Spurgeon: Sermons on Proverbs by Charles Spurgeon

Author:Charles Spurgeon [Spurgeon, Charles]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2010-04-16T07:00:00+00:00

He means I think that there is a great difficulty--a terrible

difficulty, quite too much of a difficulty for him to overcome. He has heard of lion-tamers and lion-killers, but he is not one. He has not the strength and the vigor to attack this dreadful enemy; he will even confess that he has not sufficient courage for such an encounter. The terrible difficulty which he foresees is more than he can face: it is a lion, and he is neither Samson, nor David, nor Daniel, and therefore he had rather leave the monster alone. Are there not many here who say much the same? "Oh," they say to the preacher, "you do not know our position or the peculiar circumstances and special trials under which we labor. We would gladly be saved, but we cannot live as Christian men: our trade is a difficulty, our poverty is a difficulty, our want of education is a difficulty, and the whole put together make up an impossibility; there is a lion in the way."

Yes, I know, that is what your relative said many years ago, and as long as there is any of your family left there always will be lions about: and you, being a true descendant of the slothful one--to speak honestly to you--can hear the lion roar under your window just as your great grandfather's grandfather did in Solomon's time. I am persuaded that your sons and daughters, if they have the same mind as you have--that is, a mind unwilling to come to Christ--will hear the voice of the lions too; wonderful difficulties will be in their way as they are in yours. The ancient order of the Donomores and the fruitful family of the Easys will keep their beds and their posts till the last trump shall sound. Though the promise is, "Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet," they have no heart for the conflict and therefore never win a victory.

Yes, but in this sluggard's case it was a very fierce lion. The Hebrew of the second text implies that it was a mighty lion that was in the street. His imagination pictured a very extraordinary monster, much larger than usual. And so, my dear friends, you have some difficulty much greater than anybody else ever had; at least you talk as if this were the case. True, the martyrs swam through seas of blood to win the crown, and thousands were burnt to ashes at the stake that they might be found faithful to Christ: but it would seem from your talk that those lions were nothing compared with your lion, which is of huge dimensions and extraordinary ferocity. What can this lion be? Perhaps if I were to examine a little closely it might come out that you are a great coward, and the lion a wretched cur not worth noticing. Your lion is a mere mouse: where is your manliness to

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