The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.
The Weeding of the Garden.
A sermon delivered on Sunday morning, December 8,
1861, by the Reverend C.
H.
Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
Matthew 15, verse 18.
For he answered and said, Every plant which
my Heavenly Father hath not planted shall be
rooted up.
Jesus Christ had spoken certain truths which were
highly objectionable to the Pharisees.
Some of his loving disciples were in great
fright, and they came to him and said,
Knowest thou not that the Pharisees are offended?
Now our Savior, instead of making any apology
for having offended the Pharisees, took it as
a matter of course, and replied in a
sentence which is well worthy to be called
a proverb.
Every plant which my Heavenly Father hath not
planted shall be rooted up.
Now we have oftentimes, as Matthew Henry very
tritely remarks, a number of good and affectionate,
but very weak hearers.
They are always afraid that we shall offend
other hearers.
Hence, if the truth be spoken in a
plain and pointed manner and seems to come
close home to the conscience, they think that
surely it ought not to have been spoken,
because so-and-so and so-and-so
and so-and-so took offense at it.
Truly, my brethren, we are not all slow
to answer in this matter.
If we never offended, it would be proof
positive that we did not preach the gospel.
They who can please man will find it
quite another thing to have pleased God.
Do you suppose that men will love those
who faithfully rebuke them?
If you make the sinner's heart to groan
and waken his conscience, do you think he
will pay you court and thank you for
it?
Nay, not so.
In fact, this ought to be one aim
of our ministry, not to offend, but to
test men and make them offended with themselves
so that their hearts may be exposed to
their own inspection.
Their being offended will discover of what sort
they are.
A ministry that never uproots will never water.
A ministry that does not put down will
never build up.
He who knoweth not how to pluck up
the plants which God hath not planted scarcely
understandeth how to be a worker of God
in his vineyard.
Our ministry ought always to be a killing
as well as a healing one.
A ministry which kills all false hopes, blights
all wrong confidences, and weeds out all foolish
trusts, while at the same time it trains
up the feeblest shoot of real hope and
tends comfort and encouragement even to the weakest
of the sincere followers of Christ.
Do not, then, be needlessly alarmed about our
ministry.
Just give us plenty of elbow room to
strike right and left.
Let not our friends encumber us.
Whether they be friends or foes, when we
have to strike for God and His truth,
we cannot spare whoever may stand in our
way.
To our own master we stand or fall,
but to no one else in heaven or
on earth.
Well, now, our Savior was thus led from
the remark of His disciples to utter this
memorable proverbial saying.
If we understand it aright, it applies to
every doctrine and to every false system of
religion.
Whatever God hath not planted will be rooted
up.
As for heretical teachers, let them alone.
They be blind leaders of the blind, and
if the blind lead the blind, they shall
both fall into the ditch.
Many good people are greatly concerned about the
growth of papacy in England.
They fear the day will come when papacy
shall have quenched the light of gospel truth.
I trust my brothers and sisters in Christ
you will not get nervous upon that point.
It is of little consequence what men are
if they are not saved, if they are
not brought to know the Lord.
I do not know that it is a
very important item what kind of religion they
have if they have not got the true
one.
They may receive the awful doom of unbelievers
in Christ and enemies to the gospel as
Romanists or Mohammedans or like too many in
this land being merely professing Christians who deceive
themselves and others, they may incur the same
wrath of God and inherit the same condemnation.
But do not think for a moment that
the harlot of the seven hills will ever
prevail against the bride of Christ.
Not she.
The Lord will buy and buy when her
iniquity shall be full utterly destroy her.
Only be sure in your heart that God
has not planted it and you may be
equally sure that he will pluck it up.
Prophets may plant it with their pretended revelations.
Martyrs may water it with their blood.
Confessor after confessor may defend it with his
learning and with his courage.
Time may endear it.
Literature may protect it and kings may keep
guard about it.
But he that ruleth in the heavens and
careth not for human might shall certainly grasp
its trunk and pulling it up, even though
it be as strong as cedar, shall hurl
it into the fire because he hath not
planted it.
Yes, every hoary system of superstition, every ancient
form of idolatry, every venerable species of will
worship shall be certainly overturned as God is
true.
Leave them alone.
Be not overanxious.
He shall come by and buy who shall
cry overturn, overturn, overturn.
And he shall pluck up by the roots
everything which his own hand hath not planted.
The advice of the Jewish orator was very
sensible when he said concerning certain men, refrain
from these men and let them alone.
For if this counsel or this work be
of men, it will come to naught.
But if it be of God, ye cannot
overthrow it.
When you see a new enterprise, some brethren
very enthusiastic attempting something you cannot quite approve
of, do not stand in their way.
Let them have a fair trial.
There is one at the helm who understands
how to manage better than we do.
Let them alone.
If God has not the work in hand,
it will come to naught.
And if it should be God's work, then
surely it will stand.
I am so constantly referred to for advice
from all parts of the country that I
am very often in the position of the
Delphic oracle, not wishing to give wrong advice
and therefore hardly able to give any.
Among others, some time ago I had an
inquiry from a brother as to whether he
ought to preach or not.
His minister told him he ought not and
yet he felt he must.
So I thought I would be safe and
I said to him just this, My brother,
if God has opened your mouth, the devil
cannot shut it.
But if the devil has opened it, I
pray the Lord to shut it directly.
I was quite certain to be safe there.
He took it as an encouragement to preach
on.
I think we may say the like with
regard to all modern enterprises.
Whenever a brother comes with something new that
is to revive the church and to do
good, we may say, Well, if God has
opened your mouth, I will not help Satan
to shut it.
But if Satan has opened your mouth, may
God shut it.
But it is not mine to do that
work.
I must leave it to him.
To your own master you shall stand or
fall.
But while I have no doubt that this
is the drift of the text and what
the Savior specially aimed at, yet beyond a
doubt we may read this sentence as having
reference to our own souls.
And here may the Spirit of God give
to us a deep solemnity of spirit that
we may be led to ask ourselves and
honestly to answer the inquiry whether we are
plants of God's right hand planting or not.
May God the Holy Ghost have personal dealings
with many of our souls tonight.
And may this be a heart-searching and
rain-trying hour.
First, I shall have something to say about
those plants that God has not planted.
Secondly, we will consider a little about their
being uprooted, and then we will come to
the examination as to whether we are plants
that God has planted.
The Greek word not only signifies plants, for
you know we are in the habit of
calling a thing a plant which grows in
the woods, but the Greek word has nicer
discrimination.
As Tyndall very well remarks, it is not
merely a plant but a root that has
been designed to be put into the ground
and taken care of.
We must not only be comparable to dying
plants, but we must be comparable to those
which come under the gardener's care, which are
planted in the soil, tended by his skill,
and looked upon with interest as being his
own.
Now, there are many professors who are like
wild plants.
They were never planted by any servant of
God, much less by God himself.
They are thorns and briars.
They bring forth wild fruits, noxious, bitter, poisonous,
acrid, and deadly to the taste of the
passerby.
They grow in abundance.
This London is like some wild heath that
is covered with its ferns and gorse, and
even with something worse than these wild plants
that spring up spontaneously.
Now, these will have to be rooted up.
When the day comes for God to clear
his commons, there will be a blaze indeed,
when he shall say, Gather them together in
bundles to burn, but gather the wheat into
my garner.
The drunkard, the swearer, the adulterer, those who
live by cheating and robbing their neighbors, those
who never darken the walls of God's sanctuary,
those to whom the Sunday is the busiest
day in the week, those who are without
God and without hope and without Christ, these
we may call self-sown plants, uncared for,
untutored, and must be rooted up, for he
will say, Gather out of my kingdom all
things that offend, and they that do iniquity.
There are other plants, however, that have evidently
been planted by some hand.
Some have been planted by the minister's hand.
There are the signs and marks about them
that some pruning knife has been at work.
You know to what I refer.
We all of us have some converts.
God has his thousands, I hope, in this
place, but I have some of my own
here that I could do better without.
A man's converts are always a disgrace to
him.
It is only those that God converts that
will last.
When we go fresh into a place, there
is always a number of people who hear
with a degree of profit and who are
affected by us.
But let that minister be taken away, and
they go back again.
One wave washes them up on the shore,
and the return wave sucks them back again
into the great deeps.
Why, see how it was with this congregation
in years gone by, when they were smaller
and pure in number.
When my worthy predecessor, Mr. James Smith, preached
the word, there was a number of those
who professed conversion.
And what became of many when he went
away?
God alone knows, save that we found out
some of them no better than they should
be.
And if I should die, there would be
some of you that would do the same.
Take but away the leader, and the soldier
slinks back into his quarters.
He has no objection to follow his captain
while he sees him, but the man being
the captain, if the standard bear falls, then
he flies himself out of the conflict and
is seen no more.
I do not know who planted you, but
if ye are only planted by man, though
he were the best man that ever lived,
you will be rooted up.
If your conversion is only human, if you
are only brought to God by mere moral
suasion, and have never been operated upon by
the holy, divine, supernatural energy of the Holy
Spirit, you will go back like the dog
to his vomit, and like the sow that
was washed to her wallowing in the mire.
There are some, too, that were not planted
by ministers, but they were planted by their
fathers and mothers.
They have got a kind of family religion.
Well, I like to see the child follow
his parent when the parent walks in the
footsteps of Christ.
It is a blessed thing when the old
oak falls off to see a half a
dozen saplings sprung up the spot where he
stood.
But we must recollect that we have nothing
to do with hereditary godliness, for hereditary godliness
is not worth a straw.
We must be personally saved.
We cannot be saved in our father's loins.
What if the blood of martyrs be in
my veins tonight, and if I traced back
my pedigree as I might do through a
few of preachers of the word, what mattereth
it if I myself make shipwreck concerning faith
and be a castaway?
It shall be but the sore condemnation for
a child of the saints to perish as
an heir of wrath.
Ah, there are many of you who have
fathers and mothers in the church who look
for your everlasting welfare with anxious desire.
I pray you do not imagine that your
father's religion will save you.
We will not baptize you, lest you should
have that thought in your head.
Till you have got religion of your own,
we have nothing to do with you.
Not until you have a personal faith dare
we give you a baptism.
We would not have you make a profession
by proxy, nor would we have profession made
for you while you are an unconscious babe.
True religion is personal to every man, and
is a matter of his own consciousness.
He must, in his own soul, be lost
or be saved.
The battle of life can be fought in
no battlefield but in your own personal consciousness,
and he that attempts to shift the work
or to shift the responsibility to another goes
on a fool's errand, and he will surely
fail in it.
If he has not been planted thus, you
will be rooted up.
And oh, how many there are of even
professors of religion who are self-planted.
By their own good deeds and their own
efforts and their own strivings and their own
prayings, they hope to be saved.
And having an experience which was not wrought
in them but which they borrowed from books,
they have come, and oft times they have
deceived the minister and been added to the
church.
Ah, souls, ye may paint yourselves as ye
will, but unless ye have the genuine matter,
ye will never be able to pass the
judgment seat of God.
Ye may gild and varnish, but he will
say, Take it away.
And like the painted face of Jezebel, which
the dogs did eat, despite the paint, so
shall you yourselves be utterly devoured despite the
fair picture that you made.
There may be some such in this church.
Human judgment cannot discover them.
May the candle of the Lord search them
out tonight.
Soul, a home-spun religion and a home
-made godliness will fail us.
We must have that which is the workmanship
of God by the Holy Ghost.
Except a man be born again, he cannot
see the kingdom of God.
And except a man be born of water
and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into
the kingdom of heaven.
Take care, ye self-planted trees, lest when
the master cometh by, he shall say, How
came that plant there?
I never put it in the garden.
Pluck it up.
And he shall throw it over the wall
of the garden just as the gardeners throw
away their rubbish, which is afterwards gathered up
and burned in the fire.
Before I leave this point, I want to
say two or three things.
I speak in humble language so that I
may be understood.
For in these solemn matters and soarings after
fine language is but mocking the souls of
men.
Let me just notice that some of those
plants that God never did plant are very
beautiful.
If you go into the fields, there are
many plants that grow there that are quite
as lovely as those in the garden.
Look at the foxglove and the dog rose.
Look at many of the blossoms we pass
by as insignificant.
They are really beautiful, but they are not
plants that have ever been planted.
Now, how many we have in our congregations
that are really beautiful, yet they are none
of God's planting?
Men and women whose character is upright, whose
manners are amiable, whose life is irreproachable.
They are not immoral.
They neither cheat nor lie, but they are
exemplary.
Their disposition is kind, tenderhearted, and affectionate.
Yes, but my dear here, there must be
something more than this.
For Jesus says, every plant which my heavenly
Father hath not planted shall be rooted up.
Though it be a lovely plant, though it
seem to be a fair flower externally, yet
since the root of it hath sucked its
nourishment out of the wild wastes of sin,
whether of infidelity or of lawlessness, it is
evil in the eye of God, and it
must be plucked up.
Further, how many there are of our wild
wood plants that even bring forth fruit?
The schoolboy in the country can tell us
that the wood is an orchard, and that
often he has had many a luscious meal
from those wild fruits that grew there.
Yet mark you, though the birds may come
and satisfy their hunger from those wild fruits,
and though the seeds may be in the
winter, the sparrows garner in the linnet's storehouse,
yet they are not planted, and they do
not come under the description of the text.
Plants that have been planted.
So too, there may be some of you
who really do some good in the world.
Without you, a mother's wants might not be
provided for.
From your table many of the poor are
fed.
Oh, this is good.
This is good, I would, that all of
you did more of it.
But I pray you remember that this is
not enough.
There must be gods planting in you, or
else the fruits you bring forth will be
selfish fruits.
You will be like Israel who was denounced
as being an empty vine because, forsooth, he
brought forth fruit unto himself.
Charity is good, noble charity.
Be thou honored among men.
But there must be faith.
And if we have no faith in Christ,
though we give our bodies to be burned
and bestow our goods to feed the poor,
yet where Christ is, we certainly can never
come.
And I would hint just once more that
many of those wild plants have very strong
roots.
If you were to go and try to
dig them up, you would have a task
before you not easily accomplished.
Look at the wild dock.
Did you seek to pull it up?
Piece after piece it breaks away, and you
have to send to some sharp instrument deep
into the ground before you can root it
out.
And even then, if there be but a
piece left, it springs up and thrives again.
Oh, how many there are who have as
much tenacity of life in their false confidence
as there is in the dock in its
root.
Some of you cannot shake.
I never have a doubt, said one.
I never had a doubt or a misgiving.
You remember Robert Hall said, allow me to
doubt for you, sir.
Because he knew the man to be an
ill liver.
And so we have some.
They are not in trouble as other men.
Neither are they plagued like other men.
They speak with an air of satisfaction.
Their language sounds like assurance, but it is
presumption.
It looks like confidence in Christ, but it
is presumption.
It is confidence in themselves.
And such will strike their roots very deep,
and they will be very strong indeed, so
that you cannot shake them, yet alas for
them.
They are not plants of the Lord's right
hand planting, and therefore the sentence is passed.
And ere long it shall be executed without
pity, they shall be rooted up.
And now very briefly indeed, upon my second
point, for time will fail us if we
dwell long upon it, their uprooting.
This uprooting sometimes comes in this life.
Peradventure they are tempted, and they foully fall,
or persecution comes, and they desert the standard
by which they swore to stand or die.
Or if not, they come to die, and
death comes and takes hold of their profession,
and strikes it to and fro like some
great giant who was able to rend up
an oak by its roots.
Perhaps for weeks the man holds his confidence
and says, it is well with me, it
is well with me.
And we have known some plants with the
root so deep that death himself could not
tear them up.
They have died deceived, they have perished with
a false hope, and they have gone into
the next world dreaming of heaven and expecting
to see the face of God, but oh
their mistake.
Where am I, said the soul, this is
not heaven.
And the mask was pulled off, and the
man saw himself all loathsome and leprous, and
he said, I thought I was fair and
lovely.
Some rude hand plucked off his garment, and
he saw his running sores and ulcers, and
he said, I thought I was soundly healed.
And he heard the voice of conscience saying,
thou hypocrite, God never had a work in
thy soul, thou didst deceive thyself, thou didst
deceive thyself into a pretended hope, and now
where art thou?
The songs of the sanctuary change for the
wailings of hell, thy sittings at the Lord's
table, and indolorous feastings at the table of
devils.
Cast out, lost, banished, because God never planted
thee, therefore art thou plucked up.
This leads me to my final task, the
work of self-examination.
Dear friends, let not my aged confirmed Christians
here stand back from self-examination.
Minister thou too, O my own soul, and
thou deacon, elder, aged professor, let each man
among us put himself into the scale.
Am I or am I not a plant
of the Lord's right hand planting?
Well then, first and foremost, if I am
a plant of the Lord's planting, there was
a time when I had to be taken
out of the place where I once grew.
Can I remember a time when he digged
about me and dug me up till the
roots of my heart began to bleed, my
soul was loosened from the earth and the
soil which it had loved, and though it
did cling tenaciously to it, yet was I
drawn out by superior power, taken out of
the kingdom of darkness and separated from the
earthiness of my own works and self-righteousness?
Can I remember that?
Yes, blessed be God, some of us can
say I can.
One thing I know, whereas I once was
blind, now I see.
Old things have passed away, behold, all things
have become new.
There must be a change.
No matter how moral you may have been,
there must be a change.
There must be a change too which you
can feel yourself, even though others cannot see
it.
And when such a change does not amount,
I will not merely say to the change
in a sick man when he gets well,
but to the change in a dead man
when he comes to life.
If there is no change as this, we
must fear that we are not plants of
the Lord's planting.
Again, if I have been planted by God,
I do most thoroughly and unfeignedly mourn that
I ever was anything but what I am,
and I do most heartily pant to be
made like unto Christ and to be conformed
unto his image.
If thou hast any love in thy heart
towards sin, so as willingly to choose it,
take care that thou deceive not thyself as
to the love of God being in thee.
He that is saved hates sin and loathes
it, and though he committeth sin, it is
by infirmity, and even when his will giveth
consent unto the sin, yet it giveth a
still deeper and more confident assent unto the
law, and after it hath sinned, it mourneth
and bemoaneth itself exceedingly on account of sin.
If you saw a fish in a tree,
you would know it was not in its
element, and if you see a Christian in
sin, you will be able to discover that
he is not in his element.
If sin be a pleasure to thee, if
thou canst sail down its stream and rejoice
in it, canst drink its dross and make
merry with those that make merry therein, then
deceive not thyself, for thou art not a
plant of the Lord's right hand planting.
Again, if thou be such as God hath
made thee, then thou hast learned thine utter
helplessness and emptiness apart from Christ as thy
righteousness, and the Spirit of God as thy
strength.
Have you anything of your own to boast
of?
He never planted you.
Have you done anything that you can bring
before God and claim as your own?
He has had no dealings with you.
About this we are quite sure, for here
the Lord makes clean work.
Self-righteousness must not merely be wounded in
the leg, it must have its brains dashed
out, and he that still clingeth to himself
and his strength and his works has to
begin anew, for he has not yet begun
in God's way.
Another essential mark of the plants of God's
planting is that they are all planted on
one soil, and, strange to say, all on
a rock.
They whom God has planted put their trust
in Jesus only.
They have not the shadow of a shade,
of a suspicion, of an idea, of a
hope anywhere, but in Christ.
They say of Christ's wounds, they are the
clefts of the rock in which we hide
ourselves.
They say of Christ's blood, this has cleansed
our sins.
They say of Christ himself, he is our
law.
They say of his presence, it is our
delight.
They say of his gospel, it is our
joy.
They say of his heaven, it is our
sure and everlasting reward.
I would that we had longer time.
I knew not that the time was speeding
at so great a rate.
I would we had longer time to be
testing and trying ourselves in this matter.
But Scripture is so explicit as to what
a believer is and what he is not,
that I need not enlarge, but rather stir
up your hearts to make sure work here.
Professor, what if you should be deceived?
If you should be, do not say, but
I tell again, it is possible for others
have been deceived.
I beseech thee, suppose it possible.
Oh, that thou may say in thy soul,
well, if it be possible, if I am
deceived, yet I am a sinner.
And as a sinner, I will go to
Christ afresh tonight.
If I am not a saint, I am
a sinner.
And this is a faithful saying and worthy
of all acceptation that Christ Jesus came into
the world to save sinners of whom I
am chief.
So I will go to him again.
But if you refuse to say this, I
will put the if again.
Jonathan Edwards remarks that in the great revival
in New England, there were sinners of all
sorts converted except unconverted professors.
And says he, these unconverted professors are in
the most dangerous state in which men can
be.
Well, take that warning to yourselves.
Some of you say, but I am not
a professor.
Ah, but you are always here and people
consider you such.
Though you are not baptized and do not
join the church, yet you're constantly coming here,
identifies you with us, and they consider that
you make a profession.
And so you do after a sort.
Mark this.
If you are still unconverted and keep on
attending the means of grace year after year,
you are getting into a more dangerous state.
It is not often we hear of men
being converted when they have been hearing the
word 20 or 30 years without it having
taken effect.
Do then, I pray you, try yourselves, make
sure work for eternity, build with stone and
not with plaster, build on the rock and
not on the sand.
I counsel thee that thou buy of me
gold tried in the fire, saith the spirit.
Oh, let not your faith be a mere
spasm, the mere action of a moment.
Oh, that you may have the faith of
God elect, which is of the operation of
God, the Holy Ghost.
Do you say?
How is this to be had?
How can I be saved?
So I have a free gospel to preach
to thee, a full Christ to empty sinners,
a precious Christ for lawless outcasts, a rich
Christ to beggarly and starving souls.
Whosoever will, saith Jesus, let him come and
take of the water of life freely.
He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting
life.
He that trusts Christ is a plant of
God's right hand planting.
Oh, that thou wouldst treat Jesus now.
I know there is something which holds thee
back and thou sayest, I am not fit.
He wants no fitness.
Come as you are.
Any man is fit to be washed that
is black.
Any man is fit to be made whole
that is sick.
Any man is fit to be relieved that
is poor.
Ah, you have got the fitness in your
unfitness for your unfitness is all the fitness
that he wants.
But may I come, say you?
May you?
Yea, if you need the Saviour, you may
come, just as you may go to the
fountain which stands in the street and sends
forth its sparkling streams that he who is
thirsty may drink, so may you come now.
The greater the wretch, said Roland Hill in
his hymn, the welcomer here.
Christ loves to save big sinners, black sinners,
double-dyed sinners, crimson-dyed sinners.
Jesus Christ delights to wash.
Oh, is there such a one here tonight?
Is there a heart here that longs to
have Christ to be his all in all?
So if thou art longing for Christ, he
is longing for thee.
Let the match be made tonight since you
are both agreed.
Since you are agreed to have Christ and
he wills to have you here, strike hands
tonight and take him to have and to
hold for better, for worse, for life and
for death, yea, for all eternity.
What sayest thou?
Oh, I am not worthy.
Ah, saith he, thou art black, but thou
art comely in me.
If thou art but willing to come to
me now, as he made thee willing to
come to Christ in Christ's name, come.
He bids thee come.
From heaven he speaks to thee tonight through
his ambassador.
Come and welcome, sinner, come.
The door is opened and the master stands
outside and he says, my oxen and my
fatlings are killed.
Come ye to the supper.
Trust Jesus, sinner, down with thee, down with
thee, flat on thy face before him.
Trust him with thy soul, just as it
is.
Away with your buts and with your tomorrows
and peradventures and your carnal reasonings.
Now with an empty hand, take a full
Christ.
Now with empty, hungry mouths, receive the living
food, for he is able to save unto
the uttermost them that come unto God by
him.
One may grow hoarse in calling after poor
souls, but they will never come unless our
heavenly Father comes after them by his Spirit.
But he often does come when the word
is preached with faithfulness and affection.
God is in the word.
God wrestling with the souls of men and
going after the souls of men and fetching
in souls, as our church books testify every
week.
Oh, I am loath to leave off tonight.
Let me plead with you another moment.
Poor heart, dost thou go away and say,
there is nothing for me?
How can this be?
How can it be?
Even if the text condemn thee still, the
gospel is preached to thee.
Christ Jesus says, come unto me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden, and I
will give you rest.
There is something for you, you that cannot
see the preacher down yonder in the lobbies.
There is something for you.
In your ears the word sounds.
Oh, everyone that fasteth, come ye to the
waters, and he that hath no money, come
ye, buy and eat.
Yea, come, buy, buy wine and milk without
money and without price.
Trust Christ, sinner, and your soul is saved.
A plant of the Father's right hand planting
is that soul who hath come to put
his trust in Jesus, and the devil himself
shall not be able to pluck you up.