be saved.” I cannot reverse my Master’s order — he says, “believes,” and then “baptised”; and he tells me that “he that believes not shall be damned.” Oh, my hearers, your works cannot save you. Though I have spoken to Christians, and exhorted them to live in good works, I talk not so to you. I ask you not to get the flower before you have the seed. I will not bid you get the roof of your house before you lay the foundation. Believe on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall be saved. Whoever here will now cast himself as a guilty worm flat on Jesus — whoever will throw himself into the arms of everlasting love, that man shall be accepted; he shall go from that door justified and forgiven, with his soul as safe as if he were in heaven, without the danger of its ever being lost. All this is through belief in Christ.
24. Surely you need no argument. If I thought you did I would use it. I would stand and weep until you came to Christ. If I thought I was strong enough to fetch a soul to Jesus, if I thought that moral persuasion could win you, I would go around to each of your seats and beg of you in God’s name to repent. But since I cannot do that, I have done my duty when I have prophesied to the dry bones. Remember we shall meet again. I boast of neither eloquence nor talent, and I cannot understand why you come here; I only speak right on, and tell you what I feel; but see me, when we meet before God’s bar, however ill I may have spoken, I shall be able to say, that I said to you, “Believe on the name of Jesus, and you shall be saved.” Why will you die, oh house of Israel? Is hell so sweet, is everlasting torment so much to be desired, that therefore you can let go the glories of heaven, the bliss of eternity? Men, are you to live for ever? or, are you to die like brutes? “Live!” say you, Well, then, are you not desirous to live in a state of bliss? Oh may God grant you grace to turn to him with full purpose of heart! Come, guilty sinner, come! God help you to come, and I shall be well repaid, if but one soul be added to the visible fold of Jesus, through anything I may have said.
{a} Icarus: He is a character in Greek mythology. He is the son of Daedalus and is commonly known for his attempt to escape Crete by flight, which ended in a fall to his death. See Explorer “http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icarus”
Thoughts On The Last Battle
No. 23-1:173. A Sermon Delivered On Sunday Evening, May 13, 1855, By C. H. Spurgeon, At Exeter Hall, Strand.
The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. {1 Corinthians 15:56,57}
1. While the Bible is one of the most poetic of books, though its language is unutterably sublime, yet we must remark how constantly it is true to nature. There is no straining of a fact, no glossing over a truth. However dark may be the subject, while it lights it up with brilliance, yet it does not deny the gloom connected with it. If you will read this chapter of Paul’s epistle, so justly celebrated as a master piece of language, you will find him speaking of that which is to come after death with such exaltation and glory, that you feel, “If it is like this to die, then it would be well to depart at once.” Who has not rejoiced, and whose heart has not been lifted up, or filled with a holy fire, while he has read such sentences as these: “In a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump: for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. Oh Death, where is your sting? Oh grave, where is your victory?” Yet with all that majestic language, with all that bold flight of eloquence, he does not deny that death is a gloomy thing. Even his very figures imply it. He does not laugh at it; he does not say, “Oh, it is nothing to die”; he describes death as a monster; he speaks of it as having a sting; he tells us where the strength of that sting lies; and even in the exclamation of triumph he imputes that victory not to unaided flesh, but he says, “Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”
2. When I select such a text as this, I feel that I cannot preach from it. The thought overwhelms me; my words do stagger: there are no utterances that are great enough to convey the mighty meaning of this wondrous text. If I had the eloquence of all men united in one, if I could speak as never man spoke, (with the exception of that one God-like man of Nazareth) I could not encompass so vast a subject as this. I will not therefore pretend to do so, but offer you such thoughts as my mind is capable of producing.
3. Tonight we shall speak of three things: first, the sting of death; secondly, the strength of sin; and thirdly, the victory of faith.
4. I. First, THE STING OF DEATH. The apostle pictures death as a terrible dragon or monster, which, coming upon all men, must be fought with by each one for himself. He gives us no hopes whatever that any of us can avoid it. He tells us of no bridge across the river Death; he does not give us the faintest hope that it is possible to emerge from this state of existence into another without dying: he describes the monster as being exactly in our path, and with it we must fight, each man personally, individually, and alone; each man must die; we all must cross the black stream; each one of us must go through the iron gate. There is no passage from this world into another without death. Having told us, then, that there is no hope of our escape, he braces up our nerves for the combat; but he gives us no hope that we shall be able to slay the monster; he does not tell us that we can strike our sword into his heart, and so overturn and overwhelm death; but pointing to the dragon, he seemed to say, “You cannot slay it, man; there is no hope that you should ever put your foot upon its neck and crush its head; but one thing can be done — it has a sting which you may extract; you cannot crush death under foot, but you may pull out the sting which is deadly; and then you do not need fear the monster, for monster it shall be no longer, but rather it shall be a swift winged angel to waft you aloft to heaven.” Where, then, is the sting of this dragon? Where must I strike? What is the sting? The apostle tells us that “The sting of death is sin.” Once let me cut off that, and then, though death may be dreary and solemn, I shall not dread it; but holding up the monster’s sting, I shall exclaim, “Oh death, where is your sting? Oh grave, where is your victory?” Let us now dwell upon the fact, that “the sting of death is sin.”
5. 1. First, sin puts a sting into death from the fact that sin brought death into the world. Men could be more content to die if they did not know it was a punishment. I suppose if we had never sinned there would have been some means for us to go from this world to another. It cannot be supposed that so large a population would have existed, that all the myriads who have lived from Adam down until now could ever have inhabited so small a globe as this; there would not have been space enough for them. But there might have been provided some means for taking us off when the proper time should come, and bearing us safely to heaven. God might have furnished horses and chariots of fire for each of his Elijahs; or as it was said of Enoch, so it might have been declared of each of us, “He is not, for God has taken him.” Thus to die, if we may call it death, to depart from this body and to be with God, would have been no disgrace; in fact, it would have been the highest honour: fitting the loftiest aspiration of the soul, to live quickly its little time in this world, then to mount and be with its God; and in the prayers of the most pious and devout man, one of his sublimest petitions would be, “Oh God, hasten the time of my departure, when I shall be with you.” When such sinless beings thought of their departure they would not tremble, for the gate would be of ivory and pearl — not as now, of iron — the stream would be as nectar, far different from the present “bitterness of death.” But alas! how different! Death is now the punishment of sin. “In the day you eat of it you shall surely die.” “In Adam all die.” By his sin every one of us becomes subject to the penalty of death, and thus, being a punishment, death has its sting. To the best man, the holiest Christian, the most sanctified intellect, the soul that has the nearest and dearest intercourse with God, death must appear to have a sting, because sin was its mother. Oh fatal offspring of sin, I only dread you because of your parentage! If you did come to me as an honour, I could wade through Jordan even now, and when its chilling billows were around me I would smile amidst its surges; and in the swellings of Jordan my song should swell too, and the liquid