Disobedience to the Gospel
(No. 2804)
INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD'S-DAY, NOVEMBER 9, 1902.
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON, ON LORD'S-DAY EVENING,
JANUARY 14, 1877.
"But they have not all obeyed the Gospel." Romans 10:16.
EVEN concerning those who have heard the Gospel, it can still be said,
"They have not all obeyed the Gospel." And this, dear Friends, is one
of the plainest proofs of the deep depravity of human nature. We might
have expected that if God, in the exercise of His marvelous mercy,
should stay His hand and not at once execute the sentence of justice
upon the guilty–if in His surprising Grace, He should devise a way by
which He could be just and yet could justify the ungodly– I say, we
might have supposed that the moment men heard that good news, they
would immediately believe it! Seeing that they had offended God and so
had brought themselves into a state of condemnation, we might have
thought that as soon as ever the God of Grace mentioned the possibility
of forgiveness, they would have sought it at His hand! It could never
have been imagined–apart from the utter ruin of man's nature by the
Fall–that we should have needed so many ministers, so much pleading,
so many years of long-suffering on God's part and, above all, that we
should have needed the display of the almighty power of the Spirit of
God, Himself, before sinners would be willing to obey the Gospel! Yet
so it is and nothing that I know of beneath high Heaven, so clearly
proves that man's heart is absolutely estranged from all that is
good–and that the sinner has really become demented through his
sin–as that man rejects the Gospel of Grace, refuses Divine Mercy and
often stops his ears to the voice of God's messengers and, in every
case, except where the Holy Spirit graciously renews the
nature–tramples underfoot the very blood of the Son of God! O Man, you
who were at first like the sons of the morning–no, more than that, you
who were made in the likeness of God–you whose place was in Eden, the
garden of the Lord–how low have you fallen and into what a sad state
of estrangement to your God have you come through your sin!
That, however, is not my subject at this time. I want, in the name of
the Lord Jesus Christ, to have a time of earnest pleading with those
who have not obeyed the Gospel. It is true of many who meet with us, in
this House of Prayer, as it is of those who assemble elsewhere, that
though they have often heard the Gospel, yet "they have not all obeyed
the Gospel." Perhaps some of those who up to now have been disobedient,
will now obey it. May the Spirit of God make it to be so!
I. My first observation upon the text will be this. THE GOSPEL COMES TO
MEN WITH THE FORCE OF A
COMMAND. "They have not all obeyedthe Gospel." But you cannot speak of
obeying anything which has not the authority of a command–it is clear,
therefore, that the Gospel comes to men in the form of a command and
that it has the force of a command!
I shall not stay to quote the large number of texts which I might
easily bring to your recollection and all of which, unless they are
wrested from their true meaning in order to suit a certain form of
theological teaching, prove that the Gospel comes to men as a command.
I will mention just one such passage–"The times of this ignorance God
winked at; but now commandsall men everywhere to repent." So it is not
optional to you whether you will accept the Gospel or not–it is not
said to you, "You may, if you will, accept it, or you may, if you
please, reject it." You cannot reject it without incurring the guilt of
disobedience to a Divine command! The Gospel does not come to you as an
ordinary thing which is of little or no importance to you. It is true
that you may reject it, but not without frightful peril to your soul.
It does not humbly crave an entrance into your heart–it
demandsit–claims it as a right! It comes not as a message from one of
your fellow men, but, with Divine authority, it comes to you from the
mouth of God, Himself, directly through His Word, or indirectly through
the faithful preaching of His servants. Therefore, if you reject it,
you are disobedient to God, Himself, like those of old to whom He said,
"All day long I have stretched forth My hands unto a disobedient and
gainsaying people." To reject the Gospel of Christ is to incur great
sin. He Himself said, concerning the Holy Spirit, "He will reprove (or
convince) the world of sin." And then, almost immediately, He added,
"of sin, because they believe not on Me"–as though it were the very
head and front of sin–the flower and crown of sin–its virus–its
quintessence of guilt–that men believe not on Christ!
And, further, the command to men to believe the Gospel has the death
penalty attached to disobedience. Let me remind you of the words of our
Lord Jesus Christ upon this point–"He that believes not is condemned
already, because he has not believed in the name of the only-begotten
Son of God. And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the
world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds
were evil." Remember, too, the solemn utterance of our Lord concerning
the universal ministration of His Word–"Go you into all the world and
preach the Gospel to every creature. He that believes and is baptized
shall be saved; but he that believes not shall be damned." So, you see,
the Gospel is given to us as a command–and disobedience to it involves
a direful penalty.
Now, Beloved, possibly you will say to me, "How is it that the
Gospel–God's glad tidings to guilty man, the Gospel which is full of
Grace, which is, indeed, all of Grace from top to bottom–comes in the
shape of a command. Does it not tend to make your preaching legal" My
answer to that question is that if it did have that effect, I could not
help it! I am bound to preach what I find in God's Word. Whatever may
be the consequences, I must not alter the form of my Master's message!
But it strikes me that the Gospel is put in the form of a command,
first of all, to encourage poor seekers when they are coming to Christ.
Their question generally is, "May we come." As a rule, they ask, "May
we really believe in Jesus Christ. May we dareto do so." Now, if there
is a bare invitation, or if that invitation is limited to persons of a
certain character, the eyes of the sinner would be fixed upon that
character and he would look to see whether he was one of those invited.
We do not want him to turn his eyes toward himself, yet that is exactly
what he usually does–and this keeps him from fixing his eyes upon
Christ, alone, where salvation is to be found. This, I think, is one
reason why the Lord has put the Gospel message into the form of a
command. You certainly may do what you are commanded by God to do! Even
despair, itself, cannot raise a question about that matter. If I am
commanded to keep the Sabbath holy, then I am, certainly, permittedto
do so. And if I am commandedto worship God, I am, certainly,
permittedto worship Him. So, then, if I, as a sinner, am commanded to
put my trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, I need not stop to look at what
I am, or who I am, or to search for any goodness or preparation in
myself–and I may be assured that I may believe in Jesus because I am
commanded to do so!
I have sometimes tried to illustrate this Truth of God by supposing
that Queen Victoria were to send an order to some poor man, in the
lowest slums of London, to go down to see her at Windsor Castle. Just
imagine that this were possible, that the message ran somewhat to this
effect–"that So-and-So, of such-and-such a place, is hereby commanded
to come to the royal palace at Windsor, and he will stay away at his
peril." Well, now, that man would probably feel that such a summons
could hardly be true. He would turn it over and look at the signature
and the seal–and if it proved to be genuine–I fancy I see him
starting off to get to Windsor as quickly as possible! If he spoke
about his errand and said, "I am going to see Her Majesty," everybody
in the third-class carriage would laugh. "Ridiculous," they would say,
"how can you be such a fool? It is absurd!" "But," he would say, "I am
commanded by the Queen to go! Look, here are my orders in her own
handwriting. What I am to do–such a poor, uneducated man as I am, I do
not know, but, you see, it says, 'he will stay away at his peril,' so I
dare not stay away."
You see, the very sternness of the expression–the strong form in which
it was put–had in his eyes the force of law and so really became an
encouragementto him to go–and gave strength to him in going. In a
similar manner, when the Gospel commands the sinner to repent, it does,
in effect, say to him, "Let your reasoning, your questions, your doubts
and your fears all be put to death by this sword of the Spirit, which
is the Word of God, the Lord's own command being quite a sufficient
warrant for you to come to Him." As He bids you come, you certainly may
come. "Preach the Gospel to every creature," is our Lord's command–you
are a creature, so we preach it to you and tell you, in Christ's name,
that
"he that believes and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believes
not shall be damned." It is put in that shape to encourage you, even by
driving you to come to Christ and trust in Him to save you.
I have no doubt, also, that the Gospel is given to us in the form of a
command, in order to embolden theproclaimer of it. I have often, when I
have finished preaching, said to myself, "I have told the people the
Gospel and I have pleaded with them to come to Christ, but I wonder
whether I have done it as my Master would have me do it." You know that
true preaching is done in the name of Jesus and with His authority. It
is a sort of miracle-working for we have to tell the dead to live–a
most absurd thing to do except that God having told us to do it, we do
it, and the dead live! We say, "Hear, you deaf and see, you
blind"–things which look, to human reason, out of all order. Yet,
since we are bid to do so, we do it, and God blesses it–and the deaf
hear and the blind see–and the dead are raised to life! Well, I have
said to myself, "Have I, by Divine authority, spoken to my hearers like
that. Having this treasure in an earthen vessel–has the excellency of
the power of God really shone forth?" Now, Sinners, in the name of
Jesus of Nazareth, who is shortly to come again to judge the quick and
the dead, I deliver to you these commands in His name–"Repent and be
baptized, every one of you." "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you
shall be saved." These are no dogmas of the church–they are the plain
Truths of God that I find in the Scriptures and, in the name of Jesus,
I charge you to obey them! O Spirit of the living God, make the people
obedient in this, the day of Your power! So this is another reason why
the Gospel is put in this shape–that the minister of Christ may speak
with confidence, commanding men, in his Master's name, to repent and
believe in Jesus!
But, dear Friends, there is a further reason, and that is to secure the
honor of God. The Gospel is not an offer from an equal to an equal.
When the Gospel says, "Believe, and you shall live," it is not the
voice of a man speaking to another man. I charge every sinner who is
trifling with the Gospel, to beware what he is doing, for it is God,
his Maker, who also will be the Judge of the ungodly, who sends out the
invitations to the great Gospel wedding feast. If you refuse them, you
are not refusing the invitations of a man, but the invitations of God,
your Creator and your Judge! You are really rejecting Him who will
shortly come, in the clouds of Heaven, with great power and Glory, to
punish the disobedient by banishing them forever from His Presence! So
it is most fitting that the Gospel should not come like a common
invitation, but that it should come with all the force at its back
which a Divine command can have!
Again, remember that although the blessings of the Gospel are all gifts
of Divine Grace wherever they are found, they are, nevertheless–I
think I may say every one of them–things which the Law of God, itself,
demands of men. For instance, the Gospel comes to you in order that you
may have new hearts, yet the ancient Prophet proclaimed God's promise,
"A new heart, also, will I give you." The Gospel comes to you in order
that you may be pure, but you ought to be pure apart from any
Gospel–you have no right to be impure. The Gospel comes to you in
order that it may put away your sin, but you have no rightto have any
sin! That sin of yours, you have committed against God willfully and
wickedly, and the guilt of it lies at your door. The Gospel comes to
you in order that you may be reconciled to God, but you ought never to
have been His enemies and, as long as you continue in enmity against
God, you are sinning every moment! The Gospel truly brings you the
gifts of God's Grace, but, at the same time, it brings you, to a large
extent, that which should have been yours–and would have been yours if
you had not sinned against the righteous God and broken His most holy
Law.
Moreover, the demands ofthe Gospel upon you are, after all, only the
duties which rightly devolve upon you, for, to believe God is the
absolute duty of everyone of those whom He has created for His praise,
since, not to believe Him is to make Him a liar! Sometimes, when I am
talking to persons privately about their souls, I have peculiar power
given to me by God the Holy Spirit in charging this great sin home upon
their conscience. Very likely, the good Sister is here who, last week,
came a second time and asked me to pray for her–and I told her that I
would do nothing of the kind. And then I added, "I have set the Gospel
plainly before you. I have told you that if you trust Christ, you shall
be saved. What am I to pray for? Am I to ask God to make another Gospel
to suit your fancy, or to save you in some way apart from faith in His
Son? I cannot and I will not do it! If you say that you cannot trust
Christ, you practically make God a liar–and if you are determined to
commit that crowning act of guilt, your blood will be upon your own
head." It startled her when I set the Truth of God before her in such a
fashion as that–and then, when I again explained that this simple
matter of trusting in Jesus Christ and Him crucified was the great
stipulation of the Gospel, I was delighted to find that the Lord
led her at once to do it! And while she confessed her faith in Christ,
then and there, light and liberty came to her soul which had been so
long in darkness and bondage!
It seems to me to be the most awful thing in the world for a man to
say, "I cannot believe God." Many a time, when such a remark has been
made to me, I have said, "Now, if you say to me, 'I cannot believe
you,' I shall feel hurt by your lack of confidence–but you may say it
a thousand times to me rather than say it once concerning God, who
cannot lie." O dear Souls, you who are not yet believers in Christ,
remember that it is nothing but God's right that He should be believed
and nothing but Christ's right that He should be trusted–and that both
in saint and in sinner, distrust of God is a sin that is not to be
excused for a moment–and that if it is not repented of and forsaken,
it will have to be dealt with by the great Judge of All at the last
dread assize!
Then, with regard to repentance, when a man has done wrong, surely it
is his bounden duty to repent of that wrong–and though he will never
do so until the Spirit of God leads him–and all true repentance is, in
every case, a spiritual gift, yet is it equally true that in so far as
a man is in the wrong, he ought at once, with all his heart and soul,
to seek to get right–to make such recompense as he can, or, if none
can be made, certainly to confess his fault and humbly to seek pardon
for it! It seems to me that our own conscience tells us that this is
true and so confirms what we find plainly recorded in the Word of God.
As you all know, the Gospel is set forth under the figure of a feast,
and those who would not come to it were punished for not coming. It is
also described as the prodigal's return to his father's house. The
parable of the prodigal son does not mention everything connected with
a sinner's repentance. For instance, there is nothing said in it about
the Spirit of God leading the prodigal to resolve to go back. It looks
as if he came of his own accord–but Christ did not attempt to teach
all theology in that one parable. It must have been true that the
prodigal was brought back by the secret working of the Spirit of God
upon his heart. At the same time, it was always the prodigal's duty to
come back, because he never ought to have gone away–and there never
was a moment, from the time that he "took his journey into a far
country, and there wasted his substance with riotous living," that he
was not wrong in so doing. There never was a moment, while he was
feeding the swine, that he was not wrong in being there at all. And if
he had acted rightly–only that sinful heart of his would not let him
act rightly–he would long before have said, "I will arise and go to my
father."
So I think I have plainly proved to you that the Gospel comes to men
with the force of a command.
II. Now, in the second place, let us enquire–WHAT, THEN, ARE THE
CLAIMS OF THE GOSPEL TO OBEDIENCE!
Any unconverted person here may say to me, "You tell me, Sir, that I
cannot hear the Gospel preached and then go away and reject it, at my
pleasure, without being guilty of a great sin." I do tell you that–and
the reason is that there is the authority of God, Himself at the back
of the Gospel message. When we lift up Christ in our preaching, as
Moses lifted up the bronze serpent upon the pole, and cry to our
hearers, "Look and live," we are not speaking our own words–we are
uttering the Words of God! To reject our words would be a small matter,
but to reject the testimony of God is guilt of the deepest dye! My dear
Friend, give me your hand and, as I press it, let me look you in the
face and say, "When God Himself sets forth Christ as the only
propitiation for sin, will you turn your back upon Him and reject so
great salvation?" God grant that you may no longer do so if you have
done so until now! The Gospel claims our obedience because it has the
authority of God at the back of it!
Then, next, to disobey the Gospel is, evidently, to slight the motive,
the wonderful love of the God who sends it to us. Oh, what wondrous
love is displayed by God in the Gospel–the love which made Him give up
His only-begotten Son to bleed and die–the love which allowed our Lord
Jesus to be nailed to the Cross by His own voluntary act, that He might
suffer in our place! Oh, the amazing love of God, that He should
proclaim a complete amnesty and oblivion for all our past
transgressions–that He should say to us, "Come now, and let us reason
together, says the Lord: though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be
as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as
wool"–that He should even entreat men to repent and send to them such
a message as this through His servant, Isaiah, "Let the wicked forsake
his ways, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let him return unto
the Lord, and He will have mercy upon him; and to our God, for He will
abundantly pardon." That God should do all this and yet that man, with
his proud heart, should throw it all aside as worthless, is to insult
the love of God! And it seems to me to be a cruel thing–a monstrous
thing–for sinful men and women to do!
And, further, not to obey the Gospel is to perpetrate a high affront to
our Lord Jesus Christ. The Son of God Himself died upon the Cross at
Calvary–for me to say that I do not need His death–that I regard it
as a superfluity, for I am righteous enough without Him, or else that
even if I am sinful, yet I care not that I am, and I will run the risk
of Divine anger and I will not have this wondrous Christ to be my
Savior–this would, indeed, be awful! If ever angels could shiver with
horror and be astounded at the enormity of human guilt, it would be
when they heard a man say, concerning Christ, by his actions, if not in
so many words, "I will have nothing to do with Him! Neither do I care
anything for Him." Dear Friends, again I wish I could get near to each
one of you instead of addressing you in a crowd at this long
distance–if you have not obeyed the Gospel, I should like to put to
you this question, "Can you, will you still refuse to obey it when your
disobedience is really a rejection of the dying Son of God and an
insult to the almighty love of His Father?"
Disobedience to the Gospel is, also, an act that contains the
concentrated essence of rebellion against God. Suppose a king
promulgates a certain law and one of his subjects violates every
command of that law. The king summons the lawbreaker into his presence
and says, "Friend, do you really mean not to obey my law? Do you regard
it as harsh and severe?" The man replies that the law is harsh and
severe, "but," he adds, "that is not the main matter. I do not
acknowledge your authority over me and I hate you." I can suppose it to
be just possible that this gracious king might say to his rebellious
subject, "Listen, Friend. I am going to ask you to do something which
is wholly for your own good–not for my benefit, but for yours. I hear
that you are in debt to the amount of £10,000 and I am willing to give
you that sum of money so that your debt may be discharged–will you
accept it?" "No," he says, "I will not! I would rather go to prison and
die there." Do you not see at once what is the venom of this man's
animosity against the king? Yet, alas, his conduct is constantly being
imitated by rebellious sinners. Here is a man who positively says, by
his actions, "I would sooner be damned than obey God's Gospel! I would
rather lie in Hell forever than accept His Son as my Savior. I will not
obey His Law, but, to show my desperate hatred to Him and everything
that is His, I will not obey His Gospel either."
"Oh," you say, "I do not mean that." Perhaps you do not, but that is
the meaning that lies in the very center of your disobedience–just as
a worm is sometimes hidden in the center of certain fruit. You have not
perceived it, yet, but it is there. "But," says another, "I have not
definitely said that I would never obey the Gospel." No, but you have
definitely continued to disobey it up to this very moment, for you are
still an unbeliever! "Oh," you say, "but I am no skeptic! I believe
that what all the Bible says is true." That admission only makes your
case all the worse, for, if it is the truth, why do you not believe it?
If Christ is, indeed, true, why do you not believe on Him? This is most
monstrous conduct and it shows that you have made up your mind that you
will not have the great King of Kings to reign over you! I wish,
however, that you would look that fact clearly in the face, for I hope
that when you have done so, the Spirit of God will convince you of the
sin in which you are living–for that would go a long way towards
leading you to seek cleansing from that sin through the precious blood
of Jesus.
Beloved Brothers and Sisters, pray that God will bless the message I am
trying to deliver, in deep solemnity of soul, to poor sinners. Ask Him
to send it home to their hearts by the effectual working of His Holy
Spirit. Do you know, my dear unsaved Hearer, what God's estimate of the
Gospel is? Do you not know that it has been the chief subject of His
thoughts and acts from all eternity? He looks upon it as the grandest
of all His works–that marvelous scheme of redemption by the blood of
His only-begotten Son–that wonderful way of salvation by the sinner
ceasing to trust in himself and believing in Jesus Christ, God's Son!
You cannot imagine that He has sent this Gospel into the world to be a
football for you to play with–that you may give it a kick, as Felix
did when he said to Paul, "Go your way for this time; when I have a
convenient season, I will call for you." You surely cannot believe that
God sent His Gospel into the world for you to make a toy of it and to
say, as Agrippa said to Paul, "You have almost persuaded me to be a
Christian," and then put away all thought of it out of your souls! You
cannot even speak of it irreverently without committing a great sin. In
my own heart, I often feel that I dare not think of that wondrous
monument of Infinite Love–the Gospel provided for guilty
sinners–without, like Moses, taking off my shoes, because the place
whereon I stand is holy ground. Do not, I pray you, make merry over the
rejected Gospel, for its blood will be required at your hands!
I appeal to your own consciences, if they are not drugged. Do you feel
right–you who have been my hearers for so many years? Do you feel
right in remaining as you are–hearers only, and not doers of the Word?
Do you feel that if Christ were to come at this moment, you could
justify your position before Him? If, instead of this pulpit being
before
you, the Great White Throne were set, and the books were opened, do you
suppose that you could stand up and say, "God, I am doing right in
hearing the Gospel, yet not believing it. I am doing right in sitting
in this pew impenitent"? You know that you could not talk like that!
You would then be speechless like the man without the wedding garment!
You know, too, that there is nobody to blame but yourself for your
impenitence. I am clear of your blood, for I have faithfully warned
you. Your own conscience will confirm what I say. Suppose you turn to
any of the people of God now present and ask them what they think of
their unbelief in the days before they came to Christ. Ask them whether
they consider that it was sinful–they will tell you that when God the
Holy Spirit quickened and awakened them, and brought them to trust in
Jesus, they felt as if they could never forgive themselves for having
so long refused the invitations of the Gospel and rejected the Lord
Jesus Christ! They wept, mourned and sighed as they remembered how they
had resisted the Spirit of God and grieved Him in a thousand
ways–checked conscience, stifled conviction, rushed into sin after sin
in order to escape from the Gospel if they could. They feel that all
this was gross sin and they are good judges in such matters, for the
Lord has taught them, by His Spirit, and you may depend upon it that it
is, indeed, sinful!
And God Himself still says, as He did of old, "Oh, do not this
abominable thing that I hate!" If you do, think what the consequences
must be. Does not everybody know that suicide is a terrible sin? Yet
the suicide does, as it were, but kill his body–but what guilt must be
his who sends his soul to Hell by disobeying the Gospel! To be a
suicide, a man need not use a knife or a rope–he can starve himself to
death if he pleases. And as for him who willfully refuses to eat the
Bread of Heaven and damns his soul by a suicidal rejection of
Christ–who shall pity him? Who among the angels, who among redeemed
men in Glory can pity the man who chose his own delusions and follies
and would rather eternally perish than obey the simple command of the
Gospel, "Believe and live"? I pray you to lay these solemn Truths of
God to heart.
III. I come now to my third point, which is this–WHAT IS THE OBEDIENCE
WHICH IS SPOKEN OF IN OUR
TEXT? "They have not all obeyed the Gospel."
Do you ask, "What must we do to obey the Gospel?" I will put the answer
briefly and compactly. First, you are to hear it. God said of old,
"Incline your ear, and come unto Me: hear, and your soul shall live."
And the reason for that command is that "faith comes by hearing, and
hearing by the Word of God." But, Beloved, you must take heed howyou
hear as well as whatyou hear. You must not listen to the Gospel as you
would to a story or a song. "Hearken diligently unto Me," says the
Lord, "and eat you that which is good." There must be, in your
listening, a deep, earnest desire to know the Truth of God and to know
the whole of the Truth of God, especially that part which condemns you
and humbles you in the very dust! That is what you must especially seek
to hear. O Sinner, do not wish to be flattered with lies! I have no
doubt that you would like it, but that is the very worst thing possible
for you to hear. Avoid a sugared Gospel as you would shun sugar of
lead! Seek that Gospel which rips up, tears, cuts, wounds, hacks and
even kills–for that is the Gospel that makes alive again! And when you
have found it, give good heed to it. Let it enter into your inmost
being. As the rain soaks into the ground, so pray the Lord to let His
Gospel soak into your soul. Open the windows of your heart–God help
you to do so by devout attention and prayerful meditation–that the
blessed, perfumed Gospel may come floating through and penetrate into
the deepest recesses of your soul!
But hearing the Gospel is not enough; the plain command is, "Believe on
the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved." Now, to believe is to
trust–it is the practical proof that we have rightly heard the Gospel
if we believe it. This is the Gospel in brief. Christ died for sinners.
He stood as the Substitute for all who trust Him. I trust Him and so I
know Him to be my Substitute. God has punished Him instead of me and,
therefore, He cannot also punish me, for that would be punishing the
same offense twice, which the righteous God will never do. Christ has
paid all the debts of all Believers. Whoever trusts Christ is a
Believer, so his debts are paid, he is free from liability on account
of them and, therefore, he may well rejoice. The essence of obedience
to the Gospel lies in giving up all self-confidence, all attempts to
save yourself by your own merit and a simple reliance upon Jesus Christ
to save you. When you go to your banker, you take your gold and give it
into his charge–and he takes care of it for you. You do not go to him,
five minutes afterwards and say, "If you please, Sir, I should like to
see my money, to make sure that it is safe." If you did so, the banker
would advise you to take it away and not bother him anymore! But you do
not act so foolishly, for you have confidence that the banker will keep
your money safely. And so you must act in the same way with your soul.
Come, now, may the Spirit of God help you to do so–and make Christ
your Banker! Deposit your soul with Him and then say, with the Apostle
Paul, "I know
whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that
which I have committed unto Him against that day." That act, which is a
continuous one throughout the entire life, is the act that saves the
soul!
"Ah," says one, "but then repentance is also required." Just so, and he
who trusts his soul with Christ is sure to repent, for true repentance
makes a man talk thus–"Has Christ really saved my soul? Has He been so
loving and gracious to me as to make me His, forever? Oh, then, I am
ashamed that I did not love Him before! My mind is changed towards Him
now, yet, oh, how I wish that I had not acted as I have done! I grieve
to think how I have sinned against God. And now He has forgiven me. I
pray Him to help me henceforth to be His faithful servant, to do His
will and not my own." Genuine repentance is a complete change of mind
towards all things through knowing the love of God shed abroad in the
heart by Jesus Christ our Lord.
Remember, next, that the Lord Jesus Christ requires that, henceforth,
you should acknowledge Him as your Master, your Teacher, your King,
your Leader, your All-in-All. You are to come forward and confess that
you belong to Him and that you have given yourself up wholly to Him.
You are to declare He has ordained the way in which He would have you
do it outwardly that others may see, namely, by being buried with Him
in Baptism unto death–not that this will save you, for you have no
right to observe this ordinance till you are saved–but when you have
believed in Jesus, you are to make the Scriptural confession of your
faith, avowing that you are Christ's by being dead, buried and then
raised up again in the very significant type and symbol which our Lord
has ordained. You are to be obedient to what Christ has commanded and
to follow the example He has set before you. And I, for my part, will
never, while this tongue can speak, leave out any part of my Master's
Gospel, for, though I have sometimes almost wished that there were no
outward ordinances, because, in these days, they are so grossly
perverted, put out of their proper place and order, and exaggerated–
yet, God forbid that we should ever attempt to alter His Word! It is
written in the Scriptures, "With the heart man believes unto
righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation."
Our Lord Jesus said, as I have often reminded you, "Whoever, therefore,
shall confess Me before men, him will I confess also before My Father
which is in Heaven." So, then, it seems to me that Christ requires of
you a wholehearted faith which will make you give yourself up to Him to
be His forever and to be obedient to each one of His commands as the
Spirit of God shall enlighten you concerning them.
Now, young man, here I stand, as a recruiting sergeant, and I would to
God that I could enlist you beneath the banner of the Lord Jesus
Christ! I cannot come and ask you, each one, personally, whether you
will enlist or not, but I trust that my Master's power is going with
His Word and that He will compel you to enroll yourself among His
followers. But again I remind you that it is not a matter of option
with you–you are bound to do it–you ought to do it. "Well," says one,
"I am willing to enlist. How am I to do it?" How does any soldier
enlist? He takes the shilling, does he not? This is the way to become a
Christian–take Christ! You have not to give anything, you have to
take–and to take Christ as soon as ever–by that act of faith, you
have received Christ, you are a soldier of the Cross! The soldiers of
God, however, are not "short-service men." They are in for life and for
eternity! When we take Christ, we take Him as the husband takes his
wife, for better or worse, for richer or poorer, for life or for death.
Yes, but our union to Christ goes further than that. Death comes in and
breaks the marriage tie, but, with us–
"Once in Christ, in Christ forever! Nothing from His love can sever."
"For I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor
principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor
height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us
from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord."
I hope that there are some here who are saying, "I see what the Gospel
commands and I am willing to obey–but I have not the strength that is
required." My dear Friend, if you had any strength, it would be a
hindrance to you! It is your weaknessthat Christ wants, not your
strength! "But, Sir, I am not fit to come to Christ," cries another.
You are the very man He wants–your fitness would be in the way! It is
your unfitness that Christ wants–not your fitness. "Oh, but I have
nothing good about me!" You are another man whom Christ wants–your
goodness would stand in His way! It is your sin He died to put
away–that is what He wants you to believe. So, without any goodness,
without any fitness, all unholy and vile as you are, I pray you to
follow these lines which I will repeat, and see if you can truly say
them to Christ from your heart–
"A guilty, weak, and helpless worm, On Your kind arms I fall; Be You my
strength and righteousness, My Jesus, and my All."
Can you say that? Can you also say, "I trust myself wholly to Him and
desire Him to save me from sin and make me holy. I wish to be His
faithful servant and subject as long as I live. Only let Him save me
and I will love Him forever and ever"? If your heart has really said
that, you are a saved man, as surely as you live! Sister, if you also
said that, go in peace–your sins, which are many, are all forgiven! If
you did say that, my son, then, be of good cheer, your sins are
forgiven you! Take up your bed and walk, you poor lame soul–this night
have you found salvation! Free, full, irreversible, eternal salvation
is yours, for you have obeyed the command of the Gospel which has come,
I trust, with power into your heart!
O Brothers and Sisters, be true to Christ! Begin at once to confess Him
and never be backward to acknowledge Him as your Lord! If He has saved
you, tell it out! It is a shame for any Christian soldier not to wear
his regimentals. Christ is such a Lord that He is worth living for,
worth dying for–yes, if our whole lives could be spent in the fires of
martyrdom, Christ deserves that none of us should flinch from such a
trial for His dear sake! Be an out-and-out Christian, young man, young
woman, if you are a Christian at all! God help you to do so, giving
your whole self up to Christ to be His forever and ever! So may God
grant it, for Jesus' sake! Amen.