Mary was full of a love to Christ which could be very active and self-sacrificing. I have read to you of her pouring the precious box of spikenard upon our Lord for his anointing. She was therefore one who not only waited and listened, but she served the Lord after her sort and fashion. If she had been simply contemplative and nothing more, we might, perhaps, have considered her somewhat of a one-sided character, and while pointing to that which was good in her as an example, we might have had to comment on her deficiencies, but she did more than sit at the Master’s feet. Beloved, if we ever serve the Lord as Mary did, we shall do well.

Now, since she was able thus to serve, she becomes a safe example for us in this other matter of restful faith. The portion of her life occupied in sitting at her Master’s feet may instruct and help us. I feel I can safely hold her up to you as an example in all respects, and the more so because, for the particular incident just now before us, she received the Master’s express commendation. He praised her also for bringing the box of ointment, but, on this occasion, he praised her too, saying that she had chosen the good part which should not be taken from her. He could not have more conspicuously set his seal of approbation on her conduct than he did. I am not going to say much about her, but I want to speak to those of you who love the Lord as Mary did, to try if I cannot entice you for your own rest and for your own encouragement into following her example in this particular incident, namely, that of sitting at the feet of the Lord Jesus Christ. I have already said you can see that the example is only part of her life-one side of it; at another time I may take the other side, and exhort you to follow her also in that; but for this next hour or so, I want you to leave out the other side of her character and stick only to this. Consider it well, for I am persuaded that this is the true preparation for the other,-that contemplation and rest at the Saviour’s feet will give you strength which will enable you afterwards to anoint his feet according as your heart’s love shall dictate.

On this occasion, then, we have only to do with Mary sitting at our Saviour’s feet. There shall be four heads which you will not forget:-love at leisure sitting down; love in lowliness, sitting at Jesus’ feet; love listening-she heard his words; love learning-she heard his words to most blessed purpose: all the while she chose the good part.

First, then, love at leisure. That is a point which I want you specially to notice. You that have families to feed and clothe, know how, all day long, you are busy-very busy, perhaps; the husband is away from early morning till the evening comes; the children have gone to school, and the wife is occupied in a hundred household things. But now the evening meal is over, and there is a warm fire burning on the hearth. Is it not one of the most pleasant sights of English interiors to see the family gathered around the fire, just to sit still for a little while to talk, and to indulge in those domestic loves which are the charm of that sweet English word “home”? May an Englishman never cease to think of the word “home” as the most musical word that ever dropped from mortal lips! Now love is quiet and still, and, I was about to say, careless. Outside it has to watch its words, but inside it is playful, it is at ease, it disports itself, fearless of all adversaries. It takes its rest. The armour is put off, and the soldier feels the day’s battle is done. He stands not on his guard any longer. He is amongst those that love him, and he feels that he is free. I do not know what life would be if there were not some of those sweet leisure moments when love has nothing else to do except to love-those intervals, those oases in the desert of life, wherein to love is to be happy, and to be loved is to be doubly blest.

Now, Christian people ought to have such times. Let us put aside our service for awhile. I am afraid that even those who are busy in the Master’s work and are not occupied much with lower things, yet overlook the necessity for love to be at leisure. Now to-night, at any rate, you that work longest and toil most, and have to think the hardest, can ask the Lord to make this a leisure time between you and Jesus. You are not called upon to help Martha to prepare the banquet. Just sit still now-sit still and rest at Jesus’ feet, and let nothing else occupy the next hour, but sitting still and loving and being loved by him.

Can we not get rid of worldly cares? We have had enough of them during the six days: let us cast the whole burden of them upon our Lord. Let us roll them up and leave them all at the throne of grace. They will keep till to-morrow, and there is no doubt whatever that they will plague us enough then, unless we have faith enough to master them. But now put them on the shelf. Say, “I have nothing to do with you now-any one of you. You may just be quiet. My soul has gone away from you, up to the Saviour’s bosom, there to rest and to delight herself in him.”

And then let us try to banish all church cares also. Holy cares should not always trouble us. As I came here just now, I said to myself, “I will try to-night not to think about how I shall preach, or how this part of the sermon may suit one class of my hearers or that part another. I will just be like Lazarus was, of whom it is written that ‘Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.’ ” You know that the preacher to such a congregation as this may often find himself like Martha, cumbered with much serving if he forgets that he is but a servant of the Master, and has only to do his bidding. You may well excuse us. But it must not be so to-night. Whether you are deacon or elder, or preacher, or hearer, you must have nothing to do to-night with anything outside of our blessed Lord and our own hearts. Our love shall claim this time for her own rest. No, Martha, even though you are getting ready to feast Christ, we will not hear the clatter of dishes or the preparation of the festival. We must now sit just there at his feet, and look up, and have no eyes except for him, no ears except for him, no heart except for him. It shall be love’s leisure night to-night.

And, in truth, beloved, we have plenty of reason for resting. Let us sit at Jesus’ feet because our salvation is complete. He said, “It is finished,” and he knew that he had wrought it all. The ransom-price is paid for thee, O my soul; not one drop has been withheld of the blood that is thy purchase. The robe of righteousness is woven from top to bottom; there is not one thread for thee to add. It is written, “Ye are complete in him,” and however frail we be, yet are we “perfect in Christ Jesus,” and in spite of all our sin we are “accepted in the beloved.” If it be so, O love, hast thou not room for leisure; is not this thought a divan upon which thou mayest stretch thyself, and find that there is space enough for thee to take thy fullest ease? Thy rest is not like the peace of the ungodly of whom it is said, “The bed is shorter than that a man may stretch himself upon it.” Here is perfect rest for thee; a couch long enough and broad enough for all thy need. And if, perchance, thou shouldest remember, O my heart, that thou hast sin yet to overcame, and corruption within thee yet to combat, bethink thee this night that Christ has put away all thy sin, for he is “the end of the law for righteousness to everyone that believeth,” and that he has overcome the world on thy behalf, and said to thee, “Be of good cheer.” Thou hast to fight, but thy foe is a routed foe. It is a broken-headed dragon that thou hast to go to battle with, and the victory is sure, for thy Saviour has pledged himself to it. Thou mayest well take thy leisure, for the past is blotted out and the future is secure. Thou art a member of Christ’s body, and as such thou canst not die. Thou art a sheep of his pasture, and as such he will never lose thee. Thou art a jewel of his crown, and as such he will never take his eye or his heart off from thee. Surely then thou mayest take thy leisure.

Let us rest also because we have received so much from our Master. Be sure to remember, O heart that wouldest have leisure for love, that though thou hast many mercies to receive, there are not so many to come as thou hast had already. Thou hast great things yet to learn, but not such great things as thou hast been taught already. He that has found Christ Jesus to be his Saviour has found more than he will ever find again, even though he find a heaven, since even heaven itself is in the loins of Christ, and he that getteth Jesus hath got an eternity of bliss in him. If God gave thee Christ, all else is small compared with the gift thou already hast. Take thy leisure, then, and rejoice in thy Lord himself and in his infinite perfections.

As to the Lord’s work, we may well take leisure for love, because it is his work. It will go on rightly enough. It is his work, the saving of those souls. It is well that we are so eager; it were better if we were more eager. But just now we may lay even our eagerness aside, for it is not ours to save: it is his, and he will do it. He will give you soon to see of the travail of his soul. Christ will not die in vain. Election’s decree shall not be frustrated, and redemption’s purpose shall not be turned aside. Therefore rest.

Besides, my heart, what canst thou do, after all? Thou art so little and so altogether insignificant; if thou dost worry thyself into thy grave what canst thou accomplish? God did well enough before thou wert born, and he will do well enough when thou art gone home. Therefore fret not thyself. I have sometimes heard of ministers that have been quite exhausted by the preparation of a single sermon for the Sunday. I am told, indeed, that one sermon on a Sunday is as much as any man can possibly prepare. It is such laborious work to elaborate a sermon. And then I say to myself, “Did my Lord and Master require his servants to preach such sermons as that.” Is it not probable that they would do a great deal more good, if they never tried to do any such fine things, but just talked out of their hearts of the simplest truths of his blessed gospel. I turn to the Old Testament, and I find that he told his priests to wear white linen, but he also told them never to wear anything that caused sweat, from which I gather that he did not want his priests in the temple to be puffing and blowing and sweating and toiling like a set of negro slaves. He meant that his service, although they threw their strength into it, should never be wearisome to them. He is not a task-master, like Pharaoh, exacting his tale of bricks, and then again a double tale, giving his servants no straw wherewith to make them. No, but he says, “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me, for I am meek and lowly in heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” Therefore it seems to me that, with all the work his people do-and they ought to do it so as to pour their whole life on his head like a box of precious spikenard, yet he did not mean them to go up and down about his service, stewing and worrying and killing their very lives out of them about this and that and the other. They will do his service a great deal better if they will very often come and sit down at his feet, and say, “Now I have nothing to do but to love him-nothing to do but to receive his love into my soul.” Oh, if you will seek after such quiet communion you will be sure to work with a holy might that shall consume you. First take in the strength by having these blessed leisures at the Saviour’s feet. “He that believeth shall not make haste.” He shall have such peace and restfulness, such quiet and calm, that he shall be in no hurry of fear or fright, but he shall be like the great Eternal who, with all that he doeth-and he worketh hitherto, and guideth the whole universe which is full of stupendous wonders-yet never breaks the eternal leisure in which his supreme mind for ever dwells.

Well, if we cannot keep up such leisure as that, at least let us have it to-night. I invite you, persuade you, and entreat you, beloved Marys and others like you, to do nothing but just enjoy the leisure of love, and sit at Jesus’ feet.

The second thing is love in its lowliness. Love wants to spend her time with Christ: she picks her place, and her place is down at his feet. She doth not come to sit at the table with him, like Lazarus, but she sitteth down on the ground at his feet.

Observe that love in this case does not take the position of honour. She is not a busy housewife, managing affairs, but a lowly worshipper who can only love. Some of us have to be managers for Christ; managing this and managing that; but perhaps love is most at home when she forgets that she has anything to manage. She leaves it to manage itself, or better still, she trusts the Lord to manage it all, and just subsides from a manager into a disciple, from a worker into a penitent, from a giver forth into a receiver, from a somebody, which grace has made her, to a nobody, glad to be nothing, content to be at his feet, just to let him be everything, while self sinks and sinks away. Do not let me only talk about this, beloved, but let it be done. Love your Lord now. Let your hearts remember him. Behold his robes of love, all crimsoned with his heart’s blood. You shall take your choice whether you look up to him on the cross, or on the throne. Let it be as suits your mind best to-night; but in any case say unto him, “Lord, what am I, and what is my father’s house, that thou hast loved me so?”

Sit near thy Lord, but sit at his feet. Let such words as these be upon thy lip, “Lord, I am not worthy to be called by thy grace. I am not worthy to be written in thy book of life. I am not worthy that thou shouldest waste a thought on me, much less that thou shouldest shed thy blood for me. I do remember now what I was when thou didst first deal with me. I was cold, careless and hard towards thee, but very wanton and eager towards the world, giving my heart away to a thousand lovers, and seeking comfort anywhere except in thee. And when thou didst come to me, I did not receive thee. When thou didst knock at my door, I did not open to thee, though thy head was wet with dew and thy locks with the drops of the night. And, oh! since through thy grace I have admitted thee, and thou and I have been joined together in bonds of blessed union, yet how ill have I treated thee! O my Lord! how little have I done for thee! How little have I loved thee! I could faint in thy presence to think that if thou didst examine me and cross-question me, I could not answer thee one of a thousand of the questions thou mightest ask of me. Thy book accuses me of negligence in reading it. Thy throne of grace accuses me of slackness in prayer. The assemblies of thy people accuse me that I have not been hearty in worshipping. There is nothing, either in providence or in nature, or in grace, but what might bring some accusation against me. The world itself might blame me that my example so little rebukes it; and my very family might charge that I do not bless my household as I should.” That is right, dear brother, or sister. Sink; go on sinking; be little; be less; be less still; be still less; be least of all; be nothing.

Lift up thine eyes from thy lowly place to him who merits all thy praise. Say to him, “But what art thou, beloved, that thou shouldest have thought of me, or ever the earth was, that thou shouldest take me to thyself to be thine, and then for me shouldest leave the royalties of heaven for the poverties of earth, and shouldest even go down to the grave that thou mightest lift me up and make me to sit with thee at thy right hand? Oh! what wonders thou hast wrought on me; and I am not worthy of the least of thy mercies; and yet thou hast given me great and unspeakable blessings. If thou hadst only let me be a doorkeeper in thy house, I had been happy; but thou hast set me among princes. If thou hadst given me the crumbs from thy table, as dogs are fed, I had been satisfied; but thou hast put me among the children. If thou hadst said that I might just stand outside the gates of heaven now and then, on gala days, to hear thy voice, it would have been bliss for me; but now thou hast promised me that I shall be with thee where thou art, to behold thy glory and to be a partaker of it, world without end.” Does not such thoughts as these make you sink? I do not know how it is with you, but, the more I think of the Lord’s mercies, the more I grow downward. I could weep to think that he should lavish so much on one that gives him no return at all, for so it seems to my heart that it is with me. What do you think of yourself? What are your faith, your love, your liberality, your prayers, your works? Dare you call them anything? Do you imagine that the Lord is pleased with your past? Would he not rather say to you, “Thou hast bought me no sweet cane with money, neither hast thou filled me with the fat of thy sacrifices; but thou hast made me to serve with thy sins and wearied me with thy iniquities.” So we sit down again at his feet, and from that place we would not wish to rise. Love’s leisure shall be spent in acts of humiliation. We will bow at the feet that were pierced for our redemption.

But now, in the third place, here is love listening. She is down there in the place of humility, but she is where she can catch each word as it falls, and she is there with that object. She wishes to hear all that Christ has to say, and she wishes to hear it close at hand. She wants to hear the very tones in which he speaks and the accents with which he delivers each precept. She loves to look up and see that eye which has such meaning in it, and that blessed countenance which speaks as much as the lips themselves; and so she sits there, and she looks with her eyes toward him as a handmaid’s eyes are to her mistress; and then, with her ears and her eyes, she drinks in what he has to say.

Now, beloved, I want you just to do that. Say in prayer now, “Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth;” and then with your ear open hear what he says by his word. Perhaps there is some text that has come home to your soul to-day. Hear it. Hear it well. It would not be much use for anyone to try to preach a sermon in the centre of the city in the middle of the day. If you stood near St. Paul’s Cathedral, with all that traffic going by, and all that rumbling, roaring, and shouting, why, the big bell itself might speak, and you would hardly hear it. But when it is night, and all is still, then you can hear the city clocks strike; and you might hear a man’s voice even though it was not a very strong one, if he went through the streets, and delivered a message with which he had been entrusted. Well, our blessed Lord often takes advantage of those quiet times when the man has a broken leg, and cannot get to work, but must be still in the hospital, or when the woman is unable to get about the house, to attend to her ordinary duties, but is so helpless that she cannot do anything else but think. Then comes the Lord, and he begins to bring to our remembrance what we have done in days past, and to talk with us as he never has the opportunity of doing at any other time. But it is far more blessed to find time ourselves, so that the Lord will not need to afflict us in order to get us quickly at his feet. Oftentimes the Good Shepherd in caring for the sheep “maketh us lie down,” but he is glad when we come of our own accord that we may rest and listen to his word.

Listen to what he is saying to you by providence. Perhaps a dear child is sick at home, or you have losses and crosses in business. It may not seem to you as if these things come from your loving Lord, but they are perhaps the pressure of his hand to draw you to his side that he may tell you his secret. Perhaps it has been mercy that has come to you in another way. You have been prospered, you have been converted, you have had much joy in your family. Well, the Lord has a voice in all that he does to his people; so listen to-night. If you listen you will be obliged to say, “What shall I render to the Lord for his benefits to me?”

Listen also to what the Spirit says in your soul. Listen, for it is not till you get your soul quiet that you can hear what the Spirit of God is saying. I have known such a clatter of worldliness or pride, or some other noise, in the soul of man, that the still small voice of the Holy Spirit has been drowned, to the serious detriment of the disciple. Now, I hope you have really done with all your cares and left them outside the Tabernacle to-night, that even the cares about your class in the Sunday-school and about your preaching engagement to-morrow, and everything else, have been put aside, and that now you are just sitting down at Jesus’ feet, and listening. While you listen in that fashion, in lowly spirit at his feet, you are likely to hear him say some word to you which, perhaps, may change the whole tenor of your life. I do not know what God the Lord will speak, but “he will speak peace to his people.” Sometimes he speaketh in such a way that a turbid life has become clear; a life of perplexity has become decided and distinctly happy; and a life of weakness has become a career of strength; and a life that seemed wasted for a while has suddenly sprung up into eminent usefulness. Keep thine ear open, Mary. Keep thy ear open, brother, and thou wilt hear what Jesus Christ has to speak.

But now let me say, while you are sitting and listening, you will do well to listen as much to him as to what he has to say, for Christ himself is the Word and his whole life is a voice. Oh, sit you down, sit down and listen. I wish I had not to talk to-night, and could sit down and do it for myself, and just look up at him, God over all, blessed for ever, and yet brother to my soul, a partaker of flesh and blood! This very fact, that He is incarnate, speaks to me, that God is in human flesh speaks comfort to my soul, such as no words could ever convey. God in my nature, God become my brother, my helper, my head, my all! Could not my soul leap out of the body for joy at the incarnation, if there were nothing else but that revealed to us?

Now let me look up again, and see my Lord with the wounds, as Mary did not see him, but as we now may, with hands and feet pierced, with scarred side and marred visage, tokens of the ransom-price paid in his pangs and griefs and death. Is it not wonderful to see thy sin for ever blotted out, and blotted out so fully, and blotted out by such means as this! Why, if there were not an audible word, those wounds are mouths which speak his love. The most eloquent mouths that ever spoke are the wounds of Christ. Listen! listen! Every drop of blood says, “Peace”; every wound says, “Pardon; life, eternal life.”

And now see thy beloved once again. He is risen from the dead, and his wounds bleed no more; yea, he has gone into the glory, and he sits at the right hand of God, even of the Father. It is well for thee, dear brother or sister, that thou canst not literally sit at his feet in that guise, for if thou couldest only see him as he is, I know what would happen unto thee-even that which happened unto John when he saw him with his head and his hair white like wool, as white as snow, and his eyes as a flame of fire, and his feet as if they burned in a furnace. Thou wouldest swoon away. John says, “When I saw him I fell at his feet as dead.” You cannot sit at those feet of glory till you have left this mortal clay, or until it has been made like unto his glorious body; but you may in faith do so, and what will his glory say to you? It will say, “This is what you shall receive; this is what you shall share; this is what you shall see for over and ever.” He will say to you-even to you who mourn your insignificance and in lowliness sit at his feet-“Beloved, thou shalt partake of the glory which the Father gave me, even that which I had with him before the world was. Soon, when a few more moons have waxed and waned, soon thou shalt be with me where I am.” Oh, what bliss is this! Never mind Martha’s frowns; forget her for the moment and keep on sitting at Jesus’ feet. She may come in and grumble, and say that something is neglected; tell her she should not neglect it then; but now your business is not with plates or pots, but to do as your Master has permitted you to do, namely, to sit at his feet and listen to him.

So I close by saying, in the fourth place, that here is love learning. Whilst she listened she was being taught, because as she sat at Jesus’ feet with her heart all warm-sitting in the posture of lowliness-she was, as few could hear them, hearing his words so as to spy out their secret meaning. You know the difference between a man’s voice at a distance, saying something, and his being very near you. You know how much the face can say, and the eyes can say, and the lips can say; and there is many a deaf man that has heard another speak though he has never heard a sound; he has known the meaning by the very motion of the lips and the gleams of the countenance. Ah, and if you get into such near fellowship with Christ as to sit at his feet, you will get his meaning. When the letter kills others, you will see the secret meaning that is hidden within, and you will rejoice.

She got at his meaning, and then she was hearing the words so as to drink in the meaning. “They sit down at thy feet,” says the old Scripture, “every one shall receive of thy words.” Beloved, that is a great promise-to receive of his words. Some people hear the words, but do not receive them, but there sat Mary where, as the words fell, they dropped upon her as snowflakes drop into the sea and are absorbed. So each word of Jesus dropped into her soul, and became part and parcel of her nature, they fired and filled her very being.

What she learnt she remembered. We see love learning what she will treasure up. Mary never forgot what she heard that day. It remained with her for ever; it seasoned her whole life. The words of her Master were with her all the days she was watching, all the days she was waiting, she was waiting after they had been spoken. They kept her watching and waiting, till at last love’s instinct told her that the time was come, and then she went upstairs where she had put away the choice ointment for which she spent her money. She had laid it up and kept it till the time should come, and just before the Saviour’s death and burial she fetched it down, the gift which she had hoarded up for him, and she poured it out in adoration.

As she sat at his feet, she resolved to love him more and more. Love was learning to love better. As she had listened and learnt, the learning had crystallized itself into resolves to be, among women, the most devoted to him. Perhaps, little by little, she had laid by this great price which she had paid for the spikenard. Be it as it may, it was dear to her, and she brought it down when the time was come, and put it all on him with a joyous liberality and love. Well, now, I want you just to learn of Jesus after that fashion, and, by-and-by, when the time comes, you, too, may do some deed for Christ that shall fill the house in which you dwell with sweet perfume; yea, shall fill the earth with it, so that, if man scents it not, yet God himself shall be delighted with the fragrance you pour, out of love, upon his Son.

We are going to have the communion, here are the emblems of his blessed body and blood; and I hope they will help us to have nothing to do but to think of him; nothing to do but to be lowly in his presence; nothing to do but to listen to his words and to drink in his teaching.

But there are some here that do not love him. It may be that God will lay you low by affliction in order to bring you to the feet of Jesus. Perhaps he will allow disaster and disappointment to overtake you in the world, to win you to himself. If any of you have had this experience, or are passing through it just now, do not trifle with it, I pray you; for, while we are in this life, if the Lord comes to us to remind us of our sin, he does it in the greatness of his mercy, and in order that he may bring salvation to us. It will be quite another thing, in the next life, if you die unrepentant and unforgiven. Then you may indeed dread the coming of God to bring your sin to remembrance; but while you are here, if the Lord is so speaking to you, incline your ear, and hearken to his voice, however harshly it may seem to sound in your ears. Even if he should strip thee, be glad to be stripped by him. If he should wound thee, and bruise thee, willingly give thyself up to be wounded and bruised by him; yea, even if he should slay thee, rejoice to be slain by him, for remember that he clothes those whom he strips, he heals those whom he wounds, and he makes alive those whom he kills. So it is a blessed thing to undergo all those terrible operations of law-work at the hands of the Most High, for it is in that way that he comes to those whom he means to bless.

I cannot preach to you, for the time has gone; but, do you know, I think one of the most dreadful things that can ever be said of man is that he does not love Christ. I should be sorry to enter on my list of friends the man that did not love his mother; yea, I would not call him a man. Dead is that heart to every noble sentiment that loves not her that bare him; and yet there might be some justifiable cause to excuse even that. But not to love the Christ, the God that stooped to bleed for man-this is inexcusable. I dare not to-night utter, as my own, what Paul said, but, very pointedly and solemnly, I would remind you who love not Christ of it. Paul says, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be anathema Maran-atha”-cursed at the coming. Sometimes when I think of my Lord, and my heart grows hot with admiration of his self-denying love, I think I could almost invoke the imprecation on the head of him that does not, would not, could not love the Christ of God. But better than that I will ask his blessing for you, and I say, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!”

Here our sermon closes, and may God’s blessing rest on it.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

PSALM 63; LUKE 10:38-42; and JOHN 12:1-8

I will read the 63rd Psalm first, as somewhat representing the state of heart into which I would we could all come to-night.

Psalm 63 Verse 1. O God, thou art my God;-

Read that sentence how you will, it is unspeakably precious. If we say “O God, thou art my God,” it brings out the possession which the believer has in God. If we say “O God, thou art my God,” it shows the greatness of the possession which we thus have in having this God to be our God for ever and ever. And if we say “O God, thou art my God,” it leads us to think of God and not of his gifts as our chief good.

1, 2. Early will I seek thee: my soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is; to see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.

Long after the old times over again-for those times of heaven upon earth-those special seasons when the Lord made the veil between us and heaven to be very thin indeed, and allowed us almost to see his face. “To see thy power and thy glory, so as I have seen thee in the sanctuary.” Well, then, let us go to the sanctuary again, or make the place where we are a sanctuary. Even the stony pillar may mark the site of Bethel, and every spot may be hallowed ground.

3-5. Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee. Thus will I bless thee while I live: I will lift up my hands in thy name. My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness; and my mouth shall praise thee with joyful lips:

Satisfaction, absolute satisfaction; satiety of every desire, full to the brim to the running over only because God is our God; we want nothing beyond that to make our mouth praise with joyful lips.

6, 7. When I remember thee upon my bed, and meditate on thee in the night watches. Because thou hast been my help, therefore in the shadow of thy wings will I rejoice.

If I cannot see thy face the shadow of thy wing shall be enough for me, for that shall shelter me from all harm and I will, yea I will rejoice. Under the wings we are near the heart of God, and he who knows God’s heart of love must needs be glad.

8-10. My soul followeth hard after thee: thy right hand upholdeth me. But those that seek my soul, to destroy it, shall go into the lower parts of the earth. They shall fall by the sword: they shall be a portion for foxes.

All our sins, and all other things or beings that are the enemies of our soul, Christ has overcome, and he will leave them upon the field.

11. But the king shall rejoice in God; every one that sweareth by him shall glory: but the mouth of them that speak lies shall be stopped.

Now a short passage in the New Testament, about Mary, the sister of Martha.

Luke 10 Verses 38-40. Now it came to pass, as they went, that he entered into a certain village: and a certain woman named Martha received him into her house. And she had a sister called Mary, which also sat at Jesus’ feet, and heard his word. But Martha was cumbered about much serving, and came to him and said, Lord, dost thou not care that my sister hath left me to serve alone? bid her therefore that she help me.

Agitated, distressed Martha was afraid that something would go wrong with the dinner. She had too much on her hands-too much on her brain. That led her to blame her sister Mary, and to try to get the Lord to blame her too. There is a strong tincture of self-righteousness in Martha’s speech.

41, 42. And Jesus answered and said unto her, Martha, Martha, thou art careful and troubled about many things: But one thing is needful: and Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.

I shall not tell her to leave my instruction said our Lord or to get up from the position which she occupies. No, you may go about your work, she is honouring me as much as you are, if not more. This did not mean that Mary was perfect, or that Martha was wholly to be condemned. Both needed to learn much from Jesus, and Mary was more in the way of it. Still Martha was doing good service.

But you will see that Mary could do something for Christ too when the time came.

John 12 Verses 1, 2. Then Jesus six days before the passover came to Bethany, where Lazarus was which had been dead, whom he raised from the dead. There they made him a supper; and Martha served: but Lazarus was one of them that sat at the table with him.

Martha served: she had not given that up. She was a wondrous housewife, and she did well to keep to her occupation. Lazarus had been dead, and had been raised again. But he was not the centre of interest: “He that raised him up was there.”

3-7. Then took Mary a pound of ointment of spikenard, very costly, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped his feet with her hair: and the house was filled with the odour of the ointment. Then saith one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, which should betray him, why was not this ointment sold for three hundred pence, and given to the poor? This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein. Then said Jesus, Let her alone: against the day of my burying hath she kept this.

Somebody or other always seemed to object to Mary. If Martha does not do it, Judas will. To be found guilty of excess of love to Christ is such a blessed criminality that I wish we might be executed for it. It were sweet to be put to death for such a crime. It was that that Christ died of. He was found guilty of excess of love.

8. For the poor always ye have with you; but me ye have not always.

It is not every day that you can do something personally and distinctly for Christ himself, and therefore, whenever the occasion serves you be sure to be there to avail yourself of it. True, you can serve him indirectly by aiding his poor saints. Still, something for him-for him himself-should often be devised as Mary devised this service that day.

SHAM CONVERSION

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, March 23rd, 1905,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

On Lord’s-day Evening, December 10th, 1876.

“And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the Lord: therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them. They feared the Lord and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence. Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the Lord.”-2 Kings 17:25, 33 and 34.

The world is full of deceptions and counterfeits. We have had to protect ourselves by law against adulterations of the commonest articles of diet, but all the laws in the world will not be able to protect us against the constant, the almost universal deceit which is found in daily life. Men seem continually to be set on making the worse appear the better: putting the bitter for the sweet and the sweet for the bitter. If any man shall go through this world with his eyes shut, believing all that he hears, he will find himself the dupe of a thousand knaves. You must keep your eyes open; you must carry a test with you by which you shall be able to discern between things that differ, or else in the ordinary affairs of life you will soon be brought to bankruptcy and poverty.

In the highest regions also, where we have to do with spiritual and eternal things, there are even worse cheats than anywhere else. That old enemy of God and man, who is rightly said to be a liar from the beginning, takes care to use falsehood in order, if it were possible, to deceive even the very elect. If there is a Christ, he sets up an antichrist. If there is a church of Christ, he makes a world’s church that shall mimic it. If there is a gospel, he too comes with his good news and sets up “another gospel, which is not another.” In the matters which concern the inner man-in the work of the Holy Spirit upon the soul-Satan is an adept at deception there also. He can imitate repentance with remorse. He can match faith with credulity. He can mimic assurance with presumption. He can give us the pleasures of this world instead of the joy of the Lord, and instead of a simple confidence in Christ he can offer us that which may look remarkably like it, and yet, after all, be confidence in self. Hence, one of the very first things that a man has to do if he would be right at last, is to search his own heart, to test and try that which he supposes to be there whether it be the work of God or no; whether his spot be the spot of God’s children or only a vile imitation of it.

Conversion which is absolutely necessary to salvation-conversion by which man turns from sin to righteousness, from self to Christ, from the world to heaven, from rebellion to obedience-conversion which we must all experience if we are to be right towards God, for “except ye be converted and become as little children ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven”-conversion, too, has been mimicked in many ways. In this discourse we are going to look at one instance in which the false has been put for the true, in order that by the light of that instance, as by a beacon, we may be warned off this dangerous rock. Another man’s shipwreck ought always to be a beacon to us, so where these Samaritans failed, let us take heed unto ourselves lest we fall after the same fashion.

We shall have three points which will follow the order of the narrative. We shall look, first, at their first estate: “They feared not the Lord”; secondly, their sham conversion: “They feared the Lord and served their own gods”; thirdly, their real state while they professed thus to be converted: “They feared not the Lord.”

First, then, let us observe these Samaritans in their first estate. They were brought, very likely much against their will, from different parts of the Assyrian empire, and they were put down as colonists in the various towns which had formerly been occupied by the tribes of Israel. There they were compelled to dwell. They do not appear to have had any reverence for God at all. They were wholly indifferent. “They feared not the Lord;” they scarcely knew his name, and they seem to have made no inquiries. They found that the land was good, and they tilled it; the vines were fruitful, and they pruned them; the houses were built, and they inhabited them; and thus they settled down. What did it matter to them about Jehovah? Who was he and what was he? No doubt there had been a people living there who more or less had reverenced his name, but what was that to them? They were strangers. It had never crossed their mind that they should be interfered with at all in the matter of worshipping Jehovah, and so they lived altogether carelessly and indifferently. How many there are that are doing the same to-day: many who are thoughtless altogether about divine things: taken up with trifles: occupied only with the things of this life. It does not seem to enter into their heads that they are immortal-that they will have to live in another state. As to their having a Creator and one who daily preserves them in life, no doubt they believe it, but they are not concerned about it. Practically they say, “Who is the Lord that we should obey his voice?” That was the condition of these Samaritans at the first. They were altogether indifferent to the matter. It never troubled them at all.

They had no fear of God. They may have heard of some that trembled at Jehovah, but they never trembled. Perhaps they heard that he was a God whose worship was very troublesome, whose laws were very strict, whose subjects often had to mourn because they rebelled, and hence they did not want to know too much about him, lest they should be drawn into the same exercise of heart and have to confess the same sins and fall into the same sorrows. They knew not and they did not want to know. They were not troubled.

I should not wonder that when they began to hear something about him they even ridiculed Jehovah. Had not their gods overcame the God of the land? Had they not taken possession of these fair cities? Had not the hosts of Assyria scattered, like clouds before the wind, all the companies that the men of Israel could bring against them? So they would have a sneer for the Israelites, and the men of Judah, for their God and their worship. Any religion they had only went as far as to lead them to despise the only true religion and to meet it with jest and sarcasm: that was all. “They feared not the Lord.”

Yet there was this point. They had come to live near a people that did fear the Lord, for, at that time, the people of Judah were in a great measure right towards the Lord God of Hosts. Hezekiah, I suppose, was then upon the throne, a king who in all things walked before the Lord and sought to uphold, in singleness of heart, the worship of the one only God. These strangers coming into the neighbourhood where the ancient faith of God’s people prevailed must have found it dangerous to their indifference and perilous to their scepticism and their false belief. So have I known men without religion or the fear of God, or any respect whatever for divine things, who have been brought, in the order of providence, into a society where there have been true piety and fervent religion. That always means trouble for their impiety, and disturbance for their indifference. They receive some sparks from that fire into their souls, and who knows whether the sparks may not light a fire that will burn down the wood and the hay and the stubble that are within their spirits? It ought to be a very hard thing for a man to live near us, my dear brothers and sisters, and to remain indifferent to religion. The preacher ought so to preach that it shall be almost an impossibility for his hearer to be altogether careless. You Christian people should set such an example in your households, that it should be next door to an impossibility for son or daughter or servant to remain at peace while they remain out of God and out of Christ in a state of sin. These people feared not the Lord; but the point that would be sure to bring them difficulty was that they had come near to the people of Judah that did fear God-near to a commonwealth that was presided over by Hezekiah, who feared the Lord with all his heart and all his soul.

Now, secondly, we come to their conversion. In the 33rd verse we read, “They feared the Lord,” but there is a very ugly “and” after it which shows that it was a sham conversion. “They feared the Lord and served their own gods.” Still, it was a sort of conversion; it meant at any rate an outward change.

How came it about? If you read the chapter, as we have done just now, you will find that their conversion was caused entirely by terror. The country had been devastated. War had raged all over it for years. The cities and villages had become uninhabited, and consequently the wild beasts had come down from the mountains, and had so multiplied that lions became a terror throughout the land. Imagining that every country had a different god these people said, “The god of the land must have sent these lions among us.” Yea, and the sacred writer does not hesitate to say that God did send the lions among them, for even common things which can be readily accounted for in the order of nature must nevertheless be ascribed to God. He did send lions among them, and it was these lions that converted them. Their teeth and fangs and fiery eyes and the thunders of their roars-these converted them. They must have a god to deliver them: they could not bear the lions, therefore they must fear the Lord who could send lions, and who perhaps would cease to send them. Now, dear friends, always be somewhat diffident of your own conversion if you can trace it only and solely to motives of terror. Here is one man who never would have feared God if disease had not come into the house, if a child had not died, then another and another: it seemed as if they would all sicken, and so he became religious. Another went into business, and for a while be was very prosperous, but the tide turned and he lost his money; bankruptcy stared him in the face; he made a second effort, only to fail again, and then he seemed to feel as if the lions were out against him, so he turned religious. Another had seen his children grow up, and having trained them for the world they went to the world; his son almost broke his heart: his daughter so acted as well nigh to bring his grey hairs with sorrow to the grave: everything seemed to go badly with him, and so he said he would go to church or go to the meeting or something. He turned religious because the lions were out. Still another who had been a very hale, healthy, strong man, and had never thought about religion at all-he had an accident, he had a fit, or he was attacked with a complaint of which he had warning that in all probability it would be fatal by and by, and there did not seem any cure for it. He got worse and worse, and so-well, he thought he would be religious. There was something sensible in the resolution: nay, it was a most proper resolution had it been but carried out rightly and in the way of truth. But you see in all these cases there was no sense of having done wrong. There was no desire to do right. It was the lions, the lions, the lions, the lions. If there had been no lions there would have been no religion. If there had been no lions there would have been no seeking the Lord. If there had been no lions there would have been no wanting to know the manner of the god of the land. Such men have no desire after God, nothing of the kind. The thing that drives them is just that awful lion: the dread of death is upon them, and the dread of something after death, the judgment to come-nothing else. Now some are really brought to God by terrors, but many are only brought into a condition of sham conversion; the root of their religion has been nothing else but the lions.

Now, notice that their conversion was attended with gross ignorance. What little sincerity there was-and there was a measure of sincere of-was, nevertheless, dimmed by lack of knowledge, its eyes were put out by an utter ignorance. They did not really know God at all. They looked on Jehovah as if he were but the same as the gods of Cuth and Ava and Sepharvaim, as if he were a petty god of that district, too powerful for them to venture to withstand-nothing more than that. They did not want to know him you notice, for their request to the king of Assyria was not that they might know about God, but that they might know “the manner” of the god of the land. Ay, and there are lots of people who when they desire conversion wish only to know the manner of the people who are converted. What way ought a religious man to behave? What is wanted to satisfy outward decencies? What are the sacraments? What are the doctrines? Their thought is altogether of externals. They only want to know the manner of the god of the land. When a man is really awakened by the Holy Spirit his cry is, “I will arise and go to my Father”; but when it is not the Spirit of God, but only fear which rouses him, his cry is, “I will arise and hide in my Father’s house. I want to get into some secret chamber of his abode. The desire is not for God himself, you see, not for himself, but for his “manner.” I know many who are converted just this way-converted to a profession, converted to a creed, converted to sacraments, to forms. But as the Lord liveth you must be turned to God himself or else ye are not turned aright; ignorance of God is a fatal ignorance. Not to know him or to seek to know him, but only to know the manner and the mode of worshipping him, is a poor desire; yet many rest satisfied with that and nothing more.

Further, these people were not only led to their conversion by fear: not only was their conversion marred by ignorance; but probably also they were instructed by an unfaithful priest. The king of Assyria sent them one of the priests that he might teach them the religion. One of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel and taught them how they should fear the Lord. It looks very suspicious, that dwelling in Bethel. I suspect he taught them worship of the calves of Bethel; and you know that the worshippers of the calves of Bethel were the Romanists of that day, just as the pure worshippers of God in Judah were the Protestants of the day. The worshippers of the calves of Bethel did not perhaps worship the calves: they worshipped God under the image of an ox, and they said that image of an ox signifies power and strength. “So we do not worship it,” they would have said, “we worship God in it.” They were symbol-users-worshippers of emblems; and this priest was one of them. Well it is a poor conversion which is helped on by a blinded priest. O brethren, take heed how ye hear, and take heed what ye hear; we ought not to entrust ourselves to every person who professes to be a spiritual instructor. “Try the spirits whether they be of God.” One good test I will give you; see whether they search and probe you; rest assured that the Lord has not sent those that speak smooth words and never trouble your conscience or make you search yourselves. “If thou take forth the precious from the vile, thou shalt be as my mouth,” saith the Lord to his prophets, but not else. So this man came and he taught them, I dare say, in his own easy way. He would say, “Well, my dear fellows, you see you have all got your own gods, and I am no sectarian, so long as you worship the true God I do not mind. You may worship Nergal and Ashima and Tartak and Adrammelech, and all the rest of them, just whenever you like. I am teaching you, you see; this is to be the recognized state religion for the time present, and I will teach it to you. But do not afflict yourselves over much: it will be all right.” That is the way these got converted. No wonder that they came over so easily, seeing they had such a nice comforting minister who never troubled them at all about any vital change.

Being thus converted they adopted a good many outward ceremonies. “So they feared the Lord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places.” They went in for doing the thing thoroughly. As it was a matter of form, when they had found out how to do it-why, they would do it. One priest would not be enough: they would make a great many, and they made as many as ever they could get, and as the lowest of the land would probably be the cheapest they selected them, Men generally have an eye to business even in these things. They set to work worshipping on every high hill though God had said that he was to have sacrifices offered nowhere but at Jerusalem. He would have one altar only, but they took every high place and consecrated it, and they began with great form and pomp and show to go in for the worship of Jehovah. Generally the more show the less reality, and it was so in this case.

You see then that this conversion, though it looked very fine, was radically unsound. Let me emphasize the reasons for this.

It was so, first, because there was no repentance. You do not find these people confessing that they had been wrong in worshipping every man his own god. They are quite willing to worship Jehovah, to have sacrifices and do the right thing, but as to any confession of sin making the place a Bochim-a place of weeping, because they had transgressed against the only living and true God-there is not a word of it. Now, my hearer, let me speak to you about your own conversion. If you have skipped the first page of the book, namely, repentance, go back and begin again, for that faith which has a dry eye and never wept for sin is not the faith of God’s elect. There must be repentance: it is an essential grace; no man is truly saved who has not a hatred of the sin he loved before, who has not made a confession of it before God with an earnest prayer for pardon.

Notice, again, these converts had no expiatory sacrifice. The true believer-the man of Judah-had a day of atonement once every year, and there were great sacrifices of sin-offerings whenever there had been special sin. But there is no mention of trespass-offering or sin-offering among these colonists, they had no sacrifice, no blood of expiation. Ah, sirs, that religion that does not begin with the sacrifice of Jesus Christ is a religion that will soon come to an end, and the sooner it comes to the end the better, that ye may begin again on a surer foundation. A religion without the blood of Christ in it is a lifeless religion. A religion without the atonement and reconciliation by the blood of the covenant has missed the most essential part of true godliness. There was a radical unsoundness in the conversion of these people, for there was no repentance and no sacrifice.

Moreover, there was no putting away of the false gods. They did not mind worshipping Jehovah, but every man worshipped his own god too. This is not a true nor worthy service. “I will trust Christ,” says one. Yes, and you mean to trust your baptismal regeneration too. That is a false god. You will serve God, but you must indulge some secret sin too. That is another false god which cannot be tolerated. If we are converted to God we must take the hammer and smash the idols. Dagon and Nergal and Adrammelech must not stand in the same temple where stands Jehovah’s ark. All the false gods can live comfortably together, but when the living God comes, he is a jealous God, and they must all fall before him. You worship not God at all if you do not worship God alone. There must be an image-breaking in the soul if the conversion is really true. There was none of it here.

In fact, there was no love to God in these Samaritans. They were afraid of the lions, but their hearts did not go out to the God who could deliver them from the lions.

I wonder whether I could pick out any characters, among those present, that are like that, some of the Samaritan breed who are trying the fear of the Lord and serving other gods. I have known a man of this kind; he came to a place of worship, and if he had been allowed he would have joined the church and come to the communion-table. At the same time he was a great worshipper of Bacchus-a great lover of what he called “a little drop,” though I question whether you could not have made a very considerable number of drops out of what he took. I was speaking the other day to a clergyman who said that there was a man in his parish who told him that he did not know how it was, but he never felt more spiritually minded than when he had had four or five glasses of beer. There are people of that sort about. They fear the Lord and they serve their own gods. Only think of such a thing as a Christian drunkard. Can there be such a thing? Your common sense shall answer: I need not.

I have known also such a thing as this: a man-such an excellent man; his guinea was always ready for the cause of God, he had a very prominent pew, and was very well known in connection with religion, but if you had known that he had a second house beside his own, and known the way in which he lived, you would have held him up to execration. Yet he dared to come into the house of God, and if he did not actually unite himself with the church, he was prominently identified with it. At the same time he was living in the lusts of the flesh and professing to be a servant of God-fearing the Lord-keeping a bit of religion, because he was afraid of the lions: that was all: and all the while he was worshipping his own god as well.

You know the thing is done in business also. There is a man that can sing a hymn most beautifully and he can pray in the prayer meeting. But he can prey upon you as well. His mode of business is such that he takes advantage, cheats, and sails wonderfully near the wind; yet he has the name of being a very good man. He is a religious scoundrel. Oh, that God would save our churches from this kind of people who are to be met with so often. The lions make them fear God. They are such cowards that they must be religious, and yet all this while they are worshipping other gods.

I have known a woman, too-I think I may truthfully say a woman in this instance-and she has been, oh, such a dear Christian soul, only there was nobody’s character safe within seven miles of her tongue-she was always ready to slander the character of the best that lived. She was a slandering saint, a gossipping mother in Israel. God save us from such.

I cannot describe all the characters that may be suggested by those Samaritans, nor am I intending to hit anybody I know to be here just now, but if I do, I pray you take the cap and wear it and keep it on until it does not fit you any longer. Although you smile, these inconsistencies are very serious matters, and, what is more, they are very common matters. Sham conversion is a thing that may be met with all over the world. Oh, we have got it on a large scale in this “Christian” England of curs which fears the Lord and yet sells opium, fears the Lord and is the most drunken nation under heaven. God save us from such national hypocrisy! God save us too from similar hypocrisy on a minor scale in all ranks and classes and conditions of men who attempt to fear the Lord and to serve their own gods! Such double religion will not run: it is no use: it will not work. If God be God, serve him; and if the devil be God, serve him; but the attempt to join the two together will never succeed, either in this world or in that which is to come.

Such is the pattern of the sham conversion which these people experienced.

Now, lastly, we have got before us their real state and God’s verdict upon it. He says, “They feared not the Lord.”

No. They insulted the Lord. They did not fear him. The men who worshipped God and worshipped Baal too, worshipped God and Adrammelech too, were impiously daring. The Lord’s claim is that he only is God, and he would have us know that the gods of the heathens are no gods. Our God made the heavens, but as for these they are the work of men’s hands. One of the Roman emperors was willing to put up a statue of Christ in the Pantheon amongst all the rest of the gods, and there were some that thought that that showed a kindly spirit. But what an insult to set up Christ by the side of lustful Jupiter, and infamous Venus, and all the rest of these horrible gods, which were only fit for a reformatory, the very best of them. And for the Samaritans to mention the name of Jehovah side by side with those cruel, bestial gods which they worshipped was not to do him honour, but was to insult his sacred majesty. Even so, gentlemen, to try and keep religion, and yet to keep your sins, is not to fear God, but to insult him. “Unto the wicked God saith, What hast thou to do to declare my statutes or that thou shouldest take my covenant in thy mouth.” Keep clear of such trickery. If you must sin, do not add to your sins this needless and unnecessary one, of making a hypocritical pretence of fearing the living God. Save yourself that superfluity of naughtiness.

These people did not fear God for they did not really obey him. Obey him? Why, had they obeyed him they would have broken their gods to pieces at once. But no, they only wanted to know “the manner” of the God. They were willing to fall in with that, but as to really asking what his mind and will were, and being willing to do it-that was foreign to them. Therefore they feared not God.

They were not in covenant relation with God, as were the Israelites. They were under his old covenant of works, but they were not under the covenant of grace, neither did they know anything of it. God had not brought them up out of Egypt with a high hand and an outstretched arm. He had never redeemed them by blood and set them apart to be his people. They did not know anything about that. There are multitudes of professed converts to religion to-day who know nothing about the covenant of grace-nothing about redemption by blood: they cannot sing the song of Moses and of the Lamb. No, they simply keep an outward ceremonial observance of the manner of the God of the land, and they are content with that, but into the very vitals of religion they have not come, therefore they fear not God.

These people soon acted so as to prove this. You know what they did a few years afterwards when God had brought back his servant Ezra, together with a company of people, to begin to build the temple. These persons first of all came and said that they would like to join in the work. But Ezra and Nehemiah looked at them very sternly and said, “We have nothing to do with you. You cannot trace your pedigree to Abraham: you do not belong to the covenant seed. You know nothing about it. Go about your business.” Then these people showed the old spirit, they wrote letters to the various kings that were then in authority, and so the building of the temple was stayed several times, and they even tried afterwards to attack the people of Jerusalem and put an end to the building of the temple. There are no people in the world that turn out, generally, to be such haters of real religion and of genuine Christianity as those people who are scared into a nominal religion by the lions and yet are abiding in their sins. When the Methodists first began to preach, you know what an outcry there was against them. The great and heinous crime that they were committing was that they were insisting upon regeneration and upon holy lives. So crowds of people all over the country said, “Why we are as religious as people can be. It is true we drink and we do all sorts of things, but you really cannot set up anything like a pure and perfect church in the world. To talk of that is mere cant, you know. There cannot be such a thing; we cannot all be consistent in our profession, and there cannot be anybody that always is; it is all lies and hypocrisy to suppose that any people can be holy or can walk only in the fear of God;” and so they began to pelt the pioneer Methodists with mud and to put them into prison and to oppose them in all sorts of ways. I say it again, it is Ishmael that hates Isaac because though he is not in the line of succession he is very near akin to him. It is Esau that hates Jacob because though Esau does not get the blessing he is very near akin to Jacob, and comes of the same parents. There is no enmity like the enmity of the Samaritan to the Jew-no enmity like that of the mere moralist or the mere hypocritical professor to the man that has vital godliness, that has received the grace of God into his soul.

Perhaps you will think that I have spoken somewhat severely, but I have spoken to myself as well as to you with this earnest desire that we may be right before the living God. There are many of us here that profess to be Christians. Are we really so? Have we real faith in Christ? Does our life prove that it is the living faith-the faith that produceth good works? Brethren, if we be indeed what we say we are, we have only one God. All other aims, objects and designs are secondary. We seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness. If we are indeed Christians we have broken a great many idols, we have still some more to break, and we must keep the hammer going till they are all broken.

“The dearest idol I have known,

Whate’er that idol be,

Help me to tear it from thy throne

And worship only thee.”

If we are real Christians we have one only trust; we hang all our weight on Jesus, and all other trusts have been flung to the bats and the moles long ago. If we are really the servants of God, we are trying to get rid of sin; we are not harbouring any lust or any false way. Though we are not perfect, yet we want to be, we long to be. There is not a wilful sin that we would keep. God helping us, we desire to steer clear of everything that is contrary to his holy mind. May God grant us this thoroughness, this depth of sincerity, this real change of heart, that we be not among the Samaritan trimmers, but that of us it may be said, “Behold an Israelite indeed, in whom is no guile.”

God bless you for Christ’s sake. Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

EXODUS 20:1-17; and 2 KINGS 17:23-41

Exodus 20 Verses 1-3. And God spake all these words saying, I am the Lord thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before me.

God is the only God, and no other object of worship is to be tolerated for a moment.

4-6. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth: Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the Lord thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.

Here we are forbidden to worship God under any similitude whatever. The first command forbids the worship of another God: the second strictly forbids us to worship anything which our eyes can see, under the pretence that we are worshipping God thereby. This is another offence, and much more common than the first; and it is often pleaded-“Oh, we do not worship these things: we worship God whom these represent.” But here it is strictly forbidden to represent God under any form or substance whatsoever, and to make that an object of worship.

7. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; for the Lord will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.

A reverence for the very name of God is demanded and all things that are connected with his worship are to be kept sacred.

8-11. Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work; but the seventh day is the sabbath of the Lord thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.

It is good for us that we make the Sabbath a day of rest-a day of holy worship-a day of drawing near unto God. Thus far, we have the first table, containing the duties towards God. The rest inscribed on the second table are our duties towards man.

12-14. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee. Thou shalt not kill. Thou shalt not commit adultery.

These commandments take a far wider sweep than the mere words. “Thou shalt not kill” includes the doing of anything by which life may be shortened as well as taken away. It includes anger-every evil wish and every malicious passion. And “Thou shalt not commit adultery” includes every form of unchastity and impurity.

15-17. Thou shalt not steal. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

It was the tenth commandment that convicted the apostle Paul, for he says “I had not known sin except the law had said “Thou shalt not covet.” When men break the other commandments they often break this one first.

2 Kings 17 Verses 23, 24. So was Israel carried away out of their own land to Assyria unto this day. And the king of Assyria brought men from Babylon, and from Cuthah, and from Ava, and from Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they possessed Samaria, and dwelt in the cities thereof.

It was a part of the tactics of the Assyrian empire to take people away from their original location and colonize them in other places-to shift them to another land; so that while the Israelites were taken to Babylon, numbers of those who had lived round about Babylon were brought to live in the Samaritan province, in order that nationalities might thus be broken down and patriotism might expire, thus making it easier for the Assyrian tyrant to govern the land.

25-27. And so it was at the beginning of their dwelling there, that they feared not the Lord: therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which slew some of them. Wherefore they spake to the king of Assyria, saying, The nations which thou hast removed, and placed in the cities of Samaria, know not the manner of the God of the land: therefore he hath sent lions among them, and, behold, they slay them, because they know not the manner of the God of the land. Then the king of Assyria commanded, saying Carry thither one of the priests whom ye brought from thence; and let them go and dwell there, and let him teach them the manner of the God of the land.

He did not care one single farthing himself what religion they were of; but if they did not happen to have a religion to suit the country, “Well, then, send one of the priests who used to live there who can teach them what it is.” According to his notions, they could take it up just when they liked.

28-31. Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Beth-el, and taught them how they should fear the Lord. Howbeit every nation made gods of their own, and put them in the houses of the high places which the Samaritans had made, every nation in their cities wherein they dwelt. And the men of Babylon made Succoth-benoth, and the men of Cuth made Nergal, and the men of Hamath made Ashima, and the Avites made Nibhaz and Tartak, and the Sepharvites burnt their children in fire to Adrammelech and Anammelech the gods of Sepharvaim.

It would answer no practical purpose if I were to explain the meaning of the names of these various gods. They were some of them of brute forms. Their worship was generally attended with the most lascivious rites; and especially the worship of Molech or Moloch, who is mentioned under two different forms here. He was a god whose worship was consummated with the most dreadful cruelties, for children were passed through the fires and burnt in his honour.

32-38. So they feared the Lord, and made unto themselves of the lowest of them priests of the high places, which sacrificed for them in the houses of the high places. They feared the Lord, and served their own gods, after the manner of the nations whom they carried away from thence. Unto this day they do after the former manners: they fear not the Lord, neither do they after their statutes, or after their ordinances, or after the law and commandment which the Lord commanded the children of Jacob, whom he named Israel; with whom the Lord had made a covenant, and charged them, saying, Ye shall not fear other gods, nor bow yourselves to them, nor serve them, nor sacrifice to them; but the Lord, who brought you up out of the land of Egypt with great power and a stretched out arm, him shall ye fear, and him shall ye worship, and to him shall ye do sacrifice. And the statutes, and the ordinances, and the law, and the commandment, which he wrote for you, ye shall observe to do for evermore and ye shall not fear other gods. And the covenant that I have made with you ye shall not forget; neither shall ye fear other gods.

How this warning comes over and over and over again! “Hear, O Israel. The Lord thy God is one God.” The worship of anything else under any pretext whatsoever, besides the one ever-blessed trinity in unity is for ever forbidden to us.

39-41. But the Lord your God ye shall fear; and he shall deliver you out of the hand of all your enemies. Howbeit they did not hearken, but they did after their former manner. So these nations feared the Lord and served their graven images, both their children, and their children’s children: as did their fathers, so do they unto this day.

Trying, as far as ever they could, to link the old idolatries with the worship of the true God, which thing is the most loathsome in the sight of the Most High.