Sermon Tone Analysis

Sermon

Creator: Charles Spurgeon

Date: October 18, 1857

References:

Title: The True Christian’s Blessedness

A Sermon

DELIVERED ON SABBATH MORNING OCTOBER 18, 1857, BY THE

REV. C. H. SPURGEON,

AT THE MUSIC HALL, ROYAL SURREY GARDENS.

“We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”—.

I. WE have here the description of a true Christian, and a declaration of that Christian’s blessedness.

We have him first very succinctly, but very fully described in these words—“Them that love God, them who are the called according to his purpose.”

These two expressions are the great distinguishing marks whereby we are able to separate the precious from the vile, by discovering to us who are the children of God.

The first contains an outward manifestation of the second—“Them that love God.”

Now, there are many things in which the worldly and the godly do agree; but on this point there is a vital difference.

No ungodly man loves God—at least not in the Bible sense of the term.

An unconverted man may love a God, as, for instance, the God of nature, and the God of the imagination; but the God of revelation no man can love, unless grace has been poured into his heart, to turn him from that natural enmity of the heart towards God, in which all of us are born.

And there may be many differences between godly men, as there undoubtedly are; they may belong to different sects, they may hold very opposite opinions, but all godly men agree in this, that they love God.

Whosoever loveth God, without doubt, is a Christian; and whosoever loveth him not, however high may be his pretensions, however boastful his professions, hath not seen God, neither known him, for “God is love, and he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”

True believers love God as their Father; they have “the spirit of adoption, whereby they cry Abba, Father.”

They love him as their King; they are willing to obey him, to walk in his commands is their delight; no path is so soft to their feet as the path of God’s precepts, the way of obedience thereunto.

They love God also as their Portion, for in him they live and move and have their being; God is their all, without him they have nothing, but possessing him, however little they may have of outward good, they feel that they are rich to all the intents of bliss.

They love God as their future Inheritance; they believe that when days and years are past they shall enter into the bosom of God; and their highest joy and delight is the full conviction and belief, that one day they shall dwell for ever near his throne, be hidden in the brightness of his glory, and enjoy his everlasting favour.

Dost thou love God, not with lip-language, but with heart-service?

Dost thou love to pay him homage?

Dost thou love to hold communion with him?

Dost thou frequent his mercy-seat?

Dost thou abide in his commandments, and desire to be conformed unto his image?

If so, then the sweet things which we shall have to say this morning are thine.

But if thou art no lover of God, but a stranger to him, I beseech thee do not pilfer to-day and steal a comfort that was not intended for thee.

“All things work together for good,” but not to all men; they only work together for the good of “them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Note the second phrase, which contains also a description of the Christian—“the called according to his purpose.”

However much the Arminian may try to fritter away the meaning of this 8th chapter of the Romans we are obliged as long as we use terms and words to say, that the 8th chapter of the Romans and the 9th, are the very pillars of that Gospel which men now call Calvinism.

No man after having read these chapters attentively, and having understood them, can deny that the doctrines of sovereign, distinguishing grace, are the sum and substance of the teaching of the Bible.

I do not believe that the Bible is to be understood except by receiving these doctrines as true.

The apostle says that those who love God are “the called according to his purpose;” by which he means to say two things—first, that all who love God love him because he called them to love him.

He called them, mark you.

All men are called by the ministry, by the Word, by daily providence, to love God; there is a common call always given to men to come to Christ, the great bell of the gospel rings a universal welcome to every living soul that breathes; but alas! though that bell hath the very sound of heaven, and though all men do in a measure hear it, for “their line is gone out into all the earth and their Word unto the end of the world,” yet there was never an instance of any man having been brought to God simply by that sound.

All these things are insufficient for the salvation of any man; there must be superadded the special call, the call which man cannot resist, the call of efficacious grace, working in us to will and to do of God’s good pleasure.

Now, all them that love God love him because they have had a special, irresistible, supernatural call.

Ask them whether they would have loved God if left to themselves, and to a man, whatever their doctrines, they will confess—

“Grace taught my soul to pray,

Grace made my eyes o’erflow,

’Tis grace that kept me to this day

And will not let me go.”

I never heard a Christian yet who said that he came to God of himself, left to his own free-will.

Free-will may look very pretty in theory, but I never yet met any one who found it work well in practice.

We all confess that if we are brought to the marriage-banquet—

“ ’Twas the same love that spread the feast

That gently forced us in,

Else we had still refused to taste,

And perished in our sin.”

Many men cavil at election; the very word with some is a great bugbear; they no sooner hear it than they turn upon their heel indignantly.

But this know, O man, whatever thou sayest of this doctrine, it is a stone upon which, if any man fall, he shall suffer loss, but if it fall upon him it shall grind him to powder.

Not all the sophisms of the learned, nor all the legerdemain of the cunning, will ever be able to sweep the doctrine of election out of Holy Scripture.

Let any man hear and judge.

Hearken ye to this passage in the 9th of Romans! “For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth; It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger.

As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.

What shall we say then?

Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid!

For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion.

So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that showeth mercy.”

“Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault?

for who hath resisted his will?

Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour!

What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction: And that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had afore prepared unto glory.

Even us, whom he hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles.”

These are God’s words; if any man doth cavil at them, let him cavil; he rejecteth the testimony of God against himself.

If I promulgated the doctrine on my own authority, I could not blame you if you should turn against me, and reject it; but when, on the authority of Holy Scripture, I propound it, God forbid that any man should quarrel therewith.

I have affirmed, and I am sure most Christians will bear witness, that what I said was the truth, that if any man loveth God he loves him because God gave him grace to love him.

Now, suppose I should put the following question to any converted man in this hall.

Side by side with you there sits an ungodly person; you two have been brought up together; you have lived in the same house; you have enjoyed the same means of grace; you are converted, he is not; will you please to tell me what has made the difference?

Without a solitary exception the answer would be this—“If I am a Christian and he is not, unto God be the honour.”

Do you suppose for a moment that this is any injustice in God in having given you grace which he did not give to another?

I suppose you say “Injustice, no; God has a right to do as he wills with his own; I could not claim grace, nor could my companions; God chose to give it to me; the other has rejected grace wilfully to his own fault, and I should have done the same, but that he gave ‘more grace,’ whereby my will was constrained.”

Now, sir, if it is not wrong for God to do the thing, how can it be wrong for God to purpose to do the thing?

and what is election, but God’s purpose to do what he does do?

It is a fact which any man must be a fool who would dare to deny that God does give to one man more grace than to another; we cannot account for the salvation of one and the non-salvation of another but by believing, that God has worked more effectually in one man’s heart than another’s—unless you choose to give the honour to man, and say it consists in one man’s being better than another, and if so I will have no argument with you, because you do not know the gospel at all, or you would know that salvation is not of works but of grace.

If, then, you give the honour to God, you are bound to confess that God has done more for the man that is saved than for the man that is not saved.

How, then, can election be unjust, if its effect is not unjust?

However, just or unjust as man may choose to think it, Gad has done it, and the fact stands in man’s face, let him reject it as he pleases.

God’s people are known by their outward mark: they love God, and the secret cause of their loving God is this—God chose them from before the foundation of the world that they should love him, and he sent forth the call of his grace, so that they were called according to his purpose, and were led by grace to love and to fear him.

If that is not the meaning of the text I do not understand the English language.

“We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”

Now, my hearers, before I proceed to enter into the text, let the question go round.

Do I love God? Have I any reason to believe that I have been called according to his purpose?

Have I been born again from above?

Has the Spirit operated in my heart in a manner to which flesh and blood never can attain?

Have I passed from death unto life by the quickening agency of the Holy Ghost?

If I have, then God purposed that I should do so, and the whole of this great promise is mine.

II.

We shall take the words one by one, and try to explain them.

1.

Let us begin with the word “work.”

“We know that all things work.”

Look around, above, beneath, and all things work.

They work, in opposition to idleness.

The idle man that folds his arms or lies upon the bed of sloth is an exception to God’s rule; for except himself all things work.

There is not a star, though it seemeth to sleep in the deep blue firmament, which doth not travel its myriads of miles and work; there is not an ocean, or a river, which is not ever working, either clapping its thousand hands with storms, or bearing on its bosom the freight of nations.

There is not a silent nook within the deepest forest glade where work is not going on.