The Prince of Preachers Charles
Haddon Spurgeon has been called England's greatest contribution
to the spread of the gospel in the
19th century.
One of his contemporaries said that the chief
secret of Spurgeon's attractiveness was the fact that
in every sermon, no matter what the text
or the occasion, he explained the way of
salvation in simple terms.
Spurgeon's messages remain one of the great treasure
houses of Christian literature, still bringing the light
of the gospel and the comfort of the
scriptures to hungry souls long after the preacher
has passed into glory.
This is Charles Kelch inviting you to listen
to a message from the Prince of Preachers.
This message was preached by C.
H.
Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle in the year
1879.
The title is, How to Read the Bible.
The text comes from Matthew chapter 12, verses
1 through 7.
At that time Jesus went on the Sabbath
day through the corn, and his disciples were
unhungered, and began to pluck the ears of
corn to eat.
But when the Pharisees saw it, they said
unto him, Behold, thy disciples do that which
is not lawful to do upon the Sabbath
day.
But he said unto them, Have ye not
read what David did when he was unhungered,
and they that were with him?
How he entered into the house of God,
and did eat the showbread, which was not
lawful for him to eat, neither for them
which were with him, but only for the
priests?
Or have ye not read in the law,
how that on the Sabbath days the priests
in the temple profane the Sabbath, and are
blameless?
But I say unto you, that in this
place is one greater than the temple.
But if ye had known what this meaneth,
I will have mercy, and not sacrifice.
Ye would not have condemned the guiltless.
The scribes and the Pharisees were great readers
of the law.
They studied the sacred books continually, poring over
each word and letter.
They made notes of very little importance, but
still very curious notes, as to which was
the middle verse of the entire Old Testament,
which verse was halfway to the middle, and
how many times such a word occurred, and
even how many times a letter occurred, and
the size of a letter, and its peculiar
position.
They have left us a mass of wonderful
notes upon the mere words of Holy Scripture.
They might have done the same thing upon
another book, for that matter, and the information
would have been about as important as the
facts which they have so industriously collected concerning
the letter of the Old Testament.
They were, however, intense readers of the law.
They picked a quarrel with the Saviour upon
a matter touching this law, for they carried
it at their fingers' ends, and were ready
to use it as a bird of prey
does its talons to tear and rend.
Our Lord's disciples had plucked some ears of
corn, and rubbed them between their hands.
According to Pharisaic interpretation, to rub an ear
of corn is a kind of threshing, and
as it is very wrong to thresh on
the Sabbath day, therefore it must be very
wrong to rub out an ear or two
of wheat when you are hungry on the
Sabbath morning.
That was their argument, and they came to
the Saviour with it, and with their version
of the Sabbath law.
The Saviour generally carried the war into the
enemy's camp, and He did so on this
occasion.
He met them on their own ground, and
He said to them, Have ye not read?
A cutting question to the scribes and Pharisees,
though there is nothing apparently sharp about it.
It was a very fair and proper question
to put to them.
But only think of putting it to them.
Have ye not read?
Read, they could have said.
Why, we have read the book through very
many times.
We are always reading it.
No passage escapes our critical eyes.
Yet our Lord proceeds to put the question
a second time.
Have ye not read?
As if they had not read after all,
though they were the greatest readers of the
law then living.
He insinuates that they have not read at
all, and then He gives them incidentally the
reason why He had asked them whether they
had read.
He said, If ye had known what this
meaneth, as much as to say, Ye have
not read, because ye have not understood.
Your eyes have gone over the words, and
ye have counted the letters, and ye have
marked the position of each verse and word,
and ye have said learned things about all
the books.
And yet ye are not even readers of
the sacred volume, for ye have not acquired
the true art of reading.
Ye do not understand, and therefore ye do
not truly read it.
Ye are mere skimmers and glancers at the
word.
Ye have not read it, for ye do
not understand it.
That is the subject of our present discourse,
or at least the first point of it,
that in order to the true reading of
the Scriptures, there must be an understanding of
them.
I scarcely need to preface these remarks by
saying that we must read the Scriptures.
You know how necessary it is that we
should be fed upon the truth of Holy
Scripture.
Need I suggest the question as to whether
you do read your Bibles or not?
I am afraid that this is a magazine
-reading age, a newspaper-reading age, a periodical
-reading age, but not so much a Bible
-reading age as it ought to be.
In the old Puritanic times, men used to
have a scant supply of other literature, but
they found a library enough in the one
book, the Bible.
And how they did read the Bible!
How little of Scripture there is in modern
sermons compared with the sermons of those masters
of theology, the Puritanic divines!
Almost every sentence of theirs seems to cast
side-lights upon a text of Scripture.
Not only the one they are preaching about,
but many others as well are set in
a new light as the discourse proceeds.
They introduce blended lights from other passages which
are parallel or semi-parallel thereunto, and thus
they educate their readers to compare spiritual things
with spiritual.
I would to God that we ministers kept
more closely to the grand old book.
We should be more instructive preachers if we
did so, even if we were ignorant of
modern thoughts and were not abreast of the
times.
I warrant you we should be leagues ahead
of our times if we kept closely to
the word of God.
As for you, my brothers and sisters, who
have not to preach, the best food for
you is the word of God itself.
Sermons and books are well enough, but streams
that run for a long distance above ground
gradually gather for themselves somewhat of the soil
through which they flow, and they lose the
freshness with which they started from the springhead.
Truth is sweetest where it breaks from the
smitten rock, for at its first gush it
has lost none of its heavenliness and vitality.
It is always best to drink at the
well and not from the tank.
You shall find that reading the word of
God for yourselves, reading it rather than notes
upon it, is the surest way of growing
in grace.
Drink of the unadulterated milk of the word
of God and not of the skim milk
or the milk and water of man's word.
But now, beloved, our point is that much
apparent Bible reading is not Bible reading at
all.
The verses pass under the eye and the
sentences glide over the mind, but there is
no true reading.
And old preacher used to say, the word
has mighty free course among many nowadays, for
it goes in at one of their ears
and out at the other.
So it seems to be with some readers.
They can read a very great deal, because
they do not read anything.
The eye glances, but the mind never rests.
The soul does not light upon the truth
and stay there.
It flits over the landscape as a bird
might do, but it builds no nest therein
and finds no rest for the soul of
its foot.
Such reading is not reading.
Understanding the meaning is the essence of true
reading.
Reading has a kernel to it, and the
mere shell is little worth.
In prayer there is such a thing as
praying in prayer, a praying that is the
bowels of prayer.
So in praise there is a praising in
song, an inward fire of intense devotion which
is the life of the Hallelujah.
It is so in fasting.
There is a fasting which is not fasting,
and there is an inward fasting, a fasting
of the soul which is the soul of
fasting.
It is even so with the reading of
the Scriptures.
There is an interior reading, a kernel reading,
a true and living reading of the word.
This is the soul of reading, and if
it be not there, the reading is a
mechanical exercise and profits nothing.
Now, beloved, unless we understand what we read,
we have not read it.
The heart of the reading is absent.
We commonly condemn the Romanists for keeping the
daily service in the Latin tongue.
Yet it might as well be in the
Latin tongue as in any other tongue if
it be not understood by the people.
Some comfort themselves with the idea that they
have done a good action when they have
read a chapter, into the meaning of which
they have not entered at all.
But does not nature herself reject this as
a mere superstition?
If you had turned the book upside down
and spent the time in looking at the
characters in that direction, you would have gained
as much good from it as you will
in reading it the regular way without understanding
it.
If you had a New Testament in Greek,
it would be very Greek to some of
you, but it would do you as much
good to look at that as it does
to look at the English New Testament unless
you read with understanding heart.
It is not the letter which saves the
soul.
The letter killeth in many senses, and never
can it give life.
If you harp on the letter alone, you
may be tempted to use it as a
weapon against the truth, as the Pharisees did
of old.
And your knowledge of the letter may breed
pride in you to your destruction.
It is the spirit, the real inner meaning,
that is sucked into the soul by which
we are blessed and sanctified.
We become saturated with the word of God,
like Gideon's fleece which was wet with the
dew of heaven.
And this can only come to pass by
our receiving it into our minds and hearts,
accepting it as God's truth, and so far
understanding it as to delight in it.
We must understand it, then, or else we
have not read it aright.
Certainly the benefit of reading must come to
the soul by the way of the understanding.
When the high priest went into the holy
place, he always lit the golden candlestick before
he kindled the incense upon the brazen altar,
as if to show that the mind must
have illumination before the affections can properly rise
to their divine object.
There must be knowledge of God before there
can be love to God.
There must be a knowledge of divine things
as they are revealed before there can be
an enjoyment of them.
We must try to make out, as far
as our finite mind can grasp it, what
God means by this and what He means
by that.
Otherwise we may kiss the book and have
no love to its contents.
We may reverence the letter and yet really
have no devotion towards the Lord who speaks
to us in these words.
Beloved, you will never get comfort for your
soul out of what you do not understand,
nor find guidance for your life out of
what you do not comprehend, nor can any
practical bearing upon your character come out of
that which is not understood by you.
Now, if we are thus to understand what
we read, or otherwise we read in vain,
this shows us that when we come to
the study of the Holy Scripture, we should
try to have our mind well awake to
it.
We are not always fit, it seems to
me, to read the Bible.
At times it were well for us to
stop before we opened the volume.
Put off thy shoe from off thy foot,
for the place whereon thou standest is holy
ground.
You have just come in from careful thought
and anxiety about your worldly business, and you
cannot immediately take that book and enter into
its heavenly mysteries.
As you ask a blessing over your meat
before you fall to, so it be of
good rule for you to ask a blessing
on the word before you partake of its
heavenly food.
Pray to the Lord to strengthen your eyes
before you dare to look into the eternal
light of Scripture.
As the priests washed their feet at the
labor before they went to their holy work,
so it were well to wash the soul's
eyes with which you look upon God's word,
to wash even the fingers, if I may
so speak, the mental fingers, with which you
will turn from page to page, that with
a holy book you may deal after a
holy fashion.
Say to your soul, Come, soul, wake up!
Thou art now not about to read the
newspaper.
Thou art not now perusing the pages of
a human poet to be dazzled by his
flashing poetry.
Thou art coming very near to God, who
sits in the word like a crowned monarch
in his halls.
Wake up, my glory!
Wake up all that is within me!
Though just now I may not be praising
and glorifying God, I am about to consider
that which should lead me to do so,
and therefore it is an act of devotion.
So be on the stir, my soul, be
on the stir, and bow not sleepily before
the awful throne of the Eternal.
Scripture reading is our spiritual mealtime.
Sound the gong, and call in every faculty
to the Lord's own table to feast upon
the precious meat which is now to be
partaken of.
Or rather, ring the church bell for worship.
For the studying of the Holy Scripture ought
to be as solemn a deed as when
we lift the psalm upon the Sabbath day
in the courts of the Lord's house.
If these things be so, you will see
at once, dear friends, that if you are
to understand what you read, you will need
to meditate upon it.
Some passages of Scripture lie clear before us,
blessed shallows in which the lambs may wade.
But there are deeps in which our mind
might rather drown herself than swim with pleasure
if she came there without caution.
There are texts of Scripture which are made
and constructed on purpose to make us think.
By this means, among others, our Heavenly Father
would educate us for heaven by making us
think our way into divine mysteries.
Hence He puts the word in a somewhat
involved form to compel us to meditate upon
it before we reach the sweetness of it.
He might, you know, have explained it to
us so that we might catch the thought
in a minute.
But He does not please to do so
in every case.
Many of the veils which are cast over
the Scripture are not meant to hide the
meaning from the diligent, but to compel the
mind to be active.
For oftentimes the diligence of the heart in
seeking to know the divine mind does the
heart more good than the knowledge itself.
Meditation and careful thought exercise us and strengthen
the soul for the reception of the yet
more lofty truths.
I have heard that the mothers in the
Balearic Isles in the old times who wanted
to bring their boys up to be good
slingers would put their dinners up above them
where they could not get at them until
they threw a stone and fetched them down.
Our Lord wishes us to be good slingers
and He puts up some precious truth in
a lofty place where we cannot get it
down except by slinging at it.
And at last we hit the mark and
find food for our souls.
Then we have the double benefit of learning
the art of meditation and partaking of the
sweet truth which it has brought within our
reach.
We must meditate, brothers.
These grapes will yield no wine till we
tread upon them.
These olives must be put under the wheel
and pressed again and again that the oil
may flow therefrom.
In a dish of nuts you may know
which nut has been eaten because there is
a little hole which the insect has punctured
through the cell.
Just a little hole.
And then inside there is the living thing
eating up the kernel.
Well is the grand thing to bore through
the shell of the letter and then to
live inside feeding upon the kernel.
I would wish to be such a little
worm as that, living within and upon the
word of God, having bored my way through
the shell and having reached the innermost mystery
of the blessed gospel.
The word of God is always most precious
to the man who most lives upon it.
As I sat last year under a wide
-spreading beech, I was pleased to mark with
prying curiosity the singular habits of that most
wonderful of trees which seems to have an
intelligence about it which other trees have not.
I wondered and admired the beech, but I
thought to myself, I do not think half
as much of this beech tree as yonder
squirrel does.
I see him leap from bough to bough,
and I feel sure that he dearly values
the old beech tree because he has found
his home somewhere inside it, in a hollow
place.
These branches are his shelter and those beech
nuts are his food.
He lives upon the tree.
It is his world, his playground, his granary,
his home.
Indeed, it is everything to him.
And it is not so to me, for
I find my rest and food elsewhere.
With God's word it is well for us
to be like squirrels, living in it and
living on it.
Let us exercise our minds by leaping from
bough to bough of it, find our rest
and food in it, and make it our
all in all.
We shall be the people that get the
profit out of it if we make it
to be our food, our medicine, our treasury,
our armory, our rest, our delight.
May the Holy Ghost lead us to do
this and make the word precious to our
souls.
Beloved, I would remind you next that for
this end we shall be compelled to pray.
It is a grand thing to be driven
to think.
It is a grander thing to be driven
to pray through having been made to think.
Am I not addressing some of you who
do not read the word of God?
And am I not speaking to many more
who do read it, but do not read
it with the strong resolve that they will
understand it?
I know it must be so.
Do you wish to begin to be true
readers?
Will you henceforth labor to understand?
Then you must get on your knees.
You must cry to God for direction.
Who understands a book best?
The author of it.
If I wish to ascertain the real meaning
of a twisted sentence, and the author lives
near me, and I can call upon him,
I will ring at his door and say,
Would you kindly tell me what you mean
by that sentence?
I have no doubt whatever that it is
very clear, but I am such a simpleton
that I cannot make it out.
I have not the knowledge and grasp of
the subject which you possess, and therefore your
allusions and descriptions are beyond my range of
knowledge.
It is quite within your range and commonplace
to you, but it is very difficult to
me.
Would you kindly explain your meaning to me?
A good man would be glad to be
thus treated, and would think it no trouble
to unravel his meaning to a candid inquirer.
Thus I should be sure to get the
correct meaning, for I should be going to
the fountainhead when I consulted the author himself.
So, beloved, the Holy Spirit is with us,
and when we take his book and begin
to read and want to know what it
means, we must ask the Holy Spirit to
reveal the meaning.
He will not work a miracle, but he
will elevate our minds, and he will suggest
to us thoughts which will lead us on
by their natural relation, the one to the
other, till at last we come to the
pith and marrow of his divine instruction.
Seek, then, very earnestly the guidance of the
Holy Spirit, for if the very soul of
reading be the understanding of what we read,
then we must in prayer call upon the
Holy Ghost to unlock the secret mysteries of
the inspired word.
If we thus ask the guidance and teaching
of the Holy Spirit, it will follow, dear
friends, that we shall be ready to use
all means and helps towards the understanding of
the Scriptures.
When Philip asked the Ethiopian eunuch whether he
understood the prophecy of Isaiah, he replied, How
can I, unless some man should guide me?
Then Philip went up and opened to him
the word of the Lord.
Some, under the pretense of being taught of
the Spirit of God, refused to be instructed
by books or by living men.
This is no honoring of the Spirit of
God.
It is a disrespect to him, for if
he gives to some of his servants more
light than to others and it is clear
he does, then they are bound to give
that light to others and to use it
for the good of the church.
But if the other part of the church
refused to receive that light, to what end
did the Spirit of God give it?
This would imply that there is a mistake
somewhere in the economy of gifts and graces
which is managed by the Holy Spirit.
It cannot be so.
The Lord Jesus Christ pleases to give more
knowledge of His word and more insight into
it to some of His servants than to
others, and it is ours joyfully to accept
the knowledge which He gives in such ways
as He chooses to give it.
It would be most wicked of us to
say, we will not have the heavenly treasure
which exists in earthen vessels.
If God will give us the heavenly treasure
out of His own hand, but not through
the earthen vessel, we will have it.
But we think we are too wise, too
heavenly-minded, too spiritual altogether, to care for
jewels when they are placed in earthen pots.
We will not hear anybody, and we will
not read anything, except the book itself.
Neither will we accept any light, except that
which comes in through a crack in our
own roof.
We will not see by another man's candle.
We would sooner remain in the dark.
Brethren, do not let us fall into such
folly.
Let the light come from God, and though
a child shall bring it, we will joyfully
accept it.
If any one of His servants, whether Paul
or Apollos or Cephas, shall receive light from
Him, behold, all are yours, and ye are
Christ's, and Christ is God's.
And therefore accept of the light which God
has kindled, and ask for grace that you
may turn that light upon the word, so
that when you read it, you may understand
it.
I do not wish to say much more
about this, but I should like to push
it home upon some of you.
You have Bibles at home, I know.
You would not like to be without Bibles.
You would think you were heathens if you
had no Bibles.
You have them very neatly bound, and they
look very fine volumes.
Not much thumbed, not much worn, and not
much likely to be so, for they only
come out on Sundays for an airing, and
they lie in lavender with a clean pocket
of handkerchiefs all the rest of the week.
You do not read the word.
You do not search it.
And how can you expect to get the
divine blessing?
If the heavenly gold is not worth digging
for, you are not likely to discover it.
Often and often have I told you that
the searching of the Scriptures is not the
way of salvation.
The Lord hath said, Believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.
But still, the reading of the word often
leads, like the hearing of it, to faith,
and faith bringeth salvation, for faith cometh by
hearing, and reading is a sort of hearing.
While you are seeking to know what the
gospel is, it may please God to bless
your souls.
But what poor reading some of you give
to your Bibles!
I do not want to say anything which
is too severe, because it is not strictly
true.
Let your own consciences speak.
But still, I make bold to inquire.
Do not many of you read the Bible
in a very hurried way, just a little
bit, and off you go?
Do you not soon forget what you have
read, and lose what little effect it seemed
to have?
How few of you are resolved to get
at its soul, its juice, its life, its
essence, and to drink in its meaning!
Well, if you do not do that, I
tell you again, your reading is miserable reading,
dead reading, unprofitable reading.
It is not reading at all.
The name would be misapplied.
May the Blessed Spirit give you repentance touching
this thing.
But now, secondly, and very briefly, let us
notice that in reading we ought to seek
out the spiritual teaching of the Word.
I think that is in my text, because
our Lord says, Had ye not read?
Then again, Had ye not read?
And then He says, If ye had known
what this meaneth, and the meaning is something
very spiritual.
The text He quoted was, I will have
mercy, and not sacrifice, a text out of
the prophet Hosea.
Now the scribes and Pharisees were all for
the letter, the sacrifice, the killing of the
bullock, and so on.
They overlooked the spiritual meaning of the passage,
I will have mercy, and not sacrifice, namely,
that God prefers that we should care for
our fellow creatures, rather than that we should
observe any ceremonial of His law, so as
to cause hunger or thirst, and thereby death
to any of the creatures that His hands
have made.
They ought to have passed beyond the outward
into the spiritual, and all our readings ought
to do the same.
Notice that this should be the case when
we read the historical passages.
Had ye not read what David did when
he was an hungred, and they that were
with him, how he entered into the house
of God, and did eat the shewbread, which
was not lawful for him to eat, neither
for them which were with him, but only
for the priests?
This was a piece of history, and they
ought so to have read it, as to
have found spiritual instruction in it.
I have heard very stupid people say, Well,
I do not care to read the historical
parts of Scripture.
Beloved friends, you do not know what you
are talking about when you say so.
I say to you now by experience that
I have sometimes found even a greater depth
of spirituality in the histories than I have
found in the psalms.
You will say, How is that?
I assert that when you reach the inner
and spiritual meaning of a history, you are
often surprised at the wondrous clearness, the realistic
force with which the teaching comes home to
your soul.
Some of the most marvelous mysteries of Revelation
are better understood by being set before our
eyes in the histories than they are by
the verbal declaration of them.
When we have the statement to explain the
illustration, the illustration expands and vivifies the statement.
For instance, when our Lord Himself would explain
to us what faith was, He sent us
to the history of the brazen serpent.
And who that has ever read the story
of the brazen serpent has not felt that
he has had a better idea of faith
through the picture of the dying snake-bitten
persons looking to the serpent of brass and
living than from any description which even Paul
has given us, wondrously as he defines and
describes.
Never, I pray you, depreciate the historical portions
of God's Word.
But when you cannot get good out of
them, say, That is my foolish head and
my slow heart.
O Lord, be pleased to clear my brain
and cleanse my soul.
When he answers that prayer, you will feel
that every portion of God's Word is given
by inspiration and is and must be profitable
to you.
Cry, Open thou mine eyes that I may
behold wondrous things out of thy law.
Just the same thing is true with regard
to all the ceremonial precepts, because the Savior
goes on to say, Have ye not read
in the law how that on the Sabbath
days the priests in the temple profane the
Sabbath and are blameless?
There is not a single precept in the
old law but has an inner sense and
meaning.
Therefore do not turn away from Leviticus or
say, I cannot read these chapters in the
books of Exodus and Numbers.
They are all about the tribes and their
standards, the stations in the wilderness, and the
halts of the march, the tabernacle and furniture,
or about golden knops and bowls and boards
and sockets and precious stones and blue and
scarlet and fine linen.
No.
But look for the inner meaning.
Make thorough search, for as in a king's
treasure that which is the most closely locked
up and the hardest to come at is
the choicest jewel of the treasure, so is
it with the Holy Scriptures.
Did you ever go into the British Museum
library?
There are many books of reference there which
the reader is allowed to take down when
he pleases.
There are other books for which he must
write a ticket, and he cannot get them
without the ticket.
But they have certain choice books which you
will not see without a special order.
And then there is an unlocking of doors
and an opening of cases, and there is
a watcher with you while you make your
inspection.
You are scarcely allowed to put your eye
on the manuscript for fear you should blot
a letter out by glancing at it.
It is such a precious treasure.
There is not another copy of it in
all the world, and so you cannot get
at it easily.
Just so.
There are choice and precious doctrines of God's
Word which are locked up in such cases
as Leviticus or Solomon's Song, and you cannot
get at them without a deal of unlocking
of doors.
And the Holy Spirit Himself must be with
you, or else you will never come at
the priceless treasure.
The higher truths are choicely hidden away as
the precious regalia of princes.
Therefore, search as well as read.
Do not be satisfied with a ceremonial precept
till you reach its spiritual meaning, for that
is the true reading.
You have not read till you understand the
spirit of the matter.
It is just the same with the doctrinal
statements of God's Word.
I have sorrowfully observed some persons who are
very orthodox and who can repeat their creed
very glibly, and yet the principal use that
they make of their orthodoxy is to sit
and watch the preacher with the view of
framing a charge against him.
He has uttered a single sentence which is
judged to be half a hair's breadth below
the standard.
That man is not sound.
He has said some good things, but he
is rotten at the core, I am certain.
He used an expression which was not eighteen
ounces to the pound.
Sixteen ounces to the pound are not enough
for these dear brethren of whom I speak.
They must have something more, and over and
above the shackle of the sanctuary, their knowledge
is used as a microscope to magnify trifling
differences.
I hesitate not to say that I have
come across persons who could a hair divide
betwixt the west and northwest side in matters
of divinity, but who know nothing about the
things of God in their real meaning.
They have never drank them into their souls,
but only sucked them up into their mouths
to spit them out on others.
The doctrine of election is one thing, but
to know that God has predestinated you, and
to have the fruit of it in the
good works to which you are ordained, is
quite another thing.
To talk about the love of Christ, to
talk about the heaven that is provided for
His people, and such things, all this is
very well, but this may be done without
any personal acquaintance with them.
Therefore, beloved, never be satisfied with a sound
creed, but desire to have it graven on
the tablets of your heart.
The doctrines of grace are good, but the
grace of the doctrines is better still.
See that you have it, and be not
content with the idea that you are instructed
until you so understand the doctrine that you
have felt its spiritual power.
This makes us feel that in order to
come to this, we shall need to feel
Jesus present with us whenever we read the
word.
Mark that fifth verse, which I would now
bring before you as part of my text,
which I have hitherto left out.
Have ye not read in the law how
on the Sabbath days the priests in the
temple profane the Sabbath and are blameless?
But I say unto you that in this
place is one greater than the temple.
Ay, they thought much about the letter of
the word, but they did not know that
he was there who is the Sabbath's master,
man's lord, and the Sabbath's lord, and lord
of everything.
O, when you have got hold of a
creed, or of an ordinance, or anything that
is outward in the letter, pray the Lord
to make you feel that there is something
greater than the printed book and something better
than the mere shell of the creed.
There is one person greater than they all,
and to him we should cry that he
may ever be with us.
O living Christ, make this a living word
to me.
Thy word is life, but not without Thy
Holy Spirit.
I may know this book of Thine from
beginning to end, and repeat it all from
Genesis to Revelation, and yet it may be
a dead book, and I may be a
dead soul.
But, Lord, be present here.
Then will I look up from the book
to the Lord, from the precept to Him
who fulfilled it, from the law to Him
who honored it, from the threatening to Him
who has borne it for me, and from
the promise to Him in whom it is
yea and amen.
Ah, then we shall read the book so
differently.
He is here with me in this chamber
of mine.
I must not trifle.
He leans over me.
He puts His finger along the lines.
I can see His pierced hand.
I will read it as in His presence.
I will read it knowing that He is
the substance of it, that He is the
proof of this book as well as the
writer of it, the sum of the Scripture
as well as the author of it.
That is the way for true students to
become wise.
You will get at the soul of Scripture
when you can keep Jesus with you while
you're reading.
Did you never hear a sermon as to
which you felt that if Jesus had come
into that pulpit while the man was making
his oration, He would have said, Go down,
go down.
What business have you here?
Go home and learn of Me, and then
come and talk.
That sermon which does not lead to Christ
or of which Jesus Christ is not the
top and the bottom is a sort of
sermon that will make the devils in hell
to laugh but might make the angels of
God to weep if they were capable of
such emotion.
You remember the story I told you of
the Welshman who heard a young man preach
a very fine sermon, a grand sermon, a
high-faluting spread-eagle sermon.
When he had done, he asked the Welshman
what he thought of it.
The man replied that he did not think
anything of it.
And why not?
Because there was no Jesus Christ in it.
Well, said he, but my text did not
seem to run that way.
Never mind, said the Welshman.
Your sermon ought to run that way.
I do not see that, however, said the
young man.
No, said the other.
You do not see how to preach yet.
This is the way to preach.
From every little village in England, it does
not matter where it is, there is sure
to be a road to London.
Though there may not be a road to
certain other places, there is certain to be
a road to London.
Now, from every text in the Bible, there
is a road to Jesus Christ, and the
way to preach is just to say, How
can I get from this text to Jesus
Christ, and then go preaching all the way
along it?
Well, but, said the young man, suppose I
find a text that has not got a
road to Jesus Christ.
I have preached for forty years, said the
old man, and I have never found such
a scripture.
But if I ever do find one, I
will go over hedge and ditch, but I
will get to Him, for I will never
finish without bringing in my Master.
Perhaps you will think that I have gone
a little over hedge and ditch tonight, but
I am persuaded that I have not.
For the sixth verse comes in here, and
brings our Lord in most sweetly, setting Him
in the very forefront of you, Bible readers,
so that you must not think of reading
without feeling that He is there, who is
Lord and Master of everything that you are
reading, and who shall make these things precious
to you, if you realize Him in them.
If you do not find Jesus in the
Scriptures, they will be of small service to
you.
For what did our Lord Himself say?
Ye search the Scriptures, for in them ye
think ye have eternal life, but ye will
not come unto me that ye might have
life, and therefore your searching comes to nothing.
You find no life, and remain dead in
your sins.
May it not be so with us?
Lastly, such a reading of Scripture, as implies
the understanding of and the entrance into its
spiritual meaning, and the discovery of the Divine
Person, who is the spiritual meaning, is profitable.
For here our Lord says, If ye had
known what this meaneth, I will have mercy,
and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned
the guiltless.
It will save us from making a great
many mistakes, if we get to understand the
word of God.
And among other good things, we shall not
condemn the guiltless.
I have no time to enlarge upon these
benefits, but I will just say, putting all
together, that the diligent reading of the word
of God, with the strong resolve to get
at its meaning, often begets spiritual life.
We are begotten by the word of God.
It is the instrumental means of regeneration.
Therefore, love your Bibles, keep close to your
Bibles.
You seeking sinners, you who are seeking the
Lord, your first business is to believe in
the Lord Jesus Christ.
But while you are yet in darkness and
gloom, oh, love your Bibles and search them.
Take them to bed with you, and when
you wake up in the morning, if it
is too early to go downstairs and disturb
the house, get half an hour of reading
upstairs.
Say, Lord, guide me to that text which
shall bless me.
Help me to understand how I, a poor
sinner, can be reconciled to Thee.
I recollect how, when I was seeking the
Lord, I went to my Bible, and to
Baxter's call to the unconverted, and to Alan's
alarm, and Doddridge's rise and progress.
For I said in myself, I am afraid
that I shall be lost, but I will
know the reason why.
I am afraid I never shall find Christ,
but it shall not be for want of
looking for him.
That fear used to haunt me.
But I said, I will find him if
he is to be found.
I will read.
I will think.
There was never a soul that did sincerely
seek for Jesus in the word, but by
and by he stumbled on the precious truth
that Christ was near at hand and did
not want any looking for, that he was
really there.
Only they, poor blind creatures, were in such
a maze that they could not just then
see him.
Oh, cling you to the Scripture!
Scripture is not Christ, but it is the
silken clue which will lead you to him.
Follow its leadings faithfully.
When you have received regeneration and a new
life, keep on reading, because it will comfort
you.
You will see more of what the Lord
has done for you.
You will learn that you are redeemed, adopted,
saved, sanctified.
Half the errors in the world spring from
people not reading their Bibles.
Would anybody think that the Lord would leave
any of his dear children to perish if
he read such a text as this?
I give unto my sheep eternal life, and
they shall never perish, neither shall any man
pluck them out of my hand.
When I read that, I am sure of
the final perseverance of the saints.
Read then the word, and it will be
much for your comfort.
It will be for your nourishment too.
It is your food as well as your
life.
Search it, and you will grow strong in
the Lord and in the power of his
might.
It will be for your guidance also.
I am sure those go rightest who keep
closest to the book.
Oftentimes, when you do not know what to
do, you will see a text leaping out
of the book and saying, Follow me.
I have seen a promise sometimes blaze out
before my eyes, just as when an illuminated
device flames forth upon a public building.
One touch of flame and a sentence or
a design flashes out in gas.
I have seen a text of Scripture flame
forth in that way to my soul.
I have known that it was God's word
to me, and I have gone on my
way rejoicing.
And, oh, you will get a thousand helps
out of that wondrous book if you do
but read it.
For understanding the words more, you will prize
it more.
And as you get older, the book will
grow with your growth and turn out to
be a greybeard's manual of devotion just as
it was aforetime a child's sweet storybook.
Yes, it will always be a new book,
just as new a Bible as if it
was printed yesterday and nobody has ever seen
a word of it till now.
And yet it will be a deal more
precious for all the memories which cluster round
it.
As we turn over its pages, how sweetly
do we recollect passages in our history which
will never be forgotten to all eternity, but
will stand forever intertwined with gracious promises.
Beloved, the Lord teaches to read His book
of life, which He has opened before us
here below, so that we may read our
titles clear in that other book of love
which we have not seen as yet, but
which will be opened at the last great
day.
The Lord be with you and bless you.
Charles Haddon Spurgeon preached this message how to
read the Bible in 1879.
This is Charles Kelsch inviting you to join
me again for another message from the Prince
of Preachers.