The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

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СКАЧАТЬ from them, and there they stand!” “No, sleep on, sleep on; the sword is not yet at your throat; sleep on, sleep on!” It is at your throat; you startled with horror. Sleep on, sleep on! But you are gone! “Demon, why did you tell me to slumber! It would have been wise in me to have escaped the city when first the gates were shaken. Why did I not ask for the password before the troops came? Why, by all that is wise, why did I not rush into the streets, and cry the password when the soldiers were there? Why did I stay until the knife was at my throat? Indeed, demon that you are, be cursed; but I am cursed with you for ever!” You know the application; it is a parable you can all expound; you do not need for me to tell you that death is after you, that justice must devour you, that Christ crucified is the only password that can save you; and yet you have not learned it — that with some of you death is nearing, nearing, nearing, and that with all of you he is close at hand! I need not expound how Satan is the demon, how in hell you shall curse him and curse yourselves because you procrastinated — how, that seeing God was slow to anger you were slow to repentance — how, because he was great, in power, and kept back his anger, therefore you kept back your steps from seeking him; and here you are what you are!

      26. Spirit of God, bless these words to some souls that they may be saved! May some sinners be brought to the Saviour’s feet, and cry for mercy! We ask it for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

      {a} La traviata is an opera in three acts by Giuseppe Verdi set to an Italian libretto by Francesco Maria Piave. It is based on the novel La dame aux Camelias by Alexandre Dumas, fils, published in 1848. The title “La Traviata” means literally The Woman Who Strayed, or perhaps more figuratively, The Fallen One. See Explorer “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_traviata”

      Prayer — The Forerunner Of Mercy

      No. 138-3:249. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, June 28, 1857, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

       Thus says the Lord God; I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel to do it for them; I will increase them with men like a flock. {Ezekiel 36:37}

      1. In reading the chapter we have seen the great and exceeding precious promises which God had made to the favoured nation of Israel. God in this verse declares, that though the promise was made, and though he would fulfil it, yet he would not fulfil it until his people asked him to do so. He would give them a spirit of prayer, by which they should cry earnestly for the blessing, and then when they should have cried aloud to the living God, he would be pleased to answer them from heaven, his dwelling place. The word used here to express the idea of prayer is a suggestive one. “I will yet for this be enquired of by the house of Israel.” Prayer, then, is an enquiry. No man can pray properly, unless he views prayer in that light. First, I enquire what the promise is. I turn to my Bible, and I seek to find the promise by which the thing which I desire to seek is certified to me as being a thing which God is willing to give. Having enquired as far as that, I take that promise, and on my bended knees I enquire of God whether he will fulfil his own promise. I take to him his own word of covenant, and I say to him, “Oh Lord, will you not fulfil it, and will you not fulfil it now?” So that there, again, prayer is enquiry. After prayer I look out for the answer; I expect to be heard; and if I am not answered I pray again, and my repeated prayers are only fresh enquiries. I expect the blessing to arrive; I go and enquire whether there are any tidings of its coming. I ask; and thus I say, “Will you answer me, oh Lord? Will you keep your promise? Or will you shut up your ear, because I misunderstand my own wants and do not understand your promise.” Brethren, we must use enquiry in prayer, and regard prayer as being, first, an enquiry for the promise, and then on the strength of that promise an enquiry for the fulfilment. We expect something to come as a present from a friend: we first have the note, by which we are informed it is in transit. We enquire as to what the present is by the reading of the note; and then, if it arrive not, we call at the accustomed place where the parcel ought to have been left, and we ask or enquire for such and such a thing. We have enquired about the promise, and then we go and enquire again, until we get an answer that the promised gift has arrived and is ours. So with prayer. We get the promise by enquiry, and we get the fulfilment of it by again enquiring from God.

      2. Now, this morning I shall try, as God shall help me, first to speak of prayer as the prelude of blessing: next I shall try to show why prayer is thus constituted by God the forerunner of his mercies ; and then I shall close by an exhortation, as earnest as I can make it, exhorting you to pray, if you wish to obtain blessings.

      3. I. Prayer is the FORERUNNER OF MERCIES. Many despise prayer: they despise it, because they do not understand it. He who knows how to use that sacred art of prayer will obtain so much by it, that from its very profitableness he will be led to speak of it with the highest reverence.

      4. Prayer, we assert, is the prelude of all mercies. We bid you turn back to sacred history, and you will find that never did a great mercy come to this world, unheralded by prayer. The promise comes alone, with no preventing merit to precede it, but the blessing promised always follows its herald, prayer. You shall note that all the wonders that God did in the old times were first of all sought at his hands by the earnest prayers of his believing people. Only the other Sunday we beheld Pharaoh cast into the depths of the Red Sea, and all his hosts “still as a stone” in the depths of the waters. Was there a prayer that preceded that magnificent overthrow of the Lord’s enemies? Turn to the Book of Exodus, and you will read, “The children of Israel sighed by reason of the bondage, and they cried, and their cry came up to God by reason of the bondage.” And also note that just before the sea parted and made a highway for the Lord’s people through its bosom, Moses had prayed to the Lord, and cried earnestly to him, so that Jehovah said, “Why do you cry to me?” A few Sundays ago, when we preached on the subject of the rain which came down from heaven in the days of Elijah, you will remember how we pictured the land of Israel as an arid wilderness, a mass of dust, destitute of all vegetation. Rain had not fallen for three years; the pastures were dried up; the brooks had ceased to flow; poverty and distress stared the nation in the face. At an appointed season a sound was heard of abundance of rain, and the torrents poured from the skies, until the earth was deluged with the happy floods. Do you ask me, whether prayer was the prelude to that? I point you to the top of Carmel. Behold a man kneeling before his God, crying, “Oh my God! send the rain”; lo! the majesty of his faith — he sends his servant Gehazi to look seven times for the clouds, because he believes that they will come, in answer to his prayer. And notice the fact, the torrents of rain were the offspring of Elijah’s faith and prayer. Wherever in Holy Writ you shall find the blessing you shall find the prayer that went before it. Our Lord Jesus Christ was the greatest blessing that men ever had. He was God’s best boon to a sorrowing world. And did prayer precede Christ’s advent? Was there any prayer which went before the coming of the Lord, when he appeared in the temple? Oh yes, the prayers of saints for many ages had followed each other. Abraham saw his day; and when he died Isaac took up the note; and when Isaac slept with his fathers, Jacob and the patriarchs still continued to pray; yes, and in the very days of Christ, prayer was still made for him continually: Anna the prophetess, and the venerable Simeon, still looked for the coming of Christ; and day by day they prayed and interceded with God, that he would suddenly come to his temple.

      5. Indeed, and notice that as it has been in Sacred Writ, so it shall be with regard to greater things that are yet to happen in the fulfilment of promise. I believe that the Lord Jesus Christ will one day come in the clouds of heaven. It is my firm belief, in common with all who read the Sacred Scriptures properly, that the day is approaching when the Lord Jesus shall stand a second time upon the earth, when he shall reign with illimitable sway over all the habitable parts of the globe, when kings shall bow before him, and queens shall be nursing mothers of his Church. But when shall that time come? We shall know its coming by its prelude: when prayer shall become more loud and strong, when supplication shall become more universal and more incessant, then even as when the tree СКАЧАТЬ