The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

It is a fact, deny it who will, and abuse it, if you please, to your own wicked purposes; I cannot help it, — it is a fact that some living children of God have been allowed — and an awful allowance it is — to go into the very blackest sins. Do you think David was not a child of God, even when he sinned? It is a hard subject to touch; but it is not to be denied. He had the life of God within him before; and though he sinned — oh! horrid and awful was the crime! — yet his substance was in him when he lost his leaves. And many a child of God has gone far away from his Master; but his substance is in him. And how do we know this? Because a dead tree never lives again; if the substance is really gone, it never lives; and God’s Holy Word assures us, that if the real life of grace could die out in anyone, it could never come again; for says the apostle, “it is impossible, if they have been once enlightened, and have tasted the heavenly gift, and have been partakers of the Holy Spirit,” — if these fall away — “it is impossible to renew them again to repentance.” Their tree is “dead, plucked up by the roots.” And the apostle Peter says — “For if, after they have escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust, they are again turned back, their last end shall be worse than the first.” But now take David, or take Peter, whichever you please. Peter we will have. Oh! how foully did he curse his Master! With many an oath he denied him. But did Peter not then have the life of God still in him? Yes; and how do we know? Because when his Master looked upon him, he “went out and wept bitterly.” Ah! if he had been a dead man, hardened and without the substance in him, his Master might have looked for all eternity, and he would not have wept bitterly. How do I know that David was still alive? Why, by this — that although there was a long, long winter, and there were many prickings of conscience, like the workings of the sap within a tree, abortive attempts to thrust forward here and there a shoot before its time, yet when the hour was come, and Nathan came to him and said, “You are the man,” had David been dead, without the life of God, he would have spurned Nathan from him, and might have done what Manasseh did with Isaiah, cut him in pieces in his anger; but instead of that he bowed his head and wept before God; and still it is written, “The Lord has put away your sin, you shall not die.” His substance was in him, when he lost his leaves. Oh! have pity upon poor fallen brethren. Oh! do not burn them; they are not dead logs; though their leaves are gone their substance is in them. God can see grace in their hearts when you cannot see it; he has put a life there that can never expire, for he has said, “I give to my sheep eternal life,” and that means a life that lives for ever — the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. You may choke the well up with big stones, but the water will still find its way out, and well up notwithstanding. And so the heir of heaven may to the grief of the church and to the injury of himself, most grievously transgress — and weep, my eyes, oh weep for any that have done so, and oh bleed, my heart, and you have bled, for any that have so sinned; but yet their “substance is in them, when they cast their leaves: so the holy seed” — that is, Christ within them, the Holy Spirit within them, the new creature within them — “the holy seed shall be its substance.” Poor backslider! here is a word of comfort for you. I would never comfort you in your sins; God forbid! But if you know your sins and hate them, let me comfort you. You are not dead! As Jesus said of the damsel, “She is not dead, but sleeps,” so let me say of you, “You are not dead; you shall yet live.” Do you repent? Do you grieve over your sin? That is the bud that shows that there is life within. When a common sinner sins he does not repent, or if he does repent it is with a legal repentance. His conscience tricks him, but he squelches it. He does not leave his sin and turn from it.

      20. But did you ever see a child of God after he had been washed from a foul sin? He was a changed man. I know such a one, who used to carry a merry countenance, and many were the jokes he made in company; but when I met him after an awful sin, there was a solemnity about his countenance that was unusual for him. He looked, I should say, something like Dante, the poet, of whom the boys said, “There is the man that has been in hell”; because he had written of hell and looked like it — he looked so terrible. And when we spoke of sin there was such a solemnity about him; and when we spoke of going astray the tears ran down his cheeks, as much as to say, “I have been astray too.” He seemed like good Christian, after he had been in Giant Despair’s castle. Do you not remember, beloved, the guide who took the pilgrims up to the top of a hill called Clear, and he showed them from the top of the hill a lot of men with their eyes put out, groping among the tombs, and Christian asked what it meant. The guide said, “These are pilgrims that were caught in Giant Despair’s castle; the giant had their eyes put out, and they are left to wander among the tombs to die, and their bones are to be left in the courtyard.” Whereupon John Bunyan very naively says, “I looked, and saw their eyes full of water, for they remembered they might have been there too.” Just like the man talked and spoke that I once knew, he seemed to wonder why God had not left him to be an apostate for ever, as the lot of Judas or Demas. {2 Timothy 4:10} He seemed to think it was such a startling thing that while many had gone aside altogether from God’s way he should still have had his substance in him, when he had lost his leaves, and that God should still have loved him. Perhaps, beloved, God allows some such men to live, and sin, and afterwards repent, for this reason. You know there are some voices needed in music that are very rare, and when now and then such a voice is to be heard everyone will go to hear it. I have thought that perhaps some of these men in heaven will sing soprano notes before the throne — choice, wondrous notes of grace, because they have gone into the depths of sin after profession, and yet he has loved them when their feet made haste to perdition, and brought them back, because he “loved them well.” There are but a few of these, for most men will go foully into sin; they will go out from us because they are not of us, for if they had been of us they would doubtless have continued with us. But there have been a few such — great saints, then great backsliding sinners, and then great saints again. Their substance was in them when they had lost their leaves. Oh! you that have gone far astray, sit and weep. You cannot weep too much, though you should cry with Herbert —

      Oh, who will give me tears? Come all you springs,

      Dwell in my head and eyes; come, clouds and rain!

      My grief has need of all the wat’ry things,

      That nature has produc’d.

      You might well say —

      Let every vein

      Suck up a river to supply my eyes,

      My weary weeping eyes; too dry for me,

      Unless they get new conduits, new supplies,

      To bear them out, and with my state agree.

      But remember still, “He has not forsaken his people, neither has he cut them off”; for still he says, —

      Return, oh wanderer, return,

      And seek an injured Father’s heart.

      Return! return! return! Your Father’s heart still yearns for you. He speaks through the written oracles at this moment, saying “How shall I give you up, Ephraim? How shall I deliver you, oh Israel? How can I make you as Admah? How can I set you as Zeboim? My heart is moved; my repentings are kindled together; {Hosea 11:8 cf. Deuteronomy 29:23} for I will heal their backslidings, I will receive them graciously, I will love them freely, for they are mine still. As the terebinth and as the oak, whose substance is in them when they cast their leaves, even so the holy seed within the elect and called vessels of mercy, is still its substance.”

      21. And now, what have I to say to some of you that live in black sin, and yet excuse yourselves on account of the recorded falls of God’s people? Sirs, know this! Inasmuch as you do this, you wrest the Scriptures to your own destruction. If one man has taken poison, and there has been a physician by his side so skilful that he has saved his life by a heavenly antidote, is that any reason why you, who has no physician and no antidote, should yet think that the poison will not kill you? Why man, the sin that does not damn a Christian, because Christ washes him in his blood, will damn you. Brookes said — and I will repeat his words, and conclude — “He who believes and is baptized shall be saved, said the apostle, be his sins ever so many; but he who does not believe shall be damned,