New Park Street Pulpit · Sermon No. 325
Delivered on Sabbath Evening, June 3, 1860, by the Rev. C. H. Spurgeon, at New Park Street Chapel, Southwark
“Oh love the Lord, all you His saints.” Psalm 31:23. LOVE Jehovah—so the text runs. God the Father demands your love, and He deserves the warmest affection of your hearts. He has chosen you from before the foundation of the world. He has given His Son that He might redeem you with His precious blood. He has taken you into His family by Divine Adoption. He has “begotten you again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.” It is to Him that you address your prayers; it is He who grants you your requests. It is He who glorified His Son Jesus, receiving Him into the heavens as your Representative; and He will glorify Him yet again by gathering you together with all His people into the mansions provided for the blessed. “Oh love the Lord, all you His saints.” Love the Son! It is He whose delights were with the sons of men of old, He who entered into suretyship and Covenant engagement on the behalf of His elect. It is He who with His precious blood has ransomed our souls and delivered them “from going down into the pit.” He is our Mediator through whom we pray and our Intercessor who prays for us! He is our Head, our Husband, our King. He it is, even Jesus, who took our nature and wears a body like our own. It is He who imparts to us His mind now, and promises that hereafter we shall bear His likeness in Glory. “Oh love the Lord, all you His saints.” Love the Holy Spirit! He has been revealed to us, and is known by us as “the Comforter.” How endearing!— “He in our hearts of sin and woe Has bid streams of Grace arise, Which unto endless glory flow.”
He has quickened us when we were dead in sins. He has given us the Grace of repentance and of faith. He has sanctified us, and kept and preserved us up till now. He has taken of the things of Christ and has showed them unto us. He has dwelt in our poor hearts; He has been our Comforter, our Instructor and our daily Teacher; it is He who convicted us of sin when as yet we perceived not its malignity; and it is He who inspires our hearts and souls with the supernatural will and disposition of living to God.
It is of the Holy Spirit we are born-again and made partakers of the New Creation. It is by the same Spirit we are ultimately to be changed into the image of our Lord from glory to glory. “Oh love the Lord, all you His saints.” If a blind world sees no beauty in its God and, therefore, does not love Him, yet oh you saints, love your God! If the enemies of the Most High set up other gods, and bow down before them—if they turn aside into crooked ways and go a whoring after their false gods—yet, oh you saints of His, stand fast and turn to your Jehovah and love Him forever more! Do not merely serve Him, but love Him. O house of Israel be not His slaves—serve not your God as the heathen serve their gods—out of terror and fear, but, “love the Lord all you saints.” Be not as the subjects of Pharaoh, flogged to their work with the whip, but be you the dutiful children of your loving Father! Serve Him, I say, and rejoice before Him. Let love sweeten all your services; give Him all your hearts; make Him the object supreme of all your heart’s desire. Always live to Him as you live by Him!
I shall have to ask your patience this evening, while I take a liberty with my text. It is this. I mean to confine its exhortation to one Person of the Divine Trinity. I have already accepted it in its comprehensiveness, “Oh love Jehovah, all you His saints.” Tonight I propose to use it as consonant with such an occasion as the present, when we shall celebrate the Supper of our Lord—“Oh love the Lord Jesus, all you His saints.” And I shall endeavor, as the Holy Spirit shall enable me, first of all to stir you up to love Jesus, by showing how meet and befitting it is that you should do so. And then I shall seek to show the excellence of loving Jesus—how profitable it will be to your spirit, if your heart is wholly inflamed with love to Him.
I. First, then, my Beloved, let one sentiment animate every mind, and one emotion fill every heart. “Oh love the Lord, all you His saints.” I feel in beginning to exhort you to love Christ, that love is a stream which must flow spontaneously, a fountain that must bubble up of its own accord. When Grace makes a man love Christ, it does not do it by force, for love is a wine that cannot be trod out of the grapes with pressure; it must freely distil. The heart cannot be forced to love. It is true it can be constrained bylove, but by no other constraint. Moses, with all the thunders that gave extraordinary sanction to his mission, never could make a heart love God! There is nothing but love that can create love, and love, itself, comes like droppings from the honeycomb. The only pressure it will deign to endure is the pressure of love. “Draw me,” says love, “I will run after you—drive me and I cannot but resist—my desire cannot even stir, much less can I run after you with fervent attachment. My heart melted while my Beloved spoke, because He was my Beloved. Because He loved me, and spoke right lovingly, my heart melted. Had He been angry with me, had He spoken with coarse words, my soul might have melted with fear, but it never could have been dissolved with love.” Love, I say, is the only pressure which may be used to produce love and yet, I think I may “stir up your pure minds by way of remembrance.” It may so happen that while I strike some fear sparks, they may touch the inflammable passion of your new-born spirits; the breath of the Spirit may fan them and nurture them, till the love of your heart will seem as if it had received new fire.