Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (62 page)
Read Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs Online
Authors: Charles Spurgeon
And do not tonight wish that the truth were yours, but buy it. You say the cost is too great. Too great? It is nothing. It is "without money and without price." Do you mean however to say that it is too great a cost to give up a sin? What, will you burn in hell rather than give up a lust? Will you dwell in everlasting burnings for ever, sooner than give up those cups that intoxicate you? Must you have your silly wantonness and lascivious mirth, or any kind of sin? Must you have it? Will you sooner have it than heaven? Then, sirs, your blood be on your own heads. You have been warned. I hope you are sober and have not yet gone to madness, and if you be you will see that no pleasures of an hour can ever recompense for casting yourselves under the anger of God for ever and for ever. Buy the truth. Do not merely talk about it and wish for it, but buy, buy the truth.
VI.And then lastly a warning as to losing the purchase. "Sell it not." My time has gone, and therefore, as I never like to exceed it, there shall be but these few words. When you have once got the truth, I know you will not sell it. You will not, I am sure, at any price; but the exhortation nevertheless is a most proper one. There have been some who have sold the truth to be respectable. They used to hear the gospel, but now they have got on in the world, and keep a carriage, and they do not like to go where there are so many poor people, so, away they go where they can hear anything or nothing so that they may be respectable. Ah! I have the uttermost contempt for this affectation of gentility and respectability that leads men to be so mean as to forsake their Christian friends. Let them go; they are best gone. Such chaff had better not be with the wheat, and those that can be actuated by such motives are too base to be worth retaining.
Some sell the truth for a livelihood. I pity these far more. "I must have a situation; therefore, I must do what I am told there; I must break this law of God and that for I must keep my family." Ah! poor soul, I pity thine unfortunate position, but I pray that thou mayest have grace even now to play the man and never sell the truth, even for bread.
Some sell the truth for the pleasures of the world. They must have enjoyment, they say, and so they will mingle with the multitude that do evil and give up their Christian profession.
Others seem to sell the truth for nothing at all. They merely go away from Christ because religion has grown stale with them. They are weary of it, and they go away. I shall put the question painfully to all: Will ye also go away? Will ye to be respectable, will ye to have a livelihood, will ye to have the pleasures of sin for a season, will ye out of sheer weariness--will ye go away? Nay, we can add:-
Sell it not; sell it not; it cost Christ too dear. Sell it not; you
made a good bargain when you bought it. Sell it not. Sell it not; it has not disappointed you; it has satisfied you and made you blessed. Sell it not; you want it. Sell it not; you will want it. The hour of death is coming on and the day of judgment is close upon its heels. Sell it not; you cannot buy its like again; you can never find a better. Sell it not; you are a lost man if you part with it. Remember Esau and the morsel of meat, and how he would again have found his birthright if he could. Remember Demas; remember Judas, the son of perdition. You are lost without it. It is your life. Skin for skin, yea all that you possess, part with for it, and be resolved, come fair or come foul, come storm or come calm, come sickness or come health, come poverty or come wealth, come death itself in the grimmest form, yet none shall separate you from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus your Lord, and none shall make you part from the truths you have learned and received from his Word, the truths you have felt and have had wrought into your soul by his Spirit, and the truths which in action you desire should tone and colour all your life.
God bless you, dear friends, and keep you, and when the Great Shepherd shall appear may you have the mark of truth upon you, and appear with him in glory.
A sermon (No. 1995) intended for reading on Lord's Day, December 11th, 1887.
at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington,
by C. H. Spurgeon.
These are the words of Solomon speaking in the name of wisdom, which wisdom is but another name for the Lord Jesus Christ, who is made of God unto us wisdom. If you ask "What is the highest wisdom upon the earth?" it is to believe in Jesus Christ whom God has sent--to become his follower and disciple, to trust him and imitate him. It is God in the person of his dear Son who says to each one of us, "My son, give me thine heart." Can we answer, "Lord, I have given thee my heart"? Then we are his sons. Let us cry, "Abba, Father," and bless the Lord for the high privilege of being his children. "Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God."
Only love seeks after love. If I desire the love of another it can surely only be because I myself have love toward him. We care not to be loved by those whom we do not love. It were an embarrassment rather than an advantage to receive love from those to whom we would not return it. When God asks human love, it is because God is love. As the sparks mount toward the sun, the central fire, so ought our love to rise toward God, the central source of all pure and holy love. It is an instance of infinite condescension that God should say, "My son, give me thine heart." Notice the strange position in which it puts God and man; the usual position is for the creature to say to God, "Give me", but here the Creator cries to feeble man, "Give me." The Great Benefactor himself becomes the Petitioner--stands at the door of his own creatures and asks, not for offerings, nor for words of praise, but for their hearts. Oh, it must be because of the great love of God that he condescends to put himself into such a position, and if we were right-minded our immediate response would be, "Dost thou seek my heart? here it is, my Lord." But alas! few thus respond, and none do so except those who are like David, men after God's own heart. When God says to such, "Seek ye my face," they answer at once "Thy face Lord, will we seek": but this answer is prompted by divine grace. It can only be love that seeks for love.
Again, it can only be supreme love which leads wisdom to seek after the heart of such poor things as we are. The best saints are poor things; and as for some of us who are not the best, what poor, poor things we are! How foolish! How slow to learn! Does wisdom seek us for scholars? Then wisdom must be of a most condescending kind. We are so guilty, too. We shall rather disgrace than honor the courts of wisdom if she admits us to her school. Yet she says to each of us, "Give me thy heart. Come and learn of me." Only love can invite such scholars as we are. I am afraid we shall never do much to glorify God; we have but small parts to begin with, and our position is obscure. Yet
commonplace people though we are, God says to each one of us, "My son, give me thine heart." Only infinite love would come a-wooing to such wretched hearts as ours.
For what has God to gain? Brothers and sisters, if we did all give our hearts to him in what respect would he be the greater? If we gave him all we have would he be the richer? "The silver and the gold are mine," says he, "and the cattle on a thousand hills. If I were hungry, I would not tell thee." He is too great for us to make him greater, too good for us to make him better, too glorious for us to make him more illustrious. When he comes a-wooing, and cries, "Give me thine heart," it must be for our benefit and not for his own. Surely it is more blessed for us to give than for him to receive. He can gain nothing: we gain everything by the gift. Yet he does gain a son: that is a sweet thought. Everyone that gives God his heart becomes God's son, and a father esteems his children to be treasures; and I reckon that God sets a higher value upon his children than upon all the works of his hand besides. We see the Great Father's likeness in the story of the returning prodigal. The father thought more of his returning son than of all that he possessed besides. "It was meet," said he "that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found." Oh, I tell you, you that do not know the Lord, that if you give your hearts to him you will make him glad! The Eternal Father will be glad to get back his lost son, to press to his bosom a heart warm with affection for him, which heart aforetime had been cold and stony towards him. "My son, give me thine heart," says he, as if he longed for our love and could not bear to have children that had forgotten him. Do you not hear him speak? Speak, Spirit of God, and make each one hear thee say, "My son, give me thine heart"!
You who are sons of God already may take my text as a call to give God your heart anew, for--I do not know how it is--men are wonderfully scarce now; and men with hearts are rare. If preachers had larger hearts they would move more people to hear them. A sermon preached without love falls flat and dead. We have heard sermons, admirable in composition and excellent in doctrine, but like that palace which the Empress of Russia built upon the Neva of blocks of ice. Nothing more lustrous, nothing more sharply cut, nothing more charming; but oh, so cold, so very cold! Its very beauty a frost to the soul! "My son," says God to every preacher, "give me thine heart." O minister, if thou canst not speak with eloquent tongue, at least let thy heart run over like burning lava from thy lips! Let thy heart be like a geyser, scalding all that come near thee, permitting none to remain indifferent. You that teach in the school, you that work for God anyhow, do it thoroughly well. "Give me thine heart, my son," says God. It is one of the first and last qualifications of a good workman for God that he should put his heart into his work. I have heard mistresses tell servants when polishing tables that elbow-grease was a fine thing for such work; and so it is. Hard work is a splendid thing. It will make a way under a river, or through an Alp. Hard work will do almost everything; but in God's service it must not only be hard work, but hot work. The heart must be on fire. The heart must be set upon its design. See how a child cries! Though I am not fond of hearing it, yet I note that some children cry all over: when they want a thing, they cry from the tips of their toes to the last hair of their heads. That is the way to preach, and that is the way to pray, and that is the way to live: the whole man must be heartily engaged in holy work. Love prompts the request of wisdom. God knows that in his service we shall be miserable unless our hearts are fully engaged. Whenever we feel that preaching is heavy work, and Sunday-school teaching after six days' labor is tiresome, and going round a district with tracts is a terrible task
--then we shall do nothing well. Put your heart into your service and all will be joyful, but not else.
II. Now I turn my text another way. Wisdom persuades us to obey this loving request. To take our hearts and give them up to God is the wisest thing that we can do. If we have done it before, we had better do it over again, and hand over once more the sacred deposit into those dear hands which will surely keep that which we commit to their guardian care. "My son, give me thine heart."
Wisdom prompts us to do it; for first, many others crave our hearts, and our hearts will surely go one way or other. Let us see to it that they do not go where they will be ruined. I will not read you the next verse, but many a man has lost his heart and soul eternally by the lusts of the flesh. He has perished through "her that lieth in wait as for a prey, and increaseth the transgressors among men." Happy is that young man whose heart is never defiled with vice! There is no way of being kept from impurity except by giving up the heart to the holy Lord. In a city like this, the most pure-minded are surrounded with innumerable temptations; and many there are that slip with their feet before they are aware of it, being carried away because they have not time to think before the temptation has cast them to the ground. "Therefore, my son," says wisdom, "give me thine heart. Everybody will try to steal thy heart, therefore leave it in my charge. Then thou needest not fear the fascinations of the strange woman for I have thy heart, and I will keep it safe unto the day of my appearing." It is most wise to give Jesus our heart, for seducers will seek after it.
There is another destroyer of souls. I will not say much about it, but I will just read you what the context saith of it-- "Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Who hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes? They that tarry long at the wine. They that go to seek mixed wine. Look not thou upon the wine when it is red, when it giveth his color in the cup, when it moveth itself aright. At the last it biteth like a serpent, and stingeth like an
adder. Thine eyes shall behold strange women, and thine heart shall utter perverse things." Read carefully the rest of the chapter, and then hear the voice of wisdom say, "My son, if thou wouldst be kept from drunkenness and gluttony, from wantonness and chambering, and everything that the heart inclineth to, give me thy heart."
It is well to guard your heart with all the apparatus that wisdom can provide. It is well totally to abstain from that which becomes a snare to you: but I charge you, do not rely upon abstinence but give your heart to Jesus; for nothing short of true godliness will preserve you from sin so that you shall be presented faultless before his presence with exceeding great joy. As you would wish to preserve an unblemished character and be found honorable to the end, my son I charge thee give to Christ thy heart.
Wisdom urges to immediate decision because it is well to have a heart at once occupied and taken up by Christ. It is an empty heart that the devil enters. You know how the boys always break the windows of empty houses, and the devil throws stones wherever the heart is empty. If you can say to the devil when you are tempted, "You are too late: I have given my heart to Christ, I cannot listen to your overtures, I am affianced to the Savior by bonds of love that never can be broken," what a blessed safeguard you have! I know of nothing that can so protect the young man in these perilous days as to be able to sing "O God, my heart is fixed; my heart is fixed! Others may flit to and fro and seek something to light upon, but my heart is fixed upon thee for ever. I am unable to turn aside through thy sweet grace." "My son," says the text, "give me thine heart" that Christ may dwell there, that when Satan comes, the One who is stronger than the strong man armed may keep his house, and drive the foeman back.
