3495. The Judgment on Zacharias

A Sermon Published On Thursday, January 20, 1916.

You shall be dumb and not able to speak until the day that these things shall be performed, because you do not believe my words, which shall be fulfilled in their own time. {Lu 1:20}

1. Unbelief is a great sin everywhere, and a grievous mistake. Unbelief has proved the ruin of those countless multitudes who, having heard the gospel, rejected it, died in their sins, have been consigned to the place of torment, and await the fiercer judgment of the last day. I might ask the question concerning this innumerable host, “Who slew all these?” The answer would be, “Unbelief.” And when unbelief comes into the Christian’s heart, as it does at times — for the truest believer has his times of doubt; even Abraham, the father of the faithful, sometimes had his misgivings — that unbelief does not assail his thoughts without withering his joys, and impairing his energies. There is nothing in the world that costs a saint so dearly as doubt. If he doubts his God, he most assuredly robs himself of comfort, deprives himself of strength, and does himself a real injury. The case of Zacharias may be a lesson to the Lord’s people. It is to them I am going to speak. Zacharias is a striking example of the ills a good man may have to suffer as the result of his unbelief.

2. I. In reviewing these, we notice: — THE CHARACTER AND POSITION OF ZACHARIAS.

3. Here we cannot fail to discover some profitable lesson. He was undoubtedly a believer. He is said, in the sixth verse, to have been righteous before God. No man ever obtained such a reputation except by faith. “The just shall live by faith.” No other righteousness than what is faith is of any esteem in God’s account. Such was the righteousness of Abraham, and such was the righteousness of all the saints before the advent of our Redeemer. Such, too, has been the standard ever since. Zacharias evidently was a real believer. Yet for all that, when the angel appeared to him, and God gave him the promise of a son, he was amazed, bewildered, incredulous, and could not believe, but only question the announcement. “How shall I know that these things shall be?”

4. Nor was he merely a genuine believer; he was well-instructed and greatly enlightened, for he was a priest, and, as a priest considered, he was righteous before God, and blameless, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord. That he was well-instructed in the Word of God is undeniable. He could not otherwise have discharged his duty, for the priest’s lips must keep knowledge, and he must teach men. Being proficient in the one, and competent for the other, ignorance offered him no excuse. Moreover, as a man of years, he was probably to be classed among the experienced saints of his time. He had borne the burden and heat of the day, and received proof upon proof of the abundant mercy of God. Now notice this. For any of us to doubt, who have been justified by faith is a shameful delinquency. For those to doubt who have, in addition to their first convictions, a thousand confirmations of the truth they have embraced, who are acquainted with the covenant and its rich inventory of promises, who are deeply taught in the things of God — for such to doubt involves a higher degree of guilt. I do not think that, had Zacharias been a mere babe in grace, or an inexperienced stripling, his unbelief would have received so stern a rebuke. It was because he was a venerable priest, one thoroughly schooled in sacred truth, a man who for many years instructed the people of Israel in the oracles of God, that it became a crying evil for him to say, “How shall I know this?” when the angel told him of his prayer being heard, and of the kind of answer the Lord would bestow on him.

5. The high office that Zacharias held as a priest caused him to be looked up to. Hence his conduct was more narrowly watched, and his example had a wider influence. On a similar account we have need, all of us in our various spheres, to consider the effect of our actions on others. The higher a man’s position, the greater his responsibility; and in the event of any delinquency, the more grave his offence. For you to doubt, my dear brother, who are at the head of a household, is worse than a personal infirmity; it is a violation of duty to your family. And you, dear friend, who preach the gospel, for you to doubt, who are looked up to by many as an advanced Christian, as a mature saint whose example may be safely followed by those who listen to your counsels — this is a great and a crying evil, by which you dishonour the Lord. I pray God that your conscience may be tenderly sensitive, and that you may be aroused to a sense of the dishonour you bring to him by your faithlessness.

6. How especially favoured Zacharias was! An angel of the Lord appeared to him. Not to any of the other priests, when they were offering incense, did such a heavenly visitor come. And what welcome news he brought! It was a wonderful message that he was to be the father of a child great in the sight of the Lord, one who should minister in the spirit and power of Elijah, and become the forerunner of the Messiah. This surely was an exceptional example of divine favour. And notice this, beloved, our God is very jealous of those whom he highly favours. You cannot have privileged communications from the Lord, or be admitted into close communion with him, without finding that he is a jealous God. The nearer we draw to him, the more hallowed our sense of his presence will be. But to doubt his Word, or question the fulfilment of his promise when he speaks kindly to us, must incur his censure. I speak according to the manner of men; we do not expect from a stranger the esteem which we ought to merit from our servants. But our friends, who know us better than servants, ought to trust us more implicitly. And yet beyond common friendship in the near relationship and tender attachment of a wife to her husband, the most unqualified confidence should be reposed. Even so, my brethren, if you and I have ever been permitted to lean our heads on Jesus’ bosom; if we have sat down at his banquets, and his banner over us has been love; if we have been separated from the world by special fellowship with Christ, and have had choice promises given to us, we cannot, like Zacharias, ask, “How shall I know” without grieving the Holy Spirit of God, and bringing on ourselves some sad chastisement as the result.

7. What soothing comfort had just been administered to Zacharias by the angel of the Lord! Was not the manner of greeting suited to allay terror, and inspire him with trust? The troubled thoughts that perplexed him, and the fear that fell on him when the angel appeared standing at the right hand of the altar, received no rebuke. If it was natural that so unusual a vision should startle him, there was a gentle sympathizing tenderness in the angel’s address that might well have stilled the throbbings of his heart. “Do not fear, Zacharias, for your prayer is heard.” And so it is with us when the consolations of God have been neither few nor small, and when his good will towards us has been pointedly expressed, does it not make doubt and questioning more inexcusable? Do we not aggravate the sin by it? Some of us have lived in the very bosom of comfort. Precious promises have been brought home to our souls; we have eaten the marrow and the fatness; we have drunk the wines on the lees well-refined. We are no strangers to the blessing of his eternal and unchanging love, or to the light of his countenance, which they prove who find grace in his eyes. Oh! if we begin to doubt after these discriminating love-tokens, what apology can we offer? How can we hope to escape from the chastening rod?

8. Moreover, the misgivings that Zacharias betrayed relate to the very subject on which his supplications were offered. It was in response to his own petition that the angel said to him, “Your prayer is heard.” I marvel at his faith that he should persevere in prayer for a blessing which seemed, at his own and his wife’s age, to have been out of the course of nature, and beyond the domain of hope, but I marvel a great deal more that, when the answer came to that very prayer, Zacharias could not believe it. So very often it is with us; nothing would surprise some of us more than to receive an answer to some of our prayers. Though we believe in the efficacy of prayer, at times we believe so feebly that when the answer comes, as it does come, we are astounded and filled with amazement. We can scarcely think of it as a purpose of God; it seems rather to us like a happy coincidence. Surely this adds greatly to the sin of unbelief. If we have been asking for mercy without expecting it, and pleading promises while harbouring doubt, every prayer we have offered has been only a repetition of our secret unbelief; and it is God’s faithfulness that brings our inconsistency to light.

9. One other reflection is suggested by the narrative. Zacharias appears to have staggered at a promise which others, whom we might well imagine to have been weaker in faith than himself, implicitly believed. The veteran falters where a babe in grace might have taken courage. And is it not always a scandal if any of us who have been conspicuously favoured by God are ready to halt, while our feebler brothers and sisters are animated and encouraged? No dubious thought seems to have crossed the mind of Elizabeth, no incredulous expression fell from her lips. She said, “Thus the Lord has dealt with me.”

10. This case was the very opposite of that of Abraham and Sarah. There Abraham believed, but Sarah doubted; here the wife believes in the face of her husband’s scruples. In the same way, Mary, that humble village maiden, accepts with simple faith the high and holy greeting which she received. She just asks a natural question, and that being answered, she replies, “Be it to me, according to your Word.” Her surprise was soon exchanged for joy, and eventually she begins to sing with a loud voice, “My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit has rejoiced in God my Saviour.” This is a very remarkable opening chapter of the Gospel according to Luke. Women, who had been in the background through long preceding generations, seem suddenly to take a foremost place. Zacharias and Joseph stand in doubt, while Elizabeth and Mary exaltingly believe. And who knows if I may be addressing some poor woman here who, in the depth of affliction, bodily suffering, and poverty, nevertheless rejoices in God with all her heart? But without a doubt, I am now speaking to many a man who is vexed with trifling cares, murmurs bitterly because of petty annoyances, and doubts his God when clouds come over the sky so that he does not see his way. Shame on our unbelief! Please be ashamed of yourselves because of it. Never does it disgrace us more than when the weaklings of the Lord’s family put us to shame by the simplicity and sincerity of their faith. The character and position of Zacharias may furnish a striking moral, but I do urgently entreat each Christian to point the keen edge of criticism at himself, and consider how much he is personally to blame for his own unbelief.

11. II. Let us now proceed to investigate: — THE FAULT OF ZACHARIAS.

12. Where did this perilous wavering come from at that privileged hour? His fault was that he looked at the difficulty. “I am an old man,” he said, “and my wife is well advanced in years.” And while he looked at the difficulty he would gladly suggest a remedy; he wanted a sign. “How shall I know this?” It was not enough for him that God had said so; he wanted some collateral evidence to guarantee the truth of the word of the Lord. This is a very common fault among really good people. They look for a sign. I have often trembled in my own soul when I have felt an inclination like this to tempt the Lord by looking for some minute circumstance to verify a magnificent promise. When I have thought, “By this I shall know whether he does hear prayer or not,” a cold shiver has passed over me, the shudder has gone through my soul that I should ever think of challenging the truth of God’s word, when the fact is so certain. For us who have very often cried to the Lord in our distresses and been delivered out of our troubles, to raise such a question is indeed ungrateful. For a child of God who habitually prays to his Father in heaven to look at his faithfulness as a matter of uncertainty is to degrade himself, and to dishonour his Lord. Yet there is no denying the tendency and disposition among us to want a sign. As we read a prophecy of the future, we crave a sign in the present. If the Lord were pleased to give us a sign, or if he told us to ask for a sign, we should be quite right in attaching a high importance to it, but for us to doubt a plain promise, and, therefore, ask for a sign, is to sin against the Lord. Sometimes we have wanted signs in spiritual things. It is fitting and proper for us to rejoice in the true delights of fellowship with Christ, but it ill becomes us to make our feelings a kind of test of our acceptance, or to say, “I will not believe God if he does not indulge me with certain displays of grace; unless he gives me the deserts I crave, I will be sulky and sullen, and refuse to eat the children’s food.” Why, such conduct is wilful and wicked; it is weak, and utterly inexcusable. Yet how many of us have been guilty of this folly? Now, as Zacharias stood on the threshold of the gospel age, and he was the first among those who heard the glad news to express unbelief, it was necessary that he should be made an example of.

13. God would show at the very outset, even before John the Baptist was born, that unbelief could not be tolerated nor should it go unchastened. Therefore, his servant, Zacharias, must, as soon as he had asked for a sign, have such a sign as would make him suffer for months to come, constrain him to be sorry that he had ever dared to proffer the request. Oh! beloved, is our faith still so weak, and our experience still so contracted, that we cannot yet trust our God? We have known him for twenty years. Has he been a wilderness to us? Have his mercy and truth ever failed us in time of need? Shall all his tender dealings with us count for nothing? Do you think so lightly of the gift of his Son, the gift of the Holy Spirit, of the daily providence which has guarded you, and of the hourly blessing which has been bestowed on you, that you would gladly put aside these unfailing benefits from your grateful memory, while you indulge in some paltry whim, and tempt the Lord your God by your doubt? May that be far from any of us! We would rather take up the position of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, who, when arraigned before Nebuchadnezzar, and condemned to be thrown into the furnace of fire, said, “Our God is able to deliver us; but,” they added, “if not (though he should do nothing of the kind), nevertheless be it known to you, oh king, we will not serve your gods, nor worship the golden image which you have set up.”

14. That is the spirit in which we ought to walk before God — “Though he kills me, yet I will trust in him.” What if he does not spare my mother’s precious life? What if he does not preserve my child from the ravages of the fatal epidemic? What if he takes away the desire of my eyes with a stroke? What if my business should cease to thrive? What if my health fails and my strength decays? What if I am dishonoured by the scandal of my neighbours? Shall I, therefore, cast off my allegiance to God, or betray my trust in him? Am I to engage in rebellion like this? Neither flood nor flame could quench or extinguish his love for me. Shall anxiety or tribulation, disappointment or disaster sever my heart from devotion to him? No, may God give me grace to see my cattle destroyed, and my goods swept away, and my children cut off in their prime, and to hear cruel taunts from the wife of my bosom; to be covered with severe boils, and to sit on a dunghill and scrape myself with a potsherd and find my best friends miserable comforters, and yet, in the midst of accumulated distresses, to be able to say, “I know that my Redeemer lives; he has not failed to deliver me so far, and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God. Though the fig tree should not blossom, though the flocks and herds are cut off, yet I will trust in the Lord, and glory in the God of my salvation.” If true to our high profession, the Christian’s faith should not borrow its hue from the circumstances by which he is surrounded. To hanker after signs that a promise shall be fulfilled is obviously to show doubt of the promiser. “Now the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace, in believing, so that you may abound in hope through the power of the Holy Spirit.” So you shall be restrained from asking for a petty sign to justify you in relying on his princely bounty. May the Lord keep you from this great transgression!

15. III. We pass on to observe: — THE PENALTY ZACHARIAS INCURRED.

16. His morbid propensity was followed by a mortifying punishment. He had doubted, and he became dumb, and as the narrative clearly shows us, he was deaf likewise. Such was his chastisement, and it was sent not in anger, but in God’s own covenant love. What a salutary medicine! Although bitter to the taste, how effective it was! Read his song, and you will see the evidence. He had been for months silent, quiet, shut out from all sound, and unable to make any. But he had occupied his months of seclusion well. He had searched the prophets — do you see that? He had been musing much on the coming one — do you see that? Deep humility had taken the place of arrogant presumption. He was bowed down before the majesty of God, yet at the same time full of peace and blissful hope. So he looked into the glorious future. Oh! dear brethren, if you are prone to doubt, this sickness of the mind will require a strong corrective. Very likely God will give you some sharp medicine, but it shall work for your good. As his child, he will not chasten you so as to injure you, but he will chasten you so as to benefit you. I do not think children generally court the rod, however beneficial it may be, and yet I am quite sure there is no wise child of God who would not shrink from the graver ills which render such discipline essential for his soul’s health.

17. See how judgment was tempered with mercy. The punishment sent to Zacharias was not so severe as it might have been. Instead of being struck deaf and dumb, he might have been struck dead. As I read this passage, I wondered that God had not struck me deaf and dumb when I have spoken unbelieving words — when I have been depressed in spirit, and spoken unadvisedly with my lips. Oh! had the Lord been angry with me, and said, “If that is your witness about me, you shall never speak again.” That would have been most just, and I might have been a mournful example of his indignation against his unbelieving servants; he has not dealt so with me; glory be to his name!

18. And this chastisement did not invalidate the promise. The Lord did not say, “Well, Zacharias, since you do not believe it, your wife, Elizabeth, shall not have a son. There shall be a John born, but he shall not come from your house.” Oh! no; that is a grand passage — “If we do not believe, yet he remains faithful; he cannot deny himself.” The promise still stands. God does not take advantage of our unbelief to renege and say, “I will give you no blessings because you doubt me” — no, but having said it, he does it, and his Word does not return to him void. Even the trembling, doubting children, though they get the rod, get the blessing too; and the promise is fulfilled, though the father is dumb when the blessing comes. Very painful, indeed, was his chastisement. One would not like to be deaf and dumb for a day; but to be deaf and dumb for the time of nine months must have been a very painful trial to this man. Moreover, he could not bless the people; he could not speak a word; he could not instruct the people; he was useless for that part of the priest’s work; and when the song went up within the hallowed walls of the temple, he could not hear it. He might know by signs that they were singing a hallelujah, yet his ears could not catch its grateful strains. That poor tongue of his was silent. He could not add a note to the volume of praise that went up to the God he loved. It must have been mournful to him to have no prayer in the family which he could hear, and in which he could join, and to be as good as dead for all practical purposes.

19. Now I am afraid that there are many believers who have had to suffer something like this, for many days, on account of their unbelief. I think I can point out some who are unable to hear the gospel as they once did. Many years ago, a friend said that he could not hear me preach. I said to him, “Buy a horn.” “No,” he said, “it is not your voice; I can hear that, but I do not enjoy it.” My reply was, “Perhaps that is my fault, but I am far from sure that it is not your own.” I fear, in such cases, it is quite as often the hearer’s fault as the preacher’s fault. At any rate, when others profit, and our judgment approves, though our hearts find no refreshment, there is reason to suspect that in the dullness of our senses we are compelled to bear chastisement for our unbelief. You go where others go, and find no solace. You hear what edifies and comforts them, but there is no cheer for you. You are deaf; your ears are closed to what the Lord says. Very often it has happened, I fear, to some here, that, for lack of faith, they have lost their speech. There was a time when they could tell of the Lord’s goodness, but they seem silent now. They could sing once, but their harps are hung on the willows now. As they get with their companions, they seem as if they have lost all their pleasant conversation. If they try the old accustomed strings of the time-worn harp, the ancient skill is gone. They cannot praise God as they once did; and all because on one occasion, when the promise was clear before their eyes, they would challenge and doubt it. They could not rely on their God. Little do we know how many Fatherly chastisements happen to us as the result of our unbelief.

20. The lessons I gather, and with which I conclude, are these — First, if any of you, beloved, are weak in faith, do not be satisfied about it. Cry to God. Our God deserves better homage from us than a weak, tenuous faith can render him. He deserves to be trusted with such confidence as a child gives his parent. Ask him to increase your faith. And you who have faith, oh! keep it jealously, exercise it habitually; pray to the Lord to preserve it. Never begin to walk according to the sight of the eyes. Do not confer with flesh and blood. Do not come down from that blessed height of simple confidence in God, but ask that you may continue there, and no longer doubt. The Church needs believers to believe for her, and to pray for her. “He who wavers is like a wave of the sea, driven by the wind and tossed. Do not let that man think that he shall receive anything from the Lord.” Are you strong in faith, be stronger still; are you weak in faith, be strong.

21. But let the unbeliever, the utter unbeliever, tremble. If a good man, a saved man, a noble and a blameless man was nevertheless for months struck dumb for unbelief, what will become of you who have no faith at all? He who does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the Son of God. To you, unbeliever, no angel Gabriel will appear, but the destroying angel awaits you. What shall be your fearful chastisement? You will be silent; it will be eternal. Oh! you shall stand silent at the judgment seat of Christ, unable to offer any excuse for your rebellion and unbelief. Unbelief will destroy the best of us: faith will save the worst of us. He who believes in the Lord Jesus Christ has eternal life — he who does not believe (whatever else his apparent excellencies are), will assuredly perish. Faith, faith! this is the priceless saving thing for every one of us. May the gift be yours to believe. May the grace be yours to inherit the righteousness of faith. May the joy be yours to believe in Jesus Christ with all your hearts. May the triumph be yours to believe now to the saving of your souls. Amen.

Exposition By C. H. Spurgeon {Heb 3:1-4:3,9}

1. Therefore, holy brethren, partakers of the heavenly calling, consider the Apostle and High Priest of our profession, Christ Jesus.

Oh that we considered him more! He is supremely worthy of our perpetual consideration from all points of view. And the more you consider him the more you may, for there is a depth and breadth about his wonderful personality, his work, and his offices well worthy of our deepest thought and admiring worship. Holy brethren, partakers of a heavenly calling, we may well consider him.

2-4. Who was faithful to him who appointed him, as also Moses was faithful in all his house. For this man was counted worthy of more glory than Moses, inasmuch as he who has built the house has more honour than the house. For every house is built by some man; but he who built all things is God.

The translators were obliged to supply the word man, and yet it is not correct. It is only half the matter; for behold Christ is God and man in one ever-blessed person, and, therefore, he was counted worthy of more glory than Moses.

5, 6. And Moses was truly faithful in all his house, as a servant, for testimony of those things which were to be spoken later; but Christ as a son over his own house; whose house we are, if we hold firmly the confidence and the rejoicing of the hope firm to the end.

We are the house in which he dwells with delight — in which he finds comfort and rest. We are the household over which he rules, and in which he is the delight and the joy of us all. Oh! may our church always be such a house, so well ordered, that when the Lord comes into it — indeed, whenever he dwells in it — he may not be grieved in his own house. Whatever trouble a man has, he hopes to find solace at home. And so let the house of God be the house of Jesus — the place where there is peace, obedience, love, holiness.

7-9. Therefore (as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you will hear his voice. Do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation, in the day of temptation in the wilderness: when your forefathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works for forty years.

That was a house in which it was hard to dwell. It had been Moses’ prayer, “If your presence does not go with us, do not carry us up from here”; and the curtains had been spread for God’s abode, and there was the holy place. But, oh! their provocations made it an uneasy house for the Lord of the house, which ultimately he left, tearing its veil from the top to the bottom as he left it, for it was finished, and he abandoned it.

10. Therefore I was grieved with that generation, and said, ‘They always err in their heart; and they have not known my ways.’

They do err; they did always err in their heart. God is very tender towards errors of judgment — errors of the head. But to err in the heart — this is the heart of erring, and very provoking to the Most High; and for it always to be so after having tasted the bitter fruit of erring — after having known God’s anger on account of previous errors — oh! this was sad! “They do always err in their heart.” The foundation of sin often lies, however, in ignorance — “They have not known my ways.” Ignorance can never be of any benefit to us. “That the soul is without knowledge is not good.” But ignorance of God is the constant course of the errors of the heart. “All your children shall be taught by the Lord,” is a very gracious promise, and where it is carried out, there the errors are rectified by the grace of God.

11. So I swore in my wrath, ‘They shall not enter into my rest.’”)

What a dreadful warning this is for us! If God has had forty years’ patience with you, take heed, sinner, take heed, lest he swear in his wrath that you shall not enter into his rest, for your entrance into that rest depends on his good will and pleasure. He will have mercy of whom he will have mercy, and he will have compassion on whom he will have compassion. If, then, you provoke him to swear that you shall not enter into his rest, into that rest you never can enter, for then the gates of hell are barred on you, and the gates of heaven firmly locked against you. Beware, then, lest you provoke him.

12. Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, a departing from the living God.

That is the thing that provokes God — unbelief; not so much the unbelief of the head, as the unbelief of the heart, when the heart will not yield to the plan of salvation, when men want to be saved by their own works, or else are indifferent altogether about whether they are saved or not. It is heart-unbelief that damns men. It is heart-faith that is the means of salvation. With the heart man believes to righteousness; but heart-unbelief leads to, and seals, his ruin.

13. But exhort each other daily.

In opposition to their always erring, always be exhorting, and you cannot do that with any face unless you are always watching that you do not err yourselves; but when, you yourselves are walking with God, you exhort each other, it is good. “Exhort each other daily.”

13. While it is called “Today”; lest any of you be hardened through the deceitfulness of sin.

If sin were to come to us labelled as sin, I trust we should reject it; but there is a deceitfulness of sin. It sometimes comes as a necessary action. We think that wisdom demands that we should sin a little sometimes to avoid some great evil; and in this way the soul gets hardened through the deceitfulness of sin. Oh! if the devil would come in the form of a devil, he would do little mischief, but he assumes the form of an angel of light, and there it is that he causes us so much sin and sorrow.

14. For we are made partakers of Christ if we hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.

It is not true that one act of faith is all that is required; unless you will consider that one act to be continuous throughout life. If a man were a believer once, and if that were possible to cease to be so, then, of course, he is ruined; but the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints does not speak in that way, but it says that he who is a believer shall continue so — that he who is right with God shall remain so even to the end; and unless it is so we are not partakers of Christ at all. We are made partakers of Christ if we “hold the beginning of our confidence steadfast to the end.”

15, 16. While it is said, “Today, if you will hear his voice, do not harden your hearts, as in the provocation.” For some, when they had heard, rebelled.

There are many such, and there are no sinners who provoke God so much as those who hear the gospel. A man who never hears the gospel at all may provoke God, but the man who sins after he has heard it again and again, and again, and has the sound of it ringing in his ears, provokes God with a sevenfold degree of provocation.

16. However not all who came out of Egypt by Moses.

No, but all but two. Yes, but the Lord will not forget two. There were only a few a mere handful — in Sodom, but the Lord would not consume them with the wicked. They were brought out of it; and so here, if there are only two, the Holy Spirit takes care to be very accurate in the counting of God’s elect ones; and he says, “However, not all who come out of Egypt by Moses.” If you are one of a family, and two of a city, he will take you and bring you into Zion. You may be in so great a minority that in all your acquaintance there may not be one godly person; yet the Holy Spirit will not take the matter in the lump, but he will choose you out, and single you out, and distinguish you. Do you not notice how careful he was when he spoke about Judas — the good Judas? He says, “Not Iscariot.” No, no; he will not have him mistaken for that traitor. He guards the names of his people, each one of them, if there is only one — and two, if there are only two. “However not all who came out of Egypt by Moses.”

God has an election according to grace. Doubtless there are some here now who will no longer provoke God, but who, constrained by sovereign love, will throw down all the weapons of their rebellion, and yield themselves up to him. May it be your case; may it be your case sinner, even at this moment.

17. But with whom was he grieved for forty years; was it not with those who had sinned, whose carcases fell in the wilderness?

How he speaks of them, and calls them “carcases!” He never speaks of his children like that; and you remember that in the Old Testament the unredeemed man is comparable to the donkey. “You shall not redeem him; you shall break his neck”; but the redeemed man is comparable to the sheep. Valuable property is in him, and God esteems him. “Whose carcases fell in the wildness.”

18, 19. And to whom did he sware that they should not enter into his rest, but to those who did not believe? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.

It is those who do not believe who have God’s curse. If you do not rest on Christ as your salvation, you, too, shall hear God swear that you shall not enter into his rest.

Hebrews 4

1. Let us therefore fear, lest, a promise being left to ourselves of entering into his rest, any of you should seem to come short of it.

If you avoid the very seeming of it, you will avoid the thing itself. Oh! that we were careful about this — that there was nothing that should give any reasonable fear to those who observed us, or to ourselves when we search our hearts, lest we should not enter into this rest.

2. For to us the gospel was preached, as well as to them: but the word preached did not profit them, not being mixed with faith in those who heard it.

It must be mixed with faith. There are many drugs that are of no value until they are mixed with something else; and the Word preached becomes of no value to a soul until it is mixed with faith in those who hear it.

3. For we who have believed enter into rest, as he said, “As I have sworn in my wrath, if they shall enter into my rest”: although the works were finished from the foundation of the world.

I leave out the intermediate words for the time being. “There is a rest.”

9. There remains therefore a rest for the people of God.

John Ploughman’s Sheet Almanac for 1916

With a Proverb or Quaint Saying for every Day in the Year. Suitable for Cottage Homes, Workshops, Mission Halls, etc. Originated by C. H. Spurgeon. One of the most popular Sheet Almanacs published. Price 1d.

Spurgeon’s Illustrated Book Almanac for 1916

Containing Daily Texts and choice Quotations from the Writings of C. H. Spurgeon, with numerous illustrations. A useful little Almanac for every home. Sixtieth year of publication. Price 1d.

Marshall Brothers, Ltd., 47 Paternoster Row, London, E. C.