The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

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СКАЧАТЬ felt as she did, who could enter into her feelings and realise the value of her faith. She stood alone. Oh! it is a noble thing to be the lonely follower of despised truth. There are some who could give you an account of standing up alone. There have been days when the world poured continually a river of infamy and calumny upon them, but they stemmed the torrent, and by continued grace, made strong in weakness, they held their own until the current turned, and they, in their success, were praised and applauded by the very men who sneered before. Then did the world accord them the name of “great.” But where lay their greatness? Why, in this, that they stood as firm in the storm as they stood in the calm — that they were as content to serve God alone as they were to run by fifties. To be good we must be singular. Christians must swim against the stream. Dead fish always float down the stream, but the living fish forces its way against the current. Now, worldly religious men will go just as everyone else goes. That is nothing. The thing is to stand alone. Like Elijah, when he said, “I only am left, and they seek my life”; to feel in one’s self that we believe as firmly as if a thousand witnesses stood up by our side. Oh there is no great right in a man, no strong minded right, unless he dares to be singular. Why, the most of you are as afraid as you ever can be to go out of the fashions, and you spend more money than you should because you think you must be respectable. You dare not move in opposition to your brethren and sisters in the circle in which you move; and therefore you involve yourselves in difficulties. You are blindfolded by the rich fabric of fashion, and therefore many a wrong thing is tolerated because it is customary. But a strong minded man is one who does not try to be singular, but who dares to be singular when he knows that to be singular is to be right. Now, Rahab’s faith, sinner as she was, had this glory, this crown about its head, that she stood alone, “faithful among the faithless found.”

      7. And why should God not bestow the same faith to you my poor sinning, but contrite hearer? You live in a back street, in a house which contains no one but Sabbath breakers, and irreligious men and women. But if you have grace in your heart you will dare to do right. You belong to an infidel club; if you should make them a speech after your own conscience, they would hiss you; and if you forsook their company, they would persecute you. Go and try them. Dare them. See whether you can do it; for if you are afraid of men, you are taken in a snare which may result in your grief, and is now your sin. Note that the chief of sinners can make the most daring saints; the worst men in the devil’s army, when they are converted, make the truest soldiers for Jesus. The forlorn hope of Christendom has generally been led by men who have proven the high efficacy of grace to an eminent degree by having been saved from the deepest sins. Go on, and the Lord give you that high and singular faith!

      8. III. Furthermore, this woman’s faith was a STABLE FAITH, which stood firm in the midst of trouble. I have heard of a church clergyman who was once waited upon by his church warden, after a long time of drought, and was requested to pray for rain. “Well,” said he “my good man, I will offer it, but it’s not a bit of use while the wind is in the east, I am sure.” There are many who have that kind of faith: they believe just as far as probabilities go with them, but when the promise and the probability part, then they follow the probability and part with the promise. They say, “The thing is likely, therefore I believe it.” But that is not faith, it is sight. True faith exclaims, “The thing is unlikely, yet I believe it.” This is real faith. Faith is to say, that “Mountains, when in darkness hidden, are as real as in day.” Faith is to look through that cloud, not with the eye of sight, which sees nothing, but with the eye of faith, which sees everything, and to say, “I trust him when I cannot trace him; I tread the sea as firmly as I would the rock; I walk as securely in the tempest as in the sunshine, and lay myself to rest upon the surging billows of the ocean as contentedly as upon my bed.” The faith of Rahab was the proper sort of faith, for it was firm and enduring.

      9. I will just have a little talk with Rahab this morning, as I suppose old Unbelief did commune with her. Now, my good woman, do not you see the absurdity of this thing? Why, the people of Israel are on the other side of Jordan, and there is no bridge: how are they to get across? Of course they must go up higher towards the fords; and then Jericho will be for along time secure. They will take other cities before coming to Jericho; and besides, the Canaanites are mighty, and the Israelites are only a parcel of slaves; they will soon be cut in pieces and that will be an end of them; therefore do not harbour these spies. Why put your life in jeopardy for such an improbability? “Ah,” she says, “I do not care about the Jordan; my faith can believe across the Jordan, or else it would be only a dry land faith.” By and by they march through the Jordan dry shod, then faith has a firmer confidence. “Ah,” she says, secretly within herself, what she would willingly have said to her neighbours, “Will you not now believe? will you not now sue for mercy?” “No,” they say, “the walls of Jericho are strong: can the feeble host resist us?” And lo, on the next day the troops are out, and what do they do? They simply blow a number of rams’ horns; her neighbours say, “Why, Rahab, you do not mean to say you believe now? They are mad.” The people just go around the city, and all hold their tongues except the few priests blowing rams’ horns. “Why, it is ridiculous. It would be quite a new thing in warfare to hear of men taking a city by blowing rams’ horns.” That was the first day; probably the next day Rahab thought they would come with scaling ladders and mount the walls; but no, rams’ horns again, up to the seventh day; and this woman kept the scarlet thread in the window all the time, kept her father and mother and brothers and sisters in the house, and would not let them go out; and on the seventh day when the people made a great shout, the wall of the city fell flat to the ground; but her faith overcame her womanly timidity, and she remained within, although the wall was tumbling to the ground. Rahab’s house stood alone upon the wall, a solitary fragment amidst a universal wreck, and she and her household were all saved. Now would you have thought that such a rich plant would grow in such poor soil — that strong faith could grow in such a sinful heart as that of Rahab? Ah! but here it is that God exercises his great husbandry. “My Father is the husbandman,” said Christ. Any husbandman can get a good crop out of good soil; but God is the husbandman who can grow cedars on rocks, who cannot only put the hyssop upon the wall, but put the oak there too, and make the greatest faith spring up in the most unlikely place. All glory to his grace! the greatest sinner may become great in faith. Be of good cheer, then, sinner! If Christ should make you repent, you have no need to think that you shall be the least in the family. Oh! no, your name may yet be written among the mightiest of the mighty, and you may stand as a memorable and triumphant instance of the power of faith.

      10. IV. This woman’s faith was A SELF-DENYING FAITH. She dared to risk her life for the sake of the spies. She knew that if they were found in her house she would be put to death, but though she was so weak as to do a sinful deed to preserve them, yet she was so strong that she would run the risk of being put to death to save these two men. It is something to be able to deny yourselves. An American once said, “I have a good religion; its the right sort of religion; I do not know that it costs me a cent a year; and yet I believe I am as truly a religious man as anyone.” “Ah!” one said who heard it, “the Lord have mercy on your miserable stingy soul; for if you had been saved you would not have been content with a cent a year” — a half-penny per annum! I hazard this assertion, that there is nothing in the faith of that man who does not exercise self-denial. If we never give anything to Christ’s cause, work for Christ, deny ourselves for Christ, the root of the matter is not in us. I might call some of you hypocrites: you sing —

      And if I might make some reserve,

      And duty did not call,

      I love my God with zeal so great,

      That I could give him all.

      Yes, but you would not though; you know better than that, for you do not, as it is, give all, no, nor yet half, nor yet the thousandth part. I suppose you think you are poor yourselves, though you have more than a thousand pounds income per year, and so you keep it yourself, under the notion that “He who gives to the poor lends to the Lord.” I do not know how СКАЧАТЬ