you see a house on fire; the flames are raging, and the smoke is ascending up in one black column to heaven. Crowds gather in the street, and you are told there is a man in the upper bedroom who must be burnt to death. No one can save him. You say, “Why that is my enemy’s house”; and you see him at the window. It is your own enemy — the very man; he is about to be burned. Full of lovingkindness, you say, “I will save that man if I can.” He sees you approach the house; he puts his head out the window and curses you. “An everlasting blast upon you!” he says; “I would rather perish than that you should save me.” Do you imagine yourself then, dashing through the smoke, and climbing the blazing staircase to save him; and can you conceive that when you get near him he struggles with you, and tries to roll you into the flames? Can you conceive your love to be so potent, that you can perish in the flames rather than leave him to be burned? You say, “I could not do it; it is beyond flesh and blood to do it.” But Jesus did it. We hated him, we despised him, and, when he came to save us, we rejected him. When his Holy Spirit comes into our hearts to strive with us, we resist him; but he will save us; no, he himself braved the fire that he might snatch us as brands from eternal burning. The joy of Jesus was the joy of saving sinners. The great motive, then, with Christ, in enduring all this, was, that he might save us.
28. III. And now, give me just a moment, and I will try and hold the Saviour up for OUR IMITATION. I speak now to Christians — to those who have tasted and handled the good word of life. Christian men! if Christ endured all this, merely for the joy of saving you, will you be ashamed of bearing anything for Christ? The words are on my lips again this morning, —
If on my face for your dear name,
Shame and reproach shall be,
I’ll hail reproach, and welcome shame,
My Lord, I’ll die for thee.
Oh! I do not wonder that the martyrs died for such a Christ as this! When the love of Christ is shed abroad in our hearts, then we feel that if the stake were present we would stand firmly in the fire to suffer for him who died for us. I know our poor unbelieving hearts would soon begin to quail at the crackling faggot and the furious heat. But surely this love would prevail over all our unbelief. Are there any of you who feel that if you follow Christ you must lose by it, lose your position, or lose your reputation? Will you be laughed at, if you leave the world and follow Jesus? Oh! and will you turn aside because of these little things, when he would not turn aside, though all the world mocked him, until he could say, “It is finished.” No, by the grace of God, let every Christian lift his hands to the Most High God, to the Maker of heaven and earth, and let him say within himself,
Now for the love I bear his name,
What was my gain I count my loss,
I pour contempt on all my shame,
And nail my glory to his cross.
“For me to live is Christ; to die is gain,” Living I will be his, dying I will be his; I will live for his honour, serve him completely, if he will help me, and if he requires it, I will die for his name’s sake.
[Mr. Spurgeon was so consumed by the first point, that he was unable from lack of time to touch upon the other points. May what was blessed to the hearer be sweet to the reader.]
{a} Tyburn was used for centuries as the primary location of the execution of London criminals; the Old Bailey was the main criminal court of London.
Hypocrisy
No. 237-5:97. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, February 6, 1859, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.
Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. {Luke 12:1}
1. This age is full of shams. Pretence never stood in so eminent a position as it does at the present hour. There are few, I fear, who love the naked truth; we can scarcely endure it in our houses; you would scarcely do business with a man who absolutely stated it. If you walked through the streets of London, you might imagine that all the shops were built of marble, and that all the doors were made of mahogany and wood of the rarest kinds; and yet you soon discover that there is scarcely a piece of any of these precious materials to be found anywhere, but that everything is veneer, and painted, and varnished. I find no fault with this, except as it is an outward type of an inward evil that exists. As it is in our streets, so is it everywhere; veneer, painting, and gilding, are at an enormous premium. Counterfeit material is of such a quality that it is with the utmost difficulty that you can detect it. The counterfeit so nearly mimics the genuine, that the eye of wisdom itself needs to be enlightened before she can discern the difference. This is especially the case in religious matters. There was once an age of intolerant bigotry, when every man was weighed in the balance, and if he was not precisely up to the orthodox standard of the day, the fire devoured him; but in this age of tolerance, and of most extreme tolerance, we are very apt to allow the counterfeit to pass as currency, and to imagine that outward show is really as beneficial as inward reality. If ever there was a time when it was needful to say, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy,” it is now. The minister may cease to preach this doctrine in the days of persecution: when the faggots are blazing, and when the rack is in full operation, few men will be hypocrites. These are the keen detectors of impostors; suffering, pain and death, for Christ’s sake, are not to be endured by mere pretenders. But in this silken age, when to be religious is to be respectable, when to follow Christ is to be honoured, and when godliness itself has become gain, it is doubly necessary that the minister should cry aloud, and lift up his voice like a trumpet against this sin, “the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.”
2. I am sure that every true child of God will stand at times in doubt of himself, and his fear will probably take the shape of a suspicion concerning his own state.
He that never doubted of his state,
He may — perhaps he may — too late.
The Christian, however, does not belong to that class. He will at times begin to be terribly alarmed, lest, after all, he his should only seem to be godly, and his profession an empty vanity. He who is true will sometimes suspect himself of falsehood, while he who is false will wrap himself up in a constant confidence of his own sincerity. My dear Christian brethren, if you are at this time in doubt concerning yourselves, the truths I am about to utter will, perhaps, help you in searching your own heart and trying your own reins, and I am sure you will not blame me if I should seem to be severe, but you will rather say, “Sir, I desire to make sure work concerning my own soul, tell me faithfully and tell me honestly what are the signs of a hypocrite, and I will sit down and try to read my own heart, to discover whether these things have a bearing upon me, and I shall be happy if I shall come out of the fire like pure gold.”
3. We shall note, then, this morning, first, the character of a hypocrite; then we shall try to tally up his accounts for him, with regard to his loss or gain; and then we shall offer a cure for hypocrisy, which, if constantly carried around with us, will certainly prevent us from attempting to deceive. The cure is contained in these words which follow the text — “For there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; neither hidden, that shall not be known. Therefore whatever you have spoken in darkness shall be heard in the light; and what you have spoken in the ear in closets shall be proclaimed upon the housetops.”
4. I. First, THE HYPOCRITE’S CHARACTER. We have an elaborate description of the hypocrite in the chapter we have just read, the twenty-third of Matthew, and I do not know that I can better portray him than by
