never stop until they have reached the goal for which they started; but you fly hither, thither, anywhere,-and nowhere, in the long run,-and you drop down, faint and weary,-drop, ah, where?-but into the devouring jaws of the old dragon who has long sought your destruction, and who will achieve it unless you listen to the voice of wisdom which saith, “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near: let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

Thirdly, dear friends, these migratory birds not only know the time for them to come or go, and the place to which they should go, but, by some strange instinct, they also know the way.

There is no road that they can follow. Our swallows, I suppose, fly across the English Channel;-sometimes, across France and Spain;-but they are often met with far, far out at sea, and have been known to rest upon the rigging, the masts, and even the decks of vessels when they have grown weary. Their flights are very long and rapid, but they can have no landmarks. They fly, usually, far across the sea, yet they never miss their way; and, in due time, they reach their desired end. No convoy is by their side; no wings of angels are heard rustling around them as they speed upon their way. There may be no favouring wind; but if it should be contrary to them, they fly against it. They must reach the sunnier clime, or die in the attempt; and, therefore, though the wind should, at times, beat them back, and impede their flight, yet onward they go.

Now, there are many, many men, who can say with the apostle I quoted before, “Lord, we know not whither thou goest, and how can we know the way?” They say this concerning the way to salvation, the way to safety, the way to heaven. They do not know the way. Some of you, who have heard the gospel preached for years, do not know the way. That is not through our lack of plain speaking,-nor through our want of reiterating-

“The old, old story,

Of Jesus and his love.”

I always feel that I have not done my duty, as a preacher of the gospel, if I go out of this pulpit without having clearly set before sinners the way of salvation. I sometimes think that you have so often and so long heard me tell this story that you will get weary of it; but I cannot help it if you do. I had better weary you than, in any way, be false to my charge. Yet, with all this telling, over, and over, and over again, the simple message of “Believe, and live.” though the outward ear hears it, and the mind catches some idea of it, yet the soul embraces it not. Let me tell it to you yet once more. The way for a soul to fly to the place of safety lies in this direction alone. God’s only-begotten and well-beloved Son, who is himself “very God of very God,” came down from heaven, and became man; he lived upon this earth a life of perfect obedience to his Father’s law. and a life of holy service on behalf of sinful men. On the cross of Calvary, the sin of all those who will ever trust in him was laid upon him; and, on the accursed tree, he endured all that they ought to have suffered for their sins. God bruised Christ, his own Son, in the stead of as many sinners as believe on him. God was perfectly just in acting thus. The payment of our enormous debt of guilt was demanded, and Christ paid it in full; so, all who trust in Jesus may rest assured that their sin was laid upon Christ, put away by Christ, and so completely blotted out that it has ceased to be. We are accounted just through our faith in Jesus Christ, the great Sin-bearer. “The Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.” “He hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” The way of safety, then, is the way of substitution,-the way of atonement,-the way of Jesus Christ’s blood; and the way to travel in that road is by simply trusting-believing with the heart-in Jesus Christ, relying upon him, depending upon him, leaning on him, resting on him, believing his Word, and accepting him to be to us what God has set him forth to be to the trusting sons and daughters of men.

My last remark about these migratory birds-the stork, the turtle-dove, the crane, and the swallow,-is that they not only know the time for their flight, and the place they want to reach, and the way they have to go; but they show their wisdom by actually going to the sunny land.

It would not profit them, in the least, to know when to go if they did not really go at the appointed time. It would not serve them an atom to know where to go, if they did not go;-nor to know how to go if they still loitered here. But the wisdom of these fowls of heaven is proved by the fact that they do go. They practise what they know; they yield to the instinct which guides them, the impulse which moves them; but, alas! in contrast with these birds, sinners are often very foolish. They have long heard the gospel hut they have not yet obeyed it. They have never practised what they do know, at least in a sense. There are many, who profess to believe all that we preach, who prove, by their actions, that they have never really received our message. How foolish it is to say that they believe there is a hell, and yet seek not to escape from it;-to talk of believing that there is a heaven, and yet never start in the way that leads to it;-and to pretend to believe in the only Saviour of sinners, and yet really not to trust in him!

Then, there are many, who know their danger, yet do not escape from it. They are fully aware of the terrible place whither their sin is carrying them, they are quite conscious that they are without hope of entering heaven; and that, when they die, there will be nothing for them but “the blackness of darkness for ever;” yet all this knowledge is of no avail to them, for they do not seek to escape from their impending doom. Where shall I find language strong enough to describe such folly as this? There are some, who even say, as that son said to his father, “I go, sir;” yet they do not go. They vow, yet break their vow again and again. They are at times, moved; but it is only with temporary regrets, for they turn again to the sin they said they had left. Alas! Alas! Alas! Yet these people are not idiots; they are not fools in other matters. See them at their business; they are sharp enough there. They want to see the latest telegram, for it may affect the stocks and shares in which they are so deeply interested. They are very anxious to be in time about their temporal affairs; they are punctual in their payments, and they are glad to be equally prompt in their receipts. They look after their own interests in everything except the greatest and most important of them all. They carefully examine the title-deeds relating to their estates; they will not set their signature to any document till they have thoroughly understood it, and seen that it is all right. They make everything as secure as they can except their immortal souls. To take care of the garment, but to neglect the body it covers, is egregious folly; to give all our time to our houses and lands, to our money and our worldly estate, and to leave our soul to be lost, is the supremest folly of which we can be capable. I know not what to say to those, who know what they should be, and what they should do, and yet hesitate, and debate, and delay to do it. Is there such folly anywhere else under heaven? The birds of the air and the beasts of the field are not so stupid as that. Surely, the very stones in our streets have as much reason in them as those men have, who know that there is a Saviour for sinners, and who yet lose him by neglecting to trust in him. Vain is it for me to appeal to you; instead of doing so, I make my appeal to God. O Holy Spirit, save these fools from themselves, and from their sins, and lead them to faith in Christ, the only Saviour! O fools, and slow of heart to believe, I call heaven and earth to witness that I have warned you of the consequences of your fatal folly! If ye will perish in your sins, remember that I have warned you;-not with such a voice as I would use if I had it, nor in such language as I would wish to speak if it were possible;-but using the best I have, that which my heart prompts me to use. “Why will ye die?” Why will ye be lost to all eternity? You must live for ever, for you are immortal; God has made you so, and he will never let your soul die. Then, will you deliberately choose to make that endless life of yours to be for ever wretched, for ever without hope? You do not mean to do so; I cannot think that you are so insane as that. You desire to have peace here and hereafter; then, seek the Saviour this very hour. None are so happy as true believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. Would you have joy for ever? Then, trust in him; for, if you do not, no joy can ever be yours. The inexorable decree of God concerning heaven is: “There shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.” Therefore, if your names are not in that book;-that is to say, if you believe not in Jesus Christ as your Saviour, if you are not trusting in the blood of the Lamb.-you will go to that dread place where hope can never dawn, but where the midnight of despair shall darken over the lost souls that will be imprisoned there for ever and for evermore.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

JEREMIAH 8, and 9:1

Chapter 8. Verse 1. At that time, saith the Lord, they shall bring out the bones of the kings of Judah, and the bones of his princes, and the bones of the priests, and the bones of the prophets, and the bones of the inhabitants of Jerusalem, out of their graves:

The prophet Jeremiah had to foretell terrible judgments upon the guilty people, who had been often warned, but who had at last gone beyond all bearing, and were about to be destroyed by the Chaldeans; for here we have the picture of Judah and Jerusalem invaded by the Chaldeans and Babylonians, just before the city was utterly destroyed. It was a very common practice to bury treasure with the bodies of kings; hence when any land was invaded by foreign foes, they broke open the tombs, and searched for hidden valuables; and it was a sign of the special detestation of the enemy, and of their fury against the people, when they dragged the carcases out of the graves, and scattered the bones to the four winds of heaven. In this case, it was foretold that this desecration would not only take place with regard to the bones of the kings, in whose tombs the greatest treasure might be expected to be found, but the bones of princes, priests, prophets, and people were all to be alike brought forth.

2. And they shall spread them before the sun, and the moon, and all the host of heaven, whom they have loved, and whom they have served, and after whom they have walked, and whom they have sought, and whom they have worshipped: they shall not be gathered, nor be buried; they shall be for dung upon the face of the earth.

What a striking and appropriate judgment that was! As they had worshipped the sun, that very sun was to dry their bones. As they had worshipped the moon, that moon’s rays should fall upon their relics; and the stars, which they had adored, would also be quite unable to help them.

3. And death shall be chosen rather than life by all the residue of them that remain of this evil family, which remain in all the places whither I have driven them, saith the Lord of hosts.

There was to be stern treatment for the dead; but it would be worse with the living; for the Chaldeans were strong, fierce, cruel, and most ingenious in the torments which they inflicted upon their captives. It was an awful thing to be living in such times as those, and it always is a terrible thing to be living when God’s judgments are abroad in the earth, and sinners are hardened in their sin.

4, 5. Moreover thou shalt say unto them, Thus saith the Lord; Shall they fall, and not arise? shall he turn away, and not return? Why then is this people of Jerusalem slidden back by a perpetual backsliding? they hold fast deceit, they refuse to return.

Perseverance in sin is a great aggravation of it. There are some who fall into sin, but, by God’s grace, they are raised out of it; and they turn away from iniquity, and are restored to God’s favour. Where there is true grace in the heart, where there is spiritual life, there will be restoration, sooner or later; but there are others, like the people of Jerusalem, who have “slidden back by a perpetual backsliding.” Day after day, they grow more outrageous in their wickedness.

6. I hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright: no man repented him of his wickedness, saying, What have I done? every one turned to his course, as the horse rusheth into the battle.

God listened; he waited to be gracious; he was eager to hear one penitent cry, and to observe one tear of genuine repentance; but, as the war-horse is eager for the fray, and, at the first blast of the trumpet, seeks to dash into the very centre of the fight, so did these ungodly people. Instead of turning to God, they turned more desperately to sin.

7. Yea, the stork in the heaven knoweth her appointed times; and the turtle and the crane and the swallow observe the time of their coming; but my people know not the judgment of the Lord.

When God’s judgments are being experienced, it is high time to repent. But these people did not think of such a thing; they were not half so sensible as migratory birds, which come and go as the seasons guide them.

8. How do ye say, We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us? Lo, certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain.

What! do they talk like that, the people who do not know and do not regard God’s judgments,-do they talk in such a style as that? Ah, yes! Some of the most wicked of them have a so-called “religion” upon which they still pride themselves. Their hands are red with blood, yet they keep a Bible handy. They say, “We are wise, and the law of the Lord is with us; “all the while that they are sinning against the Lord and his law. Scribes multiplied copies of the law; and some of these very people, who were most hardened in guilt, possessed a copy. But, says God, “certainly in vain made he it; the pen of the scribes is in vain;” and our own Bible Societies may go on printing Bibles by the million; but, as long as men do not obey what is taught in the Bible, the work of the printing press, like that of the copyist, will be in vain. We need more than the letter of the Word, valuable as that is; we need to know, in spirit and in truth, what the Spirit teaches through the letter, and also to practise it. God grant that even our Bibles may not rise up in judgment against us

9. The wise men are ashamed, they are dismayed and taken lo, they have rejected the word of the Lord, and what wisdom is in them?

See God’s judgment upon a man wise in his own conceit. You hear, every now and then, of some wonderfully learned, philosophic, scientific man, and many folk are frightened because he is an infidel. He does not possess true wisdom; God’s description of such a man is this, “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”

10, 11. Therefore will I give their wives unto others, and their fields to them that shall inherit them: for every one from the least even unto the greatest is given to covetousness, from the prophet even unto the priest every one dealeth falsely. For they have healed the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace.

It is a dreadful thing when those, who ought to warn the people, simply flatter them; when, instead of speaking sharp, stern, honest, faithful words, they cry, “Peace, peace; when there is no peace.” Such false teachers say, “Do not trouble yourself; all will come right at last. You may live as you like, but there is no hereafter that need alarm you; in another state, you may get set right, whatever God’s Word declares as to the punishment of the impenitent.” There are far too many of these smooth-tongued deceivers living now. God deliver this land from them, lest they become an occasion of judgment against the people!

12. Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination t nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush: therefore shall they fall among them that fall: in the time of their visitation they shall be cast down, saith the Lord.

They had gone so far in sin that they could not blush. It is a dreadful thing when a man has lost the very sense of shame; there will be no repentance where that is the case.

13. I will surely consume them, saith the Lord: there shall be no grapes on the vine, nor figs on the fig tree, and the leaf shall fade; and the things that I have given them shall pass away from them.

They would not recognize the Giver, so the gift should be taken away from them.

Now the people dwelling in the country villages begin to be alarmed because of the Chaldeans, and they say:-

14-16. Why do we sit still? assemble yourselves, and let us enter into the defenced cities, and let us be silent there: for the Lord our God hath put us to silence, and given us water of gall to drink, because we have sinned against the Lord. We looked for peace, but no good came; and for a time of health, and behold trouble! The snorting of his horses was heard from Dan; the whole land trembled at the sound of the neighing of his strong ones; for they are come, and have devoured the land, and all that is in it; the city, and those that dwell therein.

Dan was the northernmost tribe, bordering on Phœnicia; and after Nebuchadnezzar conquered the Phœnicians, he began to march through the territory of Dan. The mighty horses of the Chaldeans can be seen represented upon the slabs brought home by Mr. Layard; they are a very prominent part of the Chaldean force; so the poet-prophet pictures them as being heard as far as from Dan all the way to Jerusalem, so terrible was their snorting. That, of course, is the imagery of poetry, but there was terrible reality behind it.

17. For, behold, I will send serpents, cockatrices, among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord.

Such were the Chaldeans,-crafty as serpents, full of the venom of cruelty; wherever they came, there was no way of charming them as a serpent may be charmed. They came on a deadly errand, and thoroughly did they perform it.

18-21. When I would comfort myself against sorrow, my heart is faint in me. Behold the voice of the cry of the daughter of my people because of them that dwell in a far country: Is not the Lord in Zion? is not her king in her? Why have they provoked me to anger with their graven images, and with strange vanities? The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved. For the hurt of the daughter of my people am I hurt; I am black; astonishment hath taken hold on me.

The weeping prophet sorrows over the desolation of his land, in words that have seldom been surpassed for sublime sympathy and pathos:-

22. Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there? why then is not the health of the daughter of my people recovered?

Chapter 9. Verse 1. Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!

Matthew Henry well observes that, in the Hebrew, the same word signifies “eye” and “fountain”, as if God had as much given us eyes to weep with as to see with, as if there were as much cause to sorrow over sin as to look out upon the beauties of the world. Magnificent in its poetry, and most touching in its pathos, is this verse, which ought never to have been cut off from the previous chapter: “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people!”