and who is Cephas, but ministers by whom you believed, even as God gave to every man.” It must be “not by might, nor by power, but by my Spirit, says the Lord.” Go forth, poor minister! You have no power to preach with polished diction and elegant refinement; go and preach as you can. The Spirit can make your feeble words more mighty than the most ravishing eloquence. Alas! alas! for oratory! Alas! for eloquence! It has long enough been tried. We have had polished phrases, and finely turned sentences; but in what place have the people been saved by them? We have had grand and gaudy language; but where have hearts been renewed! But now, “by the foolishness of preaching,” by the simple utterance by a child of God’s Word, he is pleased to save those who believe, and to save sinners from the error of their ways. May God prove his Word again this morning!
15. IV. The fourth point was, WHAT ARE THE INFERENCES TO BE DERIVED FROM THE FACT THAT JESUS CHRIST IS “MIGHTY TO SAVE?”
16. Why, first, there is a fact for ministers to learn — that they should endeavour to preach in faith, nothing wavering. “Oh God,” cries the minister at times, when he is on his knees, “I am weak; I have preached to my hearers, and have wept over them; I have groaned for them; but they will not turn to you. Their hearts are like the nether millstone; they will not weep for sin, nor will they love the Saviour.” Then I think I see the angel standing at his elbow, and whispering in his ear, “You are weak, but he is strong; you can do nothing, but he is ‘mighty to save.’ ” Think of this. It is not the instrument, but the God. It is not the pen by which the author writes which is to have the praise of his wisdom of the making of the volume, but it is the brain that thinks it, and the hand that moves the pen. So in salvation. It is not the minister, it is not the preacher, but the God who first designs the salvation, and afterwards uses the preacher to work it out. Ah! poor disconsolate preacher, if you have had very little fruit in your ministry, go on still in faith, remembering it is written, “My word shall not return to me void, but it shall accomplish what I please, and prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.” Go on; be of good courage; God shall help you; he shall help you, and that very soon.
17. Again, here is another encouragement for praying men and women, who are praying to God for their friends. Mother, you have been groaning for your son for many a year; he is now grown up and has left your house, but your prayers have not been heard. So you think. He is as carefree as ever; not yet has he made your heart rejoice. Sometimes you think he will bring your grey hairs with sorrow to the grave. It was only yesterday you said, “I will give him up, I will never pray for him again.” Stop, mother, stop! By all that is holy and that is heavenly, stop! Do not utter that resolution again; begin once more! You have prayed over him; you have wept over his infant forehead, when he lay in his cradle; you taught him when he came to the age of understanding, and you have often warned him since; but all of no avail. Oh! do not give up your prayers, for remember, Christ is “mighty to save.” It may be that he waits to be gracious, and he keeps you waiting, so that you may know more of his graciousness when the mercy comes. But pray on. I have heard of mothers who have prayed for their children twenty years; indeed, and of some who have died without seeing them converted, and then their very death has been the means of saving their children, by causing them to think. A father once had been a pious man for many years, yet he never had the happiness of seeing one of his sons converted. He had his children around his bed, and he said to them when he was dying, “My sons, I could die in peace, if I could only believe you would follow me to heaven; but this is the most sorrowful thing of all — not that I am dying, but that I am leaving you to meet you no more.” They looked at him, but they would not think about their ways. They went away. Their father was suddenly overtaken with great clouds and darkness of mind; instead of dying peacefully and happily, he died in great misery of soul, but still trusting in Christ. He said, when he died, “Oh! that I had died a happy death, for that would have been a testimony to my sons; but now, oh God, this darkness and these clouds have in some degree taken away my power to witness to the truth of your religion.” Well, he died, and was buried. The sons came to the funeral. The day after, one of them said to his brother, “Brother, I have been thinking, father was always a pious man, and if his death was yet such a gloomy one, how gloomy must ours be, without God and without Christ!” “Ah!” said the other, “that thought struck me too.” They went up to God’s house, heard God’s Word, they came home and bent their knee in prayer, and to their surprise they found that the rest of the family had done the same, and that the God who had never answered the father’s prayer in his life had answered it after his death, and by his death too, and by such a death as would appear to be most unlikely to have brought the conversion of any. Pray on, then, my sister; pray on, my brother! God shall yet bring your sons and daughters to his love and fear, and you shall rejoice over them in heaven, if you never do on earth.
18. And finally, my dear hearers, there are many of you here this morning who have no love for God, no love for Christ; but you have a desire in your hearts to love him. You are saying, “Oh! can he save me? Can such a wretch as I be saved?” In the thick of the crowd there you are standing, and you are now saying within yourself, “May I one day sing among the saints above? May I have all my sins blotted out by blood divine?” “Yes, sinner, he is ‘mighty to save’; and this is comfort for you.” Do you think yourself the worst of men? Does conscience strike you as with a mailed fist, and does he say it is all over for you; you will be lost; your repentance will be of no avail; your prayers never will be heard; you are lost to all intents and purposes? My hearer, do not think so. He is “mighty to save.” If you cannot pray, he can help you to do it; if you cannot repent, he can give you repentance; if you feel it is hard to believe, he can help you to believe, for he is exalted on high to give repentance, as well as to give remission of sins. Oh poor sinner, trust in Jesus; cast yourself on him. Cry, and may God help you to do it now, the first Sunday of the year; may he help you this very day to cast your soul on Jesus; and this will be one of the best years of all your life. “Turn, turn; why will you die, oh house of Israel?” Turn to Jesus, you wearied souls; come to him, for lo, he bids you come. “The Spirit and the bride say come; and let him who hears say come; and whoever will let him come and take of the water of life,” and have Christ’s grace freely. It is preached to you, and to all of you who are willing to receive it, it has been already given.
19. May God from his grace make you willing, and so save your souls, through Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour. Amen.
{a} Kraal: A village of Southern or Central African native peoples, consisting of a collection of huts surrounded by a fence or stockade, and often having a central space for cattle, etc. OED
The War Of Truth
No. 112-3:41. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Morning, January 11, 1857, By C. H. Spurgeon, At The Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.
And Moses said to Joshua, Choose men and go out, fight with Amalek; tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in my hands. {Exodus 17:9}
1. The children of Israel were led out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm. They were conducted into the vast howling wilderness, where there were few, if any, permanent abodes of men. For some time they pursued their march in solitude, discovering wells and other traces of a nomadic population, but not meeting with any to disturb their loneliness. But it appears that then, as now, there were wandering tribes who, like the Bedouin Arabs, wandered to and fro through that very country which the people of Israel were now treading with their feet. These people, driven by the hope of spoil, suddenly attacked the rearguard of the children of Israel, struck the hindmost of them in a most cowardly manner, took their spoil, and then swiftly left. Gathering strength and courage from this successful foray, they then dared to attack the whole host of Israel, which at that time must have amounted to two or three million people, who had been brought out of Egypt and fed miraculously in the wilderness. This time Israel was not to be surprised; for Moses had said to Joshua — “Choose men, and go out, fight with Amalek: tomorrow I will stand on the top of the hill with the rod of God in
