The Suitability of the Gospel

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, confession of sin, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved…How then shall they call on Him in whom they have not believed? and how shall they believe in Him of whom they have not heard? and how shall they hear without a preacher? … faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. – Romans 10:13,14,17

There are minds which God has so prepared that the moment they hear the gospel they respond to it. I think I hear the seeker after truth exclaim when he heard the gospel, “True? Why, how could it be otherwise? It is so divinely grand, so harmonious, so good, so gracious, so unexpected—nobody could have thought of it but God Himself—it must be the truth.” Having long sought goodly pearls of truth, the illuminated eye catches the gleam of the gospel and discerns it to be a priceless gem. Those are blessed indeed who are thus at once brought unto faith by the statement of the gospel.

To some others, the convincing point has been the suitability of the gospel to their case, for while they have heard it preached as a gospel for sinners, they have felt that they were certainly among that class. When the preacher has gone on to describe the misery of the fall, the utter ruin of human nature, its deceitfulness, feebleness, fickleness, and folly, the hearer has said, “Is the gospel sent to those who are thus lost, guilty, and impotent? Why, I am precisely in that condition!” And, then, when its great command is stated, namely, simple trust in Jesus, the soul perceives the suitability of the way of grace. We do not go to heaven to bring Christ down, or dive into the deeps to bring Him up from the dead; we can neither keep the law nor find an atonement for our transgressions; but this simple trust, oh how suitable it is to undone sinners. Nothing to do—I can do nothing; noticing to bring—I have nothing to bring; it suits my case. Glory be to God for devising a plan so adapted to our wants. From the suitabilty of the gospel to the sinner, many have been by God’s Spirit led to saving faith in Jesus, and so faith has come by hearing.

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon

God’s Strange Choice

Sherry sermon

You who are King of kings and Lord of lords, we worship You. Before Jehovah’s awful throne we bow with sacred joy.

Sermon Text

Simply State the Gospel Message

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation 1 Comment

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. – Romans 10:17

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. – 1 Corinthians 1:17

Sometimes faith has come into men’s minds by hearing the simple statement of the gospel. They have longed to be saved, and they have been told that Jesus the Son of God condescended to come into this world and to take upon Himself the form of man, and as man to be partaker of our infirmities, and to offer Himself as a sacrifice in the room, place, and stead of sinners; they have, moreover, been told that whosoever trusts in this substitutional sacrifice shall be saved, and straightway they have believed. All they have wanted has been merely to be informed of the way of salvation. God’s Spirit has so prepared them that they have believed almost as soon as they have heard the saving truth. In many cases the only difficulty in the way of salvation has been a want of understanding the Word. I know in my own case I would have given all I had, if I might but have been informed what I must do to be saved. Though I frequented places where the gospel was preached, I did not catch the meaning of believing, it puzzled me much. I do not remember to have heard the simple declaration that to trust in Jesus Christ would save my soul; or, possibly, I did hear it with my outward ears, but I must have been strangely infatuated, for I did not understand the sense; and I have often thought if I could have heard the way of faith simply stated, my soul would have leaped into liberty long before. I will not so say; but I am persuaded that faith often comes by hearing the simple declaration that God accepts sinners, not for what they are in themselves but for what Christ is, and that when sinners believe in Jesus, they are saved there and then and are acceptable with God through Jesus Christ His dear Son.

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon

A Faith-Creating Preaching

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. – Romans 10:17

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel—not with wisdom and eloquence, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power. – 1 Corinthians 1:17

I beg you to notice that it does not say in the text (of Romans 10:17) that faith comes through the eloquence, earnestness, or any other good quality of the preacher. Faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word, not of man, but of God. The Word of God is the substance of faith-creating preaching; it is by the hearing of God’s Word, and not by any other hearing that saving faith comes to the soul. I may hear a man descant upon the gospel with all the eloquence that can be commanded by the most fluent tongue, yet if my faith comes to me because the man spoke pathetically, or poetically, or argumentatively, or rhetorically, it is a poor miserable faith; being, of the power of the flesh, it will die, and so prove itself unlike the faith which springs from the incorruptible Word of God, that liveth and abideth for ever. On the other hand, I may hope for faith if I am listening to the true gospel, the very Word of God, though the man who speaks it may be of stammering lips, and his voice may be disagreeable to my ear, and there may be much about his manner that does not commend itself to me. If he preaches truth, it is by hearing not him, the man, but by hearing the Word of God, that I shall come to faith. I do desire ever, as a preacher, to feel that it is not my word but God’s Word that saves souls; we are to explain it and expound it, but we are not to add to it, take from it or conceive that we can improve it. We must not go into the pulpit and say, “I have been working out a subject from my own mind, and I am going to give you the result of my thoughts.” We had better keep our own thoughts for some other place and give the people the revealed truth of God. The theory now-a-days is that all preachers worth hearing by this refined generation must be profound thinkers, and inventors of improved theologies. Brethren, let man’s thoughts perish for ever; the thoughts of God and not the thoughts of man will save souls. The truth of God should be spoken simply, with as little as possible of the embellishments of metaphysics, and philosophy, and high culture, and all that stuff. I say the Word of God delivered as we find it is that which, when heard, brings faith to the souls of men.

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon

Faith Comes by Hearing

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. – Romans 10:17

Some have supposed that true faith will come to men by dreams and visions. It is surprising how a belief in these things lingers still in what is called this age of light; the notion is still current that if you dream of seeing Jesus, or fancy you have seen Him while awake, or if a passage of Scripture strikes you, or if you hear or imagine that you hear a voice speaking to you, you are then a believer…Though you should see all the angels in heaven, it would not prove that you would go to heaven, any more than my having seen the Pope’s bodyguard would be a proof that I shall be made a Cardinal. Things which are seen of the eye save not, for the things which are seen are temporal, and cannot work eternal salvation. Moreover, men saw Christ and yet pierced Him and blasphemed Him. Visions have been seen by heathens like Nebuchadnezzar, and angels have appeared to bad men like Balaam who, though he sighed out, “Let me die the death of the righteous,” yet perished, fighting against the God of Israel. True faith has a more solid basis for its fabric than the fleeting fancies of the mind.

I ought, perhaps, to add that the expression “by hearing,” though of course literally it must be confined to the hearing of words vocally uttered, is meant to include in its spirit the reading of the Word; for reading is a sort of hearing with the eyes, and faith has often come and will often come to men while they are reading the Word of God for themselves. We must not kill the spirit of the text by excessive regard to the mere letter of it, and we should do so if we excluded readings, which is a quiet hearing of the still small voice of the printed page. Faith comes by the Word of God reaching our minds, and our knowing and understanding it. The entrance of God’s Word giveth light. “Incline your ear and come unto Me, hear and your soul shall live” (Isaiah 55:3).

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon

Feelings Do Not Create Faith

Sherry Attributes of God, Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. – Romans 10:17

For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.- Romans 10:13

There are some who fancy that faith cometh by feeling. If they could feel emotions either of horror or of exquisite delight, they would then, they think, be the possessors of faith; but till they have felt what they have heard described in certain biographies of undoubtedly good men, they cannot believe, or even if they have a measure of faith, they cannot hope that it is true faith. Faith doth not come by feeling, but through faith arises much of holy feeling, and the more a man lives in the walk of faith, as a rule, the more will he feel and enjoy the light of God’s countenance. Faith hath something firmer to stand upon than those ever-changing frames and feelings which, like the weather of our own sunless land, is fickle and frail, and changeth speedily from brightness into gloom. You may get feeling from faith, and the best of it, but you will be long before you will find any faith that is worth the having, if you try to evoke it from frames and feelings.

“My hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus’ blood and righteousness;
I dare not trust the sweetest frame;
But wholly lean on Jesus’ name;
On Christ the solid rock I stand,
All other ground is sinking sand.”

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon

The Small Value of the Sacraments

Sherry Character of Jesus, Christian Life, promises, salvation, Sovereignty of God

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God… – Ephesians 2:8

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. – Romans 10:17

It appears to be thought possible to infuse grace by sacraments. There are persons yet alive who teach that a babe may be regenerated by certain aqueous processes and be thereby placed in “a state of salvation.” But is not faith a perpetual concomitant of regeneration? and what is that regeneration worth which leaves a person an unbeliever, and, consequently, “condemned already, because he hath not believed on the Son of God?” Rest assured, that as faith does not come by descent, neither can it be produced by any rite which recognizes that descent: it comes in one way, and in one way only in every case, and that is, by the hearing of the Word. To every person, whoever he may be, though nursed in the bosom of the church, and introduced to that church by the most solemn ritual, we are bound to say, you must hear as well as others, and you must believe as the result of that hearing as well as others, or else you will remain short of saving grace. Faith is not a mystery juggled into us by the postures, genuflections, and mumblings of priests. We have heard a great deal about sacramental efficacy, but I think a man must have extraordinary hardihood who would say that either baptism, or the so-called Eucharist, are the sure creators of faith; yet see I not what saving service these forms can render to unbelieving men if they leave them in an unbelieving condition, and, consequently, in a state of condemnation. Seeing that without faith it is impossible to please God, the grace supposed to be conveyed by the mere participation in sacraments is of small value, it cannot give the cardinal requisite for acceptance before God. Faith cannot be washed into us by immersion, nor sprinkled upon us in christening; it is not to be poured into us from a chalice, nor generated in us by a consecrated piece of bread. There is no magic about it; faith comes by hearing the Word of God, and by that way only.

How Can I Obtain Faith? by C. H. Spurgeon