Jeremiah did not intend these verses to be a description of a sinner under conviction of sin. He was sorrowing over the woes of Jerusalem and the nation that had been so heavily punished for its sin, yet we may rightly apply his words to the most bitter of all human griefs,-I mean, of all human griefs except that ruinous remorse which sometimes comes as the prelude of eternal destruction.

Dear friends, when we preach to you, we do, as it were, shoot arrows at a mark; but, alas! how few of them ever reach the target! If any of our arrows are shot without earnestness and zeal, they are almost certain to fall short of the mark. How sad it is that any of us, who are sent by God to do such important work as this, should be cold-hearted or lukewarm! Shame on the preacher who doth not bend the bow with all his might, and throw his whole strength of spirit, soul, and body into his efforts to win souls! At times, our arrows fly too high. Perhaps we use expressions which our hearers do not understand, or do not talk sufficiently concerning the simplicities of the gospel. In such a case, we ought to repent, and be grieved with ourselves that we have not better carried out our commission, and so adapted the means we have used as to achieve the end we ought to have had in view. But even when we aim aright, and put our whole force into the drawing of the bow, how often do our arrows glint off the steel armour of indifference in which so many of our hearers are encased from top to toe! The point of the arrow is blunted, or the shaft is snapped as we shoot again and again at those who try to prevent the entrance of the truth into their hearts. Year after year I have drawn my bow at some of you; I have used the sharpest arrows and the most polished shafts that my quiver could supply, and have thrown my whole strength into the effort, yet up till now no arrow has pierced your hearts or reached your reins. But how different is the case when God himself draws the bow! Ah, my brethren, his arrows never miss the mark; the joint in the sinner’s harness is always visible to him, and though it be but a very small opening which no one else can see, between the plates of the armour the arrow unerringly enters. God knows how to wound mortally too; as the text reminds us, the arrow is driven right into one’s reins, into those parts of our being where the vital principle is most active; so that there is no hope of escape from the arrows which God sendeth right into the heart, the soul, the conscience of the one at whom he shoots his shafts.

As God shall enable me, by his Holy Spirit, I intend to describe the case of those who have been pierced by God’s arrows, but I want, first, to speak of some arrows which do not come from God’s quiver at all, but which, nevertheless, cause very much pain to some sensitive spirits. So, first, I am going to try to break the devil’s arrows; secondly, to endeavour to describe God’s arrows; and then, thirdly, to seek to comfort those who have been wounded by these arrows.

First, then, I am to try to break some of the devil’s arrows.

I will venture to say that nine out of ten of the terrible feelings which men have when under conviction of sin are not the work of God’s Spirit, but are the result of the uprising of their own unbelief stirred and agitated by the diabolic suggestions of Satan. He knows that it is “now or never” with them; if he can now drive them to despair, and keep them from coming to Christ, he will have gained his end; but if now the anxious soul should find shelter and rest in the atonement of Christ, the prince of darkness will have lost it for ever, and therefore he exerts all his power, and stirs up all his fellow-fiends to do their utmost to keep the poor soul in despair.

One of the arrows which the devil shoots at such a time is this; he says to the troubled soul, “Your sins are so great that it is not possible for God to forgive you. You have sinned so grossly and so long; remember your sin on such-and-such a day, and your sin on such-and-such a night; if you had not committed such-and-such a sin, you might have been forgiven, but now there is no hope for you. Besides, think of the many ways in which your offences have been aggravated. You have sinned against light and knowledge; though you have been often reproved, you have hardened your neck, and you shall surely be destroyed, and that without remedy. Your case is utterly hopeless.” Now, although part of Satan’s speech is quoted from the Scriptures, I dare to affirm that this arrow never came out of God’s quiver. That quotation has no reference to one who sincerely repents of sin, and comes to God seeking mercy for Jesus’ sake. However great your guilt may have been, remember that “the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him.” If you had gone as far in sin as Satan himself could have led you, that great promise of the Lord Jesus Christ would still have been available for you, “All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men.” If the guilt of a thousand sinners had been concentrated in you, yet still, if you did but wash in the-

“Fountain fill’d with blood,

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins,”-

there is potency enough in that precious blood to make you whiter than the newly-fallen snow. O poor troubled one, let this arrow be broken in pieces once for all! Let the thought of God’s everlasting mercy and his boundless power to forgive snap it in two, and cast it to the ground.

Another of the devil’s arrows which often goes whizzing through the air is this:-“The Holy Spirit cannot soften such a hard heart as yours. You cannot repent as a sinner should do, sin has got too firm a hold upon you. Why, you know that you can listen to a most earnest discourse, and yet not be in the least impressed by it; or if you are for a time moved by the message, you soon go back to your sin as the dog returns to his vomit, and as the sow that was washed goes back to her wallowing in the mire. There is no tenderness left in you; your conscience is seared as with a hot iron; the Holy Spirit is powerless to do anything in such a case as yours.” That is another lie, a gross and slanderous falsehood. What is there that the Holy Spirit cannot do? O my brethren, when anyone is talking about what the Deity can do, the word “powerless” must never be mentioned! Even the word “difficult” is not to be put side by side with the name of God. “Is anything too hard for the Lord?” “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save; neither his ear heavy, that it cannot hear.” Why, one drop of Jesu’s precious blood could melt a mountain of ice as huge as a million, worlds; one flash of the Holy Ghost’s celestial fire could make a rock of granite run like the water that gushed from the smitten rock in the wilderness. There is no doubt about the hardness of your heart, and the badness of your nature; probably you are much worse than you think you are; but it is impossible that your depravity should exceed the potency of the Holy Spirit’s influence to renew your nature, and change your whole life, so let this diabolical arrow also be smashed to atoms, so that even the devil himself cannot use it again.

Here is another shaft from Satan’s quiver. The devil says, to the poor troubled soul, “It is too late for you to repent; if you had repented and turned to God years ago, you might have been saved; when you were a young man, you had your day of grace, but that is over now. Do you not recollect being in a certain chapel, one Sunday night, when the minister was so earnestly pleading with sinners, and many were smitten down under conviction of sin? You also seemed to be impressed, but your anxiety had all gone in the morning; so you missed your opportunity, and now the gates of heaven are shut against you for ever. You may seek the Lord, but you shall not find him; you may call upon him, but he will not answer you.” That is another of Satan’s lies, for there is no man living who has arrived at a period when it is too late for God to save him. We rightly sing,-

“While the lamp holds out to burn,

The vilest sinner may return.”

Did not Christ save the dying thief? He was fastened to the cross, and was soon to die; but when he repented of his sin, and pleaded with Christ to remember him, he received the gracious assurance that he should be that day with Christ in paradise. If old age could keep men out of heaven, there are many now before the throne of God who would never have been there. If you are seventy, or eighty, or even ninety years of age, it is a sad and solemn thing that you should have lived so long without Christ, but this is no reason why you should die and be damned after all. God’s message to you still is this, “Turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die?” The commission to Christ’s servants is still the same as when he gave it to his first disciples, “Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature,”-not merely to every creature under fifty years of age, but to everyone of the whole human race. If you are over a hundred years old, yet, as you are a creature, I have to preach the gospel to you; and the gospel is, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved;” so, if you believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, however great your age may be, or however many times you may have refused to believe on him, there is no doubt about God’s willingness and power still to receive, and pardon, and accept you.

Another of Satan’s arrows is this. He whispers in a sinner’s ear, “You are not one of God’s elect; you are shut out of the kingdom of heaven. It is no use for you to think of being saved, a stern decree has blotted out all possibility of hope for you.” But how does the devil know that? This is one of the things that God has never revealed to anyone, and I am sure that Satan has never been allowed to read the names in the Lamb’s book of life, so do not let this arrow trouble you for a moment. Why should not you be one of God’s elect as well as any other man? Have you been a drunkard? Many drunkards have been saved in spite of their drunkenness. Have you been addicted to profane swearing? There are many, who once uttered the foulest oaths, but who were afterwards washed in the precious blood of Christ, and who are now singing the new song before the throne of God in glory. Have you been a willing servant of the devil? There are many, who long served him here below, who are now playing their golden harps in the presence of God above. You cannot tell whether you are one of the elect or not until you believe in Jesus; when you do that, you will have positive proof that God chose you unto salvation, and gave you to his Son long ere he formed the world. The doctrine of election is not one about which you need trouble yourself just now. Begin to read your Bibles at the Gospel according to Matthew, and see there how you are bidden to repent, and invited to come to Christ. When you have done that, you can go on to the Epistles, and read about election and all the other doctrines of grace, but your first business is to repent of sin, and to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ.

I have also known Satan whisper to a man, “It is no use for you to pray. You know that you have been praying for a long time, but you have got no comfort from it, so give it up, for it is an utterly useless exercise. It is no use for you to believe. There was a man, the other day, who said that he believed, but he was just as great a sinner afterwards, so what good is it for you to believe? Here again we have Satan’s lies set in contrast with God’s truth. It is of great use for every one to pray, for our Saviour said, “Every one that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him that knocketh it shall be opened.” There is not one case of true prayer that is exempt from this general rule. Then as to Satan’s assertion that there are some who say that they have believed, and yet they are not saved, we can reply that it is one thing to say that we believe, but quite another thing really to believe. No doubt there are some who say that they believe who are no better for it, but it is equally true that “he that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life.” Faith does justify the soul; “being justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” So will you believe Satan’s lie or God’s truth?

I do not know what other arrows the devil may have shot at any of you. He may perhaps have told you that you have committed the unpardonable sin, but that is certainly more than he knows. If you now desire to be saved, you may depend upon it that you have not committed that sin which is unto death; and if you are now believing in the Lord Jesus Christ, you have the best possible proof that this sin cannot be laid to your charge, for whosoever believeth in him is not condemned, but hath everlasting life. Cling thou to the cross of Christ, and thou shalt never sink down to perdition.

Having thus tried to break some of the devil’s arrows, I want, next, to endeavour to describe some of God’s arrows.

Here I will give you a piece of my own experience. When God began to deal with me, one of the first arrows that flew right into my heart was this, “Thou God seest me.” I recollected that God knew all about my sins, that he had seen them or heard them, and had noted them all down in his book of remembrance. I was greatly alarmed, for I had forgotten many of them, and had dreamed that God also had forgotten them.

Then came another arrow, bearing this motto, “I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.” I realized that God knew all about my motives and thoughts. He had seen my selfishness when I was seeking to do what was right merely that I might be saved by it. He had watched all the wanderings of my heart, and all the evil imaginations of my mind; and I was almost driven to despair as I thought what must be the fruit of my doings.

Then came another sharp arrow, and it was labelled thus, “The soul that sinneth it shall die.” I knew that I had sinned, and I felt that I must die, for the law can show no mercy, it can only punish the guilty. Then I heard that terrible sentence, “Cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them.” Then was I sorely afraid, like Belshazzar was when he saw the mysterious handwriting on the wall.

Then came another arrow, bearing this inscription, “Thy commandment is exceeding broad,” and I began to see that the law of the Lord was much more than I had thought it to be. I had fancied that, if I kept the letter of the commandments, I should be accounted innocent; but I found that the commandment which said, “Thou shalt not kill,” meant that, if I hated my brother, I should be murderer; and that “Thou shalt not commit adultery” not only referred to that shameful act, but also included the lascivious look and the unclean thought. Ah, me! where was all my fancied righteousness then? In view of the spirituality of God’s holy law, I might well say, with Moses at Sinai, “I exceedingly fear and quake.”

Another arrow that came to me was marked, “Without me ye can do nothing.” I found that, by my own unaided power, I could not pray, I could not repent, I could not believe; but there I lay, as helpless as the dirt beneath my feet, and with no more power to save myself than a sere leaf driven by the blast of a tornado would have had.

Ah! these were sharp arrows indeed; and just when I seemed covered with wounds all over me, methought I had another arrow shot into me, and bearing this terrible message, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels.” When I went to sleep, I dreamed that I was in hell; and when I woke up, I wondered that the earth did not open, and swallow up such a sinner as I felt myself to be. Life became almost unbearable to me.

Then there came another arrow, which caused me to suffer still more. It bore this missive, “You have sinned against light and knowledge. You were not ignorant, as many lads were, of what you ought to do; you had received gracious instruction, and you knew what the gospel was; you sinned against your father’s prayers and your mother’s tears.” I recollected the Sunday evenings at home when my mother had prayed with me, and pleaded with me to lay hold on eternal life, yet I had still refused to turn to God, and to trust in Jesus as my Saviour; and this thought came to my mind, “It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon, and for Sodom and Gomorrha, in the day of judgment than for thee.” Thus did the arrows of God’s quiver enter into my reins.

These are God’s arrows, and the messages they bear are all true. It is true that God sees us, it is true that he reads our thoughts and motives, it is true that he punishes sin, it is true that his commandment is exceeding broad, it is true that we are powerless to save ourselves; and if, my dear hearers, you are feeling the force of any of these truths, I congratulate you that God has thus made you a mark for his arrows.

Now, thirdly, I want to seek to comfort those who have been wounded by these arrows.

My dear afflicted friends, thus troubled and distressed in mind, please consider why God sends these arrows to you. Remember that they are not sent to destroy you, but to save you, and to save you by destroying some things of which you are very fond. They are sent, first of all, to destroy your false peace. God cannot bear that you should say, “Peace, peace,” when there is no peace, and therefore he shoots these arrows to kill your carnal ease, that you may be stirred up to seek his face. They are sent also to slay your self-righteousness, and they are blessed arrows that can do that. When Mr. Hervey asked a poor ploughman what was the hardest thing to get rid of, he expected him to answer, “Sinful self.” But the reply was, “Righteous self.” And, certainly, of the two, righteous self is much harder to part with than sinful self. These arrows are also sent to kill your strength. Remember, sinner, when you can do nothing, then God will do everything; when you are so completely emptied that you have nothing left, God will give you everything. If you wish to save yourselves, do it, but God will have no share in the work under such conditions. If he is to save you, he must be Alpha and Omega; he must have all the praise because he gives all the power.

Next, as God’s name and nature are both love, he cannot take any pleasure in seeing you suffer. He has a purpose in setting you as a mark for his arrows, he has a design in causing the arrows of his quiver to enter your reins; he does not wound you out of ill-will toward you, but he is aiming at your good all the while. So thank him for shooting at you, and beg him not to spare any of his arrows, but to keep on shooting until he has killed the last relic of evil and self-righteousness that has kept you from coming to Christ.

Further, do not imagine that you are the first person who has suffered in this way. All the people of God, in their measure, pass through a similar experience. If they do not become God’s target at the time of their conversion, they find that his quiver is emptied against them sooner or later. Therefore, my poor wounded brother or sister, look upon your pathway as being the pathway of the saints; it is the King’s highway which has been trodden by the pilgrims to heaven in all ages.

Once more, you are one of those who are specially invited in this blessed Book. Listen: “Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden,”-that must mean you; “and I will give you rest,” that is what you need. “Ho, every one that thirsteth,”-that means you; “come ye to the waters, and he that hath no money;”-that means you; “come ye, buy, and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.” “Whosoever will,”-that must mean you, for you are willing enough to be saved,-“let him take the water of life freely.”

If you cannot get any comfort out of these invitations because you fear you are not the person described in them, remember that there is a general call given in the gospel. Not only are we invited to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and bidden to repent of sin; but, as Paul said at Athens, “God now commandeth all men every where to repent.” Be thankful that it is not too late for you to obey that command. The door of heaven is not yet closed against you, the gate of hell has not yet been fastened as your eternal prison-house; you are still on praying ground, and on pleading terms with God, so “seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near; let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

Above all, my dear hearers, remember that “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,”-sinners, mark you,-not the righteous, the good, the excellent, but the sinful, the bad, the guilty. God loved not men because of their goodness, Christ bought not men because of their moral beauty, the Holy Spirit quickened not those who were already alive; but “when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly,” and “God commmdeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” Look by faith, sinner, to him as he hung upon the cross. It is God’s eternal Son, “very God of very God,” who there died “the Just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” Recollect how he cried, “It is finished,” ere he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost. What was finished? Why, the road from hell to heaven, the pathway along which the vilest sinner may travel to glory;-the fountain in which the most scarlet sins may be washed away;-the redemption by which the bond-slaves of sin and Satan are for ever set at liberty. All this and more than this was finished on Calvary; and if you will trust in Jesus now, a finished salvation shall be yours this very moment. May the Holy Spirit enable you, just as you are, to rest upon the finished work of the Lord Jesus Christ, and then you will find that he, who wounded you with his arrows, shall heal you by his grace, and you shall be his for ever and ever. God grant it, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.

Expositions by C. H. Spurgeon

LAMENTATIONS 3:1-33; and JEREMIAH 31:22-37

I am about to read a portion of Holy Scripture which may seem very strange to some of you, but it belongs to a part of the congregation, and I hope it may be the means of giving them comfort. I read it as a picture of the suffering of a soul under a sense of sin. I think it is a most graphic portrait of a heart that is aroused and made to feel its lost estate. If there are any such here, they will be sure to see themselves in the picture.

Verse 1. I am the man that hath seen affliction by the rod of his wrath.

It is a mistake that most souls make when in trouble, to suppose that no others ever felt as they do. John Bunyan describes Christian as being very much comforted by hearing someone quoting Scripture as he went through the Valley of the Shadow of Death, for then he perceived that there were others in like case with his own. Do not think, poor troubled soul, that no one ever was so broken in pieces as you are; your path of sorrow is a well-trodden one.

2. He hath led me, and brought me into darkness, but not into light.

A Hebrew method of saying that it was a thick darkness without any light, either star-light or moon-light. You who have passed through this state of conviction know what it means,-no comfort from ordinances, no comfort from God’s Word, no comfort from your daily mercies. Every stream of comfort seems dried up to you, and sin lies heavily upon you.

3. Surely against me it he turned; he turneth his hand against me all the day.

As if, when a man is about to strike, he smites not with his open hand, but turns his hand, so the prophet says God did with him. He felt that he was being smitten with the heaviest blows that God seemed able to give.

4. My flesh and my skin hath he made old; he hath broken my bones.

As men through excessive grief sometimes appear to grow prematurely aged, so the prophet says he had done through grief. He felt as if his bones were broken. The sore vexations of his spirit had dashed the solid pillors of the house of Manhood from their place.

5. He hath builded against me, and compassed me with gall and travel.

That is to say, as the besiegers erected a mound against a city, and threw up earthworks, so, the prophet says, God seemed to have thrown up earthworks from which he might fire off the great guns of the law against him.

6. He hath set me in dark places, as they that be dead of old.

As though he had to live in a tomb, where neither life nor light could come to him.

7. He hath hedged me about, that I cannot get out: he hath made my chain heavy.

“My way seems blocked up; nothing prospers with me.” As the convict sometimes drags about his chain, and has a ball at his foot, so the prophet felt as if God had clogged him with a heavy chain, so that he could not move because of its terrible weight.

8. Also when I cry and shout, he shutteth out my prayer.

Which was the worst trial of all.

9. He hath inclosed my ways with hewn stone, he hath made my paths crooked.

It was believed that hewn stones made the strongest wall as the joints would the more closely fit into one another. Jeremiah seems to speak as if God had taken care and trouble to build, not as men do, roughly with common stones, but with polished and well-shapen troubles built like strong barriers in his way.

10. He was unto me as a bear lying in wait, and as a lion in secret places.

He felt as if the justice of God was about to spring upon him. He was afraid to move, lest the couchant lion should leap upon him, and tear him in pieces. John Bunyan, in his Grace Abounding to the Chief of Sinners, describes in his own experience precisely what the prophet here speaks of.

11-13. He hath turned aside my ways, and pulled me in pieces: he hath made me desolate. He hath bent his bow, and set me as a mark for the arrow. He hath caused the arrows of his quiver to enter into my reins.

And all this while, to aggravate his grief, he found no comfort anywhere.

14. I was a derision to all my people; and their song all the day.

It is just so with a man who is under a sense of sin. His companions ask him why he is so melancholy; he has an attack of the mopes, they say. They do not want his society; they will chase him from their midst. I marvel not that they want not his company, for well do I know that he wants not theirs; but this adds much to his grief, to find that they make derision and laughter of his woe.

15. He hath filled me with bitterness, he hath made me drunken with wormwood.

What a strong expression the prophet uses! As a drunken man hath lost his wits, and staggereth he knoweth not where, even so is a sinner when he really begins to taste the bitterness of sin. He does not act as if he were endowed with reason; despair and sorrow have driven his senses away.

16. He hath also broken my teeth with gravel stones, he hath covered me with ashes.

The Easterns usually baked their cakes on the hearth, and very frequently there would be in the cakes pieces of grit, perhaps large lumps of cinder, and sometimes small gravel stones, which would break the teeth. “So,” the prophet seems to say, “when I went to try to get some nourishment by the eating of bread, I was disappointed; my teeth were broken with gravel stones.” I remember when I used to go up to the house of God to try to get comfort; but, instead thereof, I came away more wretched than I went, for sin, that great devouring dragon, still followed me everywhere.

17-21. And thou hast removed my soul far off from peace: I forgat prosperity. And I said, My strength and my hope is perished from the Lord: remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul hath them still in remembrance, and is humbled in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope.*

Notice the gracious change that has taken place, as if the sun had risen after the blackness and gloom of the night. Now the birds of joy begin to sing, and the flowers of hope begin to open their golden cups.

22. It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

Bad as our state is, we are not yet in hell; we are not yet beyond the reach of hope.

23. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.

We had new mercies this morning, and we have had fresh mercies this evening. God has not forgotten us. The very breath in our nostrils is a proof of his goodness to us; let us, therefore, dear friends, still hope for yet further favours from him.

24, 25. The Lord is my portion, saith my soul; therefore will I hope in him. The Lord is good unto them that wait for him, to the soul that seeketh him.*

Can you get a hold of this blessed truth any of you troubled ones who are here? Broken-hearted sinner, can you get a grip of this comforting assurance? If so, there will soon be peace for you.

26, 27. It is good that a man should both hope and quietly wait for the salvation of the Lord. It is good for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth.†

For this yoke, though it may seem to be very heavy for a time, when it has humbled us, and brought us to Christ, will bring us innumerable blessings.

28-33. He sitteth alone and keepeth silence, because he hath borne it upon him. He putteth his mouth in the dust; if so be there may be hope. He giveth his cheek to him that smiteth him: he is filled full with reproach. For the Lord will not cast off for ever: but though he cause grief, yet will he have compassion according to the multitude of his mercies. For he doth not afflict willingly nor grieve the children of men.

Unless he has some gracious motive for it, he never afflicts or grieves them; and when he doth act thus, it is as when a father smites his child. It is because it must be done, and not because he loves to do it. See, then, the great mercy of God. May it lead the sinner to repentance, yea, and lead us all to put our trust in the Lord!

(The following Exposition is the concluding portion of the one published with Sermon No. 3,261, “The Covenant.” The passage here expounded it Jeremiah 31:22-37.

Jeremiah 31 Verse 22. For the Lord hath created a new thing in the earth, A woman shall compass a man.

Here is a prophecy of the birth of Immanuel, God with us, born of a woman by the supernatural power of the Holy Ghost. Mary was indeed blessed among women, and we rejoice in that Man who was thus miraculously born to be the Saviour, Christ the Lord.

23-25. Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; As yet they shall use this speech in the land of Judah and in the cities thereof, when I shall bring again their captivity; The Lord bless thee, O habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness. And there shall dwell in Judah itself, and in all the cities thereof together, husbandmen, and they that go forth with flocks. For I have satiated the weary soul, and I have replenished every sorrowful soul.

There are good times in store for Israel; Jerusalem shall then be the “habitation of justice, and mountain of holiness.”

26. Upon this I awaked, and beheld; and my sleep was sweet unto me.

Jeremiah woke up with a pleasant impression of his vision upon him, and well he might, for was there ever a more blessed one than that of which we have just read?

27, 28. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will sow the house of Israel and the house of Judah with the seed of man, and with the seed of beast. And it shall come to pass, that like as I have watched over them, to pluck up, and to break down, and to throw down, and to destroy, and to afflict; so will I watch over them, to build, and to plant, saith the Lord.

All the ingenuity of heaven seems to be taxed to bless believers; and just as man sought out many inventions for evil, God in his infinite love and mercy seeks out many inventions for the good of his people.

29, 30. In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children’s teeth are set on edge. But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.

We live under a personal dispensation; there is no such thing as hereditary godliness or salvation by proxy. Every man must for himself repent, and for himself believe. Vain and foolish is the idea that, because we have had Christian parents, therefore we also are Christians.

31, 32. Behold, the days come, saith the Lord, that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the Lord.

What bliss it is to know about this new covenant! Let us notice its tenour.

33. But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the Lord, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts;*-

Not on the tables of stone, not on the walls of the church, but “I will write it in their hearts;”-

33. And will be their God, and they shall be my people.

You may have heard it said that Christ will not leave his people, but that his people may leave him; but in this promise the second contingency is provided for as well as the first.

34-37. And they shall teach no more every man his neighbour, and every man his brother, saying, Know the Lord: for they shall all know me, from the least of them unto the greatest of them, saith the Lord: for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Thus saith the Lord, which giveth the sun for a light by day, and the ordinances of the moon and of the stars for a light by night, which divideth the sea when the waves thereof roar; The Lord of hosts is his name: If those ordinances depart from before me, saith the Lord, then the seed of Israel also shall cease from being a nation before me for ever. Thus saith the Lord; If heaven above can be measured, and the foundations of the earth searched out beneath, I will also cast off all the seed of Israel for all that they have done, saith the Lord.

What a God of infinite mercy he is!

INTELLIGENT OBEDIENCE

A Sermon

Published on Thursday, August 17th, 1911,

delivered by

C. H. SPURGEON,

at the metropolitan tabernacle, newington.

“Keep and seek for all the commandments of the Lord your God.”-1 Chronicles 28:8.

Is the Lord your God? I must put this question very pointedly to you at the onset; otherwise I shall not be speaking to you in expounding the words of my text. Were I to address the ungodly and the unconverted, and say to them, “Keep God’s commandments,” they would, perhaps, misunderstand such an exhortation, and consider that I intend to set before them as the way of life a strict observance of the commands. It is no such thing. “By the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified.” So far as the sinner is concerned, by the law comes the knowledge of sin. The law can do nothing more for him than convince him that he needs a Saviour, and drive him out of himself to find in Christ what he cannot find in himself.

I am now about to address those who are saved,-those who are saved through the merits of the Lord Jesus,-those who have rested in him, and are now trusting in him, and in him alone. These have taken God to be their God; they are in covenant relationship with him; and now, being introduced into the family of God, they become like children under parental influence and parental discipline, bound to “keep and seek for all the commandments of the Lord their God.”

David says, first of all, “Keep the commandments,” that is to say, such of them as you know, such as are clear from your reading of Scripture, such as have been pressed upon your conscience,-keep these; keep them always; ask for more grace to keep them better. Or when you feel that you have not kept them, go with holy repentance to the foot of the cross, to get rid of sin past, and look up for sanctifying grace that, through the Holy Spirit’s power, you may keep them better for the future, for “in keeping of them there is great reward.” The path of obedience is a path of safety and of happiness.

But David says more than that, and it is to this I call your attention. He says, “Keep and seek for all the commandments of the Lord your God.” There are precepts the nature of which you have never understood, the obligation of which you have never felt; seek these out. Try to know all God’s will concerning you. Keep what you do know; but wherein you are at fault through lack of knowledge, do not content yourself with ignorance any longer, but search out the matter. Read the King’s proclamations. Study the code of the King’s laws. Ask him to teach you, and to make you wise in the way of his commandments, that in nothing you may be chargeable with indifference, or be guilty of neglecting the ordinances of the Most High.

It shall be my endeavour, then, for a little while, as God shall help me, to commend such an obedience, and show you the excellence of that earnest pursuit which seeks out God’s commandments.

Such an obedience is deeply spiritual.

Were I simply to do that part of the divine will which everybody else does; if, being a member of a certain Christian church, I take my cue from my fellow-members, or pin myself to the sleeves of my pastor, and act precisely according to the fashion which everybody else is setting, I may be merely conforming to religious usages in a mechanical, dreamy, unspiritual, unacceptable way. It may not be the worship of God at all; it may be but a physical exercise, following in the rut as the cart that is dragged there by the horse. Does it profit my character that I make proof of nothing but those grooves through which I am drawn by custom? But you will see at once that, when a man bestirs himself to find out what the will of the Lord is, there is an exercise of the mind at once. The spirit is then, even before any action is taken, in a state of obedience; it is bowing itself reverently before the Most High, and saying to him, “What wouldst thou have me to do?” The man who seeks to know the Lord’s will is never likely to become a mere formalist. His mind will be awake. Why, some of you, I dare say, have come here a good many times, and you have sat through the service, and have gone away again none the better, because it has grown into a regular thing with you. I have sometimes noticed this in our worship. Dissenting worship is simple enough, but yet for all that there gets to be a formality about it. If it has been the habit of people to sit during the singing of the hymn, when they have been asked to stand up, they have felt that it was a dreadful innovation,-quite a departure from the old mechanism; and should a verse be given out-have you not noticed it?-with a doxology or a chorus at the end, how many have dropped into their seats before we have got to the last line, and risen up again wondering what the preacher can be at, because their minds are not awake in the service of God. We are all prone to get into that kind of routine. Sitting in the same seat, or even standing on the same platform, and going through the same form of worship, produces in us mechanical service. But if we seek to know the Lord’s will, it is evident that in that thing at least we have broken through the mechanical, and got into that which is spiritual,-worship which God says he will accept, for “God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth.”

The obedience which seeks to know the Lord’s will also indicates the truest sincerity.

A man who is not sincere in his obedience may conform to the regular order of that which he knows to be prescribed, but only the sincere man will seek to find out matters he is not yet acquainted with. Which is the best servant-the man who must always have his orders written for him every morning, and who at night excuses himself for the neglect of many an obvious duty because, as he says, “It was not down on the paper, sir; I have followed your instructions,”-is he the better servant, or the other man who thinks, after he has obeyed his orders, “What ought I to do for my master? Is there not this thing, or that thing which, though it may not be absolutely recorded or written down, yet is intended in the spirit of my instructions?” Do you not love the child who looks out for occasions and opportunities to please you? Do you not feel a satisfaction in accepting from a friend a kindness which may be almost unexpected, and which manifests to you that he must have been thinking about you, and has, perhaps, lain awake all night to consider how he could gratify or serve you? You feel that this is sincere friendship. So is it with your service for God. If you do only those duties which I stand here and write out to you so plainly that you cannot help seeing them, why, is here any great forwardness or fidelity of purpose in it? But if you go1 to that grand old Book, and on your knees say to your Lord and Master, “I want to do all that I can to show how my heart loves thee; teach me what thou wouldst have me to do;” this manifests a sincerity which is indisputable.

Again, is not the seeking out of the divine commands a proof of an intense affection?

Common affection will do what it must, but intense affection will do all it can. A vehement enthusiasm, a constraining love, such as that which Jesus Christ deserves of us, says,-

“Oh! what can I do my Saviour to praise?”

“Is there an alabaster box of precious ointment that I can break, that I may anoint his head? Wherein can I be of service to any members of his family? How can I show forth the glory of his name?” The glow of affection would be always prompting us to seek here, and there, and everywhere, to know what we can do. We are far from believing in works of supererogation. No man can ever do more than it was his duty to have done. When we have done all, we are but unprofitable servants. Still the earnest Christian, if he could, would do even more than he should. Instead of wishing to stand still, and stop short on this side of the path, he would exceed both in service and in sacrifice, as Dr. Watts sings,-

“Yet if I might make some reserve,

And duty did not call;

I love my God with zeal so great,

That I should give him all.”

Diligent enquiry in seeking out the divine will manifests that holy intensity of affection which becomes the disciples of such a Lord as our Saviour Jesus Christ, and which I trust and pray ever gleams, and shall gleam, in the bosoms of many of us who have been redeemed by his precious blood.

Further, this searching after the divine commandments indicates the mature manhood of grace.

The babe in grace doth that which is plain simply and obediently, but it is not to be expected that he will begin to search and pry into things which are not so clear, until he has grown, and had his senses exercised. At any rate, it is more excusable if the babe in grace is more ready to be led by his fellow-Christians than to be on his own account a deep searcher into the divine word. But the man who is a man in Christ, having grown in grace, takes the Book, and he saith, “My Lord, I desire to serve thee to the utmost stretch of my manhood. Thou hast been pleased to give me an understanding, not that I may cringe at the foot of some priest, and lower myself into a beast of burden to be driven whithersoever those incarnations of evil spirits may goad me on. Nay, but thou hast made me a man, and given me mind, and thought, and capacity, and thou has put into my hand a Book which I can understand, and here I am; assist me while I bow this judgment to thy sway, and teach me what thy mind is.” God would have us all educated for the skies. We are here but minors. I trust, however, we have many of us passed our infancy. We are getting something beyond the mere first childhood of grace, and now we seek to know, and to know practically, the Lord’s will and mind respecting us. If you would always be babes, then sit still, and have this word and that put into your mouths, forms of prayer composed for your use, and unintelligible creeds compiled for you to repeat; but if you would grow into men in Christ Jesus, come to the Book, and keep and seek out the commands of God, with full purpose of heart to obey them.

In these days, people do not read their Bibles much. One reason why Romanism is so popular is because it allows a man to get a deputy to do his thinking for him, and to do his praying for him; but what a poor affair it is with the man who keeps his brains in somebody’s else’s head, and carries his heart in somebody else’s bosom! Are there not many of you who do not read the Word of God? We stand up as Protestants, and say, “The Bible, and the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants;” and yet what multitudes never think of reading it! They hear a chaper read in public service, and perhaps now and then read a chapter at home; but as to downright study of the Word, and searching out the divine meaning, I do believe that is an exercise to which many professors are totally unaccustomed. They do not engage in it regularly and constantly, nor come to it as a daily duty and a daily privilege. Indeed, their great theme is unsectarianism. Unsectarianism! That is the correct thing nowadays,-unsectarianism! Which, being translated means,-it does not signify which is which, whether it is right or wrong; it matters not one atom whether you obey God or obey man, whether you belong to a church which is apostate from the truth, or one that holds the truth. Unsectarianism, my friends, is treason to God and to God’s Word. It is only the strong sectarian who can be true; I mean only the man who follows out the divine Word in every jot and tittle, and feels, “I must hold to this truth if I stand alone.” I mean not that we are to say, “I cannot love this Christian brother who does not see what I see.” Nay, my brethren, I wish to push liberty of conscience further than that, so far as to feel that you have no right to judge your brother about what he sees or does not see, but that you stand solely and wholly on your own feet before God; you have there to exercise your own mind, and it does not matter to you whether you belong to any one section, or whether you be a sect to yourself, as long as you can but call him Lord and Master, and keep all his Word and all his way. But the giving up of this and that truth, denying one ordinance and compromising another, shirking some doctrines and dexterously turning the angles of other doctrines, giving up any particular practice which is clearly of God’s appointment, and tolerating any other practice of human device with a vindication of its harmlessness, this is nothing but flat treason against the majesty of heaven in order to win the approbation of men. The world points its finger at the rigid Puritan, and declaims against him; but the rigid Puritan is the man whom God accepts; nor can he be too rigid in everything in which he believes the divine will is concerned. “How liberal,” says one. Ay; but let a servant be liberal with his own money, not with his master’s. I have no right to liberality in principles. Principles and duties are things which I have no more right to touch than I have to take pains to alter the statute law of the realm. Yea, let the canons of law be altered, and Acts of Parliament be burned in the fire, but let the Word of God stand fast for ever. If any man preach any other gospel than that we have received, instead of saying, “No doubt he is an excellent, but a mistaken man,” let us say with Paul, “Let him be accursed!” and until we get back the old spirit of following out the Master’s mind in all things, personally, scrupulously, rigidly, our consciences keeping close to the Divine mind, we shall scarcely know what true obedience is. The Church greatly needeth now to be brought back to her true standing of obedience to her Lord and King.

Taking this for granted, admitting that it is our duty to search out the divine command in all respects, and to yield in nothing whatsoever, you may ask, “How are we to discover the divine mind?”

Let me say at once, only by searching the Word of God, under the teaching of the Holy Spirit. Brethren and sisters, let me warn you against the many ways in which men have sought to discover God’s will apart from his Word,-all foolish, and some of them wicked. I have known some who have opened the Book as if the passage on which they should alight at hap-hazard became their oracle, or if another passage of a different complexion, irrespective of the context, should open or turn up, that should guide them. Do you not know that this was an old heathen custom? The Romans, using Virgil or some other poet, as you use your Bibles, did just the same thing. When you are so doing, you are simply guilty of idolatry, and might just as well go to the shrine of Delphi, and consult the Pythian oracle, as thus tempt the Lord your God. We have known some cast lots to know what they should do; as if the most precarious hazard could interpret God’s will which is so clear and plain! I marvel how any civilized man can be sol besotted as to do such things, and yet I know that this is an evil pastime and practice which lingers amongst some Christians.

Others judge of the divine mind by providence. But what do you mean by providence? Is it the current of the wind, the drifting of the tide, the aspect of the clouds, or the fortuitous coincidences that have arrested your attention? Such providence, you know, will guide you any way if you follow that. Jonah went to go to Tarshish, and he found a ship; of course he did, but was it a providence? Yes, he might have said, “I should never have gone, but the finger of providence seemed to clear.” Many people have got into prison through such providence. Your rule is not to be providence, but the command of God. Who are you that you should interpret providence? Is that a providence when a man means to rob another that he finds the house neglected? If a man means to cheat, is that a providence that he meets some easy customer in the course of business? Yet many talk so, and try to lay their sins upon the providence of God. My brethren and sisters, never do this; you will either be the victims of infatuation or the perpetrators of wicked folly, if you do anything of the kind.

Others, too, judge of their duty by impressions. “If I feel it impressed upon my mind,” says one, “I shall do it.” Does God command you to do it? That is the proper question. If he does, you should make haste, whether it is impressed upon your mind or not; but if there be no command to that effect, or rather, if it diverges from the line of God’s statutes, and needs apology or explanation, hold your hand, for though you have ten thousand impressions, yet must you never dare to go by them. It is a dangerous thing for us to make the whimsies of our brain instead of the clear precepts of God, the guide of our moral actions. “To the law and to the testimony,”-this is the lamp that shows the Christian true light; be this your chart, be this your compass; but as to impressions, and whims, and fancies, and I know not what beside which some have taken,-these are mere wreckers’ lights that will entice you on the rocks. Hold fast to the Word of God, and nothing else; whoever he shall be that shall guide you otherwise, close your ears to him. If at any time, through infirmity or weakness, I should teach you anything which is contrary to this Book, cast it from you, hurl it away as chaff is driven from the wheat; if it be mine and not my Master’s, cast it away. Though you love me, though I may have been the means of your conversion to God, think no more of what I say than of the very strangers in the street, if it be not consistent with the teachings of the Most High. Our guide is his written Word, let us keep to this.

Many arguments might be adduced for such obedience as this; but we shall only mention three or four of them.

Remember, beloved in the Lord, that our duty as Christians is not to be measured by our sense of that duty or by our knowledge. What, is it my duty to do anything that I do not know to be my duty? Certainly it is. Do you not know that, even amongst men in the ordinary courts of law, if you break a law of which you were not cognizant, you are still amenable to punishment? Only last week a case in point occurred. In the new Act for regulating the traffic in the streets, there are clauses which are quite unknown to some of the drovers. Some of these persons were prosecuted for breaking the law. They pleaded that they did not know it, and, very rightly, they were dealt with leniently; but the magistrate told them that Parliament looked upon the law as binding upon men whether they knew it or not;-it was their business to know it, and they were to find it out. If it could be proved that a man did not try to know the law, and went on breaking it through wilful ignorance, he would soon learn that the judicature would not treat him with leniency, but would rather consider it a double offence, that the man who violated the law also persistently showed contempt for the law he violated, and would not search it out. There are many such professing Christians. They do not know their duty because they do not want to know it. If they found out such-and-such a commandment of the Lord to be imperative, it would be very inconvenient; therefore they walk on the other side of the road rather than face the public notice. They take care to read some other passage of Scripture. I recollect a good man, a very good man, who, whenever he came to that passage in the Acts about Philip and the eunuch, took care not to read it, for it is a very awkward passage, and reads so wonderfully like believers’ baptism. As he could not bear that ordinance, and did not wish to trouble his conscience about it, he passed that passage by; but was he therein excusable? Assuredly not. God’s ordinances are not according to our notions of those ordinances. Either a thing is right or not; if it is right, it is right, and cannot be wrong; and I sin in not being obedient to it. My conscience cannot excuse me. If my conscience errs, I therein commit two sins,-first, the error of my conscience, and secondly, the error against the law, which I have not properly read, and have not understood as I ought to have done. The fall spoiled our understanding so that we do not know the divine will as we should know it; but the flaw in our understanding is no excuse for the flaw in our life, otherwise all the corruptions of nature might be urged as an excuse for the corruptions of practice, which they certainly are not. Our rule, then, is not our sense of duty, nor what we think to be our duty, but this Book. There it is, the whole of it, and we must come to that, and seek to set right our sense of duty and our conscience by the dictates of the Word of God.

And recollect, Christian, that sin is to you, if you really be what you say you are, evermore a thing of horror. Is it not, therefore, horrible even to suspect that you may be living constantly in sinful omission, and every day engaged in the commission of some action hostile to God? Would you not be alarmed if it were whispered that there was a cancer somewhere in your body, and you did not know where it was, but only that it was there somewhere? Would you ever rest till you had found out where it was? And if at night it should be said that somewhere in the house there was a thief, would you say, “Well, I do not know where he is, and therefore I am justified in going to sleep”? No; but you would search until you drove him out. If you were in a room where there was a deadly viper, and you just got an inkling of its being there, would you say, “I do not know, but I am almost sorry that I ever heard about the viper; I wish somebody had left me alone”? No; but you would thank him for telling you it was there, and you would never rest till you had got rid of it. So, each one of us may be doing what we think is right, but which may be wrong. We may be living each day in the neglect of something which we ought to be doing. Will we not, therefore, make it this very night one of our earnest prayers, “Lord, teach me thy commandments, and give me grace to keep them; suffer me not, even one solitary day, to live willingly disobedient to the will of so kind and loving a Lord!”

Beloved, to the keeping of every command there is a reward appended, not of debt but of grace. In keeping his commandments there is great reward, while, on the other hand, he that knoweth his Master’s will and doeth it not, shall be beaten with many stripes. He that knew not his Lord’s will, and therefore did not do it, was he therefore excused? No, he was beaten too,-beaten with fewer stripes, but still beaten. There is a reward which God gives, not that we have any merit, but out of his own grace and love to those who keep close to himself. And, dear friends, we never neglect a duty without at once suffering for it; whether we perceive the suffering or not, we are losers by the neglect. Oh, that we could walk after the perfect pattern of the life of our Lord Jesus, without flaw, and in perfection; and if that be not possible, yet at any rate let us struggle after it, seeking each day for the power of the Holy Spirit to work in us, that we may be conformed unto the mind of Christ. O Spirit of God, leave us not! Clay vessels as we are, thou hast made us vessels for honour; let us be fit for the Master’s: use.

The best argument, after all, that I can use with you is this: when our Lord Jesus became a servant on earth, he did not wait for instructions; but he sought out what he could do for us. O my brethren and sisters, all that spontaneous service of affection which he rendered to us flowed from his inmost soul with a marvellous force. He did not say, “How little can I do for these poor sinners? How little can I suffer, and yet let them be saved? How little can I give, and yet bring them to heaven?” No, but he emptied out the full treasure of his soul for us, in nothing bounding or limiting himself, the infinite Saviour, infinite in all that he did for us, in the boundless affection of his heart. Let us not serve Christ after a narrower sort than this, but let us ask him to take our whole heart, to take us as disciples into his school, to teach us to write according to his copy, to amend the errors that we make, to correct the lines wherein we have been mistaken, that we may come day by day nearer and nearer to the perfect copy, and make up our minds to give up the dearest thing we have seen when we find it to be wrong, and to follow out the hardest practice when we know it to be right. I do think that, even with regard to our doctrinal views, firmly established as we should be in the present truth, we should always feel this when we are in prayer, that if there be something new that we do not know, but is quite contrary to what we do know, we are ready to learn it; and if some cherished opinion, which we have held all our lives long, should be found to be contrary to the mind of God, let us hold ourselves ready to abjure that opinion at all costs and hazards as willing, obedient, and true soldiers of our great Master and Captain.

I have thus tried to address the children of God. I have done it very, very feebly. The Lord forgive our weakness!

To the ungodly there is this word. I have not spoken to you hitherto, because I could not lay down the actions of the living to the dead, but to you there is a word. We are bidden to preach to everyone in all the world, “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” To believe is to trust the Lord Jesus. It is that which saves you. Faith alone saves. After you have believed, then come and declare your death and burial with Christ through baptism, according to his Word. That will not save you. You have no right to it until you are saved; but when you are saved, then that ordinance, and the ordinance of the Lord’s supper, become instructive and useful to you, but they are of no service to you until you are completely saved through the blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ.

The Lord give you grace to believe, and to follow in his ways, and to him be the glory! Amen.

Exposition by C. H. Spurgeon

ROMANS 8:23-39

(Concluded from Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, No. 3,255, “The Pearl of Patience.”)

Verse 23. And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the firstfruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.*

That is what we are waiting for: “the redemption of our body;” and we shall not wait in vain for it, for Christ is the Saviour of our body as well as of our soul, and the day shall come when even our bodies shall be free from pain, and weakness, and weariness, and sin, and death. Happy day! we may well look forward to it with the loftiest anticipations.

24, 25. For we are saved by hope: but hope that is seen is not hope: for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.†

This is our present position,-patiently waiting for “the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ,”-patiently waiting for “the manifestion of the sons of God,” for “it doth not yet appear what we shall be; but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”

26. Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered.

There is much in this chapter about groaning, and that is but natural, for it so largely concerns our present imperfect state; but, by-and-by, there will be-

“No groans to mingle with the songs

Which warble from immortal tongues.”

27. And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercesssion for the saints according to the will of God.

This explains what to many is the mystery of prayer. The Holy Spirit, being himself God, knows the secret purposes of the divine will, and therefore moves the saints to pray in accordance with that will, and makes their supplications effectual through his own prevailing intercession.

28. And we know-

Paul, like John, was no Agnostic; he did not even say, “We think, we imagine, we suppose.” No; “we know”-

28. That all things work together for good-

We must not stop there, otherwise the statement will not be true, for all things do not work together for good to all men, but only-

28. To them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.*

How are we to know who they are who are the called according to God’s eternal purpose? The previous clause informs us, for both relate to the same individuals; “them that love God” are “them who are the called according to his purpose.” We cannot peer into the pages of the Lamb’s book of life, yet we can tell by this simple test whether our names are recorded there,-do we truly love the Lord? If so, all things are working for our present and eternal good,-all things visible and invisible, all things friendly and unfriendly, all things in providence and grace.

29. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.†

What an eternal honour for all believers,-that they might be among the “many brethren” of Christ, God’s firstborn and well-beloved Son! Here too we see the purpose of God’s foreknowledge and predestination, that we should be “conformed to the image of his Son.”

30. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.‡

You see that these great declarations relate to the same persons right through the whole series: “Whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate; … whom he did predestinate, them he also called; … them he also justified; … them he also glorified.” There is not a single link missing from the eternal purpose and foreknowledge of God to the everlasting glory in which the saints’ bliss shall be consummated. The practical questions for each one of us to answer are just these,-have I been “called” by grace out of nature’s darkness into God’s marvellous light? Have I been “justified” by faith, and have I peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ? Then, being called and justified, I may rest assured that I have been predestinated, and that in due time I shall be glorified.

“There, where my blessed Jesus reigns,

In heaven’s unmeasured space,

I’ll spend a long eternity

In pleasure and in praise.”

31, 32. What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also give us all things.

After having given us his own Son, what is there that he can withhold from us if it is for our real good? Nay, he has already virtually given us all things in giving him to us.

33, 34. Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth. Who is it that condemneth? It is Christ that died, yea rather, that is risen again, who is even at the right hand of God, who also maketh intercession for us.*

Well might the apostle ring out these confident challenges to heaven, and earth, and hell. As it is God that justifieth, who can bring any charge against his elect? Who can condemn those for whom Christ died, for whom he has risen, and for whom he is now making intercession at the right hand of God?

35-37. Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? As it is written, for thy sake we are killed all the day long; we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter. Nay in all these things we are more than conquerors through him that loved us.†

“All these things” have only made the saints cling the more closely to their Lord, instead of separating them from him. Their persecutors thought they were triumphing over them, but it was the martyrs who were the victors all the while.

38, 39. For I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.‡

Paul had good reason for being persuaded that there was no separation for those for whom there was no condemnation; may we be among them by God’s grace! Amen.