THE PLAIN MAN’S PATHWAY TO PEACE – Charles Spurgeon
THE PLAIN MAN’S PATHWAY TO PEACE
Introduction
“And when Jesus departed from there, two blind men followed Him, crying and saying, You son of David, have mercy on us! And when He was come into the house, the blind men came to Him: and Jesus said unto them, Do you believe that I am able to do this? They said unto Him, Yes, Lord. Then He touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith be it unto you. And their eyes were opened; and Jesus straitly charged them, saying, See that no one knows it.” Matthew 9:27-30.
I am not about to expound this incident, nor to draw illustrations from it, but only to direct your attention to one single point in it, and that is, its extreme simplicity. There are other cases of blind men, and we have various incidents connected with them, such as, in one instance, the making of clay and the sending of the patient to wash at the pool of Siloam, and so forth. But here the cure is extremely simple—the men are blind, they cry to Jesus, they come near, they confess their faith, and they receive their sight straightway! In many other cases of miracles that were worked by Christ, there were circumstances of difficulty. In one case, a man is let down through the roof, being borne by four; in a second case, a woman comes behind Him in the press and touches the hem of His garment with great effort. We read of another who had been dead for four days, and there seemed to be a clear impossibility in the way of his ever coming forth from the tomb. But everything is plain sailing here. Here are blind men, conscious of their blindness, confident that Christ can give them sight. They cry to Him, they come to Him, they believe that He is able to open their eyes, and they receive their sight at once! You see, there were, in their case, these simple elements—a sense of blindness, a desire for sight—then prayer, then coming to Christ, then an open avowal of faith, and then the cure. The whole matter lies in a nutshell. There are no details, no points of care and nicety which might suggest anxiety—the whole business is simplicity itself, and upon that one point, I want to dwell at this time.
There are cases of conversion which are just as simple as this case of the opening of the eyes of the blind, and we are not to doubt the reality of the work of Grace in them because of the remarkable absence of amazing incidents and striking details. We are not to suppose that a conversion is a less genuine work of the Holy Spirit because it is extremely simple.
May the Holy Spirit bless our meditation.
I. MANY PERSONS ARE MUCH TROUBLED IN COMING TO CHRIST
It is a fact that must be admitted—that all do not come quite as readily as these blind men came. There are instances on record in biographies—there are many known to us and, perhaps, our own cases are among them—in which coming to Christ was a matter of struggle, of effort, of disappointment, of long waiting, and at last, of a kind of desperation by which we were forced to come. You must have read Mr. John Bunyan’s description of how the pilgrims came to the wicket gate. They were pointed, you remember, by Evangelist to a light and to a gate, and they went that way according to his bidding.
I have told you, sometimes, the story of a young man in Edinburgh who was very anxious to speak to others about their souls, so he addressed himself one morning to an old Musselburgh fishwife, and he began by saying to her, “Here you are with your burden.” “Yes,” she said. He asked her, “Did you ever feel a spiritual burden?” “Yes,” she said, resting a bit, “I felt the spiritual burden years ago, before you were born, and I got rid of it, too. But I did not go the same way to work that Bunyan’s pilgrim did.” Our young friend was greatly surprised to hear her say that and thought she must be under grievous error and, therefore, begged her to explain. “No,” she said, “when I was under concern of soul, I heard a true Gospel minister who bade me look to the Cross of Christ, and there I lost my load of sin. I did not hear one of those milk-and-water preachers like Bunyan’s Evangelist.” “How,” said our young friend, “do you make that out?” “Why, that Evangelist, when he met the man with the burden on his back, said to him, ‘Do you see that wicket gate?’ ‘No,’ he said, ‘I don’t.’ ‘Do you see that light?’ ‘I think I do.’ Why, man,” she said, “he should not have spoken about wicket gates or lights, but he should have said, ‘Do you see Jesus Christ hanging on the Cross? Look to Him and your burden will fall off your shoulders.’”
“He sent that man round the wrong way when he sent him to the wicket gate, and much good he got by it, for he was likely to have been choked in the Slough of Despond before long! I tell you, I looked at once to the Cross and away went my burden.” “What?” said this young man, “Did you never go through the Slough of Despond?” “Ah,” said she, “many a time, more than I care to tell. But at the first, I heard the preacher say, ‘Look to Christ,’ and I looked to Him. I have been through the Slough of Despond since that—but let me tell you, Sir, it is much easier to go through that slough with your burden off than it is with your burden on!”
And so it is! Blessed are they whose eyes are only and altogether on the Crucified! The older I grow, the more sure I am of this—that we must have done with self in all forms and see Jesus only if we would be at peace. Was John Bunyan wrong? Certainly not! He was describing things as they generally are. Was the old woman wrong? No! She was perfectly right—she was describing things as they ought to be and as I wish they always were. Still, experience is not always as it ought to be and much of the experience of Christians is not Christian experience! It is a fact which I lament but, nevertheless, must admit, that a large number of persons, before they come to the Cross and lose their burden, go round about no end of a way, trying this plan and that plan with but very slender success, after all, instead of coming straightway to Christ just as they are, looking to Him and finding light and life at once.
II. THE TROUBLE IS NOT ESSENTIAL TO A REAL SAVING COMING TO CHRIST
It is admitted that many are much troubled in coming to Christ, but this is not at all essential to a real saving coming to the Lord Jesus Christ. I mention this because I have known Christian men distressed in heart because they fear that they came to Christ too easily. They have half imagined, as they looked back, that they could not have been converted at all because their conversion was not attended with such agony and torment of mind as others speak of.
I would first remark that it is very difficult to see how despairing feelings can be essential to salvation! Look for a minute. Can it be possible that unbelief can help a soul to faith? Is it not certain that the anguish which many experience before they come to Christ arises from the fact of their unbelief? They do not trust—they say they cannot trust—and so they are like the troubled sea which cannot rest. Their mind is tossed to and fro and vexed sorely through unbelief. Is this a foundation for holy trust? It would seem to me the oddest thing in all the world that unbelief should be a preparation for faith! How can it be that to sow the ground with thistle seed should make it more ready for the good corn? Are fire and sword helpers to national prosperity? Is deadly poison an assistance to health? I do not understand it.
It seems to me to be far better for the soul to believe the Word of God at once and far more likely to be a genuine work when the soul, convicted of sin, accepts the Savior. Here is God’s way of salvation, and He demands that I trust His dear Son who died for sinners. I perceive that Christ is worthy to be trusted, for He is the Son of God—so that His sacrifice must be able to put away my sin. I perceive, also, that He laid down His life in the place of His people and, therefore, I heartily trust Him. God bids me trust Him and I trust Him without any further question. If Jesus Christ satisfies God, He certainly satisfies me! And, asking no further question, I come and trust myself with Him.
Does not this kind of action appear to have about it all that can be necessary? Can it possibly be that a raging, raving despair can ever be helpful towards saving faith? I do not see it. I cannot think it! Some have been beaten about with the most awful thoughts. They have supposed that God could not possibly forgive them—they have imagined that, even if He could pardon them, He would not since they were not His elect, nor His redeemed! Though they have seen the Gospel invitation written in letters of love—“Come unto Me, all you that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest,” they dare to question whether they should find rest if they came and they invent suspicions and surmises, some of them amounting, even, to blasphemy against the Character of God and the Person of His Christ!
That such people have been forgiven according to the riches of Divine Grace, I do verily believe, but that their sinful thoughts ever helped them to obtain pardon, I cannot imagine! That my own dark thoughts of God, which left many a scar upon my spirit, were washed away with all my other sins, I know. And that there was never any good in those things, or that I can look back upon them without shame and regret, is also a thing I know! I cannot see of what particular service they could have been to anybody! Shall one bath of ink take out the stain of another? Can our sin be removed by our sinning more? It is impossible that sin could aid Grace and that the greatest of all sins, the sin of unbelief, should help towards faith!
Yet, once again, dear Friends, much of all this struggling and tumult within which some have experienced is the work of the devil, as I have already said. Can it be essential to salvation for a man to be under the influence of Satan? Is it necessary that the devil should come in to help Christ? Is it absolutely essential for the black fingers of the devil to be seen at work with the lily hands of the Redeemer? Impossible! That is not my judgment of the work of Satan, nor will it, I think, be yours if you will look at it.
III. THOSE WHO COME TO JESUS GENTLY, PLEASANTLY, AND HAPPILY ARE NOT LOSERS
Those who are privileged to come to Jesus Christ softly, pleasantly, and happily are not losers. They do lose something, certainly, but there is not much in it. They lose somewhat of the picturesque and they have less to tell. When a man has had a long series of trials to drive him out of himself and, at last, comes to Christ like a wrecked vessel tugged into port, he has a story to talk of and write about and, perhaps, he thinks it interesting to be able to tell. And, if he can tell it to God’s Glory, it is quite proper that he should. Many of these stories are found in biographies because they are the incidents which excite interest and make a life worth writing about—but you must not conclude that all godly lives are of the same sort.
Happy are those whose lives could not be written because they were so happy as to be uneventful. Some of the most favored lives do not get written because there is nothing very picturesque about them. But I ask you this—when those blind men came to Christ just as they were and said that they believed that He could open their eyes and He did open their eyes—is there not as much of Christ in their story as there well could be? The men, themselves, are nowhere—the healing Master is in the foreground! More detail might almost take away the peculiar prominence that He has in it all.
There He stands, the blessed, glorious Opener of the eyes of the two blind men! There He stands and His name is glorious! There was a woman who had spent all her substance upon physicians and was nothing better, but rather grew worse. She had a long tale to tell of the various doctors she had been to, but I do not know that the narrative of her many disappointments would glorify the Lord Jesus one bit more than when these two blind men could say, “We heard of Him and we went to Him and He opened our eyes! We never spent a halfpenny upon doctors. We went straightaway to Jesus, just as we were, and all He said to us was, ‘Do you think that I can do it?’ and we said, ‘Yes, we believe You can,’ and He opened our eyes at once and it was all done.”
Oh, if my experience should ever stand in my Master’s light, perish my best experience! Let Christ be first, last, midst—don’t you agree, my Brothers and Sisters? If you, poor Sinner, come to Christ at once with nothing about you whatever that you ever can talk of—if you are just a nobody coming to the ever-blessed Everybody—if you are a mere nothing coming to Him who is the All-in-All! If you are a lump of sin and misery, a great vacuum, nothing but an emptiness that never is thought of any more—if you will come and lose yourselves in His infinitely glorious Grace—this will be all that is needed!
It seems to me that you will lose nothing by the fact that there is not so much of the picturesque and the sensational in your experience. There will be, at least, this grand sensation—lost in self but saved in Jesus—glory be to His name!
Conclusion
Perhaps you may suppose that persons who come thus gently lose something by way of evidence afterwards. “Ah,” said one to me, “I could almost wish, sometimes, that I had been an open offender so that I might see the change in my character. But, having been always moral from my youth up, I am not always able to see any distinct sign of a change.” Ah, let me tell you, Friends, that this form of evidence is of small use in times of darkness, for if the devil cannot say to a man, “You have not changed your life”—for there are some that he would not have the impudence to say that to, since the change is too manifest for him to deny it—he says, “You changed your actions, but your heart is still the same. You turned from a bold, honest sinner to be a hypocritical, canting professor! That is all you have done!”
Very little consolation is to be had even out of the change that conversion works when once the arch-enemy becomes our accuser. In fact, it comes to this—however you come to Christ, you can never place any confidence in how you came. Your confidence must always rest in Him to whom you came—that is, in Christ—whether you come to Him flying, or running, or walking. If you get to Jesus, you are all right! It is not how you come—it is whether you come to Him! Have you come to Jesus? Do you come to Jesus? If you have come and you doubt whether you have come, come again! Never quarrel with Satan about whether you are a Christian. If he says you are a sinner, reply to him, “So I am, but Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners and I will begin again.”
He is an old lawyer, you know, and very cunning. He knows how to baffle us, for we do not understand things as well as he does. He has been, these thousands of years, at the trade of trying to make Christians doubt their interest in Christ and he understands it well. Never answer him! Refer him to your Solicitor—tell him you have an Advocate on high who will answer him. Tell him you will fly away to Christ, again. If you never went to Jesus before, you will go now and, if you have been before, you will go again! That is the way to end the quarrel.
As to evidences, they are fine things in fine weather, but when the tempest is out, wise men let evidences go. The best evidence a man can have that he is saved is that he is still clinging to Christ!
Lastly, some may suppose that those who come gently to Christ may lose a good deal of adaptation for later usefulness because they will not be able to sympathize with those who are in deep perplexity and in awful straits when they are coming to Christ. Ah, well, there are enough of us who can sympathize with such and I do not know that everybody is bound to sympathize with everybody in every respect. I remember mentioning, one day, to a man who had considerable property, that his poor minister had a large family and could scarcely keep a coat on his back. I said I wondered how some Christian men who profited under the ministry of such a man did not supply his needs. He answered that he thought it was a good thing for ministers to be poor because they could sympathize with the poor. I said, “Yes, yes, but then, don’t you see, there ought to be one or two that are not poor to sympathize with those who are rich.” I would go one better, certainly, and let the poor pastor, now and then, have the power to sympathize with both classes!
He did not seem to understand my argument, but I think there is a good deal in it. It is a great mercy to have some Brethren around us who, by their painful experience, can sympathize with those who have been through that pain. But don’t you think it is a great mercy to have others who can say, “Well, dear Heart, don’t be troubled because the great dog of Hell did not howl at you. If you have entered the gate calmly and quietly and Christ has received you, do not be troubled because you are not barked at by the devil, for I, too, came to Jesus just as gently and safely and sweetly as you have done”? Such a testimony will comfort the poor soul and so, if you lose the power to sympathize one way, you will gain the power to sympathize in another—and there will be no great loss, after all.
To sum it all up—I would that every man and woman and child here would come and trust the Lord Jesus Christ! It seems to me to be such a matchless plan of salvation—for Christ to take human sin and to suffer in the sinner’s stead and for us to have nothing to do but just to accept what Christ has done and to trust ourselves wholly with Him! He that would not be saved by such a plan as this deserves to perish—and so he will! Was there ever so sweet, so sure, and so plain a Gospel? It is a joy to preach it! Will you have it? Dear Souls, will you not yield to be nothing and have Jesus to be All in All? God grant that none of us may reject this way of Grace, this open way, this safe way. Come, linger no longer. The Spirit and the bride say “Come.” Lord, draw them by the love of Jesus! Amen.
Charles Spurgeon