The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

to you. I rejoice to know that the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of love, and the ministry of the Spirit is endeared to me in nothing as much as this, that he takes the things of Jesus, and shows them to me, spreading abroad the Saviour’s love in my heart, until it constrains all my passions, awakens the most tender of all tender emotions, reveals my union to him, and occasions my strong desire to serve him. Do not let love appear to you as a stern duty, or an arduous effort; rather look to Jesus, yield yourself up to his gracious charms until you are ravished with his beauty and preciousness. But ah! if you are slack in the proofs you give, I shall know you are not walking with him in holy communion.

      18. And allow me to suggest one profitable way of improving the ordinance of the Lord’s Supper. That is: while you are partaking of it, my friends, renew your dedication to Christ. Seek this morning to give yourselves over afresh to your Master. Say with your hearts, what I shall now say with my lips: “Oh! my precious Lord Jesus, I do love you; you know I have in some degree given myself to you up to this time, thanks to your grace! Blessed be your name, that you have accepted the deeds of so unworthy a servant. Oh Lord, I am conscious that I have not devoted myself to you as I ought to; I know that in many things I have come short. I will make no resolution to live better for your honour, but I will offer the prayer that you would help me to do so. Oh! Lord, I give to you my health, my life, my talents, my power, and all I have! You have bought me, and bought me wholly: then, Lord, take me this morning, baptize me in the Spirit; let me now feel an entire affection for you. May I have that love which conquers sin and purifies the soul — that love which can dare danger and encounter difficulties for your sake. May I henceforth and for ever be a consecrated vessel of mercy, having been chosen by you from before the foundation of the world! Help me to hold fast that solemn choice of your service which I desire this morning, by your grace to renew.” And when you drink the blood of Christ, and eat his flesh spiritually — in the type and in the emblem, then I beseech you, let the solemn remembrance of his agony and suffering for you inspire you with a greater love, that you may be more devoted to his service than ever. If that is done, I shall have the best of churches; if that is done by us, the Holy Spirit helping us to carry it out, we shall all be good men and true, holding fast by him, and we shall not need to be ashamed in the awful day.

      19. As for you that have never given yourselves to Christ, I dare not tell you to renew a vow which you have never made; nor dare I ask you to make a vow, which you would never keep. I can only pray for you, that God the Saviour would be pleased to reveal himself to your heart, that “a sense of blood bought pardon” may “dissolve your hearts of stone”; that you may be brought to give yourselves to him, knowing that if you have done that, you have the best proof that he has given himself for you. May God Almighty bless you: those of you who depart, may he dismiss with his blessing: and those who remain, may you receive his favour, for Christ’s sake. Amen.

      (We suspect communion was held after this service based on how Spurgeon concluded his message. Editor.)

      The Blood Shedding

      No. 118-3:89. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, February 22, 1857, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

       Without shedding of blood is no remission. {Hebrews 9:22}

      1. I will show you three fools. One is that soldier, who has been wounded on the field of battle, grievously wounded, almost to death; the surgeon is by his side, and the soldier asks him a question. Listen, and judge his folly. What question does he ask? Does he raise his eyes with eager anxiety and enquire if the wound is mortal, if the practitioner’s skill can suggest the means of healing, or if the remedies are within reach and the medicine at hand? No, nothing of the sort; strange to tell, he asks, “Can you inform me with what sword I was wounded, and by what Russian I have been thus grievously mauled? I want,” he adds, “to learn every minute particular respecting the origin of my wound.” The man is delirious or his head is affected. Surely such questions at such a time are proof enough that he is bereft of his senses.

      2. There is another fool. The storm is raging, the ship is flying impetuously before the gale, the dark cloud moves swiftly over head, the masts are creaking, the sails are ripped to rags, and still the gathering tempest grows more fierce. Where is the captain? Is he busily engaged on the deck, is he manfully facing the danger, and skilfully suggesting means to avert it? No sir, he has retired to his cabin, and there with studious thoughts and crazy fancies he is speculating on the place where this storm took its rise. “It is mysterious, this wind; no one ever yet” he says, “has been able to discover its origin.” And, so reckless of the vessel, the lives of the passengers, and his own life, he is careful only to solve his curious questions. The man is mad, sir; take the rudder from his hand; he is completely gone mad! If he should ever get to shore, shut him up as a hopeless lunatic.

      3. The third fool I shall doubtless find among yourselves. You are sick and wounded with sin, you are in the storm and hurricane of Almighty vengeance, and yet the question which you would ask of me, this morning, would be, “Sir, what is the origin of evil?” You are mad, Sir, spiritually mad; that is not the question you would ask if you were in a sane and healthy state of mind; your question would be: “How can I get rid of the evil?” Not, “How did it come into the world?” but “How am I to escape from it?” Not, “How is it that hail descends from heaven upon Sodom?” but “How may I, like Lot, escape out of the city to a Zoar.” Not, “How is it that I am sick?” but “Are there medicines that will heal me? Is there a physician to be found that can restore my soul to health?” Ah! you trifle with subtleties while you neglect certainties. More questions have been asked concerning the origin of evil than upon anything else. Men have puzzled their heads, and twisted their brains into knots, in order to understand what men can never know — how evil came into this world, and how its entrance is consistent with divine goodness? The broad fact is this, there is evil; and your question should be, “How can I escape from the wrath to come, which is engendered of this evil?” In answering that question this verse stands right in the middle of the way (like the angel with the sword, who once stopped Balaam on his road to Barak,) “Without shedding of blood is no remission.” Your true need is to know how you can be saved; if you are aware that your sin must be pardoned or punished, your question will be, “How can it be pardoned?” and then point blank in the very teeth of your enquiry, there stands out this fact: “Without shedding of blood there is no remission.” Notice this is not merely a Jewish maxim; it is a worldwide and eternal truth. It does not pertain to the Hebrews only, but to the Gentiles likewise. Never in any time, never in any place, never in any person, can there be remission apart from shedding of blood. This great fact, I say, is stamped on nature; it is an essential law of God’s moral government, it is one of the fundamental principles which can neither be shaken nor denied. Never can there be any exception to it; it stands the same in every place throughout all ages — “Without shedding of blood there is no remission.” It was so with the Jews; they had no remission without the shedding of blood. Some things under the Jewish law might be cleansed by water or by fire, but in no case where absolute sin was concerned was there ever purification without blood — teaching this doctrine, that blood, and blood alone, must be applied for the remission of sin. Indeed the very heathen seem to have an inkling of this fact. Do not I see their knives gory with the blood of victims? Have I not heard horrible tales of human offerings, of holocausts, of sacrifices; and what do these mean, except that there lies deep in the human heart, deep as the very existence of man, this truth, — “that without shedding of blood there is no remission.” And I assert once more, that even in the hearts and consciences of my hearers there is something which will never let them believe in remission apart from a shedding of blood. This is the grand truth of Christianity, and it is a truth which I will endeavour now to burn into your memory; and may God by his grace bless it to your souls. “Without shedding of blood is no remission.”

      4. First, let me show you the blood shedding, before I begin to dwell upon the text. Is there not a special blood shedding meant? Yes, there was a shedding of most precious blood, to which I must now refer you. I shall not tell you now of massacres and murders, nor of rivers of blood of goats and rams. There was a blood shedding once, which did all other shedding of blood by far outdo; it