Then did the world accord them the name of "great." When you get nearer to God, Satan will sometimes seem to get nearer to you. He is not ashamed that it should be so. "By faith Noah, being warned of God of things not seen as yet, moved with fear, prepared an ark." True, it brought him into a world of trouble, and no wonder: such a noble course as his was not likely to be an easy one. Strength to do right at the head of a household must come by divine gift; and that gift will only be placed in the open hand of faith. No. Men have repented, and yet have not been saved, because their's was the wrong repentance. I have heard of one brought to Christ, who was a very great sinner--of so stiff a neck that he never would be approached by anybody who aimed at his conversion. He takes account of what he has prepared for them. We have sometimes heard of a brother who has become great and rich in the world, and he has had some poor brother or some distant relative, and when he has seen him in the street he has been obliged just to speak to him and own him; but I dare say he wished him a long way off, especially if some rich acquaintance happened to be with him who should say, "Why, Smith, who was that wretched seedy-looking fellow that you spoke to?" my brethren and sisters, if some of us wished to return, we should have this opportunity to return in a certain sense. I said, "I am glad to hear it." He does not like to say, "That is my relation," or "That is my brother." Of your secret martyrdom angels will be spectators, and Christ will suffer in you--wherefore, fear not. No other sail is within sight. O! How strong is the evil in the best man, how stern is the conflict to keep under the body, lest corruption should prevail! But if you have grace in your heart you will dare to do right. Noah went on obeying under daily scorn. But now they desire a better country, that is an heavenlycity." "He hath prepared for them"--not "for all of you"--only for such of you as answer the description on which we have been meditating has he prepared "a city.". And Jacob, one of the patriarchs, was driven to go down into the land, but he could not stay there; he was always unrestful, till at last he stole a march upon Laban and came back into the proper life--the life which he had chosen, the life which God had commanded him, the life of a pilgrim and a stranger in the land of promise. C.H. God add his blessing to this discourse, and give a blessing to your souls, for Jesus Christ' sake. It begins with one triumph of faith, and then proceeds to others. WE HAVE FOR THIS REASON GREAT BLESSEDNESS. After this manner these opportunities to return may serve us a good purpose: they prove our faith, while they try our character; thus helping us to see whether we are indeed the Lord's or not. It must be sooner or later exercised. He shall dwell in God's house and be still praising him. The call is given again, will you obey it or not? That kind of obedience which comes of faith in God is real obedience, since it shows itself by its works. And with the encouragement of the Holy Spirit, it also grew in numbers. Let no man say, "I shall never fall." Abraham was prepared for instant obedience to any command from God; his journey was appointed, and he went. I am sure it has been so with you. Thou art more glorious than all the mountains of praise. But now for other reasons. What a glorious degree Abraham took when he was called "the friend of God"; was not his loss of earthly friendships abundantly made up to him? The last speciality in Abraham's procedure was, what he did was done at once. They may call him a brother. Might it not, even if it were divine, be suggested to me for many reasons that I was mistaken, that it was most unlikely that God should speak to a man at all, and more unlikely still that he should speak to me? Ah! Now, have you ever felt that it is a very hard thing to have a singular faith? He climbed a hill on his road. will you not now sue for mercy?" Remember that your greatest joy, while you are a pilgrim, is your God. God add his blessing on these words for Christ's sake. And, when the jeer has been raised against canting methodists, you have said, "I am one of them." C. H. Spurgeon at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens. In watching with the eyes of carnal reason for objections to God's precept and providence, it would be well if our eyes were burnt out, for better for us to enter into life having no eyes than having two eyes to follow our own devices and find our end destruction in hell fire. Delivered on Lord's-day Morning, June 1st, 1890, At the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. All you can see in that poor child of God is a hard-working laboring man, mocked and despised of his fellows. There is enough in the world for sinners, but not for saints. Believe in him, though you see no flashes of delight nor sparkles of joy. My brethren, we have such opportunities in our daily calling. The obedience of faith springs from a principle within, and not from compulsion without. I wished to clear myself if any sin remained upon me, but I could not discover any evil which I was tolerating. Abraham returned not; Isaac returned not; Jacob returned not. "No; the fact of it is, I think, if I look to myself that is quite enough." If thou wilt trust thy soul with Jesus, thou art saved. January 1, 1970. True faith gives its full assent to the Scriptures; it takes a page and says, "No matter what is in the page, I believe it;" it turns over the next chapter ands says, "Herein are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable do wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their destruction; but hard though it be, I believe it." how often will our imagination paint sin in very glowing colours, and though we loathe the sin and loathe ourselves for thinking of it, yet how many a man might say, "Had it not been for divine grace, my feet had almost gone, my steps had well-nigh slipped." Alas, I have had to mourn over Christian men--at least I thought they were such--who have waxed very poor, and when they have grown poor, they hardly felt they could associate with those they knew in better circumstances. No; each man's calling may seem to him to be more full of temptation than his fellows, but it is not so. Remember that your greatest joy while you are a pilgrim is your God. If he had not believed the threat, he would not have prepared an ark, and so would not have received the promise. O! Many a man has felt keenly enough the separation from home and kindred, and next to that, the sad banishment from his native land. God's time is best. If a little flood had happened and moved his ark a little, he would have had some evidence for his faith; but there was no flood at all; and his ark lay high and dry for a century and a quarter! Grace has given it. Was it gambling? We have been lining our nests very softly, and counting all the eggs that are laid therein, with the greatest cheerfulness and delight; we have had much goods laid up for many years, and all of a sudden, Misfortune, like a wicked boy, has climbed the tree, and pulled down the nests, and the birds had to fly, and we have said, "Whither shall we go?" There is a high and blessed duty and privilege--I will call it both--which is to every Christian the necessity of his life, and that is to pray. To the believer, let a truth be tinctured with the glory of God, and he values it; but if God and eternity be not there, he will leave these trifles to those who choose them. This is . The city of which you, who have never been converted to Christ, are citizens, is the City of Destruction, and as is its name such shall be its end. Trust you in Christ to overcome by his Spirit that which he has put away by his death. Shall God's longsuffering mercy only afford you opportunities for multiplying transgressions. Though you should forsake all, and should be by all forsaken, for the truth's sake, with Abraham's trial and Abraham's faith, you shall have Abraham's honor and Abraham's reward. Why, the people of Israel are on the other side of Jordan, and there is no bridge: how are they to get over? Perfect obedience to God would mean love among men, justice to all classes, and peace in every land. But know this, it is not a sanctuary merely, it is an hospital too; for it heals their sins, delivers them from their diseases, and they are not afterwards what they were before they received the gospel." The bravest and the most honoured of men are those who implicitly obey the command of the King of kings. The obedience of faith creates a form of life which may be safely copied . I saw him afterwards, and I hope I conducted him from the verge of insanity into the open, healthy place of peace through believing. I. I should do so altogether if I did not know that all the saints are permitted to enjoy the same privileges. ABRAHAM left his country at God's command, and he never went back again. I charge you who profess to be the Lord's not to be unbelieving with regard to the terrible threatenings of God to the ungodly. He can say, "Let God be true, but every man a liar." Rahab's faith was a SANCTIFYING FAITH. Yes, and Christ did not find fault with them for doing so; what he found fault with them for was this--"When ye have found him ye make him tenfold more the child of hell than yourselves.". He answered all appeals very coarsely. Our Puritan forefathers reeked little of property or liberty when these stood in the way of conscience: they defied exile and danger sooner than give up a grain of truth; but their descendants prefer peace and worldly amusements, and pride themselves on "culture" rather than on heroic faith. No, he was commanded to go, and he went without hesitation. To refuse to keep his own promise when it is pleaded would be to falsify his word, and change his character; and neither of these things can ever be. But," said he, wishing to improve the occasion, "have you ever heard of the key of heaven?" What a shout of triumph would they raise, and how would they fraternize with him! I can only pray the Lord to give you to believe in him. "THE SWORD AND THE TROWEL." That is his master. Noah believed through a hundred and twenty solitary years! He knows thy poor body, and he permits it to be frail, and permits thy heart to be trembling, because he will glorify himself in his tenderness to thy weakness, wherein he will make thee strong. Do not cultivate doubt, or you will soon cultivate disobedience. Take that, and every blow will tell, but no other instrument will avail. If God be God to-morrow he is God to-day; if Christ be worth having next week he is worth having to-day. You must joy in God, or you will not joy at all. "Whither away?" ActiveChristianity Hebrews 11:39-40 Hebrews 11 is all about the heroes of faith. "My Father is the husbandman," said Christ. There was communication kept up between them and the old family house at Padan-Aram. To believe in God, and to do his bidding, is a great escape from the hazards of personal weakness and folly. Besides, we all know with what inconvenience Abraham must have removed. A softer spirit has come over the human mind; but there is as much enmity against God as ever; and now it finds a less public arena, and a meaner mode of torture. What harvest will come of our sowing we must leave with the Lord of the harvest; but we ourselves must look to the basket and the seed, and scatter our handfuls in the furrows without fail. Some allow a presuming fear: "If I am to be saved," say they, "I shall be saved; and if I am to be lost, I shall be lost. No; no child of God can be. Out of this weakness in prayer you can only be made strong by faith. It is nothing short of Godhead's utmost stretch of might that keeps the feet of the saints, and preserves them from going back to their old unregenerate condition. Thy faith out of weakness shall make thee strong. Do not try to answer cavillers; but if you do, mind that faith is your weapon. It may be that certain of you are called to suffer in your minds, not because of any wrong thing in yourselves, but for the sake of others. He that knows the care of a household knows how easily a parent can do serious mischief with his children by his very efforts to do them good. Look at this preparation just a minute. We are strangers and sojourners, as all our fathers were; dwellers in this wilderness, passing through it to reach the Canaan which is to be the land of our perpetual inheritance. Or do you put out your thinking to be done for you, like your washing? It will be, in the first place, life without that great risk which else holds us in peril. If Christ should make thee repent, thou hast no need to think that thou shalt be the least in the family. You see his outward attire, not his inner self--you see the earthly tabernacle, but the spirit newborn, immortal and divine--you see not that. This woman's faith was A SELF-DENYING FAITH. O that you were wise and would yield obedience to the truth! Oh, what a privilege it will be if you yourself and all your house are saved! Suppose the right course should expose you to ridicule, cause you to be spoken of as a fanatic, or mocked at as a hypocrite, or despised as a fool, what can you do without faith? The obedience which faith produces must be continuous . He who does not believe that God will punish sin, will not believe that God will pardon it through the atoning blood. -- Hebrews 11:31. "Is there a heart that will not bend To thy divine control? Their descendants, of the third generation, are not all of them of their way of thinking; but they have risen through God's blessing on their grandfathers. Amen and Amen. "But," said Origen, "it is true, Celsus, that Christ's gospel is a sanctuary for thieves, robbers, murderers, and harlots. Few, if any, are without sorrow, and many saints have a double portion of grief in their pilgrimage. If any of you are prospering in this world, oh watch, for you are in imminent danger of being mindful to return to the place whence you came out. Believe in his Spirit, and pray by his help. Oh! Spurgeon's Bible Commentary Hebrews 11:1-20 This is the Arc de Triomphe erected to the memory of the heroes of faith, whose names are here recorded by the apostle's inspired pen, with a brief mention of some of their most memorable actions. They were not naturally strong either to do or to suffer. Do you think that we meditate enough upon heaven? She was disappointed, expecting that everyone would have some keys. The infinite rolls, like Noah's flood, over the tops of the hills of the present and the finite. They may look up to him in all the depths of their degradation. There are many ways in which the devil's whip can reach the back of the child of God. When Napoleon was attacking the Egyptians he had powerful artillery, but he could not reach the enemy, for they were ensconced in a mud fort, and it made Napoleon very angry, because, if they had been behind granite walls, he could hate battered them down, but their earthworks could not be blown to pieces, every ball stuck in the mud, and made the wall stronger. But perhaps that woman--I saw her weep just now--had a mother, who has gone long ago, and she was married to a brutal husband, and at last left a poor widow; she calls to mind the days of her childhood, when the big Bible was brought out and read around the hearth, and "Our Father which art in heaven" was their nightly prayer. He did not know where his way would take him, but he knew that the Lord had bidden him go. Did you never note that those who seem least likely to fall into a sin are the very people who commit it? His choice is neither wealth, nor ease, nor honour; but that ho may glorify God in his body, and his spirit, which are the Lord's. But where lay their greatness? The Jews in all time have been very different from all other nations, and although other races have become permanently united, the Jewish people have always been a family by themselves. If you attempt his conversion apart from heavenly power, you might as well try to take leviathan with a hook! cells in an azure synapse studio notebook can be reordered without copying and pasting the contents. I sigh to think of how many that appeared very earnest Christians when they were struggling for bread have become very dull and cold now that they have become rich. I do not always enjoy something better. First, then, he had a call. We desire something better. It is a great thing to be desirous. Some say it is a land of confusion and of the shadow of death. But do you not think that we are too apt to attempt to spread the gospel in our own strength; and need we wonder if we break down? You see, whether you grow rich or whether you grow poor, you will have these opportunities to return. He who is not firm at starting is cutting out for himself a poor pattern of life. You may be diligent in secret prayer, and perhaps the devil may have been asleep till you begin to pray, and when you are most fervent then will he also become most rampant. Our lease of mortal life is fast running out. Not now do I see them lift up the great iron door, and let loose the monsters that come forth roaring, hungry for their prey. God said to him, "Make an ark"; and we read in answer thereto that he prepared an ark. Believe in God, and you will prevail with God. 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