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| − | ====<FONT color="#oooffo" size="">'''HE DIED FOR ME'''</font>==== | + | ====A Blow at Self-Righteousness!==== |
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| − | Sacred to the memory of Jesus Christ. He took our place on the cross and gave his life that we might live, and go to heaven and reign with him.
| + | Charles Spurgeon |
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| − | "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, confess him with thy mouth, and thou shalt be saved and thy house."
| + | December 16th, 1860, at Exeter Hall |
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| | + | "If I justify myself — my own mouth shall condemn me; if I say, I am perfect — it shall also prove me perverse." Job 9:20 |
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| − | It is a great salvation that can reach down into the quagmire of filth, pull a young man out and send him out to hunt [for] his mother and fill her days with sunshine. It is a great salvation, for it saves from great sin.
| + | Ever since man became a sinner he, has been self-righteous. When he had a righteousness of his own, he never gloried of it — but ever since he has lost it, he has pretended to be the possessor of it. Those proud words which our father Adam uttered, when he sought to screen himself from the guilt of his treason against his Maker, laying the blame apparently on Eve — but really upon God who gave him the woman — were virtually a clame to blamelessness. It was but a fig leaf he could find to cover his nakedness — but how proud was he of that fig-leaf excuse, and how tenaciously did he hold to it. |
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| − | The way to salvation is not Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Vassar or Wellesley. Environment and culture can't put you into heaven without you accept Jesus Christ.
| + | As it was with our first parents so is it with us: self-righteousness is born with us, and there is perhaps no sin which has so much vitality in it, as the sin of self-righteousness. We can overcome lust itself, and anger, and the fierce passions of the will — better than we can ever master the proud boastfulness which rises in our hearts and tempts us to think ourselves rich and increased in goods — while God knows we are naked, and poor, and miserable. |
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| − | It's great. I want to tell you that the way to heaven is a blood-stained way. No man has ever reached it without Jesus Christ and he never will.
| + | Tens of thousands of sermons have been preached against self-righteousness, and yet it is as necessary to turn the great guns of the law against its walls today, as ever it was. Martin Luther said he scarcely ever preached a sermon without inveighing against the righteousness of man, and yet, he said, "I find that still I cannot preach it down. Still men will boast in what they can do, and mistake the path to heaven to be a road paved by their own merits, and not a way besprinkled by the blood of the atonement of Jesus Christ." |
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| − | '''Your Real Conversion?'''
| + | My dear hearers, I cannot compliment you by imagining that all of you have been delivered from the great delusion of trusting in yourselves. The godly, those who are righteous through faith in Christ, still have to mourn that this infirmity clings to them; while as to the unconverted themselves — their besetting sin is to deny their guiltiness, to plead that they are as good as others, and to indulge still the vain and foolish hope that they shall enter into heaven from some doings, sufferings, or weepings of their own! |
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| − | What does converted mean? It means completely changed. Converted is not synonymous with reformed. Reforms are from without - conversion from within. Conversion is a complete surrender to Jesus. It's a willingness to do what he wants you to do. Unless you have made a complete surrender and are doing his will it will avail you nothing if you've reformed a thousand times and have your name on fifty church records.
| + | I do not suppose there are any who are self-righteous in as bold a sense, as the poor countryman I have heard of. His minister had tried to explain to him the way of salvation — but either his head was very dull, or else his soul was very hostile to the truth the minister would impart; for he so little understood what he had heard, that when the question was put, "Now then, what is the way by which you hope you can be saved before God?" the poor honest simpleton said, "Do you not think sir, if I were to sleep one cold frosty night under a hawthorn bush, that would go a great way towards it?" conceiving that his suffering might, in some degree at least, assist him in getting into Heaven. |
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| − | Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, in your heart and confess him with your mouth and you will be saved. God is good. The plan of salvation is presented to you in two parts. Believe in your heart and confess with your mouth. Many of you here probably do believe. Why don't you confess? Now own up. The truth is that you have a yellow streak. Own up, business men, and business women, and all of you others. Isn't it so? Haven't you got a little saffron? Brave old Elijah ran like a scared deer when he heard old Jezebel had said she would have his head, and he beat it. And he ran to Beersheba and lay down under a juniper tree and cried to the Lord to let him die. The Lord answered his prayer, but not in the way he expected. If he had let him die he would have died with nothing but the wind moaning through the trees as his funeral dirge. But the Lord had something better for Elijah. He had a chariot of fire and it swooped down and carried him into glory without his ever seeing death. [ 2 Chron. 21:12].
| + | You would not state your opinion in so bold a manner; you would refine it, you would gild it, you would disguise it — but it would come to the same thing after all; you would still believe that some sufferings, or believings of your own might possibly merit salvation. The Romish Church indeed, often tells this so very plainly, that we cannot think it less than profanity. I have been informed that there is in one of the Romish chapels in England, a monument bearing these words upon it, "Sacred to the memory of the benevolent Edward Molloy; a friend of humanity, the father of the poor; he employed the wealth of this world only to procure the riches of the next; and leaving a balance of merit in the book of life, he made Heaven debtor to mercy. He died October 17th, 1818, aged 90." |
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| − | So he says he has something better for you - salvation if he can get you to see it. You've kept your church membership locked up. You've smiled at a smutty story. When God and the Church were scoffed at you never peeped, and when asked to stand up here you've sneaked out the back way and beat it. You're afraid and God despises a coward - a mutt. You cannot be converted by thinking so and sitting still.
| + | I do not suppose that any of you will have such an epitaph on your tombstones, or ever dream of putting it as a matter of account with God, and striking a balance with him, your sins being on one side and your righteousness on the other, and hoping that a balance might remain. And yet the very same idea, only not so honestly expressed — a little more guarded, and a little more refined — the same idea, only taught to speak after a gospel dialect — is inherent in us all, and only divine grace can thoroughly cast it out of us. |
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| − | Maybe you're a drunkard, an adulterer, a prostitute, a liar; won't admit you are lost; are proud. Maybe you're even proud you're not proud, and Jesus has a time of it.
| + | The sermon of this morning is intended to be another blow against our self-righteousness. If it will not die, at least let us spare no arrows against it; let us draw the bow, and if the shaft cannot penetrate its heart, it may at least stick in its flesh and help to worry it to its grave! |
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| − | Jesus said: "Come to me," not to the Church; to me, not to a creed; to me, not to a preacher; to me, not to an evangelist; to me, not to a priest; to me, not to a pope; "Come to me and I will give you rest." Faith in Jesus Christ saves you, not faith in the Church.
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| − | You can join church, pay your share of the preacher's salary, attend the services, teach Sunday school, return thanks and do everything that would apparently stamp you as a Christian - even pray - but you won't ever be a Christian - until you do what God tells you to do.
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| − | That's the road, and that's the only one mapped out for you and for me. God treats all alike. He doesn't furnish one plan for the banker and another for the janitor who sweeps out the bank. He has the same plan for one that he has for another. It's the law - you may not approve of it, but that doesn't make any difference.
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| − | '''Salvation a Personal Matter'''
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| − | The first thing to remember about being saved is that salvation is a personal matter. "Seek ye the Lord" - that means every one must seek for himself. It won't do for the parent to seek for the children; it won't do for the children to seek for the parent. If you were sick all the medicine I might take wouldn't do you any good. Salvation is a personal matter that no one else can do for you; you must attend to it yourself.
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| − | Some persons have lived manly or womanly lives, and they lack but one thing - open confession of the Lord Jesus Christ. Some men think, that they must come to him in a certain way - that they must be stirred by emotion or something like that.
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| − | Some people have a deeper conviction of sin before they are converted than after they are converted. With some it is the other way. Some know when they are converted and others don't.
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| − | Some people are emotional. Some are demonstrative. Some will cry easily. Some are cold and can't be moved to emotion. A man jumped up in a meeting and asked whether he could be saved when he hadn't shed a tear in forty years. Even as he spoke he began to shed tears. It's all a matter of how you're constituted. I am vehement, and I serve God with the same vehemence that I served the devil when I went down the line.
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| − | Some of you say that in order to accept Jesus you must have different surroundings. You think you could do it better in some other place. You can be saved where you areas well as anyplace on earth. I say, "My watch doesn't run. It needs new surroundings. I'll put it in this other pocket, or I'll put it here, or here on these flowers." It doesn't need new surroundings. It needs a new mainspring; and that's what the sinner needs. You need a new heart, not a new suit.
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| − | Some of you say that in order to accept Jesus you must have different surroundings. You think you could do it better in some other place. You can be saved where you areas well as anyplace on earth. I say, "My watch doesn't run. It needs new surroundings. I'll put it in this other pocket, or I'll put it here, or here on these flowers." It doesn't need new surroundings. It needs a new mainspring; and that's what the sinner needs. You need a new heart, not a new suit.
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| − | What can I do to keep out of hell? "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shaft be saved."
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| − | The Philippian jailer was converted. He had put the disciples into the stocks when they came to the prison, but after his conversion he stooped down and washed the blood from their stripes.
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| − | Now, leave God out of the proposition for a minute. Never mind about the new birth - that's his business. Jesus Christ became a man, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh. He died on the cross for us, so that we might escape the penalty pronounced on us. Now, never mind about anything but our part in salvation. Here it is: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved."
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| − | You say, "Mr. Sunday, the Church is full of hypocrites." So's hell. I say to you if you don't want to go to hell and live with that whole bunch forever, come into the Church, where you won't have to associate with them very long. There are no hypocrites in heaven. [For better Biblical explanations of the afterlife, see
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| − | You say, "Mr. Sunday, I can be a Christian and go to heaven without joining a church." Yes, and you can go to Europe without getting on board a steamer. The swimming's good - but the sharks are laying for fellows who take that route. I don't believe you. If a man is truly saved he will hunt for a church right away.
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| − | You say, "It's so mysterious. I don't understand." You'll be surprised to find out how little you know. You plant a seed in the ground - that's your part. You don't understand how it grows. How God makes that seed grow is mysterious to you.
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| − | Some people think that they can't be converted unless they go down on their knees in the straw at a camp-meeting, unless they pray all hours of the night, and all nights of the week, while some old brother storms heaven in prayer. Some think a man must lose sleep, must come down the aisle with a haggard look, and he must froth at the mouth and dance and shout. Some get it that way, and they don't think that the work I do is genuine unless conversions are made in the same way that they have got religion.
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