Life In Earnest

Life In Earnest
A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 2, 1862, BY REV. C. H.
SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
"He did it with all his heart and prospered." 2 Chronicles 31:21.
This is no unusual occurrence. In fact, it seems to be the general rule
of the moral universe that those men prosper who do their work with all
their hearts, while those are almost certain to fail who go to their
labor leaving half their hearts behind them. Look around you in
business. Who are the young men who rise in the establishment? Not your
men who sleep behind the counter, who are glad to avoid a customer.
Employers soon discover those who throw energy into their work and they
like a young man who has "push" in him.
He is sure to be promoted and in time will become a trader on his own
account. Who are the merchants that succeed in this busy time of
competition? Your lazy sluggards? No. Your men who are diligent in
business, do what they do with both their hands, breast the current
with all their strength, scorning to be carried down the stream to the
cataract of bankruptcy. Who are your men who rise to eminence? Men do
not go to bed and wake up in the morning to find themselves famous, at
least not until they have encountered many stern labors.
God does not at this day give harvests to idle men except harvests of
thistles, nor is He pleased to send wealth to the man who will not dig
in the field to find its hidden treasure. It is universally confessed
that if a man would prosper, he must be diligent in business. For at
this day, beyond every preceding age it is true, "In the sweat of your
brow shall you eat bread."
The same thing is true if we leave mercantile pursuits and survey any
other of the walks of life. If a man would make discoveries in science,
he does not hit upon them by accident. But, being in the way, science
meets with him. If a man would become eminent as a physician, he must
walk the hospitals. If he would attain position at the bar, he must
give days and nights to the folios of law. There is no hope for a man
in these times, in anything, unless he proceeds to it with all his
heart.
It is the same in religion as it is in other things. I would not have
you treat religion as though it were a business. But I would have you
put as much force and power and energy and heartiness and earnestness
into religion as ever you do into business, and, I might add, that it
deserves far more. How is it that false religions have spread? What
made Mohammedanism once so mighty in the earth? It was because Mahomet
himself, when he preached, was as sincerely deluded as any of his
followers–when he was pelted in the streets he still persevered and
when assassins dogged his footsteps he counted not his life dear unto
him that he might proclaim what he thought to be a revelation from
Heaven.
As for his followers, they were not sleepy professors. They drew their
scimitars from their scabbards and swore that they would not rest till
they had brought men by edge of steel to the faith of their prophet. On
they dashed, till their religion, like a mighty rising ocean, swept all
before it, nor could its rising wave be driven back till it was met by
an equal enthusiasm to withstand its progress.
Look again on Roman Catholic missions. How was it that Romanists did
what we have never done and what I fear we never shall do till we have
changed our men? How was it that Francis Xavier carried his faith into
India, preached in Burma, obtained great influence in China and even
entered into the recesses of Japan, till everywhere you might see a
Catholic convent or nunnery and a crucifix lifted up, with devotees
bowing before it? Because Xavier's spirit was full of fire. He seemed
to be a flash of lightning flaming from one end of Heaven to the other.
Now mark, as it has been with false religions, so must it be with the
true. Under God, the Holy Spirit, our only hope for the increase of the
Church and for the conversion of the world lies in the development of
energy within us, in the bringing out of earnestness in Christian
souls. Oh, it was not scholarship that converted the heathen world at
first, for on the slabs in the catacombs we have decisive evidence that
the first Christians could scarcely spell their own names. It was not
the pomp of learning, the pride of philosophy, or the power of
eloquence which made the early confessors so mighty. It was their
singular earnestness.
The Church was all on fire. She was like a volcano. She might not be
high and lofty as some of the surrounding hills, but they had summits
clothed with frost, while she sent forth earnest Truths of God like
streams of lava, which burned their way and covered all the lands.
Christians in those days were Christians, indeed. They believed what
they professed. They knew what they spoke. They testified what they had
seen. And they spoke with an unconquerable, untamable energy, which
smote even the iron power of Rome and dashed it into shivers.
So must it be today, and indeed, so is it. Look around you–who are the
most useful men in the Christian Church today? The men who do what they
undertake for God with all their hearts. Where is the preacher whom God
blesses to the conversion of hundreds in a year? Is he a sleepy,
prosaic soul? Does he confine himself within narrow limits? Does he
speak sleepy words to a slumbering congregation? We know it is not so,
but where God is pleased to give the congregation, it is, whatever it
may not be, a proof that there has been earnestness in the preacher.
Who are the most successful Sunday school teachers? The most learned?
Every superintendent will tell you it is not so. The most talented? The
most wealthy? No. They that are the most zealous. The men whose hearts
are on fire–those are the men who honor Christ. Who among you today is
doing the most for your Master's kingdom? I will tell you. Lend me a
spiritual thermometer by which I may try the heat of your heart and I
will tell you the amount of your success. If your hearts are cold
towards God I am sure you are doing nothing though you may pretend to
do it. But if you can say, "Lord, our soul is all on flame with an
agony of desire to do good to the souls of men," then you are doing
good, and God is blessing you as He did Hezekiah, who did it with all
his heart and prospered.
I feel that very many Christians are not Christians with all their
hearts. I feel that perhaps some of you have only given Jesus Christ a
dull, cobwebby corner of your hearts, instead of bidding Him sit at the
head of the table and reign upon the throne. And fearing that we are
all in danger of getting into a Laodicean lukewarm state, I wish to
stir you up this morning. But if I may only stir myself up, I shall be
thrice happy to go home and think that at least one has gotten some
good from the service, for the preacher needs to be kept alive quite as
much as the hearers. There is a danger that even the Lord's servant may
lack the live coal upon his lips, and then he will be useless to his
hearers.
This morning we shall notice the effects of whole-heartedness upon the
Christian. I shall then endeavor to stir you up with many arguments to
be earnest in your work offaith and labor of love. And when I have so
done, I shall address those to whom religion has as yet been a trifling
matter. And God grant that they may be ready to seek the Lord with all
their hearts, for then He will surely be found of them.
I. First, then, let us notice THE SPHERE WHICH CHRISTIAN EARNESTNESS
OCCUPIES IN THE DIVINE
LIFE. Mark, I speak now only to those who are really and savingly
converted to God, for if we are not first right with God, zeal for God
is but a pretense.
One of the first things that thorough earnestness will do for a
Christian man is to make him think very earnestly for his Lord and
Master. In the diary of Jonathan Edwards we find the following account
of his feelings towards the Lord's work, "I had great longing for the
advancement of Christ's kingdom in the world; my secret prayer used to
be in great part taken up in praying for it. If I heard the least hint
of anything that had happened in any part of the world which appeared
to me, in some respect or other, to have favorable aspect on the
interest of Christ's kingdom, my soul eagerly caught at it and it would
much animate and refresh me. I used to be earnest to read public news
letters, mainly for that end, to see if I could not find some news
favorable to the interest of religion in the world."
Now, when we are full of zeal for God, it is the same with us. Our
thoughts are continually set upon Divine things. Go where we may, we
regard our place not as a sphere for business, but as a sphere for
usefulness. We make that our very first thought. Why, Beloved, if we
are really in earnest for God, we shall begin to think of Christ's work
in the world as soon as ever we wake. And when we rest at night it will
be still with the Lord before us, and with His glory written in our
hearts.
I am afraid some of you think but very little of Him and of His cause
in the world. How often when our missionary heralds are issued, nobody
cares to read them. The annual report of what God is doing in foreign
nations is generally the driest and dullest affair that ever comes in
our way–not so much dry in itself but because we of this generation
have not been tutored and schooled to think of the advance of the
Gospel and the progress of Christ's cause. Let once this flaming torch
of zeal kindle your souls and you will have Christ's cause upon your
hearts at all times.
But when a man has thus had his soul quickened, to consider the cause
of Christ, the next thing he will do is to plan and to purpose for it.
What fine purposes some men have at eccentric seasons! After they have
listened to some earnest address they go home thinking–"Well, I must
do something." And they half resolve they will, but, lacking the
whole-heartedness of Hezekiah, the purpose never comes to a definite
shape. It still resides in the clouds. As some men build castles in the
air, so others build Churches there. They educate preachers in the air,
they support Christ's ministers in the sky, they send out fresh
missionaries in the clouds.
All their plans are very beautiful, and all practical schemes are poor
affairs compared with their magnificent projects, but then it is all an
unsubstantial dream–a pleasing picture, a dissolving view, and it soon
melts into something which for them is more practical–the world and
the affairs thereof. Give a man earnestness, and every time he makes a
purpose it is a purpose. Every stroke of the great motive-power within
his soul reveals and sets a wheel in motion. He cannot let the blood
circulate through him without its carrying life in every drop. But some
men have dead blood in their veins, it is going round, going to the
heart, and issuing from it, but there is no life in a drop of it.
They can talk and they can sometimes make a resolve but it never comes
to a definite purpose. They never set their ties and plant their feet
down and say, "God helping me, I will do something. God being with me,
I will not live in this world for nothing. I will not be as an oyster
which lies in the mud and opens its shell according as the tide brings
round the meal-time. It shall not be said that I live merely to eat and
drink, and to accumulate wealth. But, O Christ Jesus! By everything
that is true, if You will help me I will serve You while I live and, if
it must be, will be prepared to die for Your cause." Only earnest men
get so far as to select their purpose and adhere to it.
Dear Friends, choose your gun, but mind you, stand to it till every
round of ammunition is exhausted. We have known persons in a great
spasm–in a sort of apoplectic fit of pious enthusiasm, make a huge
resolve but they came to their cooler senses long before it is carried
out. The blood has run to the land very powerfully, there has even been
too much blood–they have rolled over in the spasm of fanaticism. It
has never come to a practical effect.
Now, when a man's heart is right with God, what he has resolved to do
he will do. I can speak for one, when I say I know a man who, when he
feels that God has given him a work to do–when he has once resolved it
shall be done– would move Heaven and earth but what he would
accomplish it. And he would sooner break his heart or destroy his
health than he would fail in it. For he feels that if it is God's work,
it must be done. Man's work may stop, but God's work cannot. And when
any get in his way, or seem to thwart his purpose, that man feels his
zeal so boiling over, that for God's sake he forgets everything else.
And even dear friendships snap when it appears as if Christ's cause
were imperiled.
I know this, that when a man gets thoroughly alive for God, he cannot
put up with those lazy sluggards who will neither work themselves nor
permit others to labor. When once a Believer gets his spirit wholly up
to the work, it is now–for God and Christ–follow who may. But as for
you that are faint-hearted, go to your homes lest you make the man of
God's heart to faint. Stand away, lest the chilling influence of your
icy souls should do something to abate our fervor. Methinks a Christian
is never worth much till, having been brought up to the point of
resolve, he will achieve the Heaven-born purpose, come what may. Until
he is ready to crash and smash everything earthly and worldly so that
he may accomplish his life-work in the name of the eternal God who
called him to it.
His earnestness of purpose will show itself in perseverance. The man
fell the first time–"Never mind," says he, "It is God's work. We will
try again." He breaks down again–but he falls to rise. There he sees
the summit of the mountain glittering in the sunlight. And though he
has a burden on his back, he vows, "I will climb there." He has fallen
down that crag and he lies there black with bruises, groaning and
moaning. The first thing he does when he wipes his eyes of the dust, is
to look up and say, "I will mount there yet." He climbs again–but an
antagonist shoves him down. He has not time to stop and examine who it
is, and resent the insult–he recommences the ascent.
Now and then he runs. When he cannot run he walks. And when he cannot
walk he creeps. And when it seems impossible to go on hands and knees,
he is content to pull himself up by his hands alone, oftentimes even
grasping a briar and sending a thorn into his flesh, but still saying,
"It is God's place and He has bid me climb and in His Divine strength I
will do it. I cannot rest, I cannot be quiet till the deed is done."
Perseverance is the sure effect of this whole-heartedness for God. Mark
carefully that this heart being thus on fire will show its zeal in an
entire dependence upon God and in intensely fervent prayer for God's
help and for God's blessing.
Surely a man cannot know himself, who, when he has a high and noble
purpose, attempts it apart from God. He is well persuaded that if it is
God's work it must be done in God's strength and as he must have that
strength, he goes before God as if he meant to have it, and could take
no denial. One of the old Puritans says, "When we pray to God without
fervency we do, as it were, ask Him to deny us. But when we can go with
fervency, then we must prevail." Oh, those prayers which one has
sometimes heard when the man of God seemed like a Samson! He gets hold
of the two pillars of Heaven and bowing himself with all his strength
to pull down the mercy and to destroy his sins, he knocks at Heaven's
gate as for dear life–the knock of a starving beggar who cannot afford
to be unheard.
Oh, that is prevailing prayer, when we can get a grip of the angel and
wrestle with him. I saw in one of the Churches in Paris a picture by an
eminent artist representing Jacob wrestling with the angel. I had not
exactly conceived it so literally as the artist had, for he has
sketched the Patriarch with his foot between the angel's feet, trying
to throw him down and wrestling just as wrestlers might do in the ring.
There ought to be a practical purpose about our prayer and as intense
an earnestness to win the blessing from the angel as there is on the
part of the wrestler to hurl his foe upon his back. We shall never get
true and lasting revival in the Church till we have men who in the
supplications do their work with all their hearts and thus prosper.
My dear Friends, I shall not enlarge further to show you the proper
sphere of earnestness–the fact is that it enters into every part of
the spiritual man. Earnestness quickens his pulse, increases the
circulation of his blood, it makes the man in all respects in an
healthy state. These holy stimulants make the soul stronger than the
giant when he is refreshed with new wine. If you would ask me what fire
has to do with the Christian sacrifice, I would answer it has
everything to do with it. You may present a sacrifice in the dark but
you cannot consume a sacrifice without flame. You may do with very
little light, but you must have fire to burn the whole victim, or else
the sacrifice is no offering at all.
Oh for more of this fire! Jesus! Master! Baptize us with the Holy
Spirit and with fire! Fill our souls with fervor! Restore unto us the
indomitable energy of our ancestors. Give us back the northern iron and
steel, to which their resolute natures may be likened–deliver us from
these willow days in which men bend before every blast–make us strong
men to run the race of righteousness, and mighty men made mighty
through Your Spirit, with earnestness to serve You among the sons of
men!
II. I shall want your earnest attention while I labor TO STIR YOU UP BY
CERTAIN ARGUMENTS WHICH MAY PROVOKE YOU TO THIS EARNESTNESS.
Either our religion is the grossest impostor that was ever palmed upon
mankind, or else it is one which deserves the whole life and force and
strength of every man who has been blessed by it. I would today, if I
were not sure that God's Word is true and that the precious Doctrines
of Grace are the very revelation of Heaven, renounce them boldly. Oh, I
could not, I hope–I speak before God–hold the religion of Christ and
yet be sleepy about it. It does seem to me that if religion is worth
anything, it is worth everything–and that for man to keep his
godliness as some great farmers do their little off-hand farms, which
they merely farm for pleasure, while their very life and substance is
spent in another place, seems to me to be the height of wickedness and
the topmost ridge of absurdity.
Either I would never seek God and His righteousness at all, or I would
seek them first. It seems to me to be an insane attack upon everything
like wisdom, to put the worst things first and the best things last–to
put the world on our heads and Heaven under our feet–to make Christ
second best and to make Mammon chief and lord in our affections. Surely
this will never do.
But, Christian Brothers and Sisters, that I may have your hearts warmed
this morning, may the Spirit of God take these things and lay them like
hot coals to your souls. Remember, my Brothers and Sisters, what solemn
things you and I have to deal with. We have to deal with the souls of
men, immortal, infinitely precious. We have to clear under God with the
eternal interests of Heaven and Hell. We have dealings with the
sinner's sin and long to see it washed away with the precious blood of
Christ. We have dealings with man's natural death in sin and long that
men may be regenerated by the Holy Spirit.
Now, if the soul is what Scripture tells us it is–if there is a Heaven
and a Hell–if Christ has made an atonement for sin, these are things
that cannot be trifled with. As well dance upon the altar of God, or
dabble a harlot's garments in the blood of the Paschal Lamb, as trifle
and be half-hearted when we have to deal with such awful things as
these.
Consider the greatness of the work we have to deal with. Have any of
you a glimpse of an idea of this one city of London? Three million!
Three million! As many as the Scottish nation, with some sixty thousand
added to the number every year–more added than we add accommodation in
places of worship to receive them, so that if our Churches grow–still
not in the same ratio as the population. It is said that we have more
than half a million inhabitants in this city who are heathens–as
positively heathens as though they lived under the sway of the king of
Dahomey, or dwelt in the very center of Tartary–without God and
without Christ! They never listen to the Gospel, never enter a place of
worship from the beginning of the year to the end of it. This is the
work for which we must gird up our loins.
Oh, dear Brethren! We cannot afford to be half-hearted here. If there
is some happy city somewhere in the world where all men hear the Word
and where the most are converted, even there coldness is inexcusable.
But here, here in this awful city with so much to do, asleep!! Oh, God,
forgive us that we are not more awake! Think how few there are to do
the work. There are, perhaps, many so called laborers, men who wear the
robes of priesthood but who know not Christ in the power of His Gospel.
How few there are of the faithful among men who are ready to spend and
be spent!
When I look at the great harvest–enlarge your thoughts for a moment,
the field is the world–when I see corn field after corn field, a
thousand million immortal souls. And in some countries one missionary
to two million, and in others, not one even to ten million immortal
souls–one may wipe the sweat from his brow in the hot and sultry day
but only the cold-hearted will stop to rest, for there is so much to
do. "The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few." And
shall those laborers sleep? O Lord, we beseech You, have pity upon us
and help us never to sleep again but to be in earnest for poor souls.
Think, I pray you, how earnest Satan is. If we slumber, he never does.
If we are idle, certainly he never is. As Hugh Latimer said, the devil
is the most busy prelate in the land. He traverses his diocese. He is
always visiting his flock. He is instant in season and out of season to
destroy. See the activity of the infidel and the Romanist–those who
hold false doctrines–how zealously do they compass sea and land to
make one proselyte. What are we doing? I say, Brethren, what are we
doing? Call it nothing and you have not called it by too small a name.
They are alive and we are half dead. They are boiling in fervent heat
and we are neither cold nor hot, but lukewarm.
And, oh, I pray you, my Hearers, think and let this move you–think of
the responsibilities which lie upon us as a Church. I speak not
egotistically, to glorify either myself personally or myself in you.
But there has never been a congre-gation–certainly never a dissenting
congregation–which has been more favored than we have been. What has
God worked! What a dew from Heaven has rested upon the Word! What
multitudes have been added to the Church! What manner of people are we
to be? Indeed, Brethren, I do not need to censure, for your obligations
are felt and the Holy Spirit is helping you to fulfill them.
There are men in the midst of this Church of whom I dare speak in any
and in every company, and say that Apostolic days scarcely produced men
superior to them. I have the felicity and the honor to see some in this
Church who are patterns of everything that is good. They not only spend
their time for Christ, but who beyond what I ever expected to see of
mortal men. They give labor, substance and talent to Christ and His
cause. Those I always look upon with joy as being the honorable product
of the Truth of God fully, fairly and faithfully preached.
But there are many others of whom this could not be said. Oh, we were
speaking lies in hypocrisy if we said of all of you that you were doing
what you could do, or half what you can do! Yes, and in some cases a
hundredth part of what you will wish you had done when you come to lie
upon your beds. God has been pleased to give a congregation and to give
to that congregation a ministry upon which the Spirit has rested, as is
manifested in the many–the very many conversions which daily take
place in our midst.
The Christian world has looked upon us and said, "How God has favored
that Church!" And if we sleep, what base ungrateful wretches shall we
be? If God has brought us to the kingdom for such a time as this, and
we prove unworthy, deliverance will come from some other quarter to
this land but we shall have to write Ichabod upon these walls, for the
glory will depart. God will leave us to our own devices. We have had
opportunities of doing good that have been seldom offered to any body
of Christians, and if we do not avail ourselves of them, the most
withering curse that ever came upon a Christian community must most
certainly fall upon us. Oh, may God help us to be found faithful to our
charge.
Do you need anything else to stir you up? Behold, before you today the
stream of death washing away myriads of souls–behold, I say, before
you this morning, the dying souls of men. Listen! Their moans are going
up to Heaven now, the groans which they utter in their last agonies are
accusing you before the Most High. "None cared for my soul," is the cry
of many. "Great God, I lived in a Christian land but none cared for my
soul! I lived in a court or in an alley and Christian people passed the
entrance of that alley to go to Chapel but they never thought about me.
I lived next door to a Christian man but he never prayed for me. I
lived in a top room of the very house where there lived a man of God
but he never thought of me!"
Oh, hear those last cries, I say, as the Spirit for the last time
reflects upon the cold Church which cared not for her children. Hear
the accusation of the angel as he cries, "The sea monsters draw out the
breast, they give suck to their young ones–the daughter of my people
is become cruel, like the ostriches in the wilderness. The tongue of
the sucking child cleaves to the roof of his mouth for thirst–the
young children ask for bread and no man breaks it unto them."
Hear, I beseech you and let it startle you into earnestness–hear the
shrieks of the damned spirits for a moment. Another soul has gone to
Hell, and while we speak, another and another and another. Listen to
the solemn fall, the moving of the black waters as they close around
the sinking spirit. As roll the masses of water down Niagara's steep,
so roll the waves of souls into perdition. And you, you are the men
whom God has sent to be the saviors of the world–will you waste the
moments and neglect your charge?
Black night has settled upon the nations and you, you only, are the men
who carry the flaming torch into the thick darkness–followers of
Christ, disciples of Jesus. You are to be the deliverers of those who
sit in the valley of the shadow of death bound in affliction and iron.
Will you sit still, will you fold your arms, will you give to the world
and self that which belongs to Christ? Let my tears influence you. But
what are these if shrieks of doomed souls cannot awaken us? What hearts
of adamant we must have, not to feel while the terrors of Hell are
around us! What granite heart must we have received if we believe that
men are being lost and yet never care for them!
Oh, sits there a Christian man anywhere around me, above, or beneath,
who cares not for man's soul? I pray God to send into his ears one
piercing shriek from Tophet and let that abide in his memory and ring
in his soul until he says, "I must do something to win sinners to
Christ."
But once more–and if I fail here–I break down altogether. I conjure
myself and you to serve God with all our hearts, because of that love
which we have received of Jesus. Look, there He hangs–my eyes behold
Him. His head is crowned with thorns. His feet are pierced with nails.
His hands are dripping with blood. Jesus, Master! You are dying for me!
That precious heart's blood of Yours is flowing for my redemption and
for my cleansing. At Your feet I fall and kiss You. O Lover of my soul,
I cannot but love You, You have won my heart. The love of Christ
constrains me! And do You, Lord, for sinners, bleed? For rebels, for
enemies, for those who would not have You to reign over them and shall
I not adore You?
Yes, but when I rise from my knees, shall I go forth into the world and
forget You? Thorn-crowned head, shall I forget You? Pierced hands and
feet, shall I forget You? Mangled body, shall I forget You? Slaughtered
Emmanuel, shall I forget You? God forbid!–
"Sooner than not my Savior lo ve Oh, may I cease to be."
Beloved, what do you say? Will you look into His face and never weep
for souls? Will you look upon His wounds and your heart never be
wounded for poor dying men? Will you live unto yourselves and die unto
yourselves?
Sirs, the infidel is not far wrong when he tells us that our religion
is hypocrisy, if we can be half-hearted over it. Go, go you enemy of
the Church, tell it in Gath. Publish it in the streets of Ascalon, till
we become a hissing and a reproach if you shall find us living, as
though the Truth of God were a lie and as though the doctrines revealed
of God were but a delusion and an impostor! Wake up, Church of God! Why
are you given to slumber? O for a voice like thunder! How would I make
you wake! But what am I, more than half asleep myself? I read the life
of such men as Alleine of Taunton, and Baxter of Kidderminster,
Grimshaw of Haworth and Whitfield of everywhere–I blush at my cold
heart.
Especially when perusing the life of our Apostle Paul, I blush a
thousand times to think how idly I have lived. Sinners, these were
men–the tears streamed down their cheeks when they thought of sinners
lost forever. Their words froze not like icicles upon their lips–they
spoke and every word was power. Oh how they pleaded! How Paul could
say, "Night and day with tears," (hear how he puts it), "as though God
did beseech you by us, we pray you in Christ's place, be you reconciled
to God." He surely could not accuse himself that he had not poured out
his soul for men. No, these men lived.
We dare not say we live. Oh, the long-suffering and the tender mercy of
God, that He has had compassion on such a Church as that of the present
day and that He continues to have mercy upon us, when we are so dull
and sluggish in the service of Christ. Even while I am preaching thus I
feel sorry that we should have need of such a sermon. When the Spartans
went to battle, every Spartan marched with songs, willing to fight. But
when the Persians went to the conflict, you could hear as the regiments
came on the crack of whips, as the officers drove their soldiers to the
fight. You need not wonder that a few Spartans were more than a match
for thousands of Persians–that in fact, they were like lions in the
midst of sheep.
So let it be with the Church, never needing to be flogged to action but
full of an irrepressible life which longs for conflict against
everything which is contrary to God. Then we should be like lions in
the midst of herds of our enemies and nothing, through God, should be
able to stand against us. Play no longer, men! Cease your piping and
dancing in the market places. Come, lift up your hands from those
childish toys! Come away men, come away from the dormitories where you
sleep so luxuriously and from the playgrounds where you sport so
merrily!
Get to something that is worth doing, to something that is high and
noble and heavenly, befitting your birth. "What is this you are calling
play?" you say. Why your work, your business, your cares, unless they
are sanctified to God. I tell you, Sirs, that in the light of eternity
all thing else save serving God are mere child's-play, mere
theatricals, mere masquerading. They are but the mummeries of a
carnival, the jests of a comedy, the laughter of a pantomime. It is
only serving God that is doing immortal work. It is only living for
Christ that is living at all.
III. And now I must draw to a conclusion–may God give me fresh Grace
while I undertake the solemn work OF
DEALING WITH CARELESS AND UNCONVERTED SOULS.
When Mr. Whitfield was preaching in the parish Church of Haworth, he
said when he came to the point of self-examination, "I was about to
address the ungodly but I suppose that after the faithful ministry to
which you have listened in this Church, there is very little need for
me to say anything about this." Mr. Grimshaw thereupon rose and said,
"Brother Whitfield, don't flatter them, I fear that half of them are
going to Hell with their eyes open."
And I must say this morning, blessing God for all the conversions that
have taken place here, yet for God's sake we dare not flatter you.
There are many of you still in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds
of iniquity, as far from God as ever you were. Though we have wept over
you and preached to you again and again, yet your hard hearts will not
break. Up to now you have been proof that we can do nothing, and unless
the Spirit of God shall come upon you, we fear that you will remain the
same. But now in God's name let us talk to you.
And so, my Hearers, you think that the things of God are not worth
serious thought, at least not yet. If they are not altogether trifling
things, they are of such secondary importance that any time will do.
The scraggy end of your life will suffice, you think, for them. Now let
me remind you who may be sporting with these things, that this is
inconsistent with reason and sense. You will find dying to be very
earnest work. It will be no amusement to be smitten by the hand of
death, to go to your deathbed with your physician's voice in your ear,
"Nothing can be done for you, you may linger for a little while but you
must die."
When the death struggle comes on, when death gets you, when the grim
monster shakes you till you feel every bone rattle, when they wipe the
death sweat of the last conflict from your brow, when the darkness
steals over your eyes, when your extremities chill with death, when the
voice is choked, when the death rattle is in your throat, oh, Sirs, you
will not laugh, then! You will not say these things are fancies! You
will have no hard words in those last moments against those who warned
you.
Men laughed at Noah when he built his ark upon dry land, but when they
were climbing to the mountain tops to escape the inundating waves, they
had no material for jest and satire. Then their tears and cries and
groans proved that they felt the truth of Noah's preaching of
righteousness. It will be so with you–mark, whosoever shall be the
witness of it–you will find death no child's play. And then comes the
judgment. The heavens are on fire, the earth is shaking. The Judge is
sitting and the books are opened. Will you laugh then, when you hear
your name proclaimed with the addition "Come to judgment, come away?"
When the eye of the Judge shall be fixed upon you and He shall turn to
that page which records your deeds, and shall solemnly read them while
men and angels hear–Sinner! Sinner! It is enough to drive the laughter
out of you this morning if you would but hear even the distant echo of
the awful voice which shall pronounce the sentence, "Depart you cursed
into everlasting fire in Hell, prepared for the devil and his angels."
After the judgment, what comes then, Sinner? Then comes wrath without
end. God will deal with you. His bare arm shall smite you. Beware, lest
He tear you to pieces and there be none to deliver you. In eternity,
mercy's gates are shut– God's long-suffering is then over. Justice
commences its awful work. Soul, you will have no merry jests in Hell.
You will find no laughter there at God's mysteries. Oh, you may go on
trifling now, my Hearers, but then you will not. You may say a little
more sleep and a little more slumber today–but there will be none of
it then.
Oh, how you will look back upon the misspent past and wish, but wish in
vain, that you had never been created, sooner than that you should have
lived to lose your only hope of salvation, your only time in which you
might find salvation. O God, my God, I beseech You plead with men, for
we are weak! Plead with them, and make them feel that death, nor
judgment, nor Hell are things to be trifled with!
Will you remember, you who are the butterflies of the day, the insects
who flit from flower to flower? Remember that Christ did not trifle
when He came into the world to save souls. His was no life spent in the
polished refinements of gaiety. His was a stern, awful life–His was a
zeal that ate Him up. When He sweat great drops of blood, it was no
light burden He had to carry upon those blessed shoulders. And when He
poured out His heart, it was no weak effort He was making for the
salvation of His people.
Ah, Sinner! Ah, Sinner! Was Christ in earnest and are you foolish? Was
Christ in earnest, I say, and do you despise, do you forget, do you
neglect this great salvation? I may add, the ministers whom God sends
are in earnest. I can say at this moment, I do feel a longing for the
conversion of my hearers, such as I cannot describe. I would count it a
high privilege if I might sleep in death this morning, if that death
could redeem your souls from Hell. But why is it that we can feel? Oh,
that we felt more! Why is it that we can weep when you do not? What is
your soul to us, compared with what it must be to you? If we warn you,
and you perish, your blood will not be required at our hand. It is only
if we are cold and indifferent that we shall be held responsible.
But when we have poured out our heart unto you, when we have stretched
out our arms and like a loving mother with a child, have sought to
bring you to the arms of Jesus, we have done all that we can do. We
must leave the rest with God. But how is it, why is it, that you can
trifle? It is your own salvation, not mine. It is your own eternal
state. It is you that will lie forever in the pit, or joyously climb to
Heaven. It is you, Sinner, yourself! Not your neighbor, not the person
that is sitting next to you, but you, standing there in the crowd, or
you yonder–each of you personally. Oh, why should we be earnest and
you be dull? God forgive you this sin and forbid you to trifle longer.
But lastly, you will find God to be in earnest when He comes to punish
you. When He lets loose His terrors on you, you shall find it no sport.
When the arrow which is today fitted to the string shall fly, you shall
find it to be no babe's toy. When the sword which has been long in
furbishing and which is bathed in Heaven, shall begin to cut, you may
say to it, "Oh, Sword, when will you rest, when will you be quiet." But
it will know no rest, for it will be awfully and solemnly in earnest
with you, punishing you for your sins.
Would now that one could awake you! Would that every heart here felt
the need of whole-heartedness towards God. But you will not mind
it–you will go away and I shall be unto you as one that plays a tune
upon a goodly instrument, and it will all be forgotten. There was a
tear just now–perhaps rather a tear of sympathy excited by
earnestness, than a tear from your own hearts, for your own case. You
will go away and forget it all, and you will come again and forget it
again. And we shall go on praying with you, and preaching to you, but
you will forget it. And one day it will be said, "So-and-So is dead, he
died without a hope." And though it will be some consolation, yet what
a sad one for the minister to be able to say, "Well, as in the sight of
God, I did all I could, I did warn, teach, exhort, and plead with him."
Oh, how much better if God shall bless the Word to you, and we shall
hear you tell that He took you up out of the horrible pit and out of
the miry clay and set your feet upon a rock and established your
goings. "Believe in the Lord Jesus
Christ and you shall be saved." Faith in Christ is the great way of
salvation. Trust Jesus, trust Him with all your heart and you are saved
this morning and your sins are gone!
And when you are saved yourself, I pray you forget not what I have
tried to instill this morning–that if we serve God with all our hearts
we shall prosper in His ways. And that we cannot expect to see His
blessing upon anything that we do, unless we do it as unto the Lord and
not unto men.