“Poor houseless soul, dost thou want a home? I have a house to let this morning for every sinner who feels his misery. Do you want a house for your soul? Then I will condescend to men of low estate and tell you in homely language that I have a house to let. Do you ask me what is the purchase? I will tell you; it is something less than proud human nature will like to give. It is without money and without price…will you take my Master’s house on lease for all eternity with nothing to pay for it, nothing but the ground-rent of loving and serving him forever? Will you take Jesus, and dwell in him throughout eternity? Or will you be content to be a houseless soul? Come inside, sir; see it is furnished from top to bottom with all you want. I t has cellars filled with gold, more than you will spend as long as you live; it hath a parlor where you can entertain yourself with Christ and feast on his love; it hath a drawing-room of brotherly love where you can receive your friends. You will find a resting room up there where you can rest with Jesus; and on the top there is a look-out whence you can see heaven itself. Will you have the house, or will you not? Ah! If you are houseless you will say, ‘I should like to have the house; but may I have it?’ Yes, there is the key. The key is, ‘Come to Jesus.’ But, you say, ‘I am too shabby for such a house.’ Never mind; there are garments inside. As Rowland Hill once said –
‘Come naked, come filthy, come ragged, come poor,
come wretched, come dirty, come just as you are’
If you feel guilty and condemned, come, and though the house is to good for you, Christ will make you good enough for it by and by. He will wash you, and cleanse you and you will be able to sing with Moses, with the same unfaltering voice, ‘Lord, thou hast been my dwelling place throughout all generations.’”
– Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeons Sermons Vol. II, The Glorious Habitation
Over the last month or so I’ve been working on writing a short story/essay comparing the church to a city full of half-finished buildings. Hopefully it will be finished in the next three or four weeks, but it’s been slow going since the state of the church today is something that is particularly heavy upon my heart. However, the above segment from a sermon by Charles Spurgeon that I just finished reading reminded me that it is in Christ alone – whatever state the church as a whole may be in – who is a place of rest for our souls, and oh how many there are today who do not know the peace and shelter of having the Lord as their dwelling place!
We are surrounded by thousands of people who have built for themselves massive homes in which their physical bodies may find shelter but have utterly neglected the shelter of their souls. Is it any wonder that so many are restless and seek satisfaction in such a vast array of places when the center of their being has nowhere to lay its head or set its heart? You, parent, do you wonder why your child is so in need of wearing the latest fashions or seeing the latest movie? And you, young man or woman, do you recognize the tug within your heart that constantly cries for more than what you now have? What of those long in years, retiring and spending the better part of their days in rest and entertainment; have you truly found that rest which you thought would come when you have spent those sixty-something years laboring? I think not. Perhaps in all these cases it is evidence that your souls are yet to find a home in which they can find repose.
Or perhaps it is that you have been so long at these soulish wanderings that you know no other existence. Maybe it is for you as it was for those young Israelites, born and grown during their years wandering in the desert and without any experience of having a fixed home to return to day after day. Their only knowledge was that of awaking in the morning to tear down their tents and carry them through the heat of the day, resetting them again in the evening. Day after day this was their lot, and they knew no other, save from the stories that their elders would often recount around the cooking fires of Egypt and how, though the houses there were poor and rough, they were a place to always return to.
Ah! Christian, look about you and see how many there are whose lives are lived in that fashion; moving day by day from one relationship to the next, from one pleasure to the next, and never finding a solid place in which they could stay and be satisfied. So many have been born to this sorrowful lot and have no knowledge of any other. But you, oh soul at rest in Christ, have known a home that is above any other. Tell them, my friends, that they may see once again that their souls were meant to be sheltered beneath the roof of the glory of God, which alone will keep them safe in the strongest of gales.
Tell them, as Spurgeon did, of how this home we have found is a place without price and full of the satisfaction for every want. Tell them that the lowest and dirtiest of men may enter so long as they be willing to trade their garments for those that the home’s Master offers them. They must stoop at the low gate and lay down their pride and self-reliance, trusting that the Master will provide for them. Tell them of the sweetness of the fellowship found in that house; how brothers live together in unity and love, and how the greatest serve the least and all are full with overflowing joy. Tell them of the quiet chambers where the weary heart is restored and refreshed; of the banquet hall where the greatest of feasts awaits all who the Master invites; of the upper rooms where vast secrets and wonders are kept for those who would search them out. Tell them, as those elder Israelites surely did for the younger, inspiring in that young generation a longing for the land that had been promised to them. Tell them, and show them as in your life you prove that the Lord is your dwelling place, and their souls shall surely recognize what it is that they have so long sought.
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