3225. Finding And Following Christ

A Sermon Published On Thursday, November 24, 1910.

We have found him. {Joh 1:45}

For other sermons on this text:

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 570, “First Five Disciples, The” 561}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 921, “Nathanael and the Fig Tree” 912}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2375, “Found by Jesus, and Finding Jesus” 2376}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3225, “Finding and Following Christ” 3226}

   Exposition on Joh 1:19-51 Mt 4:12-24 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2646, “Baptist’s Message, The” 2647 @@ "Exposition"}

   Exposition on Joh 1:29-51 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2375, “Found by Jesus, and Finding Jesus” 2376 @@ "Exposition"}

1. I hope there are many here who are seeking Christ, but I feel sure that there are with us many more who can truthfully say, “We have passed beyond that stage, for ‘we have found him.’ Others may declare that there never was such a person as Jesus of Nazareth; but we know there was and still is, for ‘we have found him,’ and we are living in happy daily fellowship with him. We bear our glad testimony to what this grace of God has done for us, and we say, with Philip, ‘We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and the prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph,’ whom we also worship as the Son of God.”

2. Notice how positively Philip speaks. He himself had only just been found by Christ; yet he does not say “We think we have found the Messiah,” or “We hope we have found the promised Deliverer”; but, without the slightest hesitation he says, “We have found him.” This is a matter about which it is possible for us to be quite as positive as Philip was. There are abundant reasons why we may have a well-grounded assurance that Christ is our Saviour if we have truly trusted in him. Some have thought and said that it is not possible for him to know that we are saved. Thank God that is not true; and many can adopt the inspired language of the apostle John, and say, “We know that the Son of God is come, and has given us an understanding, so that we may know him who is true, and we are in him who is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God, and eternal life.” Such positiveness as this is attainable, by God’s grace, by every true believer in Jesus Christ.

3. Let me remind you, first, that it ought to be so. Whether we are saved or not, is a matter of the greatest importance to us; we cannot afford to let it rest on a “perhaps” or a “peradventures” It is also important for us to know whether we are saved or not. If I have really found Christ, my sins are forgiven me for his sake; and this is a fact of which I ought to be quite certain. If I have found the Lord Jesus Christ, I am reconciled to God by the death of his Son, I have been adopted into the family of God, I may confidently look to God for the supply of all my needs both for this life and for what is to come, and I may expect to be taken, at the right time, to dwell with him for ever. Such glorious blessings as these ought not to be mere matters of speculation with us; our possession of them ought to be the result of clear, unmistakable evidence. If I have not found Christ, I am in danger every day of death, and of the hell that is the everlasting prison of all unbelievers. If I have not found Christ, I am still without hope, “and without God in the world,” “condemned already,” because I have not believed in the name of the only-begotten Son of God. Surely I ought not to go to bed tonight with that all-important question unsettled. I can understand a man being in doubt about this matter, but I cannot understand his resting comfortably while it is a matter of doubt. If you are content to be in doubt concerning whether you are entitled to your estates, or concerning whether you are mortally diseased or not, well, those are only minor matters compared with the salvation of your souls; but God forbid that you should be willing to let the far greater matter remain in suspense! Seek the aid of the Holy Spirit, and never rest satisfied until you know assuredly that you have found the Lord Jesus Christ as your Saviour.

4. A poor woman, some nights ago, wrapping her poor thin shawl around herself, was walking along the street because she had nowhere else to go; and as she was passing a certain building, she saw written up over the door, “For the homeless.” “That is the place for me,” she said, and in she went. Now, my friend, are you a sinner? Then I have to tell you that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Are you lost? Then I have to tell you that he came to seek and to save the lost. It would have done that poor woman no good at all to sit down on a rich man’s door-step, and consider how poor she was; she got what she needed by going to the Home for the homeless, and Jesus Christ is a Home for homeless souls, so away with you, poor homeless soul, and find in him the shelter that you need. May God’s grace enable you to flee straight away to Christ, for, if you do so, he will not refuse to receive you.

5. Remember also that, no real spiritual comfort can come to us until we know that we have found Christ. Perhaps and peradventures are like thorns in our pillow, they prevent us from resting; or like stones in the pilgrim’s shoes, they make walking very uncomfortable for him. To be able to say, with Paul, “I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that he is able to keep what I have committed to him against that day,” is to have a fount of consolation springing up within your heart; but to have to cry,—

   ’Tis a point I long to know,

      Oft it causes anxious thought,

   “Do I love the Lord, or no?

      Am I his, or am I not?”—

is to be in continual unhappiness. The man who is in such a state as that may be safe, but he cannot have joy and peace; he must be weak, trembling, and tossed to and fro, like the waves of the troubled sea when it cannot rest. It is only when we can say, with David, “My heart is fixed, oh God, my heart is fixed: I will sing and give praise”; that there is the music of deep and lasting joy in the songs that we send up to heaven.

6. Let me add that you may confidently hope to attain to this assurance of knowledge because so many others have already done so. I have reminded you of Philip, and John, and Paul; but such knowledge as this was not confined to the apostolic age, it is at this moment the priceless privilege of tens of thousands of believers in the Lord Jesus Christ. If I were now to say, “Let all those brothers and sisters who know that Christ is theirs, stand up and testify to this fact,” I believe that most of this congregation would at once rise; and I pray that you weaker ones, you timid and trembling souls may seek him who can work this great grace in you also, so that you too may be able to say as positively as Philip did, “We have found him.”

7. I. Now I am going, by the Holy Spirit’s help, to suggest a few reflections for those to bear in mind who can say, “We have found him”; and the first is this, IF WE HAVE FOUND CHRIST, HE MUST HAVE FIRST FOUND US.

8. In the verse before our text, we read that this very man, who had found Christ, had himself been found by Christ. It is probably true, my dear brother or sister in Christ, that you were brought to know the Lord through some human instrumentality. A godly father or mother, a faithful minister of the gospel, a loving Sunday School teacher or other Christian friend, or the reading of the Word under the guidance of the Holy Spirit, may have been the means of your conversion. Whichever of these it was, be grateful for it. There is a very precious link between the instrument of your salvation and yourself, which you ought never to forget. Surely we can never cease to thank God for the man or the woman whom he used to lead us out of darkness into his marvellous light; yet that holy man did not convert us, that gracious woman could never have given us a new heart and a right spirit. We must trace our new birth to its supernatural origin; it was the Lord, and the Lord alone, who performed that wonderful miracle of regeneration. “HE has quickened you who were dead in trespasses and sins.” If the Lord has not turned you from the error of your ways, you are still in the broad road that leads to destruction. If he has not found you as the shepherd finds his lost sheep, you are still wandering on the dark mountains of sin and woe; and, just as the sheep would never find its shepherd unless he first found it, so you, if you have found Christ, must first have been found by Christ.

9. I want you to go even further back, and to remember that, inasmuch as you never imagine that it was wrong for Christ to save you, although he has not saved all other sinners, and although some in your own family have not yet found him, and although some who attend the same place of worship as you do have not found him, while you have found him, and been found by him,—you have never thought that it was wrong for Christ to make this difference between you and others. I want you to also remember that, whatever Christ has done, he must have always meant to do, it must have been his eternal purpose to do it. Unless you are a careless blunderer, you do not do anything without having made up your mind to do it; and, certainly, the Lord Jesus Christ has not acted in this great matter of the salvation of souls without thought and deliberation. Do you not see that this brings us to the doctrine of election? Many people do not like that doctrine, but all Christian people, though they may not believe it as we do, must believe what is the very essence of it; for if there is a difference between ourselves and others, it must have been Christ who made it by his grace; and since he made it, then it must have been right for him to make it, and it could not have been wrong for him to purpose to make that difference. We do not believe that Christ does anything without a plan and a purpose, and it makes no difference whether the purpose was in his mind a year ago or from all eternity; I mean that there would be the same difficulty with regard to the doctrine, though I see no difficulty in it at all. Well then, the Lord Jesus Christ purposed from all eternity to work his good work in you by his Holy Spirit, to bring you to repent of your sin and to trust in his atoning sacrifice, and it is a part of his purpose to bring you home to heaven to dwell with him for ever. Yet there have been and still are many in this world who have not found him, who are more eminent than you are,—people of greater ability and loftier position. There are wise men who have never become wise to salvation, and rich men who do not possess this heavenly treasure. There are mighty kings, who lord it over mighty hosts of men, who do not know the Lord of hosts, and do not yield homage to the Lord Jesus Christ. When you think of all this, do you not marvel that you should have been found by Christ, and that you should have found Christ? Do you not wonder that God should have chosen you, that Christ should have redeemed you, that the Holy Spirit should have regenerated you? And will you not bless and praise the Lord for all eternity for making you the simple subject of his grace while such multitudes and so many far more mighty ones have been passed by?

10. This teaching, which seems to me to be so simple and plain, lies at the root of the most profound doctrines of Holy Writ, and it is at the same time one of the most practical truths in all of divine revelation. Nothing makes us love Christ more than knowing that he has loved us with an everlasting love, and therefore with lovingkindness has drawn us to himself. Nothing makes us crave for likeness to him so much as the knowledge that he has chosen us, and ordained us, that we could go and produce fruit, and that our fruit should remain, even “fruit to holiness, and in the end, everlasting life.” I wish that this truth was understood and believed by all Christians, for it is God’s truth, and a very precious truth. I feel sure that it is believed by many who have not recognised it or fully understood it. I remember preaching, in the open air, to a great crowd of miners, most of them Methodists; and as I preached, they shouted “Glory!” “Hallelujah!” “Praise the Lord,” and so on. Just as they were in full cry in that way, I paused for a moment, and then said, “This brings me to the doctrine of election.” I could almost feel the cold shiver of disappointment that seemed to pass through the crowd, and it appeared likely that there would be no more “Hallelujahs” during that discourse; but I said to them, “In your hearts you really believe that doctrine, though you imagine you do not; and before I have finished my sermon, I will prove it to you, and many of you will shout ‘Praise the Lord’ for it even more loudly than you were doing just now.” I saw the look of incredulity on their faces, but I went on. “Here is a man who was once a drunkard, a swearer, a Sabbath-breaker, a thief, a liar, and everything that was bad; but a great change has somehow come over him, and he is quite a new man compared with what he used to be. There is no such alteration in many of his old companions and friends. Who can have made him so different from what he once was? Here is a glorious golden crown, and whoever has made this man to be such a contrast to what he was before ought to have this crown placed on his head.” Then I said, “Shall I put the crown on the man’s own head? Did he make this change in himself?” “No, no!” came the answer from all parts of the crowd. “Well then,” I asked, “On whose head shall I put the crown? Who is to have the glory for this man’s conversion?” At once they cried, “The Lord, the Lord alone, put the crown on his head.” So far we were all agreed, and I therefore asked next, “Was it wrong for God to make this difference?” No one dared to say that it was, so I advanced to my next question, “Since it was right for God to make this difference, was it not also right for God to plan beforehand that he would do so? The Lord did not act without a set purpose; and therefore, since he is to be crowned for the action, is he not also to be crowned for the purpose to do it?” “Indeed, that he is,” cried the crowd; “bless his name, hallelujah!” So I won the hallelujahs of my Methodist friends for the doctrine of election as I said I would.

11. We do not preach, we never have preached, and we never shall preach that God has created any man for the purpose of destroying him; but we do preach, and shall preach as long as we live, that salvation is of the Lord, and all by grace from first to last; and, therefore, that all the glory for it must be given to the divine hand that accomplished the work, and to the eternal mind that planned the work, and to the great heart of love that was the fount and source from which the gracious purpose sprang. The only explanation for the whole matter is the one we have so often sung,—

   What was there in you that could merit esteem,

      Or give the Creator delight?

   “’Twas even so, Father,” you ever must sing,

      “Because it seemed good in thy sight.”

   Then give all the glory to his holy name,

      To him all the glory belongs;

   Be yours the high joy still to sound forth his fame,

      And crown him in each of your songs.

12. II. My second observation is, IF WE HAVE FOUND CHRIST, LET US FOLLOW HIM. Philip found him, and followed him all his days.

13. Christ was given to be the Leader and Commander of his people, so his people should all follow him. You have followed him, beloved, but can you not follow him even more closely? You are his disciples, but can you not learn more from him, than you have yet learned? Let us follow our Jesus promptly. I want to be in such a state of heart and mind that, the moment I know what Christ’s will concerning me is, I do it. I should like to be a leaf borne along by the blessed current of his divine purpose, having no will or wish to resist the sacred influences of his unerring mind and loving heart; to obey his commands promptly and cheerfully, and not only to obey cheerfully, but also to suffer cheerfully if he so pleases. It is a blessed condition to be in to take anything and everything from Christ, whether it is a kiss or a blow; to do anything for Christ, whether it is pleasing to the flesh or not; to yield up everything for Christ, to be, indeed, a divine sacrifice for him, which is after all only the “reasonable service” which he is fully entitled to claim from us. We read in the Revelation concerning some, “These are those who follow the Lamb wherever he goes”; and happy are those who imitate them even while here on earth. Beloved brothers and sisters in Christ, I entreat you to leave no path untrodden where you can see the footprints of your Lord and Master. Jesus went to Jordan’s stream, and was baptized there by John; have you followed him in this blessed ordinance? Jesus, even while living and labouring among sinners, was separate from them; are you living the separated life? What he did, let us do so far as it is in our power; what he was, let us be so far as that is possible. He was reviled, despised, and rejected by men, so let us count it an honour to receive similar treatment for his sake. He was content to walk on the bleak side of the hill, let us not seek the sunny side by craving the world’s esteem. Is this your heart’s desire, beloved? Do you sing,—

   “Through floods and flames, if Jesus lead,

      I’ll follow where he goes”?

Then take care that you not only sing those lines, but make them true in your life. Are any of you following Christ afar off, as Peter did? Then beware lest you fall as Peter did. Are you following Christ in your business, or do you forget him when you are in the office or in the market? Do you follow Christ in your home, or do you forget him when you are there? Some of you used to follow Jesus very closely, and to be very warm friends of his; have you been growing cold towards him? Oh, let this no longer be the case; but, if you have found him, follow him, and follow him “wherever he goes.”

14. III. Now, thirdly, IF WE HAVE FOUND CHRIST, LET US PRIZE HIM. It is no trifle that we find, when we find him, for he is the priceless pearl whose worth no man fully knows.

15. If I have found him, how shall I prove that I prize him? First, let me be willing to lose all that I have for him. Does my present position in life involve me in sin? Then let me leave it rather than grieve my Lord. Is my business an evil one? Then let me renounce it at once; for if I do not, I shall have to renounce him. Do I have any companions who are the enemies of Christ? Then I dare not call them my friends. Is there some dear one with whom I have entered into such close association that it will draw me away from Christ? Then, while I can, let me break the connection, for I must give up all for the Christ who gave up all for me. The captain of a vessel, when his ship is in danger of sinking, will throw the most valuable cargo into the sea if by it he may save the ship and the lives of all on board; and I must be willing to part with my joys, my pleasures, my money, my friends, and all that I have, rather than give up my Lord and Saviour, for I must have Christ at any cost.

16. Further, if you have found Christ, and want to prove that you can prize him, study to find out all that you can about him. Jesus Christ is a great mine of untold wealth, and no man has ever yet perfectly explored that mine. Read the Scripture to learn all you can about Christ, listen to any preacher or teacher who can tell you anything about Christ, and be sure to meditate as much as you can on Christ. He is the chief among ten thousand; “yes, he is altogether lovely.” At our first sight of him, we fall in love with him; but his choicest beauties are the hidden ones which we only find by diligent search, and much fellowship with him. As you get to know more of him in his person, in his work, in his offices, in his promises, in his power, in his love, you will prize him all the more until you would not set even heaven itself in comparison with him, for what would heaven be if he were not there?

17. Further, beloved, if you prize Christ as you ought, you will make all the use you can of him, and he loves to be of use to his people. Is there any sin on your conscience? Run to him to remove it from you. Is there any trouble on your mind? Go and tell Jesus. Is there anything that is a burden to you? Cast your burdens on him, and he will relieve you of them, or give you the grace and strength to carry them. Remember that Jesus Christ is an every-day Saviour, an all-the-year-round Saviour, a lifelong Saviour, a Saviour for the body as well as for the soul. Whatever there may be lacking in you, there is nothing lacking in him, and he can supply all that you lack. He is the Bread of life, so feed on him. He is the Light of the world, so see everything in the light that comes from him. He is your All in all, so, look for all in him.

18. Show, too, that you prize Christ as you should by letting others see how you value him. A bride, who has many precious jewels, will wear them where they can be seen and admired by others; and we, too, are to put on the Lord Jesus Christ, who is more precious than all the gems in the universe. Some professing Christians are apt to blush at any allusion to their Christianity; but if it is the blush of shame, they have reason to be ashamed of such blushing. I never hear of any man blushing because he is a peer of the realm, though there have been many of the so-called “nobility” who might well cause their fellow peers to blush; but to blush because one is a Christian,—oh, this must never be! As well might we blush at being compared to an angel. Suppose the ungodly do point the finger of scorn at you, that is the only way in which such people can really honour you. Will you strike your colours because the enemy attacks you? No, no; nail the flag to the mast, and fight so bravely for Christ that the enemy has to strike his colours. It is the act of a pirate to sail under another flag; so, whatever ship you meet on life’s wide sea, fly the flag of your King, and defy the devil and all his legions to do their worst. At home and abroad, in the house of God or in the street, in the market or wherever you may be, let friend and foe alike know that you belong to Christ. I wish that all of us who are members of this Tabernacle church might love the Lord with a far deeper and more fervent love than we have ever yet experienced. I know that there are some eminently gracious souls among us, and I pray that their number may be greatly increased; but I am anxious lest, as a church, we should fall to the low level of so many of the professing Christians of this age. Our Lord Jesus Christ deserves the very best that we can bring to him, so let us give him our hearts, our minds, our time, our talents, and all we have, to show how greatly we prize him whom we have found.

19. IV. Fourthly, and briefly, IF WE HAVE FOUND CHRIST, LET US NEVER PART WITH HIM. Philip became one of Christ’s disciples, then one of his apostles, and now he is with Christ for ever.

20. You will go, young man, into the workshop or to the counter tomorrow, and your companions will laugh at you if you say you are a Christian; but do not part with Christ because of the laughter of fools. Some of you will be going to the Stock Exchange or to the various markets of this great city; but do not part company with Christ by doing what is wrong. Hold him firmly, and keep to what is right, and honest, and true, for he is a traitor to Christ who gets even a penny by an unrighteous action. Tomorrow, some of you may hear what is blasphemous or foul; rebuke it in your Lord’s name, for he who is silent when he ought to speak is tacitly denying his Lord and Master. Again I say to you, hold him firmly however much men may scoff at you for doing so, for such a treasure as Christ is well worth holding. Let no man separate you from your Lord; if you are truly his, I am persuaded that no one and nothing shall be able to separate you. Though the devil himself should try to tear Christ away from you, he cannot do it, for Christ is stronger than Satan, and he holds you with a divine grip which the devil and all his hosts cannot relax.

21. I especially urge you not to let Jesus slip away from you unawares through your neglect of private prayer, or the reading of the Scriptures, or your intimate personal communion with him. Make your prayers more fervent, your study of the Word more intense and real, and your daily walk with Christ more close and tender. Remain in him, never give him or anyone else reason to think that you have left him. The good soldier of Jesus Christ never has a furlough; he is like the knights of old who slept in their armour, and were ready for the fray at any moment. A Christian is to always be a Christian and in every place; he may not do wrong once a year, nor once in a lifetime. What would you say to a man who told you he was only going to poison himself once? What would you think of a wife who said she was going to cease loving her husband just for once? We, too, are married to Christ, so we are always his, and entirely his, and only his. Hold us tight, oh you blessed Lover of our souls, for only by doing so can we continue to hold you firmly!

22. V. My last injunction is this, IF YOU HAVE FOUND CHRIST, TELL OTHERS ABOUT HIM, even as Philip said to Nathanael, “We have found him.”

23. I have sometimes feared that some professing Christians imagine that they are to keep Christ all to themselves. They seem to have an idea that heaven is just—

   “A little spot enclosed by grace,”—

where only they and a small select company of like-minded people will gain admittance. I cannot congratulate them on harbouring such a notion; and I should very strongly urge them to imitate the example of a man who found that he had a forged bank-note in his possession, so he threw it over a hedge, and ran away as fast as he could for fear anyone should think it belonged to him. Such a spirit as that seems to me to be quite contrary to the mind of him who wept over Jerusalem, and who said, “How often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you would not!”

24. Have you found this great hive of honey, and is it very sweet to your taste? Then, tell others about it, for there is abundance for them and you too. You are not like the poor people in a besieged city who feel that every mouthful that someone else eats leaves so much the less for them. Oh, no! there is “bread enough and to spare” in the great Father’s house, so no prodigal son need perish with hunger. At the gospel banquet, you may eat as much as you want, but there will be just as much left for others. We have to deal with the God who is infinite and omnipotent, whose supplies are inexhaustible, and who will be glad and gratified as we spread far and wide the invitations to the great feast in honour of his Son. My brothers and sisters in Christ, since you love him, follow his blessed example by going after the lost sheep until you find them. If you had only common humanity, it ought to make you earnest in seeking to deliver others from going down to the pit by telling them of him who has paid the ransom price for all who put their trust in him. A battle-field must present a terrible sight to all who gaze on it. I wish all those who are so eager for war could see the horrors of which we can scarcely bear to read; yet this great London presents an even more terrible sight for those whose eyes have been opened to see sinners as they really are in the sight of God. Our streets swarm with the unregenerate; many of you live next door to them when they are at home, some of you live in the same house with them, some even sleep in the same room with them. Plead for your husbands or wives, your brothers and sisters, your parents or children, and plead with them as well as for them. God forbid that you should be eternally separated from those who are so near and dear to you! Pray for them night and day; you who are the Lord’s remembrancers, take no rest, and give him no rest, and give them no rest until they are saved. Next to your own relatives, plead with and for your servants, your masters, your neighbours, and all with whom you come in contact, and then widen your sympathies and supplications until they shall embrace all of woman born. Remember Richard Knill’s question, “Brethren, the heathen are perishing, will you let them perish?” Do not neglect the heathen abroad or the heathen at home. An earnest minister said to his people, one Sabbath, “I am going this week on a mission to the heathen.” The deacons looked at each other, for the pastor had not mentioned the matter to them; and the members thought, “We are about to lose our dear minister, but whatever has made him think of going as a missionary to the heathen?” While these thoughts were passing through their minds, he quietly added, “But I am not going out of this town in order to be a missionary”; and there is no need for anyone to go out of town in order to be a missionary to the heathen. There they are, brothers and sisters, all around you; and you are the missionaries. There is your work; go and do it, and may God bless you in it, and so may many precious immortal souls through you be led to find Jesus, and to trust in him for salvation, for his name and mercy’s sake! Amen.

Exposition By C. H. Spurgeon {Ac 2:1-21}

(The following Exposition is the earlier portion of the one published with Sermon No. 3,224, “Repentance and Remission.”)

1-8. And when the day of Pentecost {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 511, “Pentecost” 502} {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1783, “Pentecost” 1784} was fully come, they were all with one accord in one place. And suddenly there came a sound from heaven as of a rushing mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting. And there appeared to them cloven tongues like fire, and it sat on each of them. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak with other languages, as the Spirit gave them utterance. And there were dwelling at Jerusalem Jews, devout men, out of every nation under heaven. Now when this sound occurred, the multitude came together, and were confounded, because every man heard them speak in his own language. And they were all amazed and marvelled, saying to each other, “Behold, are not all these who speak Galileans? And how is it that we hear, each in our own language in which we were born?”

These men, so far from being able to speak many languages, could not by themselves speak even one correctly. The Galilean dialect was a base degradation of the true Jewish language, so that the Galileans were always the subject of sneers and scoffings on account of their mispronunciation. There are several stories in the old Rabbinical writings, all intended to ridicule the Galileans; yet these men had now been taught to speak their own language perfectly; and, what was even more marvellous, languages that they had never heard now came pouring out from their lips with the greatest fluency. How wide the range of those foreign languages was, we learn from the following verses:—

9-11. Parthians, and Medes, and Elamites and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, and in Judea, and Cappadocia, in Pontus, and Asia, Phrygia, and Pamphylia, in Egypt, and in the parts in Libya around Cyrene, and strangers from Rome, Jews and proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, we hear them speak in our languages the wonderful works of God.

Babel’s curse was now removed,—not by a reversing of God’s curse, for God’s curses and blessings are both like the laws of the Medes and Persians which never can be altered; men still spoke the languages of confusion, but the apostles were able to speak to them all after receiving that miraculous gift of languages. So that promise of Jesus was fulfilled, “He who believes in me, the works that I do he shall do also; and he shall do greater works than these; because I go to my Father”; for Christ never spoke with many languages, nor did he enable his disciples to do so during his life on earth, but when he had gone back to heaven to his Father, and had received gifts for men, they were enabled to do greater works than he had accomplished by his personal ministry here below.

12, 13. And they were all amazed, and were in doubt, saying to each other, “What does this mean?” Others mocking said, “These men are full of new wine.”

That is to say, if a Libyan, for example, had been listening to one who was preaching in the language of Cappadocia, he might think that the man was merely babbling strange sounds without any meaning in them. To others, the inspired speech of the apostles was only like the incoherent utterance of drunk men.

14-20. But Peter, standing up with the eleven, lifted up his voice, and said to them, “You men of Judea, and all you who dwell at Jerusalem, let this be known to you, and listen to my words: for these are not drunk, as you suppose, since it is only the third hour of the day. But this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: “‘And it shall come to pass in the last days,’ says God, ‘I will pour out my Spirit on all flesh: and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 806, “A Young Man’s Vision” 797} and your old men shall dream dreams: and on my servants and on my handmaidens I will pour out in those days my Spirit; and they shall prophesy: and I will show wonders in heaven above and signs in the earth beneath; blood, and fire, and vapour of smoke: the sun shall be turned into darkness, and the moon into blood, before that great and notable day of the Lord comes:

Doubtless this refers first to the siege of Jerusalem, when those strange portents were seen in the heavens, and afterwards to that far greater and more notable day of the Lord, the day of judgment, when the moon shall become as blood, and the sun shall become black as sackcloth of hair.

21. And it shall come to pass, that whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.’”

What a glorious gospel verse this is! This is one of the great life-boat texts of the Bible. He who can get into this boat shall certainly sail to glory in safety. “Whoever”—there is no exception of character; whatever his past life may have been, “Whoever shall call on the name of the Lord”—here are no hard conditions;—prayer, trust, confession of that trust,—all these make up calling on the name of the Lord; and whoever shall do this not only may be, but “shall be saved.” There is no perhaps, no peradventures about it: “Whoever shall call on the name of the Lord shall be saved.”

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