Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs (91 page)

Dear brothers and sisters, may you by God's grace be preserved from sin; but if sin should come upon you unawares, may your bones be broken by it, and may you feel that your very heart is wounded because you have wounded your God! To repent of sin is one of the hallmarks of a Christian; but to have a hardened, untrembling heart, is one of the sure marks of the reprobate who are far off from God.

I might thus continue to show you, by a hundred contrasts, that the man who feareth alway is the really happy man. Suppose that we are fishing and that we have cast our line into the water. There is one fish that is altogether afraid of our bait, and of all our arrangements, and he swims as far as ever he can up or down the stream away from us. But here are some fish that are quite charmed with our worm. They say that they do not mean to swallow the hook, but we do not believe them. They say that they mean to get the worm off without letting the hook catch hold of them. They have very clever ways of sucking worms off hooks, and they are going to show what they can do; and soon they are caught. But happy is the fish that fears the bait as well as the hook, and so keeps right away from both of them. When some of us were boys we used to set traps for the sparrows and other birds in winter time, and we would watch to see them go in to eat our crumbs inside the trap. Sometimes there would come a bird that had seen our arrangement before, and had been almost caught in it, and knew all about it. Well, as soon as ever he looked at it he made up his mind that he would give our trap a very wide berth, so he flew away as far as he could. But there were some other birds that would come and look at the trap, and even perch on it, and presently some of them would get into it. Of course they did not mean to be caught; they thought they knew the way to go just far enough into the trap to get those grains of wheat, and then to fly out; but once in, they could not fly out. And sinners are just as foolish as those sparrows. Of course they do not mean to be caught; they will fly out of the trap all right when they have eaten the wheat! Yes, but I say, happy is the bird that feareth always, and that keeps far off the trap; and unhappy is the bird that thinks it can go just so far into the trap, but fully intends to go no further. Oh, how many young men and young women have been ruined because they have gone just so far into sin, meaning to stop there! But they could not stop there; they began to slide and it carried them along where they never meant to go. The only safe plan is to keep off the ice altogether. If you do not take the first wrong step, dear friend, you will not take the second; and if divine grace makes you fear and tremble before you begin to go down the hill, you are not likely to be found amongst those who have fallen to the bottom. Happy is the man, in this sense, that feareth alway.

III. But I must pass on to notice, in the third place, that the man who has this fear in his heart will do well to have it there continually: Happy is the man that feareth alway.

Have this fear concerning your holy things. For instance, when you come up to God's house to worship, be afraid as you are coming along, lest you should be only a lip-server, and so get no blessing. If you are afraid of that happening it will not happen. And when you are sitting in your pew, say to yourself, "Now, it is possible for me to become a mere formalist in worship, and I may be listening to the Word of God with my ears, yet not receiving it into my heart. I am sorely afraid lest it should be so." Brethren and sisters, it will not be so if you are afraid that it will be. And when the service is over, say to yourself, "I am afraid that I did not worship God in spirit and in truth as I should have done; I fear that I did not praise him or pray to him with my whole heart as I ought to have done. O Lord, pardon the iniquity of my holy things! "I do not think any man ever preached as he ought to preach if he is satisfied with his own efforts. I sometimes feel thankful to God for the feeling of dissatisfaction that possesses me every time I preach. I often feel as I am going home that I should like to go back again and try to do it so much better;--I do not mean better in an oratorical way, but pressing the truth home to men's hearts more earnestly and more simply. I think that, in this sense, it is right that we should fear always. Ah, my dear young brother in the College, you are afraid that you will become coldhearted, but you never will as long as you cherish such a fear as that. If you are afraid that you will by-and-by preach in a perfunctory official manner, you will not fall into that bad habit if you live in dread of doing so. If you are afraid that you will not set a good example to your people, I believe that you will set them a good example. But if you ever feel, "Oh, I can preach and practice too; I am all right;" it may happen that God will rebuke your pride and let you see, and perhaps let your enemies see, what a poor fool you are after all. Blessed is the man who, in his holy things, feareth alway--the man who is afraid when he is on his knees alone, lest he should not pray aright-- the man who is afraid lest either in public or in private he should act the hypocrite before his God.
And happy is the man who has this holy fear in his own house --the man who says, "I am afraid lest I should not act as a Christian father ought to act towards his children, or as a Christian husband should act towards his wife." Other members of the household may say, "I fear lest I should not be such a wife, or such a child, or such a servant, or such a master as I ought to be." These are the people who usually are what they should be --those who are afraid that they are not. Those who are the most anxious lest they should fail are generally those who do not fail.

And I would like you also to be anxious in your business, for fear lest you should in any way take advantage of anybody-- lest in the measure, or in the weight, or in the price, or in the invoice, there should be any mistake which would unjustly benefit you. The man who is afraid of anything like that will be an honest tradesman, you may rest assured of that. As for the servant or the workman who is afraid that he will not give a fair day's work for a fair day's wage, and the employer who is afraid that he will not give his servant or workman as much as he ought to give him-- I can only say that I wish we had many more of that sort of men than we already have, though I know a good many of that sort. If we are afraid of wronging one another, and not loving our neighbor as ourselves, that is a healthy kind of fear; and the more we have of it the more happy shall we be.

And if perchance there should not seem to be in yourself any special cause for this fear just now--though "let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall,"--then begin to be afraid for the church of which you are a member. This is a fear which is always resting heavily upon me--the fear lest we should love our earnestness in prayer--lest we should not care as much as we ought for the souls of men--lest the members of our church should grow worldly--lest we should become cold and indifferent towards our dear Lord and Master. Never lose this wholesome kind of fear concerning this church and your fellow-members, or concerning any other church with which you are connected.

Then, have a solemn fear about your own children; lest possibly you should not have trained them up as you should have done, or should not have prayed for them as you should to have done, or lest your own example should not have been such as they could safely follow. Be afraid for your children as Job was for his. When they met together to feast he "offered burnt offerings according to the number of them all: for Job said, It may be that my sons have sinned and cursed God in their hearts." The man who is thus afraid that things may be wrong is the man who is most likely to keep everything right. Many a man who becomes a bankrupt is so, largely, because he does not examine his books. He says that he does not like looking into his books; they are very unpleasant literature to him, and he never sees to the details of his affairs himself. He leaves this to John, and that to Thomas, and the other to one clerk, and something else to another; and then one day he wakes up to find that everything has gone to smash. Do not let it be so in your household, or in your temporal affairs, or in your spiritual concerns; but look into everything yourself and watch everything carefully; for in this way, by fearing alway, you will be both safe and happy in the hands of God.

There are some of my hearers at this service--I am glad that they are here--who I am afraid have cause to fear in a far deeper sense than that in which I have used my text. Some of you are not saved; you know you are not. You have never had your sins forgiven, you have never sought and found mercy through the atoning sacrifice of Jesus Christ, God's only-begotten Son. And some of you are very ill; you were only just able to get here tonight. What! so ill as that, yet with no Savior to help you? Sick, well-nigh unto death, yet without a Savior? Likely to die soon, for you are consumptive, yet you have no Savior? Let me appeal to you my dear friend: is this wise? Can you afford to run such a terrible risk? Why, the healthy may die at any moment but as for you, death is already at your door; so surely you cannot afford to trifle with eternal things. And some of you are getting old, yet you are not saved. Sixty years of age and not saved? Seventy, eighty, and not saved? What are you at? A man told me the other day that he would not come to hear me again, for, said he, "The last time I came you called me an old fool. Why was that? I asked. "Why," he replied, "you said that an old sinner was an old fool." So I said to him, "Are you an old sinner then? Because if you are, you are an old fool;" and he could not deny it, for we are all fools till we are saved by Jesus Christ. A man must be a fool to run the risk of losing his immortal soul. I have heard that a man once went up to the top of the spire of Salisbury cathedral and stood on his head there. What do you think he was? "A fool," you say. Yes, so he was; yet he only risked his neck; but you are risking your soul's eternal welfare, risking the loss of heaven, and running a terrible risk of going to hell for ever. O friend, is this wise? You know it is not, and that I am only speaking the truth when I tell you that you are a fool, and one of the worst of fools.

O sirs, if you are not believers in the Lord Jesus Christ you are standing over the mouth of hell upon a single plank, and that plank is rotten. You are hanging over the jaws of perdition by a single hair, and that hair is snapping. I looked down my well this afternoon as a man was going down it to do some necessary work, and I said to him, "Oh, do be careful! Pray be very careful!" I felt such dread upon me
lest possibly the man should fall while he was going down that great depth, into which I looked till it made me giddy; and I cannot bear to think of some of you who are in far greater danger, for you are hanging over the mouth of hell with only a rotten rope to hold to. Some of you may be in hell within a week; I cannot guarantee that any one of you will live ten minutes longer. All the physicians in the world would not
be able to guarantee to any one individual that he should live even for five minutes. You are always liable to death and in danger of the wrath to come. Therefore escape for your lives, I entreat you; and meanwhile I would put you in fear about this matter, that, through this fear, you
may he driven to the only place of safety, even to Jesus Christ who was lifted up upon the cross and now is exalted on high a Prince and a
Savior. There is life in him; there is life for you at this moment if
you will only trust in him. There is pardon for you now if you will
only believe in him.

A Sermon (No. 3080) Published on Thursday, February 20th, 1908. Delivered by C.H. Spurgeon at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington on Lord's Day evening, March 29th, 1874.

"The fear of man bringeth a snare; but whoso puteth his trust in the Lord shall be safe."
--Proverbs 29:25.

We have two ancient proverbs here; each of them is true as a separate proverb, and they are equally true when linked together. The independent proposition, that the fear of man bringeth a snare, is a truth which experience has taught to many. The other proposition, that he that trusteth in the Lord shall be safe, has been found most blessedly true by all those who have tested it. Then put the two propositions together--that the fear of man bringeth a snare but trust in the Lord is the safe and certain way to avoid that snare --and this also is true.

I. We shall first of all consider for a little while the first of the two ancient proverbs: "The fear of man bringeth a snare." That is one of the great evils that we have to avoid.

What a common evil the fear of man is--the fear of losing human approbation, the fear of incurring human wrath. There are thousands of men who have no fear of God who have great fear of man. They break the laws of God without any fear of the consequences that must ensue, yet they are afraid to break the laws of man because they dread the punishment that might possibly follow. They are not afraid of hell, yet they are afraid of an earthly prison. They dread not the arm of the Almighty, yet they are afraid of an arm of flesh.

The fear of man has been thought by some persons to be a very good and salutary thing. Instead of bringing a snare, they think that it is the means of preventing much sin among mankind. Now I do not doubt that some are hindered by the fear of man from committing great crimes and open acts of wrong, but the utmost that the fear of man can do is to confer a very doubtful benefit. Try it in your own house among your own children. If your children are kept from wrong-doing only by the fear of you--if they only do that which they are bidden to do because they are afraid to do otherwise--you will have a very poor form of
obedience; and you will have at the same time an abundant crop of deceit springing up; for when your child has done wrong his fear of punishment will drive him to a falsehood, and perhaps lead him from one falsehood to another, and falsehoods may become so common with him that at last it shall be as natural to him to tell a lie as to speak the
truth; and I think every parent must know that all the faults a child can commit, if put into the scale together, are not equal in
criminality and in injury to his spiritual constitution to a lie. The power to tell a lie is one of the most hideous powers to which man can attain, and some children are kept in such a state of terror that they naturally learn to do it. It is supposed too that servants cannot be managed without being kept in a state of fear. Yet you all know what an eye-server is. If there is no right principle in servants, they are worth nothing. Those who will only work because the eye of the master or mistress is upon them are of very little value. You only teach them habits of deceit if they live in constant fear of you. This experiment has been tried on a large scale. Laws have been made with the severe penalties for their violation, yet men seemed as if they transgressed all the more. In prison, the sternest forms of discipline have been tried, yet the prisoner has come out determined to sin again; certainly there has been no beneficial change produced in him by fear.