Good Cause for Great Zeal

A SERMON DELIVERED

BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.

"Now because we have maintenance from the king's palace, and it was not
meet for us to see the King dishonored, therefore have we sent and
informed the king." Ezra 4:14.

THE facts of the case were these. Under Zerubbabel, the Jews, who had
returned from Babylon, commenced to rebuild Jerusalem. There were in
the land certain half-and-half persons, somewhat like the Samaritans,
who were neither Jews nor Gentiles and they asked, at first, that they
might join in the building of Jerusalem. This was refused, the Jews
determining to keep themselves pure from all association with the
heathen or semi-heathen. So indignant were these people at this that
they wrote Artaxerxes, the king, to tell him that he was very little
aware of what was going on in Judea, for the Jews had always been, from
time immemorial, a troublesome people, and now they were beginning to
build their city again. And as soon as it was built they would, in all
probability, revolt against King Artaxerxes and give him much trouble,
as their fathers had done to kings before him.

Now, in writing that letter they showed themselves wise in their
generation, for they told the king in the words of our text that they
were moved by gratitude to write to him. It was false–but hypocrites
often use the best of words and employ the best of sense to cover their
deceit. They said that they, themselves, were sustained from the king's
palace and, therefore, they could not bear that the king should be
dishonored–for this reason they had written to tell his majesty that
the Jews were building this wall and they trusted that, for his own
honor's sake, and for his subjects' sake, he would stop them.

Now let me take these words right out of those evil mouths and put them
into my own and into yours. They will suit us well if we turn them to
the great King of kings. We may truly say, "Now because we have
maintenance from the King's palace, and it was not meet for us to see
the King dishonored, therefore have we sent and informed the King." The
text will enable me to speak on three points. First, here is a fact
acknowledged–"we have maintenance from the King's palace." Here is,
secondly, a duty recognized–"it was not meet for us to see the King
dishonored." And, thirdly, here is a course of action
prescribed–"therefore have we sent and informed the King."

I. Now, beloved fellow Believers, the words of our text may be used by
us while we acknowledge a very gracious fact–WE HAVE MAINTENANCE FROM
THE KING'S PALACE. How true this is of all God's people, in all
respects, you will be abundantly ready to acknowledge. Both the upper
and the nether springs from which we drink are fed by the eternal
bounty of the great King. Up to now we have been supplied with food and
raiment. Sometimes we may have been reduced to a pinch, no doubt, and
the question has arisen, through the infirmity of our nature and
fermented with the irritability of our unbelief, "What shall we eat,
what shall we drink, and with what shall we be clothed?"

But we have dwelt in the land and verily we have been fed and I have no
doubt that to many of you it has been peculiarly gratifying to receive
the loaf, as it were, immediately from your Father's hands. You have
known what poverty has meant and then there has been to you a peculiar
sweetness in the daily bread which, in answer to prayer, has been sent
to you. Although we do not drink of the water from the Rock, or find
the manna lying at our tent door every morning, yet the Providence of
God produces for us quite the same results. We have been fed and
satisfied and, at any rate, many of us, in looking back, can say, "my
cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy have followed me all the days
of my life."

Therefore we have to now, even in temporal things, been made to feel
that we have been maintained from the King's palace. But it has been in
spiritual things, Beloved, that our continual experience of the King's
bounty has been most notable. We have a new life and therefore we have
new needs and new hunger and a new thirst–and God has maintained us
out of His own palace as to this new life of ours. O Beloved, we have
had great hunger at times, after heavenly things,

and He has "satisfied our mouth with good things," and our youth has
been "renewed like the eagle's." We have had huge needs–bottomless
deeps of need we have had. And yet, great God, the treasures of Your
Grace have been everlasting mines, deep as our helpless miseries were,
and boundless as our sins.

Why, sometimes we have been drawn aside from our steadfastness and we
have needed mighty Grace to set us on our feet again–and to make us
once more, "strong in the Lord and in the power of His might"–and we
have had it, have we not? We have sought it and we have found it! Our
shoes have been iron and brass and as our days so has our strength
been. Up till this moment we have found that underneath us are the
everlasting arms. In looking back upon all the way wherein the Lord our
God has led us, we can sing of the beginning of it, we can sing of the
middle of it and we believe we shall sing of the end of it–for all
through we have been maintained out of the King's palace. This is
matter of fact both as to things temporal and things spiritual.

Beloved, it is a great mercy that you and I have been maintained out of
the King's palace as Believers because, where else could we have been
maintained? Where else, I ask you? As to spiritual things, to whom
could we go but unto Him who has been so good to us? What empty wells
ministers are if we look to them! If we look to their Master, "the rain
also fills the pools," and we find that there is supply in the preached
Word for our consolation. But have you not often known what it is to
find that even God's servant under whom you have been fed does not meet
your case? He is meeting the case of hundreds of others, perhaps, but
somehow he misses you–there is no food for your soul!

Yes, and the books you once read with so much comfort appear to have
lost their flavor, their aroma and their sweet savor, and, I may add,
even the Word of God itself, though it is unchanged, appears to be
changed sometimes to you. But God, the God of Israel, your God, oh, how
graciously has He still supplied you! "All my springs are in You," my
God. And had they been elsewhere they long ago would have failed. Who
else could supply our needs but Jehovah? As the king of Israel said to
the woman in the famine of Samaria, "If the Lord does not help you, how
can I help you out of the barn-floor or out of the winepress?"

There is no help for the child of God if his heavenly Father should
shut the granary door. If out of the King's palace there came no
portions of meat in due season, we might lay down and die of despair!
Who could hold us up but God? Who could guide us but God? Who could
keep us from falling into Perdition but God? Who could, from hour to
hour, supply our desperate needs but God? Is it not, then, right well
for us–abundantly well–that we have had our maintenance from the
King's palace?

While we turn over this very sweet thought, we may remember that our
maintenance from the King's palace has cost His Majesty dearly. He has
not fed us for nothing. We do not know what was the expenditure in gold
of King Solomon, every day, to supply all his court with wine and oil,
with meal and fine flower, with sheep and fat oxen, harts and roebucks,
venison and fatted fowl. But we do know that Solomon's cost was nothing
at all compared with the vast expense at which we are sustained by the
munificence of God! It cost Him His own dear Son at the very first. We
should not have begun to live if He had spared His Son and kept Him
back from us!

But the choicest treasure in Heaven, the Koh-i-noor of God's regalia,
He was pleased to spend for our sakes that we might live! And ever
since then we have been fed upon Jesus Christ Himself. No other food
would be adequate to our necessities. His flesh is meat, indeed! His
blood is drink, indeed! This is the most royal dainty conceivable, for
a soul to feed upon the Son of God! And yet we have fed upon Him these
many years. Let us bless and magnify our bounteous God, whose infinite
favor has thus supplied our needs.

And while He spares nothing for us, but gives everything to us, let us
not keep back anything from Him. With such a generous God, generosity
seems to be so natural that it ought to be spontaneous. The
highest–the most ardent–form of service would seem to be but a
trifling recompense for the immense expense which the Lord has been at
in supporting us these many years. May I ask you to think over the kind
of portion and maintenance you have had from the King's palace? Such
thoughts will stir your gratitude. Beloved, we have had a bountiful
supply! God has never stinted us. As the sun throws out his wealth of
heat and light and does not measure it by the consumption of men, but
throws it broadcast over all worlds–even so does God flood the world
with the sunlight of His goodness and His saints are made to receive it
in abundance.

If you have ever been stinted it is not by God–you have stinted
yourself. Our receptive faculty may be small, but His giving
disposition is abundant. Floods of mercy, oceans of love has He poured
out for us. O, what a bountiful

maintenance have we had! Enough and to spare. Our imagination could not
have conceived greater wealth than is ours in the Covenant of
Grace–for all things are yours–the gifts of God! God being ours, the
Infinite is ours! The Omniscient is ours! The Omnipotent is ours! O,
what a bountiful portion we have! And we have had an unfailing portion.
As there has been much of it, so it has always come to us in due
season. Times of need have come, but the needed supply has come, too.

If there is any Believer here that has reason to testify against his
God, let him do it. Have you ever rested on Him and found Him fail you?
Did you ever trust Him in vain? Are His promises false? Has He left you
in the deep waters? When you passed through the fires did the flames
kindle upon you? Have you found your God a wilderness? Has He been
barrenness in the day of your extremity? No, Beloved, our God has been
bountiful and He has continued His bounty– not good by fits and
starts, but ever gracious to us. I am desirous, if this were the proper
place, to stop and tell what I know of this. But then, surely, many
older saints here might interrupt me and say, "Let me speak of it."

I remember once trying to speak of the great goodness of God in the
pulpit, when my venerable grandfather, who is now in Heaven, was
sitting behind me. He pulled my coattail and bid me stop, for he
thought he could talk upon that better than I could! And, indeed, he
could, because of his deep experience of the faithfulness of the living
God! It is a great delight and benefit to younger men to hear their
gray-headed sires stand up and say what they have known and what they
have proved of God's eternal goodness! But I think we can say, whether
young or old, if we have known His name a few years–

"When trouble, like a gloomy cloud,

Has gathered thick and thundered loud,

He near my soul has always stood,

His loving kindness, oh, how good!" He has been a faithful Friend to
us–we have been right well maintained from the King's table.

While the supply has thus been bountiful and continuous, it has
ennobled us. For consider how great a thing it is, to be supported from
a king's palace–but it is the greatest of all privileges to be living
upon the bounty of the King of kings–and "Such honor have all the
saints." Even the feeble Mephibosheths that are lame in their feet
shall eat at the King's table! The Lord Jesus, the Good Shepherd, makes
all His little ones to be like the ewe lamb of the parable which was
fed out of the man's own cup and did lie in his bosom! Even those that
are weakest and meanest have this high honor–to be supplied by
Royalty, itself, with all that they need!

Lift up your heads, you that hang them down. You poor desponding saints
that think yourselves less than the least of all, you are, every one of
you, King's sons! You are all gentlemen commoners upon the King of
kings! Your diet is better than that of the angels! God will sooner let
Gabriel starve than you–

"Never did angels above, know

Redeeming Grace and dying love" Yet that is your daily bread, your
morning meal and evening feast! Be glad! Have you little of temporal
good? Well, but your Father sends it to you. Do you mourn that you have
so little spiritual good? Bless Him that you have any, for it is God
that sends it to you! You would have had none if it were not for His
Infinite Grace! Therefore praise Him for what you have and confidently
ask Him for more.

And there is reason for good cheer in this, dear Friends, that we have
such a soul-satisfying portion in God. A soul that gets what God gives
him has quite as much as he can hold and as much as he can need. He has
got a portion that might well excite envy! If the world did but know
how happy and blessed Christians are, they would count them up in the
royal family and they would envy them beyond all others. There is
nothing in the worldling's estate to envy. The more he has, the worse
it will be for him to leave it. His fine gardens and lawns and parks
will make it hard to die. The greater his earthly honor the worse will
be his eternal dishonor. It must be to him a horrible thing to have had
such a high flight and then to have all the greater fall because of it.

"Fret not yourself because of evildoers, neither be you envious because
of the prosperity of the wicked." What, after all, becomes of him that
prospers in his way? "I have seen the wicked in great power, and
spreading himself like a green bay tree; yet he passed away, and lo, he
was not: yes, I sought him, but he could not be found." The place that
has known the ungodly and the lands they have called by their own name,
soon become oblivious of their memory. Their record has perished
quickly and they, themselves, have gone back "to the vile dust from
where they sprang." But you have eternity

to be your heritage! You have Heaven to be your portion! The few drops
of gall that are in your cup today shall soon be rinsed out and it
shall be full of the nectar of celestial thrones!

Be content, now, with your brown bread and hard fare a little while,
for you shall eat the delicacies of angels! Yes, and by faith you do
even now feast upon the fat things full of marrow and the wines on the
lees well-refined, which your God sends to you from the King's palace!
Let us rejoice, dear Brothers and Sisters, if we are, any of us,
downcast tonight, for our maintenance is from the King's palace and
what can we need more?–

"Father, I wait Your daily will.

You shall divide my portion still.

Grant me on earth what seems You best,

Till death and Heaven reveal the rest." Thus we acknowledge the fact
with lively interest and devout gratitude–"We have maintenance from
the King's palace."

II. Now, secondly, here is A DUTY RECOGNIZED–"It was not meet for us
to see the King dishonored." No doubt you will see the force of the
argument without need of much explanation. It is good reasoning. If
they were fed from the king's palace it was not right that they should
stand by and see the king dishonored. The reasoning comes home to us.
If we are so favored–we, who are Believers–with such a choice
portion, it is not right for us to sit down and see our God dishonored.

And here I will notice some things which dishonor God and which we are
bound not to put up with. By every sense of propriety we are bound not
to see God dishonored by ourselves. It is well to begin at home. Are
you doing anything that dishonors your God, Believer–anything at home,
anything in your daily avocation, anything in the way of conducting
your business? Is there anything in your conversation, anything in your
actions, anything in your reading, anything in your writing, anything
in your speaking that dishonors God? Seeing that you are fed from the
King's table, I beseech you, let it not be said that the King got
damage from you! If there is a traitor, let him be found somewhere
else, but not among the Lord's own chosen!

You are bought with blood–will you trample on that blood? The
Crucified One died for you–will you crucify Him afresh and put Him to
an open shame? You will soon be where Jesus is. Would you blush to see
His face and to stand in His Presence? What? And shall it ever be said
that you bring dishonor upon Jesus? God has given you a portion above
the angels and will you fill the devils' mouths with laughter and cause
them to have a reason to glory against God? May that be far from you,
my Brother! The Lord grant us Grace to feel that if we are maintained
from the King's palace it is not right for us to cause the King
dishonor!

Perhaps that dishonor may come from those who dwell under our roof and
live in our own house. I charge you that are parents and masters, to
see to this! Do not tolerate anything in those over whom you have
control that would bring dishonor to God. Remember Eli–he did not
restrain his sons and they behaved shamefully. They were the minister's
sons and because they were not restrained, God overthrew Eli's house
and did such terrible things that the ears of him that hears might well
tingle! Joshua said, "And for me and my house, we will serve the Lord."
We cannot impart to our children new hearts, but we can see to it that
there shall be nothing within our gates that is derogatory to the
religion of Jesus Christ. I charge you, see to it!

But you cannot control your children, you say. Then the Lord have mercy
upon you! It is your business to do it and you must do it, or else you
will soon find they will control you! And no one knows what judgment
will come from God upon those who suffer sin in children and servants
to go unrebuked. No, if we are maintained from the King's palace, let
us not see the King dishonored. Let the same holy jealousy animate us
among those with whom we have influence–as, for instance, among those
who wish to be united with us in Church fellowship. It is the duty of
every Church to try, as far as it can, to guard the honor and dignity
of King Jesus against unworthy persons who would intrude themselves
into the congregation of the saints, of those who are called, chosen,
and faithful.

We are deceived, and always shall be, for the Church never was
infallible. But still let no negligence of our practice supplement the
infirmity of our judgment. Because ungodly men will creep in unawares,
we are not, therefore, to cooperate at their entrance. To allow persons
to come to the Communion Table who do not even profess to be born-again
is a clear act of treason against the King of kings! To receive into
our membership persons of unhallowed life, unchaste, unrighteous–of
licentious life and lax doctrine, such as know not the Truth of God as
it is in Jesus–would be

to betray the trust with which Christ has invested us! That must not be
and every Church member is bound to do his best to guard the Church
against that which would render her unclean in the sight of God! If you
are maintained from the King's table, it is not meet that you should
see the King dishonored. We are under sacred obligations to maintain
the Statutes and Testimonies of the Lord. And, oh, how the King is
dishonored by the mutilation and misrepresentation of His Word!
Therefore, dear Brothers and Sisters, we are always bound to bear our
protest against false doctrine.

I am sometimes accused of saying sharp things. The charge does not come
home to my conscience with very great power. If anybody said I spoke
smooth things I think it would oppress me a great deal more. As long as
there are evils in this world, God's ministers are bound to protest
against them! That man who, as he goes through the world, can say,
"Hail, fellow, well met!" with everybody and extol the modern Diana of
charity–universal charity, false charity, charity towards the
false–that man, when he comes to stand before his Maker, will find it
hard to give his account. In these days, when nobody believes anything,
when everybody has subscribed to the belief that black is white and
white is black, and colors are nothing at all but imaginary
distinctions, it is time that somebody should believe something! And a
little sharpness of speech might not only be excused, but commended, if
we had but men who spoke what they did know and testified honestly to
the Truth of God which they had received.

Everyone here present who is maintained from the King's palace, is
bound to fight against every doctrine which insults the King. When I
see a man pretending to be a priest and assuming that he has power to
forgive sins and to dispense pardons and indulgences, I do my best to
unmask the deceiver and to speak against his imposition, less I might
be accounted accessory to his crime, chargeable with his guilt and be
made partaker of his condemnation! Therefore, let every Englishman, let
every Protestant and, above all, let every Christian denounce
priestcraft of every sort and in every Church, whether among Romanists,
Anglicans, or Dissenters. Down with it!

There is only one Priest and He is in Heaven!! And none of us have any
power to offer any sacrifice for sin, or any power to absolve our
fellow men. Whether you accuse us of being censorious or not, the
profanity appalls us, the duplicity that is taken ill by it amazes us
and the sincerity with which we love the Gospel inflames us to make our
protest heard! If we do not speak out about this crying perversion of
the Truth of God, we ought to be ashamed of ourselves!

Then there are some in these days who deny the divinity of Christ and
there can be no terms of peace between us and them. I remember a remark
of a Unitarian doctor, which I thought eminently correct. He said of a
certain Calvinist, who was accused of speaking sharply against
Unitarians, "Quite right and so he ought, because if the Calvinist is
right the Unitarian is not a Christian at all. But if the Unitarian is
right the Calvinist is an idolater, because he worships one who is a
man and is not the Son of God."

If what we hold is true, it is not possible that the man who denies the
Deity of Christ can be a Christian, nor can there be for him a hope of
salvation. He deliberately refuses the only way of escape from the
wrath to come. I can understand a man getting to Heaven as a Roman
Catholic, notwithstanding all his errors, because he believes in the
Divinity of Christ and relies on the expiatory Sacrifice of His death,
with whatever superstitions his creed may be overlaid. But I cannot
understand, nor do I believe, that any man will ever enter those pearly
gates who, in doubting or discrediting the Deity of our blessed Lord
and Savior Jesus Christ, renounces the sheet-anchor of our most holy
faith and dares to face his maker without a Counselor, without an
Advocate, without a plea for mercy!

It is time we said so, and spoke out plainly. This is no theme for
trifling. Courtesies are thrown away upon antagonists whose cause is
treason! Nor are we the men who should practice reserve, for if we are
maintained from the King's palace, we are cowards if we do not stand up
for our King! Then there have been attacks made in modern times upon
the doctrine of Substitution. If the doctrine of Substitution is not
true, I am a lost man–therefore, tooth and nail, will I fight for it!
No other hope beneath the skies have I, except in the expiatory
Substitution of the Lord Jesus Christ. If He did not suffer in my
place, the Just for the unjust, then flames of Hell must be my portion.
Therefore I can never give up that Truth of God, for it is giving up my
own salvation. But it has been revealed, and I cling to it with the
most implicit credit.

Do you tell me that "modern thought" assails it? How, and with what
weapons, I ask? Is it with argument, with proof, or with any
counter-suggestion? Oh, no, it is merely met with vague questionings,
idle quibbles and impertinent sneers–a style of answer that affects
much, though it affirms nothing! I pray you, Brothers and Sisters,
wherever you are, defend this fundamental doctrine of our most holy
faith–that the Lord Jesus Christ has laid down His life to make

atonement for the sins of His people. Or should we be confronted with
any other form of false doctrine, or should we be haunted with any kind
of skepticism–(skepticism! An anomalous thing, which is without form
and void)–are we to stand with mealy mouths and say, "Yes, Brethren,
you are of that opinion, and I am of the other"?

No, but opinion is light as a bubble when judgment is pronounced by the
supreme court from which there is no appeal. What do you think? Is
there no fact? Is there no Truth? Is the Word of God, "yes," and, "no"?
Has it come to this, that it is to be shuffled like a pack of cards, or
shaped like a nose of wax as every man may please? Oh, no! By the
ever-living God there is Truth somewhere and that Truth we will find
out if we can! And, having found it, we will hold it fast. Let us, in
the day of battle, use our standard–and if our arm is torn off, we
hope the standard will not fall but that others will be found to hold
it up as there were in the brave days of yore–when our fathers burned
at the stake for these things, or went to the galleys, or perished
amidst the Alps sooner than the Truth of God's own Word should be
without witnesses among the sons of man!

Hear none of these things in your hearts with tolerance, but hold fast
to the things which you have been taught and hold them fast in faith
and love to Christ Jesus! Those who have their maintenance from the
King's palace ought not to allow the Lord to be dishonored by a neglect
of His ordinances. Brothers and Sisters, I remind you, who are
Believers, the Lord Jesus has given you only two symbolic ordinances.
Take care that you use them well. Follow Him in what He did, when He
said, "Thus it becomes us to fulfill all righteousness." Be baptized in
His name! Follow Him to the Communion Table. He said, "This do you, as
often as you drink it, in remembrance of Me." Be obedient, I pray you,
to His gracious Word, and suffer not the King's precept to be trifled
with!

Again, if we are, indeed, His courtiers, let us take care that He is
not dishonored by a general decline of His Church. When churches go to
sleep when the work of God is done deceitfully–for to do it formally
is to do it deceitfully–when there is no life in the Prayer
Meeting–when there are no holy enterprises afloat for the spread of
the Redeemer's kingdom, then the world says, "That is your Church! What
a sleepy set these saints are!" O, let not the King be thus dishonored!
Brothers and Sisters, bestir yourselves! May this Church never settle
upon its lees, or fall into slumber as it grows older. May God grant it
may grow more earnest! May there be ever here regiments of stalwart men
who shall fight for King Jesus and not be ashamed–and may the Church
be full of life and vigor till Christ Himself shall come.

When we sleep with our fathers, may there be others found better than
we are to maintain the cause and crown rights of King Jesus. And oh,
dear Friends, how can we tolerate it that so many should dishonor
Christ by rejecting His Gospel? We cannot prevent their doing so, but
we can weep for them! We can pray for them! We can plead for them! We
can make it uncomfortable for them to reflect that Believers are loving
them and yet they are not loving the Savior! If you are fed from the
King's palace it is not right that you see, with dry eyes, the King
dishonored!

If you hear a man swearing in the streets, mourn and lament it! If you
see the Sunday desecrated, grieve over it! If you behold drunkenness,
do not laugh at it! If you hear lascivious songs, do not smile at them!
Everything that is evil should be painful to a Believer and it ought to
be an incessant sorrow to us that souls are perishing!–

"Did Christ over sinners weep, And shall our cheeks be dry?"

Privileged as you are, Beloved, you ought to love your Master so that
the slightest word against Him should provoke your spirit to holy
jealousy.

III. Our last point is this–A COURSE OF ACTION PURSUED–"Therefore,"
says the text, "have we sent and

informed the king." How shall we do that? Doubtless we act as it well
becomes us, when we go and tell the Lord all about it? "Informed the
king"!–but does He not know? Are not all things open to Him from whom
no secrets are hid? Ah, yes, but when Hezekiah received Rabshakeh's
blasphemous letter He took it and spread it before the Lord! It is a
holy exercise of the saints to report to the Lord the sins and the
sorrows they observe among the people–the griefs they feel and the
grievances they complain of–to spread before Him the blasphemies they
have heard and appeal to Him concerning the menaces with which they are
threatened.

Yes, you may report to the Lord the false doctrine that is preached and
the foul sophistry that is printed in these days. Such plain statements
might become mighty pleas with God that He should arise, assert His
cause and do His own work. Lord, You know that this day the Deity of
your Son has been insulted–the Inspiration of Your Word has been
denied. You know the power of Your Holy Spirit has been ridiculed, Your
eternal love has been denied, Your infinitely

blessed Sovereignty has been scoffed at! O Father, You know the atoning
blood has been made a subject of contempt! Arise, O God, plead Your own
cause! Behold, all over the world men are mad upon their idols! They
give themselves to falsehoods and to lies.

O God of Truth, arise and avenge Yourself! Have You not said, "Ah, I
will ease Me of My adversaries"? Do this, then. Give glory to whom
glory is due and let not the name of Jesus be forever cast out as evil
by ungodly men! This ought to be the constant pleading of the
Church–"Shall not God avenge His own elect, which cry day and night
unto Him?" O, it ought to be! Day and night cry about all this! The sin
of this London, oh, if we felt it, it would weigh us down–the
drunkenness of London, the lust of London, the oppression of London,
the wickedness of every shape that reeks, as from a dunghill, from this
great city–O God, will You always bear it? Will You not rise and
change all this? Will You not give power to Your Gospel that a gracious
reformation may be made?

Tell the Lord about it! Inform the King! After those people had
informed the king, they took care to plead with him. As I have already
told you, they apprized him that the city of Jerusalem was a very
troublesome city and therefore it ought not to be rebuilt. Plead with
God! Plead with God! Plead with God! That praying is poor shift that is
not made up of pleading. "Bring forth your reasons," says the Lord.
Bring forth your strong arguments. O, what prayers were those of John
Knox, when he seemed to say to God, "Save Scotland for this reason–for
that reason–for another reason–for yet one more reason"–the number
of his motives still multiplying with the fervor of his heart! So did
he labor with God as though he pleaded for his life and would not let
Him go until he had gained his suit for Scotland!

Why, Scotland's knowledge of the Truth of God is due, doubtless, beyond
everything else to John Knox's prayers, which even now are ringing in
Heaven! He, "being dead, yet speaks." O, for men of that caliber and
that mind in this country, thus to plead for London! O, what a gem
would London be in Christ's crown! If Christ had but London, surely out
of this great city, which is the very heart of the world in many
respects, there would go streaming forth rivers of health and life and
blessing to the utmost ends of the earth! Spread London's case, then,
before God, and plead with the Most High!

And when you have done it, do not go away and make your prayers into a
lie by contrary actions, or by refraining from any action at all! He
that prays hard must work hard, for no man prays sincerely who is not
prepared to use every effort to obtain that which he asks of God. We
must put our shoulder to the wheel while we pray for strength to put it
in motion. All success depends upon God–yet He uses instruments, and
He will not use instruments that are useless and unfitted to the work!
"And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward. Not that we are
sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves. But our
sufficiency is of God, who has made us able ministers"–therefore let
us be up and be stirring, for if we are maintained from the King's
palace, it is not meet that we see the King dishonored, but it is due
to Him that we should seek His Glory.

Now, I would that every one of you knew what it was to be maintained
from the King's palace, but alas, there are some here that have never
eaten the King's bread and will be banished from the King's Presence if
they die as they are. But, O remember, the King is always ready to
receive His rebel subjects and He is a God ready to pardon. "Kiss the
Son lest He be angry, and you perish from the way when His wrath is
kindled but a little." "Blessed are all they that put their trust in
Him." That is the way of reconciliation–to put your trust in Him. And
if you do put your trust in His dear Son, you are reconciled to Him!
You shall be maintained out of His palace, and then, I trust, you will
live to His Glory. Amen and amen.

PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON–Psalm 119:49-64.
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Wonders