The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

son.” Well, young man, will you kick against love like that — love that will bear your kicks, and will not turn around against you, but love you straight on still. But perhaps that woman — I saw her weep just now — had a mother, who has gone long ago, and she was married to a brutal husband, and at last left a poor widow; she calls to mind the days of her childhood, when the big Bible was brought out and read around the hearth, and “Our Father who is in heaven” was their nightly prayer. Now, perhaps, God is beginning some good thing in her heart. Oh! that he would bring her now, though seventy years of age, to love the Saviour! Then would she have the beginning of life over again in her last days, which will be made her best days.

      14. VI. One more point, and then we are finished. Rahab’s faith was a SANCTIFYING FAITH. Did Rahab continue to be a prostitute after she had faith? No, she did not. I do not believe she was a prostitute at the time the men went to her house, though the name still stuck to her, as such ill names will; but I am sure she was not afterwards, for Salmon the prince of Judah married her, and her name is recorded among the ancestors of our Lord Jesus Christ. She became after that a woman eminent for piety, walking in the fear of God. Now, you may have a dead faith which will ruin your soul. The faith that will save you is a faith which sanctifies. “Ah!” says the drunkard, “I like the gospel, sir; I believe in Christ”: then he will go over to the Blue Lion Pub tonight, and get drunk. Sir, that is not the believing in Christ that is of any use. “Yes,” says another, “I believe in Christ”; and when he gets outside he will begin to talk lightly, frothy words, perhaps lascivious ones, and sin as before. Sir, you speak falsely; you do not believe in Christ. That faith which saves the soul is a real faith, and a real faith sanctifies men. It makes them say, “Lord, you have forgiven my sins; I will sin no more. You have been so merciful to me, I will renounce my guilt; so kindly have you treated me, so lovingly have you embraced me, Lord, I will serve you until I die; and if you will give me grace, and help me so to be, I will be as holy as you are.” You cannot have faith, and yet live in sin. To believe is to be holy. The two things must go together. That faith is a dead faith, a corrupt faith, a rotten faith, which lives in sin that grace may abound. Rahab was a sanctified woman. Oh that God might sanctify some that are here! The world has been trying all manner of processes to reform men: there is only one thing that ever will reform them, and that is, faith in the preached gospel. But in this age preaching is much despised. You read the newspaper; you read the book; you hear the lecturer; you sit and listen to the pretty essayist; but where is the preacher? Preaching is not taking out a manuscript sermon, asking God to direct your heart, and then reading pages prepared beforehand. That is reading — not preaching. There is a good tale told of an old man whose minister used to read. The minister called to see him, and said, “What are you doing, John?” “Why, I am prophesying, sir.” “Prophesying; how is that? You mean you are reading the prophecies?” “No, I do not; I am prophesying; for you read preaching, and call it preaching, and I read prophecies, and on the same rule that is prophesying.” And the man was not far from being right. We want to have more outspoken downright utterances of truth and appeals to the conscience, and until we get these we shall never see any great and lasting reforms. But by the preaching of God’s word, foolishness though it seems to some, prostitutes are made righteous, drunkards are reformed, thieves are made honest, and the worst of men brought to the Saviour. Again let me affectionately give the invitation to the vilest of men, if so they feel themselves to be.

      Come you needy, come, and welcome;

      God’s free bounty glorify:

      True belief and true repentance,

      Every grace that brings us nigh —

      Without money,

      Come to Jesus Christ, and buy.

      Your sins will be forgiven, your transgressions cast away, and you shall hence forth go and sin no more, God having renewed you, and he will keep you even to the end. May God give his blessing, for Jesus’ sake! Amen.

      {a} Prometheus was put in chains, and fastened to a pillar, where an eagle sent by Zeus consumed in the daytime his liver, which, in every succeeding night, was restored again. Prometheus was thus exposed to perpetual torture, but Hercules killed the eagle and delivered the sufferer, with the consent of Zeus, who thus had an opportunity of allowing his son to gain immortal fame (Hesiod, Theogony, 521, &c., Works and Days, 47, &c.; Hyginus, Poet. Astr. ii. 15; Apollodorus, ii. 5. s. 11). GoTo Explorer “http://www.theoi.com/Ther/AetosKaukasios.html”

      A Faithful Friend

      No. 120-3:105. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, March 8, 1857, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

      There is a friend who sticks closer than a brother. {Proverbs 18:24}

      1. Cicero has well said, “Friendship is the only thing in the world concerning the usefulness of which all mankind are agreed.” Friendship seems as necessary an element of a comfortable existence in this world as fire or water, or even air itself. A man may drag along a miserable existence in proud solitary dignity, but his life is scarcely life, it is nothing but an existence, the tree of being stripped of the leaves of hope and the fruits of joy. He who wishes to be happy here must have friends; and he who wishes to be happy hereafter, must, above all things, find a friend in the world to come, in the person of God, the Father of his people.

      2. Friendship, however, though very pleasing and exceedingly blessed, has been the cause of the greatest misery to men when it has been unworthy and unfaithful; for just in proportion as a good friend is sweet, a false friend is full of bitterness. “A faithless friend is sharper than an adder’s tooth.” It is sweet to repose in someone; but oh! how bitter to have that support snapped, and to receive a grievous fall as the result of your confidence. Fidelity is an absolute necessity in a true friend; we cannot rejoice in men unless they will stand faithful to us. Solomon declares that “there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” That friend, I suppose, he never found in the pomps and vanities of the world. He had tried them all, but he found them empty; he passed through all their joys, but he found them “vanity of vanities.” Poor Savage spoke from sad experience when he said —

      You’ll find the friendship of the world a show!

      Mere outward show! ’Tis like the harlot’s tears,

      The statesman’s promise, or false patriot’s zeal,

      Full of fair seeming, but delusion all.

      And so for the most part they are. The world’s friendship is always brittle. Trust in it, and you have trusted a robber; rely upon it, and you have leaned upon a thorn; indeed, worse than that, upon a spear which shall pierce you to the soul with agony. Yet Solomon says he had found “a friend who sticks closer than a brother.” Not in the haunts of his unbridled pleasures, nor in the wanderings of his unlimited researches, but in the pavilion of the Most High, the secret dwelling place of God, in the person of Jesus, the Son of God, the Friend of sinners

      3. It is saying a great thing, to affirm that “there is a friend who sticks closer than a brother”; for the love of brotherhood has produced most valiant deeds. We have read stories of what brotherhood could do, which, we think, could hardly be excelled in all the annals of friendship. Timoleon, with his shield, stood over the body of his slain brother, to defend him from the insults of the foe. It was reckoned a brave deed of brotherhood that he should dare the spears of an army in defence of his brother’s corpse. And many such instances there have been, in ancient and modern warfare, of the attachment of brothers. There is a story told of two brothers in a Highland regiment, who, while marching through the Highlands, lost their way; they were overtaken by one of the terrible storms, which will sometimes come upon travellers unawares, and blinded by the snow, they lost their way upon the mountains. Almost frozen to death, it was with difficulty they could continue their march. One man after another dropped into the snow and disappeared. There were two brothers, however, by the name of Forsythe; one of them fell prostrate on the earth, and would have lain there to die, but his brother, though barely able to drag his own limbs across the white desert, took him on