Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (60 page)

Just so, if you go in for it, you will find true religion to be
splendid; but if you go paddling about in the shallows of it you will become chilled with doubts and fears and the comfort of it will be far from you. If religion is important, it is all-important. If it is
anything, it is everything. If false, leave it altogether: if true, love it altogether. To show how the joy of religion is proportioned to the degree of it I sometimes tell a story. It is a parable most instructive and fully to the point, and therefore I cannot help repeating it. It is a story of a man in America who was fond of growing the choicest apples. He asked a neighbor to come up to his orchard and taste his apples, which he greatly praised as the best in the world. This high praise he sang many times in his friend's ear, but he could not get him to come to his place to taste the fruit. He asked him again and again, and still the friend did not come. He therefore hinted that there must be a reason for his refusal. "Well," said the other, "the truth is that one day as I was driving by your orchard, I saw an apple or two that had dropped into the road, and I picked one up and tasted it, and it was out of sight the sourest thing in all creation. I am very much obliged to you but I have had enough for one lifetime." "Oh," said the owner, "do you know I went forty miles to buy those sour apples, and I planted them all along the hedge; for I thought they would be good for the boys and keep them from picking and stealing. They are a fine sort for that particular purpose. But if you will come and see me I will lead you inside the orchard, past those first two or three rows, and you will find a sweetness and a flavor which will fill your mouth with delight." "I see," said the other, "I see." Do you also see my drift? All round the outside of religion there are sour fruits of prohibitions, rebukes, repentances, and self-denials, to keep the hypocrites out. Have you never seen how long they pull their faces as if their religion did not agree with them? and that is because they have eaten the sour apples on the outskirts. But, oh! if you would come near to the faith and joy which are in Christ Jesus, if you would give all your heart to heavenly pursuits you would find it quite another thing. Then would your heart "rejoice with joy unspeakable, and full of glory."

The text says, "Guide your heart in the way"; that is, get your very soul into the way of salvation. Get every portion of your being under holy influence. Let every fragment of your heart and mind and soul and strength be consecrated. Your heart grows like a luxuriant plant, and you must train every tendril, every shoot in the right direction. Nail every branch to the wall and keep it there. Try to guide your heart into the way of truth, life, and holiness; let none of it stray. Then will you be filled with delight. Then will you in very deed know that you are saved.

The last word I have to say is, oh, that everyone here present who is not saved would attend to these three precepts now! Hear now! Make up your mind that if there be salvation to be had, you will have it. Be wise at once lest you be wise too late. Say, "It would be folly to delay, for I may soon be dead and buried. I will have Christ to-day, my mother's Christ, my father's God." Be wise and cry to God to help you, cry for the Holy Spirit to enable you to lay hold on eternal life, and believe in the Lord Jesus Christ for immediate salvation. Trust him. Remember what I told you of Luther the other night, when he said "I shall not save myself. Christ is a Savior; it is his business to save." Put your soul into your Redeemer's hand. He is a Savior, and he will save all who trust him. To trust Jesus is wise. It is wisest of all to do it at once, and here. How constantly do I hear of friends falling dead suddenly, or being taken away by unobserved disease! If I were to point tonight to the pews that have been emptied in this place since the first of January you would be greatly surprised. Your sitting was lately occupied by one who is now dead, and this makes the spot a solemn one. Someone else will soon sit in your pew. Be wise, be wise, and seek the Lord at once. Midsummer has come upon us. Let it not pass away without your soul being brought to Jesus. The hay-time is upon us, and death is sharpening his weapon. I can hear the rink-a-tink of that dread scythe at this very moment; and you too will soon be withered like the grass which has fallen before the mower. Wherefore now, even now, seek ye my Savior. I implore you, seek him without further delay! I wish that I were able to speak to you with a clear and powerful voice which would keep pace with my heart; but as I cannot do so, I do my best and use what voice I have. I would do anything to draw you to the Lord Jesus who is the way of life. We shall soon stand at God's great judgment seat, and I shall have to answer for my preaching. Therefore I entreat you to be wise. Why should I give in my account with grief? "Seek ye the Lord while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near." May the Lord lead you to do so, for Jesus' sake! Amen.

A sermon (No. 3449) published on Thursday, March 11th, 1915; Delivered on Lord's Day evening, June 26th 1870,
at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington,
by C. H. Spurgeon.

John Bunyan pictures the pilgrims as passing at one time through Vanity Fair, and in Vanity Fair there were to be found all kinds of
merchandise, consisting of the pomps and vanities, the lusts and pleasures of this present life and of the flesh. Now all the dealers, when they saw these strange pilgrims come into the fair, began to cry as shopmen will do, "Buy, buy, buy--buy this, and buy that." There were the priests in the Italian row with their crucifixes and their beads. There were those in the German row with their philosophies and their metaphysics. There were those in the French row with their fashions and with their prettinesses. But the one answer that the pilgrims gave to all the dealers was this--they looked up and they said, "We buy the truth; we buy the truth," and they would have gone on their way if the men of the Fair had not laid them by the heels in the cage and kept them there, one to go to heaven in a chariot of fire, and the other afterwards to pursue his journey alone. This is very much the description of the genuine Christian at all times. He is surrounded by vendors of all sorts of things, beautifully got up and looking exceedingly like the true article, and the only way in which he will be able to pass through Vanity Fair safely is to keep to this, that he buys the truth, and if he adds to that the second advice of the text, and never sells it, he will under divine guidance find his way rightly to the skies. "Buy the truth, and sell it not."

Is not the parable we have just read a sort of enlargement of our text? When the merchantman all over the world had travelled to find out some pearl that should have no flaw, some diamond of the purest water fit to glisten in the crown of royalty, at last in his researches, he met with a gem the like of which he had never seen before, and knowing that here was wealth for him, in the joy of his discovery he sold all that he had that he might buy that pearl. Even so, the text seems to tell us that truth is the one pearl beneath the skies that is worth having; and whatever else we buy not, we must buy the truth; and whatever else we may have to sell, yet we must never sell the truth, but hold it fast as a treasure that will last us when gold has cankered and silver has rusted and the moth has eaten up all goodly garments, and when all the riches of men have gone like a puff of smoke, or melted in the heat of the judgment day like the dew in the beams of the morning sun. Buy the truth. Here is the treasure. Cost it what it may, buy you it. Here is the piece of merchandise which you must buy but must not sell. You may give all for it, but you may take nothing in exchange for it since there is nothing that can be likened unto it.

I. The commodity that is mentioned: buy the truth." I shall not speak tonight of those common forms of truth that relate to politics, to history, to science, or to ordinary life, yet would I say of all
these--buy the truth. Never be afraid of the truth. Never be afraid in anything of having your prejudices knocked on the head. Always be determined, come what may, even though truth should prove you to be a fool, yet to accept the truth, and though it should cost you dear, yet still to pursue it, for in the long run they who build mere
speculations, fancies, and errors, though they may seem to build suitable structures for the time, shall find that they are wood, hay, and stubble, and shall be consumed; but he that keeps to what he knows, to matters of fact, and matters of truth, builds gold, silver, and precious stones, which the trying fire of the coming ages shall not be able to destroy. I would sooner discover one fact and lay down one certain truth than be the author of ten thousand theories, even though these theories should for a while rule all the thought of mankind.

But I speak now of religious truth. Buy that truth; buy that truth above all others. And here we must have three heads. First, in the matter of doctrinal truth, buy the truth. Holy Scripture is the
standard of truth. To the law and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word it is because there is no truth in them. "Thy word is truth." Here is silver tried in the furnace and purified seven times. Speak of Infallibility? It is not at Rome, but it is here in this Book. Here is an infallible witness to the truth of God, and he that is taught of the Holy Spirit to understand it gets at the truth. Now dear brethren, do aim to get the right truth, the real truth as to matters of doctrine. Count it not a trifle to be sound in the faith. Think no error to be harmless for truth is very precious, and error, even when we do not see it to be so, may lead to the most solemn consequences of mischief. In this world we see too much of salvation without Christ--I mean we meet with many who believe that they are saved because they have been baptized, or confirmed, or passed through the ceremonies of the church to which they belong. They have not looked to the precious blood; they are not depending simply upon the finished work of the Redeemer, but something else than Christ has become their confidence. Now, avoid that, and buy the truth which lies here, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved." We hear too much nowadays of regeneration without faith --the supposed regeneration of unconscious babes, the new birth of people through drops of water when they are not able to understand what is performed upon them. I beseech you, believe that there is no new birth where there is not a confidence in Christ, and that the regeneration which does not lead to repentance and faith, which is not, indeed,
immediately attended therewith, is no regeneration whatever. Buy the truth in this matter. Stand to it that it is the work of the Holy
Spirit in rational and intelligent beings, leading them to hate sin and to lay hold of eternal life. Alas! we have in some quarters too much of faith is trusted in, which is not practical. Men say they believe, but they do not prove it by their lives. They remain in sin, and yet wrap themselves up in the belief that they are God's chosen ones. From such turn away, and remember that a faith without works is dead, and only the faith that changes the character, sanctifies the life, and leads the man to God, is the faith which will save the soul. We must see to it that in our doctrine we bow our judgment to the teachings of Scripture, and try to be conformed to all the revelation of God, and especially to all the teachings of our Lord Jesus Christ. May we not fall into one error or another. Scylla is there, and Charybdis is there, and he is a happy helmsman who can steer between the two. You shall fall into this ism or into that unless you keep to the truth. Never mind whether you can make the truth always consistent to your own judgment or not. If it is the truth, believe it; and though it should seem to contradict another truth, yet hold to it if it is in the Word, waiting till clearer light shall reveal to you that all these truths stood in a wonderful harmony and consistency which, at first, you could not perceive. In doctrine, buy the truth.

But secondly, buy experimental truth. I know not another word to use; I mean truth within, the truth experienced. See that this be real truth. How easy it is to be deceived with the notion that we are converted when we still need to be converted; to fancy that because we have the approbation of our minister and of our Christian friends, we must therefore necessarily be the people of God. There is only one true new birth, but there are fifty counterfeits of it. In this respect then, buy the truth. Let me have you beware of an experience which has a faith in it that was never attended with repentance. I am afraid of a dry-eyed faith. That faith seems to me to be the faith of God's elect, whose eyes are full of tears. If thou hast never felt thyself a sinner, never trembled under the law of God, never felt that thou hast deserved to be cast into hell, I am afraid thy faith is a mere presumption, and not the faith that looks to Christ. Beware of an experience that lies in talk, and not in feeling. Mr. Talkative, in Bunyan's Pilgrim, could speak very glibly about religion; no man more so than he; he was fit to take the chair in an assembly of divines, but it was not heart-work; it was all surface-work. Plough deep, my brethren. Feel what you believe. Let it be with you real homework, soul-work, the work of God the Holy Ghost--not a temporary excitement, not head-knowledge, not theory. May the truth be burned into your souls by the operation of the Holy Ghost. In this respect, buy the truth. Alas! we see nowadays in many professors a great deal of life without struggle, and I think I have learned that all spiritual life that is not attended with struggles is a mistake, for Isaac, the child of the promise, is sure to be mocked by Ishmael. No sooner does the seed of the woman come into the world than the seed of the serpent tries to destroy it. You must and will find a battle going on within you if you are a believer. Sin will contest with grace, and grace will seek to reign over sinful corruptions. Be afraid of too easy an experience. "Moab is at ease from his youth; he hath not been emptied from vessel to vessel" ; "for the time cometh when the Lord will search Jerusalem with candles, and punish the men that are settled upon their lees." There must be strivings within or we may well beware of such an experience. And I think I have noticed a growing feeling abroad of confidence without self-examination. I would have you hold to believe God's Word, but do not take your own state at haphazard. Do not conclude that you are a Christian because you thought you were ten years ago. Day by day bring yourself to the touchstone. He that cannot bear examination will have to bear condemnation. He that dare not search himself will find that God will search him. He that is afraid to look himself in the face has need to be afraid to look the Judge in the face when the great white throne shall be placed, and all the world summoned to judgment. Confidence is quite consistent with self-examination, and I pray you in this thing buy the truth, and seek to have a religion that will bear the test --a true faith, a living faith, a faith that moves your soul, a deep-rooted faith, a faith which is the supernatural work of the Holy Ghost, for the time cometh when, as the Lord liveth, nothing short of this will stand you in good stead.