A Word About Godly Ambition

“I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture, so were they filled; they were filled, and their heart was exalted; therefore have they forgotten me. Therefore I will be unto them as a lion: as a leopard by the way will I observe them: I will meet them as a bear that is bereaved of her whelps, and will rend the caul of their heart, and there will I devour them like a lion: the wild beast shall tear them.” - Hosea 13:5-8.

There may also be some... who are eagerly aspiring after great things, and these may learn a lesson of sobriety. A desire to rise is laudable, but the winged horse needs to be well bitted and reined lest it fly away with its rider. Some spirits are dissatisfied with moderate success; they pine to reach the front ranks, and to climb to the high places of the earth. Ambition has become the star of their life, perhaps, I had better say-the will-o’-the-wisp of their folly.

Let them learn from this morning’s word [in Hosea above] that all is not gold that glitters, that outward prosperity doth not make men truly prosper, and that there is a way of growing rich without being rich towards God. I would lay a cool hand upon a fevered brow, and remind the ardent youth that a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Prosperous Man's Reminder," delivered October 27, 1878. Image by Kamal Hamid on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.

He Came To Lift Us Up

The Fall was so grievous that he must come right down into the place of our ruin; he must come to the dunghill that he might lift us out of it. God sat in heaven and said, “Let there be light,” and the darkness fled before him, but he could not sit in heaven and save sinners: he must needs come into the world to do so; down into this polluted creation the eternal Creator must himself descend. Lo, there in Bethlehem’s manger he sleeps, and on a woman’s breast he hangs! He cannot save sinners, so great is their ruin, unless he becomes incarnate and takes upon himself our nature.

And being here, think how dreadful must be the ruin when we see that he cannot return, saying, “It is finished,” until first of all he dies. That sacred head must be crowned with thorns, those eyes must be closed in the darkness of the tomb, that body must be pierced even to its heart, and then must lie a chill, cold corpse in the grave, ere man can be redeemed; and all that shame, and suffering, and death were but the outer shell of what the Savior suffered, for he passed under divine wrath and bare a load such as would have crushed the whole race of men had they been left to bear it.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Faithful Saying," delivered May 26, 1878. Image by Anita Ritenour on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.

It Is Because Of His Mercy

The principle which rules our life is not mercenary, we do not expect to earn a reward, neither are we flogged to duty by dread of punishment. We are under grace - that is to say, we are treated on the principle of mercy and love, and not on that of justice and desert. Freely, of his own undeserved favor, God has forgiven us for Christ’s sake. He has regarded us with favor, not because we deserved it, but simply because he willed to do so, according to that ancient declaration, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.” 

The Lord did not choose us because of any goodness in us, but he hath saved us and called us according to the purpose of his own will. Moreover, our continuance in a state of salvation depends upon the same grace which first placed us there. We do not stand or fall according to our personal merit; but because Jesus lives we live, because Jesus is accepted we are accepted, because Jesus is beloved we are beloved: in a word, our standing is not based upon merit, but upon mercy; not upon our changeable character, but upon the immutable mercy of God.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Believers Free From The Dominion Of Sin," delivered April 21, 1878. Image by on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.

If You Are Not Offended By Him

But what blessedness awaits you if you are not offended in Jesus. You are blessed while you are waiting for him, but your best reward is to come, In that hereafter, when the morning breaks on the everlasting shore, how will they be ashamed and disgusted with themselves who sought their own honor and esteem, and denied their Lord and Master! Where will Demas be then, who chose the present world and forsook his Lord? Where will that son of perdition be who chose the thirty pieces of silver and sold the Prince of Life? What shame will seize upon the coward, the fearful, the unbelieving, the people who checked conscience and stifled conviction because a fool’s laugh was too much for them! Then they will have to bear the Savior’s scorn and the everlasting contempt of all holy beings.

But the men who stood meekly forward to confess their Lord, who were willing to be set in the pillory of scorn for Christ, ready to be spit upon for him, ready to be called ill names for his sake, ready to lose their character, their substance, their liberty, and their lives for him - oh how calmly will they await the great assize*, when loyalty shall receive honor from the great King. How bright will be their faces when he that sitteth on the throne will say, “They confessed me before men, and now will I confess them before my Father which is in heaven. These are mine, my Father,” says he “they are mine. They clave unto me, and now I own them as my jewels.”

These are they that followed the Lamb whithersoever he went. They read the word, and what they found there they believed. They saw their Lord’s will in the Scriptures, and they labored to do it. They were faithful to conscience and to conviction, and the Spirit dwelt in them and guided their lives; they shall be the Redeemer’s crown and the beloved of his Father. They were the poor of this world; they were considered to be mere idiots by some, and were thought to have gone mad by others; but they are the Lord’s own elect.

Jesus will say, “They were with me in my tribulation; they were with me in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, and now they are mine, and they shall be with me on my throne. Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from before the foundations of the world.”

* - the sitting of a court

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Offended With Christ." Image by Patrick on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.

Bow Before His Majesty

A man is not saved until he bows before the supreme majesty of God. He may say, “I believe in Jesus,” but if he goes on to follow out his own desires, and to gratify his own passions, he is a mere pretender, a wolf in the clothing of a sheep. Dead faith will save no man; it is not even as good as the faith of devils, for they “believe and tremble,” and these men believe in a fashion which makes them brazen in their iniquity. No, salvation means being saved from the domination of self and sin; salvation means being made to long after likeness to God, being helped by divine grace to reach to that likeness, and living after the mind and will of the Most High.

Submission to God is the salvation which we preach, not a mere deliverance from eternal burnings, but deliverance from present rebellion, deliverance from the sin which is the fuel of those flames unquenchable. There must be conformity to the eternal laws of the universe, and according to these God must be first and man must bow to him: nothing can be right till this is done.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Reason Why Many Cannot Find Peace," delivered April 7, 1878. Image by Doug Aghassi on Flickr under Creative Commons License, without alteration.

Lead Us Not Into Temptation

I am afraid that badly as some behave under temptation, others of us might have done worse if we had been there. I like, if I can, to form a kind judgment of the erring; and it helps me to do so when I imagine myself to have been subject to their trials, and to have looked at things from their point of view, and to have been in their circumstances, and to have nothing of the grace of God to help me: should I not have fallen as badly as they have done, or even gone beyond them in evil? May not the day come to you who show no mercy in which you may have to ask mercy for yourselves?...

Now, whenever you see the drunkard reel through the streets do not glory over him, but say, “Lead us not into temptation.” When you take down the papers and read that men of position have betrayed their trust for gold, condemn their conduct if you will, but do not exult in your own steadfastness, rather cry in all humility, “Lead us not into temptation.” When the poor girl seduced from the paths of virtue comes across your way, look not on her with the scorn that would give her up to destruction, but say, “Lead us not into temptation.”

It would teach us milder and gentler ways with sinful men and women if this prayer were as often in our hearts as it is upon our lips.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Lead Us Not Into Temptation." Image by Moyan_Brenn on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The Modern God who is not Divine

“God is angry with the wicked every day.”

The wise men of modern thought have made a new God of late - one of those gods newly come up that our fathers knew not, and who is quite unknown to the Bible, as false a god as Apollo or Baal. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob these deep thinkers cannot endure, but if you say that God is angry with the wicked every day, these modern god-makers tell you that he is too loving for that - that he cannot possibly be angry, but loves all, has redeemed all, and will in the long run save all, including Satan himself.

They adore a god made of putty or of wax - plastic, effeminate, molluscous, with no masculine faculty about him, and no quality that entitles him to the respect of just and honest men, for a being who cannot be angry at wrongdoing is destitute of one of the essential virtues, and a moral Ruler who is not angry with the wicked, and who refuses to punish crime, is not divine.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Reasons For Turning To The Lord," delivered January 13, 1878. Image by davedehetre on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

When the Children of God Mix with the World

The chosen family was intended by the divine purpose to dwell alone and maintain a peculiar walk of separation. The seed of Abraham was ordained to be in the highest sense a Nonconformist tribe, a race of separatists. Their God meant them to be a distinct people, entirely severed from all the nation among whom they dwelt; and so they must be, but the inclination to be like their neighbors was very manifest in Jacob’s family....

Children of God cannot mix with the world without mischief. The world does hurt to us and we to it when once we begin to be of the world and like it. It is an ill-assorted match. Fire and water were never meant to be blended. The seed of the woman must not mix with the seed of the serpent. It was when the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair, and took of them as they pleased, that the deluge came and swept away the population of the earth. Abundant evil comes of joining together what God has put asunder.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Family Reformation." Image by Jöshua Barnett on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The Righteousness of Christ Imputed to Me

As he takes thy sin and lays it upon Christ so he takes Christ’s righteousness and lays it upon thee. He looks at thee as if thou wert as righteous as his Son who represents thee. He treats thee as if thou hadst been obedient to all his law; he looks upon the model man Christ Jesus, the perfect humanity, and he sees in Christ all his people, and treats them accordingly. He looks upon his people as if they themselves had magnified the law and made it honorable by a sinless life. Wondrous doctrine this, but he that believes it shall find rest unto his soul; and it is because of it that we are authorized to come forth this day and declare the day of salvation. The guilt of the believing sinner is put away, for Christ has carried it; and now righteousness belongs to the sinner, for God imputes it to him without works: therefore this is the day of salvation.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Day Of Salvation," delivered January 13, 1878. Image by Paul Bica on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Sins Of Ignorance

Inadvertence is a kind of acted ignorance: a man frequently does wrong for want of thought, through not considering the bearing of his action, or even thinking at all. He carelessly and hastily blunders into the course which first suggests itself, and errs because he did not study to be right. There is very much sin of this kind committed every day. There is no intent to do wrong, and yet wrong is done. Culpable neglect creates a thousand faults. “Evil is wrought by want of thought as well as want of heart.” Sins of inadvertence, therefore, are undoubtedly abundant among us, and in these busy, thoughtless, railway days they are apt to increase.

We do not take time enough to examine our actions: we do not take good heed to our steps. Life should be a careful work of art, in which every single line and tint should be the fruit of study and thought, like the paintings of the great master who was wont to say, “I paint for eternity”; but alas life is often slurred over like those hasty productions of the scene painter in which present effect alone is studied, and tile canvas becomes a mere daub of colors hastily laid on. We seem intent to do much rather than to do well: we want to cover space rather than to reach perfection. This is not wise. O that every single thought were conformed to the will of God.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Sins Of Ignorance," delivered November 25, 1877. Image by .Bala on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

This Is What I Know

Beloved, I know that I have been converted, for I am sure that there is a change of heart in me; nevertheless, my hope of eternal life does not hang upon the inward fact. I rest in the external fact that God hath revealed himself in Jesus as blotting out the sin of all his believing people, and, as a believer, I have the word of God as my guarantee of forgiveness. This is my rest. Because I am a believer in Christ Jesus, therefore have I hope, therefore have I joy and peace, since God hath declared that “he that believeth in him hath everlasting life.” This joy can only safely come through believing, and I pray you, brothers and sisters, never be drifted away from child-like faith in what God hath said.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "A Round Of Delights," delivered November 11, 1877. Image by James Jordan on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The Mercy Of God To The Nations

How matchless is his patience! How enduring his mercy! The wicked provoke him, and he feels the provocation, but yet he does not smite. Week after week they still insult him, they even touch the apple of his eye by persecuting his people, but still he lets the lifted thunder drop, and gives space for repentance. He sends them messages of mercy, he implores them to turn from the error of their ways; but they harden their hearts, they blaspheme him, they take his holy name in vain. Still, by the space of many years he bears with their incessant rebellions, and though he is grieved with the hardness of their hearts, he keepeth back his indignation.

This patience is shown, not here and there to one of our race, but to myriads of the human family, and not for one generation only, but from generation after generation still doth his good Spirit strive, still doth he stretch out his hands all the day long even to the disobedient and to the gainsayers. Not willing that any should perish, he waiteth long and patiently, because he delighteth in mercy. Equally wonderful, I think, is the power which God hath over his own mind in the ultimate pardoning of many of these transgressors. It is marvellous that he should be able to forgive any, and so perfectly to forgive.

It often happeneth to us that we feel compelled to say when greatly offended, “I can forgive you, but I fear I shall never forget the wrong.” God goeth far beyond this, for he casteth all our sins behind his back, and he declares that he will not remember them against us any more for ever. What, never! Such deep offenses; such heinous crimes! Such provoking transgressions! Shall they never be remembered? What, not even remembered? Shall there not be at least a frown, or a degree of coolness on account of them? No. “I have blotted out, as a thick cloud, thy transgressions, and, as a cloud, thy sins." It shows the great-mindedness of God that he should be able to act thus, and to act thus towards the very chief of sinners.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Magnanimity Of God," delivered October 21, 1877. Image by Xristoforos on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

He Is The Righteous Father

Worldly wisdom talks of “the universal fatherhood of God,” and babbles for ever about that mere dream, that fiction of folly, against which the Bible is a plain and pointed protest. Universal Fatherhood indeed, when our Lord Jesus said, “If God were your Father ye would love me, for I proceeded forth and came from God. Ye are of your father the devil, and the lusts of your father ye will do.” Is it not described as a special wonder of love that we should be called the sons of God? (1 John 3:1.)  Did not the Holy Ghost say by his servant John, “In this the children of God are manifest, and the children of the devil; whoever doeth not righteousness is not of God, neither he that loveth not his brother.”

The philosophic Christian world knows an effeminate, indiscriminate fatherhood, but not “the righteous Father.” It will not bow before the majesty of his justice. According to the tenor of its teaching sin is a misfortune, transgression, a mere trifle, and the souls that suffer for wilful guilt are objects to be pitied rather than to be blamed. The world’s “thinkers” are continually drawing upon our feelings to make us pity those who are punished, but they have little to say in order to make us hate the evil which deserved the doom. Sin according to them does not of itself demand punishment, but penalties are to be exacted or remitted for the general good, if indeed they are to be executed at all. All necessary and inevitable connection between guilt and its punishment is denied. They dare to call justice revenge, and speak of atonement as if were a solatium for private pique. The Christian world does not seem to have learned the truth that “a God all mercy were a God unjust,” and that a God unjust would soon be discovered to be a God without love, in fact, no God whatever. “Righteous Father!” This is the peculiar revelation which is received by those who have been taught of the Holy Spirit, and to this day Jesus Christ may say, “O righteous Father, the world hath not known thee.”

Men kick against the doctrine of the atonement, they quarrel with substitution, they are fierce in their sarcasms against the mention of the precious blood of Christ, and sneer superciliously at those who hold fast the old truth. They stumble at this stumbling stone, and strive evermore to overthrow this rock of truth; and yet, depend upon it, this is the test question by which we shall know whether a man knoweth God aright or knoweth him not.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Righteous Father Known And Loved," delivered October 14, 1877. Image by Jeff Pang on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Let Us Not Forget The Substitute

Sin with many streams had been flowing down the hills of time and forming by their dread accumulation one vast and fathomless lake. Into this the sinner’s substitute must be plunged. He had a baptism to be baptized with and He must endure it, or all His chosen must perish forever. That was a day of vengeance when all the waves and billows of divine wrath went over His innocent head.

Came at length the dreadful night; 
Vengeance with its iron rod 
Stood, and with collected might 
Bruised the harmless Lamb of God. 
See, my soul, thy Savior see, 
Prostrate in Gethsemane!

From His blessed person there distilled a bloody sweat, for His soul was exceedingly sorrowful even unto death. All through the night with scourgings and buffetings and spittings of cruel men, He was tortured and abused; He was rejected, despised, maltreated, and pierced in His inmost soul by man’s scorn and cruelty. Then in the morning He was taken out to be crucified, for nothing could suffice short of His death. The outward sorrows of crucifixion ye know, but the inward griefs ye do not know, for what our Lord endured was beyond what any mortal man could have borne. The infinity of the Godhead aided the manhood, and I doubt not Hart was right in saying that He

Bore all Incarnate God could bear 
With strength enough but none to spare. 

 It was an awful “day of vengeance of our God,” for the voice cried aloud, “Awake, O sword, against my shepherd, against the man that is my fellow, saith the Lord of hosts.” The doctrine that justice was executed upon our great Substitute is the most important that was ever propounded in the hearing of men; it is the sum and substance of the whole gospel, and I fear that the church which rejects it is no longer a church of Christ.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Proclamation Of Acceptance And Vengeance," delivered August 12, 1877. Image by mindfulness on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Sin And Grace Cannot Agree

Sin and grace can no more agree than fire and water. Even the God of peace never tries to establish a peace between good and evil, for it would be monstrous even if it were possible. The way to peace is the way of holiness. Cast out sin, and you cast out contention. Subdue iniquity, and peace wins the victory.

Beloved, it is of no use for us to seek happiness of life except by the way of holiness of conversation*. I have already declared that we have peace with God through the atoning work of our Lord Jesus Christ; but for deep calm of heart and quiet of conscience there must be a work of sanctification within us wrought by the power which raised Jesus Christ from the dead. Sin is our enemy, and the new life within us is heartily at enmity with evil, and therefore peace can never be proclaimed in the triple kingdom of our nature until we always do that which is well pleasing in the sight of the Lord, through Jesus Christ.

* - In modern English the old word "conversation" means "life" or "lifestyle."

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The God Of Peace And Our Sanctification," delivered August 5, 1877. Image by Jenny Downing on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

When A Child Of God Falls

I may be addressing a child of God, or one who thought that he was a child of God, who has grievously fallen. My brother, go thou with haste to thy Lord, and acknowledge thine iniquity. He bids thee come. Only confess thine iniquity in which thou hast transgressed against the Lord, and he will have mercy upon thee now. And oh, what a relief it is when you have discharged the load, and when the voice of mercy has said, “Thou art forgiven; go in peace.” What would I give for that, says one. Well, thou needest not give anything. Do but confess, and if thou confess into the ear of God, with faith in his dear Son, for Jesus’ sake he will accept thee, and seal thy pardon home to thy soul. Come and unburden thy spirit at the bleeding feet of the Redeemer, and leap for joy.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Danger Of Unconfessed Sin." Image by Luis Argerich on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The Proof That I Was Pardoned

The really pardoned man also desires to be rid of all sin. I know some who can never hope to obtain forgiveness, for they continue in their iniquity. Can a woman expect to find peace with God while she goes on taking her sly drop and becoming intoxicated in private? Can a man find joy in God who still clings to the drunkard’s vice? Will God receive into his favor those who continue to practice dishonesty in trade? Shall sin be fondled and yet pardoned? No one dares to expect it, and yet deceitful hearts attempt to think so. They will condemn other people’s pet sins, and yet excuse their own. They pretend to much sorrow for sin in. general, and yet hold to one favourite sin in particular. Their delicate Agag must live. Kill all the rest, but surely as to this one the bitterness of death has passed!

O sirs, be not deceived; you must be willing for all sin to go. If you desire one sin to live you will not live yourself. The honest-hearted sinner - he whom the Lord absolves of iniquity - desires to see all his sins brought forth and hung up like the kings whom Joshua found in the cave at Makkedah - hung up in the face of the sun that they might die the death.

The dearest idol I have known, 
Whate’er that idol be, 
Help me to tear it from thy throne, 
And worship only thee. 

We are not perfect, but every really pardoned man wishes that he were so. Though there are sins into which we fall there are no sins which we love. Though we come short of the glory of God, yet we do not rest happy in falling short, and we can never be wholly content till it is no longer so with us. Beloved, the pardoned man is cleansed from the guile which would ask for quarter for darling sins.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Guile Forsaken When Guilt Is Forgiven," delivered March 25, 1877. Image by zenera on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

Out Of Gratitude

The man who has had much forgiven will be sure to love much in return. Gratitude to God is a grand mainspring for holy action. Those who do right in order to be rewarded for it are acting selfishly. Selfishness is at the bottom of their character, they abstain from sin only lest self should suffer, and they obey only that self may be safe and happy. The man who does right, not because of heaven or hell, but because God has saved him, and he loves the God who saved him, is the truly rightloving man. He who loves right because God loves it has risen out of the bog of selfishness and is capable of the loftiest virtue, yea, he has in him a living spring, which will well up and flow forth in holy living so long as he exists.

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "For Whom Is The Gospel Meant?," delivered March 25, 1877. Image by Andrew Morrell on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

A Great Transformation

I sometimes meet with persons who claim to be Christians and believers and all that, but they have never experienced any change that they can remember from their babyhood. Well, dear friend, there must have been such a change if you are a Christian. I will not say that you ought to know the day and the hour, but, depend upon it, if you are now what you were when you were born, you are in the gall of bitterness and in the bonds of iniquity. If there has not been a turning you are going the wrong way; every man must be turned from the way in which father Adam set his face, for our face is towards sin and destruction, and we must be turned right round so as to have our faces towards holiness and everlasting life. Where there is not such a turning there is the most solemn cause for heart-searching and humiliation and for the seeking of salvation.

Have you undergone a great transformation?

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Idols Abolished." Image by on Flickr under Creative Commons License.

The Sinner's Savior

Gospel blessings are intended for those who have transgressed and are under condemnation, for who else would value forgiveness and justification? I know myself of no gospel for men who have not sinned. I know of no New Testament promises intended for those who have never broken the law; but I perceive all through the wondrous pages of the gospel that mercy’s eye and heart are set upon those who are guilty and self-condemned.

The Eternal Watcher is looking over the vast ocean of life, not that he may spy out the vessels which sail along proudly in safety, but that he may see those who are almost wrecks. “He looketh upon men, and if any say, I have sinned, and perverted that which was right, and it profiteth me not; he will deliver his soul from going into the pit, and his life shall see the light.” Our Lord was more moved at the sight of sickness than of health, and wrought his greatest wonders among fevers, leprosies, and palsies. This is the end and object of the gospel, namely, to save the unrighteous; the God of the gospel is he that “justifieth the ungodly,” “for when we were yet without strength, Christ died for the ungodly.” “God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”

From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Sinner's Savior," delivered October 1, 1876. Image by Jenny Downing on Flickr under Creative Commons License.