PROPHECY FEATURE: "HELL: Fighting fire with Fire" Spurgeon

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PROPHECY FEATURE

 

"HELL: Fighting fire with Fire"

"Due to a Rise in False Teaching on Hell we dedicate this series"

 

The Saint's Horror At 
the Sinner's Hell

by Charles H. Spurgeon

A SERMON DELIVERED ON SUNDAY MORNING, 
AUGUST 16TH, 1863, 
BY THE REV. C. H. SPURGEON, 
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON

“Gather not my soul with sinners.” — Psalm 26:9.

WE must all be gathered in due course. When time shall have ripened the 
fruit, it must hang no longer upon the tree, but be gathered into the basket; 
when the summer’s sun has perfectly matured the corn, the sickle must be 
brought forth, and the harvest must be reaped; to everything there is a 
season and an end. There shall be a gathering-time for every one of us. It 
may come to-morrow; it may be deferred another handful of years; it may 
come to us by the long process of consumption or decline; it may advance 
with more rapid footsteps, and we may in a moment be gathered to our 
people. Sooner or later, to use the expressive words of Job, the Almighty 
shall set his heart upon each of us, and gather unto himself our spirit and 
our breath. That gathering rests with God! — the prayer of the Psalmist 
implies it, and many Scriptures affirm it. As Young sings in his Night 
Thoughts —

“An angel’s arm can’t hurl me to the grave.”

Accidents are but God’s arrangements; diseases are his decrees; fevers his 
servants, and plagues his messengers. Our mortality is immortal, till the 
Eternal wills its death. “Return, ye children of men” can be spoken by none 
but our heavenly Father, and when he gives the word, return we must 
without delay. I do not know, my brethren, seeing that our death is certain, 
and remains entirely in the hands of our gracious God, that there is any 
prayer which we need to offer concerning it, except, “Father, into thy 
hands I commit my spirit,” and this brief sentence, “Gather not my soul 
with sinners.” Scarcely can I commend those who plead to be delivered 
from sudden death, for sudden death is sudden glory; hardly can I advise 
you to request a hasty departure; for flesh and blood shrink from speedy 
dissolution. Pray not for long life, nor for an early grave; cheerfully leave 
all these matters to the choice of infinite wisdom, and concentrate all your 
desires upon the one desire of the text. Filled with a holy horror of the hell 
of sinners, let us make most sure our calling to the heaven of the blessed. 
Let the fear of being cast forth with the withered branches increase our 
fruitfulness, and let our horror of the sinner’s character and doom lead us 
to cleave more closely to the Savior of souls.

We will divide our discourse thus: first, the gathering, and here let us 
behold a vision; next, the prayer, and here let us note an example; thirdly, a 
fear, and here let us observe a holy anxiety; and then fourthly, an answer 
yielding a consolation.

I. First, THE GATHERING. Let the man who hath his eyes open behold the 
gathering of sinners, and in the sanctuary of the Lord let him understand 
their end.

There have been many partial gatherings of the ungodly, all ending in 
sudden ruin and overthrow. Turn your eyes hither. Two hundred and fifty 
men have impudently taken censers into their hands, and have dishonored 
the Lord’s chosen servants, Moses and Aaron. Mark well their proud 
revilings of the Lord’s anointed. In the gainsaying of Korah they have all a 
part. The people hasten from their tabernacles, and they stand alone. It is 
but for a moment. See I the earth cleaveth asunder; they go down alive into 
the pit, and the earth closes her mouth upon them. My soul trembleth and 
hideth her face for fear, and my fainting heart groaneth out her desire — 
“Gather not my soul with sinners!”

Look yonder, my brethren, to the city of palm trees surrounded by its 
strong munitions. All the inhabitants are gathered together within it; from 
the top of the walls they mock the feeble band of silent Israelites, who for 
six days have marched round and round their city. The seventh day has 
come, and the rams’ horns give the signal of destruction; the Lord cometh 
forth from his rest, and at the terror of his rebuke the walls of Jericho fall 
flat to the ground. Now where are your boastings, O congregation of the 
wicked? The sword of Israel is bathed in your blood, O accursed sons of 
Canaan. As we hear the shriek of the slaughtered, and mark the smoke of 
the city ascending up to heaven like the flame of Sodom of old, we 
reverently bow the knee unto Jehovah, and cry, “Gather not my soul with 
sinners.”

Leaping over centuries, with weeping we behold the holy city, beautiful for 
situation, once the joy of the whole earth, but now forsaken of her God, 
and beleaguered by her foes. All the Jewish people have come together 
from the four winds of heaven: as the flesh is cast into the caldron, and the 
fire burneth fiercely, so are they gathered together for judgment. Well 
might their rejected Messiah weep over the devoted city as he remembered 
how often he would have gathered her children together as a hen gathereth 
her chickens under her wings, and they would not. Now are they gathered 
in another manner, and the wings of eagles flutter over them, hastening for 
the prey. See yonder the Roman armies, and the mounds which they have 
cast up! Woe unto thee, O city of Zion, for the spoilers know no pity; they 
spare neither young nor old. “Blessed are the barren, and the wombs that 
never bare, and the paps which never gave suck;” for the day of the Lord’s 
vengeance is come, and the words of Moses are fulfilled, when he said — 
“The Lord shall bring a nation against thee from afar, from the end of the 
earth, as swift as the eagle flieth; a nation whose tongue thou shalt not 
understand; a nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard the 
person of the old, nor shew favor to the young... . And thou shalt eat the 
fruit of thine own body, the flesh of thy sons and of thy daughters, which 
the Lord thy God hath given thee, in the siege, and in the straitness, 
wherewith thine enemies shall distress thee.” Hark! the clarion summons 
the warrior to arms. The veterans of Vespasian and Titus dash to the 
assault. Where art thou now, O city polluted with the murder of prophets, 
and stained with the blood of the prophets’ Lord? Thy walls protect not 
thy sons, they keep not the temple of thy glory. See! A soldier’s ruthless 
hand hurls the red firebrand into the sacred precincts of the temple, and its 
smoke darkens the sky. Can ye walk those mouldering ruins, and behold 
the heaps of ashes mingled with burning flesh, the crimson streams of gore, 
and the deep pools of clotted blood? Can ye linger there where desolation 
holds her reign supreme, and refuse to see the justice of the God of Israel, 
or fail to breathe the humble prayer of the Psalmist, “Gather not my soul 
with sinners?” Wherever the enemies of God are gathered, there we have 
ere long, confusion, and tears, and death. In whatever place sinners may 
hold their counsels, when the Judge of all the earth cometh out against 
them, we soon see an Aceldama — a field of blood.

But, forgetting all these inferior gatherings, illustrious in horror though 
they be, my eye beholds a greater gathering which is proceeding every day 
to its completion. Every day the heavens and the earth hear the voice of 
God, saying, “Gather ye; gather ye my foes together, that I may utterly 
destroy them.” “Therefore wait ye upon me, saith the Lord, until the day 
that I rise up to the prey: for my determination is to gather the nations, that 
I may assemble the kingdoms, to pour upon them mine indignation, even 
all my fierce anger: for all the earth shall be devoured with the fire of my 
jealousy.” As the huntsman, when he goes forth to the battue, encompasses 
the beasts of the forest with an ever-narrowing ring of hunters, that he may 
exterminate them all in one great slaughter, so the God of justice has made 
a ring in his providence round about the sinful sons of men. Within that 
circle of divine power are imprisoned monarchs and peasants, peers and 
paupers; that ring encompasses all nations, polite or barbarous, civilised or 
rude. No impenitent sinner can break through the lines; as well might a 
worm escape from within a circle of flame. Every hour the lines grow 
narrower, and the multitudes of the Lord’s enemies are driven into the 
center where his darts are flying, where his sharp arrows shall pierce them. 
I hear the baying of the dogs of death to-day, hounding the unbelieving to 
their doom. I see the heaps of slain, and mark the terrible arrows as they fly 
with unerring aim. Multitudes of sinners are scattered from the equator to 
the poles, but not one of them is able to escape the avenger’s hand. High 
and haughty princes, boasting their imperial pomp, fall like antlered stags, 
smitten with the shafts of the Almighty; while their valiant warriors, like 
wild boars of the forest, perish upon the point of his glittering spear. The 
vision of the Apocalypse is no mere dream. He whose name is THE WORD 
OF GOD, shall tread the wine-press of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty 
God; and meanwhile, the angel standing in the sun crieth with a loud voice 
to all the fowls which fly in the midst of heaven, “Come and gather 
yourselves together into the supper of the great God: that ye may eat the 
flesh of kings, and the flesh of captains, and the flesh of mighty men, and 
the flesh of horses, and of them that sit on them, and the flesh of all men, 
both free and bond, both small and great.” At the remembrance of all this, 
we may well exclaim with Habakkuk, “When I heard, my belly trembled; 
my lips quivered at the voice: rottenness entered into my bones, and I 
trembled in myself, that I might rest in the day of trouble: when he cometh 
up unto the people, he will cut them in pieces with his troops.” O thou God 
of all grace, I pray thee, by the atoning sacrifice of Jesus, in which I trust, 
“Gather not my soul with sinners.” Let that providence which gathereth thy 
people from among men, lay hold on me. Let thine angels who keep watch 
and ward about thy people, keep me from the snare of the fowler, and from 
the destruction which wasteth at noonday.

But the scene changes: we see no longer the assembling of the multitudes 
in the great valley of the shadow of death, but we track them further, till 
we find ourselves on the threshold of the abode of spirits. Ye have seen the 
prisoners in their cells, waiting for their trial at the next assize. The strong 
hand of law has laid them in durance, where they await the summons to 
appear before the judge. I pray you note the company, and before the 
trumpet announces the judge, see what a strange gathering the prison-house 
contains. Do you mark them? There is the murderer, with blood-red 
hand; there is he who smote his fellow to his wounding; yonder lies the 
wretch who perjured himself before God; and here the man who pilfered 
his neighbour’s goods. However they differed from one another before, 
they are on a level in rank in this house of detention, and they all await one 
common gaol-delivery. It is no pleasant sight to visit these cells before the 
assize comes on; crime, although as yet uncondemned, is no comfortable 
vision. But what of earthly prisons? My heart sees a sight far more terrible 

“Look down, my soul, on hell’s domains, 
That world of agony and pains! 
What crowds are now associate there, 
Of widely different character. 
What wretched ghosts are met below, 
Some once so great, so little now; 
So gay, so sad, so rich, so poor; 
Now scorn’d by those they scorn’d before.”

Multitudes are gathered together in the state where souls abide until their 
final doom is pronounced both on their bodies and on their souls; a place of 
misery where not a drop of water cools their parched tongue; a state of 
doubt, and terror, and suspense; a place from which consolation is 
banished, where the “wrath to come,” perpetually afflicts them. There in 
captivity abide the formalist, the hypocrite, the profane, the licentious, the 
abandoned, those who despised God, and hated Christ, and turned away 
from the glory of his cross; there they are gathered, tens of thousands of 
them, at this day, waiting till the great assize shall sit. O God, “gather not 
my soul with sinners,” but let me be gathered with those whose spirits wait 
beneath the altar for their redemption, to wit, the resurrection of their 
bodies. Gather me with those who cry day and night until God avenge his 
own elect. Gather me with the multitude of spirits who wait the coming of 
the Son of God from heaven, that their bliss may be complete.

But now, my eye, prophetic in the light of Scripture, sees another 
gathering. The trumpet has sounded, the prison doors are loosed, and the 
gates of death give way. They come, bodies and souls; souls from the place 
of waiting in the pit of hell; and bodies from their graves, from ocean, and 
from earth; from all the four winds of heaven, bodies and souls come 
together, and there they stand — an exceeding great army. This time it is 
not in the valley of suspense; but “multitudes, multitudes in the valley of 
decision.” “And the Lord shall utter his voice before his army; for his camp 
is very great: for he is strong that executeth his word: for the day of the 
Lord is great and very terrible: and who can abide it?” “Assemble 
yourselves, and come, all ye heathen, and gather yourselves together round 
about: thither cause thy mighty ones to come down, O Lord. Let the 
heathen be wakened, and come up to the valley of Jehoshaphat: for there 
will I sit to judge all the heathen round about. Put ye in the sickle, for the 
harvest is ripe: come, get you down; for the press is full, the fats overflow; 
for their wickedness is great.” “And I saw a great white throne, and him 
that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and 
there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, 
stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was 
opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those 
things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the 
sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the 
dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to 
their works... And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was 
cast into the lake of fire.” Oh! well may you and I pray that we may have a 
part in the first resurrection; upon such the second death hath no power. 
Grant us, O Lord, that we may not be with the wicked, the rest of the 
dead, who rise not until after a thousand years are finished; but give thou 
us a portion among those whose iniquities are blotted out, who have not 
received the mark of the beast in their foreheads, who therefore live and 
reign with Christ a thousand years. (Revelation 20:4.) May we be gathered 
with the harvest of the Lord, when he that sits on the cloud shall reap it 
with his golden sickle; but this gathering of which my text speaks is not the 
harvest of the righteous, but the vintage of the wicked; when “the angel 
which had power over fire” shall cry, “Thrust in thy sharp sickle, and 
gather the clusters of the vine of the earth: for her grapes are fully ripe.” 
How dreadful that great wine-press of divine wrath which shall be trodden 
without the city, and how terrible that flow of blood, like a mighty stream 
of wine, so deep that it ran even unto the horses’ bridles by the space of a 
thousand and six hundred furlongs. “Gather not my soul with sinners,” O 
God, in that tremendous day.

I need not stop to paint, for colors equal to its terrors I have none, that 
dreadful place where the last gathering shall be held; that great synagogue 
of Satan, the place appointed for unbelievers, and prepared for the devil 
and his angels; where “sullen moans and hollow groans, and shrieks of 
tortured ghosts” shall be their only music; where weeping, wailing, and 
gnashing of teeth shall be their perpetual occupation; where joy is a 
stranger, and hope unknown; where death itself would be a friend. No, I 
will not attempt to describe what our Savior veiled in words like these, 
“These shall go away into everlasting punishment.” “Where their worm 
dieth not, and their fire is not quenched.” “Outer darkness, where shall be 
wailing and gnashing of teeth.” We drop the curtain, hoping that you have 
seen enough to make you pray, “Gather not my soul with sinners.” Dear 
brethren, when we recollect that that last gathering will be a perfect one, 
that there will be no sinner left with the saints; that, on the other hand, no 
saint will remain with sinners, when we recollect that it will be a final one, 
no re-distribution will ever be made, and that it will entail an everlasting 
separation, a great gulf being fixed, which none can cross, it remains for us 
to be solemnly anxious to be found on the right hand, and to put up, with 
vehemence, this prayer — “O Lord, gather not my soul with sinners.”

II. Having thus shown the vision of the gathering, let me, with deep 
solemnity, conduct your minds for a little time to THE PRAYER ITSELF. I am
sure we are all agreed about it, every one of us. Balaam, if he be here this 
morning, differs not from me. The worst and most abandoned wretch on 
earth agrees with David in this. Sinners do not wish to be gathered with 
sinners. Balaam’s prayer is, “Let me die the death of the righteous, and let 
my last end be like his,” which only differs in words from David’s petition, 
“Gather not my soul with sinners.” But then the reasons of the one prayer 
are very different in different persons. We would all like to be saved from 
hell, but then there is a difference in the reasons why we would so be 
delivered. The same prayer may be uttered by different lips; in the one it 
may be heard and accepted as spiritual prayer, and in the other it may be 
but the natural excitement produced by a selfish desire to avoid misery.

Now, I know why you would not wish to be gathered with sinners — those 
of you who are ungodly and impenitent — you dread the fire, the flames 
which no abatement know; you dread the wrath, the suffering, you dread 
the horrors of that world to come. Not so with the Christian, these he 
dreads as all men must, but he has a higher and a better reason for not 
wishing to be gathered with sinners. I tell you, sirs, if sinners could be 
gathered into heaven with their present character, the Christian’s prayer 
would be what it now is — “Gather not my soul with sinners.” If sin 
entailed happiness; if rebellion against God could give bliss, even then the 
Christian would scorn the happiness and avoid the bliss which sin affords; 
for his objection is not so much to hell, as to sinners themselves; his desire 
is to avoid the contamination and distraction of their company. Many of 
you will say, “Now I dislike the company of sinners;” indeed, most moral 
people dislike the society of a certain class of sinners. I suppose there is 
scarcely one here to-day who would wish to be found in the den of the 
burglar, where the conversation is concerning plunder and violence; you 
would not probably feel very easy in the haunt of the harlot, where 
licentious tongues utter flippantly lascivious words. You shun the house of 
the strange woman. The pothouse is not a favourite resort for you. You 
would not feel very much at ease at the bar of the gin palace; you would 
say of each of these — “This is no joy to me.” Even those of you who are 
not renewed by Christ, despise vice when she walks abroad naked. I fear 
me ye cannot say as much when she puts on her silver slippers, and wraps 
about her shoulders her scarlet mantle. Sin in rags is not popular. Vice in 
sores and squalor tempts no one. In the grosser shapes, men hate the very 
fiend whom they love when it is refined and delicate in its form. I want to 
know whether you can say, “Gather not my soul with sinners,” when you 
see the ungodly in their highdays and holidays? Do you not envy the 
fraudulent merchant counting his gold; his purse heavy with his gains, 
while he himself by his craft is beyond all challenge by the law? Do you not 
envy the giddy revellers, spending the night in the merry dance, laughing, 
making merry with wine, and smiling with thoughts of lust? Yonder 
voluptuary, entering the abode where virtue never finds a place, and 
indulging in pleasures unworthy to be named in this hallowed house, does 
he never excite your envy? I ask you, when you see the pleasures, the 
bright side, the honors, the emoluments, the gains, the merriments of sin, 
do ye then say, “Gather not my soul with sinners?” There is a class of 
sinners that some would wish to be gathered with, those easy souls who go 
on so swimmingly. They never have any trouble; conscience never pricks 
them; business never goes wrong with them; they have no bands in their 
life, no bonds in their death; they are not in trouble as other men, neither 
are they plagued like other men. They are like the green bay tree, which 
spreads on every side, until its boughs cover whole acres with their shade. 
These are the men who prosper in the world, they increase in riches. Can 
we say when we look at these, when we gaze upon the bright side of the 
wicked, “Gather not my soul with sinners?” Remember, if we cannot do so 
without reservation, we really cannot pray the prayer at all; we ought to 
alter it, and put it, “Gather not my soul with openly reprobate sinners;” and 
then mark you, as there is only one place for all sorts of sinners, moral or 
immoral, apparently holy or profane, your prayer cannot be heard, for if 
you are gathered with sinners at all — with the best of sinners — you must 
be gathered with the worst of sinners too. I know, children of God, ye can 
offer the prayer as it stands, and say, “In all their glory and their pomp; in 
all their wealth, their peace, and their comfort, my soul abhors them, and I 
earnestly beseech thee, O Lord, by the blood of Jesus, ‘Gather not my soul 
with sinners.’”

Brethren, why does the Christian pray this prayer? He prays it, first of all, 
because as far as his acquaintance goes with sinners, even now he does 
not wish for their company. The company of sinners in this world to the 
saint is a cause of uneasiness. We cannot be with them and feel ourselves 
perfectly at home. “My soul is among lions, even among them that are set 
on fire of hell.” “Rid me from strange children.” We are vexed with their 
conversation, even as Lot was with the language of the men of Sodom. We 
lay an embargo upon them, they cannot act as they would in our society, 
and they lay a restraint upon us, we cannot act as we would when we are 
with them. We feel an hindrance in our holy duties through dwelling in the 
tents of Kedar. When we would talk of God, we cannot in the midst of 
company to whom the very name of Jesus is a theme for jest. How can we 
well engage in family devotions when more than half the family are given 
up to the world? How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? You 
who sojourn in Mesech, you know how great a grief it is, what a damper it 
is to your spirituality, what a serious hindrance it is to your growth in 
grace. Besides, the company tempts believers to sin. Who can keep his 
garment pure when he travels with black companions? If I am condemned 
to walk continually in the midst of thorns and briars, it is strange if I do not 
mar my garments. Often our nearest friends get a hold upon our hearts, and 
then, being enemies to God, they lead us to do things which we otherwise 
would never have dreamed of doing.

The company of the sinner is to the Christian a matter of real loss in 
another respect, for when God comes to punish a nation, the Christian has 
to suffer with the sinners of that nation. National judgments fall as well 
upon the holy as upon the profane, and hence, through being mingled with 
the ungodly of this world, the Christian is a sufferer by famine, war, or 
pestilence. Well may he, from the little taste he has known of their 
company, cry “Gather not my soul with sinners.” Why, brethren, I will put 
you for a moment to the test — you shall be in the commercial room of an 
inn — you are on a journey, and you sit down to attend to your own 
business, or to await the train. Now, if two or three fast men come into the 
room, and they begin venting their filth and blasphemy, how do you feel? 
You do not wish to hear; you wish you were deaf. One of them cannot 
speak without larding his conversation with an outh. There is another, 
perhaps a man elevated above the situation which his education fits him to 
occupy, who, in his conversation utters the most abominable and atrocious 
language, and the others laugh at him. Before many minutes you will steal 
out of the room, for you cannot endure it. What must it be to be shut in 
with such persons for ever? On board a steam-boat, it may be, you fall into 
the middle of a little knot who are talking on some infidel subject in a 
manner far from palatable to you. Have you not wished yourself on shore, 
and have you not walked to the other end of the boat to be out of their 
way? I know you have felt that kind of thing. Your blood has chilled; 
horror has taken hold upon you, because of the wicked who keep not 
God’s law. If such has been your experience, you can well understand the 
reason of the Psalmist’s prayer, for much of such torment you could not 
bear.

Moreover, I do not know any class of sinners whose company a Christian 
would desire. I should not like to live with the most precise of hypocrites. 
What ugly company to keep! You cannot trust them anywhere — always 
hollow — always ready to deceive and to betray you. I would not choose 
to live with formalists, self-righteous people, because whenever they begin 
to talk about themselves and their own good deeds, they do, as it were, 
throw dirt upon the righteousness of Christ, which is our boast, and that is 
ill company for a Christian. The believer triumphs in the free grace of God, 
the power of the Holy Spirit, and the efficacy of the blood of Jesus, but the 
self-righteous man speaks only of his Church-goings and his Chapel- 
goings, his fastings and his almsgivings, and the like. We cannot agree with 
the self-truster; we could almost as well associate with the profane as we 
could with the self righteous. As for blasphemers, we could not endure 
them a moment. Would you not as soon be shut up in a tiger’s den, as with 
a cursing, swearing, thievish profligate? Who can endure the company of 
either a Voltaire or a Manning? Find out the miserly, the mean, the 
sneaking, the grasping — who likes to be with them? The angry, the 
petulant, who never try to check the unholy passion, one is always glad to 
be away from such folks; you are afraid lest you should be held responsible 
for their mad actions, and therefore if you must be with them, you are 
always ill at ease. With no sort of sinners can the child of God be hail-fellow. 
Lambs and wolves, doves and hawks, devils and angels, are not fit 
companions; and so through what little trial the righteous have had, they 
have learned that there is no sort of sinners that they would like to be shut 
up with for ever.

But then, we have other reasons. We know that when impenitent sinners 
are gathered at the last their characters will be the same. They were filthy 
here, they will be filthy still. Here on earth their sin was in the bud; in hell it 
will be full-blown. If they were bad here they will be worse there. Here 
they were restrained by providence, by company, by custom — there, there 
will be no restraints, and hell will be a world of sinners at large, a land of 
outlaws, a place where every man shall follow out his own heart’s most 
horrible inclinations. Who would wish to be with them? Then again, the 
place where they will be gathered alarms us — the pit of hell, the abode of 
misery and wrath for ever — who would be gathered there? Then, their 
occupation. They spend their time in cursing God; in inventing and venting 
fresh blasphemies. They go from bad to worse; climbing down the awful 
ladder of detestable depravity. Who would wish to be with them? 
Remember too, their sufferings; the pain of body and of soul they know, 
when God has cast both body and soul into hell. Who would wish to be 
with them? Recollect too, that they are banished for ever from God, and 
God is our sun, therefore they are in darkness; God is our life, therefore 
they are worse than dead; God is our joy, therefore they are wretched in 
the extreme. Why! this would be hell, if there were no other hell to a 
Christian, to be banished from his God. Moreover, they are denied the joys 
of Christ’s society. No Savior’s love for them, no blissful communion at 
his right hand, no living fountains of water to which the Lamb shall lead 
them. O my God, when I think of what the sinner is, and where he is, and 
how he must be there for ever, shut out from thee, my soul may well pray 
with anguish that prayer, “Gather not my soul with sinners.”

“Thou lovely chief of all my joys, 
Thou sovereign of my heart! 
How could I bear to hear thy voice 
Pronounce the sound ‘Depart?’ 
Oh wretched state of deep despair, 
To see my God remove, 
And fix my doleful station where 
I must not taste his love. 
Jesus, I throw my arms around, 
And hang upon thy breast; 
Without a gracious smile from thee 
My spirit cannot rest.”

III. But I am afraid I weary you, and therefore, dear friends, let me take 
you very briefly to the third point. There is in our text A FEAR, as if a 
whisper awakened the Psalmist’s ear to trembling, “Perhaps, after all, you 
may be gathered with the wicked.”

Now, that fear, although marred by unbelief, springs, in the main, from 
holy anxiety. Do you not think that some of us may well be the subjects of 
it? This holy anxiety may well arise if we recollect our past sin. Before we 
were converted we lived as others lived. The lusts of the flesh were ours. 
We indulged our members, we permitted sin to reign in our mortal bodies 
without restraint, and there will be times to the pardoned man, even though 
he has faith in Christ, when he will begin to think — “What if after all those 
sins should be remembered, and I should be left out of the catalogue of the 
saved?” Then again he recollects his present backwardness; and as the little 
apple on the tree, so sour and unripe, when it sees the crabs gathered is 
half afraid it may be gathered with them, so is he, with so little grace, so 
little love, he is afraid he shall be gathered with the ungodly. He recollects 
his own unfruitfulness, and as he sees the woodman going round the 
orchard, knocking off first this rotten bough, and then cutting off that other 
decayed branch, he thinks there is so little fruit on him, that perhaps he may 
be cut off too; and so, what with his past sin, his present backsliding, and 
unfruitfulness, he is half afraid he may yet have to suffer the doom of the 
wicked. And then, looking forward to the future, he recollects his own 
weakness and the many temptations that beset him, and he fears that he 
may fall after all, and become a prey to the enemy. With all these things 
before him, I wonder not that the poor plant, set yonder in the garden, is 
half afraid that it may be pulled up with the weeds and burned on yonder 
blazing fire in the corner of the garden. “Gather not my soul with sinners.” 
What man is there among you who has not need sometimes to tremble for 
himself? If any of you can say you are always confident, it is more than I 
can say. I would to God I could always know myself saved and accepted in 
Christ, but there are times when a sense of sin within, and present evil and 
prevailing corruptions make the preacher feel that he is in jeopardy, and 
compel him to pray, as he does sometimes now, in fear and trembling, “O 
God, gather not my soul with sinners.”

IV. And here comes in, to conclude, THE ANSWER TO THIS PRAYER, 
which is a word of consolation.

Brother, if you have prayed this prayer, and if your character be rightly 
described in the Psalm before us, be not afraid that you ever shall be 
gathered with sinners. Have you the two things that David had — the 
outward walking in integrity, and the inward trusting in the Lord? Do you 
endeavor to make your outward conduct and conversation conformable to 
the example of Christ? Would you scorn to be dishonest toward men, or to 
be undevout toward God? At the same time, are you resting upon Jesus 
Christ’s sacrifice, and can you compass the altar of God with humble hope? 
If so, then rest assured, with the wicked you never shall be gathered, for 
there are one or two things which render that calamity impossible.

The first is this, that the rule of the gathering is like to like. “Gather ye 
together first the tares, and bind them in bundles to burn them” — all the 
tares together — “but gather the wheat into my barn.” It is not “Make a 
mixture of them; throw them together in a heap; put the corn and the tares 
in my garner.” Oh, no: “Tares in bundles; wheat in sheaves.” If then, thou 
art like God’s people, thou shalt be with God’s people; if thou hast their 
life within, their character without; if thou restest on their Savior; if thou 
lovest their God; if thou hast a longing towards their holiness, thou shalt be 
gathered with them — like to like.

There is another rule: those who have been our proper comrades here are 
to be our companions hereafter. God will be pleased to send us where we 
wish to go in this life; that is to say, if in this life I have loved the haunt of 
the sinner, if I have made the theater my sanctuary, if I have made the 
drinking house my abode of pleasure, if I have found my solace with the 
gambler, and my comfort with the debauchee, if I have lived merely for 
business and for this world, and never for the next, then I shall go with my 
companions; I shall be sent where I used to go; being let go, I shall go to 
my own company among the lost. But, on the other hand, if I have loved 
God’s house; if I can say with the Psalmist, “I have loved the habitation of 
thy house, and the place where thine honor dwelleth;” if the excellent of 
the earth have been my companions, and the chosen of God have been my 
brethren, I shall not be separated from them; I shall have the same company 
in heaven that I have had on earth; if I have walked with God here, I shall 
reign with God there; if I have suffered with Christ here, I shall reign with 
Christ hereafter. That is another thing which prevents your being gathered 
with the wicked.

Again, you cannot be gathered with the wicked, for you are too dearly 
bought. Christ bought you with blood, and he will not cast you into the 
fire. It is a doctrine we never can hold, that Christ redeemed with his 
precious blood any that are damned in hell. We cannot conceive it possible 
that Christ should have stood their sponsor in suffering, and yet they 
should be punished too; that he should pay the debt, and then they should 
have to pay it also.

And again, you are loved too much. God the Eternal Father has loved you 
long and well, and proved that to you by his great gift and by his daily 
consideration and care of you; and it is not, therefore, possible that he 
should permit you, the darling of his heart, the child of his desire, a 
member of the mystical body of his only beloved Son, to perish for ever in 
Tophet.

Again that new nature within you will not let you be gathered with sinners. 
What does your new nature do — what must it do? It must love God. 
What! love God and be in hell! Your new nature must pray. What! pray in 
the pit! Your new nature must praise the God that created it. What! sing 
songs to the Divine Being amidst the howling of the damned! Impossible! 
If thou hast a new heart and a right spirit; if thy soul clings with both its 
hands to the cross of Christ; if thou lovest Jesus and longest to be like him, 
thou mayst have this fear, but it is a groundless one, for thou shalt never be 
gathered with sinners, but thy feet shall stand in the congregation of the 
righteous in the day when the wicked are cast away for ever.

I had hoped this morning so to have handled my text, that mayhap God 
might bless it to the sinner, and who can tell it may be so? Sinner, if it be a 
dreadful thing to be gathered with thee, what a frightful thing thy gathering 
must be! My dear hearer, careless and thoughtless, this morning I have no 
fervid words with which to awake you; no earnest tones with which to 
startle you; but still, from my soul I do entreat you consider, that if it be a 
subject of horror to us to dwell with you for ever, it must be an awffil thing 
to be a sinner. And wilt thou be a sinner any longer? Wilt thou abide where 
thou now art? Alas! thou canst not save thyself; thou art hopelessly ruined; 
thou hast lost all power as well as all virtue; thou art as a dead thing, as a 
potter’s vessel that is broken to shivers with a rod of iron. But there is one 
who can save thee, even Jesus, and his saving voice to thee this morning is, 
“Believe in me, and thou shalt be saved.” To believe in him, is to believe 
that he can save thee, and therefore to trust. Dost thou not believe that of 
him who is God? Canst thou not believe that of him whose ways are not as 
thy ways, whose grace is boundless, and whose love is free! Wilt thou now 
believe that Christ can save thee, and that he will save thee? — and wilt 
thou now trust thyself to him to save thee? Say in thy heart, “Here, Lord, I 
give my soul up to thee to save it; I believe thou wilt and thou canst. Thy 
nature and thy name are love, and I trust thy name, I believe in thy 
goodness, I repose in thee.” Sinner, you are saved; God has saved you. No 
soul ever so believed in Christ and yet was left unpardoned. Go thy way; be 
of good cheer, “Thy sins which are many, are all forgiven thee.” Rejoice 
thou in him evermore, for thou shalt never be gathered with sinners. May 
God give his blessing to you now, for Jesus Christ’s sake. Amen.

 


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