The Pierced One Pierces The Heart
DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, JUNE 19, 1864, BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
"And I will pour upon the house of Da vid and upon the inhabitants of
Jerusalem, the spirit of Grace and of supplications: and they shall
look upon Me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for Him, as
one mourns for his only son and shall be in bitterness for Him, as one
that is in bitterness for his first-born." Zechariah 12:10.
THIS prophecy, first of all, refers to the Jewish people. And I am
happy that it confirms our hearts in the belief of the good which the
Lord will do unto Israel. We know of a surety, because God has said it,
that the Jews will be restored to their own land and that they shall
inherit the goodly country which the Lord has given unto their fathers
by a Covenant of salt forever. But, better still, they shall be
converted to the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ and shall see in Him
the house of David restored to the throne of Israel. The day is coming
when they shall see in Jesus of Nazareth, that Messiah for whom their
saints looked with joyful expectation, of whom the Prophets spoke with
rapture, but who was despised and rejected of their blinded sires.
Happy day! Happy day! When our Jewish Brethren shall all be found
worshipping before the Lord of Hosts through their great High Priest,
who is a Priest forever, after the order of Melchizedek! We must
remember the prophecy concerning this thing. We must enquire of the
Lord concerning His promise. We must expect its fulfillment, labor for
it and then beyond a doubt, when the due season shall have arrived,
Israel shall own her king and upon the house of David and the
inhabitants of Jerusalem the Spirit of Grace and supplication shall be
poured out.
We intend to hear our text, upon the present occasion, as it speaks to
ourselves. A great mistake is very common among all classes of men–it
is currently believed that we are, first of all, to mourn for our sins
and then to look by faith to our Lord Jesus Christ. Most persons who
have any concern about their souls but are not as yet enlightened by
the Spirit of God think that there is a degree of tenderness of
conscience and of hatred of sin which they are to obtain, somehow or
other, and then they will be permitted and authorized to look to Jesus
Christ. Now you will perceive that this is not according to the
Scripture, for, according to the text before us men first look upon Him
whom they have pierced and then, but not till then, they mourn for
their sin!
This is the common folly of men–they look for the effect in order to
produce the cause. They forget the old proverb and put the cart before
the horse. But our text plainly indicates what is the cause, and puts
it first, assuring us that the effect will follow. Repentance is in no
sense a title to faith in Christ. It is, on the other hand, a
legitimate consequence of faith. In certain diseases the surgeon aims
at producing an outward eruption which carries off the internal poison
and so assists in the cure. But no man would be justified in refraining
from medical advice until he could see the eruption in his skin–that
being a healthy sign, a prognostic of cure–a result of medicine, and
by no means a preparation for it.
So repentance is the bringing into our own sight the sin which lurks
within. It is a result of the medicine of faith. But we should be
foolish, indeed, if we refused to believe until we saw in ourselves
that repentance which only faith can produce! That repentance which is
unattended by faith in the Lord Jesus is an evil repentance which works
wrath and only sets the soul at a greater distance from God than it was
before. Sweet, heart-melting, reconciling repentance brings the soul to
love the Lord and to hope in His mercy–this precious gem always
glitters on the hand of faith and nowhere else.
Without faith it is impossible to please God. And consequently an
unbelieving repentance has nothing in it acceptable to God. Unbelieving
repentance may be so deep as to drive us to hang ourselves, like Judas,
but its only result would be to secure for us Judas's doom. Without
faith, if our hearts could break–if our eyes could become perpetual
fountains of tears–our repentance would in no way whatever be regarded
by God except as a continuance of our sin. We would really be rejecting
the Lord Jesus and setting up our own bitterness of soul in competition
with the finished work of our
Lord Jesus Christ. Let us be quite clear on this point, then, to start
with, that it is not mourning for sin which causes or prepares the way
for our looking to Christ.
It is our looking to Jesus which makes us weep and mourn for Him and
works in us the sweet bitterness of true repentance. We will consider
three points–first, what there is in a sight of the Pierced One to
make us mourn. Secondly, what is the character of true mourning for
sin. And thirdly, what is that which connects Jesus and this true
mourning. The text tells us that looking does it all–"They shall look
upon Me whom they have pierced and they shall mourn for Him."
I. WHAT IS THERE IN A SIGHT OF JESUS TO MAKE US MOURN FOR SIN? Let us
not answer this question merely in a doctrinal fashion. But as we
proceed let us pray that the Holy Spirit may bring our minds to feel
the melting force of the great Sacrifice on Calvary so that we may
bedew His Cross with tears of holy penitence. Come with me, Brethren,
to Golgotha's terrible mount of doom that we may sit down and watch the
death-pangs of the great Lover of men's souls. There on that transverse
wood bleeds the Incarnate Son of God. His head yields ruby drops where
the crown of thorns has pierced it.
His hands and feet flow with rivulets of blood. His back is all one
wound. His face is marred with bruises and filthy with the spittle of
the mockers. His hair has been plucked from His cheeks. His eyes are
bloodshot. His lips are parched with fever. His whole body is a mass of
concentrated agony. He hangs yonder in physical pain impossible to be
fully described, while the misery of His soul, crushed beneath the
wheels of the chariot of Justice, constitutes a woe far more terrible.
His soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even unto death, while His body is
as a cup full to the brim with grief–what if I say a sponge saturated
with infinite miseries?
While Jesus bleeds on yonder tree, our hearts bleed, too. If we have
tears at any time, let us shed them now, for now or never must we weep.
The first cause for deep sorrow lies in the excellency of the
Sufferer's Person. He who hangs there is no other than that Son of God
before whom angels veil their faces with their wings. He is Lord of
Heaven and earth– concerning Him the Father said of old, "Let all the
angels of God worship Him." At His behests the cherubim and seraphim
fly to the utmost verge of space, glad to be the messengers of His good
pleasure. He is the Light and Brightness of Heaven, the express Image
of his Father's Glory.
"Without Him was not anything made that was made," and by Him all
things consist. And yet the King of Heaven lays aside His crown, strips
Himself of His purple, takes off His golden rings, becomes an Infant of
a span long and after a life of suffering yields Himself to a slave's
death upon the wretched gibbet of the Cross! My Soul, do you not sorrow
that so Divine a Person should sink so low? Think of the purity of His
Character as Man! In Him was never any sin and yet He suffers! His
whole life was spent in doing good. Unselfishly He spared not Himself.
And now men do not spare Him their worst cruelty! He gives food to the
hungry, health to the sick, life to the dead. He has not time for
Himself so much as to eat bread. He shuns no labor for the good of
others. He seeks no ease for Himself. And yet the men whom He would
bless conspire to curse Him! He lives a life of perfect holiness, in no
way causing any to offend. His life is the pure light of the sun of
love, it has no darkness whatever in it. His acts are as a river
flowing with crystal streams of loving kindness, untainted by
selfishness or ambition. And yet He bleeds! Heaven's brightest Jewel is
cast into the mire–earth's purest Gold is trod in the streets. He who
is of Heaven the Sun, suffers an eclipse! He who is of earth the
brightest Star, is hidden beneath black clouds.
O You Immaculate Man, shall I see You bleed without compassion? O You
Almighty God, shall I see You Incarnate in the flesh, suffering throes
and pangs unworthy of Your Godhead, without feeling the commiseration
of my soul stirred towards You? Can we, Brethren, think of the beauty
of our Lord without being filled with bitterness of soul for Him? Shall
those eyes which are as the eyes of doves by the rivers of waters,
which once were washed with milk, now be drowned in tears of blood? His
cheeks, which are as a bed of spices, as sweet flowers–shall these be
given to them that pluck off the hair? Those hands which are set with
jewels, shall they be pierced? Shall His legs, which are as pillars of
marble set upon sockets of fine gold become all bespattered with the
stream of His heart's gore?
Oh, here is sorrow if you will! That precious casket of His body, so
rich that Heaven's treasures and earth's wealth together could not
furnish such another! That dear case of jewels is cast out as an
unclean thing and made a Victim without the camp! O, who will give me
tears? I weep, I must weep for my sins!–
"My sins, my hateful, cruel sins, His chief tormentors were!
Each of my crimes became a nail, And unbelief the spear. 'Twas you that
pulled the vengeance down, Upon his guiltless head, Break, break my
heart! O burst my eyes, And let my sorrows bleed."
All human eyes, if they were forever full of tears, could not express
the woe that One so glorious, so pure, so loving, so condescending,
should in His own world find no shelter, and among His own creatures
find no friends! But contrariwise, in this world be racked upon the
Cross and among His creatures meet His murderers! This should make us
mourn bitterly for sin.
Look up again, my Soul, and perhaps another word may help to melt you,
stubborn though you are. Let us remind ourselves of His sufferings.
Remember Gethsemane? In that garden His soul is exceedingly sorrowful.
Though He is not in labor, but simply in the exercise of prayer, a
sweat comes streaming from every pore–not the common sweat of men who
toil, but, O God, it is a sweat of blood! "He sweat, as it were, great
drops of blood falling down to the ground." The pains of Hell alone can
furnish a fit parallel for the awful misery of Christ that night. And
perhaps even there such sufferings were never sustained as Christ
endured in the garden! Betrayed by His chosen friend, He is hurried
away to the Sanhedrim and there accused of blasphemy.
Oh, cruel charge against the Son of the Highest! Then He is dragged
away to Pilate and then away to Herod, to be slandered before both
tribunals. Meanwhile, they scourge His back with the scourge, the very
thought of which is enough to make a man shudder–it is said to have
been made of the sinews of oxen intertwisted with pieces of sharp and
ragged bone–so that every blow tore through the flesh to the very
bone. He is scourged thus and then beaten with rods. He is set upon a
mimic throne and crowned with thorns. They spit in His face. They
insult His Person. They bow the knee and say, "Hail, King of the Jews."
They buffet Him with their hands. Shame never descended to a lower
depth–mockery could devise nothing worse than that crown of thorns and
that reed scepter.
Away they hound Him, tearing off the purple robe which must have glued
itself to His bleeding flesh–they roughly tear it away. And then they
put on His own garments and hasten Him to the malefactor's Tyburn.
Rudely they strip Him. Cruelly they fling Him down. Savagely they
pierce His hands and His feet. They lift up His Cross and dislocate His
every bone with the jar given to it, as it is fastened in the earth.
They sit down to look at Him in derision and gloat over His pains. The
weight of the body tears the nails through His hands and when the
weight falls upon His feet, the nails force themselves in long wounds
through the nerves of His blessed feet!
Fever is brought on by His fearful wounds. He is faint with pain. His
mouth is dried like an oven. In His extremity, He cries, "I thirst!"
They thrust vinegar into His mouth–that is the only comfort they will
render Him–vinegar mingled with gall! The hot sun scorches Him until
He cries, "All My bones are out of joint: My heart is like wax. It is
melted in the midst of My bowels. My strength is dried up like a
potsherd. And My tongue cleaves to My jaws. And You have brought Me
into the dust of death."
Even the light is denied Him. He hangs shivering in midday-midnight.
The thick darkness did but express the darkness which might be felt
which covered all His soul. His agonies had become so intense that they
must not be beheld by any onlooker. The darkness, therefore, formed as
it were, a secret chamber wherein Christ might do battle with His
direst griefs. Griefs like Himself, immense, unknown. Godlike sorrows
now hold fast the Son of God–only His Deity enabled Him to sustain the
struggle. The storm passes and at last, shouting, "It is finished,"
with bowed head, He gives up the ghost.
Have we no tears for such sorrows as these? Shall we have no mourning
for such griefs? How is it that if we read the story of a common man,
suffering by his own folly, we freely weep? And over the silly story of
a love-sick maid we will feel our pity stirred? But here on Calvary,
where the King of Heaven is tortured with unutterable woe, tormented
with sorrows so tremendous that they overtop all other griefs as a
mountain exceeds the molehills, we are like flints or steel and
scarcely feel compassion move? O God, pour out upon us the spirit of
grief and commiseration, that we may mourn for Him–
"Strike, mighty Grace, my flinty soul,
Till melting waters flow,
And deep repentance drowns my eyes
In agonizing woe."
Perhaps we have not come to the very center of heart-breaking thought.
The wonder is that Jesus Christ should suffer thus as the result of
sin–of our sin. A young man ran away from home and left his aged
mother that he might plunge into sin–after a few shameful years he
came back to his country and sought his home. When he knocked at the
cottage door he asked for his mother, but she was not there. "What name
did you say, Sir? She died years ago." "And how did she die?" Well,
they say she had a son who treated her with cruelty and at last left
her to indulge his own evil passions. She could not bear it, for she
loved him much. She sickened and no one could comfort her. She died,
they say, of a broken heart. And that is her grave over the hedge
yonder in the Churchyard."
Well might the sinner turn away with reeling brain and wish himself
under the turf at her side. "I slew my mother by my sins." If he weeps
not at this he must be a devil, indeed. Jesus Christ, my Lord, hangs on
that tree slain by my sins– shall I not sorrow now? Had I never
sinned, there had been no need of a Savior for me. Had we never
rebelled against God, there would have been no sword of vengeance to
plunge into His heart–
"Was it for crimes that I had done He groaned upon the tree?"
This is sad, indeed. Can you get the thought, my dear Friends, that you
made Christ die–yes, you–if there were no other man. You could not,
if there had been only you to save–you could not enter Heaven without
the dying groans of that Savior. There must be an Atonement made no
less than His great Sacrifice for you and you alone. Therefore take the
whole of it to yourself, and now, will you not sorrow at the sight of
the pierced Savior?
Let us remember, too, as we continue at the foot of the Cross, that
Jesus Christ does not merely suffer for sin but He suffers FOR YOU. I
do not know, but perhaps this may be the heart-breaker with some who
never did repent of sin before. O you who look to Him believingly,
Jesus Christ loves your poor guilty soul at such a rate that He suffers
all this for you! I pray you as you look to Him dying upon the Cross,
forget not that every drop yonder flows for you. How could you have
despised Him who died for you! Determined to save you He went down to
the very lowest depths to bring you up and yet you have heard the
Gospel and neglected it! You have lived all these years in sin! You
have been day after day a neglector of the Word of God, perhaps a
Sunday-breaker! It may be a swearer, using this very name of Christ to
curse by and yet He suffered this for you.
O believing Sinner, for you these wounds, for you that sweat of gore,
for you that Cross, for you that spear, for you that mangled frame
lying in the tomb motionless in the grasp of death! Will not this make
you feel that you cannot any longer harbor the lusts which are the
enemies of Christ, but that you must cast out, once and for all from
your soul, these cruel foes which made the Savior bleed? While I am
talking upon this theme, I feel more than at any other time in my own
life my own insufficiency. I cry as Elijah did, "Woe is me! For I am
undone, because I am a man of unclean lips and I dwell in the midst of
a people of unclean lips!"
O, it needs an angel's tongue to tell out a Savior's grief! Yes, even a
seraph might fail. It needs the Savior Himself to tell you in worthy
words how He suffered and what was the love which led Him through the
woe. Surely the Cross makes sin hateful when we see it by the light of
the Spirit of all Truth. One more remark here upon this first point. It
should make us mourn for sin when we think that this suffering of
Christ for us can be attributed to nothing else than His own marvelous
love towards us who were so undeserving. What could have brought Christ
from on high except motives of pure affection? Can you conjecture any
other cause? Did He want Glory?
My Brothers and Sisters, was not the Glory of Heaven enough for Him?
Besides, if it could have been possible for Him to need Glory, is He
not Omnipotent? Could He not, in a moment, have created ten thousand
thousand worlds filled with inhabitants all too glad to be permitted to
sing His praise? Could He gain anything, let me ask you, by coming here
below? And was there anything in you or me to merit what He did? Far,
far away be the accursed thought of my merit! But even if we could
merit anything, could we merit this Sacrifice? Could we merit that
bloody sweat? O Virtue, you could never merit this! No, heroism at its
highest point and self-sacrifice sublime to its most exalted degree
could never merit that the Son of God should die!
Sin accomplished what Virtue could not. Sin brings the Savior from on
high–Virtue never could have procured this. Ah, Brethren, the love of
Jesus must have been a strange love, indeed. We have heard of men who
out of love to some poor countrywoman have left their kingdom and their
throne to follow her poverty and lift her up ultimately to their
wealth. But who ever heard of the equal of this? That God's own Son,
"though He was rich, yet for our sakes He became poor, that through His
poverty we might be made rich"? Worms were never raised so high above
their meanest fellow worms and therefore they could never stoop as
Christ did! If an angel could die for ants, that would look like
condescension–but for Christ to die for men is more wondrous by far!
If the noblest cherubim before the Throne should shed his heart's blood
for a poor insect, you would think it marvelous! But for God Himself to
take a creature's form, to bleed for such insignificant, despicable,
worthless things as men– this is a wonder which has set Heaven ringing
ever since it was known and will make eternity echo with shouts of
praise. Surely, dear Friends, if nothing else can make us loathe sin
and weep before God, this should do so. And yet, I confess, I spoil the
theme. When Mark Anthony brings out the body of Julius Caesar, he
excites the sympathies of the Roman people by the sight of the mantle
of the murdered man.
He makes them weep and then he cries, "What? Do you weep when you but
behold your Caesar's vesture wounded! Look you here–here is
himself–marred, as you see, by traitors." Such speech puts tongues
into the silent stones of Rome! Whereas, alas, I, poor worthless
creature as I am, talk of my Master, stabbed by ourselves, bleeding out
of love to us, at so poor a rate that I cannot stir your souls, nor
scarce my own! Almighty Spirit, well is it written that You will come
to give the spirit of supplication, for except You shall come, we shall
neither look to Christ, nor weep, nor mourn because of Him!
II. Secondly WE ARE TO SPEAK UPON WHAT TRUE MOURNING FOR SIN IS. It is
not necessarily feeling great terrors nor frightful tears. There is no
need that you should doubt the mercy of God–all these things may come
with repentance, as smoke attends fire, but they are not a part of it.
They often spoil repentance–they cannot make it more acceptable.
1. True mourning for sin is the work of the Spirit of God. There is no
mourning until first the Spirit is poured out. Then men look and then
they mourn. Repentance is too choice a flower to grow in Nature's
garden. If you have one sigh after Christ–if you have one particle of
hatred of sin–God the Holy Spirit must have given it to you, for poor
human nature with its utmost strain can never reach to a spiritual
thing. "That which is born of the flesh is flesh. And that which is
born of the Spirit is spirit." True repentance, then, must come from on
high. Lord, send it to us now!
2. True repentance has a distinct and constant reference to the Lord
Jesus Christ. If you repent of sin without looking to Christ, away with
your repentance! If you are so lamenting your sin as to forget the
Savior, you have need to begin all this work over again. Whenever we
repent of sin we must have one eye upon sin and another upon the Cross.
Or, better still, let us have both eyes upon Christ, seeing our sin
punished in Him and by no means let us look at sin except as we look at
Jesus. A man may hate sin just as a murderer hates the gallows–but
this does not prove repentance. If I hate sin because of the
punishment, I have not repented of sin–I merely regret that God is
just.
But if I can see sin as an offense against Jesus Christ and loathe
myself because I have wounded Him, then I have a true brokenness of
heart. If I see the Savior and believe that those thorns upon His head
were plaited by my sinful words. If I believe that those wounds in His
heart were pierced by my heart sins. If I believe that those wounds in
His feet were made by my wandering steps and that the wounds in His
hands were made by my sinful deeds–then I repent of sin after a right
fashion. Only under the Cross can you repent. Repentance elsewhere is
remorse which clings to the sin and only dreads the punishment. Let us
then seek, under God, to have a hatred of sin caused by a sight of
Christ's love.
3. True repentance is real and often intense in its bitterness. The
text tells us it is a sorrow like that of one who weeps for his only
son. A son is a gift from God. A good son, especially, is a treasure to
his father's heart. But here is a dead son before me–I think I hear
the father's cries, "O my son Absalom, my son, my son Absalom! Would
God I had died for you, O Absalom, my son, my son!" Here I see an only
son, which was not David's case, for he had Solomon yet spared to him.
I think I see the woman at the gate of Nain with her only son carried
out to be buried, making much lamentation, with grievous pomp of
heartfelt woe. Yes, and it is not only that, it is the first-born son,
the beginning of the father's strength. And the man who has watched him
and seen himself in his first-born's growing form, will not be
comforted because his son–his only son, his first-born son is dead.
Such is true weeping for sin–it cuts to the heart–it pierces to the
quick.
"Oh," says one, "I cannot believe in Christ, for I have no such
bitterness." My dear Friend, you never will have it till you believe in
Christ! You are to trust in Jesus Christ to get this! You are not to
feel this and then trust in Christ. Come, you hard Heart, come to
Christ to be softened. Come, you Hell-hardened Steel, come to Christ to
be melted in the furnace of His Divine affection. Come as you are,
Sinner, feeling or unfeeling and look up to Jesus! There is life in a
look at Him and life for you now. And the first sign of life will be a
real and intense sorrow for sin.
4. True sorrow for sin is eminently practical. No man may say he hates
sin if he lives in it. It will make us see the evil of sin, not merely
as a theory, but experimentally–as a burnt child dreads fire. We shall
be as much afraid of it as a man who has lately been stopped and robbed
is afraid of the thief upon the highway. And we shall shun it–shun it
in every-thing–not in great things only, but in little things, too.
True mourning for sin will make us very jealous over our tongue lest it
should say a wrong word. We shall be very watchful over our daily
actions lest in anything we should offend. And each night we shall
close the day with painful confessions of shortcoming and each morning
awaken with anxious prayers, that this next day God would hold us up
that we might be saved.
5. Once again, true repentance is continual–a man does not repent for
a few weeks and then have done with it. Rowland Hill said that
repentance was one of the sweetest earthly companions. And the only
regret he had in the thought of going to Heaven was that his dear
friend, Repentance, could not go with him there. Repentance is the most
heavenly thing out of Heaven. Well did our hymn say–
"Lord, let me weep for nothing but sin!
And after none but You!
And then I would–
O that I might–
A constant weeper be!"
True Believers repent to their dying day–they are always repenting.
Their life is made up, it is said, of sinning and repenting–I will not
say that–believing and repenting is their life–and sin is the disease
which mars it. No time can wear away the bitterness of repentance. If a
man loses his child, time happily softens his grief. Every other
trouble yields to time, but this never does. It is so sweet a sorrow
that we can only thank God we are permitted to enjoy and to suffer it
until we enter into our eternal rest.
This, then, is true sorrow for sin. But let me say, whatever is or is
not true sorrow for sin, I do entreat my hearers not to try and get
sorrow for sin before they come to Christ. The Gospel is, "He that
BELIEVES in Jesus is not condemned." Whether you have sorrowed enough
for sin or not, if you trust Jesus Christ, you are not condemned. Your
salvation is not procured by your tears, nor by your feelings, but by
Him whom you have pierced! Look to Him, away from self. Look not even
to your own faith, but look to the Object of your faith. Now fixedly
behold Him and trust Him and your heart will break and be poured out
like water before the Lord.
III. WHAT IS THAT WHICH CONNECTS JESUS CHRIST AND THE MOURNING? How am
I to get at Christ?
This used to puzzle me. I thought if I could walk a thousand miles to
see Him, I would set off joyously. Oh, if I could but fall at His feet
and lay hold of Him! I thought this would be very easy–touching the
hem of His garment–or crying, "God be merciful to me!" But this
thought long puzzled me–"How can I get to Christ?" So many fleshly
notions mix themselves with our thoughts before we are born again that
we are very much like poor Nicodemus and say, "Can a man enter his
mother's womb a second time, and be born again?"
We have gross and carnal thoughts concerning spiritual things. Now, our
connection with Jesus is a look, not with these eyes, of course, but
with the eyes of the heart. We all know what it is to look at a thing.
We are told to look at a certain subject in politics or science–we are
told to look into it. There is nothing to see with your eyes, but you
see into it with your mind. And this is the kind of look which is
intended here, "They shall look upon Me whom they have pierced."
You cannot, with all your looking, see Christ with these eyes! But
thinking of Him and believing in Him is the look which is meant. In
describing this look, let me say that it is very simple. Why, looking
is not a hard thing! I never heard of a college for training people to
look. I never in my life heard of anyone trying to teach another person
to look! There may be a defect in people's eyes, but still if they have
any eyes at all, they may look. They may happen to have cross eyes, but
a crossed-eyed look at Christ will save the soul. They may have a
waterfall in the eye, so that there is scarcely a corner left, but it
is not looking with a full eye, it is not looking with a bold eye–it
is the looking in any way–the simple act of looking which saves a
soul.
A man may not be able to read a single letter in a book, but he can
look to Jesus. A man may not be able to spell a word of one syllable,
but he can look. A man may have no moral courage, but he can look. He
may be destitute of all the virtues and yet he can look. A man may be a
thief, a whoremonger, an adulterer, but he can look. A man may be cast
out of society, transported, shut up between stone walls, but he can
look. Looking is a thing so simple that neither moral nor physical
preparations are required. Looking! Such is faith in Jesus Christ. As
the sin-bitten ones looked to the brazen serpent so do we look away
from self to Christ and we live!
Observe, secondly, as it is a simple look so it is a look which
requires no merit in order to precede it. We have an old proverb, to
wit, "a cat may look at a king," and certainly a poor man may. There is
no hurt done by looking. If the queen were here, I should not ask her
leave to let me look. And if there were a crossing sweeper, or a
mud-lark, or even a pickpocket here, he certainly would commit no
offense by looking. On the other hand, there would be no merit in
looking. Where is the merit of looking at a thing? It is too simple
either to need merit before it or to have merit in it.
So you who are the worst of the worst! You who feel nothing in yourself
which is good! You who can not even say that you feel your own
emptiness and vileness–nothing of your own is needed to precede that
look by way of preparation. Look, look to Jesus as you are, and you
shall be saved! The look which saves the soul, again, should be an
attentive look. If you have looked to Christ and cannot see anything
there to comfort you, look again! Look again! Perhaps each man is
comforted in a different way by looking to Christ. One sees Christ to
be God and he says, "Ah, then, He can save me." Another dwells mainly
upon Christ's being Man and he says, "Ah, then, He can pity me and be
willing to receive me."
One fixes his eyes upon God's having appointed Christ to save him–that
comforts him. Another remembers the infinite value of Christ's
sufferings and that cheers him. If one point in Christ does not comfort
you, look to another. Keep your mental eyes fixed upon what Jesus
Christ is. Ah, my dear Friends, I am telling you this, but how
difficult it is to make you do it until the Holy Spirit brings you! Why
the first thing I get from any of you when I talk to you about your
souls is, "O Sir, I do not feel." I know then that you are looking to
self. O my dear Hearers, you who have some concern about your souls, I
would beseech my God to wean you from this which must damn your
souls–this looking to SELF!
Come, I pray you, consider! You are too vile, too sinful ever to have
anything good in you to look at! Why will you search for goodness where
there is none? "Why do you spend money for that which is not bread? And
labor for that which satisfies not? Hearken diligently unto Me and eat
that which is good and let your soul delight itself in fatness." You
can do so if you look at the Cross! I know you will raise your "buts,"
or cry, "But I cannot believe." There you are, looking to your faith
instead of Christ. There He hangs! He bears upon His shoulders the sin
of man and whoever trusts Him shall be saved. Can you not trust Him?
Not trust your God? Can you not trust Him, your Brother born to bear
your adversities? Not trust GOD? Why I protest before you all if I had
all your sins upon my shoulders, I could trust Him!
When John Hyatt lay a-dying, someone said to him, "Can you trust Jesus
with your soul now?" "Ah," said he, "I could trust Him if I had a
million souls! I could trust Him with them all." Do not tell me,
awakened Souls, you cannot trust your Master! When did He ever lie to
you? Whom did He ever cast out? When did He break His promise? Who ever
came to Him and was rejected? When did He say to the chief of sinners,
"Your sins shall never be forgiven"? Thousands have been to Him and He
has received them.
I sought the Lord and He heard me. I tried to save myself by feelings
of repentance and praying, but it was all of no avail. At last, in
sheer despair, I flew like a dove pursued by the hawk straight away to
Jesus Christ, the Rock, and found shelter in His wounds. O that you
would do so! Come, I pray you, have done with that self of yours–
"None but Jesus, none but Jesus Can do helpless sinners good."
This look is sometimes a wondering look–I know it was to me. When I
saw Him hanging on the Cross for me, I could not understand such love,
and I cannot fathom it now. I can understand some of the things which
Christ has done for me. But I cannot make out why He should die for
me–why He should love such a heap of filth, such a walking dunghill as
man is! Why He should give His blood–every drop of which is more
costly than rubies! Why He should give His tears, which are richer than
diamonds! Why He should give His heart, which is better than a mine of
gold! Why He should close those lips which are sweeter than harps of
angels and shut those eyes, which are brighter than so many suns–and
all for such a clod of earth, such a rebellious piece of rottenness as
man! Oh, this is marvelous! How can we understand it? We can only fall
down before His feet and while we trust Him add to our faith a holy
adoring wonder!
This look must, in every case, be a personal one. You cannot be saved
by another man's faith. I do beseech of all to whom this word shall
come–detest, loathe, abominate the lie that any man can perform
spiritual acts for another! No "sponsor" can promise to renounce the
works of the flesh for another! No man can stand at the font and
declare that he believes for another! No man can promise that an
unconscious slumbering baby shall believe in God. No man can say in
God's name what he knows is a lie–that the child does believe–when it
cannot believe and probably is asleep at the time and not occupied with
any mental operation, much less believing what it never heard and what
it could not understand if it did hear!
O, I pray you, shun this blasphemy! The curse of England has been this
dogma of baptismal regeneration, for it leads men to shake off their
personal responsibility and obligations to God. Your godfathers and
godmothers, your confirmation, your priests and rural deans and canons
and I know not what of man's invention, can do no more for you than so
many witches with their incantations. You must flee to Christ
yourselves and by simple faith lay hold on Jesus! All this frippery and
nonsense of man's invention must be pulled down! O for a rough hand to
pull it down, to let the sinner see that he stands before God, naked
and defenseless, except as he flees to Christ, and in the passion and
life of Jesus, finds salvation!
A personal faith it must be and what if I urge you to let it be an
immediate faith? It will be no easier to flee tomorrow than it is
today. It is the same thing that you will have to believe tomorrow as
it is today–that Jesus Christ gave Himself for your sins. This is
God's testimony, that Christ is able to save. O that you would trust
Him! My Soul, you have regretted a thousand things, but you have never
regretted trusting Christ in your youth! Many have wept that they did
not come to Christ before, but none ever lamented that they came too
early. Why not this very day? O Holy Spirit, make it so! Behold, the
fields are showing the green ears ready for the harvest! The season
advances and the fields are prophesying the harvest. O that we might
see some green ears today, some green ears prophetic of a blessed
harvest of souls!
As to myself, I cross this day into another year of my own life and
history and I bear witness that my Master is worth trusting! Oh, it is
a blessed thing to be a Christian! It is a sweet thing to be a Believer
in Christ and though I, of all men, perhaps, am the subject of the
deepest depression of spirits at times, yet there lives not a soul who
can say more truthfully than I, "My soul does magnify the Lord and my
spirit has rejoiced in God my Savior." He who is mighty has looked upon
me with eyes of love and made me His child and I trust Him this day as
I have trusted Him before.
But now I would to God that this day some of you would begin to trust
in Him! It is the Spirit's work only, but still, He works through
means. I think He is working in your heart now. Young Man, those tears
look hopeful–I thank God that those eyes feel burning now. I pray you
do not go chatting on the road home and miss any good impression. Go to
your chamber, fall upon your knees, cry out to God, entreat His favor!
This day let it be! None of the devil's tomorrows–away with them! Away
with them!
"Today if you will hear His voice, harden not your heart." May the
Spirit of God constrain you to "Kiss the Son, lest He be angry and you
perish from the Way, when His wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed
are all they that put their trust in Him." Amen.