A Divided Heart
A Sermon
(No. 276)
Delivered on Sabbath Morning, September 25th, 1859, by the
REV. C.H. SPURGEON
at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.
"Their heart is divided; now shall they be found faulty."–Hosea 10:2.
THIS passage may be taken as referring to the people of Israel as a
nation, and it is not less applicable to the church of God. It is one
grand and grievous fault with the church of Christ at the present day,
that it is not merely divided somewhat in its creed, and somewhat also
in its practice of the ordinances, but alas, it is also somewhat
divided in heart. When the differences are of such a character, that as
people of God we can still love each other, and still unite in the
common battle against the cause of evil and in the common end of
building up the church, then there is but little that is faulty. But
when our doctrinal divisions grow to so great a head that we cease to
co-operate; when our opinions upon mere ordinances become so acid
towards each other, that we can no longer extend the right hand of
fellowship to those who differ from us, then indeed is the church of
God found faulty. "A house divided against itself cannot stand." Even
Beelzebub with all his craft cannot stand when once his hosts are
divided. If Beelzebub be divided against himself, even he must fall,
and assuredly this must be the case with those who lack that craft
which might tend to overcome disunion. Oh, my brethren, nothing can so
soon cast down the church from its high place, mar its glories, and
diminish its opportunities of success, as divisions among the hearts of
God's people. If we would grieve the Holy Spirit and cause him to
begone; if we would provoke the anger of the Most High and bring down
trying providences on the churches, we have nothing to do but to be
divided in our hearts and all will be accomplished. If we wish that
every vial may empty out its ill, and that every vessel may withhold
its oil, we have but to cherish our bickerings till they become
animosities; we have but to nurse our animosities till they become
hatreds, and all the work will be fully completed. And if this be the
case in the church at large, it is peculiarly true in those various
sections of it which we now call Apostolic Churches. Oh, my brethren,
the smallest church in the world is potent for good when it hath but
one heart and one soul; when pastor, elders, deacons, and members, are
bound together by a threefold cord that cannot be broken. Then are they
mighty against every attack. But however great their numbers, however
enormous their wealth, however splendid may be the talents with which
they are gifted, they are powerless for good the moment that they
become divided amongst themselves. Union is strength. Blessed is the
army of the living God, in that day when it goeth forth to battle with
one mind, and its soldiers as with the tramp of one man, in undivided
march, go onwards towards the attack. But a curse awaiteth that church
which runneth hither and thither and which, divided in itself, hath
lost the main stay of its strength with which it should batter against
the enemy. Division cuts our bowstrings, snaps our spears, hoofs our
horses, and burns our chariots in the fire. We are undone the moment
the link of love is snapped. Let this perfect bond be once cut in twain
and we fall down, and our strength is departed. By union we live, and
by disunion we expire.
I intend, however, to take the text this morning specially with
reference to our individual condition. We shall look at the separate
individual heart of each man. If divisions in the great main body–if
separation among the distinct classes of that body should each promote
disasters, how much more disastrous must be a division in that better
kingdom–the heart of man. If there be civil tumult in the town of
Mansoul, even when no enemy attacks its walls, it will be in a
sufficiently dangerous position. If the isle of Man be governed by two
kings, then is it disorganised, and it will soon be destroyed. I
address myself this morning to some of whom it can be said, "their
heart is divided, now shall they be found faulty." And thus shall I
address you, first of all noticing a fearful disease; secondly, its
usual symptoms; thirdly, its sad effects; and fourthly, its future
consequences.
I. Observe, then, that our text describes a FEARFUL DISEASE. Their
heart is divided. I have called it a fearful disease, and this will
very readily appear if you observe, first of all, the seat of it. It
affects a vital part, it is not merely a disease of the hand, that
reformation might cure; it is not merely a disease of the foot, that
restraint might sometimes mollify; it is not merely a disease of the
eye which hath but to be couched to let the light stream in upon it. It
is a disease of a vital region–of the heart; a disease in a part so
vital that it affects the whole man. The utmost extremity of the frame
suffers when once the heart becomes affected, and especially so
affected as to be divided. There is no power, no passion, there is no
motive, no principle, which does not become vitiated, when once the
heart is diseased. Hence it is that Satan, who is always crafty,
endeavors to strike at the heart. He will give you the hand if you
please; you may be honest. He will give you the eye if you please; you
shall be outwardly chaste. He will give you the foot, if you please;
you shall appear to run in the way of righteousness Only let him keep
the heart, only let him rule in the citadel, and he will be well
content to give up all the rest. John Bunyan describes this as being
one of the terms which old Diabolus was said to make with King
Shaddai,–"Oh!" said he, "I will give up all the city of Mansoul, if
thou wilt but permit me to live in the citadel of the heart." Surely
there was but little in his terms and conditions. Ay but give up
everything else; if thou retainest the heart, thou retainest all, O,
fiend! for out of the heart are the issues of life.
Thus the disease of our text is one that toucheth a vital part, a part
which if once affected, tends to vitiate the whole frame. But you will
observe, the disease here described, not only deals with a vital part,
but toucheth it after a most serious fashion. It does not simply say
the heart palpitates; it doth not declare that the life-floods that
issue from it have become more shallow and less rapid, but it declares
something worse than all these, namely, that the heart was cleft in
twain and utterly divided. A stony heart may be turned to flesh but
turn a divided heart into whatsoever you please, so long as it is
divided, all is ill. Nothing can go right when that which should be one
organ becomes two; when the one motive power begins to send forth its
life-floods into two diverse channels, and so creates intestine strife
and war. A united heart is life to a man, but if the heart be cut in
twain, in the highest, deepest, and most spiritual sense, he dies. It
is a disease which is not only affecting a vital part, but affecting it
after the most deadly fashion.
But we must observe again of this divided heart, that it is a division
in itself peculiarly loathsome. Men who are possessed of it do not feel
themselves to be unclean; in fact they will visit all society, they
will venture into the church, they will propose to receive her
communion, and to be numbered with her members, and they will
afterwards go and mingle with the world; and they do not feel that they
have become dishonest. They think themselves fit to mingle with honest
worldlings, and with sincere Christians too. If a man had spots upon
his countenance or some disease that stared everyone else in the face
as often as he was beheld surely he would retire from society and
endeavor to keep himself a recluse. But not so the man with a divided
heart. He goes everywhere, utterly unconscious that his disease is of
the most loathsome character. Shall I show you how it is so? Take the
glass and look at the man's heart, and you will discern that it is
loathsome, because Satan and sin reigns there. Although the man goes
about and has sufficient of what is right and what is wrong, to be
uneasy in his sin, yet has he such an intense love of all manner of
iniquity, that he allows the loathsome demons to come and dwell in his
heart. But his loathsomeness is worse than this, because all the while
that he is really living in sin, he is a loathsome hypocrite,
pretending that he is a child of God. Of all the things in the world
that stink in the nostrils of a honest man, hypocrisy is the worst. If
thou be a worldling, be a worldling. If thou serve Satan, serve him. If
Baal be god, serve him, but mask not thy service of self and sin by a
pretended service of God. Appear to be what thou art, tear off thy
masks. The church was never meant to be a masquerade. Stand out in thy
true colors. If thou preferest Satan's shrine say so, and let men know
it, but if thou wilt serve God, serve him, and do it heartily, as
knowing him who is a jealous God and searcheth the hearts and trieth
the reins of the children of men. It is a terribly loathsome disease
this of a divided heart. If the man were but known, his disease is so
loathsome, that the most wicked men in the world would have nothing to
do with him. I have known sometimes instances of this. A man who
pretended to be religious and regularly attended his place of worship
is seen on one occasion entering into a ball-room of the very lowest
class. He begins at once to plunge into its gaieties, with the most
evil intentions. He is at once observed. The right senses even of the
wicked themselves are awakened. "Kick that man down stairs," is the
unanimous verdict, and he receives it and he deserved it right well.
When a man has a divided heart–tries to do right and to do wrong, to
serve God and to serve Satan at the same time; I say his disease is of
so loathsome and degraded a character, that the very worldling, whose
leprosy is on his brow, despises, hates him, and avoids him.
And yet again, not merely is the disease loathsome, but I must observe
it is one always difficult to cure, because it is chronic. It is not an
acute disease, which brings pain, and suffering, and sorrow with it,
but it is chronic, it has got into the very nature of the man. A
divided heart, how are you to get at that? If it were a disease in any
other part, the lancet might find it out, or some medicine might heal
it. But what physician can join together a divided heart? What skillful
surgeon can set together the disrupted members of a soul that has been
divided between God and mammon? This is a disease which enters into the
very nature, and will lie in the blood, though the most powerful
medicines search it out. This is a disease, in fact, which nothing but
Omnipotent grace can ever overcome. But he has no grace whose heart is
divided between God and mammon. He is an enemy to God, he is an injury
to the church, he is a despiser of God's Word, he is a sheaf ripening
for the harvest of eternal fire. His disease is deeply rooted within
him, and if left alone it will come to a most dreadful end–its end is
sure destruction.
I must observe once more, and then I will leave this point of the
disease, that, according to the Hebrew of my text, this disease is a
very difficult one to deal with, from the fact that it is a flattering
disease. The text might be rendered–"Their heart flatters them; now
are they found faulty." There are many cunning flatterers in the world,
but the most cunning is man's own heart. A man's own heart will flatter
him even about his sins. A man is a grasping miser–his heart flatters
him that he is only exercising proper business habits. A man on the
other hand is extravagant and spends the good gifts of God upon his own
evil passions; then his heart tells him that he is a liberal soul. The
heart turns "sweet into bitter and bitter into sweet." It is so
"deceitful above all things," and so "desperately wicked," that it has
the impudence to "put darkness for light and light for darkness." Now
when a man has a divided heart, he generally flatters himself. "Well,"
says he, "it is true I drink too much, but then there is never a time
that I refuse a guinea towards a charity. It is true," says he "I am
not certainly what I should be in my moral character, but still, see
how regularly I keep to my church or chapel. It is true," says he, "I
don't now and then mind a trick or two in my trade, but I am always
ready to help the poor." And so he imagines that he blots out an evil
trait in his character with a good one and thus flatters his heart. And
see how self-contented and satisfied he is. The poor child of God is
trying his own heart with the deepest possible anxiety; this man knows
of no such thing. He is always fully assured that he is right. The true
believer is sitting down and turning over his accounts day by day to
see whether he be really on the road to heaven or whether he has
mistaken his evidence and has been deceived. But this man,
self-satisfied, bandages his own eyes and walks deliberately on,
singing at every step, straight to his own destruction. I know of some
such now. It will not suffice for me simply to state what their
character is unless God the Holy Spirit open their eyes. They will be
sure not to know their own likeness, even though I should paint it to
the very life, and put in every touch and stroke, yet they will say,
"Ah he could not refer to me. I am so good and so godly, there could
have been no reference to me in anything that he said." Do you know a
class of people that pull the most tremendously long faces, that always
look so serious, that talk the English language with a kind of unctuous
twang, that give a savoury pronunciation to every word they utter?
Beware of them. When a man wears all his religion in his face, he has
generally but a very small stock in his heart. Those tradesmen that put
such a great display in their windows, frequently have very little
behind. So with these professors; no one would know they were
religious, so they label themselves that you may not make a mistake.
You would think they were worldlings, if it were not for their
sanctimonious appearance. But by putting that on, they think to glide
through the world with credit. I hope they are not imagining that they
shall stand accepted before the bar of God and deceive the Omniscient.
Alas for them! Their heart is divided. This is no uncommon disease,
despite its loathsomeness and its terrible fatality. Rife is it in this
day; tens of thousands of Englishmen who are reckoned good and
honorable are afflicted with it. Their whole head is sick, and their
whole heart faint from the fact that their heart is divided. They lack
the courage to be thorough-going sinners, and they have not sincerity
enough to be truly-devoted people of God.
II. Having thus described the disease, I proceed to notice its USUAL
SYMPTOMS. When a man's heart is divided, one of the most frequent
symptoms is formality in his religious worship. You know some men,
perhaps, who are very stringent believers of a certain form of
doctrine, and very great admirers of a certain shape of church rule and
government. You will observe them utterly despising, and abhorring, and
hating all who differ from their predilections. Albeit the difference
be but as a jot or a tittle, they will stand up and fight for every
rubric, defend every old rusty nail in the church door, and think every
syllable of their peculiar creed should be accepted without challenge.
"As it was in the beginning, so must it be now, and so must it ever be
even unto the end." Now it is an observation which your experience will
probably warrant, as certainly mine does, that mostly these people
stand up so fiercely for the form, because lacking the power, that is
all they have to boast of. They have no faith, though they have a
creed. They have no life within, and they supply its place with outward
ceremony. What wonder therefore that they fiercely defend that? The man
who knows how precious the life of godliness is, the man who
understands its vitality, its deep-seated, deeply-rooted heart power,
he also loves the form, but not as he loves the Spirit. He approves the
letter, but he likes the pith and marrow better. He is apt, perhaps to
think less of forms than he should do, for he will mingle first with
one body of sincere Christians and then with another, and he will say,
"If I can enjoy my Master's presence it is but little matter to me
where I am found. If I can but find the name of Christ extolled, and
his simple gospel preached, this is all I desire." Not so, the man
whose heart is divided who has no soul in godliness. He is bigoted to
the extreme, and well–I repeat it–he may be, poor man; all he has is
the empty shell. What wonder therefore that he should be ready to fight
for it? You will notice many persons punctilious with regard even to
the form of our own simple worship. They will have it that there must
always be observed, not simply reverent behavior in the house of God,
but something more than mere reverence, there must be an abject
slavish, tyrannical fear upon the hearts of all who are gathered. They
will have it that every jot and tittle of our worship must always be
conducted with a certain traditional decorum. Now these people, as
frequently as not, know nothing whatever of the power of godliness, and
only contend for these little shells because they have not the kernel.
They fight for the surface albeit they have never discovered "the deep
that coucheth beneath." They know not the precious ores that lie in the
rich mines of the gospel, and therefore the surface, covered though it
be with weeds, and thistles, is quite enough for them. Formality in
religion is very often a trait in the character of a man who has a
divided heart.
But this, perhaps, is not the most prominent symptom. Another mark in
such a man's character is his inconsistency. You must not see him
always, if you would have a good opinion of him. You must be guarded as
to the days on which you call upon him. Call upon him on a Sunday and
you will find him like a saint; don't call upon him on the Saturday
night–you might, perhaps, find him very much like the worst of
sinners. Oh! of all the men in the world whom I fear most for, because
I know their dangerous and deceitful position, they are those among you
who try with all your might to follow the church and yet follow the
world You can come up and sing the sacred hymns of Zion one evening,
and another time you can go to your haunts and sing a profane and
lascivious song. You can drink one day at the table of the Lord and
another day at the table of devils. You appear to run first of all with
God's people in his service, and then afterwards run with the multitude
to do evil. Ah, men and brethren, this, indeed, is a terrible fact–a
terrible index of a frightful disease, You must have a divided heart if
you lead an inconsistent life. It is a happy circumstance when a
minister can believe of his church that be has no hypocrite in the
whole number, but I am bold to say, though with the deepest sorrow,
this is more than I could believe of so large a church as that over
which I am called to preside. Ah, friends, there may be some of you who
practice sins unseen by your pastor's eye. Neither elder or deacon has
yet tracked you out. You have been cunning in your iniquity. Perhaps
your sin is of such an order that church discipline would altogether
fail to touch it. You know, however, and your conscience tells you,
that your life is not consistent with your profession. I adjure you, by
the living God, as you and I must stand at the last great day face to
face at his tremendous bar, either give up your profession, or be true
to it. Cease to be called a Christian, or else be a Christian in truth.
Seek more grace, that you may live up to the example of your Master, or
else I entreat of you–and do it honestly, and if you would take me at
my word, I should rejoice that you had done so–renounce your
membership, and no longer make a profession of godliness. An
inconsistent life, I say, is a sure token of a divided heart.
And again I must observe there is another token of a divided heart,
namely–variableness in object. I might depict a character which you
have met with often in your life. A man who attends a public meeting
upon some religious matter is seized with a sudden enthusiasm to do
good. If he will not be a missionary to the heathen himself, yet he
will undertake to devote of his substance to the cause, and for the
next week there is nothing on his tongue but the missionary enterprise.
A little while after he attends some political meeting, and now there
is nothing before him but the reformation of politics. Another week,
and he is called to attend some sanitary commission, and now there is
nothing wanted but proper drainage. Religion, politics, social economy,
each in its turn, and everything else must give place to the last topic
which has engrossed his attention. These men run first in one
direction–then in another. Their religion is all spasmodic. They are
taken with it as men are taken with an ague. They shake by fits, and
anon they are calm. They are sometimes hot and feverish, and anon they
are chilly and cold. They take up their religion, and then they lay it
down again. What does this prove concerning them, but that they have a
divided heart, and they are in the sight of God diseased, loathsome
persons, who shall never see his face with joy.
To conclude the list of symptoms. Once more, frivolity in religion is
often a token of a divided heart; and here I address myself more
immediately to those of my own age. It is perhaps too common a sin with
young persons to treat religion with a light and frivolous air. There
is a seriousness which is well becoming, especially in youthful
Christians. Cheerfulness should be the constant aim of the aged. Their
tendency is towards sadness. Perhaps a proper seriousness and solemnity
should be the aim of the youthful believer, whose tendency will rather
be to levity than to despondency. Oh, my brethren, when we can talk
about religious things with flippancy; when we can quote texts of
Scripture in order to make jests upon them, when we come up to the
Lord's table as if it were but a common repast; when we come to baptism
as though it were but an ordinary observance, about which no solemnity
is to be found–then I fear we prove that our heart is divided. And I
know that any soul conscious of its guilt, if it has really been
brought to know the love of Christ, will always come to sacred things
in a altered manner. We do not come to the Lord's table with lightness
of heart. There have been times when it has seemed too solemn a matter
for us to come at all; and as for baptism, he that comes to baptism
without having searched his heart, without having looked well to his
motives, and without true devotion of spirit, comes altogether in vain.
As the wrong communicant may eat and drink damnation to himself, so may
he who would be thus wrongly baptized receive condemnation instead of a
blessing. Frivolity of spirit is often a sign of a divided heart.
III. This brings us to the third point, the sad effects of a divided
heart. When a man's heart is divided, he is at once everything that is
bad. With regard to himself he is an unhappy man. Who can be happy
while he has rival powers within his own breast. The soul must find a
nest for itself, or else it cannot find rest. The bird that would seek
to rest upon two twigs would never have peace, and the soul that
endeavors to find two resting places, first, the world, and then the
Saviour, will never have any joy or comfort. A united heart is a happy
heart; hence David says, "Unite my heart to fear thy name." They that
give themselves wholly to God are a blessed people, for they find that
the ways of religion are "ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are
peace." Men who are neither this nor that, neither one thing nor
another, are always uneasy and miserable. The fear of discovery, and
the consciousness of being wrong, conspire together to agitate the soul
and make it full of unease, disease, and restlessness of spirit. Such a
man is unhappy in himself.
He is in the next place useless in the church. Of what good is such a
man to us? We cannot put him in the pulpit to propound that gospel he
does not practice. We cannot put him in the deaconship to serve the
church which his life would ruin. We cannot commit to his charge the
spiritual matters of the church in the eldership, because we discern
that not being spiritual himself, he is not to be entrusted with them.
In no respect is he of any good to us. "Reprobate silver shall men call
them." His name may be in the church-book, but it had better be taken
away. He may sit among us and give us his contribution, we should be
better without it and without him than with either, though he should
double his talent and treble his contribution. We know that no man who
is not united in his heart vitally and entirely to Christ, can ever be
of the slightest service to the church of God.
But not only this; he is a man dangerous to the world. Such a man is
like a leper going abroad in the midst of healthy people; he spreads
the disease. The drunkard is a leper set apart by himself; he doth but
little harm comparatively, for he in his drunkenness is like the leper
when he is driven from society. His very drunkenness cries out,
"Unclean, unclean, unclean!" But this man is a professor of religion
and therefore tolerated. He says he is a Christian, and therefore he is
admitted into all society, and yet he is inwardly full of rottenness
and deception. Though outwardly whitewashed like a sepulcher, he is
more dangerous to the world, I say, than the most vicious of men. Tie
him up–let him not go loose; build a prison for him. But what am I
saying? If you would build a prison for hypocrites, all London would
not suffice for ground for the prisons. Oh my brethren, notwithstanding
the impossibility of binding them, I do say that the maddest dog in the
hottest weather is not one-half so dangerous to men as a man who hath a
divided heart, one who runs about with the rabid poison of his
hypocrisy upon his lips, and destroys the souls of men by
contamination.
Not only unhappy himself, useless to the church, and dangerous to the
world but he is contemptible to everybody. When he is found out nobody
receives him. Scarcely will the world own him, and the church will have
nothing to administer to him but its censure.
The most solemn consideration, however, is that this man is reprobate
in the sight of God. To the eye of infinite purity he is one of the
most obnoxious and detestable of beings. His heart is divided. A pure
and holy God hates, first, his sin, and secondly, the lies with which
he endeavors to cover it. Oh, if there be a place where sinners are
more loathsome to God than anywhere else, it is in his church. A dog in
its kennel is well enough; but a dog in the throne-room is quite out of
place. A sinner in the world is bad enough, but in the church he is
hideous. A madman in an asylum is a creature to be pitied, but a madman
who protests he is not mad, and will thrust himself among us that he
may obtain means of doing mischief, is not merely to be pitied, he is
to be avoided, and needs to be restrained. God hateth sin anywhere, but
when sin puts its fingers upon his divine altar; when it comes and lays
its insolent hand upon the sacrifice that is burning there, then God
spurns it from him with disgust. Of all men, who stand in the most
likely place to receive the mightiest thunderbolt, and the most
terrible lightning's flash, those are the men who have a divided heart,
and profess to serve God while with their souls they are serving sin.
Take heed, sinner, take heed, running on in thy sin thou wilt meet with
punishment; but after all, O hypocrite, look well to thy ways, for thy
sin and thy lie together shall bring down a dread and swift destruction
upon thy devoted head.
IV. In conclusion I have to address some remarks to you with regard to
the FUTURE PUNISHMENT of the man whose heart is divided, unless he be
rescued by a great salvation.
I have endeavored to preach faithfully this morning, as faithfully as I
could, but I am conscious that many of the children of God do not find
food under such a sermon as this, nor is it my intention that they
should do so. It is not rightly possible to blend the sieve of sifting,
with the bushel of the gospel. We cannot well bring you the wheat and
the sieve too. This morning I have sought to take the fan ministerially
into my hand, and thoroughly purge this floor, in the name of him who
shall be the great "Purger" at the last day. We all need it whether we
know it or not. The best Christian needs sometimes to question himself
as to his motives. And when God's children are not fed, it is often
more profitable to them to be led to examine themselves, than it would
be if they had some rich promise to feed upon. My hearers, out of so
vast a number this morning, are there none among you with divided
hearts? Is it possible that this whole congregation is made up of
sincere Christians, truly enlightened, called, and saved? Is there not
one man, who, mistaking his place, has put himself among the sheep when
he should have been among the goats? Is there not one man here who
without making a mistake has dared impudently to thrust himself into
the number of God's priests, when he is really a worshipper of Baal?
Let me then, in the last place, that I may with faithfulness discharge
my mission, describe the terrible condition of the hypocrite when God
shall come to judge the world.
He comes with brazen face, he comes in the midst of the congregation of
the righteous. The mandate has gone from the throne, "Gather out first
the tares!" He hears the mandate, and his cheek pales not. His
impudence continues with him even now. He would still knock at the
door, and say, "Lord! Lord! open to me." The dividing angel flies.
Terror is on the face of the wicked, as on the left the tares are bound
in bundles to burn. Imagine, however the still greater consternation of
this individual, who, standing in the midst of ministers, saints and
apostles, suddenly finds himself about to be gleaned from them. With a
tremendous swoop, like an eagle descending from its lofty height, the
death angel bears upon him, snatches him away, and claims him as his
own. "Thou art," says the black angel, "Thou art a tare. Thou hast
grown side by side with the wheat, but that has not changed thy nature.
The dew that falls upon the wheat has fallen upon thee; the sun which
shone upon it thou hast enjoyed also, but thou art still a tare, and
thy doom remaineth the same. Thou shalt be bound up with the rest in
bundles to be burned." O hearer, what must be his consternation when
with mighty hand that angel plucks him up by the roots, carries him
away, and he that thought himself a saint is bound up with sinners for
destruction!
And now imagine the reception that he meets. He is brought into the
midst of the wicked–the wicked who once with Pharasaic tongue he had
reproved. "Here he comes," say they, "the man who instructed us, the
good man who taught us to do better, here he comes himself, found out
at last to be no better than those whom he despised." And then imagine,
if you dare, the inner dungeon, the reserved seats of that fiery abode,
and the heaviest chain of despair–imagine, I say, if you can, the
terrible destruction, terrible beyond every other, which shall
overwhelm the man who in this world deceived the church and dishonored
God, but who is now detected to his shame. Common sinners have the
common prison, but this man shall be thrust into the inner prison, and
made fast in the stocks of despair. Tremble, professors, tremble, you
who are half and half religious men, tremble, you who pretend to fear
God, but like the Samaritans, worship your idols also. O, tremble now
lest your trembling should come upon you in a day when you are not
aware of it, when you shall long for the rocks to hide, and for the
mountains to cover you, but shall be without a shelter in the day of
the fierce anger of the God of the whole earth.
And now, I cannot send you away without preaching the gospel for a
moment or two. I have, perhaps, one here who is saying, "Sir, my heart
is not only divided, but it is broken." Ah, there is a great deal of
difference between a divided heart and a broken heart. The divided
heart is cut in twain, the broken heart is broken in pieces, all
asunder, and yet it is not divided. It is all in pieces, in one sense,
as to its proud hope, and it is melted, in another sense, as to its
earnest longing that it may be saved. Poor broken heart, I was not
rebuking thee. Art thou desirous thy morning to have thy sins put away.
Then from the bottom of thy poor broken heart cry to day, Lord, save me
from hypocrisy. Whatever I may be, do not permit me to think I am one
of thine if I am not." Are you breathing out this prayer to God, "Lord,
make me truly thine. Put me among thy children. Let me call thee my
Father,' and not turn away from thee. Give me a new heart and a right
spirit; O wash me in the blood of Christ, and make me clean. Make me
what thou wouldst have me be, and I will praise thee for ever."
Remember, my dear hearer if that is the desire of thy heart, thou art
this day bidden to believe that Christ is able to save thee, and
willing to save thee, and waiting to be gracious unto thee, and more
ready to bestow mercy than thou art to receive it. Therefore thou art
commanded to trust him, fur all thy sins have been punished on him as
thy surety, and for the sake of Christ, God is willing now to receive
thee, now to bless thee. Come close with him this morning. Lift thine
eye to him that did die upon the tree. Put thy trust in him who is my
Redeemer, and thy Redeemer too; let the blood which flows from his side
be received into thy heart. Open thy poor wounds, and say, "My Master,
heal these wounds for me. O Jesus! I know no other trust. If thou wilt
save me I will know no other love. My heart is undivided in its love,
it looks alone to thee; it shall be soon undivided in its gratitude; I
will praise thee and thee alone. Poor heart-broken penitent, I said not
ill when I contradicted myself by saying, "Though thy heart is broken,
it is not divided." Bring it just as it is, and say, "Lord, receive me
through the blood of Christ, and let me be thine now, and thine for
ever, through Jesus." Amen.