The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

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СКАЧАТЬ I described, the sin was secret. But, young man, your sin is not. You have gone so far that your habits are openly wicked; you have dared to sin in the face of God’s sun. You are not as some others — seemingly good; but you go out and openly say, “I am no hypocrite; I dare to do wrong. I do not profess to be righteous; I know I am an incorrigible rascal. I have gone astray, and I am not ashamed to sin in the street.” Ah! young man, young man! Your father, perhaps, is saying now, “Oh God that I had died for him — oh God that I had seen him buried in his grave, before he would have gone to such lengths in wickedness! Oh God that when I first saw him and mine eye was gladdened with my son, I had seen him the next minute smitten with disease and death! Oh, would to God that his infant spirit had been called to heaven, that he might not have lived to bring in this way my grey hairs in sorrow to the grave!” Your sport in the city gates is misery in your father’s house; your open merriment before the world brings agony into a mother’s heart. Oh, I beseech you, stop. Oh, Lord Jesus! touch the bier this morning! Stop some young man in his evil habits, and say to him, “Arise!” Then he will join with us in confessing that those who are alive have been quickened by Jesus, through the Spirit, though they were dead in trespasses and sins.

      15. 3. Now we come to the third and last case — LAZARUS DEAD AND BURIED. Ah! dear friends, I cannot take you to see Lazarus in his grave. Stand, oh stand away from him. Where shall we flee to avoid the noxious odour of that reeking corpse? Ah, where shall we flee? There is no beauty there; we dare not look upon it. There is not even the gloss of life left. Oh, hideous spectacle! I must not attempt to describe it; words would fail me, and you would be too much shocked. Nor dare I tell the character of some men present here. I would be ashamed to tell the things which some of you have done. This cheek might be suffused with a blush to tell the deeds of darkness which some of the ungodly of this world habitually practise. Ah, the last stage of death, the last stage of corruption, oh, how hideous; but the last stage of sin, is far more hideous! Some writers seem to have an aptitude for puddling in this mud, and digging up this miry clay; I confess that I have none. I cannot describe to you the lust and vice of a full grown sinner. I cannot tell you what are the debaucheries, the degrading lusts, the devilish, the bestial sins into which wicked men will run, when spiritual death has had its perfect work in them, and sin has displayed itself in all its fearful wickedness. I may have some here. They are not Christians. They are not, like the young maiden, still fondled, nor even, like the young man, still kept in the funeral procession: no, they have gone so far that decent people avoid them. Their very wife, when they go into the house, rushes upstairs to be out of the way. They are scorned. Such a one is the prostitute, from whom one’s head is turned in the very street. Such a one is the openly profligate, to whom we give wide quarters, lest we touch him. He is a man that is far gone. The stone is rolled before him. No one calls him respectable. He lives, perhaps, in some back slum of a dirty lane; he does not know where to go. Even as he stands in this place, he feels that if his next door neighbour knew his guilt he would give him a wide berth, and stand far away from him; for he has come to the last stage; he has no marks of life; he is utterly rotten. And notice; as in the case of the maiden the sin was in the bedroom, secret; in the next case it was in the open streets, public; but in this case it is secret again. It is in the tomb. For you will notice that men, when they are only half gone into wickedness, do it openly; but when they are fully gone their lust becomes so degrading that they are obliged to do it in secret. They are put into the grave, in order that all may be hidden. Their lust is one which can only be perpetrated at midnight; a deed which can only be done when shrouded by the astonished curtains of darkness. Have I any such here? I cannot tell that I have many; but still I have some. Ah! in being constantly visited by penitents I have sometimes blushed for this city of London. There are merchants whose names stand high and fair. Shall I tell it here? I know it on the best authority, and the truest, too. There are some who have houses large and tall, who on the exchange are reputable and honourable, and everyone admits them and receives them into their society; but ah! there are some of the merchants of London who practise lusts that are abominable. I have in my church and congregation — and I dare to say what men dare to do — I have in my congregation women whose ruin and destruction have been wrought by some of the most respected men in respectable society. Few would dare to speak so boldly as that; but if you boldly do the thing, I must speak of it. It is not for God’s ambassador to wash his mouth beforehand; let him boldly reprove, as men do boldly sin. Ah! there are some that are a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty; some whose character is hideous beyond all hideousness. They have to be covered up in the tomb of secrecy; for men would expel them from society, and hiss them from existence, if they knew all. And yet — and now comes a blessed interposition — yet this last case may be saved as well as the first, and as easily too. The rotten Lazarus may come out of his tomb, as well as the slumbering maiden from her bed. The last — the most corrupt, the most desperately abominable, may yet be quickened; and he may join in exclaiming, “And I have been quickened, though I was dead in trespasses and sins.” I trust you will understand what I wish to convey — that the death is the same in all cases; but the manifestation of it is different; and that the life must come from God, and from God alone.

      16. II. And now I will go on to another point — THE QUICKENING. These three people were all quickened, and they were all quickened by the same being — that is by Jesus. But they were all quickened in a different manner. Note, first, the young maiden on her bed. When she was brought to life, it is said, “Jesus took her by the hand and said, maiden, arise.” It was a still small voice. Her heart received its pulse again, and she lived. It was the gentle touching of the hand — no open demonstration — and the soft voice was heard — “arise.” Now, usually when God converts young people in the first stage of sin, before they have formed evil habits, he does it in a gentle manner; not by the terrors of the law, the tempest, fire and smoke, but he makes them like Lydia, “whose heart the Lord opened” that she received the word. On such, “it drops like the gentle dew from heaven upon the place beneath.” With hardened sinners grace comes down in showers that rattle on them; but in young converts it often comes gently. There is just the sweet breathing of the Spirit. They perhaps scarcely think it is a true conversion; but true it is, if they are brought to life.

      17. Now note the next case. Christ did not do the same thing with the young man that he did with the daughter of Jairus. No; notice the first thing he did was, he put his hand, not on him but on the bier ; “and they that bare it stood still,” and after that, without touching the young man, he said in a louder voice, “Young man, I say to you, arise!” Note the difference: the young maiden’s new life was given to her secretly. The young man’s was given more publicly. It was done in the very street of the city. The maiden’s life was given gently by a touch; but in the young man’s case it must be done, not by the touching of him, but by the touching of the bier. Christ takes away from the young man his means of pleasure. He commands his companions, who by bad example are bearing him on his bier to his grave, to stop, and then there is a partial reformation for awhile, and after that there comes the strong outspoken voice — “Young man, I say to you, arise!”

      18. But now comes the worst case; and will you please at your leisure at home notice what preparations Christ made for the last case of Lazarus? When he raised the maiden, he walked up into the bedroom, smiling, and said, “She is not dead, but sleeps.” When he raised the young man, he said to the mother, “Do not weep.” Not so when he came to the last case; there was something more terrible about that: it was, a man in his grave corrupting. It was on that occasion you read, “Jesus wept”; and after he had wept it is said that “he groaned in his spirit”; and then he said, “Take away the stone”; and then there came the prayer, “I know that you hear me always.” And then, will you notice, there came, what is not expressed so fully in either of the other cases. It is written, “Jesus cried with a loud voice, Lazarus, come forth!” It is not written that he cried with the loud voice to either of the others. He spoke to them; it was his word that saved all of them; but in the case of Lazarus, he cried to him in a loud voice. Now, I have, perhaps, some of the last characters here — the worst of the worst. Ah! sinner; may the Lord quicken you! But it is a work that makes the Saviour weep. I think when he comes to call some of you from your death in sin who have gone to the utmost extremity СКАЧАТЬ