In preparing the message for Sunday, I came across two great sermons by Charles Spurgeon, “The Sinner’s Friend” and “The Very Friend You Need” and I used several long quote that were packed with goodness. And since they were so long and so loaded with great material, I thought that I would use this space to share them with you again. I think it will take you the rest of the week to digest these mouthfuls.
“His whole soul was filled with love to men while they were yet sinners and enemies to himself. It was this that made him quit his Father’s court, and all the royalties of heaven, to come and be born in a stable, and laid in a manger, and to labour in a carpenter’s shop, and to become the poorest of the poor, and the most despised and rejected of men. All this was because he loved men, not only as men, but as guilty men.”
Spurgeon, C. H. (1896). “The Very Friend You Need.” In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (Vol. 42, p. 460). London: Passmore & Alabaster.
“You do not find him standing at a distance, issuing his mandates and his orders to sinners to make themselves better, but you find him coming among them like a good workman who stands over his work; he takes his place where the sin and the iniquity are, and he personally comes to deal with it. He does not write out a prescription and send by another hand his medicines with which to heal the sickness of sin, but he comes right into the lazar-house, touches the wounded, looks at the sick; and there is healing in the touch; there is life in the look. The great Physician took upon himself our sicknesses and bare our infirmities, and so proved himself to be really the sinner’s friend.”
Spurgeon, C. H. (1864). The Sinner’s Friend. In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (Vol. 10, p. 110). London: Passmore & Alabaster.
“The Lord Jesus Christ was not “a friend of publicans and sinners” in the sense of being in the least like them. Our proverb says, “A man is known by the company he keeps,” but you could not have known the Lord Jesus Christ by the company he kept. It would be strictly true to say of him that he was “holy, harmless, undefiled, and separate from sinners,” that even when he was present with them, and received them, and ate with them, yet still there was a grave distinction between him and them, so that you could never consider him to be of the same class with them. No, brethren, his bitterest enemies could not truly lay any sin to his charge; they had to hire false witnesses to make up an accusation against him, and when they had made it up, there was really nothing in it. The quick-eyed prince of this world, Satan himself, could find nothing sinful in him, and the princes of this world, whose eyes, through their malice, had become like the eyes of lynxes, yet could not discover anything for which they could blame him. He was not like them, he was not like any sinner, he was not like the drunkard, he was not like the adulterer, he was not like the thief, nor was he in the least like the hypocritical Pharisee, who, with all his attempts to appear righteous, was not really like the Saviour. So, Christ was not “a friend of publicans and sinners” in the sense of being like them.”
Spurgeon, C. H. (1896). “The Very Friend You Need.” In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (Vol. 42, p. 458). London: Passmore & Alabaster.
And here is another one that I did not have time to add into my message:
“Our Saviour proved his love to men in his very coming to this earth, as I have already said; but when he was here, he went about doing good. He never was invited to do good to any, and refused, however lowly—and, let me add, however polluted they might be; they were always welcome to his benediction. He went about preaching the gospel which could elevate those who were fallen, and comfort those who were despairing. And at the last he proved his love in the highest conceivable manner. If a good shepherd laid down his life for his sheep, and in doing so was proved to be good, did not Jesus do so? Let me quote those blessed words of the apostle Peter,—there is more music in them than in all Homer’s poetry,—“Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree.” That we might live, he died. That we might be cleansed from our iniquities, the Lord hath laid them all on him. O sinners, Christ is indeed your friend, since, by his death, he has already done for you all that almighty love could suggest, and omnipotent love could carry out. Yea, and rising from the grave, and mounting to his throne, he made intercession for the transgressors, and he continues still to prove his love to sinners by daily pleading for them. The prayer he commenced on earth has never closed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Oh, yes, he is intensely, deeply affectionate within himself, but he is abundantly and practically the friend of sinners by what he does for them! How I wish that some of you would prove this by going to him, that he might exercise upon you all the matchless skill of his inimitable grace!
Spurgeon, C. H. (1896). “The Very Friend You Need.” In The Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit Sermons (Vol. 42, pp. 460–461). London: Passmore & Alabaster.