Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (59 page)

Next, "be wise": that is, be affected by what you have heard. Yield your heart up to the Word of God. Some people are hard to move; they are more like stone than flesh. There are congregations where you may preach your own heart out but you cannot get at their hearts. You might as well preach to the statues in St. Paul's Cathedral or Westminster Abbey as preach to them; they are impenetrable and immovable. He that is wise permits the truth to come into full contact with him. Be wise, my hearer! Yield yourself up to the truth, for it will do you good and no harm. Do not resist it, do not evade it. Let the heavenly wind blow on you, for it brings healing. If it bids you hate sin, hate sin. If it bids you repent, repent. If it entreats you to believe, believe. Be what the gospel is meant to make you. You cannot make yourself a saint, but the Holy Spirit can do it through the word of truth.

And then take care that you do not wander into evil company. You say, "Surely you are leaving your text. Why bring that in?" Solomon brought it in: "Hear thou my son and be wise. Be not among winebibbers among riotous eaters of flesh," and so on. If you are wise you will keep out of bad company, especially out of the society of revellers, drunkards, and gluttons. This warning may be very necessary to some to whom this sermon will come. You have lately come from the country to this wicked city. I am sure that you must be very sorry to have come to this horrible wilderness of bricks and mortar. Oh, for an hour or two of the green fields and the leafy woods and the blue sky! Alas! designing persons are surrounding you; they are trying to draw you into evil. Be wise. "If sinners entice thee, consent thou not." Be wise. Keep out of the way of their enticements. In ten years' time if you have gone into evil company in the interval, you will be yourself the best witness of how unwise you have been; and if you are kept out of it, kept especially from the wine-cup and vice, I am sure you will thank God that you were wise in time. Choose good companions. Make saints your friends. Trust the true and good, and quit the gay and frivolous.

Once more, "Be wise"; that is, take care to do what you hear. Have you never seen persons crowding into a place of worship? Do they not in this place often press upon one another to hear the word? Yes, yes; and when they have come and they have heard it, what have they done with it? The great mass of them have done nothing with it. Did you ever go to a physician? Did you ever wait in the room for an hour or two before your turn came to see the great man? Did you give him your guinea? Did he hand you a prescription? Tell me, did you leave it on the table? Did you fold it up carefully and put it into your pocket? Did you keep it there? Did you not have the medicine made up? Did you not take it? Suppose that in a month's time some one should say, "Did you see the doctor?" You say, "Yes, I went to see him." "Did you have a prescription?" "He gave me a bit of paper with something or other upon it, but I do not know what it was, for I cannot read Latin." "You do not mean to say that you have not had it made up at the chemist's?" "No," you say, "I was satisfied with seeing the doctor." Dear friends, you smile at this description of folly for it is such gross unwisdom. Be wise then, do not hear the gospel in vain by neglecting its
commands. If you know how to be saved, obey the command. Do not be lost in darkness with light shining upon your eyeballs. Do not go to hell with the gate of heaven standing open before you. I pray you, hear and be wise. Turn what you hear into speedy practice. God help you to do so for his mercy's sake!

I am talking to you in a very feeble and commonplace manner; but what more could I say if I had the eloquence of the greatest orator? What better could I do than in a loving and brotherly manner to plead with every one of you not to play the fool with your souls? Hear the gospel, but be not hearers only. Be wise enough to be diligent in practicing what you are taught. Believe in Jesus unto life eternal. May the good Spirit make you wise unto salvation! Why will you perish? Why run risks with your never-dying soul? Come now and seek the Lord. If you seek him he will be found of you.

There is but one way. "In the way," mark: that is to say, in the way of wisdom; and this is one and one only. There are not two Gods, but one God; there are not two Christs, but one Christ; there are not two gospels, but one gospel; there are not two heavens, but one heaven; and there are not two ways of life, but one way. There is "one Lord, one faith, one baptism," and one Holy Spirit, and one life by his
indwelling; and there is no going to heaven by any but the one way. Some people get comparing the different ways of salvation. This is frivolous and foolish; for he that preaches any other than the one gospel is accursed. Suppose a man wants to go to York, and he says, "Well, I want to go to York, but the road to London is a better road and a wider road." What matters the character of the road if it does not lead where you want to go? You say you want to go to York, then what have you to do with any road but that which leads to York? There are many ways, but what have you to do with any but the way everlasting? There is one royal road which leads to God and eternal life and heaven. Never mind what the other ways are or are not; go you the right way. When I go from this place I want to go home to Norwood. The road down the Borough is level, but my road home is up a very steep hill to Norwood. Suppose I were to say, "I shall take the level road and cross London Bridge, and drive into the county of Essex"--what then? Why, I shall not get home if I take any other road than that which leads to the top of Norwood Hill. If it is steep I cannot help it, but I must say with John Bunyan at the Hill Difficulty, "This hill, though high, I covet to ascend." So with you, dear friend. There is only one road to heaven, and although there are a dozen roads which do not lead to holiness and God, it is idle to praise them up for they will not serve your turn. Take the hilly road of Self-denial. Climb up to heaven on your hands and knees if it must be, but make up your mind that you are going there by God's way.

That way is often described in the Scripture. Shall I tell you what the Bible says about this way? Well, it calls it the way of the Lord; and you are not in the right way unless you walk with God day by day. A religion that has not God in it is irreligion. Atheism cannot bring you to heaven, nor can any form of deism, even though it be baptized into the name of Christianity. If God be not Chief, Head, King, Lord, Sovereign, you are not in the right road. It is Christ's way too, for Christ says "I am the way." You are not on the right way unless Christ is first and last with you. His precious blood to put away your sin, his glorious resurrection to be your justification, his ascension to heaven to take possession of a place for you, his second coming to receive you to himself--all these are the way. Christ is all in all to the man who is on the right road. Note this!

Sometimes it is called the way of faith. That is the only way to heaven. The way of works might have taken us to heaven if we had not fallen in Adam and had never sinned on our own account, but having been once defiled by iniquity we cannot be saved by future innocence. Do what we may, we cannot mend the life which we have marred; the flaws and fractures will appear. Justice will demand punishment for past transgressions: "The soul that sinneth, it shall die." We must be saved by grace through faith, as it is written "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." The way of faith is the way to glory.

This way is also called the way of truth. If your religion is based on a lie it must deceive and ruin you. If it is founded on the truth of God it will truly save you, but not else. Alas for many! The way of truth they have not known. Many hate truth and go about with a thousand inventions to get rid of it. If you love truth and follow it and
believe in it as God has revealed it in the person of his Son, all is well with your soul.

It is also called the way of holiness. My dear hearer, are you in that way? This is the King's highway, and it leads to the city of the great King. Do you hate sin? Do you follow after righteousness? Would you scorn a lie? Do you keep your word even when it is to your personal loss? Do you endeavor to act fairly to your workmen, kindly to your servants, faithfully to your masters, uprightly to all? When you feel that you have erred, are you humbled and grieved? Do you endeavor for the future to guard the point in which experience has proved you to be weak? Do you watch against temptation and daily cry to God for strength to overcome it? Depend upon it, he that would be happy hereafter must be holy now.

The road to glory is also called the "way of peace." We must seek after peace of conscience, peace with God, peace with our fellowmen. If our end is to be peace, our way must be peace: a quiet, contented mind is a thing to cultivate. Keep in this way!

Let me tell you two or three more things which the Bible says about this way. It is the "old" way. It bids us ask for the old paths. True religion is no new thing. Your mother was saved: you could not doubt it. Be saved in the way which led your mother safely. If there might be a new way I would not try it: one cannot afford to play experiments with the only soul he has. That which has saved those who have gone before is quite good enough for me. I love to think of friends in glory: their footprints cheer me. I love

The moderns have struck out a new path altogether; their road is both new and broad. What! were the saints of former ages all mistaken? The martyrs--did they die for a falsehood and shed their blood for doctrines which criticism explodes? The men of whom the world was not worthy, were they all the dupes of theories which time has disproved? Did nobody know anything till Darwin appeared? Were those who believed that "the things which are seen were not made of things which do appear" downright fools? Is it quite so certain as some think it, that the things which were made grew out of things already existing? Of course I know that nowadays men are so wonderfully intelligent that they have discovered that human life has been "evolved" from lower life. We are the heirs of oysters, and the near descendants of apes. It has taken some time to compass the evolution, and yet I will grant that very hard shells are still to be met with, and some men are not much above animals--especially such men as can be duped by this hypothesis. Were the old-fashioned believers all wrong? No, my brethren, they were not wrong: their lives and their deaths prove that they were right. We shall be wrong if we leave the old and tried paths for these new cuts which lead into fathomless bogs of unbelief. It was enough to condemn the idols of Israel that they were new gods, newly set up; and it is enough to condemn the gospels of the hour that they are such as were never heard of in the golden ages of the church. "The old is better." Yet it is strange but true, that the way to heaven is in Scripture called the "new" way; the "new and living way"--that is to say, Christ's blood: for when Christ came men began to understand the way of salvation more clearly, and it came to them with a freshness of power of which the old ceremonial law knew nothing. The incarnate Savior by his death has opened a new and living way to the secret pavilion of God. We want nothing newer than the opened way which is made by the death of our Lord Jesus Christ. That gospel which came in with a dying and risen Savior is the gospel for us.

Again, we are told in the Bible that it is a "narrow" way. We are expressly told that "Wide is the gate and broad is the way that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat: because strait is the gate and narrow is the way which leadeth unto life." "Oh," says one, "I like a man who is broad in his views." Do you? Possibly you are in the broad road yourself; and if so "a fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind." How can you, in the teeth of Holy Scripture, admire the broad way? for it surely leads to destruction. "I cannot endure narrow views," cries one. Cannot you? Then what are you going to do? Do you refuse to follow the narrow way? Yet that way leads to life, and though "few there be that find it," I should have thought it well worth your while to be one of the few. Of course great thinkers and great doubters shun it, because it does not afford room enough for their greatness; but commonplace men should choose it because it leads to the right place. It is curious, is it not? that our Lord Jesus Christ should describe this heavenly way as narrow, and yet some who are themselves Christians would if they could, make it out to be very broad. Everything broad commends itself to their taste. Well, well, however unpopular may be my teaching, I exhort the young men here to follow the narrow way, to keep close to Christ and the crimson way of his precious blood, and to defy all ridicule on that account. Follow after holiness, and let the gaieties and vanities of the world go to those who love them. Keep you to the narrow way of secret prayer and hallowed fellowship with God; and let those who want sing-song and theatricals go their own way. It may be you will appear to be losers by quitting the fellowship of the worldly religious, but your loss will be
unspeakable gain to you in the long run. Dare to be Puritanic, conscientious, scrupulous. Venture to follow Christ, even if you go alone; for so shall you go aright. But I will not keep you much longer. I am still speaking upon this third precept: you are to put your heart into your religion. In no business can a man prosper if he is half-hearted. Religion without heart is a wretched affair. That man who professes to fear the Lord and yet only puts half his heart into his godliness will make a great failure of it. He is a poor, miserable creature who has enough religion to prevent his enjoying sin, and not enough to make him enjoy holiness. He that goes right into the heart of godliness will be made happy by it, but no one else. I am speaking to young men, and I would drive home this truth in their case. They will recollect that when they were boys, they went down to the river for a bath, and certain of the lads went paddling in just above their ankles or their knees. How they shivered with the cold! They did not much appreciate the bath. But one of the boys mounted the spring-board, and leaped right into the water head-first. I see him now coming up all glowing and rosy, and I hear his cheery voice shouting, "Splendid!"