Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (21 page)
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Authors: Charles Spurgeon
We will only mention one more form of this evil. Some may be said to be guilty of withholding the corn, because while they themselves do not speak for Christ, they do not help those who can. No Christian man ought to go to bed with an easy conscience if he has thousands of pounds which he does not require, which lies by unused for God. There must be many Christians in this rich country who have not consecrated their substance to the Lord. When a man can say, "I have money which I really do not need, and my children do not require it; and this is money absolutely needed for God's cause," ought he to keep it from the Lord Jesus?' Must you confess that so many missionaries might be sent out tomorrow if you just drew a cheque and handed it over to the proper quarter--then why not do it? A destitute neighborhood needs a place of worship, and if I can build it if I would, how am I to answer for it to my Lord?
I cannot understand how a man can love God when he only lives to heap up riches. I can with great difficulty imagine such a case, but I fear that such cannot be real piety. It seems to me that if I have any religion in my soul, it will make me not only say with Dr. Watts: -
but I think it would make me carry it out. I will not propose to you that you should act indiscreetly in giving, so as to beggar your families or deprive yourselves of what is necessary; you know I am not so foolish. But I am speaking to many Christians who have not only enough, but to spare, and who will continue to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate, and I cannot think that they can feel that they are doing right in the sight of God. O God! this great city needing preachers, needing the gospel--thousands needing even bread to keep them from starving--and for thy professing people to be heaping their coffers fuller and fuller! Why surely, if I do this, I am heaping up wrath against the day of wrath, and I shall find it come into my bosom hot and fierce from the God of Sabaoth, to whom my gold and my silver will cry out against me. Let us not be guilty of this, but each in our own station, as far as we can, let us be aiding others to preach the word if we cannot preach it ourselves. Dozens of young men are desirous to enter our College, and you can help them to go forth to preach if you cannot preach yourself.
II. I am pleased to turn to the other subject for a minute or two. I am to speak upon the blessedness which those possess who break the bread of life.
To describe it is altogether beyond my power. You must know and taste and feel it, beloved. There are many blessednesses in doing good to others. God is a good paymaster; he pays his servants while at work as well as when they have done it; and one of his payments is this, an easy conscience. If you have spoken faithfully only to one person, when you go to bed at night you feel happy in thinking "I have this day discharged my conscience of that man's blood." You do not know how delightful a Sabbath evening is to some of us when God has helped us to be faithful; how sweet to feel "I have made many blunders, shown many infirmities of the flesh, and so on, but I have preached the gospel and preached it with my whole heart to the best of my ability." One feels a burden taken off one's back, and there is a joy and satisfaction unknown to those who sit at home doing nothing. You in your class at the Sunday-school, I know you feel when Sunday is over, though it is a very hard day's work for some of you after the six days' toil in the week, you feel "I thank God I did not spend that afternoon in lolling about at home, but I did speak a word for Jesus." You will find such a peace of mind that you would not give it up for all the world. Then there is a great comfort in doing something for Jesus. Look into his face--what would you not do for him? When first converted did you not think you could do ten thousand things for Jesus; the moment your burden was off your back and your sins forgiven, how you felt you could follow him through floods and flames! Have you lived up to your resolutions, brethren? Have you kept up to your own ideas of Christian duties? I do not suppose any of us can say that we have. Still, what little we have done has been an unspeakable delight, when we have felt that we have been crowning his head and strewing palm-branches in his path. Oh! what a happiness to place jewels in his crown and give him to see of the travail of his soul! Beloved, there is very great reward in watching the first buddings of conviction in a young soul! To say of that girl in the class, "She seems so tender of heart, I do hope that there is the Lord's work there." To go home and pray over that boy who said something in the afternoon to make you think he must know something more than he seemed to know! Oh, the joy of hope! But as for the joy of success! It is unspeakable. I recollect the first soul that God ever gave me--she is in heaven now--but I remember when my good deacon said to me, "God has set his seal on your ministry in this place, sir." Oh, if anybody had said to me, "Somebody has left you twenty thousand pounds," I should not have given a snap of my fingers for it compared with that joy which I felt when I was told that God had set his seal on my ministry. "Who is it?" I asked. "Why, it is a poor laboring man's wife! she went home brokenhearted by the sermon two or three Sundays ago, and she has been in great trouble of soul, but she has found peace, and she says she would like to speak to you." I felt like the boy who has earned his first guinea, like a diver who has been down to the depths of the sea and brought up a rare pearl-- I prize each one whom God has given me, but I prize that woman most. Since then my God has given me many thousands of souls, who profess to have found the Savior by hearing or reading words which have come from my lips. Well, this joy, overwhelming as it is, is a hungry sort of joy --you want more of it: for the more you have of spiritual children the more your soul desires to see them multiplied. Let me tell you that to be a soul-winner is the happiest thing in this world, and with every soul you bring to Jesus Christ you seem to get a new heaven here upon earth. But what will be the joy of soul-winning when we get up above! What happiness to the Christian minister to be saluted on his entrance into heaven by many spiritual children! They will call him "Father," for though they are not married nor given in marriage, though natural relations are all over, yet spiritual relations last for ever. Oh! how sweet is that sentence, "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Do you know what the joy of Christ is over a saved sinner? You cannot guess it. You would need to know the griefs he suffered to save that sinner. O the joys he must feel when he sees that sinner saved as the result of his griefs; this is the very joy which you and I are to possess in heaven: "Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord." Yes, when he mounts the throne you shall mount with him. When the heaven rings with "Well done, well done," you shall partake in the reward; you have toiled with him, you have suffered with him, you shall now reign with him; you have sown with him, you shall reap with him; you were despised with him, you shall now be honored with him; your face was covered with sweat like his, and your soul was grieved for the sins of men as his soul was, now shall your face be bright with heaven's splendor as is his countenance, and now shall your soul he filled with beatific joys even as his soul is. He that breaketh bread, blessings shall be upon his head.
Hungry sinners, wanting a Savior, we cannot withhold the bread from you. You may never come to hear the gospel again; we therefore will open the granary very wide. Christ Jesus, the Son of God, became man to save men, and inasmuch as God's wrath was due to sin, Christ took the sin of all who have ever believed, or ever shall believe on him, and, taking all their sins, he was punished in their room and place, and stead so that God can now justly forgive sin because Christ was punished in the stead of sinners, and suffered divine wrath for them. Now this is the way of salvation, that thou trust this Son of God with thy soul and if thou dost so then know that thy sins are now forgiven thee, and that thou art saved. Concerning this salvation, hear thou just these few words.
It is a satisfying salvation. Here is all that thou canst want. Thy conscience shall be at ease for ever if thou believest in Jesus: thy biggest sins shall no longer trouble thee, thy blackest iniquities shall no longer haunt thee. Believing in Jesus, every sin thou hast of thought and word and deed shall be cast into the depths of the sea and never shall be mentioned against thee any more for ever.
It is an all-sufficient salvation too. However great thy sins, Christ's blood can take all away. However deep thy needs, Christ can supply them. Thou canst not be so big a sinner as he is a Savior. Thou mayest be the worst sinner out of hell, but thou art not too great for him to remove; he can carry elephantine sinners upon his shoulders, and bear gigantic mountains of guilt upon his head into the wilderness of forgetfulness. He has enough for thee, however deep thy necessity.
It is moreover a complete salvation. Sovereign mercy does not stand on the mountain and cry to you, climb up hither and I will save you. Eternal mercy comes down the valley to you just where you are, and meets your case just as it is, and never leaves you till it has made you meet to be a partaker of the inheritance of the saints in light. Christ does not want you to pay one talent out of the hundred and promise to pay for you the ninety-nine. He will discharge all your debts of sin. All that you want to take you up to heaven is provided in Jesus.
This is a present salvation--a salvation which if it come to you, will save you now. You shall be a child of God this very hour, and ere that clock shall strike again you shall rejoice in the peace which the Spirit of God gives you, if you believe on him.
It is an available salvation, freely presented to you in Christ Jesus. Remember the text of two or three Sundays ago: "Whosoever will, let him take of the water of life freely." Jesus casts out none that come to him. Oh that thou mayest be led to come this morning.
Thus have I tried to avoid the sin of withholding corn; and if any in
this house of prayer have been guilty of it, I pray you avoid the curse of the people, and seek the blessing of the Most High God by this day endeavoring to scatter everywhere the bread of life. Go and work for God wherever you have an opportunity, and help us in our prayers and efforts to send forth more laborers into the harvest, for the harvest
truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few. Amen.
The Soul Winner A sermon (No. 1292) delivered on Thursday evening, January 20th, 1876, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington,
by C. H. Spurgeon.
I had very great joy last night--many of you know why but some do not. We held our annual meeting of the church, and it was a very pleasant sight to see so many brethren and sisters knit together in the
heartiest love, welded together as one mass by common sympathies, and holding firmly to "one Lord, one faith, and one baptism." Think of a church with 4,900 members! Such a community has seldom been gathered in any age, and in the present century it is without a parallel. "O Lord, thou hast multiplied the people and increased the joy. They joy before thee as the joy of harvest." It brings tears into one's eyes to look upon so many who declare themselves to be members of the body of Christ. The hope that so many are plucked as brands from the burning and delivered from the wrath to come is in itself exceedingly
consoling, and I felt the joy of it while communing with the brethren and sisters in Christ Jesus. On thinking it over afterwards however, it seemed to me that there was a higher joy in looking at a body of believers than that which arises from merely regarding them as saved. Not but what there is a great joy in salvation, a joy worthy to stir the angelic harps. Think of the Savior's agony in the ransom of every one of his redeemed, think of the work of the Holy Spirit in every renewed heart, think of the love of the Father as resting upon every one of the regenerate: I could not, if I took up my parable for a month, set forth all the mass of joy that is to be seen in a multitude of believers if we only look at what God has done for them, and promised to them, and will fulfill in them. But there is yet a wider field of thought, and my mind has been traversing it all this day--the thought of the capacities of service contained in a numerous band of believers, the possibilities of blessing others which lie within the bosoms of regenerate persons. We must not think so much of what we already are that we forget what the Lord may accomplish by us for others. Here are the coals of fire, but who shall describe the
conflagration which they may cause?
We ought to regard the Christian Church, not as a luxurious hostelry where Christian gentlemen may each one dwell at his ease in his own inn, but as a barracks in which soldiers are gathered together to be drilled and trained for war. We should regard the Christian church not as an association for mutual admiration and comfort, but as an army with banners, marching to the fray to achieve victories for Christ, to storm the strongholds of the foe and to add province after province to the Redeemer's kingdom. We may view converted persons when gathered into church membership as so much wheat in the granary. God be thanked that it is there, and that so far the harvest has rewarded the sower; but far more soul-inspiring is the view when we regard those believers as each one likely to be made a living center for the extension of the kingdom of Jesus, for then we see them sowing the fertile valleys of our land and promising ere long to bring forth some thirty, some forty, some fifty, and some a hundredfold. The capacities of life are enormous; one becomes a thousand in a marvellously brief space. Within a short time a few grains of wheat would suffice to seed the whole world, and a few true saints might suffice for the conversion of all nations. Only take that which comes of one ear, store it well, sow it all, again store it next year, and then sow it all again, and the multiplication almost exceeds the power of computation. O that every Christian were thus year by year the Lord's seed corn! If all the wheat in the world had perished except a single grain, it would not take many years to replenish all the earth and sow her fields and plains; but in a far shorter time, in the power of the Holy Spirit, one Paul or one Peter would have evangelised all lands. View yourselves as grains of wheat predestinated to seed the world. That man lives grandly who is as earnest as if the very existence of Christianity depended upon himself, and is determined that to all men within his reach shall be made known the unsearchable riches of Christ.
