How Saints May Help the devil # 6 (and others)

How Saints May Help the devil # 6 (and others)

And now I conclude, by addressing the people of God with equal solemnity and earnestness.

My dear hearers, if I could weep tears of blood this morning, I could not show too much emotion concerning this most solemn point. I do not know that this text ever struck me before yesterday, but I no sooner noticed it than it came home to me as an accusation. I plead guilty to it, and I pray for forgiveness. I only wish that a like power may attend it to you, that you may feel that you have been guilty too. O friends, can you bear the thought that you may have helped to drag others down to hell? Christ has loved you and pardoned your sins; and will you push others downward? And yet if you are inconsistent, and especially if you are cold and lukewarm in your religion, you are doing it. "Well," says one, "I don't do much good, but I do not hurt." That is an impossibility. You must be either doing good or evil. There is no borderland between truth and sin; a man must be either on land or in the water; and you are either serving God or serving satan; each day you are increasing your Master's kingdom, or else diminishing it. I cannot bear the thought that any of you should be employed in satan's camp. Suppose there ever should be an invasion of this country by France. The tocsin rings from every church steeple, the drum is sounding in every street, and men are gathering at every market-cross. Peaceful men spring up to soldiers in an instant; and multitudes are marching away to the coast. When we come near it we behold a troop of soldiers who have climbed our white cliffs, and with bayonets fixed they are marching against us. We, with a tremendous cheer, rush on against them, to drive them back into the sea which girds our beloved country. Suddenly, as we rush forward, we detect scores of Englishmen marching in the same ranks with our foes, and seeking to ravage their own country. What should we say? Seize these traitors; let not one of them escape; put them all to death. Can Englishmen take the side of England's enemies? Can their fatherland, and take toe side of the tyrant Emperor? Can this be? Then let them die the death!" And yet this day I behold a more mournful spectacle yet. There is King Jesus marching at the head of His troops; and can it be that some of you, who profess to be His followers, are on the other side; that professing to be Christ's you are lighting in the ranks of the enemy - carrying the baggage of satan and wearing the uniform of hell, when you profess to be soldiers of Christ? I know there are such here: God forgive them! God spare them; and may the deserters yet come back, even though they come back in the chains of conviction! May they come back and be saved!  O brethren and sisters, there are enough to destroy souls without us - enough to extend the kingdom of satan without our helping him. "Come out from among them; touch not the unclean thing; be ye separate."  Church of God! Awake, awake, awake to the salvation of men! Sleep no longer, begin to pray, to wrestle, to travail in birth; be more holy, more consistent, more strict, more solemn in thy deportment! Begin, O soldiers of Christ, to be more true to your colors, and as surely as the time shall come when the church shall thus be reformed and revived, to surely shall the King come into our midst, and we shall march on to certain victory, trampling down our enemies, and getting to our King many crowns, through many victories achieved.

~Charles Haddon Spurgeon~

(The End)
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Would He not Stab It With A Thousand Wounds?

Sin never appears so odious, as when we behold it in the red glass of Christ's sufferings. Can we look upon sin as the occasion of all Christ's sufferings, can we look upon sin as that which made Christ a curse, and which made Him forsaken of His Father, and which made Him live such a miserable life, and which brought Him to die such a shameful, painful, and cruel death - and our hearts not rise against it?

Shall our sins be grievous unto Christ - and shall they not be odious unto us? Shall He die for our sins - and shall not we die to our sins? Did not He suffer for sin - that we might cease from sin?

If one would kill our father - would we hug and embrace him? Surely not! We would be revenged on him. Sin has killed our Saviour - and shall not be revenged on it?

Can a man look upon that snake which stung his dearly loved wife to death - and preserve it alive, warm it at the fire, and hug it in his bosom? Would he not stab it with a thousand wounds? It is sin which has stung our dear Jesus to death, which has crucified our Lord, clouded His glory, and shed His precious blood! Oh, how should this stir up our indignation against sin!

Ah, how can a Christian make much of those sins, which have killed his dearest Lord! How can he cherish those sins which betrayed Christ, and bound Christ, and condemned Christ, and scourged Christ, and which violently nailed Him to the Cross, and there murdered Him!

It was neither Judas, nor Pilate, nor the Jews, nor the soldiers - which could have done our Lord Jesus the least hurt - had not our sins, like so many butchers and hangmen, com in to their assistance!

~Thomas Brooks~