Covenant Blessings
(No. 2681)
INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, JULY 1, 1900.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT NEW PARK STREET CHAPEL, SOUTHWARK, ON A THURSDAY EVENING, IN THE
SUMMER OF 1858.
"He has given meat unto them that fear Him: He will always be mindful
of His Covenant." Psalm 111:5.
THIS verse occurs in one of the Hallelujah Psalms, that is, those
commencing with "Praise you the Lord." We often find the Psalmist
praising and extolling God–let us imitate his example. Let us do so
because we shall find it very pleasant and profitable and because,
also, it is our bounden duty. One of the highest exercises of the new
life is praising God! Our doubts and fears are indications of life, for
the dead man neither doubts nor fears. But our songs of praise are far
higher demonstrations of the life within and are more worthy fruits of
a soil which has been the subject of God's husbandry, which has been
plowed by the agonies of the Savior and made fertile through His
precious blood. My Brothers and Sisters, our life should be one
continuous Psalm with here and there a note descending very deep! Yet
we should always seek to sing as we live. The stars sing as they shine
and they sing by shining. Let us sing while we live and live by
singing–and let our life be perpetually singing one great Psalm!
There are many ways of praising God. We should do it with the lips and
grateful is the voice of song in the ears of the Lord God of Sabaoth.
We should do it by our daily conversation–let our acts be acts of
praise, as well as our words be words of praise. We should do it even
by the very look of our eyes and by the appearance of our countenance.
Let not your face be sad, let your countenance be joyous! Sing wherever
you go, yes, when you are laden with trouble, let no man see it. "You,
when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face." Be you always
glad, for it is God's commandment, through His servant, the Apostle
Paul, "Rejoice in the Lord always and again I say, Rejoice." And yet
once more he says, "Rejoice evermore." That we may have themes for
song, David has in this Psalm mentioned many subjects. Let us attend to
the subjects of the text–the subject, I might have said, for it is all
one. This verse is the voice of experience. It is not the voice of
hope, saying, "He will give," but the voice of experience–"He has
given meat unto them that fear Him" and the voice of faith–"He will
ever be mindful of His Covenant."
We shall notice, first of all, the gift–"He has given meat unto them
that fear Him." Then we shall notice the Covenant–"He will ever be
mindful of His Covenant." And then, lastly, the character of the
persons here spoken of–"He has given meat unto them that fear Him."
I. Let us first consider THE GIFT. "He has given meat." We are to
understand this expression, of course, in a twofold sense, of our
necessities. The first, temporal. The other, spiritual.
First, we are to understand this expression in a temporal sense. Our
bodies need meat. We cannot keep this mortal fabric in repair without
continually providing it with food. God's children are not, by the fact
of their being spiritual men, prevented from feeling natural
needs–they hunger and they thirst even as others do. Sometimes, too,
they are even called to suffer poverty and know not where their next
morsel of meat shall come from. Blessed be God–
"He that has made our Heaven secure Will here all good provide"–
and God's Covenant relates not merely to the great and marvelous things
that we need spiritually, but it is a Covenant which includes in the
catalog of its gifts, mercies that are food for the body, mercies for
our immediate and pressing needs–"He has given meat unto them that
fear Him."
God has never suffered His people to starve. "The young lions do lack
and suffer hunger: but they that seek the Lord shall not want any good
thing." The promise is as true under the New Covenant as under the Old,
that our bread shall be given us and our water shall be sure. The Lord,
who feeds the ravens, will not be less careful of His people. He who
supplies every insect with its food and feeds the prowling lion in his
majesty, will not suffer His own home-born children, those who are
nearest His heart, to perish for lack of nutriment. "The cattle on a
thousand hills are His," so He will not allow His children to lack for
their meat. He it is to whom the earth belongs and the fullness
thereof–He will not, then, suffer His children to go without necessary
supplies. "He has given meat unto them that fear Him."
Some of us are qualified to speak from experience upon this point. We
may truly say that God has always given us our meat. Indeed, we have
not lacked anything. Up to now the road has been to us like that of the
Israelites when they came to the camp of the Syrians and found the way
strewn with gold, silver and garments! God has provided for our needs
even before they have come. He has anticipated our necessities. But
there are others of you who have been brought so low by poverty and
affliction that you are qualified to speak in a still more emphatic
fashion. You have sometimes gone, with a hungry stomach, to an empty
cupboard. You have wondered where your supplies would come from. You
may even have been houseless and homeless. But ah, children of the
living God, has He utterly failed you? Though He has reduced you very
low, so that the last morsel was eaten from the cupboard, has He not
ultimately supplied your needs and that, too, by means not miraculous,
but almost so? Has He not in Providence sent you things which you
needed and which you scarcely expected to receive? In answer to prayer,
has He not delivered you out of your deepest tribulations? And when you
were well-nigh famished, has He not spread your table with plenty when
you have bent your knees before Him? Yes, you tried ones, you have
tested this text and have proved it true! You sons of poverty and toil,
you have had to rest the whole weight of your daily maintenance on the
promise of God without anything to look to but that–and have you ever
found Him fail you? No, you will unanimously bear witness that this is
a great Truth of God, "He has given meat unto them that fear Him."
But it is surprising, sometimes, how God has done it! I have heard many
a story from the poor among my own flock of how God has delivered
them–strange stories, at which some of you would laugh if I were to
repeat them. There are some of them who could write, "Banks of Faith"
that would be as wonderful as that of William Huntington! Some of you
laugh at that book and do not believe it, but it is only because there
are so many things of the same sort all put together that they seem to
be incredible through their number. But there are many of the Lord's
servants who could easily compose a "Bank of Faith" like Huntington's,
for they have had their most deep necessities and their most poignant
sorrows–and they have had their relief well-nigh miraculous–so that,
if God had thrust His hand out of the clouds and handed down bread and
clothing for them, their deliverance would not have been more
apparently from His hand than it has been in the way whereby His
Providence has supplied their needs! They can say that He has done it
and He has done it marvelously and constantly, too. "He has given meat
unto them that fear Him."
Why, if the child of God were in such a position that the earth could
not yield him bread, God would open the windows of Heaven and rain
manna from there again! If a Christian could be placed in such a
position that the common course of Providence could not serve his end,
God would change the nature of everything, rather than break His
promise! He would reverse all the seasons and unloose the very bonds of
Creation, itself, and let the laws of Nature run riot, rather than
suffer one of His promises to fail, or one of His children to lack. "He
has given meat"–and He will always do so– "unto them that fear Him."
But we are to understand this expression chiefly in a spiritual sense.
God's people need spiritual meat. I was talking, the other day, to a
minister who certainly is not noted for his great soundness in the
faith. He was making a joke to me about certain people in his
congregation who said they could not feed under him. "There is Mrs.
So-and-So," he said, "who tells me that she cannot get a bit of food
out of my ministry. I do not know how it is," he continued laughingly,
"for I do not think you say half as many good things as I do! But yet
the old woman cannot feed upon my sermons." He laughed at the idea of
feeding under a ministry, but there is a good deal more in the
expression than many think. There is much meant by it that cannot be
expressed by any other word. It is only the true Christian who can
understand its meaning. He hears a very eloquent discourse delivered,
"but," he says, "I have got no food out of it." Or he hears a very
learned discourse, "but," he says, "I cannot feed under that." There is
a peculiar style of preaching and a peculiar style of hearing which can
only be described as a "feeding preaching" and a "feeding hearing," in
which the child of God feels
that, though he may have learned little that is fresh, yet still his
soul has been receiving spiritual food and he can go on his way
rejoicing.
And, my Brothers, the House of God is one of the principal places where
He feeds His people. And those to whom He has committed the solemn work
of the ministry should be very careful that there is something in what
they say that the child of God can feed on. The child of God can never
feed under a ministry unless he hears the doctrines of Grace and
listens to the things of the Kingdom of God.
"Our minister preached a fine metaphysical sermon the other day," one
says. "I never heard such a clear distinction as he made between that
point and the other." But the child of God goes out and says, "Well, I
don't need any of his metaphysics–there was no food in the sermon for
my soul. I went there to hear about the Lord Jesus Christ. I went to be
taught something for my soul's welfare, something about the Heaven that
is to come, or the Hell that is to be shunned. I wanted to hear
something about communion with Christ, something about the Eternal
Covenant. But there was nothing of the kind in the whole discourse."
Sermons need to be instructive! There should be real teaching in them
concerning the things of the Kingdom of God. "Why," said a good writer,
once, "if you were to hear six lectures by a geologist, he would be the
poorest geologist in the world if he did not give you some clear ideas
concerning geology. But you may hear 60 sermons from many preachers
without getting any notion of their system of divinity."
It is the glory of the men of this age that they have no system of
divinity–they have cast creeds to the wind–they have no forms in
which they can systematically state the Truths of God which they
believe. The reason is because they have nothing to state! No man will
avoid having a system when he has certain definite principles. It is
impossible for a man to believe the Truths in God's Word without
insensibly to himself forming a creed of some sort or other. It is the
fashion to talk about giving up creeds, but creeds are only the orderly
way of stating God's Truth. If we hold the Truths, themselves, we shall
always be able to set them out in some fashion and to communicate our
knowledge to others so that, in a given number of discourses, our
hearers will be pretty tolerably acquainted with our ideas of the Truth
of God. "He has given meat unto them that fear Him" under the ministry.
Sometimes God gives your minister such a gift of utterance that if he
were to preach for a week, you would listen to him. There are periods
when your own minister gives no food to you, though he does to others,
because he has to care for different members of God's family. But there
are other periods when the Lord seems to have given him such bountiful
gifts that he has let fall handfuls to be gathered by the gleaners as
did the man, Boaz, and you pick them up and feast on them and are
satisfied.
There is another way in which God gives food to His children–that is,
in the Bible. This precious volume is the greatest granary of spiritual
food for God's people. Would to God you read it more! With your
magazines, newspapers and tracts on this, that and the other subject,
you have too much covered up this ancient Bible, this grand old Book,
this emporium of all wisdom, this sum of all knowledge! Yes, Christian,
if you need spiritual meat, study a chapter of God's Word. If you need
to have food for your souls, give up, for a little while, reading the
works of even the best of men, and take a Psalm for the theme of your
study–or if not a whole Psalm, take one verse of it! Take it for your
daily meditation–chew on it and digest it all day long–and so you
will find meat for "them that fear Him."
Let me just say a word or two of caution to you on this point. When you
read the Bible, do not think that you will get spiritual food out of it
simply by reading. I know some people who make a point of reading two
chapters of the Bible every day. They do so as a sort of mental
exercise–they simply run their eyes down the page and, after all, do
not know a word they have been reading. That is not the way to feed
upon God's Word! We cannot truly feed unless we understand and believe
what we read. In reading the Scripture, do as Luther advised. He says,
"When I get a promise, I treat it as if it were a tree in my garden. I
know there is rich fruit on it and if I cannot at once get it, I shake
the tree backwards and forwards by prayer and meditation until, at
last, the fruit drops into my hand." Do you the same! Read a short
portion of Scripture–turn it over and over, again, in your meditation
all day long–and then, if you cannot get anything out of it, I will
tell you a way whereby you will be sure to get something. Go down on
your knees before the passage and say, "O Lord, open this passage to
me! Give me something out of it. Teach me to understand it." And it
will not be long before God refreshes you with dainty portions from the
tables of Paradise and makes your soul glad with choice morsels of
royal dainties wherewith He feeds His own chosen ones!
But there is another way of getting spiritual meat, even when we have
not our Bible with us. The Lord sometimes gives meat "unto them that
fear Him," by bringing Jesus Christ home to them, without the use of
the Word–simply in
meditation and communion. You know, Beloved, after all, that what a
child of God feeds upon is Jesus Christ. When the Jews went to the
Temple, they did not eat the tongs and fire shovels. They did not eat
the garments of the priests and the bells and the pomegranates. They
valued all these things, for they were made according to God's orders
and, therefore, they thought them precious. But they did, at the
appointed season, eat the paschal lamb. So the Christian does not eat
the Doctrines of the Word–he feeds on Christ! He loves the Truths of
God. He loves the ordinances, he loves everything in the Bible for
Christ's sake. But his food is the Lamb, Himself! Jesus, Jesus, Jesus
is the real food for all the Lord's chosen! And are there not most
sweet and happy moments when the spirit is carried aloft in blessed
communion, when Jesus Christ seems very present and very precious, when
we lean our head on His bosom, when we seem to feel the very beating of
His heart and to realize His love for us, when we lose ourselves in Him
and almost forget that we have a separate existence? Then we are–
"Plunged in His Godhead's deepest sea, And lost in His immensity!"
I was much struck, the other evening, at a Prayer Meeting, by the
prayer of one of our Brothers, which came home to my heart. When he
prayed, he said, "O Lord, give me Mary's place–
"'Oh that I could forever sit
With Mary at the Master's feet!
Be this my happy choice,
My only care, delight and bliss,
My joy, my Heaven on earth, be this,
To hear the Bridegroom's voice.'" He prayed that he might have Mary's
part and always sit at the feet of Jesus. But, by-and-by, the good
man's fervor increased and in his prayer he said, "No, my Master, I
have not asked enough of You. Mary's place is too low for me, if I may
have a better one. Lift me up higher, Lord! Give me John's place–
"'Oh, that I might, with favored John,
Forever lean my head upon
The bosom of my Lord!'"
As he pleaded for that higher degree of communion between his soul and
Christ, I thought, "Surely, now you have asked enough." But, suddenly
rising another flight on the wings of communion, like the eagle taking
its last soar into the skies, he said, "No, Lord, John's place does not
suffice me. You have lifted me from Your feet to Your bosom, now lift
me from Your bosom to Your lips." Then, quoting the words of the
spouse, "Let Him kiss me with the kisses of His mouth: for Your love is
better than wine," he sweetly paraphrased it thus, "Let the lips of my
petitioning meet the lips of Your benediction. Let the lips of my
praise meet the lips of Your acceptance–so shall the kiss of love be
consummated and my joy be complete."
Yes, and when we, also, are favored to go through these various stages
of fellowship with Christ–to go from the foot to the bosom and from
the bosom to the lips. To go from the mere learner to be a friend and
companion and then to go still higher–to be lifted up and to feel our
fellowship with Christ by standing as high as He does and our lips
being on His lips–it is there that the child of God almost insensibly
receives strength and, like Elijah smitten by the angel, he rises up
and finds his meat baked upon the coals, eats thereof and lives upon it
for forty days! This is, indeed, a most precious mode of feeding for
our souls!
But, somehow or other, God does give meat to His children and will
never leave them to be famished. You have often noticed, I daresay,
that when one means of feeding fails for God's children, others become
available and effective. You are sick and cannot be fed by the public
ministry–you cannot go out to hear sermons–so God's Word becomes more
precious to you. Or, you have nobody to read to you and your sight has
failed–generally, then, communion becomes more precious. One way or
other, God will have His children fed.
II. We will now consider THE COVENANT. "He will always be mindful of
His Covenant."
God has made many Covenants at divers times and none of these Covenants
has He ever broken. Let me briefly mention these Covenants. There was
the Covenant with Adam, the Covenant of Works–"Obey Me and you shall
live; disobey Me and you shall die." That Covenant God did not break.
He did not subject Adam to pain or misery until he had first broken the
Covenant and so became the inevitable heir of suffering. God made a
Covenant with Noah that the wa-
ters should no more go over the earth–and the rainbow, the sign of
that Covenant–has lit up the sky ever since at various intervals. And
the earth has not been drowned with a flood a second time. He made a
Covenant with Abraham, that he would give the land of Canaan to be the
heritage of his seed. And that Covenant has He kept. Neither has He
altered the thing that went out of His lips. He made a Covenant with
David, that his seed should sit upon his throne and that Covenant He
kept.
But the Covenant here referred to is a better Covenant than all these,
it is the Covenant of Grace. That is a sweet subject to preach upon!
Suffer me to go back to the time when this Covenant was made. It is
older than the oldest things that man has ever seen–the Covenant of
Grace is more ancient than the everlasting hills. It was made by God
with Christ for us before all worlds were created! God had foreseen
that man would be a sinner. Jesus Christ and His Father were determined
to save him and, therefore, a Covenant was made between them. God the
Son, on His part, stipulated that He would suffer all the punishment
which all the elect deserved to suffer–that He would offer a perfect
righteousness on their behalf and pay all the demands of God's justice.
God the Father, on His part, covenanted that all the elect, being
redeemed by the blood of Christ, would most certainly be accepted and
saved. That is the Covenant of which God is always mindful.
Some people believe in a rickety kind of Covenant which I could never
find in the Bible–a Covenant that has conditions in it which you and I
are to fulfill. If there were such a Covenant as that, it would not be
a Covenant of Grace, but of works. If the Covenant of Grace were made
with men–with those that should be saved, on condition of their
believ-ing–it would be as impossible for any man to be saved on that
condition as it would be on the condition of obeying, since faith is no
more possible to unaided man than is perfect obedience! Faith in Christ
is as difficult a thing, to a man dead in trespasses and sins, as is
perfect obedience to every command of God. The Covenant of Grace is a
Covenant without any conditions on our part, whatever, of any sort, in
any shape, in any form, or any fashion. The Covenant, in fact, is not
made between us and God–it is made between God and Christ, our
Representative. All the conditions of that Covenant are fulfilled so
that there are none left for us to fulfill! The conditions were that
Christ should suffer–and He has suffered. That Christ should obey–and
He has obeyed. All that is done. And all that is now standing is the
unconditional Covenant, that God will give to all His elect, though
dead in sin, power to live! That He will give to them, though black,
perfect cleansing in the fountain filled with blood! That He will give
to them, though naked, a robe of perfect righteousness! That He will
ultimately accept them to dwell with Him forever in Glory everlasting.
This Covenant, on which our hopes are built, this glorious Covenant,
is–
"Signed, sealed and ratified, In all things ordered well."
Will God ever forget it? No, "He will always be mindful of His
Covenant," in everything that it guarantees and towards every person
who is interested in it. God will not suffer one single promise of the
Covenant to be unfulfilled, nor one single blessing of the Covenant to
be kept back. Every iota, jot and tittle of the covenanted purpose of
God shall be fulfilled–and everything which He has promised to His
people in the Covenant, and which Christ has bought for His people
through the Covenant–shall most infallibly be received by His people!
As for the persons interested therein, not one of them shall be
forgotten. If in the Covenant, they shall most assuredly be saved
despite every attack of the devil, all their own wickedness, or any
"accident," so-called, of Providence, or whatever may happen! All who
are in the Covenant must and shall be gathered in. The Arminian says
there are some in the Covenant who tumble out of it–that God has
chosen some men–that He justifies them, that He accepts them–and then
turns them out of His family.
The Arminian holds the unnatural, cruel, barbarous idea that a man may
be God's child, and then God may disown him because he does not behave
himself. The idea is revolting even to human sensibility! If our
children sin, they are still our children–though chastened and
punished–yet never do they cease to be numbered among our family.
There are many of God's children who have gone astray from Him and been
chastened for it, but it were an idea too barbarous to suppose that God
would disown His child for any sin he commits. He keeps fast His
Covenant–He loves them, sinners though they may be. He keeps them from
running riotously into sin, but when, sometimes, they go astray, as the
best of them will, still His loving heart towards them is unchangeably
the same!
I do not serve the god of the Arminians at all! I have nothing to do
with him and I do not bow down before the Baal they have set up! He is
not my god, nor shall he ever be! I fear him not, nor tremble at his
presence. A mutable god may be
the god for the Arminian–he is not the god for me. My Jehovah changes
not! The god that says today and denies tomorrow. That justifies today
and condemns the next. The god that has children of his own one day and
lets them be the children of the devil the next has no relation to my
God in the least degree! He may be the relation of Ashtaroth or Baal,
but Jehovah never was nor can be his name. Jehovah changes not! He
knows no shadow of turning. If He has set His heart upon a man, He will
love him to the end. If He has chosen him, He has not chosen him for
any merit of his own– therefore He will never cast him away for any
demerit of his own. If He has begotten him unto a lively hope, He will
not suffer him to fall away and perish! That were a breaking of every
promise and an abrogation of the Covenant! If one dear child of God
might fall away, then might all. If one of those for whom the Savior
died might be damned, then the Savior's blood would be utterly void and
vain. If one of those whom He has called according to His purpose might
perish, then would His purpose be null and void. But, children of God,
you may lay your heads upon the Covenant and say with Dr. Watts–
"Then should the earth's old pillars shake And all the wheels of Nature
break, Our steady souls should fear no more Than solid rocks when
billows roar." III. Now I close by noticing THE CHARACTER OF THE
PERSONS HERE REFERRED TO–"them that fear Him." Those who fear the Lord
are in the Covenant of His Grace.
The anxious enquirer or the young convert oftentimes says to the
minister, "Sir, how can I know that I am elect?" And the usual answer
is, "You have nothing to do with that–you may think of that matter,
by-and-by." Begging the gentleman's pardon, that is not true! A sinner
has everything to do with it. Instead of having nothing to do with
election, he has everything in the world to do with it. But it is said
that he need not trouble his mind about it. Perhaps he should not, but
he will, and it is no source of comfort to tell him that he ought not.
If I have a toothache, it is poor comfort for a physician to tell me
that I ought not to have it. So, when a sinner is troubled about the
Doctrine of Election, it is poor comfort to tell him he ought not to be
troubled. The best way is to go fairly through the whole question and
say to him, "Do you fear the Lord? Then, so sure as you are a living
man, you are elect. You have the fear of the Lord before your
eyes–then you need have no doubt but that your name is in the
Covenant." None have feared the Lord who were not first loved by the
Lord. Never did one come and cast himself at the feet of Jesus simply
because he feared the penalty of sin. And none ever came to embrace the
loving skirts of the Redeemer because he feared lest he should go
astray without having been first called, chosen and made faithful. No,
the fear of God in the heartis the proof of being God's elect one. If
we fear Him, we may believe that He will always give meat to us and
that He will always keep His Covenant towards us which He has made for
us in Christ Jesus our Lord.
"But," says one, "how am I to know whether I am elect?" Beloved, you
cannot know it by any outward profession. You may be of any church in
the world, or of no church, and yet be one of God's elect. Nor can you
know it even by the sentiments which you receive as being true, for you
may know truth and yet not have truth in your soul. You may be orthodox
in your head and heterodox in your heart. You may believe everything
and yet be cast away at last. The only way whereby you can judge
yourself is this–Do you fear the Lord? Do you reverence His name and
His Sabbath? Have you trembled at His Word? Have you cast away your
self-righteousness at His command? And have you come to Him and taken
Christ to be your All-in-All? I do not ask you whether you fear
Hell–many fear Hell who fear not God. Do you fear to offend a loving
Father? Do you fear lest you should go astray from God's commandments?
Do you cry to Him–
"Savor, keep me lest I wander?" Do you ask Him to preserve you? And can
you honestly say that if you could be perfect, you would be? That you
desire to be freed from sin? That you hate every false way? And is it
your dally groaning to be set free from guilt and to be wholly
surrendered to the Crucified? Lastly, can you say this after me–
"A guilty, weak and helpless worm, On Christ's kind arms I fall– He is
my strength and righteousness, My Jesus and my All?"
Then you are elect! Then you are justified! Then you are accepted and
you have no more reason to doubt your acceptance and your election than
you will have when you stand before the Throne of God, amid the blazing
luster of eternal Glory!
You are elect and you always were elect! God has chosen you. Your
fearing Him is the evidence of it and your believing in Christ, without
any righteousness of your own, is proof positive that you were chosen
of God before the foundation of the world!
Now what shall I say in conclusion? There are some of you who fear not
God. Alas, for you, that you should be in a state so utterly miserable
and pitiable, without the fear of God before your eyes! Oh, that God
would teach you to fear Him! Oh, that He would break your hearts and so
make you feel your ruined state as to bring you to His feet to receive
the perfect righteousness of Christ–then would you fear Him–and then
might you rejoice that He would give you meat and keep you in His
Covenant.
I think I hear one say, "I am a great sinner. I am in the very front
rank of the army of guilt. I have truly transgressed and gone astray
from the Most High. Tell me, did Jesus die for me? Did He die–not as
some say He died, for all men– but in that special sense which ensures
salvation?" I will answer you. Can you say, "I am a sinner," not as a
kind of idle compliment that most men pass when they say they are
sinners and do not mean what the word implies, for they no more mean
that they are sinners than that they are horses. But do you really
believe that you are sinners deserving God's wrath and the fire of Hell
forever? Then the Lord Jesus died for you and, "this is a faithful
saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the
world to save sinners." If the word is to be understood in the sense in
which Hart uses it when he says–
"A sinner is a sacred thing,
The Holy Spirit has made him so"–
if you feel you are a sinner in that sense, Christ died for you.
But you say, "I wish He had set my name down in the book, that I might
read it." Why, my Friend, if He had done so, you would believe it was
intended for somebody else! If the book contained the name of Smith, on
such a street, Smith would declare that there were so many Smiths that
it could not be meant for him! And if you could read your name, you
would still doubt that it could, by any possibility, be a description
of you, since another person might bear the same title. But since it
says, "sinners," Satan himself cannot beat you out of that. God has
taught you what the term, "sinner," means and Satan cannot unteach you
that. Are you, then, a sinner–fully, wholly, in all the black sense of
the word? Then Christ died for you. Cast yourself upon that Truth of
God– Christ died for sinners.
"But," you say, "Sir, if I were a little better, I might believe that
He died for me." I would not, for He died for sinners. Or you say, "If
I were a saint, I might believe that He died for me." I would not, for
he died for sinners. Only prove yourself a sinner and you have proved
that Christ died for you! Only be sure that you are a sinner, that you
have revolted from God and that you know it–only confess with your
heart your transgressions and take this title to yourself, and you may
believe that Jesus died for you.
Let me give you a lesson in logic–not from Whateley nor Watts, but
from the logic of Faith. It is extraordinary how different are the
conclusions of Faith from those of Reason. Once Reason came along and
heard a man cry, "I am guilty, guilty." She stopped and said, "The man
is guilty. God condemns the guilty, therefore this man will be
condemned." She went away and left the man condemned, ruined and
quivering with fear. Faith came and heard the same cry, rendered more
bitter by the cruel syllogism of Reason. Faith stopped. She said, "The
man is guilty, but Christ died for the guilty–therefore the man will
be saved." And her logic was correct–the man lifted up his head and
rejoiced!
Reason came one day and saw a man naked. And she said, "He has not on a
wedding garment. Can naked souls appear before the bar of God? Should
they have a place at the supper of the Lamb? The man is naked–he must
be cast out for naked ones cannot enter Heaven!" Then Faith came by and
said, "The man is naked. Christ worked a robe of righteousness–He must
have made it for the naked–He would not have made it for those who
have a robe of their own. That robe is for the naked man and he shall
stand in it before God." And her logic was correct and just. The other
might seem strictly according to rule, but this was still better.
Reason one day heard a man say that he was very good and righteous. She
saw him go up to the Temple and heard him pray, "Lord, I thank You that
I am not as other men," and Reason said, "That man is better than
others and he will be accepted." But she argued wrongly, for, lo, he
went out and a poor sinner by his side, who could only say, "God be
merciful to me, a sinner," went down to his house justified–while the
proud Pharisee went on his way disregarded. The logic of Faith is to
argue white from black, whereas the logic of Reason argues white from
white.
Luther says, "Once upon a time the devil came to me and said, 'Martin
Luther, you are a great sinner and you will be damned.' 'Stop, stop,' I
said, 'one thing at a time! I am a great sinner, it is true, though you
have no right to tell me of it. I confess it. What next?' 'Therefore
you will be damned.' 'That is not good reasoning. It is true I am a
great sinner, but it is written, 'Jesus Christ came into the world to
save sinners,' therefore I shall be saved. Now go your way.' So I drove
off the devil with his own sword and he went away mourning because he
could not cast me down by calling me a sinner."
I have a right to believe that Jesus Christ died for me and I cast
myself wholly upon Him. Do the same, poor disconsolate one, for you
have nothing of your own to depend upon! But you, O great, and good,
and rich man, I have nothing to say to you!–
"Not the righteous, Sinners, Jesus came to save."
While you have a rag of your own, you shall never have Christ's robe!
Go your way, your righteousness shall prove like the shirt of Hercules,
when it burnt him and did eat his flesh away–though you glory in it,
it shall be the winding-sheet of your soul forever.
But if you have nothing and are poor, penniless and miserable–reduced
to utter spiritual destitution and pov-erty–in God's name I preach to
you the Gospel! Christ died for you and you shall not perish. God will
not punish Christ for us and then punish us afterwards. He will not
demand the payment, first at His hands and then again, at ours. He is
not unjust to punish, first, the Scapegoat, the Surety, the
Substitute–and then to punish you. Christ was your Substitute–He bore
your guilt, He carried your iniquities upon His head. Your sins were
numbered upon Him and your punishment was laid upon Him!
Go your way. You can never be punished. Your sins, which are many, are
all forgiven. Rejoice in pardon bought with blood–be glad, be
satisfied, be happy even till you die–and then you shall be happy
forever!