The Spurgeon Series 1855 & 1856. Charles H. Spurgeon
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1. One wise man may deliver a whole city; one good man may be the means of safety to a thousand others. The holy ones are “the salt of the earth,” the means of the preservation of the wicked, Without the godly as a preservative, the race would be utterly destroyed. In the city of Samaria there was one righteous man — Elisha, the servant of the Lord. Piety was altogether extinct in the court. The king was a sinner of the blackest dye, his iniquity was glaring and infamous. Jehoram walked in the ways of his father Ahab, and made for himself false gods. The people of Samaria were fallen like their monarch: they had gone astray from Jehovah; they had forsaken the God of Israel; they did not remember the watchword of Jacob, “The Lord your God is one God”; and in wicked idolatry they bowed before the idols of the heathens, and therefore the Lord of Hosts allowed their enemies to oppress them until the curse of Ebal was fulfilled in the streets of Samaria, for “the tender and delicate woman who would not venture to set the sole of her foot upon the ground for delicateness,” had an evil eye to her own children, and devoured her offspring by reason of fierce hunger. {Deuteronomy 28:56-58} In this awful extremity the one holy man was the medium of salvation. The one grain of salt preserved the entire city; the one warrior for God was the means of the deliverance of the whole beleaguered multitude. For Elisha’s sake the Lord sent the promise that the next day, food which could not be obtained at any price, should be had at the cheapest possible rate — at the very gates of Samaria. We may picture the joy of the multitude when first the seer uttered this prediction. They knew him to be a prophet of the Lord; he had divine credentials; all his past prophecies had been fulfilled. They knew that he was a man sent from God, and uttering Jehovah’s message. Surely the monarch’s eyes would glisten with delight, and the emaciated multitude would leap for joy at the prospects of so speedy a release from famine. “Tomorrow,” would they shout, “tomorrow our hunger shall be over, and we shall feast to the full.”
2. However, the officer on whom the king leaned expressed his disbelief. We do not hear that any of the common people, the plebeians, ever did so; but an aristocrat did it. It is strange that God has seldom chosen the great men of this world. High places and faith in Christ do seldom well agree. This great man said, “Impossible!,” and, with an insult to the prophet, he added, “If the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be.” His sin lay in the fact, that after having seen many miracles in Elisha’s ministry, he still disbelieved the assurances uttered by the prophet on God’s behalf. He had, doubtless, seen the marvellous defeat of Moab; he had been startled at tidings of the resurrection of the Shunammite’s son; he knew that Elisha had revealed Benhadad’s secrets and smitten his marauding hosts with blindness; he had seen the bands of Syria decoyed into the heart of Samaria; and he probably knew the story of the widow, whose oil filled all the vessels, and redeemed her sons; at all events the cure of Naaman was common conversation at court; and yet, in the face of all this accumulated evidence, in the teeth of all these credentials of the prophet’s mission, he still doubted, and insultingly told him that heaven must become an open casement, before the promise could be performed. Whereupon God pronounced his doom by the mouth of the man who had just now proclaimed the promise: “You shall see it with your eyes, but shall not eat of it.” And providence — which always fulfils prophecy, just as the paper takes the stamp of the type — destroyed the man. Trodden down in the streets of Samaria, he perished at its gates, beholding the plenty, but not tasting it. Perhaps his attitude was haughty, and insulting to the people; or he tried to restrain their eager rush; or, as we would say, it might have been by mere accident that he was crushed to death; so that he saw the prophecy fulfilled, but never lived to enjoy it. In his case, seeing was believing, but it was not enjoying.
3. I shall this morning invite your attention to two things — the man’s sin and his punishment. Perhaps I shall say only a little about this man, since I have detailed the circumstances, but I shall discourse upon the sin of unbelief and the punishment of it.
4. I. And first, the SIN. His sin was unbelief. He doubted the promise of God. In this particular case unbelief took the form of a doubt of the divine veracity, or a mistrust of God’s power. Either he doubted whether God really meant what he said, or whether it was within the range of possibility that God would fulfil his promise. Unbelief has more phases than the moon, and more colours than the chameleon. Common people say about the devil, that he is seen sometimes in one shape, and sometimes in another. I am sure this is true of Satan’s firstborn child — unbelief, for its forms are legion. At one time I see unbelief decked out as an angel of light. It calls itself humility, and it says, “I would not be presumptuous; I would not dare to think that God would pardon me; I am too great a sinner.” We call that humility, and thank God that our friend is in so good a condition. I do not thank God for any such delusion. It is the devil dressed as an angel of light; it is unbelief after all. At other times we detect unbelief in the shape of a doubt of God’s immutability: “The Lord has loved me, but perhaps he will cast me off tomorrow. He helped me yesterday, and under the shadow of his wings I trust; but perhaps I shall receive no help in the next affliction. He may have cast me off; he may he unmindful of his covenant, and forget to be gracious.” Sometimes this infidelity is embodied in a doubt of God’s power. We see every day new problems, we are involved in a net of difficulties, and we think “surely the Lord cannot deliver us.” We strive to get rid of our burden, and finding that we cannot do it, we think God’s arm is as short as ours, and his power as little as human might. A fearful form of unbelief is that doubt which keeps men from coming to Christ; which leads the sinner to distrust the ability of Christ to save him, to doubt the willingness of Jesus to accept such a great transgressor. But the most hideous of all is the traitor, in its true colours, blaspheming God, and madly denying his existence. Infidelity, deism, and atheism, are the ripe fruits of this pernicious tree; they are the most terrific eruptions of the volcano of unbelief. Unbelief has become of full stature, when putting off the mask and laying aside the disguise, it profanely stalks the earth, uttering the rebellious cry, “No God,” striving in vain to shake the throne of the divinity, by lifting up its arm against Jehovah, and in its arrogance would
Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Rejudge his justice — be the god of God.
Then truly unbelief has come to its full perfection, and then you see what it really is, for the least unbelief is of the same nature as the greatest.
5. I am astonished, and I am sure you will be, when I tell you that there are some strange people in the world who do not believe that unbelief is a sin. Strange people I must call them, because they are sound in their faith in every other respect; only, to make the articles of their creed consistent, as they imagine, they deny that unbelief is sinful. I remember a young man going into a circle of friends and ministers, who were disputing whether it was a sin in men that they did not believe the gospel. While they were discussing it, he said, “Gentlemen am I in the presence of Christians? Are you believers in the Bible, or are you not?” They said, “We are Christians of course.” “Then,” he said, “does not the Scripture say, ‘of sin, because they believed not on me?’ And is it not the damning sin of sinners, that they do not believe on Christ?” I could not have thought that people should be so foolhardy as to venture to assert that “it is no sin for a sinner not to believe on Christ.” I thought that, however far they might wish to push their sentiments, they would not tell a lie to uphold the truth, and, in my opinion, this is what such men are really doing. Truth is a strong tower and never requires to be buttressed with error. God’s Word will stand against all man’s devices. I would never invent a sophism to prove that it is no sin on the part of the ungodly not to believe, for I am sure it is, when I am taught in the Scriptures that, “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world and men love darkness rather than light,” and when I read, “He that does not believe is condemned already, because he does not believe on the Son of God,” I affirm, and the Word declares it, unbelief is a sin. Surely with rational and unprejudiced people, it cannot require any reasoning to prove it. Is it not a sin for a creature to doubt the word of its Maker? Is it not a crime and