“Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.” — Jeremiah 33:3.

Some of the most learned works in the world smell of the midnight oil; but the most spiritual, and most comforting books and sayings of men usually have a savor about them of prison-damp.  I might quote many instances: John Bunyan’s Pilgrim may suffice instead of a hundred others; and this good text of ours, all moldy and chill with the prison in which Jeremiah lay, hath nevertheless a brightness and a beauty about it, which it might never have had if it had not come as a cheering word to the prisoner of the Lord, shut up in the court of the prison-house.  God’s people have always in their worst condition found out the best of their God.  He is good at all times; but he seemeth to be at his best when they are at their worst.

“How could you bear your long imprisonment so well?” said one to the Landgrave of Hesse, who had been shut up for his attachment to the principles of the Reformation.  He replied, “The divine consolations of martyrs were with me.”  Doubtless there is a consolation more deep, more strong than any other, which God keeps for those who, being his faithful witnesses, have to endure exceeding great tribulation from the enmity of man.  There is a glorious aurora for the frigid zone; and stars glisten in northern skies with unusual splendor.  They who dive in the sea of affliction bring up rare pearls.  You know, my companions in affliction, that it is so.  You whose bones have been ready to come through the skin through long lying upon the weary couch; you who have seen your earthly goods carried away from you, and have been reduced well nigh to penury; you who have gone to the grave yet seven times, till you have feared that your last earthly friend would be borne away by unpitying Death; you have proved that he is a faithful God, and that as your tribulations abound, so your consolations also abound by Christ Jesus.

My prayer is, in taking this text this morning, that some other prisoners of the Lord may have its joyous promise spoken home to them; that you who are straitly shut up and cannot come forth by reason of present heaviness of spirit, may hear him say, as with a soft whisper in your ears, and in your hearts, “Call upon me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.”

The text naturally splits itself up into three distinct particles of truth.  Upon these let us speak as we are enabled by God the Holy Spirit.  First, prayer commanded — “Call unto me;” secondly, an answer promised — “And I will answer thee;” thirdly, faith encouraged — “And shew thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.”

I. The first head is PRAYER COMMANDED.

We are not merely counseled and recommended to pray, but bidden to pray.  This is great condescension.  An hospital is built: it is considered sufficient that free admission shall be given to the sick when they seek it; but no order in council is made that a man must enter its gates.  A soup kitchen is well provided for in the depth of winter.  Notice is promulgated that those who are poor may receive food on application; but no one thinks of passing an Act of Parliament, compelling the poor to come and wait at the door to take the charity.  It is thought to be enough to proffer it without issuing any sort of mandate that men shall accept it.  Yet so strange is the infatuation of man on the one hand, which makes him need a command to be merciful to his own soul, and so marvelous is the condescension of our gracious God on the other, that he issues a command of love without which not a man of Adam born would partake of the gospel feast, but would rather starve than come. In the matter of prayer it is even so.  God’s own people need, or else they would not receive it, a command to pray.

How is this?  Because, dear friends, we are very subject to fits of worldliness, if indeed that be not our usual state.  We do not forget to eat: we do not forget to take the shop shutters down: we do not forget to be diligent in business: we do not forget to go to our beds to rest: but we often do forget to wrestle with God in prayer and to spend, as we ought to spend, long periods in consecrated fellowship with our Father and our God.  With too many professors, the ledger is so bulky that you cannot move it, and the Bible, representing their devotion, is so small that you might almost put it in your waistcoat pocket.  Hours for the world!  Moments for Christ!  The world has the best, and our closet the parings of our time.  We give our strength and freshness to the ways of mammon, and our fatigue and languor to the ways of God.  Hence it is that we need to be commanded to attend to that very act which it ought to be our greatest happiness, as it is our highest privilege to perform, viz. to meet with our God.  “Call upon me,” saith he, for he knows that we are apt to forget to call upon God.  “What meanest thou, oh, sleeper? arise and call upon thy God,” is an exhortation which is needed by us as well as by Jonah in the storm.

He understands what heavy hearts we have sometimes, when under a sense of sin.  Satan says to us, “Why should you pray?  How can you I hope to prevail?  In vain, thou sayest, I will arise and go to my Father, for thou art not worthy to be one of his hired servants.  How canst thou see the king’s face after thou hast played the traitor against him?  How wilt thou dare to approach unto the altar when thou hast thyself defiled it, and when the sacrifice which thou wouldst bring there is a poor polluted one?”  O brethren, it is well for us that we are commanded to pray, or else in times of heaviness we might give it up.  If God command me, unfit as I may be, I will creep to the footstool of grace; and since he says, “Pray without ceasing,” though my words fail me and my heart itself will wander, yet I will still stammer out the wishes of my hungering soul and say, “O God, at least teach me to pray and help me to prevail with thee.”

Are we not commanded to pray also because of our frequent unbelief?  Unbelief whispers, “What profit is there if thou shouldst seek the Lord upon such-and-such a matter?”  This is a case quite out of the list of those things wherein God hath interposed, and, therefore (saith the devil), if you were in any other position you might rest upon the mighty arm of God; but here your prayer will not avail you.  Either it is too trivial a matter, or it is too connected with temporals, or else it is a matter in which you have sinned too much, or else it is too high, too hard, too complicated a piece of business, you have no right to take that before God!  So suggests the foul fiend of hell.

Therefore, there stands written as an every-day precept suitable to every case into which a Christian can be cast, “Call unto me — call unto me.”  Art thou sick?  Wouldst thou be healed?  Cry unto me, for I am a Great Physician.  Does providence trouble thee?  Art thou fearful that thou shalt not provide things honest in the sight of man?  Call unto me!  Do thy children vex thee?  Dost thou feel that which is sharper than an adder’s tooth — a thankless child?  Call unto me.  Are thy griefs little yet painful, like small points and pricks of thorns?  Call unto me!  Is thy burden heavy as though it would make thy back break beneath its load?  Call unto me!  “Cast thy burden upon the Lord, and he shall sustain thee; he shall never suffer the righteous to be moved.”  In the valley — on the mountain — on the barren rock-in the briny sea, submerged, anon, beneath the billows, and lifted up by-and-by upon the crest of the waves — in the furnace when the coals are glowing — in the gates of death when the jaws of hell would shut themselves upon thee — cease thou not, for the commandment evermore addresses thee with “Call unto me.”  Still prayer is mighty and must prevail with God to bring thee thy deliverance.  These are some of the reasons why the privilege of supplication is also in Holy Scripture spoken of as a duty: there are many more, but these will suffice this morning.

We must not leave our first part till we have made another remark.  We ought to be very glad that God hath given us this command in his word that it may be sure and abiding.  You may turn to fifty passages where the same precept is uttered.  I do not often read in Scripture, “Thou shalt not kill;” “Thou shalt not covet.”  Twice the law is given, but I often read gospel precepts, for if the law be given twice, the gospel is given seventy times seven.  For every precept which I cannot keep, by reason of my being weak through the flesh, I find a thousand precepts, which it is sweet and pleasant for me to keep, by reason of the power of the Holy Spirit which dwelleth in the children of God; and this command to pray is insisted upon again and again It may be a seasonable exercise for some of you to find out how often in scripture you are told to pray.  You will be surprised to find how many times such words as these are given; “Call upon me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee” — “Ye people, pour out your heart before him.”  “Seek ye the Lord while he may be found; call ye upon him while he is near.”  “Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you” — “Watch and pray, lest ye enter into temptation.”  “Pray without ceasing” — “Come boldly unto the throne of grace,” “Draw nigh to God and he will draw nigh to you.”  “Continue in prayer.”  I need not multiply where I could not possibly exhaust.  I pick two or three out of this great bag of pearls.  Come, Christian, you ought never to question whether you have a right to pray: you should never ask, “May I be permitted to come into his presence?”  When you have so many commands, (and God’s commands are all promises, and all enablings,) you may come boldly unto the throne of heavenly grace, by the new and living way through the rent veil.

But there are times when God not only commands his people to pray in the Bible, but he also commands them to pray directly by the motions of his Holy Spirit.  You who know the inner life comprehend me at once.  You feel on a sudden, possibly in the midst of business, the pressing thought that you must retire to pray.  It maybe, you do not at first take particular notice of the inclination, but it comes again, and again, and again — “Retire and pray!”  I find that in the matter of prayer, I am myself very much like a water-wheel which runs well when there is plenty of water, but which turns with very little force when the brook is growing shallow; or, like the ship which flies over the waves, putting out all her canvas when the wind is favorable, but which has to tack about most laboriously when there is but little of the favoring breeze.  Now, it strikes me that whenever our Lord gives you the special inclination to pray, that you should double your diligence.  You ought always to pray and not to faint; yet when he gives you the special longing after prayer, and you feel a peculiar aptness and enjoyment in it, you have, over and above the command which is constantly binding, another command which should compel you to cheerful obedience.

At such times, I think we may stand in the position of David, to whom the Lord said, “When thou hearest a sound of a going in the tops of the mulberry trees, then shalt thou bestir thyself.”  That going in the tops of the mulberry trees may have been the footfalls of angels hastening to the help of David, and then David was to smite the Philistines, and when God’s mercies are coming, their footfalls are our desires to pray; and our desires to pray should be at once an indication that, the set time to favor Zion is come.  Sow plentifully now, for thou canst sow in hope; plough joyously now, for thy harvest is sure.  Wrestle now, Jacob, for thou art about to be made a prevailing prince, and thy name shall be called Israel.  Now is thy time, spiritual merchantmen; the market is high, trade much; thy profit shall be large.  See to it that thou usest right well the golden hour, and reap thy harvest while the sun shines.  When we enjoy visitations from on high, we should be peculiarly constant in prayer; and if some other duty less pressing should have the go-bye for a season, it will not be amiss and we shalt be no loser; for when God bids us specially pray by the monitions of his spirit, then should we bestir ourselves in prayer.

II. Let us now take the second head — AN ANSWER PROMISED.

We ought not to tolerate for a minute the ghastly and grievous thought that God will not answer prayer.  His nature, as manifested in Christ Jesus, demands it.  He has revealed himself in the gospel as a God of love, full of grace and truth; and how can he refuse to help those of his creatures who humbly in his own appointed way seek his face and favor?  When the Athenian senate, upon one occasion, found it most convenient to meet together in the open air, as they were sitting in their deliberations, a sparrow, pursued by a hawk, flow in the direction of the senate.  Being hard pressed by the bird of prey, it sought shelter in the bosom of one of the senators.  He, being a man of rough and vulgar mould, took the bird from his bosom, dashed it on the ground and so killed it.  Whereupon the whole senate rose in uproar, and without one single dissenting voice, condemned him to die, as being unworthy of a seat in the senate with them, or to be called an Athenian, if he did not render succor to a creature that confided in him.

Can we suppose that the God of heaven, whose nature is love, could tear out of his bosom the poor fluttering dove that flies from the eagle of justice into the bosom of his mercy?  Will he give the invitation to us to seek his face, and when we as he knows, with so much trepidation of fear, yet summon courage enough to fly into his bosom, wilt he then be unjust and ungracious enough to forget to hear our cry and to answer us?  Let us not think so hardly of the God of heaven.

Let us recollect next, his vast character as well as his nature.  I mean the character which he has won for himself by his past deeds of grace.  Consider, my brethren, that one stupendous display of bounty — if I were to mention a thousand I could not give a better illustration of the character of God than that one deed — “He that spared not his own Son, but freely delivered him up for us all” — and it is not my inference only, but the inspired conclusion of an apostle — “how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?”  If the Lord did not refuse to listen to my voice when I was a guilty sinner and an enemy, how can he disregard my cry now, that I am justified and saved!  How is it that he heard the voice of my misery when my heart knew it not, and would not seek relief, if after all he will not hear me now that I am his child, his friend?  The streaming wounds of Jesus are the sure guarantees for answered prayer.  George Herbert represents in that quaint poem of his, “The Bag,” the Savior saying,

“If ye have anything to send or write

(I have no bag, but here is room)

Unto my Father’s hands and sight,

(Believe me) it shall safely come.

That I shall mind what you impart

Look, you may put it very near my heart,

Or if hereafter any of friends

Will use me in this kind, the door

Shall still be open; what he sends

I will present and somewhat more

Not to his hurt.”

Surely, George Herbert’s thought was that the atonement was in itself a guarantee that prayer must be heard, that the great gash made near the Savior’s heart, which let the light into the very depths of the heart of Deity, was a proof that he who sits in heaven would hear the cry of his people.

You misread Calvary, if you think that prayer is useless.  But, beloved, we have the Lord’s own promise for it, and he is a God that cannot lie: “Call upon me in, the day of trouble and I will answer thee.”  Has he not said, “Whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believe that ye shall have it and ye shall have it.”  We cannot pray, indeed, unless we believe this doctrine; “for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the rewarder of them, that diligently seek him;” and if we have any question at all about whether our prayer will be heard, we are comparable to him that wavereth; “for he who wavereth is like a wave of the sea, driven with the wind and tossed; let not that man think that he shall receive anything of the Lord.”

Furthermore, it is not necessary, still it may strengthen the point, if we add that our own experience leads us to believe that God will answer prayer.  I must not speak for you; but I may speak for myself.  If there be anything I know, anything that I am quite assured of beyond all question, it is that praying breath is never spent in vain.  If no other man here can say it, I dare to say it, and I know that I can prove it.  My own conversion is the result of prayer, long, affectionate, earnest, importunate.  Parents prayed for me; God heard their cries, and here I am to preach the gospel.  Since then I have adventured upon some things that were far beyond my capacity as I thought; but I have never failed, because I have cast myself upon the Lord.

You know as a church that I have not scrupled to indulge large ideas of what we might do for God; and we have accomplished all that we purposed.  I have sought God’s aid, and assistance, and help, in all my manifold undertakings, and though I cannot tell here the story of my private life in God’s work, yet if it were written it would be a standing proof that there is a God that answers prayer.  He has heard my prayers, not now and then, nor once nor twice, but so many times, that it has grown into a habit with me to spread my case before God with the absolute certainty that whatsoever I ask of God, he will give to me.  It is not now a “Perhaps” or a possibility.  I know that my Lord answers me, and I dare not doubt, it were indeed folly if I did.  As I am sure that a certain amount of leverage will lift a weight, so I know that a certain amount of prayer will get anything from God.  As the rain-cloud brings the shower, so prayer brings the blessing.  As spring scatters flowers, so supplication ensures mercies.  In all labor, there is profit, but most of all in the work of intercession: I am sure of this, for I have reaped it.  As I put trust in the queen’s money, and have never failed yet to buy what I want when I produce the cash, so put I trust in God’s promises, and mean to do so till I find that he shall once tell me that they are base coin, and will not do to trade with in heaven’s market.

But why should I speak?  O brothers and sisters, you all know in your own selves that God hears prayer; if you do not, then where is your Christianity?  Where is your religion?  You will need to learn what are the first elements of the truth; for all saints, young or old, set it down as certain that he doth hear prayer.

Still remember that prayer is always to be offered in submission to God’s will; that when we say, God heareth prayer, we do not intend by that, that he always gives us literally what we ask for.  We do mean, however, this, that he gives us what is best for us; and that if he does not give us the mercy we ask for in silver, he bestows it upon us in gold.  If he doth not take away the thorn in the flesh, yet be saith, “My grace is sufficient for thee,” and that comes to the same in the end.  Lord Bolingbroke said to the Countess of Huntingdon, “I cannot understand, your ladyship, how you can make out earnest prayer to be consistent with submission to the divine will.”  “My lord,” she said, “that is a matter of no difficulty.  If I were a courtier of some generous king, and he gave me permission to ask any favor I pleased of him, I should be sure to put it thus, ‘Will your majesty be graciously pleased to grant me such-and-such a favor; but at the same time though I very much desire it, if it would in any way detract from your majesty’s honor, or if in your majesty’s judgment it should seem better that I did not have this favor, I shall be quite as content to go without it as to receive it.’  So you see I might earnestly offer a petition, and yet I might submissively leave it in the king’s hands.”  So with God.  We never offer up prayer without inserting that clause, either in spirit or in words, “Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt; not my will but thine be done.”  We can only pray without an “if” when we are quite sure that our will must be God’s will, because God’s will is fully our will.

III. I come to our third point, ENCOURAGEMENT TO FAITH, “I will shew thee great and mighty things which thou knowest not.”

Let us just remark that this was originally spoken to a prophet in prison; and, therefore, it applies in the first place to every teacher, and, indeed, as every teacher must be a learner, it has a bearing upon every learner in divine truth.  The best way by which a prophet and teacher and learner can know the reserved truths, the higher and more mysterious truths of God, is by waiting upon God in prayer.  I noticed very specially yesterday in reading the Book of the Prophet Daniel, how Daniel found out Nebuchadnezzar’s dream.  The soothsayers, the magicians, the astrologers of the Chaldecs, brought out their curious books and their strange-looking instruments, and began to mutter their abracadabra and all sorts of mysterious incantations, but they all failed.

What did Daniel do?  He set himself to prayer, and knowing that the prayer of a united body of men has more prevalence than the prayer of one, we find that Daniel called together his brethren, and bade them unite with him in earnest prayer that God would be pleased of his infinite mercy to open up the vision.  “Then Daniel went to his house and made the thing known to Hannriah, Mishael, and Azariah, his companions, that they would desire mercies of the God of heaven concerning this secret, that Daniel and his fellows should not perish with the rest of the wise men of Babylon.”

And in the case of John, who was the Daniel of the New Testament, you remember he saw a book in the right hand of him that sat on the throne — a book sealed with seven seals which none was found worthy to open or to look thereon.  What did John do?  The book was by-and-by opened by the Lion of the Tribe of Judah, who had prevailed to open the book; but it is written first before the book was opened, “I wept much.”  Yes, and the tears of John which were his liquid prayers, were, as far as he was concerned, the sacred keys by which the folded book was opened.

Brethren in the ministry, you who are teachers in the Sabbath school, and all of you who are learners in the college of Christ Jesus, I pray you remember that prayer is your best means of study: like Daniel you shall understand the dream, and the interpretation thereof, when you have sought unto God; and like John you shall see the seven seals of precious truth unloosed, after that you have wept much.  “Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up the voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God.”  Stones are not broken, except by an earnest use of the hammer; and the stone-breaker usually goes down on his knees.  Use the hammer of diligence, and let the knee of prayer be exercised, too, and there is not a stony doctrine in Revelation which is useful for you to understand, which will not fly into shivers under the exercise of prayer and faith.  “Bene orasse est bene studuisse” was a wise sentence of Luther, which has been so often quoted, that we hardly venture but to hint at it.  “To have prayed well is to have studied well.”

You may force your way through anything with the leverage of prayers.  Thoughts and reasoning may be like the steel wedges which may open a way into truth; but prayer is the lever which forces open the iron chest of sacred mystery, that we may get the treasure that is hidden therein for those who can force their way to reach it.  The kingdom of heaven still suffereth violence, and the violent taketh it by force.  Take care that we work away with the mighty implement of prayer, and nothing can stand against you.

We must not, however, stop there.  We have applied the text to only one case; it is applicable to a hundred.  We single out another.  The saint may expect to discover deeper experience and to know more of the higher spiritual life, by being much in prayer.  There are different translations of my text.  One version renders it, “I will show thee great and fortified things which thou knowest not.”  Another reads it, “Great and reserved things which thou knowest not.”  Now, all the developments of spiritual life are not alike easy of attainment.  There are the common frames and feelings of repentance, and faith, and joy, and hope, which are enjoyed by the entire family: but there is an upper realm of rapture, of communion, and conscious union with Christ, which is far from being the common dwelling-place of believers.  All believers see Christ; but all believers do not put their fingers into the prints of the nails, nor thrust their hand into his side.  We have not till the high privilege of John to loan upon Jesus’ bosom, nor of Paul, to be caught up into the third heaven.  In the ark of salvation, we find a lower, second, and third story; all are in the ark, but all are not in the same story.  Most Christians, as to the river of experience, are only up to the ankles; some others have waded till the stream is up to the knees; a few find it breast-high; and but a few — oh! how few! — find it a river to swim in, the bottom of which they cannot touch.  My brethren, there are heights in experimental knowledge of the things of God which the eagle’s eye of acumen and philosophic thought hath never seen; and there are secret paths which the lion’s whelp of reason and judgment hath not as yet learned to travel.  God alone can bear us there; but the chariot in which he takes us up, and the fiery steeds with which that chariot is dragged, are prevailing prayers.

Prevailing prayer is victorious over the God of mercy “By his strength, he had power with God: yea, he had power over the angel, and prevailed: he wept, and made supplication unto him: he found him in Beth-el, and there he spoke with us.”  Prevailing prayer takes the Christian to Carmel, and enables him to cover heaven with clouds of blessing, and earth with floods of mercy.  Prevailing prayer bears the Christian aloft to Pisgah and shows him the inheritance reserved; ay, and it elevates him to Tabor and transfigures him, till in the likeness of his Lord, as he is, so are we also in this world.  If you would reach to something higher than ordinary groveling experience, look to the Rock that is higher than you, and look with the eye of faith through the windows of importunate prayer.  To grow in experience then, there must be much prayer.

You must have patience with me while I apply this text to two or three more cases.  It is certainly true of the sufferer under trial: if he waits upon God in prayer much he shall receive greater deliverances than he has ever dreamed of — “great and mighty things which thou knowest not.”  Here is Jeremiah’s testimony: — “Thou drawest near in the day that I called upon thee: thou saidst, Fear not O Lord , thou hast pleaded the causes of my soul; thou hast redeemed my life.”  And David’s is the same: — “I called upon the Lord in distress: the Lord answered me, and set me in a large place…. I will praise thee: for thou hast heard me, and art become my salvation.”  And yet again: “Then they cried unto the Lord in their trouble, and he delivered them out of their distresses.  And he led them forth by the right way, that they might go to a city of habitation.”  “My husband is dead,” said the poor woman, “and my creditor is come to take my two sons as bondsmen.”  She hoped that Elijah would possibly say, “What are your debts? I will pay them.”  Instead of that, he multiplies her oil till it is written, “Go thou and pay thy debts, and” — what was the “and?” — “live thou and thy children upon the rest.”

So often it will happen that God will not only help his people through the miry places of the way, so that they may just stand on the other side of the slough, but he will bring them safely far on the journey.  That was a remarkable miracle, when in the midst of the storm, Jesus Christ came walking upon the sea, the disciples received him into the ship, and not only was the sea calm, but it is recorded, “Immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.”  That was a mercy over and above what they asked.  I sometimes hear you pray and make use of a quotation which is not in the Bible: — “He is able to do exceeding abundantly above what we can ask or even think.”  It is not so written in the Bible.  I do not know what we can ask or what we can think.  But it is said, “He is able to do exceeding abundantly above what we ask or even think.”  Let us then, dear friends, when we are in great trial only say, “Now I am in prison; like Jeremiah I will pray as he did, for I have God’s command to do it; and I will look out as he did, expecting that he will show me reserved mercies which I know nothing of at present.”  He will not merely bring his people through the battle, covering their heads in it, but he will bring them forth with banners waving, to divide the spoil with the mighty, and to claim their portion with the strong.   Expect great things of a God who gives such great promises as these.

Again, here is encouragement for the worker.  Most of you are doing something for Christ; I am happy to be able to say this, knowing that I do not flatter you.  My dear friends, wait upon God much in prayer, and you have the promise that he will do greater things for you than you know of.   We know not how much capacity for usefulness there may be in us.  That ass’s jaw-bone lying there upon the earth, what can it do?  Nobody knows what it can do.  It gets into Samson’s hands, what can it not do?  No one knows what it cannot do now that a Samson wields it.  And you, friend, have often thought yourself to be as contemptible as that bone, and you have said, “What can I do?”  Ay, but when Christ by his Spirit grips you, what can you not do?  Truly you may adopt Paul’s language and say, “I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me.”

However, do not depend upon prayer without effort.  In a certain school, there was one girl who knew the Lord, a very gracious, simple-hearted, trustful child.  As usual, grace developed itself in the child according to the child’s position.  Her lessons were always best said of any in the class.  Another girl said to her, “How is it that your lessons are always so well said?”  “I pray God to help me,” she said, “to learn my lesson.”  “Well,” thought the other, “Then I will do the same.”  The next morning when she stood up in the class she knew nothing; and when she was in disgrace she complained to the other, “Why I prayed God to help me learn my lesson and I do not know anything of it.  What is the use of prayer?”  “But did you sit down and try to learn it?”  “Oh, no,” she said, “I never looked at the book.”  “Ah,” then said the other, “I asked God to help me to learn my lesson; but, I then sat down to it studiously, and I kept at it till I knew it well, and I learned it easily, because my earnest desire, which I had expressed to God was, help me to be diligent in endeavoring to do my duty.”  So is it with some who come up to prayer meetings and pray, and then they fold their arms and go away hoping that God’s work will go on. Like the woman singing, “Fly a broad, thou mighty gospel,” but not putting a penny in the plate; so that her friend touched her and said, “But how can it fly if you don’t give it wings to fly with?”  There be many who appear to be very mighty in prayer, wondrous in supplications; but then they require God to do what they can do themselves, and, therefore, God does nothing at all for them. “I shall leave my camel untied,” said an Arab once to Mahomet, “and trust to providence.”  “Tie it up,” said Mahomet, “and then trust to providence.”  So you that say, “I shall pray and trust my Church, or my class, or my work to God’s goodness,” may rather hear the voice of experience and wisdom which says, “Do thy best; work as if all rested upon thy toil; as if thy own aim would bring thy salvation;” “and when thou hast done all, cast thy self on him without whom it is in vain to rise up early and to sit up late, and to eat the bread of carefulness; and if he speed thee give him the praise.”

I shall not detain you many minutes longer, but I want to notice that this promise ought to prove useful for the comforting of those who are intercessors for others.  You who are calling upon God to save your children, to bless your neighbors, to remember your husbands or your wives in mercy, may take comfort from this, “I will shew thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”  A celebrated minister in the last century, one Mr. Bailey, was the child of a godly mother.  This mother had almost ceased to pray for her husband, who was a man of a most ungodly stamp, and a bitter persecutor.  The mother prayed for her boy, and while he was yet eleven or twelve years of age, eternal mercy met with him.  So sweetly instructed was the child in the things of the kingdom of God, that the mother requested him — and for some time he always did so — to conduct family prayer in the house.  Morning and evening, this little one laid open the Bible; and though the father would not deign to stop for the family prayer, yet on one occasion he was rather curious to know “what sort of an out the boy would make of it,” so he stopped on the other side of the door, and God blessed the prayer of his own child under thirteen years of age to his conversion, said, The mother might well have read my text with streaming eyes and said, “Yes, Lord, thou hast shewn me great and mighty things which I knew not: thou hast not only saved my boy, but through my boy thou hast brought my husband to the truth.”  You cannot guess how greatly God will bless you.  Only go and stand at his door, you cannot tell what is in reserve for you.

If you do not beg at all, you will get nothing; but if you beg he may not only give you, as it were, the bones, and broken meat, but he may say to the servant at his table, “Take thou that dainty meat, and set that before the poor man.”  Ruth went to glean; she expected to get a few good ears: but Boaz said, “Let her glean even among the sheaves, and rebuke her not;” he said moreover to her, “At mealtime come thou hither, and eat of the bread, and dip thy morsel in the vinegar.”  Nay, she found a husband where she only expected to find a handful of barley.  So in prayer for others, God may give us such mercies that we shall be astounded at them, since we expected but little.  Hear what is said of Job, and learn its lesson, “And the Lord said, My servant Job shall pray for you: for him will I accept: lest I deal with you after your folly, in that ye have not spoken of me the thing which is right, like my servant Job…. And the Lord turned the captivity of Job, when he prayed for his friends: also the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before.”

Now, this word to close with.  Some of you are seekers for your own conversion.  God has quickened you to solemn prayer about your own souls.  You are not content to go to hell, you want heaven; you want washing in the precious blood; you want eternal life.  Dear friends, I pray you take this text — God himself speaks it to you — “Call unto me, and I will answer thee, and show thee great and mighty things, which thou knowest not.”  At once take God at his word.  Get home, go into your chamber and shut the door, and try him.  Young man, I say, try the Lord.  Young woman, prove him, see whether he be true or not.  If God be true, you cannot seek mercy at his hands through Jesus Christ and get a negative reply.  He must, for his own promise and character bind him to it, open mercy’s gate to you who knock with all your heart.  God help you, believing in Christ Jesus, to cry aloud unto God, and his answer of peace is already on the way to meet you.  You shall hear him say, “Your sins which are many are all forgiven.”  The Lord bless you for his love’s sake.  Amen.

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“But we believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.” Acts 15:11

You who are conversant with Scripture, will recollect that these are the words of the apostle Peter.  Paul and Barnabas had been preaching the gospel among the Gentiles with great success, but “certain of the sect of the Pharisees which believed,” could not get rid of their old Jewish bigotry, and vehemently urged that the converted Gentiles ought to be circumcised, or else they could not be saved.  They made a great clamor over this, and there was no small dissension and disputation.  The children of the bondwoman mustered all their forces, while the champions of glorious liberty arrayed themselves for the battle.

Paul and Barnabas, those valiant soldiers of the cross, stood, out stoutly against the ritualistic brethren, and told them that the rite of circumcision did not belong to the Gentiles at all, and ought not to be forced upon them; they would not yield their free principles at the dictation of the Judaisers, but scorned to bow their necks to the yoke of bondage.  It was agreed to bring the matter up for decision at Jerusalem before the apostles and elders; and when all the brethren had assembled, there seems to have been a considerable dispute, in the midst of which, Peter, speaking with his usual boldness and clearness, declared that it would be wrong to put a heavy yoke upon the necks of the Gentiles, which neither that generation of Jews nor their fathers had been able to bear, and then he concluded his address by saying, in effect, “Although these people are not circumcised, and ought not to be, yet we believe that there is no difference between the Jew and the Gentile, but by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.”  Herein Peter was not to be blamed, but to be greatly commended, for he spake under the influence of the Spirit of God.

I. We shall use the text as concisely as we can for three important purposes; and in the first place, we shall look upon it AS AN APOSTOLICAL CONFESSION OF FAITH.

You notice it begins with, “ We believe.”  We will call it, then, the “Apostle’s Creed,” and we may rest assured that it has quite as clear a right to that title as that highly esteemed composition which is commonly called the “Nicene, or Apostle’s Creed.”  Peter is speaking for the rest, and he says, “We believe.”  Well, Peter, what do you believe?  We are all attention.  Peter’s answer is, “We believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.”

One thing is clear from this “Apostle’s Creed” which we have before us –it is clear that the apostles did not believe in ritualism. Peter –why, they make him out to be the head of the church!  Do they not say that he was the first pope, and so on?  I am sure if Peter were here he would grow very angry with them for slandering him so scandalously, for in his epistle he expressly warned others against being lords over God’s heritage, and you may be sure he did not fall into that sin himself.  When he is asked for his confession of faith, he stands up and declares that he believes in salvation by grace alone. “We believe.”  O bold apostle, what do you believe?  Now we still hear it.  Peter will say, “We believe in circumcision; we believe in regeneration by baptism; we believe in the sacramental efficacy of the Lord’s Supper; we believe in pompons ceremonies; we believe in priests, and altars, and robes, and rubrics!”  No; he does not utter a syllable concerning anything of the kind.  He says, “We believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we who have been circumcised shall be saved, just like those who have not been circumcised; we believe that we shall be saved, even as they.”  He makes very small account, it seems, of ceremonies in the matter of salvation.  He takes care that no idea of sacramentarianism shall mar his explicit confession of faith; he glories in no rite, and rests in no ordinance.  All his testimony is concerning the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ.  He says nothing whatever about ordinances, ceremonies, apostolical gifts, or prelatical unction-his theme is grace, and grace alone; and those, my brethren, are the true successors of the apostles who teach you that you are to be saved through the unmerited favor and free mercy of God, agreeing with Peter in their testimony, “We believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved.”  These are the men who preach to you the gospel of salvation through the blood and righteousness of Jesus; but those pretended ministers who boast of their priesthood, preach another gospel, “which is not another; but there be some that trouble you.”  Upon their heads shall be the blood of deluded souls.  They profess to regenerate others, but they will perish themselves; they talk of sacramental grace, and shall receive eternal destruction.  Woe unto them, for they are deceivers.  May the Lord deliver this land from their superstitions.

Another thing is very clear here.  The apostle did not believe in self-righteousness. The creed of the world is, “Do your best, and it will be all right with you.”  To question this is treason against the pride of human nature, which evermore clings to salvation by its own merits.  Every man is born a Pharisee.  Self-confidence is bred in the bone-and will come out in the flesh. “What,” says a man, “do you not believe that if a man does his best, he will fare well in the next world?  Why, you know, we must all live as well as we can, every man according to his own light; and if every man follows out his own conscience, as near as may be, surely it will be well with us?”  That is not what Peter said.  Peter did not say, “We believe that through doing our best, we shall be saved like other people.” He did not even say, “We believe that if we act according to our light, God will accept that little light for what it was.”  No, the apostle strikes out quite another track, and solemnly affirms, “We believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved,” not through our good works, not through anything that we do, not by the merit of anything which we feel or perform, or promise to perform, but by grace, that is to say, by the free favor of God.

“Perish each thought of human pride,

Let God alone be magnified.”

We believe that if we are ever saved at all, we must be saved gratis –saved as the gratuitous act of a bountiful God –saved by a gift, not by wages –saved by God’s love, not by our own doings or merits.  This is the apostle’s creed: salvation is all of grace from first to last, and the channel of that grace is the Lord Jesus Christ, who loved, and lived, and died, and rose again for our salvation.  Those who preach mere morality, or set up any way except that of trusting in the grace of God through Christ Jesus, preach another gospel, and they shall be accursed, even though they preach it with an angel’s eloquence.  In the day when the Lord shall come to discern between the righteous and the wicked, their work, as wood, hay, and stubble, shall be burnt up; but those who preach salvation by grace through Jesus Christ, shall find that their work, like gold, and silver, and precious stones, shall abide the fire, and great shall be their reward.

I think it is very clear, again, from the text, that the apostles did not believe in salvation by the natural force of free will. I fail to detect a trace of the glorification of free will here.  Peter puts it, “We believe that we shall be saved;” through what? Through our own unbiassed will?  Through the volitions of our own well-balanced nature?  Not at all, sir; but “we believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved.”  He takes the crown from off the head of man in all respects, and gives all glory to the grace of God; he extols God, the gracious sovereign, who will have mercy upon whom he will have mercy, and who will have compassion upon whom he will have compassion.  I wish I had a voice of thunder to proclaim in every street of London this glorious doctrine, “By grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: not of works, lest any man should boast.”

This is the old reformation doctrine.  This is the doctrine which will shake the very gates of hell, if it be but faithfully preached.  O for an army of witnesses to publish abroad the gospel of grace in its sovereignty, omnipotence, and fullness.  If you are ever to get comfort, believe me, dear hearer, you must receive the doctrine of salvation by free grace into your soul as the delight and solace of your heart, for it is the living truth of the living God.  Not by ritualism, not by good works, not by our own unaided free will are we saved, but by the grace of God alone.

“Not for the works which we have done,

Or shall hereafter do,

Hath God decreed on sinful worms

Salvation to bestow.

The glory, Lord, from first to last,

Is due to thee alone:

Aught to ourselves we dare not take,

Or rob thee of thy crown.”

Were I now to take this apostle’s creed to pieces, and look closely at the details of it, it would be easy to show that this creed contains within it many important truths.  It implies, most evidently, the doctrine of human ruin. “We believe that we shall be saved.”  That statement assuredly implies that we need to be saved.  The apostle Peter, as well as his brother apostle Paul, was sound in the faith concerning the total depravity of human nature, he viewed man as a lost creature, needing to be saved by grace.  He believed in those three great “r’s” which Rowland Hill used to talk about-ruin, redemption, and regeneration.  He saw most clearly man’s ruin, or he would not have been so explicit upon man’s salvation.  If Peter were here to preach tonight, he would not tell us that man, though he is a little fallen, is a noble creature still, who needs only a little assistance, and he will be quite able to right himself.  Oh, the fearful flattery which has been heard from some pulpits!  Anointing corruption with the unction of hypocrisy; besmearing the abomination of our depravity with sickening eulogiums!

Peter would give no countenance to such false prophets.  No; he would faithfully testify that man is dead in sin, and life’s a gift; that man is lost, utterly fallen and undone.  He speaks in his epistles of the former lusts of our ignorance, of our vain conversation received by tradition of our fathers, and of the corruption, which is in the world through lust.  In the verse before us, he tells us that the best of men, men such as himself and the other apostles, had need to be saved, and, consequently, they must have been originally amongst the lost, heirs of wrath even as others.  I am sure that he was a firm believer in what are called “the doctrines of grace,” as he was certainly in his own person an illustrious trophy and everlasting monument of grace.  What a ring there is in that word GRACE!  Why, it does one good to speak it and to hear it; it is, indeed, “a charming sound, harmonious to the ear.”  When one feels the power of it, it is enough to make the soul leap out of the body for joy.

“Grace! how good, how cheap, how free,

Grace, how easy to be found!

Only let your misery

In the Savior’s blood be drowned!”

How it suits a sinner!  How it cheers a poor forlorn wanderer from God!  Grace!  Peter was not in a fog about this; his witness is clear as crystal, decisive as the sentence of a judge.  He believed that salvation was of God’s free favor, and God’s almighty power; and he speaks out like a man, “We believe that we are saved by grace.”

Our apostle was also most decided and explicit concerning the atonement. Cannot you see the atonement in the text, sparkling like a jewel in a well-made ring?  We are saved “through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  What does the apostle mean but the grace which came streaming from those five wounds when on the cross the Savior hung?  What does he mean but the grace which is revealed to us in the bleeding Sufferer who took our sins, and carried our sorrows, that we might be delivered from wrath through him?  O that every one were as clear about the atonement as Peter is!  Peter had seen his Master; nay, more, his Master had looked at him and broken his heart, and afterwards bound it up, and given him much grace; and now Peter is not content with saying, “We believe that we shall be saved through grace,” but he is careful to word it, “We believe that we shall be saved through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Dear hearers, never have any questions upon the vital point of redemption by blood.  This is a fundamental truth; he who is in darkness upon that subject, has no light in him.  What the sun is to the heavens, that the doctrine of a vicarious satisfaction is to theology.  Atonement is the brain and spinal cord of Christianity.  Take away the cleansing blood, and what is left to the guilty?  Deny the substitutionary work of Jesus, and you have denied all that is precious in the New Testament.  Never, never let us endure one wavering, doubtful thought upon this all-important truth.

It seems to me, too, that without straining the text, I might easily prove that Peter believed in the doctrine of the final perseverance of the saints. They were not, in a certain sense, it seems, perfectly saved when he spoke, but he says, “We believe we shall be saved.”  Well, but Peter, may you not fall away and perish?  “No,” says he, “we believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved.”  How positively he speaks of it!  I do wish you, dear friends, to get a firm and intelligent hold of the doctrine of the safety of the believer, which is as clear as noonday in the Scriptures.  Upon the whole, you have learned it to purpose, and can defend it well, but all of you should be able to give a reason for the hope that is in you.  I have known one of our people met by those who do not believe this doctrine, and they have said to him, “You will fall away; look at your own weakness and tendency to sin.”  “No,” said the man, “I know I should if I were left to myself, but then Christ has promised that he never will leave me nor forsake me.”

Then it is sometimes said, “but you may be a believer in Christ today, and yet perish tomorrow;” but our friends generally reply, “Do not tell us that falsehood: God’s saints shall never perish, neither shall any pluck them out of Jesus’ hand; as for your doctrine of the final falling of the Lord’s blood-bought ones, if that is the gospel, go and keep it to yourselves; as for us, we would not go two inches to listen to it; there is nothing in it to lay hold of; it is a bone without marrow; there is no strength, no comfort for the soul in it.”  If I know when I trust Christ that he will save me at the last, then I have something to rest upon, something worth living for, but if it is all a mere “if,” or “but,” or “perchance,” or “peradventure,” a little of myself, and a little of Christ, I am in a poor case indeed.  A gospel which proclaims an uncertain salvation is a miserable imposition.  Away with such a gospel, away with such a gospel; it is a dishonor to Christ; it is a discredit to God’s people; it neither came from the Scriptures of truth, nor does it bring glory to God.

Thus, then, have I tried to open up the apostle’s creed, “We believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they.”

II. And now, I shall take it as THE CONVERTED MORAL MAN’S STATEMENT.

Let me show you what I mean.  Observe and admire the way in which Peter puts the case.  A company of Jews have assembled, to discuss a certain matter, and some of them look very wise, and bring up certain suggestions that are rather significant.  Say they, “Well, perhaps these Gentile dogs may be saved; yes, Jesus Christ told us to go and preach the gospel to every creature; therefore, no doubt, he must have included these Gentile dogs – we do not like them, though, and must keep them as much under our rules and regulations as we can; we must compel them to be circumcised; we must have them brought under the full rigor of the law; we cannot excuse them from wearing the yoke of bondage.”

Presently, the apostle Peter gets up to speak, and you expect to hear him say – do you not? – to these gentlemen, “Why, these ‘Gentile dogs,’ as you call them, can be saved, even as you.”  No; he adopts quite a different tone; he turns the tables, and he says to them, “We believe that you may be saved, even as they.”  It was just as if I should have a company of persons here now who had been very bad and wicked, who had plunged into the deepest sin, but God’s grace has met with them and made them new creatures in Christ Jesus: there is a church-meeting, and when these persons are brought before the church, suppose there were some of the members who should say, “Yes, we believe that a drunkard may be saved, and a person who has been a harlot may, perhaps, be saved too.”

But imagine, now, that I were to stand up and reply, “Now, my dear brethren, I believe that you may be saved even as these,” what a rebuke it would be!  This is precisely what Peter meant. “Oh!” said he, “do not raise the question about whether they can be saved – the question is whether you, who have raised such a question, will be saved; we believe that, through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved, even as they.”  So he seems, in this dispute, to take the objectors aback, and to put the Gentile believers first in order, to cast out the bad, proud, wicked, devilish spirit of self-righteousness.

Now, brethren, some of us were favored by providence with the great privilege of having Christian parents, and consequently we never did know a great deal of the open sin into which others have fallen.  Some of us never were inside a theater in our lives, never saw a play, and do not know what it is like.  There are some here who, perhaps, never did frequent the tavern, do not know a lascivious song, and never uttered an oath.  This is cause for great thankfulness, very great thankfulness indeed.

But, O you excellent moralists, mind you do not say in your heart, “We are quite sure to be saved,” for, let me tell you, you have not before God any advantage over the outward transgressor, so as to entitle you to be saved in a less humbling manner.  If you ever are saved, you will have to be saved in the same way as those who have been permitted to plunge into the most outrageous sin.  Your being restrained from overt offenses is a favor for you to be grateful for, but not a virtue for you to trust in.  Ascribe it to God’s providential goodness, but do not wrap it about you as though it were to be your wedding garment, for if you do, your self-righteousness will be more dangerous to you than some men’s open sins are to them; for do you not know how the Savior put it, “Verily I say unto you, That the publicans and the harlots go into the kingdom of God before you!”  You moral people must be saved by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ – saved even as they, the  outcasts, the wanderers.  You will not, you cannot, be saved in any other way, and will not be saved at all if you do not submit to this way.  You will not be permitted to enter heaven, good as you think yourselves to be, unless you come down to the terms and conditions which sovereign grace has laid down, namely, that you should trust Christ, and be saved by grace, “even as they.”

There is no difference in the blood of humanity, it flows from one polluted source, and is tainted in all its channels.  The depravity of human nature does not belong merely to those who are born in dirty backcourts and alleys, but it is as certainly manifest in those of you who were born in the best parts of the city.  You dwellers in Belgravia are as altogether born in sin as the denizens of Bethnal Green.  The west end is as sensual as the east.  Hyde Park has no natural superiority of nature over Seven Dials.  The corruption of those born in the castle at Windsor is as deep as the depravity of workhouse children.  You, ladies and gentlemen, are born with hearts as bad and as black as the poorest of the poor.  You sons of Christian parents, do not imagine, because you spring of a godly ancestry, that therefore your nature is not polluted like the nature of others.

In this respect, we are all alike; we are born in sin, and alike are we dead by nature in trespasses and sins, heirs of wrath, even as others.  Remember, too, that although you may not have sinned openly, as others have done, yet in your hearts you have, and it is by your hearts that you will be judged; for how often a man may commit adultery in his soul, and incur the guilt of theft, while his hand lays idly by his side!  Do you not know that a look may have in it the essence of an unclean act, and that a thought may commit murder as well as a hand?  God takes note of heart sin as well as hand sin.  If you have been outwardly moral, I am thankful for it, and I ask you to be thankful for it too; but do not trust in it for justification, seeing that you must be saved, even as the worst of criminals are saved, because in heart, if not in life, you have been as bad as they.

Moreover the method of pardon is the same in all cases.  If you moralists are to be washed, where must you find the purifying hath?  I never heard of but one fountain-that

“Fountain filled with blood,

Drawn from Immanuel’s veins.”

That fountain is for the dying thief as much as for you, and for you as much as for him.  There is a robe of righteousness that is to cover the best living among professors – that same robe of righteousness covered Saul of Tarsus, the bloody persecutor: if you, of unspotted outward character, are ever to have a robe of righteousness, you must wear the same one as he wore there cannot be another nor a better.  O you who are conscious of outward innocence, do, do, humble yourselves at the foot of the cross, and come to Jesus just as empty-handed, just as broken-hearted, as if you had been outwardly amongst the vilest of the vile, and through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, you shall be saved, even as they.  O may the Holy Spirit bring you to this.

I do not know whether anybody here has ever fallen into such an unwise thought as I have known some entertain.  I met with a case of this sort only the other day.  A very excellent and amiable young woman, when converted to God, said to me, “You know, sir, I used almost to wish that I was one of those very bad sinners whom you so often speak to, and invited to come to Jesus, because I thought then I should feel my need more: that was my difficulty, I could not feel my need.”  But see, dear friends, we believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we who have not plunged into black sin, shall be saved even as they who have done so.  Do not make a difficulty about this.  Others make a difficulty on the opposite side; they say, “Oh! I could trust Christ if I had been kept from sin.”  The fact is, that you unbelieving souls will not trust Christ whichever way you have lived, for from some quarter or other, you will find cause for your doubtings; but when the Lord the Spirit gives you faith, you big sinners will trust Christ quite as readily as those who have not been great offenders openly; and you who have been preserved from open sin will trust him as joyfully as the great transgressors.  O come, come, come, ye sick souls; come to my Master! Do not say, “We would come if we were worse,” do not say, “We would come if we were better,” but come as you are; come just as you are.  Oh! if you be a sinner, Christ invites you.  If you be but lost, remember Christ came to save the lost.  Do not be picking out your case, and making it to be different from others, but come, and welcome: weary and heavy-laden sinner, come, and welcome; come, even now!

“Just as thou art, without one trace

Of love, or joy, or inward grace,

Or meetness for the heavenly place,

O guilty sinner, come!

Come, hither bring thy boding fears,

Thy aching heart, thy bursting tears;

‘Tis mercy’s voice salutes thine ears,

O trembling sinner, come.”

‘The Spirit and the Bride say, Come;’

Rejoicing saints re-echo, Come;

Who faints, who thirsts, who will, may come:

Thy Savior bids thee come.”

III. THE CONFESSION OF THE GREAT OUTWARD SINNER WHEN CONVERTED.

I will now speak to those here present who, before conversion, indulged in gross sin. Such are here.  Glory be to God, such are here!  They have been washed; they have been cleansed.  My dear brethren, my dear sisters, I can rejoice over you; more precious are you by far in my eyes than all the precious gems which kings delight to wear, for you are my eternal joy and crown of rejoicing.  You have experienced a divine change; you are not what you once were; you are new creatures in Christ Jesus.  Now, I will speak for you.  “We believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved, even as they.”  What do we mean?  Why, we believe that we shall be saved, even as the best are saved.  I will split that thought up, as it were, into individual instances.

Yonder sits a very poor believer. We are very glad to see him at the Tabernacle.  I know he had a thought that his clothes were hardly good enough to come in, but I hope none of you will ever stop away because of your clothes.  Come, come anyhow; we are always glad to see you, at least, I am, if others are not.  But my poor friend is very badly off indeed; he would not like anybody perhaps to see the room where he lives.  Yes, but my dear brother, do you expect to have a poor man’s salvation?  Do you expect that when you get to heaven, you will be placed in a corner as a pauper pensioner?  Do you think that Jesus Christ will only give you the crumbs which fall from off his table?  “Oh, no!” I think I hear you say, “oh, no! we shall leave our poverty when we get to glory.”  Some of our friends are rich, they have an abundance of this world’s goods, and we rejoice to think they have, and hope that they will have grace to make a proper use of this mercy; but we poor people believe that we shall be saved, even as they.  We do not believe that our poverty will make any difference to our share in divine grace, but that we shall be as much loved of God as they are, as much blessed in our poverty as they are in their riches, and as much enabled by divine grace to glorify God in our sphere as they are in theirs.  We do not envy them, but on the contrary, ask grace from God that we may feel that if we are poor in pocket, yet we are rich in faith, and shall be saved, even as they.

Others of you are not so much poor in money as you are poor in useful talent.  You come up to chapel, and fill your seat, and that is about all you can do.  You drop your weekly offering into the box, and when that is done, you have done all, or nearly all in your power.  You cannot preach; you could not conduct a prayer meeting; you have hardly courage enough to give away a tract.  Well, my dear friend, you are one of the timid ones, one of the little Benjamins, of whom there are many.  Now, do you expect that the Lord Jesus Christ will give you a second-hand robe to wear at his wedding feast?  And when you sit at the banquet, do you think he will serve you from cold and inferior dishes?  “Oh, no!” say you; “oh, no!  Some of our brethren have great talents, and we are glad that they have; we rejoice in their talents, but we believe that we shall be saved, even as they: we do not think that there will be any difference made in the divine distribution of loving-kindness because of our degree of ability.”  There are very proper distinctions here on earth between rich and poor, and between those who are learned and those who are unlearned; but we believe that there is no distinction in the matter of salvation – we shall be saved, even as they.

Many of you would preach ten times better than I do if you could only get your tongues unloosed to say what you feel.  Oh! what red-hot sermons you would preach, and how earnest you would be in their delivery.  Now, that sermon, which you did not preach, and could not preach, shall be set down to your account, while perhaps that discourse of mine will be a failure because I may not have preached it as I should have done, with pure motives and zealous spirit.  God knows what you would do if you could, and he judges, not so much according to what you do, as according to your will to do it.  He takes in this case, the will for the deed, and you shall be saved, even as they who with the tongue of fire proclaim the truth.

Most likely there is some doubting brother here. Well, my dear friend, you are a weakling; you are Mr. Much-afraid, or Mr. Little-faith; but, how is your heart?  What are your prospects?  Do you believe that you will be put off with a second-rate salvation, that you will be admitted by the back door into heaven instead of through the gate of pearl?  “Oh no!” say you; “I am the weakest lamb in Jesus’ fold; but I believe that I shall be saved, even as they; that is, even as they who are the strongest in grace, most useful in labor, and most mighty in faith.”  In a few hours, dear friends, I shall be crossing the sea, and I will suppose that there shall be a good stiff wind, and that the vessel may be driven out of her course, and be in danger.  As I walk the deck, I see a poor girl on board; she is very weak and ill, quite a contrast to that fine strong, burly passenger who is standing beside her, apparently enjoying the salt spray and the rough wind.  Now, suppose a storm should come on, which of these two is the more safe?  Well, I cannot see any difference, because if the ship goes to the bottom, they will both go, and if the ship gets to the other side of the channel, they will both land in security.  The safety is equal when the thing upon which it depends is the same.  So, if the weakest Christian is in the boat of salvation – that is, if he trusts Christ – he is as safe as the strongest Christian; because, if Christ failed the weak one, he would fail the strong one too. Why, if the least Christian who believes in Jesus does not get to heaven, then Peter himself will not get to heaven.  I am sure of it, that if the smallest star which Christ ever kindled does not blaze in eternity, neither will the brightest star.  If you who have given yourselves to Jesus should any of you be cast away, this would prove that Jesus is not able to save, and then all of us must be cast away too.  Oh, yes! “We believe that we shall be saved, even as they.”

I have nearly done; but I will suppose for a moment that there has been a work of grace in a prison – Cold Bath Fields, if you like.  There are half-a-dozen villains there, thorough villains; but the grace of God has made new men of them.  I think I see them; and, if they understood the text, as they looked across the room, and saw half a dozen apostles – Peter, James, John, Matthew, Paul, Bartholomew, and so on – they might say, “We believe that through the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ we shall be saved, even as they, even as those apostles are.”  Can you catch the idea, and make it your own?

When artists have drawn pictures of the apostles, they have often put a halo round their heads, very like a brass pan, or something of that kind, as if to signify that they were some particular and special saints; but there was no such halo there – the painter is far from the fact; we say it, and say it seriously and thoughtfully, that twelve souls picked from the scum of creation who look to Christ, shall be saved, even as the twelve apostles are saved; halo or no halo, they shall join in the same hallelujah to God and the Lamb.

Dear hearer, if you have understood this very simple statement, go to Jesus at once with your soul; and may God enable you to obtain complete salvation at this hour.  I do pray you to come in faith to the cross – I pray my Master’s grace to compel you to enter into a state of full dependence upon Jesus, and so into a state of salvation.  If you are now led to believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, no matter how black the past may have been, “the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s dear Son, cleanseth us from all sin.”

Here’s pardon for transgressions past,

It matters not how black their cast;

And oh! my soul, with wonder view,

for sins to come here’s pardon too.”

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“That in the ages to come he might show the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”-Ephesians 2:7

From this verse, it is clear that Paul fully expected the gospel of the grace of God to be preached in the ages to come.  He had no notion of a temporary gospel to develop into a better, but he was assured that the same gospel would be preached to the end of the dispensation.  Nor this alone; for as I take it, he looked to the perpetuity of the gospel, not only through the ages which have already elapsed since the first advent of our blessed Lord, but throughout the ages after he shall have come a second time.  Eternity itself will not improve upon the gospel.  When all the saints shall be gathered home, they shall still talk and speak of the wonders of Jehovah’s love in Christ Jesus, and in the golden streets they shall stand up and tell what the Lord has done for them to listening crowds of angels, and principalities, and powers.  Paul did not believe in the quenching of the light of the testimony of grace, but expected that throughout the ages to come it would burn on with the selfsame brilliance.

This I infer from the fact that he looked upon the believing Ephesians and himself as having been converted in the dawn of Christianity on purpose that to after ages they might serve as specimens of what the gospel can do.  He looked upon these Ephesians newly drawn out from the slough of idolatry in the same light as he looked upon himself when he said that the Lord had shown towards him all longsuffering for a pattern to them that should hereafter believe on his name.  Paul and these Ephesians, and all those early Christians, were types to us of what God can do by the gospel, and of what he will continue to do until the present dispensation shall close.  From this statement, we may gather with most sure logic that the gospel is altogether unalterable; for if its results eighteen hundred years ago are to serve us as proofs of its power, then it must be the same gospel.  It is clear that the converts of the first century would not be to us any kind of testimony to the power of the gospel as it now exists among us if meanwhile there had been a change in the gospel itself.  At best, such facts could only show what the old-fashioned gospel did in its day, but we could not infer from them what a new-fangled gospel will now accomplish.  Paul did not at all anticipate any removal of the old landmarks.  He held it forth that the same results would follow in all ages from the preaching of the same gospel with the same power from heaven, and hence he regarded the first converts as pledges and proofs to all succeeding ages of what the gospel could achieve.  Hold you, my brethren, to that gospel which has been delivered unto you, which we have received by the Spirit of God through the teaching of Christ and of his apostles, and you shall yet see repeated in your midst the self-same things which were wrought in those early days.  Those who will may drink the new wine of the modern vintage, my conviction is that the old is better.

Learn also from this language of Paul that every age is a gainer by those which preceded it.  I have smiled often in this place at the conceit of this nineteenth century which holds up its head among the ages as far excelling them all, though if it knew itself it would sing to a more modest tune; but now I will moderate my tone, and admit that this century is superior to all the ages that have been before it, superior in this one respect, that it has received by the lapse of time the fullest and most repeated evidence of the gospel’s power.  Whereas in the second century men could only refer to the experience of the saints during one hundred years, we have at this hour the accumulated evidence of nineteen hundred years, and all this is put in evidence as proof of what grace can do.  Whereas in the third, fourth, and fifth centuries men had the accumulated personal testimonies of those who had till then believed in Christ, and had been saved thereby, we, upon whom the ends of the earth have come, have now far larger evidence, because the time has supplied us with a greater cloud of witnesses.

For nearly two thousand years has this gospel been preached among men, and every year has brought fresh trophies to its power: every day, I might say, is now producing evidence of its divine power.  We have not today, dear friends, to begin to test the gospel; the ice is broken for us: experiments have been made so frequently that we have now entered upon another stage.  It is not ours to analyze the bread, but to feed upon it.  We have not today to enquire, Can we ford the stream?  Lo, these nineteen centuries the hosts of God have gone through the flood in safety, and we have but to join their ranks and follow where they lead the way.  Surrounded by evidence that is altogether overwhelming, we behold the gospel of Jesus going forth, conquering and to conquer.  We hear from ten thousand times ten thousand voices the cry, “Christ is the power of God and the wisdom of God.”  We cannot cease to proclaim the mercy of God as displayed in the atoning sacrifice of our Lord Jesus, for infallible assurances strengthen our confidence, and set our hearts on fire.

The multitudes of converts in past time make known to us in these ages that there is salvation, nay more, that this salvation is to be had, for they obtained it; nay, further, that it is to be had upon the terms that God has laid down of simply believing in Jesus Christ: for they obtained it in that way, and in none other.  Doubt ought now to be out of the question; every needy, trembling sinner should hasten away to the refuge supplied by Jesus.  Because so many have been to him with success; because he has never rejected any; because he has saved to the uttermost all those that have come to him, therefore sinful men ought eagerly and unquestioningly to come at once, and put their confidence in the Lamb of God.  Then will God’s purpose, as described in the text, be accomplished, that to the ages to come should be made known by all who have tasted of his kindness the exceeding riches of his grace toward men in Christ Jesus the Savior.

This morning I have a text before me which is a great deal too full for me: I can never draw out all its supplies.  I have gone round the walls of this city text, I have counted its towers, and marked well its bulwarks, and I am utterly unable to express myself by reason of joyous astonishment.  I feel as if I must sit down and lose myself in adoration.  I am a poor dumb dog over such a theme.  I believe that if I were shut up to preach for twelve months from this text I should not be straitened for matter; but rather, when I had finished the fifty-two Sabbath-days, I should be eager to enter upon another year’s consideration of the same topic.  Here is a vast and fruitful country,-a land of hills and valleys, a land of fountains and brooks of water, who shall spy it out and set the bounds thereof?  I shall try to exhibit a cluster from Eshcol, but the whole land I cannot show you, it behoves you to journey thither for yourselves.  It is a right royal subject, “The exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”  Whitefield and Wesley might preach the gospel better than I do, but they could not preach a better gospel.

I shall preach with the longing desire that others may be enticed to come and taste of the dainties of Christ’s marriage-feast.  To this end I shall rehearse the lovingkindnesses of the Lord.  Oh that the Holy Spirit may help me, and draw you.  We begin with:

I. The Kindness of the Lord toward Us in Christ Jesus.

What kindness he displayed in choosing such sinners as we were. These Ephesians had been most superstitious idolaters.  You know how loudly they shouted, “Great is Diana of the Ephesians.”  There was no preparedness in them to cast away their idols and to worship the great Invisible.  There was nothing in them to draw them towards the light that shineth in the Christ of God.  They were far off, as Paul says, having no hope, and really and truly without God in the world; and yet these were the very men whom the exceeding riches of God’s grace brought out of darkness into marvelous light.  They were “dead in trespasses and sins;” they walked according to the course of the world, according to the prince of the power of the air; they fulfilled the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were sunken in all manner of loathsome lusts and vices; and yet the grace of God came to men of Ephesus, and called out a church to show forth the praises of God.

Now, what were we, my brethren?  We were not idolaters, nor sunk in all the degradation of Ephesus, but we were all sinners in some fashion or other.  All the sheep went astray; though each one followed a different way, all took the downward road, and we among them.  We, to the utmost of our power, fulfilled the lusts of the flesh and of the mind: we did evil even as we could.  If it had not been for the restraints of education and the checks of our surroundings, I know not into what crimes we should not have plunged.  It is a happy circumstance for some of us that God met with us very early, or else we should have been swept away by the torrents of our youthful passions into the worst possible vices.  We ever had a strong will and a firm purpose, and courage equal to any daring: these qualities under the devil’s influence would soon have forced for us a passage to hell.  If we had been left to sow our wild oats, what a crop we should have had long ere this.  Thanks be to God for his preventing love!

Alas, some, left to wander far, were allowed to prove in their lives the sin which dwelt in them; and what a wonder of grace, what a miracle of love, that God should have selected them, after all, and brought them near to himself.  Dear brothers and sisters, I will not enlarge upon this, for this is a point for your private meditations.  Shut yourselves up in your closets and think of what you were and what you would have been if it had not been for the kindness of God toward you in Christ Jesus.  Forget not that the Lord has shown this kindness toward us in order that others like us may be induced to believe in the same kindness.  Are any here the children of pious parents, and have you done violence to your consciences?  After the same fashion did many of us terribly rebel, and yet the Lord has had mercy upon us.  Have some of you fallen into the lusts of the flesh, and followed after the pleasures of sin, and thus defiled yourselves greatly?  Do not despair of pardon, for there are some here who tearfully remember how the God of pardons forgave them after they had fallen into like sins.  Whatever form your transgression may take, God has saved others who aforetime fell into similar sins, in order that in them he might make known to you his willingness to clasp you to his bosom, and to cast your sins behind his back.

No doctrine, however clearly stated, will ever have such influence over men as living examples; but when we can say of this one and of the other, “These were great offenders, these were open sinners, these were grievous transgressors, but they obtained mercy,” we do in effect say to all of the like character, “Come you, and you shall not be refused: leave your sin as they have done: loathe it as they do: trust in Jesus as they have been taught to do, and you shall find equal mercy with them, and shall rejoice in the common salvation.”  The kindness of God toward us how I delight to dwell on the word “us,” and then to take it up and acknowledge my own personal share in it:the kindness of God toward me.  Do this, my brethren, and then go and display to others the kindness of the Lord towards your own souls.

But our attention is called not only to the persons whom God chose, but to his kindness displayed in the gracious acts which he has done towards them.  Mark the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us.

What has he done for us? He chose us before he lit the stars, those torches of the sky: he wrote our names upon the heart and hands of Christ ere he laid the foundations of the hills.  In the fullness of time, he gave Christ for us, even that blessed Christ of whom we say, “Who loved me and gave himself for me.”  He made with us in Christ Jesus a covenant ordered in all things and sure, which shall stand fast when all created things dissolve.

Having done this, he watched over us when we were bondslaves to the tyrant Satan.  Graciously he guarded us from going further still into transgression and committing the sin which is unto death.  Then he called us, and when we would not come, he drew us yet more forcibly by his effectual grace, till at last we yielded.  Oh, I cannot tell all that he did for us when we at last came to Jesus, but this I know, he washed us, and we were whiter than snow; he brought forth the best robe and put it on us, and made us comely in his sight.  He gave us the kiss of sweet acceptance, and he put us among the children, and since then he has given us the children’s portion, and has dealt with us as he uses to deal with those that love his name.  We have been adopted into the family, and we have lived on the children’s bread; we have been guided, and led, and instructed, and upheld, and sanctified, and the almighty Savior is still performing for us miracles of mercy.  The old tale of the giants piling mountain upon mountain, Pelion upon Ossa, is outdone by our God: he has not only heaped up one hill of mercy, but he has laid mountain upon mountain; he has piled up Alps on Alps to make a pathway for us, that we may ascend to the right hand of God, even the Father, and sit in the heavenly places with Christ.

What has he done? I answer, what has he not done?  What more could he do?  Can you suggest a mercy?  He has already given it.  Can you desire a favor?  It is yours already, and was yours from before the foundation of the world.  Oh, the goodness, the manifold goodness, the overflowing, surpassing, inconceivable goodness of God in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.

I am bound to dwell a moment on that last word: his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.  That is the channel through which all blessing has come to us.  God gives common mercies to men as his creatures; but these riches of his grace, these covenant blessings, all come to us as his chosen, through the Mediator.  You can see the mark of the cross on every spiritual favor which the Father has bestowed: some drops of bloody sweat have fallen upon every treasured gem of the covenant casket.  And does not this endear the mercy of God to you, that it does come through Jesus Christ?  It seems to me to enhance its value, and to make every covenant blessing more and more dear, because it is brought to us by the hand of the Well-beloved.

By his atonement, it is procured to us, and by his matchless intercession it is actually bestowed.  Said I not right well that I have a theme which is too deep and high for me?  I might detain you many a day upon this one word, “through Christ Jesus,” through the incarnate God, through his life and death and resurrection, and his intercession at the right hand of the throne of the majesty on high.  All things come to us through Christ Jesus: he is the golden pipe of the conduit of eternal love, the window through which grace shines, the door by which it enters.  Get these two or three words, and sit down and turn them over and over and over in your souls, and see if there is not the very music of heaven sleeping within them, which your faith may call forth, and coin into hallelujahs.  “The exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus”— this is an anthem worthy of the choirs celestial; sing it, O ye chosen of the Lord, while ye are waiting to ascend his holy hill.

II. But now I take a step further, and get into the soul of the text.  Let us consider, “The Exceeding Riches of His Grace.”

Here our English is a poor language as compared with the Greek, and I believe that Paul groaned even when he was writing the matchless Greek of the text, because he could not make it express all his meaning.  Even the Hebrew, which seems to be the most expressive of all human tongues, and might well have been spoken in Paradise, cannot contain or set forth the fullness of God’s great thoughts but here the Greek is wonderful.  What if I read the words, the hyperbolical wealth of grace, or the superabounding, excessive, overflowing riches of the grace of God?  If I were to heap up epithets, I could not give you all that Paul means.

Only notice, first, that the riches of the grace of God are above all limit. A man is not rich when he can count his money, or miss this and that when he has spent it.  We used to read in our first Latin books, “It is the mark of a poor man to number his flocks: the rich man has so many sheep that he cannot count them.”  When a person becomes immensely wealthy, he is richer than he needs to be, and has not only enough, but much to spare. So is it with the grace of God: he has as much grace as you want, and he has a great deal more than that.  The Lord has as much grace as a whole universe will require, but he has vastly more.  He overflows: all the demands that can ever be made on the grace of God will never impoverish him, or even diminish his store of mercy; there will remain an incalculably precious mine of mercy as fall as when he first began to bless the sons of men.

In a country village, if a man has a few hundred pounds he is thought to be quite rich.  You get into a large town, there a man must have several thousands; but when you come to London, and frequent the Stock Exchange, you enquire of so-and-so, “Is he a rich man?” and some one will perhaps reply, “Yes, yes; he is worth a hundred thousand pounds.”  Put that same question to a Rothschild with his millions, and he answers, “No, he is a little man, he is not rich; he only owns a hundred thousand pounds;” for these great bankers count their money by millions.  Well, but what are these great Rothschilds with all their millions when they are reckoned up according to the wealth of heaven?  They are nowhere at all.  The Lord alone is rich. “If I were hungry,” says he, “I would not tell thee, for the world is mine and the fullness thereof.”

He says, “The silver and the gold are mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills.”  God is so rich in mercy that you cannot tell how rich he is.  His is overflowing riches, marvelous riches, exceeding riches.  God is excessive in nothing that I know of except in his mercy.  He is boundless in all his attributes, but emphatically so in his love, for God is love.  His grace is above all observation.  The little grace which you have seen, you stop me and exclaim, “Sir, I have seen great grace.”  So you have, for you; but the little grace you have seen, I say, bears no proportion to the glorious whole.  You have not seen as much of God’s grace as a man might see of the sea if he stood upon the beach at Brighton or at Hastings.

“Why,” you reply in surprise, “I can see as much of the ocean there as ever mortal man can see.”  That may be; but men’s eyes have but a narrow range.  I tell you, you have never beheld the sea, but only a trifling portion of it.  If a man crosses from America, he has gazed upon a narrow furrow along which his vessel has ploughed its way, but no one has ever beheld to the full the vast, majestic ocean in all its length, and breadth, and depth.  Nobody can see it in all its far-resounding shores and hollow caves.  Such is the “exceeding riches” of God’s grace, unsearchable, passing knowledge.  Oh my poor tongue, and my dull language. I must leave my subject, for it overflows my soul and drowns my speech.  You must think it out for yourselves.  The grace of God surpasses all you know, all you see, and all you think.

So I remark next that this grace is above all expression, ay, even inspired expression. Paul, though full of the Holy Spirit, could not speak out all the love of God in Christ Jesus, for his love is unspeakable.  “Thanks be to God for his unspeakable grace.”  If we had all the tongues of men, and of angels, we could not declare all the riches of the grace of God.  No, if all the orators that ever lived made this their one and only theme, and if all of these were under the influence of the divine Spirit, yet human language could not compass this divine thing.

“Words are but air, and tongues but clay,

And this compassion is divine…”

If we knew the language of angels, we could not then declare the grace of God.  The most experienced saints bewail the weakness of every form of speech to describe the exceeding riches of the grace of God.

We are compelled to add that it is above all our ways of action. The gospel has taught us to forgive, but we do not take to it naturally.  If anyone treats us very ill, it is with some difficulty that we forgive; but there are certain base, cruel, and ungrateful treatments which it becomes almost impossible to overlook; and, if we forgive, yet we do not always forget.  But such is the greatness of God’s mercy that we who have wearied ourselves with iniquity, and wearied him with our sins, yet have not outworn his compassion.  It is hard for us to pardon, but it is spontaneous with God.  He delights in it – “He delighteth in mercy.”  Twenty-six times in one psalm the sweet singer proclaims that “his mercy endureth for ever.”  How he  rings that bell again, and again, and again, “For his mercy endureth for ever.”  Your mercy is very short, and your temper is quick, so that you speak unadvisedly and angrily very soon; but it is not so with God.  So wondrous are his ways of grace that they are past finding out.  We cannot follow them, and can scarce believe them because they are so unlike ours.  His ways are above our ways, and his thoughts above our thoughts, as much as the heavens are above the earth.  The gentlest, meekest, and most loving minds are left far behind in this race of love.  Man is a niggard of forgiveness, but the Lord is rich in mercy.  Our little stream of goodness runs after much pumping and pressure, but the river of divine love flows freely on.

Ay, and the ways of grace are above our understanding. Some famous minds have been born into the world every now and then, men who have explored the sun, threaded the stars, and pried into the bowels of the earth, and told us of its ancient history.  God raises up every now and then master minds to perceive and reveal his wisdom in nature; but there never was, and never shall be, a human understanding that can fully grasp the incomprehensible riches of the mercy of God in Christ Jesus.  Sit down and think it over, and look intently into this mystery, and you will find it far beyond you.  “It is high, I cannot attain unto it.”  I have set myself this day to study this matter, but I have barely touched it as with a swallow’s wing; I have not dived into the fathomless depths, nor can I.  Jehovah is such a marvelously forgiving God, so rich in his mercy that our understanding cannot count the mighty sum.  Ay, and if our thoughts were raised to the utmost, if we were sanctified to the highest degree, if we were so pure in heart as to see God, not even then should we be able to know all the exceeding riches of his grace to usward who believe.  The loftiest thought of the most saintly mind never rose to the height of this great argument.

The most masterly poetic conception faints, its wing droops, and it falls to earth in the presence of this mercy which is higher than the heavens, and far above the clouds.  I wish I could say something that would make men know how vast is the mercy of God.  Oh that these lips had language!  Perhaps my failure may be better than fluency.  If so, I would gladly be dumb to let mercy itself speak.

Furthermore, dear friends, the exceeding riches of God’s grace may be guessed at by the fact that divine mercy is above all our sins. You cannot sin so much as God can forgive.  If it comes to a pitched battle between sin and grace, you shall not be so had as God shall be good.  I will prove it to you.  You can only sin as a man, but God can forgive as a God.  You sin as a finite creature, but the Lord forgives as the infinite Creator.  When I received that thought fairly into my soul last night I felt like Abraham when he laughed for joy: I sin like a man, but he forgives like a God.  We will never sin that grace may abound; that were infamous and detestable.  But what a blessed text is that: “Where sin abounded grace did much more abound.”  Your sin is like a mountain, but if you have faith as a grain of mustard seed you shall say to this mountain, “Be thou removed hence, and cast into the midst of the sea of God’s infinite mercy,” and it shall be done unto you.  The atoning blood will wash out all transgression, and not a trace of it shall remain.  Does not this fact magnify the mercy of God?  Gross and intolerable as your sin may be, yet it is but as the drop of a bucket compared with the immense ocean of forgiving love.

Try again.  God’s mercy is greater than his promises. “Oh, no,” say you, “that will not do.  We have read of ‘exceeding great and precious promises.’”  I tell you his mercy has a glory beyond his promises, for his mercy is the father of his promises.  The Lord had mercy and grace before he had spoken a single promise; and it was because his heart was flaming with love that he made a covenant of grace, and wrote therein the words of peace.  His promises are precious streams that come leaping up in the deserts of our lost and ruined state, but the depth that lieth under, which Scripture calls “the depth that coucheth beneath,” is richer than the fountain which comes out of it.  The mercy of God as the source and well-head is greater than the promises which flow from it: infinitely greater than our straitened interpretations of the promises, which fall far short of their real meaning, and even that meaning, did we know it, cannot set forth all “the exceeding riches of his grace in his kindness toward us through Christ Jesus.”

Let us try again.  God’s mercy is greater than all that all his children ever have received as yet. His redeemed are a multitude that no man can number, and each one draws heavily upon the divine treasurer, but notwithstanding all the grace he has ever given to them (and he has given to each of them a measureless portion), yet is there more grace in God than he has given forth as yet.  “Oh,” say you, “how can that be?”  It is so because his mercy is not all given out in this life; much of it is laid up for enjoyment in the world to come.  The grace which we have not yet tasted is the very crown of the feast.  The Lord hath prepared for them that love him an inconceivable bliss.  There is heaven, there is glory, there is all the bliss of the endless ages yet laid up in store.  Oh the wealth of these heavenly reserves.  I am sure I stated the truth when I said that what the Lord has given does not comprehend all the exceeding riches of his grace: he has infinitely more to give.  You have seen the river Thames go rolling along, the abounding and rejoicing river, and, on a hot day, you stand knee deep in the stream, and drink, drink, drink.  There is more water in the Thames than all the bullocks in all earth’s pastures ever drank, or will drink.  They may be driven from every prairie under heaven and stand on the river’s brink, and drink as though they would suck up Jordan at a draught, but they will never diminish the wealth of Father Thames: but even if they could do so, you and I would be still as far off from all possibility of draining the wondrous flood of mercy which comes flowing forth from beneath the throne of God.  The rain of grace has filled the pools, but it will rain again none the less plentifully.  God’s ability to give is greater than our capacity to receive.

The fact is that this grace is above all measure.  Yet we have four measures for it – height, depth, breadth, length — and this mercy of God is so exceeding great that in each of these measures it baffles description.  It is higher than our sin, though that be exceedingly heinous and proudly threatens the gates of heaven: it is higher than our thoughts, though our imagination sometimes takes a condor’s flight.  Oh, the height of divine mercy!  It rises to the throne of the Eternal.  As for the depths of grace, the sea has immense depths, but the mercy of God is altogether unfathomable.  Great sins sink into it and are lost; but grace is just as deep after it has swallowed up a world’s sin as it was before.  There are inconceivably deep places in God’s mercy where the blackest sins are lost.  Out of these come the choicest pearls of grace.

Oh the depths!  As for the breadth of mercy, David says, “As far as the east is from the west, so far hath he removed our transgressions from us.”  What greater breadth can be conceived?  As for the length of it, it is from everlasting to everlasting.  Can anybody tell me the length of that?  My sins began less than fifty years ago; but the Lord’s mercy began – oh, when did it begin?  It was always with him, and his plans of mercy are from everlasting.  There is a beginning to man’s sin, but there is no beginning to pardoning love.  I shall cease to sin, I hope, long before another fifty years are over, and I shall be beyond fear of further fault; but the mercy of the Lord will never end, world without end.  Who then can compass a matter which in any one of its measurements far surpasses all human computation?  Grace is above all calculation.

Hasten hither, you great sinners.  You are not great as compared with the Lord’s great mercy in Christ Jesus.  We cannot allow you to apply the word “great” to your sin, we need to reserve it for the mercy of God.  We must monopolize the word; for all greatness dwells in the love and mercy of our God.  However much you may have wandered, however black you may be, however defiled, God delights in mercy: it is the joy of his heart to pass by transgression and sin through the precious blood of Christ.  Do not do my Lord so great a dishonor as to measure your sin and affirm that it outstrips his mercy.  It cannot be!  You know nothing about the glorious nature of my Lord.  A child may fill its little cup out of the great sea, but the sea never misses it.  Your sin is like that cup, and you may fill it to the brim with mercy, but the ocean of love will never miss all that you can take from it.

Come, take all that you can take, and none shall question you.  Wash out your crimson stains in this pure flood, and it shall remain as pure as at the first.  I would not speak lightly of your sin: it is an exceeding great and grievous thing: but still I do say over again that as compared with the infinite mercy of God it is but as a shadow to the sun, or a grain of sand to the full ocean at its flood.

III. These riches of grace deserve TO BE STILL FURTHER ILLUSTRATED; and I shall illustrate them only by hints.

What exceeding riches of grace it was on God’s part that when we resisted him in the days of our sin he resolved to overcome our folly.  If you offer a man a great kindness, and he will not have it, you say, “Well, then, he must do without it: I am not going down on my knees to him to ask him to receive a favor from me.”  Yet the Lord pleads with sinners to accept his grace.  “Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord.”  He begs and beseeches men that they will be saved: he entreats them, pleads with them, argues with them, that they would turn to Jesus and live.  Oh, the exceeding riches of his grace.  My Master, the Lord Jesus, came along to me, and he said, “Soul, will you have pardon and forgiveness?” and fool that I was I answered, “No.”  Then he came again and said,” Wilt thou have me and my salvation?  I will take thee to heaven with me.”  And I answered, “No.”  Ah, but he would not take “No” for an answer.  He had a sweet way of getting at my understanding and my will, and he drew me till at last I cried after him.

How I ate my black, and rebellious words.  “O Lord,” I said, “take no notice of what thy poor, poor child has said: throw his obstinate refusals behind thy back, and let me come to thee.”  But, oh, the exceeding riches of his grace that he should stand waiting, waiting long, and knocking at our door though we would let him in.

The exceeding riches of his grace were seen in making no conditions with us.  When the Lord Jesus Christ met with us, he did not stand out for terms.  I heard one say the other day, “I do not feel enough brokenness of heart nor enough humiliation of spirit.”  Who said that Christ demanded so much brokenness of heart and so much humbling of spirit before he would give his mercy?  He who dared to say it knows not the freeness of the gospel, for the gospel comes to bring you the broken heart and the humbled spirit; and Christ comes to you just as you are, in all your alienation and your enmity, and brings everything in his hands that you can want.  This is what we call free grace.  A sharp critic said the other day, “Do not say ‘free grace,’ it is a tautology: grace must be free.”  Ah, my dear sir, but we shall say “free grace,” so that there shall be no mistake about it; for some, I dare say, will not know where we are unless we are even redundant in our expressions upon this point.  There was nothing in us to draw Christ to us; we had nothing good, but everything evil.  When he came he did not say, “Bankrupt sinner, you must pay twopence in the pound, and I will pay the other nineteen and tenpence.”  He paid all our debts, asking not a farthing from us.  He saw us lying by the roadside bruised and broken, and he did not say, “Come hither, poor man; rise up, and I will bind your wounds.”  No, but he came where we were lying unable to stir, and poured in the wine and the oil, and did it all without our help.  This is the “exceeding riches of his grace,” in not standing stipulating and huckstering with us, but freely giving to us all we need, only asking that we would receive it, that we would be empty, and that he might fill us with his love.

Beloved, I think I never knew “the exceeding riches of his grace” better that when I was thinking, the other day, of how his grace works.  Why, he does all this with a word.  He speaks a black sinner white he speaks a dead sinner into life by a word.  “Live,” saith he; and he that was dead lives.  He that had been accounted unrighteous is, by God’s will, reckoned righteous, and he is righteous, for him whom God reckons to be righteous by the imputation of Christ’s righteousness is righteous indeed; yea, and he shall be rewarded for that righteousness which God with a word gives to him.

If you want another proof of “the exceeding riches of his grace,” think of the power of the blood.  Once washed in the crimson fount your every sin is gone, every spot is washed out; ay, and gone never to return, for he that is once washed in the atoning blood will never be black again.  The cleansing is perfected forever.  The glorious High Priest made one offering for sin, only one: he did it once, and by that he annihilated all the sins of all his people at a single stroke, once for all.  Oh, “the exceeding riches of his grace.”  His word, his blood have wrought such wondrous mysteries of grace.

And since then, dear friends, have not “the exceeding riches of God’s grace” been marvelous to you?  To think that he should accept us as believers though we had not more than half a grain of faith!  He has even treated us as believers when sometimes we have been more doubters than trusters.  As for our repentance, it seemed such a poor shallow regret, yet he has reckoned it repentance, and accepted it as such.  Our love to him!

Oh, our poor love to him has been like a spark hiding away in the ashes, yet he has called it love.  He has known us better than we know ourselves, and he has known we loved him notwithstanding the feebleness of our affection.  These poor, frail graces of ours that we have been ashamed of, he has nevertheless rejoiced in them, and had a joy in them as being the gift of his Spirit, of “the exceeding riches of his grace.”

Ever since our conversion, the Lord has held on to us, and helped us to hold on to him.  We have tried him sorely time out of mind.  Sometimes we talk about our trials.  There is another side to that.  Think of Christ’s trials: how we have grieved him.  We must have provoked his spirit ten thousand times, yet he loves us infinitely, and does not give us up. He has espoused us to himself, and he never will divorce us.  He never sued out a divorce against a soul that was married to him, nor ever will he.  He has not grown cold in his love; notwithstanding our chilliness he loves us now with all his great and infinite heart; and by-and-by he will open the golden gates, and he will say, “Come up hither.”

“Then, Lord, shall I fully know,

Not till then, how much I owe.”

But if when I get to heaven, I shall know what I owed him here, I shall be in a greater difficulty than ever, for I shall not know what I then owe him in his glory.  It is an enormous debt we owe him for the blessings of time, and perhaps in eternity we shall begin to calculate their value; but then we shall be sweetly oppressed with a new burden, in a sense of the amazing mercy which he will then be giving us at his right hand.  We may give up the endless task.  We cannot possibly calculate the sum.  Brethren, we are all in an  equal difficulty, and shall be so for ever, for the Lord will go on to deluge us with mercy, grace, favor, for ever and for ever, and we shall say to one another, when millions of years have gone, “Brother, is it not still astonishing?  Do you seem to know much more of it than you did in the Tabernacle that morning when you heard the poor preacher try to do his best with his subject, and he was utterly lost in it?”  And you will say, “I know far more, but I am as far off as ever from knowing all, for now I know more of my ignorance; I know more of the extent of what I do not know.”  Brothers, if what we do know and what we do not know are added together to make up the total sum of the Lord’s grace, what must it be?

“God only knows the love of God:

Oh that it now were shed abroad

In these poor stony hearts.”

God grant it, for Jesus’ sake.  Amen.

Delivered on Lord’s-day morning, June 18th, 1882.

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I believe that the best, surest, and most permanent way to fill a place of worship is to preach the gospel, and to preach it in a natural, simple, interesting, earnest way. The gospel itself has a singularly fascinating power about it, and unless impeded by an unworthy delivery, or by some other great evil, it will win its own way. It certainly did so at the first, and what is to hinder it now? Like the angels, it flew upon its own wings; like the dew, it tarried not for man, neither waited for the sons of men. The Lord gave the word; great was the company of them that published it; their line went forth throughout all the world, and the nations heard the glad tidings from heaven.

The gospel has a secret charm about it which secures a hearing: it casts its good spell over human ears, and they must hearken. It is God’s own word to men; it is precisely what human necessities require; it commends itself to man’s conscience, and, sent home by the Holy Spirit, it wakes an echo in every heart.

In every age, the faithful preaching of the good news has brought forth hosts of men to hear it, made willing in the day of God’s power. I shall need a vast amount of evidence before I shall come to the conclusion that its old power is gone. My own experience does not drive me to such a belief, but leads me in the opposite direction. Thirty years of crowded houses leave me confident of the attractions of divine truth: I see nothing as yet to make me doubt its sufficiency for its own propagation. Shorn of its graciousness, robbed of its certainty, spoiled of its peculiarities, the sacred word may become unattractive; but decked in the glories of free and sovereign grace, wearing the crown–royal of the covenant, and the purple of atonement, the gospel, like a queen, is still glorious for beauty, supreme over hearts and minds. Published in all its fulness, with a clear statement of its efficacy and immutability, it is still the most acceptable news that ever reached the ears of mortals. You shall not in my most despondent moments convince me that our Lord was mistaken when he said, “If I be lifted up, I will draw all men unto myself.”

Edited from The Sword and the Trowel (August, 1883).

The current formatting and editing is copyrighted by Jim Ehrhard, 2000. You are permitted to reproduce and distribute this material in any format provided that: (1) you credit the author; (2) any modifications are clearly marked; (3) you do not charge a fee beyond the cost of reproduction; and (4) you do not make more than 100 copies without permission. If you would like to post this material to your web site or make any use other than as defined above, please contact

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“And Jesus saith unto them, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

When Christ calls us by his grace we ought not only to remember what we are, but we ought also to think of what he can make us. It is, “Follow me, and I will make you.” We should repent of what we have been, but rejoice in what we may be. It is not “Follow me, because of what you are already.” It is not “Follow me, because you may make something of yourselves;” but, “Follow me, because of what I will make you.” Verily, I might say of each one of us as soon as we are converted, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” It did not seem a likely thing that lowly fishermen would develop into apostles; that men so handy with the net would be quite as much at home in preaching sermons and in instructing converts. One would have said, “How can these things be? You cannot make founders of churches out of peasants of Galilee.”

That is exactly what Christ did; and when we are brought low in the sight of God by a sense of our own unworthiness, we may feel encouraged to follow Jesus because of what he can make us. O you who see in yourselves at present nothing that is desirable, come you and follow Christ for the sake of what he can make out of you. Do you not hear his sweet voice calling to you, and saying, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men?”

Note, next, that we are not made all that we shall be, nor all that we ought to desire to be, when we are ourselves fished for and caught. This is what the grace of God does for us at first; but it is not all. We are like the fishes, making sin to be our element; and the good Lord comes, and with the gospel net he takes us, and he delivers us from the life and love of sin. But he has not wrought for us all that he can do, nor all that we should wish him to do, when he has done this; for it is another and a higher miracle to make us who were fish to become fishers – to make the convert into a converter – the receiver of the gospel into an imparter of that same gospel to other people.

I think I may say to every person whom I am addressing – If you are saved yourself, the work is but half done until you are employed to bring others to Christ. You are as yet but half formed in the image of your Lord. You have not attained to the full development of the Christ-life in you unless you have commenced in some feeble way to tell to others of the grace of God: and I trust that you will find no rest to the sole of your foot till you have been the means of leading many to that blessed Savior who is your confidence and your hope. His word is–Follow me, not merely that you may be saved, nor even that you may be sanctified; but, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Be following Christ with that intent and aim; and fear that you are not perfectly following him unless in some degree he is making use of you to be fishers of men. The fact is that every one of us must take to the business of a mancatcher. If Christ has caught us, we must catch others. If we have been apprehended of him, we must be his constables, to apprehend rebels for him. Let us ask him to give us grace to go a-fishing, and so to cast our nets that we may take a great multitude of fishes. Oh that the Holy Ghost may raise up from among us some master-fishers, who shall sail their boats in many a sea, and surround great shoals of fish!

My teaching at this time will be very simple, but I hope it will be eminently practical; for my longing is that not one of you that love the Lord may be backward in his service. What says the Song of Solomon concerning certain sheep that come up from the washing? It says, “Every one beareth twins, and none is barren among them.” May that be so with all the members of this church, and all the Christian people that hear or read this sermon!

The fact is, the day is very dark. The heavens are lowering with heavy thunder-clouds. Men little dream of what tempests may soon shake this city, and the whole social fabric of this land, even to a general breaking up of society. So dark may the night become that the stars may seem to fall like blighted fruit from the tree. The times are evil. Now, if never before, every glow-worm must show its spark. You with the tiniest farthing candle must take it from under the bushel, and set it on a candlestick. There is need of you all. Lot was a poor creature. He was a very, very wretched kind of believer; but still, he might have been a great blessing to Sodom had he but pleaded for it as he should have done. And poor, poor Christians, as I fear many are, one begins to value every truly converted soul in these evil days, and to pray that each one may glorify the Lord. I pray that every righteous man, vexed as he is with the conversation of the wicked, may be more importunate in prayer than he has ever been, and return unto his God, and get more spiritual life, that he may be a blessing to the perishing people around him. I address you, therefore, at this time first of all upon this thought. Oh that the Spirit of God may make each one of you feel his personal responsibility!

Here is for believers in Christ, in order to their usefulness, something for them to do: “Follow me.” But, secondly, here is something to be done by their great Lord and Master: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” You will not grow into fishers of yourselves, but this is what Jesus will do for you if you will but follow him. And then, lastly, here is a good illustration, used according to our great Master’s wont; for scarcely without a parable did he speak unto the people. He presents us with an illustration of what Christian men should be – fishers of men. We may get some useful hints out of it, and I pray the Holy Spirit to bless them to us.

I. First, then, I will take it for granted that every believer here wants to be useful. If he does not, I take leave to question whether he can be a true believer in Christ. Well, then, if you want to be really useful, here is SOMETHING FOR YOU TO DO TO THAT END: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

What is the way to become an efficient preacher? “Young man,” says one, “go to college.” “Young man,” says Christ, “follow me, and I will make you a fisher of men.” How is a person to be useful? “Attend a training-class,” says one. Quite right; but there is a surer answer than that—Follow Jesus, and he will make you fishers of men. The great training-school for Christian workers has Christ at its head; and he is at its head, not only as a tutor, but as a leader: we are not only to learn of him in study, but to follow him in action. “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” The direction is very distinct and plain, and I believe that it is exclusive, so that no man can become a fisherman by any other process. This process may appear to be very simple; but assuredly it is most efficient. The Lord Jesus Christ, who knew all about fishing for men, was himself the Dictator of the rule, “Follow me, if you want to be fishers of men. If you would be useful, keep in my track.”

I understand this, first, in this sense: be separate unto Christ. These men were to leave their pursuits; they were to leave their companions; they were, in fact, to quit the world, that their one business might be, in their Master’s name, to be fishers of men. We are not all called to leave our daily business, or to quit our families. That might be rather running away from the fishery than working at it in God’s name. But we are called most distinctly to come out from among the ungodly, and to be separate, and not to touch the unclean thing. We cannot be fishers of men if we remain among men in the same element with them. Fish will not be fishers. The sinner will not convert the sinner. The ungodly man will not convert the ungodly man; and, what is more to the point, the worldly Christian will not convert the world. If you are of the world, no doubt the world will love its own; but you cannot save the world. If you are dark, and belong to the kingdom of darkness, you cannot remove the darkness. If you march with the armies of the wicked one, you cannot defeat them. I believe that one reason why the church of God at this present moment has so little influence over the world is because the world has so much influence over the church.

The first lesson which the church has to learn is this: Follow Jesus into the separated state, and he will make you fishers of men. Unless you take up your cross and protest against an ungodly world, you cannot hope that the holy Jesus will make you fishers of men.

A second meaning of our text is very obviously this: abide with Christ, and then you will be made fishers of men. These disciples whom Christ called were to come and live with him. They were every day to be associated with him. They were to hear him teach publicly the everlasting gospel, and in addition they were to receive choice explanations in private of the word which he had spoken. They were to be his body-servants and his familiar friends. They were to see his miracles and hear his prayers; and, better still, they were to be with himself, and become one with him in his holy labor. It was given to them to sit at the table with him, and even to have their feet washed by him. Many of them fulfilled that word, “Where thou dwellest I will dwell.” They were with him in his afflictions and persecutions. They witnessed his secret agonies; they saw his many tears; they marked the passion and the compassion of his soul, and thus, after their measure, they caught his spirit, and so they learned to be fishers of men.

At Jesus’ feet, we must learn the art and mystery of soul-winning to live with Christ is the best education for usefulness. It is a great boon to any man to be associated with a Christian minister whose heart is on fire. The best training for a young man is that which pastors were wont to give, when each old man had a young man with him who walked with him whenever he went up the mountainside to preach, and lived in the house with him, and marked his prayers and saw his daily piety. This was a fine instruction. Was it not? But it will not compare with that of the apostles who lived with Jesus himself, and were his daily companions. Matchless was the training of the twelve. No wonder that they became what they were with such a heavenly tutor to saturate them with his own spirit! And now to-day his bodily presence is not among us; but his spiritual power is perhaps more fully known to us than it was to those apostles in those two or three years of the Lord’s corporeal presence.

There be some of us to whom he is intimately near. We know more about him than we do about our dearest earthly friend. We have never been able quite to read our friend’s heart in all its twistings and windings, but we know the heart of the Well Beloved. We have leaned our head upon his bosom, and have enjoyed fellowship with him such as we could not have with any of our own kith and kin. This is the surest method of learning how to do good. Live with Jesus, follow Jesus, and he will make you fishers of men. See how he does the work, and so learn how to do it yourself. A Christian man should be bound apprentice to Jesus to learn the trade of a Savior. We can never save men by offering a redemption, for we have none to present; but we can learn how to save men by warning them to flee from the wrath to come, and setting before them the one great effectual remedy.

See how Jesus saves, and you will learn how the thing is done: there is no learning it anyhow else. Live in fellowship with Christ, and there shall be about you an air and a manner as of one who has been made in heart and mind apt to teach, and wise to win souls.

A third meaning, however, must be given to this “Follow me,” and it is this: “Obey me, and then you shall know what to do to save men.” We must not talk about our fellowship with Christ, or our being separated from the world unto him, unless we make him our Master and Lord in everything. Some public teachers are not true at all points to their convictions, and how can they look for a blessing? A Christian man anxious to be useful, ought to be very particular as to every point of obedience to his Master. I have no doubt whatever that God blesses our churches even when they are very faulty, for his mercy endureth forever.

When there is a measure of error in the teaching, and a measure of mistake in the practice, he may still vouchsafe to use the ministry, for he is very gracious. But a large measure of blessing must necessarily be withheld from all teaching which is knowingly or glaringly faulty. God can set his seal upon the truth that is in it, but he cannot set his seal upon the error that is in it. Out of mistakes about Christian ordinances and other things, especially errors in heart and spirit, there may come evils which we never looked for. Such evils may even now be telling upon the present age, and may work worse mischief upon future generations. If we desire as fishers of men to be largely used of God we must copy our Lord Jesus in everything, and obey him in every point. Failure in obedience may lead to failure in success.

Again, I think that there is a great lesson in my text to those who preach their own thoughts instead of preaching the thoughts of Christ. These disciples were to follow Christ that they might listen to him, hear what he had to say, drink in his teaching, and then go and teach what he had taught them. Their Lord says, “What I tell you in darkness, speak ye in light: and what ye hear in the ear, that preach ye upon the housetops.” If they will be faithful reporters of Christ’s message, he will make them “fishers of men.”

But you know the boastful method nowadays is this: “I am not going to preach this old, old gospel, this musty Puritan doctrine. I will sit down in my study, and burn the midnight oil, and invent a new theory; then I will come out with my brand-new thought, and blaze away with it.” Many are not following Christ, but following themselves, and of them the Lord may well say, “Thou shalt see whose word shall stand, mine or theirs.” Others are wickedly prudent, and judge that certain truths which are evidently God’s word had better be kept back. You must not be rough, but must prophesy smooth things. To talk about the punishment of sin, to speak of eternal punishment, why, these are unfashionable doctrines. It may be that they are taught in the Word of God, but they do not suit the genius of the age. We must pare them down. Brothers in Christ, I will have no share in this. Will you? O my soul, come not thou into their secret!

To a great degree I attribute the looseness of the age to the laxity of the doctrine preached by its teachers. From the pulpit they have taught the people that sin is a trifle. From the pulpit these traitors to God and to his Christ have taught the people that there is no hell to be feared. A little, little hell, perhaps, there may be; but just punishment for sin is made nothing of. The precious atoning sacrifice of Christ has been derided and misrepresented by those who were pledged to preach it. They have given the people the name of the gospel, but the gospel itself has evaporated in their hands. From hundreds of pulpits, the gospel is as clean gone as the dodo from its old haunts; and still the preachers take the position and name of Christ’s ministers. Well, and what comes of it? Why, their congregations grow thinner and thinner; and so it must be. Jesus says, “Follow me, I will make you fishers of men;” but if you go in your own way, with your own net, you will make nothing of it, and the Lord promises you no help in it. The Lord’s directions make himself our leader and example. It is, “Follow me, follow me. Preach my gospel. Preach what I preached. Teach what I taught, and keep to that.” With that blessed servility which becomes one whose ambition it is to be a copyist, and never to be an original, copy Christ even in jots and tittles. Do this, and he will make you fishers of men; but if you do not do this, you shall fish in vain.

I close this head of discourse by saying that we shall not be fishers of men unless we follow Christ in one other respect; and that is, by endeavoring, in all points, to imitate his holiness. Holiness is the most real power that can be possessed by men or women. We may preach orthodoxy, but we must also live orthodoxy. God forbid that we should preach anything else; but it will be all in vain, unless there is a life at the back of the testimony. An unholy preacher may even render truth contemptible. In proportion as any of us draw back from a living and zealous sanctification, we shall draw back from the place of power.

Our power lies in this word, “Follow me.” Be Jesus-like. In all things endeavor to think, and speak, and act as Jesus did, and he will make you fishers of men. This will require self-denial. We must daily take up the cross. This may require willingness to give up our reputation — readiness to be thought fools, idiots, and the like, as men are apt to call those who are keeping close to their Master. There must be the cheerful resigning of everything that looks like honor and personal glory, in order that we may be wholly Christ’s and glorify his name. We must live his life and be ready to die his death, if need be. O brothers, sisters, if we do this and follow Jesus, putting our feet into the footprints of his pierced feet, he will make us fishers of men. If it should so please him that we should even die without having gathered many souls to the cross, we shall speak from our graves. In some way or other, the Lord will make a holy life to be an influential life. It is not possible that a life which can be described as a following of Christ should be an unsuccessful one in the sight of the Most High. “Follow me,” and there is an “I will” such as God can never draw back from: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Thus much on the first point. There is something for us to do: we are graciously called to follow Jesus. Holy Spirit, lead us to do it.

II. But secondly, and briefly, there is SOMETHING FOR THE LORD TO DO.

When his dear servants are following him, he says, “I will make you fishers of men;” and be it never forgotten that it is he that makes us follow him; so that if the following of him be the step to being made a fisher of men, yet this he gives us. ‘Tis all of his Spirit. I have talked about catching his spirit, and abiding in him, and obeying him, and hearkening to him, and copying him; but none of these things are we capable of apart from his working them all in us. “From me is thy fruit found,” is a text which we must not for a moment forget. So, then, if we do follow him, it is he that makes us follow him; and so he makes us fishers of men.

But, further, if we follow Christ, he will make us fishers of men by all our experience. Keep close to your Lord and he will make every step a blessing to you. If God in providence should make you rich, he will fit you to speak to those ignorant and wicked rich who so much abound in this city, and so often are the cause of its worst sin. And if the Lord is pleased to let you be very poor you can go down and talk to those wicked and ignorant poor people who so often are the cause of sin in this city, and so greatly need the gospel. The winds of providence will waft you where you can fish for men. The wheels of providence are full of eyes, and all those eyes will look this way to help us to be winners of souls. You will often be surprised to find how God has been in a house that you visit: before you get there, his hand has been at work in its chambers. When you wish to speak to some particular individual, God’s providence has been dealing with that individual to make him ready for just that word which you could say, but which nobody else but you could say. Oh, be you following Christ, and you will find that he will, by every experience through which you are passing, make you fishers of men.

Further than that, if you will follow him he will make you fishers of men by distinct monitions in your own heart. There are many monitions from God’s Spirit which are not noticed by Christians when they are in a callous condition; but when the heart is right with God and living in communion with God, we feel a sacred sensitiveness, so that we do not need the Lord to shout, but his faintest whisper is heard. Nay, he need not even whisper. “Thou shalt guide me with thine eye.” The Christian who follows his Lord shall be tenderly guided. I do not say that the Spirit of God will say to you, “Go and join yourself unto this chariot,” or that you will hear a word in your ear; but yet in your soul, as distinctly as the Spirit said to Philip, “Go and join yourself to this chariot,” you shall hear the Lord’s will. As soon as you see an individual, the thought shall cross your mind, “Go and speak to that person.” Every opportunity of usefulness shall be a call to you. If you are ready, the door shall open before you, and you shall hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk ye in it.” If you have the grace to run in the right way you shall never be long without an intimation as to what the right way is. That right way shall lead you to river or sea, where you can cast your net, and be a fisher of men.

Then, too, I believe that the Lord meant by this that he would give his followers the Holy Ghost. They were to follow him, and then, when they had seen him ascend into the holy place of the Most High, they were to tarry at Jerusalem for a little while, and the Spirit would come upon them and clothe them with a mysterious power. This word was spoken to Peter and Andrew; and you know how it was fulfilled to Peter. What a host of fish he brought to land the first time he cast the net in the power of the Holy Ghost! Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

Brethren, we have no conception of what God could do by this company of believers gathered in the Tabernacle to-night. If now we were to be filled with the Holy Ghost there are enough of us to evangelize London. There are enough here to be the means of the salvation of the world. God saveth not by many nor by few. Let us seek a benediction; and if we seek it let us hear this directing voice, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.”

You men and women that sit before me, you are by the shore of a great sea of human life swarming with the souls of men. You live in the midst of millions; but if you will follow Jesus, and be faithful to him, and true to him, and do what he bids you, he will make you fishers of men. Do not say, “Who shall save this city?” The weakest shall be strong enough. Gideon’s barley cake shall smite the tent, and make it lay along. Samson, with the jawbone, taken up from the earth where it was lying bleaching in the sun, shall smite the Philistines. Fear not, neither be dismayed. Let your responsibilities drive you closer to your Master. Let horror of prevailing sin make you look into his dear face who long ago wept over Jerusalem, and now weeps over London. Clasp him, and never let go your hold. By the strong and mighty impulses of the divine life within you, quickened and brought to maturity by the Spirit of God, learn this lesson from your Lord’s own mouth: “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” You are not fit for it, but he will make you fit. You cannot do it of yourselves, but he will make you do it. You do not know how to spread nets and draw shoals of fish to shore, but he will teach you. Only follow him, and he will make you fishers of men.

I wish that I could somehow say this as with a voice of thunder, that the whole church of God might hear it. I wish I could write it in stars athwart the sky, “Jesus saith, Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” If you forget the precept, the promise shall never be yours. If you follow some other track, or imitate some other leader, you shall fish in vain. God grant us to believe fully that Jesus can do great things in us, and then do great things by us for the good of our fellows!

III. The last point you might work out in full for yourselves in your private meditations with much profit. We have here A FIGURE FULL OF INSTRUCTION. I will give you but two or three thoughts which you can use.

A fisher is a person who is very dependent, and needs to be trustful. He cannot see the fish. One who fishes in the sea must go and cast in the net, as it were, at a peradventure. Fishing is an act of faith. I have often seen in the Mediterranean men go with their boats and enclose acres of sea with vast nets; and yet, when they have drawn the net to shore, they have not had as much result as I could put in my hand. A few wretched silvery nothings have made up the whole take. Yet they have gone again and cast the great net several times a day, hopefully expecting something to come of it. Nobody is so dependent upon God as the minister of God. Oh, this fishing from the Tabernacle pulpit! What a work of faith! I cannot tell that a soul will be brought to God by it. I cannot judge whether my sermon will be suitable to the persons who are here, except that I do believe that God will guide me in the casting of the net. I expect him to work salvation, and I depend upon him for it. I love this complete dependence, and if I could be offered a certain amount of preaching power, by which I could save sinners, which should be entirely at my own disposal, I would beg the Lord not to let me have it, for it is far more delightful to be entirely dependent upon him at all times. Go to work, you who would be fishers of men, and yet feel your insufficiency. You that have no strength, attempt this divine work. Your Master’s strength will be seen when your own has all gone. A fisherman is a dependent person, he must look up for success every time he puts the net down; but still he is a trustful person, and therefore he casts in the net joyfully.

A fisherman who gets his living by it is a diligent and persevering man. The fishers are up at dawn. At day-break our fishermen off the Doggerbank are fishing, and they continue fishing till late in the afternoon. As long as hands can work men will fish. May the Lord Jesus make us hard-working, persevering, unwearied fishers of men! “In the morning sow thy seed, and in the evening withhold not thine hand; for thou knowest not whether shall prosper, either this or that.”

The fisherman in his own craft is intelligent and watchful. It looks very easy, I dare say, to be a fisherman, but you would find that it was no child’s play if you were to take a real part in it. There is an art in it, from the mending of the net right on to the pulling it to shore. How diligent the fisherman is to prevent the fish leaping out of the net! They are very crafty, these fish, and they use this craftiness in endeavoring to avoid salvation. We shall have to be always at our business, and to exercise all our wits, and more than our own wits, if we are to be successful fishers of men.

The fisherman is a very laborious person. It is not at all an easy calling. He does not sit in an armchair and catch fish. He has to go out in rough weathers. If he that regardeth the clouds will not sow, I am sure that he that regardeth the clouds will never fish. If we never do any work for Christ except when we feel up to the mark, we shall not do much. We must be always at it, until we wear ourselves out, throwing our whole soul into the work in all weathers, for Christ’s sake.

The fisherman is a daring man. He tempts the boisterous sea. A little brine in his face does not hurt him; he has been wet through a thousand times, it is nothing to him. He never expected when he became a deep-sea fisherman that he was going to sleep in the lap of ease. So the true minister of Christ who fishes for souls will never mind a little risk. He will be bound to do or say many a thing that is very unpopular; and some Christian people may even judge his utterances to be too severe. He must do and say that which is for the good of souls. It is not his to entertain a question as to what others will think of his doctrine, or of him; but in the name of the Almighty God he must feel, “If the sea roar and the fullness thereof, still at my Master’s command I will let down the net.”

Now, in the last place, the man whom Christ makes a fisher of men is successful. “But,” says one, “I have always heard that Christ’s ministers are to be faithful, but that they cannot be sure of being successful.” Yes, I have heard that saying, and one way I know it is true, but another way I have my doubts about it. He that is faithful is, in God’s way and in God’s judgment, successful, more or less. For instance, here is a brother who says that he is faithful. Of course, I must believe him, yet I never heard of a sinner being saved under him. Indeed, I should think that the safest place for a person to be in if he did not want to be saved would be under this gentleman’s ministry, because he does not preach anything that is likely to arouse, impress, or convince anybody.

Well, if any person in the world said to you, “I am a fisherman, but I have never caught anything,” you would wonder how he could be called a fisherman. A farmer who never grew any wheat, or any other crop – is he a farmer? When Jesus Christ says, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men,” he means that you shall really catch men – that you really shall save some; for he that never did get any fish is not a fisherman. He that never saved a sinner after years of work is not a minister of Christ. If the result of his life-work is nil, he made a mistake when he undertook it. Go thou and scatter the good seed: it may not all fall in fruitful places, but some of it will. Be thou sure of that. Do but shine, and some eye or other will be lightened thereby.

Thou must, thou shalt succeed. But remember this is the Lord’s word –”Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Keep close to Jesus, and do as Jesus did, in his spirit, and he will make you fishers of men.

Perhaps I speak to an attentive hearer who is not converted at all. Friend, I have the same thing to say to you. You also may follow Christ, and then he can use you, even you. I do not know but that he has brought you to this place that you may be saved, and that in after years he may make you speak for his name and glory. Remember how he called Saul of Tarsus, and made him the apostle of the Gentiles. Reclaimed poachers make the best gamekeepers; and saved sinners make the ablest preachers. Oh, that you would run away from your old master to-night, without giving him a minute’s notice; for if you give him any notice, he will hold you. Hasten to Jesus, and say, “Here is a poor runaway slave! My Lord, I bear the fetters still upon my wrists. Wilt thou set me free, and make me thine own?”

Remember, it is written, “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out.” Never runaway slave came to Christ in the middle of the night without his taking him in; and he never gave one up to his old master. If Jesus make you free you shall be free indeed. Flee away to Jesus, then, on a sudden. May his good Spirit help you, and he will by-and-by make you a winner of others to his praise! God bless you. Amen.

Edited from a sermon preached by Spurgeon in 1886.

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