3389. The Soul’s Awakening

A Sermon Published On Thursday, January 15, 1914.

Truly, truly, I say to you, the hour is coming when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live. {Joh 5:25}

1. I suppose that when a pearl fisherman is at the bottom of the sea, and has gathered his bag full of pearl oysters, he will sometimes see others lying around, which he would be very, very glad to take up if he could; and I can imagine that when he has been safely taken into his boat, and has put away what he gathered the first time, he will be rather anxious to descend again somewhere near that same spot to bring up those that he left behind. This, at least, is much like my own case. While reading the chapter and preparing the sermon for this morning, I thought there were so many pearls in the text I could not say much about this particular verse, so I felt inclined to return to the same spot at once to see if we might not fetch up some fresh gems.

2. Those of you who were present this morning, will remember that we saw in the chapter a threefold gradation of life-giving in the person of Christ. As here and there in the Old Testament age God had raised up some people from the dead, so Christ also in the days of his flesh had quickened whom he wished; people naturally dead he had restored to natural life. This is the first, and indeed a very wonderful, prerogative of life-giving for Christ to exercise, to be able to raise Lazarus from the grave, or to raise the young daughter of the ruler, or to restore to the widow her departed son. The second form of life-giving is that described in the verse before us. He was constantly giving, through his voice, spiritual life to those who were spiritually dead. The third kind of life-giving we spoke of is that of the universal resurrection, when all who are in the grave shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and shall rise to judgment. It is to the second that we propose to direct our attention this evening — a form of life-giving which is going on now — not a matter of the past, as was the raising of a few in Christ’s day; not a matter of the future, as the coming resurrection is, but a matter of the present; not so apparent to the eye and to the ear as either of those mysteries, in so much that it is to a great extent invisible, except to the man who is a participator in it, but just as real, just as miraculous, and in many senses even more marvellous and divine. Christ is constantly raising the spiritually dead, and giving them life. Oh! that we may be enabled by God’s Spirit to open up this truth to your understanding, and may it be applied to your hearts!

3. I. Our first endeavour shall be to describe: — WHAT IT IS TO BE SPIRITUALLY DEAD.

4. “The hour is coming,” says the Saviour, “and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear shall live.” What is it to be spiritually dead? You all know what it is for the body to be physically dead. The soul has departed, and has left the body incapable, insensitive, unable to preserve itself. The soul was like salt to it; that being gone, it soon becomes putrid and obnoxious. Poor dead body! A most terrible and humiliating spectacle to see, especially to look at it after it has been lying for a while in the grave. Most of us have heard what it is to be morally dead. It does not happen, I hope, to very many, but there are some who seem to be dead to all moral feeling of right and wrong between their fellow men — that is what I mean just now by morality. They have been so accustomed to theft, uncleanness, drunkenness, and some few even to murder, that when they have been arrested, convicted, imprisoned, nothing seemed to move them to repentance. Even the dread of the last terrible penalty of the law has not sufficed to bring from some of them any kind of emotion. Those who have been most earnest to arouse their conscience have felt the most painful conviction that their moral faculties were totally defunct. They have become callous, seared as with a hot iron. It is an awful spectacle to see a man morally dead — blind to reason, deaf to warning, numb to shame — hence morally dead. His passions raging without control, he becomes like some wild wolf of whom all the district is afraid, like a raging lion going about in quest of prey, whom every man dreads to encounter, and whom some think it only fitting to kill. May none of us ever fall into such infamy! Alas! it might be! Step by step, little by little, men have become outcasts from society, and found their lodging in the very lairs of corruption, though they were born in better circumstances and trained with brighter prospects. May God grant we may never come to it ourselves!

5. But to be spiritually dead — what is that? It is something like these two, but I think it is somewhat different. I must describe spiritual death, not in its essence, for that I cannot do, but in its outward signs. Now, observe a spiritually dead man. He is not dead in any other respect. He walks abroad, and sees the fields full of abundant harvests. At nightfall he looks up to the skies and sees the glorious scenery of night. By day he climbs the mountains, beholds the valleys beneath in all their smiling beauty, and gazes upward at the golden sun above. God is to be seen in all these — God obviously the Creator, Preserver, and Benefactor of mankind, but this man does not perceive him. He sees no God. Perhaps he can stand, like Byron, under the shadow of Mont Blanc, and write himself “Atheos,” without God where God is everywhere. Where God is in every breath of air, where God is in every flower beneath his feet, he does not see the footprints of the Almighty; he does not believe in his secret presence. Is the Great Eternal First Cause defunct, then, or is there no God? No, sirs, the man’s perception of God is all gone, and is all that is gone; his power to understand spiritual things has failed, or else his ears would hear the voice of God in the sounding tops of the pines; his eyes would see the name of God written in golden letters across the midnight sky; his every sense would perceive God, and his innermost soul drink deep of God, but he is dead, and therefore he cannot. Watch that man in the common events of Providence. Many mercies have come to him in abundance; there are happy children climbing his knee; his wife is in strong health and full of happiness, they have no need to look from where the next meal shall come. The stream of mercy flows close by their door, and this has been continued for many years; they have long enjoyed uninterrupted prosperity. Now, all this comes from God, and health and strength are particularly his gifts. The power to get, and the power to enjoy, our earthly goods must both proceed from him. But this man never sees God in it at all. He talks about luck sometimes, and thinks himself a fortunate fellow. Luck, chance, and fortune — these seem to be his deity. Though the hand of God, wide open and full of bounty, is so spread out that one might think a bat or an owl might see it, yet this man does not perceive it. The man is dead to the perception of spiritual things, so that the great Master Spirit himself is not perceived when he comes near loaded with favours.

6. As it is in nature, and, as it is with the gifts of Providence, so especially it is in anything like outward religion. The man attends a place of worship; it may be he repeats his creed; joins in a form of prayer; or possibly he drops in where simpler worship is adopted, and what does he do? He sings as others sing; he bows his head as others do in prayer; he listens as others do to the preaching of the Word, but it is a heavy, dull, monotonous service to him. He wishes it were over; he sees nothing in it; at least, if he had his way, and custom did not bind him at all, he would never he found wasting his time in such unprofitable proceedings as he thinks them to be. He is like the mouse in church that thinks the Bibles and Prayer-Books are dry nibbling. He would rather be in the common ale-house, or at home reading novels, or walking out in the fields, or anywhere than in the place of worship. Yet others sitting by his side have found the profoundest pleasure in those sacred engagements, which have only brought weariness to him. Unlike him, they have been carried as on eagles’ wings up to heaven; their souls have been filled with joy and peace, and they have said as they have retired, “Surely God was in that place, and it was good to be there.” Why is this? The things ministered, and the man who ministered them, were the same. Ah! the one was dead, while the others lived. How shall the dead derive comfort? How shall the dead be charmed? How shall the dead be fed and instructed? God was in the sermon, but the carnally minded man, being dead, did not perceive him.

7. Nor, my dear friends, is this spiritual death merely a failure to recognise the being of God; it is equally palpable in reference to the moral obligations it involves. Man by nature is dead to the right and to the true, to the commandment of the Lord which enlightens the eyes, and to the testimony of the Lord which makes wise the simple. He is alive, probably, to his obligations to his fellow men, because he has a clear understanding of their obligations to him; he keeps himself within the bounds of law and decency generally, but his greater obligations to his Creator — these do not cross his mind, yet it is the very essence of rectitude and truth that he who made all things should be served by those he made, and that he who sustains in life all his creatures should have honour from those creatures, who owe their continued existence to him. Why does the ungodly man not think of this? How is it he can live for thirty or forty years sustained by God, and yet never give to God the service of his heart — scarcely thinking about his God at all? How is it? Why, because the man is dead to spiritual obligations. It must be so, or else he would lament that he had not met those obligations, and begin to repent that he had transgressed the bounds that his Maker set. The man is dead, sirs — dead.

8. Further, the natural man is dead to eternal things. How quick he is hear about the things of time — how swift to perceive their value, and in what haste to grasp them if he can! But ah! the eternal realities which God has revealed in Scripture, the man neither cares to hear about them, nor, hearing them, do they arouse any desires within his spirit. Alas! my hearers, we have sometimes had to warn you of the judgment to come; we have had to take down the shrill-sounding trumpet and blow an alarm; we have had to tell you that there is a dreadful hell into which the wicked, dying impenitent, must be cast; how is it that men are not stirred by a theme so truthful and so dreadful? Because they are dead. They would be awake enough if they were afraid that their house should be on fire, and that they themselves might be burned with the natural element; yet the spiritual danger, far more to be apprehended, does not arouse them — because they are dead to it. At other times it has been our delight to speak of heaven, to picture the pearly-gated city with all its azure brightness, with its bejewelled foundations, and to talk about its inhabitants all blessed for ever, who walk in the light of their glorious King, and surely it would be enough to put heart into a stone, and to make the cold marble glow with warmth. But no, the thing did not move men. A little joy of earth would whet their appetite far more quickly. It is because to the spiritual heaven revealed in Scripture men are altogether dead, and do not care for it. Oh! sirs, it is sad, it is sad, it is very sad, that to the fleeting shadows we should be wide awake, but to substantial verities we should be sound asleep; that after the poor gew-gaws and child’s bubbles of this mortal state we should be all agog, but as for the solid joys and lasting pleasures of an eternal world we showed no desire! This, again, is a sign of spiritual death.

9. I must hurry on to note a few more indications of this spiritual death. Prayer is one of the most blessed engagements and occupations of men while they are outside of heaven — to ask of the All-Bountiful One the mercies which they need. But there are some here tonight who never pray, who never really ask from God what they require. They take the attitude of supplicants, perhaps, as a matter of habit, but there they are like kneeling corpses. They do not pray; they are dead to prayer. Open this book, this holy Bible, before them. There was never another such; no angel ever gazed on a page more rich with glory than this. It is this book that opens to us immortality and gives us the news of eternal love. Set the natural man down before it. It is to him a mere history, or a dry book of dogmatic matters; he sees nothing in it that can charm him, nothing that can entrance his spirit. The man is dead, sir. To the sightless eyes the brightest jewels flash back no radiance. He is dead; yes, to Christ himself the man is dead, for when he is preached — Christ, the Father’s Son, the virgin’s child, the condescending Saviour, the ascending Conqueror, the exalted King with glory crowned — why, the people of God delight to hear about him; to them the savour of Jesus’ name is like ointment poured out; but exhibit this Saviour to the natural man, he perceives nothing. How should he? He is dead, dead in trespasses and sins. All the outward phenomena that you will discern in the best natural man indicate that, whatever kind of light there may be in him, the light that deals with God, with the spirit world, the world to come, is not there. He is unconscious of these, has no fellowship with them. He is dead, and a prey to corruption.

10. II. When we have paused for a minute we shall endeavour to describe: — THE WORD WHICH JESUS BRINGS TO THE DEAD.

11. “The hour is coming, and now is when the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God.” Our Lord Jesus Christ is in Scripture, especially in the Gospel of John, called “the Word.” Here his voice is spoken of, but what is a voice apart from the person who utters it? What is the Word which Jesus speaks by which dead men are quickened? Is Jesus Christ himself not the Word of God to man? The distinct, articulate revelation of Deity is Jesus Christ. Now, let me show you this. Jesus Christ once came from heaven, condescended to become a babe, to be nursed in a manger, to hang on a woman’s breast. He was God. What did that say — that child, that babe — human, yet divine? Why, it said this, “God has compassion on man, and has not left him; he is about to establish an intimate relationship between himself, the great and the glorious, and man, the weak, and the pitiable — a union not at first between God and fully-developed man, but between God and the babe; as if it should be said the weakest and feeblest of all who bear the name of manhood may take comfort, for God has come down and taken a baby’s form into union with himself.” That meant compassion, it meant mercy, it meant fellowship, and it meant hope for the race of man. For this purpose Jesus passed a life in the midst of all our sorrows and infirmities, and took upon himself our sickness, and what did that mean? Why it meant compassion. A beautiful word that — compassion — a united passion, a fellow-feeling, a kindred suffering. It seemed to say, “God is not indifferent to your woes. Oh! sons of men! You have fallen through your sins, but God has compassion on you; God feels for you; he is no flinty-hearted Jupiter, who sits serenely on his throne amid the pains, and agonies, and eternal death of his creatures; indeed, but he has come down to you; he has taken upon himself manhood so that he may suffer with man, and let man see that he has not left him, but that he feels for him.”

12. And, after he had lived a life of holiness, which was, indeed, comparatively only a small part of his work, our Lord Jesus Christ gave himself up to die. Into the garden he went, and there the wrath of God was laid on him, until that precious cluster was so crushed in the awful press of the divine wrath, that great red drops of bloody sweat were distilled from every pore like the red juice from the cluster. He went to Pilate’s hall, to Herod’s tribunal, to be mocked, and scourged, and spat on, and at last in extreme agony, he offered up his life on the accursed tree. What did he then say to us? He said this, “God is just; I come down to you poor mortal men, and taking on myself your nature, and taking also your sins, as your substitute I have to suffer.” Christ Jesus’ suffering is a loud word from God to this effect, “I pity you, men, but I must punish your sins; I cannot pass them by; if they are laid on my Son I must prostrate my Son beneath their load; I cannot wink at sin, though it is laid on the perfect Substitute, for even there I must hunt it to the death; it is an accursed thing and must not be tolerated; I must stamp it out of my universe.” This is God’s Word; he says, “Justice as well as compassion; pity, but pity consistent with severity.” Moreover, Jesus rose again from the dead, and now he lives for ever at the right hand of God, and his Holy Spirit has come, and animates at this time the preaching of the Word with divine energy. Christ now declares to us God’s Word in this way, “Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ is born by God; whoever will trust in the Incarnate Son of God and fully rely on the merits of his wondrous suffering, shall be saved; God does not will the death of the sinner, but would rather that he should turn to him and live, and everyone who will turn to the living God, and trust his Son to make propitiation, shall be saved from the damning power of sin and have everlasting life.” Christ, the living One, is God’s Word to us so that we shall be delivered from the wrath to come if we trust in him, even as he himself was delivered when he rose again from the dead and ascended into glory. My dear friends, the gospel which I preach again tonight is what I have always preached, until I have a fear lest I should preach until you are almost nauseated with the repetition. Yet if it were so, I could not help it, for no other name do I dare to preach, nor is there any other foundation that I dare to lay and tell you to build on it but this. Jesus Christ, the Son of God, has come. Here on earth, he lived and died, and suffered for the sake of mankind. God is a God of love, but he is also a God of justice. There is a way in which he can be just and yet tender towards you. If you trust his dear Son, your sins shall not destroy you; Christ’s sufferings shall stand, instead of yours, and you shall live. If you will now accept Christ, if you now will lean fully on Jesus, if you now will fling away both your love for sin and your love for your own righteousness, and come and rest where God would have you rest, God shall be reconciled to you, and you shall be his child, and you shall live for ever and ever.

13. III. I must now close with the third point: — THE MODE BY WHICH THIS WORD IS APPLIED.

14. “The hour is coming, and now is, when the dead shall hear.” I have told you what they will hear, they will hear the word; but who will speak it? Who is it who alone can speak it to purpose? Why — “When the dead shall hear the voice of the Son of God, those who hear shall live.” Whenever any dead soul does live, it is through the Word, but it is not through the voice of the preacher. That is only an instrument, and nothing more. The real voice that makes dead souls live is the voice of Christ Jesus. What, is it so? Does he actually speak to every soul that is saved? He does, I do not mean in imagination, as though you heard voices in the air, but I mean that this Word which I have just now preached to you must come home to your heart and your conscience, and be applied by the Holy Spirit to it, so that you prove its power and feel its energy. It is through the Holy Spirit that the voice of Christ is heard in the soul. But while I speak to you like this, some will say, “What, then, can we do with sinners, since we do not have the voice that can raise them?” Why, you can tug your Master on the skirt, and say to him, “Good Lord, speak the word, speak the word!” When I come into this pulpit the prayer that rises to my heart always — I hope I can say without guile always — is this, “Lord, be here to speak yourself through me.” I am persuaded that, though I preach to dead sinners for ten thousand years, never will one be saved by my voice. Why, then, do I preach to sinners, knowing them to be dead! Because I am simply the instrument of Christ, and he speaks through his voice with his own Spirit, which is as his voice, and the dead do hear, and they are made to live — not without the instrumentality; not through the instrumentality alone, but by the voice of Jesus Christ. I ask you, then, dear brothers and sisters who are alive to God, to pray that Jesus would speak while the preacher speaks. Be lifting up your hearts and silently crying: — 

   Oh! let the dead now hear thy voice,

   Bid, Lord, thy banished ones rejoice;

   Their beauty this, their glorious dress,

   Jesus, the Lord, our righteousness.

15. What encouragement there is in this for you, my brothers and sisters! However feeble you may be in yourselves, yet, if it is the voice of Christ you have to rely on, what power there is in that! You may go to your Sunday School class and say, “I cannot teach these troublesome boys and these inattentive girls; how can I hope to see them saved?” Ah! but your Master can speak through you, and he can do what you cannot. Though it is true that old Adam is too strong for young Melancthon, he is not too strong for the mighty Saviour, whose voice does not speak merely to the living, but to the dead, and all who hear that voice shall live. Bend your ear, then, and bow down your heart, attend to the voice of Christ, since by it alone the dormant faculties can be quickened, and a lively interest aroused.

16. Yet while Christ speaks to the dead, power is communicated to them so that they may have it and use it, call it their own, and exercise it. “The dead shall hear,” and, notice, “Those who hear shall live.” You must not imagine that man is passive in the matter. What does it say, “Draw us,” and we will be drawn? No, but “Draw us, and we will run after you.” There comes an activity. I have heard some speak of faith, and repentance as the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Most truly, so they are, but why do you speak of these gifts as though the sinner had nothing to do to repent and to believe? Always remember that it is you who must repent and believe. The Holy Spirit will not repent for you. What should he repent about? He never did wrong. And the Holy Spirit will not believe for you. What should he believe for? He is God himself. The fact is, that the apostle has expressed it exactly, when he says, “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God who works in you, to will and to do his own good pleasure.” Christ gives the voice, but the man hears. There is something done; there is something to be received. It is no great act to hear a sound when it is made; it is no great act to receive mercy when it is presented; yet the hearing is a miracle, for the dead hear; and the receiving by faith is a miracle, for no one does this except those to whom it is given; yet it is done by man. Faith and repentance are gifts of God: the voice that saves is the voice of Christ, but the point of personal salvation is reached when the man actively hears and receives the truth.

17. Please, then, my dear hearers, if you wish to be saved, be diligent in hearing the gospel. I would urge you to frequent those places of worship the most where Christ is preached the most. Do not seek after eloquence, oratory, gaudy phrases, or grotesque observations that might amuse you. You have something else to do on the Lord’s Day besides being amused and having your ears tickled. There is a soul in you that will either be saved or lost, and today is given to you particularly so that you may listen to the gospel which saves you. Hunt out the gospel, then, in your locality. Follow it wherever you may hear it preached. I entreat you to hear it, but do not think that the mere hearing of it with your outward ears will be enough. Alas! such a hearing may involve responsibility, and bring you no blessing. Please, ask the Lord as you go up to the house of prayer to open your inward ears, to quicken you from your spiritual death, and bless you to your profit. I believe, my dear friends, that few will miss a blessing who hear a gospel minister, anxiously desiring to get a blessing. In these waters men shall catch what they fish for, and if you seek earnestly for God’s blessing, you shall find it. Thirst for it; pant for it; long for it; you already have the beginning of it, for to desire grace is an evidence that you have grace in a measure, and to seek Christ earnestly is already to have something from Christ, a foretaste of the feast they enjoy who find him.

18. Ah! my dear friends, we keep on preaching, and you keep on coming and going Sabbath after Sabbath, but how is it with you? Are you saved or not? A man opens a shop for the sale of drugs, and I will suppose them to have great medicinal power. There is a plague in the district, and he asks himself, “Are these drugs, after all, what they profess to be?” If men keep on dying, he will, as an honest man, begin to get anxious and to enquire, and if he meets people who are talking about other things, he will say, “Nonsense! Put them aside a bit; I want to ask you about something of more importance. Are these drugs of mine true shots with which to do battle with the plague? Are these the weapons with which to chase away this horrible disease, and avert the threatening? Is the plague increasing on your street, or is it dying out?” Oh! I want to push these questions home to you tonight. The Word of Christ I know I preach. I am sure I have told you the gospel of his salvation. I cannot imitate the voice of Christ, nor would I if I could. It is his to use his own voice. His tongue, and his tongue only, is like a two-edged sword, which can cut and cure, kill and heal at the same time. How is it with you? Are you saved? Are you awakened? Are you seeking? Are you finding? Or, are you, after all, just hearing, and hearing, and hearing, again and again, to no purpose? Ah! I wish that I were not the preacher to such as you, and that you were not my hearers, for I cannot bear that I should be adding to your condemnation; that I should be hardening you — for so it must be — hardening your hearts with the very truth that ought to soften them! I pray the Master to bring you into a different state, and give you to lay hold on these things, for if they are not true, it is time I quit preaching them; if they are true, it is time you had received them. If they are not true, it is time that these services were stopped, for they are awful farces; but if this Book is true, and Christ’s gospel a verity, it is time that you did not make farces of them, but that you turned to God with full purpose of heart.

19. May the Lord save you, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.

Expositions By C. H. Spurgeon {Eph 2; Mt 11:1-6}

1. And he has quickened you, who were dead in trespasses and sins;

What a great change, then, has taken place in the people of God! It is described as being similar to the resurrection of the dead. And do you suppose that this took place without a man’s knowing it? Do you think that we are wrong in stating a wide difference between the quickened ones and the dead? I do not think so. In fact, those addresses made to congregations in which there is no distinction made between the living and the dead in Zion, are deceptive. And prayers that are meant to suit congregations of mixed character, where some are dead in sin, and others alive to God, are, on the very face of them, an attempt at an impossibility. As great as is the distinction between the dead in their graves and living men who walk the streets, so great is the difference between the regenerate and unregenerate. Do you think that in reading this verse, dear friends you could apply it to yourself, “and you, and you, and you, he has quickened who were dead in trespasses and sin?”

2. In which in time past you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit who now works in the children of disobedience:

Those who are not saved have a life of evil. They are dead towards God, but they are alive towards Satan. An unregenerate man’s heart is Satan’s workshop, in which he forges various devices of evil — the spirit who works in the children of disobedience.

3. Among whom also we all had our conduct in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.

There is no difference by nature between the brightest saint in the church of God and the blackest sinner of the camp of Satan all fallen, all desperately depraved at our very origin. What wonders of grace are those who are saved! Let them take care that they never fail in praising that grace.

4-7. But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love by which he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together with Christ, (by grace you are saved;) and has raised us up together, and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. That in the ages to come he might show the very great riches of his grace in his kindness towards us through Christ Jesus.

God’s great object is to display his grace — to let all the universe know what a gracious God he is; therefore, he selected us who were dead in sin, even as others; therefore, he quickens us; and therefore, having quickened us, he goes on to raise us up from one point to another until he makes us sit with Christ on his throne. Oh! beloved, if all the ages are to learn the grace of God from his dealings towards us, let us learn it, and let us talk much about it, and exalt much in it. Who is a gracious God like our God?

8. For by grace you are saved

Not by your own merits, not by priestcraft, not by your own free will. “By grace you are saved.” This is the great summary of the gospel. Let this doctrine be preached, and we shall soon see the errors of Rome flee before it. “By grace you are saved.”

8. Through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:

Neither the faith nor the salvation are from ourselves. They are both the gifts of divine love, both created in us by the Divine Spirit. It is the gift of God.

9, 10. Not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship,

No good man can boast about his works, because those works are the work of God. Without him we could not perform good works, so that even when we possess them, we are his workmanship. Shall the vessel on the wheel exalt itself as if it made itself? No, the potter must have the credit for all the skill of the making of the vessel, and if, therefore, there shall be in our character marks and lines of grace and truth, to God be the glory for them, for we are his workmanship.

10-12. Created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God has before ordained that we should walk in them. Therefore remember, that you being in time past Gentiles in the flesh, who are called Uncircumcision by those who are called the Circumcision in the flesh made by hands; that at the time you were without Christ, being aliens from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no hope, and without God in the world:

This is the position of our forefathers. This is our position by nature. We have not gotten even as far as the Jew, who had a covenant according to the flesh to plead; and had received its sign while still a child; but we — we were altogether foreigners and aliens from the Most High.

13. But now in Christ Jesus you who sometimes were far off are made near by the blood of Christ.

Oh! rejoice in this. You far-off ones made near, lift up your hearts now in thankfulness for what the Lord Jesus has done for you by his blood — made near by the blood of Christ.

14. For he is our peace, who has made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of partition between us;

Christ is peace between Jew and Gentile — peace between both of them and their God. I have heard of a poor bricklayer, who, when at work on a scaffold, fell from a great height and was taken up and was dying. They sent for a minister of the gospel, who began addressing him in such terms as this, “My dear man, you are evidently near to death, and, therefore, I exhort you to make your peace with God.” He knew only very little about it, compared with what the poor bricklayer knew, for, opening his eyes, he said, “Make my peace with God, sir? That I could not do; but, I thank God, it was made for me in the everlasting covenant of grace in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ almost two millennia ago, and I have no peace to make.” It is peace already made, and we only have to accept it, for he is our peace who has made both one and broken down the middle wall of partition between us.

15, 16. Having abolished in his flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments contained in ordinances; for to make in himself of two one new man, so making peace; and so that he might reconcile both to God in one body by the cross, having slain the enmity by it:

No enmity now should exist between Jew and Gentile. Nothing exists between the believer and his God. The enmity is dead for ever, for Christ has died.

17, 18. And came and preached peace to you who were afar off, and to those who were near. For through him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.

In this verse you have the whole Trinity, and all the Trinity in unity are necessary for prayer. “Through him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.”

19. Now therefore you are no more strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints, and of the household of God;

How blessedly grace annihilates all national distinctions. Cowper spoke of nations which, like kindred drops, would have melted into one if they had not been divided by a range of mountains or intersected by a narrow frith. {a} But in the gospel of grace we melt into one. Whoever loves the Lord is a co-patriot with all who love him. Distinctions of nationality sweetly sink when we come to know the Saviour. We are fellow citizens with the saints and of the household of God.

Reading from Matthew 11: — 

1-5. And it came to pass, when Jesus had made an end of commanding his twelve disciples, he departed from there to teach and preach in their cities. Now when John had heard in the prison the works of Christ, he sent two of his disciples. And said to him, “Are you he who should come, or do we look for another?” Jesus answered and said to them, “Go and show John again those things which you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.

These were Christ’s seals and proofs: he did not need to seek others. These were the very works of which prophecy had said they would be the marks of the Messiah. If then, these marks were found in him, he left John and his disciples to draw the inference that he was, indeed, the One who was to come. Christ is always best known by his works, and in his people especially; he is seen in their lives. There are two great precepts for the conquest of the world for Christ: the first is, preach the gospel; but the second is, live the gospel, and if we do not live the gospel we shall not succeed in preaching the gospel. In fact, those members of our churches who do not live the gospel undo through all the week what the preacher of the gospel endeavours to do on the Lord’s Day. It is a fine thing to preach with your mouth; but the best thing in the world is to preach with your feet and with your hands — in your walk and in your work; and if you are enabled to do this, the people will be able to say very little against the preaching of the gospel when they see the result of it in those who accept it. May God grant that we may be all preachers in some way or another.

6. And blessed is he, whoever shall not be offended in me.”

{a} Frith: A piece of land grown sparsely with trees or with underwood only. Also, a space between woods; unused pasture land. OED.

Barbed Arrows, from the Quiver of C. H. Spurgeon. A Collection of Anecdotes, Illustrations and Similes. With Preface by Pastor C. Spurgeon, A companion Volume to “Feathers for Arrows.” Cloth. Published at 2s. 6d., offered at 2s.

Illustrations and Meditations; or, Flowers from a Puritan’s Garden. Distilled and dispensed by C. H. Spurgeon. Cloth. Published at 2s. 6d., offered at 2s.