Bankrupt

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 The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, volume 37, sermon number 2,203, "Lo, I come."

"The devil had played his cards so well that man was left bankrupt of virtue, bankrupt of happiness, bankrupt of hope." 

Then, in the volume of the Book, it was written, “I said, Lo, I come.” Yes, in the hour when hellish falsehood had robbed man of everything. No man hath yet dealt with the devil without being a loser. The arch-deceiver promises very fairly; but he lies from beginning to end.
I know he promised you pleasure unbounded, and liberty unrestrained. Now, the pleasure is burnt out, and the ashes of that which once blazed and crackled, are terrible to look upon. As for liberty, where is it? You have become the bond-slave of sin. You were to enjoy life, and lo, you are plunged in death!

It may be, there are in this house persons who bear in their bodies the marks, not of the Lord Jesus, but of the devil’s temptations. He has made you so to sin that your bones are filled with the sins of your youth; and you know it. He needs a long spoon who eats out of the same dish as the devil and your spoon has not been long enough.

Sin has overreached and betrayed you; and you stand trembling before God as the result of having listened to the falsehoods of hell, and having rejected the commands of heaven.  Supposing such a person to be present—and I feel sure he is—I pray that he may hear my text as from the Lord Jesus himself. “Then said I, Lo, I come.”

The devil has trod you down, but Jesus comes to raise you up. Your paradise is lost, and by him it is to be restored. Jesus has come to give repentance and remission of sins. That crafty head which deceived you, the Lord Jesus has broken; he came for this purpose. If you had not been betrayed, you would not have needed a deliverer; but your misery has made room for his mercy.

Not while Adam is perfect in paradise is there any news of the Seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head; but after the serpent has done his deceitful work, and has ruined the race, then we hear that ancient gospel of God, and see the only hope of fallen man.

Here is good cheer for you who look with shame upon your foolish yielding to Satan’s deceits. You are caught as silly birds in a snare; you have been as foolish as the fish of the sea which are taken in a net; but when you are captives, Christ comes to be your Liberator and God commends his love towards you in that while you are yet sinners Christ died for the ungodly.

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