The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

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      Henceforth I will not grieve him; I will be a good conscience to him, through the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ.” The trumpet rang a third time, and growling from the innermost vaults, there came up a grim black fiend, with hate in his eyes, and hellish majesty on his brows. He is asked, “Have you anything against that sinner?” “Yes,” he said, “I have; he has made a league with hell, and a covenant with the grave, and here it is signed with his own hand. He asked God to destroy his soul in a drunken fit, and vowed he would never turn to God; see, here is his covenant with hell!” “Let us look at it,” said Mercy; and it was handed up, while the grim fiend looked at the sinner, and pierced him through with his black looks. “Ah! but,” said Mercy, “this man had no right to sign the deed; a man must not sign away another’s property. This man was bought and paid for long beforehand; he is not his own; the covenant with death is disannulled, and the league with hell is torn in pieces. Go your way Satan.” “No,” he said, howling again, “I have something else to say: that man was always my friend; he always listened to my insinuations; he scoffed at the gospel; he scorned the majesty of heaven; is he to be pardoned, while I return to my hellish den, for ever to bear the penalty of guilt?” Mercy said, “Away with you, fiend; these things he did in the days of his unregeneracy; but this word ‘nevertheless’ blots them out. Go to your hell; take this for another lash upon yourself — the sinner shall be pardoned, but you — never, treacherous fiend!” And then Mercy, smilingly turning to the sinner, said, “Sinner, the trumpet must be blown for the last time!” Again it was blown, and no one answered. Then the sinner stood up, and Mercy said, “Sinner ask yourself the question — ask of heaven, of earth, of hell — whether anyone can condemn you?” And the sinner stood up, and with a bold loud voice said, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect?” And he looked into hell, and Satan lay there, biting his iron bonds; and he looked on earth, and earth was silent; and in the majesty of faith the sinner did even climb to heaven itself, and he said, “Who shall lay anything to the charge of God’s elect? God?” And the answer came, “No; he justifies.” “Christ?” Sweetly it was whispered, “No; he died.” Then turning around, the sinner joyfully exclaimed, “Who shall separate me from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” And the once condemned sinner came back to Mercy; prostrate at her feet he lay, and vowed henceforth to be hers for ever, if she would keep him to the end, and make him what she would desire him to be. Then no longer did the trumpet ring, but angels rejoiced, and heaven was glad, for the sinner was saved.

      19. Thus, you see, I have what is called, dramatised the thing; but I do not care what it is called; it is a way of arresting the ear, when nothing else will. “Nevertheless”; there is the obstruction taken away! Sinner, whatever is the “nevertheless,” it shall never-the-less abate the Saviour’s love; not-the-less shall it ever make it, but it shall remain the same.

      Come, guilty soul, and flee away

      To Christ and heal your wounds;

      This is the glorious gospel day,

      In which free grace abounds.

      Come to Jesus, sinner, come.

      On your knee weep out a sorrowful confession; look to his cross, and see the substitute; believe, and live. You who are almost demons, you who have gone farthest in sin, now, Jesus says, “If you know your need of me, turn to me, and I will have mercy upon you: and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.”

      Secret Sins

      No. 116-3:73. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, February 8, 1857, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

      Cleanse me from secret faults. {Psalms 19:12}

      1. Self-righteousness arises partly from pride, but mainly from ignorance of God’s law. It is because men know little or nothing concerning the terrible character of the divine law, that they foolishly imagine themselves to be righteous. They are not aware of the deep spirituality, and the stern severity of the law, or they would have other and wiser notions. Once let them know how strictly the law deals with the thoughts, how it brings itself to bear upon every emotion of the inner man, and there is not one creature beneath God’s heaven who would dare to think he was self-righteous in God’s sight in virtue of his own deeds and thoughts. Only let the law be revealed to a man; let him know how strict the law is, and how infinitely just, and his self-righteousness will shrivel into nothing — it will become a filthy rag in his sight, whereas before he thought it to be a goodly garment.

      2. Now, David, having seen God’s law, and having praised it in this Psalm, which I have read in your hearing, he is brought, by reflecting on its excellency, to utter this thought, “Who can understand his errors?” and then to offer this prayer, “Cleanse me from secret faults.”

      3. In the Lateran Council of the Church of Rome, a decree was passed that every true believer must confess his sins, all of them, once in a year to the priest, and they affixed to it this declaration, that there is no hope of pardon but in complying with that decree. What can equal the absurdity of such a decree as that? Do they suppose that they can identify their sins as easily as they can count their fingers? Why, if we could receive pardon for all our sins by telling every sin we have committed in one hour, there is not one of us who would be able to enter heaven, since, besides the sins that are known to us and that we may be able to confess, there are a vast mass of sins, which are as truly sins as those which we do observe, but which are secret, and do not come to our knowledge. Oh! if we had eyes like those of God, we would think very differently about ourselves. The sins that we see and confess are but like the farmer’s small samples which he brings to market, when he has left his granary full at home. We have only a very few sins which we can observe and detect, compared with those which are hidden to ourselves and unseen by our fellow creatures. I do not doubt it is true of all of us who are here, that in every hour of our existence in which we are active, we commit tens of thousands of unholinesses for which conscience has never reproved us, because we have never seen them to be wrong, seeing we have not studied God’s laws as we ought to have done. Now, be it known to us all that sin is sin, whether we see it or not — that a sin secret to us is a sin as truly as if we knew it to be a sin, though not so great a sin in the sight of God as if it had been committed presumptuously, seeing that it lacks the aggravation of wilfulness. Let all of us who know our sins, offer the prayer after all our confessions: “Lord, I have confessed as many as I know, but I must add an etcetera after them, and say, ‘Cleanse me from secret faults.’ ”

      4. That, however, will not be the gist of my sermon this morning. I am going after a certain class of men who have sins not unknown to themselves, but secret to their fellow creatures. Every now and then we turn up a fair stone which lies upon the green grass of the professing church, surrounded with the verdure of apparent goodness, and to our astonishment we find beneath it all kinds of filthy insects and loathsome reptiles, and in our disgust at such hypocrisy, we are driven to exclaim, “All men are liars; there is not one in whom we can put any trust at all.” It is not fair to say so of all; but really, the discoveries which are made of the insincerity of our fellow creatures are enough to make us despise our kind, because they can go so far in appearances, and yet have so little soundness of heart. To you, sirs, who sin secretly, and yet make a profession; you break God’s covenants in the dark and wear a mask of goodness in the light — to you, sirs, who shut the doors and commit wickedness in secret — to you I shall speak this morning. Oh may God also be pleased to speak to you, and make you pray this prayer: “Cleanse me from secret faults.”

      5. I shall endeavour to urge upon all pretenders present to give up, to renounce, to detest, to hate, to abhor all their secret sins. And, first, I shall endeavour to show the folly of secret sins; secondly, the misery of secret sins; thirdly, the guilt of secret sins; fourthly, СКАЧАТЬ