The Christian man must not expect to go to heaven without opposition. A soldier who never meets an enemy at all is not renowned.... The man who is scarred and gashed, maimed and wounded, he is the hero to whom men pay homage. You must fight if you would reign. Your predecessors swam through seas of blood to win the crown; and, though the form of battle may be changed, yet the spirit of the enemy is unaltered; you must still contend against sin and bear up under trouble, for only through much tribulation will you inherit the kingdom of God.
It is a warfare, brethren, for all these reasons, and yet more so because we must always be upon the watch against danger. In a battle no man is safe. Where bullets fly, who can reckon upon life a moment? Brethren, the age is peculiarly dangerous. Perhaps every preacher before me has said as much, and every preacher after me will say the same for his times — yet still, I say, in this peculiar age there are a thousand perils for the soul, from superstition on the one hand and scepticism on the other; from rude self-reliance and indolent trust in others, from a wicked world and an apostate church. You must not wonder that it is so, for war is raging. The enemy has not laid down his weapons, the war drum is still beaten; therefore do not lay down your arms, but fight manfully for your King and country — for Christ and for his church.
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "The Hand Of God In The History Of A Man," delivered October 10, 1875. Image by nosha on Flickr under Creative Commons License.
No comments:
Post a Comment