DELIVERED BY
C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
"By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body
of Jesus Christ once for all." Hebrews 10:10.
DEAR Friends, ever since the Lord has quickened us by His Grace we have
begun to look into ourselves and to search our hearts to see our
condition before God. Hence many things which once caused us no
disquietude now create in us great anxiety. We thought that we were all
right and felt it to be enough to be quite as good as others. We
dreamed that if we were not quite as good as we should be, we would
certainly grow better, though we did not stop to inquire how or why. We
took stock of our condition and concluded that we were rich and
increased with goods and had need of nothing. A change has come over
the spirit of the scene–the Grace of God has made us thoughtful and
careful. We dare not take things for granted. We test and prove things,
for we are very anxious not to be deceived. We look upon eternal
realities as being of the utmost consequence and we dare not take them
for granted as being certain to be right.
We are afraid of being presumptuous and we long to be sincere. We hold
an assize within our spirits and we are so afraid that we may be
partial, as probably we shall be, that we ask the Lord to search us and
try us, to see if there is any wicked way in us, that He may lead us
out of such a way into the way everlasting. This is all very wise and
very proper and I would not, for a moment, try to turn the people of
God away from a proper measure of this state of heart. And yet let it
never be forgotten that we are, in the sight of God, different, in some
respects, than we shall ever see ourselves to be if we look through the
glass of feeling and consciousness–there are other matters to be taken
into consideration– matters which our anxiety may lead us to overlook
and our inward search may cause us to forget.
Faith reveals to us another position for the people of God besides that
which they occupy in themselves. Some call it an evangelical fiction
and the like but, thank God, it is a blessed fact that sinners as we
are in ourselves, yet Believers are saints in God's sight and that
sinful as they feel themselves to be, yet they are washed, cleansed and
sanctified in Jesus Christ! Notwithstanding all that we mourn over, the
very fact that we do mourn over it becomes an evidence that we are no
longer what we once were and do not stand, now, where we once stood. We
have passed from death unto life! We have escaped from under the
dominion of the Law into the kingdom of Divine Grace. We have come from
under the curse and we dwell in the region of blessing!
We have believed on Him that justifies the ungodly and our faith is
counted for righteousness (Rom. 4:5). There is, therefore, no
condemnation for us, for we are in Christ Jesus our Lord and walk no
longer after the flesh but after the Spirit. That your hearts may be
gladdened, I want yon to think of the noble position into which the
Grace of God has lifted all Believers–the condition of sanctification
which is spoken of in the text–for by the "will of God we are
sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for
all."
We shall, first, speak of the eternal will. Secondly of the effectual
Sacrifice by which that will has been carried out. And thirdly, of the
everlasting result accomplished by that will through the Sacrifice of
the body of Christ. May the Holy Spirit who has revealed the grand
doctrine of Justification now enable us to understand it and to feel
its comforting power.
I. First, then, THE ETERNAL WILL–"By that will we have been
sanctified." This will must, first of all, be viewed as the will
ordained of old by the Father–the eternal decree of the Infinite
Jehovah that a people whom He chose should be sanctified and set apart
unto Himself. The will of Jehovah stands fast forever and ever and we
know of it that it is altogether unchangeable and that it has no
beginning. It is an eternal will, we have no vacillating Deity, no
fickle God. He wills changes, but He never changes His will. "He is of
one mind and who can turn Him? And what His soul desires, even that He
does."
The will of God is invincible as well as eternal. We are told in
Ephesians that He works all things after the counsel of His own will.
"Who can stay His hand, or say unto Him, What are You doing?" The good
pleasure of His will is never defeated–there cannot be such a thing as
a vanquished God. "His purpose shall stand and He will do all His
pleasure." In fact, the will of God is the motive force of all things.
"He spoke and it was done. He commanded and it stood fast." His Word is
Omnipotent because His will is at the back of it and it puts force into
it. He said, "Light be," and there was light because He willed that
there should be light! He bade creatures come forth, numerous as the
drops of dew, to people the world that He had made and forth they came,
flying, leaping, swimming in varied orders of life, because of His own
will He did create them.
His will is the secret power which sustains the universe and threads
the starry orbs and holds them like a necklace of light about the neck
of Nature. His will is the Alpha and the Omega of all things. It was
according to this eternal, invincible will of God that He chose,
created and set apart a people that should show forth the glory and
riches of His Grace–a people that would bear the image of His
only-begotten Son, a people that should joyfully and willingly serve
Him in His courts forever and ever–a people who should be His own sons
and daughters, to whom He would say, "I will dwell in them and walk in
them and they shall be My people and I will be their God."
Thus stood the eternal will of old. "For whom He did foreknow, He also
did predestinate to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might
be the firstborn among many brethren." But the people concerning whom
this will was made were dead in sin, defiled with evil, polluted by
transgression! The old serpent's venom was in their veins. They were
fit to be set apart for the curse, but not to be set apart for the
service of the thrice holy God! And the question was, how then, should
the will of the Immutable Invincible ever be carried out? How shall
these rebels become absolved? How shall these fountains of filth become
clear as crystal, pouring forth floods of living water and Divine
praise? How shall these unsanctified and defiled ones become sanctified
unto the service of God?
It must be–but how shall it be? Then came the priests, with smoking
censers and with basins full of blood, steaming as it came fresh from
the slaughtered victims and they sprinkled this blood upon the Book and
upon the people, upon the altar and upon the Mercy Seat and upon all
the hangings of the tabernacle and all the ground whereon the
worshippers walked, for almost all things under the Law were sanctified
by blood. Everywhere was this blood of bulls and of goats. Fresh every
morning and renewed every evening. Still, God's will was not done, the
chosen were not thus sanctified and we know they were not, because it
is written, "Sacrifice and offering You did not desire." His will was
not fulfilled in them. It was not His will that they should sanctify
the people. They were inefficacious to such an end for, as the Holy
Spirit has said, it was "not possible that the blood of bulls and of
goats should take away sins." And so, if these offerings had been all
there was, centuries of the house of Aaron and of the priests of the
tribe of Levi might have come and gone and yet the will decreed by the
eternal Father would not have been an accomplished fact!
Thus we have landed at our second point, which is that this will by
which we are sanctified was performed by the ever-blessed Son. It was
the will of God the Father, but it was carried out by the Divine Son
when He came into the world. A body was prepared for Him and into that
body, in a mysterious manner which we will not attempt, even, to
conceive of, He entered and there He was–the Incarnate God! This
Incarnate God, by offering His own blood; by laying down His own life;
by bearing in His own body the curse and in His own spirit enduring the
wrath, was able to effect the purpose of the everlasting Father in the
purging of His people, in the setting of His chosen apart and making
them henceforth holiness unto the Lord.
Do you not see what the will of the Father was–that He should have a
people that should be sanctified unto Himself? But that will could not
be carried out by the blood of bulls and of goats! It must be achieved
by the offering up of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. Our Lord
Jesus Christ has done whatever that will of the Father required for its
perfect achievement. This is our satisfaction. We will not enter, at
this time, into a detailed account of our Lord's active and passive
obedience by which He magnified the Law and set apart His people. I
pray you, however, never fall into the error of dividing the work of
Christ as some do and say, "Here He made Atonement for sin and there He
did not." In these modern times, certain brethren have invented
refinements of statement of so trivial a character that they are not
even worth the trouble of thinking over and yet, like babies with a new
rattle, they make a noise with them all day long!
It is amusing how these wise professors make grave points out of mere
hair-splitting distinctions and if we do not agree with them they give
themselves mighty airs, pitying our ignorance and esteeming themselves
as superior persons
who have an insight into things which ordinary Christians cannot see!
God save us from having eyes which are so sharp that we are able to spy
out new occasions for difference and fresh reasons for making men
offenders for mere words. I believe in the life of Christ as well as in
His death and I believe that He stood for me before God as much when He
walked the acres of Palestine as when He hung on the Cross at
Jerusalem. You cannot divide and split Him in sunder and say, "He is so
far an example and so far an Atonement," but you must take the entire
Christ and look at Him from the very first as the Lamb of God which
takes away the sin of the world.
"Oh, but," they say, "He made no Atonement except in His death," which
is, let me tell you, an absurdity in language! Listen a minute. When
does a man die? I cannot tell you. There is the minute in which the
soul separates from the body, but all the time that a man may be
described as dying he is alive, is he not? A man does not suffer when
actually dead. What we call the pangs of death are truly and accurately
pangs of life. Death does not suffer–it is the end of suffering! A man
is in life while he suffers and if they say, "It is Christ's death that
makes an Atonement and not His life," I reply that death, alone and by
itself, makes no Atonement! Death in its natural sense and not in this
modern non-natural severance from life, does make Atonement–but it
cannot be viewed apart from life by any unsophisticated mind.
If they must have distinctions, we could make distinctions enough to
worry them of such an unprofitable business, but we have nobler work to
do! To us our Lord's death seems to be the consummation of His life,
the finishing stroke of a work which His Father had given Him to do
among the sons of men. We view Him as having come in a body prepared
for Him to do the will of God once–and that "once" lasted throughout
His one life on earth! We will not, however, dwell on any moot point,
but unfeignedly rejoice that whatever was needed to make God's people
wholly sanctified unto God, Christ has worked out! "By that will we are
sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once." It
is finished!
Does the Divine Law require, for our acceptance, perfect submission to
the will of the Lord? Jesus has rendered it! Does it ask complete
obedience to its precepts? He has presented the same! Does the
fulfilled will of the Lord call for abject suffering, a sweat of blood,
pangs unknown and death, itself? Christ has presented it all, whatever
that "all" may be! As when God created, His Word effected all His will,
so, when God redeemed, His blessed and Incarnate Word has done all His
will! In every point, as God looked on each day's work and said, "It is
good," so, as He looks upon each part of the work of His dear Son, He
can say of it, "It is good." The Father joins in the verdict of His Son
that it is finished–all the will of God for the sanctification of His
people is accomplished!
Beloved, this work must be applied to us by the Holy Spirit. It is the
Holy Spirit who brings us to know that Jesus Christ has sanctified us,
or set us apart and made us acceptable with God. It is the Holy Spirit
who has given us the New Testament and shed a light upon the Old. It is
the Holy Spirit who speaks to us through the ministers of Christ when
He blesses them to our conversion. Especially is it the Holy Spirit who
takes away from us all hope of being sanctified before God by any means
of our own, brings us to see our need of cleansing and reconciliation
and then takes of the things of Christ and reveals them to us.
Not without the going forth of His sacred power are we made to take the
place of separation and dedication, to which the Lord of old ordained
us. Thus it is by the will of the Father, carried out by the Son and
applied by the Holy Spirit that the Church of God is regarded as
sanctified before God and is acceptable unto Him. I do not tarry longer
on any one point because these great things are best spoken of with few
words. They are subjects better fed upon by quiet thought than
exhibited in speech.
II. I invite you, dear Friends, in the second place, to consider THE
EFFECTUAL SACRIFICE by which the will of God with regard to the
sanctity of His people has been carried out. "By that will we are
sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ." This
implies, first, His Incarnation, which of course includes His eternal
Deity. We can never forget that Jesus Christ is God. The Church has
given forth many a valiant confession to His Deity and woe be to her
should she ever hesitate on that glorious Truth of God! Yet sometimes
she has great need to earnestly insist upon His Humanity. As you bow
before your glorious Lord and adore Him with all the sanctified, yet
remember that He whom you worship was truly and really a Man.
The Gospel of His Incarnation is not a spiritual idea, nor a metaphor,
nor a myth. In very deed and truth the God that made Heaven and earth
came down to earth and hung upon a woman's breast as an Infant. That
Child, as He grew in stature and wisdom, was as certainly God as He is
at this moment in Glory! He was as surely God when He was here hun-
gry and suffering, sleeping, eating, drinking as He was God when He
hung up the morning stars and kindled the lamps of night, or as He
shall be when sun and moon shall dim at the brightness of His coming!
Jesus Christ, very God of very God, did certainly stoop to become such
as we are and was made in the likeness of sinful flesh. It is a Truth
of God you all know, but I want you to grasp it and realize it. It will
help you to trust Christ if you clearly perceive that, Divine as He is,
He is bone of your bone and flesh of your flesh–your Kinsman, though
the Son of God. All this is implied in the text, because it speaks of
the offering of the body of Christ.
But why does it specially speak of the body? I think to show us the
reality of that offering–His soul suffered and His soul's sufferings
were the soul of His sufferings, but still, to make it palpable to us,
to record it as a sure historical fact, the Holy Spirit mentions that
there was an offering of the body of Christ. I take it, however, that
the word means the whole of Christ–that there was an offering made of
all of Christ, the body of Him, or that of which He was constituted. It
is my solemn conviction that the Deity co-worked with His Humanity in
the wondrous passion by which He has sanctified His elect.
I am told that Deity cannot suffer. I am expected to subscribe to that
because theologians say so. Well, if it is true, then I shall content
myself with believing that the Deity helped the Humanity by
strengthening it to suffer more than it could otherwise have endured.
But I believe that Deity can suffer, heterodox as that notion may seem
to be. I cannot believe in an impassive God as my Father. If He pities
and sympathizes, surely He must have some sensibilities! Is He a God of
iron? If He wills it, He can do anything and, therefore, He can suffer
if He pleases. It is not possible for God to be made to suffer–that
would be a ridiculous supposition–yet if He wills to do so, He is
certainly capable of doing that as well as anything else–for all
things are possible to Him.
I look upon our Lord Jesus as in His very Godhead stooping down to bear
the weight of human sin and human misery, sustaining it because He was
Divine and able to bear what otherwise had been too great a load. Thus
the whole of Christ was made a Sacrifice for sin. It was the offering,
not of the spirit of Christ, but of the very body of Christ–the
essence, subsistence and most manifest reality and personality of Jesus
Christ, the Son of the Most High! And this was wholly offered. I do not
know how to bring out my own thoughts here, but to accomplish the will
of God in sanctifying all His people, Christ must be the Offering and
He must be wholly offered.
There were certain sacrifices which were only presented to God in part,
so far as the consumption by fire was concerned. A part was eaten by
the priest or by the offerer and so far it was not a whole burnt
offering. In this there was much precious Truth set forth, of which we
will not speak at this time, but as our Sin-Offering, making expiation
for guilt, our blessed Lord and Master gave Himself wholly for us as an
atoning Sacrifice and Offering for sin–and that, "Himself," sums up
all you can conceive it to be in and of the Christ of God! And the
pangs and griefs which, like a fire went through Him, did consume Him,
even to the uttermost of all that was in Him.
He bore all that could be borne! He stooped to the lowest to which
humility could stoop! He descended to the utmost abyss to which a
descent of self-denial could be made! He made Himself of no reputation!
He emptied Himself of all honor and glory! He gave up Himself without
reserve! He saved others, Himself He could not save–He spares us in
our chastisements, but Himself He spared not! He says of Himself in the
22nd Psalm, "I am a worm and no man; a reproach of men and despised of
the people." You do not know, you cannot imagine how fully the
Sacrifice was made by Christ! It was not only a Sacrifice of all of
Himself, but a complete Sacrifice of every part of Himself for us! The
blaze of eternal wrath for human sin was focused upon His head!
The anguish that must have been endured by Him who stood in the place
of millions of sinners to be judged of God and smitten in their place
is altogether inconceivable! Though Himself perfectly innocent, yet in
His own Person to offer up such a Sacrifice as could honor the Divine
Justice on account of myriads of sins of myriads of the sons of men was
a work far beyond all human realization! You may give loose to your
reason and your imagination and rise into the seventh Heaven of sublime
conception as with eagle wings, but you can never reach the utmost
height. Here is the sum of the matter–"Thanks be unto God for His
unspeakable gift," for unspeakable, inconceivable it certainly is when
we view the Lord Jesus as a Sacrifice for the sins of men!
This offering was made once and only once. The pith of the text lies in
the finishing words of it, "through the offering of the body of Jesus
Christ once for all." Those words, "for all," are very properly put in
by the translators but you must not make a mistake as to their meaning.
The text does not mean that Christ offered Himself up once for
all–that is,
for all mankind. That may be a doctrine of Scripture, or it may not be
a doctrine of Scripture–but it is not the teaching here. The passage
means "once for all" in the sense of–all at once, or only once. As a
man might say, "I gave up my whole estate once and for all to my
creditors and there was the end of the matter," so here our Lord Jesus
Christ is said to have offered Himself up as a Sacrifice once and for
all–that is to say, only once and that was the end of the matter.
His Sacrifice on behalf of His people was for all the sins before He
came. Think of what they all were! Ages had succeeded ages and there
had been found among the various generations of men criminals of the
blackest dye and crimes had been multiplied. The Prophet said in vision
concerning Christ, as he looked on all the multitude, "All we like
sheep have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own way; and
the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." That was before He
came. Reflect that there has been no second offering of Himself ever
since and never will be–it was once and that once did the deed!
Now let your mind conceive of this–nearly 2,000 years have passed
since the offering and if the Prophet were to stand here tonight and
look back through those 1,800 years and more, he would still say, "All
we like sheep have gone astray: we have turned every one to his own
way; and the Lord has laid on Him the iniquity of us all." Oh, it is a
wonderful conception–the Sacrifice of the Lord Jesus was the reservoir
into which all the sins of the human race ran, from this quarter and
that and that and that and that! All the sins of His people rolled in a
torrent unto Him and gathered as in a great lake! In Him was no sin and
yet the Lord made Him to be sin for us. You may have seen a deep
mountain lake which has been filled to the brim by innumerable
streamlets from all the hillsides round about. Here comes a torrent
gushing down and there trickles from the moss that has overgrown the
rock a little drip, drip, drip, which falls perpetually– great and
small tributaries all meet in the black lake which, after the rain, is
full to the brim and ready to burst its banks!
That lone lake pictures Christ, the meeting place of the sins of His
people! They were all laid on Him, that from Him the penalty might be
exacted. At His hands the price must be demanded for the ransom of all
this multitude of sins! And it is said that He did this once for all. I
have no language with which to describe it–but I see before me the
great load of sin, the huge, tremendous world of sin! No, no, it is
greater than the world! Atlas might carry that, but this is a weight
compared with which the world is but as a pin's head! Mountains upon
mountains, alps on alps are nothing to the mighty mass of sin which I
see before my mind's eyes! And lo, it all falls upon the Well-Beloved!
He stands beneath it and bows under it till the bloody sweat starts
from every pore and yet He does not yield to its weight so as to get
away from the burden! It presses more heavily, it bows Him to the dust,
it touches His very soul, it makes Him cry in anguish, "My God, My God,
why have You forsaken Me?" and yet, at the last He lifts Himself up and
flings it all away and cries, "It is finished!" And it is gone!
There is not a speck of it left! No, not an atom of it left! It is all
gone at once and once and for all. He has borne the immeasurable weight
and cast it off from His shoulders forever and, as it lies no more on
Him, so also it lies no more on us! Sin shall never be mentioned
against His people any more forever. Oh, wondrous deed of Deity! Oh,
mighty feat of love accomplished once and for all! The Redeemer never
offered Himself to death before. He never will do it again! Look at it
this way, my Brothers and Sisters–the reason why it never will be done
again is because there is no need for it! All the sin that was laid
upon Jesus is gone–all the sin of His people is forever discharged. He
has borne it–the debt is paid! The handwriting of ordinances against
us is nailed to His Cross! The accuser's charge is answered forever.
What, then, shall we say of those who come forward and pretend that
they perpetually present the body of Christ in the unbloody sacrifice
of the "mass?" Why, no profane jest from the lips of Voltaire ever had
even the slightest degree of God-defiant blasphemy in it compared with
such a hideous insult as this horrible pretense! It is infernal! I will
say no less. There can be nothing more intolerable than that notion,
for our Lord Jesus Christ has offered Himself for sin once and once and
for all! He who dares to think of offering Him again insults Him by
acting as if that once were not enough. I cannot believe any language
of abhorrence to be too strong if the performers and attendants at the
"mass" really knew what is implied in their professed act and deed!
In the judgment of Christian charity we may earnestly pray, "Father,
forgive them, for they know not what they do." Our words fail and our
conceptions faint at the thought of the great Substitute with all the
sins of His people condensed into one black draught and set before Him!
How shall we think of Him as putting that cup to His lips and drinking,
drinking, drinking all the wrath till He had drained the cup to the
bottom and filled Himself with horror? Yet look, He has finished the
death-drink and turned the cup upside down, crying, "It is finished!"
At one tremendous draught the
loving Lord has drained destruction dry for all His people and there is
no dreg nor drop left for any one of them, for now is the will of God
accomplished–"by that will we are sanctified through the offering of
the body of Jesus Christ once for all." Glory be to God! And yet again,
glory be to God!–
"He bore on the tree the sentence for me,
And now both the Surety and sinner are free.
In the hea venly Lamb thrice happy I am
And my heart does rejoice at the sound of His name." III. Now I close
with our third head and that is THE EVERLASTING RESULT. The everlasting
result of this effectual carrying out of the will of God is that God
now regards His people's sin as expiated and their persons as
sanctified. Our sin is removed by expiation. Atonement has been offered
and its efficacy abides forever. There is no need of any other
expiation. Believers repent bitterly, but not in the way of expiation.
There is no penance to be exacted of them by way of putting away guilt.
Their guilt is gone–their transgression is forgiven! The Covenant is
made with them and it runs thus–"Their sins and their iniquities will
I remember no more forever." Their sins have, in fact, been ended,
blotted out and annihilated by the Redeemer's one Sacrifice.
Next, they are reconciled. There is no quarrel, now, between God and
those who are in Christ Jesus. Peace is made between them forever. The
middle wall that stood between them is taken away. Christ, by His one
Sacrifice, has made peace for all His people and effectually
established an amity which never shall be broken–
"Lord Jesus, we believing
In You have peace with God,
Eternal life receiving
The purchase of Your blood.
Our curse and condemnation
You bore in our stead
Secure is our salvation
In You, our risen Head."
Moreover, they are not only accepted and reconciled, but they are
purified–the taint that was upon them is taken away. In God's sight
they are regarded no more as unclean. They are no longer shut outside
the camp–they may come to the Throne of the heavenly Grace whenever
they will. God can have communion with them! He regards them as fit to
stand in His courts and to be His servants, for they are purified,
reconciled, expiated through the one Offering of Christ! Their
admission into the closest intimacy with God could never be allowed if
He did not regard them as purged from all un-cleanness and this has
been effected not at all by themselves, but only by the great
Sacrifice–
"Your blood, not mine, O Christ, Your blood so freely spilt, Has
blanched my blackest stains, And purged away my guilt. Your
righteousness, O Christ, Alone does cover me. No righteousness avails
Save that which is in Thee."
Now, what has come of it? That is the point. I want you, now, to let me
leave the doctrine and try and bring out the experience arising from
it. What Christ has done in the carrying out of the great will of God
has effected salvation for all His chosen–but this is applied to them
actually and experimentally by the Holy Spirit's dwelling in them–by
which indwelling they know they are now God's people. The Israelites
were God's people, after a fashion. The Levites were more peculiarly so
and the priests were still more especially so–and all of these had to
present perpetual sacrifices and offerings that God might be able to
look upon them as His people–for they were a sinful people.
You and I are not typically, but truly and really His people. Through
Jesus Christ's offering of Himself once and for all, we are really set
apart to be the Lord's people from now on and forever and He says of
us–I mean, of course, not of us all, but of as many as have believed
in Jesus and to whom the Holy Spirit has revealed His finished work–"I
will be their God and they shall be My people." You Believers are
sanctified in this sense, that you are now the set-apart ones unto God
and you belong wholly to Him. Will you think that over? "I am now not
my own. I do not belong, now, to the
common order of men, as all the rest of men do. I am set apart. I am
called out. I am taken aside. I am one of the Lord's own. I am His
treasure and His portion. He has, through Jesus Christ's death, made me
one of those of whom He says– 'They shall dwell alone, they shall not
be numbered among the people.'"
I want you to feel it so that you may live under the power of that fact
that you may feel, "My Lord has cleansed me. My Lord has made expiation
for me. My Lord has reconciled me unto God and I am God's man, I am
God's woman. I cannot live as others do. I cannot be one among you. I
must come out. I must be separate. I cannot find my pleasure where you
find yours. I cannot find my treasure where you find yours. I am God's
and God is mine. That wondrous transaction on the Cross of which our
minister has tried to speak, but of which he could not speak as he
ought–that wondrous unspeakable deed upon the Cross–that wonderful
life and death of Jesus, has made me one of God's people, set apart
unto Him and as such I must live."
When you realize that you are God's people, the next thing is to
reflect that God, in sanctifying a people, set them apart for His
service and He made them fit for His service. You, Beloved, through
Christ's one great Offering of His body for you, are permitted, now, to
be the servants of God! You know it is an awful thing for a man to try
and serve God until God gives Him permission–there is a presumption
about it. Suppose that one of the Queen's enemies, who has sought her
life and has always spoken against her, were to say, "I mean to be one
of her servants. I will go into her palace and I will serve her,"
having all the while in his heart a rebellious, proud spirit? His
service could not be tolerated! It would be sheer impudence. Even so,
"Unto the wicked God says, What have you to do to declare My statutes?"
A wicked man, pretending to serve God, stands in the position of Korah,
Dathan and Abiram trying to offer incense because he is not purified
and not called to the work and has no fitness for it.
But now, Beloved, you that are in Christ are called to be His servants.
You have permission and leave to serve Him. It ought to be your great
joy to be accepted servants of the living God. If you are only the
Lord's shoeblack, you have a greater privilege than if you were an
emperor! If the highest thing you ever will be allowed to do should be
to loosen the laces of your master's shoes or to wash his servants'
feet–if that master is Christ you are favored above the mightiest of
the mighty! Men of renown may envy you–their orders of the Garter or
the Golden Fleece are nothing compared with the high dignity of being
servitors of King Jesus! Look upon this as being the result of Christ's
death upon the Cross, that such a poor, sinful creature as you
are–once a slave of the devil–is now allowed to be the servant of
God!
On the Cross my Master bought for me the privilege to preach to you at
this time. And He bought for you, dear Mother, the privilege to go home
and train your little child for the great Father in Heaven. In fact, He
bought for us a sanctification which has made us the Lord's people and
has enabled us to engage in His service. Do we not rejoice in this?
Next to that we have this privilege that what we do can now be
accepted. Because Jesus Christ, by the offering of His body once, has
perfected the Father's will and has sanctified us, therefore what we do
is now accepted with God! We might have done whatever we would, but God
would not have accepted it from a sinner's hands–from the hands of
those that were out of Christ.
Now He accepts anything of us. You dropped a penny into the box–it was
all that you could give and the Lord accepted it! It dropped into His
hand! You offered a little prayer in the middle of business this
afternoon because you heard an ill word spoken–and your God accepted
that prayer. You went down the street and spoke to a poor sick person.
You did not say much, but you said all you could–the great God
accepted it! Acceptance in the Beloved, not only for our persons, but
for our prayers and our works, is one of the sweetest things I know of.
We are accepted! That is the joy of it. Through that one great bloody
Sacrifice, once and for all offered, God's people are forever accepted
and what His people do for Him is accepted, too! And now we are
privileged to the highest degree, being sanctified–that is to say,
made into God's people, God's servants and God's accepted servants!
Every privilege which we could have had, if we had never sinned, is now
ours and we are in Him as His children. We have more than would have
come to us by the Covenant of Works and if we will but know it and live
up to it, even the very privilege of suffering and the privilege of
being tried–the privilege of being in need–should be looked upon as a
great gift, for I think an angel spirit, seated high alone there,
meditating and adoring, might say within himself, "I have served God.
These swift wings have borne me through the ether on His errands, but I
never suffered for Him. I was never despised for Him. Drunks never
called me names. I was never misrepresented as God's servant. After
all, though I have served Him, it has been one perpetual joy. He has
set a hedge about me and all that I have."
If an angel could envy anybody, I think he would envy the martyr who
had the privilege of burning to the death for Christ, or such as Job,
who, when stripped of everything and covered with sores, could sit on a
dunghill and yet honor his God! Such as these achieved an unique
service within itself which has sparkling diamonds of the first water
glittering about it–but the same cannot be found in an unsuffering
ministry–be it as complete as it may! You are favored sons of Adam,
you who have become sons of God! You are favored beyond cherubim and
seraphim in accomplishing a service for the manifestation of the riches
of the Grace of God which unfallen spirits never could accomplish!
Rejoice and be exceedingly glad that this one offering has put you
there.
And now you are eternally secure. No sin can ever be laid to your door,
for it is all put away and sin being removed, every other evil has lost
its fang and sting. Now you are eternally beloved, for you are one with
Him who can never be other than dear to the heart of Jehovah! That
union never can be broken, for nothing can separate us from the love of
God and, therefore, your security can never be imperiled. Now are you
in some measure glorified for, "the spirit of glory and of Christ does
rest upon you," and our conversation is in Heaven, from where we look
for the Savior, the Lord Jesus, who has already raised us up together
and made us sit together in the heavenlies! Heaven is already ours in
promise, in price and in principle and the preparation for it has also
begun. I feel at this hour that–
"All that remains for me Is but to love and sing, And wait until the
angels come To bear me to their King."
In such a spirit would I always live!
Brothers and Sisters, are you dispirited at this time? Have you a great
trouble upon you? Are you alone in the world? Do others misjudge you,
or does the iron of scandal pierce your very soul? Do fierce coals of
juniper await those vicious tongues that wrong you? Do you feel bowed
into the dust? Yet, why are you despairing? Child of God and heir of
all things, why are you cast down? Joint heir with Christ, why are
groveling? Why do you lie among the pots when you have already angels'
wings about you? Up, Man, up! Your heritage is not here among the
dragons and the owls. Up! You are one of God's eagles, born for
brighter light than earth could bear–light that would blind the
weak-eyed sons of men if they were once to get a veiled glimpse of it!
You, a twice-born man, one of the imperial family, one that shall sit
upon a throne with Christ as surely as Christ sits there–why are you
moaning and groaning?
Wipe your eyes and smooth your brow and in the strength of the Eternal
go to your life-battle. It will not be long. The trumpet of victory
almost sounds in your ears. Will you now beat a retreat? No! Play the
man and win the day! "Trust in the Lord and do good; so shall you dwell
in the land and verily you shall be fed," till He comes to catch you
away where you shall see what Jesus did for you when He made His body
once and for all a Sacrifice that He might fulfill the will of the
eternal Father and sanctify you and all His people unto God forever and
ever! May the best of blessings rest upon all who are in Christ Jesus.
Amen.
STOCKWELL ORPHANAGE FOR GIRLS
The land being bought and paid for, Mr. Spurgeon is anxious to begin
building, since large numbers of orphans are applying. The block, which
will contain houses for 250 girls and the various schoolrooms, will
cost about £8,000, of which £3,000 is promised. To raise the rest of
the money will need the united liberality of many and the special
bounty of the few who are wealthy. It is proposed that the first stone
should be laid on Mr. Spurgeon's birthday, June 19, should a sufficient
sum be in hand to make it prudent to begin. Sympathizing readers can
forward donations to Mr. Spurgeon, Nightingale Lane, Balham, and he
will gratefully acknowledge the same.
__________________________________________________________________
"They Were Tempted"