The Spurgeon Series 1859 & 1860. Charles H. Spurgeon

been an opportunity of making a little: have you taken it? Has God enabled you to endure when tempted, whether to unlawful gain, or to lustful pleasure, or to pride and vanity? Have you been enabled to stand firm against all these, and to say, “Get behind me Satan for you do not savour the things which are of God, but those which are of man and of sin?” How have you stood the test of temptation? If you have never been tempted you know nothing about this. How can we tell the worthiness of the ship until she has been at sea in the storm? You cannot know what you are until you have been through the practical test of every day life. How then has it been with you? Have you been weighed in the balance, and have you been enabled to say, “I know through grace I have been kept in the hour of temptation, and with the temptation the Lord has always sent a way of escape. And here I am glorying in his grace; I cannot rest in myself, but still I can say, ‘I am truly his.’ The work within me is not of man, neither by man: it is the work of the Spirit. I have found help and support when my heart and my flesh have failed me.”

      15. It is probable, my hearers, that most of you are professors of religion; let me ask you again very earnestly to test and try yourselves, whether your religion is real or not. If there are many false prophets in the world, and those prophets have followers, must there not also be many false men who are fatally deceived? Do not suppose, I beseech you, because you are a deacon, or have been baptized, or are a member of the church, or are professors, you are therefore safe. The bleaching bones of the skeletons of self-deceived ones should warn you. On the rock of presumption thousands have been wrecked that once sailed merrily enough. Take care, oh mariner! though your bark may be gaily trimmed and may be brightly painted, yet it is none the surer after all. Take heed, lest the rocks are seen beneath the keel, lest they pierce you through, and lest the waters of destruction overwhelm you. Oh! do not, I entreat you, say, “Why make all this fuss? I dare say I shall be all right at last.” Do not let your eternal state be a matter of suspicion or doubt. Decide now, I beseech you, decide now in your conscience whether you are Christ’s or not. Of all the most miserable men in the world, and the most hopeless, I think those are most to be pitied who are indifferent and careless about religion. There are some men whose feelings never run deeper than their skin; they either have no heart, or else it is so surrounded with fatness that you can never touch them. I like to see a man either desponding or rejoicing; either anxious about his eternal state or else confident about it. But you who never will question yourselves — you are just like the bull going to the slaughter, or like the sheep that will enter the very slaughter house and lick the knife that is about to take its blood. I wish I could speak this morning somewhat more earnestly. Oh that some sparks from the Divine fire could now light up my soul; I think I could speak to you like some of the prophets of old, when they stood in the midst of a professing generation, to warn them. Oh that the very voice of God would speak to each heart this morning! While God is thundering on high may he thunder below in your souls! Be warned, my hearers, against self-deception. Be true to yourselves. If God is God, serve him, and do it truly; if the devil is God, serve him, and serve him honestly, and serve him faithfully. But do not pretend to be serving God, while you are really indifferent and careless about it.

      16. II. I must now close, by endeavouring to speak about THE LAST GREAT BALANCE; and here I would speak very solemnly, and may the Spirit of God be with us. Time shall soon be over; eternity must soon begin; death is hurrying onward; the pale horse at his utmost speed is coming to every inhabitant of this earth. The arrow of death is fitted to the string, and soon it shall be sent home. Man’s heart is the target. Then, after death, comes the judgment; the dread assize shall soon commence. The trump of the archangel shall awake the sleeping myriads, and, standing on their feet, they shall confront the God against whom they have sinned. I think I see the scales hanging in heaven, so massive that no one but the hand of Deity can uphold them. Let me turn my eye upward, and remember that hour when I must myself enter those scales and be weighed once and for all. Come, let me speak for each man present. Those scales up there are exact; I may deceive my fellow men now, but I cannot deceive God then. I may be weighed in the balances of earth, which shall give only a partial verdict, and so commit myself to a false idea that I am what I am not, that I am hopeful when I am hopeless. But those scales are true. There is no means whatever of flattering them into a false declaration; they will cry aloud and not spare. When I get there, the voice of flattery shall be changed into the voice of honesty. Here I may go daily on crying, “Peace, peace, when there is no peace”; but there the naked truth shall startle me, and not a single word of consolation shall be given to me that is not true. Let me therefore ponder the fact, that those scales are exactly true and cannot be deceived. Let me remember also, that whether I wish to or not, into those scales I must go. God will not take me on my profession. I may bring my witnesses with me; I may bring my minister and the deacons of the church to give me a character reference, which might be thought all sufficient among men, but God will tolerate no subterfuge. He will put me into the scales whatever I may be; whatever the opinion of others may be of me, and whatever my own profession. And let me remember, too, that I must be altogether weighed in the scales. I cannot hope that God will weigh my head and pass over my heart — that because I have correct notions of doctrine, therefore he will forget that my heart is impure, or my hands guilty of iniquity. My all must be cast into the scales. Come, let me stretch my imagination, and picture myself about to be put into those scales. Shall I be able to walk boldly up and enter them, knowing whom I have believed, and being persuaded that the blood of Christ and his perfect righteousness shall bear me harmless through it all; or shall I be dragged with terror and dismay? Shall the angel come and say, “You must enter?” Shall I bend my knee and cry, “Oh, it is all right,” or shall I seek to escape? Now, thrust into the scale, do I see myself hesitating for one solemn moment. My feet have touched the bottom of the scales, and there stand those everlasting weights, and now which way are they turned? Which way shall it be? Do I descend in the scale with joy and delight, being found through Jesus’ righteousness to be full weight, and so accepted; or must I rise, light, frivolous, unsound in all my fancied hopes, and kick the beam? Oh, shall it be, that I must go where the rough hand of vengeance shall seize, and drag me downward into dreadful despair? Can you picture the moments of suspense? I can see a poor man standing on the gallows with the rope around his neck, and oh, what an instant of apprehension must that be; what thoughts of horror must float through his soul! How must a world of misery be compressed into a second? But oh, my hearers, there is a far more terrible moment still for you who are godless, Christless, careless: that have made a profession of religion, and yet do not have it in your hearts. I see you in the scales; but what shall we say? The wailings of hell seem not sufficient to express your misery. In the scales without Christ! just before you shall be in the jaws of hell, without pity and without compassion. Oh, my dear hearers! if you could hope to get to heaven without being weighed — if God would believe what you say without testing you, I would not care about asking you this morning to ascertain the state of your own hearts. But if God will try you, try yourselves; if he will judge you, judge your own hearts. Do not say that because you profess to be religious therefore you are right — that because others imagine you to be safe that therefore you are so. Weigh yourselves; put your hearts into the balance. Do not be deceived. Pull the bandage from your eyes, that your blindness may be removed, and that you may pass a just opinion upon yourselves as to what you are. I wish to have you not only see yourselves as others see you, but I wish to have you see yourselves as God sees you; for that after all, is your real state; his eye is not to be mistaken; he is the God of truth, and he is just and right. How fearful a thing it will be, if any of us who are members of Christ’s church shall be cast into hell at last. The higher we ascend, the greater will be our fall, like Icarus in the old fable, who flew aloft with waxen wings, until the sun melted them and he fell. And some of you are flying like that: you are flying up with waxen wings. What if the terrible heat of the judgment day should melt them! I sometimes try to picture, how terrible the reverse would be to me if I am found to be rejected at last. Let what I shall say for myself suit for all. No, and must it be, if I live in this world and think I am a Christian and am not — must it be that I must go from the songs of the sanctuary to the cursings of the synagogue of Satan? Must I go from the cup of the Eucharist to the cup of demons? Must I go from the table of the Lord to the feast of fiends? Shall these lips that now proclaim the word of Jesus, one day utter the wailings of perdition? Shall this tongue that has sung the praises of the Redeemer be moved with blasphemy? Shall it be