The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

you not know your wife, Bishop?” “What is her name?” he said. She said, “I am your wife.” “I did not know I had one,” he said. Poor old man! his faculties had all failed him. At last one stooped down and whispered, “Do you know the Lord Jesus Christ?” “Yes,” said he, making an effort to speak “I have known him these forty years, and I never can forget him.” It is marvellous how memory will hold a place for Jesus, when it will with no one else; and it is equally marvellous, that

      When all created streams are dry,

      Christ’s fulness is the same.

      23. My dear hearers, do think of this matter. Oh that you might have Christ for your friend; he will never be your friend while you are self-righteous; he will never be your friend while you live in sin. But do you believe yourselves guilty? Do you desire to stop sinning? Do you want to be saved? Do you desire to be renewed? Then let me tell you, my Master loves you! Poor, weak, and helpless worms, my Master’s heart is full of love for you; his eyes at this moment are looking down with pity on you. “Oh! Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Jerusalem!” He now bids me tell you that he died for all of you who confess yourselves to be sinners, and feel it. He bids me say to you, “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved.” He tells me to proclaim salvation full and free — full, needing nothing of yours to help it; free, needing nothing of yours to buy it.

      Come, you thirsty, come and welcome;

      God’s free bounty glorify:

      True belief and true repentance,

      Every grace that brings us near —

      Without money,

      Come to Jesus Christ, and buy.

      There is nothing I feel that I fail so much in as addressing sinners. Oh! I wish I could cry my heart out, and preach my heart out, to you and at you.

      Dear Saviour, draw reluctant hearts;

      To thee let sinners fly,

      And take the bliss your love imparts;

      And drink, and never die.

      24. Farewell, with this one thought — we shall never all of us meet together here again. It is a very solemn thought, but according to the course of nature and the number of deaths, if all of you were willing to come here next Sunday morning, it is not at all likely that all of you will be alive; one out of this congregation will be sure to have gone the way of all flesh. Farewell, you who are appointed to death, I do not know where you are — that strong man, or that tender maiden, with the hectic flush of consumption on her cheek. I do not know who is appointed to death; but I do now most solemnly take my farewell of such a one. Farewell poor soul; and is it farewell for ever? Shall we meet in the land of the hereafter, in the home of the blessed; or do I bid you farewell now for ever? I do solemnly bid farewell to you for ever, if you live and die without Christ. But I cannot bear that dreary thought; and I therefore say, poor sinner! stop and consider — consider your ways, and now “turn, turn, why will you die?” “Why will you die?” “Why will you die?” “Why will you die?” Ah! you cannot answer that question. May God help you to answer it in a better fashion: by saying — “Here Lord!

      Just as I am, without one plea,

      But that your blood was shed for me,

      Oh Son of God, I come to thee.

      I trust my soul in your kind hands.” The Lord bless you all; for Christ’s sake. Amen.

      {a} Escutcheon: Shield with a coat of arms on it. OED.

      {b} Peer: An English noble.

      The Leafless Tree

      No. 121-3:113. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Evening, March 8, 1857, By C. H. Spurgeon, At New Park Street Chapel, Southwark.

      But yet in it shall be a tenth, and it shall return, And shall be eaten; as a teil tree, and as an oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed shall be its substance. {Isaiah 6:13}

      1. Our first business tonight will be briefly to explain the metaphor employed in the text. The prophet was told that despite all the admonitions he was instructed to deliver, and notwithstanding the eloquent earnestness of his lips, which had been just touched with a live coal from off the altar, still the people of Israel would persevere in their sins, and would therefore be certainly destroyed. He asked the question, “Lord, how long?” that is, “How long will the people be thus impenitent? How long will your severe judgment thus continue?” and he was informed that God would waste and destroy the cities and their inhabitants, until the land would be utterly desolate. Then it was added, for his comfort, “Yet in it shall be a tenth.” And so it happened; for when “Nebuchadnezzar carried away all Jerusalem,” the historian gives this reservation — “no one remained except the poorer sort of the people of the land.” They were left by the captain of the guard, “to be vinedressers and husbandmen.” Thus in it there was a tenth; this small remnant of the people, however, was to be nearly destroyed too. “It shall return and shall be eaten”; the sense is eaten up or consumed. The poor creatures left in the land, many of them fled into Egypt at the time of the conspiracy of Ishmael, (not Ishmael, the son of Hagar, but an unworthy member of the royal family of Judah,) and there in Egypt, most of them were cut off and perished. “But,” says God, “although this tenth only shall be preserved, and then even this small part shall be subjected to many perils, yet Israel shall not be destroyed, for it shall be as a terebinth tree and as an oak”; their “substance is in them, when they cast their leaves,” and so lose their verdure and their beauty; thus in like manner, a holy seed, a chosen remnant, shall still be the substance of the children of Israel, when the fruitful land is stripped of its foliage, and that fair garden of earth is barren as the desert.

      2. The figure is taken, first of all, from the terebinth or turpentine tree — here translated the teil tree. That tree is an evergreen, with this exception, that in very severe and inclement weather it loses its leaves; but even then the terebinth tree is not dead. And so of the oak, it loses its leaves every year, of course, but even then it is not dead. “So,” says God, “you have seen the tree in winter, standing naked and bare, without any sign of life, its roots buried in the hard and frozen soil, and its naked branches exposed to every blast, without a bloom or a bud; yet the substance is in the tree when the leaves are gone. It is still alive, and it shall, by and by, in due season bud and bloom; so,” he says, “Nebuchadnezzar shall cut off all the leaves of the tree of Israel — take away the inhabitants, only a tenth shall be left, and they shall almost all be eaten up; still the church of God and the Israel of God never shall be destroyed; they shall be like the terebinth tree and the oak, whose substance is in them, when they cast their leaves; so the holy seed shall be its substance.”

      3. I hope I have made the meaning of the passage as plain as words can make it. Now, then, for the application — first, to the Jews; secondly, to the Church; thirdly, to each believer.

      4. I. First, TO THE JEWS.

      5. What a history is the history of the Jew! He has antiquity stamped upon his forehead. His is a lineage more noble than that of any knights or even kings of this our island, for he can trace his pedigree back to the very loins of Abraham, and through him to that patriarch who entered into the ark, and to there up to Adam himself. Our history is hidden in gloom and darkness; but theirs, with certainty, may be read, from the first moment even down until now. And what a chequered history has been the history of the Jewish nation! Nebuchadnezzar seemed to have swept them all away with the huge broom of destruction; the tenth left was again given over to the slaughter, and one would have thought we should have heard no more of Israel, but in a little time they rose phoenix-like from their ashes. A second temple was built, and the nation became strong once more, and though often swept with desolations in the meantime, yet it did abide, and the sceptre did not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from