“And Jesus saith unto them, Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.”-Matthew 4:19.

When Christ calls us by His grace we ought not only to remember what we are, but we ought also to think of what He can make us. It is, “Follow Me, and I will make you.” We should repent of what we have been, but rejoice in what we may be. It is not “Follow Me, because of what you are already.” It is not “Follow Me, because you may make something of yourselves;” but, “Follow Me, because of what I will make you.” Verily, I might say of each one of us as soon as we are converted, “It doth not yet appear what we shall be.” It did not seem a likely thing that lowly fishermen would develop into apostles; that men so handy with the net would be quite as much at home in preaching sermons and in instructing converts. One would have said, “How can these things be? You cannot make founders of churches out of peasants of Galilee.” That is exactly what Christ did; and when we are brought low in the sight of God by a sense of our own unworthiness, we may feel encouraged to follow Jesus because of what He can make us. What said the woman of a sorrowful spirit when she lifted up her song? “He raiseth up the poor out of the dust, and lifteth up the beggar from the dunghill, to set them among princes.” We cannot tell what God may make of us in the new creation, since it would have been quite impossible to have foretold what He made of chaos in the old creation. Who could have imagined all the beautiful things that came forth from darkness and disorder by that one fiat, “Let there be light?” And who can tell what lovely displays of everything that is divinely fair may yet appear in a man’s formerly dark life, when God’s grace has said to him, “Let there be light?” O you who see in yourselves at present nothing that is desirable, come you and follow Christ for the sake of what He can make out of you. Do you not hear His sweet voice calling to you, and saying, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men?”~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1906.cfm

To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death… – Luke 1:79

Have you in your despair made a league with death, and a covenant with hell? Thus saith the Lord, “Your covenant with death shall be disannulled, and your agreement with hell shall not stand;” for the Lord has come forth, and visited you in the person of His dear Son to deliver the captive, and save those who are appointed unto death. Knowing your guilt, the Lord visits you and bids you look up. “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world.” Look and live; look, and be delivered at once, even from the horrible deathshadow which now broods over you. I do delight to think of this tender mercy of God to those who are lost. There are lost that shall be found, and last that shall be first. You seem forgotten of God, left out of the register of hope, but yet to you has Jesus come-“to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” Is not this tender mercy? If he had not come to shine on such I should never have been saved. A gospel for the cheerful would never have met my case; I wanted a gospel for the despairing. I know some here who must have perished if the gospel had only been suitable to those who are of good character, and have the beginnings of natural religion within them. Only a sinner’s Savior would have suited some of you, or, indeed, any of us. As the good Samaritan did to the wounded man, “he came where he was,” so did Jesus come to us in our ruin. The benefactor of the wounded did not stand and say to him, “Come here, and get on my beast, and he shall carry you to the inn.” But he went to him when he was lying half dead, and therefore helpless; and he poured the oil and wine into his wounds while the poor wretch could not move an inch, nor stir hand or foot. He bound up his wounds, and then set him on his own beast, and took him to the inn. This is tender mercy; and in this fashion Jesus deals with us. He does everything for us from the very beginning. He is Alpha, even as He must be Omega. Does not this show the tender mercy of our God, that He does come to us in the darkness, and under the grim shadow of death, and there and then reveals His love to us?~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1907.cfm

To give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace. – Luke 1:79

Our God visits us when we are in darkness; when we are in such darkness as to know nothing, see nothing, believe nothing, hope nothing; even then the Lord’s mercy comes to us. Is not this tenderness? “Educate a man up to a certain point,” says one, “and then we may hope that God’s grace will visit him.” Educate him by all means, but have hope that God may visit even those who have no education of any sort. “Follow the advance of civilization,” cries one, “and do not risk your missionaries among barbarians.” Not so; our marching orders are, “Preach the gospel to every creature.” The gospel is to precede and produce civilization. To them that sit in darkness, the Lord is pleased to send the Dayspring from on high. To send light where there is light is superfluous. Have we not a proverb about sending coals to Newcastle? God sendeth not grace to us because we have already something which may be viewed as prevenient and preparatory; but the prevenient and the preparatory are of His grace, and He comes in love to bring these with Him, to those who as yet know nothing of His light and life. They are in the dark, and He creates their day.

Did you notice that it is said “to those that sit in darkness?” This is more than being in the dark. The man who sits in darkness does so because he feels that his case is hopeless, and therefore he forbears all further action. A poor benighted traveler has wandered this way and that to find a track, but it is so dark that he cannot perceive his road; and so at last he embraces the rock for want of a shelter, crouching to the earth in despair. It is a part of the tender mercy of our God that He visits those who despond and are motionless in a dread inactivity. Those who have lost hope are lost indeed, and such the Savior has come to save. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1907.cfm

To give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins… – Luke 1:77

Permit me to read the text to you-“To give knowledge of salvation unto His people by the remission of their sins,” from which it appears that God comes to visit us when we are in our sins. If the plan of salvation were that we were to get out of our sins, and then God would come to us, it might be full of mercy, but it would not be tender mercy. Let it never be forgotten that “When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.” “God commendeth His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” I feel always at home when I get upon this blessed topic of the visits of God to undeserving, ill-deserving, hell-deserving sinners. His saving visits spring from grace, pure grace, altogether unmixed with any merit or claim on our part. God comes to us as the morning, which does not wait for man, nor tarry for the sons of men. I cannot bear the spirit which I see spreading among us in reference to almsgiving. It should not be indiscriminate, but it should be bounteous. Many cry, “We shall give help only to the deserving.” If God were to adopt that rule, where would you and I be? It has even been muttered in an undertone that, with regard to hospitals, no doubt they are used by persons who ought to provide for themselves, and so help to support struggling medical men. It may be so; but I like not the hard and niggardly spirit which suggests such criticisms. Talk not so; this is fit chatter for barbarians. Those who know the tender mercy of God will recollect that, when we ourselves had no good about us whatsoever, his tender mercy visited us, even as the sun ariseth upon the just and upon the unjust. He giveth with gladness to those who have no deservings of any kind. He will not mar the magnificence of His goodness by asking our pitiful pence of merit as a payment for it; but He giveth freely, according to the riches of His grace. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/1907.cfm