As much as lieth in us, we should seek to do good unto all men, and we can never know to whom we may be rendering service. These people of Malta never dreamed that they were entertaining an apostle, and it never entered into their heads that their simple act of hospitality would be recorded in the Sacred Scriptures, and that millions of eyes would read of, and millions of minds would think upon, this kind act of theirs on behalf of this shipwrecked company. They really entertained an angel unawares, and they had many blessings in consequence, for we find that Paul afterwards healed the father of the chief man of the island, and others of the inhabitants who were suffering from various diseases. We can never tell how God may make return to us for acts of kindness which we may do to others; but just as it is said that curses, like chickens, come home to roost, and that he who throws a stone into the air will find it fall on his own head, so do good actions, deeds of kindness and charity, come back to us in some shape or other, even as Christ said to his disciples, “Give, and it shall be given unto you: good measure, pressed down, and shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. For with the same measure that ye mete withal it shall be measured to you again.” It is the best way to bless ourselves to be earnest in blessing others. These hospitable people were bringing down upon the island of Malta untold benedictions while they were, in their simple kindliness, entertaining shipwrecked mariners. At this season of the year, in the midst of such a city as this, abounding as it does with the poor and needy, there are abundant opportunities of using “the mammon of unrighteousness” well by relieving their wants, and what you possess would be made all the sweeter to yourselves through your ministering to others in their necessities. I am not, however, going to speak upon that matter just now, but I intend to use the text in this manner. First, I am afraid we are very apt to grow spiritually cold; and, therefore, next, the text suggests that we should be diligent in using means for getting spiritual warmth; and, thirdly, as there are a good many in this world who are cold, as Paul and his companions were when they came shivering from the deep, it should be our constant duty to seek to kindle a fire, and to receive them every one, because of the cold.

First, then, I am afraid that we ourselves are very apt to be cold spiritually.

First, because we are ourselves cold subjects,-hot enough perhaps in temper, earnest enough in pursuit of business, fast enough where pleasure may draw us, but ah! how chilly, how wintry when we have to do with the things of God! I know that, at one time, we burned and flamed with sacred ardour, but we look back upon that period with the deepest regret that it should have gone by so long ago. Even now, when we are moved by an earnest discourse, or are gathered with faithful brethren, we begin to glow again; but how easy it is for us to get back to the icy state, and to have our soul frozen so that it does not flow freely as it should! Do you not find, brethren, that you never need make any effort to be dull in religious matters, but that the effort has to be made the other way,-that you have to make an effort, and need God’s grace to give you strength to make it, towards holiness, towards fervency, towards enthusiasm? By nature, we are as hard, and cold, and dead as stones, and seem as if we never could be warm; and we never are unless God turns the heart of stone into a heart of flesh. And even then, it often seems to grow hard and chill again, so that we need fresh grace to warm our heart, and to keep it beating at anything like the pace of life. I know not how it may be with you, dear friends. Perhaps you have been so lifted up by divine grace that you have never wearied in the heavenly race; if so, you are very happy and privileged individuals. But there are some of us, who, although we have not been suffered actually to stand still, have found our onward progress to be a hard climb up the Hill Difficulty, because we are so lumpish and heavy. Often have we had to cry, with Dr. Watts,-

“Come, Holy Spirit, heavenly Dove,

With all thy quickening powers,

Kindle a flame of sacred love

In these cold hearts of ours.

“Dear Lord! and shall we ever lie

At this poor dying rate?

Our love so faint, so cold to thee,

And thine to us so great?”

We are indeed cold subjects. Just compare your state of heart, for a while, with the ardour of apostles, confessors, and martyrs who lived and died for Jesus. Compare, or rather, contrast yourselves with, some other children of God whom you have known, whose fervent prayers put you to shame, and whose many acts of self-denial, and whose whole persevering service now rise before you to make you blush. Above all, contrast yourselves with your dear Lord and Saviour. He was a veritable flame of fire, but what are you? Alas! alas! what am I? Cold, cold, cold! Even his great love scarcely warms us to anything like true Christian affection. We can think of hell with its unutterable horrors, and yet be scarcely moved; we can think of heaven with its indescribable glories, and yet be scarcely affected; we can turn to thee, O thou blessed Christ of Calvary, and look upon thy ghastly wounds, yet is our soul scarcely made to melt! It is sad that it should be so, but mournfully true is it that we are cold by nature.

But then, beside that, we live in a cold country. Who that has to move about in this world does not know that this is true? Not only are we so chilly by nature that, even when we live in the torrid zone of revival, we can scarcely keep ourselves warm, but, alas! we are often compelled to be where everything is like the Arctic regions. You who have to spend most of your time in business, do you meet with many in the market or on the Exchange who help you to make progress in the divine life? You who have to go to work with other workmen, do you meet with many who toil for their bread who speak earnest words for Jesus? I ask you who live as servants in the house, or you whose occupation calls you abroad, do you meet with many who aid you spiritually? Have you found this world help you on to God? In the olden time, it was a world lying in the wicked one, and God’s people were strangers and foreigners here, and I fear it is so still. Our very employments, as they engross our attention, take our thoughts away from higher things, and so tend to chill us. How often does it happen that the possession of riches brings coldness to the heart; and, on the other hand, if we grow poor, chill penury represses the genial currents of the soul, and prevents them from flowing freely, as they ought to do. There is scarcely any position in life that can be said to minister to growth in grace. How few heads encircled by a crown have ever been dedicated to God, and how seldom have the beggar’s rags covered the body of a truly gracious man! Everywhere it is a cold world in which we live, and we are cold subjects in a cold world.

But then, beside that, there are very cold seasons that come upon us. There are times when everything seems chillier than usual. The Church at one time seems to be all in earnest; her prayer-meetings are crowded and fervent, her ministry seems full of life, and zeal, and enthusiasm, the members seem to walk together in holy unity and love seeking which shall bring most glory to God. But the Church has her winters as well as her summers; after her revivals there will come years of dearth, seven years of famine after seven years of plenty, and the cankerworm will come, and eat up the fruit of the land, and that by a long space together. When the Church as a whole is cold, it is not easy for us as individuals to be warm. I have often heard members of this church say, when they have gone away to join other congregations, that they have felt as if they had suddenly dropped out of a conservatory into an ice-well. I can easily gauge the temperature of a congregation in any place where I go to preach. I can soon see that some are warm and hearty, and ready to receive the truth, while it is heavy work to preach to others because they evidently either do not understand or do not appreciate the gospel, or if they do appreciate it, they have a peculiar way of preventing the preacher from seeing that they have any enjoyment of the word that he has spoken. There are churches which always seem to be very cold, and there are other churches that once glowed with summer heat that have now come into their wintry season.

Let me add that there are not only these cold seasons in the Church as a whole, but we ourselves have our cold seasons. I suppose we are very much like one another; but sometimes, for some reason, we scarcely know why, we are full of fervour and ardour. We are not only in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, but we are; also in the Spirit all the days of the week; the candle of the Lord shines about our path, we walk in the light as God is in the light, and we have fellowship with him, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. The Spirit of God is with us, and the time of the singing of birds has come to us. At other times, the desire to pray is within us, but we cannot pray. Gloomy doubts arise, or carking cares come crowding in upon us, or else a dreadful indifference, which we cannot shake off, steals over us, like the sleepy fits which come on people when they want to be active, but their eyelids are so heavy that they cannot keep from sleep. This will happen again and again, and we struggle against it, and seek by any means and every means to keep ourselves spiritually warm. I suppose the experience of most of God’s people will verify this.

Thus I have tried to show you that we are cold by nature, we live in a cold country, and there are cold seasons with us all.

And then I may add that there are some persons who live in very cold corners. There are some who not only live in a country that is cold, but they are in the coldest part of that country. There may be a cold room that is more chilly than any other in the house, and some of my friends seem to have lived in that particularly cold room. Good people as they are, if they speak to you, it is very frosty talk. They never greet you with that genial smile that is born of sunshine. They seem almost to prefer to have the temperature of winter in their souls, it is constitutional with them; and they communicate that cold to those with whom they come in contact. I always like a room which has a sunny aspect; but I know some people who prefer a room that is darkened by a high brick wall. If they could have a room near the Old Bailey, with a clear view of the gallows, that is the kind of prospect that would please them. They like to think of the corruptions of their own heart, and of the depravity that rages within, and no preaching will suit them unless it makes them thoroughly melancholy; and if it makes them unutterably wretched, they consider that the preacher is a deeply-experienced man of God sent to instruct them. I shall not quarrel with these brethren, and if they prefer the room with the dark or wintry aspect, they may have it so far as I am concerned. I shall be quite content to take the room with the sunnier aspect, and to look out on green fields, and waving trees, and shining water, and to see the goodness, and loving-kindness, and tenderness of the Almighty both in nature and grace.

But, besides the fact that some people are in these cold corners constitutionally, others seem to have found their way there in the order of God’s providence. A wife, who has become converted, has a husband who has no desire towards the things of God, and therefore opposes and vexes her continually. A Christian is living with another Christian of totally opposite views and doctrines; they ought to have fellowship with one another, but they do not, and differences constantly come up. Then there is a Christian, whose unhappy lot it is to live with persons who have no sympathy whatever with true religion. Another Christian man is thrown, not by his own choice, but unavoidably, amongst those who continually ridicule him, or he is compelled to dwell with fellow-Christians who are all of the cold school, and who freeze him; or what is perhaps quite as bad, a Christian is compelled to live where he has no one to assist him with a word of sympathy, none with whom he can take sweet counsel, and walk to the house of God in company. These are some of those who live in a specially cold corner, and if you are amongst them, I would say to you that, if you cannot get out of that cold corner, you must, above all others, kindle a fire because of the present cold; above all others, you must give good heed to what I shall have to say to you directly about maintaining the warmth of the heart. As you have the severer trial, you must be the more earnest in overcoming it.

I will say no more about the cold lest you begin to shiver while I am speaking of it, but we will now come to the kindling of the fire. Thank God, he does not leave us without some means of becoming spiritually warmer. There is an abundance of fuel to overcome the cold. The Christian man being subject to coldness of heart, God has provided him with the means of kindling a spiritual fire that may make him warm, and keep him warm.

The first great fire is the Word of God. “Is not my Word like a fire, saith the Lord?” It is so in many ways, but especially because it has such a warming influence. When we are spiritually cold, and we go to hear the Word preached, how it warms our hearts! Brethren, have you not often proved it to be so? You have been trembling, and downcast, and almost distracted, and you have said, “I will go and enquire at the hand of the Lord,” and God has given you a message that has so changed your feelings that you have gone out with joy unspeakable, blessing God that ever your feet have trodden that floor which has become sacred to you through the visitation of God’s Spirit. It is not often that I can hear a sermon; but when I do, I have sometimes had seasons of very gracious refreshing to my soul. I remember, one Sabbath morning, listening to a man who was by no means literate, and as I listened, I felt the tears streaming down my cheeks as I realized afresh how precious Christ was to me, and I envied the good people who could hear the gospel preached Sabbath by Sabbath, and who had not to stand up, and deliver it to others, and go without spiritual food themselves. I am sure you, who love the Lord, will bear witness that, when Christ is preached, your heart is always warmed. The preacher may have spoken very simply, and not have tried to display any of the graces of oratory, yet the sermon satisfied’ your soul because Christ was in it; but if there is no Christ in it, you go down the aisles saying, like Mary Magdalene, “They have taken away my Lord.” It is Jesus Christ that you want; and when you get the truth about him, and about the Father, and about the Spirit,-when you get the doctrine of electing love, of God’s faithfulness, of God’s sovereignty, of God’s immutability, and all those precious things of the covenant of grace, you feel somewhat as the two disciples did when, on the way to Emmaus, Jesus himself talked with them, and their hearts burned within them.

Is it not very much the same also in reading the Word of God? I can speak more experimentally upon this than upon hearing the Word preached. Oh, to get one verse-or perhaps only a few words in it,-into your mouth, and keep it there, and roll it under your tongue as a sweet morsel. At first, it tastes like wafers made with honey, and as you press it between the lips of meditation, and turn it over and over on the palate of mental discernment, at last you say, “How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” So the Word begins to warm your heart. You asked if there was any love there, and now it begins to flame out towards God. You thought the Spirit of adoption was gone from you, but now you say, “Abba, Father,” with no faltering tongue. Your faith, which seemed to be in a swoon, suddenly revives, and gains new vigour. Ah, brethren, read the Scriptures diligently when you are passing through these cold seasons; keep close to the fire of the precious promises and the other divine messages, and you will not be frostbitten. That is one fire.

There is another fire which is equally efficacious. If you would be warmed when your soul is cold, betake yourself to prayer. Pray! Pray! Pray! Some have said that it is good only to pray when you feel moved to pray, but I would rather say that you should pray to feel moved to pray. When you feel that you cannot pray is the very time when you should pray, for when you can pray there may be less need for prayer than when you feel that you cannot pray. Instead of its being wisdom to forsake the mercy-seat because you feel dead and cold, it is the most egregious folly. A man might say to me, “If I put my hand near the fire when it is very cold, it pains my hand.” No doubt it does, because the cold is in it; but you need to bear that pain in order to get the cold out. So, when we try to pray when we feel dead and cold, the very trying to pray makes us feel an inward pain; but we must try, and keep on trying. Prayer is our very life, and is essential to our health and our growth. As Montgomery’s well-known hymn reminds us, it is the Christian’s-

“Watchword at the gates of death:

He enters heaven with prayer.”

If your heart is cold, multiply your seasons for prayer. Try praying with somebody else. Ask some Christian brother to come to your room, and pray with you; and you, my dear sister, call in some Christian woman whom you know, and say to her, “Come, dear sister, and let us pray together.” Much blessing often comes through two or more Christians joining their supplications in private; but if that does not help you, I would urge you to get to the meeting where many gather together to pray. If you can do so, come to the prayer-meeting, and see if your heart does not burn within you there. I cannot promise that it will certainly be so, for some of our brethren’s prayers are not always fervent; but when the meeting is as it should be, we help one another to get warm, and to keep warm. I cannot tell you how much I owe to the Monday evening prayer-meetings and the other prayer-meetings that are held so frequently in connection with our work here. I do hope that we shall never have them less frequently, for those prayer-meetings have been the strength of this pulpit. The pillars on which our ministry rests are, under God, the prayers of our people. If you want to be warm spiritually, you must keep up the spirit of prayer.

Next, I would say that, in addition to hearing and reading the Word, and praying fervently, it will often tend to warm us to be much in meditation. Having read the Scriptures, keep them in memory; turn them over and over in your minds, and let your meditation grow beyond meditation into fellowship and communion with Christ. Sit down and think of him, and of his great love to you. Try to picture to yourself Gethsemane and Golgotha. Turn over in your mind the all-important doctrine of the Atonement, and meditate upon its wonderful efficacy; think of Christ’s prevailing intercession for his people, think of his second Advent. If nothing else will warm a man’s heart, surely the love of Christ will do it. There is such a warmth of love in the heart of Christ that it makes even the dead to live. Meditate perpetually upon him, and you shall not long have to complain that you are spiritually cold.

I would also strongly recommend anyone who feels a chill at his heart to seek much fellowship with his fellow-Christians. I believe, under God, there is scarcely any greater blessing to a Christian man than to have those to speak with who can help him by telling him their own experience. If two friends are walking together, and one of them stumbles, the other can help to hold him up. I recommend young Christians especially to seek suitable godly companions. We are companionable by nature, and we are too apt to get the wrong kind of associates; but if we have Christian companions, true helpers in the Lord, we shall find the way to heaven much smoothed. Be as much as you can with the saints of God. I have sometimes spent an hour with a congenial spirit, a man whose heart has been warm with love to his Master; and when he has gone, I have felt that I could bless God for having had the privilege of talking with him, yet that very man has said that he thanked God for that hour because of the good he had got from me, while it seemed to me as if I had got all the good, and had given nothing in return.

If all this should not sufficiently warm you, I would strongly recommend one fire, which, under the blessing of God’s Spirit, is sure to warm a Christian, and that is, kindle the flame of earnest service for God and your fellow-creatures. You may rest assured that the best way of getting good is by doing good. I mean, of course, for the man who is saved, because he is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. Job’s captivity was turned when he prayed for his friends, but not till then. Christ’s disciples had all their baskets empty, but there was a boy in the crowd who had a few loaves and fishes. I have no doubt that the disciples as well as the people were hungry; but they had nothing to eat except through feeding the multitude with the loaves and fishes that their Master had blessed. When the people were fed, the disciples also were fed; and when you are awake to the necessities of others, and begin to help them, you will find God blessing you. I believe that many professing Christians are cold and uncomfortable because they are doing nothing for their Lord; but if they actively served him, their blood would begin to circulate spiritually, and it would be well with them. You know what the farmer in the country says to his boys, “You say that you can’t warm yourselves by the fire; well, then, just go out into the barn, and do something that needs to be done, or go and attend to the horses in the stable;” and very soon the boys feel a good deal warmer, and it is only because they have had something to do. And Christian people, who want the minister to preach to them this doctrine and the other, if they had something to do for Christ, would be all the better for it. Let the preacher take care to keep up a good fire, and put on plenty of the coals of sound doctrine; but that alone will not warm the people; but the moment they begin to seek to do good to others, they will have kindled a fire which will warm, themselves as well as others.

Our third point is to be that, like these barbarous people, we should not simply think of ourselves in the cold, but seek to kindle a fire for the good or others, because of the present cold.

It is a very cold period, spiritually, just now. The professing Church seems to be frozen so hard that those fine skaters, of modern growth, have a fine sheet of ice on which to perform their wonderful evolutions. If God would send us a gracious thaw, they would soon disappear. When the Church is filled with the Spirit, her members do not find any room for these modern foolish notions about high culture, which usually spring from ignorance of that which is really worth knowing. If God will give us back a really living Church, we shall soon find that these evils have vanished. Just as the iron gets bright when it gets hot, so let the Church of Christ get red-hot, and it will soon throw off all this rubbish.

What is the first thing towards warming people at the fire? The first thing is, that we must get a flame; and though the Indians are said to make a flame by rubbing two pieces of wood together, I do not think that you and I will ever get it in that way. There is no way for us to get a revival-fire but from God himself. If anybody can “get up a revival,” as it has been said that they do, in any other way, it is not worth having. The only kind of revival that is worth having is that which has come down from God, not that which has been got up by men. The fire which fell upon Elijah’s sacrifice on Carmel was the fire of the Lord which fell from heaven, and which “consumed the burnt sacrifice, and the wood, and the stones, and the dust, and licked up the water that was in the trench.” We want that kind of fire; and if we have only two or three praying people, who feel that they would die of a broken heart if the Church of Christ should continue in the condition in which she now is, we shall soon see a different state of things. The heart of God is still moved by the prayers of his people, still is his hand stretched out in blessing in answer to the cries of his children. The kindling of the fire of revival must be from a live coal from off the heavenly altar.

After you get a flame, you must remember that all fires begin with littles. At first you have only a little spark feebly glowing, and you might put that spark out if you tried to make it into a big fire all at once. You must let it burn a little amongst the shavings and chips and wood, and then drop your coal on deftly, cunningly, tenderly, as if you loved the little fire too much to risk putting it out by putting on too much fuel at once. We must not despise the day of small things. We must give ourselves up to the full belief that God means us to do great things by doing them a little at a time. It is because we despise little things that we do not prosper as we might. You may have heard the story of a little child, who was seen outside a door one day. A man had shot down a whole load of coals, and she was with a little fire-pan taking some of them into the house. Someone said to the child, “Do you expect to get in all that load of coal?” “Yes,” replied she, “if I keep on long enough;” and there are many other great tasks that can be accomplished little by little. If we are prayerfully dependent upon God, great things can be done by any one of us; but let no one say, “I am going to do great things; I mean to have a glorious revival; there will be a great stir.” I do not think there will be anything of the sort if it depends upon what you are going to do. I have more faith in good men speaking to their children about their souls, and in godly women praying for their little ones, and in Sunday-school teachers praying and labouring for the conversion of their scholars, and in humble, consecrated men talking about Christ to scores, or hundreds, or thousands of people. That is how God usually sends revivals of religion, and the fire will soon spread when it begins to burn in that fashion; and then there is one thing that should always be done. Have you never seen your servants-or you, good housewives, have you never done it yourselves,-have you never knelt down in front of the fire when it has been nearly out, and gently blown upon it? That is a fine way of getting a spark to grow into a fire; and in a Christian church, those who often go down on their knees in prayer will soon blow the spark into living flame. Just what Mary does with the kitchen or parlour fire is what you must do in order to get the spiritual fire needed because of the present cold. On your knees you must fan it with your very life’s breath, and then it will burn.

But when it does burn, there must be fresh fuel for it. Paul knew this, and therefore he set to work picking up sticks. When we once get God’s revival fire to warm this cold world, the Church must find suitable fuel to feed it. We must get some from this brother, and some from another brother, and from our good sisters too, and we ourselves must be the glowing coals, and if we can be kept close together, and be fanned by the spirit of unity and by the breath of the Holy Spirit, there will soon be a blessed furnace-heat that shall warm this cold earth.

“Spirit divine, attend our prayers,

Make a lost world thy home;

Descend with all thy gracious powers;

Oh come, Great Spirit, come!

“Come as the fire, and purge our hearts,

Like sacrificial flame;

Let our whole soul an offering be

To our Redeemer’s name.”

And perhaps, while we are trying to gather all the fuel that we can, we may pick up a viper in the process. It was so in Paul’s case, and I should not wonder if it is so in ours. I have heard this fault found with revivals, that certain persons had been added to the Church who never ought to have been admitted. Very likely some people found fault with that Malta fire when, in the process of picking up sticks to feed it, a viper fastened on Paul’s hand. I have noticed that, whenever there is a revival in the Church, there is almost certain to be a hypocrite hidden away among the converts. If you have a garden, you must have noticed that the snails come out after rain; and after a revival, slimy hypocrites are pretty sure to appear, but what if they do? The Lord Jesus Christ did not leave off preaching because he knew that there was a Judas among his apostles; and if we should have a Judas in our ranks, should that make us give up our work for Christ? Nay; but if there are in our midst some people who are good for nothing, let us try all the more to find out those who will be good for something; and if, in the course of the Lord’s work, there should be unworthy persons added to the Church, so much the greater should be our anxiety that worthy persons should be added too, to counterbalance the mischief that the others may produce.

Oh, that we might have just now the gracious assurance sent from God that we are to have a still greater revival than any that we have ever yet experienced! As a church, we have lived in revivals for nearly twenty years; there has never been a time, that I can remember, when there have not been souls converted in our midst. I do not know that there has ever been a Sabbath without a conversion in this place; I do not think there has been a sermon without a conversion. We cannot speak positively about every one of them; but we can say, to our certain knowledge of many of them, and we have every reason to believe that it was the same concerning all the rest, that their message has had upon it the blessing of God. To him be the praise, and to him let us cry that everywhere that great prayer may be answered, “Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.”

Thus have I used a very simple incident to set forth very important truths; but, alas, there are some, in this place, to whom this subject may have seemed very uninteresting, for they are not themselves saved, they are not themselves converted. I would not have them go out of this building without reminding them that the gospel is to be preached to every creature in all the world, and therefore it is to be preached to them. And this is the gospel: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” You will observe that I have not left out half of it. It is more than I dare to do to play with Christ’s gospel, or to clip one of its wings. Christ’s own words are, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” To believe is simply to trust Christ; to be baptized is to be immersed in water upon profession of your faith in Jesus Christ. May God grant to all of you grace first to believe in his Son, Jesus Christ, and then to confess that faith, in his own appointed way, by being baptized in his name, and to him shall be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.

(Mr. Spurgeon’s Exposition of Acts 28 was too long for insertion here; it must be used with a shorter Sermon. The Exposition here given belongs to Sermon No. 3,127, “A Promise and Precedent.”)

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

JOHN 16:1-14

Verses 1-3. These things have I spoken unto you, that ye should not be offended. They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the time cometh, that whosoever killeth you will think that he doeth God service. And these things will they do unto you, because they have not known the Father, nor me.

True followers of Christ must not reckon upon having the world’s commendation. At first, the Jews persecuted the Christians; then the Romans took up the cruel work, and others have continued it, in some form or other, even to this day, for the persecution of the saints has not yet ceased. There are many who still have hard times, and have to endure trials of cruel mockings for Christ’s sake. If you resolve to follow Christ, men will be sure to call you old-fashioned, ridiculous, Puritanic, and I know not what besides; yet what does it matter to you if they do? Your Master foretold that it would be so.

4. But these things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them. And these things I said not unto you at the beginning, because I was with you.

Christ did not deceive his disciples concerning the treatment that would he meted out to them. He did not promise that the road to heaven would be an easy path, or flatter his followers with the notion that the cross, which they had to carry after him, had no weight in it; “These things have I told you, that when the time shall come, ye may remember that I told you of them.”

5, 6. But now I go my way to him that sent me; and none of you asketh me, Whither goest thou? But because I have said these things unto you, sorrow hath filled your heart.

They were thinking more of their loss by his going away from them than of his gain in going back to his Father. If they had thought of the glory into which he was so soon to enter, they would have ceased to sorrow, and would have rejoiced with exceeding joy; but they seem to have loved themselves better than they loved their Lord; hence his absence, which ought to have given them many reasons for rejoicing, became to them a cause for grief.

7. Nevertheless I tell you the truth; It is expedient for you that I go away:

“It is not merely for my own glory that I am going away, but my absence from you will be better for you than my continued bodily presence with you could possibly be.”

7. For if I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you; but if I depart, I will send him unto you.

“And he will be of more service to you than I could be even if I were to remain with you.” The presence of the Spirit of God in the Church is better for the present dispensation than even the bodily presence of Christ would be.

8-12. And when he is come, he will reprove the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment: of sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because I go to my Father, and ye see me no more; of judgment, because the prince of this world is judged. I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now.

“You have not yet received the Spirit of God as you shall do after my departure, and then your capacities shall be enlarged, so that you shall be able to understand deep truths which are altogether beyond your comprehension at present.”

13. Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth: for he shall not speak of himself; but whatsoever he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will shew you things to come*

Is not that wonderful? As Jesus Christ said that he did not bear witness to himself, but spoke the words which his Father had given him, so the Spirit of God does not speak of himself, but he bears witness to the truth which Christ has revealed, and also makes known “things to come.” But he will never reveal anything contrary to that which Christ has revealed in his Word. That which is to be revealed is that truth which was from the beginning. As we are taught it by the Divine Spirit, it becomes fresh truth to us, though it was ever in Christ’s eternal mind.

14. He shall glorify me: for he shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto you.

Oh, that this blessed Spirit may continually show the things of Christ to us!

SOUL SATISFACTION

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, March 25th, 1909,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.”-Psalm 35:3.*

This text may very properly be understood as a request that God would teach the soul to rest upon him in temporal difficulties, and straits, and distresses. We are all apt to try to work out our own deliverance. We would go back to Egypt, or we would climb the rock on our right hand, or we would, if it were possible, force a passage on the left; but when the Red Sea rolls before, when Pharaoh is behind, and there are frowning rocks on the right hand and on the left, this most delightful truth is learned,-and probably it is the only occasion when we can learn it,-God is our salvation! If thou art in trouble, Christian, ask who brought thee there, for he shall bring thee out again. If thou art sorely vexed and deeply grieved, why shouldst thou look to a human arm for succour, or why shouldst thou turn thine eye to the horses and to the chariots of Pharaoh? Lift up thine eyes to the hills, whence cometh thine help, and in the solemn silence of thy soul hear thou the soft and cheering word, “I am thy salvation; I have been with thee in six troubles, and no evil has touched thee; now I have brought thee into another trouble, but I will deliver thee out of them all; call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.” O believer, the strongest sinew in an arm of flesh will crack, and the strongest band of human strength will give way; but trust thou in the Lord for ever, for in the Lord Jehovah is everlasting strength. Learn thou to stand still, and to see the salvation of God, as he says to thee, “I the Omnipotent, I the Omnipresent, I who have servants everywhere, will work thy rescue, for I am thy salvation.” It is also very necessary for us to learn this verse in its teaching as to soul-matters; for no man is saved, or can be saved, unless he knows that God is his salvation. The greatest enemy to human souls-I think I am not wrong in saying so,-is the self-righteous spirit which makes men look to themselves for salvation.

“From the cross uplifted high,

Where the Saviour deigns to die,”-

there comes a voice, as soft as it is potent, “I am thy salvation.” But the sinner stops his ear, and listens-perhaps to the enchantments of Rome, or to the mutterings of some false priest, or to the equal lying of his own heart, while these say, “We are thy salvation.” We must get away, brethren, from every form of confidence which would take us from the finished work of Jesus Christ. From the beginning to the end of the entire matter the great “I AM” comprehends our whole salvation. Jesus, the “Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief,” was, nevertheless, JEHOVAH, the “I AM;” and as the “I AM” he speaks to-night to every soul that desires to know the way of salvation, and he says, “I am thy salvation.” Sinner, there is no hope for thee anywhere else. “Other foundation can no man lay than that is laid.” Thy hopes, poor sinner, shall be baseless; they shall be as the fabric of a dream. Rest thou not in them, but forsake them, pitying thine own folly for having ever trusted in them. Jesus bids thee renounce them now. Flee thou away from everything which has hitherto yielded thee a gleam of comfort, or a ray of joy, to the wounds of him who suffered in the sinner’s place, and to the cross of him who was made a curse for us that we might be made a blessing. “I am thy salvation.” You are to trust now. Are you saying, “How can I be saved?” Jesus answers, “I am thy salvation.” Not “I will be,” but “I am” Present salvation is stored up in Christ.

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

There is life at this moment for thee.”

“But,” say you, “what am I to do? What am I to feel? What am I to be?” The answer is,-

“Nothing, either great or small,

Nothing, sinner, no;

Jesus did it, did it all,

Long, long ago.”

“Yes, but surely there is something wanted to fit me for him?” No, come just as thou art. He does not say, “I will be thy salvation when thou hast done this and that, so as to fit thyself for me.” No, but he says, “I am thy salvation.” If thou dost but trust him unfeignedly, and with thy whole heart, he this moment forgives thee, he this moment takes thee into the family of grace, regenerates thee, and makes thee “a new creature” in himself. May God grant that we may all spiritually learn this doctrine, “I am thy salvation.”

Not that I intend just now to use the text in this sense alone, though I think it is highly proper both in temporal and in spiritual dilemmas to feel that God is our salvation. Rather let me show you how it embodies a prayer of the psalmist for the full assurance of faith. He is asking that, having believed in God, he may have a token for good, that he may be able to-

“Read his title clear

To mansions in the skies.”

He wants to hear a still, small voice within him saying, “I am thy salvation.”

I shall try, first of all, to describe the assurance intended in the text; secondly, to show its blessedness; and, thirdly, to set forth the way of reaching it.

First, let me describe the assurance intended in the text.

“Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” The assurance which the psalmist seeks in this prayer is one concerning a very solemn business. People like to be sure about purchasing their estates. There is a deal of searching every time the land is bought, in order to see that the title is good, valid, and indefeasible. Some persons are very particular about their bodily health, and they like occasionally to have an assurance from the physician that every organ is in a sound condition. But, in this Psalm, David is perplexed, neither about his estate, though that was a kingdom, nor about his health, though that was more than a fortune to him, but he is concerned only about his soul. O my brethren, if we ought to be sure anywhere, it is here; would that we were half as diligent to make our “calling and election sure” as some are to make secure their bonds, and mortgages, and title-deeds! Not to be sure of heaven, what a wretched state to be in! To have a question about my soul’s eternal welfare,-a dying mortal, whose breath may depart any second in the hour!-oh, this is misery indeed! I had better know my true state. If it be bad, it will be well for me to know the worst of it while there is time, so that it may yet be mended; and if it be good, it will be a sweet thing for me to know that it certainly is so, and then my “peace shall be like a river,” and my joy shall flow on in perpetual waves of freshness. O my dear hearers, make sure work for eternity! If you must trifle anywhere, never trifle here! This anchor, this bower-anchor, this sheet-anchor of the soul, see that you have a good cable to this. There! let everything else go; but now that the dread storm is coming on, see that the anchor holds within the veil; and see also that it is God’s anchor of faith, wrought in you by God the Holy Spirit. Breathe, I pray you, at the very outset of this address, the prayer, “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.”

And, you will notice, as it is about a very solemn business, so, also, it is an appeal to One who knows about it, and who can speak on it with authority. Brethren, if you should come to a minister, whoever he may be, and say to him, “Sir, I will tell you my evidence, I will relate my experience; tell me, are these the marks of a child of God?” you may deceive him in your statements, and he himself may mislead you in his judgment. What would be the worth of the opinions of all the men in the world as to the state of a soul before God? Certainly it would be very suspicious, and would give much cause for fear if God’s people were afraid of me, for I should begin to be afraid of myself; but still, though they have accepted me, let me not therefore take it for granted that God has done so. I may stand well with his church, I may be beloved by his servants, but for all that he may know that I am none of his. I may be rather more thickly coated with gilt than some others, and yet I may not be real gold; I may be better made and varnished than some, and yet I may be but an imitation, and not the true wood. It looks well, my dear hearers, when you dare to come before God, and have an investigation of your case. When a man is willing to have the title-deeds of his estate examined in any court in the world, I should think that those deeds were thoroughly sound. When you can say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts,” or can even pray, as this text does, “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation,” then there is hope for you.

But observe that the evidence the psalmist wants is personal assurance: “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” How many times have we to cry out against that bad habit of generalizing in religion! Beloved, let us repeat what we have said a thousand times before, that national religion is altogether a dream; that even the idea of family religion, excellent as it is, is yet often but a mere idea. The only godliness worth having is personal godliness, and the only religion which will really effect salvation is that which is vital and personal to the individual. “Ye must be born again.” Now there is no way of being born again by proxy. The Church of England may invent its “sponsors” at will, but God has nothing to do with such things. I pray you, never let the soul-damning falsehood of another man standing for you be tolerated in your soul for a single second! Another man cannot promise anything for you, or, if he should promise it, he would not be able to accomplish what he had promised. These works must be wrought in you personally by God the Holy Ghost himself, or else saved you can never be. I love you to pray for your children; I am glad, poor woman, that you are anxious for your husband; it is a good thing that you, husband, should pray for your wife; but oh, remember, the salvation of another will be but poor comfort to you if you yourself should be cast into the everlasting burnings! Let your prayer be first for yourselves. Do let that be the leading point, and then you will breathe the prayer more hopefully for others: “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation; I hear that showers of mercy are dropping all around, let them drop also upon me; I hear that conversions are numerous, oh, if I am not converted, convert me; I know that thou doest great wonders, Lord, let me be a monument of thy power to save.” It is personal assurance that the psalmist wants.

Observe, also, for it lies on the surface of the text, that it is an assurance sent, not to the ear, but to the heart: “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” Now, God does speak to us through our ears. When the Word is read or preached, we often get a blessing through hearing it; but if the words you hear merely come to the ear, it involves responsibility without insuring a blessing. Certain persons dream that God is their salvation! Go to bed and dream again, and dream fifty times, and when you have dreamed the same thing fifty times, there can and will be nothing but dreaming in it after all. You who build on dreams had better mind what you are at.

“Well,” says another, “but I heard a voice in the air.” Nonsense! “But I did,” say you. Superstition! “But I am sure I did.” Well, what matters it? I care not where the voice came from, if you heard it only with your outward ears. It is as likely to have been the devil that spoke as anybody else, if indeed it was anybody at all. You are as likely to deceive yourself as anything in the world. The prayer of the text is not, “Say to my ears,” but “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” Do you understand what soul-talking is? Oh, dear, dear, the most of people do not understand anything that has to do with the spirit world; there are materialists in Christianity as well as in other matters. They suppose that, to worship God means to sing in a certain way, to bend the knee, and to say certain words. Why, you may do all that, and yet there may not be a fraction of worship in it; and, on the other hand, you may worship God without any of it. A man may sing God’s praises without ever opening his mouth; a man may pray unto God, and yet never say a word, for it is soul-singing and soul-praying that God accepts; and when God speaks back again to the soul that has learned to talk with him, he does not speak lip-language, tongue-language, or ear-language, but soul-language. I have already said that this soul-language sometimes takes the body of preaching, or of the Word of God, and so becomes, as it were, a thing to appeal to the ear; but even then the letter killeth, it is only the spirit that makes alive. It is God’s soul talking to man’s soul that is wanted here. And mark you, dear friend, if ever God speaks to your soul, you will not have to ask who it is that speaks, for if ever the eternal God comes into direct contact with the human heart, there is no making a mistake. Do you understand this? Some of you think I am fanatical. I would to God you were all as fanatical! May you have God talking with your soul, and may the Holy Spirit bear witness with your spirit that you are born of God! Pray the prayer, and may God hear it now, “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.”

Then I want you also to notice that the prayer here offered is a present one. It means, “Say now unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” It is not “Do it by-and-by,” but “now, Lord, now.” Perhaps some of you have heard God’s voice in years gone by, but now you have got into Doubting Castle. Well, you may pray this prayer here, and while you are sitting in the pew, though none shall hear it but yourself, yet God’s Spirit shall talk to you, and you shall hear him say, “I am thy salvation,” and then your heart shall sing, “I am my Beloved’s, and my Beloved is mine.” Pray the prayer now, and it need not take a moment to be answered, for, while you are yet speaking it, you shall feel it. You will be bowed down under a sense of gratitude, and yet you will be lifted up with a “joy unspeakable, and full of glory,” when you can sing-

“While Jesus whispers I am his,

And my Beloved’s mine.”

Come, believers, let us all pray this prayer, whether we have heard this voice before or not. O, my God, make us true believers now, and may we all pray it, “Say unto my soul, I am thy salvation.” The preacher often needs to use this prayer himself, and he has no doubt that many of his brethren have been constrained to use just such a cry. Well, let it go up again to-night: “O God, give us back the love of our espousals, our first faith, our early joy, and speak thou, with thine own voice, to our troubled hearts, and say to our souls, ‘I am thy salvation.’ ”

And now shall we turn, very briefly indeed, to the second point? It was to be the blessedness of the assurance asked for.

I do not think I shall preach on that at all, but leave you to find it out for yourselves. You who know it know that I cannot describe it, for you cannot describe it yourselves; and you who do not know it would not understand it if I told you what it is. You will understand as much as this, that if you were able to feel to-night that God himself had said to your soul, “I am thy salvation,” you would feel infinitely more happy than you now do. Some of you are very cheerful, but sometimes you do get troubled and cast down. You apparently have, I know, a great deal of hilarity and mirth about you, but at night, or in the early morning, or when you have to go to a funeral, you do not feel quite as you would like to feel. There is an aching void somewhere or other, and you have not found out that which is to fill it yet. Now, if God himself should say to you, “I am thy salvation,” would not that fill it? Oh, what a different life you would then lead! How happy you would be, and, being saved, how holy you would try to be; and, being holy, how near to God you would try to live! “If I were but saved,” says one, “then would I indeed praise the Lord as long as I had any being.” Well, poor soul, I pray that this may be thy case, but the blessedness of it thou must taste to know. “O taste and see that the Lord is good!” There is no other way of understanding it than this.

I think I told you, once, the little story of the boy at the mission-station who had received a piece of sugar from a missionary, and when he went home told his father that he had had something so sweet. The father asked if it were as sweet as such-and-such a fruit? Oh, sweeter than that! Was it as sweet as such another? Yes, much sweeter than that; and when the boy could not make his father understand how sweet it was, he ran down to the station, and said, “Oh, sir, would you give me another piece of that sweet stuff? Father wants to understand how sweet it is, and I want to make him understand it, but I can’t tell him.” So he got another piece of sugar, and back he went to his father with it. “Here, father, now you will understand how sweet it is.” A very good illustration is this of the text I just quoted, “O taste and see that the Lord is good!” Taste for yourselves, and then you shall know for yourselves.

Now let us go to the third point without delay. How are we to get this assurance? How shall the believer know that he is saved?

The way to assurance is through the door of simple faith. The gospel is, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved.” To believe is to trust Christ. Now, if I know that I do trust Christ, and that I have, in obedience to his command, been baptized, then, God says I shall be saved; and is not that enough for me? Ought it not to be, at any rate? If God says it, it must be true. I believe his Book to be inspired, and he has put it thus, “He that believeth on him is not condemned.” Well, if I do believe on him, then I am not condemned. Conscience says, “You are a long way off being perfect.” I know that. Ah, conscience! I know it to my shame and to my sorrow; but the Word says, “He that believeth on him is not condemned.” I do believe on him, and I am not condemned, let conscience say what it likes. “Well, but,” the devil says, “how can this be true?” That is neither my business nor thine, Satan; God says it is so, and therefore it is so. That is enough for me. We take men’s word, why should we not take God’s Word? He who simply believes in Jesus Christ must have some degree of assurance, for the simple act of reclining, recumbently resting, upon Christ, if it be done truly and sincerely, is in its measure assuring to the heart. At any rate, it is the milk that brings the cream. Faith is the milk, and assurance is the cream. You must get your assurance from your faith; and if it be a simple faith which relies entirely upon Jesus Christ, it will, if not directly, yet very speedily, bring you some degree of assurance of your interest in Christ.

There are many good people who say, “We are trusting in Christ, and we hope we are Christians.” They do not like to say that they know they are saved. They think they are very humble in saying, “We trust so; we hope so;” whereas there is nothing but pride, like a thick sediment, at the bottom of all that kind of talk. What right have I, when God tells me that a thing is so, to say that I hope it is so? If I were to promise to give a subscription of ten pounds to any object, and the person to whom I promised it should say, “Well, I hope you will give it;” I should answer, “But I have said that I will.” “Yes, I hope you will.” “But don’t you believe me?” “Yes, I hope I do, but---” Why, if such talk as this prevailed among men of the world, they would be for showing the door to one another. It would be looked upon as an insult not to believe a man; and why should you treat God in a manner in which you would not like to be treated by your fellow-men? God says that I am saved if I trust Christ. I do trust Christ, and I am saved; if I am not, then God’s Word is not true. It comes to that. Since his Word must be true, then, if I really do trust Christ, and I know that I do,-if, whatever else I have left undone, my soul does cling to him, sink or swim, not having the shadow of a hope anywhere but in his precious blood, and if I can say this, then I know I am saved, for God says I am. Experience and conscience may say whatever they like, but “let God be true, and every man a liar.”

The way, however, to increase the measure of our assurance is to be found in more study of the Word of God. Some people have not the confidence they might have because they do not understand the truth. I do think that certain forms of Arminianism are deleterious to the faith of the Christian; those forms, for instance, which deny the election of God, the effectual calling of the Holy Spirit, and the final perseverance, because the sure preservation, of the saints. These denials seem to me to cut from under a man’s foot everything he has to stand upon, and I do not wonder that the man who believes them has no assurance. If I believe that God’s children may fall away and perish, it seems to me that full assurance, at any rate, becomes an impossibility, for if they may fall, why may not I? What is there in me that I should stand where others fall? But when I rest alone upon the finished work and righteousness of Jesus, and believe it is finished, then I can sing, “Now unto him who is able to keep me from falling, and to present me faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding joy, be glory, majesty, dominion and power, for ever and ever. Amen.” Study the Word much, dear Christian brother. Never mind the magazines; never mind the newspapers. Further than they are necessary to your business, you need not trouble yourself with them. We should all of us be a great deal better if we kept to the one Book. Let us be as expansive in our knowledge as possible, but let us keep the Bible as the sun and centre of the solar system of our knowledge, and let everything we know revolve around that centre. If we knew more of God, we might be content to know less of men.

Next to this, I think, if we would have full assurance established, we must be more in prayer than we are. You will not be in a healthy state if you live without prayer. You cannot live without it if you are a Christian; but I mean you cannot be healthy if you live without much prayer. I am persuaded that none of us pray as we ought. I am not given to bandying accusations against God’s saints without thought; but I am afraid that this is not a praying age. It is a reading age, a preaching age, a working age, but it is not a praying age. When one reads of the Puritans’ prayers, one is astounded. Why, their public prayers were sometime three-quarters of an hour in length, and sometimes one hour and a half by the clock. I do not like that; but their private prayers were longer far, and days of fasting and of prayer were quite common things. I wish we could have a day of fasting and of prayer about this cattle disease; but I only say this by the way. I wish we all of us prayed a great deal more than we do. We just pray for a short season because we say that we are so busy; but we forget that the more we pray the more able we are to work. The mower grudgeth not the time he spends in whetting his scythe, or the scribe the interval for mending his pen Martin Luther, when he had twice as much to do as he usually had, said, “I must pray for three hours to-day at least, or else I shall never get through my work.” The more work he had, the more did he pray in order that he might be able to get through it. Oh, that we did the like! We should have more assurance if we were more on the mount with God alone.

Let me also advise you to attend an edifying ministry, and to get with well-advanced Christians. Some of the young plants here, when they get moved away, suffer terribly from the cold; they come, perhaps, from the country, full of doubts and fears, and then some of my good brethren and sisters get round them, and talk to them, and cheer them up, and then they are so glad. Oh, that all churches were warm-hearted, cordial, and affectionate! There is so much stuck-upishness, so much keeping aloof from one another, that there can be no talking one to another about the things of God. By the grace of God, we will try to break this down, and get a little warm-heartedness to one another, and so we will hope to get the full assurance by talking to one another of the things of the kingdom, and so strengthening each other in our work.

But, dear friends, if you want to get full assurance, I can recommend you to another thing, and it is this, work for Christ. We are not saved by works, but working for God brings us many blessings. Rest assured that, if you spend and are spent for Christ, you shall never be out of spending-money. If you lay out your strength for him, he will lay in for you fresh stores of strength. He does not give us faith that we may bury it as the man buried his talent; but if we have five talents of faith, and use them, he will give us five talents more; and so we shall have assurance if we use our faith well.

And then, again, praise God for what you have. Old Master Brookes says, “If you only have candle-light, bless God for it, and he will give you starlight; when you have got starlight, praise God for it, and he will give you moonlight; when you have got moonlight, rejoice in it, and he will give you sunlight; and when you have got sunlight, praise him still more, and he will make the light of your sun as the light of seven days, for the Lord himself shall be the light of your spirit.” Praise and bless him, and your assurance shall grow.

Above all, press through ordinances, and means, and prayers, to the person of Christ himself. Thomas found that putting his finger into Christ’s wounds was a cure-all for his unbelief; and so will you. Ask him to-

“Wrap you in his crimson vest,

And tell you all his name.”

Pray him to reveal himself to you in his sufferings, and in his glory. Ask him that you may read his heart, that he may speak to you, and show you the great love unspeakable wherewith he loved you from before the foundation of the world. Then your communion with Christ shall be as eagle wings to bear you up to heaven; your fellowship with Jesus shall be like horses of fire to drag your chariot of flaming love up to the throne of the Most High. You shall walk the mountain-top, talking with God, for you have learned to commune with Christ. Your spirit shall make its nest hard by the throne of the Most High. You shall get above the cares of earth, you shall mount beyond the storm and strife of worldly conflict, and you shall even now bathe your souls in the unbroken sea of everlasting calm before the throne of God.

Let us ask him to say to each of our souls to-night, “I am thy salvation.” Some of us are going to the communion-table: perhaps he will say it to us there; and if he does not, we will go home to pray; and if he does not speak to us then, perhaps in the night-watches he will say it; and when we awake, we will still plead on, until those lips which said, “Let there be light,” and there was light, shall again say “Let there be light” to us, and we shall know that he is our salvation.

May God bless you very richly by hearing this prayer, for Jesus’sake.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

PHILIPPIANS 1:21-30; and 2:1-11

Chapter 1 Verse 21. For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.*

“To me to live is Christ.” If he lived, he lived to know more of Christ, studying his person, and learning by his happy experience so that he increased in his knowledge of his Lord and Saviour. If he lived, he lived to imitate Christ more closely, becoming more and more conformed to his image. If he lived, he lived to make Christ more and more known to others, and to enjoy Christ more himself. In these four senses, he might well say, “For to me to live is Christ,”-to know Christ more, to imitate Christ more, to preach Christ more, and to enjoy Christ more.

“And to die is gain,” because death, he felt, would free him from all sin, and from all doubts as to his state in the present and the future. It would be gain to him, for then he would no longer be tossed upon the stormy sea, but he would be safe upon the land whither he was bound. It would be gain to him, for then he would be free from all temptations both from within and from without. It would be gain to him, for then he would be delivered from all his enemies; there would be no cruel Nero, no blaspheming Jews, no false brethren then. It would be gain to him, for then he would be delivered from all suffering, there would be no more shipwrecks, no more being beaten with rods, or being stoned, for him then. Dying, too, would be gain for him, for he would then be free from all fear of death; and having once died, he would die no more for ever. It would be gain to him, for he would find in heaven better and more perfect friends than he would leave behind on earth; and he would find, above all, his Saviour, and be a partaker of his glory. This is a wide subject, and the more we think over it, the more sweetness shall we get out of it.

22. But if I live in the flesh,

That is a very different thing from living to the flesh.

22. This is the fruit of my labour;

He lived to work for Christ, and to see souls saved as the fruit of his labour.

22, 23. Yet what I shall choose I wot not. For I am in a strait betwixt two, having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ; which is far better:*

There were the two currents flowing in opposite directions. The apostle seemed to hear two voices speaking to him; one of them said, “Live, and you will gather the fruit of your labour, you will see sinners saved, churches established, and the kingdom of Christ extended in the earth.” The other said, “Die, and you will be with Christ;” so he knew not which to choose.

24-26. Nevertheless to abide in the flesh is more needful for you. And having this confidence, I know that I shall abide and continue with you all for your furtherance and joy of faith; that your rejoicing may be more abundant in Jesus Christ for me by my coming to you again.

The apostle desired to die, yet he was willing to live. Death would have been gain to him, yet he would endure the loss of living if he might thereby benefit others. Let us also always prefer the welfare of others before our own, and care rather to serve others than to make ourselves never so happy.

Now the apostle gives these saints at Philippi a loving exhortation:-

27. Only let your conversation be as it becometh the gospel of Christ: that whether I come and see you, or else be absent, I may hear of your affairs, that ye stand fast in one spirit, with one mind striving together for the faith of the gospel;

The unity of the church is of the utmost importance. When there is a want of brotherly love, the perfect bond is lost; and as a bundle of rods, when once the binding cord is cut, becomes merely a number of weak and single twigs, so is it with a divided church. May we always be kept in one holy bond of perfect union with each other!

28. And in nothing terrified by your adversaries: which is to them an evident token of perdition,

“Away with them! Away with them!” cried the heathen; “those who are not ashamed to acknowledge the crucified Christ are only worthy of perdition.” But of what was their courage a token to themselves?

28. But to you of salvation, and that of God.

For when saints can bear fierce persecution without flinching it is an evident sign that they are saved by the grace of God.

29. For unto you it is given in the behalf of Christ, not only to believe on him,

Which is a great gift,-

29. But also to suffer for his sake;

Which is a still greater gift.

30. Having the same conflict which ye saw in me, and now hear to be in me.

“The same agony” it is in the Greek, as if every Christian must, in his measure, go through the same agony through which the apostle went, striving and wrestling against sin, groaning under its burden, agonizing to be delivered from it, and labouring to bring others out of its power.

Chapter 2 Verses 1, 2. If there be therefore any consolation in Christ, if any comfort of love, if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, fulfil ye my joy, that ye be likeminded, having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.

He knew that these saints at Philippi loved him. They had sent once and again to relieve his necessities, so he pleaded with them, by their love to him, to love each other. He does as much as say, “If you really do love me, if it is not a sham, if you have any sympathy with me, and with my labours and sufferings, if you really have the same spirit that burns in my breast, make my heart full of joy by clinging to one another, by being likeminded, ‘having the same love, being of one accord, of one mind.’ ”

3. Let nothing be done through strife or vainglory;

This would be a good motto for those who are intending to build new places of worship. Let them not be built through strife, because of a squabble among the people of God, but make sure that all concerned are actuated by right motives, and seeking only the glory of God. Then, sometimes, if one gives a guinea, another feels that he must give two so as to excel him; this is giving out of vainglory. Let nothing be done in this way; but as unto the Lord, and as in his sight, let us do all our works, and give all our gifts.

3, 4. But in lowliness of mind let each esteem other better than themselves. Look not every man on his own things, but every man also on the things of others.

Consider how you can help others, and in what way you can prosper them both in temporal things and in spiritual. You are members of a body, so one member is not to think for itself alone; the unity of the whole body requires that every separate and distinct part of it should be in harmony with the whole.

5-8. Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.*

He humbled himself, so be you not unwilling to humble yourself. Lower than the cross Christ could not go; his death was one of such extreme ignominy that he could not have been more disgraced and degraded. Be you willing to take the lowest place in the Church of God, and to render the humblest service; count it an honour to be allowed to wash the saints’ feet. Be humble in mind; nothing is lost by cherishing this spirit, for see how Jesus Christ was honoured in the end.

9-11. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.†

Some foolish and superstitious persons make this passage a pretext for bowing their heads at the name of Jesus whenever it is mentioned. Nothing can be more senseless, because the passage means no such thing.

What we are taught here is the great truth that Jesus Christ, though once he stooped to the lowest shame, is now exalted to the very highest glory, and even the devils in hell are compelled to own the might of his power. We are also to learn from this passage that the way to ascend is to descend. He who would be chief must be willing to be the servant of all. The King of kings was the Servant of servants; and if you would be crowned with honour by-and-by, you must be willing to be despised and rejected of men now. The Lord give us this gracious humbleness of mind, for Jesus Christ’s sake! Amen.