Extirpation

Your weekly dose of Spurgeon

The PyroManiacs devote some space each weekend to highlights from the lifetime of works from the Prince of Preachers, Charles Haddon Spurgeon.  The following excerpt is from Able to the Uttermost, pages 94-95, Pilgrim Publications.

"The tribes, after they had conquered the land, had another task to do, namely, to extirpate the old inhabitants." 

For they were not merely to bring them under subjection, so that Judah or Reuben might possess his land, but they were to slay them utterly, for their sins had been great, and God had doomed them to die and the Israelites were to be their executioners.

Now, this is what God has to do in each one of His people, viz., to exterminate our sins. O brethren, what a battle that would be for us! Why, our sins, when we attack them single-handed, soon overcome us.

Why, the very weakest sin that is in any one of us would be our downfall if we were let alone; and as for our stronger passions, if opportunity and temptation should come together and then our evil desires should leap up at the same time, who among us could stand in such a conflict? And yet, as surely as God has undertaken the work of our salvation, He means to take up root and branch all our sins. Can you realise it?

O my brethren, who are daily fighting with inward sin, can you realise it, that the day will come when you will have no tendencies to sin, when all your powers will go towards righteousness and to righteousness only? Can you grasp it? “Oh,” say you, “it is a heavenly thought.” Yes, and in Heaven it will be realised, and you will have more and more of Heaven here below in proportion as it is realised here.

Holiness is the royal road to happiness. The death of sin is the life of joy. At the root of every sin there is the bitterness of sorrow. Sin is the root of bitterness. When God shall tear up every one of these roots of bitterness, it will be a blessed thing for us, but this He will do.

The quick-tempered brother shall no longer be liable to bursts of passion; the sluggish-minded shall no longer be tempted to indolence; the man of imperious pride shall bow as humbly as the seraph who veils himself with his wings; there shall be in us every propensity to good and no inclination to evil.

O sacred hour, O blest abode!

I shall be near and like my God,

And flesh and sense no more assail

The solid pleasures of my soul.

I shall be for ever free from that which brings me sorrow, and shall possess that which brings me joy. The Lord’s portion is His people, and He will not leave a Canaanite in the land. He will cut them up altogether.

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