Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (55 page)

It is assuredly so. Although grace can bring in a person of any age, yet God delights to be found of them that seek him early. It matters not who he may be: if any man comes to Jesus he shall be received; but yet there is a susceptibility which pertains to the young which has often gone from those who year after year have heard the gospel and yet have not yielded to its demands.

Oh! I should like you who have two lions to frighten you to cry out to the Lord tonight to help you to go out and slay them both. "I am very old," say you. Well, that is one of the lions but the grace of God can make a sinner who is a hundred years old into a babe in Christ. "Oh! but I have formed such bad habits." Yes, those are horrible lions; but those habits can be broken by divine power. "Ah! but my heart is so hard." Lay it asoak in the fountain filled with blood, and that will soften it. The Spirit of God -

He can take away the heart of stone out of your flesh, and give you a heart of flesh. Let us have done with the lions, whether there be two or two hundred, for the Lord will help us. Oh! for a lion-hunt tonight. Drive away the one, and drive away the two. But that can never be while sluggards still are sluggards. The Lord quicken them and wake them up to real earnestness.
III. That brings me to my last point, which is no lion at all. If there be here a man who would have Christ, there is no lion in the way to prevent his having Christ.

"There are a thousand difficulties," says one. If thou desirest Christ truly, there is no effectual difficulty that can really block thee out from coming to him. You notice that Solomon does not say that there were any lions in the way: he only tells us that the sluggard said so. Well, you need not believe a lazy man. The sluggard said it twice; but it did not make it true. Everybody knew what a poor fool he was, and that it was only in his own imagination that there were any lions at all. Do not believe your sluggish self then, and do not believe the sluggish speeches of others. There are no lions except in your own imagination. John Bunyan pictures lions at the gate of the
interpreter's house, and according to some commentators he meant the deacons and elders of the church that are outside to watch those who desire to join the church. I am one of those horrible lions; but the happy thought is that the lions are chained. Whenever you wish to join the church, if you will only have courage to come and face us who are the dreadful lions in front of the palace gate, you will find that we are chained; and what is more, if we were not chained we would not harm you. We do try to roar at those who are not our Master's children, and we would drive away all who come as thieves and robbers, for it is our duty to do so; but if you have a true heart and wish to cast in your lot with the Lord's people, you shall not find that we are any terror to you. We shall be glad to say, "Come in, thou blessed of the Lord. Wherefore standest thou without?" A believer's duty is to join a Christian church, therefore fear not the face of man. I believe that some will never come to Christ until another and a real lion shall get at them, and then they will run to Jesus for shelter, lions or no lions. I mean, if the lions of their sin should ever wake up and roar upon them terribly, then they will not say that there are lions in the way. I used to be terribly afraid to come to Christ until I came to be more afraid of my sin than of all things else in the world. And Mr. Bunyan, in one of his books, says that line pictured Christ in his own mind as standing with a drawn sword to keep him away, "but at last," says he, "I got so desperately worried by my convictions of sin that if the Lord Jesus had really stood within a pike in his hand, I would have thrown myself upon the point of it, for I felt that I must come at him or perish." Let some such desperate resolve impel you to his feet. Say-

Oh, throw yourself on the very point of the pike, for it is but in
seeming that there is either pike or point. Hasten to Jesus, even
though he seems to frown, for there is more love in a frowning Savior than in all the world beside. He cannot mean it. No sinner comes to him but Christ is more glad to receive him than the sinner is to be
received. Nothing charms Jesus like seeing a poor troubled one come to him. He will in no wise cast out one who does so. If you were walking in the fields, and a poor bird should fly into your bosom for shelter
from a hawk, would you take it out of your bosom and throw it away, and give it up to its enemies? I know that you would not. You would put
your hands about it, and say, "Poor fluttering thing, you are safe
enough now. Nobody shall harm you. You have trusted a man that has humanity, and he will take care of you." And if you fly into the bosom of Jesus Christ he will not give you over to your foe, but he will
receive you and you shall be his for ever. I have heard of a king upon the crown of whose pavilion, when it was pitched, a pair of birds came and built their nests; and he was gentle of heart and truly royal, for
he said to his chamberlain, "the tent shall never be taken down till
the birds have hatched their young. They have found shelter in a king's pavilion, and they shall not have to rue it." And oh, if you will go
like the swallows and the sparrows, and build your nests under the
eaves of Christ, who is the temple of God, you shall never have your nest pulled down. Ay, and if you can lay your young there, they shall be safe too. There is no place half so secure for our children as
Christ's bosom. All who are in Christ shall be kept in safety, and
shall be cherished and blessed. Oh, come along with you. Come, you that are afraid of lions. There are no lions. The way is clear and open, for Jesus says, "I am the way," and "Him that cometh to me I will in no
wise cast out." Why do you still say that you will come by-and-by? Do not trifle so. I had almost rather that you cried, "I will not come at
all"; such perversity might end better than feigned promises and base delays. I pray God to give you a better mind than that and may you say, "Yes, this very night, please God, I will be saved. The sun has gone
down, but there is a little twilight left, and I will yield ere
darkness quite sets in, I will now trust my Savior and hasten to him,
and seek him on my knees in prayer." May the Spirit of God sweetly lead you to do this; and oh, our heart will be so glad of it. The Lord grant
it, for his dear name's sake. Amen.

All the Day Long A sermon (No. 2150) delivered on Lord's Day Morning, June 22nd, 1890, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington,
by C. H. Spurgeon.

"Let not thine heart envy sinners: but be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long. For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off." {end: or, reward}--Proverbs 23:17, 18.

Last Lord's-day we had for our texts two promises. I trust they were full of comfort to the tried people of God, and to souls in the anguish of conviction. To-day we will consider two precepts, that we may not seem to neglect any part of the Word of God; for the precept is as divine as the promise. Here we have a command given of the Holy Spirit through the wisest of men; and therefore both on the divine and on the human side it is most weighty. I said that Solomon was the wisest of men, and yet he became in practice the most foolish. By his folly he gained a fresh store of experience of the saddest sort, and we trust that he turned to God with a penitent heart and so became wiser than ever--wiser with a second wisdom which the grace of God had given him to consecrate his earthly wisdom. He who had been a voluptuous prince became the wise preacher in Israel: let us give our hearts to know the wisdom which he taught.

The words of Solomon to his own son are not only wise, but full of tender anxiety, worthy therefore to be set in the highest degree as to value, and to be received with heartiness as the language of fatherly affection.

These verses are found in the Book of Proverbs: let them pass current as proverbs in the church of God as they did in Israel of old. Let them be "familiar in our mouths as household words." Let them be often quoted, frequently weighed, and then carried into daily practice. God grant that this particular text may become proverbial in this church from this day forward. May the Holy Ghost impress it on every memory and heart! May it be embodied in all our lives!

If you will look steadily at the text you will see, first, the
prescribed course of the godly man: "Be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long." Secondly you will note the probable interruption of that course. It occurred in those past ages and it occurs still: "Let not thine heart envy sinners." We are often tempted to repine because the wicked prosper: the fear of the Lord within us is disturbed with envious thoughts--which will lead on to murmuring and to distrust of our heavenly Father unless they be speedily checked. So foolish and ignorant are we that we lose our walk with God by fretting because of evil-doers. Thirdly we shall notice before we close, the helpful consideration, which may enable us to hold on our way and to cease from fretting about the proud prosperity of the ungodly: "For surely there is an end; and thine expectation shall not be cut off."

I. Oh, for grace to practice what the Spirit of God says with regard to our first point, the prescribed course of the believer--"Be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long"! The fear of the Lord is a brief description for true religion. It is an inward condition betokening hearty submission to our heavenly Father. It consists very much in a holy reverence of God, and a sacred awe of him. This is accompanied by a childlike trust in him which leads to loving obedience, tender submission, and lowly adoration. It is a filial fear. Not the fear which hath torment, but that which goes with joy when we "rejoice with trembling."

We must first of all be in the fear of God, before we can remain in it "all the day long." This can never be our condition except as the fruit of the new birth. To be in the fear of the Lord, "ye must be born again." The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and we are taught therein by the Holy Spirit, who is the sole author of all our grace. Where this fear exists it is the token of eternal life, and it proves the abiding indwelling of the Holy Ghost. "Happy is the man that feareth alway." "The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear him." This holy fear of the living God is the life of God showing itself in the quickened ones.

This fear, according to the text, is for all the day and for every day: the longest day is not to be too long for our reverence, nor for our obedience. If our days are lengthened until the day of life declines into the evening of old age, still are we to be in the fear of God; yea, as the day grows longer our holy fear must be deeper.

This is contrary to the habit of those persons who have a religion of show; they are very fine, very holy, very devout when anybody looks at them; this is rather the love of human approbation than the fear of the Lord. The Pharisee, with a halfpenny in one hand and a trumpet in the other, is a picture of the man who gives an alms only that his praises may be sounded forth. The Pharisee, standing at the corner of the street saying his prayers, is a picture of the man who never prays in secret but is very glib in pious assemblies. "Verily, I say unto you, they have their reward." Show religion is a vain show. Do nothing to be seen of men or you will ripen into a mere hypocrite.

Neither may we regard godliness as something off the common-- an extraordinary thing. Have not a religion of spasms. We have heard of men and women who have been singularly excellent on one occasion, but never again: they blazed out like comets, the wonders of a season, and they disappeared like comets never to be seen again. Religion produced at high pressure for a supreme occasion is not a healthy growth. We need an ordinary, commonplace, everyday godliness, which may be compared to the light of the fixed stars which shineth evermore. Religion must not be thought of as something apart from daily life; it should be the most vital part of our existence. Our praying should be like our breathing, natural and constant; our communion with God should be like our taking of food, a happy and natural privilege. Brethren, it is a great pity when people draw a hard and fast line across their life, dividing it into the sacred and the secular. Say not, "This is religion, and the other is business," but sanctify all things. Our commonest acts should be sanctified by the Word of God and prayer and thus made into sacred deeds. The best of men have the least of jar or change of tone in their lives. When the great Elijah knew that he was to be taken up, what did he do? If you knew that tonight you would be carried away to heaven, you would think of something special with which to quit this earthly scene; and yet the most fitting thing to do would be to continue in your duty, as you would have done if nothing had been revealed to you. It was Elijah's business to go to the schools of the prophets and instruct the young students; and he went about that business until he took his seat in the chariot of fire. He said to Elisha, "The Lord hath sent me to Bethel." When he had exhorted the Bethel students he thought of the other college, and said to his attendant, "The Lord hath sent me to Jericho." He took his journey with as much composure as if he had a lifetime before him, and thus fulfilled his tutorship till the Lord sent him to Jordan, whence he went up by a whirlwind into heaven. What is there better for a man of God than to abide in his calling wherein he glorifies God? That which God has given you to do, you should do. That, and nothing else, come what may. If any of you should tomorrow have a revelation that you must die, it would not be wise to go upstairs and sit down, and read, or pray, until the usual day's work was finished. Go on good woman, and send the children to school, and cook the dinner and go about the proper business of the day, and then if you are to die you will have left no ends of life's web to ravel out. So live that your death shall not be a piece of strange metal soldered on to your life, but part and parcel of all that has gone before. "Be thou in the fear of the Lord all the day long." Living or dying we are the Lord's, and let us live as such.