Delivered on Sabbath Morning, October 10, 1858, by the REV. C. H. Spurgeon at the Music Hall, Royal Surrey Gardens.
"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is in you, except ye be reprobates."—2 Corinthians 13:5.
HAD
INTENDED to address you this morning from the third title given to our
blessed Redeemer, in the verse we have considered twice
before—"Wonderful, Counsellor, the mighty God;" but owing to
excruciating pain and continual sickness, I have been unable to gather
my thoughts together, and therefore I feel constrained to address you on
a subject which has often been upon my heart and not unfrequently upon
my lips, and concerning which, I dare say, I have admonished a very
large proportion of this audience before. You will find the text in the
thirteenth chapter of the second epistle to the Corinthians, at the
fifth verse—"Examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove
your own selves. Know ye not your own selves, how that Jesus Christ is
in you, except ye be reprobates?"—a solemn text, that we cannot preach too impressively, or too frequently meditate.
The
Corinthians were the critics of the apostles' age. They took to
themselves great credit for skill in learning and in language, and as
most men do who are wise in their own esteem, they made a wrong use of
their wisdom and learning—they began to criticise the apostle Paul. They
criticised his style. "His letters," say they, "are weighty and
powerful, but his bodily presence is weak and his speech contemptible."
Nay, not content with that, they went so far as to deny his apostleship,
and for once in his life, the apostle Paul found himself compelled to
"become a fool in glorying; for," says he, "ye have compelled me: for I
ought to have been commended of you: for in nothing am I behind the very
chiefest apostles, though I be nothing." The apostle wrote two letters
to them; in both he is compelled to upbraid them while he defends
himself, and when he had fully disarmed his opponents, and wrested the
sword of their criticism out of their hands, he pointed it at their own
breasts, saying, "'Examine yourselves.' You have disputed my doctrine;
examine whether ye be in the faith. You have made me prove my
apostleship; 'prove your own selves.' Use the powers which you have been
so wrongfully exercising upon me for a little season upon your own
characters."And now,
my dear friends, the fault of the Corinthians is the fault of the
present age. Let not any one of you, as he goeth out of the house of
God, say unto his neighbour. "How did you like the preacher? What did
you think of the sermon this morning?" Is that the question you should
ask as you retire from God's house? Do you come here to judge God's
servants? I know it is but a small thing unto us to be judged of man's
judgment; for our judgment is of the Lord our God; to our own Master we
shall stand or fall. But, O men! ye should ask a question more
profitable unto yourselves than this. Ye should say, "Did not
such-and-such a speech strike me? Did not that exactly consort with my
condition? Was that not a rebuke that I deserve, a word of reproof or of
exhortation? Let me take unto myself that which I have heard, and let
me not judge the preacher, for he is God's messenger to my soul: I came
up here to be judged of God's Word, and not to judge God's Word myself."
But since there is in all our hearts a great backwardness to
self-examination, I shall lay out myself for a few minutes this morning,
earnestly to exhort myself, and all of you, to examine ourselves
whether we be in the faith.Read the Whole Thing Here
http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/0218.htm
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