Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 713
Delivered on Sunday Morning, September 30, 1866, by C. H. Spurgeon
“Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, The God of my salvation, And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.” Psalm 51:14.
DAVID had been grossly guilty towards his faithful and veteran friend Uriah. He had given instructions that Uriah should be led into the hottest part of the fight and then suddenly deserted so that he might be struck by the sword of the Syrians, and might appear to have died in the natural order of battle. Whereas, of course, his death was a cowardly murder, planned and devised by the very man who ought to have been his protector.
It is pleasing to observe in David’s penitence that he plainly names his sin. He does not call it manslaughter. He does not speak of it as an imprudence by which an unfortunate accident occurred to a worthy man, but he calls it by its true name, bloodshed. It is true he did not actually slay the husband of Bathsheba—it was by another hand that Uriah died. But still it was planned in David’s heart that Uriah should be slain, and he was before the Lord the murderer of Uriah. He calls a spade a spade, and names his crime as bloodshed.
Let us learn in our confessions to be honest with God. Do not give fair names to foul sins. Call them what you will, they will smell no sweeter. What God sees them to be, that you must labor to feel them to be, and with all openness of heart acknowledge their true character. Observe, too, that David not only gives it the right name, but is evidently oppressed with a sense of the heinousness of his sin. It is easy to use words, but it is difficult to feel their meaning. He prays like one who is consciously guilty. The blood of Uriah was now not on his hands, alone, but on his conscience. The bloody hand was before him continually and the impossibility to purge away the stain, except by the sacrificial hyssop, made David’s heart lay low in the dust.
The fifty-first Psalm is the photograph of a contrite spirit. Oh, let us seek after the like brokenness of heart, for however excellent our words may be, yet if the heart is not conscious of the blackness and Hell-deservingness of sin, we cannot expect to find mercy with the Judge of all the earth! Possibly, my Brethren, you will think that I ought not to use such a text as this in addressing you, for there are no murderers here. “A sermon from this text to someone who had strangled another, or fired the deadly shot through his enemy’s heart might be well enough, but are there any here,” says one, “that are guilty of bloodshed?”
Yes, Friend. The preacher is guilty, at any rate, if no one else is! And he believes that there is not a person here who will be able to go out of this house unconvicted of sin in this respect, if God the Holy Spirit is but here, first, to enable the preacher to lay the charge clearly, and secondly, to enable your conscience honestly to take that home which really belongs to you. There are other ways of being guilty of bloodshed besides stabbing with a knife, or poisoning with a deadly drug. There is another kind of murder far less detested, but equally black in God’s sight—not the destruction of the body—but the destruction of the soul! Not the destruction of the mere shell, the outward man, but the murder of the real man, the inward self, the inner spirit, the soul murder which cries for vengeance before high Heaven, concerning which we have need to offer the prayer of David, “Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God, The God of my salvation.”
Before I proceed to the heavy work of this morning, which is to bring home sin to our consciences, I would like to put in a word by way of caution. I shall have to speak of some who “destroy with their meat those for whom Christ died,” and of others who, “crucify the Lord afresh, and put Him to an open shame.” And when I do so, there will be some who will not dare to take exception to the Scriptural phraseology, because everyone yields to that, but they will fight hard against the supposed meaning of the very expressions which they are forced to put up with. They will say to me, “It is impossible that any should be destroyed for whom Christ died.”
And I may add it is equally impossible that Christ should be crucified afresh. I shall quite agree with them in this, but if they, therefore, gather that it is impossible for anyone to be guilty of the two sins mentioned, I shall not agree with them, because such offenses would not have been mentioned in Scripture as having been committed if they could not be committed.
Do you not know, dear Friends, that a man may be guilty of a sin which he never could actually commit, but which he committed in his heart? For instance, in very deed and act, I can never destroy a man for whom Christ died. It is not in my power nor in the power of even devils to destroy such souls! But if I commit an action which in the ordinary nature of things would destroy such a soul. If I utter teachings, or if I present an example which, if God did not prevent, would destroy such a soul, then I am guilty because I should have destroyed that soul if it had not been for God’s interposing. His interposition does not take away my guilt though it prevented its effects.