3307. Over the Mountains

A Sermon Published On Thursday, June 20, 1912.

My beloved is mine, and I am his: he feeds among the lilies. Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away, turn, my beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of Bether. {So 2:16,17}

For other sermons on this text:

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 374, “Interest of Christ and His People in Each Other, The” 364}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1190, “Song Among the Lilies, A” 1181}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1634, “Loved and Loving” 1635}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2442, “My Beloved Is Mine” 2443}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3185, “Song of My Beloved, A” 3186}

   {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 3307, “Over the Mountains” 3309}

   Exposition on So 2:1-3:5 {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2485, “Love’s Vigilance Rewarded” 2486 @@ "Exposition"}

   {See Spurgeon_SermonTexts "So 2:17"}

1. It may be that there are saints who are always at their best, and are happy enough never to lose the light of their Father’s countenance. I am not sure that there are such people, for those believers with whom I have been most intimate have had a varied experience; and those whom I have known, who have boasted of their constant perfection, have not been the most reliable of individuals. I hope there is a spiritual region attainable where there are no clouds to hide the Sun of our soul; but I cannot speak positively, for I have not traversed that happy land. Every year of my life has had a winter as well as a summer, and every day its night. I have so far seen clear shinings and heavy rains, and felt warm breezes and fierce winds. Speaking for the many of my brethren, I confess that though the substance is in us, as in the teil tree and the oak, yet we do lose our leaves, and the sap within us does not flow with equal vigour at all seasons. We have our downs as well as our ups, our valleys as well as our hills. We are not always rejoicing, we are sometimes in heaviness through manifold trials. Alas! we are grieved to confess that our fellowship with the Well Beloved is not always that of rapturous delight; but we have at times to seek him, and cry, “Oh, that I knew where I might find him!” This appears to me to have been in a measure the condition of the spouse when she cried, “Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved.”

2. I. These words teach us, first, that COMMUNION MAY BE BROKEN.

3. The spouse had lost the company of her Bridegroom: conscious communion with him was gone, though she loved her Lord, and sighed for him. In her loneliness she was sorrowful; but she had by no means ceased to love him, for she calls him her Beloved, and speaks as one who felt no doubt about that point. Love for the Lord Jesus may be quite as true, and perhaps quite as strong, when we sit in darkness as when we walk in the light. Indeed, she had not lost her assurance of his love for her, and of their mutual interest in each other; for she says, “My Beloved is mine, and I am his”; and yet she adds, “Turn, my Beloved.” The condition of our graces does not always coincide with the state of our joys. We may be rich in faith and love, and yet have so low an esteem of ourselves as to be much depressed. It is plain, from this sacred Canticle, that the spouse may love and be loved, may be confident in her Lord, and be fully assured of her possession of him, and yet there may for the present be mountains between her and him. Yes, we may even be far advanced in the divine life, and yet be exiled for a while from conscious fellowship. There are nights for men as well as babes, and the strong know that the sun is hidden quite as well as do the sick and the feeble. Do not, therefore, condemn yourself, my brother, because a cloud is over you; do not cast away your confidence; but rather let faith burn up in the gloom, and let your love resolve to come to your Lord again whatever are the barriers which separate you from him.

4. When Jesus is absent from a true heir of heaven, sorrow will ensue. The healthier our condition the sooner will that absence be perceived, and the more deeply it will be lamented. This sorrow is described in the text as darkness; this is implied in the expression, “until the day breaks.” Until Christ appears, no day has dawned for us. We dwell in midnight darkness; the stars of the promises and the moon of experience yield no light of comfort until our Lord, like the sun, rises and ends the night. We must have Christ with us or we are benighted: we grope like blind men for the wall, and wander in dismay.

5. The spouse also speaks of shadows. “Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away.” Shadows are multiplied by the departure of the sun, and these are apt to distress the timid. We are not afraid of real enemies when Jesus is with us; but when we miss him, we tremble at a shadow. How sweet is that song, “Yes, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for you are with me; your rod and your staff they comfort me!” But we change our note when midnight is now come, and Jesus is not with us: then we fill the night with terrors: spectres, demons, hobgoblins, and things that never existed except in our imagination, are apt to swarm about us; and we are in fear where no fear is.

6. The spouse’s worst trouble was that the back of her Beloved was turned to her, and so she cried, “Turn, my Beloved.” When his face is towards her, she suns herself in his love; but if the light of his countenance is withdrawn, she is severely troubled. Our Lord turns his face from his people though he never turns his heart from his people. He may even close his eyes in sleep when the vessel is tossed by the tempest, but his heart is awake all the while. Still, it is pain enough to have grieved him in any degree; it cuts us to the quick to think that we have wounded his tender heart. He is jealous, but never without good reason. If he turns his back on us for a while, there is doubtless more than sufficient reason. He would not walk contrary to us if we had not walked contrary to him. Ah, it is sad work this! The presence of the Lord makes this life the preface to the celestial life; but his absence leaves us pining and fainting, neither does any comfort remain in the land of our banishment. The Scriptures and the ordinances, private devotion and public worship are all like sundials, — most excellent when the sun shines, but of little avail in the dark. Oh, Lord Jesus, nothing can compensate us for your loss! Draw near to your beloved yet again, for without you our night will never end.

   See! I repent, and vex my soul,

      That I should leave thee so!

   Where will those vile affections roll

      That let my Saviour go?

7. When communion with Christ is broken, in all true hearts there is a strong desire to win it back again. The man who has known the joy of communion with Christ, if he loses it, will never be content until it is restored. Have you ever entertained the Prince Emmanuel? Has he gone elsewhere? Your room will be dreary until he comes back again. “Give me Christ, or else I die,” is the cry of every spirit that has lost the dear companionship of Jesus. We do not part with such heavenly delights without many a pang. It is not with us a matter of “maybe he will return, and we hope he will”; but, it must be, or we faint and die. We cannot live without him; and this is a cheering sign, for the soul that cannot live without him shall not live without him; he comes speedily where life and death hang on his coming. If you must have Christ, you shall have him. This is just how the matter stands: we must drink of this well or die of thirst; we must feed on Jesus or our spirit will starve.

8. II. We will now advance a step, and say that, when communion with Christ is broken, THERE ARE GREAT DIFFICULTIES IN THE WAY OF ITS RENEWAL.

9. It is much easier to go downhill than to climb to the same height, again. It is far easier to lose joy in God than to find the lost jewel. The spouse speaks of “mountains” separating her from her Beloved: she means that the difficulties were great. They were not little hills, but mountains, that blocked her way. Mountains of remembered sin, Alps of backsliding, dread ranges of forgetfulness, ingratitude, worldliness, coldness in prayer, frivolity, pride, unbelief. Ah me, I cannot teach you all the dark geography of this sad experience! Giant walls arose before her like the towering steeps of Lebanon. How could she come to her Beloved?

10. The separating difficulties were many as well as great. She does not speak of “a mountain,” but of “mountains.” Alps rose on Alps, wall after wall. She was distressed to think that in so short a time so much could come between her and him of whom she sang just now, “His left hand is under my head, and his right hand embraces me.” Alas, we multiply these mountains of Bether with a sad rapidity! Our Lord is jealous, and we give him far too much reason for hiding his face. A fault, which seemed so small at the time we committed it, is seen in the light of its own consequences, and then it grows and swells until it towers aloft, and hides the face of the Beloved. Then our sun has gone down, and fear whispers, “Will his light ever return? Will it ever be daybreak? Will the shadows ever flee away?” It is easy to grieve away the heavenly sunlight, but ah, how hard to clear the skies, and regain the unclouded brightness!

11. Perhaps the worst thought of all to the spouse was the dread that the separating barrier might be permanent. It was high, but it might dissolve; the walls were many, but they might fall; but, alas, they were mountains, and these stand firm for ages! She felt like the psalmist, when he cried, “My sin is always before me.” The pain of our Lord’s absence becomes intolerable when we fear that we are hopelessly shut out from him. A night one can bear, hoping for the morning; but, what if the day should never break? And you and I, if we have wandered away from Christ, and feel that there are ranges of immovable mountains between him and us, will feel sick at heart. We try to pray, but devotion dies on our lips. We attempt to approach the Lord at the communion table, but we feel more like Judas than John. At such times we have felt that we would give our eye-teeth to behold once more the Bridegroom’s face, and to know that he delights in us as in happier days. Still, there stand the awful mountains, black, threatening, impassable; and in the far-off land the Life of our life is away, and grieved.

12. So the spouse seems to have come to the conclusion that the difficulties in her way were insurmountable by her own power. She does not even think of herself going over the mountains to her Beloved, but she cries, “Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of Bether.” She will not try to climb the mountains, she knows she cannot: if they had been less high, she might have attempted it; but their summits reach to heaven. If they had been less craggy or difficult, she might have tried to scale them; but these mountains are terrible, and no foot may stand on their lonely crags. Oh, the mercy of utter self-despair! I love to see a soul driven into that close corner, and forced therefore to look to God alone. The end of the creature is the beginning of the Creator. Where the sinner ends the Saviour begins. If the mountains can be climbed, we shall have to climb them; but if they are quite impassable, then the soul cries out with the prophet, “Oh that you would rend the heavens, that you would come down, that the mountains might flow down at your presence, as when the melting fire burns, the fire causes the waters to boil, to make your name known to your adversaries, that the nations may tremble at your presence! When you did terrible things which we did not look for, you came down, the mountains flowed down at your presence.” Our souls are lame, they cannot move to Christ, and lo! we turn our strong desires to him, and fix our hopes only on him; will he not remember us in love, and fly to us as he did to his servant of old when he rode on a cherub, and flew, yes, he flew on the wings of the wind?

13. III. Here arises that PRAYER OF THE TEXT WHICH FULLY HANDLES THE CASE; “Turn, my Beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of division.”

14. Jesus can come to us when we cannot go to him. The roe and the young hart, or, as you may read it, the gazelle and the ibex, live among the crags of the mountains, and leap across the abyss with amazing agility. For swiftness and sure-footedness they are unrivalled. The sacred poet said, “He makes my feet like hinds’ feet, and sets me on my high places,” alluding to the feet of those creatures which are so suited to stand surely on the mountain’s side. Our blessed Lord is called in the title of the twenty-second Psalm, “the hind of the morning”; and the spouse in this golden Canticle sings, “My Beloved is like a roe or a young hart; behold, he comes leaping over the mountains, skipping over the hills.”

15. Here I would remind you that this prayer is one that we may honestly offer, because it is the way of Christ to come to us when our coming to him is out of the question. “How?” you say. I answer that of old he did this; for we remember “his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins.” His first coming into the world in human form, was it not because man could never come to God until God had come to him? I hear of no tears, or prayers, or entreaties after God on the part of our first parents; but the offended Lord spontaneously gave the promise that the Seed of that woman should bruise the serpent’s head. Our Lord’s coming into the world was untaught, unsought, unthought of, he came altogether of his own free will, delighting to redeem.

   With pitying eyes the Prince of grace

      Beheld our helpless grief;

   He saw, and oh, amazing love!

      He ran to our relief.

16. His incarnation was a type of the way in which he comes to us by his Spirit. He saw us cast out, polluted, shameful, perishing; and as he passed by his tender lips said, “Live!” In us is fulfilled that ancient word, “I am found by those who did not seek me.” We were too averse to holiness, too much in bondage to sin ever to have returned to him if he had not turned to us. What do you think? Did he come to us when we were enemies, and will he not visit us now that we are friends? Did he come to us when we were dead sinners, and will he not hear us now that we are weeping saints? If Christ’s coming to the earth was in this way, and if his coming to each one of us was in this way, we may well hope that now he will come to us in the same way, like the dew which refreshes the grass, and does not wait for man, neither tarries for the sons of men.

17. Besides, he is coming again in person, in the latter days, and mountains of sin, and error, and idolatry, and superstition, and oppression stand in the way of his kingdom; but he will surely come, and overturn, and overturn, until he shall reign over all. He will come in the latter days, I say, though he shall leap over the hills to do it, and because of that I am sure we may comfortably conclude that he will draw near to us who mourn his absence so bitterly. Then let us bow our heads for a moment, and silently present to his most excellent Majesty the petition of our text, “Turn, my Beloved, and be like a roe or a young hart on the mountains of division.”

18. Our text gives us sweet assurance that our Lord is at home with those difficulties which are quite insurmountable by us. Just as the roe or the young hart knows the passes in the mountains, and the stepping places among the rugged rocks, and is void of all fear among the ravines and the precipices, so our Lord knows the heights and depths, the torrents and the caverns of our sin and sorrow. He carried all of our transgression, and so became aware of the tremendous load of our guilt. He is quite at home with the infirmities of our nature; he knew temptation in the wilderness, heart-break in the garden, desertion on the cross. He is quite at home with pain and weakness, for “he himself took our infirmities, and bore our sickness.” He is at home with despondency, for he was “a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” He is at home even with death, for he gave up the ghost, and passed through the sepulchre to resurrection. Oh yawning gulfs and frowning steeps of woe, our Beloved, like a hind or hart, has traversed your glooms! Oh my Lord, you know all that separates me from you; and you know also that I am far too feeble to climb these separating mountains, so that I may come to you; therefore, please, come over the mountains to meet my longing spirit! You know each yawning gulf and slippery steep, but none of these can stop you; hurry to me, your servant, your beloved, and let me again live by your presence.

19. It is easy, too, for Christ to come over the mountains for our relief. It is easy for the gazelle to cross the mountains, it is made for that purpose; so it is easy for Jesus, for this purpose he was ordained from of old so that he might come to man in his worst state, and bring with him the Father’s love. What is it that separates us from Christ? Is it a sense of sin? You have been pardoned once, and Jesus can renew most vividly a sense of full forgiveness. But you say, “Alas! I have sinned again; new guilt alarms me.” He can remove it in an instant, for the fountain appointed for that purpose is opened, and is still full. It is easy for the dear lips of redeeming love to put away the child’s offences, since he has already obtained pardon for the criminal’s iniquities. If with his heart’s blood he won our pardon from our Judge, he can easily enough bring us the forgiveness of our Father. Oh, yes, it is easy enough for Christ to say again, “Your sins are forgiven!”

20. “But I feel so unfit, so unable to enjoy communion.” He who healed all kinds of bodily diseases can heal with a word your spiritual infirmities. Remember the man whose ankle-bones received strength so that he ran and leaped; and her who, was sick with a fever, and was healed at once, and arose, and ministered to her Lord. “My grace is sufficient for you; for my strength is made perfect in weakness.” “But I have such afflictions, such troubles, such sorrows, that I am weighted down, and cannot rise into joyful fellowship.” Yes, but Jesus can make every burden light, and cause each yoke to be easy. Your trials can be made to aid your heavenward course instead of hindering it. I know all about those heavy weights, and I perceive that you cannot lift them; but skilful engineers can adapt ropes and pulleys in such a way that heavy weights lift other weights. The Lord Jesus is great at gracious machinery, and he has the art of causing a weight of tribulation to lift from us a load of spiritual deadness, so that we ascend by what, like a millstone, threatened to sink us down. What else hinders? I am sure that, if it were a shear impossibility, the Lord Jesus could remove it, for things impossible with men are possible with God.

21. But someone objects, “I am so unworthy of Christ. I can understand eminent saints and beloved disciples being greatly indulged; but I am a worm, and no man, utterly below such condescension.” Do you say? Do you not know that the worthiness of Christ covers your unworthiness, and he is made by God to you wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption? In Christ, the Father does not think so basely of you as you think of yourself; you are not worthy to be called his child, but he does call you that and considers you to be among his jewels. Listen, and you shall hear him say, “Since you were precious in my sight, you have been honourable, and I have loved you. I gave Egypt for your ransom; Ethiopia and Seba for you.” So, then, there remains nothing which Jesus cannot leap over if he resolves to come to you, and re-establish your broken fellowship.

22. To conclude, our Lord can do all this immediately. As in the twinkling of an eye the dead shall be raised incorruptible, so in a moment our dead affections can rise to fulness of delight. He can say to this mountain, “Be moved from here, and be cast into the midst of the sea,” and it shall be done. In the sacred emblems now on this supper table Jesus is already among us. Faith cries, “He has come!” Like John the Baptist she gazes intently at him, and cries, “Behold the Lamb of God!” At this table Jesus feeds us with his body and blood. We do not have his physical presence, but we perceive his real spiritual presence. We are like the disciples when none of them dared ask him, “Who are you?” knowing that it was the Lord. He is come. He looks out at these windows, — I mean this bread and wine; showing himself through the lattices of this instructive and endearing ordinance. He speaks. He says, “The winter is past, the rain is over and gone.” And so it is; we feel it to be so: a heavenly spring-time warms our frozen hearts. Like the spouse, we wonderingly cry, “Even before I was aware, my soul made me like the chariots of Amminadib.” Now in happy fellowship we see the Beloved, and hear his voice; our heart burns; our affections glow; we are happy, restful, brimming over with delight. The King has brought us into his banqueting house, and his banner over us is love. It is good to be here!

23. Friends, we must now go our ways. A voice says, “Arise, let us go from here.” Oh you Lord of our hearts, go with us! Home will not be home without you. Life will not be life without you. Heaven itself would not be heaven if you were absent. Stay with us. The world grows dark, the twilight of time draws on. Stay with us, for it is towards evening. Our years increase, and we are near the night when dews fall cold and chilly. A great future is all around us, the splendours of the last age are coming down; and while we wait in solemn, awe-struck expectation, or heart continually cries within herself, “Until the day breaks, and the shadows flee away, turn, my Beloved!”

Exposition By C. H. Spurgeon {Joh 14}

Let us read that well known and most blessed fourteenth chapter of John, which so clearly shows our Saviour’s tender consideration for the comfort of his people, lest the great grief aroused in them by his impending death should altogether break their hearts.

1. “Do not let your heart be troubled: you believe in God, believe also in me. {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1741, “Let Not Your Heart Be Troubled” 1742}

I think our Saviour meant to say, and really did say, “If you believe in God, you are believing in me; and if you believe in me, you are believing in God; for there is such a perfect unity between us that you need not, when I die make any distinction between me and God, but still believe in me as you believe in the Father.”

2. In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you.

“Wicked men will shut you out of my Father’s house below: the temple at Jerusalem, though being still used for Jewish worship after all its ritual and ceremonialism have been abolished, will cease to be my Father’s house for you; but there is ‘a building of God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens,’ and there is room for all of you there. When this country gets to be a desert to you, remember that there is the home country, the blessed glory land, on the other side of the river, and the Father’s house there with its many mansions.”

2, 3. I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you, to myself; so that where I am, there you may be also. {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2751, “A Prepared Place for a Prepared People” 2752}

Jesus often keeps this promise in many senses. By his gracious Spirit, he has come again; by his divine presence in the means of grace, he very often comes again. Eventually, if we die, he will come again to meet us; and if we do not die, then the promise will be fulfilled to the greatest possible extent, for Jesus will come again, and receive in his own proper person those who are alive and remain until his coming.

Anyway, “I will come again, and receive you to myself,” remains one of the sweetest promises that was ever given to believers by the Lord Jesus Christ. He did not say, “I will receive you to heaven”; he promised something far better than that: “I will receive you to myself.” Oh, what bliss it will be to get to Christ, to be with him for ever and ever!

4. And where I go you know, and the way you know.”

“At least, I have taught it to you; I have explained it to you; I have told you that I am the goal of your way, and the way to your goal; that I am the end, and also the way to that end.”

5. Thomas says to him, “Lord, we do not know where you are going; and how can we know the way?”

Oh, how much ignorance there may be where there ought to be much knowledge. It is not always the man who lives in the sunlight who sees the most. Thomas had been one of the twelve disciples for years, during all that time he had had Christ for his Teacher, yet he had learned very little. With such poor teachers as we are, it is no wonder if our hearers and pupils learn very little from us, yet they ought to learn much from Christ, although I think that we learn nothing even from Jesus Christ himself except under the teaching of the Holy Spirit.

6. Jesus says to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me. {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 245, “The Way to God” 238} {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 942, “The Way” 933} {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2938, “Jesus the Way” 2939}

“I am going to the Father, — that is the place where I am going, Thomas, and you can only come to the Father by me; do you not know that?”

7. If you had known me, you should have known my Father also:

For Christ is the express image of his Father’s person, so that you always see the Father when you see the Son.

7. And from now on you know him, and have seen him.”

Thomas had made an advance in heavenly knowledge; he had taken a higher degree in divinity now that the Master had taught him so much on this most important point: “from now on you know him, and have seen him.”

8. Philip says to him, “Lord, show us the Father, and it suffices us.”

It was not merely one of Christ’s pupils, you see, who was so dull of comprehension, here is another of the dunces, Philip.

9. Jesus says to him, “Have I been so long a time with you, and yet had you not known me, Philip? He who has seen me has seen the Father; and why do you say then, ‘Show us the Father?’

He who really knows Christ, and understands Christ’s character, understands, so far as it can be understood by man, the character of God. We know more about God from the life of Christ than we can learn from any other source.

10-12. Do you not believe that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? The words that I speak to you I do not speak of myself: but the Father who dwells in me, he does the works. Believe me that I am in the Father, and the Father in me: or else believe me for the very work’s sake. Truly, truly, I say to you, 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.

The Lord Jesus Christ, after he had gone back to heaven, gave to his servants the power to do these “greater works” — the Holy Spirit resting on them, — in the gathering in of the nations to their Lord. Whereas Christ kept to one little country, he sent his first disciples, and he still sends us to preach the gospel to every creature in the whole world, and he clothes his servants with all required authority and power to do the work he has committed to their charge.

13, 14. And whatever you shall ask in my name, that I will do, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son. If you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.

There is the only limit to true believing prayer. There are some things which we could not ask in Christ’s name; that is, using his authority in asking for them. There are some wishes and whims that we may cherish, and that we think we may pray about; but we do not have Christ’s name or authority to warrant us in expecting that we shall have them, and therefore we cannot ask for them in his name. To say, “For Christ’s sake,” is one thing; but to say, “I ask this in Christ’s name,” is quite another matter. He never authorized you to make use of his name about everything. There are only certain things about which you can pray in his name, such as are the express subject of a divine promise, and when you pray for one of those things, you shall prove Christ’s words to be true, “If you shall ask anything in my name, I will do it.”

15, 16. If you love me, keep my commandments. And I will pray the Father, and he shall give you another Comforter, {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1074, “The Paraclete” 1065} {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 1932, “Love’s Law and Life” 1933}

The Paraclete, the Helper. The word “Comforter” has lost its old meaning; you get it in certain old writings, when you read of such and such a man that he gave to someone else help and comfort. There is more here than merely giving us consolation. It means Helper: “He shall give you another Helper.” Advocatus is the Latin, and that too is the correct word: “He shall give you another advocate,” —

16, 17. That he may remain with you for ever; even the Spirit of truth; whom the world cannot receive because it does not see him, neither knows him: but you know him; for he dwells with you, and shall be in you. {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 4, “The Personality of the Holy Spirit” 5} {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 754, “The Saint and the Spirit” 745} {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2074, “Intimate Knowledge of the Holy Spirit” 2075}

Worldly men are not cognizant of the existence of the Holy Spirit. They do not believe in him; they say that there may or may not be such a Divine Being in the world as the Holy Spirit, but they have never come across his path. This then is one of the tests of true believers, the twice-born; they have received a new nature which enables them to recognise the existence of the Spirit of God and to feel the influence of his work: “You know him: for he dwells with you, and shall be in you.”

18, 19. I will not leave you orphans: I will come to you. Yet a little while, and the world sees me no more; but you see me: {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2990, “The Believer Not an Orphan” 2991}

“Your spiritual sight, which discerns the presence with you of the Holy Spirit, will also discern my continued existence when I am gone away from you.”

19, 20. Because I live, you shall live also. At that day you shall know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 968, “Life in Christ” 959}

This is something more for us to know. To know that Christ is in the Father, is one thing; but it is even more for us to understand the next mystical unity, “you in me, and I in you.” Oh, wonderful combination of the Father and the Son, and of Emmanuel, God with us, and ourselves!

21, 22. He who has my commandments, and keeps them, it is he who loves me; and he who loves me shall be loved by my Father, and I will love him, and will reveal myself to him.” Judas says to him, not Iscariot. “Lord, how is it that you will reveal yourself to us, and not to the world?” {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 29, “Christ Revealing Himself To His People” 29}

Large-hearted Judas, very different from Judas Iscariot! He wants Christ to reveal himself to all the world; he seems to have been a man of very broad views. He does not comprehend discriminating love and electing grace; he wants all the privileges of the children of God to be the privileges of the King’s enemies, but that cannot be.

23. Jesus answered and said to him, “If a man loves me, he will keep my words: and my Father will love him, and we will come to him, and make our abode with him. {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 2895, “A Blessed Gospel Chain” 2896}

Christ is sure to reveal himself to those who love him, but how can he reveal himself to those who do not love him? They cannot see him; they would not appreciate him if they could see him, they have no spiritual taste with which to enjoy him.

24-26. He who does not love me does not keep my saying: and the word which you hear is not mine, but the Father’s who sent me. I have spoken to you these things, still being present with you. But the Comforter, who in the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your memory, whatever I have said to you.

Do we sufficiently look to the Holy Spirit for divine teaching? We read our Bibles, I trust, with diligence, and also any explanatory books by which we may better understand our Bibles, but do we look up to the Holy Spirit, and ask him distinctly and immediately to teach us what is the meaning of Christ’s words, and to bring them to our memory? I wish we did this more than we do.

27. Peace I leave with you,

“That is my legacy to you.”

27. My peace I give to you: — {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 247, “The Best of Masters” 240} {See Spurgeon_Sermons No. 300, “Spiritual Peace” 291}

My own deep calm of spirit, which is not ruffled or broken though the hostility from sinners continually annoys me: “My peace I give to you.” Christ puts his hand into his heart, and takes out of that priceless jewel chest the choicest jewel it contains, — his own peace, and he says, “Wear that on your finger, the seal and token of my love.” “My peace I give to you”: —

27. I do not give to you as the world gives.

“With an expectation of getting a reward for it; neither do I give it to take it back again; nor do I give it in mere pretence; I give it in reality, sincerely, selflessly, as your freehold possession for ever.”

27, 28. Do not let your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. You have heard how I said to you, ‘I go away, and come again to you.’ If you loved me, you would rejoice, because I said, ‘I go to the Father’: for my Father is greater than I.

Christ as man had condescended to become less than the Father; he had taken upon himself the form of a servant, but now he was going back to take his own natural dignity again. We ought to rejoice in his gain. Though you may think it a loss not to have his physical presence, yet would you like to call him away from those harps that ring out his praises, and the perfect love of the Father with whom he reigns supreme? Oh, no, blessed Master, stay where you are!

29-31. And now I have told you before it comes to pass, that, when it is come to pass, you might believe. Hereafter I will not talk much with you; for the prince of this world comes, and has no claim on me. But that the world may know that I love the Father; and just as the Father gave me commandment, even so I do. Arise, let us go from here.”

C. H. Spurgeon’s Useful Books at Reduced Prices.

The Salt-Cellars. Being a Collection of Proverbs, together with Homely Notes on them. By C. H. Spurgeon. “These three things go to the making of a proverb: Shortness, Sense, and Salt.” In 2 vols., cloth gilt, published at 6d. each, offered at 2s. 6d. each; Morocco, 7s. 6d. each.

“For many years I have published a Sheet Almanac, intended to be hung up in workshops and kitchens. This has been known as ‘John Ploughman’s Almanac,’ and has had a large sale. It has promoted temperance, thrift, kindness to animals, and a regard for religion, among working people. The placing of a proverb for every day for twenty years has cost me great labour, and I feel that I cannot afford to lose the large collection of sentences which I have brought together; yet lost they would be, if left to die with the ephermeral sheet. Hence these two volumes. They do not profess to be a complete collection of proverbs, but only a few out of many thousands.” — Extract from Preface.