How remarkably interwoven and intertwisted are the duties of believers and their privileges! Indeed, it is very often very difficult to say which is a privilege and which is a duty, for that which is a duty under one aspect is a privilege under another aspect, and that which is evidently a privilege may involve sin if it be not enjoyed, and therefore it has something of duty about it. I think there should be no dividing asunder the duties and privileges which God has manifestly joined together, and that we should count it our highest privilege to do his will in every duty which he has enjoined upon us.

Equally remarkable is it how closely the privileges and duties of the Christian life are connected with the person of the Lord Jesus Christ. Because we are one with him, therefore are we beloved of the Father, therefore are we redeemed from death and hell, therefore are we separated from the world, therefore are we dead to sin, therefore do we live unto the Lord, and therefore do we confidently expect a final triumph over all our adversaries until the last enemy of all shall be put under our feet. You get nothing, dear brother or sister in Christ, except as you get it through Christ. Apart from him, you would be miserable, and poor, and blind, and naked, as you were until you came to him; but in union with him you are rich to all the intents of bliss. All things are yours because you are Christ’s; and while the Father views you as one with Christ, he will bless you; and while you view yourself as one with Christ, you will be conscious of the blessing, and, at the same time, will be led to devote yourself more completely to the pursuit of holiness and the fear of God.

I have been specially praying for the guidance of the Holy Spirit in handling a subject which belongs not so much to the worshippers in the outer court, where we preach the gospel to all, as to those in the inner court, where we speak only to those who are, we trust, already saved. If I have the gracious guidance of the Spirit of God, my words will drop as dew upon the hearts of those who are living unto God, and they will be refreshed and encouraged. But I could not bear the thought that my sermon should have no bearing whatever upon those who are, at present, outside the visible fold of Christ. Therefore, at the very outset of my discourse, I let you all know that I am preaching now specially to the Lord’s own people. Judge ye yourselves, therefore, as to whether ye belong to that privileged company or not; and if you have not believed in our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, know that you have no share in the privileges of the covenant of grace; and while I am preaching to believers, sit you down, and sigh from your inmost heart over the sad fact that you are an alien from the commonwealth of Israel. If the Lord, by his gracious Spirit, will lead you so to do, he will hear that sorrowful sigh of yours; and I trust that you will be led, sighing and crying, to the Saviour’s feet, to believe in him to the salvation of your never-dying soul. Then will you enter at once into all the privileges which belong to the children of God, those privileges about which I am now to speak.

The two verses, which form my text, seem to me to set before us, first, a great truth,-a great fact which is to be the subject of our reckoning: “Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord;” and, secondly, a great lesson to be put into practice: “Let not sin therefore”-for the argument is carried on from the former verse,-“Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.”

What is the meaning of the first verse? What is the great truth which is there taught to us by the Holy Spirit? It is this: “Reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.”

It is quite certain that God never asks believers to reckon anything to be true which is not true; for to reckon a thing to be what it is not would be to build upon a false basis, and, in fact, to argue upon that which is false. This would not be consistent with the character of God himself, nor with the nature of the gospel, which is, essentially, a proclamation of truth. There are no suppositions and imaginations in the gospel; it tells of positive sin, positive punishment, positive substitution, and positive forgiveness, for God would not have his people reckon upon anything which is not absolutely true. Hence, the text does not mean that you are to reckon that there is no sin in you, but that you are “dead indeed unto sin.” You are not to reckon that which is falsehood; that which God the Holy Spirit intends you to reckon is a matter of positive, undoubted fact. If you read the context, you will see what that matter of fact is.

It is, first, that every believer is truly dead to sin, because Christ has died to sin. The Lord Jesus Christ is our covenant Head; and what he did, he did in the room, and place, and stead of his people; he did it all representatively on their behalf; so that, what he did, they virtually did through him as their Representative. Always remember that the federal principle has been adopted by God in his dealings with the human race from the very beginning. We were all, representatively, in Adam; and, hence, Adam’s sin brought us all into transgression and condemnation, so that we have all become partakers in the result of Adam’s one sin. It was not actually ours, but it became ours by imputation, and it brought upon us all its terrible consequences because Adam was our federal head. In the same way, the Lord Jesus Christ is the federal Head and Representative of his people; and what he has done, he has done on their behalf, and it is reckoned as though they had done it themselves. Beloved, it was due from us that, having broken God’s law, we should endure the punishment resulting from our disobedience. That punishment was death, for “the soul that sinneth it shall die.” There must therefore be passed upon us, if we are ever to be clear at God’s judgment bar, a sentence that shall be an adequate punishment for sin; that sentence is so overwhelming and so dreadful that nothing can describe it but the term death. Can that ever happen to us? It has happened to us. We, who believe in Jesus Christ, have been confronted with our sins, accused of them, condemned for them, and punished for them. The full penalty, or that which was tantamount thereunto, has been exacted from us. We have died the death that was sin’s due reward.

“But,” someone asks, “how is that?” I answer, that the apostle tells us, in this chapter, that we have done it, representatively, in the person of Jesus Christ, our great federal Head, Surety, and Substitute. Can you grasp the great truth that, whatever was due from us to God’s justice has been fully paid by Christ? Whatever of suffering was necessary as the result of sin, from the penal side of the question, has been already endured by Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Hence, Christ took our sin upon him, though in him was no sin of his own, and he died unto sin, bearing the penalty of it. As the inevitable consequence of his sacrifice upon the cross, he is clear from the sin that was laid upon him, and so are all his people, in whose stead he suffered. Toplady truly sang,-

“Complete atonement thou hast made,

And to the utmost farthing paid

Whate’er thy people owed:

Nor can his wrath on me take place,

If shelter’d in thy righteousness,

And sprinkled with thy blood.

“If thou hast my discharge procured,

And freely in my room endured

The whole of wrath divine:

Payment God cannot twice demand,

First at my bleeding Surety’s hand

And then again at mine.”

I may make this truth plainer by a comparison, which is impossible in the case of men, but which may illustrate the point we are now considering. Suppose that a man has been found guilty of a crime which is a capital offence according to the law of his country. The only way of dealing with him, in justice, is that he should endure the penalty for his offence. Suppose the sentence to have been carried out, the man has been put to death, and has been buried. But after that, he has risen again; can the law touch him now? Can any charge be laid against him? Can he be brought a second time before the tribunal? Assuredly not; the same justice, which brought him to the bar before, and punished him, now stands up, and declares that he cannot be touched again, for how shall he be twice charged, and twice tried, and twice put to death for the same offence? This cannot happen, as I have said, among men, but it has happened in the case of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. For all his people he has borne the death penalty, and he has risen from the dead; and they have borne the death penalty in him, and risen from the dead in him. Wherefore, let them rejoice that, in the person of their Redeemer, they are dead by sin, and dead for sin,-for such is the meaning of this passage. I wish that all of you, who believe in Jesus, could get a firm hold of this blessed truth; for, if you do, it will make your heart dance for joy. We are emancipated because our ransom price has been fully paid; we are set free from the law, not by the law waiving the penalty due to our sin, for the penalty has been endured in the person of One who had the right to endure it, for he was his people’s Representative; and what he endured on their behalf is reckoned as though they had personally endured it, so that each one of them can say, with Toplady,-

“Turn then, my soul, unto thy rest:

The merits of thy great High Priest

Have bought thy liberty:

Trust in his efficacious blood,

Nor fear thy banishment from God,

Since Jesus died for thee.”

Further, the apostle says that we are to reckon ourselves “dead indeed unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord.” This is the other side of the great truth which is implied in our union to Christ,-that every believer is truly alive unto God, because Christ is alive unto God. We know that Christ is alive unto God: “Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more;” and we also know that the new life, of which the apostle is here writing, is a life that we share with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ because of our union to him. Christ died, and was laid in the grave, because he was our Surety and Substitute. Our great debt of sin was laid to his account, but his death discharged all our liabilities. What then? The receipt for our debt, the token that our sin had been for ever put away, was that Christ should come out of the prison of the grave. As one of our rhymesters says,-

“If Jesus had not paid the debt,

He ne’er had been at freedom set.”

He “died for our sins,” but he also “rose again for our justification.” When the bright angel flew from heaven, and rolled away the stone from the mouth of the sepulchre, and Jesus unwrapped the cerements of his tomb, and came forth in the glory of his resurrection-life, all for whom he died and rose again were acknowledged as justified before God through his righteousness, and cleansed from all sin by his blood. And now, beloved brethren and sisters in Christ, this is our joy, that we are alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord. A little while ago, we were dead unto God, for the sentence which he had pronounced upon us made us virtually dead unto him. We were under condemnation, “the children of wrath, even as others;” but now that Jesus Christ has risen from the grave, we are no longer dead unto God, but we are alive unto him; and he looks upon us as those who have been delivered from the sentence of spiritual death, and who cannot again come under that penalty, since Christ, who stood in our place, and suffered in our stead, has for ever put away from us, not only our guilt, but also all its dread consequences.

“We were lost, but we are found,

Dead, but now alive are we;

We were sore in bondage bound,

But our Jesus sets us free.

“Therefore will we sing his praise

Who his lost ones hath restored,

Hearts and voices both shall raise

Hallelujahs to the Lord.”

Further than that, as the text says, “Likewise”, the very word here used bids us run the parallel as the apostle has done. He says, “Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him.” See then, what this means in reference to us who have believed in him. Jesus Christ will not die twice. The sin of his people, that was laid upon him, brought him down to the grave; but there he buried it, and he rose again, no longer bearing the sin for which he had paid the penalty; and that sin cannot be laid upon him a second time, and therefore he shall never again need to be crucified. Beloved, do you not see that, if your sin was really laid upon Christ, and you died unto sin in Christ, you can never have that sin laid to your charge again, under any circumstances whatsoever, unless Christ can die again? By one sufficient punishment, our offence has been put away even from the sight of God; can that offence, then, be brought against us, and laid to our charge a second time? Nay, verily; for if it could, it would be needful that our great Substitute should bleed and die a second time; but, as that cannot be, the sin of the believer can never again be imputed to him, and can never again rise in judgment against him. While Christ, the ever-blessed Saviour, continues to live, his people must also continue to live. What a glorious truth this is! I, then, if I am a believer in Christ, have, through my union to him, borne the penalty of sin, I have died in Christ, and the life that I now live before the living God is a life that is uncondemned and uncondemnable, and which never can expire, because never can sin be laid to its charge again.

Beloved brother or sister in Christ, how I wish that you could get a firm grip of this blessed truth, so that you could enjoy it to the full in your own soul! It is not always easy to realize your union with Christ,-to see how he takes your place, and you take his,-to mark how he is bruised for your iniquities, and how the chastisement of your peace is laid upon him; and that, in consequence, you take his place as accepted and beloved by the Father, that you are raised from the dead, and honoured even to share his glory in the highest heavens, for he has gone up there as the Representative of all his people, and you also are raised up together with him, and made to sit with him in the heavenly places; and as he is to come again, in all the glory of the Father, to subdue all things unto himself, so are you to reign with him, for he has said, “Where I am, there shall also my servant be;” and “to him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me in my throne, even as I also overcame, and am set down with my Father in his throne.” What a glorious truth this is, that all believers are dead, raised, living, exalted, and glorified, in Christ Jesus!

Now, beloved, having given you that meaning of the passage,-and I am persuaded that it is its true signification, and that no other will bear examination,-I want to warn you against the interpretation that some have tried to put upon the apostle’s words. They say that they are dead to sin, and alive unto God; and they tell us-perhaps not in so many words,-that now they do not sin, that they live in a state of perpetual sanctity, and are no more affected by sin than a dead man would be affected by that which goes on in the house wherein his corpse is lying. These people say that their life now is one, if not of absolute holiness, yet, in a certain sense, of perfect holiness. I conceive this to be one of the most dangerous delusions of the present age,-apparently specious and supportable by Scripture; but, in reality, without any solid foundation, and full of a thousand dangers. There are two ways by which a man can persuade himself that he does not sin. The first is the Antinomian method, by which he says that he is not under the law, and that, therefore, whatever he does is not sinful. If another man were to do a certain thing, he would be very wrong; but if he himself does it, he, being a specially chosen one, is in a condition in which it is not reckoned to be sin, or is not laid to his charge. Well, beloved, I can only say that, when I have read certain caricatures of this doctrine,-and it is most natural that ungodly men should make fun of it,-I have thought that the caricature was richly deserved, and that any contempt that could be poured upon such atrocious falsehoods was well merited. For sin, in a Christian, is quite as much sin as it is in anybody else; indeed, it is a great deal more sinful, for never does a black stain seem so black as when it falls on spotlessly white linen, and never is sin so sinful as when it is committed by one who is greatly loved by the Lord, and is the subject of peculiar favour. May Antinomianism never mislead either you or me, beloved!

The other way of perverting this truth is to say that you do not sin at all,-to stand up straight, like the Pharisee in the temple, and say that you have attained such a condition that you do not now sin. If any of you, my dear friends, are in that condition, the sooner you get out of it, and humble yourselves before God for ever having dared to get into it, the better will it be for you. Our Lord Jesus Christ and his apostle never meant that we were to reckon ourselves to be dead to sin in such a sense that we never sinned at all, or that sin did not affect us as it affected other people, because that is not the truth. I appeal to every man who has a conscience, and I trust that even the believers in this superfine holiness have some trace of conscience left, so I appeal to them whether they are not conscious of sin. My dear brother or sister, if you are not guilty of a single sin of commission,-if you never utter an unkind or angry word,-if you never speak unadvisedly with your lips,-if you never break one of the ten commands in the letter by an overt act of sin,-if there is never about you any trace of pride, or covetousness, or wrath, or anything else that is wrong, can you say that you are free from sins of omission? Have you done all you should have done, in as high and noble a spirit as you ought to have displayed in it? O my brother, if this is your belief, you must be strangely different from what I have ever been able to be; for, when I have done my very best before God, I have always felt that my best was imperfect and marred by sin. I have had to mourn over many omissions even when I have diligently laboured to obey my Lord and Master perfectly; and in reviewing any one day of my life, I have never dared to congratulate myself upon it; but, with tears of repentance, I have had to confess that, if I have not erred by overt sin, yet I have somewhere or other come short of the glory of God. My dear brother, do you really believe that your motives, and the spirit in which you have acted, have been perfect in God’s sight? It is quite unaccountable to me, if you look into your own heart, and try to trace all your secret motives, and desires, and imaginations, and all the tendencies of your nature, and yet say that you do not sin against the Lord. Have you the same standard of holiness that we have? Surely you cannot have, if you think you have attained it; if you have the same standard that we have, I am certain that you have not attained it. The holiness that a Christian ought to aim at is to be absolutely as just, and righteous, and pure as God himself is. This is the mark that he sets before us: “Be ye holy, for I am holy;” “Be ye perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” If you say that you have reached that perfection, I believe that, if you let your conscience speak the truth, it will tell you that you are under a great delusion, and that you are utterly self-deceived upon that matter.

As to the notion that reckoning yourself to be perfect will help you to be so, I tell you flatly that it will most effectually prevent you from becoming perfect. Reckon that you are sinful, admit that sin far too often prevails over you, and then go humbly to God, and confess that it is so, and seek from him grace to keep you, day by day, from the power of reigning sin; and you will, in that way, make a real advance in sanctification and true holiness. But if you reckon that you have reached this blessed condition, you never will reach it. If you sit down in carnal security, you will rest in contentment with yourself, but you will never be what I trust you really desire to be. Your experience will be like that of the artist who at last painted a picture with which he was perfectly satisfied, and he then said to his wife, “I may as well break my pallet, and throw away my brush. I shall never be a great painter now, for I have realized my ideal, I am perfectly satisfied with this picture that I have produced.” Far better is it for you to have a sacred dissatisfaction and hallowed discontent with all that you are. That forgetting of the things which are behind, and reaching forth unto those that are before, that pressing forward toward the mark for the prize of your high calling in Christ Jesus, to which the apostle urges you,-that seeking to fight from day to day with the temptations that surround you, not reckoning that you have won the victory yet, but believing that you will win it through the blood of the Lamb;-this is what we long to see in you; and not to behold you sitting down in calm content, and saying, “It is all done; I am perfect.” For, believe me, my brother,-or, if you do not believe me, you will find it to be true, sooner or later,-you are not perfect by a very long way, as the devil knows, and as God knows, and as many people beside yourself know, who see what your daily life is, and mark your conversation.

Now, having thus spoken concerning this great truth, and having shown you in what way we are dead unto sin, and alive unto God, through our union to Christ, I want to point out to you the great practical lesson which the text sets before us: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof.”

This is the great fact that you are ever to remember, you are now an altogether new man. In Christ Jesus, you have died, and been buried, and have risen again. Surely you will not now have anything to do with sin, will you? You must hate it, for it has done you such serious mischief. It was sin that slew you in the person of your Substitute and Saviour; but, now, you have been born again, and you are a new man in Christ Jesus. You are not going back to sin, are you? Oh, no; your whole soul abhors it, and you endeavour now, from this time forward, to be entirely free from its dominion. You mourn that sin is still within you, and that it still has great power over you. That power it will try to use, and it aims at getting complete dominion over you. It seeks to make you again what you formerly were, its subject and its slave.

You are told, in the text, not to let sin reign in your mortal body, and this injunction implies that sin is already there, and that sin will seek to get dominion over you. Be not surprised, young converts, if you find sin to be terribly fierce within you, and if sometimes it seems even to be stronger than divine grace. It is not really so, but it may appear to you sometimes to be so; and rest assured of this,-that sin in you is so strong that, unless God the Holy Spirit shall help you, it will get the victory over you. It will fail to get the victory over you, because God will help you; but if he did not, the smallest soldier in the army of sin would be too strong for you, however powerful you may think yourself to be. Sin in a believer can never reign over him, because he is dead to the reigning power of sin. O King Sin, I am no subject of thine! I was once, but I died, and now I have risen again in Christ, and I am no subject of thine. What, then, does sin do, if it cannot reign over the believer? It lurks inside the soul like an outlaw whose banishment has not yet taken place. John Bunyan’s description of the Holy War is a matter of true experience. After the Diabolonians were overthrown in Mansoul, many of them remained hidden away in dens and corners of the city, and although diligent search was made to find them, there were always some of them hiding away in the back lanes and side streets, where they could not easily be discovered. It is just so with sin. As a reigning king, sin is dead to you, and you to it; but, as a sneaking outlaw, sin is still lurking within your soul. It is plotting and planning to get back its former dominion over you, and not merely plotting and planning, but it is also warring and fighting to that end.

Oh, with what terrible force does sin sometimes assail a believer! Just when he least expected it to come, some old lust reappears. “Oh!” he cries, “I thought that evil passion would never again assail me.” Perhaps when he is on his knees in prayer, a blasphemous thought is suddenly injected into his mind, and when he is engaged in his business, endeavouring to provide things honest in the sight of all men, he finds a temptation to do something which is unjust put in his way, and though, at first, it seems as if he would consent to it, yet, by the grace of God, he is enabled to get the victory over it. The very best man in the world, if he were left by divine grace only for five minutes, might become, and probably would become, the worst man in the world. Left to himself, impetuous Peter begins cursing and swearing, and thrice denies his Master. This vile outlaw, sin, that is always fighting within us, will be king if it can. It will rally all the forces of the world against us, it will call the devil himself to its assistance, and so seek to get the reigning power again; but it never can, for we are not its subjects, we are not under its dominion, and we never will be. The almighty God, who has redeemed us from going down into the pit, will never suffer us to be again the slaves of sin; yet we are constantly to be on the watch against its attacks.

The text also implies that the point of assault of sin upon you will be your body: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.” It is generally through our body that sin tries to bring our soul into captivity. There are natural wants of the body which must be attended to; but every one of these wants may become a sinful craving, and we may so excessively minister to the want that, by-and-by, it becomes a sinful lusting. That a man should eat to appease his hunger, is right; but, alas! gluttony often follows. That a man should drink to quench his thirst, is right; but there are divers drinks which lead to drunkenness; and so, even through two such perfectly justifiable natural wants as eating and drinking, sin may come in. There are a great many other wants, emotions, and passions of the body, which are, in themselves, properly considered, not sinful, but every one of them may readily be made into a door through which sin can enter. Nay, it is not only the wants of the body, but also the pleasures of the body, which may lead to sin. There are bodily enjoyments which are perfectly innocent; but it is very easy to pass beyond that line, and to indulge the flesh with that which is evil. Even the pains of the body may become the means of attack upon the soul, for great pain will often bring depression of spirit, and despondency; and through despondency comes doubt. Ay, and pain sometimes causes murmuring, and murmuring is really rebellion against God. This poor flesh seems to be the battlefield in which the fight with sin is continually to be carried on. Sin makes frequent incursions into the region of mind and spirit, but it generally begins with the body. How strenuously, therefore, must we see to it that we obey the apostolic injunction, “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof;” but, rather, let us yield these our members to be the instruments of righteousness and purity. Watch and pray, beloved; do not imagine that the stern battle is over, it is only just begun. As long as you are in this mortal state, you are to put on the whole armour of God, and to strive, and agonize, and wrestle against sin, in the power of the blood of Jesus Christ, who will help you by his ever-blessed Spirit; but to suppose that the battle for purity is over is to suppose a falsehood, which will seriously endanger the sanctity of your lives.

The apostle uses one word which is very comforting to my mind: “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body.” I am very glad to read that word “mortal.” If this body were immortal, with its present tendencies, then might it continue to be a field of battle for the believer for ever. But it is mortal; and when it dies, then shall its tendencies, which now incline us to sin, die also. “Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,” for flesh and blood always will have a tendency towards that which is evil. But, brethren, we are going to leave this flesh and blood behind us when we die. We shall be re-united to our body after it has been refined, for the grave is the refining pot for it; but, until we die, this body will be the nest of sin, and within our flesh, as Paul truly says, “there dwelleth no good thing.” Through being cumbered with this flesh, many a true child of God will, perhaps, have to cry even upon his dying bed, “O wretched man that I am! who shall deliver me from the body of this death?” Thank God, then, that it is a mortal body in which this warfare is waged, so that, when it dies, the fight is over, and the emancipated spirit shall then rejoice in the fulness of the glory of God; but not till then, neither need you expect it; for, if you do, you will be grievously disappointed when you find that you have been buoyed up with a false hope, based upon self-conceit, and not upon the work of the Spirit of God at all.

The pith of the matter lies here, brethren. Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin because, in Christ Jesus, you died unto sin; and let that truth strengthen you to fight sin. As long as you have any question about whether God counts you among the guilty, you will never have courage to contend with sin. Evangelical doctrine is the battle-axe and the other weapons of war with which the believer is to fight against sin. That I am saved,-that I am fully absolved from guilt,-that I am accounted just in the sight of God,-that I am saved to all eternity,-this is a firm foundation for me to stand upon; and now, relying upon the power of God’s grace, I may confidently say, “Sin shall not have dominion over me, because of this amazing mercy which I have received. Because of this high calling, to which God’s infinite love has called me, I will cast down every sin that dares to lift itself up; I will take by the throat everything that is hostile to God, and I will labour to perfect holiness in the fear of God.” Tell the sinner that he must do this and that, and he is conscious of his want of power, and therefore he does nothing; but go to him, God-sent, in the power of the Holy Spirit, and say to him, “Thy sin was laid on Jesus, so thou art free from it, for Jesus bore its penalty. Thou art saved, for in him thou hast virtually died, and the law cannot now touch thee; thou art a dead man so far as it is concerned. Sin cannot accuse thee, for thou art dead to it,”-and what does the man say? Why, with great surprise in his soul, he is yet enabled to believe it, and he sees, as it were, the mountains cast down, the valleys filled up, and a pathway made in the desert for God to come to his soul, and for him to come to his God; and, in the joy of pardon freely given through his Saviour’s precious blood, in the bliss of salvation graciously bestowed without money and without price, he shakes himself from the dust, arises from his former love of sin, and says, “Now, sin, I am dead to thee, and I will never permit thee to be king over me. I am no longer under thy dominion, and I will drive thee out of my being altogether. Thou shalt not reign over me. I will, by the power and grace of him who has bought me with his blood, live to the praise and glory of God alone.”

Now, brethren and sisters in Christ, most earnestly do I desire that you may so live that you will never doubt your eternal union with Christ, and your consequent perfect acceptance with God. I pray that you may exercise an unstaggering faith in the finished work of Christ culminated on Calvary’s cross; and then I say to you, “Think what manner of persons you ought to be in all holy conversation and godliness.” Never tolerate any sin in yourselves; never wink at it, or imagine that it is less in you than it would be in others. Grieve over every shortcoming, every failure, everything that is not according to the perfect rule of righteousness; and watch every day, and every hour of the day, calling in the aid of divine strength that you may be enabled to watch, and believing, at the same time, that that strength will be given you, for the promise to you is, “Sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” This will make sure work for holiness; you will not be puffed up, but you will be built up; you will not go bragging about how holy you are, your own mouth condemning you all the while; but, in silence before the Lord, you will sit down to admire the grace which has looked in love upon such a poor unworthy worm as you are. While you will seek to do that which is right, and will hate every false way, you will, at the same time, take your place with the publican in the temple, and cry, “God be merciful to me a sinner.” Seek to be as holy as the angels, yet be, all the while, as humble as the publican. Recollect that it is grace which has made you what you are, and that it is grace which must keep you faithful to the end. If grace did not keep you, you must be a castaway; but you shall not be a castaway, for, “beloved, we are persuaded better things of you, and things that accompany salvation, though we thus speak.” I pray that every member of this church, and of Christ’s Church at large, may be very careful in his living, very watchful, very devout, very earnest. O professing Christians, you are not what you should be! A great many of you seem to forget altogether the sacred obligations of the love which has been from eternity fixed upon you. Confess this sin, mourn over it, and seek the power of Christ to help you against it, and henceforth may your course be as “the shining light, which shineth more and more unto the perfect day.”

I fancy that I hear somebody in the congregation say, “These godly people seem to have a hard fight of it.” They do; it is not an easy work to get to heaven, even by grace; for, though we are saved, yet it is a pilgrimage to heaven, and a stern fight all the way. What we have to say to unconverted people is this, “If the righteous scarcely”-or, with difficulty,-“are saved, where shall the ungodly and the sinner appear?” If he, who zealously desires to follow after holiness, has such a stern fight for it, what must be the end of the man who never denies himself, but indulges his sinful passions, and casts the reins upon the neck of his lusts? O Christian, yours is the lot of a soldier, and you have to “endure hardness as a good soldier of Jesus Christ;” but you are comforted because, by faith, you can see the crown of life, which fadeth not away, and which is reserved in heaven for you; and therefore you keep on contending. But as for you who never fight against sin, and who feel no agony within, it is very evident why you have no inward struggle; it is because your whole nature goes one way. Dead fish float with the stream; it is the live fish that swim against it; and if you never feel any inward contention and striving,-if you never have to cry, “To will is present with me; but how to perform that which is good I find not,”-if you never groan under a sense of sin, I close my sermon by saying that I pray God that you soon may do so, and that your groanings may be uttered at the foot of his cross, who will look down upon you as you lie there in utter weakness and misery, and who will say to you, “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins: return unto me, for I have redeemed thee.” May we all learn that Christ is everything, and that we are nothing; that he is holiness, and that we are unholiness, and may the Lord give us the grace to be found in him, not having our own righteousness, which is of the law, but the righteousness which is of God by faith! Amen.

GREAT CHANGES

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, May 4th 1905,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington,

In the year 1862.

“And, behold, there are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.”-Luke 13:30.

In some of the books printed in the olden times, the authors were wont to put a hand in the margin, as if to point out some passage to which they would have particular attention directed. Now, wherever we see in Holy Scripture the word “behold,” it answers the same end. It is intended to show us that there is either something new, something impressive, or something which is speedily to transpire, and, therefore, needs immediate attention; or else there is usually something contrary to what men expect, and, therefore, their consideration is the more earnestly directed to it. Seeing this “behold” in the margin, a sign-post as it were, a directory for us to stop and pause and learn, let us do so to-night; and may the Spirit of God be our Instructor, that we may listen to profit.

“There are last which shall be first, and there are first which shall be last.” Similar passages occur in Matthew and Mark as well as in Luke. In Matthew, the connection in which it stands shows that there Christ intended it to relate to temporal circumstances. Peter had told him that he, together with his fellow-apostles, had left all that he had, to follow Christ; and his Master informed him that he should be no loser by it, but that, the rather, he should greatly profit through having left house and lands, and children and wife, for Christ’s name’s sake and the gospel’s. “For,” saith Christ, “there be last which shall be first, and there be first which shall be last.” Brethren, let us then hear and understand this, that circumstances shall very soon be altered. The high and mighty shall not always be so elevated; the base and mean shall not always occupy such a humiliating position. Throughout the whole history of the world, sin has been striding in high places, with shoes of iron and brass, while godliness has walked bare-foot through the valley. Multitudes of most ungodly men have worn the tiara, and have thrown the purple about their shoulders; while a far more than equal number of the virtuous have been slaves to tug the galley oar, or have been condemned to long imprisonments, or have “wandered about in sheep-skins and goat-skins, being destitute, afflicted, tormented.” Still, Dives wears the scarlet and fine linen, and fares sumptuously every day, while Lazarus lies at his gate full of sores, and the dogs give him the charity of their tongues. Still Nero is on the throne, and Paul rots in the Mamertine dungeon. Still a Charles II shall have the crown, while the Puritan shall be found “despised and rejected of men.” You can scarcely turn to any page of history in which you do not see the wicked in great power, spreading himself like a green bay-tree, while the righteous is plagued all the day long, and chastened every morning. Well, the time is coming when all this shall be changed. One wave of thy hand, O Death! and where is the dignity of sin? One blast of thy breath, O God! and where are the glories of the mighty? Where are the pomp and the power of the ungodly man who vexed thy saints? See there, Dives has gone down to the nethermost pit, and Lazarus is lifted to the throne. See there, Nero rots, and is corrupt, and Paul, on angels’ wings, is borne to the right hand of the Majesty on high. Poverty-stricken, having hardly a place where he can lay his head, the humble tent-maker took rank with the very lowest; but, though last, he now stands first, nearest the eternal throne,-

“’Midst the bright ones, doubly bright.”

Proud, having all the earth at his beck, Rome’s legions at his call, Nero reigned and thought himself a god; but now the meanest slave is greater than he, and they mock and jeer him, even they, the princes who lost their thrones by him, and the men whom he trampled in the dust; in Hades they greet him with the cry, “Art thou become like one of us?” and marvel greatly because the mighty are fallen and the proud are stained in the mire. Patience, then, patience, ye who are the sons of poverty, and yet the sons of God. Hush your boasting, ye that are the heirs of wrath, and yet the heirs of fortune; the tables shall soon turn, eternity shall undo the incongruities of life. Time! thine inequalities shall all be forgotten, justice shall right every wrong, “the first shall be last, and the last shall be first.”

So, brethren, to pass on, there is no doubt that this is equally true with regard to the world’s esteem. For many a long year, the precious sons of God, comparable to fine gold, have been esteemed as earthen pitchers, the work of the hands of the potter. For the first three centuries, there was no villainy too vile to be laid at the door of the Christians. They were baser than the greatest miscreants. The world hooted them from the streets. No terms were thought bad enough for them. “It is not fit that they should live,” was the world’s verdict upon the followers of the Crucified. And even to-day a godly man is held in no reputation. There are no racks, ’tis true, no prisons, no fines; but there are the jeer and the mockery, the shrugging of the shoulder, the reviling, the shame, and the spitting,-these have not ceased even now. Genius, intellect, science, taste, poetry, and literature have their golden shrines. Godliness is just tolerated in its own conventicle.

I may be addressing some Christian men, some young converts especially, who feel it very hard to have the cold shoulder in society, to be neglected by their friends, to be threatened by their parents, to be forsaken by all who once counted them to be good. Ay, patience, patience, patience! You that are the last for Christ shall be the first with Christ by-and-by. Those that are first to-day in honour, and think themselves great and famous because they will never yield to fanaticism, because they will never be enthusiastic after Christ,-they shall be among the last. The day cometh when they shall “awake to shame and everlasting contempt.” The organs of public sentiment will change their tone. The world that honoured the ungodly shall see their shame. The eyes that once looked slightingly on saints shall be made to honour them as the noblest of the noble, and they that hated Christ shall be lightly esteemed. Let these two thoughts be rivetted upon our memories; but I choose to dwell rather upon two other thoughts. The first part of my text seems to me to teach wonders of grace, and the next part of it seems to me to teach wonders of sin.

Here, surely, is a wonder of grace: “There are last that shall be first.”

Here is divine sovereignty,-choosing the last to make them first. Here is sovereign grace,-forgiving the greatest sin to make the brightest saint. Here is almighty power changing the most degraded, turning the current of the most strong-minded sinner, and making his soul “willing in the day of God’s power.”

What means it, those that are last? I take it, if I understand the sense aright, it means this. There are some that are last in pedigree, born of impious parents in some low hovel, in some dingy room, an attic or a cellar, in some court, where the first sound that reached their ear was blasphemy, and the first sight that greeted their eye was drunkenness. How many we have of such in London, who are indeed last if we consider their birth! Poor things, they are born not simply to poverty, but they seem to be the nurslings of vice. One’s eyes might weep tears of blood when we think how unhappily some children are placed in the very first moment of their advent into society. Glory be to God, however, there are some of these that shall be first. God will find his jewels in the dens, and alleys, and slums of London, and take up to his eternal throne those that were the sons of harlots, and the children of the thief, that they may sing for ever of his amazing grace.

Last, too, they are in education. Turned out into the street to pick up from every boy the vice he has acquired, to learn from evil men villainy of which their young hearts would not have dreamed. If you should go into our Ragged-schools, especially some in the very lowest neighbourhoods, or if you would hear Mr. Gregory, the missionary in St. Giles’s, tell his tale of all the sin he sees, and the education that our young men of St. Giles’s get, O gentlemen of St. James’s! it might well make you blush,-blush with shame that you are not doing something for them,-shame for yourselves, that you let your neighbours live like this. Your neighbours still they are, though they are hidden behind the tall houses of your gorgeous streets and crescents, your squares and terraces. Well, these are last in education; but, glory be to God, some who were trained for the gallows, and tutored for the convict-settlement, shall, nevertheless, be taught of the Lord, and inducted into the fellowship of the saints. Irresistible grace shall come and pluck them out of the furnace, hating the garment spotted with the flesh, yet esteeming them that they also may be jewels in the Redeemer’s crown.

Then, again, they are last in morals. At eventide, see her as she goes out to hunt for souls. See him, too, as at eventide he reels from gin palace to gin palace, to drink, to swear, to curse. Ah! we are not without those who are last in morals in this huge den of vice, this city of iniquity. Could Sodom find sinners that would match with the sinners of London? What think ye? Could Tyre and Sidon outvie the iniquities that are near our own doors, and may be seen in our own streets? I trow not. You need not, to-night, go many steps when once the sun is down before you will see under every gaslight some that are last. Blessed be God, some of them shall be first. Praise the Lord, ye angels, there are some of them here to-night, some of them saved, some of them snatched from the fire, and they will sing in heaven, and they do sing on earth right sweetly, to the praise of the love that has made the last to be the first.

What though some of these appear, beside their moral debasement, to have the last disposition that could ever be susceptible of grace? You know the men I mean; men that, when you look into their faces, you feel you would not like to meet them on a dark night. There are such men, whose very countenances betray a stolidity and hardness that is not altogether common to men. Do you remember what the Scotchman said to Rowland Hill, when he looked long into his face? and Rowland asked him, “What are you looking there for?” “I was looking at the lines on your face,” said he. “And what do you think of me?” said Rowland. “Why,” said the man, “I was thinking that, if it hadn’t been for the grace of God, you would have been one of the biggest scoundrels living;” and Rowland said ’twas even so. He felt that himself. And I think we have all felt so; we have all felt, as one good man said, “There goes John Bradford, if it were not for the grace of God.” To the ale-house, to the prison, to the gallows, each of us might have come if sovereign grace had not prevented. There are men who seem naturally more coarse, more rough, more wild, more outrageous than others; they have furious passions, they have a fiendish temper. What other word could I use? They have a temper that seems to make them like very maniacs for a little provocation. They know not what to do, but stamp, and rave, and say they know not what. These are the last men you would think could be saved. Ay, but there are many of them that have been made first. Strange is it that God picks out the very men whom we would throw away; the most worthless, the most hopeless, hapless, and helpless. Sovereign grace had fixed its eye upon them, and said of each one of them, “I will have that man.” That man’s will stood out stoutly, and resisted to the uttermost the pleading voice of salvation; but grace would have him. O that strong will of his, how useful it is now in the cause of Christ! That hard heart of his, now softened, seems to give a holy courage, and a dauntless and a fearless manner which would be unknown to men of a different mould. “There are last that shall be first.”

What inferences do we draw from all this? We draw these lessons. There is an encouragement for some of you, who think you are last. I bless God there are always some of the last ones coming into the Tabernacle. God deliver us from having an exclusively respectable congregation! I like to see men of all classes. I do like to see the poor come in; and I like to see the base and vile come in, and I know they do. I feel like Rowland Hill, when it was said to him, “It is only the tag, rag, and bobtail that go to Surrey Chapel.” “Ah, then!” said he, “welcome tag, and welcome rag, and welcome bobtail,-these are just the sort we want to see come into the chapel.” “Ah,” I hear someone say with a sigh, “that means me, that means me; I am one of those men; I am one of the last.” Then there is encouragement for you. Mercy’s gates stand wide open, and Christ invites you. Trust him at this very hour, for “there are last that shall be first.”

And, brethren, what cause for humiliation to us who are saved! Were not we the last? I am sure, when I look at that headstrong boy, when I think of that hard, stubborn boy, that never did, and would not yield, when I think of that child who could bear any measure of chastisement, but never would make an apology for anything, and then think of myself saved by grace, I marvel. How is it that God should choose such an one as I am? And I think you can all say, “Why me, Lord? why me?” And you can put it down to this, “There are last that shall be first.”

And what a reason this is why you and I should serve Christ, too! What, did he look on me when I was last, and will I not work for him? Stand out of the way, ye groups of cold-hearted men; stand out of the way, ye careless professors, that cannot serve your Master, I must and will do God service, for I owe him more than you do. Mary, I implore you, by the gentleness of your spirit, stand back, stand back; I must break my alabaster-box over that blessed head, for I have much forgiven, and therefore I love much. I must do much for him. Give me great sinners to make great saints; they are glorious raw material for grace to work upon; and when you do get them saved, they will shake the very gates of hell. The ringleaders in Satan’s camp make noble sergeants in the camp of Christ. The bravest of the brave are they. God send us many such, and we will sweep before us yet the hosts of evil, and drive iniquity into the depths of the sea. “There are last that shall be first.” O dear friends, I wish the net would catch some of the last now. I know that young man over there thinks that Christ will never save him. “There are last that shall be first.” I know that young woman has written it down in her conscience that she is an odd person; she is sure to be passed over,-one of the last, I see. Ah, and you shall be among the first. Only believe Christ, only trust him. He is God; he can save you: he is man; he is willing to save you. Trust him, his promise is given, he will save you, he will wash you from every sin, and bring you with joy before his face at the last.

But now I must take the second part of the text, as briefly as possible, and speak of wonders of sin: “There are first that shall be last.”

First in ancestry, hushed to thy slumber with a holy lullaby, dandled on the knee of piety, hanging at the breast of tenderness and love, from thy mother’s arms thou shalt go to the frightful grasp of the destroyer, and from a father’s rejected counsel to the sinner’s direst doom!

“There are first that shall be last:” first in training, taught in the Sunday-school, prayed over, wept over.

“There are first that shall be last:” first in privileges, sitting under a faithful ministry, warned, exhorted, entreated, pleaded with. “There are first that shall be last:” having much light and knowledge, having an awakened conscience, but quenching it, having the warnings of the Spirit, but stifling them. “There are first that shall be last,” regularly in the house of God, well-read in Scripture, well-trained in doctrine, understanding the way of God, but not running in it, knowing thy duty but doing it not. “There are first that shall be last.” O my hearers, I speak to thousands of you that are among the first to-night! When I said there were last ones here, I glanced at the few; but oh, how many of you belong to the tribes and families of men who are of the first! You are not Sabbath-breakers, the most of you,-you go to a place of worship; you are not heathens,-you have a Bible, you do read it sometimes; and you know what faith in Christ means, if you have it not in your hearts. O London! London! London! thou fair metropolis of merchandize and wealth! how art thou exalted to heaven by thy privileges! Christ is preached in the corner of every street now, in your parks, in your fields; Christ is preached in your theatres, he is preached where every man can hear of him if he will. First and foremost as ye stand, O inhabitants of London, the envy of many nations, and the refuge of the oppressed of all nations, how many of you shall be worse off than the savages of Africa or the cannibals of New Zealand! “There are first that shall be last.”

I cannot preach on this text; I have not the strength, I have not the power of thought to point out this solemn truth as I fain would, and to thrust it on your consciences. I can only thus make it ring and sound in your ears, by saying again, “There are first that shall be last.”

Remember, if it be so with you,-and this is the conclusion of the whole matter,-your being last will involve awful responsibilities because you were first. You cannot perish, as others do. If you do reject Christ, how shall ye escape who neglect so great salvation? Sirs, I tell you, it will be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah, than for you, in the day of judgment. Besides this, how shall you escape from the remorse of your conscience, when conscience, wide awake, shall cry, “Ye knew your duty, but ye did it not”? The caverns of Hades shall say, with dull and dreary echoes, “Ye knew your duty, but ye did it not.” Every revolution of eternity, as it brings some fresh crisis of your pain, shall say to you, “Ye knew your duty, but ye did it not.” Banished from Heaven to Tophet, from the Temple of the Lord to Gehenna, from the voice of the minister to weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth, from the song of the sanctuary to the howlings of the pit, this, this shall be the edge of the sword, this the tooth of the devouring worm, “Ye knew your duty, but ye did it not.” O ye first ones, God help you! If you ever should be last, how terrible will be your doom! Let us then engage in great searchings of heart to-night. I search my own soul now,-what if I, standing first in gospel privileges, the teacher of this people, what if I be among the last? My brethren, you the elders and deacons of this church, the first in our Israel,-what if you be among the last? You young men and women of our Catechumen classes, of our Bible-classes; you young men of our College, first, most hopeful of all,-what if you be found among the last? You Sunday-school teachers and superintendents, you who teach young children the way to heaven,-what if you learn not the way to heaven yourselves? What if you, the first, should be the last? You, the beloved of my soul, whom these hands have baptized into the Lord Jesus Christ, you with whom we have had sweet communion at the blessed feast of the Lord’s table,-what if you, the first, should be among the last? I can but reiterate the cry, I can but stand here like Jonah, and cry aloud with one unvarying note of warning, “Take heed, ye first, that ye be not among the last!” And what shall we all say, rolling the two sentences into one? O grace, make me among the first; let me not be among the last at the last! O God, help me now to escape from hell and fly to heaven! I do accept Christ as my Saviour.

“ ‘Nothing in my hands I bring,

Simply to the cross I cling.’ ”

Say that in your souls after me, you who feel it,-

“Just as I am, and waiting not

To rid my soul of one dark blot,

To thee whose blood can cleanse each spot

O Lamb of God, I come.”

Trust the Master now, my hearers. Say, in your spirits, “Yes, we are guilty and vile; save us, Lord, or we perish.” Let the cry of your repentance and the utterance of your faith go up to heaven in one sound, and then God commissions us to say to you, from his Word, that he absolves you from the guilt of all your sin when you have believed in Jesus Christ his Son. He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life, and shall never perish. He shall never come into condemnation, but the love of God shall rest on him in time and eternity. God grant it to us all, for his name’s sake!

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

PSALM 51 and 142

Psalm 51-This Psalm is dedicated to the chief musician, so that it was intended to be sung. Yet it is not by any means a joyous piece of music. It seems more fit to be sung-or sighed-as a solo for the solitary penitence of a broken heart than for the united songs of believers. Yet, in God’s ear, it is clear that the voice of penitence is full of music, for this penitential Psalm is dedicated to the chief musician.

Verse 1. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness:

No eye can spy out the tender attributes of God like an eye that is sore with weeping on account of acknowledged sin; so David prays, “Have mercy upon me O God, according to thy lovingkindness.” This word “lovingkindness” is a rich double word, and it was specially suitable just then, for he who has a broken heart-bruised and broken on account of sin, needs double mercy from God.

1. According unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

“They are on record, and I cannot erase the terrible lines; nor canst thou erase them, O Lord, without displaying a multitude of thy tender mercies. It will need omnipotence itself to get rid of this gravure in the brass; therefore, ‘according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.’ ”

2. Wash me throughly from mine iniquity.

“Wash me through and through, O Lord; wash me thoroughly!” A hypocrite is satisfied with the washing of his garments, but the true penitent cries, “Wash me. ‘Wash me throughly from mine iniquity.’ It is almost the only thing that I can really call my own, and it is most sadly mine, O Lord, wash mine iniquity right away!”

2. And cleanse me from my sin.

“If washing will not suffice, put me in the fire; but somehow, anyhow, O Lord, cleanse me from my sin!” You notice that David’s prayer is not concerning the punishment of his sin, but concerning the sin itself. That is the one thing which is eating into his heart; see how many words he uses to describe it: “My sin; mine iniquity; my transgressions.” He cries to God to help him to get rid of that which is the source of all his sorrow. The thief dreads the gallows, but the penitent fears not the punishment of his sin, it is the sin itself that terrifies him.

3. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

“I cannot get away from it, and I cannot get rid of it. It stares me in the face; it haunts me in my lying down and my rising up. I am obliged to acknowledge my sin, for it is ever before me.”

4. Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight:

“It is true that I have grieved others, and that I have done much injury to others by my sin; but, in all this, I have sinned most against thee. The virus-the essence of my sin is that it has been committed against thee, O my God!”

4. That thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

“My sin was committed within thy jurisdiction, and against thy law, O Lord; and, therefore, as I am summoned to appear at thy court, I cannot disobey the summons. I am compelled to give an answer to the charge brought against me, and my answer is that I am guilty, without any extenuating circumstances that I can plead before thee, O Lord! I am guilty through and through.”

5. Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

David does not say that by way of making an excuse for himself; but rather to aggravate his own guilt. He admits that his guiltiness is really a part of himself. He does not say, “Lord, I was acting contrary to my nature when I committed this sin. Thou knowest that it was not like me to do that.” Oh, no! but he says, “Lord, thou knowest that I was acting quite in accordance with my nature; it was just like me to fall into this terrible sin.” We have sometimes heard people say that they were surprised to find that they had been guilty of certain sins; let it not be so with you, but rather be you surprised to find yourself kept from guilt, wonder when you are preserved from sin; for the whole tendency of unrenewed human nature is towards iniquity. “In sin did my mother conceive me.”

6. Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

As much as to say, “Lord, that which thou desirest to see in me is not there; and though thou hast made me also to desire it, yet I fear that I have not at present gone beyond the desire; for still within me, in my secret soul, there lies a tendency to evil; and unless I keep a strict watch over myself, I soon go astray. Lord, make me inwardly clean; I cannot bear that it should be otherwise with me.”

7. Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean:

As the priest purges the unclean man by dipping the bunch of hyssop into the blood of the sacrifice, and then sprinkling him with it, so, “purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean.”

7. Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

“That is to say, I shall be clean if thou dost wash me, O Lord! My own washings make me no cleaner; my own purgations make me fouler than I was before; but if thou wilt purge me, and if thou wilt do it with the sacrificial blood, then I shall be whiter than snow.” This is grand faith on David’s part. I cannot help calling your attention to it,-that he, with a sense of his sin heavy upon him, and bowed down to the very earth with the consciousness of his great guilt, yet dares to say, “Wash me,”-adulterous, murderous David,-“wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.” No faith brings greater glory to God than the faith of the consciously guilty when they dare to believe that God can forgive them. Not even the unfallen seraphim can render to God purer homage than when thou, a defiled and condemned sinner, darest to believe in the mercy of God in Christ Jesus, and so to believe as to say, with David, “Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.”

8. Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

If a good man ever goes astray, he may depend upon it that his sin will be very costly to him; and the better a man is, the more expensive will his sin be to him in the long run. God breaks the very bones of his children when he chastens them for their sin. I do not doubt that, many a time, their pilgrim way has been all the more weary in their later days by reason of their sins in their earlier days. There is many a pain, that shoots through old bones, that is meant to remind the old bones what they were when they were young. God will certainly chasten us for our iniquities if we are his own people.

9. Hide thy face from my sins,

“Lord, do not look at them. Refuse to see them. Hide thy face, not from me, but from my sins.”

9. And blot out all mine iniquities.

See how he comes back to that note again and again; he is never long away from it. There are certain tunes in which one note is constantly repeated, so is it here. David prays, “O God, put away my sin, blot out my sin, forgive my sin.” He cries for nothing else but that: “Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.” He longs for the time when not one of them shall be in existence.

10, 11. Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me. Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.

These are the groanings of a true child of God. Never has a man, without the Spirit of God within him, prayed to God in this fashion. David, therefore, notwithstanding all his sin, still had the life of God within his soul; and when Nathan came to reprove him, the sacred fire began to burn again. Here are some of the sparks of it, and some of the smoke of it, too: “ ‘Cast me not away from thy presence.’

“ ‘Dismiss me not thy service, Lord.’

“Say not, ‘I can no longer use you. You shall no longer stand in my courts, for you have disgraced my livery; get you gone from my presence.’ ‘Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.’ ”

12. Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

David longs for his Lord to come back to him. When God flogs his children, they still cling to him, and they cry to him. They do not wish to run away, and hide themselves from him. No; their only comfort is to weep upon their Father’s bosom, and to wait for the kiss of forgiveness from his lips. So David prays, “Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.”

13. Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.

Do you not see, brothers and sisters, that we must be in a right state of heart if we are to serve God well? We cannot teach transgressors his way, with a confident hope that they will be converted unto him, unless we ourselves possess the joy of God’s salvation, and are upheld by his good Spirit. If we go to God’s work out of order, we shall make a mess of it, and accomplish nothing that is really worth doing; but when God gives us his comforting grace within, and his upholdings on every hand, then shall we teach with power, and sinners shall learn to profit: “Then will I teach transgressors thy ways, and sinners shall be converted unto thee.”

14. Deliver me from bloodguiltiness, O God, thou God of my salvation: and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

None sing so loudly the praises of redeeming grace as those who have been forgiven great sins. There is no music, outside heaven, that has such a volume of God-glorifying praise in it as the song of the man who loves much because he has had much forgiven: “My tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.”

15. O Lord, open thou my lips;-

He felt as if he could not be trusted to open his own lips; and, certainly, he was not to be trusted to open his own eyes, for when he had aforetime opened them, he had looked on that which led him into sin. So now he would have God to keep his very lips, that he shall never speak again except as he shall be guided from on high: “O Lord, open thou my lips;”-

15, 16. And my mouth shall shew forth thy praise. For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it:

Very naturally, David’s mind began to think of the multitudes of bullocks, and lambs, and rams, that were burnt upon Jehovah’s altar. There is nothing that makes a man so spiritual, and so Evangelical, as a deep sense of sin. You cannot be a sacramentarian and a ceremonialist long if you have a broken heart. Those pretty toys do very well for the kind of “miserable sinners” who do not know what either misery or sin means; but he who really has had his heart broken, on account of the guilt of his sin, cannot be content with the mere outward sacrifice; he must have that which is spiritual: “Thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it:”

16, 17. Thou delightest not in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.

David has come to feel that it is better to have one genuine sigh for sin than to make ten thousand bullocks shed their blood upon the sacrificial altar; and if thou art truly broken from thy sin,-if thou dost really hate it, and cry to God for the pardon of it,-if the Spirit of God has really given thee complete cleansing from thy guilt by the precious blood of Jesus,-this is better than all the material sacrifices offered in all the temples that were ever built, and overlaid with gold. “The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise.”

18. Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

As much as though David said, “I have done great hurt to Zion, I have pulled down the walls of Jerusalem by my sin; now, Lord build them up again; undo the mischief which thy poor foolish servant has wrought by his backslidings.” So may any backslider amongst us pray to the Lord, “Visit thy Church so graciously, Lord, that my sin may not injure her!”

19. Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

Oh, yes; we are sure to bring to God the best that we have when we once get our sins forgiven. After we have looked to Christ, who is the one great sacrifice for sin, then we bring to God all that we can to show how grateful we are for his pardoning mercy.

Psalm 142 Maschil of David. A prayer when he was in the cave. This “Maschil of David” is instructive to us, for the experience of one believer is very edifying to another. We are so much alike that, as in water face answereth to face, so the heart of man answereth to man; and what one believer has felt awakens sympathy in the rest of God’s people.

Psalm 142 Verses 1, 2. I cried unto the Lord with my voice: with my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication. I poured out my complaint before him; I shewed before him my trouble.

David mentions that he prayed with his voice. This is an unimportant matter compared with praying with the heart; but when the heart is full of prayer, it is often very helpful to be able to use the voice to give expression to the emotions of the soul. To have a room in which, without disturbing others, and without ostentatiously revealing your private experiences to others, you can speak aloud unto the Lord, will be found to be a great advantage in prayer. Some men’s thoughts become more concentrated, and flow more freely, and their hearts are better able to pour out their deepest and fullest expressions, when they can pray aloud. So David says that, in the cave, where he would not be likely to disturb anybody, he cried with his voice unto the Lord: “With my voice unto the Lord did I make my supplication.” You can see from verse 2 what was the style of his prayer. “I poured out my complaint.” The figure is a very simple one. Just as you pour out water from a bottle, so David let his heart’s complaint flow out before the Lord. In pouring out water, it sometimes comes slowly gurgling, and sometimes fast; at times with a rush, followed by a pause. There is no prayer better than that which naturally flows from the renewed heart, without any strain or effort; it was so with David: “I poured out my complaint before him; I shewed before him my trouble.” Just as a patient shows his wounds to the surgeon, so take away the covering from your broken heart and wounded spirit, and set your trouble before the Lord, who already sees it. It will be no novelty or cause of surprise to him; but he desires you to manifest such trustfulness in him as will lead you to lay before him your complaint and your trouble.

3. When my spirit was overwhelmed within me, then thou knewest my path.

“My spirit was so overwhelmed within me, that I did not know where I was, or what I was. I could not make head or tail of myself. I seemed to be like a skein of silk or wool in a tangle. My thoughts, as George Herbert would have said, were all a case of knives, sharp to cut and wound. I could not make myself out; I was a puzzle even to myself, but ‘thou knewest my path’ even then.”

3, 4. In the way wherein I walked have they privily laid a snare for me. I looked on my right hand, and beheld, but there was no man that would know me: refuge failed me; no man cared for my soul.

This is a terrible condition for anyone to be in,-to have every friend forsake you,-to find that those who used to know you best, do not want to know you any longer, but turn their heads away as if it would be a disgrace to them to be known to have been your friends. This is a grand opportunity for testing the reality of your faith. Can you believe God now? Can you take him to be your Friend now that you have not another friend in the world? Fine weather faith is very cheap, and easily to be obtained; but the faith that can stand fast in the time of the storm and tempest,-that hardy mountaineering faith which hides in God in the coldest winter, and finds its summertime in him alone,-that is the faith that is worth having and worth keeping.

5. I cried unto thee, O Lord: I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.

“I left the broken reeds alone, and leaned upon my God. ‘I said, Thou art my refuge and my portion in the land of the living.’ ”

6, 7. Attend unto my cry; for I am brought very low: deliver me from my persecutors; for they are stronger than I. Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about; for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.

This is a beautiful metaphor, suggesting that, when the saints heard that God brought him out of prison, they would come round about him, gaze upon him as a miracle of mercy, and ask him to tell them his wonderful tale. He would be the centre of their delighted observation, and their own faith and hope in the Lord would be greatly increased. As a little imprisoned bird might long for emancipation, David says, “O Lord, open my cage-door, and let me fly; and I will sing, as I mount, to the praise of him who gave me my liberty. ‘Bring my soul out of prison, that I may praise thy name: the righteous shall compass me about, for thou shalt deal bountifully with me.’ ”