I found this sermon to be very impactful what implorings and pleadings to lost sinners. Oh God give us this impassioned heart to share with the lost adquately!
[b]AUDIO VERSION:
[b]WITNESSES AGAINST YOU.
NO. 2123
A SERMON INTENDED FOR READING ON LORD’S-DAY,
JANUARY 19TH, 1890,
DELIVERED BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.
“I set a great assembly against them.” — Nehemiah 5:7.
THE facts are these. At the time when certain of the Jews returned with
Nehemiah to Jerusalem, many of them were in very straitened
circumstances; and, contrary to the Jewish law, the richer Jews lent them
money upon usurious interest, amounting to the hundredth per month, or
twelve per cent. per annum. They took from their poorer brethren their
lands, or put a heavy mortgage upon them; and in some cases took the men
themselves to be slaves for debts which they had unavoidably incurred.
Now, as you know, every Jew was a landholder, and his land, if mortgaged
for a time, must return free to him in the fiftieth year; and, though a Jew
might for a while become a servant to his Jewish brother, yet he must go
out free at the end of the seventh year. He could only be bound for a short
period of servitude. Nehemiah called to him, therefore, the elders, and
nobles, and rulers of Jerusalem, and showed them how wrong they were to
hold their poorer brethren in bondage. “Ye exact usury, every one of his
brother,” he says; and he rebukes them sharply for it. When he found that
his own words were scarcely powerful enough with them, he gathered
together the people, and let them all have a voice, and in the many voices
there was power. “I set,” said he, “a great assembly against them.” Some
persons are deaf to the voice of justice until it is repeated loudly by
thousands of their fellow-men. The silent voice of principle and right they
will not hear, and the gentle rebuke of some one faithful friend they will
despise; but when righteousness enlists public opinion on its side, when
many are seen to be its advocates, then these very persons will show that
they have relics of conscience left, and they yield to right demands, because
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they see them not only to be just, but to be popular. This is the main point
with those of the feebler sort; and we turn the scale, if, like Nehemiah, we
“set a great assembly against them.”
Now, it struck me to-night that I could most properly, without any
difficulty whatever, set a great assembly against every unconverted person
here; and, in addition to calling upon him in the name of God, and by the
claims of truth, to consider his ways and turn to God, I might summon a
great assembly who should testify against the evil course which the
unconverted are pursuing.
I shall try to act upon this plan to-night, in reference to those who remain
unconverted. I would set a great assembly against you. You have not
repented of your sins; you have not accepted the salvation which is
provided in Christ Jesus; you live without prayer; you seek your own,
instead of seeking God.
I set against you the great assembly of all the godly that are upon the
earth. They all testify against you. They look upon you with love and
anxiety, and desire to see you converted; but, while you are as you are,
they are against you. Does not the consistent life of every true Christian
rebuke you? When you see humble persons devout, gracious, though
nothing be said, and though they be not eloquent in speech, is not their life
eloquent? Do you not feel it? Have you never felt, even in your most
careless moods, that it would be better for you if you were as they are?
And when you have seen them remain true and upright under temptation,
have you not said within yourself, “After all, there is something in them
which I admire, and I wish that I possessed the same strong principles to
keep me right in the hour of trial”? Every man, after all, in the bottom of
his soul, feels the power of godliness: he cannot help it. In the assembly of
the righteous God is greatly feared. The wicked know God’s presence
among his people, and they do fear it, whether they confess it or not. In
fact, slander, ridicule, and persecution are a form of homage which
rebellion pays to obedience, which sin pays at the footstool of
righteousness. The evil hate the good, because it condemns their evil; they
try to make themselves despise it because it makes them despise
themselves.
The righteous do not only stand against you in the consistency of their
character, but their joy in God rebukes you. If you happen to be an
unconverted man, and to have had a godly mother, the subject of much
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weakness and pain, you cannot have forgotten the sacred cheerfulness with
which she bore her life-long affliction. Or, if you have lost a Christian wife,
who enjoyed but little comfort in her life with you, you cannot but
remember that pale yet happy face when it bade you adieu, and entered
into its rest. You know there was a calm about that woman in the time of
trouble which you could not imitate; that she took patiently pain which
would have startled you into madness, for the power of grace was in her,
and made her strong. She, and such as she was, children of God, made
calm, and peaceful, and happy — I set them in an assembly against you,
and they bear witness against you, because you obey not the living God.
Moreover, they do not only bear witness, but their very horror at your sin
and at your state is a witness against you. I often think that, if I really could
know the condition of my unconverted hearers (thoroughly know it), it
might be impossible for me to address them. I do try to realize the position
of some of you, and to project my mind into the future which awaits you if
you die without God, and without hope. I am not about to give any terrible
descriptions of the world to come; but, remember, the most terrible I could
give would fall infinitely short of what the reality must be. If I could realize
that dreadful future more fully, this tongue might be silent through the
horror of my heart’s emotions. I pray you, therefore, by that terror which
we experience in speaking to you, let it stand as a witness against the sin
which will bring upon you such misery. We cannot bear to think of that
which awaits you. Holy Whitefield, when he began to touch upon that
subject, would, with the tears streaming down his cheeks, cry “The wrath
to come! The wrath to come!” It was too much for him. He could but
repeat those words, and there cease. We feel for you, if you will not feel for
yourselves. There are those present who never bow the knee at night
without praying for the unconverted with great burden of spirit. I know
some here, strong men, whom I have seen overcome with sacred passion
when they have agonized for you, and for the souls of the ungodly. It has
not been merely a plentiful stream of tears bedewing their manly cheeks,
but their hearts have heaved within their bosoms, and their whole being has
been convulsed with agony of spirit, lest, peradventure, you should perish.
All the praying people in the world I set as an assembly against you. Shall
they pray for you, and will you never pray for yourselves? Shall horror
seize them on account of your sins, and shall no horror ever seize you?
Shall a godly mother waste — no, it is not waste, shall she spend nights in
tears for your soul, and will you never weep the tear of repentance? Shall
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we plead with you with all the eagerness our heart is capable of, and search
for words with which to plead with you, and feel that we have done all too
little when we have done our best to persuade you — shall we do all this,
and yet will you say, “It is nothing to me. It is nothing to me”? Well, then,
if it must be so, I can only say that I set the whole assembly of the living
saints upon earth against you. Let them have some influence over you.
“Ah!” say you, “but there are many hypocrites amongst them.” Very well,
they shall go over to your side: you shall be welcome to them; but all the
sincere I set against you.
“But it is not the sincere only that pray.” Very well, you shall have all the
insincere. Poor company! I wonder you should claim them; but still, every
sincere believer does, as it were, when he pleads with God, protest against
you that your knees are never bent, and your hearts never cry to God as
the Father of spirits. Some live week after week, and month after month,
and year after year, without prayer. The very Mahometans and heathen
rebuke you: they dare not live a single day without their prayers. You are
worse than they are. The little chick, as it drinks at the stream, lifts its head
as though to thank God. You are worse than the poor fowls. You have
become like the swine under the oak, which search for the acorns, but
never think of the tree. You receive the mercies of God, but never give
thanks to the Giver. O conscience, if there be conscience left, cry shame
upon the man who dares to live without God! I set the prayerful, then,
against you.
But next, I have another mighty squadron to call. I set against unconverted
men all the inspired writers of the Old and New Testament. Let them come
up, one by one, and speak as they were wont to do. Not one has a word of
comfort for a man that will not repent of his sins. “Mercy,” they will all
cry, to the man that accepts the atoning sacrifice; but if he will not believe
in Jesus, with one chorus, all the prophets, and the apostles too, will say,
“Woe, woe, woe, woe unutterable to the man that lives and dies without
Christ!” The universal consent of all the men that ever spake as the Spirit
moved them is against the ungodly.
But I mention a larger host than either of these, and that is, the departed
saints. Oh, could you see them this day in their white robes, could you hear
their sacred song, it were a sight worth dying to behold; and the sound —
it were worth losing all the voices of earth in the silence of death to hear!
But suppose you, an unconverted person, should seek a friend amongst
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that blood-washed host. I will picture you beholding them as they stand in
their glorious ranks, and you say, “I am an enemy to God, I am prayerless,
I am impenitent, I am graceless, and I intend to remain so; which among
you all will be a friend to me?” Not an eye will glance upon you, except
with indignation; not a hand will be put out to grasp you. There! March
down that long file, look into those joyous faces, and see if you can find
among them all a trace of sympathy with your obstinate rebellion. Ask
them; conjure them to come and assist you in your sins, or to comfort you
in your impenitence. Is there one that will do it? I set the whole assembly
against you. And there stands one — you remember her, for though she is
strangely changed, and the beatific vision makes every part of her to shine
so gloriously, yet you know her. It was your mother, who wept over you in
childhood, and who died with prayers for you upon her lips. Ask her
whether, if you live and die unconverted, she will be your friend; and that
face, which you have often gazed upon with affection, and which was
always full of love to you, is turned from you. What has she to do, even
with her child, if that child is an heir of wrath? She loves the Savior too
much to side with the Savior’s enemies. On earth she could weep and pray
for you: in heaven she has other work to do, and has undergone such an
absorption into the will of God that, if your spirit should pass into another
world unrenewed, she, with those dear lips, would say, “Amen!” most
solemnly to your condemnation. She, too, will confess, with all the army of
the faithful, that the sentence would be just. There is not one of all you
knew on earth who is now in heaven who can love you, unless you are
renewed and changed in heart. I have sought with many of you, many
times, to put the truth as plainly as I could, and to speak as earnestly as I
could; but, once past the portal, and you are gone into another world, no
preacher shall ever trouble you there. Go down to the shades of death and
hell, and no earnest voices shall ever plead with you there. You shall have
nobody to ridicule as a fanatic there. You shall hear no sermons of which
you can say, “How the man seems to rave!” Ah, no! you shall have other
company, and other engagements, but all God’s ministers will be against
you; and, as long as you remain ungodly here, they are against you. I set
the whole host of the redeemed in heaven before you now, and challenge
you, by all their glory, to turn from the error of your way, lest that glory
should only increase your misery by contrast.
I have to add to all these saints on earth, and glorified spirits in heaven, the
whole company of the angels. They are the friends and companions of the
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saints, but they are by no means the friends of the ungodly. They would
rejoice over you if you repented; but, while you do not repent, it seems to
me as if full often the angels, as they fulfill their errands among us, must
feel tempted to cry, “Great God of vengeance, let us draw our swords, and
let us smite these rebels!” There stands a man who the other day cursed
God, and dared him to blast his limbs. If there had been an angel passing
by, and doubtless it might have been so, I wonder he did not pause,
suspended in mid-air, in very horror. I should not wonder if he felt in his
soul that it was poison to him to be near to such a man, and would fain
have drawn the mighty sword, which seraphs wield, to cut the man down.
The angels are against you. No one of the sacred host is friend to the man
who is the foe of God.
The worst is to come: God is against you. “The face of the Lord is against
them that do evil, to cut off the remembrance of them from the earth.” He
would fain have you saved. He has sworn with an oath, “As I live, saith the
Lord God, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the
wicked turn from his way and live.” But if you will not turn, you must
burn. If you will not repent, you must perish. God has said it, and he will
not lie. Justice demands it, and the Judge of all the earth must be just.
And, to crown all, Jesus Christ, the Son of God, is against you if you
resolve to be the enemy of God. He loves sinners: he died for sinners: he is
ever willing to receive them; but as long as they remain impenitent and
unbelieving, he cannot love their sin, he cannot love them, viewing them in
the light of wilful, persistent rebels. And when he comes in the latter days,
you know what will happen to those that loved not Christ: they will be
Anathema Maranatha — cursed his coming. He himself will say it; and it
appalls me to have to remind you of the fact — he himself, whose gentle
lips were like lilies dropping sweet-smelling myrrh, tender as a woman’s —
he himself, when he comes, will say, “Depart from me, ye cursed, into
everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels!” You will find no
friend in Christ in that last tremendous day. He will break you in pieces
with a rod of iron, as potters’ vessels are broken into shivers. So, then, I
set this great assembly against you: saints on earth and saints in heaven, the
angels, and God, and Christ himself against you.
Who is there for you? Who is there on your side, O enemies of God? It is
as dreadful to think of those who are for you as of those who are against
you; for those who are for you, and on your side, are the ungodly, like
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yourselves; and the lost in hell, who are now what you must be, except you
escape; and the devil and his angels, themselves punished for their sins. A
grim assembly, surely, those that are for you! Methinks a man should start
up and say — “I cannot abide in such company as this! Do I sail in this
pirate’s vessel, with such a dreadful crew on board? and Satan for captain?
In God’s name I will jump overboard, and swim to another ship, for in this
vessel I will never stay, and under this black flag I will never fight, let the
bribe be as high as it may. I cannot serve Satan, and I will not.” Friends, if
such be your language, I stand here, as a servant of Jesus, and hold above
you the blood-stained banner of Christ’s cross. Oh, ye who will take the
enlisting-money, here it is: come and take it, for whosoever receives Christ
— receives him by trusting him — to him is given power to become a
servant of Christ, and a soldier of the cross; and then I shall have no
assembly to set against him, but the same august assembly shall be on the
side of the man saved by faith in Jesus! God grant that these words may be
found useful, and Christ shall have the glory!
For a few minutes I will vary the strain, but keep closely to the same idea.
Some say that sin is a very pleasant and profitable thing: indeed, many
profess to be of that opinion nowadays. I may have some here, particularly
some young men just commencing life, who are fascinated by the charms of
London life, and have begun to sip of the dangerous wine which is vended
in the house of the strange woman. To them it seems that vice is pleasure.
O young man, I wish I had thee in a room alone, that I might speak to thee,
for some things that I would say earnestly to thee in private I must but hint
at in a public assembly. The results of sin are not such as I can speak of
here. Thou art under great delusions. If thou thinkest sin will give thee
pleasure, I will set an assembly against thee concerning this dream. Oh,
what an assembly it would be if I could bring up from the hospitals the
wretches who are suffering an earthly hell from their sins! Have I not seen
them? Have I not seen them crawling through the earth, creatures that dare
not look up, broken down with hypochondriasis, desponding and
despairing, with that despair which nothing but vice ever brings on man?
Have I not seen them when their very bones have rotted through their sin?
There are diseases which are the stamp and seal of the curse of the Eternal
upon transgression. There are diseases which are the big first drops of the
everlasting rain of hell’s tremendous tempest. If there were a physician or a
surgeon here, he could tell you that there are sins which are commonly
practiced, which bring on men, even in this life, a penalty most terrible. The
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furnace of hell devours; but, like Nebuchadnezzar’s guards, men in this life
are made to fall down, slain by the powerful heat that glows from the
eternal burnings, when God suffers a portion of the results of sin to come
upon them in this life. Could I not bring up here to-night, if it were fit and
proper, spendthrifts, who squandered their early days in all manner of
dissoluteness, and who have brought themselves to rags and disease? Go
over the casual ward, enter the union-house, spend an evening in a low
lodging-house, and sit down and hear the tales of sons of ministers, of sons
of gentlemen, of sons of noblemen, of men that once were merchants,
traders, lawyers, doctors, who have brought themselves down by nothing
else than their own extravagance and sin, to eat the bread of pauperism,
and to know the lack even of that bitter fare. Tell me sin is pleasure! If it
be, you can have too much of it; but it is bitterness before long, and they
are wise who flee from it.
“Well, well,” cries one, “we are not all lovers of that kind of sin.” Indeed, I
hope you are not: I, too, refused such sins, but I had other sins — the
world would not call them sins, but they were such — and when, before I
found the Savior, I began to discover what sin was (I speak what I do
know), my sins, to me in my consciousness, were a little hell. I know that
men who are not saved, sometimes on a dark night, or in sickness, or in
trouble, or when alone, will permit conscience to work, and they feel
dreadfully uneasy. Have I not seen your cheek blanch when you have been
told that your friend was dead? When the funeral knell has been tolling,
have you not wished yourself in the depths of the forest, that you might not
hear it? When you have been compelled to sit a little while alone, you
feared to allow your mind to meditate upon eternity; but you tried to fly off
again to the frivolities of time, though you felt there was nothing in them.
Sin is a wretched thing, unsatisfying at best. Even painted sins, with their
Jezebel faces, are not truly beautiful. What men call immoralities are
wretched in themselves, upon the outside; and a grain of common-sense
will enable a man to see that their misery far exceeds their pleasure. I set an
assembly against the man who declares that there is pleasure in iniquity.
On the other hand, it is said that true religion makes people miserable. I
would set an assembly against anybody who dares to say that. It was in my
mind to ask you who are unhappy through being Christians, to bear witness
to-night against Christianity, and then I thought perhaps I would put it the
other way; and let those of you who love the Savior, and find consolation
and happiness in him, sing with me one of our joyous hymns; and I warrant
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you, sirs, we would make this great dome resound with hearty music.
Unhappy! Unhappy through being Christians! I have suffered as much of
bodily pain as most here present, and I know also about as much of
depression of spirit at times as anyone; but my Master’s service is a blessed
service, and faith in him makes my heart leap for joy. I would not change
with the most healthy man, or the most wealthy man, or the most learned
man, or the most eminent man in all the world, if I had to give up my faith
in Jesus Christ — tried as it sometimes is. Ah! it is a blessed thing to be a
Christian, and all God’s people will tell you so. It is offtimes our lot to go
to see the sick, but sick believers usually cheer our heart. There is a seat
just below that used to be occupied by a beloved sister, well-known to you,
whom I went to visit in her sickness; and I do assure you, when she was in
a consumption, and near to death, I never spent a happier hour than I did
with her. And only last week, or ten days ago, when I sat down with her,
and she could scarcely speak, yet what she did say was as full of sacred joy
as words could compass. She is in heaven now, and heaven was in her
then. “So much farther on have I got,” said she, “to the better land — so
many the fewer of these hard breaths to fetch, and so many the fewer of
these hard pains to bear. I shall soon be where Jesus is;” and she talked as
freely about dying, and going home, as I should talk of going to my own
house when this service is ended. Before she fell asleep yesterday, about
twelve o’clock, she said to those about her she felt strangely as if she were
going through a river. At one time she said she was in the midst of it, the
floods were round about her; and soon she said, in intervals of
consciousness, “I am going up the other side; the waters are shallower: I
am mounting the other bank.” At length she cried, “Jesus is coming for me!
I can hear the music of heaven!” Her heart seemed to be overpowered with
some sweet mystic melody, which, if it did not enter her soul by the ear, at
any rate reached her inmost spirit by some other channel. “I can hear them
sing! I can hear them sing!” she said, “and when Jesus comes, don’t keep
him waiting for me; don’t wish me to stop. Let me go.” She is gone. Never
one I think suffered more in dying, and never had a consumptive more
difficulty in breathing. Thank God, they do not often suffer as much as she
did; yet there was never one more calm, more comfortable, and more
joyous on the bed of death than this daughter of affliction.
I believe in God without any evidence except himself, and his own
revelation of himself to my soul; but yet I thank God for evidences, and
among those most helpful to me are the death-beds of believers. It does my
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soul great good to see the Lord’s people depart this life. I grieve that you
should be taken away to heaven, for we want you here; but ah! if the
departure of any of you shall be so sweet as those I have been privileged to
witness of late, I shall come to my pulpit boldly. If the religion that I teach
makes men and women die like this, I am not ashamed to preach it. If the
faith that I have delivered to them, by the power of the Holy Ghost, makes
them so triumphant in the last article of death, I will deliver nothing else,
but still continue to tell them to trust simply in the substitutionary sacrifice
of Jesus Christ, and rest wholly and only there. I say, then, by the living
saints that do rejoice, and by the dying saints who die without a fear, I set
an assembly against the man who dares to slander true religion by saying
that it does not make men happy.
I had many other things to say, but it were well to leave you where you
are, only praying you, by the shortness of time, by the suddenness of death,
by the certainty of judgment, by the terrors of hell, by the glories of
heaven, by the value of your own souls, by the blood of Jesus, and by the
glory of the eternal God, to cease being his enemies. Seek ye his face. “Let
the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts: and let
him return unto the Lord, and he will have mercy upon him; and to our
God, for he will abundantly pardon.” “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ,
and thou shalt be saved;” for “he that believeth and is baptized shall be
saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.” From that, God save
you! Amen.
PORTION OF SCRIPTURE READ BEFORE SERMON — Isaiah 1:1-20.
HYMNS FROM “OUR OWN HYMN BOOK” — 387, 34, 514.