Real Grace for Real Need
A sermon
(No. 889)
Delivered on Sunday Morning, SEPTEMBER 5, 1869, by
C.H.SPURGEON,
At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
"He healed them that had need of healing."- Luke 9:11.
"HE healed them that had need of healing," that is to say, on this
gracious occasion no single case came before Him which baffled Him.
However rampant might be the disease, however extreme the condition of
the patient's malady, Jesus worked an instantaneous cure. And truly to
this very hour no spiritual sickness has defeated the great Physician.
No sick souls have ever been carried away from His feet to perish
hopelessly because their need outreached His power. Satan's worst is
soon undone by Jesus' best. The Son of God, in no solitary instance,
has been foiled. Still in the goings forth of His mercy He has "healed
them that had need of healing."
The text also indicates that our Lord continued unweariedly to heal all
the multitudes that came. From morning till night, as fast as the
various patients presented themselves, He worked their care. There was
an eye to be opened here– hearing to be given there, a lame man to be
made to leap–a withered limb to be outstretched. There was leprosy to
be cleansed, dropsy to be dried, fever, epilepsy, madness and all
manner of maladies to be subdued, and Jesus paused not, virtue
continued still to flow to heal "them that had need of healing." Though
they had been countless as the sands, His love, like the sea, would
have touched them all. His restoring power was by no means
exhausted–the oil only ceased to flow when there was not another
vessel to fill!
Had the needy continued still to come even to this day, our Master
would still have multiplied His miracles of mercy. In spiritual
sicknesses, the great Healer of our sin-sick nature has by no means
declined in power. He is far from being exhausted by the number of
applicants who have come to Him. We do well to sing–
"Your precious blood Shall never lose its power, Till all the ransomed
Church of God Is saved to sin no more."
If this present world should continue through a century of thousands of
years, yet no sinner shall apply to Jesus for pardon and find that His
cleansing efficacy has ceased! So long as sin shall pollute this earth,
the Savior shall remain to purify those who believe in Him.
But the text seemed particularly, to me, as it flashed upon my mind, to
indicate this further Truth of God–that as the Redeemer was neither
baffled by any one disease, nor drained of His healing virtue by the
multitude–as the diseases which He healed were intense, the cures
which He worked were memorable. They were not feigned sicknesses which
were brought before Him, nor counterfeit miseries, else His cures also
had been shams and He Himself had been a mock Savior. Those whom He
healed had deep, true, undoubted, urgent need of healing! They were not
pretended patients, with sores which they had manufactured for the
occasion. They were not sentimental sufferers with griefs imagined but
not existent.
Our Master worked health for persons who were well known to be cruelly
diseased–in whom the mischief was no dream, the misery no fiction–and
consequently the cures which He worked were no fictions. either. They
were evident, permanent and true. Fancied ills He left to others. He
healed those that had need of healing. Sentimental grievances may be
left to jangling philosophers and hair-splitting rabbis–Jesus deals
with actual evils whose cure is urgent. Of all men who ever lived, the
Prophet of Nazareth was the most practical. He did nothing for show,
nothing for mere custom, but everything to work solid good and erase
real evil.
Not a motion of His finger has He for feigned or fancied grievance, but
all His power goes forth to those who have true need of healing. We
shall take this thought, this morning, and dwell upon it. It seems to
us to be full of comfort. May God grant it may bring into light and
liberty some who have long been bound.
I. Our first head, this morning, shall be that THOSE WHOM CHRIST HAS
SAVED WILL ALL CONFESS THAT THEY HAD NEED OF SAVING. Out of the whole
multitude who have believed in Jesus, there is not one to whom His
salvation has been a superfluity. I will be spokesman for them, this
morning, according to my ability–they will all confess that what they
have received was what they greatly needed–that the salvation which
Jesus has given them was a salvation without which they would have
perished everlastingly.
For first, Beloved, all the saved saints confess that they had need of
healing through their natural depravity. There is a sad bias in us all
towards sin. Whoever may dispute concerning original sin as a universal
fact, all the saints confess it as a particular evil in their own case.
We are compelled to own that David's confession must be ours, "Behold,
I was shaped in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." Our
nature was corrupted at its fountainhead. When at any time we were put
upon right courses by the stress of moral persuasion, or by the urgency
of fear, yet still our heart labored to follow its own devices against
wind and tide.
Even as the bowl from the potter's hand, however straightly it runs for
awhile, before long begins to curve according to the bias, even so
under all circumstances we tend towards evil. To our nature, to do evil
is easy–to do good is difficult. We loved darkness naturally rather
than light. Uphill work it was to serve God, but as swiftly as a stone
hurled down from a crag pursues its downward course, so readily did we
follow the way of rebellion. Our sin was of the heart, not of the
surface, "The leprosy was deep within." Our tendency to evil did not
spring from imitation–for we had set before us, some of us, the
noblest of Christian examples–but the prompting to evil was
within–the taint was in our vital blood.
Now there was need of healing here, since the disease had corrupted our
essential being and rendered us hopelessly unclean. To our heart's
center there was urgent need of healing. But, Beloved, many of us have
been led to feel that in addition to ordinary original sin, evil
tendencies had in the case of some of us assumed peculiar shapes and
dreadful forms of besetting and constitutional sin. I will appeal to
certain of my Brothers and Sisters here, whether they had not a natural
tendency to a quick temper, an anger soon excited and exceedingly mad
when once aroused? In others, there was a strong disposition to pride.
Even now, with the Divine Grace of God in them, it costs them much to
keep their heads in their proper places. Alas, in how many others the
animal passions are forceful and eager like hungry lions roaring for
their prey and nothing but Divine Grace can keep them in check?
Ah, there are some of us who may do well to imagine what we should have
been if Grace had not interposed! We are bold in spirit, eager in
desire, intent in purpose, stubborn in will, energetic and ardent–and
had we been set on mischief–nothing could have restrained us in our
headlong course. Grace leads us in glad captivity! And apart from this
we would have been terrible sinners before the Lord. All Providences
that might have thwarted us would but have incited us to more vehement
endeavors to pursue our wicked and willful way! Divine Grace has
conquered, but what if we had been left alone?
A Scotch gentleman was observed to look very intently upon the face of
Rowland Hill. The good old man asked him, "And why are you looking at
my face?" The observer replied, "I have been studying the lines of your
face." "And what do you make of them?" said Rowland. "Why I see," said
he, "that if the Grace of God had not changed your heart, you would
have been a great rascal." "Ah," said Rowland, "you understand the
Truth of God, indeed." Many of us have to confess humbly that in us
there was pressing need of healing, for if healing had not come we
should not only have been sinful as others, but should probably have
taken the lead in iniquity and been carried away by the wild sweep of
inward passion to the utmost excess of riot.
Brethren, this need of healing will be confessed by the saints in this
further respect–there was not only in us a tendency to sin, but we had
grievously sinned in act and deed before conversion. I know it is very
customary with those who are seeking Christ to imagine that the saints
of God whom they respect and esteem could never have sinned before
conversion as they, themselves, have done. They cannot imagine that the
man who is now rejoicing in Christ was once as hardened in sin as
themselves! Yet in truth we were even as you. When the Apostle
mentioned the greatest of sinners, he added, "Such were some of us: but
we are washed, but we are sanctified."
O dear Seeker, do not believe, as Satan tells you, that those who are
washed were never as black as you! We were just as vile. It were a
shame for us to confess in public all our transgressions and iniquities
before we knew pardoning mercy of the Lord, but it will suffice us to
say that the remembrance of them lays us in the very dust so that we
should not dare to
lift up our head were it not that we have an Advocate with the Father,
Jesus Christ the Righteous! There is not a saint in Heaven but what had
sinned enough to damn him to the lowest Hell if he had not been saved
by One who knew he had need of saving!
Where had Peter been? As bad as Judas, certainly, if Sovereign Grace
had not prevented. Where had John been, even loving John? Cursing and
blaspheming the very Christ upon whose bosom he laid his head if it had
not been that converting love stepped in and made him, in the fullness
of time, to become a child of God. There would have been no difference
between the best and the worst of men if Divine favor had not worked
some better thing in the godly. And let this always be treasured up as
a hopeful circumstance to you who would be saved–that in the matter of
actual sin there was a deep and real need of healing in the saints who
are healed.
No, Sirs, our sins were not mere fiction. Our repentances were not
fanatical sentiment. Southey, when he writes upon the repentance of
John Bunyan and his terrible accusations of himself, cannot refrain
from thinking him a little beside himself and morbid in his feelings.
The good man is candid and honest and wants to make something out of
it, but he cannot see in young Bunyan any cause for such outcries
against himself. Had Southey been able to look upon sin in that same
vivid but truthful light which had shone upon the young tinker's soul,
he would have seen the least sin to be exceeding sinful and would have
felt that exaggeration in horror against sin is not possible! To sin
against light, against conscience, against the Holy Spirit is to sin
with a vengeance!
No degree of outward moral purity can comfort a heart which is once
made aware of its inward defilement and of the actual sinfulness of
what man calls a trifle. Our actual sins would have been draughts of
poison to our souls if the Divine antidote had not been given. There
was, indeed, great need of healing. Further, let me say there was need
of healing in our case because, in addition to having sinned, we
willfully continued in it. In the very teeth of Divine mercy, in spite
of conscience and of the invitations of the Gospel, we persevered in
our sinful courses. Do I not remember how often I was invited to come
to Christ and even felt the gentle drawings of His cords of love?
But I drew back like a bull unaccustomed to the yoke! Do I not
recollect how God's Law plowed me again and again? And yet in those
very furrows the cursed grasses and thistle of my sins dared to spring
up! How often have I stood and wept and trembled, but have
procrastinated, and so have gone my way to dry those eyes and look
again into the face of sin without alarm! Yes, there was need of
healing in that heart which the Cross of Christ could not affect, which
the terrors of Hell could not subdue, which the loving invitations of a
mother could not persuade to holiness, and that even the warnings of
sickness and the fear of death could not bend to the will of God!
Some of you were long years before you yielded to the power of Divine
Grace. You will sorrowfully acknowledge, this morning, that in your
obstinate will there was need of healing, for had not that healing
come, it is as certain as that you are here, today, pilgrims on the way
to Heaven, that you would have continued to pursue the road to Hell.
There was need of healing, for the disease was not one that would have
died out by itself–it would never have come to a head and then have
lost its power. It was a disease that would have spread until it
defiled you beyond bearing and until the righteous God would have said,
"Put it away with the unclean forever and ever, for within the courts
of Heaven it can never dwell."
O praise your God, this morning, you that are saved, for you had solemn
need of saving! The longer I live the more I feel the need of daily
salvation. I have need of my great Master's healing hand every hour! If
the Lord does not carry on the work which He has begun, it will surely
fail. If He does not continue to repress and destroy in us our carnal
inclinations, they will get the better of us even now! If the Holy
Spirit does not fan with His living breath that spark of Grace which
lives within us, it will certainly be quenched with the floods of
temptation. If there were no other proof of our need of healing than
our experience since conversion, we should have more than enough! If
ever I get to Heaven, I will praise God more loudly than any of you,
for I shall owe more to the Grace of God that will bring me there.
But I suppose the same feeling is in every man that is conscious of the
sin that dwells in him and trembles at his own lack of strength. God
will carry on His work. He will not take away His hand from you, nor
suffer you to perish. But in the fact that if He did so withdraw, the
best of you would be cast away and before tomorrow would be apostates
from the faith, you have proof that you have need of healing. You will
have need of healing all along until you come to die. Even when just
about to enter into the joy of your Lord, when the last sin is under
your feet and your sanctification is all but perfect–when you have
almost destroyed, by His Grace, the last indwelling lust–even then you
will have need of
healing! He must be the Omega who was the Alpha, or you can never
finish. He must carry on even to its close the work which in His
tenderness He has commenced, or else it will be incomplete to your
eternal overthrow.
So, then, it is established beyond a doubt, and I speak as the witness
of 10,000 of God's servants, that those who are saved were such as had
need of saving. The Son of Man came to seek and to save us when we were
lost, emphatically lost. He has healed us, but it has not been of a
finger ache or a flea-bite–He has healed us of a disease most deadly
and damnable. Blessed be His name, while we are forced to speak
depreciatingly of ourselves, in that very proportion we can speak
gloriously of Him! We had need of healing and He has given us just the
healing that our spirits needed.
II. Having, as it were, cast up my earthworks round about the soul that
I desire to win for Jesus, I shall now come point blank to the attack.
You, dear Hearers, you unsaved hearers, YOU ALSO HAVE NEED OF SAVING. I
am not going to talk to you, this morning, about your feeling your need
of Christ. I know that you make that quite a favorite question and a
fond excuse for unbelief. So we shall not speak of your sense of that
need, but what is far more vast a subject, namely, your need itself.
You unsaved Souls, you have great need of saving! You have need of
saving, because you are inclined to evil. You have lately been, in a
measure, desirous to find eternal life. You are not, now, so callous as
you once were. Conscience is awakened and you are seeking more or less
earnestly after Christ. But still, with all this, your natural
inclinations are towards evil. Your goodness will soon pass away like
the dew of the morning–but your love to sin is engraved as with a
diamond into your heart of stone. The strong self-will within your soul
is still set on mischief. You will not come to Christ that you may have
life! Perhaps you have never thought of your natural corruption and
above all have never been humbled by it. But it is there
notwithstanding your forgetfulness of it. You are a fallen, degenerate
creature!
You are not a pure spirit, whose judgment is accurately balanced. You
judge unrighteous judgment. You are not a creature with a free will
that is equally inclinable either to good or evil, according as it may
seem most beneficial to yourself. Your overpowering tendency, now, is
towards that which is evil. Your mind puts bitter for sweet and sweet
for bitter, darkness for light and light for darkness. And your nature,
like an evil tree, brings forth evil fruit. You, perhaps, have never
perceived this, but the very fact that you have not perceived it only
proves that you have the greater need of healing–since the disease has
become so thorough as to have made you insensible of its own existence!
When there is no pain in the limb, then is it certainly in greater risk
of mortification. And while your natural depravity causes you no pain
whatever, and you are even inclined to deny it and take no shame to
yourself concerning it, the more urgent is the need that the Holy
Spirit should convince you of sin and that the Lord Jesus Christ should
come and deliver you from it.
Ah, poor Sinner, what a ruin you are at best! Alas for human dignity,
with its lofty pinnacles of morality and turrets of excellency. What
theatrical pasteboard! What sand-built rubbish all appears when seen in
the blaze of Divine light! Vain is your bandaging of your deadly sore!
Your heart is, in itself, vile and deceitful above all things and
desperately wicked. You may wash the platter as you may. You may make
the outside of the cup as clean as you will, but your inward parts are
very wickedness. The imaginations of the thoughts of your hearts are
evil, only evil and that continually. "You must be born again!" Your
nature is too depraved for mending. You must be created anew in Christ
Jesus! You have need of healing, indeed!
In addition to this, dear Hearer, you are, day by day, proving your
need of healing by your actual sin. I cannot publicly rehearse your
particular and personal sins, but I know this–the charge may be
legitimately brought against every unconverted person here that you are
daily living in sin. Take down the Ten Commandments and read them
through. I will but remind you of one and beg you to examine yourself
upon it, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with
all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength." Are
you keeping that? Why, you live as if there were no God–you know you
do! And day after day and even month after month, you never do anything
to manifest love towards God!
You have some love towards your relatives, but no passion like that is
kindled in your spirit towards your God! You have no love at all and
yet the precept is, "You shall love Him with all your heart." Why, that
one command is lodging charges against you at the bar of God every day!
Indeed, the whole 10 you are constantly breaking–there is not one that
you keep! These sins of yours are speeding as messengers up to the
record office in Heaven and there you shall find written down every
idle word, every sinful thought and every guilty action of your whole
life! How will you bear to hear of all
these in the latter days, when your body shall have arisen from the
grave at the archangel's trumpet? How will you bear to hear the book
read out that shall rehearse your sins?
At the very thought of it your bones may be dissolved within you–sins
against a righteous God, sins against His people, sins against His
Day–sins against His Book, sins against your bodies, sins against your
souls! Sins of every kind, sins unseen of human eye–sins unknown to
any but yourself and your God–all read and all proclaimed with trumpet
voice while men and angels hear! You have need of healing, for you are
scarlet, you are crimson, you are double-dyed with your iniquities! O
that you did but know this! O that you did but feel this! You have need
of healing and yet dark as the thought is, it gives me comfort and it
ought to give you comfort to remember the text–"Jesus healed those
that had need of healing"–and if you are such, why should He not heal
you? Your many sins only prove that you have need of healing, and the
desperate depravity of your heart only proves, still more, that you are
such as Jesus came to heal. He healed those that had need of healing!
He healed just such as you are!
Further, I think I hear some of you confess that you do not feel this
as you ought. Now I was about to bring this to you as a proof that you
have need of healing. When a man does wrong and yet will not confess
it, how wrong he must be! Or when, having confessed it, he feels not
the proper shame, or feeling for awhile the proper shame, he yet
returns to the same evil like the dog to his vomit–how deep must the
evil be in his moral nature–how trebly diseased must he be, inasmuch
as he does not feel sin to be sin at all! When a man has done wrong and
knows it and stands with bitter repentance to confess the evil, why,
you think hopefully of him–after all, there are good points about the
man–there is a vitality in him that will throw out the disease.
But when the villain, having perpetrated a grave and causeless offense,
does not for a moment acknowledge that he has done amiss, but continues
calmly to perpetrate the offense again–ah, then–where is there any
good in him? Is he not thoroughly bad? Now, such are you. If you were
at all right with God you would fall at your Father's feet and never
rise until you were forgiven! Your tears would flow day and night until
you had the assurance of pardon! But since your heart seems to yourself
to be made of Hell-hardened steel and to be like the nether millstone
that feels not at all, why, then, there is more need of healing! And
you seem to me, this morning, the very man I am after–the very man
that Christ came to save–for he came not to call the righteous but
sinners to repentance, not to save those who had no need of healing,
but to heal just such as you whose need is desperate, indeed.
As if to prove your own need of healing, you are, this morning,
according to your own statement, unable to pray. You have been trying
to pray of late and wished you could. You put yourself upon your knees,
but your heart does not talk with God. A horrible dread comes over you,
or else frivolous and vain thoughts distract you. "Oh," you have said,
"I would give a thousand pounds for one tear of repentance! I would be
ready to pluck out my eyes if I could but call upon God as the poor
publican did, with, 'God be merciful to me a sinner.' I thought it the
easiest thing in the world once to pray, but now I find that a true
prayer is beyond my power."
O Soul, you have need of healing, indeed, possessed with a dumb devil
and all your other devils to boot, and unable to cry out for mercy!
Yours is a sad case. You have need of healing and I cannot help
repeating my text to you, "He healed them that had need of healing."
Why should He not heal you? Ah, but you tell me your feelings, your
desires after good things, are very often dampened. Perhaps this
morning you are sincerely in earnest, but tomorrow you may be just as
careless as ever. The other day you went into your chamber and did
wrestle with God, but a temptation came across your path and you were
as thoughtless about Divine things as if you had never been aroused to
a sense of their value.
Ah, this shows what a need you have of healing! You are vile, indeed,
when you dare to trifle with eternity, to sport with death and judgment
and to be at ease while in danger of Hell–your heart, indeed, has need
of healing! And though I grieve that you should be in such a plight,
yet I rejoice that I am able to add, "He healed those that had need of
healing." Though you know your case to be so bad, yet at times you set
up a kind of self-repentance and try to justify yourself in the sight
of God. You say, "I have repented, or tried to do so. I have prayed, or
tried to pray. I have done all I can to be saved and God will not save
me!" That is to say, you throw the blame of your damnation upon God and
make out yourself to be righteous in His sight. You know this to be
wrong! If you are not saved it is because you will not believe in
Jesus. There is the only hitch and the only difficulty.
Your damnation is not of God, but of yourself! It is necessitated by
your own willful wickedness in not believing in Christ! And inasmuch as
you are so wicked as to dare to excuse yourself–you have great need of
healing–urgent need
of saving. But, then, the minute that you have thus excused yourself,
you rush to the opposite extreme–you declare that you have sinned past
hope–that you deserve to be in Hell now and that God can never forgive
you. You deny the mercy of God! You deny the power of Christ to forgive
you and cleanse you! You fly in the face of God's Word, and you make
Him out to be a liar! When He tells you that if you trust Jesus you
shall find peace, you tell Him it is not possible there can be any
peace with you! When He reminds you that He never rejected one, you
insinuate that He will reject you!
You thus insult the Divine Majesty by denying the truthfulness and
honesty of God. You have need of healing when you thus allow wicked
despair to get the mastery over you–you are far gone, very far gone.
But, oh, I rejoice to know that you are still among such as Jesus came
to heal! He came to heal those that had need of healing and you cannot
deny you are one of those! Why, Satan himself will not have the
impudence to tell you that you have no need of healing! O that you
would but cast yourself into the Savior's arms–not trying to make
yourself out to be good–but acknowledging all that I have laid to your
charge, and then, trusting as a sinner that dear Lamb of God that takes
away the sins of the world!
Remember, dear Hearer, you have need of healing, for unless you are
healed of these sins and of all these wicked tendencies and thoughts of
yours, as sure as you are living you will be cast into Hell. O my dear
Friend, I know of no Truth of God that ever causes me such pain to
preach as this–not that sinners will be damned, awful Truth as that
is– but that awakened sinners will be damned unless they believe in
Jesus! You must not make a Christ out of your tears. You must not hope
to find safety in your bitter thoughts and cruel despairs. Unless you
believe, you shall never be established. Unless you come to Christ, you
may be convinced of sin, of righteousness and judgment, too, but those
convictions will only be preludes to your destruction!
My dear Hearer, do you know what you are this morning? You call
yourself a seeker, but until you are a finder you are an enemy to God
and God is angry with you every day! Let but one drop of your blood go
wrong this morning, let but your beating pulse be suspended and where
are you? Why, in Hell–in spite of those tears, in spite of those
cries–for if you will not believe in Jesus, there is no "purgatory"
for you, no place where afterwards you may find space for repentance
and seek the Christ whom you today disregard! I have no alternative for
you, however tender and brokenhearted you may be, but this one–believe
and live! Refuse to believe and you must perish–for your
broken-heartedness and tears and professed contrition can never stand
in the place of Christ! You must have faith in Jesus, or you must die
eternally!
I shall press on very briefly to the next point, but I pray God to make
these words of use to you before you forget them. I am endeavoring to
speak simply, personally and pointedly. He knows how my soul yearns
over those who are here, that they may, this morning, find life in
Jesus! O may He grant the desire of my soul and bring them to Himself
now!
III. Our third point is to you, O needy Sinner. JESUS CAN SAVE YOU. I
need not enter into what your case is. Remember, Jesus has saved a
parallel case to yours. Yours may seem, to yourself, to be exceedingly
odd, but somewhere or other in the New Testament you will find one as
singular as yours. You tell me that you are full of so much wickedness.
Did not He cast seven devils out of Magdalene? Yes, but your wickedness
seems to be greater than even seven devils. Did not He drive a whole
legion of devils out of the demoniac of Gadara?
You tell me that you cannot pray, but He healed one possessed of a dumb
devil. You feel hardened and insensible, but He cast out a deaf devil.
You tell me you cannot believe–neither could that man with the
withered arm stretch out his arm–but he did it when Jesus bade him.
You tell me you are dead in sin, but Jesus made even the dead live!
Your case cannot be so bad but it has been matched, and Christ has
conquered the likes of it. O poor Soul, if you do but come to Him, you
shall not find yourself one half the singularity that you suppose, for
another has been saved just like yourself!
Remember again, Christ can save you, for there is not a record in the
world, nor has there ever been handed down to us by tradition a single
case in which Jesus has failed. If I could meet anywhere in my
wanderings a soul that had cast itself on Christ, alone, and yet had
received no pardon. If there could be found in Hell a solitary spirit
that relied upon the precious blood and found no salvation, then the
Gospel might well be laid by in the dark and no longer gloried in. But
as that has not been and never shall be–Sinner–you shall not make the
first exception! If you come to Christ–and to come to Him is but to
trust Him wholly and simply–you cannot perish, for He has said–"Him
that comes to Me I will in no wise cast out."
Will He prove a liar! Will you dare to think so? O come, for He cannot
cast you out! Think for a moment, Sinner, and this may comfort you–He
whom I preach to you as the Healer of your soul is God! What can be
impossible with God? What sin cannot He, who is God over all, forgive?
If your transgressions were to be dealt with by an angel, they might
surpass all Gabriel's power. But it is Immanuel, God With Us, who is
come to save! Though you were between the jaws of Hell, so long as the
Pit had not shut her mouth upon you, He could save you! Doubt not,
where you have to deal with Deity, nothing is impossible, or even
difficult!
Moreover, you cannot doubt His will. Have you ever heard of Him–He
that was God and became Man? He was gentle as a woman–
"His heart is made of tenderness, His heart melts with love."
It was not in Him to be harsh. When the woman taken in adultery, in the
very fact, was brought to Him, what did He say? "Neither do I condemn
you: go and sin no more." It was said of Him, "This man receives
sinners, and eats with them," and He is not changed now that He reigns
above! He is just as willing to receive sinners now as when He was here
below.
Once more, do you still doubt? Remember what He has done to save
sinners. My time fails me, else would I ask you to go with me to
Gethsemane and view Him covered with the sweat of blood. I would ask
you to stand with me in Pilate's hall when Pilate cries, "EcceHomo'" To
see the Savior as His shoulders are crimsoned with streams of gore for
sinners who were His enemies. I would ask you, then, to stand beneath
the Cross and view the hands and feet and side, all pouring forth His
life-blood. These are the drops that take our sins away! These are the
griefs of Him who took our guilt that our guilt might be forgiven. Can
Jesus, the Son of God, suffer like this and yet there be no power in
His blood to cleanse? What? Was the Atonement a fiction? Was the death
of the eternal Son of God a thing without effect? There must be power
enough there to take away sin! Come and wash, come and wash, you vile
and black! Come and wash and you shall find instant cleansing the
moment that, by faith, you touch His purifying blood.
Lastly, Jesus demands of you, Sinner, this morning, your trust. He
deserves it, let Him have it. You have need of healing. He came to heal
those that have need of healing. He can heal you. What is to be done in
order that you may be healed this morning, that all your sins may be
forgiven and yourself saved? All that is to be done is to leave off
your own doing and let Him do for you! Leave off looking to yourself,
or looking to others and just come and cast yourself on Him. You know
Dr. Watts' lines–
"A guilty, weak and helpless worm, On Christ's kind arm I fall. He is
my strength and righteousness, My Jesus and my All."
"Oh," you say, "but I cannot believe." Cannot believe? Then do you know
what you are doing? You are making Him a liar! If you tell a man, "I
cannot believe you," that is only another way of saying, "You are a
liar." Oh, you will not dare to say that of Christ! No, my Friend, I
take you by the hand and say another word–you must believe Him. He is
God, dare you doubt Him? He died for sinners. Can you doubt the power
of His blood? He has promised. Will you insult Him by mistrusting His
Word? "Oh, no," you say, "I feel I must believe, I must trust Him, but
suppose that trust of mine should not be of the right kind? Suppose it
should be a natural trust?"
Ah, my Friend, a humble trust in Jesus is a thing that never grew in
natural ground. For a poor soul to come and trust in Christ is always
the fruit of the Spirit. You need not raise a question about that.
Never did the devil–never did mere Nature empty a man of himself and
bring him to Jesus! Do not be anxious on that point. "But," says one,
"the Spirit must lead me to believe Him!" Yes, but you cannot see the
Spirit–His work is a secret and a mystery. What you have to do is to
believe in Jesus–there He stands, God and yet a suffering Man–making
Atonement and He tells you if you trust Him you shall be saved. You
must trust Him. You cannot doubt Him. Why should you? What has He done
that you should doubt Him?–
"O believe the record true, God to you His Son has given." And if you
trust Him, you need not raise the question as to where your faith came
from. It must have come from the Holy Spirit who is not seen in His
works, for He works where He wills. You see the fruit of His work, and
that is enough
for you. Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ? If so, you are born
of God! If you have cast yourself, sink or swim, on Him, then are you
saved! We read in the papers, this week, how a man was saved from being
shot. He had been condemned in a Spanish court, but being an American
citizen and also of English birth, the consuls of the two countries
interposed and declared that the Spanish authorities had no power to
put him to death and what did they do to secure his life? They wrapped
him up in their flags–they covered him with the Stars and Stripes and
the Union Jack–and defied the executioners! "Now fire a shot if you
dare, for if you do you defy the nations represented by those flags and
you will bring the powers of those two great nations upon you."
There stood the man and before him the soldiery and though a shot might
soon have ended his life, yet he was as invulnerable as though in a
coat of triple steel! Even so Jesus Christ has taken my poor guilty
soul ever since I believed in Him and has wrapped around me the
blood-red flag of His atoning Sacrifice! And before God can destroy me
or any other soul that is wrapped in the Atonement, He must insult His
Son and dishonor this Sacrifice! And that He will never do, blessed be
His name! May the Lord save each one of you. May He do it now and His
shall be the Glory. Amen and Amen.
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–Luke 7:1-30.