p. 152 | WHY TEMPTED by Charles H. Spurgeon

Pacific Press Publishing Company · Oakland, California · Jan 8, 1894

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 20, No. 10.

WHY TEMPTED.

By Charles H. Spurgeon

Persecution and temptation are a sort of sieve, to sift the church of God. As it is, we have enough hypocrites among us, and if the way to heaven were strewn all along with loaves and fishes, we should have the devil himself going on pilgrimage. There must be these fiery persecutions, that the drossy hypocrites may be purged out. I warrant you there were not many hypocrites in the catacombs of Rome when to be a Christian involved almost certain death. They crept into their assemblies at the dead of night, and there gathered to sing hymns to the name of Jesus, and few were the traitors' tongues that joined in the singing.

When in our own country any man who had a Bible must die for it, and therefore men hid their Bibles behind the wainscot or under the floor boards, few were very eager for Bible reading. The mocking, the jesting, the jeering which goes on in the world is the sieve constantly moving to shake off the chaff and let the good wheat remain. If we could stop that winnowing fan, we should hardly wish to do so. I am sure if I could give some of you new converts a pass from here to heaven, so that nobody would ever laugh at you, and you would never suffer anything for Christ, I would not do it.

I feel I should be doing you a serious injury if I could secure you against every trial. Think of a soldier when he enlists. Suppose he should say to the sergeant, "Sergeant, will you give me a guarantee that I shall never fight?" I think the officer would reply, "You had better not enlist." Even so I say to you, We cannot guarantee you that you shall not be tempted, and if you want such a guarantee as that, you are not the kind of man we want; you are not the sort of man that is ever likely to win the crown unfading.

Trial and temptation discover the reality of conversion. Here is a man ridiculed for his religion and for his sobriety. He will not touch a drop of the drink which formerly cast him down to his destruction, and therefore his fellow-workmen laugh at him. All sorts of epithets are hurled at him while he is at work. He goes to a place of worship on Sunday, and for this he must be jeered at to the last degree. Who is this man that bears this so patiently?—Why, the very man who, twelve months ago, could drink as much as any of them, and used to jeer at others; the very man who, for twenty years before, never entered the house of God.

Now the fact that he can stand against temptation is one of the very best evidences that he is born again, and made a new creature in Christ Jesus; and those who see such a change confess that this is the finger of God. What else could have changed him so completely as to make him stand against the very thing which he himself took part in so short a time ago? We may thank God for the temptation, since it helps to evidence the reality of the conversion.—C. H. Spurgeon.