Did the call of God. It is close to you; it is as close as your mouth. we know how this was in Israel, how it might be, and has been, in Christendom. . For they're ignorant of God's righteousness and they are going about to establish their own righteousness.I had a Jewish fellow one night as we were talking say to me, "Well, Chuck, my father is a very religious man. Now it is the positive power of God in raising up from the dead Him that was delivered for our offences, and raised again for our justifying. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus hath made me free from the law of sin and death. For, essentially associated as He is with the glory of God the Father, the full deliverance of souls from the realm of death was His also. Finally, Paul insists that, all through history, God has been stretching out hands of appeal to Israel, and Israel has always been disobedient and perverse. A man is hungry, and he asks you, "How can I get bread?" Nothing less, I am persuaded, than this full blessing is the line that God has given to those who have followed Christ without the camp, and who, having been set free from the contracted ways of men, desire to enter into the largeness and at the same time the profound wisdom of every word of God. This proves that to the regular ministry there must be a regular mission and ordination. I think I hear the seeker after truth exclaim when he heard the gospel, "True? How are they to believe in him of whom they have not heard? But, suppose I still say: "Can it be that they have not heard?" Moreover, suppose in addition to this he charges you nothing whatever, but does everything gratis, having evidently no motive of gain, but being altogether disinterested, moved only by real pity for you, and a kind desire to remove your pain and save your life. Sleepy hearers are not likely to be led to faith. Not that any part of the truth has escaped: it is the fatal brand of that "great house" that even the most elementary truth suffers the deepest injury; but as to this truth, it seems unknown altogether. Conscience will cry aloud "I heard the gospel of grace, and I heard the arguments which proved it true, but I rejected a gospel which God himself proclaimed, a gospel which was genuine on the face of it, a gospel full of such love as ought to have melted a rock, a gospel that was brought to me without money and without price, a gospel that was pressed upon me from my infancy to my hoar hairs I rejected it, I wilfully rejected it, not because it was not true, but because I would believe a lie, and would not believe the living God." The sweet love of Jesus has an omnipotence in it to win souls. The entrance of God's word giveth light. Here is an instance of what is so reprehensible. If the first book in the Bible showed that it was only the call of God that made Israel what they were, its second book as clearly proved that all was over with the called people, had it not been for the mercy of God. The old man refused. Living By Faith: Commentary on Romans & 1st Corinthians, Spurgeon's Verse Expositions of the Bible. Thither He shall come, and thence, go forth. I say the word of God delivered as we find it is that which, when heard, brings faith to the souls of men. It is "revealed," and this too "from heaven."
