Conceit Rebuked
(No. 2834)
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JUNE 17, 1903.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING, JULY 5,
1877.
"Should it be according to your mind?" Job 34:33.
ELIHU thought that Job had spoken too boastfully and that there was too
much of self about him and, therefore, he reproved him by asking this
question, "Should it be according to your mind?" It is a question
which, in the original, has a great wealth of meaning in it and, as the
language of the Book of Job is extremely ancient and very terse, it is
not easy to get the fullness of Elihu's meaning. But it has been said
that upon the whole, our translation not only gives the meaning of his
enquiry, but also more of the meaning than can be conveyed in any other
words, so that we may be perfectly satisfied with it and may pray God
the Holy Spirit to apply it to us. And if we have grown to be high and
mighty, and have begun to criticize the way of God in dealing with us,
this question may come to us very sharply, "'Should it be according to
your mind?' Should everything be arranged just to suit your whims and
wishes? Should everything in the world be fashioned according to your
taste and the whole globe revolve just to serve you and please your
fancy? Should it be according to your mind?'"
There are four things I am going to say concerning our text. First I
shall ask, Are there really any people in the world who think that
everything should be according to their mind? Then, secondly, I shall
enquire, what leads them to that notion?Thirdly, I shall try to show
you what a mercy it is that they cannot have everything according to
their mind. And then, fourthly, I shall urge you to keep this evil
spirit in check, so that, henceforth, you will not wish that things
should be according to your mind.
I. Our first question has a measure of astonishment about it. ARE THERE
REALLY ANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WHO WOULD HAVE EVERYTHING ACCORDING TO
THEIR MIND? Oh, yes, there are such people! I should not wonder if
there are some of them here right now. In fact, I question whether we
have not, all of us, at times, drunk very deeply into this naughty,
haughty spirit. If we have done so, may we be speedily delivered from
it!
First, there are some people who would have God, Himself, according to
their mind. Now, as a matter of fact, all that I can know of God I must
learn from God revealing Himself to me. I cannot discover Him by
myself–He must unveil Himself to me–and that He has done in Holy
Scripture. All that He intends us to know about Himself, He has
revealed in the written Word and in the Incarnate Word, His
ever-blessed Son. But there are some people who get their idea of God
out of themselves. You may have heard of the German philosopher who
evolved the idea of a camel out of his own consciousness–at least, so
he said. I do not think it was much like a camel when he had evolved
it, but there are many persons who try to evolve the idea of God out of
their own consciousness. It cannot be, they say, that certain
statements in the Bible are true because there is something or other,
in their inner consciousness, that contradicts the Scriptural
declarations. God, as they believe in Him, is what they think He ought
to be, not what He really is. And there are some, in these days, who
have even gone so far as to reject the Old Testament altogether because
its teaching concerning God does not meet the approval of their very
marvelous minds.
Practically, these people are idolaters, for an idolater is one who
makes a god unto himself. The true worshipper of God–the accepted
worshipper–is one who worships God as He is and as He reveals Himself
in His Word. But there are many persons who make a god out of their own
thoughts. The teachers of the modern school of theology work in a kind
of god-factory. The people in some heathen lands make their gods out of
mud, but these men make their gods out of their own thought, their
imagination, their "intellect." That is what they call it, though I am
not sure that it is that organ which is at work in this instance. But
when a man makes a god of thought, he is just as much an idolater as if
he had made a god of wood or of gold. The true God–the God of
Scripture thus revealed Himself to His ancient people, "I am the Lord
your God, which have brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the
house of bondage." This God is our God, "the God of Abraham, and the
God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob," "the God of the whole earth He
shall be called." Many a man refuses to accept this God as his, but I
would like to ask him, "Should God be according to your mind?" That
would be a strange god, indeed! Should He have no other attributes but
such as you would give to Him? Should His Character and conduct be only
such as you can comprehend and justify? Must there be nothing in Him
that shall puzzle you? Are there to be no Divine deeps that shall be
beyond the reach of your finite mind? Are there to be no heights beyond
your power to soar?
That is what seems to be your notion and if there is anything that
staggers you a little, you say, "I cannot believe it." If it were
possible, you would eliminate from the Character of God everything that
is stern and terrible–though these attributes clearly appertain to the
Most High as He has been pleased to reveal Himself in Scripture. I beg
you, dear Friends, never to attempt to mold the Character of God with
the fingers of your own fancy! Worship Him just as He is, though you
cannot comprehend Him. Believe in Him as He reveals Himself and never
imagine that you could, by making any change in Him, effect an
improvement in Him. By toning down His justice, you think that you are
increasing His love and, by denying His righteous vengeance, you
imagine that you are honoring His goodness. But, instead of doing so by
the removal of these things which alarm and annoy you–if you could do
so–you would take away part of God's grandeur and strength which make
His goodness and His mercy to shine as brightly as they now do!
Leave God just as He is, remembering how He has said, "For as the
heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your
ways, and My thoughts than your thoughts." The Infinite God must be
past finding out by the creatures whom He has made. I confess that it
is one of my greatest joys to find myself completely baffled when I am
trying to comprehend the Character of God. Sometimes, when I have tried
to preach upon the Deity of Christ, I have been fairly staggered under
the burden of that stupendous Truth and I have felt the utter
uselessness and poverty of human language to describe our great and
terrible, yet loving Lord! And I have been glad to have it so, for,
verily, God is altogether above our comprehension and none of us can
speak of Him as He deserves to be spoken of! But never let us try in
any way to diminish His glorious perfections.
A more common way of offending God and setting up our self-will, is by
quarreling with His Providential dealings. If anyone here is doing so,
let me ask, "Should it be according to your mind?" You look, sometimes,
upon the arrangements of Providence on a great scale in reference to
the nations of the earth. You see them at war with one another and you
note how slow the progress of civil and religious liberty are and how
few there are to rally in defense of right principles. Sometimes you
get greatly distressed about the general state of affairs and you wish
you could alter it–but the Lord looks down from His eternal Throne and
He seems to say to you, "Should it be according to your mind?" The
world was wisely ordered by God before we were born and it will be
equally well ordered by Him after we are dead!
When Alexander Peden, the Covenanter, was dying, he sent for one of his
brethren, a fellow-minister of the Word, James Renwick, and he bade him
stand out in the room and turn his back to his departing friend. When
he had done so, Peden said to him, "I have looked at you and I perceive
that you are only a little man and you have but feeble shoulders and
weak legs." "Yes," replied Renwick, "that is true, but why have you
made that observation?" "Because," said Pe-den, "I perceive that you
cannot, after all, carry the whole world upon your back–you are not
made for any such work as that." And I may say of all of us who are
here that we were not made to carry the world on our backs. Yet some of
us attempt to play the part of Atlas and not only try to carry the
world, but seek to set the Church right as well! We fancy that we can
do that, poor worms that we are, but the Lord knows that we can do
nothing of the kind. "He remembers that we are dust," though we are apt
to forget it ourselves!
Well, Beloved, after all, "should it be according to your mind?" Will
you, like Jonah, sit pining, mourning and complaining? Does not the
Eternal Ruler understand the politics of nations and the best way of
governing the world infinitely better than you do? Do not attempt to
drive the horses of the sun–your puny hands are unfit for so
tremendous a task as that. Leave all things with God! As long as they
are ordered by Him, they are well ordered!
Probably, however, it is with the minor Providence that we more often
quarrel when we are in an ill state of heart. You think that you would
like to be rich, yet you are poor. "Should it be according to your
mind?" You would have liked to be healthy and strong, but you are weak
and sickly, or you have a suffering limb that troubles you and you
sometimes think, "Mine is a very hard loss. I wish it could be
changed." "Should it be according to your mind?" Should the fashioning
of yourself and your circumstances have been left to you? What do you
think? Possibly you have recently sustained a great loss in business
and you cannot quite get over it. "Should it be according to your
mind?" Should Providential circumstances have been arranged otherwise
so as to suit you? Should God have stopped the great machinery of the
universe and put it out of gear in order to prevent you from losing a
few pounds? "Should it be according to your mind?"
Perhaps it is worse than that–a dear child has been taken away just
when he had become most closely entwined around your heart. You would
gladly have kept him with you, but was it right that he should go, or
right that he should stay? Come now, there is a difference of opinion
between you and God–who is in the right? Should it be according to His
mind, or according to your mind? "Ah," says someone else, "it is the
mainstay of the home who has been taken away from us–the husband–the
father of the family." Well, though it is so, again I ask concerning
this bereavement, or any other trial that comes to you, "Should it be
according to your mind?" It should be sufficient for you to know that
the Lord has permitted it or actually performed it.
Should it be according to your mind, or according to His mind? It is
not easy, I know, to submit without murmuring to all that happens to
us. I am probably touching very tender places in many who, at divers
times and seasons, have really felt that God, in His Providential
dealings with them, had been unkind to them, or that, at least, He had
been showing His kindness in a very strange way.
There are some who carry this difference between them and God into
another sphere, for they do not approve of the Gospel as it is taught
in the Bible. You know that the Gospel, as revealed in the New
Testament, is so simple that a child can understand it. And you may go
and teach it to the poorest and the most illiterate and many of them
will leap at it, and grasp it at once! But there are others who think
that it should be something which is much more difficult to understand,
something which would need a higher order of intellect than the common
people possess. Do you really think so, my dear Sir? "Should it be
according to your mind?" Would you shut out the poor and the needy and
the illiterate from the privileges of the Gospel–and keep them to
yourself and to a few others who have been highly educated? Surely not!
O Brothers and Sisters, if it were possible for us to preach a Gospel
that we had made obscure, or which could only be comprehended by the
elite of society, we would soon have cause to sadly deplore before God
that we had lost that simple, blessed, plain way of instruction which
the wayfaring man, though a fool, can understand, and in which he need
not err!
Many try to bring down the Doctrines of Grace. They would get rid of
Election if they could. Anything like the specialty of the Atonement of
Christ they cannot bear! The sweet and blessed Doctrine of Effectual
Calling they abhor and they would gladly make a Gospel of their own.
But should they want to do so? Is it not your duty and mine, Brother,
rather to try to find out what the Gospel really is than to seek to
make it what we consider it ought to be? "Should it be according to
your mind?" We have known some people take a text of Scripture and,
because it did not square with the system in which they were brought
up, they tried to cut it down to make it fit in with their notion! But,
Sirs, is not the Gospel grander than any of our comprehension of it?
Are there not in it great Truths of God that cannot be cut down to fit
any system that the human mind can make? And ought we not to be
thoroughly glad that it is so? For, surely, it is better that the
Gospel should be according to God's mind than that it should be
according to the mind of Toplady, or the mind of Wesley, or the mind of
Calvin, or the mind of Arminius! The mind of God is greater than all
the minds of men, so let all men leave the Gospel just as God has
delivered it unto us.
Sometimes this difference comes up concerning the Church of Christ.
Some people do not like God's order of Church membership and Church
government–they would like to see the world welcomed inside the
Church. They do not approve of the ordinances as they were instituted
and observed by our Lord Jesus Christ. Believers' Baptism is peculiarly
objectionable to them. Sometimes they disapprove of God's
ministers–they pick holes in the most useful of them. This man ought
to be so-and-so, and that other man ought to be something else. I can
only ask again, with regard to the whole matter, "Should it be
according to your mind?" Are you to make the ministers and to teach
them what they are to preach? Are they your servants or God's servants,
and are they to deliver their message in your way or in God's way? Let
the question be honestly considered and then, perhaps, much of the
murmuring that is sometimes heard, and much of the discord that often
arises among professing Christians would be cleared away. For, surely,
these things should not be according to our mind, but we should let God
appoint, equip and send forth His own servants just as He pleases–not
as we please. Christ must decide everything concerning His own Church!
He must be free to choose whom He likes to be members of it and to
fashion His Church after His own model.
II. Now, secondly, we are to enquire–WHAT LEADS PEOPLE TO THINK THAT
EVERYTHING SHOULD BE ACCORDING TO THEIR MIND?
My answer is, first, that there is a great deal of self-importance in
such a notion. There are some people who seem to fancy that they are
the center of the whole universe. The times are always bad if they do
not prosper. If the earth does not so revolve as to bring grist to
their mill, then the times must be out of joint. But who are you, dear
Friend, that you should suppose that for you, the sun rises and sets?
That for you seasons change and that God is to have respect to you and
to nobody else? "Should it be according to your mind?" Then, if so, why
not according to my mind, also? And why not according to the mind of
another Brother? And why not according to the mind of yet another? But
no, it is according to yourmind that you would have it! Ah, does not
this show what overweening importance we attach to ourselves? We are
mere ants, creeping insects upon the bay-leaf of existence–here today
and gone tomorrow–yet we suppose that all things are to be ordered for
our special benefit and we quarrel with God if we suffer even a little
inconvenience!
This notion also arises from self-conceit. We really seem to fancy that
we could arrange things much better than they now are–we would not
dare to plainly say so, much less would we be willing to put it in
writing, but we talk and feel as if it were really so. If only we had
had the ordering of things, we are quite sure that they would not have
happened as they have done! But then, depend upon it, they would have
happened wrongly if they had been other than they have been! "Should it
be according to your mind?" No! Unless you are self-conceited enough to
put your folly in comparison with the wisdom of God, you know that it
should not be according to your mind!
Then there is the spirit of murmuring that so easily comes upon us. We
have known some who really became slaves to that evil spirit. They
complained of everything, nothing was right in their eyes. It was not
possible, it seemed, even for God, Himself, to please them. "Should it
be according to your mind?" How would it be possible to please one who
is so changeable, so whimsical, so fanciful as you are? Poor simpleton,
surely you cannot think that such a thing should be.
But, oftentimes, this quarrel arises from lack of faith in God. If we
did but believe in Him, we would see that all things are ordered well.
If we did but trust in God as a loving child trusts in its father, we
would feel safe enough at all times and we would not want to have
anything different from what it is. Have you ever heard of the woman
who was in a great storm at sea and terribly frightened? She saw her
husband, who was the captain of the ship, perfectly composed even while
the vessel was tossed about by the mighty billows–but he could not
calm her troubled heart. So he drew a sword from its scabbard and held
it close to her breast. As he did so, he said to her, "Do you not
tremble, my wife?" "No," she replied, "I am not in the least afraid."
"But this sword is close to you." "I am not afraid of that," she said,
"because it is in my husband's hand. "Well," he said, "is it not even
so with this storm? Is it not in the hands of God? And if it is in His
hands, why should we be alarmed?" So, if we have true faith in God, we
shall accept whatever God sends us, and we shall not want to have
things arranged according to ourmind, but we shall quite agree with
what His mind ordains.
So would it be, too, if you had more love to God, for love always
agrees with that which its object delights in. So, dear Friends, when
we come to love God with a perfect heart, we are glad for God to have
His way with us. If He wills that we should be sick, we would not wish
to be otherwise. If He wills that we should be poor, we are willing to
be poor–and if He wills that we should pass through a sea of trial, we
would not wish to have a drop less than His blessed will appoints.
III. But now, thirdly, WHAT A MERCY IT IS THAT THINGS ARE NOT ACCORDING
TO OUR MIND! If they were, I wonder what sort of world we would live
in?
If things were according to our mind, God's Glory would be obscured. He
knows what will best glorify Him and He has been pleased to so arrange
His Providential dealings with men that all shall glorify Him to the
highest possible degree. And, Beloved, if we were to alter anything of
this–if we could altar anything, it is evident that the Glory of God
would not be so well promoted. So, "should it be according to your
mind" that God would lose a measure of the Glory that is due unto His
name? God forbid!
If it were according to our mind, others would often have to suffer. At
any rate, if things were arranged according to the mind of some people,
they would grind the poor in the dust and utterly crush them. If things
were settled according to the mind of man, we would often be in a
terrible plight. Did not David say to God, "Let us fall now into the
hands of the Lord, for His mercies are great: and let me not fall into
the hands of man"? When God is most grieved with His people, He never
deals with them in so harsh a manner as the ungodly would deal with
them if they had them in their power. Let us trust in the Lord, my
Brothers and Sisters, and thank Him that He does not allow things to be
according to the mind of man, for it would be terrible, indeed, for us,
then!
Here is another reflection. If things were according to our mind, we
would have an awful responsibility resting upon us because we would
feel that if anything went amiss, we would be the cause of it. If we
had the choosing of our circumstances and the details of all that
happened to us, we would straightway feel that we would be called to
account for everything by our fellow men and by our own conscience. But
now that it is according to the mind of God, you have no responsibility
concerning it. If it is according to His will, it must be that which is
right and that which is best! So let us bless His name that all things
are left at His disposal.
If things were according to our mind, I am afraid our temptations would
soon be greatly increased, for many who are poor would speedily become
rich–and they do not know what the temptation of riches might be, nor
the Grace they would need to resist it. And some, who are now sick and
are praising God upon their sickbeds–if they were well, might find
much of their spirituality departing and they might be thrown into a
thousand troubles which they now escape in the quiet of their own room.
Some of you are in a condition of life where you may not have many
comforts, but, on the other hand, you are not subject to those trials
which come to us who are prominent in public life. You can be sure you
are in your right place if God put you there. "Should it be according
to your mind?" If so, you would have more temptations and less
Grace–more of the world, but less of your Lord. So thank Him that it
is not according to your mind.
If it were according to our mind, we would seldom know our own mind. If
a man could manage everything as he liked, he would not long like his
own management. Unrenewed men, especially, are never satisfied. The way
for a man to be happy is not to have his own will, but to sink his will
in the will of God. Look at Solomon when he had his own way. As one
time he gave all his thoughts to grand buildings–and when he had built
his palaces he got quite tired, so he took to making gardens, aqueducts
and fountains of water. When he had made them, he did not get much
satisfaction out of them, so he got instruments of music and singing
men and singing women, but he was soon tired of them. Then he took to
study, but he said, "Of making many books there is no end, and much
study is a weariness of the flesh." He had whatever he chose to have,
yet it was all vanity and vexation of spirit to him! And he never had
what filled his soul till he came to rest alone in his God, which, we
trust, he did in his old age.
I do not know a more horrible endowment that a man could have than for
God to say to him, "Everything shall be as you like to have it." He
would probably be the most miserable and most dissatisfied person under
Heaven! "Should it be according to your mind?" Ah, then sin would go
uncorrected in you, for you would never have a mind to use the rod!
Then your dross would remain, for you would never have a mind to be put
into the furnace! Should all things go with you according to your own
will, then your flesh would get the mastery over you and be pampered
and indulged–you would be settled on your less, not emptied from
vessel to vessel–and you would bring upon yourself unutterable woe! O
Beloved, for this reason, also, it is a thousand mercies that things
are not arranged according to the mind of even the best saint out of
Heaven except when his mind is brought into full subjection to the will
of God!
"Should it be according to your mind?" Then there would be universal
strife. If this were the case, think what a terrible condition the
Church of God and the world, too, would soon be brought into, because,
as I have already hinted, if it were according to your mind, why should
it not be according to my mind, or according to the mind of every other
person? Then what chaos, what confusion there would be! How would the
world be managed if you, I, and 50 others, each one with a different
mind from all the rest, must have it according to our minds? It would
mean that the King of Heaven must resign His Throne and give place to
universal anarchy! It could not be–it would be impossible that such an
arrangement should continue for an hour! We would have to go, in tears,
before the Lord and cry to Him, "O Lord, come back and reign over us,
for we cannot get on without You! Everything is going to destruction
for need of an Almighty
Will to manage it." Should it be according to your mind? "No, Lord
never let it be so except when you have made my mind to be filled with
Your mind and then it shall be well." "I always have my way," said a
holy man. "How is that?" asked one who heard him. And the good man
replied, "Because God's way is my way." "I always have my will," said
another, and he gave a similar explanation, "because it is my will that
God should have His will." When God's will gets to be your will, then
it may be according to your mind–but not till then–thank God, not
till then!
IV. So now, in the last place, dear Friends, I am going to say to you,
let us try, by the help of God's Holy Spirit, to
CHECK THAT SPIRIT WHICH LEADS MEN TO THINK THAT ALL THINGS SHOULD BE
ACCORDING TO
THEIR MIND.
First, because it is impracticable. As I have already shown you, it is
quite impossible that all things should be according to the mind of men
so long as their mind is in its natural carnal state.
Again, it is unreasonable that it should be so. In a well-ordered
house, whose will ought to be supreme? Should it not be the father's?
Do you expect everything in your home to be ordered according to the
will of your little boy? No, you know that you take a comprehensive
view of all who are in the house and all their concerns–and you are
better able to judge than he is, what is right. It would be very
unreasonable for your child to say, "Everything is to be managed
according to my will." If he were to talk like that, you would soon
teach him better, I guarantee you–and it is unreasonable to imagine
that the Lord should make your will to be the rule of His
dispensations. Do not cultivate a spirit which you cannot justify by
any sensible and reasonable arguments.
In the next place, it is un-Christlike.''Should it be according to your
mind?" Why, if ever there was a Son of the great Father, according to
whose mind things should be, it was our blessed Lord Jesus Christ! Yet
what did He say? "Not as I will, but as You will." And as Jesus said,
"Not as I will," is there one among us who shall dare to say, "Let it
be as I will?" "Will you not join your Elder Brother in that sweet
resignation of all desire to be the ruler in order that the great
Father, who fills all things, may have His way? If you wish to have all
things according to your mind, you are not like Christ–for in all
things He did the Father's will and suffered the Father's will, too,
and rejoiced in it. Let us pray the Holy Spirit to help us to do the
same!
Once more, if we desire to have our own mind, it is atheistic, for a
god without a controlling mind is no god. And a god whose will was not
carried out would be no god. If you were to have your way in all
things, you would be taking the place of God–do you not tremble at the
very thought of it? His Throne ill becomes you. Would you–
"Snatch from His hand the balance and the rod, Rejudge His judgments,
be the God of God"? If you are truly converted, you shudder at the bare
mention of such a thing as that! Yet, dear Sister, was not that the
spirit in which you came into this House? Did you not feel, "The Lord
has dealt very harshly with me. I can scarcely be reconciled to Him"?
Oh, drop that rebellious spirit! You are but a poor, helpless creature,
and He is God Over All! Let His supreme will sweetly rule your heart at
this hour–and labor to get rid of that waywardness and that revolting
from the Most High!
I knew one who was in mourning many, many years for a child. And a good
Quaker said to her, "Friend, have you not forgiven God yet?" There are
some to whom we might put the same question. And we have heard of some
who professed to be Christians, who, when they met with a very terrible
reverse, said they could never understand it– really meaning that they
could never acquiesce in the Divine Will about that loss. It must not
be so with us. Whenever a child falls out with his father, the best
thing he can do is to fall in again, for a sullen child who is angry
with his father, will have to come round if he has a wise father. The
father will say to him, "My dear Boy, there is one of us who must
change before we can be perfectly agreed. And I cannot, for I know I am
in the right. It is you who must change and come round to my way of
thinking." And if you have fallen out with God by willfulness and
stubbornness, He cannot come round to you, but you will have to come
back to Him. So yield to Him at once! Bow down before Him, your own
Father in Heaven, who infinitely loves you! Do you mean to say that you
will keep up the quarrel with Him? You began the dispute and you know
that you are in the wrong and He is right, so say, "It is the Lord. Let
Him do what seems good to Him." Or if you cannot say as much as that,
at least do what Aaron did in his great bereavement, "Aaron held his
peace," or what David did when he said, "I was dumb, I opened not my
mouth because You did it." Oh, for that blessed silence which springs
from acquiescence to the Divine Will!
I should like you to go further than that, however, and even to praise
and bless the Lord for poverty, pain and bereavement. In Heaven, among
the sweetest notes of your song will be those you sing over your trials
here below. There was one who lost his eyesight, but he always praised
God for that, for he said that he never saw till he was blind. I have
heard of another who had lost a leg, and he said that he never stood on
the Rock of Ages till he had that leg amputated. We, who are branches
of the true vine, will have more of Christ's sharp pruning-knife than
of anything else, but let us praise and bless God for it and henceforth
labor, by the Spirit's Power, to chase out of our soul the idea that
things should be according to our mind. Get away to your room and
confess your willfulness and pride, dear Brother, if you have fallen
into that sad state. Ask the Lord to make your soul even as a weaned
child–
"Pleased with all the Lord provides Weaned from all the world besides."
I know that I have been speaking to some who do not love the Lord. I
wonder what it is that keeps them where they now are–out of Christ?
You want something to be changed, you say. Well, ask the Lord to change
you, for that is the alteration that is needed. The plan of salvation
does not quite suit you. Well, there will never be another. Does not
Jesus Christ please you? God will never lay another foundation for a
sinner to build his hopes upon, so you had better be pleased with God'
s way and build upon Christ Jesus, the sure Foundation Stone. We tell
people, sometimes, that they had better not fall out with their living
and I can tell you, Soul, that you had better not fall out with your
salvation! God's way of saving you is the best conceivable way–and it
is also the only way.
He says that whoever believes on the Lord Jesus Christ shall not
perish, but shall have everlasting life. May the Eternal Spirit bring
you to believe in the Lord Jesus now–and if you do so believe you
shall be saved at once! But do not think that the plan of salvation
will be altered to please you. It will not be made according to your
mind. There is the Gospel–take it or leave it, but change it you
cannot! May the Lord grant that you may accept it and rejoice in it for
His dear Son' s sake! Amen.
EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: GALATIANS 6:6-18.
Verses 6, 7. Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him
that teaches in all good things. Be not deceived; God is not mocked:
for whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap. Paul puts that in
connection with the support of those who are teachers of the Truth. And
I have sometimes thought that in certain Churches where God's ministers
have starved, it was not very surprising that the people should starve,
too. They thought so little about the pastor that they left him in
need, so it was not strange that, as they sowed little, they reaped
little. One of these misers said that his religion did not cost him
more than a shilling a year–and somebody replied that he thought it
was a shilling wasted on a bad thing, for his poor religion was not
worth even that small amount!
8. For he that sows to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. He
shall reap what flesh turns to in due time–"he shall of the flesh reap
corruption." What is the end of flesh? The fairest flesh that ever was
molded from the most beauteous form ends in corruption! And if we live
for the flesh, and sow to it, we shall reap "corruption."
8. But he that sows to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life
everlasting. He shall reap what the Spirit really is and what the
Spirit really generates–"life everlasting." Of course if a man sows
tares, he reaps tares. If he sows wheat, he reaps wheat. If we sow to
the flesh, we reap corruption. If we sow to the Spirit, we shall "reap
life everlasting."
9. Andlet us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall
reap, if we faint not. It is a pity to faint just when the time is
coming to reap, so, sow on, Brothers and Sisters, sow on!
10. As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men,
especially unto them who are of the household of faith. Extend your
love, your charity to all mankind. But let the center of that circle be
in the home where God has placed you–in the home of His
people–"especially unto them who are of the household of faith."
11. You see how large a letter I have written unto you with my own
hand. I suppose that he meant, "See what big letters I have made. My
eyes are weak, and so, when I do write a letter," says Paul, "in the
dimness of this dungeon, with my poor weak eyes and my hands chained, I
have to write text-hand and give it to you in large letters. Well," he
says, "then carry it out in big letters. You see with what large
letters I have written to you, now emphasize it all, take it as
emphatic and carry it out with great diligence. As I have written this
with my own hand and not used a secretary, I beseech you to pay the
more attention to it, you Galatians who seem to be so bewitched that to
deliver you from false doctrine and an evil spirit, I would even write
a letter with my own blood if it were necessary."
12, 13. As many as desire to make a fair show in the flesh, they
constrain you to be circumcised; only lest they should suffer
persecution for the Cross of Christ For neither they themselves who are
circumcised keep the Law; but desire to have you circumcised, that they
may glory in your flesh.' 'See," they say, "these Gentiles. We have
converted them and we have got them circumcised. Is not that a
wonderful thing?" No, not at all, for he says–
14. But God foretold that I should glory, save in the Cross of our Lord
Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the
world.' 'I have ceased to care," says Paul, "about glorying in men and
making other people glory in my converts. The world is dead to me, and
I to it."
15-17. For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision avails anything, nor
uncircumcision, but a new creature. And as many as walk according to
this rule, peace be on them, and mercy, and upon the Israel of God.
From henceforth let no man trouble me: for I bear in my body the marks
of the Lord Jesus. I have the marks of the whips upon my body. I am the
branded slave of Jesus Christ. There is no getting the marks out of me.
I cannot run away. I cannot deny that He is my Master and my Owner! "I
bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."
18. Brethren, the Grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit
Amen. And that is our benediction to you. The Lord fulfill it to each
one of you!