A Distinct Message

Spurgeon, Charles Haddon

Judges 3:12-30

And the children of Israel did evil again in the sight of the LORD: and the LORD strengthened Eglon the king of Moab against Israel…

Can there be any person to whom God has never sent a message? Is He your Creator? And has He made you to drift on the tempestuous sea of life in solitude without compass or guide?

I. MESSAGES FROM GOD. This Bible is in the house of every Englishman. It is "a message from God unto thee." Other messengers you have had. Ought not the kindness and compassion extended to you in providence to have led you to say, "How can I grieve such a God?" Other messages have come to you draped in black. Can you forget the season when life trembled in the scale, and the physician knew not which way it would turn? Another dark messenger has come to you. Death has bereaved you of friends and comrades. Are there those whom thou didst ensnare who have gone their way before thee to feel their terrible remorse? Let the remembrance of them make you pause and think and turn from your sins to the living and true God.

II. THE GOSPEL OF THE GRACE OF GOD IS IN ITSELF A MESSAGE FROM GOD TO YOU. Be sure of this, let our case be what it may, the gospel preached is a message from God to our souls. The hypocrite cannot long attend upon the means of grace without finding that its doctrines are very heart-searching. They pierce his thoughts; they hold a candle up to him, and if he would but look they would expose his desperate condition. The formalists, the men who delight in ceremonies, cannot long frequent God's hallowed courts, where His true ministers proclaim His name, with out perceiving that there is a message from God to them. The most careless spirit will find in the Word a looking-glass held up to his face in which he can see a reflection of himself.

III. If there be such a message as this from God to us, HOW SHOULD WE TREAT IT?

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