Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 588
Delivered on Sunday Morning, September 4, 1864, by C. H. Spurgeon, at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington
Luke 15:20.
THERE he is! He is as wretched as misery itself—as filthy as his brute associates who could satisfy themselves with husks—while he could not. His clothes hang about him in rags and what he is on the outside, that he is within. He is disgraced in the eyes of the good and the virtuous remember him with indignation. He has some desires to go back to his father’s house but these desires are not sufficient to alter his condition. Mere desires have not scraped the filth from him, nor have they so much as patched his rags. Whatever he may or may not desire, he is still filthy, still disgraced, still an alien from his father’s house—and he knows it—for, by God’s Grace, he has come to himself.
He would have been angry if we had said as much as this before, but now we cannot describe him in words too black. With many tears and sighs he assures us that he is even worse than he appears to be and that no man can know all the depth of the vileness of his conduct—he has spent his living with harlots—he has despised a generous parent’s love and broken loose from his wise control. He has done evil with both his hands to the utmost of his strength and opportunity. There he stands, notwithstanding this confession, just what I have described him to be—for even though he has said within himself, “I have sinned”—yet that confession has not removed his griefs.
He acknowledges that he is not worthy to be called a son—and it is true he is not. But his unworthiness is not removed by his consciousness of it nor by his confession of it. He has no claims to a father’s love. If that father shuts the door in his face, he acts with justice. If he shall refuse so much as to speak a single word, except words of rebuke, no one can blame the father, for the son has so sadly erred. To this the son utters no denial. He confesses that if he is cast away forever, he well deserves it.
This picture, I know, is the photograph of some who are now present. You feel your vileness and sinfulness but you cannot look upon that sense of vileness as in any way extenuating or altering your condition. You feel, but you cannot plead, your feelings. You confess this morning that you have desires towards God but that you have no rights to Him— you cannot demand anything at His hands. If your soul were sent to Hell, His righteous Law approves it and so does your own conscience! You can see your rags. You can mark your filthiness. You can long for something better but you are no better. You have no more claims than you used to have upon God’s mercy. You stand here today a self-convicted offender against the loving kindness and holiness of God.
I pray that to such of you as are in this shape I may be the bearer of a message from God to your soul this morning. O you who know the Lord, put up earnest and silent prayers just now that my message may come home with power to troubled consciences! And I beseech you, for your own profit, look back to the hole of the pit where you were dug and to the miry clay where you were drawn and remember how God received you! And while we talk of what He is willing and able to do to the far-off sinners, let your souls leap with joyous gratitude at the recollection of how He received you into His love and made you partakers of His Grace in days gone by.
There are two things in the text—the first is the condition of many a seeker—he is yet a great way off. And then, secondly, the matchless kindness of the Father towards him.
I. First, dear Friends, THE CONDITION OF SUCH A SEEKER—HE IS YET A GREAT WAY OFF. He is a great way off if you consider one or two things. Remember his need of strength. This poor young man had, for some time, been without food—brought so very low that the husks upon which the swine fed would have seemed a dainty to him if he could have eaten them. He is so hungry that he has become emaciated and to him every mile has the weariness of leagues within it.
It costs him many pains and sore griefs to drag himself along, even though it is but an inch. So the sinner is a long way off from God when you consider his utter need of strength to come to God. Even such strength as God has given him is very painfully used. God has given him strength enough to desire salvation but those desires are always accompanied with deep and sincere grief for sin. The point which he has already reached has exhausted all his power and all he can do is fall down before Jesus and say—
“Oh, for this no strength have I, My strength is at Your feet to lie.”
He is a great way off, again, if you consider his need of courage. He longs to see his father but yet the probabilities are that if his father should come he would run away—the very sound of his father’s footsteps would act upon him as they did on Adam in the garden—he would hide himself among the trees. So instead of crying after his father, the great father would have to cry after him—“Where are you, poor fallen creature? Where are you?” His need of courage, therefore, makes the distance long—for every step up to now has been taken as though into the jaws of death. “Ah,” says the sinner, “it must be a long time before I can dare to hope—for my inequities have gone over my head so that I cannot look up.”