Travailing for Souls part5
September 3rd, 1871
by
C. H. SPURGEON
(1834-1892)
But the result is surprising, not only for its rapidity, but for the
greatness of it. It is said, "Shall a nation be born at once?" As soon as
ever Zion was in distress concerning her children, tens of thousands
came and built up Jerusalem, and re-established her fallen state. So, in
answer to prayer, God not only bestows speedy blessings, but great
blessings. There were fervent prayers in that upper room "before the
day of Pentecost had fully come," and what a great answer it was when,
after Peter's sermon, some three thousand were ready to confess their
faith in Christ, and to be baptized. Shall we never see such things
again? Is the Spirit straitened? Has his arm waxed short? Nay, verily,
but we clog and hinder him. He cannot do any mighty work here
because of our unbelief; and, if our unbelief were cast out, and if prayer
went up to God with eagerness, and vehemence, and importunity, then
would a blessing descend so copious as to amaze us all.
But enough of this, for I must needs pass on to the next point.
III. THIS TRAVAIL AND ITS RESULT ARE ABUNDANTLY DESIRABLE; pre-eminently
desirable at this hour. The world is perishing for a lack of knowledge. Did
any one among us ever lay China on his heart? Your imagination cannot
grapple with the population of that mighty empire, without God, without
Christ, strangers to the commonwealth of Israel. But it is not China alone;
there are other vast nations lying in darkness; the great serpent hath
coiled himself around the globe, and who shall set the world free from
him? Reflect upon this one city with its three millions. What sin the
moon sees! What sin the Sabbath sees! Alas for the transgressions of
this wicked city. Babylon of old could not have been worse than
London is, nor so guilty, for she had not the light that London has
received. Brethren, there is no hope for China, no hope for the world,
no hope for our own city, while the church is sluggish and lethargic.
Through the church the blessing is usually bestowed. Christ multiplies
the bread, and gives it to the disciples; the multitudes can only get it
through the disciples. Oh, it is time, it is high time that the churches
were awakened to seek the good of dying myriads. Moreover, brethren,
the powers of evil are ever active. We may sleep, but Satan sleepeth
never. The church's plough lies yonder, rusting in the furrow; do you
not see it to your shame? But the plough of Satan goes from end to end
of his great field, he leaves no headland, but he ploughs deep while
sluggish churches sleep. May we be stirred as we see the awful activity
of evil spirits and persons who are under their sway. How industriously
pernicious literature is spread abroad, and with what a zeal do men
seek for fresh ways of sinning. He is eminent among men who can
invent fresh songs to gratify the lascivious tongue, or find new
spectacles to delight unclean eyes. O God, are thine enemies awake,
and only thy friends asleep? O Sufferer, once bathed in bloody sweat in
Gethsemane, is there not one of the twelve awake but Judas? Are they
all asleep except the traitor? May God arouse us for his infinite mercy's
sake.
Besides this, my brethren, when a church is not serving God, mischief
is brewing withing herself. While she is not bringing others in, her own
heart is becoming weak in its pulsations, and her entire constitution is a
prey to decline. The church must either bring forth children unto God,
or else die of consumption: she has no alternative but that. A church
must either be fruitful or rot, and of all things, a rotting church is the
most offensive. Would God we could bury our dead churches out of
our sight, as Abraham buried Sarah, for above ground they breed a
pestilence of scepticism; for men say, "Is this religion?" and taking it to
be so, they forego true religion altogether.
And then, worst of all is, God is not glorified. If there be no yearning
of heart in the church, and no conversions, where is the travail of the
Redeemer's soul? Where, Immanuel, where are the trophies of thy
terrible conflict? Where are the jewels for thy crown? Thou shalt have
thine own, thy Father's will shall not be frustrated; thou shalt be
adored; but as yet we see it not. Hard are men's hearts, and they will
not love thee; unyielding are their wills, and they will not own thy
sovereignty. Oh! weep because Jesus is not honored. The foul oath still
curdles our blood as we hear it, and blasphemy usurps the place of
grateful song. Oh! by the wounds and bloody sweat, by the cross and
nails, and spear, I beseech you followers of Christ, be in earnest, that
Jesus Christ's name may be known and loved through the earnest
agonizing endeavors of the Christian church.
IV. And now I must come near to a close, by, in the fourth place,
noticing THE WOE WHICH WILL SURELY COME TO THOSE WHO HINDER THE TRAVAIL OF
THE CHURCH, and so prevent the bringing forth of her children. An earnest
spirit cannot complete its exhortations to zeal without pronouncing a
denunciation upon the indifferent. What said the heroine of old who had gone
forth against the enemies of Israel, when she remembered coward spirits?
"Curse ye Meroz, saith the angel of the Lord, curse ye bitterly the
inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the Lord against
the mighty." Some such curse will assuredly come upon every professing
Christian who is backward in helping the church in the day on her
soul's travail. And who are they that hinder her? I answer, every
worldly Christian hinders the progress of the gospel. Every member of
a church who is living in secret sin, who is tolerating in his heart any
thing that he knows to be wrong, who is not seeking eagerly his own
personal sanctification, is to that extent hindering the work of the Spirit
of God. "Be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord," for to the extent
that we maintain known unholiness, we restrain the Spirit. He cannot
work by us as long as any conscious sin is tolerated. It is not over
breaking of commandments that I am now speaking of, brethren, but I
include worldliness also--a care for carnal things, and a carelessness
about spiritual things, having enough grace just to make us hope that
you are a Christian, but not enough to prove you are; bearing a
shriveled apple here and there on the topmost bough, but not much
fruit; this I mean, this partial barrenness, not complete enough to
condemn, yet complete enough to restrain the blessing, this robs the
treasure of the church, and hinders her progress. O brethren, if any of
you are thus described, repent and do your first works; and God help
you to be foremost in proportion as you have been behind.
They are also guilty who distract the mind of the church from the
subject in hand. Anybody who calls off the thoughts of the church from
soul-saving is a mischief maker. I have heard it said of a minister, "He
greatly influences the politics of the town." Well, it is a very doubtful
good in my mind, a very doubtful good indeed. If the man, keeping to
his own calling of preaching the gospel, happens to influence these
meaner things, it is well, but any Christian minister who thinks that he
can do two things well, is mistaken. Let him mind soul-winning, and
not turn a Christian church into a political club. Let us fight out our
politics somewhere else, but not inside the church of God. There our
one business is soul-winning, our one banner is the cross, our one
leader is the crucified King. Inside the church there may be minor
things that take off the thoughts of men from seeking souls,--little
things that can be made beneath the eye that is microscopical, to swell
into great offences. Oh, my brethren, let us, while souls are perishing,
waive personal differences. "It must need be that offences come, but
woe unto him by whom the offence cometh;" but, after all, what can
there be that is worth taking notice of, compared with glorifying Christ.
If our Lord and Master would be honored by your being a doormat for
his saints to wipe their feet on, you would be honored to be in the
position; and if there shall come glory to God by your patient
endurance, even of insult and contumely, be glad in your heart that you
are permitted to be nothing that Christ may be all in all. We must by no
means turn aside to this or that; not even golden apples must tempt us
in this race! There lies the mark, and until it is reached, we must never
pause, but onward press, for Christ's cause and crown.
Above all, my brethren, we shall be hindering the travail of the church
if we do not share in it. Many church members think that if they do
nothing wrong, and make no trouble, then they are all right. Not at all,
sir; not at all. Here is a chariot, and we are all engaged to drag it. Some
of you do not put out your hands to pull; well, then, the rest of us have
to labor so much the more; and the worst of it is we have to draw you
also. While you do not add to the strength which draws, you increase
the weight that is to be drawn. It is all very well for you to say, "But I
do not hinder;" you do hinder, you cannot help hindering. If a man's
leg does not help him in walking, it certainly hinders him. Oh, I cannot
bear to think of it. That I should be a hindrance to my own sou's growth
is bad indeed; but that I should stand in the way of the people of God
and cool their courage, and damp their ardor--my Master, let it never
be! Sooner let me sleep among the clods of the valley, than be a
hindrance to the meanest work that is done for thy name.
V. And now I shall close, not with this note of woe, but with A WORD
OF BLESSING. Depend upon it there shall come a great blessing to
any of you who feel the soul travail that brings souls to God. Your own
heart will be watered. You know the old illustration, so often used that
it is now almost hackneyed, of the two travelers, who passed a man
frozen in the snow, and thought to be dead; and the one said, "I have
enough to do to keep myself alive, I will hasten on;" but the other said,
"I cannot pass a fellow-creature while there is the least breath in him."
He stooped down and began to warm the frozen man by rubbing him
with great vigor; and at last the poor fellow opened his eyes, came back
to life and animation, and walked along with the man who had restored
him to life; and what think you was one of the fist sights they saw? It
was the man who so selfishly took care of himself frozen to death. The
good Samaritan had preserved his own life by rubbing the other man;
the friction he had given had caused the action of his own blood, and
kept him in vigor. You will bless yourselves if you bless others.
Moreover, will it not be a joy to feel that you have done what you
could? It is always well on a Sunday evening for a preacher to feel
when he gets home, "Well, I may not have preached as I could wish,
but I have preached the Lord Jesus, and poured forth all my heart and I
could do no more." He sleeps soundly on that. After a day spent in
doing all the good you can, even if you have met with no success, you
can lean your head on Christ's bosom and fall asleep, feeling that if
souls be not gathered, yet you have your reward. If men are lost, it is
some satisfaction to us that they were not lost because we failed to tell
them the way of salvation. But what a comfort it will be to you
supposing you should be successful in bringing some to Christ. Why it
will set all the bells of your soul ringing. There is no greater joy except
the joy of our own communion with Christ, than this of bringing others
to trust the Saviour. Oh seek this joy and pant after it. And what if you
should see your own children converted? You have long hoped for it,
but your hopes have been disappointed; God means to give you that
choice blessing when you live more nearly to him yourself. Yes, wife,
the husband's heart will be won when your heart is perfectly
consecrated. Yes, mother, the girl shall love the Saviour when you love
him better. Yes, teacher, God means to bless your class, but not until
first of all he has made you fit to receive the blessing. Why, now, if
your children were to be converted through your teacher, you would be
mightily proud of it: God knows you could not bear such success, and
does not mean to give it until he has laid you low at his feet, and
emptied you of yourself, and filled you with himself.
And now I ask the prayers of all this church, that God would send us a
time of revival. I have not to complain that I have labored in vain, and
spent my strength for nought; far from it. I have not even to think that
the blessing is withdrawn from the preaching of the word, even in a
measure, for I never had so many cases of conversion in my life as I
have known since I have been restored from sickness; I have never
before received so many letters in so short a time, telling me that the
sermons printed have been blest, or the sermons preached here; yet I do
not think we ever had so few conversions from the regular
congregation. I partly account for it from the fact, that you cannot fish
in one pond always and catch as many fish as at first. Perhaps the Lord
has saved all of you he means to save; sometimes, I am afraid he has;
and then it will be of little use for me to keep on preaching to you, and
I had better shift quarters and try somewhere else. It would be a
melancholy thought if I believed it:--I do not believe it, I only fear it.
Surely it is not always to be true that strangers, who drop in here only
once, are converted, and you who are always hearing the gospel remain
unaffected. Strange, but may it not be strangely, lamentably true of
you? This very day may the anxiety of your Christian friends be
excited for you, and then may you be led to be anxious for yourselves,
and give your eyes no slumber till you find the Saviour. You know the
way of salvation; it is simply to come with your sins and rest them on
the Saviour; it is to rely upon or trust in the atoning blood. Oh that you
may be made to trust this morning, to the praise of the glory of his
grace. The elders mean to meet together tomorrow evening to have a
special hour of prayer; I hope, also, the mothers will meet and have a
time wrestling, and that every member of the church will try to set
apart a time for supplication this week, that the Lord may visit again
his church, and cause us to rejoice in his name. We cannot go back; we
dare not go back. We have put our hand to the plough, and the curse
will be upon us if we turn back. Remember Lot's wife. It must be
onward with us; backward it cannot be. In the name of God the Eternal,
let us gird up our loins by the power of his Spirit, and go onward
conquering through the blood of the Lamb. We ask it for Jesus' sake.
Amen.
Travailing for Souls part1 C. H. SPURGEON
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