Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (77 page)
Read Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs Online
Authors: Charles Spurgeon
and we did give ourselves up wholly to our Lord. We could not help doing so. We were carried right away as when a mountain torrent comes, removes the earth from the young tree that is growing by the river side, and gradually undermines it until the tree falls into the stream and the current sweeps it on and on and never lets it rest again, but bears it right down to the sea. So was it with us that blessed day when first we knew that we could call Christ "Master and Lord."
Brethren, our Lord Jesus Christ has so completely mastered us that now, to-day, he is our sole Master. It is not always a thing to ennoble a man when he is able to call another person his master; but we feel that the more fully we are mastered by Christ the better will it be for us; and the more absolutely we can become his servants, the more noble and honored shall we be. In many passages of Scripture where our translation uses the term "servant", the true word is "slave"; and I think the time has come when we had better speak of it as it ought to be, that we may learn the full force of the expression. We do not mean that there is any cruel slavery of Christ's people to himself; but we do mean that just as much as the slave completely belonged to his master to do his master's bidding, to live or die at his master's will, so have we given ourselves up unto Christ; he has become our sole Master. There are others who struggle for the mastery over us, but no man can serve two masters. He may serve two rival powers--one struggling against the other for a while--but they cannot both be masters; only one can be supreme within the spirit. In this way Christ has become so completely the believer's Master that sin shall not have dominion over him, and he shall not be any longer under the domination of Satan. Christ is the Master of all his people, whatever happens to them. We may wander like sheep but Christ is still our Shepherd, and he will bring the straying sheep back--for they are still his property even when they are wandering away from him.
What say you, brothers and sisters? Do you own any other master beside Christ? If you do, in that divided sovereignty you shall find ten thousand miseries. Oh! if your right eye is contrary to Christ, pluck it out and cast it from you; if your very life should stand up in rivalry with Christ, it would be much better for you that you should die than that you should lead such a life as that. Our Lord Jesus is the sole Master of us this day.
And what a choice Master he is also! If we had had the opportunity in our old state of choosing our master, we were so blind and foolish that we would not have chosen him; but if we had known then what we know now we should have chosen him; and if we knew infinitely more about him we should never discover a reason why he should not be our Master; but we should continually find stronger arguments why we should be his servants forever. There was never such a Master as our Lord Jesus Christ, who took our nature that he might be able to master such servants as we are, who even died to win us, and whose only mastership after all is that of love. He rules us sovereignly; yet in his hand is the silver scepter, not the rod of iron. Our Master is at the same time our Husband, whom we must obey. Oh! it is blessed to obey him to whom our hearts are fully surrendered, and in whom all loveliness is
centred. When a husband truly loves his wife it becomes easy for the wife to be obedient unto her husband; and as Christ loves us
infinitely, we must love him and serve him in return. Look by faith into his blessed face; it is Jehovah's joy to look upon him, and it shall be ours forever. Was there ever such another countenance? Was ever such loveliness imagined as really exists in him? Look at all his character, from Bethlehem even until now; peep in upon him in his loneliness, or see him in the midst of the crowd, and will you not say of him, "He is the standard-bearer among ten thousand; yea, he is altogether lovely"? Pick out all the charms that ever could be found in the most amiable character, gather up all the virtues that ever
glittered in the most spiritual man or woman, and bring them all here. Ah! but they are not worthy to be compared with the glory and beauty and excellency of the Well-beloved. All their goodness came from him, therefore, let them all lie at his feet for there is none to be
compared with him.
Next, our spirit exultingly says, "As he is our choice Master so he is our chosen Master. Since he has chosen us, we have learned to choose him." The love was at first all on his side; but now, through the effectual working of his grace, it is on our side too. We can each one say, "I love my Master; I love his house; I love his children; I love his service; I have chosen him to be mine for ever. If he should dismiss me from his service I would come back to him again. If he gave me what men call liberty, I would beg of him to withdraw such accursed liberty and let me be, forever, and only, and completely, and entirely his; for as he has chosen me by his grace, so has his grace led me to choose him." I know that many of you can say the same; and I daresay while I have been speaking you have been thinking of George Herbert's lines,-
We delight to use this title concerning our Lord for he is, further, our gracious Master. That word "Master" seems to lose the idea of masterfulness when it is applied to him. He is most graciously and wondrously our Lord; but yet we call him no more "Baali," that is, "my Lord," but we call him "Ishi," that is, "my Man," "my Husband." There is truly a service to which we are called; yet his message to his disciples was, "Henceforth I call you not servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I have heard of my Father I have made known unto you." We never can forget that, with all his love, he is our Lord; it is our joy to remember that; yet what loving service we have received at his hands! He has been so much our servant that we have sometimes had to ask ourselves, "Which is the servant?" He is Servus servorum--the Servant of servant--as he proved when he washed his disciples' feet. He has done more than that for us; for he stooped so low as to be despised of men and rejected of the people in order that he might save us. Then surely it shall be our joy and bliss and glory henceforth to call him Master and Lord.
He is also our lifelong Master. No; that is a mistake, for there was, alas! a time when we lived, yet we lived not unto him. Some of us were but boys when erst we began to serve him. I always feel glad to think that I wore a boy's jacket when I was baptized into his name; I had not assumed the garb of a man, but my whole soul was his and I was buried with him. I wish it had been earlier still. O dear young people, there is no such joy as that of knowing Christ in your early youth! We hear sometimes of lifelong teetotallers, but I could wish that I had been a lifelong abstainer from selfrighteousness, a lifelong drinker of the river of the water of life; but as all of us failed to serve the Lord at the beginning of our life, let us try with all our hearts to serve him right to the end. Oh, to have him for our lifelong Master--with no little intervals of running away, no furloughs, no holidays! Brethren, we have our recreations in Christ's service, but we never have any holidays; that is to say, he recreates us, but he permits us to continue in his work without cessation or intermission. It would be no recreation for us to have a furlough from the great work of the Lord; we only wish that we could live and labor and spend ourselves, and find our rest as some birds do, on the wing, flying, mounting, singing, and so resting, and making this to be our continual joy. So you see, we are in for our Master's service for life; we have entered his employ and we are bound to him; and "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" and Master forever, blessed be his name!
That business is expressed in the Hebrew of our text by the word "keep." I will read you the text as it should be rendered, and as the translators will make it read if they use their senses in their
revision of the Old Testament; that is, if they give the same meaning to a word in all places. The previous translators thought that the Bible would sound tautological if they gave the same translation of a word everywhere; so to charm the ears they changed the words; but then, alas! they sometimes changed the sense. Here the original ought to be rendered thus: "Whoso keepeth the fig tree shall eat the fruit thereof: so he that keepeth his master shall be honored." Is not that a wonderful word? In the interpretation I am giving to the passage, it means that as certainly as the husbandman keeps and tends a fig tree, so you and I are to keep and tend Christ. Is it really true that he hath committed himself to our keeping? Yes. On earth among the sons of men there is One who keepeth Israel; but Israel in another sense is made to be a keeper, and is to keep the Lord Jesus Christ.
How are we to do that? Well, erst, we must keep him by always remaining his servants. We must keep him as our Master. I like the idea of that man who once said to his master, "Sir, you talk about discharging me; but you see sir, if you don't know when you have a good servant I know very well when I have a good master, and I don't mean to be discharged. If you put me out of the front door I shall come in at the back, for I have been your servant ever since I was a boy. I was born in your father's house and I mean to die in this house." The gentleman saw that it was quite hopeless to try to get rid of the old man as he would not go, so he decided they should not be parted; and I think some of us have come to the same pass with our Lord and Master, Jesus Christ. Truly he knows that in us he has, even at our best, only unprofitable servants; but then he accepted us. He knew all that we were and all that we should be; he had a clear foresight of our whole future, and he has engaged us for life. Some of our friends think he only engaged them for a quarter or half a year, or for a limited period; but I know that he took me on for life, and for eternity too; and my soul rejoices in the fact that he will keep to the bargain. Like the old man, I am determined that if he puts me out at the front door I will come in at the back, for I know that I have a good Master and I will not go away from him. Do not you say the same, beloved? Then still hold on to him and tell him that you will not let him go. Should he chasten you with the rod of men and lay many stripes on you, yet be like some dogs that seem to love their masters all the better the more they beat them. So dear friends, love your Lord all the better when he treats you roughly; kiss the hand that smites you and let this be your settled resolution, that from him you will not go.
What else are we to do in order to keep our Master? I think next we are to keep him by defending him. We must defend our Lord's name and honor and cause at all costs and all hazards. We must not let him sleep like King Saul, with his spear stuck in the ground by his bolster and his body-guard also asleep; but if the enemy should ever come to attack our Master, our watchword must be "Up, guards, and at them!" Give them a warm reception from whatever quarter they may come. You and I, beloved, are put in charge of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, and every child of God is bound to be upon the defensive just as if the keeping of the gospel depended entirely upon him. I believe that I am as much bound to preach against error and to war for the truth of Christ as if there were not another minister living, and I think that every other minister stands in the same responsible position; and it is the same with every Christian. Keep your Master and all that he has in safety; let no traitor come near him; guard his ordinances, his doctrines, his precepts; adore his matchless person, and extol his blessed work, and so keep him against all comers.
Then dear friends keep him by guarding all his interests. It is the duty of a servant to reckon that what belongs to his master is, in a certain sense, his, and therefore to be sacredly defended. I have heard of servants in the olden times saying, "That is our park," "this is our country house," or "this is our town house," "these are our horses;" and one of them was heard by his master to say, "There come our children, bless their little hearts!" Well, they were no children of his were they? Yes they were, for they were his master's children; and he had become so identified with his master's interests that he regarded his master's children as belonging to him. So ought we to think of everything that appertains to Christ; and if the Lord has anywhere a little child who needs to be cared for, each of us who are his servants should be prepared to nurse it and watch over it for him, and say to him with good Dr. Doddridge-
Thus dear friends, keep your Master; watch over your Master's possessions; guard your Master's truth; defend your Master's honor; care for your Master's children; as far as your power goes try to keep everything that belongs to him, labor for the good of his cause; struggle for the advancement of his interests and for the overthrow of his adversaries, just as every loyal soldier seeks to preserve his sovereign's dominions intact and to keep his king's arms from suffering any dishonor. Thus let us keep our Master and all that belongs to him.
Now let us come back to our own Authorized Version: "He that waiteth on his master shall be honored." This also is a very good translation, if not equal to the other; and I think it conveys an important meaning for us. You and I are like servants who wait upon their Master, and that waiting consists in part in waiting for his orders, trying to ascertain what they are; and when we know them, waiting until he bids us carry them out. It is not intended that you and I should be inventors of rites and ceremonies and novelties of worship, and all manner of strange doctrines; our position is simply that of servants. Our Master has a certain way of setting out his table and inviting his guests to it; and I have no business to go to him and say, "See how the king of Syria arranges his table; is not that a better plan than yours?" No, that would be utter disloyalty; I have to set the table according to my Master's plan and custom. There are some old country squires who have acquired odd ways of their own, and the servants whom they employ must drop into them whatever their own notions may be. Now, the ways of the Lord are right and it is your duty and mine to ask what they are, and to conform our practice to them.
