The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

upon it is — “He said this day, implying that he was only to be troubled in this life, by being stoned to death, but that God would have mercy on his soul, seeing that he had made a full confession of his sin.” And I, too, am inclined, from reading the chapter, to concur in the idea of my venerable and now glorified predecessor, Dr. Gill, in believing that Achan really was saved, although he was put to death for the crime, as an example. For you will observe how kindly Joshua spoke to him. He said, “My son, please give glory to the Lord God of Israel, and make confession to him, and tell me now what you have done; do not hide it from me.” And you find Achan making a very full confession. He says, “Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus and thus have I done. When I saw among the spoils a goodly Babylonish garment, and two hundred shekels of silver, and a wedge of gold of fifty shekels weight, then I coveted them, and took them; and, behold, they are hidden in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it.” It seems so full a confession, that if I might be allowed to judge, I would say, “I hope to meet Achan the sinner, before the throne of God.” But I find Matthew Henry has no such opinion; and many other expositors consider that as his body was destroyed, so was his soul. I have, therefore, selected his case, as being one of doubtful repentance. Ah! dear friends, it has been my lot to stand by many a deathbed, and to see many such a repentance as this; I have seen the man, when worn to a skeleton, sustained by pillows in his bed; and he has said, when I have spoken to him about judgment to come, “Sir, I feel I have been guilty, but Christ is good; I trust in him.” And I have said within myself, “I believe the man’s soul is safe.” But I have always come away with the melancholy reflection that I had no proof of it, beyond his own words; for it needs proof in acts and in future life, in order to sustain any firm conviction of a man’s salvation. You know that great fact, that a physician once kept a record of a thousand people who thought they were dying, and whom he thought were penitents; he wrote their names down in a book as those, who, if they had died, would go to heaven; they did not die, they lived; and he says that out of the whole thousand he had not three people who turned out well afterwards, but they returned to their sins again, and were as bad as ever. Ah! dear friends, I hope none of you will have such a deathbed repentance as that. I hope your minister or your parents will not have to stand by your bedside, and then go away and say, “Poor fellow, I hope he is saved. But alas! deathbed repentances are such flimsy things; such poor, such trivial grounds of hope, that I am afraid, after all, his soul may be lost.” Oh, to die with a full assurance; oh! to die with an abundant entrance, leaving a testimony behind that we have departed this life in peace! That is a far happier way than to die in a doubtful manner, lying sick, hovering between two worlds, and neither ourselves nor yet our friends knowing to which of the two worlds we are going. May God grant us grace to give in our lives evidences of true conversion, that our case may not be doubtful!

      The Repentance of Despair

       Judas — I have sinned. {Matthew 27:4}

      13. V. I shall not detain you too long, I trust, but I must now give you another bad case; the worst of all. It is the THE REPENTANCE OF DESPAIR. Will you turn to Matthew 27:4? There you have a dreadful case of the repentance of despair. You will recognise the character the moment I read the verse: “And Judas said, I have sinned.” Yes, Judas the traitor, who had betrayed his Master, when he saw that his Master was condemned, “repented, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood, and cast down the pieces in the temple, and went” and what? — “and hanged himself.” Here is the worst kind of repentance of all; in fact, I do not know that I am justified in calling it repentance; it must be called remorse of conscience. But Judas did confess his sin, and then went and hanged himself. Oh! that dreadful, that terrible, that hideous confession of despair. Have you never seen it? If you never have, then bless God that you never were called to see such a sight. I have seen it once in my life, I pray God I may never see it again, — the repentance of the man who sees death staring him in the face, and who says, “I have sinned.” You tell him that Christ has died for sinners; and he answers, “There is no hope for me. I have cursed God to his face; I have defied him; my day of grace I know is past; my conscience is seared with a hot iron; I am dying, and I know I shall be lost!” Such a case as that happened long ago, you know, and is on record — the case of Francis {c} Spira — the most dreadful case, perhaps, except that of Judas, which is upon record in the memory of man. Oh! my hearers, will any of you have such a repentance? If you do, it will be a beacon to all people who sin in the future; if you have such a repentance as that, it will be a warning to generations yet to come. In the life of Benjamin Keach — and he also was one of my predecessors — I find the case of a man who had been a professor of religion, but had departed from the profession, and had gone into awful sin. When he came to die, Keach, with many other friends, went to see him, but they could never stay with him more than five minutes at a time, for he said, “Go away; it is of no use your coming to me; I have sinned away the Holy Spirit; I am like Esau, I have sold my birthright, and though I seek it carefully with tears, I can never find it again.” And then he would repeat dreadful words, like these: “My mouth is filled with gravel stones, and I drink wormwood day and night. Do not tell me, do not tell me about Christ! I know he is a Saviour, but I hate him and he hates me. I know I must die; I know I must perish!” And then followed doleful cries, and hideous noises, such as no one could bear. They returned again in his placid moments only to stir him up once more, and make him cry out in his despair. “I am lost! I am lost! It is of no use your telling me anything about it!” Ah! there may be a man here who may have such a death as that; let me warn him, before he comes to it; and may God the Holy Spirit grant that that man may be turned to God, and made a true penitent, and then he need not have any more fear; for he who has had his sins washed away in a Saviour’s blood, need not have any remorse for his sins, for they are pardoned through the Redeemer.

      The Repentance of the Saint

       Job. — I have sinned. {Job 7:20}

      14. VI. And now I come into daylight. I have been taking you through dark and dreary confessions; I shall detain you there no longer, but bring you out to the two good confessions which I have to read to you. The first is in Job 7:20: “I have sinned; what shall I do to you, oh you preserver of men?” This is the repentance of the saint. Job was a saint, but he sinned. This is the repentance of the man who is a child of God already, an acceptable repentance before God. But as I intend to dwell upon this in the evening, I shall now leave it, for fear of wearying you. David was an example of this kind of repentance, and I would have you carefully study his penitential psalms, the language of which is always full of weeping humility and earnest penitence.

      The Blessed Confession

       The Prodigal — I have sinned. {Luke 15:18}

      15. VII. I come now to the last instance, which I shall mention; it is the case of the prodigal. In Luke 15:18, we find the prodigal saying: “Father I have sinned.” Oh, here is a blessed confession! Here is what proves a man to be a regenerate character — “Father, I have sinned.” Let me picture the scene. There is the prodigal; he has run away from a good home and a kind father, and he has spent all his money with prostitutes, and now he has none left. He goes to his old companions, and asks them for relief. They laugh him to scorn. “Oh,” he says, “you have drunk my wine many a day; I have always bankrolled you in all our revelries; will you not help me?” “Go away!” they say; and he is turned out of doors. He goes to all his friends with whom he had associated, but no man gives him anything. At last a certain citizen of the country said, — “You want something to do, do you? Well go and feed my swine.” The poor prodigal, the son of a rich landowner, who had a great fortune of his own, has to go out to feed swine; and he a Jew too! — the worst employment (to his mind,) which he could have. See him there, in squalid rags, feeding swine; and what are his wages? Why, so little, that he “would fain have filled his belly with the husks the swine eat, but no man gave to him.” Look, there he is, with the fellow commoners of the stye, in all his mire and filthiness. Suddenly a thought put there by the good Spirit, strikes