The Spurgeon Series 1857 & 1858. Charles H. Spurgeon

me there, for unless you hold me fast I feel I must, I shall decline, and prove an apostate after all.” There is enough tinder in the heart of the best men in the world to light a fire that shall burn to the lowest hell, unless God should quench the sparks as they fall. There is enough corruption, depravity, and wickedness in the heart of the most holy man that is now alive to damn his soul to all eternity, if free and sovereign grace does not prevent it. Oh Christian, you need to pray this prayer. But I think I hear you crying, “Is your servant a dog that I should do this thing?” So said Hazael, when the prophet told him that he would kill his master; but he went home, and took a wet cloth and spread it over his master’s face and stifled him, and did the next day the sin which he abhorred before. Do not think it is enough to abhor sin, you may yet fall into it. Do not say, “I never can be drunk, for I have such an abhorrence of drunkenness”; you may fall where you are most secure. Do not say, “I can never blaspheme God, for I have never done so in my life”; take care; you may yet swear most profanely. Job might have said, “I will never curse the day of my birth”; but he lived to do it. He was a patient man; he might have said, “I will never murmur; though he kills me yet will I trust in him”; and yet he lived to wish that the day was darkness when he was born. Do not boast, then, oh Christian: by faith you stand. “Let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.”

      20. But if this needs to be the prayer of the best, how ought it to be the prayer of you and me? If the highest saint must pray it, oh mere moralist, you have good need to utter it. And you who have begun to sin, who make no pretensions to piety, how much need is there for you to pray that you may be kept from presumptuously rebelling against God?

      21. Instead, however, of enlarging upon that point, I shall close my few remarks this morning by just addressing myself most affectionately to such of you as are now under a sense of guilt by reason of presumptuous sins. God’s Spirit has found some of you out this morning. I thought when I was describing presumptuous sin that I saw here and there an eye that was suffused with tears; I thought I saw here and there a head that was bowed down, as much as to say, “I am guilty there.” I thought there were some hearts that palpitated with confession, when I described the guilt of presumption. I hope it was so. If it was, I am glad of it. If I hit your consciences, it was that I meant to do it. Not to your ears do I speak, but to your hearts. I would not give the snap of this my finger to gratify you with mere words of oratory, with a mere flow of language. No, God is my witness. I never sought effect yet, except the effect of hitting your consciences. I would use the words that would be most rough and vulgar in all our language, if I could get at your heart better with them than with any other; for I consider that the chief purpose of a minister is to touch the conscience. If any of you feel then that you have presumed against God in sinning, let me just bid you look at your sin, and weep over the blackness of it; let me exhort you to go home and bow your heads with sorrow, and confess your guilt, and weep over it with many tears and sighs. You have greatly sinned, and if God should blast you into perdition now, he would be just, if now his fiery thunderbolt of vengeance should pierce you through, if the arrow that is now upon the string of the Almighty should find a target in your heart, he would be just. Go home and confess that, confess it with cries and sighs. And then what should you do next? Why, I bid you remember that there was a Man who was a God. That Man suffered for presumptuous sin. I would bid you this day, sinner, if you know your need of a Saviour, go up to your bedroom, cast yourself upon your face and weep for sin; and when you have done that, turn to the Scriptures, and read the story of that Man who suffered and died for sin. Do you think you see him in all his unutterable agonies, and griefs, and woes, and say this —

      My soul looks back to see

      The burdens you did bear,

      When hanging on th’ accursed tree,

      And hopes her guilt was there.

      Lift up your hand, and put it on his head who bled, and say —

      My faith would lay its hand

      On that dear head of thine,

      While like a penitent I stand,

      And there confess my sin.

      Sit down at the foot of his cross, and watch him until your heart is moved, until the tears begin to flow again, until your heart breaks within you; and then you will rise and say —

      Dissolved by his mercy I fall to the ground,

      And weep to the praise of the mercy I’ve found.

      Oh sinner, you can never perish, if you will cast yourself at the foot of the cross. If you seek to save yourself you shall die; if you will come, just as you are all black, all filthy, all hell deserving, all ill deserving, I am my Master’s hostage, I will be answerable at the day of judgment for this matter, if he does not save you. I can preach on this subject now, for I trust I have tried my Master myself. As a youth I sinned, as a child I rebelled, as a young man I wandered into lusts and vanities: my Master made me feel how great a sinner I was, and I sought to reform, to mend the matter; but I grew worse. At last I heard it said, “Look to me, and be saved all the ends of the earth”; and I looked to Jesus. And oh! my Saviour, you have eased my aching conscience, you have given me peace; you have enabled me to say —

      Now freed from sin I walk at large,

      My Saviour’s blood’s a full discharge;

      At his dear feet my soul I lay,

      A sinner saved, and homage pay.

      And oh! my heart pants for you. Oh that you who never knew him could taste his love now. Oh that you who have never repented might now receive the Holy Spirit who is able to melt the heart! And oh that you that are penitents would look to him now! And I repeat that solemn assertion — I am God’s hostage this morning; you shall feed me on bread and water to my life’s end, indeed, and I will bear the blame for ever, if any of you seek Christ, and Christ rejects you. It must not, it cannot be. “Whoever comes,” he says, “I will in nowise cast out.” “He is able to save to the uttermost those who come to God by him.” May God Almighty bless you; and may we meet again in heavenly paradise; and there we will sing more sweetly of redeeming love and dying blood, and of Jesus’ power to save —

      When this poor lisping, stammering tongue,

      Lies silent in the grave.

      Israel In Egypt

      No. 136-3:233. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, June 14, 1857, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

       And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are your works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are your ways, oh King of saints. {Revelation 15:3 }

      1. At the outset, let us remark the carefulness of the Holy Spirit in guarding the honour of our blessed Lord. This verse is often quoted as if it says thus — “They sing the song of Moses and the Lamb.” This mistake has led many weak minds to wonder at the expression, for they have imagined that it divided the honour of the song of heaven between Moses and the Redeemer. The clause — “the servant of God” — is doubtless inserted by the Holy Spirit to prevent any error upon this point, and therefore it should be carefully included in the quotation. I take it that the song of Moses is here united with the song of the Lamb, because the one was a type and picture of the other. The glorious overthrow of Pharaoh in the Red Sea foreshadowed the total destruction of Satan and all his host in the day of the great battle of the Lord; and there was in the song of Moses the expression of the same feelings of triumph which will pervade the hearts of the redeemed when they shall triumph with their Captain.

      2. May God the Holy Spirit enable me to exhibit the parallel which exists between the condition of Israel when passing through the sea, and the position of the church of Christ at the present day. Next, we shall compare the triumph of the Lord at the Red Sea with the victory of the Lamb in the great and terrible day of the Lord. And lastly, I shall point out certain prominent features of the song of Moses, which will doubtless be as prominent