The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit.
Barriers Broken Down.
A sermon intended for reading on Lord's Day,
July 26, 1891, delivered by C.
H.
Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington.
Romans 10, verse 3.
For they being ignorant of God's righteousness, and
going about to establish their own righteousness, have
not submitted themselves unto the righteousness of God.
You that have your Bibles open, kindly follow
me from the first verse of the chapter.
It begins, Brethren, my heart's desire and prayer
to God for Israel is that they might
be saved.
If you really desire that men should be
saved, pray for them.
It is an empty wish, a mere formality,
if you do not turn it into prayer.
Every loving desire for any man or woman
should, by the believer, be taken before God
in prayer.
We cannot expect that God will save men
unless His people pray for it.
There must be travail before the birth, and
there must be travail in prayer with God
before we can expect that many will be
born again into the church of God.
O, for more prayer!
Let us cry to God in secret and
in the family and in all our assemblies
that God would save the sons of men.
But prayer, if it is sincere, is always
attended with effort.
Hence the Apostle begins to teach as well
as to pray.
He prays that Israel might be saved, and
then he explains the difficulties in the way
and tries to remove them.
You pray, dear friend, do you?
But you never speak to the individual for
whom you pray.
Is your prayer sincere?
I will not question it, but your prayer
has hardly reached that pitch of passionate earnestness
which will secure an answer.
For if you were in downright earnest, you
would go to the person for whom you
pray and explain the way of salvation.
You want your boy to be a scholar?
Then you send him to school.
You want your girl to learn a certain
trade?
You put her apprentice to it, do you
not?
In the things of common life, that which
you desire, you use means to obtain.
O, that in all our churches we might
feel that while effort without prayer is presumption
and prayer without effort is hypocrisy, the holy
blending of prayer and labor will produce for
certain a grand result.
If we labor for souls, we must not
be content unless souls are really saved.
For the Apostle says, For I bear them
record that they have a zeal of God.
Well, does not that satisfy you, Paul?
They are zealous for God.
They are red-hot.
No, says he, not unless it is in
the right way.
They have a zeal of God, but not
according to knowledge.
We feel very thankful when we see tears
stream down the cheek.
But you know, people cry at the theater,
and there is not much in it.
Pray God it may not end in a
shower of tears, but that the heart may
bleed as well as the eyes weep.
It may happen that we have induced our
hairs to give up some outward sins.
So far, so good.
But it is written, Ye must be born
again.
And if this vital change is not experienced,
all outward reformation will land them short of
heaven.
Beloved, the Apostle's love for souls led him
to pray and led him to labor.
But it led him to be very concerned
that none should stop short of real living
faith in Christ and justification by his blood
and righteousness.
When we are in the throes of a
revival and we think men are turning to
Christ, let us be happy and let us
not throw any cold water upon anybody, but
let us see that it is really the
work of grace in the hearts of our
hairs.
Let us take care that the plowshare goes
down deep, some soil once even cross-plowing
and scarifying.
Let us do the work thoroughly, for it
is only those that are really converted that
will stand.
We do not want a lot of people
that will run in at one door of
the church and out the other, but we
want saving work.
And our prayer should be, Lord, quicken the
people into divine life by divine truth through
the divine Spirit.
Now observe that the Apostle, being thus earnest
about souls, endeavours to be specially clear about
the doctrine of justification by faith.
If we want men to be truly converted,
we must set before them the plan of
salvation very clearly and distinctly.
I meet with hundreds of persons who have
had some kind of work upon their hearts,
but they tell me that they walk in
a mist.
They have not quite understood it.
They felt that they were on the rock,
but they were not quite sure what the
rock really was.
It is a good thing that our zeal
for God should be according to knowledge, that
we know what we believe and why we
believe it, and know that we are saved
and how we are saved and why we
are saved.
For if there be a mistake here, it
may be fatal.
Martin Luther, who, as we all know, continually
preached the doctrine of justification by faith, said
one day that he felt half-inclined to
take the Bible and bang it about the
people's heads, for they seemed as if they
would not get a hold of the doctrine
that we are saved by faith in Jesus
Christ and by that alone.
I suspect that knocking people's heads about with
the Bible would not affect any very great
result, but that was Martin Luther's way of
putting it.
Keep hammering away on that nail.
Believe, believe, believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved.
Well, now, that was the particular battleground of
Luther's day, so that he said, The doctrine
of justification by faith is the article of
a standing or a falling church.
If a church holds and preaches that it
is a church of Christ, notwithstanding many blunders,
but whatever it may preach, if it does
not preach that, it is to be questioned
whether it is not a a church that
has lost its true position.
The fight today is the same as in
Luther's day.
The words have changed, and men make other
pretenses, but the fight all along the line
is still this.
Are we saved by our own merits or
by the merit of another?
Are we righteous through what we do, or
are we righteous through what Christ has done?
Is sin put away by tears and repentances,
or is sin washed away by the precious
blood of Christ and by that alone?
Beloved, I trust that our pulpit will never
give an uncertain sound upon this matter.
In our discourse, we shall endeavor to show
you that while there are two righteousnesses, our
own righteousness and the righteousness of God, there
will always be, as there has always been,
a conflict between the two.
Men will choose their own righteousness, and they
will not submit themselves to the righteousness of
God.
You that are fellow workers for Christ will
be especially interested in this text, for it
sets forth three difficulties in the way of
a man's salvation.
The first is ignorance.
They, being ignorant of God's righteousness, the next
is self-will, and going about to establish
their own righteousness, and the third is flat
rebellion, have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness
of God.
Well, now, our first difficulty is with ignorance.
Ignorance is the mother of devotion according to
the Church of Rome.
Ignorance is the mother of error according to
the word of God.
We love the spread of knowledge, although there
is a knowledge which it were better not
to know, as there is a philosophy that
is nothing but vain deceit and not true
wisdom.
What we want our fellow men to possess
is spiritual knowledge.
Especially do we desire that they may have
first and chiefly knowledge with regard to God's
righteousness, for the difficulty is that men do
not know what that righteousness is which God
requires.
Do you want to be saved by your
own righteousness?
Do you know what kind of righteousness it
must be?
To be accepted, it must be perfect.
That is to say, if you have committed
but one sin, you have stained your character
in the sight of God, and your hope
of perfect righteousness is gone.
God's law requires obedience from the first moment
that the creature understands that law, as long
as ever that creature lives.
Mark what it requires of you.
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with
all thy heart, and with all thy soul,
and with all thy strength, and with all
thy mind.
Have you done that?
And thy neighbor as thyself, have you done
that?
Why, there is not one of us who
has done it.
If we had kept the law of God
completely from the first command to the last,
and from the first day until now, even
that would not save us.
For if there were to be one sinful
word or deed during the rest of life,
it would spoil the whole, and God could
not accept our righteousness.
When a man commits one sin, he is
guilty of disobedience to all the commands of
God.
For he that offendeth in one point is
guilty of all.
Here is a chain containing twenty links.
If I break one of them, I have
broken the chain.
Through there are nineteen perfect links, but if
number twenty is snapped, down goes the cage
over the mouth of the mine, and the
miners are killed.
Suppose that I should be required to produce
a perfect vase of alabaster or clear crystal
as a present to the queen, but my
servant maid has chipped it just a little.
What is to be done?
I may possibly find somebody to use some
patent cement and fasten the little pieces in
their places, but when all is done, it
is chipped.
It is not perfect, and if it must
be perfect before royalty can accept it, I
must get another vase, for this one will
not do.
Now, dear friend, while I am talking to
you about a chip here and a chip
there in your life, I am sure you
must be saying, Do not talk so, sir.
Why, some of us have not only got
chipped, but we are smashed right up.
And as to broken links, why, we have
fairly melted the chain.
There is not a link left.
We have nothing, absolutely nothing, that we can
bring before God.
I am glad to hear it.
If you are lost, you are the very
ones Christ came to save, and if you
have no righteousness of your own, you have
got to the halfway house of salvation.
When you strip a man, you are partly
on the way to clothing him.
When a man is changing his old clothes
for better, he must get the old ones
off first.
Oh, how glad I am to meet with
a real sinner.
There are many sham sinners about.
I saw one day in Italy a fellow
sticking out his arm with an awful sore,
and he begged of me.
As I suspected that he had manufactured that
sore with a little sulfuric acid, or by
some such process, I did not feel the
least pity for him.
We have lots of people who come confessing
their sins.
Oh yes, we are sinners, we are sinners.
They do not mean it.
They are only sham sinners.
A real sinner, one who feels his guilt,
is a sacred thing.
As Hart says, the Holy Ghost has made
him so.
He is an empty vessel that God is
going to fill.
He is a broken heart that God is
going to make anew.
But here is our trouble, that the mass
of people are not aware how perfect, how
complete any righteousness must be before God can
accept it.
The next difficulty is that men do not
know that God has provided a righteousness for
all believers.
For every soul of Adam born who will
believe in Christ, there is a perfect righteousness,
not ours, but God's.
God came here in human form, not bound
to be obedient, but being found in fashion
as a man, he became obedient.
Obedient to his own law and fulfilled every
jot and tittle of it, he was obedient
unto death, even the death of the cross.
And his obedience is ours, if we believe.
God looks at us as if we had
done what his Son has done.
Christ died and rose again, and God regards
us as having died in him and reckons
that we are risen with him and now
live in him.
Our righteousness is the righteousness of another, even
of the Son of God, a perfect righteousness,
a divine righteousness, an everlasting righteousness.
In the book of Daniel, it is written
that Messiah, the Prince, should finish the transgression,
make an end of sins, make reconciliation for
iniquity, and bring in everlasting righteousness.
He was made sin for us who knew
no sin, that we might be made the
righteousness of God in him.
Alas, how many there are who do not
know that God justifieth the ungodly, that sinners
can be regarded as just through what Christ
has done and suffered, and that believing in
the precious Christ whom God has set forth
to be a propitiation, the vilest are fair
to look upon in God's esteem, and the
far off ones are made nigh by the
blood of Christ.
Oh, I wish that men knew it.
I have sometimes thought that if they did
but know it, if they did but really
hear the gospel, they must believe it.
You that preach Christ in the streets, go
on preaching him.
I saw a man preaching the other day
with no creature but one dog to listen
to him, and I really thought that he
might as well have gone home.
But I met with a story yesterday which
I know to be true, and it showed
me that I was making a mistake.
There was a woman who for years had
been in such dreadful despair that she would
not even hear the gospel.
She came to be very ill, and she
said to one that called upon her, you
sent a man to preach under my window
three months ago, and I got a blessing.
No, the friend said, I never sent anybody
to preach under your window.
Oh, she said, I think you did, for
he came and preached, and my maid said
that there was nobody listening to him.
I did not want to hear him, and
as he made so much noise, my maid
shut the window, and I lay down in
bed.
But the man shouted so that I was
obliged to hear him, and I thank God
I did, for I heard the gospel, and
I found Christ.
Did you not send him?
No, said the good man, I did not.
Well, she said, then God did.
There was nobody in the street listening to
him, but I heard the gospel, and I
got out of my despair, and I found
the Savior, and I am prepared to die.
Fire away, brethren!
You do not know where your shot will
strike, but there is a billet for every
bullet.
I believe that there is some soul whom
God means to bless whenever we preach the
gospel, depending upon his grace.
But the mass of mankind are ignorant of
the righteousness which God requires, and ignorant of
the righteousness which God has provided.
Many are ignorant as to how they are
to receive this righteousness.
If there be such a righteousness, say they,
how are we to get it?
The current notion is, I must pray so
much, I must weep so much, I must
feel so much.
Ah, this is the common ignorance, whereas men
should know that there is life for a
crucified one.
Why, everybody preaches this, says someone.
I know they do, but people do not
understand it, although you keep on preaching it.
For until God the Holy Ghost makes men
to know the meaning of what you say,
they will but nod their heads and pass
on.
Though I heard the gospel from my childhood,
and was brought up upon the very knee
of piety, I did not understand what I
must do to be saved till I heard
that text preached from, Look unto me, and
be ye saved, or the ends of the
earth.
I do not believe that my ignorance was
the fault of the preacher.
It was certainly not the fault of my
father or my mother, and not the fault
of the Bible which I had read through
again and again, but it was the fault
of these dim eyes that I could not
see.
Go on, go on, ye preachers of the
word.
Spread abroad the knowledge of this great fact,
that he that believeth on the Son hath
everlasting life.
The worst of this terrible ignorance is that
the mass of mankind do not know Him
who is our righteousness.
Who is the righteousness of God?
Who is the blessed one?
God's only begotten Son, God, the word made
flesh, born at Bethlehem, nurtured in the carpenter's
shop, toiling here below and wearing His life
away for the souls of men, extending His
arms upon the cross, giving His side to
be pierced, His soul to be breathed out,
His body to be laid in the tomb,
that men might be saved.
O Jesus, in thy wounds is our salvation,
but men do not know it.
O Jesus, thy death is the death of
sin, thy life is our life unto God,
but men do not know it.
Alas, alas, men still go on in their
blindness and ignorance.
Still is the Lord of life despised and
rejected of men, and still His servants cry,
Who has believed our report, and to whom
is the arm of the Lord revealed?
You see, our great difficulty is human ignorance.
Ignorance, dear friends, even of the facts of
the truth, you do not know how near
to this place in the very midst and
heart of London there are tens of thousands
who do not know the name of Christ.
You think it incredible, but I know that
it is so.
There are multitudes that have never read a
chapter in the word of God since they
went to Sunday school as children, and they
never darkened the threshold of God's house.
There are streets in neighborhoods not far from
here where if one man goes to a
place of worship he is marked by all
his neighbors as a strange character.
Let me turn aside for a moment and
ask you how in this city of London
are we to get the gospel to the
working men, to a great number of them?
How does it get to some of them?
How?
Oh, little Mary sings it on father's knee
on Sunday night.
He has not been out to a place
of worship, but his little girl has been
to the Sunday school.
Or his son Jack has been to the
mission and comes home and tells his father
what the preacher said.
He will listen to his own children when
he will listen to no one.
The way to increase the number of those
who are not ignorant is for us so
to see the things of Christ that others
who have never seen them may have from
us an intimation of what we have seen.
Oh, it must be very painful to a
blind man for another to say to him,
now I am looking over a delightful landscape.
Away there I can see a beautiful piece
of water, and beyond the hills I see
the sea.
There is a ship going along.
Oh, the man says, I wish I had
eyes that I could see too.
The Holy Spirit makes us see that as
we tell the story, we may set others
longing to see also.
I think I reminded you once before that
when the prodigal came back, his father said,
bring forth the best robe and put it
on him and put a ring on his
hand and shoes on his feet.
But you will notice he never fed him.
The father does not say anything about that.
He says, bring hither the fatted calf and
kill it and let us eat and be
merry.
Well, it is the servants and all the
rest of the household that are to eat.
There is nothing said about killing the fatted
calf for the prodigal.
No, no.
You see, he had lost his appetite and
others must begin to eat fast.
And then when they began to eat, he
was sure to join in with them.
There is no sure way of begetting an
appetite than seeing other people eating.
Let us enjoy the things of Christ so
much that poor sinners mouths will water and
they will begin to ask, what is thy
beloved more than any other beloved?
What is this righteousness whereof you speak?
What is this wonderful thing?
We have need to tell out what we
know.
For ignorance, even of the simple facts of
the gospel, is extremely common.
Others are in great ignorance as to the
excellence of the gospel.
They do not know the peace, the joy,
the rest it brings.
His worth, if all the nations knew, sure
the whole world would love him too.
But they think that it is all mere
talk, or something all very well for parsons
and for some few other people to get
hold of.
But nothing for the working man, nothing for
the man of business, nothing for your noble
gentleman who has his heaven at Newmarket and
his bliss at Epsom?
Ah, dear friends, I would to God they
knew the pearl of great price, the incomparable
value of salvation by blood.
For then they would reckon the highest glory
of this present world as unworthy to be
compared with the least delight of the kingdom
of God.
With many, the ignorance is willful.
Nobody is so blind as the man that
does not want to see.
Nobody so deaf as the man that does
not wish to hear.
Many are like the hogs in harvest, very
deaf when they are told to go out
of the cornfield.
And so, when sinners run riot in their
sins, they are very deaf indeed when they
are told to quit them and fly to
Christ for refuge.
Some of you perhaps do not want to
know too much.
When you come to that part of the
Bible that begins to touch your conscience, you
say, shut that up.
You will go on somewhere else.
You do not want to know.
Willful ignorance will bring terrible damnation.
If there be salvation and you do not
want to know it, then you deserve to
be cast away.
There are some who are ignorant despairingly.
And I do pity them, poor souls.
They sigh and cry, oh, I cannot be
saved.
I am so guilty.
My heart is so hard.
The devil tells men first that they can
be saved any day they like, so they
may put it off.
Then immediately afterwards he says, salvation is not
for such as you.
You never had enough sense of sin.
You never will have enough faith.
God will never save you.
Ah, my dear friend, I wish I could
make you understand that whoever comes to Christ,
he will in no wise cast out.
For he himself has said, he that believeth
on me hath now everlasting life.
He shall never perish, neither shall any man
pluck him out of Christ's hands.
Some of us will give Christ great glory
when we get to heaven.
I think that some people will meet us
at the gate and say, what, and have
you got here?
I should not wonder if it was some
elder brother.
That elder brother was a good fellow.
He was a real child and he was
always with his father and all his father
had was his.
Yet he was surprised to see the prodigal
come home after wasting his father's living.
Ah, but it is those that cost the
Lord so much in whom his infinite grace
will be displayed.
They will glorify him most.
O ye despairing ones, if you must faint,
faint away unto the bosom of Christ, swoon
away into the arms of the almighty Saviour,
and then it will be well to have
swooned, and you will find in him your
strength.
There is another thing that stands in our
way that is worse than ignorance, and that
is self-will.
Men, ignorant of God's righteousness, are said to
be going about to establish their own righteousness.
In other words, to set up the poor
idol of their own righteousness.
Man sees God's righteousness and instead of accepting
it, he says, I think I could match
that.
I will set up my own righteousness.
There is a treasure of gold, and the
man says, no, I will not have that.
I think that I could make a sovereign
at home out of a bit of brass.
Fool that he is, how shall he mimic
God?
If I were at heaven's wide open gate
and a voice would say, enter freely, and
I replied, no, I think I prefer the
surrey hills or a place down by the
seaside.
What a fool I should be.
But even then, not so great a fool
as when forsaking the righteousness of God, I
want to set up my own.
A human thing at best, how shall that
match the divine righteousness?
An imperfect thing at best, how shall I
compare that with the perfect righteousness of Christ?
A fading, fleeting thing, always apt to be
damaged by the next moment's temptation.
How can I be so foolish?
A ridiculous thing, an ignominious thing, a filthy
thing.
Paul said that his righteousness, which was of
the law, was blameless.
And yet he counted it dung that he
might win Christ.
Dung, the most filthy thing.
Here, scavenger, take it away.
Have any of you any righteousness of your
own?
I do not believe that even the dust
man would have it.
He would say, no, the carts are not
for carting away man's righteousness.
We have no place bad enough to shoot
it into.
Shoot it into the bottomless pit.
Nay, even there they have not any righteousness,
for they know their true condition.
Human righteousness is a great lie.
It is filthy rags away with it from
off the face of the earth.
What do men try to do?
In what vain efforts are they spending their
time and strength?
According to the text, they go about to
establish their own righteousness.
I think you will better understand it if
I read it.
They go about to set up their own
righteousness.
You see, it is a dead thing.
See here, they say, we will make it
stand.
If I had a corpse here, I am
glad that I have not.
Well, I set it up.
Well, I set it up and it tumbles
down.
Nevertheless, I will put its legs out a
little wider and see whether it will stand.
Down it goes.
Now I will prop it up.
Surely I can make this dead thing stand.
But no, it has a tendency to fall
and down it goes.
Have I not seen a sinner try to
set up the corpse of his own righteousness
and make it stand?
At last he has been obliged to say
what the fool said in the old classic,
it wants something inside.
And so it does.
For until there is life within, it will
not stand.
Even so, our righteousness has no true vitality,
no life within, and it will not stand.
To use another illustration, it is like a
man trying to patch up an old house.
You will find such in country villages, a
place which nobody has ever repaired for 50
years.
I do not know if there is any
landlord, but if there is, he would like
to forget that he has such a property.
The main beam is nearly cracked through, the
lathe and plaster have gone long ago, and
the birds go in and out to the
best parlor whenever they like, and the whole
thing is tumbling down.
A man buys it and he says, now
you know, it is a pity to pull
this house down, I think I will repair
it.
So he puts in a beam there, just
under the roof, and he puts a strut
here and another timber there, and by the
time he has spent as much as would
have built a house, he has got a
very handsome ruin left, and nothing more.
I think it was Charles I who used
to swear, God mend me.
Somebody said it would be an easier job
to make a new one of him, and
I believe it.
When men say, God mend me, they had
better say, God make me new.
So as to your righteousness, if you have
a lot of it, and it is very
good, if you have been christened, or baptized,
if you like, and confirmed, and have always
gone to your place of worship, and are
so good that you wonder you can live
in such a wicked world as this, if
you have all that righteousness, the best thing
to do with it is to get rid
of it, for it will ruin your soul.
But this is what men do, they try
to set up their own righteousness, and then
the text says that they go about to
do this, going about to establish their own
righteousness.
That is to say, they set about it
with great zeal.
Some of you that know the Lord can
recollect how you thought you would do it,
why at first, when you started as a
young man, you were never going to do
anything wrong.
You were going to have a perfect righteousness
of your own.
You had an ugly temper, however, and it
broke out indeed.
Well, you said, I shall never do so
again.
You came down to breakfast, and you were
as bad tempered as ever.
So you said, never mind, I will set
it up now.
I shall be a teetotaler, that will be
a grand thing.
So it was, but somehow or other, down
tumbled your righteousness again.
Then you went to a place of worship.
You said, I will always be there.
You began to think that you would grow
into a saint, but you did not.
Down tumbled your righteousness, over it went, and
you all the while tried zealously to set
it up.
Going about implies great earnestness.
When a man says, I am going about
a thing, he means that he is going
to take his coat off, going to work
in his shirt sleeves.
He is going to toil at it for
many hours.
I recollect how I set to work in
my shirt sleeves to make a righteousness of
my own, and I did very nicely indeed,
while it was dark.
But when a little light from the cross
broke in, I began to see the filthiness
of it.
And you, my friend, think yourself very beautiful
when you cannot see yourself.
But let the looking glass be held before
you.
You would begin to see the spots of
filth that defile the very best of your
righteousnesses.
Ah me, how foul the righteousness of men
is, and yet they go about to set
up their own righteousness.
To go about to establish a righteousness means,
in the next place, that men have varied
ways of doing it.
Shall I tell you what I frequently meet
with?
I have talked with a person and said,
can you trust in your own works?
Oh no, sir, I can never do that.
Well, can you come to Christ and take
the righteousness of God?
Well, sir, no, I do not feel enough
my own emptiness.
Look, this man is going to bring his
own emptiness to help him.
He actually thinks that if he has not
any righteousness, his own emptiness is good for
something.
And if he can get to feel that
he will come and bring his feelings of
emptiness to commend him to Christ.
Did you ever hear such a thing?
You go to him and you say, my
dear man, salvation is not on account of
your feelings.
Each time you drive him out of his
refuge of lies, he hastens back to the
old ground again, something of himself.
Suppose there is a ship out at sea,
and the people on board feel that they
are safe.
One of them says, I know that we
shall not drift far out, of course.
Why?
Because we have such a big anchor on
board.
You say, ah, he is a cockney.
He must be a fool who believes in
an anchor on board.
Why, it is no good to anybody.
It is when you let go the anchor
and lose sight of it, and the anchor
gets an unseen grip down below.
That is good for something.
But while the anchor is on board, it
is only so much dead weight for the
ship.
You want to have your anchor on board,
do you not?
You do not like it to enter into
that which is within the veil.
That is too mysterious.
You want to feel something, to have something
of your own.
O pride, O self-will, God will have
salvation to be all of grace, and man
will have it of debt.
God gives the promise of his grace, and
man puts his penny down to pay for
it.
Men's pennies and God's promises do not very
well go together to buy heaven.
He says, like a king, you may have
it for nothing, and we say, Lord, we
think we could make up a little something
to buy it.
Well then, you will never have it.
His terms are free, rich, sovereign grace, a
sinner with nothing, receiving everything from God.
He may have it.
He may have it now.
None can say him nay, but he stands
chaffering, trying to pay his penny as if
God kept a shop.
Has God come down to stand in your
market and cry to you, here, bring your
gold and your silver to purchase my favor?
You know not who he is, for all
things are his.
If he were hungry, he would not tell
you, for the cattle on a thousand hills
belong to him.
Well, will you have salvation freely?
If so, take it freely.
But if you will buy it, you and
God can never agree.
Let me just close this point about human
will by saying that the efforts of men
for their own salvation are deadly efforts.
God will save them one way, and they
want to be saved another.
God says, there is medicine, take it, drink
it.
Man says, no, I will grow my own
drugs in my own garden, and I will
compound my own physic.
And he goes and takes his own dose.
And can he ever get well in such
a way as that?
God says, I will forgive.
Man says, I will try and deserve to
be forgiven, as if that could be possible.
I've heard that the Romanists say that venial
sins are a kind of sins that deserve
to be forgiven.
What sort of sin must that be?
Yet some men seem to think that somehow
or other they can deserve to be forgiven.
That would not be forgiveness at all.
Come, come, ye vilest of the vile, ye
lost and utterly undone.
Come, come, you that have no righteousness or
the ghost of a shade of a shadow
of a pretense of any.
Come as you are.
There is everything you want in Christ.
Come and have him and you shall not
be refused, but reject his terms and salvation
can never be yours.
Now, very briefly, I want to speak upon
the third difficulty, which is a gross evil,
namely flat rebellion.
Observe my text, dear friend.
If you forget everything else, I say, remember
what the Lord says.
They have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness
of God.
This is a strange word.
Have not submitted themselves.
Do you not wonder that such a word
is used?
Here is a criminal who will not submit
to be pardoned.
Here is a sick man who will not
submit to be made well.
Here is a man with a broken leg
who will not submit to have it healed.
Here is a poor beggar in the street
who will not submit to be made into
a gentleman.
Why, the word seems quite out of place,
does it not?
It shows you the monstrous absurdity of self
-righteousness that men will not submit themselves to
that which is the greatest blessing that heaven
itself can bestow.
It is a matter of submission.
And while it is a strange word, it
is a very searching word.
Is it so that the reason why I
am not saved is that I will not
submit?
Do I stick out?
Have I an iron sinew in my neck?
Am I such a self-willed fool that
I will not submit before my maker, will
not yield even to have salvation for nothing?
Am I so proud that I scorn to
be a pauper before God?
That is just it.
That is the reason why many have not
peace.
If they were bankrupts, if they were cleaned
right out, they would have perfect rest of
soul.
But still they stand out and in their
self-righteousness fight against God.
It is a very true word.
I am sure that there is many a
sinner who has not anything to be proud
of, and yet he is as proud as
Lucifer.
Why, there are harlots that are proud of
their own righteousness.
There are drunkards proud of their own righteousness.
I do not know where they get it
from, but proud of it they are.
I have heard say that a dustman can
be as proud as my Lord Mayor, and
so the vilest sinner can be proud of
his own righteousness.
Why, say you, he has not any to
be proud of?
No more have you.
I mean you good moral persons, you who
never do anything wrong as you think.
You have not any more righteousness than he
has, if it comes really to be measured
up and tested by the word of God.
Still it is so.
The worse the man, the harder he is
to bow before the righteousness of God.
It is a very suggestive word.
They have not submitted themselves unto the righteousness
of God.
They will not own that God is King.
They quarrel with His sovereignty.
How can the rebel be forgiven when he
begins to question whether the King is King?
When he begins to deny the rights of
the magistrate to condemn him, how can he
be pardoned?
You must yield, my friend.
Submit to the fact that God is God,
or else you will not submit to God's
righteousness.
Man thinks that God is hard, austere, demanding
too much.
And while God puts before him everything for
nothing, yet still he says that the price
is too high.
It is his heart that is too high,
his proud looks that want bringing down.
Oh, that God would bring them down.
The man will not submit to the power
of God.
He will not yield himself up to God
to work with him and in him and
for him.
He wants to do all himself.
And then if he got to heaven, he
would throw his cap up and want to
share the glory.
But it will not do.
It is all of grace from first to
last, and the sinner must consent that it
shall be so, or else the gate of
heaven will never give him admittance.
And lastly, it is a very cheering word.
They have not submitted themselves to the righteousness
of God.
And is that all that I have to
do?
To submit myself?
Is that all?
You say there is a feather in the
cap of your pride.
Take it out.
You have a weapon of rebellion by your
side.
Throw it down.
Just submit yourself there with folded hands, with
a rope around your neck.
Say, Lord, if my soul be sent to
hell, I deserve it.
I submit and I plead for mercy.
I plead the precious blood.
I not only submit to take that plea,
but I delight to take it.
I am happy to believe that thou hast
promised to forgive all who on thy son
believe.
Lord, I know thou canst not lie.
Give me Christ or else I die.
Beloved friend, may the Holy Spirit lead you
to submit.
You have been kicking and struggling.
Now submit.
You have been despairing and talking about its
presumptuous to believe.
Submit.
Give all that up.
No more of your talk.
Come to faith.
When a man submits to God, that man
has got the victory.
When God is king, you are safe.
When you take Christ to be everything and
you are nothing, then neither death nor hell
shall ever divide you from the heart of
God.
When you are not your own, you are
Christ's.
But so long as you are dependent upon
self, you do not know the Lord and
you cannot know Him.
May God bless this simple testimony to each
and all and to His name be praise.
Amen.