OBTAINING PROMISES. A Sermon DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 16TH, 1862, BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "Who through faith obtained promises."-Hebrews xi. 33. THE promises of God are to the believer an inexhaustible mine of wealth. Happy is it for him if he knows how to search out their secret veins and enrich himself with their hid treasures. They are to him an armoury containing all manner of offensive and defensive weapons. Blessed is he who has learned to enter into the sacred arsenal, to put on the breastplate and the helmet, and to lay his hand to the spear and to the sword. They are to the believer a surgery in which he will find all manner of restoratives and blessed elixirs; he shall find therein an ointment for every wound, a cordial for every faintness, a remedy for every disease. Blessed is he who is well skilled in heavenly pharmacy and knoweth how to lay hold on the healing virtues of the promises of God. The promises are to the Christian a storehouse of food. They are as the granaries which Joseph built in Egypt, or as the golden pot wherein the unrotting manna was preserved. Blessed is he who can take the five barley loaves and fishes of promise and break them till his five thousand necessities shall all be supplied, and he is able to gather up baskets full of fragments. The promises are the Christian's Magna Charta of liberty, they are the title deeds of his heavenly estate. Happy is he who knoweth how to read them well and call them all his own. Yea, they are the jewel room in which the Christian's crown-treasures are preserved-the regalia, secretly his to-day, but which he shall openly wear in paradise. He is already a king who hath the silver key with which to unlock the strong room; he may even now grasp the sceptre, wear the crown, and put upon his shoulders the imperial mantle. O how unutterably rich are the promises of our faithful, covenant-keeping God! If we had here the tongue of the mightiest of human orators, and if that tongue could be touched with a live coal from off the altar, yet still it could not utter a tenth of the praises of the exceeding great and precious promises of God. Nay, they who have entered into rest, and have had their tongues attuned to the lofty and rapturous eloquence of cherubim and seraphim, even they can never tell the height and depth, the length and breadth of the unsearchable riches of Christ which are stored up in the treasure-house of God-the promises of the covenant of his grace. See, then, my brethren, how needful it is that you and I should know the heavenly art of by faith "obtaining promises." Furthermore, all things under the covenant of grace are by promise. The law had blessings for works. What shall I say? It had only 100 METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE PULPIT. thou goest. This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest observe to do according to all that is written therein: for then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success. Have not I commanded thee? Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest." One more instance may not be amiss. God sometimes gives his people fresh promises by faith just before a trial is about to come upon them. It was so with Elijah. God said to him, "Go to the brook Cherith, behold I have commanded the ravens to feed thee there." This was at the beginning of the famine. There he abode, and God fulfilled the promise, for by faith Elijah had obtained it. Acting upon faith, still dependant upon God, he abides at Cherith, and as the result of this faith, God gives him a fresh promise, "Arise, get thee to Zarephath-I have commanded a widow woman there to sustain thee." The faith which received the first promise obtained the honour of a second. So with you and with me. If we have had a little promise, and up till now have realised it, if we have lived upon it and made it the stay and support of our souls, surely God will give us another and a greater one, and so, from promise to promise speeding our way, we shall find the promises to be rounds of the ladder which Jacob saw, the top whereof shall reach to heaven. Doubt and be distrustful about the promise that you have, and you cannot expect God to increase his revelation to your soul. Be afraid, stagger through unbelief at that which was laid to your heart yesterday, and you shall not have a new one to-morrow. Oh, that we had power to act as Samson did, who having the promise of God that he should smite the Philistines; with the jaw-bone of an ass, laid them heaps on heaps, never reckoning the odds, but having God with him in child-like simple faith he dashed upon his foes and overcame them. We should go from strength to strength, receiving grace upon grace if we had faith to mount from promise to promise. But, I hear some one say, "is there such a thing as receiving promises now? They are in the Bible, and we can read them, but can they ever come to us as if they were our own?" Oh, yes, dear friends, and that is the best way in which God's people get at the sweetness of them. I believe in God the Holy Ghost. I believe in his immediate operations in the soul of man. This is the dispensation of the Holy Spirit, and would therefore be strange if he did not speak in us now as much as in the age of types and shadows. I am not a disciple of the Quakers, although I believe a descendant of one of their early martyrs, but in some matters I heartily agree with them, as, for instance, in their testimony to the special and direct monitions, directions, and illuminations of the Holy Spirit. Surely, I know that God the Holy Spirit hath dealings with his people to-day, as much as ever he had with the prophets of old, and there are times when he taketh an old text out of the Word, and re-writeth it upon their souls, so that it is as really a revelation fresh from heaven, as though it had never been written in that book before. Bilney, that blessed martyr of Jesus Christ, was much wounded in conscience, by reason of the great sin which, through the weakness of the flesh he had committed, by subscribing to Popish errors; at that time he could get no comfort of soul because of his deep 292 OBTAINING PROMISES. A Sermon DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, FEBRUARY 16TH, 1862, BY REV. C. H. SPURGEON, AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON. "Who through faith obtained promises."-Hebrews xi. 33. THE promises of God are to the believer an inexhaustible mine of wealth. Happy is it for him if he knows how to search out their secret veins and enrich himself with their hid treasures. They are to him an armoury containing all manner of offensive and defensive weapons. Blessed is he who has learned to enter into the sacred arsenal, to put on the breastplate and the helmet, and to lay his hand to the spear and to the sword. They are to the believer a surgery in which he will find all manner of restoratives and blessed elixirs; he shall find therein an ointment for every wound, a cordial for every faintness, a remedy for every disease. Blessed is he who is well skilled in heavenly pharmacy and knoweth how to lay hold on the healing virtues of the promises of God. The promises are to the Christian a storehouse of food. They are as the granaries which Joseph built in Egypt, or as the golden pot wherein the unrotting manna was preserved. Blessed is he who can take the five barley loaves and fishes of promise and break them till his five thousand necessities shall all be supplied, and he is able to gather up baskets full of fragments. The promises are the Christian's Magna Charta of liberty, they are the title deeds of his heavenly estate. Happy is he who knoweth how to read them well and call them all his own. Yea, they are the jewel room in which the Christian's crown-treasures are preserved-the regalia, secretly his to-day, but which he shall openly wear in paradise. He is already a king who hath the silver key with which to unlock the strong room; he may even now grasp the sceptre, wear the crown, and put upon his shoulders the imperial mantle. O how unutterably rich are the promises of our faithful, covenant-keeping God! If we had here the tongue of the mightiest of human orators, and if that tongue could be touched with a live coal from off the altar, yet still it could not utter a tenth of the praises of the exceeding great and precious promises of God. Nay, they who have entered into rest, and have had their tongues attuned to the lofty and rapturous eloquence of cherubim and seraphim, even they can never tell the height and depth, the length and breadth of the unsearchable riches of Christ which are stored up in the treasure-house of God-the promises of the covenant of his grace. See, then, my brethren, how needful it is that you and I should know the heavenly art of by faith "obtaining promises." Furthermore, all things under the covenant of grace are by promise. The law had blessings for works. What shall I say? It had only curses for transgressors, since the blessings were never obtained by any who were under the law. But the covenant of grace saith not, "Do this and live," but it saith, "I will," and "thou shalt." It saith not, "He that doeth these things shall live by them;" but, "at suchand-such a time will I visit you and ye shall be blessed." Mention anything you will which is contained in the covenant, and I will show it is by promise. Speak we of adoption? "Now we, brethren, as Isaac was, are the children of promise." "They which are the children of the flesh, these are not the children of God: but the children of the promise, these are counted for the seed." Speak you of inheritance? Then "God gave it to Abraham by promise," we are the "heirs of promise;" "and this is the promise that he hath promised us even eternal life." The covenants are described by Paul as being the "covenants of promise." Even the Gospel itself is in the first chapter of the Romans, at the second verse, spoken of as "the Gospel of God, which he had promised afore by his prophets in the holy Scriptures." Life eternal is described as the "promise of eternal life." We, brethren, look for the "promise of his coming;" and after that we, "according to his promise look for new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness." So that if we should begin at the beginning and run on till we come to the close of the catalogue of divine blessings which are bestowed upon us through grace, we might say of them all, "These are promised covenant mercies." How needful then-in what a tenfold degree is it absolutely necessary that you and I should know how to obtain the promises and see them fulfilled; for if not,-failing to obtain the promise, we have lost all things and are of all men the most miserable. I would try this morning to explain the text, understanding it in two senses. First, some reader might think it means obtaining the promises in themselves. Perhaps, a more thoughtful reader would perceive that it may be better understood as obtaining the fulfilment of the promises; the phrase means certainly both, but we think that the mind of the Spirit is most fully expressed by the second sense. I. It is certain that holy men of old, and that good men now, do BY FAITH OBTAIN PROMISES. Let us give you an instance the memorable case of Abraham. Abraham is bidden by God to offer up his son Isaac. He was already an heir of the promises, but not as yet had they been revealed to him in their utmost length and breadth. Obedient to the divine command he prepares to offer up his son Isaac, his only son, on whom his hope of posterity depended, counting that God was able either of stones to raise up children, or to raise up Isaac again from the dead. He unsheathes the knife to slay his son. He is prevented from the consummation of the deed. God accepts his sacrifice and rewards it with a promise. If you will at your leisure read in Genesis xxii., commencing at the fifteenth verse, and proceeding onwards, you will see it was then that God conferred on Abraham that great charter wherein it was written, "In blessing I will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the heaven, and as the sand which is upon the sea shore; and thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed; because thou hast obeyed my voice." Now, it was his act of faith which, not meritoriously, but of grace, obtained that noble promise. Brethren, if ye would obtain a promise, your faith must do exploits. When you have made some sacrifice for God, and have been willing in the teeth of human reason to do God's Word as God bids you, you shall then stand on a vantage ground from which you may reach another and a higher promise than as yet you have ever been able to grasp in the hand of your faith. It is true the promise is not through the law, but through the righteousness of faith; but to him who like Abraham staggereth not at the promise through unbelief, it shall surely be given to be "heir of the world." To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundantly. The Spirit of God shall whisper into your soul some promise which shall come home with as much power to you as though an angel from heaven had spoken it to you, and you shall through one act of faith obtain the promise which before was beyond your reach. Another notable instance is given us in the case of David, where it was not so much faith, as an act consequent upon faith, which brought him the promise, namely, a noble wish to serve God by building a house for him. David had been storing up much gold and silver that he might build a house for God, for he said, "Behold I dwell in a house of cedar, but the ark of the covenant of the Lord remaineth under curtains." He was not permitted to build the house, but as a reward for his desire to do this for his God, Nathan was sent, and then it was that the covenant was made with David, in which he rejoiced even when expiring, because it was "ordered in all things and sure." Then Nathan said to him, "And it shall come to pass, when thy days be expired that thou must go to be with thy fathers, that I will raise up thy seed after thee, which shall be of thy sons; and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build me an house, and I will stablish his throne for ever. I will be his father, and he shall be my son; and I will not take my mercy away from him, as I took it from him that was before thee: but I will settle him in mine house and in my kingdom for ever: and his throne shall be established for evermore." Now, brethren, if you and I would obtain the promise, if we would have them spoken home to us with a force as great as if they consisted of novel words for the first time uttered by some seraphic lips, we must resolve to do some great thing for God; and he who expects the grace-indited wishes of his children, will in return lead them into some inner chamber of new delights which they had not known before. To quote yet another instance. Joshua was about to invade the land of Canaan, and therefore before his arduous enterprise the Lord gave him a new promise. His faith led him to the brink of Jordan, the borders of the promise land, and then and there he by faith obtained a blessed promise, which we will read for our comfort, remembering that venturing in the path of duty upon great enterprises, we may expect like him to win new promises. "There shall not any man be able to stand before thee all the days of thy life: as I was with Moses, so I will be with thee: I will not fail thee, nor forsake thee. Be strong and of a good courage: for unto this people shalt thou divide for an inheritance the land, which I sware unto their fathers to give them. Only be thou strong and very courageous, that thou mayest observe to do according to all the law, which Moses my servant commanded thee: turn not from it to the right hand or to the left, that thou mayest prosper whithersoever |
