The Spurgeon Series 1859 & 1860. Charles H. Spurgeon

necks to his yoke; and then I know you shall go away to taste his faithful love, and at last to sing in heaven the song of the redeemed — “To him who loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood, to him be glory, for ever. Amen.”

      Oh you great eternal Jesus,

      High and mighty Prince of Peace,

      How your wonders shine resplendent,

      In the wonders of your grace:

      Your rich gospel scorns conditions,

      Breathes salvation free as air;

      Only breathes triumphant mercy,

      Baffling guilt, and all despair.

      Oh the grandeur of the gospel,

      How it sounds the cleansing blood;

      Shows the compassion of a Saviour,

      Shows the tender heart of God.

      Only treats of love eternal,

      Swells the all abounding grace,

      Nothing knows but life and pardon,

      Full redemption, endless peace.

      {a} Upas Tree: is an evergreen tree native to southeastern Asia, from India and Sri Lanka east to southern China, the Philippines and Fiji; closely related species also occur in eastern Africa. It produces a highly poisonous latex, known in Java as “Upas,” from the Javanese word for “poison.” See Explore “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upas”

      Grain In Egypt

      No. 234-5:73. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, January 16, 1859, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.

       Now when Jacob saw that there was grain in Egypt, Jacob said to his sons, “Why do you look at one another?” And he said, “Behold, I have heard that there is grain in Egypt: go down there, and buy for us from there; that we may live, and not die.” {Genesis 42:1,2}

      1. God in his wisdom has so made the outward world, that it is a strange and wonderful picture of the inner world. Nature has an analogy with grace. The wonders that God does in the heart of man, each of them finds a parallel, a picture, a metaphor, an illustration, in the wonders which God performs in providence. It is the duty of the minister always to look for these analogies. Our Saviour did so. He is the model preacher: his preaching was made up of parables, pictures from the outer world, accommodated to teach great and mighty truths. And so is man’s mind constituted that we can always see a thing better through a picture than any other way. If you tell a man a simple truth, he does not see it nearly so well as if you explained it to him with an illustration. If I should attempt to describe the flight of a soul from sin to Christ, you would not see it one half so readily as if I should picture John Bunyan’s pilgrim running out of the city of Destruction, with his fingers in his ears, and hastening with all his might to the wicket gate. There is something tangible in a picture, a something which our poor flesh and blood can lay hold of; and therefore the mind, grasping through the flesh and the blood, is able to understand the idea, and to apply it. Hence the necessity and usefulness of the minister always endeavouring to illustrate his sermon, and to make his discourse as much as possible like the parables of Jesus Christ.

      2. Now, there are very few minds that can make parables. The fact is, I only know of one good allegory in the English language, and that is, the “Pilgrim’s Progress.” Parables, pictures, and analogies are not as easy as some think; most men can understand them, but few can create them. Happy for us who are ministers of Christ, we have no great trouble about this matter; we do not have to make parables; they already are made for us. I believe that Old Testament history has for one of its purposes the furnishing of the Christian minister with illustrations; so that a truth which I find in the New Testament in its naked form taught to me as a doctrine, I find in the Old Testament cast into a parable. And so would we use this most excellent ancient book, the Old Testament, as an illustration of the New, and as a means of explaining to our minds the truth that is taught to us in a more doctrinal form in the New Testament.

      3. What, then, do we see in these two verses of the forty-second chapter of Genesis? We have here a picture of man’s lost estate, he is in a severe soul devouring famine. We discover here man’s hope. His hope lies in that Joseph whom he does not know, who has gone before him and provided all things necessary, that his needs may be supplied. And we have here practical advice, which was preeminently wise on the part of Jacob to his sons in his situation, and which, being interpreted, is also the wisest advice to you and to me. Seeing that there is mercy for sinners, and that Jesus our brother has gone before us to provide for us an all sufficient redemption, “why do we sit here and look at one another?” There is mercy in the heart of God, there is salvation in Christ; “Go down there, and buy for us from there; that we may live, and not die.”

      4. Three things, then, this morning: first, a pitiful plight; secondly, good news; and thirdly, excellent advice.

      5. I. First, A PITIFUL PLIGHT. These sons of Jacob were overtaken by a famine. We may talk about famines, friends, but none of us knows what they are. We have heard of a famine in Ireland, and some dreadful stories have been related to us that have harrowed our hearts, and almost made our hair stand on end; but even there the full fury of famine was not known. We have heard too, to our great grief, that there are still in this city, dark and hideous places, where men and women are absolutely perishing from hunger, who have sold from off their backs the last rags that covered them, and are now unable to leave the house, and are positively perishing from famine. Such cases we have seen in our daily journals, and our hearts have been sick to think that such things could now occur. But none of us can guess what is the terror of a universal famine, when all men are poor, because all men lack bread, when gold and silver are as valueless as the stones of the street, because mountains of silver and gold would scarcely suffice to buy a single sheaf of wheat. Read the history of the famine of Samaria, and see the dreadful straits to which women were driven, when they even ate their own offspring. Famines are hells on earth. The famine which had overtaken Jacob was one which, if it had not at the moment of which this passage speaks, exactly arrived at that dreadful pitch, was sure to come to it; for the famine was to last for seven years; and if, through the spendthrift character of Eastern nations, they had not saved in the seven years of plenty enough even for one year, what would become of them during the sixth or seventh year of famine? This was the state of Jacob’s family. They were cast into a waste, howling wilderness of famine, with only one oasis, and that oasis they did not hear of until just at the time to which our text refers, when to their joy they learned that there was grain in Egypt. Permit me now to illustrate the condition of the sinner by the position of these sons of Jacob.

      6. First, the sons of Jacob had a very great need of bread. There was a family of sixty-six of them. We are apt, when we read these names of the sons of Jacob, to think they were all lads. Are you aware, that Benjamin, the youngest of them, was the father of ten children, at the time he went into Egypt, so that he was a young lad at any rate, and all the rest had large families, so that there were sixty-six to be provided for. Well, a famine is frightful enough when there is one man who is starving — when there is one brought down to a skeleton through leanness and hunger: but when sixty-six mouths are craving for bread, that is indeed a horrible plight to be in. But what is this compared with the sinner’s needs! His necessities are such that only Infinity can supply them; the demands of sixty-six mouths are nothing compared with his demands. He has before him the dreadful anticipation of a hell, from which there is no escape; he has upon him the heavy hand of God, who has condemned him on account of his sins. What does he need? Why, all the manna that came down from heaven in the wilderness would not supply a sinner’s necessities, and all the water that gushed from the rock in the desert would not be sufficient to quench his thirst. Such is the need of the sinner, that all the handsful of Egypt’s seven years would be lost upon him. He needs great mercy; the greatest of mercy, no, he needs an infinity of mercy, and unless this is given to him from above, he is worse than starved, for he dies the