Debtors and Debtors

Debtors and Debtors

(No. 2768)

A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, MARCH 2, 1902.

DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON.

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON THURSDAY EVENING,
SEPTEMBER 13, 1883.

"There was a certain creditor which had two debtors: the one owed five
hundred pence, and the other fifty." Luke 7:41.

I TRUST that the Lord has "somewhat to say" upon this subject to some
who are like Simon the Pharisee. And if He has, I trust that those
persons will be led by the Grace of God to say, as Simon did, "Master,
say on." Be ready to hear what the Lord Jesus Christ will speak to you!
There are some who cover up the windows of their hearts with the
shutters of prejudice–they are only prepared to hear what will please
them–they cannot endure to listen to that which will grieve them and
humble them. How many there are who want the preacher to prophesy
smooth things! If he will say what they can agree with, they will go
away and sing his praises, which is a poor result in any case. But let
us be of a nobler sort than that! Let us be like the Bereans, who,
after they had heard Paul and Silas preach, "received the Word with all
readiness of mind, and searched the Scriptures daily, whether those
things were so. Therefore many of them believed." Let us say, as Eli
bade young Samuel do, "Speak, Lord, for Your servant hears." Let us say
to Him, "Even if You speak that which will lay me in the dust, I will
hear it. If You say that which will condemn me to Hell, I will give
heed to it, for it is best for me to know the Truth of God, that, by
knowing it, I may be stirred up to flee from the wrath to come. Let me
know the worst of my case, O Lord God of Truth! 'Search me, O God, and
know my heart; try me, and know my thoughts: and see if there is any
wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.'"

So far, I think, Simon the Pharisee may be an example to us. The Master
said to him, "Simon, I have something to say to you." And his answer
was, "Master, say on."

I am not going to expound the whole parable at this time. We may,
perhaps, go on with it on another occasion. I intend now to take only
this one verse–"There was a certain creditor which had two debtors:
the one owed five hundred pence, and the other fifty." There are two
lessons for us to learn from this text. The first is that all sinners
are debtors to God. And the second is that some sinners are greater
debtors to God than others are–"The one owed five hundred pence, and
the other fifty."

I. First, ALL MEN ARE DEBTORS TO GOD. He is that "certain Creditor"
mentioned in our text, of whom, I fear, many debtors think very little.

We are all indebted to God, first, in the matter of obedience to Him,
as His creatures. He is our Creator, our Preserver, our Provider, our
Benefactor. "It is He that has made us, and not we ourselves; we are
His people, and the sheep of His pasture." He is "the living God" who
gives us richly all things to enjoy." We owe to Him our continued
existence. Every breath of our nostrils is His gift. Therefore, by our
very creation, we are bound to serve Him according to the righteous
demands of His holy Law, "You shall worship the Lord your God, and Him
only shall you serve." And that other "first and great
commandment"–"You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart,
and with all your soul, and with all your mind." This Law is not
exacting. It does not go a hair's breadth beyond the righteous claims
of Divine Justice.

But, as we have not rendered to God the obedience which is due Him, we
have become further indebted because of the penalty incurred by us as
sinners. All the Ten Commandments stand up in the court as witnesses
against us, for we have broken them all. We have been guilty of sins of
omission altogether innumerable–and of sins of commission more than

the hair of our head. We are under obligation to obey God's command
even though we are unable to obey it. Though we have not the power to
keep God's Law perfectly, that inability by no means removes from us
the liability to do so. If a man is in debt and cannot pay, the fact
that he is unable to pay does not exonerate him from the duty of
paying. He is still in debt. Debts are not discharged by pleading that
you cannot pay them–that is no valid excuse and we are, all of us,
bound to obey God perfectly, notwithstanding all that has happened in
the past. What a debt, then, we must owe Him– a debt that is
increasing every day–a debt that is already past all reckoning–a debt
that will go on swelling as long as we live unless it can be removed by
some power higher than our own!

That debt of penalty involves tremendous results to the body and the
soul of man. "Fear not them which kill the body," said Christ, "but are
not able to kill the soul: but rather fear Him which is able to destroy
both soul and body in Hell." You know that among all the terrible words
spoken concerning the penalty of sin, the most terrible are those which
were uttered by our Lord Jesus Christ, the most loving and tender of
all teachers. Measure not a man's true tenderness of heart by his
avoidance of the subject of "the wrath to come." It may be only
tenderness to him, or a willingness to pander to the evil desires of
sinful men that prompts him to such action as that. But the Christ who
weeps over Jerusalem does not hesitate to predict its dreadful doom!
And He who loved men so much as to lay down His life for them was the
one who spoke again and again of the place "where their worm dies not,
and the fire is not quenched." Many such words fell from those loving
lips that never would have invented an unnecessary terror, so we may be
sure that the penalty of sin is a very terrible one.

Every one of us who is out of Christ is under the death penalty–"He
that believes not is condemned already, because he has not believed in
the name of the only begotten Son of God." "The soul that sins, it
shall die." And what that death involves, what that existence must be
which is but life in the midst of death–the life of an immortal being
that is stripped of all possibility of well-being forever–I will not
attempt to describe. But that is the penalty of sin and that is due to
God, to whom we are debtors, indeed.

And, my dear Friends, it gives me great joy to add that if we are
pardoned sinners, we owe to God a deep debt of gratitude! If, through
the blessed processes of Grace, through the atoning Sacrifice and
mediation of our Divine Redeemer, we are delivered from the debt of sin
and the handwriting that was against us is taken away and nailed to His
Cross. If, through the death of Christ, we are delivered from the death
penalty of sin–as we certainly are, for Christ has forever cleared all
Believers by bearing their punishment in His body on the tree, then are
we debtors to the Infinite Love and boundless compassion of our
Covenant-keeping God, His well-beloved Son and the ever-blessed Spirit!
In this debt let us be continually willing to sink deeper and deeper. I
would that, in this respect, my own soul were like a boat that had
foundered at sea–and the sea should be the Love of God–and I would go
down into it over the masthead till I was completely submerged in the
abyss of Infinite Love. And, in truth, that is just where we are if we
are in Christ Jesus! And each one of us, slightly altering the poet's
words, can say–

"Olove! You bottomless abyss! My soul is swallowed up in you."

Which of us can ever fully tell what we owe to God for our election,
our redemption, our effectual calling, our justification, our
sanctification and our promised glorification? Who can tell how much we
owe for being preserved from sin, for being restored after we have
fallen into sin and for being enabled by Grace to rise above sin? Who
can tell how great is our debt for all the blessings laid up in store
for us which we shall enjoy, by-and-by, but which are just as surely
ours before we receive them–that Grace we have not tasted yet, and
that Glory which we have scarcely dreamt of yet–that infinite
happiness which is hidden in the closed hand of God until the day shall
come when He shall manifest it to our wondering eyes? "Therefore,
brethren, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the
flesh"–but debtors to the Covenant Love of God and, therefore, debtors
to our fellow men, realizing our obligation to show to them, according
to our ability, the great Love of God and to testify to them concerning
the way of eternal life.

So, you see, in some form or other, we are all debtors. I am not about
to speak of that last kind of debt, now, for it is not included in our
Savior's parable. But I want to speak of the debt of obedience which
has not been rendered and the debt of penalty which has been incurred
in consequence of our disobedience. I intend, as God shall help me, to
say something about debtors. And if, in the use of the illustration, I
should seem to utter hard words about people who are in

debt, I am not meaning to do that and I hope they will not take it so.
I am simply intending to use the illustration. If it happens to hit
anybody, I cannot help that. If the cap fits anyone, let him wear it.

Now, first, a sinner is very much like a debtor in this respect–he is
very apt to get more deeply into debt. If you owe a pound today, there
is a great tendency to owe two pounds tomorrow. Getting into debt is a
slippery process and when your feet begin to slide, you are very apt to
go deeper and deeper into the mire. And I am sure that this is the case
with the Lord's two debtors–with the Lord's unnumbered millions of
debtors–with all the Lord's debtors! People say, "Money makes money,"
and I suppose it does, but, certainly, sin makes sin. There is a
cumulative force in evil so that a sinner finds that it gets easier to
sin, instead of becoming more difficult. While the man grows old, his
sin does not– rather, it seems to grow younger and to become more
vigorous! Often times a sinner will become more adept in guilt and more
inclined to evil, the further he advances in years. Certain sins may
decline through the weakening of the flesh, but the sins of the heart
do not. The power to sin may grow less, but the will to sin continues
to increase as the sinner grows older. This is one of the terrible
things about iniquity–that it breeds so fast. A man can never say to
sin, "You may only come this far, but no further–and here shall your
proud waves be stayed." When the great flood tide of evil comes rolling
in, there is no telling where it will stop! As debt leads to more debt,
so sin leads to more sin and, therefore, it is that there is a parallel
between the sinner and the debtor.

Further, sin, like debt, causes uneasiness in a man if there is a spark
of honesty about him. Some men, who have no sense of honor, are quite
happy while in debt. You may have read of a sale that was to be held in
Rome, on one occasion, when there were to be sold the goods of a man
who had been for many years greatly embarrassed by debt. The emperor
said to one of his chamberlains, "Go to the sale and buy that man's
bed, for I cannot sleep at night and, surely, I should be able to sleep
on his bed if he, being in debt, has been able to sleep so comfortably
as I hear he has." Debtors ought not to have good sleep if they have
wantonly plunged themselves into debt. Honest men are troubled, vexed,
perturbed if they feel that they cannot meet their obligations. Now,
when a sinner is thoroughly awakened to his true position, this is just
his case. He says, "I am in debt to God and I cannot pay even a
farthing in the pound. If He comes to call me to account and asks me,
'How much do you owe unto your Lord?' what can I answer Him? I am full
of confusion and full of fear." Thus, you see, a sinner is like a
debtor because he has no rest.

And further, debtors and sinners shun their creditors–they do not want
to meet them–they try to get out of their way. Some of us know what it
is to have cleared ourselves of rather troublesome friends by lending
them money. We have never seen them since, so we reckon that perhaps it
was a good investment. A man who is in debt does not want to see the
person to whom he owes money. He would rather go down another street
than meet him. If there is a knock at the door and the person who wants
to come in is one who has called for a debt which the debtor cannot
discharge, he would sooner jump out of the back window and make his
escape, than he would meet him. And this is precisely the case with the
sinner. He is in debt to God and he does not like to meet his great
Creditor. He will not regard the call of the church bell and he will
not keep holy the Sabbath. He would rather forget about all such
things. To read his Bible, to attend a service where he shall be
reminded of his obligations is most objectionable to him. He does not
want to be reminded of them. If there should come one, in the dead of
night, and cry in his chamber, "Prepare to meet your God!" it would be
more terrifying to him than an earthquake or the most terrific
thunderstorm. He does not want to meet his God! He says in his heart,
if not in so many words, "No God! No God for me! I do not want a God!"
And if it could be satisfactorily proved to him that God was dead, it
would be one of the most joyful pieces of news that he had ever heard.
He is so deeply in debt to God that he cries, "Where shall I flee from
His Presence?" He would take the wings of the morning, if he could, and
fly to the uttermost parts of the earth if he thought that he could
find some lonely spot where he would not be troubled by the fear of the
Presence of God. That is every sinner's condition. That is the
condition of every unconverted person here! That was once my condition
and the condition of everyone who is now a child of God.

The sinner, too, like the debtor, is in great danger. I do not know
what the laws of England are, just now, concerning debt. Putting them
into very simple English, I think they mean that nobody needs pay
anybody unless he likes–and we have plenty of people who are getting
rich by paying nobody at all. When they fail altogether, they break,
and so make themselves. But I shall talk of the laws of England as they
used to be. When a man was in debt in the olden times, he was always in
fear of arrest. He could not tell when the sheriff's officer would lay
his hand upon him. That is just your case if you are an unforgiven,
unpardoned sinner. You cannot tell when God will arrest you, but it is
certain that, sooner

or later–and even the later will not be long–you will have to stand
before His Judgment Seat and answer at the bar of inflexible Justice
for all your sins against Him. I would not like to have been a debtor
who, wherever he went, was likely to be arrested. I have heard of one
who was so often in debt and so frequently in prison in consequence,
but who so regularly ran into debt after he was let out of jail that,
on one occasion, when his coat-sleeve caught on an area railing, he
supposed it was the touch of the sheriffs officer and, thinking that he
was again arrested, he exclaimed, "At whose suit?" It was only an iron
bar that held him, but he imagined that one of his many creditors had
claimed him. That must be a wretched kind of life for anyone to
live–to be always afraid of arrest!

You smile at the idea, but if you were really in that condition, I do
not suppose that you would smile then. And if you realized that at any
moment you might be arrested by the cold hand of death, smiles would be
far enough from your countenance! A man may be sitting in one of these
pews and, before the clock ticks again, he may be in the world of
spirits before his God! I am often hearing of persons, whom I have
lately met apparently in robust health, who have been suddenly called
away. They are gone, but we are still spared. In thought, I saw a
procession passing before me. At first I imagined that it was flesh and
blood marching down the street, but, as the procession passed me, I
discovered that all who composed it were but shadows. I, who was
looking on, am also a shadow and I, too, shall pass away. O debtor to a
righteous God, this thought should cause disquietude within your
careless spirit–that, at any moment, you may be arrested at the suit
of your great Creditor!

And then, mark you, according to the Law of God, when arrested by
death, you are cast into prison. You remember how our Savior put
it–"Agree with your adversary quickly, while you are in the way with
him; lest at any time the adversary deliver you to the judge, and the
judge deliver you to the officer, and you be cast into prison. Verily I
say unto you, You shall by no means come out from there till you have
paid the uttermost farthing." Oh, what a dreadful prison that is into
which souls will be cast who die in debt to God! And since they can
never pay even a farthing of their debt, there can be no release for
them! How long shall they lie there? Till they have paid the uttermost
farthing? Why, that can never be! So, mind what you doing, you who are
indebted to God, lest you be cast into that dreadful dungeon! Trifle
not away your time, I pray you, but fly to Jesus who alone can deliver
you from this weight of debt, for your danger is imminent at this very
moment!

There is this about our debt to God–that it will never be forgotten by
Him. I once knew a man who was much troubled by a debt, but his
creditor was not, for many years had passed and he had never mentioned
it. In fact, it had entirely slipped from his memory! I do not think
such a case as that often happens, but I remember that one–but it will
never happen with God. Nothing will ever slip from His memory! Sin is
irrevocable and eternal. There is one process that can blot it out, or
cast it into the depths of the sea and make it cease to be–there is
but one such process–and the Christ of God can tell you what that is.
But, apart from His atoning Sacrifice, there is no hope that the debt
will ever be forgotten or forgiven.

And there is no protection for those who are in debt to the great
Creditor. Protection is sometimes given to an insolvent debtor and, in
the olden times, there used to be places of sanctuary to which men fled
and so were free from liability to be arrested. Even now, men flee
across the seas to avoid arrest. They cross the narrow channel that
parts us from the Continent and there they are secure. But there is no
such way of escape for those who are in debt to God! If you are one of
His debtors through sin, there is no protection for you unless you flee
to Christ! There is no distance of space or lapse of time, no
repentance or tears that can blot out your transgressions. There they
stand, indelible! Neither can you escape from the righteous hand of God
in the day when He shall visit you for them.

This makes our indebtedness to God assume a very terrible shape–and if
we have not been delivered from it by Christ, what can we do? No
composition can be taken in part payment of our enormous debt. Even if
it could be, we could not offer it–and there is no friend who can give
to God a ransom for us, or stand in our place. No, let me correct
myself. There is one Friend–and never let us forget Him–One who
became Surety for His people and who was made to smart for it in that
day when He paid their debts, to the uttermost farthing, by laying down
His life for them. But, dear Friends, if there is anyone among us here
who is still in debt to God on the matter of obedience, and who cannot
present to Him the righteousness of Christ on His own behalf and who,
in the matter of penalty, cannot bring to God the substi-tutionary
Sacrifice of Christ, and plead that it was offered for him, his case is
a very sad and wretched one, indeed. The

Lord deliver all such in His great mercy! I have been speaking
figuratively, but there is truth at the back of it all. It is no
figure, no emblem, no fancy, but a dread and terrible reality, that all
sinners are in debt to God.

II. Now comes the second thought which will have much soul-searching
power about it if God the Holy Spirit blesses

it, and that is, that SOME SINNERS ARE GREATER DEBTORS TO GOD THAN
OTHERS ARE–"The one owed

five hundred pence, and the other fifty."

We have all sinned, so we are all debtors to God. But we have not all
sinned to the same degree, therefore we are not all debtors to the same
extent. There are some sins that are greater than other sins and, both
in this world and in the next, punishments are to be measured out
proportionately. There are some to whom it will be more tolerable in
the Day of Judgment than it will be to others. Our Lord said even to
Pontius Pilate, "He that delivered Me unto you has the greater sin."
So, clearly, one sin is greater than another. Every sin is great enough
to ruin a soul forever, but there are some sins that have a peculiar
crimson about them, a special venom and heinousness of offense against
the Majesty of God. What constitutes, then, the five hundred pence
debtor? Who are the people that are greater sinners than others?

I answer, first, that there are some who have greater capacity than
others. There are some men and women who have but very little
intellectual power. Their minds are narrow, their power of thought is
limited–they cannot, under any circumstances, commit the
transgressions which are easy enough to men of great, though imperious,
masterly minds, with much inventive power and strong passions. Judge
you as to your own condition in this respect. Some of you may know that
you are very differently constituted from some of your neighbors. You
may even have been tempted, in a moment of pride, to look upon them as
very commonplace sort of folk–and you are quite aware, without any
pride, that you are a person of far greater ability than they are. Very
well, then it is possible for you to be a far greater sinner than they
can be! You can throw more force and energy, more devilry into your
life than they can. I have no doubt that there are many people who slip
through life with little mind, little mental force and with
comparatively little sin. They know but little, and think but little,
and their condemnation will be little compared with that of greater
sinners.

Some are great sinners because they are placed in positions of great
trust. He who has but one talent can only sin with regard to that one
talent. But he who has 10 talents, is 10 times as unrighteous in the
sight of his Master. A man who is but a house servant, or a day
laborer, may be unfaithful to his worldly master and, so far he will be
wrong. But think of the position of a minister of the Gospel, the man
to whom the souls of men are committed. If he is unfaithful to his
Master, what terrible consequences are involved! And, as his reward is
higher than the wages of the man that tills the soil, so shall his
punishment be greater. Mark the difference of the sacrifice for a
priest compared with the offering for a woman's purification. She might
come with a pair of turtledoves or two young pigeons, but not so the
sons of Aaron! Their office was higher and, if they sinned, their
iniquity was, in consequence, all the greater–and there must be
presented, in the type, a costlier sacrifice in recognition of the
greater guilt in their case. You fathers and mothers can sin more than
your children can. Masters, you can sin more than your servants can.
Men of wealth, you can sin against every pound you have if you use it
wrongfully. Men who occupy high places, your sin may be like that of
David, who greatly disgraced the name of God before men. Because of
your exalted position, you can do so much more mischief and your sin,
therefore, is reckoned at a proportionately higher rate.

Sin, too, becomes greater in proportion to a man's light and knowledge.
A young man, blessed with godly parents, brought up from his childhood
in the midst of prayer and holiness, can sin much more than poor
children taken out of the back slums and who, from their very babyhood,
have heard words of blasphemy and seen deeds of filthiness. Oh, when
some of us, whose privilege it was to hear the name of Jesus mingled
with the first hush of our lullaby–when we sinned against God, there
was an intensity of blackness about our sin that could not be found in
the poor heathen, or in such sinners in this land as are left in
ignorance! The more you know–the more you understand of the mind and
will of God–the greater is your transgression when you sin against
Him!

Sin, too, is very largely increased by tenderness of conscience. There
are some persons who must know that this assertion is true if they have
looked into their own hearts and lives, for they were very
tender-spirited in their youth and, as they grew up, they retained much
of that tenderness. There are some coarse, rough, brutal men who could
almost commit murder and not feel it–but some of us can remember the
horror which came upon us when, for the first time, we used or heard an
ill word. You remember how the breach of the Sabbath cut you to the
quick when it was only a small matter about which others thought
nothing. You also remember how, when you found yourself out in having
told a lie, per-

haps, unintentionally, you could not sleep, you felt so mean and
miserable! Well, now, if you have forced yourself to sin in spite of
such a check as this–if you have, as it were, gone over hedge and
ditch in order to get to Hell–if you have throttled and strangled your
better self with stern resolve that you would do evil–then you have
sinned, indeed!

There are some such sinners, and there may be some such here, who have
suffered through sin and yet have gone back to it. In the summer and
autumn evenings it is one of the miseries of a man who sits writing to
find how the poor gnats and the "daddy long legs" will fly to the lamp
and get burned to death. You try to drive them away. You take the
trouble to pick them up after they have burnt themselves–but back they
come–and their folly is a true and melancholy picture of the way in
which some men return to their vices, again and again, even after they
have suffered greatly through indulgence in them! Even delirium tremens
will not suffice to save some men from continuing to be drunks–and the
rottenness of their bones has not been sufficient to keep others back
from the house of the strange woman. Oh, how horrible is this! And how
it adds to the guilt of sin and puts upon it a certain degree of
presumptuousness which provokes God beyond the ordinary transgressions
of common sinners.

Does this truth come home to the conscience of anyone whom I am now
addressing? Then I go back to my preface, and ask such an one to say,
with Simon the Pharisee, "Master, say on." There is always a great
intensity about sin when it is practiced for a long time. The sinner
who is 60 years old is a greater sinner than a mere youth can well be.
And the man who has spent three-score years and ten without remembering
his God–the man whose life lease has run out and yet who, all the
while, has spent his vigor in the service of Satan–has become one of
the greatest of sinners–one of the five-hundred pence debtors!

Yes, there are degrees of sin! Sometimes a man recognizes that he has
distinctly sinned against God in an especially personal way. David
seemed to feel his sin thus when he said to the Lord, "Against You, You
only, have I sinned, and done this evil in Your sight." Usually,
unenlightened men think most of an offense against their fellow men. It
is very curious that it should be so, but so it is. If I were to charge
any man here with the commission of a crime against his fellows, he
would probably knock me down if he could. But if I charged him with a
sin against God, he would say, "Oh, yes, yes! We are all sinners," and
think that it was nothing to be a sinner because it was only against
God! Thus men turn things upside down and an offense against our fellow
man is reckoned to be a greater evil than an offense against the Judge
of all the earth! But it is not so. It is that sinning distinctly
against God that has the most evil about it and, therefore, it is that
there is but one sin that is unpardonable–and that is a willful sin
against the Holy Spirit, one Person of the blessed Trinity. It is
because it is so especially and so designedly against Him that no
repentance ever comes to the man who has committed it, for he has
sinned the sin which is unto death and he remains in his death-state,
so that he never repents of the iniquity and finds no forgiveness for
it. Beware, I pray you, of sins distinctly against God, especially such
sins as that of blasphemy, of murmuring against God, of infidelity, of
a denial of His existence, of Socinianism, which is a robbing of Christ
of His Deity and so of His highest Glory! For those sins which are most
distinctly against God stand first in the dread catalog of iniquity.
Remember how the Prophet Samuel said to Saul, "Rebellion is as the sin
of witchcraft, and stubbornness is as iniquity and idolatry."
Witchcraft was thought to be one of the worst of sins–and rebellion
against God is put side by side with it.

And, last, I do believe that the greatest sin of all–that which, like
a giant, rises head and shoulders above the rest– is the sin of
unbelief, or rejection of the mercy of God in Christ Jesus. If any man
here shall say, "I am no drunkard. I am no whoremonger." Well, Sir,
suppose you are not–but are you an unbeliever in Christ? Then you
shall have the same portion as they have, for, when God says, "I will
give My only-begotten Son to die to save sinners," and yet men say, "We
will not have Your Son as our Savior, but we will reject Him. 'This is
the heir; come, let us kill Him, that the inheritance may be
ours'"–when God takes out of His own bosom the darling of His heart,
the very Glory of Heaven, and sends Him here in human flesh and blood
to bear shame, suffering and death for guilty men–and they say that
they will not believe on Him, then this is the sin that turns the key
of Heaven against them and dooms them to eternal destruction!

Remember the solemn words of our Lord Jesus, Himself–"He that believes
and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be
damned." Listen again to these familiar words–"He that believes not is
condemned already." Why is he condemned already? He is living, he is
laughing, he is sporting, he is merry-making–yet he is condemned
already, "because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten
Son of God." That is the sin which, above all others, drops the black
wax upon his death warrant and sets the seal of Divine Wrath there so
that he must die!

O my dear Hearers, our text says that one of the debtors owed 500 pence
and, surely, that is the man who has heard the Gospel and yet has
refused it! It is you who have been coming to this place, or to other
houses of prayer, and who have been warned, invited and entreated for
months and years–I know not how long–to believe in Jesus. If such is
the case with any of you, put yourself down, not as a 50-pence debtor,
but as a 500-pence debtor! No, I think I must liken you to him who owed
his master ten thousand talents. How can you ever repay it? There is no
hope of your ever repaying it. You can have it all frankly and freely
forgiven! If you go to Christ and plead perfect poverty, you shall then
be set free at once through faith in His dear name! But if not, you
must be delivered over to the keeper of the terrible prison of which I
spoke to you, and you can never come out of it! God grant that it may
not be so with any of you, for His dear Son's sake! Amen.

EXPOSITION BY C. H. SPURGEON: ROMANS 15:13-33.

Verses 13-27. Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in
believing, that you may abound in hope, through the power of the Holy
Spirit And I myself also am persuaded of you, my brethren, that you
also are full of goodness, filled with all knowledge, able also to
admonish one another Nevertheless, brethren, I have written the more
boldly unto you in some sort, as putting you in mind, because of the
Grace that is given to me of God. That I should be the minister of
Jesus Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the Gospel of God, that the
offering up of the Gentiles might be acceptable, being sanctified by
the Holy Spirit I have therefore reason to glory through Jesus Christ
in those things which pertain to God. For I will not dare to speak of
any of those things which Christ has not worked by me, to make the
Gentiles obedient, by word and deed, through mighty signs and wonders,
by the power of the Spirit of God; so that from Jerusalem, and round
about unto Illyricum, I have fully preached the Gospel of Christ Yes, I
have strived to preach the Gospel, not where Christ was named, lest I
should build upon another man's foundation: but as it is written, To
whom He was not spoken of, they shall see: and they that have not heard
shall understand. For which cause also I have been much hindered from
coming to you. But now having no more place in these parts, and having
a great desire these many years to come unto you; whenever I take my
journey into Spain, I will come to you: for I trust to see you in my
journey, and to be brought on my way there by you, if first I be
somewhat filled with your company. But no w I go unto Jerusalem to
minister unto the saints. For it has pleased them of Macedonia and
Achaia to make a certain contribution for the poor saints which are at
Jerusalem. It has pleased them verily; and their debtors they are. For
these Achaeans and Macedonians had received the Gospel from the saints
in Jerusalem. The Gentiles had been made partakers of their spiritual
things, so it was their duty to minister to the poor Christian Jews in
carnal things.

27, 28. For if the Gentiles have been made partakers of their spiritual
things, their duty is also to minister unto them in carnal things. When
therefore I have performed this, and have sealed to them this fruit
That is, "when I have delivered the money, and obtained a receipt in
full for it; when I have discharged my duty in this matter."

28, 29. I will come by you into Spain. And I am sure that when I come
unto you, I shall come in the fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of
Christ He was sure of that, but he did not know how he would go in
other respects. He did not know that he would go to Rome as a prisoner.
He could not foresee that he would be sent there as an ambassador in
bonds; and little, I think, did he care in what manner he would go, so
long as he had the absolute certainty that he should go "in the
fullness of the blessing of the Gospel of Christ."

30, 31. Now I beseech you, brethren, for the Lord Jesus Christ's sake,
and for the love of the Spirit, thatyou strive together with me in your
prayers to God for me; that Imay be delivered from them in Judea that
do not believe; and that my service which I have for Jerusalem may be
accepted of the saints. For there were some saints in Jerusalem who
were very narrow-minded and who hardly thought it right to accept
anything from Gentiles. They had not got clear of their Jewish bonds
and Paul was a little afraid lest what he was taking to them might not
be acceptable, so he asked the Romans to pray about that matter. Is
there anything about which Believers may not pray? If there are, then
we have no right to have anything to do with it! Bring everything
before God in prayer, for all right things may lawfully be prayed
about. So Paul asked the Christians in Rome to pray about that matter
of his journey to Jerusalem and also to pray for his return.

32, 33. That I may come unto you with joy by the will of God, and may
with you be refreshed. Now the God of peace be with you all Amen.