by C.H. Spurgeon
"And that lord answered the man of God, and said, Now, behold, if the Lord
should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be? And he said, Behold,
thou shalt see it with thine eyes but shalt not eat thereof"-2 Kings 7:19.
ONE WISE man may deliver a whole city; one good man may be the means of
safety to a thousand others. The holy ones are "the salt of the earth," the
means of the preservation of the wicked. Without the godly as a conserve,
the race would be utterly destroyed. In the city of Samaria there was one
righteous man-Elisha, the servant of the Lord. Piety was altogether extinct
in the court. The king was a sinner of the blackest dye, his iniquity was
glaring and infamous. Jehoram walked in the ways of his father Ahab, and
made unto himself false gods. The people of Samaria were fallen like their
monarch: they had gone astray from Jehovah; they had forsaken the God of
Israel; they remembered not the watchword of Jacob, "The Lord thy God is one
God;" and in wicked idolatry they bowed before the idols of the heathens,
and therefore the Lord of Hosts suffered their enemies to oppress them until
the curse of Ebal was fulfilled in the streets of Samaria, for "the tender
and delicate woman who would not adventure to set the sole of her foot upon
the ground for delicateness," had an evil eye to her own children, and
devoured her offspring by reason of fierce hunger (Deut 28:56-5
. In this
awful extremity the one holy man was the medium of salvation. The one grain
of salt preserved the entire city; the one warrior for God was the means of
the deliverance of the whole beleaguered multitude. For Elisha's sake the
Lord sent the promise that the next day, food which could not be obtained at
any price, should be had at the cheapest possible rate-at the very gates of
Samaria. We may picture the joy of the multitude when first the seer uttered
this prediction. They knew him to be a prophet of the Lord; he had divine
credentials; all his past prophecies had been fulfilled. They knew that he
was a man sent of God, and uttering Jehovah's message. Surely the monarch's
eyes would glisten with delight, and the emaciated multitude would leap for
joy at the prospects of so speedy a release from famine. "To-morrow," would
they shout, "to-morrow our hunger shall be over, and we shall feast to the
full."
However, the lord on whom the king leaned expressed his disbelief. We hear
not that any of the common people, the plebeians, ever did so; but an
aristocrat did it. Strange it is, that God has seldom chosen the great men
of this world. High places and faith in Christ do seldom well agree. This
great man said, "Impossible!" and, with an insult to the prophet, he added,
"If the Lord should make windows in heaven, might such a thing be." His sin
lay in the fact, that after repeated seals of Elisha's ministry, he yet
disbelieved the assurances uttered by the prophet on God's behalf. He had,
doubtless, seen the marvelous defeat of Moab; he had been startled at
tidings of the resurrection of the Shunamite's son; he knew that Elisha had
revealed Benhadad's secrets and smitten his marauding hosts with blindness;
he had seen the bands of Syria decoyed into the heart of Samaria; and he
probably knew the story of the widow, whose oil filled all the vessels, and
redeemed her sons; at all events the cure of Naaman was common conversation
at court; and yet, in the face of all this accumulated evidence, in the
teeth of all these credentials of the prophet's mission, he yet doubted, and
insultingly told him that heaven must become an open casement, ere the
promise could be performed. Whereupon God pronounced his doom by the mouth
of the man who had just now proclaimed the promise: "thou shalt see it with
thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof." And providence-which always fulfills
prophecy, just as the paper takes the stamp of the type-destroyed the man.
Trodden down in the streets of Samaria, he perished at its gates, beholding
the plenty, but tasting not of it. Perhaps his carriage was haughty, and
insulting to the people; or he tried to restrain their eager rush; or, as we
would say, it might have been by mere accident that he was crushed to death;
so that he saw the prophecy fulfilled, but never lived to enjoy it. In his
case, seeing was believing, but it was not enjoying.
I shall this morning invite your attention to two things-the man's sin and
his punishment. Perhaps I shall say but little of this man, since I have
detailed the circumstances, but I shall discourse upon the sin of unbelief
and the punishment thereof.
I. And first, the SIN.
His sin was unbelief. He doubted the promise of God. In this particular case
unbelief took the form of a doubt of the divine veracity, or a mistrust of
God's power. Either he doubted whether God really meant what he said, or
whether it was within the range of possibility that God should fulfill his
promise. Unbelief hath more phases than the moon, and more colors than the
chameleon. Common people say of the devil, that he is seen sometimes in one
shape, and sometimes in another. I am sure this is true of Satan's
first-born child-unbelief, for its forms are legion. At one time I see
unbelief dressed out as an angel of light. It calls itself humility, and it
saith, "I would not be presumptuous; I dare not think that God would pardon
me; I am too great a sinner." We call that humility, and thank God that our
friend is in so good a condition. I do not thank God for any such delusion.
It is the devil dressed as an angel of light; it is unbelief after all. At
other times we detect unbelief in the shape of a doubt of God's
immutability: "The Lord has loved me, but perhaps he will cast me off
to-morrow. He helped me yesterday, and under the shadows of his wings I
trust; but perhaps I shall receive no help in the next affliction. He may
have cast me off; he may be unmindful of his covenant, and forget to be
gracious." Sometimes this infidelity is embodied in a doubt of God's power.
We see every day new straits, we are involved in a net of difficulties, and
we think "surely the Lord cannot deliver us." We strive to get rid of our
burden, and finding that we cannot do it, we think God's arm is as short as
ours, and his power as little as human might. A fearful form of unbelief is
that doubt which keeps men from coming to Christ; which leads the sinner to
distrust the ability of Christ to save him, to doubt the willingness of
Jesus to accept so great a transgressor. But the most hideous of all is the
traitor, in its true colors, blaspheming God, and madly denying his
existence. Infidelity, deism, and atheism, are the ripe fruits of this
pernicious tree; they are the most terrific eruptions of the volcano of
unbelief. Unbelief hath become of full stature, when quitting the mask and
laying aside disguise, it profanely stalks the earth, uttering the
rebellious cry, "No God," striving in vain to shake the throne of the
divinity, by lifting up its arm against Jehovah, and in its arrogance would
"Snatch from his hand the balance and the rod,
Re-judge his justice-be the god of God."
Then truly unbelief has come to its full perfection, and then you see what
it really is, for the least unbelief is of the same nature as the greatest.
I am astonished, and I am sure you will be, when I tell you that there are
some strange people in the world who do not believe that unbelief is a sin.
Strange people I must call them, because they are sound in their faith in
every other respect; only, to make the articles of their creed consistent,
as they imagine, they deny that unbelief is sinful. I remember a young man
going into a circle of friends and ministers, who were disputing whether it
was a sin in men that they did not believe the gospel. Whilst they were
discussing it, he said, "Gentlemen am I in the presence of Christians? Are
you believers in the Bible, or are you not?" They said, "We are Christians
of course." "Then," said he, "does not the Scripture say, 'of sin, because
they believed not on me?' And is it not the damning sin of sinners, that
they do not believe on Christ?" I could not have thought that persons should
be so fool-hardy as to venture to assert that, "it is no sin for a sinner
not to believe on Christ." I thought that, however far they might wish to
push their sentiments, they would not tell a lie to uphold the truth, and,
in my opinion this is what such men are really doing. Truth is a strong
tower and never requires to be buttressed with error. God's Word will stand
against all man's devices. I would never invent a sophism to prove that it
is no sin on the part of the ungodly not to believe, for I am sure it is,
when I am taught in the Scriptures that, "This is the condemnation, that
light is come into the world, and men love darkness rather than light," and
when I read, "He that believeth not is condemned already, because he
believeth not on the Son of God," I affirm, and the Word declares it,
unbelief is a sin. Surely with rational and unprejudiced persons, it cannot
require any reasoning to prove it. Is it not a sin for a creature to doubt
the word of its Maker? Is it not a crime and an insult to the Divinity, for
me, an atom, a particle of dust, to dare to deny his words? Is it not the
very summit of arrogance and extremity of pride for a son of Adam to say,
even in his heart, "God I doubt thy grace; God I doubt thy love; God I doubt
thy power?" Oh! sirs believe me, could ye roll all sins into one mass,-could
you take murder, and blasphemy, and lust, adultery, and fornication, and
everything that is vile and unite them all into one vast globe of black
corruption, they would not equal even then the sin of unbelief. This is the
monarch sin, the quintessence of guilt; the mixture of the venom of all
crimes; the dregs of the wine of Gomorrah; it is the A1 sin, the
master-piece of Satan, the chief work of the devil.
I shall attempt this morning, for a little while, to shew the extremely evil
nature of the sin of unbelief.
And let me say here, that unbelief in the Christian is of the self-same
nature as unbelief in the sinner. It is not the same in its final issue, for
it will be pardoned in the Christian; yea it is pardoned: it was laid upon
the scapegoat's head of old: it was blotted out and atoned for; but it is of
the same sinful nature. In fact, if there can be one sin more heinous than
the unbelief of a sinner, it is the unbelief of a saint. For a saint to
doubt God's word-for a saint to distrust God after innumerable instances of
his love, after ten thousand proofs of his mercy, exceeds everything. In a
saint, moreover, unbelief is the root of other sins. When I am perfect in
faith, I shall be perfect in everything else; I should always fulfill the
precept if I always believed the promise. But it is because my faith is
weak, that I sin. Put me in trouble, and if I can fold my arms and say,
"Jehovah-Jireh, the Lord will provide," you will not find me using wrong
means to escape from it. But let me be in temporal distress and difficulty;
if I distrust God, what then? Perhaps I shall steal, or do a dishonest act
to get out of the hands of my creditors; or if kept from such a
transgression, I may plunge into excess to drown my anxieties. Once take
away faith, the reins are broken; and who can ride an unbroken steed without
rein or bridle? Like the chariot of the sun, with Phaeton for its driver,
such should we be without faith. Unbelief is the mother of vice; it is the
parent of sin; and, therefore, I say it is a pestilent evil-a master sin.
"Law and terrors do but harden,
All the while they work alone:
But a sense of blood-bought pardon
Will dissolve a heart of stone."
Methinks the tale of Calvary is enough to break a rock. Rocks did rend when
they saw Jesus die. Methinks the tragedy of Golgotha is enough to make a
flint gush with tears, and to make the most hardened wretch weep out his
eyes in drops of penitential love; but yet we tell it you, and repeat it
oft, but who weeps over it? Who cares about it? Sirs, ye sit as unconcerned
as if it did not signify to you. Oh! behold and see all ye that pass by. Is
it nothing to you that Jesus should die? Ye seem to say "It is nothing."
What is the reason? Because there is unbelief between you and the cross. If
there were not that thick veil between you and the Saviour's eyes, his looks
of love would melt you. But unbelief is the sin which keeps the power of the
gospel from working in the sinner: and it is not till the Holy Ghost strikes
that unbelief out-it is not till the Holy Spirit rends away that infidelity
and takes it altogether down, that we can find the sinner coming to put his
trust in Jesus.
Faith fosters every virtue; unbelief murders every one. Thousands of prayers
have been strangled in their infancy by unbelief. Unbelief has been guilty
of infanticide; it has murdered many an infant petition; many a song of
praise that would have swelled the chorus of the skies, has been stifled by
an unbelieving murmur; many a noble enterprise conceived in the heart has
been blighted ere it could come forth, by unbelief. Many a man would have
been a missionary; would have stood and preached his Master's gospel boldly;
but he had unbelief. Once make a giant unbelieving, and he becomes a dwarf.
Faith is the Samsonian lock of the Christian; cut it off, and you may put
out his eyes-and he can do nothing.
And, oh! do you not know that unbelief kept Moses and Aaron out of Canaan?
They honored not God; they struck the rock when they ought to have spoken to
it. They disbelieved: and therefore the punishment came upon them, that they
should not inherit that good land, for which they had toiled and labored.
Let me take you where Moses and Aaron dwelt-to the vast and howling
wilderness. We will walk about it for a time; sons of the weary foot, we
will become like the wandering Bedouins, we will tread the desert for a
while. There lies a carcass whitened in the sun; there another, and there
another. What means these bleached bones? What are these bodies-there a man,
and there a woman? What are all these? How came these corpses here? Surely
some grand encampment must have been here cut off in a single night by a
blast, or by bloodshed. Ah; no, no. Those bones are the bones of Israel;
those skeletons are the old tribes of Jacob. They could not enter because of
unbelief. They trusted not in God. Spies said they could not conquer the
land. Unbelief was the cause of their death. It was not the Anakims that
destroyed Israel; it was not the howling wilderness which devoured them; it
was not the Jordan which proved a barrier to Canaan; neither Hivite or
Jebusite slew them; it was unbelief alone which kept them out of Canaan.
What a doom to be pronounced on Israel, after forty years of journeying:
they could not enter because of unbelief!
Not to multiply instances, recollect Zechariah. He doubted, and the angel
struck him dumb. His mouth was closed because of unbelief. But oh! if you
would have the worst picture of the effects of unbelief-if you would see how
God has punished it, I must take you to the siege of Jerusalem, that worst
massacre which time has ever seen; when the Romans razed the walls to the
ground, and put the whole of the inhabitants to the sword, or sold them as
slaves in the market-place. Have you never read of the destruction of
Jerusalem, by Titus? Did you never turn to the tragedy of Masada, when the
Jews stabbed each other rather than fall into the hands of the Romans? Do
you not know, that to this day the Jew walks through the earth a wanderer,
without a home and without a land? He is cut off, as a branch is cut from a
vine; and why? Because of unbelief. Each time ye see a Jew with a sad and
somber countenance-each time ye mark him like a denizen of another land,
treading as an exile in this our country-each time ye see him, pause and
say, "Ah! it was unbelief which caused thee to murder Christ, and now it has
driven thee to be a wanderer; and faith alone-faith in the crucified
Nazarene-can fetch thee back to thy country, and restore it to its ancient
grandeur." Unbelief, you see, has the Cain-mark upon its forehead. God hates
it; God has dealt hard blows upon it: and God will ultimately crush it.
Unbelief dishonors God. Every other crime touches God's territory; but
unbelief aims a blow at his divinity, impeaches his veracity, denies his
goodness, blasphemes his attributes, maligns his character; therefore, God
of all things, hates first and chiefly, unbelief, wherever it is.
II. This brings us now to conclude with the PUNISHMENT.
"Thou shalt see it with thine eyes, but shalt not eat thereof." Listen
unbelievers! ye have heard this morning your sin; now listen to your doom:
"Ye shall see it with your eyes, but shalt not eat thereof." It is so often
with God's own saints. When they are unbelieving, they see the mercy with
their eyes, but do not eat it. Now, here is corn in this land of Egypt; but
there are some of God's saints who come here on the Sabbath, and say, "I do
not know whether the Lord will be with me or not." Some of them say, "Well,
the gospel is preached, but I do not know whether it will be successful."
They are always doubting and fearing. Listen to them when they get out of
the chapel. "Well, did you get a good meal this morning?" "Nothing for me."
Of course not. Ye could see it with your eyes, but did not eat it, because
you had no faith. If you had come up with faith, you would have had a
morsel. I have found Christians, who have grown so very critical, that if
the whole portion of the meat they are to have, in due season, is not cut up
exactly into square pieces, and put upon some choice dish of porcelain, they
cannot eat it. Then they ought to go without; and they will have to go
without, until they are brought to their appetites. They will have some
affliction, which will act like quinine upon them: they will be made to eat
by means of bitters in their mouths; they will be put in prison for a day or
two until their appetite returns, and then they will be glad to eat the most
ordinary food, off the most common platter, or no platter at all. But the
real reason why God's people do not feed under a gospel ministry, is,
because they have not faith. If you believed, if you did but hear one
promise, that would be enough; if you only heard one good thing from the
pulpit here would be food for your soul, for it is not the quantity we hear,
but the quantity we believe, that does us good-it is that which we receive
into our hearts with true and lively faith, that is our profit.
But, let me apply this chiefly to the unconverted. They often see great
works of God done with their eyes, but they do not eat thereof. A crowd of
people have come here this morning to see with their eyes, but I doubt
whether all of them eat. Men cannot eat with their eyes, for if they could,
most would be well fed. And, spiritually, persons cannot feed simply with
their ears, nor simply with looking at the preacher; and so we find the
majority of our congregations come just to see; "Ah, let us hear what this
babbler would say, this reed shaken in the wind." But they have no faith;
they come, and they see, and see, and see, and never eat. There is some one
in the front there, who gets converted; and some one down below, who is
called by sovereign grace; some poor sinner is weeping under a sense of his
blood-guiltiness; another is crying for mercy to God: and another is saying,
"Have mercy upon me, a sinner." A great work is going on in this chapel, but
some of you do not know anything about it; you have no work going on in your
hearts, and why? Because ye think it is impossible; ye think God is not at
work. He has not promised to work for you who do not honor him. Unbelief
makes you sit here in times of revival and of the outpouring of God's grace,
unmoved, uncalled, unsaved.
But, sirs, the worst fulfillment of this doom is to come! Good Whitefield
used sometimes to lift up both his hands and shout, as I wish I could shout,
but my voice fails me. "The wrath to come! the wrath to come!" It is not the
wrath now you have to fear, but the wrath to come; and there shall be a doom
to come, when "ye shall see it with your eyes, but shall not eat thereof."
Methinks I see the last great day. The last hour of time has struck. I heard
the bell toll its death knell-time was, eternity is ushered in; the sea is
boiling; the waves are lit up with supernatural splendour. I see a rainbow-a
flying cloud, and on it there is a throne, and on that throne sits one like
unto the Son of Man. I know him. In his hand he holds a pair of balances;
just before him the books,-the book of life, the book of death, the book of
remembrance. I see his splendour, and I rejoice at it; I behold his pompous
appearance, and I smile with gladness that he is come to be "admired of all
his saints." But there stands a throng of miserable wretches, crouching in
horror to conceal themselves, and yet looking, for their eyes must look on
him whom they have pierced; but when they look they cry, "Hide me from the
face." What face? "Rocks, hide me from the face." What face? "The face of
Jesus, the man who died, but now is come to judgment." But ye cannot be
hidden from his face; ye must see it with your eyes: but ye will not sit on
the right hand, dressed in robes of grandeur; and when the triumphal
procession of Jesus in the clouds shall come, ye shall not march in it; ye
shall see it, but ye shall not be there. Oh! methinks I see it now, the
mighty Saviour in his chariot, riding on the rainbow to heaven. See how his
mighty coursers make the sky rattle while he drives them up heaven's hill. A
train girt in white follow behind him, and at his chariot wheels he drags
the devil, death, and hell. Hark, how they clap their hands. Hark, how they
shout. "Thou hast ascended up on high; thou hast led captivity captive."
Hark, how they chant the solemn lay, "Hallelujah, the Lord God omnipotent
reigneth." See the splendour of their appearance; mark the crown upon their
brows; see their snow-white garments; mark the rapture of their
countenances; hear how their song swells up to heaven while the Eternal
joins therein, saying, "I will rejoice over them with joy, I will rejoice
over them with singing, for I have betrothed thee unto me in everlasting
lovingkindness." But where are you all the while? Ye can see them up there,
but where are you? Looking at it with your eyes, but you cannot eat thereof.
The marriage banquet is spread; the good old wines of eternity are broached;
they sit down to the feast of the king; but there are you, miserable, and
famishing, and ye cannot eat thereof. Oh! how ye wring your hands. Might ye
but have one morsel from the table-might ye but be dogs beneath the table.
You shall be a dog in hell, but not a dog in heaven.
But to conclude. Methinks I see thee in some place in hell, tied to a rock,
the vulture of remorse gnawing thy heart; and up there is Lazarus in Abraham's
bosom. You lift up your eyes and you see who it is. "That is the poor man
who lay on my dunghill, and the dogs licked his sores; there he is in
heaven, while I am cast down. Lazarus-yes, it is Lazarus; and I who was rich
in the world of time am here in hell. Father Abraham, send Lazarus, that he
may dip the tip of his finger in water, to cool my tongue." But no! it
cannot be; it cannot be. And whilst you lie there, if there be one thing in
hell worse than another, it will be seeing the saints in heaven. Oh, to
think of seeing my mother in heaven while I am cast out! Oh, sinner, only
think, to see thy brother in heaven-he who was rocked in the selfsame
cradle, and played beneath the same roof-tree-yet thou art cast out. And,
husband, there is thy wife in heaven, and thou art amongst the damned. And
seest thou, father! thy child is before the throne; and thou! accursed of
God and accursed of man, art in hell. Oh, the hell of hells will be to see
our friends in heaven, and ourselves lost. I beseech you, my hearers, by the
death of Christ-by his agony and bloody sweat-by his cross and passion-by
all that is holy-by all that is sacred in heaven and earth-by all that is
solemn in time or eternity-by all that is horrible in hell, or glorious in
heaven-by that awful thought, "for ever,"-I beseech you lay these things to
heart, and remember that if you are damned, it will be unbelief that damns
you. If you are lost, it will be because ye believed not on Christ; and if
you perish, this shall be the bitterest drop of gall-that ye did not trust
in the Saviour.
