Now, his fellow workman, who worked beside of him, as it was getting very late, wished himself at home, and therefore groaned. IV. We are chosen out of the world to be a peculiar people, adversaries to all evil, never sheathing our sword till we enter into our rest. So the enquirer asked him again, "But what is . but if it be an effectual call, and if salvation shall be the result thereof, what matters it though thou dost go to heaven alone? We are panting, longing after something greater, better, nobler, and it is coming. Did I not say that we have not received the whole of our portion, and that what we have received is to the whole no more than one handful of wheat is to the whole harvest, a very gracious pledge, but nothing more? Though we cannot pay all, we can at least acknowledge the debt. God bless you, for Christ's sake! And somehow or other you have an equal faith for the future. There is a third black portion, too, namely, temptation. The debt is paid, and Christ is at the right hand of God. Thou in thy poverty art as a sparkling jewel in the darkness of the mine. We may look, then, at this third clause, as having a "much more" before it, comparing Scripture with Scripture. IV. What Paul are you at? You shall find, when your biography is written, that the black page did but harmonize with the bright one that the dark and cloudy day was but a glorious foil to set forth the brighter noon-tide of your joy. If he hath called thee, nothing can divide thee from his love. What a broad assertion it is. For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. Nay, his law never asked for more than human righteousness divine. traitor against God!" This is the part of the subject from which our craven spirit often shrinks, but if we were wise it would not be so. Let the sacred mounds of our fathers' sepulchres speak to us. Another text. Did he not learn it by revelation? No doubt can make him question. Romans 8:26-27 . "Things present." There lie the bodies of the saints he has martyred, and they cry from under the altar "O Lord! It was after death remember that, it was after death that his heart poured out the tribute of blood and water by which we have the double cure; see, then, how he loves us in death and after death. But here we have a more uncommon and a sublimer theme. So that wish and I do not think there has been a man in this world who has not had it proves that "the carnal mind is enmity against God. Now, why did you come here till you had paid your debt? And we desire that every one of you do shew the same diligence to the full assurance of hope unto the end: Keep it up; be as earnest to-day as you were twenty years ago, when you were baptized and joined the church: "Show the same diligence unto the end." He would say, "My labor is all thrown away on such a plot of ground as this, nothing more can be done with it, for after having done my utmost nothing but weeds is produced, so now it must be left to itself." I can see that there is no better place than the brink of Jordan, after all. On Lord's-Day Evening, August 24th, 1890. To God's cause you are debtors. Will he be ruler over many things? If I read in the Scriptures that in the most heroic acts of faith God the Holy Ghost helpeth his people, I can understand it; if I read that in the sweetest music of their songs when they worship best, and chant their loftiest strains before the Most High God, the Spirit helpeth them, I can understand it; and even if I hear that in their wrestling prayers and prevalent intercessions God the Holy Spirit helpeth them, I can understand it: but I bow with reverent amazement, my heart sinking into the dust with adoration, when I reflect that God the Holy Ghost helps us when we cannot speak, but only groan. Why, sometimes, it can drive us to Christ; let us pray that it may. There is no getting away from yourself, and when you yourself condemn yourself, then you are condemned indeed. Let me imagine a man entering heaven without a change of heart. By G. Rogers (Continued.). True Advocate is he, and Comforter most effectual. I thought Christians were a humble, timid people." I will now proclaim to you the way of salvation. He was dead, absolutely dead, rotten in his sin; the life is given when the call comes, and, in obedience to the call, the sinner comes forth from the grave of his lust, begins to live a new life, even the life eternal, which Christ gives to his sheep. If ye be without chastisement, whereof all are partakers, then are ye bastards, and not sons; but, if ye be true sons, like to the firstborn, the rod will make you smart, and sometimes you will have to say, "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" The proof of love to the uttermost is that "It is Christ that died.". If any text can be more conclusive than this against universal sonship, I must confess I know of none, and unless these words mean nothing at all, they do mean just this, that believers are the sons of God and none besides. You have been to everybody else; you may go to them now." All the prayers which the Spirit of God inspires in us must succeed, because, first, there is a meaning in them which God reads and approves. I know that I have robbed God of his glory, but Christ has brought all the glory back again. If they drink but little from the river of pleasure, his draughts must be shallow too, for their joy is his joy, and his glory he has given them. There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. Then all thy love, as though there were not another to be loved, is mine, O God, and all thy grace, as though there were never another sinner to partake of it, is mine. His own dear Son came, and stood in my place, and took my sin upon him. Let us notice in the first place, how it is that our spirit is able to bear witness; and as this is a matter of experience, I can only appeal to those who are the true children of God; for no others are competent to give testimony. The snake with its azure hues, may slumber amid the flowers, and the child may stroke its slimy back, but it is a serpent still; it does not change its nature, though it is dormant. Certainly no true child of God; he would not have it altered, even if he might. As surely as Jesus is a son, so surely are we, for the same Spirit bears witness to both, as it is written "And because ye are sons, God hath sent forth the Spirit of his Son into your hearts, crying, Abba, Father." 12 So then, brothers, we are debtors, not to the flesh, to live after the flesh. As Jonathan of old, with his armor, climbed up the steep place in the cleft of the rock and began to mow down his enemies, so, believer, alone or with your friend, as God has called you, climb up, for verily the possession is yours, and you may take it. You may judge of a man by what he groans after. I beseech you then, beloved, wherever you see a poor saint, wherever you behold an aged Christian, recollect he cannot be so much in debt to you as you are to him, for you have much, and he has but little, and he cannot be in debt for what he has not. If there should be no thrones for us, there would be no throne for him; if the promise should utterly fail of fulfillment to the least of the joint heritors, it must also fail of accomplishment to our Lord Jesus Christ himself. Oh! Jesus now heads a race assailed but victorious; sorely tempted but enabled to overcome. The snow is numbing his limbs, and his soul is breathed out with many a groan. Now that is the way to act; to feel and acknowledge that you are a debtor; when there is a thing to be done, to do it, and to say, "Do not thank me for it, I have only done what I ought to have done; I have only paid the debt that I owed.". There were no obedient creatures in the world of that sort, knowing good and evil, in the days of Eden's glory. And the heart, when we perceive not its ebullitions, when it belches not forth its lava, and sendeth not forth the hot stones of its corruption, is still the same dread volcano. We are to be holy, harmless, undefiled and separate from sinners. They do not groan, so far as any pain can be, but they long with greater intensity than you and I long, for the "adoption, to wit, the redemption of the body." Side by side with you there sits an ungodly person; you two have been brought up together, you have lived in the same house, you have enjoyed the same means of grace, you are converted, he is not; will you please to tell me what has made the difference? Within this narrow house of my body, this tenement of clay, if I be a true believer, there dwells the Holy Ghost, and when I desire to pray I may ask him what I should pray for as I ought, and he will help me. Did he not say, "In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world?" Hebrews 6:20 . You could not doubt the affliction, for you smarted under it, but you might almost as soon have doubted the divine help, for your confidence was firm and unmoved. EXEGESIS: ROMANS 8:12-13. If you are not so persuaded, here is honey, but you do not taste it; here is light, but you do not see it; here is heaven, but you do not enter the pearly gate. Will any one who believes in the Prayer Book dissent from the doctrine that "the carnal mind is enmity against God?". Let the truths of Christianity work out their perfect work: and pride, bitterness, wrath, envy, and malice, must see their graves. If his heart is against God, we ought to tell him it is his sin; and if he cannot repent, we ought to show him that sin is the sole cause of his disability that all his alienation from God is sin that as long as he keeps from God it is sin. Didst thou never hear the heart say, "I wish there were no God?" Some esteem it nothing. AP&A-c1970 lfpb. When, indeed, we are in our bewilderment almost driven to give up prayer, the whisper of his love drops a live coal from off the altar into our soul, and our hearts glow with greater ardour than before. I owe no man anything after the debt has been paid, whether by myself, or by somebody else; and if Christ took our sin upon himself, and suffered for it, the sins for which he suffered are gone, plunged as in a shoreless sea, drowned in the Redeemer's blood. In the spiritual body, some are fitted for and called to one sort of work; others for another sort of work. They can't get away this time!" General Douglas McArthur "My words are Spirit and Life, and not to be weighed by the understanding of man. One other instance let me give you. I showed you that the difficulty is that we know not what we should pray for "as we ought," and the Spirit meets that difficulty by making intercession for us in a right manner. He said, "Reproach hath broken mine heart, and I am full of heaviness." They were, therefore, encouraged to take part and lot with Christ, the elder brother, with whom they had become joint heirs; and they were exhorted to suffer with him, that they might afterwards be glorified with him. It is true, that by birth we are at enmity with God. So it is with us to-day. Will you be sharers with him? You can make your wooden cross into an iron one, if you choose, by being of a fretful disposition. But here are we who know both good and evil; we understand the one, and the other too, and now there is begotten in us a nature which loves holiness and cannot sin, because it is born of God; we are left free agents, yea, we are freer than ever we were, and yet in this life, and in the life to come, our path is like that of the just which shineth more and more unto the perfect day. Paul says, "I am persuaded," and it is implied that, first, HE IS PERSUADED OF THE LOVE OF GOD. When Christ pleads, he does not plead with one who is stronger than him or inimical to him, but with his own Father. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy." Let her, then, as Christ's queen, claim the earth as hers, and send her heralds forth from sea to sea to bid all men bow before him, and confess him to be their King. Thou Church of God, surely it must survive in thee; for to whom should it more belong to die and sacrifice all, than to those who are the sons of God. "This world is ours," says the apostle in another place, and ours because it is Christ's by right of inheritance. Therefore, beloved, all the glory must be unto God and not to us. There is a secret something about the Christian of which Satan wishes to spoil him, but which is entirely out of his reach, so the saint sings, "I am persuaded that neither angels, nor principalities, nor powers can separate me from the love of Christ. We teach every Sabbath day, that the whole shower of devine wrath was poured upon Christ's head, that the black cloud of vengeance emptied out itself upon the cross, and that there is not left in the book of God a single sin against a believer, nor can there possibly be even a particle of punishment ever exacted at the hand of the man that believeth in Jesus, for this reason, that Jesus has been punished to the full. Then after you had heard what the natural religion of man is, I would ask what must his irreligion be? Again; how many a man is there who says, "I want such-and-such a luxury; I know the cause of God demands of me more than I give it, but I must have that luxury, that shilling shall go to myself, and not to God." The alternative of this bond, if not paid, was, that we should be sold for ever under sin, and should endure the penalty of our transgressions in unquenchable fire. no; but the whole Bible tells us, from beginning to end, that salvation is not by the works of the law, but by the deeds of grace. It is a wonderful thing. Joint heirs with Christ Jesus! No man ever desired Christ in his heart with a living and longing desire, who did not find him sooner or later. Conscience, I will put thee in the witness-box, and cross-examine thee this morning! the mind of that Spirit who arranged all the order which now pervades this earth! Wait awhile; that weary head shall soon be girt with a crown. These prayers are sometimes "groanings that cannot be uttered," because they concern such great things that they cannot be spoken. O my beloved, do not ask the question. There is a double precedent to strengthen our confidence that he must prevail. That secret we must keep separate from all earthly things; that treasure which he has committed to us we must watch both night and day against those profane intruders who would defile the consecrated ground. The first who takes up the believer's challenge is Satan. God has punished sin; and when men say, "God must punish sin," we answer, "Sin has been punished, for Christ has died.". PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON Romans 8:26-39 . "All things work together," for that kind of good to God's people. There are two things that join God and a believer together; the first is, God's love to the believer, and the second is, the believer's love to God. But the text, you see, furnishes us with a higher witness than this. "If children then heirs." And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. Now, observe that PREDESTINATION IS THE IMPELLING FORCE TOWARDS THIS CONFORMITY. Though the sins of the whole world should press on any one of these sacred columns, it would never break nor bend. Does he stand in the presence of God he appears in the presence of God for us; Hebrews 9:24 . Here we have in the text conformity to Christ spoken of as the aim of predestination; we have, secondly, predestination as the impelling force by which this conformity is to be achieved; and we have, thirdly, the firstborn himself set before us as the ultimate end of the predestinations and of the conformity. So strange and startling a doctrine as this asserted with such dogmatic impudence? NVIPT. This does not often strike us. Yes, but "Jesus died;" and say what thou wilt, O conscience, remind me of what thou wilt; lo this shall be my sure reply in "Jesus died." (Who would wish that they should? how ought we day by day to seek, by living unto God, to acknowledge the debt we owe to him; and, if we cannot pay him the principal, yet to give him some little interest upon the talent which he has lent to us, and upon those stupendous mercies which he has granted to us. It shall work, it is working for thy good. Thou camest here to-day from thy toil, and thy bones have scarce forgotten yesterday's weariness; but thou art coheir with him who rules all heaven; thou art come here in poverty and thou wilt go home to a scant meal in a narrow room, but thou art co-heir with him who made the worlds, by whom: all thinks consist; you have come here weak and feeble, doubting, distrustful, and cast down, but I tell thee, weak though thou be, and in thine own judgment less than the least of all yet the same hand that wrote Christ heir of all things wrote thy name with his, and till a hand can be found that can blot out thy Redeemer's name thine shall stand and abide fair ever and ever. "We know that all things work together far good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose." Dost thou love to pay him homage? The text speaks of "our infirmities," or as many translators put it in the singular of "our infirmity." They are sternly holy; they are, like him, ready to forgive, but they can by no means tolerate iniquity, nor hear that sin should live in their presence." If he were an uneducated man he would be in a poor plight. Tell even them that Christ died. Prayers which are the offspring of great desires, sublime aspirations, and elevated designs are surely the work of the Holy Spirit, and their power within a man is frequently so great that he cannot find expression for them. Blessed is the man to whom this reasoning is not abstract, but experimental. 6. If such be the bright hope that cheers us, we may well groan for its realisation, crying out. May my blessed Master help you to come to him, and draw you to his Son, for Jesu's sake. You may go down, down, down, till you seem to have got beyond the reach of help from mortal man; but there are cords and bands which bind you to Christ that even these depths can never break, come what may. We are all of us under obligations; let us consider the fact in the following manner: First, how are we to understand this? For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. God can do all things, but I see not any way by which he could give to his only-begotten Son beings that should be akin to himself, except through the processes which we discover in the economy of grace. For human righteousness is only human; being human, it is finite; and, being finite, it falls short somewhere or other. If this be his ardent love of the Godhead, what must his hatred thereof be? Camillus had been banished from Rome by false accusations. The heathen may rage, and the kings of the earth take counsel together, but God saith, "I will declare the decree, yet have I set my Son upon any holy hill of Zion." But this know, O man, whatever thou sayest of this doctrine, it is a stone upon which, if any man fall, he shall suffer loss, but if it fall upon him it shall grind him to powder. This truth seems to me to have struck its roots into all the other truths of Scripture and to have twisted itself among the granite rocks which are the very foundation of our hope. Now, I consider these things as being a very mean display of wisdom, compared with what is to come in a hundred years, and very small compared with what might have been, if man's intellect had continued in its pristine condition. Our nation is fast learning to forget God. By God's grace, the man who trusts in Christ's eternal love, and believes in the immutability of the divine purpose, and therefore is persuaded that he can never be separated from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, he is the man to win a glorious victory by his faith in his great God. Paul himself counted not his life dear unto him that he might win Christ, and be found in him; wherefore he says that he is persuaded that neither death, nor life, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. We go to our lowly homes; we meet with our brethren and sisters here in their earth-built temples; and we are content, so far as these things go, still, how can kings be content till they mount their thrones? If he had not been a Christian, his Jewish dignity would never have condescended to call a Roman "brother;" for a Jew sneered at the Gentile, and called him "dog." Now, believer, thou mayest be very poor, and very sick, and very much unknown and despised, but sit thee down and review thy calling this morning, and the consequences that flow from it. The believer is here the brother to the worm; in heaven he shall be next of kin to the angels. And, then O ye people of God, let this last thought abide with you, what condescension is this that Divine Person should dwell in you for ever, and that he should be with you to help your prayers. 16-18. Do you know I am one of the best churchmen in the world; the very best, if you will judge me by the articles, and the very worst, if you measure me in any other way. He first of all stirred up their pure minds by way of remembrance as to their sonship, for saith he "as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God." Conscience, truly answer! We are to be like him then in nature, in relation, in experience. Who is Christ, and who is it with whom he intercedes. Read Joo 15:7 bible commentary from Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible by Charles Haddon Spurgeon FREE on BiblePortal.com. III. 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