The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

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СКАЧАТЬ else I shall be cast away.” Oh, you self-righteous ones now present, who think yourselves so good that you can mount to heaven by your works — blind horses, perpetually going around the mill and making not one inch of progress — do you think to take the law upon your shoulders as Samson did the gates of Gaza? Do you imagine that you can perfectly keep this law of God? Will you dare to say, you have not broken it. No, surely, you will confess, though it is only in an undertone, “I have revolted.” Then, know this: the law can do nothing for you in the matter of forgiveness. All it can do is just this: It can make you feel you are nothing at all; it can strip you; it can bruise you; it can kill you; but it can neither quicken, nor clothe, nor cleanse — it was never meant to do that. Oh, are you this morning, my hearer, sad, because of sin? Do you feel that you have been guilty? Do you acknowledge your transgression? Do you confess your wandering? Hear me, then, as God’s ambassador, God has mercy upon sinners. Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. And though you have broken the law, he has kept it. Take his righteousness to be yours. Cast yourself upon him. Come to him now, stripped and naked and take his robe as your covering. Come to him, black and filthy, and wash yourself in the fountain opened for sin and uncleanness; and then you shall know “What purpose then does the law serve?” That is the first point.

      6. II. Now, the second. The law serves to kill all hope of salvation of a reformed life. Most men when they discover themselves to be guilty, avow that they will reform. They say, “I have been guilty and have deserved God’s wrath, but for the future I will seek to win a stock of merits which shall counterbalance all my old sins.” In steps the law, puts its hand on the sinner’s mouth, and says, “Stop, you cannot do that; it is impossible.” I will show you how the law does this. It does it partly thus, by reminding the man that future obedience can be no atonement for past guilt. To use a common metaphor, that the poor may thoroughly understand me, you have run up a score at your shop. Well, you cannot pay it. You go off to Mrs. Brown, your shopkeeper, and you say to her, “Well, I am sorry, madam, that through my husband being out of work,” and all that, “I know I shall never be able to pay you. It is a very great debt I owe you, but, if you please madam, if you forgive me this debt I will never get into your debt any more; I will always pay for all I have.” “Yes,” she would say, “but that will not square our accounts. If you do pay for all you have, it would be no more than you ought to do. But what about the old bills? How are they to be paid? They will not be cancelled by all your fresh payments.” That is just what men do towards God. “True,” they say, “I have gone far astray I know; but then I will not do so any more.” Ah, it was time you threw away such childish talk. You do only show your rampant folly by such a hope. Can you wipe away your transgression by future obedience? Ah, no. The old debt must be paid somehow. God’s justice is inflexible, and the law tells you all your future obedience can make no atonement for the past. You must have an atonement through Christ Jesus the Lord. “But,” says the man, “I will try and be better, and then I think I shall have mercy given to me.” Then the law steps in and says, “You are going to try and keep me, are you? Why, man, you cannot do it.” Perfect obedience in the future is impossible. And the ten commandments are held up, and if any awakened sinner will only look at them, he will turn away and say, “It is impossible for me to keep them.” “Why, man, you say you will be obedient in the future. You have not been obedient in the past, and there is no likelihood that you will keep God’s commandments in time to come. You say you will avoid the evils of the past. You cannot. ‘Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may you also do good that are accustomed to do evil.’ ” But you say “I will take greater heed to my ways.” “Sir, you will not; the temptation that overcame you yesterday will overcome you tomorrow. But, notice this, if you could, you could not win salvation by it.” The law tells you that unless you perfectly obey you cannot be saved by your doings, it tells you that one sin will make a flaw in it all, that one transgression will spoil your whole obedience. It is a spotless garment that you must wear in heaven; it is only an unbroken law which God can accept. So, then, the law answers this purpose, to tell men that their attainments, their amendings, and their doings, are of no use whatever in the matter of salvation. It is theirs to come to Christ, to get a new heart and a right spirit; to get the evangelical repentance which does not need to be repented of, that so they may put their trust in Jesus and receive pardon through his blood. “What purpose then does the law serve?” It serves this purpose, as Luther has it, the purpose of a hammer. Luther, you know, is very strong on the subject of the law. He says, “For if anyone is not a murderer, an adulterer, a thief, and outwardly refrain from sin, as the Pharisee did, which is mentioned in the gospel, he would swear that he is righteous, and therefore he conceives an opinion of righteousness, and depends on his good works and merits. Such a one God cannot otherwise mollify and humble, that he may acknowledge his misery and damnation, but by the law; for that is the hammer of death, the thundering of hell, and the lightning of God’s wrath, that beats to powder the obstinate and senseless hypocrites. For as long as the opinion of righteousness abides in man, so long there abides also in him incomprehensible pride, presumption, security, hatred of God, contempt for his grace and mercy, ignorance of the promises and of Christ. The preaching of free remission of sins, through Christ, cannot enter into the heart of such a one, neither can he feel any taste or savour of it; for that mighty rock and adamant wall, that is, the opinion of righteousness, by which the heart is surrounded, resists it. Therefore the law is that hammer, that fire, that mighty strong wind, and that terrible earthquake rending the mountains, and breaking the rocks, {1 Kings 19:11-13} that is to say, the proud and obstinate hypocrites. Elijah, not being able to abide these terrors of the law, which by these things are signified, covered his face with his mantle. Notwithstanding, when the tempest ceased, of which he was a beholder, there came a soft and a gracious wind, in the which the Lord was; but it behoved that the tempest of fire, of wind, and the earthquake should pass, before the Lord should reveal himself in that gracious wind.”

      7. III. And now, a step further. You who know the grace of God can follow me in this next step. The law is intended to show man the misery which will fall upon him through his sin. I speak from experience, though I am young; and many of you who hear me will hear this with ears of attention, because you have felt the same. There was a time with me, when very young in years, I felt with much sorrow the evil of sin. My bones waxed old with my roaring all day long. Day and night God’s hand was heavy upon me. There was a time when he scared me with visions, and frightened me by dreams; when by day I hungered for deliverance, for my soul fasted within me: I feared lest the very skies should fall upon me, and crush my guilty soul. God’s law had gotten hold upon me, and was showing me my misery. If I slept at night I dreamed of the bottomless pit, and when I awoke I seemed to feel the misery I had dreamed. Up to God’s house I went; my song was only a groan. I retired to my bedroom, and there with tears and groans I offered up my prayer, without a hope and without a refuge. I could then say with David, “The owl is my partner and the bittern is my companion”; for God’s law was flogging me with its ten-thonged whip, and then rubbing me with brine afterwards, so that I shook and quiver with pain and anguish, and my soul chose strangling rather than life, for I was exceedingly sorrowful. Some of you have had the same experience. The law was sent on purpose to do that. But, you will ask, “Why that misery?” I answer, that misery was sent for this reason: that I might then be made to cry to Jesus. Our heavenly Father does not usually make us seek Jesus until he has whipped us clean out of all our confidence; he cannot make us in earnest after heaven until he has made us feel something of the intolerable tortures of an aching conscience, which has foretaste of hell. Do you not remember, my hearer, when you used to awake in the morning, and the first thing you took up was Alleine’s Alarm, or Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted? Oh, those books, those books; in my childhood I read and devoured them when under a sense of guilt, but they were like sitting at the foot of Sinai. When I turned to Baxter, I found him saying some such things as these: — “Sinner, consider; within an hour you may be in hell. Consider; you may soon be dying — death is even now gnawing at your cheek. What will you do when you stand before the bar of God without a Saviour? Will you tell him you had no time to spend on religion? Will not that empty excuse melt into thin air? Oh, sinner, will you, then, dare to insult your Maker? Will you, then, dare to scoff at him? Consider; the flames of hell are hot and the wrath СКАЧАТЬ