I can see a poor man standing on the gallows with the rope around his neck, and oh, what an instant of apprehension must that be; what thoughts of horror must float through his soul! How must a world of misery be compressed into a second? But oh, my hearers, there is a far more terrible moment still for you who are godless, Christless, careless: that have made a profession of religion, and yet do not have it in your hearts. I see you in the scales; but what shall we say? The wailings of hell seem not sufficient to express your misery. In the scales without Christ! just before you shall be in the jaws of hell, without pity and without compassion. Oh, my dear hearers! if you could hope to get to heaven without being weighed — if God would believe what you say without testing you, I would not care about asking you this morning to ascertain the state of your own hearts. But if God will try you, try yourselves; if he will judge you, judge your own hearts. Do not say that because you profess to be religious therefore you are right — that because others imagine you to be safe that therefore you are so. Weigh yourselves; put your hearts into the balance. Do not be deceived. Pull the bandage from your eyes, that your blindness may be removed, and that you may pass a just opinion upon yourselves as to what you are. I wish to have you not only see yourselves as others see you, but I wish to have you see yourselves as God sees you; for that after all, is your real state; his eye is not to be mistaken; he is the God of truth, and he is just and right. How fearful a thing it will be, if any of us who are members of Christ’s church shall be cast into hell at last. The higher we ascend, the greater will be our fall, like Icarus in the old fable, who flew aloft with waxen wings, until the sun melted them and he fell. And some of you are flying like that: you are flying up with waxen wings. What if the terrible heat of the judgment day should melt them! I sometimes try to picture, how terrible the reverse would be to me if I am found to be rejected at last. Let what I shall say for myself suit for all. No, and must it be, if I live in this world and think I am a Christian and am not — must it be that I must go from the songs of the sanctuary to the cursings of the synagogue of Satan? Must I go from the cup of the Eucharist to the cup of demons? Must I go from the table of the Lord to the feast of fiends? Shall these lips that now proclaim the word of Jesus, one day utter the wailings of perdition? Shall this tongue that has sung the praises of the Redeemer be moved with blasphemy? Shall it be that this body which has been the receptacle of so many a mercy — shall it become the very house and home of every misery that vengeance can invent? Shall these eyes that now look on God’s people one day behold the frightful sights of spirits destroyed in that all consuming fire? And must it be that the ears that have heard the hallelujahs of this morning, shall one day hear the shrieks, and groans, and howls, of the lost and damned spirits? It must be so if we are not Christ’s. Oh how frightful it will be! I think I see some grave professor at last condemned to hell. There are multitudes of sinners, lying in their irons, and tossing on their beds of flame; lifting themselves upon their elbows for a moment, then seem to forget their tortures as they see the professor come in, and they cry — “Are you become like one of us? Is the preacher himself damned? What! is the deacon of the church below, come to sit with drunkards, and with swearers?” “Aha,” they cry, “aha, aha, are you bound up in the same bundle with us after all?” Surely the mockery of hell must be itself a most fearful torture; professing sinners mocked by those who never professed religion.
17. But mortal life can never describe the miseries of a disappointed blasted hope, when that hope is lost — it involves the loss of mercy, the loss of Christ, the loss of life — and it involves moreover, the terrible destruction and the awful vengeance of Almighty God. Let us one and all go home today, when yet God’s sky is heavy, and let us bend ourselves at his altar, and cry for mercy. Every man apart — husband apart from wife. Apart, let us seek our rooms of praying again and again, “Lord renew me: Lord forgive me: Lord accept me.” And while, perhaps, the tempest which is now lowring over the sky, and before another still more dire tempest shall fall on us with its fearful terrors, may you find peace. May we not then find ourselves lost, lost for ever, where hope can never come! It shall be my duty to examine myself. I hope I shall be enabled to put myself into the scale; promise me my hearers, that each of you will do the same.
18. I was told one day this week by someone, that having recently preached for several Sundays upon the comforting doctrines of God’s Word, he was afraid that some of you would begin to console yourselves with the idea that you were God’s elect when perhaps you were not. Well, at least, such a thing shall not happen, if I have done what I hoped to do this morning. God bless you, for Jesus’ sake.
His Name — The Mighty God
No. 258-5:265. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, June 19, 1859, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.
The Mighty God. {Isaiah 9:6}
1. Other translations of this divine title have been proposed by several very eminent and able scholars. Not that any of them have been prepared to deny that this translation is after all most accurate; but rather that while there are various words in the original, which we render by the common appellation of “GOD,” it might be possible to interpret this to show more precisely its meaning. One writer, for example, thinks the term might be translated “The Irradiator,” — he who gives light to men. Some think it bears the meaning of “The Illustrious,” — the bright and the shining one. Still there are very few, if any, who are prepared to dispute the fact that our translation is the most faithful that could possibly be given — “the mighty God.”
2. The term here used for God, El, is taken from a Hebrew root, which, as I take it, signifies strength; and perhaps a literal translation even of that title might be, “The Strong One,” the strong God. But there is added to this an adjective in the Hebrew, expressive of mightiness, and the two taken together express the omnipotence of Christ, his real deity and his omnipotence, as standing first and foremost among the attributes which the prophet saw. “The mighty God.” I do not propose this morning to enter into any argument in proof of the divinity of Christ, because my text does not seem to demand it of me. It does not say that Christ shall be “the mighty God,” — that is affirmed in many other places of Sacred Writ; but here it says, “He shall be called Wonderful,” called “Counsellor,” called, “The mighty God”; and I think that therefore I may be excused from entering into any proof of the fact, if I am at least able to establish the truth of what is here foretold, inasmuch as Christ is indeed called to this day, and shall be called to the end of the world, “the mighty God.”
3. First, this morning, I shall speak for a moment on the folly of those who profess to be his followers, but who do not call him “the mighty God.” In the second place I shall try to show how the true believer practically calls Christ “the mighty God,” in many of the acts which concern his salvation; and then I shall close by noticing how Jesus Christ has proven himself to be indeed “the mighty God” to us, and in the experience of his church.
4. I. First let me point out THE FOLLY OF THOSE WHO PROFESS TO BE THE DISCIPLES OF CHRIST, YET DO NOT, AND WILL NOT, CALL HIM GOD. The question has sometimes been proposed to me, how it is that those of us who hold the divinity of Christ display what is called uncharitableness towards those who deny him. We do continually affirm that an error, with regard to the divinity of Christ, is absolutely fatal, and that a man cannot be right in his judgment upon any part of the gospel unless he thinks correctly of him who is personally the very centre of all the purposes of heaven, and the foundation of all the hopes of earth. Nor can we allow any latitudinarianism here. We extend the right hand of fellowship to all those who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth; but we cannot exchange our Christian greetings with those who deny him to be “very God of very God.” And the reason is sometimes asked; for our opponents say, “We are ready to give the right hand of fellowship to you, why do you not do so to us?” Our reply shall be given thus briefly: “You have no right to complain about us, seeing that in this matter we stand on the defensive. When you declare yourselves to believe that Christ is not the Son of God, you may not be conscious
